Elections

Vermonters head to the polls Tuesday to choose nominees for the state’s lone House seat as well as the Senate seat being vacated by Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat who is retiring.Not registered to vote? No problem. Thanks to Vermont’s same-day voter registration laws, adults who live in the state can still cast ballots in Tuesday’s primaries.Here’s what to know:How to voteIf you need to take advantage of same-day registration, do it in person — either at your polling location, or during normal business hours at town clerks’ offices. Online registrations may not be processed in time for voting on Election Day.If you are voting by mail, make sure your ballot is received by election officials before the end of Election Day. If you have not already mailed your ballot in, drop it off at your town clerk’s office before it closes or at a polling location until 7 p.m. Eastern time.According to a rule introduced in 2020, the secretary of state’s office mails ballots to every registered voter ahead of the general election in November. But primary elections are not subject to that rule, and the deadline has passed to receive an absentee ballot for Tuesday’s contests.Polling locations are equipped with tablets to accommodate voters with disabilities. Here is more information about accessible voting in Vermont.Where to voteFind your polling place on the secretary of state’s website here.Most towns in the state offer voters the option of depositing absentee or mail ballots in designated drop boxes. You can find information about voting in your town by visiting your town’s website. Here’s how to look that up.What is on the ballotMr. Leahy will retire in January, at the end of his current term. The state’s current at-large representative, Peter Welch, leads the Democratic contest to replace him.Becca Balint, the president pro tempore of the State Senate, will face off against Lt. Gov. Molly Gray in the Democratic primary for the seat being vacated by Mr. Welch. Each woman is running with the backing of one of Vermont’s senators: Ms. Balint is endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders, and Ms. Gray is endorsed by Mr. Leahy.Phil Scott, the blue state’s uber-popular Republican governor, will face two challengers in his party’s primary in his quest to win a fourth term in Montpelier.You can see exactly what will appear on your ballot here. More

Voters in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Vermont and Connecticut head to the polls on Tuesday for primaries and for a special election in Minnesota that could further narrow the already tight Democratic majority in the House.Here is what to watch as the returns roll in:Another Trump-tinged brawl in Wisconsin.The expected Democratic primary fight for the right to challenge Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican, fizzled when one contender after another dropped out and endorsed the state’s lieutenant governor, Mandela Barnes, setting up a highly anticipated race for the fall.But Republicans are in fighting form over who will try to stop the re-election of Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers. Of four remaining candidates, Tim Michel, who has the endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump, and Rebecca Kleefisch, the choice of former Vice President Mike Pence, have the best shot.If you’re looking for ideological differences, it will be a strain. Ms. Kleefisch, who was lieutenant governor under Gov. Scott Walker, has said President Biden’s victory over Mr. Trump in Wisconsin was “rigged,” though repeated examinations of the nearly 21,000-vote margin have turned up nothing of the kind.Mr. Michels, an insurance executive for whom Mr. Trump held a rally on Friday, hasn’t ruled out supporting an effort in the Republican-dominated Legislature to overturn the 2020 election results altogether, though such a move would be symbolic at best. He has also promised to abolish the state’s elections commission, a bipartisan regulatory agency that administers elections — a move that Mr. Evers says is meant to give the gerrymandered Legislature the final say in election results.Both candidates have also taken a hard line against abortion, which, after the repeal of Roe v. Wade, became illegal in the state under a law enacted in 1849. State law now allows abortions only to save the life of the mother, and, during a televised town hall-style debate last week, each of the candidates said they would oppose any additional exceptions.Given the centrality of Wisconsin in recent presidential elections, and how Mr. Evers has portrayed himself as a Democratic bulwark against Republican efforts to alter the electoral system, much may rest on the outcome of the governor’s race.A Democratic fight for an open House seat.In Wisconsin’s only competitive House race, four Democrats are vying to take on Derrick Van Orden, a Republican, in the G.O.P.