Elections

Donald J. Trump’s efforts to politicize the law enforcement system have now become his shield as he tries to deflect accusations of wrongdoing.WASHINGTON — Two days after the 2020 election that Donald J. Trump refused to admit he lost, his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., made an urgent recommendation: “Fire Wray.”The younger Mr. Trump did not explain in the text he sent why it was necessary to oust Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director his father himself had appointed more than three years earlier. He did not have to. Everyone understood. Mr. Wray, in the view of the Trump family and its followers, was not personally loyal enough to the departing president.Throughout his four years in the White House, Mr. Trump tried to turn the nation’s law enforcement apparatus into an instrument of political power to carry out his wishes. Now as the F.B.I. under Mr. Wray has executed an unprecedented search warrant at the former president’s Florida home, Mr. Trump is accusing the nation’s justice system of being exactly what he tried to turn it into: a political weapon for a president, just not for him.There is, in fact, no evidence that President Biden has had any role in the investigation. Mr. Biden has not publicly demanded that the Justice Department lock up Mr. Trump the way Mr. Trump publicly demanded that the Justice Department lock up Mr. Biden and other Democrats. Nor has anyone knowledgeably contradicted the White House statement that it was not even informed about the search at Mar-a-Lago beforehand, much less involved in ordering it. But Mr. Trump has a long history of accusing adversaries of doing what he himself does or would do in the same situation.His efforts to politicize the law enforcement system have now become his shield to try to deflect accusations of wrongdoing. Just as he asserted on Monday that the F.B.I. search was political persecution, he made the same claim on Wednesday about the New York attorney general’s unrelated investigation of his business practices as he invoked his Fifth Amendment right to avoid testifying because his answers could incriminate him.“Now to flip the script and falsely claim that he’s the victim of the exact same tactics that he once deployed is just the rankest hypocrisy,” said Norman L. Eisen, who served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first Trump impeachment. “But consistency, logic, evidence, truth — those are always the first to go by the board when a democracy comes under assault from within.”Mr. Trump’s Republican allies argue that he was not the one who undercut the apolitical tradition of the F.B.I. and law enforcement, or at least he was not the first to do so. Instead, they maintain, the system was corrupted by the bureau’s leadership and even members of the Obama administration when Mr. Trump and his campaign were investigated for possible collusion with Russia during the 2016 campaign, an inquiry that ended with no charges of conspiracy with Moscow.The former president’s camp has long pointed to text messages between a pair of F.B.I. officials that sharply criticized Mr. Trump during that campaign and to surveillance warrants obtained against an adviser to Mr. Trump that were later deemed unjustified. The Justice Department acknowledged the warrants were flawed, and an inspector general faulted the F.B.I. officials for their texts. But the inspector general found nothing to conclude that anyone had tried to harm Mr. Trump out of political bias.In a letter to Mr. Wray on Wednesday, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, alluded to the history of the F.B.I.’s previous investigation of Mr. Trump to cast doubt on the current inquiry that led to Monday’s search for classified documents that the former president may have improperly taken when he left office.Christopher A. Wray’s F.B.I. executed an unprecedented search warrant at the former president’s Florida home.Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times“The F.B.I.’s actions, less than three months from the upcoming elections, are doing more to erode public trust in our government institutions, the electoral process and the rule of law in the U.S. than the Russian Federation or any other foreign adversary,” Mr. Rubio said in the letter.The search was approved by a magistrate judge and high-level law enforcement officials required to meet a high level of proof of possible crimes. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, himself a former appeals court judge who was appointed by Mr. Biden with bipartisan support and whose caution in pursuing the former president until now had generated criticism from liberals, has offered no public explanation so far.The degree to which Mr. Trump has succeeded in promoting his view of a politicized law enforcement system was evident in the hours after the F.B.I. search on Monday when many Republicans, including Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House minority leader, wasted little time assailing the bureau’s action as partisan without waiting to find out what it was based on or what it turned up.The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 7The Trump InvestigationsNumerous inquiries. More

