Elections

In the homestretch of the epic Wisconsin Supreme Court race that ended last week with a blowout victory for liberals, voters’ cellphones pinged incessantly with text message ads.“Woke trans activists have their candidate,” one text message said, according to Wisconsin Watch, a local nonprofit news site. “Schools across Wisconsin are stripping away parental rights and trans kids behind parents backs. There’s only one candidate for the Supreme Court who will put an end to this. Vote for Judge Daniel Kelly by April 4 and protect your children from trans madness.”For a judicial race that centered on two big issues the Wisconsin Supreme Court is likely to consider soon, abortion and voting, it might seem odd that these ads in support of the conservative candidate chose to focus on an issue nowhere near the top of the agenda on the court’s upcoming docket.For reasons that are now obvious, conservative groups supporting Kelly largely avoided touting his opposition to abortion. That’s a sure loser, as the G.O.P. is rapidly learning. It probably wouldn’t have been a good idea to run on preserving the right-wing gerrymander that gives conservatives a total lock on Wisconsin’s Legislature and congressional delegation either. So some supporters reached for the wedge issue du jour: transphobia.An article of faith has emerged among hard-right conservatives — and has been worried over by some centrist pundits — that parental concerns about health care and social support for transgender children make for a potent wedge issue. After all, it has all the hallmarks of an effective culture war hot button: It involves strange new social and medical practices and unfamiliar ways of life, and children are sometimes concerned. But it’s not working the way conservatives expected.The end of Roe has reversed the tides of the culture war. The right has now lost it by winning the biggest victory of all. State legislatures across the country are enacting draconian abortion bans that are producing predictably tragic outcomes. Americans don’t have to imagine what the right will do with its power over women’s lives because we see it in every headline about women risking death because a doctor is too scared of running afoul of an anti-abortion law to provide a necessary medical procedure. It has become blindingly obvious what happens when Republicans legislate what Americans do with their sex organs. And voters, understandably, don’t like what they see.For years even before the fall of Roe, conservatives have used hard-edge anti-trans messaging in both red and swing state races, only to come up short. They tried it in North Carolina’s 2016 governor’s race, in the aftermath of a controversial bill requiring people to use the bathroom associated with their sex assigned at birth. The Democrat, Roy Cooper, won despite a hail of anti-trans ads. They tried it against Andy Beshear, the Democratic candidate for governor in deep-red Kentucky in 2019, and failed. In 2022, G.O.P. candidates tried to use L.G.B.T. issues as a wedge in races in swing states from the Midwest to the Sunbelt to New England. The data suggest that opposition to trans rights cannot overcome — or possibly even make a dent in — the advantage that comes to Democrats in swing states for supporting abortion rights. It’s not even close.“Transphobia was, and is, the dog that couldn’t hunt,” wrote the anonymous but eerily prescient polling analyst who writes a Substack newsletter under the name Ettingermentum.Wisconsin was the most recent example of this failure. The American Principles Project, a Virginia organization that is a driving force behind the harsh anti-transgender laws sweeping red states, spent almost $800,000 on ads supporting Kelly in the State Supreme Court race, according to Wisconsin Watch. A video paid for by the organization’s PAC accompanied text messages that described his liberal opponent, Judge Janet Protasiewicz, as “endorsed by all the woke activists that are stripping parents of their rights in Wisconsin schools and forcing transgenderism down our throats,” Wisconsin Watch reported.In one mendacious video advertisement the narrator claims that a 12-year-old was medically transitioned without parental consent. The video shows images of surgical scarring and implies that this child underwent surgery at the behest of school officials. This is absolutely false. The child in question merely changed their name and pronouns.But any hopes that this messaging would drive swing voters seems to have fallen flat. Indeed, the margin of victory in Wisconsin exceeded predictions. Joe Biden won the state by just 20,000 votes in 2020. Protasiewicz won by 200,000.The failure of anti-trans messaging as a wedge issue may seem surprising because the Democratic Party really does seem to have a problem when it comes to parents and schools. Resentment over Democrats’ support for school closures during the pandemic has become a liability for the party among educated suburbanites, as the 2021 governor’s race in Virginia demonstrated.But Republicans seem to be making the grave error of assuming that someone angry about school closures in the fall of 2021 is a potential conscript in their war today against drag queens and trans people. So far there appears to be little appetite among swing-state voters for laws that could — if our worst fears are realized — allow school officials to demand inspections of their child’s genitals before soccer matches and swim meets. Besides, there’s a far more urgent issue when it comes to students’ safety: In a country where child shooting deaths went up 50 percent from 2019 to 2021, who would trust their children to the political party that opposes gun regulation?There is no doubt that attitudes about gender are changing quickly, and changing especially quickly among young people. But it’s hard to draw firm conclusions about how Americans really feel about this. In a Pew poll last June, a large majority of respondents said they favor legal protections for trans people from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces. Other findings suggest unease: 43 percent said gender identity norms were changing too quickly. Majorities support requiring athletes to compete as their sex assigned at birth. Depressingly, 46 percent said they supported criminalizing gender-affirming care for minors.But one finding from that same poll stood out to me: 68 percent of respondents aren’t paying close attention to the trans bills popping up across the country, and three-quarters of self-identified moderates said they weren’t following the issue closely. But that doesn’t mean they are interested in restrictive or repressive laws, much less willing to vote on the basis of support for such policies.Of course, this lack of attention can cut both ways. Voters who aren’t paying attention to the issue are unlikely to be drawn to the polls to vote against a transgender care ban, either. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis, presumed to be a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, has been able to defy post-Roe gravity and increase his support despite prosecuting an aggressive culture war campaign against queer people. It remains to be seen how this would play out in a presidential election, which would run smack into swing states that have recently rejected in statewide elections both anti-abortion and anti-trans candidates.Democrats — and all Americans — should support the rights of all queer people, not just for electoral advantage but as a matter of principle. There is a clear line from the fight over bodily autonomy in reproductive rights to the fight for access to medical care for trans people. It’s a matter of dignity, too. Trans rights, much like abortion, present a profound challenge to the gender binary, which upholds the world’s oldest and most persistent hierarchy. People who don’t want to or cannot fit within their traditionally prescribed roles — mother, father, woman, man, boy, girl — increasingly have the freedom to live their lives beyond those circumscribed identities.The right has responded to this flowering of freedom with a barrage of repression. In states where Republicans have an ironclad grip on power, they have been incredibly successful. There are hundreds of bills passed or pending that vary in their intrusion on personal liberty but share the goal of giving right-wing politicians the power to control the bodies of citizens through law. On Thursday, this frenzy reached cruel new heights when the attorney general of Missouri issued new emergency rules that put up steep barriers to transgender care, not just for children but also for adults. These barriers could amount to a virtual ban on gender-affirming care for most transgender people in the state.In the face of this onslaught, some centrists seem determined to keep flirting with trans skepticism. It is easy to see why trans issues have become the place for certain centrists to try to perform their moderation — queer people have served this purpose for decades. While other forms of open bigotry became taboo, homophobia and the view that queer people’s rights were a marginal concern has persisted. It has happened before. Bill Clinton heavily courted the gay vote to win the presidency in 1992, only to turn around and sign into law two odious policies: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act. Clinton has since rent his garments over his regrets, but the fact remains that he enshrined discrimination against queer people into federal law.Republicans like to say they are the party of common sense. But what they seem to have forgotten is the commonest sense of all: Most people do not want the government making personal decisions for them. People want to control their own bodies. People want the freedom to decide when and how to form families. Suddenly, after years of pointing fingers at the left for so-called cultural totalitarianism, Republicans have now decisively revealed themselves to be the “jackbooted thugs” wanting details on your teenage daughter’s menstrual cycle. It’s hard to imagine a less appealing message to swing voters than that.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

A look at Tim Scott and whether he has an angle to build a base of support.Senator Tim Scott has started an exploratory committee for a 2024 run for president.Charles Krupa/Associated PressThere’s been surprisingly little post-Trump-indictment polling of the Republican race. As a result, we’re still in wait-and-see mode here at the Tilt — and we’ve been waiting long enough that it has become easy to forget what we were even waiting for.In the interim, let’s jump into the mailbag.Off-season?As I wrote a few weeks ago, we’d like the mailbag to be a regular feature during the “off-season,” which brings us to our first question:What is meant by “during the off-season?” Off-season of what? — Jan PanellaI suppose it’s off “election season” or “campaign season.” There’s a predicable ebb and flow to the pace and import of political news, with a slow first half of odd-numbered years ramping up to the heart of the campaign season in the fall of even-numbered years.Reacting to announcementsOf course, it hasn’t exactly been the slowest news week. Tim Scott, a Republican senator from South Carolina, announced an exploratory presidential committee on Wednesday.What, if anything, do you “do” or look for when you see a presidential announcement from a lesser-known candidate, like Sen. Scott or Nikki Haley? — Kevin in Windsor Terrace, BrooklynI watch a lot of YouTube videos. I watch the speeches the candidates gave at the last party convention. I watch their interviews on Fox News. I watch their victory speeches on election night, and so on. I do not read their books.What am I looking for? A lot of it is entirely superficial: I want to know if they have that “it” factor that might help them catch fire. This is fairly subjective, of course, but there isn’t usually much debate about the truly special candidates, and it usually takes a pretty special candidate to rise from obscurity on the strength of performance on the trail or on the campaign stage.I wouldn’t usually comment on this sort of thing, but Mr. Scott is a fairly typical presidential candidate by these sorts of measures. I would not expect him to break through simply on the strength of his media appearances, campaign speeches and debate performances.What I would comment on, however, is whether candidates have an angle that might help them build a base of support. Usually, the easiest way to build a base is to cater to the needs of a major faction, especially if that faction is out of the grasp of the party’s leading candidate. Most relatively unknown candidates gain a foothold in this way, like Bernie Sanders’s appeal to progressives.These two big questions interact in important ways. A factional candidate might not need to have “it” to play a big role in the race even if they might struggle to win in the end. On the other hand, broadly appealing candidates without a factional base might really need some special performances to break through. Otherwise, they might languish in obscurity alongside the likes of Jay Inslee or Tim Pawlenty.By this measure, Mr. Scott seems likelier to languish. Like a fellow South Carolinian, Nikki Haley, Mr. Scott has positioned himself as an antidote to the “woke” left’s views on race and America. While this is likely to have broad appeal throughout the party, it doesn’t make him the natural favorite of any particular segment of the party. He’s certainly not going to outdo Ron DeSantis in the “anti-woke” department. His announcement video did emphasize his religious faith and opposition to abortion, but it is not obvious that he’s a natural leader of the religious right — like a Mike Huckabee or a Rick Santorum.Front-runnersThis cycle, there’s another consideration: What if the front-runners fade?In the jungle, male lions often battle one another for dominance of the pride. The loser usually departs with his tail between his legs or leaves to go nurse what can be life-threatening injuries. The victorious lion may have incurred some injuries in the battle, which makes him a target for a younger male lion who senses an opportunity.Question: if Trump and DeSantis go at one another viciously, is there a viable Republican candidate on the sidelines who might step in and capitalize on their weakness? — Roger LevineHistorically, it