Elections

Cuando los líderes políticos se enfrentan a una crisis constitucional, como la del 6 de enero en EE. UU., el proceso de decidir colectivamente cómo responder puede ser desordenado, arbitrario y, a veces, cambiar la naturaleza del propio sistema.Cuando buscamos casos similares en el mundo al momento del año pasado en el que el entonces vicepresidente Mike Pence se negó a ceder ante la presión del presidente Donald Trump para ayudarlo a revertir su derrota electoral, algo queda claro casi de inmediato.Este tipo de crisis, en las que el destino de la democracia queda en manos de un puñado de funcionarios, rara vez se resuelven únicamente sobre la base de principios legales o constitucionales, aunque luego sean citados como justificación.En su lugar, por lo general la resolución está determinada por las élites políticas que logran formar rápidamente una masa crítica a favor de un resultado. Y esos funcionarios pueden seguir cualquier motivación —principios, antipatía partidista, interés propio— que los movilice.En conjunto, la historia de las crisis constitucionales modernas destaca algunas duras verdades sobre la democracia. Las normas supuestamente fundamentales, como elecciones libres o el Estado de derecho, aunque se presenten como si estuvieran cimentadas de manera irreversible en las bases de la nación, en realidad solo son tan sólidas como el compromiso de quienes estén en el poder. Y si bien una crisis puede ser una oportunidad para que los líderes refuercen las normas democráticas, también puede ser una oportunidad para revisarlas o revocarlas por completo.Por ejemplo, en medio de las elecciones de Yugoslavia de 2000, la oposición declaró que había obtenido suficientes votos para destronar al presidente Slobodan Milosevic, cuyo gobierno aseguró falsamente que la oposición se había quedado corta.Ambas partes apelaron a los principios constitucionales, los procedimientos legales y, con furiosas protestas, a la voluntad del pueblo. Al final, una masa crítica de funcionarios del gobierno y de la policía, incluidos algunos en puestos necesarios para certificar el resultado, señalaron que, por razones que variaban de persona a persona, tratarían a Milosevic como el perdedor de las elecciones. Posteriormente, el nuevo gobierno lo extraditó para enfrentar cargos por crímenes de guerra en La Haya, en los Países Bajos.Slobodan Milosevic, expresidente de Yugoslavia, aplaudiendo durante una ceremonia en la academia militar de Belgrado, en 2000. Milosevic fue declarado perdedor de unas disputadas elecciones y posteriormente extraditado para ser acusado de crímenes de guerra en La Haya.Agence France-PresseLos estadounidenses parecieran tener más cosas en común con Perú. Allí, en 1992, el entonces presidente Alberto Fujimori disolvió el Congreso controlado por la oposición, que estaba haciendo gestiones para destituirlo. Los legisladores de todo el espectro votaron rápidamente para remplazar a Fujimori con su propio vicepresidente, quien se había opuesto al abuso de poder presidencial.Ambos bandos aseveraron estar defendiendo la democracia de la amenaza que representaba el otro. Ambos apelaron a las fuerzas militares de Perú, que tradicionalmente había desempeñado un rol de árbitro final, de forma casi similar al de una corte suprema. El pueblo, profundamente polarizado, se dividió. Los militares también se dividieron en dos bandos.En el momento más crítico, una cantidad suficiente de élites políticas y militares indicó su apoyo a Fujimori y logró que prevaleciera. Se juntaron de manera informal, cada uno reaccionando a los eventos de manera individual. Muchos apelaron a diferentes fines, como la agenda económica de Fujimori, la sensación de estabilidad o la posibilidad de que su partido prevaleciera bajo el nuevo orden.Perú cayó en un cuasi-autoritarismo, con derechos políticos restringidos y elecciones celebradas, pero bajo términos que favorecían a Fujimori, hasta que fue destituido de su cargo en 2000 por acusaciones de corrupción. El año pasado, su hija se postuló para la presidencia como una populista de derecha y perdió por menos de 50.000 votos.La América Latina moderna ha enfrentado repetidamente este tipo de crisis. Esto, según muchos académicos, no se debe tanto a rasgos culturales compartidos, sino más a una historia de intromisión de Guerra Fría que debilitó las normas democráticas. También surge de sistemas presidenciales de estilo estadounidense y de la profunda polarización social que allana el camino para el combate político extremo.Las democracias presidenciales, al dividir el poder entre ramas en competencia, crean más oportunidades para que cargos rivales se enfrenten, incluso hasta el punto de usurparse unos a otros los poderes. Dichos sistemas también enturbian las preguntas sobre quién está al mando, lo que obliga a sus ramas o poderes a resolver disputas de manera informal, sobre la marcha y, en ocasiones, por la fuerza.Venezuela, que solía ser la democracia más antigua de la región, sufrió una serie de crisis constitucionales cuando el entonces presidente Hugo Chávez se enfrentó con jueces y otros órganos gubernamentales que bloquearon su agenda. Cada vez, Chávez —y luego su sucesor, Nicolás Maduro— apeló a los principios legales y democráticos para justificar el debilitamiento de esas instituciones hasta que, con el tiempo, las acciones de los líderes, en apariencia para salvar la democracia, prácticamente las destriparon.Hugo Chávez, expresidente de Venezuela, llegando a la Asamblea Nacional para su discurso anual sobre el estado de la nación en Caracas, en 2012. Él y su sucesor apelaron a los principios legales y democráticos para justificar su debilitamiento de las instituciones democráticas.Ariana Cubillos/Associated PressLas presidencias no son comunes en las democracias occidentales. Una de las pocas, en Francia, experimentó su propia crisis constitucional en 1958, año en el que se evitó un intento de golpe militar cuando el líder Charles de Gaulle se otorgó poderes de emergencia para establecer un gobierno de unidad que satisficiera a los líderes civiles y militares.Si bien otros tipos de sistemas pueden caer en grandes crisis, a menudo se debe a que, al igual que en una democracia presidencial, los centros de poder en rivalidad chocan hasta el punto de intentar invadir al otro.Aun así, algunos académicos argumentan que los estadounidenses que esperan comprender la trayectoria de su país no deberían mirar a Europa, sino a América Latina.Ecuador estuvo cerca del precipicio en 2018 debido al esfuerzo del entonces presidente Rafael Correa de extender sus propios límites de mandato. Pero cuando los votantes y la élite política se opusieron, Correa dejó el cargo de manera voluntaria.En 2019, Bolivia se sumió en el caos en medio de una elección disputada. Aunque la opinión pública estuvo dividida, las élites políticas y militares señalaron que creían que el líder de izquierda en funciones en aquel momento, Evo Morales, debía dejar el cargo y prácticamente lo obligaron a hacerlo.Sin embargo, cuando el remplazo de derecha de Morales no pudo evitar meses de inestabilidad y turbulencia y luego se dispuso a posponer las elecciones, muchas de