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      Potential Trump Jan. 6 Charges Include a Civil Rights Law Violation

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      A target letter sent by the special counsel investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to reverse his election loss cited three statutes that could be the basis for a prosecution.Federal prosecutors have introduced a new twist in the Jan. 6 investigation by suggesting in a target letter that they could charge former President Donald J. Trump with violating a civil rights statute that dates back to the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, according to three people familiar with the matter.The letter to Mr. Trump from the special counsel, Jack Smith, referred to three criminal statutes as part of the grand jury investigation into Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss, according to two people with knowledge of its contents. Two of the statutes were familiar from the criminal referral by the House Jan. 6 committee and months of discussion by legal experts: conspiracy to defraud the government and obstruction of an official proceeding.But the third criminal law cited in the letter was a surprise: Section 241 of Title 18 of the United States Code, which makes it a crime for people to “conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person” in the “free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”Congress enacted that statute after the Civil War to provide a tool for federal agents to go after Southern whites, including Ku Klux Klan members, who engaged in terrorism to prevent formerly enslaved African Americans from voting. But in the modern era, it has been used more broadly, including in cases of voting fraud conspiracies.A Justice Department spokesman declined to discuss the target letter and Mr. Smith’s theory for bringing the Section 241 statute into the Jan. 6 investigation. But the modern usage of the law raised the possibility that Mr. Trump, who baselessly declared the election he lost to have been rigged, could face prosecution on accusations of trying to rig the election himself.A series of 20th-century cases upheld application of the law in cases involving alleged tampering with ballot boxes by casting false votes or falsely tabulating votes after the election was over, even if no specific voter could be considered the victim.In a 1950 opinion by the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, for example, Judge Charles C. Simons wrote of applying Section 241 in a ballot box-stuffing case that the right to an honest count “is a right possessed by each voting elector, and to the extent that the importance of his vote is nullified, wholly or in part, he has been injured in the free exercise of a right or privilege secured to him by the laws and Constitution of the United States.”In a 1974 Supreme Court opinion upholding the use of Section 241 to charge West Virginians who cast fake votes on a voting machine, Justice Thurgood Marshall cited Judge Simons and added that every voter “has a right under the Constitution to have his vote fairly counted, without its being distorted by fraudulently cast votes.”The line of 20th-century cases raised the prospect that Mr. Smith and his team could be weighing using that law to cover efforts by Mr. Trump and his associates to flip the outcome of states he lost. Those efforts included the recorded phone conversation in which Mr. Trump tried to bully Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough additional votes to overcome Mr. Biden’s win in that state and promoting a plan to use so-called fake electors — self-appointed slates of pro-Trump electors from states won by Mr. Biden — to help block or delay congressional certification of Mr. Trump’s defeat.“It seems like under 241 there’s at least a right to an honest counting of the votes,” said Norman Eisen, who worked for the House Judiciary Committee during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment. “Submitting an alternate electoral certificate to Congress (as opposed to casting false votes or counting wrong) is a novel scenario, but it seems like it would violate this right.”The prospect of charging Mr. Trump under the other two statutes cited in the target letter is less novel, if not without hurdles. Among other things, in its final report last year, the House committee that investigated the events that culminated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol had recommended that the Justice Department charge the former president under both of them.One, Section 371 of Title 18, makes it a crime to conspire to defraud the United States. The other, Section 1512, includes a provision that makes it a crime to corruptly obstruct an official proceeding.A spokesman for Mr. Trump declined requests to clarify what was in the letter.Citing the statutes in the letter, which Mr. Trump has said he received on Sunday, does not necessarily mean that any charges brought by Mr. Smith would have to be based on them. But the letter’s contents provide a road map to investigators’ thinking.The conspiracy to defraud