Elections

Congressman Jim Jordan refuses to cooperate with 6 January committeeThe Ohio Republican, claiming an ‘outrageous abuse’ of authority, is the second member of Congress to resist the investigation

Is the US really heading for a second civil war?
The Ohio Republican Jim Jordan is the second sitting congressman to refuse a request for cooperation from the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack.Capitol attack: Trump not immune from criminal referral, lawmakers insistRead moreIn a Sunday night letter to the committee chair, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the Trump ally accused the panel of “an outrageous abuse” of its authority.He also claimed “an unprecedented and inappropriate demand to examine the basis for a colleague’s decision on a particular matter pending before the House of Representatives”.“This request is far outside the bounds of any legitimate inquiry,” he said, “violates core constitutional principles and would serve to further erode legislative norms.”Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, who was also closely involved in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his election defeat, has also refused to cooperate.The former Trump strategist Steve Bannon has pleaded not guilty to a charge of criminal contempt of Congress, for refusing cooperation. His trial is set for July.Mark Meadows, Trump’s final White House chief of staff and a former congressman, has also refused. The committee has recommended a criminal charge.Citing committee sources, the Guardian has reported that the panel is considering whether Trump himself might be charged with criminal conspiracy.But Thompson has suggested the panel may have few options to compel testimony from sitting members of Congress. An alternative path may be a series of primetime public hearings, seeking as wide an audience as possible.In columns for the Guardian, the former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal has laid out Jordan’s extensive contacts with Trump before and on 6 January, throughout legalistic efforts to throw out results and the Capitol riot itself.Blumenthal has also suggested precedent exists for compelling Jordan to testify – in the investigation of John Brown’s anti-slavery raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia in 1859.That event preceded the civil war, fought from 1861 to 1865. Many academics and observers have warned that Trump’s assault on democracy could stoke such conflict.Five people died and more than 140 police officers were injured around the attack on Congress, which failed to stop the certification of electoral college results. Trump was impeached, for inciting an insurrection, and acquitted.Jordan, a former wrestling coach and member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, is a leading Trump ally in Congress.Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, proposed Jordan as a member of the 6 January committee. Democrats blocked it. Only two Republicans sit on the panel: Trump critics Liz Cheney, of Wyoming, and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.Unthinkable review: Jamie Raskin, his lost son and defending democracy from TrumpRead moreOn Sunday, Kinzinger asked on NBC: “What did the president know about 6 January leading up to 6 January?“It’s the difference between, was the president absolutely incompetent or a coward on 6 January when he didn’t do anything or did he know what was coming? That’s a difference between incompetence with your oath and possibly criminal.”On Sunday night, a spokesperson said the committee would respond to Jordan soon and “consider appropriate next steps”.“Mr Jordan has admitted that he spoke directly to President Trump on 6 January and is thus a material witness,” the spokesperson said. “Mr Jordan’s letter to the committee fails to address these facts.”TopicsUS Capitol attackRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

The Republican congressman from Ohio, a close ally of former President Donald Trump’s, denounced the House investigation of the Capitol riot as one of the Democrats’ “partisan witch hunts.”WASHINGTON — Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, announced on Sunday that he was refusing to cooperate with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, joining a growing list of allies of former President Donald J. Trump who have adopted a hostile stance toward the panel’s questions.In an effort to dig into the role that members of Congress played in trying to undermine the 2020 election, the committee informed Mr. Jordan in December by letter that its investigators wanted to question him about his communications related to the run-up to the Capitol riot. Those include Mr. Jordan’s messages with Mr. Trump and his legal team as well as others involved in planning rallies on Jan. 6 and congressional objections to certifying Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.Mr. Jordan — who in November told the Rules Committee that he had “nothing to hide” regarding the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation — on Sunday denounced the bipartisan panel’s inquiry as among what he called the Democrats’ “partisan witch hunts.”“It amounts to an unprecedented and inappropriate demand to examine the basis for a colleague’s decision on a particular matter pending before the House of Representatives,” Mr. Jordan wrote in a letter to Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and chairman of the committee. “This request is far outside the bounds of any legitimate inquiry, violates core constitutional principles and would serve to further erode legislative norms.”Mr. Jordan was deeply involved in Mr. Trump’s effort to fight the election results, including participating in planning meetings in November 2020 at Trump campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va., and a meeting at the White House in December 2020.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?On Jan. 5, Mr. Jordan forwarded to Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, a text message he had received from a lawyer and former Pentagon inspector general outlining a legal strategy to overturn the election.“On Jan. 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as president of the Senate, should call out all the electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all — in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence,” the text read.Mr. Jordan has acknowledged speaking with Mr. Trump on Jan. 6, though he has said he cannot remember how many times they spoke that day or when the calls occurred.Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the vice chairwoman of the committee, has said that Mr. Jordan is a “material witness” to the events of Jan. 6.In Mr. Jordan’s letter on Sunday, he argued he had little relevant information to share with the committee and that its members should be investigating security failures at the Capitol instead of seeking to question Republican lawmakers.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

