Elections

The Republican National Committee says it will require candidates to pledge to not participate in debates run by the Commission on Presidential Debates. What would replace them, if anything, was unclear.The Republican National Committee is preparing to change its rules to require presidential candidates seeking the party’s nomination to sign a pledge to not participate in any debates sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates.Republican committee officials alerted the debate commission to their plans in a letter sent on Thursday, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. If the change goes forward, it would be one of the most substantial shifts in how presidential and vice-presidential debates have been conducted since the commission began organizing debates more than 30 years ago.The nonprofit commission, founded by the two parties in 1987 to codify the debates as a permanent part of presidential elections, describes itself as nonpartisan. But Republicans have complained for nearly a decade that its processes favor the Democrats, mirroring increasing rancor from conservatives toward Washington-based institutions.The move by the R.N.C. was an outgrowth of those long-held complaints and came after months of discussions between the commission and party officials. According to the R.N.C.’s letter, the chairman of the party’s temporary presidential debate committee, David Bossie, began discussions last year with the debate commission’s co-chairman, Frank Fahrenkopf, a former Republican official.The Republican Party chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, had demanded that changes be made to the commission and how the debates were held, writing in a letter to the commission in June that the party and its voters had lost faith in the commission.The change requiring candidates to refuse participation in the commission’s debates is to be voted on at the R.N.C. winter meeting in Salt Lake City in February. If the R.N.C. moves forward with it, it is unclear what that would mean for future debates. But it would change the approach to be similar to what happened before the commission existed, when the two parties or campaigns had to negotiate directly and agree on terms, or no debates would take place.Commission officials have privately complained that R.N.C. leaders have conflated the processes around primary debates with those in the general election, which are the only ones the commission is involved with. They have also complained that the commission historically deals with campaigns and not with party committees. While the eventual nominee could decide to debate, there’s far more energy in the G.O.P. base behind abandoning institutions than there used to be.Circumstances could always change and the R.N.C. could choose not to go ahead with the planned rules change. But Ms. McDaniel has walked far out on a limb with her latest letter, and the commission, which usually negotiates with the nominees’ campaigns, is showing no sign of making the R.N.C. a negotiating partner.“The C.P.D. deals directly with candidates for President and Vice President who qualify for participation,” the commission said in a statement. “The C.P.D.’s plans for 2024 will be based on fairness, neutrality and a firm commitment to help the American public learn about the candidates and the issues.”One major concern for the R.N.C. was the timing of the first debate in the 2024 election cycle.In 2020, more than one million ballots were cast before the first presidential debate on Sept. 29 that year, after some states changed their election rules because of the coronavirus pandemic and expanded both absentee and early voting. The party has been pushing the commission to host a debate before early voting begins in 2024.Former President Donald J. Trump has criticized the commission since his first campaign, against Hillary Clinton in 2016, when he complained that one of its co-chairs, Mike McCurry, was a White House press secretary under President Bill Clinton. He also complained then that the debates were being held at the same time as N.F.L. games. Mr. McCurry later condemned Mr. Trump’s attacks on the media as president.Officials with the commission told the R.N.C. in December that one of the party’s demands in particular was unacceptable: having nonvoting representatives of either the R.N.C. or the Democratic National Committee at the commission’s board meetings. The commission wrote that it was still studying that and other concerns the R.N.C. had raised, including the choice of moderators, as part of its review before the 2024 campaign cycle.“We take the R.N.C.’s observations and suggestions seriously and, as we have said previously, we will give them careful consideration,” the commission’s letter read. “In furtherance of our position as a nonpartisan, neutral body, which neither favors nor disfavors any party or candidate, we do not negotiate the terms or conditions of our operations with anyone.”But in her letter on Thursday, Ms. McDaniel replied that the commission’s response seemed designed to “delay any reform until it is too late to matter for the 2024 election.”She added that the Republican National Committee’s duty was to ensure that its candidates debated their opponents on a level playing field.“So long as the C.P.D. appears intent on stonewalling the meaningful reforms necessary to restore its credibility with the Republican Party as a fair and nonpartisan actor, the R.N.C. will take every step to ensure that future Republican presidential nominees are given that opportunity elsewhere,” Ms. McDaniel wrote.Accordingly, she added, the R.N.C. would start the process of amending its rules at the winter meeting “to prohibit future Republican nominees from participating in C.P.D.-sponsored debates.”It remains to be seen what, if any, new entity the Republican Party will choose as a host for debates and whether Democrats will agree.Republicans have long complained about how the commission handles debates, going back to the 2012 campaign, when Senator Mitt Romney of Utah was the Republican nominee against the incumbent Democrat, President Barack Obama. The moderator of the town hall-style debate, Candy Crowley, then with CNN, fact checked Mr. Romney in real time about a claim he made about Mr. Obama, prompting an outcry from conservatives.But the intensity of frustration with the commission has increased since Mr. Trump first became the Republican nominee in 2016.Mr. Trump’s adviser, Rudolph W. Giuliani, argued with the commission at the second debate with Mrs. Clinton, when he tried to seat women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct near the stage. Mr. Trump has also complained about moderators repeatedly, insisting that both the former Fox News anchor Chris Wallace and the NBC News reporter Kristen Welker were biased against him (Mr. Trump said after the debate that Ms. Welker had been fair).Mr. Trump announced three days after the first presidential debate in 2020 that he had been infected with the coronavirus. He had appeared sick to some onlookers at the first debate, and his former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, wrote in a book about the presidency that Mr. Trump had in fact had one positive coronavirus test in the days before the debate, followed by a negative one.The commission changed the second presidential debate to a virtual format, prompting Mr. Trump to withdraw from it after a contentious debate with the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, for which Mr. Trump was heavily criticized.Mr. Trump’s campaign manager at the time, Bill Stepien, wrote a blistering letter to the commission after the second debate format was changed, accusing the commission, among other things, of omitting the topic of foreign policy to try to help Mr. Biden.Mr. Romney, who is Ms. McDaniel’s uncle, said that it would be “nuts” to go ahead with withdrawing from the commission debates. “The American people want to hear from the nominees of the two respective parties,” he told HuffPost. “It’s a good chance to understand their views and to see them in a high-pressure situation. It’s a great service to the public.” More