esas mismas élites presionaron para que estas se realizaran rápidamente, lo que benefició al sucesor elegido por Morales.Evo Morales, expresidente de Bolivia, hablando con la prensa el día de las elecciones en La Paz, en octubre de 2019. El país se sumió en el caos tras las elecciones, que fueron objeto de controversia.Martin Alipaz/EPA vía ShutterstockLa frase “élites políticas” puede evocar imágenes de poderosos que fuman puros y se reúnen en secreto para mover los hilos de la sociedad. En realidad, los académicos usan el término para describir a legisladores, jueces, burócratas, autoridades policiales y militares, funcionarios locales, líderes empresariales y figuras culturales, la mayoría de los cuales nunca coordinarían directamente, muchos menos acordarían qué es lo mejor para el país.Aun así, son esas élites las que, en colectivo, preservan la democracia día a día. Del mismo modo en que el papel moneda solo tiene valor porque todos lo tratamos como valioso, las elecciones y las leyes solo tienen poder porque las élites se despiertan cada mañana y las consideran primordiales. Es una especie de pacto, en el que los poderosos se vinculan voluntariamente a un sistema que también los restringe.“Una democracia organizada y en buen funcionamiento no nos exige pensar activamente en qué la sostiene”, me dijo Tom Pepinsky, politólogo de la Universidad Cornell, poco después de los disturbios en el Capitolio, el 6 de enero de 2021. “Es un equilibrio; todos están motivados a participar como si continuara”.Pero en una enorme crisis constitucional, cuando las normas y reglas destinadas a guiar la democracia se ponen en duda o se dejan de lado por completo, esas élites, súbitamente, se enfrentan a la pregunta de cómo —o si se debe— mantener su pacto democrático.No siempre estarán de acuerdo sobre cuál es el mejor camino para la democracia, para el país o para ellos mismos. En ocasiones, el impacto de ver la vulnerabilidad de la democracia los llevará a redoblar su compromiso con ella. En otras, a deshacerse de ese sistema en parte o en su totalidad.El resultado, a menudo, es una lucha de élites que se presionan entre sí directamente, como lo hicieron muchos republicanos de alto rango y asesores de la Casa Blanca durante el 6 de enero, o mediante declaraciones públicas dirigidas a los miles de funcionarios que operan la maquinaria del gobierno.Los académicos denominan esto como un “juego de coordinación”, en el que todos esos actores intentan comprender o influir en la manera en que otros responderán, hasta que surja un consenso mínimamente viable. Puede no parecerse tanto a una trama bien definida, sino más bien a una manada de animales asustados, por lo que el resultado puede ser difícil de predecir.Antes del 6 de enero, no había muchas razones para cuestionar el compromiso de los legisladores con la democracia. “No se había cuestionado si apoyaban o no la democracia en un sentido interno real; eso nunca había estado en juego”, afirmó Pepinsky.Ahora, una crisis los había obligado a decidir si anular las elecciones, y eso demostró que no todos esos legisladores, de tener esa opción, votarían para defender la democracia. “Me ha sorprendido demasiado cuánto de esto en realidad depende de 535 personas”, confesó Pepinsky, refiriéndose a la cantidad de legisladores en el Congreso.Max Fisher es reportero y columnista de temas internacionales con sede en Nueva York. Ha reportado sobre conflictos, diplomacia y cambio social desde cinco continentes. Es autor de The Interpreter, una columna que explora las ideas y el contexto detrás de los principales eventos mundiales de actualidad. @Max_Fisher • Facebook More

Gov. Kathy Hochul appears to be cruising to a likely win in next week’s primary, but allies worry that she is not doing enough to excite voters for November.Good morning. It’s Tuesday. We’ll look at Gov. Kathy Hochul’s campaign, with an eye toward November. We’ll also check on what to know now that the global outbreak of monkeypox has reached New York.Mary Altaffer/Associated PressGov. Kathy Hochul appears to be sailing toward a comfortable win in the Democratic primary for governor next week.With an apparently commanding lead, she has followed a Rose Garden strategy against her opponents, Representative Thomas Suozzi of Long Island and Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate. She has spent millions of dollars on television commercials and digital ads. But she has mostly stayed above the political fray, avoiding in-person campaign appearances. In fact, most of her appearances this spring — in Black churches or in parades, for instance — have counted as official duties. Her campaign has listed only five events in the last month.Her approach has been so low-key that some elected officials, party leaders and Democratic strategists are worried. They fear that Hochul, a relatively untested candidate from western New York who was not well known downstate before she replaced Andrew Cuomo as governor 10 months ago, has not built the kind of political ground game that would generate enthusiasm among Black and Latino voters and union members in New York City.That, they say, could have implications for the turnout in November — and low turnout, in turn, could endanger Democrats down the ballot. Democratic strategies say that it could hurt Antonio Delgado, the Hudson Valley congressman she chose to be lieutenant governor. He is in a tight contest against Ana Maria Archila and Diana Reyna.Charles Rangel, the longtime dean of Harlem politics, sounded the alarm in a meeting with two of Hochul’s top political aides last month. He asked: Where’s the campaign? No posters had gone up, and no surrogates were working subway stations to get out the vote for the primary.Three major union leaders who are backing Hochul told my colleagues Nicholas Fandos and Jeffery C. Mays that they were perplexed about the relative quiet from Hochul’s team. They said they had not been asked for help to canvass or do other errands her predecessors had routinely sought. One of them said flatly that he had seen no evidence of campaign activity.Tyquana Henderson-Rivers, a senior Hochul adviser, acknowledged that the campaign was taking a “slower build” approach than officials like Rangel might be used to.But it has its reasons, she said, including the pandemic — which has shifted some in-person campaign outreach onto harder-to-see digital platforms — and the calendar. This is the first year in which New York’s primary for governor is being held in June rather than September. The change will lengthen the time between the primary and the general election. Hochul’s team is consciously conserving resources now to prepare for campaigning in late summer and fall.