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      Book Review: ‘Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency’

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to ReadNew Books to Watch For This Month25 Book Review GreatsNew in PaperbackListen: The Book Review PodcastAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBooks of The TimesA Closely Reported Look at Joe Biden’s ‘Lucky’ Path to the White HouseMarch 2, 2021, 11:40 a.m. ETCredit….AmazonApple BooksBarnes and NobleBooks-A-MillionBookshopIndieboundWhen you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.About midway through “Lucky,” the journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes describe the concerns that some Democrats had last summer about Joe Biden, by then the party’s presidential nominee: How could they hope to win with “an agenda and a person so bland it made cardboard taste flavorful”?Considering that this agenda and person constitute a driving narrative force in “Lucky,” the line reads like a coded admission that the authors — tasked with parsing the flavor of cardboard over the course of more than 400 pages — had their work cut out for them.Allen and Parnes have published two previous books, both of them about Hillary Clinton, including the best-selling “Shattered,” which recounted how the Clinton campaign bungled what should have been a winnable election against Donald Trump in 2016 by succumbing to incompetence and infighting.Jonathan AllenCredit…Stuart Hovell“Shattered” arrived in the spring of 2017, when bewildered Democrats were still asking what happened. “Lucky” arrives at a completely different moment. A string of tell-alls about Trump’s White House have recounted a level of backbiting and chaos that made the inner workings of the Clinton campaign look like a Swiss timepiece by comparison. Within the last year alone, a pandemic has killed more than 500,000 Americans and the White House demanded crackdowns on protests against police brutality. Less than two months have passed since Trump supporters invaded the Capitol. I’m guessing that a number of readers felt so inundated by the unrelenting news cycle of the Trump era that their receptors for campaign-trail intrigues have been worn down to calloused nubs.It’s understandable that Allen and Parnes would do everything they could to amp up the drama — not an easy feat, given the cardboard. With their new book, they promise to explain “how Joe Biden barely won the presidency.” Biden’s margin of victory — 7 million votes, or 4.5 percent — was considerable by modern American standards. But the quirks of the American system, including the gauntlet of the primaries and the peculiarities of the Electoral College, meant that there were a number of moments when Biden’s chances were nearly sunk — moments that “Lucky” recounts in full.The book reminds us that back in April 2019, when Biden announced he was running, he wasn’t an obvious favorite in a crowded field of Democratic aspirants. (“Lucky” reports that Clinton was so unimpressed with everyone’s prospects that she briefly considered running … again.) Biden had already sought and failed to secure the nomination twice, in 1988 and 2008. He was 76 years old — not even a boomer like Trump, previously the oldest president sworn into a first term, but a member of the Silent Generation. Biden had always rambled and repeated himself, and during the early days of his campaign he was rambling and repeating himself more than ever.Although he brandished his record as a consensus-builder in the Senate, he had a habit of hurling insults at potential voters. At one town hall, as if he were intent on reminding the audience of both his age and his temper, Biden called a young woman “a lying dog-faced pony soldier.”But Joe Biden was always a favorite of Joe Biden. One of the themes in this book is how unwaveringly confident he was in his chances — “a great strength and a weakness that could leave him sounding a little self-delusional,” Allen and Parnes write. (Barack Obama, in his recent memoir, describes him as someone who “wasn’t always self-aware.”) Biden believed he could win even during the dark days of the early Democratic primaries more than a year ago, when his campaign was running out of money and he placed abysmally in Iowa and New Hampshire before coming in a distant second to Bernie Sanders in Nevada.Amie ParnesCredit…Chip SomodevillaSure, Biden realized that some progressive voters might take issue with parts of his long Senate record, including his adamant opposition to busing in the 1970s, his treatment of Anita Hill during Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings and his authorship of the 1994 crime bill. But Biden was banking on his likability, Allen and Parnes say. That, and the hunch that an American populace exhausted by an erratic Trump just wanted someone experienced, steady and familiar at the wheel.He also benefited from a Democratic establishment that was so averse to Sanders that it closed ranks around Biden as other centrist contenders — Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar — dropped out of the race. Biden, with his “bland message and blank agenda,” was “not what most Democratic voters had envisioned as a Trumpslayer,” Allen and Parnes write. But a hard-won endorsement from Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, a central figure in the Congressional Black Caucus, helped turn Biden’s fortunes around. “Lucky” portrays the Biden campaign as stuck in traffic until Super Tuesday, when it started hitting a string of green lights.This luck persisted through the pandemic, which revealed Biden’s ability to empathize with a grieving public while showcasing President Trump’s determination to do the opposite. As Anita Dunn, an adviser to the Biden campaign, put it: “Covid is the best thing that ever happened to him.”It’s a ghoulish sentiment, the kind of candid cynicism that one expects from a political ticktock like this. But it also highlights something else. Amid all the fund-raising, the polling, the minute movements of the horse race enumerated in this book, people were dying. Americans were suffering. California was burning. The world, in other words, was happening — all while enormous political energy and billions of dollars got sucked into the maw of endless campaigning.A future researcher will undoubtedly find it useful to have a page and a half of exacting detail about what everyone was thinking when a fly landed on Mike Pence’s head during the vice-presidential debate, or to learn how Biden’s people insisted on watering down one of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s jokes during the Democratic convention. Given how the American political system currently works, the granular politicking ably recounted in “Lucky” is a necessity — but what becomes unintentionally clear is how wasteful so much of it is.