Elections

The country is coming to a crossroads on Monday. That’s the date Michigan is to certify the results of the 2020 election. Yet President Trump has chosen a state he lost by more than 150,000 votes — more than 14 times the size of his 2016 victory in Michigan — to try to subvert the election.Having failed in the courts, President Trump is now grasping at a new lifeline: pressuring Republican election officials and legislators to ignore the reality that Joe Biden legitimately won the popular vote in their states. This tactic, now being played out in Michigan, is no doubt sending the anxiety levels of Biden supporters back to where they were before the courts had calmed these efforts by exposing how empty most of the legal claims were.But this tactic, too, is destined to fail — though it is toxic for the country’s politics.Michigan has an unusual system for certifying vote totals. In many states, a single actor, the governor or secretary of state, has the final authority to certify the winner of an election. But Michigan employs four-member canvassing boards, first at the county level — which is now complete — and then at the statewide level. These boards, including the statewide canvassing board that meets Monday, include two Democrats and two Republicans. The governor appoints them, with the Senate’s consent. This structure was designed to provide checks against partisan manipulation of the certification process. But the president is hoping to get the two Republicans on the board to refuse to certify, thus blocking certification.Because the president almost succeeded in getting the two Republicans on the Wayne County board to do that, many wonder whether he might manage to get the Republican members of the state canvassing board to refuse to certify. But even if they turn out to be so unethical as to refuse to acknowledge the fact that Mr. Biden legitimately won Michigan, the tactic is not going to work.The Biden campaign and Michigan voters would likely first turn to the state or federal courts. A court would likely issue an order to the state board to certify the result — legally, this is known as issuing a writ of mandamus — because the board’s legal duty is clear and unequivocal once it has received the certified vote totals from the counties. If the resistant board members were still willing to defy the court and go to jail (presidential pardons do not apply to state crimes), a court could also issue the certification itself.Michigan’s governor also has legal powers she could invoke, though whether she would choose to do so would involve complex political judgments. Under the state’s Constitution, she has the power — the Constitution, actually, calls it a duty — to remove or suspend from office a canvassing board member for “gross neglect of duty,” “corrupt conduct” or “for any other misfeasance or malfeasance” in carrying out their duties. Failing to certify on the facts in Michigan would easily meet this standard.The Trump campaign team is pursuing whatever avenues they imagine might conceivably block certification, in Michigan and elsewhere, including calling up Republican canvassing officials and inviting Republican legislative leaders from Michigan to the White House for a meeting (the Michigan Republican legislative leaders said, after the meeting, that they would “follow the normal process” in certifying the vote results). That’s because once states certify, Mr. Biden is the legal winner. Not only is getting a court to overturn the legal result of an election extremely difficult, but the Biden electors would be officially appointed and it would be much harder for the General Services Administration not to make the relevant finding that unlocks the transition process.One of the many tragedies of what has gone on since the election is that we should be celebrating our achievement at having smoothly managed to conduct an exceptionally high turnout election under the most difficult circumstances. Think of the list of concerns we had in advance of the election: foreign interference; inability to staff polling places; huge lines on Election Day; excessive challenges at the polls or even violent confrontations; high rejection rates of absentee ballots; large numbers of absentees arriving too late to be counted; long delays in mail delivery that compromised the outcome.That’s a partial list. None became significant issues, though election reforms are still needed. We also worried about partisan election administration, because the chief election officer in most states, the secretary of state, is typically a partisan elected official. Yet secretaries of states from both parties have not just performed in a completely professional manner, they have done so heroically against political pressures and personal threats.Yet the country, mired in baseless accusations of fraud, cannot even see this achievement, let alone celebrate it. Even those who voted for Mr. Biden are too consumed with anxiety about getting safely to Jan. 20 to celebrate the country’s triumph in how well the election was run.President Trump will undoubtedly continue to try any tactic to fend off the reality that he lost the election. But even if he manages to corrupt a few partisan actors, it will not change the outcome. The election survived the stress test we faced. The postelection process will as well.The real danger is that the country will become increasingly ungovernable.This article has been updated to reflect news developments.Richard H. Pildes is a professor at New York University’s School of Law and an author of the casebook “The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

