Elections

As a handful of authors compete to recount President Donald J. Trump’s last year in office, Twitter is strewn with vividly reported snapshots of a monumental year in American history.WASHINGTON — The capital was just beginning to quiet down for the summer when the buzz over the books began: Several seeking to explain the final year of Donald J. Trump’s presidency are landing so closely together over the next month that publishers have hastily changed publication days to avoid mid-scoop collisions.It’s enough to give an author nightmares.“I literally just wake up every day waiting to find out that someone else has jumped in front of us, and some book that I had no idea was coming is going to be announced,” Michael C. Bender, the author of “Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost,” said in an interview.Really, it is not the most unfounded fear. Mr. Bender is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. “Frankly,” his first book, will be published on July 13. But he fast-tracked its publication, originally slated for August, after his publisher snooped on Amazon and uncovered the release dates of two other Trump-related books this summer: “Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency,” by Michael Wolff, and “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year,” by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters at The Washington Post.What has ensued is a war of excerpts among writers who are realizing their juiciest material may not hold. Twitter is now strewn with the most unsettling moments from Mr. Trump’s last year in office. Vividly reported snapshots of a monumental year in American history are proliferating like cicada shells on city pavement.Mr. Bender’s book, in excerpts shared with CNN, Vanity Fair, Axios, The Daily Mail and others, lays bare the leadership failures of Mr. Trump and his team. “Frankly” is full of expletive-laden interactions, including one particularly colorful exchange between Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Mr. Trump’s immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, over the protests that roiled the country last summer.The drip-drip of material is the extreme version of a commonplace promotion strategy, intended to get Mr. Bender, a lesser-known writer than some of his competitors, maximum publicity. But others seeking to claim their territory are aggressively following suit: Jonathan Karl of ABC News, whose book does not come out until later this year, published his own excerpt in recent days in The Atlantic.David Kuhn, a literary agent at Aevitas Creative Management, said the cascade of Trump books could end up “cannibalizing each other.”“There’s so many different planets that have to align for a book to truly break out,” he said.But the reporters are betting frequent promotion in a crowded market will improve their fortunes.An excerpt from Michael Wolff’s “Landslide,” which will be published on July 27, is the cover story for New York magazine, and outlines a scene in which Mr. Trump told his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, that he “didn’t mean it literally” that his supporters should march to the Capitol on Jan. 6.And more details of Mr. Trump’s illness from the coronavirus were shared before the publication on Tuesday of “Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History,” by Damian Paletta and Yasmeen Abutaleb, journalists for The Post.Mr. Trump has invited some of the authors of books on his presidency to Mar-a-Lago, his estate in Palm Beach, Fla., more than once.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesIn their book, Mr. Paletta and Ms. Abutaleb present gripping evidence that Mr. Trump received a strong cocktail of drugs — “Trump’s doctors threw everything they could at the virus all at once,” they write. Robert R. Redfield, then the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had prayed that a serious bout with the coronavirus would change Mr. Trump’s response to the pandemic. It did not.“Nightmare Scenario” is focused on the federal government’s handling of the coronavirus — Ms. Abutaleb and Mr. Paletta do not examine the events of Jan. 6, for instance, and they did not interview Mr. Trump. Still, so many reporters covering the same material at the same time made for a crowded reporting process.“We definitely would hear from sources that they had gotten calls from other reporters,” Mr. Paletta said in an interview. “That was quite intimidating for us.”Some of the more decorated reporters in Washington’s press corps have chosen silence as a strategy as they complete books scheduled to be published this year.Little is known about when Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of The Washington Post may publish their book on Mr. Trump’s final days, but the best guess from agents and authors alike is that it will be in September. (Neither author replied to requests for comment.)The list of summer releases does not include titles coming next year from reporters for The New York Times. Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent, is working on a definitive account of the Trump presidency with his wife, Susan Glasser of The New Yorker. Maggie Haberman, a former Trump White House reporter and current Washington correspondent for The Times, is also working on a book about Mr. Trump. Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns, national political correspondents, are writing a book on the presidential race between Mr. Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr., and Jeremy Peters, who covers the Republican Party for The Times, is working on a book that assesses the G.O.P.’s attempts to wrangle Mr. Trump.Mark Leibovich, a political correspondent for The Times, is working on a sequel to “This Town,” a book on Washington culture, that will touch on the Trump era.At the center of the publishing frenzy is the subject himself. Aware of the barrage of books about his presidency and lacking a book deal that could give his grievances another formal platform, Mr. Trump has tried a charm offensive. He has invited some writers to Mar-a-Lago, his estate in Palm Beach, Fla., more than once, serving them steak and seating them in his estate’s great room, where the visiting journalists can be part of the political pageant that happens there each night.Mr. Trump, who keenly understands his own place in the news media ecosystem, has turned down only a few interview requests, including one from Mr. Woodward. Mr. Woodward’s 2020 book, “Rage,” included several interviews with Mr. Trump, who told Mr. Woodward he had downplayed the threat of the coronavirus pandemic.But Mr. Trump has quizzed other visiting journalists on the people they are talking to, the questions they are going to ask and the stories they plan to tell about his presidency.“We were really surprised by how much time he spent talking to us,” Mr. Rucker said. “And by, frankly, how interested he was in our book and the subjects we were covering. He very much wanted to be a part of trying to shape the historical narrative of his presidency.”(Given Mr. Trump’s history with reading books — he does not read them — Mr. Rucker does not expect that the former president will provide a full review.)As Mr. Bender readied another excerpt for publication — this time detailing the long-running animosity that existed between Kellyanne Conway, Mr. Trump’s counselor, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner — he said Tuesday evening that the breakneck pace with which he has written and promoted his book mirrored the hectic nature of four years on the Trump beat.“When this is all done I want to ask my publisher how this is supposed to work,” Mr. Bender said. “Nothing about this has felt normal. Which is kind of the experience of covering Donald Trump in a nutshell.” More

The Board of Elections, which has a history of mishaps, is now under intense fire for its error in releasing mayoral primary results.As New Yorkers began to cast ballots in the first citywide election with ranked-choice voting, turmoil quietly roiled the government agency overseeing the election.The agency, the New York City Board of Elections, had lost its executive director and one of his top deputies just weeks before early voting. It was being pressured to change its plan for releasing results.And as Primary Day approached on June 22, the board’s remaining leaders had repeatedly declined help with the ranked-choice software and delayed training for employees, creating confusion among the staff.On Tuesday, as the city eagerly awaited results in the mayoral primary and other major races, the problems burst into public view when the agency released preliminary ranked-choice vote totals — only to retract them hours later, acknowledging that they were no longer trustworthy.Officials explained that the board had mistakenly included more than 130,000 test ballots in the preliminary count. A new ranked-choice tally was run on Wednesday, and the top-line results were unchanged: Eric Adams, who had the most first-place votes on primary night, was still the first choice, but by a far narrower numerical margin over his closest rival, Kathryn Garcia.The results, however, seemed almost anticlimactic, with the memory of Tuesday’s snafu still causing outrage across the city and renewing calls for changes at the elections board. It also resurrected long-held frustrations about the barriers that have persistently blocked reforms at the agency, despite decades of blunders and scandals.“It’s just one fiasco after another, year after year,” said Lulu Friesdat, executive director of Smart Elections, an elections reform group. “The fact that we haven’t made the effort to change that is shocking. It’s appalling.”New York is the only state in the country with local election boards whose staffers are chosen almost entirely by Democratic and Republican Party bosses. The system is meant to ensure fairness by empowering the parties to watch each other, but for decades the board in New York City has been criticized for nepotism, ineptitude and corruption.In recent years, the political appointees who run the board have stumbled again and again. They mistakenly purged about 200,000 people from voter rolls ahead of the 2016 election; they forced some voters to wait in four-hour lines on Election Day 2018; and they sent erroneous ballots to nearly 100,000 New Yorkers seeking to vote by mail last year.Still, while some lawmakers have suggested reforms, the proposals have failed to gain much traction. The structure of the election board is enshrined in the New York State Constitution, so it is hard to change, and political leaders have little incentive to support any reforms because the current system gives them a lot of power.The snafu in ranked-choice results created outrage across the city.