Elections

It affects everyone from Joe Manchin to Joe Biden.Why is the Republican Party so determined to constrain the franchise?One answer is provided by the changing demographics of the children in the nation’s public schools, a leading indicator of shifts in the racial and ethnic makeup of the country.According to the National Center for Education Statistics,The percentage of public school students who were white was 64.8 percent in 1995, and this percentage dropped below 50 percent in 2014 (to 49.5 percent). N.C.E.S. projects that in 2029, White students will make up 43.8 percent of public school enrollment.The changing racial and ethnic makeup of the schools, something visible to parents and to anyone who walks by at recess, is a leading indicator of the day (in roughly 2045) when non-Hispanic whites of all ages will drop under 50 percent of the U.S. population, soon to be followed by the day when whites become a minority of the electorate (although that will depend on how voters self-identify — among other things, data suggests that many mixed race Americans identify as white).Hispanics and Asian-Americans are driving the ascendance of America’s minority population, while the Black share of the population will increase by a small amount. Pew Research estimates that over the 50 year period from 2015 to 2065, the non-Hispanic white share of the population — as defined by the U.S. census — will drop from 62 to 46 percent, while the Hispanic share will grow from 18 to 24 percent and the Asian-American share from 6 to 14 percent. The Black share will go from 12 to 13 percent.Richard Alba, a sociologist at the City University of New York, and other experts have argued that predictions of a white minority in a little over 20 years have created a false narrative because it fails to account for the numerous second- and third-generation children of interethnic and interracial marriages, many of whom see themselves (and are seen by others) as white.False or not, the white minority prediction has become a dominant political narrative — particularly insofar as Republicans exploit this characterization — and in the process this framing has become a central element in the worldview of many conservative whites.How does the expectation of a majority-minority America affect the thinking of white Americans?Maureen Craig at N.Y.U. and Jennifer Richeson, at Yale, reported in their 2018 paper “Majority No More? The Influence of Neighborhood Racial Diversity and Salient National Population Changes on Whites’ Perceptions of Racial Discrimination” thatWhite Americans considering a future in which the white population has declined to less than 50 percent of the national population are more likely to perceive that the societal status of their racial group — in terms of resources or as the “prototypical” American — is under threat, which in turn leads to stronger identification as white, the expression of more negative racial attitudes and emotions, greater opposition to diversity, and greater endorsement of conservative political ideology, political parties, and candidates.Biden, more than either of his three Democratic predecessors — Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — is putting this white reaction to the test.Not only is Biden actively supporting voting rights reform designed to protect and strengthen Black and Hispanic political participation, but he has taken assertive stands on racial issues, both in terms of appointments and in supporting racially targeted provisions in his stimulus and infrastructure legislation.The question for Biden is whether a Democrat can firm up the party’s multiracial coalition with a double-edged strategy. First, winning over enough working class whites by disbursing substantial benefits in his stimulus and infrastructure legislation; and, second, by targeting generous programs to racial and ethnic minorities to reduce disparities in income and education.The underlying question is whether more white voters will turn against Biden in the 2022 midterm elections as they turned against Clinton in 1994 and Obama in 2010.A large number of white people already believe that they suffer higher levels of discrimination than Black people and other minorities do.Craig and Richeson write:Organizational messages that are favorable to racial diversity have also been found to enhance the sense among whites of personal and group discrimination against them compared with race-neutral messages.In addition, many Republican and conservative-leaning whites are convinced that as minorities become more powerful, the left coalition will become increasingly antagonistic to them. Craig and Richeson write:This research suggests, in other words, that whites are likely to perceive more antiwhite discrimination under circumstances in which they perceive that their group’s position in society is under threat.Nour Sami Kteily, a professor of management and organizations at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, emailed to say that he and Richeson have been conducting a study that asks whites how much they agree (7) or disagree (1) with statements like:If Black Americans got to the top of the social hierarchy, they would want to stay on top and keep other groups down.andIf Black Americans got to the top of the social hierarchy, they would put all of their effort toward creating