Elections

When an American president is inaugurated, it’s supposed to mark the height of American democracy and power. The elaborate ceremony is designed to convey the peaceful transfer of power and that no matter how bitter the election, the nation is moving on.But when Joe Biden is inaugurated as the 46th US president on Wednesday, the ceremony will seem anything but that. America is arriving at the inauguration at an incredibly perilous moment, just two weeks after a violent pro-Trump mob attacked the US Capitol and several Republican members of Congress voted against certifying the results of the election. For months, Donald Trump has refused to acknowledge Biden as the legitimate winner of the election – a belief shared by legions of his supporters. The ceremony will have a heavy military presence because of threats of violence. Trump isn’t bothering attending.While Trump has accelerated this dangerous moment, it’s been shaped by a deliberate Republican strategy to undermine faith in elections to make it harder to vote. The myth of voter fraud and repeated allusions to elections being stolen have moved from fringe theories to the center of Republican ideology over the last several decades. The refusal to accept the election, and the attack on the Capitol, are a consequence of that strategy.“Donald Trump was definitely the spark and he had many enablers and facilitators, but the kindling had all been laid,” said Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “The strategy has been to slowly, steadily, undermine Americans’ faith in the security of elections, increase their belief in the existence of widespread voter fraud so as to enable them to accept what would otherwise be perceived as a really illegitimate and anti-democratic agenda of restricting access to voting.”For years, Republicans have used misleading and faulty data to suggest that elections are at risk of fraud. In Kansas, Kris Kobach, the former secretary of state, used the threat of non-citizen voting to justify a law requiring people to prove their citizenship when they registered to vote (the law has since been blocked by a federal court). Conservative lawyers in recent years have also used misleading data analyses to suggest that voter rolls are filled with ineligible voters.By 2016, when Trump claimed that voter fraud cost him the popular vote, it fit neatly into the narrative the Republican party was beginning to embrace.Two years later, there were signs that questioning election results were moving to Republican orthodoxy. Paul Ryan, then serving as speaker of the House, said it was “bizarre” and “weird” that Republicans fell behind in California races as more mail-in ballots were counted after election night. When Trump started making similar claims last spring and summer that mail-in ballots would lead to fraud and cost him the election, few Republicans objected.The party began to attack ballot drop boxes and mail-in voting, something Republicans long relied on. When Trump claimed there was something amiss as states continued to count ballots after election day, Republicans – with a few exceptions – supported him too. The rhetoric began to have real consequences, as supporters started protesting at vote counting sites and harassing workers trying to count ballots during November’s election.And by the time of electoral college certification, the effort to undermine faith in the vote had gone so far that it made it possible for two-thirds of the House Republican caucus and a dozen senators to back the idea of throwing out the election results entirely.“It’s gone from voter fraud in a particular election to ‘stolen election’,” said Lorraine Minnitte, a professor at Rutgers University-Camden, who has studied allegations of voter fraud. “I don’t think it would have been as successful if the fraud myth hadn’t been planted a long time ago.”Kobach, a Trump ally who briefly led a White House panel to investigate voter fraud, said it was “entirely appropriate” for members of Congress to object to the certification of electoral college votes. He noted that since 2000, Democrats had objected repeatedly to the counting of electoral college votes for Republican presidential winners (in all of those cases, however, the effort was not supported by the Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, who had already conceded the race).He dismissed the idea that there was any connection between raising concerns about election fraud and the attack on the Capitol.“I’ve talked about voter fraud to small audiences and very, very large audiences over 100 times. Maybe multiple hundreds of times. Never has it inflamed passions so that people want to go march on something and break windows,” he told the Guardian. “The idea that talking about the integrity of our elections is inflammatory is idiotic.”Kobach, who built a national reputation by focusing on voter fraud, also downplayed the significance of a Biden presidency in which a significant number of people do not accept him as a legitimately elected figure.“I would say it’s going to be very similar to the last four years where you had many on the left thinking Donald Trump wasn’t legitimately elected because they believed Russian interference caused him to be elected,” he said. “You will have many on the right harboring doubts as to whether the results in those five states were accurate accounts of legal votes in those five states, but I don’t think it’s going to be all that different.”Hillary Clinton conceded the election to Trump the day after the polls closed in 2016.Since last week’s electoral college vote, several businesses have announced they are pausing donations to the Republican members of Congress who voted against upholding election results. The pause comes after business interests for years have supported conservative groups that have facilitated voter ID laws and extreme partisan gerrymandering that allowed Republicans to take votes without fear of the consequences.“People were willing to tolerate this anti-democratic conduct up to a point. And then when it boiled over, when it became so extreme that people couldn’t ignore it, then they became willing to repudiate it,” Weiser said. “Seeing it so vividly all at once has broken that complacency.”Biden will be inaugurated on Wednesday on the Capitol’s west front amid a growing rejection of that complacency. But convincing Trump’s supporters that the election was legitimate and overcoming the doubt sowed in American elections may be an impossible task. We may have only begun to see the consequences of the damage. More

AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhy Rage Over the 2020 Election Could Last Well Past TrumpThe vast majority of Americans do not approve of the riot at the Capitol. But experts warn that the widespread belief there was election fraud, while false, could have dangerous, lasting effects.Polls indicate that only a small fraction of Americans approved of the riot in Washington last week. Credit…Jason Andrew for The New York TimesJan. 18, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETWASHINGTON — For many Trump supporters, the inauguration of Joseph R. Biden Jr. this week will be a signal that it is time to move on. The president had four years, but Mr. Biden won, and that is that.But for a certain slice of the 74 million Americans who voted for President Trump, the events of the past two weeks — the five deaths, including of a Capitol Police officer, the arrests that have followed, and the removal of Mr. Trump and right-wing extremists from tech platforms — have not had a chastening effect.On the contrary, interviews in recent days show that their anger and paranoia have only deepened, suggesting that even after Mr. Trump leaves the White House, an embrace of conspiracy theories and rage about the 2020 election will live on, not just among extremist groups but among many Americans.“I can’t just sit back and say, ‘OK, I’ll just go back to watching football,’” said Daniel Scheerer, 43, a fuel truck driver in Grand Junction, Colo., who went to the rally in Washington last week, but said he did not go inside the Capitol and had nothing to do with those who did. He said he did not condone those who were violent, but believed that the news media has “totally skewed” the event, obscuring what he sees as the real story of the day — the people’s protest against election fraud.