Elections

The committee asked for testimony and documents from the little-known former official who pressed his colleagues to pursue Donald J. Trump’s election fraud claims.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot issued a subpoena on Wednesday to Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official under President Donald J. Trump who was involved in Mr. Trump’s frenzied efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.The subpoena seeks testimony and records from Mr. Clark, a little-known official who repeatedly pushed his colleagues at the Justice Department to help Mr. Trump undo his loss. The panel’s focus on him indicates that it is deepening its scrutiny of the root causes of the attack, which disrupted a congressional session called to count the electoral votes formalizing President Biden’s victory.“The select committee needs to understand all the details about efforts inside the previous administration to delay the certification of the 2020 election and amplify misinformation about the election results,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the committee chairman, said in a statement. “We need to understand Mr. Clark’s role in these efforts at the Justice Department and learn who was involved across the administration.”The subpoena was the 19th issued in the House inquiry, and it came as the panel braced for a potential legal battle with at least one prospective witness, Stephen K. Bannon, a former adviser to Mr. Trump who has refused to cooperate. The leaders of the committee threatened last week to seek criminal charges against Mr. Bannon in response.Robert J. Costello, a lawyer for Mr. Bannon, did not back down in a letter to the committee on Wednesday, reiterating 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.”On Wednesday, Mr. Thompson said the panel “expects Mr. Clark to cooperate fully with our investigation.”The Senate Judiciary Committee said last week that there was credible evidence that Mr. Clark was involved in efforts to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power, citing his proposal to deliver a letter to state legislators in Georgia and others encouraging them to delay certification of election results.The Senate committee also said Mr. Clark recommended holding a news conference announcing that the Justice Department was investigating allegations of voter fraud, in line with Mr. Trump’s repeated demands, despite a lack of evidence of any fraud. Both proposals were rejected by senior leaders in the department.The New York Times reported in January that Mr. Clark also discussed with Mr. Trump a plan to oust the acting attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, and wield the department’s power to force state lawmakers in Georgia to overturn its presidential election results. Mr. Clark denied the account, which was based on the accounts of four former Trump administration officials who asked not to be named because of fear of retaliation.The House panel’s subpoena requires Mr. Clark to produce records and testify at a deposition on Oct. 29.Last week, the committee issued subpoenas to organizers of the “Stop the Steal” rally that took place on the grounds of the Capitol before the violence. The panel has issued subpoenas to 11 others associated with the rallies as well as four allies of Mr. Trump it believes were in communication with him before and during the attack.Maggie Haberman More

A wide range of parties in the Czech Republic banded together despite their differences to oppose Andrej Babis, the country’s populist prime minister. Opposition parties in Hungary are hoping to duplicate the feat.ROZDROJOVICE, Czech Republic — Marie Malenova, a Czech pensioner in a tidy, prosperous village in South Moravia, had not voted since 1989, the year her country held its first free elections after more than four decades of communist rule.Last Friday, however, she decided to cast a vote again, an event so unusual that her disbelieving family recorded her change of heart, taking photographs of her slipping her ballot into a big white box at the village hall.She said she did not much like the people she voted for, a coalition of previously divided center-right parties, describing them as “a smaller evil among all our many thieves.” But they at least had a simple and clear message: We can beat Andrej Babis, the Czech Republic’s populist, billionaire prime minister.“I wanted a change,” Ms. Malenova said, “and I wanted something that could beat Babis.”For the past decade, populists like Mr. Babis have often seemed politically invincible, rising to power across Central and Eastern Europe as part of a global trend of strongman leaders disdainful of democratic norms. But on Saturday, the seemingly unbeatable Mr. Babis was defeated because opposition parties put ideological differences aside and joined together to drive out a leader they fear has eroded the country’s democracy.Petr Fiala, center, a former political scientist and university rector who led one of two opposition coalitions, at a news conference on Saturday in Prague.EPA, via ShutterstockTheir success could have major repercussions in the region and beyond. In Hungary and in Poland, where nationalist leaders have damaged democratic institutions and sought to undermine the European Union, opposition leaders are mobilizing, trying to forge unified fronts and oust populist leaders in upcoming elections.“Populism is beatable,” said Otto Eibl, the head of the political science department at Masaryk University in Brno, the South Moravian capital. “The first step in beating a populist leader is to suppress individual egos and to compromise in the interest of bringing a change.”The biggest showdown could come in Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban has promoted himself as Europe’s standard-bearer for “illiberal democracy,” while his Fidesz party has steadily stripped away democratic checks, squeezing independent media and the judiciary. Mr. Orban has staked out right-wing political positions — including hostility to immigration, the European Union and L.G.B.T.Q. rights (if also proving adept at adopting left-wing welfare policies) — that have been emulated by his allies in Poland, the governing Law and Justice party.In recent years, champions of liberal democracy have been confounded in their efforts to battle their way back into power against nationalist leaders skilled at stoking fear and presenting themselves as saviors. Faced with well-oiled and well-financed political machines, like Mr. Orban’s Fidesz party or Mr. Babis’s party, Ano, opposition forces have been notoriously divided — until now.Prime Minister Andrej Babis after the election results were announced on Saturday in Prague.Petr David Josek/Associated PressThis weekend, six Hungarian parties will complete a weekslong opposition primary race, the first of its kind, to whittle down the list of potential contenders in every electoral district to oppose Mr. Orban’s party. The coalition includes groups ranging from nationalist conservatives to leftists, who disagree on most things but share a fervent desire to dispatch Mr. Orban.In Poland, Donald Tusk, a former prime minister and European Council president, returned to Poland this summer to rally the main opposition party and people who often do not vote, and lure support from a plethora of other opposition groups.The appeals for opposition unity have also been evident in Russia, where parliamentary elections held last month were neither free nor fair. Allies of the jailed opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny had been trying to persuade voters to rally behind a single opposition candidate in each constituency, whether they liked the candidate or not, in the name of trying to