would be pretty unusual for two candidates as strong as Donald J. Trump or Mr. DeSantis to collapse, whether on their own or while locked in hand-to-hand combat. That said, Mr. Trump’s legal issues and Mr. DeSantis’s status as a first-time candidate make this possibility seem likelier than usual for two candidates with good poll numbers.If the front-runners collapse, many viable candidates will jump into the race. But I’m not sure there’s anyone I would describe as “stepping in,” which at least to me implies someone strong, waiting in the wings, and ready to take over and restore order to the situation, sort of like if Joe Biden had stepped in if Hillary Clinton had been sidelined for any reason in 2016. This time, Ted Cruz might be the closest analogue. Perhaps Mike Pence could still play a similar role, too.Questions on what’s wokeOur newsletter on “woke” and the new left received more email feedback than just about any we’ve done. Most of the feedback was positive, though at least a few points of clarification may be in order:What a misleading article to portray the Democratic Party as having been taken over by this entity known as the new left. I don’t think that the elections of 2020 or 2022 indicate a takeover by the new left. — Ira BezozaWhoa, Ira, I did not say the Democratic Party had been taken over by the “new” New Left. Mr. Biden is the president, after all. Mr. Sanders lost, twice. The Squad is not an army. Indeed, one of the biggest reasons Republicans have struggled to capitalize on the rise of the “woke” left may be exactly because the Democrats have tended to nominate relatively moderate candidates.The new left, however, is very real and it’s a focal point of Republican attacks. And while this new left may be out of power, it exercises outsized influence in American life, thanks to its presence in upper echelons of society.About that Fox callThe Fox call on Arizona also elicited a lot of feedback, including plenty who simply wondered why the press is involved in the race-calling business at all:Great piece on Fox … But isn’t there a massive bigger issue missed in this entire debate which is the media stampede to call the election itself? I mean, seriously, isn’t it time someone reflected on all that? — Catherine CusackFor what it’s worth, I don’t think there’s a stampede to call the election. Here at The Times, we didn’t call the 2020 presidential election until the Saturday after. We didn’t call control of the House in 2022 for a week.But this is slightly different than the question at hand: Why call races at all? The simple explanation is that there isn’t an “official” winner for a month, and people want and need to know who won well before then. The alternative to media projections isn’t pretty. There would be great uncertainty about the outcome, and bad actors might step in. Mr. Trump’s declaration of victory on election night, for instance, might have been far more confusing and convincing to the public if not for the expectation that the media would call the race if it was truly over. More

Fox News, which is defending itself from Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion lawsuit, is going to trial on Monday in a hole. In an unusual move, the judge has already ruled that on-air statements — those asserting that Dominion’s voting machines played a role in causing Donald Trump to lose the 2020 election — were false. The main task left for the jury is to decide whether Fox made those false statements with what’s known as actual malice.It’s remarkable that Dominion’s suit has gotten this far and may even ultimately prevail, thanks in part to a raft of incredibly damaging Fox emails, text messages and other evidence that show deep internal misgivings about on-air claims about the 2020 election. But proving actual malice is difficult: Dominion must show that Fox News either knew that its reporting was false or entertained serious doubts about the truth of the reporting. This high bar, set by the Supreme Court in 1964, often is insurmountable for plaintiffs.Given the evidence against Fox that already has been made public, it might seem unfair that Dominion continues to face such an uphill battle in this case. But it is a very good thing for our democracy that it is so difficult to prove actual malice.A movement to erode this legal protection has gained steam in recent years, but the main push has not come from Fox critics. Rather, conservatives have characterized the protections as unfairly enabling liberal news outlets to lie. Commentators, politicians, judges and two Supreme Court justices have urged the court to reconsider these protections.The Dominion case demonstrates why this politicization is the wrong course. Overturning nearly six decades of vital First Amendment precedent would not benefit conservatives, liberals or anyone other than those who seek to stifle reporting and criticism with the threat of litigation.Sixty-three years ago, this newspaper ran a full-page advertisement from a civil rights committee that accused Southern officials of mistreating Martin Luther King Jr. and other peaceful protesters. Some statements were untrue. For instance, although the city of Montgomery, Ala., had deployed the police near a local college, the officers did not “ring” the campus, as the ad alleged. L.B. Sullivan, a Montgomery city commissioner who supervised the police, sued The New York Times for defamation, and the all-white jury found against The Times and four Black ministers whose names were on the advertisement and awarded Sullivan $500,000.The Supreme Court in 1964 unanimously overturned that ruling, reasoning that public officials must establish actual malice before recovering defamation damages. Justice William Brennan touted the “profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.” The court later expanded this requirement to public-figure defamation plaintiffs.The merits of New York Times v. Sullivan have long been the subject of academic debate, but its survival was not seriously questioned until 2019, when Justice Clarence Thomas called on the court to revisit the decision. He deemed Sullivan and its progeny “policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law.” Two years later, Justice Neil Gorsuch joined Justice Thomas, arguing that the actual malice rule might enable the spread of falsehoods online and on cable news.As the Supreme Court showed last year when it overturned Roe v. Wade, no precedent is entirely safe from reversal, so any supporters of Sullivan should be quite concerned by two justices calling to revisit the case.Sullivan is increasingly under attack. This month, for instance, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Florida took a swipe at the actual malice standard when applying it to rule in favor of CNN in a defamation lawsuit that the lawyer Alan Dershowitz brought against the network. “Policy-based decisions” such as the actual malice rule are best left to elected legislatures, “not to an unelected judge who may be king or queen for a day (or a lifetime),” Judge Raag Singhal wrote. Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit cited the media’s “bias against the Republican Party” in his 2021 call to overturn Sullivan. And at a February round table about the news media, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said the precedent enables the media to “smear” politicians.The actual malice rule protects speakers regardless of politics. It protects CNN and The New York Times. It protects Fox News and Newsmax. The rule gives them the flexibility to investigate, report on and criticize the most powerful people and companies without fearing ruinous liability because of an accidental error. It also protects individual speakers on social media.The precedent does not provide media outlets and other speakers with a blank check to knowingly lie. Actual malice is a high bar, but it is not insurmountable. Dominion has already produced emails and other evidence that Fox employees and executives privately entertained serious doubts about many claims about the election. The jury could well conclude that Fox knew of the statements’ falsity or were sufficiently aware of their probable falsity. But Sullivan gives Fox the opportunity to present this defense rather than automatically becoming liable for every error.Judges who argue that the actual malice rule may not be rooted in the First Amendment gloss over the threat to speech posed by using the power of the government — court judgments — to punish speech.Attacks on Sullivan are attacks on the building blocks of democracy, and they should concern everyone who cares about free speech, regardless of political affiliation. We have seen how the powerful have weaponized weaker defamation laws in other countries. In a December report, UNESCO noted that there has been a global increase in civil defamation lawsuits that often aim “to target journalists who publish content that makes public officials or powerful economic actors uncomfortable.” A 2020 report from the Foreign Policy Center observed that since a right-wing populist party rose to power in Poland in 2015, a Polish daily newspaper had received more than 55 legal threats from “powerful state actors,” state-owned companies and people tied to the ruling party.Fearing such an outcome, Matthew Schafer, a First Amendment lawyer (who represented The Times a number of years ago), and I came up with a backup plan: In a recent law review article, we proposed a federal statute that would codify the actual malice rule and other vital free speech and press protections. While courts and state legislatures would be free to impose even stronger protections, our proposal would prevent a sudden erosion of free speech because of a single Supreme Court opinion.Hopefully, such a plan will be unnecessary and judges will come to again recognize the enduring value of Sullivan. The Dominion trial is an opportunity for the nation to witness how this “profound national commitment” protects all speakers. And it will be in the best interests of conservatives to fight to protect Sullivan rather than to tear it down.Jeff Kosseff is a senior legal fellow at The Future of Free Speech Project and the author of the forthcoming book “Liar in a Crowded Theater: Freedom of Speech in a World of Misinformation.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

America today faces a crisis of governance. In the face of numerous challenges — from climate change, to housing shortages, to pandemics — our institutions struggle to act quickly and decisively. Democratic processes often get captured by special interests or paralyzed by polarization. And, in response, public faith in government has reached a new low.For the political philosopher Danielle Allen, this crisis requires a complete transformation of our democratic institutions. “Representation as designed cannot work under current conditions,” she writes. “We have no choice but to undertake a significant project of democracy renovation.” Allen’s most recent book — “Justice By Means of Democracy” — puts forth a sweeping vision of what she calls “power-sharing liberalism,” which aims to place political equality, power and participation at the center of liberal thinking.[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]But Allen isn’t just a theorist of liberal governance; she’s actively applying her insights in the real world. As the director of Harvard’s Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics, she’s convened interdisciplinary groups to tackle a range of challenges from building Covid-19 testing infrastructure to innovating in A.I. governance. She was co-chair of the “Our Common Purpose” commission, which put forward over 30 specific policy recommendations for reinventing American democracy. She even ran for governor of Massachusetts.So this is a conversation about what it would mean to build a better, more responsive and inclusive government — and the numerous challenges standing in the way of doing that. Along the way, we discuss liberals’ failure to take power seriously, Colorado’s experiments with “plural voting,” Seattle’s efforts to publicly finance elections through “democracy bucks,” Taiwan’s groundbreaking innovations in deliberative democracy, whether most citizens actually want deeper participation in government — or just better results from it, what it would mean to democratically govern AI development and much more.You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Courtesy of Danielle AllenThis episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Jeff Geld, Kristin Lin, and Roge Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski. More

After four members of Congress backed Donald J. Trump, Republicans close to the Florida governor are trying to keep others from wading into the brewing fight for the G.O.P. presidential nomination.Supporters of Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, who is considering a run for president, have begun pressing members of the state’s Republican congressional delegation to hold off on any endorsements in the brewing presidential primary after four House members from Florida publicly backed Donald J. Trump.The effort, first reported by NBC News, was indicative of the growing concern in Mr. DeSantis’s orbit that the former president was building a significant structural advantage as the governor considers jumping in. One Republican familiar with the calls, who insisted on anonymity in order to discuss private conversations, said that Mr. DeSantis had been “blindsided” by the Trump endorsements from Representatives Byron Donalds, Matt Gaetz, Anna Paulina Luna and Cory Mills, all staunch supporters of the former president who also backed Mr. DeSantis’s re-election last year.It also shows how important the megastate of Florida will be in 2024. Once a general election battleground, Florida has drifted out of reach for Democrats. But with Florida’s governor and arguably its most famous resident, Mr. Trump of Palm Beach, battling for endorsements, donors and voters, the Republican primary will be a local brawl, assuming Mr. DeSantis jumps in.The calls, led by Ryan Tyson, a Florida pollster, and his political team based in Tallahassee, have reached Representatives Kat Cammack, Vern Buchanan, Mario Diaz-Balart, Greg Steube, Aaron Bean and Laurel Lee. Others in the 20-member Republican delegation from Florida are almost certainly on the call list, another Republican official familiar with the effort said on Thursday.“Yeah, they have reached out,” Mr. Steube confirmed to The Sarasota Herald-Tribune. “When we are ready to endorse a candidate for president, we will.”The endorsement of Mr. Trump by Mr. Donalds was especially stinging, coming from one of the few Black Republicans in the U.S. House and a former member of the Florida House of Representatives. Mr. Donalds introduced the governor at his victory party on election night in November.Mr. Donalds wrote in his endorsement on Monday that “2024 isn’t simply an election.” He continued: “It is an inflection point in our nation’s history, and it is an inflection point in world history. There is only one leader at this time in our nation’s history who can seize this moment and deliver what we need.”The calls may be having an impact, according to the sources familiar with them. Mr. Tyson’s team was told by some members that no more endorsements were imminent.Neil Vigdor More

