Elections

In federal court, Shaye Moss detailed how Rudolph Giuliani’s baseless claims that she had stolen votes from Donald Trump ignited threats and left her depressed and fearful.On Dec. 4, 2020, Shaye Moss, at the time an election worker in Fulton County, Ga., was summoned to her supervisor’s office, where she thought she would be getting a promotion for her hard work on Election Day, after a month of positive feedback.Instead, Ms. Moss was shown videos filled with “lies” and unfounded accusations that she and her mother, a co-worker, had tried to steal votes in the vital swing state from President Donald J. Trump, she testified in Federal District Court in Washington on Tuesday.From the moment she got that heads up, her life was altered. Soon, she and her 14-year-old son were inundated with threats, racist messages and calls. “Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920” was one warning she received on Facebook.“That was the day that everything changed,” Ms. Moss told a jury in a civil trial to determine what damages Rudolph W. Giuliani should pay for defaming her and her mother, Ruby Freeman, by spreading the baseless reports that they had tried to cheat Mr. Trump out of votes. “Everything in my life changed. The day that I changed. The day that everything just flipped upside down.”Georgia officials quickly debunked the accusations, and a yearslong investigation cleared Ms. Moss and Ms. Freeman of any wrongdoing. But Ms. Moss is unrecognizable to herself, crippled by fear, anxiety and depression, she said during hours of emotional testimony.“I’m most scared of my son finding me and, or my mom, hanging in front of my house in front of a tree,” she said, fighting back tears, as Mr. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and federal prosecutor, sat nearby, showing no emotion.“Most days I pray that God does not wake me up, that I just disappear,” she said.It was the second day of the trial, and her testimony brought to life the impact of the falsehoods that Mr. Giuliani helped to promote in the aftermath of Election Day 2020. At the time, Mr. Giuliani was serving as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer and helped lead the efforts to keep him in office after he lost the 2020 election.The women are seeking compensatory damages between $15.5 million and $43 million, an amount Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer on Monday said was the civil equivalent of the death penalty.The judge presiding over the case, Beryl A. Howell, previously ruled that Mr. Giuliani had spread lies about the women, intentionally inflicted emotional distress on them and engaged in a conspiracy with others.Throughout her testimony, Ms. Moss described the pain inflicted on people she loves, particularly the racism embedded in the accusations and threats she said were spurred by Mr. Giuliani. The relentless calls and texts to Ms. Moss’s son interfered with his school work. She said he ended up with failing grades in his first year of high school.“He didn’t deserve that,” she said through tears.When Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer, Joseph Sibley IV, questioned Ms. Moss, he tried to make the point that the racist comments could not be directly linked to his client, a notion Ms. Moss strongly rebutted. She said Mr. Giuliani assumed that all of the Fulton County election workers were Democrats because they were all Black.“I feel like that is the beginning of the race issue,” she said, adding that he did not go on “BET Nightly News” to talk about his conspiracy theory, but instead went to media platforms where “he knew his people would believe his lies.”Mr. Giuliani has yet to testify in court, but despite the judge’s ruling — and his own previous acknowledgment that he had made false and defamatory accusations about the women — repeated his accusations on Monday evening as he left the courthouse.“Everything I said about them is true,” Mr. Giuliani told journalists. “They were engaging in changing votes.”On Tuesday morning, Judge Howell told Mr. Sibley that comments like those could be considered another defamation claim.When she asked if Mr. Sibley knew about his client’s statements, Mr. Sibley deflected and said he was not with him at the time, while Mr. Giuliani nodded his head in affirmation behind him. Judge Howell then asked Mr. Giuliani directly if he made those statements, and he said, “yes.”Mr. Sibley also suggested that the long days in the courtroom could be taking a toll on Mr. Giuliani, 79. Judge Howell asked Mr. Sibley if he was concerned about his client’s age and mental capacity issues. Mr. Sibley said he had not seen evidence of that yet.Judge Howell said she had observed Mr. Giuliani paying close attention and being responsive.“He’s following everything I’m saying quite closely,” she said Tuesday morning.Mr. Giuliani has rankled Judge Howell several times throughout the case. He refused to turn over routine documents about his net worth and wide reach on social media. He skipped one of the final hearings on the case. And on the first day of the trial, he was late to the courtroom.On Tuesday, Judge Howell said, “Mr. Sibley has a hard job.”Mr. Sibley told the jury, “My client, as you saw last night, likes to talk a lot, unfortunately.”The trial is expected to last a week and include testimony from Ms. Freeman and Mr. Giuliani. More

The special counsel has substantive and procedural reasons for wanting a quick ruling on whether Donald Trump can be prosecuted for his actions as president.Jack Smith, the special counsel who has brought two cases against former President Donald J. Trump, made a bold move this week designed to undercut one of Mr. Trump’s chief defenses against accusations of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.Mr. Smith asked the Supreme Court to rule on Mr. Trump’s attempts to have the election subversion charges dismissed on a sweeping claim of executive immunity before a lower appeals court even has the chance to consider the issue.Mr. Smith also asked the justices to make their decision quickly.“The United States recognizes that this is an extraordinary request,” he told the Supreme Court in a petition filed on Monday.But there was a reason it was needed.“This is an extraordinary case,” he wrote.Here is a look at the intersecting legal and political issues surrounding the special counsel’s move.What does Mr. Smith want the Supreme Court to do?He made two separate requests.First, he asked the justices to consider a legal issue they have never looked at before: whether the Constitution confers absolute immunity on a former president against a federal prosecution for crimes he committed while in office.Mr. Trump put that argument at the center of his initial motion to dismiss the election case, which he filed in October in Federal District Court in Washington. He contended that because the charges were based on official actions he took while in the White House, the indictment in its entirety had to be thrown out.Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is handling the case, disagreed and rejected the motion two weeks ago. Mr. Trump’s lawyers challenged her decision in the normal way in front of a federal appeals court in Washington and also asked her to freeze the case while the appeal was being heard.Mr. Smith asked the Supreme Court to step in front of an appeals court to rule on former President Donald J. Trump’s claims of immunity.