Elections

WASHINGTON — “Do you feel safe? You shouldn’t.”In August, 42-year-old Travis Ford of Lincoln, Neb., posted those words on the personal Instagram page of Jena Griswold, the secretary of state and chief election official of Colorado. In a post 10 days later, Mr. Ford told Ms. Griswold that her security detail was unable to protect her, then added:“This world is unpredictable these days … anything can happen to anyone.”Mr. Ford paid dearly for those words. Last week, in U.S. District Court in Lincoln, he pleaded guilty to making a threat with a telecommunications device, a felony that can carry up to two years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.But a year after Attorney General Merrick B. Garland established the federal Election Threats Task Force, almost no one else has faced punishment. Two other cases are being prosecuted, but Mr. Ford’s guilty plea is the only case the task force has successfully concluded out of more than 1,000 it has evaluated.Public reports of prosecutions by state and local officials are equally sparse, despite an explosion of intimidating and even violent threats against election workers, largely since former President Donald J. Trump began spreading the lie that fraud cost him the 2020 presidential election.Colorado alone has forwarded at least 500 threats against election workers to the task force, Ms. Griswold said.The sluggish pace has sparked consternation among both election workers and their supporters, some of whom say they are souring on the idea of reporting the menacing messages to prosecutors if nothing comes of it.“The reaction usually is ‘Thank you for reporting that; we’ll look into it,’ and there’s no substantive follow-up to understand what they’re doing,” said Meagan Wolfe, the president of the National Association of State Election Directors. That leads some “to feel there isn’t adequate support that can deter people from doing this in the future,” she added.U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland formed the Election Threats Task Force in June 2021.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesThe depth of election workers’ fear was underscored in hearings this month by the congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault at the U.S. Capitol. Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who are mother and daughter and both election workers in Atlanta, told of being forced into hiding by a barrage of threats in December 2020, after being falsely accused of election fraud by Rudy Giuliani, who was then Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer. Protesters tried to enter a relative’s house in search of the two. Eventually, they quit their positions.That is not the norm, but neither is it uncommon. Ms. Griswold said one Colorado county clerk wears body armor to work, and another conducts business behind bulletproof glass.“In my experience, if someone is telling you over and over how they’re going to hang you, asking you the size of your neck so they can cut the rope right, you have to take the threats really seriously,” she said, citing threats she had received.The city clerk in Milwaukee, Claire Woodall-Vogg, said she had “completely redesigned our office at City Hall for safety reasons” after receiving hundreds of threats, which she said had been forwarded to the task force.An investigation by Reuters in September turned up more than 100 threats of death or violence to election officials in eight battleground states, which at that time had produced four arrests and no convictions.A survey in March by the Brennan Center for Justice found that one in six local election officials have personally experienced threats, and nearly a third said they knew people who had left their jobs at least in part because of safety concerns.Justice Department officials declined to comment on the task force’s progress. The department has said previously that the task force was tracking and logging election-related threats, and had opened dozens of criminal investigations as a result. That led to charges in February against men from Texas and Nevada and the recent guilty plea in Nebraska.Claire Woodall-Vogg, the city clerk in Milwaukee, had to reconfigure the clerk’s office due to safety concerns.Scott Olson/Getty ImagesThe task force also has conducted training and education sessions on threats with state and local law enforcement and election officials and social media platforms. Each of the 56 F.B.I. field offices has assigned an agent to collect and analyze threat reports, and federal prosecutors have been trained in assessing and investigating threats.The trickle of prosecutions in the wake of those moves is explained in part by federal law, which defines illegal threats extremely narrowly in the name of preserving the constitutional right to free speech.“You need to say something like, ‘I am going to kill you.’ It can’t be ‘Someone ought to kill you,’” said Catherine J. Ross, a professor and expert on First Amendment law at George Washington University. “That’s a very high bar, and intentionally a high bar.”That so-called true threat doctrine classifies even many extreme statements as protected political speech. That rules out charges in a great many cases of threats against election officials — even when the recipients feel terrified for their lives.Joanna Lydgate, founder and chief executive officer of the bipartisan legal watchdog organization States United Democracy Center, said she was encouraged to see results from the task force and understood, “These cases can be challenging to bring, and they take time.”She said: “We definitely hope to see more of this from DOJ, because investigating these threats, building these cases and holding people accountable is critically important, especially as we’re looking toward the midterms.”In Arizona, the office of Secretary of State Katie Hobbs has reported more than 100 threats to the F.B.I. in the last year, said a spokeswoman, C. Murphy Hebert. Ms. Hebert said she was confident that the task force was reviewing those threats, but that could be cold comfort to recipients who have not seen results.“For the folks monitoring and the folks being targeted, a hundred messages saying ‘You should die’ is pretty threatening,” she said. “But based on what we know of the process,” they are not actionable, she said.Protesting supporters of U.S. President Donald J. Trump are reflected in a window of a tabulation center during the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County, Ariz.Jim Urquhart/ReutersMatt Crane, the executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, said threats sent to him in the past year included voice mail and online chatter urging that he, his wife and children be shot in the head. He said he had reported at least one threat to the F.B.I.But while the bureau has helped clarify how its threat review process works and has met with local clerks, he said, he still does not know whether his report was followed up on.“It does not give a lot of comfort to the people who receive threats,” he said. “I’ve heard some say: ‘Why should I report it? I’m better off just carrying my gun with me and if something happens, at least I can do something to protect myself.’”Other experts say the lack of both action and transparency was undermining the principal goal of the task force — to stop the epidemic of violent threats.“Three prosecutions in a year for a problem that is nationally widespread seems awfully low,” said David J. Becker, a onetime voting rights lawyer at the Justice Department who now directs the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research. “Whether accurate or not, the impression among election officials is that the effort the Department of Justice launched with great fanfare a year ago isn’t getting the job done.”The Brennan Center report in March found that more than half the threats against election officials who were polled had gone unreported, and that a vast majority of threats were forwarded to local law enforcement agencies, not state or federal law enforcement.Four in 10 election officials said they had never heard of the task force. And while the Justice Department has increased outreach to election officials and publicized a hotline that can be used to report complaints, “there is really very little detail about what happens when complaints are made,” said Lawrence Norden, the senior director of the center’s Elections and Government Program.“Election officials rightly feel that public repercussions for these threats are going to be critical to curtailing them,” he said. But, so far, there have been too few court cases to provide any sense that offenders will be held accountable.Until that changes — if it does — election officials need more reassurance that law enforcement has their back, he and others said.“You have a lot more election officials who are exercising their Second Amendment rights than before 2020,” said Mr. Crane, the head of the Colorado clerks association. “It only takes one of these crazy people to show up at your doorstep.” More

