Elections

The decision deals a temporary blow to voting access in a critical battleground state. Democrats pledged an appeal.A state court in Pennsylvania on Friday struck down the state’s landmark election law as unconstitutional, dealing a temporary blow to voting access in one of the nation’s most critical battleground states. The law, known as Act 77, was passed by the Republican-controlled legislature and signed by Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, in 2019. It permitted no-excuse absentee voting, created a permanent mail-in voter list, reduced the voter registration deadline from 30 days to 15 and provided for $90 million in election infrastructure upgrades. It also eliminated straight ticket voting.The opinion from Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt, a Republican, sided with 14 Republican lawmakers who sued last year, arguing that the law was unconstitutional and that the legislature could not make alterations to voting laws without amending the constitution. The bipartisan law was praised by both sides when it was passed, but it became a target of conservatives during the 2020 election, as former President Donald J. Trump unspooled falsehoods and lies about mail-in voting. Eleven of the 14 lawmakers who sued to kill the law had voted for it in 2019.Democrats said they were not surprised that the Commonwealth Court, which they said leans Republican, ruled against the law, and they pledged an appeal to the state Supreme Court, which has sided with the state on voting issues both during and following the 2020 election. “This is just a continuation of attacking and undermining our electoral process,” said State Senator Jay Costa, the Democratic minority leader. He added that an appeal would be filed by the end of the day. “Act 77 will ultimately be deemed to be constitutional.” More

Spoiler alert: It’s Donald Trump.Senator Kyrsten Sinema has received so much attention recently that you might have forgotten that she’s not the Arizona Democrat up for re-election in 2022.That would be Senator Mark Kelly. As a freshman Democrat in a state that President Biden won by less than a percentage point in 2020, he’s one of four vulnerable incumbents whom Republicans are targeting as they seek to regain the majority in the U.S. Senate.If Republicans fail to knock off Kelly, a popular former astronaut with piles of campaign cash, it’ll be for one main reason, party strategists and pollsters tell us: A primary so consumed with winning Donald Trump’s blessing that the Republican Party sets itself up to lose the general election.“With the current electoral environment shaping up to be very pro-Republican, the only potential issue is that a hard-right candidate comes out of the primary and ends up losing in what should be a gimme Republican year,” said Mike Noble, an Arizona-based pollster.The obvious choice for a challenger to Kelly might have been Doug Ducey, Arizona’s Republican governor. He managed to win re-election in a brutal year for Republicans and is not allowed to run for a third term. But Ducey has steadfastly maintained he’s not interested in the Senate.That leaves a number of lesser-known Republicans to vie for the nomination. The best way to stand out? Obtaining the endorsement of Trump, which means making remarks or taking positions that could haunt them in November.First, there’s Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who’s worked in Arizona government for the last decade. But he faces intense pressure from Trump and from the Republican grass-roots to find fraud in his investigation of the 2020 election. At an Arizona rally earlier this month, Trump referred to his baseless claims that he actually won the state and told the crowd that he was “anxiously waiting” to see whether Brnovich would agree with him, and that they’d soon find out if the attorney general is a “good man.”Brnovich, apparently undeterred, posted on Twitter a photo of himself with Trump.Trump reserved a warmer reception for Blake Masters, calling him “a really terrific guy” at the rally. Masters — a venture capitalist backed by Peter Thiel, a billionaire tech mogul who’s close to Trump — has said that he believes Trump won in 2020 and that the country is being run by “psychopaths.”Then there’s Jim Lamon, a businessman whose campaign put $1 million behind a TV ad cheering “Let’s Go Brandon,” a far-right slogan that translates to an expletive directed at Biden. Lamon also helped facilitate Republicans’ post-mortem review of the 2020 election results in the state’s most populous county.All of these efforts to win the former president’s support could backfire in the fall if Democrats are able to anchor the eventual nominee to Trump.“Yes, it’s a big benefit and help during the primary due to Trump’s current influence over the electorate,” Noble said. “However, it is absolutely a weakness when they move into the all-important general election.”It’s ‘the Republicans’ to lose’Before we go any further, let’s make one thing clear: Given the national environment, Republicans should have a natural advantage in a state that Biden won so narrowly.It’s not just that the party in the White House tends to struggle in the first midterm election of a president’s term, or that the president’s approval ratings are hovering in the low 40s. It’s also that Biden inherited a pandemic and all the economic and social fallout that came with it. And that Arizona was ruby red only a few short years ago, suggesting that Kelly’s three-point margin in 2020 could be easy enough to erase.“It’s absolutely the Republicans’ to lose,” Brian Seitchik, an Arizona-based Republican consultant, said of the race.Republicans are confident that whoever becomes their nominee will enter the race against Kelly in a strong position to win.