Elections

Whether for her pathbreaking role as the first woman on a Republican presidential ticket or for rapping “Baby Got Back” on the Masked Singer, Sarah Palin has, since her debut on the national scene in 2008, made an art of attracting the spotlight.But fame — even in America — can get you only so far, and Ms. Palin’s campaign this year for Alaska’s only House seat has exposed the limits of her celebrity. Her fund-raising has lagged. Her campaign schedule has been unusually light for a candidate heading into a competitive election. And she announced recently that she’d received “crappy advice” from advisers and was no longer trying to raise money. In an unexpectedly close ranked-choice race, she has had to endure the indignity of encouraging voters to support her Republican opponent, in a last-ditch effort to prevent the Democrat, Mary Peltola, from running away with the seat.Ms. Palin may be about to fade once again from national politics, but the “mama grizzly” brand she invented is here to stay. Already, a group of female leaders is embracing and iterating on Ms. Palin’s trademark mom-knows-best Republicanism. Some are politicians, railing against the powers-that-be; others are activists, speaking out against school closures and vaccine mandates. As these new mama bears enter the political sphere, they are transforming American discourse, harnessing motherhood itself as a political asset, just as Ms. Palin did before them. Even if she loses her battle to make it to Washington next week, in a broader cultural sense, Ms. Palin has already won the war. And a new generation of GOP women stand poised to carry her complex legacy forward.When John McCain chose Ms. Palin as his running mate in 2008, she was in her 40s and had only served less than two years as governor. Her many doubters noted, correctly, that she wasn’t ready for the job of vice president. But their criticisms were often shot through with a condescension and sexism that had less to do with Ms. Palin’s experience than with her looks, clothes and identity as a mother of five.Few female politicians before her had emphasized their lives as mothers to the extent she did. She held her baby onstage right after accepting the nomination, deliberately presenting herself as a down-to-earth “hockey mom” and later on as a protective “mama grizzly.” Ms. Palin’s folksy demeanor was often ridiculed as a gimmick and Ms. Palin herself as an ignoramus. But the course of political events soon proved that she was on to something. The Tea Party wave during Barack Obama’s first term swept Palin imitators like Michele Bachmann and Christine O’Donnell to national prominence, women who were likely to be found in jeans at the gun range, when they weren’t giving a speech in stilettos. Rather than leaving family life at home the way men always had, which a previous generation of women had seen as a necessity to succeed professionally, this new generation saw how womanhood and motherhood added significantly to their brand. By signaling their tenacity in the domestic sphere, they implied their toughness in the political arena. And they increased their populist appeal.Among those who noticed their potential was Donald Trump’s future adviser, Steve Bannon, who made a 2010 documentary called “Fire from the Heartland” glorifying Mrs. Bachmann and other Tea Party women, as well as a 2011 documentary about Ms. Palin herself called “The Undefeated,” framing her femininity and Everywoman image as an unsung asset for the GOP.Of course, Mr. Bannon and the right as a whole eventually found a different champion, and while Mr. Trump left little room for also-rans like Ms. Palin, his time in office helped her particular strain of conservatism mutate and spread — giving rise to a new, Trumpier version of Ms. Palin’s mama grizzly.This new generation’s pugnaciousness makes Ms. Palin’s “Going Rogue” days look subdued. Conservative moms from all over the country have turned local school board meetings into contentious showdowns over policy and curriculum, organized by groups like Moms for Liberty who say they are “on a mission to stoke the fires of liberty.” “We do NOT co-parent with the government,” reads the back of one of the T-shirts for sale in the moms’ online merch store.Shades of Ms. Palin can be seen in Representatives Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, whose gun-toting photo-ops recall Ms. Palin’s rural, hunting-and-fishing image. But Kari Lake, the hard-right former news anchor running for governor in Arizona, is perhaps the paradigmatic New Mama Bear. One moment, she’s literally vacuuming a red carpet for Mr. Trump; the next, she’s calling her Democratic opponent a coward and the media the “right hand of the Devil.” Ms. Lake shares Ms. Palin’s instinct for the spotlight and feel for optics, as well as her affection for copacetic mama bears (Ms. Lake has often used the term). But while Ms. Palin lost control of her image to a skeptical, often condescending news media (remember the infamous Katie Couric interview in which the candidate couldn’t name any newspapers she read?), the steely, intense Ms. Lake has made a sport of antagonizing the reporters on her trail and excelled at turning the exchanges into content. The rise of the New Mama Bear might not have been possible without the fragmentation of a media now more drawn than ever toward controversy and the outrageous.Ms. Lake, who has a knack for generating outrage, stands a very good chance of winning. And she is far from the only one. In the heated conservative debate over schools, the new mama bears have been racking up some important wins, crashing school meetings to protest critical race theory and banning books with L.G.B.T.Q. themes or other content they deem inappropriate from school libraries. Moms for Liberty has claimed huge growth in membership over the past year and made itself a key player in the education battles that have marked this midterm cycle. Top Republicans have embraced the school controversies, showing just how potent this new paradigm has become on a national scale. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who gave the keynote speech at Moms for Liberty’s “Joyful Warriors” conference this summer, endorsed several of their school board candidates, and they went on to win their primaries. The effect could be that the new mama bears see their trademark political issues high on the agenda for the 2024 Republican primary.It’s ironic that Ms. Palin, the mother of mama bear politicking, should be an afterthought during a moment so clearly borne of her own trailblazing prime. But that’s often how it goes in politics, where an innovation’s impact is obvious only in hindsight — once someone else has perfected it.Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) is a reporter who has covered politics for BuzzFeed News and The Atlantic.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

Second only to how much the this country accomplished in two decades — no set of colonies had ever liberated itself, nor since Rome had anyone designed a republic that could endure — was how much the founders quarreled among themselves.There were petty feuds, lifelong feuds, intermittent feuds, inexplicable feuds, deadly feuds. Those who lived and worked closely together quarreled. Those who spent little time in the same room quarreled. Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson fell out. Jefferson and John Adams fell out. So did Adams and Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine and George Washington, Washington and Jefferson. When John Adams sailed to France to negotiate a treaty of peace at the end of the war, Jefferson wondered with whom he would side. Adams hated both the French and the British. He also hated his colleagues, Franklin and John Jay.The language could be rich — and brutal. The most peevish, John Adams, naturally proved the most quotable. He found Franklin’s life “one continued insult to good manners and decency.” He called Hamilton “a bastard brat of a Scotch peddler” — three times, in three different letters, over 10 years. He deemed Washington “illiterate, unlearned, unread for his station.” Thomas Paine was to his mind “a mongrel between pig and puppy, begotten by a wild boar on a bitch wolf.” There was ample reason Jefferson should compare John Adams — with whom he ultimately reconciled, a decade before their deaths — to “a poisonous weed.”The collisions tell us a great deal about the personalities at play; a straight-spined, word-spewing John Adams was never going to fare well with a supple, silent Thomas Jefferson. But the collisions also reveal deep-seated, warring