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Why Trump Holds a Grip on the G.O.P.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyWhy Trump Holds a Grip on the G.O.P.Republicans still embrace the power of the ex-president’s agenda to galvanize voters and drive turnout.Mr. McCarthy has been a political editor and commentator for 18 years and has written extensively about conservatism, populism and the Trump presidency.March 1, 2021, 11:17 a.m. ETCredit…Mark Peterson/Redux, for The New York TimesThe Donald Trump era isn’t over for the Republican Party. He is the party’s kingmaker, and two impeachments and a re-election defeat have not quelled Republican voters’ enthusiasm for him. As no less a critic of the ex-president than Senator Mitt Romney has acknowledged, he will be the party’s presumptive front-runner if he chooses to run for president again.If there is a Republican “civil war,” Mr. Trump is winning — and so easily that it can hardly be called a real fight.At the Conservative Political Action Conference on Sunday, Mr. Trump topped the presidential straw poll with 55 percent. The only other politician to break double digits, with 21 percent, was Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has positioned himself as Mr. Trump’s political heir.(If 55 percent seems like a less than resounding victory, recall that Mr. Trump came in only third in CPAC’s 2016 straw poll. Yet in that year’s primary contests he proved to be more popular with rank-and-file Republicans than he was with ideological conservatives like those who attend CPAC and tended to favor Ted Cruz in party caucuses.)Paradoxically, Mr. Trump may be all the stronger within the party because he served only one term. Many Republicans feel there is unfinished business to be settled after the Trump years. Many want a rematch to expunge the memory of defeat. The Republican right in particular feels that the battles Mr. Trump began over immigration, foreign policy, trade with China and the power of Big Tech in politics have yet to be played out.These are some of the themes that the party’s potential 2024 aspirants — Governor DeSantis, Senators Josh Hawley and Cruz, Nikki Haley (Mr. Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations) and others — continue to underscore, as do a legion of conservative commentators. With only one term to enact its agenda, the Trump administration is forgiven for not having achieved everything it set out to do, and its setbacks can be chalked up to Mr. Trump’s inexperience on entering office, the hostility of his media critics and the bad luck that the Covid-19 crisis struck in a re-election year. Two of these three conditions will not apply in 2024.What will apply, for better or worse, is the power of Mr. Trump and his agenda to galvanize voters and drive turnout — for both parties. In 2020 Mr. Trump received more votes — 74 million — than any other Republican nominee in history. That was over 11 million more votes than Mr. Trump won four years earlier. After everything that had happened in those years, and even amid the historic hardships of Covid, the Trump brand had actually grown its base of support.Credit…Mark Peterson/Redux, for The New York TimesThis singular fact is seared into the minds of Republicans who look to the future, much as, after the 1964 election, forward-looking analysts like Kevin Phillips and the direct-mail innovator Richard Viguerie were more impressed by what Barry Goldwater had achieved in building a conservative movement of millions than by the fact of his loss. And Mr. Trump’s achievement was greater than Mr. Goldwater’s. Yet he lost, too; and many of the 81 million voters who elected President Biden seemed to be driven by antipathy to Mr. Trump and his politics, as indicated by the fact that many Biden voters did not vote for House Democrats.The lesson Republicans take from this is that Mr. Trump has discovered a potentially winning formula — if that formula’s power to attract voters to the Republican brand can be separated from the formula’s propensity to repel even larger numbers of voters who turn out to elect Democrats. More

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      Trump’s Republican Hit List at CPAC Is a Warning Shot to His Party

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentLatest UpdatesTrump AcquittedHow Senators VotedSeven Republicans Vote to ConvictAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTrump’s Republican Hit List at CPAC Is a Warning Shot to His PartyIn his first public appearance since leaving office, Donald Trump went through, by name, every Republican who supported his second impeachment and called for them to be ousted.Former President Donald J. Trump told the Conservative Political Action Conference on Sunday that he would not form a new party, then called for ousting Republicans who had backed his second impeachment.CreditCredit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesJonathan Martin and Published More

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      Trump 2.0 Looks an Awful Lot Like Trump 2020

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyThe conversationTrump 2.0 Looks an Awful Lot Like Trump 2020Are we really going to do this again?Gail Collins and Ms. Collins and Mr. Stephens are opinion columnists. They converse every week.March 1, 2021Credit…Mark Peterson for The New York TimesBret Stephens: I don’t know about you, Gail, but watching Donald Trump’s speech at the CPAC conference in Orlando brought to mind that Michael Corleone line: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!” Here we were, barely a month into the Biden presidency, thinking we could finally put one American disaster behind us and have normal arguments about normal subjects, and now we may be staring at the worst sequel of all time.The idea of another Trump presidential run is worse than “The Godfather Part III.” It’s “Dumb and Dumberer” meets “Friday the 13th Part VIII.”Gail Collins: Well, he made it very clear he’s planning on a “triumphant return to the White House.” If you folks want to save the Republican