Elections

Trump White House aide was secret author of report used to push ‘big lie’Report on Dominion voting machines produced after 2020 election was not the work of volunteer in Trump’s post-election legal team Weeks after the 2020 election, at least one Trump White House aide was named as secretly producing a report that alleged Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden because of Dominion Voting Systems – research that formed the basis of the former president’s wider efforts to overturn the election.The Dominion report, subtitled “OVERVIEW 12/2/20 – History, Executives, Vote Manipulation Ability and Design, Foreign Ties”, was initially prepared so that it could be sent to legislatures in states where the Trump White House was trying to have Biden’s win reversed.Trump lawyer knew plan to delay Biden certification was unlawful, emails showRead moreBut top Trump officials would also use the research that stemmed from the White House aide-produced report to weigh other options to return Trump to the presidency, including having the former president sign off on executive orders to authorize sweeping emergency powers.The previously unreported involvement of the Trump White House aide in the preparation of the Dominion report raises the extraordinary situation of at least one administration official being among the original sources of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.The publicly available version of the Dominion report, which first surfaced in early December 2020 on the conservative outlet the Gateway Pundit, names on the cover and in metadata as its author Katherine Friess, a volunteer on the Trump post-election legal team.But the Dominion report was in fact produced by the senior Trump White House policy aide Joanna Miller, according to the original version of the document reviewed by the Guardian and a source familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.The original version of the Dominion report named Miller – who worked for the senior Trump adviser Peter Navarro – as the author on the cover page, until her name was abruptly replaced with that of Friess before the document was to be released publicly, the source said.The involvement of a number of other Trump White House aides who worked in Navarro’s office was also scrubbed around that time, the source said. Friess has told the Daily Beast that she had nothing to do with the report and did not know how her name came to be on the document.It was not clear why Miller’s name was removed from the report, which was sent to Trump’s former attorney Rudy Giuliani on 29 November 2020, or why the White House aide’s involvement was obfuscated in the final 2 December version. Miller did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The Dominion report made a number of unsubstantiated allegations that claimed Dominion Voting Systems corruptly ensured there could be “technology glitches which resulted in thousands of votes being added to Joe Biden’s total ballot count”.Citing unnamed Venezuelan officials, the report also pushed the conspiracy theory that Dominion Voting Systems used software from the election company Smartmatic and had ties to “state-run Venezuelan software and telecommunications companies”.After the Dominion report became public, Navarro incorporated the claims into his own three-part report, produced with assistance from his aides at the White House, including Miller and another policy aide, Garrett Ziegler, the source said.Ziegler has also said on a rightwing podcast that he and others in Navarro’s office – seemingly referring to Trump White House aides Christopher Abbott and Hannah Robertson – started working on Navarro’s report about two weeks before the 2020 election took place.“Two weeks before the election, we were doing those reports hoping that we would pepper the swing states with those,” Ziegler said of the three-part Navarro report in an appearance last July on The Professor’s Record with David K Clements.The research in the Dominion report also formed the backbone of foreign election interference claims by the former Trump lawyer and conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell, who argued Trump could, as a result, assume emergency presidential powers and suspend normal law.That included Trump’s executive order 13848, which authorized sweeping powers in the event of foreign election interference, as well as a draft executive order that would have authorized the seizure of voting machines, the Guardian has previously reported.The claims about Venezuela in the Dominion report appear to have spurred Powell to ask Trump at a 18 December 2020 meeting at the White House – coincidentally facilitated by Ziegler – that she be appointed special counsel to investigate election fraud.Miller’s authorship of the Dominion report was not the last time the Trump White House, or individuals in the administration, prepared materials to advance the former president’s claims about a stolen election and efforts to return himself to office.The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack revealed last year it had found evidence the White House Communications Agency produced a letter for the Trump justice department official Jeffrey Clark to use to pressure states to decertify Biden’s election win.TopicsUS elections 2020Trump administrationUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

Charles Burkett was the mayor of Surfside when the 13-story Champlain Towers South complex fell in June, killing 98 people. He lost his re-election bid by 33 votes on Tuesday.The mayor who led the seaside town of Surfside, Fla., through the traumatic aftermath of the collapse of a condominium tower in which 98 people were killed last year was voted out of office on Tuesday night.The mayor, Charles Burkett, who was elected in 2020, placed third in the three-way race and lost by 33 votes to the winner, Shlomo Danzinger, according to an unofficial tally.Mr. Burkett was thrust into the national spotlight after the Champlain Towers South, a 13-story residential condo building just north of Miami Beach, collapsed in the early hours of June 24. He was a fixture at press briefings as firefighters, search dogs and emergency crews spent weeks scouring the rubble for survivors. Eventually, the rescue effort shifted to a recovery operation, when rescuers acknowledged that no more survivors would be found.The tragedy was officially deemed one of the deadliest accidental structural building failures in American history and was expected to lead to years of investigations. The first signs of failure were found at the building’s base and in an underground garage, but federal authorities have not determined what caused the collapse.The Champlain Towers South condominium complex in Surfside partially collapsed in 2021, killing 98 people.Erin Schaff/The New York Times“It’s been a pretty tough two years,” Mr. Burkett said in an interview on Wednesday. “The day I was elected, the country shut down because of Covid, and then the next year we had the building collapse. It was all hands on deck.”He said he believed that rancor at recent town meetings had led voters in the town of about 6,000 people to seek new leadership.In July 2020, a town commissioner, Eliana R. Salzhauer, gave Mr. Burkett the middle finger after he muted her during a virtual meeting about a proposed anti-discrimination resolution. The disagreement was over Mr. Burkett’s proposal to add Christians to an ordinance denouncing hatred against Asians and Jews.