win a single seat and breaking President Vladimir V. Putin’s complete stranglehold on power.It did not work — partly because most real opposition candidates were kept off the ballot, but also because Mr. Putin’s government pressured companies to remove a “smart voting” app that the opposition was using to coordinate its campaign.Mr. Babis, right, with Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary last month in Prague.David W. Cerny/ReutersLike Mr. Putin, Europe’s populist leaders claim to be defending traditional Christian values against decadent liberals, but unlike Mr. Putin, they have to hold real elections. Until recently, they were helped by the fact that opposition parties splintered the vote, meaning that few of those parties had much chance of beating highly organized governing parties.Those governing parties have also gained significant control over media in their countries. In the Czech Republic, Mr. Babis owns a media holding company with newspapers, internet portals and other news outlets. In Hungary, Mr. Orban has placed state television and much of private media under the control of loyal allies or business cronies.Peter Kreko, the director of Political Capital, a research group in Budapest, described Hungary as “the most captured state with the most centralized media environment” in Europe. Yet he said the new mobilization by Hungary’s opposition parties could change the political dynamic there.“They have a good message: If you fight against populists, things can be different,” Mr. Kreko said.In the Czech elections, that was largely the theme. While Mr. Babis is seen as less extreme than Mr. Orban, he has alienated many people in the Czech Republic. They see him as a bully whose wealth and corporate ties have given him an inordinate amount of power.The Russian opposition politicians Aleksei A. Navalny, right, Lyubov Sobol and Ivan Zhdanov in February 2020 at a rally in Moscow.Shamil Zhumatov/ReutersMarie Jilkova, a successful anti-Babis candidate in South Moravia from one of the two coalitions of parties that came together to oppose the prime minister, said that banding together to confront Mr. Babis and his party machine “was, for us, the only way to survive — there was no alternative.”Her own party, the Christian Democrats, differs on issues like abortion and gay marriage from the more centrist parties in her coalition, so, she said, “we agreed that we would not talk about these things during the campaign.”Faced with a united bloc of center-right opponents, Mr. Babis and his Ano party veered to the right, railing against immigration and the European Union. He invited Mr. Orban to campaign with him.Since he first entered politics nearly a decade ago, Mr. Babis has been inundated with questions about his financial affairs and those of his conglomerate, Agrofert. A week before the election, documents surfaced as part of the Pandora Papers project by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists showing how he shuffled more than $20 million through offshore shell companies in 2009 to buy property in France.Experts disagree on whether the disclosure had a significant effect on the race, but the revelations clearly rattled Mr. Babis.“He was desperate to find issues that would scare people and convince them that only he could save them,” Ms. Jilkova said in an interview in Brno. “Fortunately, it didn’t work.”Nationally, the opposition coalitions won 108 of 200 seats in the Parliament, a clear majority.In Rozdrojovice, where Ms. Malenova cast her first vote since 1989, Ms. Jilkova’s coalition benefited from a high turnout and won 37.3 percent of the vote, a big jump on what its component parties got when they ran separately four years ago.Donald Tusk, a former prime minister of Poland, on Sunday in Warsaw. He has been trying to rally opposition support.Slawomir Kaminski/Agencja Gazeta Via ReutersPetr Jerousek, who runs a wine business and owns a pub in Rozdrojovice, said his customers did not usually talk much about politics, but, faced with a choice between Mr. Babis and his foes, “they sometimes got very excited in their discussion.”Mr. Jerousek was ecstatic about the final results late Saturday. “People finally opened their eyes,” he said. “They have had enough.”Petr Stransky, a former police officer who now drives a municipal bus, was despondent. “I don’t like disorder and like things to be clear in society,” he said, bemoaning Mr. Babis’s defeat at the hands of what he said was unfair ganging up by opposition parties.“When we were fighting as kids in the schoolyard it was always one against one. Five kids fighting against one was cowardly. It was clear who would win,” he said. “This election was the same. It was not fair.”The mayor of the village, Daniel Strasky, said that while he wanted to see Mr. Babis go, he did not vote because he objected to an alliance between his own party, which represents mayors and other local dignitaries, and the Pirates, a rambunctious group popular with young voters.But, he added, the loveless electoral marriage was probably worthwhile because it helped defeat Mr. Babis, whose handouts to pensioners, young rail travelers and other budget-busting measures offended the mayor’s belief in financial discipline.Mr. Strasky was also distressed by the prime minister’s anti-immigration tirades, especially because a family from Vietnam runs the village’s only food store.“I and everyone else in the village are so glad they are here,” the mayor said. “Nobody else would ever run that shop.”A demonstration on Sunday in Warsaw in support of the European Union. Poland’s governing party has long been at odds with the bloc over rule-of-law issues.Wojtek Radwanski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBenjamin Novak More

Over the 20-year period from 1970 to 1990, whites, especially those without college degrees, defected en masse from the Democratic Party. In those years, the percentage of white working class voters who identified with the Democratic Party fell to 40 percent from 60, Lane Kenworthy, a sociologist at the University of California-San Diego, wrote in “The Democrats and Working-Class Whites.”Now, three decades later, the Democratic Party continues to struggle to maintain not just a biracial but a multiracial and multiethnic coalition — keeping in mind that Democrats have not won a majority of white voters in a presidential election since Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory in 1964.There have been seven Democratic and seven Republican presidents since the end of World War II. Obstacles notwithstanding, the Democratic coalition has adapted from its former incarnation as an overwhelmingly white party with a powerful southern segregationist wing to its current incarnation: roughly 59 percent white, 19 percent Black, 13 percent Hispanic, and 8 percent Asian American and other groups.William Julius Wilson, a sociologist at Harvard, put the liberal case for the importance of a such a political alliance eloquently in “Rising Inequality and the Case for Coalition Politics”:An organized national multiracial political constituency is needed for the development and implementation of policies that will help reverse the trends of the rising inequality and ease the burdens of ordinary families.Biden won with a multiracial coalition, but even in victory, there were signs of stress.In their May 21 analysis, “What Happened in 2020,” Yair Ghitza, chief scientist at Catalist, a liberal voter data analysis firm, and Jonathan Robinson, its director of research, found that Black support for the Democratic presidential nominee fell by 3 percentage points from 2016 to 2020, and Latino support fell by eight points over the same period, from 71 to 63 percent.At the same time, whites with college