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AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyLawmakers Clash Over Call for Special Panel to Investigate Capitol AssaultThe disputes are reminiscent of the fight surrounding the creation of the independent commission that conducted an inquiry into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.Speaker Nancy Pelosi was an early proponent of a special commission to fully investigate the Sept. 11 attacks and has called for a special panel to scrutinize the Capitol riot.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesFeb. 25, 2021, 7:12 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Republicans were leery of the prospect of an independent commission to investigate an assault that had shaken the nation and exposed dangerous threats, fearful that Democrats would use it to unfairly cast blame and a political shadow on them.Congress was already conducting its own inquiry, some of them argued, and another investigation was not needed. The commission could be a distraction at a vulnerable time, prompt the disclosure of national secrets or complicate the prosecution of those responsible.The year was 2001, but the clash 20 years ago over the creation of an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11 attacks bears unmistakable parallels to the one that is now raging in Congress over forming a similar panel to look into the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.To most Americans, the idea of a blue-ribbon commission to dig into the causes of the Capitol riot and the security and intelligence failures that led to the seat of government being ransacked would probably seem straightforward. But in recent days, it has become clear that, as in the past, devising the legislative and legal framework for such a panel is fraught with political difficulty, particularly in this case, when members of Congress experienced the attack themselves, and some now blame their colleagues for encouraging it.And this time, given the nature of the breach — an event inspired by President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, which were trumpeted by many Republicans — the findings of a deep investigation could carry heavy political consequences.The tensions intensified this week, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi floated a proposal for the creation of a special panel. Republican leaders denounced her initial plan, which envisioned a commission made up of seven members appointed by Democrats and four by Republicans.Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, called her idea “partisan by design,” and compared it unfavorably with the Sept. 11 commission, which was evenly divided. He also predicted that Democrats would use their influence on the panel to focus mainly on violent acts by Mr. Trump’s supporters — who planned and perpetrated the assault — suggesting that its mandate should be broadened to examine left-wing extremists.“If Congress is going to attempt some broader analysis of toxic political violence across this country, then in that case, we cannot have artificial cherry-picking of which terrible behavior does and does not deserve scrutiny,” Mr. McConnell said.Ms. Pelosi fired back on Thursday, saying she was disappointed in Mr. McConnell, who she said had earlier indicated his support for a commission similar to the one established after the Sept. 11 attacks.She accused Republicans of following the lead of Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, who suggested this week that the pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6 had actually been a mostly peaceful crowd seeded with a few “provocateurs,” including members of a loosely affiliated group of far-left anti-fascism activists, known as “antifa.” (The F.B.I. has said there is no evidence that antifa supporters had participated in the Capitol rampage.)“He was taking a page out of the book of Senator Johnson,” Ms. Pelosi said of Mr. McConnell. She added that the crucial aspect of devising the commission was to determine the scope of its work, dismissing the exact makeup of the panel as an “easily negotiated” detail.“I will do anything to have it be bipartisan,” Ms. Pelosi said.The independent, bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States was eventually formed and lauded for its incisive report published in July 2004. But first, there were myriad obstacles to its creation.“It was hard,” said Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee at the time who backed the independent panel over objections from the George W. Bush administration. He wanted a deeper look even though his own committee had conducted a revealing joint review with its House counterpart. “I thought it needed to be broader,” Mr. Shelby said.Ms. Pelosi, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee at the time, was an early proponent of a special commission to fully investigate the attack. She argued that any congressional review would almost certainly be too narrow and that an inquiry by the same government that had failed to prevent the attack would lack public credibility. Her proposal was rejected by the Republican-led House under pressure from the Bush administration, which feared disclosures of intelligence lapses and other shortcomings that could cost their party politically.Instead, Congress moved ahead with the joint inquiry by the House and Senate intelligence panels, which revealed a failure by the White House to heed warnings about a looming strike on the United States. But even those leading the inquiry believed an independent commission was needed to break free of congressional constraints.“One of the benefits of a subsequent round of hearings is that you can avoid those interferences,” said Bob Graham, a Democratic senator from Florida and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee at the time.Senator Mitch McConnell denounced the initial Democratic proposal for a commission made up of seven members appointed by Democrats and four by Republicans as “partisan by design.”Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesSenators Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, and John McCain, Republican of Arizona, responding to calls from the families of those killed on Sept. 11, pushed forward with a proposal for an independent panel. They built on a long tradition of the United States taking such steps after shattering events like the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy assassination. But the plan encountered stiff resistance from the Bush administration, which finally agreed to its creation in late 2002 after one last round of foot dragging.As the commission began public hearings in the spring of 2003, Ms. Pelosi lamented that it had taken so long but lauded the determination required to make it a reality.“Through the persistence of a member of this commission, former Congressman Tim Roemer, as well as that of Senators McCain and Lieberman, this body was established and has begun its critical work,” she said then.In the case of the Jan. 6 assault, Congress this week began its own set of hearings into what went wrong. Some lawmakers privately suggested that their work could be sufficient and that an independent panel would be redundant. And at his confirmation hearing on Monday to be attorney general, Judge Merrick B. Garland warned that he supported the idea of an independent inquiry only as long as it would not derail the prosecution of any of those charged in the assault.The current Congress is much more polarized than it was in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and the creation of the commission is complicated by the fact that Democrats are highly skeptical of the motives of Republicans. Democrats see some of them as complicit in fueling the attack by spreading falsehoods about the presidential election being stolen and then challenging the electoral vote count on Jan. 6.On Wednesday, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the No. 5 Democrat, accused top Republicans of not acting in good faith and setting a “bad tone” by joining the unsuccessful effort to overturn the election results.