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      Bracing for Losses, Democrats Look to Biden for a Reset

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      At a party retreat in Philadelphia, House Democrats hoped the president would offer a winning strategy heading into a challenging midterm election season.PHILADELPHIA — House Democrats planned a retreat here this week hoping for a reset after a difficult period during which President Biden has been buffeted by rising gas prices, soaring inflation and sagging approval ratings.Instead, they arrived in buses in the middle of the night after the president’s latest coronavirus aid package collapsed in Congress late Wednesday, a grim reminder that his legislative agenda has stalled on Capitol Hill as they head into a midterm election season in which they are bracing for big losses.One year to the day after the enactment of Mr. Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan — a law that remains broadly popular even if the president, at the moment, is not — Democrats are toiling to retool their message and refocus their agenda. They are worried that the accomplishments they helped deliver to Mr. Biden are being drowned out by concern over the rising price of gas and a focus on their legislative failures.And they are looking to the president, who addressed them at the retreat on Friday, to help them reframe the conversation.“This may be the most important off-year election in modern history,” Mr. Biden told lawmakers on Friday afternoon. If Democrats lose their majorities in the House and the Senate, he said, “the only thing I’ll have then is a veto pen.”The president outlined his administration’s achievements over the past year, noting that few pieces of legislation have had the impact of the stimulus plan he proposed during his first month in office. He criticized Republicans for wrongly blaming him for gas prices.But it was not clear from his remarks how Mr. Biden planned to help his party refashion its message before November.Gone was the talk of a transformative agenda to remake the country’s social safety net, which was once a centerpiece of Democrats’ sales pitch to voters. The words “build back better” were all but forbidden among the groggy lawmakers who arrived in Philadelphia in the wee hours of Thursday morning.Speaking to reporters, Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, joked that the slogan for Mr. Biden’s defunct social policy and climate bill had become like the evil Voldemort in “Harry Potter”: that which must not be named.Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the president could use executive actions to address the issues voters care about before the midterm elections.Alex Wong/Getty ImagesInstead, after a year of supporting his agenda, House Democrats have pivoted to beseeching Mr. Biden to act on his own through executive actions to address the outstanding issues they care about before they face voters in November.Ms. Jayapal said the president could pass executive actions to cap the price of insulin, raise the overtime eligibility threshold to increase wages for tens of millions of people, and fix the so-called family glitch in the Affordable Care Act, which can make it impossible for some workers with modest incomes to afford health insurance.Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the No. 3 Democrat, said he recently met with White House officials to discuss executive actions that Mr. Biden could take to protect voting rights and overhaul policing after the demise of his efforts to pass major legislation tackling both issues. And Representative Raul Ruiz, Democrat of California and the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said he wanted the president to use his executive power to raise the cap on the number of refugees who can be resettled in the United States this year.Other lawmakers said they hoped a shift to the center debuted at Mr. Biden’s State of the Union address last week, along with strong support for his handling of the war in Ukraine, would be enough to persuade voters that Democrats were focused on kitchen-table issues.“We care about everyday Americans, and they don’t,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said when asked to sum up his party’s pitch to voters.The retreat was the group’s first in-person gathering in three years and a chance for Democrats — who have seen 31 colleagues opt to retire — to talk up their achievements and compare notes on how to move forward.“We have passed two major pieces of legislation that, in any other Congress, would have been historic in and of themselves,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader, referring to the American Rescue Plan and the bipartisan infrastructure bill.He acknowledged that the landscape might look bleak, but he said the political environment this summer would matter more.“The polls don’t look particularly good now,” Mr. Hoyer said, “but that’s happened in the past.”Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said on Thursday that keeping the majority depended on speaking to voters in a way that was not too preachy or condescending.“We spent a bunch of time talking about attributes in addition to issues,” Mr. Maloney said of a closed-door presentation he delivered on Thursday. “Whether voters think we care about them, whether they think we share their values, whether we have the right priorities.”Every vulnerable Democrat, Mr. Maloney said, was “in the business of having to say, ‘You may not like everything about my political party, but I’m getting it done.’”Some of the moderate Democrats whose seats are most at risk said the tone of the president’s State of the Union address — in which he underscored funding the police, capping the cost of insulin and fighting the opioid epidemic — raised their hopes that he had moved away from simply championing progressive proposals that pleased the party’s left flank but could alienate constituents in conservative-leaning districts like theirs.“Veterans, opioids, these are things we can come together on,” said Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, one of the 32 Democrats identified by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as running for re-election in a competitive seat. “Ukraine is part of the unity message. That is what I think our caucus is hungry for, especially those of us who believe in the value of reaching out to Democrats and Republicans, and it’s certainly what we’re hearing back at home.”That appeared to be the administration’s focus before Mr. Biden’s appearance in Philadelphia on Friday, as his team worked to highlight positive economic indicators.On Tuesday night, administration officials circulated among House Democrats a slide show about deficit reduction, noting that Mr. Biden had lowered it by $360 billion in 2021. White House officials have also been promoting record job growth, while making clear that getting prices under control remains the president’s top priority.Still, vulnerable Democrats said that was not necessarily enough to bolster their political fortunes.“The metrics are strong — employment, wages — but that doesn’t matter,” said Representative Dean Phillips, who represents a suburban Minneapolis district that was long held by Republicans. “What matters is how people feel.”Mr. Biden’s new message has also angered and concerned some progressives, who fear that their priorities were being pushed to the margins.“People say the speech was unifying — unifying because it brought white moderates and white independents back,” said Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York, who is Black, referring to Mr. Biden’s State of the Union address. “I was sitting there, like, ‘Damn, again?’”He added: “George Floyd is dead. There’s no national database for police misconduct.”“It’s lazy and unacceptable for the president of the United States to only keep the conversation at that shallow level,” Mr. Bowman said of the discussion about supporting law enforcement. “It’s deeper than that.”Feelings were still raw in Philadelphia this week about the demise of Mr. Biden’s emergency request for Covid-19 aid, which Democratic leaders had stripped from a $1.5 trillion spending bill amid disputes over how to finance it. The money will have to move separately, and Democrats will need Republican support to win its approval.“I would have preferred to just pause for another 24 hours and try to figure out” how to move forward, Ms. Jayapal said in an interview. “I’m not in control.”Jonathan Weisman More

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      Republicans Wrongly Blame Biden for Rising Gas Prices

