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      Anti-Trump Republicans Diverge on 2022 Midterms

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      Disaffected conservatives broke with their party to oust a sitting president. Some still hope to have a say in the G.O.P.’s future.For those Republicans who dare to publicly oppose Donald J. Trump, politics can be a lonely place.Both Jeff Flake, the former Senator from Arizona, and Cindy McCain, the widow of Senator John McCain, landed ambassadorships in the Biden administration, but has anyone heard from the former senator from Tennessee, Bob Corker, lately? As for the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump last year, the former president has succeeded in pushing them out, or else frightened most of the rest into silence, with the fates of a few others — notably, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming — yet to be written.As for the broader network of disaffected Republican strategists and activists who worked to defeat Trump in 2020, the upcoming midterms are highlighting a conundrum: With Trump not on the ballot, what should they be doing in 2022?Some still hope to change the Republican Party from within, while others have determined that the entire institution has become a danger to American democracy. Many are increasingly frustrated, too, with the direction of the Democratic Party and the Biden administration, and have peppered their new allies with advice, both publicly and privately.The result is a Never Trump movement that finds itself splintered as the election season begins, with various groups pursuing their own strategies and no discernible central organizing hub.“I think there’s a fair amount of burnout, to be honest,” said Geoffrey Kabaservice, a historian of the Republican Party and vice president of political studies at the Niskanen Center, a libertarian think tank. Many disaffected Republicans, he added, are “retreating into their cocoons.”The G.O.P.’s congressional leaders, Representative Kevin McCarthy and Senator Mitch McConnell, have toggled between enabling and resisting Trump to various degrees — leading to competing assessments of whether they should be returned to power.Sarah Longwell, a prominent anti-Trump strategist, described her approach to 2022 as “a little from Column A and a little from Column B.” Her group, the Republican Accountability Project, is planning to raise and spend $40 million to bolster “pro-democracy” Republicans and target candidates who say the 2020 election was stolen.Others have decided to focus on supporting Democrats outright, making the argument that a Republican Party led by Trump must be defeated before it can be rebuilt.“People are taking the fight in different directions, and that’s OK,” said Mike Madrid, a co-founder of the defunct Lincoln Project, which supported Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. “Nobody in the Never Trump movement has any idea how this plays out.”The change agentsChristine Todd Whitman, a former governor of New Jersey, is one of the Never Trumpers who have decided to try boosting centrist Republicans — a vanishing breed in a party still dominated by Trump and his allies.Whitman is a co-chair of States United Democracy Center, a bipartisan effort to counter Trump’s attempts to subvert elections, and an adviser to the Renew America Movement, another anti-Trump group led by Miles Taylor, who wrote an anonymous Op-Ed essay in The New York Times while serving as a Department of Homeland Security official in the Trump administration.“​​I’m a Republican, and so I’m hoping that we’re going to be successful in primaries,” Whitman said in an interview, referring to her fellow centrists. Her hope, she added, was to help elect enough moderate Republicans to “give backbone to some of those who want to stand up and just are so afraid of party leadership.”The Senate, however, where Democrats have a stronger chance of preserving their majority, is a different story. There, she’s working to help Democrats “at least so they can push back against some of the worst, the most egregious things that are going to happen in the House,” she explained. In Arizona, for example, she plans to support Senator Mark Kelly, the Democratic incumbent.Asked if she wants Republicans to win congressional majorities, Whitman said, “If we’re going to see the dominance of the far right, no.”Frustration with DemocratsSeveral anti-Trump Republicans expressed exasperation with the left wing of the Democratic Party, which they believe misunderstands the political moment and too often embraces causes, such as defunding the police, that poll badly with swing voters.“I think there’s a lot of angst out there about the Democrats,” said Charlie Sykes, the founder and editor-at-large at The Bulwark, which has become a congregating ground for anti-Trump commentators and activists.In recent months, Sykes and like-minded conservatives have grown despondent over President Biden’s dismal poll numbers and other issues, such as New York City granting noncitizens the right to vote. They have urged Democrats to return to the middle-of-the-road approach that won them the White House in 2020.Describing his message to Democrats, Sykes said: “We are trying to give you tough love because the next two elections are not going to be decided in Burlington, Vt., or the faculty lounge at Oberlin,” the liberal arts college in Ohio. “The fate of democracy is not going to be decided by the MSNBC green room,” he added.Sykes and others fear Republicans and right-leaning independents who voted for Biden last fall will become similarly disillusioned, and usher Trump’s enablers in Congress back to power in November.“Democrats have been renting their loyalty,” Kabaservice, the Republican historian, said of Republican voters who supported Biden. “They don’t own them.”The inside playMike Duhaime, a Republican strategist who has been critical of Trump, argued that abandoning the G.O.P. is shortsighted. “By walking away from the party, you lose influence on what the party is going to look like,” he said.One point in favor of supporting fellow Republicans is to take advantage of the possibility that voters might sour on Trump, said David Weinman, executive director of An America United, an advocacy group founded by supporters of Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland.“Obviously, Trump still has a stranglehold on the party, but things can change quite quickly in politics, in ways you don’t always expect,” Weinman said.It’s too early to say what sort of Republican Party the G.O.P.’s expected takeover of the House might yield. A large class of new freshman Republicans, some speculated, might dilute the influence of pro-Trump members like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and strengthen more moderate lawmakers.Madrid, the Lincoln Project co-founder, described that view as delusional, however. He favors maintaining Democrats in power until the pro-Trump fervor in the G.O.P. subsides.Wait too long to exorcise Trumpism from the Republican Party, he said, and “it’s going to get harder to dig the tick out of the body.”What to readThe Supreme Court blocked President Biden’s vaccine mandate for large employers, though it allowed the administration to require health care workers at facilities receiving federal money to be vaccinated. Adam Liptak dissects the ruling.In a blow to Biden’s agenda, Senator Kyrsten Sinema said she opposed making an exception to the filibuster to pass federal voting rights legislation. “While I continue to support these bills, I will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country,” the Arizona Democrat said.The panel investigating the events of Jan. 6 is weighing whether to compel Representative Kevin McCarthy, the top House Republican, to testify. “Congressional investigators have rarely confronted a situation that carries such hefty stakes for their institution,” Luke Broadwater and Charlie Savage write.The F.B.I. arrested Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, on charges of seditious conspiracy for his involvement in the Capitol riot. It’s the first time that prosecutors have invoked “sedition,” Alan Feuer and Adam Goldman note. Last January, Jennifer Schuessler wrote a helpful explainer on the term.Maggie Haberman reports that the Republican National Committee is preparing to break with the Commission on Presidential Debates.Harry S. Truman gave his first news conference as president in 1945.Bettmann, via Getty ImagesOne more thing …It’s been a tough week for President Biden — soaring inflation, setbacks on voting rights and vaccine mandates, lousy poll numbers, a deepening showdown with Russia.Harry S. Truman could relate.During one particularly difficult stretch of his presidency, in July 1946, Truman unloaded his frustrations in a letter to his mother and sister.