Elections

Sean Patrick Maloney is a Democratic Party stalwart who declares himself a “practical, mainstream guy.”Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a political outsider-turned-left-wing star with a powerful social media megaphone.Perhaps no two House Democrats better represent the dueling factions of a party at war with itself — over matters of ideology and institutions, how to amass power and, most of all, how to beat Republicans. Mr. Maloney, who represents a Hudson Valley-area district, is the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, tasked with protecting incumbents and making him a pillar of the establishment. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who represents the Bronx and Queens, has made it her mission to push that establishment to the left, one endorsement of a liberal challenger at a time.The two forces collided this week when Ms. Ocasio-Cortez handed her endorsement to Mr. Maloney’s primary opponent, Alessandra Biaggi, a left-leaning state senator with a political pedigree. It is often frowned upon for incumbents of the same party to back primary challengers, and it is especially unusual within a state’s delegation. But Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who toppled a Democratic incumbent herself in 2018, has never been one to abide by such rules, and her muscle and fund-raising savvy could be a major factor in the race.The move turned a contest already filled with powerful New Yorkers and divided loyalties into a messy national Democratic proxy battle. There are clear tensions on issues that have divided the moderate and left wings of the party, including public safety, Medicare for All and fund-raising tactics. Driving those disputes are more existential questions, like how to pursue political survival in a climate that appears increasingly catastrophic for the party in power.Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York at the Capitol in 2021. Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images“It’s a fight between two Democrats: one is younger and dynamic and wants to make changes quickly,” said former Governor David Paterson, for whom Mr. Maloney once worked and who has remained neutral in the race. By contrast, he said, Mr. Maloney “is now emerging in the leadership of the House, and is thinking more about the entire party and how things will go in November this year.”The fight will play out in New York’s 17th District, which under new boundaries includes parts of wealthy Westchester County, outside New York City, and conservative Hudson Valley hamlets. The district was recently redrawn as part of a redistricting fight that left some Democrats seething at Mr. Maloney. It also left the 17th District more competitive — raising the stakes for a primary fight that may turn on which candidate voters think can hold the seat. Mike Lawler, a state assemblyman, is expected to be the Republican front-runner in the primary on Aug. 23.“We have an incredible opportunity to be able to win against Republicans in November by being bold on our positions for working people,” Ms. Biaggi said in an interview.But that may not happen with an Ocasio-Cortez endorsement, warned Suzanne Berger, the chairwoman of the Westchester County Democratic Committee, who is backing Mr. Maloney.“They misjudged the voters of New York-17 if they think that is helpful to winning in November, which is the main point,” she said. “Republicans will use that endorsement as a weapon in November.”Ms. Ocasio-Cortez declined an interview request. Her spokeswoman, Lauren Hitt, said that the district would be competitive regardless and that “with Roe and gun safety on voters’ minds, Senator Biaggi’s record makes her uniquely positioned to drive out enthusiastic voters in the midterms.”Ms. Biaggi and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez have been political allies since they both rose to prominence by defeating Democratic incumbents in 2018. Ms. Biaggi, 36, is the granddaughter of Mario Biaggi, who was a 10-term congressman from New York. Hillary Clinton, whose Chappaqua home is now in the district, helped lead Ms. Biaggi’s wedding ceremony. Mr. Maloney, 55, has his own Clinton connections. He worked in former President Bill Clinton’s White House as a staff secretary, and he recently marched with Mrs. Clinton in a Memorial Day parade in Chappaqua, according to a photo he posted on Twitter. Spokesmen for the Clintons had no comment on their plans to endorse in the race.Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hugging Alessandra Biaggi in the Bronx on Election Day in 2020.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesMr. Maloney, who calls himself a “pragmatic progressive who gets things done,” is regarded as the favorite in the race, though local party officials say both candidates have work to do in introducing themselves across a newly configured district. Ms. Biaggi, for her part, argued that Mr. Maloney had been too timid on issues like health care — she supports Medicare for All and said that “ideally private insurance would not be part of that.” She casts Mr. Maloney as too close to corporate interests.And, at a moment of overlapping national crises and frequent stalemate on Capitol Hill, where Democrats hold narrow majorities, she suggested that voters were in the mood for candidates who would “fight like hell for them.”When Mr. Maloney first arrived in Congress after flipping a Republican seat in 2012, he was unquestionably more of a centrist. But his allies now dismiss the idea that the congressman — New York’s first openly gay member of Congress who has long fought for L.G.B.T.Q. rights and supported climate proposals backed by Ms. Ocasio-Cortez — is a moderate.In an interview, he said he believed “in mainstream policies that can get done right now, on things like protecting our kids from gun violence, protecting reproductive freedom and climate change.” (The Senate has stymied most of those priorities.)He noted several times that he had “nothing but respect” or “tremendous respect” for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, despite her endorsement of Ms. Biaggi.