Elections

The districts would be among the most gerrymandered in the country. The Republican-friendly seat held by Representative Adam Kinzinger, a Trump antagonist, would be eliminated.Illinois Democrats on Friday proposed a new set of highly gerrymandered congressional maps that would consolidate Democratic power in the state’s congressional delegation, most likely cutting the number of Republican seats in the state to three from five.The proposal would eliminate the Republican-friendly seat held by Representative Adam Kinzinger, a Trump antagonist and a Republican whose current district hugs the Chicago exurbs and parts of northern and central Illinois.The maps, if approved by the state’s Democrat-controlled House and Senate, would be among the most gerrymandered in the country. Two districts, designed to elect Democratic candidates, would snake across hundreds of miles of rural areas to connect small Democratic-leaning communities. And 42 of the state’s 102 counties would be split up, according to an analysis from the Princeton Gerrymandering Project.The current Illinois House delegation is made up of 13 Democrats and five Republicans. The proposal would most likely result in 14 Democrats and three Republicans. The state is losing a seat to reapportionment.State lawmakers elsewhere in the nation have also sought to maximize their partisan advantages during the once-in-a-decade redistricting process. Oregon Democrats drew just a single Republican district among the six in their state’s new map. In Texas, Republicans are aiming to press their advantage to minimize Democratic districts.The proposed 17th District of Illinois would stretch in a crescent along the state’s northwestern borders, connecting Rockford in the north to Peoria and the twin cities of Bloomington and Normal, home to Illinois State University. Driving the length of the district without leaving it would cover 332 miles.Cheri Bustos, a Democrat who is planning to retire, represents the current 17th District.The new map’s 13th District would connect the diverse suburban communities east of St. Louis, the state capital of Springfield and the college towns of Champaign and Urbana, more than three hours away by car.The proposal leaves in place one of the nation’s most crooked districts, the jaw-shaped Fourth that connects Hispanic neighborhoods on the North and South Sides of Chicago. In the mouth of the proposed Fourth District sits the Seventh, one of three districts drawn to have a plurality of Black voters.Mr. Kinzinger, a six-term congressman, has for months said he plans to seek re-election to the House and dismissed suggestions that he run for governor against the Democratic incumbent, J.B. Pritzker, or the Senate, against Senator Tammy Duckworth. But on Friday, with his home drawn into a Democrat-heavy district held by Representative Marie Newman, Mr. Kinzinger said he would consider seeking a different office.“Following the release of the new congressional maps for Illinois, my team and I will spend some time looking them over and reviewing all of the options, including those outside the House,” Mr. Kinzinger said in a statement released by his office.In a text message, Mr. Kinzinger said he was “just talking options” and declined to elaborate. More

Eric Adams, New York City’s likely next mayor, rebuked Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to scrap the current system as he prepares to leave office. Eric Adams said on Friday that he would keep New York City’s elementary school gifted and talented program if, as expected, he wins the general election for mayor next month — a clear rebuke to Mayor Bill de Blasio, who recently announced plans to eliminate the program.“There’s a new mayor next year, that mayor must evaluate how he’s going to deal with the gifted and talented program,” Mr. Adams, the Democratic nominee for mayor, said in an interview with CNN. “He can’t get rid of it until next year,” he added of Mr. de Blasio.Asked directly whether he would eliminate the gifted program, Mr. Adams replied, “no I would not, I would expand the opportunities for accelerated learning.”In another break with Mr. de Blasio, Mr. Adams said in a radio interview on Friday that he supported requiring students to receive a coronavirus vaccine to attend class — an action the mayor has steadfastly resisted over concerns it could motivate some parents to keep their children home.“I say yes, if it’s F.D.A.-approved, we should also mandate it as we mandate with other vaccinations,” Mr. Adams said in the interview, with WCBS.As to the gifted program, Mr. de Blasio said last week that he wanted to scrap the current system, including an admissions exam for 4-year-olds that has been heavily criticized, and start over with a new one that offers an accelerated education to every elementary school student. Mr. Adams has yet to release his own plan for the city’s schools, and he has reversed course previously on at least one contentious education issue. But he made it clear on Friday that he was not going to let the outgoing mayor dictate a policy that has major implications for the nation’s largest school system. And although Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president and an ally of Mr. de Blasio’s, avoided directly criticizing the mayor during the CNN interview, his comments appeared to betray some irritation that the plan had been announced barely a month before the election. Mr. de Blasio did not consult with Mr. Adams before releasing it. “There’s nothing to put back in place, because the next mayor must make the determination,” Mr. Adams said in the interview.Mr. de Blasio’s plan has elicited outrage among some parents who see the gifted program as a way of keeping their children enrolled in the public school system and as an alternative to struggling neighborhood schools. Many other families, as well as activists pushing to integrate the system, have strongly endorsed ending or overhauling the program, saying that it excludes too many Black and Latino students while weakening instruction for children in regular classes by removing strong performers.Mr. de Blasio is considering running for governor next year. Having won election in 2013 on a pledge to broadly reduce inequality in the city, he has been criticized for not doing more to reduce segregation in the schools and, more specifically, for not addressing inequities in the gifted program until the end of his tenure.About 75 percent of the 16,000 students enrolled in gifted classes are white or Asian American while 70 percent of the students in the overall system are Black and Latino, according to Department of Education data. The gifted program, which puts students on a separate academic track even before they enter the public schools, has exacerbated segregation in the city’s schools. Mr. Adams acknowledged the problem on Friday.