Elections

Rights advocates fear the government could use newly passed legislation to restrict speech and target critics in the run-up to crucial elections in June.ISTANBUL — Turkey’s Parliament has passed sweeping new legislation intended to stamp out disinformation, allowing the government to jail journalists and social media users for up to three years for spreading information deemed to be false or misleading.The final piece of the legislation, which also requires social media companies to hand over the personal details of users suspected of spreading “fake news,” was approved on Thursday night with votes from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s governing party and its allies, who control a parliamentary majority.Mr. Erdogan, who has concentrated more power in his hands in recent years while growing less tolerant of dissent, had argued it was necessary to fight disinformation and called social media a threat to democracy.But a range of critics — including opposition lawmakers, media freedom advocates and legal scholars — have criticized the law itself as a threat to democracy, saying that its vague provisions could have a chilling effect on free expression and enable the government to prosecute critics or journalists who publish information about wrongdoing or corruption.Those worries are particularly acute in the run-up to presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for June, in which Mr. Erdogan and his party will seek to stay in power, despite galloping inflation that has seen their popularity sag in the polls.The disinformation legislation is the most recent step in what rights watchdogs have called a constriction of free expression in Turkey under Mr. Erdogan, who has been the country’s premier politician since 2003 and president since 2014.In recent years, the websites of foreign news outlets, including the Voice of America and Germany’s DW, have been blocked, Turkish TV stations and newspapers have fallen increasingly under the control of the state, and citizens have been arrested on charges for such crimes as “insulting the president.”But social media and online news sites enjoyed a greater degree of free expression, which the new law threatens to undermine.Representatives of journalist associations and unions protested against the new legislation last week in Turkey’s capital, Ankara.Adem Altan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo drive that point home, Burak Erbay, an opposition lawmaker, spoke from the Parliament’s podium to the millions of young Turks who will be eligible to vote for the first time next year.“You have only one freedom left: the phone in your pocket,” Mr. Erbay said. “If the law here passes in Parliament, you can break your phone like this.”Then he smashed a cellphone with a hammer.Mahir Unal, a senior lawmaker from Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, defended the legislation in Parliament, saying it did not target free expression or criticism that “does not exceed the limits.”During a TV interview in May, after his party proposed the law, he said, “We are working on this so that freedom of expression, criticism and freedom of the press will not be limited.”To come into force, the new legislation must be signed by Mr. Erdogan within 15 days. He can also send it back to Parliament for revision.Turkey was under fire for limiting freedom of expression even before the new legislation. Freedom House, a democracy promotion group, rates Turkey “Not Free” on its Freedom in the World index. Reporters Without Borders ranked Turkey 149 out of 180 countries in its press freedom index.The Venice Commission, the Council of Europe’s legal advisory body, acknowledged in a legal assessment of the legislation the threat that disinformation poses to democratic societies. But at the same time, it called on Turkey not to enact the law, saying it had “serious doubts” about the need to criminalize disinformation in such a way.It also said the legislation could lead to self-censorship, especially during elections.The legislation is not a new law, but it consists of 40 amendments to existing laws.Of greatest concern to rights advocates is Article 29. It allows for prison terms of one to three years for anyone who “disseminates false information about the country’s domestic and foreign security, public order and general health, with the sole aim of creating anxiety, fear or panic among the public and in a manner that is liable to disturb public peace.”Supporters of the legislation have compared it with similar laws in European countries and say it includes enough safeguards to prevent it from being used to punish peaceful, legitimate speech. But legal scholars say it gives the authorities great flexibility in how to apply it.“It is very vague and arbitrary, it will be used in an arbitrary and discriminatory way in Turkey,” said Yaman Akdeniz, a law professor at Istanbul Bilgi University. “It lacks adequate legal safeguards and provides wide discretion to the prosecutors and courts.”The law also significantly tightens regulations governing the operations of large social media companies in Turkey.If requested by the Turkish authorities, companies like Meta, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube must remove content and provide proprietary information, including user data of suspected perpetrators and algorithmic information used to determine rankings.Companies that fail to comply could face drastic slowdowns in the speed of their services in Turkey, a practice known as throttling, or fines equal to 3 percent of their global income.Mr. Akdeniz said these companies must decide whether they are going to respect the new requirements to continue to operate in Turkey, at the risk of enabling government crackdowns.“If you comply with this,” he said, “you risk becoming the long arm of the Turkish authorities.” More

