Elections

A terse announcement signaled a possible end to a long-running constitutional lawsuit. But former President Donald J. Trump is not a party to the arrangement.WASHINGTON — The Biden administration and House Democrats have reached a tentative deal to allow President Donald J. Trump’s former White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, to testify before Congress about Mr. Trump’s efforts to obstruct the Russia inquiry, according to a court filing late Tuesday.The deal appears likely to avert a definitive court precedent that would draw a clear line in an ambiguous areas: the scope and limits of Congress’s constitutional power to compel testimony for its oversight responsibilities, and a president’s constitutional power to keep secret conversations with a White House lawyer.An appeals court had been set to hear arguments on the case next week, but lawyers for the Justice Department, which has been defending Mr. McGahn since 2019 against a House subpoena seeking to compel his testimony, and for the House of Representatives asked the court in a joint letter to drop that plan as mooted by the deal.“The Committee on the Judiciary and the executive branch have reached an agreement in principle on an accommodation and anticipate filing, as soon as possible, a joint motion asking the court to remove this case from the May 19, 2021, oral argument calendar in order to allow the parties to implement the accommodation,” the letter said.What to do about the subpoena case, which President Biden inherited from the Trump administration, has been a rare locus of institutional disagreement among Democrats in the two branches.Lawyers in the Biden White House have been hesitant about establishing a precedent that Republicans might someday use to force them to testify about their own internal matters. House Democrats under Speaker Nancy Pelosi have been determined to push forward after frustration that the Trump administration’s uncompromising approach and litigation strategy ran out the clock, preventing any testimony by Mr. McGahn before the 2020 presidential election.The two sides had been negotiating for several months, leading to delays in the appeals court case. The filing was terse and offered no details about the deal, including what limits, if any, there would be — like whether Mr. McGahn would testify in public and the scope of what lawmakers could ask him to disclose.But the filing also flagged a potential wild card: “Former President Trump, who is not a party to this case, is not a party to the agreement in principle regarding an accommodation,” it said.That absence leaves open the question of whether Mr. Trump could try to intervene to block Mr. McGahn from testifying by asserting executive privilege. An attempt to invoke it by Mr. Trump would raise novel questions about the extent to which a former president may assert the privilege when the incumbent president declines to do so.Should Mr. Trump try to intervene, a rare but limited precedent is a 1977 case, Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, in which the Supreme Court ruled that Richard M. Nixon could assert executive privilege claims over official records from his White House even though he was no longer the president — but it also weighed that assertion against the contrary view of Jimmy Carter, the president at the time.That dispute, however, centered on control of Nixon-era White House documents, not a subpoena for a former White House lawyer’s testimony.The present dispute centers on the House Judiciary Committee’s desire to question Mr. McGahn about matters related to his role as a key witness in the report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, about efforts by Mr. Trump to obstruct the Russia investigation.After the Justice Department made most of the report public, Democrats on the Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Mr. McGahn to testify. After he refused to appear, on Mr. Trump’s instructions, the committee sued.The case has gone through several rounds of convoluted legal fights over constitutional issues that have lacked definitive precedents because previous disputes had generally been resolved with a negotiated compromise, averting a need for a court ruling.But the lawsuit over the McGahn subpoena is one of an unprecedented number of cases pitting the two branches against each other in court that arose after Democrats took the House in the 2018 midterm elections and Mr. Trump vowed to stonewall “all” subpoenas.First, the Justice Department under Mr. Trump had argued that Mr. McGahn was “absolutely immune” from any compelled appearance before Congress to testify about his work duties. Last year, the full District of Columbia Circuit rejected that theory.The Justice Department then continued to fight the subpoena on other legal grounds, arguing that Congress had no “cause of action” that authorized it to sue the executive branch. (The executive branch has taken that position under administrations of both parties, and the Biden administration had signaled that it was prepared to keep arguing it.)The apparent resolution of the McGahn subpoena case — unless Mr. Trump disrupts it — is similar to a dispute in 2009, when President Barack Obama took office and inherited a House lawsuit over a subpoena for testimony by President George W. Bush’s former White House counsel Harriet Miers related to the firings of United States attorneys.The Obama administration, a lawyer for the House and a legal representative of Mr. Bush worked out a deal under which Democrats were able to confidentially interview Ms. Miers about the topic, with limits. That accommodation mooted the case, so the District of Columbia Circuit never issued a binding ruling, leaving the legal questions it raised unresolved. More

