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      Ed Gainey Poised to Become Pittsburgh's First Black Mayor

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      Ed Gainey won the Democratic primary in a city that is roughly a quarter Black. The incumbent, Bill Peduto, is the first Pittsburgh mayor to lose a bid to stay in office since 1933.PITTSBURGH — Ed Gainey, a five-term Pennsylvania state representative, is poised to become the first Black mayor of Pittsburgh, having won the Democratic primary for mayor on Tuesday night by defeating a two-term incumbent on a campaign of unequivocal progressivism.“A city is changed when we all come together to improve the quality of life for everybody,” Mr. Gainey told his supporters, sounding a theme he has focused on for months. “That’s why I ran for mayor, because I believe we can have a city for all.”In a city that is roughly a quarter Black, Mr. Gainey won 46 percent of the vote. The incumbent, Bill Peduto, an outspoken liberal with a national profile, trailed with 39 percent, the first Pittsburgh mayor to lose a bid to stay in office since 1933. There is no declared Republican candidate for the general election in November.Though Pittsburgh routinely shows up on various lists as one of the country’s “most livable” cities, the mayoral campaign was fought largely around one short question: Livable for whom?Mr. Gainey’s thoughts on that question were not drastically different from Mr. Peduto’s; both talked of addressing racial inequities and building more affordable housing. But Mr. Gainey, who is less known for his profile in the legislature than for his easy and avuncular rapport with constituents, pointed out that Mr. Peduto had already had two terms to do these things, and said he had fallen short.Bill Peduto is the first Pittsburgh mayor to lose a bid to stay in office since 1933.Andrew Rush/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, via Associated PressWhen Mr. Peduto won the mayor’s office in 2013, talking aggressively of fighting climate change and pursuing criminal justice reform, he also emphasized the continued reinvention of Pittsburgh, once Steel City, into a tech and health care town. But highlighting the presence of companies like Google and Uber, as well as the hometown medical giant, UPMC, made Pittsburgh’s disparities appear harsher in contrast.Nearly 7,000 Black people left the city from 2014 to 2018, leading to a broad debate about whether rapid gentrification might be driving the exodus. A city-commissioned report found that, on certain metrics, including employment rates and maternal health, Black people in Pittsburgh, and Black women in particular, had a lower quality of life than Black people in nearly all U.S. cities. Pittsburgh police officers, who are overwhelmingly white, have been routinely found to arrest Black residents at starkly disproportionate rates.As inequities like these were drawing scrutiny, George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis and a summer of protest broke out. The protests in Pittsburgh were mostly peaceful, but the police cracked down hard on several occasions, firing tear gas and projectiles and at one point forcibly pulling one man into an unmarked van. The protests became in part about the police tactics in response, and on several nights demonstrators crowded in front of Mr. Peduto’s house demanding his resignation.As with many mayors who were in office in 2020, Mr. Peduto’s attempts to respond to the concerns of protesters but also support the city’s police proved an unwieldy political task. Indeed, local measures banning no-knock warrants and restricting the use of solitary confinement passed by overwhelming margins.In his concession speech, Mr. Peduto called Mr. Gainey’s win “a historic night for the city of Pittsburgh,” and pledged to support him.Western Pennsylvania may be synonymous with Trump Country to many, but Pittsburgh has been an electric hub for grass-roots progressivism. Activists have campaigned for races from the White House to the school board, battling for Republican-held legislative seats in the outer-ring suburbs and ousting establishment Democrats in upsets around Allegheny County.In 2018, Summer Lee and Sara Innamorato, both first-time candidates endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, won state legislative seats, beating older male incumbents with dynastic Democratic roots. Two years later, Ms. Lee, the first Black woman to represent a southwestern Pennsylvania district in the legislature, faced coordinated opposition from old-line Pittsburgh Democrats when she ran for re-election — and she won by an even bigger margin.Many of these new, avowedly progressive political figures backed Mr. Gainey’s campaign, seeing him as a better fit for an electorate impatient for change.“You’re not going to find anyone who says Pittsburgh is perfect just the way it is,” said Bethany Hallam, an Allegheny county councilor who was first elected last year. This, she said, “does not spell good news for incumbents who created the landscape we live in.” More

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      Maya Wiley Has ‘50 Ideas’ and One Goal: To Make History as Mayor