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesWhile the lawyers obviously hoped to win the appeal, they also had another goal: to drag out the process for as long as possible and postpone a trial on the election interference charges.It was that delay strategy that appeared to underlie Mr. Smith’s second request to the Supreme Court. He asked the justices not only to rule on the immunity issue before the lower appeals court did, but also to do so on an expedited basis.Mr. Smith told the justices that an ordinary, even a relatively fast, appeal could take too much time. And he expressed concern in particular about keeping the trial, now set to go before a jury on March 4, more or less on schedule.What could happen if the trial is delayed?It depends on whom you ask and how long the trial is postponed.A significant delay could push the trial into summer or fall — the heart of the 2024 campaign season. That could cause problems for Mr. Trump because he would be obliged to attend the trial in Washington every weekday for two or three months when he could be holding rallies or meeting voters.Mr. Trump would likely respond to such a situation by bringing his campaign to the steps of the federal courthouse. He would almost certainly hold daily news conferences in front of the television cameras that would await his exit from the courtroom and use them to deliver his political talking points and attack the legal proceeding. He has employed a similar strategy during the civil fraud trial in New York in which he is accused of inflating his company’s net worth.There could also be serious consequences, however, if the trial is pushed off until after the election.If that happens and Mr. Trump wins the race, he would suddenly have the power to order the charges to be dropped. Moreover, millions of voters would never get to hear the evidence that Mr. Smith’s team collected about Mr. Trump’s efforts to subvert the last election before making a decision about whether to elect him again.What do we know about whether the Supreme Court will take the case on an expedited basis?It would require only four of the nine justices to come together for Mr. Smith’s request to be granted. Shortly after Mr. Smith filed his petition, the court issued an order telling Mr. Trump’s legal team to respond with their opinions on the issue by Dec. 20. While the schedule the justices set gave no indication of whether they might ultimately take the case, it did seem to suggest that the court was not inclined to drag its feet in reaching a decision.A significant delay in the case could plunge the trial into the heart of Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesHistorically speaking, the Supreme Court has only rarely stepped in front of lower appeals courts by using the procedure known as “certiorari before judgment.” Before 2019, the court had not used the provision for 15 years, according to statistics compiled by Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas. But as of late last year, the court had used it 19 times since.The procedure has been used in cases involving national crises, like President Richard M. Nixon’s refusal to turn over tape recordings to a special prosecutor during a criminal investigation.Mr. Smith urged the court to use it in Mr. Trump’s criminal case as well, saying that the proceeding involved “issues of exceptional national importance.”How sympathetic has this Supreme Court been to Trump in such cases?While the court’s current majority has voted in favor of a number of staunchly conservative policies, from striking down abortion rights to reversing affirmative action, it has shown less of an appetite for supporting Mr. Trump’s attempts to monkey with the democratic process.Just months before Mr. Trump appointed his third Supreme Court justice, the court ruled by a 7-to-2 vote in 2020 that he had no absolute right to block the release of his financial records from investigators in a criminal inquiry.“No citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority.That same year, in a brief unsigned order, the court rejected a lawsuit filed by the state of Texas seeking to throw out the election results in four battleground states that Mr. Trump had lost. It also declined requests to review suits filed by pro-Trump lawyers claiming that voting machines across the country had been hacked by a cabal of foreign actors to flip votes away from Mr. Trump.Last year, the Supreme Court refused a request from Mr. Trump to block the release of White House records concerning the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, effectively rejecting his claims of executive privilege.The court’s unsigned order upheld the original decision made in the case by none other than Judge Chutkan. And she had scathing words for Mr. Trump in her initial decision rejecting his claims of executive privilege.“Presidents are not kings,” she wrote, “and plaintiff is not president.”What could happen next?If the Supreme Court takes the case and agrees with Mr. Trump’s immunity claims, then the indictment would be tossed out and there would be no trial on the election interference charges. But if the court hears the case and quickly sides with Mr. Smith, a trial would be held, likely before the election.On the other hand, if the justices decline to hear the case at this stage, then it would go back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. But the Supreme Court could eventually come back into the picture and consider challenges to the decision of the appeals court. More

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is all but certain to come out on top after a three-day vote, with the war in Gaza turning the country’s focus from economic calamity to security.There were four men on the ballot when Egyptians voted in this week’s presidential election, but with rare exception, only one of their faces gazed out from billboards, banners, buses and lampposts across Egypt: that of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.According to the government, Mr. el-Sisi won 97 percent of the vote in his last two electoral bids, in 2014 and 2018. “All of us are with you,” many of the pro-Sisi banners read, as if anticipating a similar result this time.At voting stations, which closed on Tuesday at the end of a three-day vote, “Oh Egypt, My Love” and other patriotic songs played at nightclub-worthy volumes, while glowing newspaper headlines told of newlyweds so dedicated to the nation that they showed up to the polls still in tuxedos and white gowns.In a country with almost no space for dissent, a tightly leashed media and a lamed opposition, Mr. el-Sisi’s victory is not a matter of great suspense. Official energy appeared to be channeled instead into boosting turnout — a measure of Mr. el-Sisi’s popularity that an economic crisis, and the deep resentment and despair it has generated, was otherwise likely to depress.The get-out-the-vote effort appeared to involve some unsubtle encouragement.Four people in Cairo, the capital, said they had received 200 Egyptian pounds each — the equivalent of about $6.67 — after voting. Several others said they had voted only because they had heard they would be fined for failing to do so or because their employers had given them time off with explicit instructions to use it to cast ballots.The thought of selecting any of the other three candidates, all unknowns, did not seem to cross anyone’s mind. A few said they had deliberately spoiled their ballots by checking all four boxes; the rest said they had voted Sisi.Diaa Rashwan, head of Egypt’s State Information Service, said in a statement that while there was a fine for not voting on the books, in practice it had never been applied. He said that providing money or goods in exchange for votes was a criminal offense, but dismissed allegations of such offers as “hearsay.”Voters who said they had taken payments explained that they needed the money. Others, disdaining the election, said they had skipped voting altogether.A Cairo street in September.Mauricio Lima for The New York Times“I used to like Sisi a lot, but now I’m fed up,” said Nadia Assran, 63, who on Sunday, rather than voting, was having coffee with her sister in the lower-middle-class Cairo neighborhood of Shubra.Such coffee breaks are increasingly expensive, and therefore increasingly rare. Then there was the problem of paying for her daughter’s marriage expenses, or of simply finding affordable sugar and onions amid soaring inflation.Ms. Assran mentioned the roads, bridges and shiny new cities Mr. el-Sisi has built around Egypt, which officials and state media have hailed as a major presidential accomplishment.