Elections

When Giorgia Meloni, the hard-right leader who is likely to become Italy’s next prime minister, said on Italian TV this month that she opposed adoption by gay couples and that having a mother and a father was best for a child, Luigi, 6, overheard her and asked his father about it.“I wasn’t able to answer very well,” said his father, Francesco Zaccagnini. “I said they are not happy with how we love each other.”In recent weeks, Mr. Zaccagnini, 44, who works for a labor union in the Tuscan city of Pisa and is a gay father, went door to door asking friends and acquaintances to vote in Sunday’s elections to oppose Ms. Meloni’s party, Brothers of Italy.“My family is at stake,” he said.Mr. Zaccagnini and his partner had Luigi and their 6-month-old daughter, Livia, with two surrogate mothers who live in the United States. In her election campaign, Ms. Meloni pledged to oppose surrogacy and adoption by gay couples. As a member of Parliament, she submitted an amendment to a law that would extend a ban on surrogacy in Italy to Italians who seek the method abroad. It has not yet been approved by Parliament.Francesco Zaccagnini, left, with his partner and their children, Luigi and Livia. Mr. Zaccagnini worries that his son could see some of the hard-right messaging around gay families when he starts reading soon.Courtesy of Francesco ZaccagniniItaly is already an outlier in Western Europe in terms of gay rights — gay marriage is still not recognized by law — but the possibility of Ms. Meloni taking power has prompted fears among gay families that things might get worse.In 2016, Parliament passed a law recognizing civil unions of same-sex couples despite opposition by the Roman Catholic Church, which is influential in Italy.Gay parents remain cut off from the main avenues for adoption, which require a marriage rather than a civil union. And with surrogacy banned and in vitro fertilization only allowed for heterosexual couples, gay couples are effectively forced to travel abroad to become parents, and to navigate complicated — and case by case — paths through bureaucracy, courts and social services.“We hoped that the country would go forward,” said Alessia Crocini, the president of Rainbow Families, an association of gay families. “But we have a dark period ahead.”Ms. Meloni has said that civil unions are good enough for gay couples. She has also repeatedly said that she is not homophobic, and that she is not going to alter existing civil rights, but that what is best for a child is to have both a mother and a father. Her surrogacy proposal scared many gay parents, as did her tone and emphasis on what constitutes a family.“It gives homophobes an excuse and a political support,” Ms. Crocini said.Ms. Meloni has decried what she calls “gender ideology” as aimed at the disappearance of women as mothers, and opposes the teaching of such ideas in schools.Ms. Crocini said she worried that her son, 8, saying he has two mothers at school might be considered gender ideology. She has some reason to think that. Federico Mollicone, the culture spokesman for Ms. Meloni’s party, recently urged the Italian state broadcaster RAI not to air an episode of the popular cartoon “Peppa Pig” that featured a bear with two mothers, calling it “gender indoctrination,” and claiming that young children should not see gay adoption presented as something “natural” or “normal, because it’s not.”Last year, Ms. Meloni campaigned to make surrogacy a “universal crime,” using a picture of a child with a bar code on its hand.Mr. Zaccagnini said he was scared his son would see such images and messages if they kept circulating. Despite his instinct to stay in Italy and fight, Mr. Zaccagnini said he had been thinking about relocating abroad.“My son this year will start reading,” he said. “I need to protect him somehow.” More

More from our inbox:Women, ‘Stay Loud’A Childhood HomeGet a Living WillIllustration of the American flag.Illustration by Matt ChaseTo the Editor:Re “Democracy Challenged,” by David Leonhardt (front page, Sept. 18):Your excellent, and frightening, article suggests that our democracy is facing two simultaneous crises: Republicans who refuse to accept defeat in an election, and a growing disconnect between political power and public opinion. But there is a third, equally serious danger.While it is critical to get rid of dark money (reversing Citizens United) and gerrymandering, and to set term limits on the Supreme Court, an equally significant element of the current nightmare is coming from social media.Indeed, the degree to which social media has not only ginned up but actually created some or much of the current social-cultural-political zeitgeist is not well understood or acknowledged. For all the positives it provides, social media has become a cancer on society — one that has metastasized and continues to do so, often with the full knowledge (and even complicity) of social media companies.If we are going to begin arresting, and then (hopefully) reversing, the crisis described in the article, we need to address the social media issue as urgently as we need to address the overtly political ones. Addressing the latter without the former simply will not do the job.Ian AltermanNew YorkTo the Editor:Our democracy and our constitutional republic are not only challenged, but are on the verge of collapse. Should the Republicans capture the House and the Senate in the midterm elections, I believe that it will be a long time before we have another free and fair election in this country.The G.O.P. has stacked state houses with MAGA Republicans who, if given the chance, will do what Donald Trump wanted done in 2020: refuse to certify the will of the voters. In other areas we are rapidly losing our freedoms. We are in danger of losing the right to choose whether or not to bring a child into the world, the right to read or watch whatever we choose, and in many cases, the right to vote.The Republican Party has developed into a race-baiting, hateful group of people, inspired and directed by Mr. Trump, and Americans need to beware the consequences of electing more of their ilk at the local, state and federal level.Henry A. LowensteinNew YorkTo the Editor:“Democracy Challenged” is a chilling portrait of the bitter ideological civil war raging in America today. While not a conflict exacting physical wounds for the most part, it is for many of us emotionally exhausting, compounded by the realization that no obvious relief or solution is evident. It is almost impossible to watch