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AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main story95 Percent of Representatives Have a Degree. Look Where That’s Got Us.All these credentials haven’t led to better results.Opinion columnistDec. 21, 2020Credit…Damon Winter/The New York TimesOver the last few decades, Congress has diversified in important ways. It has gotten less white, less male, less straight — all positive developments. But as I was staring at one of the many recent Senate hearings, filled with the usual magisterial blustering and self-important yada yada, it dawned on me that there’s a way that Congress has moved in a wrong direction, and become quite brazenly unrepresentative.No, it’s not that the place seethes with millionaires, though there’s that problem too.It’s that members of Congress are credentialed out the wazoo. An astonishing number have a small kite of extra initials fluttering after their names.According to the Congressional Research Service, more than one third of the House and more than half the Senate have law degrees. Roughly a fifth of senators and representatives have their master’s. Four senators and 21 House members have MDs, and an identical number in each body (four, twenty-one) have some kind of doctoral degree, whether it’s a Ph.D., a D.Phil., an Ed.D., or a D. Min.But perhaps most fundamentally, 95 percent of today’s House members have a bachelor’s degree, as does every member of the Senate. Yet just a bit more than one-third of Americans do.“This means that the credentialed few govern the uncredentialed many,” writes the political philosopher Michael J. Sandel in “The Tyranny of Merit,” published this fall.There’s an argument to be made that we should want our representatives to be a highly lettered lot. Lots of people have made it, as far back as Plato.The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be any correlation between good governance and educational attainment that Sandel can discern. In the 1960s, he noted, we got the Vietnam War thanks to “the best and the brightest” — it’s been so long since the publication of David Halberstam’s book that people forget the title was morbidly ironic. In the 1990s and 2000s, the highly credentialed gave us (and here Sandel paused for a deep breath) “stagnant wages, financial deregulation, income inequality, the financial crisis of 2008, a bank bailout that did little to help ordinary people, a decaying infrastructure, and the highest incarceration rate in the world.”Five years ago, Nicholas Carnes, a political scientist at Duke, tried to measure whether more formal education made political leaders better at their jobs. After conducting a sweeping review of 228 countries between the years 1875 and 2004, he and a colleague concluded: No. It did not. A college education did not mean less inequality, a greater G.D.P., fewer labor strikes, lower unemployment or less military conflict.Sandel argues that the technocratic elite’s slow annexation of Congress and European parliaments — which resulted in the rather fateful decisions to outsource jobs and deregulate finance — helped enable the populist revolts now rippling through the West. “It distorted our priorities,” Sandel told me, “and made for a political class that’s too tolerant of crony capitalism and much less attentive to fundamental questions of the dignity of work.”Both parties are to blame for this. But it was Democrats, Sandel wrote, who seemed especially bullish on the virtues of the meritocracy, arguing that college would be the road to prosperity for the struggling. And it’s a fine idea, well-intentioned, idealistic at its core. But implicit in it is also a punishing notion: If you don’t succeed, you have only yourself to blame. Which President Trump spotted in a trice.“Unlike Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who spoke constantly of ‘opportunity’” Sandel wrote, “Trump scarcely mentioned the word. Instead, he offered blunt talk of winners and losers.”Trump was equally blunt after winning the Nevada Republican caucuses in 2016. “I love the poorly educated!” he shouted.A pair of studies from 2019 also tell the story, in numbers, of the professionalization of the Democratic Party — or what Sandel calls “the valorization of credentialism.” One, from Politico, shows that House and Senate Democrats are much more likely to have gone to private liberal arts colleges than public universities, whereas the reverse is true of their Republican counterparts; another shows that congressional Democrats are far more likely to hire graduates of Ivy League schools.This class bias made whites without college degrees ripe for Republican recruitment. In both 2016 and 2020, two thirds of them voted for Trump; though the G.O.P. is the minority party in the House, more Republican members than Democrats currently do not have college degrees. All 11 are male. Most of them come from the deindustrialized Midwest and South.Oh, and in the incoming Congress? Six of the seven new members without four-year college degrees are Republicans.Of course, far darker forces help explain the lures of the modern G.O.P. You’d have to be blind and deaf not to detect them. For decades, Republicans have appealed both cynically and in earnest — it’s hard to know which is more appalling — to racial and ethnic resentments, if not