Elections

Retired NYPD officer receives longest sentence yet for attack on CapitolThomas Webster was given a 10-year prison time for six charges, including assaulting an officer with a metal flagpole A retired New York police department officer has received a record-setting 10- year sentence for his involvement in the Capitol attack, during which he used a metal flagpole to assault one of the police officers trying to hold off a mob of Donald Trump supporters.Thomas Webster was sentenced on Thursday, and his prison time will represent the longest punishment so far for the roughly 250 people facing punishment for their role in the January 6 attack.Donald Trump says he plans to pardon US Capitol attack participants if electedRead moreThe previous longest was shared by two other rioters, who were sentenced separately to seven years and three months in prison.Webster, a 20-year NYPD veteran, was the first Capitol riot defendant to be tried on an assault charge and the first to present a self-defense argument. A jury rejected Webster’s claim that he was defending himself when he tackled Noah Rathbun, a Metropolitan police department officer, and grabbed his gas mask outside the Capitol.US district judge Amit Mehta sentenced Webster, 56, to 10 years in prison plus three years of supervised release. He allowed Webster to report to prison at a date to be determined instead of immediately ordering him into custody.“Mr Webster, I don’t think you’re a bad person,” the judge said. “I think you were caught up in a moment. But as you know, even getting caught up in a moment has consequences.”“The other victim was democracy, and that is not something that can be taken lightly,” Mehta added.Webster turned to apologize to Rathbun, who was in the courtroom but didn’t address the judge. Webster said he wishes he had never come to Washington DC.“I wish the horrible events of that day had never happened,” he told the judge.In a court filing, prosecutors accused Webster of “disgracing a democracy that he once fought honorably to protect and serve”. Webster led the charge against police barricades at the Capitol’s Lower West Plaza, prosecutors said. They compared the attack to a medieval battle, with rioters pelting officers with makeshift projectiles and engaging in hand-to-hand combat.Defense attorney James Monroe said in a court filing that the mob was “guided by unscrupulous politicians” and others promoting the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. He questioned why prosecutors argued that Webster didn’t deserve leniency for his 25 years of service to his country and New York City.“That is not how we measure justice. That is revenge,” Monroe said.In May, jurors deliberated for less than three hours before they convicted Webster of all six counts in his indictment, including a charge that he assaulted Rathbun with a dangerous weapon, the flagpole.The sentencing was one of several developments related to the Capitol attack on Thursday. A New Jersey man pleaded guilty to using pepper spray on police officers, including Officer Brian Sicknick, who later suffered a stroke and died. Julian Khater, 33, pleaded guilty to two counts of assaulting or impeding officers with a dangerous weapon and could face up to 20 years in prison. Kellye SoRelle, a lawyer for the far-right Oath Keepers extremist group, was arrested in Texas on charges including conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.Webster retired from the NYPD in 2011 after 20 years of service, which included a stint on then mayor Michael Bloomberg’s private security detail. He served in the US Marine Corps from 1985 to 1989 before joining the NYPD in 1991.The Associated Press contributed reportingTopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsNew YorkPoliceDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

Sarah Palin’s bid for a political comeback just got a lot harder.Ms. Palin, a household name and former Republican Party vice-presidential nominee, lost a special House election this week that will send Mary Peltola, a Democrat, to Congress until January. But she will enter a rematch with Ms. Peltola and other opponents this fall as they seek to fill Alaska’s lone congressional seat from 2023 onward.Ms. Palin failed to consolidate the support of Republican voters, contending with low approval ratings and a ranked-choice system that favored moderate candidates. The question is whether she can overcome the same challenges in the fall.Former President Donald J. Trump had endorsed Ms. Palin, 58, a former Alaska governor, but she came in second behind Ms. Peltola by a few percentage points late Wednesday after two rounds of tabulations in a new election system that allowed voters to rank their top three choices in order of preference. Ms. Peltola will now finish the term of Representative Don Young, who died in March after serving in Washington for nearly 50 years.After the results were released Wednesday, Ms. Palin appeared stunned and frustrated in a video filmed at her campaign headquarters in Anchorage.