Party, you’re going to have to take him on.Bret: I’ve always wanted to write a musical called “The Mitt and I.”Gail: Seeing Trump so clearly gearing up for another presidential run brought me back to an ongoing argument we’ve been having. Third parties. Am I to understand you’re a fan?Bret: I’m not a fan of third parties that have no hope of winning elections and mainly serve as vanity projects for the likes of Ross Perot or Ralph Nader. And I’m obviously not a fan of extremist parties, whether they are of the George Wallace or Henry Wallace varieties.On the other hand, I’d be a fan of a right-of-center party that can replace the current Republican Party, one that believes in the virtues of small government and personal responsibility without being nativist and nasty.Gail: A lovely idea, but it’s not going to work. Nobody’s ever made it work. We’ve already seen an exodus of moderates and sane conservatives from the Republican Party, leaving it even loopier. And Trump is threatening to start a third party of his own, or at least he was, which would split things even more.Feel free to daydream about the perfect, sane, moderate alternative Republican Party, Bret, but no chance.Bret: Well, Abe Lincoln made it work by building a party on the wreckage of the Whigs.Gail: Not going to interject that it took a civil war …Bret: And there’s a political moment here. Gallup released a poll two weeks ago showing that 62 percent of Americans believe that “parties do such a poor job representing the American people that a third party is needed.” Among self-identified Republicans, the number was a notch higher: 63 percent. I think you are underestimating the number of people who feel they’ve been abandoned by a Republican Party that became a whacked-out cult of personality under Trump. What’s missing isn’t an agenda; it’s a galvanizing personality to lead a new movement.Gail: Which galvanizing personality do you have in mind — Mitt Romney?Bret: Given what happened to the G.O.P., I bet you sometimes wish he’d won back in 2012.Gail: Um, no. But let’s look at now. Reforming the current Republican Party would mean a million grass-roots battles to retake the base. Understandable that people would just prefer to start a new movement — much less nasty infighting. Just sincere get-togethers of like-minded people, holding barbecues and giving interviews to folks like us who are desperate to think this could work.But you could never create a massive 50-state party structure, with enough voters willing to make the very large decision of abandoning the party they’ve identified with forever. More

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      Republicans Grapple With Raising the Minimum Wage

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRepublicans Grapple With Raising the Minimum WageThe politics of a $15 minimum wage are increasingly muddled, but some Republicans are gravitating toward a higher base pay, citing the economic needs of working-class Americans.A grocery store cashier in Charlottesville, Va., on Friday. The state is among those with the highest share of hourly paid workers earning at or below the federal minimum wage.Credit…Eze Amos for The New York TimesAlan Rappeport and Feb. 26, 2021Updated 7:44 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — The policy debate over raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour is the latest fault line between Democrats, who largely support the idea, and Republicans, who generally oppose such a sharp increase as bad for business.But it is also revealing new fissures in the Republican Party, which is straining to appeal to its corporate backers, some of whom believe that more than doubling the minimum wage would cut deeply into their profits, and the working-class wing, which fueled President Donald J. Trump’s rise and would stand to gain from a pay increase.After decades of either calling for the abolishment of a federal minimum wage or arguing that it should not be raised, Republicans are beginning to bow to the realities facing the party’s populist base with proposals that acknowledge the wage floor must rise. President Biden is likely to try to capitalize on that shift as he tries to deliver on his promise to raise the minimum wage, even if it does not make it into the $1.9 trillion aid package because of a ruling Thursday evening by the Senate parliamentarian.For years, Republicans have embraced the economic arguments that were laid out in a letter this month to Congress by Americans for Tax Reform, the Club for Growth and other conservative groups that promote free enterprise. They point to studies that assert mandated wage increases would lead to job losses, small-business closures and higher prices for consumers. And they make the case that the economic trade-offs are not worth it, saying that more jobs would be lost than the number of people pulled from poverty and that those in states with a lower cost of living — often conservative-leaning states — would bear the brunt of the fallout.In 2016, as Republicans moved further to the right, moderate candidates such as Jeb Bush, a former Florida governor, and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, argued forcefully that the federal minimum wage did not need to be raised above $7.25, which is where it still stands today. Mr. Bush said the matter of wages should be left to the private sector, while Mr. Rubio warned about the risk of making workers more costly than machines.But Republicans have at times grappled with the challenging politics of a position that so clearly sides with business interests. In the 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, said that he believed that the federal minimum wage should rise in step with inflation, as measured by the national Consumer Price Index.And after arguing early on in his 2016 campaign that wages were already too high, Mr. Trump later said he could support a $10 minimum wage.That is the number that Mr. Romney, now a Republican senator from Utah, and Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, introduced in a plan that would gradually raise the minimum wage to $10 over four years and then index it to inflation every two years.On Friday, Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, went a step further by matching the proposal that Democrats have made for a $15 minimum wage. His plan comes with a big caveat, however, and would apply only to businesses with annual revenue of more than $1 billion.