“We hear you,” Henderson-Rivers said, when asked about fellow Democrats’ concerns, before adding that Hochul’s campaign operation would get in gear. “We’re revving,” she said.WeatherPrepare for a chance of showers in the afternoon, with temperatures near the high 70s. At night, the chance of showers continues with temps in the mid-60s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until July 4 (Independence Day).The latest New York newsJefferson Siegel for The New York TimesAn accident downtown: A taxi cab jumped a sidewalk in Manhattan and hit several pedestrians. Three people were taken to the hospital in critical condition.The toll of lower-profile attacks: A Father’s Day shooting in Harlem killed one person and wounded eight others. Over the weekend there were also shootings in Queens, Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Vestavia, Ala.Unionizing Starbucks:Jaz Brisack was a Rhodes Scholar who became a Starbucks barista and worked to help unionize the company’s stores in Buffalo.Living in the cityReturn of the happy hour: Companies are struggling to coax employees back to the office, but after-work crowds at some bars are nearing prepandemic levels.Dog insurance: Many insurance companies have long refused coverage or charge more for dogs considered more dangerous, but New York and other states say policies shouldn’t be breed specific.Arts & CultureMan behind the bob: Being Anna Wintour’s hairstylist may sound glamorous, but it’s his art practice that gets Andreas Anastasis talking.Art heist recovery: A librarian and a curator in New Paltz, N.Y., helped the F.B.I. track down 200-year-old paintings that were stolen in 1972.Monkeypox cases are ticking upCDC, via Associated PressMonkeypox, a virus long endemic in parts of Africa, is spreading globally. Some 23 cases have been reported in New York, but health officials believe there are more undetected cases. Most reported cases are among gay or bisexual men or men who have had sex with other men. The city has said that most of the cases so far have been mild, but even mild cases can cause a painful rash that can take two to four weeks to resolve. I asked Sharon Otterman, who covers health care for Metro, to explain.How is it spread? Can it spread through respiratory droplets the way the coronavirus can?The virus is spread primarily by skin-to-skin contact with the sores of someone who is infected.It appears to have been spreading mostly through intimate and sexual contact, though it is not officially considered a sexually transmitted disease. Scientists say it can also spread by contact with sharing objects with an infected person, such as towels or sex toys.It can spread by respiratory droplets, which are created when we speak, sneeze or cough, but that would probably take prolonged close contact. There is also some evidence that it may be able to spread in a limited way via tiny aerosols, like Covid-19, meaning that it may be airborne.But the monkeypox virus in general is much less contagious than Covid-19. It is not thought that you can get it just by breathing the air in a room where an infected person is sitting, for example. So, overall, the risk for most people is low at this point.You write that testing remains rare, which sounds troublingly like the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. How are monkeypox tests handled?Only about 70 public labs in the country can conduct the test for orthopox, the family of viruses to which monkeypox belongs. To get a test, a health care provider has to call the local health department and have a conversation about whether a test is warranted, and right now, health officials in New York will not test everyone who just comes in with a rash.But if an orthopox virus test is positive, the sample then goes to the C.D.C. in Atlanta for final confirmation of monkeypox. The whole process can take several days. To speed the response, any orthopox test that’s positive is presumed to be monkeypox even before the confirmation test.If you text positive for monkeypox, what’s the treatment?Most patients get better on their own, with some supportive care for symptoms, such as to relieve the itching from the pox.What to Know About the Monkeypox VirusCard 1 of 5What is monkeypox? More

The House committee investigating the Capitol attack will also underscore the vitriol and suffering that election workers endured because of President Donald J. Trump’s lies.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol on Tuesday plans to detail President Donald J. Trump’s personal involvement in a pressure campaign on state officials to subvert the will of the voters as well as an audacious scheme to put forward false slates of electors in seven states to keep him in power.At its fourth hearing this month, scheduled for 1 p.m., the committee will seek to demonstrate what has been a repeated point of emphasis for the panel: that Mr. Trump knew — or should have known — that his lies about a stolen election, and the plans he pursued to stay in office, were wrong, but that he pushed ahead with them anyway.The committee also plans to highlight, in potentially emotional testimony, the vitriol and the death threats that election workers endured because of Mr. Trump’s lies.“We will show evidence of the president’s involvement in this scheme,” Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and a member of the panel, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”“We will also again show evidence about what his own lawyers came to think about this scheme,” he continued. “And we will show courageous state officials who stood up and said they wouldn’t go along with this plan to either call legislatures back into session or decertify the results for Joe Biden.”Mr. Schiff, who will play a key role in Tuesday’s hearing, told The Los Angeles Times that the panel would release new information about the deep involvement of Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff. Among that evidence, Mr. Schiff said, will be text messages revealing that Mr. Meadows wanted to send autographed “Make America Great Again” hats to people conducting an audit of the Georgia election.The hearing’s first witness will be Rusty Bowers, a Republican who is the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives. Mr. Bowers withstood pressure to overturn his state’s election from Mr. Trump; Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer; and even Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas.Mr. Bowers will describe the pressure campaign by Mr. Trump and his allies, according to a committee aide. He will also describe the harassment he endured before and after Jan. 6, and its impact on his family, the aide said.The Jan. 6 committee plans to release new information about Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, according to a member of the panel.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe panel will then hear testimony from Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, and Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer for the secretary of state’s office, who were pressed to overturn their state’s election results. In a phone call, Mr. Trump pushed Mr. Raffensperger to “find” him enough votes to put the state in his column and vaguely threatened him with “a criminal offense.”Finally, the committee will hear from Shaye Moss, a Georgia election worker who was the target of a right-wing smear campaign.Ms. Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, both of whom processed ballots in Atlanta during the 2020 election for the Fulton County elections board, filed a defamation lawsuit against The Gateway Pundit, a right-wing conspiratorial website that published dozens of false stories about them. The stories described the two women as “crooked Democrats” and claimed that they “pulled out suitcases full of ballots and began counting those ballots without election monitors in the room.”Ms. Moss and Ms. Freeman also sued Mr. Giuliani, saying that he “bears substantial and outsized responsibility for the campaign of partisan character assassination” that they faced.Investigations conducted by the Georgia secretary of state’s office found no wrongdoing by the two women.Shaye Moss, a Fulton County election worker, scanned mail-in ballots in Atlanta during Georgia’s primary elections in June 2020. Ms. Moss and her mother later became targets of a right-wing smear campaign.Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated PressThe pressure campaign on state officials came as the Trump campaign was organizing false slates of electors in seven swing states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. The committee and federal prosecutors have been investigating how those slates were used by Mr. Trump’s allies in an attempt to disrupt the normal workings of Congress’s certification of the Electoral College votes on Jan. 6.The fourth hearing comes as the committee continues to build its case against Mr. Trump, laying out evidence of how he spread lies about the election results, then raised hundreds of millions of dollars off those lies, and how he tried to stay in office by pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject legitimate electoral votes.A fifth hearing planned for Thursday will dig into Mr. Trump’s attempts to intervene into the workings of the Justice Department, including exploring the possibility of firing the acting attorney general for not going along with his plans.The committee is continuing to gather evidence as it holds its hearings. The panel recently sent a letter to Ms. Thomas, who goes by the nickname of Ginni, asking to interview her about her communications with John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who advised Mr. Trump on how to overturn the election, and later unsuccessfully sought a pardon.“We believe you may have information concerning John Eastman’s plans and activities relevant to our investigation,” the panel wrote to Ms. Thomas in a letter obtained by The New York Times.As the committee explores how Mr. Trump’s lies sparked death threats against election workers, one member of the panel revealed on Sunday some of the vitriol he had endured. The lawmaker, Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, posted to Twitter a letter that threatened the murder of his family.“This threat that came in, it was mailed to my house,” Mr. Kinzinger said on ABC’s “This Week,” adding: “We got it a couple of days ago and it threatens to execute me, as well as my wife and 5-month-old child. We’ve never seen or had anything like that.” More

Donald Trump plotted fake electors scheme, January 6 panel set to showCommittee also expected to probe Trump’s pressure on officials in crucial states to corruptly reverse his election defeat The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is expected to show at its fourth hearing on Tuesday that Donald Trump and top advisers coordinated the scheme to send fake slates of electors as part of an effort to return him to the White House.The panel is expected to also examine Trump’s campaign to pressure top officials in seven crucial battleground states to corruptly reverse his defeat to Joe Biden in the weeks and months after the 2020 election.At the afternoon hearing, the select committee is expected to focus heavily on the fake electors scheme, which has played a large part in its nearly year-long investigation into Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the election at the state level.Liz Cheney’s condemnation of Trump’s lies wins over DemocratsRead moreThe panel will show how the fake electors scheme – which may have been illegal – was the underlying basis for Trump’s unlawful strategy to have his vice-president, Mike Pence, refuse to certify Biden’s win in certain states and grant him a second term.If the 2020 election cycle had been like any other when the electoral college convened on 14 December 2020 and Democratic electors attested to Biden’s victory over Trump, that would have marked the end of any post-election period conflict.But that year, after the authorized Democratic electors met at statehouses to formally name Biden as president, in seven battleground states, illegitimate Republican electors arrived too, saying they had come to instead name Trump as president.The Trump electors were turned away. However, they nonetheless proceeded to sign fake election certificates that declared they were the “duly elected and qualified” electors certifying Trump as the winner of the presidential election in their state.The fake electors scheme was conceived in an effort to create “dueling” slates of electors that Pence could use to pretend the election was in doubt and refuse to formalize Biden’s win at the congressional certification on 6 January.Kinzinger: Trump’s actions surrounding January 6 amount to ‘seditious conspiracy’Read moreAnd, the select committee will show, the fake election certificates were in part manufactured by the Trump White House, and that the entire fake electors scheme was coordinated by Trump and his top advisers, including former chief of staff Mark Meadows.“We will show evidence of the president’s involvement in this scheme,” congressman Adam Schiff, the select committee member leading the hearing alongside the panel’s chairman, Bennie Thompson, and vice-chair, Liz Cheney, said on CNN on Sunday.Members of Trump’s legal team insist this is a distorted characterization of the scheme, saying the so-called alternate slates were put together and signed in case that states did re-certify their election results for Trump and they needed to be sent right away to Congress.But that explanation is difficult to reconcile given Trump lawyer John Eastman admitted in a 19 December 2020 the Trump slates were “dead on arrival” if they were not certified, and yet still pushed Pence to reject Biden’s slates even though Trump slates were still not certified.The fake electors scheme is important because it 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.If Trump was involved in the scheme, and the justice department pursues a case, then the former US president may also have criminal exposure. At least one federal grand jury in Washington is investigating the scheme and the involvement of top Trump election lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani.The select committee is also set to closely focus on Trump’s pressure campaign on leading Republican state officials in the weeks and months after the election, according to a committee aide who previewed the hearing on a briefing call with reporters.‘A one-sided witch-hunt’: angry Trump lashes out at January 6 hearingsRead moreAmong other key flash points that the panel intends to examine include Trump’s now-infamous 2 January 2021 call with Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger – who will testify live at the hearing – when Trump asked him to “find” votes to make him win the election.“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said during the conversation, a tape of which was obtained by the Washington Post and House investigators working for the select committee.The select committee will describe Trump pressuring other state officials to investigate election fraud claims his own White House and campaign lawyers knew were false, relying on testimony from Arizona House speaker Rusty Bowers.And the panel will additionally hear testimony from Shaye Moss, a Georgia election worker in Fulton County, who was falsely accused by Giuliani and others of sneaking in “suitcases” of ballots for Biden – a conspiracy debunked by election officials.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackMike PenceUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

