Elections

With Germans facing an era of political and economic turbulence, the Alternative for Germany is resurgent. Mainstream politicians are struggling to respond.The tables were packed at the Waldhaus, a restaurant on the wooded outskirts of an east German town, as the regulars — workers shaking calloused hands, retirees clutching purses in their lap — settled in for a pub gathering of the far-right Alternative for Germany.But the die-hards worry Germany’s political leadership less than people like Ina Radzheit. An insurance agent in a flowered blouse, she squeezed in among platters of schnitzel and frothy beers for her first visit to the AfD, the German initials by which the party is known.“What’s wrong?” she said. “Where do I start?” She feels unsafe with migration rising. She is uncomfortable with Germany providing weapons to Ukraine. She is exasperated by government squabbling over climate plans she fears will cost citizens like her their modest but comfortable way of life.“I can’t say now if I would ever vote for the AfD,” she said. “But I am listening.”As anxieties over Germany’s future rise, so too, it seems, does the AfD.The AfD has reached a polling high in Germany’s formerly Communist eastern states, where it is now the leading party, drawing around a third of voters. It is edging up in the wealthier west. Nationally, it is polling neck and neck with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats.If the trend lasts, the AfD could present its most serious threat to Germany’s political establishment since 2017, when it became the first far-right party to enter Parliament since World War II.The turnabout is surprising for a party whose political obituaries filled the German media a year ago, after it had sunk in national elections. And it reflects the unease of a country at a crossroads.Locals arriving for an AfD meeting at the Waldhaus restaurant in Gera, Germany.Lena Mucha for The New York TimesAfter decades of postwar prosperity, Germany is struggling to transform its 20th-century industrial exporting model into a digitized economy that can withstand climate change and competition from powers like China.“We are living in a world of global upheaval,” said Rene Springer, the national AfD lawmaker speaking at the Waldhaus in Gera. “Our responsibility to our children is to one day leave them better off than we are. That’s no longer to be expected.”When it was elected in 2021, Mr. Scholz’s three-party coalition vowed to lead Germany through a painful but necessary transformation. Instead, the country was plunged into deeper uncertainty by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.At first, the coalition seemed to beat the odds: Allies praised its pledge to overwrite postwar pacifism with military revitalization. It found alternatives to cheap Russian gas — nearly 50 percent of its supply — with unexpected speed.But then the country dipped into recession. Migration numbers reached all-time highs, mostly driven by Ukrainian refugees. And the coalition began fighting among itself over how to return to the course it set for Germany before the war.The AfD, a party that mostly drew support by criticizing migration, found new appeal as defender of Germany’s economically precarious class.“With migration, the AfD offered a cultural narrative and identity to those anxious about their future,” said Johannes Hillje, a German political scientist who studies the AfD. “Now, the cultural threat is coming not just from the outside, but within — that is, the transformation policy of the government.”An AfD demonstration on energy security and inflation, outside of the Reichstag in Berlin in October.Christoph Soeder/DPA, via Associated PressThe AfD has resurged despite domestic intelligence classifying it a “suspected” right-wing extremist organization, allowing it to be put under surveillance. Its branch in Thuringia, where the Waldhaus gathering was held, is classified as “confirmed” extremist.A month earlier, its national youth wing was also classified confirmed extremist, though that label was recently lifted as a case regarding its status is settled in the courts.In April, the domestic intelligence agency head, Thomas Haldenwang, said in the agency’s yearly report that of 28,500 AfD members, around 10,000 are believed to be extremists.Yet a full third of Germans now view it as a “normal democratic party,” Mr. Hillje said. “The paradox is that, at the same time, it has become more and more clear that this is really a radical party, if not an extremist party.”In previous years, the party seemed ready to sideline extreme figures. No longer. This April, co-leader Alice Weidel spoke alongside Björn Höcke, party leader in Thuringia and seen as one of the AfD’s most radical politicians.Mr. Höcke was recently charged by state prosecutors for using the phrase “everything for Germany” at a rally — a Nazi Storm Trooper slogan.None of that dampened the enthusiasm at the Waldhaus in Gera, a town of about 93,000 in eastern Thuringia, where the AfD is the most popular party.Anke Wettengel, a schoolteacher, called such labels the equivalent of focusing on hooligan fans of a soccer team — not a reflection of normal supporters, like her.Nor did she see a problem with Mr. Höcke’s language.“That was a very normal sentence,” she said. “We should be allowed to be proud of our country today without immediately being accused of being extremists.”From the stage, Mr. Springer railed against not only immigrant labor reforms, calling them a “traitorous system against native citizens,” but also criticized new climate measures.The audience thumped their tables in approval.A question-and-answer session for AfD supporters and locals at the Waldhaus in Gera. The town in eastern Thuringia is one of many seeing a rise in support of the party across the country.Lena Mucha for The New York TimesStefan Brandner, Gera’s AfD representative, shared statistics that he said overwhelmingly linked foreigners to murders and food handouts, eliciting gasps from the crowd.Many guests said it is such “real facts” that drew them to AfD events. (The federal government wrote in a document providing statistics to the AfD that the data was not substantial enough for such conclusions.)Political analysts say Germany’s main parties share the blame for the AfD’s rise. Mr. Scholz’s coalition failed to convincingly communicate its transformation plans — and instead appeared locked in internal battles over how to carry them out.Their mainstream conservative opponents, including the Christian Democrats of former Chancellor Angela Merkel, are edging closer to AfD positions, hoping to regain voters themselves.They are adopting the AfD’s antagonism to gender-neutral language, as well as tougher stances on migration. Some Christian Democratic leaders are even calling to remove asylum rights in Germany’s constitution.AfD supporters have noticed their views becoming normalized even as rivals try to marginalize the party — and that makes it more difficult for mainstream parties to regain their trust.“They are getting hardened,” said Julia Reuschenbach, a political scientist at the Free University of Berlin. “No group of core voters is as unreachable as those of the AfD.”Björn Höcke, a party leader in Thuringia and one of the AfD’s most radical politicians, marching at a rally in Thuringia last month. Martin Schutt/Picture Alliance, via Getty ImagesLast week, the German Institute for Human Rights, a state-funded organization, released a study arguing that the language and tactics used by the AfD “to achieve its racist and right-wing extremist goals” could meet conditions for banning the party as a “danger to the free democratic order.”Yet such proposals create another dilemma for democratic society: The tools Germany has for fighting the party it sees as a threat are the same that reinforce sentiments among AfD supporters that their country is not actually democratic.