Elections

Shane Goldmacher
8:07 PM ET More

Whether he is out of power or in office, Donald Trump deploys conspiracy theory as a political mobilizing tool designed to capture anger at the liberal establishment, to legitimize racial resentment and to unite voters who feel oppressed by what they see as a dominant socially progressive culture.The success of this strategy is demonstrated by the astonishing number of Republicans — a decisive majority, according to a recent Economist/YouGov survey — who say that they believe that the Democratic Party and its elected officials conspired to steal the 2020 election. This is a certifiable conspiracy theory, defined as a belief in “a secret arrangement by a group of powerful people to usurp political or economic power, violate established rights, hoard vital secrets, or unlawfully alter government institutions.”Not only do something like 71 percent of Republicans — roughly 52 million voters, according to a University of Massachusetts Amherst poll released on Jan. 6, 2022 — claim to believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 election despite indisputable evidence to the contrary, but the Republican Party has committed itself unequivocally and relentlessly to promoting this false claim.The delusion is evident in the Republican candidates who won primaries for governor, U.S. Senate, U.S. House and other statewide posts in elections conducted in 18 states during the first five months of this year.“District by district voters in places that cast ballots through the end of May have chosen at least 108 candidates for statewide office or for Congress — Republican candidates who have repeated Trump’s lies,” Amy Gardner and Isaac Arnsdorf reported last week in The Washington Post.Consider Texas. On the campaign trail this year, the Republican nominees for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general and 24 of the state’s congressional districts endorsed Trump’s claim that “the 2020 Election was Rigged and Stolen.”On June 18, the 5,000 delegates to the Texas Republican Party convention adopted a platform declaring, “We reject the certified results of the 2020 presidential election, and we hold that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States.”The stolen election conspiracy theory has, in effect, become the adhesive holding the dominant Trump wing of the party in lock-step. This particular conspiracy theory joins the network of sub-theories that unite Trump loyalists, who allege that an alliance of Democratic elites and urban political machines have secretly joined forces to deny the will of the people, corralling the votes of illegal immigrants and the dead, while votes cast by Trump supporters are tossed into the trash.In a 2017 essay, “How conspiracy theories helped power Trump’s disruptive politics,” Joseph Uscinski, of the University of Miami, Matthew D. Atkinson of Miami University and Darin DeWitt of California State University, Long Beach, recognized the central role of conspiracy theories in Trump’s rise to the presidency.In the 2016 primaries, “Trump, as a disruptive candidate, could not compete on the party establishment’s playing field,” they write. “Trump’s solution is what we call ‘conspiracy theory politics.’”Trump’s conspiratorial rhetoric, they continue,boiled down to a single unifying claim: Political elites have abandoned the interests of regular Americans in favor of foreign interests. For Trump, the political system was corrupt and the establishment could not be trusted. It followed, then, that only a disrupter could stop the corruption.A recent paper, “Authoritarian Leaders Share Conspiracy Theories to Attack Opponents, Galvanize Followers, Shift Blame, and Undermine Democratic Institutions” by Zhiying (Bella) Ren, Andrew Carton, Eugen Dimant and Maurice Schweitzer of the University of Pennsylvania, describes the methods political leaders use to gain power by capitalizing on conspiracy theories: “Leaders share conspiracy theories in service of four primary, self-serving goals: to attack opponents, galvanize followers, shift blame and responsibility, and undermine institutions that threaten their power.”Such leaders, the four authors write,often spread conspiracy theories to direct the attention, emotion, and energy of followers toward a common enemy who threatens their interests, thereby galvanizing followers. Toward this end, many conspiracy theories depict a nefarious perpetrator engaging in covert activities to harm the welfare of followers.They continue:Systems such as open elections and the free press can safeguard democracy by illuminating corrupt behavior and ensuring the peaceful transition of power. Leaders may use conspiracy theories to undermine the credibility, legitimacy, and authority of these institutions, however, if they threaten their power.Politicians who adopt conspiratorial strategies, Ren and colleagues write,find this to be an especially effective tactic if their own claim to power is illegitimate or controversial. Moreover, since the exposure to conspiracy theories reduces followers’ confidence in democratic institutions, leaders may even mobilize followers to engage in violent actions that further undermine these institutions (e.g., disputing an election defeat by initiating riots or mobilizing military forces).In a September 2021 paper, “Social Motives for Sharing Conspiracy Theories,” Ren, Dimant and Schweitzer argue that in promulgating conspiracy theories on social media, many people “knowingly share misinformation to advance social motives.”When deliberately disseminating misinformation, the authors write,people make calculated trade-offs between sharing accurate information and sharing information that generates more social engagement. Even though people know that factual news is more accurate than conspiracy theories, they expect sharing conspiracy theories to generate more social feedback (i.e. comments and “likes”) than sharing factual news.Ren, Dimant and Schweitzer add that “more positive social feedback for sharing conspiracy theories significantly increases people’s tendency to share these conspiracy theories that they do not believe in.”Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at N.Y.U.’s Stern School of Business, noted that spreading a lie can serve as a shibboleth — something like a password used by one set of people to identify other people as members of a particular group — providing an effective means of signaling the strength of one’s commitment to fellow ideologues:Many who study religion have noted that it’s the very impossibility of a claim that makes it a good signal of one’s commitment to the faith. You don’t need faith to believe obvious things. Proclaiming that the election was stolen surely does play an identity-advertising role in today’s America.Joanne Miller, a political scientist at the University of Delaware, wrote by email that she and two colleagues, Christina Farhart and Kyle Saunders, are about to publish a research paper, “Losers’ Conspiracy: Elections and Conspiratorial Thinking.” They found that “Democrats scored higher in conspiratorial thinking than Republicans after the 2016 election, and Republicans scored higher in conspiratorial thinking after the 2020 election.”One factor contributing to the persistent Republican embrace of conspiracy thinking, Miller