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      They have pointed to the Biden administration’s policies on the Keystone XL pipeline and certain oil and gas leases, which have had little impact on prices.WASHINGTON — As gas prices hit a high this week, top Republican lawmakers took to the airwaves and the floors of Congress with misleading claims that pinned the blame on President Biden and his energy policies.Mr. Biden warned that his ban on imports of Russian oil, gas and coal, announced on Tuesday as a response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, would cause gas prices to rise further. High costs are expected to last as long as the confrontation does.While Republican lawmakers supported the ban, they asserted that the pain at the pump long preceded the war in Ukraine. Gas price hikes, they said, were the result of Mr. Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline, the temporary halt on new drilling leases on public lands and the surrendering of “energy independence” — all incorrect assertions.Here’s a fact check of their claims.What Was Said“This administration wants to ramp up energy imports from Iran and Venezuela. That is the world’s largest state sponsor of terror and a thuggish South America dictator, respectively. They would rather buy from these people than buy from Texas, Alaska and Pennsylvania.”— Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, in a speech on Tuesday“Democrats want to blame surging prices on Russia. But the truth is, their out-of-touch policies are why we are here in the first place. Remember what happened on Day 1 with one-party rule? The president canceled the Keystone pipeline, and then he stopped new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters.”— Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader, in a speech on Tuesday“In the four years of the Trump-Pence administration, we achieved energy independence for the first time in 70 years. We were a net exporter of energy. But from very early on, with killing the Keystone pipeline, taking federal lands off the list for exploration, sidelining leases for oil and natural gas — once again, before Ukraine ever happened, we saw rising gasoline prices.”— Former Vice President Mike Pence in an interview on Fox Business on TuesdayThese claims are misleading. The primary reason for rising gas prices over the past year is the coronavirus pandemic and its disruptions to global supply and demand.“Covid changed the game, not President Biden,” said Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, which tracks gasoline prices. “U.S. oil production fell in the last eight months of President Trump’s tenure. Is that his fault? No.”“The pandemic brought us to our knees,” Mr. De Haan added.In the early months of 2020, when the virus took hold, demand for oil dried up and prices plummeted, with the benchmark price for crude oil in the United States falling to negative $37.63 that April. In response, producers in the United States and around the world began decreasing output.As pandemic restrictions loosened worldwide and economies recovered, demand outpaced supply. That was “mostly attributable” to the decision by OPEC Plus, an alliance of oil-producing countries that controls about half the world’s supply, to limit increases in production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Domestic production also remains below prepandemic levels, as capital spending declined and investors remained reluctant to provide financing to the oil industry.Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has only compounded the issues.“When you throw a war on top of this, this is possibly the worst escalation you can have of this,” said Abhiram Rajendran, the head of oil market research at Energy Intelligence, an energy information company. “You’re literally pouring gasoline on general inflationary pressure.”These factors are largely out of Mr. Biden’s control, experts agreed, though they said he had not exactly sent positive signals to the oil and gas industry and its investors by vowing to reduce emissions and fossil fuel reliance.Mr. De Haan said the Biden administration was “clearly less friendly” to the industry, which may have indirectly affected investor attitudes. But overall, he said, that stance has played a “very, very small role pushing gas prices up.”President Biden announced a ban on imports of Russian oil in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesMr. Rajendran said the Biden administration had emphasized climate change issues while paying lip service to energy security.“There has been a pretty stark miscalculation of the amount of supply we would need to keep energy prices at affordable levels,” he said. “It was taken for granted. There was too much focus on the energy transition.”But presidents, Mr. Rajendran said, “have very little impact on short-term supply.”“The key relationship to watch is between companies and investors,” he said.It is true that the Biden administration is in talks with Venezuela and Iran over their oil supplies. But the administration is also urging American companies to ramp up production — to the dismay of climate change activists and contrary to Republican lawmakers’ suggestions that the White House is intent on handcuffing domestic producers.Speaking before the National Petroleum Council in December, Jennifer M. Granholm, the energy secretary, told oil companies to “please take advantage of the leases that you have, hire workers, get your rig count up.”Understand Rising Gas Prices in the U.S.Card 1 of 5A steady rise. More

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      There Are Glimmers of Hope for Biden. Or Maybe Slivers.

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      Despite the terrible reality of the war in Ukraine, rising inflation and record gas prices, a faint ray of sunshine has fallen on Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. According to strategists for both parties, the Democrats now have a 50-50 chance of retaining control of the Senate in the midterm elections, crucial for the appointment of federal judges, but nowhere near enough electoral strength to give them a shot at keeping their House majority.Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, agrees that “Biden is finally getting some good news after a long period of horrible events,” but those pluses stand against the more sustained setbacks the president has experienced.Ayres argued in an email that Bidendrove his own job approval down by hanging onto an obviously hopeless BuildBackBetter, muddying his bipartisan success on the infrastructure bill. He ran as a center-left moderate but tried to govern as a progressive. That had two results: raising the hopes of liberals, when it was obvious he was never going to get Manchin or Sinema, before dashing those hopes, leaving liberals demoralized. On top of that, he left a bunch of people who voted for him thinking they were sold a bill of goods. Along with the fiasco of the Afghanistan withdrawal, he squandered majority job approval.Ayres noted:It’s hard to imagine Republicans not winning the House, given historical trends and Biden’s lousy job approval ratings. Control of the Senate depends on the kinds of candidates Republicans nominate. Nominate sane governing Republicans like Rob Portman, Richard Burr and Pat Toomey, and the Senate is theirs. Nominate far-right wing-nut cases and the Senate stays in the hands of the Democrats.Still, Biden has had some significant success and Republicans face serious obstacles.On the plus side for Democrats: The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in February, employers added 678,000 new jobs and unemployment fell to 3.8 percent. Meanwhile, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection disclosed on March 3 that it has “has a good-faith basis for concluding that the president and members of his campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States.”Politico reported on March 8:President Joe Biden’s approval rating is on the rise — for now — in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Biden’s State of the Union address last week. Multiple surveys over the past week, including a new Politico/Morning Consult poll out Tuesday, show a modest-to-moderate uptick in voters’ views of Biden’s job performance, up from his low-water mark earlier this year.And then there is the setback that never materialized: While many predicted the post-2020 census redrawing of congressional districts would be a disaster for Democrats, in practice the new congressional lines are a wash. “We now estimate Democrats are on track to net 4 to 5 more House seats than they otherwise would have won on current maps, up from two seats in our previous estimate,” David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report wrote on Feb. 24.On the negative side for Republicans: Donald Trump’s admiration for and long courtship of Vladimir Putin has begun to backfire, causing conflict within Republican ranks; and these intraparty tensions have been compounded by Mike Pence’s growing willingness to challenge Trump, as well as by an internal strategy dispute between Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, and Senator Rick Scott, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.Steve Rosenthal, a former political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. who now heads The Organizing Group, a political consulting firm, contended in an email that the Biden administration has done a poor job promoting its successes:We’ve been canvassing white working-class voters in Southwestern PA and in the Lehigh Valley. They have no idea what the president and the Democrats in Congress have already done that directly impacts the issues they raise. When they hear about Biden sending $7 billion to PA for their roads, bridges and schools, they’re moved by it. This isn’t rocket science.