strains in the national character.Nowhere was that more apparent than in the ill-starred friendship of John Hancock and Samuel Adams. The two spent the most hair-raising hours of their lives in each other’s company. They worked side by side over nearly three decades. But they did so intermittently, as for much of that time they were not on speaking terms.Colleagues in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, Adams and Hancock colluded to undermine and oust a royal governor. Together they conspired to publish his private letters. Together they patrolled a Boston wharf over several critical evenings in December 1773, when they collaborated in plotting the destruction of East India Company tea. The two most wanted men in Massachusetts, they shared a Lexington bedroom on the night of April 18, 1775. Together they heard, from Paul Revere, of their imminent arrest. At dawn, as British soldiers and British colonists fired at each other for the first time, Hancock and Adams huddled together, several miles away, in a swamp. Which did not make of them natural companions.Having inherited one of New England’s greatest fortunes at a young age, Hancock was an early American plutocrat. He lived and entertained, reported one neighbor, “like a prince.” In modern terms Hancock was the billionaire philanthropist who never met a naming opportunity he could resist. He gave Boston a fire engine, a bandstand, streetlights, trees, a library, a church bell. (There were no media companies in those days.) He liked to be thanked and got his money’s worth; his name was everywhere bandied about. The common people, a minister noted, would support Hancock even if they knew nothing of his character. There was reason one Boston visitor called him “the king of the rabble.”Fifteen years Hancock’s senior, Adams was a principled, penniless political operator, an unwavering republican who trusted that once colonial tempers calmed, the clock would reset itself, and piety, education and virtue would among them save the American day.An expert reader of men, Adams had early on encouraged Hancock’s political ambitions. He guessed that the attention would please the young man, whose fortune would please the party. Adams remained on hand to soothe a petulant Hancock when wayward comments left him bruised. He coaxed him back to the fold when Hancock attempted to skulk off. He directed him to the spotlight, Hancock’s preferred address.It made for an uneasy pairing. One man was all preening and extravagance, the other all austerity and ideals. Hancock displayed in his mansion the magnificent John Singleton Copley portrait of Adams that today hangs in Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, a portrait Hancock most likely commissioned. But at various junctures he also attempted to distance himself from his mentor. Crown officials compared Adams’s recruiting of Hancock with the devil’s seduction of Eve. Every time the younger man attempted to liberate himself, Adams would — like a squid — “discharge his muddy liquid,” disorienting Hancock all over again.Early in the 1770s, Hancock finally succumbed to the blandishments of the royal governor, who reminded him of the toll Adams and his radical politics were taking on Hancock’s private affairs. He bought off Hancock with a corps of ceremonial cadets; Hancock threw himself into ordering musical instruments and uniforms, outfitting his men in scarlet coats and beaver hats. He swore off all connection with Adams, whom he hoped never to see again. He then started a campaign to oust Adams from the Massachusetts House, proposing an inquiry into his finances. (They were a morass.) Hancock managed to detach nearly a third of Boston voters from Adams, who was forced to run about town, defending himself against comments he had never made.Ultimately friends reconciled the two, though the relationship limped along from slight to recrimination and back again. One man was all steadfast starch, the other “flattered by ideas of his own consequence,” as a contemporary put it. At the same time, there were no illusions about who was directing whom. As one Crown officer saw it, Hancock was “a poor contemptible fool, led about by Adams.”The two arrived together at the second Continental Congress but would fall out spectacularly on that larger stage. Adams was particularly disgusted by Hancock’s attempt to arrange for a formal farewell ceremony before a Philadelphia departure; it was the kind of ostentation that Adams abhorred in a nascent republic. Hancock traveled north with a troop of light horse and liveried servants that left the country people gaping in awe. Adams quietly made the same trip several weeks later. Tavern keepers along the way complained: Hancock and his enormous retinue had neglected to settle their bills.Back in Boston, Hancock lost no time in maligning Adams. He nursed a rumor that Adams had participated in the Conway Cabal, a shadowy plot against General Washington. Adams could only stutter in disbelief. He did his best to ignore the slight, but it stung. To any and all he insisted that though Hancock considered him his enemy, he considered Hancock a friend.The two disagreed violently about Shays’ Rebellion in 1786, when western Massachusetts farmers rose up in armed revolt against new taxes. Adams saw the ringleaders as a threat to a legitimately elected government. He believed they should hang. As governor, Hancock pardoned them.Though the two reconciled briefly before Hancock’s death, their ghosts continued to fight it out in the press, precisely as their spirits do today.We have landed at the very intersection where the founders parted ways, tax cuts leading in one direction, Medicare and Social Security in the other. With mere days to go before the midterms, we appear to be agreed that, once again, it’s the economy, stupid. But beyond inflation and unemployment looms a far more ominous concern. Can democracy survive a stampede of billionaires? Can a capitalist country remain a country of equals?Some two centuries later, those questions may haunt us more than any other issue that divided the founders, who — for all their differences — could never have envisioned so much wealth so firmly concentrated in so few hands. To the 18th- century merchant elite, the demands of the people endangered the nation’s prosperity. Wall Street makes the same case today when it argues in favor of trickle-down economics. To Adams’s mind, the greater danger came from the elite calling the shots. Privilege, he believed, should step aside, to make room for opportunity and industry.His vote was for progress and prosperity across the board, for what matured into the American dream. He could not have imagined that torrents of money might one day spill noiselessly into elections, any more than he could have imagined that — appropriate though it might be — he was to live on as a beer, John Hancock as an insurance company.Stacy Schiff, recipient of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for biography, is the author, most recently, of “The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams,” from which this essay is adapted.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

To win election, Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right allies harnessed perceived threats to Israel’s Jewish identity after ethnic unrest last year and the subsequent inclusion of Arab lawmakers in the government.LOD, Israel — The sectarian unrest between Arabs and Jews that swept across Israeli cities in May 2021 helped end Benjamin Netanyahu’s last term in office. Seventeen months later, fallout from that same unrest has helped put him back in power — at the head of one of the most right-wing coalitions Israel has ever known.Last year’s riots, in places like Lod, a central city with a mixed Arab and Jewish population, helped nudge Naftali Bennett — a onetime ally of Mr. Netanyahu — toward breaking ranks. Mr. Bennett ran on the promise of trying to heal Israel’s sectarian divides, and he formed a rival coalition with centrist, leftist and Arab lawmakers that ousted Mr. Netanyahu from office last June.Right-wing Jewish voters this past week punished Mr. Bennett for that decision, which they grew to see as a betrayal of Israel’s Jewish identity. His party suffered a wipeout in the general election on Monday, while support for a more extreme alliance doubled. And it is that far-right alliance, Religious Zionism, that has given back to Mr. Netanyahu his parliamentary majority.“Nobody who voted for Bennett looked at what happened over the last year and thought, ‘Let’s do that again,’” said Noam Dreyfuss, a community organizer in Lod who voted for Mr. Bennett in 2021.