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      Maya Wiley Has ‘50 Ideas’ and One Goal: To Make History as MayorMs. Wiley has unveiled an array of policies to fight inequality as she seeks to become the first woman elected mayor of New York. Can she break out of the pack?Maya Wiley, at a vaccine sign-up in Brooklyn last month, is a civil rights lawyer who has focused her mayoral campaign on addressing inequality and systemic racism.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesThe New York City mayoral race is one of the most consequential political contests in a generation, with immense challenges awaiting the winner. This is the fourth in a series of profiles of the major candidates.May 19, 2021If there was a single moment that captured the essence of Maya Wiley’s campaign for New York City mayor, the Women for Maya launch was it.She sat on a folding chair in Central Park at the event earlier this month, at the foot of a statue depicting three historical figures of women’s suffrage. To her immediate right was Representative Nydia Velázquez, the first Puerto Rican woman elected to Congress; to her left was Gloria Steinem, the feminist icon.Since entering the mayor’s race last year, Ms. Wiley had underscored how it was time for a woman — a Black woman — to finally lead New York, someone who understood the concerns of those who struggled even before the pandemic and who are worried that the recovery is leaving them behind.“You will no longer tell us we are not qualified,” Ms. Wiley said, before starting to chant “We lead!” with a crowd of supporters who gathered at the event.Ms. Wiley, 57, offers a mix of experience — she served as a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio and led the Civilian Complaint Review Board — and a dose of celebrity: As a prominent analyst for MSNBC, she won the attention of its left-leaning viewership and sparked enthusiasm that she could become the standard-bearer for New York’s progressive left.Her comfort level with the on-the-fly jousting seen on cable news shows seemed to give her an advantage last week in the first official Democratic debate, as she repeatedly challenged Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president who is one of the contest’s front-runners.Three days later, she landed a key endorsement from Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the state’s highest-ranking House member. His support is expected to help Ms. Wiley with a key constituency Mr. Adams is also vying for: Black voters, especially from central Brooklyn.Ms. Wiley was endorsed by 1199 S.E.I.U., the city’s largest labor union, which represents health care workers, many of whom are women of color. She speaks often about making sure women are not left behind in the recovery.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesIf Ms. Wiley has a path to victory in the June 22 primary, it will also largely be paved by women. She has the support of the city’s largest labor union, Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union, which represents 200,000 health care workers, many of whom are women of color. And she has the backing of Ms. Velázquez and Representative Yvette Clarke, two powerful congressional leaders in Brooklyn.She hopes to capitalize on the sexual misconduct allegations that were recently lodged against her chief rival for progressive voters in the Democratic primary, Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller; Ms. Wiley called on Mr. Stringer to withdraw from the race, and she has picked up some of the endorsements he has lost.Her campaign is centered on a series of policy proposals that reflect her progressive values. She wants to cut $1 billion from the police budget and trim at least 2,250 officers. She wants to help poor families pay for child care by offering $5,000 grants to caregivers and building community centers with free child care. And she wants to create a $10 billion Works Progress Administration-style jobs program that funds infrastructure repairs and other projects.But she has yet to fully energize the left-wing of the party that she is trying to win over; she upset some activists by distancing herself from the defund the police slogan; she can also sound at times like her former boss, Mr. de Blasio, whose popularity has fallen sharply in his second and final term.Unlike Mr. Stringer and Mr. Adams, who have said they had always wanted to be mayor, Ms. Wiley readily acknowledges that running for office was never a lifelong ambition. She says she long believed she was more effective, and more natural, at pressuring elected officials from the outside.“I literally never thought I would run for public office, and I mean never,” she said in an interview. “It was not on my bucket list. I’ve been a civil rights lawyer and advocate my whole career, and politics is not appealing. What I wanted to make was change.”She said that her outlook began to shift several years ago, when her teenage daughter came to her almost in tears, worried she would be unable to pay rent in New York City while pursuing a career as a graphic novelist and illustrator. Ms. Wiley said the exchange brought home how increasingly unaffordable the city had become.“That was an emotional gut-punch moment that really stayed with me,” she said.While politics was not necessarily in Ms. Wiley’s blood, a commitment to social justice was.Ms. Wiley worked as Mayor Bill de Blasio’s counsel and served as chair of the Civilian Complaint Review Board. Her father, a prominent civil rights leader, founded the National Welfare Rights Organization.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesAt the event in Central Park, Ms. Steinem spoke about working with Ms. Wiley’s father, George Wiley, a prominent civil rights activist, in the 1970s.He founded the National Welfare Rights Organization and paid attention to “women in poverty as the single most important indicator of the country’s welfare when no other male spokesperson was doing that,” Ms. Steinem said.“I’m so sorry that Maya lost him young, but his spirit is in her,” she said.‘We had to find a way to live’The sudden death of Ms. Wiley’s father was especially traumatic.Mr. Wiley had taken his two children, Daniel and Maya, sailing off Chesapeake Beach, Md., on a summer day in 1973. The winds and seas were rough, and Mr. Wiley fell from the 23-foot pleasure craft into the Chesapeake Bay.His children threw him a line, but the tides and wind pulled him away, according to an Associated Press account of the episode. Days later, memorial services for Mr. Wiley, 42, were held across the nation.Ms. Wiley often speaks of her father’s death as a formative experience that shaped her and taught her a hard lesson in grief and perseverance. At her campaign kick-off event on the steps of the Brooklyn Museum in October, Ms. Wiley compared her loss to families who had watched a relative die from the coronavirus and could not hold them one last time.“My brother and I — two little kids, 9 and 10 years old — alone on a boat after watching the waves wash away our father, we had to find a way to live,” she said.She described how they found their way to the shore, and how the white beachgoers they encountered did not help them. They went from house to house asking for help until someone called the police.The seeming indifference from the people on the beach stayed with her. The experience, she told Bloomberg Opinion, made her realize that “racism is a deep illness.”Other parts of her biography often come up on the campaign trail. Ms. Wiley’s mother, Wretha, grew up in Abilene, Texas, and came to New York to attend Union Theological Seminary. Her parents met at Syracuse University and moved to the Lower East Side, where Ms. Wiley lived briefly as a baby, before they left for Washington.When she talks about education, Ms. Wiley notes that attending a segregated school as a child informed her thinking on the issue. She led a high-profile school diversity panel that in 2019 called for integrating city schools by eliminating gifted and talented programs.Yet when she is asked about fixing the city’s segregated school system, she has been vague at times, seeming cautious and political. Asked if she was afraid of talking about a combustible issue, Ms. Wiley pushed back.“I’m a kid who went to a segregated Black elementary school when I was young and was two years behind grade level despite the fact that my parents had collectively over eight years of graduate education between them,” she said.“I’m not afraid of third rails,” she added. “I wouldn’t be running for mayor if I was.”After her father’s death, Ms. Wiley moved to a private school where she caught up with her peers. She graduated from Dartmouth College and Columbia Law School. As a young lawyer, she worked as a staff attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund for two years, as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York for three years and at the American Civil Liberties Union as part of a fellowship.The job she held the longest was at the Center for Social Inclusion, a nonprofit she founded after the Sept. 11 attacks as a young mother “sitting in my living room with a baby in a bouncy seat.” She built it into a national organization dedicated to addressing racial inequity, with a $3 million annual budget and 13 employees.“As she came into her own, she opted not to go to a big private law firm, but to commit herself to public service,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, who expressed admiration for Ms. Wiley’s dedication to social justice when she could have taken a different path. “She was progressive before the term was fashionable.”Ms. Wiley was in the running to lead the N.A.A.C.P., but withdrew from contention after joining Mr. de Blasio’s administration.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesA rocky experience inside city governmentMs. Wiley had never met Mr. de Blasio when she wrote a piece for The Nation magazine about broadband internet access that caught his attention. He invited her to three long get-to-know-you meetings at City Hall.She had been in the running to lead the N.A.A.C.P., but agreed to join Mr. de Blasio’s administration in 2014 as his chief legal adviser. She was proud to be the first Black woman to hold the job, and joked early on that her main goal was to “keep him out of jail.”Ms. Wiley, even in jest, was somewhat prescient: Mr. de Blasio was investigated for questionable fund-raising practices, leading Ms. Wiley to help craft the administration’s legal response. She also became known for her role in what became known as the “agents of the city” controversy, when she argued unsuccessfully in 2016 that Mr. de Blasio’s emails with outside advisers should be private.Ms. Wiley helped form Mr. de Blasio’s argument that communications with outside advisers should be as immune from public scrutiny as those of any city employee, even though many of the advisers also represented clients with business before the city.John Kaehny, executive director of the good-government group Reinvent Albany, said the efforts to hide the mayor’s emails were “desperate, doomed and destructive” and undermined Freedom of Information laws and ethics rules.“Agents of the city was a giant blunder by her and de Blasio and hopefully she learned from her mistakes,” he said.Ms. Wiley has gone to great lengths to say that her administration would be more transparent than Mr. de Blasio’s. She says that it was her job to provide the mayor with legal advice and it was his decision whether to follow that advice..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{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;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-12vbvwq{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-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“Those emails would have been public if I was the decision maker,” she said at a mayoral forum.Not long after the episode, Ms. Wiley resigned and became chairwoman of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the agency that investigates police misconduct.While Ms. Wiley points to her time there as valuable experience in learning how to tackle police reform, groups like the New York Civil Liberties Union say she was too secretive about the disciplinary process and too sluggish in confronting the Police Department. The current chairman, the Rev. Fred Davie, has been more outspoken on issues like repealing 50-a, a law that until recently kept officer disciplinary records secret.Her experience at City Hall and the watchdog agency has enabled Ms. Wiley to argue that she knows city government, but it also ties her to Mr. de Blasio.As counsel to Mr. de Blasio, Ms. Wiley was known for her role in the “agents of the city” battle, when she tried to keep the mayor’s emails with outside advisers private.Nicole Bengiveno/The New York TimesMs. Wiley, like Mr. de Blasio, has been known to speak about inequality in broad terms. When she described homelessness as a public safety issue during a recent appearance on Brian Lehrer’s WNYC show, Mr. Lehrer shared a response from a listener: “de Blasio 2.0.”Ms. Wiley argues that women should not be judged by the men they worked for. She praised Mr. de Blasio’s achievements like universal prekindergarten and criticized him over his handling of the police killing of Eric Garner in 2014.“Women should not be defined by anything other than their record,” she said. “I’m not running against Bill de Blasio.”A push to ‘reimagine’ New YorkAs protests over police brutality rocked the nation last summer, Ms. Wiley gained attention on MSNBC for her clearheaded explanations of why some activists wanted to defund the police.Her national exposure created excitement when she entered the race, but also the expectation that she would catch fire as the leading progressive candidate. That has not happened for a variety of reasons.“This is a race that has a lot of progressive options,” said Eric Phillips, a former press secretary for Mr. de Blasio. “I think it’s natural that there would be real competition and one candidate wouldn’t automatically own that lane.”Ms. Wiley must prove that she can energize the left-wing of the party and be the most viable candidate to take on the two more moderate front-runners, Andrew Yang, the former presidential hopeful, and Mr. Adams. She is often in third or fourth place in the polls, along with Mr. Stringer.Ms. Wiley would cut $1 billion from the police budget, and hire a police commissioner from outside the department.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesBut the accusations lodged against Mr. Stringer have created some room for momentum: The powerful Working Families Party had named Mr. Stringer as its first choice for mayor, but withdrew the endorsement after the sexual misconduct allegations. The group is now supporting Ms. Wiley and Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive and the most left-leaning candidate in the race.Still, Mr. Stringer has a major fund-raising advantage: He has more than $7 million to pour into television ads. Ms. Wiley has about $2.5 million on hand.Mr. Sharpton said he believed that Ms. Wiley could make a “late surge” once more voters start tuning into the race. He is considering endorsing one of several of the candidates trying to become the city’s second Black mayor — Ms. Wiley, Mr. Adams, or Raymond J. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive — if Mr. Sharpton believes he could help one of them win, according to a person who is familiar with his thinking.To differentiate herself from some of her rivals, Ms. Wiley has been rolling out her “50 Ideas for NYC,” a new plan every day focused on issues like reducing the Black maternal mortality rate. Her most ambitious proposal is called “New Deal New York,” which involves spending $10 billion to help the city recover from the pandemic and to create 100,000 jobs. Her universal community care plan would make 100,000 families eligible for a $5,000 annual grant to care for children and older people. She also wants to hire 2,500 new teachers to lower class sizes.As concerns have grown about violent crime, she released a policing and public safety plan that includes hiring a civilian police commissioner and creating a new commission to decide whether to fire officers accused of misconduct. She was early in urging Mr. de Blasio to fire his police commissioner, Dermot F. Shea, after his aggressive response to last year’s protests.Yet she has also distanced herself from the defund slogan, saying the term “means different things to different people.” In contrast, Ms. Morales has embraced the movement and pledged to slash the $6 billion police budget in half — a stance that has endeared her to left-leaning voters, less so to more moderate ones.At the same time, some business and civic leaders fear that Ms. Wiley is too liberal; in a poll of business leaders, Ms. Wiley was near last place with just 3 percent. They also question whether Ms. Wiley has enough experience as a manager to run a sprawling bureaucracy with a $98 billion budget.“Maya is terrific, but business is looking for a manager, not an advocate,” said Kathryn Wylde, the leader of a prominent business group.At the moment, Ms. Wiley is simply looking to connect to as many voters as she can, in person and on social media, where she posts campaign diaries recorded at home.She lives in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, with her partner, Harlan Mandel, in an elegant house built in the Prairie School architectural style made famous by Frank Lloyd Wright. They have two daughters, Naja, 20, and Kai, 17. Ms. Wiley is Christian and Mr. Mandel is Jewish, and they belong to Kolot Chayeinu, a reform congregation in Park Slope.The last woman who came close to being mayor, Christine Quinn, a former City Council speaker, said she regretted that she tried to soften her hard-charging personality during her campaign. Her advice for Ms. Wiley was to be herself.“The thing voters hate the most is someone who is not authentic,” Ms. Quinn said. “Maya needs to be exactly who she is.”Who Ms. Wiley is, she said in an interview, is the daughter of civil rights activists who will fight to make the city more fair.“I have been someone committed to racial justice and transformation my entire career,” Ms. Wiley said. “And that means bringing us all back, every single one of us, and not just back to January 2020, but to reimagine this city.” More

