Elections

LAS VEGAS — An influential network of conservative activists fixated on the idea that former President Donald J. Trump won the 2020 election is working to recruit county sheriffs to investigate elections based on the false notion that voter fraud is widespread.The push, which two right-wing sheriffs’ groups have already endorsed, seeks to lend law enforcement credibility to the false claims and has alarmed voting rights advocates. They warn that it could cause chaos in future elections and further weaken trust in an American voting system already battered by attacks from Mr. Trump and his allies.One of the conservative sheriffs’ groups, Protect America Now, lists about 70 members, and the other, the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, does not list its membership but says it conducted trainings on various issues for about 300 of the nation’s roughly 3,000 sheriffs in recent years. It is unclear how many sheriffs will ultimately wade into election matters. Many aligned with the groups are from small, rural counties.But at least three sheriffs involved in the effort — in Michigan, Kansas and Wisconsin — have already been carrying out their own investigations, clashing with election officials who warn that they are overstepping their authority and meddling in an area where they have little expertise.“I’m absolutely sick of it,” said Pam Palmer, the clerk of Barry County, Mich., where the sheriff has carried out an investigation into the 2020 results for more than a year. “We didn’t do anything wrong, but they’ve cast a cloud over our entire county that makes people disbelieve in the accuracy of our ability to run an election.”In recent years, sheriffs have usually taken a limited role in investigations of election crimes, which are typically handled by state agencies with input from local election officials. Republican-led state legislatures, at the same time, have pushed to impose harsher criminal penalties for voting infractions, passing 20 such laws in at least 14 states since the 2020 election.“This is all part and parcel of returning to a world where we’re using the criminal law in a way to make voting harder,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, the interim co-director of the Voting Rights Project at the A.C.L.U. “All the things that used to feel more fringy no longer feel so fringy, as we’re starting to see this very much collective effort.”Richard Mack, center, the founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, appeared at FreedomFest, a recent event in Las Vegas attended by a range of libertarians and conservatives.Alexandra Berzon/The New York TimesThe sheriff of Racine County in Wisconsin, the state’s fifth-most-populous county, is trying to charge state election officials with felonies for measures they took to facilitate safe voting in nursing homes during the pandemic.In Barry County in Michigan, a rural area that voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Trump, the sheriff has been investigating the 2020 election after becoming involved with efforts by people working on Mr. Trump’s behalf to try to gain access to voting machines.And the sheriff of Johnson County in Kansas, which includes suburbs of Kansas City and is the most populous county in the state, has said he is broadly investigating the county’s 2020 election. At a recent meeting with election officials, he questioned their procedures and integrity, according to a written account from the county’s top lawyer, who sent him a letter expressing concern that he was interfering in election matters.The Johnson County sheriff, Calvin Hayden, said in an interview that sheriffs faced a learning curve.“We don’t know anything about elections,” he said. “We’re cops. We have to educate ourselves on the system, which takes a long, long time.”More From Democracy ChallengedRight-Wing Radio Disinformation: Conservative commentators falsely claim that “Democrats cheat” to win elections, contributing to the belief that the midterm results cannot be trusted.Jan. 6 Timeline: We pieced together President Donald J. Trump’s monthslong campaign to subvert American democracy and cling to power.The Far-Right Christian Push: A new wave of U.S. politicians is mixing religious fervor with conspiracy theories, even calling for the end of the separation of church and state.A Cautionary Tale on Democracy: A New Hampshire man pushed through a drastic budget change in his “Live Free or Die” town, angering the community — and jolting it out of indifference.Hatching election plans in Las VegasThe three sheriffs gathered with a few hundred others at a forum this month in Las Vegas hosted by the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association.Attendees included leaders of True the Vote, a group whose work spreading discredited theories of mass voter fraud inspired the conspiratorial film “2000 Mules”; Mike Lindell, the Trump ally and MyPillow chief executive; and other prominent figures in the 2020 election-denial movement.Speakers urged more sheriffs to open investigations of the 2020 election, which they compared to a rigged sporting event, presenting evidence that rehashed long-disproved theories. One speaker said the way that betting odds had changed on election night constituted proof of a stolen election.Some of the arguments centered on the premise of “2000 Mules”: that an