Elections

I wrote my weekend column about three ways that Donald Trump might be prevented from plunging the country into crisis in 2024, should he reproduce both his 2020 defeat and his quest to overturn the outcome: first, through the dramatic electoral overhauls favored by progressives; second, through a Bidenist politics of normalcy that prevents the G.O.P. from capturing the House or Senate; or third, through the actions of Republican officials who keep their heads down and don’t break with Trump but, as in 2020, refuse to go along if he turns another loss into an attempted putsch. More

A Senate investigation of the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol has uncovered broad government, military and law enforcement failings before the violent attack, including a breakdown within multiple intelligence agencies and a lack of training and preparation for Capitol police officers who were quickly overwhelmed by the rioters.The Senate report released on Tuesday is the first – and possibly the last – bipartisan review of how hundreds of supporters of the former president Donald Trump were able to violently push past security lines and break into the Capitol that day, interrupting the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.It includes new details about the police officers on the front lines who suffered chemical burns, brain injuries and broken bones and who told senators that they were left with no direction when command systems broke down. It recommends immediate changes to give the Capitol police chief more authority, to provide better planning and equipment for law enforcement and to streamline intelligence-gathering among federal agencies.As a bipartisan effort, the report does not delve into the root causes of the attack, including Trump’s role as he called for his supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat that day. It does not call the attack an insurrection, even though it was. And it comes two weeks after Republicans blocked a bipartisan, independent commission that would investigate the insurrection more broadly.“This report is important in the fact that it allows us to make some immediate improvements to the security situation here in the Capitol,” said Michigan senator Gary Peters, the chairman of the homeland security and governmental affairs committee, which conducted the investigation along with the Senate rules committee. “But it does not answer some of the bigger questions that we need to face, quite frankly, as a country and as a democracy.”The House passed legislation in May to create a commission that would be modelled after a panel that investigated the 9/11 terrorist attack two decades ago. But it failed to get the 60 Senate votes needed to advance, with many Republicans pointing to the Senate report as sufficient.The top Republican on the rules panel, the Missouri senator Roy Blunt, has opposed the commission, arguing that investigation would take too long. He said the recommendations made in the Senate could be implemented faster, including legislation that he and the Minnesota Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar, the rules committee chair, intend to introduce soon that would give the chief of Capitol police more authority to request assistance from the National Guard.The Senate report recounts how the guard was delayed for hours on 6 January as officials in multiple agencies took bureaucratic steps to release the troops. It details hours of calls between officials in the Capitol and the Pentagon and as the then chief of the Capitol police, Steven Sund, desperately begged for help.It finds that the Pentagon spent hours “mission planning” and seeking layers of approvals as rioters were overwhelming and brutally beating Capitol police. It also states that the Department of Defense’s response was “informed by” criticism of its heavy-handed response to protests in the summer of 2020 after the death of George Floyd at the hands of police.The senators are heavily critical of the Capitol police board, a three-member panel that includes the heads of security for the House and Senate and the architect of the Capitol. The board is now required to approve requests by the police chief, even in urgent situations. The report recommends that its members “regularly review the policies and procedures” after senators found that none of the board members on 6 January understood their own authority or could detail the statutory requirements for requesting National Guard assistance.Two of the three members of the board, the House and Senate sergeants-at-arms, were pushed out in the days after the attack. Sund also resigned under pressure.Congress needed to change the law and give the police chief more authority “immediately”, Klobuchar said.The report recommends a consolidated intelligence unit within the Capitol police after widespread failures from multiple agencies that did not predict the attack even though insurrectionists were planning it openly on the internet. The police’s intelligence unit “knew about social media posts calling for violence at the