“If we tolerate a fraudulent election, I believe we cease to have a republic,” he said. “We turn into a totalitarian state.”Asked what would happen after Mr. Biden took office, Mr. Scheerer said: “That’s where every person has to soul search.”Trump campaign billboards displayed along Texas State Highway 71 near La Grange, Texas, on Election Day. Credit…Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesHe continued: “This just isn’t like a candidate that I didn’t want, but he won fair and square. There’s something different happening here. I believe it needs to be resisted and fought against.”Mr. Scheerer said he was not advocating violence, nor was he part of any group that was. But he echoed the views of many who supported the events in Washington last week: A fervent belief that something bad was about to happen, and an instinct to fight against it.Polls indicate that only a small fraction of Americans approved of the riot in Washington last week. A Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that 8 percent of adults and 15 percent of Republicans support “the actions of people who stormed the U.S. Capitol last week to protest Biden’s election as president.” That is far from most voters, but enough to show that the belief in a stolen election has entered the American bloodstream and will not be easy to stop.“It’s a dangerous situation,” said Lucan Way, a political scientist at the University of Toronto who writes about authoritarian regimes. “The ‘election was stolen’ narrative has become part of the political landscape.”The country’s political divide is no longer a disagreement over issues like guns and abortion but a fundamental difference in how people see reality. That, in turn, is driving more extremist beliefs. This shift has been years in the making, but it went into hyper-speed after the Nov. 3 election as Mr. Trump and many in his party encouraged Americans, despite all the evidence to the contrary, to believe the results were fraudulent. The belief is still common among Republicans: A Quinnipiac poll published Monday found that 73 percent still falsely believe there was widespread voter fraud.Now, with Mr. Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday and so many Americans enraged about the election, state capitals and Washington are on high alert, with soldiers and security perimeters, bracing for further acts of violence.“Polarization is not the problem anymore,” said Lilliana Mason, a political psychologist at the University of Maryland. “Now it’s the threat to democracy.”When Professor Mason began surveying people in 2017 about their tolerance for political violence for a book on partisanship, she did not expect to find much. Partisanship was always seen as an inert, harmless thing, she said, a way to get people interested in the otherwise boring topic of politics.She was wrong. She and her co-author, Nathan Kalmoe, found that the share of Americans who say it is “at least a little bit justified” to engage in violence for political reasons has doubled in three years, rising to 20 percent after the election, from 10 percent in 2017. The trend was the same for both Republicans and Democrats. But the election was a catalyzing event: The Republicans who said they condoned violence became more approving after it, Professor Mason said. Democrats stayed about the same.State capitals and Washington are on high alert, with soldiers and security perimeters, bracing for further acts of violence.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesProfessor Mason said she worried that more violence and attacks on elected leaders and state Capitols could be coming, saying the country could be in for a period like the Troubles, the conflict in Northern Ireland in which sectarian violence kept the region unstable for 30 years.In interviews with Mr. Trump’s more fervent supporters, people expressed a pattern of falsehoods and fears about the coming Biden administration. As events like the riot have raced ahead, so have conspiracy theories explaining them. They have blossomed in the exhausting monotony of coronavirus lockdowns.Theda Kasner, 83, a retired medical worker from Marshfield, Wis., who was originally interviewed for a New York Times polling story before the election, has been in an R.V. park in Weslaco, Texas, near the border with Mexico, since December. She is spending the winter there with her husband, for the sun and the beaches nearby. But the coronavirus is roaring through, and this week, their R.V. park went on lockdown.“I told my husband today, I said ‘I’m going stir crazy,’” she said. “We are practically quarantined in our units.”She has been spending lots of time in her motor home reading books and watching videos. One featured rousing, emotional music and footage of Mr. Trump and crowds of his supporters, with a voice talking darkly about a looming confrontation. It ended with the Lord’s Prayer and the date Jan. 20, 2021, flashing on the screen. Another, 48 minutes long, was of Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, an inventor, testifying before the Georgia State Senate about election fraud. She and her husband watch Newsmax TV, a right-wing network, in the evenings.When asked about the violence at the riot, Ms. Kasner repeated the common conspiracy theory that antifa had infiltrated the crowd. These days, she is finding herself increasingly confused in a sea of information, much of it false.She had heard on a video she was sent on Facebook that in the Biden administration, children could be taken away from their parents. “I am in a total state of, I don’t know what is happening,” Ms. Kasner said.A supporter of President Trump during the vote count at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia in November.Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times“I simply cannot fathom what my country is becoming,” she said, saying that she had been sitting in her home in tears. For Mr. Scheerer, the fuel truck driver in Colorado, the multiple catastrophes of the past year — the coronavirus, the economic disruption that came with it, the political fear across the country — all fused into a kind of looming threat. The lockdowns infuriated him. He sees mask mandates not as public health but public control. Both, he believed, were signs of a coming tyranny. He left a truck-driving job he liked when, by his account, his boss told him he had to wear a mask or leave.Then came the election. On Jan. 6, he arrived in Washington for the rally to protest the results. Afterward, when pressed on how he felt about the event given the number of white supremacists in the riot, he said that they were only a fraction of the people there. Anyway, he said, their presence was insignificant compared the broader issue of fraud. “It’s way more than just being some kind of a Trump fanatic,” he said. He said he sees himself as “a guy up on the wall of a city seeing the enemy coming, and ringing the alarm bell.”Force he said, is only a last resort.“Are you OK with internment camps if you refuse to wear a mask or take a vaccination?” he asked. “I believe in a world where force has to be used to stop evil or the wrong act.”The inauguration stage in front of the U.S. Capitol Building.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times In western North Carolina, Kevin Haag, a retired landscaper who was at the Capitol last week but did not go inside, said people in his conservative community have grown increasingly alarmed about what has happened in the days since. His electric power company, Duke Energy, has announced it would pause donations for Republicans who voted against certifying the election results. It all feels like a vast piling on against Trump supporters, he said.To top it off, the Senate, the House and the White House now belong to Democrats.“Now it’s pretty scary, people are alarmed, they own it all now,” said Mr. Haag, who was first quoted in a Times story about the December rally in Washington for Mr. Trump. Mr. Haag, who is 67, is also a member of his local town council.In a telephone conversation this week, he said he is part of a group called the Armed Patriots, people from his area whose purpose, he said, is to protect the community. On Tuesday night, the group met, he said, and invited the public for a gun instruction session with two experts who talked about how to use an assault rifle. Sixty people attended, he said, including women.They also held a raffle of a gun to raise money for a website, he said, “because they are taking down our communications.”The meeting, he said, “was to educate and to relieve fear.”Mr. Haag insisted that the group was not a militia.“We are not here to take over the country,” he said. “If that’s what you are here for, we are not your group. We are here to protect our citizens and to stand up for our country.”He said he was still hoping that Mr. Trump would be the one to be inaugurated this week. But even if Mr. Trump did not succeed, the movement, he said, would continue.“It’s not about Trump, he was just championing the cause,” he said. “We don’t have Trump around right now, and we are picking up the ball and running with it ourselves.”Kitty Bennett contributed research.