Michael Tackett

President Donald Trump has been eager to show progress on construction of his long-promised wall on the border with Mexico. So eager that Wednesday he sent a tweet showing the building of steel fencing in southern New Mexico with the video sped up to add a sense of both efficiency and urgency.

He retweeted himself Thursday with the all-caps proclamation “THE WALL IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION RIGHT NOW!”

This is misleading.

The government has built about 700 miles of wall and fencing along the border since 2006. The barriers, damaged by migrants trying to get through them or by the elements, need periodic repairs.

The section of the barrier that Trump showcased this week was not new construction, but rather replacement for existing fencing. The money for the steel-slatted barrier came from a congressional appropriation in 2017, not from newly authorized spending in the recent deal that averted a government shutdown, or from money the president is seeking to take from other federal projects under his national emergency declaration from last week.

A construction contract for the replacement bollard fencing was awarded Jan. 22, 2018, to a company in Montana, according to a news release from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

“The area of the border wall replacement will be a 20-mile section of existing vehicle barrier located just west of the Santa Teresa Port of Entry and extending westward” in New Mexico, the release said. “The existing barrier will be replaced with an 18- to 30-foot-high bollard-style wall.”

The contract called for the project to be completed in about 390 days. The agency also highlighted the benefits of the see-through characteristics of the bollard wall.

Trump noted that the project finished ahead of schedule.

Whether there will be new wall or fence construction in that area is an open question. New Mexico is among the states suing the Trump administration to challenge his emergency declaration.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/us/politics/new-mexico-wall-fact-check.html" id="b6f850bd-5176-3856-a790-bac1f56e8c01">The New York Times</a>.

(Fact Check)

Trump Claims His Wall Is Being Built. It's Just a Replacement of Old Barriers.

Their disagreement has led to a protracted shutdown affecting vast swaths of the federal government that have nothing to do with the construction of a wall between the United States and Mexico.

But as the government shutdown neared the end of its third week, the president left Washington with no additional negotiations scheduled with congressional leaders. In remarks to reporters Thursday, Trump left open the possibility of declaring a state of emergency, which could allow him to bypass Congress to fund the wall.

Asked if he would make such a declaration, an action that would face legal challenges, Trump said, “If this doesn’t work out, probably I will do it, I would almost say definitely. This is a national emergency.”

The president held a brief and contentious negotiation with Democrats and Republican leaders Wednesday in the Situation Room that ended abruptly when he stormed out of the room after Speaker Nancy Pelosi rebuffed his overture to reopen the government in exchange for wall funding. Pelosi and Democrats have consistently said that they would be willing to negotiate border security issues with him if he would reopen the government, even as Pelosi has held firm to the position that she does not support funding for a barrier wall.

Before his departure, Trump denied Democrats’ reports that he slammed his hand on the table and had what Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, called “a temper tantrum.”

“I didn’t smash the table. I should have,” Trump said later Thursday morning.

Trump also addressed his longtime promise that Mexico would pay for the border wall.

“When during the campaign I would say, ‘Mexico is going to pay for it,’ obviously, I never said this, and I never meant they are going to write out a check,” Trump said. That statement was an apparent contradiction of what he has previously said, including in December when he wrote in a Twitter post, “I often stated, “One way or the other, Mexico is going to pay for the Wall.”

On Thursday, Trump repeated his assertion that Mexico would foot the bill through a renegotiated trade deal.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/us/politics/trump-texas-border-wall.html" id="32932c25-f083-3416-ae90-08a42fe59593">The New York Times</a>.

Trump, Heading to the Border, Suggests He Will Declare an Emergency to Fund the Wall

MCALLEN, Texas — President Donald Trump arrived in this border town Thursday on a trip that he did not want to take to discuss a crisis that Democrats say does not exist.

On Thursday, Trump repeated his assertion that Mexico would foot the bill through a renegotiated trade deal, even though the deal, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement does not specify that Mexico would pay for the wall or divert funds to do so. The agreement has yet to be approved by Congress.

In a meeting with network anchors Tuesday before his address to the nation, the president dismissed his trip to McAllen, a border community where crime is near a 30-year low, as a “photo op” that he was doing because his top communications advisers counseled him to do.

In Texas, a crowd of supporters with flags and “build the wall” signs gathered near the Rio Grande before Air Force One landed Thursday. While in Texas, Trump is expected to meet with Border Patrol officials who are being forced to work without pay because of the funding impasse.