“​​Voters and persuadable swing voters will be inclined to want to vote for someone who’s going to be a check and a balance on the Biden administration,” said Daniel Scarpinato, a former chief of staff to Ducey.Proceeding with cautionArizona elected two Democratic senators during Trump’s term and ultimately voted to oust him in 2020. And even in a national environment that could lift Republicans to the majority, they could still find ways to lose.Scarpinato said he hasn’t seen candidates engage in behavior that would “tear the party apart or put people in a position where they’re perceived as being unelectable.”But he cautioned that Republicans can’t become so preoccupied with fighting one another in the primary — which is not until August — that they delay their attacks against Kelly.“They need to start now,” Scarpinato said.One Republican national strategist involved in Senate races told us that the top concern for many in his party is that the eventual nominee drains all their resources on the primary, leaving them cash-strapped against Kelly, who ended last year with nearly $20 million in his campaign account.And while others noted that while Republican-aligned outside groups such as the Club for Growth could make up any gaps in spending, money is likely one reason that many Republicans keep hoping Ducey changes his mind and decides to run, Noble said.Ducey was re-elected in 2018 even as Democrats won a Senate seat in Arizona for the first time in decades. He’s already proven he can put together a top-tier statewide campaign operation. But Ducey has said publicly and privately that he’s not running, and it’s easy to see why: He’d have to get through a Republican primary and general election without the support of Trump, who blames him for losing the state in 2020. Just a few weeks ago, Trump reiterated in a statement that Ducey would never have his “endorsement or the support of MAGA Nation!”One of the great unknowns in the 2022 election is the effect of the president’s approval rating. If it stays in the low 40s, Kelly could be ousted no matter how skilled a campaign he runs, or how bumbling an opponent he faces.“He has to carry around Joe Biden like a sack of potatoes wherever he goes,” said Stan Barnes, a Republican strategist based in Phoenix.What to readSome Democrats hope that nominating a Black woman to the Supreme Court will help solidify support from Black voters in the midterms, Trip Gabriel reports.The confirmation process will test Senator Dick Durbin, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans.In his latest Congressional Memo, Carl Hulse asks if the Democrats’ new voting bill talks are for real — or for show.The economy is growing faster than it has in decades, so why aren’t voters rewarding Biden for it? Here’s what economists told Jeanna Smialek and Ben Casselman.This is more of a recommendation on what to do tonight: Try gerrymandering an imaginary state in this online game created by Ella Koeze, Denise Lu and Charlie Smart.Justice Thomas, left, has been mistakenly referred to as Chief Justice, the position John Roberts, right, holds.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesOne more thing …A lighthearted moment accidentally illuminated some important dynamics on the Supreme Court — more consequential, perhaps, than the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer.In oral arguments last week in a case about whether Boston can stop a private group from flying a Christian flag in front of its City Hall, a lawyer for the plaintiffs was addressing Clarence Thomas, a deeply conservative associate justice who joined the court in 1991.“Chief —” the lawyer, Mathew Staver, began, before correcting himself and continuing, “Justice Thomas.”The little-noticed hiccup came after a flood of recent commentary and reporting on Thomas’s growing influence after years on the margins of the court.Last year, Jill Abramson, the former executive editor of The New York Times, observed in an opinion essay that “what is remarkable is the extent to which the Supreme Court, with the addition of three Donald Trump nominees who create a 6-to-3 conservative majority, seems to be reshaping itself in Justice Thomas’s image.”This is the one thing that pundits of opposite political leanings seem to agree on: Liberals have lamented Thomas’s role as “the new chief justice,” while conservatives, including the influential Wall Street Journal editorial page, have hailed “the Thomas court.”It’s not the first time someone has made the same error. In March of last year, when a lawyer in another case mistakenly called Thomas “Mr. Chief Justice,” the actual chief justice — John Roberts — joked, “There’s no opening.”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

Senators involved in the negotiations underway say the discussions are serious and substantive, but some Democrats remain wary.WASHINGTON — Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, was finally closing in on a hard-fought agreement with Republicans on a gun safety measure, following a string of horrific shootings in 2019, when the talks suddenly collapsed.New plans in the House to impeach President Donald J. Trump meant that Republicans were no longer in the mood to compromise with Democrats on anything, and the emerging accord went the way of so many seemingly promising ones on Capitol Hill in recent years, stymied by Republicans who said they were willing to accept some sort of deal — just not that one.