Authorities conducting fraud investigations into Donald Trump and his businesses are reportedly looking at consulting fees that may have gone to his daughter Ivanka Trump, prompting her to accuse them of “harassment”.The New York Times said there were twin New York investigations, one criminal and one civil.The criminal inquiry, led by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr, and a civil investigation by the state attorney general, Letitia James, are just some of many legal challenges that will probably face the president and his family business when he returns to being a private citizen. The report provoked a sharp response from Trump’s eldest daughter, who is a senior presidential adviser.“This is harassment pure and simple,” Ivanka Trump said on Twitter, linking to the report in the New York Times. “This ‘inquiry’ by NYC democrats is 100% motivated by politics, publicity and rage. They know very well that there’s nothing here and that there was no tax benefit whatsoever. These politicians are simply ruthless.”The Times, which said the two investigations have subpoenaed the Trump Organization in recent weeks, follows publication of Trump’s long-sought tax records and revelations that he personally guaranteed debt running into the hundreds of millions that could soon be called in or come due.Trump’s financial and legal stresses appear to be mounting. Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Trump’s main lender, Deutsche Bank, is looking for ways to end its relationship with the president.Deutsche Bank has about $340m in loans outstanding to the Trump Organization, the president’s umbrella group that is currently overseen by his two sons. The loans, which are against Trump properties and start coming due in two years, are current on payments and personally guaranteed by the president, according Reuters.Among the latest revelations is that he reduced his tax exposure by deducting about $26m in fees to unidentified consultants as a business expense on several projects in the past decade.Some of those fees, the Times said, appear to have been paid to Ivanka Trump, including a payment of $747,622 from a consulting company that exactly matched consulting fees claimed as tax deductions by the Trump Organization.Trump Organization counsel Alan Garten described the development as “just the latest fishing expedition in an ongoing attempt to harass the company”.Details of the twin investigations have been scarce. The Manhattan DA’s inquiry was originally focused on Trump Organization payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the Trump’s 2016 election victory but has since expanded to include insurance and bank-related fraud, tax evasion and grand larceny.The civil investigation began earlier this year after Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen told Congress that the president had boosted the value of his assets to secure bank loans and reduced them for tax purposes.In a TV interview this month, James, the New York attorney general, said the outcome of this month’s election was irrelevant to the investigations. She said: “We will just follow the facts and the evidence, wherever they lead us.”But Trump has dismissed the investigations as “the greatest witch-hunt in history”. More

Even a fortune teller could not have foreseen what a crazy year 2020 has been.And it wasn’t just the pandemic. There was also the wild and close presidential election, and now there is the question of which party will control the United States Senate. The answer will determine what tax changes President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. will be able to enact.Two runoff elections in Georgia in early January will decide whether Republicans will hold a majority in the Senate or whether Democrats will hold 50 seats, with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking any tied votes.Yet the outcome will not be known until early next year, making it more difficult to plan now for what next year may look like. So how can you make financial decisions that carry significant tax consequences before the end of the year?“Whether you’re talking income tax or estate tax issues, there’s a common denominator on what to do, and that is: What is the opportunity cost of taking action or not taking action?” said Tony Roth, chief investment officer at Wilmington Trust.