Singin’ the coups: Donald Trump releases single with January 6 prisonersFormer president drops charity song on streaming sites recorded with men imprisoned for their role in attack on US CapitolDonald Trump has released a charity single, recorded with a choir of men held in a Washington DC prison for their parts in the deadly January 6 insurrection he incited.Trump’s war with DeSantis heats up with details of 2024 battle planRead moreOn Friday, Justice for All by Donald J Trump and the J6 Prison Choir was available on streaming platforms including Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube.The move is the latest in a growing trend by Trump and others on the far right of US politics to embrace the January 6 attack on the Capitol as a political cause and portray many of those who carried it out as protesters being persecuted by the state.Forbes, which first reported the song’s production, said a video would debut on a podcast hosted by Steve Bannon, the far-right activist and alleged fraudster who was Trump’s campaign chair and White House strategist.Over an ambient backing, the song features Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, interspersed with a male voice choir singing The Star-Spangled Banner. The song lasts for about two and a half minutes and ends with a chant of “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!” Forbes said it was “produced by a major recording artist who was not identified”.Robert Maguire, research director for the watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said: “I have never been more repulsed by the mere existence of a song than one sung by a president who tried to do a coup and a literal ‘choir’ of insurrectionists who tried to help him.”Barb McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor and former US attorney, called the song “a disinformation tactic right out of the authoritarian playbook”.Trump, she said, was seeking to “wrap lies in patriotism”.On 6 January 2021, Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” to block certification of Joe Biden’s election win. A mob then attacked the US Capitol, sending lawmakers including Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president, running for their lives.The riot only delayed the certification process but it is now linked to nine deaths, including law enforcement suicides.More than 1,000 people have been charged. Hundreds have been convicted, some with seditious conspiracy, and hundreds remain wanted by the FBI.Trump was impeached for inciting the insurrection but acquitted when enough Senate Republicans stayed loyal.The House January 6 committee made four criminal referrals regarding Trump to the Department of Justice, which continues to investigate.That is just one source of legal jeopardy for Trump, who also faces investigations of his financial affairs, a hush money payment to a porn star, his election subversion and his retention of classified records, as well as a defamation suit from a writer who accuses him of rape, an allegation he denies.Running for president again, Trump dominates polling regarding the Republican field.Forbes said Trump’s January 6-themed song was intended to raise money for the families of those imprisoned. It also said the project would not “benefit families of people who assaulted a police officer”.Citing “a person with knowledge of the project”, Forbes said the choir consisted of about 20 inmates at the Washington DC jail who were recorded over a jailhouse phone. Some such inmates reportedly sing the national anthem each night.Trump did not comment.TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

Sources and notes <!–> [–><!–>Tracking map Tracking data is from the National Hurricane Center. The map shows probabilities of at least 5 percent. The forecast is for up to five days, with that time span starting up to three hours before the reported time that the storm reaches its latest location. Wind speed probability data […] More

The Texas Supreme Court on Sunday denied an effort by Republicans to throw out more than 120,000 votes that had already been cast at drive-through locations in Harris County, leaving Republicans’ only remaining option at the federal level.The ruling from the court came without comment.The effort to get rid of the votes from Harris County, which includes Houston and is largely Democratic, now hinges on a nearly identical effort at the federal level, where a judge has called an election-eve hearing for Monday.The lawsuit contends that the 10 drive-through voting sites in Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, are operating illegally and are arranged in locations that favor Democrats.The system was put in place for the first time this year by Chris Hollins, the Harris County clerk, with unanimous approval by county commissioners, after being tested in a pilot program over the summer.More than 127,000 voters have cast ballots at the sites, and the number could grow to more than 135,000 through Election Day on Tuesday, said Susan Hays, a lawyer for Harris County. She said county officials planned to vigorously challenge the suit, which she described as an act of “voter suppression.”“It’s nuts,” she said. “Votes should count.”Democrats were hopeful on Sunday that the decision from the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court would bode well for their battle at the federal level.The case will be heard on Monday morning by Judge Andrew S. Hanen of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, who was appointed by President George W. Bush.In a motion on Friday asking to intervene in the case, Democrats said it threatened to “throw Texas’ election into chaos by invalidating the votes of more than 100,000 eligible Texas voters who cast their ballots” at the drive-through sites. The motion was filed by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the campaign of M.J. Hegar, a Democratic candidate for the Senate in Texas.The plaintiffs, who include State Representative Steve Toth and the conservative activist Steve Hotze, argue that drive-through voting “is a violation of state and federal law and must be stopped.”In a telephone interview on Saturday, Mr. Toth said that only the Legislature had the authority to put in place a drive-though voting system. He also said the arrangement of the sites was tilted toward Democratic voters, noting that Mr. Hollins is vice chairman of finance for the Texas Democratic Party.“If Hollins is really concerned that everybody is accurately represented, why is it that nine of the 10 are set up in predominantly Democratic areas?” said Mr. Toth, who represents part of neighboring Montgomery County.He denied that the lawsuit was aimed at blunting Democratic momentum amid record rates of early voting in Houston and other strongly Democratic areas in the last days before the election.“We’re not the ones who are disenfranchising anybody,” he said. “This is Hollins who did this.”In a statement on Twitter on Saturday, Mr. Hollins said drive-through voting was “a safe, secure and convenient way to vote,” adding: “Texas Election Code allows it, the Secretary of State approved it, and 127,000 voters from all walks of life have used it.”He said that his office was “committed to counting every vote cast by registered voters in this election,” and that voters would be notified if court proceedings required them to take any additional steps. More

