Sittenfeld conviction damaging to political campaigns, free speech - The Cincinnati Enquirer

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Caleb P. Burns

Imagine that a Midwestern city councilman is running for mayor on a pro-development platform.  As part of his campaign, he pledges his support for a project to revitalize a large-and-blighted building in the heart of his city’s downtown. A developer of that downtown property then makes a campaign contribution to the councilman. Is that a crime? Alarmingly, the Department of Justice thinks so.

This is not a hypothetical. It happened in United States v. Sittenfeld where the Department of Justice indicted former Cincinnati Councilman Alexander "P.G." Sittenfeld for accepting a political contribution based on his support of the development project. 

Read the indictment:Cincinnati City Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld arrested

Unfortunately, misguided prosecutions like this are not limited to the Midwest. The Department of Justice brought similar charges against former New York Lieutenant Governor Brian Benjamin for allegedly directing state funds to the non-profit of a campaign contributor. The federal district court in New York dismissed those charges before trial, ruling that "for criminal liability for bribery in the context of campaign contributions, there must be a quid pro quo that is clear and unambiguous" and "must be shown by something more than mere implication." Undeterred, the Department of Justice has appealed the court’s dismissal.

Sittenfeld was not so fortunate. The federal district court in Cincinnati did not dismiss his case and a jury convicted him. He is appealing his conviction and the outcome will have far-reaching implications for political campaigns, governing and fundamental issues of free speech and association.

The Supreme Court − always cautious about criminalizing politics − long ago recognized in McCormick v. United States that politicians raising money from people with business before them is "conduct that in a very real sense is unavoidable so long as election campaigns are financed by private contributions." Often, those likeliest to give money to political candidates are those with an economic stake in who wins the election. 

Accordingly, the Supreme Court has limited public corruption cases in the campaign contribution context to situations where the agreement for official action is "explicit" and there is an unambiguous and clear understanding. Nothing less than a clear quid pro quo is enough or else anyone who donates to a candidate − knowing the candidate will support the donor’s preferred policies − could be subject to indictment and conviction.

If Sittenfeld’s conviction stands, or Benjamin’s dismissal is reversed, that is precisely where we will be. As a result, political contributors will refrain from exercising their First Amendment rights to support like-minded candidates. Innumerable advocacy groups − the NRA, Emily’s List, AIPAC and many more − who contribute to candidates, but only after those candidates pledge to vote a certain way, could be accused of public corruption. They will all be at the mercy of the Department of Justice which, in these cases, has been a hammer in search of nails.

Sittenfeld’s case is particularly troubling. Knowing that Sittenfeld always supported and voted for economic development projects, the FBI designed a sting in which it directed a local developer and longtime donor to approach him about a blighted downtown project he had already said he supported redeveloping. The FBI then sent undercover agents to pose as the developer’s partners on the project. 

Those agents ended up making a political contribution to Sittenfeld’s PAC. Not once did Sittenfeld say that his support for the development project was contingent on the contribution, and not one cent of it was embezzled for personal use. It was a lawful contribution in all respects, and was publicly reported in regulatory filings. Nonetheless, the Department of Justice brought the full weight of the United States government and spent untold amounts of taxpayer money because a politician received a political contribution when he reaffirmed his support for something he was already doing.  While the jury largely rejected this farce − acquitting Sittenfeld on four counts − it convicted him on two. 

I have advised clients on campaign finance and government ethics for more than two decades. I understand why a lay jury convicted Sittenfeld on two counts: People think politics and political fundraising are unsavory. But that general view is precisely why the Supreme Court has long curtailed creative prosecutions of political candidates − juries tend to have preconceived ideas when politicians are on trial.

In Sittenfeld’s case, the trial judge himself acknowledged the evidence of a corrupt bargain was "ambiguous" and noted that a different jury could have deemed Sittenfeld’s conduct ordinary, lawful politics. But if ambiguous evidence is all that is required of the Department of Justice, then no officeholder or contributor is safe. The Department of Justice is not saving our representative democracy from corrupt politicians, it is eroding the relationship between our elected representatives and those they govern. And that has serious implications for our country that go well beyond Sittenfeld and Benjamin.

Caleb P. Burns is a partner at Wiley Rein LLP who specializes in campaign finance law, serves on the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Election Law, and has been retained as an expert witness in numerous public corruption cases including United States v. Sittenfeld.

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Meta says it broke up Chinese influence operation looking to exploit U.S. political divisions - NBC News

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China has become one of the most aggressive actors attempting to sway U.S. public opinion through fake accounts on social media, Meta said Thursday, despite still finding little success in those efforts.

In a quarterly report on inauthentic account behavior on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, Meta said it had taken down five distinct Chinese networks targeting foreign audiences this year, more than from any other country. 

“For comparison, between 2017 and November 2020, we took down two networks from China, and both mainly focused on the Asia-Pacific region,” the company said in its report. “This represents the most notable change in the threat landscape, when compared with the 2020 election cycle.”