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      Arizona G.O.P. Passes Law to Limit Distribution of Mail Ballots

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      The new law, signed by Gov. Doug Ducey, will remove people from a widely popular early voting list if they do not cast a ballot at least once every two years.PHOENIX — Arizona Republicans passed a law on Tuesday that will sharply limit the distribution of mail ballots through a widely popular early voting list, the latest measure in a conservative push to restrict voting across the country.The legislation will remove voters from the state’s Permanent Early Voting List, which automatically sends some people ballots for each election, if they do not cast a ballot at least once every two years.The vote-by-mail system is widely popular in Arizona, used by Republicans, Democrats and independents. The overwhelming majority of voters in the state cast their ballots by mail, with nearly 90 percent doing so last year amid the coronavirus pandemic, and nearly 75 percent of all voters are on the early voting list. Under the new law, the list will be called the Active Early Voting List.The State Senate voted along party lines to approve the bill, and Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, surprised many observers by signing the legislation just hours later.The bill may be only the first in a series of voting restrictions to be enacted in Arizona; another making its way through the Legislature would require voters on the early voting list to verify their signatures with an additional form of identification.Unlike in other states where Republicans have passed voting restrictions this year, including Florida, Georgia and Texas, the Arizona Legislature did not create a sweeping omnibus bill made up of numerous voting provisions. Republicans in the state are instead introducing individual measures as bills in the Legislature.The new law signed on Tuesday is likely to push an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 voters off the early voting list, which currently has about three million people. Opponents of the bill have said that Latinos, who make up roughly 24 percent of the state’s eligible voters, would make up a significantly larger share of those removed from the early voting list.The G.O.P. voting restrictions being advanced throughout the country come as former President Donald J. Trump continues to perpetuate the lie that he won the election, with many Republican lawmakers citing baseless claims of election fraud, or their voters’ worries about election integrity, as justification for the stricter rules.In Arizona, Republicans who supported the new law argued that it would not stop anyone from voting over all and that it would prevent voter fraud by ensuring no ballots are cast illegally, though there has been no evidence of widespread fraud in the state.“In voting for this bill, it’s about restoring confidence for everyone who casts a ballot, no matter what their party is,” said State Senator Kelly Townsend, a Republican who briefly withheld her support for the bill because she wanted to wait for the completion of a widely disparaged audit ordered by the G.O.P.-controlled Senate. “I have been reassured and convinced it is OK to move forward because we are now looking at other issues that need to be fixed for the 2022 election.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{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;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media 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(min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}In his letter signing the legislation, Mr. Ducey said that the change would “free up dollars for election officials, ensuring that rather than sending a costly early ballot to a voter who has demonstrated they are not going to use it, resources can be directed to important priorities including voter education and election security measures.”The vote came after an hour of debate on the Senate floor, with Democrats arguing that the bill was the latest in a long line of suppression efforts targeting Black and Latino voters.“Making it harder to vote is voter suppression,” said State Senator Juan Mendez, a Democrat.“Governor Ducey’s decision to sign this bill into law is a terrible blow to democracy,” Emily Kirkland, the executive director of Progress Arizona, a coalition of voting rights organizations and community groups, said in a statement. “It is a conscious effort to put barriers in the way of Arizonans trying to make their voices heard.”For nearly a month, the state has been embroiled in an extraordinary Republican-led audit of 2020 presidential election ballots from Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix. The process could go on for several more weeks or even months.Voting rights activists in Arizona are now likely to put more pressure on Senators Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema, both Democrats, to eliminate the filibuster in the Senate and open a path to passing the party’s federal legislation to protecting access to the ballot. More