“This is good for our sons and our grandsons,” said Ms. Assran, a widow who survives on the pension from her husband’s job as a police officer. “But how does it help me now?”Her sister, Hana Assran, 50, flicked a hand at some nearby Sisi banners.“Why would we vote? He’s going to make it anyway,” she said, reflecting widespread cynicism about the outcome. “And why are you spending so much on election propaganda when we’re struggling so much with the prices?”Though it dipped slightly in November, annual inflation hit record highs of nearly 40 percent this year as Egypt grapples with an economic crisis in which the currency’s value has plummeted and basic items have disappeared from grocery shelves.The 200 pounds voters said they had received for casting their ballots was worth about $12.50 in 2019, when a constitutional referendum granted Mr. el-Sisi the right to run for a third term, lengthened presidential terms to six years from four and handed him greater powers. Now it is worth about half that.Economists say Egypt’s economic implosion stemmed from mismanagement, most notably Mr. el-Sisi’s lavish spending on weapons and megaprojects such as new cities, a spree that piled unsustainable debt on what had already been a structurally unsound economy.Construction at an administrative megaproject,some 30 miles east of Cairo, in 2020.Khaled Desouki/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe country managed to dodge a reckoning until Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Egyptian officials have attributed Egypt’s problems to outside causes such as the war and the coronavirus pandemic.Egypt says it is opening up its politics, pointing to initiatives such as a much-publicized dialogue between government and opposition figures.But Mr. el-Sisi, a former general who rose to power in a 2013 military takeover, has also succeeded in persuading many Egyptians that they need a strong leader like him to fend off the war, chaos and destruction that have swallowed many of Egypt’s neighbors in recent years, including Libya, Sudan and now the Gaza Strip.“At least we’re guaranteed to have safety and security,” said Nadia Negm, 28, a housewife in Shubra al-Khaima, a working-class area northeast of Cairo, who said she had proudly voted for Mr. el-Sisi. “Yes, it’s hard, but at least we’re better off than other countries.”Ms. Negm, like other Sisi supporters interviewed, pointed out that many other countries were also staring down high inflation and shortages, a common refrain in the state-controlled media.But for others who declined to vote or said they voted only because they had heard they would be fined if they did not, the humiliation of not knowing how they would pay for next week’s meals, of having to break off a child’s engagement for lack of funds to cover marriage expenses or of being in constant debt outweighed their fear of instability.“Security and safety should be applied to food and jobs, too,” said Mahmoud Mohamed, 65, a coffeehouse waiter in Banha, a small city in Egypt’s Nile Delta region, who said he had fallen into a cycle of borrowing each month just to pay back the previous month’s debts. “He promised us so much, and none of it was achieved.”The war in next-door Gaza, however, has shifted some Egyptians’ focus back to other threats such as terrorism, which Mr. el-Sisi says he has successfully battled in northern Sinai, and what many Egyptians see as Israel’s drive to push Gazans across the border into Egypt.Yasmine Fouad, 39, who owns a cellphone accessories shop in Banha, said she had initially planned to sit out the election as a quiet protest of Mr. el-Sisi and the inflation he has presided over.The crisis in Gaza changed her mind.“At this moment, we all have to be behind the president, because anything could happen,” she said. “That makes us accept the current situation.”Hanging a campaign banner for President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Cairo this month.Khaled Desouki/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images More

More from our inbox:The Texas Abortion RulingThe Campus Clash of Free Speech and AntisemitismThe Undemocratic Electoral CollegeTrump and NATO Illustration by Alicia Tatone; Photographs by Yiming Chen, SDI Productions, Joshua Roberts/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Republicans Are Finding Out That ‘Pro-Life’ Has Too Many Meanings,” by Liz Mair (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 6):Ms. Mair, a G.O.P. campaign strategist, writes about all the desperate ways Republican politicians are trying to explain their stance on abortion now that their decades-long fight to make it illegal has taken a step forward.It seems her clients are scrambling, surprised to find that “rank-and-file G.O.P. voters are not as pro-life as we might have thought.”The medical community is not surprised. You see, there are no party affiliation requirements for unplanned or medically doomed pregnancies. Doctors have seen staunch Republicans obtain safe and legal abortions for decades. I’m sure that every single white male Republican legislator who signs “heartbeat” laws, piously claims he is pro-life and rails against Planned Parenthood knows a woman who has had an abortion. And he may have caused one himself.Instead of spinning the message on their terrible policies, her advice to her G.O.P. clients should be to stop blocking funding for reliable contraception, stop interfering with medical decisions between women and their doctors and start writing laws that support women who can’t afford another pregnancy because of poverty, a lack of postpartum job security or abusive partners.You know, “pro-life” stuff.Cheryl BaileySt. Paul, Minn.The writer is a retired gynecologic oncologist.To the Editor:In recommending that Republicans finesse the abortion issue, Liz Mair doesn’t mention one point. Pro-choice advocates are not anti-life, but we disagree with those who call themselves pro-life in two fundamental ways. We do not believe that humans can claim to know what God — who certainly allows miscarriages — wants, and we do not believe that humans claiming to have this knowledge have a right to impose their religious beliefs on others.Republicans may continue to succeed politically by demagoguing the abortion issue, but most Americans, religious or not, do not believe that the law should forbid women from obtaining a safe abortion.Jamie BaldwinRedding, Conn.To the Editor:Liz Mair is absolutely correct that “pro-life” has many meanings, but she mistakenly focuses only on abortion.Being “pro-life” also means things like good pre- and post-natal care for all mothers; good health care for everyone, including babies born to the poorest among us; accessible and affordable child care and preschool for all; gun safety laws to ensure that bullets are no longer the biggest cause of accidental death among U.S. children, and, not least, more commitment to combating climate change.Republicans need to consider these matters when they (or if they) decide to come up with a better, more marketable definition of “pro-life.”Nadine GodwinNew YorkThe Texas Abortion Ruling Kate