The president maintains he has the option of declaring a national emergency to fund construction for the wall, perhaps the central promise that he made to his political base during his campaign, and bypassing a legislative solution. The head of the Army Corps of Engineers traveled with Trump to Texas. Redirecting funds from the Army’s construction agency to build the wall is one option Trump could use in a national emergency.

Trump said he has the legal authority to make the declaration. “This is a thing that the lawyers tell me is 100 percent,” Trump said.

If the president were to declare a national emergency, which some legal experts say is within his authority, it is sure to stoke debate in Congress.

To bolster his campaign for the wall, the president has also scheduled an interview with the Fox host Sean Hannity, who will broadcast his show Thursday night from McAllen. Hannity is one of the president’s highest-profile supporters and is highly influential among his political base.

The president’s trip comes a month before some bollard wall construction in the area, based on a previous congressional appropriation, is set to begin.

Once there, he is expected to meet with Border Patrol officials who are being forced to work without pay because of the president’s impasse with Democrats in Congress who have refused to accede to his demand for funding for a border wall.

But as the government shutdown neared the end of its third week, the president was scheduled to board Air Force One to head to Texas with no additional negotiations scheduled with congressional leaders.

The president has said he has reserved the option of declaring a national emergency to fund construction for the wall, perhaps the central promise that he made to his political base during his campaign, and bypassing a legislative solution.

The White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, is to accompany the president to Texas, according to a White House official who declined to be identified to discuss internal matters. Cipollone would be among those who would presumably provide a legal rationale should Trump declare an emergency.

If the president were to declare a national emergency, which some legal experts say is within his authority, it is sure to stoke debate in Congress, and almost certainly will invite a legal challenge in the courts.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump was reluctantly set to travel to McAllen, Texas, on Thursday to address a crisis on the Mexican border that Democrats say does not exist but that has led to a partial government shutdown.

Trump Heading to Texas Border Town to Press His Case for a Wall

The president’s trip comes a month before some bollard wall construction in the area, based on a previous congressional appropriation, is set to begin. Local officials have noted that crime associated with illegal immigration has not affected McAllen, where crime is reported to be near a 30-year low.

It was a studied contrast, and an implicit atonement, to his decisions last month to forgo a ceremony in France and the traditional visit to Arlington on Veterans Day.

The president, holding a black umbrella, made his way Saturday among the headstones of the military veterans who are buried at Arlington. He chatted with a guide as he viewed some of the thousands of wreaths that had been laid for an event called Wreaths Across America.

During a two-day trip to Paris in November, as part of ceremonies marking the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, Trump scrapped a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, near where the Battle of Belleau Wood was fought. Aides cited rain, saying that the weather could have caused difficulty for the president’s helicopter.

The president later took to Twitter to offer an explanation. “By the way, when the helicopter couldn’t fly to the first cemetery in France because of almost zero visibility, I suggested driving. Secret Service said NO, too far from airport &amp; big Paris shutdown.”

The next day, the president visited the Suresnes American Cemetery outside Paris, and spoke in the rain.

After he returned to the United States, Trump then opted not to commemorate Veterans Day at Arlington Cemetery.

The decision elicited a rare apology from the president, who later acknowledged in an interview with Fox News that he had made a mistake in not attending.

“I should have done that,” he said. “I was extremely busy on calls for the country.” The president’s schedule for that day listed no public events.

“In retrospect, I should have and I did last year and will virtually every year,” he added.

On Saturday, as Trump started back toward his vehicle, he addressed the ruling Friday by a federal judge in Texas striking down the entire Affordable Care Act.

“We’ll sit down with the Democrats, if the Supreme Court upholds, we’ll be sitting down with the Democrats and we will get great health care for our people,” he said.

He added, “It was a big, big victory by a highly respected judge, highly, highly respected in Texas, and on the assumption that the Supreme Court upholds, we will get great, great health care for our people, we’ll have to sit down with the Democrats to do it, but I’m sure they want to do it also.”

He then said he would ask Republicans and Democrats to fashion an alternative as millions of Americans could find themselves without coverage. “We will get great, great health care for our people,” he said, offering no details.

The wreath-laying ceremony Saturday was not listed on the president’s public schedule. Volunteers at the event were expected to place more than 250,000 wreaths at 1,400 cemeteries across the country.