hatred. There’s a reason that the Black working class isn’t defecting to the Republican Party in droves. (Of the nine Democrats in the House without college degrees, seven, it’s worth noting, are people of color.)For now, it seems to matter little that Republicans have offered little by way of policy to restore the dignity of work. They’ve tapped into a gusher of resentment, and they seem delighted to channel it, irrespective of where, or if, they got their diplomas. Ted Cruz, quite arguably the Senate’s most insolent snob — he wouldn’t sit in a study group at Harvard Law with anyone who hadn’t graduated from Princeton, Yale or Harvard — was ready to argue on Trump’s behalf to overturn the 2020 election results, should the disgraceful Texas attorney general’s case have reached the Supreme Court.Which raises a provocative question. Given that Trumpism has found purchase among graduates of Harvard Law, would it make any difference if Congress better reflected the United States and had more members without college degrees? Would it meaningfully alter policy at all?It would likely depend on where they came from. I keep thinking of what Rep. Al Green, Democrat of Texas, told me. His father was a mechanic’s assistant in the segregated South. The white men he worked for cruelly called him “The Secretary” because he could neither read nor write. “So if my father had been elected? You’d have a different Congress,” Green said. “But if it’d been the people who he served — the mechanics who gave him a pejorative moniker? We’d probably have the Congress we have now.”It’s hard to say whether more socioeconomic diversity would guarantee differences in policy or efficiency. But it could do something more subtle: Rebuild public trust.“There are people who look at Congress and see the political class as a closed system,” Carnes told me. “My guess is that if Congress looked more like people do as a whole, the cynical view — Oh, they’re all in their ivory tower, they don’t care about us — would get less oxygen.”When I spoke to Representative Troy Balderson, a Republican from Ohio, he agreed, adding that if more members of Congress didn’t have four-year college degrees, it would erode some stigma associated with not having one.“When I talk to high school kids and say, ‘I didn’t finish my degree,’ their faces light up,” he told me. Balderson tried college and loved it, but knew he wasn’t cut out for it. He eventually moved back to his hometown to run his family car dealership. Students tend to find his story emboldening. The mere mention of four-year college sets off panic in many of them; they’ve been stereotyped before they even grow up, out of the game before it even starts. “If you don’t have a college degree,” he explains, “you’re a has-been.” Then they look at him and see larger possibilities. That they can be someone’s voice. “You can become a member of Congress.”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 storyOpiniónSupported byContinue reading the main storyComentarioLa oposición brasileña necesita unirse para acabar con BolsonaroLas elecciones municipales de Brasil fueron una dura derrota para el presidente, pero una oposición dividida podría favorecerlo.El presidente de Brasil, Jair BolsonaroCredit…Ueslei Marcelino/ReutersEs periodista y narrador.21 de diciembre de 2020BARCELONA, España — El gran derrotado en las elecciones municipales de noviembre en Brasil fue el presidente Jair Bolsonaro. La mayoría de sus candidatos perdió y sus resultados en São Paulo y Río de Janeiro fueron humillantes. Aunque conserva parte del apoyo popular —del 35 al 37 por ciento—, su respaldo electoral se redujo al de cuando era solo un diputado gritón y maleducado al que nadie tomaba en serio.Pero su derrota no significó un triunfo de la izquierda, que recuperó poco espacio y solo gobernará una capital, Belém (Pará). Fue la derecha de antes —de cuando ser “de derecha” no incluía ser antivacunas ni defender la tortura— que salió victoriosa, porque reconquistó votos perdidos y atrajo a electores del centro con candidatos moderados, contrarios al extremismo del presidente.Aunque las elecciones municipales tengan su dinámica propia, con factores locales, muestran tendencias que anticipan un cuadro complejo para las presidenciales de 2022. Si bien Bolsonaro sufrió una clara derrota, no hay una oposición fuerte. El voto en su contra está dividido entre una izquierda aún golpeada y fragmentada —pero con capacidad de movilización— y una derecha sin un proyecto claro y aún atada a polarizaciones del pasado. Si ambos grupos votaran a un mismo candidato en dos años, podrían vencer.Hay dos futuros posibles para Brasil: Bolsonaro podrá ser recordado como una breve anomalía histórica que dejó un desastre (más de 186.000 muertos por el coronavirus, la Amazonía amenazada, la democracia moribunda y una sociedad enfrentada por una política de odio), pero que al final fue superada; o bien como el inicio de una transformación sistémica que terminó por erosionar la democracia y la modernidad en Brasil. Para evitar esto último, los demócratas de todo el arco político deben buscar juntos la salida del infierno, como hicieron los chilenos en los noventa frente al dictador Augusto Pinochet.El golpe parlamentario contra Dilma Rousseff, en 2016, y la posterior persecución y encarcelamiento político de Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva son una herida abierta entre izquierda y derecha, pero algún entendimiento será necesario. Sin renunciar a la disputa ideológica, ambos bloques podrían trazar una línea roja contra el fascismo.Para ello, por un lado, la izquierda debería abandonar su guerra de egos, modernizarse y volver a dialogar fuera de su burbuja. Por otro lado, los sectores democráticos de la derecha y la centroderecha deberían alejarse de quienes, en sus filas y en el mal llamado “centrão” (partidos clientelistas cuyo peso en el Congreso les permite negociar cargos y prebendas), prefieren ser socios menores de un presidente autoritario.Hay antecedentes que Brasil podría observar. A finales de los ochenta, la oposición a la dictadura militar en Chile logró unir a partidos de izquierda, centro y derecha comprometidos con la democracia. Esa peculiar alianza derrotó al dictador en el referéndum de 1988 y ganó en 1989 las primeras elecciones presidenciales libres desde el golpe de 1973.Si en Brasil no fuese posible una concertación a la chilena, al menos debería haber un compromiso para enfrentar en relativa alianza a Bolsonaro y apoyar a quien llegue a la segunda vuelta para derrotarlo en 2022.Hay un cambio de tendencia que favorece esa posibilidad. En 2018, el desconocido Wilson Witzel fue electo gobernador de Río de Janeiro con una victoria aplastante gracias al apoyo público de los hijos de Bolsonaro (luego fue apartado del cargo por denuncias de corrupción). En uno de sus actos de campaña, mientras Witzel levantaba el puño, un candidato vestido con una remera de Bolsonaro mostró una placa rota con el nombre de Marielle Franco, concejala de izquierda asesinada a tiros por sicarios de una mafia con vínculos a la familia del presidente. Entonces, la “ola” de la extrema derecha era tan fuerte que ese candidato fue el legislador más votado del estado.Pero esa ola ya no tiene la misma fuerza. Bolsonaro publicó en Twitter una lista de sus apadrinados para estas elecciones municipales. Aunque luego borró el tuit, la derrota era evidente: de los 13 candidatos a alcalde que apoyaba, 11 perdieron.Hay que prestar atención a las dos grandes capitales. En São Paulo, el candidato del presidente, Celso Russomanno, apenas obtuvo el 10,5 por ciento de los votos. En una segunda vuelta que pareció un retorno a la normalidad, un candidato de izquierda, Guilherme Boulos, y un liberal de centroderecha, Bruno Covas, se enfrentaron de forma civilizada, y cuando Covas venció dijo que “es posible hacer política sin odio”.En Río de Janeiro, el candidato que Bolsonaro respaldó, el actual alcalde, Marcelo Crivella (pastor homofóbico y sobrino del dueño de la Iglesia Universal del Reino de Dios), fue humillado en las urnas. Su adversario en la segunda vuelta, Eduardo Paes, recibió el apoyo del electorado de izquierda pese a ser de centroderecha y ganó en todos los barrios.Bruno Covas celebra su victoria en las elecciones municipales de Brasil, en donde ganó la reelección a la alcaldía de São Paulo.Credit…Amanda Perobelli/ReutersEduardo Paes vota durante las elecciones de noviembre, en donde obtuvo la victoria para ser el alcalde de Río de Janeiro.Credit…Sergio Moraes/ReutersCovas, Paes y otros vencedores se diferencian, por su moderación, de sus propios partidos, que en los últimos años se acercaron peligrosamente a la extrema derecha. El éxito de los candidatos moderados parece ser la lección de estas elecciones para la derecha.Antes del balotaje presidencial de 2018, que concluyó con la victoria de Bolsonaro, el diario Estado de S. Paulo afirmó en un editorial que elegir entre Fernando Haddad (del partido de Lula) y Jair Bolsonaro era “muy difícil”. De un lado, estaba Haddad, un político sin antecedentes de corrupción, profesor universitario, con buenas gestiones como alcalde y ministro. Del otro, Bolsonaro, un militar retirado que reivindicaba la dictadura, amenazaba a sus adversarios y hacía campaña con mentiras. Pero dos años después, la elección no parece tan difícil. Los resultados de la gestión de Bolsonaro confirman lo falsa que era esa simetría. Solo en las últimas semanas, el presidente brasileño ha realizado una campaña contra las vacunas en plena pandemia de la COVID-19, en el segundo país del mundo con más muertes.La situación de Brasil no es normal y hace falta responsabilidad histórica.En 2022, en la primera o la segunda vuelta, todos los demócratas deben unirse para impedir la reelección del peor presidente de su historia, aunque eso signifique hacer acuerdos con adversarios de toda la vida. Será imprescindible para que la pesadilla Bolsonaro acabe para siempre.Bruno Bimbi es periodista y narrador. Ha escrito los libros Matrimonio igualitario y El fin del armario. Vivió diez años en Brasil y fue corresponsal para la televisión argentina.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Race and PolicingFacts on Walter Wallace Jr. CaseFacts on Breonna Taylor CaseFacts on Daniel Prude CaseFacts on George Floyd CaseAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story5 Takeaways From the Mayor’s Race: A Subway Pledge and Police ScrutinySome New York City candidates vowed to reform the Police Department — or to ride the subway more often than Mayor Bill de Blasio.Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, was less critical of how the police handled Black Lives Matter protests than some of his rivals.Credit…Elizabeth D. Herman for The New York TimesEmma G. Fitzsimmons and Dec. 21, 2020, 3:00 a.m. ETThe Democratic candidates running for mayor of New York City differ on many issues, but they tend to agree on one thing: All aspire to be different from Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat in his second term whose approval rating dropped after his failed run for president last year.On Friday, the city Department of Investigation released a report that sharply criticized the de Blasio administration for its handling of the Black Lives Matter protests earlier this year.The findings were uniformly welcomed by the mayoral hopefuls, many of whom have been critical of the police tactics deployed. One went further, vowing to remove the police commissioner, Dermot F. Shea, if elected mayor.One other way they vow to differ from Mr. de Blasio? They say they will ride the subway more often.Here’s what you need to know about the week that was in the mayor’s race:Who’s landing the big political guns for hire?The huge field of candidates running for mayor — as well as the City Council and other local races in New York — is expected to be a bonanza for campaign consultants, and some key hired guns have landed in some interesting places.L. Joy Williams, the president of the Brooklyn N.A.A.C.P., signed on with Raymond J. McGuire, a Black businessman. She was an adviser for Cynthia M. Nixon, the actress and activist who ran for governor in 2018.Ms. Williams could help Mr. McGuire, a first-time candidate, reach Black voters in Brooklyn, especially women — a critical constituency that will be courted by other Black candidates, including Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, and Maya Wiley, a former top counsel to Mr. de Blasio and MSNBC analyst.Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, hired Rebecca Katz, a confidante of Mr. de Blasio’s who helped shape his image, but has been critical of the mayor recently. Ms. Katz has worked for progressive candidates, including Representative Jamaal Bowman.Ms. Wiley hired Alison Hirsh, who left Mr. de Blasio’s administration earlier this year and worked for the powerful 32BJ local of the Service Employees International Union; and Maya Rupert, who worked on the presidential campaigns of Julián Castro and Elizabeth Warren.Maya Rupert, a former campaign manager for Julián Castro in the 2020 presidential race, was hired to work on Mara Wiley’s mayoral campaign.Credit…Michael Starghill Jr. for The New York TimesMr. Adams hired Katie Moore, political director of the influential Hotel Trades Council.But the competition is fierce.Abbey Lee Cook, the campaign manager for Representative Max Rose, who just announced his mayoral bid, already signed up to work with Tali Farhadian Weinstein, a former prosecutor who is running for Manhattan district attorney. A high-profile political firm led by Stu Loeser, an aide to former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, is also working on Ms. Weinstein’s campaign.Be like Bill de Blasio and ride an SUV? Not likely.Mr. de Blasio has been criticized for not riding the subway regularly to see riders’ commuting misery up close, opting instead to view the city from the windows of his chauffeured SUV.Admitting that he could do better, Mr. de Blasio told reporters last week that he would ride the subway soon, to show New Yorkers that it is safe during the pandemic.But some candidates are pledging to do more. Shaun Donovan, a former housing secretary under President Barack Obama, promised to ride the subway every day. Mr. McGuire said in an interview that the subway is the “easiest, cheapest and quickest way to get around,” and that he would ride the subway as much as possible if elected.Others followed suit after Streetsblog, a website dedicated to street safety, inquired about their commuting habits. Mr. Adams said that he was already a regular subway rider, and would continue to be one if elected mayor.Carlos Menchaca, a Brooklyn city councilman, committed to taking the subway or riding his bike while “significantly limiting car trips.”It should be noted that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo actually controls the subway, and is rarely seen aboard a passenger train. But the mayor appoints members to the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the agency that oversees the subway, and can use his or her bully pulpit to help the system, which is in a deep financial crisis.Being early contenders pays off for Stringer and AdamsThe city’s Campaign Finance Board announced last week that it had approved more than $17 million in matching-funds payments to 61 candidates in races across the city next year.The initial outlay underscored the advantages of establishing early candidacies: Mr. Adams’s campaign qualified for about $4.4 million in matching funds, while Mr. Stringer’s campaign received about $3.3 million.The city comptroller, Scott Stringer, qualified for about $3.3 million in public matching funds; the only other mayoral candidate to receive matching funds was Mr. Adams.Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesNo other candidate met the dual threshold of raising at least $250,000 in contributions of $250 or less from at least 1,000 city residents by July.Mr. McGuire is not participating in the 8-to-1 matching-funds program, which effectively turns a $10 campaign contribution from a city resident into $90. Lupé Todd-Medina, a spokeswoman for Mr. McGuire, said the campaign felt good about not accepting taxpayer resources during a financial crisis and could raise enough money to get its message out.But Paul J. Massey Jr., a wealthy real estate executive who ran against Mr. de Blasio in 2017, suggested that mayoral candidates like Mr. McGuire may regret not participating in the matching-funds program. He said his biggest mistake as a first-time candidate was deciding to opt out; Mr. Massey raised $1.6 million, but spent it quickly on consultants and lent his campaign $1.2 million.“Being involved in the matching-funds program or writing checks the size Michael Bloomberg wrote are probably the few practical paths to financing a campaign for mayor,” he said in an interview.A ‘monumental failure of leadership’One candidate called for an elected Civilian Complaint Review Board and “massive disinvestments” in the New York Police Department. Another said the mayor demonstrated a “monumental failure of leadership.” And one candidate called for the dismissal of the police commissioner.The reactions came in response to a Department of Investigation report that concluded that the Police Department’s use of aggressive tactics had inflamed the summertime protests over the death of George Floyd, and violated protesters’ rights.The strongest reaction came from Dianne Morales, considered among the most progressive candidates in the race, and Ms. Wiley, a former chairwoman of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates accusations of police misconduct.Ms. Morales said the Police Department committed “acts of violence,” and called for “dedicated prosecutors” for police misconduct.Ms. Wiley said the police used “brutally violent tactics” against the protesters, and called for the dismissal of Commissioner Shea and a policy change that would require the police to be more accountable to civilian review.Mr. Stringer, Mr. Donovan and Mr. McGuire focused on what they saw as a failure of leadership.“When I’m mayor, I’ll make certain that my police commissioner understands my values and the perspective of people who look like me,” said Mr. McGuire, who is Black.Mr. Stringer, who has collected a string of endorsements from progressive candidates, called for “wholesale reform” because the Police Department operated without “real accountability.”Mr. Adams, a former police officer, had perhaps the most moderate view among the major candidates. He said the report detailed “tactical errors and acts of heavy-handed policing” and called for more diverse leadership and enhanced de-escalation and implicit bias training.Lawsuit against ranked-choice voting suffers setbackA lawsuit seeking to prevent the use of ranked-choice voting in the June primary was dealt a significant blow last week when a State Supreme Court judge declined to issue a temporary restraining order in the matter.“This court is disinclined to take any action that may result in the disenfranchisement of even one voter or take any action that may result in even one voter’s ballot being nullified,” Justice Carol R. Edmead of State Supreme Court in Manhattan wrote in her ruling.Under a new system approved by referendum last year, voters in primary and special elections can rank up to five candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority, the last-place winner is eliminated and the second-choice votes of those ballots are counted. The process continues until a candidate has won a majority.But several members of the Black, Latino and Asian Caucus of the City Council have filed a lawsuit suggesting that voters had not been educated about the new process, and that people of color and immigrants would be disenfranchised as a result.Two Black mayoral candidates, Mr. Adams, the borough president of Brooklyn, and Mr. McGuire, a businessman, both expressed concerns about Black voter disenfranchisement. Other Black mayoral candidates, Ms. Morales, a former nonprofit executive who is Afro-Latina, and Ms. Wiley, support the use of ranked-choice voting.The ruling directly affects a Feb. 2 special election for a City Council seat in Queens, which is slated to be the city’s first contest to use ranked-choice voting since the referendum was passed. Justice Edmead noted that overseas ballots for the race were about to be mailed out.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe ‘Red Slime’ Lawsuit That Could Sink Right-Wing MediaVoting machine companies threaten “highly dangerous” cases against Fox, Newsmax and OAN, says Floyd Abrams.Last week, a lawyer for Antonio Mugica sent scathing letters to Fox, Newsmax and OAN demanding that they immediately, forcefully clear his company’s name.Credit…Niklas Hallen/Getty ImagesDec. 20, 2020Updated 9:43 p.m. ETAntonio Mugica was in Boca Raton when an American presidential election really melted down in 2000, and he watched with shocked fascination as local government officials argued over hanging chads and butterfly ballots.It was so bad, so incompetent, that Mr. Mugica, a young Venezuelan software engineer, decided to shift the focus of his digital security company, Smartmatic, which had been working for banks. It would offer its services to what would obviously be a growth industry: electronic voting machines. He began building a global company that ultimately provided voting machinery and software for elections from Brazil to Belgium and his native Venezuela. He even acquired an American company, then called Sequoia.Last month, Mr. Mugica initially took it in stride when his company’s name started popping up in grief-addled Trump supporters’ wild conspiracy theories about the election.