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      Oath Keepers Leader Found Guilty of Seditious Conspiracy in Jan. 6 Case

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      A jury in federal court in Washington convicted Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right militia, and one of his subordinates for a plot to keep Donald Trump in power.Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, was convicted on Tuesday along with one of his subordinates of seditious conspiracy as a jury found them guilty of seeking to keep former President Donald J. Trump in power through an extensive plot that started after the 2020 election and culminated in the mob attack on the Capitol.The jury in Federal District Court in Washington found three other defendants in the case not guilty of sedition and acquitted Mr. Rhodes of two separate conspiracy charges.The split verdicts, coming after three days of deliberations, were a landmark — if not total — victory for the Justice Department, which poured enormous effort into prosecuting Mr. Rhodes and his four co-defendants.The sedition convictions marked the first time in nearly 20 trials related to the Capitol attack that a jury had decided that the violence that erupted on Jan. 6, 2021, was the product of an organized conspiracy.Seditious conspiracy is the most serious charge brought so far in any of the 900 criminal cases stemming from the vast investigation of the Capitol attack, an inquiry that could still result in scores, if not hundreds, of additional arrests. Mr. Rhodes, 57, was also found guilty of obstructing the certification of the election during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 and of destroying evidence in the case. On those three counts, he faces a maximum of 60 years in prison.Nearly two years after the assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters, the events of Jan. 6 and what led up to them remain at the center of American politics and the subject of multiple investigations, including an inquiry by the Justice Department into any criminal culpability that Mr. Trump and some of his allies might face and an exhaustive account being assembled by a House select committee.The conviction of Mr. Rhodes underscored the seriousness and intensity of the effort by pro-Trump forces to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election, and was the highest-profile legal reckoning yet from a case related to Jan. 6.Understand the Events on Jan. 6Timeline: On Jan. 6, 2021, 64 days after Election Day 2020, a mob of supporters of President Donald J. Trump raided the Capitol. Here is a close look at how the attack unfolded.A Day of Rage: Using thousands of videos and police radio communications, a Times investigation reconstructed in detail what happened — and why.Lost Lives: A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died in connection with the attack.Jan. 6 Attendees: To many of those who attended the Trump rally but never breached the Capitol, that date wasn’t a dark day for the nation. It was a new start.But it is not clear how much effect it might have on broader public perceptions that have hardened, largely along partisan lines, over the past two years. Mr. Trump, written off as a political force in the days after the attack, is again a candidate for president, embraced by a substantial portion of his party as he continues to promote the lie that the election was stolen from him.Mr. Rhodes was convicted of sedition along with Kelly Meggs, who ran the Florida chapter of the Oath Keepers at the time the Capitol was stormed. Three other defendants who played lesser roles in the planning for Jan. 6 — Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins and Thomas Caldwell — were found not guilty of sedition.Mr. Rhodes was also acquitted of two different conspiracy charges: one that accused him of plotting to disrupt the election certification in advance of Jan. 6 and the other of planning to stop members of Congress from discharging their duties that day.Mr. Meggs, who led a group of Oath Keepers into the Capitol, and Ms. Watkins, who went in separately and was recorded on a digital walkie-talkie app, were both convicted of conspiracy to stop the election certification. Along with Mr. Harrelson, they were also found guilty of the count of conspiracy to interfere with members of Congress during the attack. All five were convicted of obstructing an official proceeding and destroying evidence in the case.Taken as a whole, the verdicts suggested that the jury rejected the centerpiece of Mr. Rhodes’s defense: that he had no concrete plan on Jan. 6 to disrupt the transfer of presidential power and to keep Joseph R. Biden Jr. from entering the White House.But the jury also made the confusing decision to acquit Mr. Rhodes of planning in advance to disrupt the certification of the election yet convict him of actually disrupting the certification process. That suggested that the jurors may have believed that the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 erupted more or less spontaneously, as Mr. Rhodes has claimed.“The government did a good job — they took us to task,” said James Lee Bright, one of Mr. Rhodes’s lawyers. Mr. Bright added that he intended to appeal the convictions. No sentencing date was set.In a statement on Tuesday night, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland noted the convictions against all five defendants.“The Justice Department is committed to holding accountable those criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy on Jan. 6, 2021,” he said.A charge that traces back to efforts to protect the federal government against Southern rebels during the Civil War, seditious conspiracy has been used over the years against a wide array of defendants — among them, far-right militias, radical trade unions and Puerto Rican nationalists. The last successful sedition prosecution was in 1995 when a group of Islamic militants was found guilty of plotting to bomb several New York City landmarks.The Oath Keepers sedition trial began in Federal District Court in Washington in early October. In his opening statement, Jeffrey S. Nestler, one of the lead prosecutors, told the jury that in the weeks after Mr. Biden won the election, Mr. Rhodes and his subordinates “concocted a plan for an armed rebellion to shatter a bedrock of American democracy”: the peaceful transfer of presidential power.Mr. Nestler also closed the government’s case last week, declaring that the Oath Keepers had plotted against Mr. Biden, ignoring both the law and the will of the voters, because they hated the results of the election.“They claimed to be saving the Republic,” he said, “but they fractured it instead.”In between those remarks, prosecutors showed the jury hundreds of encrypted text messages swapped by Oath Keepers members, demonstrating that Mr. Rhodes and some of his followers were in thrall to outlandish fears that Chinese agents had infiltrated the United States government and that Mr. Biden — a “puppet” of the Chinese Communist Party — might cede control of the country to the United Nations.The messages also showed that Mr. Rhodes was obsessed with the leftist movement known as antifa, which he believed was in league with Mr. Biden’s incoming administration. At one point during the trial, Mr. Rhodes, who took the stand in his own defense, told the jury he was convinced that antifa activists would storm the White House, overpower the Secret Service and forcibly drag Mr. Trump from the building if he failed to admit his defeat to Mr. Biden.Prosecutors sought to demonstrate how Mr. Rhodes, a former Army paratrooper with a law degree from Yale, became increasingly panicked as the election moved toward its final certification at a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6. Under his direction, the Oath Keepers — whose members are largely former law enforcement officers and military veterans — took part in two “Stop the Steal” rallies in Washington, providing event security and serving as bodyguards for pro-Trump dignitaries.Throughout the postelection period, the jury was told, Mr. Rhodes was desperate to get in touch with Mr. Trump and persuade him to take extraordinary measures to maintain power. In December 2020, he posted two open letters to Mr. Trump on his website, begging the president to seize data from voting machines across the country that would purportedly prove the election had been rigged.In the letters, Mr. Rhodes also urged Mr. Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, a more than two centuries-old law that he believed would give the president the power to call up militias like his own to suppress the “coup” — purportedly led by Mr. Biden and Kamala Harris, the incoming vice president — that was seeking to unseat him.“If you fail to act while you are still in office,” Mr. Rhodes told Mr. Trump, “we the people will have to fight a bloody war against these two illegitimate Chinese puppets.”As part of the plot, prosecutors maintained, Mr. Rhodes placed a “quick reaction force” of heavily armed Oath Keepers at a Comfort Inn in Arlington County, Va., ready to rush their weapons into Washington if their compatriots at the Capitol needed them. Mr. Caldwell, a former Navy officer, tried at one point to secure a boat to ferry the guns across the Potomac River, concerned that streets in the city might be blocked.Mr. Rhodes tried to persuade the jury during his testimony that he had not been involved in setting up the “quick reaction force.” But he also argued that if Mr. Trump had invoked the Insurrection Act, it would have given the Oath Keepers the legal standing as a militia to use force of arms to support the president.On Jan. 6 itself, Mr. Rhodes remained outside the Capitol, standing in the crowd like “a general surveying his troops on the battlefield,” Mr. Nestler said during the trial. While prosecutors acknowledged that he never entered the building, they claimed he was in touch with some of the Oath Keepers who did go in just minutes before they breached the Capitol’s east side.Even with the convictions, the government is continuing to prosecute several other Oath Keepers, including four members of the group who are scheduled to go on trial on seditious conspiracy charges on Monday. A second group of Oath Keepers is facing lesser conspiracy charges at a trial now set for next year, and Kellye SoRelle, Mr. Rhodes’s onetime lawyer and girlfriend, has been charged in a separate criminal case. More

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      Biden Helped Democrats Avert a ’22 Disaster. What About ’24?

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      A stronger-than-expected midterm showing has quieted the party’s public hand-wringing about a re-election campaign for President Biden. But it hasn’t put those worries to rest.Expecting a cataclysmic midterm election, many Democrats had been bracing for an end-of-year reckoning with whether President Biden, who once declared himself a “bridge” to a new generation, should give way to a new 2024 standard-bearer.But the stronger-than-expected Democratic showing has taken the pressure off.And Donald J. Trump’s decision to announce a run for president again, and the Republican backlash against him, have abruptly quieted Democrats’ public expressions of anxiety over Mr. Biden’s poor approval ratings, while reminding them of Mr. Biden’s past success over Mr. Trump.Now, as Mr. Biden mulls a decision over whether to seek a second term, interviews with more than two dozen Democratic elected officials and strategists suggest that, whatever misgivings some Democrats may harbor about another Biden candidacy, his party is more inclined for now to defer to him than to try to force a frontal clash with a sitting president.In recent days, officials ranging from Representative Henry Cuellar, one of the most conservative House Democrats, to Representative Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, have said they would support another Biden bid.In private conversations, younger Democratic operatives have shifted from discussing potential job opportunities in a competitive presidential primary to gaming out what a Biden re-election campaign might look like. And a variety of lawmakers have lauded Mr. Biden for the party’s history-defying midterm performance, crediting him with the major legislative accomplishments they were able to run on and with pressing a message that cast Republican candidates as extremists who threatened democracy.Supporters at a Nov. 1 speech by Mr. Biden in Miami Gardens, Fla. Some Democrats say that challenges facing the president and his party should not be glossed over just because of the election results.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesAlready, Mr. Biden appears to be improving Democrats’ confidence in him: A recent USA Today/Ipsos poll found that 71 percent of Democrats surveyed believe he could win in 2024, up from 60 percent who said the same in August, though they were evenly divided on whether he should be the 2024 nominee.The concerns about Mr. Biden’s overall weak standing in public opinion polls — which was a burden for many Democratic candidates — have not dissipated entirely. And some Democrats say that the challenges confronting the 80-year-old president and his party should not be glossed over in the party’s relief over the outcome of the elections.Stanley B. Greenberg, the veteran Democratic pollster, pointed to a postelection survey that highlighted Democratic vulnerabilities. The poll, conducted by the organization Mr. Greenberg helped found, warned of “the continuing risk of a Republican challenge centered on borders and crime.” It determined that “Trump may have been weakened in this election, but another leader with that message” poses “an accelerated risk.”In an interview, Mr. Greenberg said he came away from the survey “believing Democrats have huge issues to address.” While “President Biden has done remarkable things,” he added, “I think we need a new voice to address huge challenges but also huge opportunities.”The Biden PresidencyHere’s where the president stands after the midterm elections.Beating the Odds: President Biden had the best midterms of any president in 20 years, but he still faces the sobering reality of a Republican-controlled House.2024 Questions: Mr. Biden feels buoyant after the better-than-expected midterms, but as he turns 80, he confronts a decision on whether to run again that has some Democrats uncomfortable.The ‘Trump Project’: With Donald J. Trump’s announcement that he is officially running for president again, Mr. Biden and his advisers are planning to go on the offensive.Legislative Agenda: The Times analyzed every detail of Mr. Biden’s major legislative victories and his foiled ambitions. Here’s what we found.Surveys of voters leaving the polls found that two-thirds, including nearly a third of Democrats, said they did not want Mr. Biden to run for president again — though Mr. Biden’s allies have noted those numbers are not predictive of how voters would respond when presented with a choice between the president and a Republican candidate. At a postelection news conference, Mr. Biden insisted that those poll ratings would not affect his decision. He has said that he intends to run but planned to discuss the race with his family over the holidays and could announce a decision early next year.David Axelrod, who served as chief strategist for President Barack Obama, said the midterm elections