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesOn Wednesday, facing anger and ridicule from across the political spectrum — including in a statement sent by former President Donald J. Trump — leaders in the New York State Senate and Assembly vowed to hold hearings to finally tackle problems at the board.“The situation in New York City is a national embarrassment and must be dealt with promptly and properly,” said Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a Democrat who leads the Senate, in a statement. “In the coming weeks, the Senate will be holding hearings on this situation and will seek to pass reform legislation as a result at the earliest opportunity.”Even as lawmakers promised reforms, the board acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that it had been operating through the election season without much of its leadership team.Michael Ryan, who has served as the board’s executive director since 2013, has been on medical leave since early March, and Pamela Perkins, the agency’s administrative manager, retired on June 1 after nearly two decades in the position, a spokeswoman confirmed.The New York Post reported Mr. Ryan’s medical leave earlier Wednesday.Wilma Brown Phillips, who was chosen to succeed Ms. Perkins, started the job on Monday, meaning the board did not have an administrative manager on Primary Day.In the absence of Mr. Ryan and Ms. Perkins, both Democrats, day-to-day operations were effectively run by the board’s two top Republicans, Dawn Sandow and Georgea Kontzamanis.Ms. Sandow is a former executive director of the Bronx Republican Party with deep ties to Guy Velella, a longtime lawmaker and Bronx party leader who quit elected office in 2004 after pleading guilty in a bribery conspiracy.The leadership vacuum — during an intense election, with a new method of voting — caused tumult at the board for months, several employees said.As the board dealt with those issues, it also ignored offers of technological assistance from the supplier of the software that it would use to tabulate the ranked-choice votes.The supplier, Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center, first offered to help on May 26 and then tried again several times, said its policy director, Christopher W. Hughes.“We had offered up to the Board of Elections to be there in person or remotely and support running the ranked-choice voting election,” Mr. Hughes said in an interview on Wednesday.Mr. Hughes said the resource center could have run a parallel process, using the same data and a copy of the same software, to ensure that the results matched. Doing so would have made it more likely that they would have caught the test ballots that were inadvertently added to the tally on Tuesday, he said.Valerie Vazquez-Diaz, a spokeswoman for the elections board, declined to address the substance of Mr. Hughes’s assertion.Instead, she reiterated the board’s position that the problem was not caused by the software, but by the agency’s staff.“The issue was not the software,” Ms. Vazquez-Diaz said. “There was a human error where a staffer did not remove the test ballot images from the Election Management System.”Understanding the potential role of human error, Mr. Hughes had offered to train New York City election workers on the software, and to provide “remote or in-person support” when it came time to tabulate the vote.His original proposal set out a budget of $90,000 for assistance through 2025, at the cost of $100 or $150 an hour. But he did not hear back, even after trying again on June 2, June 14 and finally, June 21, the day before the primary.The organization’s software was used last year in primaries in Kansas, Wyoming and Alaska. Mr. Hughes said the center always offered some assistance to jurisdictions using its software.“Other jurisdictions tended to be more responsive to outreach, though,” he said.Delays plagued the plan to train staff in the software used for ranked-choice voting.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesThe board also got a late start in testing the software to generate the ranked-choice results because of an impasse with the State Board of Elections that took more than a year to resolve. As recently as a month before the election, the board still faced the possibility of having to count hundreds of thousands of ballots by hand.Only on May 25 did the state board give a green light to the city board’s preferred software package, known as the Universal Ranked-Choice Voting Tabulator.Douglas Kellner, the co-chairman of the state Board of Elections, said the delay was caused by the city election board itself, as well as resistance from Republicans on the state board.