“I’m an original co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, and we have spoken about that — I speak to her all the time,” he said.But as of Thursday, he confirmed, they had not spoken since she raised the prospect last month that he should step aside as D.C.C.C. chairman, amid a battle over redistricting that threatened to tear the delegation apart. According to people in and around the delegation, who were granted anonymity to discuss private conversations, there have not been efforts to mediate between the two representatives.Ms. Hitt, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s spokeswoman, said that they were “collegial despite their differences.”After the state’s high court struck down a congressional map drawn by Democrats and a new map was announced, Mr. Maloney declared that he would be running not in the redrawn version of his current 18th Congressional District but in the slightly safer 17th District. He lives there — and Ms. Biaggi does not, although she is planning to move to it — but the area is largely represented by Representative Mondaire Jones.State Senator Alessandra Biaggi of New York speaking outside Rikers Island prison last year in support of legislation aimed at reducing the prison population.Juan Arredondo for The New York TimesThe leader of the campaign committee entertaining a challenge to a fellow incumbent drew explosive backlash, and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, citing a conflict of interest, suggested that Mr. Maloney should step down as chairman should he pursue such a challenge. Ultimately, Mr. Jones decided to run in a different district and a primary was averted, but some members still privately bristle at the episode.Asked about his message to disgruntled colleagues, Mr. Maloney acknowledged that he “could have done things better,” even as he stressed that the district he selected was only marginally safer for Democrats than the alternative.“I also thought there was a way for it to work out and avoid a primary between members and that’s just what we did,” he said.He also promised that, as chairman of the committee, his “heart” and his “focus” would be on protecting the Democratic majority even as he navigated his own race.At the same time, Mr. Maloney noted that he ended a policy that blacklisted consultants or political groups that backed candidates who ran against incumbents. The policy had been a point of contention between left-leaning members and the D.C.C.C.Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has backed several challengers this year — one lost and one narrowly trails in a race that is headed to a recount — much to the annoyance of some Democrats.“New York’s post-redistricting fiasco is a clear demonstration of why a sitting member of Congress should not lead the political arm of the Democratic Party,” said Representative Kathleen Rice of New York. But she also seemed to criticize Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, complaining about “certain members with their own long history of challenging incumbents” who are stirring the pot.“When the stakes are this high, Democrats should be coming together to keep the majority, rather than promoting Dem-on-Dem violence,” she said.Asked about criticism that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is overly eager to take on her colleagues, Ms. Hitt said that the congresswoman believed that no one was entitled to re-election “by default.”Some nationally prominent House Democrats have rallied around Mr. Maloney, who is close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The list includes the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio, who said in an interview Thursday that she was supporting him.Some of the criticism Mr. Maloney is getting, she noted, comes with the job.“You’re never going to make everybody happy, and you’re judged on victory,” she said.Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, called Mr. Maloney “a hard-working and well-respected member of Congress who has won multiple hotly contested elections,” and expressed confidence that voters “will once again send him back to Washington.”Asked if that was an endorsement, he said only that the comment spoke for itself. But it reflected an unmistakable sign of encouragement from party leadership.The primary is scheduled for August. But for all the drama around the contest, some Democrats in the delegation and beyond are already consumed by bigger problems amid an ever-worsening political climate.“When you’re facing the possibility of a tornado,” said former Representative Steve Israel, a former D.C.C.C. chairman, “the angry breezes don’t really matter.” More

For New York’s beleaguered Republican Party, all signs had been pointing for months toward 2022 being an exceptional year.As Democrats battle the traditional midterm slump, Republicans were blessed with unforeseen fortune, including a court victory that resulted in new congressional lines pitting veteran liberals against each other and putting new House districts in play. Add in Gov. Kathy Hochul’s middling poll numbers, and many New York conservatives were dreaming of a united G.O.P. winning its first statewide election since 2002.Then Carl Paladino walked in.Mr. Paladino, the party’s lightning rod former gubernatorial nominee, unexpectedly re-emerged in the past week as a candidate in the newly drawn 23rd Congressional District in Western New York, a development that has driven a sharp wedge between some Republicans, including those who feel Mr. Paladino’s history of racist and outrageous remarks disqualifies him and could endanger Republicans up and down the ballot.It is also fueling a potentially nasty proxy war between two of the party’s younger Trump-aligned leaders vying for dominance: Representative Elise Stefanik, the powerful North Country conservative who has endorsed Mr. Paladino, and Nick Langworthy, the state party chairman who formally declared his candidacy for the 23rd District on Friday, taking a veiled swipe at his onetime ally’s tendency toward incendiary statements.“We don’t just need people who like to make noise,” said Mr. Langworthy, in a campaign announcement video. “We need proven fighters who know how to win.”Far from rattled, Ms. Stefanik, the No. 3 House Republican, is standing by Mr. Paladino, whom she endorsed moments after the district’s current congressman, Representative Chris Jacobs, announced last week that he would not seek re-election in the face of furious backlash for his embrace of gun control measures after mass shootings in Buffalo — near his district — and in Uvalde, Texas.Representative Elise Stefanik, a member of House Republican leadership, has endorsed Mr. Paladino and is helping him qualify for the ballot.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesMs. Stefanik’s team spent the week helping Mr. Paladino collect signatures to qualify for the ballot. And privately, she and her allies are fanning discontent for Mr. Langworthy among midlevel party leaders and lawmakers, a growing number of whom believe his congressional run could prove a costly distraction for the party if he does not resign as chairman.Needless to say, a rough-and-tumble primary battle on the banks of Lake Erie is not what Republicans had in mind ahead of critical midterm elections that were shaping up to be the most promising for the party in two decades.After the redistricting fiasco for Democrats, party leaders planned to compete seriously in as many as a dozen House districts across the state.And in a likely race for the governorship against Ms. Hochul, a Democrat who has seen her job performance ratings sag in the face of concerns about crime and the economy, Republicans are hoping for a serious shot at breaking a lengthy losing streak in a state in which registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than two to one.Four Republicans are facing off in the June 28 primary for governor, with Representative Lee M. Zeldin of Long Island receiving the party’s blessing. Andrew Giuliani, the son of the former New York City mayor; Rob Astorino, the former Westchester County executive; and Harry Wilson, a corporate turnout expert, are also all on the ballot and will meet for their first debate on Monday.