“When it comes down to second- and third-place votes, that’s going to decide who’s going to win?” she asked, criticizing the election system as she raised her arms in exasperation.For Ms. Peltola and Alaska, her win is historic, if temporary.Mary Peltola will be the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress.Ash Adams for The New York TimesMs. Peltola, 49, a former state lawmaker who is Yup’ik, will become the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress and the first woman to hold the House seat. It also will provide a significant boost of momentum for Democrats, who have not notched a major statewide victory since Mark Begich defeated Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican, in 2008 after Mr. Stevens’s tenure was marred by a conviction on corruption charges.Ms. Peltola’s victory adds to a string of strong showings for Democrats, most recently in the special election for New York’s 19th Congressional District. Democrats have grown more confident about their chances of holding on to the Senate in November as debate over abortion has energized their voters and President Biden’s approval ratings have ticked up slightly. Still, most Democrats acknowledged that retaining control of the House will be more difficult.The general election in November for the House seat in Alaska, a conservative-leaning state with a strong libertarian and independent streak, is considered a tossup, in part because of the uncertainties of the ranked-choice system. Candidates still have a chance to revise their strategies, and the ballot will include a fourth top candidate to rank, the largely unknown Christopher Bye, a combat veteran who is running as a libertarian. (In the special election, the fourth candidate, an independent named Al Gross, dropped out and expressed support for Ms. Peltola.)“Sarah Palin still has a path forward because it was still quite close,” a Republican pollster, Matt Larkin, said. “It will come down to how she and the other candidates adapt.”In the special election, roughly 60 percent of Alaskans listed a Republican as their first choice on the ballot. Ms. Peltola and Ms. Palin earned the top two spots, but neither had 50 percent of the vote. So votes from the ballots that had ranked Nick Begich III, also a Republican, as first choice were then allocated between Ms. Palin and Ms. Peltola based on whether either woman had been listed second.That tally showed that Ms. Palin had not united Republican voters behind her: Of the ballots that ranked Mr. Begich first, only about half listed her as a second choice. Roughly 30 percent ranked Ms. Peltola second, and a further 21 percent were considered “exhausted,” or inactive — meaning they had no second choice or they listed a candidate who had already been eliminated.The numbers suggest that thousands of Republican voters cast their second-choice votes for a Democrat, another candidate or no one, rather than Ms. Palin.In the end, Ms. Palin drew nearly 86,000 votes, or roughly 48.5 percent, coming nearly three percentage points behind Ms. Peltola, who won more than 91,000 votes, or 51.5 percent, according to the Alaska state election results that are expected to be certified this week.Sarah Palin’s campaign headquarters in South Anchorage. On the trail, she told voters to rank only her on the ballot. Ash Adams for The New York TimesMs. Palin’s campaign on Thursday did not respond to multiple requests for interviews.In early signs, Ms. Palin did not seem willing to change or moderate her tone or strategy. Videos of her reaction to the results at her campaign headquarters captured her renewing criticism of the system, saying she had long encouraged supporters not to comply. On the campaign trail, she told voters to rank her and her alone.Ms. Palin’s attempt at a political comeback had stirred wide debate among Alaskans from the beginning over whether she was interested in public service or in seeking more celebrity. She has so far run a campaign that leans on a solid base of support among evangelical conservatives and Trump supporters. In the final weeks before the Aug. 16 special election and primary, she sparred heavily with her top Republican opponent, Mr. Begich, shunned the establishment and mostly ignored the press.In interviews in Anchorage, Palmer and her hometown, Wasilla, her most ardent supporters were often conservative women who had long tracked her political rise and wished to see her tussle with powerful Democratic women like Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “It would be so fun to watch Nancy Pelosi swear her in,” said T.J. DeSpain, 51, an art therapist who attended an outdoor concert in Palmer days before the Aug. 16 special election.But several voters complained Ms. Palin had spent most of her time on the reality TV circuit or in the lower 48 states after she resigned from the governor’s office in 2009 while facing ethics complaints and legal bills. Alaska Survey Research found in late July that 31 percent of registered Alaska voters viewed her positively and 61 percent viewed her negatively. In a different analysis, Mr. Larkin, the Republican pollster, argued that it was most likely that Ms. Peltola or Mr. Begich would win the special election, based on Ms. Palin’s low approval numbers.Nick Begich III with supporters in Anchorage last month. He sought to define himself as a young and idealistic fiscal conservative.Ash Adams for The New York TimesMr. Begich, 44, the founder and chief executive of a software development company, criticized his opponent for what he described as her failure to campaign more aggressively in the state. He sought to define himself as an idealistic fiscal conservative, despite sharing a last name with the best-known Democratic family in the state, including his uncle, former Senator Mark Begich.In an interview Thursday, Mr. Begich said he had told his supporters to rank Ms. Palin second,but that she did not reciprocate the call.