The president pledged to use all of the powers of his office to thwart Republicans still under the thumb of Donald J. Trump.WASHINGTON — President Biden has begun his second year in office by lashing out at Republicans, embracing forceful new attacks meant to define a choice for voters between Mr. Biden’s Democrats and a Republican Party still under the thumb of former President Donald J. Trump.The sharp tone comes as Mr. Biden seeks to jump-start his agenda, which has largely stalled in Congress. And with midterm elections looming at the end of the year, the president faces a challenge that he has largely avoided so far: drawing Mr. Trump and other Republican leaders into a more direct clash of ideas.On Thursday, Mr. Biden delivered a fierce speech promising a reckoning with Mr. Trump and pledging to use all of the powers of his office to thwart the anti-democratic forces unleashed by the 45th president. It was the most searing example since Mr. Biden took office of his effort to contrast the two parties, lamenting “the Big Lie being told by the former president and many Republicans who fear his wrath.”A day later, he took another opportunity to focus on the differences between the two parties as he acclaimed news that the unemployment rate had dropped to 3.9 percent. He predicted that Republicans would accuse him of failing to address the economic pain caused by surging inflation in recent months.“Malarkey,” Mr. Biden said. “They want to talk down the recovery because they voted against the legislation that made it happen. They voted against the tax cuts for middle-class families. They voted against the funds we needed to reopen our schools, to keep police officers and firefighters on the job, to lower health care premiums.”“I refuse to let them stand in the way of this recovery,” he added. “Now my focus is on keeping this recovery strong and durable, notwithstanding Republican obstructionism.”For some of Mr. Biden’s Democratic allies, the change in tone is a welcome shift from the dominant theme of the president’s first year, when he more often focused on his desire to unify the country and struggled to negotiate with members of his own party.Now, they say, it is time for Mr. Biden to focus not only on his own achievements, but also on how the Republican Party threatens to reverse those efforts if it returns to power on Capitol Hill — something that has not been at the center of his presidency so far.“What Biden, the White House and Democrats writ large have to do is to force a choice that takes into account not just Republicans criticizing, but what’s their solution?” said Robert Gibbs, who served as President Barack Obama’s press secretary during the year leading up to the 2010 midterm elections. “That’s going to be crucial heading into 2022 and then ultimately setting the table for 2024.”Mr. Gibbs said Mr. Biden, then the vice president, would often advise Mr. Obama to keep the focus on their rivals in the other party.“What he used to tell President Obama is: ‘It’s hard when you’re compared to the Almighty. It’s easier when you’re compared to the alternative,’” Mr. Gibbs recalled.Mr. Biden has largely avoided drawing former President Donald J. Trump and other Republican leaders into a more direct clash of ideas.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesRepublicans are not shrinking from the fight. Mr. Trump issued a statement describing Mr. Biden’s speech as “the last gasps of a corrupt and discredited left-wing political and media establishment,” and vowing to fight back at the ballot box.The stakes are high. Mr. Biden and his party are at serious risk of losing their already bare majorities in the House and the Senate during the midterm elections, an outcome that would most likely rob the president and his team of any real hope of significant progress in Congress for the rest of his term.And the obstacles to progress are steep.During his first year in office, Mr. Biden has seen his policy efforts at home and abroad disrupted by Supreme Court rulings, supply chain glitches, lawmakers from his own party and, most of all, coronavirus variants that have extended — endlessly, it seems, to everyone’s dismay — the need for masks, vaccines and social distancing.Mr. Biden has had some major successes to highlight: He passed Covid recovery legislation at the beginning of his term, and he found agreement with some Republicans on a $1 trillion measure to invest in infrastructure projects around the country.But the virus is still rampant — a near-constant reminder of Mr. Biden’s campaign-year pledge to finally end the pandemic. His $1.8 trillion social policy legislation is struggling at best, and practically dead at worst. A voting rights bill he says will rectify an “existential threat” to the country faces the steepest of odds in Congress. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is beating his chest on Ukraine’s border. Every day, there is evidence that climate change is getting worse.Democrats are hopeful that the president can begin to change those realities by March 1, when he will deliver his first State of the Union speech to a joint session of Congress, giving a formal assessment of the country under his leadership so far. “It’s your best opportunity to get in front of the American people and make your argument about what you can get done before the fall and what the choice is going to be,” said Jennifer Palmieri, a veteran Democratic communications expert who worked for Mr. Obama and Hillary Clinton.For that to happen, the Biden team needs to get a number of things right, according to people rooting for it to succeed.Coronavirus testing shortages have led to long lines throughout the country.