Capitol on 6 January, including a plot to breach the Capitol, the online sharing of maps of the Capitol complex’s tunnel systems, and other specific threats of violence”, the report says, but agents did not properly inform leadership of everything they had found.The senators also criticise the FBI and the homeland security department for downplaying online threats and for not issuing formal intelligence bulletins that help law enforcement plan.In a response to the report, the Capitol police acknowledged the need for improvements, some of which they said they were already making. “Law enforcement agencies across the country rely on intelligence, and the quality of that intelligence can mean the difference between life and death,” the statement said.During the attack, the report says, Capitol police were heavily compromised by multiple failures – bad intelligence, poor planning, faulty equipment and a lack of leadership. The force’s incident command system “broke down during the attack”, leaving officers on the front lines without orders. There were no functional incident commanders, and some senior officers were fighting instead of giving orders. “USCP leadership never took control of the radio system to communicate orders to frontline officers,” the investigation found.“I was horrified that no deputy chief or above was on the radio or helping us,” one officer told the committee in an anonymous statement. “For hours the screams on the radio were horrific, the sights were unimaginable and there was a complete loss of control … For hours no chief or above took command and control. Officers were begging and pleading for help for medical triage.”The acting chief of police, Yogananda Pittman, who replaced Sund after his resignation, told the committees that the lack of communication resulted from “incident commanders being overwhelmed and engaging with rioters, rather than issuing orders over the radio”.The committee’s interviews with police officers detail what one officer said was “absolutely brutal” abuse from Trump’s supporters as they ran over them and broke into the building. They described hearing racial slurs and seeing Nazi salutes. One officer trying to evacuate the Senate said he had stopped several men in full tactical gear who said: “You better get out of our way, boy, or we’ll go through you to get [the Senators].’”The insurrectionists told police officers they would kill them, and then the members of Congress. One officer said he had a “tangible fear” that he might not make it home alive.At the same time, the senators acknowledge the officers’ bravery, noting that one officer told them: “The officers inside all behaved admirably and heroically and, even outnumbered, went on the offensive and took the Capitol back.” More

Donald Trump called Joe Biden a “mental retard” during the 2020 election, a new book says, but was reluctant to attack him too strongly for fear the Democrats would replace him with Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama.Biden went on to beat Trump by more than 7m in the popular vote and by 306-232 in the electoral college, a result Trump deemed a landslide when it was in his favour against Clinton in 2016.Trump refused to accept defeat, pushing the lie that it was the result of electoral fraud. The lie resulted in the deadly Capitol attack of 6 January, by a mob Trump told to “fight like hell”, and a second impeachment. Trump was acquitted of inciting the insurrection and remains eligible to run for office.He tops polls of Republican nominees for 2024 and has returned to public speaking. On Monday, Forbes reported a planned tour with the former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, who left the network amid claims of sexual misconduct.Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost, by Michael Bender of the Wall Street Journal, will be published in August. Trump was among interviewees for the book. Vanity Fair published an excerpt on Monday.Previous revelations include that the Fox News host Sean Hannity, who was rebuked for campaigning with Trump, wrote an ad for the Trump campaign – a report Hannity denied.Bender writes that Trump interrupted a White House meeting to ask: “How am I losing in the polls to a mental retard?”The idea Democrats would replace Biden reportedly came from Dick Morris, a former adviser to Bill Clinton who has migrated rightwards and who was informally advising Trump.“Dick Morris told Trump that Biden was too old and too prone to gaffes to be the nominee,” Bender writes.Biden was 78 when he became the oldest president ever sworn in. Trump turns 75 next week.Bender adds that Trump believed his attacks on the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren early in the Democratic primary were too successful. Trump gave Warren a racist nickname, Pocahontas, based on her claim to Native American ancestry.Thinking Warren would have been an easier opponent, Bender writes, Trump fretted to aides that Democrats would “realise [Biden is] old, and they’re going to give it to somebody else. They’re going to give it to Hillary, or they’re going to give it to Michelle Obama.”Trump reportedly feared Democrats would move to replace Biden at their convention.According to widespread reporting, Trump’s fears about Clinton were not entirely without justification. Clinton did consider jumping into a race in which Biden struggled before surging to victory.According to Battle for the Soul by Edward-Isaac Dovere, released last month, the former first lady, senator and secretary of state “would muse aloud sometimes” about taking the nomination at a contested convention.Michelle Obama, however, never expressed interest. The former first lady remains hugely popular with the Democratic base but has repeatedly ruled out a career in frontline politics. More

Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe is seeking his old job, and Democrats will square off in races for lieutenant governor and attorney general.WASHINGTON — Virginia Democrats go to the polls on Tuesday to determine their candidates in races ranging from governor to the State House, but the onset of summer isn’t the only reason this year’s primary season has been sleepy.Taking place just months after a presidential election, nominating contests in Virginia often reflect the mood of the electorate. And if this year’s primary never seemed to get off the ground, it was in part because many voters are burned out on politics after four convulsive years of the Trump administration, a bitter 2020 campaign and a coronavirus pandemic that is only now receding.The most dedicated political aficionados have still followed the 2021 races in Virginia. However, former President Donald J. Trump’s ongoing refusal to acknowledge defeat, the storming of the Capitol and the subsequent impeachment inquiry diverted attention from state politics in a way that effectively delayed the start of the primary and starved former Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s opponents in the governor’s race of political oxygen.This was all manna from heaven for the once and potentially future governor, Mr. McAuliffe, who was succeeded by Gov. Ralph Northam in 2018 because Virginia is the last state in America to bar governors from serving for consecutive terms.Wielding perhaps the two most powerful weapons in a statewide primary — name recognition and cash on hand — Mr. McAuliffe has staked out a wide lead in the polls against four Democrats who are comparatively little-known and lightly financed: Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, State Senator Jennifer McClellan, State Delegate Lee Carter and former State Delegate Jennifer Carroll Foy.But just because Mr. McAuliffe appears poised to claim the nomination on Tuesday for his old job does not mean the results won’t be revealing.Here’s what to watch for in the Democratic races. (Virginia Republicans nominated their ticket last month, with Glenn Youngkin, a self-funding former private equity executive, emerging as the party’s nominee for governor.)How many voters will turn out?In 2009, Virginia Democrats had a hotly contested primary for governor that included two candidates from the vote-rich Washington suburbs, but only 319,000 voters cast ballots. In 2017, more than 543,000 Virginians voted in the Democratic primary for governor.The ultimate difference in those two election cycles: Twelve years ago, in the aftermath of President Barack Obama’s election, Republicans would claim the governorship, while four years ago, Democrats rode a wave of anti-Trump energy to sweep all three state offices: governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.“We need not have Donald Trump in the White House for our people to get out and vote, because Trumpism is alive and well in the Virginia Republican Party,” said Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn of the State House, a Democrat who was elevated to her position when, in 2019, another anti-Trump wave swept her party to the majority.Republicans, and some Democrats, are not convinced, especially given the G.O.P.’s nomination of Mr. Youngkin, a Northern Virginia businessman with roots in Hampton Roads.Without the one-man Democratic turnout lever that was Mr. Trump still in the Oval Office, can the party still overwhelm Republicans in the suburbs, where Virginia elections are often decided?Overall turnout on Tuesday will offer some initial clues.Terry McAuliffe, a former governor, has staked out a wide lead in the polls against four Democrats who are comparatively little-known and lightly financed.Parker Michels-Boyce for The New York TimesCan Terry McAuliffe win a majority?Capturing a majority of the vote in a five-way race can be difficult. But Mr. McAuliffe has so dominated the primary that it’s possible he can crack 50 percent. While it’s admittedly an arbitrary figure, a majority would represent a strong vote of confidence in Mr. McAuliffe.He appears well positioned to reach that threshold. He has claimed endorsements from much of Virginia’s Democratic establishment, including Mr. Northam, who’s now highly popular among Democrats despite his infamous blackface scandal in 2019. And despite running against three Black candidates, Mr. McAuliffe has also received endorsements from many of the state’s prominent African-American leaders.He has run as the de facto incumbent, linking his governorship and that of Mr. Northam to trumpet the last eight years and the broader Democratic takeover of Virginia. Republicans have not won a statewide race since 2009 and are now in the minority of both chambers of the General Assembly.