army of left-wing operatives wrongfully flooded drop boxes with absentee ballots in 2020. Many, including William P. Barr, Mr. Trump’s former attorney general and Georgia state officials, have pointed to major flaws in the supposed findings and the flimsy evidence presented.Still, Richard Mack, the founder of the constitutional sheriffs association, said the accusations made in “2000 Mules,” which was released in May, were a “smoking gun” and had persuaded him to make election issues his group’s top priority.Mr. Lindell said in an interview that he and his team had offered the three sheriffs “all of our resources,” including computer experts and data on voters, but that he had made no financial commitments.Mr. Mack speaking at FreedomFest. He said in an interview that accusations of voter fraud made in the conspiratorial film “2000 Mules” were a “smoking gun.”Alexandra Berzon/The New York TimesThe Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, which was formally founded about a decade ago by Mr. Mack, is dedicated to the theory that sheriffs are beholden only to the Constitution and serve as the ultimate authority in a county — above local, state and federal officials and statutes. The group, whose leaders have promoted Christian ideology in government, has been active in supporting fights against gun control laws, immigration laws and federal land management.Protect America Now, founded by Sheriff Mark Lamb of Pinal County, Ariz., and Republican operatives, was announced shortly after the 2020 election. Its principles closely align with many of the constitutional sheriffs association’s, but it has employed more traditional political methods such as running ads.Attempts to interview Mr. Lamb, who has not announced local investigations into election issues, were unsuccessful. Discussing his partnership with True the Vote at a Trump rally in Arizona on Friday, he said sheriffs would do more to hold people accountable for violating election laws. “We will not let happen what happened in 2020,” he said.For conservative activists focused on voter fraud, an alliance with law enforcement seemed natural.True the Vote initially approached state and federal law enforcement agencies with its election claims, but did not provide sufficient evidence to warrant an investigation, officials said.In partnership with Protect America Now, the group has now raised $100,000 toward a goal of $1 million for grants to sheriffs for more video surveillance and a hotline to distribute citizen tips.True the Vote’s executive director, Catherine Engelbrecht, said in a speech at the Las Vegas event that in sheriffs, she had found a receptive audience for her claims.“It’s the sheriffs,” she said. “That’s who we can trust.”A troubled history of law enforcement at the pollsSome conservative activists have also floated the idea of increasing the presence of sheriffs wherever ballots are cast, counted and transported, echoing a proposal by Mr. Trump in 2020 that didn’t gain steam.Deputizing volunteers could even be an option, said Sam Bushman, the national operations director for the constitutional sheriffs association.Jim Marchant, the Republican nominee for secretary of state of Nevada and an attendee in Las Vegas, said that if elected, he would try to “bring sheriffs back in” to the election process.“The deputies are going to be there at the locations to watch for any anomaly,” he said in an interview.Jim Marchant, the Republican nominee for secretary of state in Nevada, said he would like to involve sheriffs in the election process.John Locher/Associated PressFor voting rights groups, the potential presence of law enforcement officers at polling locations evokes a darker period in American democracy, when the police were weaponized to suppress turnout by people of color.Because of this history, state and federal protections limit what law enforcement can do. In California and Pennsylvania, for example, it is a crime for officers to show up at the polls if they have not been called by an election official. In other states, including Flor­ida, North Caro­lina, Ohio and Wiscon­sin, officers must obey local elec­tion offi­cials at the polls, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.Sheriffs interviewed at the Las Vegas event said they were aware of such restrictions and did not want to impede voting. The Barry County, Mich., sheriff, Dar Leaf, said he was more focused on 2020 rather than looking ahead. Others, like Mr. Hayden, said they were considering increased video surveillance of drop boxes.Mr. Mack said, “I don’t think any sheriff is trying to intimidate people not to vote.”Some sheriffs from rural Trump-voting counties said they hadn’t observed major problems to fix in their own counties but supported more sheriff involvement overall. Richard Vaughn, a sheriff in rural Grayson County in Virginia, said he wanted officers to be involved in observing vote counts, and would support election investigations “in areas where there are allegations.” “A lot of people are losing confidence,” he added.Wide-ranging investigative scrutinyElection experts say the activities of the three sheriffs already raise concerns.Sheriff Hayden of Johnson County, Kan., said he had started investigating elections after receiving 200 citizen complaints.He is scrutinizing “ballot stuffing,” “machines” and “all of the issues you hear of nationally,” he said in an interview. Asked what he meant by ballot stuffing, he described the practice of delivering absentee ballots on behalf of other voters. (During the 2020 election, Kansas did not have a law regarding that practice; last year, it passed legislation allowing people to return no more than 10 ballots from other voters.)Mr. Hayden said in a statement that he disagreed with the county lawyer’s depiction of his meeting with election officials and that he was treating the elections work like any other investigation.