continued, is that Trump loyalists in 2020 — who had suddenly become political losers — abruptly understood themselves to be on “a downward trajectory.” Miller writes that “perceiving oneself to be ‘losing’ (culturally, politically, economically, etc.) is likely one of the reasons people are susceptible to belief in conspiracy theories.”Haidt added another dimension to Miller’s argument:I don’t think there’s anything about the conservative mind that makes it more prone to conspiracies. But in the world we live in, the elites who run our cultural, medical and epistemic institutions — and particularly journalism and the universities — are overwhelmingly on the left, so of course Democrats are going to be more trusting of elite pronouncements, while Republicans are more likely to begin from a position of distrust.Are there partisan differences in connection with conspiracy thinking?Uscinski argues that in his view there is little difference in the susceptibility of Democrats and Republicans to conspiracy thinking, but:The issue here isn’t about conspiracy theories so much. These ideas are always out there. The issue is about Donald Trump. The numbers are so high because Trump and his allies inside and outside of government endorsed these election fraud conspiracy theories. Trump, his many advisers and staff, Republican members of Congress, Republican governors and state legislators, conservative media outlets, and right-wing opinion leaders asserted repeatedly that the 2020 election would be and then had been stolen.This has a lot more to do, Uscinski contended, “with the power of political and media elites to affect their followers’ beliefs than anything else.”John Jost, a professor of psychology, politics and data science at N.Y.U., strongly disagrees with Uscinski, arguing that there are major differences between Democrats and Republicans on measures of conspiratorial thinking.Jost wrote by email:My colleagues and I found, in a nationally representative sample of Americans, that there was a .27 correlation (which is quite sizable by the standards of social science) between conservative identification and scores on a scale of generalized conspiratorial mentality.In a separate study, Jost continued:We observed a smaller but clearly significant correlation of .11 between conservative identification and a clinical measure of paranoid ideation, which includes items such as “I often feel that strangers are looking at me critically.” Furthermore, we found that paranoid ideation was a significant mediator of the association between conservative identification and general conspiratorial mind-sets.Jost pointed to a January 2022 article — “Conspiracy mentality and political orientation across 26 countries,” by Roland Imhoff, a professor of psychology at Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany, and 39 co-authors — that examined the strength of the “conspiracy mentality” at the extremes of left and right based on a sample of 104,253 people in 26 countries, not including the United States.Among their findings:While there was a clear positive relation suggestive of greater conspiracy mentality at the political right in countries spanning the center — north of Europe such as Austria, Belgium (particularly Flanders), France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden, the conspiracy mentality was more pronounced on the left in countries spanning the center-south of Europe such as Hungary, Romania and Spain.But it’s not only that:Taken together, supporters of political parties that are judged as extreme on either end of the political spectrum in general terms have increased conspiracy mentality. Focusing on the position of parties on the dimension of democratic values and freedom, the link with conspiracy mentality is linear, with higher conspiracy mentality among supporters of authoritarian right-wing parties. Thus, supporters of extreme right-wing parties seem to have a consistently higher conspiracy mentality, whereas the same only counts for extreme left-wing parties of a more authoritarian makeup and with less focus on ecological and liberal values.In a March 2019 paper, “Understanding Conspiracy Theories,” Karen M. Douglas, a psychologist at the University of Kent, writing with Uscinski and six other scholars, conducted a wide-ranging study of conspiratorial thinking. They found that “conspiracy beliefs are correlated with alienation from the political system and anomie — a feeling of personal unrest and lack of understanding of the social world. Belief in conspiracy theories is also associated with a belief that the economy is getting worse.”In addition, Douglas and her colleagues contend that “a conviction that others conspire against one’s group is more likely to emerge when the group thinks of itself as undervalued, underprivileged, or under threat.”Studies in the United States of “the social characteristics of those prone to conspiracy theories,” the authors note, show that “higher levels of conspiracy thinking correlate with lower levels of education and lower levels of income.” Another study they cite found that “conspiracy believers were more likely to be male, unmarried, less educated, have lower income, be unemployed, be a member of an ethnic minority group, and have weaker social networks.”Importantly, the Douglas paper points to studies showing that “conspiracy belief has been linked to violent intentions.” One of those studies, by Uscinski, writing with Joseph M. Parent of Notre Dame,showed that those who were more generally inclined toward conspiracy theories were more likely to agree that “violence is sometimes an acceptable way to express disagreement with the government.” Those inclined toward conspiracy belief are also in favor of lax gun ownership laws, show a willingness to conspire themselves and show greater intentions to engage in everyday crime.Douglas, Daniel Jolley of the University of Nottingham, Tanya Schrader of Staffordshire University and Ana C. Leite of Durham University demonstrate a linkage between conspiracy thinking and everyday crime: “Such crimes can include running red lights, paying cash for items to avoid paying taxes, or failing to disclose faults in secondhand items for sale” — in their 2019 paper, “Belief in conspiracy theories and intentions to engage in everyday crime.”In a series of experiments, Jolley and his colleagues found that “belief in conspiracy theories was significantly positively correlated with everyday crime behaviors. Criminal behaviors were also negatively associated with Honesty-Humility, Agreeableness-Anger, Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience and Moral Identity.”The authors suggested that “engaging in everyday crime may be empowering for people who perceive that the world is full of conspiring powerful elites who ought to be challenged.”A related question facing the country going into the 2022 midterms and, more important, the 2024 presidential election is whether the contagion of conspiratorial thinking will increase the likelihood of violence before, during and after the election.In another paper, “The complex relationship between conspiracy belief and the politics of social change,” Christopher M. Federico, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota, makes a key point: “Conspiratorial ideation about secret plots