“I liken it to a cage fight,” Mr. Burkett said, referring to the meetings. “We’re all put into this cage for five hours and then asked to conduct a productive meeting.”Ms. Salzhauer, who was up for re-election, also lost her seat. She did not respond to messages on Wednesday.On his campaign website, Mr. Danzinger, a father of five children, describes himself as a community activist and leader who has helped “tech startups and tech giants” for more than 25 years. He pushed for “restoring civility and dignity” to the commission and railed against the “obscene gestures and comments made during public meetings” that he said had “put our town in the press’s crosshairs.” Shlomo Danzinger was scheduled to be sworn in as mayor of Surfside on Wednesday night.Pedro Portal/Miami Herald, via Associated Press“Needless to say, our town deserves leaders who put aside their egos for the benefit of the community,” Mr. Danzinger said on his website. He also pushed for a “gold standard” for building requirements that would ensure the safety of new developments and neighboring buildings while demanding accountability from developers.Mr. Danzinger received 499 votes. Tina Paul, the town’s vice mayor, placed second with 476 votes. Mr. Burkett received 466 votes, according to unofficial results.Mr. Danzinger did not respond to messages for comment on Wednesday. He is scheduled to be sworn into office on Wednesday night, according to the town clerk’s office.During the campaign, Mr. Danzinger presented himself as a family man who lives in the heart of town while saying that Mr. Burkett “lives alone in a mansion on the pristine little enclave of Biscaya Island.”Mr. Burkett, who owns Burkett Properties Inc., a real estate company, said he lives with his son, who is 18.A supporter of the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, a Republican, Mr. Burkett said he would turn his attention to helping him get re-elected this November. Mr. Burkett, who is not affiliated with a political party, said he also admired Senators Rick Scott and Marco Rubio of Florida, who are both Republicans. He said he would consider running for governor or the Senate if any of the three current office holders choose not to run again.While he was surprised by the results, Mr. Burkett said he was glad Mr. Danzinger won. Mr. Burkett described his opponent as someone who has “a very similar worldview compared to me.”“It’s a good day because the town of Surfside is going to be fine,” Mr. Burkett said. “We’ve got good people in place. They’re reasonable. They’re thoughtful.” More

Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, is giving Donald Trump a run for his money as the most divisive politician in America.“We want people that are going to fight the left, and that’s what we need to do in this country,” DeSantis declared in an interview with Fox News on Feb. 8. “That’s what we’re doing in Florida, standing up for people’s freedoms. We’re opposing wokeness. We’re opposing all these things.”In a Nov. 5, 2021 article on the liberal Daily Beast website, “Desperate, Deranged DeSantis Devolves Into Dumb Troll,” Ruben Navarrette Jr. wrote that DeSantis “is a terrible governor who is failing his leadership course with flying colors. Driven only by politics and naked ambition, he pursues reckless policies that divide Floridians and may even put them in danger.”The governor routinely succumbs to right-wing pressure groups, Navarrette continued, “because he apparently has no core beliefs other than the unshakable conviction that he should sit in the Oval Office.”On Jan. 17, 2022, The Guardian followed up from the left:In a red-meat-for-the-base address at the opening of Florida’s legislature last week, themed around the concept of “freedom” but described by critics as a fanfare of authoritarianism, DeSantis gave a clear indication of the issues he believes are on voters’ minds. They include fighting the White House over Covid-19, ballot box fraud, critical race theory in schools and defunding law enforcement.The view from the right is starkly different.On March 14, Rich Lowry, editor in chief of National Review, heaped praise on DeSantis as “the voice of the new Republican Party,” a politician who “opens up a vista offering an important element of Trumpism without the baggage or selfishness of Trump.”Lowry argues that DeSantis has strategically positioned himself on the cutting edge of a political movement with the potential to have “broad appeal to GOP voters of all stripes without the distracting obsessions of the former president.” This “could be one of the most persuasive arguments to Republican voters for Trump not running again — not that he needs to go away so the old party can be restored, but that he’s unnecessary because a new party has emerged.”DeSantis’s political strength among conservative voters — and the reason for the unanimous hostility toward him on the left — lies in his capacity to stay relentlessly on message.His dealings with the press result in headlines that are red meat to his conservative loyalists: “Ron DeSantis Berates Reporter Over Question About Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill,” “AP urges DeSantis to end bullying aimed at reporter,” and “DeSantis and the Media: (Not) a Love Story.”“If the corporate press nationally isn’t attacking me, then I’m probably not doing my job. So, the fact that they are attacking me is a good indication that I’m tackling the big issues,” DeSantis tweeted on Jan. 7.A Yale graduate with a law degree from Harvard, DeSantis served as an attorney in the Navy’s Judge Advocate General Corps at Guantánamo Bay and in Iraq as a senior legal adviser to SEAL Team One. He is smart and disciplined and runs his political career like a military campaign. Lacking Trump’s impulsiveness and preference for chaos, a President DeSantis, with his attention to detail and command of the legislative process, might well match or exceed Trump as liberals’ worst nightmare.Susie Wiles, a Republican consultant who helped guide the last month of DeSantis’s 2018 campaign for governor, described the candidate as a “workhorse.”“It’s like watching an actor who can film the whole scene in one take,” Wiles told the Miami Herald. “He can gobble up a whole issue in one briefing, and when I saw that on my second day, I thought, ‘This is a whole different kind of thing.’ ” Wiles added, “If he doesn’t have a photographic memory, it’s close.”I asked a number of Democratic strategists which 2024 Republican nominee worried them most, Trump, DeSantis or Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas.Paul Begala, a national Democratic strategist, argued by email thatDeSantis seems to be the furthest down the track on replicating Trump’s politics of grievance and bullying. For a great many Republicans, politics is no longer about allocating resources in the wisest, most equitable way. It is instead about “owning the libs.”Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, compares DeSantis to Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas and finds both men disturbing. “DeSantis and Cotton are dangerous because they are both true-believer ideologues who would be smarter and more disciplined than Trump about using the levers of power to push their right-wing agendas,” Garin wrote by email, before adding:Each of them are lacking in personal charm and I don’t think voters would find either one to be particularly likable or relatable over the course of a long presidential campaign. DeSantis’s meanness in particular could come back to haunt him in a national campaign.DeSantis relishes using the state to enforce his aggressive social agenda and has consistently plotted a hard right course on issues from critical race theory to transgender rights.For example, DeSantis sponsored and pushed through the legislature the “Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (W.O.K.E.) Act” — or the Stop Woke Act for short — which now awaits his signature.The measure not only bans teaching what is known as critical race theory but also gives parents the right to sue public schools accused of teaching the theory and cuts off public funds to schools that hire critical race theory “consultants.”Among the new state guidelines:An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, does not bear responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. An individual should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.A second bill, the Parental Rights in Education Act, is also on DeSantis’s desk for signature. The measure declares thatClassroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3” and that “A school district may not encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a manner that is not age-appropriate.At a March 4 news conference, DeSantis told reporters: “Clearly, right now, we see a lot of focus on transgenderism, telling kids that they may be able to pick genders and all that. I don’t think parents want that for these young kids,” before adding, “I think it’s inappropriate to be injecting those matters, like transgenderism, into a kindergarten classroom.”On April 10, 2021, DeSantis signed the “Combating Public Disorder Act,” a conservative response to Black Lives Matter and other protests that turn violent or destructive. On Sept. 9, 2021, however, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker blocked enforcement of the law because a person of “ordinary intelligence” could not be sure if he or she broke the law while participating nonviolently in a protest that turned violent:The vagueness of this definition forces would-be protesters to make a choice between declining to jointly express their views with others or risk being arrested and spending time behind bars, with the associated collateral risks to employment and financial well-being.DeSantis has capitalized on Florida’s outdoor culture to become the nation’s leading opponent of mask mandates and lockdowns of schools and businesses, including a May 3, 2021, executive order declaring:In order to protect the rights and liberties of individuals in this State and to accelerate the State’s recovery from the Covid-19 emergency, any emergency order issued by a political subdivision due to the Covid-19 emergency which restricts the rights or liberties of individuals or their businesses is invalidated.For DeSantis, the pandemic offered the opportunity to distinguish himself from Trump. In January, Jonathan Chait described his strategy in New York Magazine:Where Trump was tiptoeing around vaccine skepticism, DeSantis jumped in with both feet, banning private companies like cruise lines from requiring vaccination, appointing a vaccine skeptic to his state’s highest office, and refusing to say if he’s gotten his booster dose.DeSantis “may or may not actually be more delusional on Covid than Donald Trump,” Chait wrote, “but it is a revealing commentary on the state of their party that he sees his best chance to supplant Trump as positioning himself as even crazier.”Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic, has a similar take on the Trump-DeSantis Covid feud, writing on Jan. 18:What’s suddenly intriguing is that DeSantis has decided to try to outflank Trump, to out-Trump Trump, in terms of his hard-trolling of the libs on the vaccine question. And it’s Trump —Donald Trump! — who is playing the role of civilizing, normalizing truth teller.Politically speaking, however, DeSantis’s stance on Covid policy, together with his culture war agenda, has been a success. His favorability ratings have soared and in the third quarter of 2021, the most recent data available, Florida’s gross domestic product grew by 3.8 percent, third fastest in the nation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, behind Hawaii and Delaware.DeSantis’s aggressive posture and threats to bring legal action have created anxiety about retribution in some quarters. In January, for example, Dr. Raul Pino, the administrator for the Florida Department of Health’s office in Orange County, wrote his staff to say that only 77 of 558 staff members had received a Covid-19 booster, 219 had two doses of the vaccine and 34 had only one dose, according to reporting by my colleague Patricia Mazzei in The Times. “I am sorry but in the absence of reasonable and real reasons it is irresponsible not to be vaccinated,” Dr. Pino added. He went on: “We have been at this for two years, we were the first to give vaccines to the masses, we have done more than 300,000 and we are not even at 50 percent. Pathetic.”Shortly afterward, Pino was put on administrative leave for a month. Jeremy T. Redfern, the press secretary for the Department of Health, said when the leave of absence was announced that the department was “conducting an inquiry to determine if any laws were broken in this case.” Redfern said in a statement that the decision to get vaccinated “is a personal medical choice that should be made free from coercion and mandates from employers.”This and other similar developments have certainly not hurt DeSantis’s poll numbers. The latest survey released Feb. 24 by Public Opinion Research Lab at the University of North Florida not only found that “of the elected officials on this survey, Governor Ron DeSantis had the highest job approval rating at 58 percent, with 37 percent disapproval,” but also that Florida Republicans preferred DeSantis over Trump 44-41 as their presidential nominee.John Feehery, a Republican lobbyist who previously worked for the party’s House leaders, argues that DeSantis isattuned to the libertarian impulses of an electorate that simply doesn’t trust the conventional wisdom coming out of Washington. DeSantis also seems willing to court cultural conservatives in ways that most Washington politicians don’t, like with the sex education bill that he signed. DeSantis also seems willing to take on big corporations for their wokeness, a potent issue among the G.O.P. base.Feehery described DeSantis as “a wild-card,” noting “he was also right on Covid, which took an incredible amount of courage.”As governor, DeSantis is wary when he senses the potential for blowback, waiting days before commenting on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. When he finally did so, his comments were largely focused on domestic politics.At a Feb. 28 news conference, DeSantis placed blame for the invasion on the “weakness” of the Biden administration while lavishing praise on Trump: “When Obama was president, Putin took Crimea. When Trump was president, they didn’t take anything. And now Biden’s president and they’re rolling into Ukraine,” DeSantis said, arguing that Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was a “total catastrophe” that emboldened Putin.Along with supporters, DeSantis has many harsh critics.Nancy Isenberg, a historian at L.S.U. and the author of “White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America,” wrote by email that “DeSantis is yet another