cable news or read the daily papers without feeling despondent about the widening philosophical gulf separating the two parties.It is ironic that Democratic-leaning states contribute more to the federal government than they receive, in effect subsidizing Republican state policies that Democrats strongly oppose.I look forward to future articles in which I can hopefully discover a nugget of hope.Howard QuinnBronxTo the Editor:Thank you for all of your efforts to highlight the challenges to democracy and fair elections, but what I believe you are failing to do is sell democracy. You assume that democracy will sell itself. It won’t. There was a time when it would, but not today.Not only do you need to sell democracy — that is, emphasize its benefits — but you also need to highlight the cons of the alternative.We must sell democracy as if our lives depended on it. Because they do.Dan BuchanCheyenne, Wyo.To the Editor:While David Leonhardt is correct, of course, that the Republican Party’s increasing inclination to refuse to accept defeat in an election constitutes an existential threat to our democracy, so, too, does the likelihood that some of the large number of election deniers now running for statewide or local positions of electoral authority will prevail in November.Such a calamitous result would mean that if the outcome of a subsequent election is called into question by a defeated, victimized Democrat with legitimate cries of foul, it will be met with derision and scorn by the faux patriot MAGA crowd, and upheld by judges and justices whose allegiance to one man outweighs any sense of loyalty to the Constitution they might once have held sacrosanct.Edward PellSanta Monica, Calif.Women, ‘Stay Loud’ Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesTo the Editor:“Trolls in Russia Schemed to Divide Women’s March,” by Ellen Barry (front page, Sept. 19), is a thorough, well-researched piece about how Russian trolls deliberately created discord within the Women’s March and across the women’s rights movement more broadly.While the details may be shocking to many, it’s old news that women are in the sightlines. Whether the actors are foreign or domestic, we’ve long been the targets of disinformation, harassment and violence, against our bodies and our freedoms.We’ve had to create programs like Digital Divas and Digital Defenders to combat disinformation, because it is still happening and only going to get worse as we fight back. In addition to digital spaces, we’re leaning on proven analog tactics, including get-out-the-vote training, phone banking and postcard mailing.Thousands of women, including many who have never volunteered before, are active ahead of the critical midterm elections to get people registered to vote and educated on the issues. We saw in the abortion referendum in Kansas last month how our efforts can succeed.Silence us, they will not. Women more than ever need to stay loud in the battle for equality. Neither a Russian bot nor a domestic terrorist will silence us into submission.Emiliana GuerecaLos AngelesThe writer is the founder and president of Women’s March Foundation and Action.A Childhood Home Marine BuffardTo the Editor:Re “Your Childhood Home Is in Front of You. Do You Go In?,” by Mark Vanhoenacker (Opinion guest essay, Sept. 12):I enjoyed this article, which described the pull toward one’s childhood home. As a psychiatrist, I begin my journey with patients by asking about their earliest years.“Who lived with you during your childhood?”“Were there any disruptive moves or departures?”By exploring these distant memories, I begin to understand their path to my office, and how I can help them shape a healthier future.If looking back is a positive experience, I may encourage those struggling with insomnia to imagine a virtual tour of their earliest home, focusing on even the most minute details. “What do you see as you look around your bedroom?”As a busy working mom, I find that this technique has helped me return to sleep despite my anxious mind, a soothing recall of a childhood filled with safety and love.Jennifer ReidMoorestown, N.J.Get a Living Will Emiliano PonziTo the Editor:Re “The Space Between Brain Death and Organ Donation,” by Daniela J. Lamas (Sunday Opinion, Sept. 18):It behooves everyone to make their wishes clear regarding organ donation (like on a driver’s license). Just as important, if not more so, is that each of us make our wishes clear regarding life support and other artificial means: respirator, feeding tube, etc.Making our wishes known in a living will not only has cost-saving implications but also assures our dignity.Pankaj GuptaEdison, N.J.The writer is a geriatrician. More

January 6 panel to take up key unanswered questions in final hearingWednesday’s session is committee’s last chance to show potential culpability of Donald Trump before midterm elections The House January 6 select committee is expected to hold its final public hearing next Wednesday, with the congressional investigation into the US Capitol attack nearing its conclusion as staff counsel prepare to produce an interim report of its findings before the 2022 midterm elections.The specific topic of the final hearing that the panel’s chairman, Congressman Bennie Thompson, will convene starting at 1pm is unclear.But the select committee is expected to make headway on some of the most pressing questions about January 6 that remain unanswered since the panel last convened in July and made the case that Donald Trump violated the law by refusing to take action to call off the Capitol attack, sources said.Virginia Thomas agrees to interview with House January 6 panelRead moreThe principal issues at play include whether there was a concrete through-line from the former president to political operatives like Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, who were in close contact with the far-right extremist groups – including the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers – that stormed Congress.The select committee has found some circumstantial evidence about such ties and previously revealed that Trump directed his then White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to call both Stone and Flynn the night before January 6 as the extremist groups finalized their plans for the day.Another issue for House investigators is whether Trump’s ouster of former defense secretary Mark Esper was an effort to install in his place a loyalist who might have had no objection to using the national guard to seize voting