“The gifted and talented program was isolated only to certain communities,” he said. “That created segregation in our classrooms.” Mr. Adams also said on CNN that all children should be assessed to determine whether accelerated classes were right for them. But he said such assessments would be a part of a broader plan to evaluate all students frequently, not just for academic strengths but also for challenges that might cause them to struggle in school. “We’re focusing on the gifted students,” he said. “They are going to be all right. How come we’re not focusing on those children with dyslexia, learning disabilities? We should be testing them periodically. That feeds our prison population. Fifty-five percent of Rikers inmates have learning disabilities.”Mr. Adams’s aides said he was considering delaying or altering next year’s test for screening 4-year-olds for the gifted program, and then seeking broader changes to the program the following year. His transition team will announce more details after the election, according to a person with direct knowledge of the work who was authorized to discuss it publicly. At the moment, there is no contract for administering a gifted exam in 2022 because an advisory board rejected the last one in a surprise decision. If Mr. Adams wanted to restore the test, he would need approval from the panel, which could again reject the contract.He would also have to move very quickly: If elected, he would take office on Jan. 1. His Republican opponent, Curtis Sliwa, has said that he would keep the gifted program.Under Mr. de Blasio’s plan, New York City would no longer admit rising kindergarten students into separate gifted classes or schools starting next fall. Instead, the city would train all of its roughly 4,000 kindergarten teachers to accommodate students who need accelerated instruction within their general education classrooms. Students who are already enrolled in the program would be allowed to finish, and the program would be phased out over five years.The National Association for Gifted Children criticized Mr. de Blasio’s plan in a recent statement, but praised his action on the test. The association said it was “supportive of the mayor’s plan to eliminate the one-size-fits-all standardized test to identify gifted students, as it often fails to recognize a significant number of Black, Brown and impoverished gifted students.” Many parents, including those whose children are enrolled in gifted classes or who support the program, have said the test causes unnecessary anxiety for young children, and has benefited some wealthy parents who can pay for test preparation for their 4-year-olds. Mr. Adams has been clear throughout the campaign that he did not plan to eliminate the gifted program. But he has appeared to take clear positions on education issues before, only to change his mind. As Brooklyn borough president, he was among the strongest supporters of a plan to eliminate the high-stakes admissions exam for the city’s so-called specialized high schools. The schools enroll tiny numbers of Black and Latino students, something that Mr. Adams has said infuriates him. A few weeks after standing alongside Mr. de Blasio to call for an end to the test, Mr. Adams reversed his position amid an outcry from some parents. He now says he wants to keep the exam in place. Researchers who study gifted education, including those who support the city’s current program, have said Mr. Adams’s call to expanding gifted classes would do little to diversify the program unless fundamental changes are made to the admissions process. Gifted programs in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods all but disappeared in many parts of the city after former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg introduced a citywide test-based threshold for admission into gifted classes. Today, there are nearly twice as many gifted programs in Manhattan’s District 2, one of the city’s whitest and wealthiest districts, as there are in all of the Bronx, the city’s poorest borough. In order to change that dynamic, Mr. Adams would almost certainly have to make big changes to the admissions system. Mr. de Blasio defended his plan during a radio appearance on Friday, although he was not asked about Mr. Adams’s comments. The current system, he said, is “incredibly exclusive and unhelpful.” Emma G. Fitzsimmons contributed reporting. More

Though the state is getting bluer, voters’ exhaustion is imperiling the former governor’s comeback attempt against his Republican rival, Glenn Youngkin.RICHMOND, Va. — Terry McAuliffe doesn’t do subtext well.So when Mr. McAuliffe appeared on “Morning Joe” on MSNBC this week, it wasn’t long before the Democrat let slip the biggest challenge he’s facing next month in his bid to reclaim Virginia’s governorship. “People got to understand, Joe, this is about turnout,” he told the show’s co-host, Joe Scarborough.Mr. McAuliffe could be forgiven for effectively reading his stage directions out loud. While he is running against a self-funding, and hazily defined, Republican, polls and interviews show that Mr. McAuliffe is confronting an equally daunting obstacle: Democratic apathy.With former President Donald Trump out of office, congressional Democrats in a bitter standoff and Virginia Democrats having claimed every political prize, Mr. McAuliffe is straining to motivate the liberal voters in his increasingly blue state.At the moment — one that is being watched closely by both parties for clues about the elections next year — he is bumping up against a fatigued electorate.Virginia has elections every year, because its state campaigns are in odd-numbered years while its federal elections are, as everywhere, in even years. But voters here are drained from the Trump administration’s round-the-clock drama, which they felt more acutely because of their proximity to Washington, where the local news is also national news.Then there is the 19-month fog of Covid-19, which has not only disrupted jobs, schools and daily life but also diverted attention from state politics — which had already been dimmed by the decline of local news outlets and eclipsed by national political news.