-leaning seat of Representative Ron Kind, a Democrat who is retiring. Mr. Kind has been a Republican target for years, and Mr. Van Orden came close to beating him in 2020.Then came Jan. 6, 2021, when Mr. Van Orden, an actor and retired member of the Navy SEALs, was in Washington to protest Mr. Biden’s victory. What exactly he was doing there is in dispute. Democrats say a Facebook photo proved he crossed into a restricted area as Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. Mr. Van Orden denied that and said he was merely in the nation’s capital “to stand for the integrity of our electoral system as a citizen.”State Senator Brad Pfaff faces three other Democrats vying to take on Derrick Van Orden, who has cleared the G.O.P. primary field in the race to succeed Representative Ron Kind, a Democrat.Lauren Justice for The New York TimesAll of his would-be Democratic opponents say Mr. Van Orden is singularly dangerous, but they are taking different tacks. Brad Pfaff, a Wisconsin state senator, is emphasizing his accumulated experience in politics and claiming the mantle of Mr. Kind’s style of centrism. His main rival, Deb McGrath, a former C.I.A. officer and Army captain, is taking a more liberal line and a more confrontational stance against Mr. Van Orden, a fellow veteran who she said “took the same oath that I did to protect and defend the Constitution,” but then went to Washington on Jan. 6.Whoever wins the primary can expect an uphill climb to keep the seat in Democratic hands.In Minnesota, a special election could narrow the Democratic edge in the House.The death from cancer of Representative Jim Hagedorn, a Republican, in February has given voters in his southern Minnesota district the chance to fill his seat just in time for the final big votes in an already narrowly divided House. In another year, the seat might have been more competitive. After all, it was represented by Tim Walz, now Minnesota’s Democratic governor, before Mr. Hagedorn was elected in 2018.But the district leans Republican, and Brad Finstad, a farmer who held an Agriculture Department post in the Trump administration, has the edge over his Democratic opponent, Jeff Ettinger. Mr. Ettinger, the former chief executive of Hormel Foods, is not making it easy on the Republicans: He has poured $900,000 of his own money into the race. Mr. Finstad, who won his May primary by just 427 votes, must unite the G.O.P. and turn out the vote in a state where the big-ticket race for governor does not have a competitive primary. More

Doug Sosnik is the kind of political analyst who likes to figure out the results of the next election well in advance — it’s just how he’s wired.But even Sosnik, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton who now tries to forecast elections as a hobby, is stumped about the 2022 midterms.“I can’t figure this one out,” Sosnik said on Monday, a day after Democrats passed Build Back Better — whoops, pardon me, the Inflation Reduction Act, a woolly mammoth-size package that aims to shrink both the deficit and the risk of catastrophic climate change.The bill’s passage is one of a string of recent victories for beleaguered Democrats, who have spent the past 18 months squabbling among themselves and fretting about the coming elections. Gas prices are ticking down. Jobs are plentiful, with the unemployment rate at a 50-year low.Congress also passed the bipartisan CHIPS Act, a bill that would provide $52 billion in subsidies and tax credits to companies that manufacture chips in the United States and would add more than $200 billion for applied scientific research.Even President Biden, whose age and concern about the virus forced him to spend much of the 2020 presidential election campaigning from his home in Wilmington, Del., managed to shrug off 18 days of coronavirus-induced quarantine.As Ethel Merman might say, everything seems to be coming up roses for Joe and the gang in recent weeks, despite widespread predictions that Democrats are likely to lose the House and possibly the Senate.A ‘blood bath’ that might never arriveAccording to the usual logic Sosnik uses to make predictions, Democrats should expect a “blood bath” in the fall. But he’s not so sure anymore and is questioning everything he knows about the deeper patterns of U.S. elections.He is puzzled by one thing in particular: Which past elections offer a guide to 2022?The question doesn’t have an easy answer, in part because times have changed — there was no recent assault on the Capitol with the partial backing of one particular party in the 1982 midterms, for instance — and in part because the nature of political partisanship has changed.That latter point makes it really hard to compare today’s approval ratings to the past; back in, say, the 1960s, voters were much more inclined to give the president the benefit of the doubt. Today, far fewer partisans are willing to give the other side an ounce of credit or respect.