He can do whatever it takes to win re-election, and the Republican Party will have his back. Source: Elections – nytimes.com More

A survey by election researchers argues that efforts to confuse or scare away prospective voters disproportionately target minority groups in battleground states.When it comes to elections, disinformation is not just a problem online.Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin argue in a new report that disinformation targeting communities of color in three battleground states circulated as often through traditional sources of information, complicating efforts to fight it.The misleading information was included in mailings and campaign advertisements in newspapers, radio, television and even billboards. Those efforts are more likely to reach voters in those communities than targeted disinformation campaigns on the internet.“Online disinformation is just one small piece of the puzzle,” said Rachel Goodman of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan organization that commissioned the report. “There are many other failures in the information ecosystem that allow disinformation about elections to thrive.”False or misleading information about registering and voting is so pervasive, the researchers said, that it amounts to what they call “structural disinformation.” It affects not only elections but also other issues, like health care, creating information gaps that those propagating disinformation can exploit.The report argued that poor dissemination of changes in voting rules “creates openings for targeted disinformation and innocent misunderstandings which will keep members of that community from exercising their rights.”The report, based on surveys of election activists in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin, also cited direct mailings sent to Black voters in Milwaukee containing false information about voting, though they were made to look like official documents.Billboards in Wisconsin wrongly warned that people with felony convictions could not vote after completing their sentences. In rural parts of Arizona, Native American voters had trouble providing proof of residence because they lived in places without United States Postal Service addresses.Changes to state election laws, like the one in Georgia that Republican lawmakers enacted after Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s presidential victory in 2020, are likely to compound the problem.“Structural disinformation, particularly structural disinformation related to the right to vote, has a disproportionate impact on communities of color and other historically marginalized communities,” the report said.The findings suggested that efforts to rebut disinformation should not be limited to online services. The researchers said the most effective measures involved direct contact with prospective voters — in person, at events or through direct mailings. Those efforts are expensive and labor intensive, however.The cumulative effect of disinformation and partisan controversy over elections has been to create distrust and demoralization, dampening turnout and eroding confidence in the government more broadly.“The low turnout rates and things that we see happening now in their states and their communities are at least in large part due to the ways in which over the course of time disinformation has made their communities skeptical of the American democratic system,” said one of the researchers, Samuel Woolley, the program director of propaganda research at the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin. More

There was a time in 2016 when Elise Stefanik, now the third-ranking Republican in the House, was so disgusted by Donald Trump, she would barely mention his name. Today he proudly refers to her as “one of my killers.”She proved that again last month. In an effort to undermine confidence in the select committee investigating the violent assault on the Capitol, Ms. Stefanik said, “This is not a serious investigation. This is a partisan political witch hunt.” The committee, she said, is “illegitimate.” The hearings did not change her mind. In mid-July, before the final session planned for the summer, she referred to the committee as a “sham” and declared that “it is way worse than the impeachment witch hunt parts one and two.”Maybe Ms. Stefanik was continuing to discredit the House committee because the evidence it has produced from Trump insiders — and the compelling way the evidence has been presented — has inflicted staggering damage on Mr. Trump, even though it might not prevent him from winning the Republican presidential nomination for a third straight time. Ms. Stefanik has failed in her efforts to sabotage the committee, but it’s not for lack of trying.Ms. Stefanik’s fealty to Mr. Trump is so great that some of his advisers are mentioning her as a potential vice-presidential candidate if he runs in 2024, which he and his advisers are