Much of the attention paid to Donald Trump’s favorite candidates running in the midterms has focused — rightly! — on their support for relitigating the 2020 election. (Which, for those still unsure, was not stolen.)But across a range of policy issues, including abortion, climate change, same-sex marriage and education, Trump’s MAGA warriors have taken positions that put them on the fringes of the Republican Party — let alone the nation as a whole.The usual caveats apply: Candidates often say things to win a primary that they then jettison or downplay when facing general-election voters.But the nature of political partisanship in America has changed over the last decade or so, raising doubts about whether that conventional wisdom still holds. If they are elected in November, the Trump crowd could shove American politics sharply rightward.Let’s take a look:AbortionNowhere is the starkness of the these candidates’ positions more evident than on abortion, which has become a much more urgent litmus test on the right since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for governor of Arizona, has said she supports enacting a “carbon copy” of the Texas abortion law in her state. That law does not include exceptions for incest or rape. It also contains an unusual provision that was meant to work around Roe v. Wade before the decision was thrown out in June: Anyone can report someone violating the law and claim a $10,000 bounty from the state.Blake Masters, who won the G.O.P. nomination for Senate in Arizona, has supported a federal “personhood” law that would establish that fetuses are people. He has also raised questions about whether Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court decision granting couples the federal right to use contraception, was correctly decided — but he does not support a ban on contraception.The list goes on: In Georgia, Herschel Walker, the party’s nominee for Senate, has told reporters, “There’s not a national ban on abortion right now, and I think that’s a problem.” Doug Mastriano, who is running for governor of Pennsylvania, introduced a fetal heartbeat bill as a state senator. Again, the bill contained no exceptions for incest or rape.Climate changeSkepticism of the human impact on the planet’s climate abounds, despite mounting scientific evidence that severe flooding, rising global temperatures, droughts and volatile weather patterns have already arrived.Mastriano, for instance, has called climate change a “theory” based on “pop science.” Mehmet Oz, the Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, has leaned on his background as a doctor to adopt a markedly unscientific pro-carbon position.Read More on Abortion Issues in AmericaA First: Indiana became the first state to draw up and approve a near-total abortion ban in the post-Roe era. Some major companies in the state, including Eli Lilly, have criticized the law.An Uneasy Champion: President Biden, a practicing Catholic, is being called to lead a fight for abortion rights that he has sidestepped for decades. Advocates wonder if he’s up to the task.A Resounding Decision: Kansas voters overwhelmingly rejected an amendment that would have removed the right to abortion from the State Constitution, a major win for abortion rights in a deep-red state.Safe Havens: After Roe, conservatives are seeking to expand ways that allow women to give up newborns, such as baby drop boxes. But for many experts in adoption and women’s health, they are hardly a solution.The “ideology that carbon is bad” is “a lie,” Oz said during a forum among primary candidates in Erie in March. “Carbon dioxide, my friends, is 0.04 percent of our air. That’s not the problem.”Asked about the Green New Deal during a Georgia campaign event in mid-July, Walker expounded on his own theory about global wind currents that even Fox News found “head scratching.”Herschel Walker, who is challenging Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, in Georgia, has put forward dubious theories on climate change.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“Since we don’t control the air, our good air decides to float over to China’s bad air,” Walker said. “So, when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So, it moves over to our good air space. Then, now, we got to clean that back up.” More

