Elections

The Senate candidate was a rising Republican when he abandoned his moderate roots. Now, those who have watched his transformation wonder if his rhetoric reflects who he really is.BEACHWOOD, Ohio — In the fall of 2016, Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign was pressing Ohio’s young state treasurer, Josh Mandel, to step it up. A former Marine, he held some sway with Republican voters, and Trump aides wanted him doing more public events.But Mr. Mandel couldn’t quite find the time. He just had so many scheduling conflicts, he joked over breakfast with Matt Cox, a Republican lobbyist and, at the time, a friend. Mr. Cox recalled Mr. Mandel rattling off the excuses he used to avoid being too closely linked to a candidate he wasn’t sold on: Running after his three children, other political commitments, his observance of all those Jewish holidays.Once Mr. Trump won, any reluctance from Mr. Mandel fell away fast. Within weeks, he spoke at the president-elect’s first victory rally, slamming those who were “avoiding Trump” during the election. Five days after the rally, he launched his second bid for Senate, borrowing Mr. Trump’s catchphrases of a “rigged system” and “drain the swamp” for his announcement video.Mr. Mandel has not looked back. As he runs for the U.S. Senate in Ohio, the 44-year-old politician has become one of the nation’s most strident crusaders for Trumpism, melding conspiracy theories and white grievance politics to amass a following that has made him a leading contender for the G.O.P. nomination in this Republican-leaning state.His political evolution — from a son of suburban Cleveland to warrior for the Make America Great Again movement — isn’t unique. Across the country, rising stars of the pre-Trump era have shed the traditional Republicanism of their past to follow Mr. Trump’s far-right brand of politics, cementing the former president’s influence over the next generation of the party’s leaders.Mr. Mandel with a supporter at the Faith and Freedom Rally in Troy, Ohio, last month.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesBut Mr. Mandel’s transformation has been particularly striking. Friends, strategists and supporters who powered his start in public life say that Mr. Mandel has so thoroughly rejected his political roots in Cleveland’s liberal-leaning suburbs that he is nearly unrecognizable to them. Some are convinced that his shift began as a clear political calculation — following his party to the right. But with his recent entrenchment on the fringe, many now wonder if it is not just Mr. Mandel’s public identity that has changed, but also his beliefs.“He’s twisting himself into something he wasn’t, just to win an election.” said Mr. Cox, who is not a Trump supporter and has donated to Mr. Mandel’s opponents. “Telling obvious lies,” he said, “is not part of the game. It’s intentional. And you have to believe that, if you say it that often.”Mr. Mandel has burned protective masks and blamed the “deep state” for the pandemic and has claimed that former President Barack Obama runs the current White House. He has rejected the separation of church and state and said that he wants to “shut down government schools and put schools in churches and synagogues.” The grandson of Holocaust survivors who were aided by resettlement organizations, he has compared a federal vaccine-or-testing mandate to the actions of the Gestapo, and today’s Afghan refugees to “alligators.”And he denies that President Biden was legitimately elected. “He is my president,” Mr. Mandel said recently in a video, pointing to a Trump sign in an Ohio cornfield.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.“I want to believe that this is a character he is playing,” said Rob Zimmerman, a Democrat and former city councilman from Shaker Heights, Ohio. Mr. Zimmerman spent hours advising and fund-raising for Mr. Mandel, viewing him as a politician who could bridge partisan divides. “It is jaw-droppingly different. The Josh Mandel of 2003 — of 2016, even — would not recognize the Josh Mandel of 2021.”“This,” Mr. Zimmerman added, “has broken my heart.”Since launching this campaign, his third for the Senate, Mr. Mandel has largely spoken through conservative media outlets and his active Twitter account.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesMr. Mandel declined to be interviewed for this article. Since launching this campaign, his third for the Senate, he has largely spoken through conservative media outlets and his active Twitter feed, which was restricted last year for violating the platform’s rules on “hateful conduct.” (Mr. Mandel created a poll asking which “illegals” — either “Muslim Terrorists” or “Mexican Gangbangers” — would commit more crimes.)When a reporter for The New York Times attended a campaign event on Jan. 25 at a church in Troy, Ohio, Mr. Mandel singled him out and denounced the newspaper in Trump-like terms, calling it “the enemy of the people” and “evil.”Elsewhere, Mr. Mandel has disputed that his politics have changed, arguing instead that he is in sync with the people he hopes to represent. “The voters in Ohio in the past two presidential elections have made it very clear, they don’t want a moderate running Ohio or running America,” he told a local cable news station after announcing his candidacy last year. “I’m the opposite of a moderate.”Other Republicans challenge Mr. Mandel’s assessment of what most Ohio voters want. Brad Kastan, a Republican donor who has known Mr. Mandel for two decades, said he worried that the candidate was “painting himself into a corner so far out that he can’t win” in a general election.In a state that has moved to the right, backing Mr. Trump by eight percentage points in 2020, Mr. Mandel has been polling ahead of his primary rivals, including Jane Timken, a former head of the Ohio Republican Party, and J.D. Vance, an author made famous by his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.” Much of the primary has revolved around winning Mr. Trump’s endorsement.Last spring, when summoned along with other candidates to Mar-a-Lago to jockey for Mr. Trump’s support, Mr. Mandel promised to hold nothing back to win the seat, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting who asked for anonymity to reveal a private conversation.Mr. Mandel’s stridency has surprised some in Beachwood, an affluent, predominantly Democratic suburb dotted with synagogues, where Mr. Mandel was a quarterback for his high school football team and then married into a wealthy Cleveland family.Mr. Mandel showed an early talent for standing out in a crowd at Ohio State, where he erected a 30-foot inflatable King Kong on the campus green to draw attention to his run for student government and won the presidency, twice.Shortly after graduating from the School of Law at Case Western Reserve, he won a City Council seat in Lyndhurst, a Cleveland suburb, drawing on support from his tight-knit community. When Albert Ratner, a major real estate developer and Ohio power broker, hosted a fund-raiser for Mr. Mandel, the candidate made a point of downplaying his Republican affiliation: “I really don’t care about partisanship,” he said, according to several people who recounted the gathering.Mr. Mandel attended just one City Council meeting before deploying to Iraq as an intelligence specialist in the Marine Corps Reserve. On his return trip home, his re-entry into U.S. airspace was announced at a high school football game to a cheering crowd.Mr. Mandel played quarterback for Beachwood High School’s football team and served in Iraq with the Marine Reserve Corps.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesAt 29, he won a seat in the Ohio Legislature, where he showed a keen understanding of the conservative causes that energized party activists. At one point, he took on the State House speaker, a fellow Republican, over a policy requiring ministers who led prayers in the chamber to submit their remarks in advance. The rationale was to avoid proselytizing in the Legislature. Mr. Mandel declared it an affront to religious liberty.