“Our citizens want to have, and deserve to have, confidence in their local elections,” he said.Election workers sorting mail ballot applications in Olathe, Kan., in 2020. The sheriff of Johnson County, which includes Olathe, has said he is investigating elections.Charlie Riedel/Associated PressMr. Leaf has led an effort to try to investigate voting machines.Emails obtained last year from his department by the news site Bridge Michigan showed that a lawyer identifying Mr. Leaf as his client had communicated about seizing machines with Trump allies who were trying to prove 2020 election conspiracy theories.In December 2020, Mr. Leaf met with a cybersecurity specialist — who was part of the Trump allies’ network — to discuss voting machine concerns, Mr. Leaf said in an interview.Mr. Leaf said he had also been provided with a private investigator for election matters by another lawyer of his, who previously helped Sidney Powell, a former lawyer for Mr. Trump, bring a conspiratorial lawsuit seeking to overturn Michigan’s 2020 results.At one point, someone connected to Mr. Leaf’s investigation gained access to a voting tabulator, according to state police records. State authorities intervened and began investigating Mr. Leaf’s office.Over 18 months, Mr. Leaf’s investigative efforts have changed focus several times, and he has had three search warrant requests rejected for lack of evidence, Julie A. Nakfoor Pratt, the county’s top prosecutor, said in an interview.Mr. Leaf said in a statement, “I took an oath and obligation as sheriff to investigate all potential crimes reported to my office, including election law violations.”In Wisconsin, Mr. Schmaling has tried to charge statewide election officials with violating the law by temporarily suspending election oversight work in nursing homes.Those officials, who serve on the Wisconsin Elections Commission, the state’s bipartisan arbiter of election matters, voted for the suspension in March 2020, as the pandemic was first raging. After investigating a complaint in November 2021, Mr. Schmaling said he had found eight instances of potential fraud.No fraud charges were filed in any of the cases.But in November, Mr. Schmaling issued criminal referrals for five of the six members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, recommending that the district attorneys in the counties where they live charge them with crimes including felonies.Three of the district attorneys have dismissed the referrals; two have not yet made a decision.Mr. Schmaling, who said his nursing home inquiry took up hundreds of hours, described his decisions as routine. “The bigger picture for me is we exposed something that was wrong, something illegal,” he said. “My goal is to make certain that the law is followed.”But others involved said the actions were an overreach of power.“The idea that the solution for an election whose results you didn’t like is, after the fact, to threaten criminal charges for that public work of a government official is shocking,” said Ann Jacobs, the Democratic chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, who faced a criminal referral. “It is chilling. It is the antithesis of how democracy works.” More

PRESCOTT, Ariz. — Pamphlets, buttons and American flags cluttered booth after booth for political candidates at a conference center in Prescott, Ariz., this month. But the table for Ron Watkins, a Republican candidate for Congress who rose to fame for his ties to the QAnon conspiracy theory, sat empty.“I thought it started at 11:30,” said Orlando Munguia, Mr. Watkins’s campaign manager, who arrived about 30 minutes after the event had begun and hastily laid out campaign materials without the candidate in tow.Mr. Watkins, a computer programmer in his 30s, is running into the same reality that many other QAnon-linked candidates have confronted: Having ties to the conspiracy theory does not automatically translate to a successful political campaign.More established Republican rivals have vastly outraised Mr. Watkins in Arizona’s Second District. Two other congressional candidates in Arizona who have shown some level of support for QAnon also trail their competitors in fund-raising ahead of the Aug. 2 primary. A fourth Arizona candidate with QAnon ties has suspended his House campaign. The same trend is playing out nationally.Primary results for QAnon-linked candidates More