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsKansas Abortion Vote: After a decisive victory for abortion rights in deep-red Kansas, Democrats vowed to elevate the issue nationwide, while some Republicans softened their stands against abortion.Wisconsin Primary: Former President Donald J. Trump’s supporters have turned the false notion that his 2020 defeat can still be reversed into a central issue ahead of the state’s G.O.P. primary for governor.Election Deniers: In Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, Republicans who dispute the legitimacy of the 2020 election are on a path toward winning decisive control over how elections are run.Senate Races: The key question with less than 100 days until the fall election: Can Democratic candidates in crucial Senate contests continue to outpace President Biden’s unpopularity? Midterms are completely different animals than presidential election cycles, too: Fewer voters turn out, and the electorate tends to be older and more Republican.Historically, or at least since World War II, the party in power has lost seats in every midterm election but two: 1998 and 2002.The first came as Clinton skillfully exploited the unpopularity of congressional Republicans, whose impeachment drive backfired. The second came after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when patriotic sentiments were still running high.But these midterms are structurally different from many others. For one thing, many of the Democratic House members in battleground districts — the Cindy Axnes and Elissa Slotkins of the world — were elected in the anti-Trump wave of 2018. Those who held onto their seats in 2020, a good year for Republicans in Congress despite Trump’s loss, may know a thing or two about staying in office. More

In early 2021, with the turmoil of a bitterly contested presidential contest still fresh, several election clerks in Michigan received strange phone calls.The person on the other end was a Republican state representative who told them their election equipment was needed for an investigation, according to documents from the Michigan attorney general’s office.They obliged. Soon, the machines were being picked apart in hotels and Airbnb rentals in Oakland County, outside Detroit, by conservative activists hunting for what they believed was proof of fraud, the documents said. Weeks later, after the equipment was returned in handoffs in highway car-pool lots and shopping malls, the clerks found that it had been tampered with, and in some cases, damaged.The revelations of possible meddling with voting machines have set off a political tsunami in Michigan, one of the most critical battleground states in the country.The documents detail deception of election officials and a breach of voting equipment that stand out as extraordinary even among the volumes of public reporting on brazen attempts by former President Donald J. Trump’s supporters to scrutinize and undermine the 2020 results.But one of the most politically striking elements of the case is the identity of one of the people implicated in the scheme by the office of the attorney general: Matthew DePerno, who is now the presumptive Republican nominee for that very post.Mr. DePerno, a lawyer who rose to prominence challenging the 2020 results in Antrim County and has been endorsed by Mr. Trump, is vying to unseat Dana Nessel, a Democrat who is Michigan’s top law enforcement official and who fought attempts to undermine the state’s election.Now, evidence provided by her office places Mr. DePerno at one of the “tests” of voting equipment and suggests that he was a key orchestrator of “a conspiracy” to gain improper access to machines in three counties, Roscommon and Missaukee in Northern Michigan and Barry, a rural area southeast of Grand Rapids. The tampering resulted in physical damage, but the attorney general’s office indicated that there was no evidence that there was “any software or firmware manipulation” of the equipment.Even before the new accusations, the prospective race between Ms. Nessel and Mr. DePerno was one of the most closely watched contests for attorney general in the country.During his campaign, Mr. DePerno has continued to falsely claim that mail voting is rife with fraud and that voting records were deleted or destroyed after the election, and he has pledged to “prosecute the people who corrupted the 2020 election.” He has also said he would begin inquiries of Ms. Nessel, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, all Democrats.His candidacy has worried election experts, Democrats and even many Republicans, who fear that he could use his powers to carry out investigations based on fraudulent claims or engage in other forms of meddling in elections.Mr. DePerno has pledged to carry out inquiries of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Ms. Nessel and Jocelyn Benson, the Michigan secretary of state, all Democrats.Jake May/The Flint Journal, via Associated PressYet because Mr. DePerno is the likely Republican nominee — he clinched the state party’s endorsement this year and is expected to be formally nominated later this month — any investigation by Ms. Nessel is politically fraught and risks a conflict of interest. With that in mind, her office on Friday requested that a special prosecutor be appointed to continue the investigation and pursue potential criminal charges.The allegations against Mr. DePerno and eight others — including Daire Rendon, a Republican state representative, and Dar Leaf, the sheriff of Barry County — were detailed in a letter sent on Friday from the deputy attorney general to Ms. Benson, and in a petition from Ms. Nessel’s office requesting the special prosecutor. The Detroit News first reported the letter, and Politico first reported the petition. Reuters first reported Mr. DePerno’s alleged involvement. More