the United States statute, if used, raises the question of who Mr. Trump’s co-conspirators would be.Some of those who worked most closely with Mr. Trump in promoting the lie that Mr. Trump had been robbed of a victory by widespread fraud, including lawyers like Rudolph W. Giuliani and John Eastman, had not received target letters, their lawyers said on Tuesday.The corrupt obstruction of a proceeding charge has been used against hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters and has served as the Justice Department’s go-to count in describing the central event that day: the disruption of the Electoral College certification process that was taking place inside the Capitol during a joint session of Congress.The law was originally passed as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a measure meant to curb corporate malfeasance. Defense lawyers for several rioters have challenged its use against their client, saying it was meant to stop crimes like witness tampering or document destruction and had been unfairly stretched to include the chaos at the Capitol.But in April, a federal appeals court upheld the viability of applying that charge to participants in the Capitol attack. Still, unlike ordinary rioters, Mr. Trump did not physically participate in the storming of the Capitol, although he had summoned supporters to Washington that day and railed about the unwillingness of Vice President Mike Pence, who was presiding over the proceedings in Congress, to stop them.A second attempt to invalidate the obstruction count in the federal appeals court in Washington has focused specifically on a provision of the law dictating that defendants must act “corruptly” in committing the obstructive act.Defense lawyers have argued that this provision does not apply to many ordinary Jan. 6 rioters who did not act corruptly because they stood to gain nothing personally by entering the Capitol. It could, however, be applied more easily to Mr. Trump, who stood to gain an election victory by obstructing the certification process.William K. Rashbaum More

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      What Frederick Douglass Knew That Trump and DeSantis Don’t

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      There was a moment during the Trump administration when the president and his most ideologically committed advisers searched for a way to end birthright citizenship.Enshrined in the first sentence of the first section of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, birthright citizenship means that anyone and everyone born on American soil is an American citizen. Written to secure the social transformations wrought by the Civil War, it is a cornerstone of the United States as a multiracial democracy.President Donald Trump would end it, he decided, by executive order. “It was always told to me that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don’t,” he said when announcing the effort in 2018, falsely asserting, “We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States — with all of those benefits. It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. And it has to end.”Fortunately, Trump was wrong. There is no way, short of a constitutional amendment, to nullify the birthright citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment. Nor was there any question of its meaning and intent. After fierce pushback from legal scholars on both the left and the right, Trump dropped the issue.But he didn’t forget about it. Earlier this year, Trump announced that if he were elected president again, he would ban birthright citizenship through executive order. Not to be outdone in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, said that he, too, would end birthright citizenship if elected president.“Stop the invasion,” said DeSantis’s blueprint for immigration policy. “No excuses.” He is pledging to “take action to end the idea that the children of illegal aliens are entitled to birthright citizenship if they are born in the United States.” He also contends, “Dangling the prize of citizenship to the future offspring of illegal immigrants is a major driver of illegal migration,” adding that “it is also inconsistent with the original understanding of the 14th Amendment.”The main reason DeSantis has followed Trump down this path is that he appears to be running to be the understudy to the former president. If Trump is forced out of the race because his legal troubles push him out of presidential politics, then DeSantis will take the standard for the MAGA faithful. Or so he hopes.At the same time, it’s clear that DeSantis’s position is as much about ideology as it is about opportunism. His attack on birthright citizenship is consistent with his crusade to purge “wokeness” from schools and classrooms in the state of Florida, where officials have banned books and suppressed instruction on, among other subjects, the history of American racism.The attack on birthright citizenship is an attempt to stigmatize and remove from society an entire class of people. And the attack on so-called wokeness is an attempt to delegitimize and remove from