“There are some things you can do that have a high opportunity cost,” Mr. Roth said. “Then there are other things that don’t have as potentially as a high an opportunity cost. It all needs to be framed around that.”As you’re making your choices, you have to consider the possibility of an increase in the tax rates on income, capital gains and wealth transfers as gifts or through estates at death.Here is a look at four areas where weighing the costs of decisions now could have impact for years to come.Selling stocksRebalancing a portfolio is a typical year-end endeavor. But this year, it carries some added weight.One of Mr. Biden’s tax proposals is to increase the capital gains rates — now at 23.8 percent for the highest earners — to match the income tax rates, which under a Biden administration could top out at 43.4 percent.So the question becomes, do you sell now and pay the known tax? Or do you hold the stocks until next year, hope for a post-inauguration run-up in value and potentially pay a higher tax?“It has clients frightened,” said Ed Renn, partner in the private client and tax team at the law firm Withers. “It’s a doubling of the capital gains tax. Then, throw in state and local taxes, and the client is over 50 percent.”One thing to consider is when you are most likely to sell the stock. If it’s something you planned to do anyway, then go ahead and do it now, when you know what the tax is going to be, Mr. Roth said.“If you think there’s a high likelihood that you’re going to sell the asset one way or the other in the next four years, then the opportunity cost of selling it between now and the end of the year may be relatively low,” he said.The counterargument is that after the inauguration, the stock market could be poised for another run, fueled by investors sitting on cash until they see how much Mr. Biden can do. Michelle Connell, founder and president of the wealth management firm Portia Capital Management, noted that a measure of the amount of cash available to invest, known as the M2, is up about 25 percent over last year.“Money needs to go somewhere,” she said. “I think the markets are going to go to a much higher level because there is so much liquidity sitting on the sidelines.”If you are inclined to believe that argument, then the appreciation in your stock could outweigh any possible tax increase. But it’s a bet that needs to be right twice, on taxes and on stock appreciation.Selling a businessThe decision of whether to sell a family business is both emotional and financial in the best of times. But there could be several factors that make this year a better time to wrap up a deal.The potential increase in the capital gains tax is one factor, for sure. Given the work that’s gone into building a business, paying 20 percent more in capital gains tax is hard to swallow. It’s also less likely that a closely held business is going to appreciate the way securities might in a post-inauguration bump.One tax strategy that families use to keep their businesses without having to bring in outside investors or borrowing significantly is to discount the value of the business and put those discounted parts into trusts for heirs. The Internal Revenue Service typically allows business owners to discount valuations by about 30 percent, because outside buyers typically do not want to pay full price if they are not going to have more control than family members would retain.But Mr. Biden has floated the idea of decreasing the discount allowed, which alone would mean far more in taxes. Add to that potentially higher capital gains taxes, and the incentive is high to complete a sale this year.“If you’re going to sell your business now, and you want to wait, is the buyer going to pay you 20 percent more next year?” Mr. Roth asked. “That’s what you need to make up for the transfer tax.”This year also provides an added planning tool for family business owners. They can ask for a so-called “as-of” valuation to appraise the company on a certain date, presumably one at the start of the pandemic when the company’s value was lower.“Except for internet or medical companies, most of my clients could get a valuation as of June 1, where the numbers were dramatically down,” said Sarah Wentz, partner at the law firm Fox Rothschild. “If the numbers are back up now, you can use a valuation within the last few months.”As long as the valuation is no older than six months, she said, it is allowed by the I.R.S.Transferring assets to heirsA broader issue with transferring assets to heirs is what the exemption level will be under a Democratic administration. Right now, it stands at $11.58 million per person. That exemption level is already set to be reduced in 2025, but a new Biden administration could lower the exemption more quickly.