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      David McCormick Concedes to Dr. Oz in the G.O.P. Primary for Senate in Pennsylvania

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      David McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, conceded the exceedingly close race for the Republican nomination for Senate in Pennsylvania on Friday to Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity television physician, with a statewide recount underway and no official race call.Dr. Oz had a lead of fewer than 1,000 votes, or .07 percent, before the county-by-county recount began last week. The unexpected early concession — five days before the recount’s full results were to be released — was a recognition that Mr. McCormick had gained only handfuls of votes so far and faced an insurmountable hurdle in making up his deficit. His decision sets up one of the most pivotal contests of the midterms, a November election between Dr. Oz and the Democratic nominee, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.“We spent the last 17 days making sure every Republican vote was counted,” Mr. McCormick said in an appearance in Harrisburg with supporters on Friday evening. “But it’s now clear to me that with the recount largely complete, that we have a nominee. And today I called Mehmet Oz to congratulate him on his victory.”The primary initially produced a photo finish in which both campaigns’ calling for all votes to be counted vividly contrasted with how Republican supporters of former President Donald J. Trump reacted to his loss in Pennsylvania in 2020, when he and his allies tried to block the counting of ballots beyond Election Day.Mr. Trump, who endorsed Dr. Oz, urged him the day after the election to follow his own conspiratorial script — he still maintains the presidential election was “stolen” — and declare victory before all the votes were in. Dr. Oz, the longtime host of “The Dr. Oz Show” on daytime television, mostly ignored the advice. But as the recount began on May 27, he declared himself the “presumptive” nominee. The recount was ordered by Leigh M. Chapman, the state’s acting secretary of the commonwealth, and was triggered automatically by Pennsylvania law because the gap between candidates was under 0.5 percent. Understand the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarAfter key races in Georgia, Pennsylvania and other states, here’s what we’ve learned.Trump’s Invincibility in Doubt: With many of Donald J. Trump’s endorsed candidates failing to win, some Republicans see an opening for a post-Trump candidate in 2024.G.O.P. Governors Emboldened: Many Republican governors are in strong political shape. And some are openly opposing Mr. Trump.Voter Fraud Claims Fade: Republicans have been accepting their primary victories with little concern about the voter fraud they once falsely claimed caused Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss.The Politics of Guns: Republicans have been far more likely than Democrats to use messaging about guns to galvanize their base in the midterms. Here’s why.Armies of lawyers for the candidates challenged small batches of provisional ballots in front of county election boards, sought hand recounts in certain precincts and went to court, scrapping over every vote. Mr. McCormick, who led his opponent on mail ballots, sued to include 850 or so mail-in votes that were received on time but did not have voters’ handwritten dates on the envelopes. Although he received a favorable ruling from the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, it was clear that there just weren’t enough outstanding votes under any scenario for Mr. McCormick to prevail.Suspense around the race for weeks deflected attention from Mr. Fetterman, who suffered a stroke May 13, days before the election, leading to a hospital stay and the implantation of a pacemaker and defibrillator in his heart. Mr. Fetterman’s absence from the campaign trail ever since and his refusal until Friday to offer more than scant details of his condition raised questions about his ability to campaign in the general election. Mr. Fetterman, 52, revealed on Friday that he had “almost died” after ignoring for years a doctor’s warning that his heart’s pumping was diminished. His cardiologist made public a diagnosis of cardiomyopathy, which makes it harder for the heart’s muscles to pump. Ramesh R. Chandra, the cardiologist, said if Mr. Fetterman follows his instructions and takes his health seriously this time, “he should be able to campaign and serve in the U.S. Senate without a problem.”The November election holds high stakes for both parties: Pennsylvania is probably Democrats’ best chance to add a seat to their fragile 50-50 control of the Senate, in which Vice President Kamala Harris holds the tiebreaking vote. With Senator Patrick J. Toomey retiring, the seat is the only G.O.P.-held open Senate seat in a state that Joseph R. Biden Jr. won in 2020. For Republicans, retaining it would ease their path to a Senate majority in a year when the political climate is strongly in their favor.In a statement after Mr. McCormick’s concession, Dr. Oz said, “Now that our primary is over, we will make sure that this U.S. Senate seat does not fall into the hands of the radical left, led by John Fetterman.” Dr. Oz, 61, who won Mr. Trump’s endorsement in large part because of his television charisma, was never fully embraced by core Trump supporters, as evidenced by the closeness of the race. At a rally Mr. Trump held in Pennsylvania 11 days before Election Day, boos greeted the mention of Dr. Oz’s name. Mr. McCormick, a West Point graduate and the former chief executive of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, was more competitive than polls and many political experts had expected. In part that was because of Dr. Oz’s history of espousing liberal views, notably on abortion and transgender issues, which made him toxic to some conservatives. David McCormick conceded the race amid a statewide recount.Mark Makela/Getty ImagesHesitance to embrace Dr. Oz by the Trump-centric base allowed a late surge by a hard-right candidate, Kathy Barnette. On Election Day, when she finished third with about 25 percent of the vote, she appeared to have siphoned grass-roots Trump supporters from Dr. Oz. She did so after declaring “MAGA does not belong to President Trump,” and despite Mr. Trump’s dismissal that Ms. Barnette, who has a history of homophobic and anti-Muslim remarks, “will never be able to win the general election.”Dr. Oz and Mr. McCormick, both first-time candidates, worked hard to transform themselves from members of the East Coast elite, with middle-of-the-road politics, into credible champions of the MAGA movement. Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      The Good News in Georgia That’s Bad News for Trump