“A lot of folks are dealing with so many other things, I’m not sure that the broader community knows this is taking place, or that it’s rising to the level of importance,” said Sean Miller, who runs the Boys & Girls Club in a largely Black part of Richmond and who gave Mr. McAuliffe a tour of his center this week.Mr. McAuliffe’s former education secretary, Anne Holton — the daughter of one former governor and the wife of another — was more succinct.“People are a little exhausted,” Ms. Holton said after a round-table discussion about education in Alexandria. Still, she predicted “very high turnout.”Mr. McAuliffe, in his well-caffeinated way, is doing all he can to sound the alarm.He is stepping up his appearances on national cable news programs and summoning the biggest names in his party to cross the Potomac. Former President Barack Obama is coming to Virginia later this month, President Biden is expected soon after, and a parade of other surrogates, including Vice President Kamala Harris, are also on the way.The once and potentially future governor, who by state law could not run for re-election after his term ended in 2018, is also trying to rouse complacent Democrats by amping up his rhetoric against his Republican rival, Glenn Youngkin.Just as Gov. Gavin Newsom of California did before his larger-than-expected recall victory last month, Mr. McAuliffe is calling Democrats to the barricades by warning that Mr. Youngkin would build a liberal house of horrors in Virginia: Texas’ abortion laws, Florida’s Covid policies and, most ominous of all, Mr. Trump’s rebirth.“We cannot let Trump off the mat — his comeback is not starting in Virginia,” Mr. McAuliffe told reporters outside Fairfax County’s main early-voting site on Wednesday. Then he paused for just a moment before adding, “Only if Democrats get out and vote.”Democratic leadership in the state has loosened voting access so any resident can vote in person or by mail from Sept. 17 to Oct. 30.Win Mcnamee/Getty ImagesA pro-business Democrat with an unparalleled donor network, Mr. McAuliffe was seen by state Democrats as their safest choice. But with his decades of political experience as a fund-raiser and party leader, he’s not exactly a fresh face who will rally a new generation of voters to the polls.In recent weeks, he has made no effort to hide his frustration that his party’s warring factions in Congress have held up a bipartisan infrastructure bill. And his aides fear that without some good news from Washington, the race could slip away.While Mr. Biden carried the state by 10 points last year, public and private polling indicates the president’s approval rating has fallen to or below 50 percent in Virginia. Those same surveys suggest that Mr. McAuliffe and Mr. Youngkin are locked in a close race but that more of Mr. Youngkin’s voters are enthusiastic about voting compared with Mr. McAuliffe’s voters.Tellingly, though, the greater the turnout projections, the wider Mr. McAuliffe’s lead grows in the polls.That’s because of Virginia’s significant transformation from a Republican redoubt and hotbed of social rest to a multiracial archipelago of cities and suburbs that are as progressive as the rest of the country’s metropolitan areas. However, if voters in these population hubs, which are filled with immigrants and transplants, do not show up to the polls, Virginia may return a Republican to the governor’s mansion for the first time since 2009.That was also the last time Virginians went to the polls in the first year under a new Democratic president, Mr. Obama, whose approval ratings, like Mr. Biden’s today, had sagged since he was sworn in. Turnout in Virginia collapsed to the lowest level for a governor’s race in four decades.Unlike today, though, the previous unpopular Republican president, George W. Bush, had moved happily into retirement and ceded the spotlight fully to his successor.The question now is if the accelerating demographic shift in Virginia — no Republican has won a statewide race since 2009 — and Mr. Trump’s continued presence on the political scene are enough to lift Democrats even in a less than favorable environment.There are signs that those two factors could prove sufficient for Mr. McAuliffe, so long as he can galvanize Democrats in the same fashion as Mr. Newsom did.While Virginia Democrats may in some ways be victims of their own success, having claimed every major office and taken control of the legislature, their dominance has also allowed them to loosen voting laws. While other Southern states have been tightening voting access, Virginia enacted expansive early voting this year. Residents can vote in person or by mail between Sept. 17 and Oct. 30.What’s more, Northern Virginia has become increasingly hostile to Republicans. Fairfax County, the state’s most populous, split about evenly between Mr. Bush and Al Gore in 2000. Last year, Mr. Trump won just 28 percent of the vote there.Mr. Youngkin, who, like Mr. McAuliffe, lives in Fairfax, is positioned to perform far better there. But the threat of Mr. Trump’s return to the White House has clearly alarmed voters in the affluent and well-educated county.In interviews outside Fairfax’s early-voting site, every McAuliffe voter cited Mr. Trump as a reason for supporting the Democrat. Transportation, education and taxes — longtime core issues of Virginia governor’s races — were scarcely mentioned.Paul Erickson, an architect from Vienna, Va., summoned a reporter back after revealing his concerns about Mr. Trump and said in an urgent tone that he had more to share.