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      in US Politics

      Judge blocks Arkansas law allowing librarians to be charged over ‘harmful’ books

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      Arkansas is temporarily blocked from enforcing a law that would have allowed criminal charges against librarians and booksellers for providing “harmful” materials to minors, a federal judge ruled on Saturday.US district judge Timothy L Brooks issued a preliminary injunction against the law, which also would have created a new process to challenge library materials and request that they be relocated to areas not accessible by kids. The measure, signed by the state’s Republican governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, earlier this year, was set to take effect on 1 August.A coalition that included the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) in Little Rock had challenged the law, saying fear of prosecution under the measure could prompt libraries and booksellers to no longer carry titles that could be challenged.The judge also rejected a motion by the defendants, which include prosecuting attorneys for the state, seeking to dismiss the case.The ACLU of Arkansas, which represents some of the plaintiffs, applauded the court’s ruling, saying that the absence of a preliminary injunction would have jeopardized the free speech rights enshrined in the US constitution’s first amendment.“The question we had to ask was – do Arkansans still legally have access to reading materials?” Holly Dickson, the executive director of the ACLU in Arkansas, said in a statement. “Luckily, the judicial system has once again defended our highly valued liberties.”The lawsuit comes as lawmakers in an increasing number of conservative states are pushing for measures making it easier to ban or restrict access to books. The number of attempts to ban or restrict books across the US last year was the highest in the 20 years the American Library Association has been tracking such efforts.Laws restricting access to certain materials or making it easier to challenge them have been enacted in several other states, including Iowa, Indiana and Texas.Arkansas’s attorney general, Tim Griffin, said in an email on Saturday that his office would be “reviewing the judge’s opinion and will continue to vigorously defend the law”.The executive director of the Central Arkansas Library System, Nate Coulter, said the judge’s 49-page decision recognized the law as censorship, a constitutional violation and wrongly maligning librarians.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“As folks in south-west Arkansas say, this order is stout as horseradish!” he said in an email. He added: “I’m relieved that for now the dark cloud that was hanging over CALS’ librarians has lifted.”The lawsuit which produced Brooks’s injunction names the state’s 28 local prosecutors as defendants, along with Crawford county in west Arkansas.A separate lawsuit is challenging the Crawford library’s decision to move children’s books that included LGBTQ+ themes to a separate portion of the library. More

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      in US Politics

      Obama speaks out against ‘profoundly misguided’ book bans in school libraries

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      In an open letter to American librarians, Barack Obama has criticised “profoundly misguided” rightwing efforts to ban books from libraries in public schools.“Some of the books that shaped my life – and the lives of so many others – are being challenged by people who disagree with certain ideas or perspectives,” the former president wrote.“It’s no coincidence that these ‘banned books’ are often written by or feature people of colour, Indigenous people, and members of the LGBTQ+ community.”Obama’s letter on Monday supported Unite Against Book Bans, a campaign led by the American Library Association (ALA).Obama also appeared in a TikTok video posted by the Kankakee Public Library, from Illinois, which has found success with viral videos.The 44th president appeared at the end of the short video, which otherwise featured staff reading books subject to bans or attempted bans. Obama was shown reading and sipping from a library-branded mug. More videos are set to be released.The ALA has found that in US public schools last year, “a record 2,571 unique titles were targeted for censorship”, often by parent-led groups, “a 38% increase from the 1,858 unique titles targeted for censorship in 2021”.It adds: “Of those titles, the vast majority were written by or about members of the LGBTQ+ community and people of colour.”In his letter, Obama also cited “unfortunate instances in which books by conservative authors or books containing ‘triggering’ words or scenes have been targets for removal”.He added: “Either way, the impulse seems to be to silence, rather than engage, rebut, learn from or seek to understand views that don’t fit our own. I believe such an approach is profoundly misguided, and contrary to what has made this country great.”Obama is the author of his own bestselling books: Dreams from My Father, The Audacity of Hope and A Promised Land, the last named the first volume of his political memoirs. His wife, Michelle Obama, is the author of the hit memoir Becoming and a recent follow-up, The Light We Carry.In his letter, Obama said writers “like Mark Twain and Toni Morrison, Walt Whitman and James Baldwin taught me something essential about our country’s character.“Reading about people whose lives were very different from mine showed me how to step into someone else’s shoes. And the simple act of writing helped me develop my own identity – all of which would prove vital as a citizen, as a community organizer, and as president.”Regarding school book bans, the former president also said it was “important to understand that the world is watching.“If America – a nation built on freedom of expression – allows certain voices and ideas to be silenced, why should other countries go out of their way to protect them?“Ironically, it is Christian and other religious texts – the sacred texts that some calling for book bannings in this country claim to want to defend – that have often been the first target if censorship and book banning efforts in authoritarian countries.” More

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      in Elections

      Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Draws Support From Outside the Democratic Party