New problems in New Zealand like inflation and gang violence and old problems like unaffordable housing have sent her polling numbers to new lows as an election looms next year.WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Abroad, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand remains a leading liberal light. During a recent trip to the United States, she delivered the commencement address at Harvard, cracked jokes with Stephen Colbert and met in the Oval Office with President Biden. At each stop, she highlighted her successes in passing gun restrictions and handling the pandemic.At home, Ms. Ardern’s star is fading. Rising prices for food, fuel and rent are making life increasingly difficult for many New Zealanders, and an explosion of gang violence has shocked suburbanites not used to worrying much about their safety.More fundamentally, there are deepening doubts that Ms. Ardern can deliver the “transformational” change she promised on systemic problems, as housing prices reach stratospheric levels, the country’s carbon emissions increase despite her government’s pledges, and child poverty rates stay stubbornly high.Polls show her center-left Labour Party at its lowest level of support in five years, with an election looming in 2023. That, said Morgan Godfery, a liberal writer and senior lecturer in marketing at Otago University in Dunedin, reflects a view that Ms. Ardern is “missing in action” on the issues voters care about.“New Zealanders who see this day to day are getting frustrated by a lack of change,” Mr. Godfery said. “But if you look from overseas, you don’t see the lack of policy, you see the personality. And that’s where the mismatch comes in.”Ms. Ardern built an international profile as a progressive feminist and a compassionate leader, which stood out all the more as a wave of right-wing populism swept the United States and other countries. It has allowed her to amass unusual star power for the leader of a small country.Ms. Ardern with President Biden during her visit to the White House in late May. Doug Mills/The New York TimesIn her first term, she won widespread praise as she guided her country through the aftermath of the Christchurch mosque massacre and through the emergence of the pandemic. Within days of the mosque shootings, she announced a sweeping ban on military-style weapons. And after the arrival of the coronavirus, she took swift action to eliminate the virus through lockdowns and border controls, largely preserving normal life.Her pandemic success helped lift her party to an outright majority in Parliament during the last election, in October 2020 — the first time any party had won a majority since the country moved to its current electoral system in 1993.But it may also be causing her current troubles. As New Zealand emerged from the pandemic with one of the world’s lowest death rates, “there was a sense the government really can do the impossible by holding up a virus ravaging the rest of the world,” said Ben Thomas, a conservative commentator.Now, with most of its virus restrictions lifted, Ms. Ardern’s government has lost its unifying fight against the pandemic and, with it, much of its bipartisan support. What remains is soaring inflation, increasing gun violence and little progress on issues that have bedeviled New Zealand for decades.Police officers in Wellington, New Zealand, facing off in early March against protesters opposed to coronavirus vaccine requirements. In February, New Zealand started loosening coronavirus restrictions.Mike Scott/New Zealand Herald, via Associated Press“The prime minister has gone from untouchable — almost Olympian — levels back to being an ordinary politician again,” Mr. Thomas said.Ms. Ardern, 41, is one of many world leaders whose support has fallen amid the economic snarls caused by the war in Ukraine and pandemic-related supply chain problems. Mr. Biden’s approval ratings are in the low 40s, and President Emmanuel Macron of France lost his party’s parliamentary majority in an election marked by frustration with the cost of living.New Zealand’s inflation rate of 6.9 percent is lower than the 9.2 percent in the developed world as a whole, and Ms. Ardern has responded to criticism by pointing to the global pressures beyond her control.“The whole world is experiencing the worst economic shock since the Great Depression, with the war in Ukraine and Covid-19-related supply chain issues adding to it with the worst inflation spike in decades,” said Andrew Campbell, a spokesman for Ms. Ardern.Her government has announced, among other measures, a payment of 350 New Zealand dollars ($220) to middle- and low-income New Zealanders to help alleviate increases in the cost of living. Many, however, see the government’s responses as inadequate and are dissatisfied by overseas comparisons.“It’s not the government’s fault, but it is the government’s problem,” Mr. Thomas said.Homes in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city. The average price of a house in the country has passed 1 million New Zealand dollars, or $626,000.David Gray/ReutersMs. Ardern has also found herself grappling with rising gun violence, with at least 23 gang-related drive-by shootings reported in late May and early June as two once-allied gangs battled over territory.At times, police officers, who are typically unarmed in New Zealand, were forced to carry rifles in parts of Auckland, the country’s largest city. Last week, Ms. Ardern demoted her police minister, saying she had lost “focus.”Ms. Ardern’s current difficulties are the latest twist in an unexpectedly rapid political ascent.After her sudden elevation to the Labour leadership in 2017, her party rode a surge of “Jacindamania,” fueled by her fresh face and promises of major reform, to form a government with two smaller parties in an upset victory over the center-right National Party.Three years later, in the next national election, 50.01 percent of voters supported Labour. Until February of this year, polling showed the party still winning the support of up to 50 percent of voters.That month, the government began loosening coronavirus restrictions. With the pandemic fading as an issue, Labour is now averaging 35 percent support in polls, and the National Party stands at 40 percent. Including their allied parties, the two sides are evenly matched in polling.Political analysts are unsure whether Ms. Ardern can achieve breakthroughs on any of the longstanding issues to help improve her standing.Ms. Ardern taking a selfie during a visit to a school in Wellington this week. Her center-left Labour Party is now averaging 35 percent support in polls.Hagen Hopkins/EPA, via ShutterstockSuccessive governments have failed to rein in an overheated housing market. The problem has intensified under Ms. Ardern’s government, with average house prices rising 58 percent between 2017 and 2021. Last year, the average house price passed 1 million New Zealand dollars, or $626,000.The country has also battled persistent child poverty, which causes rates of rheumatic fever and lung ailments that are surprisingly high for a developed country. In 2017, Ms. Ardern declared reducing child poverty a core goal. Currently, 13.6 percent of New Zealand children live in poverty, a decrease from 16.5 percent in 2018 but more than the government’s target of 10.5 percent.And despite Ms. Ardern’s promise to treat climate change like her generation’s “nuclear-free moment,” emissions have increased by 2.2 percent since 2018.Mr. Campbell said the government had made progress on major issues despite Covid-19’s challenges. “We have got on with addressing the long-term challenges our country has faced, including overseeing the largest government housing program in decades, lifting tens of thousands of children out of poverty, and taking real climate action,” he said.But Mr. Godfery, the liberal writer, said Ms. Ardern had not gotten enough help from her team in translating her rhetoric into policy.Ms. Ardern “is a genuinely caring and compassionate person who has a deep commitment to issues of inequality, climate change and child poverty,” Mr. Godfery said. “But often that doesn’t translate to a concrete policy program.” More