had given Mr. Biden “a little giddyup in his step.” As for a run for a second term, Mr. Axelrod said, “If he were 60 and not 80, there would be absolutely no doubt.”Democrats eager for Mr. Biden to make way for a new cohort of presidential aspirants pointed to the decision by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 82, to step down as the House Democratic leader.Former President Donald J. Trump announced he would seek the presidency again in 2024. Jonathan Ernst/ReutersShelia Huggins of North Carolina, a member of the Democratic National Committee, said the country was “looking at what the future looks like, especially with the speaker deciding that now is the time for her to step away and to give other people an opportunity.”Ms. Huggins, who has been open about her reservations regarding Mr. Biden, praised the president’s record but added, “I just still have some concerns about him running again. Part of it does have to do with his age.”Quinton Lucas, the mayor of Kansas City, Mo., said he wanted Mr. Biden to run again and was unbothered by his age. But he also said that the next Democratic nominee should be ready to run against candidates other than Mr. Trump, who is 76, as Republicans weigh an array of younger potential contenders.“The party needs to be prepared for a Ron DeSantis, next-generation Republican,” Mr. Lucas said. “President Biden, in his record of experience, and really his more recent successes, is able to handle that. But I think that’s what the American people will be looking at.”Republicans have long made issues of Mr. Biden’s age and verbal missteps, and polls show that plenty of Democrats, too, have reservations about Mr. Biden’s age.“Most people in this country don’t know many 80-year-olds that can run the entire country,” said Tyler Jones, a Democratic strategist in South Carolina. “That’s not to say that they don’t exist, and it’s not to say that he can’t do it, but it is a very rare thing. And so the burden, unlike most presidents, the burden is on Biden to show the country that he can not just win in ’24, but lead for the next four years.”Mr. Jones said it would be “foolish and counterproductive” not to have a serious conversation in the party about the strengths and weaknesses of a Biden candidacy.But there is no doubt that Mr. Biden would have a significant edge should he run again, the kind of advantage that a man who sought the presidency for decades might resist giving up. It is rare for an incumbent president to lose re-election — or, in recent years, to face a major primary threat — and the Democratic National Committee has already laid groundwork to support Mr. Biden in 2024, preparing to take on a variety of Republican candidates. Mr. Biden’s political advisers have also been ramping up outreach to his early backers, and his team has scheduled a gathering for major supporters and key party figures to discuss the administration’s agenda on Dec. 15 at the White House.Asked about concerns some Americans have about Mr. Biden’s age, Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said Mr. Biden had the “most successful legislative record of any president since Lyndon Johnson,” citing achievements on infrastructure and gun policy. He extolled Mr. Biden’s record on the world stage and his political strengths.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, at a rally in Hialeah, is widely seen as the strongest Republican alternative to Mr. Trump so far. Scott McIntyre for The New York Times“The same coalition President Biden built to expand the map for Democrats in 2020 powered our historic midterm wins, including unprecedented youth turnout,” Mr. Bates said. “The president galvanized independent voters with a message widely adopted across the party, highlighting the differences between his values and ultra-MAGA Republicans’ agenda.”Regardless of the next Republican nominee’s age, some Democrats suggest the G.O.P. is vulnerable to the same challenges that drove major defeats this year.“Republicans failed in a year when they should have been hugely successful,” said Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois. “People have rejected the anti-little ‘d’ democratic values that they have run on.”Others argue that it would be possible to support Mr. Biden if he runs while also backing generational change in the party.Jane Kleeb, the chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, stressed her hope that, overall, “batons are beginning to be passed.” But she also said she would support another Biden campaign.“It doesn’t have to be all or nothing,” she said.While a left-leaning advocacy group has already launched a “Don’t Run Joe” campaign to urge Mr. Biden to step aside, few Democrats expect, at this point, that he would draw a major primary challenge. But if he does not run, some Democrats think the size of the field could resemble that of 2020, which swelled to nearly 30 candidates.Some of them, including Vice President Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, are often mentioned in political circles as potential contenders if Mr. Biden does not run. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, 81, who maintains a devoted following on the left, has not ruled out a bid if Mr. Biden opts out. Several of them campaigned for candidates in battleground states this year, fostering relationships that could prove useful in the future.California Gov. Gavin Newsom touring the U.S. Capitol in July.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesThere is also a crop of Democratic governors, many of whom have stressed their support for Mr. Biden, who have raised their national profiles this year, including Mr. Pritzker, Gavin Newsom of California and Phil Murphy of New Jersey, the chairman of the National Governors Association. Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina has also attracted attention as chairman of the Democratic Governors Association.Other Democratic governors, including Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Jared Polis of Colorado, earned national notice as they won re-election by commanding margins.“There are some great prospects who are considering running in the next election in which there is not an incumbent,” said Mr. Pritzker, a longtime Democratic donor who has supported many Democratic governors. “I think the president is running for re-election. So I think you’ll see Democrats supporting the president.”Mr. Newsom recently made precisely that commitment to the White House, Politico reported, and said that he would not run even if Mr. Biden did not seek a second term.Mr. Biden at a rally in Philadelphia before the elections. Several Democratic governors have raised their profiles recently while also stressing their support for the president.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesMr. Pritzker, for his part, said he intended to support Mr. Biden. He also noted that Chicago was vying to host the 2024 Democratic National Convention and said that he had “every intention of being governor of Illinois for the next four years.”Other Democrats, including Representative Ro Khanna of California, have worked to introduce themselves around the country. And some who won challenging races are already being discussed in “future of the party” conversations, a list that Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia could join if he wins re-election in his runoff next month.“There’s too much talent and too much ambition in our party to think it’s going to be a coronation,” Mr. Jones said of the 2024 presidential election.Still, he added, “Ultimately, they’re waiting to see what the president is going to do.” More

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      What Does the New Congress Mean for Family Policy?