ATLANTA — In his campaign for the Senate, Herschel Walker has not hidden his past struggles with mental illness and violence in past relationships, aspects of his background that he outlined in a 2009 memoir and that his campaign sought to address in its earliest days.Now, a group of anti-Trump Republicans is hammering him over one of those episodes.In a new advertisement running on major networks in the Atlanta media market, footage of Mr. Walker scoring a touchdown for the University of Georgia is juxtaposed with close-up video of his ex-wife, Cindy Grossman, describing how he once held a gun to her temple and threatened to pull the trigger.“Do you think you know Herschel Walker?” a narrator asks. “Well, think again.”Mr. Walker has not denied Ms. Grossman’s accusations, saying his violence against her was a consequence of his struggles with mental health. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment.The ads were purchased by a subsidiary of the Republican Accountability PAC, a group that grew out of Republican Voters Against Trump, which was established in 2020 by “never-Trump” Republicans including the strategist Sarah Longwell and the writer William Kristol. It says it has allocated $10 million in negative advertising and voter mobilization efforts over the next three months to stop Mr. Walker and other candidates it views as unfit for office or a danger to democracy. They include two candidates for governor, Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Kari Lake in Nevada.The initial ad buy against Mr. Walker in the Atlanta media market is just $100,000. It would take far more to make serious inroads with Georgia’s vast Republican base, for whom Mr. Walker still retains near-godlike status from his career as a college running back. But the anti-Trump group is hoping at least to turn the heads of some swing voters.Specifically, Ms. Longwell, the group’s executive director, said it hoped to exploit what she called an emerging gap in support for candidates atop Georgia’s Republican ticket. While Mr. Walker was running roughly even in the polls with Senator Raphael Warnock, the incumbent Democrat, she said, Gov. Brian Kemp was outpacing his Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, by a slightly larger margin.“We think that there’s a lot of these voters in Georgia who will split their ticket, and who will vote for Kemp, who will vote for Brad Raffensperger, but cannot vote for Herschel Walker,” she said, also naming the Georgia secretary of state. “For a lot of these voters, it’s about understanding the difference between the football player and the person running for Senate.”One such voter she pointed to was Brenda James, a Republican from Columbus, Ga., who in an interview said she voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 but President Biden in 2020, according to the Republican Accountability PAC. She condemned Republicans for “attempting to manipulate and use” Mr. Walker.“Bless poor Herschel’s heart,” Ms. James said. “The man needs help. He doesn’t need to be thrust into political limelight in the way that they are doing. Frankly, I think it’s disgusting and despicable.” More

The accord paves the way for national reconciliation talks and democratic elections. However, it was snubbed by the main rebel group responsible for the death of Chad’s previous leader.DAKAR, Senegal — Chad’s military government and more than 40 rebel groups signed a cease-fire agreement on Monday in Qatar, paving the way for reconciliation talks later this month as the Central African nation seeks a way out of a troubled political transition.But the signing of the agreement, after five months of negotiations, was overshadowed by the absence of Chad’s most powerful armed group, which refused to to join in the accord, making any prospects for a return to stability all the more uncertain.After Chad’s longtime autocratic ruler, Idriss Déby, died while fighting against rebels in April last year, his son Gen. Mahamat Idriss Déby seized power and vowed to lead the country through an 18-month transition period.With less than two months left in that transition period, Mr. Déby’s military government and rebel groups have been negotiating in Doha, Qatar, what comes next. On Monday after nearly five months of talks, they agreed to hold national reconciliation talks later this month in Chad’s capital, N’Djamena, which would then pave the way to democratic elections.But the absence among the signatories of one of Chad’s main rebel groups, the Front for Change and Concord in Chad (F.A.C.T., by its French acronym), threw the outcome of the coming talks into question. It was while visiting troops fighting against the F.A.C.T. that Mr. Déby was killed last year, according to the Chadian military authorities.On Sunday, the group’s spokesman said the accord didn’t respect key requests such as the immediate release of prisoners and parity between the government and opposition groups during the coming reconciliation talks.Thus the agreement may bring some temporary stability, but any lasting peace is unlikely, said Remadji Hoinathy, a Chadian political analyst based in N’Djamena.Chadian soldiers parading through N’Djamena after battling rebel forces last May.Djimet Wiche/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Some protagonists have long understood that the only way to have a frank discussion in Chad is to go through armed rebellion,” said Mr. Hoinathy, an analyst with the Institute for Security Studies.Even as a broad