Meta said it took down two of those coordinated inauthentic behavior networks recently. One of them included almost 5,000 fake accounts and primarily targeted Americans, often with posts about U.S. politics or U.S.-China relations. Many of the accounts also had counterparts on X, formerly known as Twitter, which are still live. NBC News viewed more than a dozen of those accounts, and all had fewer than 100 followers.

Meta said the repeated efforts indicate an attempt to have some networks in place in the lead-up to the 2024 election.

Ben Nimmo, Meta’s global threat intelligence lead, said in a call previewing the report that China’s attempts to create fake networks of influence accounts were evidence of multiple groups in that country attempting similar tactics.

“If you look at the China-origin influence operations that we’ve taken down and disclosed over the last year and a half, they’re coming from multiple different actors,” he said, noting that his team had attributed some campaigns to tech firms in China and one to Chinese law enforcement.

Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., said that he was unaware of such a campaign.

“Some people and institutions have launched one ‘rumor campaign’ after another against China on social media platforms and spread a tremendous amount of disinformation about China,” he said in an emailed statement.

In its 2023 annual threat assessment report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence found that China is prioritizing influence campaigns, especially as both major U.S. political parties routinely criticize Beijing.

Those campaigns are “probably motivated by their view that anti-China sentiment in the United States is threatening their international image, access to markets, and technological expertise. Beijing’s growing efforts to actively exploit perceived U.S. societal divisions using its online personas move it closer to Moscow’s playbook for influence operations,” the ODNI said in its report.

While pro-China influence networks of inauthentic accounts often gain little traction, it isn’t for the lack of trying. Another Meta report earlier this year found a campaign that spread across more than 50 websites, including almost every major social media platform, though engagement with those accounts was minimal.

Dakota Cary, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, said the repeated failed efforts to create pro-China influence operations could reflect that some propagandists have received bureaucratic orders despite the fact that Meta and some other companies routinely take them down.

“These institutions have continued to push down this path, even though we can see, at least from our side, that the efforts aren’t working very well,” he said. “And that’s because they are not responding to the metrics or the impact that we’re able to see but they’re responding to their own political incentives.”

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Opinion | The Electoral College Is 'the Exploding Cigar of American ... - The New York Times

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Hey, it’s election season! Think about it: A year from now, we should know who the next president is going to be and …

Stop beating your head against the wall. Before we start obsessing over the candidates, let’s spend just a few minutes mulling the big picture. Really big. Today, we’re going to moan about the Electoral College.

Yes! That … system we have for actually choosing a president. The one that makes who got the most votes more or less irrelevant. “The exploding cigar of American politics,” as Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice called it over the phone.

Whoever gets the most electoral votes wins the White House. And the electoral votes are equal to the number of representatives and senators each state has in Washington. Right now that means — as I never tire of saying — around 193,000 people in Wyoming get the same clout as around 715,000 people in California.

It’s possible the system was quietly hatched as a canny plot by the plantation-owning Southerners to cut back on the power of the cities. Or it’s possible the founders just had a lot on their minds and threw the system together at the last minute. At the time, Waldman noted, everybody was mainly concerned with making sure George Washington was the first president.

Confession: I was hoping to blame the whole Electoral College thing on Thomas Jefferson, who’s possibly my least favorite founding father. You know — states’ rights and Sally Hemings. Not to mention a letter he once wrote to his daughter, reminding her to wear a bonnet when she went outside because any hint of the sun on her face would “make you very ugly and then we should not love you so much.” But Jefferson was someplace in France while all this Electoral College stuff was going on, so I’m afraid it’s not his fault.

Anyway, no matter how it originally came together, we’ve now put the loser of the popular vote in office five times. Three of those elections were more than a century ago. One involved the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who won in 1876 even though the electoral vote was virtually tied and Samuel Tilden easily won the popular vote. But the Republicans made a deal with Southern Democrats to throw the election Hayes’s way in return for a withdrawal of federal troops from the South, which meant an end to Reconstruction and another century of disenfranchisement for Black voters in the South.

Really, every time I get ticked off about the way things are going in our country, I keep reminding myself that Samuel Tilden had it worse. Not to mention the Black voters, of course.

Here’s the real, immediate worry: Our current century is not even a quarter over and we’ve already had the wrong person in the White House twice. George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore in 2000 — many of you will remember the manic counting and recounting in Florida, which was the tipping point state. (Gore lost Florida by 537 votes, in part thanks to Ralph Nader’s presence on the ballot. If you happen to see Robert Kennedy Jr. anytime soon, remind him of what hopeless third-party contenders can do to screw up an election.)

And then Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump decisively in the popular vote — by about 2.8 million votes, coming out ahead by 30 percentage points in California and 22.5 percentage points in New York. But none of that mattered when Trump managed to eke out wins by 0.7-point margins in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, not to mention his 0.3-point victory in Michigan.

