Financial crimes prosecution

Post-traumatic stress — the nightmares, flashbacks and anxiety set off by terrifying events — is a defining injury of the global war on terrorism. But in the past few decades, the mental health community and the military have come to understand that there is a related, intensifying phenomenon called moral injury.

Moral injury doesn’t simply result from witnessing or participating in the horrors of war. Moral injury comes from participating in events that violate soldiers’ morality or, as the Department of Veterans Affairs describes it : “failing to prevent immoral acts of others, or giving or receiving orders that are perceived as gross moral violations.”

A person suffering from moral injury may be unable to trust friends and family, or the society that enabled the immorality. The injured can question whether virtue exists. Moral injury is often described as a bruise of the soul .

To avoid such injury, militaries long ago adopted procedures to ensure that those who don the uniform can do so with honor and then remove it with pride. One of the pillars of that framework is the military justice system; another is societal taboos against aberrant behavior.

President Trump threatened both those pillars by pardoning Clint Lorance, a former Army officer serving a 19-year sentence for murdering two civilians, and Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, accused of killing an unarmed Afghan, and by reversing the demotion of Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, the subject of a high-profile war crimes trial.

Patrick Swanson, who was Mr. Lorance’s company commander in Afghanistan, told The Times : “The tragedy is that people will hail him as a hero, and he is not a hero. He ordered those murders. He lied about them.”

That Mr. Trump would pardon men accused or convicted of war crimes should come as little surprise, given that he campaigned on promises to torture the nation’s enemies and kill their families. Mr. Trump in May became the first modern president to pardon a person convicted of war crimes, when he pardoned Michael Behenna , a former Army lieutenant, who had been convicted of killing a prisoner in Iraq.

The president may think he’s supporting men and women in uniform. “When our soldiers have to fight for our country, I want to give them the confidence to fight,” he said in a statement issued by the White House. “We train our boys to be killing machines, then prosecute them when they kill!” he said on Twitter last month.

Whatever the reason, absolving people who commit war crimes does great harm to society in general, and the men and women who served honorably — as far more than “killing machines” — in the wars since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in particular.

A nation has to know that military action being taken in its name follows morally defensible rules — that soldiers do not, for instance, kill unarmed civilians or prisoners.

To excuse men who have so flagrantly violated those rules — to treat them as heroes, even — is to cast the idea of

One of the loudest groups pushing for Mr. Trump’s pardons was United American Patriots , a nonprofit organization that supports numerous soldiers accused of crimes, including Mr. Lorance, Mr. Behenna and Major Golsteyn. Last month, Chief Gallagher sued two of his former lawyers and United American Patriots, alleging that his lawyers tried to delay the case to increase fund-raising for the organization.

Supporters of the pardoned men say the military justice system comes down too hard and too often on honorable soldiers fighting through the fog of war. That wouldn’t explain why United American Patriots has made a cause célèbre of Robert Bales, who pleaded guilty to slaughtering 16 Afghan civilians in their homes during a one-man nighttime rampage in 2012.

The president might truly believe these pardons won’t endanger soldiers by damaging allied support or emboldening enemies, and they’re probably unlikely to encourage future war crimes, though critics have raised such a specter.

But the impact such formal absolution will have on the veterans of these murky wars and the society that they are working to rejoin will be lasting. Venerating these pardoned men will cause even greater damage.

Mr. Lorance was a men testified that

“There was no threat from those guys whatsoever,” Staff Sgt. Daniel Williams told The Times . After his own men refused to fire, Mr. Lorance radioed a nearby truck to open fire. “This was straight murder,” Sergeant Williams said.

After

“I’m actually proud of everything that happened to me,” Mr. Lorance declared on Fox News’ s “Fox & Friends” on Monday , his first media appearance since being pardoned by President Trump.

“It is awesome to have you here,” said Pete Hegseth, a co-host of the show and an Iraq war veteran, slapping his guest on the thigh.

“I’m so happy to be an American,” Mr. Lorance said.

Chief Gallagher was charged after demanded that action be taken against him, even though they were threatened with career retribution for doing so. Two SEAL snipers told investigators that Chief Gallagher shot a girl walking on a riverbank with other girls.

He was charged with shooting indiscriminately at unarmed civilians and stabbing a prisoner in 2017. Chief Gallagher was found not guilty of those crimes. A find him guilty of posing for photos with a teenage captive’s dead body. Mr. Trump reversed the demotion that resulted from that conviction.