The continued revelations from the House select committee and the rapid pace of the Georgia investigation have left the Justice Department on the defensive.In the last week, local prosecutors in Atlanta barreled ahead with their criminal investigation into the effort by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, targeting fake electors, issuing a subpoena to a member of Congress and winning a court battle forcing Rudolph W. Giuliani to testify to a grand jury.In Washington, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack unfurled its latest batch of damning disclosures about Mr. Trump at a prime-time hearing, and directly suggested that Mr. Trump needs to be prosecuted before he destroys the country’s democracy.But at the Justice Department, where the gears of justice always seem to move the slowest, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland was forced to rely on generalities about the American legal system, saying “no person is above the law in this country” as he fended off increasing questions about why there has been so little public action to hold Mr. Trump and his allies accountable.“There is a lot of speculation about what the Justice Department is doing, what’s it not doing, what our theories are and what our theories aren’t, and there will continue to be that speculation,” Mr. Garland said at a briefing with reporters on Wednesday as he appeared to grow slightly irritated. “That’s because a central tenet of the way in which the Justice Department investigates and a central tenet of the rule of law is that we do not do our investigations in public.”The contrast between the public urgency and aggressiveness of the investigations being carried out by the Georgia prosecutors and the congressional committee on the one hand and the quiet, and apparently plodding and methodical approach being taken by the Justice Department on the other is so striking that it has become an issue for Mr. Garland — and is only growing more pronounced by the week.The House committee has interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, with more still coming in, and has selectively picked evidence from what it has learned to set out a seamless narrative implicating Mr. Trump. The Georgia prosecutor, Fani T. Willis, appears to be assembling a wide-ranging case that some experts say could lead to conspiracy or racketeering charges.Exactly what is going on inside the Justice Department remains largely obscured, beyond what it prioritized in the months after the attack: its prosecution of hundreds of the rioters who stormed the Capitol and its sedition cases against the extremist groups who were present.But through subpoenas and search warrants, the department has made clear that it is pursuing at least two related lines of inquiry that could lead to Mr. Trump.One centers on the so-called fake electors. In that line of inquiry, prosecutors have issued subpoenas to some people who had signed up to be on the list of those purporting to be electors that pro-Trump forces wanted to use to help block certification of the Electoral College results by Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.Investigation of the fake electors scheme has fallen under Thomas Windom, a prosecutor brought in by the Justice Department last year to help bolster its efforts. Mr. Windom’s team has also issued subpoenas to a wide range of characters connected to the Jan. 6 attacks, seeking information about lawyers who worked closely with Mr. Trump, including Mr. Giuliani and John Eastman, the little-known conservative lawyer who tried to help Mr. Trump find a way to block congressional certification of the election results.Thomas Windom is a prosecutor brought in by the Justice Department last year to investigate the so-called fake electors scheme.Julio Cortez/Associated PressEarlier rounds of subpoenas from Mr. Windom sought information about members of the executive and legislative branches who had been involved in the “planning or execution of any rally or any attempt to obstruct, influence, impede or delay” the certification of the 2020 election.The other line of Justice Department inquiry centers on the effort by a Trump-era Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clark, to pressure Georgia officials not to certify the state’s election results by sending a letter falsely suggesting that the department had found evidence of election fraud there.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 9Making a case against Trump. More

Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. Damn, it’s hot.Gail Collins: Ah Bret, we agree once again. How inspiring it is to realize that even in these troubled times, Americans of all political stripes can gather to complain about the weather.Bret: Just give this conversation another five seconds ….Gail: And, of course, vent about Senator Joe Manchin, who keeps putting his coal-loving foot on any serious attempt to deal with climate change.Am I moving out of our area of agreement?Bret: Maybe a tad. I’m grateful to Manchin for fighting for American energy. We’ll all be complaining about climate change a whole lot more when diminished power generation and supply shocks leave us with rolling blackouts and long stretches without air-conditioning.On the other hand, I mentioned in a previous conversation that I’m going to Greenland later this summer. Wasn’t kidding! An oceanographer I know pretty much wants to shove my face into a melting glacier in hopes of some kind of Damascene conversion.Gail: Great! Then we can join hands and lobby for tax incentives that will encourage Americans to buy electric cars and encourage power companies to trade coal for wind and solar energy, right?Bret: Wind and solar power alone will never meet demand. We should build a lot more nuclear power, which