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      Eric Adams, N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidate, Has Something to Prove

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      Eric Adams Says He Has Something to Prove. Becoming Mayor Might Help.Mr. Adams is a top fund-raiser in the New York City mayoral race, with key endorsements and strong polling, but he still faces questions about his preparedness for the job.Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, has made public safety a focus of his campaign for mayor.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesThe New York City mayoral race is one of the most consequential political contests in a generation, with immense challenges awaiting the winner. This is the third in a series of profiles of the major candidates.May 7, 2021Nearly three decades ago, when Eric Adams decided he wanted to someday be mayor of New York City, he started a journal of observations about local governance, making periodic entries before bed.He has now filled 26 notebooks.The long arc of Mr. Adams’s career — from the son of a Queens house cleaner to a reform-driven New York City police officer, from state senator to Brooklyn borough president and now a leading mayoral candidate — is an ode to personal discipline. By his telling, his life has been carefully structured to land him on the precipice of the only job he has ever wanted, in the only city where he has ever really lived.During an Easter Sunday visit to the Church of God of East Flatbush, Mr. Adams cited a biblical passage that describes a test of courage under duress.“I believe in all my heart that this is an Esther 4:14 moment,” Mr. Adams, 60, told the parishioners. “God made me for such a time as this.”To Mr. Adams, his broad life experience is what sets him apart in the vast and fractured field of mayoral candidates.He speaks of growing up poor and Black in Queens, being beaten by the police at age 15, starting as a police officer during the height of the 1980s crack epidemic, and then, in later years, becoming a voice for police reform. In 2013, he was the first Black person elected Brooklyn borough president.Yet there is a perception among some Democratic leaders, strategists and mayoral rivals that Mr. Adams’s career has been driven by self-interest rather than civic-mindedness, and that he is unprepared to lead the city as it tries to emerge from the pandemic.That perception rankles Mr. Adams, who equates efforts to dismiss him to reductive treatment of Black elected officials.His campaign, he believes, will surprise those he said have underestimated him and his ability to connect with the New Yorkers who make up his base: working class and older minority voters outside Manhattan, who prioritize authenticity in their politicians and issues like public safety.Mr. Adams, who has adopted more moderate positions than his left-wing rivals, says his broad life experience has prepared him for the role.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesThis confidence gives Mr. Adams’s campaign stops — and his political strategy — a sense of assured purpose. He is not only trying to appeal to voters; he is seemingly running for personal validation, to prove that he is equally worthy to the rivals whom the city’s political class has deemed more polished, serious or qualified.“For years, I’ve had people — for years — calling me an ‘Uncle Tom’ or calling me a sellout,” Mr. Adams said in an interview, adding that he was “immune” to such attacks.“They don’t believe in me, but I believe in me,” he said. “Because I know me, and I’m a beast.”He will nonetheless be tested by a changing city and Democratic Party. New Yorkers have embraced big personalities in politicians before, particularly in mayoral races, but brashness and Blackness can project differently when packaged together.It may not help that Mr. Adams has had a history of embracing divisive figures, aligning himself with Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader, and the ex-boxer Mike Tyson after his 1992 rape conviction. Mr. Adams has also faced several ethics probes during his career, including one that questioned his role in allowing a politically connected company to gain a casino franchise at Aqueduct Racetrack.He first rose to prominence in New York by challenging Police Department policies during news conferences, earning scorn from police officials that persists decades later. And bombastic statements, like a pledge to carry a gun while in City Hall and forgo a security detail, have fueled detractors.Mr. Adams, as he darts around Queens and Brooklyn with less than seven weeks to go before the June 22 primary, thinks that unconventionality is a political superpower. He gives out his personal cellphone number to people on the street and often refers to himself in the third person. He shuns the popular language of progressive academics in favor of a relatable grit.He is, at once, a candidate who desires to be taken seriously as a liberal policymaker, and one who mocks the idea that elite-educated activists get to determine what is or is not serious.“I’m in these forums, and they’re talking about legal crack, legal fentanyl, legal heroin! Are you kidding me?” Mr. Adams said to a resident during a recent stop in the Laurelton section of Queens. “Do they remember what crack did to your communities?”A son of two boroughsMr. Adams, right, appeared alongside the Rev. Al Sharpton, center, during a news conference in 1993.Bebeto Matthews/Associated PressThree omnipresent dangers loomed for a young Black man growing up in South Jamaica, Queens, in the late 1970s and 1980s: the crime, the drugs, and the police.At age 15, Mr. Adams and his brother were arrested on criminal trespassing charges. Mr. Adams said he was beaten by officers while in custody and suffered post-traumatic stress from the episode. Yet it fueled his desire to become a police officer six years later, he said, after a local pastor suggested that he could “infiltrate” the department and help change police culture.Beginning as a transit officer and rising to the rank of police captain, he made his largest impact not on the police beat but through his involvement in two Black police fraternal organizations: the Grand Council of Guardians, and 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, a group that he founded.“Eric was always the guy who not just complained about the issues, but then pushed the group to organize to do something about it,” said David C. Banks, president and chief executive of the Eagle Academy Foundation in Brooklyn, which operates a network of schools for boys.“He was a pain in the neck and a thorn in the side of the central command at the police headquarters,” said Mr. Banks, who has known Mr. Adams for 30 years. “A lot of other officers would be afraid to raise these kind of issues.”Mr. Adams helped amplify cases of police brutality or errors, raising public awareness of uncomfortable policing issues, even if it did not sway top police brass, who tended to view him as an attention-seeking gadfly.His reputation also suffered from a series of unorthodox stances or appearances while on the force: He traveled to Indiana in 1995 to escort Mr. Tyson after his release from prison; he repeatedly defended Mr. Farrakhan in the 1990s; and he was registered as a Republican during that same time period, when New York, a predominantly Democratic city, was led by Republican mayors.Flanked by members of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, a group he founded, Mr. Adams held a news conference in 2000 in response to a shooting of a Black man by the police.Nicole Bengiveno/The New York TimesPaul Browne, a former chief spokesman for the Police Department under Raymond W. Kelly, said it was “laughable” that Mr. Adams was drawing on his law enforcement career to run for mayor on a public safety platform.“I don’t remember him distinguishing himself in any way, except promoting himself through 100 Black Officers in Law Enforcement Who Care,” Mr. Browne said.Mr. Adams “would try to have it both ways — that he was a cop but that we were all racist. He would say Blacks that weren’t as radical were an Uncle Tom,” said Mr. Browne, who is white. “He’d be a disaster as mayor.”Yet on the other side of the political spectrum, Mr. Adams’s law enforcement background is often viewed as a drawback, and as evidence that he is not the right candidate to bring significant changes to policing at a time when activists are demanding a paradigm shift.Mr. Adams rejected that notion, arguing that he helped lay the groundwork for more recent social justice movements. He cited a 2013 federal trial over the constitutionality of the stop-and-frisk program, when he testified that the police commissioner at the time had told him that it existed to “instill fear” in Black and Latino men. The judge cited his words in her ruling that the program violated the constitutional rights of those who were stopped.