Elections

In 2010, the Supreme Court held that “political speech does not lose First Amendment protection ‘simply because its source is a corporation.’” The case was Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and the conservative justices sided with a group barred by the government from airing a political documentary.Republicans used to celebrate that decision. “For too long, some in this country have been deprived of full participation in the political process,” said Mitch McConnell, then the majority leader. The Supreme Court, he added, “took an important step in the direction of restoring the First Amendment rights of these groups.”Mr. McConnell was standing up for a principle: People have a bedrock right to form associations, including corporations, and to use them to speak their minds.In the last few years, however, as large companies have increasingly agitated for left-of-center causes, many Republicans have developed a sudden allergy to corporate political speech, one that will have vast consequences for both the party and the nation.Disney’s Magic Kingdom Park in Florida.Ted Shaffrey/Associated PressConsider the recent drama in Florida. The evident retaliation by Gov. Ron DeSantis and his Republican allies against Disney, a major corporate player in their state, is part of a larger trend: What critics once called the party of big business is now eager to lash out at large companies and even nonprofits it deems inappropriately political — which in practice means anti-Republican.Conservatives angry at technology platforms over what they see as unfair treatment of right-of-center viewpoints have found a champion in a Republican senator, Josh Hawley of Missouri, who has introduced bills to reform legal protection for certain social media platforms and offered the Bust Up Big Tech Act. J.D. Vance, running in the Ohio Republican Senate primary, has suggested that we “seize the assets” of the Ford Foundation and other progressive NGOs; he also called for raising the taxes of companies that showed concerns about state-level voting legislation favored by Republicans last year. Leading right-wing commentators, from Tucker Carlson of Fox News to Ben Shapiro of The Daily Wire, cheer the efforts on.Too many conservatives seem to have no qualms today in wielding state power to punish their political opponents and shape the economy to their whims. This is not just a departure from the Republican consensus of the last half-century. It is a wholesale rejection of free markets and the very idea of limited government. It will make America poorer and the American people more vulnerable to tyranny.Republicans’ reversal is easy enough to explain: As companies increasingly accede to activist demands to make themselves combatants in a culture war, they have alienated broad swaths of the population. Twenty years ago, according to Gallup, fewer than half of Americans said they were somewhat or very dissatisfied with “the size and influence of major corporations.” Today, that number is 74 percent. Defending economic liberty is now passé. Taking on “big business” has become an effective way to score political points on the right, at least when the businesses are also seen as “woke.”The change may be politically expedient, but it will have grave costs. Conservatives once understood that free markets are an engine that produces widespread prosperity — and that government meddling is too often a wrench in the works. Choosing winners and losers, and otherwise substituting the preferences of lawmakers and bureaucrats for the logic of supply and demand, interferes with the economy’s ability to meet people’s material needs. If Republicans continue down this path, the result will be fewer jobs, higher prices, less consumer choice and a hampering of the unforeseen innovations that make our lives better all the time.But conservatives are turning on more than markets; they may be turning on the rule of law itself. The First Amendment prohibits the government from abridging people’s ability to speak, publish, broadcast and petition for a redress of grievances, precisely because the American founders saw criticizing one’s rulers as a God-given right. Drawing attention to errors and advocating a better path forward are some of the core mechanisms by which “we, the people” hold our government to account. The use of state power to punish someone for disfavored political speech is a gross violation of that ideal.The American economy is rife with cronyism, like subsidies or regulatory exemptions, that give some businesses advantages not available to all. This too makes a mockery of free markets and rule of law, transferring wealth from taxpayers and consumers to politically connected elites. But while ending cronyism is a worthy goal, selectively revoking privileges from companies that fall out of favor with the party in power is not good-government reform.One might doubt the retaliatory nature of Republicans’ corporate speech reversal, but for their inability to quit stepping in front of cameras and stating the quiet part aloud. In the very act of signing the law that does away with Disney’s special-purpose district and several others, Mr. DeSantis said this: “You’re a corporation based in Burbank, Calif., and you’re gonna marshal your economic might to attack the parents of my state. We view that as a provocation, and we’re going to fight back against that.”But if government power can be used for brazen attacks on