“The world has become so polarized that our Republican colleagues come so very close to closing a deal, but then they begin staring down the abyss of their base and they recoil,” said Mr. Blumenthal, who attributed the Republican recalcitrance to fear of a political backlash for any cooperation with Democrats.The same has been true for other politically charged issues where efforts at compromise have ended up going nowhere in Congress. Republicans initially seemed willing to engage on legislation addressing immigration and police misconduct, for example, only to abruptly pull back, blaming Democrats for what they called unreasonable demands or a refusal to take hard steps that might anger their liberal supporters.So as a rump group of senators in both parties has recently ramped up discussions aimed at reaching a compromise on voting legislation, leading Democrats who saw their far broader voting rights package stall in the Senate last week have been wary.They worry that the emerging legislation could be a distraction from the pressing issue their bill was meant to address — Republican voter-suppression efforts at the state level — and amount to little more than cover for Republicans who want to appear interested in protecting election integrity despite uniformly opposing Democrats’ voting rights bill.They have taken note that Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and minority leader, has blessed the effort — a telltale sign, say Democrats who have learned to be endlessly suspicious of his motives, that it might go nowhere.The Democratic fear is that once the moment passes and attention shifts away from election law to spending issues and now a contentious Supreme Court nomination, the talks will fizzle and Democrats will be left with nothing to show for their voting rights drive, even as the 2022 midterms loom and the 2024 election is just over the horizon.But leaders of the talks that now include at least 16 senators divided between Republicans and Democrats say they are substantive, gaining momentum and could produce legislation that might prevent another Jan. 6-style confrontation by focusing on fixing the deficiencies in the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act.They point to the bipartisan infrastructure measure that many of the same lawmakers were able to produce last year as their model for negotiations, and as proof that compromise is still possible.“I’m encouraged by the fact that almost every day, someone calls me and asks to join our group,” said Senator Susan Collins, the centrist Republican from Maine and a leader of the compromise effort. She characterized its members, who met virtually this week, as ranging from “pretty conservative to pretty liberal.”“This is a serious, committed group of senators from both sides of the aisle,” she said in an interview. “This is not a surface effort.”Aiding the outlook for the talks is the fact that Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, is also now encouraging them. He is taking what one ally described as a wait-and-see attitude after initially lashing out at the potential compromise as a ruse to undercut the Democratic voting rights package.A separate group that includes Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota and chair of the Rules Committee, and Angus King, the Maine independent, is drafting comparable legislation.Virtually all Democrats back the idea of fixing the Electoral Count Act, which lays out the ceremonial process by which Congress makes an official count of the presidential election results to confirm the victor, to guard against its being exploited in the way that Mr. Trump and his allies attempted to do so.But they caution that it is no substitute for their proposals, which focus on countering efforts to make it harder for minorities to vote and restoring parts of the landmark Voting Rights Act.“I don’t think anybody is against fixing the piece,” Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, said about the electoral vote counting process. “But nobody should pretend that this in any way solves the bigger issues regarding the attack on our democracy.”Ms. Collins, however, says that the focus on how presidential electoral votes are tallied should be the aim of any new voting legislation as a direct response to the assault on the Capitol last January by Mr. Trump’s supporters seeking to interfere with the tally.“That the Democrats didn’t put anything on the Electoral Count Act in their 735-page bill is astounding to me given the link to Jan. 6,” Ms. Collins said.Understand the Battle Over U.S. Voting RightsCard 1 of 5Why are voting rights an issue now? More

The Republican digital donation platform is facing inquiries from four state attorneys general into its use of prechecked boxes to withdraw donations automatically.A federal judge in Minnesota on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by WinRed, a company that processes online donations for Republicans, that sought to block state attorneys general from investigating fund-raising tactics that have triggered complaints of fraud.The attorneys general from four states — New York, Minnesota, Maryland and Connecticut — first sent letters to WinRed last April, asking for documents after a New York Times investigation revealed the company’s use of prechecked boxes to automatically enroll donors in recurring contribution programs. The boxes resulted in a surge in demands for refunds from supporters of former President Donald J. Trump.WinRed declined to provide the documents and instead went to federal court to argue that federal law should pre-empt any state-level consumer investigations. Chief Judge John R. Tunheim of the U.S. District Court in Minnesota ruled against the company on Wednesday.Judge Tunheim dismissed WinRed’s attempt to stop the attorneys general investigating outside Minnesota, ruling that he did not have jurisdiction. He ruled in favor of the Minnesota attorney general, Keith Ellison, writing that federal law would not pre-empt a state inquiry.“The court has confirmed an important principle that has nothing to do with politics: State attorneys general can use the laws and investigatory tools of their states to protect the consumers of their states from harm, deception, and abuse,” Mr. Ellison said.Judge Tunheim also denied a request to block a subpoena from the attorneys general, which was issued last July 16, shortly after WinRed went to federal court, according to the ruling issued on Wednesday.