Two years ago, Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota easily survived her Democratic primary by beating back a fellow progressive. Even though she had become a national lightning rod for attacks from the right and faced staunch opposition from pro-Israel groups that spent millions of dollars in hopes of defeating her, she won her 2020 race by more than 35,000 votes.But on Tuesday, Ms. Omar edged out only a narrow primary victory against a centrist Democrat, coming within 2,500 votes of losing her seat. “Tonight’s victory is a testament to how much our district believes in the collective values we are fighting for and how much they’re willing to do to help us overcome defeat,” Ms. Omar posted on Twitter. To her supporters and her critics, the tight race was a sign that her strong support of a progressive push to overhaul the Minneapolis Police Department had cost her votes. That push, which took the shape of a ballot measure last year, followed the 2020 killing of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, which set off protests and nationwide calls for racial justice and police reform. More than two years later, the issue of policing and accountability continues to deeply divide Democrats.“Most voters, when they call 9-11, they want the police to come right away,” said Michael Meehan, a Democratic strategist, adding that Ms. Omar’s narrow win showed the “punitive power” of the backlash against calls to “defund the police” across the country.For many in Minneapolis, the clashes over policing between Ms. Omar and her main Democratic rival in the primary, Don Samuels, a former Minneapolis city councilman and school board member, were a continuation of last year’s battle over the ballot measure to replace the Minneapolis Police Department with a new Department of Public Safety.Ms. Omar supported the measure, which grew out of the outrage over Mr. Floyd’s murder, when Minneapolis became the center of a push to defund or abolish the police. But moderate Democrats, including Mayor Jacob Frey, called for improving the current department, as an increase in homicides sparked concern.In the end, Minneapolis voters struck the amendment down. Mr. Samuels, who campaigned to defeat the ballot measure and who had the backing of Mr. Frey in the primary, had criticized Ms. Omar for her support of the “defund police” movement. After he conceded his race, Mr. Samuels contended that his opponent was beatable. “If this was the general election, no doubt that we would have won this race,” he said.This time, pro-Israel groups declined to get involved. The political action committee affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee did not respond to requests for comment. They and other groups have opposed Ms. Omar in the past after she made comments about the influence of pro-Israel donors on lawmakers. Her fierce and persistent criticism of Israel has exposed broader tensions between younger Democrats who accuse the Jewish state of human rights abuses and older Democrats who stand behind it.On Wednesday, Ms. Omar’s progressive supporters were feeling relieved, yet also dispirited. “I feel like it shouldn’t have been that close,” said D.A. Bullock, a filmmaker and Minneapolis community activist who supported her campaign. “It was almost like trying to bring her to heel rather than push for better policy.”Sabrina Mauritz, a field director with TakeAction Minnesota, said Ms. Omar won despite the broader backlash because she has been an effective local leader. “The constant fear mongering — it is meant to scare people,” Ms. Mauritz said, referring to the attacks on Ms. Omar and efforts at police reform. More

Representative Scott Perry’s lawyer said he was told he is not a target of the Justice Department’s expanding inquiry into one element of the effort to keep Donald J. Trump in power after his loss in 2020.The F.B.I.’s seizure of Representative Scott Perry’s phone this week was at least the third major action in recent months taken in connection with an escalating federal investigation into efforts by several close allies of former President Donald J. Trump to overturn the 2020 election, according to two people familiar with the matter.The inquiry, which was begun last year by the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office, has already ensnared Jeffrey Clark, a former department official whom Mr. Trump wanted to install atop the agency to help him press his baseless claims of election fraud, and John Eastman, an outside lawyer who advised Mr. Trump on brazen proposals to overturn the vote result.In June, federal agents acting on search warrants from the inspector general’s office seized phones and other electronic devices from Mr. Clark and Mr. Eastman. That same tactic was used on Tuesday to seize the phone of Mr. Perry, a Republican of Pennsylvania.While the inspector general’s office had initial jurisdiction in the probe because Mr. Clark was an employee of the department, there have been signs in recent days that the investigation is increasingly being run by prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington. One of those prosecutors, Thomas P. Windom, is in charge of a broad investigation of a plan by Mr. Trump and his allies to create fake slates of electors to the Electoral College in states that were actually won by Joseph R. Biden Jr.It