“Had the most awful day I’ve ever had Tuesday,” he began. “Saw somebody every fifteen minutes on a different subject, held a Cabinet luncheon and spent two solid hours discussing Palestine and got nowhere. Today’s been almost as bad but not quite.”Several days later, he sent another lament to his wife, Bess, back in his native Missouri. “I still have a number of bills staring me in the face,” Truman began, before going into detail on some of his legislative headaches. “It sure is hell to be President.”Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Before Elections, Georgia Republicans Again Consider Voting Restrictions

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      A sweeping 2021 law drew a legal complaint from the Justice Department. Legislators in the state are considering several new measures focused on ballot access and fraud investigations.ATLANTA — Butch Miller, a Republican leader of the Georgia State Senate, is running for lieutenant governor and faces a tough fight this spring against a primary opponent backed by former President Donald J. Trump.So perhaps it is no surprise that Mr. Miller, a co-sponsor of a sweeping and restrictive state voting law last year, has once again jumped into the fray, promoting a new measure to prohibit the use of drop boxes for absentee ballots, which he says would increase security — though no problems with their use by voters have been verified.“Drop boxes are the weakest link in our election security,” Mr. Miller said in a statement. “This change removes that weakest link without doing anything to prevent access. It’s actually easier to vote early in person — and we provide far more days than most states for that.”Georgia was a key to President Biden’s victory as well as the Democratic takeover of the Senate, and this is the second year that the state’s Republicans are focused on voting restrictions. Mr. Miller’s proposal is among a raft of new bills that underscore how much Republicans have embraced Mr. Trump’s false narrative that voter fraud cost him the 2020 election.One measure under consideration would allow Georgians to use paper ballots if they have concerns about the recently purchased touch-screen voting machines that were the subject of fantastical fraud claims promulgated by some of Mr. Trump’s supporters.Another proposal would allow the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to open inquiries into allegations of voter fraud. Yet another would create a constitutional amendment to prevent noncitizens from voting — even though they are already barred from voting under existing state law.An absentee ballot box in Atlanta before the 2020 general election. Republicans have zeroed in on the Democratic stronghold with an investigation into the Fulton County election board. Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesAt the same time, the elections board in Fulton County, the most populous in the state and a Democratic stronghold, is the subject of a state investigation of its management practices. In theory, this investigation could lead to a Republican-directed takeover of the local election board — one that was made possible by the 2021 election law.The investigation, and the new proposals before the Republican-controlled legislature, has triggered fresh anger among Democrats who believe that the measures could contribute to an already unfair playing field in a state where numerous Trump-backed candidates are running for statewide offices.“The most disturbing thing is that the people who have an iron grip on power in the General Assembly believe that they have to continue to suppress voting in order to maintain that iron grip,” said David Worley, a Democrat and former member of the state elections board. “And they’re willing to try any method at hand to do that.”Though Republicans dominate the state legislature, some of the proposals may prove to be, at most, performative gestures by lawmakers eager to show the party’s base that they are responsive to Trump-fueled concerns about voter fraud. The measure that would expand the role of the state investigations bureau, backed by the powerful House speaker, David Ralston, may have the greatest chance of success.Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, sounded a less than enthusiastic note this week about going much further than the 2021 voting law, which he called “the No. 1-ranked elections integrity act in the country.”More than any other state, Georgia was the linchpin of Democrats’ fortunes in 2020, said Larry Sabato, a veteran political analyst and the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. The Republican stronghold not only flipped for Mr. Biden but delivered the Senate to him.“That’s why the new voting rules in Georgia and elsewhere matter so much,” he said. “Will they shave just enough votes from the Democratic column to put Republicans firmly back in the driver’s seat? If the G.O.P. sees that no penalty is paid for voter suppression, surely that will encourage Republicans to do it wherever they can get away with it.”He added: “In both 2022 and 2024, Georgia is going to be the canary in the coal mine. And it’s a pretty damn big canary.”State Senator Mike Dugan of Georgia shook hands last year with a fellow Republican state senator, Jeff Mullis, after the passage of a bill that would enact new voting restrictions. Ben Gray/Associated PressIn a year that saw Republican-led legislatures nationwide pile new restrictions on voting, the elections law that Georgia lawmakers passed last spring was less notable for its severity than for its specificity. The measure took dead aim at the record 1.3 million absentee votes cast the previous November, disproportionately by Democrats. It did so by sharply reining in the use of drop boxes that were favored by mail-in voters, imposing ID requirements on absentee ballots and raising stiff barriers to the distribution of mail-in ballot applications by both local officials and voting drives.Atop that, the law allowed for state takeovers of county election boards, banned mobile voting sites in heavily Democratic Atlanta and even barred residents from providing food and water to voters waiting in line at the polls.The 2021 statute drew a number of legal challenges, including by the U.S. Department of Justice, which argues that the law violates the federal Voting Rights Act by making it harder to vote and that it was racially motivated. Major League Baseball moved its All-Star Game out of the state in protest.The state law, as well as federal voting rights legislation praised by Mr. Biden in a visit to Atlanta this week, is expected to be front and center in upcoming statewide campaigns. The governor’s race is likely to pit the country’s best-known voting rights advocate, Stacey Abrams, a Democrat, against either Mr. Kemp, whom Ms. Abrams has openly accused of voter suppression in her 2018 race against him, or former Senator David Perdue, Mr. Kemp’s Republican primary challenger, who has echoed Mr. Trump’s baseless fraud claims.In Atlanta on Tuesday, President Biden urged passage of federal legislation to protect the right to vote and the integrity of elections.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOn Tuesday, Mr. Kemp, in a news conference preceding Mr. Biden’s speech, defended the 2021 election law, saying that the Biden administration had “lied” about it — a reference to Mr. Biden’s untrue assertion that the law “ends voting hours early.”He blamed Mr. Biden, Ms. Abrams and Vice President Kamala Harris for the backlash to the law, including the loss of the All-Star Game, which he said had cost the state $100 million. He warned that the federal voting rights laws Mr. Biden was pushing for amounted to a political grab by Democrats.“Make no mistake,” he said, “Georgia is ground zero for the Biden-Harris assault on election integrity, as well as an attempt to federalize everything from how hard-working Georgians run their businesses, to what our kids are taught in school, to how we run elections.”Mr. Kemp and Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, have both earned places atop Mr. Trump’s list of enemies for defying the former president’s demands that they help overturn his narrow electoral loss in Georgia.The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 6Numerous inquiries. More