Ivy League graduate of Yale and Harvard, pretending to be one of the people,” adding thatDeSantis represents a tried and true feature of American politics: You pretend to care about the “common man,” speaking his language, and while his gaze is captivated by the dazzling show, as Lyndon Johnson remarked of poor white rage, “he won’t notice you’re picking his pockets.”Anthony Brunello, a professor of political science at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla., wrote in an email that “Ron DeSantis is like Trump in that he is a creature of power.” Brunello posed the question, “Who believes in their ideology more — Trump or DeSantis?” DeSantis, he answered:His conservative values lean against responding to climate change, dealing with environmental problems, providing health care, establishing disaster insurance on a statewide basis, improving social services, rebuilding infrastructure, improving public education, improving the foster care system, protecting the ocean and coastline and fisheries, moving on prison reform, protecting the right to vote and so on. DeSantis has no plans to do any of those things in a state that needs them all. Instead, he is deep into culture wars, battling against critical race theory — and backing anti-L.G.B.T.Q. legislation — because it will win votes and hold that conservative core. He calculates Trump will fade in the months to come and he will pick up the pieces.DeSantis is running for re-election this year and is clearly favored to win a second term. He has raised more than $86 million, dwarfing the seven-figure totals collected by the two leading Democratic contenders, former governor Charlie Crist and Nikki Fried, the Florida commissioner of agriculture.Campaign finance in Florida is a major deregulated industry in itself.Large donors to DeSantis, according to the website Florida Politics, include:$200,000 from a single source, West Palm Beach-based company Kane Financial. Two political committees also wrote six-figure checks. The Strong Communities of Southwest Florida PC and The Committee for Justice, Transportation and Business, both chaired by lobbyist David Ramba, each donated $150,000. Floridians for Positive Change and Focused on Florida’s Future PC, two other Ramba-headed political committees, also wrote $75,000 checks to Friends of Ron DeSantis this month.DeSantis has dismissed speculation that he will run for president in 2024 as “nonsense,” but Trump does not believe him. How do we know this? Because Trump has issued a series of direct and indirect hostile comments targeting DeSantis, but often without naming him.On Jan. 12, Trump criticized “politicians” who refuse to say whether they have been vaccinated: “The answer is ‘Yes,’ but they don’t want to say it, because they’re gutless.”Axios reported on Jan. 16 that Trump was telling associates that DeSantis is “an ingrate with a ‘dull personality’ and no realistic chance of beating him in a potential 2024 showdown.”Trump, whose own interest in running for president grew after Barack Obama baited him at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ dinner, should know better than to toss insults at a politician like DeSantis — a bulldog who does not back down from a fight.As Rich Lowry, whose admiration for DeSantis I discussed earlier, wrote in Politico on Jan. 20, 2022:The Trump-DeSantis story line is inherently alluring, considering the chances of a collision between two men who have been allies and the possibility of the subordinate in the relationship, DeSantis, eclipsing the figure who helped to elevate him into what he is today.Some version of what DeSantis represents, Lowry continued, “has the greatest odds of coaxing the party away from Trump and forging a new political synthesis that bears the unmistakable stamp of Trump while jettisoning his flaws.”Lowry even suggested a line of attack: that Trump “elevated Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, early in the pandemic and listened to his advice for too long”; that “despite all his talk of building a border wall, Trump didn’t get it done and left a desperately flawed immigration system intact, even though he had two years of a Republican Congress”; that Trump “rattled China’s cage but didn’t make fundamental changes”; and that Trump “lost to Joe Biden, a desperately flawed candidate who only made it into the White House because Trump made himself so unpopular.”For DeSantis, there is nothing to gain by declaring now what he will do in 2024. Instead, he continues to gain national stature as his builds a powerful fund-raising base, stressing themes that draw support from conservatives in Florida and from across the nation.In one fund-raising solicitation, DeSantis warns of “cultural Marxism,” according to the website Florida Politics, telling prospective donors: “We delivered on a promise to the people of Florida by banning critical race theory. This ‘curriculum’ of hate and divisiveness has no place in society, let alone our schools. Critical race theory indoctrinates our children and teaches them to judge each other as ‘oppressors,’ ‘inherent racists’ and ‘victims.’”A second DeSantis fund-raising letter reads: “Joe Biden might want Governor DeSantis to get out of the way so he can impose his radical agenda, but Governor DeSantis will not kowtow to authoritarian bullying from Joe Biden or anyone else.”Not only do these themes stand ready for use in a presidential bid, but their very pugnacity suggests that Trump may want to reconsider his provocative bullying strategy when it comes to DeSantis.DeSantis has a wide range of options. He has positioned himself as a leading 2024 presidential candidate, if Trump falters. If Trump does run and looks unbeatable in the race for the nomination, DeSantis can hold back and wait until 2028, when he will be 50 — the prime of life for a presidential candidate.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

David McCormick, a Republican Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, came under attack from his chief rival, Dr. Mehmet Oz, over the underperformance of investments for the state’s teachers.Before he entered Pennsylvania’s Senate race, David McCormick oversaw a giant hedge fund that invested billions of dollars for the retirement plans of the state’s teachers.But Mr. McCormick’s company, Bridgewater Associates, delivered such middling profits and charged such high fees that the Pennsylvania teachers’ retirement fund moved to sell off its Bridgewater holdings beginning two years ago.Overall, Bridgewater’s performance was a contributing factor in nearly a decade of poor returns for the retirement fund, trustees of the fund said in interviews.The impact is now being felt indirectly by thousands of teachers who have to pay more from their paychecks to fund their retirements, an extra $300 annually in some cases.Since jumping into the Republican primary in January, Mr. McCormick has offered his business career as a qualification for the open Senate seat in November, but he has made little mention of his connection to the state’s teacher pension fund, which has long been mired in controversy, nor to the more than $500 million in fees that Bridgewater was paid by the fund.But on Tuesday, Mr. McCormick’s chief Republican rival, the celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, sought to use those high fees and Mr. McCormick’s decade on top of Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund, against him.