“We’re a new state today,” Mr. McAuliffe said last week during a stop at a pie shop in Arlington, recalling what he called the “anti-women, anti-gay, anti-environment, anti-immigrant, pro-gun” Republican legislature when he took office in 2014.The question is whether his popularity, and the credit he gets from Democrats for Virginia’s transformation, is enough to run away with a race against a field that includes younger, more diverse and more progressive opponents.Will there be a suburban surge?The Virginia suburbs outside Washington used to be strikingly different from the rest of the state. “Occupied territory” was the joke residents who lived south of the Rappahannock River would make about the more transient, less culturally Southern communities outside the nation’s capital.But now far more of Virginia resembles Northern Virginia. In their demographics and, increasingly, their politics, the population hubs of Richmond and Hampton Roads are closer to Arlington than Abingdon.This is all to say that Mr. McAuliffe’s performance and the overall turnout are worth watching most closely in the so-called urban crescent, stretching from Northern Virginia down Interstate 95 to Richmond and then east on I-64 to Hampton Roads.Are these Democrats a) enthusiastic to vote and b) eager to support an older, more moderate contender? They were in the 2017 primary, when Mr. Northam fended off a challenge from his left by former Representative Tom Perriello, but Tuesday will tell us more about the state of the party in the precincts that have turned Virginia blue.Primaries for the nomination for lieutenant governor and other state offices are also on the ballot on Tuesday.Parker Michels-Boyce for The New York TimesWhat about the down-ballot races?Races for governor always get the most attention in Virginia’s year-after-the-presidential-election contests because they can be a handy temperature check on the electorate. Backlashes are often first detected here. In fact, until Mr. McAuliffe’s 2013 victory, Virginia had a decades-long streak of electing a governor of the opposite party from the occupant of the White House.But the other two races for statewide office, lieutenant governor and attorney general, are also worth keeping tabs on.The primary for the state’s No. 2 job is sprawling, with six candidates running. Three state lawmakers — Sam Rasoul, Hala Ayala and Mark Levine — have the most money. Ms. Ayala enjoys the support of Mr. Northam, and Mr. Rasoul would be the first Muslim elected to statewide office in Virginia.While the job brings few official duties beyond breaking ties in the State Senate, it’s coveted by up-and-coming politicians because, given Virginia’s one-and-done rule for governors, it can be a quick steppingstone to the top job. Former Govs. Charles S. Robb, L. Douglas Wilder and Tim Kaine, as well as Mr. Northam, followed that route.Attorney general can also be a launching pad for governor — the joke being that A.G. stands for Almost Governor — and that’s what many believed Attorney General Mark Herring, a Democrat, would be running for this year. But with Mr. McAuliffe seeking the governorship, Mr. Herring, who had his own blackface scandal in 2019, decided to seek what would be a third term.He drew a challenge from a young, Black state lawmaker, Jay Jones, who picked up the support of Mr. Northam. Mr. Herring, though, has outraised Mr. Jones and has benefited from stronger name recognition. In a primary season that was slow to start and never seemed to fully flower, that could prove enough. More

The US vice-president, Kamala Harris, said she had held ‘robust’ talks with the Guatemalan president, Alejandro Giammattei, as she sought to find ways of deterring undocumented immigration from Central America to the United States. Speaking during a news conference with Giammattei, Harris delivered a blunt message to people thinking of making the dangerous journey north: ‘Do not come’

Kamala Harris faces doubts over retooled US policy in Central America
Kamala Harris takes on a new role as she heads on her first overseas trip More