“Most of us voted this time for Religious Zionism,” Mr. Dreyfuss said. With Religious Zionism, he added, “What you vote for is what you get.”An event on Friday that was organized by Noam Dreyfuss, a community organizer in Lod who voted for Naftali Bennett in 2021 but for Religious Zionism this year.Amit Elkayam for The New York TimesMr. Dreyfuss on Friday in Lod. With Religious Zionism, he said, “What you vote for is what you get.”Amit Elkayam for The New York TimesIsrael’s rightward shift began decades ago and accelerated after the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in the early 2000s. A wave of Palestinian terrorist attacks at the time swayed many Israelis toward the right-wing narrative that Israel had no partner for peace.Israel’s lurch toward the far right in this election, however, was also born from more recent fears about Israel losing its Jewish identity.The 2021 riots occurred against the backdrop of unrest in Jerusalem and the outbreak of war between Israel and Gazan militants. The unrest saw two Arabs and two Jews killed, hundreds injured and thousands arrested, most of them Arabs. Among Arabs, the fallout fueled a sense of discrimination and danger. Among Jews, it fed fears of an enemy within — Israel’s Arab minority, which forms about a fifth of the population of nine million.Ever since, the riots have become a shorthand among some Jews for wider anxiety about other kinds of threats, including deadly attacks on Israelis and unrest in southern Israel this year.The formation of a unity government last summer that included right-wingers like Mr. Bennett as well as Arab Islamists was partly rooted in political pragmatism, but it also aimed to salve the wounds of the riots and encourage greater Jewish-Arab partnership.Yet to many right-wing voters, it was seen as a betrayal. They perceived the coalition’s dependence on Raam, the Arab party that sealed the government’s majority, as a danger to the state’s Jewish character. The efforts by Jewish-led leftist parties in the coalition to secularize aspects of Israeli public life, like permitting public transportation on the Jewish Sabbath, also exacerbated fears that Israel’s Jewishness was under threat.Mr. Netanyahu’s main far-right ally, Itamar Ben-Gvir, campaigned on a promise to tackle perceived lawlessness, end perceived Arab influence on government and strengthen Israel’s Jewish identity.Itamar Ben-Gvir, Mr. Netanyahu’s main far-right ally, during a night walk with supporters last month in Jerusalem.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York TimesMr. Ben-Gvir’s main campaign slogan asked: “Who’s the landlord here?”Critics of Mr. Ben-Gvir focus on his history of extremism and antagonism toward Arabs.As a young man, he was convicted of racist incitement and support for a terrorist group. He was barred from army service because Israeli officials deemed him too extremist. He was a follower of a rabbi who wanted to strip Arab Israelis of their citizenship. Until 2020, he hung in his home a large photograph of a Jewish extremist who shot dead 29 Palestinians in a West Bank mosque in 1994. Today, he still wants to deport anyone he deems disloyal to Israel.But many of Mr. Ben-Gvir’s new supporters saw someone else: a straight-talker who recognized their anxieties and proposed a response.“People voted for him, not necessarily because they are racists, but because they thought he might be a strong leader that could bring order to the street,” said Shuki Friedman, the vice president of the Jewish People Policy Institute, a Jerusalem-based research group that focuses on Jewish identity.The streets of Lod on Friday. Sectarian unrest swept across Israeli cities, including Lod, last year.Amit Elkayam for The New York TimesHussen Shehada, the father of the former Lod city councilor Fida Shehada, picking olives in his garden on Friday in Lod.Amit Elkayam for The New York TimesMr. Ben-Gvir’s rise was propelled by Israel’s “general shift to the right, fears over personal security and fears for the Jewish character of the state,” Dr. Friedman said.Among the Palestinian minority, which fears Mr. Ben-Gvir’s rise, the fallout from the riots also prompted electoral consequences in places like Lod.If the riots briefly raised questions for Jewish Israelis about the future of a Jewish homeland, they also left Palestinian Israelis feeling terrified and discriminated against.Nationally, the vast majority of those arrested in the riots were Arabs, leading to accusations of systemic bias.In Lod, a group of Jews accused of killing an Arab resident were quickly released and acquitted, while several Arabs suspected of killing a Jew were detained and charged with murder.In this past week’s election, this sense of disproportion helped bolster Balad, a small Arab party that won three times more votes in Lod than the other Arab-led parties combined. Its leader, Sami Abu Shehadeh, became known for defending the city’s Arab residents in the riots’ aftermath.Ms. Shehada on Friday outside her home in Lod. She voted this past week for Balad, a small Arab party that won three times more votes in Lod than the other Arab-led parties combined.Amit Elkayam for The New York Times“Sami was here with the people after the events of May,” said Fida Shehada, a former Lod city councilor who voted Balad for the first time. “It’s natural for people here to support him.”Known in Arabic as Lydda or Lydd, Lod’s recent tensions exacerbate longstanding Palestinian trauma. During the wars surrounding the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, after local Arabs and their allies refused the partition proposed by the United Nations, many Palestinian residents of the city were expelled and never allowed to return.Mr. Ben-Gvir’s new supporters say they do not necessarily agree with all of his positions.Rinat Mazuz-Bloch, a youth group leader, voted for Mr. Bennett in 2021 and Mr. Ben-Gvir in 2022 — but not out of a desire for revenge.“People didn’t vote Ben-Gvir because we want to hit the Arabs back,” Ms. Mazuz-Bloch said. “They’re here and we need to relate to them.”But, she added, “We have to say out loud that this is a Jewish state.”Rinat Mazuz-Bloch, a youth group leader, on Friday with her family in their home in Lod. She voted for Mr. Bennett in 2021 and Mr. Ben-Gvir in 2022.Amit Elkayam for The New York TimesA game of table tennis on Friday in the backyard of Omri Saar, a city councilman for Likud in Lod.Amit Elkayam for The New York TimesMr. Dreyfuss, the community organizer, said that he was not necessarily opposed to Arab participation in government, and that he accepted that Raam, the small Arab party that formed part of the departing government, made a sincere effort to accept Israel’s status as a Jewish state.But Mr. Dreyfuss still believes that an Arab party should not hold the balance of power in the government, as Raam did.“The mistake is to be dependent on them,” he said. “Once you have a majority, then you can add them.”Mr. Ben-Gvir’s success was rooted not only in his hard-line approach to Arabs, but also in his opposition to the departing government’s moves to secularize aspects of Israeli public life. And some simply voted for him to enlarge his party’s presence in Parliament, making it harder for Mr. Netanyahu’s party, Likud, to form an alliance with centrists.“The vote for Religious Zionism was a vote for a clearer and sharper position,” said Omri Saar, a city councilman for Likud in Lod.After Mr. Bennett’s U-turn in 2021, Mr. Saar said, “There’s no doubt many chose a more extreme party than Likud to make sure that their vote would stay in the right-wing camp.”And to Mr. Saar, that was a positive thing, even if it cost Likud a few votes itself. “It’s good that we have someone who can pull us in the right direction,” he said.Religious Zionism posters affixed to a house on Friday in Lod. Amit Elkayam for The New York TimesMr. Dreyfuss, whose organization was subject to an arson attack during the riots, also denied that Mr. Ben-Gvir’s election would be so harmful to Arabs.By cracking down on lawlessness in Arab neighborhoods, Mr. Ben-Gvir would improve the personal safety of any Arab who was not involved in crime, Mr. Dreyfuss said.“Everyone can live here,” Mr. Dreyfuss said.“But they need to remember that we’re the landlords here,” he added.Reporting was contributed by More