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      Now that the dust has (nearly) settled on the 2022 midterm elections and Republicans are preparing to take control of the House while Democrats will hold onto the Senate, I wanted to check in with some family policy advocates to see what a split Congress might mean for investments in caregiving.To recap: The initial formulation of the Biden administration’s Build Back Better plan offered the prospect of “the most transformative investment in children and caregiving in generations,” including large investments in child care, elder care and expanded child tax credits. Permanently funded federal paid family leave was also on the table.None of that happened in the current Congress, with Democrats narrowly holding both houses, despite the fact that child care and leave are extremely popular. According to a new national online survey of over 1,000 voters from the First Five Years Fund: “65 percent of voters say they are disappointed (45 percent) or even angry (20 percent) that Congress failed to act” on child care this year. “Suburban women are even more dismayed — 71 percent describe themselves as angry or disappointed.”Further, 81 percent of respondents say that their member of Congress should work with the Biden administration to expand affordable child care options; 65 percent of Republicans agree. According to a Morning Consult-Politico poll from about a year ago, paid family and medical leave is even more popular; only 5 percent of registered voters said it should not be available.When I asked some of my readers in the sandwich generation about what would make their lives easier, many of them echoed the sentiments of Liza Clay Yu, who has two kids under 4 and is also caring for several older family members: “I think the most helpful thing we could hope for would be affordable, reliable, high-quality child care.”So do we have any hope that these very necessary care infrastructure policies will move forward now?Let’s remember that we still have a brief period before the 118th Congress takes over in January. Sarah Rittling, the executive director of the First Five Years Fund, said “a lot gets done potentially at the last minute,” and while she doesn’t expect any child care plans as generous as those in the original B.B.B. framework, something could be squeezed in before the end of 2022.There’s also the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (P.W.F.A.), which would require employers to make reasonable accommodations for pregnant and postpartum and nursing workers, which already passed the House with bipartisan support. Reasonable accommodations could include a designated space for pumping breast milk, a chair to sit in for a supermarket cashier or temporary relief from certain workplace duties if they are dangerous, said Dina Bakst, the co-founder and co-president of the advocacy group A Better Balance.The bill’s proponents believe it could pass the Senate, it just needs to be put to a vote. “Leader Schumer should bring P.W.F.A. up immediately,” Bakst said. “Working women have been the backbone of our economy, and we need our leaders to stand up and give pregnant and postpartum workers the respect they deserve.” Bakst is not optimistic that P.W.F.A. would pass the House again under its new Republican leadership. “We’re literally at the end,” she said.Bakst is probably right. Christine Matthews, a pollster who’s worked with Republican clients in the past, pointed me to the Congressional Republican Study Committee Family Policy Agenda, and said “that is broadcasting what they are focused on in terms of family and children policies.” She was not surprised to see that the document listed, as its No. 1 agenda item, the statement: “We support the protection of children from far-left ideologies inside and outside the classroom.”There is child care legislation on that agenda, but it mostly concerns deregulating the industry so that it might become less expensive rather than using federal money to raise pay for care workers. That doesn’t appear to fix one of the most critical child care problems we currently have, which stems from a worker shortage owing to low pay in the industry.Similarly, the current Republican Study Committee agenda doesn’t propose a traditional paid family leave plan like those in many of our peer nations. Rather, it offers suggestions about how workers could transfer overtime pay into more paid days off and allowing states to extend Medicaid coverage for postpartum women to last more than 60 days.Even though things don’t look particularly rosy for family policy at the federal level, there are small wins happening at the state level. Vicki Shabo, a senior fellow for paid leave policy and strategy at New America, a left-leaning think tank, said, of paid family leave, “on balance, I’m excited about the possibility of state progress in places like Maine, where there’s a legislative effort and a potential ballot for 2023.” She also mentioned movement toward paid leave happening in Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and New Mexico.Jocelyn Frye, the president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, who calls herself an “eternal optimist” about policy at the federal level, said she believes the conversation has moved forward in recent years. “The path is complicated, but the urgency is real” and “the support for the policies is real.” Going forward, she added, “the conversation will be less about whether there’s a value in paid leave, and increasingly a conversation about what paid leave should look like.”After a few of these conversations, I had a measure of guarded optimism about the prospects for some of these policies. I think the pandemic changed the national calculus around the issue of care. I believe more people of all political stripes are beginning to realize that many Americans need robust governmental support to continue working while raising our families.Shabo co-wrote a report for New America that found rural Americans — who do not tend to vote for Democrats — are in particular need of paid leave, because they tend to live much farther from care options. “Without access to paid sick time and paid leave for serious family and medical needs, workers are often forced to manage taking care of themselves or loved ones without pay while struggling to make ends meet, potentially jeopardizing their health, job or economic security,” the report notes. Matthews said that in focus groups she conducted among Americans from rural areas, “men were just as interested in paid family leave as the women, because they had much more rigid jobs,” and they could get fired for taking time off to care for a sick relative or wife who was having health issues postpartum.These aren’t women’s issues. They aren’t urban issues and they aren’t mom issues. They are everybody issues. The incoming Congress should remember that.Want More?In October, The Times’s Dana Goldstein reported, “Why You Can’t Find Child Care: 100,000 Workers Are Missing.” The question: “Where did they go?” The answer: “To better-paying jobs stocking shelves, cleaning offices or doing anything that pays more than $15 an hour.” In the clichéd parlance of the internet: The math is not mathing.Another congressional battle is shaping up over expanded child tax credits, which lapsed at the end of 2021, reports The Times’s Jason DeParle: “Some Democrats hope to revive payments to small groups of parents as part of a year-end tax deal, and despite Republicans taking control of the House in January, restoring the full program remains a long-term Democratic goal.”Some anti-abortion advocates are now arguing for more generous family policies. “Fighting state-level battles at the ballot box requires a greater willingness to find compromise and credible commitment to supporting women and children, rather than the legal strategy that, by necessity, took center stage from 1973 until this year,” wrote Patrick T. Brown in America magazine. He made a similar argument in a guest essay for Opinion in May.American rail workers may go on strike over the issue of paid sick leave. According to reporting in October by The Times’s Peter S. Goodman:“More than anything, workers expressed outrage over their lack of paid sick leave. Most spoke on the condition that they not be named, citing the risk of being disciplined or fired.”