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      How to Interpret Polling Showing Biden’s Loss of Nonwhite Support

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      Yes, there’s reason for skepticism, but also reason for concern for Democrats, particularly over turnout.Is President Biden really struggling as badly among nonwhite voters — especially Black voters — as the polls say?I’ve seen plenty of skepticism. Among nonwhite voters, a Democratic presidential candidate hasn’t fared as badly as those polls suggest in a presidential election result since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. In the case of Black voters, the disparity between the usual support for Democrats — around 90 percent or more — and the recent polling showing it in the 70s or even the 60s just seems too much to accept. Some skeptics believe they’ve seen results like this before, only for Republican strength to vanish on Election Day.But if we compare the polls with those from previous election cycles, Mr. Biden’s early weakness looks serious. His support among Black, Hispanic and other nonwhite voters is well beneath previous lows for Democrats in pre-election polls over the last several decades — including the polls from the last presidential election. Yet at the same time, his weakness is put in better perspective when judged against prior polls, rather than the final election results.Here’s how you should interpret what the polling really means for Mr. Biden’s eventual support among nonwhite and especially Black voters.Election results are the wrong benchmarkA major source of skepticism of Mr. Biden’s weakness among nonwhite voters is the sheer magnitude of the drop-off, based on the difference between the early poll results among registered voters and the estimated final results in post-election studies, like the exit polls.It’s an understandable comparison, but it’s a bad one. Millions of people are undecided in polling today, while all voters have made up their minds in these post-election studies. The registered voter polling also includes millions of people who won’t ultimately vote; the post-election studies typically include only actual voters.These two factors — undecided voters and low-turnout voters — help explain many seemingly weird differences between pre-election polls and the post-election studies.For illustration, consider the following from our New York Times/Siena College polling:Mr. Biden leads, 72 percent to 11 percent, among Black registered voters over the last year.Mr. Biden’s lead among Black voters jumps to 79-11 if undecided voters are assigned based on how they say they voted in 2020.He leads by 76-10 among Black voters with a record of participating in the 2020 general election.His lead among 2020 voters jumps to 84-10 if we allocate undecided voters based on their self-reported 2020 vote preference.For comparison, this same group of Black voters who turned out in 2020 reported backing Mr. Biden over Donald J. Trump, 89-7, in the last election.The upshot: The gap between post-election studies and registered voter polls narrows considerably after accounting for the inherent differences between the two measures — undecided voters and turnout.This lesson isn’t limited to Black voters. To take a different example, Mr. Biden leads by just 46-34 among young registered voters in our polling over the last year, but he leads by 57-35 among young validated 2020 voters if we assign undecided voters based on their 2020 vote preference. His lead among Hispanic voters grows from 47-35 to 56-36 with the same approach. Among Asian American, Native American, multiracial and other nonwhite voters who aren’t Black and Hispanic, it goes up to 50-39, from 40-39.Of course, we can’t assume that Black, Hispanic, young or any voters will turn out as they did in 2020. We can’t assume that undecided voters will return to their 2020 preferences, either. The point is that the differences between pre-election registered voter polls and the final post-election studies explain many of the differences between survey results by subgroup and your expectations. If you must compare the crosstabs from registered voter polls with the final election studies, here’s a tip: Focus on major party vote share. In the case of Black voters, Mr. Biden has a 71-12 lead, so that means he has 86 percent of the major party vote in our Times/Siena polling, 71/(71+12) = 86. That roughly five- or six-point shift in major party vote share is a lot likelier to reflect reality than comparing his 59-point margin among decided voters (71-12 = 59) with his 80-point margin from 2020.Why major party vote share? The logic is simple. Imagine that today 17 percent of eventual Biden voters are undecided and 17 percent of eventual Trump voters are undecided. What would that mean for a poll of voters who will eventually vote 86 to 14? They would be 71 to 12 in the polls today.Mr. Biden’s polling weakness is unusualThere’s another aspect of the skeptics case that I’m less sympathetic toward: the idea that we always see this kind of weakness among nonwhite voters, and it just never materializes.If you look back at polling from prior cycles, it becomes clear that Mr. Biden today really is quite a bit weaker than previous Democrats in registered voter polling from prior cycles. More

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      Federal Court Again Strikes Down Alabama’s Congressional Map