mix of political parties, rebel groups and the military government are set to convene in N’Djamena this month, Mr. Hoinathy said, “Those who didn’t sign the accord may as well invite themselves to the conversation — but through weapons.”Mamadou Djimtebaye, a Chadian political journalist, said that scenario could have been true years ago, but is not anymore. “That’s an old framework — people won’t let it happen,” he said. “They want elections, and both the government and F.A.C.T. have understood that.”Issa Ahmat, the spokesman for F.A.C.T., said any resolutions from the reconciliation talks would likely be biased in favor of the government. But he said that violence wasn’t on the table. “We haven’t closed the door to dialogue,” Mr. Ahmat said in a telephone interview.The presence of myriad groups in Doha — more than 50, with nearly 10 of them rejecting the accord — highlighted the key role they have played in Chad since the country’s independence from France in 1960. The country’s history has been characterized by military dictatorship and repeated attempts to seize power by such groups, often operating from neighboring Libya or Sudan.Besides the cease-fire, the agreement signed on Monday includes a disarmament program; amnesty and the safe return of rebels outside Chad; the end of recruitment by rebel groups; and the release of prisoners on both sides.The Union of Resistance Forces, which tried to oust the elder Mr. Déby in 2019 by sending a column of fighters in 50 pickup trucks from Libya — only to be beaten back by French airstrikes — signed the agreement. But another powerful group, the Military Command Council for the Salvation of the Republic, rejected the pledge.Now, as the transition period is likely to exceed its 18-month term, Chadians have been increasingly frustrated with the junta.In May, supporters of the country’s main political opposition group, Wakit Tama, were arrested following protests against the military government. They also denounced France’s presence in the country and its support for the military leaders, echoing a rising anti-French sentiment in former French colonies.France has long considered Chad, a nation of 17 million, a strategic partner in the Sahel region. France’s counterterrorism operation, Operation Barkhane, has been headquartered in N’Djamena since its launch in 2014.But critics have pointed to a double standard by France. In Mali, it has been unflinching with military leaders who seized power in a coup last year, yet it has been more accommodating toward Chad’s government, even though Mr. Déby’s takeover following his father’s death was also unconstitutional.Human rights organizations have also criticized Mr. Déby for a broad crackdown on peaceful protests and the arrests of hundreds of members and supporters of the opposition.“Chad’s significant military commitments in the fight against terror have meant that the international community has felt comfortable to turn a blind eye to the serious human rights violations in country,” Human Right Watch’s director for Central Africa, Lewis Mudge, wrote in April.Chad’s troubled history has been marked by several peace agreements similar to those signed on Monday, which Mr. Hoinathy said had often brought limited results.Jérôme Tubiana, an independent expert on Chad, said “Key groups are missing, but the government’s plan may not have been to have all those groups as signatories.” He continued, “Instead, it may have tried to avoid negotiations between the government on one side, and all the groups together on the other.”“If the government had a divide-and-rule strategy, then it won.” More

Mr. Trump once asked his chief of staff why his military leadership couldn’t be more like the German generals who had reported to Adolf Hitler, according to an excerpt.WASHINGTON — Former President Donald J. Trump told his top White House aide that he wished he had generals like the ones who had reported to Adolf Hitler, saying they were “totally loyal” to the leader of the Nazi regime, according to a forthcoming book about the 45th president.“Why can’t you be like the German generals?” Mr. Trump told John Kelly, his chief of staff, preceding the question with an obscenity, according to an excerpt from “The Divider: Trump in the White House,” by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, published online by The New Yorker on Monday morning. (Mr. Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times; Ms. Glasser is a staff writer for The New Yorker.)The excerpt depicts Mr. Trump as deeply frustrated by his top military officials, whom he saw as insufficiently loyal or obedient to him. In the conversation with Mr. Kelly, which took place years before the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the authors write, the chief of staff told Mr. Trump that Germany’s generals had “tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off.”Mr. Trump was dismissive, according to the excerpt, apparently unaware of the World War II history that Mr. Kelly, a retired four-star general, knew all too well.“‘No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,’ the president replied,” according to the book’s authors. “In his version of history, the generals of the Third Reich had been completely subservient to Hitler; this was the model he wanted for his military. Kelly told Trump that there were no such American generals, but the president was determined to test the proposition.”Much of the excerpt focuses on Gen. Mark A. Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the country’s top military official, under Mr. Trump. When the president offered him the job, General Milley told him, “I’ll do whatever you ask me to do.” But he quickly soured on the president.General Milley’s frustration with the president peaked on June 1, 2020, when Black Lives Matter protesters filled Lafayette Square, near the White House. Mr. Trump demanded to send in the military to clear the protesters, but General Milley and other top aides refused. In response, Mr. Trump shouted, “You are all losers!” according to the excerpt. “Turning to Milley, Trump said, ‘Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?’” the authors write.After the square was cleared by the National Guard and police, General Milley briefly joined the president and other aides in walking through the empty park so Mr. Trump could be photographed in front of a church on the other side. The authors said General Milley later considered his decision to join the president to be a “misjudgment that would haunt him forever, a ‘road-to-Damascus moment,’ as he would later put it.”A week after that incident, General Milley wrote — but never delivered — a scathing resignation letter, accusing the president he served of politicizing the military, “ruining the international order,” failing to value diversity, and embracing the tyranny, dictatorship and extremism that members of the military had sworn to fight against.“It is my belief that you were doing great and irreparable harm to my country,” the general wrote in the letter, which has not been revealed before and was published in its entirety by The New Yorker. General Milley wrote that Mr. Trump did not honor those who had fought against fascism and the Nazis during World War II.Donald Trump, Post-PresidencyThe former president remains a potent force in Republican politics.Losing Support: Nearly half of G.O.P. voters prefer someone other than Donald J. Trump for president in 2024, a Times/Siena College poll showed.Trump-Pence Split: An emerging rivalry between Mr. Trump and Mike Pence, his former vice president, reveals Republicans’ enduring divisions.Looking for Cover: Mr. Trump could announce an unusually early 2024 bid, a move designed to blunt a series of damaging Jan. 6 revelations.Potential Legal Peril: From the Justice Department’s Jan. 6 inquiry to an investigation in Georgia, Mr. Trump is in legal jeopardy on several fronts.“It’s now obvious to me that you don’t understand that world order,” General Milley wrote. “You don’t understand what the war was all about. In fact, you subscribe to many of the principles that we fought against. And I cannot be a party to that.”Yet General Milley eventually decided to remain in office so he could ensure that the military could serve as a bulwark against an increasingly out-of-control president, according to the authors of the book.“‘I’ll just fight him,’” General Milley told his staff, according to the New Yorker excerpt. “The challenge, as he saw it, was to stop Trump from doing any more damage, while also acting in a way that was consistent with his obligation to carry out the orders of his commander in chief. ‘If they want to court-martial me, or put me in prison, have at it.’”In addition to the revelations about General Milley, the book excerpt reveals new details about Mr. Trump’s interactions with his top military and national security officials, and documents dramatic efforts by the former president’s most senior aides to prevent a domestic or international crisis in the weeks after Mr. Trump lost his re-election bid.In the summer of 2017, the book excerpt reveals, Mr. Trump returned from viewing the Bastille Day parade in Paris and told Mr. Kelly that he wanted one of his own. But the president told Mr. Kelly: “Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade. This doesn’t look good for me,” the authors write.“Kelly could not believe what he was hearing,” the excerpt continues. “‘Those are the heroes,’ he told Trump. ‘In our society, there’s only one group of people who are more heroic than they are — and they are buried over in Arlington.’” Mr. Trump answered: “I don’t want them. It doesn’t look good for me,” according to the authors.The excerpt underscores how many of the president’s senior aides have been trying to burnish their reputations in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack. Like General Milley, who largely refrained from criticizing Mr. Trump publicly, they are now eager to make their disagreements with him clear by cooperating with book authors and other journalists.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who never publicly disputed Mr. Trump’s wild election claims and has rarely criticized him since, was privately dismissive of the assertions of fraud that Mr. Trump and his advisers embraced.On the evening of Nov. 9, 2020, after the news media called the race for Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Pompeo called General Milley and asked to see him, according to the excerpt. During a conversation at General Milley’s kitchen table, Mr. Pompeo was blunt about what he thought of the people around the president.