Last year at Arlington alone, more than 93,000 volunteers and visitors participated, said Barbara Lewandrowski, director of public affairs at Arlington National Cemetery. She estimated that about 60,000 people attended Saturday.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/us/politics/trump-veterans-arlington-cemetery.html" id="df0d7464-12c3-3ca2-a38e-64969e6fcb8e">The New York Times</a>.

After Skipping Events Honoring Fallen Soldiers, Trump Visits Arlington Cemetery

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump walked on the muddy, rain-drenched grounds of Arlington National Cemetery on Saturday, finding himself in an unusual position for a voluble man: a solitary figure, as he attended a ceremony to lay wreaths for the fallen.

<h1>DIMONDALE, Mich. — In August 2016, Donald Trump was full of promises when he spoke to a packed crowd at the Summit Sports and Ice Complex here. Predicting that he would carry Michigan, a state that had not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1988, Trump said his would be “a victory for the wage-earner, the factory worker, a victory for the everyday citizen.”</h1>

That pledge and his promise to bring back the industrial jobs were major reasons Trump carried Dimondale and the rest of Eaton County, an area heavily dependent on the automotive industry that voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and went on to carry Michigan in an upset crucial to his election.

But nothing has reversed the decline of the county’s manufacturing base. From January 2017 to December 2018, it lost nearly 9% of its manufacturing jobs, and 17 other counties in Michigan that Trump carried have experienced similar losses, according to a newly updated analysis of employment data by the Brookings Institution.

“To the extent that economic realities have the power to alter voting behavior, the trends are pointing in one direction in Michigan in a lot of these counties,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who directed the analysis.

And that makes it most likely that Michigan, which the president won by only 10,704 votes, could be a place where his expansive promises will come back to haunt him in 2020.

More troubling for Trump, some of the same forces are at work in the two other states that were critical to his Electoral College victory — Wisconsin, where 10 counties that he won in 2016 lost manufacturing jobs, and Pennsylvania, where eight counties that he carried faced manufacturing job losses.

All three states experienced overall growth in manufacturing jobs during the period surveyed by Brookings, but the growth rates have begun to slow, especially in Michigan.

“Michigan is likely a forerunner,” Muro said. “I could imagine Pennsylvania and Wisconsin turning negative or losing growth momentum the rest of the year.” While Michigan’s economy is more dependent on the big automakers, all three states have economies with roots in factory work, particularly in smaller towns and rural areas that have been steadily losing ground because of automation and globalization.

North of Dimondale, Clinton County offers another example. Trump won the county, but it has experienced a loss of more than a quarter of its manufacturing jobs.

In Pennsylvania, the losses were not as steep, but two counties that Trump won easily, Wyoming and Warren, had the highest percentage declines in the state. The same was true for Trempealeau and Rusk counties in Wisconsin, where a Democrat, Tony Evers, ousted the incumbent Republican governor, Scott Walker, a strong supporter of the president, in 2018.

These are the kind of places about which Trump should feel most confident in 2020. But their shifting economic fortune could now test how far his appeal to white working-class voters stretches and whether their cultural alliance with him is enough to persuade them to stick with him.

Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, pushed back at the idea of manufacturing job losses in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

“President Trump has a vision of ensuring policies are in place that support a growing economy and the American worker, including our great manufacturers,” he said in a statement. “The president has not only lowered taxes for hard-working families, his leadership and passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act along with deregulation has led to an unprecedented period of job and wage growth across the country, and Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are no exceptions.”

But the president faces troubling poll results in all three states.

A poll published this month in The Detroit Free Press and conducted by Lansing-based polling firm EPIC-MRA showed that only 32% of voters surveyed would vote for Trump’s reelection, a finding consistent with the company’s poll in March. It also found that former Vice President Joe Biden, who is running for the Democratic nomination, led Trump by 11 points.

“That’s a guy in trouble,” said Bernie Porn, president of the polling firm. “Those numbers are really indicative of someone who is going to have problems.”

He said that polling also showed that most people in Michigan credit Obama, whose administration bailed out General Motors at the depths of the Great Recession, for helping the auto industry and the thousands of jobs that go with it.

In Wisconsin, 28% of registered voters said they would definitely vote for Trump’s reelection and 14% said they probably would, according to a Marquette University Law School survey in April.