I met a girl who sang the bluesAnd I asked her for some happy newsBut she just smiled and turned away— “American Pie” More

Christopher C. Miller, the acting defense secretary on Jan. 6, plans to defend the Pentagon’s actions before and during the violence when he testifies before a House panel on Wednesday.WASHINGTON — Christopher C. Miller, who was the acting defense secretary when rioters attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, plans to testify before Congress on Wednesday that he worried that sending troops to the complex would contribute to perceptions of a “military coup” under President Donald J. Trump.He will also blame Mr. Trump for encouraging the violent mob that overran the Capitol Police, according to written testimony submitted to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.Mr. Miller’s comments, part of the lengthy defense of the Pentagon’s actions before and during the mob violence, are the first he will make in sworn testimony as various committees investigate the largest attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812. He is set to testify during an hourslong hearing before the committee at 10 a.m.“I personally believe his comments encouraged the protesters that day,” Mr. Miller plans to say about Mr. Trump.Fear of the appearance of a coup was not an explanation given by the Pentagon in the days after the riot. At the time, Defense Department officials said they largely held back because they were not asked to send troops. District of Columbia officials, the former chief of the Capitol Police and Maryland’s Republican governor have all said they called for the National Guard to be deployed for hours on Jan. 6 before the Pentagon gave approval.During the hearing, Democrats plan to press Mr. Miller and former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen on what they believe is a “stark contrast” between how aggressively the Justice and Defense Departments responded to Black Lives Matter protests over the summer and the pro-Trump mob attack on the Capitol, according to a committee aide. Democrats also plan to ask whether the Justice Department had a “blind spot to right-wing extremism” that prevented it from anticipating the potential for violence, the aide said.“There is no question that former President Trump’s inflammatory language provoked and incited the violent mob that stormed the United States Capitol in a last-ditch effort to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election,” said Representative Carolyn B. Maloney of New York, the committee’s chairwoman. “Yet more than four months later, Congress and the American people still have many unanswered questions about why the Trump administration did not do more in response to open threats of violence espoused by violent right-wing extremists before the attack, and why federal agencies were so slow to respond once the attack began.”Mr. Rosen will reaffirm the Justice Department’s determination that it had seen “no evidence of widespread voter fraud at a scale sufficient to change the outcome of the 2020 election,” according to his submitted testimony.He also plans to testify that the department played a secondary role in security preparations for Congress’s Jan. 6 certification of the election results and the expected protests.“Based on the updates I received, I was confident that very substantial efforts were undertaken by D.O.J. personnel in advance of Jan. 6 to understand and prepare for the potential threats, and share that information with law enforcement partners,” Mr. Rosen is expected to say.Mr. Miller plans to testify that Mr. Trump did not block the National Guard from being deployed. According to his testimony, a day before the riot, the president requested 10,000 troops to be present.“The call lasted fewer than 30 seconds, and I did not respond substantively, and there was no elaboration. I took his comment to mean that a large force would be required to maintain order the following day,” Mr. Miller wrote.Defense Department officials have come under criticism since the attack, particularly from the commander of the D.C. National Guard, who testified before Congress in March that the Pentagon had placed “unusual” restrictions on his troops before the Capitol riot. The commander, Maj. Gen. William J. Walker, who has since become the House sergeant-at-arms, said the military leaders’ fears of a repeat of aggressive tactics used during racial justice protests last year slowed decision-making and squandered time as the violence escalated.He has also said he did not receive approval to mobilize troops until more than three hours after he had requested it.But Mr. Miller is expected to defend his actions, arguing that he informed General Walker hours earlier that he could deploy the guard. He also plans to say he believed a military deployment would send the wrong message to the protesters.