“How can it be that an organization funded by the state can stand up and try to stigmatize a significant part of its voters?” Mr. Springer asked in an interview.It is a question to which those in the crowd, like Ms. Wettengel, have found unsettling answers.“Mainstream politics are against the people,” she said. “Not for the people.”The real test of AfD support won’t come until next year, when several east German states hold elections and it has a chance at taking the largest share of the vote.In the meantime, every week, AfD politicians fan out across the country, hosting information booths, pub nights and citizen dialogues, as if it already were campaign season.Outside the train station of Hennigsdorf, a Berlin suburb, the state AfD lawmaker Andreas Galau handed out pamphlets to visitors with an unwavering smile. Some passers-by shouted insults. Others were curious.“Many come here just to get their frustrations off their chest,” he said with a chuckle. “They come and tell us what is on their minds — we’re a bit of a therapy group.”More and more people, he said, no longer feel ashamed to show interest in the AfD. It is this sense that the political establishment is not listening to ordinary people that may be helping fill out the AfD’s ranks.In Gera, Mr. Springer’s address to the crowd seemed an exercise in catharsis and validation.“They think we are stupid,” he said. “They’ll think again when the next elections come.” More

“There was no document,” the former president said on Fox News as he gave some of his most expansive remarks on the case that led to his federal indictment.Former President Donald J. Trump claimed to a Fox News anchor in an interview on Monday that he did not have a classified document with him in a meeting with a book publisher even though he referred during that meeting to “secret” information in his possession.The July 2021 meeting — at Mr. Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J. — was recorded by at least two people in attendance, and a transcript describes the former president pointing to a pile of papers and then saying of Gen. Mark A. Milley, whom he had been criticizing: “Look. This was him. They presented me this — this is off the record, but — they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him.”On the recording, according to two people familiar with its contents, Mr. Trump can be heard flipping through papers as he talks to a publisher and writer working on a book by his final White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Mr. Trump and the people in the meeting do not explicitly say what document the former president is holding.According to the transcript, Mr. Trump describes the document, which he claims shows General Milley’s desire to attack Iran, as “secret” and “like, highly confidential.” He also declares that “as president, I could have declassified it,” adding, “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”But in the interview on Monday, with the Fox News anchor Bret Baier, Mr. Trump denied that he had been referring to an actual document and claimed to have simply been referring to news clippings and magazine pieces.“There was no document,” Mr. Trump insisted. “That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things. And it may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document. I didn’t have a document per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.”Apparently playing down the information from the recording, he added, “I don’t think that I’ve ever seen a document from Milley.”The audio recording is a key piece of evidence in an indictment charging Mr. Trump with illegally holding on to 31 sensitive government documents, some of which were highly classified and included information about U.S. nuclear and military capabilities. The indictment was filed this month by Jack Smith, a special counsel appointed by the Justice Department, in Federal District Court in Miami. The indictment also accused Mr. Trump of conspiring with one of his aides, Walt Nauta, to evade a grand jury subpoena issued last May for all classified material in his possession.General Mark A. Milley testifying during a budget hearing in Congress this year. Pete Marovich for The New York TimesA description of a typewritten document by General Milley appears in Mr. Meadows’s book, unattributed and stated as fact.Criminal defendants usually avoid speaking publicly about details of any charges in their case, for fear of their remarks being used against them. The interview was broadcast on the same day that a federal magistrate judge in Mr. Trump’s case issued a protective order instructing him not to reveal any evidence that had been turned over to his legal team as part of the discovery process.While the interview did not seem to violate that order, his remarks represented some of his most expansive comments about the nearly two years that federal officials spent trying to retrieve material from his presidency that belongs to the government. The comments were also the latest in a string of shifting stories that he and his allies have offered since it became public that officials at the National Archives and Records Administration recovered 15 boxes of material from Mr. Trump in January 2022.Earlier in the interview with Mr. Baier, Mr. Trump appeared to concede that even after the Justice Department issued a subpoena last year for all classified documents in his possession, he delayed complying with it in order to separate any personal records that might have been among them.“Before I send boxes over, I have to take all of my things out,” Mr. Trump said. “These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things.”Mr. Trump also acknowledged that he did not immediately comply with an earlier request to return government records to the archives, telling Mr. Baier that he gave the archives “some” and maintaining, “I was very busy, as you’ve sort of seen.”A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In February 2022, after the public learned that Mr. Trump had returned classified material to the archives, the former president directed aides to issue a statement saying he had returned everything to the government. The final statement the Trump team released did not make this claim.But the draft version of that statement became a focus of prosecutors who were entering evidence and hearing testimony before a grand jury in Florida, according to two people familiar with the matter.Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination for 2024, and his allies have offered evolving explanations for his possession of classified material and repeated refusals to return it. He has insisted the documents all belonged to him as personal records. He has also claimed that he declassified everything he removed before it left the White House, through a so-called standing order that material was declassified when it left the Oval Office to go to the White House residence. Former senior White House officials said no such order existed.And last month, Mr. Trump’s lawyers wrote a letter to Congress saying that his staff “quickly packed everything into boxes and shipped them to Florida,” leaving the impression that Mr. Trump himself did not go through the material and was unaware of what was in the boxes when they were packed.The indictment contradicted that claim, with prosecutors saying that Mr. Trump was “personally involved in this process” and “caused his boxes, containing hundreds of classified documents, to be transported from the White House to the Mar-a-Lago club.”In his interview with Mr. Baier, the former president indicated that he did sort through some boxes after they were sent from Washington to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida.At one point, Mr. Baier asked Mr. Trump why he did not simply hand the material over.“I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out,” Mr. Trump said. “I don’t want to hand that over to NARA yet.” More