“All of that said, Speaker Pelosi still presented the framework to the Republicans, which then, of course, instead of leading to some kind of good-faith conversation from them, they immediately launched into a partisan political attack,” Mr. Jeffries said.But Republicans have suspicions of their own. Even those who have backed the idea of a commission say they will not accept a proposal they see as giving Democrats the upper hand in determining the course of the commission’s work.“It has to be independent,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas. “This can’t be the Nancy Pelosi commission.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAfter 10 Months at Sea, a Giant Carrier Returns to a Changed NationA mounting pandemic death toll. A contested election. A riot at the Capitol. “The world at home has become completely different and we don’t know what we are coming home to,” one sailor on the Nimitz said.Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III greeting troops aboard the carrier Nimitz on Thursday. He told sailors and pilots that he knew what it felt like to be cut off from life during extended deploymentsCredit…Helene Cooper/The New York TimesFeb. 25, 2021, 5:25 p.m. ETABOARD U.S.S. NIMITZ, off California — When this aircraft carrier and its city-size crew departed Naval Base Kitsap in Bremerton, Wash., on April 27, George Floyd was still alive.Donald J. Trump was still president, Georgia had two Republican senators, and some 56,000 people in the United States had died of the coronavirus.Now, 10 months later, the nuclear-powered warship is returning home to a country vastly different from the one it left. That difference was highlighted on Thursday when the new defense secretary — for the first time, an African-American — landed aboard to talk to a travel-weary and isolated crew.“Secretary of defense in combat!” came the announcement.Lloyd J. Austin III, his baritone ringing through the ship’s public-address system, told the sailors and pilots on the Nimitz that he knew what it felt like to be cut off from life during extended deployments: Mr. Austin, a retired Army four-star general, was posted in Iraq about a decade ago for a tour even longer than the Nimitz’s.But that was on land, in Army bases near Baghdad and flying around to Erbil and Ramadi. The Nimitz sailors and Navy and Marine pilots were at sea, spending 2020 in what sometimes felt like a time warp, sailors said.They had to quarantine for two weeks before they even boarded the ship and, once on, they basically could associate only with one another, even during port calls.On the rare occasions that the ship came into port — in Guam or in Manama, Bahrain — the 5,000-strong crew was not allowed traditional shore leave, and had to sleep on board, in berths with around 100 other sailors. They were told not to interact with the public on land, because of the pandemic.They watched the presidential election returns from the Indian Ocean and woke up the morning of Jan. 7, in the Persian Gulf, to the news that rioters had stormed the Capitol.Petty Officer First Class Christina Ray, 31, said she turned on the television in her office on the ship’s second deck, and stared at the images. She recalled being aghast at what was happening.“That type of violence was what we were supposed to be defending the country against,” she said in an interview. “The world at home has become completely different and we don’t know what we are coming home to.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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A well-connected conservative group in Wisconsin nearly succeeded in forcing the state to kick nearly 17,000 eligible voters off its rolls ahead of the 2020 election, new state data reveals.
The group, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (Will), caused a national uproar in late 2019 when it successfully convinced a county judge to order the state to immediately remove more than 232,000 people Wisconsin suspected of moving homes from the state’s voter rolls. The state, relying on government records, had sent a postcard to all of those voters asking them to confirm their address, and Will sought to remove anyone who had not responded within 30 days.
Democrats on the commission refused to comply with the order, believing that the underlying data wasn’t reliable, and wanted to give voters until April 2021 to confirm their address before they removed them. Appeals courts intervened and blocked the removals; the case is currently pending before the Wisconsin supreme court. There were still more than 71,000 voters still on the list at the end of January who did not respond to the mailer (152,524 people on the list updated their registration at a new address).
But new data from the Wisconsin Elections Commission shows how disastrous such a purge could have been. And the dispute underscores the way fights over how states remove people from their voter rolls – often called purging – has become a critical part of protecting voting rights in America.
Across the country, Republicans and conservative groups have pushed for aggressive purging, saying it helps prevent fraud. Democrats and voting rights groups say the process can be done haphazardly, leaving eligible voters, particularly minority groups and students, at risk of being wrongly purged.
Bar chart showing people in non-white zipcodes were more likely to be on the purge list.
In Wisconsin, of the 232,579 people who were flagged for potential removal from the rolls in October 2019, 16,698 people – 7.2% of the list – wound up confirming they wanted to remain registered to vote at the same address. Nearly 11,000 of those people voted in the November election (Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by just over 20,000 votes in the state).
“7.2% never moved. That is a huge error rate,” Mark Thomsen, a Democrat on the bipartisan Wisconsin elections commission, said during a meeting earlier this month.
“17,000 voters is a lot of voters,” said Ann Jacobs, another Democrat on the commission.
Richard Esenberg, Will’s president and general counsel, however, said the new data was actually evidence that Wisconsin’s process worked. “If the number is 7%, then I think it’s fair to say that the movers list was reliable for the purpose that it is being used for, ie, to ask voters to confirm their registrations,” he wrote in an email.
Timeline
Wisconsin officials are still trying to understand exactly why so many voters were getting wrongly flagged. 2019 was just the second time the state used data from the Electronic Registration Information Center (Eric), a multi-state consortium that uses records from the DMV, post office and other government sources to help election officials flag voters who may have moved. Thirty states and the District of Columbia belong to the consortium and the system is generally considered a reliable way of identifying voters who have moved.