strongly hinting he will do.The transformation of Ms. Stefanik, who is 38, is among the most dramatic and significant in American politics. Her political conversion is a source of sadness and anger for several people I spoke to who were colleagues of hers — as I was in the White House of George W. Bush although I did not work with her directly — and who were, unlike me, once close to her. To them, Ms. Stefanik’s story is of a person who betrayed her principles and her country in a manic quest for power.Born in upstate New York, Ms. Stefanik graduated from Albany Academy for Girls and Harvard, after which she joined the Bush administration as a staff member for the Domestic Policy Council and later in the office of the White House chief of staff. She worked for the 2012 presidential campaign of Tim Pawlenty before overseeing debate preparation for the Republican vice-presidential nominee, Paul Ryan.Ms. Stefanik was elected to the House of Representatives in 2014, becoming at the time the youngest woman elected to Congress. In January 2017, Ms. Stefanik became a co-chair of the Tuesday Group, made up of moderate Republicans who served as a counterbalance to the right-wing Freedom Caucus, which was co-founded two years earlier by Mark Meadows, who later became chief of staff to Mr. Trump when he was president. At the time, Ms. Stefanik was viewed as pragmatic and highly competent, a member of the establishment wing of the Republican Party and a person Democrats felt they could do business with.But within a matter of a few years, all that changed, with Ms. Stefanik referring to herself as “ultra-MAGA and proud of it.” Because of her previous beliefs, she had to reassure Trump supporters. So last year she appeared on the podcast of the right-wing provocateur Steve Bannon, a popular figure with the Republican base who served as Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, to make her case to replace Liz Cheney as chair of the House Republican Conference. Ms. Stefanik was supported in her effort to supplant Ms. Cheney by Mr. Trump, who issued a statement giving his “complete and total endorsement” to Ms. Stefanik. And understandably so. She voted to invalidate the 2020 election and has repeated his false claims about election fraud.I spoke to several people who have worked with Ms. Stefanik over the years — some who were willing to speak on the record, others who insisted on anonymity so that they could speak candidly to help me understand what had happened to her and what her rise to power and celebrity status says about the modern-day Republican Party.Those who know Ms. Stefanik well consider her smart and talented but hollow at the core. She is an individual of “ambition unmoored to principle,” as Barbara Comstock, a Virginia Republican who served in Congress with Ms. Stefanik, told me.Margaret Hoover, the host of “Firing Line,” who worked in the Bush administration with Ms. Stefanik and was consulted by her before her run for Congress in 2014, described her as a person of “sheer ambition and not principled at all.” Another Republican — a former member of Congress who served with Ms. Stefanik and worked closely with her — also spoke to me of her towering ambition, invoking Icarus, the Greek mythological character. “She’s flying too close to the sun,” said this person, who requested anonymity in order to speak openly about her transformation.People who worked with Ms. Stefanik say that during the 2016 campaign, her reaction to Mr. Trump was quite negative and that she was particularly disgusted by his attitude toward women. She considered Mr. Trump’s comments on the “Access Hollywood” tape sickening — and like many others, she assumed he would lose the election. He didn’t, of course, and Ms. Stefanik, like so many other Republicans, began the process of accommodation. Soon hers would be complete.When the Republican Party was a George W. Bush party, she was a Bush Republican. When the Republican Party became a Trump party, she was a Trump Republican. Former colleagues of hers will tell you she meant it then and she means it now. She’s a person who takes her views from the place she finds herself — and the place she finds herself today is in a pro-Trump district and in a thoroughly Trumpified party.Several people I spoke to about Ms. Stefanik mentioned a couple of key moments in her journey to MAGA world. The first was an August 2018 visit by Mr. Trump to Fort Drum, an Army base that has a substantial economic and political impact in New York’s 21st Congressional District, which she represents. The large crowd the president drew and the enthusiasm he generated registered with Ms. Stefanik, who welcomed him. “Elise stood in front of the MAGA Trump crowd and decided to shed her old self and follow instead of lead,” Ms. Comstock told me. “It was the beginning of the end.”But the most important inflection point was the first impeachment trial of Mr. Trump, in 2019. Ms. Stefanik accused Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the committee overseeing the impeachment trial, of trying to silence Republicans and clashed with the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie L. Yovanovitch, whose testimony about Mr. Trump was damning.Mr. Trump was thrilled by Ms. Stefanik’s performance; he called her a “new Republican star” on Twitter. Her life changed after that. She became much better known and was able to raise a lot of money from her new position and with her new posture.