“The city Board of Elections had other priorities, that was one issue,” Mr. Kellner said. “And when they finally got around to saying, ‘We have a ranked-choice voting election next year,’ the Republicans at the state Board of Elections started dragging their feet, because they question whether the city even had the authority to amend the charter to provide for this system of voting. So that added several months of additional delay.”Delays also plagued the plan to train employees on the software and ranked-choice voting itself, workers said. Two employees said they did not receive training until after early voting had already begun.A final challenge emerged when the board leaders struggled to decide how and when to release the results of the ranked-choice voting.The board always planned to release only the results of first-choice votes by early voters and in-person voters on primary night. Initially, it planned to then wait until it had received all the absentee votes to conduct the instant runoff enabled by the ranked-choice part of the election.However, officials had received pressure to release results earlier, including from Councilman Brad Lander, who proposed legislation last December to require earlier reporting. Some supporters of ranked-choice voting pushed to make raw voting data public early on, in part because they feared that if the absentee votes changed the results, critics would blame ranked-choice voting.At the last minute — just a few days before Primary Day, employees said — the board settled on a compromise: It would release the results of an instant runoff just for the early votes and in-person voters, as something of a test of the system. That was the release on Tuesday, which was calculated erroneously and sparked the outrage.The debate about when to release results surfaced as early as December, at an oversight hearing of the City Council.At that hearing, Councilman Fernando Cabrera opened with a warning that now sounds prescient.“2021 is the biggest year for local races in recent memory, with open contests for all citywide offices and two-thirds of the City Council seats,” he said. “We cannot afford to get this wrong.”Michael Rothfeld More

It has long been clear to me that we are teaching the concept of voting wrong, that we are buying into an idea of false hope and optimism that is easily exploited by those who want fewer people to vote and fewer votes to be counted. More

The outcome of the New York City mayor’s race will likely come down to the results of the more than 125,000 absentee ballots that still remain to be counted. According to preliminary and unofficial results released Wednesday, Eric Adams leads Kathryn Garcia by about 15,000 votes after all rounds of ranked-choice tabulation.Strong Election Day Support for Garcia in Districts With Most Absentee BallotsThe areas that cast the most absentee ballots were Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn, where Kathryn Garcia drew stronger support in the Election Day vote tally. More than 125,000 absentee ballots received by the Board of Elections have yet to be counted in the Democratic mayoral primary. More

When the New York City Board of Elections announced Tuesday night that it had screwed up in tallying the votes for mayor, lawmakers reacted with anger — but not much surprise.After years of watching the board make errors, they have grown accustomed to problems.The board mistakenly purged about 200,000 people from voter rolls before the 2016 election. It forced some voters to wait in four-hour lines on Election Day 2018. It sent erroneous ballots to nearly 100,000 New Yorkers seeking to vote by mail last year.And those are just the recent blunders.For decades, since nearly the founding of the election board, critics have complained about its structure, its history of nepotism and its lack of accountability. New York is the only state with local election boards whose staff members are chosen almost entirely by Democratic and Republican Party bosses.In 1940, a city investigation found that the board was plagued by “illegality, inefficiency, laxity and waste.” In 1971, a New York Times editorial derided it as “at best a semi‐functioning anachronism.” And in 1985, another city inquiry said it had an “almost embarrassing lack of understanding” of its job.In recent years, some lawmakers have proposed reforms, but they have failed to gain much traction. The election board’s structure is enshrined in the New York state constitution, so it is difficult to change. Political leaders also have little incentive to support reform because the current system gives them a lot of power.Earlier this year, State Senator Liz Krueger, a Democrat from Manhattan, unsuccessfully proposed a bill to make the board’s operations more professional.On Tuesday, following the latest high-profile mistake, another Democratic state senator, Zellnor Myrie of Brooklyn, vowed to push the state to finally tackle the problems.“If you’re an upset voter tonight, I hear you,” Mr. Myrie, who leads the Senate’s Elections Committee, wrote on Twitter. “We have to do better for you. And we will. Stay tuned for a hearing date and bring all the energy, concerns, and ideas for change to the table. We stand ready to listen and where possible, implement.” More

