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      Kari Lake Will Present Election Fraud Claims in an Arizona County Court

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      After a judge dismissed most of her claims, two will go forward. Lawyers expect she will have to clear a high bar, and her case relies on a collection of election deniers.Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor in Arizona who made false election claims the centerpiece of her campaign, is starting a two-day trial on Wednesday as she presses to have her loss overturned.Ms. Lake lost by around 17,000 votes to Katie Hobbs, the secretary of state, but sued Maricopa County and Ms. Hobbs to overturn the results under Arizona’s election contest statutes. A Maricopa County Superior Court judge is allowing two of her claims of misconduct by election officials to go forward, but eight other claims were dismissed. A ruling is likely soon afterward.In a separate election case in Mohave County, the Republican candidate for attorney general, Abraham Hamadeh, will present evidence on Friday. The November election ended with Mr. Hamadeh trailing Kris Mayes, the Democratic nominee, by 511 votes, within the margin that requires a mandatory statewide recount that is going on now.Lawyers for Ms. Hobbs and Maricopa County have been warning that such trials could become a free-for-all for election conspiracy theorists. Ms. Lake has indicated that she may call as witnesses people who have been pushing false or misleading claims related to Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the presidential election.There is, however, a high bar to proving election misconduct that could have swayed the results.“The court has given an opportunity to put them to the test,” said Abha Khanna, a lawyer for Ms. Hobbs. “If you think you have proof something happened and that proof doesn’t exist, and they’re not able to prove it in this court, I hope we could put to bed the idea that there’s something lurking out there.”The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

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      in US Politics

      US government sues Arizona over shipping container wall on Mexico border

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      US government sues Arizona over shipping container wall on Mexico borderThe complaint claims that the state of Arizona is trespassing on federal lands and says the US is entitled to compensation The US government sued Arizona governor Doug Ducey and the state on Wednesday over the placement of shipping containers as a barrier on the border with Mexico, saying it is trespassing on federal lands.The complaint filed in the US district court comes three weeks before the Republican governor steps aside for Democratic governor-elect Katie Hobbs, who has said she opposes the construction.Arizona governor builds border wall of shipping crates in final days of officeRead moreThe complaint by the US justice department asks the court that Arizona be ordered to halt placement and remove the containers in remote San Rafael valley in easternmost Cochise county. The work placing up to 3,000 containers at a cost of $95m (£76m) is about a third complete, but protesters concerned about its impact on the environment have held up work in recent days.“Officials from Reclamation and the Forest Service have notified Arizona that it is trespassing on federal lands,” the complaint reads. The action also seeks damages to compensate the US to fix any damage along the border.The justice department sued on behalf of the Bureau of Reclamation, the Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service it oversees.The US agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, said in a statement from Washington that the project “is not an effective barrier, it poses safety hazards to both the public and those working in the area and has significantly damaged public land”.Arizona governor builds border wall of shipping crates | First ThingRead more“We need serious solutions at our border, with input from local leaders and communities. Stacking shipping containers is not a productive solution,” Vilsack said.Ducey told US officials earlier this week that Arizona stands ready to help remove the containers, which he says were placed as a temporary barrier. But he wants the US government to say when it will fill any remaining gaps in the permanent border wall as it announced it would a year ago.The US “owes it to Arizonans and all Americans to release a timeline”, he wrote in a letter on Tuesday, responding to news of the pending federal complaint.Border security was a focus of Donald Trump’s presidency and remains a key issue for Republican politicians.The complaint was applauded by US representative Raúl Grijalva, a Democrat who represents southern Arizona. He called the project an “illegal junkyard border wall”.Russ McSpadden, south-west conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the federal complaint “should be the beginning of the end of Doug Ducey’s lawless assault on protected national forestlands and endangered wildlife”.The Associated Press contributed reportingTopicsArizonaUS politicsUS-Mexico bordernewsReuse this content More

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      In Congress, Party Switching Cuts Both Ways