degrees continued their march into the Democratic Party: “The trends all point in the same direction, i.e., a substantial portion of this constituency moving solidly toward Democrats in the Trump era.” Among these well-educated whites, the percentage voting for the Democratic nominee rose from 46 percent in 2012 to 50 percent in 2016 to 54 percent in 2020. These gains were especially strong among women, according to Catalist: “White college-educated women in particular have shifted against Trump, moving from 50 percent Democratic support in 2012 to 58 percent in 2020.”In a separate June 2021 study, “Behind Biden’s 2020 Victory,” by Ruth Igielnik, Scott Keeter and Hannah Hartig, Pew Research found thatEven as Biden held on to a majority of Hispanic voters in 2020, Trump made gains among this group overall. There was a wide educational divide among Hispanic voters: Trump did substantially better with those without a college degree than college-educated Hispanic voters (41 percent vs. 30 percent).Biden, according to Pew, made significant gains both among all suburban voters and among white suburban voters: “In 2020, Biden improved upon Clinton’s vote share with suburban voters: 45 percent supported Clinton in 2016 vs. 54 percent for Biden in 2020. This shift was also seen among White voters: Trump narrowly won White suburban voters by 4 points in 2020 (51-47); he carried this group by 16 points in 2016 (54-38).”Crucially. all these shifts reflect the continuing realignment of the electorate by level of educational attainment or so-called “learning skills,” with one big difference: Before 2020, education polarization was found almost exclusively among whites; last year it began to emerge among Hispanics and African Americans.Two Democratic strategists, Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin, both of whom publish their analyses at the Liberal Patriot website, have addressed this predicament.On Sept. 30 in “There Just Aren’t Enough College-Educated Voters!” Teixeira wrote:The perception that nonwhite working class voters are a lock for the Democrats is no longer tenable. In the 2020 election, working class nonwhites moved sharply toward Trump by 12 margin points, despite Democratic messaging that focused relentlessly on Trump’s animus toward nonwhites. According to Pew, Trump actually got 41 percent of the Hispanic working class vote in 2016. Since 2012, running against Trump twice, Democrats have lost 18 points off of their margin among nonwhite working class voters.In an effort to bring the argument down to earth, I asked Teixeira and Halpin three questions:1. Should Democrats support and defend gender and race-based affirmative action policies?2. If asked in a debate, what should a Democrat say about Ibram X. Kendi’s claim that “Standardized tests have become the most effective racist weapon ever devised to objectively degrade Black and Brown minds and legally exclude their bodies from prestigious schools?”3. How should a Democrat respond to questions concerning intergenerational poverty, nonmarital births and the issue of fatherlessness?In an email, Teixeira addressed affirmative action:Affirmative action in the sense of, say, racial preferences has always been unpopular and continues to be so. The latest evidence comes from the deep blue state of California which defeated an effort to reinstate race and gender preferences in public education, employment and contracting by an overwhelming 57-43 margin. As President Obama once put it: ‘We have to think about affirmative action and craft it in such a way where some of our children who are advantaged aren’t getting more favorable treatment than a poor white kid who has struggled more,’ There has always been a strong case for class-based affirmative action which is perhaps worth revisiting rather than doubling down on race-based affirmative action.Teixeira on Kendi’s arguments:It is remarkable how willing liberal elites have been to countenance Kendi’s extreme views which ascribe all racial disparities in American society to racism and a system of untrammeled white supremacy (and only that), insist that all policies/actions can only be racist or anti-racist in any context and advocate for a Department of Anti-Racism staffed by anti-racist “experts” who would have the power to nullify any and all local, state and federal legislation deemed not truly anti-racist (and therefore, by Kendi’s logic, racist). These ideas are dubious empirically, massively simplistic and completely impractical in real world terms. And to observe they are politically toxic is an understatement.The left, in Teixeira’s view,has paid a considerable price for abandoning universalism and for its increasingly strong linkage to Kendi-style views and militant identity politics in general. This has resulted in branding the party as focused on, or at least distracted by, issues of little relevance to most voters’ lives. Worse, the focus has led many working-class voters to believe that, unless they subscribe to this emerging worldview and are willing to speak its language, they will be condemned as reactionary, intolerant, and racist by those who purport to represent their interests. To some extent these voters are right: They really are looked down upon by elements of the left — typically younger, well-educated, and metropolitan — who embrace identity politics and the intersectional approach.In March, Halpin wrote an essay, “The Rise of the Neo-Universalists,” in which he argued thatthere is an emerging pool of political leaders, thinkers and citizens without an ideological home. They come from the left, right, and center but all share a common aversion to the sectarian, identity-based politics that dominates modern political discourse and the partisan and media institutions that set the public agenda.He calls this constituency “neo-universalists,” and says that they are united by “a vision of American citizenship based on the core belief in the equal dignity and rights of all people.” This means, he continued,not treating people differently based on their gender or their skin color, or where they were born or what they believe. This means employing collective resources to help provide for the ‘general welfare’ of all people in terms of jobs, housing, education, and health care. This means giving people a chance and not assuming the worst of them.How, then, would neo-universalism deal with gender and race-based affirmative action policies?“In terms of affirmative action, neo-universalism would agree with the original need and purpose of affirmative action following the legal dismantling of racial and gender discrimination,” Halpin wrote in an email:America needed a series of steps to overcome the legal and institutional hurdles to their advancement in education, the workplace, and wider life. Fifty years later, there has been tremendous progress on this front and we now face a situation where ongoing discrimination in favor of historically discriminated groups is hard to defend constitutionally and will likely hit a wall very soon. In order to continue ensuring that all people are integrated into society and life, neo-universalists would favor steps to offer additional assistance to people based on class- or place-based measures such as parental income or school profiles and disparities, in the case of education.What did Halpin think about Kendi’s views?A belief in equal dignity and rights for all, as expressed in neo-universalism and traditional liberalism, rejects the race-focused theories of Kendi and others, and particularly the concept that present discrimination based on race is required to overcome past discrimination based on race. There is no constitutional defense of this approach since you clearly cannot deprive people of due