“‘You had guys that just didn’t want to share that they had Covid because they couldn’t afford to take off,’ said a former member of a traveling maintenance gang for a major railroad based in Alabama. ‘I believe it added to the spread on the road.’”Tiny VictoriesParenting can be a grind. Let’s celebrate the tiny victories.I designated an old pair of sweatpants as my mealtime pants. Since I frequently have a child sitting in my lap at a meal, I don’t care when those pants get covered in food.— Lisa Leininger, Ann Arbor, Mich.If you want a chance to get your Tiny Victory published, find us on Instagram @NYTparenting and use the hashtag #tinyvictories, email us or enter your Tiny Victory at the bottom of this page. Include your full name and location. Tiny Victories may be edited for clarity and style. Your name, location and comments may be published, but your contact information will not. By submitting to us, you agree that you have read, understand and accept the Reader Submission Terms in relation to all of the content and other information you send to us. More

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      The Republican Party and the Scourge of Extremist Violence

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      This editorial is the fourth in a series, The Danger Within, urging readers to understand the danger of extremist violence — and offering possible solutions. Read more about the series in a note from Kathleen Kingsbury, the Times Opinion editor.

      On Oct. 12, 2018, a crowd of Proud Boys arrived at the Metropolitan Republican Club in Manhattan. They had come to the Upper East Side club from around the country for a speech by the group’s founder, Gavin McInnes. It was a high point for the Proud Boys — which until that point had been known best as an all-male right-wing street-fighting group — in their embrace by mainstream politics.The Metropolitan Republican Club is an emblem of the Republican establishment. It was founded in 1902 by supporters of Theodore Roosevelt, and it’s where New York City Republicans such as Fiorello La Guardia and Rudy Giuliani announced their campaigns. But the presidency of Donald Trump whipped a faction of the Metropolitan Republican Club into “an ecstatic frenzy,” said John William Schiffbauer, a Republican consultant who used to work for the state G.O.P. on the second floor of the club.The McInnes invitation was controversial, even before a group of Proud Boys left the building and violently confronted protesters who had gathered outside. Two of the Proud Boys were later convicted of attempted assault and riot and given four years in prison. The judge who sentenced them explained the relatively long prison term: “I know enough about history to know what happened in Europe in the ’30s when political street brawls were allowed to go ahead without any type of check from the criminal justice system,” he said. Seven others pleaded guilty in the episode.And yet Republicans at the New York club have not distanced themselves from the Proud Boys. Soon after the incident, a candidate named Ian Reilly, who, former club members say, had a lead role in planning the speech, won the next club presidency. He did so in part by recruiting followers of far-right figures, such as Milo Yiannopoulos, to pack the club’s ranks at the last minute. A similar group of men repeated the strategy at the New York Young Republicans Club, filling it with far-right members, too.Many moderate Republicans have quit the clubs in disgust. Looking back, Mr. Schiffbauer said, Oct. 12, 2018, was a “proto” Jan. 6.In conflicts like this one —  not all of them played out so publicly — there is a fight underway for the soul of the Republican Party. On one side are Mr. Trump and his followers, including extremist groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. On the other side stand those in the party who remain committed to the principle that politics, even the most contentious politics, must operate within the constraints of peaceful democracy. It is vital that this pro-democracy faction win out over the extremists and push the fringes back to the fringes.It has happened before. The Republican Party successfully drove the paranoid extremists of the John Birch Society out of public life in the 1960s. Party leaders could do so again for the current crop of conspiracy peddlers. Voters may do it for them, as they did in so many races in this year’s midterm elections. But this internal Republican Party struggle is important for reasons far greater than the tally in a win/loss column. A healthy democracy requires both political parties to be fully committed to the rule of law and not to entertain or even tacitly encourage violence or violent speech. A large faction of one party in our country fails that test, and that has consequences for all of us.Extremist violence is the country’s top domestic terrorist threat, according to a three-year investigation by the Democratic staff members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which reported its findings last week. “Over the past two decades, acts of domestic terrorism have dramatically increased,” the committee said in its report. “National security agencies now identify domestic terrorism as the most persistent and lethal terrorist threat to the homeland. This increase in domestic terror attacks has been predominantly perpetrated by white supremacist and anti-government extremist individuals and groups.” While there have been recent episodes of violent left-wing extremism, for the past few years, political violence has come primarily from the right.This year has been marked by several high-profile acts of political violence: an attempted break-in at an F.B.I. office in Ohio; the attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of the speaker of the House; the mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo by a white supremacist; an armed threat against Justice Brett Kavanaugh; a foiled plan to attack a synagogue in New York. More

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      It’s Time, Again, for My Brother Kevin