“What I didn’t say is, for the first time in my adult life I fear for our nation,” Mr. Erickson said. “We’re tearing ourselves apart from within.”Others were less expansive but equally to the point.“I don’t like Trump, and I believe Youngkin is equal to Trump,” said Carol Myers, a retiree who, with her husband, was voting before playing a round of golf at the Army Navy Country Club in Arlington.Democrats are portraying Glenn Youngkin as a Trump clone.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesMr. Youngkin’s aides are skeptical that their candidate, whom they’ve spent tens of millions of dollars painting as an inoffensive suburban dad, can be MAGA-fied.On Thursday, though, the Republican received a reminder that Mr. Trump and his supporters are determined to make him take sides between them and Virginia’s broader, anti-Trump electorate.Mr. Youngkin had so far avoided inviting Mr. Trump to the state — and avoided a Trumpian attack for the stiff arm. But the former president called into a Virginia political rally on Wednesday night and said, “I hope Glenn gets in there.” More problematic for Mr. Youngkin, event organizers pledged allegiance to a flag that had been present at the Jan. 6 rally after which supporters of Mr. Trump attacked the Capitol.By the end of the day Thursday, Mr. Youngkin — who had skipped the rally to deny Democrats an opening to link him to Mr. Trump — issued a statement calling the use of the flag “weird and wrong.”To Mr. McAuliffe it was something else: a political gift.Mr. McAuliffe has tried to lash Mr. Youngkin to Mr. Trump, noting that he had gladly accepted the former president’s endorsement, and derides him as “a Trump wannabe,.”If that Trumpification strategy works for Mr. McAuliffe, it will most likely be replicated by other Democrats running in blue and purple states next year.In Virginia, it’s easy to understand why Democrats have gone back to the same well: Mr. Trump was a one-man turnout machine for them. In 2019, when only state House and Senate races were on the ballot, turnout reached almost the same level as in 2013, when Mr. McAuliffe won the governorship. During the 2018 congressional midterms, when Virginia Democrats picked up two House seats, turnout was at nearly 60 percent. Four years earlier, in a pre-Trump midterm, turnout here was less than 42 percent.In Richmond’s Black community, Mr. Trump is still on the minds of some voters.“It’s crazy to think that a president that lost still has such a hold on a certain group of people,” said Herman Baskerville, who owns Big Herm’s restaurant in the city’s historic Jackson Ward.Standing outside his restaurant as dusk fell on quiet streets, however, Mr. Baskerville was more focused on the slowdown in foot traffic around Richmond during the coronavirus pandemic. Fewer people working in their offices has meant fewer customers.“Many of us feel like we’re near normal, but there are a lot of folks who are still suffering,” said Mayor Levar Stoney of Richmond. Then Mr. Stoney, a protégé of Mr. McAuliffe’s, got back on message.“My fear is, the policies you see in Florida and Texas, that could take Virginia backwards,” he said. More

The House select committee investigating the Capitol riot will vote next week to recommend a criminal contempt of Congress charge against Stephen K. Bannon after he defied a subpoena.WASHINGTON — The chairman of the House inquiry into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said the committee would move next week to recommend that Stephen K. Bannon, a former top adviser to President Donald J. Trump, face criminal contempt charges for refusing to cooperate with its investigation.The move would escalate what is shaping up to be a major legal battle between the select committee and the former president over access to crucial witnesses and documents that could shed light on what precipitated the assault, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol and disrupted Congress’s formal count of the votes that confirmed President Biden’s election.The fight will test how far Congress will be able to go in pressing forward on the investigation in the face of stonewalling by the former president. Should the House ultimately approve the referral, as expected, the Justice Department would decide whether to accept it and pursue a criminal case.So far, the Biden administration has taken the unusual step of refusing to honor Mr. Trump’s claims of executive privilege, which can shield White House deliberations or documents involving the president from disclosure.Mr. Bannon informed the panel last week that he would defy a subpoena, in accordance with a directive from Mr. Trump, who has told former aides and advisers that they should not cooperate because the information requested is privileged.“Mr. Bannon has declined to cooperate with the select committee and is instead hiding behind the former president’s insufficient, blanket and vague statements regarding privileges he has purported to invoke,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said in a statement.The committee, which is controlled by Democrats, will consider the referral on Tuesday and is all but certain to agree to it. That would send the criminal contempt citation to the full House, where Democrats have the votes to approve it. The matter would then be sent to the Justice Department with a recommendation that officials pursue a legal case against Mr. Bannon.The cumbersome procedure reflects a challenging reality that Democrats are grappling with as they delve deeper into the Jan. 6 inquiry. Congress is a legislative body, not a law enforcement entity, and its ability to compel cooperation and punish wrongdoing on its own is inherently limited. Its investigative tools are only as powerful as the courts decide, and the process of waging legal fights to secure crucial information and witnesses is likely to be a prolonged one.Robert J. Costello, a lawyer for Mr. Bannon, said in a letter to the committee on Wednesday that his client would not produce documents or testimony “until such time as you reach an agreement with President Trump” on claims of executive privilege “or receive a court ruling.”The case of Mr. Bannon is particularly tricky because he has not been an executive branch official since he left the White House in 2017, and any conversations he may have had with Mr. Trump pertaining to Jan. 6 are likely to have fallen outside the former president’s official duties.No court has definitively said whether conversations with private citizens are covered by executive privilege, which is generally extended in relation to conversations or documents that pertain to presidential duties.