The Florida governor made a fund-raising stop in Sacramento not far from the home of Gov. Gavin Newsom. The two are in the midst of a mutually beneficial feud.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, took his campaign into the backyard of his most vocal Democratic critic on Monday, courting donors at an event near the home of Gov. Gavin Newsom of California weeks after sending two planeloads of migrants to California’s capital.The $3,300-a-plate fund-raiser, hosted by a Republican real estate developer at a suburban country club in Sacramento, was closed to the press, and Mr. DeSantis did not make a public statement. But the location itself underscored the tit-for-tat that has escalated for more than a year between the two governors, who have increasingly used each other as political foils.Florida officials acknowledged this month that the state had orchestrated the abrupt relocation of some three dozen Latin American asylum seekers from Texas to Sacramento. Mr. DeSantis, who for months has been moving migrants, mostly from Texas, into Democratic-run towns and cities, has said the initiative is intended to equalize the burden of the Biden administration’s immigration policies.Mr. Newsom suggested the moves were tantamount to “kidnapping” and denounced them as callous political stunts, noting that California, too, shares a stretch of the Mexican border. An investigation by the California attorney general’s office is underway.Days after the migrants’ flights, Mr. Newsom made a rare appearance on Fox News, the conservative network, assertively defending California policies and assailing those of governors such as Mr. DeSantis. He told the Fox News host Sean Hannity that he would be “all in — count on it” for a debate about the issues with Florida’s governor.Mr. DeSantis later retorted at a news conference that Mr. Newsom should “stop pussyfooting around” and run for president if he wanted to air their differences on a debate stage.“Are you going to get in and do it?” he demanded. “Or are you just going to sit on the sidelines and chirp?”“So … debate challenge accepted? Or do you need your notes for that, too?” California’s governor retorted, posting a video of Mr. DeSantis at a podium apparently glancing down at a crib sheet before making the “pussyfooting” challenge.Although Mr. Newsom has said he has “subzero” interest in running for president and has energetically supported President Biden’s re-election, he is widely viewed as a potential contender for the White House after the 2024 election.Mr. DeSantis has been regarded as Donald J. Trump’s leading rival for the Republican nomination in 2024, but even as the former president faces a federal indictment, national polls have consistently shown Mr. DeSantis running some 30 points behind Mr. Trump.“Look, DeSantis needs to poke Gavin the Bear,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican political consultant in California. “He needs to keep that fire going — it’s the main thing that gives him oxygen.”But, he added, the feud also elevates Mr. Newsom’s profile.“This fight over the cultural direction of the country is in many ways being spearheaded by Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom, and it serves both of their interests,” said Mr. Madrid, who did not attend the fund-raiser.True to form, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign signaled his arrival in California on Monday by tweeting that “the debate is already settled” and posting a new campaign ad describing California as plagued with population loss and homelessness and strewn with “needles and feces.”“California’s liberal governance is a disaster,” the DeSantis campaign declared.The Florida governor’s appearance, in a county where more than 60 percent of voters supported President Biden in 2020, drew no protesters and filled the small parking lot at the Del Paso Country Club with supporters from the capital area’s more conservative precincts.It was one of several stops planned for Mr. DeSantis in California on Monday, including a second event at the Harris Ranch in Coalinga, in Fresno County. It was also among a flurry of visits to California by White House contenders as momentum gathers for the 2024 presidential race.President Biden was in Silicon Valley on Monday — with Mr. Newsom — to announce some $600 million in federal funding for climate resilience at a marshland preserve in Palo Alto. Mr. Biden also was scheduled to appear at two private fund-raisers for his re-election campaign.Other Republican presidential candidates stopping in California in recent days included Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Tim Scott, a U.S. senator from South Carolina.California is the most populous state in the nation, with an economy larger than that of most countries, and candidates in both parties regard it as a major source of political funding.Although President Biden carried the state by an overwhelming margin in 2020, more than six million Californians also voted for Mr. Trump, who received more votes from California than from any other state. More

Former President Donald J. Trump has said that until Republicans gain power and can change the law, they have “no choice” but to support voting by mail.After years of deriding early and mail-in voting, claiming they lead to fraud and help Democrats to steal elections, top Republicans are changing their position, leading to a split in the party as the 2024 election approaches.The converts atop the party warn that they must adapt or risk further electoral setbacks, especially in key states where early and mail balloting are in place. However, the entrenched foes within Republicans’ election-denier ranks could muddle the party message on voting.The Republican National Committee recently announced that it had created a program to promote early voting, both by mail and in person. The effort, called Bank Your Vote, further calls for Republicans to take advantage of “ballot harvesting” where it is legal, a practice that allows a third party to collect voters’ completed ballots.“To win close elections, we need to close the gap on pre-Election Day voting,” Ronna McDaniel, the R.N.C. chair, said in a rollout video for the program.The reversal is a concession to math and the realities of the moment, as the popularity of mail-in voting shows few signs of receding, three years after the pandemic began and accelerated its use. It also is a grudging recognition that Republicans have failed to gain traction with their baseless claims that mail voting compromises election integrity.While Donald Trump has said Republicans should accept mail voting, he also continues to claim it encourages fraud.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesEven former President Donald J. Trump, whose lies and conspiracy theories about his 2020 election loss heightened the party’s distrust of mail voting, has been saying for months that Republicans have “no choice” but to embrace the method, at least until the party has the power to change voting laws.As Mr. Trump seeks the Oval Office for a third time, his soft-pedaled shift illustrates the divide between the party’s candidates, who want to avoid adding to the string of defeats in 2020 and 2022, and his fervent base of supporters.Still, Mr. Trump and some of the party’s other standard-bearers have tried to straddle both sides of the issue, sometimes in awkward ways, further confounding their voters.While headlining the Georgia Republican Party convention this month in a state that doomed his 2020 re-election and is the center of a criminal inquiry into his attempts to subvert his loss, Mr. Trump again sowed distrust of voting by mail.“Mail-in ballots, by the way, will always be dishonest,” he said.Mr. Trump, who has regularly voted by mail, falsely claimed that chain-of-custody issues involving mail ballots compromised election integrity.