“I think Alaskans have made clear that they don’t want to see Sarah Palin in office again,” he said. “Poll after poll showed that Sarah Palin would be unable to beat a Democrat in Alaska, and now that has been proven by the result we saw yesterday.”The refrain was echoed by Ms. Peltola’s supporters, who argued that their top choice captured the energy of Alaskans and the independent-streak legacy of Mr. Young, who was close friends with her father. Ms. Palin “is so played out, and that shows in the results,” said Amber Lee, a Democratic strategist who is backing Ms. Peltola.Ms. Peltola, who is friends with Ms. Palin, ran a largely positive campaign that sharply diverged from her Republican opponents in substance. She strongly championed abortion rights, called for higher taxes on the wealthy and sought an approach to development of Alaska’s resources focused on sustaining communities over corporate interests.Heather Kendall, who is Athabascan and a retired lawyer with the Native American Rights Fund, called Ms. Peltola’s victory “a combination of an earthquake and a tsunami for Alaskan politics all at once.”In the undertow of the electoral contest has been Mr. Trump, who made a rare visit to Anchorage in July to hold a rally for Ms. Palin, whom he hailed as “legendary.”Mr. Trump won Alaska by 10 percentage points in 2020, but those results represented a drop from his 15-point victory in 2016 as he has alienated thousands of moderate Republicans and independents. Before Ms. Palin’s loss this week, some analysts had speculated that Mr. Trump’s endorsement of Ms. Palin could push those Republicans who did not favor him away from her, even as it might have drawn others to her side.For now, her defeat in the special election calls into question whether she retains a strong political base in the state that powered her political rise. She served as mayor of Wasilla, a city of about 10,000 people, before becoming governor and then contending for a job in 2008 that would have put her second in line to the presidency.After Barack Obama defeated Ms. Palin’s running mate, Senator John McCain, in that presidential election, Ms. Palin faced a reckoning from Republican Party leaders who attributed his defeat to her uneven political performance and lack of deep policy knowledge.Tell-all books from that campaign mocked her verbal blunders and dished on her rough treatment of staff, who clashed frequently with her over issues as varied as her aggressive political rhetoric and her wardrobe.Mr. McCain, who died of brain cancer in 2018, grew estranged from his former vice-president-to-be in his later years. The two stopped speaking to one another, and Ms. Palin was not invited to Mr. McCain’s funeral at his family’s insistence.But it was Ms. Palin who better represented the mood and style of the angry, growing base of Republican voters — a group that would later become the molten core of Mr. Trump’s stunning upset against Mrs. Clinton eight years after the defeat of Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin.As news broke that Ms. Peltola had defeated Ms. Palin late Wednesday, the longtime conservative radio host Mike Porcaro fielded reactions from Republicans who seemed to find no middle ground on Ms. Palin. “She is loved or not,” he said.One caller stuck with him in particular, a 30-year-old Republican who said he had ranked Mr. Begich first and Ms. Peltola second because he had grown tired of Ms. Palin and Mr. Trump. “It is pretty obvious the Republicans have more people, but they seem to be at odds with each other, and it opens the door for the Democrat,” Mr. Porcaro said.Blake Hounshell More

What happens if the 2024 election is between Donald Trump and somebody like Bernie Sanders? What happens if the Republicans nominate someone who is morally unacceptable to millions of Americans while the Democrats nominate someone who is ideologically unacceptable? Where do the millions of voters in the middle go? Does Trump end up winning as voters refuse to go that far left?The group No Labels has been working quietly over the past 10 months to give Americans a third viable option. The group calls its work an insurance policy. If one of the parties nominates a candidate acceptable to the center of the electorate, then the presidential operation shuts down. But if both parties go to the extremes, then there will be a unity ticket appealing to both Democrats and Republicans to combat this period of polarized dysfunction.The No Labels operation is a $70 million effort, of which $46 million has already been raised or pledged. It has four main prongs. The first is to gain ballot access for a prospective third candidate in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The organization is working with lawyers, political strategists and petition firms to amass signatures and establish a No Labels slot on the 2024 ballots. The group already has over 100,000 signatures in Ohio, for example, and 47,000 signatures in Arizona.The second effort is to create a database on those Americans who would support a unity ticket. The group’s research suggests there are 64.5 million voters who would support such