“We’re stuck with a half-a-billion-dollar bill while he and his colleagues got half a billion in fees,” Dr. Oz said outside the Harrisburg headquarters of the pension fund, the Public School Employees Retirement System, known as PSERS. He addressed a small group of supporters with a large prop check made out for $500 million.“The fact that no one knows this story,” he added, is “shameful.”Until 2019, the retirement fund had nearly $5 billion invested with Bridgewater, among the most of any firm, and it was one of the hedge fund’s top clients.In response to Dr. Oz, the McCormick campaign said that Bridgewater had made plenty of money for the retirement fund and that Mr. McCormick, who served as president and later as chief executive of the hedge fund, was not directly involved in overseeing its relationship or investments with PSERS.The dispute is the latest round in a slugfest between Mr. McCormick and Dr. Oz, whose primary contest will help shape one of the most crucial races this year for control of the Senate. The two candidates and their outside supporters have already spent a state record $30 million in attack ads ahead of the May 17 primary. A Fox News poll this month of potential Republican voters showed Mr. McCormick on top of a five-person field, although many voters are undecided.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the 2022 election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.A West Point graduate and former Treasury Department official, Mr. McCormick was recruited by Bridgewater as president in 2009, rose to co-chief executive in 2017 and became sole chief executive in 2020 before leaving in January to run for Senate.The Pennsylvania teachers’ pension fund has been troubled for years. Besides hedge funds, it put its money into highly risky “alternative” investments including trailer park chains, pistachio farms and pay phone systems for prison inmates.In mid-2020, the fund’s annual profits over nine years, a decade when the stock market boomed, amounted to just 6.34 percent, missing a target set by Pennsylvania law.The shortfall prompted $80 million in higher paycheck deductions for about 100,000 teachers and other school employees, as well as higher property taxes for homeowners statewide, to pay for school districts’ makeup contributions to the pension fund, said Stacy Garrity, the state treasurer.Mr. McCormick’s campaign said that he had not directly been involved in overseeing Bridgewater Associates’ relationship with the Pennsylvania teachers’ retirement fund or overseeing the fund’s investments.Libby March for The New York TimesMr. McCormick, who declined to be interviewed, said through a campaign spokeswoman that PSERS’s poor performance was not the fault of its Bridgewater holdings — as Dr. Oz argued — and that those holdings had earned money for the pension fund. “Pennsylvania retirees made $3.9 billion in net profits and did not lose a penny over the life of the relationship under Bridgewater management,” the spokeswoman, Jess Szymanski, said.Still, some Bridgewater investments did miss internal benchmarks that the retirement fund had set, which contributed to the decision by the board of trustees to sell off its Bridgewater investments, along with those in other hedge funds.In the most recent quarterly reporting period, PSERS’s largest Bridgewater investment, the Pure Alpha II fund, underperformed a benchmark for comparable funds over the preceding three-, five- and 10-year periods. It exceeded the benchmark over a one-year period.More important than the individual Bridgewater investments, according to board members, was that Bridgewater’s investment philosophy came to dominate the retirement fund’s broad portfolio, currently valued at more than $72 billion.At a July 2020 meeting with senior retirement fund staff members, Joseph Torsella, the state treasurer at the time, criticized Bridgewater’s poor performance and its wide influence over the pension fund.Mr. Torsella, a Democrat, said in an interview, “I got the sense we were important at the highest level of Bridgewater, and I got the sense at PSERS that Bridgewater was the one true church.”Bridgewater, which manages about $140 billion, largely for institutional clients, is known as much for a culture in which employees bluntly air their differences as it is known for its investing record. It boasts of earning customers tens of billions of dollars over four decades.Its founder, Ray Dalio, is a multibillionaire who popularized an investing strategy known as “risk parity.” It promises to make money in both good and bad economic times by placing bets across different types of assets such as gold, Treasury bonds and sovereign wealth funds.During the 2008 financial crisis, when stocks went into a free-fall, Bridgewater’s Pure Alpha fund gained 9.5 percent. That was the start of an infatuation with Bridgewater by the professional staff at the Pennsylvania teachers’ fund, according to board members and their aides.Walloped by its declining stock holdings, the retirement fund embraced the risk parity model. It not only loaded up on Bridgewater’s own funds, it molded itself into a Bridgewater-like hedge fund.A report for the Pennsylvania legislature in 2018 found that PSERS’s portfolio allocation “reflects a risk parity model.”Mr. McCormick on the campaign trail in Edinboro, Pa. He topped a recent Fox News poll of Republican primary candidates, though many voters were undecided.Libby March for The New York TimesIt was a highly unusual, and risky, approach for a public fund that sends monthly checks to 250,000 former teachers, custodians and other school employees.“The real impact of Bridgewater on PSERS was not just that Bridgewater was one among a couple of hundred managers — they were the guru,” said Mr. Torsella, who was part of a bipartisan group of board members who began challenging the way the pension fund was run. “Too many of the investment team at PSERS became acolytes of Bridgewater. There was too much deference to their way of thinking.”Certainly, no one at Bridgewater was twisting the arms of PSERS’s staff to imitate the hedge fund’s strategy.Still, teams of retirement fund staff members trooped to Bridgewater’s wooded campus in Westport, Conn., or hosted Bridgewater consultants in Harrisburg for daylong seminars. In 2019, top pension fund executives flew to China for two Bridgewater events, including a weeklong “investor summit,” at a cost of $4,467 in travel.Over the decade following the financial crisis, as the stock market recovered and boomed, PSERS’s embrace of a risk parity model of investing had a disastrous impact on the pension fund’s bottom line. As of 2018, the retirement fund’s returns over a decade ranked 50th out of 52 public pension plans nationwide, according to the report for state lawmakers.Although Bridgewater’s funds were promoted as a way to weather a bear market in stocks, the arrival of the pandemic in 2020 proved that the complex financial straddles didn’t live up to the hype. Bridgewater’s Pure Alpha fund was underwater for the year, even as the S&P 500, the broad stock market index, gained more than 16 percent.The dissidents on the PSERS board, who favored a plain-vanilla portfolio of largely public stocks and bonds, succeeded in pushing the pension fund to sell off two of its Bridgewater funds, All Weather and Optimal, and to eventually liquidate all of its hedge fund investments.In July 2021, the pension fund was forced to increase paycheck deductions for 94,400 school employees hired since 2011.Samantha Kreda, who teaches special education to third to fifth graders at the Richard R. Wright School in Philadelphia, was one.Samantha Kreda in her classroom in Philadelphia.Hannah Yoon for The New York Times“The PSERS increase amounted to $30 every paycheck, but that’s a huge amount of money considering all the things teachers are expected to pay for,” she said. She buys books, snacks, birthday gifts and school supplies out of her pocket for students in her high-poverty school. Rather than cut back on those extras, she said, she has reconsidered “splurges” like dinner out with her boyfriend.Ms. Kreda, 27, who has a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, knows Ivy League peers who went into law or finance and now make “unfathomable” salaries. “I love my job; I don’t teach for the paycheck,” she said. Still, a $30 deduction from her biweekly pay gives her pause. “It definitely makes a difference,” she said.Maureen Farrell More