“It’s going to be corrupt, whether it’s — I would never say this about our mailmen because we love our mailmen — but whether it’s the mailmen or all the many people who touch those ballots,” he said. “They find them in rivers. They find them in streams. They find them all over the place. Many people got many ballots.”Kari Lake, a Trump ally whose repeated legal challenges of her 2022 loss in Arizona’s governor’s race have been denied by the courts, has also thawed on mail balloting.“While you know how I feel about mail-in ballots, if this is the game we have to play, if we’ve got to work in their rigged system, we’ll work in their rigged system,” Ms. Lake said in late May.In Arizona, the 2022 Republican candidate for governor, Kari Lake, has lost repeated lawsuits challenging her loss. She now says she will encourage mail voting in her likely next race.Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesMs. Lake had been speaking at a news conference after the dismissal of her latest election lawsuit, which had claimed that Arizona’s most populous county, Maricopa, had neglected to review voters’ signatures on mail ballots. Now, she said, she would focus on banking mail-in votes as she teases a potential run for the Senate in 2024.Just days after entering the 2024 presidential race, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Mr. Trump’s chief G.O.P. rival, said Republicans had hurt themselves in 2020 with their assault on absentee voting.“I think telling people not to send in a mail ballot is a huge mistake, and it ends up reducing the pool of prospective voters,” Mr. DeSantis said during a May 26 radio appearance with the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro.But the mistrust of early voting that Mr. Trump planted still permeates the G.O.P., leaving many holdouts among election deniers, who called the acceptance of mail-in ballots misguided.“They are 100 percent wrong,” Mike Lindell, the MyPillow founder and Trump ally who has been a leading voice in pushing conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, said in a text message. “Same-day voting!”Mr. Lindell also renewed calls for elections to be conducted entirely using paper ballots that would be counted by hand, not electronic tabulators.Since the 2020 election, Republican attacks on mail voting have been unrelenting. Some declared absentee voting as “un-American,” including Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas and a Trump ally, who termed mail-in ballots a “threat to democracy” in a 2020 online commentary.But in a review prepared by the Republican National Committee after the party’s underwhelming showing in last year’s midterm elections, G.O.P. leaders acknowledged that opposition to voting by mail was a flawed strategy.A demonstration in November 2020 in Philadelphia celebrating Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s election victory.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesKarl Rove, the G.O.P. strategist who has been a target of Mr. Trump’s barbs, said in an interview that the former president’s repeated calls for Republicans to eradicate mail-in and early voting once they gain power were delusional.“It’s fanciful,” he said. “It’s not going to happen.”Mr. Rove said that failing to turn out early votes in Arizona and Georgia in 2020 hurt the party’s chances — Mr. Trump lost both states narrowly — and he described the effort to simultaneously embrace and attack mail-in voting as “not helpful” for Republicans.Even so, Republican state lawmakers and governors have continued to press for legislation that makes it harder to vote by mail, to mixed results.In Nebraska, a push by two Republican senators to require most people to vote in person stalled this year in the unicameral legislature. In Arkansas, Republicans used their power monopoly this year to ban ballot drop boxes, in a state that does not use them.Tyler Dees, a G.O.P. state senator who was the bill’s main sponsor, suggested that drop boxes in other states were prone to being vandalized and facilitated illegal ballot harvesting, claims that have been refuted by independent election monitors and studies.“They act as a beacon of mistrust,” Mr. Dees said of drop boxes during a February floor speech. “They do not encourage a fair and equal process.”But the party’s pragmatists point to the success Democrats have demonstrated by taking advantage of laws that allow voting for a longer period, rather than just on Election Day.“We need to treat this more like Lent and less like Halloween,” said Jeff Roe, a longtime G.O.P. strategist who is advising a super PAC supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in his presidential bid and has worked on Glenn Youngkin’s successful campaign for Virginia governor, Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential bid and a lengthy list of other campaigns.Andy Reilly, a Republican National Committee member from Delaware County, Pa., next to Philadelphia, said the strength of Democrats’ early voting operation was difficult to match.“You better have a damn good Election Day operation,” he said. “There’s no such thing as Election Day operations now. It’s election season that they have to embrace.”Mr. Reilly said Republicans had not grasped that unforeseen events can arise on Election Day that keep voters from going to the polls.“Life gets in the way,” he said, adding that it was a mistake to limit voting to one day. “It is, in essence, suppressing the Republican vote.” More

More from our inbox:A Trump Scenario: Losing in Court, but Winning the PresidencySupporting World Heritage SitesYoung Voices for Climate ActionSome drivers for services like Uber and Lyft said they have seen wages decline, while others say they have risen.Gabby Jones for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Hustle Till It Hurts: Gig Work’s Luster Dims” (Sunday Business, May 28):The questions and concerns raised by freelance and gig work are important ones, but we need to stop trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.As a lawyer who has spent her career analyzing work force policy, hearing from women, single mothers and people with disabilities who feel left out of traditional work models, we need to address what’s missing from the conversation: the bigger policy picture.In America, the social safety net is tied to employment status, and worker classification laws are complicated and nuanced. Because of this, workers who want flexibility to choose when, where and how often to work have to choose between sovereignty and certainty.I urge policymakers to consider legislation that addresses these barriers by decoupling benefits from employment status, developing a thoughtful alternative model as other countries have done, and partnering with business leaders and educators to expand resources for workers to understand their classification status.Only then can we tap into the talents of a vast, diverse work force and build a more inclusive, innovative and sustainable economy.Regan ParkerPortland, Ore.The writer is the general counsel and chief public affairs officer for ShiftKey, a digital platform that connects independent licensed professionals with health care facilities.To the Editor:Your article rightly states that there is not a clear consensus on how some gig workers, such as ride-share drivers and freelance writers, should be classified under current employment laws. But when it comes to the highly regulated health care industry, there’s no room for debate: Nurses and nursing assistants should be classified as employees.The recent rise in digital health care staffing platforms gives nurses more flexibility, allowing them to work shifts as they please rather than full time at a facility. However, some of these staffing platforms improperly claim that because their nurses work gig-style schedules, they can be classified as independent contractors.These companies save themselves money but put the nurses and facilities where they work at risk. Nurses don’t control when they start and end their shifts. They are supervised and perform their responsibilities according to strict guidelines.When properly enforced, the Fair Labor Standards Act enables nurses to enjoy gig-style schedules without losing the employee-related benefits they deserve.Tony BraswellTampa, Fla.The writer is the president and founder of Gale Healthcare Solutions.A Trump Scenario: Losing in Court, but Winning the PresidencyDonald Trump at a campaign event.