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      This is a column about good news, written in the shadow of the worst news imaginable.Like many people, the mass shooting of children in Uvalde, Texas, is basically the only thing I’ve read about for days. But as I’ve marinated in the horror — and, increasingly, in rage at the police response — I’ve also been aware of the way our media experience works today, how we are constantly cycled from one crisis to another, each one seemingly existential and yet seemingly forgotten when the wheel turns, the headlines change.Climate change, systemic racism, toxic masculinity, online disinformation, gun violence, police violence, the next Trump coup, the latest Covid variant, the death of democracy, climate change again. This is the liberal crisis list; the conservative list is different. But for everyone there are relatively few opportunities to take a breath and acknowledge when anything actually gets better.So my next column will be about the darkness in Texas and the possible policy response. In this one I want to acknowledge that in a different zone of existential agitation, things just meaningfully improved.In Georgia, the state at the center of the 45th president’s attempt to defy the public will and stay in office, there were two Republican primary races that doubled as referendums on the Trumpian demand that G.O.P. officials follow him into a constitutional crisis — and in both of them his candidate lost badly.The higher-profile race was the battle for the gubernatorial nomination between Brian Kemp and David Perdue, which Kemp won in an extraordinary rout. But the more important one was the Republican primary for secretary of state, in which Brad Raffensperger, the special target of Trump’s strong-arm tactics and then his public ire, defeated Jody Hice, Trump’s candidate — and did so without a runoff. Probably some crossover Democratic votes helped push him over 50 percent, but most of his voters were Republicans who listened to his challenger’s constant talk of voter fraud and decided to stick with the guy who stood up to Trump.Brian KempNicole Craine for The New York TimesBrad RaffenspergerAudra Melton for The New York TimesThe Kemp victory was expected; the easy Raffensperger win less so, and certainly it wasn’t expected at this time last year. Back then, if you pointed out that all the Republicans in positions that really mattered in the aftermath of the 2020 election, across multiple states and multiple offices, did their jobs and declined to go along with Trump, the usual response was maybe it happened once but wouldn’t happen again, because Trump’s enmity was a guaranteed career-ender.Now that narrative, happily, has been exploded. Any Republican in a key swing-state office come 2024 can look at Kemp and Raffensperger and know that they have a future in G.O.P. politics if, in the event of a contested election, they simply do their job.Moreover, the primary balloting in Georgia saw record early-voting turnout and no evidence of meaningful impediments to voting, which exploded a different crisis narrative that took hold on the left — and in corporate America and the Biden White House — when the state passed new voting regulations last year. According to that narrative, in trying to address the paranoia of their own constituents, Republicans were essentially rolling back voting rights, even recreating Jim Crow — “on steroids,” to quote our president.There was little good evidence for this narrative at the time, and even less evidence in the turnout rate for the Georgia primary, where early voting numbers were higher even than in 2020. “Jim Crow on steroids” should be stricken from the crisis cycle; it does not exist.On the other hand the Trumpian peril, the risk of election subversion and constitutional crisis, does still exist. Doug Mastriano’s recent primary victory in Pennsylvania proves as much, and there may be other swing-state nominees who, like Mastriano, can’t be trusted to imitate Kemp and Raffensperger in the clutch.But the results in Georgia prove that the faction that elevates figures like Mastriano does not have a simple veto in the party. It shows the effectiveness of what you might call a “stay and govern” strategy of dealing with Trump’s hold on the G.O.P., one with wide application as the party moves toward 2024.And it indicates the limits of the all-or-nothing thinking that a crisis mentality imposes. I can easily imagine an alternative timeline where Raffensperger resigned his office rather than standing for re-election, inked a deal with MSNBC, turned his subsequent book into a mega-bestseller in the style of so many Trump-administration exposés and adopted Biden-administration talking points to denounce Georgia election laws. That timeline would have unquestionably been better for the Raffensperger family’s bank account, and it would have prompted many liberals to hail him as a profile in Republican courage.But for everyone else — Georgians, the G.O.P., the country — that timeline would have been worse. Whereas because he stayed in the party, ran again and won, even in a dark week for America one region of our common life looks a little better, and one of our crises should feel a little bit less dire.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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      Trump Lawyers Are Focus of Inquiry Into Alternate Electors Scheme

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      In recent subpoenas, federal prosecutors investigating alternate slates of pro-Trump electors sought information about Rudolph W. Giuliani, John Eastman and others.The Justice Department has stepped up its criminal investigation into the creation of alternate slates of pro-Trump electors seeking to overturn Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the 2020 election, with a particular focus on a team of lawyers that worked on behalf of President Donald J. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.A federal grand jury in Washington has started issuing subpoenas in recent weeks to people linked to the alternate elector plan, requesting information about several lawyers including Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and one of his chief legal advisers, John Eastman, one of the people said.The subpoenas also seek information on other pro-Trump lawyers like Jenna Ellis, who worked with Mr. Giuliani, and Kenneth Chesebro, who wrote memos supporting the elector scheme in the weeks after the election.A top Justice Department official acknowledged in January that prosecutors were trying to determine whether any crimes were committed in the scheme.Under the plan, election officials in seven key swing states put forward formal lists of pro-Trump electors to the Electoral College on the grounds that the states would be shown to have swung in favor of Mr. Trump once their claims of widespread election fraud had been accepted. Those claims were baseless, and all seven states were awarded to Mr. Biden.It is a federal crime to knowingly submit false statements to a federal agency or agent for an undue end. The alternate elector slates were filed with a handful of government bodies, including the National Archives.The focus on the alternate electors is only one of the efforts by the Justice Department to broaden its vast investigation of hundreds of rioters who broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.In the past few months, grand jury subpoenas have also been issued seeking information about a wide array of people who organized Mr. Trump’s rally near the White House that day, and about any members of the executive and legislative branches who may have taken part in planning the event or tried to obstruct the certification of the 2020 election.The widening and intensifying Justice Department inquiry also comes as the House select committee investigating the efforts to overturn the election and the Jan. 6 assault prepares for public hearings next month.The subpoenas in the elector investigation are the first public indications that the roles of Mr. Giuliani and other lawyers working on Mr. Trump’s behalf are of interest to federal prosecutors.After Election Day, Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Ellis appeared in front of a handful of legislatures in contested swing states, laying out what they claimed was evidence of fraud and telling lawmakers that they had the power to pick their own electors to the Electoral College.Mr. Eastman was an architect of a related plan