A sweeping 2021 law drew a legal complaint from the Justice Department. Legislators in the state are considering several new measures focused on ballot access and fraud investigations.ATLANTA — Butch Miller, a Republican leader of the Georgia State Senate, is running for lieutenant governor and faces a tough fight this spring against a primary opponent backed by former President Donald J. Trump.So perhaps it is no surprise that Mr. Miller, a co-sponsor of a sweeping and restrictive state voting law last year, has once again jumped into the fray, promoting a new measure to prohibit the use of drop boxes for absentee ballots, which he says would increase security — though no problems with their use by voters have been verified.“Drop boxes are the weakest link in our election security,” Mr. Miller said in a statement. “This change removes that weakest link without doing anything to prevent access. It’s actually easier to vote early in person — and we provide far more days than most states for that.”Georgia was a key to President Biden’s victory as well as the Democratic takeover of the Senate, and this is the second year that the state’s Republicans are focused on voting restrictions. Mr. Miller’s proposal is among a raft of new bills that underscore how much Republicans have embraced Mr. Trump’s false narrative that voter fraud cost him the 2020 election.One measure under consideration would allow Georgians to use paper ballots if they have concerns about the recently purchased touch-screen voting machines that were the subject of fantastical fraud claims promulgated by some of Mr. Trump’s supporters.Another proposal would allow the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to open inquiries into allegations of voter fraud. Yet another would create a constitutional amendment to prevent noncitizens from voting — even though they are already barred from voting under existing state law.An absentee ballot box in Atlanta before the 2020 general election. Republicans have zeroed in on the Democratic stronghold with an investigation into the Fulton County election board. Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesAt the same time, the elections board in Fulton County, the most populous in the state and a Democratic stronghold, is the subject of a state investigation of its management practices. In theory, this investigation could lead to a Republican-directed takeover of the local election board — one that was made possible by the 2021 election law.The investigation, and the new proposals before the Republican-controlled legislature, has triggered fresh anger among Democrats who believe that the measures could contribute to an already unfair playing field in a state where numerous Trump-backed candidates are running for statewide offices.“The most disturbing thing is that the people who have an iron grip on power in the General Assembly believe that they have to continue to suppress voting in order to maintain that iron grip,” said David Worley, a Democrat and former member of the state elections board. “And they’re willing to try any method at hand to do that.”Though Republicans dominate the state legislature, some of the proposals may prove to be, at most, performative gestures by lawmakers eager to show the party’s base that they are responsive to Trump-fueled concerns about voter fraud. The measure that would expand the role of the state investigations bureau, backed by the powerful House speaker, David Ralston, may have the greatest chance of success.Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, sounded a less than enthusiastic note this week about going much further than the 2021 voting law, which he called “the No. 1-ranked elections integrity act in the country.”More than any other state, Georgia was the linchpin of Democrats’ fortunes in 2020, said Larry Sabato, a veteran political analyst and the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. The Republican stronghold not only flipped for Mr. Biden but delivered the Senate to him.“That’s why the new voting rules in Georgia and elsewhere matter so much,” he said. “Will they shave just enough votes from the Democratic column to put Republicans firmly back in the driver’s seat? If the G.O.P. sees that no penalty is paid for voter suppression, surely that will encourage Republicans to do it wherever they can get away with it.”He added: “In both 2022 and 2024, Georgia is going to be the canary in the coal mine. And it’s a pretty damn big canary.”State Senator Mike Dugan of Georgia shook hands last year with a fellow Republican state senator, Jeff Mullis, after the passage of a bill that would enact new voting restrictions. Ben Gray/Associated PressIn a year that saw Republican-led legislatures nationwide pile new restrictions on voting, the elections law that Georgia lawmakers passed last spring was less notable for its severity than for its specificity. The measure took dead aim at the record 1.3 million absentee votes cast the previous November, disproportionately by Democrats. It did so by sharply reining in the use of drop boxes that were favored by mail-in voters, imposing ID requirements on absentee ballots and raising stiff barriers to the distribution of mail-in ballot applications by both local officials and voting drives.Atop that, the law allowed for state takeovers of county election boards, banned mobile voting sites in heavily Democratic Atlanta and even barred residents from providing food and water to voters waiting in line at the polls.The 2021 statute drew a number of legal challenges, including by the U.S. Department of Justice, which argues that the law violates the federal Voting Rights Act by making it harder to vote and that it was racially motivated. Major League Baseball moved its All-Star Game out of the state in protest.The state law, as well as federal voting rights legislation praised by Mr. Biden in a visit to Atlanta this week, is expected to be front and center in upcoming statewide campaigns. The governor’s race is likely to pit the country’s best-known voting rights advocate, Stacey Abrams, a Democrat, against either Mr. Kemp, whom Ms. Abrams has openly accused of voter suppression in her 2018 race against him, or former Senator David Perdue, Mr. Kemp’s Republican primary challenger, who has echoed Mr. Trump’s baseless fraud claims.In Atlanta on Tuesday, President Biden urged passage of federal legislation to protect the right to vote and the integrity of elections.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOn Tuesday, Mr. Kemp, in a news conference preceding Mr. Biden’s speech, defended the 2021 election law, saying that the Biden administration had “lied” about it — a reference to Mr. Biden’s untrue assertion that the law “ends voting hours early.”He blamed Mr. Biden, Ms. Abrams and Vice President Kamala Harris for the backlash to the law, including the loss of the All-Star Game, which he said had cost the state $100 million. He warned that the federal voting rights laws Mr. Biden was pushing for amounted to a political grab by Democrats.“Make no mistake,” he said, “Georgia is ground zero for the Biden-Harris assault on election integrity, as well as an attempt to federalize everything from how hard-working Georgians run their businesses, to what our kids are taught in school, to how we run elections.”Mr. Kemp and Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, have both earned places atop Mr. Trump’s list of enemies for defying the former president’s demands that they help overturn his narrow electoral loss in Georgia.The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 6Numerous inquiries. More