remains unclear exactly how — or even if — the inquiry into Mr. Perry, Mr. Clark and Mr. Eastman is entwined with the broader investigation. In that inquiry, prosecutors are seeking to determine whether a group of Mr. Trump’s lawyers and several of his allies in state legislatures and state Republican parties broke the law by creating pro-Trump slates of electors in states he did not win and later by using them to disrupt a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, where the final results of the election were certified.Mr. Clark, Mr. Eastman and Mr. Perry all played roles in the effort to keep Mr. Trump in office, according to extensive evidence gathered by the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House select committee that is looking into the events of Jan. 6. The men also each had direct dealings with Mr. Trump, meaning the inquiry could ultimately lead to the former president.At a series of public hearings, the House committee showed, for instance, how Mr. Eastman, a constitutional scholar, was one of the chief architects of the fake elector plan, advising Mr. Trump on its viability and encouraging lawmakers in some key swing states to go along with it.Mr. Eastman also took part in a campaign to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to use the fake slates of electors to disrupt or delay the normal counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6 in the effort to hand Mr. Trump the election.A video clip of John Eastman speaking at a rally on Jan. 6, 2021, with Rudolph W. Giuliani. The House committee showed Mr. Eastman, a constitutional scholar, was one of the chief architects of the fake elector plan seeking to overturn the 2020 election.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Jan. 6 panel have further documented how, in December 2020, Mr. Clark helped to draft a letter to Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia falsely claiming that the Justice Department had evidence that the vote results in the state might have been marred by fraud. The letter, which was never sent, advised Mr. Kemp, a Republican, to rectify the problem by calling a special session of his state’s General Assembly to create “a separate slate of electors supporting Donald J. Trump.”Mr. Perry was instrumental in pushing Mr. Trump to appoint Mr. Clark as his acting attorney general over the objections of several other top officials at the Justice Department. At one of its presentations, the House committee released text messages in which Mr. Perry repeatedly pressured Mark Meadows, then Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, to reach out to Mr. Clark.The House committee issued a subpoena to Mr. Perry in May, but he declined to comply with it. Mr. Clark and Mr. Eastman were also subpoenaed by the committee and repeatedly invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.On Wednesday, after Mr. Perry received his phone back from investigators, prosecutors told him that he was a witness in, not a subject of, their inquiry, according to one of his lawyers, John Irving. More

Plus new details about explosions in Crimea and revelations about the victims of Seoul’s floods.Good morning. We’re covering Donald Trump’s decision not to answer questions in a civil inquiry and details about the victims of Seoul’s floods.Donald Trump left Trump Tower in New York City yesterday. Brittainy Newman for The New York TimesTrump sidesteps legal questionsDonald Trump declined to answer questions in a civil inquiry into his company’s business practices yesterday, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.He made the surprising gamble in a high-stakes legal interview with the New York attorney general’s office. His strategy is likely to determine the course of the investigation.Trump’s office released a statement shortly after the questioning began yesterday, explaining that he “declined to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States Constitution.” Here are live updates.Background: Since March 2019, the New York attorney general’s office has investigated whether Trump and his company improperly inflated the value of his hotels, golf clubs and other assets. Context: In his statement yesterday, Trump cast the inquiry as part of a grander conspiracy against him. He linked it to the F.B.I. search at Mar-a-Lago, his home and private club in Palm Beach, Fla., on Monday. Analysis: His sidestep could help him in a parallel criminal inquiry into whether he fraudulently inflated valuations of his properties.Smoke rose after explosions were heard near a Russian military air base in Crimea on Tuesday.ReutersDetails emerge about Crimea blastThe damage at a Russian air base in Crimea appears to be worse than the Kremlin initially claimed.After a series of explosions on Tuesday, Crimea’s leader declared a state of emergency and said that more than 250 people had to evacuate from their homes. Officials on the Russian-occupied peninsula said at least