American companies and nonprofits, what can’t it be used for? If it is legitimate for politicians to retaliate against groups for political speech, is it also legitimate to retaliate against individuals? (As Senator Mitt Romney once said, “Corporations are people, my friend.”) And if even the right to speak out is not held sacred, what chance do the people have to resist an authoritarian turn?Conservatives, confronting these questions, once championed free markets and limited government as essential bulwarks against tyranny. Discarding those commitments is not a small concession to changing times but an abject desecration, for cheap political gain, of everything they long claimed to believe.For decades, the “fusionist” governing philosophy — which, in bringing together the values of individual freedom and traditional morality, charges government with protecting liberty so that the people will be free to pursue virtuous lives — bound conservatives together and gave the Republican Party a coherent animating force. That philosophy would reject the idea that political officials should have discretion over the positions that companies are allowed to take or the views that people are allowed to express.The G.O.P. today may be able to win elections without fusionism, but it cannot serve the interests of Americans while wrecking the economy and undermining the rule of law.Stephanie Slade (@sladesr) is a senior editor at Reason magazine.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

The US president, Joe Biden, joked about his own low approval ratings and his predecessor Donald Trump, as he resumed a Washington tradition of speaking at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. The event had been cancelled for two years due to the Covid pandemic and was boycotted by Donald Trump during his presidency. ‘This is the first time the president attended this dinner in six years. It’s understandable: we had a horrible plague, followed by two years of Covid,’ Biden quipped 

‘A horrible plague, then Covid’: Biden and correspondents joke in post-Trump return to normality More

Donald Trump’s endorsement of the author and venture capitalist J.D. Vance has shaken up the Republican race for the first major Senate midterm election.COLUMBUS, Ohio — Josh Mandel’s wager was simple: No one would outflank him in mirroring Donald J. Trump, either on hard-right America First positions or the bellicose, come-at-me style of the former president.So, Mr. Mandel said of Black Lives Matter activists, “They are the racists, not us.” He stirred animosity toward migrants, including refugees from Afghanistan, and falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump. The Jewish grandson of a Holocaust survivor whose website features a Christian cross, Mr. Mandel stumped mostly in evangelical churches, claiming “there’s no such thing” as separation of church and state.For a long time, it worked. Mr. Mandel was the presumed front-runner in the crowded Republican field for U.S. senator from Ohio.But two weeks ago, the one person he sought most to impress — the former president himself — spurned Mr. Mandel, a former state treasurer, and bestowed his coveted endorsement on J.D. Vance, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author, remaking the race overnight.Mr. Vance, who had been trailing in polls and running low on money, has seen a surge in donations and support since Mr. Trump’s embrace, as the first major Senate midterm primary election entered its final weekend before Tuesday’s voting.And around the state, Republicans including Mr. Mandel; Mr. Vance; Mike Gibbons, a self-funded businessman; and State Senator Matt Dolan fanned out in a preview of national G.O.P. politics to come — different moons circling Mr. Trump’s sun.On Saturday, Mr. Vance campaigned with two far-right members of Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida. Mr. Mandel hopscotched across the state’s big cities — Toledo, Columbus and Cincinnati — with a conservative ally of his own, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.To longtime acquaintances and observers of Mr. Mandel, 44, who early in his career promoted civility and bipartisanship, his unrequited embrace of Trumpism and divisiveness suggested there was a price on political calculation.“I see the desperation there these last few months,” said Matt Cox, a former Republican operative who was an early adviser to Mr. Mandel before a falling-out. “I think his strategy was: All right, Trump won Ohio by eight points twice. All I have to do to become the nominee is to become the most like Trump.”The candidate most left on the sidelines since Mr. Trump’s nod at Mr. Vance, according to polls, has been Jane Timken. The only woman running, Ms. Timken was endorsed by Ohio’s retiring senator, Rob Portman, a center-right throwback to an earlier Ohio G.O.P. who voted with Senate Democrats for the bipartisan infrastructure bill.The Senate candidate and former Republican state chair, Jane Timken, has been endorsed by Senator Rob Portman, who is vacating his seat. Gaelen Morse/ReutersMs. Timken has solid Trump-era credentials — she chaired the state party while Mr. Trump was in office — but she does not mimic the former president’s aggrieved style, which has been a key to unlocking the most fervent Republican voters. She has set herself apart from rivals who she says seek every day to get themselves “canceled on Twitter” with their statements and antics.In a debate in March, Mr. Mandel nearly got into a physical confrontation with Mr. Gibbons.At a Baptist church in Columbus on Saturday, Mr. Mandel took aim at popular targets of the right, including transgender people, Republicans with “jelly knees” like Senator Mitt Romney of Utah and the “liberal media in the back of the room” (just minutes after greeting reporters amicably by name in a private room).Fitting the setting, the largely older crowd in the pews called out encouraging “amens!” or groaned audibly when Mr. Mandel named enemies.