“You know who fought the battle for our religious freedom? A 28-year-old Jewish guy,” said Lori Viars, an abortion-rights opponent who supports Mr. Mandel’s Senate bid. “I was so pleased to see him standing up when really no others did.”Running for state treasurer in 2010, Mr. Mandel was accused of trafficking in Muslim stereotypes after a campaign ad falsely implied that Kevin Boyce, the Democratic incumbent and Black man, was a Muslim.But Mr. Mandel’s reaction to the criticism cuts a contrast with the “fighter” image that he projects today. His campaign pulled the ad and he expressed regret, both publicly and privately to Mr. Boyce.“I think he had a sense of what’s right and what’s wrong, and I think he knew that wasn’t a right ad,” said Mr. Boyce, whom Mr. Mandel defeated. “He had a very strong reputation then as a moderate Republican and he seemed a little more reasonable.”Mr. Mandel had pledged to serve a full four-year term as treasurer. But he took the first steps toward a Senate campaign just five months after winning the job.He won the 2012 primary by courting Tea Party activists, but ran in the general election against Senator Sherrod Brown, the incumbent Democrat, as a business-friendly Republican. Campaigning that year for Mitt Romney, the G.O.P. presidential nominee, Mr. Mandel said he believed that Ohio voters rejected “hyperpartisanship” and wanted leaders who would “rise above it all to do the right thing.”(Mr. Mandel’s appraisal of Mr. Romney, now a senator and Trump critic, has curdled. “Mitt Romney is a loser,” he said last year.)Mr. Mandel had initially endorsed Marco Rubio in the 2016 presidential race, but he later backed Donald J. Trump. Andrew Harnik/Associated PressMr. Mandel’s sharpest political pivot came after the 2016 presidential race. He had endorsed Marco Rubio, then fell in behind Mr. Trump after he captured the nomination, though he privately expressed doubts about Mr. Trump’s credibility and business acumen and sometimes gave excuses when asked to stump for him, according to friends and former Trump campaign aides.After the October release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Mr. Trump was heard making vulgar comments about women, Mr. Mandel condemned the remarks but affirmed his support for Trump, saying he would be better than Democrats on issues like gun rights, religious liberty and the Supreme Court.Within weeks after Mr. Trump’s victory, Mr. Mandel was matching Mr. Trump in rhetoric and tone.At the postelection Trump rally in Cincinnati, he said Ohio’s cities would become so-called sanctuary cities “over my dead body,” over chants of “Build the wall!”Today, he calls himself Mr. Trump’s “number one ally” in Ohio.Mr. Mandel’s second Senate campaign ended in his withdrawal from the race in January 2018, citing his wife’s health. The two later divorced. The Cincinnati Enquirer is suing to unseal his divorce records. A campaign worker now involved in a relationship with Mr. Mandel has been cited in local news reports as having driven other employees to quit.In Beachwood, discussions of Mr. Mandel’s politics can be as emotionally intense as a family feud. More than a dozen people approached in the affluent suburb declined to be interviewed, some saying they did not want to have to avert their eyes when they saw his relatives at the local coffee shop or the Beechmont Country Club.Some friends and former supporters said that in more recent encounters with Mr. Mandel they had searched for signs of the young man they once supported or even pleaded with him to cease his drift into far-right-wing politics.The criticism, they said, didn’t seem to register.“He made the decision that ‘My path here is to be all-in on Trump,’” said Alan Melamed, a Democratic political consultant who first met Mr. Mandel decades ago. “Since then, he has been going down the path of ‘How far to the right can I go, and how outrageous can I be?’”“People can change,” Mr. Melamed added. “And he did.”Mr. Mandel denies that President Biden was legitimately elected, and has referred to Trump as his president.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesKevin Williams More

The latest alarmist claims about spying on Trump appeared to be flawed, but the explanation is byzantine — underlining the challenge for journalists in deciding what merits coverage.WASHINGTON — When John H. Durham, the Trump-era special counsel investigating the inquiry into Russia’s 2016 election interference, filed a pretrial motion on Friday night, he slipped in a few extra sentences that set off a furor among right-wing outlets about purported spying on former President Donald J. Trump.But the entire narrative appeared to be mostly wrong or old news — the latest example of the challenge created by a barrage of similar conspiracy theories from Mr. Trump and his allies.Upon close inspection, these narratives are often based on a misleading presentation of the facts or outright misinformation. They also tend to involve dense and obscure issues, so dissecting them requires asking readers to expend significant mental energy and time — raising the question of whether news outlets should even cover such claims. Yet Trump allies portray the news media as engaged in a cover-up if they don’t.The latest example began with the motion Mr. Durham filed in a case he has brought against Michael A. Sussmann, a cybersecurity lawyer with links to the Democratic Party. The prosecutor has accused Mr. Sussmann of lying during a September 2016 meeting with an F.B.I. official about Mr. Trump’s possible links to Russia.The filing was ostensibly about potential conflicts of interest. But it also recounted a meeting at which Mr. Sussmann had presented other suspicions to the government. In February 2017, Mr. Sussmann told the C.I.A. about odd internet data suggesting that someone using a Russian-made smartphone may have been connecting to networks at Trump Tower and the White House, among other places.Mr. Sussmann had obtained that information from a client, a technology executive named Rodney Joffe. Another paragraph in the court filing said that Mr. Joffe’s company, Neustar, had helped maintain internet-related servers for the White House, and that he and his associates “exploited this arrangement” by mining certain records to gather derogatory information about Mr. Trump.Citing this filing, Fox News inaccurately declared that Mr. Durham had said he had evidence that Hillary Clinton’s campaign had paid a technology company to “infiltrate” a White House server. The Washington Examiner claimed that this all meant there had been spying on Mr. Trump’s White House office. And when mainstream publications held back, Mr. Trump and his allies began shaming the news media.“The press refuses to even mention the major crime that took place,” Mr. Trump said in a statement on Monday. “This in itself is a scandal, the fact that a story so big, so powerful and so important for the future of our nation is getting zero coverage from LameStream, is being talked about all over the world.”There were many problems with all this. For one, much of this was not new: The New York Times had reported in October what Mr. Sussmann had told the C.I.A. about data suggesting that Russian-made smartphones, called YotaPhones, had been connecting to networks at Trump Tower and the White House, among other places.The conservative media also skewed what the filing said. For example, Mr. Durham’s filing never used the word “infiltrate.” And it never claimed that Mr. Joffe’s company was being paid by the Clinton campaign.Most important, contrary to the reporting, the filing never said the White House data that came under scrutiny was from the Trump era. According to lawyers for David Dagon, a Georgia Institute of Technology data scientist who helped develop the Yota analysis, the data — so-called DNS logs, which are records of when computers or smartphones have prepared to communicate with servers over the internet — came from Barack Obama’s presidency.