one person was killed and dozens more were wounded.Ukraine has not officially taken responsibility for the explosions. But a senior military official said Ukraine’s special forces and partisan resistance fighters were behind the blast. Here are live updates.Our Coverage of the Russia-Ukraine WarOn the Ground: After a summer of few conclusive battles, Ukraine and Russia are now facing a quandary over how to concentrate their forces, leaving commanders guessing about each other’s next moves.Nuclear Shelter: The Russian military is using а nuclear power station in southern Ukraine as a fortress, stymying Ukrainian forces and unnerving locals, faced with intensifying fighting and the threat of a radiation leak.Ukrainians Abroad: Italy already had the biggest Ukrainian community in Western Europe before the war, but Russia’s invasion put a spotlight on the diaspora and forged a stronger sense of national identity.Prison Camp Explosion: After a blast at a Russian detention camp killed at least 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war, Ukrainian officials said that they were building a case of a war crime committed by Russian forces.Analysis: The blasts could be important, because any Ukrainian attack on Russian forces in the Crimean Peninsula would be a significant expansion of Ukraine’s offensive efforts. Until now, Ukraine has focused on pushing Russians back from territories occupied after the invasion began.Nuclear plant: Russian missiles killed 13 people near a Russian-held nuclear plant in the south, a Ukrainian official said. Russia may try to divert its electricity to Crimea, which could intensify military competition for the plant and heighten the risk of an accident.Press: Russian investigators detained a former state television journalist yesterday, months after she staged a rare on-air protest against the war in Ukraine.Rescue officials pumped water out of this home in Seoul to find a family of three dead inside.Woohae Cho for The New York TimesSouth Korea mourns flood victimsHeavy rains caused flooding in the Seoul area, which killed at least nine people. A family of three, who lived in a semi-underground room, are among the dead: a 13-year-old girl, her mother, 47, and her aunt, 48.Their deaths highlight the predicament of South Korea’s urban poor, who often live in such homes, called banjiha. (“Parasite,” which won the Academy Award for Best Film ​in 2020, dramatically depicted their flood hazard.)South Korea faces a growing housing crisis and hundreds of thousands of people in the Seoul area live in similar damp, musty quarters. They fear floods each monsoon season, but stay to find jobs, save money and educate their children in hopes of overcoming South Korea’s growing inequality.Details: The family knew the low-lying district was prone to flooding. But it was cheap and close to a welfare center where the girl’s aunt, who had Down syndrome, could get help.Quotable: “When I returned home from work, I found my banjiha under water,” one resident wrote on the web portal Naver. “It felt as if heaven had crashed down on me.”THE LATEST NEWSAsia and the PacificA U.S. Navy ship conducting a routine operation in the Taiwan Strait.U.S. Pacific Command, via Associated PressThe U.S. said it would continue operating in the Taiwan Strait in response to Chinese military drills that U.S. officials say are evolving into long-term military pressure on the island.Fumio Kishida, Japan’s leader, reshuffled his cabinet yesterday, The Associated Press reported. The move, which happened a month after the assassination of Shinzo Abe, was an effort to distance his government from the controversial Unification Church.New polling showed that New Zealand’s right-leaning coalition could have enough support to form a government, The Guardian reported. Jacinda Ardern’s popularity has plummeted.The U.S. returned 30 looted cultural artifacts to Cambodia this week.U.S. NewsU.S. stocks jumped yesterday, following news that inflation slowed in July. Here are live updates.The Justice Department charged a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard with plotting to kill John Bolton, a Trump-era national security adviser.An Afghan immigrant was charged in the shooting deaths of two fellow Muslims in Albuquerque.President Biden signed legislation to expand benefits for veterans who were exposed to toxic burn pits.World NewsAntony Blinken visited Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.Pool photo by Andrew HarnikAntony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, pushed the Democratic Republic of Congo to reconsider its plans to auction parts of its rainforest to oil and gas companies. The countries agreed to jointly examine the proposed extractions.The U.S. and Iran are considering the E.U.’s “final” offer to restore the 2015 nuclear deal, before talks collapse for good.Britain faces another heat wave.An Emirati court overturned the sentence of an American rights lawyer who worked with