In a speech on Monday, former Vice President Mike Pence sounded like a future presidential candidate, but not like someone interested in discussing the specifics of Jan. 6.Former Vice President Mike Pence has emerged from the Jan. 6 hearings in a peculiar position.To some Democrats in Congress, he has become something of a hero for resisting Donald J. Trump’s pressure campaign to overturn the 2020 election at a time when American democracy seemed to teeter on the brink. To Mr. Trump and his political base, Mr. Pence is a weakling who gave away the presidency. And to a swath of anti-Trump voters in both parties, he is merely someone who finally did the right thing by standing up to his former boss — years too late, after willingly defending or ignoring some of Mr. Trump’s earlier excesses.The whipsaw of images creates an uncertain foundation for a potential presidential campaign, for which Mr. Pence has been laying the groundwork. Yet the former vice president is continuing with his travels around the country in advance of the 2024 primaries, as he navigates his fraught positioning.Much as he did after the 2020 election, when he tried to keep his tensions with Mr. Trump from becoming public only to have him push them into the light, Mr. Pence continues to walk a tightrope, trying to make the best of a situation he didn’t seek without becoming openly adversarial to the president with whom he served and who remains the leader of the Republican Party.Mr. Pence himself has said little about Jan. 6, though his aides have testified about his resolve as Mr. Trump and his allies tried to press him to subvert President Biden’s victory. On Monday, in an economic speech at the University Club of Chicago, Mr. Pence sounded very much like a candidate — but not much like someone interested in discussing the specifics of what he lived through on Jan. 6.“We’ve all been through a lot over the last several years,” Mr. Pence told the audience. “A global pandemic, social unrest, a divisive election, a tragic day in our nation’s capital — and an administration seemingly every day driving our economy into the abyss of a socialist welfare state.” Insights into Mr. Pence’s mind-set at the time have come largely from the testimony of his former chief of staff, Marc Short, and of his former counsel, Greg Jacob. Mr. Pence, as he made clear in his Chicago speech, has kept his sights trained on the Biden administration and on electing Republicans, including Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia and others who were sharply at odds with Mr. Trump, in the midterms. If Mr. Pence has sharper things to say, he may not do so until the fall, when he has a book coming out.Former Vice President Mike Pence at a campaign event for Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia in Kennesaw, Ga., in May.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“The situation Mike Pence faces is a political briar patch,” said David Kochel, a Republican strategist who worked on Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign in 2016. “The more he’s praised by Democrats and the media for doing the right thing on Jan. 6, the more some in Trump’s base grow skeptical of his loyalty to the Trump team.” He added, “There is no upside for him to lean into any of this.”Later on Monday in Peoria, Ill., Mr. Pence called on Republicans to focus on the future and not the 2020 presidential election, an indirect reference to Mr. Trump’s incessant focus on his election loss that continues to this day. “In the days between now and Election Day, let’s cast a positive vision for the future for the American people,” Mr. Pence told a crowd of Republican activists at a Lincoln Day dinner. “Yes, let’s be the loyal opposition. Let’s hold the other side accountable every single day. In the days between now and Election Day, we need you to say yes — yes to the future, yes to a future of freedom and our cherished values. And the Republican Party must be the party of the future.”The Themes of the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsMaking a Case Against Trump: The committee appears to be laying out a road map for prosecutors to indict former President Donald J. Trump. But the path to any trial is uncertain.Day One: During the first hearing, the panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Day Two: In its second hearing, the committee showed how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers in declaring victory prematurely and relentlessly pressing claims of fraud he was told were wrong.Day Three: Mr. Trump pressured Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing.Three times Mr. Pence lauded accomplishments of “the Trump-Pence administration” and he related a story from his high school reunion about a former classmate who encouraged him by telling him, “We need you guys back.”During the speech, Kathy Sparrow, the chairwoman of the Republican Party of Hancock County, Ill., shouted “Pence for president!” Mr. Pence ignored the shout. “Trump had his turn,” Ms. Sparrow said after Mr. Pence’s remarks. “It’s time for Pence to step up and run.” The attention on Mr. Pence provides both potential benefit and peril as he considers running for president.Paeans from Democrats certainly do not help him, but his actions before, during and after Jan. 6 give him an opportunity to differentiate himself in what could be a crowded primary field, one that may include Mr. Trump. Mr. Pence, whose support for Mr. Trump helped allay concerns about him from evangelical voters in 2016, has the advantage of starting as a known entity to the Republican base.Mr. Pence has tried to stake out a lane for himself by representing the aspects of the Trump White House that appealed to conservatives but without the coarse and sometimes abusive behavior from Mr. Trump that they grew weary of. But this approach has been complicated by the fact that the loudest praise for Mr. Pence has come from Democrats who voted to impeach Mr. Trump.