“They’re marching now saying Black Lives Matter, they’re doing Chapter 2 — I was Chapter 1,” Mr. Adams said. “When no one else was doing this, Eric Adams was doing this.”Mr. Adams, seen at the Capitol in Albany, was elected to the State Senate as a Democrat in 2006. Previously, he spent several years as a registered Republican.Mike Groll/Associated PressRising up in politicsAs early as 1994, Mr. Adams had decided that he wanted to be mayor — a desire he expressed to Bill Lynch, a deputy mayor under David N. Dinkins, the first Black mayor of New York City.Mr. Lynch gave him four pieces of advice, Mr. Adams recalled: get a bachelor’s degree, gain managerial experience in the Police Department, work in Albany, and become a borough president — a path that somewhat resembled the one Mr. Dinkins followed to his historic victory.Mr. Adams followed the advice, but largely kept his mayoral ambitions quiet. It was better to be known as an earnest doer than an ambitious climber, he said, particularly as a Black man.“I am the poster child of missteps, but I am also the poster child of endurance,” Mr. Adams said. “I had a plan.”The first step was to leave the police force and enter politics. There was a failed congressional run in 1994, when Mr. Adams’s relationship with the Nation of Islam proved divisive. His switch to the Republican Party in the following years, while Rudolph W. Giuliani was mayor and the party controlled the State Senate, seemed opportunistic; he explained then that “if you take a look at some of the concepts of the Republican Party, you’ll see that many of them are our values.”By 2006, however, he was a Democrat again, in time for a successful run for State Senate. In the political career that has followed, Mr. Adams has often been ideologically fungible, displaying an independent streak as well as attention-grabbing skills.He was an early supporter of marriage equality and continued to rail against policing practices, like stop-and-frisk, that were shown to disproportionately affect Black and Latino communities. He turned his focus to issues many other politicians would avoid, such as a “Stop the Sag” campaign that called on Black men to pull up their pants and emphasized personal responsibility as a response to racism. He also pushed for higher pay for elected officials — including himself.“I don’t know how some of you are living on $79,000,” Mr. Adams said at the time. “Show me the money!”The comments hurt Mr. Adams’s reputation among the city’s political class in the same way the police news conferences had in the years before. In 2010, a scathing state inspector general report said that Mr. Adams, then the chairman of the Senate Racing, Gaming and Wagering Committee, had given the “appearance of impropriety” by getting too close to a group that was seeking a casino contract at Aqueduct Racetrack.The inspector general said Mr. Adams had attended a party thrown by the lobbyist, earned campaign donations from the group’s shareholders and affiliates, and conducted a process that amounted to a “political free-for-all.”By 2013, Mr. Adams had left Albany for a successful bid for Brooklyn borough president, succeeding Marty Markowitz, and becoming the first Black person to head New York’s most populous borough..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{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;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-12vbvwq{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-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}As borough president, a job with limited formal duties but a sizable bully pulpit, Mr. Adams expanded the role that Mr. Markowitz pioneered as a garrulous cheerleader for Brooklyn.He put himself through what he sometimes calls “mayor school,” reaching out to donors, community activists and business leaders to check their pulses on which direction they felt the city should go in.“I knew I had to prove I was serious,” Mr. Adams said. “People had to see Eric had serious plans. They had to see Eric could raise the money and that I could articulate issues of impact.”But he also drew more criticism over potential conflicts of interest. In his first year as borough president, the city’s Department of Investigation found that his office appeared to have violated conflict of interest rules in raising money for a nonprofit Mr. Adams was starting. No enforcement action was taken.The final taskMr. Adams accepted an endorsement from the FDNY Uniformed Fire Officers Association last month. He has earned several major endorsements from organized labor.James Estrin/The New York TimesIn the early stages of the mayoral race, Mr. Adams was viewed as one of three leading candidates, along with Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, and Corey Johnson, the City Council speaker. Only Mr. Adams was thought to appeal to large swaths of Black and Latino voters, especially outside Manhattan.He also had longstanding relationships with union leaders and other elected officials, and a network of donors cultivated over the past decade.But the dynamics have changed. Mr. Johnson is running for comptroller, not mayor. Mr. Stringer is now facing an allegation of sexual assault.The Black Lives Matter movement has pushed younger voters and some white liberals to the left of Mr. Adams on racial justice and policing. And other top Black candidates — Maya Wiley, the former lawyer to Mayor Bill de Blasio and MSNBC analyst; Raymond J. McGuire, a former Wall Street leader; and Dianne Morales, a nonprofit executive — are in the running.And then there is Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate who appears to be the front-runner, according to the limited polling that exists, and who has drawn donors and media coverage to match.“Before Yang, I was the Chinese candidate,” Mr. Adams said. “I was the Bangladeshi candidate — which I still am. I’m going to get overwhelmingly the Muslim vote.”Mr. Adams has sought to portray Mr. Yang as unprepared to be mayor.“When I look over the lives of everyone else, I see moments of commitment. And I’m asking like, ‘Who is Andrew?’” Mr. Adams said. “Maya Wiley, I see a civil rights activist. Ray? Successful businessman. Dianne Morales, I see her commitment to fighting against injustice.”He added: “They didn’t just discover that we have injustice in this city.”Mr. Adams believes people have underestimated his ability to connect with the working-class New Yorkers who make up his base.Victor J. Blue for The New York TimesIn a statement, the Yang campaign pushed back against the idea that Mr. Yang had not demonstrated a commitment to service. “Andrew is known by the most New Yorkers in the race for starting a national movement on universal basic income,” said Alyssa Cass, Mr. Yang’s communications director. “While some candidates were handing out patronage jobs or getting investigated for corruption, Andrew was fighting poverty.”Mr. Adams and Mr. Yang tend to have more moderate positions than some of their left-leaning rivals, like Mr. Stringer, Ms. Wiley and Ms. Morales.But Mr. Adams argues that his platform, which includes an expanded local tax credit for low-income families, investment in underperforming schools, and improvements to public housing, amounts to the systemic change progressives want.His “100 Steps for New York City,” a plan he partly drew from his journal of observations that began decades earlier, includes a special focus on public safety initiatives like releasing the names of officers being internally investigated for bad behavior.Mr. Adams has proposed diverting $500 million from the New York police budget to fund crisis managers and crime prevention programs, and has pledged to further diversify the police force.He has also proposed restoring a maligned plainclothes anti-crime unit that was disbanded by the Police Department last year, and refashioning it to focus on getting guns off the streets. Mr. Adams says proposals like these showed a responsiveness to the city’s most needy residents, including some Black neighborhoods suffering the brunt of violent crime. Critics point out that the disbanded unit has been behind several police shootings.As he runs to succeed Mayor Bill de Blasio, left, Mr. Adams has faced skepticism from the city’s progressive Democrats.Dave Sanders for The New York Times“Those other candidates, their names don’t ring out over here,” said Takbir Blake, a community activist who shepherded Mr. Adams during a business tour in Laurelton. “It’s that you know he’s been on the front lines. But you also know he’s from the streets.”As the primary approaches, Mr. Adams has begun to demonstrate the benefits of his long-honed political relationships. He has won major labor endorsements, including from the city’s largest municipal union, 32BJ SEIU, which represents private-sector building service workers. He has raised more money than his rivals participating in the city’s matching-funds program, yet has spent less than several of them — maintaining his war chest for the stretch run.And he believes that he will eventually win over the party’s progressive wing, especially if it becomes clearer that Democratic voters still favor Mr. Yang as their top choice.“The polls are not everything, or always honest, but it’s going to send a message,” Mr. Adams said. “They not only need a person that they agree with, but I’m the person that could win the race.”Mr. Adams says he can form a coalition of the marginalized, who want a mayor who has not had an aspirational New York experience, but who has experienced the common struggle.It is the path of Mr. Dinkins, laid out by Mr. Lynch, and executed over decades by the most disciplined loose cannon in New York City politics.“Say what you want, but there’s very little misunderstanding about me,” Mr. Adams said. “When you pull that lever, you know who you’re voting for.”“An actual, real blue-collar New Yorker.” More