“The reason that we’re going to win on Tuesday is because we have this army of Christian warriors throughout the state,’’ he pledged.One pastor present, Dan Wolvin, said he “felt sorry” for Mr. Trump over the Vance endorsement, saying he was “listening to the wrong people.” Still, Mr. Wolvin predicted the Trump nod would gain Mr. Vance “about five points” on Election Day, while conceding, “it’s a lot for Josh to make up.”Spurned or not, Mr. Mandel was still flying the Trump flag.“I supported President Trump yesterday. I support him today, and I’ll continue to support him tomorrow,” he said. He predicted the former president would return to the White House, “and I look forward to working with him.”The candidates, to varying degrees, all concur. Here are snapshots from around Ohio in the last weekend of campaigning.J.D. Vance in Newark, OhioJ.D. Vance campaigned with two far-right members of Congress, Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida. Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesJ.D. Vance, the author and venture capitalist, bounded onto the stage at the Trout Club in Newark, Ohio, with the confidence of the nominal front-runner, a status bestowed by Mr. Trump’s endorsement on April 15.The crowd of about 75 in the bar and restaurant of a well-manicured country club had been warmed up by Mr. Gaetz and Ms. Greene, who ticked through the talking points of the fringe right: “medical tyranny,” “open borders,” “gender pediatric clinics” turning boys into girls, men in women’s bathrooms and women’s sports, The Walt Disney Company “grooming” children into homosexuals and transgender people.Mr. Vance breezed through some of the same themes, but he appeared more intent on previewing the larger issues he planned to argue in the general election to come.He castigated both parties for free trade agreements that he said had sent Ohio manufacturing to Mexico and China, for the “bipartisan decision to allow American Wall Street firms to get rich off the growth of China and not off the growth of the American middle class.” He also accused financial firms of allowing “the Chinese into this country, buying up our farmland, buying up our single-family homes, making it impossible for young families to buy a home, to own a stake in their own country.”“That is the game they play, and I’m running for the U.S. Senate to go and play a different game, a game where we put our citizens and the people in this room first,” he said to cheers.The people in that room — just off a verdant golf course, far away from the illegal immigrant, drug-infested cities that Mr. Vance speaks of on the stump — were hardly the down-and-out white workers central to his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” But an unspoken truth is, his audience is the true core of the pro-Trump vote in Ohio. The one income group that President Biden won in this state in 2020 was that of voters who earn less than $50,000. More affluent voters went for Mr. Trump.But economic themes in general — and the China threat in particular — resonated.“That’s in the DNA in Ohio,” said Representative Tim Ryan, the likely Democratic nominee for the coming Senate race.Mr. Vance was asked by a reporter why he invited Ms. Greene and Mr. Gaetz to barnstorm through Ohio with him on the closing weekend of the primary campaign.“There is nothing more disgusting in politics than the way that leadership asks you to stab your friends in the back,” he said before heading with them to West Chester, outside Cincinnati. He added for emphasis, “I’m not going to disavow them because some scumbag who doesn’t have the best interest of Ohio at heart wants me to.”Jonathan WeismanMike Gibbons in Dublin, OhioMike Gibbons pumped nearly $17 million of his own money into the race. Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesMr. Gibbons likes to sport a navy blue suit coat and red tie reminiscent of Mr. Trump. He has a habit of reminding voters that he is a businessman, not a politician. And he speaks often of how, in 1989, he started his investment banking and financial advisory firm in a small Cleveland office with nothing but a desk and a phone.But imitation did not win Mr. Gibbons the endorsement of the former president he so sought to emulate, and he is closing out the final stretch of the primary much the way he started: with his own gumption and personal wealth.In an interview on his campaign bus Saturday, Mr. Gibbons emphasized his lifelong Ohio roots and business credentials as the best fit for Ohio voters.