society an entire way of understanding the world. Together, the attacks form an assault on two of the pillars of the egalitarian ideal.Here, it is worth taking a brief tour of the history of birthright citizenship in the United States. Before the 14th Amendment, the boundaries around citizenship were ill defined. Although the idea of birthright citizenship was present in English common law at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, the Constitution as ratified said nothing about acquiring citizenship by either birth or naturalization.In 1790, Congress limited citizenship by naturalization to “free White persons … of good character,” but was silent on the question of citizenship by birth. As the 18th century came to a close and the 19th century progressed, one prominent view was that there was no citizenship in the United States as such; there was only citizenship in a state, which conferred national citizenship by virtue of the state’s place in the Union. To the extent that citizenship came with rights, the scope of those rights was a question of state laws and state constitutions.But there were always proponents of a broader, more expansive and rights-bearing birthright citizenship. They were free Black Americans, who needed to anchor themselves in a world where their freedom was tenuous and uncertain.“We are Americans, having a birthright citizenship,” wrote Martin Delany, the free Black journalist and antislavery orator, in his 1852 pamphlet “The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States.” Delany, as the historian Martha S. Jones noted in “Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America,” called on Black Americans to leave the United States. And yet, he still claimed the country as his own.“Our common country is the United States,” Delany wrote. “Here were we born, here raised and educated; here are the scenes of childhood; the pleasant associations of our school going days; the loved enjoyments of our domestic and fireside relations, and the sacred graves of our departed fathers and mothers, and from here will we not be driven by any policy that may be schemed against us.”Against legislative efforts to make their lives in America impossible to live, free Blacks asserted that, in Delany’s words, “the rights of the colored man in this country to citizenship are fixed,” attached not just to the states, but to the United States.Jones noted that even those opposed to emigration, like the men of the 1853 Colored National Convention in Rochester, N.Y., mirrored Delany’s thinking. “We are Americans, and as Americans, we would speak to Americans,” declared the group. “We address you not as aliens nor as exiles, humbly asking to be permitted to dwell among you in peace; but we address you as American citizens asserting their rights on their own native soil.”With his 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, however, Chief Justice Roger Taney foreclosed the constitutional recognition of Black citizenship and defined the United States, in true Jacksonian form, as a white man’s country. Black people, he wrote, “were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.” They had no rights, he added, “which the white man was bound to respect.”The birthright citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, based on similar language found in the Civil Rights Act of 1866, was a direct response to and a rebuke of Taney’s reasoning. Having won the argument on the battlefield, the United States would amend its Constitution to establish an inclusive and, in theory, egalitarian national citizenship.The authors of the 14th Amendment knew exactly what they were doing. In a country that had already seen successive waves of mass immigration, they knew that birthright citizenship would extend beyond Black and white Americans to people of other hues and backgrounds. That was the point.Asked by an opponent if the clause would “have the effect of naturalizing the children of Chinese and Gypsies born in this country,” Senator Lyman Trumbull, who helped draft the language of birthright citizenship in the Civil Rights Act, replied “Undoubtedly.” Senator John Conness of California said outright that he was “ready to accept the provision proposed in this constitutional amendment, that the children born here of Mongolian parents shall be declared by the Constitution of the United States to be entitled to civil rights and to equal protection before the law with others.”In 1867, around the time Congress was debating and formulating the 14th Amendment, Frederick Douglass delivered a speech in Boston where he outlined his vision of a “composite nationality,” an America that stood as a beacon for all peoples, built on the foundation of an egalitarian republic. “I want a home here not only for the Negro, the mulatto and the Latin races; but I want the Asiatic to find a home here in the United States, and feel at home here, both for his sake and for ours,” Douglass said. “The outspread wings of the American Eagle are broad enough to shelter all who are likely to come.”If birthright citizenship is the constitutional provision that makes a multiracial democracy of equals possible, then it is no wonder that it now lies in the cross hairs of men who lead a movement devoted to unraveling that particular vision of the American republic.Embedded in birthright citizenship, in other words, is the potential for a freer, more equal America. For Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, that appears to be the problem.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Elecciones en Guatemala: lo que hay que saber