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }N.Y.C. Mayoral RaceA Look at the RaceAndrew Yang’s Candidacy5 TakeawaysWho’s Running?AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRivals Mock Andrew Yang: 5 Takeaways From the Mayor’s RaceAndrew Yang’s visit to a “bodega” drew digs from other contenders, and his entry in the New York City’s race seemed to shake up the contest.Andrew Yang’s entry into the mayoral race last week prompted criticism from his rivals.Credit…James Estrin/The New York TimesEmma G. Fitzsimmons and Jan. 18, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETAndrew Yang made a big splash last week as he entered the mayor’s race, adding a jolt of energy to a campaign season that has been relatively staid and polite until now.Other campaigns pounced on Mr. Yang, questioning his authenticity as a New Yorker and his commitment to the city. While their digs highlighted some of his weaknesses, they also illustrated how the candidates view Mr. Yang as a threat.The campaigns also released their fund-raising figures last week, showing which candidates are in the strongest financial position, while a former Wall Street executive known for a #MeToo complaint entered the lesser-known Republican field.Here are some key developments in the race:The knives are out for YangEven before Mr. Yang entered the race, he had already faced social media ridicule for a remark he made to The New York Times explaining his decision to leave New York City for his weekend home in the Hudson Valley early in the pandemic.That was before the bodega incident.A day after Mr. Yang held an in-person campaign launch in Morningside Heights, he posted a video on Twitter about his love for bodegas — a safe stance that few would challenge. But Mr. Yang recorded the video in a spacious, glistening store that few New Yorkers would consider a bodega.The video brought Mr. Yang more ridicule — and 3.7 million views by Sunday afternoon.Rival campaigns took other swipes at him. After Mr. Yang finished a walking tour of the Brownsville neighborhood in Brooklyn, the campaign of Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, said: “Eric doesn’t need a tour of Brownsville. He was born there.”The campaign manager for Maya Wiley, a former counsel for Mayor Bill de Blasio, knocked Mr. Yang’s swerve from the presidential campaign trail to the New York mayor’s race: “Maya is running — not as a backup plan — but because she’s dedicated her entire life to improving, empowering and lifting up New Yorkers.”Mr. Stringer’s campaign spokesman, Tyrone Stevens, also took a dig: “We welcome Andrew Yang to the mayor’s race — and to New York City.”Could Yang’s entry be divinely inspired?The choice of music to accompany a candidate’s official launch or acceptance speech is usually a calculated decision. “Don’t Stop” by Fleetwood Mac was Bill Clinton’s campaign theme song in 1992; Lorde’s “Royals” prefaced Mr. de Blasio’s victory speech in 2013.Mr. Yang arrived at his launch event in Morningside Park in Manhattan dancing to the song “God’s Plan” by Drake, which features the lyrics: “They wishin’ on me/Bad things.”Indeed, Mr. Yang faced a barrage of questions from journalists over why he left the city during the pandemic and why he had not voted in local elections. One key question is whether Mr. Yang views the job as a steppingstone to run for national office again — like Mr. de Blasio who received criticism for his lackluster bid for president in 2019 and several trips to Iowa.Asked by The New York Times if he would commit to not running for president while serving as mayor, Mr. Yang declined to do so. But he said being mayor of New York would be the job of a lifetime.Mr. Yang’s family attended the announcement of his candidacy. He has acknowledged spending much of the pandemic out of New York.Credit…James Estrin/The New York Times“New Yorkers have nothing to worry about,” he said.Mr. Yang made a suggestion: The city should take control of the subway away from the state. There’s only one obstacle: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who has seized near total control of the transit agency and is not known for ceding power.“Who knows? Maybe he’ll be happy to have the city take it off his hands,” Mr. Yang told reporters gathered on a subway platform, who laughed incredulously at the thought.He spent his first day on the campaign trail crossing four of the city’s five boroughs (sorry, Staten Island). On NY1’s “Inside City Hall” that evening, Mr. Yang disappointed some by saying the city might not be able to close the jail at Rikers Island by the year 2027.“Rikers Island should be closed, but we need to be flexible on the timeline,” he said.A rising star’s endorsement stirs resentmentMr. Yang touted a key endorsement as he hit the trail: Representative Ritchie Torres of the Bronx, a rising star in the Democratic Party who helped to counter criticism that Mr. Yang was out of touch with the city.Mr. Torres and Mondaire Jones are the first openly gay Black men to serve in Congress, and Mr. Torres was being courted by several campaigns. He had met or had conversations with Ms. Wiley, Mr. Adams, Mr. Stringer, Raymond J. McGuire and Shaun Donovan, a former housing secretary under President Barack Obama.Mr. Torres said he gave the losing campaigns a heads-up about his decision even while he was engrossed with the vote to impeach President Trump.“No mayoral candidate endorsed me in my race,” Mr. Torres said. “I did not owe anyone anything.”Mr. Torres said Mr. Yang’s endorsement of a universal basic income would be a victory for the South Bronx district he represents, one of the poorest in the nation. He said that he also likes the fact that Mr. Yang is not a part of the city’s political establishment.The endorsement allows Mr. Torres to align himself with a fellow moderate progressive. If Mr. Yang wins, it would boost Mr. Torres’s standing while giving him a powerful ally in City Hall.Asked about the response to his decision, Mr. Torres said: “Eric Adams was gracious, most were disappointed and one campaign in particular was hostile.”Mr, Yang and Congressman Richie Torres, who has endorsed him, rode the subway to a campaign stop. Credit…James Estrin/The New York TimesSeveral people who were familiar with the discussions said that the McGuire campaign was the one that responded with hostility. Mr. Torres met with Mr. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive, at an event in the Hamptons over the summer, and his campaign believed it had the inside track.Mr. McGuire’s campaign denied being upset about the snub.“Ray is not a politician and doesn’t hold grudges,” his spokeswoman, Lupé Todd-Medina, said. “He looks forward to working with the congressman when he is mayor.”Kathryn Garcia has fans but is short on fundsMany officials who have worked in and around city government think highly of Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, who is running as a proven manager capable of leading the city’s recovery from the pandemic. But she is falling behind in the money race.Ms. Garcia has raised about $300,000 and failed to qualify for public matching funds.Still, the recent filings revealed that Ms. Garcia received campaign donations from a number of high-powered New Yorkers, including Joseph J. Lhota, the former head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority who ran as Republican against Mr. de Blasio in 2013; Polly Trottenberg, the city’s former transportation commissioner; and Kathryn Wylde, the leader of a prominent business group. Ms. Wylde also donated to Mr. McGuire, who is a favorite among Wall Street donors.Monika Hansen, Ms. Garcia’s campaign manager, said that many city employees back her bid.“Kathryn has the support of the doers in New York City government at every rank,” she said.A lesser-known candidate, Zachary Iscol, a nonprofit leader and former Marine, has raised nearly $750,000 and said he expects to qualify for matching funds soon.Another candidate who worked in Mr. de Blasio’s administration is struggling: Loree Sutton, a former veteran affairs commissioner who has $398 on hand and $6,000 in outstanding liabilities. She said her campaign has experienced some bumps but that she is reorganizing and “is in this race and in it to win it.”A former Wall Street executive joins as a RepublicanThe Democratic primary in June is expected to decide the mayor’s race, with registered Democrats far outnumbering Republicans in New York City. But there is also a Republican primary in June, and a new candidate entered the race last week: Sara Tirschwell, a former Wall Street executive who once filed a #MeToo complaint against her boss.In an interview, Ms. Tirschwell touted her experience as a single mother and a moderate Republican with liberal social views. She highlighted her “managerial competence” as a rare woman who rose to high positions at financial firms.