Cox, via Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Texas Supreme Court Rules Against Woman Who Sought Abortion” (news article, Dec. 12):I hope the women of Texas go on strike and march to the state capital. Women, especially mothers, all over the country will stand with them.Eve Rumpf-SternbergSeattleTo the Editor:Is there no end to these people’s cruelty?Linda GrunbaumNew YorkThe Campus Clash of Free Speech and Antisemitism Adam Glanzman for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Censorship Can’t Help University Presidents,” by David French (column, Dec. 11):Mr. French argues that what American campuses need is more viewpoint diversity and true freedom of speech — not the current hypocrisy of some speech being favored and other speech censored.But what Mr. French does not mention at all is the need for morality and truth to be part of the curriculum. President John F. Kennedy, a Harvard alumnus, said “the goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.”The university presidents’ failure before Congress to unambiguously repudiate calls for “the genocide of Jews” reflected how far these schools have strayed from that purpose. Allowing more speech on campus without a moral compass will yield only more noise and little else.Nathan J. DiamentWashingtonThe writer is the executive director for public policy of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.The Undemocratic Electoral College Christopher Lee for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “‘The Exploding Cigar of American Politics,’” by Gail Collins (column, Nov. 30):Ms. Collins’s excellent column about the Electoral College should have commented more on the U.S. Senate, which is even more unrepresentative and undemocratic.Two out of three of our elected national arms of government are unrepresentative. (The third “arm,” the House, is roughly representative, but tainted by gerrymandering, “dark” money and increasing voter suppression.)The Electoral College has overturned the national popular vote five times in America’s nearly 250-year history, but twice already in this still young century. It’s likely to happen again, probably soon (’24?).One reason the founding fathers decided not to have direct elections to the presidency was a fear of a mostly uneducated and ill-informed electorate voting in either a fraudster or a populist demagogue as president. Some would say we got two for the price of one in 2016.We should abolish the Electoral College and directly vote for the president (as we do for the Senate and the House). Failing that, embrace the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, by which states agree to award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote.I dread the day when many more Americans despair of the ballot box and instead choose far more dangerous ways of expressing their will — i.e., more Capitol insurrections, but successful ones.The founding fathers must be spinning in their graves at our inability to modernize our now dangerously outdated Constitution.Michael NorthmoreStaten IslandTrump and NATOFormer President Donald J. Trump has made it clear that he primarily sees NATO as a drain on American resources.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump’s Stance Toward NATO Alarms Europe” (front page, Dec. 10):I’m 73 years old and frightened. So many things I have taken for granted my entire life are threatened. My dad fought overseas in World War II. He, and I, always assumed that the things he fought for would remain protected.I never contemplated that the coalitions we established with our allies after the war would be threatened. I came to believe that the isolationism thriving before the war had been essentially put to rest.But now Donald Trump and his disciples have awakened the blind nationalism that raises the specter of totalitarianism. That menace should strike terror in all who treasure our democracy.And we can’t allow a feeling of helplessness or a belief that such things could never happen here prevent us from protecting what we can no longer take for granted.Stephen F. GladstoneShaker Heights, Ohio More

El expresidente y sus aliados hacen poco para tranquilizar a quienes están preocupados por una posible dictadura. Incluso, con sus declaraciones y acciones parecen estar reafirmando esas alarmas.El otro día, cuando un historiador escribió un ensayo en el que advertía que elegir al expresidente Donald Trump el próximo año podría conducir a una dictadura, un aliado de Trump no tardó en responder con un llamado para que dicho historiador fuera enviado a prisión.Suena casi como una parodia: la respuesta a las inquietudes de un autor sobre una dictadura es procesarlo. Pero Trump y sus aliados no se están tomando la molestia de rechazar con firmeza la acusación de una dictadura para tranquilizar a quienes les preocupa lo que podría significar un nuevo mandato. En todo caso, parece que la están alentando.Si Trump regresara a la presidencia, sus allegados han prometido “perseguir” a los medios de comunicación, iniciar investigaciones penales contra excolaboradores que se distanciaron del expresidente y expulsar del gobierno a los funcionarios públicos que consideran desleales. Cuando los críticos señalaron que el lenguaje de Trump sobre eliminar a todos los “parásitos” de Washington evocaba al de Adolf Hitler, un portavoz del expresidente dijo sobre los críticos que su “triste y miserable existencia será destruida” bajo el gobierno de Trump.El propio Trump hizo poco para calmar a los estadounidenses cuando su amigo Sean Hannity intentó ayudarlo en Fox News la semana pasada. Durante una reunión de foro abierto, Hannity le planteó a Trump lo que parecía ser una pregunta sencilla al pedirle que reafirmara que, por supuesto, no tenía la intención de abusar de su poder y usar el gobierno para castigar a sus enemigos. En lugar de tan solo concordar con esa afirmación, Trump aseguró que solo sería un dictador en el “Día 1” de un nuevo periodo.“Trump ha dejado bien claro, mediante todas sus acciones y retórica, que admira a los líderes que despliegan tipos de poder autoritario, desde Putin hasta Orbán pasando por Xi, y que quiere ejercer ese tipo de poder en casa”, comentó Ruth Ben-Ghiat, autora de Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, en referencia a Vladimir Putin de Rusia, Viktor Orbán de Hungría y Xi Jinping de China. “La historia nos demuestra que los autócratas siempre manifiestan quiénes son y qué van a hacer”, agregó. “Solo que nosotros no escuchamos hasta que es demasiado tarde”.A pesar de su enfrentamiento público con la dirigencia china, el presidente Trump ha elogiado al presidente Xi Jinping por sus políticas de hombre fuerte.