an effort, including roughly a third of the people who supported Donald Trump in 2020 and 20 percent of the Democrats who supported Joe Biden in that year, as well as a slew of independents.The group has identified 23 states where they believe a unity ticket could win a plurality of the vote, including Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, Minnesota and Colorado. If the ticket gained a plurality in those 23 states, that would give its standard-bearer 279 electoral votes and the presidency.The third effort is to find a policy agenda that appeals to unity voters. The group has come up with a series of both/and positions on major issues: comprehensive immigration reform with stronger borders and a path to citizenship for DACA immigrants; American energy self-sufficiency while transitioning to cleaner sources; No guns for anyone under 21 and universal background checks; moderate abortion policies with abortion legal until about 15 weeks.The fourth effort is to create an infrastructure to nominate and support a potential candidate. There’s already a network of state co-chairs and local volunteers. Many of them are regular Americans, while others are notables like Mike Rawlings, a Democrat and the former mayor of Dallas, the civil rights leader Benjamin Chavis and Dennis Blair, the former director of national intelligence.The group has not figured out how the nominating process would work, though they want to use technology to create a transparent process that would generate public interest. There would be a nominating convention in Texas, shortly after it becomes clear who will be the Democratic and Republican nominees.The people who are volunteering for this emphasize that they are not leaving their parties. This is not an effort to create a third party, like Andrew Yang’s effort. This is a one-off move to create a third option if the two major parties abandon the middle in 2024.The big question is: Is this a good idea? To think this through I’ve imagined a 2024 campaign in which the Republicans nominate Trump, Biden retires and the Democrats nominate some progressive and the No Labels group nominates retired Adm. William McRaven and the former PepsiCo C.E.O. Indra Nooyi. (I’m just grabbing these latter two names off the top of my head as the sort of people who might be ideal for the No Labels ticket).The first danger is that the No Labels candidates would draw more support away from the Democrats and end up re-electing Trump. This strikes me as a real possibility, though the No Labels activist Jenny Hopkins from Colorado tells me, “I find it easier to find Republicans who want to pull away from Trump than it is to find Democrats who want to pull away from Biden.”The second danger is that the No Labels candidates fail to generate any excitement at all. Millions of Americans claim to dislike the two major parties, but come election time they hold their noses and support one in order to defeat the party they hate more.The last competitive third presidential option was Ross Perot in 1992. He ran as a clear populist outsider, not on the moderate “unity” theme that is at the heart of the No Labels effort. On the other hand, the gap between the two parties is much vaster today than when Perot ran against Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. There is much more running room up the middle. Plus, the country is much hungrier for change. Only 13 percent of American voters say the country is on the right track.This is one of those efforts that everybody looks at with skepticism at first. But if ever the country was ripe for something completely different, it’s now.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

Mary Peltola, whose victory in a special election on Wednesday makes her the first Democrat in nearly half a century to represent Alaska in the House, won the contest for the remainder of Representative Don Young’s term with an upbeat campaign that appealed to Alaskan interests and the electorate’s independent streak.But Alaska’s new voting system also played a big role in Ms. Peltola’s three-percentage-point victory over former Gov. Sarah Palin, her Republican opponent.Ms. Peltola, who will become the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress and the first woman to hold the House seat, won at least in part because voters had more choices. While more voters initially picked a Republican candidate, that didn’t matter. Given a second choice, many Republican voters opted for a Democrat — Ms. Peltola — over Ms. Palin.Speaking to reporters on Wednesday night, Ms. Palin criticized the new voting system as “weird.” Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas called the system a “scam to rig elections” against Republicans.But proponents of systems like Alaska’s say this is how it is supposed to work. When voters have more choices, they’re less likely to vote along strict party lines, reducing polarization and giving independent-minded or more centrist candidates a better shot.The changes to how Alaskans choose their representatives in state and federal elections were decided on in 2020, when allies of Lisa Murkowski — the state’s senior senator, who ran in 2010 as a write-in candidate after losing that year’s Republican Party primary — promoted and bankrolled a ballot initiative that passed by a narrow margin — precisely 3,781 votes, out of more than 344,000.The consequences for Alaskan politics, and for the country, could be seismic. New York, Maine and Utah also have some form of ranked-choice voting, as do dozens of American cities. But the Alaska approach — which combines ranked-choice voting across party lines with an instant runoff between several top candidates — goes further in disrupting political parties’ influence.Second choices matterIn the first stage of the complex new system, voters in a primary pick from a list of candidates from all parties and ideological stripes.The top four finishers then make the ballot for the general election, when voters rank up to four choices in order of preference: first, second, third and fourth — or none at all.Over multiple rounds of what is known as instant runoff or ranked-choice voting, election officials first eliminate candidates with no chance of winning and then reallocate the second, third and fourth choices of their voters to others.Former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska doing interviews at a rally hosted by former President Donald J. Trump in Anchorage in July.Ash Adams for The New York TimesNicholas Begich III, a Republican, failed to meet the threshold, meaning his votes were reallocated based on their second choices. But 15,000 voters who preferred Mr. Begich crossed party lines to select Ms. Peltola as their backup pick instead of Ms. Palin. A further 11,000 Begich voters opted for no second choice or another candidate. In total, that meant that nearly half of Mr. Begich’s voters, presumably Republicans, did not vote for Ms. Palin.Scott Kendall, a leading proponent of the Alaska system, said in an interview on Thursday: “The campaign that Nick Begich ran was a clinic in how to have your party lose a ranked-choice election.” More

Donald Trump says he plans to pardon US Capitol attack participants if elected‘I mean full pardons with an apology to many,’ says former president as January 6 rioter sentenced to 10 years for assault Donald Trump said on Thursday he would pardon and apologize to those who participated in the deadly attack on the US Capitol on January 6 if he were elected to the White House again.“I mean full pardons with an apology to many,” he told Wendy Bell, a conservative radio host on Thursday. “I will be looking very, very strongly about pardons, full pardons.”‘US democracy will not survive for long’: how January 6 hearings plot a roadmap to autocracyRead moreFive people died in connection with the attack and more than 140 law enforcement officers were injured. More than 875 people have been charged with crimes related to January 6, according to an NPR tracker. 370 people have pleaded guilty to crimes so far.Trump also said he was offering financial support to some of those involved in the attack. “I am financially supporting people that are incredible and they were in my office actually two days ago, so they’re very much in my mind,” Trump said. “It’s a disgrace what they’ve done to them. What they’ve done to these people is disgraceful.”It was not immediately clear what the extent of Trump’s financial assistance was.In a series of televised hearings this summer, the US House panel investigating the Capitol attack laid out extensive evidence that Trump encouraged the mob to go to the Capitol on January 6 and resisted efforts to quell the violence.The panel is set to continue its work this fall, but the decision over whether to file criminal charges will ultimately be made by the US Department of Justice.Trump has heavily hinted that he will run for the presidency again in 2024, but has so far not confirmed any bid. If he does run, he will automatically be the overwhelming favorite to be the Republican nominee as his grip on the party and its base remains strong.Trump’s comments came the same day that Thomas Webster, a retired New York police department officer, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, the longest sentence issued so far for any defendant in the attack, according to the Associated Press. A jury found Webster guilty after he argued he was acting in self-defense when he assaulted a Washington DC police officer and pulled his gas mask off.“Some of the legal people on the other side, they’re the most cold-hearted people. They don’t care about families. They don’t care about anything,” Trump said Thursday.Amit Mehta, the US district judge who sentenced Webster, said that other than the police officer, the other victim in the attack was “democracy”.TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

Crime is a perennial political football, discussed on the campaign trail usually in terms of how harshly it should be punished. Voters describe how much they fear it. Candidates describe how tough they will be in stopping it.But some of the millions of people who have actually experienced it feel lost in the debate.A nonpartisan group of them, Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice, will announce a campaign on Thursday to persuade 100,000 crime survivors to cast ballots in the midterm elections, with a focus on people who have not previously voted. The effort — part of a multiyear, multimillion-dollar push by the group to increase turnout — will be national but will focus primarily on a subset of states, including Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas, where there are competitive elections and the group has existing infrastructure.