Leader of Oath Keepers militia group faces sedition charge over Capitol attackStewart Rhodes and 10 others face 20-year prison sentences as the first charged with seditious conspiracy in January 6 insurrection

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Stewart Rhodes, the founder and leader of the far-right Oath Keepers militia group, has been arrested and charged with seditious conspiracy in the 6 January attack on the US Capitol, the Department of Justice said on Thursday.Ten others face the same charge, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.Announcing the first seditious conspiracy charges brought in connection with the Capitol attack, the justice department said members of the extremist group came to Washington intent on stopping the certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in the presidential election.Rhodes, 56 and from Granbury, Texas, is the highest-ranking member of any extremist group to be arrested in relation to the attack.Extremist groups continue to ‘metastasize and recruit’ after Capitol attack, study findsRead moreThe justice department said Rhodes and Edward Vallejo, 63, of Phoenix, Arizona, were “being charged for the first time in connection with events leading up to and including 6 January. Rhodes was arrested this morning in Little Elm, Texas, and Vallejo was arrested this morning in Phoenix.”The nine others already faced charges in connection with the Capitol attack, among more than 725 individuals to do so.In its statement, the justice department described the Oath Keepers as “a large but loosely organised collection of individuals, some of whom are associated with militias.“Though the Oath Keepers will accept anyone as members, they explicitly focus on recruiting current and former military, law enforcement and first-responder personnel. Members and affiliates of the Oath Keepers were among the individuals and groups who forcibly entered the Capitol on 6 January 2021.”Rhodes did not enter the Capitol but is accused of helping put into motion violence that disrupted the certification process.Thousands of pro-Trump rioters stormed past police barriers and smashed windows, entering the building, injuring dozens of officers and sending lawmakers into hiding. Five people died, including a Capitol police officer and a Trump supporter shot by law enforcement.Some in the mob erected a gallows outside the Capitol. Some chanted “Hang Mike Pence” as they searched for the vice-president, who was presiding over certification.Pence rejected pressure from Trump and advisers who said it was within his power to block certification, citing unfounded claims of electoral fraud in battleground states, and throw the election to the US House.Scenes from the attack on the Capitol were broadcast around the world. The justice department release described one of the most indelible moments.At approximately 2.30pm, it said, some of the men now charged with seditious conspiracy and other “Oath Keepers and affiliates – many wearing paramilitary clothing and patches with the Oath Keepers name, logo, and insignia – marched in a ‘stack’ formation up the east steps of the Capitol, joined a mob, and made their way into the Capitol.“Later, another group of Oath Keepers and associates … formed a second ‘stack’ and breached the Capitol grounds, marching from the west side to the east side of the Capitol building and up the east stairs and into the building.“While certain Oath Keepers members and affiliates breached the Capitol grounds and building, others remained stationed just outside of the city in quick reaction force (QRF) teams. According to the indictment, the QRF teams were prepared to rapidly transport firearms and other weapons into Washington DC in support of operations aimed at using force to stop the lawful transfer of presidential power.“The indictment alleges that the teams were coordinated, in part, by [Thomas] Caldwell [67 and of Berryville, Virginia] and Vallejo.”The attempt to stop certification failed. Though more than 700 people have been charged over the riot, no politician has yet been formally punished.Steve Bannon, an adviser to Trump, has pleaded not guilty to a charge of criminal contempt of Congress, for refusing to cooperate with the House committee investigating the attack. Mark Meadows, Trump’s last White House chief of staff, could face the same charge.Trump himself was impeached for a second time over the riot but acquitted of inciting the insurrection when enough Republican senators stayed loyal. Senior House Republicans including the minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, have refused to cooperate with the select committee.Amid reaction to the charges against the Oath Keepers on Thursday, Matthew Miller, a political analyst and former justice department official, wrote: “The seditious conspiracy charges are important for a lot of reasons, but in my mind the most important is that, should they be convicted, the Oath Keepers will be forever branded as traitors to their country.”Regarding the arrest of Rhodes, the Lincoln Project, a group of Republican anti-Trump operatives, said: “Alternative headline: Key GOP Coalition Leader Arrested in 6 January Investigation.”TopicsUS Capitol attackThe far rightUS crimenewsReuse this content More

We can rant about the Senate and rail against Fox News. The ranting is warranted and the railing just. We can survey all the Republican efforts to subvert the will of voters, size up the hatred that so many Americans feel for one another and see the makings of a civil war.Or we can wonder how urgently all those forces would matter — whether they would have moved us this fast toward this brink — without the impossibly fragile ego of one insatiably needy man.Does a great nation’s future hinge on a rejected president’s pride?I thought about that on Wednesday morning as I listened to Donald Trump’s interview with Steve Inskeep on NPR. All these months later, Trump was still fixated on the inferior size of the crowds that turned out for Biden in 2020, still prattling on about it, still insistent: I’m bigger! I’m better! That was before he hung up on Inskeep, who had the temerity not to surrender readily to Trump’s delusion that the election was stolen.I thought about Trump’s delicate psyche and our delicate state when my Monday and Tuesday news feeds filled with his attack on Senator Mike Rounds, a South Dakota Republican. “Is he crazy or just stupid?” Trump said in a written statement. “I will never endorse this jerk again.” Such elevated language, and the prompt for it? Rounds had merely acknowledged that Biden won the 2020 election.I think about Trump’s narcissism every time we get a closer glimpse into what he was doing and how he was feeling during the Jan. 6 riot, when those ghastly images filled our screens. What churned our stomachs salved his vanity. As my colleague Maureen Dowd wrote last weekend, “Rather than admit that he lost re-election, Trump was willing to egg on a seditious cult to overturn the election. You can just picture him sitting there in the White House, surrounded by McDonald’s wrappers, thrilled at the TV scenes of MAGA hooligans attacking the police.”His insistence on an inverted version of history — one that doesn’t merely flatter him but that turns him into a noble martyr — is one of the driving forces behind many Republicans’ anti-democratic maneuvers and their indulgence or outright promotion of conspiratorial thinking. There’s no Big Lie without the Big Liar. And while, yes, this big liar is the product of dynamics in the electorate that he didn’t create, he turbocharges the ugliness with a relentlessness and perverse skill all his own.He must always reassure himself that he’s the king of the jungle. He must forever fluff his mane and amplify his roar.There has long been a (verbally sexist) “Great Man” theory of history, but with Trump we have a subset of that, or an annex to it: the great psychosis theory of history. One man’s pathological insecurity is — or can be — an entire country’s fate. That has been the case elsewhere before. Is it the case here now?Post-Ivy IgnominySenator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, left, and Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, on Capitol Hill in 2019.