machines or delay their deployment to stop the Capitol attack.The select committee has viewed the plot to seize voting machines – suggested by Flynn during a contentious White House meeting in December 2020, hours before Trump sent a tweet urging his supporters to attend a “wild protest” on January 6 – as a crucial moment in the overall timeline.House investigators have also spent time in recent weeks examining Microsoft Teams chats and emails sent between Secret Service agents on security details for Trump and former vice-president Mike Pence that day, as well as discussions about invoking martial law even after the Capitol attack.The hearing on Wednesday is likely to touch on some of those issues, the sources said, in the last opportunity for the select committee to show potential culpability by Trump and Republican members of Congress on national television before the midterm elections take place in early November.Trump’s attempts to delay Mar-a-Lago inquiry largely fail as legal woes mountRead moreWith their control of the House and Senate hanging in the balance, this hearing is also widely being seen on Capitol Hill as the final chance for Democrats to persuade voters that the midterms are a referendum on the Republican party’s role in January 6.Part of the reason the Wednesday hearing is expected to be the final one is because next week is the last that the House is in session until the midterms, and the panel was reluctant to schedule an event during campaign season, when committee members like Elaine Luria face uphill re-election battles.The select committee is also starting to shift its focus away from the made-for-television hearings – which have required time-consuming preparation and rehearsals – and towards putting together an interim report in the coming weeks as well as a final report by the end of the year.The panel remained undecided on the final direction of each of the reports, the sources said, as well as whether to make a criminal referral to the justice department against Trump and key aides, including his former lawyer John Eastman, who orchestrated the fake elector scheme.Once a major priority, the need for such a referral appears to have diminished in recent weeks. Subpoenas reviewed by the Guardian show the justice department is pursuing at least three investigations examining January 6 and issued more than 30 subpoenas to top Trump aides.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More

Italian politicians are on a virtual hunt for undecided voters.Over the summer, as polls suggested that most of those who had not yet picked a side were under 30, party elders took it to the next level: TikTok.This month, Silvio Berlusconi, 85, who served four times as Italy’s prime minister, landed on the social media platform that is mostly popular among the young, explaining why he was there at his age.“On this platform, you guys are over five million, and 60 percent of you are less than 30. I am a little envious,” Mr. Berlusconi said, raising and lowering his voice for dramatic effect. “We will talk about your future.”The video had 9.6 million views, raising eyebrows among some users.“You are not so stupid that a video on TikTok is enough to vote for you,” said Emma Galeotti, a young TikTok content creator. “You send the message that we, young people, are so malleable and bonkers.”But Mr. Berlusconi’s communications team did not give up. His profile is brimming with a mix of snapshots from his TV appearances and classic Berlusconi jokes, as well as political messages recorded in his studio, where he is seen wearing classy blue suits — and often ties.Viewers have taken notice of his cultivated appearance.“What’s your foundation cream?” one asked. “The cream is too orange, more natural tones are better,” another wrote.“The rebound was comic or grotesque, but being on TikTok allowed him to be central to the electoral debate,” said Annalisa Ferretti, the coordinator of the social media division at the Italian advocacy group FB & Associati, who noted that the number of people following Mr. Berlusconi’s profile had surpassed 3.2 million in three weeks.“The problem is that this generation rejects the political class overall,” she said, adding that such social media popularity did not directly translate into votes.Other politicians have chosen different paths. Matteo Salvini, 49, of the far-right League party, who has been on TikTok for years and has 635,600 followers, uses the platform mostly as a mouthpiece for his meat-and-bone topics — security and immigration.Giorgia Meloni, 45, the leader of Brothers of Italy and possibly the next prime minister, does not seem to be doing as well on TikTok, despite her successful electoral campaign. She has 197,700 followers.University students seem to like the leader of the centrist party Action, Carlo Calenda, 49, who posts short political messages, answers questions received on the platform and discusses books, Ms. Ferretti said. But he has only about 24,300 followers.The center-left Democratic Party is the only party that offers a plurality of voices on TikTok. They post thematic videos with topics discussed by politicians who are the symbol of such issues, like Alessandro Zan, 48, for the civil rights battle. Enrico Letta, 56, a party leader, recently encouraged users to go vote — for whomever they liked. “The others should not decide for your future,” he said.Despite the efforts of politicians to reach a different audience, abstention still seems to be the main threat to the parties, and to Italian democracy.“They used to say, ‘Squares are full and the ballot boxes are empty,’” Ms. Ferretti said. “Now it’s more social media is full, and the ballot boxes are empty.” More