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      Los comicios en la nación centroamericana están marcados por la exclusión de importantes candidatos y llamados a tomar medidas enérgicas contra la delincuencia.Guatemala, el país más poblado de Centroamérica, votará este domingo en unas elecciones presidenciales que están dirigiendo el foco de atención a la erosión del Estado de derecho en una nación que se ha convertido en una fuente importante de migración hacia Estados Unidos.La incipiente democracia del país tras el fin de una guerra civil hace unas cuatro décadas que dejó cientos de miles de personas desaparecidas o muertas —una de las más sangrientas en la historia reciente latinoamericana— ha decaído en años recientes bajo un gobierno cada vez más autoritario.El poder judicial se ha utilizado como arma arrojadiza y ha forzado al exilio a decenas de jueces y fiscales que se dedicaban a combatir la corrupción. La libertad de prensa también ha recibido ataques: este mes, el editor de un importante periódico que expuso muchos episodios de corrupción fue sentenciado a seis años de prisión tras haber sido acusado de delitos financieros.El Tribunal Supremo Electoral de Guatemala, un país de 18 millones de habitantes, ha incrementado las preocupaciones sobre los ataques a las normas democráticas tras haber descalificado a varios candidatos presidenciales importantes que eran percibidos como una amenaza a la clase política y económica dominante.La descalificación de varios candidatos de la contienda presidencial, entre ellos Carlos Pineda, ha generado dudas sobre la legitimidad de las elecciones del domingo.Daniele Volpe para The New York TimesLas tensiones en torno a la inestable democracia de Guatemala han dejado a algunos votantes desilusionados y preguntándose si deberían incluso molestarse en ir a votar.“Creo que no deberían celebrarse las elecciones”, afirmó Óscar Guillén, de 70 años, quien explicó que tenía planeado dejar su voto en blanco para expresar su descontento.Los electores todavía podrán elegir entre un nutrido grupo de más de 20 candidatos, ninguno de los cuales se prevé que obtenga una mayoría el domingo, lo que obligaría a ir a una segunda vuelta el 20 de agosto entre los dos primeros lugares.Las segundas vueltas se han vuelto comunes en Guatemala desde que los acuerdos de paz de 1996 pusieron fin un conflicto interno que duró 36 años y que estuvo marcado por brutales tácticas de contrainsurgencia que resultaron en un genocidio contra la comunidad indígena.El presidente actual de Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, tiene prohibido por ley buscar la reelección. Pero incluso luego de que un aumento pronunciado en los crímenes violentos y un costo de vida extremadamente alto causaron que el mandatario, conservador, sea profundamente impopular, los candidatos líderes en la contienda son de tendencia en general conservadora, lo que sugiere que habrá continuidad con la clase política dominante del país.La votación no es obligatoria en Guatemala y la tasa de abstención, que casi llegó al 40 por ciento en las últimas elecciones presidenciales en 2019, será observada de cerca como un indicador del descontento entre los electores.A continuación, lo que debes saber sobre las elecciones de este domingo.Sandra Torres parece ser la principal candidata, con niveles de apoyo que rondan el 20 por ciento.Daniele Volpe para The New York Times¿Quién se está postulando a la presidencia?Ninguno de los tres candidatos principales tiene proyectado obtener ni siquiera algo cercano a la mayoría necesaria para ganar en primera vuelta el domingo. En diferentes encuestas, Sandra Torres, una ex primera dama, parece ser la principal candidata, con niveles de apoyo que rondan el 20 por ciento. (Según las encuestas, los números del candidato presidencial del partido de Giammattei rondan cifras bajas de un solo dígito)Torres, de 67 años, estuvo casada con Álvaro Colom, presidente de Guatemala de 2008 a 2012 y quien falleció este año, a los 71 años de edad. Se divorciaron en 2011, cuando Torres intentó postularse por primera vez a la presidencia, en un intento de sortear una ley que prohíbe que los familiares del presidente puedan presentarse como candidatos.Torres no logró conseguir la autorización para postularse a la presidencia ese año, pero obtuvo el segundo lugar en las dos elecciones presidenciales más recientes. Después de las elecciones de 2019, fue acusada de cometer violaciones de financiación de campaña y pasó tiempo en arresto domiciliario.A finales del año pasado, un juez sentenció que no había suficientes pruebas para proceder al juicio de Torres, lo que le permitió volver a postularse. Durante