“It’s a volatile environment,” Rosenthal adds: “Covid, war in Ukraine, inflation — and a lot can happen between now and November. But I definitely like the hand the Democrats are playing better this week than last. For now, let’s take it one week at a time.”Dean Baker, a co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal-leaning think tank, made a similar case in his emailed response to my inquiries:On the economic front, President Biden and the Democrats really need to up their game in pushing their record and their agenda. We have had record job growth since Biden took office, and somehow the economy is supposed to be a liability for the Democrats? If the shoe were on the other foot, the Republicans would be plastering the job numbers across the sky. This is the best labor market in more than half a century. Workers can leave jobs they don’t like for better ones; that is a really great story.In Baker’s view:Biden and the Democrats really need to move forward on what they can get from his Build Back Better agenda. This means sitting down with Senator Manchin and figuring out what he will go for. It is kind of mind-boggling that they didn’t do this last spring.The point, Baker argued, “is to get something that will have as much benefit as possible — climate tops the list — and push it through quickly.”Baker wrote that he has “no idea if the Democrats can hold one or both chambers in November, but things are looking somewhat better,” especially in the Senate, where “the Republicans are having trouble getting strong candidates in many potential swing states like New Hampshire, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia and possibly even Ohio. This raises the possibility of the Democrats picking up seats.”Control of the House, where Democrats hold a slim 222-211 majority, will be another matter after the coming election.Frances Lee, a political scientist at Princeton, made the case in an email thatIt would be a major historical anomaly if Democrats retain control of the House in 2022. One of the most predictable features of American politics is the loss of seats in Congress for the president’s party at the midterm. Even presidents with majority public approval still almost always see losses for their party in Congress. With Democrats’ margin so narrow, the party just cannot spare any losses.Biden’s favorability rating, currently averaging 41.6 percent according to Real Clear Politics, would have to rise “above 60 percent — like George W. Bush in 2002 or Bill Clinton in 1998 — before it would become reasonable to expect Democrats to avert a loss of House control,” Lee observed. “Since the advent of public opinion polling, all presidents with approval ratings below 60 percent have seen losses of congressional seats at the midterm, in every case more than the 5 seats that Democrats can spare in 2022.”Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm, provided historical data to The Times based on Gallup polling and House election outcomes in nonpresidential contests from 1962 to 2018. When the president’s approval rating was 60 percent or higher, the president’s party gained one seat; when the rating was in the 49 percent to 59 percent range, the president’s party lost an average of 12 seats; when the favorability rating fell below 49 percent, the average loss was 39 House seats. Biden, with eight months until the midterms, is well below that mark.The picture, according to Lee,is not entirely bleak. The employment recovery is strong; the pandemic seems to be abating. The battle for the Senate is more evenly matched, and Republicans have come up short in some high-profile candidate recruitment efforts. But Democrats have no margin for error. Any losses given a 50-50 balance will tip Senate control to Republicans. In a midterm year, one would have to rate that outcome as the more likely outcome.Lee suggested that “the more plausible question for Biden is how bad things are likely to get for Democrats.”She pointed out:Thirty House Democrats have already retired rather than run for re-election. Inflation is expected to be running well above Federal Reserve targets through the rest of 2022. Even though Biden has been able to rally the democratic world in opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, few experts expect a favorable outcome of the conflict on any near-term horizon. The pandemic has defied predictions to date, and public patience is wearing thinner.Charlie Cook, founder of the Cook Political Report, argued in an email that Biden is in a deep hole very difficult to climb out of:Between the Mexican border, not anticipating a rush across the border when Trump left town, being caught flat-footed, Kabul made the fall of Saigon look fairly dignified, ignoring/dismissing inflation. The worst sin for most voters, inflation, hurts 100 percent of people, a totally unrealistic legislative agenda, party line vote on coronavirus package, 7.5 months to get half of what they wanted on infrastructure, he has pretty much soiled his nest. Republican voters are hyper-motivated, Democratic voters lethargic, independents alienated, doesn’t sound terribly promising to me.Alex Theodoridis, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, is pessimistic about Democratic prospects, but less so than Cook.Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Theodoridis wrote by email, “is an awkward one for GOP elites and voters. They have spent the last few years downplaying the nefariousness of Putin’s regime and portraying Ukraine as a hopelessly corrupt hotbed of profiteering for the Biden family.”This message, he continued, hastrickled down to the Republican rank-and-file. UMass Poll data from 2020 and 2021 show that Republicans, on average, rate Democrats, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and even people who vote for Democrats, as greater threats to America than Vladimir Putin and Russia. In the weeks before the invasion, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon and Donald Trump, among others, peddled takes flattering to Putin. This stance has grown uncomfortable as Russia and Putin have clearly played the role of unprovoked aggressor and Ukrainians and Zelensky emerge as both sympathetic and heroic.But, in Theodoridis’s view, the “positive signs for Biden and Democrats over the last couple weeks” do not “yet rise to the level of changing the expectation that 2022 will likely follow the historical pattern of midterm loss for the president’s party. And, Democrats have precious little margin with which to sustain any loss of seats.”There are still major uncertainties to be resolved before Election Day, Nov. 8. These include the possibility that Trump will be embroiled in criminal charges and the chance that Trump himself will become an albatross around the neck of the Republican Party.The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a Mississippi case that could unwind Roe and bar access to abortion for millions of women with the political response quite likely to cost the Republican Party a significant number of votes. Trump’s legal status, in turn, will be determined by prosecutors in Georgia, New York and possibly the United States Justice Department.Finally, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a wild card, giving rise, among other things, to mounting speculation about Trump’s judgment and his fitness for office.On Feb. 22, the day after Putin said he would recognize the independence of Luhansk and Donetsk, two regions in eastern Ukraine, Trump remarked, “This is genius”— a comment in line with Trump’s history of fulsomely praising Putin.On March 2, Trump tried to cut his losses and abruptly told Maria Bartiromo of Fox News that the invasion amounted to a “holocaust” and Russia must “stop killing these people.” He condemned the Russian military: “They’re blowing up indiscriminately, they’re just shooting massive missiles and rockets into these buildings and everybody is dying​.”On March 5, speaking at a meeting of top Republican donors in New Orleans, Trump wandered farther afield, suggesting, however insincerely, that the United States should paste Chinese flags on F-22s and “bomb the [expletive] out of Russia.”On Feb. 27, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas was clearly discomfited by George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” when Stephanopoulos, speaking of Trump, noted:Last night, he finally condemned the invasion, but he also repeated his praise of Putin, calling him smart.Earlier in the week, he called him pretty smart. He called him savvy. He says NATO and the U.S. are dumb.Are you prepared to condemn that kind of rhetoric from the leader of your party?Pressed repeatedly, Cotton ducked repeatedly:George, if you want to know what Donald Trump thinks about Vladimir Putin or any other topic, I’d encourage you to invite him on your show. I don’t speak on behalf of other politicians. They can speak for themselves.Mike Pence, on the other hand, has determined that his best strategy as he continues to explore a presidential bid is to defy Trump.“Ask yourself, where would our friends in Eastern Europe be today if they were not in NATO?” Pence asked the Republican National Committee donors on March 4. “Where would Russian tanks be today if NATO had not expanded the borders of freedom? There is no room in this party for apologists for Putin.”The biggest unknown on the political horizon is the repercussions of the sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies on Russia, which are certain to raise energy and food costs, exacerbating the administration’s continuing difficulties with rising prices.“War and sanctions means higher inflation,” The Economist warned on March 5. “Things could get much worse should sanctions expand in scope to cover energy purchases or if Russia retaliates against them by reducing its exports.” On Tuesday, the Biden administration announced that it was banning Russian oil imports.“JPMorgan Chase,” The Economist went on,projects that a sustained shut-off of the Russian oil supply might cause prices to rise to $150 per barrel, a level sufficient to knock 1.6 percent off global G.D.P. while raising consumer prices by another 2 percent. The stagflationary shock would carry echoes of the Yom Kippur war of 1973, which sparked the first of the two energy crises of that decade.A political minefield lies ahead and negotiating this terrain will require more tactical and strategic skill than the Biden administration has demonstrated in its 14 months in office.This is especially relevant in the context of another explosive unknown, the possibility of the largest land war in Europe since 1945 metastasizing into a global conflict.In an essay he posted on Monday, “The Nuclear Threat Is Back,” Mohamed ElBaradei, the recipient of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize and the former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, argues that “beyond the bloodshed and needless destruction, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also increased the risk of radiation leaks and even nuclear war” — events, it is almost needless to say, that would create mind-boggling suffering, throw current electoral calculations into disarray and raise the stakes of every political decision we make.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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      Pressing for Evidence, Jan. 6 Panel Argues That Trump Committed Fraud