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      His family name, libertarian bent and support from the tech world, along with his views on censorship and vaccines, have given Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a foothold in the 2024 contest.Speaking at a festival hosted by a libertarian group in New Hampshire, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. railed against the “mainstream media” for serving as “propagandists for the powerful.” Each time he mentioned the perfidy of the press — for silencing dissent, for toeing the government line, for labeling him a conspiracy theorist — he drew a supportive hail of jeers.It was a page out of the playbook of Donald J. Trump. But for Mr. Kennedy, who is running a long-shot challenge to President Biden for the Democratic nomination for president, it was more than a rhetorical flourish.Censorship is a central theme of his campaign, uniting an unlikely coalition that includes longtime acolytes in what is known as the “health freedom” movement; donors from Silicon Valley; and new admirers from across the political spectrum.“The mainstream media that is here today is going to report that I, you know, have paranoid conspiracy theories, which is what they always say, but I’m just going to tell you facts,” Mr. Kennedy said at the event last week. He added, “When the press believes it is their job to protect you from dangerous information, they are manipulating you.”Indeed, Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and scion of the storied Kennedy Democratic clan, is now a leading vaccine skeptic and purveyor of conspiracy theories. He has twisted facts about vaccine development by presenting information out of context; embraced unsubstantiated claims that some clouds are chemical agents being spread by the government; and promoted the decades-old theory that the C.I.A. killed his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy.The idea that the press has a stranglehold on public information is a core, animating belief in the health freedom movement, which broadly opposes regulation of health practices, including vaccinations. Two political action committees supporting Mr. Kennedy were formed by people who knew him through this movement, which accounts for some of his most ardent support.Censorship, and specifically disdain for attempts to regulate the flow of disinformation and hate speech, is also a motivating factor for his powerful backers in Silicon Valley. Tech executives and investors have amplified Mr. Kennedy’s anti-establishment message and celebrated his willingness to challenge liberal orthodoxies and scientific consensus — never mind that in doing so, he has often spread widely discredited claims about vaccines and other public health measures.And, for many prospective voters drawn to Mr. Kennedy, anger about censorship is a natural outgrowth of a deep distrust of authority that accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic, particularly in response to the lockdowns that public officials called on to halt the virus’s spread.It is the latter group that is most diverse. Some are libertarians, searching for a standard-bearer; others are disaffected Democrats; some are Republicans looking for an alternative to Mr. Trump. Mr. Kennedy’s audience in New Hampshire of at least 250 people included at least one person wearing a Trump 2020 hat.A fund-raising email from his campaign on Tuesday said it had raised “less than $4 million” since he entered the race in April. Official figures will be released in July, along with numbers from his PACs, which have separately said they brought in several million dollars.Mr. Kennedy’s recent public appearances have tended to be before conservative or libertarian audiences. Last week, he spoke about environmental stewardship at a sold-out dinner hosted by the Ethan Allen Institute, a free-market, right-of-center think tank in Burlington, Vt. This week, he had been scheduled to speak at an event hosted by Moms for Liberty, a conservative organization that has, among other things, pushed for the banning of books that discuss race, gender and sexuality, but later canceled that appearance, citing a scheduling conflict, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.“We are here to protect the soul of America,” said Debra Sheldon, 48, a registered Democrat from New York State, who attended a Kennedy event in Lancaster, N.H., with her son, Cass Sheldon Misri.Ryan David Brown for The New York TimesDespite this rightward tilt, Mr. Kennedy has emerged as a persistent thorn in the side of Mr. Biden, posing not so much a serious threat to the president’s renomination as a high-profile reminder that many Democratic voters would prefer new blood.Mr. Kennedy’s support among Democrats reached as high as 20 percent in polls in recent months, but a Quinnipiac University poll this month also found Mr. Kennedy’s standing among Republicans to be fairly high: 40 percent viewed him favorably, compared with 31 percent of independents and 25 percent of Democrats. In New Hampshire, a Saint Anselm College Survey Center poll put his Democratic support in June at 9 percent.Mr. Kennedy’s longtime admirers are not surprised. Debra Sheldon, 48, a Democrat from New York State, campaigned for Barack Obama in 2008. But when she had a child, she said, Mr. Kennedy’s Children’s Health Defense — a nonprofit group he formed that has campaigned against vaccines — “really helped inform me, as a new mom, about what was good for my kid.”Children’s Health Defense has been widely criticized for spreading disinformation about vaccines, included discredited claims linking them to autism.Ms. Sheldon is now a volunteer for Mr. Kennedy’s campaign, and was in New Hampshire selling his books and other materials about autism at the libertarian retreat, the Porcupine Freedom Festival. She described her mission in almost spiritual terms: “We are here to protect the soul of America.”Some of Mr. Kennedy’s newer supporters said they were drawn to what they saw as his message of unity and fairness, an almost nostalgic perspective he often anchors in stories of his childhood in one of America’s most famous political families. But others described feeling “awakened” during the pandemic by questions Mr. Kennedy posed about vaccines, masks and school lockdowns, issues they felt were ignored — or, worse, stifled — by the mainstream media.“All of those people watched over many years where Bobby was censored in every mainstream venue,” said Tony Lyons, whose company, Skyhorse Publishing, has picked up authors deemed unsavory or risky by other presses, including the filmmaker Woody Allen, the former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, and Mr. Kennedy. Mr. Lyons is a co-chair of a PAC supporting Mr. Kennedy.“Every TV show, venue — they just wouldn’t let him on to talk about his views on what Big Pharma companies were doing to the American public,” Mr. Lyons said. “He then kind of became a hero of the freedom of speech people,” a group that includes many political identities, he said.Mr. Kennedy was kicked off social media platforms during the pandemic on the grounds that he had spread debunked claims about the virus. Instagram lifted its suspension in June, citing his presidential candidacy, after Mr. Kennedy complained about the suspension on Twitter. The complaint prompted Elon Musk — who calls himself a free speech absolutist — to invite him to a discussion on Twitter Spaces.Mr. Kennedy at the Porcupine Freedom Festival in Lancaster, N.H.Ryan David Brown for The New York TimesMr. Kennedy has embraced cryptocurrency, as well: He spoke at a major Bitcoin conference in Miami last month, and his campaign is accepting Bitcoin donations.He has also embraced podcasts, and recently recorded a more than three-hour-long appearance with Joe Rogan, whose immensely popular show reaches 11 million listeners per episode. The show, which has been criticized for spreading misinformation, largely caters to young men, and many of his listeners fall on the center-right of the political spectrum.On the show, Mr. Kennedy described the modern Democratic Party as the “party of censorship.”Jason Calacanis, a co-host of a popular podcast on which Mr. Kennedy appeared in May, said in response to questions about Mr. Kennedy’s appeal that his willingness to talk for hours on a podcast stood in contrast to Mr. Biden, who has held few news conferences.“In the age of podcasting, Americans want someone sharp and willing to engage in vibrant debates,” Mr. Calacanis said. “Trump won in 2016 because of social media, and the next president will win because of podcasts.”Mr. Kennedy and his PAC are drawing significant support from the tech world, including Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter who endorsed Mr. Kennedy, and David Sacks, a venture capitalist who has raised money for Republicans and Democrats alike.Mark Gorton, a New York City trader who created the file-sharing service LimeWire, helped create and fund a PAC supporting Mr. Kennedy. The PAC, American Values 2024, has taken in at least $5.7 million, its leadership says — official numbers will be released next month.Mr. Gorton said the pandemic “unlocked all this energy” among a “very marginalized group” of people pushing back against public health protocols who found themselves ostracized or “de-platformed” on social media. In Mr. Kennedy, they saw a hero.Bill Barger, a 31-year-old from Manchester, N.H., who attended Mr. Kennedy’s speech Thursday, said he was “definitely interested” in Mr. Kennedy. But he wasn’t yet sold on Mr. Kennedy’s commitment to free speech.He said he would like to see Mr. Kennedy debate Mr. Trump, whom he described as “funny as hell.”On a radio show Monday, Mr. Trump hailed Mr. Kennedy’s poll numbers, calling him a “very smart guy.”The two candidates share common fixations. During his speech in New Hampshire, Mr. Kennedy repeatedly invoked The New York Times as an example of corrupt media.“The New York Times, which is in this room today,” he said, as an audience member pointed down at the Times reporter’s seat, prompting a chorus of boos so angry, Mr. Kennedy’s campaign manager — the former Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich — told the audience member to stop it.Mr. Kennedy smiled for a few moments, then walked back across the stage. “I’m not saying the reporter who is here. She’s a very sweet person, by all accounts.”Ruth Igielnik More