In Pennsylvania, a recent Franklin &amp; Marshall College poll found that 36% of registered voters favored Trump’s reelection while 61% said it was time for a change, numbers that may be more troubling given that people in the state said they felt economic conditions had improved since 2016, even with job losses in parts of the manufacturing sector.

Another sign that the president might be losing support in Pennsylvania was the victory of Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat, who in November won his third term in the state. Casey beat his main opponent in the heavily industrialized Erie County, for instance, by 18 points, compared with Trump, who carried the county by a margin of less than two points in 2016.

A central challenge for Democrats in the three states is whether they can effectively make the case that Trump’s promises were mere sloganeering and win back those votes.

In Michigan, that will be determined to a great degree by the health of the auto industry. In the Great Recession, the auto industry suffered greatly, forcing General Motors into bankruptcy for a period as thousands of automotive workers in Michigan lost their jobs. That added to their sense of grievance as voters and helped give rise to Trump’s victory.

In his campaign speech in Dimondale, Trump said “the Michigan manufacturing sector is a disaster,” and he blamed the Obama administration’s policies for the struggles of the auto industry, even saying that if he were not elected, Mexico would become “the car capital of the world.”

Now, a contraction in the automotive sector in Michigan and other states is affecting not only the large manufacturing plants but also the parts suppliers that have provided an economic lifeline to smaller and midsize towns.

Michigan, which is heavily dependent on supply chain links with Mexico, dodged additional trouble when Trump pulled back from his threat to impose tariffs on imports from Mexico, though the president has reserved the option of changing his position.

“I think we are definitely seeing a slowdown,” said Carla Bailo, president and chief executive of the Center for Automotive Research, a nonprofit organization that studies the industry. “Sales have slowed. Production rates have slowed.”

The slowing sales stem in part from a change in consumer demand toward SUVs and away from sedans, but she said that Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum have hit both manufacturers and parts suppliers, increasing “the price of vehicles.”

Ben Frantz, vice president of UAW Local 652 in Lansing, which represents a GM plant that produces Cadillacs and Camaros, said that the union will try to make the facts about the president clear to members. “On camera, he talks about all these things that hit to the heart of his base,” he said of Trump. “He continues to talk about it, but doesn’t do anything about it.”

Still, he said, the president has some strong pockets of support among union members, notably those who are pro-gun rights and opposed to abortion. “It’s these single-issue voters who gnaw on that chunk of wood,” Frantz said.

While Trump’s critics might like to see a stream of voters who say they are betrayed, the story in places like Dimondale is more layered. The larger forces of the economy, including tariff policies and a drop in auto sales, move slowly through communities like this one, a town of about 1,250 people with a lone primary commercial street and quiet neighborhoods that seem far removed from factories.

Lori Conarton, who has lived in Dimondale since childhood, opened a restaurant on Bridge Street about 18 months ago. She said the local economy is doing “pretty well after a lot of ups and downs.”

People who live in the heart of the auto belt know those cycles well. Conarton, who said she could not bring herself to vote for Trump in 2016, added that some of the president’s policies seem to have worked but that he loses support because of his “pretty unprofessional” tone. And if the economy, especially with regards to the auto industry, contracts, then the peril for Trump will be that voters may focus even more on what they see as negative sides of his character.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/24/us/politics/trump-manufacturing-jobs-2020.html" link="null" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

That pledge and his promise to bring back the industrial jobs were major reasons Trump carried Dimondale and the rest of Eaton County, an area heavily dependent on the automotive industry that voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and went on to carry Michigan in an upset crucial to his election.

Rethinking Trump where factory jobs fell

“If you go with what Hillary is saying in the ninth month, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby,” Trump said.

That emotive, visceral answer, Land said, was probably enough to win over skeptical working-class Catholic voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, who at that moment found an unlikely champion in Trump on the single issue that would determine their choice and deliver the White House to Trump.

“The relationship that evangelicals have with President Trump is a very transactional one,” said Land, who serves on a spiritual advisory board to the president. “They feel like their voices are heard, and he is keeping their promises to them.”

Land said that Trump, far more than Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, an evangelical himself, has given evangelicals a place at the table and a welcome at the White House.

As he enters his re-election campaign, Trump, through his appointment of judges who oppose abortion rights, including to the Supreme Court, and his equally graphic language about late-term abortions, is again speaking a language that evangelicals embrace.

The issue has taken on renewed prominence after the Alabama Legislature passed one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws, drawing fierce opposition from Democratic opponents and presidential candidates seeking to challenge Trump.