to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to use the alternate electors in a bid to block or delay congressional certification of Mr. Biden’s victory.Examining the lawyers who worked with Mr. Trump after the election edges prosecutors close to the former president. But there is no guarantee that an investigation of the lawyers working on the alternate elector plan would lead prosecutors to discover any evidence that Mr. Trump broke the law.The plot to use alternate electors was one of the most expansive and audacious schemes in a dizzying array of efforts by Mr. Trump and his supporters to deny his election loss and keep him in the White House.John Eastman, a lawyer advising Mr. Trump, was an architect of a plan to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to use alternate electors in a bid to block Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesIt began even before some states had finished counting ballots, as officials in places like Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin came under pressure to create slates of electors announcing that Mr. Trump had won.The scheme reached a crescendo in the days leading up to Jan. 6, when Mr. Trump and his allies mounted a relentless campaign to persuade Mr. Pence to accept the alternate electors and use them at a joint session of Congress to deny — or at least delay — Mr. Biden’s victory.At various times, the plan involved state lawmakers and White House aides, though prosecutors seem to believe that a group of Mr. Trump’s lawyers played a crucial role in carrying it out. Investigators have cast a wide net for information about the lawyers, but prosecutors believe that not all of them may have supported the plans that Mr. Trump’s allies created to keep him in office, according to one of the people familiar with the matter.Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer said he was unaware of any investigation into his client. Mr. Eastman’s lawyer and Ms. Ellis did not return emails seeking comment. Mr. Chesebro declined to answer questions about the inquiry.The strategy of pushing the investigation forward by examining the lawyers’ roles could prove to be tricky. Prosecutors are likely to run into arguments that some — or even much — of the information they are seeking is protected by attorney-client privilege. And there is no indication that prosecutors have sought to subpoena the lawyers or search their property.“There are heightened requirements for obtaining a search warrant on a lawyer,” said Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney in Alabama. “Even when opening a case where a lawyer could be a subject, prosecutors will flag that to make sure that people consider the rights of uninvolved parties.”As a New York real estate mogul, Mr. Trump had a habit of employing lawyers to insulate himself from queries about his questionable business practices and personal behavior. In the White House — especially in times of stress or scandal — he often demanded loyalty from the lawyers around him, once asking in reference to a mentor and famous lawyer known for his ruthlessness, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?”Some of the lawyers who have come under scrutiny in connection with the alternate elector scheme are already facing allegations of professional impropriety or misconduct.In June, for instance, Mr. Giuliani’s law license was suspended after a New York court ruled that he had made “demonstrably false and misleading statements” while fighting the election results on Mr. Trump’s behalf. Boris Epshteyn, another lawyer who worked with Mr. Giuliani, has also come under scrutiny in the Justice Department investigation, the people familiar with the matter said.Two months before Mr. Giuliani’s license was suspended, F.B.I. agents conducted extraordinary searches of his home and office in New York as part of an unrelated inquiry centered on his dealings in Ukraine before the 2020 election, when he sought to damage Mr. Biden’s credibility.In March, a federal judge in California ruled in a civil case that Mr. Eastman had most likely conspired with Mr. Trump to obstruct Congress and defraud the United States by helping to devise and promote the alternate elector scheme, and by presenting plans to Mr. Pence suggesting that he could exercise his discretion over which slates of electors to accept or reject at the Jan. 6 congressional certification of votes.There is no guarantee that an investigation of the lawyers working on the alternate elector plan would lead prosecutors to discover evidence that Mr. Trump broke the law.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThe scheme, which involved holding meetings and drafting emails and memos, was “a coup in search of a legal theory,” wrote the judge, David O. Carter of the Central District of California.It was revealed this month that Mr. Eastman was involved in a similar — but perhaps even more brazen — effort to overturn to the election results. According to emails released by a public records request, Mr. Eastman pressed a Pennsylvania state lawmaker in December 2020 to carry out a plan to strip Mr. Biden of his win in that state by essentially retabulating the vote count in a way that would favor Mr. Trump.A week before the disclosure of Mr. Eastman’s emails, Ms. Ellis was accused of misconduct in an ethics complaint submitted to court officials in Colorado, her home state.The complaint, by the bipartisan legal watchdog group the States United Democracy Center, said that Ms. Ellis had made “numerous public misrepresentations” while traveling the country with Mr. Giuliani after the election in an effort to persuade local lawmakers that the voting had been marred by fraud.It also noted that Ms. Ellis had assisted Mr. Trump in an “unsuccessful and potentially criminal effort” to stave off defeat by writing two memos arguing that Mr. Pence could ignore the electoral votes in key swing states that had pledged their support to Mr. Biden.As for Mr. Chesebro, he was involved in what may have been the earliest known effort to put on paper proposals for preparing alternate electors.A little more than two weeks after Election Day, Mr. Chesebro sent a memo to James Troupis, a lawyer for the Trump campaign in Wisconsin, laying out a plan to name pro-Trump electors in the state. In a follow-up memo three weeks later, Mr. Chesebro expanded on the plan, setting forth an analysis of how to legally authorize alternate electors in six key swing states, including Wisconsin.The two memos, obtained by The New York Times, were used by Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Eastman, among others, as they developed a strategy intended to pressure Mr. Pence and to exploit ambiguities in the Electoral Count Act, according to a person familiar with the matter. More

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      The Depp-Heard Trial Isn’t Even the Weirdest Thing About America Right Now

