Donald Trump’s “big lie” that he lost the 2020 US election because of voter fraud is “a bit like WWF”, Mitt Romney said on Sunday, referring to the gaudy and artificial world of professional wrestling, an arena in which Trump starred before entering politics.“It’s entertaining,” said the Utah senator and 2012 Republican presidential nominee. “But it’s not real.”Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, Romney was asked about former attorney general William Barr’s assertion to the Atlantic on Sunday that Trump’s claims were always “bullshit”.Barr said as much publicly in December – a month after Joe Biden’s win. He told the Atlantic the then Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, had wanted him to say so in November.Romney suggested most Americans have always known Trump is lying about electoral fraud, which he was told about by conspiracy theorists – “the MyPillow guy [Mike Lindell and] Rudy Giuliani” – rather than any official source.Most Americans, Romney suggested, would not take seriously such partisan operations as an ongoing recount in Arizona’s most popular county. Polling, however, shows belief in Trump’s claims shared by a majority of Republican voters.Romney also said Trump’s lie “is surely being used around the world to minimise the support for democracy”.“If the autocratic nations can point to the United States,” he said, “which is the birthplace really of this modern democracy, and can say, ‘Look, they can’t even run an election there that’s not fraudulent … that obviously is having an impact on on the cause of democracy and freedom around the world.”But in the US, Romney insisted, “it’s pretty clear. The election was fair. It wasn’t the outcome that the president wanted, but let’s move on.”Trump has not moved on. At a rally in Ohio on Saturday which marked his return to the campaign trail, supporters wore T-shirts saying “Trump won, deal with it”; “Trump 2024. Make votes count again”; and “Biden is not my president”.Trump told them: “This was the scam of the century and this was the crime of the century. We’re never going to stop fight for the true results of this election … Remember I’m not the one trying to undermine American democracy. I’m trying to save American democracy.”Romney was the only Republican in Congress to vote to impeach Trump twice. But he was joined at Trump’s second trial by six other GOP senators who thought Trump guilty of inciting the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January, by a mob seeking to overturn the election.Despite that, Republicans in the Senate blocked the formation of a 9/11-style independent commission to investigate the January attack. This week the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, announced the formation of a select committee.Republicans say that will be too partisan. Key witnesses such as the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, who pleaded with Trump to call off the attack, seem unlikely to agree to appear.Romney said he hoped Pelosi would “appoint people that are seen as being credible and are willing to look at the evidence on a clear-eyed basis”.He added: “I voted in favour of a bipartisan commission. I think that would have had more credibility … and yet there will be a an effort to look back at what happened on 6 January. I think there are questions that are appropriate to be evaluated.“One question is why did it take so long for security to come to the Capitol and to rescue the Capitol police that were battling away, and to make sure that the Vice-President [Mike Pence] was safe and his family was safe, as well as other elected officials.“Why was the delay so long? Why didn’t the Pentagon for instance move more quickly? What happened in the White House?“… That was a terrible day in American history, and it’s going to be used against us around the world. It already is by China and Russia. It has huge implications. It should never happen again in any effort to understand why it happened, is in my opinion, appropriate.” More

Kenneth Eugene Smith was put to death by nitrogen gas on Thursday night, the first time the method was used in capital punishment in the U.S.Alabama carried out on Thursday the first execution using nitrogen gas in the United States, an untested method that was the subject of debate before it was used. The inmate, Kenneth Smith, was pronounced dead at 8:25 p.m. Central time at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Ala., after the U.S. Supreme Court denied an appeal to stay the execution.Here are a few things to know about the case.Who was Kenneth Smith, and what was his crime?Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, was one of three men convicted in the stabbing murder of Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett, 45, whose husband, a pastor, had recruited them to kill her in March 1988 in Colbert County, Ala.According to court documents, Ms. Sennett, a mother of two, was stabbed 10 times in the attack by Mr. Smith and another man. Charles Sennett Sr., Ms. Sennett’s husband, had recruited a man to handle her killing, who in turn recruited Mr. Smith and another man.Mr. Sennett arranged the murder in part to collect on an insurance policy that he had taken out on his wife, according to court records. He had promised the men $1,000 each for the killing.What were the circumstances around his death sentence?Mr. Smith was convicted in 1996. At his sentencing, 11 out of 12 jurors voted to spare his life and to sentence him to life in prison, but the judge in the case, N. Pride Tompkins, decided to overrule their decision and condemned him to death. In 2017, Alabama stopped allowing judges to overrule death penalty juries in such a way, and such rulings are no longer allowed anywhere in the United States.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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E. M. Capassakis makes calculated choices in her New York Times debut.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesWEDNESDAY PUZZLE — If I have occasionally joked about my slight distaste for math-related clues and entries in the daily crossword, it’s only because I think of numbers and language as standing somewhat at odds with each other. One represents pure logic, the other creative expression. How can you love both in equal measure?E. M. Capassakis offers one possible answer to this question via today’s crossword puzzle. In her New York Times debut, numbers and language not only coexist but are codependent. Solving the grid may invite you to consider whether we need to separate the two at all.Ready to go? I’ll count us in.Today’s ThemeRevealerless puzzles are sneaky but fun, because they leave us to identify patterns and crack the theme. In today’s grid, a series of numerical clues — at 17-, 19-, 31-, 47-, 62- and 64- Across — add up to our answer.The clue “101” is shorthand for a beginner’s understanding of a subject — an INTRO CLASS (17A), in other words. And “007” is a longtime code name for James BOND (19A). These automatic associations are no accident: Numbers double as words. We can say “420” and refer to CANNABIS (31A), euphemize “666” with THE BEAST (47A) and so on.Tricky Clues16A. The “End of a noodle?” isn’t a slurp: It’s an IDEA, since this refers to the kind of noodling done with the mind.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Source: Election results and race calls from The Associated Press By Sarah Almukhtar, Michael Andre, Aliza Aufrichtig, Matthew Bloch, Larry Buchanan, Andrew Chavez, Nate Cohn, Annie Daniel, Andrew Fischer, Will Houp, Jonathan Huang, Josh Katz, Aaron Krolik, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Jasmine C. Lee, Rebecca Lieberman, Denise Lu, Jaymin Patel, Charlie Smart, Ben Smithgall, Rumsey Taylor, […] More