“My concerns regarding the appropriate and limited use of the military in domestic matters were heightened by commentary in the media about the possibility of a military coup or that advisers to the president were advocating the declaration of martial law,” Mr. Miller wrote. “I was also concerned that those seeking to obstruct the Electoral College certification or otherwise disrupt our government could provoke a soldier to act in a way that could be portrayed in the media as an attack against demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights of assembly and speech.”Capitol security officials have blamed communication breakdowns and overlapping jurisdictions for creating utter confusion that hindered attempts to stop the assault. Mr. Miller plans to testify that those breakdowns were evident in the days before the riot.“A principal concern for the Department of Defense was the apparent lack of coordination, synchronization and information exchange with and between the numerous domestic law enforcement organizations having primary jurisdiction and responsibility over such matters in the District,” he wrote. “I felt it was my responsibility to initiate these discussions given my sense that these efforts and coordination were not tightly wired at that point.”Even so, he plans to say that he stands behind the decisions he made on Jan. 6.“I know that many fine men and women serving on the front lines on Jan. 6, 2021, with domestic law enforcement agencies did their best to protect the Capitol and the individuals who were in harm’s way from a lawless and ignorant mob acting contrary to nearly two and a half centuries of peaceful and respectful transfers of power under our Constitution,” he wrote. More

Glenn Youngkin, a first-time candidate with vast wealth, will deliver a pro-business message intended to win over suburban voters. Democrats plan to portray him as a Trump devotee.Republican voters’ choice for Virginia governor, a deep-pocketed first-time candidate who plans to run as a business-friendly political outsider, will offer a major test in the post-Trump era of the party’s ability to win back suburban voters who have fled over the past four years.Glenn Youngkin, who won the Republican nomination on Monday night, had walked a line between his party’s Trump-centric base and appeals to business interests in a crowded field, defeating two rivals who more aggressively courted supporters of former President Donald J. Trump.After years of Democratic advances in the state thanks to suburban voters who adamantly rejected anyone linked to the Trump G.O.P., Mr. Youngkin, 54, a former private equity executive, has warned that “we can kiss our business environment away” if Democrats retain power in Richmond.During the nominating fight, he criticized the current governor, Ralph Northam, and his predecessor, Terry McAuliffe, for creating business conditions that cause college-educated residents (read: suburbanites) to move away.But even as Mr. Youngkin tries to focus on kitchen-table issues, Democrats signaled on Tuesday they would aggressively seek to fuse the nominee to Mr. Trump, by reminding voters of hard-line positions he took in fending off six Republican rivals — including on voting rights, Medicaid expansion and culture-war topics like critical race theory.Mr. McAuliffe, the polling leader for the Democratic nomination, said in a statement on Tuesday that Mr. Youngkin “spent his campaign fawning all over Donald Trump,” adding that he would “make it harder to vote” and be “a rubber stamp for the N.R.A.’s dangerous agenda.”Mr. Trump stayed out of the G.O.P. race while the field jockeyed for position, with Mr. Youngkin ultimately emerging as the winner after roughly 30,000 voters cast ranked-choice ballots at 39 locations around the state on Saturday. But the former president jumped in on Tuesday with an endorsement of Mr. Youngkin, although it was primarily an attack on Mr. McAuliffe, a former fund-raiser for Bill and Hillary Clinton, who as a private citizen was in business with Chinese investors.“Virginia doesn’t need the Clintons or the Communist Chinese running the state,” Mr. Trump said, “so say no to Terry McAuliffe, and yes to Patriot Glenn Youngkin!”But Mr. Youngkin might consider such effusions unwelcome in a state Mr. Trump lost by 10 percentage points in November. Mr. Youngkin, 54, was raised in Virginia Beach and has lived in Northern Virginia for 25 years. He defeated two rivals who appealed more directly to the Trump-centric base: Pete Snyder, a technology entrepreneur, and State Senator Amanda Chase, a hard-right supporter of the former president who was censured in a bipartisan vote of the state’s General Assembly for referring to the rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6 as “patriots.”Mr. Youngkin’s appeal to Republicans was at least twofold: He is a political blank slate, with no record in elected office for Democrats to attack. And his private wealth — reportedly more than $200 million after he retired as co-chief executive of the Carlyle Group — will allow him to compete financially against Mr. McAuliffe, a prolific fund-raiser.Mr. McAuliffe raised $36 million for his 2013 election campaign and more than $9.9 million during the past two years, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. Mr. Youngkin has already spent $5.5 million of his own money since entering the race in late January.Republicans have not won a statewide election since 2009, and Democratic dominance of the once-purple state accelerated under Mr. Trump, with