la campaña, ha logrado conseguir el apoyo de su partido, la Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE), el cual está bien arraigado y es ampliamente conocido en Guatemala.Torres, al igual que sus dos principales rivales, ha expresado admiración hacia la represión a las pandillas ejecutada por el gobierno del país vecino de El Salvador, la cual ha ayudado a disminuir los niveles de violencia, pero también ha planteado preocupaciones referentes a abusos de derechos humanos.Torres también ha prometido ampliar las transferencias de efectivo y la asistencia alimentaria para las familias de bajos recursos, valiéndose de su experiencia como primera dama, cuando fue el rostro de este tipo de iniciativas populares.Otra de las principales candidatas, Zury Ríos, de 55 años, es también una figura conocida en la política guatemalteca. Es la hija de Efraín Ríos Montt, quien fue dictador del país a principios de la década de 1980 y que fue condenado por genocidio en 2013 por intentar exterminar a los ixiles, un pueblo maya indígena de Guatemala.Aunque la evidencia contra su padre fue meticulosamente documentada y detallada en su juicio, Ríos ha negado repetidas veces que haya ocurrido un genocidio. Su partido ultraconservador está liderado por figuras que tienen vínculos con su padre.Sin embargo, aunque Ríos publicita sus credenciales conservadoras y su fe cristiana evangélica, tiene un historial más matizado como exdiputada del Congreso, donde forjó alianzas en un esfuerzo por obtener la aprobación legislativa para proyectos de ley enfocados a mejorar las condiciones para las mujeres y la comunidad LGBTQ.Otro de los principales aspirantes a la presidencia es Edmond Mulet, de 72 años, un abogado y experimentado exdiplomático que ha sido el embajador de Guatemala en Estados Unidos y la Unión Europea, así como jefe de la Misión de Estabilización de las Naciones Unidas en Haití.Si bien Mulet ha destacado su experiencia diplomática, también es conocido por su labor como abogado en la década de 1980, cuando fue arrestado en conexión con su trabajo organizando adopciones de niños guatemaltecos por parte de familias canadienses.Aunque fue puesto en libertad rápidamente y ha negado haber cometido algún delito, Mulet ha tenido que invertir tiempo en la campaña para explicar su participación en este episodio.En su campaña, Mulet está representando a un partido nuevo que no ocupa ningún escaño en el Congreso, pero que ha forjado una coalición competitiva de candidatos a nivel local y nacional para las elecciones del domingo. Entre sus propuestas se encuentran la creación de una pensión universal, el incremento de salarios policiales y la construcción de una nueva cárcel de máxima seguridad.Alrededor del 20 por ciento de los legisladores en el congreso de Guatemala enfrentan algún tipo de acusación por corrupción.Daniele Volpe para The New York Times¿Cuáles son los principales temas?Corrupción: Guatemala obtuvo elogios en la última década por sus esfuerzos para reducir la impunidad y la corrupción. Pero esa iniciativa, liderada por una comisión de investigadores internacionales respaldada por la ONU, fue sistemáticamente desmantelada en años recientes cuando los intereses políticos y económicos arraigados comenzaron a acosar a jueces y fiscales anticorrupción y a obligarlos a salir del país.Según grupos defensores de libertades civiles, la exclusión de candidatos importantes en las elecciones refleja cómo la élite está firmemente reafirmando su poder.Familiares alrededor del ataúd de Miguel Rojché Zapalu, uno de los hombres guatemaltecos que murieron en un incendio en un centro migratorio cerca de la frontera con Estados Unidos, durante su funeral en abril en Chicacao, una comunidad indígena.Daniele Volpe para The New York TimesMigración: Los guatemaltecos figuran entre los grupos de migrantes de más rápido crecimiento en Estados Unidos. El número de migrantes que llegan anualmente se ha incrementado cerca de 33 por ciento entre 2010 y 2021, de 830.000 a más de 1,1 millón.Existen varios factores que impulsan a los guatemaltecos a emigrar, en el que destaca la falta de oportunidades económicas: cerca del 59 por ciento de la población vive por debajo de la línea de pobreza.El gobierno de EE. UU. le dio prioridad a la lucha contra la corrupción y el fortalecimiento de la democracia en Guatemala y otros países centroamericanos al principio del mandato del presidente Biden, argumentando que eso evitaría que la gente abandonara su tierra natal.Pero esos esfuerzos han hecho muy poco para prevenir un retroceso de la democracia en la región o para reducir de forma notable el flujo de migrantes.Un acusado es escoltado a una audiencia en unn tribunal de Ciudad de Guatemala.Daniele Volpe para The New York TimesDelincuencia: Un tema importante durante toda la campaña electoral en Guatemala han sido los llamados a emular la represión a las pandillas realizada por el El Salvador, tras señalar la creciente frustración con los altos niveles de crímenes violentos.La cantidad de homicidios en Guatemala —impulsada en parte por pandillas poderosas— se incrementó casi 6 por ciento en 2022 con respecto al año anterior, y también ha habido un aumento marcado en el número de víctimas de homicidio que han mostrado señales de tortura. Muchos guatemaltecos citan el temor a la extorsión y el crimen como razones para emigrar. More