a more egalitarian social system for all groups.On average, whites fell at the midpoint but, Kteily wrote, there waslarge variation associated with being Republican vs. Democrat, with Republicans being more likely to believe that Black Americans would use power to dominate. The difference is highly statistically significant.In a December 2019 article, “Demographic change, political backlash, and challenges in the study of geography,” Ryan Enos, a political scientist at Harvard, wrote:The relationship between diversity and reactionary politics should be considered one of the most important sociopolitical issues facing the world today — it is a near certainty that almost every developed country and many developing countries will be more diverse a generation from now than they are today.Thus, Enos continued,if increasing diversity affects political outcomes, the relationship can point in two consequentially different directions: toward increased diversity liberalizing politics or toward increased diversity causing a reactionary backlash.The 2020 election of Biden combined with Democratic control of the House and Senate have contained, at least momentarily, the reactionary backlash, but a liberalized politics has not yet been secured. What are the prospects for Democrats seeking to maintain, if not strengthen, their fragile hold on power? More

At a debate for Virginia governor, Mr. Fairfax, the state’s lieutenant governor, denounced Mr. McAuliffe for urging him to resign after women accused Mr. Fairfax of sexual assault in 2019.Terry McAuliffe, the leading candidate in this year’s Democratic primary for Virginia governor, faced a flurry of attacks from his rivals at a debate on Tuesday night as they aimed to diminish his broad support from Black voters. In the most extraordinary broadside, the state’s Black lieutenant governor, Justin Fairfax, accused Mr. McAuliffe of treating him like George Floyd or Emmett Till after Mr. Fairfax was accused of sexual assault by two women in 2019.Mr. McAuliffe, a white former governor of the state who has the backing of many of the state’s top Black elected officials, issued a public call that year for Mr. Fairfax to resign.Mr. Fairfax’s remarks on Tuesday — in which he compared himself to two Black people killed in episodes of white violence — were the most pointed attempt by one of the three Black candidates in the race to draw a racial distinction between them and Mr. McAuliffe, who is aiming to reclaim the office he held from 2014 to 2018.The accusation came at the end of the debate, the first for the five Virginia Democrats running for governor. Responding to a question asking the candidates to envision the future of law enforcement in Virginia, Mr. Fairfax said theoretical descriptions were unnecessary because he was a living embodiment of the harm that false accusations and a rush to judgment can produce.“Everyone here on this stage called for my immediate resignation, including Terry McAuliffe three minutes after a press release came out,” Mr. Fairfax said. “He treated me like George Floyd, he treated me like Emmett Till, no due process, immediately assumed my guilt. I have a son and I have a daughter, and I don’t want my daughter to be assaulted, I don’t want my son to be falsely accused. And this is the real world that we live in. And so we need to speak truth to power and we need to be very clear about how that impacts people’s lives.”Mr. McAuliffe did not respond to Mr. Fairfax on the debate stage. His spokesman declined to address the remarks.In February 2019, amid a concurrent scandal involving a medical school yearbook photograph of Gov. Ralph Northam in blackface, two women accused Mr. Fairfax of sexually assaulting them in separate episodes — allegations that Mr. Fairfax has always denied. Mr. Fairfax faced a torrent of calls for his resignation. Weeks later, in a speech on the floor of the Virginia Senate, he compared himself to lynching victims.Mr. Fairfax was not the only candidate on Tuesday night to try to cleave Black voters from Mr. McAuliffe. The scant public polling of the race has found Mr. McAuliffe holding sizable leads over his four opponents, and no survey has shown him with less than a two-to-one advantage over his closest rival.Jennifer McClellan, a state senator who is running for governor, accused Mr. McAuliffe of underfunding the state’s parole system, cutting deals with the National Rifle Association during his term as governor and being a late advocate for racial justice.“Racial justice is about more than criminal justice reform,” said Ms. McClellan, who is Black. “It is embedded in every system we have in government, and I did not need George Floyd’s murder or the Unite the Right rally to teach me that.”Mr. McAuliffe, during his turns to speak, emphasized his relationships with Mr. Northam and President Biden, two Democrats who both owe their offices to strong relationships with and support from Black voters. He highlighted his move to restore the voting rights of 206,000 felons in the state and said every police officer in the state should wear a body camera “so we can see what’s going on.”“Thank goodness we had all those individuals there who had those cellphones when George Floyd was murdered,” he said.Mr. McAuliffe barely mentioned his rivals during the debate, except to remind the audience that Ms. McClellan was a frequent partner of his when he was governor. But Mr. Fairfax, by the debate’s end, sought to define himself as the chief rival to the loquacious former governor.“There appears to be two sets of rules up here, one where the governor can talk as long as he wants to and do whatever he wants, and one for everybody else,” Mr. Fairfax said. “I think that’s part of the issue, that we do have so many disparities in our society.” More