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      The argument was a response to a lawsuit filed by John Eastman, who is seeking to shield his communications with former President Donald J. Trump.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol on Tuesday laid out its theory for potential criminal charges against former President Donald J. Trump, arguing before a federal judge that he and the conservative lawyer John C. Eastman were involved in a conspiracy to perpetrate a fraud on the American public as part of a plan to overturn the 2020 election.The allegations, which the committee first leveled against the men last week in response to a lawsuit filed by Mr. Eastman, could determine just how deeply the panel can dig into emails, correspondence and other documents of lawyers close to Mr. Trump who have argued that such material should be shielded from scrutiny because of attorney-client privilege.They also form the core of the panel’s strategy for potentially holding Mr. Trump and his allies criminally liable for what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, one that turns on the notion that they knowingly sought to invalidate legitimate election results.“We’re talking about an insurrection that sadly came very close to succeeding to overturn a presidential election,” Douglas N. Letter, the general counsel of the House, told Judge David O. Carter of the United States District Court for the Central District of California, during arguments in Mr. Eastman’s case.The House committee’s argument is a risky one. If Judge Carter were to reject its claims, the inquiry’s legal team would be less likely to win support for a criminal prosecution unless investigators unearthed new evidence.In court on Tuesday, Mr. Letter repeatedly chastised Mr. Eastman for writing a memo that some in both parties have likened to a blueprint for a coup. The document encouraged Vice President Mike Pence to reject electoral votes from swing states won by President Biden, even as Mr. Eastman conceded that the maneuver was likely illegal.“Violate the law — and let them sue,” Mr. Letter said, characterizing Mr. Eastman’s counsel. “Boy, that’s not legal advice that I’ve ever given.”The committee in recent weeks has issued subpoenas to lawyers, including Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who worked closely with Mr. Trump as they pursued various efforts to keep the former president in power despite losing the election. They offered up false slates of electors claiming Mr. Trump had won politically competitive states that he had lost, and explored the seizure of voting machines.Among them was Mr. Eastman, whom the committee says could potentially be charged with criminal violations including obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the American people.Charles Burnham, Mr. Eastman’s lawyer, said the committee’s accusations against the former president are “groundbreaking criminal allegations,” but he argued that both Mr. Eastman and Mr. Trump genuinely believed the claims of a stolen election — despite being told repeatedly that such statements were false.“Dr. Eastman and others absolutely believed that what they were doing was well-grounded in law and fact, and was necessary for what they believed was the best interest of the country,” Mr. Burnham said.In a filing in Mr. Eastman’s case last week, the committee first revealed the basis of what its investigators believe could be a criminal referral to the Justice Department against Mr. Trump. Central to the case is the argument that, in repeatedly rejecting the truth that he had lost the 2020 election — including the assertions of his own campaign aides, White House lawyers, two successive attorneys general and federal investigators — Mr. Trump was not just being stubborn or ignorant, he was knowingly perpetrating a fraud on the United States.The panel turned over to the court hundreds of pages of arguments, exhibits and court transcripts from Trump advisers telling him there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election. But Mr. Burnham also said that Mr. Trump was given conflicting legal advice.“Multiple presidential advisers were counseling the president that there were issues with the 2020 election — fraud, illegality, and so forth,” he said.Mr. Burnham cited a book recently published by former Attorney General William P. Barr, who recounted how he tried to break through to Mr. Trump to tell him his wild fantasies about election fraud weren’t true, even as others informed the president he was right.“After the election,” Mr. Barr wrote, “he was beyond restraint. He would only listen to a few sycophants who told him what he wanted to hear. Reasoning with him was hopeless.”The arguments in court were prompted by Mr. Eastman’s attempt to shield from release documents he said were covered by attorney-client privilege. The committee responded that under the legal theory known as the crime-fraud exception, the privilege does not cover information conveyed from a client to a lawyer if it was part of furthering or concealing a crime.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3The first trial. More

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      President Biden Never Saw War In Ukraine Coming

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      As Joe Biden campaigned for the White House in 2020, he knew that the next president of the United States would govern under circumstances significantly more daunting than those that most faced.As he took the oath of office in 2021, he could see very clearly — in the tally of Covid-related deaths, in the economic and social devastation of the pandemic, in the country’s vicious partisanship — the immense scope and immeasurable difficulty of the work ahead.But he surely never expected this.Never expected war in Europe. Never expected a confrontation with Vladimir Putin of such urgency and unpredictable proportions. Never expected that his stack of challenges would grow this much taller, in this particularly terrifying way.He delivered his first formal State of the Union address on Tuesday night as both a leader and a lesson: Few who have taken a seat at the Resolute Desk end up reading from anything like the script they had first imagined for themselves — or that others had imagined for them. Presidents plan. History laughs.Or weeps or screams — those seem the more appropriate verbs now. Whatever the language, I look at Biden and I not only examine someone in what the journalist John Dickerson, in the title of his 2020 book, calls “The Hardest Job in the World.” I also behold someone in history’s crucible, learning or relearning what every candidate should know and what every voter should factor into his or her calculations, which is how quickly events jag and how suddenly they judder.Biden is in many ways a propitious fit for current events. It’s useful, at this fearful juncture, to have a decidedly even-tempered president with his broad perspective, which has thus far prevented a potentially catastrophic overreaction to Putin’s saber-rattling.It’s useful to have a president with his regard for institutions and NATO specifically. The Western alliance has been more united than Putin or just about anybody else wagered it would be, and Biden gets some credit for that. As John Avlon, the author of the new book “Lincoln and the Fight for Peace,” told me, “This is reflecting his experience and at least some of his intended strengths.”But Avlon agreed that Biden belongs to a long line of presidents tugged far off script. Avlon reminded me that President Woodrow Wilson had once famously said, “It would be an irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs.” Well, fate went full-throttle ironic in the form of the First World War.“It’s almost always foreign affairs,” Avlon, a senior political analyst and anchor for CNN, said, “because the process of campaigning is almost always about domestic affairs.”President George W. Bush, in his bid for the White House, questioned “nation building” in foreign lands, sounded somewhat isolationist at times and emphasized aspects of his persona that complemented a relatively prosperous, peaceful chapter of American life. Then came the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.President Jimmy Carter, whose appeal was largely as an ethical correction after President Richard Nixon, found himself dealing with stagflation at home and the Iranian hostage crisis abroad.We elect presidents — or should — not just for the moment but for any moment, because the moment changes in the blink of an autocrat’s ego. It did for Biden.