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      in Elections

      How Erdogan Reoriented Turkish Culture to Maintain His Power

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      At the final sundown before the first round of voting in the toughest election of his two-decade rule, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey visited Hagia Sophia for evening prayers — and to remind his voters of just what he had delivered.For nearly a millennium the domed cathedral had been the epicenter of Orthodox Christianity. After the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, it became one of the Islamic world’s finest mosques. In the 1930s, the new Turkish republic proclaimed it a museum, and for nearly a century its overlapping Christian and Muslim histories made it Turkey’s most visited cultural site.President Erdogan was not so ecumenical: In 2020 he converted it back into a mosque. When Turks return to the ballot box this Sunday for the presidential runoff, they will be voting in part on the political ideology behind that cultural metamorphosis.Join the crowds at the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque now, leaving your shoes at the new long racks in the inner narthex, and you can just about glimpse the mosaics of Christ and the Virgin, today discreetly sheathed with white curtains. The famous marble floor has been upholstered with thick turquoise carpet. The sound is more muffled. The light’s brighter, thanks to golden chandeliers. Right at the entrance, in a simple frame, is a presidential proclamation: a monumental swipe at the nation’s secular century, and an affirmation of a new Turkey worthy of its Ottoman heyday.“Hagia Sophia is the crowning of that neo-Ottomanist dream,” said Edhem Eldem, professor of history at Bogazici University in Istanbul. “It’s basically a transposition of political and ideological fights, debates, polemical views, into the realm of a very, very primitive understanding of history and the past.”In the 1930s, the new Turkish republic made Hagia Sophia, which, over the centuries, had been a cathedral and a mosque, into a museum. In 2020 President Erdogan made it a mosque again. Bradley Secker for The New York TimesBradley Secker for The New York TimesBradley Secker for The New York TimesIf the mark of 21st-century politics is the ascendancy of culture and identity over economics and class, it could be said to have been born here in Turkey, home to one of the longest-running culture wars of them all. And for the past 20 years, in grand monuments and on schlocky soap operas, at restored archaeological sites and retro new mosques, Mr. Erdogan has reoriented Turkey’s national culture, promoting a nostalgic revival of the Ottoman past — sometimes in grand style, sometimes as pure kitsch.After surviving a tight first round of voting earlier this month, he is now favored to win a runoff election on Sunday against Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the candidate of the joint opposition. His resiliency, when poll after poll predicted his defeat, certainly expresses his party’s systematic control of Turkey’s media and courts. (Freedom House, a democracy watchdog organization, downgraded Turkey from “partly free” to “not free” in 2018.) But authoritarianism is about so much more than ballots and bullets. Television and music, monuments and memorials have all been prime levers of a political project, a campaign of cultural ressentiment and national rebirth, that culminated this May on the blue-green carpets beneath Hagia Sophia’s dome.Some mosaics with Christian imagery are now discreetly covered by white curtains.Bradley Secker for The New York TimesOn the eve of the first round of voting President Erdogan visited Hagia Sophia for Maghrib prayers. Murat Cetinmuhurdar/PPO, via ReutersOutside Turkey, this cultural turn is often described as “Islamist,” and Mr. Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party, known as the A.K.P., have indeed permitted religious observances that were once banned, such as the wearing of head scarves by women in public institutions. A Museum of Islamic Civilizations, complete with a “digital dome” and light projections à la the immersive Van Gogh Experience, opened in 2022 in Istanbul’s new largest mosque.Yet this election suggests that nationalism, rather than religion, may be the true driver of Mr. Erdogan’s cultural revolution. His celebrations of the Ottoman past — and the resentment of its supposed haters, whether in the West or at home — have gone hand in hand with nationalist efforts unrelated to Islam. The country has mounted aggressive campaigns for the return of Greco-Roman antiquities from Western museums. Foreign archaeological teams have had their permits withdrawn. Turkey stands at the bleak vanguard of a tendency seen all over now, not least in the United States: a cultural politics of perpetual grievance, where even in victory you are indignant.For this country’s writers, artists, scholars and singers, facing censorship or worse, the prospect of a change in government was less a matter of political preference than of practical survival. Since 2013, when an Occupy-style protest movement at Istanbul’s Gezi Park took direct aim at his government, Mr. Erdogan has taken a hard turn to authoritarian rule. Numerous cultural figures remain imprisoned, including the architect Mucella Yapici, the filmmakers Mine Ozerden and Cigdem Mater, and the arts philanthropist Osman Kavala. Writers like Can Dundar and Asli Erdogan (no relation), who were jailed during the purges that followed a failed military coup against Mr. Erdogan in 2016, live in exile in Germany.This election suggests that nationalism, rather than religion, may be the true driver of Mr. Erdogan’s cultural revolution. Bradley Secker for The New York TimesMore than a dozen musical concerts were canceled last year, among them a recital by the violinist Ara Malikian, who is of Armenian descent, and a gig by the pop-folk singer Aynur Dogan, who is Kurdish. The tensions reached a grim crescendo this month, shortly before the first round of voting, when a Kurdish singer was stabbed to death at a ferry terminal after declining to sing a Turkish nationalist song.In the days after the first round of voting, I met with Banu Cennetoglu, one of the country’s most acclaimed artists, whose commemoration of a Kurdish journalist at the 2017 edition of the contemporary art exhibition Documenta won acclaim abroad but brought aggravation at home. “What is scary right now compared to the 90s, which was also a very difficult time, especially for the Kurdish community, is that then we could guess where the evil was coming from,” she told me. “And now it could be anyone. It is much more random.”For the Turkish artist Banu Cennetoglu, Istanbul has become a city of self-censorship. “But even if you don’t speak,” she says, “you can be the next one.”Caroline Tompkins for The New York TimesThe strategy has worked. Independent media has shrunk. Self-censorship is rife. “All the institutions within art and culture have been extremely silent for five years,” Ms. Cennetoglu said. “And for me this is unacceptable, as an artist. This is my question: when do we activate the red line? When do we say no, and why?”Nationalism is nothing new in Turkey. “Everybody and his uncle is a nationalist in this country,” Mr. Eldem observed. And the Kemalists — the secular elite who dominated politics here for decades until Mr. Erdogan’s triumph in 2003 — also used nationalist themes to spin culture to their political ends. Turkey’s early cinema glorified the achievements of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Archaeological digs for Hittite antiquities aimed to provide the new republic with a past rooted even more deeply than Greece and Italy.Edhem Eldem at his home in Istanbul. “When it comes to heritage, the uses of the past, he’s not very different from his predecessors,” the historian says. “He’s just more efficient.”Bradley Secker for The New York TimesIn the 2000s, Mr. Erdogan’s blend of Islamism and reformism had Turkey knocking at the door of the European Union. A new Istanbul was being feted in the foreign press. But the new Turkish nationalism has a different cultural cast: proudly Islamic, often antagonistic, and sometimes a little paranoid.One of the signal cultural institutions of the Erdogan years is the Panorama 1453 History Museum, in a working-class district west of Hagia Sophia, where schoolchildren discover the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in a painted cyclorama. At one point, a painting in the round might have been immersion enough. Now it’s been souped up with blaring video projections, a wildly nationalist pageant styled like the video game “Civilization.” Kids can watch Sultan Mehmed II charge toward Hagia Sophia, while his horse rears up in front of a celestial fireball.Visitors to Panorama 1453, a history museum founded in 2009, whose 360-degree mural celebrates the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul.Bradley Secker for The New York TimesAn immersive video animation depicts the Ottoman victory over the Byzantine Empire.Bradley Secker for The New York TimesSultan Mehmed II rears for battle.Bradley Secker for The New York TimesThere’s a similar backward projection in Turkey’s television dramas, which are hugely popular not just here but internationally, with hundreds of millions of viewers throughout the Muslim world, in Germany, in Mexico, all over. On shows such as “Resurrection: Ertugrul,” an international hit about a 13th-century Turkic chieftain, or “Kurulus: Osman,” a “Game of Thrones”-esque Ottoman saga airing every Wednesday here, past and present start to merge.“They are casting the discourse of Tayyip Erdogan in the antique ages,” said Ayse Cavdar, a cultural anthropologist who’s studied these shows. “If Erdogan faces a struggle right now, it is recast in an Ottoman context, a fictional context. In this way, not the knowledge about today’s struggle, but the feeling of it, is spread through society.”A still from “Kurulus: Osman,” starring Burak Ozcivit as Osman I, the first sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Turkish historical dramas are popular not just at home but abroad.ATVIn these half-historical soap operas, the heroes are decisive, brave, glorious, but the polities they lead are fragile, teetering, menaced by outsiders. Ms. Cavdar noted how frequently the TV shows feature leaders of an emerging, endangered state. “As if this guy has not been governing the state for 20 years!” she said.Culture came on the agenda during the runoff, too, as Mr. Erdogan showed up to inaugurate the new home of Istanbul Modern. The president had praise for the new Bosporus-side museum, designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano — but he couldn’t help bashing the creations of the previous century, with what he described as a misguided abandonment of the Ottoman tradition.Now, the president promised, an authentic “Turkish century” was about to dawn.Assuming he wins on Sunday, his neo-Ottomanism will have survived its strongest test in two decades. The cultural figures with the most to regret are of course those in prison, but it will also be a bitter outcome for the academics, authors and others who left the country in the wake of Mr. Erdogan’s purges. “A.K.P.’s social engineering can be compared to monoculture in industrial agriculture,” said Asli Cavusoglu, a young artist who recently had a solo show at New York’s New Museum. “There is one type of vegetable they invest in. Other plants — intellectuals, artists — are unable to grow, and that’s why they leave.”Back issues of Agos, the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper edited by Hrant Dink, a journalist assassinated in Istanbul in 2007. His home has been converted into a memorial museum.Bradley Secker for The New York TimesNayat Karakose, coordinator of the museum, in Hrant Dink’s office. “In the past we were able to cooperate more with universities, but now it’s almost impossible,” she said.Bradley Secker for The New York TimesTurkey’s minorities may face the greatest hazards. At the memorial museum for Hrant Dink, the Turkish-Armenian journalist assassinated in 2007, I looked through copies of his independent newspaper and watched footage of his television chat shows, each an admonishment of contemporary Turkey’s constricted freedom of expression. “Civil society actors are becoming more prudent,” said Nayat Karakose, who oversees the museum and is of Armenian descent. “They do events in a more cautious way.”For Mr. Eldem, who has spent his career studying Ottoman history, the reconversion of Hagia Sophia and the “Tudors”-style TV dramas are all of a piece, and are less confident than they seem. “Nationalism is not just glorification,” he said. “It’s also victimization. You can’t have proper nationalism if you’ve never suffered. Because suffering gives you also absolution from potential misconduct.”“So what the naïve Turkish nationalist, and especially neo-Ottomanist nationalist, wants,” he added, “is to bring together the idea of a glorious empire that would have been benign. That’s not a thing. An empire is an empire.”But whether or not Mr. Erdogan wins the election on Sunday, there are headwinds that no amount of cultural nationalism can stand against: above all, inflation and a currency crisis that has bankers and financial analysts flashing a red alert. “In that future, there’s no place for heritage,” Mr. Eldem said. “The Ottomans are not going to save you.”Hagia Sophia has been the epicenter of Orthodox Christianity, one of the Islamic world’s finest mosques and, for decades, a museum that was Turkey’s most visited cultural site. Now it is called the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque.Bradley Secker for The New York Times More