“I was shocked,” Mr. Gibbons said of Mr. Trump’s endorsement of Mr. Vance, referring to his opponent as someone who “flew in from the West Coast.” He added: “Ohioans should be insulted.”Outside, a couple of volunteers mingled in a grocery store parking lot near Columbus, picking up Gibbons swag and eating pizza, before fanning out to knock on doors.Mr. Gibbons grew up in Parma, a working-class suburb outside of Cleveland. He was a one-time professional football player, and at 37, he founded Brown Gibbons Lang & Company. He ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2018, and this time has pumped roughly $17 million into his campaign, making him the largest self-funder in the race.He drew some scrutiny in March for comments he made in 2013 on China and Asian people that used offensive stereotypes and was later criticized for the heated debate stage encounter with Mr. Mandel.Mr. Gibbons served as Mr. Trump’s Ohio fundraising co-chair in 2016. But in one crucial way, his supporters say, his path has sharply diverged from Mr. Trump’s: Mr. Gibbons did not receive a multimillion-dollar loan from his father to launch his business empire.“I like that he is from Parma, Ohio — real down-to-earth kind of guy who worked hard for everything he has in life and earned his way,” said Michael Palcisko, 54, a schoolteacher and military veteran in Cleveland.Jazmine Ulloa and Kevin WilliamsMatt Dolan in North Royalton, Ohio Unlike the other leading Republican candidates in the race, State Senator Matt Dolan acknowledges President Biden is the nation’s legitimate leader.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesOn an overcast Saturday morning, Mr. Dolan knocked on doors in an affluent suburb just south of Cleveland. He was making a last-minute push to get voters to the polls, and on his target list were registered Republicans who had yet to cast a ballot. But on his route, he was just as likely to encounter Democrats and independents who were backing his candidacy — or simply cheering him on.“If it has to be a Republican, I hope it is you,” Rich Evans, 69, a retired educator, told him, as he stopped manicuring his lawn to shake hands.From the beginning, Mr. Dolan, who has served in the statehouse since 2017 and whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball team, has been walking in his own lonely lane. He is the only Republican candidate who supports Mr. Trump but has attempted to put some distance between himself and Mr. Trump.Mr. Trump “did a lot of good things for Ohio,” Mr. Dolan said. But he said he wanted his own campaign to remain focused on Ohio. He wanted to get back to discussing policy, and he certainly did not want to re-litigate the last election.“I am not looking backwards,” he said.Like the other Republicans in the race, he said he wants to secure the border, cut the flow of fentanyl into the state and tackle inflation. But he also said he could do more than his competitors to bring workers to the state and put together a unique economic development agenda.He’s hardly a never Trumper. He said he voted for Mr. Trump in the last presidential election, opposed both impeachment cases against him and has said he would support the former president should he become the 2024 Republican nominee.But on Jan. 6, Mr. Dolan did not shy away from criticizing Mr. Trump for spreading lies about the results of the November 2020 election, writing on Twitter, “Real leaders lead not manipulate.” Unlike the other leading Republican candidates in the race, he also acknowledges President Biden is the nation’s legitimate leader.It was a stance that Pat Ryan, 64, said he respected. Standing at his front door, Ryan, who considers himself a Democrat, said he planned to vote in the Republican primary this year because of Mr. Dolan. “I looked at all the candidates, and he’s the most honest one,” he said.Jazmine Ulloa More

Why has the Ohio Republican Senate primary, which reaches its conclusion Tuesday, been so interesting (if not always edifying) to watch? In part, because it’s the first time the divides of the party’s 2016 primary campaign have risen fully to the surface again.Six years ago, under the pressure of Donald Trump’s insurgency, the G.O.P. split into three factions. First was the party establishment, trying to sustain a business-friendly and internationalist agenda and an institutionalist approach to governance. This was the faction of Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, much the party’s Washington D.C. leadership — but fewer of its media organs and activists.Those groups mostly supported the more movement-driven, True Conservative faction — the faction of Ted Cruz, the Tea Party, the House Freedom Caucus, talk radio. This faction was more libertarian and combative, and richer in grassroots support — but not as rich as it thought.That’s because Trump himself forged a third faction, pulling together a mixture of populists and paleoconservatives, disaffected voters who didn’t share True Conservatism’s litmus tests and pugilists who just wanted someone to fight liberal cultural dominance, with no agenda beyond the fight itself.When Trump, astonishingly, won the presidency, you might have expected these factions to feud openly throughout his chaotic administration. But that’s not exactly what happened. Part of the establishment faction — mostly strategists and pundits — broke from the party entirely. The larger part, the Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan and Nikki Haley camp, essentially ran policy in the early Trump era — passing tax reform, running the national security bureaucracy, bemoaning Trump’s tweets while setting much of his agenda.The movement faction, Tea Partyers and TrueCons, was given personnel appointments, the chance to write irrelevant budget proposals, and eventually a degree of personal power, through figures like Mick