“No president had delivered his State of the Union address with such a large-scale and consequential land war underway in Europe since 1945,” Peter Baker wrote in The Times, describing just how unusual Biden’s situation suddenly is.Also in The Times, David Sanger weighed in: “Eastern Europe was not the battlefield Mr. Biden had in mind when he raised the idea last year that the battle of ‘autocracy versus democracy’ would be the defining foreign policy principle of his administration.” No, the scheming of Donald Trump, not Putin, was undoubtedly front of mind.Dickerson, the “Hardest Job” author and the chief political analyst for CBS News, told me that when Biden took office, Afghanistan and “trying to orient the West’s focus — his focus — toward China” were top priorities. “Land war in Europe was not on that agenda,” he noted.“Having said that, all the planning that he’s done in his career, the building of alliances, the team he put together: Implicit in their approach to the world is that the presidency surprises you with things all the time,” he added. “This is a job of surprises.”For the Love of SentencesPeter Bocklandt / Getty ImagesSeems fitting to begin with Russia and Ukraine. So we shall.David Brooks, in The Times, cast Ukrainians’ lot as emblematic and metaphoric of “a global struggle against authoritarianism,” and he stressed “the need to defeat the mini-Putins now found across the Western democracies. These are the demagogues who lie with Putinesque brazenness, who shred democratic institutions with Putinesque bravado, who strut the world’s stage with Putin’s amoral schoolboy machismo while pretending to represent all that is traditional and holy.” (Thanks to Karen Coe, from Seattle, for nominating this.)In The Washington Post, Sally Jenkins endorsed a particular punishment of the Russian president, writing that there’s “nothing trivial about wiping Vladimir Putin’s musky perspirations from the international sports stage.” She continued: “His brand of shirtless belligerent patriotism — his macho nationalism — has been a long con, and it’s no small thing to knock him off medal podiums and expose the lifts in his shoes, or to rip off his judo belt and show the softening of his belly.” (Phil Carlsen, South Portland, Maine)And in The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan wrote this about Putin’s big going-to-war speech: “It had the wound-up particularity of the local grocer when he talks about his 30-year feud with the butcher down the street.” (Steve DeCherney, Chapel Hill, N.C.)Leaving Ukraine but sticking with foreign figures and affairs, here’s Henry Mance, in The Financial Times, on Prince Andrew’s botched spin of his onetime friendship with Jeffrey Epstein: “Still, Andrew went on TV, and said that he didn’t regret his friendship with Epstein because of ‘the opportunities that I was given to learn, either by him or because of him.’ Yes, say what you will about Hannibal Lecter, he threw very original dinner parties. Andrew is so tin-eared that he could sell mining rights to his own head.” (Chris Durban, Paris)And here’s Andrew Cohen, in The Globe and Mail of Toronto, on the much smaller Canadian city of Ottawa: “In one enterprise after another, Ottawa falls short. It is easily satisfied with mediocrity. As New York was said to be a town without foreplay, Ottawa is a city without climax.” (Bill Weaver Dresden, Ontario)Now to matters gustatory. On his website, Garrison Keillor reflected on fine music and his anticipation of an imminent breakfast, noting that “this bagel is turning into the high point of my day, the bagel of all bagels, the bagel Hegel would’ve finagled with Puccini’s cream cheese and scallions that win medallions from Italians.” (Tom Sigafoos, County Donegal, Ireland)And in The Times, Margaret Renkl pondered food and Lent: “During their midlife years of creeping weight gain, my mother and father would announce that they were losing 10 pounds for Lent, a goal I always found hilarious. As a Lenten resolution, it did bear some resemblance to the fasting and sackcloth of the early days of Christianity, if not for an entirely spiritual reason. I’m no theologian, but I feel sure that Jesus did not spend 40 days and 40 nights in the desert so he could fit into his old jeans.” (Tom Powell, Vestavia Hills, Ala., and Andrea Ondak, Newtown, Conn.)To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here, and please include your name and place of residence.What I’m Reading (and Doing)I thought I knew a thing or two about the history of food writing, but my knowledge went back only so far. In “What We Write About When We Write About Food,” in The Times’s T Magazine, Ligaya Mishan travels all the way to ancient Greece and a glutton named Archestratos. She explains that these days he’d be labeled a food writer, “kin to those specialists of our own time, the literary-minded cooks who know that every recipe comes with a story; the memoirists who recall each meal as half debauchery, half revelation; the journalists who stake out tailgates and backyard barbecues; and the critics who skulk into restaurants in disguise, brandishing words like knives.” (Thanks to Marcia Lewis of Cohasset, Mass., for recommending that I showcase this.)While news organizations and readers are rightly riveted by what’s happening in Ukraine, what’s happening in Afghanistan remains important and heartbreaking, and in The New Yorker recently, Jon Lee Anderson took fascinating measure of the Taliban’s rule.I’ll admit to reading this review in The Times of my just-published book, “The Beauty of Dusk,” more than once. OK, more than twice. When you put a book, especially such a personal one, out into the world, you take a deep, deep breath, and I thank the reviewer, Min Jin Lee, not only for letting me exhale but also for describing the scope and intent of the book so well.Over recent days, I talked about the book on CBS Mornings, chatted with Seth Meyers on his late-night show, was interviewed by Ari Shapiro for NPR’s “All Things Considered” and had a Zoom conversation with John Molner for Katie Couric Media.On a Personal (By Which I Mean Regan) NoteThere is or was or will be a squirrel in this tree. With Regan, you never know.Frank BruniThe skeptical read on those of us with dogs is that we’re gluttons for guaranteed affection. We’re after easy, unconditional love.Not so with me and Regan — and I think we’re more representative than exceptional. When I welcomed her into my life three years ago, I felt an urge to give unconditional love.That tug was inextricably tied to my suddenly compromised and imperiled eyesight. With my physical powers in question, I wanted to flex my emotional might. I also wanted to avoid the traps of self-pity in particular and self-indulgence in general, and I could be only so concerned with my own welfare when I had to lavish thought and energy on hers. Just as my heart needed more bounce in it, my head needed less Frank in it. Regan did double duty in that regard (and thus gets a significant role in “The Beauty of Dusk”). She was the catalyst for a generosity that was at odds with, and offset, any sense of enfeeblement.From the very start, I was much more focused on how well I was serving her than on how well she was serving me, and I couldn’t have predicted how satisfying it would be to figure out the riddle of which healthy foods might suit her sometimes finicky appetite; to whisk her to the vet when she was ill and make her better; to find a hiking trail that invigorated her more than other paths had; to see her sleeping peacefully for hours on end in a dog bed that I had chosen wisely and put in the right place.Before Regan, I’d puzzled over how gaga some people could be about dogs who displayed all sorts of problems and unpleasantness, but that was because I’d misjudged those relationships, which weren’t about what surefire, ready-made bundles of joy dogs were. No, dogs were acts of devotion.I don’t have any science on this, but I bet we’re flooded with more serotonin or dopamine or endorphins or all of the above when we say “I love you” than when we hear it. And we’re healthier people when we’ve made commitments beyond ourselves. We’re better still when we’ve kept them.I vowed that Regan would never lack for exercise, and she hasn’t, not even during a four-day period about two years ago when a skin infection turned the lower part of my right leg into a badly inflamed, insanely tender slab of misery. Morning and night, I took her into Central Park regardless, and I limped and winced, winced and limped, laughing inwardly at the joke and spectacle of me, a man whose left half functioned perfectly well but whose right half — bum eye, bum leg — was a disaster.I vowed that I wouldn’t travel excessively for work or pleasure and that when I did need to leave her, I’d forge arrangements that minimized the disruption. I followed through on that as well.I vowed that she’d get plenty of time with other dogs and with people in addition to me, so that her world wasn’t a small one. That, too, has come to pass.Schooled in the limits of my control over my own life, I have exercised my control over hers with all the diligence I can muster. Her tail wags and my spirits do a jig. Mercy comes in many forms, some of them four-legged. More

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      Will Asian Americans Bolt From the Democratic Party?