The president also pardoned admitted to the killing on Fox News in 2016. The pardon ends any military investigation into what happened.

“These are men who went into the most dangerous places on earth with a job to defend us, and made tough calls on a moment’s notice,” Mr. Hegseth said on Fox this year, before mentioning Chief Gallagher, Major Golsteyn and Mr. Lorance. “They’re not war criminals, they’re warriors who have now been accused of certain things that are under review.”

Of course, all war criminals fancy themselves warriors who had to make tough calls, facing the judgment of people who couldn’t possibly understand their actions.

The president has the undisputed power to pardon. Indeed, he should use it more often in cases where guilt or a fair trial are in genuine doubt. But that power cannot be exercised without a cost, in this case injury to the morality of a nation that once held its own to account.

The commander of the Navy SEALs tried to salvage some honor by formally ousting Chief Gallagher from the elite unit and removing the iconic “Trident” pin from Chief Gallagher and three of the officers who oversaw him. Mr. Trump intervened again on Thursday to stop the forging ahead to remove Chief Gallagher from the unit.

The United States military — and its civilian commander — doesn’t have the luxury of simply asserting that it is morally superior to its enemies. It needs to be morally superior, which means abiding by the rule of law, not some sense of American exceptionalism that presumes that monsters cannot exist in our midst.

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Though it was lost in the four-year cyclone that was the presidency of Donald Trump, one of his most immoral acts was to pardon soldiers who were accused of committing war crimes by killing unarmed civilians or prisoners. Military leaders, including his own defense secretary and the secretary of the Army objected, saying it would undermine good order and discipline. Lawlessness can easily beget lawlessness.

But the American system is ill prepared to deter leaders bent on undermining the rule of law. Checks and balances spread powers across the government, but that isn’t enough to temper or stop bad-faith actors looking to subvert the law. According to a new article in The Atlantic , Gen. Mark Milley, upon becoming the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2019, “found himself in a disconcerting situation: trying, and failing, to teach President Trump the difference between appropriate battlefield aggressiveness on the one hand, and war crimes on the other.”

Donald Trump, as General Milley discovered and many Americans already knew, is a man unencumbered by any moral compass. He goes the way he wants to go, legalities and niceties be damned. Last week in a post on his social network, Mr. Trump argued that General Milley’s actions would have once been punishable by death.

Most Americans probably didn’t notice his screed. Of those who did and were not alarmed, far too many nodded along in agreement. As Josh Barro said in a Times Opinion round table this week about the former president’s recent comments, “Trump is and has been unhinged, and that’s priced in” to the views that many voters have of him.

It is no exaggeration to say that Mr. Trump is running for the presidency on a platform of lawlessness, promising to wield the power of the state against his enemies — real or imagined. Today, millions and millions of Americans support him for that reason or despite it.

In poll released this week, 51 percent of American adults said they’d vote for Mr. Trump over President Biden, including the vast majority of Republicans. And Wednesday night’s farcical G.O.P. debate may only increase Mr. Trump’s large lead in the primary.

That advantage over the Republican field is growing even as prosecutors are finally trying to hold Mr. Trump legally responsible for his misdeeds — from the plot to overturn the 2020 election to fraud allegations concerning his real estate empire.

The backlash has been predictable: In the past few months, Mr. Trump has argued that federal laws about classified documents don’t apply to him; floated the idea of pardons for his supporters jailed for attacking the Capitol; said that judges with whom he disagrees are unfit to preside over cases against him; and has been accused of threatening to prejudice the jury pool in one case. A judge decided to shield the identity of jurors in another after Trump supporters posted the names, photos and addresses of grand jurors involved in issuing an indictment in that case. He is also pushing for a government shutdown to halt Justice Department investigations, to force a show of loyalty and try to bend our political system to his will — even when he is out of office.

All this has accompanied a sharp uptick in the often incoherent statements from the 77-year-old former president, on social media and at his rallies. And while many Americans long ago tuned him out, his most extreme supporters, like Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona, have not. In his newsletter , Mr. Gosar recently wrote that General Milley should be hanged.

As the legal cases against Mr. Trump have picked up, “so too have threats against law enforcement authorities, judges, elected officials and others,” The Times reported this week . “The threats, in turn, are prompting protective measures, a legal effort to curb his angry and sometimes incendiary public statements and renewed concern about the potential for an election campaign in which Mr. Trump has promised ‘retribution’ to produce violence.”