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. It looks like I won’t be vacationing in Vladivostok anytime soon. Or Omsk, Tomsk, Yakutsk or Smolensk, for that matter.Gail: Bret, this is one of the most interesting openings we’ve ever had. Is this because you canceled a summer vacation reservation for the Trans-Siberian Railway? Or perchance the Russian reaction to your very powerful anti-Putin column?Bret: I woke up on Saturday to the news that my name was on a list of 963 Americans barred for life by the Russian foreign ministry from visiting Mother Russia. Which is about as upsetting as waking up to a call from your doctor who says, “It isn’t cancer” or a message from an ex that reads, “I was wrong about everything.”Gail: You know, when people visit our apartment, their favorite home decoration is almost always the letter Donald Trump wrote calling me a dog “with the face of a pig.” If only you could get Vladimir Putin to drop you a note saying, “Looking forward to seeing you — Never!” it’d be the ultimate example of high-end hate mail.Bret: I’m OK with the Russian sanction on me so long as it doesn’t involve poisoned underpants. Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine rages on, abortion rights are on the line at the Supreme Court, inflation is high and the markets are tanking, and yet the most divisive issue of our time seems to be … Amber Heard v. Johnny Depp.Are you taking a side?Gail Collins: Bret, I’m a big fan of Hollywood gossip as an antidote for dwelling too long on deeply depressing current events. But this one is pretty depressing itself and I kinda wish we could talk about some other celebrity story. Hey, did you know Dick Van Dyke has signed up for a fitness class at 96?Bret: I did. Good to know we are both attentive readers of The New York Post.Gail: I guess everyone who watches late-night talk shows now knows that Depp is suing his ex-wife for defamation over a 2018 op-ed she wrote in The Washington Post about domestic violence. Couldn’t be a more important topic, but the stories we’ve heard since — like the controversy over whether she defecated on their bed or if it was the dog — don’t really bring a desirable kind of attention to spousal abuse issues.Your thoughts?Bret: Heard is a lot more convincing as an actress than she is as a witness. I also think the reason the trial has captured this kind of attention — aside from the pure entertainment value of watching two deeply troubled celebrity exes go at each other as if they were re-enacting a scene from “Gladiator” — is that for many people it represents a kind of corrective to the excesses of the #MeToo movement.Gail: OK, we’re now at Disagreement Central. Men who are subject to those kinds of accusations obviously deserve to have their defenses listened to. And nobody should automatically be seen as guilty until the evidence is in.Bret: Yes and yes.Gail: But when it comes to issues of physical abuse, a woman deserves immediate attention, partly just out of concern for her safety. And because we’re trying to turn around a long human history in which violence against a sexual partner wasn’t seen as serious as violence against anybody else.Bret: Agree again, but while Heard has accused Depp of being violent, she also said on the stand that “It’s always been my own testimony that I hit Johnny.” I think the case serves as a reminder that the current politicized vision of relationships — in which men always hold all the power, including physical power; women are generally presumed to be the victimized party, as well as the honest one; and romantic relationships are supposed to abide by the dictates of a legal brief, not the alchemy of desire — just doesn’t conform to the way most people experience life.Gail: If our readers want to mull this matter further, I really recommend our colleague Michelle Goldberg’s Heard-Depp column from last week.Bret: Michelle eloquently expresses the exact opposite of my view.Gail: Speaking of eloquent, what about the primaries that just occurred? The big one in Pennsylvania for the Republican Senate nomination, featuring Dr. Oz versus Business Guy, is still unresolved. Which has got to be a plus for the Democratic nominee, John Fetterman. Any thoughts on that race?Bret: My guess is that Fetterman will have a tough time winning in November. He’s on the leftward side of a Democratic Party that is struggling to overcome the perception that it leaned too far left in Biden’s first year. Of course, Oz and David McCormick, his closest opponent, could still tear the Pennsylvania G.O.P. to pieces fighting for the 1,000 or so votes that separated them in last week’s primary. The older I get, the more I realize that winning in politics is mostly a game of being slightly less stupid than your opponent.Gail: Embarrassing to look all around the country and see previously sane Republicans who now feel compelled to deny Biden won the election.Bret: Those Republicans aren’t sane, but I take your point.Gail: Fetterman is overly colorful for my taste, constantly showing up in shorts for public events and bragging about his tattoos. But his policies are perfectly reasonable, and I think he has a real shot.Bret: The other primary race that fascinates me, Gail, is the one for governor in Georgia. Trump favorite David Perdue is making a run for incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp’s job, and it looks like Perdue will lose in a rout. That’s all the more notable because Kemp stood by Biden’s victory in the state’s 2020 presidential election. It may be a good indication that Trump’s power in the party is finally beginning to wane.Or is that just wishful thinking?Gail: Maybe the rule on Republican primaries is that party voters will back the Trump candidate if they know virtually nothing about the people who are running. If the endorsee is, say, Representative Madison Cawthorn, the newly rejected 26-year-old congressional juvenile delinquent, they’ve got plenty of information to make a choice on their own.Bret: On a related note, it will be interesting to see if Marjorie Taylor Greene wins her G.O.P. primary in Georgia. If she loses, maybe she can blame those Jewish space lasers again.Gail: One primary that’s going to tell us a lot about Trump’s ability to impose his will on an election where the voters are well informed should be in Wyoming. Will Liz Cheney get renominated? That’d certainly leave our former president gnawing on a Mar-a-Lago porch railing.Bret: Whatever happens to Liz Cheney — and things don’t look great for her right now — she’s earned her own chapter in some future sequel to John F. Kennedy’s “Profiles in Courage.” After the recent shooting in Buffalo, she tweeted that the “House G.O.P. leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and antisemitism.” There’s a word for that kind of magnificent honesty, often associated with bowling, tennis or golf.Gail: Of course the Wyoming primary isn’t until August. Plenty of stuff to look forward to before then. As well as watching the actual government in operation. How do you think Biden’s doing these days?Bret: Well, he’s done a much better job standing up for Ukraine than I had expected he might, and I’ll give him and his national-security team full marks for that.On the other hand, homicide rates in major American cities were 44 percent higher in 2021 than they were in 2019, and there’s a palpable sense of lawlessness and urban decay in one downtown after another, including a random killing Sunday morning on the subway in New York. That isn’t Biden’s fault, but it adds to a perception of Democratic misgovernance.Gail: Conservative refusal to control gun sales is my nominee for the Misgovernment Medal.Bret: Inflation hasn’t been this high in 40 years and it can cost more than $100 to fill a tank of gas. We may have been spared a migration crisis this summer, but only because a Trump-appointed judge blocked the C.D.C.’s effort to end Title 42. We also seem to be teetering on the verge of a recession, which would be … bad. Despite all this, the White House seems to think that Biden is a plausible candidate for re-election in 2024, which at this point looks about as likely as that vacation I was supposed to take in Vladivostok.My question for you is, when do Democrats start panicking?Gail: Well, the first panic-possible moment is this fall, when we see how the midterm elections go. Can’t actually say I’m feeling optimistic right now, but I do believe there’s a huge difference between Democrats Can’t Govern — the big issue this fall — and Who Wants Trump Back?, which will be the big issue in two years.Totally confident right now that most Americans don’t want Trump back. In fact that’s possibly the only question in which Biden definitely comes out the winner.Bret: A decent strategy unless Ron DeSantis is the nominee.Gail: Not a fan of Biden acknowledging now that he won’t run again, as I’ve mentioned before, but I do admit one plus would be bringing the race for 2024 up front right away and giving the new talent a chance to show itself.Bret: Glad to have possibly won you over on that point. Last thing, Gail, our readers shouldn’t miss Dwight Garner’s obituary for Roger Angell, The New Yorker’s great baseball writer, who died last week at 101. Always good to see one magnificent writer do justice to another.Gail: Amen.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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      Ginni Thomas Urged Arizona Lawmakers to Overturn Election