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      in US Politics

      Moms for Liberty, meet John Birch: the roots of US rightwing book bans

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      Moms for Liberty is a Florida-based pressure group which campaigns for book bans in US public schools, an issue at the heart of the national debate as Republican-run states seek to control or eliminate teaching of sex education, LGBTQ+ rights and racism in American history.But rightwing calls for school book bans are by no means a new phenomenon – and a look at the Moms for Liberty website indicates why.Moms for Liberty seeks to organise “Madison Meetups”, events it describes as “like a book club for the constitution!”, featuring discussion of “liberty, freedom and the foundation of our government”. Under “resources that we have found helpful”, the only resource offered is The Making of America, a book by W Cleon Skousen.In the early 1960s, Skousen was a hero to and a defender of the John Birch Society, a far-right group that campaigned against what it claimed was the communist threat to America.Matthew Dallek, a professor of political management at George Washington University, is the author of Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right. He points out that though the Birchers were not the only ones promoting book bans in the 60s, “they were likely the most visible group promoting book bans or promoting the policing of content in schools, libraries, movie theaters, even on newsstands”.The Birchers, Dallek adds, focused on “the so-called erosion of the moral fiber of the United States, but also the struggle to rid the country of what they regarded as really the socialist left wing”.The society still exists but its influence is greater than its presence, most obviously through a resurgence of Bircher-esque thought and action in the Republican party of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.In the society’s heyday, Dallek says, book bans and school board elections, another current battlefield, “gave Birchers a way to take action in their community.“They looked at where their kids went to school and their local library and the movie theater they would pass by. Part of their agenda was to insert what they considered Americanist publications, as opposed to communist propaganda.“What’s frightening now is that I don’t recall a time where those efforts were so often successful. Moms for Liberty and the other successors to the John Birch Society, they’re having a lot more success at actually implementing their vision.”Last month, the writers’ organisation Pen America reported a 28% rise in public school book bans in just six months. As the 2024 election approaches, attacks on the place of race in history classes and teaching on LGBTQ+ issues seem certain to feature in Republican debates and town halls.Dallek considers the Birchers’ influence on the Republican party over more than 60 years. But he can’t recall the society inspiring “any sweeping legislation like Florida has now passed, through three major bills. And one in particular, it’s very Orwellian. They have these education minders who have to approve all texts in school libraries. That was certainly a dream of the Birch Society.”Tactics are familiar too. Birchers often protested against what they called pornography in books and teaching, as a vehicle for communistic thought. Now, the hard right sees pornography in books on LGBTQ+ rights, in drag queen story hours, or in the casting of children’s plays.Dallek says: “Whatever the language is, whether it’s ‘woke’, or ‘progressive’, or ‘pornographic’, or ‘communistic’, in a way the brilliance of the Birchers and other groups is in the way they use language. They’re able to distill ideas and aspects of the culture they find offensive and brand them as something evil, something un-American, something that will twist and pollute the minds of kids.“I don’t know that they meant that it was literally communistic to teach sex ed in schools but it was a kind of brilliant shorthand, because they were able to mobilise a lot of supporters by saying this was a civilizational battle. A battle for whether your children will grow up being moral or not, whether they’ll have a decent life.“And if we want to bring it back to today, Ron DeSantis is out there claiming, ‘We’re only banning books that are pornographic or that kids should not be exposed to.’ But then when you’re talking about banning Toni Morrison? I mean, come on. It’s ridiculous.”But it’s real. The Bluest Eye, Morrison’s first novel, and her masterpiece Beloved have been removed from some Florida libraries.Dallek notes other echoes. For instance, the role of rightwing women.“Historically, schools have been in terms of teaching jobs often reserved for women. And so, ironically, in the 1960s and 70s, as feminism becomes a major force in the culture and many women expect to work outside the home and be active politically, conservative, really far-right women take an element of that and get active in their communities.“Women have been on the frontlines of many of these fights to ban books, to police what kids are learning. Parental rights, the whole idea … is I think focused at the moms and … imposing their version of Christian morals on public education and many public spaces.“To go back to the W Cleon Skousen thing” on the Moms for Liberty website, “it does suggest a link to the past. Skousen continued to write in the 1980s and 90s. He was a defender of the John Birch Society and was held up as a hero.”Skousen died in 2006. Seventeen years later, to Dallek his recommendation from Moms for Liberty “suggests there really is a tradition in modern American politics, on the far right, that has become much more mainstream.“Groups like Moms for Liberty understand that. That there’s a set of ideas, and a literature, and a whole kind of subculture around this effort to police ideas and morality in schools. And they are tapping into that very effectively.”
      Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right is published in the US by Hachette More