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      How the 'Let's Go, Brandon' Meme Became a Campaign Ad

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      How an inside joke among Republicans became one candidate’s tactic for reaching the G.O.P. masses.It began last fall as an ironic, profane joke after a NASCAR race. Now, it’s showing up in campaign ads.Jim Lamon, a Republican candidate for Senate in Arizona, has a new television advertisement that employs the slogan “Let’s go, Brandon.” His campaign says it is spending $1 million to air the ad, including during local broadcasts of Monday night’s college football championship.As far as we can tell, it’s the first instance of this three-word catchphrase being used in a campaign spot, and that makes it worth unpacking. It says something important about what Republican politicians think animates their primary voters.For those unfamiliar, “Let’s go, Brandon” is code for an insult to President Biden, in place of a four-letter expletive. Colleen Long of the A.P. wrote a good explainer on the phrase’s origins back in October, when it was becoming a widespread in-joke among Republicans.The phrase was even used for a bit of Christmas Eve trolling of Mr. Biden and the first lady, while they fielded a few calls to the NORAD Santa Tracker in what has become an annual White House tradition.At the end of an otherwise cordial call with a father of four from Oregon, President Biden said, “I hope you have a wonderful Christmas.”“I hope you guys have a wonderful Christmas as well,” replied the caller, later identified as Jared Schmeck, a Trump supporter. He added: “Merry Christmas and ‘Let’s go, Brandon!’”The ‘Let’s go, Brandon’ adIn Arizona, Lamon, a businessman who is running in a crowded primary field, has pledged to spend $50 million of his money.Even though money can purchase many things in politics — chartered jets, campaign staff, polling and data wizardry, yard signs — there’s one precious commodity it can’t buy: attention.Thus the new ad. “If you are pissed off about the direction of our country, let’s go,” Lamon begins, as action-movie-style music plays in the background. “If you’re ready to secure the border and stop the invasion, let’s go. If you want to keep corrupt politicians from rigging elections, let’s go.”“Let’s take the fight to Joe Biden, and show him we the people put America first,” Lamon continues, deadly serious in tone. “The time is now. Let’s go, Brandon. Are you with me?”It’s a marked contrast from Lamon’s gauzy biography ad, which introduces him as a genial military veteran who was able to go to college thanks to an R.O.T.C. scholarship.The new ad comes days ahead of a much-anticipated rally by Donald Trump in Florence, Ariz., a town of 25,000 people between Phoenix and Tucson.Trump has yet to back a candidate, but his imprimatur could be decisive. He has all but made embracing his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen an explicit condition for his endorsement, and Saturday’s rally will feature a number of prominent election deniers.“Everybody is running to the right and trying to express their fealty to Donald Trump,” Mike O’Neil, an Arizona political analyst, said of the new Lamon ad. “This is his attempt to break through.”More chucksLamon’s ad isn’t even the most striking video of the Senate primary in Arizona.In mid-October, the state attorney general, Mark Brnovich, the closest thing to an establishment candidate in the Senate race, posted a video of himself twirling nunchucks. “People, you want more chucks, you got more chucks,” Brnovich says.The display was widely ridiculed as a desperate plea for attention. Brnovich has struggled to capture the imagination of primary voters — many of whom fault him for not doing enough to prevent Biden’s win in Arizona in 2020 — leaving the race wide open.In November, Blake Masters, a 35-year-old, Stanford-educated lawyer and venture capitalist backed by Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire close to Trump, introduced a video of his own that drew national attention for its unusually stark advocacy of Second Amendment rights.In that ad, Masters squints into the camera while cradling a futuristic-looking gun called the “Honey Badger.” “This is a short-barreled rifle,” he intones. “It wasn’t designed for hunting. This is designed to kill people.”Clad in a long-sleeve black T-shirt emblazoned with the word “DROPOUT,” Masters goes on to explain his reasoning, as ominous-sounding music plays in the background.“If you’re not a bad guy, I support your right to own one,” he says. “The Second Amendment is not about duck hunting. It’s about protecting your family and your country.“What’s the first thing the Taliban did when Joe Biden handed them Afghanistan?” Masters continues, before lowering his voice to barely more than a whisper. “They took away people’s guns. That’s how it works.”Harnessing the backlashThe50-second Masters spot did not run on TV, but was viewed at least 1.5 million times on Twitter, generating media coverage and buzz on the right for its unapologetic defense of a weapon that is seen as especially dangerous by gun control advocates.“What was more interesting, in a way, was how much it freaks the left out,” Masters said in an interview, reflecting on the reaction to the ad among liberals. He said he welcomed the opprobrium: “Bring it on.”He noted that when he was working on his biographical ad, introducing himself as an Arizona native, he decided not to lean too heavily on his record as an entrepreneur, and to talk about his values instead.“Dude, nobody cares,” he said. “Nobody cares about your solar company.”The Trump factorSenator Mark Kelly, the Democratic incumbent, will be a formidable and well-funded opponent for whoever wins the G.O.P. primary, which is not until August. And Trump’s support could become a liability in a general election.O’Neil noted that many conservative women in the suburbs voted for Biden in 2020 but opted for Republican candidates elsewhere on the ballot.But Masters argued that there’s no downside to running to the right.