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesOodles of acquaintances brought my attention to a recent article in The Atlantic, “How Ivy League Elites Turned Against Democracy,” by Stephen Marche, because of this withering claim within it: “What the Ivy League produces, in spades, on both the left and the right, is unwarranted confidence. Its institutions are hubris factories.” My acquaintances wanted my thoughts because I once wrote a book questioning the magical power that so many students and their parents attribute to such schools and because I now teach at an Ivy-esque institution, Duke.My thoughts are that Marche’s assessment applies accurately to some students at elite colleges but by no means to most of them. It’s a big overgeneralization.But his article — an excellent one, worth your time — has stuck with me for a different reason. It pointedly and perfectly captures a truism that we sometimes speed too quickly past and that has special relevance to events in American politics, and to the Republican Party in particular, over these past few years: People will sell out anyone and anything, including themselves, if it gets them to, or keeps them at, the top of the heap.How and why, Marche wonders, do the likes of Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican who went to Stanford as an undergraduate and got his law degree at Yale, and Senator Ted Cruz, whose three years at Harvard Law were preceded by four at Princeton, incite anti-elite fury? And how and why do Hawley, Cruz and other lawmakers who make their careers in government fan the flames that would burn down the very institutions they inhabit?Marche describes the contradiction especially well in writing about the second of President Trump’s two secretaries of state: “Mike Pompeo graduated first in his class from West Point and served as editor of the Harvard Law Review. When a man of those advantages oversees the hollowing out of the State Department, allows the president to fire inspectors general who displease him by their inspection, uses his position to cultivate donors for his party, and consistently bends the norms and destroys the traditions that have lifted him to power, what hope can there be for his country? If he cannot manage to keep faith with the system, who can?”Ouch and amen. But there’s a simple solution to the seemingly complicated riddle of Hawley, Cruz and Pompeo. And Marche provides it: Right now their surest path to power, or firmest grip on it, involves the theatrical trashing of their own trappings, the reinvention of themselves as characters in a story other than their own. They haven’t had some post-Ivy moral or philosophical epiphany. Their makeovers are fundamentally commercial: They sized up the current marketplace and manufactured what sells best.And for them — as for too many people in this age of runaway vanity — brand dictates belief.For the Love of SentencesHanya YanagiharaDavid Levenson/Getty Images“To Paradise,” by Hanya Yanagihara, has attracted extensive analysis, none more deft than a review in The Atlantic by Jordan Kisner: “Reading the novel delivers the thrilling, uncanny feeling of standing before an infinity mirror, numberless selves and rooms turning uncertainly before you, just out of reach.” (Thanks to Barbara Rothschild of Columbia, Mo., for nominating this.)In The New Yorker, Richard Brody has been on a tear. Here’s his appraisal of “Don’t Look Up,” which he calls “a clever film that’s short on wit. The difference is that wit is multifaceted, like a gem that, however small, offers different glimmers at different angles. Cleverness exhausts itself in a single glint and then repeats itself to infinity.” (Zino Vogiatzis, Timonium, Md.)And here he is on one of the less hallowed movies directed by Peter Bogdanovich, who died last week: “Before Michael Cimino’s ‘Heaven’s Gate,’ before Elaine May’s ‘Ishtar,’ there was the scandal of ‘At Long Last Love,’ which the critics of the time heaven’s-gated, leaving Bogdanovich ishtarred and feathered.” (Allan Tarlow, West Hollywood, Calif.)Examining the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot in The Washington Post, Kate Woodsome wrote: “As the psychotherapist Resmaa Menakem teaches, over time, a person’s trauma can look like personality. Growing angry with the banal. Insomnia. Drinking. Scanning everywhere for threats. Maybe this is simply how you are. Or maybe you’re tying your shoes with broken fingers.” (Tricia Chatary, Middlebury, Vt. )And Rex Huppke was having none of it when he fired off this column for The Chicago Tribune, which observed: “A portion of the populace has slid from ‘it’s good to be smart’ to ‘being smart is elitist, so I’m going to follow the medical advice of this podcaster,’ a painfully common epitaph throughout the pandemic.” He added that Jan. 6 “will live in idiocy. It was the charge of the not-bright brigade.” (Helen Mooty, Seabrook, Texas)Now to The Times. Reviewing Carl Bernstein’s new memoir, “Chasing History,” about his beginnings as a reporter, the Times book critic Dwight Garner wrote: “At 77, he is entering his anecdotage.” (Nancy Mansbach, Waban, Mass., and Gordon Brown, Boulder, Colo.) Garner also described Bernstein’s youthful enthusiasm this way: “If he’d been a dog, his head would have always been outside the car window.” (Helaine Fendelman, Manhattan)Weighing in on the final weekend of regular-season N.F.L. games, Mike Tanier explained: “The New England Patriots (10-6) can improve their chances to win the A.F.C. East by beating the Miami Dolphins (8-8), who were eliminated from postseason contention last week, while the Buffalo Bills (10-6) can clinch the division by defeating the Jets, who were eliminated in 1972.” (Mark Cameron, Suquamish, Wash.) And here’s a bonus from Mike, on the quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers, who ended up making it into the playoffs: “Ben Roethlisberger, who is expected to retire at season’s end, now throws and runs like a great-uncle playing a pickup game at a backyard cookout after three I.P.A.s and two helpings of potato salad.” (Conrad Macina, Landing, N.J., and Christopher Bailey, Richmond, Va.)Reflecting on New York City’s new mayor, Ginia Bellafante observed: “Saturday marks the end of Eric Adams’s first week as the mayor of New York, a time he has used to successfully distinguish himself from his predecessor — taking the J train; holding meetings at 9 a.m., an hour that found Bill de Blasio still in sweatpants; riding a Citi Bike in a suit, horse-bit loafers and a rose-colored helmet coordinated to the hue of his tie. Whatever might come, this would not be a tenure of earth tones and lethargy and saturnine expressions.” (Debbie Deitcher, Manhattan)Taking the measure of Mehmet Oz, Annaliese Griffin