“I think there is a need for a moderate in this race, and it’s not clear that a moderate is going to survive a Democratic primary in New York City,” she said.Ms. Tirschwell, who grew up in Texas, echoed the complaints of many Republicans — and some Democrats — that “Bill de Blasio is probably the worst mayor in our lifetime.” But she did not want to discuss the recent violence in Washington or Mr. Trump’s impeachment.“This race is about New York, and it’s about New Yorkers and the crisis that this city faces, and that is what my campaign is focused on,” she said.Other names that have been floated in the Republican primary: John Catsimatidis, the billionaire owner of the Gristedes grocery store chain; Fernando Mateo, an advocate for livery cabdrivers who was linked to a scandal over Mr. de Blasio’s fund-raising; and Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyIn Minnesota, a G.O.P. Lawmaker’s Death Brings Home the Reality of CovidMinnesota Republicans celebrated election victories with a gala party. A state senator’s death from Covid-19 underlined the consequences of the G.O.P.’s rejection of health experts’ guidance.Dana Relph’s father, State Senator Jerry Relph of Minnesota, died from Covid-19 after attending a celebratory dinner with other Republicans following Election Day. Credit…Caroline Yang for The New York TimesJan. 18, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETRepublicans in the Minnesota State Senate were feeling jubilant after the November election. They had held onto a slim majority following an onslaught by Democrats trying to win control. Now, it was time to party.More than 100 senators, their spouses and their staff members gathered for a celebratory dinner at a catering hall outside the Twin Cities on Nov. 5, two days after Election Day. Masks were offered to guests on arrival, but there was little mask wearing over hours of dining and drinking, at a moment when a long-predicted surge in coronavirus infections was gripping the state.At least four senators in attendance tested positive for Covid-19 in the days that followed. One was the Republican majority leader, Paul Gazelka, the state’s most outspoken opponent of mask mandates and shutdown orders during the pandemic. He compared his symptoms to a “moderate flu” and recovered. So did two other senators who had tested positive after the dinner.“Our future cannot be prolonged isolation, face coverings and limited activities,” Mr. Gazelka said defiantly in announcing his positive test.The fourth was Senator Jerry Relph, a Vietnam veteran and grandfather from St. Cloud, Minn. Struggling to breathe after testing positive for the coronavirus, he was admitted to a hospital in mid-November. He died on Dec. 18, at age 76.His daughter Dana Relph, who watched her father fight the disease as well as the cruel isolation it forces on patients and families, is still furious at Republican leaders for holding the dinner and the refusal of Mr. Gazelka to take responsibility.Mr. Relph died on Dec. 18 after being admitted to a hospital in mid-November.Credit…Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune, via Associated Press“Why are you throwing a party with 100-plus people in the middle of a pandemic?” said Ms. Relph, 44, who was not allowed to visit her father until the day he died. “Why would you choose to do that when we know people are going to be eating and drinking and taking their masks off, where their inhibitions will be lowered? Why would you even consider that responsible behavior?”Mr. Gazelka declined an interview request, and a spokeswoman said he would not respond to Ms. Relph “out of respect for privacy requested from the family.”Ten months into the coronavirus crisis, the ongoing Republican resistance to mask wearing and social distancing is a striking political phenomenon: G.O.P. officials have abetted the spread of the virus to friends and colleagues, even fatally so, because they don’t take the science seriously.Four Democratic members of Congress tested positive this month after being in lockdown at the Capitol on Jan. 6 with Republicans who refused to wear masks. Luke Letlow, just elected to Congress as a freshman Republican from Louisiana, died of Covid-19 in December, days before he was to be sworn in. According to the election data site Ballotpedia, six state lawmakers have died from Covid-19, including the speaker of the New Hampshire State House and a Virginia state senator who succumbed on New Year’s Day. All six were Republicans.G.O.P. officials and voters have amplified President Trump’s misinformation about risk factors. After two packed campaign rallies in Minnesota for the president over the summer, defying state orders and federal guidelines, coronavirus cases spiked in the surrounding counties.And while Republicans insist that their freedom was at issue in refusing to wear masks or enforce mandates, such events and the death of Mr. Relph raise urgent questions as to where individual “freedom” ends and where responsibility to others begins in a pandemic during which breathing shared air can be fatal.“It’s ironic that Senator Gazelka, as majority leader, was always the person most outspoken in opposing the governor’s emergency order and would state to us over and over again that Minnesotans would do the responsible thing,” said Richard Cohen, a Democrat who retired from the Legislature last month. “And now it is alleged that because of a caucus event, where apparently many people were not wearing masks, a caucus member became ill and then passed away.”An owner of the catering hall, John Schiltz, said that his servers had worn masks and gloves throughout that evening, and that none had later tested positive. Although masks were offered to guests, state guidelines at the time allowed them to be removed at tables.Mr. Schiltz said the dinner was the only event any group had booked at his venue in November before he had to close on Nov. 20. As of that date, Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, restricted bars and restaurants to takeout and delivery service only amid a surge in virus cases, hospitalizations and deaths.Paul Gazelka, the leader of the Republican majority in the Minnesota State Senate, spoke outside the State Capitol in October.Credit…Leila Navidi/Star Tribune, via Associated PressPressed about the dinner in a radio interview in late November, Mr. Gazelka, 61, who is reported to be considering a run for governor, said he had no regrets.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Covid-19 VaccinesVaccine QuestionsWhich States are Increasing AccessRollout by StateHow 9 Vaccines WorkAdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyThe conversationTrump Isn’t Out the Door YetBut after a few terrible weeks, there are reasons for Americans to be cautiously optimistic.Gail Collins and Ms. Collins and Mr. Stephens are opinion columnists. They converse every week.Jan. 18, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Damon Winter/The New York TimesBret Stephens: Gail, given what’s happened in the past two weeks, Martin Luther King Jr. Day feels particularly meaningful this year. It seems as if the country is just holding its breath, waiting for the next Capitol Hill mob to descend, somewhere, somehow, on something or someone.Is this 1968 all over again, or do you feel any sense of optimism?Gail: Well Bret, I was actually around in 1968 — politically speaking.Bret: Ah, but do you actually remember it?Gail: There were certainly a lot of … distractions, what with a cultural revolution around every corner. And a terrible string of assassinations — after King, I can remember when Robert Kennedy was killed in June, feeling like nobody was safe from crazy people and right-wing racists.Bret: Now it’s like déjà vu all over again. Donald Trump spent five years stoking the paranoia and loathing of his crowds, and now it has been unleashed. We’ll be living with it for years.Gail: But here’s the other thing. I remember in the 1970s, when I had a news service in Connecticut, listening to the state Legislature arguing vehemently about whether King deserved a holiday. It was controversial, even in the Northeast.Now, we’re a different nation. On the dark side we have crazy people publicizing bring-your-own AR-15 rifle rallies. We have appalling racists conspiring with each other on the internet. But on the other hand, we live in a multiracial society that agrees, at least in theory, that everybody is equal. Even though, I know, the acting out part can be terrible.Bret: Very true. The other day I was reading a dazzling essay in Tablet Magazine by its editor, Alana Newhouse, called “Everything Is Broken.” Alana is a brilliant thinker, but one of my own thoughts after reading her piece was: “Everything? Really?”We’re so fixated on what is wrong today that we forget how much was far more wrong 50 years ago. We have serious racial problems today. They were a whole lot worse when King was murdered. We have this terrible pandemic. Unlike in 1968, we also have the medical know-how to develop a vaccine in less than a year. We breathe