“She became a celebrity,” I was told by a Bush administration colleague of Ms. Stefanik’s who requested anonymity so this individual could speak freely about what is still a very sensitive subject. Until that point, this person said, “she hadn’t gotten fully on board the Trump train. Then she was put into first class, and she couldn’t get off. And first class is pretty plush.”I reached out twice to Ms. Stefanik’s communications director, seeking comment from the congresswoman, but received no response. Ms. Stefanik, in defending herself, has argued that she’s reflecting the views of a majority of the people in her district, and she is. Mr. Trump carried her district by 14 percentage points in 2016. “I represent farmers, manufacturers and hard-working families who want someone who stands up for them, and President Trump spoke to those people,” she told Mr. Bannon on his show.But even if you believe that the job of an elected representative is to vote according to the will of the voters rather than to owe voters one’s “judgment and conscience,” as the British parliamentarian and conservative political theorist Edmund Burke famously put it, at some point carrying out the will of the voters can become indefensible. That is certainly true if it requires a member of Congress to support a seditious president.Looking at what happened with Ms. Stefanik is sad and disturbing because people who know her say she knows better. She was willing to be shaped by circumstances, even when circumstances drove her to ugly places and to embrace conspiracy theories. Contrast this with Ms. Cheney, who was stripped of her position in the Republican leadership and replaced by Ms. Stefanik. Ms. Cheney represents the people of Wyoming on many issues that are important to them, but she drew a line when it came to a fundamental attack on our democracy. She wouldn’t cross that line. Ms. Stefanik did.Ms. Stefanik’s story is important in part because it mirrors that of so many other Republicans. They, like Ms. Stefanik, are opportunists, living completely in the moment, shifting their personas to advance their immediate political self-interests. A commitment to ethical conduct, a devotion to the common good and fidelity to truth appear to have no intrinsic worth to them. These qualities are mere instrumentalities, used when helpful but discarded when inconvenient.The politicians and former Bush administration officials I spoke to were worried that Republicans in Congress will conclude that Ms. Stefanik’s path to power is the one to emulate. The fast track to leadership is to enlist figures like Mr. Trump, Mr. Bannon and what one of my interlocutors called “the army of the base,” made up as it is of QAnon followers, Christian nationalists, right-wing talk radio aficionados and those who are determined to overturn elections.The Bush administration figure who worked with Ms. Stefanik told me that her move into MAGA-dom was illustrative because it was representative of a larger problem. “In isolation, Elise is not a particular malefactor. She’s more a symptom than a disease.” But, this individual said, she and other Republicans “could have made a difference if they had had collective courage.”They could have made the case against Mr. Trump’s malicious and unconstitutional conduct. They could have attempted to mold the sentiments of the Republican base in a healthy direction. But they refused.Never mind Ms. Stefanik. “I affix a lot of the blame on the dozens and dozens of Republican leaders who acquiesced in what they knew to be wrong,” this person said.During the Trump era, we saw a profound failure of leadership among Republican lawmakers when it came to calming down inflamed populist passions.Wise observers of politics have told me that what leadership does in a populist moment like ours is to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate grievances. Leaders speak to legitimate grievances and channel them in constructive ways through policies. Demagogues elevate illegitimate grievances and speak to them in reckless ways. In populist times, good leaders tamp down on the bad and elevate the good. Ms. Stefanik and many, many others chose to elevate the worst.This has inflicted a grave cost on the political profession, making Americans even more cynical about the whole political enterprise. I hate to think about the message it sends younger people who are thinking about running for office.Someone who takes the route to power Ms. Stefanik has chosen “degrades and demeans public service,” Ms. Hoover told me. “Anyone who cares about our political system should find what she’s done so deeply offensive. We deserve better. Our country deserves better, and those who came before us deserve better.”At the end of my conversation with Ms. Comstock, I asked for her assessment of the game Ms. Stefanik is playing.