Elections

The ruling set up a final battle over the maps in the state Supreme Court, where Democrats hold a slim edge.WASHINGTON — A North Carolina state court on Tuesday rejected claims by voting rights advocates that Republican gerrymanders of the state’s political maps were unconstitutional.The unanimous ruling, by a panel of two Republican judges and one Democrat, set up a final battle over the maps in the seven-member state Supreme Court, where Democratic justices hold a slim edge. Voting rights groups said they would file an appeal immediately. One, Common Cause North Carolina, said the plaintiffs had presented “overwhelming evidence” that the maps were stacked to favor Republicans.“The evidence clearly showed that Republican legislative leaders brazenly ignored legal requirements designed to protect voting rights for Black North Carolinians,” the group’s executive director, Bob Phillips, said in a statement. “If allowed to stand, these extreme gerrymanders would cause profound and lasting harm to the people of our state.”The Republican chairman of the redistricting committee in the State Senate, Warren Daniel, called the decision a sign that “the people of our state should be able to move on with the 2022 electoral process.” The state’s primary elections were pushed back from March to May to make time for legal challenges to the maps.Redistricting at a GlanceEvery 10 years, each state in the U.S is required to redraw the boundaries of their congressional and state legislative districts in a process known as redistricting.Redistricting, Explained: Answers to your most pressing questions about redistricting and gerrymandering.Breaking Down Texas’s Map: How redistricting efforts in Texas are working to make Republican districts even more red.G.O.P.’s Heavy Edge: Republicans are poised to capture enough seats to take the House in 2022, thanks to gerrymandering alone.Legal Options Dwindle: Persuading judges to undo skewed political maps was never easy. A shifting judicial landscape is making it harder.Mr. Daniel charged that any Supreme Court reversal would be suspect because one of the Democratic justices, Anita Earls, was elected with the help of a donation from a Democratic Party redistricting group. An affiliate of that group, the National Redistricting Foundation, is funding legal action by one of the plaintiffs in the gerrymander case.In their ruling, in Wake County Superior Court in Raleigh, N.C., the three judges agreed that both the legislative and congressional maps were “a result of intentional, pro-Republican partisan redistricting.” They also alluded to the political harm that caused, citing their “disdain for having to deal with issues that potentially lead to results incompatible with democratic principles and subject our state to ridicule.”But the judges dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims that the maps violated the state Constitution, that they were deliberately created to disenfranchise Black voters and that they broke longstanding rules for drawing political districts.The case involves new political districts approved in December by the Republican-dominated State Legislature that would give Republicans an overwhelming political advantage in a state balanced almost evenly between Republican and Democratic voters.The new congressional map would give Republicans control of as many as 11 of the state’s 14 House seats, compared to the party’s current eight-to-five edge. (North Carolina gained a fourteenth district as a result of population gains in the 2020 census.) The maps would also re-establish much of the lopsided advantage that Republicans enjoyed in the House and State Senate as a result of gerrymanders approved when those maps were redrawn in 2011.Understand How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

As I’ve noted before, one reason I pay very close attention to the Israeli-Palestinian arena is that a lot of trends get perfected there first and then go global — airline hijacking, suicide bombing, building a wall, the challenges of pluralism and lots more. It’s Off Broadway to Broadway, so what’s playing there these days that might be a harbinger for politics in the U.S.?Answer: It’s the most diverse national unity government in Israel’s history, one that stretches from Jewish settlers on the right all the way to an Israeli-Arab Islamist party and super-liberals on the left. Most important, it’s holding together, getting stuff done and muting the hyperpolarization that was making Israel ungovernable.Is that what America needs in 2024 — a ticket of Joe Biden and Liz Cheney? Or Joe Biden and Lisa Murkowski, or Kamala Harris and Mitt Romney, or Stacey Abrams and Liz Cheney, or Amy Klobuchar and Liz Cheney? Or any other such combination. Before you leap into the comments section, hear me out.In June, after an utterly wild period in which Israel held four national elections over two years and kept failing to produce a stable governing majority, the lambs there actually lay down with the lions.Key Israeli politicians swallowed their pride, softened policy edges and came together for a four-year national unity government — led by rightist Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and left-of-center Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid. (They are to switch places after two years.) And for the first time, an Israeli Arab party, the Islamist organization Raam played a vital role in cementing an Israeli coalition.What forced everyone’s hand? A broad agreement that Israeli politics was being held hostage by then-Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, who resisted putting together any government that he would not lead, apparently because, if he didn’t lead, he could lose his chance at some kind of immunity from prosecution on multiple corruption charges that could lead to prison.Sound familiar?Netanyahu was just a smarter Donald Trump, constantly delegitimizing the mainstream media and the Israeli justice system and vigorously exploiting social/religious/ethnic fault lines to divide and rule. He eventually stressed out the system so much that several of his former allies broke away to forge a unity coalition with Israeli center, left and Arab parties.As Hebrew University of Jerusalem religious philosopher Moshe Halbertal put it to me: “What happened here is that there is still enough civic responsibility — not everywhere, but enough — that the political class felt that the continued breakdown of the rule of law and more elections, which was leading nowhere, was an indulgence that Israel simply could not afford, given its highly diverse population and dangerous neighborhood.”This new Israeli government will neither annex the West Bank nor make final peace with the Palestinians, Halbertal noted, but it is one “that will attempt to renew the relationship with the Palestinian Authority rather than weakening it. It is one that prevented a racist anti-Arab party allied to Netanyahu from entering the cabinet.” And it is one that is counterbalancing Bibi’s strong embrace of the less-than-democratic, ultranationalist states in Europe and evangelical Christians and Trump Republicans in America “by rebuilding ties with the Democrats, liberal American Jews and liberal parties in Europe.”As Israeli leaders treat each other — and Israeli and Palestinians leaders treat each other — with a little more respect, and a little less contempt, because they are out of Facebook and into face-to-face relations again, stuff is getting done. Unity has not meant paralysis. This coalition in November passed Israel’s first national budget since 2018! So far, every attempt to topple it has failed.Mansour Abbas, the Islamist party’s leader, even recently stunned many Israeli Arabs and Jews when he publicly declared, “Israel was born a Jewish state, that was the decision of the people.” He continued: “It was born this way and it will remain this way. The question is, what is the status of the Arab citizen in the Jewish State of Israel?’’Could this play come to Broadway? I asked Steven Levitsky, a political scientist and co-author of “How Democracies Die,” after he presented some similar ideas last week to my colleague David Leonhardt.America is facing an existential moment, Levitsky told me, noting that the Republican Party has shown that it isn’t committed any longer to playing by democratic rules, leaving the United States uniquely threatened among Western democracies.That all means two things, he continued. First, this Trump-cult version of the G.O.P. must never be able to retake the White House. Since Trump has made embracing the Big Lie — that the 2020 election was a fraud — a prerequisite for being in the Trump G.O.P., his entire cabinet most likely would be people who denied, or worked to overturn, Biden’s election victory. There is no reason to believe they would cede power the next time.“In a democracy,” Levitsky said, “parties lose popularity and they lose elections. That is normal. But a democracy cannot afford for this Republican Party to win again because they have demonstrated a ton of evidence that they are no longer committed to the democratic rules of the game.”So Biden-Cheney is not such a crazy idea? I asked.“Not at all,” said Levitsky. “We should be ready to talk about Liz Cheney as part of a blow-your-mind Israeli-style fusion coalition with Democrats. It is a coalition that says: ‘There is only one overriding goal right now — that is saving our democratic system.’”That brings us to the second point. Saving a democratic system requires huge political sacrifice, added Levitsky. “It means A.O.C. campaigning for Liz Cheney” and it means Liz Cheney “putting on the shelf” many policy goals she and other Republicans cherish. “But that is what it takes, and if you don’t do it, just look back and see why democracy collapsed in countries like Germany, Spain and Chile. The democratic forces there should have done it, but they didn’t.”To put it differently, this Trump-cult version of the G.O.P. is trying to gain power through an election, but it’s trying to increase its odds of winning by gaming the system in battleground states. America’s small-d democrats need to counter those moves and increase their odds of winning. The best way to do that is by creating a broad national unity vehicle that enables more Republicans to leave the Trump cult — without having to just become big-D Democrats. We all have to be small-d democrats now, or we won’t have a system to be big-D or big-R anythings.That is what civic-minded Israeli elites did when they created a broad national unity coalition whose main mission was to make the basic functions of government work again and safeguard the integrity of Israel’s democracy.Such a vehicle in America, said Levitsky, should “be able to shave a small but decisive fraction of Republican votes away from Trump.” In a tight race, it would take only 5 or 10 percent of Republicans leaving Trump to assure victory. And that is what matters.This is the democratic way of defeating a threat to democracy. Not doing it is how democracies die. I am quite aware that it is highly unlikely; America does not have the flexibility of a parliamentary, proportional-representation system, like Israel’s, and there is no modern precedent for such a cross-party ticket. And yet, I still think it is worth raising. There is no precedent for how close we’re coming to an unraveling of our democracy, either.As Levitsky put it: “If we treat this as a normal election, our democracy stands a coin flip’s chance of survival. Those are odds that I don’t want to run. We need to communicate to the public and the establishment that this is not a normal donkeys-versus-elephants election. This is democracy versus authoritarians.”This is not for the long term, noted Levitsky: “I want to get back as quickly as possible to where I can disagree with Liz Cheney on every policy issue” — and that is the most we have to worry about — “but not until our democracy is safe.”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