Democrats taking control of both houses of the General Assembly in 2020 for the first time in a generation.They used their dominance of state government to pass sweeping progressive priorities like more restrictive gun laws and a ban on capital punishment.But the trend is not irreversible, as some election analysts see it. In the pre-Trump era, Mr. McAuliffe won his first governor’s race in 2013 by just 2.5 percentage points against a hard-right conservative, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II. Rural regions of southern and southwest Virginia have grown redder even as the populous northern and central suburbs are bluer. There is a theoretical path to statewide Republican victory for a candidate who rouses rural Trump voters, appeals to suburban independents and benefits from lower overall Democratic turnout without Mr. Trump as a motivator.And Mr. Youngkin has signaled that he would run against the very legislation Democrats have passed, accusing his opponents of pushing Virginia far to the left of most voters’ preferences.Mr. McAuliffe may be the clear polling leader for the Democrats, but he is conspicuous as the lone white candidate in a field with three Black contenders, in a party whose base is heavily African-American.In four years in office, Mr. McAuliffe governed as a pro-business Democrat, and he began his campaign for a second term in December on a pro-education note, pledging to raise teacher pay and offer universal pre-K. (Virginia governors cannot serve two consecutive terms.)Though Mr. Youngkin is not as unrelenting a supporter of Mr. Trump as some of his Republican opponents, he declined the chance at a recent candidates’ forum to distance himself from Mr. Trump’s lies about a rigged 2020 election. Asked about “voter integrity,” he launched into a five-point plan to “restore our trust in our election process.”During the nominating race, he also pledged to restore a state voter identification law and to replace the entire state board of education. He also said he would create the “1776 Project,” an apparent reference to a curriculum of patriotic education proposed by a commission established under Mr. Trump that has been derided by mainstream historians.Last month, Mr. Youngkin said it was “a sad thing” that Virginia had expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, though he acknowledged the clock couldn’t be turned back.As Mr. Youngkin likely spends generously on TV ads to forge a more soft-focus identity as a pro-business outsider, Democrats are sure to try to keep his earlier positions in front of voters.“Make no state mistake about it, we are going to point out every step of the way the right-wing extremism of Glenn Youngkin,” Susan Swecker, chair of the Virginia Democrats, said on Tuesday. More

Democrats now face the task of overcoming their own differences on the measure, and deciding whether they will use it as a vehicle to try to curb the filibuster.WASHINGTON — A key Senate committee deadlocked on Tuesday over Democrats’ sweeping proposed elections overhaul, previewing a partisan showdown on the Senate floor in the coming months that could determine the future of voting rights and campaign rules across the country.The tie vote in the Senate Rules Committee — with nine Democrats in favor and nine Republicans opposed — does not prevent Democrats from moving forward with the 800-page legislation, known as the For the People Act. Proponents hailed the vote as an important step toward adopting far-reaching federal changes to blunt the restrictive new voting laws emerging in Republican-led battleground states like Georgia and Florida.But the action confronted Democrats with a set of thorny questions about how to push forward on a bill that they view as a civil rights imperative with sweeping implications for democracy and their party. The bill as written faces near-impossible odds in the evenly divided Senate, where Republicans are expected to block it using a filibuster and at least one Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, remains opposed.With their control in Washington potentially fleeting and Republican states racing ahead with laws to curtail ballot access, Democrats must reach consensus among themselves on the measure, and decide whether to attempt to destroy or significantly alter the Senate’s filibuster rules — which set a 60-vote threshold to overcome any objection to advancing legislation — to salvage its chances of becoming law.“Here in the 21st century, we are witnessing an attempt at the greatest contraction of voting rights since the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of Jim Crow,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said at the session’s outset.He cited a new law in Iowa restricting early and mail-in voting, another in Florida cutting back on the use of drop boxes and making it harder to vote by mail, and one in Georgia, where Democrats have attacked the decision to bar third parties from giving water or snacks to voters waiting in long lines.