Plus gremlins, goddesses, Paris Hilton at Versace and a triumph at Bottega Veneta. Things are getting funky in Italy.MILAN — The night before Italy went to the polls on Sunday for its first general election in five years, almost 20,000 people thronged the square in front of the Duomo. It was raining, but they stood side by side, jittering in mass anticipation. A raised stage had been constructed before the soaring cathedral, and on either side stood towers of floodlights and two enormous screens.Then out marched another mass of people in white puffer jackets. The Moncler 70th anniversary experience had begun, and it seemed like the brand had invited practically the whole city (plus Colin Kaepernick) to come together and watch.Italy may have been on the verge of voting in its most extreme right-wing government in decades, but Italian fashion has been swinging in the opposite direction. Normally the promise of the country’s first female prime minister — Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Brothers of Italy party — would have designers nattering on about women and power and what it means to them (big shoulders, usually), but not this time. This time, the looming shift in vibe has seeped onto the runways in a different form.Moncler, spring 2023.Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York TimesSitting front row at Bottega Veneta, for example, Gaetano Pesce, the artist and architect who created the swirling, multicolored set with its hundreds of unique chairs for the brand’s designer Matthieu Blazy, called the concept a tribute to diversity and the differences that define us. Mr. Blazy later called it “the world in a small room.”He celebrated exactly that, in a tour de force of a wardrobe variety show that ranged from the everyday — Kate Moss in what looked like a plaid flannel shirt (which turned out to be leather) over a white tank and faded jeans (also leather) — to the extraordinary: a trio of calf-length dresses in kumquat, lemon and light blue covered in thousands of feathery filaments that seemed to undulate in the air.Bottega Veneta, spring 2023.Antonio Calanni/Associated PressBottega Veneta, spring 2023.Matteo Corner/EPA, via ShutterstockIn the middle were assorted pick-your-personality options including pantsuits with the seams pinched together into little raised fins at the back of the calves and arms, and gorgeous knit jacquard dresses that looked like abstract landscapes, hugging the shoulders and finished in deep-pile fringe. A turquoise leather skirt sprouted a garden of three-dimensional flowers beneath a skinny ribbed knit while filigree ivory slip dresses came scattered with furry pastel blooms and hung with iridescent beading, like drops of water. All of it united by exacting technique and generosity of spirit. And the idea that there are no designer dictators here.Goddesses and RebelsThis was after Stella Jean returned to the catwalk — after a two-year absence in protest at the lack of designers of color in Milanese fashion — with her multicultural WAMI show, an acronym for “We Are Made in Italy,” featuring the work of five other designers as well as her revisionist plantation dressing overlaid with Haitian-inspired prints. After she ended that show with a rabble-rousing speech, crying, “When it comes to civil rights and human rights we are all part of the same party.”And after Donatella Versace, who earlier in the week had posted a red, white and green heart on Instagram with the words (in Italian) “vote to protect rights already acquired, thinking about progress and with an eye on the future,” sent out a parade of what she called in her show notes one “goddess of freedom” after another.Versace, spring 2023.Alessandro Garofalo/ReutersAs to what goddesses of freedom wear, well, the same thing as goth moto rebels from the 1990s apparently, liberating themselves from the tyranny of good taste (often equated with conservative taste). That meant fringed and abbreviated black leathers, slashed peekaboo jersey, animal-print sheer shirting over hipster cargos, and teeny lacy lingerie numbers in neon Barbie shades, complete with bridal veils.And it meant Paris Hilton strutting her stuff in a glittering pink crystal minidress as a surprise finale — in what seemed a somewhat Teflon nod to the recent trend for re-examining the narrative around the women who became cultural punching bags at the turn of the millennium.(As it happened, Paris wasn’t the only famous blonde making a guest appearance: As seen in scores of social media clips, Kim Kardashian, who collaborated on the Dolce & Gabbana show and its bustiers forever! sparkle, took a finale bow, alongside the designers.)But still, there’s a lot of emotion permeating the clothes, generally in a good way.Seeing DoubleIt infused the Gucci show, certainly, which was called “Twinsburg.” Inspired by the designer Alessandro Michele’s mother and her identical twin sister who helped raise him (rather than the Ohio town of the same name or the stuff of horror films) — as well as the idea of the “other” — it featured 68 pairs of identical twins.Not that anyone in the audience realized it at first, since each model was seemingly just walking on their ownsome in the gobbledygook fantasia of muchness for which the designer is known: tiger stripe boots under chinoiserie pencil skirts with tabard tops and sunglasses dangling rhinestone fringe; gray suits with the pants turned into stockings complete with garter belts; sofa brocades and cheongsams and Lurex 1940s Hollywood goddess gowns; gremlins.Gucci, spring 2023.GucciWait — gremlins? Yes, those furry creatures from the 1984 black comedy about adorables with twin personalities whose evil instincts come out when they get wet. They were made into bags, worn on the front of belts and the tops of slides, and even printed on the hem of an evening dress. They mixed it up with overalls and traffic cone-orange sequined jackets splashed with the word “Fuori!!!”That was the name of a 1970s magazine from the Fronte Unitario Omosessuale Rivoluzionario Italiano, or the United Homosexual Revolutionary Front. It was, Mr. Michele said later in his usual post-show stream-of-consciousness news conference, a reminder that “we are entitled to freedom. We fought to say the issue was freedom.” And that, he said, it is time to fight again.He did it on the runway not with his clothes, which don’t really change from season to season (How could they? He’s already put every imaginable permutation of everything on the runway), but with how he framed them. This time that meant a backdrop featuring portraits of twins — which later rose up to reveal an identical show taking place on the other side.Then the twins reappeared, reaching across the divide to clasp hands, traversing the show space as one. Metaphor alert!One that turned out to be utterly convincing for conveying the idea that we are, in fact, stronger together.Two is a TrendIn one of those weird mindmelds that occasionally takes place in fashion, like every designer suddenly making blue or, in this season’s case, cargo pants with cropped tops, the Sunnei designers Simone Rizzo and Loris Messina were also playing with the idea of twins, using them to explore the transformative power of fashion.Jil Sander, spring 2023.Pietro S. D’Aprano/Getty ImagesIn the audience they had planted models who clambered out