Elections

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — Kansas voters resoundingly decided against removing the right to abortion from the State Constitution, according to The Associated Press, a major victory for the abortion rights movement in one of America’s reliably conservative states.The defeat of the ballot referendum was the most tangible demonstration yet of a political backlash against the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that had protected abortion rights throughout the country. The decisive margin came as a surprise, and after frenzied campaigns with both sides pouring millions into advertising and knocking on doors throughout a sweltering final campaign stretch.“The voters in Kansas have spoken loud and clear: We will not tolerate extreme bans on abortion,” said Rachel Sweet, the campaign manager for Kansans for Constitutional Freedom, which led the effort to defeat the amendment.told supporters that a willingness to work across partisan lines and ideological differences helped their side win.“The voters in Kansas have spoken loud and clear: We will not tolerate extreme bans on abortion,” Ms. Sweet said.At a campaign watch party in suburban Overland Park, abortion rights supporters yelled with joy when MSNBC showed their side with a commanding lead.“We’re watching the votes come in, we’re seeing the changes of some of the counties where Donald Trump had a huge percentage of the vote, and we’re seeing that just decimated,” said Jo Dee Adelung, 63, a Democrat from Merriam, Kan., who knocked on doors and called voters in recent weeks.She said she hoped the result sent a message that voters are “really taking a look at all of the issues and doing what’s right for Kansas and not just going down party lines.”The vote in Kansas, three months before the midterm elections, was the first time American voters weighed in directly on the issue of abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade this summer. The referendum, watched closely by national figures on both sides of the abortion debate, took on added importance because of Kansas’ location, abutting states where abortion is already banned in nearly all cases. More than $12 million has been spent on advertising, split about evenly between the two camps. The amendment, had it passed, would have removed abortion protections from the State Constitution and paved the way for legislators to ban or restrict abortions.“We’ve been saying that after a decision is made in Washington, that the spotlight would shift to Kansas,” said David Langford, a retired engineer from Leawood, Kan., who wants the amendment to pass, and who reached out to Protestant pastors to rally support.The push for an amendment was rooted in a 2019 ruling by the Kansas Supreme Court that struck down some abortion restrictions and found that the right to an abortion was guaranteed by the State Constitution. That decision infuriated Republicans, who had spent years passing abortion restrictions and campaigning on the issue. They used their supermajorities in the Legislature last year to place the issue on the 2022 ballot.That state-level fight over abortion limits took on far greater meaning after the nation’s top court overturned Roe, opening the door in June for states to go beyond restrictions and outlaw abortions entirely. The Roman Catholic Church and other religious and conservative groups spent heavily to back the amendment, while national supporters of abortion rights poured millions of dollars into the race to oppose it.Canvassers supporting Amendment 2 left literature at a resident’s door last week in Olathe, Kan.Chase Castor for The New York TimesSupporters of the amendment have said repeatedly that the amendment itself would not ban abortion, and Republican lawmakers have been careful to avoid telegraphing what their legislative plans would be if it passed.“Voting yes doesn’t mean that abortion won’t be allowed, it means we’re going to allow our legislators to determine the scope of abortion,” said Mary Jane Muchow of Overland Park, Kan., who supported the amendment. “I think abortion should be legal, but I think there should be limitations on it.”If the amendment had passed, though, the question was not whether Republicans would try to wield their commanding legislative majorities to pass new restrictions, but how far they would go in doing so. Many Kansans who support abortion rights said they feared that a total or near-total abortion ban would be passed within monthsAbortion is now legal in Kansas up to 22 weeks of pregnancy.“I don’t want to become another state that bans all abortion for any reason,” said Barbara Grigar of Overland Park, Kan., who identified herself as a moderate and said she was voting against the amendment. “Choice is every woman’s choice, and not the government’s.”A Pew Research Center survey published last month found that a majority of Americans said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and that more than half of adults disapproved of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe.Kansas has been a focal point of the national abortion debate at least since 1991, when protesters from across the country gathered in Wichita and blocked access to clinics during weeks of heated demonstrations that they called the Summer of Mercy.At times, the state has seen violence over the issue. In 1986, a Wichita abortion clinic was attacked with a pipe bomb. In 1993, a woman who opposed abortion shot and injured Dr. George Tiller, one of only a few American physicians who performed late-term abortions. In 2009, another anti-abortion activist shot and killed Dr. Tiller at his Wichita church.In recent years, and especially in the weeks since Roe fell, Kansas has become a haven of abortion access in a region where that is increasingly rare.Even before the Supreme Court’s action, nearly half of the abortions performed in Kansas involved out-of-state residents. Now Oklahoma and Missouri have banned the