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      Keisha Lance Bottoms Won’t Seek Second Term as Atlanta Mayor

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      Ms. Bottoms, who was mentioned briefly as a potential running mate with President Biden, is the latest mayor to move on after a year of pandemic challenges and social justice protests.ATLANTA — Keisha Lance Bottoms, the first-term Atlanta mayor who rose to national prominence this past year with her stern yet empathetic televised message to protesters but has struggled to rein in her city’s spike in violent crime, will not seek a second term in office, according to two people who were on a Zoom call with the mayor on Thursday night.The news shocked the political world in Atlanta, the most important city in the Southeast and one where the mayoral seat has been filled by African-American leaders since 1974, burnishing its reputation as a mecca for Black culture and political power.It is unclear why Ms. Bottoms, a Democrat, is not seeking another term, but 2020 took a toll on mayors nationwide. It was one of the most tumultuous years for American cities since the 1960s, with the social and economic disruptions of the coronavirus pandemic as well as racial justice protests that sometimes turned destructive.In November, St. Louis’s mayor at the time, Lyda Krewson, announced she would not pursue a second term. A month later, Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle announced she would not run for re-election. Several mayors in smaller cities have also declined to run again, exhausted or demoralized by the ravages of 2020.Two contenders who have been seeking to unseat Ms. Bottoms in the November election have promised to do a better job fighting what Ms. Bottoms has called a “Covid crime wave,” which includes a 58 percent spike in homicides in 2020.But Ms. Bottoms, 51, was expected to mount a formidable defense. She has a loyal ally in President Biden, whom she was early to endorse, and who repaid her loyalty with an appearance at a virtual fund-raiser in March. Ms. Bottoms was mentioned briefly as a potential vice-presidential running mate and said that she later turned down a cabinet-level position in the Biden administration.Ms. Bottoms, who served as a judge and a city councilwoman before being sworn in as mayor in 2018, is also blessed with a voice — measured, compassionate, slightly bruised and steeped in her experience as a Black daughter and Black mother — that seemed uniquely calibrated to address the challenges of the past year.It was in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis that Ms. Bottoms went on live television and became a national star as she spoke directly to protesters. Some of their demonstrations had descended into lawlessness, with people smashing windows, spray-painting property and jumping on police cars.“When I saw the murder of George Floyd, I hurt like a mother would hurt,” she said. Then she scolded the protesters, insisting that they “go home” and study the precepts of nonviolence as practiced by the leaders of the civil rights movement. More

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      Prosecuting Nazi War Criminals

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      More from our inbox:A Resource for New York City VotersTruth, Race and Reconciliation  Illustration by The New York Times; photographs from the Gerson FamilyTo the Editor:Re “Immigration Lies, Past and Present” (Opinion guest essay, April 27):Daniela Gerson, in her tribute to her father, presents a misleading picture of the Office of Special Investigations in the U.S. Department of Justice, where her father served in 1980 and 1981. I was the director of that office, and Allan Gerson was a lawyer on my staff.To say that O.S.I. “did not prosecute Nazis based on their wartime crimes, but rather because they had lied on immigration forms” misunderstands the cases we presented. We proved those lies as a necessary predicate to proving the crimes themselves, to show that their entry was unlawful.The trials, and the judgments against them that followed, depended entirely on the compelling proof of their criminal actions. We had neither the purpose nor the desire to concern ourselves with those who, like Mr. Gerson’s parents, had merely lied on immigration forms, and certainly not those who, like them, were survivors of Nazi crimes.As federal prosecutors (we eschewed the characterization of “Nazi hunters”), our mandate from Congress and the attorney general was to present cases against Nazi criminals to secure the loss of their citizenship and their eventual deportation. Anyone who sat in the courtroom would have witnessed the prosecution of those criminals in full and fair trials, their complicity conclusively proved by the Nazis’ own documentation and the testimony of those who survived their crimes. That includes the federal judges who rendered the decisions of denaturalization and deportation.As Ms. Gerson states, her father left O.S.I. after 18 months, but at no time did he ever suggest to me any discontent with our “tactics,” our investigations and lawsuits, or the legal basis on which they securely rested.In April, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum awarded the Office of Special Investigations its highest honor, the Elie Wiesel Award. Howard M. Lorber, the museum’s chairman, said:“While true justice for the victims of the Holocaust is not possible, [Ambassador] Stuart Eizenstat and the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Special Investigations have each worked tirelessly in different ways to secure a measure of justice for the survivors and accountability for the perpetrators. We are honored to recognize their achievements and decades-long dedication to these noble pursuits.”That honor was not conferred on O.S.I. for the prosecution of lies on immigration forms.Allan A. RyanNorwell, Mass.The writer was director of the Office of Special Investigations at the Justice Department from 1980 to 1983 and is the author of “Quiet Neighbors: Prosecuting Nazi War Criminals in America.”A Resource for New York City VotersTo the Editor:Re “New York’s Electing a Mayor. New Yorkers Yawn” (front page, April 27):The last year has put a tremendous strain on millions who have lost a loved one, become extremely ill or faced financial hardship. Given the circumstances, it’s understandable that many New Yorkers are oblivious to the citywide primary elections on June 22.In addition to these circumstances, there are more than 400 candidates running for various offices in the city, and ranked-choice voting will be used for the first time.The people who win the primaries in less than seven weeks will most likely be the ones to shape our city for a generation to come. We need as many New Yorkers engaged in this election as possible to ensure that our city’s recovery benefits us all.If people feel overwhelmed by the prospect of educating themselves about who is running, that can’t be allowed to happen. That’s why we started ElectNYC.org, a comprehensive, nonpartisan guide to the 2021 elections, so voters can feel empowered to make the best choices for themselves and their communities.New Yorkers need a place where they can easily get unbiased information about who is running, where they stand on important issues and how to cast a ballot. We encourage everyone to use this valuable resource ahead of the June primary.Betsy GotbaumNew YorkThe writer is executive director of Citizens Union and a former New York City public advocate.Truth, Race and ReconciliationWilliam Sylvester White Jr., who was appointed to the rank of Ensign in the U.S. Naval Reserve during World War II, Chicago, 1940.Illustration by Alexandria Valentine; photograph by Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Black Troops Deserve Better” (Opinion guest essay, April 22):Theodore R. Johnson helps us all understand how systemic racism has corrupted our country. Now we need a truth and reconciliation commission to put these cases into their context.We will never reach a fair and equitable society until these issues are brought into the light of day. Denying that our country has been systemically racist and that this affects our world today is a falsehood.If we review the truth, maybe politicians will then take reparations arguments seriously.Daniel DziedzicRochester Hills, Mich. More