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      The wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote to legislators in a crucial swing state after the Trump campaign’s loss in 2020.In the weeks after the 2020 presidential election, Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, twice lobbied the speaker of the Arizona House and another lawmaker to effectively reverse Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s popular-vote victory and deliver the crucial swing state to Donald J. Trump.Ms. Thomas, known as Ginni, a right-wing political activist who became a close ally of Mr. Trump during his presidency, made the entreaties in emails to Russell Bowers, the Republican speaker, and Shawnna Bolick, a Republican state representative. Ms. Bolick’s husband, Clint, once worked with Justice Thomas and now sits on the Arizona Supreme Court.The emails came as Mr. Trump and his allies were engaged in a legal effort to overturn his defeats in several battleground states. While the Arizona emails did not mention either presidential candidate by name, they echoed the former president’s false claims of voter fraud and his legal team’s dubious contention that the power to choose electors therefore rested not with the voters but with state legislatures.“Do your constitutional duty,” Ms. Thomas wrote the lawmakers on Nov. 9. On Dec. 13, with Mr. Trump still refusing to concede on the eve of the Electoral College vote, she contacted the lawmakers again.“The nation’s eyes are on you now,” she warned, adding, “Please consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you do not stand up and lead.”After she sent her first round of emails, but before the second round, Mr. Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, more directly pressured Mr. Bowers. They called him and urged him to have the state legislature step in and choose Arizona’s electors.Mr. Bowers could not be reached for comment on Friday. In a statement to The Arizona Republic, a spokesman said that Mr. Bowers never saw Ms. Thomas’s email. He ended up rebuffing all the requests to intervene, even in the face of protests outside his house.Ms. Bolick, who did not return requests for comment and is now running to become Arizona’s next secretary of state on a platform to “restore election integrity,” proved more of an ally. She thanked Ms. Thomas for reaching out, writing that she hoped “you and Clarence are doing great!” Among other things, she would go on to urge Congress to throw out Arizona’s presidential election results and award the state’s Electoral College votes to Mr. Trump.The emails, reported earlier by The Washington Post and obtained by The New York Times, were part of a letter-writing campaign hosted on FreeRoots, a political advocacy platform. On Friday, Mark Paoletta, a lawyer and close friend of the Thomases, said on Twitter that Ms. Thomas “did not write the letter and had no input in the content,” but rather merely “signed her name to a pre-written form letter that was signed by thousands of citizens.”“How disturbing, what a threat!” he wrote, dismissing the revelations as a “lame story.” He added: “A private citizen joining a letter writing campaign, hosted by a platform that served both conservative and liberal causes. Welcome to America.”In fact, the emails are a reflection of the far broader and more integral role that Justice Thomas’s wife played in efforts to delegitimize the election and install Mr. Trump for a second term — efforts that culminated on Jan. 6, 2021, with a protest called the “March to Save America” that turned into a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol.As a string of revelations by The Times and other outlets in recent months has demonstrated, Ms. Thomas actively supported and participated at the highest levels in schemes to overturn the election. Those efforts have, in turn, cast a spotlight on her husband, who from his lifetime perch on the Supreme Court has issued opinions favoring Mr. Trump’s efforts to both reverse his loss and stymie a congressional investigation into the events of Jan. 6.This February, The New York Times Magazine reported on Ms. Thomas’s role on the board of C.N.P. Action, a conservative group that had instructed members to adopt letter-writing tactics — of the kind she personally used in Arizona — to pressure Republican lawmakers in swing states to circumvent voters by appointing alternate electors.C.N.P. Action had also circulated a newsletter in December 2020 that included a report targeting five swing states, including Arizona, where Mr. Trump and his allies were pressing litigation. It warned that time was running out for the courts to “declare the elections null and void.” The report was co-written by one of Mr. Trump’s leading election lawyers, Cleta Mitchell, a friend of Ms. Thomas.And in the lead-up to the rally on Jan. 6, Ms. Thomas played a mediating role, uniting feuding factions of planners so that there “wouldn’t be any division,” one of the organizers, Dustin Stockton, later told The Times.Ms. Thomas declined to speak to The Times for that article, but a few weeks later, in an interview with a friendly conservative outlet, she denied playing any role in the organization of the rally, even as she acknowledged attending it. (She said she left before Mr. Trump addressed the crowd.)But she has adamantly opposed a fuller inquiry into the insurrection. Last December, she co-signed a letter calling for House Republicans to expel Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger from their conference for joining the committee investigating the Capitol riot, saying it brought “disrespect to our country’s rule of law” and “legal harassment to private citizens who have done nothing wrong.”And in late March, The Post and CBS reported that she had sent a series of text messages to Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, imploring him to take steps to reverse the election. Ms. Thomas urged him to “release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down,” invoking a slogan popular on the right that refers to a set of conspiratorial claims that Trump supporters believed would overturn the vote. In the text messages, she also indicated that she had been in contact with the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, about a post-election legal strategy.Democrats expressed outrage. In a letter after the text messages were reported, two dozen Democrats, including Senators Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker, wrote: “Given the recent disclosures about Ms. Thomas’s efforts to overturn the election and her specific communications with White