“Privilege for a private citizen, who was potentially talking about things outside of the president’s official duties, has never been tested in court,” said Jonathan D. Shaub, a law professor at the University of Kentucky who worked at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.Even as it moves aggressively against Mr. Bannon, the panel has taken a different approach to two other advisers to Mr. Trump who have so far declined to comply with its subpoenas but have not stonewalled the inquiry entirely.Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, and Kash Patel, a former Pentagon chief of staff, were also summoned to sit for depositions this week, but they are not yet facing contempt citations for failing to do so.The committee said it was in communication with Mr. Meadows and Mr. Patel, and a person with knowledge of those talks said that lawmakers were likely to grant them a delay before testifying. Dan Scavino Jr., a former White House deputy chief of staff under Mr. Trump, was served with his subpoena last week.For years while Mr. Trump was president, administration officials refused to comply with congressional subpoenas, thumbing their noses at Democratic lawmakers on matters from election interference to census questions. Democrats, in turn, opted not to try to press their claims in court, concluding that the process would be too time-consuming to be effective, particularly in the case of Mr. Trump’s impeachment.Now that he has left office, Democrats and Mr. Biden’s Justice Department must decide how aggressive they want to be in waging legal battles to insist on congressional prerogatives. That includes the question of whether to try to compel cooperation in the investigation from Mr. Trump himself, which Mr. Thompson has repeatedly said was possible, but which raises legal and logistical challenges that many Democrats privately say make it unlikely.Under federal law, any person summoned as a congressional witness who refuses to comply can face a misdemeanor charge that carries a fine of $100 to $100,000 and a jail sentence of one month to one year.But the Justice Department has generally refrained from prosecuting executive branch officials when they have refused to comply with subpoenas, and Congress has voted to hold them in contempt, according to a 2019 Congressional Research Service report.Justice Department legal opinions from 1984 and 2008 say that the department will not prosecute officials for complying with a president’s formal assertion of privilege over conversations or documents.In 2015, the Justice Department under President Barack Obama said it would not seek criminal contempt charges against Lois Lerner, a former I.R.S. official; and in 2019, the department under Mr. Trump made a similar decision, rebuffing Congress on behalf of Attorney General William P. Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.The last person charged with criminal contempt of Congress, Rita M. Lavelle, a former federal environmental official under President Ronald Reagan, was found not guilty in 1983 of failing to appear at a congressional subcommittee hearing. She was later sentenced to jail for lying to Congress.Jeffrey S. Robbins, a former federal prosecutor and a partner at the law firm Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr, said under different circumstances, the committee might face an uphill battle enforcing the subpoena: if the Justice Department were still under Mr. Trump, Congress were in Republican hands, or there were a reasonable argument — such as protecting national security — for invoking executive privilege. In this case, Mr. Robbins said, none of those circumstances existed.“It’s open contempt of a subpoena without an apparent basis,” said Mr. Robbins, who teaches a course on congressional investigations at Brown University. He called the invocation of executive privilege “patently bogus,” adding, “It’s difficult to imagine it will not be referred for prosecution.”Once Congress votes to hold Mr. Bannon in contempt, the next step would be to refer the matter to the U.S. attorney in Washington. If the White House determines that no claim of executive privilege applies, the U.S. attorney’s office would then decide whether to bring the case before a grand jury, in consultation with top Justice Department officials.But if Mr. Bannon were to sue over the issue, the Justice Department would most likely follow past practice and wait for the courts to resolve the lawsuit before bringing the contempt charge before a grand jury, Mr. Shaub said.In letters transmitting its subpoenas to Mr. Bannon and the three former Trump administration officials, the committee said it was seeking information about the president’s actions in the run-up to and during the riot.Mr. Bannon reportedly communicated with Mr. Trump on Dec. 30 and urged him to focus his efforts on Jan. 6, the committee said. He was also present at a meeting at the Willard Hotel in Washington the day before the violence, when plans were discussed to try to overturn the results of the election the next day, the committee stated. Mr. Bannon was quoted as saying, “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow.”On Wednesday, the committee also issued a subpoena to Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who was involved in Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. The committee’s action came the same day it heard lengthy closed-door testimony from Jeffrey A. Rosen, the former acting attorney general, who has testified publicly and privately about the final days of the Trump administration, when the former president was pressing top officials to use the Justice Department to advance false claims of election fraud.In private testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Rosen said that Mr. Clark had told him that Mr. Trump was getting ready to fire Mr. Rosen and endorse Mr. Clark’s strategy of pursuing conspiracy theories about the hacking of voting booths and fraud.“Well, I don’t get to be fired by someone who works for me,” Mr. Rosen said he told Mr. Clark. More