wrote: “He’s rightly understood as a kind of quasi-religious leader, one who has set up his revival tent between a yoga studio and an urgent-care clinic, with the television cameras rolling.” (Scott Williams, Salt Lake City)Finally, here’s Charles Blow on his dinner with Sidney Poitier: “His enchantment settled on you, like a soft sweater. Cashmere, of course.” (Tom Wild, Killington, Vt., and Vipan Chandra, Attleboro, Mass.)To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here, and please include your name and place of residence.Bonus Regan Picture!Frank BruniDogs are Rorschachs, and someone less sentimental about them than I am might consider the positions of Regan (right) and Marlin (left, who belongs to my sister and is recovering from toe surgery) accidental. In this view, Marlin happened to place his cone, which he’s wearing so that he doesn’t lick and aggravate his wound, atop Regan’s paws; she was too zonked out to care. I choose a different interpretation. Marlin craved connection. Regan wanted to provide it, even if that meant coarse plastic against her soft fur. Mere inches from me on a conveniently king-size bed, these dog cousins (of a sort) comfort each other. I just look on — and beam.On a Personal NoteIt has been exactly six months since I left New York for North Carolina, and not one of them has gone by without several New Yorkers asking me how much I miss it. It’s an assumptive question: how much, not if. But I get it. In Manhattan I had more friends. In Manhattan I had more restaurants. In Manhattan I had more history, a memory on every street corner, and I had those early evenings when, without even planning it, I found myself walking along the Hudson exactly as the sun set over the Palisades. Don’t I pine just a bit for that?Oddly, no, and I somehow knew I wouldn’t. I could sense within me a growing impatience, a gnawing unsettledness, a twitchy finger wanting to turn the page. And the long list of reasons to ignore that feeling couldn’t compete with the emotional logic of paying it heed. In this life you can make lists of pros and cons and prudently yield to the arithmetic of it all. Or you can respond to the weather inside you, and just as wisely ride those currents.They carried me to Chapel Hill, where I smile almost every time I turn into my driveway because, for someone who’d become so firmly rooted in the concrete jungle, suburbia is the adventure. A garage door that opens automatically and a mailbox with a little red flag on its side are what’s exotic.Hardly a day goes by when Regan, in a patch of forest safely distant from streets and cars, doesn’t give futile chase to a posse of white-tailed deer, either sprinting toward them at a velocity that stuns me or hopping, like a kangaroo, so she doesn’t lose sight of her quarry in the tall grass. That’s my theater.A few of the neighborhood deer seem to have figured out what I already knew: Regan’s all bound, no bite. On those occasions when she catches up to them, she freezes. So they sometimes don’t bother to flee.In pursuing them, she’s just stretching her legs. By leaving Manhattan, I was doing something similar. There’s comfort and safety in staying put, but it can also leave you cramped, cinched. If you’re fortunate enough to be able to stray, why not head into the woods? More

A year after the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol, the United States seems perhaps even more alarmingly fractious and divided. Regrettably, the right has sustained its support for Donald Trump and continued its assault on American democratic norms.The next national election will almost inevitably be viciously (perhaps violently) contested. It is fair to say that the right-wing threat to the United States — and its apparent goal of laying the groundwork for a power grab, if necessary, in 2024 — is politically existential.Yet many Americans seem to be whistling past the graveyard of American democracy. In particular, there seems to have been little effort so far at think tanks, professional military institutions and universities to build and contemplate the dire scenarios that have become increasingly plausible. And the worst-case scenario is this: The United States as we know it could come apart at the seams.The worst case isn’t necessarily the most likely, but there’s a natural tendency to assign a vanishingly low probability to events that appear to pose insoluble problems and catastrophic outcomes and thus to dismiss them as fanciful.In the 20th century, constructive doomsaying helped prevent the Cold War from becoming a shooting war. It was ultimately worst-case thinking that stabilized nuclear deterrence and staved off nuclear Armageddon. Herman Kahn’s clinical projections of nuclear devastation dazzled and horrified a growing audience — his warnings began with a series of Princeton lectures and eventually became the basis of his best seller “Thinking About the Unthinkable.” The eventual Nobel Prize-winning economist Thomas C. Schelling used game theory to explore the risk that conventional conflict could escalate to the use of nuclear weapons; his work demonstrated the value of arms control and helped establish nuclear deterrence based, however perversely, on mutual assured destruction.In the 1980s, Jonathan Schell’s series of New Yorker essays (and subsequent book), “The Fate of the Earth,” reinvigorated popular alarm about nuclear war and stimulated calls for nuclear disarmament on both sides of the Atlantic. In line with dystopic novels like “On the Beach” by Nevil Shute and movies like “Fail-Safe,” “Dr. Strangelove,” “The Bedford Incident” and “The Day After,” worst-case thinking kept the prospect of nuclear holocaust real and the need to avoid it urgent. Clearly it influenced Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, who seriously contemplated nuclear disarmament in 1986.This urgent brand of collective cultural alertness receded after the Cold War. On the left, worst-casing thinking was blamed for the expansive growth of nuclear arsenals and the ill-fated U.S. war in Vietnam. Now the Republican Party’s embrace of “alternative facts,” aided by the growth of conservative media, has effectively created a separate domestic reality for millions of Americans. Since Jan. 6, 2021, comedians, partisan journalists and public intellectuals have recognized, ridiculed and lamented the state of our democracy and raised the possibility of a “slow-moving coup” (Bill Maher) or a “worst-case scenario” for our politics (Robert Crawford in The Nation). Other columnists and historians (Chauncey DeVega and Max Hastings, for example) have casually mooted the possibility of secession or large-scale political violence in the wake of the 2024 presidential election. A few recent books, like the political scientist Barbara F. Walter’s “How Civil Wars Start” and the journalist Stephen Marche’s “The Next Civil War,” have been discussed.But systematic and dispassionate analysis of such possibilities has not widely emerged. In June 2020, the bipartisan Transition Integrity Project — comprising over 100 former and serving government officials, academics, research analysts, journalists and other experts — held tabletop exercises on four different 2020 election crisis scenarios. Selected teams hypothesized moves and countermoves, responses and counter-responses, and in August 2020 published a broadly prescient report — which suggested that the election could be contested into 2021 and the transition process disrupted. It also included several preventive measures with an eye to 2024-25. Perhaps understandably, given the political climate, most participants were reluctant to identify themselves publicly and only a few talked to the media about the