of their seats dressed in basic mufti (denim miniskirts, chinos, oversize sweats) and then down the runway to disappear through a revolving door, their doppelgängers then emerging in entirely new, brightly colored geometrics like a parade of Supermen from their phone booths.Then there was Brunello Cucinelli, who this season introduced the concept of “twinwear,” meaning paired items (easy shirts and trousers in the same beaded champagne satin; an earthy knit skirt and cardigan with tiny sequins) that can lounge equally well in the light of day or a candlelit evening. And at Jil Sander, Luke and Lucie Meier combined their men’s and women’s wear, the more effectively to reveal the gracefully minimal suiting that — along with some lusciously fringed evening wear — is the ideal antidote to the Gen Z pandering that has become ubiquitous on so many runways.Tod’s, spring 2023.Filippo Monteforte/AFP, via Getty ImagesIt all made Walter Chiapponi’s blandly serene collection at Tod’s, shown in the shadows of Anselm Kiefer’s towering installation “The Seven Heavenly Palaces” and full of buttery leathers in 50 shades of camel and greige, seem awfully disconnected by comparison. Even with Carla Bruni, France’s former first lady, to start things off. More

QAnon follower who chased officer on January 6 convicted of feloniesDouglas Jensen could face more than 50 years in prison after federal jury found him guilty A QAnon conspiracy theorist who led a pack of Donald Trump supporters that chased a solitary police officer around the US Capitol on the day of the January 6 attack has been found guilty of several felonies.Douglas Jensen – the bearded 43-year-old Iowa man who appeared in several media photos of the attack while wearing a black T-shirt with a large “Q” – could in theory face more than 50 years in prison after a federal jury in Washington DC convicted him on Friday, US justice department prosecutors said in a statement.However, it is rare for convicts in US district court to receive the harshest available punishment, even if they chose to stand trial rather than plead guilty in advance. And the harshest sentence handed out so far to anyone found guilty of having a role in the deadly Capitol attack has been 10 years.Antisemitic army reservist gets four years for role in January 6 Capitol attackRead moreProsecutors alleged that Jensen formed part of the mob of Trump supporters who gathered at the Capitol on the day in early 2021 that Congress was meeting to certify Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the previous year’s presidential election.Clad in a navy blue knit cap and the T-shirt paying homage to QAnon, the conspiracy myth that Trump is locked in secret combat against a cabal of leftist pedophiles and its deep state allies, Jensen scaled a wall at the Capitol, watched as fellow mob members broke the Senate wing entrance’s windows and doors, and was among the first 10 people to invade the facility, according to prosecutors.Jensen went around a few corners and joined a crowd that encountered a lone Capitol police officer near a stairwell, prosecutors said. Jensen squeezed his way to the front of the group, essentially came face to face with the officer, Eugene Goodman, and helped chase him up the stairs to a hallway just outside the Senate chamber.Prosecutors said that Jensen – carrying a knife with a three-inch blade in his pocket – barked at Goodman as well as other officers to “back up” and ordered them to arrest Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, whom the mob was threatening to hang if he didn’t halt the certification of Biden’s electoral college win.After 40 minutes, Jensen was made to exit, briefly re-entered another section of the Capitol and was forced out again, prosecutors said.Authorities arrested him two days later, after he returned to Iowa.At Jensen’s trial, concluding Friday, his defense attorney portrayed him as “a terribly confused man” whose mind was even more twisted by QAnon as well as Covid lockdowns. Jensen’s attorney also claimed his client had never physically hurt anyone during his time at the Capitol.But jurors needed just four hours to convict Jensen as charged of assaulting police, obstructing a congressional proceeding, interfering with law enforcement, entering a restricted building and disorderly conduct with a dangerous weapon, which are all felonies.Jensen was also found guilty of a pair of misdemeanors: picketing in the Capitol and disorderly conduct in that facility.Goodman testified during Jensen’s trial, describing how he had felt cornered and threatened by the mob. Prosecutors showed video of Goodman leading the mob away from the Senate floor while defensively holding up a baton with one of his hands.The Senate awarded Goodman a congressional Gold Medal, saying that the officer had led the violent mob away from lawmakers who ultimately did certify Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.A bipartisan Senate report linked seven deaths to the Capitol attack and said it had left more than 140 police officers injured. As of this week, more than 870 people had been charged with roles in the insurrection.TopicsUS Capitol attackIowaWashington DCnewsReuse this content More

VANCOUVER, Wash. — In March, five months before he became the Republican nominee in a Washington State congressional race, Joe Kent appeared on a webcast hosted by a Gen-Z white nationalist group called the American Populist Union. Kent, who would soon be endorsed by Donald Trump, was there to explain his disavowal of Nick Fuentes, a smirking 24-year-old far-right influencer whom The New York Times has described as “a prominent white supremacist.”On one side of the split screen was David Carlson, the American Populist Union’s baby-faced chief content officer. On the other was Kent, a movie-star-handsome former Green Beret in a plaid flannel shirt, with an American flag hanging behind him. What followed was a 45-minute conversation in which Kent attempted a dance that’s become common in today’s G.O.P.: remaining in the good graces of the far right while putting some distance between himself and its most abhorrent avatars.Joe Kent at a campaign event in Amboy, Wash. “Our agenda for the first two years is simple,” he said. “Impeachment, obstruction and oversight. The Biden agenda dies off in the crib.”Kent had spoken on the phone to Fuentes, a Holocaust denier and Vladimir Putin admirer who believes women shouldn’t be allowed to vote, earlier in his campaign to unseat Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler, one of the 10 Republicans who’d voted to impeach Trump. (They apparently discussed social media strategy.) Their association had become a problem in Kent’s primary, and eventually Kent tweeted that he didn’t want Fuentes’s endorsement because of “his focus on race/religion.” But this rejection infuriated some of Kent’s most reactionary supporters; Fuentes himself went after Kent in a three-and-a-half hour livestream. So Kent appeared on the American Populist Union’s webcast (the group has since changed its name to American Virtue) to explain himself.There, he spoke about how white people are discriminated against in America, called for an immigration moratorium, and said the United States is the only country that “recognizes that our rights are inherent and they come from God, not from government.” Carlson pressed him: Why, given Kent’s own religious and nationalist convictions, did he consider Fuentes “divisive”?