Andrew G. McCabe, the former F.B.I. deputy director, will receive his pension and other benefits after settling his lawsuit with the Justice Department.WASHINGTON — Hours before he was scheduled to retire in 2018, Andrew G. McCabe, then the F.B.I.’s deputy director, was fired by the Justice Department, depriving him of his pension and prompting cheers from President Donald J. Trump, who had been hounding him over his role in the Russia investigation.On Thursday, the department reversed Mr. McCabe’s firing, settling a lawsuit he filed asserting that he was dismissed for political reasons. Under the settlement, Mr. McCabe, 53, will be able to officially retire, receive his pension and other benefits, and get about $200,000 in missed pension payments.In addition, the department agreed to expunge any mention of his firing from F.B.I. personnel records. The agreement even made clear that he would receive the cuff links given to senior executives and a plaque with his mounted F.B.I. credentials and badge.The Justice Department did not admit any wrongdoing. But the settlement amounted to a rejection by the Biden administration of how Mr. McCabe’s case had been handled under Mr. Trump, who perceived Mr. McCabe as one of his so-called deep-state enemies and repeatedly attacked him. A notice of the lawsuit’s dismissal was also filed in federal court.“Politics should never play a role in the fair administration of justice and Civil Service personnel decisions,” Mr. McCabe said in a statement. “I hope that this result encourages the men and women of the F.B.I. to continue to protect the American people by standing up for the truth and doing their jobs without fear of political retaliation.”Mr. McCabe thanked his lawyers at the firm of Arnold & Porter, who will receive more than $500,000 in legal fees paid by the government. The firm intends to donate the money to its foundation, which provides scholarships to minority law students, among other things.“What happened to Andrew was a travesty, not just for him and his family, but the rule of law,” said Murad Hussain, one of Mr. McCabe’s lawyers. “We filed this suit to restore his retirement benefits, restore his reputation and take a stand for the rights of all civil servants, and that’s exactly what this settlement does.”The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Jeff Sessions, the attorney general at the time, fired Mr. McCabe on March 16, 2018, after the department’s inspector general said Mr. McCabe had lied repeatedly about a leak to a newspaper about Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. The case was referred to prosecutors, who ultimately decided not to charge Mr. McCabe with making false statements to a law enforcement officer.Mr. Sessions acted a day before Mr. McCabe’s retirement was set to take effect, and after months of public criticism of Mr. McCabe by Mr. Trump.With the lawsuit resolved, the Justice Department and F.B.I. avoid the risk that moving toward a trial could produce embarrassing information through the discovery process and depositions. In September 2020, a federal judge rejected the department’s efforts to dismiss the case, allowing the litigation to move forward.Mr. McCabe’s lawyers had planned to question the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, and his former deputy, David L. Bowdich. The lawyers would have also grilled Mr. Sessions and his deputy at the time, Rod J. Rosenstein, as well as others, including the department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz.Mr. McCabe and his lawyers had argued that he was fired because he refused to swear loyalty to the president at the time. He also had been part of F.B.I. leadership that opened an investigation into whether any Trump campaign associates had conspired with Russia in the 2016 presidential election. Mr. Trump repeatedly called the inquiry a witch hunt and fired the F.B.I. director at the time, James B. Comey, after expressing his fury about the investigation.Mr. Trump had urged the Justice Department to get rid of Mr. McCabe. After the news media reported in December 2017 that Mr. McCabe planned to retire, Mr. Trump said on Twitter that “FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!”Mr. McCabe, a graduate of Duke University and of Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, joined the F.B.I. in 1996 as an agent in the New York office and quickly climbed the bureau’s ranks. Mr. Comey appointed Mr. McCabe deputy director in 2016, putting him in charge of operations as the bureau’s senior most agent.Mr. McCabe’s rise in the bureau took a vertiginous turn in January 2018 when Mr. Wray demoted Mr. McCabe without telling him why. Mr. McCabe then elected to take leave until March, when he was eligible for retirement.Nearly a month after he was fired, the inspector general released his findings, issuing a report on Mr. McCabe’s conduct, saying he had failed to be completely honest in answering questions about his role in the news media leak about the Clinton case.Mr. McCabe sued over his dismissal, saying he was a victim of political retaliation. In the suit, he said that Mr. Sessions, Mr. Wray and others “served as Trump’s personal enforcers rather than the nation’s highest law enforcement officials, catering to Trump’s unlawful whims instead of honoring their oaths to uphold the Constitution.”Firing Mr. McCabe “was a critical element of Trump’s plan and scheme” to rid the F.B.I. and Justice Department of those deemed not loyal to the president, his lawsuit said. Mr. McCabe accused the department of retaliation and terminating him for political