“The way you win a swing state in Arizona is not by focus-grouping,” he said. “It’s by truly being conservative, and being bold by articulating conservative ideas.”Mike Murphy, a prominent Trump critic and longtime adviser to John McCain, the deceased Arizona senator, said the Lamon ad was a “sign of the sad times in U.S. politics.”But, he quipped, “in the G.O.P. primary electorate this year, who the Brandon knows.”What to readDavid McCormick, the former chief executive of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates and a former Treasury Department official, has filed paperwork to enter the Pennsylvania Senate race.The congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol has asked Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House’s top Republican, for a voluntary interview, Luke Broadwater reports.Consumer prices rose in December at the fastest rate since 1982, growing at a 7 percent clip in the last year, Ana Swanson reports. An AP-NORC poll published this week found that 68 percent of Americans ranked the economy as their top concern.In a news analysis, Nate Cohn writes that Democrats “still seem nowhere close to enacting robust safeguards against another attempt to overturn a presidential election.”Trump abruptly ended an interview with Steve Inskeep when the NPR host pressed him on his false claims of a stolen election in 2022. The radio network published a full transcript of the encounter, which ended with Inskeep saying, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, I have one more question. … He’s gone. OK.”PULSEThe approval rating for President Biden is at 33 percent. That’s down from 36 percent in November.Doug Mills/The New York TimesNo New Year bump for BidenQuinnipiac University released a poll today that showed President Biden’s approval rating at just 33 percent, while 53 percent of respondents gave him a negative rating. That’s down from 36 percent in November. It’s just one poll, but it’s a sign that Biden’s image isn’t on the rebound. The president’s average approval rating is higher, but still just 42.2 percent, according to 538.Another finding that stood out from the Quinnipiac poll: 76 percent of respondents said that political instability within the United States posed a greater threat than the country’s adversaries. A majority, 58 percent, agreed that American democracy is “in danger of collapse.”Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      How the Voting Rights Bills Miss the Target on Election Subversion

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      The proposed legislation and the push to reform the Electoral Count Act leave open a variety of pathways to subvert a presidential election. More than a year after the attack on the Capitol, President Biden and congressional Democrats still seem nowhere close to enacting robust safeguards against another attempt to overturn a presidential election. One reason is obvious: There’s not enough support in the Senate for Democrats to enact the two voting rights proposals that Mr. Biden pushed in his speech in Atlanta on Tuesday. But there’s another less obvious reason: Neither of the voting rights bills, nor the emerging bipartisan effort to reform the Electoral Count Act, is sure to close off some of the most probable avenues for election subversion. While the various legislative paths might protect access to voting or hold the promise of clarifying how Congress counts electoral votes, the proposals are largely silent on a crucial time frame — the period between the polls closing in November to January, when Congress gathers to count electoral votes. This is when election administrators go about the once routine business of counting and certifying election results. Many analysts believe the electoral process may be at its most vulnerable during this period, when the actions of even a handful of officials could precipitate a constitutional crisis. The risks were evident after the last election, when former President Donald J. Trump and his allies relentlessly sought to persuade election officials to refuse to certify results or invalidate ballots. Virtually no election administrators joined Mr. Trump’s effort. A friendlier voice might answer the phone the next time a president calls a secretary of state in search of another 11,000 votes.Yet the arcane workings of tabulating and certifying the vote have received less attention, whether in legislative proposals or in the news media, than the spectacle of violence at the Capitol or the wave of new Republican laws to restrict voting access. The two legislative paths — the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act — that the president promoted on Tuesday do offer at least some protection against election subversion.The Freedom to Vote Act has evolved considerably since the summer, when its predecessor contained almost no provisions to address the issue. Now it attempts to respond to the numerous Republican election laws that target election workers and nonpartisan election officials, while including other provisions that indirectly protect the process of counting votes — including paper ballot and chain of custody requirements, and safeguards against discarding mail ballots because of a missing security envelope or inexact signature match. But the proposed laws do not regulate the process of certifying the vote — the focal point for Mr. Trump and his allies as they tried to overturn the last election. While their attempt ended in failure, some of their efforts came close enough to represent a credible path for future election subversion. The certification of elections by local election administrators is one example. In Wayne County, Mich., which includes the overwhelmingly Democratic and majority Black city of Detroit, two Republicans initially blocked certification in 2020 before quickly reversing themselves. And one of the two Republican members of a statewide Michigan board refused to certify the results. If the other Republican on the board had done the same, Michigan would have failed to certify — and it is not clear what would have happened as a result.Next time, the outcome might be different. Today, Republicans who believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen are poised to assume greater power across the country, from sitting on local election boards to winning or running for secretary of state positions. With Republican voters remaining loyal to Mr. Trump, many G.O.P. officials might have a very different understanding of what is expected of them by the voters than they did heading into the last election. Similarly, the Democratic voting rights bills would do little to guard against the other paths that Mr. Trump pursued to invalidate the 2020 election, such as pressuring the vice president and congressional Republicans to ignore or overturn Electoral College delegates, or pressuring state legislatures to ignore the certified election result and appoint Trump electors.The Freedom to Vote Act’s anti-gerrymandering provisions have been construed as offering indirect protection against a congressional effort to overturn a presidential election, on the assumption that it would reduce the likelihood of Republican control of Congress. But even that provision seems to be of waning utility, as Democrats appear poised to gerrymander enough Democratic-leaning seats in New York, Illinois and other states so as to ensure a relatively fair national fight for control of Congress. And the proposal does not include a ban on state legislative gerrymandering, a tactic Republicans have sometimes used in states like Wisconsin, Georgia or Texas to create such lopsided majorities that it’s plausible to imagine how there might be enough support to overturn a closely contested election. Former Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi presided over the counting of Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, 2021.Erin Schaff/ The New York TimesIn contrast to the Democratic voting rights bills, an attempt to reform the Electoral Count Act — the 1887 law that established the procedures for counting electoral votes — might be more likely to more directly address the risk of an intentional campaign to reverse the result of a certified election in Congress. Over the last few weeks, a variety of lawmakers from both parties in the House and Senate have been mulling possible fixes to the law. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, signaled openness to revising the act, though many progressives see the push as part of an attempt to derail their own voting rights initiatives.Understand the Battle Over U.S. Voting RightsCard 1 of 6Why are voting rights an issue now? More

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      Biden-Cheney 2024?