“It’s more of a tactics thing,” Kent said. He noted that he has “moral qualms” about Fuentes’s giggling praise for Hitler, but said that where they really differ is on strategy. “Running out there and saying, ‘This movement is for white people and Christians only,’” said Kent, “that is not how you win elections at all.”The question of how you win an election in Washington’s Third Congressional District — a stretch along the southeastern border with Oregon that’s been reliably Republican, voting for Trump by four points in 2020 but still considered fairly moderate — is not just a political debate for right-wing YouTube. The race, pitting Kent, a burgeoning MAGA-world star, against Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a 34-year-old rural working-class Democrat who is emphasizing abortion rights, has national implications.Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in Camas. She is counting on anger over the overturning of Roe to help her win.It’s one that will show us whether Republicans overreached in nominating candidates who speak almost exclusively to their base, or whether politicians like Kent really are the party’s future. It will show us just how potent the backlash to the overturning of Roe v. Wade is. And it will show us what kind of House we’re going to have come 2023: one that is capable of legislating, or one that makes the Tea Party look tame.In other words, the race in Washington’s Third is an almost perfect microcosm of the broader political forces at work in the fall midterm elections.You’ve heard it before: Until recently, it seemed inevitable that a red wave would crash over America in November. The Democrats’ congressional majority is paper-thin, the party in power typically loses midterm seats, and Joe Biden’s poll numbers were abysmal. But lately the forecast has turned cloudier, and districts like Washington’s Third have become surprisingly competitive.Across the country, Republicans have nominated politically inexperienced MAGA fanatics who could lose otherwise winnable races — people like the Ohio House candidate J.R. Majewski, a QAnon promoter who performs pro-Trump rap songs and reportedly misrepresented his military service.Kent is one of the more polished of the MAGA candidates. His military service — 11 tours, mostly in Iraq — is very real, and he has an immensely sympathetic personal story. In 2019, his wife, a Navy cryptologic technician named Shannon Kent, was killed by an ISIS suicide bomber in northeastern Syria, leaving Joe as the single father to a baby and a toddler. This horrific loss, he’s said, helped propel him into politics. Kent holds what he calls the “administrative state” responsible for his wife’s death, arguing that unelected bureaucrats subverted Trump’s attempts to pull American troops out of Syria.“They were supposed to be out Christmas Eve of 2018,” he told me, accusing people close to Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who resigned over the Syria pullout, of slow-rolling the process. “I 100 percent blame the administrative state.”Kent’s anger is understandable, as is his deep disillusionment with the war on terror, which he now sees as a scheme, built on an edifice of lies, to enrich the military-industrial complex. America’s foreign wars, he said, were “a great way for the ruling class to extract wealth and give themselves more power.”It’s hard to entirely disagree with that. But Kent’s fury at the establishment has led him to what was, at least before Trump, the right-wing fringe. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with there being a white people special interest group,” he said on Carlson’s webcast.Kent said that the Jan. 6 insurrection “reeks of an intelligence operation” and he wants all the “political prisoners” arrested for invading the Capitol released. His campaign, The Associated Press’s Brian Slodysko reported, paid a member of the Proud Boys, one of the groups that led the Jan. 6 attack, $11,375 for “consulting” services. He’s appeared at several rallies with Joey Gibson, the founder of a Vancouver-based Christian Nationalist group called Patriot Prayer that has often worked in concert with the Proud Boys.When I asked Kent why he went on Carlson’s webcast, he claimed he didn’t really know who he was. “Honestly, it seemed like a venue where a lot of younger guys listened to, so why not try and get in front of that audience,” he said. He described the Proud Boys, who’ve engaged in especially violent brawls in Portland, Ore., as “a drinking group” that acted in self-defense against the lawlessness of antifa and Black Lives Matter.Despite his hard-right associations, the Republican edge in the midterms probably would have made Kent a shoo-in in his district before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. But the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has mobilized pro-choice voters nationwide.Last month Pat Ryan, a Democrat running on abortion rights, won a special election in a closely divided district in upstate New York. A week later, a Democrat, Mary Peltola, beat Sarah Palin in a special election for Alaska’s lone House seat. “Democrats are punching above their weight in special elections since Dobbs,” said an analysis in FiveThirtyEight. While the November elections can be different from special elections, the challenge for Democrats remains the same: Can they punch above their weight in Washington’s Third?If Kent is one likely face of the future Republican Party, Gluesenkamp Perez, an auto shop owner, offers an intriguing path forward for the Democrats, who need to become competitive in Republican-leaning districts without sacrificing their ideals. She’s counting on a Dobbs backlash, especially since Kent favors a nationwide abortion ban. “It doesn’t matter what a woman’s political party is,” she said of women she meets on the trail. “If they’re old enough to remember what illegal abortions looked like, they do not want to go back.”Gluesenkamp Perez has spoken about how, during the height of the pandemic, she had a miscarriage and needed medical attention. One of the few places that could see her right away was Planned Parenthood, but to get inside, she had to make her way through a wall of protesters. It brought home to her the outrageous presumption of those who’d dictate to women what they can do with their bodies.