Alex Villanueva’s combative approach has antagonized many officials and spurred an extraordinary ballot measure that would allow county leaders to oust him.The deputies wore tactical gear as they descended on the white colonial in Santa Monica, Calif. Search warrant in hand, they pounded on the door. A helicopter thrummed above.The house belonged to Sheila Kuehl, 81, a former actress and attorney and a powerful longtime politician who emerged barefoot and agitated. Soon her computers and files — even photographs from her time starring on the sitcom “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis” — were carted away.According to the warrant, it was part of an investigation into a nonprofit run by Ms. Kuehl’s friend Patricia Giggans, whose home was also raided. But for many, the dramatic events in September represented a new level of retaliation ordered up by a confrontational leader: Alex Villanueva.Elected four years ago as sheriff of Los Angeles County, Mr. Villanueva, 59, has become one of California’s most polarizing figures, his tenure punctuated with what many see as combative behavior, perplexing politics and the antics of a cowboy lawman.Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s double-decker campaign bus at a rally last month.Lauren Justice for The New York TimesRecoiling from efforts to regulate his power, he has battled with public officials and antagonized his critics. Among them are Ms. Kuehl, who serves on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors — the governing body that oversees the sheriff’s department budget — and Ms. Giggans, who sits on the county’s civilian oversight commission. Both have called for the sheriff’s resignation.Unlike police chiefs who are appointed, sheriffs in most states answer directly to voters, giving them largely unchecked powers over an array of law enforcement matters, from issuing gun permits to running the jails. Few have pushed the bounds of their authority like Sheriff Villanueva.In his first term running the largest sheriff’s department in the nation, he has been accused of opening criminal investigations into his detractors, covering up inmate abuse and deputy misconduct, unlawfully reinstating a friend fired for alleged domestic abuse and bullying a county executive, which led to a $1.5-million settlement.He has done all of it with an air of braggadocio, gaining a new following while infuriating the Democratic political establishment that runs Los Angeles. Despite being a Democrat, he has expressed his disdain for “the woke left,” scoffed at the notion of tension between the police and the Black community, and denounced county vaccine mandates for his employees.His actions have prompted the county supervisors to place an extraordinary measure on the ballot allowing them to oust him — if he survives the election on Tuesday against a former police chief, Robert Luna, who has been endorsed by prominent Democrats and labor unions.Should Sheriff Villanueva win, he has no plans to curb his public clashes with local leaders.“I will call them out for doing something wrong,” he said in an interview at his campaign office. “I’ve never hesitated on that. And I won’t now.”Robert Luna, left, the former police chief of Long Beach, Calif., has been backed by prominent Democrats in his campaign for Los Angeles County sheriff against Alex Villanueva, the candidate they once supported.Pool photo by Myung J. ChunA Frustrated DeputyThe first time Mr. Villanueva announced he was running for sheriff, he was just seven years into his career. It was 1993, and he was assigned to the East Los Angeles station, a place where deputies tended to be hardened by the travails of facing off against the Maravilla gangs. There was also a reputed culture of deputies forming their own gangs within the station itself.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Biden’s Speech: In a prime-time address, President Biden denounced Republicans who deny the legitimacy of elections, warning that the country’s democratic traditions are on the line.State Supreme Court Races: The traditionally overlooked contests have emerged this year as crucial battlefields in the struggle over the course of American democracy.Democrats’ Mounting Anxiety: Top Democratic officials are openly second-guessing their party’s pitch and tactics, saying Democrats have failed to unite around one central message.Social Security and Medicare: Republicans, eyeing a midterms victory, are floating changes to the safety net programs. Democrats have seized on the proposals to galvanize voters.Mr. Villanueva was considered an oddity. “Alex was more of an intellectual bookworm who undoubtedly had a hard time fitting in,” said Matt Rodriguez, a former captain who was once close friends with him and was among more than two dozen people interviewed by The Times for this story. “He can’t get out of his own way, because he believes he knows more than anybody else.”The idea of Mr. Villanueva leading the department was absurd to many — at one point, he was put on bike patrol, taking to the streets in a white polo shirt with green shorts — and he eventually faded from the race.But Mr. Villanueva said he was well received and respected as a deputy. “I didn’t fit the normal mold, I didn’t try to blend in,” he said.Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, left, and his wife, Vivian, a retired deputy, sharing a light moment during his swearing-in ceremony in 2018.Jae C. Hong/Associated PressMr. Villanueva often complained that he did not get promoted and said it was because of racial discrimination. He wrote letters to newspapers, penning several to The Los Angeles Times.“In law enforcement in particular, the ‘good ol’ boy’ network routinely promotes less-qualified male whites over more-qualified minorities, the untold twist of affirmative action,” he wrote in 2002.The son of a second-generation Polish American mother and Puerto Rican father, Sheriff Villanueva said that he has experienced being an outsider ever since he was 9, when his family moved from New York to Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. He had to quickly learn Spanish, while his blue eyes led to calls of “gringo.” His father ran a print shop, and the family was poor enough that he felt like a second-class citizen at his Catholic school, he said.Commander John Satterfield, who is now the sheriff’s chief of staff, said he and Mr. Villanueva used to sit and talk over lunches brought from home back when they were sergeants at the training academy. Neither was the type to get beers after work. “Even back then, he had said, ‘There’s one position they can’t keep me out of and that’s sheriff, so maybe one of these days, I’ll run,’” Commander Satterfield said.Mr. Villanueva was promoted to lieutenant after settling a lawsuit with the department in which he said he had been passed over for promotions because he was Hispanic.In 2017, Mr. Villanueva announced his plan to try for the top position once more.Democrats rallied around his promises of transparency and criminal justice reform, and he pulled off a stunning victory, beating an incumbent and jumping six ranks overnight. He characterized his win as the triumph of an insider willing to “speak truth to power.”Sheriff Villanueva sent deputies to Venice Beach to clean up homeless encampments. The effort was dismissed by critics as showboating since the area is in Los Angeles Police Department territory.Sarah Reingewirtz/The Orange County Register, via Associated PressQuestions From Day 1On Dec. 3, 2018, Sheriff Villanueva was in a black Suburban, on his way to his swearing-in ceremony, his wife, son and granddaughter by his side. Also in the car was Caren Carl Mandoyan, a deputy fired under the former sheriff and with whom Mr. Villanueva had recently grown close.The route included a planned stop: the East Los Angeles station, the same place he had launched his campaign the year before with little fanfare. When he got out of the car this time, deputies greeted him eagerly, asking for photos. Many were later seen at the ceremony sitting in a reserved section up front.“He reminds me of the kid who was always picked last for the baseball team growing up,” said Bob Olmsted, a former top administrator who worked for Mr. Villanueva. “Now he’s the sheriff, and he owns the ballpark, the bat and glove, everything. And he gets to pick who he wants on his team.”Mr. Olmsted had been among those hired to replace more than a dozen fired administrators who had worked for the sheriff’s predecessor, Jim McDonnell. Optimistic about Sheriff Villanueva, Mr. Olmsted soon saw him as vindictive and impressionable and left after a year.He recalled how he and Ray Leyva, who had taken on the role of undersheriff before being fired, showed up for their first official meeting at the sheriff’s home in La Habra. To their surprise, the agenda included executive promotions for people whom they believed were considerably underqualified. “He said, ‘I owe it to them because they helped me get elected,’” Mr. Olmsted said. “Ray and I looked at each other and go, ‘This is ludicrous.’ And that was Day 1.”In an email, the sheriff’s campaign director, Javier González, defended personnel decisions, saying that Mr. Villanueva “had a limited batch he could trust.”Sheriff Villanueva would soon develop a reputation for instigating questionable criminal inquiries into public officials that never would result in charges, a pattern that the chair of the civilian oversight commission said suggested ulterior motives. He was also accused of basing decisions on personal loyalty.It was the sheriff’s promises to his friend and former deputy Mr. Mandoyan that widely signaled a leader who did not want to be reined in. Mr. Mandoyan had been fired after being investigated for domestic abuse, but the sheriff reinstated him with $200,000 in back pay and told The New York Times last month it was “a horrendous, wrongful termination.” Courts disagreed and allowed the county to remove Mr. Mandoyan, including a state court of appeals that found that the sheriff had acted unlawfully.“Carl Mandoyan was Villanueva’s shot across the bow,” said Carol Lin, a department administrator before the firings. “It was a signal to the rank-and-file that ‘I’m going to stand up to the powers that be.’”The sheriff has defended his investigations as legitimate probes into potential criminal activity, and he and his supporters say he has been a principled and fair leader who cleaned up the department. They pointed out that his investigation into corrupt deputies led to dismissals. Among his other accomplishments, the sheriff said, were implementing body-worn cameras and diversifying the work force.He also frequently says that he made good on a promise to prevent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials from accessing the jails, though critics say he did so only under pressure from county supervisors and watchdog organizations.Mr. Villanueva, left, walking in a procession behind a coroner’s van transporting the body of Joseph Gilbert Solano, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, in 2019. Mr. Solano was shot in an off-duty attack at a fast-food restaurant.Damian Dovarganes/Associated PressHis work often has been overshadowed by his hostility. He responded to criticism from Max Huntsman, the watchdog for the Sheriff’s Department, by opening criminal investigations into him, calling him a Holocaust denier and ultimately banning his access to the department’s facilities, personnel and databases.“I resist unethical, weaponized oversight, which is what they’re doing,” the sheriff said. Mr. Huntsman has not been charged with any crimes.Villanueva campaigning for re-election door-to-door last month in Carson, Calif.Lauren Justice for The New York TimesIn the spring, Mr. Villanueva drew national attention when he held a news conference to announce an investigation into a Los Angeles Times reporter who wrote about a department cover-up involving a deputy who knelt on an inmate’s head. Deputies allege in lawsuits that the sheriff helped hide the incident and retaliated against the whistle-blowers. Mr. Villanueva called the lawsuits frivolous.“How he ran, and what he ended up being — it’s so, so different,” said Eli Vera, who had been a top adviser to the sheriff but was demoted after he decided to try to unseat his boss in this year’s election.Shortly before resigning in March, a lawyer for the county sent an 84-page document to the California attorney general, Rob Bonta, requesting that he intervene in Sheriff Villanueva’s “intimidating, politically motivated investigations.”Initially, the attorney general said only that he would review the matter. But in September, Mr. Bonta announced he would take control of the inquiry into Ms. Kuehl, the county supervisor who has publicly dueled with the sheriff, saying the “unprecedented investigation” had raised serious questions for residents.It was just days after the raid on Ms. Kuehl’s home, and the move appeared to be a sign that a higher authority was taking charge — one who could restrain Sheriff Villanueva’s power.The sheriff, who said the Kuehl raid was not personal, responded with a different take, posting a letter on social media thanking the attorney general for looking into the city’s corruption.Then, just last week, Sheriff Villanueva held a news conference in which he questioned Mr. Bonta’s objectivity and whether he was obstructing justice.He declared a plan to request that the attorney general’s investigation now be monitored by the U.S. attorney’s office.Kirsten Noyes More

WASHINGTON — Are we ready for our new Republican overlords?Are we ready for an empowered Marjorie Taylor Greene?Are we ready for a pumped-up, pistol-packing Lauren Boebert?“How many AR-15s do you think Jesus would have had?” Boebert asked a crowd at a Christian campaign event in June. I’m going with none, honestly, but her answer was, “Well, he didn’t have enough to keep his government from killing him.”The Denver Post pleaded: “We beg voters in western and southern Colorado not to give Rep. Lauren Boebert their vote.”The freshman representative has recently been predicting happily that we’re in the end times, “the last of the last days.” If Lauren Boebert is in charge, we may want to be in the end times. I’m feeling not so Rapturous about the prospect.And then there’s the future first female president, Kari Lake, who lulls you into believing, with her mellifluous voice, statements that seem to emanate from Lucifer. She’s dangerous because, like Donald Trump, she has real skills from her years in TV. And she really believes this stuff, unlike Trump and Kevin McCarthy, who are faking it.As Cecily Strong said on “Saturday Night Live” last weekend, embodying Lake, “If the people of Arizona elect me, I’ll make sure they never have to vote ever again.”Speaking of “Paradise Lost,” how about Ron DeSantis? The governor of Florida, who’s running for a second term, is airing an ad that suggests that he was literally anointed by God to fight Democrats. God almighty, that’s some high-level endorsement.Much to our national shame, it looks like these over-the-top and way, way, way out-of-the mainstream Republicans — and the formerly normie and now creepy Republicans who have bent the knee to the wackos out of political expediency — are going to be running the House, maybe the Senate and certainly some states, perhaps even some that Joe Biden won two years ago.And it looks as if Kevin McCarthy will finally realize his goal of becoming speaker, but when he speaks, it will be Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan and Lauren Boebert doing the spewing. It will be like the devil growling through Linda Blair in “The Exorcist” — except it will be our heads spinning.Welcome to a rogue’s gallery of crazy: Clay Higgins, who’s spouting conspiracy theories about Paul Pelosi, wants to run the House Homeland Security Committee; Paul Gosar, whose own family has begged Arizonans to eject him from Congress, will be persona grata in the new majority.In North Carolina, Bo Hines, a Republican candidate for the House, wants community panels to decide whether rape victims are able to get abortions or not. He’s building on Dr. Oz’s dictum that local politicians should help make that call. Even Oprah turned on her creation, Dr. Odd.J.D. Vance, the Yale-educated, former Silicon Valley venture capitalist and author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” who called Trump “America’s Hitler” in 2016, before saluting him to gain public office, could join the Senate in January. Talk about American Elegy.Even though he wrote in his best seller that Yale Law School was his “dream school,” he now trashes the very system that birthed him. Last year, he gave a speech titled “The Universities Are the Enemy”: His mother-in-law is a provost at the University of California San Diego.It’s disturbing to think of Vance side by side with Herschel Walker. Walker was backed by Mitch McConnell, who countenanced an obviously troubled and flawed individual even if it meant degrading the once illustrious Senate chamber.Overall, there are nearly 300 election deniers on the ballot, but they will be all too happy to accept the results if they win.People voting for these crazies think they’re punishing Biden, Barack Obama and the Democrats. They’re really punishing themselves.These extreme Republicans don’t have a plan. Their only idea is to get in, make trouble for President Biden, drag Hunter into the dock, start a bunch of stupid investigations, shut down the government, abandon Ukraine and hold the debt limit hostage.Democrats are partly to blame. They haven’t explained how they plan to get a grip on the things people are worried about: crime and inflation. Voters weren’t hearing what they needed to hear from Biden, who felt morally obligated to talk about the threat to democracy, even though that’s not what people are voting on.As it turns out, a woman’s right to control her body has been overshadowed by uneasiness over safety and economic security.To top it off, Trump is promising a return. We’ll see if DeSantis really is the chosen one. In Iowa on Thursday night, Trump urged the crowd to “crush the communists” at the ballot box and said that he was “very, very, very” close to deciding to “do it again.”Trump, the modern Pandora, released the evil spirits swirling around us — racism, antisemitism, violence, hatred, conspiracy theories, and Trump mini-mes who should be nowhere near the levers of power.Heaven help us.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