exercise. Two conservative outfits, the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the Claremont Institute, jointly gamed out similar scenarios, concluding that the constitutional order would hold. But these projects were short term and situationally limited and have not generated sustained open-source consideration of the more dire possibilities that have surfaced since Jan. 6.Predictably, far-right groups mobilized to dismiss the Transition Integrity Project’s activities as leftist “psychological warfare,” and some branded it a blueprint for a left-wing coup. That should not stop a reprise of the project’s efforts with respect to the 2024 election. In light of the lack of contingency planning for major violence on Jan. 6 by the Capitol Police and the Department of Homeland Security, such planning is presumably underway at federal law-enforcement agencies and the Pentagon. But that’s not enough.A right-wing minority — including many elected politicians — is now practicing a form of brinkmanship by threatening to unilaterally destroy American democracy, daring what they hope is a timid and somnolent majority to resist them. But that majority has the benefit of warning ahead of 2024.It behooves us to prepare our defenses for the worst. Understandably, the policy focus is now on pre-empting a right-wing steal in the next national election. But success will depend crucially on factors that are beyond control — the midterm elections this year and the identity of the Republican candidate in 2024 — which suggest that focus is misplaced. And even if a steal is thwarted, success might not preclude a coercive challenge of the election results; quite to the contrary, it would provoke one.War games, tabletop exercises, operations research, campaign analyses, conferences and seminars on the prospect of American political conflagration — including insurrection, secession, insurgency and civil war — should be proceeding at a higher tempo and intensity. Scholars of American politics need to pick up the torch from experts on the democratic decline in Europe, who first raised the alarm about growing dangers to American politics. The very process of intellectual interaction and collaboration among influential analysts of different political stripes could reconcile many of them to the undesirability of political upheaval, and thus decrease its likelihood.The overarching idea is, publicly and thoroughly, to probe just how bad things could get precisely to ensure that they never do, and that America’s abject political decay is averted.Jonathan Stevenson, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and managing editor of Survival, served on the National Security Council staff in the Obama administration and is the author of “Thinking Beyond the Unthinkable.” Steven Simon is a fellow at M.I.T. and a senior analyst at the Quincy Institute. He served in the State Department and on the National Security Council staff in the Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

How an inside joke among Republicans became one candidate’s tactic for reaching the G.O.P. masses.It began last fall as an ironic, profane joke after a NASCAR race. Now, it’s showing up in campaign ads.Jim Lamon, a Republican candidate for Senate in Arizona, has a new television advertisement that employs the slogan “Let’s go, Brandon.” His campaign says it is spending $1 million to air the ad, including during local broadcasts of Monday night’s college football championship.As far as we can tell, it’s the first instance of this three-word catchphrase being used in a campaign spot, and that makes it worth unpacking. It says something important about what Republican politicians think animates their primary voters.For those unfamiliar, “Let’s go, Brandon” is code for an insult to President Biden, in place of a four-letter expletive. Colleen Long of the A.P. wrote a good explainer on the phrase’s origins back in October, when it was becoming a widespread in-joke among Republicans.The phrase was even used for a bit of Christmas Eve trolling of Mr. Biden and the first lady, while they fielded a few calls to the NORAD Santa Tracker in what has become an annual White House tradition.At the end of an otherwise cordial call with a father of four from Oregon, President Biden said, “I hope you have a wonderful Christmas.”“I hope you guys have a wonderful Christmas as well,” replied the caller, later identified as Jared Schmeck, a Trump supporter. He added: “Merry Christmas and ‘Let’s go, Brandon!’”The ‘Let’s go, Brandon’ adIn Arizona, Lamon, a businessman who is running in a crowded primary field, has pledged to spend $50 million of his money.Even though money can purchase many things in politics — chartered jets, campaign staff, polling and data wizardry, yard signs — there’s one precious commodity it can’t buy: attention.Thus the new ad. “If you are pissed off about the direction of our country, let’s go,” Lamon begins, as action-movie-style music plays in the background. “If you’re ready to secure the border and stop the invasion, let’s go. If you want to keep corrupt politicians from rigging elections, let’s go.”“Let’s take the fight to Joe Biden, and show him we the people put America first,” Lamon continues, deadly serious in tone. “The time is now. Let’s go, Brandon. Are you with me?”It’s a marked contrast from Lamon’s gauzy biography ad, which introduces him as a genial military veteran who was able to go to college thanks to an R.O.T.C. scholarship.The new ad comes days ahead of a much-anticipated rally by Donald Trump in Florence, Ariz., a town of 25,000 people between Phoenix and Tucson.Trump has yet to back a candidate, but his imprimatur could be decisive. He has all but made embracing his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen an explicit condition for his endorsement, and Saturday’s rally will feature a number of prominent election deniers.“Everybody is running to the right and trying to express their fealty to Donald Trump,” Mike O’Neil, an Arizona political analyst, said of the new Lamon ad. “This is his attempt to break through.”More chucksLamon’s ad isn’t even the most striking video of the Senate primary in Arizona.In mid-October, the state attorney general, Mark Brnovich, the closest thing to an establishment candidate in the Senate race, posted a video of himself twirling nunchucks. “People, you want more chucks, you got more chucks,” Brnovich says.The display was widely ridiculed as a desperate plea for attention. Brnovich has struggled to capture the imagination of primary voters — many of whom fault him for not doing enough to prevent Biden’s win in Arizona in 2020 — leaving the race wide open.In November, Blake Masters, a 35-year-old, Stanford-educated lawyer and venture capitalist backed by Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire close to Trump, introduced a video of his own that drew national attention for its unusually stark advocacy of Second Amendment rights.In that ad, Masters squints into the camera while cradling a futuristic-looking gun called the “Honey Badger.” “This is a short-barreled rifle,” he intones. “It wasn’t designed for hunting. This is designed to kill people.”Clad in a long-sleeve black T-shirt emblazoned with the word “DROPOUT,” Masters goes on to explain his reasoning, as ominous-sounding music plays in the background.“If you’re not a bad guy, I support your right to own one,” he says. “The Second Amendment is not about duck hunting. It’s about protecting your family and your country.