Mike Gibbons, a leading contender to succeed Senator Rob Portman, made the comments in a 2013 podcast on doing business in China.The leading Republican candidate in the Ohio Senate primary employed offensive stereotypes about Asian people in a 2013 podcast, citing a widely discredited book, “The Bell Curve,” that has drawn allegations of racism and sloppy research.The Senate candidate, Mike Gibbons, a financier who has poured millions of dollars of his own money into his campaign, made the comments during a discussion of how to do business in China. The remarks, published here for the first time, come as Republican candidates grapple with how to address a topic that has inflamed their voters, many of whom blame Beijing for a coronavirus pandemic that Donald Trump has referred to as the “Chinese virus.”And though Gibbons hasn’t used that terminology, his decade-old comments on China and Asian people could draw fresh scrutiny to a candidate who has received little national media attention despite running in one of the marquee races in this year’s midterm elections.“I’ve often thought that when I’ve run into Asians they’re all — you know, if you’ve ever read ‘The Bell Curve,’ it’s a book, a very controversial book, I can’t even remember who wrote, I think his name is Murray wrote this book,” Gibbons said in the Nov. 3, 2013, podcast, according to a transcript of his comments reviewed by The New York Times. He was referring to Charles Murray, a co-author of the 1994 book.Gibbons continued: “And it said that the smartest people in the world as far as measurable I.Q. were Ashkenazi Jews. And then right below them was basically everybody in China, India and, you know, throughout the Asian countries.”About a minute later, Gibbons, who earned a master’s degree from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, described being in a class with “mostly Asians” during graduate school.“It was astounding to me how much they studied, how they were incredibly bright, but they memorized formulas,” Gibbons said. “And when we ran into a word problem — and you know, I think this is a function of the educational track they put them on — they got lost in the weeds.”As the discussion continued, his co-host asserted that the Chinese education system did a poor job of teaching critical thinking.“They’re very good at copying,” Gibbons added.Asked about Gibbons’s comments, Samantha Cotten, a senior communications adviser to the campaign, said in an email, “Mike was discussing the difference in educational structure and attainment that he experienced in both business and graduate school in relation to China.”Asian American leaders and advocates described Gibbons’s comments as offensive.“Defining an entire continent of billions of individuals by a singular characteristic is the definition of racism,” said Representative Judy Chu, a Democrat of California and the chairwoman of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. Gibbons’s comments, she added, “betray his own lack of ‘critical thinking.’”Russell Jeung, the co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, a group that monitors incidents of discrimination against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, said Gibbons’s description of Asian intelligence was “part of the dehumanizing rhetoric around AAPIs that has contributed to the surge in racism that harms us today.”China has been an especially vexing topic for Republicans during this year’s campaigns, especially in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. Candidates have accused one another of being “soft” on Beijing, which many primary voters hold responsible for everything from the coronavirus pandemic to lost manufacturing jobs.In July 2020, the Pew Research Center reported that 83 percent of Republicans held unfavorable views of China. And in a March 2021 Pew survey, 72 percent of Republicans said they supported getting tougher on China on economic issues, and 53 percent said that they viewed China as an enemy of the United States.The pandemic has also been accompanied by an alarming surge in attacks on Asian Americans across the United States. In the most recent example, in Yonkers, N.Y., a security camera captured a man assaulting a 67-year-old woman of Asian descent inside the entry to an apartment building. The video shows him hitting her more than 125 times, stomping on her crumpled body and spitting on her in what law enforcement officials said was a racially motivated incident.The pandemic has been accompanied by an alarming surge in attacks on Asian Americans across the United States.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesA Trump-like pitchOn the campaign trail, Gibbons casts himself as a self-made man, a political outsider and a job creator — in language that often sounds a lot like Trump’s 2016 campaign.His Cleveland-based investment banking and financial advisory firm, Brown Gibbons Lang & Company, has indeed made him wealthy and successful. According to his Senate campaign’s financial disclosure, Gibbons reported assets worth between $83 million and $286 million. He has already spent nearly $12 million in advertising alone, according to AdImpact, eclipsing his closest rivals.“I can’t be bought,” he said during a recent stop in Canton. “I’ve already lived my American dream. I’m not going there to get rich or make friends. I’m going there to restore American values.”The pitch seems to be paying off: Gibbons is leading the field, according to a recent Fox News poll of Ohio Republican primary voters, along with Josh Mandel. Twenty-two percent of those surveyed said they planned to vote for Gibbons in the May 5 primary, and 20 percent favored Mandel. Other candidates polled lower: J.D. Vance at 11 percent, Jane Timken at 9 percent and Matt Dolan at 7 percent.Senator Rob Portman, who is retiring, has endorsed Timken, a former state party chairwoman, as his preferred replacement.But the race is still wide open — 24 percent of voters remain undecided, and about two-thirds of the supporters of each of the top three contenders said they would consider another candidate.The world according to Mike GibbonsLike the other candidates in the Ohio race, Gibbons has played up his ties to Trump. He was a finance co-chair of Trump’s presidential campaign in Ohio in 2016, and, his website notes, he “gave even more money to the Trump re-election campaign in 2020.”But Gibbons does not always seem to have been in sync with one of the core elements of Trump’s political appeal: the former president’s trade policies, which were defined by an America-first agenda that included imposing tariffs on Chinese goods and promising to return manufacturing to the United States.Last year, Gibbons praised Trump’s handling of China during an interview with Jewish Insider.