Marine Le Pen’s National Rally now has a place of power in the political establishment and a chance to prove itself in the eyes of voters.PARIS — In 2017, after the far-right leader Marine Le Pen and her allies won only a handful of seats in parliamentary elections, she blamed France’s two-round voting system for shutting her party out of Parliament despite getting over one million ballots cast in its favor.“We are eight,” she said bitterly, referring to the seats won by her party in the National Assembly, the lower and more powerful house of Parliament. “In my opinion we are worth 80.”Fast-forward to last week’s parliamentary elections. The voting system hasn’t changed, but with 89 newly elected lawmakers — an all-time record for her party, currently known as the National Rally — Ms. Le Pen is now beaming.On Wednesday, she hugged her new colleagues, kissing cheeks left and right, before leading them into the National Assembly and posing for a group picture. “You’ll see that we are going to get a lot of work done, with great competence, with seriousness,” Ms. Le Pen told a scrum of television cameras and microphones. In contrast with “what you usually say about us,” she pointedly told the gathered reporters.For decades, dogged by its unsavory past and doubts over its ability to effectively govern, the French far right failed to make much headway in local and national elections even as it captured the anger of France’s disillusioned and dissatisfied. Most recently, President Emmanuel Macron defeated Ms. Le Pen in April’s presidential race.Supporters listening to a campaign speech by Ms. Le Pen in Stiring-Wendel, France, in April. For decades, the French far right failed to make much headway in local and national elections, even as it captured the anger of France’s disillusioned and dissatisfied.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesBut the National Rally surged spectacularly in the parliamentary election last weekend, capping Ms. Le Pen’s yearslong quest for respectability as she tries to sanitize her party’s image, project an air of competence and put a softer face on her resolutely nationalist and anti-immigrant platform.Fueled by anger against Mr. Macron and enabled by the collapse of the “republican front” that mainstream parties and voters traditionally erected against the far right, the results came as a shock even within the National Rally’s own ranks.“I would be lying if I told you that I wasn’t surprised,” said Philippe Olivier, Ms. Le Pen’s brother-in-law and special adviser, who described the 89 seats secured by the party in the 577-seat National Assembly as “a tidal wave.”The National Rally is now the second largest party in Parliament behind that of Mr. Macron, who lost his absolute majority and is now struggling to cobble together enough lawmakers to pass his bills, potentially forcing him to work with a reinvigorated opposition.In an interview with the news agency Agence France-Presse on Saturday, Mr. Macron said he had asked Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne to consult with parliamentary groups to form “a new government of action” that will be named early next month.He added that the new government could include representatives from across the political landscape, with the exception of the hard-left party France Unbowed and Ms. Le Pen’s party, which he said he did not consider to be “parties of government.”The National Rally does not have enough lawmakers to push through its own bills and will struggle to find allies in Parliament. But thanks to increased public funding based on its election results, the haul of seats is a financial boon for the heavily indebted party.Crucially, for the first time since the 1980s, it has enough seats to form a parliamentary group — the only way to get leverage in the lower house.The National Rally is now the second largest party in Parliament behind that of Mr. Macron, who lost his absolute majority and is now struggling to cobble together enough lawmakers to pass his bills.James Hill for The New York TimesNational Rally lawmakers can now bring a no-confidence vote, ask for a law to be reviewed by the Constitutional Council, create special investigative committees, fill top parliamentary jobs and use a new wealth of speaking time and amending power to push and prod the government and slow or block the legislative process.“During the previous term, there was a two-day debate on immigration,” Mr. Olivier recalled. “We had five minutes of speaking time!”Ms. Le Pen has said that her party will ask for positions that are traditionally allocated to opposition groups, including the vice presidency of the National Assembly and the leadership of the powerful finance committee, which oversees the state budget.Analysts say this established presence in Parliament could further anchor the far right in France’s political landscape, providing an invaluable launching pad for future elections.“I think Marine Le Pen understands that this is really the final test,” said Jean-Yves Camus, co-director of the Observatory of Radical Politics at the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, a progressive research institute.Many voters, even those who might agree with her proposals, still question her party’s capabilities, Mr. Camus noted. Now, he said, she will try to show that, like other far-right populist parties in Europe, her party can harness institutional machinery from the inside, instead of railing against it from the outside.Mr. Olivier said that his party would try to push through legislation on its favorite themes, including lowering value-added taxes on energy and essential goods, drastically reducing immigration and increasing police powers. But he said his party would also be “a constructive opposition,” not a “troublemaker.”“If Macron proposes a bill on nuclear power, we will vote for it,” he said. “If a bill goes in the right direction, we will study it.”Migrants waiting to be allocated emergency housing by a nonprofit group in Paris last year. The far right wants to lower sales taxes on energy and essential goods, drastically reduce immigration and increase police powers.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesMs. Le Pen has engaged in a long and deliberate strategy to “undemonize” her party and widen her electorate. Since her defeat by Mr. Macron in 2017, she has tried to foster her credibility and rebrand her party away from its extremist roots.Many of the new far-right lawmakers came to politics during this makeover era and learned the ropes as city councilors or parliamentary assistants who tried to project rigorousness and break with the excesses of some of the party’s longtime lieutenants, who were often associated with antisemitism and xenophobia.“A bit of new blood and some new faces won’t hurt,” Bryan Masson, who captured a seat in the Alpes-Maritimes area of southern France, told BFM TV last Monday. At 25, he is one of Parliament’s youngest members, after a decade of activism for the National Rally, first as a leader of its local youth branch and then as a regional councilor.Ms. Le Pen also has dropped ideas that alienated mainstream voters, such as a proposal to leave the eurozone, which helped her to get 41.5 percent of the vote in April’s presidential election, an eight-point increase from 2017.That was not enough to defeat Mr. Macron, who called for a “republican front,” a longtime strategy in which mainstream voters put political differences aside to support anyone but the far right in runoff votes.That front has weakened in recent years, however, and last week it appeared to collapse, amid the growing polarization in French politics around three strongly opposed blocs: Mr. Macron’s broad, pro-globalization center, the far right and the hard left of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party, France Unbowed.Last weekend, the National Rally won half of its runoff matches against candidates from an alliance of parties supporting Mr. Macron, compared with less than one in 10 in the previous legislative elections.Many in Mr. Macron’s party put the far right on near-equal footing with Mr. Mélenchon’s leftist coalition, saying both were extreme, prompting half of the president’s supporters to abstain in runoffs pitting the National Rally against the left, according to a recent poll.Newly elected lawmakers from the far-right National Rally party visiting the National Assembly on Wednesday, in Paris.Christophe Ena/Associated PressSimilarly, the left-wing alliance said that “not a single vote” should go to the far right, but it did not encourage voters to back Mr. Macron’s alliance, leading many supporters to stay home.Gilles Ivaldi, of the Center for Political Research at Sciences Po in Paris, said the far right had surfed on the wave of resentment against Mr. Macron’s pro-business policies and his perceived arrogance, as many voters wanted mainly to punish the president.“These legislative elections looked a lot like midterms,” he said, despite being held barely two months after Mr. Macron’s re-election victory.But the National Rally’s new presence in Parliament is a double-edged sword, analysts say.Ms. Le Pen has to manage a delicate balancing act that entails “being almost completely normalized while remaining transgressive,” Mr. Camus said, as the party fully joins a political system it had long castigated as inefficient and corrupt.“What brought voters to the National Rally was that they were an anti-establishment party,” he added.Now, they are at the establishment’s heart. More