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      This Thanksgiving, for the first time in years, my brother Kevin and I could both say we’ve had enough of Donald Trump. But that’s not to say he and I agree on much else. Once again, here’s Kevin with his annual view from the starboard side of the Dowd family:The midterms are over, and the results are disappointing. A red wave did not materialize, and the Democrats and President Biden were not made to pay for their actions of the past 22 months.These include the Afghanistan debacle; cashless bail, which favors criminals over victims; 40-year-high inflation; a two-year invasion at our southern border; record gas prices; a dangerous drawdown of the strategic petroleum reserve; the further decline of our education system; the weakening of our military; and the total embrace of wokeness to divide the country. All of that, with the president’s approval rating deep underwater and 81 percent of Americans believing that the country is headed in the wrong direction, should have produced the anticipated Republican surge. But the president emerged from the elections thinking that Democrats’ relatively good fortune was due to his policies, not in spite of them.Republicans must take a large share of the blame. Their messaging was late or nonexistent, letting Democrats persuade swing voters to believe the only issues that mattered were Trump, abortion and the supposed threat to our democracy.Candidates must fit their district. Don’t pick a conservative for a moderate district. Intrusions by Rick Scott and Lindsey Graham on hot-button issues hurt. The Republicans must persuade supporters to vote early, not wait for Election Day. Democrats often amass large leads from early voting, forcing Republicans to come from behind.Donald Trump is radioactive. His insistence on picking candidates based on their loyalty to him cost Republicans control of the Senate in consecutive elections, and his attacks on other Republicans are despicable. Historians will judge his presidency in more generous terms than the media does now, and we will be forever in his debt for saving the country and the Supreme Court from Hillary Clinton, but his effectiveness has passed.His announcement that he will run again was greeted with resounding silence from Republicans the next day. Rupert Murdoch stripped Trump of the formidable Fox defenses. Trump’s isolation was made plain at his announcement party, where the only member of Congress in sight was Madison Cawthorn, who lost his own primary.A third Trump run will simply settle old scores with political enemies and the press and ignore the repair work that the G.O.P. needs to be done.The Democrats’ better-than-expected results emboldened Mr. Biden, to the nation’s detriment. He will likely run again (he’d be 82 at his second inauguration) and said after the midterms that he intends to change “nothing.” “The more they know about what we’re doing, the more support there is,” he said, as if his policies were a luscious bœuf bourguignon simmering over the heat of roiling inflation.There are some bright spots. Republicans have won the House and ended the torturous reign of Nancy Pelosi. With that victory come the purse strings, which should put Democratic profligacy on the skids.Republicans’ first order of business should be impeaching the odious Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, who has presided over the disgraceful situation at the border, wearing incompetence like a badge of honor. In just the last fiscal year under his watch, over 2.4 million migrants have been encountered at the border, over 500,000 have evaded capture, and over 850 deaths have occurred.Republican hopes for 2024 must rest with their new superstar, Ron DeSantis, who won almost 60 percent of the vote in his race to be re-elected governor of Florida, paving the way for four new G.O.P. House members. His handling of Hurricane Ian was only his latest feat, building on his popular defense of parental rights in education, his support of the police and his fight against wokeism.The pandemic lockdowns, spurred by teachers’ unions, resulted in a disastrous drop in the nation’s test scores and pulled back the curtain to what children were being taught. I do not want my elementary school grandchildren hearing about sexuality from a stranger or being labeled an “oppressor.” Stick to math and reading; there is enormous room for improvement.Republicans must now wait two more years for redemption. The Senate field in 2024 has Democrats defending 23 seats. With two more years of Biden’s mistaken policies, rising crime in our major cities, bone-crushing inflation and an impending recession, Republicans should have another golden opportunity. Carpe diem.Here’s hoping for the new year,Kevin.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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      Your Turkey Day Politics Quiz Is Here

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      Now we’ll look forward to the new year, and inspiration from people like Republican Kevin McCarthy, the very-probably-soon-to-be House speaker.You may remember that after the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters, McCarthy told his colleagues, “We cannot just sweep this under the rug.” Then when a special House committee was convened to investigate it, McCarthy … More

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      Trump Was a Gift That Might Not Keep Giving

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      The 2022 midterm election revealed dangerous cracks in the Democratic coalition, despite the fact that the party held the Senate and kept House losses to a minimum.Turnout fell in a number of key Democratic cities. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the city’s “vote count dropped 33 percent from 2020, more than any other county and the statewide average of 22 percent. It’s not just a 2020 comparison: This year saw a stark divergence between Philly turnout and the rest of the state compared to every federal election since at least 2000.”The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners reported that turnout of registered voters in 2022 was 46.1 percent, down from 60.67 percent in the previous 2018 midterm.According to the Board of Elections in Ohio’s Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, turnout fell from 54.5 percent in 2018 to 46.1 percent in 2022.The Gotham Gazette reported that from 2018 to 2022, turnout fell from 41 to 33 percent in New York City.The drop in turnout was disturbing to Democratic strategists, but so too was the change in sentiment of many of the voters who did show up, as support for the party’s nominees continued to erode among Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters. As The Washington Post reported:While more than 8 in 10 Black voters supported Democrats for Congress, their level of support fell between four and seven percentage points during the 2022 midterms compared with 2018, according to network exit polling and the AP VoteCast poll, respectively. Among Latinos, support for Democrats declined between nine and 10 percentage points, with between 56 percent and 60 percent backing Democrats.In the 2018 midterms, 77 percent of Asians voted for House Democratic candidates, according to network exit polls, compared with 58 percent this year — although data from AP VoteCast showed a smaller decline in Asian American support for Democrats from 2018 to 2022: 71 percent to 64 percent.Perhaps most important, the 2022 results revealed that voters did not fully turn against the Republican Party; in fact, Republican House candidates got 3.5 million more votes nationwide than Democrats did, 53.9 million, or 51.7 percent of the two-party vote to the Democrats’ 50.4 million, or 48.3 percent. This represents just over a six-point swing in favor of Republicans this year compared with the 2020 House results.Instead, voters, in the main, turned against the specific candidates endorsed by Donald Trump — candidates who in competitive races backed Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen.“Candidate quality and the toxicity of former President Trump and the MAGA movement hurt certain Republicans where it mattered most,” wrote Charlie Cook, founder of the Cook Political Report, in “GOP Won the Votes, but Not the Seats,” a Nov. 17 analysis. “Some of these ‘nontraditional’ candidates managed to win over the support of G.O.P. primary voters but were unable to appeal to that narrow slice of voters in the middle of the broader November electorate.”Two days after the election, Karl Rove, who was the chief political strategist during the administration of George W. Bush, wrote in The Wall Street Journal:The losers Tuesday were often the candidates who closely followed the former president’s rally-speech scripts — campaigning on the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump by fraud on a massive scale. Of the Republican candidates for secretary of state or attorney general who based their campaign on this falsehood, only one has pulled through, and he was in deep red territory.What then are the odds that Republican voters will still nominate Trump?If they do, Democrats’ chances of keeping the presidency, retaking the House and holding losses in the Senate to a minimum all improve. If the Republicans nominate Ron DeSantis, Glenn Youngkin, Nikki Haley or a dark horse, chances are Democrats will face a tough fight on all fronts in 2024.While there is general agreement that midterm returns are not reliable predictors of the next presidential election, the 2022 results do not uniformly suggest a weakened national Republican Party.“Overall, it’s a strange election,” wrote Sean Trende, senior elections analyst at RealClearPolitics, in “What Happened.” “Had you showed any major analyst these results, along with exit poll findings that Biden would be at 44 percent job approval, no one would have expected this outcome.”Matt Grossmann, a political scientist at Michigan State, noted in an email:The negative Trump effect seems even more clear now. Trump-endorsed candidates fared worse, often on the same ballot with Republicans who separated themselves from Trump and performed better. So I see it as more of the same warning to Republicans: tying themselves to Trump is not a winning general election strategy.Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist, made a similar case by email. “Swing voters in swing states and districts didn’t marry the Democrats; they just dumped the Republicans,” he wrote. “In the post-Dobbs environment, extremism is not a theoretical concern anymore. The two most valuable players of this cycle for the Democrats are Sam Alito and Donald Trump. Democrats should send them each a fruit basket.”“I cannot think of a worse way for the House G.O.P. to introduce themselves as a governing party than braying about investigations into Hunter Biden and Anthony Fauci,” Begala argued. “Their candidates won by promising action on inflation, crime and borders.”To counter the House Republican agenda, Begala wrote,Biden needs to say, “They’re obsessed with my family’s past; I’m obsessed with your family’s future.” At every hearing in which the Republicans are tormenting Hunter Biden or Dr. Fauci, I would have Democratic members ask, “How will this hearing lower the price of gas at the pump? How will it reduce crime? How will it secure the border?”Data pointing to the vulnerability of the Trump-endorsed Republicans running for federal and state offices raises an interesting question: Should Democrats repeat a tactic used successfully this year to lift the chances that Republicans nominate their weakest general election candidate?Last September, Annie Linskey reported in The Washington Post that Democratic candidates and committees “have spent nearly $19 million across eight states in primaries this year amplifying far-right Republican candidates.” A postelection analysis by Ellen Ioanes of Vox concluded that the strategy “appears to have paid off in the midterm. Six Democratic challengers in races where Democratic organizations donated to extremist Republican candidates have so far won their contests.”A number of Democratic strategists and scholars, however, firmly rejected continuing the strategy of purposely investing during the Republican primaries in advertising promoting Trump to Republican voters premised on the calculation that Trump would be the easiest to beat of the most likely Republican nominees in the general election.Both Begala and Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, stood firmly opposed. “We should leave this to Republicans to nominate their own Trump,” Lake said by email.Begala gave three reasons for his opposition. First, “it undermines President Biden’s powerful message that Trump leads a mega-MAGA fanatical fringe that is a clear and present danger to our democracy.” Second, “Trump is still a massive, major force in American politics — especially in the Republican Party. I don’t want Trump anywhere near the White House.” Third, “while I respect the political success of governors like DeSantis, Youngkin, Hogan and Christie, if the Democrats can’t beat them, we don’t deserve the White House.”Daniel Hopkins, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, was adamant in his opposition to the tactic:If Democrats truly worry about the fragility of American democracy, they should not take any steps that would facilitate Trump’s return to office, even if that means a higher chance that they lose the presidency. The slightly higher probability of holding the presidency with Trump as the G.O.P. nominee is surely outweighed by concerns about the threats to democracy should he win election.In an email, Hopkins suggested that Democrats should not view the outcome of the 2022 election as a clear victory:Republicans are likely to have won significantly more votes for their U.S. House candidates than Democrats, but the Democrats benefited from the geographic distribution of their support and the strength of several of their House incumbents in hard-fought races. Turnout in cities like Philadelphia was down relative to elsewhere, and the Democrats have not returned their strong showings with Latino voters from 2012 and 2016. The Republicans’ strength in Florida as well as New York was remarkable — and those are two of the largest states in the country. So absolutely, both parties have outcomes to celebrate and liabilities to watch.One of Hopkins’s political science colleagues, Matthew Levendusky, noted in an email:There is not one narrative to come out of this election. While we usually think about nationalization, in this election, we saw quite significant differences across states. Pennsylvania and Michigan — and even Wisconsin and Arizona — ended up somewhat better than the pre-election polls suggested (in some cases, quite a bit better). From this perspective, Democrats should be happy. But they did much worse than expected in Florida and New York. So which lesson is the right one?Levendusky pointed out that there “seem to be two trends that might be working against Republicans’ recent advantage in translating votes into seats”:If Republicans are doing better (at least in some areas) with Black and Latino voters, that erodes Democrats’ edge in urban districts, but