“‘The crazies have taken over,’” Mr. Pompeo told General Milley, according to the authors. Behind the scenes, they write, Mr. Pompeo had quickly accepted that the election was over and refused to promote overturning it.The Jan. 6 hearings on Capitol Hill have revealed that a number of the former president’s top aides pushed back privately, if not publicly, against Mr. Trump’s election denials. Kenny Holston for The New York Times“‘He was totally against it,’ a senior State Department official recalled. Pompeo cynically justified this jarring contrast between what he said in public and in private. ‘It was important for him to not get fired at the end, too, to be there to the bitter end,’ the senior official said,” according to the excerpt.The authors detail what they call an “extraordinary arrangement” in the weeks after the election between Mr. Pompeo and General Milley to hold daily morning phone calls with Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, in an effort to make sure the president did not take dangerous actions.“Pompeo and Milley soon took to calling them the ‘land the plane’ phone calls,” the authors write. “‘Our job is to land this plane safely and to do a peaceful transfer of power the 20th of January,’ Milley told his staff. ‘This is our obligation to this nation.’ There was a problem, however. ‘Both engines are out, the landing gear are stuck. We’re in an emergency situation.’”The Jan. 6 hearings on Capitol Hill have revealed that a number of the former president’s top aides pushed back privately against Mr. Trump’s election denials, even as some declined to do so publicly. Several, including Pat A. Cipollone, the former White House counsel, testified that they had attempted — without success — to convince the president that there was no evidence of substantial fraud.In the excerpt, the authors say that General Milley concluded that Mr. Cipollone was “a force for ‘trying to keep guardrails around the president.’” The general also believed that Mr. Pompeo was “genuinely trying to achieve a peaceful handover of power,” the authors write. But they write that General Milley was “never sure what to make of Meadows. Was the chief of staff trying to land the plane or to hijack it?”Gen. Milley is not the only top official who considered resignation, the authors write, in response to the president’s actions.The excerpt details private conversations among the president’s national security team as they discussed what to do in the event the president attempted to take actions they felt they could not abide. The authors report that General Milley consulted with Robert Gates, a former secretary of defense and former head of the C.I.A.The advice from Mr. Gates was blunt, the authors write: “‘Keep the chiefs on board with you and make it clear to the White House that if you go, they all go, so that the White House knows this isn’t just about firing Mark Milley. This is about the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff quitting in response.’”The excerpt makes clear that Mr. Trump did not always get the yes-men that he wanted. During one Oval Office exchange, Mr. Trump asked Gen. Paul Selva, an Air Force officer and the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, what he thought about the president’s desire for a military parade through the nation’s capital on the Fourth of July.General Selva’s response, which has not been reported before, was blunt, and not what the president wanted to hear, according to the book’s authors.“‘I didn’t grow up in the United States, I actually grew up in Portugal,’ General Selva said. “‘Portugal was a dictatorship — and parades were about showing the people who had the guns. And in this country, we don’t do that.’ He added, ‘It’s not who we are.’” More

SÃO PAULO — “Quiero que esos sinvergüenzas lo sepan”, dijo el presidente de Brasil, Jair Bolsonaro, a sus seguidores el año pasado. “¡Nunca iré preso!”.Estaba gritando. Pero Bolsonaro tiende a exaltarse cuando habla de la posibilidad de ir a prisión. “Por Dios que está en el cielo”, declaró ante un grupo de empresarios en mayo, “nunca me arrestarán”. Como pasa “más de la mitad” de su tiempo lidiando con demandas, seguramente se siente con suficientes recursos para evitar una detención. Pero este desafío suena desesperado. El destino de la expresidenta de Bolivia Jeanine Añez, quien hace poco fue sentenciada a prisión, presuntamente por haber orquestado un golpe de Estado, se percibe con fuerza en el aire.Para Bolsonaro, es una advertencia. De cara a las elecciones presidenciales de octubre, que según todas las proyecciones perderá, Bolsonaro está visiblemente preocupado de también ser arrestado por, como trató de minimizarlo sin dar más detalles, “actos antidemocráticos”. Ese temor explica sus intentos desesperados por desacreditar las elecciones antes de que se lleven a cabo; por ejemplo, al reunir a decenas de diplomáticos extranjeros para deslegitimar el sistema de votación electrónica del país.Sin embargo, sin importar cuán absurdo sea su comportamiento —y no hay duda de que obligar a los embajadores a escuchar su diatriba descabellada durante 47 minutos es delirante— el motivo de fondo sigue teniendo sentido. Porque, a decir verdad, Bolsonaro tiene bastantes razones para temer ir a