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Former President Donald Trump’s indictment might very well culminate in his being convicted on felony espionage charges while running for and possibly winning the presidency. Inexplicably, the Constitution does not preclude this.The surreal, disheartening and illogical nature of such an outcome is underscored by current employment prohibitions in the U.S. for convicted felons. Those with felony convictions cannot work in the banking, real estate, health care and insurance industries. Additionally, professions that require a license, including those involving lawyers, teachers and psychologists, preclude felonious applicants. Beyond this, several states have their own employment restrictions for individuals with felony backgrounds.In light of this, the idea that Mr. Trump could conceivably occupy the Oval Office for four more years, despite his being a felon, should this be the case, is proof that the framers of the Constitution were not prescient enough to anticipate how sordid our nation’s politics would become.Mark GodesChelsea, Mass.To the Editor:In my view, Democrats would do well to turn off the indictment news and focus on defeating Donald Trump. Jack Smith’s clear indictment offers, to those willing to read it, compelling evidence of the flood of corruption that surged through the White House during the Trump presidency and will hopefully persuade some more moderate Republicans to abandon him. But winning a conviction without defeating him at the ballot box leaves us in the same dark hole or worse off than before.Few who still support Mr. Trump after learning about the details of the indictment will change their decision based upon Mr. Smith’s success in the courtroom. The specter of Mr. Trump losing in court and winning the election would do enduring damage to the nation.Mr. Trump must be defeated the hard way, at the ballot box.Larry LobertGrosse Pointe Park, Mich.Supporting World Heritage SitesYosemite National Park in California is one of UNESCO’s many World Heritage sites.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “After a Six-Year Hiatus, the U.S. Will Rejoin UNESCO in July, Agency Says” (news article, June 13):Thank you for your reporting that the United States plans to rejoin UNESCO. And for highlighting the importance of World Heritage sites, designated by UNESCO. Many Americans — and citizens of other nations — have visited and been inspired by World Heritage sites in the United States, including the Statue of Liberty, Yellowstone National Park, Chaco Culture National Historical Park and many other places.However, the United States last paid its World Heritage Committee dues in 2011. Congress and the Biden administration should pay our current year dues (estimated at less than $600,000) and past unpaid dues.The United States has continued to participate in the World Heritage program, including recent designations of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, including the Guggenheim Museum, and pending nominations of Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks in Ohio and the Historic Moravian Church Settlements in Bethlehem, Pa. Advocates are also working to nominate U.S. Civil Rights Movement Sites and the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.Full U.S. engagement with World Heritage requires paying our share of the program’s costs. It would also permit the United States, a catalyst for the creation of the World Heritage program, to reassert our global leadership in heritage preservation, including such challenges as the reconstruction of World Heritage sites in Ukraine.Thomas CassidyArlington, Va.The writer is a trustee of World Heritage USA.Young Voices for Climate Action Amber Bracken for The New York TimesTo the Editor:The devastating Canadian wildfires make it imperative that we include everyone in climate advocacy, particularly young voices. These wildfires are stark reminders of the escalating climate crisis and the urgent need for change.Young voices are essential in demanding systemic transformations, as this is just one chapter in an existential fight that will persist for the rest of our lives.My climate advocacy is a matter of self-defense. I grew up in Portland, Ore., a place struggling with climate change. I have witnessed wildfires approaching my city and threatening my home, river ecosystems collapsing and their species being put at risk of extinction. The battle we face is not limited to a single fire season or year; it is a fight for our collective survival.Young people will bear the brunt of these disasters. Our future is at stake. Our voices must be heard. We did not ask for the fight against climate change, yet it is a battle we have shouldered since birth. We are ready to contribute our collective power to improve our future.Samantha BlockFalls Church, Va.The writer is a student at Bryn Mawr College. More

Local alliances between the center-right Popular Party and the far-right Vox may foreshadow a broader coalition agreement at the national level.Spain’s far right took office in a string of Spanish cities and in a powerful region over the weekend by forging coalition agreements with the moderate right, in a move that may foreshadow a broader alliance to govern the country after next month’s general elections.The agreements came about three weeks after the center-right Popular Party crushed Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s left-wing coalition in regional and local elections. To secure control of dozens of cities, the Popular Party struck coalition deals with the far-right Vox, which also performed well, embracing part of the party’s nationalist, anti-migrant agenda.Both parties will now govern together in some 25 cities of more than 30,000 residents, including five regional capitals, giving Vox, a party once considered anathema by most voters, crucial political leverage. They have also teamed up to run the wealthy Valencia region, which accounts for 10 percent of Spain’s population.“It’s something completely new, both in terms of extent and depth,” Sandra León, a political analyst at Carlos III University in Madrid, said of the alliances. “It opens up a new path, a new period in the right-wing bloc.”The growing popularity of Vox, which is already the third-largest political force in the Spanish Parliament, has coincided with the rise of the far right in Europe, at a time when the continent is grappling with fierce identity debates, the economic fallout of a pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine.Hard-right forces already govern Italy, and on Friday, Finland’s main conservative party announced a new coalition government with a nationalist party. In France, Marine Le Pen’s normalization strategy is steadily bearing fruit.The leader of the far-right Vox party, Santiago Abascal, bottom right, in Parliament in Madrid in March.Chema Moya/EPA, via ShutterstockSantiago Abascal, the leader of Vox, has made it clear that he intends to make the most of his party’s gains locally. “We are and we will be extending our hand to build an alternative,” he wrote on Twitter this week, just as Vox and the Popular Party were locked in negotiations over regional governments.While municipal councils had to be formed by Saturday, regional governments have more time, and new agreements between Vox and the Popular Party could be reached in the next few days in regions such as Extremadura, in the west, and Murcia, in the east.Ms. León, the political analyst, said the local coalition agreements would help Vox, a party created only a decade ago, gain experience in running cities and provide it with resources to consolidate its organizational base. But she added that the most important outcome of the agreements is that they “have paved the way” for an alliance at the national level.Most polls show the Popular Party, also known by its initials PP, winning most votes in the early general elections that Mr. Sánchez has called for next month. But it would require an alliance with Vox to be able to form a government, a possibility that Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the Popular Party leader, has not ruled out.