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      G.O.P. Seeks to Empower Poll Watchers, Raising Intimidation Worries

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      Republicans in several states are pushing bills to give poll watchers more autonomy. Alarmed election officials and voting rights activists say it’s a new attempt to target voters of color.HOUSTON — The red dot of a laser pointer circled downtown Houston on a map during a virtual training of poll watchers by the Harris County Republican Party. It highlighted densely populated, largely Black, Latino and Asian neighborhoods.“This is where the fraud is occurring,” a county Republican official said falsely in a leaked video of the training, which was held in March. A precinct chair in the northeastern, largely white suburbs of Houston, he said he was trying to recruit people from his area “to have the confidence and courage” to act as poll watchers in the circled areas in upcoming elections.A question at the bottom corner of the slide indicated just how many poll watchers the party wanted to mobilize: “Can we build a 10K Election Integrity Brigade?”As Republican lawmakers in major battleground states seek to make voting harder and more confusing through a web of new election laws, they are simultaneously making a concerted legislative push to grant more autonomy and access to partisan poll watchers — citizens trained by a campaign or a party and authorized by local election officials to observe the electoral process.This effort has alarmed election officials and voting rights activists alike: There is a long history of poll watchers being used to intimidate voters and harass election workers, often in ways that target Democratic-leaning communities of color and stoke fears that have the overall effect of voter suppression. During the 2020 election, President Donald J. Trump’s campaign repeatedly promoted its “army” of poll watchers as he publicly implored supporters to venture into heavily Black and Latino cities and hunt for voter fraud.Republicans have offered little evidence to justify a need for poll watchers to have expanded access and autonomy. As they have done for other election changes — including reduced early voting, stricter absentee ballot requirements and limits on drop boxes — they have grounded their reasoning in arguments that their voters want more secure elections. That desire was born in large part out of Mr. Trump’s repeated lies about last year’s presidential contest, which included complaints about insufficient poll watcher access.Now, with disputes over the rules governing voting now at a fever pitch, the rush to empower poll watchers threatens to inject further tension into elections.Both partisan and nonpartisan poll watching have been a key component of American elections for years, and Republicans and Democrats alike have routinely sent trained observers to the polls to monitor the process and report back on any worries. In recent decades, laws have often helped keep aggressive behavior at bay, preventing poll watchers from getting too close to voters or election officials, and maintaining a relatively low threshold for expelling anyone who misbehaves.But now Republican state lawmakers in 20 states have introduced at least 40 bills that would expand the powers of poll watchers, and 12 of those bills in six states are currently progressing through legislatures, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.In Texas, the Republican-controlled Legislature is advancing legislation that would allow them to photograph and video-record voters receiving assistance, as well as make it extremely difficult for election officials to order the removal of poll watchers.The video-recording measure has particularly alarmed voting rights groups, which argue that it could result in the unwanted identification of a voter in a video posted on social media, or allow isolated incidents to be used by partisan news outlets to craft a widespread narrative.“If you have a situation, for example, where people who are poll workers do not have the ability to throw out anybody at the polls who is being disruptive or anyone at the polls who is intimidating voters, that’s essentially authorizing voter intimidation,” said Jon Greenbaum, chief counsel for the nonpartisan Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.Republicans have been increasingly open in recent years about their intent to line up legions of supporters to monitor the polls. Following the lead of Mr. Trump, they have often framed the observational role in militaristic tones, amplifying their arguments of its necessity with false claims of widespread fraud. Just three years ago, the courts lifted a consent decree that for more than three decades had barred the Republican National Committee from taking an active role in poll watching; in 2020, the committee jumped back into the practice.In Florida, Republicans in the State Legislature passed a new election bill on Thursday that includes a provision allowing one partisan poll watcher per candidate on the ballot during the inspection of votes. The measure carries the potential to significantly overcrowd election officials. The bill also does not stipulate any distance that poll watchers must keep from election workers.In Michigan, a G.O.P. bill would allow challengers to sit close enough to read poll books, tabulators and other election records, and would let them challenge a voter’s eligibility if they had “a good reason.”The Republican drive to empower poll watchers adds to the mounting evidence that much of the party continues to view the 2020 election through the same lens as Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly argued that his losses in key states must have been because of fraud.President Donald J. Trump on the morning after the election. His campaign promoted an “army” of poll watchers.Doug Mills/The New York Times“It seems like the No. 1 goal of these laws is to perpetuate the Big Lie,” said Dale Ho, the director of the Voting Rights Project at the A.C.L.U. “So when you get these unfounded charges that there was fraud or cheating in the election and people say, ‘Well, that’s not detected,’ the purveyors of these lies say, ‘That’s because we weren’t able to observe.’”After the election last year, complaints that poll watchers had not been given enough access, or that their accusations of improperly cast ballots had been ignored, fueled numerous lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign and its Republican allies, nearly all of which failed.In Texas, the leaked video of the Harris County Republican Party’s training, which was published by the voting rights group Common Cause, recalled a similar episode from the 2010 midterm elections.That year, a Tea Party-affiliated group in Houston known as the King Street Patriots sent poll watchers to downtown polling locations. The flood of the mostly white observers into Black neighborhoods caused friction, and resurfaced not-too-distant memories when racial intimidation at the polls was commonplace in the South.The King Street Patriots would eventually evolve into True the Vote, one of the major national organizations now seeking more voting restrictions. Last year, True the Vote joined several lawsuits alleging fraud in the election (all failed) and led countrywide drives to try to recruit more poll watchers.Access for poll watchers is considered sacred by Texas Republicans; in the Legislature, they cited the difficulty in finding observers for drive-through voting and 24-hour voting as one of their reasons for proposing to ban such balloting methods.“Both parties want to have poll watchers, need to have poll watchers present,” State Senator Bryan Hughes, a Republican who sponsored the chamber’s version of the bill, said in an interview last month. “That protects everyone.”While the antagonistic language from the Trump campaign about its poll watchers was already a flash point in November, Democrats and voting rights groups are worried that relaxed rules will lead to more reports of aggressive behavior.In 2020, there were at least 44 reports of inappropriate behavior by poll watchers in Harris County, according to county records obtained by The New York Times. At one polling site on the outskirts of Houston, Cindy Wilson, the nonpartisan election official in charge, reported two aggressive poll watchers who she said had bothered voters and repeatedly challenged the staff.“Two Poll watchers stood close to the black voters (less than 3 feet away) and engaged in what I describe as intimidating behavior,” Ms. Wilson wrote in an email to the Harris County clerk that was obtained by The Times through an open records request.Ms. Wilson said she was not sure which campaign or party the observers were representing.Of course, plenty of interactions with poll workers went smoothly. Merrilee C. Peterson, a poll watcher for a local Republican candidate, worked at a different site, the NRG Arena, and reported no tensions of note.“We still had some of the problems of not thinking we were allowed to get close enough to see,” she said. “But once the little kinks were worked out, quite frankly we worked very well with the poll workers.”In Florida, crowding was the chief concern of election officials.Testifying before state senators, Mark Earley, the vice president of the Florida Supervisors of Elections, said that “as an association, we are very concerned” about the number of poll watchers who would now be allowed to observe the process of duplicating a voter’s damaged or erroneously marked ballot. He said it presented “very grave security risks.”Mr. Earley was backed by at least one Republican, State Senator Jeff Brandes, who found the provision for poll watchers unnecessary and dangerous.“I don’t think we should have to install risers in the supervisor of elections offices or bars by which they can hang upside down in order to ensure that there is a transparent process,” Mr. Brandes said.A crowd that included many Michigan Republicans banged on the windows as workers counted absentee ballots in Detroit on Nov. 4. Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesBut perhaps no other state had a conflict involving poll watchers erupt onto cable news as Michigan did. On Election Day and the day after in November, Republican poll watchers grew increasingly obstructive at the TCF Center in Detroit, where absentee ballots were counted as it became clear that Mr. Trump was losing in the state.It began with a huddle of Republican observers around midday on Nov. 4, according to affidavits from Democratic poll watchers, nonpartisan observers and election officials.Soon after, the Republicans “began to fan out around the room,” wrote Dan McKernan, an election worker.Then they ramped up their objections, accusing workers of entering incorrect birth years or backdating ballots. In some cases, the poll watchers lodged blanket claims of wrongdoing.“The behavior in the room changed dramatically in the afternoon: The rage in the room from Republican challengers was nothing like I had ever experienced in my life,” wrote Anjanette Davenport Hatter, another election worker.Mr. McKernan wrote: “Republicans were challenging everything at the two tables I could see. When the ballot envelope was opened, they would say they couldn’t see it clearly. When the next envelope was opened, they made the same complaint. They were objecting to every single step down the line for no good reason.”The chaos provided some of the basis for Michigan officials to debate whether to certify the results, but a state board did so that month.Now, the Republican-controlled Legislature in Michigan is proposing to bar nonpartisan observers from acting as poll watchers, allowing only partisan challengers to do so.While widespread reports of intimidation never materialized last year, voting rights groups say the atmosphere after the election represents a dangerous shift in American elections.“It really hasn’t been like this for decades, generally speaking, even though there’s a long and storied history of it,” said Michael Waldman, a legal expert at the Brennan Center. Aggressive partisan poll watchers, he said, were “a longstanding barrier to voting in the United States, and it was also largely solved. And this risks bringing it back.” More