“What Trump and some news outlets are saying is wrong,” said Jody Westby and Mark Rasch, both lawyers for Mr. Dagon. “The cybersecurity researchers were investigating malware in the White House, not spying on the Trump campaign, and to our knowledge all of the data they used was nonprivate DNS data from before Trump took office.”In a statement, a spokesperson for Mr. Joffe said that “contrary to the allegations in this recent filing,” he was apolitical, did not work for any political party, and had lawful access under a contract to work with others to analyze DNS data — including from the White House — for the purpose of hunting for security breaches or threats.After Russians hacked networks for the White House and Democrats in 2015 and 2016, it went on, the cybersecurity researchers were “deeply concerned” to find data suggesting Russian-made YotaPhones were in proximity to the Trump campaign and the White House, so “prepared a report of their findings, which was subsequently shared with the C.I.A.”A spokesman for Mr. Durham declined to comment.Mr. Durham was assigned by the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, to scour the Russia investigation for wrongdoing in May 2019 as Mr. Trump escalated his claims that he was the victim of a “deep state” conspiracy. But after nearly three years, he has not developed any cases against high-level government officials.Instead, Mr. Durham has developed two cases against people associated with outside efforts to understand Russia’s election interference that put forward unproven, and sometimes thin or subsequently disproved, suspicions about purported links to Mr. Trump or his campaign.Both cases are narrow — accusations of making false statements. One of those cases is against Mr. Sussmann, whom Mr. Durham has accused of lying during a September 2016 meeting with an F.B.I. official about Mr. Trump’s possible links to Russia.(Mr. Durham says Mr. Sussmann falsely said he had no clients, but was there on behalf of both the Clinton campaign and Mr. Joffe. Mr. Sussman denies ever saying that, while maintaining he was only there on behalf of Mr. Joffe — not the campaign.)Both Mr. Sussmann’s September 2016 meeting with the F.B.I. and the February 2017 meeting with the C.I.A. centered upon suspicions developed by cybersecurity researchers who specialize in sifting DNS data in search of hacking, botnets and other threats.A military research organization had asked Georgia Tech researchers to help scrutinize a 2015 Russian malware attack on the White House’s network. After it emerged that Russia had hacked Democrats, they began hunting for signs of other Russian activity targeting people or organizations related to the election, using data provided by Neustar.Mr. Sussmann’s meeting with the F.B.I. involved odd data the researchers said might indicate communications between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, a Kremlin-linked institution. The F.B.I. dismissed suspicions of a secret communications channel as unfounded. In the indictment of Mr. Sussmann, Mr. Durham insinuated that the researchers did not believe what they were saying. But lawyers for the researchers said that was false and that their clients believed their analysis.The meeting with the C.I.A. involved odd data the researchers said indicated there had been communications with Yota servers in Russia coming from networks serving the White House; Trump Tower; Mr. Trump’s Central Park West apartment building; and Spectrum Health, a Michigan hospital company that also played a role in the Alfa Bank matter. The researchers also collaborated on that issue, according to Ms. Westby and Mr. Rasch, and Mr. Dagon had prepared a “white paper” explaining the analysis, which Mr. Sussmann later took to the C.I.A.Mr. Durham’s filing also cast doubt on the researchers’ suggestion that interactions between devices in the United States and Yota servers were inherently suspicious, saying that there were more than three million such DNS logs from 2014 to 2017 — and that such logs from the White House dated back at least that long.But Ms. Westby and Mr. Rasch reiterated that YotaPhones are extremely rare in the United States and portrayed three million DNS logs over three years as “paltry and small relative to the billions and billions” of logs associated with common devices like iPhones.“Yota lookups are extremely concerning if they emanate from sensitive networks that require protection, such as government networks or people running for federal office,” they said. More

Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk, has been stripped of her county election oversight but is seeking to oversee her state’s elections as secretary of state.A Republican county clerk in Colorado who was stripped of her responsibility of overseeing county elections is joining a growing movement of people throughout the country who spread false claims about fraud in the 2020 presidential election and want to oversee the next one.Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk, who is facing accusations that she breached the security of voting machines, announced on Monday that she would run to be the top elections official in Colorado.At least three Republican challengers are already running to unseat the current Colorado secretary of state, Jena Griswold, a Democrat.Colorado is a purple state that President Biden won with 55 percent of the vote in 2020. The state’s primary is on June 28, and Colorado is one of 27 states whose top elections official will be on the ballot this year.In 2020, when former President Donald J. Trump and his allies sought to undo the results of the election, they focused their pressure campaign on these relatively little-known officeholders.“I am the wall between your vote and nationalized elections,” Ms. Peters said during an appearance Monday on a podcast hosted by Stephen K. Bannon, the embattled former top aide to Mr. Trump. “They are coming after me because I am standing in their way — of truth, transparency and elections held closest to the people.”Ms. Griswold, who is also the head of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, said in a statement on Monday that Ms. Peters was “unfit to be secretary of state and a danger to Colorado elections,” citing Ms. Peters’s attempts to discredit the results of the 2020 presidential election.Ms. Peters did not immediately respond to telephone and email messages on Monday seeking comment.Elected in 2018, Ms. Peters took office as clerk and recorder of Mesa County, in far western Colorado, in 2019. By late 2021 a Mesa County Court judge had upheld Ms. Griswold’s removing Ms. Peters from overseeing elections in the county and replacing her with an appointee.In May of last year, Ms. Peters and two other people entered a secure area of a warehouse in Mesa County where crucial election information was stored. They copied hard drives and election-management software from voting machines, the authorities said.In early August, the conservative website Gateway Pundit posted passwords for the county’s election machines. In October Ms. Peters spoke at a gathering in South Dakota of people determined to show that the 2020 election had been stolen from Mr. Trump.The gathering also featured a large screen that, at one point, showed the software from the election machines in Mesa County.Ms. Griswold said her office had concluded that the passwords leaked out when Ms. Peters enlisted a staff member to accompany her to surreptitiously record a routine voting-machine maintenance procedure. State and county officials announced last month that a grand jury was looking into allegations of tampering with Mesa County election equipment and “official misconduct.”More recently, Ms. Peters was briefly detained by the police when she obstructed efforts by officials with the local district attorney to serve a search warrant for her iPad. Ms. Peters may have used the iPad to record a court proceeding related to one of her deputies, according to Stephanie Reecy, a spokeswoman for the county.In video of the Feb. 8 encounter, taken by a bystander and posted on Twitter, Ms. Peters can be heard repeatedly saying, “Let go of me,” as officers seek to detain her. “It hurts. Let go of me,” she says, before bending her leg and raising her foot toward the officer standing behind her.An officer responds, “Do not kick,” according to body camera video posted by KJCT News 8, a local station. “Do you understand?”Ms. Peters was charged with obstructing a peace officer and obstructing government operations, according to the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office. She turned herself in to the authorities on Thursday, posted $500 bond and was released, according to county officials.“I still have the bruises on my arm where they manhandled me,” Ms. Peters told Mr. Bannon on Monday. Later she said: “I just want to say I love the people. That’s why I’m doing this.”Mr. Bannon said Ms. Peters had been targeted because of her fight against “this globalist apparatus.”“Thank you,” Ms. Peters told the host. “I’ll work hard for you guys.” More