“In a time of absolutely scandalous betrayal of people’s oaths of office and crimes being committed all over the place, somebody who does their job and sticks to the law will stand out as a hero on that day,” Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attacks, said on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “And on that day, he was a hero.”Many other Democrats, however, have resisted the idea that Mr. Pence — who is known as cautious and loyal, and who did not break with Mr. Trump until the very end — should be praised, particularly as he considers campaigning to be the next president.“Pence is currently on his own political rehab tour, hoping he can wash the stink of being Trump’s vice president off,” the Arizona Democratic Party said in a blast email when Mr. Pence made a trip to the southern border in that state recently. “But we know just because Mike Pence didn’t give in on January 6 doesn’t change the fact he missed multiple opportunities to do the right thing for 4 whole years.”Other Democrats, including the members of the Democratic National Committee, have highlighted that Mr. Pence adhered closely to Mr. Trump without wavering during some of the biggest controversies of his presidency, including his first impeachment, and that Mr. Pence did not speak publicly about his views until moments before the election certification began on Jan. 6.Nonetheless, even some of the harshest critics of the Trump era have said that the actions of Jan. 6 should not be treated lightly.Vice President Mike Pence with President Donald J. Trump at the White House three weeks after Election Day in 2020.Erin Schaff/The New York Times“It’s true that for months before the election and weeks after, Mike Pence played along with Trump’s baseless election conspiracies,” said David Axelrod, a former top adviser to former President Barack Obama. “He certainly didn’t dissent. But, at the end of the day, he’ll be remembered for one critical moment when he resisted enormous pressure and literally put his life on the line for our democracy. And, for that, he deserves all the accolades he’s received.”The complaints from Democrats have focused not just on his tolerance for Mr. Trump’s norm-shattering behavior but also for the administration’s policies. Mr. Pence’s aides say he believed the administration was enacting policies he generally agreed with, including putting forward conservative nominees for three Supreme Court seats. His long loyalty to Mr. Trump could resonate with some Republicans, but, with the former president demanding total fealty, it is a difficult line to walk.“The irony is that Pence was arguably the primary enabler of Trump,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist based in California. “He was the mainstream traditional conservative Republican who would go to donors and not just defend Trump and his policies, but with a straight face insist that Donald J. Trump was a good man.”Mr. Short, Mr. Pence’s former chief of staff, has been critical of aspects of the House committee’s work, at a time when Mr. Trump has encouraged his supporters to view the panel as illegitimate. That has allowed Mr. Pence to keep some distance from the work of the committee, which he has not appeared before himself.Officials are expected to try again to ask Mr. Pence to testify, a move he will most likely resist. On Sunday, Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California and a committee member, left open the idea that requesting his presence may still happen.“Certainly a possibility,” Mr. Schiff said. “We’re not excluding anyone or anything at this point.”Maggie Haberman More

During his campaign, Gustavo Petro proposed major reforms if he was elected. After winning Sunday’s presidential election, he’ll now have to prove he can carry out those changes.BOGOTÁ, Colombia — In a packed arena in Bogotá on Sunday, amid a burst of confetti and below a sign that read “Colombia won,” Gustavo Petro celebrated his victory as the first leftist ever elected president of Colombia.“The government of hope has arrived,” said the former rebel and longtime legislator, to a cascade of cheers.For decades, Colombia has been one of the most conservative countries in Latin America, where the left has long been associated with a violent insurgency and past leftist presidential candidates have been assassinated on the campaign trail.Against that backdrop, Mr. Petro’s win was historic, signaling voters’ frustration with a right-wing establishment that many said had failed to address generations of poverty and inequality that have only worsened during the pandemic.Mr. Petro’s choice for running mate, Francia Márquez, an environmental activist who will be the country’s first Black vice president, made the victory all the more exceptional. Some of the highest voter turnout rates were recorded in some of the poorest and most neglected parts of the country, suggesting that many people identified with her prominent and repeated calls for inclusion, social justice and environmental protection.As a candidate, Mr. Petro promised to reshape some of the most important sectors of Colombian society in a nation that is among the most unequal in Latin America.But now that he will occupy the presidential palace, he will soon have to turn those pledges — some of which critics call radical — into action.“This is a program of very deep transformations,” said Yann Basset, a political science professor at Rosario University in Bogotá. “On all these issues he is going to need significant support from Congress, which promises to be quite difficult.”Supporters of Mr. Petro on Sunday in Bucaramanga, Colombia.Nathalia Angarita for The New York TimesMr. Petro has vowed to vastly expand social programs, providing a significant subsidy to single mothers, guaranteeing work and a wage to unemployed people, bolstering access to higher education, increasing food aid, shifting the country to a publicly controlled health care system and remaking the pension system.He will pay for this, in part, he says, by raising taxes on the 4,000 wealthiest families, removing some corporate tax benefits, raising some import tariffs and targeting tax evaders.A core part of his platform is a plan to shift from what he calls Colombia’s “old extractive economy,” based on oil and coal, to one focused on other industries, in part to fight climate change.Some of Mr. Petro’s policies could cause tension with the United States, which has poured billions of dollars into Colombia in the last two decades to help its governments halt the production and export of cocaine, to little effect. Mr. Petro has promised to remake the country’s strategy on drugs, shifting away from the eradication of the coca crop, the base product in cocaine, to emphasizing rural development.Washington has already begun moving in the direction of prioritizing development, but Mr. Petro could clash with U.S. officials on precisely what this looks like.Mr. Petro has also pledged to fully implement the 2016 peace deal with the country’s largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and to slow the destruction of the Colombian Amazon, where deforestation has risen to new highs in recent years.One of Mr. Petro’s biggest challenges will be paying for his ambitious agenda, in particular finding new revenue to compensate for lost oil and coal money while expanding social programs.Two other leftists, Gabriel Boric in Chile and Pedro Castillo in Peru, have taken office recently with ambitious promises to expand social programs, only to have their popularity plummet amid rising inflation, among other issues.Colombia collects less in taxes as a proportion of its gross domestic product compared with almost every other country in the region.The country already has a high deficit, and last year, when the current president, Iván Duque, attempted to pursue a tax plan to help lower it, hundreds of thousands of people took to the street in protest.