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesEn los últimos días, las conversaciones sobre el posible carácter autoritario de una nueva presidencia de Trump han impregnado el debate político en la capital de Estados Unidos. Una serie de informes en The New York Times esbozaron varios planes desarrollados por aliados de Trump para imponer un enorme poder en un nuevo mandato y detallaron cómo el exmandatario tendría menos restricciones constitucionales. The Atlantic publicó una edición especial en la que 24 colaboradores pronosticaron cómo sería un segundo periodo presidencial de Trump, y muchos predijeron un régimen autocrático.Liz Cheney, quien fue legisladora republicana por Wyoming en el Congreso y vicepresidenta del comité de la Cámara de Representantes encargado de investigar el asalto del 6 de enero de 2021 al Capitolio, publicó un nuevo libro en el que advierte que Trump es un peligro claro y presente para la democracia estadounidense. Y, por supuesto, se publicó el ensayo del historiador Robert Kagan en The Washington Post que motivó a J. D. Vance, senador republicano por Ohio y aliado de Trump, a presionar al Departamento de Justicia para que lo investigara.Seamos claros, los presidentes estadounidenses han excedido los límites de su poder y han sido llamados dictadores desde los primeros días de la república. John Adams, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson y Franklin Roosevelt, entre otros, fueron acusados de ser déspotas. Se decía que Richard Nixon consolidó su poder en la “presidencia imperial”. Tanto a George W. Bush como a Barack Obama se les comparó con Hitler.Pero hay algo distinto en el debate actual, más allá de la retórica subida de tono o los desacuerdos legítimos sobre los límites del poder ejecutivo, algo que sugiere que este es un momento fundamental de decisión en el experimento estadounidense. Tal vez es una manifestación del desencanto popular con las instituciones del país: solo el 10 por ciento de los estadounidenses piensa que la democracia funciona muy bien, según una encuesta realizada en junio por The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.Tal vez es un reflejo del extremismo y la demagogia que se han vuelto tan comunes en la política de muchos lugares en el mundo. Y tal vez proviene de un expresidente que reclama su antiguo puesto y evidencia una afinidad tan desconcertante hacia los autócratas.En una ocasión, Trump expresó que no sentía ni un atisbo de remordimiento al compartir en redes sociales una cita de Mussolini y adoptó el lenguaje de Stalin al llamar a los periodistas los “enemigos del pueblo”. Le dijo a su jefe de gabinete que “Hitler hizo muchas cosas buenas” y luego expresó que deseaba que los generales estadounidenses fueran como los generales de Hitler.En diciembre del año pasado, poco después de iniciar su campaña de reaparición, Trump hizo un llamado a “poner fin” a la Constitución para retirar de inmediato al presidente Joe Biden del cargo y reinstaurarlo a él en la Casa Blanca sin tener que esperar a otras elecciones.Los defensores de Trump desestiman los temores sobre sus instintos autocráticos como quejas de los liberales que no lo apoyan ni a él ni a sus políticas y que intentan asustar a los votantes de maneras engañosas. Argumentan que Biden es el verdadero dictador, ya que su Departamento de Justicia llevará a juicio a su rival más contundente el próximo año por varios presuntos delitos, aunque no hay evidencia de que Biden haya participado personalmente en esas decisiones, y a pesar de que algunos exasesores de Trump afirman que las acusaciones son legítimas.“Los comentarios relacionados con una dictadura que realizan Kagan y sus colegas escritores liberales es un intento de asustar a los estadounidenses no solo para distraerse a sí mismos de los errores y la debilidad del gobierno de Biden, sino porque hay algo que ellos temen aún más: que un segundo gobierno de Trump tenga mucho más éxito a la hora de implementar su agenda y deshacer políticas y programas progresistas que el primero”, escribió Fred Fleitz, quien trabajó brevemente en la Casa Blanca de Trump, en el sitio web American Greatness el viernes.Kagan, un académico muy respetado de la Institución Brookings y autor de numerosos libros de historia, tiene muchos antecedentes de apoyar una política exterior firme que, en opinión de la izquierda, dista mucho de ser liberal. Pero desde hace años ha sido un crítico firme y declarado de Trump. En mayo de 2016, cuando otros republicanos se hacían a la idea de la primera nominación de Trump a la presidencia, Kagan advirtió: “así es como el fascismo llega a Estados Unidos”.Su ensayo del 30 de noviembre sonó como una nueva advertencia. Puede que los intentos de Trump para poner en marcha sus ideas más radicales en su primer mandato hayan sido obstaculizados por asesores republicanos y oficiales militares más moderados, argumentó Kagan, pero no se va a volver a rodear de esas figuras y encontrará menos de los controles y contrapesos que lo limitaron la última vez.Los defensores del expresidente califican los temores sobre los instintos autocráticos de Trump como quejas de liberales que intentan asustar a los votantes.Jordan Gale para The New York TimesEntre otros ejemplos, Kagan citó el intento de Trump por anular una elección que había perdido, sin tomar en cuenta la voluntad de los votantes. También señaló los comentarios francos de Trump sobre llevar a juicio a sus adversarios y desplegar al ejército en las calles para reprimir las manifestaciones. “En unos pocos años, hemos pasado de tener una democracia relativamente segura a estar a unos pasos cortos, y a escasos meses, de la posibilidad de vivir una dictadura”, escribió Kagan.Vance, senador recién llegado que buscó el apoyo de Trump y la semana pasada fue mencionado por Axios como un posible compañero de fórmula a la vicepresidencia en 2024, se ofendió en nombre del expresidente. Envió una carta al fiscal general Merrick Garland en la que sugería que Kagan debía ser llevado a juicio por incitar una “rebelión abierta”, y basó su argumento en una parte del ensayo de Kagan que señalaba que los estados dirigidos por demócratas podrían desafiar la presidencia de Trump.Vance escribió que “según Robert Kagan, la perspectiva de una segunda presidencia de Donald Trump es tan terrible como para justificar una rebelión abierta contra Estados Unidos, junto con la violencia política que invariablemente le seguiría”.El artículo de Kagan no abogaba realmente por la rebelión, sino que pronosticaba la posibilidad de que los gobernadores demócratas se opusieran a Trump “mediante una forma de anulación” de la autoridad federal. De hecho, llegó a insinuar que los gobernadores republicanos podrían hacer lo mismo con Biden, algo que tampoco defendía.Vance intentaba establecer un paralelo entre el ensayo de Kagan y los esfuerzos de Trump para revertir las elecciones de 2020. El senador escribió que, según la lógica del Departamento de Justicia al investigar a Trump, el artículo de Kagan podría ser interpretado como una “invitación a la ‘insurrección’, una expresión de ‘conspiración’ delictiva o un intento de ocasionar una guerra civil”. Para enfatizar su idea, insistió en que hubiera respuestas para el 6 de enero.Kagan, quien publicó otro ensayo el jueves sobre cómo detener la trayectoria hacia la dictadura que él vislumbra, comentó que la intervención del senador validaba sus argumentos. “Es revelador que su primer instinto tras ser atacado por un periodista es sugerir que lo encierren”, señaló Kagan en una entrevista.Los ayudantes de Trump y Vance no respondieron a las solicitudes de comentarios. David Shipley, editor de opinión de The Washington Post, defendió el trabajo de Kagan. “Estamos orgullosos de publicar los reflexivos ensayos de Robert Kagan y animamos al público a leer sus artículos del 30 de noviembre y del 7 de diciembre juntos, y a sacar sus propias conclusiones”, dijo. “Estos ensayos forman parte de una larga tradición de Kagan de iniciar conversaciones importantes”.Es una conversación que tiene meses por delante y un final incierto. Mientras tanto, nadie espera que Garland tome en serio a Vance, incluido casi con toda seguridad el propio Vance. Su carta era una declaración política. Pero dice algo de este momento que su propuesta de procesar a un crítico se pueda ver como un triunfo político.Peter Baker es el corresponsal jefe del Times en la Casa Blanca. Ha cubierto a los cinco últimos presidentes estadounidenses y a veces escribe artículos analíticos que sitúan a los mandatarios y sus gobierno en un contexto y un marco histórico más amplios. Más de Peter Baker More