Ron Johnson has a history of making outlandish comments. But Democrats aren’t focusing on those for now.If you don’t live in Wisconsin, you probably know Ron Johnson as the senator who has suggested gargling with mouthwash to ward off the coronavirus. Or, you might know him as the guy who has said Jan. 6 didn’t “seem like an armed insurrection.” Up until this weekend, he was also the Republican dragging his feet on whether to run for a third Senate term.On Sunday, Johnson finally jumped in. And Democrats responded immediately with a television ad that provided an early glimpse of their 2022 messaging.Noticeably absent from the ad, which was sponsored by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, are Johnson’s stances on two of the biggest issues that the country is facing: the pandemic and political violence. It doesn’t mention that he’s questioned the efficacy of vaccines, or has used his perch on the Homeland Security Committee to amplify Donald Trump’s false claims about a stolen election. In fact, it doesn’t mention any of the incendiary comments that have landed him in the national spotlight.Instead, the ad begins: “Has Ron Johnson been looking out for himself, or you?” It cites an AP headline, “​​Report: Johnson pushed for tax break benefitting megadonors.”Cut-and-paste attacksIn Washington, Democrats bash Trump and his allies for elevating conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and for sowing misinformation about the coronavirus. But if Wisconsin is an indicator of what’s to come, Democrats seem to be gravitating toward conventional candidate attack lines that have little to do with the political outrage of the moment.For the 2022 midterms, Democrats may be betting that the generic conventions that have worked in countless campaigns — attacking candidates’ voting records, elevating so-called “kitchen-table” issues — are more likely to move the voters they need to reach than righteous condemnation over fringe ideas. It’s a return to the plutocrat-bashing that was so successful for Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election against Mitt Romney, and a rejection of Terry McAuliffe’s more recent efforts to anchor Glenn Youngkin to Trump in the Virginia governor’s race.They might be hoping to reach the surprisingly large group of Wisconsin voters who haven’t formed an opinion of Johnson — just over 20 percent, according to polling data from the Marquette Law School.Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, put it this way: “It’s what affects people more than what offends people.”Top targetWisconsin is one of the country’s most fiercely contested political battlegrounds. Since Trump won the state in 2016, shattering Hillary Clinton’s “blue wall,” Democrats have crawled their way back. In 2018, Tony Evers was elected governor and Senator Tammy Baldwin won re-election, both Democrats. In 2020, Biden won the state, by barely more than 20,000 votes.That makes Johnson a top target for Democrats, who are hoping that defeating him will help them hang onto their Senate majority. Republican primaries are still sorting themselves out in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona — which means that Johnson will be the Democratic Party’s chief villain for the next few months, too.A Look Ahead to the 2022 U.S. Midterm ElectionsIn the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are 10 races to watch.In the House: Republicans are already poised to capture enough seats to take control, thanks to redistricting and gerrymandering alone.Governors’ Races: Georgia’s race will be at the center of the political universe this year, but there are several important contests across the country.Key Issues: Both parties are preparing for abortion rights and voting rights to be defining topics.Multiple Democrats are vying to take on Johnson, though they all entered the race before they knew he was running again. Among them are Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and State Treasurer Sarah Godlewski, along with Alex Lasry, an executive with the Milwaukee Bucks, and Tom Nelson, a county executive.Did Trump change the game?Johnson isn’t the only candidate who has repeated misinformation on the pandemic. In Pennsylvania, Mehmet Oz, a celebrity doctor who has advocated for using unproven drugs to treat Covid-19, could become the Senate nominee for Republicans. Will Democrats attack him for that, or would they go after him as a wealthy carpetbagger who has been living for years in New Jersey?In the pre-Trump world, Democrats actively rooted for opponents known for making outlandish or false statements, because they made for easier targets. Take Todd Akin, a Missouri Senate candidate who was ostracized from the Republican Party in 2012 for saying: “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Claire McCaskill, the Democrat who defeated Akin, later confessed to shotgunning a beer when Akin won the G.O.P. primary.Now, however, many Democrats doubt that comments like Akin’s would register with voters in the same way.“The difference would be that as soon as it happened, there would just be a chorus on the right that would just say, ‘Oh, yeah, yeah, that’s true. A woman’s body can just shut that down,’” said Jason Kander, a Democrat who fell short in the 2016 Missouri Senate race.Candidates, taking their cues from Trump, have also learned to recast their gaffes as bold truth-telling. As Johnson wrote in his announcement in The Wall Street Journal, “Countless people have encouraged me to run, saying they rely on me to be their voice, to speak plain and obvious truths other elected leaders shirk from expressing — truths the elite in government, mainstream media and Big Tech don’t want you to hear.”Partisanship has also deepened since the pre-Trump era. Even if some voters find certain rhetoric to be unsavory, they would rather not vote for someone who would build the opposing party’s majority. They’re voting against not just the candidate on the ballot in front of them, but also Nancy Pelosi or Mitch McConnell.And then there’s the simple magnitude of the challenge: If Democrats are going to mention the things that they find to be the most outlandish, they then have to spend time explaining why it’s outlandish.“Democrats are going to have to come up with some new messaging, because everything they’re talking about now is old,” said Brandon Scholz, a Republican and former strategist based in Wisconsin. “They have covered everything he’s said.”It might just be easier to discredit the messenger, rather than the message. As Wikler, the Democratic state chairman, explained it, the allegations about Johnson’s self-dealing are more likely to break through to ordinary Wisconsinites than his comments about the coronavirus or the Capitol riot.“For voters that aren’t paying attention closely to politics from day to day,” he said, “that’s the stuff that feels most extreme and disappointing.”What to read tonightA New York Times analysis of climate data by Krishna Karra and Tim Wallace found that temperatures in the United States last year “set more all-time heat and cold records than any other year since 1994.”The Justice Department is forming a unit to combat domestic terrorism, Katie Benner reports.