Wisconsin, however, is exempt from a 1993 federal law that requires states to offer voter registration services at DMVs. That may be leading to issues in matching DMV and voter records in the state; voters who change a car registration to a different address but haven’t actually moved may be getting incorrectly flagged as movers, Meagan Wolfe, the executive director of the Wisconsin elections commission, said during a meeting earlier this month.
Figuring out whether or not the data Wisconsin is relying on is accurate is crucial because a state statute says that local election officials have to remove someone from the voter rolls if they have “reliable” information they have moved. Will says the data is reliable and so the voters must be removed. Democrats and voting rights groups say the data is not reliable enough to cancel registrations.
The Guardian contacted more than 200 voters who informed the state at some point over the last year or so they were still living at the same address after they were flagged as movers in 2019. Several voters said they had temporarily moved out of Wisconsin but continued to vote absentee in the state.
That’s what happened to Riley Freeman, a 23-year-old from Waunakee. In 2018, he asked the post office to begin forwarding his mail to his college address at Northwestern University, just outside Chicago, but continued to vote absentee in Wisconsin. He didn’t register to vote in Illinois, apply for a driver’s license or register his car there. The state flagged him as a mover, even though he was still eligible to vote in Wisconsin and wanted to do so. He voted by mail in 2020; had the 2019 purge gone through, he would have had to re-register to vote from college before he could vote by mail.
“I still kind of considered myself a Wisconsin resident who just happened to live in Illinois nine months of the year,” he said, calling the process “a little bit unfair”.
Carlos Martin Del Campo, a 20-year-old from New Holstein in north-east Wisconsin, was also among those flagged. Towards the end of 2019, he left Wisconsin to live temporarily in California with his father, but always intended to return to the state and vote there. By the time Wisconsin’s spring election in April came around, he was back in the state and voted in person at the polls after confirming to officials there that he had not moved.
“In my case I would see why I was flagged. But it just concerns me the potential for my vote not being cast was there,” he said.
It’s not clear why voters temporarily out of state may be getting flagged as movers.
“If National Change of Address has it listed as temporary, and not with other codes or other dmv data also indicating a move, then we take them off the list,” Reid Magney, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said in an email. “But it’s also possible they checked the wrong box on the change of address form, or there was a data entry error by the post office. Or they had some other transaction at DMV regarding their vehicle, etc.”
Voters in non-white and low-income zip codes were all more likely to get flagged as movers subject to a potential purge, according to a Guardian analysis of state data. People living in those same areas were also likely to be wrongly flagged as movers.
Map showing where people were most likely to be on a list to be purged from the voter rolls.
Researchers found similar trends when they studied racial disparities the first time Wisconsin attempted to remove voters using Eric data. In 2018, 4% of the voters flagged as movers wound up casting ballots at the same address. Minority voters were twice as likely to do so than their white counterparts.
The study suggests that simply sending voters postcards to confirm their address is probably not the best way to identify who may have moved.
“It highlights the challenges in doing [voter roll] maintenance when people have unstable addresses,” said Marc Meredith, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the authors of the study. “Postcards by themselves aren’t gonna cut it.”
Esenberg and other defenders of the aggressive removals have argued that even if Wisconsin officials did erroneously remove some voters from the rolls, Wisconsin has same-day registration, which allows people to re-register when they show up at the polls. But several voters on the list also told the Guardian that they continued to vote absentee from an address abroad, casting ballots from places like the United Kingdom and Japan. Those voters are unlikely to have the option to re-register on election day, and it may be more difficult for them to get the necessary documents to prove their residency eligibility in Wisconsin.
“We’ve just gotten through an election cycle where the right in this country, conservative activists and legislators are practically apoplectic over garden variety election irregularities. But in the context of this issue, they seem to be very comfortable with a 7% error rate,” said Jon Sherman, an attorney at the Fair Elections Center who went to court to try to stop the removals last year.