is what France is doing, again, and also extract more gas and oil in the U.S. and Canada. However, if Joe Biden also wants to help me pay for that Tesla I don’t actually need, I probably won’t say no.Speaking of the president, I’m wishing him a speedy recovery. Is Covid something we can at last stop being freaked out about?Gail: Clearly Biden’s in a particular risk group because of his age, but 79-year-olds who are surrounded by high-quality medical staff may not be the most endangered part of the population.Bret: Just hope the vice president’s office didn’t recommend the doctor.Gail: One of the biggest problems is still the folks who refused to get vaccinated. And who are still being encouraged by a number of Republican candidates for high office.Bret: OK, confession: I’m having a harder and harder time keeping faith with vaccines that seem to be less and less effective against the new variants. How many boosters are we all supposed to get each year?Gail: Oh Bret, Bret …Bret: Never mind my Kamala joke, now I’m in real trouble. What were you saying about Republicans?Gail: I was thinking about anti-vaxxers — or at least semi-anti-vaxxers — like Dan Cox, who is now the Republican nominee for Maryland governor, thanks to the endorsement of Donald Trump and about $1.16 million in TV ads paid for by the Democratic Governors Association, who think he’ll be easy to beat.Bret: Such a shame that a state Republican Party that had one of the few remaining Republican heroes in the person of the incumbent governor, Larry Hogan, should nominate a stinker like Cox, who called Mike Pence a “traitor” for not trying to overturn the election on Jan. 6. His Democratic opponent, Wes Moore, is one of the most outstanding people I’ve ever met and could be presidential material a few years down the road.I hope Cox loses by the widest margin in history. Of course I also said that of Trump in 2016.Gail: Ditto. But I just hate the Democrats’ developing strategy of giving a big boost to terrible Republican candidates in order to raise their own side’s chances. It is just the kind of thing that can come back to haunt you in an era when voters have shown they’re not always freaked out by contenders who have the minor disadvantage of being crazy.Bret: Totally agree. We should be working to revive the center. Two suggestions I have for deep-pocketed political donors: Don’t give a dime to an incumbent who has never worked on at least one meaningful bipartisan bill. And ask any political newcomer to identify one issue on which he or she breaks with party orthodoxy. If they don’t have a good answer, don’t write a check.For instance: bail reform. My jaw hit the floor when the guy who tried to stab Representative Lee Zeldin at a campaign event in New York last week walked free after a few hours, even if he was then rearrested under a federal statute.Gail: We semi-disagree about bail reform. I don’t think you decide who should be able to walk on the basis of the amount of money their families can put up. Anybody who’s charged with a dangerous crime should stay locked up, and the rest should go home and be ready for their day in court. More

Many of Donald J. Trump’s allies in the media believe the reports about violence and criminal conduct committed by Trump supporters have been exaggerated.After the Jan. 6 committee’s final summer hearing last week, the talk on the sets of CNN and MSNBC turned to an intriguing if familiar possibility about what might result from the panel’s finding. The case for a criminal prosecution of former President Donald J. Trump, many pundits said, was not only justified but seemed more than likely given the evidence of his inaction as rioters sacked the Capitol.If that felt like déjà vu — more predictions of Mr. Trump’s looming downfall — the response to the hearings from the pro-Trump platforms felt like something new, reflecting the lengths to which his Praetorian Guard of friendly media have gone to rewrite the violent history of that day.Even as the committee’s vivid depiction of Mr. Trump’s failure to intervene led two influential outlets on the right, The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, to denounce him over the weekend, many top conservative media personalities have continued to push a more sanitized narrative of Jan. 6, 2021. They have turned the Capitol Police into villains and alleged the existence of a government plot to criminalize political dissent.Mark Levin, the talk radio host, scoffed at the notion that Mr. Trump had tried to overturn the election or instigate an insurrection. If he had, Mr. Levin explained during an appearance on Fox News as other networks aired the hearings live, the former president would have taken more direct steps, such as ordering the arrest of Vice President Mike Pence or firing the attorney general.“You’d think with all the talk of criminality, they would show us,” Mr. Levin said, speaking on Fox News on Thursday night. “There’s nothing,” he added. “Absolutely zero evidence that Donald Trump was involved in an effort to violently overthrow our elections or our government. Literally nothing.”And to put a finer point on exactly what he meant, Mr. Levin read from a section of the 14th Amendment that says anyone who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” is barred from holding federal office.That was why the media kept calling Jan. 6 “an insurrection,” Mr. Levin explained.