The Justice Department’s success in compelling top aides to former President Donald Trump to testify to a grand jury moves the special counsel closer to a decision on seeking indictments.Without fanfare, the Justice Department’s investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election is approaching an important milestone.After nearly nine months of behind-the-scenes clashes, Mr. Trump’s lawyers have largely lost their battle to limit testimony from some of his closest aides to a federal grand jury. The decisions, in a string of related cases, represent an almost total failure by Mr. Trump to constrain the reach of the inquiry and have strengthened the position of Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the investigation, as he builds an accounting of the former president’s efforts to retain power after his defeat at the polls.Having lost their challenges to grand jury subpoenas and largely failed to limit the scope of their testimony with assertions of executive and attorney-client privilege, a last group of aides is now being forced to answer questions.On Tuesday, it was Stephen Miller, an adviser and top speechwriter for Mr. Trump, who showed up in Federal District Court in Washington and spent several hours in front of the grand jury. On Thursday, it was John Ratcliffe, the former director of national intelligence. The process could culminate near the end of this month with an appearance by former Vice President Mike Pence.While questions linger over pending appeals and potential efforts by some of the witnesses to delay things further by invoking the Fifth Amendment, the developments suggest that Mr. Smith is close to finishing the fact-finding phase of his work and is moving closer to a decision about seeking charges against Mr. Trump and others.There are no clear indications about when Mr. Smith might decide about charges in the case, but he faces pressure on several fronts to keep the process moving.The political season could be a consideration: The 2024 presidential race is heating up, with Mr. Trump still regarded as the front-runner for the Republican nomination, and the first debate of the G.O.P. primary season has been scheduled for August.On the legal front, the looming decision by a district attorney in Georgia, Fani T. Willis, on whether to seek indictment of Mr. Trump on charges related to his efforts to overturn his election loss has placed added pressure on Mr. Smith, who must decide whether allowing another prosecutor to go first with similar charges could complicate any prosecution he pursues.Former Vice President Mike Pence may testify before a grand jury by the end of this month.Winnie Au for The New York Times“The speed of the Georgia state investigation increases the pressure on Jack Smith to move with alacrity and to get his witnesses before the federal grand jury now,” said John P. Fishwick Jr., an Obama appointee who served as the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia from 2015 to 2017. “Once the state indictment comes down, it can really bog down the D.O.J. investigation.”Among those who have worked with him, Mr. Smith is seen as a diligent manager bent on collecting the information needed to make a decision while remaining cognizant of the time pressures and the highly partisan atmosphere in which he is operating.In his first and only public comments — a statement emailed to reporters shortly after his appointment in November — he vowed that the pace of his Trump investigations would “not pause or flag,” noting that he would “move the investigations forward expeditiously and thoroughly to whatever outcome the facts and the law dictate.”Mr. Smith is also overseeing the parallel investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified information after leaving office and whether the former president obstructed government efforts to reclaim the materials..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, who will ultimately make the decision on whether to indict Mr. Trump, has told associates that he will not overrule Mr. Smith’s judgment, whatever it turns out to be, unless he believes the special counsel has deviated from departmental standards and procedures.Mr. Garland, and his top deputy Lisa O. Monaco, have publicly projected an air of detachment from the case, but they have been following developments in the privilege fights that have been playing out in the federal courthouse that sits just a few blocks from their office. They have been receiving regular briefings from aides who are getting updates from members of Mr. Smith’s team, according to two people familiar with the situation.The legal battles over privilege began well before Mr. Smith was appointed to the special counsel post and have pitted two powerful forces against each other.Jack Smith has been leading the inquiry since his appointment in November.Pool photo by Peter DejongIn the course of the investigation into Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, federal prosecutors have subpoenaed an army of Mr. Trump’s former aides in an effort to have the grand jury hear as many firsthand accounts as possible of his behavior in the White House in the days leading up to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Mr. Trump’s lawyers have countered by asserting that any adviser close to the former president should not have to answer certain questions in front of the grand jury because of attorney-client privilege, which protects communications between lawyers and those they represent, and executive privilege, which shields some communications between the president and members of his administration.Among the first people to engage in this debate were Marc Short and Greg Jacob, two of Mr. Pence’s top aides, who went into the grand jury in July and asserted privilege in response to certain questions, prompting prosecutors to file motions compelling their full testimony. Setting a pattern for the months that followed, Mr. Trump’s lawyers fought those motions but ultimately lost their case in front of Beryl A. Howell, then the chief federal judge in Washington, and subsequently in front of a federal appeals court.With the privilege waived, Mr. Short and Mr. Jacob testified for a second time in October. They