“WinRed will appeal,” the company said in an emailed statement.WinRed has argued that the attorneys general, all Democrats, are politically motivated. However, the four also sent a similar request for documents last year to ActBlue, the leading Democratic donation-processing platform. ActBlue said on Wednesday that it had also received a subpoena and that it had shared the requested information.After the ruling Wednesday, Attorney General Brian Frosh of Maryland urged WinRed to cooperate with the inquiry.“Now that its case has been dismissed, it is our hope that WinRed moves from a strategy of attack, attack, attack and cooperates in the investigation of allegations that it deceived consumers around the nation,” he said in a statement.New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, said, “It’s their responsibility to be honest and transparent with their services, and it’s the responsibility of the states to fight back against deceptive behavior in all its forms.”In the fall of 2020, the Trump campaign used prechecked boxes to get a donor’s permission to withdraw extra donations every week — then obscured that fact below extra text unrelated to the additional withdrawals. In the following weeks and months, demands for refunds increased sharply as supporters said they were duped into unwitting contributions.All told, the Trump operation, working with the Republican Party, refunded more than 10 percent of every dollar raised through WinRed in the 2020 campaign — a rate more than four times that of the Democrat Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s operation.The bipartisan Federal Election Commission voted unanimously last year to recommend that Congress outlaw the practice of prechecked recurring donation boxes. Legislation has since been introduced in both the House and the Senate.Kitty Bennett contributed research. More

The French president acknowledged the suffering of colonists who fled Algeria after the war of independence, a group that has long voted heavily in favor of the right in France.PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron of France, addressing a community that has been fertile ground for the far right ahead of presidential elections this spring, on Wednesday acknowledged the suffering of the French and European colonists who fled Algeria after the 1954-62 war of independence and of their descendants.“The 1962 exodus is a tragic page of our national history,” he said, adding that the colonists and their descendants “were not listened to” and “were not welcomed with the affection that every French citizen deserves.”Mr. Macron’s speech was the latest step in a yearlong effort to resolve painful memories of France’s colonial past in Algeria. Following proposals made in a government-commissioned report, he acknowledged crimes committed by the French military and police and the state’s lack of regard for those who fled Algeria and had fought for France.But it also came as Mr. Macron enters the final stretch of a bruising campaign to serve a second five-year term in which his government has moved increasingly to the right on issues prominent in far-right campaigning such as immigration and the place of Islam in France.People fleeing Algeria on a boat, waiting to be taken back to France in 1962.Gamma-Keystone, via Getty ImagesOver the past year, Mr. Macron has recognized the suffering of nearly every community affected by France’s colonial history in Algeria, including independence fighters and immigrants, and Algerians who fought on the French side during the war of independence.“He achieved in six months what had not been done for 60 years,” said Benjamin Stora, a leading historian of the Algerian War and the author of the government-commissioned report.But Mr. Macron’s speech Wednesday recognizing the suffering of the colonists, known as Pieds-Noirs, and their descendants, was notable for its timing three months before an election in a political environment marked by heated debates over immigration and Islam that have echoes of the French colonial past in Algeria.Mr. Macron, right, received the report on colonization and the Algerian war from the historian Benjamin Stora in 2021.Pool photo by Christian HartmannThe trauma of that history continues to shape modern France, with nostalgia on the right and resentment among the country’s large Muslim population.The long shadow of France’s defeat in Algeria looms large in the rhetoric of Éric Zemmour, a far-right candidate for president whose parents left the country in the 1950s and who speaks of “reconquering” a France he says is being colonized by Islam and immigration. His message has resonated with many voters on the far right, leading to a jump in the polls last year that has gradually dissipated in recent months as Mr. Zemmour has struggled to broaden his base of support and attract working-class voters.Mr. Macron last year started addressing the recommendations in the Stora report by acknowledging the brutal killing of a leading Algerian lawyer, Ali Boumendjel, by French soldiers. He also facilitated access to sensitive archives of the Algerian War and was the first French head of state to commemorate the mass killing of Algerian independence protesters by the Paris police 60 years ago.The moves were widely criticized by the French right, which is still reluctant to openly criticize colonization, particularly the party of the far-right leader Marine Le Pen, the National Rally, whose origins are rooted in popular opposition to the end of colonial Algeria.France’s National Archives near Paris. Mr. Macron facilitated access to sensitive archives of the Algerian War.