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      As I’ve noted before, one reason I pay very close attention to the Israeli-Palestinian arena is that a lot of trends get perfected there first and then go global — airline hijacking, suicide bombing, building a wall, the challenges of pluralism and lots more. It’s Off Broadway to Broadway, so what’s playing there these days that might be a harbinger for politics in the U.S.?Answer: It’s the most diverse national unity government in Israel’s history, one that stretches from Jewish settlers on the right all the way to an Israeli-Arab Islamist party and super-liberals on the left. Most important, it’s holding together, getting stuff done and muting the hyperpolarization that was making Israel ungovernable.Is that what America needs in 2024 — a ticket of Joe Biden and Liz Cheney? Or Joe Biden and Lisa Murkowski, or Kamala Harris and Mitt Romney, or Stacey Abrams and Liz Cheney, or Amy Klobuchar and Liz Cheney? Or any other such combination. Before you leap into the comments section, hear me out.In June, after an utterly wild period in which Israel held four national elections over two years and kept failing to produce a stable governing majority, the lambs there actually lay down with the lions.Key Israeli politicians swallowed their pride, softened policy edges and came together for a four-year national unity government — led by rightist Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and left-of-center Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid. (They are to switch places after two years.) And for the first time, an Israeli Arab party, the Islamist organization Raam played a vital role in cementing an Israeli coalition.What forced everyone’s hand? A broad agreement that Israeli politics was being held hostage by then-Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, who resisted putting together any government that he would not lead, apparently because, if he didn’t lead, he could lose his chance at some kind of immunity from prosecution on multiple corruption charges that could lead to prison.Sound familiar?Netanyahu was just a smarter Donald Trump, constantly delegitimizing the mainstream media and the Israeli justice system and vigorously exploiting social/religious/ethnic fault lines to divide and rule. He eventually stressed out the system so much that several of his former allies broke away to forge a unity coalition with Israeli center, left and Arab parties.As Hebrew University of Jerusalem religious philosopher Moshe Halbertal put it to me: “What happened here is that there is still enough civic responsibility — not everywhere, but enough — that the political class felt that the continued breakdown of the rule of law and more elections, which was leading nowhere, was an indulgence that Israel simply could not afford, given its highly diverse population and dangerous neighborhood.”This new Israeli government will neither annex the West Bank nor make final peace with the Palestinians, Halbertal noted, but it is one “that will attempt to renew the relationship with the Palestinian Authority rather than weakening it. It is one that prevented a racist anti-Arab party allied to Netanyahu from entering the cabinet.” And it is one that is counterbalancing Bibi’s strong embrace of the less-than-democratic, ultranationalist states in Europe and evangelical Christians and Trump Republicans in America “by rebuilding ties with the Democrats, liberal American Jews and liberal parties in Europe.”As Israeli leaders treat each other — and Israeli and Palestinians leaders treat each other — with a little more respect, and a little less contempt, because they are out of Facebook and into face-to-face relations again, stuff is getting done. Unity has not meant paralysis. This coalition in November passed Israel’s first national budget since 2018! So far, every attempt to topple it has failed.Mansour Abbas, the Islamist party’s leader, even recently stunned many Israeli Arabs and Jews when he publicly declared, “Israel was born a Jewish state, that was the decision of the people.” He continued: “It was born this way and it will remain this way. The question is, what is the status of the Arab citizen in the Jewish State of Israel?’’Could this play come to Broadway? I asked Steven Levitsky, a political scientist and co-author of “How Democracies Die,” after he presented some similar ideas last week to my colleague David Leonhardt.America is facing an existential moment, Levitsky told me, noting that the Republican Party has shown that it isn’t committed any longer to playing by democratic rules, leaving the United States uniquely threatened among Western democracies.That all means two things, he continued. First, this Trump-cult version of the G.O.P. must never be able to retake the White House. Since Trump has made embracing the Big Lie — that the 2020 election was a fraud — a prerequisite for being in the Trump G.O.P., his entire cabinet most likely would be people who denied, or worked to overturn, Biden’s election victory. There is no reason to believe they would cede power the next time.“In a democracy,” Levitsky said, “parties lose popularity and they lose elections. That is normal. But a democracy cannot afford for this Republican Party to win again because they have demonstrated a ton of evidence that they are no longer committed to the democratic rules of the game.”So Biden-Cheney is not such a crazy idea? I asked.“Not at all,” said Levitsky. “We should be ready to talk about Liz Cheney as part of a blow-your-mind Israeli-style fusion coalition with Democrats. It is a coalition that says: ‘There is only one overriding goal right now — that is saving our democratic system.’”That brings us to the second point. Saving a democratic system requires huge political sacrifice, added Levitsky. “It means A.O.C. campaigning for Liz Cheney” and it means Liz Cheney “putting on the shelf” many policy goals she and other Republicans cherish. “But that is what it takes, and if you don’t do it, just look back and see why democracy collapsed in countries like Germany, Spain and Chile. The democratic forces there should have done it, but they didn’t.”To put it differently, this Trump-cult version of the G.O.P. is trying to gain power through an election, but it’s trying to increase its odds of winning by gaming the system in battleground states. America’s small-d democrats need to counter those moves and increase their odds of winning. The best way to do that is by creating a broad national unity vehicle that enables more Republicans to leave the Trump cult — without having to just become big-D Democrats. We all have to be small-d democrats now, or we won’t have a system to be big-D or big-R anythings.That is what civic-minded Israeli elites did when they created a broad national unity coalition whose main mission was to make the basic functions of government work again and safeguard the integrity of Israel’s democracy.Such a vehicle in America, said Levitsky, should “be able to shave a small but decisive fraction of Republican votes away from Trump.” In a tight race, it would take only 5 or 10 percent of Republicans leaving Trump to assure victory. And that is what matters.This is the democratic way of defeating a threat to democracy. Not doing it is how democracies die. I am quite aware that it is highly unlikely; America does not have the flexibility of a parliamentary, proportional-representation system, like Israel’s, and there is no modern precedent for such a cross-party ticket. And yet, I still think it is worth raising. There is no precedent for how close we’re coming to an unraveling of our democracy, either.As Levitsky put it: “If we treat this as a normal election, our democracy stands a coin flip’s chance of survival. Those are odds that I don’t want to run. We need to communicate to the public and the establishment that this is not a normal donkeys-versus-elephants election. This is democracy versus authoritarians.”This is not for the long term, noted Levitsky: “I want to get back as quickly as possible to where I can disagree with Liz Cheney on every policy issue” — and that is the most we have to worry about — “but not until our democracy is safe.”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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      Biden Comes Out Swinging Against Republicans as His Agenda Stalls