“Who is going to write a bill that can encompass all the complexity of giving birth and being pregnant?” she said. “That will not happen. There is no role for government in making these decisions.” The Pacific Northwest has a strong libertarian streak, and Gluesenkamp Perez said she meets people who were outraged by mask mandates and are now similarly angry about anti-abortion restrictions on bodily autonomy.Though fund-raising has recently picked up, Gluesenkamp Perez’s campaign is still running on a shoestring. It currently consists of four paid staff members, including a young political director living in a camper in Gluesenkamp Perez’s driveway. Kent, whose appearances on Tucker Carlson’s show and Steve Bannon’s podcast have contributed to his national profile, has a staff of eight.At the Gluesenkamp Pérez event in Camas. A recent survey by Public Policy Polling had Kent leading by three percentage points, 47 percent to 44 percent, within the poll’s margin of error. Nine percent were undecided. The Gluesenkamp Perez campaign’s internal polling shows her with a slight lead, and though internal polling should always be taken with a grain of salt, The Cook Political Report has changed the district’s rating from “Solid Republican” to “Lean Republican.”Because of the Trumpist candidates Republicans have nominated — people like Herschel Walker in Georgia, Blake Masters in Arizona and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania — some forecasts favor Democrats to maintain control of the Senate. The House, where gerrymandered districts give Republicans a strong advantage, is a different story.“For Democrats to retain a majority, they will have to pull the equivalent of an inside straight, holding virtually all their tossup districts in addition to flipping some tossup seats Republicans currently hold,” reported The Times.Democrats need to do a few things simultaneously. They need to turn out pro-choice women, shore up their edge with Latinos and stop hemorrhaging rural voters. Gluesenkamp Perez is unusually well positioned to try to do all three.Her father, a Mexican immigrant, was an evangelical preacher; she told me she learned public speaking in his Texas church. She and her husband live, with their 13-month-old son, off an unpaved road in a house they built themselves “nail by nail,” as she likes to say on the stump. Like Kent, she is good-looking, resembling a taller, lankier Winona Ryder, which shouldn’t matter but probably does.The auto shop owned by Gluesenkamp Perez and her husband.Gluesenkamp Perez and her son, Ciro.The shop Gluesenkamp Perez runs with her husband, Dean’s Car Care, employs eight people, and Gluesenkamp Perez speaks passionately about the struggles of both small-business owners and working parents. She often talks about putting infant noise-protecting headphones on her baby registry; because she couldn’t find a day care spot, her son spent a lot of time with her at the auto shop.“If you think you can spend 15K a year on day care, per kid, and save for retirement, and save up for a mortgage, you’re living in a really different economy than me and most of the people that I know,” she said at one rally.In high school, Gluesenkamp Perez told me, she was so obsessed with civics that she was active in both the Young Republicans and the Young Democrats. It was only when she was a freshman in college and her brother came out as gay that she decided the Republican Party wasn’t for her.Though she looks nothing like Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senate candidate, John Fetterman, something about her reminds me of him. Both are part of working-class communities, and use cultural fluency as much as political rhetoric to try to connect with voters who might feel alienated by the national Democratic Party.Gluesenkamp Perez doesn’t always mention her immigrant heritage when she’s campaigning, at least in front of white, English-speaking audiences. (Her district is about 11 percent Latino.) “I’d say a lot of moderates feel like it’s somehow identity politics,” she said. She leans harder on her rural credentials: “We get our water from a well. I get my internet from a radio tower. And that means a lot to people in rural communities,” she said.Gluesenkamp Perez ’s first political campaign was in 2016, when she ran for county commission in Skamania County, the heavily forested area along the Columbia River Gorge where she lives. The county is very conservative, and she lost, but she outperformed Hillary Clinton by almost seven points.“I really learned how to listen more deeply about what the actual concerns are,” she said. “Because there’s sort of a top level of Fox News talking points, and then if you keep listening, and you go a little deeper, you can start to hear, what are the ways that that’s manifesting for you — what’s really influencing your quality of life.”A packed house, and then some, at a Gluesenkamp Perez event in Vancouver.It was Kent who inspired her to jump into the congressional race. Gluesenkamp Perez recalled the run-up to the 2016 election, when she was surrounded by evidence of enthusiasm for Trump and worried that national Democrats were ignoring it. She saw similar signs, she said, with Kent. “It was basically Joe Kent wallpaper in Skamania County,” she said. People she would have expected to have Herrera Beutler signs just didn’t.