“Harry Reid lived for the Senate floor. He also lived on it,” writes Carl Hulse in a remembrance of the late Senate majority leader, who will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday.BRIEFING BOOKIn his speech, President Biden pressed the Senate to alter the filibuster.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe New York Times covered every angle of Tuesday’s appearance by President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in Atlanta, where they delivered forceful, back-to-back addresses demanding the Senate act on federal voting rights legislation.“We’re here today to stand against the forces in America that value power over principle,” Biden said, connecting those imposing new restrictions on voter access to the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. “The right to vote and have that vote counted is democracy’s threshold liberty.”Reacting to the speech, Spencer Overton, head of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and the author of a book on voter suppression, told us: “Biden was not silent today. He drew clear lines that you’re either for democracy or you’re against democracy.”Here are some highlights of our coverage:Biden is pressing the Senate to alter the filibuster, an institutional rule that effectively requires a 60-vote threshold for most legislation, including two voting rights bills Republicans uniformly oppose.That’s leading to an angry pushback from Senate Republicans, Carl Hulse reports. “Republicans are going to be furious over those references putting them on the side of Southern racists like George Wallace and Bull Connor,” he predicts.In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who stood up to Trump’s false claims of election fraud, accused Democrats of pushing for a “federal elections takeover.”Georgia has become the crucible for the national struggle over voting rights, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Astead W. Herndon write.Nick Corasaniti explains what the battle over voter rights and elections is fundamentally about.One more thing…At a hearing Tuesday before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Dr. Anthony Fauci was caught on a hot mic muttering under his breath after an exchange with Senator Roger Marshall, a Republican from Kansas.Marshall had been pressing Fauci to share his personal financial disclosure forms, insinuating that the National Institutes of Health’s top infectious disease expert might be benefiting improperly from inside information.“Wouldn’t you agree with me that you see things before members of Congress would see them, so that there’s an air of appearance that maybe some shenanigans are going on?” Marshall said. His staff had been unable to find the forms, he added.Fauci replied that Marshall was “totally incorrect” and that his records were publicly available.“What a moron,” Fauci could be heard whispering afterward. “Jesus Christ.”Asked about the encounter, an NIH spokesperson replied, “Dr. Fauci’s public financial disclosure reports are releasable through the Ethics in Government Act.” She added: “Anyone can obtain them by submitting OGE Form 201 request, as described on the NIH FOIA portal website.”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

Capitol attack panel closes in on Trump inner circle with three new subpoenasSubpoenas suggest committee examining whether Trump’s rally speech suggests White House had prior knowledge of attack plans The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack closed in on Donald Trump’s inner circle on Tuesday, issuing subpoenas to three new White House officials involved in planning the former president’s appearance at the rally that preceded the 6 January insurrection.Voters move to block Trump ally Madison Cawthorn from re-electionRead moreThe new subpoenas show the select committee is moving ever nearer to Trump in its investigation and suggests the panel is now examining whether the former president’s speech suggested that the White House had advance knowledge of plans to attack the Capitol.Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the select committee, issued subpoenas to the former White House strategists Andy Surabian and Arthur Schwartz, suggesting they helped coordinate Trump’s appearance by communicating with the organizers and speakers at the rally.The chairman also authorized a subpoena for Ross Worthington, the former White House official who drafted the speech Trump delivered at the rally, during which the former president lied that he won the 2020 election and urged his supporters to march to the Capitol.“The select committee is seeking information from individuals who were involved with the rally,” Thompson said. “Protests that day escalated into an attack on our democracy. Protesters became rioters who carried out a violent attempt to derail the peaceful transfer of power.”The rally at the Ellipse has grown in significance for the select committee in recent weeks, as it examines whether Trump obstructed a congressional proceeding by inciting his supporters to storm the Capitol and stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.The Guardian first reported last week that the panel is also examining whether Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy that connected his plan to have then-Vice President Mike Pence refuse to certify Biden’s victory with the extremist groups that attacked the Capitol.Thompson said in the subpoena letters to Surabian and Schwartz that they were targeted since they appeared to have repeated communication with some of the top organizers and speakers at the rally, including Trump’s eldest son Don Jr, and his fiance Kimberly Guilfoyle.The chairman added that they also had contacts that touched on securing the participation of far-right activists such as Ali Alexander and Alex Jones at the rally, discussed media coverage of the rally, and appearance fees for others who did speak at the rally.Thompson said in the subpoena letter to Worthington that he was being targeted since he helped draft Trump’s speech for the rally, where the former president urged his supporters to “fight much harder” and “stop the steal” – before promising to march with them to the Capitol.The select committee gave the three former Trump aides until 24 January to produce documents detailed in the subpoenas, with deposition dates set from the end of the month through the first week of February.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