“I do believe this catches up with people,” she said. “There might be what appears as a short-term benefit, but situations like this often spectacularly fail.”“I don’t view Elise’s story as a success story,” she added. “It won’t end well. Stories like this never do.”Peter Wehner (@Peter_Wehner) — a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum who served in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush — is a contributing Opinion writer and the author of “The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.”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: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

Campaigning to be Britain’s next prime minister, Liz Truss has modeled herself after Margaret Thatcher and pushed a party orthodoxy of lower taxes, less government and bucking the European Union.BIRMINGHAM, England — When a British journalist asked Liz Truss on Tuesday to name the character flaw she would most like to fix, she confessed, “I think some of my friends would say I’m a bit relentless.”Her answer elicited chuckles from a gathering of Conservative Party members; after all, that question is usually an invitation for a politician to resort to a humble brag. Yet this time it had the ring of truth, coming after a campaign in which Ms. Truss, Britain’s foreign secretary, has piled up big-name endorsements, upbeat media coverage and a seemingly unshakable lead in polls of party members.With less than two weeks left in the race to replace Prime Minister Boris Johnson, her march to Downing Street looks nothing if not relentless. After a shaky start, Ms. Truss, 47, has cemented her status as the odds-on favorite to become Britain’s third female leader, after Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May.The results of the Tory leadership contest will not be announced until Sept. 5, after the ballots of the party’s 160,000 or so dues-paying members are counted. Ms. Truss’s underdog opponent, Rishi Sunak, delivered a robust and well-received performance at the event in Birmingham, a reminder that fortunes can change swiftly in politics.“You’re acting like this is already over — and it’s not,” a visibly peeved Mr. Sunak told the moderator, John Pienaar.Rishi Sunak, Ms. Truss’s rival for party leadership, being interviewed by John Pienaar, a journalist, at the event in Birmingham on Tuesday.Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockThe static campaign has unfolded amid rapidly deepening economic turmoil. Household energy bills are spiking, inflation has soared into double digits, and the Bank of England warns of a prolonged recession. But none of that has dented the aura of inevitability around Ms. Truss.British newspapers are already busy speculating about whom she will name to her cabinet and when she will pass an “emergency budget.” The first question is easier to answer than the second. Despite spending a month on the campaign trail, Ms. Truss has offered very few clues about how she would confront an economic crisis that many experts view as the gravest in a generation.Instead, she has vowed to cut taxes, discard remaining European Union regulations, and shrink the size of Britain’s government — crowd-pleasing measures, tailor-made for the members of the Conservative Party, who tend to be older, wealthier, and more right-wing than the party’s voters, to say nothing of the broader British electorate.Ms. Truss has stood by Mr. Johnson and continues to serve in his lame-duck government. But she has wrapped herself in the mantle of Thatcher, an anti-Communist warrior, free-market evangelist and conservative icon who entered Downing Street at a time of comparable economic hardship in 1979.The Fall of Boris Johnson, ExplainedCard 1 of 5The Fall of Boris Johnson, ExplainedTurmoil at Downing Street. More

Because of the downpour, candidates for New York City mayor pressed their cases to voters at churches and bars, instead of in parks and on street corners.The cold rain dashed countless Memorial Day weekend plans in New York City, including those of the eight leading Democratic candidates for mayor, who were understandably eager to bump as many elbows as possible with just over three weeks before the June 22 primary.Instead of campaigning at subway spots and in parks, candidates spent the weekend in search of captive audiences. They tracked them down in churches, in bars and wherever dry spots could be found.Their messages varied in nuance, but the cold rain did not drown out one unifying theme: Post-pandemic New York City is in crisis, with a rise in shootings, increasing poverty and an exacerbated need for affordable housing.Several of the candidates made haste to pulpits in the voter-rich neighborhoods of central Brooklyn and southeast Queens to tout their wares.In East Flatbush, Andrew Yang pitched himself to parishioners at the Clarendon Road Church as an heir to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s fight against poverty.Dr. King argued for a version of guaranteed income, Mr. Yang pointed out — a concept that Mr. Yang cast a klieg light on during his 2020 presidential campaign. (The candidate made a point of noting that he knows Martin Luther King III, who is backing his campaign.)