were followed two months later by Pat A. Cipollone and Patrick F. Philbin, the two top lawyers in Mr. Trump’s White House, who went through the same process.The fight dragged on into this year as another round of aides — including Mr. Miller; Dan Scavino, a onetime deputy chief of staff; and Mr. Scavino’s boss, Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff — all tried, and failed, to assert forms of privileges. The last skirmish took place just a couple of weeks ago when a new chief judge, James E. Boasberg, turned down efforts to limit Mr. Pence’s testimony.While getting these witnesses in front of the grand jury has been challenging and time consuming, the accounts they have given — or will eventually give — are only a fraction of the total body of evidence that Mr. Smith and his predecessors have gathered.Well before Mr. Smith arrived, another prosecutor, Thomas P. Windom, obtained grand jury testimony from pro-Trump figures like Ali Alexander, who organized several prominent “Stop the Steal” events, and from a wide array of state officials involved in a plan to create fake slates of pro-Trump electors in swing states that were actually won by President Biden.Mr. Windom, who now works with Mr. Smith, also oversaw the seizure of phones from lawyers close to Mr. Trump, including John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark and Boris Epshteyn. Mike Roman, a campaign strategist who was the director of Election Day operations for the Trump campaign in 2020, also had his phone seized under Mr. Windom’s watch.Other prosecutors who now work with the special counsel began an inquiry before Mr. Smith arrived into Save America PAC, a fund-raising operation that Mr. Trump created after his loss in the election. As part of that investigation, dozens of subpoenas have been issued to companies that have received money from the PAC, including some law firms.Danny Hakim More

Not quite a year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion continues to be one of the main issues shaping American politics.Abortion is not fading as a driving issue in America, coming up again and again everywhere policy is decided: in legislatures, courts, the Oval Office and voting booths.An 11-point liberal victory in a pivotal Wisconsin Supreme Court race last week was fueled by the issue. Days later, a Texas judge invalidated the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion drug mifepristone (late Wednesday, an appeals court partly stayed the ruling but imposed some restrictions). And Florida, under Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely Republican presidential candidate, is poised to ban abortion after six weeks’ gestation.The fallout from the Supreme Court’s revocation of a constitutional right to abortion last year looks poised to be a major issue in the upcoming presidential race. So where do the likely candidates stand?Here is what some of the most prominent contenders, declared and likely, have said and done:Anti-abortion protesters rallying in Indiana last July while lawmakers there debated an abortion ban during a special session.Kaiti Sullivan for The New York TimesPresident BidenPresident Biden condemned the ruling invalidating the approval of mifepristone, which his administration is appealing, and called it “another unprecedented step in taking away basic freedoms from women and putting their health at risk.”Mr. Biden has a complicated history with abortion; before his 2020 presidential campaign, he supported restrictions, including the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding for most abortions. But he has since spoken more forcefully in defense of unfettered access, including endorsing congressional codification of the rights Roe v. Wade used to protect.White House officials have said he is not willing to disregard the mifepristone ruling, as some abortion-rights activists have urged.Mr. Biden has said he is planning to run in 2024, but has not formally declared his candidacy.Donald J. TrumpMore than perhaps any other Republican, former President Donald J. Trump is responsible for the current state of abortion access: He appointed three of the six Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade and the district judge who invalidated the approval of mifepristone. But lately, he has been loath to talk about it.Last year, Mr. Trump privately expressed concern that the ruling overturning Roe would hurt Republicans — and it did, both in the midterms and in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election.If elected again, he would be under tremendous pressure from the social conservatives who have fueled the Republican Party for decades — and who helped elect him in 2016 — to support a national ban. He has not said whether he would do so.Ron DeSantisGov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, whom polls show as the top potential Republican competitor to Mr. Trump, is pushing forward with the Florida Legislature to ban most abortions after six weeks. The bill passed on Thursday and was sent to Mr. DeSantis’s desk. Polls show that most Americans, including Floridians, oppose six-week bans.It is a more aggressive posture than he took last year, when Florida enacted a ban after 15 weeks and Mr. DeSantis — facing re-election in November — did not commit to going further. He made his move after winning re-election by a sweeping margin.Nikki HaleyAt a campaign event in Iowa this week, Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina and former United Nations ambassador, gestured away from anti-abortion absolutism — saying that she did not “want unelected judges deciding something this personal.”But her comments were muddled: She said she wanted to leave the issue to the states, but at the same time suggested that she would be open to a federal ban if she thought there was momentum for one.“This is about saving as many babies as we can,” she said, while adding that she did not want to play the “game” of specifying when in pregnancy she believed abortion should be allowed.Asa HutchinsonSince starting his presidential campaign this month, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas has said only that he is “proud to stand squarely on my pro-life position” when it comes to abortion.He has not detailed what, if any, federal legislation he would support.Last year, Mr. Hutchinson criticized the lack of an exception for rape and incest in an Arkansas abortion ban he had signed. When he signed it, he said that he wanted the exception but legislators didn’t, and that he accepted their judgment as the will of voters — though a poll last year found that more than 70 percent of Arkansans supported such an exception.Mike PenceA staunch social conservative, former Vice President Mike Pence has been more open than most Republicans about continuing to advertise his opposition to abortion.“Life won again today,” he said in a statement on the mifepristone ruling. “When it approved chemical abortions on demand, the F.D.A. acted carelessly and with blatant disregard for human life.” Last year, Mr. Pence said anti-abortion activists “must not rest” until abortion was outlawed nationwide. Mr. Pence is considering a 2024 run, but has not formally joined the race.Tim ScottSenator Tim Scott of South Carolina repeatedly dodged questions about whether he supported federal restrictions on abortion in the days after announcing a presidential exploratory committee this week.Asked in an interview with CBS News whether he supported a 15-week ban, he called himself “100 percent pro-life.” When the interviewer suggested that his stance indicated he would support a 15-week ban, he replied, “That’s not what I said.”On Thursday, he told WMUR, a New Hampshire news station, that he would support a 20-week ban, but still did not say whether he would back something stricter. More

