Elections

US man charged in Capitol attack gets asylum in BelarusEvan Neumann, accused of hitting police with metal barricade, tells Belarusian state TV he has ‘mixed feelings’ about the move A former San Francisco Bay Area resident facing federal criminal charges from the January 6 attack at the US Capitol has been granted asylum in Belarus, the former Soviet nation’s state media reported on Tuesday.Evan Neumann, 49, was charged a year ago with assaulting police, including using a metal barricade as a battering ram during the riot last year. In an interview with the Belarus 1 channel that aired last year, he acknowledged being at the building that day but rejected the charges and said he had not hit any officers.The move comes a month into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Joe Biden was heading to Europe to talk with allies about possible new sanctions against Russia and more military aid for Ukraine.“Today I have mixed feelings,” Neumann told the state-owned television network BelTA in the report aired on Tuesday, the Washington Post reported. “I am glad Belarus took care of me. I am upset to find myself in a situation where I have problems in my own country.”The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, and Russian president, Vladimir Putin, have used the riot as evidence of a supposed double standard by the US, which often condemns crackdowns on anti-government demonstrations elsewhere.Belarus is a Russian ally and neighbor to Ukraine. It does not have an extradition agreement with the US.Neumann told Belarus 1 that he had traveled to Italy in March 2021 and eventually arrived in Ukraine before crossing over illegally into Belarus. He owns a handbag manufacturing business.Police body-camera footage shows Neumann and others shoving a metal barricade into a line of officers before he punches two officers and hits them with the barricade, according to court papers. Court documents state Neumann stood at the front of a police barricade wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat in support of Donald Trump.TopicsUS Capitol attackBelarusEuropenewsReuse this content More

As the 2022 midterms draw into view, the question arises: To what degree are Democratic difficulties inevitable?Ruy Teixeira, a co-editor of The Liberal Patriot, argues in an email that “the cultural left has managed to associate the Democratic Party with a series of views on crime, immigration, policing, free speech and, of course, race and gender that are quite far from those of the median voter. That’s a success for the cultural left, but the hard reality is that it’s an electoral liability for the Democratic Party.”Teixeira went on: “The current Democratic brand suffers from multiple deficiencies that make it somewhere between uncompelling and toxic to wide swaths of American voters who might potentially be their allies.”In Teixeira’s view, many Democrats have fallen victim to what he calls the “Fox News fallacy.”“This is the idea,” Teixeira said. “If Fox News criticizes the Democrats for X, then there must be absolutely nothing to X, and the job of Democrats is to assert that loudly and often.” He wrote, “Take the issue of crime. Initially dismissed as simply an artifact of the Covid shutdown that was being vastly exaggerated by Fox News and the like for their nefarious purposes, it is now apparent that the spike in violent crime is quite real and that voters are very, very concerned about it.”In an analysis of the complexity of the current Democratic predicament, Sarah Anzia, a professor of public policy and political science at Berkeley, addressed the preponderance of urban voters in the Democratic coalition: “The Democrats have a challenge rooted in political geography and the institution of single-member, first-past-the-post elections.” Citing Jonathan Rodden’s 2019 book “Why Cities Lose,” Anzia argued that the density of Democratic voters in cities has both geographically isolated the party and empowered its most progressive activist wing:They need to find ways to compete in more moderate or even conservative districts if they hope to have majorities of seats in the U.S. Congress or state legislatures. But large numbers of their voters are concentrated in cities, quite progressive and want the party to move further left in its policy positions — and not just on social-cultural issues.Anzia contended that Democrats “have collectively staked out positions that have alienated certain supporters,” which is “related to the built-in challenge I just described.”The murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer and fall of 2020, Anzia continued,brought policing reform to the agenda in a way that it hadn’t been before, even after Ferguson, but suddenly the conversation jumped to “defund the police.” However one defines the specifics of what that should mean, I do think it sounded extreme and scary to a lot of people outside of places like Berkeley, Seattle, Minneapolis.According to Anzia’s analysis, Democratic elected officials and teachers’ unions weakened the party by closing schools for in-person instruction for too long:It made sense to have remote instruction early in the pandemic, but in many places, kids were in Zoom school until April of 2021 or even until the end of the academic year. Anyone could see that this was going to have some really negative consequences for kids.Multiple studies, Anzia wrote,show that this was more common — schools remained in remote learning longer — in more Democratic places with stronger teachers’ unions. This is an issue that affects people’s lives very directly. It handed Republicans an issue to run on.Some experts in American elections make the case that Joe Biden was elected by voters seeking a return to regular order after the tumultuous Trump years but that instead of steering a moderate course, Biden sought to become a transformative president in the mold of Franklin Roosevelt — the problem being that because his party held razor-thin majorities in Congress, he lacked the mandate to do it.Frances Lee, a political scientist at Princeton, wrote in an email thatthe structural problem here is that Democrats’ success in winning unified party control in the Georgia Senate runoffs in 2021 hugely inflated the expectations of Democratic base voters about what could be achieved. At that time, it was even bandied about that Joe Biden was going to be the next F.D.R. Democrats passed a $3.5 trillion budget resolution that envisioned a transformational domestic policy agenda. But Democrats have not been able to deliver on most of these policy goals.“Democrats,” Lee continued,have not been able to achieve that unanimity on issues of critical importance to the party’s base: voting rights, Build Back Better, minimum wage, police reform. Democratic base voters are very frustrated and disappointed right now. Considering that the policy outcomes of trifecta control of national government have been so disappointing, it is hard to see how Democrats can fire up their base to turn out again. It is difficult to see anything changing on this front between now and the 2022 midterms.Eric Schickler, a political scientist at Berkeley, described the most likely outcome of the 2022 elections as part of “a cycle of disappointment and recrimination” that not only has plagued Biden’s first two years in office but also dogged his two most recent Democratic predecessors — Bill Clinton in 1994 and Barack Obama in 2010.The pattern:Republicans provided unified opposition to Democrats’ agenda, Democrats struggled to corral all of their members behind their program, and the party’s own voters grew frustrated by the disappointing results compared to their expectations.At the moment, there is widespread pessimism among those on the left end of the political spectrum. Isabel V. Sawhill, a senior fellow at Brookings, replying by email to my inquiry, wrote that for predictable reasons, “Democrats face an uphill battle in both 2022 and 2024.”But, she went on, “the problems are much deeper. First, the white working class that used to vote Democratic no longer does.” Sawhill noted that when shestudied this group back in 2018, what surprised me most was their very negative attitudes toward government, their dislike of social welfare programs, their commitment to an ethic of personal responsibility and the importance of family and religion in their lives. This large group includes some people who are just plain prejudiced but a larger group that simply resents all the attention