“If a voting machine junked 7% of the ballots you fed it, I don’t think you would call that a reliable voting machine.” More

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }N.Y.C. Mayoral RaceWho’s Running?11 Candidates’ N.Y.C. MomentsAn Overview of the Race5 TakeawaysAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWant to Be Mayor of New York? Better Know Your Wings and DumplingsFood can be a unifying or divisive factor in New York City politics, with people taking sides on pizza slices, deli choices and utensil selection.Andrew Yang has dined around the city, including in Chinatown earlier this month, to highlight restaurants that are struggling during the pandemic.Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesFeb. 25, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETAmong all the things that help shape a New York City mayor’s image, it’s not always the most consequential topics that tend to stick — especially on matters that concern food.Just ask Mayor Bill de Blasio.On second thought, maybe don’t ask him: Mr. de Blasio is still remembered for making the mistake of eating a slice at Goodfella’s, a popular pizzeria on Staten Island, with a knife and fork. It was his second week in office.Food can be a strangely unifying or divisive factor in New York City politics, with people taking sides on pizza slices, deli choices and, of course, bagels.That remains true even now, with New York City in crisis, and the mayor’s race perhaps the most important in a generation. Yet with the pandemic forcing much of the campaign inside and online, discussing food — and consuming it at sporadic in-person campaign events — has been a pleasant diversion.Andrew Yang, the former presidential hopeful, keeps a photo diary of his campaign snacks on Twitter: gourmet pickles on the Lower East Side of Manhattan; pizza at Gino’s restaurant in Bay Ridge in Brooklyn; Dominican food in Hunts Point in the Bronx.When Mr. Yang stopped recently for soup dumplings and scallion pancakes in Chinatown, he said that he wanted to highlight restaurants that are struggling during the pandemic.“As much as I enjoyed running for president, the culinary options of New York City are very different than those in Iowa and New Hampshire,” he said. “It’s been delightful for me to think of a type of a food that I want, and it’s available.”Mr. Yang is not the only candidate dining al fresco.After Mr. Yang posted a photo of his lunch with Donovan Richards, the Queens borough president, at Szechuan Mountain House in January, Maya Wiley soon followed with news of having had “slammin’ chicken wings” with Mr. Richards at Queens Bully, a gastro pub.Even before she entered the race, Ms. Wiley, a former MSNBC analyst and ex-counsel to Mr. de Blasio, posted a photo last summer of her Caribbean meal at Code Red in the Bronx with Carl Heastie, the State Assembly speaker — a coveted ally who has not made an endorsement yet.Eating on the campaign trail can be trickier for Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, who is a vegan evangelist and often brings his own food. He grabbed a green goddess smoothie and a quinoa tofu bowl one recent morning before visiting Yankee Stadium in the Bronx to hand out masks.“This will be in the car so I can have healthy options, and I don’t have to nibble on something unhealthy,” he said.Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, is a vegan who published a book last year called “Healthy at Last,” about his plant-based diet.Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesFor Mr. Adams, his personal transformation from an overweight police officer in the 1990s to a lean vegan who loves yoga and meditation is a key part of his campaign narrative. Mr. Adams published a book last year called “Healthy at Last” about his plant-based diet, with recipes for tempeh stir-fry and jackfruit and okra gumbo.Mr. Adams is serious about his diet after dropping 30 pounds and reversing his diabetes. He has a mental map of the best vegan spots around the city, name-dropping Screamer’s Pizzeria in Williamsburg in Brooklyn, and boasts of his homemade creations like pizza with a cauliflower crust.When Michael R. Bloomberg was mayor, he famously cracked down on trans fats, sugary drinks and salt to try to force New Yorkers to get healthy. But his personal diet was filled with indulgences: He sprinkled salt on bagels and pizza, and enjoyed burned bacon and peanut butter sandwiches, Cheez-Its and Big Macs.Mr. Adams also wants to make public health a focus of his administration if elected, but would undoubtedly be a better model in his personal habits than Mr. Bloomberg.In his book, Mr. Adams describes waking up with vision problems in March 2016 and learning he had diabetes. After years of eating fast food like McDonald’s and KFC, Mr. Adams decided to change his lifestyle, along with his partner, Tracey Collins, a former school principal.The book has plenty of practical advice: “Don’t Brag (When You Start Looking Oh So Good)” and discusses health disparities in the Black community.Now when Mr. Adams eats with community leaders, he first scans the menu for appetizers and side dishes and orders something simple like broccoli or hummus. If he is offered something homemade, he tries to be polite.“I’m a master at moving food around on the plate,” he said with a laugh.Mr. Adams isn’t even the only candidate with a cookbook: Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, published one on healthy eating in East Harlem in 2008. But Mr. Stringer is no expert home chef. His contribution to the book was a list of ten tips for ordering takeout, including, “That’s dressing on the side, please.”Mr. Stringer said he learned some kitchen basics after marrying his wife, Elyse Buxbaum, in 2010.“Pre-Elyse, I was a connoisseur of West Side takeout,” he said. “Now I’m proud to say that I’m getting better at cooking. I can make pasta and throw tomato sauce on it.”Asked about his best meal on the campaign trail, Mr. Stringer sounded crestfallen that he remains mostly stuck inside his bedroom closet on video chats.“Takeout sushi in the midst of Zooming,” he said.The silver lining, perhaps, is avoiding the pitfalls awaiting candidates when they make public food choices.For instance, a recent stop for a dan tat, a Chinese egg tart, got Mr. Yang into trouble with his wife, Evelyn.“It was warm and delicious,” he said. “The only problem was that I didn’t bring one home for Evelyn. She saw it on my Twitter feed.”As for Mr. de Blasio, wisdom has not necessarily come with experience. Six years after the pizza fiasco, the mayor suggested that his favorite New York City bagel came toasted — prompting many bagel aficionados to recoil in horror. To make matters worse, Mr. de Blasio’s bagel purveyor of choice did not even have a toaster.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Campaign to Subvert the 2020 ElectionKey TakeawaysTrump’s RoleGeorgia InvestigationExtremist Wing of G.O.P.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhat to Watch For at CPAC: Trump, Cruz, Pompeo and MoreEven more than usual, the Conservative Political Action Conference this year will be a barometer for the Republican Party, newly out of power in Washington and trying to chart a way back.Former President Donald J. Trump in October at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa. On Sunday, he is scheduled to give the culminating speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesFeb. 25, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETStarting on Friday, a medley of conservative politicians, commentators and activists will descend on Orlando, Fla., for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, commonly known as CPAC. In years past, the event has been a reliable barometer for the base of the Republican Party, clarifying how its most devout members define the institution now, and what they want it to look like in the future.For the party’s leadership, those questions have become especially urgent in the aftermath of former President Donald J. Trump’s election loss in November, not to mention the riot at the Capitol carried out last month by Trump supporters. The party has hardened over the past four years into one animated by rage, grievance and — above all — fealty to Mr. Trump. The days ahead will help illuminate whether it’s likely to stay that way.What is Trump’s influence on the event?The former president is scheduled to deliver the culminating speech of the conference at 3:40 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, but his presence will be felt throughout the event. Recent polls show that a majority of Republicans falsely believe the election was stolen from Mr. Trump, and the agenda this year indicates that subjects like voter fraud will be top of mind.On Friday morning, panelists including Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama, who has enthusiastically backed Mr. Trump’s claims of fraud, will gather onstage for a 35-minute segment called “Protecting Elections: Why Judges & Media Refused to Look at the Evidence.” That theme picks up again on Sunday morning, when speakers will discuss what they call the “Failed States” of Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada — states that Joseph R. Biden Jr. won in November, and where Mr. Trump’s legal efforts to overturn the results sputtered.The 45th president won’t be the only Trump to make an appearance. On Friday afternoon, Donald Trump Jr. will speak under the vague banner of “Reigniting the Spirit of the American Dream.” He’ll be introduced by Kimberly Guilfoyle, his girlfriend and a former Fox News personality.In other words, when it comes to the elder Mr. Trump, expect this year’s CPAC to feel similar to the past four — from the number of times his name is invoked to the audience’s eagerness to hear from the man himself.What issues are on the agenda?As conservatives look for a message to rally around ahead of the midterm elections in 2022, the CPAC agenda previews the uphill battle awaiting them. The agenda includes panels on the debt, abortion, education, Big Tech and “cancel culture.” But with so many segments anchored in the 2020 election, the conference appears to be less about mapping the party’s future than relitigating its past.Except for one particular day, that is. Nowhere on the agenda is there any reference to Jan. 6 — not the pro-Trump march in Washington, the chants of “stop the steal,” nor the demonstration that devolved into a riotous mob storming the Capitol. Prominent Republican politicians have tried to pin the riot on antifa and other left-wing movements or groups, and CPAC will reveal how conservative voters regard the events of that day nearly two months later.Senators Mike Lee and Ted Cruz walking through the Capitol subway on Tuesday. Both are set to speak at CPAC.Credit…Erin Scott for The New York TimesWho’s eyeing 2024?A speaking slot at CPAC is prime real estate for ambitious Republicans. This year, a number of those eager to claim the mantle of a post-Trump G.O.P. have managed to nab one. With the event being held in his state, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has perhaps the most coveted spot on the schedule apart from that of Mr. Trump himself — he’ll deliver the conference’s kickoff address on Friday at 9 a.m.Other rumored 2024 candidates include Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who will speak on the “Bill of Rights, Liberty, and Cancel Culture” on Friday at 10:50 a.m.; Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who will discuss “Keeping America Safe” at 12:55 p.m. that day; and Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who is up at 2:55 p.m. for a discussion on “Unlocking Our Churches, Our Voices, and Our Social Media Accounts.”Mr. Scott is immediately followed on the schedule by Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, whose speech is simply titled “Remarks.”Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, and Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota will anchor the lineup on Saturday. He will speak on the Bill of Rights at 1:35 p.m. and she will address the audience at 3:50 p.m.; no topic is listed for her speech.Looming over them all, of course, is Mr. Trump. If the former president’s popularity with the base holds firm, the 2024 election could revolve around whether he chooses to run. If he does, few Republicans are likely to challenge him for the nomination. If he doesn’t, candidates will pour as much energy into earning his endorsement as they do into their ground game in Iowa.And so at CPAC, 2024 hopefuls are likely to deliver their speeches in a familiar mode: to an audience of one.Who won’t be there?With the Republican Party looking to take back the White House in 2024, who isn’t speaking at CPAC this year is as telling as who is.The most notable absence from the lineup is former Vice President Mike Pence. He has kept a low profile since Jan. 6, when some rioters called for his execution and Mr. Trump declined to take action to stop the mob. Politico first reported that Mr. Pence had declined an invitation to speak at CPAC.Also absent from the agenda is Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina who served under Mr. Trump as ambassador to the United Nations. Ms. Haley is another rumored contender for 2024, and her absence from the conservative conference may signal an attempt to occupy a more moderate lane in the party in the years ahead.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Campaign to Subvert the 2020 ElectionKey TakeawaysTrump’s RoleGeorgia InvestigationExtremist Wing of G.O.P.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyWe Still Have to Worry About the Supreme Court and ElectionsThe justices are about to consider whether the Voting Rights Act applies to policies that restrict the vote.Contributing Opinion WriterFeb. 25, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Damon Winter/The New York TimesWhen the Supreme Court on Monday rejected Pennsylvania Republicans’ after-the-fact effort to invalidate late-arriving mailed ballots, it was tempting to suppose that the country’s courthouse doors had finally closed on this most litigated of presidential elections.If only it were that simple.True, in denying the Republicans’ petitions, the court didn’t issue an opinion. Of the four votes necessary to accept a case, these two cases (treated by the court as one) garnered only three. So for the official record, the only outcome in Republican Party of Pennsylvania v. DeGraffenreid and in Corman v. Pennsylvania Democratic Party was “denied.”But the three justices who would have accepted the cases — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — issued dissenting opinions that provide both a road map and a rationale for the Supreme Court’s future intervention in the quintessentially state matter of how to conduct elections.Remember Bush v. Gore, the case that decided the 2000 presidential election, in which five justices voted to overturn the Florida Supreme Court’s handling of a statewide recount? That decision was based on a theory of equal protection so wacky that the majority opinion insisted that “our consideration is limited to the present circumstances” — that is to say, don’t dare invoke this poor excuse for an opinion as a precedent.That didn’t stop Justice Thomas from citing Bush v. Gore in his dissenting opinion on Monday, and he did so in a particularly shameless fashion. The language he cited wasn’t even from the Bush v. Gore majority opinion, but rather from a separate concurring opinion filed in that case by only three of the majority justices, who argued that the Florida Supreme Court had violated the U.S. Constitution by substituting its will for that of the state Legislature. Justice Thomas invoked that minority portion of the decision to assert that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was constitutionally out of bounds when, citing both the Covid-19 pandemic and the collapse of the Postal Service as its reasons, it added three postelection days for lawful receipt of mailed ballots.He went on to warn that fraud was “more prevalent with mail-in ballots,” citing as evidence a 1994 Federal District Court case, an article in this newspaper from 2012 and the 2018 Republican ballot-harvesting fraud in North Carolina. Such occurrences, he said, raise “the likelihood that courts will be asked to adjudicate questions that go to the heart of election confidence.” This was the reason, he argued, that the Supreme Court should have taken and decided the Pennsylvania cases before the next election cycle.In his inventory of ballot fraud, Justice Thomas of course could not refer to fraud in the 2020 election, because there wasn’t any. Not a problem:We are fortunate that many of the cases we have seen alleged only improper rule changes, not fraud. But that observation provides only small comfort. An election free from strong evidence of systemic fraud is not alone sufficient for election confidence. Also important is the assurance that fraud will not go undetected.In other words, Justice Thomas would have it both ways: If there was fraud, the court needed to intervene, and if there was no fraud, the court needed to intervene because the fraud might simply be undetected. Despite his disclaimer, the entire structure of his opinion, suggesting that something bad had happened even if no one could prove it, is fairly read as validating the essence of the Trump narrative.Justice Alito, in a separate dissenting opinion that Justice Gorsuch also signed, was more circumspect about the fraud issue. His emphasis was the urgency of stopping state courts from substituting their judgment for that of the legislatures. He said that even though the election was over and late ballots were too few to have made a difference in Pennsylvania’s vote totals, state courts could be expected to behave in the same way in the future unless the Supreme Court used this occasion to stop them.There are several things to note about the Pennsylvania cases. The most obvious is the absence of a fourth vote. In an initial round in the Pennsylvania cases, in mid-October, Justice Brett Kavanaugh had provided Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch with a fourth vote to grant a stay of the state court decision. But a stay requires five votes rather than four. With Amy Coney Barrett not yet confirmed, the eight justices divided 4 to 4, and the stay was denied without opinions. Justice Kavanaugh withheld his vote on Monday, without explanation. Maybe he decided this was a propitious time to offer some cover for Chief Justice John Roberts, who has voted in nearly all the election cases this fall with the three remaining liberal justices.Justice Barrett was also silent. During her confirmation hearing, Senate Democrats had pressed her to promise recusal from any election cases, given that President Donald Trump had said he needed a prompt replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg so that he would have a majority of justices voting his way in any election disputes. Justice Barrett did not recuse herself from the Pennsylvania case. Perhaps her decision not to provide the fourth vote her dissenting colleagues needed was a kind of de facto recusal, in recognition that the optics of voting to hear a last-ditch Trump appeal would be awkward, to say the least.The deeper question raised by Monday’s development is why Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch are so intent on what would seem to be a counterintuitive goal for conservatives: curbing the power of state courts. I’m cynical enough to think it has to do with how these three understand the position of state legislatures and state courts in today’s political climate. It’s been widely reported that Republican-controlled legislatures are rolling out bills by the dozens to restrict access to the polls, aimed at discouraging the kind of turnout that produced Democratic victories in Georgia last month. The vote-suppression effort has become so aggressive that some Republicans are starting to worry about voter backlash, according to a recent Washington Post article.State courts, on the other hand, are capable of standing in the way of this strategy. When state high-court judges are elected, as they are in many states, they typically run in statewide races that are not subject to the gerrymandering that has entrenched Republican power in states that are much more balanced politically than the makeup of their legislatures reflects. What better way to disable the state courts in their democracy-protecting role than to push them to the sidelines when it comes to federal elections.So there is no way the Supreme Court is finished with elections. Next Tuesday, as it happens, the justices will hear a crucial voting rights case. The case, from Arizona, asks the court to decide for the first time how Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 applies to policies that restrict the vote, through such measures as voter ID requirements.Section 2, which pertains nationwide, is the major remaining provision of the Voting Rights Actfollowing the Supreme Court’s dismantling of the act’s Section 5, in the 2013 Shelby County case. That section barred certain states and smaller jurisdictions from making changes in their election procedures without first receiving federal permission, known as “preclearance.” Section 5 provided vital protection in parts of the country where racism had not released its grip on the levers of power.The issue now is whether Section 2 can be deployed to fill that gap. It prohibits any voting practice that “results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” It has typically been used to challenge redistricting plans that dilute the electoral power of racial and ethnic minorities. The question of whether it can be useful in challenging the wave of vote-suppression schemes, which can present complex problems of proof, hands the justices arguably the most important civil rights case of their current term.With the country exhausted and still reeling from the turmoil of the 2020 election and its bizarre aftermath, the urge not to think about elections for a while is powerful. I share it. But it’s a luxury the Supreme Court hasn’t given us, not now, not as long as some justices have more to say.