Mulvaney and Mark Meadows. (Trump clearly just liked the Freedom Caucus guys, whatever their ideological differences.) The populists, meanwhile, won some victories on immigration policy and trade, while complaining about the “deep state” on almost every other front.But because both the TrueCons and the populists delighted in Trump’s pugilism — even unto his election-overturning efforts in 2020 — it could be hard to see where one faction ended and the next began. And this pattern often held in Trump-era Republican primary battles, in which candidates with TrueCon or establishment backgrounds recast themselves as Trumpists by endorsing his grievances and paranoias.But in the Ohio Senate primary, finally, you can see the divisions clearly once again. First you have a candidate, Matt Dolan, who is fully in the establishment lane, explicitly refusing to court Trumpian favor and trying to use the Russian invasion of Ukraine to peel Republicans away from the America First banner.You have a candidate in the TrueCon lane, the adaptable Josh Mandel, who tried to hug Trump personally but who draws his support from the old powers of movement conservatism — from the Club for Growth to talk radio’s Mark Levin to the political consultancy that runs Ted Cruz’s campaigns.And you have J.D. Vance, who is very clear about trying to be a populist in full — taking the Trump-in-2016 line on trade and immigration and foreign policy, allying himself with thinkers and funders who want a full break with the pre-Trump G.O.P.Given this division, it’s significant that Trump decided to endorse Vance, and that his most politically active scion, Donald Jr., is enthusiastic for the “Hillbilly Elegy” author. It’s also significant that Trump’s endorsement hasn’t prevented the Club for Growth from continuing to throw money against Vance, prompting blowback from Trump himself. For the first time since 2016, there’s a clear line not just between Trump and the establishment but between Trumpian populism and movement conservatism.That line will blur again once the primary is settled. But the battle for Ohio suggests things to look for in 2022 and beyond. First, expect a Trump revival to be more like his 2016 insurgent-populist campaign than his incumbent run in 2020. Second, expect populism writ large to gain some strength and substance but still remain bound to Trump’s obsessions (and appetite for constitutional crisis).Third, expect many of the movement and TrueCon figures who made their peace with Trump six years ago to be all-in for Ron DeSantis should he seem remotely viable. Fourth, expect the remains of the establishment to divide over whether to rally around a candidate of anti-Trump principle — from Liz Cheney to certain incarnations of Mike Pence — or to make their peace with a harder-edged figure like DeSantis.Finally, expect a potential second Trump presidency to resemble the scramble for his endorsement in Ohio: the establishment left out in the cold, no Reince Priebus running the White House or McConnell setting its agenda, but just constant policy battles between movement conservatives and populists, each claiming to embody the true and only Trumpism and hoping that the boss agrees.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

Charles W. Herbster, who has been endorsed by Donald Trump for Nebraska governor, was accused of groping a second woman at a 2019 Republican fund-raising event. He denies both allegations.A second woman has publicly accused Charles W. Herbster, the Republican candidate for governor in Nebraska endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump, of groping her at a 2019 Republican fund-raising dinner.Elizabeth Todsen said Mr. Herbster grabbed her at the dinner in Omaha and said details of the incident reported earlier this month by the Nebraska Examiner were correct.“For years I have struggled with an experience I had with Charles W. Herbster,” she said in a statement issued by her lawyer. “At a political event in 2019, Herbster sexually groped me while greeting my table.”The allegations against Mr. Herbster, a millionaire agribusiness executive who is largely self-funding his campaign, have roiled the often polite world of Nebraska politics ahead of the state’s May 10 primary. The longtime Trump ally has adopted the former president’s playbook in responding to the allegations, forcefully denying them, suing his first public accuser, a state senator, and tying her to his political rivals.A spokeswoman for Mr. Herbster’s campaign, Emily Novotny, said Mr. Herbster “absolutely and unequivocally denies all allegations.” She said he “will be taking legal action” against Ms. Todsen. Mr. Herbster is a bitter political rival of Gov. Pete Ricketts, a term-limited Republican who like Mr. Herbster has long been a major donor to Nebraska Republicans. Mr. Ricketts is supporting Jim Pillen, a member of the University of Nebraska Board of Regents. Limited public polling of the race shows Mr. Herbster and Mr. Pillen locked in a virtual three-way tie with Brett Lindstrom, a state senator who has attracted support from moderate Republicans and from some Democrats who have changed their party affiliation to vote in the primary.The account from Ms. Todsen follows an accusation earlier this month from Julie Slama, a Nebraska state senator who said Mr. Herbster also grabbed her at the same event.Ms. Todsen, 26, is a former political aide to Nebraska state legislators who now works for a fund-raising