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      If history is any guide, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, the latest lawmaker to change her stripes, faces an uncertain future.WASHINGTON — When Phil Gramm, a conservative House member from Texas, left the Democratic Party in 1983, he immediately quit Congress and forced a special election that he won as a newly minted Republican six weeks later. He called his leave-and-start-from-scratch approach the “only honorable course of action,” since voters had elected him as a Democrat.Arlen Specter, a longtime centrist Republican senator from Pennsylvania, was blunt when he suddenly became a Democrat after backing some Obama administration initiatives in 2009. He said he had consulted his political strategist and been informed that polls showed he could not win a Republican primary; hence, he needed to switch parties if he was to have any hope of political survival. He lost anyway, suffering defeat in a Democratic primary the next year.Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who left the Democratic Party and proclaimed herself an independent last week, was less transparent about her move. She dismissed any suggestion that she had made it to better position herself for a 2024 re-election bid after angering Arizona Democrats by regularly bucking her party, even though poll numbers in the state clearly indicate that she would have a difficult time winning a Democratic primary.Though she asked Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, to allow her to keep her committee slots on the Democratic side of the aisle, she refused to say she would align with Democrats, like two other Senate independents, Senators Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont. She didn’t even want Democrats declaring that they still retained their new 51-to-49 majority, though that is clearly the result for Senate organizational purposes at the moment.Mr. Schumer on Tuesday even dared to utter those numbers.“Senator Sinema asked me to keep her committees and that keeps the Senate committees functioning in a 51-49 vein, and that’s what we want to do,” he said.The switch was another drama-filled episode featuring the enigmatic first-term senator. Democrats are hoping that once the immediate moment passes, Ms. Sinema will continue to work with them for the next two years as she has on numerous major pieces of legislation over the past two years, and that little will change except the letter after her name signifying her partisan affiliation.“She’s always been independent,” said Senator Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat who has teamed up with Ms. Sinema in multiple bipartisan “gangs” to strike deals on issues such as gun control and infrastructure. “She’s been an effective legislator, and I will continue working with her.”A New U.S. Congress Takes ShapeFollowing the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats maintained control of the Senate while Republicans flipped the House.Divided Government: What does a split Congress mean for the next two years? Most likely a return to gridlock that could lead to government shutdowns and economic turmoil.Kyrsten Sinema: The Arizona senator said that she would leave the Democratic Party and register as an independent, just days after the Democrats secured an expanded majority in the Senate.A Looming Clash: Congressional leaders have all but abandoned the idea of acting to raise the debt ceiling before Democrats lose control of the House, punting the issue to a new Congress.First Gen Z Congressman: In the weeks after his election, Representative-elect Maxwell Frost of Florida, a Democrat, has learned just how different his perspective is from that of his older colleagues.But Democrats are also keeping a wary eye. Any further move away from the party by Ms. Sinema could thrust them back into the 50-50 split they were so thrilled to escape with the re-election of Senator Raphael Warnock in Georgia last week, only to have Ms. Sinema rain on their victory parade days later.Then there is Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, who has his own 2024 re-election difficulties ahead. Mr. Manchin assured reporters this week that he had no plans to join Ms. Sinema in the stripes-changing camp, but also said he could not predict the future — a comment no doubt duly noted by his Democratic colleagues.While Mr. Warner is correct that Ms. Sinema has always been independent, her change of affiliation does offer her some distance from her old party if she wants to emphasize it. Both Republicans and Democrats will be watching to see if that translates into a new approach. She said in interviews, an op-ed and a video statement that she does not intend to operate any differently than she has to date.“I’m going to keep doing exactly what I do, which is just stay focused on the work and ignore all the noise,” she told CNN.But Republicans will no doubt try to capitalize on her new status. For instance, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, used Twitter to urge the new independent to insist that Senate committees be evenly divided instead of the one-seat advantage Democrats are expecting to have beginning in January.“Now Sen Sinema is independent & she correctly states ppl tired of partisanship,” he said in a tweet. “One step she cld take even though she won’t caucus w Republicans is push to keep equal party numbers on committees like this congress. That wld result in more bipartisanship.”Such a move by Ms. Sinema, suffice it to say, would be frowned on by Democrats.Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and minority leader, on Tuesday noted his own strong relationship with Ms. Sinema.“She and I talk all the time,” he said. “She has a lot of friends on our side of the aisle, including me, and I think she’s decided she’s genuinely an independent and is charting her own course, and I wish her well.”In her announcement, Ms. Sinema sought to emphasize her independent streak to diminish any criticism that she had played bait and switch with Arizona voters by running as a Democrat only to abandon the party label four years later when it appeared she might not fare well in a party primary.“When I ran for the U.S. Senate, I pledged to be independent and work with anyone to achieve lasting results,” she said.But she ran as a Democrat, benefiting from millions of dollars in party spending, and some Arizonans clearly feel cheated, judging by the swell of attacks on her emanating from the state. Mr. Schumer and other Democrats say it is way too early to weigh in on whether they would back her or a declared Democrat when 2024 rolls around.Party-switching on Capitol Hill gained steam in the Reagan years as multiple congressional Democrats from the South moved to the Republican side, in line with the sweeping political realignment coursing through the region. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it did not.Representative Bill Grant, a lifelong Democrat from Florida’s conservative Panhandle, was courted by President George H.W. Bush to jump the Democratic ship in 1989 by promising to campaign for him the next year.“This action is not going to change the way I vote,” Mr. Grant promised in an appearance with the president.It did change the way his constituents voted when it came to him. He was defeated by Democrat Pete Peterson the next year after Mr. Peterson, a former Vietnam prisoner of war, accused Mr. Grant of a breach of faith with voters by changing parties midstream.Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who is retiring this year after six terms, became an enthusiastic Republican after the party’s congressional election sweep in 1994, and has survived quite comfortably.“I got the same amount of votes as a Republican as I did as a Democrat,” Mr. Shelby said this week. “I was elected twice as a Democrat and four times as a Republican. I had no compunction about it. I have no regrets.”Ms. Sinema’s political fate is yet to be determined. Democrats just hope she sticks with them in the near future.“I’m sure it was an important and maybe difficult decision for her to make personally,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat. “I am going to work with Kyrsten in her capacity as long as she’s working toward the same goals that I share.” More