The president must maintain evangelicals’ committed backing to win a second term, and has clearly decided that he will try to frame the election as part of a culture war, even as he talks about the strength of the economy. By speaking so directly of his opposition to abortion, Trump is putting himself squarely on one side of perhaps the nation’s most divisive social issue.

It is a side that he only recently occupied. For much of his life, Trump favored abortion rights.

In a 1999 interview on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” he described himself as “very pro-choice,” though he also said he “hated” abortion. Trump said that his views on abortion were shaped in part by living in Manhattan, where abortion rights are overwhelmingly favored.

He has moved decisively to the other side and has started to emphasize the issue at his rallies and during other political speeches. On April 2, during a speech to the National Republican Congressional Committee, Trump took credit for introducing the term “rip” into the debate.

“You can rip the baby out of the womb and kill the baby,” he said, incorrectly describing the medical procedure.

Trump has also repeatedly reminded his supporters of the conservative judges he has appointed to the federal bench as abortion cases make their way through the federal courts.

“Sadly, on immigration and so many other issues, Democrat lawmakers have totally abandoned the American mainstream,” Trump said this year at the Conservative Political Action Conference convention. “But that’s going to be good for us in 2020. They’re embracing open borders, socialism and extreme late-term abortion.”

Trump started to lay the foundation for making abortion a signal issue in the campaign during his State of the Union address in February, though in much less florid language.

“To defend the dignity of every person, I am asking the Congress to pass legislation to prohibit the late-term abortion of children who can feel pain in the mother’s womb,” he said.

“Let us work together to build a culture that cherishes innocent life,” he added. “And let us reaffirm a fundamental truth: All children — born and unborn — are made in the holy image of God.”

Trump also solidified his support among evangelicals with the selection of Vice President Mike Pence, who has deep roots in that world, Land said, calling the vice president the “24-karat-gold standard” among them.

While Trump’s rhetoric has escalated of late, he has at times been more equivocal, especially when pressed on whether he wanted to see Roe v. Wade overturned.

Shortly after his election, in an interview with “60 Minutes,” Trump was asked if he was looking to appoint a Supreme Court justice who wanted to overturn the landmark decision legalizing abortion.

“So, look, here’s what’s going to happen — I’m going to — I’m pro-life. The judges will be pro-life,” he said.

“But having to do with abortion, if it ever were overturned, it would go back to the states,” he added.

He was then asked if he thought it would be acceptable that women might have to travel to another state to have an abortion. He replied: “Well, we’ll see what happens. It’s got a long way to go, just so you understand. That has a long, long way to go.”

Trump has said that he changed his views on abortion when a couple he knew decided against an abortion and he later met their child.

“It was a personal change,” Trump told a conservative radio host. “And, you know, Ronald Reagan made that personal change, too. Many people have made the personal change. I mean, some make the personal change the other way, also.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="a04ad66f-0c9e-3474-a53f-08c57e1f690a" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/16/us/politics/trump-abortion-evangelicals-2020.html">The New York Times</a>.

President Who Speaks Language of Evangelical Christians, and Keeps His Promises

WASHINGTON — Richard Land, a prominent evangelical Christian leader, said he could pinpoint the moment that Donald Trump secured his election. It was in the third presidential debate with Hillary Clinton, and the question was about abortion.

President who speaks language of evangelical Christians, and keeps his promises

In a service that had many of the trappings of a state funeral — attended by Vice President Mike Pence, Chief Justice John Roberts and more than half a dozen senators and other officials — Lugar’s life was celebrated for traits often associated with presidents. Lugar died last month at 87.

Pence called him “a true American statesman” who “will be remembered among a discrete pantheon of senators who commanded the respect of his peers in both parties and exercised enormous influence in foreign affairs.”

As the tributes flowed, the contrast between the life of Lugar and the fractious realities of the era of President Donald Trump was yawning. Pence’s single mention of the president, whose approach to foreign affairs was the polar opposite of Lugar’s, was the only time his name was spoken.

“Cooperation and compromise is often misunderstood today,” said Sam Nunn, the former Democratic senator from Georgia who worked with Lugar to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles in the former Soviet Union. “Some take it to mean giving up on principles. Dick Lugar never compromised his principles.”