If you missed the previous newsletter, you can read it here.Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News goes to trial next week, and we’ll be reminded once again of the profoundly destructive lies that the network’s carnival barkers sold. Hour after hour, night after night, they peddled Donald Trump’s insistence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. And they knew or at least suspected that they were wrong, to go by documents already released during the legal proceedings.In this much, however, Fox’s fabulists were right: If they didn’t hawk Trump’s hooey, many of their viewers would just move on to a circus that did. The documents also show that they genuinely believed that. It’s no justification for their laundering of his conspiracy theories — they surely wouldn’t have lost all their audience, and they could have tried to chip away at the dangerous delusions of the many viewers who remained. That they chose differently is a betrayal of journalistic principle and a damning indictment of them. But it says something troubling about the rest of us, too.Thanks to the sprawling real estate of cable television and the infinite expanse of the internet, we live in an age of so many information options, so many “news” purveyors, that we have an unprecedented ability to search out the one or ones that tell us precisely what we want to hear, for whatever reason we want to hear it. We needn’t reckon with the truth. We can shop for it instead.And many of us — maybe even most of us — do. That’s one of the morals of Dominion’s suit, correctly called “seismic” by my Times colleague Jim Rutenberg in his excellent and essential recent article about Fox News’s descent down the rabbit hole. Rutenberg tells the tale of that network’s spectacularly cynical dealings with its particular audience. But a larger story hovers over it, one about every audience’s relationship with reality today.The unscrupulous behavior of Tucker Carlson and his fellow entertainers (let’s call them what they really are) at Fox Phantasmagoria (let’s call it what it really is) reflects the strange new wonderland we inhabit, in which diverging continents of facts — or of recklessly harvested factoids and fictions — leave us without the common ground we need for a sane and civil society.Rutenberg chronicles the concern of senior Fox officials — and of Rupert Murdoch, the chair of Fox Corporation — not to alienate their audience, even if that meant diluting or disregarding an accurate version of events. Following Election Day 2020, Murdoch and Suzanne Scott, the network’s chief executive, grew worried about competing outlets that wholly bought into Trump’s bogus claims. “One of them, Newsmax, was moving up in the ratings while refusing to call Biden the winner,” Rutenberg writes, adding that when The Wall Street Journal, which Murdoch owns, reported that allies of Trump’s might invest in Newsmax to help it pull closer to Fox, “Murdoch alerted Scott to the piece. Fox would have to play this just right, he said in an email.” He warned that it was important not to inflame Trump.Carlson wrote to a colleague: “With Trump behind it, an alternative like Newsmax could be devastating to us.”So Carlson played along with Trump, even while admitting in a text message to an acquaintance “I hate him passionately” and privately expressing disgust and disbelief — “It’s insane,” he texted Laura Ingraham — about the fantastical accusations coming from Team Trump.Carlson sought to undermine those on the network who didn’t fall in line. After the reporter Jacqui Heinrich cast doubt on what Trump and his enablers were saying, Carlson texted Ingraham and Sean Hannity: “It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”According to a 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center, 93 percent of viewers who relied on Carlson & Co. labeled themselves Republicans or said they leaned that way. That lopsidedness isn’t unique: The same survey found that 95 percent of viewers who relied on MSNBC belonged to or sympathized with the Democratic camp. While there’s absolutely no equivalence between the two networks, there’s also no doubt that both consider the interests and inclinations of their loyalists when they’re appointing their hosts, inviting their guests, choosing their stories, calibrating their tones. They are, to varying degrees, giving people what they want. They’re businesses, after all. So is The Times, whose readers are hardly a perfectly heterogeneous snapshot of America.And that compels customers who care about getting a full and nuanced picture not to buy from just one merchant, not in the media marketplace of this moment. We can’t change or redeem the Murdochs and the Carlsons of the world — such perversions of ambition, greed and vanity will always be with us. But we can be better, smarter, more keen-eyed and more open-minded ourselves. We can refuse to confirm and reward their assessments of us.Words Worth SideliningGetty ImagesPerhaps no subspecies of journalist gravitates toward jargon with the frequency and zest of the political journalist, who can’t resist cant. I noted as much in a newsletter last October, when I pleaded for the retirement of “deep dive,” “wake-up call” and “under the bus,” among other annoyances, and said that I’d probably produce at least one follow-up glossary of similarly exhausted phrases. So here’s another batch. May we please, please say goodbye to:Clown car. That’s the favored term for any campaign or political operation of transcendent incompetence or inanity — which is to say, many campaigns and political operations. I smiled the first time I spotted this reference. And the hundredth. No more. I just did a “Donald Trump” “clown car” search on Google, which returned more than 45,000 results. That’s appropriate for the bozo in question but a failure of originality nonetheless.Dumpster fire. A clown car in flames — or any political debacle. At this point, so many developments have been deemed dumpster fires that the designation has burned itself out. It’s an ember of its former blaze.Walk and chew gum at the same time. Pundits love, love, love this expression to convey how easy it should be for a politician to accomplish two goals at once. Mid-perambulation mastication is indeed multitasking at its most mundane; the metaphor was surely as invigorating as a just-unwrapped stick of wintergreen Trident once upon a toothy time. But it lacks all flavor now. Time to spit it out.Drank the Kool-Aid. How this reference to the mass suicide of hundreds of Jim Jones’s followers became an all-purpose knock on