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesMr. Macron then asked “forgiveness” for the abandonment of Harkis, Algerians who fought for France during the war and have often shown strong support for Ms. Le Pen, his main challenger in the presidential elections in April.The Pieds-Noirs emigrated to Algeria from France and European countries, often as laborers and farmers, while the nation was under French rule, for about 130 years. After Algeria won its independence in 1962, about 800,000 of the colonists fled to France and many others who stayed were massacred. Their fate has long fueled resentment, and nostalgia for the colonial past, feelings that have often translated into support for the far right.In 2017, while campaigning for the French presidency, Mr. Macron called the colonization of Algeria a “crime against humanity,” infuriating Pied-Noir organizations. His words on Wednesday struck a very different tone.French troops in Algiers in 1956.Associated PressFrench paratroopers questioning a captive in Saint Eugene, Algeria, in 1957.Jacques Grevin/Agence France-Presse, via IntercontinentaleResponding to one of the main demands of the Pieds-Noirs, Mr. Macron officially recognized that French soldiers in March 1962 killed dozens of supporters of French Algeria. He also called for the mass killing of Pieds-Noirs by Algerian independence supporters to be “faced and recognized.”Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionCard 1 of 6The campaign begins. More

Once an ordinary citizen stumbles into the culture war, it can be hard to get back out. Just ask Michael Fanone.Michael Fanone seemed very out of place. It was the first anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection, and CNN was commemorating the occasion with blanket coverage. A year earlier, Fanone was a 40-year-old Metropolitan Police Department (M.P.D.) officer trying to hold off an angry mob outside the United States Capitol. The rioters pulled him from a tunnel and down a set of steps, pummeled him with their fists and their feet and even the staff of an American flag and tased him numerous times; in the melee, he suffered both a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury. Now Fanone was outside the Capitol again, on the set of CNN’s “New Day” morning show, sitting next to its hosts, John Berman and Brianna Keilar. He wore faded jeans and a red-and-black plaid parka, in stark contrast to Berman’s and Keilar’s news-anchor attire. With his heavy beard and a turtleneck of tattoos peeking out from underneath his collar, he looked like some sort of punk lumberjack. He sounded like one too. When Keilar asked him to share some of the conversations he was having with police officers as the anniversary approached, Fanone acidly noted that the U.S. Capitol Police “have to walk the same halls as some of these insurrectionist members of Congress,” before adding, “I couldn’t imagine sharing a work space with those jackasses.”The good news for Fanone is he doesn’t have to. Despite the incongruity of his wardrobe and words, the cable-news set was now his work space, Berman and Keilar his colleagues. In late December, Fanone resigned from the M.P.D., after nearly 20 years on the force, and took a job as an on-air commentator on law-enforcement issues at CNN. In a way, the move only formalized a pre-existing relationship. A week after the storming of the Capitol, while still recovering from his injuries, Fanone gave interviews to CNN and a host of other news outlets, recounting the horrors of the event in vivid terms that spared no detail or person. (Addressing the handful of people in the mob who came to his aid that day, he told CNN, “Thank you, but [expletive] you for being there.”) He became a media star and, inevitably, a political star as well. In July, Fanone testified in front of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. “The indifference shown to my colleagues is disgraceful,” he shouted, slamming his hand on the table. That evening, he appeared on Don Lemon’s CNN show to play a racist and homophobic voice mail message a Trump supporter left him. “This is what happens to people that tell the truth in Trump’s America,” he said. That Fanone himself was a self-described “redneck American” who voted for Trump in 2016 gave his words an added weight.They didn’t switch sides in the political battle so much as they simply stumbled into it.Apostates are rarely lonely in American politics. When a political figure switches sides — Whittaker Chambers naming Communist names and becoming a celebrated conservative intellectual, David Brock renouncing the vast right-wing conspiracy and starting liberal nonprofits — the drama of the act itself can earn more attention, and more followers, than if the person had started on that side to begin with. But in recent years, the act of apostasy has been defined down. Alexander Vindman, a by-the-book U.S. Army lieutenant colonel serving on Trump’s National Security Council, became a blue-state hero for having the temerity to suggest that it was improper of Trump to threaten to withhold U.S. military assistance to Ukraine unless it investigated Joe Biden. Nicholas Sandmann, a Kentucky teenager on a high-school field trip to Washington, became a conservative cause célèbre when a video of his encounter with a Native American political activist on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial was misconstrued, in initial press reports, as a racist confrontation. Unlike Chambers or Brock, Vindman and Sandmann didn’t switch sides in the political battle so much as they simply stumbled into it — noncombatants who were drafted into the culture war. Once conscripted, though, each capitalized on his new status by parlaying it into political and media work. Sandmann landed a job with Mitch McConnell’s re-election campaign and was given a prime-time speaking spot at the Republican National Convention. He’s now a frequent guest on Fox News, most recently showing up on Sean Hannity’s show to offer advice to Kyle Rittenhouse after his acquittal on murder charges in November. Vindman, meanwhile, wrote a book, “Here, Right Matters” — the title comes from a line in his testimony at Trump’s impeachment hearings — and even made a cameo on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” It’s not