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      The president pledged to use all of the powers of his office to thwart Republicans still under the thumb of Donald J. Trump.WASHINGTON — President Biden has begun his second year in office by lashing out at Republicans, embracing forceful new attacks meant to define a choice for voters between Mr. Biden’s Democrats and a Republican Party still under the thumb of former President Donald J. Trump.The sharp tone comes as Mr. Biden seeks to jump-start his agenda, which has largely stalled in Congress. And with midterm elections looming at the end of the year, the president faces a challenge that he has largely avoided so far: drawing Mr. Trump and other Republican leaders into a more direct clash of ideas.On Thursday, Mr. Biden delivered a fierce speech promising a reckoning with Mr. Trump and pledging to use all of the powers of his office to thwart the anti-democratic forces unleashed by the 45th president. It was the most searing example since Mr. Biden took office of his effort to contrast the two parties, lamenting “the Big Lie being told by the former president and many Republicans who fear his wrath.”A day later, he took another opportunity to focus on the differences between the two parties as he acclaimed news that the unemployment rate had dropped to 3.9 percent. He predicted that Republicans would accuse him of failing to address the economic pain caused by surging inflation in recent months.“Malarkey,” Mr. Biden said. “They want to talk down the recovery because they voted against the legislation that made it happen. They voted against the tax cuts for middle-class families. They voted against the funds we needed to reopen our schools, to keep police officers and firefighters on the job, to lower health care premiums.”“I refuse to let them stand in the way of this recovery,” he added. “Now my focus is on keeping this recovery strong and durable, notwithstanding Republican obstructionism.”For some of Mr. Biden’s Democratic allies, the change in tone is a welcome shift from the dominant theme of the president’s first year, when he more often focused on his desire to unify the country and struggled to negotiate with members of his own party.Now, they say, it is time for Mr. Biden to focus not only on his own achievements, but also on how the Republican Party threatens to reverse those efforts if it returns to power on Capitol Hill — something that has not been at the center of his presidency so far.“What Biden, the White House and Democrats writ large have to do is to force a choice that takes into account not just Republicans criticizing, but what’s their solution?” said Robert Gibbs, who served as President Barack Obama’s press secretary during the year leading up to the 2010 midterm elections. “That’s going to be crucial heading into 2022 and then ultimately setting the table for 2024.”Mr. Gibbs said Mr. Biden, then the vice president, would often advise Mr. Obama to keep the focus on their rivals in the other party.“What he used to tell President Obama is: ‘It’s hard when you’re compared to the Almighty. It’s easier when you’re compared to the alternative,’” Mr. Gibbs recalled.Mr. Biden has largely avoided drawing former President Donald J. Trump and other Republican leaders into a more direct clash of ideas.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesRepublicans are not shrinking from the fight. Mr. Trump issued a statement describing Mr. Biden’s speech as “the last gasps of a corrupt and discredited left-wing political and media establishment,” and vowing to fight back at the ballot box.The stakes are high. Mr. Biden and his party are at serious risk of losing their already bare majorities in the House and the Senate during the midterm elections, an outcome that would most likely rob the president and his team of any real hope of significant progress in Congress for the rest of his term.And the obstacles to progress are steep.During his first year in office, Mr. Biden has seen his policy efforts at home and abroad disrupted by Supreme Court rulings, supply chain glitches, lawmakers from his own party and, most of all, coronavirus variants that have extended — endlessly, it seems, to everyone’s dismay — the need for masks, vaccines and social distancing.Mr. Biden has had some major successes to highlight: He passed Covid recovery legislation at the beginning of his term, and he found agreement with some Republicans on a $1 trillion measure to invest in infrastructure projects around the country.But the virus is still rampant — a near-constant reminder of Mr. Biden’s campaign-year pledge to finally end the pandemic. His $1.8 trillion social policy legislation is struggling at best, and practically dead at worst. A voting rights bill he says will rectify an “existential threat” to the country faces the steepest of odds in Congress. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is beating his chest on Ukraine’s border. Every day, there is evidence that climate change is getting worse.Democrats are hopeful that the president can begin to change those realities by March 1, when he will deliver his first State of the Union speech to a joint session of Congress, giving a formal assessment of the country under his leadership so far. “It’s your best opportunity to get in front of the American people and make your argument about what you can get done before the fall and what the choice is going to be,” said Jennifer Palmieri, a veteran Democratic communications expert who worked for Mr. Obama and Hillary Clinton.For that to happen, the Biden team needs to get a number of things right, according to people rooting for it to succeed.Coronavirus testing shortages have led to long lines throughout the country.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesThe pandemic, which polls suggest is the single biggest drag on the president’s popularity, needs to begin to recede — at least in the daily lives of most Americans. And the administration needs to be seen doing more to address people’s frustrations, like the current shortage of Covid tests that have led to long lines and empty shelves at pharmacies.Administration officials note that Mr. Biden authorized the purchase of 500 million at-home tests that Americans will be able to request for free. The first tests will ship this month, they say, with more to follow.The economic rebound from the two-year pandemic may be one of the president’s best stories to tell on March 1. Job growth slowed somewhat in the second half of last year, but unemployment is so low that many employers are struggling to find workers. If he were giving the State of the Union address now, Mr. Biden could rightly claim to be presiding over a booming economy.Still, inflation has driven up prices and that is adding to a disconnect for many people: They do not feel as good about the economy as the numbers suggest they should. Republicans on Friday seized on lower-than-expected job growth to attack Mr. Biden’s policies.“Whether it’s anemic jobs growth, high inflation or a massive supply chain crisis, Democrats are doing a horrible job managing the economy,” said Mike Berg, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.Jen Psaki, the president’s press secretary, has repeatedly blamed people’s feelings about living in a pandemic for that disconnect.“It’s less about data and more about what people are experiencing in their day-to-day life,” she said last week. “It doesn’t look normal. They’re worried about there being labor shortages and there being canceled flights, or not enough teachers in school because of the spread of Omicron. We understand that.”Central to the administration’s response to those feelings is an effort to pass Mr. Biden’s social policy legislation, known as Build Back Better. The president argues that passage of the bill will lower prices for things like child care and prescription drugs, making people feel more secure about their financial futures.A provision in Mr. Biden’s social policy legislation would help families save money on child care.Virginia Lozano for The New York TimesBut the legislation has become mired in a dispute with Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, who objects to some of the plan’s provisions and how it would be financed. In the Senate, where Democrats control exactly 50 of the 100 seats, Mr. Manchin’s support is essential to the bill’s passage.The spectacle of the president locked in a desperate negotiation with a member of his own party has gone on for months, with little evidence of a resolution any time soon. White House officials say they are hopeful that lawmakers will be able to work something out with Mr. Manchin in the weeks ahead.In the meantime, Mr. Biden is eager to avoid another foreign policy spectacle like the hurried evacuation from Afghanistan that followed the president’s withdrawal of troops. But that is not entirely within his control.Mr. Biden has steadily ramped up threats of sanctions against Russia if Mr. Putin were to send troops across the border into Ukraine. Whether those threats will be enough to hold off Mr. Putin in the long run may help determine whether Mr. Biden has a positive story to tell by the time he addresses Americans in March.White House officials are beginning to think about that speech. In comments to reporters on Friday, Mr. Biden was — as usual — upbeat, dismissing concerns that the burdens imposed by the pandemic would never be lifted.“No. I don’t think Covid is here to stay,” he said, previewing the kind of message that aides hope he will be able to give in seven weeks. “The new normal is not going to be what it is now; it’s going to be better.” More