Two debates were hosted in marquee political races in Wisconsin and Michigan, both battleground states. Catch up on what happened:Wisconsin’s Senate contestRead four takeaways from the debate.Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, a Democrat trailing in Wisconsin polls and getting hammered by an onslaught of negative television advertising in his race to unseat Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican, tried mightily on Thursday evening in their debate to shift his campaign’s momentum. But he failed to create a singular moment destined to go viral on social and broadcast media.It was a lively affair after last week’s relatively staid debate, but it is unlikely to change the course of the election.Michigan’s race for governorWe have five takeaways from the debate.Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, and Tudor Dixon, her Republican challenger, on Thursday gave debate viewers a clear contrast of the choice they will have on the Nov. 8 ballot: an outsider versus an experienced politician.It was the first governor’s race in the state in which both contenders are women. Their next debate will be Oct. 25. More

ATLANTA — One is a seasoned public speaker, accustomed to delivering sermons nearly every Sunday from the pulpit of the famed Atlanta church where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached. The other is a political novice whose meandering, often nonsensical oratory on the stump tends to inspire as much mockery as it does applause.The stark stylistic differences between the polished Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, and his less politically refined Republican challenger, Herschel Walker, the former University of Georgia football great, add unpredictability and intrigue to their highly anticipated debate on Friday night.Their matchup, just three days before early voting begins in Georgia, will be the first — and probably the only — debate in the state’s race for Senate, which has emerged as one of the most pivotal contests for control of the chamber. The one-hour event, hosted by Nexstar Media in Savannah, Ga., will begin at 7 p.m. Eastern.The debate will test whether Mr. Warnock can expand what polls suggest is a narrow advantage over his rival, and whether Mr. Walker can quiet doubts about his qualifications for the office after a wave of explosive reports describing past behavior of his that has contradicted his public stances.Over the summer, The Daily Beast reported that Mr. Walker had fathered three children he did not previously disclose, and more recently, an ex-girlfriend of Mr. Walker’s told The New York Times that he had paid for her to have an abortion and had asked her to have a second abortion, even though he has campaigned on his opposition to the procedure with no exceptions.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Attacks by Doug Mastriano, the G.O.P. nominee, on the Jewish school where Josh Shapiro, the Democratic candidate, sends his children have set off an outcry about antisemitic signaling.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but some conservative Christians have learned to tolerate the behavior of those who advance their cause.Ahead of the debate, Mr. Walker has tried to manage expectations. Last month, he half-jokingly told reporters that he was “a country boy” and “not that smart,” saying that Mr. Warnock was “going to show up and embarrass me.”But if Mr. Walker has succeeded in setting a lower bar to clear against Mr. Warnock, who grounds many of his stump speeches in policy-heavy talking points, the face-off will also offer the Democratic incumbent a ripe opportunity to attack his opponent directly — something he has so far done only in advertisements..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-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs 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.Democrats have flooded the airwaves with millions of dollars in negative advertising against Mr. Walker, underlining allegations of domestic violence brought forth by his ex-wife, Cindy Grossman, and his son Christian Walker.The two candidates have engaged in months of back-and-forth over whether, where and when they would debate. One day after the May 24 primary election, Mr. Warnock committed to debates in Atlanta, Macon and Savannah. Mr. Walker, who did not debate his Republican primary opponents, would not commit to any of the three events but maintained a positive front when asked about them.