company in Washington. She did not respond to messages on Saturday and her lawyer, Tara Tesmer Paulson of Lincoln, Neb., said she would make no additional comments.Mr. Herbster denied Ms. Slama’s account and has since aired television ads tying her to his political rivals in the governor’s race while comparing himself to Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh, who both faced charges of improper behavior during their confirmation hearings. Mr. Herbster’s TV ad claims Ms. Slama kept in contact with him after the incident and “even invited Herbster to her destination wedding.”Ms. Slama said on Twitter on Saturday that she was “grateful for Elizabeth’s bravery in coming forward.”Mr. Herbster and Mr. Trump are scheduled to appear together at a rally on Sunday in Greenwood, Neb. The event was originally planned for Friday night but Mr. Trump moved it, he said, because of storms forecast for the area.Kirsten Noyes More

Marjorie Taylor Greene accused of lying in hearing in Capitol attack caseLawyers for groups challenging Republican say text Greene sent to Meadows, released by House panel, shows she lied in testimony Lawyers for voters seeking to bar the far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene from Congress over her support for the January 6 insurrection have accused her of lying in a hearing in the case.JD Vance’s Senate run is a test of Trump’s influence on the Republican partyRead moreIn a filing Friday, lawyers for groups challenging Greene said a text from the Georgia congresswoman to then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, released by the House committee investigating January 6, shows she lied in testimony.At the hearing in Atlanta earlier this month, a fractious affair in front of an administrative judge, Greene said she could not recall advocating for Donald Trump to impose martial law after the Capitol attack, as the then president sought to remain in power despite losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden.In the text message released this week, Greene told Meadows on 17 January 2021, 11 days after the riot and three days before Biden’s inauguration: “In our private chat with only Members several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call Marshall [sic] law.“I just wanted you to tell him. They stole this election. We all know. They will destroy our country next.”As reported by Bloomberg News, attorneys for Greene’s challengers said: “Greene’s testimony at the hearing that she could not remember discussing martial law with anyone was already dubious.“This text with President Trump’s chief of staff makes her testimony even more incredible because it seems like the kind of message with the kind of recipient that a reasonable person testifying truthfully would remember.”Greene’s lawyer, James Bopp Jr, told Bloomberg: “The text very clearly said she doesn’t know about those things. It couldn’t be clearer.“It’s just another outrageous fabrication that we have been seeing from the other side throughout this case, because they don’t have the law on their side.”The attempt to push Greene off the ballot in the Republican primary is based on section three of the 14th amendment to the US constitution. Ratified in 1868, shortly after the civil war, the amendment bars from office anyone who has taken an oath under the constitution but then engaged in insurrection.A bipartisan Senate committee linked seven deaths to the Capitol attack, which occurred after Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” in service of his lies about electoral fraud.Riot participants have tied Greene to their cause. She has repeated Trump’s lie that the election was stolen but also denied links to rioters and said she was not calling for political violence when she backed Trump’s claims.In the immediate aftermath of the Capitol riot, Greene was one of 147 Republicans in the House and Senate who objected to electoral college results.The groups challenging Greene have challenged other Trump supporters.An effort to exclude Madison Cawthorn, from North Carolina, failed when a judge said an 1872 civil war amnesty law was not merely retroactive. Attempts to eject two Arizonans, Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, were also rejected.The judge in Greene’s case has said he will soon make a recommendation to Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, who will then rule.Raffensperger is a conservative Republican but also the official who blocked Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat in Georgia. Raffensperger has said that caused him to fear for his safety.Greene appears in This Will Not Pass, a hotly anticipated new book by two New York Times reporters, both in her relation to the January 6 attack and as a thorn in the side of congressional Democrats.“If there was one Republican who had shown she had no business serving in Congress,” Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns write, “Democrats believed it was” Greene.The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, though, “thought it would be pointless to try expelling Greene from the House. Even if an expulsion vote succeeded, the speaker believed Greene would easily win a special election in her district and return.”TopicsGeorgiaUS Capitol attackUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