“Megacorporations can afford to pay their workers $15 an hour, and it’s long past time they do so, but this should not come at the expense of small businesses already struggling to make it,” Mr. Hawley said.The proposal drew a sharp rebuke from David McIntosh, the president of the Club for Growth, who suggested that Mr. Hawley was adopting bad policies in a bid to appeal to Mr. Trump’s voters. He said that his organization would not support Republicans who promoted minimum wage increases and said that they should be pushing for payroll tax cuts to give workers more take-home pay.“This is another example of his ambition driving him to these populist positions that completely violate any principles he has about free markets,” Mr. McIntosh said in an interview.While the talking points surrounding the minimum wage have remained largely the same over the years, the politics are shifting partly because the federal wage floor has stagnated for so long — and a growing economic literature has suggested that the costs of higher wage floors may not be as significant as analysts once worried they might be.After rising gradually over the decades, the minimum has held steady at $7.25 an hour since 2009. Prices have gradually increased since then, so the hourly pay rate goes a shorter distance toward paying the bills these days: Today’s $7.25 is equivalent to $5.85 in 2009 buying power, adjusted by consumer price inflation.Given how low it is set, a relatively small share of American workers actually make minimum wage. About 1.1 million — 1.5 percent of hourly paid workers and about 0.8 percent of all workers — earned at or below the $7.25 floor in 2020.A restaurant worker last week in Brooklyn. The politics of the minimum wage are shifting partly because the federal wage floor has stagnated for so long.Credit…Jordan Gale for The New York TimesStates with the highest share of hourly paid workers earning at or below the federal minimum are often Southern — like South Carolina and Louisiana — and skew conservative. About seven in 10 states that have an above-average share of workers earning at or below the minimum wage voted Republican in the 2020 presidential election.While only a slice of the work force earns at or below the minimum, lifting the federal base wage to $15 would bolster pay more broadly. The $15 minimum wage would lift pay for some 17 million workers who earn less than $15 and could increase pay for another 10 million who earn just slightly more, based on a recent Congressional Budget Office analysis.Still, raising wages for as many as 27 million Americans is likely to come at some cost. The budget office, drawing on results from 11 studies and adjustments from a broader literature, estimated that perhaps 1.4 million fewer people would have jobs in 2025 given a $15 minimum wage.Some economists who lean toward the left have questioned the budget office’s conclusion.In research that summarized 55 different academic studies of episodes where a minimum wage was introduced or raised — 36 in the United States, 11 in other developed countries — Arindrajit Dube at the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that even looking at very narrow slices of workers who were directly affected, a 10 percent increase in minimum wage might lead to a 2 percent loss in employment. Looking at the effects for low-wage workers more broadly, the cost to jobs was “minute.”More recent work from Mr. Dube has found next to no employment impact from state and local minimum wage increases.Yet many Republicans have seized on the budget office’s job loss figure.In a column titled “How Many Jobs Will the ‘Stimulus’ Kill?” Stephen Moore, an adviser and ally of Mr. Trump’s, and the conservative economist Casey B. Mulligan suggest that the $15 federal minimum wage will cost a million jobs or more. Mr. Moore said in an email that they were relying on the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate.Still, a variety of economic officials emphasize that the cost to jobs of a higher minimum wage are not as large as once believed, and that the federal minimum wage has not kept up with inflation.“Higher minimum wages clearly do help the workers who are affected,” John C. Williams, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said during a virtual speech on Thursday. “There are some job losses,” but recent evidence suggests that it is not as many as once expected.There is precedent for raising the minimum wage toward $15, because as the federal base pay requirement has stagnated, states and localities have been increasing their own pay floors. Twenty states and 32 cities and counties raised their minimum wages just at the start of 2021, based on an analysis by the National Employment Law Project, and in 27 of those places, the pay floor has now reached or exceeded $15 an hour.The drive toward $15 started in 2012 with protests by fast-food workers and was initially treated as something of a fringe idea, but it has gained momentum even in states that are heavily Republican. Florida — which Mr. Trump won in November 2020 — voted for a ballot measure mandating a $15 minimum wage by 2026.Like in many of those local cases, Democrats are proposing a gradual increase that would phase in over time. Janet L. Yellen, the Biden administration’s Treasury secretary and former Fed chair, suggested in response to lawmaker questions after her confirmation hearing that the long runway could help mitigate any costs.“It matters how it’s implemented, and the president’s minimum wage will be phased in over time, giving small businesses plenty of time to adapt,” Ms. Yellen wrote.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Garland, at Confirmation Hearing, Vows to Fight Domestic Extremism