“Such clear pacts have been concluded between Vox and the PP” at the local level, Ms. León said, that “we already know they will ally” after the national elections.The prospect of the far right gaining national power has come as a shock in a country where nationalist forces had long been sidelined because of the shadow of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, which ended only in the 1970s.Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain at the White House in May. He called for a snap election next month following gains by the opposition.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesIn particular, the alliance between the Popular Party and Vox to govern the Valencia region has raised concerns about a rollback of civil rights.The coalition agreement in Valencia promises to “preserve the quality of education by removing ideology from the classroom,” in an apparent allusion to contents on gender equality that form part of the curriculum and which Vox has long criticized. The agreement also makes no mention of climate change, a phenomenon that some Vox leaders have denied is linked to human activity.Ms. León said that the agreement showed that the Popular Party “is willing to compromise on some issues on which it has different views from Vox” in order to govern.The left was quick to use the Valencia agreement as proof that a Popular Party governing in alliance with Vox would be a step backward.“There is something much more dangerous than Vox, and that is a PP that assumes the postulates and policies of Vox,” Mr. Sánchez said in an interview with El País on Sunday. “And this is what we are seeing: the negation of political, social and scientific consensus.”Under pressure, the Popular Party has tried to distance itself from the most controversial positions of the far-right party. After a top Vox leader in Valencia said on Friday that “gender violence does not exist” — an issue that parties from across the political spectrum have long acknowledged and combated — Mr. Feijóo rushed to denounce his remarks.“Gender violence exists,” Mr. Feijóo wrote on Twitter. “We will not take a step back in the fight against this scourge. We will not give up our principles, no matter the cost.” More

A legal campaign against universities and think tanks seeks to undermine the fight against false claims about elections, vaccines and other hot political topics.On Capitol Hill and in the courts, Republican lawmakers and activists are mounting a sweeping legal campaign against universities, think tanks and private companies that study the spread of disinformation, accusing them of colluding with the government to suppress conservative speech online.The effort has encumbered its targets with expansive requests for information and, in some cases, subpoenas — demanding notes, emails and other information related to social media companies and the government dating back to 2015. Complying has consumed time and resources and already affected the groups’ ability to do research and raise money, according to several people involved.They and others warned that the campaign undermined the fight against disinformation in American society when the problem is, by most accounts, on the rise — and when another presidential election is around the corner. Many of those behind the Republican effort had also joined former President Donald J. Trump in falsely challenging the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.“I think it’s quite obviously a cynical — and I would say wildly partisan — attempt to chill research,” said Jameel Jaffer, the executive director of Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute, an organization that works to safeguard freedom of speech and the press.The House Judiciary Committee, which in January came under Republican majority control, has sent scores of letters and subpoenas to the researchers — only some of which have been made public. It has threatened legal action against those who have not responded quickly or fully enough.A conservative advocacy group led by Stephen Miller, the former adviser to Mr. Trump, filed a class-action lawsuit last month in U.S. District Court in Louisiana that echoes many of the committee’s accusations and focuses on some of the same defendants.Targets include Stanford, Clemson and New York Universities and the University of Washington; the Atlantic Council, the German Marshall Fund and the National Conference on Citizenship, all nonpartisan, nongovernmental organizations in Washington; the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco; and Graphika, a company that researches disinformation online.In a related line of inquiry, the committee has also issued a subpoena to the World Federation of Advertisers, a trade association, and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media it created. The committee’s Republican leaders have accused the groups of violating antitrust laws by conspiring to cut off advertising revenue for content researchers and tech companies found to be harmful.A House subcommittee was created to scrutinize what Republicans have charged is a government effort to silence conservatives. Kenny Holston/The New York TimesThe committee’s chairman, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a close ally of Mr. Trump, has accused the organizations of “censorship of disfavored speech” involving issues that have galvanized the Republican Party: the policies around the Covid-19 pandemic and the integrity of the American political system, including the outcome of the 2020 election.Much of the disinformation surrounding both issues has come from the right. Many Republicans are convinced that researchers who study disinformation have pressed social media platforms to discriminate against conservative voices.Those complaints have been fueled by Twitter’s decision under its new owner, Elon Musk, to release selected internal communications between government officials and Twitter employees. The communications show government officials urging Twitter to take action against accounts spreading disinformation but stopping short of ordering them to do, as some critics claimed.Patrick L. Warren, an associate professor at Clemson University, said researchers at the school have provided documents to the committee, and given some staff members a short presentation. “I think most of this has been spurred by our appearance in the Twitter files, which left people with a pretty distorted sense of our mission and work,” he said.Last year, the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana sued the Biden administration in U.S. District Court in Louisiana, arguing that government officials effectively cajoled or coerced Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms by threatening legislative changes. The judge, Terry A. Doughty, rejected a defense motion to dismiss the lawsuit in March.The current campaign’s focus is not government officials but rather private individuals working for universities or nongovernmental organizations. They have their own First Amendment guarantees of free speech, including their interactions with the social medial companies.The group behind the class action, America First Legal, named as defendants two researchers at the Stanford Internet Observatory, Alex Stamos and Renée DiResta; a professor at the University of Washington, Kate Starbird; an executive of Graphika, Camille François; and the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, Graham Brookie.Renée DiResta, a researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory, is among the defendants named in a lawsuit filed by America First Legal, a conservative group. Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated PressIf the lawsuit proceeds, they could face trial and, potentially, civil damages if the accusations are upheld.Mr. Miller, the president of America First Legal, did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement last month, he said the lawsuit was “striking at the heart of the censorship-industrial complex.”Stephen Miller, a former adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, leads America First Legal. Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesThe researchers, who have been asked by the House committee to submit emails and other records, are also defendants in the lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana. The plaintiffs include Jill Hines, a director of Health Freedom Louisiana, an organization that has been accused of disinformation, and Jim Hoft, the founder of the Gateway Pundit, a right-wing news site. The court in the Western District of Louisiana has, under Judge Doughty, become a favored venue for legal challenges against the Biden administration.The attacks use “the same argument that starts with some false premises,” said Jeff Hancock, the founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab, which is not a party to any of the legal action. “We see it in the media, in the congressional committees and in lawsuits, and it is the same core argument, with a false premise about the government giving some type of direction to the research we do.”The House Judiciary Committee has focused much of its questioning on two collaborative projects. One was the Election Integrity Partnership, which Stanford and the University of Washington formed before the 2020 election to identify attempts “to suppress voting, reduce participation, confuse voters or delegitimize election results without evidence.” The other, also organized by Stanford, was called the Virality Project and focused on the spread of disinformation about Covid-19 vaccines.Both subjects have become political lightning rods, exposing the researchers to partisan attacks online that have become ominously personal at times.In the case of the Stanford Internet Observatory, the requests for information — including all emails — have even extended to students who volunteered to work as interns for the Election Integrity Partnership.A central premise of the committee’s investigation — and the other complaints about censorship — is that the researchers or government officials had the power or ability to shut down accounts on social media. They did not, according to former employees at Twitter and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, who said the decision to punish users who violated platform rules belonged solely to the companies.No evidence has emerged that government officials coerced the companies to take action against accounts, even when the groups flagged problematic content.“We have not only academic freedom as researchers to conduct this research but freedom of speech to tell Twitter or any other company to look at tweets we might think violate rules,” Mr. Hancock said.The universities and research organizations have sought to comply with the committee’s requests, though the collection of years of emails has been a time-consuming task complicated by issues of privacy. They face mounting legal costs and questions from directors and donors about the risks raised by studying disinformation. Online attacks have also taken a toll on morale and, in some cases, scared away students.In May, Mr. Jordan, the committee’s chairman, threatened Stanford with unspecified legal action for not complying with a previously issued subpoena, even though the university’s lawyers have been negotiating with the committee’s lawyers over how to shield students’ privacy. (Several of the students who volunteered are identified in the America First Legal lawsuit.)The committee declined to discuss details of the investigation, including how many requests or subpoenas it has filed in total. Nor has it disclosed how it expects the inquiry to unfold — whether it would prepare a final report or make criminal referrals and, if so, when. In its statements, though, it appears to have already reached a broad conclusion.“The Twitter files and information from private litigation show how the federal government worked with social media companies and other entities to silence disfavored speech online,” a spokesman, Russell Dye, said in a statement. “The committee is working hard to get to the bottom of this censorship to protect First Amendment rights for all Americans.”The partisan controversy is having an effect on not only the researchers but also the social media giants.Twitter, under Mr. Musk, has made a point of lifting restrictions and restoring accounts that had been suspended, including the Gateway Pundit’s. YouTube recently announced that it would no longer ban videos that advanced “false claims that widespread fraud, errors or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past U.S. presidential elections.” More

The unexpected polling strength of an anti-vaccine activist with a celebrated Democratic lineage points to the president’s weaknesses, which his team is aiming to shore up.President Biden might seem to be on cruise control until the heat of the 2024 general election. Nearly all of the nation’s top Democrats have lined up behind him, and the Republican nomination fight seems set to revolve around Donald J. Trump’s legal problems.But he is nevertheless facing his own version of a primary: a campaign to shore up support among skeptical Democratic voters.As much as the president wants to turn to his looming fight against a Republican — he has signaled he is itching for a rematch with Mr. Trump — his Democratic allies warn he has significant work to do with voters in his own party. He still has to find ways to promote his accomplishments, assuage voters wary of his age and dismiss the Democratic challengers he does have without any drama.Those upstart rivals include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaccine activist with a celebrated Democratic lineage who has emerged with unexpected strength in early polls even as he spreads conspiracy theories and consorts with right-wing figures and billionaire donors. Mr. Kennedy’s support from Democrats, as high as 20 percent in some surveys, serves as a bracing reminder of left-leaning voters’ healthy appetite for a Biden alternative, and as a glaring symbol of the president’s weaknesses.“It’s clear there is a softness that perhaps is born out of a worry about electability in 2024,” said Julián Castro, the former housing secretary who ran for president against Mr. Biden in 2020. “While he’s accomplished a lot, there have been areas where I think people feel like he hasn’t quite delivered what was promised on voting rights, immigration reform, police reform and some aspect of climate.”The White House is taking steps to strengthen Mr. Biden’s political hand, planning a summer of events promoting his legislative achievements. This week, he is making his first overnight campaign trip since announcing his re-election bid, a fund-raising swing through Northern California. Last week, he accepted endorsements from the country’s biggest environmental and labor organizations, which his campaign says will help him coalesce Democratic support.This month, his campaign began running online advertisements highlighting his record. The Biden team even paid for a billboard truck to circle the Capitol and park in front of the Republican National Committee headquarters.Yet some of Mr. Biden’s allies say they worry that the president’s still-nascent campaign does not fully grasp the depth of its problems with Democratic voters, who have consistently told pollsters they would prefer that Mr. Biden not seek re-election. Voters remain uneasy about inflation and his stewardship of the economy.President Biden with Mayor Paige Cognetti of Scranton, Pa., in 2021. Ms. Cognetti has recently promoted projects in Pennsylvania funded by the Biden administration.Doug Mills/The New York TimesSome allies have even decided not to wait for the president’s team, kicking off freelance voter outreach campaigns meant to increase his support in key places.This month, Mayor Paige Cognetti of Scranton, Pa., and three other Pennsylvania mayors hopped in a rented van for a road trip across the state to promote projects funded by the Biden administration because they were concerned voters didn’t know about them.They met in Harrisburg with Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, a Democrat who won office last year. Mr. Davis said Mr. Biden had done “some tremendous things” but worried that voters were unaware. He recalled campaigning in Black barbershops in Philadelphia and hearing that voters felt the country was better off under Mr. Trump.