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesThe pandemic, which polls suggest is the single biggest drag on the president’s popularity, needs to begin to recede — at least in the daily lives of most Americans. And the administration needs to be seen doing more to address people’s frustrations, like the current shortage of Covid tests that have led to long lines and empty shelves at pharmacies.Administration officials note that Mr. Biden authorized the purchase of 500 million at-home tests that Americans will be able to request for free. The first tests will ship this month, they say, with more to follow.The economic rebound from the two-year pandemic may be one of the president’s best stories to tell on March 1. Job growth slowed somewhat in the second half of last year, but unemployment is so low that many employers are struggling to find workers. If he were giving the State of the Union address now, Mr. Biden could rightly claim to be presiding over a booming economy.Still, inflation has driven up prices and that is adding to a disconnect for many people: They do not feel as good about the economy as the numbers suggest they should. Republicans on Friday seized on lower-than-expected job growth to attack Mr. Biden’s policies.“Whether it’s anemic jobs growth, high inflation or a massive supply chain crisis, Democrats are doing a horrible job managing the economy,” said Mike Berg, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.Jen Psaki, the president’s press secretary, has repeatedly blamed people’s feelings about living in a pandemic for that disconnect.“It’s less about data and more about what people are experiencing in their day-to-day life,” she said last week. “It doesn’t look normal. They’re worried about there being labor shortages and there being canceled flights, or not enough teachers in school because of the spread of Omicron. We understand that.”Central to the administration’s response to those feelings is an effort to pass Mr. Biden’s social policy legislation, known as Build Back Better. The president argues that passage of the bill will lower prices for things like child care and prescription drugs, making people feel more secure about their financial futures.A provision in Mr. Biden’s social policy legislation would help families save money on child care.Virginia Lozano for The New York TimesBut the legislation has become mired in a dispute with Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, who objects to some of the plan’s provisions and how it would be financed. In the Senate, where Democrats control exactly 50 of the 100 seats, Mr. Manchin’s support is essential to the bill’s passage.The spectacle of the president locked in a desperate negotiation with a member of his own party has gone on for months, with little evidence of a resolution any time soon. White House officials say they are hopeful that lawmakers will be able to work something out with Mr. Manchin in the weeks ahead.In the meantime, Mr. Biden is eager to avoid another foreign policy spectacle like the hurried evacuation from Afghanistan that followed the president’s withdrawal of troops. But that is not entirely within his control.Mr. Biden has steadily ramped up threats of sanctions against Russia if Mr. Putin were to send troops across the border into Ukraine. Whether those threats will be enough to hold off Mr. Putin in the long run may help determine whether Mr. Biden has a positive story to tell by the time he addresses Americans in March.White House officials are beginning to think about that speech. In comments to reporters on Friday, Mr. Biden was — as usual — upbeat, dismissing concerns that the burdens imposed by the pandemic would never be lifted.“No. I don’t think Covid is here to stay,” he said, previewing the kind of message that aides hope he will be able to give in seven weeks. “The new normal is not going to be what it is now; it’s going to be better.” More

It’s perhaps an understatement to say that Americans have a difficult and contradictory relationship with our bodies.Every decade or so there is a new optimal way to feed ourselves, along with increasingly outlandish weight-loss regimens and whole categories of foods to champion or fear. We revel in the sophistication of medical science while widely distrusting it, and our politicians refuse to support a health care system in which everyone has access to basic, compassionate care. We are overly sedentary, but when we exercise we value strenuous over relaxing movement, strain over ease, striving over acceptance.No one embodies these obsessions better than Mehmet Oz, known as Dr. Oz to American daytime television viewers. Dr. Oz, who has styled himself as a kind of high priest in the church of American wellness, recently announced his candidacy in the Republican primary for an open Senate seat in Pennsylvania — a race that could decide control of the chamber.As Dr. Oz pursues this pivotal position, he should be seen as more than a celebrity turned politician. 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. And many Americans are primed and ready to commit to his doctrine, which promises boundless possibility so long as we invest in individual responsibility — for our health and for everything else.This is worrying. As we collectively face yet another surge of coronavirus infections, leaders who extol individualism aren’t simply ineffective — they’re dangerous. If there’s anything we should be taking away from the past two years, it’s that autonomy and self-reliance are inadequate for 21st-century problems such as climate change, structural racism and the pandemic.The son of Turkish immigrants, born in Cleveland, and by all accounts a gifted surgeon, Dr. Oz gained notice as a frequent guest on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” appearances that earned him the tag “America’s doctor” and led to introduction of “The Dr. Oz Show” in 2009. Over 13 seasons, the frequent topics of the show, which at its height regularly drew over a million viewers per week, could also be a list of Americans’ biggest bodily anxieties: weight loss, cancer, weight loss, aging, weight loss, sleep problems, poop problems and oh, weight loss.Dr. Oz often describes his path from cardiothoracic surgeon to TV health expert with missionary zeal: “As I performed thousands of surgeries on patients whose hearts had been ravaged by obesity, I realized we needed to better educate people on how to take part in their own care,” he explained in testimony before a Senate committee in 2014. “And for that reason I went into the public life, in an effort to teach.”And his announcement that he is now making the leap from daytime television to national politics took on a downright rapturous tone: “I’m running for the Senate to empower you to control your destiny,” he wrote in an essay in The Washington Examiner, “to reinvigorate our great nation, and to reignite the divine spark that we should always be seeing in each other.”The thousands