In February 2020, in the midst of a vitriolic presidential election, an idealistic group of donors from across the ideological spectrum met to plan an ambitious new project. They called themselves the New Pluralists and pledged to spend a whopping $100 million over the next decade to fight polarization by funding face-to-face interactions among Americans across political, racial and religious divides.Fixing what is broken in American democracy requires more than changing voter ID laws or the shape of our congressional districts, they argued. It requires forging deep personal connections that will change hearts and minds and ultimately American culture itself.Their experiment rests on a basic idea: Far too many Americans lack the skills, the opportunity and even the inclination to work together across lines of difference toward a common goal. Part of the solution, these donors believe, is embracing a very old idea that has fallen out of fashion: pluralism.The term “cultural pluralism” was coined in the early 1900s by Horace Kallen, a Jewish philosopher who proposed it in the midst of a huge wave of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. He argued that rather than try to stamp out their Polishness, Italianness or Jewishness, as many white Anglo-Saxon Protestants wanted, America should be a “nation of nationalities” where people learn to work together across lines of difference. The freedom to be different but still participate in political life as a vital part of the whole was key to the country’s genius, he argued. Mr. Kallen thought of the American people not as a melting pot, where everyone turns into the same bland stew, but as an orchestra, where distinct sounds join harmoniously.That notion fuels the New Pluralists, too. Although it’s hard to find two people who describe the project the same way, respecting difference, not papering it over, is seen as central.In his era, Mr. Kallen drew fierce criticism from those who accused him of promoting a Balkanization of the country. A scathing review of his book in The New York Times in 1924 declared that the nation faced a stark choice: “Is it to remain one in spirit, tradition and language, or is it to become a hodgepodge boardinghouse for alien groups?” It wasn’t until the 1980s, with the rise of the idea of multiculturalism, that his ideas were widely embraced.Today the New Pluralists project is grappling with a similar set of challenges as the ones Mr. Kallen wrote about over a century ago. An influx of immigrants is once again challenging prevailing notions of who Americans are and what it takes to make a country harmonious and whole. At the same time, the country does indeed feel Balkanized along a host of fault lines: rural versus urban, young versus old, religious versus secular and, of course, red versus blue.But the critiques that pluralism faces today are different. Far from being considered too radical, pluralism might not sound radical enough in an era of insurrection and potential coups. To some activists, pluralism sounds like both-sides-ism or a call to meet in the mushy middle. And yet pluralism feels more crucial than ever. Our multiracial democracy can’t survive without it.I discovered the New Pluralists this summer after I attended an online workshop on depolarizing hosted by one of its grantees, a group called Braver Angels. I found the group online because, at a time when so much attention is paid to toxic politics, I wanted to know more about groups that stood for just the opposite.Co-founded by Bill Doherty, a Minneapolis-based marriage counselor, Braver Angels is an organization with grass-roots chapters across the country that teach conservatives and liberals to debunk lazy stereotypes and clarify disagreements without yelling. In the workshop I attended, reds and blues wrestled with how they typecast the other side. Nearly all the participants were white and looked to be over the age of 40. And they were, by definition, open to reaching across the partisan divide. In other words, they were low-hanging fruit. I came away feeling more hopeful about the country nonetheless.I realized then that there was a whole ecosystem of groups, created during the Trump years, that is dedicated to bridging divides: the People’s Supper, which helps communities host potluck dinners and other events that promote racial and political reconciliation; the One Small Step project at StoryCorps, which brings together strangers for recorded conversations about their lives; More in Common, which surveys public opinion and put out an influential paper about the country’s “exhausted majority.” The New Pluralists help fund them all.The idea for the New Pluralists came about in the wake of Donald Trump’s election. Jennifer Hoos Rothberg, the New York-based executive director of the Einhorn Collaborative, a foundation started by a Wisconsin-bred hedge fund manager, said it kept getting calls from people who were alarmed by the level of polarization and thought they could help fix it. One call came from Melissa Weintraub, a longtime conflict resolution practitioner who had worked with Israelis and Palestinians.“You know that tool kit I use in the Middle East? I want to bring that to Wisconsin and Iowa,” Ms. Rothberg recalled Ms. Weintraub saying.Right then and there, Ms. Rothberg told me, “we set up a rapid response organizing around bridging divides.” The Einhorn Collaborative gave away $6 million in one-off funds but wanted to do something bigger. In 2019, Ms. Rothberg invited other donors involved in similar work to a meeting in New York to see if they could pool their money to fund these projects on a larger scale. She purposefully invited donors from across the political spectrum. Stand Together Trust, formerly the Charles Koch Institute, which funds social ventures to solve common problems, agreed to join. But that made some social justice funders on the left balk because they didn’t want to be in the same room, Fay Twersky, who attended that meeting as a representative of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, told me.In the end, about a dozen donors stuck with it. They landed on the name the New Pluralists, partly because pluralism felt neutral in an era when so many words have taken on a partisan flavor. This past summer, they brought together a group of grantees for a retreat in Atlanta in an attempt to foster relationships among them. They included the civil rights thinker john powell of the Othering & Belonging Institute and Rachel Peric of Welcoming America. They are called field builders in the New Pluralists’ overly cerebral parlance. The big idea here is to turn pluralism into a coherent field — like public health — with clearly defined norms and practices that can be replicated, measured and improved.Lennon Flowers, a co-founder of the People’s Supper, told me that the gathering felt like a salve. She said the money and credibility her organization gets from the New Pluralists filter down to the local partners, showing that “this work matters and this proves we’re not alone.”But a big question remains: Can a group of wealthy donors change American culture from above? How exactly does that work? If you are trying to change a law, you hire a lobbyist. To change American culture, whom do you hire?Nevertheless, the group is doubling down on its vision. Over the summer, it put out a request for grant proposals from grass-roots groups engaged in this work. Eight hundred applications poured in — too many to fund. That’s when the New Pluralists began an effort to challenge donors to devote $1 billion over the next decade to pluralism, an initiative it announced at a White House unity summit in September.“The need is so great, and the opportunity is so great that we need more of philanthropy to take this seriously,” the New Pluralists’ executive director, Uma Viswanathan, told me.Even the most fervent of the New Pluralists admit that they aren’t sure they will succeed. But I hope they do. After all, orchestras don’t sound good by accident. People have to practice.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