“These laws carry the stench of oppression, the smell of bigotry,” Mr. Schumer said, telling Republicans they faced a “legacy-defining choice.” “Are you going to stamp it out, or are you going to spread it?”Among other changes, Democrats’ bill would essentially overwrite such changes by setting a nationwide floor on ballot access. Each state would be required to implement 15 days of early voting, no-excuse vote by mail programs like the ones many states expanded during the pandemic and automatic and same-day voter registration. Voting rights would be restored to those who had served prison sentences for felonies, and states would have to accept a workaround neutering voter identification laws that Democrats say can make it harder for minorities to vote.Over eight hours of debate, the clash only served to highlight how vast philosophical differences over elections have come to divide the two parties in the shadow of former President Donald J. Trump’s lies about fraud and theft in the 2020 contest.Republicans gave no indication they were willing to cede any ground to Democrats in a fight that stretches from the Capitol in Washington to state houses across the country. Instead, with Mr. Schumer’s Republican counterpart, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, taking the lead, they argued that Democrats were merely using state laws as a fig leaf to justify an unnecessary and self-serving federal power grab “cooked up at the Democratic National Committee.”“Our democracy is not in crisis, and we’re not going to let one party take over our democracy under the false pretense of saving it,” Mr. McConnell said.He and other Republicans on the committee were careful to sidestep many of Mr. Trump’s outlandish claims of fraud, which have taken deep root in the party, fueling the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol and prompting state lawmakers to adjust their election laws. But in a late-afternoon statement, Mr. Trump, who still towers over the party, made clear the connection between those lies and the push to curb ballot access, calling for every state to adopt restrictive voting laws, including voter-identification requirements, “so we never again have an election rigged and stolen from us.”“The people are demanding real reform!” Mr. Trump wrote.While the Rules Committee vote fulfilled Democrats’ pledge to thoroughly consider the bill before it reached the floor, it left an enormous challenge for Mr. Schumer. Progressive activists are spending millions of dollars to ramp up pressure on Democrats to quickly scrap the filibuster or miss a chance to implement the changes before 2022. The bill already passed the House with only Democratic votes.“What is intense pressure now is only going to grow,” said Eli Zupnick, a former Senate leadership aide and a spokesman for Fix Our Senate, a coalition of liberal groups pushing to eliminate the filibuster. “There is no way out. There is no third option. It is either the filibuster or the For the People Act.”But Mr. Manchin and a small group of others remain uncomfortable both with changing Senate rules and with provisions of the underlying bill, which also includes a public financing system for congressional candidates, far-reaching new ethics requirements for Congress and the White House, an end to gerrymandering congressional districts and dozens of other significant changes.Demonstrators protesting Georgia’s voting legislation in Atlanta in March.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesDemocratic senators plan to meet privately Thursday afternoon to begin deliberations over how to move forward, according to two Democratic officials who discussed the scheduled private session on the condition of anonymity.At least some senators appear ready to make wholesale changes if necessary to win the support of Mr. Manchin and other hesitant Democrats. One of them, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, said the stakes were “existential” if Democrats failed.“If we can’t unify behind it, I think there are going to be some tough decisions to maybe set pieces of it aside,” Mr. Kaine said in an interview.Democrats proposed only modest changes during Thursday’s marathon session in the Rules Committee.Republicans rejected a large package of changes meant to address concerns raised primarily by state elections administrators who have complained that some voting provisions would be expensive or onerous to implement.Republicans also rejected a proposal by Senator Jon Ossoff, Democrat of Georgia, to strike down bans, like one included in Georgia’s new law, on providing water to voters stuck in long lines to cast ballots..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 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(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-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 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:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}When the time came to offer their own amendments, Republicans were far more ambitious, submitting 150 proposals to kill various pieces of the bill. Ultimately, they demanded votes on only a couple of dozen, many of which forced Democrats to defend positions Republicans believe are politically unpopular.Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, the top Republican on the committee, tried to strip the provision creating a public financing system that would match small donations to congressional candidates with federal funds. Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, argued the case against it most vividly, calculating how much each member of the committee might receive in matching funds, including $24 million for himself.Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, the top Republican on the Senate panel considering the measure, tried to strip the bill of a public financing system that would match small donations to congressional candidates with federal funds.Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times“Your constituents in every one of your states, I would venture, do not want to give your campaigns or my campaign millions of dollars in federal funds,” he said. “We do not need welfare for politicians.”Democrats pointed out that the public financing would be optional, but defended it as far preferable to the current system, in which politicians largely rely on a small number of wealthy donors and special interests to bankroll their campaigns. The amendment failed.“If people want to pay for their campaigns with big-money donors instead, I guess that’s what they’ll do,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the committee chairwoman.In a sign of the how seriously both parties took the debate, Mr. McConnell, who rarely attends hearings as party leader, remained glued to the dais for much of the day, sparring vigorously with Democrats. He was most animated in opposition to proposed changes to campaign finance laws, reprising his role as the Senate’s pre-eminent champion of undisclosed, unlimited political spending.“Regardless of who has a partisan advantage here — let’s just put that aside — is it the business of the government to supervise political speech, to decide what you can say about an issue that may be in proximity to an election?” he said.Mr. McConnell called unsuccessfully for dropping language that would require super PACs to disclose the identities of their big donors and a proposed restructuring of the Federal Election Commission to make it more partisan.Mr. Ossoff pushed back. Arguing that there was often no difference between the objectives of super PACs and traditional campaigns, he said, “The public should have the right to know who is putting significant resources into influencing the views of the voters.” More

The new law, signed by Gov. Doug Ducey, will remove people from a widely popular early voting list if they do not cast a ballot at least once every two years.PHOENIX — Arizona Republicans passed a law on Tuesday that will sharply limit the distribution of mail ballots through a widely popular early voting list, the latest measure in a conservative push to restrict voting across the country.The legislation will remove voters from the state’s Permanent Early Voting List, which automatically sends some people ballots for each election, if they do not cast a ballot at least once every two years.The vote-by-mail system is widely popular in Arizona, used by Republicans, Democrats and independents. The overwhelming majority of voters in the state cast their ballots by mail, with nearly 90 percent doing so last year amid the coronavirus pandemic, and nearly 75 percent of all voters are on the early voting list. Under the new law, the list will be called the Active Early Voting List.The State Senate voted along party lines to approve the bill, and Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, surprised many observers by signing the legislation just hours later.The bill may be only the first in a series of voting restrictions to be enacted in Arizona; another making its way through the Legislature would require voters on the early voting list to verify their signatures with an additional form of identification.Unlike in other states where Republicans have passed voting restrictions this year, including Florida, Georgia and Texas, the Arizona Legislature did not create a sweeping omnibus bill made up of numerous voting provisions. Republicans in the state are instead introducing individual measures as bills in the Legislature.The new law signed on Tuesday is likely to push an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 voters off the early voting list, which currently has about three million people. Opponents of the bill have said that Latinos, who make up roughly 24 percent of the state’s eligible voters, would make up a significantly larger share of those removed from the early voting list.The G.O.P. voting restrictions being advanced throughout the country come as former President Donald J. Trump continues to perpetuate the lie that he won the election, with many Republican lawmakers citing baseless claims of election fraud, or their voters’ worries about election integrity, as justification for the stricter rules.In Arizona, Republicans who supported the new law argued that it would not stop anyone from voting over all and that it would prevent voter fraud by ensuring no ballots are cast illegally, though there has been no evidence of widespread fraud in the state.“In voting for this bill, it’s about restoring confidence for everyone who casts a ballot, no matter what their party is,” said State Senator Kelly Townsend, a Republican who briefly withheld her support for the bill because she wanted to wait for the completion of a widely disparaged audit ordered by the G.O.P.-controlled Senate. “I have been reassured and convinced it is OK to move forward because we are now looking at other issues that need to be fixed for the 2022 election.”.