“I was not in this race to take Jaime Herrera Beutler out,” she told me. “Did I love her? No, but I wasn’t going to upset my life to run against her. But Joe Kent is dangerous, and I really felt like the same brand of Democrat with a pedigree and a graduate degree was not the solution right now.”Last Saturday afternoon, I watched Gluesenkamp Perez speak at a brewery here in downtown Vancouver. She was introduced by Washington’s attorney general, Bob Ferguson, who boasted of winning 53 lawsuits against the Trump administration. Gluesenkamp Perez thanked him for his work, which she said “derailed Trump’s march towards fascism. And let’s be very clear. Joe Kent is picking up that same banner of fascism. Of white nationalism. Of the Proud Boys. And he has got to be stopped before it is too late!”Gluesenkamp Perez knows talking about fascism, like identity, can be inflammatory; witness the freakout in some quarters when Biden called the MAGA movement “semi-fascist.” But she also thinks that authoritarianism is something a good chunk of people in the district worry about. In an internal poll, her campaign asked voters which issues will determine their choice for Congress. “Protecting democracy,” came in first, closely followed by the cost of living. Abortion was third.After Gluesenkamp Perez, a man who doesn’t often speak at Democratic rallies took the mic. David Nierenberg, a hedge fund manager who calls Mitt Romney his “best friend,” was probably Jaime Herrera Beutler’s biggest fund-raiser in the district. Now he’s backing Gluesenkamp Perez.Nierenberg told me he’s been doing political fund-raising in the community since 1999. “I have never been involved with such a joyous and ecstatic and enthusiastic fund-raising effort as I’m seeing here,” he said. “And I think that is the combination of the huge differences between these two candidates, where Marie is likable, approachable, moderate, well spoken, and then we have a flame-throwing extremist on the other side.”But one of Kent’s key advantages is that he doesn’t have the affect of a flame-throwing extremist. He’s smooth and affable, without Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s coiled, wild-eyed intensity or Representative Matt Gaetz’s smarm. “He’s got a very clean-cut, square-jawed sort of marketing, and if you’re not really paying attention, you’re going to get distracted by the hair,” said Gluesenkamp Perez. He has a talent for saying outrageous things as if they were banal common sense.I met Kent last Sunday, at a Republican picnic held in a wooded grove in Skamania County, and then saw him speak again the next day at an outdoor town hall in a rural area called Amboy. He made it quite clear what he intends to do in Congress. “Our agenda for the first two years is simple,” he said at the town hall. “Impeachment, obstruction and oversight. The Biden agenda dies off in the crib.”After the Kent event in Amboy, where the candidate expressed his view on shutting down the government if need be. “I used to work in the federal government,” he said. “It can shut down. It’s really not a big deal.”Of course, any Republican majority will obstruct and investigate Biden, but the size and composition of a potential Republican caucus still matters. It will determine, among other things, just how many impeachments and government shutdowns we’re in for, and how often the House uses its power to protect Trump and reify MAGA conspiracy theories. The more candidates like Kent get elected, the less reason Republicans will have to make any concession to a reality that exists outside the Trumpist bubble.In his speeches, Kent promised to impeach Biden on Day One, and then Vice President Kamala Harris (“one of the lead fund-raisers for antifa and B.L.M. during the summer of 2020”), Attorney General Merrick Garland and the secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas. At the town hall, he emphasized his willingness to shut down the government: “I used to work in the federal government,” he said. “It can shut down. It’s really not a big deal.”In this environment, a Gluesenkamp Perez win wouldn’t just give Democrats an extra seat, or provide a shining example for how to run in purplish regions: It would be a cautionary tale warning Republicans that there’s a price for marching into the fever swamps.As for Kent, his attempt to distance himself from Fuentes shows that he’s capable of modulating his political strategy. Most of the time, it seems, he doesn’t think he has to. A Kent victory would signal to other Republicans that even outside of ultra-red districts, there’s no need to appeal to moderates, and little price to be paid for courting the hard right.On the stump, in addition to listing all of those people he would impeach, Kent promised to hold Anthony Fauci “accountable” for the “scam that is Covid.” I asked him what holding Fauci accountable means. “Criminal charges,” said Kent. But what charges, I asked? “Murder,” he replied, as it were the most obvious answer in the world.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 the weeks before Election Day, Times Opinion needs your help to understand what motivates each generation to vote.In a world on fire, our readers often describe a sense of displacement, and the fear that they and their children might not have the same lives their parents did. Every generation experienced the pandemic differently, from Zoom classrooms to apartments brimming with young children and isolated retirement communities, locked away from those they love. Combined with the upheaval of the last few months, those experiences, as different as they were, have left a deep and impermeable mark on our politics — radicalizing some generations, alienating others, and exposing our institutional rot to all.But even before the pandemic, the political differences between generations in America had never been greater, particularly when it came to racial discrimination, immigration policy and economic inequality.No group is a monolith, but to understand how the generational struggles at the heart of American politics might influence election outcomes in November, we want to hear directly from you, our readers. We’re particularly interested in hearing from younger voters.Pollsters often ask people to list the most important problems they face right now, and the Times Opinion politics team has narrowed that list to 19 options. We want you to choose the one that matters most to you and then tell us why: What’s at stake for you personally? What do you hope to change with your vote?We plan to publish a selection of responses shortly before the midterm elections. We won’t publish your comments or personal details without contacting you first.What’s at stake for you on Election Day?We’ve created a list of some of the biggest problems facing voters right now. Choose the one that matters most to you and tell us why.

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