By the way, does anybody remember what Clinton did when she got this horrible news? Expressed her dismay, then obeyed the rules and conceded. Try to imagine how Trump would behave under similar circumstances.

OK, don’t. Spare yourselves.

Sure, every vote counts. But it’s hard not to notice that every vote seems to count a whole lot more if you happen to be registered in someplace like Michigan, where the margin between the two parties is pretty narrow. After her loss, Clinton did wonder how much difference it might have made if she’d taken “a few more trips to Saginaw.”

On the other side of the equation, Wyoming is the most Republican state, with nearly 60 percent of residents identifying with the G.O.P. and just about a quarter saying they’re Democrats. Nobody is holding their breath to see which way Wyoming goes on election night.

But if you’re feeling wounded, Wyoming, remember that presidential-election-wise, every citizen of Wyoming is worth almost four times as much as a Californian.

We are not even going to stop to discuss representation in the U.S. Senate, but gee whiz, Wyoming. You could at least show a little gratitude.

Nothing is going to happen to fix the Electoral College. Can you imagine trying to get a change in the Constitution that enormous? It was a long haul just to pass an amendment to prohibit members of Congress from raising their own pay between elections.

But we do at least deserve a chance to groan about it once in a while.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

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Koch network's political arm endorses Nikki Haley for president - WORLD News Group

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Americans for Prosperity Action on Tuesday pledged its full support for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley for president in 2024. The super PAC said it would begin supporting Haley’s bid for the White House this week with a multi-million-dollar ad campaign in early primary election season states. The Koch network, including its super political action committee, has not supported former President Donald Trump, both in the 2020 election and in the upcoming 2024 election.

What other candidates are receiving endorsements? Recently elected House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has endorsed former President Donald Trump’s reelection bid for 2024. Meanwhile, Iowa’s Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds has endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president.

Dig deeper: Listen to Carolina Lumetta’s interview on The World and Everything In It with political scientist Ryan Burge about polls in the United States.

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Influential Koch network backs Nikki Haley in GOP presidential primary - CNN

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CNN  — 

The influential network associated with billionaire Charles Koch will throw its money and influence behind former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the Republican presidential primary, the group announced Tuesday.

The decision could dramatically reshape the Republican field – roughly seven weeks before the Iowa caucuses – as Americans for Prosperity Action deploys its vast resources and standing army of conservative activists on behalf of the former South Carolina governor.

The endorsement marks the latest sign that powerful Republican donors are coalescing behind the candidacy of the former US ambassador to the United Nations. She has seen prominent figures join her campaign in recent weeks, particularly after South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott exited the race.

Earlier this year, AFP Action – a political arm of Koch’s network – pledged to back a single contender in the GOP presidential primary for the first time in its history. And it made clear that it would bypass former President Donald Trump in its quest to find what Emily Seidel, a top AFP official, called a president “who represents a new chapter.”

“When we announced our decision to engage in our first ever Republican presidential primary, we made it clear that we’d be looking for a candidate who can turn the page on our political dysfunction – and win. It’s clear that candidate is Nikki Haley,” Siedel said Tuesday. “We can’t keep looking to the politicians of the past to fix the problems of today. Nikki Haley represents a new generation of leadership and offers a bold, positive vision for our future. AFP Action is proud to be endorsing her and we will be doing everything we can to help make her the next President of the United States.”

The effort will begin with a multimillion-dollar ad campaign in support of Haley launching this week in all early and several Super Tuesday states, and the group touted its data capabilities – including a contact database with millions of voters – and its extensive grassroots reach.

Seidel did not disclose a budget on behalf of Haley, but the network has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in previous election cycles, rivaling the financial might of the Republican National Committee.

“AFP Action’s members know that there is too much at stake in this election to sit on the sidelines. This is a choice between freedom and socialism, individual liberty and big government, fiscal responsibility and spiraling debt. We have a country to save, and I’m grateful to have AFP Action by our side,” Haley said in a statement to CNN.

The former president is the Republican primary’s clear front-runner in both national and early state polling, with Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis each jockeying to emerge as the main Trump alternative.

“We’re confident we are going to have the resources we need,” Seidel said when asked about the dollar amount the network was committing on Haley’s behalf. “What we bring to the table is, frankly, years of investment.”

She noted that in the 2022 midterms alone, the Koch groups knocked on more seven million doors and delivered more than 100 million pieces of mail.

The DeSantis campaign called the endorsement of Haley an “in-kind” contribution to Trump’s campaign, painting the former South Carolina governor as a “moderate” with no pathway to victory.

“Every dollar spent on Nikki Haley’s candidacy should be reported as an in-kind to the Trump campaign,” DeSantis spokesperson Andrew Romeo said in a statement. “No one has a stronger record of beating the establishment than Ron DeSantis, and this time will be no different.”

The network already has spent millions of dollars on advertising in early voting states this year to cast Trump as likely to lose the general election.