The G.O.P.’s war on voting has human casualties. Here’s one.Whenever you hear Republican rants about widespread voter fraud supposedly undermining Americans’ faith in the integrity of their elections, remember the story of Crystal Mason.Ms. Mason, a 46-year-old grandmother from the Fort Worth area, has been in the news on and off since 2016, when Texas prosecutors decided she was a vote fraudster so dangerous that justice demanded she be sentenced to five years behind bars.Her offense? Visiting her local precinct on Election Day that year and casting a provisional ballot for president. Ms. Mason was not eligible to vote at the time because she was on supervised release after serving a prison term for federal tax fraud. Texas, like many states, bars those with criminal records from voting until they have finished all terms of a sentence.Ms. Mason, who had only recently returned home to her three children and had gone to the polls that day at the urging of her mother, said she did not realize she wasn’t allowed to cast a ballot. When poll workers couldn’t find her name on the rolls, they assumed it was a clerical error and suggested she fill out the provisional ballot.Provisional ballots are a useful way to deal with questions about a voter’s eligibility that can’t be resolved at the polling place. Since 2002, Congress has required that states offer them as part of the Help America Vote Act, a law passed in the aftermath of the 2000 election debacle, when millions of ballots were disqualified. Ms. Mason’s ballot was rejected as soon as a search of the database determined that she was ineligible. In other words, the system worked as it was intended to.Tarrant County prosecutors went after her for illegal voting anyway. They said she should have known she was not allowed to vote. The state had sent her a letter telling her so in 2012, shortly after she had been sentenced in the tax-fraud case. The letter was delivered to her home, even though she had already begun serving her sentence. “They sent it to the one place they knew she was not going to be,” said Alison Grinter, Ms. Mason’s lawyer.The prosecutors also pointed out that when she cast her ballot in 2016, she signed an affidavit stating that she had completed all terms of her sentence. Ms. Mason said she had not read the fine print; she was focused on writing down her address in exactly the form it appeared on her driver’s license. She was convicted after a one-day trial and sentenced to five years behind bars for casting a ballot that was never counted.“It’s a surreal experience to be in a courtroom for these trials,” said Christopher Uggen, a professor of law and sociology at the University of Minnesota who has studied the impact of felon disenfranchisement for decades, and has testified as an expert in prosecutions of people charged with illegal voting. “You’ve got the judges, you’ve got the lawyers. You’ve got somebody who often is a model probationer called in, and what’s at issue is whether they voted. I have this overriding sense of, gosh, don’t we have other crimes to prosecute? It really should be a consensus issue in a democracy that we don’t incarcerate people for voting.”Mr. Uggen said that there is a stronger case for criminal punishment of certain election-law offenses, like campaign-finance violations or sabotaging voting machines, that can do more widespread damage to our election system. But in his own work he has found that the people who get punished are more likely to fit Ms. Mason’s description: female, low-level offenders who are doing relatively well in the community. “These are not typically folks who represent some great threat to public safety,” he said.You wouldn’t get that sense from how Ms. Mason has been treated. After her voting conviction, a federal judge found she had violated the terms of her supervised release, and sentenced her to 10 extra months behind bars. That punishment, which she began serving in December 2018, earned her no credit toward her five-year state sentence.Ms. Mason has continued to fight her case, but so far she has lost at every step. In March 2020, a three-judge panel on a state appellate court rejected her challenge to her sentence. The court reasoned that she broke the law simply by trying to vote while knowing she was on supervised release. It didn’t matter whether she knew that Texas prohibits voting by people in that circumstance.This appears to be a clear misapplication of Texas election law, which criminalizes voting only by people who actually know they are not eligible, not those who, like Ms. Mason, mistakenly believe that they are. It’s as though Ms. Mason had asked a police officer what the local speed limit was, and he responded: “Beats me. Why don’t you start driving and see if we pull you over?”Last week, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest court for criminal cases, agreed to rule on Ms. Mason’s appeal. It’s her