House officials about doing so, Justice Thomas’s participation in cases involving the 2020 election and the January 6th attack is exceedingly difficult to reconcile with federal ethics requirements.”Still, it remains an open question whether the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack will seek an interview with Ms. Thomas. In March, people familiar with the committee’s work signaled a desire to ask Ms. Thomas to voluntarily sit for an interview. But the committee has yet to do so, and its chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, told reporters that Ms. Thomas had not come up recently in the panel’s discussions.Justice Thomas has remained defiant amid questions about his own impartiality, resisting calls that he recuse himself from matters that overlap with his wife’s activism. Earlier this year, when the Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 to allow the release of records from the Trump White House related to Jan. 6, Justice Thomas was the sole dissenter. In February last year, he sharply dissented when the court declined to hear a case brought by Pennsylvania Republicans seeking to disqualify certain mail-in ballots.The latest revelations about his wife follow a speech last week in which he lambasted protests in front of the houses of justices after a draft opinion was leaked that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion case. “I wonder how long we’re going to have these institutions at the rate we’re undermining them,” he told a conference of fellow conservatives. “And then I wonder when they’re gone or destabilized, what we’re going to have as a country.”And he flashed at his own partisanship in claiming that the left’s protests lacked the decorum of the right — while failing to mention last year’s attack on the Capitol, or protests like those in front of Mr. Bowers’s house.“You would never visit Supreme Court justices’ houses when things didn’t go our way,” he said. “We didn’t throw temper tantrums. It is incumbent on us to always act appropriately and not to repay tit for tat.”Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife have frequently appeared at political events despite longstanding customs of the Supreme Court.Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesThe Thomases have long defied norms of the high court, where justices often avoid political events and entanglements and their spouses often keep low profiles. No spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice has ever been as overt a political activist as Ms. Thomas. C.N.P. Action, where she sits on the board, is a branch of the Council for National Policy, a secretive conservative organization that includes leaders from the National Rifle Association and the Family Research Council, a Christian advocacy group. Ms. Thomas also founded an organization called Groundswell that holds a weekly meeting of influential conservatives, many of whom work directly on issues that have come before the Supreme Court.Justice Thomas, for his part, has frequently appeared at political events hosted by advocates hoping to sway the court. He and his wife sometimes appear together at such events, and often portray themselves as standing in the breach amid a crumbling society.“It’s very exciting,” Ms. Thomas said during a 2018 Council for National Policy meeting, “the fact that there’s a resistance on our side to their side.”Luke Broadwater More

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      Democrats, the Midterm Jinx Is Not Inevitable

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      In November, the Democrats are widely expected to lose the House and probably also the Senate. Large defeats are the norm for a new president’s first midterm. A harbinger is a president’s approval rating, and President Biden’s stands at a lackluster 41.1 percent.But standard political history may not be a good guide to 2022. The Democrats are facing long odds, but there are several reasons this could be an unusual political year.For starters, Donald Trump is just as likely to hobble Republicans as he is to energize them. Mr. Trump will not be on the ballot, but many of his surrogates will. He has endorsed over 175 candidates in federal and state elections, and in his clumsy efforts to play kingmaker, Mr. Trump has promoted some badly compromised candidates and challenged party unity.In the Georgia primary for governor, a Trump surrogate, Sonny Purdue, is polling well behind Mr. Trump’s nemesis, the incumbent Brian Kemp. In the Georgia Senate race, Mr. Trump’s endorsed candidate, Herschel Walker, is running away from his past and locked in a tight race against the incumbent Raphael Warnock. It may not happen again, but in 2020, Mr. Trump’s meddling backfired and helped Democrats take two Senate seats.To hold the Senate, Democrats need to defend incumbents in New Hampshire, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia. But they have pickup opportunities in several states.In Pennsylvania, the popular lieutenant governor John Fetterman, an economic populist, will run against the winner of a close Republican primary, either the celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz or the financier David McCormick. Mr. Oz, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump, has a very slight edge, as well as a very slight connection to Pennsylvania, having lived in New Jersey for many years. Either nominee would most likely alienate part of the Trump base, and neither is remotely populist.In Ohio, Mr. Trump’s endorsement helped the author and venture capitalist executive J.D. Vance prevail. In the general election, we will get a test of the divisive culture-war populism of Mr. Vance versus the genuine pocketbook populism of Representative Tim Ryan — the kind that keeps re-electing Ohio’s Democratic senator, Sherrod Brown.For Democrats to succeed in many of these races, their base will have to be energized — but at the moment, it is not. Still, there’s hope: Even if the ubiquitous lunacy of Mr. Trump doesn’t wake Democrats up, the likelihood of abortion being banned in half the country probably will.If the leaked opinion in the Supreme Court abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, becomes law in an official June decision, it will not just allow states to criminalize abortion, but will turn doctors into agents of the state when they treat women for miscarriages. This extremism on women’s health does not have the support of most voters.The Democratic revival of 2017-20 began with the epic women’s marches of January 2017. If Democrats are more competitive than expected this year, it will be in part because women are galvanized, especially women in the Democratic base but also independent or “soft Republican” college-educated suburban women.Something like this happened in 2017, when large numbers of liberals and moderates, appalled by Mr. Trump’s presidency, saw the 2018 election as a firebreak. That year, Democrats made a net gain of 40 seats in the House, and historic turnout gains in 2018, relative to the previous midterm, were a great benefit for Democrats.All will depend on how closely 2022 resembles 2018. With the electorate so divided, there are relatively few swing voters — but potentially dozens of swing districts. How they swing depends entirely on turnout.A Democratic effort reminiscent of grass roots groups in 2017 is beginning to gear up. For example, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland sponsors a Democracy Summer for college students who want to get out and organize. This idea has been picked up in dozens of other congressional districts.Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, in the January 2021 runoff election that won him a Senate seat, helped pioneer a technique called paid relational organizing. He hired some 2,800 Georgians to reach out to their own peer networks to win support for Mr. Ossoff. Now several people who worked with Senator Ossoff are taking this strategy national.Other events this summer may have bearing on the fall. The House panel investigating the attack of Jan. 6, 2021, will hold public hearings in June. Closer to the midterms, it will release its final report, which will put Republicans on the spot to answer for their defense of an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Mr. Trump will surely continue to insist the 2020 election was stolen, but most Republicans will be whipsawed between the demands of Mr. Trump and his base and their wish to focus on more winning issues.Mr. Trump’s own behavior is exposing all the latent fissures in the contradictory coalition that narrowly elected him. Democratic candidates will be reminding Americans of the potential menace of a second Trump term. If Mr. Trump rejoins Twitter, he will remind them himself.Even so, Republican extremism is at risk of being overshadowed by economic conditions, none more than inflation. Federal Reserve economists project that inflation could begin to subside by fall. As with so much in politics, sheer luck and timing will play a role in the Democrats’ prospects and the future of our Republic.Stranger things have happened than a Democrat midterm resurgence. A wipeout is still likely, but far from inevitable — if Democrats can get organized.Robert Kuttner is a co-editor of The American Prospect and the author of “Going Big: FDR’s Legacy, Biden’s New Deal, and the Struggle to Save Democracy.”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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      America’s Doug Mastriano Problem

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      If the Ohio Senate primary two weeks ago provided some clarity about the ideological divisions in the Republican Party, Tuesday’s primaries often seemed more like a showcase for the distinctive personalities that populate a Trumpified G.O.P.The Pennsylvania Senate race gave us an especially vivid mix: As of this writing, the Celebrity Doctor and the Hedge Fund Guy Pretending to Be a MAGA True Believer may be headed for a recount, after the Would-Be Media Personality With the Inspiring Back Story and the Unfortunate Twitter Feed faded back into the pack. In the governor’s race, Republican voters chose to nominate Doug Mastriano, a.k.a. the QAnon Dad. In North Carolina, they ended — for now — the political career of Representative Madison Cawthorn, the Obviously Suffering Grifter.On substance, as opposed to personality, though, the night’s stakes were relatively simple: Can Republicans prevent their party from becoming the party of constitutional crisis, with leaders tacitly committed to turning the next close presidential election into a legal-judicial-political train wreck?This is a distinctive version of a familiar political problem. Whenever a destabilizing populist rebellion is unleashed inside a democratic polity, there are generally two ways to bring back stability without some kind of crisis or rupture in the system.Sometimes the revolt can be quarantined within a minority coalition and defeated by a majority. This was the destiny, for instance, of William Jennings Bryan’s 1890s prairie-populist rebellion, which took over the Democratic Party but went down to multiple presidential defeats at the hands of the more establishmentarian Republicans. You can see a similar pattern, for now, in French politics, where the populism of Marine Le Pen keeps getting isolated and defeated by the widely disliked but grudgingly tolerated centrism of Emmanuel Macron.In the alternative path to stability, the party being reshaped by populism finds leaders who can absorb its energies, channel its grievances and claim its mantle — but also defeat or suppress its most extreme manifestations. This was arguably the path of New Deal liberalism in its relationship to Depression-era populism and radicalism: In the 1930s, Franklin Roosevelt was able to sustain support from voters who were also drawn to more demagogic characters, from Huey Long to Charles Coughlin. Two generations later, it was the path of Reaganite conservatism in its relationship to both George Wallace’s populism and the Goldwaterite New Right.The problem for America today is that neither stabilizing strategy is going particularly well. Part of the Never Trump movement has aspired to a Macron-style strategy, preaching establishment unity behind the Democratic Party. But the Democrats haven’t cooperated: They conspicuously failed to contain and defeat Trumpism in 2016, and there is no sign that the Biden-era variation on the party is equipped to hold on to the majority it won in 2020.Meanwhile, the Republican Party at the moment does have a provisional model for channeling but also restraining populism. Essentially it involves leaning into culture-war controversy and rhetorical pugilism to a degree that provokes constant liberal outrage and using that outrage to reassure populist voters that you’re on their side and they don’t need to throw you over for a conspiracy theorist or Jan. 6 marcher.This is the model, in different styles and contexts, of Glenn Youngkin and Ron DeSantis. In Tuesday’s primaries it worked for Idaho’s conservative incumbent governor, Brad Little, who easily defeated his own lieutenant governor’s much-further-right campaign. Next week the same approach seems likely to help Brian Kemp defeat David Perdue for the governor’s nomination in Georgia. And it offers the party’s only chance, most likely via a DeSantis candidacy, to defeat Donald Trump in 2024.Unfortunately this model works best when you have a trusted figure, a known quantity, delivering the “I’ll be your warrior, I’ll defeat the left” message. The Cawthorn race, in which the toxic congressman was unseated by a member of the North Carolina State Senate, shows that this figure doesn’t have to be an incumbent to succeed, especially if other statewide leaders provide unified support. But if you have neither unity nor a figure with statewide prominence or incumbency as your champion — no Kemp, no Little — then you can get results like Mastriano’s victory last night in Pennsylvania: a Republican nominee for governor who cannot be trusted to carry out his constitutional duties should the presidential election be close in 2024.So now the obligation returns to the Democrats. Mastriano certainly deserves to lose the general election, and probably he will. But throughout the whole Trumpian experience, the Democratic Party has consistently failed its own tests of responsibility: It has talked constantly about the threat to democracy while moving leftward to a degree that makes it difficult to impossible to hold the center, and it has repeatedly cheered on unfit Republican candidates on the theory that they will be easier to beat.This happened conspicuously with Trump himself, and more unforgivably it happened again with Mastriano: Pennsylvania Democrats sent out mailers boosting his candidacy and ran a big ad buy, more than twice Mastriano’s own TV spending, calling him “one of Donald Trump’s strongest supporters” — an “attack” line perfectly scripted to improve his primary support.Now they have him, as they had Trump in 2016. We’ll see if they can make the story end differently this time.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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      Congress Is Paralyzed on Guns. Here’s Why Chris Murphy Is Still Hopeful.