process and rights based on their race.In addition, theories like these, in Halpin’s view, foster “sectarian racial divisions and encourage people to view one another solely through the lens of race and perceptions of who is oppressed and who is privileged.” Liberals, Halpin continued, “spent the bulk of the 20th century trying to get society not to view people this way, so these contemporary critical theories are a huge step backward in terms of building wider coalitions and solidarity across racial, gender, and ethnic lines.”On the problem of intergenerational poverty, Halpin argued thatReducing and eradicating poverty is a critical focus for neo-universalists in the liberal tradition. Personal rights and freedom mean little if a person or family does not have a basic foundation of solid income and work, housing, education, and health care. Good jobs, safe neighborhoods, and stable two-parent families are proven to be critical components of building solid middle class life. Although the government cannot tell people how to organize their lives, and it must deal with the reality that not everyone lives or wants to live in a traditional family, the government can take steps to make family life more affordable and stable for everyone, particularly for those with children and low household income.Although the issue of racial and cultural tension within the Democratic coalition has been the subject of debate for decades, the current focus among Democratic strategists is on the well-educated party elite.David Shor, a Democratic data analyst, has emerged as a central figure on these matters. Shor’s approach was described by my colleague Ezra Klein last week. First, leaders need to recognize that “the party has become too unrepresentative at its elite levels to continue being representative at the mass level” and then “Democrats should do a lot of polling to figure out which of their views are popular and which are not popular, and then they should talk about the popular stuff and shut up about the unpopular stuff.”How can Democrats defuse inevitable Republican attacks on contemporary liberalism’s “unpopular stuff” — to use Klein’s phrase — much of which involves issues related to race and immigration along with the disputes raised by identity politics on the left?Shor observes that “We’ve ended up in a situation where white liberals are more left wing than Black and Hispanic Democrats on pretty much every issue: taxes, health care, policing, and even on racial issues or various measures of ‘racial resentment’, ” before adding, “So as white liberals increasingly define the party’s image and messaging, that’s going to turn off nonwhite conservative Democrats and push them against us.”The result?“The joke is that the G.O.P. is really assembling the multiracial working-class coalition that the left has always dreamed of,” Shor told Politico in an interview after the election in November.On Oct. 9, another of my colleagues, Jamelle Bouie, weighed in:My problem is that I don’t think Shor or his allies are being forthright about what it would actually take to stem the tide and reverse the trend. If anti-Black prejudice is as strong as this analysis implies, then it seems ludicrous to say that Democrats can solve their problem with a simple shift in rhetoric toward their most popular agenda items. The countermessage is easy enough to imagine — some version of ‘Democrats are not actually going to help you, they are going to help them’.Bouie’s larger point is thatThis debate needs clarity, and I want Shor and his allies to be much more forthright about the specific tactics they would use and what their strategy would look like in practice. To me, it seems as if they are talking around the issue rather than being upfront about the path they want to take.Shor’s critique of the contemporary Democratic Party and the disproportionate influence of its young, well-educated white liberal elite has provoked a network of counter-critiques. For example, Ian Hanley-Lopez, a law professor at Berkeley, recently posted “Shor is mainly wrong about racism (which is to say, about electoral politics)” on Medium, an essay in which Lopez argues thatThe core problem for the Democratic Party is not too many young, liberal activists. The fundamental challenge for Democrats is to develop a unified, effective response to the intense polarization around race intentionally driven by Trump and boosted by the interlocking elements of the right-wing propaganda machine.Haney-Lopez agrees thatDemocratic messages alienate voters when they are predicated on a sense of identity that voters do not share. For instance, “defund the police” and “abolish ICE” are deeply connected to a story of the police and ICE as white supremacist institutions that oppress communities of color. In turn, this story depicts the country as locked into a historic conflict between white people and people of color. It thus asks white voters to see themselves as members of an oppressive group they must help to disempower; and it asks voters of color to see themselves as members of widely hated groups they must rally to defend. This framing is acceptable to many who are college educated, white and of color alike, but not to majorities of voters.But, in Lopez’s view,Shor weds himself to the wrong conclusion. As the Ezra Klein piece reports, Shor “and those who agree with him argue that Democrats need to try to avoid talking about race and immigration.’” This is Shor’s most dangerous piece of advice to Democrats. For Shor, this has become an article of faith.Lopez argues that the best way to defuse divisive racial issues is to explicitly portray such tactics as “a divide-and-conquer strategy.”The basic idea, Lopez wrote,is to shift the basic political conflict in the United States from one between racial groups (the right’s preferred frame) to one between the 0.1 percent and the rest of us, with racism as their principal weapon. In our research, this race-class fusion politics is the most promising route forward for Democrats.Steve Phillips, the founder of Democracy in Color (and, like Haney-Lopez, a frequent contributor to The Times), goes a giant step further. In an email, Phillips argued that for over 50 years, “Democrats have NEVER won the white vote. All of it is dancing around the real issue, which is that the majority of white voters never back Democrats.” Even white college-educated voters “are very, very fickle. There’s some potential to up that share, but at what cost?” The bottom line? “I don’t think they’re movable; certainly, to any appreciable sense.”Phillips wrote that hisbiggest point is that it’s not necessary or cost-efficient to try to woo these voters. A meaningful minority of them are already with us and have always been with us. There are now so many people of color in the country (the majority of young people), that that minority of whites can ally with people of color and win elections from the White House to the Georgia Senate runoffs,” noting, “plus, you don’t have to sell your soul and compromise your principles to woo their support.In his email, Phillips acknowledged that “it does look like there has been a small decline in that Clinton got 76 percent of the working class vote among minorities and Biden 72 percent. But I still come back to the big picture points mentioned above.”On this point, Phillips may underestimate the significance of the four-point drop, and of the larger decline among working class Hispanics. If this is a trend — a big if because we don’t yet know how much of this is about Donald Trump and whether these trends will persist without him — it has the hallmarks of a new and significant problem for Democrats in future elections. In that light, it is all the more important for Democratic strategists of all ideological stripes to spell out what specific approaches they contend are most effective in addressing, if not countering, the divisive racial and cultural issues that have weakened the party in recent elections, even when they’re won.Saying the party’s candidates should simply downplay the tough ones may not be adequate.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