cleaner air than we did 50 years ago, fly safer planes, drive better cars and watch better TV (though literature has gotten considerably worse). Women have choices, opportunities and role models today that were only being dreamed about 50 years ago. We have a polarized and angry electorate, but probably not as polarized as it was when George Wallace won 46 electoral votes, the Vietnam War was raging and the draft was still in effect. In 1968 Richard Nixon was on his way into the White House. In 2021 Donald Trump is on his way out.Gail: Yeah, and in 1968, as far as the world knew, the only gay celebrity in America was Sal Mineo.Bret: That, too. It’s not like we don’t have terrible problems. But I take a lot of comfort in a few things. Donald Trump lost the popular vote by seven million votes. The Capitol Hill barbarians are being tracked down and arrested. Mike Pence didn’t pull a Tammy Wynette and stand by his man. And Joe Biden, centered and sane, is about to become president.In other words, I’m not throwing in the towel on America. We are more resilient than we’ve probably seemed to the outside world in recent years..css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-1sjr751{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1sjr751 a:hover{border-bottom:1px solid #dcdcdc;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-k59gj9{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;width:100%;}.css-1e2usoh{font-family:inherit;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;border-top:1px solid #ccc;padding:10px 0px 10px 0px;background-color:#fff;}.css-1jz6h6z{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;text-align:left;}.css-1t412wb{box-sizing:border-box;margin:8px 15px 0px 15px;cursor:pointer;}.css-hhzar2{-webkit-transition:-webkit-transform ease 0.5s;-webkit-transition:transform ease 0.5s;transition:transform ease 0.5s;}.css-t54hv4{-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-1r2j9qz{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-e1ipqs{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;padding:0px 30px 0px 0px;}.css-e1ipqs a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.css-e1ipqs a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1o76pdf{visibility:show;height:100%;padding-bottom:20px;}.css-1sw9s96{visibility:hidden;height:0px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1prex18{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;font-family:’nyt-franklin’,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;text-align:left;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1prex18{padding:20px;}}.css-1prex18:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}Covid-19 Vaccines ›Answers to Your Vaccine QuestionsWhile the exact order of vaccine recipients may vary by state, most will likely put medical workers and residents of long-term care facilities first. If you want to understand how this decision is getting made, this article will help.Life will return to normal only when society as a whole gains enough protection against the coronavirus. Once countries authorize a vaccine, they’ll only be able to vaccinate a few percent of their citizens at most in the first couple months. The unvaccinated majority will still remain vulnerable to getting infected. A growing number of coronavirus vaccines are showing robust protection against becoming sick. But it’s also possible for people to spread the virus without even knowing they’re infected because they experience only mild symptoms or none at all. Scientists don’t yet know if the vaccines also block the transmission of the coronavirus. So for the time being, even vaccinated people will need to wear masks, avoid indoor crowds, and so on. Once enough people get vaccinated, it will become very difficult for the coronavirus to find vulnerable people to infect. Depending on how quickly we as a society achieve that goal, life might start approaching something like normal by the fall 2021.Yes, but not forever. The two vaccines that will potentially get authorized this month clearly protect people from getting sick with Covid-19. But the clinical trials that delivered these results were not designed to determine whether vaccinated people could still spread the coronavirus without developing symptoms. That remains a possibility. We know that people who are naturally infected by the coronavirus can spread it while they’re not experiencing any cough or other symptoms. Researchers will be intensely studying this question as the vaccines roll out. In the meantime, even vaccinated people will need to think of themselves as possible spreaders.The Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine is delivered as a shot in the arm, like other typical vaccines. The injection won’t be any different from ones you’ve gotten before. Tens of thousands of people have already received the vaccines, and none of them have reported any serious health problems. But some of them have felt short-lived discomfort, including aches and flu-like symptoms that typically last a day. It’s possible that people may need to plan to take a day off work or school after the second shot. While these experiences aren’t pleasant, they are a good sign: they are the result of your own immune system encountering the vaccine and mounting a potent response that will provide long-lasting immunity.No. The vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer use a genetic molecule to prime the immune system. That molecule, known as mRNA, is eventually destroyed by the body. The mRNA is packaged in an oily bubble that can fuse to a cell, allowing the molecule to slip in. The cell uses the mRNA to make proteins from the coronavirus, which can stimulate the immune system. At any moment, each of our cells may contain hundreds of thousands of mRNA molecules, which they produce in order to make proteins of their own. Once those proteins are made, our cells then shred the mRNA with special enzymes. The mRNA molecules our cells make can only survive a matter of minutes. The mRNA in vaccines is engineered to withstand the cell’s enzymes a bit longer, so that the cells can make extra virus proteins and prompt a stronger immune response. But the mRNA can only last for a few days at most before they are destroyed.Gail: Once again we are on the same page, which makes me feel compelled to turn it and ask, How do you feel about Joe Biden’s agenda?Bret: A mixed bag. The best part is the promise to speed delivery of the vaccine, above all to the elderly. Ideally, by March, anyone who was born before, say, 1956, should be able to get a shot at their nearest pharmacy or stadium parking lot. And of course we need to continue helping small businesses, self-employed people, nonprofits, schools and so on to get through the next few months.Gail: So far we are in accord …Bret: Then again, to adapt Everett Dirksen’s old line: a trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon we’re talking real money. The government has already spent about $4 trillion on pandemic relief. Now Biden wants to spend another $1.9 trillion. I’m no deficit hawk, but there has to be some limit to how much a government can print, borrow and spend without creating serious problems for itself and posterity. I also have my doubts about some of Biden’s other ideas, like raising the minimum wage to $15, since a lot of the hardest hit businesses — restaurants in particular — will struggle with the extra labor costs.My biggest fear is that this becomes a new normal and government spending as a percentage of G.D.P. rises to French-style levels, with French-style economic results, but without French-style joie de vivre.I’m guessing you’re much more of a fan than I am.Gail: Well, yeah. We’re in a multiple crisis here. The country is in the throes of a pandemic, and Washington can’t expect everyone to go out and get a job or start a business when everyone is supposed to stay home as much as possible.Bret: Don’t get me wrong: I’m quibbling more than I’m quarreling. The pandemic put whole sectors of the economy on the edge of bankruptcy, and I’m all for heavy spending in an emergency. But the money should be well spent, unlike in 2009 when all those “shovel ready” projects we were promised never seemed to materialize. And we should be spending money on the people who need it most, not sending $1,400 more to most Americans.Gail: I agree about the upper-income folks. If you want to see the money plowed directly into the economy — not shoveled into savings accounts — the lower the income of the recipients the better. The Biden plan looks like it’ll be sending income-boosters for even many upper-middle-class families. I suspect I’ll support whatever he comes up with, but lower-income households not only need more money, they spend it faster, rather than stashing it away in banks in a way that won’t do anything much to boost the economy.Bret: Dear God