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      Over the past three decades, Asian American voters — according to Pew, the fastest growing group in the country — have shifted from decisively supporting Republicans to becoming a reliably Democratic bloc, anchored by firmly liberal views on key national issues.The question now is whether this party loyalty will withstand politically divisive developments that appear to pit Asian Americans against other key Democratic constituencies — as controversies emerge, for example, over progressive education policies that show signs of decreasing access to top schools for Asian Americans in order to increase access for Black and Hispanic students.There is little question of the depth of liberal commitments among Asian Americans.“Do Asian Americans, a group marked by crosscutting demographic cleavages and distinct settlement histories, constitute a meaningful political category with shared policy views?” ask Janelle Wong, a professor of American studies at the University of Maryland, and Sono Shah, a computer scientist at the Pew Research Center, in their 2021 paper “Convergence Across Difference: Understanding the Political Ties That Bind with the 2016 National Asian American Survey.”Their answer: “Political differences within the Asian American community are between those who are progressive and those who are even more so.”Wong and Shah cite a 2016 New York Times article by my news-side colleague Jeremy W. Peters, “Donald Trump Is Seen as Helping Push Asian Americans Into Democratic Arms”:In 1992, the year national exit polls started reporting Asian American sentiment, the group leaned Republican, supporting George Bush over Bill Clinton 55 percent to 31 percent. But by 2012, that had reversed. Asian Americans overwhelmingly supported President Obama over Mitt Romney — 73 percent to 26 percent.In their paper, Wong and Shah note that “despite critical differences in national origin, generation, class, and even partisanship, Asian Americans demonstrate a surprising degree of political commonality.”With regard to taxes, for example, “More than 75 percent of both Asian American Democrats and Republicans support increasing taxes on the rich to provide a tax cut for the middle class.”Or take support for strong emissions regulations to address environmental concerns. This has 78.3 percent support among Asian American Democrats and 76.9 percent among Asian American Republicans.In a 2021 paper, “Fault Lines Among Asian Americans,” Sunmin Kim — a sociologist at Dartmouth — found that Asian Americans took decisively liberal stands on Obamacare, admission of Syrian refugees, free college tuition, opposition to the Muslim immigration ban, environmental restrictions on power plants and government assistance to Black Americans. The only exception was legalization of marijuana, which received less support from Asian Americans than from any other group.In an email, Kim cited the declining importance of communism as a key factor in the changing partisan allegiance of Asian American voters. In the 1970s and 80s, he said, “Taiwanese, Koreans, and Vietnamese chose the party that had a reputation of being tougher on communism. Obviously, it was the Republican Party. Chinese immigrants, many of whom retained the memory of the Cultural Revolution, were not too different.” After the 1990s, he continued, “the children of immigrants who grew up and received education in the United States replace the first generation, and their outlook on politics is much different from their parents. They see themselves as a racial minority, and their high education level pushes them towards liberalism on many issues.”In short, Kim wrote: “the Cold War ended and a generational shift occurred.”Despite many shared values, there are divergences of opinion among Asian Americans on a number of issues, in part depending on the country of origin. These differences are clear in the results of the 2020 Asian American Voter Survey, which was released in September 2020.Asked for their preference for Joe Biden or Donald Trump, 54 percent of all Asian Americans chose Biden to 30 percent for Trump. Biden had majority support from Indian (65-28), Japanese (61-24), Korean (57-26), Chinese (56-20) and Filipino Americans (52-34). Vietnamese Americans were the lone exception, supporting Trump 48-36.At the moment, affirmative action admissions policies are a key issue testing Asian American support for the Democratic Party. In educational institutions as diverse as Harvard, San Francisco’s Lowell High School, Loudon County’s Thomas Jefferson High School and the most prestigious selective high schools in New York and Boston, conflict over educational resources between Asian American students and parents on one side and Black and Hispanic students and parents on the other has become endemic. Policies designed to increase Black and Hispanic access to high quality schools often result in a reduction in the number of Asian American students admitted.Despite this, the 2020 Asian American Voter Survey cited above found that 70 percent of Asian Americans said they “favor affirmative action programs designed to help Blacks, women and other minorities,” with 16 percent opposed. Indian Americans were strongest in their support, 86-9, while Chinese Americans were lowest, 56-25.These numbers appear to mask considerable ambivalence over affirmative action among Asian Americans when the question was posed not in the abstract but in the real world. In 1996, California voters approved Proposition 209 prohibiting government from implementing affirmative action policies, declaring that “The State shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”In 2020, California voters were asked to support or oppose repeal of the anti-affirmative action measure — that is, to restore affirmative action. 36 percent of all Asian American voters said they would support restoration of affirmative action, 22 percent were opposed and 36 percent were undecided. A plurality of Chinese Americans, 38 percent, on the other hand, opposed restoration of affirmative action, 30 percent were in favor, and 28 percent were undecided.The debate over affirmative action admission policies has deep roots. In 2009, Thomas J. Espenshade, a sociologist at Princeton, and Alexandria Walton Radford, of the Center for Applied Research in Postsecondary Education, wrote in their paper. “A New Manhattan Project” thatCompared to white applicants at selective private colleges and universities, black applicants receive an admission boost that is equivalent to 310 SAT points, measured on an all-other-things-equal basis. The boost for Hispanic candidates is equal on average to 130 SAT points. Asian applicants face a 140 point SAT disadvantage.In 2018, the Harvard Crimson studied the average SAT scores of students admitted to Harvard from 1995 to 2013. It found that Asian Americans admitted to Harvard earned an average SAT score of 767 across all sections, while whites averaged 745 across all sections, Hispanic American 718, Native-American and Native-Hawaiian 712 and African-American 704.Scholars of Asian American politics have found that Asian American voters have remained relatively strong supporters of affirmative action policies, with one exception: Chinese Americans, who constitute nearly a quarter of all Asian Americans.In “Asian Americans and Race-Conscious Admissions: Understanding the Conservative Opposition’s Strategy of Misinformation, Intimidation & Racial Division,” Liliana M. Garces and OiYan Poon, professors of educational leadership at the University of Texas-Austin and Colorado State University, give the following reasons for the concentration of anti-affirmative action sentiment among Chinese Americans.Garces and Poon write that 1990 changes in the U.S. Immigration Act “increased by threefold the number of visas for highly skilled, professional-class immigrants, privileging highly educated and skilled immigrants” while “migration policy changes in China advantaged more structurally-privileged Chinese to emigrate.”Second, “growing up in mainland China, many of these more recent Chinese American immigrants were systemically and culturally socialized to strongly believe that a single examination is a valid measure of merit for elite college access.”Third, “The residential and employment patterns among more recent immigrants suggest that their social lives remain limited to middle and upper-middle class Chinese American immigrants and whites.”And finally,The social media platform, WeChat, plays an important role in fostering opposition to affirmative action among some Chinese American immigrants. Some studies have found that WeChat plays a central role in the distribution of information among the Chinese diasporic community, including fake news, to politically motivate and organize Chinese immigrants for conservative causes, especially against affirmative action and ethnic data disaggregation.Another issue with the potential to push Asian American voters to the right is crime.The 2018 Crime Victimization report issued in September 2019 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Department of Justice found that a total of 182,230 violent crimes were committed against Asian Americans in 2018. 