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      En la carrera hacia el futuro, la historia sufre un nuevo asedio

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      Una ola de revisionismo engañoso se ha convertido en una epidemia tanto en las autocracias como en las democracias. Ha sido notablemente efectiva… y contagiosa.En Rusia, una organización dedicada a recordar los abusos de la era soviética se enfrenta a la liquidación ordenada por el Estado mientras el Kremlin impone en su lugar una historia nacional aséptica.En Hungría, el gobierno expulsó o asumió el control de las instituciones educativas y culturales y las utiliza para fabricar un patrimonio nacional xenófobo alineado con su política etnonacionalista.En China, el Partido Comunista en el poder usa abiertamente los libros de texto, las películas, los programas de televisión y las redes sociales para escribir una nueva versión de la historia china que se adapte mejor a las necesidades del partido.Y en Estados Unidos, Donald Trump y sus aliados siguenpromoviendo una falsa versión de las elecciones de 2020, en la que aseguran que los demócratas manipularon los votos y afirman que el ataque del 6 de enero para interrumpir la certificación del presidente Joe Biden fue en su mayoría un acto pacífico o escenificado por los opositores de Trump.Unos revoltosos se enfrentaron a las fuerzas del orden del Capitolio de EE. UU. el 6 de enero de 2021.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesLa historia se reescribe todo el tiempo, ya sea por los académicos que actualizan sus supuestos, los activistas que reformulan el registro o los políticos que manipulan la memoria colectiva para sus propios fines.Pero una oleada de revisiones históricas falsas o engañosas de manera flagrante, tanto por parte de gobiernos democráticos como autoritarios, puede estar amenazando el ya debilitado sentido de un relato compartido y aceptado sobre el mundo.Los académicos creen que esta tendencia refleja algunas de las fuerzas que definen el siglo. Sociedades polarizadas y receptivas a las falsedades que afirman la identidad. El colapso de la fe en las instituciones centrales o en los árbitros de la verdad. El auge del nacionalismo. Tiranos cada vez más astutos. Líderes elegidos que giran cada vez más hacia el antiliberalismo.Como resultado, “deberíamos ser más propensos a ver el tipo de revisionismo histórico” impulsado por estos líderes, señaló Erica Frantz, politóloga de la Universidad Estatal de Michigan.Understand the Jan. 6 InvestigationBoth the Justice Department and a House select committee are investigating the events of the Capitol riot. Here’s where they stand:Inside the House Inquiry: From a nondescript office building, the panel has been quietly ramping up its sprawling and elaborate investigation.Criminal Referrals, Explained: Can the House inquiry end in criminal charges? These are some of the issues confronting the committee.Garland’s Remarks: Facing pressure from Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that the D.O.J. would pursue its inquiry into the riot “at any level.”A Big Question Remains: Will the Justice Department move beyond charging the rioters themselves?En algunos lugares, los objetivos son ambiciosos: rediseñar una sociedad, empezando por su comprensión más básica de su patrimonio colectivo. Para subrayar la importancia de este proceso, el líder de China, Xi Jinping, repite la frase de un erudito confuciano del siglo XIX: “Para destruir un país, primero hay que erradicar su historia”.Victoria Park en Hong Kong el 4 de junio de 2020Lam Yik Fei para The New York TimesEl lugar estaba vacío el 4 de junio de 2021Lam Yik Fei para The New York TimesPero, a menudo y al parecer, el objetivo es más a corto plazo: provocar la rabia o el orgullo de manera que los ciudadanos se unan a la agenda del líder.Las mentiras electorales de Trump parecen ser un ejemplo de éxito. Han escindido el sentido compartido de la realidad de los estadounidenses de manera que podrían fortalecer a los aliados de Trump y justificar los esfuerzos para controlar la maquinaria de futuras elecciones. Si las tendencias globales que permiten tales tácticas continúan, puede que vengan más casos parecidos.Integrantes del Ejército Juvenil de Rusia practicaban el montaje de rifles, técnicas de primeros auxilios y artes marciales el mes pasado en Noginsk, cerca de Moscú.Sergey Ponomarev para The New York TimesUn mundo cambianteLa manera en que los gobiernos tienden a gobernar es uno de los cambios más importantes de esta tendencia.Un reciente artículo académico afirma que el autoritarismo “está sufriendo una transformación”, con lo que resume la opinión cada vez más extendida entre los académicos.Desde la Primavera Árabe y los levantamientos de la “revolución de colores” de hace una década, los dictadores han dejado de hacer hincapié en la represión por la fuerza bruta (aunque esto también sigue ocurriendo) y han adoptado técnicas más sutiles, como la manipulación de la información o la generación de divisiones, con el objetivo de prevenir la disidencia en lugar de suprimirla.Entre otros cambios, se sustituye la estruendosa prensa estatal por una serie de llamativos medios de comunicación alineados con el Estado y bots en las redes sociales, lo que crea la falsa sensación de que la narrativa oficial no se impone desde lo alto, sino que surge de forma orgánica.La propaganda más sofisticada, cuyo objetivo es la persuasión en lugar de la coerción, se manifiesta a menudo como un tipo particular de reescritura histórica. En lugar de limitarse a eliminar a los funcionarios desfavorecidos o los errores del gobierno, cultiva el orgullo nacional y el agravio colectivo con el fin de congregar a los ciudadanos.Por ejemplo, el Kremlin ha manipulado los recuerdos de la Unión Soviética y de su caída para convertirlos en una memoria de grandeza y asedio de la herencia rusa, justificando la necesidad de un líder más fuerte como Vladimir Putin y alentando a los rusos a apoyarlo con gratitud.Esto también se manifiesta en pequeñas formas. Putin ha insistido, falsamente, en que la OTAN prometió nunca extenderse al este de Alemania, justificando así la reciente agresión a Ucrania como una necesidad defensiva.Las democracias cambian también de modos dramáticos y los líderes se vuelven cada vez menos liberales y emplean más mano dura.Las crecientes divisiones sociales, junto con la creciente desconfianza popular hacia los expertos y las instituciones, a menudo contribuyen a encumbrar a esos líderes en primer lugar.Esto puede ser una fuente de apoyo para un líder dispuesto a desechar la historia oficial y sustituirla por algo más cercano a lo que sus partidarios quieren oír. Y da a esos líderes otro incentivo: justificar la toma de poder como algo esencial para derrotar a los enemigos externos o internos.Por ejemplo, Viktor Orbán, el primer ministro húngaro, hizo una revisión de la historia de Hungría para convertirla en una víctima inocente de los nazis y los comunistas, que logró salvarse gracias a su guía patriótica. De este modo, defiende el escepticismo hacia la inmigración como la continuación de una gran batalla nacional, que también le exige suprimir a los rivales, a los críticos y a las instituciones independientes.El presidente Donald J. Trump dijo en 2020 que promovería un nuevo plan de estudios escolar “pro estadounidense”.Oliver Contreras para The New York TimesPor qué funciona el revisionismo históricoSegún las investigaciones, la propaganda más eficaz de cualquier tipo, suele centrarse en una apelación a la identidad de algún grupo, como la raza o la religión.Hay un experimento famoso: a la gente se le da un examen, se le dice su puntuación y luego se le pide que califique la objetividad del examen. Las personas a las que se les dice que han obtenido una buena puntuación tienden a calificar la prueba de justa y rigurosa. Las personas a las que se les dice que han obtenido una mala puntuación son más propensas a considerar que el examen es tendencioso o inexacto.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      How Biden and Boris Johnson Reached the Same Place on Virus Policy