among the powerful is associated with decreased intention to engage in normative political action (e.g., voting, legal demonstrations) and increased intention to engage in nonnormative political action (e.g., violence, spreading misinformation).”Since conspiratorial thinking, Federico continued, “is associated with extremist intentions and willingness to engage in aggressive, nonnormative political action, it may allow individuals whose politics otherwise incline them to support the status quo to violently resist established authority in the name of imposing their own ideal social order.”Along similar lines, Jan-Willem van Prooijen, a psychologist at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, argues in his forthcoming essay, “Psychological benefits of believing conspiracy theories,” that “conspiracy theories help perceivers mentally reconstrue unhealthy behaviors as healthy, and anti-government violence as legitimate (e.g., justifying violent protests as legitimate resistance against oppressors).”In October 2021, Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, published “The Rise of Political Violence in the United States.”Kleinfeld argues:Ideas that were once confined to fringe groups now appear in the mainstream media. White-supremacist ideas, militia fashion, and conspiracy theories spread via gaming websites, YouTube channels, and blogs, while a slippery language of memes, slang, and jokes blurs the line between posturing and provoking violence, normalizing radical ideologies and activities.While violent incidents from the left are on the rise, Kleinfeld continued,political violence still comes overwhelmingly from the right, whether one looks at the Global Terrorism Database, F.B.I. statistics, or other government or independent counts. Yet people committing far-right violence — particularly planned violence rather than spontaneous hate crimes — are older and more established than typical terrorists and violent criminals. They often hold jobs, are married, and have children. Those who attend church or belong to community groups are more likely to hold violent, conspiratorial beliefs. These are not isolated “lone wolves”; they are part of a broad community that echoes their ideas.Perhaps the most telling aspect of Kleinfeld’s essay is a chart based on statistics collected in the Global Terrorism Database that shows a surge in far-right terrorist incidents in the United States, starting in 2015 — when Trump first entered the political arena — rising to great heights by 2019, outstripping terrorist incidents linked to the far left, to religious groups or to environmentalists.What will come of all this?Parent made a good point by email: “This is tricky: Trump has been a conspiracy theorist since forever and he was only briefly a successful politician.” As The Times put it in 2016, “Donald Trump Clung to ‘Birther’ Lie for Years.”Parent continued:What’s freakishly destabilizing about the present is that ideological glues have never been so designed to eviscerate democracy and promote violence. Previous leaders always had the option to go down that road, but chose not to. Now the inmates are running the asylum.Matthew Baum, a professor of public policy at Harvard, put it another way in his email:We had a sitting president declare that an election outcome was illegitimate. This is historically unprecedented. Trump’s assertion is extremely influential to voters who look to him as the leader of the Republican Party in general, and as the leader of the MAGA movement in particular. These factors have combined to allow this particular story to metastasize to a greater extent than most other political conspiracy stories in recent history.Can the country return to the status quo ante?“It is too soon to say,” Baum writes, “whether this delegitimization is permanent. There is certainly a risk that once the genie is out of the bottle — that is, election losers are no longer willing to accept losing as a legitimate outcome and ‘live to fight another day’ — it will be hard to put it back.”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, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

Three decades ago, Jewish lawmakers made up just over half of New York City’s House delegation. Now there is one: Jerrold Nadler, who faces a tough primary battle.The clock was nearing midnight on Shavuot, the Jewish Feast of Weeks, when Ruth W. Messinger offered a prophetic political warning to a crowd munching on holiday cheesecake at the Jewish community center on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.For a century, New York has been the center of Jewish political power in the United States. So much so that as recently as the 1990s, Jewish lawmakers made up roughly about half of New York City’s delegation to the House of Representatives.Now, Ms. Messinger said at the event earlier this month, gesturing to the frumpily dressed older man sitting beside her, there is only one left — Representative Jerrold Nadler — and he could soon be ousted in this summer’s primary.“For those of you who are old and don’t believe this because you remember the glorious past, it would mean that New York City would no longer have a single Jewish representative in Congress,” said Ms. Messinger, an elder stateswoman in Manhattan’s liberal Jewish circles, who is backing Mr. Nadler.“This is, as far as I know, the largest concentration of Jews anywhere in the world,” she added, “so that’s pretty dramatic.”Mr. Nadler, an Upper West Side Democrat who is the longest-serving Jewish member of the House, finds himself fighting for political survival this summer after a court-appointed mapmaker combined key parts of his district with the Upper East Side seat represented by Representative Carolyn Maloney.The Aug. 23 contest between two powerful Democratic House committee chairs, both nearing the end of storied careers, will undoubtedly turn on many factors, grand and prosaic: ideology, geography, longstanding political rivalries and who turns out to the polls in New York’s sleepy end of summer.But for Jews, who once numbered two million people in New York City and have done as much as any group to shape its modern identity, the race also has the potential to be a watershed moment — a test of how much being an identifiably Jewish candidate still matters in a city where the tides of demographic and political clout have slowly shifted toward New Yorkers of Black, Latino and Asian heritage.“At a gut level, New York City without a Jewish representative would feel like — someplace else,” said Letty Cottin Pogrebin, an author, founding editor of Ms. magazine and self-described “dyed-in-the-wool New York Jew.”