27.5 percent were committed by African Americans, 24.1 percent by whites, 24.1 percent by Asian Americans, 7.0 percent by Hispanics, and the rest undetermined.The New York City police report on 2021 hate crime arrestees shows that 30 of the 56 men and women charged with hate crimes against Asian Americans were Black, 14 were Hispanic, 7 were white and five were Asian American/Pacific Islanders.While most of the experts on Asian American politics I contacted voiced confidence in the continued commitment of Asian Americans to the Democratic Party and its candidates, there were some danger signals — for example, in the 2021 New York City mayoral election.That year, Eric Adams, the Democrat, decisively beat Curtis Sliwa, the Republican, 65.5 to 27.1, but support for Sliwa — an anti-crime stalwart who pledged to take on “the spineless politicians who vote to defund police” — shot up to 44 percent “in precincts where more than half of residents are Asian,” according to The City.The story was headlined “Chinese voters came out in force for the GOP in NYC, shaking up politics” and the subhead read “From Sunset Park in Brooklyn to Elmhurst and Flushing in Queens, frustrations over Democratic stances on schools and crime helped mobilize votes for Republican Curtis Sliwa for mayor and conservative Council candidates.”A crucial catalyst in the surge of support for Sliwa, according to The City, was his “proposed reforms to specialized high school admissions and gifted and talented programs” — ignoring the fact that Adams had also pledged to do this. More generally, the City reported,A wave of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans during the pandemic has heightened a sense of urgency about public safety and law enforcement. Asian anger and frustration have, for the first time, left a visible dent in a city election.Grace Meng, a Democratic congresswoman from Queens, tweeted on Nov. 4, 2021:Pending paper ballot counts, the assembly districts of @nily, @edbraunstein, @Barnwell30, @Rontkim and @Stacey23AD all went Republican. Our party better start giving more of a sh*t about #aapi (Asian American-Pacific Island) voters and communities. No other community turned out at a faster pace than AAPIs in 2020.Similarly, Asian Americans led the drive to oust three San Francisco School Board members — all progressive Democrats — last month. As Times colleague Amelia Nierenberg wrote on Feb. 16:The recall also appeared to be a demonstration of Asian American electoral power. In echoes of debates in other cities, many Chinese voters were incensed when the school board changed the admission system for the district’s most prestigious institution, Lowell High School. It abolished requirements based primarily on grades and test scores, instead implementing a lottery system.In their March 2021 paper, “Why the trope of Black-Asian conflict in the face of anti-Asian violence dismisses solidarity,” Jennifer Lee and Tiffany Huang, sociologists at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, point out that “there have been over 3,000 self-reported incidents of anti-Asian violence from 47 states and the District of Columbia, ranging from stabbings and beatings, to verbal harassment and bullying, to being spit on and shunned.”While “these senseless acts of anti-Asian violence have finally garnered the national attention they deserve,” Lee and Huang continue, “they have also invoked anti-Black sentiment and reignited the trope of Black-Asian conflict. Because some of the videotaped perpetrators appear to have been Black, some observers immediately reduced anti-Asian violence to Black-Asian conflict.”Working against such Black-Asian conflict, the two authors argue, is a besieged but “real-world solidarity” demonstrated instudies showing that Black Americans are more likely than white or Hispanic Americans to recognize racism toward Asian Americans, and that Asian Americans who experience discrimination are more likely to recognize political commonality with Black Americans. Covid-related anti-Asian bias is not inevitable. While “China virus” rhetoric has been linked to violence and hostility, new research shows that priming Americans about the coronavirus did not increase anger among the majority of Americans toward Asian Americans.Lee and Huang warn, however, that “anger among a minority has invoked fear among the majority of Asian Americans.”In “Asian Americans, Affirmative Action & the Rise in Anti-Asian Hate,” published in the Spring 2021 issue of Daedalus, a journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Lee makes the case that Asian American are at a political tipping point. She argues that:The changing selectivity of contemporary U.S. Asian immigration has recast Asian Americans from ‘unassimilable to exceptional,’ resulting in their rapid racial mobility. This mobility combined with their minoritized status places them in a unique group position in the U.S. racial hierarchy, conveniently wedged between underrepresented minorities who stand to gain most from the policy (affirmative action) and the advantaged majority who stands to lose most because of it. It also marks Asians as compelling victims of affirmative action who are penalized because of their race.In recent years, “a new brand of Asian immigrants has entered the political sphere whose attitudes depart from the Asian American college student activists of the 1960s,” Lee writes. “This faction of politically conservative Asian immigrants has no intention of following their liberal-leaning predecessors, nor do they intend to stay silent.”The issue is “whether more Asian Americans will choose to side with conservatives,” Lee writes, “or whether they will choose to forge a collective Asian American alliance will depend on whether U.S. Asians recognize and embrace their ethnic and class diversity. Will they forge a sense of linked fate akin to that which has guided the political attitudes and voting behavior of Black Americans?”The outcome may well have a major impact on the balance of power between Democrats and Republicans.Catalyst, the liberal voter analysis firm, found that from 2016 to 2020, Asian Americans increased their voter turnout by 39 percent, more than any other racial or ethnic constituency, including Hispanic Americans (up 31 percent) and African Americans (up 14 percent). This turnout increase worked decisively in favor of the Democratic Party as Asian Americans voted two to one for the party in both elections.The April 2021 Pew Research report cited above found that from 2000 to 2019, “The Asian population in the U.S. grew 81 percent from roughly 10.5 million to a record 18.9 million, surpassing the 70 percent growth rate of the nation’s Hispanic population. Furthermore, by 2060, the number of U.S. Asians is projected to rise to 35.8 million, more than triple their 2000 population.”What this means is that Republicans are certain to intensify their use affirmative action, crime, especially hate crime, and the movement away from merit testing to lotteries for admission to high caliber public schools as wedge issues to try to pry Asian American voters away from the Democratic Party. Indeed, they are already at it. For its part, the Democratic Party will need to add significant muscle to Jennifer Lee’s call for a “linked fate” among Asian and African Americans to fend off the challenge.The strong commitment of Asian Americans to education has been a source of allegiance to a Democratic Party that has become the preferred home for voters with college and advanced degrees. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is, at the same time, testing the strength of that allegiance by supporting education policies that reduce opportunities for Asian Americans at elite schools while increasing opportunity for two larger Democratic constituencies, made up of Black and Hispanic voters. This is the kind of problem inherent in a diverse coalition comprising a segmented electorate with competing agendas. For the foreseeable future, the ability of the party to manage these conflicts will be a key factor in its success or failure.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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      Takeaways From Texas's 2022 Primary Elections