“The budget numbers just don’t add up,” James Bosworth, the founder of Hxagon, a political risk consulting firm in Bogotá, wrote in a newsletter on Monday. “The costs on Petro’s proposed social programs are likely to burn through the budget and leave a rapidly widening deficit.”“By year two or three of his administration,” Mr. Bosworth continued, “he’s going to have to make tough choices due to financial restrictions and that will end up angering some portion of the coalition that elected him.”Mauricio Cárdenas, a former finance minister, said that the first step Mr. Petro should take is to announce an experienced finance minister who can calm market and investor fears by assuring the public that he will not be engaging in runaway spending or excessive government intervention.Another major challenge could be working with Congress. Mr. Petro’s coalition, called the Historic Pact, has the largest number of lawmakers in the legislature. But he does not have a majority, which he will need to push through his agenda. He has already reached out to political leaders outside his coalition, but it’s unclear how much support he will gain — and whether forming new alliances will force him to give up some of his proposals. “I think he is going to have to abandon certain parts of this program,” Mr. Basset said. “In any case, I believe that he does not have a majority to implement everything he has promised.”Mr. Petro will also inherit a deeply polarized society, divided by class, race, region and ethnicity and scarred by years of violence and war.For decades, Colombia’s government fought the FARC, and the war grew into a complex battle among left-wing guerrilla groups, right-wing paramilitaries and the military, all of which have been accused of human rights abuses.Despite the 2016 peace accord with the FARC, many of the fault lines of the conflict remain, which has been supercharged by social media, allowing rumor and misinformation to fly.Polls before the election showed growing distrust in almost all major institutions.“This election in my mind is by far the most polarized that we’ve seen in Colombia in many years,” said Arlene B. Tickner, a political scientist at Rosario University. “So simply calming the waters and speaking to in particular those voters and those sectors of Colombian society that did not choose him, and that have significant fears about a Petro presidency, I think is going to be a key challenge.”One of Mr. Petro’s most difficult tasks could be addressing violence in the countryside.Despite the peace deal, armed groups have continued to flourish, mostly in rural areas, feeding off the drug trade, the cattle industry, human trafficking and other activities.Homicides, massacres and the killings of social leaders are all up in recent years, and internal displacement remains high, with 147,000 people forced to flee their homes last year, according to government data.Many people affected by this violence voted for Mr. Petro and Ms. Márquez, who was born in Cauca, one of the hardest hit parts of Colombia.Mr. Petro’s plan to address the violence includes a land reform that would discourage the ownership of large land parcels through taxation and give land titles to poor people whose lack of resources often indentures them to armed groups.But land reform has stymied president after president, and Mr. Petro admitted in an interview this year that it may be “the hardest” part of his campaign pledges to fulfill.“Because it’s this topic that has caused Colombia’s wars,” he said.Megan Janetsky contributed reporting. More

The governing coalition decided to dissolve Parliament, plunging the country back into paralysis and throwing a political lifeline to Benjamin Netanyahu.JERUSALEM — Israel’s governing coalition will dissolve Parliament before the end of the month, bringing down the government and sending the country to a fifth election in three years, the prime minister said on Monday.The decision plunged Israel back into paralysis and threw a political lifeline to Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-wing prime minister who left office just one year ago upon the formation of the current government. Mr. Netanyahu is currently standing trial on corruption charges but has refused to leave politics, and his Likud party is leading in the polls.Once Parliament formally votes to dissolve itself, it will bring down the curtain on one of the most ambitious political projects in Israeli history: an unwieldy eight-party coalition that united political opponents from the right, left and center, and included the first independent Arab party to join an Israeli governing coalition.But that ideological diversity was also its undoing.Differences between the coalition’s two ideological wings, compounded by unrelenting pressure from Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing alliance, led two right-wing lawmakers to defect — removing the coalition’s majority in Parliament. When several left-wing and Arab lawmakers also rebelled on key votes, the coalition found it impossible to govern.The final straw was the government’s inability last week to muster enough votes to extend a two-tier legal system in the West Bank, which has differentiated between Israeli settlers and Palestinians since Israel occupied the territory in 1967.Several Arab members of the coalition declined to vote for the system, which must be extended every five years. That prevented the bill’s passage and prompted Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a former settler leader, to collapse the government and thereby delay a final vote until after another election.