“You know, there are 57 varieties of Jews. We are racially and politically and religiously diverse to the point of lunacy sometimes,” she said. “You need somebody in the room who can decode our differences and explain the complexity of our issues.”A Guide to New York’s 2022 Primary ElectionsAs prominent Democratic officials seek to defend their records, Republicans see opportunities to make inroads in general election races.Governor’s Race: Gov. Kathy Hochul, the incumbent, will face off against Jumaane Williams and Tom Suozzi in a Democratic primary on June 28.Adams’s Endorsement: The New York City mayor gave Ms. Hochul a valuable, if belated, endorsement that could help her shore up support among Black and Latino voters.15 Democrats, 1 Seat: A Trump prosecutor. An ex-congressman. Bill de Blasio. A newly redrawn House district in New York City may be one of the largest and most freewheeling primaries in the nation.Maloney vs. Nadler: The new congressional lines have put the two stalwart Manhattan Democrats on a collision course in the Aug. 23 primary.Offensive Remarks: Carl P. Paladino, a Republican running for a House seat in Western New York, recently drew backlash for praising Adolf Hitler in an interview dating back to 2021.Mr. Nadler, 75, has acknowledged his particular status on the campaign trail, and wears his Jewishness with pride. Raised Orthodox in 1950s Brooklyn, he attended a Crown Heights yeshiva before his desire to study neuroscience led him to Stuyvesant High School. He still speaks some Yiddish, worships at B’nai Jeshurun, a historic Upper West Side synagogue, and sent some of his constituents swooning when he showed up to Donald J. Trump’s impeachment vote toting a babka from Zabar’s.Mr. Nadler attends religious services at B’nai Jeshurun, a synagogue on West 88th Street in Manhattan.Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images — LightRocket, via Getty ImagesSo far, though, he has mostly left it to others to make an identity-based case for his candidacy, opting to spend his own time talking about his record as a progressive stalwart. Mr. Nadler declined an interview request.New York sent its first Jewish representative, a merchant named Emanuel B. Hart, to Congress in 1851. By 1992, when Mr. Nadler arrived in the House, there were eight Jewish members representing parts of New York City alone.Today, nine of the 13 members representing parts of the five boroughs are Black or Latino. Another is Asian American.No one is suggesting that Jewish politicians will be locked out of power permanently in New York if Mr. Nadler loses. There are other Jewish candidates running for city House seats this year, including Max Rose, Daniel Goldman and Robert Zimmerman, though each faces an uphill fight to win. Others will undoubtedly emerge in future elections, including from the city’s fast-growing ultra-Orthodox communities. And Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader, is also Jewish.But the rise and fall of Jewish influence is a clear, familiar arc in a city that has absorbed waves of immigrants, who grew in numbers, economic power and, eventually, political stature — only to be supplanted by those who followed. It happened to the Dutch, English, Germans, Irish and Italians, and now to New York’s Jews, who at their peak in the 1950s accounted for a quarter or more of the city’s total population and gained footholds at all levels of government.Since then, large numbers of Jews have left the city, said Daniel Soyer, a historian at Fordham University who has written about New York Jewish history, bringing the present population to just over one million. At the same time, many American Jews began to assimilate and secularize, weakening the shared identity that drove them to vote as a cohesive group and elect their own candidates; some left the Democratic Party, their longtime home.The exception has been ultra-Orthodox communities in Brooklyn and the lower Hudson Valley. But while they have succeeded in electing their own to state and local offices, they exercise less sway at the congressional level.Successive cycles of redistricting have not helped, forcing New York to shed congressional seats and fracturing Jewish enclaves between districts. Mr. Nadler’s current seat, New York’s 10th District, had been deliberately drawn to connect Jewish communities on the West Side of Manhattan with Orthodox ones in Brooklyn’s Borough Park. This year, the court mapmaker severed the two areas.“When I was in Congress, you could have a minyan in the New York delegation,” said Steve Israel, a Democrat who once represented Nassau County and parts of Queens in Congress. “We went from a minyan to a minority to hardly anybody.”The dwindling was gradual, and in some cases merely a matter of chance. In 1992, Bill Green, a liberal Republican from the Upper East Side, lost to a young upstart, Ms. Maloney. The same year, Representative Stephen J. Solarz saw his Brooklyn district cracked in redistricting and lost in a bid for a neighboring seat drawn to empower Hispanic voters.Gary L. Ackerman, another long-tenured Jewish lawmaker known for importing kosher deli food for an annual Washington fund-raiser, retired during the last redistricting cycle in 2012, when mapmakers stitched together growing Asian populations, which in turn led to the election of the city’s first Asian congresswoman, Grace Meng.“There are new groups coming in who are flexing their political power,” said Eliot L. Engel, a former Jewish congressman from the Bronx who lost a Democratic primary in 2020 to Jamaal Bowman, a young Black educator. “I guess that’s what makes America great.”Those changes have helped push Jews toward coalition building, de-emphasizing the need for Jewish candidates to represent Jewish interests.Mr. Israel recalled a meeting with the Israeli consul general in New York as early as 2016 in which the diplomat talked openly about the need to recalibrate his country’s outreach to cultivate stronger relationships with a rising cohort of Black and Latino lawmakers.“They saw this coming and realized that being able to count on a delegation of Engels, Ackermans, Nadlers and Israels was not going to last for long,” Mr. Israel said.The new 12th Congressional District — which covers the width of Manhattan, from Union Square roughly to the top of Central Park — is believed to be the most Jewish in the country, home to a diverse array of Orthodox, conservative, reform and secular Jews. Ms. Maloney, who is Presbyterian but represents a sizable Jewish population on the East Side, has positioned herself as a staunch ally of Israel and American Jews.Her campaign is challenging Mr. Nadler for Jewish votes and has highlighted her authorship of a bill promoting Holocaust education and, above all, a vote against former President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal. That position won her plaudits from more conservative segments of New York’s Jewish community, which condemned Mr. Nadler for supporting the deal.“It’s not about the religion, it’s about the beliefs,” said Harley Lippman, a New York businessman active in Jewish-Israeli relations. He argued that non-Jews like Ms. Maloney were often more effective “because no one could say they are biased.”Ms. Maloney accused Mr. Nadler of using his Jewishness as a divisive campaign tactic.Mary Altaffer/Associated Press“We may take a certain pride — like an Italian-American would if he sees a congressman with a vowel at the end of the last name — but it’s not much more than trivia,” said Mr. Lippman, who is registered to vote in Florida, but is raising money for Ms. Maloney.Ms. Maloney was less forgiving in an interview, accusing Mr. Nadler and his allies of wielding his Jewishness as a “divisive tactic” in the race. (A third Democrat, Suraj Patel, is also competing in the race.)