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      What’s in Biden’s Spending Plan: Free Preschool and National Paid Leave

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      President Biden’s latest proposal is funded by raising taxes on wealthier Americans, and it is likely to encounter Republican resistance for that reason.WASHINGTON — President Biden’s $1.8 trillion spending and tax plan is aimed at bolstering the United States’ social safety net by expanding access to education, reducing the cost of child care and supporting women in the work force.Like the $2 trillion infrastructure plan that preceded it, Mr. Biden’s latest proposal is funded by raising taxes on wealthier Americans, and it is likely to encounter Republican resistance for that reason.Here’s a look at parts of the president’s spending proposal:Free Pre-K and Community CollegeMr. Biden’s plan promises universal free preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds, as well as two years of free community college for young adults.The plan outlines a $200 billion investment in free universal preschool and another $109 billion over 10 years to make two years of community college free. On top of that, the president is proposing an $85 billion investment in Pell grants, vouchers that low- and moderate-income students use to pay for tuition, fees, books, room and board.The universal free preschool includes children from affluent families. That follows a model that cities like Washington and New York City have used, but some education experts favor programs targeted to helping low-income children.Experts call the plan to fund college education the “biggest expansion in federal support for higher education in at least half a century.”Even though it is broadly popular, free college across 50 states with unique systems and tuition costs, is complicated to carry out. The Biden plan would require states to eliminate tuition for community colleges to receive funding.The president’s pitch is that a high school diploma is no longer enough to ensure success and that making a federal investment in education will increase earnings long term. During the pandemic, unemployed workers without college credentials are having a much harder time finding jobs.Funding for Historically Black Colleges and UniversitiesMr. Biden’s proposal singles out historically Black colleges and universities, known as H.B.C.U.s, as well as institutions that serve members of Native American tribes and other minority groups, for specific funding.Addressing racial equity is a theme that runs through Mr. Biden’s agenda, and the 15-page memo outlining his spending plans notes the extent to which historically Black colleges and universities outperform. While they account for only 3 percent of four-year universities, their graduates account for 80 percent of Black judges and half of Black lawyers and doctors. (Vice President Kamala Harris, the first woman of color to hold the role, is a graduate of Howard University.)Students and alumni gathering at Howard University to celebrate Vice President Kamala Harris’s victory last November.J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressMr. Biden’s plan calls for $39 billion over the next decade to fund two years of subsidized tuition for students from families earning less than $125,000 enrolled in a four-year program at H.B.C.U.s, or institutions that serve members of Native American tribes or other minority groups.During the 2020 presidential campaign, Mr. Biden promised to invest more than $70 billion in such schools, including $20 billion to build research facilities on their campuses.Affordable Child CareMr. Biden’s plan seeks to invest $225 billion to make child care more affordable and allow parents to stay in the labor force and work outside their homes.The plan would give child care providers funding to maintain small class sizes and classrooms that can help children with disabilities. It would also cover all child care costs for working families who are struggling. Administration officials did not say exactly who would qualify to have all child care costs covered, only that it would be a sliding scaled based on earnings compared with the state’s median income. Under the plan, families earning 1.5 times their state median income would pay no more than 7 percent of their income for child care.The plan also seeks to increase wages of early child care providers, who are by and large women of color who currently earn about $12.24 an hour without any benefits. Mr. Biden’s plan would include a $15 minimum wage for early childhood staff.National Paid LeaveMr. Biden is proposing a $225 billion investment over 10 years to cover a nationally mandated 12 weeks of paid parental, family and personal illness leave. The program seeks to provide workers up to $4,000 a month in paid leave, rising to 80 percent for the lowest wage workers.President Donald J. Trump also called for paid family leave in his State of the Union address last year, the first Republican president to take up what has long been a popular Democratic cause.In contrast to Mr. Biden’s approach, the Republican-backed proposal only covered leave for parents of babies or newly adopted children under 6, excluding care for sick family members or leave for personal medical problems. It also did not propose a new source of funding to pay for it. Instead, people could dip into their own future federal benefits, and receive smaller benefits later.NutritionMr. Biden’s plan proposes $45 billion over the next 10 years to combat food insecurity among children.The program would make permanent a summer food program that allows families eligible for free and reduced-price meals during the school year access to meals during the summer at the same rates. Mr. Biden’s plan allocates more than $25 billion to make the program permanent and available to all 29 million children who receive free and reduced-priced meals.The plan also includes $17 billion to expand healthy school meals at high-poverty schools. The proposals would provide free meals to an additional 9.3 million children, about 70 percent of whom are in elementary school. More