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      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on US book bans: time to fight back | Editorial

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      “A book is a loaded gun in the house next door,” warns a character in Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s dystopian vision of an America where books are considered so dangerous they must be incinerated. The novel appeared 70 years ago, in the aftermath of Nazi book burnings and amid McCarthyism and Soviet ideological repression. But the urge to ban books has resurged with a vengeance, with the American Library Association (ALA) recording a doubling of censorship attempts in 2022, to 1,269 across 32 states: the highest rate for decades. Pen America, which champions freedom of expression, tallied more than 2,500 cases in the last school year.These attempts are not merely more numerous but are also broadening and deepening. The decisions of school boards and districts take place in the context of politicians grasping electoral advantage and punitive yet often vaguely worded state laws on education – such as the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis’s, Stop-Woke Act. At least 10 states have passed legislation increasing parental power over library stock, or limiting students’ access. In place of spontaneous challenges to single titles come challenges to multiple titles, organised by campaign groups such as Moms for Liberty. The ALA says that 40% of attempts last year targeted 100 books or more.Not only schools but now community libraries too are under scrutiny. The efforts are also increasingly punitive. Missouri Republicans this week voted to defund all of the state’s public libraries after librarians challenged a bill that has removed more than 300 books and that threatens educators “providing sexually explicit material” with imprisonment or a fine of up to $2,000. A library in Michigan was defunded last year; another in Texas is under threat this week.These challenges are overwhelmingly from the right. And while liberal parents have sought to remove titles such as Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from mandatory reading lists over their approach to race, this time the demand from parents is not merely that their child should not have to read particular titles – but that no one’s child should be able to unless they buy it privately.Pen America notes: “It is the books that have long fought for a place on the shelf that are being targeted. Books by authors of color, by LGBTQ+ authors, by women. Books about racism, sexuality, gender, history.” They include works by celebrated children’s writers such as Judy Blume, literary greats including Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood – and even the comic picture book I Need a New Butt. Librarians are attacked as “paedophiles” over sex education titles or those depicting same-sex relationships. In part, this is a backlash against efforts to diversify reading matter in schools and libraries. The pandemic also gave parents greater insight into what their children are studying and fostered a “parental rights” movement rooted in opposition to mask mandates.The primary cost is to children denied appropriately selected books that could be life-affirming and life-changing – even, perhaps, life-saving. The chilling effect of challenges makes librarians and teachers second-guess their choices and cut book purchases. In two Florida counties, officials this year ordered teachers to cover up or remove classroom libraries entirely, pending a review of the texts – reportedly leaving weeping children begging: “Please don’t take my books.” But parents, librarians and communities are waking up to the threat, and are organising and educating to counter it. Books are the building blocks of civilisation. They must be defended.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      in Elections