The county clerk has been consumed by election conspiracy theories, lionized by a movement and indicted in a bizarre scheme. Will Republicans nominate her to run elections in Colorado?GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — Just six weeks before the 2020 presidential election — game day for vote-counting bureaucrats — Tina Peters was so proud of her operation at the Mesa County clerk’s office that she invited a film crew in to show it off. There’s no chance of mishap here, she boasted.“The Russians can’t hack into and start casting votes for someone,” she said, as a few in the office chuckled.By May 2021, it was Ms. Peters, not the Russians, who had helped engineer an audacious breach of voting machines, according to an indictment charging her with seven felonies. Ms. Peters arranged to copy sensitive election software from county voting machines in an attempt to prove the 2020 presidential election was rigged, according to court records. Prosecutors said she committed identity theft and criminal impersonation, and violated the duties of her office in the process. Ms. Peters has pleaded not guilty.The strange tale of Tina Peters — a once-ordinary public servant consumed by conspiracy theories and catapulted to minor stardom by believers — will take its next twist on Tuesday, when voters decide whether to make the indicted public official the Republican nominee for secretary of state, the top election official in Colorado. Polls are sparse in the primary race, but Ms. Peters is considered a contender.Ms. Peters did not just stumble into the world of election conspiracy theories. A review of public statements and interviews with people involved in her case showed she was repeatedly assisted by a loose network of election deniers, some of whom worked alongside Donald J. Trump’s legal team to try to subvert the presidential election in 2020. They are still working to undermine confidence in elections today.That network’s involvement is just one of several bizarre plot points in Ms. Peters’s case. The Mesa County breach involved a former surfer who was dressed as a computer “nerd” and made a FaceTime call during the operation, reporting by The New York Times shows. Afterward, the crew shared their loot — images of voting machine data — at a conference streamed online, advertising the effort to thousands. On Friday, Ms. Peters told The Times that her congresswoman, Representative Lauren Boebert, “encouraged me to go forward with the imaging.”A press officer for Ms. Boebert, a Republican, called the claim false.Through it all, Ms. Peters has parlayed the episode into a national political profile on the right, speaking at events across the country where she is celebrated as a hero. Influential election deniers have come to her aid: Mike Lindell, the MyPillow executive who supports a stable of lawyers and researchers promoting bogus theories, says he has funneled as much as $200,000 to Ms. Peters’s legal defense. Others, including Patrick Byrne, a former Overstock executive, have run ads attacking her primary opponent.Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow, praying with other attendees of an election-related event in Grand Junction, Colo., on Friday.Daniel Brenner for The New York TimesIn a statement to The Times, Ms. Peters declined to answer specific questions about the episode, citing pending litigation. In September, before Ms. Peters was indicted, her lawyer acknowledged that she had allowed “one non-employee” to copy hard drives, but argued that there was no rule or regulation against it, something the secretary of state’s office disputes.In public appearances since, Ms. Peters has said she made the copies because she worried the voting machine company was going to delete computer systems that recorded the 2020 election and wanted to preserve records. She has been less forthcoming about how the material ended up online.“The people want to know HOW our elections have been turned over to machines with no oversight, transparency or real security in any meaningful way,” Ms. Peters said in the statement.Materials released in the Mesa County breach have been used to fuel the churn of misinformation about President Biden’s victory. Election experts say the episode also highlights a growing vulnerability in election security: the insider threat.Since the Mesa County breach was made public, there have been more than a half-dozen reports of local election officials taking similar actions. Election conspiracy theory promoters claim there are more out there.Experts say the danger is that the very people trusted to carry out elections could release confidential information and undermine security measures.It’s a “new and, frankly, more discouraging” threat, said Christopher Krebs, who ran the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Department of Homeland Security from 2018 to 2020. “Institutionally, we’ve lost a bit of a North Star in terms of how elections are conducted.”Ballots in the WindTina Peters’s 2018 election to clerk and recorder of Mesa County, a Republican stronghold amid the canyons of western Colorado, was her first foray into public office. A former flight attendant who ran a construction company with her ex-husband, Ms. Peters made her top campaign issue the reopening of local Division of Motor Vehicles satellite offices, a promise she fulfilled quickly.But she had more trouble with election administration. Three months after the 2019 election, more than 500 ballots were found uncounted in a drop box outside the county election office. In the 2020 presidential primary, completed ballots were found blowing in the wind near the clerk’s office, according to The Daily Sentinel, the newspaper in Grand Junction. By July 2020, residents had begun a recall effort to remove her from office, but they failed to obtain enough signatures.Ms. Peters reading results from the 2020 presidential primary in March of that year.McKenzie Lange/The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, via Associated PressThe general election in Mesa County in 2020 went off smoothly, with no complaints of fraud or other delays. Yet the conspiracy theories spouted by Mr. Trump quickly took hold in this deeply red county, and county commissioners were soon inundated with calls from constituents questioning the results.Ms. Peters eventually rejected requests to hand-count the ballots in her own county, where Mr. Trump won 62 percent of the vote, but she began to express doubts about the national results. She connected with a local group, organized by Ms. Boebert’s former campaign manager, that met regularly to swap theories. In April 2021, the group hosted Douglas Frank, a high school math and science teacher in Ohio whose debunked theories have been influential with election conspiracists.After seeing Mr. Frank’s presentation, Ms. Peters invited him to attend an upcoming “trusted build” of the county election equipment, according to court records. The process is essentially a software update — performed in a secure location by officials from the secretary of state’s office and employees of Dominion Voting Systems, the voting machine manufacturer — that election skeptics have come to believe erases critical election data. It does not.Mr. Frank did not accept the offer, but another member of the election denier network did attend, according to court records and interviews. Conan Hayes was a former pro surfer who had worked with Mr. Trump’s legal team as it challenged the 2020 results. In 2021, Mr. Byrne paid him around $200,000 to continue his work for a year, according to Mr. Byrne.According to an account from Mr. Byrne, and confirmed by Mr. Hayes, he attended the trusted build on May 25, 2021. Mr. Hayes called Mr. Byrne from inside the Mesa County election offices, speaking in a hushed voice and explaining that he’d been invited to make backup copies of machines by a government official who thought that a cover-up was underway, Mr. Byrne said. When the two spoke over FaceTime, Mr. Byrne saw Mr. Hayes was dressed like a computer “nerd” and wearing someone else’s identification tag, Mr. Byrne said.Ms. Peters had introduced a contractor at the event and identified him as Gerald Wood, a local I.T. consultant, according to court records. The real Mr. Wood, however, told investigators he was not there that day, or two days earlier, when his badge was used to enter a secure area.Conan Hayes competing at Teahupoo, Tahiti, in 2003.Aaron Chang/Getty ImagesMr. Hayes has not been charged and is not named in the indictment, though a judge’s order did identify him as later receiving a package in the mail from Ms. Peters.In a brief phone interview, Mr. Hayes said Mr. Byrne’s account was accurate. “Patrick is pretty clear on things,” he said.