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      Republicans failed to comply with a court order to create a second majority-Black district or something “close to it,” the judicial panel said.A panel of federal judges rejected Alabama’s latest congressional map on Tuesday, ruling that a new map needed to be drawn because Republican lawmakers had failed to comply with orders to create a second majority-Black district or something “close to it.”In a sharp rebuke, the judges ordered that the new map be independently drawn, taking the responsibility away from the Republican-controlled legislature while chastising state officials who “ultimately did not even nurture the ambition to provide the required remedy.”The legislature had hastily pushed through a revised map in July after a surprise Supreme Court ruling found that Alabama’s existing map violated a landmark civil rights law by undercutting the power of the state’s Black voters. The revised map, approved over the objections of Democrats, increased the percentage of Black voters in one of the state’s six majority-white congressional districts to about 40 percent, from about 30 percent.In its new ruling, the district court panel in Alabama found that the legislature had flouted its mandate.“We are not aware of any other case in which a state legislature — faced with a federal court order declaring that its electoral plan unlawfully dilutes minority votes and requiring a plan that provides an additional opportunity district — responded with a plan that the state concedes does not provide that district,” the judges wrote. Responsibility for a new map now falls to a special master, Richard Allen, a longtime Alabama lawyer who has worked under several Republican attorneys general, and a cartographer, David Ely, a demographer based in California. Both were appointed by the court. The decision — or the independent map to be produced — can be appealed. State officials have said that a new congressional map needs to be in place by early October, in order to prepare for the 2024 elections.The litigation has been closely watched in Washington and across the country, as several other states in the South face similar voting rights challenges, and control of the U.S. House of Representatives rests on a thin margin. Prominent lawmakers in Washington — including Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California and Democrats in the Congressional Black Caucus — have kept careful tabs on the redistricting effort.At least one nonpartisan political analysis has predicted that at least one Alabama district could become an election tossup with a new map, given that Black voters in Alabama tend to vote for Democratic candidates.The decision was joined by Judge Stanley Marcus, who was nominated by former President Bill Clinton; and by Judges Anna M. Manasco and Terry F. Moorer, both named to their posts by former President Donald J. Trump. (Judge Marcus typically sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta.)For Alabama, the ruling caps off nearly two years of litigation, marking yet another instance in the state’s tumultuous history where a court has forced officials to follow federal civil rights and voting laws.Two decades ago, a lawsuit forced the creation of the Seventh Congressional District, the state’s sole majority-Black district, in southwest Alabama. (Under the Republican-drawn map rejected on Tuesday, the share of Black voters in that district dropped to about 51 percent from about 55 percent.)“It’s really making sure that people who have consistently been kept at the margins or excluded as a matter of law from politics have a chance — not a guarantee — but a realistic chance of electing candidates of choice,” said Kareem Crayton, the senior director for voting and representation at the Brennan Center for Justice and a Montgomery, Ala., native. “The fact that we’re having to fight over that principle is really sad in 2023.”After the 2020 census, which began the process of setting district lines for the next decade across the country, the Alabama legislature maintained six congressional districts with a white Republican incumbent. A group of Black voters challenged the map under a landmark voting rights law, given that more than one in four residents of Alabama is Black.The Birmingham court said the map would need to be redrawn, but the Supreme Court intervened and said a new map could not be put in place so close to the primary races ahead of the 2022 election. In doing so, the Supreme Court unexpectedly affirmed the key remaining tenet of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which bars any voting law that “results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race.” The court had gutted much of that landmark civil rights law a decade earlier, and many had expected a similar result with the Alabama case.But in a weeklong special session, Republicans refused to create a second majority-Black district, and shielded their six incumbents from a potentially brutal primary at a moment when the party has only a slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.Republicans defended their revised map, calling it a fair attempt to keep counties and communities with similar economic and geographic issues together, while adhering to the Constitution. Democrats and the Black voters who brought the challenge called it a squandered opportunity to provide equal representation to a historically disenfranchised bloc of voters.At a hearing in August, the panel of judges sharply pressed the state’s attorneys on whether the revised map had done enough to adhere to their guidance on how to address the voting rights violation, making their skepticism clear.“What I hear you saying is that the state of Alabama deliberately disregarded our instructions,” Judge Moorer said at one point. More

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      Consistent Signs of Erosion in Black and Hispanic Support for Biden

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      It’s a weakness that could manifest itself as low Democratic turnout even if Trump and Republicans don’t gain among those groups.President Biden is underperforming among nonwhite voters in New York Times/Siena College national polls over the last year, helping to keep the race close in a hypothetical rematch against Donald J. Trump.On average, Mr. Biden leads Mr. Trump by just 53 percent to 28 percent among registered nonwhite voters in a compilation of Times/Siena polls from 2022 and 2023, which includes over 1,500 nonwhite respondents.The results represent a marked deterioration in Mr. Biden’s support compared with 2020, when he won more than 70 percent of nonwhite voters. If he’s unable to revitalize this support by next November, it will continue a decade-long trend of declining Democratic strength among voters considered to be the foundation of the party.Democratic share of major party vote among nonwhite voters More

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      Biden Looks for New Ways to Energize Black Voters