prisión. De hecho, cada vez es más difícil seguir la pista a todas las acusaciones contra el presidente y su gobierno.Para empezar, está el asunto no menor de la investigación del Supremo Tribunal Federal de Brasil sobre los aliados de Bolsonaro debido a su participación en una especie de “grupo paramilitar digital” que inunda las redes sociales con desinformación y coordina campañas de desprestigio en contra de sus opositores políticos. En una investigación relacionada, el propio Bolsonaro está siendo investigado por su “participación directa y relevante” en la promoción de desinformación, según describe el informe de la Policía Federal.No obstante, los delitos de Bolsonaro distan de limitarse al mundo digital. Los escándalos de corrupción han definido su mandato y la podredumbre comienza en casa. Dos de sus hijos, que también son servidores públicos, han sido acusados por fiscales estatales de robar fondos públicos de manera sistemática al embolsarse parte de los salarios de asociados cercanos y empleados inexistentes en sus nóminas. Acusaciones similares, relacionadas con su periodo como legislador, se han esgrimido contra el propio presidente. En marzo, fue acusado de improbidad administrativa por mantener a un empleado inexistente como su asesor en el Congreso durante 15 años (el presunto asesor en realidad era un vendedor de açaí).Las acusaciones de corrupción también giran en torno a altos mandos del gobierno. En junio, el exministro de Educación de Brasil, Milton Ribeiro, fue arrestado por delitos de tráfico de influencias. Bolsonaro, a quien Ribeiro mencionó por su nombre en grabaciones comprometedoras de audio, salió de inmediato en defensa del ministro. “Pondría la cara al fuego por Milton”, declaró el presidente antes del arresto y poco después explicó que solo pondría una mano al fuego. Contra toda las pruebas disponibles, sostiene que no hay “corrupción endémica” en su gobierno.Además, está el informe nada favorecedor de la comisión especial del Senado sobre la respuesta de Brasil a la COVID-19, que describe cómo el presidente contribuyó a la propagación del virus y puede considerársele responsable de hasta 679.000 muertes en Brasil. El informe recomienda que a Bolsonaro se le imputen nueve delitos, incluida la malversación de fondos públicos, la violación de derechos sociales, así como delitos de lesa humanidad.¿Cómo responde el presidente a este pliego de cargos que se acumulan? Con órdenes para reservar la información. Estas órdenes, que ocultan las pruebas durante un siglo, se han aplicado a todo tipo de información “sensible”: los gastos detallados de la tarjeta de crédito corporativa de Bolsonaro; el proceso disciplinario del ejército que absolvió a un general y al exministro de Salud por haber participado en una manifestación a favor de Bolsonaro, y los informes de los fiscales sobre la investigación por corrupción en contra de su hijo mayor. Esto dista mucho del hombre que, al principio de su mandato, se jactó de que traería consigo “¡transparencia antes que nada!”.Si las órdenes para reservar la información no funcionan, queda la obstrucción de la justicia. Bolsonaro ha sido acusado con frecuencia de tratar de obtener información privilegiada de las investigaciones o de impedirlas por completo. En el ejemplo más conocido, el presidente fue acusado por su propio exministro de Justicia de interferir con la independencia de la Policía Federal. Es una acusación creíble. Después de todo, en una grabación filtrada de una reunión ministerial de hace dos años, se captó a Bolsonaro diciendo que no iba a quedarse “sentado viendo cómo joden a mi familia o a mis amigos”, cuando todo lo que tenía que hacer era sustituir a las autoridades encargadas de la procuración de justicia.Pero para ejercer ese poder necesita seguir en el cargo. Con eso en mente, Bolsonaro ha estado repartiendo altos cargos en el gobierno y usando una reserva de fondos, conocida como “el presupuesto secreto” por su falta de transparencia, a fin de asegurarse de contar con el apoyo de los legisladores de centro. Dada la fuerza que han cobrado las demandas de destitución —desde diciembre de 2021 se han presentado más de 130 solicitudes en su contra— necesita todo el apoyo que pueda reunir. La estrategia es bien conocida: Bolsonaro confesó haber hecho ambas cosas para “calmar al Congreso”. Niega que el presupuesto sea secreto, a pesar de que quienes solicitan fondos de él permanecen en el anonimato.Sin embargo, el mayor reto es ganarse al electorado. En este caso, Bolsonaro recurre de nuevo a triquiñuelas y soluciones alternativas. En julio, el Congreso aprobó una reforma constitucional —que el ministro de Economía apodó el “proyecto de ley kamikaze”— que le otorga al gobierno el derecho a gastar 7600 millones de dólares adicionales en pagos de asistencia social y otras prestaciones hasta el 31 de diciembre. Si suena como un intento descarado de conseguir apoyos en todo el país es porque lo es.Nadie sabe si esto ayudará a la causa del presidente. Pero las señales que envía son inconfundibles: Bolsonaro está desesperado por evitar la derrota. Y tiene muchas razones para querer evitarla.Vanessa Barbara es editora del sitio web literario A Hortaliça, autora de dos novelas y dos libros de no ficción en portugués y colaboradora de la sección de Opinión del Times. More