we agree again.Gail: And about the “shovel ready” projects: Getting infrastructure projects going was one of Biden’s jobs in the Obama White House. Can’t say he was always perfectly successful, but he’s definitely a guy with practical experience.Bret: In the meantime, Gail, I bet you’d never find yourself cheering Liz Cheney. Her vote for impeachment read like the opening salvo in the Republican Conscience Recovery Act of 2021.Gail: Yes, but 147 of her fellow Republicans voted to overturn the results of the election. The party has a long way to go before it’s returned to the world of sanity.Bret: I know. The words for those Republicans are “nauseating,” “revolting” and “emetic.”Gail: First thing on the agenda: Republican leaders have to bring the party into a true reality-based, post-Trump world. Who do you think can do it?Bret: Probably someone who isn’t now in political life. With all of my newfound admiration for Mitt Romney and Arnold Schwarzenegger, they aren’t the ones. Should we ask our colleague Ross Douthat to volunteer?The larger question in my mind is whether the G.O.P. is the village that must be destroyed in order to be saved, or, alternatively, is it like a group of previously reasonable people who got taken in by a cult and now must go through some kind of deprogramming so that they can lead normal lives again? My hope is that once Republicans realize that Trump was both a moral and political disaster for them, they might recover their senses.I’d put the chance of that at around one in three.Gail: Totally agree. If the Republicans would only come around to your way of thinking on this, the nation would be a happier place.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

The Fox News newsroom in New York.Credit…Ryan Jenq for The New York TimesMEDIA EQUATIONFox Settled a Lawsuit Over Its Lies. But It Insisted on One Unusual Condition.Why did the network insist an agreement with the family of a murdered young man remain undisclosed until after the election?The Fox News newsroom in New York.Credit…Ryan Jenq for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyJan. 17, 2021Updated 9:19 p.m. ETOn Oct. 12, 2020, Fox News agreed to pay millions of dollars to the family of a murdered Democratic National Committee staff member, implicitly acknowledging what saner minds knew long ago: that the network had repeatedly hyped a false claim that the young staff member, Seth Rich, was involved in leaking D.N.C. emails during the 2016 presidential campaign. (Russian intelligence officers, in fact, had hacked and leaked the emails.)Fox’s decision to settle with the Rich family came just before its marquee hosts, Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity, were set to be questioned under oath in the case, a potentially embarrassing moment. And Fox paid so much that the network didn’t have to apologize for the May 2017 story on FoxNews.com.But there was one curious provision that Fox insisted on: The settlement had to be kept secret for a month — until after the Nov. 3 election. The exhausted plaintiffs agreed.Why did Fox care about keeping the Rich settlement secret for the final month of the Trump re-election campaign? Why was it important to the company, which calls itself a news organization, that one of the biggest lies of the Trump era remain unresolved for that period? Was Fox afraid that admitting it was wrong would incite the president’s wrath? Did network executives fear backlash from their increasingly radicalized audience, which has been gravitating to other conservative outlets?Fox News and its lawyer, Joe Terry, declined to answer that question when I asked last week. And two people close to the case, who shared details of the settlement with me, were puzzled by that provision, too.The unusual arrangement underscores how deeply entwined Fox has become in the Trump camp’s disinformation efforts and the dangerous paranoia they set off, culminating in the fatal attack on the Capitol 11 days ago. The network parroted lies from Trump and his more sinister allies for years, ultimately amplifying the president’s enormous deceptions about the election’s outcome, further radicalizing many of Mr. Trump’s supporters.The man arrested after rampaging through the Capitol with zip-tie handcuffs had proudly posted to Facebook a photograph with his shotgun and Fox Business on a giant screen in the background. The woman fatally shot as she pushed her way inside the House chamber had engaged Fox contributors dozens of times on Twitter, NPR reported.High profile Fox voices, with occasional exceptions, not only fed the baseless belief that the election had been stolen, but they helped frame Jan. 6 as a decisive day of reckoning, when their audience’s dreams of overturning the election could be realized. And the network’s role in fueling pro-Trump extremism is nothing new: Fox has long been the favorite channel of pro-Trump militants. The man who mailed pipe bombs to CNN in 2018 watched Fox News “religiously,” according to his lawyers’ sentencing memorandum, and believed Mr. Hannity’s claim that Democrats were “encouraging mob violence” against people like him.Eric G. Munchel, left, was arrested last Sunday by the F.B.I in connection with the storming of the Capitol.Credit…Win Mcnamee/Getty ImagesAnd yet, as we in the media reckon with our role in the present catastrophe, Fox often gets left out of the story. You can see why. Dog bites man is never news. Fox’s vitriol and distortions are simply viewed as part of the landscape now. The cable channel has been a Republican propaganda outlet for decades, and under President Trump’s thumb for years. So while the mainstream media loves to beat itself up — it’s a way, sometimes, of inflating our own importance — we have mostly sought less obvious angles in this winter’s self-examination. The Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan concluded last week that the mainstream press is “flawed and stuck for too long in outdated conventions,” but “has managed to do its job.” MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan said the media had “failed” by normalizing Trump.I took my turn last week, writing about how a man I worked with at BuzzFeed played a role in the insurrection. One thoughtful reader, a former engineer at Corning, wrote to me to say she’d been reckoning with a similar sense of complicity. The engineer was on the team that developed the thin, bright glass that made possible the ubiquitous flat screen televisions that rewired politics and our minds. She’s now asking herself whether “this glass made it happen.”When I shared the engineer’s email with some others at the Times, one, Virginia Hughes, a Science editor and longtime colleague, responded: “Everyone wants to blame themselves except the people who actually deserve blame.”And so let me take a break from beating up well-intentioned journalists and even the social media platforms that greedily threw open Pandora’s box for profit.There’s only one multibillion-dollar media corporation that deliberately and aggressively propagated these untruths. That’s the Fox Corporation, and its chairman, Rupert Murdoch; his feckless son Lachlan, who is nominally C.E.O.; and the chief legal officer Viet Dinh, a kind of regent who mostly runs the company day-to-day.Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch at the Allen & Company media and technology conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, in 2018.Credit…David Paul Morris/BloombergThese are the people ultimately responsible for helping to ensure that one particular and pernicious lie about a 27-year-old man’s death circulated for years. The elder Mr. Murdoch has long led Fox, to the extent anyone actually leads it, through a kind of malign negligence, and letting that lie persist seems just his final, lavish gift to Mr. Trump.The company paid handsomely for it, according to Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News, who first reported on the settlement and has covered the case extensively.The Murdoch organization didn’t originate the lie, but it embraced it, and it served an obvious political purpose: deflecting suspicions of Russian involvement in helping the Trump campaign. That’s why the story was so appealing to Fox hosts like Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs, who kept hyping it for days after it collapsed under the faintest scrutiny. There has never been a shred of credible evidence that Seth Rich had contact with WikiLeaks, and a series of bipartisan investigations found that the D.N.C. had been breached by Russian hackers.The story of Fox’s impact on the fracturing of American society and the notion of truth is too big to capture in a single column. But the story of its impact on one family is singular and devastating. Seth Rich’s brother, Aaron, reflected on it Friday from his home in Denver, where he’s a software engineer. Seth