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      With much of his racial equity agenda thwarted by Congress or the courts, President Biden is trying to close an enthusiasm gap among the voters who helped deliver him to the White House.During a recent town hall with the Congressional Black Caucus, Vice President Kamala Harris offered a gut check to the 200 people who had gathered to take stock of the state of civil rights in America.“We are looking at a full-on attack on our hard-fought, hard-won freedoms,” Ms. Harris told the crowd, which erupted in applause as she spoke. “So much is at stake,” she said of the 2024 presidential election, “including our very democracy.”In 2020, President Biden promised Black voters he would deliver a sweeping “racial equity” agenda that included a landmark federal voting rights bill, student loan relief, criminal justice reform and more. Three years later, with much of that agenda thwarted by Congress or the courts, the White House is looking for new ways to re-energize a crucial constituency that helped propel Mr. Biden to the presidency.That means describing the stakes of the election in stark terms, as Ms. Harris did over the summer in Boston, arguing that the Republican Party is trying to reverse generations of racial progress in America. But Mr. Biden is also asking voters to judge him on a series of achievements that benefit Black Americans — but that are hardly the marquee promises from the early days of his administration.In recent weeks, the Biden administration has gone out of its way to highlight its economic accomplishments, which include the lowest Black unemployment rate on record and the fastest creation rate of Black-owned small businesses in over 25 years. It has pointed to social policy efforts, such as increased enrollment in Obamacare and closing the digital divide, as examples of real impacts on the Black community.Vice President Kamala Harris has defended the administration’s racial equity policies.David Degner for The New York TimesIn an opinion essay published on Sunday in The Washington Post, marking the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, Mr. Biden said his stewardship of the economy — a top concern among Black voters — was helping to fulfill the nation’s promise of equality.The president wrote that his administration was “advancing equity in everything we do making unprecedented investments in all of America, including for Black Americans.”Administration officials acknowledge that some of those advances may not immediately resonate with a population that sees its constitutional rights under assault. While polls show continued strong support for Mr. Biden among Black voters, there are growing concerns about an enthusiasm gap among the most loyal constituencies in the Democratic Party.Neera Tanden, Mr. Biden’s domestic policy adviser, said the president was focused on dismantling inequities that had been embedded for decades.“I think we’ll have a transformative change,” Ms. Tanden said, pointing to executive orders Mr. Biden signed in his first days in office, which directed federal agencies to consider racial equity when it comes to the distribution of money and benefits.But, she added, “it won’t be something millions of people feel in a minute.”For Black Americans like Maeia Corbett, the promises of future benefits ring hollow.“Looking at these promises that this administration has made, it’s like a whirlwind,” said Ms. Corbett, 27. “What can I grasp onto when all of these things are being taken from me?”Ms. Corbett, who graduated from college just months before the coronavirus pandemic brought student loan payments to a pause, had been banking on Mr. Biden’s promise to cancel up to $20,000 in student loan debt for millions of borrowers.When the Supreme Court ruled in June that Mr. Biden’s plan was unconstitutional, Ms. Corbett, like many Black Americans, felt a familiar sting of disappointment. The fact that the decision came just 24 hours after the court struck down affirmative action in college admissions, a longstanding mechanism for economic and social mobility for Black people, was almost disorienting.“It’s like you get to the steps of equity and the steps are torn down,” she said.Ms. Corbett’s sentiments are a warning sign for the president, who has tied the success of his presidency to racial progress. Mr. Biden has said he would use the power of his office to address inequity in housing, criminal justice, voting rights, health care, education and economic mobility.“I’m not promising we can end it tomorrow,” Mr. Biden said in January 2021. “But I promise you: We’re going to continue to make progress to eliminate systemic racism, and every branch of the White House and the federal government is going to be part of that effort.”Melanie L. Campbell, the president of the nonpartisan National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, said Black women — widely credited with securing Mr. Biden’s win — could see tangible progress in historic appointments of Black women to cabinet positions and the federal judiciary, including Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. But the courts, conservative activists and a bitterly divided Congress have curtailed a lot of Mr. Biden’s agenda. Lawsuits have held up the administration’s efforts to forgive the debts of Black and other minority farmers after years of discrimination. Congress has blocked two signature pieces of legislation Mr. Biden championed, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. And conservative groups have vowed to pursue legislation challenging Mr. Biden’s plans to prioritize race-conscious policies throughout the federal government.Now, with aides describing him as frustrated over the setbacks, Mr. Biden is taking pains to cast the election as a choice between his agenda and the extremism of “MAGA Republicans,” or those loyal to former President Donald J. Trump.“My dad used to say: ‘Joey, don’t compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the alternative,’” Mr. Biden says in a common refrain.Cedric Richmond, a co-chairman of the Biden campaign, said the campaign would emphasize that Mr. Biden should not be blamed for the Supreme Court decisions. “It’s the court that just rolled back equity, and we’re going to point to it,” he said.The Biden administration has pointed to social policy efforts as examples of real impacts on the Black community.Samuel Corum for The New York TimesA recent Axios survey of more than 780 college students and recent graduates found that 47 percent of voters blamed the Supreme Court for student loans not being forgiven, 38 percent blamed Republicans and 10 percent blamed Mr. Biden.Still, polls show that Black voters under 30 have far less enthusiasm for Mr. Biden than their elders do.Mary-Pat Hector, the chief executive of Rise, a student advocacy organization that has pushed for student debt relief and college affordability, said the disillusionment among young voters was real. On issues like student loan debt and climate, Ms. Hector said, all the voters see are “things we were told were going to happen that just haven’t happened.”