reasons, which violated agency policies. Mr. McCabe’s lawyer also argued that as a career civil servant, Mr. McCabe should have been given 30 days’ notice before he was fired.Indeed, a series of emails raised questions about whether Mr. McCabe’s firing was fast tracked by the F.B.I. or Justice Department. The emails were obtained by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW.Just after noon on March 5, 2018, Candice M. Will, who oversaw the termination effort for the F.B.I.’s Office of Professional Responsibility, emailed Mr. Rosenstein to let him know that her office had completed its review and was preparing a recommendation.Later that same day, Ms. Will then emailed Mr. Bowdich: “I let the Dept know that we are doing what should be done, not slow walking — we are following the established procedures.”He responded that they would be “second guessed by some every step of the way however this ends up.”Why Ms. Will made the comment about “slow walking” is not publicly known, but Mr. McCabe’s lawyers intended to find out and depose her if the case had moved forward.On March 7, Ms. Will recommended that Mr. McCabe be fired over the inspector general’s report. In a handwritten note accompanying the recommendation, she advised Mr. Wray and Mr. Bowdich: “It seems unlikely that this will reach final resolution before Mr. McCabe’s March 18 retirement date.” But, she said, it was up to the deputy attorney general.She spoke later that day to a top aide of Mr. Rosenstein, which seemed to set off a flurry of activity — including meetings and sensitive calls — among senior department officials scrambling to make sure Mr. McCabe was fired before his planned retirement date. In one instance, Steven A. Engel, the head of the department’s office of legal counsel, emailed one of Mr. Rosenstein’s aides with the F.B.I. guidelines for removing a senior bureau official.After Mr. McCabe was fired, Mr. Trump celebrated on Twitter, calling it “a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI — A great day for Democracy.” More

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Share of Election-Related Posts on Social Platforms Linking to Videos Making Claims of Fraud
Source: Center for Social Media and Politics at New York UniversityBy The New York TimesYouTube’s stricter policies against election misinformation was followed by sharp drops in the prevalence of false and misleading videos on Facebook and Twitter, according to new research released on Thursday, underscoring the video service’s power across social media.Researchers at the Center for Social Media and Politics at New York University found a significant rise in election fraud YouTube videos shared on Twitter immediately after the Nov. 3 election. In November, those videos consistently accounted for about one-third of all election-related video shares on Twitter. The top YouTube channels about election fraud that were shared on Twitter that month came from sources that had promoted election misinformation in the past, such as Project Veritas, Right Side Broadcasting Network and One America News Network.But the proportion of election fraud claims shared on Twitter dropped sharply after Dec. 8. That was the day YouTube said it would remove videos that promoted the unfounded theory that widespread errors and fraud changed the outcome of the presidential election. By Dec. 21, the proportion of election fraud content from YouTube that was shared on Twitter had dropped below 20 percent for the first time since the election.The proportion fell further after Jan. 7, when YouTube announced that any channels that violated its election misinformation policy would receive a “strike,” and that channels that received three strikes in a 90-day period would be permanently removed. By Inauguration Day, the proportion was around 5 percent.The trend was replicated on Facebook. A postelection surge in sharing videos containing fraud theories peaked at about 18 percent of all videos on Facebook just before Dec. 8. After YouTube introduced its stricter policies, the proportion fell sharply for much of the month, before rising slightly before the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. The proportion dropped again, to 4 percent by Inauguration Day, after the new policies were put in place on Jan. 7.To reach their findings, researchers collected a random sampling of 10 percent of all tweets each day. They then isolated tweets that linked to YouTube videos. They did the same for YouTube links on Facebook, using a Facebook-owned social media analytics tool, CrowdTangle.From this large data set, the researchers filtered for YouTube videos about the election broadly, as well as about election fraud using a set of keywords like “Stop the Steal” and “Sharpiegate.” This allowed the researchers to get a sense of the volume of YouTube videos about election fraud over time, and how that volume shifted in late 2020 and early 2021.Misinformation on major social networks has proliferated in recent years. YouTube in particular has lagged behind other platforms in cracking down on different types of misinformation, often announcing stricter policies several weeks or months after Facebook and Twitter. In recent weeks, however, YouTube has toughened its policies, such as banning all antivaccine misinformation and suspending the accounts of prominent antivaccine activists, including Joseph Mercola and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Ivy Choi, a YouTube spokeswoman, said that YouTube was the only major online platform with a presidential election integrity policy. “We also raised up authoritative content for election-related search queries and reduced the spread of harmful election-related misinformation,” she said.Megan Brown, a research scientist at the N.Y.U. Center for Social Media and Politics, said it was possible that after YouTube banned the content, people could no longer share the videos that promoted election fraud. It is also possible that interest in the election fraud theories dropped considerably after states certified their election results.But the bottom line, Ms. Brown said, is that “we know these platforms are deeply interconnected.” YouTube, she pointed out, has been identified as one of the most-shared domains across other platforms, including in both of Facebook’s recently released content reports and N.Y.U.’s own research.“It’s a huge part of the information ecosystem,” Ms. Brown said, “so when YouTube’s platform becomes healthier, others do as well.” More