paid to race, gender, sexual preference or identity and the disrespect they think this entails for those with more traditional views and lifestyles.Messages coming from the more progressive members of the Democratic Party, Sawhill warned, “will be exploited by Republicans to move moderate Democrats or to move no-Trump Republicans in their direction.”Sean Westwood, a political scientist at Dartmouth, is highly critical of the contemporary Democratic Party, writing by email:Misguided focus on unpopular social policies are driving voters away from the Democratic Party and are mobilizing Republicans. Democrats used to be the party of the working class, but today they are instead seen as a party defined by ostensibly legalizing property crime, crippling the police and injecting social justice into math classes.As a result, Westwood continued,It is no surprise that this doesn’t connect with a working family struggling to pay for surging grocery bills. By abandoning their core brand, even Democrats who oppose defunding the police are burdened by the party’s commitment to unpopular social policy.The traditional strategy in midterm elections, Westwood wrote, is to mobilize the party base. Instead, he contended, Democratshave decided to let the fringe brand the party’s messaging around issues that fail to obtain majority support among the base. Perhaps the most successful misinformation campaign in modern politics is being waged by the Twitter left against the base of the Democratic Party. The Twitter mob is intent on pushing social policies that have approximately zero chance of becoming law as a test of liberalism. Even if you support reducing taxes on the middle class, immigration reform and increasing the minimum wage, opposing defunding the police or the legalization of property crime makes you an unreasonable outcast.Along similar lines, John Halpin, who works with Teixeira as a co-editor of The Liberal Patriot, emailed to say thatthe biggest problem ahead of the 2022 midterms is that voters don’t think Biden and the Democrats are focused on the issues that matter most to them. If you look at the most recent Wall Street Journal poll, Democrats are currently suffering double-digit deficits compared to Republicans on perceptions about which party is best able to handle nearly all of the issues that matter most to voters: for example, rebuilding the economy (–13), getting inflation under control (–17), reducing crime (–20) and securing the border (–26). Democratic advantages on issues like education are also down considerably from just a few years ago.There are political analysts who differ strongly from Westwood and Teixeira in their critiques of Democratic strategy.Will Bunch, a liberal columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, argues that Democrats should adopt a full-speed-ahead, damn-the-torpedoes approach. In a March 3 column, Bunch contended that the Reagan revolution of the 1980s still casts “a cloud of self-doubt over the Democratic Party” and thatparty messaging largely remains dominated by reaction and fear rather than boldness. Those fears seem rooted in a panic that progressive values will be seen as less American — when the reality is that ideas like academic freedom, preventing censorship and a belief in inquiry, including science, are the core beliefs of this nation. It’s past time for President Biden and other leaders of the Democratic Party to approve this message.I asked Bunch how a Democratic candidate should appeal to white working-class voters and socially conservative Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters. He replied by email:The white working class is a much more diverse group than commentators from all sides tend to credit. Remember the large turnouts for Black Lives Matter marches in isolated Rust Belt and rural communities in 2020, for example, and many in the working class remain zealously pro-union. I think the greatest cause of resentment is lack of educational and related career opportunities that have shut out the working class of all races. The Democrats are philosophically wired to expand these opportunities — through free community college and trade school, for example — yet have failed to make these a priority, ensuring a continued sense that Dems are now the party of self-enlightened degree holders looking down on them. That cycle can and must be broken.I also asked how a Democrat should counter Republicans who exploit critical race theory, defunding the police, affirmative action, transgender rights and other politically divisive issues.Bunch replied:It’s important to reframe the conversations, so that the debate about schools, for example, isn’t about critical race theory (a construction that’s only taught in law schools) but about book banning or blocking teachers from discussing even Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks, which most voters in the vast middle vehemently oppose. Likewise, Democrats need to make clear that their goal is making streets safer and ending the heartbreak of homicide, but the way to do that is by thoughtfully building safer communities, not throwing more taxpayer dollars at failed methods of policing. The best strategy on affirmative action, at least in education, is to again make higher ed a public good and eliminate the current “Hunger Games” of college admissions.Dan Froomkin, a media critic who writes at Press Watch, argued in an email that Republicans are using a collection of contrived issues with little substantive merit. On critical race theory, for example, he wrote:It’s a phony issue. What far-right Republicans mean by “critical race theory” is that white children are being taught at public schools that they should be ashamed of being white. This is a made-up issue that serves as a stalking horse for inciting white grievance. Like so many of the far-right accusations against their opponents, it really couldn’t be less true. The reality is that public schools writ large don’t teach nearly enough about the sordid aspects of American history or culture, as you well know. As a press critic, I have been horrified at how credulously many political reporters have written about Republican lies — and how impressed they were at their alleged (but entirely unproven) effectiveness. They wrote about it as if it were a real problem, rather than an obvious, bad-faith attempt to manufacture white panic.The prospect of Democratic losses in the House will have ideological consequences for both parties.Halpin pointed out that the Democrats who lose seats in Congress in 2022 are certain to be disproportionately drawn from the moderates who face the most difficulty winning re-election in purple districts:If the Democrats get clobbered this fall, it will mostly be frontline members — those who are more moderate and centrist — who lose their seats, thus paving the way for a minority Democratic Party to become even more left wing. This would be a disaster for Democrats, but no one in the party seems willing to confront it.Matt Bennett, the executive vice president of Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, cited a major difference now compared to past midterm elections, writing in an email:Republicans at every level are openly plotting to steal the presidency in 2024, as we detail here. An essential element of their plot is winning control of Congress. That means the future prospects of both the Democratic Party and American democracy could be severely damaged by a loss in 2022.The congressional Republicans, Bennett continued,who stood up to Trump’s assault on democracy now number in the single digits, and most of them are retiring or likely to lose in primaries. The candidates who would give them their majorities are, almost to a person, fully committed to the big lie that Trump won in 2020. Almost all have run on a set of authoritarian messages that include fear of the mythical deep state, disregard for constitutional and legal protections (other than the Second Amendment) and contempt for vital norms of governing. Worst of all, they have committed themselves to unyielding support for Donald Trump, who has staked his entire postpresidency and comeback effort on an assault on voting. Putting his acolytes in charge of Congress could send us careening toward the cliff, endangering the future of the world’s oldest and sturdiest democracy.Bennett warned:While the economy continues to impact voter behavior most, Republicans have been able to weaponize culture war issues in ways that