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.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyHow to Keep Extremists Out of PowerEvery political reform proposal must be judged by its ability to fuel or weaken extremist candidates.Mr. Pildes has spent his career as a legal scholar analyzing the intersection of politics and law and how that impacts our elections.Feb. 25, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Shay Horse/NurPhoto, via Getty ImagesAmerican democracy faces alarming risks from extremist forces that have rapidly gained ground in our politics. The most urgent focus of political reform must be to marginalize, to the extent possible, these destabilizing forces.Every reform proposal must be judged through this lens: Is it likely to fuel or to weaken the power of extremist politics and candidates?In healthy democracies, they are rewarded for appealing to the broadest forces in politics, not the narrowest. This is precisely why American elections take place in a “first past the post” system rather than the proportional representation system many other democracies use.What structural changes would reward politicians whose appeal is broadest? We should start with a focus on four areas.Reform the presidential nomination processUntil the 1970s, presidential nominees were selected through a convention-based system, which means that a candidate had to obtain a broad consensus among the various interests and factions in the party. “Brokered conventions” — which required several rounds of balloting to choose a nominee — offered a vivid demonstration of how the sausage of consensus was made. In 1952, for example, the Republican Party convention selected the more moderate Dwight D. Eisenhower over Robert A. Taft, the popular leader of the more extreme wing of the party, who opposed the creation of NATO.Our current primary system shifted control from party insiders to voters. Now, in a primary with several credible contenders, a candidate can “win” with 35 percent of the vote. This allows polarizing candidates to win the nomination even if many party members find them objectionable. (In 2016, Donald Trump won many primaries with less than 40 percent of the vote.)How can we restore some of the party-wide consensus the convention system required? The parties can use ranked-choice voting, which allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. This rewards candidates with broad appeal to a party’s voters, even if they have fewer passionate supporters. In this system, a candidate intensely popular with 35 percent of the party’s voters but intensely disliked by much of the rest would not prevail. A candidate who is the first choice of only 35 percent but the second choice of another 50 percent would do better. Ranked-choice voting reduces the prospects of factional party candidates. Presidents with a broad base of support can institute major reforms, as Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan demonstrated.Reform the party primariesMany incumbents take more extreme positions than they might otherwise endorse because they worry about a primary challenge.One way to help defang that threat is to eliminate “sore-loser” laws. These laws, which exist in some form in 47 states, bar candidates who have lost in a party primary from running in the general election as an independent or third-party candidate. Thus, if a more moderate candidate loses in a primary to a more extreme one, that person is shut out from the general election — even if he or she would likely beat the (sometimes extreme) winners of the party primaries. One study finds that sore-loser laws favor more ideological candidates: Democratic candidates in states with the law are nearly six points more liberal and Republicans nearly nine-to-10 points more conservative than in states without these laws.Though Alaska has a sore-loser law, Senator Lisa Murkowski’s 2010 re-election is still instructive. That year, as an incumbent, she lost the Republican primary to a conservative candidate endorsed by the Tea Party and Sarah Palin. But the state permitted an exception to the sore-loser law for write-in candidates, and Ms. Murkowski, running as a write-in Republican candidate, won the general election.If sore-loser laws are eliminated, that reform should be combined with ranked-choice voting in the general election. That would ensure that in a multicandidate general election, the winner would reflect a broad consensus. Other ideas for restructuring primaries to minimize the existence of factional candidates include one adopted by Alaska voters in November: The top four candidates in a single primary move on to the general election, where the winner is chosen through ranked-choice voting.Reform gerrymanderingMany reformers agree on the need to take redistricting out of the hands of partisan state legislatures and give it to a commission. In several recent state ballot initiatives, voters have endorsed this change. But that still raises a question: What constitutes a fair map?Redistricting reform should have as a goal the creation of competitive election districts. Competitive districts pressure candidates from both the left and the right, which creates incentives to appeal to the political center. They also encourage more moderate candidates to run in the first place, because they know they have a greater prospect of winning than in a district whose seat is safe for the other party.In safe seat districts, as long as a candidate survives the primary, that person is assured of winning the general election — which means primary candidates don’t have to move toward the center.The sources of centrism in the House or Senate frequently come from politicians in swing districts or states. In the recent House impeachment, for example, the percentage of Republicans elected with 57 percent of the vote or less who voted for impeachment was more than double that of Republicans elected with more than 57 percent of the vote. Similarly, it was Democrats holding competitive seats who resisted the initial impeachment of President Trump, until news broke of his call with Ukraine.Not every district can be made competitive. But in 2018, maps that emphasized competitiveness could have produced at least 242 highly competitive districts, although only 72 races actually were competitive. The more senators and representatives who face competitive pressures in their general elections, the larger the forces of compromise and negotiation will be in Congress.The goal of creating competitive districts should not take a back seat to approaches that focus on whether the partisan outcomes match vote shares in a particular map. In these approaches, the closer a plan comes to matching the number of seats one party gets to its statewide share of the vote, the fairer that map is deemed to be. So, if 55 percent of the statewide vote goes to Democrats, then Democrats should have roughly 55 percent of the seats in the state Legislature and the U.S. House delegation from the state. The problem comes when a fair partisan map produces candidates, in