      The Powerful Lobbyist Behind Kevin McCarthy: Jeff Miller

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      Jeff Miller is the new House speaker’s top fund-raiser and closest confidant. He is also one of Washington’s most prominent corporate lobbyists, an arrangement that is drawing scrutiny.WASHINGTON — As he waged his messy campaign to become House speaker, Representative Kevin McCarthy turned to a longtime friend, Jeff Miller, to serve as a kind of field general.Mr. Miller, his closest confidant, top fund-raiser and sometimes enforcer, hosted a pasta dinner and strategy session for the McCarthy political team at his luxury condominium in Washington. He then set up shop in the speaker’s office in the Capitol for the week of the vote, working the phones to persuade holdouts, tamping down conservative criticism on social media and urging some donors to press for “yes” votes from members they had funded.When Mr. McCarthy won, so did Mr. Miller, who in addition to his wide-ranging volunteer roles for his friend is one of Washington’s most prominent Republican lobbyists, representing a spectrum of blue-chip corporate clients with issues at stake in Washington.Rarely has a lobbyist enjoyed the access to a House speaker that Mr. Miller has with Mr. McCarthy, a California Republican. As Mr. McCarthy has gained power, Mr. Miller’s prominent place in his orbit has drawn increased scrutiny from watchdog groups that track political influence as well as from conservatives who see him as an unaccountable power behind the throne whose presence is starkly at odds with their increasingly populist, anti-corporate message.Mr. Miller’s clients include Apple, Anheuser-Busch, Dow Chemical, General Electric, the Wall Street giant Blackstone, Occidental Petroleum, the drugmaker trade group PhRMA, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and other companies, some of them girding for scrutiny from Republicans eager to take on what they see as anti-conservative bias among “woke” corporations.Responding to a post on Twitter from a reporter who had spotted Mr. Miller headed into Mr. McCarthy’s office during the early rounds of the vote for speaker, when Mr. McCarthy was coming up short, Representative Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican who was a leader of the opposition, tweeted, “McCarthy isn’t even speaker and the lobbyists are moving in!”Mr. Miller worked alongside Mr. McCarthy in his office during the speaker vote last month in the Capitol.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesAfter Mr. McCarthy became speaker, Representative Vern Buchanan, Republican of Florida, confronted Mr. McCarthy on the House floor. He was furious, according to an ally of Mr. Buchanan, because he felt that Mr. Miller and Mr. McCarthy had quietly thrown their weight behind the successful rival bid for the chairmanship of the powerful Ways and Means Committee by Representative Jason Smith, a Missouri Republican with whom Mr. Miller is friendly.An associate of Mr. Miller’s said he did not play any role in the battle over the Ways and Means chairmanship. But the perception among Republicans that he is already shaping the operations of Mr. McCarthy’s House majority is a telling indication of how Mr. Miller’s place at the intersection of power, money, influence and access has made him one of the most important behind-the-scenes figures in Washington.Mr. Miller declined to be interviewed. But he said in a statement that he “worked hard with Speaker McCarthy’s team during the speaker’s race because he’s my friend” and because Mr. McCarthy “knows how to build consensus around an agenda and then how to implement it.”Mr. Miller added, “I just want to be known as a guy who works hard for my clients and does right by my friends,” adding that “everything else is just noise.”Mr. McCarthy also declined to be interviewed. In a statement, Drew Florio, a spokesman for him, said the speaker and Mr. Miller are “lifelong friends,” and credited the lobbyist with playing “a key role in aiding Speaker McCarthy’s political fund-raising operation,” while stressing that his efforts were “on a volunteer basis.”But the blurriness of the lines between Mr. Miller’s lobbying and his support for Mr. McCarthy was underscored in the days after the speaker election.Mr. Miller helped organize three days of festivities to celebrate, including a gala dinner at which Mr. Miller took the stage to introduce Mr. McCarthy. “Man, Kevin, I have waited a long time to say this: Ladies and gentlemen, the speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy,” Mr. Miller told the audience of donors, corporate executives, members of Congress and other prominent Republicans, according to an attendee.The following morning featured a breakfast for donors and freshman House Republicans held at the Washington offices of one of Mr. Miller’s lobbying clients — Altria, the tobacco and e-cigarette company. Since July 2017, Altria has donated nearly $1.4 million to a super PAC associated with Mr. McCarthy and paid $1.3 million to Mr. Miller’s firm.Building InfluenceMr. Miller, 48, met Mr. McCarthy, 58, in the early 1990s. Mr. Miller was a high school student, and Mr. McCarthy was a district staff member for the Bakersfield, Calif., area’s congressman.After joining the Naval Reserves, Mr. Miller took a job with the county Republican Party, where he worked with Mr. McCarthy and began ascending the party ladder in California. He became a lobbyist, developing connections to major donors and politicians around the country, including Gov. Rick Perry of Texas.Mr. Miller moved to Austin and helped Mr. Perry build out a political operation that became the foundation for a 2016 White House bid; Mr. Miller served as campaign manager. When Mr. Perry bowed out of the race, he and Mr. Miller threw their support to Mr. Trump. After the election, Mr. Miller moved quickly to break into a Washington lobbying world that had been dominated by powerful firms with long track records and big names, but few connections to the incoming Trump administration.Mr. Miller served as the campaign manager for Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential campaign in 2016.Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesMr. Miller was a finance vice chair for Mr. Trump’s inauguration and helped guide Mr. Perry through the Senate confirmation process to become Mr. Trump’s energy secretary. Within 13 months of Mr. Perry being sworn into office, Mr. Miller’s new firm, Miller Strategies, had registered to lobby for 24 clients — including energy interests for which he facilitated meetings with Mr. Perry — and collected nearly $3.4 million in lobbying fees. It was an impressive amount for a small new firm, but it was only the start.Mr. Miller, who spends much of his time with his family in Austin, paid nearly $3 million for a two-bedroom condominium at City Center, a location favored by the Trump set, that he would turn into the nerve center of what would become one of the leading influence operations in town.He began hosting fund-raisers, donor dinners and gatherings that drew a rotating cast of Trump world operatives, McCarthy allies, journalists and other prominent figures, with a well-stocked bar inside and guests smoking cigars on an expansive private outdoor deck. Mr. Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Mr. Perry were among his guests.According to Federal Election Commission records, Mr. Miller helped raise about $15 million for Mr. Trump’s unsuccessful re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee in the run-up to the 2020 election. But he raised far more than that for other campaigns and committees, including those associated with Mr. Trump and Mr. McCarthy, according to people familiar with his efforts.Mr. Miller said in a statement that he spends about half of his time making fund-raising calls for various Republican candidates and groups “that I’m passionate about.”Leveraging ConnectionsIn the fall of 2017, the microchip maker Broadcom, which was exploring major acquisitions that would need U.S. government approval, hired Miller Strategies to lobby the Trump White House and Congress.Two days after Mr. Miller registered to represent the company, its chief executive, Hock E. Tan, who until then had only made a single federal political donation, gave $65,000 to political committees linked to Mr. McCarthy, according to Federal Election Commission records.Two weeks later, thanks to Mr. Miller and his connections to Mr. Trump’s team, Mr. Tan was in the Oval Office, standing between Mr. Trump and Mr. McCarthy as cameras rolled, praising the president’s proposed corporate tax cuts and announcing Broadcom’s plan to return operations from Singapore to the United States. The relocation was seen partly as an effort to minimize potential U.S. government concerns about its planned acquisitions..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“Thanks to you, Mr. President, business conditions have steadily improved,” Mr. Tan said, as Mr. Miller stood unnoticed at the back of the room.After journalists left the room, Mr. Trump thanked Mr. Miller for his fund-raising assistance.