procedure in almost all cases, Nebraska may further restrict abortion in the next few months, and women from Arkansas and Texas, where new bans are in place, are traveling well beyond their states’ borders.Kansas is reliably Republican in presidential elections, and its voters are generally conservative on many issues, but polling before the referendum suggested a close race and nuanced public opinions on abortion. The state is not a political monolith: Besides its Democratic governor, a majority of Kansas Supreme Court justices were appointed by Democrats, and Representative Sharice Davids, a Democrat, represents the Kansas City suburbs in Congress.Representative Sharice Davids speaks at an election watch party hosted by Kansans for Constitutional Freedom in Overland Park, Kansas.Arin Yoon for The New York TimesMs. Davids’s district was once a moderate Republican stronghold, but it has been trending toward Democrats in recent years. Her re-election contest in November in a redrawn district may be one of the most competitive House races in the country, and party strategists expect the abortion debate to play an important role in districts like hers that include swaths of upscale suburbs.Political strategists have been particularly attuned to turnout in the Kansas City suburbs, and are seeking to gauge how galvanizing abortion is, especially for swing voters and Democrats in a post-Roe environment.“They’re going to see how to advise their candidates to talk about the issue, they’re going to be looking at every political handicap,” said James Carville, the veteran Democratic strategist. “Every campaign consultant, everybody is watching this thing like it’s the Super Bowl.”As the election approached, and especially since the Supreme Court decision, rhetoric on the issue became more heated. Campaign signs on both sides have been vandalized, police officials and activists have said. In the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park, vandals targeted a Catholic church, defacing a building and a statue of Mary with red paint.Before the vote on Tuesday, which coincided with primary elections, Scott Schwab, the Republican secretary of state, predicted that around 36 percent of Kansas voters would participate, up slightly from the primary in 2020, a presidential election year. His office said that the constitutional amendment “has increased voter interest in the election,” a sentiment that was palpable on the ground.“I like the women’s rights,” said Norma Hamilton, a 90-year-old Republican from Lenexa, Kan. Despite her party registration, she said, she voted no. More

After decades of working together as House colleagues and ultimately ascending to powerful committee leadership posts, Representatives Jerrold Nadler and Carolyn Maloney took the stage on Tuesday night as reluctant foes in a three-way Democratic debate.If fireworks were expected, then the debate was something of a washout: The two longtime Democrats stood and sat side by side, each collegially allowing the other to recite decades of accomplishments and showing an unusual degree of deference.It fell to the third candidate, Suraj Patel, a lawyer who has never held elected office, to play the energetic aggressor, criticizing the records of the New York political fixtures and suggesting that voters would be better served by a younger representative, and perhaps House term limits, too.The debate, hosted by NY1 and WNYC, offered the broadest opportunity for the three leading Democratic candidates seeking to represent New York’s newly drawn 12th Congressional District to distinguish themselves ahead of the Aug. 23 primary. (A fourth candidate, Ashmi Sheth, will appear on the ballot but did not meet the fund-raising requirement to appear onstage.)In a debate with few standout moments, the most notable exchange had little to do with the primary contest itself.Errol Louis, one of the moderators, asked the three candidates whether they believed President Biden should run for re-election in 2024.Mr. Patel, who is running on the importance of generational change, was the only candidate to respond in the affirmative. Mr. Nadler and Ms. Maloney, who are running on the argument that seniority brings clout and expertise, both dodged the question.“Too early to say,” Mr. Nadler said.“I don’t believe he’s running for re-election,” Ms. Maloney said.It seemed like a rare break from Democratic solidarity for Mr. Nadler, 75, and Ms. Maloney, 76, who were elected to office in 1992 and have often worked together as they climbed the ranks of Congress.About halfway through the 90-minute debate, Mr. Nadler was asked to expound on the differences between himself and Ms. Maloney. “Carolyn and I have worked together on a lot of things,” he said, stumbling a bit. “We’ve worked together on many, many different things.”New York’s 2022 ElectionsAs prominent Democratic officials seek to defend their records, Republicans see opportunities to make inroads in general election races.N.Y. Governor’s Race: This year, for the first time in over 75 years, the state ballot appears destined to offer only two choices: Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, and Representative Lee Zeldin, a Republican. Here is why.10th Congressional District: Half a century after she became one of the youngest women ever to serve in Congress, Elizabeth Holtzman is running once again for a seat in the House of Representatives.12th Congressional District: As Representatives Jerrold Nadler and Carolyn Maloney, two titans of New York politics, battle it out, Suraj Patel is trying to eke out his own path to victory.