“This is a distraction in a battle that nobody needs at all,” Thomas Doherty, a former top aide to Gov. George Pataki, the last Republican elected statewide in New York, said about Mr. Paladino and the debris spinning off his campaign.“You have the leading Republican in the House supporting a guy who has a ton of baggage against the Republican chairman,” Mr. Doherty added. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”Since Mr. Paladino entered the race last Friday, Media Matters, the left-leaning watchdog group, has already unearthed a Facebook post amplifying conspiracy theories about the mass shootings in Buffalo and Texas and a 2021 radio interview in which Mr. Paladino praised Adolf Hitler as “the kind of leader we need today.”Mr. Paladino, 75, who was soundly defeated in the governor’s race by Andrew M. Cuomo in 2010, has long been known for racist and homophobic comments. He partially apologized for the Hitler remarks on Thursday, calling them a “serious mistake” that he nonetheless claimed had been twisted by the news media.On Friday, Mr. Paladino’s campaign said it would not comment on Mr. Langworthy’s candidacy, but it said he planned to file more than 3,000 petition signatures to qualify for the ballot, more than his opponent.“I am so grateful for the outpouring of grass-roots support from thousands of Republicans across NY-23 in such a short amount of time,” Mr. Paladino said in a statement. “Onward to victory!”In her own statement, Ms. Stefanik said she was “focused on winning back the majority this November,” while serving her constituents and the House Republican Conference she leads in Washington.But some Republican state leaders were apoplectic about Mr. Paladino, including Keith H. Wofford, a Black corporate lawyer who was the party’s 2018 nominee for attorney general. He issued an unsparing statement on Friday saying that his personal experience left no room for doubt about who Mr. Paladino was.“There are many times where people have called one Republican or another a racist, and I have explained to those accusers why they were wrong,” Mr. Wofford said. “But Carl Paladino is a racist. Not ‘racially insensitive’; not ‘unsophisticated’; a straight-up, old-school racist.”He added: “If he wins the primary, I hope he loses in November.”Democrats have chosen Max Della Pia, an Air Force veteran and community activist, as their nominee in the district.Nick Langworthy, who chairs the New York State Republican Party, is running against Mr. Paladino in a House primary. “We don’t just need people who like to make noise,” he said in a video announcing his candidacy.Johnny Milano for The New York TimesMr. Langworthy’s decision to run — after he pushed Mr. Jacobs to step aside — has not been without controversy. A series of county party leaders have criticized him for trying to run for Congress and lead the state party simultaneously, raising concerns about conflicts of interest.“It has to be all hands on deck and our state chair can’t be hunkered down in the 23rd Congressional District running a primary while we are simultaneously trying to elect a governor,” said Lawrence A. Garvey, the party chairman in Rockland County.He called on Mr. Langworthy to resign.“The potential is very much there to squander what good options we have this year,” Mr. Garvey added, clarifying that he was not trying to boost Mr. Paladino either: “No person in their right mind could defend some of the things he has said.”That sentiment was echoed by Susan McNeil, the Republican Party chair in Fulton County, northwest of Albany, and Mike Rendino, her counterpart in the Bronx.“You can’t serve two masters,” said Ms. McNeil, who is close with Ms. Stefanik. “I’m not arrogant enough to think I could do both.”Mr. Rendino said Mr. Langworthy would make a fine congressman, but said “we need a state chair committed to raising the money necessary for ballot security and protecting the party in the upcoming statewide elections.”In an interview, Mr. Langworthy, 41, argued that he was advancing the party’s interests by taking on Mr. Paladino and said that he maintained the support of the “vast majority” of county G.O.P. chairs in the state.He also predicted he would have no trouble focusing on winning the governor’s race for Republicans in the general election after defeating Mr. Paladino in the primary.“There’s naysayers and people who have self-interest in any organization, and perhaps they are egged on by certain elected officials, but I won’t take the bait,” he said. “The most destructive thing that can happen is for us to have a leadership election.”Mr. Langworthy’s run for office comes after a career as a party operative, including a stint in Mr. Pataki’s office and time spent working for two Republican House members. In 2010, he became the chairman of the Erie County G.O.P., a position he used to boost Mr. Paladino’s raw and rambunctious campaign for governor.Both he and Mr. Paladino urged Donald J. Trump to run for governor against Mr. Cuomo in 2013, ultimately failing to convince him. Both stumped for Mr. Trump in his 2016 presidential run.In 2019, Mr. Langworthy helped oust the party’s longtime chairman, Edward F. Cox, with the then-president’s support and took the job himself, promising a new face for the party.The 23rd District, which was redrawn by a court-appointed mapmaker last month, should be safely Republican. It runs from the Buffalo suburbs to the Southern Tier, on the New York-Pennsylvania border, and includes some of the state’s most conservative counties.Still, after suffering a brutal spring — with their carefully crafted redistricting plan shredded by the courts and their lieutenant governor indicted on bribery charges — Democrats seemed delighted on Friday to sit back and let the Republicans share the glare of scrutiny.“I would not call the past few months perfect for my team, and it worried me as a Democrat,” said Christine C. Quinn, a state party leader.But she called the G.O.P. strife an ongoing “train wreck.”“Republicans seem committed to messing this thing up so badly,” she added. More