“There’s just so much wealth that is moving,” Ms. Wentz said. “I’ve moved half a billion dollars’ worth of wealth in the past six weeks, and I’m just one lawyer in the Midwest.”She said she had 20 families that asked before the election about transferring the full amount — over $23 million for couples — and all but one went through with it afterward.In this instance, the decision comes down to whether you were going to give away the money anyway and how much wealth you have. If the answer is yes to the first question and if you can afford to give your heirs assets worth $23 million, then it’s still the right thing to do.“The theme for this year is: stick to your overall plan,” said Carrie Galloway, a wealth adviser at J.P. Morgan Private Bank in New York. “It hasn’t changed due to the election. We’re still advising clients to do so and do so sooner rather than later. We have historically high exemption amounts.”Even people with lower levels of wealth could be affected by changes in the tax laws. Mr. Biden is considering a change in how assets are valued when someone dies. Currently, assets are valued on the date the person died. But the proposal would value the assets based on their original price. The person who inherited the assets would then also inherit all the capital gains, Mr. Renn said.Hedging your betsIn 2012, affluent people rushed to complete gifts by the end of the year for fear that the exemption per person was going to drop from $3.5 million to $1 million or less. Instead, the opposite happened: The exemption level went to $5 million and was indexed to inflation. There was some giver’s remorse.This time around, a once-obscure trust called a spousal lifetime access trust, or SLAT, has gained currency. It allows someone to make an irrevocable gift and takes the money out of the person’s estate, but the person who made the gift can still get access to it if needed. The other spouse can then set up a similar trust.Drafting these trusts is somewhat complicated if they are to withstand I.R.S. scrutiny. “The flexibility is really to provide the ability to adjust to changing circumstances,” said Pam Lucina, chief fiduciary officer and head of the trust and advisory practice for Northern Trust Wealth Management. “It shouldn’t be looked at as a way to undo the entire plan. If you do, you’ll be inviting an I.R.S. audit, which increases your complications.”In a year with so much uncertainty, some flexibility is attractive. More

In late October we asked readers to make their election predictions and published a sampling of the more than 500 responses. Many readers predicted a Joe Biden landslide, others thought that President Trump would win the Electoral College and some rightly guessed that the results would be too close to call on Election Day.We promised to highlight the letter that was most prescient. Raj Patel, a sophomore at John P. Stevens High School in Edison, N.J., correctly predicted on Oct. 26 that the winner would not be known on Election Day but instead several days later (he predicted a week; it was actually four days later).While his popular vote margin for Joe Biden was overly generous and a few states voted differently than he predicted, he was the only letter writer who nailed the Electoral College count, 306 to 232 — assuming no changes because of recounts, lawsuits or faithless electors.Raj told The Times on Wednesday that he wrote the letter for his U.S. history class after studying on his own how the candidates were faring in each state. He stayed up till 2 a.m. the night of the election, but had to wait a few days to learn how his prediction had put the pollsters to shame. He called it “a great honor” to be named the winner.— SUSAN MERMELSTEINTo the Editor:With the election fast approaching, everyone loves to place bets on who will win. This year is a highly important election year and will determine if many of our country’s problems will be solved over the next four years. Thus, as the tradition goes, here are my predictions:Winning states for President Trump are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska (Democratic win in 2nd District), Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wyoming.Former Vice President Joe Biden will win Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Maine (Republican win in 2nd District), Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin.The electoral vote will be Biden 306 to Trump 232. The popular vote will be 68,313,800 Biden to 58,715,300 Trump. All in all, the election results will not be given the night of the election, but rather a full week later and will be consequential in the rest of American history.Raj PatelEdison, N.J. More

The New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among members of the ‘Squad’, a group of progressive Democrats, who spoke at a Sunrise Movement rally in Washington to push Joe Biden on tackling the climate emergency.
AOC said they would urge Biden to ‘keep his promises’ to working families, women, minorities and climate activists as he fills his cabinet.