“I’ve told him many times, I’m ready to debate him any time, any day,” Mr. Walker told Brian Kilmeade of Fox News in July.His campaign did not respond to invitations from the hosts of the debates in Atlanta, Macon and Savannah that Mr. Warnock had committed to. The Walker campaign agreed in August to attend the Nexstar debate, and Mr. Warnock followed suit in September.In a Thursday morning campaign memo, Mr. Warnock’s campaign manager, Quentin Fulks, said that Friday’s debate would “put on full display the clear choice” between the two candidates, arguing that Mr. Walker’s “pattern of lies, disturbing behavior and positions prove he is not ready to represent Georgia in the U.S. Senate.”Mr. Walker, who has traded time on the campaign trail for hours of intensive debate practice over the last few weeks, is likely to underline the policy differences between himself and his Democratic opponent by tying Mr. Warnock to President Biden, who is widely unpopular among Georgia voters. Mr. Walker has repeatedly criticized both Mr. Warnock and Mr. Biden for their economic policies, blaming them for higher food and fuel prices in Georgia.In a fund-raising email to supporters on Thursday, Mr. Walker encouraged supporters to tune in to the debate and vowed to “defeat the disastrous Biden agenda” if elected to the Senate.Still, he ended with a plea for more financial support to bolster his campaign in its final weeks.“It’s going to take more than one event on a Friday night to convince voters there’s a better choice to turn our country around,” he wrote. More

Automatically adjusted lifetime income is rare and worth protecting, our columnist says.The 8.7 percent cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security isn’t just a big benefit increase.It’s priceless.You can’t buy inflation-protected lifetime income like that on the open market, not from an entity as solid as the United States government.“People don’t appreciate what a terrific thing Social Security is, in so many ways,” said Charles D. Ellis, an author and investment consultant who has studied Social Security for decades. “The COLA is a reminder: When there is serious inflation, as we have right now, you can count on Social Security taking care of it for you.”If you are an investor, there are many ways of hedging against inflation, like I bonds, which are issued by the Treasury Department and currently pay 9.62 percent interest.But safe, monthly lifetime income that automatically keeps up with inflation? You get that with Social Security.“It’s just what investors need for retirement,” Zvi Bodie, professor emeritus in finance at Boston University, said in an interview. “But, unfortunately, you can’t really get it anywhere else.”How It StartedWhile the market value of Social Security’s inflation-adjusted income can’t be easily priced, it can be evaluated in limited ways.The new COLA is really big — the biggest since 1981, when the adjustment was 11.2 percent. These automatic, yearly inflation increases began in 1975, during a decade of high inflation, when politicians understood that retirees needed help to keep up with rising prices. Before then, it took specific congressional action to raise benefit levels.The first automatic increase was 8 percent in 1975; the highest was 14.3 percent in 1980. The adjustments didn’t drop below 5 percent until 1983, after the Federal Reserve, led by Paul A. Volcker, threw the economy into two successive recessions.Until last year’s 5.9 percent COLA, the previous nine annual adjustments were invariably below 3 percent. Social Security COLAs didn’t command big headlines.More on Social Security and RetirementMedicare Costs: Low-income Americans on Medicare can get assistance paying their premiums and other expenses. This is how to apply.Downsizing in Retirement: People selling their homes often have to shell out more to spend less. Here’s what to consider.Claiming Social Security: Looking to make the most of this benefit? These online tools can help you figure out your income needs and when to file.A Look at the Current NumbersBut high inflation has come back with a vengeance, and the current COLA is welcome for the roughly 70 million people, including retirees and the disabled, who receive Social Security benefits.For someone receiving $1,754 a month — the average monthly benefit for someone retiring in December — the COLA means an increase of about $153 a month, or $1,831 a year.For many people, these increases are absolutely critical.Consider a few statistics.Among older women who receive Social Security retiree or survivor benefits, 42 percent get at least half their income from Social Security. Among older men, 37 percent do. If you are living on Social Security, every cent matters after the price of food has risen 11.2 percent this year, as the latest numbers show.Even for fairly affluent people, the inflation-adjusted payments can be significant.Imagine that your earnings have put you at the high end of the national income distribution for many years. In addition, you have followed the standard advice to maximize benefits by not claiming Social Security until you reach 70. That will get you the maximum retirement benefit for Social Security, which is $4,194 a month, or $50,328 for this year.The inflation adjustment amounts to an annual increase of about $4,379, raising your yearly Social Security benefits to $54,707. And the inflation increase will be compounded, as part of your Social Security income, year after year.I don’t know about you, but the total strikes me as substantial. What’s more, if prices soar next year, there will be another significant inflation adjustment.Most jobs don’t afford this kind of protection, but Social Security is different. You