The Trump administration called the 47-nation council hypocritical and said it was vilifying Israel. The Biden administration says the U.S. can be more effective as a member.The United States on Thursday regained a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council, which the Trump administration abandoned in 2018 because of what it called the body’s hypocrisy and anti-Israel prejudice.In seeking to rejoin the 47-member council, the Biden administration, which has taken a far more supportive stance toward the United Nations than its predecessor, argued that American interests would be better served if the United States were a member seeking change from within.The United States won a three-year term for one of 18 open seats on the council, starting in January, in a vote by the 193-member General Assembly.Based in Geneva, the council is regarded as the world’s most important human rights body. While it has no criminal enforcement or sanctioning powers, the council can undertake investigations that help shape the global image of countries. It can also exert influence on their behavior if they are deemed to have poor rights records.But the council has a wide array of critics who argue that many of its elected members are human-rights abusers themselves, pointing to examples like China, Russia, Cuba and Venezuela. The presence of such countries on the council, critics say, undercuts the legitimacy of its work.Many also object to a permanent item on the council’s agenda concerning rights abuses in the Palestinian territories, which has become the basis for its numerous resolutions condemning Israel.The Biden administration’s success at rejoining the council may now bring about a test of its stated goal of strengthening America’s human-rights advocacy around the world. Many conservative Republicans opposed rejoining, and there is no guarantee that the United States will not withdraw from the council again, should a Republican win the White House back in 2024.“The Council provides a forum where we can have open discussions about ways we and our partners can improve,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, who announced the intent to rejoin the council in February, said Thursday after the election results.“At the same time, it also suffers from serious flaws, including disproportionate attention on Israel and the membership of several states with egregious human rights records,” he said. “Together, we must push back against attempts to subvert the ideals upon which the Human Rights Council was founded.”Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke by video message to the United Nations Human Rights Council last year.United Nations, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAs if to underscore the challenges cited by Mr. Blinken, several countries with poor or questionable human-rights records also won seats on the council on Thursday, among them Cameroon, Eritrea, the United Arab Emirates and Honduras.With its return to the Human Rights Council, the Biden administration further reversed its predecessor’s moves toward American isolationism.President Biden has revived U.S. membership in the World Health Organization, re-entered the Paris climate accord and restored funding to U.N. agencies that had been cut. Those agencies include the United Nations Population Fund, a leading supplier of maternal health and family planning services, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which assists Palestinians classified as refugees.Despite the revived U.S. engagement, diplomats and rights groups in Geneva did not foresee an easy return to the kind of influence wielded by the United States at the Human Rights Council during President Barack Obama’s tenure.The United States faces a more assertive China that is pushing back aggressively at criticism of its repression in the Xinjiang region and is pressuring economically vulnerable countries into supporting initiatives that shift attention away from civil and political rights.The United States, by contrast, is short of diplomatic staff in Geneva to promote its human rights agenda. President Biden’s chosen ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva is still awaiting congressional confirmation, and he has yet to nominate an ambassador to the Human Rights Council.Under the voting system for open seats in the Human Rights Council, slates of candidates are divided into five geographic regions, and any member of the General Assembly is eligible to run except those completing two consecutive terms on the council. Voting is by secret ballot. A simple majority of 97 votes is needed to win. In cases where the number of candidates exceeds the number of open seats, the biggest vote-getter wins.This year, however, the number of candidates from each region equaled the number of that region’s open seats, meaning none of the seats were contested. Rights groups outside the United Nations called that part of the problem.“The absence of competition in this year’s Human Rights Council vote makes a mockery of the word ‘election,’” Louis Charbonneau, the U.N. director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement ahead of the vote. “Electing serious rights abusers like Cameroon, Eritrea and the U.A.E. sends a terrible signal that U.N. member states aren’t serious about the council’s fundamental mission to protect human rights.”The other newly elected or re-elected members included Gambia, Benin and Somalia from the African group; Qatar, Kazakhstan, India and Malaysia from the Asian group; Argentina and Paraguay from the Latin America and Caribbean group; Luxembourg and Finland from the Western group; and Lithuania and Montenegro from the Eastern Europe group.Nick Cumming-Bruce contributed reporting from Geneva, and Lara Jakes from Washington. More