Getting the former vice president to answer questions under oath could be crucial as the House panel focuses on Donald Trump’s responsibility for the Capitol riot.As the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol rushes to gather evidence and conduct interviews, how far it will be able to go in holding former President Donald J. Trump accountable increasingly appears to hinge on one possible witness: former Vice President Mike Pence.Since the committee was formed last summer, Mr. Pence’s lawyer and the panel have been talking informally about whether he would be willing to speak to investigators, people briefed on the discussions said. But as Mr. Pence began sorting through a complex calculation about his cooperation, he indicated to the committee that he was undecided, they said.To some degree, the current situation reflects negotiating strategies by both sides, with the committee eager to suggest an air of inevitability about Mr. Pence answering its questions and the former vice president’s advisers looking for reasons to limit his political exposure from a move that would further complicate his ambitions to run for president in 2024.But there also appears to be growing tension.In recent weeks, Mr. Pence is said by people familiar with his thinking to have grown increasingly disillusioned with the idea of voluntary cooperation. He has told aides that the committee has taken a sharp partisan turn by openly considering the potential for criminal referrals to the Justice Department about Mr. Trump and others. Such referrals, in Mr. Pence’s view, appear designed to hurt Republican chances of winning control of Congress in November.And Mr. Pence, they said, has grown annoyed that the committee is publicly signaling that it has secured a greater degree of cooperation from his top aides than it actually has, something he sees as part of a pattern of Democrats trying to turn his team against Mr. Trump.For the committee, Mr. Pence’s testimony under oath would be an opportunity to establish in detail how Mr. Trump’s pressuring him to block the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory brought the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis and helped inspire the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.It could also be vital to the committee in deciding whether it has sufficient evidence to make a criminal referral of Mr. Trump to the Justice Department, as a number of its members have said they could consider doing. The potential charge floated by some members of the committee is violation of the federal law that prohibits obstructing an official proceeding before Congress.Members of the House select committee on Jan. 6 have said they could consider criminal referrals to the Justice Department for Mr. Trump and others.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesThe combination of the pressure brought to bear on Mr. Pence and Mr. Trump’s repeated public exhortations about his vice president — “If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election,” he told supporters on the Ellipse just before they marched to the Capitol — could help the committee build a well-documented narrative linking Mr. Trump to the temporary halting of the vote certification through rioters focused, at his urging, on Mr. Pence.A criminal referral from the committee would carry little legal weight, but could increase public pressure on the Justice Department. The department has given little indication of whether it is seriously considering building a case against Mr. Trump.Understand the Jan. 6 InvestigationBoth the Justice Department and a House select committee are investigating the events of the Capitol riot. Here’s where they stand:Inside the House Inquiry: From a nondescript office building, the panel has been quietly ramping up its sprawling and elaborate investigation.Criminal Referrals, Explained: Can the House inquiry end in criminal charges? These are some of the issues confronting the committee.Garland’s Remarks: Facing pressure from Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that the D.O.J. would pursue its inquiry into the riot “at any level.”A Big Question Remains: Will the Justice Department move beyond charging the rioters themselves?Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said last week that federal prosecutors remained “committed to holding all Jan. 6 perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law — whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy.” But he did not mention Mr. Trump or indicate whether the department considered obstruction of Congress a charge that would fit the circumstances.There are nonetheless some early indications that federal prosecutors working on charging the Capitol rioters are looking carefully at Mr. Trump’s pressure on Mr. Pence — and his efforts to rally his supporters to keep up that pressure even after Mr. Pence decided that he would not block certification of the Electoral College results.In plea negotiations, federal prosecutors recently began asking defense lawyers for some of those charged in Jan. 6 cases whether their clients would admit in sworn statements that they stormed the Capitol believing that Mr. Trump wanted them to stop Mr. Pence from certifying the election. In theory, such statements could help connect the violence at the Capitol directly to Mr. Trump’s demands that Mr. Pence help him stave off his defeat.Gina Bisignano, a Beverly Hills beautician who helped her fellow Trump supporters smash at a window at the Capitol, noted in court papers connected to her plea that she had marched on the building specifically after hearing Mr. Trump encourage Mr. Pence “to do the right thing.”While in the crowd, the papers say, Ms. Bisignano filmed herself saying, “We are marching on the Capitol to put some pressure on Mike Pence.” The papers also note that once Ms. Bisignano reached the building, she started telling others “what Pence’s done,” and encouraged people carrying tools like hatchets to break the window.Similarly, Matthew Greene, a member of the Central New York chapter of the Proud Boys, said in court papers connected to his own guilty plea that he had conspired with other members of the far-right group to “send a message to legislators and Vice President Pence” who were inside the Capitol certifying the final stage of the election.