“Reality,” Stephen Colbert remarked at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2006, “has a well-known liberal bias.” That was back when he played a caricature of a conservative instead of a caricature of a liberal (I assume that’s the point of his current late-night role, at least), and the line rolled out brilliantly into the midst of a decade where reality was delivering some punishing blows to the Republican Party’s theories of the world.In that period, the years from the invasion of Iraq through the re-election of Barack Obama, the G.O.P. staked itself to the conceit that the Iraq war would disarm a dictator (the armaments in question mostly did not exist) and revolutionize the Middle East (it did, but not for the better). It staked its domestic policy on tax cuts and a housing bubble, touting the strength of the George W. Bush-era economy right up to the point when the worst financial crisis since the 1920s hit.Then in Obama’s first term, the G.O.P. staked itself to the claims that deficit spending and easy money would lead to runaway inflation or debt crisis (they did not), that Obamacare would wreck the health care market (flaws and all, it didn’t), that entitlement reform was an appropriate prescription in a slowly recovering economy (it was a good long-term goal but not an ideal 2010 priority). And as a small capstone, the G.O.P. assumed that the polls were skewed against Mitt Romney in 2012, which they emphatically were not.I was a participant in some of this, overestimating the urgency of the deficit problem and the risks of Obamacare. So I have experience from which to observe that the Democrats in 2022 find themselves struggling because reality has finally changed sides, and now has a conservative bias.What has reality delivered? To a Democratic Party that convinced itself there were few near-term limits on how much stimulus could be pumped into the economy, it has delivered the worst inflation since the 1980s.To a Democratic Party that spent the Trump era talking itself into a belief that immigration enforcement is presumptively immoral and that a de facto amnesty doesn’t have real downsides, it has delivered the southern border’s highest-recorded rate of illegal crossings.And to a Democratic Party whose 2020 platform promised to “end the era of mass incarceration and dramatically reduce the number of Americans held in jails and prisons while continuing to reduce crime rates,” it has delivered a multiyear spike in homicide rates that’s erased at least 20 years of gains.The key thing to stress about all of these developments is that they don’t prove that liberals are simply “wrong about crime” or “wrong about inflation,” any more than the events of 2003-12 simply proved that conservatives are “wrong about foreign policy” or “wrong about entitlements.”Rather, ideological and partisan commitments exist in a dynamic relationship with reality. You can get things right for a while, sometimes a long while, and then suddenly you pass a tipping point and your prescription starts delivering the downsides that your rivals warned about and that you convinced yourself did not exist.Thus in the current situation, the fact that right now America is suffering a serious crime wave doesn’t prove that Democrats (and many Republicans) were wrong about criminal justice reform 10 or 15 years ago. It just suggests that there’s a point at which de-carceration or decriminalization may need a tough-on-crime corrective.Likewise Democrats weren’t wrong about the risks of inflation being low in the Obama era or in the recent past. It’s just that except for a few Cassandras like Larry Summers they were wrong to imagine that those risks could be forever minimized, that there was no upper bound on Covid-era spending. In the same way today’s inflation doesn’t retrospectively vindicate the Obama era’s deficit hawks — but it does suggest that some of their proposals might be worth revisiting.So the question for the aftermath of Tuesday’s election isn’t whether Democrats will abandon their ideology but whether that ideology can adapt itself to what reality is saying.And whether for Joe Biden or for his possible successors, a recent model is available: Just after the era when Colbert’s quip had bite, a leader emerged who persuaded the G.O.P. to abandon its fixation on deficits and just run the economy hot, who endorsed universal health insurance and pledged to protect entitlements, and who acknowledged that the Iraq war had been a grave mistake and promised a less utopian, more realistic foreign policy.That’s right: It was Donald Trump who closed the gap — in rhetoric, if not always in his eventual policymaking — between the Republican Party and reality. Now the Democrats, facing a cold rendezvous with reality’s conservative bias, need leaders who can do the same.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

Amid cows and crowds, the State Fair became a destination for potential challengers to Gov. Kathy Hochul, including Letitia James, the state attorney general.As Gov. Kathy Hochul sampled a sandwich at the New York State Fair on Sunday, touring the Syracuse-area spectacle like other governors before her, she overtly embraced her role as the state’s new leader — and implicitly set down a marker for 2022, when she intends to seek election to a full term as governor.Two days later, the New York City public advocate, Jumaane D. Williams, was in town, observing the cows and swinging by a butterfly garden. On Wednesday, it was Attorney General Letitia James’s turn.Ms. James greeted attendees, admired a butter sculpture and, like Mr. Williams, stoked fresh speculation about future political ambitions — and whether those ambitions included a run for governor.All three New York Democratic officials have visited the fair before. But the pilgrimages this week — not unlike a presidential hopeful’s early