He added, “Dick made the world a safer place and a better place.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the majority leader, lauded his former colleague as a blend of humility, graciousness, generosity and politeness. “People came first,” McConnell said. “He met everyone where they were.”

Another of the eulogists, Mitch Daniels, the president of Purdue University, who started his political career working in Lugar’s Senate office before being elected to two terms as Indiana governor, made a wistful criticism of the battle-stations climate in Washington.

“I can’t be the only one here who is weary of hearing people issue these blanket condemnations, ‘They’re all this, they’re all that,’” Daniels said. “No, they are not.”

Of his mentor he said, “If Dick Lugar ever had an ill-tempered moment, I never saw it,” adding, “We live in such a cynical age.”

Many of the senators who attended the service stood out because of their own efforts to strike compromise and modulate the acidic tone of many contemporary congressional fights, including Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Susan Collins of Maine, Johnny Isakson of Georgia, all Republicans, and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

There were several times in Lugar’s career when he seemed destined for higher office. Ronald Reagan and George Bush considered him for vice president.

Many were those who could imagine Lugar sitting in the Oval Office. But few were those who could see how he would get there.

A man better suited to seminars than sound bites, Lugar believed that alliances made the United States stronger and the world safer. The issues that he focused on, like nuclear nonproliferation, did not roll easily off the tongue.

Although Lugar made it a practice to not criticize others, he made an exception when talking about some of the policies of Trump, calling both his efforts on North Korea and his use of tariffs “a disaster.”

Lugar was a former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and his views on international affairs carried unusual weight on Capitol Hill and with presidents of both parties.

Lugar built a résumé that seemed preordained for politics. An Eagle Scout, he was the co-president of his class at Denison University in Ohio (his soon-to-be wife, Charlene, was the other president), then became a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. While in Britain, he enlisted in the Navy and after returning to the United States, he was responsible for briefing Adm. Arleigh Burke, then the chief of naval operations.

He returned to Indiana and became a member of the school board, then was elected mayor of Indianapolis. He lost his first race for the Senate against a popular incumbent, Birch Bayh, who died in March. But two years later, in 1976, Lugar defeated another incumbent, Vance Hartke, and went on to serve 36 years in the Senate.

Lugar’s devotion to international affairs created some distance with Republican voters in Indiana just as the Tea Party wing was ascendant.

His primary opponent in 2012, Richard Mourdock, the state treasurer, cast Lugar as out of touch with his constituents and pointedly noted that the senator had not lived in Indiana for years. Mourdock won, but then lost the general election to the Democrat, Joe Donnelly, who attended Wednesday’s service.

“Models like that are hard to come by in any era, and right now they seem especially scarce,” Daniels said in an interview. He recalled that Lugar served with Sens. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Edmund Muskie, Henry Jackson, Howard Baker and Jacob Javits. “It is kind of hard to think today’s Senate will be remembered in the same way,” he said.

Lugar long held aspirations to be president, and he ran for the Republican nomination in 1996. His record was that of an orthodox conservative, but his lower-key, big-picture approach could verge on the ponderous and he did not connect with primary voters.

But Lugar later proved to be an important mentor to another presidential candidate, Barack Obama. In 2005, Lugar took Obama, a freshman senator from Illinois, on a tour of nuclear facilities in the former Soviet Union, providing him with some needed experience in international affairs.

Obama awarded Lugar the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.

“We will miss him,” Nunn said. “So will the world.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="fe99ee16-25cb-3a2a-aef7-d1412404af7e" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/us/politics/richard-lugar-funeral.html">The New York Times</a>.

Lugar hailed as statesman who made world safer

INDIANAPOLIS — Richard Lugar, a six-term senator from Indiana known for expertise in international affairs and a voice incapable of a shout or a slur, was remembered Wednesday for qualities that are rarely seen in today’s Washington: thoughtful deliberation, willing compromise and relentless civility.

He won about 70 percent of the vote in Blair County, where Altoona is the largest city, in 2016, and that support was an integral part of why Trump defied forecasts and carried Pennsylvania, a state that will again be critical to his chances in 2020, by about 44,000 votes.

Altoona’s voters have now had more than two years to assess whether Trump has honored his campaign commitments and whether they will support him again so enthusiastically. Their answer, judging from interviews with more than two dozen voters, is complicated, not the black-and-white narrative that either Trump’s supporters or his critics might assume.

Most of his supporters say they will stick with him, citing his blunt style, which some of them see as a form of entertainment, as well as a strong economy. But not all of them.