President Biden cut into Donald Trump’s margins with married men and veteran households, a Pew survey shows. But there was a far deeper well of support for Mr. Trump than many progressives had imagined.Married men and veteran households were probably not the demographic groups that Democrats assumed would carry the party to victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 election.But Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s apparent strength among traditionally moderate or even conservative constituencies, and especially men, is emerging as one of the hallmarks of his victory, according to new data from Pew Research.Mr. Trump won married men by just a 54 to 44 percent margin — a net 20 point decline from his 62 to 32 percent victory in 2016. He won veteran households by a similar 55 to 43 percent margin, down a net 14 points from his 61 to 35 percent victory.In both cases, the size of Mr. Biden’s gains among these relatively conservative groups rivals Mr. Trump’s far more publicized surge among Latino voters. Each group represents a larger share of the electorate than Latinos, as well.The Pew data, released on Wednesday, is the latest and perhaps the last major tranche of high-quality data on voter preference and turnout in the 2020 election, bringing analysts close to a final, if still imperfect, account of the outcome.The data suggests that the progressive vision of winning a presidential election simply by mobilizing strong support from Democratic constituencies simply did not materialize for Mr. Biden. While many Democrats had hoped to overwhelm Mr. Trump with a surge in turnout among young and nonwhite voters, the new data confirms that neither candidate claimed a decisive advantage in the highest turnout election since 1900.Instead, Mr. Trump enjoyed a turnout advantage fairly similar to his edge in 2016, when many Democrats blamed Hillary Clinton’s defeat on a failure to mobilize young and nonwhite voters. If anything, Mr. Trump enjoyed an even larger turnout edge while Mr. Biden lost ground among nearly every Democratic base constituency. Only his gains among moderate to conservative voting groups allowed him to prevail.The Pew data represents the only large, traditional “gold standard” survey linked to voter registration files. The files reveal exactly who voted in the election, offering an authoritative evaluation of the role of turnout; but they become available only months after the election.In previous cycles, the higher-quality data released months or years after the election has complicated or even overturned the narratives that emerge on election night. For this cycle, the Pew data — and other late analyses, like a study from the Democratic data firm Catalist — has largely confirmed what analysts gleaned from the vote tallies in the days after the election.If anything, the newest data depicts a more pronounced version of the early analysis.The Pew data, for instance, shows Mr. Trump faring even better among Latino voters than any previous estimate, with Mr. Biden winning the group by a 59 to 38 percent margin — a net 17 point decline from Hillary Clinton’s 66 to 28 percent victory in the same survey four years ago.Mr. Trump’s breakthrough among Latino voters was the most extreme example of the broader inroads he made among Democratic constituencies. According to the data, Mr. Biden failed to improve his margins among virtually every voting group that backed Mrs. Clinton in 2016, whether it was young voters, women, Black voters, unmarried voters or voters in urban areas. Often, Mr. Trump improved over his 2016 performance, even though he was largely seen as trying to appeal to his own base.Higher turnout did not reshape the electorate to the favor of Democrats, either. In the aftermath of the 2016 election, many Democrats blamed Mrs. Clinton’s defeat on low turnout and support from young and nonwhite voters. Many progressives even believed that mobilizing Democratic constituencies alone could oust the president, based in part on the assumption that Mr. Trump had all but maxed-out his support among white, rural voters without a degree.At the same time, Democrats supposed that higher turnout would draw more young and nonwhite voters to the polls, bolstering the party.Overall, 73 percent of Mr. Trump’s supporters voted in the 2020 election compared with 68 percent of Mr. Biden’s supporters. In comparison, Mr. Trump’s supporters were only 2 percentage points more likely to vote than Mrs. Clinton’s in 2016, according to the Pew data.New voters, who did not participate in 2016 or 2018, split about evenly between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, with Mr. Biden winning 49 percent of new voters to 47 percent for Mr. Trump.In the end, there was a far deeper well of