Why was there an all-encompassing racial reckoning in this country starting in the spring of 2020? And why then? Examining that question reminds us that history is driven — by general trends classifiable as progress or decline — but also just happens. Specifically, chance factors, what historians sometimes call “contingency,” have greater effects than we are always inclined to notice.As the physicist Cameron Gibelyou and the historian Douglas Northrop note in their useful “Big Ideas: A Guide to the History of Everything,” “To state that an event was contingent in general, without further qualification, means that the event would not have been possible without a certain sequence of previous events or actions being taken by particular actors, that it did not have to happen the way it did.”Ancient examples include the Ming dynasty’s decision not to pursue imperial goals across the sea after 1433. Otherwise, China might have established worldwide colonies in advance of Europeans, and the trajectory of world history would be quite different. The Battle of Salamis in 480 B.C.E. held the Persians off from Greece, after which Greek culture flowered in ways that helped forge the intellectual and artistic culture of Europe. It is interesting to imagine the different cultural developments that might have ensued if Persia had conquered and maintained dominion over Greece and then beyond.Contingency matters in our times as well. We might propose, for example, that the murder of George Floyd set off a reckoning on race in America. However, that is more a description than an explanation.There have been other relatively recent cases of gruesome and unjustifiable killings of Black people by the police that have become national touchstones and yet did not result in racial reckonings of the kind we’ve seen since 2020: When, in 1999, the police gunned down Amadou Diallo in the vestibule of a New York City apartment building as he was reaching for his wallet, the media coverage was intense and sustained. The Rev. Al Sharpton, in a role now quite familiar, served as a kind of spokesman for Diallo’s family.Yet there was nothing we would describe as a racial reckoning in the wake of Diallo’s death, nor did the initiative on race that President Bill Clinton started in 1997 result in anything like the intensity of discussion, or changes in language and norms, that our current reckoning has.We might suppose that social media needed to emerge before such a thing could happen. But then social media was largely the reason the shooting deaths of Trayvon Martin (though not by a police officer) and Michael Brown became national causes célèbres in 2012 and 2014. Yet while these cases did intensify national awareness of the generally uneasy and often perilous relationship between Black people and law enforcement in this country, they didn’t occasion a comprehensive reassessment of racism, its nature and its role in creating today’s inequalities in the way Floyd’s murder did.One might propose that what happened in 2020 happened because Black America was by then especially fed up — weary and disgusted with the nation’s refusal to more seriously address police violence. I imagine that analysis when I recall historian and former assistant attorney general Roger Wilkins in 2005 describing some Watts rioters of 1965 as “fed up” with the bleak circumstances of many citizens in Watts and South Central Los Angeles at the time. He was responding to my query about why it was in the late 1960s — after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — that the nation experienced 1967’s “long, hot summer” riots and, in 1968, more riots in Black neighborhoods in various parts of the country, including Washington, D.C. (in response, in part, to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.). Those riots were initiated by Black people in protest, rather than, as I wrote, earlier race riots in American cities that “involved white bigots storming into Black neighborhoods and terrorizing residents.”Today, I cannot help wondering whether we can really say that Black people in the late ’60s were more fed up than at times past. And I similarly wonder if there is reason to suppose that Black Americans were less fed up post-2005, after Hurricane Katrina, the miserable government response to it and the nationwide discussion of what that signaled about racism — inspiring Spike Lee’s documentary “When the Levees Broke” and David Simon’s succès d’estime, “Treme” — than we were in 2020.I would suggest that what conditioned the racial reckoning of 2020 was partly contingency. To wit, I think the pandemic was the determining factor.Tragically, hideously, Americans learn of Black people dying under appalling circumstances, involving police officers, quite often. Think of Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner — whether these circumstances lead to criminal convictions, or charges, which they often don’t. Few of us, especially those of us who live in New York City, will ever forget Garner’s words, “I can’t breathe,” though even his death wasn’t a fulcrum in quite the way Floyd’s was. In May 2020, there was something besides the injustice and brutality of Floyd’s murder that motivated the surge of nationwide demonstrations: the fact that we had been in pandemic isolation for two months and that around that same time it was becoming clear that conditions were not going to change anytime soon.I don’t mean to imply that this outcry was insincere or cynical. But I suspect that what helped make the difference was the pandemic lockdown. At that unusual and challenging time, for many people, being outdoors and connecting with other people was understandably a uniquely powerful temptation. The lockdown also gave a broader range of people — beyond those already committed to activism — the time to reflect, and to devote their energies to things beyond themselves, something they may not have done under normal circumstances.As such, it could be that if there had not been a lockdown, the Floyd protests would have been smaller in scale and shorter in duration. Further, one could surmise that if the sequence of events had taken place a few months earlier, with the lockdown beginning in the fall and Floyd’s murder happening in the colder months of January or February, this, too, would have, hypothetically, made protests smaller, less likely or shorter-term in many locations. And this probably would have decreased the chances that the protests stimulated a think-in about racism that would still be going strong two years later.There’s a case that the pandemic shaped the racial reckoning in another way. A controversial aspect of the reckoning has been the examples of workplace disciplinary actions that have become commonplace in its wake, out of a general sense of these actions as inherent to the mission of reconsidering racism. (In this newsletter, I’ve written about more than one.) That a number of these instances involve social media should come