“It’s a strange way to run, it’s sort of like, ‘Vote for me, I’m the only woman, or I’m the only white person, I’m the only Black person,’” she said. “Why don’t you put forward your statement, your issues, what you’ve done and the merit you bring to the race?”Major pro-Israel political groups, who have spent millions of dollars in Democratic primaries across the country this year, appear to be split on the Nadler-Maloney race.Marshall Wittmann, a spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, pointed out that the group’s PAC had contributed to both candidates earlier this year “in recognition of their support for the U.S.-Israel relationship.”J Street, the pro-Israel lobby that tries to act as a liberal counterweight to AIPAC, plans to raise as much as six figures to support Mr. Nadler.Mr. Nadler’s allies argue that on matters of substance, representation and gut-level identity, he brings qualities to his role that are different from those a non-Jewish person could offer.In an era when his party’s left flank has grown increasingly hostile to Israel, his supporters contend that Mr. Nadler has used his position as the informal dean of the House Jewish caucus to try to bridge more traditional Zionists and Israel’s progressive critics on issues like the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions Movement and support for Israeli defense.His 2015 vote for the Iran deal — detailed in a 5,200-word essay — soured his relationship, perhaps permanently, with some ultra-Orthodox communities he represents. But it also opened the door for greater support.“No one doubts Jerry’s progressive bona fides and no one doubts his commitment to the U.S.-Israel relationship,” said Representative Ted Deutch, a Florida Democrat who is retiring to lead the American Jewish Committee. “That’s a really, really important role, especially at this moment.” More

Shane Goldmacher
8:07 PM ET More

Los israelíes regresarán a las urnas por quinta vez, en menos de cuatro años.JERUSALÉN — El primer ministro israelí, Naftali Bennett, estará tomando decisiones en los próximos días para disolver el Parlamento y derrocar a su propio gobierno un año después de asumir el cargo, un proceso que desencadenará la celebración de nuevas elecciones dentro de unos meses. El proyecto de ley de disolución ha sido programado para una votación preliminar el miércoles, con una votación final que probablemente se realizará el lunes.La coalición de Bennett había comenzado con una mayoría mínima y recientemente la perdió, lo que hizo que fuese imposible gobernar.Una nueva elección le dará a Benjamin Netanyahu, el ex primer ministro de Israel con más años de servicio y ahora líder de la oposición, la oportunidad de regresar al poder aunque lucha contra unos cargos de corrupción. Sin embargo, su regreso está lejos de estar asegurado.Salvo el escenario improbable de que Netanyahu u otro líder del partido pueda formar una coalición alternativa con al menos 61 escaños en el Parlamento de 120 curules, los israelíes regresarán a las urnas en el otoño por quinta vez en menos de cuatro años.Aquí ofrecemos algunas explicaciones de la actual situación política en el país.¿Qué tipo de gobierno tiene Israel?Israel es una democracia parlamentaria con un sistema electoral de representación proporcional. Ningún partido ha obtenido nunca los votos suficientes para obtener una mayoría absoluta en el Parlamento. Es por eso que los partidos más grandes deben formar coaliciones consiguiendo el apoyo de los movimientos políticos más pequeños que negocian para proteger sus intereses y, a menudo, terminan ejerciendo un poder desproporcionado.Los últimos años han sido particularmente tumultuosos. Entre abril de 2019 y marzo de 2021, Israel celebró cuatro comicios que terminaron sin resultados concluyentes, con una legislatura dividida entre los partidos aliados con Netanyahu, quien fue primer ministro durante 15 años, y los que se oponen a sus intentos de permanecer en el poder.Asientos vacíos en la Knéset, el lunesAbir Sultan/EPA vía Shutterstock¿Por qué colapsó el gobierno actual?Bennett, máximo dirigente de un pequeño partido de derecha, ha liderado una difícil coalición de ocho movimientos formada por opositores políticos de derecha, izquierda y centro con agendas ideológicas enfrentadas, y que incluyó al primer partido árabe independiente que se ha unido a una coalición de gobierno israelí.Apodada por algunos como la “coalición kumbaya”, sus integrantes estaban unidos por el deseo de restaurar un sentido de unidad y estabilidad nacional, y principalmente, derrocar a Netanyahu después de que pasó 12 años consecutivos en el cargo.Pero las tensiones dentro de la coalición por cuestiones políticas y la presión implacable de Netanyahu y sus aliados hicieron que dos miembros de Yamina, el partido de Bennett, abandonaran la coalición. Varios legisladores árabes y de izquierda también se rebelaron en votaciones clave, lo que hizo que el gobierno se paralizara y luego entrara en crisis.Entonces, ¿quién lidera a Israel en este momento?Cuando finalmente se apruebe la disolución del Parlamento, muy probablemente antes de fines de junio, Bennett entregará el poder a Yair Lapid, el ministro de Relaciones Exteriores —un político de centro muy conocido por haber sido una personalidad de la televisión durante muchos años—, quien encabezará un gobierno provisional durante varios meses hasta que se convoque la elección y mientras se realizan las prolongadas negociaciones para una nueva coalición.Según los términos del acuerdo de coalición, se suponía que Lapid, el líder de Yesh Atid, el segundo partido más grande de Israel después del conservador Likud de Netanyahu, remplazaría a Bennett como primer ministro en agosto de 2023.Pero el acuerdo incluía una cláusula de seguridad en caso de que el gobierno no durara tanto. Estipulaba que si el Parlamento se disolvía debido a las acciones de los miembros de la coalición de derecha, como es el caso, Lapid se convertiría automáticamente en primer ministro interino del gobierno provisional.Trabajadores de la Comisión Electoral Central de Israel durante el recuento final de votos en la Knéset, en Jerusalén, el año pasado.Abir Sultan/EPA vía Shutterstock¿Cuándo son las próximas elecciones y quién se postulará?Aún no se ha fijado una fecha para la elección, pero pareciera existir un consenso sobre la fecha, que probablemente será a fines de octubre o principios de noviembre.Netanyahu y su partido Likud lideran las encuestas, seguidos por Lapid y Yesh Atid. Bennett, cuyo partido Yamina ocupaba solo seis escaños en el Parlamento cuando tomó posesión el año pasado, no parece haber obtenido mucho apoyo adicional.Al líder del partido que obtiene la mayor cantidad de votos generalmente se le otorga la primera oportunidad de formar un gobierno. El caso de Bennett fue muy inusual: se desempeñó como primer ministro porque era visto como el más aceptable para el flanco derecho de la diversa coalición.¿La próxima vez será diferente?Es posible que una quinta elección no produzca un resultado más definitivo o un gobierno más estable que las cuatro anteriores, según los analistas.“Hemos estado en esta película cuatro veces y podemos obtener resultados similares una quinta vez”, dijo Gideon Rahat, politólogo de la Universidad Hebrea de Jerusalén.“Por parte de Netanyahu, puede haber 1000 elecciones”, agregó Rahat. “Está preparado para barajar las cartas una y otra vez hasta que gane”.Los aliados de Netanyahu esperan que la decepción con el gobierno de Bennett impulse a los votantes de derecha que habían abandonado al líder político para que vuelvan a apoyarlo.