That same economy has yielded uneven results in Altoona, a city of about 45,000 where the low unemployment rate of 4.2% masks some uglier economic facts: Most of the new jobs are in lower-paying service industries, with scaled-down benefits. The poverty rate is 23.2%. And there are few signs of the renaissance in manufacturing that the president said he would create.

“There is not a lot of disposable income at $11 an hour,” said Jim Foreman, the county Republican chairman, who operates several physical therapy clinics.

Robert Kutz, the president of a local labor council, put it more bluntly. He said some union members who voted for Trump were starting “to realize that the promises came up empty” and will vote against him in 2020.

“As far as the manufacturing goes,” he added, “none of that has come back.”

Foreman also acknowledged that it would be difficult for Trump to replicate his overwhelming numbers from 2016. And if the numbers fall off in rural counties like his, Trump’s path to winning a state where Democrats picked up three House seats in the midterm elections becomes more challenging.

Val DiGiorgio, the Republican state chairman, said the challenge would be to maintain Trump’s margins in rural areas while trying to blunt an expected surge of Democratic voters in suburban areas of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. “That’s the question,” he said.

But there are few signs that Republicans have lost their hold in Altoona. The area is represented by Rep. John Joyce, a dermatologist elected for the first time in November with more than 70% of the vote. The district is largely Catholic and fervently anti-abortion, helping Trump.

And there are Trump supporters like Sarah Vogel, who said she wanted to live in her hometown to help its revitalization efforts and opened a coffee shop downtown. “He’s doing what he can to help small businesses and rural areas,” she said. “I don’t know if I can give any specifics.”

But, she said, she is “personally a little bit torn” over Trump’s hard-line immigration policies. While she voted for him in 2016, she is waiting to see who the Democrats nominate before making up her mind this time. Her strong opposition to abortion will weigh heavily in her decision, she added.

Cultural issues could outweigh economic interests for many voters.

Over lunch with his mother at the Black Dog restaurant near Altoona, Dr. Levi Delozier, a Democrat who returned home to practice medicine, said those issues motivated many voters here in 2016.

“I think cultural beliefs and social mores pervade every decision they make,” Delozier said. “The haze and the fog and the ether of the campaign made people feel like they were better off. I think the current president is very astute at programming his quote-unquote wins, and he is very good at off-loading losses.”

Altoona includes ancestral Democrats, voters whose family members worked for the railroad or a coal mine but increasingly have supported Republicans. Older voters in particular, and especially those who had manufacturing jobs, believe that Washington has become out of touch and are more likely to be Trump supporters.

Gib Beckwith worked in manufacturing much of his life. He lost his job as a tool and die maker but sought retraining and now has an information technology job at North American Communications, which produces envelopes for direct mail.

Beckwith gets his news from Fox. “I know it is biased, but I get more truth out of their news than anyone else,” he said. “And it’s on my radio. On the weekends, it’s on. I won’t watch NBC or CBS anymore.” He said no one in his family, “not a one,” will vote for anyone other than Trump.

“Did he do better for the working man? Most certainly,” Beckwith said. “He has brought what jobs he could bring back, and yes, he gave the rich a tax break, but I got a tax break as well.”

Views like his present a studied contrast to a generation ago, when the federal government delivered big for people here. A former congressman, Bud Shuster, who was chairman of the House Transportation Committee, was famous for securing projects for the area, most notably the extension of Interstate 99, which some have mocked as “the road to nowhere.”

Shuster was so successful securing federal largess that when reporters asked Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York which state received the most funding one year, he replied, “The state of Altoona.”

But congressional earmarks are now banned and Shuster’s political career is long over, his politics of accommodation and compromise replaced by stark polarization.

North American has churned out envelopes for direct mail solicitations for 40 years, and a sign outside its sandy brick headquarters says “Now Hiring,” proclaiming what should be good news for both the city and Trump.

Not so long ago, the company transferred most of its production jobs to Mexico, taking advantage of lower-cost labor. Then came Trump’s hard-line immigration policies and with them increased chaos that led many customers to say they no longer felt comfortable with their time-sensitive mailings subject to disruption.

So the company is trying to “reshore” several hundred light manufacturing jobs back to Altoona, just the kind of thing the president promised to do as the champion of the “forgotten American.” But company officials said Trump’s approach includes almost nothing that would assist them in bringing back jobs.