surprising that Fanone would follow the same path. He may have had little alternative. The flip side of apostasy, of course, is the enmity it earns you from your old comrades. Fanone’s outspokenness rapidly made him a target for conservative media figures: Greg Kelly of Newsmax dubbed him “that drama queen of a cop,” while Laura Ingraham of Fox mockingly awarded him a “best performance in an action role” trophy for his House testimony. Even worse, he became a target for his fellow law-enforcement officers. When he had recovered enough to return to the force in September, he has said, officers in his old district greeted him with taunts or simply shunned him; he now counts only two current Washington police officers as friends. “I had convinced myself, Mike, you’re vocalizing the opinions of thousands and thousands of police officers,” he later lamented to the Time correspondent Molly Ball. “But I’m starting to think I’m vocalizing the beliefs of just one.” In joining CNN, Fanone is merely going where he is wanted.Fanone has said that one reason he is so outspoken is he does not want anyone to whitewash, or to forget, what happened on Jan. 6. But that has trapped him in a “Groundhog Day”-like existence. In another appearance during CNN’s anniversary coverage, Fanone stood with Don Lemon in the Capitol tunnel from which rioters pulled him one year earlier. In an “exclusive” interview, he haltingly recalled how “it was like a war zone.” He went on: “It was just littered with weapons and debris, CS gas, residual gas just kind of floating in the air created this mist or haze. It was surreal.” Left unsaid was the surreality of Fanone’s having to relive the worst day of his life, yet again, for CNN’s cameras.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 17The House investigation. More

The challenge to Representative Madison Cawthorn’s re-election bid could set a precedent to challenge other Republicans who encouraged the Jan. 6 attack.WASHINGTON — A group of lawyers is working to disqualify from the ballot a right-wing House Republican who cheered on the Jan. 6 rioters unless he can prove he is not an “insurrectionist,” disqualified by the Constitution from holding office, in a case with implications for other officeholders and potentially former President Donald J. Trump.The novel challenge to the re-election bid of Representative Madison Cawthorn, one of the House’s brashest supporters of Mr. Trump and the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, could set a precedent to challenge other Republicans who swore to uphold the Constitution, then encouraged the attack.While the House committee investigating the assault on the Capitol has so far been unsuccessful in its effort to force key members of Congress to cooperate with the inquiry, the North Carolina case has already prompted a legal discussion — one that is likely to land in court — about what constitutes an insurrection, and who is an insurrectionist.And for the first time, a lawmaker who embraced the rioters may have to answer for his actions in a court of law.“I don’t think we can have those persons who have engaged in acts of insurrection elected to office and serving in office in violation of their constitutional duties and oath,” said John R. Wallace, one of the lawyers on the case and a campaign finance and election law expert in Raleigh, N.C. He added, “It should not be difficult to prove you are not an insurrectionist. It only seems to be difficult for Madison Cawthorn.”Cases challenging the legitimacy of a candidate before election boards usually hinge on a candidate’s age, legal residency, place of birth or citizenship status, or the legitimacy of signatures in a candidacy petition.This case revolves around the little-known third section of the 14th Amendment, adopted during Reconstruction to punish members of the Confederacy who were streaming back to Washington to reclaim their elective offices — and infuriating unionist Republicans.That section declares that “no person shall” hold “any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath” to “support the Constitution,” had then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”Mr. Cawthorn, 26, who is in his first term in Congress, has denounced the case as an egregious misreading of the 14th Amendment, but he has retained James Bopp Jr., one of the most prominent conservative campaign lawyers in the country, as counsel.Mr. Bopp, in an interview, declared the matter “the most frivolous case I’ve ever seen,” but allowed that what he called an “unethical” exploitation of North Carolina law by “competent” lawyers could pose a real threat to Mr. Cawthorn — and by extension, to others labeled “insurrectionists” by liberal lawyers.“This is the real threat to our democracy,” he said. “Just by bringing the complaint, they might jeopardize a member of Congress running for re-election.”“They have multiple targets,” he added. “It just so happens that Madison Cawthorn is the tip of the spear.”That is because North Carolina’s election statute offers challengers a remarkably low bar to question a candidate’s constitutional qualifications for office. Once someone establishes a “reasonable suspicion or belief” that a candidate is not qualified, the burden shifts to the officeseeker to prove otherwise.If Mr. Cawthorn is labeled an “insurrectionist,” that could have broader ramifications. Other Republican House members, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Paul Gosar of Arizona, and Lauren Boebert of Colorado, face similar accusations, but their state’s election laws present higher hurdles for challenges to their candidate qualifications. If one of their colleagues is disqualified for his role in encouraging the rioters, those hurdles might become easier to clear.The lawyers challenging Mr. Cawthorn’s eligibility are using an amendment last invoked in 1920, when Representative Victor L. Berger, an Austrian-American socialist, was denied his seat representing Wisconsin after criticizing American involvement in World War I.If nothing else, the lawyers, including two former justices of the North Carolina Supreme Court, want to depose Mr. Cawthorn as part of discovery to question his actions before, during and after the attack on the Capitol.