Two Georgia election workers are seeking as much as $43 million for false assertions from Rudolph Giuliani that they had sought to swing the 2020 outcome against Donald Trump.Rudolph W. Giuliani’s lawyer told jurors on Monday that the tens of millions of dollars in damages two Georgia election workers are seeking from him in a defamation suit “will be the end of Mr. Giuliani,” likening an award of that scale to a civil death penalty.The lawyer, Joseph Sibley IV, made the assertion in his opening statement on the first day of Mr. Giuliani’s civil trial in Federal District Court in Washington.The judge, Beryl A. Howell, has already ruled that Mr. Giuliani, who served as personal lawyer to President Donald J. Trump and helped spearhead the efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office after his loss in the 2020 election, defamed the two workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.Mr. Giuliani was found to have intentionally inflicted emotional distress on them and engaged in a conspiracy with others when he publicly accused them of election fraud related to their work counting absentee ballots at State Farm Arena in Atlanta for the Fulton County Board of Elections on Nov. 3, 2020.A jury of eight will determine how much Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City and a former federal prosecutor, should have to pay them for the harm he caused.Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss are seeking compensatory damages between $15.5 million and $43 million. The trial is expected to last a week. Mr. Giuliani, Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss all plan to testify.Michael J. Gottlieb, a lawyer for Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss, who are mother and daughter, said Mr. Giuliani’s false accusations led to a “campaign of defamation and emotional terror” against them. He said the women had to move out of their homes for safety and security because of the thousands of threats that followed.“Their names have become synonymous with crime, cheating and fraud,” Mr. Gottlieb said in his opening statement. “How much is somebody’s reputation worth?”The women’s lawyers showed the jury social media posts, laden with expletives, racial slurs, accusations of treason and threats, some calling for them to be lynched.Sitting across from Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss in the courtroom, Mr. Giuliani sighed, put his hand on his forehead and at times shook his head as Judge Howell described his actions after the election to the jury.And he nodded his head as he watched footage of himself maligning the women in December 2020, when he said, “The F.B.I. hasn’t arrested anybody,” and “they just walk around free.”Even as Georgia officials quickly debunked Mr. Giuliani’s assertions in 2020, he repeated them so often that Ms. Freeman became one of Mr. Trump’s favorite targets.Georgia’s State Election Board conducted a yearslong investigation into Mr. Giuliani’s claims and officially cleared Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss last summer.Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer said Monday that there is no question that Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss did not deserve what happened to them. But, he said, the harm inflicted on them was not all the fault of Mr. Giuliani.“You’re going to see a lot of evidence of harm, but not much evidence that Mr. Giuliani was the cause,” he said.The plaintiffs’ first witness was Regina Scott, a consultant who led a team hired to track the threats against the women. She described how analysts collected and cataloged thousands of screenshots that included mentions of their names. Ms. Scott’s risk-consulting firm, Jensen Hughes, found that in most cases the election workers’ names were mentioned in a negative context.When he cross-examined Ms. Scott, Mr. Sibley was quick to point out that there was nothing in a majority of the posts clearly linking the comments to Mr. Giuliani.Even though Judge Howell already ruled that Mr. Giuliani defamed the two women, their lawyers are presenting evidence of the attacks against them to try to convince the jury that their compensation should be significant.But any amount is likely to throw Mr. Giuliani deeper into financial distress. He already owes money to lawyers who have represented him in other matters related to his post-election efforts to undermine President Biden’s victory in 2020. Disciplinary actions against him prevent him from working as a lawyer, and he faces disbarment.He is also being sued by Dominion Voting Systems because of unfounded claims he made that the company was part of a scheme to rig the 2020 election against Mr. Trump.Mr. Giuliani, along with Mr. Trump, has also been indicted in Georgia in a racketeering case on charges that they tampered with the state’s election.Mr. Giuliani has previously annoyed Judge Howell because he was a no-show for one of the final court hearings in the case. He also refused to comply with routine trial obligations, including providing documents that would disclose his net worth and estimate the breadth of his media reach through his podcast and other programs. And last week, the judge chided Mr. Giuliani for asking that she, not a jury, hear the trial.And arriving late to the courtroom on Monday did little to help Mr. Giuliani with the judge. After waiting for him to show up, Judge Howell sent someone to collect Mr. Giuliani from where he was standing with other members of the public in the security line to enter the courthouse. More

The special counsel, Jack Smith, urged the justices to move with exceptional speed, and they quickly agreed to fast-track the first phase of the case.Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting former President Donald J. Trump on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, asked the Supreme Court on Monday to rule on Mr. Trump’s argument that he is immune from prosecution. The justices quickly agreed to fast-track the first phase of the case.Mr. Smith’s request was unusual in two ways: He asked the justices to rule before an appeals court acted, and he urged them to move with exceptional speed.“This case presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former president is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin,” Mr. Smith wrote.On Monday evening, just hours after Mr. Smith filed papers in the Supreme Court, the justices granted his initial request: to put their consideration of whether to hear the case on a fast track. The court ordered Mr. Trump’s lawyers to file their response to the petition seeking review on an abbreviated schedule, by Dec. 20.Mr. Smith’s filings represented a vigorous plea to keep the trial on track by cutting off an avenue by which Mr. Trump could cause delays.A speedy decision by the justices is of the essence, Mr. Smith wrote, because Mr. Trump’s appeal of a trial judge’s ruling rejecting his claim of immunity suspends the criminal trial. The proceeding is scheduled to begin on March 4 in Federal District Court in Washington.Any significant delays could plunge the trial into the heart of the 2024 campaign season or push it past the election, when Mr. Trump could order the charges be dropped if he wins the presidency.