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      Kyrsten Sinema Brings Bad Tidings for Democrats in 2024

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      Arizona was on the cusp of seating a Democratic governor alongside two Democratic senators for the first time since 1951 when Senator Kyrsten Sinema abruptly announced last week she is leaving the Democratic Party to become an independent.The move was met with harsh criticism from the left, which saw it as another in a series of self-aggrandizing acts that risk sacrificing the Democratic Party’s power and President Biden’s legislative agenda for her personal benefit.Polls make it clear that Ms. Sinema is reviled by a large segment of her now-former party. In a recent Civiqs poll of likely voters, she was at a meager 7 percent approval among Arizona Democrats. Her switch to declare herself an independent may seem like a desperate act to hold on to the Senate seat she won in 2018 by fewer than three percentage points.It may be that. But for Democrats looking ahead to 2024, her move compounds the difficulties of what is promising to be a brutal Senate map and suggests some hard truths about the party’s chances in Arizona and places like it.The Donald Trump era may have given Democrats in Arizona a bit of a blue mirage. They were very successful in the midterms: Senator Mark Kelly won re-election, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs will be the new governor, and Adrian Fontes will become the secretary of state.But it seems that the Democrats’ success is not simply the result of permanent shifts in Arizona’s demographics. Before Mr. Trump’s 2020 defeat, Arizona voted for five consecutive Republican presidential candidates and, before Ms. Sinema’s win in 2018, had not elected a single Democratic senator since 1976. Arizona’s electorate has certainly grown, urbanized and diversified, but registration percentages haven’t changed much since 2012. Today, 35 percent of Arizona registered voters are registered Republicans; 34 percent are Independents; and 31 percent are Democrats.Democrats’ recent victories were presaged by overtly moderate Democratic candidates running against opponents endorsed by Mr. Trump. Ms. Sinema’s path to the Senate was buoyed by her opponent’s irreparably damaging association with Mr. Trump.In announcing her departure from the Democratic Party, Ms. Sinema argued that representing Arizona as an independent will “provide a place of belonging for many folks across the state and the country who also are tired of the partisanship.” She is not wrong on that point: Over a quarter of Americans say they dislike both parties according to Pew Research Center. Only 6 percent said so in 1994.For independent voters, it is disdain for partisanship — not moderate ideology — that drives most of them to buck the party label. A vast majority of independents, 75 to 90 percent, have no trouble identifying their preferred party, and they nearly always vote for it. It is the rancor and incivility associated with partisanship that dissuades independents from publicly showing their true colors.Independent voters are hardly a uniform voting bloc: Generally, they just about evenly divide between those who hold liberal views and usually vote for Democrats and those who are conservative and usually vote for Republicans.The bad news for Ms. Sinema — and perhaps for Democrats — is that independent candidates rarely succeed. Without a sizable Republican or Democratic base, an independent will struggle to cobble together ideologically incompatible voters who are bonded primarily by their reluctance to publicly identify with the party they secretly support.This is one area where the Trump effect has come into play. In recent Arizona elections, the state’s independents have shown that they appear to be more favorable to Democrats than Republicans. In the state’s Senate race, exit polls suggest that independents backed Mr. Kelly over his Trump-endorsed opponent, Blake Masters, by 16 percentage points, and self-identified moderates favored Mr. Kelly by 30 percentage points. Ms. Hobbs similarly won the independent vote against her Trump-endorsed opponent, Kari Lake, by seven percentage points, and she won self-identified moderates by 20 percentage points.Indeed, recent survey data I collected across Arizona shows that independents look much more like Democrats than Republicans when it comes to their disdain for Mr. Trump. Even among those Arizona independents who say they lean toward the Republican Party, 40 percent see the state G.O.P. as “too conservative.”Given repeated Republican losses, it seems that Arizona Republicans — and independents, who have a large say in Arizona’s electoral outcomes — have rejected Mr. Trump as well as his chosen nominees, and this has helped usher in a wave of Democratic candidates, Ms. Sinema included.When a state’s status shifts to swing, it is often attributed to demographic change in the electorate. But in Arizona, that is not likely the case, or at least that isn’t the full story. And this is why the outlook for Democrats might be troubling.Sure, Arizona boasts high population growth in urban areas like Maricopa County. But voter data does not support theories that a transforming electorate is shifting electoral tides. Over time, voter registration percentages have shown Republicans declining slightly but maintaining their numerical advantage.That shift is probably better attributed to changes in the politicians who are running rather than to the people deciding whether to vote for them.If she had remained a Democrat, Ms. Sinema would not be the first politician who faced harsh criticism for frustrating her party, and many of them prevailed in subsequent elections. Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska are examples.If nothing changes and Ms. Sinema runs for re-election, her former party will be left in a pickle. She probably can’t win as an independent, especially if her popularity doesn’t improve quickly, but a Democrat (like Representative Ruben Gallego, who has hinted at a Senate bid) running against Ms. Sinema and a Republican is also unlikely to win.So for Democrats, Ms. Sinema has made a daunting Senate map in 2024 even worse. There will be 33 Senate seats up for re-election, and Democrats will defend 23 (including Ms. Sinema’s). Three of those seats are in states that Mr. Trump won by at least eight percentage points in 2020: Montana, Ohio and West Virginia.When Republicans in Arizona and other states leave Mr. Trump behind, Democrats will lose this electorally useful foil. States where Democrats enjoyed upset victories against MAGA Republicans might see some of their gains rolled back, especially if the Republican Party rejects Mr. Trump and elevates candidates who better represent more of the party’s voter base.Ms. Sinema’s move has just added another degree of difficulty to a formidable Senate puzzle for Democrats in 2024 — and beyond.Samara Klar is a political scientist at the University of Arizona and an author of “Independent Politics: How Disdain for Parties Leads to Political Inaction.”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: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Two Groups Quietly Spent $32 Million Rallying Voters Behind Voting Rights