not nearly enough to put those seats into jeopardy. But if they’re also strengthening their support with rural white voters, then that means they’re “wasting” more votes in those districts (shifting heavily rural parts of the country from R+20 to R+30 does not help them win more seats). So shifting demographic and geographic patterns might now make Republicans (just like Democrats) somewhat less well distributed.Sean Trende makes essentially the same point, writing that “Republicans made gains among African Americans, and significant gains among Hispanics” but, with a few exceptions, “these extra votes did not translate to seats. Because the Voting Rights Act requires that these voters be placed into heavily Hispanic/Black districts, which become overwhelmingly Democratic districts, it takes huge shifts in vote performance among these voters to win a district outright, and Republicans aren’t there right now.”Conversely, “Republicans may be suffering a representational penalty in rural areas similar to the penalty Democrats have suffered in urban districts,” Trende wrote, noting thatthe G.O.P. puts up stunning vote percentages in rural America, margins that would not have been deemed possible a decade ago, to say nothing of three decades ago. But this means that a large number of those votes are effectively wasted. As the suburbs become more competitive for Democrats and the cities become somewhat less competitive (but not enough to lose seats) as the minority vote percentage moves, Democrats lose the penalty they’ve suffered for running up overwhelming vote shares in urban districts in the past.Julie Wronski, a political scientist at the University of Mississippi, wrote by email that the election in many respectsmoved in ways predicted by the fundamentals — a Republican shift with a Democratic president who has low approval ratings and governs during poor economic indicators. However, in a few keys states and races Democratic candidates outperformed those indicators. The story seems like Republicans defeated themselves relative to the fundamentals by running low-quality candidates in some key races.For Republicans, Wronski wrote, “appealing to Trump voters without Trump on the ballot may not be a winning strategy. The types of voters who are enthusiastic for Trump do not seem equally enthusiastic for his endorsees.”In other words, it isn’t just that moderates and independents were scared off by extremist candidates; MAGA voters themselves were not fully animated by their own candidates. The candidate they want is Trump, not a Don Bolduc or a Kari Lake or a Mehmet Oz.In addition, Wronski argued:Not all Republicans want or positively respond to Trump’s preferences or persona. Trump endorsees trying to follow this playbook were not as successful as more mainstream Republican candidates. A prime example of this is the difference between the Georgia Senate and governor races.Neither party, in Wronski’s view,should take comfort in their prospects or feel in good shape nationally. The national electorate is polarized with close elections. Ultimately, I believe turnout is going to matter more than persuasion.Chris Tausanovitch, a political scientist at U.C.L.A., downplayed the success of the Democrats:This was in many ways an expected result. The polls and models performed well. The Democrats overperformed expectations slightly, but as others have pointed out, their performance is better in seats than in votes.The parties, Tausanovitch continued, “are very evenly matched and this doesn’t look like it is on a path to change quickly. This election was close. I expect the next presidential election to be close as well.” Trump-endorsed candidates, he acknowledged,did poorly, but this does not mean that a Trump-centric Republican Party cannot win or that Trump himself cannot win. He almost did in 2020. If he is the nominee, I still expect the election to be close in 2024.Republican Party elites are, in turn, increasingly voicing their concerns over the prospect of a 2024 Trump bid. I asked Ed Goeas, a Republican pollster, what would happen if Trump is the nominee, and he replied by email: “Assuming that the economy is out of the ditch by the end of ’23, I would have to believe a Trump nomination would be devastating.”In a clear slap at Trump, Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire — the Republican who handily won re-election while Maggie Hassan, the Democratic senator, beat the Trump protégé Don Bolduc, her Republican challenger — told a Nov. 18 meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition: “I have a great policy for the Republican Party. Let’s stop supporting crazy, unelectable candidates in our primaries and start getting behind winners that can close the deal in November.”At the same gathering, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie declared: “It is time to stop whispering. It is time to stop being afraid of any one person. It is time to stand up for the principles and the beliefs that we have founded this party on and this country on.”For two successive presidential elections, Trump has stymied the most ambitious members of his party, and now this group is becoming increasingly assertive. DeSantis, Youngkin, Haley, Mike Pompeo, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton and Mike Pence are engaged in the process of challenging the current occupant of the throne — making national appearances, courting donors, wooing party loyalists and generating media coverage, all with an eye on drawing blood. The question is, how vulnerable is Trump?Earlier this month, Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Michael Scherer reported in The Washington Post, “In private conversations among donors, operatives and other 2024 presidential hopefuls, a growing number of Republicans are trying to seize what they believe may be their best opportunity to sideline Trump and usher in a new generation of party leaders.”Republicans might be playing with fire.Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, told The Washington Post that there are now three key constituencies in the Republican electorate:A small group, roughly 10 percent, are “Never Trumpers,” Republicans who have long and vocally opposed Trump. A far larger group, about 40 percent, are “Always Trumpers,” his hard-core base that will be reluctant to abandon him. The remaining 50 percent or so are “Maybe Trumpers” — Republicans who voted for him twice, who generally like his policies but who are now eager to escape the chaos that accompanies him.If Trump faces two or more serious challengers in the primaries, his 40 percent core support plus whatever he can pick up from the “Maybe Trumpers” would prove to be a major asset, especially in the early contests, which often provide crucial momentum to the front-runner, setting up the scenario sought by Democrats: a Republican presidential nominee whom they believe may have some chance of prevailing in the primaries, but who has little chance of winning in November.“One of the reasons Trump’s base adores him is that he overcame overwhelming odds — including both party establishments — to win,” Nate Hochman, a staff writer for National Review, tweeted on Nov. 19. “The more Republican elites consolidate against him, the more otherwise persuadable Trump voters are going to remember why they loved him in the first place.”Democrats could not hope for more.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