as no surprise: These platforms place a kind of scrim curtain between people that can lessen our sense of dehumanization as unnatural.It’s not unlike what can happen to us on video chat applications such as Zoom or messaging programs such as Slack. Contempt and condemnation can come more easily to us when directed to a static avatar on Twitter or someone in a box on a screen than to a person we are in the same room with. Chat features and direct-message side exchanges also allow factions to build up opposition as a general meeting runs, in a way that passing notes and sharing dismissive facial expressions cannot. The way we’ve learned to communicate in the past few years, sometimes normalizing real-time shaming and dismissing, has set new norms that now feel like the default, even as live meetings become routine again.In short, I think that without a pandemic, and an ensuing year-plus when a good deal of our interactions were virtual, America would not have entered an extended racial reckoning. It wasn’t that Black Americans were, two years ago, at some unique tipping point, nor was it that white Americans opened in an unprecedented way to hearing out Black America’s concerns from the sheer goodness of their hearts.It was the confluence of a pandemic, a grievous murder and the time of year in which these occurred, with the magnitude and tone determined partly by the fact that all of this happened when handy group communication technologies had become widely established and were available to spend workdays on.History is like this, including that of race and racism. On race, contingency should be included in how we chronicle it, and not only now but in the past and the future. The civil rights victories of the 1950s and 1960s were related, in part, to the novelty of television. Future progress on race will almost certainly be driven by factors beyond protest and critique, in ways no one could have predicted beforehand.Have feedback? Send a note to [email protected] McWhorter (@JohnHMcWhorter) is an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University. He hosts the podcast “Lexicon Valley” and is the author, most recently, of “Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America.” More

Thomas Fuller
June 8, 2022 More

Thomas Fuller
June 8, 2022 More

If there was one takeaway from last night’s January 6 committee hearings, it could be: all roads lead back to Trump.The committee showed evidence that centered on what happened at the Capitol, while taking testimony from two people who had no affiliation with the White House. But the former president nonetheless cast a long shadow over the crowded hearing room.Liz Cheney, one of the committee’s two Republican members, aired evidence that the former president endorsed calls to hang his vice-president, Mike Pence, for refusing to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.The lawmakers also revealed that top Trump officials didn’t even believe the then-president’s claims. Attorney general William Barr, it turns out, thought the fraud allegations were “bullshit”. So did Trump’s daughter, drawing a response from the former president on his social network today.Then there were the insurrectionists themselves. Robert Schornak, who has been sentenced to 36 months of probation for his role in the insurrection, summed up their sentiment well: “Trump has only asked me for two things. He asked me for my vote, and he asked me to come on January 6.”The committee will meet again on June 13th, at 10 am eastern. You can read more about last night’s events in The Guardian’s coverage here:House January 6 panel shows it still has surprises in store in televised hearingRead moreDid the January 6 committee really cut through the “thick fog of propaganda” around the attack? Not if you watched Fox News, which didn’t broadcast the hearing. my colleague Adam Gabbatt took a look at what they showed in its place:The millions of people who tuned into America’s main television channels on Thursday heard how the January 6 insurrection was “the culmination of an attempted coup”, a “siege” where violent Trump supporters mercilessly attacked police, causing politicians and staffers to run for their lives.On the Fox News channel, however, there was a different take on the historic congressional hearings exploring the attack on the Capitol in Washington DC.The deadly riot was, according to the channel’s primetime host Tucker Carlson, “an outbreak of mob violence, a forgettably minor outbreak by recent standards, that took place more than a year and a half ago”.This was the alternate reality that Carlson, Fox News’ most-watched host, presented as he opened his hour-long show. He followed it up with a boast: the rightwing network would not be covering one of the most consequential political hearings in recent American history.As America watched Capitol attack testimony, Fox News gave an alternate realityRead moreJamie Raskin, a prominent lawmaker on the committee, said last night’s hearing dispelled the “thick fog of propaganda” around the insurrection.In an interview with MSNBC, he also contrasted the Republican reaction to the attack with their professed support for law enforcement:Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) says last night’s January 6th hearing “dispelled the thick fog of propaganda”:“You have a party which now claims to be on the side of law enforcement … and yet are turning a total blind eye to the most vicious, massive assault on police officers.” pic.twitter.com/2w6aHDYrDO— The Recount (@therecount) June 10, 2022
Police who were on the scene that day and their families have been increasingly outspoken againt Trump. In an interview with CNN, the brothers of Brian Sicknick, a Capitol police officer who died in the attack, said they never received condolences from the then-president:JUST NOW: Brian Sicknick’s brothers tell @NewDay Mike Pence called after Brian’s death to offer condolences. Pres. Trump did not.”Not one tweet, not one note, not one card, nothing from him because he knows. He knows he is the cause of the whole thing.”pic.twitter.com/poxyPgsxpi— John Berman (@JohnBerman) June 10, 2022
Meanwhile, the January 6 Committee has compared Trump’s actions with those of Abraham Lincoln, a Republican:In 1864, Lincoln understood that he would likely lose his reelection bid. In anticipation, he wrote a memo detailing the importance of one of our most basic democratic principles: the peaceful transfer of power.This precedent stood for 220 years— until Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/Nz7ip78jhM— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) June 10, 2022