“Of course I was surprised, but at the same time, it was pretty clear that these people were trying to discredit the election and they were throwing out 25 conspiracy theories in parallel,” he told me in an interview last week from Barbados, where his company has an office. “I thought it was so absurd that it was not going to have legs.”But by Nov. 14, he knew he had a problem. That’s when Rudy Giuliani, serving as the president’s lawyer, suggested that one voting company, Dominion Voting Systems, had a sinister connection to vote counts in “Michigan, Arizona and Georgia and other states.” Mr. Giuliani declared on Twitter that the company “was a front for SMARTMATIC, who was really doing the computing. Look up SMARTMATIC and tweet me what you think?”Soon his company, and a competitor, Dominion — which sells its services to about 1,900 of the county governments that administer elections across America — were at the center of Mr. Giuliani’s and Sidney Powell’s theories, and on the tongues of commentators on Fox News and its farther-right rivals, Newsmax and One America News.“Sidney Powell is out there saying that states like Texas, they turned away from Dominion machines, because really there’s only one reason why you buy a Dominion machine and you buy this Smartmatic software, so you can easily change votes,” the Newsmax host Chris Salcedo said in one typical mash-up on Nov. 18. Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business reported on Nov. 15 that “one source says that the key point to understand is that the Smartmatic system has a backdoor.”The Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo.Credit…Monica Schipper/Getty ImagesHere’s the thing: Smartmatic wasn’t even used in the contested states. The company, now a major global player with over 300 employees, pulled out of the United States in 2007 after a controversy over its founders’ Venezuelan roots, and its only involvement this November was with a contract to help Los Angeles County run its election.In an era of brazen political lies, Mr. Mugica has emerged as an unlikely figure with the power to put the genie back in the bottle. Last week, his lawyer sent scathing letters to the Fox News Channel, Newsmax and OAN demanding that they immediately, forcefully clear his company’s name — and that they retain documents for a planned defamation lawsuit. He has, legal experts say, an unusually strong case. And his new lawyer is J. Erik Connolly, who not coincidentally won the largest settlement in the history of American media defamation in 2017, at least $177 million, for a beef producer whose “lean finely textured beef” was described by ABC News as “pink slime.”Now, Mr. Connolly’s target is a kind of red slime, the stream of preposterous lies coming from the White House and Republican officials around the country.“We’ve gotten to this point where there’s so much falsity that is being spread on certain platforms, and you may need an occasion where you send a message, and that’s what punitive damages can do in a case like this,” Mr. Connolly said.Mr. Mugica isn’t the only potential plaintiff. Dominion Voting Systems has hired another high-powered libel lawyer, Tom Clare, who has threatened legal action against Ms. Powell and the Trump campaign. Mr. Clare said in an emailed statement that “we are moving forward on the basis that she will not retract those false statements and that it will be necessary for Dominion to take aggressive legal action, both against Ms. Powell and the many others who have enabled and amplified her campaign of defamation by spreading damaging falsehoods about Dominion.”These are legal threats any company, even a giant like Fox Corporation, would take seriously. And they could be fatal to the dream of a new “Trump TV,” a giant new media company in the president’s image, and perhaps contributing to his bottom line. Newsmax and OAN would each like to become that, and are both burning money to steal ratings from Fox, executives from both companies have acknowledged. They will need to raise significantly more money, or to sell quickly to investors, to build a Fox-style multibillion-dollar empire. But outstanding litigation with the potential of an enormous verdict will be enough to scare away most buyers.And so Newsmax and OAN appear likely to face the same fate as so many of President Trump’s sycophants, who have watched him lie with impunity and imitated him — only to find that he’s the only one who can really get away with it. Mr. Trump benefits from presidential immunity, but also he has an experienced fabulist’s sense of where the legal red lines are, something his allies often lack. Three of his close aides were convicted of lying, and Michael Cohen served more than a year in prison. (Trump pardoned Michael Flynn and commuted the sentence of Roger Stone.)OAN and Newsmax have been avidly hyping Mr. Trump’s bogus election claims. OAN has even been trying to get to Newsmax’s right, by continuing to reject Joe Biden’s status as president-elect. But their own roles in propagating that lie could destroy their businesses if Mr. Mugica sues.The letters written by lawyers for Smartmatic and Dominion are “extremely powerful,” said Floyd Abrams, one of the country’s most prominent First Amendment lawyers, in an email to The New York Times. “The repeated accusations against both companies are plainly defamatory and surely have done enormous reputational and financial harm to both.”Mr. Abrams noted that “truth is always a defense” and that, failing that, the networks may defend themselves by saying they didn’t know the charges were false, while Ms. Powell may say she was simply describing legal filings.