“I hear you’re doing great work for us,” Mr. Trump said, according to a person who attended the event. “They say nobody raises money like you.”In 2017, Hock E. Tan, the chief executive of Broadcom, made an appearance with Mr. McCarthy at the White House after Mr. Miller had registered to represent the company.Tom Brenner/The New York TimesAbout two weeks after the Oval Office event, Broadcom announced that it had finalized one of the acquisitions, having won approval from the U.S. government with assistance from Mr. Miller and his team. Broadcom’s larger acquisition — of the rival chip maker Qualcomm — was subsequently blocked by Mr. Trump, who cited national security concerns.Still, at the time, the Oval Office appearance was a victory for Broadcom and Mr. Tan. And it had benefits for the Trump White House, which used the event to sell the tax cut proposal that Mr. McCarthy, then House majority leader, helped shepherd through Congress and onto the president’s desk for signing weeks later.“That event was a perfect example of what makes Jeff so effective,” said Cliff Sims, the Trump White House aide who worked with Mr. Miller to arrange it. “He came with an idea that was helpful to what we were trying to accomplish, and his client ultimately benefited from it as well.”Even as Mr. Miller established himself as one of the go-to lobbyists for influencing the Trump administration, he retained his close ties to Mr. McCarthy, with the congressman’s political and government roles sometimes intersecting with the lobbyist’s work.Mr. Musk, the billionaire technology entrepreneur, has been a donor to Mr. McCarthy for more than a decade, and one of his companies, the rocket manufacturer and NASA contractor SpaceX, has operations in Mr. McCarthy’s hometown, Bakersfield, Calif.In 2020, Miller Strategies registered to lobby for SpaceX and has been paid more than $300,000 by the company since then, according to lobbying filings. One of Mr. Miller’s lead lobbyists on the account, George Caram, had worked for Mr. McCarthy as a congressional aide partly on space travel issues.Mr. Musk, who had been interviewed by Mr. McCarthy during a donor retreat organized by Mr. Miller in Jackson Hole, Wyo., last summer, and months later would acquire Twitter, declared his support last month for Mr. McCarthy’s bid to become speaker.Mr. Miller has also taken on hardball political tasks for Mr. McCarthy.As relations turned frosty last year between Mr. McCarthy and Representative Liz Cheney over her criticism of Mr. Trump, Mr. Miller quietly warned Republican political consultants to stop working for her re-election campaign in Wyoming or risk losing lucrative business from committees affiliated with Mr. McCarthy.Last year, Mr. Miller warned Republican political consultants to stop working for Representative Liz Cheney’s re-election campaign in Wyoming after her criticism of former President Donald J. Trump.Emily Elconin for The New York TimesMr. McCarthy would later officially endorse Ms. Cheney’s challenger in the Republican primary for her seat, Harriet Hageman, an unusual move for a congressional leader. It was followed weeks later by a fund-raiser for Ms. Hageman at Mr. Miller’s Washington condo touting Mr. McCarthy as a “special guest,” according to an invitation obtained by Politico.Tech TensionsBy the final year of the Trump administration, Miller Strategies’ lobbying revenues had grown to nearly $14 million. In 2021, with President Biden in office, the firm’s revenues dropped to less than $8 million.But Mr. Miller’s connections to Mr. McCarthy’s conference remained valuable for some of the world’s biggest companies.In June 2021, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a package of antitrust legislation targeting tech giants including Amazon and Apple, which had retained Miller Strategies in 2019.One bill was intended to loosen the control over the app marketplaces operated by Apple and Google. Another would have barred those platforms, as well as Amazon and Facebook, from giving preferential treatment to their products and services over those offered by competitors.Mr. Miller lobbied House Republicans against the bills, using the access he had built through fund-raising to urge lawmakers to take their names off the bills as co-sponsors — a bold ask.At a lunch at the private Capitol Hill Club, Mr. Miller pulled aside one Republican co-sponsor for whom he had raised money, Representative Lance Gooden of Texas.“He and I got into it, but, I mean, we weren’t fighting or anything — we were just disagreeing,” said Mr. Gooden.Mr. Gooden did not back down. But he said Mr. Miller is an effective lobbyist because “he’s a hustler” and “he was able to raise huge amounts of money for the Trump campaign, for House Republicans.” Mr. Miller “is constantly on the phone working to get Republicans elected. And if he’s not doing that, he’s working for his clients,” Mr. Gooden said.During the fight over the antitrust bills, Mr. Miller sometimes seemed to be doing both things at once.A few days after the bills were introduced, he stopped by a retreat he had organized for major donors to Mr. McCarthy’s political operation at the Hay-Adams Hotel, which featured a panel on the “growing threat of Big Tech censorship.” Mr. Miller had conversations there with at least two members of Congress in which he described the bills as government overreach that would empower Biden administration regulators and do nothing to mitigate the tech platforms’ stifling of conservatives, according to one attendee.Less than two weeks after the retreat, Mr. McCarthy offered what his office called a “framework to stop the bias and check Big Tech,” which echoed Mr. Miller’s arguments.But Mr. McCarthy’s efforts were not seen as a much of a threat to the tech companies.Mr. Florio, the spokesman for Mr. McCarthy, said in a statement that the framework was “the result of months of work between leaders of the conference, the House Judiciary Committee and the countless Americans whose free speech was silenced by Big Tech.”Critics thought they detected Mr. Miller’s fingerprints. The Fox News host Tucker Carlson asserted on his show, which is influential on the anti-corporate populist right, that Mr. Miller’s lobbying for Amazon and Apple was “one potential explanation” for Mr. McCarthy’s opposition to the antitrust bills.Mr. Carlson said that Mr. Miller was “Kevin McCarthy’s closest adviser.”“Are you shocked that Kevin McCarthy is doing what his corporate clients want him to do?” he added. “Maybe you shouldn’t be.”The two bills considered most aggressive toward Mr. Miller’s clients were never brought up for votes on the floor of the House, as technology companies lobbied furiously against them across party lines in both the House and the Senate.An employee at the Amazon Fulfillment center in Robbinsville Township, N.J. Mr. Miller’s role as a lobbyist for Big Tech is showing signs of becoming a flash point in a Republican Party.Julio Cortez/Associated PressAbout two weeks before the midterm elections, Miller Strategies terminated its contract with Amazon’s cloud computing arm before it was set to expire. Mr. Miller, a person familiar with his thinking said, did not like that his work for the company, a frequent target of tech critics across the political spectrum, was being wielded by detractors as a cudgel against Mr. McCarthy. Days later, Miller Strategies registered to lobby for more money for Oracle, which competes with Amazon’s cloud computing products and has top executives with ties to Republicans.But Mr. Miller’s role as a lobbyist for Big Tech is showing signs of becoming a flash point in a Republican Party increasingly split between a traditional pro-business wing and a populist right that is especially eager to rein in the big social media platforms and other corporations perceived as being sympathetic to the left.Last week, Representative Ken Buck of Colorado, who had joined Mr. Gooden among the co-sponsors of the antitrust bills in 2021, was passed over as chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, where he had been the top Republican last Congress. Instead, the subcommittee will be chaired by Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who opposes government spending and intervention in the economy, while the full committee is chaired by Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a close McCarthy ally.“Kevin McCarthy and Jim Jordan pretend like they’re conservative warriors against Big Tech, when in reality they’re doing Big Tech’s bidding by stopping bipartisan antitrust reforms that would hold Big Tech accountable,” said Mike Davis, a former Republican congressional lawyer who started a nonprofit group that pushes for antitrust enforcement.Mr. McCarthy “cares about keeping the lobbyists in Washington happy,” Mr. Davis said last month on a podcast, highlighting Mr. Miller’s work for Amazon and Apple and calling him “the campaign manager for Kevin McCarthy’s race for speaker.”But there is no sign that the criticism is hobbling Mr. Miller.Mr. Miller’s firm has signed six new clients since the month before the midterm elections, including the Federation of American Hospitals and the PGA Tour.Miller Strategies announced last month that it had hired three new employees — including Mr. McCarthy’s political director, Stephen Ruppel — in anticipation of a surge in business.And shortly thereafter, an invitation was sent out for a fund-raising dinner next week honoring Mr. McCarthy, with ticket prices starting at $50,000 and proceeds going to his political operation. On the invitation, obtained by Punchbowl News, Mr. Miller’s name is listed above those of a raft of top Republican congressional leaders. More