last chance to avoid prison for voting. Tossing her conviction would bring a small measure of justice to a woman whose punishment should have been limited to, at most, not being able to cast a ballot.But it wouldn’t give her back the last four years of fear and uncertainty she has endured for no good reason. Ms. Mason’s first grandchild was born a few months ago, another reminder of how much she would miss if she were to lose the appeal and end up back behind bars. “This is very overwhelming, waking up every day knowing that prison is on the line, trying to maintain a smile on your face in front of your kids and you don’t know the outcome,” Ms. Mason told The Times in an interview. “Your future is in someone else’s hands because of a simple error.”Identifying errors like these is the whole point of offering provisional ballots: The crazy quilt of voting rules and regulations that Americans face from state to state can trip up even the best-informed voters, and honest mistakes are common. By prosecuting Ms. Mason, just one of more than 44,000 Texans whose provisional ballot in 2016 was found to be ineligible, the state is saying that you attempt to participate in democracy at your own risk.That risk is almost always higher for people of color. Texas’ attorney general, Ken Paxton, likes to brag about the 155 people his office has successfully prosecuted for election fraud in the last 16 years — an average of fewer than 10 per year. What he doesn’t say out loud is what The Houston Chronicle found in an analysis of the cases he has prosecuted: almost three-quarters involved Black or Latino defendants, and nearly half involved women of color, like Ms. Mason.At this point you might be wondering why Ms. Mason was ineligible to vote in the first place. She had been released from prison, after all, and was trying to work her way back into society. As more states are coming to understand, there is no good argument for denying the vote to people with a criminal record, and that’s before you consider the practice’s explicitly racist roots. There is even a strong case to be made for letting those in prison vote, as Maine, Vermont and most Western European countries do. And yet today, more than five million Americans, including Ms. Mason, are unable to vote because of a criminal conviction. That has a far greater impact on state and national elections than any voter fraud that has ever been uncovered.Given the disproportionate number of Black and brown people caught up in the criminal justice system, it’s not hard to see a connection between cases like Ms. Mason’s and the broader Republican war on voting, which so often targets people who look like her. The nation’s tolerance of prosecutions for the act of casting a ballot reveals a complacency about the right to vote, Mr. Uggen said, and a troubling degree of comfort with voting restrictions generally. “There’s a slippery slope: If you start exempting individuals from the franchise, it’s easy to exempt other individuals by defining them outside the citizenry,” he said. “What is shocking to me is that people view this as acceptable in a political system that calls itself a democracy.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

Israel and the U.S. are trying to define anew what it means to be a pluralistic democracy. More

As a federal judge, he was impeached and removed from the bench. He was then elected to the House, where he became known as a strong liberal voice.Representative Alcee Hastings, a former federal judge who, despite being impeached and removed from the bench, was elected to Congress, where he championed civil rights and rose to become dean of the Florida delegation, died on Tuesday. He was 84.Lale Morrison, his chief of staff, confirmed the death. He provided no other details.Mr. Hastings, a Democrat, had announced in early 2019 that he had pancreatic cancer. He continued to make public appearances for a time but was unable to travel to Washington in January to take the oath of office.His death reduces his party’s already slim majority in the House of Representatives, which is now 218 to 211, until a special election can be held to fill his seat. His district, which includes Black communities around Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach as well as a huge, less populated area around Lake Okeechobee, is reliably Democratic.A strong liberal voice, Mr. Hastings was a pioneering civil rights lawyer in the 1960s and ’70s in Fort Lauderdale, which at the time was deeply inhospitable to Black people. Throughout his career he crusaded against racial injustice and spoke up for gay people, immigrants, women and the elderly, as well as advocating for better access to health care and higher wages. He was also a champion of Israel.He achieved many firsts. He was Florida’s first Black federal judge and one of three Black Floridians who went to Congress in 1992, the first time Florida had elected African-American candidates to that body since Reconstruction. He served 15 terms in the House, longer than any other current member, making him dean of the delegation.He had earlier in his career been the first Black candidate to run for the Senate from Florida.In 1979, he was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. In 1981, he became the first sitting federal judge to be tried on criminal charges, stemming from the