Mr. Trump’s targets extend to other Republicans. In a biography out next month, Senator Mitt Romney disclosed that he was spending $5,000 per day on security for himself and his family against threats from Trump supporters.

This combustible combination of heated political rhetoric, unhinged conspiracy theories, anti-government sentiment and a militant gun culture have created fertile ground for political violence. The country is not powerless to stop the spread of lawlessness but it requires addressing those precursors to violence.

Many of those elements swirled around a visit by Mr. Trump this week to a gun store in South Carolina that this summer , sold an AR-15-style rifle to a man who later carried out a racist mass shooting at a dollar store. During his visit, Mr. Trump hefted a custom Glock handgun with his face etched onto the handle. Though he said he wanted to buy one of the weapons — they’re big sellers! — it is unclear if he could legally do so since he is under indictment.

Mr. Trump’s whims and erratic online missives should not be dismissed as “Trump being Trump.” Take his call this month for House Republicans to shut down the government. Mr. Trump egged them on , urging them to settle for nothing less than their full slate of demands, including forcing the Justice Department to end its investigations of him. He called it “the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots.”

While a government shutdown won’t end the prosecutions of Mr. Trump, a Trump presidency could easily do so. After all, there are few moral or legal hurdles left to clear after pardoning war criminals.

There are many nations where citizens live in fear of governments that wield unchecked and arbitrary authority against their enemies, real or imagined. That is the America that Mr. Trump is promising his supporters. When Mr. Trump told supporters “ I am your retribution ,” all Americans should take him at his word.

Defeating Mr. Trump at the ballot box is going to require a lot more political courage than it takes to put flashes of honesty in the pages of a memoir. The former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson is the latest in a long line of memoirists, declaring in an interview on Tuesday for her new book that Mr. Trump is “most grave threat we will face to our democracy in our lifetime, and potentially in American history.”

True enough. Which is why Americans can’t wait until January 2025, and another shelf of memoirs, to hear the truth that so many Republicans have long known.

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Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted a written online conversation with Josh Barro, who writes the newsletter Very Serious, and Sarah Isgur, a senior editor at The Dispatch, to discuss their expectations for the second Republican debate on Wednesday night. They also dig into and try to sort out a barrage of politics around President Biden’s sagging approval numbers, an impeachment inquiry, a potential government shutdown and shocking political rhetoric from former President Trump.

Frank Bruni: For starters, Josh and Sarah, Donald Trump is scaring the hell out of me. It’s not just his mooning over a Glock . It’s his musing that in what he clearly sees as better days, Gen. Mark Milley could have been executed for treason. Is this a whole new altitude of unhinged — and a louder, shriller warning of what a second term of Trump would be like (including the suspension of the Constitution)?

Josh Barro: I don’t think people find Trump’s provocations very interesting these days. I personally struggle to find them interesting, even though they are important. I’m not sure this constitutes an escalation relative to the end of Trump’s service — the last thing he did as president was try to steal the election. So I’m not sure this reads as new — Trump is and has been unhinged, and that’s priced in.

Bruni: Sarah, what do you make of how little has been made of it? Is Trump indemnified against his own indecency, or can we dream that he may finally estrange a consequential percentage of voters?

Sarah Isgur: Here’s what’s wild. In one poll, the G.O.P. is now more or less tied with Democrats for “which party cares about people like me,” closing in on Democrats’ 13-point advantage in 2016 … and in another poll, the G.O.P. is leading Democrats by over 20 points on “dealing with the economy.” So how is Joe Biden even still in this race? And the answer, as you allude to, is Trump.

Barro: Trump’s behavior has already estranged a consequential percentage of voters. If Republicans found a candidate who was both normal and law-abiding and a popularist , they’d win big, instead of trying to patch together a narrow Electoral College victory, like Trump managed in 2016 and nearly did again in 2020.

Bruni: Sarah, you’re suggesting that Trump is a huge general election gift to Biden. To pivot to tonight’s debate, is there any chance Biden doesn’t get that gift — that he winds up facing Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis or someone else?