of on-air hours Dr. Oz has spent ministering to Americans’ health concerns have made him a multimillionaire, and also a controversial figure. He has praised unproven supplements such as sage leaf tea, green coffee bean extract and raspberry ketones as “miracles” for weight loss and was chastised by senators for doing so. He was part of a team at Columbia University that patented a device to strengthen damaged heart valves, and also was the target of a letter of protest by physicians who asked why the university kept him on the faculty since he had shown “an egregious lack of integrity by promoting quack treatments and cures in the interest of personal financial gain.”On Covid-19, Dr. Oz has been particularly contradictory. He has promoted the safety and efficacy of vaccines and masks, but also initially recommended the use of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid, based on a small and soon-discredited study. And his bid to represent Pennsylvania in the Senate is based on his promise to free Americans from some of the mask and vaccine mandates that his medical colleagues widely support.“We are Americans, and we can do anything we want,” he tweeted recently, alongside a Fox News clip of himself criticizing the Biden administration’s Covid-19 policies. “It’s time we get back to normal.”If there’s one consistent strain in Dr. Oz’s trajectory, it’s his belief in the power and responsibility of individuals to take control of their health and well being. Strikingly, in his essay announcing his candidacy, Dr. Oz doesn’t speak of unity or community, as many politicians do. Instead he identifies himself as a doctor who is “trained to tell it like it is because you deserve to hear our best advice and make your own decisions.”Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that this messianic diet guru would offer to cure us of all that ails us, physically and spiritually. The bigger question is why so many are ready to believe that organic, cold-pressed snake oil could stop us from aging, cure cancer, make us lose weight and end a pandemic?There’s something deeply American in Dr. Oz’s quest to reach a higher state via the improvement of the body. Its roots can be found, arguably, in the spiritual strivings of the Transcendentalists, the group of 19th-century nature-obsessed New England philosophers.Ralph Waldo Emerson’s notion of an “original relationship to the universe,” and his belief that there is a divine spirit in nature and in the human soul that does not require the doctrines and laws of organized Christianity, was radical in its time, but became foundational to the American concepts of individualism and self-reliance. These threads have been woven into everything from the prosperity gospel to my yoga teacher’s instructions to lift our arms over our heads and send our intentions “from Earth to sky through you.”The same ideas, filtered through the 21st-century preoccupation with wellness, quickly arrives at the idea that we shortchange ourselves by accepting what we are told by society — by doctors, scientists or government health officials — if it contradicts our individual instincts or opinions.It’s this American idea that health is a personal responsibility that gives rise to figures like Dr. Oz. In his individualist doctrine, when we get sick it’s generally at least partly our fault — there was probably a supplement we should have taken, a superfood we could have eaten more of or a junk food we should have eaten less of, a specialist we should have consulted.This American predilection for individualism is itself a public health risk in a pandemic, Ed Yong has argued in The Atlantic — one that has led to bad policy that puts everyone, especially the most vulnerable people, at risk. When reducing the spread of an infectious disease requires collective and individual action, “no one’s health is fully in their own hands,” Mr. Yong explains.And yet the idea that your health is in your own hands is key to Dr. Oz’s worldview. Despite what appears to be an earnest desire to help people, “The Dr. Oz Show” is not a public health effort. It’s a business. And by recommending products and services, Dr. Oz offers us opportunities to buy things — a very American way to feel empowered. He helps us find the perfect alchemy of diet, exercise and açaí berries to keep us spry, thin, and disease-free forever, as long as we can pay for it all out of pocket. In our individualist, consumerist society, wealth is health.This perhaps is the deeper, more primal appeal of what Dr. Oz is selling — the idea that if we can find the right guru, buy the right products and strive hard enough to manifest our best selves, we might just cheat death.Which of course we can’t. In this moment, when so much hangs in the balance, it’s a dangerous delusion.Annaliese Griffin is a journalist who covers culture, lifestyle and health.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

The renewed bid for office by Mr. Johnson, who has spread many false claims about the 2020 election and Covid, ensures that both parties will be highly invested in Wisconsin’s 2022 Senate race.WASHINGTON — Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin who over the last year has become the Senate’s leading purveyor of misinformation about elections and the coronavirus pandemic, announced Sunday that he would seek re-election to a third term.Mr. Johnson, 66, had pledged to step aside after two terms but opened the door to a third shortly before the 2020 presidential election. His entry into the race is certain to focus enormous attention on Wisconsin, a narrowly divided political battleground where Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, faces his own difficult re-election bid in a race that may determine control of the state’s election systems ahead of the 2024 presidential contest.