“There is no federal program to help businesses like ours to reshore our jobs,” said Tera Herman, the company vice president.

Her husband, Robert Herman, the company president, lived in El Paso, Texas, for a time when the company had operations in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. He said he did not like the way the Trump administration’s immigration policies had played out.

“I am a registered Republican,” Herman added. “I like Republican ideals on the economy. But I don’t like the way that it’s translated. It seems very at times bigoted and the language that’s used, the derogatory references. I am not that way.”

Workers at Herman’s company reflected similarly conflicting sentiments about the president. Cory Reed is the third generation in his family to work at the facility in Altoona. He voted for Trump in 2016 but doubts he will again.

“He hasn’t really fulfilled that promise,” Reed said of the president’s ode to the forgotten American. “The follow-through wasn’t there.” He is also fed up with the president’s tone. “I feel like there should be more important issues than someone completely bashing someone on Twitter. I don’t really agree with that at all.”

But like Beckwith, Rick Zupon remains solidly behind Trump.

In Zupon, a lifelong Altoona resident who twice voted for President Barack Obama, Trump has an unwavering convert. “The guy has all the money in the world but is still looking out for the guy who made the country what it is,” he said.

Trump was the plain-spoken truth-teller Zupon wanted to see shake up Washington. “Another thing I like about President Trump: He doesn’t use language that you have to get a dictionary to understand,” he said. “That’s kind of enjoyable coming from a president of the United States.”

John Stultz, a local real estate agent, also finds Trump entertaining. Some nights he says to his wife, “I’m going home to watch the national news tonight to see what he said.”

But, he added, his candidate would be former Vice President Joe Biden. “I like Joe,” he said, “even the touchy-feely.”

For the president, voters like Stultz make Pennsylvania particularly challenging, especially if Biden, who was born in the state and plans to make the first speech of the presidential campaign he is expected to launch Thursday in Pittsburgh, becomes the Democratic nominee.

Some in the Democratic Party say its nominee should focus on the so-called Obama coalition of younger voters, minorities and suburbanites. But Democrats like Biden have said the party should not abandon rural voters and should lay its own claim to the “forgotten American.”

In 2016, in Blair County, Hillary Clinton ran 7 percentage points behind Obama’s performance in 2012. If a Democrat can simply cut into Trump’s numbers here, much less match Obama’s, Trump’s Pennsylvania victory could seem more aberration than trend.

This article originally appeared in <a id="59f1ff05-a881-3aba-a409-68671f3a6e82" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/us/politics/trump-pennsylvania.html">The New York Times</a>.

Strong Support Here Helped Trump Win Pennsylvania in 2016. 2020 Could Be Different.

ALTOONA, Pa. — President Donald Trump’s road to re-election runs through places like Altoona, with its deep working-class roots, conservative social values and nearly all-white population. But it is not a straight line.

Strong support here helped Trump win Pennsylvania in 2016, 2020 could be different

President Donald Trump left no doubt Tuesday that he was staking his re-election on a remobilization of the voters who put him into office, playing to a sense of their grievance against an elitist culture that looks down on them while he serves as their champion.

And he did it while speaking no words.

The president hit send on a two-minute video on Twitter from a supporter to his nearly 60 million followers as if to remind them why they backed him in the first place. In white words against a black backdrop, the frames scroll by: “First They Ignore You,” “Then They Laugh at You,” “Then They Call You Racist.”

The video, with music seemingly drawn from the theme song of the Batman movie “The Dark Knight Rises,” opens with a tight shot of President Barack Obama then cuts to Hillary Clinton, both clearly cast as politicians who belittle Trump’s hard-line conservative base.

It goes on to show a headline that says he was exonerated by the special counsel, Robert Mueller.

And it adds victory lap scenes of the Supreme Court confirmation hearing of Brett Kavanaugh; a soaring Dow Jones industrial average and strong jobs numbers; churches and flags; and lots of faces of working-class white men.

There is also plenty of footage of Trump, walking along as he did in the promotional ads for his television show “The Apprentice,” the source of his fame that helped catapult him to office.

There were not, however, any scenes from the border with Mexico.

It was not immediately clear why Trump chose to tweet the video on a Tuesday afternoon, roughly nine months before any primary election votes are cast. What was clear was that Trump seemed to have no doubt that he would paint his campaign themes in black and white, and leave the gray to others.

Michael Tackett

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