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      Guatemala Election: What to Know

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      The election in the Central American nation is marked by the exclusion of top candidates and calls to crack down on violent crime.Guatemala, Central America’s largest nation, will vote on Sunday in presidential elections that are casting scrutiny on the erosion of the rule of law in a country that has become a major source of migration to the United States.Guatemala’s nascent democracy — which emerged after the end of a civil war nearly four decades ago that left hundreds of thousands dead or missing, one of the bloodiest in recent Latin American history — has frayed in recent years under an increasingly authoritarian government.The judiciary has been weaponized and has forced into exile dozens of prosecutors and judges focused on battling corruption. Press freedom has also come under attack, and this month, the publisher of a leading newspaper that exposed many episodes of graft was sentenced to six years in prison after being convicted of financial crimes.The electoral authority in Guatemala, a country of 18 million, has added to concerns about assaults on democratic norms after it barred several top presidential candidates who were viewed as a threat to the political and economic establishment.The disqualification of several candidates from the presidential race, including Carlos Pineda, has raised questions about the legitimacy of Sunday’s voteDaniele Volpe for The New York TimesThe tensions over Guatemala’s teetering democracy has left some voters disillusioned and wondering if they should even bother casting a ballot.“I don’t think there should even be an election,” said Óscar Guillén, 70, explaining that he planned to leave his ballot blank to express his disenchantment.Voters will still choose from a crowded field of more than 20 candidates, not one of whom is predicted to obtain a majority on Sunday, which would force a runoff on Aug. 20 between the top two finishers.Runoffs have become common in Guatemala since peace accords in 1996 ended an internal conflict that lasted 36 years and was marked by brutal counterinsurgency tactics that resulted in genocide against Indigenous people.Guatemala’s current president, Alejandro Giammattei, is barred by law from seeking re-election. But even though a sharp increase in violent crime and a punishingly high cost of living have made Mr. Giammattei, a conservative, deeply unpopular, the leading candidates in the race generally also lean conservative, suggesting continuity with the country’s political establishment.Voting is not mandatory in Guatemala, and the abstention rate, which was nearly 40 percent in the last presidential election, in 2019, will be closely watched as a gauge of voter discontent.Here’s what you need to know about the vote on Sunday.Sandra Torres has been the top candidate across several polls, though her support would fall far short of winning a majority of the vote. Daniele Volpe for The New York TimesWho is running?Of the three leading candidates, no one is predicted to secure anything close to the majority needed to win outright on Sunday. Across several polls, Sandra Torres, a former first lady, appeared to be the top candidate, but with levels of support hovering around 20 percent. (The presidential candidate from Mr. Giammattei’s party is polling in the low single digits.)Ms. Torres, 67, was married to Álvaro Colom, who was the president of Guatemala from 2008 to 2012 and who died this year at 71. They divorced in 2011, when Ms. Torres first tried to run for president and tried to circumvent a law prohibiting a president’s relatives from running for office.She was still barred from running that year, but was the runner-up in the two most recent presidential elections. After the 2019 election, she was accused of campaign finance violations and spent time under house arrest.Ms. Torres prevailed in that case late last year when a judge ruled that were was insufficient evidence to proceed to trial, allowing her to run again. On the campaign trail, she has been able to draw support from her party, National Unity of Hope, which is well established and widely known in Guatemala.Ms. Torres, like her two main rivals, has expressed admiration for the crackdown on gangs by the government in neighboring El Salvador, which has helped drive down violence, but has also raised concerns about human rights abuses.She has also promised to increase cash transfers and food assistance to poor families, building on her time as first lady when she was the face of those kinds of popular initiatives.Another top challenger, Zury Ríos, 55, is also a familiar figure in Guatemalan politics. She is the daughter of Efraín Ríos Montt, a dictator in the early 1980s who was convicted in 2013 of genocide for trying to exterminate the Ixil, a Mayan people.While the evidence