If there was one takeaway from last night’s January 6 committee hearings, it could be: all roads lead back to Trump.The committee showed evidence that centered on what happened at the Capitol, while taking testimony from two people who had no affiliation with the White House. But the former president nonetheless cast a long shadow over the crowded hearing room.Liz Cheney, one of the committee’s two Republican members, aired evidence that the former president endorsed calls to hang his vice-president, Mike Pence, for refusing to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.The lawmakers also revealed that top Trump officials didn’t even believe the then-president’s claims. Attorney general William Barr, it turns out, thought the fraud allegations were “bullshit”. So did Trump’s daughter, drawing a response from the former president on his social network today.Then there were the insurrectionists themselves. Robert Schornak, who has been sentenced to 36 months of probation for his role in the insurrection, summed up their sentiment well: “Trump has only asked me for two things. He asked me for my vote, and he asked me to come on January 6.”The committee will meet again on June 13th, at 10 am eastern. You can read more about last night’s events in The Guardian’s coverage here:House January 6 panel shows it still has surprises in store in televised hearingRead moreReactions are also trickling out from Republicans to last night’s January 6 committee hearing, in which House lawmakers took direct aim at Trump and his actions before and during that day.On his Truth Social network, the former president commented on his daughter Ivanka Trump’s admission, shown at the hearing, that she believed the 2020 election was not tampered with:Trump responds to his daughter’s testimony that AG Barr saying there no evidence of widespread election fraud: “It affected my perspective. I respect Attorney General Barr. So I accepted what he was saying.” pic.twitter.com/QrhPZ5QpYZ— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) June 10, 2022
House Representative Jim Banks, whom House Speaker Nancy Pelosi barred from sitting on the committee, called the hearing a “dud”:1) GOP IN Rep Banks on Fox on 1/6 cmte hrng: Last night’s hearing was a primetime dud. Nothing came out of it that we didn’t know before..it didn’t change anybody’s minds..his committee is trying to prosecute Donald Trump for crimes that he did not commit— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) June 10, 2022
2) Banks: We also learned from the reports over the weekend that this committee is actually going to come out and recommend for abolishing the Electoral College and to advance the radical election agenda of the Democrats, to nationalize, federalize elections— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) June 10, 2022
Republicans have seized on the rough inflation report to press their message that they are a better choice when it comes to the economy than Biden and the Democrats.Here’s Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell:Another devastating inflation report for American workers and families. Another new 40-year high. Grocery prices off the charts, worst increase since the 1970s. Rent, gas, and electricity all way up.The Democrats’ inflation has handed the average American a 3.9% real pay cut.— Leader McConnell (@LeaderMcConnell) June 10, 2022
Mike Crapo, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, alludes to the Biden administration’s now-stalled “Build Back Better” proposal that would have spent big on fighting climate change, expanding social services and making a wide variety of other priorities a reality:Inflation remains painfully high, gas prices have been setting all-time highs and families are choosing to cut expenses to make ends meet. In the face of growing risks of recession and stagflation, notions of increasing taxes or massive new spending bills must be rejected pic.twitter.com/QD1iSMG5uV— Senator Mike Crapo (@MikeCrapo) June 10, 2022
The Republican party’s Twitter account keeps its message to voters simple:Want lower gas prices? Vote Republican.— GOP (@GOP) June 10, 2022
The message from the May inflation data released earlier today is simple: prices are continuing to increase in the world’s largest economy, meaning Biden’s public support will likely suffer even more than it already has.Inflation has proven to have a potently negative effect on the president’s approval, swamping it among a wide swath of the population, particularly when it comes to the economy.The latest consumer price index data from the labor department is unlikely to change that dynamic. If anything, it could make it worse. Here are a few reasons why:
Economists expected month-on-month inflation to accelerate compared to April and it did, but by one percent, which was a bigger rise than expected.
That pushed prices compared to May 2021 up by 8.6 percent, its biggest gain since the 12-month period ending in December 1981.
Most importantly, the year-on-year growth was evidence that the current inflation wave has not peaked, as some had hoped after the April data showed a deceleration in the price increases. Instead, the wave continues to rise, as this chart makes clear.
Perhaps the most important takeaway from the data is that costs are accelerating for things American cannot avoid buying. Prices for groceries are up 1.4 percent compared to last month and 11.9 percent compared to May 2021. Gasoline prices have risen 4.1 percent from April and a whopping 48.7 percent compared to a year ago. Costs for Shelter — the category including rents one might pay for an apartment or house, and a particularly important contributor to overall inflation — are up 0.6 percent from last month and 5.5 percent compared to last year.
Biden has been trying to convince Americans the economy is better than it appears, pointing to much more positive trends in employment. But with the Federal Reserve committed to a campaign of potentially sharp interest rate increases to cut into inflation, the fear now is that the US economy is heading into a recession — a concern that has already triggered sharp selloffs on Wall Street.The Biden administration will today announce the end of its requirement that people entering the country test negative for Covid-19, CNN is reporting, citing a senior administration official.According to the network:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} The move will go into effect for US-bound air travelers at midnight on Sunday.
The CDC is lifting the restriction that the travel industry had lobbied against for months after determining it was no longer necessary “based on the science and data,” the official said. The CDC will reassess its decision in 90 days and if officials decide they need to reinstate it, because of a concerning new variant, for example, will do so. The measure has been in place since January 2021.
The official said the Biden administration plans to work with airlines to ensure a smooth transition with the change, but it will likely be a welcome move for most in the industry.