significantly damage Democrats. In a major retrospective on the 2020 congressional elections that Third Way ran along with the Collective PAC and Latino Victory Fund, we found that Republican attempts to brand Democrats as radicals worked devastatingly well. Of the 12 House Democratic freshmen who lost last cycle — on a ticket with a winning presidential candidate — all were seriously hurt by culture war attacks.This Democratic liability has become acute as politics have become nationalized, making all Democrats pay a price for what a small but prominent group pushes for:Members of Congress on the far left have taken a series of positions — like defunding the police, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, closing federal prisons, decriminalizing border crossings, etc. — that are politically toxic in swing districts. It is no longer the case that what happens in a deep blue district, where these kinds of ideas might be more palatable, stays there. The fact is that these kinds of ideas and slogans do create a perception among swing voters that Democrats are outside the mainstream.John Lawrence, who served as an aide in the House for 38 years, including eight as chief of staff to Nancy Pelosi, is the kind of party strategist hardly anyone outside Washington has heard of but who is exceptionally knowledgeable about the state of American politics.Lawrence replied by email to my inquiry:I think a lot of voters will use 2022 to remind Biden (and Democrats, since they can’t vote against him) that their vote in 2020 was a vote to return to normalcy, not a blank check to build on the New Deal and Great Society. Once in office — albeit with ridiculously narrow margins — Democrats used the crisis to swing for the stands, ignoring the historical lesson of the Senate’s moderating role. So they have created the worst of all worlds: a failure to enact what the base demanded (but they did not have the votes to deliver) and the appearance of having overreached and invited an electoral haircut by many 2020 supporters who never embraced such a sweeping agenda.The Russian invasion of Ukraine makes the future highly uncertain not only in Europe but throughout the world. Similarly, if less violently, the state of the economy, inflation and the trajectory of Covid are fuel for dissension and remain unpredictable.The historical pattern of midterm contests suggests that a rejection of the party in power is the customary order of business. But the consequences of a Republican takeover of the House or of both branches of Congress are unlikely to be routine. What we can be sure of is that the Democrats can’t go on forever with this much of a gulf between what the majority of progressive party activists think the party should stand for and what the majority of Americans think it should.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

Proyecto Veritas llamó a la hija del presidente para corroborar que era su diario. Las investigaciones judiciales revelan nuevos datos que muestran cómo fue que esa organización trabajó para divulgar información personal sobre la familia Biden.Un mes antes de las elecciones estadounidenses de 2020, la hija de Joe Biden, Ashley, recibió una llamada de un hombre que dijo que la quería ayudar. Con un tono amistoso, le aseguró que había encontrado un diario que creía que le pertenecía a ella, y quería devolvérselo.Es cierto que Ashley Biden había escrito un diario durante el año anterior mientras se recuperaba de una adicción y lo había guardado, junto con otras pertenencias, en la casa de un amigo en Florida donde había vivido hasta unos pocos meses antes. Si el contenido de ese diario personal se hubiese divulgado, podría haber significado una vergüenza o una distracción para su padre durante un momento crítico de la campaña.Biden acordó con el hombre que llamó que, al día siguiente, enviaría a una persona para que buscara el diario.Pero no estaba tratando con un buen samaritano.Esa persona trabajaba para el Proyecto Veritas, un grupo conservador que se había convertido en uno de los predilectos del presidente Donald Trump, según entrevistas con personas familiarizadas con la secuencia de eventos. Desde la sede del grupo en el condado de Westchester, Nueva York, y acompañado por otros miembros de la organización, el hombre buscaba engañar a Biden para que confirmara la autenticidad del diario, el cual Proyecto Veritas estaba a punto de comprarle a dos intermediarios por 40.000 dólares.El hombre que llamó no se identificó como alguien vinculado al Proyecto Veritas, según relatos de dos personas que conocen los detalles de la conversación. Al final de la llamada, varios integrantes del grupo que estuvieron presentes, que escucharon grabaciones de la llamada o que fueron informados sobre la conversación, creían que Biden había dicho más que suficiente para confirmar que era su diario.Los nuevos detalles sobre el esfuerzo del Proyecto Veritas para confirmar que el diario era de Biden, son elementos de una historia que sigue en proceso y que se enfoca en cómo algunos partidarios de Trump, y una organización conocida por sus operaciones encubiertas, trabajaron para exponer información personal sobre la familia Biden durante la campaña electoral de 2020.A través de entrevistas, y documentos judiciales y de otros tipos, la nueva información le agrega más detalles a lo que se sabe sobre un episodio que ha causado una investigación penal sobre el Proyecto Veritas por parte de fiscales federales, quienes sugirieron tener evidencia de que el grupo fue cómplice en el robo de la propiedad de Ashley Biden y el transporte de bienes hurtados a través de fronteras estatales.Además, al demostrar que el Proyecto Veritas utilizó el engaño en vez de técnicas periodísticas tradicionales cuando contactó a Biden —la persona que hizo la llamada se identificó con un nombre falso—, los nuevos testimonios podrían complicar aún más las afirmaciones que hizo la organización en documentos judiciales de que debería ser tratada como una editorial y recibir las protecciones consagradas en la Primera Enmienda. Con regularidad, el Proyecto Veritas lleva a cabo operaciones encubiertas, emboscadas para entrevistas y operativos de vigilancia, principalmente contra organizaciones y periodistas liberales.Al mismo tiempo, la nueva información sobre el caso sugiere que el esfuerzo por divulgar el diario provino de niveles más profundos del círculo de Trump de lo que se suponía.Un mes antes de que llamaran a Ashley Biden, el diario había sido compartido en un evento de recaudación de fondos de Trump en Florida, en la casa de una donante que ayudó a conseguir el diario y se lo entregó al Proyecto Veritas, y que luego fue nominada por Trump para el Consejo Nacional Consultivo de Cáncer. Entre los asistentes al evento se encontraba Donald Trump Jr., aunque no se sabe si leyó el diario.Los fiscales federales han estado investigando el modo en el que el Proyecto Veritas obtuvo el diario, y en otoño del año pasado realizaron allanamientos en las casas de tres de los agentes del grupo, incluida la de su fundador, James O’Keefe. En diversos documentos judiciales, los fiscales han sugerido que la organización fue cómplice en el robo de algunas pertenencias de Ashley Biden porque los testimonios muestran que el grupo obtuvo esos objetos al tiempo que intentaba confirmar la autenticidad del diario.El Proyecto Veritas —que demandó a The New York Times por difamación en otro caso— ha negado cualquier irregularidad o conocimiento de que alguna pertenencia haya sido robada. Se ha presentado como una organización de medios que está siendo injustamente investigada solo por ejercer periodismo, y ha atacado al Departamento de Justicia y al FBI por la manera en que han manejado el caso.Los fiscales han señalado que ven las circunstancias de otra manera; en un documento judicial en un tribunal casi desestimaron por completo los argumentos de la defensa del grupo que sostiene que actuaron como una organización de noticias. “La Primera Enmienda no brinda protección contra el robo y el transporte interestatal de propiedad robada”, afirmaron.En respuesta a una solicitud de comentarios al Proyecto Veritas, O’Keefe envió un correo electrónico criticando a The New York Times. “Imagínense escribir de forma tan divergente de la realidad y con un uso tan falaz de insinuaciones, que literalmente no exista ninguna expresión que no empeore la situación”, declaró.Los portavoces del FBI y de los fiscales federales que supervisan el caso en el distrito sur