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      Two different leaders with differing approaches landed on a policy of coexisting with the virus. Analysts say they had little choice.LONDON — On the evening of Dec. 21, Prime Minister Boris Johnson appeared from 10 Downing Street to tell anxious Britons they could “go ahead with their Christmas plans,” despite a surge in new coronavirus cases. At nearly the same moment, President Biden took to a White House podium to give Americans a similar greenlight.It was a striking, if unintended, display of synchronicity from two leaders who began with very different approaches to the pandemic, to say nothing of politics. Their convergence in how to handle the Omicron variant says a lot about how countries are confronting the virus, more than two years after it first threatened the world.For Mr. Johnson and Mr. Biden, analysts said, the politics and science of Covid have nudged them toward a policy of trying to live with the virus rather than putting their countries back on war footing. It is a highly risky strategy: Hospitals across Britain and parts of the United States are already close to overrun with patients. But for now, it is better than the alternative: Shutting down their economies again.“A Conservative prime minister trying to deal in a responsible way with Covid is very different than a Democratic president trying to deal responsibly with Covid,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster in Washington. And yet, he said, their options are no longer all that different.“From both a medical perspective and a political perspective,” Mr. Garin said, “there’s not as strong an imperative for people to hunker down in the way they were hunkering down a year ago.”President Biden, taking office, promised to pay greater heed to scientific advice and embraced measures like “expanded masking, testing and social distancing.”Al Drago for The New York TimesSome analysts say the two leaders had little choice. Both are dealing with lockdown-weary populations. Both have made headway in vaccinating their citizens, though Britain remains ahead of the United States. And both have seen their popularity erode as their early promises to vanquish the virus wilted.Several of Mr. Biden’s former scientific advisers this week publicly urged him to overhaul his strategy to shift the focus from banishing the virus to a “new normal” of coexisting with it. That echoes Mr. Johnson’s words when he lifted restrictions last July. “We must ask ourselves,” he said, “‘When will we be able to return to normal?’”Devi Sridhar, an American scientist who heads the global health program at the University of Edinburgh, said, “The scientific community has broad consensus now that we have to use the tools we have to stay open and avoid the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. But it’s not easy at all, as we are seeing.”The alignment of Mr. Johnson and Mr. Biden is significant because Britain has often served as a Covid test case for the United States — a few weeks ahead in seeing the effects of a new wave and a model, for good or ill, in how to respond to it.Miami this week. Several of Mr. Biden’s former scientific advisers have publicly urged him to shift the focus from banishing the virus to a “new normal” of coexisting with it.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesIt was the first country to approve a vaccine and the fastest major economy to roll it out. Its frightening projections, from Imperial College London, about how many people could die in an uncontrolled pandemic helped push a reluctant Mr. Johnson and an equally reluctant President Donald J. Trump to call for social distancing restrictions in their countries.That Mr. Johnson and Mr. Trump initially resisted such measures was hardly a surprise, given their ideological kinship as populist politicians. When Mr. Johnson locked down Britain, several days after his European neighbors, he promised to “send the virus packing” in 12 weeks. Mr. Trump likewise vowed that Covid, “like a miracle,” would soon disappear. Both later suffered through bouts with the disease.Mr. Biden, taking office, promised a different approach, one that paid greater heed to scientific advice and embraced difficult measures like “expanded masking, testing and social distancing.” Though Mr. Johnson never flouted scientific advice like Mr. Trump, he was sunnier than Mr. Biden, continuing to promise that the crisis would soon pass.For Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the major obstacle is not defiant regional leaders or the opposition but members of his own Conservative Party.Pool photo by Jack HillBut both he and Mr. Biden have languished politically as new variants have made Covid far more stubborn than they had hoped. Last July 4, with new cases dropping and vaccination rates rising, Mr. Biden claimed the United States had gained “the upper hand” on the virus. Weeks later, the Delta variant was sweeping through the country.In England, with nearly 70 percent of adults having had two doses of a vaccine, Mr. Johnson lifted virtually all social-distancing rules on July 19, a bold — some said reckless — move that the London tabloids nicknamed “Freedom Day.” After a midsummer lull in cases that appeared to vindicate Mr. Johnson’s gamble, the Omicron variant has now driven new cases in Britain to more than 150,000 a day.Mr. Biden and Mr. Johnson have different powers in dealing with the pandemic. As prime minister, Mr. Johnson can order lockdowns in England, a step he has taken twice since his first lockdown in March 2020. In the United States, those restrictions are in the hands of governors, a few of whom, like the Florida Republican Ron DeSantis, have become vocal critics of Mr. Biden’s approach.For Mr. Johnson, the major obstacle is not defiant regional leaders or the opposition but members of his own Conservative Party, who fiercely oppose further lockdowns and have rebelled against even modest moves in that direction.Riders in the London tube last month. The Omicron variant has now driven new cases in Britain to more than 150,000 a day.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesThe prime minister has kept open the possibility of further restrictions. But analysts say that given his eroding popularity, he no longer has the political capital to persuade his party to go along with an economically damaging lockdown, even if scientists recommended it.Mr. Johnson is “essentially now a prisoner of his more hawkish cabinet colleagues and the 100 or so MPs who seem to be allergic to any kind of public health restrictions,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London. They “just feel that the state has grown too big in trying to combat Covid and that they really don’t want the government to grow any bigger,” Mr. Bale said.Some British analysts draw a comparison between red-state governors like Mr. DeSantis and Conservative lawmakers from the “red wall,” former Labour strongholds in the Midlands and the north of England that Mr. Johnson’s Tories swept in the 2019 election with his promise to “Get Brexit done.”Las Vegas Boulevard during a lockdown in May 2020. Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesThese are not low-tax, small-government conservatives in the tradition of Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher, but right-leaning populists who model themselves on Mr. Trump and the Mr. Johnson who championed the Brexit vote — voters the prime minister would need to win re-election.Some critics argue that Mr. Biden and Mr. Johnson are both out of step with their countries. Britons have proven far more tolerant of lockdowns than the lawmakers in the prime minister’s party. In parts of the United States, by contrast, popular resistance to lockdowns is widespread and deeply entrenched.“Biden suffers from seeming to do too much and Boris suffers from seeming to do too little,” said Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist who was a classmate of Mr. Johnson’s at Oxford University. “Biden would have done a better job if he had led Britain, and Boris would have done a better job if he led the U.S.”Ice skaters in London last month.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesMr. Biden, unlike Mr. Johnson, does not face an internal party rebellion on his Covid policy. But the continued grip of the pandemic has sapped the president’s poll ratings, stoking fears of a Republican landslide in the midterm elections. The calls for change from members of Mr. Biden’s former scientific brain-trust, some said, reflected concerns that his Covid messaging was lagging reality.Others pointed out that the president’s determination to keep schools and businesses open, despite the soaring number of cases, signaled that a change in thinking was underway in the White House — if a few months later than that in Downing Street.“When Biden says we ought to be concerned but not panicked, he’s meeting Americans where they are,” Mr. Garin, the Democratic pollster, said. “He’s also meeting the science where it is.”Stephen Castle contributed reporting. More