‘I’ve Seen Things I Can’t Unsee’Ms. Peters didn’t speak in detail about the incident, though she alluded to acting on her worries about the election in a meeting with a county commissioner over the summer.“She talked about these white-hat guys, and she talked about having brought someone in to look at the computers, and that she now believed there was some compromise to the machines,” recalled Janet Rowland, a Republican and county commissioner in Mesa County. “And that was when she used the phrase, I think even twice at that one meeting, ‘I’ve seen things I can’t unsee.’”After Ms. Peters became a subject of investigation, supporters gathered at the Mesa County courthouse in Grand Junction, Colo., in late 2021.McKenzie Lange/The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, via Associated PressIn early August, passwords to the Mesa County election equipment appeared on a QAnon figure’s Telegram channel and then a right-wing website, leading to an investigation by the secretary of state.Days later, Mesa County’s breach found an even bigger spotlight at a “Cyber Symposium” in South Dakota organized by Mr. Lindell. After one of Mr. Lindell’s other wild claims, which Mr. Hayes had also worked on, fizzled, he changed the conversation: Ms. Peters appeared onstage to tell her story and the Mesa County conspiracy was born.The Next Conspiracy TheoryAs part of Ms. Peters’s legal defense, information copied in Mesa County was soon packaged into a series of three reports purporting to show corruption in the election system. They were pumped through the online forums and promoted at in-person meetings. Mesa County soon overtook other discredited theories, such as the fictions about improprieties in Antrim County, Mich., that Mr. Trump eagerly promoted.In fact, some of the same figures were involved in crafting both conspiracy theories. Mr. Hayes had helped to obtain the Antrim County information. And a cybersecurity firm, Allied Security Operations Group, that wrote the debunked Antrim analysis also produced the Mesa County reports for Ms. Peters’s legal team, according to the firm’s leader. There is no evidence the group was involved in the Mesa County breach.Mr. Byrne calls the reports “the Rosetta Stone for us to prove the whole thing.” But experts say they reveal no problems at all. Two of the three reports don’t even suggest issues with election results and, instead, draw false conclusions about the vulnerability of elections machines by misinterpreting certain laws and procedures, said Matt Crane, executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, who has studied the reports closely.A third report claims to show anomalies in two Mesa County elections. But the issues were caused by human error and there was no evidence that any vote counts were improper, according to the Mesa County District Attorney’s office, which did an extensive investigation.The CampaignIn February, Ms. Peters decided to try to turn her celebrity into political power, announcing a bid for secretary of state.She made appearances on Stephen K. Bannon’s podcast and linked up with a group of far-right candidates for secretary of state across the country. She secured a speaking slot at a rally held by Mr. Trump in Wyoming.In March, Ms. Peters was indicted on 10 criminal counts related to the effort to copy voting equipment software, including attempting to influence a public servant, criminal impersonation, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, identity theft and first-degree official misconduct.Ms. Peters at an event in Grand Junction on Friday night called “Election vs. Selection: Answers and Actions.”Daniel Brenner for The New York Times​​On the campaign trail, Ms. Peters says the charges are politically motivated. She has claimed the investigation is part of a “globalist takeover” and casts herself as a martyr for a cause.“I went to jail for you and I will continue to do it,” she told a group of election activists in Texas in April.Ms. Peters has declined to say who is paying her lawyers, but has directed people wanting to support her legal efforts to donate to the Lindell Legal Offense Fund, which Mr. Lindell says he uses for various lawsuits and projects.​​In the closing days of the campaign, Ms. Peters has received other assistance. A new super PAC in Colorado called Citizens for Election Integrity has spent roughly $100,000 on advertisements attacking Pam Anderson, one of Ms. Peters’s opponents for the Republican nomination, according to campaign finance disclosures.The group recently received a $100,000 donation from The America Project, a group founded by Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, another figure in the fight to overturn the 2020 election, and Mr. Byrne.Ryan Biller contributed reporting from Grand Junction, Colo. More

Rulings on abortion and guns shape the final weekend of campaigning before Tuesday’s primary.A pair of seismic rulings by the Supreme Court jolted the race for governor of New York on Sunday, as Democrats and Republicans made final pitches to an electorate that found itself at the center of renewed national debates over guns and abortion rights.All three Democratic candidates for governor fanned out Sunday morning to Black churches in Harlem and Queens, Manhattan’s Pride March and street corners across the city to denounce the rulings and promise an aggressive response.“We’re going to pass a law that’s going to say, you can’t bring a weapon into this church on a Sunday,” Gov. Kathy Hochul, the Democratic front-runner, assured congregants at Greater Allen African Methodist Episcopal Cathedral of New York in Jamaica, Queens.“I don’t want those guns on subways, either,” she added. “I don’t want them in playgrounds. I don’t want them near schools.”The Republican candidates, who mostly lauded both rulings, generally stuck to other messages with broad appeal to a state where both abortion rights and gun control are popular — attacking Ms. Hochul for New York’s rising inflation and elevated crime rates.But in at least one episode, the abortion issue was hard to avoid. Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, said that he was slapped in the back by a grocery store employee referencing abortion on Sunday afternoon while he was campaigning for his son, Andrew, on Staten Island.“The one thing he said that was political was ‘you’re going to kill women, you’re going to kill women,’” said Mr. Giuliani, who said he understood the remark to be a reference to the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade on Friday.The police, who did not confirm the abortion remark, said a suspect was in custody but had not been charged. The younger Mr. Giuliani was not on hand.Equal parts exuberance and frustration, the final pitches roughly hewed the battle lines that were drawn months ago in races that have been punctuated by violent tragedies — like the racist attack at a Buffalo supermarket in May — and buffeted by quality-of-life concerns.Wendy Dominski of Youngstown, N.Y., left, exchanged a blown kiss with Andrew Giuliani as he arrived at Lebanon Valley Speedway in New Lebanon, N.Y.