In July, Biden outlined an ambitious climate plan that would spend $2tn over four years investing in clean-energy infrastructure while vowing to cut carbon emissions from electrical power to zero in 15 years
Climate activists ramp up pressure on Biden with protest outside Democratic headquarters
Why Biden calls Trump a ‘climate arsonist’ – video explainer More

Just when we thought we could sleep again. Just when we thought his malevolent reign was over, his poison bottled, that the sun was coming out tomorrow. Just when nearly 80 million Americans could shout the words of Dr. Seuss to Marvin K. Mooney: “Please go now!”Then, this: a shameless attempt to reject the will of hundreds of thousands of voters in the most populous county in Michigan and ultimately hand a state that Joe Biden won by some 157,000 votes over Donald Trump.And this: In Nevada and Pennsylvania, Trump’s campaign asked courts to thwart the choice of a majority of voters and award their states’ Electoral College votes to the only president in history to lose the popular vote twice. It promised evidence of fraud but produced none. It was a blunt, raw, purely Trumpian move. Try to stop me.And this: Trump has invited Michigan legislators to the White House in a last-ditch — and legally dubious — effort to subvert the election.What’s unfolding now is an attempted coup by a con. It’s a bigger political scandal than Russian interference four years ago. And yes, it is likely to fail, and the system is likely to prevail. But the American majority cannot rest, nor rely on its sense of decency, until the election hooligans are beaten back.Failing in court, this most authoritarian of presidents is pressuring Little Trumpers everywhere to overturn an election that Trump’s own cybersecurity chief, Christopher Krebs, said was “the most secure in American history.” He’s trying to force canvassers, certifiers, election board referees and state legislators to create enough chaos so that he can steal a win.The good news is that a decent majority of Americans think the election was conducted freely and fairly, a belief that has the added benefit of being true. Krebs, a Trump appointee who oversaw defense of the election for the Department of Homeland Security, issued a statement saying, “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.” That assessment got him fired by the president on Tuesday.The bad news is that an indecent majority of Trump voters think Biden won because of fraud. The Big Lie — that the election was rigged unless Trump is declared the winner — thrives in a disinformation ecosystem.Since the election, I’ve been trying to remain open-minded about what moved more than 73 million Americans to vote for Trump, knowing that he’s an awful human being and a nation-wrecker, trying to soil every institutional value we hold sacred.I understand the tribalism, the urge to push back against condescending libs and the suffocating ubiquity of political correctness, the sense that only Trump can save a certain way of life.But then Trump unleashed his flying monkeys to try to take back the office he lost by nearly six million in the popular vote.Consider just how openly racist and undemocratic the Michigan debacle was. Two white Republican canvassers refused to certify the results of the state’s most populous Democratic county, which contains Black-majority Detroit. Was there evidence of fraud? No. The fig leaf was the routine clerical and counting errors found throughout Michigan — and certainly not enough votes to overturn the result.One of those canvassers, Monica Palmer, suggested that the white-majority areas of the county could be certified, while the Black-majority city of Detroit could not. The pro-Trump canvassers relented only after being buried under an avalanche of outrage and threats. But after the president called at least one of them,both Republicans again attempted to keep Wayne County’s votes from counting, although by then it was too late.This was a racial disenfranchisement move so blatant it would make Jim Crow blush. Michigan Republican leaders applauded this, and Trump tweeted, “Flip Michigan back to TRUMP.” Among the national Republican leaders, those with a conscience, a group that could fit in a broom closet, have been quiet. Humor him, they said. He’ll eventually sulk away.It wasn’t just the Black majority in Detroit that Republicans tried to render powerless. The votes of veterans and first-responders, the sick and disabled, first-time voters and longtime voters were headed for a garbage bin to please a loser crying for a do-over.“American democracy cracked last night, but it didn’t break,” said Mayor Mike Duggan of Detroit, on the morning after the certification back-and-forth. “We are seeing a real threat to everything we believe in.”One of those beliefs is the idea that honorable people will put aside partisan passions to keep the machinery of democracy moving forward.But it’s pretty hard to do that when the routine act of ballot counting has become a life-threatening job. Arizona’s secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, described “ongoing and escalating threats of violence” against her and her family for trying to perform her duty.This is Trump’s legacy: an attempt to blow up an election, from Wayne County, Mich., to Maricopa County, Ariz. For Trump the failed businessman, cheating and suing were a way of life. For Trump the failed president, cheating and suing are a blueprint for his followers into the future. And I fear there’s no going back.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.Timothy Egan (@nytegan) is a contributing opinion writer who covers the environment, the American West and politics. He is a winner of the National Book Award and author, most recently, of “A Pilgrimage to Eternity.” More