“When it comes to Gen Z,” she said, “they don’t forget, and it’s hard for them to forgive.”In the meantime, the White House says it has not given up on its most ambitious goals.This month, the Education and Justice Departments released guidance for how colleges should navigate the affirmative action decision, urging them to continue to strive for diversity. And the Education Department is preparing to start new loan programs, while delivering billions in loan relief by fixing existing programs that have long disenfranchised Black borrowers. And dozens of federal agencies are working through “equity action plans” tackling everything from disparities in home appraisals to maternal mortality.Stephen K. Benjamin, Mr. Biden’s director of public engagement, said he believed the administration’s economic record would resonate, even as he acknowledged that the White House needed help from Congress to make good on its broader agenda.“I do believe when the rubber hits the road,” he said, “people will pay more attention to these dramatic investments in their quality of life.”Lennore Vinnie, 53, said she felt the administration was looking out for people like her.Having benefited from affirmative action when she entered the white, male-dominated information technology field in the 1990s, Ms. Vinnie, a single mother of two, incurred $280,000 in student loan debt after years of pursuing a doctoral degree to advance to a senior leadership position. Some of the debt was acquired at predatory for-profit colleges.Lennore Vinnie is applying for loan relief through forgiveness programs that were not affected by the Supreme Court ruling.Carlos Bernate for The New York Times“I know for me, as an African American woman, you can never have too many degrees or too many credentials,” she said, “because that way I take away all your reasons for not putting me in the position.”Ms. Vinnie, who ultimately obtained her doctorate and her promotion, is applying for relief through loan forgiveness programs that were not affected by the Supreme Court ruling.Ms. Harris’s appearance before the Congressional Black Caucus in Boston encapsulated the administration’s strategy moving forward: highlighting its progress while rallying a community to remember — and repeat — history.In Boston, the crowd was rapt, shouting “preach!” as she called out “extremist so-called leaders” who sought to distract from the nation’s legacy of slavery and systemic racism.Ms. Harris then reminded the room that Black voters drove Mr. Biden to win the presidency in 2020, and made her the first Black vice president. “The future of America,” she said, “has always relied on the folks who are in this room.” More

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      ‘No Place for Hate in America,’ Haley Says, Recalling 2015 Church Massacre

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      Nikki Haley, fresh off a strong debate performance last week, was back on the trail and took a moment to condemn the weekend shooting in Jacksonville, Fla.Breaking from her usual stump speech at a South Carolina town hall event on Monday, Nikki Haley paused to condemn a deadly weekend rampage in Jacksonville, Fla., that the authorities were investigating as a hate crime.“I am not going to lie to you, it takes me back to a dark place,” Ms. Haley told an audience of roughly 1,000 people gathered in a corporate campus auditorium in Indian Land. “There is no place for hate in America.”Ms. Haley was governor in 2015 when a white supremacist opened fire in an African American church in Charleston, S.C., and killed nine Black parishioners at a Bible study. Ms. Haley eventually called for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the South Carolina Capitol. She later described struggling with the beginning effects of post-traumatic stress disorder in response to the shooting, but she said that the victims’ families showed her what strength and grace looked like.Ms. Haley also toed the Republican Party line on guns and racism, suggesting that such violence and mass shootings could be prevented if Americans improved mental health services, abided by gun laws and rejected division and hate in their everyday lives.She renewed her calls for the need to reverse what she often describes as a “national self-loathing,” or the idea that “America is bad or that America is rotten or that it is racist.”“Don’t fall into the narrative that this is a racist country,” she told the mostly white and graying crowd, citing her own election in 2010 as the first woman and person of color to lead the state as progress. “It was only 60 years ago today that Martin Luther King gave that speech. Look at how far we have come.”The way Ms. Haley, a former United Nations ambassador, and other Republican presidential candidates tend to downplay structural racism and prejudice — and to focus on the nation’s racial progress — puts them at odds with most Black voters.On Monday, Ms. Haley’s home state rival in the presidential race, Senator Tim Scott, called the Florida rampage “heinous.” He said that the killings had prompted patrons at his church service to discuss “the absolute devastation” in 2015 at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston.Asked whether the Republican Party had done enough to denounce white supremacist violence, Mr. Scott argued that it was the duty of every American, regardless of party affiliation, to do their part. “The question is, Have humans done enough to talk about racism and discrimination that leads to violence and to death,” he said.Ms. Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy during the debate last week.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesOn Monday, Ms. Haley was back in her home state for a victory lap after a strong performance in the first Republican primary debate. In recent days, her polling numbers have climbed, and top donors have seen her as a standout. So many people packed into her town hall at the CrossRidge Center in Indian Land that attendees filled a balcony and an overflow room.As they return to the campaign trail, Ms. Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur and political newcomer, have continued the clashes they started on the debate stage, where they tussled over policy on China, Israel and the war in Ukraine. Mr. Ramaswamy has unveiled his foreign policy platform, and on his website, he accuses Ms. Haley of lying about his stances on Israel, and calls her by her first and maiden last name, Nimarata Randhawa. For her part, Ms. Haley did not mention Mr. Ramaswamy by name, but she elicited loud laughter from the audience on Monday when she asked voters if they had watched the debate.“Bless his heart,” she said. “I know I wear a skirt. But y’all see me at work. If you say something that is totally off the wall, I am going to call you out on it.”Leaving the town hall, Ross Payne, 62, a former managing director for Wells Fargo, said that he supported Ms. Haley, whom he called the “Iron Lady,” a reference to Margaret Thatcher and a hero of Ms. Haley. But he said he had been somewhat disappointed with her answer to his question on whether she would be willing to pull from both sides of the political aisle to regulate guns and automatic weapons.Ms. Haley said that though she worried about her own children, people should have the ability to protect themselves, and that she would improve access to mental health services and ensure that people arrested for gun violations stay behind bars.“Like with abortion, can’t we all agree that if you want an AR semiautomatic weapon, you’ve got to go through two or three weeks of training and extensive vetting before you can get your hands on a weapon like that?” Mr. Payne said, echoing Ms. Haley’s calls at the debate for consensus on abortion. “A weapon that can kill, you know, 10 people in 10 seconds.”Maya King More

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      With the Latest Trump Indictment, Mind These Lessons From the South

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      With her sweeping indictment of former President Donald Trump and over a dozen co-conspirators, the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney Fani Willis is now set to prosecute her case in a court of law. Just as important, it is essential that she and others continue to explain to the American public why the decision serves a critical purpose beyond the courts and for the health of our constitutional order.The indictment should be situated in the broader arc of American political development, particularly in the South. That history justifies using the criminal justice system to protect the democratic process in Georgia — a critical swing state — for elections now and in the future.We have the benefit of hindsight to heed the great lesson of the Reconstruction era and the period of redemption that followed: When authoritarians attack democracy and lawbreakers are allowed to walk away from those attacks with impunity, they will try again, believing there are no repercussions.We should not make those mistakes again.The period after the American Civil War entrenched many of America’s political ills. Ex-confederates were welcomed back into the body politic without meaningful penance. There were vanishingly few arrests, trials and lengthy punishments. Suffering minimal political disabilities, they could muster enough power to “redeem” Southern governments from biracial coalitions that had considerable sway to remake the South.Examples of democratic decay were regrettably abundant. An early sign occurred in Louisiana. With a multiracial electorate, Reconstruction Louisiana held great promise. During contentious state elections in 1872, Louisiana Democrats intimidated Black voters from casting ballots and corruptly claimed victory. The disputed election spurred political violence to assert white supremacy, including the Colfax Massacre in 1873, where as many as 150 Black citizens were killed in Grant Parish when a white mob sought to take control of the local government.Federal prosecutors brought charges against a number of the perpetrators. But in 1876, the Supreme Court held in United States v. Cruikshank that the federal government could not prosecute private violence under the 14th Amendment because it could only protect citizens against constitutional rights violations by state actors. By its decision, the court gave license to mobs to disrupt the peaceful transition of power with grave consequences.South Carolina could have been a Reconstruction success story. Its state constitution and government reflected the values and priorities of its Black majority. The planter elite attacked the Reconstruction government as a socialist rabble and baselessly mocked elected officials as incompetent. In the lead-up to elections in 1876, political violence brewed across the state, and Democrats secured a narrow victory. But democratic decay was precipitous. Over time, South Carolina imposed new limits on voting, moving precincts into white neighborhoods and creating a confusing system. Legislators passed the Eight Box Law, which required voters to submit a separate ballot for each elected office in a different box and invalidated any votes submitted in the wrong box. This created a barrier to voting for people who could not read.The lack of repercussions for political violence and voter suppression did little to curb the impulse to crush biracial democracy by mob rule. The backsliding spread like cancer to Mississippi, Virginia and North Carolina.In Georgia, just before the state was initially readmitted to the Union, Georgians elected a Republican to the governorship and a Republican majority to the state senate. Yet the promise of a strong Republican showing was a mirage. Conservative Republicans and Democrats joined forces to expel more than two dozen Black legislators from the Georgia General Assembly in September 1868. From there, tensions only grew. Political violence erupted throughout the state as elections drew closer that fall, most tragically in Camilla, where white supremacists killed about a dozen Black Georgians at a Republican political rally.The democratic failures of that era shared three common attributes. The political process was neither free nor fair, as