visits to Iowa — took on fresh resonance, offering a very public reminder of a nascent political contest that has been brewing behind the scenes.After more than a decade of governors’ races that were dominated and defined by the now-disgraced former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, New York’s political class is quietly beginning to plan for a different — and possibly, fiercely contested — primary campaign next year.While Ms. Hochul, New York’s first female governor, has been in office for just over a week, the primary machinery is already whirring to life, with hiring, polling and political gamesmanship picking up speed. One poll had extensive questions about Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has not ruled out running for governor.The most concrete activity among Democrats surrounds Ms. Hochul. She has already brought on strategists with national and New York experience; Tucker Green, a major Democratic fund-raiser, has also recently joined her campaign team as Ms. Hochul works to cement fund-raising strength, often an advantage for a sitting governor. The governor is making other decisions about her campaign infrastructure and will have more personnel announcements after Labor Day, an adviser to Ms. Hochul said.Many New York Democrats expect Ms. Hochul to be a powerful contender, boosted by the advantages of incumbency, the statewide network she has already assembled and an outpouring of good will for a new governor who has moved urgently to restore some of the norms and relationships that crumbled under the previous chief executive.But the field will also be shaped by Ms. Hochul’s track record as she navigates a series of staggering challenges facing the state.“We don’t know who is going to be in it,” said Representative Nydia M. Velázquez, a New York Democrat. “Who is going to be in it will be defined by Kathy Hochul’s leadership.”On Wednesday, Ms. Hochul announced that Kathryn Garcia — a former mayoral candidate who had been mentioned as a possible candidate for governor herself — had been appointed director of state operations.Perhaps the biggest uncertainty in the race is whether Ms. James will run. Some of her advisers, including some at the Hamilton Campaign Network, which was heavily involved in Ms. James’s previous runs, are beginning to have conversations about who could join a potential James bid for governor, according to people familiar with the discussions — part of an effort among Ms. James’s allies to keep her options open.“We do not comment about our clients,” the company said in a statement.“Tish would be an excellent governor,” said John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers Union, who lauded her “courageousness” in spearheading the investigation that led to Mr. Cuomo’s resignation. “She has a demonstrated record of steadfast support for working people.”A critical report by Letitia James, the state attorney general, led to the resignation of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo last month.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesPeople who have spoken with Ms. James in recent weeks have not gotten the impression that she has made a decision, but one of those people said Ms. James indicated she would like to make a call sometime this fall, ahead of the Democratic State Convention slated for early next year. Others have the broad sense that she would be inclined to see how Ms. Hochul’s early months as governor proceed.Asked about those discussions, a representative for Ms. James said that the attorney general is “fully focused on her work protecting and defending the rights of New Yorkers and plans to continue taking on the big fights that matter.”There has been a flurry of activity in other potential candidates’ camps, too.Recently, Anna Greenberg, Mayor de Blasio’s longtime pollster, conducted a survey testing the mayor’s appeal outside of New York City and the potency of particular messages about him.One Westchester resident, who took notes as he was polled on Tuesday, said that questions tested the appeal of several potential candidates for governor, including Ms. Hochul, Mr. Williams, Ms. James and Mr. de Blasio.Then, several specific messages about Mr. de Blasio — questions that were not raised about the other potential candidates — were tested.Among other things, the questioner discussed Mr. de Blasio’s record of battling Mr. Cuomo over his response to the pandemic, his efforts to provide legal services to New Yorkers facing evictions and his work on police reform and universal prekindergarten. Then the pollster asked if those facts made the respondent more or less inclined to support him.A spokesman for Mr. de Blasio declined to comment.On Long Island, Steven Bellone, the Suffolk County executive, has hired J.J. Balaban and Brandon L. Davis, veteran Democratic political strategists and ad makers, and brought on the national firm GPS Impact as he contemplates a run for governor.Representative Thomas Suozzi, a Long Island Democrat, is also thought to be seriously considering a run. But he intends to assess how Ms. Hochul performs and wants to accomplish his goals in negotiations in Congress over the federal deduction for state and local taxes, according to one Long Island Democrat with knowledge of Mr. Suozzi’s intentions, granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations.In recent weeks, Mr. Williams has said publicly that he is exploring a bid for governor, and privately he has told at least one person that he has already decided to run — withholding his plans because he does not want to announce it so close to Ms. Hochul’s swearing-in.In a brief interview, Mr. Williams said he thinks it is important to give the sitting governor time “to get her bearings,” and for the state to “take a moment to recognize the historic nature of the first woman governor.”“There’s definitely time to have those conversations in the near future,” Mr. Williams said. “And I have said I am considering, but it is important that we allow that time period before we dive deep into those questions.”Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate, is exploring a run for governor.Chery Dieu-Nalio for The New York TimesJay S. Jacobs, the chairman of the New York State Democratic Party, suggested that there could be risks for candidates announcing any intentions so soon after Ms. Hochul assumed the governorship.“Right now it would be premature and probably unseemly,” he said. “You have to have a reason, and I think that means you have to give the current governor a little bit of time. Then you can distinguish yourself from her, if you choose to run.” More