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesOnly this time, the fights played out in the shadow of the Supreme Court decisions issued in recent days on abortion rights and New York’s ability to regulate firearms. The rulings have injected a fresh dynamic into the races and appear to have given Democrats a new sense of urgency.Ms. Hochul, the state’s first female governor, put both rulings at the center of her weekend hopscotch across the city, highlighting her decisions to spend $35 million to aid abortion access and call lawmakers back to Albany next week for a special legislative session to address the justices’ decision to overturn a 100-year-old New York law limiting the ability to carry concealed weapons.Hours after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday, the governor raced to a protest in Manhattan’s Union Square, promising thousands of New Yorkers that New York would be a “safe harbor” for abortion under her leadership.In a show of her standing with the state’s Democratic establishment, Ms. Hochul and her running mate, Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, also trotted out powerful Democratic surrogates. Mayor Eric Adams campaigned with them in Brooklyn on Saturday, and Representative Gregory W. Meeks, the chairman of the Queens Democratic Party who has prodded her to put together a more diverse campaign, accompanied her to church on Sunday.“I’m not telling you who to vote for,” Ms. Hochul teased in Jamaica. “You’re not supposed to do that in church.”Some voters said they were already impressed.“Thus far, I’ve been happy with what she’s done,” said Shirley Gist, a 74-year-old retired speech pathologist who voted early for Ms. Hochul on Saturday. “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.”Governor Hochul campaigned at the Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral of New York in Queens on Sunday.Brittainy Newman for The New York TimesJumaane D. Williams, New York City’s left-leaning public advocate, and Representative Thomas R. Suozzi, who is running to Ms. Hochul’s right, did their best at a Sunday appearance at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem to convince the uncommitted of just the opposite.“I’m a common-sense Democrat. I’m tired of far left, and I’m tired of crazy right,” Mr. Suozzi said in remarks where he tied himself to Mr. Adams’s crime-fighting plans and pledged to cut taxes and improve public education. He knocked Ms. Hochul for accepting support from the National Rifle Association in past campaigns — an affiliation she has since disavowed.Mr. Williams did not explicitly address the Supreme Court decisions but laid blame nonetheless at the feet of Democratic power structure.“I have to be clear, Democratic leadership has failed this time,” he said. “They failed to act.”Still, it was far from clear that the attacks would be enough to turn the tide against Ms. Hochul, who is spending millions of dollars more in advertising than either primary opponent and holds a large lead in public polls. In fact, some Democrats predicted that backlash to the Supreme Court rulings would only help Ms. Hochul, a moderate from Buffalo who only took office last summer.“What can the two Democratic challengers do?” said former Gov. David A. Paterson. “They can’t be against it, so they have to kind of sit and watch.”He predicted a comfortable win for Ms. Hochul: “When people are embattled, they tend to vote more pragmatically,” he said.Democrats will also decide on a candidate for lieutenant governor on Tuesday. Mr. Delgado has ample institutional support, but he faces a pair of spirited challenges from Ana María Archila, a progressive activist aligned with Mr. Williams, and Diana Reyna, a more moderate Democrat running with Mr. Suozzi.Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate, said Democratic leadership has failed.Craig Ruttle/Associated PressThe winner will face Alison Esposito, a Republican and longtime New York City police officer.The Republican race for governor has been considerably more lively — full of name-calling, increasing disdain and sharper policy differences between the candidates. But with scant public polling available and most of the candidates still struggling to establish name recognition with primary voters, even the state’s most-connected Republicans were scratching their heads.“I have no idea how this turns out,” said John J. Faso, a former Republican congressman and the party’s 2006 nominee for governor.With Mr. Giuliani and Harry Wilson nipping at his heels, Representative Lee Zeldin, the presumptive front-runner backed by the State Republican Party, spent the weekend touring upstate New York in a campaign bus trying to shore up support in regions that typically sway his party’s primary.“Everybody’s hitting their breaking point right now,” Mr. Zeldin told a small crowd of about three dozen who gathered in an industrial park outside of Albany. He promised to rehire people who had been fired for refusing to be vaccinated, and to fire the Manhattan district attorney, who has become a punching bag for Republicans.Another candidate, Rob Astorino, spent Sunday shaking hands with potential voters on the boardwalk in Long Beach on Long Island.Mr. Wilson, a moderate who favors abortion rights and has positioned himself as a centrist outsider, has done relatively little in person campaigning. But he has blanketed the airwaves with more than $10 million worth of advertisements filleting Mr. Zeldin as a flip-flopping political insider.Near Albany, an entirely different message was being delivered by Andrew Giuliani, who spent Saturday night spinning laps around the Lebanon Valley Speedway in a Ram pickup emblazoned with his face. He gleefully tied himself to his former boss, Donald J. Trump: “You like that guy, right?”Though Mr. Giuliani, 36, is an outspoken critic of abortion and proponent of firearms, he spent much of his three hours at the speedway Saturday night reminding voters of his MAGA credentials.The cheers that rose from the crowd suggested he was among friends.Wearing an American flag wrap over a tank top, Wendy Dominski, 52, a retired nurse who drove five hours from Youngstown, N.Y., to volunteer for the event, said the other Republicans in the race are either RINOs — Republicans in Name Only — or “flat-out flip-flop liars.”She had little doubt who the former president supports, even if he hasn’t said so. “Giuliani stands for everything that Trump stands for, and that we stand for,” she said.Reporting was contributed by More

The directives, given during a video conference, included obeying police lines and keeping away from ordinary protesters. But members of the far-right group played aggressive roles in several breaches at the Capitol.One week before scores of Proud Boys helped lead a pro-Trump mob in a violent assault on the Capitol last year, Enrique Tarrio, the chairman of the group, and some of his top lieutenants held a foul-mouthed video conference with a handpicked crew of members.The meeting, on Dec. 30, 2020, marked the founding of a special new chapter of the Proud Boys called the Ministry of Self-Defense. The team of several dozen trusted members was intended, Mr. Tarrio told his men, to bring a level of order and professionalism to the group’s upcoming march in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, that had, by his own account, been missing at earlier Proud Boys rallies in the city.Over nearly two hours, Mr. Tarrio and his leadership team — many of whom have since been charged with seditious conspiracy — gave the new recruits a series of directives: Adopt a defensive posture on Jan. 6, they were told. Keep the “normies” — or the normal protesters — away from the Proud Boys’ marching ranks. And obey police lines.