Isgur: Possible? Sure. Every year for Christmas, I thought it was possible there was a puppy in one of the boxes under the tree. There never was. I still think Ron DeSantis is probably the only viable alternative to Trump. But he’s looking far less viable than he was in June. And the more voters and donors flirt with Tim Scott or Nikki Haley, it becomes a race for No. 2 (see this debate) — and the better it is for Trump. That helps Trump in two ways: First, it burns time on the clock and he’s the front-runner. Second, the strongest argument for these other candidates was that Trump couldn’t beat Biden. But that’s becoming a harder and harder case to make — more because of Biden than Trump. And as that slides off the table, Republican primary voters don’t see much need to shop for an alternative.

Barro: These other G.O.P. candidates wouldn’t have Trump’s legal baggage and off-putting lawlessness, but most of them have been running to Trump’s right on abortion and entitlements. And if Trump isn’t the nominee, he’ll quite possibly be acting to undermine whoever is the G.O.P. nominee. So it’s possible that Republicans are actually more likely to win the election if they nominate him than if they don’t.

Isgur: You talk to these campaigns, and they will readily admit that if Trump wins Iowa, this thing is over. And right now he’s consistently up more than 30 points in Iowa. Most of the movement in the polls is between the other candidates. That ain’t gonna work.

Barro: I agree with Sarah that the primary is approaching being over. DeSantis has sunk in the polls and he’s not making a clear argument about why Trump shouldn’t be nominated.

Bruni: Do any of tonight’s debaters increase their criticism of him? Sharpen their attacks? Go beyond Haley’s “Gee, you spent a lot of money” and Mike Pence’s “You were not nice to me on Jan. 6”? And if you could script those attacks, what would they be? Give the candidates a push and some advice.

Barro: DeSantis has been making some comments lately about how Trump kept getting beat in negotiations by Democrats when he was in office. He’s also been criticizing Trump for throwing pro-lifers under the bus. The unsaid thing here that could tie together these issues and Trump’s legal issues is that he is selfish — that this project is about benefiting him, not about benefiting Republican voters. It’s about doing what’s good for him.

That said, this is a very tough pitch for a party full of people who love Trump and who think he constantly faces unfair attacks. But it’s true, and you can say it without ever actually attacking Trump from the left.

Isgur: Here’s the problem for most of them: It’s not their last rodeo. Sure, they’d like to win this time around. And for some there’s a thought of the vice presidency or a cabinet pick. But more than that, they want to be viable in 2028 or beyond. Trump has already been an electoral loser for the G.O.P. in 2018, 2020 and 2022, and it hasn’t mattered. They aren’t going to bet their futures on Trump’s power over G.O.P. primary voters diminishing if he loses in 2024, and if he wins, he’ll be limited to one term, so all the more reason to tread lightly with Trump’s core voters. Chris Christie is a great example of the alternative strategy because it is probably his last race — and so he’s going straight at Trump. But it hasn’t fundamentally altered the dynamics of the race.

Barro: I think DeSantis’s star certainly looks dimmer than it did when he got into the race.

Isgur: DeSantis is worse off. But this was always going to happen. Better to happen in 2024 than 2028. But Josh is right. Political operatives will often pitch their candidate on there being “no real downside” to running because you grow your national donor lists and expand your name recognition with voters outside your state. But a lot of these guys are learning what Scott Walker, Jeb Bush and Tim Pawlenty have learned: There is a downside to running when expectations are high — you don’t meet them.

Bruni: Give me a rough estimate — how much time have Haley and her advisers spent forging and honing put-downs of Vivek Ramaswamy? And would you like to suggest any for their arsenal? Josh, I’m betting you do, as you have written acidly about your college days with Ramaswamy.

Barro: So I said in a column (“Section Guy Runs for President”) that I didn’t know Ramaswamy in college, but I have subsequently learned that, when I was a senior, I participated in a debate about Social Security privatization that he moderated. That I was able to forget him, I think, is a reflection of how common the overbearing type was at Harvard.

Bruni: Ramaswamy as a carbon copy of countless others? Now you’ve really put me off my avocado toast, Josh. Is he in this race deep into the primaries, or is he the Herman Cain of this cycle (he asked wishfully)?

Barro: I think the Ramaswamy bubble has already popped.

Bruni : Popped? You make him sound like a pimple.

Isgur: Your words, Frank.

Barro: He makes himself sound like a pimple. He’s down to 5.1 percent in the RealClearPolitics polling average, below where he was just before the August debate. One poll showed his unfavorables going up more than his favorables after the debate — he is very annoying, and that was obvious to a lot of people, whether or not they share my politics.