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      Republicans’ turnout swamped Democrats’, while progressives claimed wins in the first elections of the 2022 midterms.For nearly a decade, the refrain from Texas Democrats has been that they are on the verge of making their state competitive, even though no Democrat has won a statewide race since 1994.Tuesday’s primary results illustrated that Democrats still have a long way to go.With more than three-quarters of the votes counted, nearly 800,000 more Republicans than Democrats voted for a candidate for governor — a gap far larger than the one in 2018, the last midterm primary election in Texas.To be sure, Republicans had a more competitive primary than Democrats. Gov. Greg Abbott’s contest against Republican challengers from his right may have been more of a draw than Beto O’Rourke’s glide path to the Democratic nomination. And Democrats will be quick to note that primary turnout is not always a predictor of big turnout in November.Still, Republicans demonstrated they are energized — even when divided between far-right and mainstream factions — and hardly ceding their hold on the state.Abbott’s right turn paid off.Before this year, Mr. Abbott had never faced a competitive Republican primary in his 25-year political career. But in a moment of conservative energy, with Republicans furious about the 2020 election and President Biden’s immigration policies, a field of Republicans bet that Mr. Abbott would be vulnerable to a challenger from his right.Turns out they were wrong.Armed with a $60 million war chest, Mr. Abbott easily dispatched seven Republicans, taking more than two-thirds of the vote. It was a win that was a year in the making. Mr. Abbott has spent much of last year placating the state’s conservative base by passing new restrictions on abortion, easing gun laws and enacting new limits on how Texas schools teach about the history of racism. Days before the primary, Mr. Abbott directed state health agencies to classify medical treatments commonly provided to transgender adolescents as “child abuse.”Mr. Abbott’s record was a striking demonstration of how a primary threat can help the right wing of the Republican Party drive the agenda, even in a state that has been trending toward Democrats.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsPrimaries Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the midterm election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering.Governors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.In the general election, Mr. Abbott will again be a heavy favorite, this time against Mr. O’Rourke, the Democrat and former congressman who narrowly lost a 2018 race to Senator Ted Cruz and then flopped in the 2020 presidential primary.Mr. Abbott has been said to have presidential ambitions himself, if Mr. Trump does not run again in 2024. The next step on that journey for him will require a decisive victory in November. In a year when Republicans are expected to do well, he will need a show of strength in Texas to make a case he can appeal to voters nationwide.Beto O’Rourke in Fort Worth after winning his primary.LM Otero/Associated PressBeto O’Rourke put up a big number.Four years ago when he ran for the Senate, Mr. O’Rourke took just 61 percent of the 2018 Senate primary vote even though he was running against little-known, poorly funded candidates.Now, after Mr. O’Rourke has become the best-known figure in Texas Democratic politics, he easily dominated a field of four Democratic primary opponents.Mr. O’Rourke took more than 90 percent of the primary vote, carrying nearly all of the 254 counties in Texas after losing 76 of them four years ago.Mr. O’Rourke’s broad win was a reminder that he enters this race as a far different candidate than the plucky underdog who became a national star in 2018. Now running for governor, Mr. O’Rourke has name recognition and the state’s largest fund-raising network, but also baggage from his previous races. His call for government confiscation of some firearms will continue to appear in Republican attacks against him, and he also has to overcome significant G.O.P. advantages in the state.Trump picked (easy) winners.As the first primary contest of 2022, Texas previewed what will be a dominant theme of the primary season: Can Donald J. Trump play kingmaker?Mr. Trump’s record was mixed. The former president endorsed 33 Texas Republicans ahead of their primaries, but virtually all of them were widely expected to win before receiving the Trump seal of approval. As of early Wednesday morning, all of Mr. Trump’s picks for Congress were on pace to win their nominations.But other races raised doubts that Mr. Trump’s approval alone could secure a victory. Attorney General Ken Paxton, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump, and Dawn Buckingham, Mr. Trump’s choice for land commissioner, were both headed to runoffs in May, after failing to get more than 50 percent of the vote.“Big night in Texas!” Mr. Trump said late Tuesday. “All 33 candidates that were Trump endorsed have either won their primary election or are substantially leading in the case of a runoff.”There were also signs that it can be perilous for Republicans to cross Mr. Trump. Representative Van Taylor, a two-term incumbent from the Dallas exurbs who voted to confirm the 2020 election results and for a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the United States Capitol, was in danger of being forced into a runoff as votes were still being tallied early Wednesday. Mr. Taylor outspent his competitors nearly 10 to 1.That figure may put a scare into Republican incumbents facing more significant tests from Trump-backed challengers in the coming months. Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Republicans who voted for impeachment from Michigan, South Carolina and Washington State are all vulnerable and the subject of Mr. Trump’s obsession.Greg Casar in Austin after winning his primary.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesThe Squad may get reinforcements.Progressives frustrated by Mr. Biden’s stalled social policy agenda were looking for a boost in Texas and got one — possibly three.Greg Casar, a former Austin city councilman, won easily Tuesday night and appears poised to come to Washington next year from his safely Democratic district. Another progressive contender, Jessica Cisneros, forced a runoff with Representative Henry Cuellar, a moderate who narrowly defeated her in the 2020 primary but is now under investigation by the F.B.I.Jasmine Crockett, a state lawmaker who was among the ringleaders of Texas Democrats’ flight to Washington to delay new Republican voting laws last summer, has a large lead but appears bound for a runoff in a Dallas-area district. Ms. Crockett was endorsed by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, who has represented the district for 35 years. Ms. Crockett leaned into the endorsement: Her campaign slogan was “passing the torch, fueling the fire.”Together, Mr. Casar, Ms. Cisneros and Ms. Crockett would bring new energy to the liberal wing of the House and to “the Squad” of progressive Democrats. Last month, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York came to Texas to campaign for Mr. Casar and Ms. Cisneros. More

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      Jan. 6 Panel Subpoenas Trump's Lawyers

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      The House committee issued six subpoenas to people who worked on legal aspects of the former president’s bid to invalidate the 2020 election.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol on Tuesday subpoenaed a half-dozen lawyers and other allies of former President Donald J. Trump who promoted false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 election and worked to overturn his loss.Those who were sent subpoenas for documents and testimony participated in a range of attempts to invalidate Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, including filing lawsuits, pressuring local election officials to change the results and drafting proposed executive orders to seize voting machines.“The select committee is seeking information about attempts to disrupt or delay the certification of electoral votes and any efforts to corruptly change the outcome of the 2020 election,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said in a statement. “The six individuals we’ve subpoenaed today all have knowledge related to those matters and will help the select committee better understand all the various strategies employed to potentially affect the outcome of the election.”More than 550 witnesses have testified before the committee, which is tasked with writing an authoritative report about the violence of a year ago that left more than 150 police officers injured and resulted in several deaths.The committee also intends to make recommendations to prevent such an episode from happening again, and is considering making criminal referrals should its investigators uncover any crimes not already charged by the Justice Department.The subpoenas issued on Tuesday direct the witnesses to sit for interviews in March.Among those summoned was Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who the panel said “promoted false claims of election fraud to members of Congress” and participated in a call in which Mr. Trump tried to pressure Georgia’s secretary of state to “‘find’ enough votes to reverse his loss there.”Ms. Mitchell was also in contact with Mr. Trump on Jan. 6 and the days before, the committee said it had learned.Kenneth Chesebro, another lawyer who was subpoenaed on Tuesday, promoted legal theories within the Trump campaign supporting the use of slates of bogus electors in states the former president lost. Mr. Chesebro told the Trump campaign his efforts would “‘bolster’ the argument for delaying the electoral certification” and make the public believe the election “‘was likely rigged, and stolen by Biden and Harris, who were not legitimately elected,’” the committee wrote in a letter accompanying Mr. Chesebro’s subpoena.The committee also issued a subpoena to Christina Bobb, who works for One America News Network and was reportedly involved in efforts to draft an executive order for Mr. Trump that would have directed federal agencies to seize voting machines in numerous states. Ms. Bobb was present in the “war room” of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, in the Willard Hotel on Jan. 6, the committee said.Ms. Bobb is said to be writing a book about Jan. 6 and interviewed Mr. Trump for the project, meaning she would most likely have notes that the committee could obtain through a subpoena.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3The first trial. More