One ad, “Unelectable,” described Trump as a serial loser who would imperil Republicans in Congress.

“If Donald Trump is the GOP nominee, we could lose everything,” the narrator says.

Trump’s campaign and an aligned super PAC quickly slammed the Koch endorsement.

“Americans for Prosperity — the political arm of the China First, America Last movement — has chosen to endorse a pro-China, open borders, and globalist candidate in Nikki ‘Birdbrain’ Haley,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said. He added that “no amount of shady money” will stop Trump from winning the GOP nomination and the White House.

In addition to attempting to stir doubts about Trump among the GOP faithful, network officials have said part of their 2024 strategy is to bring a broader range of voters – those who reliably vote in general elections but not Republican primaries – into the GOP primary process to help alter the outcome of early contests.

During his White House tenure, Trump, often sparred with Koch officials, who sharply criticized his administration’s trade and hardline immigration policies. But the network supported the Trump administration on other priorities, including a tax cut bill he signed into law in late 2017 and a criminal justice overhaul. The network also backed his nominees to the US Supreme Court.

This story has been updated with additional reporting. CNN’s Ebony Davis, Kit Maher and Kate Sullivan contributed to this story.

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Koch political network endorses Nikki Haley in GOP primary - Axios

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Koch political network endorses Nikki Haley in GOP primary  Axios

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Anti-Trump network backed by Charles Koch endorses Nikki Haley in loss for Ron DeSantis - NBC News

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WASHINGTON — The political network financed largely by billionaire Charles Koch is endorsing former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley in the Republican primary, affording her new support against her Republican rivals in the fight to be the alternative to Donald Trump.

The announcement was made in a memo to grassroots activists via the network’s advocacy arm Tuesday and is being backed by a multimillion-dollar ad campaign beginning this week in states that hold early primary contests and several that vote on Super Tuesday.

“When we announced our decision to engage in our first ever Republican presidential primary, we made it clear that we’d be looking for a candidate who can turn the page on our political dysfunction — and win. It’s clear that candidate is Nikki Haley,” Emily Seidel, senior advisor to AFP Action, said in a statement. “Nikki Haley represents a new generation of leadership and offers a bold, positive vision for our future. AFP Action is proud to be endorsing her and we will be doing everything we can to help make her the next President of the United States.” 

While Haley stands to gain support in key primary states, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appears to be at the losing end of the decision, as he struggles to find traction and has tried to find a spark to propel his listless campaign. 

“This was not an easy decision for AFP. Governor DeSantis has been a good ally and a champion of many policy positions of AFP and the state of Florida,” a source briefed on the matter said. “But Nikki Haley also was an early ally, going back to the Tea Party movement when she ran for governor of South Carolina, and is also aligned on the issues.”

Donors to Americans for Prosperity, a piece of the political arm of the larger Koch network, had pressed the deep-pocketed group to make a decision and use their resources to boost a preferred candidate sooner rather than later, two sources familiar with the decision said. The push by donors came as the Republican primary field shrank, after former Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C. dropped out.

“I’m honored to have the support of Americans for Prosperity Action, including its millions of grassroots members all across the country,” Haley said in a statement after the announcement. “AFP Action’s members know that there is too much at stake in this election to sit on the sidelines. This is a choice between freedom and socialism, individual liberty and big government, fiscal responsibility and spiraling debt. We have a country to save, and I’m grateful to have AFP Action by our side.”

For weeks, people briefed on the matter cautioned that the decision wasn’t considered final until it was announced, with others noting until days before the announcement that the group could still end up backing DeSantis instead.

A day before the announcement, a representative for the group insisted to NBC News the decision was still in progress. 

The network had already waded into the Republican primary with advertisements targeting former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden. An endorsement brings with it lucrative financial backing and an early state operation that rivals the infrastructure of the Republican National Committee. It’s known in Republican circles as a turnkey operation — as soon as they decide, AFP can kick into gear. 

The group has spent around $4 million on ads so far this cycle (digital, satellite and radio), according to AdImpact tracking. Americans for Prosperity Action, a super PAC, raised more than $70 million in the first half of the year, according to Federal Election Commission records.  

The DeSantis team got wind of the likely Haley endorsement after an AFP backer discussed it at a gathering of political donors two weeks ago. A DeSantis donor relayed it to the governor’s aides, who were “apoplectic” and began a full-court press with AFP to buy their candidate more time to return to favor, according to two sources familiar with the matter. 

DeSantis had a direct conversation with an AFP executive, according to a person familiar with the discussion. This source said AFP recently told DeSantis they had not come to a decision yet and are still going through their process. 

A DeSantis campaign aide, asked before the endorsement was made public, said this never happened. 

“The reporting is entirely false. There’s a lot of ‘wish-casting’ going on out there, but the truth continues to be that there is only one candidate that can stop Donald Trump in the primary and Joe Biden in the General Election — that candidate is Ron DeSantis,” Communications Director Andrew Romeo said. “All Nikki Haley can do is try to accelerate Trump’s efforts. We won’t let that happen.”