“It is far too early to predict how the cases, if commenced, will end,” he said. “But it is not too early to say that they would be highly dangerous to those sued.”Lawyers said they expected that the right-wing networks, if sued, would argue that Smartmatic and Dominion should be considered “public figures” — which would require the companies to prove that its critics were malicious or wildly reckless, not just wrong.Mr. Connolly said he would argue that Smartmatic was not a public figure, a legal status whose exact meaning varies depending on whether Mr. Mugica files suit in Florida, New York or another state.“They have a very good case,” another First Amendment lawyer who isn’t connected to the litigation, the University of Florida professor Clay Calvert, said of Smartmatic. “If these statements are false and we are taking them as factual statements, that’s why we have defamation law.”Fox News and Fox Business, which have mentioned Dominion 792 times and Smartmatic 118 times between them, according to a search of the service TVEyes, appear to be taking the threat seriously. Over the weekend, they broadcast one of the strangest three-minute segments I’ve ever seen on television, with a disembodied and anonymous voice flatly asking a series of factual questions about Smartmatic of an expert on voting machines, Eddie Perez, who debunks a series of false claims. The segment, which appeared scripted to persuade a very literal-minded judge or jury that the network was being fair, aired over the weekend on the shows hosted by Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro and Maria Bartiromo, where Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell had made their most outlandish claims.Newsmax said in an emailed statement that the channel “has never made a claim of impropriety about Smartmatic, its ownership or software” and that the company was merely providing a “forum for public concerns and discussion.” An OAN spokeswoman didn’t respond to an inquiry.I’m reluctant to cheer on a defamation case against news organizations, even networks that appear to be amplifying dangerous lies. Companies and politicians often exploit libel law to threaten and silence journalists, and at the very least subject them to expensive and draining litigation.And defamation cases can also collide with subjects of genuine public interest, as in the most prominent case I’ve been involved in, when a businessman sued me and my colleagues at BuzzFeed News for publishing the Steele Dossier, while acknowledging that it was unverified. There, a judge ruled that the document was an official record that BuzzFeed was entitled to publish.In this controversy, even the voting companies’ worst critics find the coverage wildly distorted.“They’ve been mining every paper I’ve ever written and any deposition I’ve ever given and it’s nonsense,” said Douglas W. Jones, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Iowa who has long argued that voting software isn’t as secure as its vendors claim. He said Ms. Powell’s cybersecurity expert, Navid Keshavarz-Nia, called him on Nov. 15, apparently seeing him as a potential ally, and spent an hour going point-by-point over claims that would wind up in a deposition. “He seemed sane, but every time I would ask him for evidence that would support one of these allegations he would squirm off to a different allegation,” Mr. Jones said.As the conversation wore on, he wondered, “Was someone trying to pull a ‘Borat’ on me?”But the allegations are no joke for Smartmatic and Dominion. Mr. Mugica said he had taken worried calls from governments and politicians all over the world, concerned that Mr. Trump’s poison will seep into their politics and turn a Smartmatic contract into a liability.“This potentially could destroy it all,” he said.Mr. Mugica wouldn’t say whether he has made up his mind to sue. Mr. Connolly said that he has “a lot of people watching a lot of videos right now,” and that he’s researching whether to file in New York, Florida or elsewhere. I asked Mr. Mugica if he’d settle for an apology.“Is the apology going to reverse the false belief of tens of millions of people who believe in these lies?” he asked. “Then I could be satisfied.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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Electoral College Results

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Electoral College Results

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Electoral College Results

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Full Results