But Sinn Fein, which is leading in polls ahead of next week’s elections, hasn’t focused its campaign on unification with Ireland.CARRICKFERGUS, Northern Ireland — The sun was setting over the tidy, red brick homes in a Protestant neighborhood outside Belfast when two candidates for Northern Ireland’s legislature came to knock on doors on a recent evening. It might as well have been setting on the pro-unionist dreams of the residents.“It’s changed times now,” said Brian Gow, 69, as he contemplated the growing odds that the Irish nationalist party, Sinn Fein, would win the most seats in parliamentary elections on Thursday.That would represent an extraordinary coming-of-age for a political party that many outside Ireland still associate with years of paramilitary violence. It would also be a momentous shift in Northern Ireland, one that could upend the power-sharing arrangements that have kept a fragile peace for two decades.Yet for all of the freighted symbolism, Mr. Gow and his wife, Alison, greeted the prospect of a Sinn Fein victory with relative equanimity.“There’s no way I would vote Sinn Fein,” said Mrs. Gow, 66, who, like her husband, is a die-hard supporter of the Democratic Unionist Party, which favors Northern Ireland’s current status as part of the United Kingdom. “But if they’re committed to serving everyone equally, people will have to live with it.”Mary Lou McDonald, the president of Sinn Fein, center left, talking to voters and stall owners at St. George’s Market during a campaign stop this week in Belfast.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesBrian Gow talking to Danny Donnelly, a candidate for the Alliance Party, a centrist alternative to Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionists, this week in Carrickfergus.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesThat would be music to the ears of Sinn Fein’s leaders. In polls this past week, they held a lead of two to six percentage points over the D.U.P., running a campaign that emphasizes kitchen-table concerns like the high cost of living and the need for better health care — and that plays down the party’s ideological commitment to Irish unification, a legacy of its ties to the Irish Republican Army.Irish unification, party leaders say, is an over-the-horizon issue, over which Sinn Fein has limited control. It is up to the British government to call a referendum on whether Northern Ireland should stay part of the United Kingdom or join the Republic of Ireland.The only immediate effect of a Sinn Fein victory would be the right to name the first minister in the next government. The unionists, who have splintered into three parties, could still end up with the largest bloc of votes, according to political analysts.“I hope that political unionism, when they meet this democratic test next week, will accept the vote from the people, no matter what that is,” said John Finucane, a Sinn Fein member of the British Parliament who is running the party’s campaign. “To paint this in an us-versus-them context, post election, is potentially dangerous.”A lawyer and rugby player, Mr. Finucane, 42, knows the horrors of Northern Ireland’s past firsthand. When he was 8, he watched from under a table while masked gunmen killed his father, Pat Finucane, a prominent Catholic lawyer. The murder, in which loyalist paramilitaries colluded with British security forces, was one of the most notorious of the 30 years of violence known as the Troubles.“I hope that political unionism, when they meet this democratic test next week, will accept the vote from the people, no matter what that is,” said John Finucane, a Sinn Fein member of the British Parliament.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesWalking near a “peace wall” that separates Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods in Belfast.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesPat Finucane’s photograph still hangs over his son’s desk — a poignant reminder of why a Sinn Fein victory would mean more than just better health care. In the United States, where many in the Irish diaspora embrace the nationalist cause, the party’s supporters frame the stakes more dramatically.Before St. Patrick’s Day, they took out ads in The New York Times and other newspapers that promised “Irish unity in our time” and called on the Irish government to “plan, prepare and advocate for Irish unity, as provided for in the Good Friday Agreement,” the 1998 peace accord that ended sectarian violence in the North.“If Sinn Fein are the largest party, the focus will immediately turn to their calls for a border poll” to determine whether a majority of people favor Irish unity, said Gordon Lyons, a Democratic Unionist who represents Carrickfergus. “What people want to avoid is the division, the arguments, and the rancor that would come from that.”But it is the Democratic Unionists who are laying the groundwork for the rancor. They have warned they will refuse to take part in a government with a Sinn Fein first minister. The party pulled its own first minister from the government in February in a dispute over the North’s trade status since Brexit, which is governed by a legal construct known as the Northern Ireland Protocol.Unionists complain that the protocol, which requires border checks on goods passing from mainland Britain to Northern Ireland, has driven a wedge between the North and the rest of the United Kingdom. They are pressuring Prime Minister Boris Johnson to overhaul the arrangement, which he negotiated with the European Union.Graffiti next to a supermarket pressing shoppers not to buy goods from the European Union or Ireland, but from Britain.