“They’ve done a pretty bad job of telling the American people and Pennsylvanians what they have done,” Mr. Davis said.Mr. Kennedy’s popularity in polls is largely because of his family, which has included three Democratic senators, one president and a host of other high-profile figures. A CNN poll late last month that showed Mr. Kennedy with 20 percent support against Mr. Biden found that the main reason voters liked him was because of the Kennedy name.Surveys have suggested that large numbers of Democratic voters are willing to tell pollsters they would take anyone over Mr. Biden. A poll from a Baltimore TV station last week found that 41 percent of Maryland Democrats preferred their governor, Wes Moore, over Mr. Biden, even though Mr. Moore is backing the president’s re-election.Yet if Mr. Kennedy manages to maintain this level of support, he could cause Mr. Biden embarrassment in the primaries.“Could Bobby Kennedy catch a spark? Maybe,” said Michael Novogratz, a billionaire Democratic donor who supported Mr. Biden in 2020 but has pledged not to back any candidate older than 72. “He’s alienated himself because of some of the anti-vax positions, but he is a bright man, articulate, eloquent, connected, has the Kennedy name and would pull a lot of the Trump voters.”Cheering at Mr. Kennedy’s campaign announcement. Some Democrats say his relative strength in polls points to weaknesses in Mr. Biden’s candidacy.Sophie Park for The New York TimesThe place Mr. Kennedy might prove the biggest nuisance is New Hampshire, where the president has alienated core supporters by shuffling the Democratic presidential nominating calendar to put South Carolina’s primary first, ahead of the Granite State.New Hampshire Democrats worry that Mr. Biden may skip their primary, which is likely to come before the slot allocated to the state by the Democratic National Committee. They also worry that if Mr. Biden does participate, enough independent voters angry with him for trying to elevate South Carolina may cast a protest vote for Mr. Kennedy to deal the president an early but cosmetic primary defeat.“If people feel hurt or slighted, that goes a long way with people in New Hampshire,” said Lou D’Allesandro, a Democratic state senator and longtime Biden ally who warned that the president’s spurning of his state could lead to a Kennedy victory there.A lawyer who rose to prominence in the 1990s as an environmental activist in New York, Mr. Kennedy, 69, has received a boost from conservative figures like Elon Musk, the Twitter owner who recently hosted him on a two-hour online audio chat, and David Sacks, a venture capitalist and supporter of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida who held a Kennedy fund-raiser last week in California.Mr. Kennedy has adopted positions that put him opposite virtually all Democratic voters. He has opposed an assault weapons ban, spread pro-Russian talking points about the war in Ukraine and suggested American presidential campaigns are rigged. He has also long trafficked in conspiracy theories about vaccines.The Biden campaign is planning a summer effort to promote the administration’s accomplishments.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesA super PAC supporting Mr. Kennedy has raised at least $5.7 million, according to John Gilmore, its executive director. The Kennedy campaign is being led by Dennis Kucinich, the former left-wing congressman and Cleveland mayor, who cast Mr. Kennedy’s cornucopia of right-wing views as evidence that he is better positioned to win a general election than Mr. Biden — who won in 2020 with significant support from Trump-skeptical moderate Republicans.“Mr. Kennedy is the one person who has the qualities that can bring about the unity that most Americans are hungering for,” Mr. Kucinich said. “He speaks a language of conciliation and compassion.”Besides fund-raising efforts, the Biden campaign has not had much of a public presence since its formal rollout in April. Top officials have spent time in recent days in Wilmington, Del., shopping for office space for a campaign headquarters that is expected to open in July, according to two people familiar with the discussions. The campaign, which has just a few employees on its payroll, is expected to add more staff members once its offices open.White House officials are planning a summer tour branded “investing in America” in which Mr. Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, their spouses and cabinet members will travel the country to promote the results of legislation Mr. Biden has signed to fund infrastructure and climate projects across the country.They believe those trips will generate positive local news coverage that will be the first step — certain to be followed by hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising from the Biden campaign and its allies — toward educating Biden-skeptical Democrats and wayward independent voters that Mr. Biden deserves a second term.“The more Americans learn about the president’s investing in America agenda, the more they support it,” said Ben LaBolt, the White House communications director. “That’s a huge opportunity for us.”It’s not unprecedented for an incumbent president to face dissension in his party before being renominated. In late 2010, Gallup found Hillary Clinton with 37 percent support in a hypothetical 2012 primary against President Barack Obama — though that was months before he announced his re-election bid.The Kennedy campaign is being led by Dennis Kucinich, the former left-wing congressman and Cleveland mayor.Josh Reynolds/Associated PressDuring the 2012 Democratic presidential primaries, a felon took 41 percent of the Democratic vote in West Virginia, and a little-known lawyer took 42 percent in Arkansas. Neither result cost Mr. Obama on the way to winning the nomination and re-election.The White House, the Democratic National Committee and Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign have all declined to talk about Mr. Kennedy on the record — a coordinated effort to avoid giving him oxygen.Mr. Biden’s allies, though are less reticent.“That campaign is a joke,” said Representative Robert Garcia of California, a Democrat whom Mr. Biden named to his campaign’s national advisory board last month. “He’s running in the wrong primary and has zero chance of gaining any sort of support.”Mr. Garcia added, “His views and worldview are dangerous.”Still, Mr. Kennedy’s early strength highlights Biden weaknesses Republicans are eager to exploit.Polling conducted in May for Way to Win, a Democratic-aligned group, found that only 22 percent of Latino voters and 33 percent of Black voters were aware of “any specific thing” Mr. Biden had done in office to improve their lives.“There’s no single sentence that everybody can repeat that is sticking,” said Tory Gavito, the president of Way to Win. “What’s happening is the G.O.P. is flooding the airwaves with a narrative of economic failure, and it’s starting to resonate.”Rebecca Davis O’Brien More