“I’ve done large financial transactions all over the world, and I can tell you I long ago noticed what was going on in how China was abusing their role,” he said. “But they don’t play by the rules, and I think Donald Trump was the first one with enough gumption to go out and say, ‘We’re gonna force you to play by the rules, and you’re not going to keep draining us of our intellectual property.’ I think he was the first one to stand up.”Years earlier, however, during an interview with Crain’s Cleveland Business in 2005, Gibbons expressed a different perspective. Asked what the “biggest challenge” Northeast Ohio was facing, he replied by discussing free-market capitalism, arguing that the region’s political leaders were clinging to an outdated understanding of global economic forces.The biggest challenge, Gibbons said, was “getting our politicians to understand the way the world works.”“The battle is over between socialism and capitalism, and capitalism won,” he told Crain’s Cleveland Business. “If our politicians want to keep fighting that battle we will end up looking like Youngstown,” an Ohio city that has been hit hard by job losses over the last few decades.He continued: “If you can have the same product on the shelf out of China, with the same level of risk as far as getting it there and development costs, invariably, in a free market, all those jobs [making that product] are going to move to China. And we better face it. No legislation in the world can stop it.”“That’s the way a free market works, and that will ultimately create more benefits for the people of the United States,” Gibbons said.Asked about those comments, Cotten, the senior communications adviser to the Gibbons campaign, said, “Mike was stating that free market capitalism is good for the U.S., not pushing American jobs overseas.”She added: “Unfortunately, because of decades of failed Democrat policies that included higher taxes and excessive regulations, good-paying, blue-collar jobs were driven to places like China. Mike believes in the America first agenda” and a need for “new leadership in Washington that will put our economy back on track like we experienced under President Trump.”What to readPresident Biden will attend a NATO summit in Brussels next week. The New York Times continues its live coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war.The crisis in Ukraine has empowered the political center, Jonathan Weisman reports.Sarah Bloom Raskin withdrew from consideration to serve as the Federal Reserve’s top regulator after Senator Joe Manchin III said he wouldn’t vote to confirm her, Jeanna Smialek reports.Closing segmentPresident Biden spoke in Philadelphia last week. He has argued that solving climate change is a way to create more jobs, and he repeated that theme at a fund-raiser on Monday.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesA change in the political climate At his first in-person fund-raiser of his presidency Monday evening, President Biden focused his remarks on the threat of climate change, boasting that he had written the first climate bill in the 1980s and calling the issue “an existential threat to humanity.”For environmentalists who have long pushed to make climate change a salient political issue, it’s a major moment. While polling indicates that most Americans believe the United States should work to address climate change, the issue can get lost in campaigns.Biden has long argued that solving climate change is also a way to create more jobs. He repeated that theme last night in Washington, D.C. — but also added that addressing climate change was a timely national security issue.It would be a “different world,” Biden said, if the United States and Europe could rely on renewable energy rather than Russian oil.— 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

Proud Boys leader had plans to ‘storm’ government buildings on 6 JanuaryEnrique Tarrio possessed document titled ‘1776 Returns’, with details to invade and occupy seven buildings, New York Times says The former leader of the Proud Boys, a violent far-right nationalist group whose members were prominent in the January 6 riot, was found in possession of comprehensive plans to “surveil and storm” government buildings, prosecutors have said.Mug shot: Republican Josh Hawley told to stop using January 6 fist salute photoRead moreEnrique Tarrio, the group’s former chairman who was arrested last week and charged with conspiracy over the deadly attack, had a nine-page document entitled “1776 Returns”, named for the year of American independence, the New York Times reported.The document, mentioned only in general terms in Tarrio’s indictment, contained details of a complex plan for supporters of Donald Trump to invade and occupy at least seven House and Senate office buildings on the afternoon Congress met to certify Joe Biden’s election victory, according to Times sources.Trump has promoted the lie that the election was stolen and incited the attack on Congress as part of a wider effort to have the result overturned.The document features five sections, the Times reported: infiltrate, execution, distract, occupy and sit-in. The plan called for the recruiting of at least 50 Proud Boys and other Trump supporters to enter and occupy each building, “causing trouble” for security personnel who tried to stop them.Once inside, the instructions stated, the activists would be encouraged to chant slogans such as “We the People” and “No Trump, no America”. Supporters unable to gain access to the buildings would be encouraged to distract law enforcement and other authorities by “pulling fire alarms at nearby stores, hotels and museums”.In the days before 6 January, Proud Boys were to undertake reconnaissance of roads near the seven buildings, looking out for roadblocks and other obstacles.Questions remain over the origin of the document and whether Tarrio, 38, shared it with any of the individuals charged alongside him.They are Ethan Nordean, 31, of Auburn, Washington; Joseph Biggs, 38, of Ormond Beach, Florida; Zachary Rehl, 36, of Philadelphia; Charles Donohoe, 34, of Kernersville, North Carolina; and Dominic Pezzola, 44, of Rochester, New York.But its existence lends context to the US justice department’s decision to charge Tarrio with conspiracy, even though he was not in Washington on the day of the riot.According to the indictment, Tarrio “nonetheless continued to direct and encourage the Proud Boys prior to and during the events of 6 January 2021” and later “claimed credit for what had happened on social media and in an encrypted chat room during and after the attack”.Tarrio has denied involvement in planning the riot. His lawyer, Nayib Hassan, declined comment to the Times.More than 770 people have been charged in connection with the Capitol riot, at least 30 members of the Proud Boys, court records show.Tarrio, from Miami, recently stood down as chair of the group, after being sentenced last year to five months in prison for burning a Black Lives Matter banner and unlawfully bringing weapons to a Washington protest.He was also exposed last year as a long-time informant for the FBI and local law enforcement agencies.TopicsUS Capitol attackThe far rightUS politicsUS crimeDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