“There is, of course, much that we don’t know, and the statute allows discovery by deposition and the production of records,” Mr. Wallace said.There is much that is known. Whether it makes Mr. Cawthorn an “insurrectionist” would have to be determined by North Carolina’s Board of Elections, or more likely, by the state’s courts, where the board might punt the matter.Weeks after the 2020 election, Mr. Cawthorn told a conservative gathering to “call your congressman” to protest the results, adding, “you can lightly threaten them.” He promoted the “Save America” rally behind the White House on Jan. 6, writing on Twitter, “the future of this Republic hinges on the actions of a solitary few,” then adding “It’s time to fight.” At the rally, he riled the crowd from the stage with talk of election “fraud.”He later called those jailed for storming the Capitol “political hostages” and “political prisoners” that he would like to “bust” out of prison.A mob rushing the Capitol on Jan. 6 were met with tear gas.Kenny Holston for The New York Times“The Second Amendment was not written so that we can go hunting or shoot sporting clays. The Second Amendment was written so that we can fight against tyranny,” he would later say in Franklin, N.C. He added, “If our election systems continue to be rigged, and continue to be stolen, then it’s going to lead to one place, and it’s bloodshed.”Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 17The House investigation. More

As legislation to expand voting rights was blocked in Washington, local residents debate a plan from officials in Lincoln County, Ga., who say they want to streamline and modernize their system.LINCOLN COUNTY, Ga. — The showdown over voting rights in the U.S. Senate may be over for now. But the issue is still smoldering in a stretch of Northeast Georgia countryside where local officials recently introduced a plan to close seven polling sites and consolidate them into one.The proposal in Lincoln County has attracted the attention and ire of major voting rights groups and suspicion among some Black residents who say the effort is just the latest example of voter suppression in a state where Republicans recently passed a restrictive new law. Hundreds of upset residents have filed protest petitions that could cause local officials to scale it back.But local officials say the current polling spots are in need of modernization — and that in a county where about two-thirds of the 7,700 residents are white, the plan is simply an effort to make it easier to manage elections. The remaining site would be located close to the polling place that currently serves the county’s one majority-Black precinct.“They seem to think that I’m trying to stop Black people from voting,” said the elections director, an African American woman named Lilvender Bolton. She would administer the plan that was under consideration last week by a mostly Republican-appointed board of two Black members and three white ones.In Georgia, a state where razor-thin voting margins have helped swing the White House and control of the Senate, any effort to change the process of voting has become fiercely contested. And after recent efforts by Republicans in Georgia and around the country to restrict voting, suspicions are high.Lilvender Bolton, who leads the Board of Elections, supports a plan to consolidate voting into one location.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesFor decades, a proposal like Lincoln County’s would have been subject to review from the Department of Justice to determine whether it was discriminatory, a step mandated by the 1965 Voting Rights Act and often referred to as “preclearance.” But this system was effectively gutted by a 2013 Supreme Court decision, Shelby County v. Holder, and has not returned since, despite efforts to revive it like last week’s Senate debate.David J. Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, said the failure to reinstitute preclearance this year was a missed opportunity.Mr. Becker was careful to note that he could not tell whether Lincoln County’s consolidation plan was politically motivated or well-intentioned. But with preclearance, he said, residents of areas like Lincoln County would at least have had a sense that a third party had taken a hard look at whether a proposed change to voting in their community would make it harder for minority groups to vote.“Preclearance was a stamp of approval that elections officials could use to tamp down exactly this kind of divisive rhetoric that’s going around,” he said.In 2019, the Leadership Conference Education Fund, a civil rights nonprofit based in Washington, issued a report analyzing the areas formerly subject to federal review and found a loss of 1,173 polling places between the 2014 and the 2018 midterm elections.Fully understanding the “potentially discriminatory impact of these closures,” the report’s authors wrote, would require “precisely the kind” of analysis “that the DOJ conducted under preclearance.”Even voting rights groups acknowledge that there are sometimes legitimate reasons for closing polling places: Populations shift, and sometimes the way people cast their vote changes, too. More voters may begin choosing to vote by mail or at early voting locations rather than their precinct.Officials want all voting to take place in Lincolnton, the county seat.