support and enthusiasm for Mr. Trump than many progressives had imagined. An additional 13 million people voted for Mr. Trump in 2020 than in 2016. Voter records in states with party registration — like Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Nevada and Arizona — suggest that registered Republicans continued to turn out at a higher rate than registered Democrats, and in some cases even expanded their turnout advantage over the 2016 cycle.There was a far deeper well of support and enthusiasm for former President Donald J. Trump than many progressives had imagined.Doug Mills/The New York TimesNationwide, Catalist found that the turnout among ‘historical’ Republican and Democratic voters both increased by 3 percentage points, leaving the basic turnout pattern of the 2016 election intact.Whether the Democratic turnout should be considered strong or weak has been a matter of some consternation for Democrats, who are understandably reluctant to diminish the contributions their base made in ousting Mr. Trump. And of course, Mr. Biden absolutely could not have won the election if Democratic turnout did not rise to at least keep pace with that of Republicans.Perhaps another Democrat would have mobilized voters more decisively. But the strong turnout for Mr. Trump implies that it would have been very challenging for any Democrat to win simply by outmuscling the other side.Instead, Mr. Biden prevailed by making significant inroads among moderate or conservative constituencies.Mr. Biden’s strength among these groups was not obvious on election night. His gains were largest in suburban areas, which are so heterogenous that it’s often hard to say exactly what kinds of voters might explain his inroads.Mr. Biden’s weakness among Hispanic voters, in contrast, was obvious in overwhelmingly Hispanic areas like Miami-Dade County or the Rio Grande Valley.But according to Pew Research, Mr. Biden made larger gains among married men than any other demographic group analyzed in the survey. He won 44 percent of married men, up from 32 percent for Mrs. Clinton in 2016. It’s an even larger surge for Mr. Biden than Pew showed Mr. Trump making among Latino voters, even though they do not stand out on the electoral map.In a similar analysis, Catalist also showed that Mr. Biden made his largest inroads among married white men, though they showed smaller gains for Mr. Biden than Pew Research.Mr. Biden also made significant, double-digit gains among white, non-Hispanic Catholics, a persuadable but somewhat conservative voting bloc. He won 16 percent of moderate to liberal Republicans, up from 9 percent for Mrs. Clinton in 2016. And Mr. Biden gained among men, even while making no ground or, according to Pew, losing ground, among women. As a result, the gender gap was cut in half over the last four years, to 13 points from 26 points in 2016.The shrunken gender gap in 2020 defies the pre-election conventional wisdom and polling, which predicted that a record gender gap would propel Mr. Biden to victory. The Pew findings offer no insight into why the gender gap may have decreased; any number of interpretations are possible. In this case, it is possible that attitudes about Mrs. Clinton may be a more important factor than attitudes about either of the 2020 election candidates. More

More from our inbox:The Heat Wave and Fossil FuelsMoney for Condo RepairsThe Best Antidote to Charges of Election Fraud: Truth and LogicSmallpox vaccinations in the 1960s.United States Department of Health Education and Welfare, via Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Vaccine Mandates Are Coming. Good,” by Aaron E. Carroll (Opinion guest essay, June 29):As of this writing, I have been fully vaccinated for four months and eight days. I reside in an area where vaccination rates have surpassed what is perceived to be herd immunity standards. So I feel as protected as possible under the circumstances.Yet I am angered by the failure at the federal, state and local levels to mandate that the reluctant, the recalcitrant and the reckless roll up their sleeves and become inoculated.More than 600,000 have died in this country alone. When is enough too much?I understand, although I disagree, that safety concerns must sometimes give way to religious accommodations, and I fully comprehend that there are those who may have legitimate health issues that preclude their participation, but beyond that, get in line.Only an emergency use authorization, not full approval? Give me a break. We have just lived through more than a year in collective hell. I can’t be silent while others die a needless, senseless death.It is well past the moment of no return. Stop handing out lottery tickets and start handing down laws. Get the shot. Now!Robert S. NussbaumGreat Barrington, Mass.To the Editor:For most, the overwhelming relief at being vaccinated is not having to worry any longer about harboring the illness asymptomatically, passing it on to someone else, and causing them harm.We now have the means in this country for every person to avoid that torment. How there is a single person left who won’t leap at the chance is impossible to understand.Personal freedoms must be protected but not at the expense of the well-being of the broader community.Margaret McGirrGreenwich, Conn.To the Editor:Early in the pandemic, I grumbled to my husband about wearing a mask. He replied, “It’s not just about you.” I needed that!Recently a young man who works in our building came to our apartment, and I asked if he was vaccinated.