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      The Democrat from Connecticut, who has spent his decade in the Senate trying and failing to enact gun safety bills, says his party should make the issue the core of its 2022 midterm message.WASHINGTON — It did not take long after the racist gun massacre in Buffalo for a familiar sense of resignation to set in on Capitol Hill about the chance that Congress would be able to muster the will to act on meaningful legislation to combat gun violence in America.In emotional remarks at the scene of the mass shooting on Tuesday, President Biden made no direct call for Congress to take such action. Afterward, he told reporters that he intended to do so, but was frank about his belief that persuading lawmakers to move would be “very difficult.”Around the same time, top Democrats on Capitol Hill were publicly conceding that their paper-thin majority in the Senate meant there was little they would be able to do to prevent the next tragedy.“We’re kind of stuck where we are, for the time being,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, playing down the chance that even a modest bill to strengthen background checks for gun purchases could overcome a Republican blockade.Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, shares his colleagues’ skepticism that any legislation can move. But he is also concerned that Democrats may squander a chance to turn the issue of gun safety into a rallying cry for the midterm elections.For a decade, the issue of gun violence has defined Mr. Murphy’s career; the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., took place a month after he won his seat.Mr. Murphy spoke to The New York Times from a Senate cloakroom about the chances for legislative action on guns, what Mr. Biden should do and why he thinks Democrats will lose control of Congress if they don’t make combating gun violence the core of their 2022 appeal to voters.The interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, when 20 young children and six adults were killed, did Democrats and President Barack Obama miss the opportunity to pass meaningful gun safety legislation?There was this popular meme in 2013, which said that if the killing of 20 children didn’t result in any action, nothing will. That’s fundamentally the wrong way to look at how Washington works. There are few epiphanies here. It’s all about political power, and political muscle, and we’re in the process of building our own.The National Rifle Association and the gun lobby was ready for us, and for those parents, in 2013. The anti-gun-violence movement was essentially nonexistent, and the N.R.A. was at its peak power.From Opinion: The Buffalo ShootingCommentary from Times Opinion on the massacre at a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo.The Times Editorial Board: The mass shooting in Buffalo was an extreme expression of a political worldview that has become increasingly central to the G.O.P.’s identity.Jamelle Bouie: G.O.P. politicians and conservative media personalities did not create the idea of the “great replacement,” but they have adopted it.Paul Krugman: There is a direct line from Republicans’ embrace of crank economics, to Jan. 6, to Buffalo.Sway: In the latest episode of her podcast, Kara Swisher hosts a discussion on the role of internet platforms like 4chan, Facebook and Twitch in the attack.We needed time to build up a movement that is stronger than the gun lobby.My worry is that a lot of my colleagues still believe in the mythology of 1994, when everyone thought Democrats lost Congress over the assault weapons ban. That’s not true — that’s not why Congress flipped. Ever since then, Democrats are under the illusion that it’s a losing issue for us.It’s one of the most important wedge issues, and if we don’t talk about it, then we’re going to lose.Many are urging Senator Chuck Schumer and Mr. Durbin to bring up a bill to expand background checks. Even if it couldn’t pass, it would force Republicans to defend their opposition to a policy that polls show has broad support. Should they?There are times when show votes help define the parties. I’m not confident this is one of those moments, given the fact that it’s already pretty clear which side Republicans fall on and which side Democrats fall on.My main recommendation is for Democrats to go out and run on this issue, proudly and strongly. My worry is we would have a vote on the Senate floor, but then Democrats would not be willing to go out and talk about that vote in campaigns.The only way we actually change the dynamic on this issue is to make Republicans show we believe this is a winning electoral issue. That’s what we did in 2018. My worry is, we don’t feel the same confidence in this issue as a winning electoral issue in 2022.I don’t know why we don’t learn a lesson from 2018, that when we run strongly on the issue of guns, universal background checks, banning assault weapons, we turn out voters that otherwise would stay home in the midterms. I’ve talked to Senator Schumer about bringing a vote to the Senate floor. I’m not interested in taking a vote on the Senate floor if we don’t talk about it.If legislation can’t pass, what executive actions are you pushing the administration to take?There is still a ton of harmful gray area around the question of who needs to be a licensed gun dealer. There are a lot of folks peddling guns online and at gun shows who are truly in the business of selling guns, and should be required to do background checks. President Obama put out helpful, but not binding, guidance. The administration could put some real meat on the existing statute and define what it means to be in the business of selling guns.Have you pitched that to them?I have. There has been significant interest from the White House in pursuing that line of policy. I don’t know that they have made a commitment or issued any directive to the Justice Department.Do you support eliminating the filibuster in order to pass gun reforms?One hundred percent. The reason we can’t get this done is the rules of the Senate, not because the American people haven’t made a choice.Guns were one of the most important issues for voters in 2018; it ranked second behind health care. When voters came to the polls in 2018 and elected a Democratic majority in the House, it was with the explicit purpose of getting gun legislation passed. The same voters came back and elected a Democratic president. It’s simply the rules of the Senate that stopped the will of the American people from becoming law.Is there anything happening in terms of discussions with Senators Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, and Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, about trying to revive their bill to tighten background checks?There’s nothing new happening now. Manchin-Toomey doesn’t have 60 votes. I spent much of the last two years trying to find a piece of Manchin-Toomey that could get 60 votes. Ultimately, we couldn’t find a landing place. I’ll continue to try any creative avenue to find an expansion of background checks.Does a weakened National Rifle Association create any opening for Republicans to move off their opposition to gun safety measures?This N.R.A. stamp of approval still really matters to them. Inside a Republican Party that has become bereft of big ideas, they’ve only got one left, which is the destruction of government. Nothing signals that more than the endorsement of the organization that supports people arming themselves against the government. In this era of anti-government fervor, it’s more important than ever.Eventually, we have to figure out a way for Republicans to show how much they hate government other than the N.R.A. endorsement. Maybe I should be rooting for the Club for Growth to be a more effective voice within the Republican Party.Can guns really be a winning issue for Democrats in a year when Republicans are attacking your party over inflation, rising gas prices and not meeting the basic needs of American families?I think voters are emotionally moved by the slaughter of innocents. And I think they find it a little weird when Democrats who claim to care about this don’t actually talk about it.We live in an era where authenticity is the coin of the realm. You just have to show voters who you are. I don’t think there’s any more potent means by which to translate who you are, and what you care about, than this issue. I think when you leave this out when you list your priorities as a candidate, it causes voters to scratch their heads a bit.What grade would you give the Biden administration on this issue?The administration could have moved faster on executive actions and the appointment of a new A.T.F. director. I want them to keep going. There’s still more regulatory and executive action that this administration can take and more things the team can do to use the bully pulpit to make sure this is an election issue.Would you give the administration a grade?No.A number of gun violence prevention organizations have called on Mr. Biden to open a White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. Do you think that would make a difference?I do. It’s become clear to me we need a specific, driving focus on gun violence. The president is clearly personally committed to this issue, but he’s stretched thin due to myriad international and domestic crises. He would be best served by a high-level senior official who wakes up every day and coordinates the issue.After another mass shooting like the one in Buffalo, do you find yourself becoming resigned to the idea that nothing can be done on gun violence?I’ve studied enough great social change movements to know they often take decades to succeed. It was a full 10 years from the shooting of James Brady to the passage of the Brady handgun bill. I think I am part of one of these great social change movements, and I’m confident that you have to put up with a lot of failures before you’re met with success.I also don’t think democracy can allow for 80 percent of the American people to not get their way, forever. Eventually we will be able to break through. We just have not been able to find that pathway yet.This is an exhausting issue to work on, but I have this very deep sense that I will see my time in public service as a failure if I don’t meet the expectations of those parents in Sandy Hook, and Hartford and Bridgeport. And fear is a powerful motivator. More