citizens were prevented from voting and lawful votes were discounted. The Southern Redeemers refused to recognize their opponents as legitimate electoral players. And conservatives abandoned the rule of law, engaging in intimidation and political violence to extinguish the power of multiracial political coalitions.At bottom, the theory behind the Fulton County indictment accuses Mr. Trump and his allies of some of these same offenses.The phone call between Mr. Trump and the Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger (“Fellas, I need 11,000 votes,” Mr. Trump demanded) is crucial evidence backing for a charge relating to soliciting a public officer to violate his oath of office. Mr. Trump’s coercive tactics persisted even though he should have known that Joe Biden fairly won the state’s Electoral College votes. But facts never seemed to matter. Mr. Trump’s false allegation of a rigged contest — a claim he and others made well before voting began — was grounded in a belief that opposition to his re-election was never legitimate.Mr. Trump and his allies could not accept that an emerging multiracial coalition of voters across the state rejected him. Election deniers focused on Atlanta, a city whose Black residents total about half the population, as the place where Georgia’s election was purportedly stolen. The dangerous mix of racial grievance and authoritarian impulses left Trump loyalists feeling justified to concoct the fake electors scheme and imploring the General Assembly to go into a special session to arbitrarily undo the will of Georgians.Political violence and intimidation are some of the most obvious symptoms of democratic decay. The charges in Fulton County are an attempt to use the criminal justice system to repudiate political violence.The sprawling case is stronger because the conspiracy to overturn Georgia’s presidential election results was replete with acts of intimidation by numerous people. Mr. Trump and Rudy Giuliani engaged in a full-scale harassment campaign against Fulton County election workers when they baselessly alleged that two individuals added fake votes to Mr. Biden’s tally. Mr. Trump threatened Mr. Raffensperger and a state employee with “a criminal offense” if they declined to join his corruption, warning them they were taking “a big risk.” A healthy democracy cannot tolerate this behavior.Democracy is not guaranteed, and democratic backsliding is never inevitable. The country avoided the worst, but the past few years have still been profoundly destabilizing for the constitutional order in ways akin to some of the nation’s darker moments.Indeed, the case by Ms. Willis can be seen as an effort to avoid darker moments in the future, especially for a critical swing state like Georgia. We should remember the words in 1871 of Georgia’s first Black congressman, Jefferson Franklin Long, who spoke out when Congress debated relaxing the requirements for restoring certain rights to ex-Confederates without meaningful contrition: “If this House removes the disabilities of disloyal men … I venture to prophesy you will again have trouble from the very same men who gave you trouble before.”His prediction proved all too accurate. It now may be up to the people of Fulton County to stop election denialism’s widening gyre.Anthony Michael Kreis is an assistant professor of law at Georgia State University, where he teaches and studies constitutional law and the history of American politics.Source photographs by Bettmann, Buyenlarge, and Corbis Historical, via Getty.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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      Kamala Harris Takes on Forceful New Role in Biden’s 2024 Campaign

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      The vice president is trying to reclaim the momentum that propelled her to Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s side as a candidate and into the White House in 2020.In recent weeks, Vice President Kamala Harris has dashed off to Florida on short notice. She sparred with the state’s conservative governor, Ron DeSantis, over how to teach slavery in schools. And she flew into Iowa to defend abortion rights while 13 Republican presidential candidates were having dinner a few miles away.Although her words were directed at Republicans, her message was also aimed at all her doubters.Once a rising star as a senator in California, Ms. Harris has for years been saddled by criticism of her performance as vice president. She has struggled with difficult assignments on issues such as the roots of illegal migration and the narrow path to enduring voting rights protections. Concerns about her future spread as Democrats pondered whether she would be a political liability for the ticket.Ms. Harris’s recent moves are her latest attempt to silence those concerns and reclaim the momentum that propelled her to Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s side as a candidate and into the White House in 2020.“It’s good to have her out there,” said Cedric Richmond, a senior adviser for the Democratic National Committee, who added that the vice president’s decision to take on the Republican Party — assertively and in real time — was central to the campaign’s 2024 strategy.It also keeps President Biden above the fray.“He is still uniting the West against Russian aggression, and he’s tackling the economy and inflation,” Mr. Richmond said. “She can go highlight the accomplishments, and she can take on people like DeSantis.”In interviews, aides and advisers acknowledge that Ms. Harris has been affected by the years of criticism. She has often approached events defensively, focusing on not making mistakes, rather than looking for opportunities to attack.But now, galvanized by what she has described as rising extremism in the Republican Party, Ms. Harris is expanding her profile.Ms. Harris forged a reputation as a pragmatist during her early years as a prosecutor, district attorney and state attorney general, which has shaped her approach to the vice presidency.