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      in Elections

      Meet Kyrsten Sinema, Former Democrat of Arizona

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. I hope I’ve succeeded in turning you into a World Cup fan. In the meantime, any choice words about, or for, Kyrsten Sinema, former Democrat of Arizona?Gail Collins: Well, Bret, you’ve at least turned me into a fan of the Times coverage of World Cup … activities. I also sorta like times like this when there are a billion different games on TV — not just soccer — and for a while every day, people don’t feel obliged to think about the rest of the world.Bret: Such as …Gail: Such as Kyrsten Sinema. Not a fan of hers from the get-go. Always seemed as if her compulsive effort to prove she wasn’t really a loyal Democrat was less about political independence and more about making wealthy donors happy.Bret: And this is on the theory that other politicians don’t care for what their wealthy donors think?Gail: But her official spin is that the two-party system is broken, and virtue lies in standing outside as an independent. I hate that kind of thinking.Bret: Whereas I love it. To me, the choice these days between Republicans and Democrats is about as appealing as a dinner invitation from Hannibal Lecter: Either you get your heart cut out or your brain removed, and both get served with a side of fava beans and a nice Chianti.Seriously, you don’t see any virtue to wanting to break this awful political duopoly?Gail: Virtue, for me, lies in fighting to make the two parties better. Pick the one that’s closest to your beliefs and get busy. Fight for the good local leaders and nominees.It’s way easier to just announce you’re superior to both of them and start your own group. The new gang probably won’t last long, and even if it does, its big achievement will most likely be to draw votes away from the major party candidates you most agree with.Never recovered from Ralph Nader’s Green Party candidacy for president in 2000 — a noble quest on the issues front that wound up costing Al Gore the job.Bret: A few years ago I would have agreed with you. But the Republican Party is pretty much irredeemable, while the Democrats are … just not the team I’m ever going to bat for.Gail: Come on in. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are waiting with open arms …Bret: Not so sure the Dems would ever want me in the first place: I heart Texas not taxes.As for Sinema, having her join someone like Maine’s Angus King as an independent shows it’s at least possible to have an alternative. I realize she has some very self-interested political reasons for doing so, since the move will spare her a primary challenge from the left if she runs for re-election in 2024. But it also reminds the party establishments that they shouldn’t take their centrist voters for granted. Now I wish a few sane-minded Republicans might go ahead and join her. Lisa Murkowski, hello?Gail: Hey, weird that of the two of us, I’m the one who thinks somebody should try to save the Republican Party.Bret: Raising the dead is beyond our powers, Gail.Gail: You know I don’t do foreign affairs, but I do feel obliged to ask you about Brittney Griner. Do you think Joe Biden did the right thing in making the trade that got her out of prison in Russia?Bret: Well, obviously I’m happy for Griner and her family that she’s back after her 10-month ordeal. And it says everything about the moral difference between the United States and Russia that they will take a harmless person hostage so they can trade her for one of their most notorious gangsters.On the other hand, I don’t understand why we didn’t prioritize the release of Paul Whelan, an American who has been wrongfully detained in a Russian prison for four years but doesn’t have the benefit of Griner’s celebrity. Nor should we forget Marc Fogel, a 61-year-old American teacher trapped in one of Putin’s prisons. My advice to the Biden administration is to tell Russia that $1 billion of its foreign reserves will be seized for every additional day these two stay in prison.Gail: Hope they’re listening.Bret: Oh, and speaking of dealing with gangsters — your thoughts on the current crop of legal cases against the former guy?Gail: I’ve never thought — and still don’t — that a former president is going to go to jail, even for stealing federal documents or rousing violent crowds to march on the Capitol.Bret: Agree. Alas.Gail: But I’ve always had a yearning that he might wind up bankrupt and, say, living in a Motel 6. Knew that was impossible — told myself to remember all the money he can make just on speaking tours or hosting parties at Mar-a-Lago.Bret: Pretty depressing how American culture has descended from “My Dinner With Andre” to that dinner with Kanye.Gail: Now, though, I’m sort of wondering. Is there going to be a market for this guy — chooser of terrible Senate candidates and breaker of bread with neo-Nazis — even just as a celebrity?Bret: I had nearly lost hope that the day would ever come, but I think we are finally watching Trump self-destruct before our eyes even faster than anyone else can destroy him. The midterm results seem to have persuaded a critical mass of Republican voters and politicians that he’s toxic for their chances. Dinner with his antisemitic pals seems to have been the icing on the cake — or whatever the exact opposite of “icing on the cake” is. Toxic algae in the cesspool?Gail: Rotting rutabaga in the refuse? Sorry, that doesn’t actually make much sense. I was seduced by all the R’s.Bret: Gail, would you mind if I rant for a minute?Gail: Bret, I love it when you rant. Even when I hate it.Bret: There’s a special place in hell for the Paul Ryan Republicans — let’s call them PRR’s. What I mean is a certain type of well-heeled, intellectually minded conservative who never liked Trump’s person or politics and who occasionally tut-tutted at his vilest excesses, but who consistently made excuses for him and his presidency while heaping scorn on Never Trumpers as a bunch of virtue-signaling prigs. These Trump-appeasing PRR’s were prepared to defend and vote for him again until the day after the midterms, when they finally realized that he was a titanic political liability.Gail: Well, I truly do love this rant. Go on.Bret: To adapt something Winston Churchill purportedly said to Neville Chamberlain after Munich in 1938: In 2016 conservatives were given the choice between electoral defeat and personal dishonor. They chose dishonor. In the end, they still got defeated.Gail: You know I’m going to ask who’s a Churchillian pick in the Republican world. For instance, Ron DeSantis was never a huge Trump pal, but I think that was only because he was eyeing his job.Bret: So, weirdly, I have much less of a moral objection to those Republicans like DeSantis who liked Trump to begin with, whether because they agreed with most of his policies or appreciated his thumb-in-the-eye personality, or both. At least they came about their support for Trump honestly, without convoluted rationalizations and self-exculpations and various suspensions of disbelief. Of course I don’t agree with them, but I long ago stopped disdaining them.Speaking of disdain, any views on all of these disclosures about Twitter’s speech policies?Gail: Is there any way we can make it illegal for the richest man in the world to own one of the largest social networks? Guess not, huh?Bret: Probably not, though I doubt Musk will profit from the acquisition.Gail: Definitely felt sorry for the Twitter workers who discovered that Musk was putting beds in their work space. And his wild political seesawing would ruin the influence of anybody who wasn’t closing in on a quarter of a trillion dollars.But here we are, and I don’t have any great strategy for making him behave in a more responsible way when it comes to things like … keeping violent hatemongers off his platform. Do you have one?Bret: Violent hatemongers aside, I thought it was pretty appalling to see the lengths to which pre-Musk Twitter went to ban legitimate news stories, like The New York Post’s scoop about Hunter Biden’s laptop, and to downplay views that went against conventional wisdom, like the Stanford professor of medicine who warned about the ill-effects of lockdowns, and to coordinate its decisions with the Biden team — and then mislead the public about what it was doing. Even progressives like Ro Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley in Congress, warned Twitter about its anti-free speech attitude, which is entirely to his credit and not at all to theirs.Gail: Bret scores …Bret: I guess the point is, we don’t want giant corporations banning political speech, whether it comes from the left or the right, and that goes especially for companies whose entire business model relies on the principle of free speech. For exposing this, I have to give Musk credit.Gail: We’ll pick this up again, Bret. Somehow I suspect Elon Musk will follow us into the new year.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