“What’s the first thing the Taliban did when Joe Biden handed them Afghanistan?” Masters continues, before lowering his voice to barely more than a whisper. “They took away people’s guns. That’s how it works.”Harnessing the backlashThe50-second Masters spot did not run on TV, but was viewed at least 1.5 million times on Twitter, generating media coverage and buzz on the right for its unapologetic defense of a weapon that is seen as especially dangerous by gun control advocates.“What was more interesting, in a way, was how much it freaks the left out,” Masters said in an interview, reflecting on the reaction to the ad among liberals. He said he welcomed the opprobrium: “Bring it on.”He noted that when he was working on his biographical ad, introducing himself as an Arizona native, he decided not to lean too heavily on his record as an entrepreneur, and to talk about his values instead.“Dude, nobody cares,” he said. “Nobody cares about your solar company.”The Trump factorSenator Mark Kelly, the Democratic incumbent, will be a formidable and well-funded opponent for whoever wins the G.O.P. primary, which is not until August. And Trump’s support could become a liability in a general election.O’Neil noted that many conservative women in the suburbs voted for Biden in 2020 but opted for Republican candidates elsewhere on the ballot.But Masters argued that there’s no downside to running to the right.“The way you win a swing state in Arizona is not by focus-grouping,” he said. “It’s by truly being conservative, and being bold by articulating conservative ideas.”Mike Murphy, a prominent Trump critic and longtime adviser to John McCain, the deceased Arizona senator, said the Lamon ad was a “sign of the sad times in U.S. politics.”But, he quipped, “in the G.O.P. primary electorate this year, who the Brandon knows.”What to readDavid McCormick, the former chief executive of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates and a former Treasury Department official, has filed paperwork to enter the Pennsylvania Senate race.The congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol has asked Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House’s top Republican, for a voluntary interview, Luke Broadwater reports.Consumer prices rose in December at the fastest rate since 1982, growing at a 7 percent clip in the last year, Ana Swanson reports. An AP-NORC poll published this week found that 68 percent of Americans ranked the economy as their top concern.In a news analysis, Nate Cohn writes that Democrats “still seem nowhere close to enacting robust safeguards against another attempt to overturn a presidential election.”Trump abruptly ended an interview with Steve Inskeep when the NPR host pressed him on his false claims of a stolen election in 2022. The radio network published a full transcript of the encounter, which ended with Inskeep saying, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, I have one more question. … He’s gone. OK.”PULSEThe approval rating for President Biden is at 33 percent. That’s down from 36 percent in November.Doug Mills/The New York TimesNo New Year bump for BidenQuinnipiac University released a poll today that showed President Biden’s approval rating at just 33 percent, while 53 percent of respondents gave him a negative rating. That’s down from 36 percent in November. It’s just one poll, but it’s a sign that Biden’s image isn’t on the rebound. The president’s average approval rating is higher, but still just 42.2 percent, according to 538.Another finding that stood out from the Quinnipiac poll: 76 percent of respondents said that political instability within the United States posed a greater threat than the country’s adversaries. A majority, 58 percent, agreed that American democracy is “in danger of collapse.”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

Freedom lovers, rejoice! After much agonizing, Senator Ron Johnson, the Wisconsin Republican, has decided that he will be deferring the joys of retirement to run for a third term this year.This may not strike some folks as big news. After all, Mr. Johnson is a spring chicken by Senate standards — a spry 66 years old in a chamber that all too often resembles an assisted living facility. But Mr. Johnson, a former plastics executive who rode to power in 2010 on the Tea Party wave of anti-establishment energy, repeatedly pledged to serve only two terms in the swamp.Like so many citizen legislators before him, however, Mr. Johnson says he failed to anticipate just how desperately Wisconsin voters — nay, the entire nation — would need him at this moment.“America is in peril,” he declared in an essay in The Wall Street Journal on Sunday. Out-of-control Democrats, aided by media and tech elites, are luring the nation down the path to “tyranny,” he warned. “Countless” concerned citizens implored him to keep up his “fight for freedom,” he noted, “to be their voice, to speak plain and obvious truths other elected leaders shirk from expressing.” What choice does he have but to soldier on?Claims of national crisis and delusions of indispensability are standard among lawmakers looking to justify abandoning their term-limit pledges. But Mr. Johnson is correct that he has distinguished himself for his willingness to tread where many other officials dare not, at least in the Senate. He has become known as perhaps the chamber’s foremost spreader of absurd yet dangerous conspiracy theories — especially in the areas of anti-vaccine insanity and the election-fraud delusions of a certain former president.So it is worth drilling down on what sort of “truth” and “freedom” Mr. Johnson is fighting for — and why it would be good news, not merely for Democrats but for all Americans, if he could get his butt whooped in November.To clarify, Mr. Johnson’s attraction to conspiracy nonsense predates Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 vote. In the run-up to the election, he used his position as the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee to investigate (read: amplify) unfounded claims about Ukraine and the Biden family that echoed a Russian disinformation campaign. Even his Republican colleagues expressed concern that the inquiry could wind up helping the Kremlin sow discord. The month before his committee released its report, Mr. Johnson received a “defensive briefing” from the F.B.I. warning that he was the target of Russian disinformation — which he said he dismissed because it was too vague and he suspected it of being a political ploy.Postelection, Mr. Johnson has ardently embraced the Big Lie that the presidency was stolen. Before Democrats assumed control of the Senate, he convened a hearing on the topic. The horrors of Jan. 6 failed to dim his ardor for disinformation. He has both pooh-poohed the seriousness of the attack and indulged wing-nut theories that the violence was the work of “agents provocateurs,” “antifa” and “fake Trump protesters.” He voiced suspicions that the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, was to blame.More recently, Mr. Johnson has claimed that the Democrats cannot be trusted — because, you know, election fraud — and urged Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled Legislature to seize the authority for overseeing voting from the state’s bipartisan elections commission.Pressing a partisan power grab based on partisan lies to rig the electoral system — that is how committed the senator is to truth and freedom.As much of a threat as he is to American democracy, Mr. Johnson may be a bigger one to the health of the American people. Since the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, he has talked down its seriousness, at one point charging that Dr. Anthony Fauci had “overhyped” Covid-19.On the vaccine front, the senator has been a font of misinformation and scaremongering, misrepresenting data and bungling basic facts. He has conveyed considerably more