alleged solicitation of a bribe. The case ended up before the House, which impeached him in 1988. The Senate convicted him in 1989 and removed him from the bench.But it did not bar him from seeking public office again, and he went on to win his seat in Congress three years later. He took the oath of office before the same body that had impeached him.If his wings were clipped in Washington, Mr. Hastings was adored at home, where his early fights for civil rights and his outspokenness helped him easily win re-election for nearly three decades.In a 2019 review of his career, The Palm Beach Post described him as “a man with immense gifts — boldness, intellect, wit — who repeatedly and brazenly strides close to the cliff’s edge of ethics, unconcerned that scandal could shake his hold on a congressional district tailor-made for him.”Mr. Hastings in 1987, when he was a federal judge. A year later, after a judicial panel concluded that he had committed perjury, tampered with evidence and conspired to gain financially by accepting bribes, the House impeached him; the year after that, the Senate removed him from the bench.Susan Greenwood for The New York TimesAlcee Lamar Hastings was born on Sept. 5, 1936, in Altamonte Springs, a largely Black suburb of Orlando. His father, Julius Hastings, was a butler, and his mother, Mildred (Merritt) Hastings, was a maid.His parents eventually left Florida to take jobs to earn money for his education. Alcee stayed with his maternal grandmother while he attended Crooms Academy in Sanford, Fla., which was founded for African-American students and is now known as Crooms Academy of Information Technology. He graduated in 1953.He attended Fisk University in Nashville, graduating in 1958 with majors in zoology and botany, and started law school at Howard University before transferring to Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University in Tallahassee. He received his law degree there in 1963.As a student, he was involved in early civil rights struggles. Recalling a drugstore sit-in in North Carolina in 1959, he later said: “Those were the early days of the civil rights movement, and the people in Walgreens were breaking eggs on our heads and throwing mustard and ketchup and salt at us. We sat there taking all of that.”He went into private practice as a civil rights lawyer in Fort Lauderdale. When he arrived, according to The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, a motel wouldn’t rent him a room; throughout much of the 1960s and ’70s, parts of the county were dangerous for Black people.At a luncheon honoring Mr. Hastings in 2019, the newspaper said, Howard Finkelstein, a former Broward County public defender, called him a “howling voice” trying to change Broward from a “little cracker town that was racist and mean and vicious.”Mr. Hastings filed lawsuits to desegregate Broward County schools. He also sued the Cat’s Meow, a restaurant that was popular with white lawyers and judges but would not serve Black people. The owner soon settled the lawsuit and opened the restaurant’s doors to all.Mr. Hastings ran unsuccessfully for public office several times, including for the 1970 Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate. He wanted to show that a Black man could run, but he received death threats in the process.Representative Charlie Crist, who was a Republican when he was governor of Florida but who later became a Democrat, said in a statement on Tuesday that he had “long admired Congressman Hastings’s advocacy for Florida’s Black communities during a time when such advocacy was ignored at best and actively suppressed or punished at worst.”Gov. Reuben Askew appointed Mr. Hastings to the circuit court of Broward County in 1977; the swearing-in ceremony was held at a high school he had helped desegregate. Two years later, President Carter named him to the federal bench.But in 1981, Mr. Hastings was indicted on charges of soliciting a $150,000 bribe in return for reducing the sentences of two mob-connected felons convicted in his court.A jury acquitted him in a criminal trial in 1983 after his alleged co-conspirator refused to testify, and Mr. Hastings returned to the bench.Later, suspicions arose that he had lied and falsified evidence during the trial to obtain an acquittal. A three-year investigation by a judicial panel concluded that Mr. Hastings did in fact commit perjury, tamper with evidence and conspire to gain financially by accepting bribes.As a result, Congress took up the case in 1988. The House impeached him by a vote of 413 to 3. The next year, the Senate convicted him on eight of 11 articles and removed him from the bench.Despite his tainted record, Mr. Hastings was elected three years later to represent a heavily minority district.Mr. Hastings at the Capitol in 1998. He was elected to the House in 1992 and served 15 terms.Paul Hosefros/The New York TimesHis impeachment was never far from the surface in the House. This was evident after the Democrats took back control in 2006. Mr. Hastings was in line to become chairman of the Intelligence Committee. Republicans started using his history against the Democrats, prompting Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, to give the chairmanship to someone else.Mr. Hastings’ survivors include his wife, Patricia Williams; three adult children from previous