Jamal Khashoggi. He is expected to be released.What Else Is HappeningIn several poor countries, a U.N. agency has joined with oil companies to protect drilling sites from residents’ objections.Roughly 100 days before the World Cup starts, FIFA is seeking a schedule change to let Qatar, the host nation, play in the first match.A stranded beluga whale died in France after a last-ditch mission to rescue it from the Seine river.Astronomers think they have found our galaxy’s youngest planet: It may be just 1.5 million years old, so young that its building blocks of gas and dust are still coming together.Canadians are flocking to see Serena Williams play after she announced her upcoming retirement from tennis.A Morning ReadImee Marcos, a sister of the president of the Philippines, is the film’s executive producer.Jam Sta Rosa/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFerdinand Marcos Jr. was elected president of the Philippines this year. Now, a new film paints a sympathetic portrait of his family. Instead of focusing on the torture, excess and martial law that characterized his father’s dictatorship, the film portrays the elder Marcos and his wife Imelda as victims of a political vendetta.In so doing, historians and artists say, the movie opens up a new front in the battle against misinformation in the Philippines, bringing a popular myth that circulated online during the recent election into a new, more credible domain.ARTS AND IDEASIn China’s Shandong Province, 558 memorial tablets at a Taoist temple were inscribed with the names and hometowns of people who died from Covid.Tingshu Wang/ReutersMourning Covid-19’s victimsThere have always been monuments to commemorate the loss of life from calamitous events: wars, genocides, terrorist attacks.But Covid-19 poses a unique challenge. Millions of people have died, but not in a singular event or in a single location. Now, as the death toll continues to rise, communities are building new monuments and updating existing memorials, trying to keep up with their mounting grief.“These are kind of odd memorials in that names are being added,” said Erika Doss, who studies how Americans use memorials. “They are kind of fluid. They are timeless.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookBryan Gardner for The New York TimesDrizzle seasoned drippings from this grilled chicken dish onto corn, tomatoes and red onions.What to Watch“Easter Sunday,” from the standup Jo Koy, is a charming Filipino American family comedy.TechnologyChange these default settings to make your devices more enjoyable to use.Now Time to PlayPlay today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Deep purple fruit (four letters).Here are today’s Wordle and today’s Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. “I let them talk”: Rick Rojas, a Times national correspondent, on how he covered the devastation of Kentucky’s floods.The latest episode of “The Daily” is about the F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago.You can reach Amelia and the team at [email protected]. More

Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia, tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday, taking her off the campaign trail temporarily in her race against Gov. Brian Kemp.Ms. Abrams, 48, confirmed her diagnosis on Twitter, writing that she took daily tests and had received a positive result Wednesday morning. “I’m experiencing mild symptoms, and I’m grateful to have been vaccinated and boosted,” she wrote.She said she planned to hold meetings by Zoom and phone for “the next few days,” and added that she had tested negative before delivering a speech Tuesday evening in Atlanta.A spokeswoman, Jaylen Black, said Ms. Abrams would still make a scheduled appearance on the Pod Save America podcast on Saturday, by phone, if she feels up to it. Before her diagnosis, she was also scheduled to attend the March for Our Lives Atlanta rally for gun violence prevention on Saturday, and Ms. Black said it was “undetermined at the moment” if she will be able to participate.“Consistent with C.D.C. guidelines, she will isolate at home and looks forward to traveling across the state to meet Georgians as soon as possible,” Ms. Black said, adding that the campaign would send surrogates to some events in Ms. Abrams’s absence and that she would not do any in-person events during the C.D.C.-recommended isolation period.Guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention instruct people with the virus to isolate for at least five days — though many people remain positive on rapid tests, and potentially contagious, for longer than that — and to continue to wear a mask around others through Day 10.Ms. Black confirmed that Ms. Abrams had tested negative on a rapid antigen test before her speech on Tuesday, and on a P.C.R. test on Monday.The race between Ms. Abrams and Mr. Kemp is a rematch of a 2018 contest that Ms. Abrams narrowly lost, falling short by about 1.5 percentage points. Election forecasters rate this year’s race as “lean Republican,” meaning it is competitive but Mr. Kemp is favored; recent independent polls have found him leading by low to mid-single digits.Ms. Abrams is known for her voting rights advocacy, but her campaign this year has focused heavily on Georgia-specific policy issues as well as abortion rights. Mr. Kemp has been emphasizing economic issues, including inflation and taxes. More