Isgur: Agree. He’s not Trump. Trump can weather the “take me seriously, not literally” nonsense. Ramaswamy doesn’t have it.

Bruni: Let’s talk about some broader dynamics. We’re on the precipice of a federal shutdown. If it comes, will that hurt Republicans and boost Biden, or will it seem to voters like so much usual insider garbage that it’s essentially white noise, to mix my metaphors wildly?

Barro: I’m not convinced that government shutdowns have durable political effects.

Isgur: It seems to keep happening every couple years, and the sky doesn’t fall. It is important, though, when it comes to what the G.O.P. is and what it will be moving forward. Kevin McCarthy battling for his job may not be anything new. But Chip Roy is the fiscal heart and soul of this wing of the party, and even he is saying they are going to pay a political penalty.

Barro: I find it interesting that Kevin McCarthy seems extremely motivated to avoid one, or at least contain its duration. He thinks the politics are important.

Isgur: I’d argue the reason it’s important is because it shows you what happens when voters elect people based on small donor popularity and social media memes. Nobody is rewarded for accomplishments, which require compromise — legislative or otherwise. These guys do better politically when they are in the minority. They actually win by losing — at least when their colleagues lose, that is. That’s not a sustainable model for a political party: Elect us and we’ll complain about the other guys the best!

Bruni: What about the impeachment inquiry? The first hearing is on Thursday. Is it and should it be an enormous concern for Biden?

Isgur: I’m confused why everyone else is shrugging this thing off. I keep hearing that this doesn’t give the G.O.P. any additional subpoena powers. Yes, it does. We just did this when House Democrats tried to subpoena Trump’s financial records. The Supreme Court was very clear that the House has broad legislative subpoena power when what they are seeking is related to potential legislation, but that it is subject to a balancing test between the two branches. But even the dissenters in that case said that Congress could have sought those records pursuant to their impeachment subpoena power. So, yes, the tool — a congressional subpoena — is the same. But the impeachment inquiry broadens their reach here. So they’ve opened the inquiry, they can get his financial records. Now it matters what they find.

Barro: I agree with Sarah that the risk to Biden here depends on the underlying facts.

Isgur: And I’m not sure why Democrats are so confident there won’t be anything there. The president has gotten so many of the facts wrong around Hunter Biden’s business dealings, I have no idea what his financial records will show. I am no closer to knowing whether Joe Biden was involved or not. But I’m not betting against it, either.

Barro: I think the Hunter saga is extremely sad, and as I’ve written , it looks to me like the president is one of Hunter’s victims rather than a co-conspirator. I also think while there are aspects of this that are not relatable (it’s not relatable to have your son trading on your famous name to do a lot of shady business), there are other aspects that are very relatable — it is relatable to have a no-good family member with substance abuse and psychological issues who causes you a lot of trouble.

Obviously, if they find some big financial scheme to transfer money to Joe Biden, the politics of this will be very different. But I don’t think they’re going to find it.

Bruni: But let’s look beyond Hunter, beyond any shutdown, beyond impeachment. Sarah, Josh, if you were broadly to advise Joe Biden about how to win what is surely going to be a very, very, very close race, what would be your top three recommendations?

Barro: The president’s No. 1 political liability is inflation, and food and fuel prices are the most salient aspect of inflation. He should be doing everything he can to bring price levels down. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a ton of direct control over this — if presidents did, they wouldn’t get tripped up by this issue. But he should be approving more domestic energy production and transmission, and he should be bragging more about doing so.

U.S. oil production is nearing record levels, but Biden is reluctant to talk about that because it makes climate activists mad. If he gets attacked from the left for making gasoline too cheap and plentiful, great.

Isgur: Make it a referendum on Trump. It’s what Hillary Clinton failed to do in 2016. When it’s about Trump, voters get squeamish. When it’s about Biden, they think of all of his flaws instead.

Bruni: Squeamish doesn’t begin to capture how Trump makes this voter feel. Additional recommendations?

Barro: Biden generally needs to be willing to pick more fights with the left. Trump has shown how this kind of politics works — by picking a fight with pro-life activists, he’s moderating his own image and increasing his odds of winning the general election. There’s a new poll out this week that says that voters see the Democratic Party as more extreme than the Republican Party by a margin of nine points. Biden needs to address that gap by finding his own opportunities to break with the extremes of his party — energy and fossil fuels provide one big opportunity, as I discussed earlier, but he can also break with his party in other areas where its agenda has unpopular elements, like crime and immigration.