The candidate, Craig Greenberg, was unharmed, but the attack left a bullet hole in his sweater. A man was charged with attempted murder, the police said.A mayoral candidate in Louisville, Ky., said he was the target of a shooting inside his campaign office on Monday that left him unharmed but shaken — and with a bullet hole in the back of his sweater.The candidate, Craig Greenberg, said he and four members of his campaign team were in a morning meeting near downtown when a man walked in.“When we greeted him, he pulled out a gun, aimed directly at me and began shooting,” Mr. Greenberg said at a news conference.The gunman was standing in the doorway as he fired his weapon multiple times, Mr. Greenberg said, and a member of his campaign staff slammed the door shut before helping to build a barricade out of tables and desks.Police officers who responded to the scene detained Quintez Brown, 21, outside the building. Mr. Brown was later charged with attempted murder and four counts of wanton endangerment, a Police Department spokeswoman said.According to Louisville news media outlets, Mr. Brown is a Black Lives Matter activist who was involved in protests after city police officers killed Breonna Taylor during a botched drug raid in her apartment in March 2020. He has written columns for The Courier-Journal about race and social justice.Mr. Brown announced in December that he would run for a Metro Council seat but county records show that he did not file to do so before last month’s deadline. It was unclear whether he had a lawyer.Mr. Greenberg declined to say whether he recognized the attacker, citing the police investigation, and it was not clear why he was targeted.Chief Erika Shields of the Louisville Metro Police Department said at a news conference that possible reasons for the attack include Mr. Greenberg’s mayoral candidacy or his Jewish identity, but that it was also conceivable that the police were “dealing with someone who has mental issues or is venomous.”“Until we can determine what the motivating factors were, we are going to keep an open mind and proceed with an abundance of caution and concern for many of our community members,” Chief Shields said.Mr. Greenberg, a Democrat, is in a crowded race to replace Mayor Greg Fischer, a Democrat who cannot run again because he is limited to three terms. The party primary contests are in May, followed by a general election in November.There are eight Democratic candidates, including David L. Nicholson, the Circuit Court clerk for Jefferson County; the Rev. Timothy Findley Jr. of Kingdom Fellowship Christian Life Center; and Shameka Parrish-Wright, a local social justice activist. Bill Dieruf, the mayor of Jeffersontown, a Louisville suburb, is one of the four Republicans in the race.Mr. Greenberg is a businessman who has been the president of a boutique hotel chain and a member of the University of Louisville’s board of trustees. He has been endorsed by at least six members of the 26-person Metro Council, including its president.The top issue on Mr. Greenberg’s campaign website is public safety. An eight-page plan outlines his desire, among other things, to hire nearly 300 police officers and to dedicate more resources to solving violent crime and making sure illegal guns stay off the streets.“Too many Louisville families have experienced the trauma of gun violence,” Mr. Greenberg said after the shooting. “Too many in Louisville were not as blessed as my team and I were today to survive.“Clearly, much more work needs to be done to end this senseless gun violence and make Louisville a safer place for everyone.”Like many large cities, Louisville has seen an increase in violent crime during the coronavirus pandemic. The city set a record with 173 homicides in 2020, and then broke it with 188 homicides last year. There were 18 homicides this year through Feb. 6, according to the Police Department, slightly behind last year’s pace.The Police Department itself has been under scrutiny for years, most prominently after officers killed Ms. Taylor. The police chief at that time was fired after officers killed a restaurant owner during protests over Ms. Taylor’s death.On Monday, Mr. Greenberg thanked the Police Department for its swift response to the shooting and its daily efforts to keep the city safe. He said he wanted to go home and hug his wife and two sons, pausing to compose himself.“It all happened so quick, but it’s a very surreal experience,” he said of the shooting. “There are far too many other people in Louisville who have experienced that same feeling.” More

Meet Representative Cindy Axne of Iowa, who has some advice for the White House about how to talk to voters.Holding a blue seat in a red-tinged place like Iowa’s Third Congressional District takes discipline. It takes a relentless focus on the folks back home, which is why you won’t see Cindy Axne yukking it up on “Morning Joe” or rubbing elbows with Jake Tapper on CNN. It takes doing who-knows-how-many hits on rural radio stations that might reach just a few hundred people at a time.Axne is a living case study in political survival. Donald Trump carried her district in both of his presidential runs. In 2020, a bad year for House Democrats, she hung on to her seat by fewer than 7,000 votes.This year, Axne has one of the hardest re-election tasks of any member of Congress. She’s the lone Democrat in Iowa’s delegation to Washington, representing a state that has moved sharply rightward. Thanks to redistricting, she just inherited nine additional counties that voted for Trump in 2020. At town hall meetings, she proudly tells constituents that hers is “the No. 1 targeted race in the nation.” Forecasters rate it a “tossup,” but privately, Democratic strategists acknowledge she might be doomed.What’s her strategy for survival? Although Axne doesn’t articulate them explicitly, we culled these unspoken rules from an interview in her office on Capitol Hill. It’s the kind of advice President Biden could use as he tries to reverse drooping poll numbers that threaten to bring down his entire party:Struggling to explain your policies? Visualize the voter you want to reach: “Take these big things and bring it down to that one individual. If that mom’s not sitting in the audience, put that mom in your head.”Dealing with bad news? Level with people: “Even if it’s not the answer everybody wants right now, give them the answer that you know.”Selling your infrastructure bill? Talk about convenience, not how many program dollars you allocated: “That doesn’t resonate. It resonates that I gave you 40 minutes of extra time when this bridge is repaired. That’s huge.”You won’t hear much soaring rhetoric about saving American democracy from Axne, either. The voters are her customers, reflecting her business background. “I’ve been a manager my whole life,” she said. “I’ve run customer service departments and retail.”And the way she figures it, the burden is on her to earn the customer’s approval. “It’s my job to go to them, to show them that they can trust me and that I deserve their vote,” she said.She urges the president to adopt that same retail mentality: Leave the mess in Washington behind, go into local communities and bring politics to a human scale.As she put it, “Come out and say, ‘Folks, here’s where we’re at.’”‘Tired’And where her customers are at right now, Axne said, can be summed up with one word: “Tired.”They’re tired of the pandemic. Tired of the disruptions it has brought to their families. Tired of their packages not being delivered on time. It’s the thread running through all the complaints she hears about, whether the issue is education or jobs or masks.