“The United States recognizes that this is an extraordinary request,” Mr. Smith wrote. “This is an extraordinary case.”The trial judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, rejected Mr. Trump’s sweeping claims that he enjoyed “absolute immunity” from the election interference indictment because it was based on actions he took while in office.In her ruling two weeks ago, she condemned his attempts to “usurp the reins of government” and said there was nothing in the Constitution or American history supporting the proposition that a former president should not be bound by the federal criminal law.Mr. Trump appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He also asked Judge Chutkan to freeze the election interference case in its entirety until the appeal was resolved.In his Supreme Court brief, Mr. Smith conceded that the election case could not be decided until after the appeal of the immunity issue was resolved. On Sunday, his team filed papers to Judge Chutkan asking her to keep the March 4 trial date and saying she could still work on certain aspects of the case even as the appeal was being heard.In what appeared to be an attempt to cover all bases, Mr. Smith’s team also filed a request to the appeals court in Washington on Monday to decide the immunity question quickly. Winning the appeal of the immunity decision was only one of Mr. Trump’s goals in challenging Judge Chutkan’s ruling. All along, he and his lawyers have had an alterative strategy: to delay the trial for as long as possible.If the trial were put off until after the election and Mr. Trump were to win, he could have his attorney general simply dismiss the charges. Holding a trial after the presidential race was over would also mean that voters would not get to hear any of the evidence that prosecutors have collected about Mr. Trump’s expansive efforts to reverse the results of the last election before weighing in on whether to elect him again in 2024.Even if Mr. Trump’s lawyers are unable to postpone the trial until after the presidential race was decided, they are hoping to push it off until the heart of the campaign season in August or September.That would present Judge Chutkan with a difficult decision: Should she hold the trial at a time Mr. Trump could be out holding rallies and meeting voters and suffer what are sure to be his vociferous complaints or make the decision herself to delay the trial after the race is over?Mr. Smith urged the justices to move fast.He asked the court to use an unusual procedure to leapfrog the appeals court, “certiorari before judgment.” It has been used in cases involving national crises, like President Richard M. Nixon’s refusal to turn over tape recordings to a special prosecutor or President Harry S. Truman’s seizure of the steel industry.The procedure used to be rare. Before 2019, the court had not used it for 15 years, according to statistics compiled by Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. As of late last year, he found, the court has used it 19 times since.Among recent examples in which the court bypassed appeals courts were cases on abortion, affirmative action and student debt forgiveness.A statement from Mr. Trump’s campaign called the request by Mr. Smith a “Hail Mary” attempt to get to the Supreme Court and “bypass the appellate process.”Derek Muller, a law professor at Notre Dame, said the procedure remained unusual.“It’s always a long-shot bid for the Supreme Court to hear a case like this, without waiting for the process to play out in the lower courts,” he said. “That said, Smith is rightly concerned about a slow appeals process that may interfere with a trial date and run even closer to Election Day. It seems unlikely it will persuade the Supreme Court to intervene, but it is worth asking given the risks of delay.”Mr. Smith’s request was based on an argument that prosecutors have used several times in the election interference case: that the public itself, not just the defendant, Mr. Trump, has a fundamental right to a speedy trial.As in the Nixon tapes case, Mr. Smith wrote, “the circumstances warrant expedited proceedings,” adding: “The public importance of the issues, the imminence of the scheduled trial date and the need for a prompt and final resolution of respondent’s immunity claims counsel in favor of this court’s expedited review at this time.”Mr. Smith asked the Supreme Court to consider a question it has never addressed before: whether the Constitution confers presidential immunity from criminal prosecution.Mr. Smith acknowledged that the Supreme Court said in 1982 that former presidents enjoy some special protections, at least in civil suits — ones from private litigants seeking money — and that the Justice Department has long taken the view that sitting presidents cannot be indicted.“But those principles cannot be extended to provide the absolute shield from criminal liability that respondent, a former president, asserts,” Mr. Smith wrote. “Neither the separation of powers nor respondent’s acquittal in impeachment proceedings lifts him above the reach of federal criminal law. Like other citizens, he is accountable for criminal conduct.”Mr. Trump’s lawyers rely heavily on the 1982 decision, also involving Nixon, Nixon v. Fitzgerald. It was brought by an Air Force analyst who said he was fired in 1970 in retaliation for his criticism of cost overruns. By the time the Supreme Court acted, Nixon had been out of office for several years.By a 5-to-4 vote, the justices ruled for Nixon. “In view of the special nature of the president’s constitutional office and functions,” Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. wrote for the majority, “we think it appropriate to recognize absolute presidential immunity from damages liability for acts within the ‘outer perimeter’ of his official responsibility.”Other Supreme Court precedents seem to be of no help to Mr. Trump.In Clinton v. Jones in 1997, the court unanimously allowed a sexual harassment suit against President Bill Clinton to proceed while he was in office, discounting concerns that it would distract him from his official responsibilities. That was also a civil case.And more recently, the Supreme Court ruled by a 7-to-2 vote in Trump v. Vance in 2020 that Mr. Trump had no absolute right to block the release of his financial records in a criminal investigation.“No citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority.In separate court papers filed on Monday, prosecutors working for Mr. Smith told Judge Chutkan that they intend to call expert witnesses during the election interference trial who will testify about the movement on Jan. 6 of Mr. Trump’s supporters from his incendiary speech near the White House — during which he urged them to “fight like hell” — to the Capitol.Prosecutors said they also planned to call a witness who could talk about the specific times that day when Mr. Trump’s Twitter account was in use.That could mean that the government will seek to provide the jury with the connections between Mr. Trump’s speech and his Twitter messages on Jan. 6 and the movement of the mob toward the Capitol. More

Parliament shot down a new government proposed by the caretaker prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, whose party, Law and Justice, lost its parliamentary majority in an October election.Poland’s newly elected Parliament torpedoed a long-shot effort by right-wing forces to stay in power and chose the opposition leader Donald Tusk as the nation’s new prime minister on Monday. The decision ushers the biggest and most populous country on the European Union’s formerly communist eastern flank into a new era.Legislators, as expected, rejected a new government proposed by the caretaker prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, whose party, Law and Justice, lost its parliamentary majority in an October election.As Parliament shot down Law and Justice’s effort to keep power, opposition legislators taunted Mr. Morawiecki and his supporters over their defeat, chanting “Donald Tusk, Donald Tusk.”Later on Monday, Parliament nominated and confirmed Mr. Tusk, 66, as Poland’s new leader, drawing cheers and applause from his allies and a sour denunciation of the new prime minister as a “German agent” from Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the chairman of Law and Justice and Poland’s de facto leader since 2015. Mr. Tusk, a veteran centrist politician who led Poland from 2007 to 2014, is expected to be sworn in on Wednesday by President Andrzej Duda, an ally of Law and Justice.