Isgur: The Republican National Committee handed Biden’s team a gift when they pulled out of the bipartisan debate commission. Biden doesn’t have to debate now. And he shouldn’t. The Trump team should want a zillion debates with Biden. I have no idea why they gave him this out.

Bruni: I hear you, Sarah, on how Biden might bear up for two hours under bright lights, but let’s be realistic: Debates don’t exactly flatter Trump, who comes across as one part feral, two parts deranged. But let’s address the Kamala Harris factor. Josh, you’ve recommended replacing Harris, though it won’t happen. Maybe that’s your third? But you have to tell me whom you’d replace her with.

Barro: Harris isn’t just a 2024 problem but also a 2028 problem. She is materially less popular than Biden is, and because of Biden’s age, he even more than most presidents needs a vice president who Americans feel comfortable seeing take the presidency, and the polls show that’s not her. I’ve written about why he should put Gretchen Whitmer on the ticket instead . What Biden needs to hold 270 electoral votes is to keep the Upper Midwest swing states where his poll numbers are actually holding up pretty well — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The popular governor of Michigan can do a lot more for him there than Harris can.

Isgur: It is a big problem that voters don’t think Biden will make it through another term, so that the V.P. question isn’t will she make a good vice president but will she make a good president. Democrats are quick to point out that V.P. attacks haven’t worked in the past. True! But nobody was really thinking about Dan Quayle sitting behind the Resolute Desk, either. But I don’t think they can replace Harris. The cost would be too high with the base. I also don’t think Harris can get better. So my advice here is to hide her. Don’t remind voters that they don’t like her. Quit setting her up for failure and word salads.

Bruni: I want to end with a lightning round and maybe find some fugitive levity — God knows we need it. In honor of Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, I wonder: How many gold bars does each of you have in your basement or closet? Mine are in my pantry, behind the cashews, and I haven’t counted them lately.

Barro: I understand Bob Menendez keeps tons of cash in his house because his family had to flee a Communist revolution. This is completely understandable. The only reason I don’t keep all that gold on hand is that I do not have a similar familial history.

Isgur: Mine are made of chocolate, and they are delicious. (Dark chocolate. Milk chocolate is for wusses, and white chocolate is a lie.)

Bruni: Are we measuring Kevin McCarthy’s remaining time as House speaker in hours, weeks or months, and what’s your best guess for when he subsequently appears in — and how he fares on — “Dancing With the Stars”?

Isgur: Why do people keep going on that show?! The money can’t possibly be that good. I’ll take the over on McCarthy, though. The Matt Gaetz caucus doesn’t have a viable replacement or McCarthy wouldn’t have won in the first place … or 15th place.

Barro: I also take the over on McCarthy — most of his caucus likes him, and unlike the John Boehner era, he hasn’t had to resort to moving spending bills that lack majority support in the conference. Gaetz and his ilk are a huge headache, but he won’t be going anywhere.

Bruni: Does the confirmed November debate between Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom — moderated by Sean Hannity! — represent reason to live or reason to emigrate?

Barro: Ugh. I find Newsom so grating and slimy . All you really need to know about him is he had an affair with his campaign manager’s wife. He’s also been putting his interests ahead of the party’s, with this cockamamie proposal for a constitutional amendment to restrict gun rights. It will never happen, will raise the salience of gun issues in a way that hurts Democratic candidates in a general election and will help Newsom build a grass roots email fund-raising list.

Isgur: Oh, I actually think this is pretty important. Newsom and DeSantis more than anyone else in their parties actually represent the policy zeitgeist of their teams right now. This is the debate we should be having in 2024. As governors, they’ve been mirror images of each other. The problem for a Burkean like me is that both of them want to use and expand state power to “win” for their team. There’s no party making the argument for limited government or fiscal restraint anymore. And there’s no concern about what happens when you empower government and the other side wins an election and uses that power the way they want to.

Bruni: You’ve no choice: You must dine, one-on-one, with either Matt Gaetz or Marjorie Taylor Greene. Whom do you choose, and how do you dull the pain?

Barro: Marjorie Taylor Greene, but we’d spend the whole time talking about Lauren Boebert.

Isgur: Damn. That was a good answer. Can I pick George Santos? At least he’s got great stories.