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutTracking the ArrestsVisual TimelineInside the SiegeThe Lost HoursThe Oath KeepersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyGarland, at Confirmation Hearing, Vows to Fight Domestic ExtremismPresident Biden’s nominee for attorney general told the Senate Judiciary Committee that investigating the Capitol riot would be his first priority.Judge Merrick B. Garland said he would restore independence to the Justice Department if confirmed as attorney general.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesKatie Benner and Feb. 22, 2021, 7:16 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Judge Merrick B. Garland, President Biden’s nominee for attorney general, said on Monday that the threat from domestic extremism was greater today than at the time of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, and he pledged that if confirmed he would make the federal investigation into the Capitol riot his first priority.Judge Garland, who led the Justice Department’s prosecution of the Oklahoma City bombing, told the Senate Judiciary Committee on the first day of his confirmation hearings that the early stages of the current inquiry into the “white supremacists and others who stormed the Capitol” seemed to be aggressive and “perfectly appropriate.”He received a largely positive reception from members of both parties on the panel, five years after Senate Republicans blocked his nomination to the Supreme Court by President Barack Obama to fill the vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.Judge Garland, 68, who was confirmed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1997, pledged on Monday to restore the independence of a Justice Department that had suffered deep politicization under the Trump administration.“I do not plan to be interfered with by anyone,” Judge Garland said. Should he be confirmed, he said, he would uphold the principle that “the attorney general represents the public interest.”Judge Garland also said he would reinvigorate the department’s civil rights division as America undergoes a painful and destabilizing reckoning with systemic racism.“Communities of color and other minorities still face discrimination in housing, education, employment and the criminal justice system,” Judge Garland said in his opening statement. But he said he did not support the call from some on the left that grew out of this summer’s civil rights protests to defund the police.The Trump administration worked to curb civil rights protections for transgender people and minorities. It also barred policies intended to combat systemic racism, sexism, homophobia and other implicit biases.“I regard my responsibilities with respect to the civil rights division at the top of my major priorities list,” Judge Garland said.Judge Garland answered questions on a wide array of additional topics, including criminal justice reform, antitrust cases, the power of large technology companies, congressional oversight and departmental morale.Discussing the threat of domestic terrorism, Judge Garland said that “we are facing a more dangerous period than we faced in Oklahoma City.”He called the assault on the Capitol “the most heinous attack on the democratic processes that I’ve ever seen, and one that I never expected to see in my lifetime.”In addition to an immediate briefing on the investigation, he said he would “give the career prosecutors who are working on this manner 24/7 all the resources they could possibly require.”Battling extremism is “central” to the Justice Department’s mission, and has often overlapped with its mission to combat systemic racism, as with its fight against the Ku Klux Klan, Judge Garland said.But the hearing was also a reminder of how politics hovers over so many of the high-profile issues that will confront Judge Garland if the full Senate confirms him, especially as the Capitol riot investigation touches on members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle and more defendants claim that they acted on former President Donald J. Trump’s command to stop Mr. Biden from taking office.Asked by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, whether the investigation into the Capitol riot should pursue people “upstream” of those who breached the building, including “funders, organizers, ringleaders or aiders and abettors who were not present in the Capitol on Jan. 6,” Judge Garland replied, “We will pursue these leads wherever they take us.”Republicans focused primarily on two politically charged investigations from the Trump era: a federal tax investigation into Mr. Biden’s son Hunter Biden, and the work of a special counsel, John H. Durham, to determine whether Obama-era officials erred in 2016 when they investigated Trump campaign officials and their ties to Russia.Judge Garland said he had not discussed the Hunter Biden case with the president, and he reiterated that the Justice Department would make final decisions about investigations and prosecutions.“That investigation has been proceeding discreetly, not publicly, as all investigations should,” he said. He noted that the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Delaware had been asked to stay on and oversee the investigation into Hunter Biden.“I have absolutely no reason to doubt that was the correct decision,” he said.Responding to a question about Mr. Durham’s investigation, Judge Garland suggested that he would let the inquiry play out but avoided making any explicit promises about how he would handle it.“I don’t have any reason — from what I know now, which is really very little — to make any determination,” Judge Garland said. “I don’t have any reason to think that he should not remain in place,” he said of Mr. Durham.About the disclosure of any report from Mr. Durham, he added, “I would though have to talk with Mr. Durham and understand the nature of what he has been doing and the nature of the report.”Senators Charles E. Grassley, left, Republican of Iowa, and Richard J. Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who leads the Judiciary Committee, during the hearing. Mr. Grassley called Judge Garland “an honorable person.”Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesSenator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the committee, said he would not “take exception” to answers about the Durham investigation that were “not quite as explicit” as he wanted “because I think you’re an honorable person.”Judge Garland has sterling legal credentials, a reputation as a moderate and a long history of service at the Justice Department. After clerking for Justice William J. Brennan Jr., he worked as a federal prosecutor for the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington under President George H.W. Bush and was chosen by Jamie Gorelick, the deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton, to serve as her top deputy..