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesIn Lincoln County, Ms. Bolton, the county elections director, argues that the change would make it easier for her to manage Election Day. Her tiny staff is stressed, she said, by the responsibility of setting up and breaking down the complicated electronic voting machines in seven locations spread around the county’s 257 square miles.The failure of the voting overhaul effort in Washington comes after Republican state lawmakers, in the wake of former President Donald J. Trump’s defeat in 2020, have moved to overhaul election systems in dozens of states, including Georgia, often in the name of protecting against dubious allegations of voter fraud promulgated by Mr. Trump and his allies.The Georgia legislature has also handed control of some or all appointments to local election boards in six counties to conservative judges or Republican-controlled county commissions.Given these recent developments, and the long history of racist disenfranchisement of Black voters in the South, some Lincoln County voters say they would be foolish not to suspect that they are being targeted.“How could you not see it as a pattern?” said Charlie Murray, 68, a Black resident who votes at a nearby church far from the county seat.“They’re making it harder for people to vote,” said another Black resident, Franklin Sherman, 29, a truck driver who usually votes in the same spot.Franklin Sherman, 29, opposes consolidating the precincts: “They’re making it harder for people to vote.”Nicole Craine for The New York TimesLincoln County was among the six Georgia counties in which the rules for selecting members of the local elections board were recently changed by the state legislature.County officials originally asked legislators for the change because they wanted to be able to stagger the members’ terms, said Walker T. Norman, the longtime chair of the county commission and a Republican.Another change — ending the tradition of letting the Democratic and Republican Parties each choose one board member — was prompted by a State Supreme Court ruling, which has been interpreted to hold that private entities cannot appoint members to government bodies, he said.The legislation mandating the changes was sponsored by State Senator Lee Anderson, a Republican who co-sponsored last year’s restrictive Georgia voting bill. He also publicly supported a baseless and unsuccessful U.S. Supreme Court challenge to the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia and three other states. In a recent interview, Mr. Anderson said that in making the changes to the local elections board, he was simply responding to the wishes of Lincoln County officials.Mr. Norman is something of a legend in the county: The community gym proposed as the sole new voting site bears his name — “I got a road named after me too,” he said — and two years ago he changed his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican because he said it had become too hard to get elected as a Democrat. In an interview, he dismissed the idea that Black voters would be discriminated against by a consolidation. He noted that in all but one precinct, white voters outnumber Black ones.“You can see that they’re not for all the people,” Charlie Murray, 68, said of Lincoln County officials.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“So if we’re suppressing anybody, I’m afraid we’re suppressing the white vote,” he said. “But that’s not our intent, to suppress any vote.”Mr. Norman said that in recent elections, a majority of participants have voted early at a centralized location in Lincolnton. He also described a litany of problems with the current system: Three polling places are within about two and a half miles of one another. Some of the facilities are antiquated. Consolidation, he said, will require less equipment. “We don’t have to use but about half of the voting machines,” he said.But opponents, both Black and white, expressed more concern for the convenience of voters than for that of the voting officials and poll workers.Racy Smith, 56, the owner of a Lincolnton antique and curio shop, said it seemed “ridiculous” to close rural polling places in a county with limited public transportation. “My 86-year-old mom can still drive,” said Mr. Smith, who is white, “but there are so many that aren’t that active who live out in the county.”The Rev. Denise Freeman, a former member of the school board and an activist leading the fight against the consolidation, expressed skepticism about the board’s true motivation. “I think it’s the good ol’ boys flexing their muscle for more power and more control,” she said.On Thursday, Ms. Freeman gave a tour of some of the more remote areas of the county, a few miles from the J. Strom Thurmond reservoir, named for the Republican senator who was known as a segregationist but ended up voting to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act.Ms. Freeman talked about her role in the other major racially charged issue that rocked the county in recent decades: an allegation, in the early 1990s, that Black children had been told to sit in the back of a school bus by a driver.The Rev. Denise Freeman, a local activist, outside the proposed site for the new polling station, a gymnasium named after the longtime chair of the county commission. Nicole Craine for The New York TimesBlack parents discussed keeping their children out of school. Ms. Freeman spoke up about this issue and other perceived injustices, earning her share of enemies.Eventually, she said, an outside group came in to broker a sort of peace: the Department of Justice.Three decades later, the residents of Lincoln County will most likely need to sort out their disagreement over polling places on their own. On Tuesday, Ms. Bolton’s office was in the process of verifying hundreds of protest petitions from voters in two precincts. Under Georgia law, those two polling places will have to stay open if the petitioners amount to 20 percent or more of the total electors in each precinct.But Jim Allen, a board member, does not believe that the plan is dead. Some form of consolidation, he said, was likely to be considered eventually.Michael Wines More