Following the announcement, Romeo shared a comment with NBC News that he had posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, slamming the group as part of the “pro-open borders, pro-jail break bill establishment,” and said the endorsement would help Trump the most.

DeSantis is in a critical stretch of the race that could be more difficult if the Koch cavalry comes out in force for his top rival. 

The endorsement offers a formidable operational advantage, with a grassroots network embedded in primary states and years of door-to-door canvassing know-how. 

“If Nikki doesn’t have a robust operation in, say, Florida, which she doesn’t, she can turn to AFP,” a source said. “AFP will become her canvassing operation and can rival the Trump and DeSantis campaigns.”

The thinking is that with a little help, the endorsed candidate could take one or two states and make themselves viable if Trump is convicted in one of the legal cases against him and therefore incapable of service. Trump has pleaded not guilty to the indictments against him in Georgia, Florida, New York and Washington, D.C. 

“I don’t think there’s ever been a time when money in a presidential race mattered less,” said one of the Republican sources, who is not connected to either campaign. “That’s why the Koch efforts have always been about lifting someone else in the primary.” 

For months, DeSantis was viewed as the most electable alternative to Trump, and as a popular swing-state governor backed by a super PAC flush with cash, someone who had the wherewithal and means to dispatch his competitors easily.

That notion began to dissipate entering the fall as the governor dipped in the polls and struggled to regain momentum.

After signaling the group could get behind DeSantis, AFP began “reserving the right to look at someone else” following the first two debate performances and disappointing polling for DeSantis, who had been their top choice for a while, according to sources familiar with the matter. 

Conversations with him stalled a bit and going into November, the group turned their eyes to Haley, according to these people.

“The polls are a snapshot in time. It’s still less than a year out. But when you look at Trump versus Biden, DeSantis versus Biden and Nikki Haley versus Biden, Nikki Haley comes out number one,” said a person familiar with the matter. “She’s the one that can most win Middle America and conservative America.”

In New Hampshire, two recent polls show Haley rising to second place, and ahead of DeSantis by double digits. A Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa poll published at the end of October shows Haley and DeSantis tied for second place at 16 percent.

People briefed on the announcement cite DeSantis’s tilt toward economic populism during his campaign as another reason for the drift, after he was endorsed by AFP during his successful 2022 gubernatorial reelection bid. 

“It’s not just a horse race,” one of these people said, and that an array of factors have weighed on AFP’s decision. 

Haley had to overcome the Koch team’s aversion to her muscular foreign policy, which took some time, this source said. In recent years, Koch-supported groups have teamed up with left-leaning allies to foster more restraint in U.S. foreign policy. 

As Haley has picked up steam, she has seen growing interest from donors who are opposed to Trump. At the same time, voters are looking favorably at her stance on an issue that has left the party reeling and upended ballot measures in even ruby-red states: abortion. 

Haley announced Monday that she had qualified for the ballot in more than 20 states. 

Leadership at Americans for Prosperity has said it is focused on electability. In a February memo, CEO Emily Seidel said AFP Action wants a candidate not only who can lead, but “who can win.” 

Both DeSantis and Haley entered the fourth quarter with a fraction of Trump’s cash on hand, an obstacle as they work to reach voters in places where the former president has notched a runaway lead. 

Supporting DeSantis is a super PAC roiled by dysfunction and criticized for a strategy that has appeared to hamper more than help him. 

In South Carolina, the group was sending out daily mailers to people’s houses through the summer before dropping off, a source said.

“Heck, we were getting text messages something like every day from Never Back Down PAC, TV ads, mail,” the source said. “They were spending a crazy amount of money early in the state, and then never had the offense. If anything, he went down.”

Haley has said that she expects to do well in Iowa and New Hampshire but that her road to winning the primary will go through her home state of South Carolina, where she was a two-time governor.

She is polling second behind Trump in South Carolina, with 18.8% of the GOP primary vote, while DeSantis is at 10.5%, according to RealClearPolitics’s average of recent polls. By comparison, Trump has 49% support. 

South Carolina Rep. Russell Fry, who is supporting Trump, said for the former president to be in trouble, there would have to be a real parity between the other candidates and him. 

“Nothing has changed, really, in a year, except that Trump’s numbers have gone up,” Fry said. 

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2024 campaign: Trump rallies aren't even about politics at this point. - Slate

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For all of Donald Trump’s rhetorical innovations, personality quirks, and alleged criminal malfeasance, what has made him truly unique as a political figure is how much he has merged fan culture with American politics. It’s not unusual for Americans to idolize presidents—Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama are still actively revered by many—but no other president has inspired the same level of merchandise lines or themed car flags. A MAGA bumper sticker often isn’t simply a statement of loyalty; it’s a cultural signifier of community much like the dancing bear bumper sticker is for a Grateful Dead fan.