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe tussle with Mr. DeSantis, who is struggling to break through as he campaigns to be the Republican presidential nominee, provides a glimpse into Ms. Harris’s role as something of a one-woman rapid-response operation.When Florida last month approved an overhaul to its standards for teaching Black history, which now say middle schoolers should be taught that enslaved people developed skills that could be of personal benefit, Ms. Harris directed her staff to get her down immediately to Jacksonville, a White House official said.She was on the ground within 24 hours, speaking to a packed audience in a historically Black neighborhood, about “extremist so-called leaders” who want to sanitize history.“How is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?” Ms. Harris said, drawing a standing ovation from the crowd.Her appearance caught the eye of Mr. DeSantis.“You clearly have no trouble ducking down to Florida on short notice,” he said in an open letter last week, accusing her of trying to score political points and inviting her to discuss the new standards.Ms. Harris, who returned to Florida for her second trip in less than two weeks, had a swift reply.“Well, I’m here in Florida,” she said before pausing as the crowd at an African Methodist Episcopal Church event in Orlando erupted in applause. “And I will tell you, there is no round table, no lecture, no invitation we will accept to debate an undeniable fact: There were no redeeming qualities of slavery.”The vice president’s press secretary, Kirsten Allen, said Ms. Harris would “continue to call out extremist leaders as they attempt to pull our country backward with book bans, revisionist history and barriers that make it harder for Americans to participate in our democracy.”Despite her more public role, Ms. Harris’s approval ratings have remained stubbornly low. About 52 percent of Americans have a negative view of her, while 40 percent have a positive view, according to FiveThirtyEight’s poll tracker. Mr. Biden has also had trouble with persistently low approval ratings.But Ms. Harris connects to sections of the electorate that are not always a natural fit for Mr. Biden, including women, minority groups and younger voters. At 58, Ms. Harris is decades younger than the 80-year-old president, who would be 86 at the end of a second term.As Ms. Harris fans out across the country, some of her longtime allies said she was showing the kind of swagger they remembered from much earlier in her career, dating back to her days as district attorney of San Francisco and attorney general of California.“Seeing her in this role, understanding she has a president who she reports to, it’s kind of funny to me,” said Lateefah Simon, who was hired by Ms. Harris in 2005 to lead a new program aimed at keeping first-time drug offenders out of jail.She recalled a confident Ms. Harris walking through the office when she won re-election for district attorney in 2007, reminding each staffer that she would be the boss for another four years. Ms. Simon believes Ms. Harris is making an impact as vice president but wonders how she is adjusting to being second in command.“I’m like, ‘Kamala with a boss?’” she said.Ms. Harris often draws on her legal background on the campaign trail as a way to emphasize her expertise — a strategy that serves as a counterweight to Republican claims that she is incompetent.At a recent speech on gun reform, she said she had studied autopsy photographs and had “seen with my own eyes what a bullet does to the human body.”And in July, when she made a trip to Iowa for a discussion on reproductive rights, she said that she had investigated sex crimes, so she understood that denying a woman an abortion was an “immoral” approach to survivors of rape or incest.The timing of the trip to Iowa was no accident: As she spoke at Drake University, saying opponents of abortion in state legislatures around the country “don’t even know how women’s bodies work,” former President Donald J. Trump and a dozen of his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination were in Des Moines for a G.O.P. dinner.Her appearance came just two weeks after the state’s Republican governor signed a strict new abortion ban into law, making it illegal to have the procedure past six weeks of pregnancy. (A judge has put the ban on hold.)Ms. Harris has made abortion rights a key part of her campaign message since the Supreme Court overturned Roe. v. Wade.Oliver Contreras for The New York TimesMs. Harris’s decision to go on the offensive is a notable shift.For all of her boundary-breaking as the first woman, the first African American and the first Asian American to serve as vice president, she has long been known for pragmatism and, to her critics, for a defense of the status quo.She has described herself in the past as a “pragmatic prosecutor” who owns a gun for personal safety and also believes in criminal justice reform. As vice president, she has had to appeal to broad constituencies; being seen as a moderate is a benefit at a time when conservative critics have tried to portray her as radical and out of step with the nation.But now, with the campaign in full swing, the White House is giving Ms. Harris room to make more assertive moves against Republican opponents.Ms. Harris is attempting to help Mr. Biden win a second term in office, a refocus after taking on assignments such as voting rights without a clear path for success. Kenny Holston for The New York TimesShe also has been freed up to travel more, something that has been in the works since the midterm elections when Democrats held off a widely expected red wave.Because the Senate was split evenly for the first two years of the Biden administration, Ms. Harris could never be more than 24 hours away from the Capitol when the Senate was in session in case her tiebreaking vote was needed.With Democrats now holding a 51-to-49 edge, at least in cases when Senator Kyrsten Sinema, the Arizona independent, votes with them, Ms. Harris has more flexibility to move. Some are hoping she continues to seize on the opportunity.Stefanie Brown James, a co-founder of the Collective PAC, an organization that helps elect Black officials, has urged Ms. Harris’s staff to have her out in front on affirmative action and abortion issues, in particular. She said for the past two and a half years, Ms. Harris was “a little too much in the background and not seen enough or heard enough.”“She definitely is having a moment,” Ms. James said. But she added a note of caution, saying she hoped it would be “a sustainable moment.” More

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      Does It Matter What Trump Really Believes?