don’t have to convince anyone that your income — now or in the future — ought to keep up with inflation.Social Security may seem irrelevant if you are young. You may believe it’s too early to think about retirement, or you may have been told that Social Security won’t be there for you when you are older.But be aware that these inflation adjustments are likely to affect you.All else being equal — that is, if your promised benefits aren’t cut because of future funding shortfalls — the inflation adjustments will increase what you receive down the road.Now, it’s true that unless Congress takes action, the Social Security Trust Funds are projected to run out of money around 2035. If that happened and Congress did absolutely nothing, the tax revenues coming regularly into the Social Security system would still pay about 80 percent of your promised benefits.But what about the rest of the money?I asked Mr. Ellis. He is a co-author of the book “Falling Short: The Coming Retirement Crisis and What to Do About It.”First, he said, Congress is virtually certain to fully protect people already receiving benefits. “No politician wants to tell older people, who vote in large numbers, that their benefits are being cut,” he said.As for everyone else, it’s important that people understand how valuable these benefits are and make their voices heard, Mr. Ellis said. Social Security has been short on funds before, and the Trust Funds can easily be built up again, much as they were in the 1980s. “I think the more people understand about Social Security,” he said, “the more likely it is that it will be preserved.” An Invaluable Benefit Without a Market PriceAll that said, how much would Social Security be worth if you could buy and sell a lifetime of benefits?You can’t really do this in financial markets, but let’s look more closely.In technical terms, Social Security is a form of an annuity — insurance that pays annual income for the rest of your life (and, for retirees, with benefits for your surviving spouse and children until they reach age 18).Annuities are sold by insurance companies in many shapes and sizes, but they aren’t popular, even though economists often recommend simple, low-cost annuities for safe and stable income.You can buy annuities that will increase their payouts by, say, 3 percent every year, but none are available now that include full cost-of-living adjustments like Social Security.There are two reasons for this, said Wade Pfau, a professor of retirement income at the American College of Financial Services. First, inflation was so low for so long that there was little demand for them, and the market withered. Second, as the current inflation surge demonstrates, “no one can accurately predict inflation, and it’s extremely difficult for insurance companies to make long-term projections and price the annuities properly,” he said.Ariel Stern, the chief operating officer of ImmediateAnnuities.com, which provides estimates of annuity costs, identified the only person who had ever used the service to buy an annuity with a full COLA. That was Jim Oatman, a 73-year-old actuary in Arizona, who purchased one from Principal for himself and his wife in 2018, shortly before Principal, the last company to offer such annuities, stopped selling them.In a telephone interview, Mr. Oatman said he had paid $200,000 for the annuity. Its monthly payouts started at $602 in early 2019. That was about half of what he said he could have gotten in monthly payments for an annuity without an inflation adjustment.“It’s expensive, but I’m a numbers guy, and I remember the 1970s and wanted the protection,” Mr. Oatman said. One COLA increased the payments to $635 a month, and another, bigger “bump” will come in November, he said, but added ruefully, “It will take years of inflation for me to catch up to what I would have had without that inflation adjustment.”Still, “it’s a risk thing,” he said. “If inflation goes very high for several years running, I’m going to feel like the smartest guy around.”Even when you could buy an annuity like that, the market was tiny. In addition, interest rates were lower a few years ago, and payouts for annuities were lower, too. For these reasons, we can’t really use Mr. Oatman’s annuity to come up with reliable market pricing for Social Security benefits.In addition, no private company is directly comparable to the U.S. government, which, even with its manifest problems, is backed by the world’s largest economy and most powerful military. In theory, the government should be safer than a mere corporation — if not for Social Security funding’s politics-induced uncertainty, which economists have been measuring for years.Still, for a ballpark estimate, it seems safe to say that as an annuity on the open market, the average monthly Social Security benefit awarded in December, even without that invaluable COLA, would be worth close to $300,000 and probably much more, based on estimates from ImmediateAnnuites.com.Even at the low end, that’s more than double the $144,000 that the average household had in 401(k) and individual retirement accounts in 2019, according to the most recent estimates provided by Anqi Chen, a senior research economist of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. The inflation adjustment has immeasurable value on top of that.If you are fairly affluent, consider this.As