More from our inbox:Republican Outrage Over the Raid at Mar-a-Lago‘Willful Ignorance’ and the Alex Jones Case Seb AgrestiTo the Editor:Re “Fed Up With Democratic Emails? You’re Not the Only One,” by Lara Putnam and Micah L. Sifry (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Aug. 1):The on-the-ground organizing the writers favor is admirable. But in deriding letters to voters, they are far off the mark. The science is clear: Large-scale randomized controlled trials over multiple election cycles have shown that Vote Forward’s partially handwritten letters significantly boost voter turnout.A peer-reviewed research study of our 2020 program “The Big Send” found that it was among the highest impact voter turnout programs ever measured in a presidential election. Vote Forward rigorously vets volunteers and encourages personal, heartfelt messages that reach beyond their bubbles — an authentic approach that works.Letter writing is a scalable, accessible activity doable year round from anywhere. It is an enjoyable entry point to electoral activism for many volunteers who later engage in deeper community organizing. And letters can be stockpiled to send at the optimal time, leaving space for other voter contact activities like canvassing and phone banking.Letters to voters are the kind of thoughtful, sustainable approach to volunteer engagement in elections that should be encouraged if we hope to build a strong civic fabric.Scott FormanOakland, Calif.The writer is the founder and executive director of Vote Forward, a nonprofit that encourages citizens to vote.To the Editor:Lara Putnam and Micah L. Sifry nailed it in their guest essay on the serious shortcomings of Democratic Party reliance on “churn and burn” email fund-raising with apocalyptic messaging. My inbox has been swamped this year with emails from Democratic PACs and candidates around the country desperately begging for money to salvage the party’s chances in the coming election. Nancy Pelosi was sending me more than an email a day, many of which had that dispiriting tone.On May 19, I finally unsubscribed to her Nancy Pelosi for Congress PAC, and sent her an email setting forth my reasons: Too much hyperbole (for example, “I critically need 3,372 gifts before midnight” was a constant refrain; there didn’t seem to be a midnight that went by that wasn’t a crucial financing deadline); too much emotion (she was shocked, disgusted, devastated); and, most troubling, too desperate.As I explained in my email, that sense of desperation “signals likely failure and has discouraged me from devoting my time and financial resources in the Democratic midterm election effort.”By contrast, the fund-raising emails I have received from President Biden have been more upbeat, and I have responded by making contributions to the Democratic National Committee. Democrats need to shift quickly from their current desperation-tinged tone to a more confident approach, with emphasis on the president’s and the party’s positive accomplishments.Allan HubbardEverett, Wash.To the Editor:The grass isn’t any greener on the other side of the aisle. My spam folder is full of similarly apocalyptic visions of what the “Biden/Pelosi/Schumer” troika will inflict on America should Republicans not sweep to congressional power in November. It’s easy enough to just hit “delete.”What is more concerning (for both red and blue voters) is that none of these desperate and destructive pleas are for anything other than money. No information on how to get more involved in the process. No links to more dispassionate discussions of the issues. Just unwarranted demonization of some of our fellow citizens via bolded adjectives and lots of exclamation marks. We can do better.Peter J. PittsNew YorkTo the Editor:Buried in the unfortunate tone of the guest essay are many points that we can agree on. Locally led conversations about elections are extremely powerful and strengthen our democracy. It is, however, a false dichotomy to say we must choose between these important local efforts and the participation of other activists in remote voter mobilization techniques. We can and must do both.Lara Putnam and Micah L. Sifry cherry-pick a study reporting a negative impact of sending postcards to voters. However, many more studies show a positive impact of between 0.4 and 2 percent. While these are small impacts, they are sufficient to make a difference in close elections.Campaigns generally do not have the capacity to knock on every door, especially in rural areas. Not all voters