“Today, I am announcing I will continue to fight for freedom in the public realm by running for re-election,” Mr. Johnson wrote in an essay published Sunday in The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Johnson’s decision follows an announcement Saturday from another Senate Republican weighing retirement, Senator John Thune of South Dakota, that he would seek a fourth term.The Wisconsin Senate contest is expected to be among the tightest in the country. Mr. Johnson is loathed by Democrats and has attracted a double-digit field of challengers vying to take him on in the general election. Local Democrats have been raising money for nearly a year to build a turnout machine for the 2022 midterm elections.When Mr. Johnson first entered politics in 2010 as a self-funding chief executive of a plastics company founded by his wife’s family, he defined himself as a citizen legislator in contrast with Senator Russ Feingold, a Democrat who had been in public office for 28 years. Mr. Johnson was carried into office by that year’s Tea Party wave, then beat Mr. Feingold again in 2016 as Donald J. Trump became the first Republican presidential nominee to win Wisconsin in 32 years.All along, Mr. Johnson pledged to serve no more than 12 years in the Senate, but he began to privately reconsider after the 2018 elections, when Democrats took back control of the House of Representatives and won narrow victories in Wisconsin’s statewide elections. He wrote Sunday that when he made reiterated his two-term pledge during his 2016 race he didn’t anticipate “the Democrats’ complete takeover of government and the disastrous policies they have already inflicted on America and the world.” Suddenly the leader of Wisconsin Republicans and the lone G.O.P. official elected to statewide office, Mr. Johnson wavered on his pledge as he became the subject of an intense lobbying campaign from Republicans in both Wisconsin and Washington. They argued that if he did not run again, the party would jeopardize a seat that could tilt the balance of the Senate in 2023.Mr. Johnson wrote that he was seeking a new term because “I believe America is in peril,” adding: “Much as I’d like to ease into a quiet retirement, I don’t feel I should.”This year, Mr. Johnson has been at the forefront of the two strongest strains of misinformation coursing through the Republican Party — false claims about election administration and public health.In the days after the 2020 election, he challenged Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. During a Senate hearing in February, he read into the record a report that falsely suggested the Trump-inspired Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol had been instigated by “fake Trump supporters.” In November, he began urging Wisconsin’s Republican state legislators to seize control of federal elections in the state, arguing that they could do so without the governor’s approval, despite decades-old rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court and the Wisconsin Supreme Court that say otherwise.Aside from Mr. Trump, there is perhaps no major Republican official who has made more false claims about the coronavirus and its vaccines than Mr. Johnson. He has said he will not get vaccinated, and has promoted discredited Covid-19 treatments and declined to encourage others to seek out the vaccines. In December, he falsely claimed that gargling with mouthwash could help stop transmission of the virus, an assertion that drew a rebuke from the manufacturer of Listerine.The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 6The global surge. More

In his 2020 book “Politics Is for Power,” Eitan Hersh, a political scientist at Tufts, sketched a day in the life of many political obsessives in sharp, if cruel, terms.I refresh my Twitter feed to keep up on the latest political crisis, then toggle over to Facebook to read clickbait news stories, then over to YouTube to see a montage of juicy clips from the latest congressional hearing. I then complain to my family about all the things I don’t like that I have seen.To Hersh, that’s not politics. It’s what he calls “political hobbyism.” And it’s close to a national pastime. “A third of Americans say they spend two hours or more each day on politics,” he writes. “Of these people, four out of five say that not one minute of that time is spent on any kind of real political work. It’s all TV news and podcasts and radio shows and social media and cheering and booing and complaining to friends and family.”Real political work, for Hersh, is the intentional, strategic accumulation of power in service of a defined end. It is action in service of change, not information in service of outrage. This distinction is on my mind because, like so many others, I’ve spent the week revisiting the attempted coup of Jan. 6, marinating in my fury toward the Republicans who put fealty toward Donald Trump above loyalty toward country and the few but pivotal Senate Democrats who are proving, day after day, that they think the filibuster more important than the franchise. Let me tell you, the tweets and columns I drafted in my head were searing.But fury is useful only as fuel. We need a Plan B for democracy. Plan A was to pass H.R. 1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Neither bill, as of now, has a path to President Biden’s desk. I’ve found that you provoke a peculiar anger if you state this, as if admitting the problem were the cause of the problem. I fear denial has left many Democrats stuck on a national strategy with little hope of near-term success. In order to protect democracy, Democrats have to win more elections. And to do that, they need to make sure the country’s local electoral machinery isn’t corrupted by the Trumpist right.“The people thinking strategically about how to win the 2022 election are the ones doing the most for democracy,” said Daniel Ziblatt, a political scientist at Harvard and one of the authors of “How Democracies Die.” “I’ve heard people saying bridges don’t save democracy — voting rights do. But for Democrats to be in a position to protect democracy, they need bigger majorities.”There are people working on a Plan B. This week, I half-jokingly asked Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, what it felt like to be on the front lines of protecting American democracy. He replied, dead serious, by telling me what it was like. He spends his days obsessing over mayoral races in 20,000-person towns, because those mayors appoint the city clerks who decide whether to pull the drop boxes for mail-in ballots and small changes to electoral administration could be the difference between winning Senator Ron Johnson’s seat in 2022 (and having a chance at democracy reform) and losing the race and the Senate. Wikler is organizing volunteers to staff phone banks to recruit people who believe in democracy to serve as municipal poll workers, because Steve Bannon has made it his mission to recruit people who don’t believe in democracy to serve as municipal poll workers.I’ll say this for the right: They pay attention to where the power lies in the American system, in ways the left sometimes doesn’t. Bannon calls this “the precinct strategy,” and it’s working. “Suddenly, people who had never before showed interest in party politics started calling the local G.O.P. headquarters or crowding into county conventions, eager to enlist as precinct officers,” ProPublica reports. “They showed up in states Trump won and in states he lost, in deep-red rural areas, in swing-voting suburbs and in populous cities.”The difference between those organizing at the local level to shape democracy and those raging ineffectually about democratic backsliding — myself included — remind me of the old line about war: Amateurs talk strategy; professionals talk logistics. Right now, Trumpists are talking logistics.