Bruni: Last question — we’ve been plenty gloomy. Name something or a few things that have happened over recent weeks that should give us hope about the country’s future.

Barro: The Ibram Kendi bubble popped ! So, that was good.

More seriously, while inflation remains a major problem (and a totally valid voter complaint), the economy has continued to show resiliency on output and job growth. People still want to spend and invest, despite 7 percent mortgage rates. It points to underlying health in the economy and a reason to feel good about American business and living standards in the medium and long term.

Isgur: I had a baby this month — and in fact, September is one of the most popular birth month in the United States — so for all of us who are newly unburdened, we’re enjoying that second (third?) glass of wine, deli meat, sushi, unpasteurized cheese and guilt-free Coke Zero. And the only trade-off is that a little potato screams at me for about two hours each night!

But you look at these new studies showing that the overall birthrate in the United States is staying low as teen pregnancies drop and birth control becomes more available but that highly educated woman are having more kids than they did 40 years ago … clearly some people are feeling quite hopeful. Or randy. Or both!

Bruni: Sarah, that’s wonderful about your little potato — and your sushi!

Barro: Congratulations!

Bruni: Pop not only goes the weasel but also the Ramaswamy and the Kendi — and the Barro, ever popping off! Thank you both. Happy Republican debate! If that’s not the oxymoron of the century.

Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter.

Josh Barro writes the newsletter Very Serious and is the host of the podcast “ Serious Trouble .”

Sarah Isgur is a senior editor at The Dispatch and the host of the podcast “ Advisory Opinions .” She was a spokeswoman at the Justice Department during the Trump administration and worked on the presidential campaigns of Carly Fiorina and Mitt Romney.

Source photograph by ZargonDesign, via Getty Images.

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During his first trip to India as Canada’s prime minister in 2018, Justin Trudeau made a visit to the northern state of Punjab, where he got a photo op in full Punjabi dress at the Golden Temple, the holiest site of the Sikh religion.

He also got, courtesy of the Indian government, an earful of grievances — and a list of India’s most-wanted men on Canadian soil.

The killing this summer of one man on that list, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, has turned into a diplomatic war between India and Canada. Mr. Trudeau claimed this month that Indian agents had orchestrated the assassination inside Canada. India rejected the assertion and accused Canada of ignoring its warnings that Canadian Sikh extremists like Mr. Nijjar were plotting violence in Punjab in hopes of making the state into a separate Sikh nation.

But beyond the recriminations, a more complex story is unfolding in Punjab, analysts, political leaders and residents say. While the Indian government asserts that Canada’s lax attitude toward extremism among its politically influential Sikhs poses a national security threat inside India, there is little support in Punjab for a secessionist cause that peaked in deadly violence decades ago and was snuffed out.

Violence in Punjab that the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi attributes to Sikh separatists is, in fact, mostly gang-related, a chaotic mix of extortion, narcotics trafficking and score-settling. The criminal masterminds, often operating from abroad, take advantage of economic desperation in a state where farmers are crushed by rising debt and many youths lack employment or direction — problems compounded by a feeling of political alienation in minority Sikh communities.

For Mr. Modi, the pursuit of a small but noisy assemblage of criminals in a faraway country — India had been pushing for the extradition of 26 before Mr. Nijjar’s death — and the amplification of the separatist threat provide an important political narrative ahead of a national election early next year.

It furthers his image as a strongman leader who will go to any extent to protect his nation. It has prompted even some of his staunchest critics to rally around him in the face of Canada’s accusation. And it offers a fresh threat to point to after Mr. Modi capitalized on violent Islamic militancy emanating from Pakistan before the last election, in 2019, to create a political wave.

On Tuesday, the Indian foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, said that Canada had seen “a lot of organized crime” related to “secessionist forces,” while adding that targeted killings were “not the policy of the Indian government.”

Stoking the threat of Khalistan — the would-be Sikh homeland — as a national issue once again has pushed India’s 25 million Sikhs into a difficult space. Old wounds of prejudice against them have been reopened, and they now find themselves in the middle of a diplomatic clash that separates them from family in the large Sikh diaspora.

For Mr. Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., there is little cost in an exaggerated portrayal of security risks in a minority community, analysts say.

The party, whose leaders espouse a nationalist ideology that prioritizes majority Hindus over minority groups like Muslims and Christians, has tried to court Sikhs as a constituency, seeing them as part of the extended Hindu family. Mr. Modi himself has often visited Sikh temples and worn the Sikh turban.