In 2013, the animal rights leaders helped undermine the mayoral campaign of Christine Quinn, boosting the chances of the eventual winner, Bill de Blasio.The last time there was a crowded race for mayor of New York City, a curious issue gained unexpected prominence: Just about every major candidate promised to do away with Central Park’s horse-drawn carriages, citing concerns over the horses’ safety.A notable exception was Christine Quinn, then the speaker of the New York City Council. Because of her stance, an animal rights group helped fund an “Anybody But Quinn” campaign that was credited with helping to topple her candidacy in 2013, paving the way for Bill de Blasio to become mayor.Eight years later, with horse-drawn carriages still rumbling through Central Park, that same animal rights group is making a return appearance in the 2021 mayoral race.The two founders of the group, New Yorkers for Clean, Livable and Safe Streets, or NYCLASS, announced on Monday their support for a new super PAC that will run television and digital ads attacking Andrew Yang, one of the Democratic front-runners in the contest.The ads were not the only curious development in the race: The office of the New York City comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, whose campaign for mayor appears to be losing steam, released an audit on Monday targeting the emergency food program established by a rival candidate, Kathryn Garcia, who has been rising in the polls. The audit raised concerns that he was using taxpayer dollars for political purposes.The audit and the anti-Yang ads were the most recent illustrations of how the June 22 primary, which is likely to determine the next mayor of this heavily Democratic city, remains in flux. Mr. Yang’s numbers have been falling, Ms. Garcia has gained ground, and Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, is now thought to be in the lead, according to an Ipsos poll commissioned by Spectrum News NY1 that was released on Monday.The digital ads attacking Mr. Yang feature photographs of apparently ailing carriage horses lying on the street, and Mr. Yang’s “no” response on a questionnaire asking if he would support efforts “to strengthen welfare protections and increase the standards of care for New York City’s carriage horses.”The ads attacking Mr. Yang feature photos of apparently ailing carriage horses lying on the street.Andrew Seng for The New York TimesThe television ad makes no mention of animal rights, focusing instead on Mr. Yang’s qualifications.“What do we actually know about Andrew Yang?” the narrator asks in the advertisement, before launching into an unflattering biography of the former presidential candidate, describing him as “a prep school millionaire whose business career mostly failed.”The organization is spending about $200,000 for one week of ads, but is willing to spend about $1 million, according to its spokesman, James Freedland.The group’s leaders, Steve Nislick, a former real estate executive, and Wendy Neu, who runs a recycling and real estate company, declined interview requests. Jackie Kelman Bisbee, Ms. Neu’s sister and a film producer who is helping fund the super PAC, also declined to comment.In a statement, Mr. Nislick said that there was “no question that respect for animal rights goes hand in hand with respect for human rights.”“It’s clear that Andrew Yang is the wrong choice for mayor on both fronts,” he continued. “From supporting the abusive carriage horse industry to opposing tax increases on the wealthiest New Yorkers, Yang is simply unable and unwilling to stand up to the powerful forces that perpetuate cruelty in order to make a profit.”Chris Coffey, one of Mr. Yang’s campaign managers, spent years working as a lobbyist for NYCLASS and said he was taken aback by the group leaders’ decision to target Mr. Yang. Mr. Coffey accused the group of working behind the scenes with Mr. Adams.“This is the clearest evidence yet that Eric Adams is cutting deals with the same people who put Bill de Blasio in office,” Mr. Coffey said. “It’s time for a change from these sketchy unethical deals of the past.”A spokesman for Mr. Adams scoffed at Mr. Coffey’s suggestion that the borough president was involved in the ad campaign.“Absurd and sad,” said Evan Thies, the spokesman. “Apparently there are plenty of other people who don’t think Andrew Yang should be mayor.”A spokesman for Eric Adams, center, scoffed at the suggestion that the borough president was involved in the ad campaign.James Estrin/The New York TimesThe group’s founders donated generously to Mr. de Blasio’s mayoral campaign, but they also fought with him over his failure to actually ban the industry, as he had promised. Instead, Mr. de Blasio has moved the horse-carriage line from 59th Street into Central Park, and signed legislation limiting horse-carriage operations on particularly hot days..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}During his regular Monday morning media briefing, Mr. de Blasio said he hadn’t met or spoken with Ms. Neu or Mr. Nislick in “months and months, for sure.”In the years after the 2013 election, the New York City Campaign Finance Boards fined NYCLASS for making illegal campaign contributions, and the issue of horse carriages receded into the background.This year, four of the top eight mayoral candidates responded to NYCLASS’s candidate questionnaire. Only two of them expressed outright support for eventually banning the industry: Maya Wiley, Mr. de Blasio’s former counsel, and Dianne Morales, the former nonprofit executive. Mr. Adams selected “no” in response to the question about banning the industry, but then elaborated that he was “open to further discussion about prohibiting the operation of horse-drawn carriages.”Ms. Quinn, the target of the organization’s 2013 ad campaign, expressed disapproval of the group leaders’ new efforts.