“We do not have one federal election,” said Amanda Litman, a co-founder of Run for Something, which helps first-time candidates learn about the offices they can contest and helps them mount their campaigns. “We have 50 state elections and then thousands of county elections. And each of those ladder up to give us results. While Congress can write, in some ways, rules or boundaries for how elections are administered, state legislatures are making decisions about who can and can’t vote. Counties and towns are making decisions about how much money they’re spending, what technology they’re using, the rules around which candidates can participate.”An NPR analysis found 15 Republicans running for secretary of state in 2022 who doubt the legitimacy of Biden’s win. In Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, the incumbent Republican secretary of state who stood fast against Trump’s pressure, faces two primary challengers who hold that Trump was 2020’s rightful winner. Trump has endorsed one of them, Representative Jody Hice. He’s also endorsed candidates for secretary of state in Arizona and Michigan who backed him in 2020 and stand ready to do so in 2024. As NPR dryly noted, “The duties of a state secretary of state vary, but in most cases, they are the state’s top voting official and have a role in carrying out election laws.”Nor is it just secretaries of state. “Voter suppression is happening at every level of government here in Georgia,” Representative Nikema Williams, who chairs the Georgia Democratic Party, told me. “We have 159 counties, and so 159 different ways boards of elections are elected and elections are carried out. So we have 159 different leaders who control election administration in the state. We’ve seen those boards restrict access by changing the number of ballot boxes. Often, our Black members on these boards are being pushed out.”America’s confounding political structure creates two mismatches that bedevil democracy’ would-be defenders. The first mismatch is geographic. Your country turns on elections held in Georgia and Wisconsin, and if you live in California or New York, you’re left feeling powerless.But that’s somewhere between an illusion and a cop-out. A constant complaint among those working to win these offices is that progressives donate hundreds of millions to presidential campaigns and long-shot bids against top Republicans, even as local candidates across the country are starved for funds.“Democratic major donors like to fund the flashy things,” Litman told me. “Presidential races, Senate races, super PACs, TV ads. Amy McGrath can raise $90 million to run against Mitch McConnell in a doomed race, but the number of City Council and school board candidates in Kentucky who can raise what they need is …” She trailed off in frustration.The second mismatch is emotional. If you’re frightened that America is sliding into authoritarianism, you want to support candidates, run campaigns and donate to causes that directly focus on the crisis of democracy. But few local elections are run as referendums on Trump’s big lie. They’re about trash pickup and bond ordinances and traffic management and budgeting and disaster response.Lina Hidalgo ran for county judge in Harris County, Texas, after the 2016 election. Trump’s campaign had appalled her, and she wanted to do something. “I learned about this position that had flown under the radar for a very long time,” she told me. “It was the type of seat that only ever changed who held it when the incumbent died or was convicted of a crime. But it controls the budget for the county. Harris County is nearly the size of Colorado in population, larger than 28 states. It’s the budget for the hospital system, roads, bridges, libraries, the jail. And part of that includes funding the electoral system.”Hidalgo didn’t campaign as a firebrand progressive looking to defend Texas from Trump. She won it, she told me, by focusing on what mattered most to her neighbors: the constant flooding of the county, as violent storms kept overwhelming dilapidated infrastructure. “I said, ‘Do you want a community that floods year after year?’” She won, and after she won, she joined with her colleagues to spend $13 million more on election administration and to allow residents to vote at whichever polling place was convenient for them on Election Day, even if it wasn’t the location they’d been assigned.Protecting democracy by supporting county supervisors or small-town mayors — particularly ones who fit the politics of more conservative communities — can feel like being diagnosed with heart failure and being told the best thing to do is to double-check your tax returns and those of all your neighbors.“If you want to fight for the future of American democracy, you shouldn’t spend all day talking about the future of American democracy,” Wikler said. “These local races that determine the mechanics of American democracy are the ventilation shaft in the Republican death star. These races get zero national attention. They hardly get local attention. Turnout is often lower than 20 percent. That means people who actually engage have a superpower. You, as a single dedicated volunteer, might be able to call and knock on the doors of enough voters to win a local election.”Or you can simply win one yourself. That’s what Gabriella Cázares-Kelly did. Cázares-Kelly, a member of the Tohono O’odham Nation, agreed to staff a voter registration booth at the community college where she worked, in Pima County, Ariz. She was stunned to hear the stories of her students. “We keep blaming students for not participating, but it’s really complicated to get registered to vote if you don’t have a license, the nearest D.M.V. is an hour and a half away and you don’t own a car,” she told me.Cázares-Kelly learned that much of the authority over voter registration fell to an office neither she nor anyone around her knew much about: the County Recorder’s Office, which has authority over records ranging from deeds to voter registrations. It had powers she’d never considered. It could work with the postmaster’s office to put registration forms in tribal postal offices — or not. When it called a voter to verify a ballot and heard an answering machine message in Spanish, it could follow up in Spanish — or not.