an annuity, the maximum Social Security benefit without any COLA would be worth at least $665,000 and as much as $909,000. Adding a COLA of any kind would push its value to $1 million, and much more than that for a full inflation adjustment linked to the Consumer Price Index, like Social Security’s.If anything, these numbers understate Social Security’s monetary value. They are intended merely to give you an appreciation of benefits that are, really, priceless.Anything that precious needs to be preserved.By all means, put away as much money as you can and invest it wisely.But these estimates suggest that the most important steps most Americans can take to fortify their retirement involve Social Security.Work as long as you can at a job you enjoy, and delay claiming Social Security until as late as possible — ideally, until you turn 70. That’s just a start.You must pay Social Security taxes your entire working life. If you want to collect what you are owed when the time comes, make it crystal clear to the political class that you expect every cent of the Social Security benefits you have been promised. More

“The Rachel Maddow Show” debuted in the interregnum between political eras. Before it lay the 9/11 era and the George W. Bush presidency. Days after the show launched in 2008, Lehman Brothers collapsed, and a few weeks later Barack Obama was elected president.And then history just kept speeding up. The Tea Party. The debt ceiling debacles. Donald Trump. The coronavirus pandemic. January 6th. The big lie. Maddow covered and tried to make sense of it all. Now, after 14 years, she has taken her show down to one episode a week and is launching other projects — like “Ultra,” the history podcast we discuss in this episode.[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]But I wanted to talk to Maddow about how American politics and media have changed over the course of her show. We discuss the legacies of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the cycle of economic crises we appear to keep having, Maddow’s relationships with Pat Buchanan and Tucker Carlson, where the current G.O.P.’s anti-democracy efforts really started, how Obama’s presidency changed politics, how Maddow finds and chooses her stories, the statehouse Republicans who tilled the soil for Trump’s big lie and 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.)MSNBC“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma. Our researcher is Emefa Agawu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski. More

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, and Tudor Dixon, her Republican challenger, on Thursday gave debate viewers a clear contrast of the choice they will have on the Nov. 8 ballot: an outsider versus an experienced politician.Ms. Whitmer, who is seeking re-election, sought to keep her tone positive, even as she took swipes at her opponent. She reminded viewers of the violent threats she faced as she tried to lead the state through the Covid pandemic. Ms. Whitmer also stressed her belief in bipartisanship and her work with Republicans, who control both chambers of the Michigan Legislature.“I will continue to work with anyone who wants to solve problems, not just score political points with rhetoric but actually come to the table with alternatives,” she said.Ms. Dixon, a former steel industry executive turned conservative news commentator, held her own as she tried to harness voters’ anger over high food and gas prices and pandemic-driven stretches of crippling unemployment, school closures and business restrictions.“This governor’s state policies are radical, dangerous and destructive,” she said. “Crime is up, jobs are down, schools are worse and the roads didn’t get fixed.”For the first time in a Michigan governor’s race, both contenders are women.The contest is playing out in an extraordinarily tense political environment in Michigan. Before the 2020 election, federal prosecutors accused several men of plotting to kidnap Ms. Whitmer, partly over her handling of the pandemic. Two men pleaded guilty, two men were acquitted and, in August, two others were convicted by jurors. A related trial is now underway in state court.Ms. Whitmer, who has been leading in the polls, has sought to keep the focus on her efforts to bring jobs to Michigan and to paint Ms. Dixon as out of step with voters on abortion. Ms. Dixon, who is backed by former President Donald J. Trump and the politically powerful DeVos family, has leaned hard into attacking transgender women and criticizing Ms. Whitmer for her pandemic-era policies on businesses.But Ms. Dixon has struggled to build out a campaign in the state, where Democrats are sharply outspending Republicans on the television airwaves.Tudor Dixon, the Republican nominee for governor in Michigan. She described herself as “pro-life with exceptions for life of the mother.”Bryan Esler/Nexstar Media GroupAbortion was prominent, but viewers learned nothing new.The first question of the night touched on the issue that has dominated the race and that may prove to be a litmus test for the state’s suburban and independent voters.With the enforcement of a 1931 law banning abortion temporarily blocked in the state and voters set to decide in November whether to enshrine abortion rights in the state Constitution, Ms. Whitmer highlighted her track record of being an outspoken supporter of abortion rights.