The G.O.P. and corporate America, longtime allies, are showing signs of a breakup — which recent polls suggest will likely play out with a Republican House.The DealBook newsletter delves into a single topic or theme every weekend, providing reporting and analysis that offer a better understanding of an important issue in business. If you don’t already receive the daily newsletter, sign up here.Ten days ago, with the midterm elections fast approaching, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the flame-throwing, far-right Republican congresswoman from Georgia, was a guest on Steve Bannon’s podcast. With the Republicans favored to take control of the House of Representatives, Bannon popped the question that has been much on the minds of corporate executives:“Do corporations have anything to fear from a populist House, ma’am?” he asked.Ms. Greene cracked a steely smile. After Jan. 6, she said, “all the big corporations stopped donating to a whole bunch of my Republican colleagues.” She continued, “I want you to know — and I want them to know — that that’s not going to be forgotten.” She added, “There is [sic] going to be investigations.” Payback time, in other words.The G.O.P. and big business, happily married for so long, are in the midst of an ugly divorce — which recent polls indicate is likely to play out in a Republican-led House. It’s not just that dozens of companies pulled back from donating to the Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election (a pullback, to be sure, that didn’t last very long).It’s also that, at least since 2008, when the gay marriage fight spurred a number of chief executives to speak out, companies have been taking stands on issues that are usually associated with Democrats. Just in the past few years, many large corporations have publicly opposed voting laws passed by Republicans, supported Black Lives Matter, criticized the Supreme Court abortion ruling and embraced the environmental, social and governance movement known as E.S.G.Combine that with the kind of MAGA-oriented Republicans who have been winning recent elections — lawmakers who don’t rely on corporate donations and consider big companies to be part of the “woke” universe — and you can just picture the brutal hearings the next two years could bring. “It will be a much more aggressive Republican majority,” said Dan Clifton, the policy director of Strategas, a big asset management and institutional research firm.But it’s more complicated than MAGA congressmen beating up woke corporations. Kevin McCarthy, who is in line to be the new speaker of the House if the Republicans are in the majority, has been openly dismissive of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ever since the chamber backed 23 House Democrats in the 2020 election. Just this week, Axios reported that Mr. McCarthy told the chamber’s board members that he would not work with the business lobby unless it fired its C.E.O., Suzanne Clark, and replaced the leadership team. (The chamber told Axios that Ms. Clark has the executive committee’s “complete support.”)The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Biden’s Speech: In a prime-time address, President Biden denounced Republicans who deny the legitimacy of elections, warning that the country’s democratic traditions are on the line.State Supreme Court Races: The traditionally overlooked contests have emerged this year as crucial battlefields in the struggle over the course of American democracy.Democrats’ Mounting Anxiety: Top Democratic officials are openly second-guessing their party’s pitch and tactics, saying Democrats have failed to unite around one central message.Social Security and Medicare: Republicans, eyeing a midterms victory, are floating changes to the safety net programs. Democrats have seized on the proposals to galvanize voters.Even so, the chamber’s activity seems very much aligned with certain longstanding G.O.P. positions. In the last four months, the chamber has sued the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The lawsuits essentially argue that with the Democrats in charge, the agencies have been overzealous. As the minority party these past two years, Republicans have often made this complaint about the regulatory agencies. If they become the majority, they will be able to drive this home much more forcefully with investigations and hearings.So what will big business be facing if the Republicans take the House?Republican strategists say that hearings attacking “woke” corporations are inevitable, and have pointed to a handful of companies that are likely to be asked to testify at such hearings. Disney, for instance. When the company’s C.E.O., Bob Chapek, criticized the Florida law that limits what teachers can say to young students about gender and sexuality — and when Gov. Ron DeSantis responded by stripping the company of a special tax district — the publicity put Disney squarely in the sights of Republican House members.Delta Air Lines, based in Atlanta, could also be called to testify. Why? Because Delta’s chief executive, Ed Bastian, described Georgia’s 2021 voting rights bill — which critics said would make it more difficult for minorities to vote — as “unacceptable” and “based on a lie.”Nineteen Republican attorneys general are investigating the six largest U.S. banks for their climate change policies — which Republicans will no doubt pick up on. “Financial companies that are pushing for lesser use of fossil fuels will come under pressure,” said Mr. Clifton.But the company most likely to be scrutinized, Republican strategists say, is BlackRock, the giant asset manager, and its chief executive, Larry Fink. Just this week, BlackRock disclosed more details about its efforts to give investors direct access to vote their shares, in part as an answer to critics who believe the firm has too much influence. In his annual letters to C.E.O.s, Mr. Fink has forcefully made the case that climate-based goals and E.S.G. more generally are important both for society and for corporate bottom lines. Shareholders, he wrote in his most recent letter, “need to know where we stand on the societal issues intrinsic to our companies’ long-term success.”One person who has made the opposite case — that companies should stick to making money and abandon E.S.G. and politics — is the investor Vivek Ramaswamy, whose book “Woke Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam,” has been highly influential in Republican circles. Last spring, for instance, Mr. Ramaswamy spoke at the House Republican retreat in Florida. “What I had to say was very well received,” he told me.Then there are areas where Republicans are likely to aid companies, because their positions are so in synch with corporate goals. Mr. Clifton told me the Republicans will push hard for more energy infrastructure — like pipelines from Canada — which of course is something energy companies want.And Republicans and big business both want fewer regulations. With Republicans in charge, congressional committees will be questioning the actions of Democratic agency heads. Has the National Labor Relations Board become too pro-union, especially in its dealings with Amazon? Where is the S.E.C.’s authority to issue a proposed rule for climate-related disclosure? Is the C.F.P.B. pursuing a “radical and highly politicized agenda unbounded by statutory limits,” as a group of Republican senators described the agency in a strongly worded letter to its director, Rohit Chopra, last September? Is the F.T.C. chair, Lina Kahn, moving the agency too far to the left?As for the Environmental Protection Agency, long a Republican target, the trade publication E&E News predicts “multiple hourslong hearings,” “letters demanding documents from every corner of the agency” and “even subpoenas for text messages.”The big question is this: With a Democrat in the White House for at least another two years, and the possibility that the Senate will remain in Democratic hands, how much change can the Republicans actually bring about? Every strategist I spoke to had the same answer: probably not much.