“What’s the horror movie where you can’t kill the monster and he keeps coming back?” Ms. Quinn said when reached by phone.Meanwhile, Mr. Stringer’s release of an audit targeting Ms. Garcia’s emergency food program prompted criticism that he was misusing the comptroller’s office for political gain.After the pandemic threw one million New Yorkers out of work, and it became apparent that New York City was facing a hunger crisis of historic proportions, Mr. de Blasio tasked Ms. Garcia, then the sanitation commissioner, with creating an emergency food program. At its height, it distributed 1.5 million meals a day.On Monday, Mr. Stringer’s office faulted the city for failing to adequately vet the background of a contractor whose owner had been convicted of obstructing the Internal Revenue Service.Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, released an audit targeting an emergency food program established by a rival candidate, Kathryn Garcia.Sarah Blesener for The New York TimesA spokeswoman for Mr. Stringer said the audit began last July, well before Ms. Garcia launched her campaign, and that the office evaluates whether an audit merits a news release based on the significance of the findings and recommendations.“The comptroller’s office has been diligently working to examine what went well and what didn’t during the response to the pandemic, and how to improve agencies’ emergency procurement procedures to quickly secure goods and services while mitigating the risks of squandering taxpayer dollars and contracting with unqualified or criminal vendors,” said Hazel Crampton-Hays, the comptroller’s press secretary.But Annika Reno, a spokeswoman for the Garcia campaign, was unconvinced.“It’s hardly a surprise that after Scott has spent his entire career in political office, that he would then use his office and taxpayer dollars to further his political career,” Ms. Reno said. “This is why New Yorkers don’t want another career politician as mayor, they want a public servant who gets things done.” More

Gov. Phil Scott signed a bill on Monday requiring that all registered voters receive mail-in ballots. His decision contrasted with Republican-led efforts to restrict voting rights in several states.Gov. Phil Scott of Vermont signed legislation on Monday that requires all registered voters in the state to receive mail-in ballots, an expansion of voting rights that counters a movement among Republicans in other states to restrict them.Mr. Scott, a Republican, signed the bill nearly four weeks after the Vermont General Assembly approved the legislation, which also allows voters to fix, or “cure,” a ballot that was deemed defective if it was filled out or mailed incorrectly.In a statement on Monday, Mr. Scott said he had signed the bill “because I believe making sure voting is easy and accessible, and increasing voter participation, is important.”He added that he would push lawmakers to expand the provision beyond statewide general elections, “which already have the highest voter turnout.”“For greater consistency and to expand access further,” he said, “I am asking the General Assembly to extend the provisions of this bill to primary elections, local elections and school budget votes when they return to session in January.”Last year, during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, Vermont officials agreed to send out mail-in ballots to voters so they could cast their votes safely.The measure was extremely popular. More than 75 percent of registered voters cast ballots early or by mail, according to the office of Jim Condos, Vermont’s secretary of state. Voter turnout was high, with more than 73 percent of the state’s 506,000 registered voters casting ballots in November, according to the state’s election results.Among registered voters in Vermont, 68 percent wanted to keep the policy of giving every registered voter a mail-in ballot while 29 percent opposed it, according to a poll conducted by Lincoln Park Strategies, a survey group. Seventy-eight percent of residents also supported giving voters a chance to fix, or “cure,” ballots with small errors.Gov. Phil Scott’s decision to sign the Vermont bill bucked a trend of Republican leaders who have supported bills restricting voting rights.Wilson Ring/Associated PressVermont’s Senate approved the measure in March. The legislation passed in the General Assembly with bipartisan support, in a 119-to-30 vote, though some Republican lawmakers had resisted the push for mail-in ballots, arguing that they could allow for voter fraud.Independent studies and government reviews have found that voter fraud is extremely rare in all forms, including mail-in voting.“We should be proud of our brave state,” Mr. Condos, a Democrat, said in a statement last month. Though he did not name states where lawmakers have worked to restrict voting rights — Florida, Georgia and Texas among them — Mr. Condos contrasted those Republican-led efforts with the measure in Vermont, where the Republican governor had expressed support for a bipartisan bill.