de Nueva York se negaron a hacer comentarios, al igual que Roberta Kaplan, abogada de Ashley Biden.Project Veritas se presenta como una organización de medios que está siendo investigada injustamente y ha atacado al Departamento de Justicia y al FBI por su manejo del caso.Stefani Reynolds para The New York TimesEl Times informó con anterioridad que la historia de la participación del Proyecto Veritas en el caso del diario comenzó en los meses previos al día de las elecciones.En julio de 2020, una madre soltera con dos hijos se mudó a la casa en alquiler de un exnovio en Delray Beach, Florida. La mujer, Aimee Harris, simpatizante de Donald Trump, le dijo al exnovio que tenía poco dinero, que no tenía dónde vivir y que estaba en disputa por la custodia de sus hijos. Poco después de mudarse a la casa en alquiler, Harris se enteró de que Ashley Biden —quien era amiga de su exnovio— había vivido en la casa durante ese año.Biden ya había regresado a Filadelfia en junio de 2020, por los días en que su padre había ganado la candidatura presidencial del Partido Demócrata. Guardó un par de bolsos con sus pertenencias en la casa de alquiler junto con su diario, y le dijo a su amigo, quien estaba rentando la casa, que planeaba regresar para llevarse sus cosas en el otoño.En agosto, Harris contactó a Robert Kurlander, un amigo suyo que en la década de 1990 fue sentenciado a 40 meses de prisión por fraude federal y que había expresado en línea su postura contra Biden, para decirle que había encontrado el diario. Ambos creían que podían venderlo, lo que ayudaría a Harris para pagar los abogados que la representaban en la disputa por la custodia.Nuevos detalles tomados de entrevistas y documentos han aclarado lo que sucedió después. Kurlander se puso en contacto con Elizabeth Fago, la donante de Trump que luego organizó el evento de recaudación de fondos al que asistió Donald Trump Jr. Cuando le hablaron por primera vez del diario, Fago afirmó haber pensado que podría ayudar a incrementar las posibilidades de que Donald Trump ganara las elecciones, según dos personas familiarizadas con el asunto.Richard G. Lubin, abogado de Fago, se negó a hacer comentarios.El 3 de septiembre, la hija de Fago alertó al Proyecto Veritas sobre la existencia del diario.Tres días después, Harris y Kurlander asistieron al evento de recaudación de fondos, donde también estaba presente Donald Trump Jr., en la casa de Fago en Jupiter, Florida, para ver si el equipo de la campaña de reelección del presidente podría estar interesado en el diario. Mientras estaba allí, Kurlander les mostró el diario a otras personas. No se sabe con claridad quiénes lo vieron.Después de que la investigación criminal sobre el Proyecto Veritas se hizo pública durante el otoño pasado, un destacado abogado republicano que cabildea en nombre de la organización y O’Keefe informó a un grupo de republicanos del Congreso sobre el caso, con el fin de instarlos a tratar de persuadir al Departamento de Justicia para que dejaran la investigación debido a que el grupo no había hecho nada malo, según una persona informada sobre el asunto.El presidente Donald Trump durante un discurso en Júpiter, Florida, en septiembre de 2020. Días antes, dos personas que luego le vendieron el diario a Project Veritas, lo llevaron a un evento de recaudación de fondos para la campaña de Trump.Doug Mills/The New York TimesEl abogado, Mark Paoletta, dijo que al enterarse de la existencia del diario en el evento de recaudación de fondos, Donald Trump Jr. no mostró ningún interés y dijo que quienquiera que lo tuviera debería informar al FBI. Pero poco después, Paoletta, quien se había desempeñado como el principal abogado del vicepresidente Mike Pence en la Casa Blanca, volvió a llamar a los republicanos del Congreso para decir que no estaba seguro de si la versión sobre la reacción de Donald Trump Jr. era precisa.Los archivos de cabildeo muestran que Paoletta recibió 50.000 dólares durante los últimos dos meses del año pasado para informar a los miembros del Congreso sobre la redada del FBI en la casa de O’Keefe. Paoletta y un abogado de Donald Trump Jr. no respondieron a las solicitudes de comentarios.Cuando el Proyecto Veritas se enteró de la existencia del diario a principios de septiembre, el grupo buscó adquirirlo. Aproximadamente una semana después del evento de recaudación de fondos, Harris y Kurlander volaron a Nueva York con el diario. Se reunieron con varios agentes del Proyecto Veritas en un hotel de Manhattan.Las dos partes comenzaron a negociar un acuerdo, pero no se llegó a un trato final. Como respuesta a la pregunta sobre qué pudo haberle pedido el Proyecto Veritas para ayudar a autenticar el diario, Kurlander, a través de su abogado Jonathan Kaplan, se negó a hacer comentarios.Pero Proyecto Veritas tuvo que dilucidar varios temas difíciles: ¿en realidad era el diario de Ashley Biden y no se trataba de una falsificación o una trampa? ¿Cómo es que Proyecto Veritas, una organización conocida por sus operaciones encubiertas, podría asegurarse de que no era víctima de sus propias tácticas engañosas?Uno de los subalternos de O’Keefe, Spencer Meads, fue enviado a Florida para investigar la autenticidad del diario.Lo que sucedió después aún no ha sido aclarado, y es uno de los grandes problemas de la investigación. El Proyecto Veritas ha dicho en documentos judiciales que sus agentes obtuvieron artículos adicionales pertenecientes a Biden que sus “fuentes” habían descrito como “abandonados”, sugiriendo así que no tenía conocimiento de ningún robo y que consiguieron las pertenencias de Biden de la misma manera en que los periodistas reciben información.“Poco después, las fuentes acordaron reunirse con el periodista de Project Veritas en Florida para darle artículos abandonados adicionales”, escribieron los abogados del grupo en un expediente judicial federal.Desde hace tiempo, los abogados de Proyecto Veritas habían advertido a los miembros que alentar o incentivar a las fuentes a robar documentos o artículos podría implicar al grupo en un delito. En un memorando dirigido a O’Keefe en 2017, uno de los abogados concluyó: “Bajo este precedente, PV disfruta de protecciones legales sustanciales para informar y divulgar material que puede haberse obtenido ilegalmente, siempre que no haya participado en el proceso para conseguirlo”.Sin embargo, al menos una de las “fuentes” les contó a otras personas que un agente del Proyecto Veritas le había preguntado si podía recuperar más artículos de la casa que pudieran ayudar a demostrar que el diario pertenecía a Ashley Biden, según una persona con conocimiento de la conversación. Una de las fuentes les informó a otras personas que procedió a sacar artículos adicionales de la casa y dárselos al integrante del grupo.En respuesta a las afirmaciones de la organización de que no había hecho nada malo y que su papel en el caso estaba protegido por la Primera Enmienda, los fiscales acusaron al grupo en los documentos judiciales de hacer declaraciones no juradas que son “falsas o engañosas y se contradicen directamente con la evidencia”. También declararon que incluso una organización de noticias legítima no sería protegida por la Primera Enmienda al adquirir materiales mediante robos u otros delitos.