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesUnion Jack bunting and flags celebrating Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee, which will be celebrated in June in Britain, adorned a shop this month on Sandy Row in Belfast.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesMr. Johnson seems poised to do so. His government is readying legislation, which could be introduced days after the election, that would throw out parts of the protocol. Critics warn it could prompt a clash with Brussels and jeopardize the hard-won peace of the Good Friday Agreement.But public opinion polls suggest the protocol is not a high priority for most voters in Northern Ireland, even many unionists. Some economists contend that the North’s hybrid trade status is an advantage, giving it dual access to markets in mainland Britain and the European Union.The issue did not come up much on a recent evening of canvassing by two candidates for the Alliance Party, which presents itself as a centrist alternative to Sinn Fein and the D.U.P. “People see it as the parties fighting over flags and the border, not the bread-and-butter issues that affect people’s everyday lives,” said one of them, Danny Donnelly.The D.U.P., opponents say, is exploiting the protocol — despite its numbingly complicated details — particularly in loyalist strongholds, where posters warn that residents will “NEVER accept a border in the Irish Sea!”“There’s no way you can tell me that a kid with a petrol bomb in his hand is aggrieved at the finer points of an international trade agreement between the E.U. and the British government,” Mr. Finucane said, referring to fiery clashes last year between young protesters and the police in Belfast.Still, even if the protocol has little tangible effect on daily lives, it does carry symbolic weight for those who have felt cast adrift from Britain since Brexit. Though Protestants remain a bare plurality of the population in the North, the Catholic population is growing faster and is poised to overtake them.“What people want to avoid is the division, the arguments, and the rancor that would come from” calls for a border poll, said Gordon Lyons, a Democratic Unionist.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesA Catholic neighborhood around Falls Road in Belfast.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesWhile the connection between religion and national identification is not automatic — some Northern Ireland Catholics view themselves as British, not Irish — it has added to the belief among unionists that the North and South will inevitably move closer together, and that their links to London will inevitably fray.“We’re still part of the U.K.,” Mr. Gow said, “but we’re not being treated that way.”For that, he blames the D.U.P. rather than Sinn Fein. The party signed off on the deal that Mr. Johnson struck with Brussels and now wants to unravel. Then it pulled out of the government, which he viewed as a political stunt that betrayed its 50-year history as a responsible voice for unionists in Belfast and London.The divisions within the party, which also faces a challenge from a right-wing party, the Traditionalist Unionist Voice, are so deep that some say the entire unionist movement may need a reset.“There is a stream of thought in unionism that maybe everything needs to crash and burn before we can get a proper new unionist movement that unites everybody,” said David Campbell, the chairman of the Loyalist Communities Council, which represents a group of pro-union paramilitary groups.“There is a stream of thought in unionism that maybe everything needs to crash and burn before we can get a proper new unionist movement that unites everybody,” said David Campbell, chairman of the Loyalist Communities Council.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesA view of Belfast from Black Mountain, which overlooks the city.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesMr. Lyons pointed out that the D.U.P. had managed to get the British government to commit to overhauling the protocol. He predicted that unionist voters — even those demoralized by Brexit — would return to the fold rather than risk letting Sinn Fein seize the mantle of the largest party.Whatever the result, history has moved on around Belfast. Kevin Mallon, 40, a shopkeeper on the bustling Falls Road, a Catholic stronghold, said nationalists were more interested in economic prosperity than in uniting with the South, even if that idea still holds atavistic appeal.Thomas Knox, 52, a house painter and decorator who is Catholic, nursed a pint in the Royal British Legion, a bar in the nearby town of Larne once frequented by British police and soldiers. A decade ago, he said, he would not have felt comfortable walking into the place.“Those days are long gone,” Mr. Knox said.Catholics and Protestants drinking together at the Station pub in the town of Larne.Andrew Testa for The New York Times More

Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby fought back tears and said it was ‘difficult to look at some of the images’ of Vladimir Putin’s ‘cruel’ and ‘depraved’ invasion of Ukraine.
Kirby stated that the US had underestimated the level of ‘violence and cruelty’ that Russian forces would undertake, and described it as ‘brutality of the coldest and most depraved sort’

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