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department executed Orlando Cordia Hall on late Thursday for his role in the 1994 kidnapping and killing of a 16-year-old girl, after the Supreme Court cleared the way earlier in the night.His execution, by lethal injection at the penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., was the eighth by the Trump administration since this summer, when it resumed use of capital punishment by the federal government after a 17-year hiatus.Mr. Hall, 49, was the first of three federal prisoners scheduled for execution during the presidential transition. President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has said he will work to end the use of capital punishment by the federal government, reversing President Trump’s support for it.In his last words, Mr. Hall thanked his supporters and assured them that he was all right, according to a report from a journalist in attendance. “Take care of yourselves,” he said. “Tell my kids I love them.”The Bureau of Prisons confirmed in a statement that Mr. Hall was pronounced dead at 11:47 p.m.A statement from the family of Mr. Hall’s victim said that it was “the end of a very long and painful chapter” in their lives. The statement also said that “the execution of Orlando Hall will never stop the suffering we continue to endure.”“Please pray for our family as well as his,” it added.According to the Justice Department, Mr. Hall was a part of a marijuana trafficking operation out of Pine Bluff, Ark. In 1994, he and others went to the home of a man in Arlington, Texas, who they believed had reneged on a drug transaction, the department said. There, the group kidnapped the man’s 16-year-old sister, and members of the group later raped her, beat her over the head with a shovel, soaked her with gasoline and buried her alive, it said.Mr. Hall, who is Black, was convicted of, among other offenses, kidnapping resulting in death. The jurors who decided his fate were all white, his lawyers said.In a filing last week, his lawyers claimed that prosecutors in Mr. Hall’s case struck Black people from the pool of potential jurors out of racist animus to achieve an all-white jury. Lawyers for Mr. Hall also cited other accusations of race-based jury-selection practices that implicated one of those prosecutors, Paul Macaluso.In an interview, Mr. Macaluso denied the accusations of racism in Mr. Hall’s jury selection and said the result would have been the same with Black jurors.“They have to find some excuse of why a jury sentenced this man to the death penalty,” he said. “We don’t need to come up with some sort of racial excuse for a jury to find that somebody who has violated the law and has caused someone’s death.”In the final days of Mr. Hall’s life, courts were largely unreceptive to pleas for a delay to his execution. Both the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit denied Mr. Hall’s applications for a stay.He found some reprieve on Thursday when Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted a stay. But the Supreme Court vacated the injunction on Thursday night, with the court’s three more liberal justices dissenting.Lawyers on behalf of Mr. Hall and Brandon Bernard, another inmate scheduled to die, also submitted an emergency application for a stay of execution to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit declined to issue a stay. The application challenged the federal government’s execution protocol, arguing that the use of the drug pentobarbital without a prescription would violate the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act and cause irreparable harm.Mr. Hall’s lawyers also claimed that he was provided the shortest notice period in the history of the modern federal death penalty, just 50 days. The Justice Department announced his scheduled execution on Sept. 30.With the brief time before his scheduled death and amid the coronavirus pandemic, the government “flouted Mr. Hall’s rights to due process and meaningful access to counsel and the clemency process,” his lawyers claimed in a filing with the Supreme Court.But the Supreme Court rejected three applications to stay Mr. Hall’s execution, including the one with Mr. Bernard, in a string of unsigned orders on Thursday night.The Trump administration intends to execute two more inmates in its final weeks.The government had planned to execute Lisa M. Montgomery, the only woman on federal death row, on Dec. 8. However, a federal judge ordered on Thursday that the government not put her to death before Dec. 31. In a memorandum opinion, Judge Randolph D. Moss of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia cited the recent coronavirus diagnoses of her two longtime lawyers.A spokesperson for Ms. Montgomery’s legal team said in a statement that one of the lawyers spent six hours in the emergency room on Wednesday night with an elevated heart rate and elevated blood pressure. Ms. Montgomery’s lawyers had argued that her rights would be violated without sufficient access to her experienced counsel and mental health experts during her clemency process. More