“En pocas palabras, incluso los miembros de los medios de comunicación ‘no pueden irrumpir con impunidad y entrar en una oficina o vivienda para recolectar noticias’”, dijeron los fiscales.Sin citar evidencia específica, los fiscales desafiaron directamente un argumento de Proyecto Veritas: la “reiterada afirmación del grupo de que no habían ‘participado’ en cómo se ‘adquirieron’ las pertenencias de la víctima”.El plan de Ashley Biden de que un amigo fuera a recuperar el diario, que tenía la persona que la llamó en octubre, fracasó. Y las versiones que Proyecto Veritas presentó en las últimas semanas, tanto en documentos judiciales como ante la policía local en Florida, sobre cómo obtuvo el diario dejan varias preguntas sobre el desarrollo de los eventos.El FBI obtuvo una orden y allanó la casa de James O’Keefe, el fundador del Proyecto Veritas.Cooper Neill para The New York TimesProyecto Veritas le dijo a un juez federal que el 12 de octubre, O’Keefe envió un correo electrónico diciéndole a su equipo que había tomado la decisión de no publicar la historia sobre el diario, aunque no tenían “ninguna duda de que el documento es real”. Sin embargo, sostenía que las reacciones a su publicación serían “calificadas como un golpe bajo”. La fecha del correo, proporcionada por O’Keefe, fue poco después de la llamada a Biden.Pero cuatro días después de que O’Keefe le dijera a su personal que no publicaría el diario, un importante abogado del Proyecto Veritas le dijo a la campaña de Joe Biden que tenía el diario y que quería entrevistarlo en cámara al respecto, según el Times reportó en diciembre.Menos de una semana después, Proyecto Veritas cerró un acuerdo por 40.000 dólares con Kurlander y Harris para comprar los derechos de publicación del diario, les transfirió el dinero y sugirió que el grupo planeaba publicarlo pronto, según una persona con conocimiento del caso.Al final, Proyecto Veritas decidió no publicarlo. En cambio, un sitio web de derecha publicó el diario en octubre, pero recibió muy poca atención antes de las elecciones. O’Keefe estaba furioso, y algunas personas dentro del Proyecto Veritas pensaron que uno de sus propios integrantes, frustrado por la falta de voluntad del grupo para publicar el diario, lo había filtrado.Proyecto Veritas decidió que uno de sus integrantes regresaría el diario, y las demás pertenencias de Biden, a Florida.Según un informe del Departamento de Policía de Delray Beach, un abogado se presentó en el departamento y le entregó los artículos a un oficial. El abogado, según las imágenes de la cámara corporal de la policía, dijo que los artículos fueron “posiblemente robados”.La policía alertó al FBI, que hizo que un agente recuperara el diario de Biden y otras pertenencias. Casi un año después, el FBI contactó a Harris y a Kurlander.Unas dos semanas después, agentes del FBI consiguieron órdenes para allanar las casas de O’Keefe y dos de sus colaboradores: Meads y Eric Cochran, quienes abandonaron la organización después del incidente del diario. En el caso de Meads, su abogado dijo que el FBI derribó la puerta de su apartamento. Los documentos judiciales indican que el FBI incautó 47 dispositivos, incluida una decena de teléfonos de Meads.Kenneth P. Vogel More

In a court filing, the conservative group assailed prosecutors for concealing the action in a proceeding from the investigation of how it acquired Ashley Biden’s diary.The conservative group Project Veritas said on Tuesday that the Justice Department began secretly seizing a trove of its internal communications in late 2020, just weeks after learning that the group had obtained a copy of President Biden’s daughter’s diary.In a court filing, a lawyer for Project Veritas assailed the Justice Department’s actions, which involved subpoenas, search warrants and court production orders that had not been previously disclosed and gag orders imposed on Microsoft, whose servers housed the group’s emails.The disclosure underscored the scope and intensity of the legal battle surrounding the Justice Department’s investigation into how Project Veritas, in the closing weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign, came into possession of a diary kept by Ashley Biden, the president’s daughter, and other possessions she had stored at a house in Florida.And it highlighted how the Justice Department has resisted demands by the conservative group — which regularly engages in sting operations and ambush interviews against news organizations and liberal groups and has targeted perceived political opponents — to be treated as a news organization entitled to First Amendment protections.It is highly unusual for the Justice Department to obtain the internal communications of journalists, as federal prosecutors are supposed to follow special guidelines to ensure they do not infringe on First Amendment rights.Since the investigation was disclosed last fall, federal prosecutors have repeatedly said that because they have evidence that the group may have committed a crime in obtaining Ms. Biden’s belongings, Project Veritas is not entitled to First Amendment protections.But Project Veritas, in its filing on Tuesday, said that prosecutors had failed to be forthcoming with a federal judge about the nature of their inquiry by choosing not to disclose the secret subpoenas and warrants.“This is a fundamental, intolerable abridgment of the First Amendment by the Department of Justice,” James O’Keefe, the group’s founder and leader, said in a video.In its court filing, Project Veritas asked a federal judge to intervene to stop the Justice Department from using the materials it had obtained from Microsoft in the investigation. The group said that federal prosecutors had obtained “voluminous materials” — which in many cases included the contents of emails — from Microsoft for eight of its employees, including Mr. O’Keefe.The group also disclosed that Uber had told two of its operatives who are under investigation — Spencer Meads and Eric Cochran — that it had handed over information from their accounts in March of last year in response to demands from the government.Microsoft said in response to questions about the matter that it had initially challenged the government’s demands for Project Veritas’s information, but the company declined to describe what that entailed.“We’ve believed for a long time that secrecy should be the exception and used only when truly necessary,” said Frank X. Shaw, a spokesman for Microsoft. “We always push back when the government is seeking the data of an enterprise customer under a secrecy order and always tell the customer as soon as we’re legally able.”According to a person with direct knowledge of the matter, Microsoft had pushed back on the Justice Department’s subpoenas and warrants when the company was served with them in late 2020 and early 2021. But the government refused to drop its demands and Microsoft handed over the information that prosecutors were seeking, the person said.Because of gag orders that had been imposed, Microsoft was barred from telling Project Veritas about the requests, the person said.Shortly after the existence of the investigation was revealed publicly last fall, Microsoft asked the Justice Department whether it could tell Project Veritas about the requests, the person said. The department refused to lift the gag orders, the person said.In response, Microsoft drafted a lawsuit against the Justice Department to try to get the gag orders lifted and told department officials that the company was prepared to file it. Soon afterward, the department went to court and had the gag orders lifted.A little more than a week ago, Microsoft told Project Veritas about the warrants and subpoenas, the person said.Project Veritas paid $40,000 for Ms. Biden’s diary to a man and a woman from Florida who said that it had been obtained from a home where Ms. Biden had been staying until a few months earlier. Project Veritas also had possession of other items left at the house by Ms. Biden, and at the heart of the investigation is whether the group played a role in the removal of those items from the home.Project Veritas has denied any wrongdoing and maintained that Ms. Biden’s belongings had been abandoned. The group never published the diary.Search warrants used in raids last fall on the homes of Mr. O’Keefe and two other Project Veritas operatives showed that the Justice Department was investigating conspiracy to transport stolen property and possession of stolen goods, among other crimes.In response to the searches, a federal judge, at the urging of Project Veritas, appointed a special master to oversee what evidence federal prosecutors could keep from the dozens of cellphones and electronic devices the authorities had obtained.Project Veritas said in its filing on Tuesday that at the time the special master was appointed the government should have revealed that it had conducted other searches that could have infringed on the group’s First Amendment rights or could have been protected by attorney-client privilege.In the final year of the Trump administration, prosecutors in Washington, who were investigating a leak of classified information, secretly obtained court orders demanding that Google, which houses The New York Times’s email accounts, hand over information from four Times reporters’ accounts. In response to requests from Google, the Justice Department allowed it to alert The Times to the demands so the newspaper could fight the orders. A lawyer for The Times, David McCraw, secretly fought the demands, which the government ultimately dropped. More