“They are going to want to show voters that the House is being run differently,” said Ron Bonjean, the co-founder of ROKK, a public affairs firm. “And score political points.” Neil Bradley, the chief policy officer for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, put it this way: “I think a lot of what companies are trying to grapple with is differentiating the political rhetoric from a policy agenda.”One area where Republicans could help get legislation passed is in regulation of Big Tech. Both Democrats and Republicans regularly criticize the big tech and social media companies, though for different reasons. Democrats are primarily concerned with antitrust issues while Republicans believe that the big social media companies are censoring conservative speech. During the current Congress, both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees passed bipartisan antitrust bills, though neither made it to the House or Senate floor. It may not be their preferred solution, but Mr. Clifton and others say they think Republicans hoping to punish the tech companies could sign onto the antitrust bills that the Democrats and the administration have been pushing. Here’s the most dizzying scenario of all. Suppose the Democrats keep the Senate and the Republicans take the House. On one day, a company like Chevron or a C.E.O. like Mr. Fink could be aggressively questioned by a Senate committee about why they are not pushing harder on climate change. Then the next day, the same group could be called before a House committee and questioned every bit as aggressively about why they are wasting shareholder money on climate change initiatives.What business wants most of all — what it always wants — is stability and predictability. Given the breakup between Republicans and business, if the Republicans take the House, that’s the one thing companies can be sure they won’t have.What do you think? Let us know: [email protected]. More

A guide to the biggest questions heading into Election Day.Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicIn 2020, Joe Biden’s presidential campaign was centered on removing Donald Trump from office, unifying the country and fighting for “the soul of the nation.” Two years later, the country is still fractured, with voters seemingly more anxious and disconnected than ever before.Over the last two months, Astead Herndon, host of “The Run-Up,” spoke with reporters, voters and newsmakers across the country to better understand the biggest issues heading into the midterm elections. With Election Day on Tuesday, here’s a guide from “The Run-Up” to the most important questions about what’s at stake.What did Democrats and Republicans get wrong about voters?In 2013, shortly after Barack Obama won his second presidential term, the G.O.P. issued an “autopsy” to understand where the party had gone wrong and blamed the party’s failures on an out-of-touch leadership that ignored minorities.In this episode, Astead spoke to Adam Nagourney, The Times’s former chief national political correspondent, and Kellyanne Conway, the former counselor to President Donald J. Trump, about how the Trump campaign went against the party’s recommendation in 2016, and to Jennifer Medina, a national politics reporter at The Times, about misconceptions about minority voters.The AutopsyIs democracy still the goal?In September of 2022, Mr. Biden argued that democracy was one of the core ideas on which the country was built and that Democrats and Republicans should join together in defending it. He repeated that call in the week before the midterm elections.But when Astead asked Representative James E. Clyburn, the highest-ranking Black member of Congress and a native of the formerly Confederate South, about the state of American democracy, Mr. Clyburn said that the country’s commitment to an inclusive political system had long wavered.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Biden’s Speech: In a prime-time address, President Biden denounced Republicans who deny the legitimacy of elections, warning that the country’s democratic traditions are on the line.State Supreme Court Races: The traditionally overlooked contests have emerged this year as crucial battlefields in the struggle over the course of American democracy.Democrats’ Mounting Anxiety: Top Democratic officials are openly second-guessing their party’s pitch and tactics, saying Democrats have failed to unite around one central message.Social Security and Medicare: Republicans, eyeing a midterms victory, are floating changes to the safety net programs. Democrats have seized on the proposals to galvanize voters.And when Robert Draper, a writer for The New York Times Magazine, was traveling through Arizona, he observed a deeply anti-democratic sentiment — one that he wrote was “distinct from anything I have encountered in over two decades of covering conservative politics.” In Arizona, Mr. Draper said Republicans saw democracy as an obstacle.The RepublicWhat prompted the transformation of American evangelicalism?A new class of conservative politicians has emerged, calling for the erasure of the separation between church and state and pushing the Republican Party further toward extremes. Others have embraced an identity as Christian nationalists — and attacked the idea of American democracy.Astead spoke with Ruth Graham, a Times national correspondent, about the origins of this grass-roots movement, and Dr. Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, about the next era of the evangelical church and the Republican Party it’s reshaping.The GuardrailsWill the fight over abortion rights unite Democrats?While Republicans deploy their playbook for national elections at the local level, anticipating and strategizing for policy changes across the country, Democrats have struggled to find a core message to rally around. “Democrats have so many issues we care about, it’s just such a big agenda,” Senator Kirsten Gillibrand told Astead. “It’s not really that our messaging is bad; it’s that we’re not all on the same song sheet.”However, since the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade earlier this year, Democrats may have finally found an issue that will unite and energize their base. Astead spoke to Ms. Gillibrand about the fight for abortion rights, Democratic messaging and what’s needed to expand majorities in both chambers of Congress.The BlueprintWill Stacey Abrams become governor of Georgia?Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesWhen Democrats flipped Georgia in 2020, helping fuel Mr. Biden’s victory, credit was given to Stacey Abrams and her playbook. For years, she had worked to register and turn out Democratic voters. Will her strategy work in a rematch against the incumbent governor, Brian Kemp?Astead talked to Ms. Abrams herself about the race. He then spoke to Maya King, a Times political reporter, about her reporting on some demographic groups that Ms. Abrams has seemed to lose ground with.The FlipWhat did 12 years of gerrymandering do to Wisconsin?Wisconsin’s State Legislature became the most gerrymandered in the country as a result of over a decade’s work that began in secret after the 2010 elections. Now, in these midterms, Democrats say they’re at risk of being shut out of power for the foreseeable future. The strategy is “colliding with the hardened Republican base that is increasingly pushing the party toward extremes,” Astead explains. “They’ve overrun the Republicans who created the system, and also the Democrats, who can’t stop them.”Astead spoke to Reid Epstein, who covers campaigns and elections for The Times, about whether there is a path forward for Democrats in Wisconsin — and how Republicans are employing this same gerrymandering strategy in other swing states.The MapsWhat’s at stake for conservative voters who want to take back Congress?This moment in politics will be defined by shifts at the grass-roots level. In conversations with four conservative voters, Astead delves into the issues driving their votes in the midterm elections — including inflation, immigration and defending the country from liberal values, even if it mean sacrificing democracy itself.The Grass Roots, Part 1Can the Democrats re-energize their base before it’s too late?After the Obama presidency, Democrats felt they had a diverse base made up of young people, minority voters and college-educated women that could carry the party for a generation. However, in 2016, some voters stayed home, and in 2020, others backed Mr. Trump instead.In the final episode of “The Run-Up” before the midterms, Astead spoke to Democratic voters about the state of the party, voting for Mr. Biden and the best ways to unite their fractured coalition.The Grass Roots, Part 2 More