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 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a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}In his letter signing the legislation, Mr. Ducey said that the change would “free up dollars for election officials, ensuring that rather than sending a costly early ballot to a voter who has demonstrated they are not going to use it, resources can be directed to important priorities including voter education and election security measures.”The vote came after an hour of debate on the Senate floor, with Democrats arguing that the bill was the latest in a long line of suppression efforts targeting Black and Latino voters.“Making it harder to vote is voter suppression,” said State Senator Juan Mendez, a Democrat.“Governor Ducey’s decision to sign this bill into law is a terrible blow to democracy,” Emily Kirkland, the executive director of Progress Arizona, a coalition of voting rights organizations and community groups, said in a statement. “It is a conscious effort to put barriers in the way of Arizonans trying to make their voices heard.”For nearly a month, the state has been embroiled in an extraordinary Republican-led audit of 2020 presidential election ballots from Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix. The process could go on for several more weeks or even months.Voting rights activists in Arizona are now likely to put more pressure on Senators Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema, both Democrats, to eliminate the filibuster in the Senate and open a path to passing the party’s federal legislation to protecting access to the ballot. More

Bill Gates, an election supervisor in Maricopa County, says the audit of votes in his state is based on the lie of election fraud, and is “tearing at the foundations of our democracy.”For several weeks, Republicans in Arizona have conducted an extraordinary audit into the results of November’s presidential election, drawing scrutiny and widespread criticism for examining ballots without any evidence of fraud, and instead relying on conspiracy theories. The audit is expected to continue for weeks, if not months, prodded on by Republicans in the State Legislature, who have perpetuated former President Donald J. Trump’s falsehood that the election was stolen from him.One of the most outspoken Republican critics of the audit is Bill Gates, who was re-elected as a Maricopa County supervisor in 2020, and along with other supervisors helps oversee the county’s election procedures.Mr. Gates is a lifelong Republican who once worked as an election lawyer for the party. He considers himself a loyal member of the G.O.P. and points to former President Ronald Reagan as an inspiration for his interest in politics. But he is horrified at the partisan audit taking place in his district, saying that the recounts Arizona already conducted had sufficiently validated the results of the election.We spoke to Mr. Gates about the recount, the future of the Republican Party and what he, along with millions of others, calls the “big lie.” The interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.I want to ask you straight away: Do you think the audit should be happening?The audits that we conducted — I think that those were sufficient. I appreciate that there’s a certain segment of the population who continues to have concerns about our electoral process and the integrity of the election. I don’t believe that this process, the way that it’s played out, is really going to address those concerns. And also this has turned into a recount, and Arizona law has specific instances for how and when a recount is to occur. And also it’s a recount that’s been outsourced to known partisans. So I think for all those reasons, I don’t think this is a helpful exercise.Having said that, although we’ve been accused of it over and over again, the board of supervisors is not acting to obstruct this exercise. From time to time we have gone to the courts, for example, and we’ve been concerned that people are being asked by the state or actually by the president of the Senate and the Senate judiciary chair to take actions that we thought might have been in violation of state law.What kind of consequences do you think the audit will have?Well, first of all, I think that it’s being conducted by a partisan entity. So that means that a majority of the people probably won’t even acknowledge the findings of it. My fear is that all of this is further tearing at the foundations of our democracy and tearing at people’s faith in our electoral systems. If there were fraud going on, if there was systematic corruption going on, I would be the first to speak out against it. But we have looked at this again and again and again with numerous audits here. These issues have been litigated and relitigated in the courts, both state and federal courts. And there was no basis. And now we’re seeing these conspiracy theories that are being pursued.If people lose faith in the electoral system, then I mean, where we go from there is very scary, right? Either people just disengage, they stop voting, or they cannot redress the government any further. They pursue what — armed rebellion? These are things that I can’t believe are even coming out of my mouth. This is such unchartered territory.I want to ask you about the governor, Doug Ducey. What do you think he can and should be doing right now?Well, I think, you know, for me, he did the most important thing that he needed to do, which was to certify this election. Back in the good old days, that was the sort of ministerial, right? But it was an act