Patricia Mazzei has spent nearly 15 years covering Miami. The experience helped her make sense of a controversy swirling around the city’s new police chief.MIAMI — Ten years ago, I sat inside the over-air-conditioned chambers of the Miami City Commission for many long hours to cover a tense debate over the fate of a beleaguered police chief.Recently, I did it again, returning to the same City Hall — to the same second-row seat, in fact — to report on a different commission discussing the future of a different official, Chief Art Acevedo, with a precarious hold on his job. Back then, I was a local government reporter for The Miami Herald, where I worked for 10 years. Now, I am the Miami bureau chief for The New York Times. Once a City Hall reporter, always a City Hall reporter.My job on the National desk is to cover Florida and Puerto Rico, a wide-ranging beat that makes it impossible to attend every City Commission meeting (of which there are many) or follow every bit of gossip (of which there are even more). In the nearly four years since I have been at The Times, I have written about hurricane hunters, climate change and statewide elections.But sometimes the story takes you back to the beginning. Knowing how City Hall works, and its bizarre and colorful history, has been essential to understanding Miami and translating its eccentricities to Times readers. Just as all politics is local, all news is local, too, and this is why I was back in my old seat.City Hall reporters have a Spidey sense that tingles when drama is near. That is why I told my editor, Kim Murphy — herself a former City Hall reporter in Mississippi — that I planned to drop in on a recent commission meeting about Chief Acevedo, who was hired to lead the Miami Police Department six months ago. His arrival made a splash — a big-name hire for a city trying to establish itself as a player in big tech. He was chosen by Mayor Francis Suarez, who faces re-election and has grown his national profile over the past year. But the hype could not save either the chief or the mayor from the political entanglements of powerful city commissioners.A majority of city commissioners were mad at the chief, in part because he had — jokingly, he said later — referred to the Police Department as being run by a “Cuban mafia.” (The chief himself is a Cuban immigrant.) In response, Chief Acevedo had written a long letter essentially accusing some commissioners of corruption.Cops, corruption, Cuba: The day had all the makings of quintessential Miami political theater.This, after all, is one of the best news cities in the country — not only for its well trodden Florida Man oddities but also because of its many local governments and their corresponding soap operas. Miami-Dade County alone has 34 cities. That’s a lot of elected officials, a lot of public employees and a lot of news, which The Herald and other outlets cover admirably, though there never seem to be enough local reporters to hold everyone accountable.Becoming a national reporter was liberating in many ways. My time is no longer dictated by the whims of local officials. I can tackle a wider range of issues. I get to explore more of the country. But it is also more challenging to write for an audience that goes beyond local readers. Why would someone in another state or another part of the world care about a little Florida story? Sometimes it’s the stories that seem obvious to people living here that make good national stories. Other times it’s the oddball anecdote that you find yourself telling friends about that demands a larger audience.We chose to write about Chief Acevedo, and the machinations of Miami politics, in The Times because his story has elements that resonate in any big American city currently trying to bring reforms in policing, as it balances entrenched competing interests.The city has gone through six police chiefs in 11 years, though not all their tenures have been as contentious as Chief Acevedo. The meeting to discuss his fate turned into something of a circus. In the afternoon, I got a slew of text messages from sources who had seen me on the meeting livestream, remarking on how wild it was. Many Miami government types had been watching for hours, transfixed by it all.A few days later, commissioners held another special meeting to further discuss Chief Acevedo. I was not, technically, covering the story. But I turned on the meeting and watched anyhow. I could not tear myself away.This week, the saga came to an end: The city manager suspended Chief Acevedo with the intent to fire him. His ouster, as expected, made headlines. But it is also be just another outlandish chapter in the history of the Magic City. More

It’s Wednesday. We’ll look at how two governors are faring as the coronavirus crisis continues and pandemic fatigue rises. We’ll also take a short look at a shirt story.From left: Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times; Michelle Gustafson for The New York TimesThe New Jersey governor’s race has become one of the first statewide contests with a focus on how voters are reacting to strict coronavirus mandates. In New York, where Gov. Kathy Hochul expanded vaccine mandates in the 50 days since she was sworn in, a poll released on Tuesday found that she leads the likely Democratic field.After an opening like that, you might expect this to be a tale of two governors, both Democrats. But this is really a tale of this November, when New Jersey holds its election, and next June, when New York will hold its Democratic primary.First, New Jersey. The contest there is clearly defined: Gov. Philip Murphy is facing Jack Ciattarelli, a Republican who was known for moderate views when he was a state assemblyman. But Ciattarelli has tacked right, pounding away at issues that galvanize Donald Trump’s conservative base, like Murphy’s order requiring face coverings for children 2 and older in day care centers.Hochul’s opponents in New York are hypothetical for now. She is the only Democrat who has declared her candidacy. Neither of the two other officials in matchups in the poll from the Marist Institute for Public Opinion — Letitia James, the state attorney general, nor Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate — has done so.Some political strategists I spoke with on Tuesday said the New Jersey race could indicate whether Republicans are energized the way Democrats were a year ago; my colleague Tracey Tully writes that turnout is seen as an essential element in Ciattarelli’s calculations for next month.In New York, where the election is 13 months away, Hochul began setting up a statewide campaign operation when Andrew Cuomo resigned in August and she became governor. Cuomo had repeatedly attacked the investigation that ultimately led to his departure — an investigation led by James’s office — as politically motivated.My colleague Luis Ferré-Sadurní writes that, judging by the Marist poll, Hochul’s efforts appear to be paying off. In a hypothetical three-way primary, 44 percent of New York Democrats said they would vote for Hochul, 28 percent for James and 15 for Williams. Another 13 percent said they were undecided.What if Cuomo were to run again? Voters again preferred Hochul in a four-way race that included Cuomo, who left office with $18 million in campaign contributions. The poll found that 36 percent would cast ballots for Hochul, 24 