“Mucha gente ha cambiado de opinión”, dijo Tzachi Hanegbi, un legislador experimentado de Likud y exministro, señalando las encuestas que muestran una erosión en el apoyo hacia algunos partidos de la coalición de Bennett.Pero a menos que Netanyahu salga victorioso y forme el próximo gobierno, dijo Ben Caspit, comentarista político y autor de dos biografías de Netanyahu, esta podría ser su última campaña electoral porque algunos de sus aliados políticos parecen menos inclinados a tolerar otro fracaso.Una valla publicitaria del partido Likud el año pasado, en Jerusalén. Muestra a Benjamin Netanyahu, a la derecha, y a sus rivales políticos, Gideon Saar, Naftali Bennett y Yair Lapid con un titular que dice: “Solo Likud formará un gobierno de derecha completo”.Abir Sultan/EPA vía Shutterstock¿Cuáles son los temas más controversiales?Esta última agitación política se produce en medio de una escalada en una batalla clandestina entre Israel e Irán. Y el conflicto con los palestinos se cierne sobre cada elección.Esta vez, es probable que la integración de los partidos árabes de Israel en el gobierno nacional sea el centro de atención. En repetidas oportunidades, Netanyahu intentó deslegitimar al gobierno de Bennett calificándolo como “dependiente de los partidarios del terrorismo”, refiriéndose a los políticos árabes que son ciudadanos de Israel.Los israelíes de centro y de izquierda dicen que un gobierno de Netanyahu dependerá de los extremistas de extrema derecha.Netanyahu ha prometido más acuerdos de paz con países que alguna vez fueron hostiles. Con la ayuda del gobierno de Trump, había establecido relaciones diplomáticas con los Emiratos Árabes Unidos, Bahréin y Marruecos.El aumento del costo de vida y los precios exorbitantes de la vivienda son quizás los temas más preocupantes para muchos votantes.Los críticos de Netanyahu dijeron que si regresa al poder, la democracia misma de Israel estaría en juego porque sus aliados piden restricciones en el sistema judicial y la cancelación de su juicio.“Quiere aplastar la democracia israelí y establecer una dictadura corrupta sin tribunales y con medios que le sirvan”, dijo Or-Ly Barlev, activista social israelí y periodista independiente. “Estamos al borde de un abismo”.Isabel Kershner, corresponsal en Jerusalén, ha estado informando sobre la política israelí y palestina desde 1990. Es autora de “Barrera: la costura del conflicto israelí-palestino”. @IKershner • Facebook More

Panel makes case that Trump campaign knew alternate electors scheme was fraudulentText appears to indicate campaign sought to use certificates it knew were not state-certified to obstruct Biden’s victory The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack made the case at its fourth hearing on Tuesday that the Trump 2020 campaign tried to obstruct Joe Biden’s election win through a potentially illegal scheme to send fake slates of electors to Congress.The panel presented a text message sent on 4 January 2021 that appeared to indicate the Trump campaign was seeking to use fraudulent election certificates they would have known were not state-certified to obstruct the congressional certification of Biden’s win.‘There’s nowhere I feel safe’: Georgia elections workers describe how Trump upended their livesRead more“Freaking Trump idiots want someone to fly original elector papers to the Senate president,” Mark Jefferson, the executive director of the Republican party in Wisconsin said in the text, seemingly referring to the Trump campaign and then vice-president Mike Pence.The fake electors scheme – so-called because Republican electors in seven battleground states signed certificates falsely declaring themselves “duly elected and qualified” to affirm Donald Trump won the 2020 election – was part of Trump’s strategy to reverse his defeat.The select committee believes, according to sources close to the inquiry, that the scheme was conceived in an effort to create “dueling” slates of electors that Pence could use to pretend the outcome of the election was in doubt and refuse to announce Biden as president.All of this is important because the scheme could be a crime. The justice department is investigating whether the Republicans who signed as electors for Trump could be charged with falsifying voting documents, mail fraud or conspiracy to defraud the United States.It is also a crime to knowingly submit false statements to a federal agency or a federal agent for an undue end. The fraudulent certificates were filed with a handful of government bodies, including the National Archives, the panel has previously said.The select committee appeared to make the case that the Trump campaign violated the law: the panel suggested the Trump campaign must have known the certificates were false and suggested the Trump campaign at least intended to submit them to government bodies.After all, the panel suggested, the Trump campaign must have known they were false since no state legislature had voted to approve a Trump slate of electors, while the text message showed the Trump campaign intended to send them to Congress in time for the certification.The evidence to connect Trump to the fake electors scheme was less clear.Congressman Adam Schiff, the select committee member who led the fourth hearing, introduced a text message from the RNC chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, that was obtained by House investigators, which he suggested showed Trump was directly implicated in the fake electors scheme.Referring to Trump, the text read: “He turned the call over to Mr Eastman, who then proceeded to talk about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather these contingent electors in case any of the legal challenges that were ongoing change the result.”The text indicated that Trump initiated the call to McDaniel and tried to use the power of his office to pressure the RNC, which could create an inferential case against Trump if viewed in conjunction with other evidence, according to two former assistant US attorneys.But while Trump’s conduct might warrant him becoming the subject of a criminal investigation, it was not clear how prosecutors might move forward with charges against Trump based on what the panel unveiled about the fake electors alone, the former assistant US attorneys said.Congressional connectionsThe other major revelation that came from the select committee’s fourth hearing was the fact that at least one Republican senator, Ron Johnson, the senior senator from Wisconsin, tried on the morning of 6 January 2021 to transmit fake certificates to Pence.According to a text exchange obtained by the select committee, Johnson’s chief of staff, Sean Riley, messaged Pence’s legislative affairs director, Chris Hodgson, seeking advice on how to give the fraudulent certificates to Pence.“Johnson needs to hand something to VPOTUS please advise,” Riley said. When Hodgson asked what for, Riley gave details, referring to fake Trump slates from Michigan and Wisconsin: “Alternate slate of electors for MI and WI because archivist didn’t receive them.”The text exchange appeared to show that Johnson intended to transmit false documents to a federal agency or agent. It was not clear whether Johnson knew that they might be used as cover for Pence to reject Biden’s win, but it did suggest he knew what the package was.Proving that last element would be crucial in pursuing charges in the fake electors scheme, the former assistant US attorneys said. It would probably not be enough to just show that Johnson wanted to submit fraudulent certificates to Congress.A spokesperson for Johnson said on Tuesday the senator – then the chairman of the Senate homeland security committee and ardent defender of Trump on Capitol Hill – had “no involvement in the creation of an alternate slates of electors and had no foreknowledge”.The statement addressed accusations never leveled at Johnson. The key question remained whether Johnson knew the certificates were fake – since neither Wisconsin nor any other states certified Trump electors – and whether he tried to give them to Pence for an undue end.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsMike PenceRepublicansMichigannewsReuse this content More