getting to that 55 percent overall, who are all elected from seats so safe for one party, they never have to compete for voters in the center.If we want to reduce extremist forces in our politics, candidates should have to appeal to a diverse set of interests and voters in competitive districts as much as possible.Reform campaign-finance reformThe way campaigns are financed also has major effects on the types of candidates who run and win.Campaign-finance efforts are now rightly focused on “leveling up” campaign dollars — by providing public funds to candidates — rather than trying to “level down” by imposing caps on election spending. That shift is partly a result of Supreme Court doctrine, but also of the difficulties of narrowing the number of channels through which money can flow to candidates.But publicly financed elections can take at least two different basic forms, and the form taken can have significant ramifications for whether the forces of extremism are further accentuated or limited.In the traditional form of public financing, which is used in around 11 states that have public financing, the government provides grants of campaign funds to the qualified candidates.In the other form — which has taken up much of the reform energy in recent years — the government provides matching funds for small donations. This based on a matching-funds program that has existed in New York City for a number of years.The campaign-finance reform proposal that House Democrats passed after the 2018 midterms, which is now a focus of the Democratic agenda, would include a small-donor matching program. The legislation would provide $6 in public funds to candidates for every dollar they raise in small donations (those of $200 or less), up to a certain level.But there is a risk that making public funding proportional to small donations will accelerate polarization and extremism even further. Research suggests small donors are more ideologically extreme than average citizens and donate to ideologically more extreme candidates. In his campaigns, Mr. Trump raised a higher percentage of his contributions from small donors than any major-party presidential nominee in history.Numerous studies have shown that in general, individual donors (large and small) are the most ideological source of money in politics. Traditional public financing is far more neutral in the types of candidates who benefit.In debating campaign-finance reform, we must focus not just on the values of participation or equality but also on the overall effects different approaches to reform are likely to have on political extremism or moderation.Jan. 6 provided a painful demonstration of the dangerous currents gathering in American political culture. Every proposed election reform must now be measured against this reality to make sure political reform furthers American democracy.Richard H. Pildes is a professor at New York University’s School of Law and an author of the casebook “The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process.”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.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyArrest of Opposition Leader in Georgia Raises Fear of Growing InstabilityLawmakers from parties aligned against the government have vowed to continue a boycott of Parliament until Nika Melia is released from police custody.A protest on Tuesday in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, after the arrest of Nika Melia, an opposition leader.Credit…Vano Shlamov/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFeb. 24, 2021, 12:00 p.m. ETMOSCOW — Major opposition parties in the South Caucasus nation of Georgia vowed on Wednesday to boycott Parliament until the government releases a prominent opponent detained recently.The instability adds yet another country to a growing list of former Soviet republics gripped by political tensions, street protests or outright war.Just in the past few months, demonstrations have shaken the government in Belarus, Kyrgyzstan has endured its third post-Soviet revolution, and Azerbaijan and Armenia have fought a vicious war over a breakaway enclave.Though politics in Georgia, a country of just over four million people, have always been sharp-elbowed, the arrest of the opposition leader, Nika Melia, suggested an alarming pivot to more repressive policies by the governing party, Georgian Dream.Mr. Melia, chairman of the United National Movement, a political party founded by a former president, Mikheil Saakashvili, had blockaded himself into the party’s headquarters in Tbilisi, the capital. To make the arrest, police officers scaled fire ladders onto the roof and battered through barricades of furniture inside the building.Mr. Melia stands accused of fomenting a crowd to storm Parliament in 2019, a charge he has dismissed as politically motivated.In a joint statement issued on Tuesday, several United States senators sharply criticized the arrest, saying it “jeopardizes what remains of Georgia’s democracy and its Euro-Atlantic path.”Mr. Melia is the head of the United National Movement, a political party founded by a former president, Mikheil Saakashvili.Credit…Vano Shlamov/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe statement called for Mr. Melia’s release and for a dialogue between parties to resolve the political crisis that has been brewing since a contested election in October. Members of several opposition parties, including the United National Movement, contend that the vote was rigged and have refused to be seated in Parliament. They have vowed to continue the boycott until Mr. Melia is released.A member of the United National Movement, Zaal Udumashvili, told local news outlets, “We are ready to sit down at the negotiating table, provided that Nika Melia will also be sitting at the table.” Several thousand people protested Mr. Melia’s arrest in central Tbilisi on Tuesday evening.Underlying the political crisis are accusations from the opposition that a billionaire who went into politics, Bidzina Ivanishvili, a backer of the governing party, has destroyed the country’s pluralistic institutions, something Mr. Ivanishvili denies.Shota Utiashvili, vice president of the Atlantic Council of Georgia, said in a telephone interview, “Georgia has been labeled as a beacon of democracy in the region, and it’s really unfortunate to see it sliding toward these signs of authoritarianism.”“Georgia has never been a perfect democracy, but at least its trajectory was in the right direction,” he added.The arrest has also roiled Georgian Dream, the governing party. The prime minister, Giorgi Gakharia, a member of the party, resigned last week to protest the issuing of a warrant for Mr. Melia’s detention. “Polarization and confrontation pose the greatest risks to our country’s future,” he said.The escalating standoff over the disputed election has alarmed Western diplomats who for years have held up Georgia as a democratic success story in the former Soviet Union.The State Department issued a statement last week saying it was “deeply concerned” about the political parties’ inability to resolve the election dispute. The United States, it said, called “on all parties to exercise restraint and avoid any actions or rhetoric that could escalate tensions or result in violence.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More