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Attacks by Doug Mastriano, the G.O.P. nominee, on the Jewish school where Josh Shapiro, the Democratic candidate, sends his children have set off an outcry about antisemitic signaling.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but some conservative Christians have learned to tolerate the behavior of those who advance their cause.She also criticized her opponent for saying that abortion should be allowed only if it is necessary to save the life of a mother, not in cases of rape or incest. “We know that our fundamental rights are very much at risk right now,” she said.Ms. Dixon described herself as “pro-life with exceptions for life of the mother” and said abortion rules in the state would be decided by voters or a judge. She leaned into a strategy that she and other Republicans have deployed throughout the campaign trail, seeking to paint Ms. Whitmer as “extremely radical” on the issue.Fighting about the pandemic remains a hot topic.Ms. Whitmer, asked if there was anything she would have done differently in her response to the pandemic, painted a stark picture of the situation that the state faced during an early wave of infections that drove a spike in deaths.“We knew that our hospitals were filling up and that people were dying,” said Ms. Whitmer, whose early restrictions were among the most sweeping in the Midwest. “We were in desperate search of masks and ventilators. There were refrigerated trucks outside of some of our hospitals to store people’s bodies.”Ms. Dixon accused the governor of bungling the response to Covid in nursing homes and blasted her over an audit that showed Michigan paid up to $8.5 billion in fraudulent unemployment assistance claims. She argued that Ms. Whitmer kept students “locked out of schools and wouldn’t listen to parents when they begged her to let them play.”Ms. Whitmer told viewers that her life was being threatened — possibly an allusion to the plot to kidnap her in 2020 — as she tried to navigate the state through the pandemic.The kids aren’t all right.Schools, both their safety and the quality of education, have been major themes in the race.The year Ms. Whitmer was sworn into office, Michigan public school students showed significant improvement after years of struggles. But the pandemic crippled the academic landscape across the country.On the campaign trail, Ms. Dixon has repeatedly drawn criticism for anti-L.G.B.T.Q. language, as she has pledged to keep transgender girls out of girls’ sports and accused schools of teaching “radical sex and gender theory.” But on the debate stage, she often kept her comments more subdued, saying she would spend more money on public schools and focus students on the basics: “Get back to reading, writing and math.”Ms. Whitmer fired back by criticizing Ms. Dixon for her ties to the powerful DeVos family, which has long worked to support charter schools and private schools.School safety has been front-of-mind in Michigan since a deadly shooting at Oxford High School last year. Ms. Whitmer noted the gun rules she backs: “secure storage,” background checks and “red-flag” gun seizure laws. Ms. Dixon argued in favor of arming and training people inside schools to confront a gunman.Cars, roads and gas came up again and again.In a state that is home to both the American auto industry and a striking number of potholes, the two candidates spent a lot of time talking about cars and the surfaces they drive on.Ms. Whitmer, who ran four years ago on a pledge to “Fix the Damn Roads,” said there had been plenty of progress, but not nearly enough time to overcome decades of rotting pavement.“We are fixing the damn roads,” the governor said. “We are moving dirt.”Ms. Dixon said that the governor had failed to keep her promises, and that the state’s infrastructure remained lacking.Electric vehicles also came up often. Ms. Dixon claimed her opponent “wants you to pay more for gas to force you into electric vehicles.” Ms. Whitmer scoffed at that suggestion.Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a former prosecutor, said she had sought more funding for law enforcement.Bryan Esler/Nexstar Media GroupDixon tried to portray the governor as weak on crime.Ms. Dixon invoked the governor’s embrace of protesters after the 2020 killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and reminded viewers that Ms. Whitmer once said she supported the “spirit” of efforts to defund the police.“We will never defund the police,” said Ms. Dixon, who played up her support from law enforcement organizations.Ms. Whitmer, a former prosecutor, countered by saying she had sought more funding for law enforcement and had worked across party lines on the issue. She also noted her own endorsements from law enforcement officials.“They know we have made the biggest investments supporting them, and we will continue to do so, so long as I’m governor,” Ms. Whitmer said.The governor also criticized Ms. Dixon for defending the actions of a Grand Rapids police officer who fatally shot Patrick Lyoya, a Congolese immigrant, after a traffic stop in April. That officer, Christopher Schurr, was later charged with murder and fired from the Police Department. He has denied wrongdoing and is awaiting trial. More