Ana María Archila, who would be the first Latina elected statewide, gained national attention after she confronted a senator over the Supreme Court confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh.For much of her first term, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez raised her profile by fighting for nationwide initiatives favored by the far left, like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.But in recent months, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, whose district includes parts of Queens and the Bronx, has shown a strong interest in more local issues, and in lifting the profile of people far closer to home.On Wednesday, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez will make her first statewide endorsement in the contest for lieutenant governor, backing Ana María Archila, an activist who some on the left believe has a chance of becoming the first Latina elected to statewide office.Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is expected to appear at a rally for Ms. Archila on Monday, one day before the June 28 primary, and will also send out a fund-raising email. Ms. Archila’s campaign believes the endorsement will increase donors, volunteers and energize left-leaning Democrats to vote.Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement, which was confirmed by her spokeswoman, Lauren Hitt, may also encourage other national progressive Democratic leaders to take more interest in the contest.A Guide to New York’s 2022 Primary ElectionsAs prominent Democratic officials seek to defend their records, Republicans see opportunities to make inroads in general election races.Governor’s Race: Gov. Kathy Hochul, the incumbent, will face off against Jumaane Williams and Tom Suozzi in a Democratic primary on June 28.Adams’s Endorsement: The New York City mayor gave Ms. Hochul a valuable, if belated, endorsement that could help her shore up support among Black and Latino voters.15 Democrats, 1 Seat: A Trump prosecutor. An ex-congressman. Bill de Blasio. A newly redrawn House district in New York City may be one of the largest and most freewheeling primaries in the nation.Maloney vs. Nadler: The new congressional lines have put the two stalwart Manhattan Democrats on a collision course in the Aug. 23 primary.Offensive Remarks: Carl P. Paladino, a Republican running for a House seat in Western New York, recently drew backlash for praising Adolf Hitler in an interview dating back to 2021.“What A.O.C. represents is a constituency of young people who are so tired of the passivity of mainstream Democrats on the issues of our moment, whether it is climate, making progress on dismantling the racist structure in our legal system or standing with workers,” Ms. Archila said in an interview. “The future of the Democratic Party is this new wave and this new generation.”Ms. Archila, who is running in tandem with Jumaane D. Williams, the New York City public advocate, and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, know each other. In 2019, Ms. Archila was Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s guest at the State of the Union address, after she got national attention for confronting Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona in an elevator over the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.Ms. Archila and another Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, Diana Reyna, face an uphill challenge in trying to defeat the newly installed incumbent, Antonio Delgado, a former congressman who left his House seat last month.Some elected officials and union leaders are worried that Gov. Kathy Hochul is running too low-key of a primary campaign, and that it could hurt the chances of Mr. Delgado, even though he has much more money than Ms. Archila.“While the opposition might want to take advantage of a sleepy electorate that is not aware of Election Day, we want as many voters as possible to know what is at stake in this race,” said Sochie Nnaemeka, the head of the New York State Working Families Party, which has endorsed Ms. Archila.An endorsement from Ms. Ocasio-Cortez does not guarantee victory. Last year, she endorsed Maya Wiley, a civil rights lawyer and former counsel for Mayor Bill de Blasio, in the race for mayor of New York City. Ms. Wiley came in third place in the Democratic primary.Ms. Ocasio-Cortez recently endorsed Alessandra Biaggi, a state senator representing parts of the Bronx and Westchester County, in her primary challenge to Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, a moderate Democrat.Ms. Ocasio-Cortez also has been willing to weigh in on local controversies, recently accusing the speaker of the New York City Council, Adrienne Adams, of playing “dirty politics,” amid accusations that she eliminated discretionary funding under her control of the left-leaning members who voted against the $101 billion budget.In May, she announced that she would be endorsing the entire slate of the New York Democratic Socialists’ candidates, as well as some backed by the progressive Working Families Party. The two left-leaning parties have occasionally been at odds with one another. This year they have aligned in support of a handful of challengers hoping to pick off long-serving incumbents in the State Legislature, in much the same way that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez herself did in 2018.In several races young women of color are challenging long-serving male incumbents in districts whose demographics have evolved during their time in office. Others are challenging heavy hitters such as Senate energy chair Kevin Parker. Opponents claim these veterans have not been responsive enough to progressive demands.The bulk of these challengers are looking for seats in the State Assembly, which some on the left have portrayed as an impediment to pushing a transformative agenda through the state legislature.There are national echoes in some of these races. Jonathan Soto, a former organizer for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez running with her endorsement, is hoping to unseat Assemblyman Michael Benedetto in the East Bronx. While campaigning to increase parental control over schools and expand access to health care, Mr. Soto has accused Mr. Benedetto of carrying water for conservatives, including the former president Donald J. Trump, who donated to him several years ago.Mr. Benedetto, who is backed by the state’s Democratic establishment, strongly rejected these claims. In a video posted to Twitter he announced, “Benedetto a Trump supporter? Garbage!” before tossing Mr. Soto’s campaign literature into an awaiting bin.Mr. Benedetto has echoed some conservative attacks on Ms. Ocasio-Cortez in pushing back at his opponent, whom he has sought to paint as an out-of-touch extremist.Assemblywoman Inez E. Dickens, who is facing a challenger backed by the congresswoman, took aim at Ms. Ocasio-Cortez directly: “She needs to really think about coming into my district because I will stand up and I will push back,” she said. More