marriages, Alcee Hastings II, Chelsea Hastings and Leigh Hastings; and a stepdaughter, Maisha.Mr. Hastings never sponsored major legislation, but he could be counted on to express himself freely. He had a particular loathing for President Donald J. Trump, whom he once called a “sentient pile of excrement.”Saying what was on his mind was long a habit of his. It started getting him in trouble as soon as he was appointed to the bench, when he veered from judicial norms, criticizing President Ronald Reagan and appearing at a rally in 1984 for the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was running for the Democratic presidential nomination.But Mr. Hastings saw nothing wrong with giving his views; just because he was a judge, he said, that did not mean he was “neutered.” As Mr. Crist said, Mr. Hastings “was never afraid to give voice to the voiceless and speak truth to power.”Nor was his self-confidence ever checked.“I’ve enjoyed some of the fights, and even the process of being indicted and removed from the bench,” he told The Associated Press in 2013. “All of those are extraordinary types of circumstances that would cause lesser people to buckle. I did not and I have not.”Maggie Astor contributed reporting. More

Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, has long argued that corporate campaign donations are a protected, nearly sacred, form of political communication. On Tuesday he made the case that business executives might be better off limiting their free speech to writing checks. In recent days, Mr. McConnell, the minority leader, has lashed out at executives with Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola, Delta and other corporations for criticizing Republican-led efforts to impose restrictions on voting access in Georgia and other states, accusing them of “bullying” politicians. Mr. McConnell went even further on Tuesday, speaking in his home state during an extended back-and-forth with reporters.“My warning, if you will, to corporate America is to stay out of politics,” said Mr. McConnell, after an appearance promoting vaccine distribution in Louisville. “It’s not what you’re designed for. And don’t be intimidated by the left into taking up causes that put you right in the middle of America’s greatest political debates.”When asked to define the activities that executives should avoid, he responded, “I’m not talking about political contributions.”Brian Fallon, a former top aide to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic majority leader, said Mr. McConnell’s comments reflect the struggle of a once-powerful leader trying to find his way following his loss of the Senate majority and a break with former President Donald J. Trump over the Jan. 6 riot.“The earth is shifting under his feet,” said Mr. Fallon, who now runs a group opposed to Mr. McConnell’s judicial nominations. “He’s criticizing corporations for wading into political debates after years of defending their right to spend unlimited sums on political campaigns. This is a guy used to calling the shots, but he is suddenly powerless and flailing.”People close to Mr. McConnell say he is simply pointing out the political perils of business leaders jumping into partisan debates, even though he has often touted the support of corporate leaders for his efforts to cut taxes and regulation.Mr. McConnell told reporters he was not implying business leaders did not have the right to express themselves, but suggested the best way to communicate was by contributing money to campaigns.“Republicans,” he said, “drink Coca-Cola too, and we fly.” Companies and sports leagues were “not very smart” to weigh in on the voting bills, he said.And M.L.B.’s decision to pull the All-Star Game out of Atlanta in protest of the Georgia law, he added, was “irritating one whole hell of a lot of Republican fans.” Mr. McConnell was one of the leading opponents of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that restricted spending by corporations and unions, challenging it in court nearly two decades ago. And he celebrated the landmark Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court that struck it down in 2010, a decision that asserted corporations had similar free speech rights to individuals.“For too long, some in this country have been deprived of full participation in the political process. With today’s monumental decision, the Supreme Court took an important step in the direction of restoring the First Amendment rights of these groups,” he said in a statement at the time. More

Lynne Patton recruited and interviewed public housing tenants in New York City for a pro-Trump re-election video. The residents accused her of tricking them into participating.The video aired on the final night of the Republican National Convention in August, a two-minute clip featuring four New York City public housing tenants praising President Donald J. Trump’s record and bashing the city’s mayor.But within hours of the broadcast, three of the tenants said they were tricked into appearing in the video, did not support Mr. Trump and accused a top federal housing official, Lynne Patton, of orchestrating the production and misleading them about its intentions.While Ms. Patton had claimed the White House signed off on her involvement, a federal agency on Tuesday found that Ms. Patton had violated a federal law known as the Hatch Act that bars most federal employees from using their government position to engage in political activities.Ms. Patton admitted to the violation, the agency said, and agreed in a settlement to pay a $1,000 fine and not to serve in the federal government for at least four years. She left her job at the Department of Housing and Urban Development at the end of Mr. Trump’s term in January.