“I’ve never seen anything impact our psyche so much like this, right?” she said. “There’s just a lot that families are coping with. It’s just hard for them to see some of the benefits that Democrats have delivered — because honestly, Democrats have delivered, I’ve delivered — but it’s hard to see when things still aren’t back to normal.”If and when they are, Axne said, “We’ve got to be really loud about it and make people feel comfortable and understand: ‘Go back to normal, folks.’”Axne has had to think a lot about how to explain the major legislative packages she has helped to pass and urges the White House to break them down into relatable pieces.She comes back to her infrastructure example, referring to bridges in Iowa that are so poorly maintained that they can’t bear the weight of a bus full of schoolchildren, leading to lengthy detours. “You know, ask any parent what their mornings are like, and would they like 40 minutes more? Heck, yeah.”Axne spoke at an American Legion post in Winterset, Iowa, in 2019.Charlie Neibergall/Associated PressEarning counties, then losing themAxne was first elected to Congress in 2018, as part of that year’s anti-Trump wave.She was a longtime Iowa state government official, an M.B.A. holder who started a consulting firm before running for Congress. If you ask her what’s on the minds of Iowa farmers, be prepared for an impromptu seminar on the intricacies of soybean processing.In 2019, when flooding devastated communities in her district along the Missouri River, Axne was everywhere: touring busted levees, lobbying for federal aid. It earned her some credit in the suburban areas around Council Bluffs and Indianola, helping her eke out that win in 2020.In a stroke of bad luck for Axne, those areas along the river are no longer her responsibility. After Iowa’s latest round of nonpartisan redistricting, they’ve become part of the district of Representative Randy Feenstra, a Republican.Her first task this year was to visit her new counties, which together voted for Trump by nearly 19,000 votes. She doesn’t have to win them — just keep the margins small enough while pumping up votes in her stronghold of Des Moines, the Iowa capital. But she does have to create some distance from national Democrats, which she tries to accomplish through humor.“I am not Nancy Pelosi,” she joked at a recent town-hall-style meeting in Ottumwa, one of 74 she’s held since her first election. “I’m a foot taller. I’m from a different state. I don’t wear five-inch heels.”Axne would like to see Democrats break the Build Back Better Act, their stalled social policy bill, into “chunks of coordinated policy.” And in the meantime, she wants Biden to get out there and hear from his disaffected customers directly.“It’s not that he doesn’t understand it,” she said. “It’s just that there’s so much happening at this high level that sometimes it’s really hard to just bring it down to that very micro level. But that micro level is what’s adding up across the country.”What to read Ryan Mac and Lisa Lerer profiled Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley investor who is seeking to become the right’s would-be kingmaker.Trump’s longtime accounting firm has cut ties with his family business amid an investigation into the Trump Organization’s financial practices, Ben Protess and William K. Rashbaum report.Ukraine’s president hinted at a major concession on Monday and Russia’s foreign minister said talks would continue, suggesting room for a peaceful resolution of the crisis. For more, go here for the latest updates on the diplomatic efforts to avert a Russian invasion.In Opinion, J. Michael Luttig, a retired judge, called on his fellow conservatives to embrace reform of the Electoral Count Act, the 1887 law that governs how Congress counts the votes of the Electoral College.Paul Singer, the New York hedge fund billionaire, in 2014.Andrew Renneisen for The New York TimesMcCarthy and Pompeo to court megadonorsAs Republicans gear up for midterm elections that they hope will give them control of both chambers of Congress, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the man who hopes to become their House speaker, is set to speak in Palm Beach, Fla. this week to some of the megadonors expected to finance the party’s efforts this fall and in 2024.The occasion is the semiannual gathering of the American Opportunity Alliance, a coalition of major donors spearheaded by the New York hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer that has worked mostly behind the scenes to shape the Republican Party.Also expected to speak is Mike Pompeo, who served as secretary of state under President Donald Trump and is said to be considering seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, which could pit him against Trump.Other prospective 2024 Republican candidates attended a meeting of the alliance last year in Colorado, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, former Vice President Mike Pence and Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador. Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who heads the Republican Party’s Senate campaign arm, also spoke to the alliance’s donors last year.The Palm Beach gathering is expected to draw candidates vying for Republican congressional nominations, including Herschel Walker (who is running for Senate in Georgia), Katie Britt (Senate in Alabama), Jane Timken (Senate in Ohio) and Morgan Ortagus (House in Tennessee).The donors in the alliance are likely to be assiduously courted by Republican candidates for a range of offices and to be solicited for donations to super PACs and party committees.Their giving and associations will be closely watched as the party and its donor class grapple with whether — and how — to move on from Trump.Singer was among the most aggressive Republican donors in seeking to block Trump from winning the Republican nomination in 2016. A conservative website he financed paid for early research into Trump’s ties to Russia. But Singer later donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund and visited the Trump White House on multiple occasions.Other donors who have been involved in the American Opportunity Alliance include the brokerage titan Charles Schwab, the hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin and Todd Ricketts, who served as finance chairman for the Republican National Committee under Trump.Among the donors expected in Palm Beach are the former Trump cabinet officials Wilbur Ross, who served as commerce secretary, and Linda McMahon, who was administrator of the Small Business Administration.Is 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

El líder francés relató su cara a cara con Vladimir Putin y desestimó el intercambio de cartas de Washington con Moscú, apostando a que su diplomacia podría dar frutos antes de las elecciones de abril.PARÍS — La semana pasada, en una mesa mucho más pequeña que la ovalada de más de 6 metros de largo en la que el presidente de Francia, Emmanuel Macron, se sentó frente al presidente de Rusia, Vladimir V. Putin, en Moscú, el mandatario francés reunió a algunos periodistas. Ahí dijo que la crisis en Ucrania le estaba ocupando “más de la mitad de mi vida, la mayor parte de mi tiempo” porque el mundo se encuentra “en un momento crítico” de la historia.Esta mesa estaba a unos diez kilómetros de altura, en el avión presidencial que la semana pasada llevó a Macron con prontitud a Moscú; a Kiev, la capital de Ucrania, y a Berlín, donde alertó de un daño “irreversible” si Rusia invadía Ucrania y señaló que era crucial “no aceptar la fatalidad”.Macron está convencido de que la crisis actual —marcada por el revanchismo de Rusia tras su aparente humillación por parte de Occidente— significa que la seguridad colectiva de Europa no se ha podido repensar desde el fin de la Guerra Fría. Parece que, al menos en eso, coincidieron Macron y Putin. El enorme desafío que se le presenta a Macron es determinar cómo podría suplirse, y convencer a los demás, entre ellos a Estados Unidos, sobre sus beneficios.Para el final de la semana pasada, el estancamiento con Rusia, que derivó en maniobras militares cerca de las fronteras de Ucrania, parecía más amenazante que nunca. Sin embargo, a solo ocho semanas de las elecciones presidenciales en Francia, Macron ha tomado la arriesgada apuesta de intentar convencer a Putin de que recurra al diálogo y de que los electores franceses estén más complacidos con su autoridad a nivel global que enfadados por su falta de atención.Si fracasa, no solo se arriesga a perder sus votos y su confianza, sino a dañar su prestigio y el de su país al ser visto en el extranjero como un líder que fue demasiado ambicioso.Consciente de esa percepción, se ha esmerado mucho en coordinar sus esfuerzos con los de otros dirigentes europeos, algunos de ellos escépticos, y con Joe Biden, el presidente de Estados Unidos. El viernes, en una conversación de 75 minutos entre los líderes de Occidente, se activó un frente unido para convencer a Rusia de “distender la crisis y optar por el camino del diálogo”, manifestó la Comisión Europea.Una imagen satelital que muestra el despliegue de viviendas y vehículos militares en Rechitsa, Bielorrusia.Maxar Technologies, vía ReutersCuando cayó el Muro de Berlín, Macron tenía 11 años y Biden, 46, por lo que tal vez es inevitable que haya ciertas divergencias de opinión. Macron no ve ninguna razón para que la estructura de la alianza que prevaleció sobre la Unión Soviética sea eterna.