against her father was meticulously documented and detailed at his trial, Ms. Ríos has claimed repeatedly that no genocide ever took place. Her ultraconservative party is led by figures with links to her father.Still, while Ms. Ríos promotes her conservative credentials and evangelical Christian beliefs, she has a more nuanced record as a former member of Congress when she forged alliances in an effort to win legislative approval for bills aimed at improving conditions for women and L.G.T.B.Q. people.Another main presidential contender is Edmond Mulet, 72, a lawyer and a seasoned former diplomat who has served as Guatemala’s ambassador to the United States and the European Union, as well as the head of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti.While Mr. Mulet has highlighted his diplomatic experience, he is also known for his work as a lawyer in the 1980s, when he was arrested in connection to his work arranging adoptions of Guatemalan children by Canadian families.Though he was quickly set free and Mr. Mulet has denied any wrongdoing, he has still spent time on the campaign trail having to explain his involvement in the episode.In his campaign, Mr. Mulet is representing a newly formed party without any seats in Congress, but that has forged a competitive coalition of candidates at the national and local level in Sunday’s election. His proposals include a universal pension, increasing police salaries and building a new high-security prison.About 20 percent of the legislators in Guatemala’s Congress face some kind of corruption accusation.Daniele Volpe for The New York TimesWhat are the main issues?Corruption: Guatemala won plaudits during the past decade for efforts to curb impunity and graft. But that initiative, led by a U.N.-backed panel of international investigators, was systematically dismantled in recent years as entrenched political and economic interests started hounding anticorruption judges and prosecutors from the country.The exclusion of top candidates in the election reflects, civil liberty groups say, how elite figures are steadily reasserting their power.Family members mourned over the coffin of Miguel Rojché Zapalu, one of 17 Guatemalan men killed in a fire at a migration center near the U.S. border, during his funeral in April in Chicacao, a predominantly Indigenous community.Daniele Volpe for The New York TimesMigration: Guatemalans rank among the fastest-growing groups of migrants in the United States. The number of those arriving annually has increased by about 33 percent from 2010 to 2021, from 830,000 to more than 1.1 million.Various factors drive Guatemalans to emigrate, notably a lack of economic opportunity, with about 59 percent of the population living below the poverty line.The United States made fighting corruption and shoring up democracy in Guatemala and other Central American countries a priority early in President Biden’s tenure, arguing that it would keep people from leaving their homelands.But those efforts have done little to prevent a backsliding of democracy in the region or make a major dent in the flow of migrants.A defendant being escorted to a hearing at a court in Guatemala City.Daniele Volpe for The New York TimesCrime: A top theme throughout the campaign season in Guatemala has been calls to emulate the crackdown on gangs in El Salvador, pointing to the rising frustration with high levels of violent crime.The number of homicides in Guatemala — fueled in part by powerful gangs — climbed nearly 6 percent in 2022 from the previous year, and there has also been a sharp increase in the number of murder victims who showed signs of torture. Many Guatemalans cite fears of extortion and crime as reasons to emigrate. More

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      Elecciones en Guatemala: algunos candidatos perdieron antes de la votación

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      Los comicios del domingo estarán marcados tanto por los presentes como por los ausentes en las papeletas, pues las autoridades descalificaron a algunos de los principales contendientes.La primavera pasada, una magistrada guatemalteca entró en una reunión en la embajada estadounidense y sacó una gran cantidad de efectivo. Según dijo, el dinero era un soborno de uno de los aliados más cercanos del presidente.La magistrada, Blanca Alfaro, forma parte del Tribunal Supremo Electoral, la autoridad que supervisa las elecciones del país. Alfaro dijo que le entregaron el soborno para influir en las elecciones de Guatemala, según un funcionario estadounidense que fue informado sobre el encuentro y una persona que estuvo presente y solicitó mantener su anonimato por no estar autorizada para discutir los detalles de la reunión privada.Los diplomáticos estadounidenses se sorprendieron por la desfachatez del episodio, pero no por los señalamientos. En el volátil clima político que reina en Guatemala en las vísperas de las elecciones presidenciales del domingo ha habido una constante: un bombardeo de ataques continuo contra las instituciones democráticas por parte de quienes están en el poder.En un país que ha pasado de ser un