“This is when you probably met me, is when I appeared on your TV screens,” Mr. Yang told the congregation. “Now, you might remember this, the magical Asian man, who was saying we should start giving everyone money.”At separate Pentecostal churches in Queens, parishioners encountered beeping thermometers, consent forms and two well-funded but badly lagging first-time candidates for mayor: Raymond J. McGuire and Shaun Donovan.At Bethel Gospel Tabernacle, a majority Black church in a working-class section of Jamaica, a 15-piece live band and choir played rousing gospel to nearly empty pews, while two jumbo screens flanking the stage showed a live webcast interview with Mr. McGuire, the former Citigroup executive.It was the first of four scheduled church stops on Sunday in Queens, during which Mr. McGuire referenced his “old Pentecostal” religious upbringing and warned that New York City was facing “a crisis of Covid, a crisis of the economy, a crisis of safety and a crisis of education.” He said he was best equipped to lead the city to a place of shared prosperity.“I do not owe any political favors,” Mr. McGuire said.At Aliento de Vida, a bilingual church in Corona in an old playhouse, parishioners were greeted to a speech from Mr. Donovan, the former housing and budget secretary who is running on his experience in the Obama administration.His framing was similar to Mr. McGuire’s.New York is in a “Nehemiah moment,” Mr. Donovan said, referring to the biblical figure who rebuilt Jerusalem from ruins.Esther Beatrice Wiggins, pastor of First Faith Baptist Church in Cambria Heights, Queens, leads Raymond J. McGuire in prayer. Mr. McGuire had four church stops on Sunday in Queens.Andrew Seng for The New York TimesScott M. Stringer, the New York City comptroller who is trying to revive his campaign following an allegation of sexual harassment, had planned to host his Sunday media event outdoors, in Foley Square. But with the rain pouring down, he relocated to the vaulted, Guastavino-tiled overhang at 1 Centre Street in Manhattan.There, Mr. Stringer said he would tamp down on the rise in hate crimes by educating students about the dangers of bigotry and focusing resources on hate-crime hot spots..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Mr. Stringer, who is running as a progressive, implicitly renounced the more pro-policing campaigns of his competitors.“We can do it without resorting to the old Giuliani-style playbook of over-policing,” Mr. Stringer said.Citing the rain, Maya Wiley had to scrap two outdoor events on Saturday at the Bronx Night Market and the Urbanspace Market in Bryant Park.She began her Sunday morning at two Black Baptist churches in Brooklyn, touting her commitment to New York City public housing, but then had to scratch another outdoor event planned for Socrates Sculpture Park in the progressive precincts of western Queens.Instead, she ended up at Katch bar in Astoria, with State Senator Michael Gianaris, who earned his progressive merit badge by helping to torpedo Amazon’s plans to build a second headquarters in Long Island City.At the bar, Ms. Wiley sampled a signature house cocktail with tequila renamed the “Mayarita” for the occasion. Over the din of more than two dozen flat-screen TVs showing a New York Knicks playoff game, Ms. Wiley and Mr. Gianaris greeted customers and well-wishers from behind the bar and served them the red concoction in stemmed cocktail glasses.It was a tougher setting than church for contemplating the city’s woes, but Ms. Wiley tried.“We had a crisis before Covid — of affordability, of systemic racism,” she said, “and what Covid did was fast-track and deepen some of the crises we already were facing.”She said the city is in recovery from the disease, but even when it is curbed, “We will still have people facing eviction. We will still have people who are hungry. We will still have a homeless crisis. We will still have a crisis of safety — safety from crime and safety from police violence.”Roseann McSorley, who owns and runs Katch with her husband, said the restaurant has hosted other women seeking office, including Cynthia Nixon and State Senator Jessica Ramos. Ms. McSorley didn’t outright endorse Ms. Wiley but said she supported the effort to put a woman in Gracie Manson, adding: “It’s time.” More