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      The money largely went to state and local organizations that often focused on turning out young voters and people of color, including with messages about threats to freedom and democracy.Two organizations quietly spent $32 million in last month’s midterm elections on organizing meant to combat election denialism and promote voting access, according to a progressive strategist behind the effort.The Pro-Democracy Center and the Pro-Democracy Campaign put that money into 126 organizations across 16 states, with a particular focus on Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan, as well as toward a range of national organizations, some of them left-leaning. The effort also connected donors with key organizations, resulting in an additional $16 million investment, said David Donnelly, the initiative’s lead strategist. The Pro-Democracy Center and the Pro-Democracy Campaign did not directly spend on specific candidates or buy advertising, he said. The initiative did, however, engage around retention of Supreme Court justices in Arizona, he said.Mr. Donnelly said the groups invested in organizations that focused in particular on turning out young voters and people of color, two key parts of the Democratic coalition, and often recommended messages about threats to freedom and democracy.“If you roll back the clock to the beginning of this year, there was a lot of ink and pixels spilled about the possibility of democratic collapse, and all that didn’t happen,” Mr. Donnelly said. A number of Republicans who made names for themselves as election deniers lost high-profile races. “It’s not the full story, but you can’t understand why without lifting up some of the groups that were doing organizing and mobilizing in communities of color and among young people.”Mr. Donnelly would not name the donors behind the groups, which as nonprofits are not required to disclose their contributors. Politico first reported on the efforts from Pro-Democracy Center and Pro-Democracy Campaign on Monday.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

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      Where Are Midterm Recounts Happening?

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      Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesIn Arizona’s attorney general race, the Republican candidate, Abraham Hamadeh, trails his Democratic opponent, Kris Mayes, by 511 votes, a small enough margin that a recount must happen under state law. The recount in that race, and a few other Arizona contests, is likely to be completed by the end of December. More

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      Arizona governor builds border wall of shipping crates in final days of office

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      Arizona governor builds border wall of shipping crates in final days of office Critics say Republican Doug Ducey’s scheme is illegal because makeshift barrier is being erected on tribal and federal landA makeshift new barrier built with shipping containers is being illegally erected along part of the US-Mexico border by Arizona’s Republican governor – before he has to hand over the keys of his office to his Democratic successor in January.Doug Ducey is driving a project that is placing double-stacked old shipping containers through several miles of national forest, attempting to fill gaps in Donald Trump’s intermittent border fencing.The rusting hulks, topped with razor wire and with bits of metal jammed into gaps, stretch for more than three miles through Coronado national forest land, south of Tucson, and the governor has announced plans to extend that up to 10 miles, at a cost of $95m (£78m).Ducey’s shipping container wall on the AZ-MX border is worse than I imagined. I went down yesterday to see it myself for a Border Chronicle story. Imagine 10 miles of this through a national wildlife forest. This is happening right now👇👇 pic.twitter.com/mqCjVo59iA— Melissa del Bosque (@MelissaLaLinea) November 30, 2022