(The writer of this article is an MSNBC contributor.)Part of the right’s message to Trump supporters is, in effect: You may have initially recoiled in horror at what you thought happened at the Capitol, but you were misled by the mainstream media. “What’s weird is that when I talk to these people, their disgust with the media over Jan. 6 is stronger now than it was a year ago,” said Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman and talk radio host who left the party because of its unwavering support for Mr. Trump. By the time the committee presented its evidence, Mr. Walsh added, “half the country didn’t give a damn or thought it was a hoax.”The dissonance can be perplexing. The same Fox News hosts who were imploring the president’s chief of staff to intercede with the president or risk “destroying his legacy,” as Laura Ingraham put it in a text to Mark Meadows on Jan. 6, now accuse the mainstream media of exaggerating the events at the Capitol.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 9Making a case against Trump. More

We all learn from failure.Our mistakes become the bridge to our successes, teaching us what works and what doesn’t, so that the next time we muster the will to try, we’ll succeed.But nefarious actors can also learn from failure. And that, unfortunately, is where we find ourselves with Donald Trump. His entire foray into politics has been one of testing the fences for weaknesses. Every time a fence has failed, he has been encouraged. He has become a better political predator.With the conclusion of this series of hearings about the Jan. 6 insurrection, it has become ever clearer to me that Trump should be charged with multiple crimes. But I’m not a prosecutor. I’m not part of the Department of Justice. That agency will make the final decision on federal charges.The questions before the Justice Department are not only whether there is convincing evidence that Trump committed the crimes he is accused of but also whether the country could sustain the stain of a criminal prosecution of a former president.I would turn the latter question around completely: Can the country afford not to prosecute Trump? I believe the answer is no.He has learned from his failures and is now more dangerous than ever.He has learned that the political system is incapable of holding him accountable. He can try to extort a foreign nation for political gain and not be removed from office. He can attempt a coup and not be removed from office.He has learned that many of his supporters have almost complete contempt for women. It doesn’t matter how many women accuse you of sexual misconduct; your base, including some of your female supporters, will brush it away. You can even be caught on tape boasting about sexually assaulting women, and your followers will discount it.He has learned that the presidency is the greatest grift of his life. For decades, he has sold gilded glamour to suckers — hawking hotels and golf courses, steaks and vodka — but with the presidency, he needed to sell them only lies that affirmed their white nationalism and justified their white fragility, and they would happily give him millions of dollars. Why erect a building when you could simply erect a myth? Trump will never willingly walk away from this.Now with the investigation into his involvement in the insurrection and his attempts to steal the election, he is learning once again from his failures. He is learning that his loyalty tests have to be even more severe. He is learning that his attempts to grab power must come at the beginning of his presidency, not the end. He is learning that it is possible to break the political system.Not only does Trump apparently want to run again for president; The New York Times reported that he might announce as soon as this month, partly to shield himself “from a stream of damaging revelations emerging from investigations into his attempts to cling to power after losing the 2020 election.”Trump isn’t articulating any fully fleshed-out policy objectives he hopes to accomplish for the country, but that should come as no surprise. His desire to regain power has nothing to do with the well-being of the country. His quest is brazenly self-interested. He wants to retake the presidency because its power is a shield against accountability and a mechanism through which to funnel money.Should his re-election bid prove successful, Trump’s second term will likely be far worse than the first.He would tighten his grip on all those near him. Mike Pence was a loyalist but in the end wouldn’t fully kowtow to him. The same can be said of Bill Barr. Trump will not again make the mistake of surrounding himself with people who would question his authority.Some of the people who demonstrated more loyalty to the country than they did to Trump during these investigations were lower-level staff members. For the former president, they, too, present an obstacle. But he might have a fix for that as well.Axios reported on Friday that “Trump’s top allies are preparing to radically reshape the federal government if he is re-elected, purging potentially thousands of civil servants and filling career posts with loyalists to him and his ‘America First’ ideology.”According to Axios, this strategy appears to revolve around his reimposing an executive order that would reassign tens of thousands of federal employees with “some influence over policy” to Schedule F, which would strip them of their employee protections so that Trump could fire them without recourse to appeal.Perhaps most dangerous, though, is that Trump will have learned that while presidents aren’t too big to fail, they are too big to jail. If a president can operate with impunity, the presidency invites corruption, and it defies the ideals of this democracy.A Trump free of prosecution is a Trump free to rampage.Some could argue that prosecuting a former president would forever alter presidential politics. But I would counter that not prosecuting him threatens the collapse of the entire political ecosystem and therefore the country.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