“We did everything we possibly could to preserve this government, whose survival we see as a national interest,” Mr. Bennett, 50, said in a televised speech. “To my regret, our efforts did not succeed,” he added.Expected to be held in the fall, the snap election will be Israel’s fifth since April 2019. It comes at an already delicate time for the country, after a rise in Palestinian attacks on Israelis and an escalation in a clandestine war between Israel and Iran. It also complicates diplomacy with Israel’s most important ally, the United States, as the new political crisis arose less than a month before President Joseph R. Biden’s first visit to the Middle East as a head of state.Mr. Biden will be welcomed by a caretaker prime minister, Yair Lapid, the current foreign minister. The terms of the coalition agreement dictated that if the government collapsed because of right-wing defections, Mr. Lapid, a centrist former broadcaster, would take over as interim leader from Mr. Bennett.Mr. Lapid will lead the government for at least several months, through the election campaign and the protracted coalition negotiations likely to follow.Former premier Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the press at the Knesset on Monday.Oren Ben Hakoon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn a show of unity on Monday night, Mr. Bennett and Mr. Lapid gave consecutive speeches from the same stage, both hailing the successes of an unlikely government that many analysts did not expect to last even for a year.The fractious alliance was formed last June after four inconclusive elections in two years had left Israel without a state budget or a functional government.The coalition’s members agreed to team up to end this paralysis, and because of their shared desire to oust Mr. Netanyahu. Mr. Netanyahu’s refusal to resign despite standing trial on corruption charges had alienated many of his natural allies on the right, leading some of them to ally with their ideological opponents to remove him from office.The coalition was cohesive enough to pass a new budget, Israel’s first in more than three years, and to make key administrative appointments. It steadied Israel’s relationship with the Biden administration and deepened its emerging ties with key Arab states.Its leaders and supporters also hailed it for showing that compromise and civility were still possible in a society deeply divided along political, religious and ethnic lines.“We formed a government which many believed was an impossible one — we formed it in order to stop the terrible tailspin Israel was in the midst of,” Mr. Bennett said in his speech.“Together we were able to pull Israel out from the hole,” he added.Nevertheless, the government was ultimately unable to overcome its contradictions.Its members clashed regularly over the rights of Israel’s Arab minority, the relationship between religion and state, and settlement policy in the occupied West Bank — clashes that ultimately led two key members to defect, and others to vote against government bills.The new election offers Mr. Netanyahu another chance to win enough votes to form his own majority coalition. But his path back to power is far from clear.Polls suggest that his party, Likud, will easily be the largest in the next Parliament, but its allies may not have enough seats to let Mr. Netanyahu assemble a parliamentary majority. Some parties may also only agree to work with Likud if Mr. Netanyahu steps down as party leader.The opening of the summer session of the Knesset last month.Maya Alleruzzo/Associated PressThis dynamic may lead to months of protracted coalition negotiations, returning Israel to the stasis it fell into before Mr. Netanyahu’s departure, when his government lacked the cohesion to enact a national budget or fill important positions in the civil service, and the country held four elections in two years. Through it all, Mr. Netanyahu is expected to remain on trial, a yearslong process that is unaffected by a new election, and which will likely only end if he either accepts a plea deal, is found guilty or innocent, or if prosecutors withdraw their charges. Despite the promises of some coalition members, the outgoing government failed to pass legislation to bar a candidate charged with criminal offenses from becoming prime minister.Critics fear Mr. Netanyahu will use a return to office to pass laws that might obstruct the prosecution, an accusation that he has denied.Understand the Collapse of Israel’s GovernmentCard 1 of 4A fragile coalition. More

A right-wing Senate candidate accompanies a squad of heavily armed men as they storm a home looking for ‘Republicans in name only.’Eric Greitens, a Republican candidate for the United States Senate in Missouri, released a violent new political advertisement on Monday showing himself racking a shotgun and accompanying a team of men armed with assault rifles as they stormed — SWAT team-style — into a home in search of “RINOs,” or Republicans in name only.“Join the MAGA crew,” Mr. Greitens, a former Navy SEAL, declares in the ad. “Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.”The ad by Mr. Greitens was just the latest but perhaps most menacing in a long line of Republican campaign ads featuring firearms and seeking to equate hard-core conservatism with the use of deadly weapons.It was posted online less than a week after the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol showed how threats by former President Donald J. Trump against his own vice president, Mike Pence, had helped to instigate the mob attack on the building.During a hearing by the committee on Thursday, J. Michael Luttig, a former federal judge widely respected by conservatives, suggested that Mr. Trump and his allies posed a “clear and present danger to American democracy.”The use of violent rhetoric has steadily increased in Republican circles in recent months as threats and aggressive imagery have become more commonplace in community meeting rooms, congressional offices and on the campaign trail.While much of the violent speech and image-making by Republicans has been aimed at Democrats, some of it, as in Mr. Greitens’s ad, has been focused on fellow party members thought to be insufficiently conservative.On Sunday, Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois and a member of the Jan. 6 committee, published a letter addressed to his wife from someone who had threatened to execute the couple.By midafternoon on Monday, Twitter had hidden Mr. Greitens’ new ad behind a warning saying that it violated rules about “abusive behavior.” Facebook removed the ad altogether.Mr. Greitens’s campaign made no apologies for it, however. “If anyone doesn’t get the metaphor, they are either lying or dumb,” said Dylan Johnson, the campaign manager.The ad by Mr. Greitens, a former Missouri governor, comes as his campaign for Senate has stumbled following lurid allegations of blackmail, sexual misconduct and child abuse. In March, Mr. Greitens’s former wife, Sheena Greitens, accused him of abusive behavior, including an incident she recounted that loosened one of their son’s teeth. A number of Republicans, including Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, called on Mr. Greitens then to quit the race.Mr. Greitens has sought an endorsement from Mr. Trump, so far without success. His campaign chair is Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancée of Donald Trump Jr.Experts have warned that violent rhetoric can often result in actual physical violence.“When individuals feel more confident and legitimate in voicing violent sentiments, it can encourage others to feel more confident in making actual violence easier,” said Robert Pape, who studies political violence at the University of Chicago. “Unfortunately, this is a self-reinforcing spiral.”Some Republicans criticized Mr. Greitens for posting the ad.“Every Republican should denounce this sick and dangerous ad from Eric Greitens,” Barbara Comstock, a former Republican congresswoman from Virginia, said on Monday. “This is just a taste of the ‘clear and present danger’ that Judge Luttig talked about last week.” More