percent for James, 19 percent for Cuomo and 9 percent for Williams. The remaining 12 percent said they were unsure.Hochul has made responding to the fallout of the pandemic a top priority, implementing vaccine mandates and expediting coronavirus relief funds for struggling rental tenants and undocumented immigrants. Murphy, in New Jersey, was one of the last governors in the country to drop a statewide indoor mask mandate.That was at the beginning of the summer. Two months later, when cases were climbing again as the highly contagious Delta virus spread, he “strongly recommended” that people again wear masks indoors.But he said that people who work in schools, day care centers and health facilities can either be vaccinated or undergo regular testing, an opt-out that matters to New Jersey’s influential teachers union, a longtime Murphy ally. New York City, by contrast, has no opt-out for teachers or health care workers.Polls have given Murphy some of his highest marks for the way he has handled the pandemic. He has said he considered it one of the defining issues setting him apart from Ciattarelli, who attacked Murphy’s mask rule for children in day care. “This is unconstitutional, un-American and has no scientific backing,” said a recent fund-raising email from Ciattarelli and his running mate, Diane Allen.WeatherOh, that patchy early morning fog. It will give way to a mostly cloudy day with temps in the mid-70s. They will drop to the low 60s in the evening, with a still-cloudy sky.alternate-side parkingIn effect until Nov. 1 (All Saints Day).The latest New York newsThe shadow of former President Donald J. Trump hangs over the trial of Lev Parnas, who assisted Rudolph Giuliani in seeking damaging information in Ukraine about Trump’s political rivals. But the campaign finance charges against Parnas have little to do with his dealings with Trump.A federal judge ruled that New York State health officials must allow religious exemptions to the vaccine mandate for health care workers, at least for now.The shirts Nelson Mandela woreReutersNelson Mandela, who was recognized as a global hero, was also recognizable. His colorful, somewhat casual-looking shirts set him apart from what the fashion historian Valerie Steele called “the conventional male ruling-class look.”Ten shirts that belonged to Mandela will be displayed at the museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she is the director and chief curator, starting today. The shirts were sent from South Africa by Mandela’s daughter Makaziwe Mandela and a granddaughter, Tukwini, according to Arlan Ettinger, the president of the Manhattan auction house Guernsey’s.He said the exhibition was a prelude to an auction in December to raise money for a memorial garden in Mandela’s hometown, Qunu, where Mandela was buried in 2013.Perhaps the most formal shirt in the exhibition was the one that Mandela wore to meet Queen Elizabeth II. Mandela wore it as he wore all the shirts, untucked and with dress slacks. Back home in South Africa, the shirts stood out in contrast to the dark suits of government officials.Some South African historians have noted that the shirts are not traditionally African. Mandela was said to have discovered them after seeing the Indonesian dictator Suharto in the mid-1990s. Steele said Suharto’s strongman predecessor, Sukarno, had favored the look in the 1950s.Mandela liked it, Yusuf Surtee, who owned a chain of men’s stores in South Africa, recalled in 1997, “and he wanted one in its image.” Soon admirers were sending Mandela shirts, so many that he was rarely seen wearing the same one twice. Steele said they “became emblematic of post-apartheid freedom, not only his freedom but the country’s freedom.”“The fact that Mandela really preferred these shirts seems to me a rejection of Western conventions of power and a sign of his bonds with all those people in Africa and Asia who struggled against colonialism and political impression,” she said.But one three-piece pinstriped suit is in the exhibition.“He decided that sometimes you do wear a suit,” Steele said.What we’re readingNew York Magazine reported on the murders at the Carter G. Woodson Houses, a public housing complex in Brooklyn.Instead of a script, this new Broadway play has a transcript, NPR reports.“Jesus Christ Superstar,” the rock opera, opened on Broadway 50 years ago to protests, an irate composer — and sold-out shows.METROPOLITAN diaryInvisible voiceDear Diary:The Q to Brooklyn can be more crowded at midnight than midday: mothers with strollers; older women with shopping carts; girlfriends sharing earphones and mouthing lyrics. It all makes for a comforting sight at that late hour.On this particular night, the car I was on was empty except for three men who were sitting evenly spaced out across from me.As the train rattled across the Manhattan Bridge, I shut my eyes against the fluorescent lights, my thoughts tumbling down into the dark water of the East River below.I heard what I thought was a woman singing softly. Startled, I looked up at the three men across from me: an older one who was closely studying a small book; a young punk leaning forward and swiping his phone; and a big construction worker cradling his helmet as he slept, his mouth slightly open.I must have fallen asleep too, I thought to myself.The train went back underground, and I let my eyelids fall. I heard the beautiful voice rise again, more confidently this time, and a few notes of what sounded like opera. I tried to figure out where it was coming from, but the melody came to a halt.Just the same three men, in the same positions.I got off the train at Seventh Avenue and the construction worker did too. As I walked up the stairs, he broke into full song behind me. We went in different directions, but I could hear his soaring falsetto as it bounced off the buildings and filled the night sky.I could still hear it faintly when I locked my apartment door two blocks away.— Michelle FawcettIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Melissa Guerrero, Andrew Hinderaker, Rick Martinez and Olivia Parker contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected] up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

Éric Zemmour, an anti-immigrant writer and TV commentator, is surging in opinion polls before presidential elections next year — and he is not yet a candidate.PARIS — He is the anti-immigration son of parents from Algeria. He styles himself as the great defender of France’s Christian civilization, though he himself is Jewish. He channels Donald J. Trump in an anti-establishment campaign. And he is now scrambling the battle lines before France’s presidential election in April.The meteoric rise of Éric Zemmour, a far-right author and TV pundit, has turned France’spolitics upside down.Until a few weeks ago, most had expected France’s next presidential elections to be a predictable rematch between President Emmanuel Macron and the far-right Marine Le Pen that, polls showed, left voters who wanted alternatives deeply dissatisfied.Though still not a declared candidate, Mr. Zemmour, 63, shot to No. 2 in a poll of likely voters last week, disrupting campaign strategies across the board, even beyond those of Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen.“The French want to upset a political order that hasn’t won them over, and Éric Zemmour appears to be the bowling ball that’s going to knock down all the pins,” said Pascal Perrineau, a political scientist at Sciences Po University specializing in elections and the right.Mr. Perrineau warned that voters were not seriously focused yet on the elections and that polls could be volatile.Yet candidates are not taking any chances.Mr. Macron’s campaign has focused on winning support on the right and forcing a showdown with Ms. Le Pen, in the belief that the French would reject her party in the second round of voting, as they have for decades.Now it is far less clear whom he would meet in a runoff: A strong showing in the first round could propel Mr. Zemmour into the second one, or it could split the far-right electorate to allow a center-right candidate to qualify for the finals.After weeks of ignoring Mr. Zemmour, Mr. Macron is now criticizing him, though not by name, while government ministers and other Macron allies have unleashed a barrage of attacks.Mr. Zemmour is the author of several books, and a star on the right-wing CNews network. Nicolas Tucat/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Zemmour’s rise has been most unsettling for Ms. Le Pen, who is plummeting in the polls — so much so that her own father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the party founder, said that he would support Mr. Zemmour if the writer were in a stronger position.Ms. Le Pen has for years tried to broaden her base with a so-called un-demonizing strategy of moving her nationalist, anti-immigrant party from the most extreme xenophobic positions that it was known for under her father. Now she finds herself in the unusual position of being outflanked on the right.Mr. Zemmour became one of France’s best-selling authors in the past decade by writing books on the nation’s decline — fueled, he said, by the loss of traditional French and Christian values, the immigration of Muslim Africans bent on a reverse colonization of France, the rise of feminism and the loss of virility, and a “great replacement” of white people, a conspiracy theory that has been cited by gunmen in multiple mass shootings.As the child of Algerians who settled in metropolitan France, he has presented himself as the embodiment of France’s successful system of assimilation. He has said that the failure to integrate recent generations of Muslim immigrants lies with the new arrivals, who hate France, and not with a system that others say has not kept up with the times.Mr. Zemmour’s influence rose to an entirely new level in the past two years after he became the star of CNews, a new Fox-style news network that gave him a platform to expound on his views every evening.His supporters include voters most deeply shaken by the social forces that have roiled French society more recently and that they now lump into “wokisme” — a #MeToo movement that has led to the fall of powerful men; a racial awakening challenging France’s image of itself as a colorblind society; the emergence of a new generation questioning the principles of the French Republic; and the perceived growing threat of an American-inspired vision of society.“In its history, France has always had a strong cultural identity, but now there’s deep anxiety about that identity,” Mr. Perrineau said. “People feel that their culture, their way of life and their political system, all is being changed. It’s enough.”Mr. Zemmour at a book promotion event in Nice last month.Valery Hache/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Éric Zemmour plays on that very well, on this nostalgia for the past, and this fear of no longer being a great power, of dissolving in a conglomerate that we don’t understand, whether it’s Europe or globalization or the Americanization of culture,” he added.In the 2017 election, Mr. Macron was the new face who overturned the existing political order. But during his presidency, “the new world of Emmanuel Macron has come to look a lot like the old world,” disillusioning voters, Mr. Perrineau said.Philippe Olivier, a close aide to Ms. Le Pen and a member of the European Parliament, said that French voters seek a larger-than-life figure in their president.“In the United States, a president could be a movie actor like Reagan or a carnival performer like Trump,” said Mr. Olivier, who is also Ms. Le Pen’s brother-in-law. “In France, we elect the king.”But the two-round system compels much of the electorate to vote in the runoffs against candidates — and not for someone of their liking.“In the second round, the point is who is more repulsive,” Mr. Olivier said. “I believe Macron would be more rejected than Marine, but Zemmour would be much more rejected than Macron.”As France has grown more conservative in recent years, Mr. Macron has tacked right on many issues to try to grab a bigger electoral slice, especially among voters in the traditional center-right Republicans party.The Republicans, who have yet to select their presidential candidate, are now facing a new threat themselves, because Mr. Zemmour draws support from them as well as from the far right.In their own bid to attract far-right voters, many leaders on the traditional right have flirted with Mr. Zemmour in recent years, excusing or overlooking the fact that the writer has been sanctioned for inciting racial hatred.“The traditional right made a serious mistake that is now exploding in their face,” said Jean-Yves Camus, director of the Observatory of Radical Politics. “Because it’s long been in competition against the far right on issues like national identity, immigration and sovereignty, it kept winking at Zemmour.”A fan taking a photo with Mr. Zemmour at a book signing in Toulon last month.Eric Gaillard/ReutersNow the traditional right is looking for ways to distance itself from the TV star without alienating his supporters.Patrick Stefanini, a Republican who ran President Jacques Chirac’s successful 1995 campaign, said Mr. Zemmour was benefiting from divisions within the traditional right on issues like immigration.“Mr. Zemmour has turned immigration into the single key to understanding the difficulties facing French society,” said Mr. Stefanini, who is now leading the presidential bid of Valérie Pécresse, the head of the Paris region. “The Republicans are having a little trouble positioning themselves because the tendencies aren’t the same within the Republicans.”Mr. Stefanini attributed Mr. Zemmour’s rise partly to the traditional right’s failure to quickly decide on a candidate, and said he felt confident that the TV star’s ratings would peter out.But for now, many voters appear to be taking a look at Mr. Zemmour, who has been attracting huge crowds at campaign-like events across France as he promotes his latest book, “France Has Not Said Its Last Word Yet.”Last week, three residents of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a wealthy suburb of Paris, came together to attend an event with Mr. Zemmour in the capital.Françoise Torneberg, who said she was in her 70s, said she liked Mr. Zemmour because “he gives a kick in the anthill,” she said.Her friend Andrée Chalmandrier, 69, said, “We love France but not the France of today.”“We’re not at home,” Ms. Chalmandrier said, adding that often when she shops in her suburb, “I’m the only French representative. There are four or five veiled women around me, who furthermore are extremely arrogant.”“And yet it’s a good neighborhood,” Ms. Torneberg said. “It’s not at all a working-class neighborhood.”Léontine Gallois contributed reporting. More