“I started contacting the records office and making suggestions and asking questions,” Cázares-Kelly said. “I did that for a long time, and the previous recorder was not very happy about it. I called so often, the staff began to know me. I didn’t have an interest in running till I heard the previous recorder was going to retire, and then my immediate thought was, ‘What if a white supremacist runs?’”So in 2020, Cázares-Kelly ran, and she won. Now she’s the county recorder for a jurisdiction with nearly a million people, and more than 600,000 registered voters, in a swing state. “One thing I was really struck by when I first started getting involved in politics is how much power there is in just showing up to things,” she said. “If you love libraries, libraries have board meetings. Go to the public meeting. See where they’re spending their money. We’re supposed to be participating. If you want to get involved, there’s always a way.”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

Dorothy Mae Adams-Streeter posed for a portrait at her 75th birthday party. Her image, floating in a brandy snifter, has a powerful resonance.On New Year’s Day, when Eric Adams was sworn in as the 110th mayor of New York City, in his right hand he raised high above his head a framed portrait of his mother, Dorothy Mae Adams-Streeter, pictured in a brandy snifter. His left hand rested over her Bible, where she kept notes, letters and old pictures.“I was raising my right hand, lifting her up, as she lifted me up,” Mr. Adams said in an interview. “Who would think that eventually, because of what she instilled in her son, that he would be in Times Square, being sworn in as the mayor and holding up her photo?”The brandy snifter portrait is as American as hip-hop, acid-washed jeans and plastic-covered sofas. A photo in that style could conjure the same feelings that oversize shoulder pads or a Jheri curl would: cringe. In 2001, the motif was spoofed by “Saturday Night Live” in a skit that featured Alec Baldwin and Jimmy Fallon, called “Put It in a Brandy Snifter.”But in the 1980s and 1990s, the brandy snifter photo was an innovative, attainable luxury, and it became ubiquitous in some communities. Its cultural significance is closely tied to the ambitions of the American working class.Mr. Adams’s tribute to his mother also honored the countless other people who see that image and immediately recognize and identify with it, as I did. In 1995, my siblings and I had our own brandy snifter portraits taken at our local CTown supermarket on 135th Street and Broadway.I wore my peach Easter dress from earlier that year. My mother tied my hair in a ponytail and curled my bangs to the side. My siblings wore polo shirts. The day before, I had applied a glow-in-the-dark, temporary tattoo I got in a box of Rude Dudes bubble gum to my cheek. My face has never been scrubbed harder than Mom scrubbed it clean that day.We had to be spotless. The front of our CTown turned into a photo studio only once a year, from what I remember.The makeshift studio where a photographer from Sears took our portraits was in an entryway where the shopping carts were usually stored, my mother told me recently. The backdrop was light blue, and the area smelled like bread. When we got the photos back some time later, our small cherubic faces were trapped in brandy snifters and adhered onto a plaque made from a composite that resembled wood. Mom still keeps the plaque on her dresser.The writer, Sandra E. Garcia, was a little girl when a brandy snifter portrait of her was taken at a supermarket in Harlem.Photo illustration by Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesWhile now it might seem crass to place the portrait of a child in an image of a brandy snifter, for my mother it was an opportunity to provide us with something that she never had: a photo shoot.I have never seen photos of my parents as children. During their youth, cameras and photos were not in reach for the poor in the Dominican Republic, where they were raised. It was important for my mother to capture us professionally in this way. The portraits were her aspirations for her children to have more than she did, manifested in a photo.It is the same ambition, that of Black and immigrant working-class communities, the heart of the Democratic base and New York City, that won Mr. Adams the mayoral election last year. The photo illustrates what he told voters during his victory speech: “I am you. After years of praying and hoping and struggling and working, we are headed to City Hall.”The choice to hold that photo while he was sworn in was more than a salute to his mother; it was a knowing nod to the communities that have been sometimes shut out by city government but continue to toil for progress.“I wanted everyone to look at that photo and think about their parents and see that we all want the same thing,” Mr. Adams said.Earlier this week, Mr. Adams was criticized for calling low-wage workers “low- skill workers.” The mayor later said that his critics had distorted his message. On Twitter, he reminded those who were offended by his comments that he was once a low-wage worker.“I was a cook. I was a dishwasher. If nobody came to my restaurant when I was in college, I wouldn’t have been able to survive,” he wrote.Mayor Adams carried his mother’s portrait as he voted on Election Day in November.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesIt is that part of his identity that is connected to these simple, antiquated portraits. Brandy snifter photos were a special occasion, something to get dressed up for.At a celebration of her 75th birthday in 2013, Dorothy Mae Adams-Streeter, then a retired housekeeper, arrived, dressed to the nines in a bone-colored blazer with a black trim and a silver tiara atop her head.Inside the Sugar Hill Restaurant & Supper Club on Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn, they served smothered chicken, ribs, cornbread, collard greens with smoked turkey and macaroni and cheese. The O’Jays played from speakers, according to Aaron Freeman, who now runs the restaurant that his father, Eddie Freeman, opened in 1942.“She welcomed everybody with open arms,” Aaron Freeman said. “As you can see, she’s just the rock of the family.”In her portrait, her smile, captured that evening, is one of delight.“I remember the day like yesterday,” Mr. Adams said. “She cleaned houses and did all sorts of work just to make sure she could provide for her children. To be able to take a day and do for her was a great moment.”Incoming N.Y.C. Mayor Eric Adams’s New AdministrationCard 1 of 7Schools Chancellor: David Banks. More