Liz Cheney: January 6 panel will subpoena Ginni Thomas if necessaryWife of Justice Clarence Thomas corresponded with Trump camp about attempts to overturn 2020 election

Robert Reich: Trump’s coup continues
The House January 6 committee will subpoena Ginni Thomas, the wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, if she will not testify voluntarily about her involvement in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.Josh Hawley, senator who ran from Capitol mob, mocked by home paperRead more“The committee is engaged with her counsel,” Liz Cheney, the panel vice-chair, told CNN’s State of the Union. “We certainly hope that she will agree to come in voluntarily but the committee is fully prepared to contemplate a subpoena if she does not.”Thomas corresponded with Mark Meadows, Trump’s final chief of staff, and John Eastman, a law professor who shaped the congressional side of a push which culminated in the deadly attack on the Capitol.She also corresponded with Arizona Republicans about attempts to overturn Joe Biden’s victory there.Her activities have added to pressure on her husband. An arch-conservative on a court tilted firmly right, Clarence Thomas was the only justice to say Trump should not have to release records to the House committee. His wife’s communications with the Trump camp were subsequently revealed.Some on the left have called for Thomas to be impeached – a political non-starter.Cheney said: “I hope it doesn’t get to [a subpoena]. I hope [Ginni Thomas] will come in voluntarily. We’ve certainly spoken with numbers of people who are similarly situated in terms of the discussions that she was having … so it’s very important for us to speak with her.”Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House strategist, faces jail time after being convicted of criminal contempt of Congress, for ignoring a subpoena.Meadows was also referred to the Department of Justice for failing to co-operate but the DoJ declined to pursue charges.On Sunday Elaine Luria, the Virginia Democrat who presented the committee’s case in a hearing on Thursday, told NBC’s Meet the Press: “I don’t think [the DoJ] can revisit something that they’ve already dismissed but [Meadows is] certainly someone who has probably more information than anyone, you know, other than the folks who we have already heard from who were in the White House that day.”She added: “If he’s listening, we’d love to hear from him.”Cheney would not go as far as her fellow Republican on the January 6 committee, Adam Kinzinger, who has said he thinks the panel has proved Trump broke the law in his attempts to overturn the election.She said: “I think that Donald Trump’s violation of his oath of office, the violation of the constitution that he engaged in, is the most serious misconduct of any president in the history of our nation.“The committee has not decided yet whether or not we’ll make criminal referrals … I would also say that the Department of Justice certainly is very focused, based on what we see publicly, on what is the largest criminal investigation in American history.“But there’s no doubt in my mind that the former president of the United States is unfit for further office.”Luria echoed Kinzinger, telling NBC: “I sure as hell hope [the DoJ has] a criminal investigation at this point into Donald Trump.”She also said Merrick Garland, the attorney general, “has already told us he’s listening, and if he’s watching today, I’d tell him he doesn’t need to wait on us because I think he has plenty to keep moving forward.”The House committee has held nine public hearings, eight in a summer run which ended on Thursday with almost three hours on Trump’s inaction while his supporters attacked the Capitol.There will be more hearings in September. Cheney said more interviews were scheduled and the committee “anticipate[s] talking to additional members of the president’s cabinet. We anticipate talking to additional members of his campaign.“Certainly we’re very focused as well on the Secret Service and on interviewing additional members of the Secret Service and collecting additional information from them.”The deletion of Secret Service text messages from 5 and 6 January 2021 despite an order from the committee to preserve them is another flashpoint in the continuing saga of Trump’s attempted coup.On Sunday, Cheney repeated her praise of witnesses who have come forward, including Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Meadows, and Sarah Matthews, a former White House press aide.Asked about Republican attacks on such witnesses, Cheney said: “Certainly it is the case that the attacks against some of the women witnesses have been particularly vicious. I also think the response that we’ve seen from the House Republicans is really disgraceful.