Nowhere is this more clear than at Trump’s rallies. He’s turned his campaign events into something that has more in common with a Bruce Springsteen concert than a Harry Truman whistle-stop tour.

A late-November Trump rally in Fort Dodge, Iowa, was as good an example of the genre as any. Held in a fading blue-collar city about 30 miles from the interstate, attendees started lining up for the rally early in the morning for the chance to see Trump appear in a high school gym decorated with banners celebrating victorious softball and bowling teams.

The line to get in wrapped around the school’s parking lot, forming an elongated C that stretched from the entrance of the building around the lot. Throughout, there were vendors selling Trump- and MAGA-branded clothing. Some set up full bazaars with shot glasses and keychains for sale alongside baseball hats and T-shirts. Others wheeled carts up and down the line, offering the most popular accessories. For the hungry, there was a food truck nearby.

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Attendees were willing to stand for hours to get in, even if they were skeptical that they would get a chance to see the candidate. Pam Bygness of Coalville, Iowa, was way at the back of the line. She had attended Fort Dodge Senior High and didn’t think its gym could hold all the people waiting to get in. But she was still willing to wait for hours for her chance to see Trump. “He is truly a patriot,” she said. “You tell me what other man could go through what he has gone through to keep fighting for this country.”

At least half of those attending were showcasing their zeal in their fashion choices—including taking advantage of vendors swarming the rally. John Miller of Fort Dodge was wearing a brand-new T-shirt displaying Trump standing with an American flag and giving the middle finger with both hands above the slogan “One For Biden. One For Harris.”

Ashley Long of Des Moines had come wearing a Trump hat and a T-shirt with the image of the former president and a single word: “Revenge.” These had been sold by a right-wing podcaster, and Long described the shirt as “a joke” and the “opposite of Obama’s ‘Hope’ ” slogan. (Trump’s legal troubles have only made Long more supportive of him, she said, but she did caveat that if Trump did “something super heinous,” she could still support someone else. “It would have to be a video of Trump punting a baby for him not to be my guy,” she said.)

Chris Seedorf of Albert Lea, Minnesota, was wearing an American-flag cowboy hat and a shirt with a cartoon of a shotgun-wielding Trump modeled on Elmer Fudd and the slogan “Be Very Quiet I’m Offending Liberals.” Seedorf said he’d “take a bullet for” Trump and that Trump was the only politician he’d commit such an act of self-sacrifice for. Of the former president, Seedorf said: “He’d do it, too, for everyone else.”

Ben Jacobs

Once attendees were let inside the high school gym, folding chairs were laid out on the basketball court, and the bleachers were packed up to the rafters. The soundtrack, which had favored early Elton John in Trump’s first presidential campaign, was now more tilted toward late Elvis. The music was interrupted by a preprogram where state elected officials did their best imitations of Trump’s populist rhetoric to entertain the crowd. One state representative started his speech by telling “transgender males” to “put their jockstraps back on” and ended it with an extended impression of Yoda, while another derided former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick as a “disrespectful little shit.” But they were undercards at best.

Trump has long drawn a community of superfans called “Front Row Joes” who treat his events with the same regard that Deadheads used to treat a live show. While Jim and Sandy Pamperin of St. Paul, Minnesota, weren’t quite in that community—Sandy had been to a mere eight Trump rallies while Jim had only been to three, including a canceled one in Iowa earlier this year—it was still an important event for them. Newlyweds married in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, just weeks before, they were treating the Trump rally as part of the celebration. As Sandy Pamperin said, “There is no better place to have a honeymoon.” Dressed in Trump gear and given prime seating, the couple was excited to get their picture taken with the former president after the event.

Eventually, finally, Trump took the stage, and the crowd stood to applaud him as Lee Greenwood blared from the speakers. They didn’t all sit down until the former president was 20 minutes into his speech, a variation on the all-too-familiar form: He riffed on a prepared text jampacked with dark “American Carnage”–style rhetoric assailing his opponents, chock-full of lines like “Crooked Joe Biden is also waging a demented crusade to annihilate Iowa ethanol,” and extended tangents about topics like the 2018 Florida gubernatorial primary, Xi Jinping’s granite-like physique, or the low crime in Fort Dodge. (According to Trump, “You don’t have people getting bopped over the top of the head” in the north-central Iowa town.)

At other typical caucus events, candidates at least face a handful of questions from voters, but there was none of that here. After all, while one might question Ron DeSantis on his foreign policy after his stump speech, no one would dare question Mick Jagger about what key he was singing in after a concert.

Instead, they stood, clapped, and cheered as Trump mocked long-standing foes like California Democrat Adam Schiff (“We call him pencil-neck,” Trump said, to guffaws), mocked transgender athletes participating in women’s sports, and shared humorous dismay about the salacious allegations of the infamous 2016 Steele dossier. Trump said of himself, to hoots and hollers, “He’s not into golden showers as they say—they call them. He’s not. I don’t like that idea.”