      The area, with mountain ranges rising abruptly from the desert and a diverse environment of plants and animals, is federal land maintained by the US Forest Service.Ducey had first experimented with a smattering of shipping containers in August in Yuma, in the south-west corner of the state, bordering California and Mexico, aiming to stop migrants and asylum seekers.Since Donald Trump implemented the Title 42 rule in 2020 when he was president, which closed ports of entry to most seeking asylum in the US, people have sought gaps in barriers elsewhere in order to request asylum from border agents. The rule appears still to be on track to end later this month although a long legal battle is taking place.Ducey issued an executive order in August to erect old shipping containers near Yuma, and 11 days later workers had installed 130 of what he described as “22ft-high, double stacked, state-owned, 8,800lb, 9x40ft containers, linked together and welded shut”.In October, Ducey filed a lawsuit in which he claimed that the federal land along the border known as the Roosevelt Reservation actually belongs to the state, not the US government, and that Arizona has the constitutional right to protect itself against what he termed an invasion, citing “countless migrants” resulting in “a mix of drug, crime and humanitarian issues”.US attorneys issued a withering response, refuting the claims.The US Bureau of Reclamation and the Cocopah tribal nation said that Ducey was violating federal law by placing the containers on federal and tribal land there. In a letter, the bureau demanded that the state remove the containers. But the state has not, and has since been emboldened to embark on the larger project now proceeding apace more than 300 miles to the east.The Cochise county sheriff, Mark Dannels, supports the new series of shipping containers being placed in his county, hoping “it will deter crime and stop criminal behavior”.But as the line of metal boxes snakes west towards adjacent Santa Cruz county, the sheriff there, David Hathaway, told the Nogales International newspaper that if anyone tries to put the containers in his jurisdiction they will be arrested for illegal dumping.Dinah Bear, an attorney and former general counsel for the council on environmental quality within the executive office of the White House said Ducey’s lawsuit was “shockingly bad” and “frivolous”.“There’s just no question that this is federal property,” she added, as well as being public land, meaning “there’s no legal difference between the land they’re putting the shipping containers on and Grand Canyon national park.”To block the project, she said US Forest Service agents “would definitely want a court order from a judge … They’re not going to go down to the border and have a shootout with state police or arrest the governor at the [state] capitol.”Federal judge David Campbell, based in Phoenix, is presiding over the case, but no hearing has been called yet.“The clock is ticking,” Bear said, with courts backed up and the holidays approaching.The incoming Arizona governor, Democrat Katie Hobbs, who will assume office on 2 January after beating Republican candidate Kari Lake in the midterm elections, has said she will remove the containers.Bear predicts Campbell will order the removal.But before that happens, they are being laid down by a contractor called AshBritt, a Florida-based disaster remediation firm. A local media investigation found that Ducey’s announced $6m cost for the Yuma barriers had actually cost $13m.Daily protests by locals alarmed at the project have slowed what was breakneck-speed installation, but not managed to halt it.Meanwhile, Mark Ruggiero, the former Sierra Vista district ranger for the US Forest Service in Cochise county, said the shipping containers are a hazard that jeopardize a binational firefighting agreement with Mexico.“I was shocked to see this barrier going in,” he said. “It’s an illegal action on public land.”As a barrier for humans, the double-stacked boxes are not much of an obstacle, but they are an existential threat to endangered migratory species, especially jaguars and ocelots, as well as being an eyesore. Emily Burns, program director for Sky Island Alliance, a binational conservation nonprofit that tracks wildlife in the Coronado national forest said: “There was no environmental review or planning or mitigation that was done.”The Center for Biological Diversity was allowed to join the federal government as a defendant in Ducey’s lawsuit and has slammed the barrier as damaging and a political stunt.Meanwhile, Burns noted that her organization has 70 wildlife cameras in this stretch of border and they rarely see migrants crossing there.TopicsArizonaUS-Mexico borderUS immigrationRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      The Election Is Over. Now Comes the Battle for Voting Rights in 2024