In a governor’s race deemed a bellwether for the 2022 midterms, the battle between Terry McAuliffe and Glenn Youngkin has ignited over national cultural issues.Sign up here to get On Politics in your inbox on Tuesdays and Thursdays.Four of the five most expensive ads for the McAuliffe campaign have been negative, with a particular focus on abortion.Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesIt’s a long-held mantra in elections: All politics are local. But the ad wars in the race for Virginia governor indicate that national is the new normal.In a contest deemed a bellwether for the 2022 midterms, the battle between Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat and the state’s former governor, and Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, has ignited more over the cultural issues currently inflaming national politics than traditional tension points like state and local taxes.Atop the list of the most aired ads in the race are attacks about abortion (though there’s no current law or challenge to abortion rights in Virginia) and schools (amid the national debates on curriculum, critical race theory and mask mandates).In an expensive race with in-person campaigning still limited by the pandemic, the national issues being debated over the airwaves have set the tone. The two candidates have combined to spend more than $36 million on broadcast television ads at just over $18 million each, according to AdImpact, an ad tracking firm. Outside groups and super PACs have largely stayed on the sidelines.More than 60 percent of the spending has been on ads that have at least some negative comparisons or attacks, according to AdImpact.Four of the five most expensive ads for the McAuliffe campaign have been negative, with a particular focus on abortion, an issue that rocketed to the forefront of national politics after Texas passed a new law that bans almost all abortions.The campaign has put the most money behind a 60-second ad that seizes on a hidden-camera video recorded by a liberal activist that showed Youngkin openly worrying about losing “independent votes” over the issue, but promising to go “on offense” to restrict access to abortion if Republicans also take the statehouse. The McAuliffe campaign portrayed Youngkin as beholden to the conservative fringe of the Republican Party.“Glenn Youngkin has been caught,” a female narrative voice whispers as news reports of the video fill the screen. “Caught on video admitting his far-right agenda.”In another ad, the McAuliffe campaign highlights a doctor who claims that Youngkin’s support of abortion limits would “harm my patients” and that he is inserting politics into science and medicine, an echo of the common critiques of the anti-vaccine and anti-mask movements.Other national dividing lines, such as voting rights, police reform and public health, play central roles in the McAuliffe campaign’s effort to paint Youngkin with the patina of a Trump Republican; more than 75 percent of McAuliffe’s ads include an attack on or contrast drawn with his opponent.For the Youngkin campaign, one ad is dominating the rotation: a clip from a debate in September where McAuliffe stated, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” The comment followed an argument between the two candidates over a veto McAuliffe signed as governor in 2017 of legislation that had allowed parents to opt out of allowing their children to study material deemed sexually explicit.Schools have quickly climbed to the forefront of national political scraps, with right-wing media seizing on a crusade against school mask mandates and critical race theory, and major conservative pundits pushing for Republicans to focus on school board races. Though McAuliffe’s quote did not originate in the current tussle over schools, it quickly resonated. The Youngkin campaign put more than $1 million behind the ad.Youngkin has a more balanced mix of positive and negative advertising, including a lot of biographical ads, highlighting his past as a college basketball player and businessman, and presenting him as an outsider to Virginia politics who can get things done.But the disparity in the ratio of positive to negative ads doesn’t necessarily reflect one candidate on the upswing or another on the defensive. Youngkin, who spent most of his career in business, has to keep introducing himself to voters while simultaneously trying to define McAuliffe through negative ads.McAuliffe, a former governor who left office in 2018 polling safely above water, is a known quantity in the state, which prohibits governors from serving two consecutive terms. With little need for biographical ads, McAuliffe’s campaign has gone more aggressively on the offensive, including with some more out-of-the-box national attack ads about the rights to Taylor Swift’s music.In a small digital ad effort, the McAuliffe campaign bought ads on Instagram, Facebook and Google that highlighted Swift’s claim that the Carlyle Group, which Youngkin used to lead as a co-chief executive, helped finance a sale of the rights to her music.One ad closes with a nod to Swift’s lyrics: “’Cause Glenn, now we got bad blood.”On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected]. More

Mr. Yarmuth, the lone Democrat in his state’s congressional delegation and a key proponent of President Biden’s domestic agenda, said he would not seek re-election.WASHINGTON — Representative John Yarmuth of Kentucky, the lone Democrat in his state’s congressional delegation and the chairman of the House Budget Committee, announced on Tuesday that he would not seek re-election in 2022.Mr. Yarmuth, who is playing a leading role in shepherding President Biden’s sprawling domestic agenda through Congress, is the first senior House Democrat to say he will not run in the midterms, when Republicans are widely believed to have a good chance of wresting the majority.In a video circulated on social media, Mr. Yarmuth, who will be 75 at the end of the current Congress, said he was leaving because of “a desire to have more control of my time in the years I have left” and to spend more time with his family.He also faced the prospect that his Louisville-centered district could be redrawn this year, potentially leading to a more difficult re-election race, though Mr. Yarmuth told reporters later on Tuesday that he was confident the district “won’t change significantly.” Even if he were to prevail, he would face the loss of his committee chairmanship if Democrats lost the House.“I know that on my first day as a private citizen, I will regret this decision, and I will be miserable about having left the most gratifying role of my professional life,” Mr. Yarmuth said in the video. “But I also know that every day thereafter, I will find other ways to help my fellow citizens, and I will be more confident that the decision I announced today is the right one.”He has held his seat since 2006 and has been the only Democrat in the congressional delegation since 2013.Mr. Yarmuth is among the most high-ranking Democrats set to depart Congress at the end of 2022, joining a trickle of rank-and-file lawmakers who have decided to seek a different political office or vacate a district that is likely to change significantly once state officials redraw them using data from the 2020 census.“In Chairman John Yarmuth, the Louisville community and indeed all Americans have had a fierce and extraordinarily effective champion for their health, financial security and well-being,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said in a statement. With his retirement, she added, “the Congress will lose a greatly respected member, and our caucus will lose a friend whose wise counsel, expertise, humor and warmth is cherished.”In his role leading the Budget Committee, Mr. Yarmuth helped oversee passage of the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package in March, which he called the proudest moment of his congressional career. He has also drafted the $3.5 trillion budget blueprint that Democrats pushed through over the summer to pave the way for Mr. Biden’s signature domestic bill addressing climate change, expanding health care and public education programs and increasing taxes on businesses and wealthy individuals.Asked by reporters on Capitol Hill about the reaction to his announcement, Mr. Yarmuth said “it’s been overwhelming — I’ve been doing my best to keep it together all day.” More