“There are some differences,” he added, stumbling a bit more before going on to name three votes in particular.But even as the two essentially made cases for their political survival, Mr. Nadler and Ms. Maloney largely refrained from attacking each other or offering strong reasons for voters to choose one of them over the other. When given the opportunity to cross-examine an opponent, both chose to question Mr. Patel.Ms. Maloney even admitted she “didn’t want to run” against Mr. Nadler, her “good friend” and ally.Mr. Nadler pointed to three key votes that set him apart from Ms. Maloney — he opposed the Iraq War and the Patriot Act, which expanded government surveillance powers after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, while she voted for them; he supported the Iran nuclear deal, which she opposed. But he refrained from criticizing her votes outright. Mr. Patel was more forceful, at one point calling Ms. Maloney’s vote on Iraq his “single biggest issue with her voting record.”Mr. Patel, 38, who has twice unsuccessfully attempted to defeat Ms. Maloney, at times tried to use their amity to his advantage. At one point, Mr. Patel questioned why Mr. Nadler had previously endorsed Ms. Maloney despite her past support for legislation that would have mandated that the government study a discredited link between vaccines and autism.“In the contest between you and her, I thought she was the better candidate,” Mr. Nadler said.“What about now?” Mr. Patel shot back.“I still think so,” Mr. Nadler responded.With three weeks until the primary contest and no clear front-runner, Mr. Patel sought to draw a sharp contrast with his two opponents. He pointed to their corporate donors and their adherence to party orthodoxy and tried to liken himself to younger, rising party stars like Representatives Hakeem Jeffries and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.“It’s 2022,” he said in his opening statement. “It is time to turn the page on 1992.”Mr. Patel’s performance seemed energetic, in starkest contrast to that of Mr. Nadler, who gave a halting opening statement in which he misspoke and said that he had “impeached Bush twice” when he meant to refer to former President Donald J. Trump.“I thought Suraj performed well,” said Chris Coffey, a Democratic strategist who is unaffiliated in the race. “I thought Carolyn did fine. And I thought Nadler struggled at times.”It was only toward the end of Tuesday’s debate that Ms. Maloney seemed to set her sights on Mr. Nadler. In a conversation about infrastructure, she argued that he had wrongfully taken credit for helping fund the Second Avenue Subway, a long-sought project in her district.Ms. Maloney said that she had advanced the project, while Mr. Nadler had yet to secure funds for a proposed freight tunnel that would run beneath New York Harbor, a project that he has championed for years.“It’s still not built,” Ms. Maloney pointed out.The exchange drove home the end of decades of political harmony predicated on a dividing line between the two elected officials’ districts: Ms. Maloney represented most of Manhattan’s East Side, while Mr. Nadler served constituents on the West Side. Over their time in office, their reach grew to neighborhoods in parts of Brooklyn and Queens, after changes made in the state’s redistricting process. Both had endorsed each other’s previous re-election bids, supporting their respective journeys to becoming New York City political icons.But the alliance fractured in May, when a state court tasked with reviewing New York’s congressional map approved a redistricting plan that threw the two powerful allies into the same district, one that combined Manhattan’s East and West Sides above 14th Street into a single district for the first time since World War II.Mr. Nadler and Ms. Maloney ultimately chose to run against each other rather than seeking a neighboring seat — a decision that guaranteed that at least one of the two will lose their position, robbing New York’s congressional delegation of at least one high-ranking member with political influence.Ms. Maloney leads the House’s Oversight and Reform Committee, a key investigative committee. Mr. Nadler chairs the Judiciary Committee, a role that vaulted him into the national spotlight during both of Mr. Trump’s impeachment trials.For months, the two have engaged in a crosstown battle for their political survival that has riveted the Democratic establishment. Both Mr. Nadler and Ms. Maloney have drawn on political ties to try to pressure old allies and wealthy donors they once shared to back one of them.All three of the candidates at Tuesday’s debate and political analysts alike have acknowledged that the race’s outcome may largely depend on who casts ballots. Even as they tried to appeal to voters, Ms. Maloney, Mr. Nadler and Mr. Patel acknowledged they largely share political viewpoints on key issues like abortion and gun control.“We are, on this stage, star-crossed lovers,” Mr. Patel said. “We are arguing right now, but the fact of the matter is, we’re on the same team.”Nicholas Fandos More

Eric Schmitt, the Missouri attorney general, easily captured the Republican nomination for an open Senate seat on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press. His decisive victory derailed the political comeback of former Gov. Eric Greitens, whose campaign had been clouded by allegations of domestic abuse, infidelity and corruption.Mr. Schmitt, a former state senator and treasurer, made a turn to the hard-right in order to fend off his top rivals, Mr. Greitens and Representative Vicky Hartzler, a longtime social conservative who was in second place as votes were counted Tuesday night, with Mr. Greitens trailing behind. Mr. Schmitt had the backing of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas — which he parlayed into multiple appearances on Fox News — and a semi-endorsement from former President Donald J. Trump, who, unable to make up his mind, endorsed “Eric” on Monday without specifying which one.His victory was a relief for Republicans in Missouri and in Washington, who had worried that nominating Mr. Greitens, four years after he resigned his governorship in disgrace to avoid impeachment, would put at risk a seat they hoped to pass easily from retiring Senator Roy Blunt to a Republican successor. Once a swing state, Missouri has become reliably red over the past decade.If Mr. Greitens had won, Democrats planned to attack him on a record that included allegations from his former wife that he had physically abused her and one of their young sons, as well as accusations of sexual abuse from a hairdresser who said that he had lured her to his home, tied her up, torn off her clothes, photographed her partly naked, threatened to release the pictures if she talked and coerced her into performing oral sex.