A memo by New York City’s new police leader sharply questioned Manhattan’s new district attorney over his strategy for prosecuting crime.New York City’s new police commissioner has expressed severe dissatisfaction with the policies of the new Manhattan district attorney, sending an email to all officers late on Friday that suggests a potential rupture between City Hall and the prosecutor over their approaches to public safety.The email from Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said she was deeply troubled by policies outlined by Alvin Bragg, the district attorney, in a 10-page memo that Mr. Bragg sent to his staff on Monday. The memo instructed prosecutors to avoid seeking jail or prison time for all but the most serious crimes, and to cease charging a number of lower-level crimes.Commissioner Sewell, who, like Mr. Bragg, was just a week into her job, said in her email to about 36,000 members of the department that she had studied the policies and come away “very concerned about the implications to your safety as police officers, the safety of the public and justice for the victims.”The email, which was first reported by WNBC-TV, suggests a looming conflict not just between them, but also between the new district attorney and the commissioner’s boss, Mayor Eric Adams.The collision course between the mayor and the district attorney was sketched out during the Democratic primary in the spring of 2021. Mr. Adams made a crackdown on crime one of the main themes of his campaign; Mr. Bragg, following in the path carved by a handful of prosecutors in cities around the country, pledged to help reshape the legal system, to avoid disproportionate punishment for first-time offenders or those struggling with mental health issues or poverty.In a statement on Saturday, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office said: “We share Commissioner Sewell’s call for frank and productive discussions to reach common ground on our shared mission to deliver safety and justice for all and look forward to the opportunity to clear up some misunderstandings.”“For our office, safety is paramount,” the statement said. It added that contrary to the way that Commissioner Sewell and others had interpreted parts of the memo, the office intended to charge anyone who used guns to rob stores or who assaulted police officers with felonies. “All must be held accountable for their actions,” it said.To some degree, the emerging tensions between the commissioner and Mr. Bragg reflect a broader political argument between centrist Democrats across the nation looking to soothe voters worried about crime and a movement of progressive prosecutors that has pushed for more lenient policies to make the justice system more fair and less biased.Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell has expressed serious concerns about Mr. Bragg’s policies.Hiram Durán for The New York TimesSome of those tensions are likely to play out in Albany this year in a debate over whether to scale back changes in a state bail law that went into effect two years ago, and that provoked strong reactions almost immediately.There is always an ingrained tension between the police and prosecutors that often centers on what charges to bring and, at times, whether there is sufficient evidence to make an arrest. For the police, in some measure, the job ends with handcuffs, while prosecutors are left with proving a case beyond a reasonable doubt or finding some other resolution. But such arguments do not often became public at all, let alone so early in a new administration.Mr. Adams has been complimentary about Mr. Bragg when asked about him in recent interviews, calling him a “great prosecutor” and declining to criticize the memo. Asked about the commissioner’s email, the mayor’s office responded with a statement from Stefan Ringel, a senior adviser: “The mayor has deep respect for the district attorney and looks forward to working with him and the police commissioner to make sure the streets are safe, and to discussing any concerns directly.”A police spokesman said the email “speaks for itself.”Mr. Bragg and Mr. Adams, both Democrats, have significant histories in law enforcement, and both have pledged some measure of reform. Mr. Bragg, a former federal prosecutor, stood out in a competitive primary vowing to balance safety with justice. Mr. Adams, a former police captain, has spoken out against police brutality and, while serving, pushed for changes within the department.Mr. Bragg is the first Black person to lead the district attorney’s office, Mr. Adams is the second Black mayor in the city’s history, and Commissioner Sewell is the first woman and third Black person to lead the Police Department.In his memo, Mr. Bragg instructed his prosecutors that unless they were required by law to do otherwise, they should ask judges for jail or prison time only for those who had committed serious offenses, including murder, sexual assault and major economic crimes. Others, he has said, would be directed to programs better equipped to deal with the issues that had led them to commit the crimes.The new district attorney also instructed his prosecutors not to charge a number of misdemeanors. Many of the crimes on his list already were not being prosecuted by his predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr. But Mr. Bragg directed his staff to avoid charging several misdemeanors which previously had been charged, including resisting arrest.“These policy changes not only will, in and of themselves, make us safer; they also will free up prosecutorial resources to focus on violent crime,” Mr. Bragg said in his memo.The directive on resisting arrest was among those that Commissioner Sewell expressed most concern about. She said that it would send a message to police officers and others that there was “an unwillingness to protect those who are carrying out their duties.”“I strongly believe that this policy injects debate into decisions that would otherwise be uncontroversial, will invite violence against police officers and will have deleterious effects on our relationship with the communities we protect,” she wrote.Incoming N.Y.C. Mayor Eric Adams’s New AdministrationCard 1 of 7Schools Chancellor: David Banks. More