Known for his ability to work across the aisle, he represented the Sacramento area from 1979 to 1999 and rose to become chairman of the House Democratic caucus.Victor Fazio, a longtime Democratic member of Congress from California who served in House leadership for several years, died on March 16 at his home in Arlington, Va. He was 79.The cause was cancer, according to a statement from his former congressional office.Mr. Fazio represented the Sacramento area from 1979 to 1999. As a member of the House Appropriations Committee, he helped bring home funding for numerous projects, including a multimillion-dollar environmental institute at the University of California, Davis. He also lobbied for the funds to protect 3,700 acres of wetlands west of Sacramento as a refuge; dedicated by President Bill Clinton in 1997, it is known as the Vic Fazio Yolo Wildlife Area.Known for his low-key, bipartisan style, he often worked in partnership with the powerful California Republican representative Jerry Lewis, who died last year.Perhaps Mr. Fazio’s most difficult period was his tenure as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 1994 — the year that Republicans, led by Representative Newt Gingrich, took control of the House for the first time in 40 years.Still, because of Mr. Fazio’s ability to work across the aisle, his colleagues chose him the next year as chairman of the House Democratic caucus.Mr. Fazio stood behind the speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, as Mr. Gingrich’s fellow Republican representatives Bill Thomas (partly hidden) and Tom DeLay conferred, during a news conference on Capitol Hill in 1995.Karin Anderson for The New York TimesAfter he retired from Congress, he worked at a public relations firm in Washington led by Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman. He later joined the Washington office of the powerhouse law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and was regularly named to the annual list of top lobbyists by the political newspaper The Hill. He retired from Akin Gump in 2020.Victor Herbert Fazio Jr. was born in Winchester, Mass., on Oct. 11, 1942. His father was an insurance salesman, his mother a homemaker and dress shop manager.He earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., in 1965 before going to California on a Caro Foundation fellowship.In 1970, he co-founded California Journal magazine, now defunct, which covered state government and politics, and served in the California State Assembly before winning his House seat in 1978.His first marriage, to Joella Mason, ended in divorce. His second wife, Judy Neidhardt Kern, whom he married in 1983, died in 2015.In 2017, he married Kathy Sawyer. In addition to her, he is survived by a daughter from his first marriage, Dana Fazio Lawrie; two stepchildren, Kevin and Kristie Kern; and four granddaughters. A daughter, Anne Noel Fazio, died in 1995. More

In an audio recording obtained by The New York Times, Adam Laxalt, a Republican running for Senate in Nevada, said he’s already gearing up to fight election fraud.We have an item tonight from our colleague Nick Corasaniti, who reports on how a Republican running for Senate in Nevada has been anticipating an election-fraud fight in November.Nevadans still have 231 days until they head to the polls in November. But Adam Laxalt, the former attorney general of Nevada and a Republican candidate for Senate, is already laying detailed groundwork to fight election fraud in his race — long before a single vote has been cast or counted.In conversations with voters at an event at his campaign headquarters this month, Laxalt explained how he’s vetting outside groups to help him establish election observer teams and map out a litigation strategy.“I don’t talk about that, but we’re vetting which group we think is going to do better,” Laxalt told an attendee, according to an audio recording obtained by The New York Times from a person who attended the event and opposes Laxalt’s candidacy.At the event, Laxalt criticized the 2020 Trump campaign and outside groups for their handling of election-fraud claims, saying that they went on the offensive too late. “In 2020, it was nothing,” he said, according to the audio recording. “And then the campaign was late and the party was late. So, it’s just different now. There’s a lot of groups that are saying there’s election fraud.”And should he be unable to find help, Laxalt pledged that his campaign would shoulder the cost of bringing in lawyers and mapping out a strategy, even at the expense of other core programs necessary to run a campaign.“If I get into July and I’m like, ‘Dear God, no one’s going to do this right,’ we will pay from our campaign, which means less voter contact for the reason you said,” Laxalt told an attendee. “If someone’s not going to do it, we’ve got to do it. And I’m willing to lose on the other side because we’re going to take it off.”The ‘biggest issue’ of the campaignOf course, there was no widespread fraud in the Nevada presidential election in 2020, nor anywhere else in the country, as numerous audits, recounts, court challenges and investigations have confirmed. The secretary of state in Nevada spent more than 125 hours investigating allegations brought by the Nevada Republican Party and found no widespread fraud. And there has been no evidence in the run-up to this year’s election of any fraud in the state.But the pledge from Laxalt is yet another indication of how vital the specter of voter fraud remains to the Republican base, an issue deemed so critical that a statewide candidate would be willing to sacrifice one of the most essential campaign tasks to ensure a litigation path was in place, months before any actual voting occurred.When asked about the comments, Laxalt reiterated his criticisms of the 2020 election, particularly in Clark County, which is home to Las Vegas and the majority of Democratic voters in the state.“Every voter deserves more transparency and to be confident in the accuracy of their election results, and I will proudly fight for them,” Laxalt said in a statement.A court ruling against the Trump campaign in 2020 found no evidence “that the 2020 general election in Nevada was affected by fraud,” both in Clark County and throughout the state.Laxalt, who was one of the leaders of the Trump campaign’s effort to overturn the results in Nevada, has stated before that voter fraud is the “biggest issue” of the campaign and has publicly talked about establishing a large force of election observers and his plan to file election lawsuits early.“With me at the top of the ticket, we’re going to be able to get everybody at the table and come up with a full plan, do our best to try to secure this election, get as many observers as we can and file lawsuits early, if there are lawsuits we can file to try to tighten up the election,” Laxalt said in August in an interview with Wayne Allyn Root, a conservative radio host.Members of the media documenting a staff member counting ballots at the Clark County Election Department in Las Vegas in November 2020.Bridget Bennett for The New York Times‘It’s about the court of public opinion’Laxalt’s legal strategy foreshadows a likely new permanent battleground for political campaigns: postelection court battles.While election-related lawsuits have long been common in American politics, the traditional fights have often been over polling hours and locations or last-minute policy changes to voting rules. But in 2020, the Trump campaign drastically altered the legal landscape, filing 60 cases after Election Day. The campaign lost 59 of them. The single case the campaign won had to do with challenging a state-ordered deadline extension in Pennsylvania for the submission of personal identification for mailed ballots.Despite that losing record, Republican candidates like Laxalt appear poised to repeat the Trump legal strategy of trying to overturn an election in court, even months before there has been any votes or any theoretical voter fraud. Experts note that while these legal strategies are likely doomed to fail in courtrooms, they risk further eroding public trust.“At the end of the day, this isn’t just about the court of law, it’s about the court of public opinion, and seeing how dangerous these lies about our elections can be,” said Joanna Lydgate, who is a former deputy attorney general of Massachusetts and who co-founded the States United Democracy Center. “We saw the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6. We see those same lies showing up on the campaign trail all across the country.”In his conversations with voters, Laxalt reiterated that he wanted to amass a large coalition to tackle fraud as part of a “formal program,” and expected help from Republican Party leadership and “the senatorial committee,” a reference to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He also discussed a group featuring Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, though the group’s title was inaudible.The attendees at the event seemed to support Laxalt’s plans, and he was sure to mention his most prominent endorser.