“Greene hoped that his actions and those of his co-conspirators would cause legislators and the vice president to act differently during the course of the certification of the Electoral College vote than they would have otherwise,” the papers said.There are early indications that federal prosecutors working on charging the Capitol rioters are looking carefully at Mr. Trump’s pressure on Mr. Pence.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesMr. Trump’s pressure campaign on Mr. Pence has been well established in news reports and books over the past year. Mr. Trump, aided at times by a little-known conservative lawyer, John Eastman, repeatedly pressured Mr. Pence to intervene in Congress’s certification of the 2020 presidential election, saying he had the power to delay or alter the outcome.Mr. Pence consulted a variety of people in weighing what to do, and when he ultimately refused, Mr. Trump attacked him with harsh words.Once the mob stormed the Capitol, with some rioters chanting for Mr. Pence to be hanged, Mr. Trump initially brushed aside calls from aides and allies to call them off.In the last week, around the anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot, both the chairman of the committee, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and its vice chairwoman, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, have suggested they want Mr. Pence to testify voluntarily.On Friday, Mr. Thompson told NPR that the committee might issue Mr. Pence a formal invitation as soon as the end of the month. That same day, another committee member, Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, underlined Mr. Pence’s importance in a television interview, saying he viewed him “as an indispensable person to talk to.”A refusal by Mr. Pence to cooperate could lead the committee to take the highly unusual move of subpoenaing a former vice president, setting up a potential court fight that could delay a resolution for months as the committee tries to wrap up its work before the election.Mr. Pence’s personal lawyer, Richard Cullen, began discussions this summer with the top investigator on the House Jan. 6 committee, Timothy Heaphy, a former federal prosecutor. Mr. Cullen had worked alongside Mr. Heaphy at the same law firm several years ago.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

Mr. Aiken said he was running as a “loud and proud Democrat” for an open House seat in his native North Carolina this year.Clay Aiken, the former “American Idol” contestant, said on Monday that he was running for Congress in North Carolina, in his second attempt to represent the state where he grew up.On his new website, Mr. Aiken, 43, referred to himself as a “loud and proud Democrat” and said he would be running in a newly drawn district that includes Durham and Chapel Hill. Representative David E. Price, a Democrat who currently represents much of that area, announced his retirement in October.“I intend to use my voice to deliver real results for North Carolina families, just like David Price has done for decades,” Mr. Aiken, a native of Raleigh, wrote. “I’ll always stand up for my principles and fight for inclusion, income equality, free access to quality health care, and combating climate change.”Mr. Aiken, who placed second behind Ruben Studdard in the second season of “American Idol” in 2003, previously ran for Congress in a Republican-leaning part of the state in 2014. He won the Democratic primary but was defeated in the general election by the Republican incumbent.Last month, the North Carolina Supreme Court ordered that the state’s 2022 primary election, originally scheduled for March 8, be postponed until May 17, citing a “need for urgency” in giving critics of the state legislature’s gerrymandered political maps additional time to pursue a legal battle to redraw them. New boundaries for state legislative districts and North Carolina’s 14 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives face three lawsuits filed by Democrats and voting-rights advocates in state court in Raleigh.Mr. Aiken is joining a crowded Democratic primary field that includes two state senators and a Durham County commissioner, The News & Observer reported.Mr. Aiken said his first experience with politics came when he was in the eighth grade and asked Mr. Price to speak to his class. Mr. Price agreed.“In Congress, I’ll use my voice to advocate for common-sense policies that encourage continued job growth and healthy communities,” Mr. Aiken wrote. “Many of these political battles divide us as people, threaten our democracy, and weaken America. North Carolinians are worried about affordable health care and rapid inflation.”Mr. Aiken studied at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and taught special education in Wake County. He is a co-founder of the National Inclusion Project, which advocates for disabled children, and he worked with UNICEF as a national goodwill ambassador, according to his website. More

More from our inbox:The Legality of a Vaccine Mandate for Businesses‘What Can Marriage Give Us?’  Mark Peterson for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “What Voters Really Think About the State of America” (Opinion, Jan. 8):The most upsetting article I’ve read recently regarding the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and its aftermath is the report on the focus groups’ comments about the state of America. I was familiar with polls showing that a majority of Republican voters believe the lies told by Donald Trump and echoed by elected officials and television activists like Tucker Carlson.But it is distressing to read that six of the eight Republicans in the focus group still believe that Mr. Trump won the election. And it is mind-blowing to read their comments about “how the Democrats invaded the White House” and were pushing Covid to keep mail-in ballots.The lies must be refuted loudly and continuously. Responsible media should give no airtime or newspaper space to anyone who does not first admit that the 2020 election was fair and the results were properly counted. Until the rank and file learn that our election was fair and honest and worked as it should, the “state of America” will remain in jeopardy.Roy GoldmanJacksonville Beach, Fla.To the Editor:I am an independent voter, and have been in my 60 years