Travel industry officials have been increasingly critical of the requirement in recent weeks and directly urged the Biden administration to end the measure, arguing it was having a chilling effect on an already fragile economy, according to Airlines for America chief Nick Calio, whose group met recently with White House officials.
The travel industry, and some scientific experts, said the policy had been out of date for months.
Lawmakers, including Democrats, had also advocated for lifting the requirement in recent weeks.
Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto said, “I’m glad CDC suspended the burdensome coronavirus testing requirement for international travelers, and I’ll continue to do all I can to support the strong recovery of our hospitality industry.”For those who were caught up in the insurrection, the January 6 committee hearing was a particularly difficult experience, The Guardian’s David Smith reports:It was too much to take. Too much for a second time.As the cavernous room filled with ugly cries and chants, police radio pleas for help, images of a human herd driven by a crazed impulse to beat police, smash windows and storm the US Capitol, survivors of that day held hands and wept.Several members of the House of Representatives, who were trapped on a balcony in the chamber as the attack unfolded on 6 January 2021, sat together at Thursday’s opening public hearing held by the select committee investigating the insurrection.When a carefully crafted video of that day’s carnage was played, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal watched haunted and spellbound and wiped a tear from her eye. When her colleague Cori Bush broke down, a tissue was passed along the line so she could wipe her eyes.Vivid retelling brings horror of January 6 back to scene of the crimeRead moreWashington politicians are going to spend a lot of time today reacting to last night’s blockbuster January 6 committee hearing, which was jam-packed with details of what happened that day. Maanvi Singh has this rundown to bring you up to speed:The first primetime hearing from the House select committee investigating January 6 presented gut-wrenching footage of the insurrection, and a range of testimony to build a case that the attack on the Capitol was a planned coup fomented by Donald Trump.After a year and half investigation, the committee sought to emphasize the horror of the attack and hold the former president and his allies accountable.Here are some key takeaways from the night:Attack on January 6 was the ‘culmination of an attempted coup’Presenting an overview of the hearing and the ones to come, House select committee chair Bennie Thompson and vice-chair Liz Cheney presented their findings that the violent mob that descended on the Capitol was no spontaneous occurrence.Video testimony from Donald Trump’s attorney general, his daughter, and other allies make the case that the former president was working to undermine the 2020 election results and foment backlash. “Any legal jargon you hear about ‘seditious conspiracy’, ‘obstruction of an official proceeding’, ‘conspiracy to defraud the United States’ boils down to this,” Thompson said. “January 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup. A brazen attempt, as one rioter put it shortly after January 6, to overthrow the government. Violence was no accident. It represented Trump’s last stand, most desperate chance to halt the transfer of power.”January 6 hearing: five key takeaways from the first primetime Capitol attack inquiryRead moreGood morning, US Politics blog readers. Yesterday evening, the January 6 committee released a slew of new evidence showing how Donald Trump acted during and in the run-up to the attack on the Capitol. If you missed the hearing, you can watch it here.The aftermath of those revelations will be one of today’s main stories, but that’s not all that’s going on:
The labor department has released horrid inflation numbers that were worse than expected and sure to fuel public discontent with Joe Biden, whose approval is languishing at record lows.
The president is meanwhile in Los Angeles and expected to sign a declaration on migration during his visit to the Summit of Americas, before heading to fundraising events with Democrats.
Top state department official Erik Woodhouse will discuss the effectiveness of the western sanctions campaign against Russia at an event hosted by the Atlantic Council.
Celebrity chef Jose Andres will be appearing on Capitol Hill for a hearing looking at the humanitarian response to the Ukraine war. More

As the Jan. 6 committee outlined during its prime-time hearing, Donald J. Trump executed a seven-part conspiracy to overturn a free and fair democratic election.In the entire 246-year history of the United States, there was surely never a more damning indictment presented against an American president than outlined on Thursday night in a cavernous congressional hearing room where the future of democracy felt on the line.Other presidents have been accused of wrongdoing, even high crimes and misdemeanors, but the case against Donald J. Trump mounted by the bipartisan House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol described not just a rogue president but a would-be autocrat willing to shred the Constitution to hang onto power at all costs.As the committee portrayed it during its prime-time televised hearing, Mr. Trump executed a seven-part conspiracy to overturn a free and fair democratic election. According to the panel, he lied to the American people, ignored all evidence refuting his false fraud claims, pressured state and federal officials to throw out election results favoring his challenger, encouraged a violent mob to storm the Capitol and even signaled support for the execution of his own vice president.“Jan. 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup, a brazen attempt, as one rioter put it shortly after Jan. 6, to overthrow the government,” said Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the select committee. “The violence was no accident. It represents Trump’s last stand, most desperate chance to halt the transfer of power.”Representatives Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, led the first hearing on the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, which included testimony from a Capitol police officer and a documentary filmmaker.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesMost incriminating were the words of Mr. Trump’s own advisers and appointees, played over video on a giant screen above the committee dais and beamed out to a national television audience. There was his own attorney general who told him that his false election claims were “bullshit.” There was his own campaign lawyer who testified that there was no evidence of fraud sufficient to change the outcome. And there was his own daughter, Ivanka Trump, who acknowledged that she accepted the conclusion that the election was not, in fact, stolen as her father kept claiming.Much of the evidence was outlined by the lead Republican on the committee, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who has been ostracized by Mr. Trump and much of her own party for consistently denouncing his actions after the election. Unwavering, she sketched out the case and then addressed her fellow Republicans who have chosen to stand by their defeated former president and excuse his actions.Read More on the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsThe Meaning of the Hearings: While the public sessions aren’t going to unite the country, they could significantly affect public opinion.An Unsettling Narrative: During the first hearing, the House panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Donald Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Trump’s Depiction: Former president Donald J. Trump was portrayed as a would-be autocrat willing to shred the Constitution to hang onto power. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump: In videos shown during the hearing, Mr.Trump’s daughter and son-in-law were stripped of their carefully managed images.“I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone but your dishonor will remain,” she said.Many of the details were previously reported, and many questions about Mr. Trump’s actions were left unanswered for now, but Ms. Cheney pulled together the committee’s central findings in relentless, prosecutorial fashion.People at a viewing party in Washington watching Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, speak during the hearing.Shuran Huang for The New York TimesSome of the new revelations and the confirmations of recent news reports were enough to prompt gasps in the room and, perhaps, in living rooms across the country. Told that the crowd on Jan. 6 was chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” the vice president who defied the president’s pressure to single-handedly block the transfer of power, Mr. Trump was quoted responding, “Maybe our supporters have the right idea.” Mike Pence, he added, “deserves it.”Ms. Cheney, the panel’s vice chairwoman, reported that in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack, members of Mr. Trump’s own cabinet discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office. She disclosed that Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and “multiple other Republican congressmen” involved in trying to overturn the election sought pardons from Mr. Trump in his final days in office.She played a video clip of Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser who absented himself after the election rather than fight the conspiracy theorists egging on Mr. Trump, cavalierly dismissing threats by Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel, and other lawyers to resign in protest. “I took it up to just be whining, to be honest with you,” Mr. Kushner testified.And she noted that while Mr. Pence repeatedly took action to summon help to stop the mob on Jan. 6, the president himself made no such effort. Instead, his White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, tried to convince Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to pretend that Mr. Trump was actively involved.“He said, ‘We have to kill the narrative that the vice president is making all the decisions,’” General Milley said in videotaped testimony. “‘We need to establish the narrative that the president is still in charge, and that things are steady or stable,’ or words to that effect. I immediately interpreted that as politics, politics, politics.”Mr. Trump had no allies on the nine-member House committee, and he and his supporters have dismissed the panel’s work as a partisan smear attempt. On Fox News, which opted not to show the hearing, Sean Hannity was busy changing the subject, attacking the committee for not focusing on the breakdown in security at the Capitol, which he mainly blamed on Speaker Nancy Pelosi even though Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, then the Republican majority leader, shared control of the building with her at the time.Before the hearing, Mr. Trump tried again to rewrite history by casting the attack on the Capitol as a legitimate manifestation of public grievance against a stolen election. “January 6th was not simply a protest, it represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country to Make America Great Again,” he wrote on his new social media site.The panel played a video of Ivanka Trump, Mr. Trump’s daughter and former White House adviser, testifying behind closed doors.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesMr. Trump is hardly the first president reproached for misconduct, lawbreaking or even violating the Constitution. Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were both impeached by the House, although acquitted by the Senate. John Tyler sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War. Richard M. Nixon resigned under the threat of impeachment for abusing his power to cover up corrupt campaign activities. Warren G. Harding had the Teapot Dome scandal and Ronald Reagan the Iran-contra affair.But the crimes alleged in most of those cases paled in comparison to what Mr. Trump is accused of, and while Mr. Tyler turned on the country he once led, he died before he could be held accountable. Mr. Nixon faced hearings during Watergate not unlike those that began on Thursday night and was involved in other scandals beyond the burglary that ultimately resulted in his downfall. But the brazen dishonesty and incitement of violence put on display on Thursday eclipsed even his misdeeds, according to many scholars.Mr. Trump, of course, was impeached twice already, and acquitted twice, the second time for his role in the Jan. 6 attack. But even so, the case against him now is far more extensive and expansive, after the committee conducted some 1,000 interviews and obtained more than 100,000 pages of documents.What the committee was trying to prove was that this was not a president with reasonable concerns about fraud or a protest that got out of control. Instead, the panel was trying to build the case that Mr. Trump was involved in a criminal conspiracy against democracy — that he knew there was no widespread fraud because his own people told him, that he intentionally summoned a mob to stop the transfer of power to Joseph R. Biden Jr. and that he sat by and did virtually nothing once the attack commenced.Whether the panel can change public views of those events remains unclear, but many political strategists and analysts consider it unlikely. With a more fragmented media and a more polarized society, most Americans have decided what they think about Jan. 6 and are only listening to those who share their attitudes. Still, there was another audience for the hearings as they got underway, and that was Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. If the committee was laying out what it considered an indictment against the former president, it seemed to be inviting the Justice Department to pursue the real kind in a grand jury and court of law.As she previewed the story that will be told in the weeks to come, Ms. Cheney all but wrote the script for Mr. Garland. “You will hear about plots to commit seditious conspiracy on Jan. 6,” she said, “a crime defined in our laws as conspiring to overthrow, put down or destroy by force the government of the United States or to oppose by force the authority thereof.”But if Mr. Garland disagrees and the hearings this month turn out to be the only trial Mr. Trump ever faces for his efforts to overturn the election, Ms. Cheney and her fellow committee members were resolved to make sure that they will at least win a conviction with the jury of history. More

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