“I’m hoping and praying that it is God’s will that Eric Greitens does not get the nomination, but if Eric Greitens wins the nomination, we will lose a Senate seat to the Democrats,” Rene Artman, the chairwoman of the St. Louis County Republican Central Committee, said days before the election. She had pleaded with Missouri Republican officials to more forcefully oppose Mr. Greitens.A super PAC in Missouri funded by affluent donors in and out of the state attacked Mr. Greitens in advertising that used his former wife’s allegations as well as footage from a trip he took as governor to China, in which he appeared to speak positively about the country.Mr. Greitens said the allegations against him were false and orchestrated by Washington Republicans such as Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, and Karl Rove, the political chief of the George W. Bush White House. Mounting a campaign saturated in violent imagery, Mr. Greitens ran advertising featuring military-style assaults against “RINOs” — Republicans in name only — and shots of himself, a former Navy SEAL, firing high-powered weaponry.In the end, Mr. Schmitt benefited from a highly fractured field of Republicans, 21 in all. It included Representative Billy Long, who claimed to be the true voice of Mr. Trump, and Mark McCloskey, a personal injury lawyer who made headlines when he and his wife brandished guns at Black Lives Matter protesters in front of the couple’s St. Louis home.Ms. Hartzler was backed by Missouri’s junior senator, Josh Hawley, but snubbed by Mr. Trump, who told his supporters on his social media site, “I don’t think she has what it takes to take on the Radical Left Democrats.” Mr. Trump called Mr. Greitens “tough” and “smart” in an interview on the pro-Trump network One America News, and his son Donald Trump Jr. shot automatic rifles with Mr. Greitens at a shooting range and said on camera that they were “striking fear in the hearts of liberals everywhere.”With Ms. Hartzler dismissed by the former president and Mr. Greitens under concerted attack from wealthy Republicans, Mr. Schmitt was able to prevail. More

Source: Election results and race calls from The Associated Press.The New York Times’s results team is a group of graphics editors, engineers and reporters who build and maintain software to publish election results in real-time as they are reported by results providers. To learn more about how election results work, read this article.The Times’s election results pages are produced by Michael Andre, Aliza Aufrichtig, Neil Berg, Matthew Bloch, Véronique Brossier, Sean Catangui, Andrew Chavez, Nate Cohn, Alastair Coote, Annie Daniel, Asmaa Elkeurti, Tiffany Fehr, Andrew Fischer, Will Houp, Josh Katz, Aaron Krolik, Jasmine C. Lee, Vivian Li, Rebecca Lieberman, Ilana Marcus, Jaymin Patel, Rachel Shorey, Charlie Smart, Umi Syam, Urvashi Uberoy, Isaac White and Christine Zhang. Reporting by Alana Celii and Jonathan Weisman; production by Amanda Cordero and Jessica White; editing by Wilson Andrews, Kenan Davis, Amy Hughes and Ben Koski. More

Voters in five states head to the primaries on Tuesday to decide races that will shape the Republican Party and perhaps America’s democratic future this November and beyond, with former President Donald J. Trump playing key roles in marquee races in Arizona, Michigan and Washington.Few states have been more rattled by Mr. Trump’s baseless claims of election rigging than Arizona and Michigan. On Tuesday, Republican voters in those states will choose standard-bearers for governors’ races in November, and, in Arizona, they will nominate a candidate for secretary of state, the post that oversees elections.Also on the ballot will be the Republican nominations for Senate races in Arizona, Missouri and Washington. Republican voters will also decide the fate of three of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.Here are the key races to watch:In Arizona, Trump is front and center.The former president turned against Arizona’s governor, Doug Ducey, after Mr. Ducey certified Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s narrow victory in the state and refused to echo Mr. Trump’s lies about a stolen election. The race to succeed Mr. Ducey has been dominated by that issue.Mr. Trump’s preferred candidate, the former news anchor Kari Lake, has repeated outlandish falsehoods about the 2020 election and embraced provocations like vowing to bomb smuggling tunnels on the southern border. Her main opponent, Karrin Taylor Robson, a real estate developer endorsed by Mr. Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, is running on conservative themes but not on election denial.Karrin Taylor Robson, right, a Republican candidate for Arizona governor, campaigned in Scottsdale.Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesOn the Democratic side, Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state, is favored to win the nomination, setting up what is expected to be a tight, high-stakes contest this fall.Mr. Trump again figures in the Republican primary to take on Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat, this November, a key front in the battle for control of a Senate now divided evenly between the parties. The former president’s endorsement of the political newcomer Blake Masters helped vault the quirky technology executive into the lead, but the state’s attorney general, Mark Brnovich, could benefit from the barrage of attack ads aimed at Mr. Masters from another Senate candidate, the solar power executive Jim Lamon.The race for the Republican nomination for secretary of state features Mark Finchem, a state representative and expansive conspiracy theorist who marched on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Show me the fate of Eric Greitens.The race to succeed Senator Roy Blunt, the Missouri Republican who is retiring, should have been a gimme for the Show Me State’s Republicans, who now dominate statewide office. But the attempted political comeback of Eric Greitens has complicated matters. In 2018, Mr. Greitens resigned as governor in disgrace amid an investigation into fund-raising improprieties and an allegation by his former hairdresser that he had lured her to his home, stripped off her clothes, taped her to exercise equipment, photographed her, threatened to make the photos public if she talked and then coerced her into oral sex.Taking a page from Mr. Trump, Mr. Greitens dismissed the allegations as cooked up by his political enemies — Democrats and “Republicans in name only” — as he plotted a comeback by running for Senate. Prominent Republicans in Missouri and Washington, D.C., split their endorsements between the state’s attorney general, Eric Schmitt, and a conservative House member, Vicky Hartzler, giving Mr. Greitens a path to the nomination — and Democrats a plausible shot at the seat.Former Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican candidate for Senate, campaigning last week in Kansas City.Chase Castor for The New York TimesIn the closing weeks, affluent donors dumped money into an anti-Greitens super PAC, Show Me Values, which blistered Mr. Greitens with his former wife’s accusations of domestic violence against her and one of their young sons. The group’s backers were confident another candidate would prevail.Despite Donald Trump Jr.’s backing of Mr. Greitens, his father, the former president, never came through with an endorsement.Missouri Democrats will have a difficult time grabbing the seat even if Mr. Greitens prevails. And a new complication has threatened Democratic unity: The party had largely gotten behind Lucas Kunce, a telegenic former Marine, but his coronation was interrupted by the late rise of Trudy Busch Valentine, the free-spending heiress to the Anheuser-Busch fortune.In Michigan, democracy (and Israel) on the ballot.Up and down the state’s primary tickets, Michiganders who deny President Biden’s clear, 2.8-percentage-point victory in their state are vying to defeat politicians from both parties who accept the results.Ryan Kelley, who was arrested last month by the F.B.I. for his actions at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is running to unseat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, though in the most recent polling he trails the conservative media personality Tudor Dixon — whose views on the 2020 election have wavered — and the self-funding businessman Kevin Rinke.Ms. Dixon picked up Mr. Trump’s endorsement on Friday, but it was unclear whether his supporters in the state would rally behind her after warring for months with Ms. Dixon’s chief backer, Betsy DeVos, and her relatives, the most influential Republican family in Michigan.A debate of Michigan’s Republican governor candidates last week: from left, Ryan Kelley, Kevin Rinkey, Tudor Dixon, Ralph Rebandt and Garrett Soldano.Emily Elconin for The New York TimesIn the Western Michigan House seat centered in Grand Rapids, a Trump-backed election denier, John Gibbs, is trying to take out Representative Peter Meijer, a freshman Republican who not only accepts the election results but also voted to impeach Mr. Trump for inciting the attack on the Capitol.The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee aired an advertisement in the final days of the campaign lifting Mr. Gibbs, a potentially far weaker candidate in November than Mr. Meijer, by highlighting his conservative credentials for Republican primary voters, a move that infuriated some Democrats.In Eastern Michigan’s Detroit suburbs, redistricting pitted two incumbent Democratic House members, Andy Levin and Haley Stevens, against one another. That race has turned into a battle royal between progressive groups backing Mr. Levin and pro-Israel groups determined to punish him for what they see as a bias toward Palestinians.The impeachers’ penultimate stand.Three of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump face their day of reckoning on Tuesday. Their fate will say much about Mr. Trump’s power with primary voters. Besides Mr. Meijer, Representatives Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dan Newhouse, both of Washington, are being challenged by Republicans endorsed by Mr. Trump as part of his revenge tour.Ms. Beutler faces the most prominent opponent, Joe Kent, a square-jawed, retired Green Beret whose wife was killed by a suicide bomber in northeast Syria in 2019 while fighting the Islamic State. Mr. Kent has run into an odd problem of his own: accusations from the furthest fringe of the right that he is a deep-state denizen working for the C.I.A. No moderate, Mr. Kent insists that the 2020 election was stolen and that those jailed after the storming of the Capitol are political prisoners.Representative Dan Newhouse in Washington last spring.Anna Rose Layden for The New York TimesMr. Newhouse has largely kept his head down since voting to impeach, but he, too, has a Trump-backed challenger, Loren Culp, a retired law enforcement officer who was the Republicans’ candidate for governor of Washington in 2020.Of the impeachment 10, so far four have retired; one, Representative Tom Rice of South Carolina, has lost his primary; and one, Representative David Valadao of California, has survived his primary. After Tuesday, just one more awaits a primary: Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, whose uphill fight will be decided on Aug. 16.Abortion on the ballot.Voters in Kansas will be the first since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade to decide for themselves whether to protect reproductive rights or turn the issue of abortion over to state legislators.Tuesday’s ballot will include an amendment to the state constitution that would remove an existing guarantee of reproductive rights and allow the Legislature to pass laws restricting abortion.The returns in Kansas will be closely watched, not only by abortion rights supporters and Democrats, for signs of the potency of the issue in the midterm elections, but also by Republican state lawmakers in Kansas and beyond, who felt empowered by the Supreme Court’s decision but are unsure how far they should go to bar abortion in their states.Incumbent Democrats see danger ahead.The power of incumbency is proved time and again, but with inflation at a 40-year-high, President Biden’s approval ratings well below 40 percent and congressional redistricting taking a toll, holding elective office is no guarantee of keeping it.In Kansas, Laura Kelly, a Democratic governor in a deep-red state, has an approval rating of 56 percent, 23 percentage points higher than Mr. Biden’s, but her relative success may not save her tossup race against her expected Republican challenger, Attorney General Derek Schmidt.Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas is expected to face Derek Schmidt, the Republican attorney general, in the fall.Evert Nelson/The Topeka Capital-Journal, via Associated PressIn the Kansas City, Kan., suburbs, Representative Sharice Davids — a gay former mixed-martial arts fighter and one of the first two Native American women in the House — was hailed as a path-breaker after her 2018 victory. But redistricting redrew her seat from a slight Democratic lean to a slight Republican edge.If Amanda Adkins, a businesswoman and former congressional aide, wins the Republican primary on Tuesday, November’s race will be a rematch of their 2020 contest, which Ms. Davids won easily. But this time, the circumstances will be more difficult for the incumbent.If the political environment deteriorates further for Democrats, another incumbent in a Tuesday primary, Senator Patty Murray of Washington, could pop up on both parties’ radar screens.In the nonpartisan Washington primary, Ms. Murray is expected to cruise, as will the Republican backed by the party establishment, Tiffany Smiley. A nurse and motivational speaker, Ms. Smiley will lean on a biography that includes the blinding of her husband by a suicide bomber in Iraq, a tragedy that drove her to veterans’ causes. But her main argument is that 30 years after Ms. Murray first won her Senate seat as a “mom in tennis shoes,” it’s time for “a new mom in town.” More

House panels: DHS officials interfered in effort to get lost Secret Service textsAfter the inspector general’s office requested the Secret Service’s January 6 communications, the effort was shut down Top officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspector general’s office interfered with efforts to recover erased Secret Service texts from the time of the US Capitol attack and attempted to cover up their actions, two House committees said in a letter on Monday.Taken together, the new revelations appear to show that the chief watchdog for the Secret Service and the DHS took deliberate steps to stop the retrieval of texts it knew were missing, and then sought to hide the fact that it had decided not to pursue that evidence.The inspector general’s office had initially sought to retrieve the lost texts from across the DHS – spanning both the Secret Service as well as the former DHS secretary Chad Wolf and his deputy, Ken Cuccinelli – as part of its internal review into January 6.But six weeks after the inspector general’s office first requested Secret Service communications from the time of the Capitol attack, that effort was shut down by Thomas Kait, the deputy inspector general for inspections and evaluations, the House committees said.“Use this email as a reference to our conversation where I said we no longer request phone records and text messages from the USSS relating to the events on January 6th,” Kait wrote in a July 2021 email to a senior DHS liaison official, Jim Crumpacker, that was obtained by Congress.The House committees also disclosed they had learned that Kait and other senior officials manipulated a memo, authored on 4 February 2022, that originally criticized the DHS for refusing to cooperate with its investigation and emphasized the need to review certain texts.By the time that Kait and other senior officials had finished with the memo, the House committee said, mentions about the erased texts from the Secret Service or the DHS secretary had been removed and instead praised the agency for its response to the internal review.The memo went from being a stinging rebuke that said “most DHS components have not provided the requested information” to saying “we received a timely and consolidated response from each component”, the House committees said.Appearing to acknowledge the removal of the damaging findings in the memo, Kait asked colleagues around that time: “Am I setting us up for anything by adding what I did? I spoke with Kristen late last week and she was ok with acknowledging the DAL’s efforts.”The disclosures alarmed the House oversight committee chair, Carolyn Maloney, and House homeland security committee chair, Bennie Thompson – who also chairs the House January 6 committee – enough to demand that top DHS officials appear for transcribed interviews.In the four-page letter, the two House committees again called for the recusal of the DHS inspector general, Joseph Cuffari, and demanded communications inside the inspector general’s office about not collecting or recovering texts from the agency relating to the Capitol attack.The deepening investigation has also revealed that Cuffari’s office was notified in February 2022 that texts from Wolf and Cuccinelli could not be accessed and that Cuccinelli had been using a personal phone – yet never told