Mug shot: Republican Josh Hawley told to stop using January 6 fist salute photoThe mug featured prominently on Hawley’s website on Tuesday despite a cease and desist letter issued by Politico The Republican senator Josh Hawley must stop using an infamous picture of him raising his fist to protesters at the US Capitol on January 6 on campaign merchandise, the news site Politico said.Trump accused of campaign finance violations in FEC complaintRead moreThe shot was taken on 6 January 2021 as Hawley, from Missouri, made his way into the Capitol for the certification of electoral college results in Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump.Supporters Trump told to “fight like hell” in defense of his lie about electoral fraud attacked the Capitol. The attempt to stop certification failed but Hawley was one of 147 Republicans to lodge objections regardless.A bipartisan Senate report connected seven deaths to the riot. Trump was impeached.12:30PM: Senator Josh Hawley pumps his fist at pro-Trump crowd gathered at the east side of the Capitol before heading into the joint session of Congress. #Jan6NeverAgain #TheBigLie pic.twitter.com/rEFsfLY4x9— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) April 16, 2021
In February, Hawley’s campaign started selling $20 mugs featuring the picture, with the caption “Show-Me Strong”, a play on Missouri’s “Show-Me State” nickname.The picture was taken by E&E News, which Politico bought in December. On Monday, Politico said it had sent a cease and desist letter and said: “We do not authorize [the picture’s] use by the Hawley campaign for the purpose of political fundraising, which the campaign has been put on notice of by legal counsel.“We are eagerly awaiting a response, but in the interim again respectfully ask that the campaign immediately cease and desist unauthorized use of the image.”A spokesperson for Hawley said: “We haven’t received any correspondence from Politico or anyone else, but we are in full compliance with the law. Perhaps Politico can show us the correspondence they sent to the many liberal groups who also used the photo.”Politico has allowed the Associated Press to use the photograph for editorial purposes.On Tuesday morning, the mug featured on the front of Hawley’s website.As reported by E&E News, a fundraising email in February said: “Liberals are so easily triggered, and this new mug is really whipping the left into a frenzy!”It also said the mug was “the perfect way to enjoy coffee, tea, or liberal tears! Check it out below, and order one for yourself or any woke friend or family member that you want to trigger!”Hawley told the Huffington Post: “It is not a pro-riot mug. This was not me encouraging rioters.”He also said he was not condoning violence when he raised his fist.“At the time that we were out there,” he said, “folks were gathered peacefully to protest, and they have a right to do that. They do not have a right to assault cops.”Hawley was widely criticised for the gesture, and in the aftermath of the riot saw Simon & Schuster cancel plans to publish his book.Josh Hawley attacks ‘woke capitalism’ and claims to be victim of cancel cultureRead moreIn the book, The Tyranny of Big Tech, Hawley said he had been “branded a ‘seditionist’ and worse. But like many others attacked by the corporations and the left, my real crime was to have challenged the reign of the woke capitalists”.Responding to a Guardian report, he wrote: “Oh dear. I’ve offended the delicate sensibilities of the Guardian! I didn’t get their approval before I wrote my book. Order a copy today and own the libs.”The book was released by a rightwing imprint distributed by Simon & Schuster.As the Guardian reported, according to public financial disclosure records, Hawley turned out to have “invested potentially tens of thousands of dollars in the very companies he denounces”.TopicsUS Capitol attackRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

The oil-rich country’s dealings are largely opaque, but its central election commission said Serdar Berdymukhammedov had captured nearly 73 percent of the vote.ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan — Turkmenistan established a political dynasty Tuesday, as the authorities said the son of the Central Asian country’s leader won its presidential election after an unusual vote-counting delay.Serdar Berdymukhammedov, 40, was the overwhelming favorite in the election on Saturday to lead Turkmenistan, an isolated, gas-rich country, and succeed his father, Gurbanguly.The country has long been difficult for outsiders to enter — it has not reported a single case of infection in the coronavirus pandemic — and no election in Turkmenistan, which became independent after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, has been considered genuinely competitive.The central election commission said Serdar Berdymukhammedov won 72.97 percent of the votes. His nearest rival in a field of nine candidates was a university official, Khyrdyr Nunnayev, who won 11 percent.There was an unexpected wait for the result, after the authorities said Sunday they needed more time to count the votes. The election commission chairman, Gulmyrat Myradov, told reporters that votes were still being counted, including those from people living abroad, and that preliminary results would likely be reported Monday.Turkmenistan typically announces preliminary results on the day after an election, such as when the elder Berdymukhammedov won re-election with more than 97 percent of the vote in 2017.Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, 64, announced the vote last month, saying the country should be run by younger people. He had been the country’s leader since he was first appointed acting president after Saparmurat Niyazov died in December 2006.The elder Berdymukhammedov established a cult of personality with the title Arkadag, or protector, and was eager to show his physical fitness with stunts including driving sports cars, target shooting and hoisting a gold weight-lifting bar to applause from his cabinet. Under his rule, China replaced Russia as the main buyer for Turkmenistan’s vast gas reserves.Serdar Berdymukhammedov has risen through a series of increasingly prominent government posts and most recently served as the country’s deputy prime minister, answering directly to his father. He recently turned 40, the minimum age for president in Turkmenistan.“My main goal is to continue on the glorious path of development built during 30 years of independence and to successfully implement programs aimed at ensuring a high level of social conditions for the people,” Serdar Berdymukhammedov said while presenting his platform in a televised speech.The country has been struggling to diversify its economy, which is overwhelmingly dependent on its natural gas reserves.Speaking to reporters after casting his ballot, Mr. Berdymukhammedov vowed to continue the country’s neutral foreign policy if elected.During the campaign, all of the candidates praised Mr. Berdymukhammedov’s father, who said he would retain the post of the head of the country’s upper house of parliament.On voting day, folk dancers and singers performed as loud music blared from loudspeakers at polling stations. Engulfing the stations were fumes from burning harmala, a plant widely used in Turkmenistan to fumigate homes and public spaces to help prevent the spread of infectious diseases. More