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1amoy78{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1amoy78{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1amoy78:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}Capitol Riot FalloutFrom Riot to ImpeachmentThe riot inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, followed a rally at which President Trump made an inflammatory speech to his supporters, questioning the results of the election. Here’s a look at what happened and the ongoing fallout:As this video shows, poor planning and a restive crowd encouraged by President Trump set the stage for the riot.A two hour period was crucial to turning the rally into the riot.Several Trump administration officials, including cabinet members Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, announced that they were stepping down as a result of the riot.Federal prosecutors have charged more than 70 people, including some who appeared in viral photos and videos of the riot. Officials expect to eventually charge hundreds of others.The House voted to impeach the president on charges of “inciting an insurrection” that led to the rampage by his supporters.In addition to Oklahoma City, Judge Garland supervised high-profile cases that included Theodore J. Kaczynski (a.k.a. the Unabomber) and the bombing at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 before being confirmed to the federal appeals court. When Mr. Obama nominated him to the Supreme Court in 2016, he was widely portrayed as a moderate.Key Republicans including Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a member of the committee, and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, have said they would support Judge Garland to serve as Mr. Biden’s attorney general.Democrats cast him on Monday as the necessary antidote to four years in which Mr. Trump had treated Justice Department investigators as enemies to be crushed or players to be used to attack his political enemies and shield his allies, especially as he sought to thwart and undo the Russia investigation.Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in his opening remarks that “the misdeeds of the Trump Justice Department brought this nation to the brink,” and that Judge Garland would need to “restore the faith of the American people in the rule of law and deliver equal justice.”Asked about Mr. Trump’s statement, “I have the absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department,” Judge Garland said that the president “is constrained by the Constitution” and that in any case Mr. Biden had pledged to not interfere with the department’s work.Judge Garland’s answer drew an implicit contrast with William P. Barr, who served under Mr. Trump as attorney general for nearly two years and appeared to see his role as serving the interests of the president much more than did other post-Watergate attorneys general.“Decisions will be made by the department itself and led by the attorney general,” he said, “without respect to partisanship, without respect to the power of the perpetrator or the lack of power, respect to the influence of the perpetrator or the lack of influence.”Judge Garland was for the most part measured and even-tempered, but he became emotional when he described his family’s flight from anti-Semitism and persecution in Eastern Europe and asylum in America.“The country took us in — and protected us,” he said, his voice halting. “I feel an obligation to the country to pay back. This is the highest, best use of my own set of skills to pay back. And so I want very much to be the kind of attorney general that you are saying I could become.”Judge Garland pledged to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the Trump Justice Department’s “zero tolerance” policy on illegal immigration that led to large numbers of parents being separated from their children.“I think that the policy was shameful,” Judge Garland said. “I can’t imagine anything worse than tearing parents from their children. And we will provide all of the cooperation that we possibly can.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Trump Schedules Address Before CPAC Next Sunday

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Rush Limbaugh (1951-2021)ObituaryLimbaugh’s LegacyPresidential Medal of FreedomLimbaugh and TrumpAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTrump Schedules Address Before CPAC Next SundayThe former president will make his first lengthy remarks since leaving office before the annual conference of conservatives Feb. 28.President Donald Trump at the 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland.Credit…Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesFeb. 20, 2021, 6:19 p.m. ETFormer President Donald J. Trump will speak at the conservative event known as CPAC on Feb. 28, his first public appearance and lengthy address since he left the White House for a final time last month.A senior aide to Mr. Trump confirmed that he would attend the Conservative Public Action Conference, which is being held in Orlando, Fla., this year, and that he planned to talk about the future of the Republican Party as well as President Biden’s immigration policies, which have been aimed at undoing Mr. Trump’s.What Mr. Trump plans to talk about and what he ultimately says once he’s onstage often diverge, as he discards scripts that aides prepare for him.But it will be the first time that he has spoken in a public setting since the deadly Jan. 6 riot by his supporters at the Capitol building.The former president, who was permanently banned from Twitter and who is facing investigations into his businesses as well as whether he has culpability for the assault on the Capitol, has generally kept a low profile, except for giving a small round of interviews to sympathetic news outlets about the death of the radio host Rush Limbaugh last week. Even though the interviews were supposed to be about Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Trump still strayed into repeating his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.But CPAC is traditionally a cattle call for Republican candidates for office as well as aspiring figures in the party. And Mr. Trump has signaled to several allies and advisers in recent days that he is focused on running for president again in 2024.Whether he actually does is an open question. But his presence could freeze the field for the next two years, preventing other candidates from developing operations and, more important, networks of donors to sustain their candidacies.Mr. Trump is currently locked in a battle with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, over the party’s future and what kind of candidates it attracts. Mr. McConnell has made it clear that he wants to try to minimize Mr. Trump’s influence after the deadly riot.But Mr. Trump has said he will try to encourage candidates who will carry his brand of politics forward.The CPAC conference is the event where, a year ago, when it was held in Washington, D.C., Mr. Trump gave a speech downplaying the threat of the novel coronavirus and insisting that his administration had the situation in hand. A New Jersey man who attended the conference tested positive for the virus, setting off a scramble by officials with the American Conservative Union, who run the conference.Within two weeks of Mr. Trump’s speech, the pandemic was a full-blown crisis, one that ultimately engulfed his administration. The administration’s failed response to the virus was a key issue for voters in the 2020 election.Mr. Trump’s modern political life began with a speech at CPAC in 2011.