Afterward, attendees quickly streamed out. They had seen the show, bought their merchandise, and taken the selfies to prove that they were there. For hardcore Trump devotees, it was yet another milestone for them to mark down. And for those less devoted, it was a rare opportunity that was not to be missed. After all, presidential candidates come to Iowa all the time—but how often does Donald Trump come to your town?

Trump loyalists, let alone those motivated enough to attend his rallies, don’t make up a majority of Republican primary voters or general election voters. But they represent a key faction within the GOP and are perhaps the decisive reason for Trump’s political strength—even after 91 criminal charges, four tumultuous years in the White House, and one attempt to storm the Capitol and overturn a presidential election. Even when Trump’s political fortunes were at their lowest ebb after he left office, he still had a base devoted to him, not so much for his politics but for his personality and what that personality represents.

It’s certainly not enough to win the general election next year on its own—after all, Trump did not receive a plurality of the popular vote against Clinton or Biden. But it is enough to explain his current strength in the Republican primary, where a significant fraction of the GOP electorate is devoted to him. For all the efforts of his rivals to displace him from the lead, all the television ads devoted to touting their virtues, and the constant stream of court cases and legal documents outlining Trump’s failings, he has one advantage they just can’t touch.

Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley have partisans. Donald Trump has fans.

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Biden uses Charlottesville to talk about political violence. But he ... - NPR

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The street where Heather Heyer was killed during the Nazi rally in 2017 has been renamed to Heather Heyer Way. Residents in Charlottesville say that day still leaves an impact on the town. Deepa Shivaram/NPR

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It's been more than six years since images of a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va., shocked the world — hundreds of people with tiki torches chanted antisemitic slurs, and a counter-protester, Heather Heyer, was killed.

The events of Aug. 12, 2017, were so shocking that they motivated Joe Biden, who had mostly retired from political life, to run for president against Donald Trump. He said hearing Trump saying there were "very fine people on both sides" that day in Charlottesville was a defining moment.

"In that moment, I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had ever seen in my lifetime," Biden says in his 2019 video announcing his run for president.

But as much as Biden talks about Charlottesville, some residents are wondering why he hasn't visited the town.

What it would mean for Biden to visit

"If that made an impact on him ... he said that was one of the reasons he ran, then why wouldn't you? I mean that would be something you do," Carla Hunt, a former educator, said.

Student Amy Little said Biden should "absolutely" visit.

"I think there's a certain gravity in coming and seeing where those things happen and really kind of getting a sense and breathing the air and seeing the sites," she said.

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Amy Little (left), a student and longtime resident in Charlottesville, said Biden should "absolutely" come visit the town. Deepa Shivaram/NPR

Deepa Shivaram/NPR

Others said a visit from Biden wouldn't make much of a difference.

"2017 was a long time ago now. There's a pandemic, there's a whole bunch of other places that have happened since then. He's going where the news is," local resident Kelly Vo said. "It is what it is."

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Kelly Vo (left) told NPR that Biden is traveling where the news is, and it wouldn't make much impact if he visited Charlottesville so many years after the 2017 events. Deepa Shivaram/NPR

Deepa Shivaram/NPR

Barbara Perry, a professor of presidential history at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, told NPR that despite how shocking the events in Charlottesville were, political memory is short.

"Perhaps the further we get away from August 2017 and from the attack on Charlottesville, it raises a good point: Do we still have a sense of the urgency there?" Perry said.

Still, Perry noted that it's important for Biden to speak up on the issue.

"It's certainly a responsibility, it seems to me, of an incumbent president of the United States to remind Americans what we are fighting for to maintain our democratic republic," Perry said.

For Biden, democracy is a central message

In private events with donors and in some official events, Biden has started to direct more pointed attacks at Trump — saying he and right-wing Republicans are an existential threat to the nation.

At a recent fundraiser in San Francisco, Biden said "democracy is at stake" in the next election and said Trump is "running on a platform to end democracy as we know it, and he's not even hiding the ball."

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President Biden, at a speech in Tempe, Ariz., made some of his most pointed attacks against former President Trump, and said he and extremist Republicans were a threat to democracy. Rebecca Noble/Getty Images

Rebecca Noble/Getty Images

At public events, he's starting to make the same arguments. At a September speech in Tempe, Ariz., Biden said it was up to Americans to decide where they stand on the country's values.

"Do we still believe in the Constitution? Do we believe in the basic decency and respect? The whole country should honestly ask itself — and I mean this sincerely — what it wants and understand the threats to our democracy," Biden said.

"I'm asking you that regardless of whether you're a Democrat, Republican or independent — put the preservation of our democracy before everything else," Biden said. "Put our country first."

Polling shows the state of democracy is an issue voters are deeply concerned about. A recent poll from Bipartisan Policy Center and Morning Consult showed a whopping 82% of voters are worried about it.