“El asunto no es la OTAN, sino cómo creamos una zona de seguridad”, dijo. “¿Cómo podemos vivir en paz en esta región?”. Macron insinuó que parte de su objetivo en Moscú había sido sugerirle a Putin que abandonara su obsesión por la OTAN —que Ucrania no debe unirse nunca a esta organización— y se concentrara en otro “esquema”. Mencionó que le había dicho al dirigente ruso que “el esquema que usted propone es falso”.Understand Russia’s Relationship With the WestThe tension between the regions is growing and Russian President Vladimir Putin is increasingly willing to take geopolitical risks and assert his demands.Competing for Influence: For months, the threat of confrontation has been growing in a stretch of Europe from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Threat of Invasion: As the Russian military builds its presence near Ukraine, Western nations are seeking to avert a worsening of the situation.Energy Politics: Europe is a huge customer of Russia’s fossil fuels. The rising tensions in Ukraine are driving fears of a midwinter cutoff.Migrant Crisis: As people gathered on the eastern border of the European Union, Russia’s uneasy alliance with Belarus triggered additional friction.Militarizing Society: With a “youth army” and initiatives promoting patriotism, the Russian government is pushing the idea that a fight might be coming.Macron advirtió que era necesario presentarse en el Kremlin y enfrentar al hombre que le ha puesto una pistola en la cabeza a Occidente con 130.000 soldados congregados en la frontera con Ucrania. Se ganaba tiempo al abrir otra ruta diplomática, más flexible que el intercambio de cartas entre Rusia y Estados Unidos, que en repetidas ocasiones Macron rechazó por considerarlas inútiles, y programar próximas reuniones. Los dos líderes se reunieron durante más de cinco horas el lunes pasado. Macron dijo que insistió tanto en “las garantías que podía darme sobre la situación en la frontera” que, en algún momento, Putin dijo que estaba siendo “torturado”.Putin, con la misma insistencia, atacó la expansión hacia el este de la OTAN desde 1997 y la agresión que esto implicaba.Marinos ucranianos en la región oriental de Donetsk el miércoles de la semana pasada.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesCuando le preguntaron acerca de esa mesa tan larga y ridiculizada, Macron dijo: “Bueno, para nada era algo fraternal”.El Kremlin no ha aceptado que Macron haya obtenido alguna concesión, pero dijo que su enfoque tenía “simientes de razón”, a diferencia del intento de diplomacia por parte del Reino Unido, el cual fue tachado por el ministro de Relaciones Exteriores, Serguéi Lavrov, de una conversación entre “sordos y mudos”.No se sabe bien cuál podría ser el nuevo esquema propuesto por Macron para la seguridad de Ucrania y de Europa. Pero, al parecer, de alguna manera ofrecería garantías inquebrantables a Ucrania de su soberanía e independencia en una forma en la que su ingreso a la OTAN quedara como un espejismo; al tiempo que Rusia permanecería satisfecha de que la seguridad de Ucrania no se hubiera reforzado a expensas de Moscú.En la práctica, Macron cree que es posible hacer un truco de prestidigitación que logre al mismo tiempo dos cosas: que los ucranianos permanezcan libres y seguros para mirar hacia Occidente para su futuro y que Putin siga pensando que ambos países forman un “espacio histórico y espiritual”, como lo llamó el líder ruso en una reflexión de 5000 palabras publicada el verano pasado sobre “la unidad histórica de los rusos y los ucranianos”.Se trata de una maniobra híbrida, pero que no es inusual en el presidente francés. A través de los años, Macron se ha dado a conocer como el mandatario de “al mismo tiempo” por sus constantes malabares de diferentes aristas de los asuntos —primero a favor de disminuir la dependencia de Francia en la energía nuclear, ahora a favor de aumentarla— y por su intrincada disección de los problemas que a veces deja a los analistas preguntándose qué es lo que él cree en realidad.Es incuestionable que cree apasionadamente en la Unión Europea y en el desarrollo de Europa como una potencia más independiente. Es un tema en el que nunca ha vacilado, y ahora parece pensar que ha llegado la hora de rendir cuentas/jugársela/arriesgarse por esa convicción.Al menos, con la reunión del canciller de Alemania, Olaf Scholz, con Putin en Moscú esta semana, Macron ha hecho que el papel de Europa cuente en esta crisis, junto con Estados Unidos. Eso es más de lo que se puede decir del Reino Unido.El presidente de Rusia, Vladimir V. Putin, durante una reunión con el presidente de Francia, Emmanuel Macron, en Moscú la semana pasada.Foto de consorcio por Thibault Camus“Europa, a través de sus principales Estados, ha regresado de una etapa de la que parecía haber sido marginada”, dijo Michel Duclos, exembajador de Francia, en un artículo publicado recientemente por el Institut Montaigne.Macron ha tenido que trabajar mucho para mantener alineados a los gobiernos europeos indecisos, sobre todo los que solían vivir bajo el yugo soviético, con sus esfuerzos diplomáticos. Puesto que ahora Francia tiene la presidencia rotatoria del Consejo de la Unión Europea, ha tratado de comunicarse con todos, lo cual es una de las razones por las que Ucrania le está consumiendo su tiempo.Sus horarios tendrán que cambiar de alguna manera las siguientes semanas. Macron todavía no anuncia su candidatura para ser reelegido como presidente, pero es casi seguro que tenga que hacerlo en el transcurso de las próximas semanas. La fecha límite es el 4 de marzo y la primera ronda de votaciones es el 10 de abril.Por ahora, Macron lidera las encuestas, que le dan alrededor del 25 por ciento de los votos, con tres candidatos de derecha que le siguen y los partidos de izquierda divididos muy por detrás. Entre los rivales a su derecha hay un apoyo importante a la imagen de caudillo de Putin y su denuncia de la “decadencia” occidental, por lo que un vínculo con el líder ruso también beneficia políticamente a Macron.Aunque es el favorito para ganar, la probabilidad de una alta tasa de abstención entre los franceses desilusionados con la política y el atractivo poderoso de la extrema derecha hacen que la reelección de Macron no sea segura. Si Putin ignora sus esfuerzos diplomáticos e invade Ucrania, las certezas desaparecerán.Partidarios de Éric Zemmourl, candidato presidencial de extrema derecha, en Lille, FranciaChristophe Petit Tesson/EPA vía ShutterstockÉric Zemmour, candidato de la extrema derecha, dijo el mes pasado que Putin “debe ser respetado”, y agregó que “los argumentos y demandas de Putin son completamente legítimos”. También dijo: “Creo que la OTAN es una organización que debió haber desaparecido en 1990”.Marine Le Pen, la perenne candidata nacionalista y antiinmigrante, dijo el año pasado que “Ucrania pertenece a la esfera de influencia de Rusia”.“Al intentar trastocar esta esfera de influencia”, agregó, “se crean tensiones y miedos, y se llega a la situación que estamos viendo hoy”. Le Pen se negó a firmar una declaración emitida el mes pasado por partidos de extrema derecha reunidos en Madrid porque criticaba a Putin.Sus posturas revelan el abismo que separa la admiración de la extrema derecha francesa por Putin de los esfuerzos de Macron. A la convicción del presidente francés de que Rusia necesita ser parte de una nueva arquitectura de seguridad europea se une la determinación de que Ucrania mantenga su soberanía.Aunque Macron haya provocado malestar por sus críticas a la OTAN, se ha mantenido firme en no ceder a las demandas de Putin.Al preguntarle cuándo se dedicaría a anunciar su candidatura, señaló: “En algún momento tendré que ponerme a pensar en ello. Nada se puede hacer con premura. Tiene que ser en el momento adecuado”.Si Macron no encuentra ese momento ideal, su diplomacia y sus ideas de una seguridad europea reinventada pueden quedar en nada. Lo que puede ser factible en un segundo periodo de cinco años al frente de Francia, seguramente no lo será antes del 24 de abril, la fecha de la segunda ronda de las elecciones.Roger Cohen es el jefe del buró de París del Times. Fue columnista del diario de 2009 a 2020. Ha trabajado para el Times durante más de 30 años y se ha desempeñado como corresponsal y editor en el extranjero. Criado en Sudáfrica y Gran Bretaña, es un estadounidense naturalizado. @NYTimesCohen More