Congress.Kait has a history of removing damaging findings from reports. In a DHS report on domestic violence and sexual misconduct, Kait directed staff to remove a section that found officers accused of sexual offenses were charged with generic offenses, the New York Times reported.The controversy over the missing texts erupted several weeks ago after Cuffari first informed Congress in mid-July that his department could not turn over Secret Service texts from the time of the Capitol attack because they had been erased as part of a device replacement program.That prompted Thompson, through the House January 6 select committee, to issue a subpoena to the Secret Service for texts from the day before and the day of the Capitol attack as it examined how the agency intended to move Donald Trump and Mike Pence on January 6.But the Secret Service provided only one text exchange to the select committee, the Guardian has previously reported, telling investigators that every other message had been wiped after personnel failed to back up data from the devices when they were swapped out.TopicsSecret ServiceUS Capitol attackJanuary 6 hearingsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

The British prime minister may be leaving Downing Street, but few expect him to cede the spotlight, or abandon the prospect of one day regaining his position.LONDON — Less than three weeks after he announced his resignation, and with rumors already swirling that he plans a comeback, Britain’s scandal-scarred prime minister, Boris Johnson, received the sort of self-care advice best dispensed by a family member.“If you ask me,” Rachel Johnson, the prime minister’s sister, said recently on LBC Radio, where she hosts a talk show, “I would like to see my brother rest and write and paint and just regroup and just, you know, see what happens.”Not much chance of that.Still serving as caretaker prime minister, Mr. Johnson has hardly retreated to the background. He recently posed in a fighter jet, then at a military base where he hurled a hand grenade, used a machine gun and held a rocket launcher during a training exercise with Ukrainian troops.According to one media report, he stoked speculation that somehow he might try to reverse his resignation, lunching recently with a prominent supporter of a petition for a rule change that could allow him to remain in his job.And at his final appearance in Parliament as prime minister, Mr. Johnson’s verdict on his three tumultuous years in Downing Street was “mission largely accomplished — for now,” before he signed off with words from a “Terminator” movie: “Hasta la vista, baby.”Mr. Johnson, 58, lost his job when a succession of scandals prompted dozens of resignations from his government but he remains prime minister until early September when one of the two remaining candidates — Foreign Secretary Liz Truss or the former chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak — will take over. In politics the media caravan moves swiftly on, and a vicious battle for the succession is now the big news story.Mr. Johnson visiting the Francis Crick Institute, four days after announcing his resignation. He has continued to make high-profile appearances.Leon Neal/Agence France-Presse Via Getty ImagesYet as a devotee of the Terminator franchise, Mr. Johnson knows about sequels.“He’s not the kind of person who gives up and goes away to live a quiet life in some nice house in the country and does good work for the local church,” said Andrew Gimson, who is soon to publish a second volume of his biography of Mr. Johnson.“You don’t really get to the top unless you are already quite unnaturally competitive, so it would be very astonishing if he just subsided into private life.”The Fall of Boris Johnson, ExplainedCard 1 of 5Turmoil at Downing Street. More

As we enter the second half of this year’s midterm primary season, more than 30 states have already held nominating contests — including some of the most crucial ones, like in Pennsylvania and Georgia.But a lot of contests are still ahead, including several taking place Tuesday in Arizona, Michigan and Washington that former President Donald J. Trump has weighed in on.Across the country, Mr. Trump has endorsed more than 200 candidates, many of whom ran unopposed or faced little-known, poorly funded opponents.For some — like J.D. Vance in Ohio and Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania — Mr. Trump’s endorsement was crucial to securing victory. But in Georgia, several of his candidates were resoundingly defeated, and he had mixed success in South Carolina and North Carolina.Here is a look at Mr. Trump’s endorsement record in key primary races.In Georgia, several losses and one victoryGov. Brian Kemp easily defeated former Senator David Perdue, Mr. Trump’s handpicked candidate, in the Republican primary for governor. Mr. Kemp became a Trump target after he refused to overturn the president’s loss there in 2020. He will face the Democratic nominee, Stacey Abrams, whom he narrowly defeated four years ago.Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who refused Mr. Trump’s demand to “find” additional votes after his 2020 loss, also defeated a Trump-backed challenger, Representative Jody Hice.Representative Jody Hice, a candidate for secretary of state in Georgia, had Mr. Trump’s endorsement but lost.