“We’re never going to be the ones to cross the police barrier or cross something in order to get to somebody,” Mr. Tarrio said.There was one overriding problem with the orders: None of them were actually followed when the Proud Boys stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.Far from holding back, members of the far-right group played aggressive roles in several breaches at the Capitol, moving in coordination and often taking the lead in removing police barricades, according to a visual investigation by The New York Times of hundreds of hours of video footage of the assault.And despite what Mr. Tarrio said about keeping away from ordinary protesters, members of the group repeatedly instigated people around them in a tactic that some Proud Boys later described in private messages as “riling up the normies.”While the video conference has been mentioned in court papers, it has not been widely seen. A recording of it was seized from Mr. Tarrio’s phone by the F.B.I. this year, and a copy was recently obtained by The Times.Lawyers for the Proud Boys say the recorded meeting is a key piece of exculpatory evidence, contradicting claims by the government that a conspiracy to attack the Capitol was hatched several weeks before Jan. 6.In court filings, prosecutors have claimed that the Proud Boys began to plan their assault as early as Dec. 19, 2020 — the day that President Donald J. Trump posted a tweet announcing his Jan. 6 rally and saying it would be “wild.” But the video conference shows that, just one week before the event, when Mr. Tarrio and other Proud Boys leaders gathered their team for a meeting, they spent most of their time discussing things like staying away from alcohol and women and taking measures to ensure their own security.The recorded meeting makes no mention of any planning that might have occurred in the week directly before the Capitol attack. And while Mr. Tarrio suggests during the meeting that the complex structure he created for the Ministry of Self-Defense was meant to be self-protective — not offensive — in nature, prosecutors have claimed that the group’s “command and control” design was instrumental in facilitating the Capitol attack.In the meeting, Mr. Tarrio laid out how the group — whose members were chosen because of their “throttle control,” as another Proud Boys leader put it — had a three-person leadership team that sat above a larger group of eight or so regional leaders. There was a “marketing” division too, Mr. Tarrio explained, that would craft and promote the Proud Boys’ “narrative” to the media. The group’s rank and file, he said, would work in 10-man teams on Jan. 6 with medics and communications experts.Throughout the meeting, Mr. Tarrio and others used blatantly misogynistic, homophobic and antisemitic language, disparaging the Proud Boys’ female supporters and making references to the “J.Q.” — or the Jewish Question, a phrase that harks back to Nazi ideology. Mr. Tarrio also threatened participants in the video conference with expulsion from the Ministry of Self-Defense if they drank too much at the Jan. 6 event, noting that too many Proud Boys were sloppily intoxicated at earlier pro-Trump rallies.As for the Capitol itself, it came up only occasionally.At one point, as the floor was opened for questions, various Proud Boys asked Mr. Tarrio about the group’s goals for Jan. 6, including how much they would focus on Vice President Mike Pence’s certification of the election results that day. Mr. Tarrio deflected the inquiries, saying that the details of the Proud Boys’ mission would be discussed in future meetings.Nayib Hassan, Mr. Tarrio’s lawyer, declined to comment on the video. Lawyers for Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl, two other Proud Boys leaders who were on the call and are facing sedition charges, also declined to comment.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 6Making a case against Trump. More

Capitol attack hearings: if Republicans did nothing wrong, why were pardons sought?The email from Alabama’s Mo Brooks potentially reveals what conduct by lawmakers he feared might be criminal One of the most striking all-purpose, preemptive pardon requests that the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack has revealed came from Alabama’s Mo Brooks.In an email obtained by the Guardian, Brooks sought preemptive pardons for lawmakers involved in objecting to the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.The 11 January 2021 email requested pardons for “Every Republican who signed the Amicus brief in the Texas lawsuit” that sued then-vice-president Mike Pence to unilaterally decide whether to certify Biden’s win in certain battleground states.Brooks, who sent the email to former Oval Office Operations coordinator Molly Michael, also recommended that Donald Trump issue preemptive pardons for “Every Congressman and Senator who voted to reject the electoral college vote submissions of Arizona and Pennsylvania”.Brooks was one of at least a half dozen members of Congress who sought pardons from Trump in the immediate aftermath of the January 6 attack. The former president “had hinted at a blanket pardon for the Jan. 6 thing for anybody,” the head of White House presidential personnel, John McEntee testified, which appears to have elicited pardon requests from some of Trump’s top allies on Capitol Hill.But the request from Brooks stands out because he explicitly outlines two groups for whom he was seeking preemptive pardons, opening a window into his thinking and potentially revealing for what conduct he worried that they might have been guilty of a crime.The reference to the Texas lawsuit is revealing since that suit pushed Pence to commandeer the ceremonial congressional certification to overturn the results of the 2020 election – which the select committee has argued amounted to a violation of federal law.Meanwhile, the reference to Arizona and Pennsylvania is notable since the objections to those states occurred after the Capitol attack, which, seen with Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani asking senators to keep objecting to stop Biden’s certification, could suggest further corrupt intent.Brooks has rejected the notion that the pardon requests showed any consciousness of guilt, saying in a statement that he feared Democrats would prosecute and jail “Republicans who acted pursuant to their Constitutional or statutory duties under 3 USC 15”.The statement referred to the statute governing the congressional certification of the presidential election, at which members of Congress are permitted to raise objections to the results in any of the states.But the trouble with Brooks’ statement remains that if he truly believed that Republicans were engaging in only lawful activity on January 6, then he could defend that conduct in court – without the need for a pardon.The select committee at the hearing also showed testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, a top former aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who said House Republicans Louie Gohmert, Scott Perry, Andy Biggs and Matt Gaetz also expressed interest in pardons.Hutchinson recalled that House Republican Jim Jordan did not directly ask for a pardon but did ask whether Trump was going to give them to members of Congress, and that House Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene expressed interest to the White House counsel’s office.The testimony by Hutchinson and McEntee and other top White House aides showed that at the very least, Republican members of Congress were concerned about potential legal exposure over their roles in Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.And the accounts, delivered under oath to the select committee, showed the extraordinary and brazen inquiries by some of Trump’s top allies on Capitol Hill to use the power of presidential pardons for their own political and personal ends.Gohmert had brought the Texas lawsuit while Perry had played a role in Trump’s efforts to pressure the justice department to reverse his election defeat in battleground states. Biggs and Gaetz had strategized with Trump about objecting to Biden’s certification.The Republican members of Congress accused of seeking preemptive pardons near-universally rejected the allegations.Gohmert denied making a request for a pardon. Perry said in a statement that he “never sought a presidential pardon for myself or other members of Congress”. Biggs said Hutchinson was “mistaken” and Greene accurately called Hutchinson’s testimony hearsay.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS politicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