“By using information and NYCHA connections available to her solely by virtue of her HUD position, Patton improperly harnessed the authority of her federal position to assist the Trump campaign,” the Office of Special Counsel, the agency that enforces the Hatch Act, said in a statement. NYCHA, or the New York City Housing Authority, oversees the public housing system.In her three years as the top regional administrator over federal housing in New York and New Jersey, Ms. Patton said she helped improve New York’s troubled public housing system. But Ms. Patton had also carved out a role as a Trump cheerleader who often mixed politics and governance.She was among a number of midlevel political appointees in the Trump administration who had little if any experience in their fields and who used their positions to promote the president and his views, often amplifying falsehoods and other misinformation. On Tuesday, Ms. Patton, who was a personal assistant to the Trump family before working for the federal government, said in an email that she did not regret having created the video.“Unfortunately, after consulting multiple Hatch Act lawyers post-employment, receiving incorrect and/or incomplete legal advice, even in good faith, from your own agency does not an affirmative defense make,” Ms. Patton wrote.In the email, Ms. Patton falsely claimed that the tenants had recanted their allegations against her and had acknowledged that they knew how the video would be used. She interviewed them over four hours in a New York City Housing Authority building last summer with a video crew.Claudia Perez, one of the four tenants who appeared in the video, on Tuesday reiterated her assertion that Ms. Patton had deceived the group into believing the interview would be used to highlight chronic problems at the housing authority. Ms. Perez, who said she voted for President Biden in the November election, said she would not have participated in a pro-Trump video.“She just wants attention, and I’m not going to give it to her,” Ms. Perez said in response to Ms. Patton’s remarks on Tuesday, adding that she deserved more severe punishment. “I don’t think it was stern enough.”After the video was broadcast, several federal watchdog groups, including the Campaign for Accountability, filed complaints with the Office of Special Counsel urging an investigation into Ms. Patton’s role in the production of the clip.In a statement, Michelle Kuppersmith, the executive director of the Campaign for Accountability, described Ms. Patton as a repeat offender of the Hatch Act. Ms. Kuppersmith said she was pleased that the special counsel had followed up on the complaint.“Laws like the Hatch Act exist for a reason and we hope this sends a message to other officials that violating the law has consequences,” she said.The video was not the first time that Ms. Patton was found to have run afoul of the Hatch Act. In 2019, the Office of Special Counsel determined that she violated the law when she displayed a Trump campaign hat in her New York office and for “liking” political tweets.While Ms. Patton worked for the federal government she also pursued a role in a proposed reality TV show featuring two other prominent Trump supporters, Candace Owens and Katrina Pierson. Ms. Patton claimed that a production company had wanted her to appear on a reality show for several years.To avoid a possible Hatch Act violation, she offered to temporarily resign or take an unpaid absence from HUD so she could film the series, according to records obtained by the American Oversight, a liberal watchdog group. The show, which she told HUD could include scenes from Trump campaign events, never materialized.At the time of the convention video, Ms. Patton was the HUD administrator for the New York region and had some oversight of the city’s public housing agency. She entered the orbit of the Trump family around 2009 after meeting Michael Cohen, the former lawyer for Mr. Trump, who connected her with Eric Trump, one of the former president’s sons. Ms. Patton first joined HUD as an assistant under Ben Carson, then the department secretary, and then relocated to its regional office in Lower Manhattan. Ms. Patton said she had produced tangible results, including spurring the city’s housing authority, long plagued by mismanagement and substandard conditions, to hire companies to help clean its 326 developments.In the final months of the 2020 presidential campaign, Ms. Patton echoed some of Mr. Trump’s most outlandish falsehoods about the election and his opponent, Mr. Biden.In a Facebook post last July, Ms. Patton suggested that she had no interest in helping tackle the homelessness crisis in New York because its leaders opposed Mr. Trump. “EVERY Democratic run city deserves EVERYTHING coming to it,” she wrote. More

On the campaign trail, Joseph R. Biden Jr. had pledged to reverse his predecessor’s land mine policy. A Pentagon spokesman said the matter was under review. More