In previously unseen footage shared by the January 6 House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol, top lawmakers are seen scrambling to respond. The footage shows House speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and others trying to maintain order

‘Do you believe this?’: New video shows how Nancy Pelosi took charge in Capitol riot
January 6 hearing takeaways: Trump knew he lost and now faces subpoena More

‘Do you believe this?’: New video shows how Nancy Pelosi took charge in Capitol riotHouse speaker continued to try to find a way for House and Senate to reconvene despite turmoilNew footage of the January 6 riots at the US Capitol shows House speaker Nancy Pelosi calmly trying to take charge of the situation as she sheltered at Fort McNair, two miles south of the Capitol. “There has to be some way,” she told colleagues, “we can maintain the sense that people have that there is some security or some confidence that government can function and that you can elect the president of the United States.” Then an unidentified voice interjected with alarming news: lawmakers on the House floor had begun putting on teargas masks in preparation for a breach. Pelosi asked the woman to repeat what she said.Capitol attack panel votes to subpoena Trump – ‘the central cause of January 6’Read more“Do you believe this?” Pelosi said to another Democratic leader, Jim Clyburn of South Carolina. The footage was from about 2.45pm, when rioters had already disrupted the planned certification of the 2020 presidential election results. It would be hours before the building was secure. Never-before-seen video footage played Thursday by the House of Representatives select committee investigating last year’s riot shows how Pelosi and other leaders, including Republican allies of Donald Trump, responded to the insurrection. The recordings offer a rare glimpse into the real-time reactions of the most powerful members of Congress as they scrambled to drum up support from all parts of the government, including from agencies seemingly ill prepared for the chaos, and vented anger over a president whose conduct they felt had endangered their lives. In the videos, Pelosi and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer negotiate with governors and defence officials to try to get the national guard to the Capitol as police were being brutally beaten outside the building. The deployment of the guard was delayed for hours as Trump stood by and did little to stop the violence of his supporters. The footage, recorded by Pelosi’s daughter, Alexandra, a documentary film-maker, was shown during the committee’s 10th hearing as an illustration of the president’s inaction in the face of the grave danger posed by the rioters. “As the president watched the bloody attack unfold on Fox News from his dining room, members of Congress and other government officials stepped into the gigantic leadership void created by the president’s chilling and steady passivity that day,” said Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin, a committee member. The concerns were not theoretical. At roughly 3pm, as a Trump loyalist outside Pelosi’s office pointed her finger and shouted, “Bring her out now!” and, “We’re coming in if you don’t bring her out!” the speaker was in a room with Schumer, who said: “I’m gonna call up the effin’ secretary of DoD.”As the violence persisted at the Capitol – “Officer down, get him up,” a voice could be heard bellowing in one clip shown by the committee – the leaders kept making calls from Fort McNair. One went to Virginia governor Ralph Northam about the possibility of help from the Virginia national guard, with Pelosi narrating the events based on what she saw from television news footage. An angrier call followed with Jeffrey Rosen, the then acting attorney general. Days earlier, and unbeknownst at the time to Congress or to the public, Rosen and colleagues had fended off a slapdash attempt by Trump to replace him with a subordinate eager to challenge the election results. On that day, though, Schumer and Pelosi sat shoulder-to-shoulder on the couch and laid bare their frustrations with the country’s top law enforcement official.Throughout the footage, Pelosi maintains her composure, barely raising her voice as she urges Rosen, and later vice-president Mike Pence and others, to send help and tries to work out a way for the House and Senate to reconvene. “They’re breaking the law in many different ways,” Pelosi said to Rosen. “And quite frankly, much of it at the instigation of the president of the United States.” Schumer weighed in too: “Yeah, why don’t you get the president to tell them to leave the Capitol, Mr attorney-general, in your law enforcement responsibility? A public statement they should all leave.” It wasn’t until the evening that the Capitol would be cleared and work would resume. The news that Congress would be able to reconvene to finish its work in certifying the election results was delivered to the congressional leaders not by Trump but by Pence. The House January 6 committee voted unanimously Thursday to subpoena Trump, demanding his personal testimony as it unveiled startling new video of close aides describing his multi-part plan to overturn his 2020 election loss that led to his supporters assault on the Capitol.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpChuck SchumerUS politicsNancy PelosinewsReuse this content More