“… I think our country is at a moment where we really have to all of us take a big step back and all of us say, ‘Look, the normal, sort of vitriolic, toxic partisanship has got to stop and we have to recognise what’s at stake.’ And … the leadership of the Republicans in the House need to be held accountable for their actions.”‘US democracy will not survive for long’: how January 6 hearings plot a roadmap to autocracyRead moreCheney, a stringent conservative, is nonetheless expected to lose her seat in Wyoming, over her opposition to Trump. She would not be fully drawn on whether she plans to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, when Trump is expected to mount another campaign.“I’ve not made a decision about 2024,” Cheney said, “and I am really very focused on the substance of what we have to do on the select committee, very focused on the work that I have to do to represent the people of Wyoming. And I’ll make a decision about 2024 down the road.“But I do think as we look towards the next presidential election … I believe that our nation stands on the edge of an abyss. And I do believe that we all have to really think very seriously about the dangers we face and the threats we face and we have to elect serious candidates.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackClarence ThomasUS politicsDonald TrumpUS supreme courtnewsReuse this content More

A series of tragedies and challenges have soured the mood of Texans and made the governor’s race perhaps the most competitive since the 1990s.SUGAR LAND, Texas — One of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. The revival of a 1920s ban on abortion. The country’s worst episode of migrant death in recent memory. And an electrical grid, which failed during bitter cold, now straining under soaring heat.The unrelenting succession of death and difficulty facing Texans over the last two months has soured them on the direction of the state, hurting Gov. Greg Abbott and making the race for governor perhaps the most competitive since Democrats last held that office in the 1990s.Polls have shown a tightening, single-digit contest between Mr. Abbott, the two-term incumbent, and his ubiquitous Democratic challenger, the former congressman Beto O’Rourke. Mr. O’Rourke is now raising more campaign cash than Mr. Abbott — $27.6 million to $24.9 million in the last filing — in a race that is likely to be among the most expensive of 2022.Suddenly, improbably, perhaps unwisely, Texas Democrats are again daring to think — as they have in many recent election years — that maybe this could be the year.“It seems like some the worst things that are happening in this country have their roots in Texas,” said James Talarico, a Democratic state representative from north of Austin. “We’re seeing a renewed fighting spirit.”At the same time, the winds of national discontent are whipping hard in the other direction, against Democrats. Texans, like many Americans, have felt the strain of rising inflation and have a low opinion of President Biden. Unlike four years ago, when Mr. O’Rourke challenged Senator Ted Cruz and nearly won during a midterm referendum on President Donald J. Trump that lifted Democrats, now it is Republicans who are animated by animus toward the White House and poised to make gains in state races.But in recent weeks there has been a perceptible shift in Texas, as registered in several public polls and some internal campaign surveys, after the school shooting in Uvalde that killed 19 children and two teachers and the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on abortion, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, that brought back into force a 1925 law banning all abortions except when the woman’s life is at risk.“Dobbs at the margins has hurt Republicans in Texas. Uvalde at the margins has hurt Republicans in Texas. The grid has hurt Republicans in Texas,” said Mark P. Jones, a professor of political science at Rice University who helped conduct one recent poll. “Biden and inflation have been their saving grace.”Mr. O’Rourke speaking in June during his rally for abortion rights in Austin, Texas. Montinique Monroe for The New York TimesMost voters polled did not rank guns or abortion among their top issues in the recent survey, by the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs, but many of Mr. O’Rourke’s supporters did, suggesting the issues could help to energize his voters, Mr. Jones said.And the issue of gun control was a top concern among another group that Republicans have been fighting hard to win away from Democrats: Hispanic women.A separate poll, conducted by the University of Texas at Austin and released this month, showed 59 percent of respondents thought Texas was on the “wrong track,” the highest number in more than a decade of asking that question. Another, from Quinnipiac University, found Mr. O’Rourke within 5 percentage points of the governor.As the new polls showed Mr. O’Rourke’s numbers improving, Mr. Abbott’s campaign convened a conference call with reporters this month.Key Themes From the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarCard 1 of 5The state of the midterms. More