“We don’t want legislators creating laws for us without including our voices,” said Priscilla Bordayo, 37, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and the Michigan manager of the crime survivors’ group, which is nonprofit. “We know best what we want and what we need in order to heal.”Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice — part of the Alliance for Safety and Justice, a group that advocates criminal justice reform — does not endorse candidates. It has tens of thousands of members, and their priorities and views vary, but, broadly, it promotes prevention and rehabilitation while opposing mass incarceration.The voter encouragement by the crime survivors’ group follows a campaign it ran in 2020, when it also aimed to turn out 100,000 crime survivors. The goal is more difficult in a midterm election year, when fewer people typically vote.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsAn Upset in Alaska: Mary Peltola, a Democrat, beat Sarah Palin in a special House election, adding to a series of recent wins for the party. Ms. Peltola will become the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress.Evidence Against a Red Wave: Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, it’s hard to see the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage. A strong Democratic showing in a New York special election is one of the latest examples.G.O.P.’s Dimming Hopes: Republicans are still favored in the fall House races, but former President Donald J. Trump and abortion are scrambling the picture in ways that distress party insiders.Digital Pivot: At least 10 G.O.P. candidates in competitive races have updated their websites to minimize their ties to Mr. Trump or to adjust their uncompromising stances on abortion.Two years ago, because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the group focused on calling potential voters. This year, it plans to organize in person in communities with large numbers of crime survivors. The campaign will involve town-hall-style events, voter education and practical help with tasks like registration.Its national director, Aswad Thomas, planned to play professional basketball before he was shot in 2009, which ended his athletic career. He said that he had lost more than 40 friends to gun violence and that his opposition to “tough on crime” policies had been informed by the discovery that his assailant was also a victim of gun violence.“I strongly believe his unaddressed trauma played a huge role with me being shot,” said Mr. Thomas, 39.Members of the group have lobbied legislators to fund trauma recovery centers and community-based violence intervention and to increase victim services. In some places, they have also promoted health care and housing assistance in an effort to address the social and economic instability that can lead to crime.“Part of my healing is helping other crime survivors so they can get the support that they need and get things that were not available to me at the time,” said Pearl Wise, 58, a chapter coordinator in York, Pa., whose son Chad Merrill was fatally shot in 2018. Ms. Wise and her husband are raising Mr. Merrill’s son, Layton, who was an infant when his father was killed.Before her son’s death, Ms. Wise said, she had never voted and did not follow the news. But afterward, she said, she was invited to a gathering of crime survivors in California and was inspired by their descriptions of pushing for legislation. It was the first time she felt she could make a meaningful difference by participating in politics.She registered to vote and cast her first ballot for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020. Then, she began lobbying Pennsylvania lawmakers to extend to five years from two the amount of time survivors have to apply for compensation.Legislation containing that provision passed this summer.Asianay Jackson of Pontiac, Mich., lost her father to gun violence when she was 3 and said that connecting with other survivors in recent years, through a grief support group and the crime survivors’ group, showed her that the killing had affected her more than she realized. She said the most important issues to her were gun violence and police brutality, that she supported the Black Lives Matter movement and that she wanted to push for stricter gun laws, including age restrictions on weapons like AR-15s.Ms. Jackson, 18, is newly eligible to vote and plans to do so, but has not yet decided which candidates to support. More

Prosecutors in Atlanta have called the Republican senator to testify before a special grand jury investigating efforts by Donald J. Trump and his allies to overturn his election loss.ATLANTA — In a setback for Senator Lindsey Graham, a federal judge ruled on Thursday that prosecutors can ask him about certain elements of his November 2020 phone calls with Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state. Mr. Raffensperger has said that in those calls, Mr. Graham suggested rejecting mail-in votes in the presidential election from counties with high rates of questionable signatures.The order from U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May must now be taken up for consideration by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. It is the latest twist in a protracted legal drama in which Mr. Graham has sought to avoid appearing before a special grand jury in Atlanta that is investigating efforts by Donald J. Trump and his allies to overturn Mr. Trump’s narrow loss in the state in 2020.Mr. Graham’s phone calls to Mr. Raffensperger were followed, weeks later, by a call from Mr. Trump himself, who asked Mr. Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes to put him over the top.Mr. Graham has argued that he should not have to comply at all with a subpoena to testify before the special grand jury. His lawyers raised issues of sovereign immunity and the fact that Mr. Graham is “a high-ranking government official.”Judge May rejected those arguments in a ruling in mid-August. But a week later, the appellate court asked the judge to determine whether limits should be applied to Mr. Graham’s testimony, based on the U.S. Constitution’s Speech or Debate clause, which protects lawmakers from being questioned about their legitimate legislative functions.Understand Georgia’s Trump Election InvestigationCard 1 of 5Understand Georgia’s Trump Election InvestigationAn immediate legal threat to Trump. More

The Senate’s Republican campaign chief on Thursday appeared to escalate an ugly quarrel with the party’s longtime leader in the chamber, Senator Mitch McConnell, in the latest sign of the G.O.P.’s eroding confidence about winning back the majority in November.Without naming Mr. McConnell, Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, lashed out in a blistering opinion piece in The Washington Examiner at Republicans he said were “trash-talking” the party’s candidates, an apparent reference to comments last month in which Mr. McConnell said that “candidate quality” could harm the G.O.P.’s chances of retaking the Senate. Mr. Scott called such remarks “treasonous” and said those who make them should “pipe down.”“Unfortunately, many of the very people responsible for losing the Senate last cycle are now trying to stop us from winning the majority this time by trash-talking our Republican candidates,” Mr. Scott wrote. “It’s an amazing act of cowardice, and ultimately, it’s treasonous to the conservative cause.”Speaking to reporters in his home state last month, Mr. McConnell conceded that Republicans had a stronger chance of winning back control of the House than the Senate in November.“Senate races are just different — they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome,” he said at a Chamber of Commerce lunch in Florence, Ky. The comment was widely interpreted to reflect Mr. McConnell’s growing concern about Republicans’ roster of Senate recruits, which includes several candidates who have been endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump and appear to be struggling in competitive races.Senator Mitch McConnell has conceded that Republicans have a stronger chance of winning back control of the House than the Senate. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesThe intraparty feuding comes at a fraught moment for Mr. McConnell, who once boasted of being “100 percent focused” on stymieing President Biden’s agenda and appeared confident of his chance to reclaim the mantle of Senate majority leader given Democrats’ tiny margin of control. Those aspirations have dimmed substantially of late as Democrats have racked up a series of legislative accomplishments and Republican candidates have foundered in key contests.Mr. McConnell’s aides have downplayed the significance of his comment about “candidate quality,” arguing that it was designed to spur donors to help underfunded Republicans in the homestretch of the campaign. Mr. McConnell subsequently hosted a fund-raiser in Louisville for Herschel Walker, the Republican Senate candidate in Georgia; Dr. Mehmet Oz, the candidate in Pennsylvania; and Representative Ted Budd of North Carolina, who is also running for Senate.“Leader McConnell’s been on airplanes and on the phone all month, and that helped make August the biggest month of the cycle so far,” said Jack Pandol, a spokesman for the Senate Leadership Fund, the political action committee Mr. McConnell controls, which has become the main vehicle for donors to support Republican candidates.A spokesman for Mr. McConnell declined to comment.Privately, some Senate campaign operatives have savaged Mr. Scott, saying they were befuddled by his decision to embark last month on an Italian yacht vacation at the same time that the committee was pulling television reservations in critical states, signaling it was losing hope of victories there. The trip was reported by Axios.Mr. Scott has been at odds with Mr. McConnell since Mr. Scott released his “11-Point Plan to Rescue America,” presenting it as a policy platform for the midterm elections. Mr. McConnell emphatically rejected the plan, telling reporters, “We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years.”Mr. Scott has never backed down from promoting his plan. And on Thursday, he took on Mr. McConnell in his strongest words yet.“If you want to trash-talk our candidates to help the Democrats, pipe down,” he wrote in the opinion piece. “That’s not what leaders do.”He added, “When you complain and lament that we have ‘bad candidates,’ what you are really saying is that you have contempt for the voters who chose them. Now we are at the heart of the matter. Much of Washington’s chattering class disrespects and secretly (or not so secretly) loathes Republican voters.” More