was his little brother, seven years younger and two inches shorter, but more at ease with people, more popular, better at soccer in high school.Mary Rich, the mother of Seth Rich, at a news conference on Aug. 1, 2016, several weeks after he was murdered in Washington, D.C.Credit…Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post, via Getty ImagesSeth Rich was murdered in the early morning of Sunday, July 10, 2016, on a sidewalk in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Aaron was still wrestling with the shock, reeling from the worst week of his life, when a friend told him that something was happening on Reddit. A news story had mentioned that Seth was a staff member at the Democratic National Committee. While some of the top comments were simply condolences, the lower part of the page was full of unfounded speculation that the young D.N.C. employee — not the Russians — had been WikiLeaks’ source of the hacked emails. Julian Assange of WikiLeaks encouraged the speculation, but it remained low-level chatter about confusing theories for about 10 months. That’s when Fox claimed that an anonymous federal investigator had linked Seth Rich to the leak.The story took off. It was like “throwing gasoline on a small fire,” Mr. Rich’s brother recalled in a telephone interview from his home in Denver. “Fox blew it out of everyone’s little echo chamber and put it into the mainstream.”The story collapsed immediately, and in spectacular fashion. The former Washington, D.C., police detective whom Fox used as its on-the-record source, Rod Wheeler, repudiated his own quotes claiming ties between Mr. Rich and WikiLeaks and a cover-up, and said in a deposition this fall that the Fox News article had been “prewritten before I even got involved.”“It fell apart within the general public within 24 hours,’’ Aaron Rich recalled, yet “Hannity pushed it for another week.” Finally, Aaron Rich said, he sent Mr. Hannity and his producer an email, and the barrage stopped, but he said he never received an apology from the Fox host.“He never got back to me to say, sorry for ruining your family’s life and pushing something there’s no basis to,” he said. “Apparently, ‘sorry’ is a hard five-letter word for him.”A Fox News spokeswoman, Irena Briganti, declined to comment on Mr. Rich’s request for an apology.Fox also pulled the story down a week after it was published, with an opaque statement that “the article was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting.”The damage had been done. The story is still in wide circulation on the right, to the point where Mr. Rich was reluctant to share a photograph of himself and his brother for this story with The New York Times. Every time he has done that, he said, the photo — of the brothers at Aaron’s wedding, for instance — has been reused and tainted by conspiracy theorists.Seth and Aaron Rich at Aaron’s wedding on Oct. 25, 2015.Credit…Aaron RichAaron Rich, who with his brother grew up in Nebraska, said he hadn’t thought much about who beyond Fox’s talent was responsible for the lies about his brother. When I asked him about Rupert Murdoch, he wasn’t sure who he was — “I’m really bad at trivia things.” That’s the genius of the Murdochs’ management of the place: They collect the cash while evading responsibility and letting their hosts work primarily for Mr. Trump.Mr. Rich isn’t party to the settlement with his parents, and he declined to discuss its details. His parents said in a court filing that the barrage of conspiracy theories had damaged their mental health and cost his mother, Mary, her ability to work and to socialize.But he said he simply doesn’t understand why Fox couldn’t simply apologize for its damaging lie — not in May of 2017, not when it reached the settlement in October, and not when it finally made the settlement public after the election and wished his family “some measure of peace.”It reminds me of a well-known political figure now leaving the stage, one who has been strikingly allergic to apologizing, expressing any empathy or engaging in any soul searching about his role in mobilizing the ugliest of American impulses.“I was glad they stopped doing it,” Seth Rich’s brother said, a bit hopelessly. “But they never admitted they lit the fire.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Youthful Movement That Made Martin Luther King Jr.In this moment made so dark by white nationalism and truth denial, Americans should look to the country’s legacy of young leaders with forward-thinking wisdom.Mr. Benjamin is the author of “Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America.”Jan. 17, 2021, 7:00 p.m. ETMartin Luther King Jr. at home in Montgomery, Ala., in May 1956.Credit…Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesThere’s an image of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that’s seared into my mind. Eyes inviting and innocent, face relaxed, the casually dressed Dr. King reminds me of a cousin at a card party — he looks so young. When Dr. King elucidated his dream at the March on Washington in 1963, he was 34 — younger than most Americans now, given the national median age of 38.Despite his youth, or perhaps because of it, Dr. King understood the long view of history. He could not have foreseen a crowd brandishing guns and ransacking the Capitol, abetted by a failed president and right-wing digital media networks peddling debunked conspiracy theories. But he might have foreseen the Senate election victories of two youthful Southerners, Jon Ossoff, 33, and Raphael Warnock, 51, the latter a charismatic preacher and a successor to his pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church.Dr. King was a mobilizer of voters as much as he was an orator. To put voting rights at the forefront of the country’s consciousness, Dr. King helped launch a voter-registration drive in Selma, Ala., in early 1965. In many marches, over many weeks, Dr. King accompanied hundreds of Selma’s Black residents to the county courthouse. During one voter registration trip, he and 250 demonstrators were hauled to jail by the segregationist sheriff. That very day, county officers arrested some 500 schoolchildren who were protesting discrimination.When a 26-year-old Black civil rights activist, Jimmie Lee Jackson, was fatally shot during a march in nearby Marion, Ala., Dr. King, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee organized a voting-rights march from Selma to the state Capitol in Montgomery. The hundreds of demonstrators, including Hosea Williams, 39, and John Lewis, 25, chairman of the S.N.C.C., were stopped as they left Selma, at the end of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Alabama state troopers and local vigilantes attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas. Alongside others badly injured, Mr. Lewis (a future U.S. congressman) suffered a fractured skull during “Bloody Sunday.”The march resumed days later with federal protection. It stood on the shoulders of longstanding action: As far back as the 1930s, Ella Baker, in her 20s and 30s, worked as a community organizer in New York. By the mid-1940s, she was traveling across the South, recruiting new members to anti-racist groups and registering voters.Personally and through their work, Ms. Baker, Mr. Williams, Mr. Lewis and Dr. King faced down legally sanctioned oppression. They confronted horrors that we do not feel as regularly in our bones. They lived through them. How is it that they remained patriots?In this moment made so dark by white nationalism and truth denial, Americans should look to these examples of young leaders with forward-thinking wisdom to carry us through, to show how our civil rights ancestors got things done. This country can survey their organizing tactics to see step-by-step how Dr. King and his allies accomplished so much. Commemoration involves studying their careers as a strategy and amending their efforts to provide a road map to achieving political power.At this tender juncture in our country’s trajectory, countless young grass-roots leaders and local organizations are reshaping human equality and power. Setting a national example, the New Georgia Project, Black Voters Matter and Georgia STAND-UP were part of an effort that registered roughly 520,000 overlooked, new voters after 2016. The New Georgia Project alone knocked on at least two million doors, made over six million phone calls and sent four million texts to get out the vote during the general election and the runoff, according to the organization.To Americans who voted for the first time this cycle, or to anyone else born after 2002, Bloody Sunday can seem like ancient history — as distant and abstract as the Teapot Dome scandal. I’ve spoken to young people who don’t know what a sit-in or redlining is. But to others who cast a ballot for Mr. Warnock or Mr. Ossoff, a direct protégé of John Lewis, watching Confederates storm a federal building after a failed right-wing attempt to invalidate votes in heavily Black Democratic strongholds, Bloody Sunday does not look like distant history at all.Georgia’s electoral upsets and the resistance to Trumpism belong to a larger narrative and pantheon of liberation campaigns. These movements do not peddle in transactional politics; they forge transformative politics. They don’t dwell in the greasy realm of back-scratching and short-term calculation. They work deeply in vision, courage and action, persevering and believing in themselves when no one else does.