The Biden campaign said the president will continue to make combating political violence part of his reelection bid, but it did not specify how he plans to talk about it going forward.

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Political noise distracts central Europe's rate-setters - Reuters

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• Summary

• Central bank governors under fire from politicians
• Hungarian government pushes for sharp rate cuts
• Incoming Polish government seeks to oust governor
• Poland, Hungary facing years of high inflation

WARSAW/BUDAPEST, Nov 27 (Reuters) - (This story has been refiled with a change to the headline)

The central bank governors of Poland and Hungary are caught up in noisy disputes with opponents over their rate-setting policy, raising new hazards for investors willing to brave central Europe's bitterly polarised politics.

In Poland, governor Adam Glapinski stands accused of having tried to boost the economy with rate cuts to help his longtime allies in the Law and Justice (PiS) party secure a new term in last month's elections - unsuccessfully, as it turned out.

In Hungary, central bank governor Gyorgy Matolcsy is under pressure from Viktor Orban's government to cut rates further ahead of local and European Parliament elections next year.

The rows come against a backdrop of regional inflation that remains markedly higher than that in western Europe, driven up by structural factors like very tight labour markets but also repeated patterns of pre-election stimulus in recent years.

Regional CEE assets like others around the world are being buoyed by the perception in financial markets that the U.S. Federal Reserve has put the brake on monetary tightening, and so have been shielded from losses over the political noise so far.

The election triumph of Donald Tusk's pro-EU coalition has even sparked a rally in Polish assets. But investors and credit rating agencies are monitoring closely the pressure on local central bankers given that inflation is still way over target and unlikely to get back on track till late-2025.

"The overall monetary settings and the credibility of CEE central banks have been adequate ahead of the recent shocks," said Karen Vartapetov, Lead Analyst for Sovereign Ratings at S&P Global Ratings.

"This year and next will put that credibility to the test."

Reuters Graphics

TANGIBLE BENEFITS

A 2021 World Bank survey found that political meddling in central bank policy led to sustained periods of high inflation in emerging market economies such as Turkey and Argentina.

Investor worries about central bank independence add to long-standing criticisms about the rule of law in Poland and Hungary, which have seen billions of euros of funds suspended by the EU due to its concerns about a backsliding of democratic standards. The governments have rejected the criticisms.

"Policy credibility is a negative rating sensitivity for Hungary and entrenched high inflation is incorporated in a negative sensitivity for Poland," said Paul Gamble, Head of Emerging Europe Sovereign Ratings at Fitch Ratings.

The incoming Polish government cites Glapinski's move to cut interest rates by a combined 100 bps ahead of the election but then keep them on hold after the vote as evidence he was tailoring monetary policy to the needs of his PiS allies. It is currently building a legal case that could see the governor being put before the State Tribunal.

Glapinski has repeatedly denied those allegations.

In response to a request to his office for comment, an NBP spokesman said officials had acted within legal mandates at all times and that moves to oust Glapinski could hit Polish assets.

"Attempts to bring the president of the NBP before the State Tribunal can be directly interpreted as an attack on the independence of the central bank," the spokesman said.

The State Tribunal consists of lawyers chosen by the lower house of parliament.

Local media says the body has handed down only two convictions since the collapse of communism and the procedure that could see Glapinski end up there could take months. If he is suspended, Deputy Governor Marta Kightley would take over.

CAPITULATION?

In Hungary, all eyes are on how Matolcsy - a former Orban ally who turned vocal critic of his economic policies - will deal with the government's demands that rates are reduced further from 11.5%, the highest in the EU.

Hungary's central bank has cut borrowing costs by 650 bps since May, refraining from a larger cut last week despite a somewhat better inflation outlook, with price growth seen easing to 7% by December from an eye-watering 25% in the first quarter.

"While there appear to be many solid reasons for accelerating the pace of rate cuts, a large proportion of foreign investors might see this as a capitulation to political pressure," ING economist Peter Virovacz said.

The bank said its base rate could fall into single digits in February, implying 75-bp cuts each over the next two months. The office of Matolcsy, whose term expires in March 2025, did not respond to questions for comment.

Polish five-year bonds carried a 282 bps spread over German Bunds on Friday, while Hungarian five-year bonds carried a 437 bps spread. How those premia evolve will depend partly on how politics in Poland and Hungary is perceived by investors to influence the central banks in the months to come.

"Everything else being equal, the less independent the central bank, the more real yield you need to have to be compensated for the risk," said Arif Joshi at Lazard Asset Management.

Additional reporting by Karol Badohal in WARSAW Writing by Gergely Szakacs Editing by Mark John and Toby Chopra

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Gergely Szakacs

Thomson Reuters

Gergely reports on central European economics, central banking and government policy, with content usually appearing on the Macro Matters, Markets, Business and World sections of the website. He has nearly two decades' worth of experience in financial journalism at Reuters and holds advanced degrees in English and Communication. Contact: 36703775834

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