will be home when a canvasser shows up, and not all will answer a phone call. An all-of-the-above approach helps ensure that as many people as possible participate in our democracy.Ronnie CohenBerkeley, Calif.The writer is executive director of Activate America.Republican Outrage Over the Raid at Mar-a-LagoF.B.I. agents reportedly searched former President Donald J. Trump’s residence and office, as a well as a storage unit, at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “A Simmering Feud Peaks in a Search of Trump’s Home” (front page, Aug. 10):Surely if former President Barack Obama had left the White House and taken with him government documents, some of which may have been classified and all of which should have been delivered to the National Archives, the Republicans would have raised holy hell. But, of course, when a Republican former president does the same they sing a different tune.As that former president often says, “so sad.”Samuel A. OppenheimFranklin, Mass.To the Editor:Republican politicians and Fox News are outraged over the Justice Department raid of Donald Trump’s home and are demanding that the department explain why it did this. What they fail to mention is that Mr. Trump received a copy of the search warrant and an inventory of what was taken. If this was an outrageous intrusion, Mr. Trump could disclose the purpose of the search warrant and what was taken.Mr. Trump has already turned over 15 boxes that were wrongfully removed from the White House, implicitly indicating that this was all he originally removed. If the dozen or so boxes that were seized on Monday should have been turned over earlier, this is a clear indication that Mr. Trump knowingly broke the law.Charles W. MurdockChicagoThe writer is a professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law.‘Willful Ignorance’ and the Alex Jones Case Pool photo by Briana SanchezTo the Editor:As a longtime Newtown resident and the husband of a retired Sandy Hook Elementary School teacher, I followed the defamation suit against Alex Jones closely. I largely agree with the sentiments expressed in “Jones Got His Comeuppance, but Don’t Expect an End to the Lies” (front page, Aug. 7).Throughout history, groups have proved their allegiance to a political/cultural movement by adhering to bizarre and clearly false claims of their leaders. Blood libels. AIDS as a bioweapon. Pizzagate.Individuals adhering to the ideology of a political/cultural/fringe group will knowingly embrace outright falsehoods to further prove their allegiance. The wilder the conspiracy, the greater the sense of belonging. Willful ignorance: the team jersey of today.Steven TenenbaumNewtown, Conn. More

Brad Finstad, a Republican former state lawmaker in Minnesota, won a special election for a U.S. House seat, according to The Associated Press. He will complete the final four months remaining in the term of Representative Jim Hagedorn, a Republican, who died from cancer in February.Mr. Finstad, 46, defeated Jeff Ettinger, a Democrat and the retired chief executive of Hormel Foods, a Minnesota company known for introducing Spam in the 1930s. The district, Minnesota’s First, stretches across the state’s southern border from South Dakota to Wisconsin.Mr. Finstad did not perform as well in the district as President Donald J. Trump did in 2020, when Mr. Trump won the area by more than 10 percentage points over Joseph R. Biden Jr. Mr. Finstad beat Mr. Ettinger by only roughly four percentage points, a relatively strong showing for Mr. Ettinger, who ran as a moderate and emphasized his support for abortion rights.The two candidates had tangled over the economy and farming issues in the largely rural district. But in the weeks since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Mr. Ettinger turned up the volume on his messaging on abortion. He positioned himself as a business-friendly Democrat and appeared to perform well in some rural pockets as well as in the counties that encompass Rochester and Mankato, education and health care hubs that have drawn residents from upper-income, college-educated and racially diverse backgrounds.Mr. Finstad’s campaign did not think abortion would move the needle at the polls. “It hasn’t really come up with very many voters,” said David Fitzsimmons, a general consultant for the campaign. “Voters seem to be talking about the economy, inflation, gas prices.”Both he and Mr. Ettinger were on the ballot twice, as both men ran successfully in the regular primary for the seat’s full term. They are now headed to a fall rematch, according to The Associated Press.Mr. Trump appointed Mr. Finstad to serve as the Agriculture Department’s rural development director for Minnesota in 2017. He also worked as an area director for the Minnesota Farm Bureau and as an agricultural policy aide for former Representative Mark Kennedy, a Minnesota Republican. Mr. Finstad served in the Minnesota House of Representatives from 2003 to 2009.Carly Olson More