The wine flowed. Donald Trump Jr. mingled with the guests. And Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire and host of the event, had a message for the well-heeled crowd: It was time to clean house.The fund-raiser at Mr. Thiel’s Miami Beach compound last month was for a conservative candidate challenging Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming for a spot on the ballot in November’s midterm elections. Ms. Cheney, one of several Republicans who had voted to impeach President Donald J. Trump on charges of inciting the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol, was the face of “the traitorous 10,” Mr. Thiel said, according to two people with knowledge of the event, who were not authorized to speak publicly. All of them had to be replaced, he declared, by conservatives loyal to the former president.Mr. Thiel, who became known in 2016 as one of the biggest donors to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, has re-emerged as a key financier of the Make America Great Again movement. After sitting out the 2020 presidential race, the venture capitalist this year is backing 16 Senate and House candidates, many of whom have embraced the lie that Mr. Trump won the election.To get these candidates into office, Mr. Thiel has given more than $20.4 million. That essentially puts him and Kenneth Griffin, the chief executive of the hedge fund Citadel, in a tie as the largest individual donors to Republican politics this election cycle, according to the nonpartisan research organization OpenSecrets.What sets Mr. Thiel’s spending apart, though, is its focus on hard-right candidates who traffic in the conspiracy theories espoused by Mr. Trump and who cast themselves as rebels determined to overthrow the Republican establishment and even the broader American political order. These campaigns have raised millions in small-dollar donations, but Mr. Thiel’s wealth could accelerate the shift of views once considered fringe to the mainstream — while making himself a new power broker on the right.“When you have a funder who is actively elevating candidates who are denying the legitimacy of elections, that is a direct assault on the foundation of democracy,” said Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at the left-leaning group New America, who studies campaign finance and hyperpartisanship.The candidates Mr. Thiel has funded offer a window into his ideology. While the investor has been something of a cipher, he is currently driven by a worldview that the establishment and globalization have failed, that current immigration policy pillages the middle class and that the country must dismantle federal institutions.Mr. Thiel has started articulating his thinking publicly, recently headlining at least six conservative and libertarian gatherings where he criticized the Chinese Communist Party and big tech companies and questioned climate science. He has taken issue with what he calls the “extreme dogmatism” within establishment institutions, which he said had sent the country backward.At an October dinner at Stanford University for the Federalist Society, he spoke about the “deranged society” that “a completely deranged government” had created, according to a recording of the event obtained by The New York Times. The United States was on the verge of a momentous correction, he said.“My somewhat apocalyptic, somewhat hopeful thought is that we are finally at a point where things are breaking,” Mr. Thiel said.Mr. Thiel, 54, has not publicly said what he believes about the 2020 election. But in Mr. Trump, he sees a vessel to push through his ideological goals, three people close to the investor said. The two men met recently in New York and at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla. Mr. Thiel also funded an app company run by John McEntee, one of Mr. Trump’s closest aides, two people with knowledge of the deal said.Unlike traditional Republican donors who have focused on their party’s winning control of Congress and the White House, Mr. Thiel has set his sights on reshaping the Republican agenda with his brand of anti-establishment contrarianism, said Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist.“I don’t think it’s just about flipping the Senate,” said Mr. Bannon, who has known Mr. Thiel since 2016. “I think Peter wants to change the direction of the country.”How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.Mr. Thiel’s giving is expected to make up just a small fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars that are likely to flow through campaigns this cycle. But the amounts he is pouring into individual races and the early nature of his primary donations have put him on the radar of Republican hopefuls.In the past, many courted the billionaire Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson, the late casino magnate. This year, they have clamored for invitations to Mr. Thiel’s Los Angeles and Miami Beach homes, or debated how to at least get on the phone with him, political strategists said.Mr. Thiel personally vets the candidates he gives to, said three Republican strategists, who declined to be named for fear of retaliation. In addition to Harriet Hageman, the challenger to Ms. Cheney, he is backing Joe Kent and Loren Culp, both of whom are running against House Republicans in Washington State who voted to impeach Mr. Trump. He also gave to a political action committee associated with Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, who is not up for re-election this year. More

Republicans say the policy helps undocumented immigrants disappear; many immigrants say it has prevented them from following the government’s instructions.WASHINGTON — A Haitian couple and their young son were among thousands of undocumented immigrants whom U.S. officials decided to allow entry through the southwest border last summer — part of a record-setting surge in unauthorized crossings over the past year.Beginning last spring, immigration officials were so overwhelmed that they admitted tens of thousands of migrants while issuing them a new document that did not include the typical hearing dates or identification numbers recognized in the immigration court system. The change sped up the process of releasing them into the country, but also made it much harder for the new arrivals to start applying for asylum — and for the government to track them.Months later, the government has not been able to complete the processing started at the border, showing how ill prepared the system was for the surge and creating a practical and political quagmire for the Biden administration.President Biden pledged as a candidate to fix the country’s broken immigration system, a campaign mantra that resonated with many voters after the harsh policies of President Donald J. Trump. But over Mr. Biden’s first year in office, his administration’s response to the surge in migration has consisted largely of crisis-driven reactions — including the faster entry process.Migrants were caught crossing the southwest border illegally more than 2 million times between December 2020 and December 2021, the largest number since at least 1960. They came not just from Central America and the Caribbean but from around the world, many fleeing persecution and economic hardship with the expectation that Mr. Biden would be more welcoming than Mr. Trump.Although migrants were expelled in a little