of voting. I was not too surprised at the outcomes of your two focus groups. I have many friends and family who are registered Democrats or Republicans and know their opinions all too well. I would have been interested in a third group of independent voters. Maybe in the future you can incorporate this growing and important group of voters.Linda L. HortonAlbuquerqueEditors’ Note: Times Opinion plans to convene additional focus groups; the next will be with independent voters.To the Editor:I understand the purpose of your giving an opinion page over to average (whatever that means) Democrats and Republicans, but I nonetheless believe that The Times has missed the mark in doing so.The purpose of journalism is not to be evenhanded or to give equal size megaphones to “both sides.” The purpose of journalism is to tell the truth. Clearly one side is by and large telling the truth, whereas the other side appears quite delusional. And it’s telling that I don’t have to state which is which for people to know what I mean.The Times can and should do better for its readers.Jonathan EngelNew YorkTo the Editor:If these interviews are supposed to help me understand the thinking of Republicans, you’ve failed.Reading what they think just made me angry — again! How some of them came up with their responses is totally beyond me, except I know they have unquestioningly accepted lies. That is what is frustrating, to hear those lies repeated over and over without any attempt on their part to use critical thinking.My stomach is churning and I’m sure my blood pressure has peaked. I can live, just barely, with the horrible mess the world is in, but I don’t need any help with my despair!Sara JoslinNew Cumberland, Pa.The Legality of a Vaccine Mandate for Businesses Jim Wilson/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Top Court Leans Toward Blocking Vaccine Mandate” (front page, Jan. 8):Certain Supreme Court justices appear skeptical regarding the constitutionality of the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for certain businesses. We should remember, however, that the court is not ruling on the constitutionality of that mandate, only on whether it should issue an injunction to prevent its being enforced while its constitutionality is being decided.In making a decision on whether an injunction should be issued, the justices would naturally want to consider the harm of issuing an injunction versus the harm of not issuing an injunction.Suppose they decided not to issue an injunction. What’s the worst that might happen? Well, some people who may not want to be vaccinated may get the lifesaving vaccine anyway.And if they do issue the injunction? Well, some people who do not want to be vaccinated may die.Seems pretty clear-cut to me.Stephen PolitBelmont, Mass.To the Editor:Dear Chief Justice Roberts,I respect the principle that limits on decision-making by federal agencies can be necessary and protective. This principle would be a vital response to an overly authoritarian executive branch.I urge you to uphold this principle — while making an exception for vaccine mandates.To return this national health issue to individual states and Congress — at this time of medical crisis and excessive cultural divide — will further politicize and undermine our nation’s ability to respond to this public health issue in a unified manner.Principles are vitally important. But wise and flexible leadership requires appropriate exceptions.Jared D. KassConcord, Mass.‘What Can Marriage Give Us?’  María MedemTo the Editor:Re “Divorce Doesn’t Have to Be Lonely,” by Kaitlyn Greenidge (Opinion guest essay, Sunday Review, Jan. 9):A widow of nine years after five decades of marriage, I know that you can go it alone. Not everyone needs to marry. But I ask, What can marriage give us? As an introvert and a writer, I prized private time. Marriage required compromise and working out problems instead of walking out.We had counseling several times, at which I learned that my little ego was as precious as his. Only in a relationship could I have learned how best to live in our world of rugged individualists. I assert myself more confidently, but also listen better.Diana MorleyTalent, Ore. More

Bret Stephens: Happy ’22, Gail. Hope your year is off to a good start. Eager to get your thoughts on Covid 3.0, which nearly every other person I know seems to have.Gail Collins: Happy New Year, Bret. I had a nice long holiday with plane travel, visits to see family and friends, and a few other outings. No Covid interruptions whatsoever, but I have gotten warnings from friends whose friends are sick, and a neighbor who just had a really bad episode.But I remember other holidays in which the flu laid a bunch of people low. Still keep thinking that if everyone takes all the vaccine shots, wears masks in public and avoids scenes like, say, jam-packed bars, it’s still possible to live a pretty normal life.Do you disagree?Bret: I think we need to treat Omicron fundamentally differently than we did previous variants. Everyone should get triple vaxxed. But the idea that we can “stop the spread” or “flatten the curve” is unrealistic, probably unnecessary and possibly counterproductive.Boosted people can still get sick, though for the most part not too severely. More than half of the people in New York City hospitals who have Covid aren’t there because of Covid. Testing doesn’t always detect the virus, and when it does it’s often too late. Mask wearing hasn’t appreciably slowed it, at least not with the surgical or cloth masks most people prefer. And contact tracing is pointless with something that spreads this quickly. Maybe instead of trying to flatten the curve, we should accept the spike and think of Omicron as the coronavirus’s version of the old chickenpox party, the sort my mom took me to as a kid so I could get it over with and gain immunity.Gail: It’s been interesting hearing some of the anti-vaxxers also denouncing other vaccines against childhood diseases. Still haven’t heard any of them call for bringing back smallpox.Bret: A pox on them, metaphorically speaking. On a different subject, I bet you never found yourself being thankful to Dick Cheney for standing up for truth, decency and the American way.Gail: Fortunately his daughter already prepared me to cheer for people I totally disagree with. Liz Cheney is pretty far on the far right when it comes to everything from