“I was just in Mar-a-Lago last week with the president,” Laxalt said, referring to Trump. “And the president was just like, all over election fraud still, obviously.”What to readJason Zengerle looks into Tucker Carlson’s influence on conservative Senate candidates’ political ads for The New York Times Magazine.The confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson offer a preview of Republicans’ midterm attack lines, Annie Karni reports. The New York Times provided live coverage of the hearings.President Biden will ask allies to apply more aggressive economic sanctions against Russia, Michael D. Shear reports.in the momentJudge Ketanji Brown Jackson at the Supreme Court confirmation hearings today.Doug Mills/The New York TimesCrime and confirmation hearingsRepublicans made their strategy for the confirmation hearings of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson painfully clear: A tour of grievance politics that criticized Democrats for transgressions spanning decades.For Democrats, however, there was also a political strategy. It just wasn’t quite as loud.As Democrats attempt to defuse allegations that they’re anti-law enforcement, an attack that some party leaders blame for losses in the House in 2020, they’ve gone full out in supporting the police ahead of the midterms. It’s a key line of defense that Democrats prepared for ahead of the hearings and another way to discredit an attack line that could hurt the party in future elections.Representative Val Demings of Florida has been highlighting her role as chief of the Orlando Police Department in her Senate race. President Biden called for funding the police in his State of the Union address. And Biden’s nominee spoke at length today about her family members in law enforcement, often in response to questions by senators.Jackson has two uncles and a brother who have served in law enforcement, noted Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont.“What do you say to people who say you’re soft on crime, or even anti-law enforcement, because you accepted your duties as a public defender?” Leahy asked.“Crime and the effects on the community and the need for law enforcement, those are not abstract concepts or political slogans to me,” Jackson responded.Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.— Blake & LeahIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected]. More

Democrats working to save their slim majority in the House in November’s elections have been sounding alarm bells lately over research showing that Republican attacks on culture-war issues are working, particularly with center-left, Hispanic and independent voters. Hispanic voters, many of us alienated by progressive labels and mottos like “Latinx” and “defund the police,” have been drifting rightward as Donald Trump marginally increased the G.O.P. Hispanic vote share in 2016 and again in 2020 — a phenomenon, it should be noted, that goes beyond Mr. Trump or any individual campaign.Democrats now understand that they are losing support among Hispanics on culture as well as pocketbook issues, leaving little in the message arsenal for the party’s candidates to use to stanch what appears to be a long-term bleed.The Democrats’ problems with Hispanics are especially glaring when you consider that Republicans are not exactly flawless when it comes to appealing to these voters. Both parties have committed a mind-boggling form of political malpractice for years: They have consistently failed to understand what motivates Hispanic voters, a crucial and growing part of the electorate.As the growth of the Hispanic eligible electorate continues to outpace other new eligible voting populations, the caricatures and stereotypes of “Hispanic issues” are proving further and further removed from the experience of most Hispanics. Yet, for all the hype and spin about Republican gains with Hispanic voters, the rightward shift of these voters is happening despite Republicans’ best efforts, not because of them.In the eyes of some on the American right, Hispanics are hyper-religious Catholics or evangelicals, entrepreneurial, anti-communist, social conservatives reminiscent of the ethnic white voters of yesteryear. To some on the left, we’re seen as angry, racially oppressed workers of the cultural vanguard who want to upend capitalism while demanding open borders. While none of these caricatures are accurate, in them there are enough grains of truth to lull self-righteous partisans on both sides into believing that they may be on the winning side of the emerging ethnically pluralistic American majority.In our current era of negative partisanship, voters are as often motivated to oppose the party they dislike or view as extreme as they are to support the party with which they align. Latinos, of course, are no different, and it is at the cultural extremes where Democrats face the greatest threat to losing what they have long viewed as the foundational base of their long-term majority prospects. As “culture” grows as a proxy for “race,” the electoral math for Democrats will most likely get bleaker as political campaigns continue as referendums on “critical race theory” and “defunding the police.” It will be worse still if Hispanics increasingly do not view themselves as an aggrieved racial minority.This understanding will help determine which party controls Congress and the White House, beginning with the 2022 midterms. Under newly drawn district lines, four of the most competitive House seats will have Hispanic populations of at least 38 percent and are in California, Texas, New Mexico and Colorado. Additionally, Hispanic voters will be essential components of Senate and other statewide contests in Arizona and Nevada. The Latino voters in these states and districts are important for both parties. As the Democratic Party drifts away from its working-class roots and emphasizes cultural issues, Republicans are well positioned to pick up these politically untethered voters and with them the reins of power.The recent debate over the term “Latinx” symbolizes the cultural alienation of institutions far removed from the realities of life for an overwhelming number of working-class Hispanics. “Latinx” was created as a gender-neutral alternative term in Spanish, a gendered language, that refers to males as “Latino” and females as “Latina’.”Commonly used by media, political and academic elites as a sign of gender inclusivity, it is virtually nonexistent in the communities it refers to. In 2020 Pew Research revealed that only 3 percent of Latinos use the term, while 9 percent of white liberals think it is the most appropriate term to use. In fact, only 14 percent of Latinos with just a high school degree or less had even heard of it.This was not a sign of intolerance but rather was emblematic of one class with the luxury of being consumed with such matters trying to impose their values on working-class families trying to keep up with paying the rent on Friday. Members of the Democratic Party don’t just live in a distinct cultural bubble removed from the realities of their blue-collar counterparts, they are so removed from the rapidly growing Hispanic working class that many of them are now literally speaking a different language.The growing cultural divide in America, in which Hispanics appear to be increasingly turned off by progressive mottos and movements, is linked to the education divide in America between college-educated and noncollege-educated voters of all ethnicities. According to Pew Research, Republicans increasingly dominate in party affiliation among white noncollege voters, who make up 57 percent of all G.O.P. voters. This in a country where 64 percent of voters do not have a college degree.The Democratic Party is losing its brand among white, working-class voters and Hispanics. This is especially pronounced among Hispanic men and Hispanic noncollege-educated voters, who are trending more Republican, just as their white noncollege-educated peers are. Latinos are increasingly voting similarly to noncollege whites, perhaps because