But Sikhs have vehemently opposed that effort, viewing it as an attempt to erase their unique identity — both as a community and as followers of a religion they consider distinct. Sikhs were a dominant part of a farmers’ movement in 2021 that gave Mr. Modi the biggest political challenge of his decade in power, forcing him into a rare concession , with Parliament repealing laws intended to open agriculture to market forces.

In Punjab assembly elections last year, the B.J.P. managed to win only two out of 117 seats.

Whenever Punjabis have felt unheard and angry in recent years, they have voted out their government, not pursued separatism. In 2022, that discontent was so widespread that Punjab voted for none of the old parties that had previously governed it, including the pre-eminent Sikh religious party.

Instead, it voted into power a relatively new outfit that was in power in just one other state, because it promised better governance — improved schools and health care.

“There is no Khalistan movement as such,” said Surinder Singh Jodhka, a professor of sociology at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. “But there is a sense that somehow justice is not done to us.”

Khalistan has remained largely a diaspora issue, with proponents of violently pursuing the cause making up a tiny minority. To the extent that Sikhs in Punjab talk about separatism, it is in opposition to a national ruling party and its sister organizations, some with their own trail of violence, that speak openly about their desire to turn India into a Hindu state.

It was a sentiment expressed earlier this year by a young man who paraded around the state portraying himself as the new prophet of Khalistan, prompting a manhunt and an internet shutdown.

The rise of the 30-year-old preacher, Amritpal Singh, was mysterious. His arrest in a cat-and-mouse chase this spring, after his supporters had grown so emboldened that they attacked a police station to free one of their detained accomplices, put a quiet end to his saga.

But Mr. Singh, giving speeches and interviews in which he mixed his appeal for the separatist cause with social issues such as drug rehabilitation, gave voice to a feeling that the B.J.P. has been prejudiced by pursuing and prosecuting Sikhs for doing the same thing that India’s Hindu right itself has done — express ideas of religious nationalism.

“Which mountain has been brought down by merely talking about Sikhs’ rights?” said Gurdeep Singh, a farmer in Punjab.

The Khalistan separatist movement, which dates in earnest to before the birth of post-colonial India in 1947, reached a bloody climax in the 1980s, when a group of militants violently took over the Golden Temple to push their cause. The wave of separatist violence at the time included the bombing of an Air India flight, en route to London from Toronto, that killed more than 300 people.

Afterward, as the separatist violence fizzled out , hope for a more inclusive future for Sikhs took hold, even with little justice for the widespread violence inflicted by the government in the name of cracking down on extremists. Between 2004 and 2014, India had its first, and only, Sikh prime minister, Manmohan Singh.

But Khalistan remained a preoccupation of some Sikhs in countries like Australia, Britain and the United States. Canada, with more than 770,000 Sikhs, has the largest Sikh population outside India. A large number of them left India during the separatist violence, or the years immediately after it, carrying wounds that fueled their Khalistani advocacy.

“They don’t even have funds, and they can’t come here because they are banned in India, but they try to provoke people on social media,” said Paramjit Singh, 45, a truck driver who lives on the outskirts of Jalandhar, in northern Punjab. “They don’t let people eat in peace.”

Amarinder Singh, who was the chief minister of Punjab in 2018 and gave the most-wanted list to Mr. Trudeau, had made the meeting difficult before it even began: He had publicly declared several of Mr. Trudeau’s cabinet ministers to be Khalistani sympathizers, including Canada’s first Sikh defense minister, Harjit Sajjan, who was part of the delegation.

“I gave him a list of 10, 12 names,” Mr. Singh said of Mr. Trudeau. “I told him that these are the people who are creating mischief.”

Mr. Singh described those on the list as “gangsters” and criminals, rather than fighters carrying the torch of a united ideology. “When they can’t get any money in these countries, they start shouting about Khalistan,” he said.

Nevertheless, Khalistan has become more frequently discussed in Indian national politics over the past three years. As Mr. Modi’s lieutenants grew frustrated with the Sikh-led farmer protests in 2021, they often labeled the protesters as Khalistanis stoked by outside forces.

“Mr. Modi is playing this politics for votes,” said Kamaljit Singh, a farmer from the outskirts of Jalandhar who participated in the protests. “We are caught in the middle.”