Marine Le Pen’s National Rally now has a place of power in the political establishment and a chance to prove itself in the eyes of voters.PARIS — In 2017, after the far-right leader Marine Le Pen and her allies won only a handful of seats in parliamentary elections, she blamed France’s two-round voting system for shutting her party out of Parliament despite getting over 1 million ballots cast in its favor.“We are 8,” she said bitterly, referring to the seats won by her party in the National Assembly, the lower and more powerful house of Parliament. “In my opinion we are worth 80.”Fast-forward to last week’s parliamentary elections. The voting system hasn’t changed, but with 89 newly elected lawmakers — an all-time record for her party, currently known as the National Rally — Ms. Le Pen is now beaming.On Wednesday, she hugged her new colleagues, kissing cheeks left and right, before leading them into the National Assembly and posing for a group picture. “You’ll see that we are going to get a lot of work done, with great competence, with seriousness,” Ms. Le Pen told a scrum of television cameras and microphones. In contrast with “what you usually say about us,” she pointedly told the gathered reporters.For decades, dogged by its unsavory past and doubts over its ability to effectively govern, the French far right failed to make much headway in local and national elections even as it captured the anger of France’s disillusioned and dissatisfied. Most recently, President Emmanuel Macron defeated Ms. Le Pen in April’s presidential race.Supporters listening to a campaign speech by Ms. Le Pen in Stiring-Wendel, France, in April. For decades, the French far right failed to make much headway in local and national elections, even as it captured the anger of France’s disillusioned and dissatisfied.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesBut the National Rally surged spectacularly in the parliamentary election last weekend, capping Ms. Le Pen’s yearslong quest for respectability as she tries to sanitize her party’s image, project an air of competence, and put a softer face on her resolutely nationalist and anti-immigrant platform.Fueled by anger against Mr. Macron and enabled by the collapse of the “republican front” that mainstream parties and voters traditionally erected against the far right, Sunday’s results came as a shock even within the National Rally’s own ranks.“I would be lying if I told you that I wasn’t surprised,” said Philippe Olivier, Ms. Le Pen’s brother-in-law and special adviser, who described the 89 seats secured by the party in the 577-seat National Assembly as “a tidal wave.”The National Rally is now the second largest party in Parliament behind that of Mr. Macron, who lost his absolute majority and is now struggling to cobble together enough lawmakers to pass his bills, potentially forcing him to work with a reinvigorated opposition.In an interview with the news agency Agence France-Presse on Saturday, Mr. Macron said he had asked prime minister Élisabeth Borne to conduct consultations with parliamentary groups to form “a new government of action” that will be named in early July.He added that the new government could include representatives from across the political landscape, with the exception of the hard-left France Unbowed party and Ms. Le Pen’s party, which he said he did not consider to be “parties of government.”The National Rally does not have enough lawmakers to push through its own bills and will struggle to find allies in Parliament. But thanks to increased public funding based on its election results, the haul of seats is a financial boon for the heavily indebted party.Crucially, for the first time since the 1980s, it has enough seats to form a parliamentary group — the only way to get leverage in the lower house.The National Rally is now the second largest party in Parliament behind that of Mr. Macron, who lost his absolute majority and is now struggling to cobble together enough lawmakers to pass his bills.James Hill for The New York TimesNational Rally lawmakers can now bring a no-confidence vote, ask for a law to be reviewed by the Constitutional Council, create special investigative committees, fill top parliamentary jobs, and use a new wealth of speaking time and amending power to push and prod the government and slow or block the legislative process.“During the previous term, there was a two-day debate on immigration,” Mr. Olivier recalled. “We had five minutes of speaking time!”Ms. Le Pen has said that her party would ask for positions that are traditionally allocated to opposition groups, including the vice presidency of the National Assembly and the chair of the powerful finance committee, which oversees the state budget.Analysts say this established presence in Parliament could further anchor the far-right in France’s political landscape, providing an invaluable launching pad for future elections.“I think Marine Le Pen understands that this is really the final test,” said Jean-Yves Camus, co-director of the Observatory of Radical Politics at the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, a progressive research institute.Many voters, even those who might agree with her proposals, still question her party’s capabilities, Mr. Camus noted. Now, he said, she will try to show that like other far-right populist parties in Europe, her party can harness institutional machinery from the inside, instead of railing against it from the outside.Mr. Olivier said that his party would try to push through legislation on its favorite themes, including lowering value-added taxes on energy and essential goods, drastically reducing immigration, and increasing police powers. But he said his party would also be “a constructive opposition,” not a “troublemaker.”“If Macron proposes a bill on nuclear power, we will vote for it,” he said. “If a bill goes in the right direction, we will study it.”Migrants waiting to be allocated emergency accommodation by a nonprofit organization in Paris last year. The far right wants to lower sales taxes on energy and essential goods, drastically reduce immigration, and increase police powers.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesMs. Le Pen has engaged in a long and deliberate strategy to “undemonize” her party and widen her electorate. Since her defeat by Mr. Macron in 2017, she has tried to foster her credibility and rebrand her party away from its extremist roots.Many of the new far-right lawmakers came to politics during this makeover era and learned the ropes as city councilors or parliamentary assistants who tried to project rigorousness and break with the excesses of some of the party’s longtime lieutenants, who were often associated with antisemitism and xenophobia.“A bit of new blood and some new faces won’t hurt,” Bryan Masson, who captured a seat in the Alpes-Maritimes area of southern France, told BFM TV on Monday. At 25, he is one of Parliament’s youngest members, after a decade of activism for the National Rally, first as a leader of its local youth branch and then as a regional councilor.Ms. Le Pen also has dropped ideas that alienated mainstream voters, such as a proposal to leave the eurozone, which helped her to get 41.5 percent of the vote in April’s presidential election, an eight-point increase from 2017.That was not enough to defeat Mr. Macron, who called for a “republican front,” a longtime strategy in which mainstream voters put political differences aside to support anyone but the far right in runoff votes.That front has weakened in recent years, however, and last week it appeared to collapse, amid the growing polarization in French politics around three strongly opposed blocs — Mr. Macron’s broad, pro-globalization center, the far right, and the hard left of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed party.Last weekend, the National Rally won half of its runoff matches against candidates from an alliance of parties supporting Mr. Macron, compared to less than one in 10 in the previous legislative elections.Many in Mr. Macron’s party put the far right on near equal footing with Mr. Mélenchon’s leftist coalition, saying both were extreme, prompting half of the president’s supporters to abstain in runoffs pitting the National Rally against the left, according to a recent poll.Newly elected lawmakers from the far-right National Rally party visiting the National Assembly on Wednesday, in Paris.Christophe Ena/Associated PressSimilarly, the left-wing alliance said that “not a single vote” should go to the far right, but it did not encourage voters to back Mr. Macron’s alliance, leading many supporters to stay home.Gilles Ivaldi, of the Center for Political Research at Sciences Po in Paris, said the far right had surfed on the wave of resentment against Mr. Macron’s pro-business policies and his perceived arrogance, as many voters wanted mainly to punish the president.“These legislative elections looked a lot like midterms,” he said, despite being held barely two months after Mr. Macron’s re-election victory.But the National Rally’s new presence in Parliament is a double-edged sword, analysts say.Ms. Le Pen has to manage a delicate balancing act that entails “being almost completely normalized while remaining transgressive,” Mr. Camus said, as the party fully joins a political system it had long castigated as inefficient and corrupt.“What brought voters to the National Rally was that they were an anti-establishment party,” he added.Now, they are at the establishment’s heart. More