Biden Transition Updates

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Donald Trump’s flirtation with declaring martial law in battleground states and appointing a conspiracy theorist as special counsel to help his attempt to overturn defeat by Joe Biden are “really sad” and “nutty and loopy”, Mitt Romney said on Sunday.“He’s leaving Washington with a whole series of conspiracy theories and things that are so nutty and loopy that people are shaking their head wondering what in the world has gotten into this man,” the Utah Republican senator said.Joe Biden won the 3 November election by 306-232 in the electoral college and by more than 7m ballots in the popular vote. Nonetheless, Trump is entertaining outlandish schemes to remain in office, egged on by allies like former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who Trump pardoned for lying to the FBI, and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney.During a Friday meeting at the White House first reported by the New York Times, Trump discussed security clearance for Sidney Powell, a conspiracy-spouting attorney who was cut from Trump’s campaign legal team.It is unclear if Trump will actually attempt to install Powell as a special counsel, a position which the US attorney general, not the president, appoints. Numerous Republicans, from outgoing attorney general William Barr to governors and state officials, have said repeatedly there is no evidence of the mass voter fraud Trump baselessly alleges.“It’s not going to happen,” Romney told CNN. “That’s going nowhere. And I understand the president is casting about trying to find some way to have a different result than the one that was delivered by the American people, but it’s really sad in a lot of respects and embarrassing.“Because the president could right now be writing the last chapter of this administration, with a victory lap with regards to the [Covid-19] vaccine. After all he pushed aggressively to get the vaccine developed and distributed, that’s happening on a quick timeframe. He could be going out and championing this extraordinary success.“Instead … this last chapter suggests what he is going to be known for.”Trump’s campaign and allies have filed around 50 lawsuits alleging voting fraud – almost all have been dismissed. Trump has lost before judges of both parties, including some he appointed, and some of the strongest rebukes have come from conservative Republicans. The supreme court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority and three Trump appointees, has refused to take up cases.Trump has been fuming and peppering allies for options. During the Friday meeting, Giuliani pushed Trump to seize voting machines. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) made clear that it had no authority to do so. It is unclear what such a move could accomplish.Barr told the Associated Press this month the Department of Justice and DHS had looked into claims voting machines “were programmed essentially to skew the election results … and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that”. Paper ballots have been used to verify results, including in Georgia, which performed two audits of its vote tally, confirming Biden’s victory.Flynn went yet further, suggesting Trump could impose martial law and use the military to re-run the election. Chief of staff Mark Meadows and White House counsel Pat Cipollone voiced objections, people familiar with the meeting told news outlets. Trump, who spent much of Saturday tweeting and retweeting electoral fraud claims, responded on Twitter.“Martial law = Fake News,” he wrote. “Just more knowingly bad reporting!”Trump’s grip on the Republican party remains secure, suggesting members in Congress will dutifully raise objections to the electoral college results on 6 January. Such objections will be for political ends and will not in all likelihood succeed in overturning the election. Democrats hold the House and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has indicated he will knock down objections in the Senate.On NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Romney, who did better at the polls in his 2012 defeat by Barack Obama than Trump did in 2016 and 2020, was asked if his party could ever escape Trump’s grip.“I believe the Republican party has changed pretty dramatically,” he said. “And by that, I mean that the people who consider themselves Republican and voted for President Trump I think is a different cohort than the cohort that voted for me.“…You look at those that are thinking about running in 2024, [they are] trying to see who can be the most like President Trump. And that suggests that the party doesn’t want to take a different direction.”Josh Hawley of Missouri, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Ted Cruz of Texas are among senators thought likely to run to succeed Trump in the White House, and therefore likely to object to the electoral college results.“I don’t think anyone who’s looking at running in 2024 has the kind of style and shtick that President Trump has,” Romney said. “He has a unique and capable politician … But I think the direction you’re seeing is one that he set out.“I’d like to see a different version of the Republican party. But my side is very small these days … I think we recognise that character actually does count.” More