more than half the cases, more than 400,000 of them were released into the country for a variety of reasons during Mr. Biden’s first year in office. Of those, more than 94,000 were released through the sped-up process — a streamlined version of a longtime practice that critics call “catch and release,” in which those who are apprehended at the border are released from custody pending their immigration court proceedings. These migrants were instructed to register with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement within 60 days to complete the process the border officials started. But in some parts of the country, local ICE offices were overwhelmed and unable to give them appointments. So the Haitian family and other new arrivals have spent months trying in vain to check in with ICE and initiate their court cases. “It was a quick fix — ‘Deal with them later,’” said Evangeline Chan, an immigration lawyer in New York. “But they have not been able to.”Human rights advocates say the change has made it harder for those seeking asylum to get by while they wait to be officially recognized in the immigration system. Republicans, in the meantime, have pounced on the Biden administration for releasing undocumented immigrants into the country with even less ability to keep track of them.“Those who cross our border illegally should be detained and deported, not released into the interior of our country on an unenforceable promise to reappear,” 80 Republican House members wrote in a letter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement earlier this month. “It is nothing short of reckless.”Migrants in Del Rio, Texas, in 2020. Under a Trump administration policy, many asylum seekers had to wait in Mexico until U.S. immigration judges ruled on their cases.Verónica G. Cárdenas for The New York TimesA ‘huge mess’Mr. Trump’s policy was to restrict the flow of asylum seekers at the southwest border by making it harder to qualify and by making some people wait in Mexico before they could enter the country to apply. In some cases, applicants had to stay in Mexico until U.S. immigration judges ruled on their cases.The most restrictive policy, however, came at the beginning of the pandemic when the federal government started using an obscure public health rule known as Title 42 to turn migrants away at the border, including those seeking asylum.Even so, hundreds of thousands have been allowed into the country for a variety of reasons including a lack of detention space because of pandemic precautions. The Biden administration has also made exceptions for humanitarian reasons, particularly for families and children.Mr. Biden’s stated goal is to reverse Mr. Trump’s harshest immigration policies and be more welcoming to immigrants, but so far, immigration and human rights advocates say he has not come through, in large part because he has kept the public health order in place. Without it, Mr. Biden would have to make the tough choice of releasing even more undocumented immigrants into the country to await proceedings or detaining them..A record number of migrants were caught illegally crossing the southern U.S. border in President Biden’s first year in office, putting his administration in crisis-reaction mode. Oliver Contreras for The New York TimesAs of the end of January, nearly 33,000 immigrants who were issued documents without court dates and the typical identification number had missed their deadline to check in and start their proceedings in immigration court, according to an ICE official speaking on condition of anonymity. It is impossible to know how many have tried to check in with ICE to get court cases started and how many have chosen not to.Hopeful that immigration will prove a potent campaign issue, Republicans are blaming Mr. Biden for the sharp increase in migrants at the border because of his campaign promise that his administration would be more welcoming than the last. His response to the surge, they say, has only made things worse.“D.H.S. was forced to deal with an unmitigated disaster, and notices to report was one of the desperate policies it implemented trying to cope,” Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, said in a statement. The streamlined document, known as a notice to report, he added, “just exacerbated the problem.”Some immigration advocates agree.“This N.T.R. situation is a huge mess that everyone is trying to navigate right now,” Emily Haverkamp, an immigration lawyer and expert on asylum policies, said.The potential for complications with the expedited processing was not lost on some members of the Biden administration, according to several current and former administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the internal debate. But some officials in the Department of Homeland Security argued that border officials could not have handled the surge of migrants without the expedited option to release them into the country.Migrants who crossed the Rio Grande from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, head to request asylum in El Paso, Texas. Border officials have been overwhelmed by the surge in illegal crossings.Jose Luis Gonzalez/ReutersA ‘vicious cycle’After setting off last June on a treacherous journey from Chile — where they had relocated to years earlier — the Haitian family made it to Texas in August, where border officials released them without a court summons and told them to report to an immigration office once they reached Miami, their destination.When they did so, the office was closed, operating on a reduced schedule because of the pandemic. When they tried to register online, they were told they would not get an appointment to finish their paperwork and receive official identification numbers, known as alien numbers, until 2032. When they wrote to an ICE email address, the automated response said the agency needed the family’s alien numbers.“It’s a vicious cycle,” the husband said through a translator.The delays have been felt most acutely in Miami, New York, Houston and Los Angeles, where many of the recent immigrants have settled. Miami appears to have the biggest backlog, and the Homeland Security Department said it is in the process of sending more staff to there to help address it.Once people are officially entered into the immigration court system — now facing its greatest backlog in history — the average wait for an initial court appearance is nearly five years, according to data collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.The Haitian couple, like most new immigrants, are not authorized to work, making it impossible to earn an honest living; they are residing with other Haitian immigrants in the Miami region. They tried for months to enroll their son in kindergarten, facing bureaucratic roadblocks at every turn. They cannot afford a lawyer to help them find a way to comply with the government.Some of their challenges are standard for people stuck in the broken immigration system; other challenges are new, resulting from the fact that they were released without being enrolled in immigration court proceedings.“You’re more under the radar and you’re more in the shadows,” Ruby Powers, an immigration lawyer in Texas, said.Stuck in this gray area, immigrants have to wait even longer to apply for a work permit. Once they have the work permit, immigrants can apply for a Social Security Number, which makes it possible to start settling in. With a Social Security Number, an asylum-seeking immigrant can apply for a driver’s license in many states, open a bank account, enter a contract for a cellular phone, and more.In the past, families willing to house new immigrants could count on them eventually getting permission to work, said Leonie Hermantin, the director of development, communications and strategic planning at the Sant La Haitian Community Center in North Miami.Leonie Hermantin of the Sant La Haitian Community Center in North Miami, speaking with a Haitian family who had recently arrived in the U.S.Scott McIntyre for The New York Times“Now you have people who are stuck staying at people’s houses who are getting increasingly inhospitable,” she said, adding that some will soon face homelessness. “They are in this state of limbo. We at social service agencies — we just don’t know what to do.” More