LONDON — For Boris Johnson, Britain’s embattled and scandal-ridden prime minister, nowhere is safe.On Thursday, that may become inescapably clear. Two local elections — one in a traditional Tory area in South Devon that the party has controlled almost continuously since 1885, the other in a postindustrial seat in North England that the Tories took from Labour for the first time in 90 years in 2019 — will deliver a decisive assessment of Mr. Johnson’s flailing popularity. As things stand, the Conservatives are set to lose both.Mr. Johnson’s ability to win over such disparate people and places — affluent farmers and neglected manufacturers, the shires in the South and old Labour heartlands in the North — once ensured his position at the top of the Conservative Party. Yet now, as Britain hovers on the brink of economic recession, the constituencies that previously united around the prime minister appear to be rejecting him. For Mr. Johnson, his authority frayed by a recent no confidence vote, a double defeat would leave his tenure hanging by a thread.But the Conservatives’ problems are much bigger than the prime minister. After 12 years in office, under three different leaders, the Conservatives have collectively set the stage for Britain’s woes. The balance sheet is dire: Wages haven’t risen in real terms since 2010, austerity has hollowed out local communities, and regional inequality has deepened. Britain’s protracted departure from the European Union, pursued by the Conservatives without a clear plan, has only made matters worse.For this litany of failures, the Conservatives seem to be finally paying the price. After four successive electoral victories, each one with a larger share of the vote, the party has trailed in the polls all year. Thursday’s elections are likely to be yet another indicator of the public’s growing disenchantment, one that bodes badly for the party’s chances in the next election, due by the start of 2025. Unable to address the country’s deep-seated problems and devoid of direction, the Conservatives are in trouble — whether led by Mr. Johnson or not.As the prices of food and energy soar to record levels, Conservatives can point to causes outside their control: the pandemic’s global disruption, lockdowns in China, Russia’s war in Ukraine. But they cannot explain why, in this time of global crisis, Britain is afflicted with particular severity. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Britain’s economy won’t grow at all next year — a bleak forecast shared only, among major economies, with Russia.That should concern the Conservatives, whose dismal economic record is visible everywhere, from rising levels of poverty to chronically underfunded public services. In the National Health Service, to which Conservatives love to pronounce their loyalty, wages for health care workers have fallen in real terms, and an estimated 110,000 positions lie vacant. As the waiting list for medical attention hits an all-time high, ever more Britons are going private: The average amount now spent by households on health care, as a percentage of G.D.P., is nearing levels in America. For a country so proud of its public health care, it’s an especially painful development.For Conservatives, the chaos of Mr. Johnson’s prime ministership offers another appealing alibi. Having first ridden on the back of Mr. Johnson’s unruliness, Conservatives now claim that it is impeding their ability to address the serious problems facing the country. They often complain that they just want to “get back to governing.” But the truth is that Conservatives gave up on governing long ago — a fact that accounts both for Britain’s current mess and Mr. Johnson’s appeal in the first place.Indeed, while Mr. Johnson’s own desperation to become party leader was always an open secret, his eventual rise to the top relied on his Conservative colleagues’ desperation as well. By 2019, after almost a decade in power and with little positive to show for it, there was a pressing need to plot a new national course. In a rut and out of ideas, Conservatives turned instead to a known peddler of feel-good fantasies. Mr. Johnson offered Conservatives an escape — from Europe, seriousness and self-doubt. What he lacked in sense of direction he made up for with his boundless optimism and sense of humor. Punch lines could take the place of policy, raising spirits if not wages.Mr. Johnson’s boosterism, giddily amplified by his cheerleaders in the right-wing press, worked for a while. During the push to leave the European Union, and even during the devastatingly mishandled pandemic, Mr. Johnson could play the role of mascot, rallying the nation for the task ahead. But now in the wreckage of that double disruption, each one exacerbated by Mr. Johnson’s incompetence, the Conservative leader has lost his charm. His jokes, amid an escalating cost-of-living crisis, fall flat. And having finally “got Brexit done,” as his winning campaign slogan promised, Mr. Johnson struggles to pin blame for the nation’s troubles on the European Union. Fed up with broken promises and brazen deceit, voters are turning against him.But Conservatives can avoid their own reckoning for only so long. First through austerity, then through Brexit and Mr. Johnson, the Conservatives have left Britain in the ruins of their ambition. Each one of their proposed solutions, offered in the name of national renewal, has made the situation worse. No one in the party can escape blame for this baleful legacy. One of the pretenders to Mr. Johnson’s throne — Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss or Jeremy Hunt — may offer a change in style. But a substantial change of course is unlikely to come. An economy predicated on low productivity and low investment, buttressed by a self-defeating lack of seriousness about Britain’s condition, is all the Conservatives seem to be able to offer.In the 1960s, an English satirist named Peter Cook warned that Britain was in danger of “sinking giggling into the sea.” Today, the feeling is pervasive. Over 12 years, the Conservatives have unmoored Britain from its foundations and perpetuated a failed economic model, accelerating the nation’s descent into disorder. For the most part, Conservatives have cheered the country on its way. On Thursday, Britain will at least learn if the tide is finally turning.Samuel Earle (@swajcmanearle) is a British journalist at work on a book about how the Conservative Party has dominated Britain for almost two centuries.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, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More