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Democrats Beat Trump in 2020. Now They’re Asking: What Went Wrong?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDemocrats Beat Trump in 2020. Now They’re Asking: What Went Wrong?Disappointed by down-ballot losses, Democratic interest groups are joining forces to conduct an autopsy of the election results. Republicans do not yet seem willing to reckon with the G.O.P.’s major defeats.Joseph R. Biden Jr. speaking outside the Chase Center in Wilmington, Del., after winning the election on Nov. 7.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesFeb. 20, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETDemocrats emerged from the 2020 election with full control of the federal government and a pile of lingering questions. In private, party leaders and strategists have been wrestling with a quandary: Why was President Biden’s convincing victory over Donald J. Trump not accompanied by broad Democratic gains down ballot?With that puzzle in mind, a cluster of Democratic advocacy groups has quietly launched a review of the party’s performance in the 2020 election with an eye toward shaping Democrats’ approach to next year’s midterm campaign, seven people familiar with the effort said.There is particular concern among the Democratic sponsors of the initiative about the party’s losses in House districts with large minority populations, including in Florida, Texas and California, people briefed on the initiative said. The review is probing tactical and strategic choices across the map, including Democratic messaging on the economy and the coronavirus pandemic, as well as organizational decisions like eschewing in-person canvassing.Democrats had anticipated they would be able to expand their majority in the House, pushing into historically red areas of the Sun Belt where Mr. Trump’s unpopularity had destabilized the G.O.P. coalition. Instead, Republicans took 14 Democratic-held House seats, including a dozen that Democrats had captured in an anti-Trump wave election just two years earlier.The results stunned strategists in both parties, raising questions about the reliability of campaign polling and seemingly underscoring Democratic vulnerabilities in rural areas and right-of-center suburbs. Democrats also lost several contested Senate races by unexpectedly wide margins, even as they narrowly took control of the chamber.Strategists involved in the Democratic self-review have begun interviewing elected officials and campaign consultants and reaching out to lawmakers and former candidates in major House and Senate races where the party either won or lost narrowly.Four major groups are backing the effort, spanning a range of Democratic-leaning interests: Third Way, a centrist think tank; End Citizens United, a clean-government group; the Latino Victory Fund; and Collective PAC, an organization that supports Black Democratic candidates.They are said to be working with at least three influential bodies within the House Democratic caucus: the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the New Democrat Coalition, a group of centrist lawmakers. The groups have retained a Democratic consulting firm, 270 Strategies, to conduct interviews and analyze electoral data.The newly elected Democratic Representatives Jason Crow, Antonio Delgado, Jared Golden and Abigail Spanberger participated in a forum hosted by End Citizens United in 2019.Credit…Erik S Lesser/EPA, via ShutterstockDemocrats are feeling considerable pressure to refine their political playbook ahead of the 2022 congressional elections, when the party will be defending minuscule House and Senate majorities without a presidential race to drive turnout on either side.Dan Sena, a former executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said there was a recognition in the party that despite Mr. Biden’s victory the 2020 cycle had not been an unalloyed Democratic success story.“I think people know that there was good and bad coming out of ’20 and there is a desire to look under the hood,” Mr. Sena said.Among the party’s goals, Mr. Sena said, should be studying their gains in Georgia and looking for other areas where population growth and demographic change might furnish the party with strong electoral targets in 2022.“There were a series of factors that really made Georgia work this cycle,” he said. “How do you begin to find places like Georgia?”Matt Bennett, senior vice president of Third Way, confirmed in a statement that the four-way project was aimed at positioning Democrats for the midterm elections.“With narrow Democratic majorities in Congress and the Republican Party in the thrall of Trump-supporting seditionists, the stakes have never been higher,” he said. “Our organizations will provide Democrats with a detailed picture of what happened in 2020 — with a wide range of input from voices across the party — so they are fully prepared to take on the G.O.P. in 2022.”In addition to the outside review, some of the traditional party committees are said to be taking narrower steps to scrutinize the 2020 results. Concerned about a drop-off in support with Latino men, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee conducted focus groups in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas earlier this year, one person familiar with the study said. It is not clear precisely what conclusions emerged from the exercise.So far there is no equivalent process underway on the Republican side, party officials said, citing the general lack of appetite among G.O.P. leaders for grappling openly with Mr. Trump’s impact on the party and the wreckage he inflicted in key regions of the country.As a candidate for re-election, Mr. Trump slumped in the Democratic-leaning Upper Midwest — giving up his most important breakthroughs of 2016 — and lost to Mr. Biden in Georgia and Arizona, two traditionally red states where the G.O.P. has suffered an abrupt decline in recent years. The party lost all four Senate seats from those states during Mr. Trump’s presidency, three of them in the 2020 cycle.But Mr. Trump and his political retainers have so far responded with fury to critics of his stewardship of the party, and there is no apparent desire to tempt his wrath with a comprehensive analysis that would be likely to yield unflattering results. One unofficial review, conducted by Mr. Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, concluded that Mr. Trump had shed significant support because of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, with particularly damaging losses among white voters.In the past, Democratic attempts at self-scrutiny have tended to yield somewhat mushy conclusions aimed at avoiding controversy across the party’s multifarious coalition.Donald J. Trump spoke on election night at the White House.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe Democratic Party briefly appeared headed for a public reckoning in November, as the party absorbed its setbacks in the House and its failure to unseat several Republican senators whom Democrats had seen as ripe for defeat.A group of centrist House members blamed left-wing rhetoric about democratic socialism and defunding the police for their losses in a number of conservative-leaning suburbs and rural districts. Days after the election, Representative Abigail Spanberger of Virginia said the party should renounce the word “socialism,” drawing pushback from progressives like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.That airing of differences did not last long: Democrats quickly closed ranks in response to Mr. Trump’s attacks on the 2020 election, and party unity hardened after the Jan. 5 runoff elections in Georgia and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. But there are still significant internal disagreements about campaign strategy.It has been eight years since either political party conducted a wide-ranging self-assessment that recommended thorough changes in structure and strategy. After the 2012 election, when Republicans lost the presidential race and gave up seats in both chambers of Congress, the Republican National Committee empaneled a task force that called for major changes to the party organization.The so-called 2012 autopsy also recommended that the G.O.P. embrace the cause of immigration reform, warning that the party faced a bleak demographic future if it did not improve its position with communities of color. That recommendation was effectively discarded after House Republicans blocked a bipartisan immigration deal passed by the Senate, and then fully obliterated by Mr. Trump’s presidential candidacy.Henry Barbour, a member of the R.N.C. who co-authored the committee’s post-2012 analysis, said it would be wise for both parties to consider their political positioning after the 2020 election. He said Democrats had succeeded in the election by running against Mr. Trump but that the party’s leftward shift had alienated otherwise winnable voters, including some Black, Hispanic and Asian-American communities that shifted incrementally toward Mr. Trump.“They’re running off a lot of middle-class Americans who work hard for a living out in the heartland, or in big cities or suburbs,” Mr. Barbour said. “Part of that is because Democrats have run too far to the left.”Mr. Barbour said Republicans, too, should take a cleareyed look at their 2020 performance. Mr. Trump, he said, had not done enough to expand his appeal beyond a large and loyal minority of voters.“The Republican Party has got to do better than that,” he said. “We’re not just a party of one president.”Henry Barbour, a member of the Republican National Committee, at the party’s 2020 convention in Charlotte, N.C.Credit…Carlos Barria/ReutersIn addition to the four-way review on the Democratic side, there are several narrower projects underway focused on addressing deficiencies in polling.Democratic and Republican officials alike found serious shortcomings in their survey research, especially polling in House races that failed to anticipate how close Republicans would come to retaking the majority. Both parties emerged from the campaign feeling that they had significantly misjudged the landscape of competitive House races, with Democrats losing seats unexpectedly and Republicans perhaps having missed a chance to capture the chamber as a result.The chief Republican and Democratic super PACs focused on House races — the Congressional Leadership Fund and House Majority PAC — are both in the process of studying their 2020 polling and debating changes for the 2022 campaign, people familiar with their efforts said.The Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican group, is said to be undertaking a somewhat more extensive review of its spending and messaging, though it is not expected to issue any kind of larger diagnosis for the party. “We would be foolish not to take a serious look at what worked, what didn’t work and how you can evolve and advance,” said Dan Conston, the group’s president.Several of the largest Democratic polling companies are also conferring regularly with each other in an effort to address gaps in the 2020 research. Two people involved in the conversations said there was general agreement that the industry had to update its practices before 2022 to assure Democratic leaders that they would not be caught by surprise again.Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster involved in reviewing research from the last cycle, said that the party was only now digging more deeply into the results of the 2020 election because the last few months had been dominated by other crises.Several Democratic and Republican strategists cautioned that both parties faced a challenge in formulating a plan for 2022: It had been more than a decade, she said, since a midterm campaign had not been dominated by a larger-than-life presidential personality. Based on the experience of the 2020 campaign, it is not clear that Mr. Biden is destined to become such a polarizing figure.“It’s hard to know what an election’s like without an Obama or a Trump,” Ms. Greenberg said, “just normal, regular, ordinary people running.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More