“You see, I think that, to be very honest, the movement made Martin rather than Martin making the movement,” Ella Baker once reflected to an interviewer. “This is not a discredit to him. This is, to me, as it should be.”As we commemorate Dr. King, we need to toss the “great man” concept of leadership, our knee-jerk longing to worship epic individuals and not citizen action. Contrary to the mythology of most King celebrations, Dr. King’s true contribution wasn’t as a single messiah of civil rights, but as a formidable organizer of people and causes. To peddle the great Moses version of Dr. King’s legacy is to betray the greatness of his extraordinary deeds, whose lessons and necessity are more urgent than ever.Rich Benjamin (@IAmRichBenjamin) is writing a book that will be a family memoir and portrait of America. He is the author of “Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America.”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

Joe Biden will deliver a message of national unity when he assumes the presidency on Wednesday, seeking to begin healing a country fractured by the acrimony of Donald Trump’s administration and ongoing threats of violence by his supporters.The preview of the theme of Biden’s inauguration address came as cities across the US braced for violent protests and Washington DC resembled a fortress with up to 25,000 national guard troops deployed.“It’s a message of moving this country forward, it’s a message of unity, it’s a message of getting things done,” Ron Klain, the incoming White House chief of staff, told CNN’s State of the Union.“There’s no question we’ve seen the most divisive four years in over a century from President Trump, it’s one reason Joe Biden ran, to restore the soul of America. The events of the past few weeks have proven out just how damaged the soul of America has been, and how important it is to restore it. That work starts on Wednesday.”Biden will act quickly to reverse many of Trump’s most controversial policies, Klain said, beginning with a 10-day flurry of executive orders that will return the US to the Paris climate agreement and Iran nuclear deal, aim to speed the delivery of Covid-19 vaccines and erase the immigration ban on Muslim-majority countries.The promise of new beginnings, however, is set against the backdrop of threats of domestic terrorism this weekend and around the inauguration. Throughout the day on Sunday, small groups of rightwing protesters gathered outside statehouses across the country, outnumbered by national guard troops and police. By late afternoon Sunday, no incidents were reported. There was an attack on our people. This was the most terrible crime ever by a president against our countryThe Washington DC mayor, Muriel Bowser, told NBC’s Meet the Press she was concerned about several areas of her city following FBI warnings of armed individuals heading there, and to state capitals, bent on repeating the insurrection that left five dead when a mob incited by Trump overran the US Capitol on 6 January.With the massive national guard presence in Washington, and federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies including the Secret Service working with local police, Bowser said she was confident Wednesday’s inauguration would be “a safe event”.But, she said, “this will be an inauguration unlike any other. It was already destined to be given Covid concerns and limited seating and public access. But having our fellow Americans storm the Capitol, in an attempt to overthrow the government, certainly warrants heightened security.”Adam Schiff, the Democratic chair of the House intelligence committee, likened the scene in Washington to Baghdad’s Green Zone, “with so much military presence and barricades”.“I never thought I would see that in our own capital or that it would be necessary, but there was a profound threat from domestic violent extremists of the nature we saw on 6 January,” he said told CBS’s Face the Nation.“There are people coming to the Washington DC area that are bringing weapons, and we see threats to all 50 state capitals. There will be gatherings of individuals and those gatherings could turn violent, so there’s a very high level of risk.”An FBI bulletin warned of the likelihood of violence from armed protesters in Washington and every state capital between 16 and 20 January, Trump’s last day in office. The president, impeached for the second time for inciting the Capitol attack with lies about a stolen election, remained isolated and silent in the White House on Sunday, reportedly assembling a legal team for his Senate trial.Christopher Wray, the FBI director, outlined on Thursday threats by rightwing agitators including QAnon and white supremacist groups such as the Proud Boys.“We are seeing an extensive amount of concerning online chatter,” he said. “One of the real challenges is trying to distinguish what’s aspirational versus what’s intentional.”As a precaution, Capitol buildings were boarded up and extra law enforcement resources deployed in numerous states. On Saturday, Washington police arrested a Virginia man found with a fake inaugural ID, a loaded handgun and ammunition. The man later told the Washington Post the he had been working security in the capital all week and pulled up to the checkpoint after getting lost. He told the paper he forgot the gun was in his truck and denied having so much ammunition. He was released after an initial court appearance and is due back in court in June, records show.“We have intelligence that there’s going to be activity around our capital and capitals across the country,” Asa Hutchinson, the Republican governor of Arkansas, told Fox News Sunday. “We’re taking necessary precautions to protect our capital and our citizens. I know some governors have beefed up even more, but I think the deterrent value hopefully has diminished that threat level.”In Washington, a large area including the White House, the Capitol, the National Mall and several blocks on either side was sealed off by thousands of national guard troops. High steel fences on concrete stands protected government buildings.In the run-up to the inauguration, troops from DC and neighbouring states will garrison the city. By several measures, it is a bigger response than the aftermath of 9/11. Large numbers of soldiers resting in the corridors of the Capitol, have not been seen since the civil war.The protected area was divided into a highly restricted “red zone” and around that a “green zone” accessible to residents, an echo of the Iraq war, and the fortified government and diplomatic area in central Baghdad.By lunchtime on Sunday, the city was quiet, with white supremacist militia leaders telling followers to stay away.In an email to supporters on Thursday, Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, joined other extremists in begging Trump to declare martial law. But he also told supporters they should not gather at state capitols, warning them of “false-flag traps”.Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the neo-fascist Proud Boys, told USA Today his group was not mobilising, saying: “I feel like this part of the battle is over.”A majority of respondents in a USA Today/Suffolk poll published on Sunday said they were still expecting violence.Trump was consumed on Sunday with his Senate trial for “incitement of insurrection”, which could begin as early as Wednesday afternoon.Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman from Maryland and the lead impeachment manager, gave a moving interview to CNN in which he recalled the Capitol riot and remembered his son Tommy, who died on New Year’s Eve at the age of 25.“When we went to count the electoral college votes and [the Capitol] came under that ludicrous attack, I felt my son with me and I was most concerned with our youngest daughter and my son in law, who is married to our other daughter, who were with me that day and who got caught in a room off of the House floor,” he said.“In between them and me was a rampaging armed mob, that could have killed them easily. These events are personal to me. There was an attack on our country, there was an attack on our people.“This was the most terrible crime ever by a president of the United States against our country.”Reuters contributed to this report. More