taxes to abortion to guns, but she’s a great example of how principled people can break with their party when it comes to other profound issues, like last January’s riot.Bret: Riot is too kind a word.Gail: I’ve run into the parents of childhood friends who I remembered as extremely cranky, but found them very charming at 80. So Cheney Sr.’s new look wasn’t so surprising. Although those were dads who used to yell about curfews, and that’s not quite the same as invading Iraq.But about Liz — I’ll bet a lot of Republicans in Congress agree with her deep in their little Trump-terrorized hearts. Don’t you think?Bret: I used to think that. But now I think they are in denial so deep it’s clinical. They’ve convinced themselves that the people who stormed the Capitol were misguided patriots, which is like saying that Harvey Weinstein was a clumsy romantic. They are keen to point fingers at Nancy Pelosi for not doing enough to secure the building, which amounts to indicting the victim for not doing enough to secure his possessions from thugs. They are upset that Democrats use the word “insurrection,” as if a violent attempt to overturn a democratic election ought better be described as a frat party that got a little outta hand. They fulsomely praise Mike Pence for doing his constitutional duty by refusing to interfere with the certification of the election, but say nothing of the 147 congressional Republicans who would not accept the result. They carry on about Stacey Abrams refusing to accept her loss in the 2018 Georgia governor’s race, while treating Donald Trump’s incessant, obsessive, demagogic, destructive lying about 2020 as just one of his exuberant personality quirks.Gail: It is amazing how we can come together on non-government-spending issues.Bret: There’s an old expression, from Poland I think, that goes, “Not my circus. Not my monkeys.” Unfortunately for the country, the G.O.P. has become our national circus, with Tucker Carlson as its scowling ringmaster. Now the question is whether Democrats can govern effectively to keep the clown show from coming back to power. Are you hopeful?Gail: You know, President Biden is the opposite of a crowd-rouser, but at this moment it might be OK to have a national leader who’s just … sane and normal and principled.He’s not going to lead the nation into any stupendous changes, but maybe right now the thing we’re looking for is “that good guy like my eighth-grade teacher.”Bret: Even better would be a good guy who loudly insists that eighth-grade teachers in Chicago show up to work. Sorry, you were saying ….Gail: My actual eighth-grade teacher, as I have alluded to earlier, was a nun, who told us, “Remember, the Romans killed Jesus, not the Jews.” The fact that I still recall that means it was an actual piece of information back then.Bret: I’m glad your nun cleared that up. My Hebrew forebears were far too busy controlling the Roman media, financing Roman conquests and manipulating the Roman Senate to waste their malice on an unconventional rabbi.Gail: And while we’re talking about cultural revolutions — I know this is before your time, but I remember as a teen hearing that Sidney Poitier won the Oscar for best actor and being so excited. I knew it was a big deal, and I guess the fact that the movie he won for, “Lilies of the Field,” was about this Black man helping a bunch of nuns meant a lot in our Catholic girlhood.It just reminded me of all the times when any acknowledgment of Black achievement seemed like big news to the country.Bret: A class act, as our colleague Charles Blow noted in a charming remembrance last week. For my generation, the corresponding analogy was the gay-rights movement in the 1980s, during the AIDS crisis. I remember watching the music video for a song called “Smalltown Boy” by the British band Bronski Beat, which made an impression. It was a small masterpiece of storytelling as well as a stunningly courageous and honest tale of coming out.But getting back to Biden, I don’t think sane, normal and principled will do. I’m kinda hoping for “effective” and “canny.” We’ve been a little lacking in that department ….Gail: Well, hey, I thought his speech about Jan. 6 was pretty powerful, don’t you agree?Bret: Up to a point, yes. It was eloquent. And I had no disagreement with the substance.I have a couple of worries, though. If Biden meant to commemorate an important anniversary, fine and good. But if he means for congressional Democrats to make “Remember Jan. 6” the organizing principle of their election campaigns, it’s political malpractice. It politicizes the event in a way that will diminish its significance and turn off wavering voters who feel they’re being talked down to. And it’s a distraction from the job Democrats should be doing, which is convincing the public that they’ve got their interests and concerns in mind. Elections are always about “What have you done for me, lately?” Democrats aren’t going to win on the promise of safeguarding abstract principles, important as that may be.Gail: I think you’re worried that the post-Jan. 6 ethos will include leftie opposition to the profitability obsession of big business. Like refusing to expand Medicaid, letting Big Pharma run amok on prescription drug prices and keeping a lid on Medicare.Bret: I just think Democrats need to be careful not to mix milk and meat, so to speak. The smart play is to let the Jan. 6 committee do its work and let the public draw its conclusions. In the meantime, fix the supply-chain bottlenecks. Pick a quarrel with any teachers union that tries to keep schools closed. Propose an immigration bill that funds border security in exchange for citizenship for Dreamers. Break Build Back Better into bite-size components and get its most popular parts passed with votes from Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema and even a Republican or two, like Lisa Murkowski or Susan Collins.To keep Trump and his epigones away from high office, it isn’t enough having the moral high ground. It’s like something Adlai Stevenson supposedly said once when a voter told him that every thinking person was on his side. “I’m afraid that won’t do,” he replied. “I need a majority.” Democracy needs a majority.Gail: Hey, my final mission today is clear. I want us to stop here so we can all remember the time we concluded with Adlai Stevenson.Till next week, Bret.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