enthusiasm about unproved treatments like horse de-wormer and mouthwash than for proved vaccines. YouTube twice suspended his account for violating its medical misinformation policy.All told, when it comes to spewing dangerous drivel, Mr. Johnson has displayed a commitment and creativity rarely seen outside of QAnon gatherings or Trump family dinners.RonJon wasn’t always like this. He used to be a relatively straightforward pro-market, small-government, budget-conscious conservative. He seemed to have a more or less solid grip on reality. But the Trump years broke him, as they broke so many in the Republican Party.The people of Wisconsin are not impressed. Polling suggests the senator is about as popular there as Brett Kavanaugh at an Emily’s List happy hour. The editorial board of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel declared him “the most irresponsible representative of Wisconsin citizens” since Joseph McCarthy.Even so, the senator has the electoral edge. Historical trends are on his side, as is the power of incumbency. Democrats will need a strong nominee, a savvy strategy, piles of cash and a whole lot of luck to unseat Mr. Johnson. A dozen Democratic challengers are vying to make the attempt, led by the state’s lieutenant governor, Mandela Barnes.Mr. Johnson is the lone Republican senator up for re-election this year in a state carried (barely) by Joe Biden in 2020. This alone would make him a mouthwatering Democratic target. As an exemplar of Trumpism, he is downright irresistible — a particularly toxic test case of the former president’s enduring hold on the Republican Party.Do the nation a solid, Wisconsin: Commit to helping Mr. Johnson stick by his original promise to serve only two terms. After everything it has been through lately, America shouldn’t have to suffer through another six years of his twisted take on truth and freedom.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

A former Treasury official, Mr. McCormick has drawn comparisons to Glenn Youngkin, the financier recently elected governor of Virginia.David McCormick, the former chief executive of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, filed paperwork to run for the Senate in Pennsylvania as a Republican on Wednesday, entering a crowded but unsettled field in what is likely to be one of the most hotly contested midterm elections.A former Treasury Department official and a former Army captain, Mr. McCormick, 56, joins a number of other major Republican and Democratic contenders vying to succeed Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican, who is retiring. His official announcement is expected in the next day or two, according to a campaign adviser, Kristin Davison.Mr. McCormick’s filing came after the Pennsylvania Democratic Party asked federal election officials last week to investigate his spending large sums for television ads in the Pittsburgh region without declaring himself a candidate.The race is for the only open Senate seat in a state won by President Biden and is seen as a tossup, making it a critical battleground for control of the chamber, now divided 50-50 with Vice President Kamala Harris’s deciding vote giving Democrats a majority.The early jockeying in the Republican field has been characterized by most candidates’ efforts to win the support of grass-roots voters who backed former President Donald J. Trump. They include Kathy Barnette, a conservative commentator who has fanned the false conspiracy that Mr. Trump won Pennsylvania in 2020, and Carla Sands, a wealthy former ambassador to Denmark under Mr. Trump, who has promised to “stand up to woke culture, censorship, and critical race theory.” Dr. Mehmet Oz, the heart surgeon and longtime television host, has framed his candidacy as a conservative response to the pandemic, criticizing mandates, shutdowns and actions by “elites” that restricted “our freedom.”Mr. McCormick has his own personal tie to Mr. Trump: His wife, Dina Powell McCormick, served on the National Security Council during the first year of the Trump Administration. The two were married in 2019. Hope Hicks, a former Trump aide, has been advising Mr. McCormick’s team, and other former Trump staffers, including Stephen Miller, are expected to do so, according to Politico.Five months ahead of the May primary, the field is wide open, especially since the withdrawal in November of Sean Parnell, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump. Mr. Parnell suspended his campaign after losing a custody fight with his estranged wife, who accused him of spousal and child abuse.In a sign of what is sure to be a highly competitive G.O.P. race with several wealthy contenders, Mr. McCormick drew attacks even before he joined the race. A super PAC supporting Dr. Oz unveiled a digital ad this week criticizing Mr. McCormick “as a friend of China with a long record of selling us out.” Bridgewater manages some $1.5 billion for Chinese investors, and its only other office outside of Connecticut is in Shanghai. And Jeff Bartos, a real estate developer who is also seeking the Senate nomination as a Republican, accused Mr. McCormick of sending Pennsylvania jobs to India in 2003.The McCormick campaign disputed the characterization made by Mr. Bartos, and, on China, pointed to his record while a senior trade official in the Commerce Department in the George W. Bush administration. “These attacks from the Oz camp are a desperate attempt of a candidate whose failure to launch has stalled his campaign,’’ said Jim Shultz, a former aide to Pennsylvania’s last Republican governor, Tom Corbett, and a supporter of Mr. McCormick.Democrats also face a crowded primary contest. Unlike the Republicans, the leading Democrats in the race have experience in elected office. One theme that could animate the general election, depending on who emerges as the G.O.P. nominee, is the issue of who is an authentic Pennsylvanian. Dr. Oz, Ms. Sands and now Mr. McCormick all have roots in the state, but lived elsewhere in recent years and returned to run for Senate.Ideologically, Republicans promoting Mr. McCormick’s bid have drawn comparisons between him and Glenn Youngkin, the former private equity executive who won the Virginia governor’s race in November by attracting the support of moderates as well as Trump devotees.Largely unknown outside the financial world, Mr. McCormick grew up in Bloomsburg, Pa., near Wilkes-Barre. He graduated from West Point and served five years in the Army, then earned a Ph.D. in international relations at Princeton.A McKinsey consultant for several years, Mr. McCormick later ran the Pittsburgh-based internet auction company FreeMarkets, then sold it to the larger tech company Ariba in 2004.He joined Bridgewater in 2009 and in 2017, he was named co-C.E.O. of the Westport, Conn.-based hedge fund, which manages $150 billion in assets. His name was repeatedly floated to be the Defense Department deputy during the Trump administration.In 2020, he became Bridgewater’s sole chief executive after his co-chief, Eileen Murray, left the firm. She later sued Bridgewater over a pay dispute that she said stemmed partly from gender discrimination. The suit was settled in 2020.On Jan. 3, Mr. McCormick announced his resignation from Bridgewater, calling his potential Senate run “a way of devoting the next chapter of my life to public service” in a farewell email to employees.Mr. McCormick bought a home recently in Pittsburgh’s East End to re-establish residency in the state, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. He had split his time between Connecticut and New York City in recent years, though since about 2010 he has owned the family Christmas tree farm where he was raised. More