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      More from our inbox:Anti-Trump Republicans as Swing VotersRacial Disparities in the Swimming PoolMultitask? Maybe.A Dog’s Behavior Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump, in Shadow of Capitol, Issues a Not Guilty Plea” (front page, Aug. 4):So, Donald Trump pleads not guilty to fraud and obstruction charges that resulted in violence, death and utter chaos on Jan. 6.He truly doesn’t know what guilt means. Nor responsibility. Nor having an honest reckoning with himself over the conduct he chose leading up to and on that infamous day. He knows only lies, blaming others and outrage.These are not traits that serve a president of a local board, never mind a chief executive of a large and complex nation battling sophisticated economic, diplomatic and social problems crying out to be addressed.I hope we never again have enough citizens who fall for a presidential candidate with these major character deficiencies.Amy KnitzerMontclair, N.J.To the Editor:Re “The Trial America Needs,” by David French (column, nytimes.com, Aug. 1):For the life of me I just cannot understand why prosecutors must prove that Donald Trump knew he was lying when he claimed he won the election.How can refusing to see the truth be a valid defense for his actions? In law school I learned about the “reasonable person” standard for determining liability in a number of circumstances. If a reasonable president would have known that he lost an election in view of the overwhelming evidence, shouldn’t this former president be imputed with this knowledge whether he believed it or not?Refusing to acknowledge facts is not reasonable. He can’t be allowed to use obtuseness to avoid the consequences for his actions.Rhonda StarerHarrington Park, N.J.To the Editor:Re “A President Accused of Betraying His Country” (editorial, Aug. 3):In his final presidential debate with Hillary Clinton in 2016, Donald Trump was asked whether he would accept the result of the election if he lost. He refused to say. “I will look at it at the time,” he responded. “I will keep you in suspense.”That the moderator, Chris Wallace, thought it necessary to pose the question should have been shocking. Mr. Trump’s unabashed contempt for democracy should have been disqualifying in the minds of enough voters to ensure he’d not be elected.Looking back now, nobody can claim that Mr. Trump didn’t put us on notice for what we’re facing now. It is an example of how we ignore certain kinds of red flags at our own great peril.David SabrittSeattleTo the Editor:Re “First Amendment Is Likely Linchpin of Trump Defense” (front page, Aug. 3):It may make sense as a legal strategy, but as a political argument for re-election, “I have a constitutional right to lie all I want” doesn’t sound like a winner, at least to this voter.Anna Cypra OliverGreat Barrington, Mass.Anti-Trump Republicans as Swing VotersRepublican voters are apparently not concerned about Donald J. Trump’s increasing legal peril.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump Far Ahead in the G.O.P. Race Despite Charges” (front page, July 31):I draw an important inference from the data in the poll described in the article: Donald Trump will lose the general election if he is the Republican nominee.The nearly one in four G.O.P. voters who are truly anti-Trump will do what they did in 2020 and vote for the presumed Democratic nominee, Joe Biden. Those swing voters proved to be a deciding factor last time, and their numbers increase with each new indictment of the former president.It doesn’t matter how unwavering Trump supporters are. If they want to elect a Republican president, they need to choose someone other than Mr. Trump. Nearly all the other G.O.P. candidates tiptoe around the mention of Mr. Trump to avoid alienating his base, but sycophancy won’t sway his followers.A more effective (and pragmatic) approach would be to repeatedly argue that swing voters, a.k.a. moderate Republicans, will hand this election to the Democrats if Mr. Trump is the nominee.Jana HappelNew YorkRacial Disparities in the Swimming Pool Allison Beondé for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Why We Need More Public Pools,” by Mara Gay (Opinion, July 30):Kudos to Ms. Gay for highlighting an important public health disparity and drowning crisis. The disproportionately high rates of drowning among Black and brown people should be unacceptable and widely recognized as a safety and public health priority.The racist policies discussed by Ms. Gay that limit resources for access to swimming opportunities contribute to the wide disparities in swimming ability and water safety.More inclusive access to competitive swimming is also important to provide swimming role models. The reversal in 2022 of the ban on the Soul Cap for Black hair by the International Swimming Federation (FINA) shows that policy change can occur through public campaigns.A much greater national public health campaign can help ensure that not only are water safety and swimming training made widely available but also that the physical and mental health benefits of swimming are widely understood and enjoyed by all, especially as the climate heats and relief is needed.Adrienne WaldHigh Falls, N.Y.The writer is an associate professor of nursing at Mercy College, specializing in public health and health promotion, and an avid swimmer.Multitask? Maybe. Janet MacTo the Editor:“Today’s Superpower Is Doing One Thing at a Time,” by Oliver Burkeman (Opinion guest essay, July 30), hit a chord in me. Mostly, because I desperately want to stop multitasking, but I simply cannot: I am a mother.Mr. Burkeman’s article is written from such a place of privilege — white, male and well off — that it began to sicken me that he was imploring the rest of us to stop multitasking. In fact, I reread the article, searching for any quotes he might have from a woman, but indeed, all his sources were men.In other words, not multitasking is a privilege that very few of us can afford.Melissa MorgenlanderBrooklynTo the Editor:I began reading Oliver Burkeman’s essay using the newspaper as a kind of readable place mat on which I enjoyed my Sunday lunch. I made it just past the second paragraph when I closed and removed the paper, carrying on with lunch atop the bare table.I felt empowered but haven’t managed to get to the rest of the piece since then.Pablo MonsivaisSpokane, Wash.A Dog’s Behavior Illustration by Akshita Chandra/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “The Stressed-Out Life of a Biter in Chief,” by Alexandra Horowitz (Opinion guest essay, Aug. 3):Thank you for publishing this piece about dog behavior, specifically biting.I am one of the many who don’t like dogs. In fact, I fear them. The reason? Every dog that has ever jumped on me, growled at me or attempted to bite me did so immediately after its human companion told me that the dog is friendly and safe to be around, followed by dismay and surprise that their dog would do such a thing.It is helpful to know more about the myriad reasons that dogs bite, even if it doesn’t assuage my fear of them.Lisa M. FeldsteinNew York More