they don’t view themselves all that differently from them. Pew Research studies on Hispanic identity have shown that fully half of the country’s Hispanics view themselves as “a typical American”; fewer responded as identifying as “very different from a typical American.”For all the discussion about diversity within the Latino community, and the now-trite adage that the community is not ‘‘monolithic,’’ in fact what unites most Hispanics is that they are an important share of the blue-collar noncollege-educated work force, and their presence in the labor force is only growing. The “essential workers” of the pandemic are disproportionately Black and Latino, and as a decidedly younger demographic, Hispanic workers are filling the roles of manufacturing, agricultural and construction trades in states with large Hispanic populations.Democrats have increasingly become a party shaped by and reliant upon white voters with college degrees. Compared with 40.1 percent of white adults age 25 and older, only 18.8 percent of Latino adults in this age group have a bachelor’s degree. Latinos are, and increasingly will be, a key part of the blue-collar work force of the future and their politics are reflecting that.From 71 percent support for President Barack Obama in 2012 to 66 percent for Hillary Clinton and 59 percent for Joe Biden in 2020, Democrats find themselves slowly but measurably losing hold of Latinos, the fastest-growing segment of the electorate. As Latino voters grow in number in key battleground states, they are increasingly rejecting the minority construct promulgated by the media, academia and Democratic politicians and consultants.The party that is able to express the values of a multiethnic working class will be the majority party for the next generation. As we continue to watch the country’s culture war increasingly divided by education levels, it is quite likely that Latino voters will continue to trend, even if marginally, into the ranks of Republican voters. The country stands on the precipice of a significant political shift. As President Ronald Reagan once quipped, quoting a Republican sheriff nominee, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.”Mike Madrid is an expert in Latino voting trends, was a visiting professor at the University of Southern California, where he taught “Race, Class and Partisanship,” and is on the board of directors of the League of Minority Voters.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

FLIPPEDHow Georgia Turned Purple and Broke the Monopoly on Republican PowerBy Greg BluesteinHow do Democrats flip a state from red to purple to blue? This question keeps Democratic operatives lying awake at night.What better place to search for answers than Georgia? In 2020, Georgians voted for the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden. The elections of the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff also handed Democrats a slim majority in the U.S. Senate. The results, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Greg Bluestein in his new book, “Flipped,” provided “Democrats an invaluable foothold in the Deep South and a bulwark against growing Republican strength in the Midwest.”Demography was not destiny, according to Bluestein. Despite the developments that were enlarging liberal, educated suburban communities while diversifying the Georgia population, partisan change depended on talented candidates, campaign strategists and local election officials.Bluestein revisits the story of Stacey Abrams, who, working with the guidance of Lauren Groh-Wargo, ran a trailblazing campaign for the governorship in 2018. Abrams was one of the first statewide figures who sought to harness the “emerging alliance that was racially, economically and geographically diverse” rather than trying to recreate the Democratic coalition that elected Bill Clinton to the presidency in 1992. Bluestein recounts how Abrams, a Black woman, was almost denied the right to vote because a poll worker insisted that she had requested an absentee ballot. If Abrams, an attorney, struggled to cast a ballot, “what about the countless other Georgians, she wondered, who could never have so quickly fixed their problem?” After losing the contest to Secretary of State Brian Kemp, Abrams founded Fair Fight, which would register large numbers of Black voters by the 2020 election.A bright spot for Democrats in 2018 was Lucy McBath, the daughter of civil rights activists. She defeated Karen Handel to represent the Sixth Congressional District. Handel had won office a year earlier in a special election, beating Ossoff, a documentary producer who had hoped to show that with Donald Trump in the White House, Democrats could win suburban Republicans and independents in districts that had been dominated by conservatives like Newt Gingrich. Instead, the election proved that Republican voters in 2017 were still loyal. McBath, whose son, Jordan, was killed by a white man in 2012, won election by advocating gun control in the wake of a horrendous mass school shooting in Florida.Ossoff and Warnock found ways to run effective statewide campaigns for the Senate in 2020 despite the challenges posed by Covid shutdowns, masking and social distancing. During the runoff election campaign after Nov. 3, both candidates responded to the fierce outrage among Democrats who were tired of the chaos and extremism coming from the White House. As Trump kept talking about himself and about rigged votes every time he visited the state (to the frustration of Republicans), Warnock and Ossoff ran smart social media campaigns and connected to voters’ hope for a better future.Remarkably, Bluestein writes that the Biden campaign underestimated the potential for victory in Georgia. Since Democrats had not won the state’s electoral votes in a presidential election since 1992, Biden’s team concluded that the risk of losing was too high. Fortunately for Democrats, local candidates disagreed. They did so by embracing the party’s liberal traditions rather than trying to mimic Republicans.Still, the victories in 2020 ultimately depended on volunteers and voters whose voices are too often missing from Bluestein’s narrative. He doesn’t do enough to capture the thousands of volunteers who engaged in phone banking, text messaging, canvassing and turning out the vote. Nor are there many portraits of the voters who went blue.“Flipped” will disillusion Democrats who hope that a realignment won’t meet fierce resistance. Lawrence Sloan, a Black American who operated a machine that opened mail-in ballots in Fulton County, was scared for his life after a video circulated online that appeared to show Sloan giving the middle finger to the machine and tossing out a ballot. In fact, we learn, his temper flared because the machine had nicked his finger, and Sloan was throwing out instructions for how to complete a mail-in ballot. Because of the misleading video, which Trump’s sons retweeted, Sloan was harassed and threatened. On one occasion, he asked friends to rescue him from a restaurant filled with Trump loyalists. “As a Black man in the South,” he said, “I know when pickup trucks start pulling up and honking their horns, it’s time to go.” Similarly, the Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, who refused to go along with Trump’s schemes, decided that his two grandchildren could not safely visit his home.All of this brings us to the question of whether Georgia has really flipped or if 2020 was an aberration. Many parts of Bluestein’s story highlight how exceptional the conditions were in 2020. Democrats won with the help of Hollywood celebrities and political heavyweights who won’t always show up. A raging pandemic as well as a president whose politics terrified many voters raised the stakes of the state’s election in ways that would otherwise have been impossible.The next few elections will reveal if Democratic success has staying power. It is worth remembering that Jimmy Carter’s efforts to forge a new kind of Democratic South ended up being trumped by Gingrich’s version of Reagan Republicanism. Even after reading this informative book, it’s all too easy to imagine how a struggling President Biden, an inflationary economy, war in Ukraine and a persistent pandemic — combined with gerrymandering, high rural turnout, national party support and Election Day polling sabotage — could result in Republicans welcoming back the Grand Old Party in 2024 following a short detour off the beaten path of conservatism. More