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      Voters rebuffed the most aggressive efforts to weaken democracy in the midterms. But battles over election districts and ballot restrictions that could prove crucial in 2024 have already resumed.WASHINGTON — With Raphael Warnock’s victory in the Georgia Senate race on Tuesday, the major midterm elections are over.But the battles over voting rules, restrictions and political boundaries that will help determine who wins the next ones barely paused for ballot-counting before resuming in force.Indeed, the day after Mr. Warnock’s election, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a potentially seismic case brought by Republicans in North Carolina that could give state legislatures significantly expanded power over election laws — and virtually unlimited authority to draw gerrymandered maps.The landscape is familiar. Democrats who took control of state legislatures in Michigan and Minnesota are preparing legislation to to broaden voting access, including measures in Michigan that would mandate absentee ballot drop boxes.Republicans, who control a majority of legislatures across the country, are proposing new restrictive legislation they say would combat election fraud, though it remains exceedingly rare. And though both parties have benefited from gerrymanders, Republicans are far more likely to make it a centerpiece of their electoral strategy.In the Ohio Legislature, Republicans are poised to pass bills that would stiffen the ID requirement for casting a ballot, limit the use of drop boxes and end automatic mailings of absentee-ballot applications to voters.In North Carolina, a Republican sweep of state Supreme Court races last month makes it likely that the State Legislature will be able to gerrymander existing nonpartisan maps of congressional and legislative districts before the 2024 elections.In Wisconsin, both parties are girding for an April election that will determine partisan control of the state’s already politicized Supreme Court — and either open or shut the door on a legal challenge to an impregnable Republican gerrymander of the State Legislature.Some of that jockeying for power always goes on beneath the radar of most voters. But in the wake of more direct attacks on democracy by insurrectionists at the U.S. Capitol and by election deniers in last month’s vote, the divergent legislative priorities of the two parties — and particularly Republican reliance on restrictive voting measures and supercharged gerrymanders — reflect what has become a ceaseless tug of war over the rules of American politics and governance.“It’s not the same thing as throwing out the vote count and putting in the wrong count,” said Wendy Weiser, who directs the Democracy Program at the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. “But it’s a form of unfair gaming of the system to gain electoral advantage, in a way that shuts out legitimate voters.”The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More