“While others are working to make it harder to vote, in Vermont we are working to remove barriers to the ballot box for all eligible voters, while strengthening the security and integrity of the voting process,” Mr. Condos said.Mr. Condos, who noted that mail-in ballots had been available to American voters since before the Civil War, said in his statement that ballots would be mailed only to active registered voters and would not be forwarded to people who had changed their addresses.Ballots must include a signed affidavit from voters identifying themselves, and each envelope will contain voter data such as a unique identification number and a bar code, Mr. Condos said.The law will give municipalities the option to send mail-in ballots for local races and allow voters to cast their ballots at drive-in polling places, said State Senator Cheryl Hooker, a Democrat, who was a sponsor of the Senate version of the bill.Becca Balint, the president pro tempore of the State Senate, said in a statement that the approval of the bill “stands in stark contrast to legislatures across the country who continue voter suppression efforts, targeting practices like mail-in voting that have correlated with higher turnout among people of color.”Ms. Balint, a Democrat, said Mr. Scott’s signature “represents bipartisan agreement that our democracy, and our state, are strengthened when we make elections more accessible to all.”Both chambers of Vermont’s General Assembly are controlled by Democrats, and Mr. Scott has said he voted for President Biden in the 2020 presidential election. After casting his ballot in November, Mr. Scott told reporters that it was the first time in his life that he had voted for a Democrat. Mr. Biden won 66 percent of the vote in Vermont.Mr. Scott’s decision to sign the bill bucked a trend of Republican leaders who have supported bills restricting voting rights. Kentucky, which has a Democratic governor but which former President Donald J. Trump won with 62 percent of the vote, is the only state with a Republican-controlled legislature that has significantly expanded voting rights.“Amid a scourge of anti-voter bills being proposed and signed into law in the states, it’s encouraging to see Vermont moving in the opposite direction,” Josh Silver, chief executive of RepresentUs, a bipartisan voting rights advocacy group, said in a statement.Mr. Trump’s refusal to admit that he lost and his monthslong campaign to delegitimize the results have gutted his supporters’ trust in the electoral system and led to baseless claims about the integrity of the election.In their public comments, lawmakers in at least 33 states have cited low public confidence in the electoral system to justify pushing for bills that restrict voting, according to a tally by The New York Times.States such as Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Iowa have already passed laws restricting the ability of voters to cast ballots. In Texas, Democrats stalled legislation that has been viewed by many voting rights groups as perhaps the harshest of all.Christine Hauser More

Durante la presidencia de Daniel Ortega, el país está a un paso de convertirse en un Estado de partido único. Las acusaciones de lavado de dinero contra su principal rival agudizan las preocupaciones.MANAGUA, Nicaragua — Los candidatos de la oposición han sido detenidos. Las protestas se han prohibido. Y los partidos políticos han sido descalificados.A meses de postular a la reelección, el presidente de Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, deja al país a un paso de convertirse en un Estado de partido único, al tomar medidas drásticas contra la oposición a un grado que no se ha visto desde la brutal represión de las protestas antigubernamentales de 2018, dicen los expertos.Las medidas agresivas de Ortega son un inesperado desafío para la gestión de Biden, que ha hecho del fortalecimiento a las democracias centroamericanas un pilar de su política exterior en la región.La mano dura de Ortega alcanzó un punto de inflexión el miércoles, luego de que su gobierno acusó a Cristiana Chamorro, una de las principales candidatas de oposición, de lavado de dinero y “falsedad ideológica” y la puso bajo arresto domiciliario horas después de anunciar sus planes de postular a la presidencia en las elecciones del 7 de noviembre. Otro candidato, Arturo Cruz, fue detenido el sábado por la policía por supuestamente “conspirar contra la sociedad nicaragüense”.La policía ha confinado a sus hogares a otros tres aspirantes presidenciales, que no han sido acusados formalmente de ningún cargo, lo que en la práctica impide que realicen campañas electorales.