of political courage that I give him great credit for. And I think that was the most important thing that he could have done.How do you convince rank-and-file Republicans, and other Republicans in general, that the election was fair and legitimate?People ask me about Pennsylvania, Georgia, and what happened there. And honestly, I’m not going to comment on those elections because I wasn’t involved in those. I don’t know. But when we’re talking about Maricopa County, I can tell them how the election was run. It’s a collaborative effort here in Arizona. That’s how it’s set up. We took part in the election or ran it as elected Republicans. So if there was truly fraudulent results in Maricopa County, — the Republicans on the board of supervisors had to be a part of that. That is quite an accusation, to be either involved in it or look the other way; it makes no sense. And when you consider we were on the ballot as well and we were all re-elected. So that’s another thing to sort of suspend belief and say, “OK, it was just fraud in the presidential race, but not in a Republican state house.”I’ve been a Republican my whole life. I mean, it’s like Liz Cheney: Nobody’s ever questioned her conservative credentials. That’s not what this is about at all. It has become about the big lie. And sadly, I feel like that is now the defining feature of the Republican Party. Whether you believe that the 2020 election results were a big lie.I just want to clarify: Do you think that the national election was fair and legitimate and Biden won?Yes, yes, I do. I’m not aware of any basis for that.So how do you persuade other Republicans to believe the election was legitimate?I think it’s a real challenge because unfortunately so many of our leaders of the party are telling them something else. I’m concerned that at this point, this is something that is going to take a while. It’s so important that we deal with reality and we’ve gotten away from that. We’re not living in our sort of normal human environment. We’ve all gone into these rabbit holes on social media.And so there’s got to be this kind of civic reawakening, a belief in democracy. Trying to appeal to those who see that Donald Trump won the election in 2020, that is probably about the worst way to accomplish that. We all know in midterm elections, the party out of power usually does pretty well. And they do it by putting together a clear message that this is what we would do differently if we were in power right now, whether it’s Republicans or Democrats. And the Republican Party is going to have to pivot pretty quickly to get into that position, because right now it’s all about the 2020 election and we’re six-plus months after that.That sounds pretty far away from where the party is now. What do you think the future holds for the G.O.P., both in Arizona and nationally?I was someone whose political views were very much shaped by Ronald Reagan, who was the president when I was a teenager. Now my personal view is that we can get back to that, the shining city on the hill, this optimistic view of conservatism. I mean, that’s the successful future. It has to be a multiracial party, where we appeal to all people, regardless of their race or ethnicity. And I think there’s very much a hope of that.If we don’t do those things, then I think we’re destined to be a minority party. And by that I mean a party that doesn’t win elections. More

The political action committee of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus is releasing bilingual advertisements targeting four Republicans in Congress over their support for former President Donald J. Trump and their votes on Jan. 6 to challenge the 2020 presidential election results in Arizona and Pennsylvania.The advertisements from the caucus, which is made up of 38 Democrats, target Republican members who represent heavily Latino districts in Florida, Texas, New Mexico and California, and who each won in a close election last year. The first advertisement focuses on Representative Carlos Gimenez of Florida, the former mayor of Miami, who narrowly defeated Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. The remaining ads will target Representatives Mike Garcia of California, Yvette Herrell of New Mexico and Beth Van Duyne of Texas.“These four Republicans led a misinformation campaign and helped spread the ‘Big Lie’ on social media and conservative news media outlets by sowing doubt about the presidential election results,” said Representative Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona who serves as the chairman of the caucus’s political action committee, BOLD PAC. “They tried to undermine our democracy and in doing so, they helped incite the insurrection. The best way to fight the Republican disinformation campaign is to hold them accountable for their actions.”Mr. Gimenez’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The advertisement opens with footage of the Jan. 6 attack, while a voice-over introduces a police officer describing his experience defending the Capitol.“I experienced a group of individuals who were trying to kill me,” the officer says. A narrator continues: “When an extremist mob attacked the Capitol, Congressman Carlos Gimenez was forced to hide. But hours later, with blood still on the floors of the Capitol, he voted with Trump and helped spread the same lies that left a police officer dead and many others injured.” More