“This is a truly wonderful day, not only for me, but for all those who have deeply believed for many years that things will get better, that we will chase away the darkness, that we will chase away evil,” Mr. Tusk said after being confirmed as prime minister by the Sejm, the more important lower house of the Polish Parliament.The return to power of Mr. Tusk, endorsed as Poland’s new leader with 248 votes for and 201 against in the Sejm, completed an ill-tempered period of political transition that Law and Justice had sought to prolong as long as possible, despite losing its majority in the October election.Mr. Morawiecki, who led Poland’s previous right-wing government, resigned after the election but was asked by Mr. Duda to stay on in a caretaker capacity and to try to form a new government.Critics of Law and Justice denounced Mr. Duda’s move as a last-gasp attempt by the defeated party to prolong its rule and appoint allies to positions in state institutions and companies.In a final, desperate effort to keep the opposition from taking over, a commission formed by the outgoing government to investigate Russian influence recommended on Nov. 29 that Mr. Tusk and other leading opposition figures not be allowed to hold positions responsible for state security.Votes in Parliament on Monday, however, ended the defeated party’s efforts to remain in office and elevated Mr. Tusk, the leader of the main opposition party, Civic Coalition, to leadership of a new government. He is expected to announce his cabinet on Tuesday.After a day of often raucous debate, 266 legislators voted against the government proposed by Mr. Morawiecki and 190 voted for, far short of the majority it needed in the 460-member Sejm to hang on.Delegates listened as Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the Law and Justice party, addressed Parliament on Monday.Wojtek Radwanski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBy rejecting Mr. Morawiecki’s proposed government, doomed to fail because of Law and Justice’s electoral defeat, Parliament delivered a humiliating blow to Mr. Kaczynski, a bitter political and personal enemy of Mr. Tusk.Mr. Kaczynski warned that the vote against Mr. Morawiecki and the return to power of Mr. Tusk, whom he has repeatedly reviled as an agent for German and Russian interests, “look like the end of Polish democracy but we hope this will not be the case.”Many others, however, cheered the end of the deeply conservative party’s rule, including Lech Walesa, a former Polish president and leader in the 1980s of the anti-communist Solidarity trade union movement. A longtime foe of Mr. Kaczynski, who has accused him of collaborating with the communist-era secret police, Mr. Walesa was so eager to witness the demise of Law and Justice that, despite a recent struggle with Covid, he traveled to Warsaw from his home in the port city of Gdansk to witness the vote. He stood in the spectators’ gallery beaming with delight as Mr. Tusk was confirmed as prime minister.The installation of a new government headed by Mr. Tusk could be a drastic shift away from Poland’s direction during eight years of Law and Justice rule, a period marked by close relations between the governing party and the Roman Catholic Church and frequent quarrels with the European Union.Scope for change, however, will be crimped by the grip of Law and Justice appointees on the judiciary, powerful state bodies like the central bank, the national prosecutor’s office, the national broadcasting system and large state-controlled corporations like the energy giant PKN Orlen. Many of those appointments will be hard to reverse.Mr. Tusk’s room for maneuver will also be constrained by Mr. Duda, who is closely aligned with Law and Justice and has veto power over new legislation. Mr. Duda’s presidential term ends in 2025.The outgoing government made clear it had no intention of cutting Mr. Tusk any slack, with former ministers recycling wild election campaign smears of the man now set to govern Poland.Speaking in Parliament on Monday evening, Mariusz Blaszczak, defense minister in the previous government, responded to Mr. Tusk’s nomination as prime minister by denouncing him as a threat to national security who, “completely obedient to Brussels and Berlin,” will “weaken our security and push us to the periphery of Europe.” He also vowed to “defend” public media, drawing jeers from Mr. Tusk’s supporters.People watching a live screening showing the session of Parliament on Monday.Omar Marques/Getty ImagesThe public broadcasting system, a network of national and local radio and television stations, is stacked with Law and Justice loyalists. TVP, the main state television station, has so far clung to its role as propaganda bullhorn for Law and Justice. Its news coverage is heavily slanted in favor of the former governing party, though it has now curbed somewhat previously incessant denunciations of Mr. Tusk as a traitor. During a debate before the votes in Parliament rejecting Mr. Morawiecki and approving Mr. Tusk, opponents of Law and Justice reviled the former governing party as sore losers who had needlessly dragged out the transfer of power.“These entire two months were built on the foundation of bitterness and non-acceptance of the sovereign’s judgment, which removed Law and Justice from power,” said Wladyslaw Kosniak-Kamusz, the leader of a centrist party allied with Mr. Tusk. “This is the end of this bad stage for Poland,” he added.Law and Justice’s defeat came less than a month after a far-right party performed far better than expected in Dutch national elections. Though it fell well short of winning a majority and is having trouble forming a government, the Dutch party’s result sent shock waves across Europe since the Netherlands had long been seen as one the continent’s most liberal countries.In Poland, Mr. Tusk and his allies are divided on the issue of abortion, which was almost completely banned by the previous government, but they share a desire to restore the independence of the Polish judiciary, which was heavily politicized under Law and Justice, and to repair relations with the European Union.A long and often-vicious election campaign cast a shadow over Poland’s previously robust support for Ukraine as Law and Justice sought to avoid losing votes to a far-right party strongly opposed to helping Kyiv. A new centrist government headed by Mr. Tusk would most likely try to put relations between Warsaw and Kyiv back on track, though issues like cheap Ukrainian grain and a blockade of the border by protesting Polish truckers could obstruct a quick return to more harmonious relations.Law and Justice won more votes than any other single party in the October election and proclaimed victory. But its opponents — Mr. Tusk’s Civic Coalition; a leftist grouping, New Left; and a centrist alliance, Third Way — won a clear majority in the Sejm. The opposition also expanded a majority it had in the Senate, the upper house of Parliament.That simple arithmetic was running against Law and Justice was clear when the new Parliament convened for the first time on Nov. 13 and selected Szymon Holownia, a leader of Third Way, as speaker of the Sejm and rejected a candidate put forward by the previous governing party.The selection of Mr. Holownia, a former television celebrity, as speaker quickly boosted public interest in previously dull legislative sessions, with subscribers to the Parliament’s livestream of debates on YouTube rising 10 times to nearly half a million. “Stock up on popcorn because I suspect there will be a lot of excitement,” Mr. Holownia recommended.Anatol Magdziarz contributed reporting. More