“Ortega está a punto de acabar con toda la competencia política en el país”, comentó Eliseo Núñez, un analista político y activista opositor nicaragüense. “Estamos muy cerca de llamar a esto de una dictadura”.La velocidad con que Nicaragua se ha precipitado hacia el autoritarismo ha tomado por sorpresa incluso a muchos de los oponentes de Ortega.Ortega, otrora líder de la junta revolucionaria de Nicaragua, ha desmantelado gradualmente las instituciones democráticas del país y sofocado la disidencia desde que regresó al poder en 2007 tras ganar unas elecciones democráticas. Más de 320 personas, en su mayoría manifestantes, murieron en protestas contra su gobierno en 2018, lo que la convierte en la peor ola de violencia política en América Latina en tres décadas.Las protestas ayudaron a sumir a uno de los países más pobres de la región en una recesión económica prolongada y condujeron a la imposición de sanciones estadounidenses contra los principales funcionarios de Ortega, incluida su esposa, Rosario Murillo, quien es la vicepresidenta y su portavoz.Ortega, intentando aliviar la presión económica e internacional, inició un diálogo con la oposición tras las protestas y estableció un plazo con la Organización de Estados Americanos el año pasado para lograr que el sistema electoral nicaragüense sea más justo.Pero al acercarse el plazo para la reforma, Ortega viró radicalmente hacia la represión. Ha nombrado a sus partidarios al consejo supremo electoral. Introdujo una serie de leyes que permiten a sus funcionarios detener o descalificar a cualquier ciudadano que haya expresado críticas al presidente, incluidos periodistas y políticos.“Ortega hizo todo lo contrario de lo que se esperaba”, observó Carlos Tünnerman, un ex alto funcionario del gobierno revolucionario de Ortega en los años ochenta. “Ha demostrado que está listo para hacer cualquier cosa para mantenerse en el poder”.La medida más audaz del gobierno hasta ahora ha sido el arresto sorpresivo de Cristiana Chamorro, heredera de una de las familias más ricas e influyentes de Nicaragua y cuya madre derrotó a Ortega en las elecciones de 1990. Hasta hace poco, Chamorro dirigía una fundación que capacitaba a periodistas independientes de Nicaragua con fondos recibidos parcialmente de Estados Unidos, lo que llevó al gobierno a acusarla de lavado de dinero y subversión.Cristiana Chamorro, al centro, candidata líder de la oposición, en Managua la semana pasada.Inti Ocon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEn la actualidad solo un grupo creíble de la oposición tiene la posibilidad legal de participar en las elecciones de noviembre y representa la última esperanza para los opositores de Ortega. La agrupación, llamada Ciudadanos por la Libertad, está en el proceso de elegir a su candidato presidencial, quien se convertiría de hecho en estandarte de una oposición por lo general indisciplinada.Los analistas políticos indican que un candidato serio de Ciudadanos por la Libertad tendría buenas oportunidades de movilizar al grueso de los votantes nicaragüenses que no apoyan al gobierno y presentar una amenaza electoral de importancia al partido gobernante.Ortega parece no estar dispuesto a permitirlo. El viernes, la junta electoral, aliada del gobierno, hizo una amenaza velada de prohibir a cualquier candidato que no cumpla con las nuevas leyes que criminalizan la disidencia política.Los líderes opositores comentaron que la nueva directriz permite que los funcionarios electorales tengan el poder de suspender a cualquier candidato que represente una amenaza seria para Ortega o el candidato de su elección para que en la práctica no enfrente oposición.“Están claramente abiertos a dar ese último paso”, dijo Félix Maradiaga, uno de los finalistas en la carrera por la nominación de Ciudadanos por la Libertad a candidato presidencial.El mismo Maradiaga ha estado periódicamente en arresto domiciliario desde noviembre sin que se le hayan presentado cargos.La vocera de Ortega, Murillo, no respondió a un pedido de comentarios sobre las detenciones de los candidatos de la oposición.El rápido deterioro de las protecciones democráticas de Nicaragua ha presentado un desafío para la gestión de Biden, que ya estaba teniendo dificultades para detener el creciente autoritarismo en Centroamérica.Funcionarios y congresistas estadounidenses respondieron a la detención de Chamorro con amenazas de imponer nuevas sanciones contra Ortega.“Definitivamente estamos viendo qué acciones vamos a tomar para responder” a la represión política, dijo el sábado a la Voice of America el principal asesor de la Casa Blanca para América Latina, Juan González.La fuerte dependencia de Nicaragua de las exportaciones preferentes a Estados Unidos y los créditos de prestamistas internacionales financiados por Estados Unidos significa que las sanciones son una seria amenaza económica para Ortega, dijo Tiziano Breda, analista centroamericano de International Crisis Group.Pero la introducción de sanciones de importancia podrían conducir a la ya contraída economía de Nicaragua a una crisis, impulsando un nuevo éxodo de migrantes de la región hacia Estados Unidos.“Ortega ya ha presidido una economía de guerra; está demostrando que está dispuesto a repetir la historia”, comentó Breda. “La pregunta es: ¿Estados Unidos está dispuesto a afrontar las consecuencias de sus acciones?”Yubelka Mendoza More