“Nah, I’m young,” he said.“Don’t you have parents, grandparents?” I asked.He said yes, his mother has been after him to be vaccinated.It’s not about you, people. It’s about all of us.Lynda GreerAtlantaThe Heat Wave and Fossil Fuels  Kathryn Elsesser/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Climate Change Ignited the Heat Dome Frying the Northwest,” by Michael E. Mann and Susan Joy Hassol (Opinion guest essay, June 30):Symptoms of a fossil-fuel-disrupted climate have struck the Pacific Northwest. The time is now to bury all things related to fossil fuels! We need to ditch the subsidies and divest from these companies. We need to rush to clean energy solutions and ban all new fossil fuel infrastructure. We need to thoroughly free ourselves from these unhealthy and polluting fuels.What calamity will open our collective eyes to the scope of this crisis? When will we aggressively mitigate this problem? Where will the next crisis strike? How many lives will be lost? There are so many questions and so little time.Sally CourtrightAlbany, N.Y.Money for Condo RepairsFirst responders continued their search on Wednesday, for the unaccounted victims from Champlain Tower South in Surfside, Fla.Maria Alejandra Cardona for The New York TimesTo the Editor:A common reality with respect to multifamily cooperatives and condominiums is the failure of residents and their elected boards to set aside sufficient funds in reserve to perform future repairs and replacements as the buildings age.Sufficient funding would require residents to pay higher maintenance and common charges. Often, the result is special assessments when the work can no longer be deferred.John A. ViterittiLaurel, N.Y.The writer managed multifamily co-ops and condominiums in New York City.The Best Antidote to Charges of Election Fraud: Truth and Logic  Ashley Gilbertson/VII Photo, via ReduxTo the Editor:Re “What if the Military Starts to Doubt Our Elections?” (Opinion guest essay, June 17):Elliot Ackerman gives us one more reason to open a national dialogue about the alleged stealing of the 2020 presidential election. This topic has been the elephant in the room long enough, and Democrats need to stop thinking that it will just magically disappear.If a large portion of our electorate believes that the election was stolen, that is a threat to our democracy and our stability as a country, because some voters will believe that any election not going their way is illegitimate. The best antidote for that kind of thinking is a big slice of truth wrapped in logic.Ask them why they would believe that every Republican secretary of state in all of our states is dishonest when the odds are much greater that Donald Trump himself is the one being crooked and dishonest. Then remind them that you are referring to the same Donald Trump who was asking state legislatures to overturn the election.Whether in a national town hall meeting or just people proactively discussing it with friends and family, the subject does need to be addressed. Otherwise, the notion that the election was stolen will continue to hover over us like the ominous clouds that precede a tornado.Bobby BraddockNashville More

Eric Adams filed a lawsuit on Wednesday seeking to reserve his right to have a judge review the ballots in the Democratic primary for mayor.The lawsuit, which was filed in Kings County Supreme Court, preserves the campaign’s rights to challenge the results once they are official. Though experts say such legal action is standard, it comes just a day after Mr. Adams and other candidates blasted the New York City Board of Elections for accidentally counting 135,000 test ballots in a preliminary tally of the ranked-choice results of the Democratic primary.“Today we petitioned the court to preserve our right to a fair election process and to have a judge oversee and review ballots, if necessary,” the Adams campaign said in a statement. “We invite the other campaigns to join us and petition the court as we all seek a clear and trusted conclusion to this election.”Andrew Yang filed a similar suit before the election, but he withdrew it after he conceded following a fourth-place finish in the initial vote.Under state law, a candidate must file a challenge within 10 days after the primary, before all of the results may have been finalized. That’s why many candidates file so-called prophylactic lawsuits, said Jerry H. Goldfeder, a well-known election lawyer who is not representing any candidate in the mayoral contest.“Even without the error by the board,” Mr. Goldfeder said, “it’s fairly standard for candidates to begin these lawsuits to protect their rights if down the road they disagree with the board ruling in the race.” More