what any excessively credulous politician or overly obedient voter has done is beyond me.That dog won’t hunt. Because it’s a Shih Tzu? A bichon frise?Put on your big-boy pants. Pundits tell timid, oversensitive politicians to do this and then wonder why so many Americans find us snotty. That’s the epitome of immaturity.Thanks to Karen Simonsen of Sisters, Ore., Sheri Sidwell of Alton, Ill., and Bill Blackburn of Austin, Tex., among others, for suggesting one or more of the above. “Words Worth Sidelining” is a recurring newsletter feature.For the Love of SentencesGetty ImagesThe Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus was pithy and pointed in her take on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s lavish maritime getaways with a billionaire Republican donor: “Beware new friends bearing yachts.” (Thanks to Tom Morman of Leipsic, Ohio, and Bonnie Ross of Sarasota, Fla., for nominating this.)Also in The Post, Ron Charles examined an alliteratively named publisher of “pro-God” children’s stories: “The Brave Books website says, ‘It take courage to stand up for the truth.’ It take grammar, too, but God works in mysterious ways.” (Pam Gates, Rockville, Md., and Cynthia Bazinet, Upper Port La Tour, Nova Scotia)And David Von Drehle took issue with a right-wing Texas jurist’s ruling to block access to the abortion drug mifepristone, asserting that unelected judges “should be as modest and unassuming as a crossing guard in a Mennonite village where all the horses are old and footsore.” (Richard Rampell, Palm Beach, Fla., and Bobbie Steinhart, Berkeley, Calif., among others)In Politico, Rich Lowry contextualized Trump’s appearance at his Waco, Tex., rally with the J6 Prison Choir: “It’d be a little like Richard Nixon running for the 1976 Republican presidential nomination, and campaigning with a barbershop quartet made up of the Watergate burglars.” (Karen Hughes, Tumwater, Wash., and Colleen Kelly, Manhattan)In The New York Times, Jesse Green had advice for theatergoers filing into a new Broadway production: “Bring earplugs. Not just because the songs in ‘Bad Cinderella,’ the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that opened on Thursday at the Imperial Theater, are so crushingly loud. The dialogue, too, would benefit from inaudibility. For that matter, bring eye plugs: The sets and costumes are as loud as the songs. If there were such a thing as soul plugs, I’d recommend them as well.” (Conrad Macina, Landing, N.J.)Also in The Times, John McWhorter noted the existence, in the dictionary, of fussy and archaic terms that have fallen far from use and survive “more as puckish abstractions than actual words. They remind me of the 32-inch-waist herringbone pants from the 1980s that I have never been able to bring myself to get rid of, along with my compass and my protractor.” (Fred Jacobs, Queens, N.Y.)And James Poniewozik described the look and feel of the Manhattan courthouse in which Trump was arraigned: “The scene was gray, humdrum, municipal, more ‘Night Court’ than Supreme Court. You could practically smell the vending-machine coffee.” (Gil Ghitelman, Westport, Conn., and Adam Eisenstat, Pittsburgh)To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.What I’m Reading and DoingGretchen Rubin’s new book begins with a scene that had special resonance for me: She visits the eye doctor, who gives her a bit of troubling news that prompts her to take a fresh, different look at the world around her. “In an instant,” she writes, “all my senses seemed to sharpen. It was as if every knob in my brain had suddenly been dialed to its maximum setting of awareness.” Her story from that point on is much different from mine, but it’s characterized by a similar impulse to summon wonder and gratitude, and it showcases her trademark wisdom about making the most of our days. The book, “Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World,” will be available Tuesday.My Times colleague Kate Zernike’s new book, “The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science,” is a perfect marriage of compelling material and formidable journalist. In a review in The Times, the “Lessons in Chemistry” author Bonnie Garmus called “The Exceptions,” which was published in late February, “excellent and infuriating,” the latter adjective referring to the injustices Kate chronicles.I’m a big admirer of the writing that Tim Miller and Jonathan V. Last do for The Bulwark, so when they asked me to join them last week on their podcast, “The Next Level,” I was delighted. (Sarah Longwell is their partner in the podcast but wasn’t around for our conversation.) We talked about politics, higher education and aging. Also, I guess, personal hygiene and self-indulgence? They titled the episode “Unacknowledged Bubble Baths,” an intriguing allusion to some bit of banter that escapes my memory. You can find “Unacknowledged Bubble Baths” (I just had to repeat it) here.On a Personal NoteHarold M. Lambert/Getty ImagesI relished many of the smart, witty articles about Gwyneth Paltrow’s days in court, but I can’t say whether the authors’ descriptions of her couture and her hauteur jibed with my impressions. I never watched so much as a minute of the proceedings.I saw precisely one short snippet of Alex Murdaugh’s testimony en route to his murder conviction, but that was that. I otherwise sated myself with written accounts of his trial.And while I use links in online articles and on social media to sample politicians’ speeches and public appearances, I don’t see nearly as much of Ron DeSantis or Kyrsten Sinema as a newscast or political talk show would air. That’s because there are few newscasts and political talk shows in my life.Am I guilty of grave professional dereliction? I wonder. I worry. Can I (or anyone else) read the culture intelligently without closely monitoring television, which is an important portal into it, a principal mirror of it and the medium that influences many Americans’ thinking and behavior like no other? Quite possibly not.But I’d like to believe that less television can equal more insight. That pulling back and tuning out — to a degree — are constructive.I’m singling out television, but I’m really speaking about something broader. I’m referring to a kind of indiscriminately rapt, instantly reactive attention to the scandal of the week, the melodrama of the day, the fascination of the hour. Many of those developments and details are ephemeral, disposable — and that’s not clear if you’re twitchily tracking them in real time. The ones with real consequences reach us in ways beyond the breathless exclamations on air. They also reach us multiple times, their repetition and endurance a measure of their import.Besides, is hyper-vigilance any way to live? Is it sustainable? Not for me, not as I get older, not in this addled era of ours.To examine the hurly-burly of our current world from a certain distance, with a certain detachment, is to see things in more accurate proportion, with better perspective — or at least I can make that argument. I think I buy it.But I acknowledge another possibility: I’m just doing what I must to stay several steps ahead of utter exhaustion and thorough disillusionment. That’s reason enough. More