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesAttorney General Chris Carr defeated John Gordon, a Trump-backed opponent, with more than 73 percent of the vote.In a primary runoff for an open seat in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District, Rich McCormick, a physician and retired Marine, defeated the Trump-backed Jake Evans, the former chairman of Georgia’s ethics commission and the son of a Trump administration ambassador.The former professional football star Herschel Walker, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump, dominated a Senate primary and will face Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat and prolific fund-raiser, in the general election.Victories in PennsylvaniaAfter a close race that prompted a recount, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Mr. Trump’s choice, won the state’s Senate primary, narrowly defeating David McCormick.Doug Mastriano, a state senator and retired Army colonel who has promoted false claims about the 2020 election and attended the protest leading up to the Capitol riot, won the Republican nomination for governor. Mr. Trump had endorsed him just a few days before the May 17 primary.Two wins and a loss in North CarolinaRepresentative Ted Budd won the Republican nomination for Senate, and Bo Hines, a 26-year-old political novice who enthralled Mr. Trump, was catapulted to victory in his primary for a House seat outside Raleigh.But Representative Madison Cawthorn crumbled under the weight of repeated scandals and blunders. He was ousted in his May 17 primary, a stinging rejection of a Trump-endorsed candidate. Voters chose Chuck Edwards, a state senator.A split in South Carolina House racesRepresentative Tom Rice, one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, was ousted by his Trump-backed challenger, State Representative Russell Fry, in the Seventh Congressional District.Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina, right, was endorsed by Nikki Haley, left, the former governor and United Nations ambassador, and defeated a Trump-backed challenger.Logan R. Cyrus for The New York TimesBut Representative Nancy Mace defeated her Trump-backed challenger, the former state lawmaker Katie Arrington, in the First Congressional District. Ms. Mace had said that Mr. Trump bore responsibility for the Jan. 6 attack, but did not vote to impeach him. She had support from Nikki Haley and Mick Mulvaney, who both held office in the state before working in the Trump administration.Election deniers win in NevadaAdam Laxalt won a Senate primary and will face the incumbent, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, who is seen as one of the most vulnerable Democrats this fall. Mr. Laxalt, a former attorney general, was endorsed by Mr. Trump and had helped lead his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Nevada.Joseph Lombardo, the Las Vegas sheriff, won the Republican nomination for governor and will face the Democratic incumbent, Gov. Steve Sisolak.Jim Marchant did not garner a formal endorsement, but his win in the secretary of state primary may well be considered a victory for Mr. Trump: He is a Trump loyalist who helped organize a slate of “America First” candidates for election posts who question the legitimacy of the 2020 election. He will face Cisco Aguilar, a Democratic lawyer.Victories in Illinois, with outside helpState Senator Darren Bailey, who got a last-minute endorsement from Mr. Trump, won the Republican primary for governor. Democratic spending, including by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, may have helped Mr. Bailey, whom Democrats saw as easier to beat in the general election than the other Republicans.Representative Mary Miller, whom Mr. Trump endorsed months ago, won her primary against fellow Representative Rodney Davis.Victories in OhioThe Senate candidate J.D. Vance defeated a field of well-funded candidates, nearly all of whom pitched themselves as Trump-like Republicans. Mr. Vance, an author and venture capitalist, had transformed himself from a self-described “never Trump guy” in 2016 to an “America First” candidate in 2022.J.D. Vance with his wife, Usha, after winning the Republican Senate primary in Ohio.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMax Miller, a former Trump aide who denied assault allegations from an ex-girlfriend and was later endorsed by Mr. Trump, won his House primary after two other Republican incumbents opted not to run.Mr. Trump also endorsed Madison Gesiotto Gilbert, a lawyer and former beauty queen who had been a surrogate for his presidential campaign. She won a seven-way primary for a congressional seat being vacated by Representative Tim Ryan, a Democrat running for Senate.In Maryland, a win aided by DemocratsDan Cox, a first-term state legislator who embraced Mr. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, handily defeated Kelly Schulz in the Republican primary for governor. Ms. Schulz was seen as a protégé of Gov. Larry Hogan, a leader of the party’s anti-Trump wing.Mr. Cox, whom Mr. Trump endorsed in November 2021, raised little money. But he benefited from more than $1.16 million in television advertising from the Democratic Governors Association, which helped his primary campaign in hopes that he would be easier to defeat in the general election.A victory in West VirginiaRepresentative Alex Mooney prevailed over Representative David McKinley in a newly drawn congressional district. Mr. Trump’s endorsement was seen as the decisive factor in the race.A win in CaliforniaKevin Kiley, a state lawmaker endorsed by Mr. Trump, advanced to the general election after finishing second in an open primary in the Third Congressional District. He will face Kermit Jones, a Democrat who is a doctor and Navy veteran and was the top vote-getter.A narrow win in MontanaRyan Zinke had been Montana’s at-large congressman before serving in the Trump administration. Now he is looking to return to Congress in the newly created First Congressional District. Mr. Trump endorsed him, and he narrowly won his primary.A loss in NebraskaCharles W. Herbster, a wealthy agribusiness executive, lost his three-way primary to Jim Pillen, a University of Nebraska regent supported by Gov. Pete Ricketts, who has long clashed with Mr. Trump and is term-limited. Late in the campaign, Mr. Herbster was accused of groping several women. He denied the accusations.And another loss in IdahoGov. Brad Little overcame Mr. Trump’s endorsement of the state’s lieutenant governor, Janice McGeachin, who was challenging him in the Republican primary.Alyce McFadden More