escenario donde se erradicaba la corrupción a otro en el que decenas de altos funcionarios anticorrupción se han visto obligados a exiliarse, la primera vuelta de la votación estará marcada tanto por quienes aparecen en la papeleta como por los ausentes.El organismo electoral del país ha descalificado a todos los candidatos serios que podrían desafiar el statu quo, encarnado por el presidente Alejandro Giammattei, un conservador al que los críticos acusan de llevar el país hacia la autocracia y que no puede contender por un nuevo mandato.Los demás candidatos son personas vinculadas a algún segmento de la élite política o económica. Junto a sus nombres en la papeleta de votación habrá varias casillas en blanco, que representan a cuatro candidatos que fueron excluidos del proceso por la autoridad electoral.La magistrada Alfaro les dijo a los funcionarios estadounidenses que había recibido el soborno de Miguel Martínez, un confidente cercano de Giammattei y funcionario clave de su partido, según afirman tanto la persona que asistió a la reunión como el funcionario estadounidense.Alfaro también dijo que la suma de dinero ascendía a 50.000 quetzales guatemaltecos (el equivalente a más de 6000 dólares), según la persona que estuvo presente en el encuentro. El Times no ha corroborado la afirmación de la magistrada Alfaro sobre el soborno. En una entrevista, Alfaro negó que fuera a la embajada e hiciera esa acusación.“No me he reunido con Miguel Martínez”, le dijo a The New York Times. Y añadió: “Dudo que a la embajada se puedan ingresar 50.000 quetzales porque uno tiene que pasar por muchas medidas de seguridad”.Por su parte, Martínez negó haber sobornado a la magistrada Alfaro y afirmó que nunca se ha reunido con ella. Dijo que estaba al tanto de un esfuerzo por parte de personas que no pudieron participar en las elecciones para involucrarlo “en alguna situación legal” con la Embajada de Estados Unidos.“Ahora nos estamos dando cuenta que en la situación legal que me están tratando a mí de involucrar para afectar al tema del proceso electoral que se está llevando a cabo de una manera limpia y democrática, es esto”, dijo Martínez.Luego, en una declaración grabada en video que circuló ampliamente en las redes sociales, Martínez dijo a unos periodistas que el Times pronto publicaría un relato de la visita de Alfaro a la embajada. “Esto es algo malicioso que ellos quieren hacer para desestabilizar las elecciones”, dijo Martínez en el video.Cuando se le preguntó sobre las acusaciones de Alfaro y la respuesta de la embajada, una portavoz del Departamento de Estado, Christina Tilghman, dijo: “No confirmamos la existencia de supuestas reuniones ni discutimos el contenido de las discusiones diplomáticas”.Tilghman dijo que siempre que el gobierno estadounidense recibe denuncias de corrupción que “cumplen los requisitos probatorios establecidos por la normativa y la legislación de Estados Unidos”, sanciona o castiga de otro modo a los implicados.La actuación de la autoridad electoral ha hecho que grupos de defensa de los derechos civiles cuestionen si la contienda presidencial del domingo en realidad puede considerarse libre y justa.“Legalidad no es lo mismo que legitimidad”, dijo Juan Francisco Sandoval, exfiscal anticorrupción que ahora vive en Estados Unidos y forma parte de las decenas de fiscales y jueces que se han exiliado en los últimos años.Sandoval afirma que la votación se verá empañada tanto por los fallos arbitrarios sobre quién puede postularse, como por el aumento de la financiación ilícita de campañas con fondos públicos.Aunque representan tendencias ideológicas distintas, al menos tres de los candidatos excluidos inquietaron a las élites políticas de Guatemala.Uno de ellos, Carlos Pineda, se posicionó como un empresario independiente que utilizó TikTok para surgir como favorito en las encuestas.“Quince partidos accionaron en mi contra. Lo hicieron porque íbamos punteando en las encuestas y se determinaba que en primera vuelta íbamos a hacer historia y ganar las elecciones”, dijo Pineda refiriéndose al hecho de que si nadie obtiene más del 50por ciento de los votos, se celebrará una segunda vuelta entre los dos candidatos más votados. “Para mí estas elecciones son ilegítimas”.Carlos Pineda en una protesta contra su exclusión de la campaña presidencialDaniele Volpe para The New York TimesOtra candidata excluida, Thelma Cabrera, es una líder de izquierda proveniente de una familia maya mam que intenta organizar a los pueblos indígenas de Guatemala, que representan aproximadamente la mitad de la población, en una fuerza política unificada. El tercero, Roberto Arzú, es un dirigente de derecha de una familia de políticos que se ha posicionado como una fuerza opositora a las élites del país.Blanca Alfaro, al centro, e Irma Elizabeth Palencia Orellana, de amarillo, magistradas del Tribunal Supremo Electoral, la autoridad encargada de las elecciones del domingoDaniele Volpe para The New York TimesGiammattei, a quien la ley le prohíbe presentarse a la reelección, ha guardado silencio sobre la exclusión de varios de los principales aspirantes. En gran medida, la campaña se ha convertido en una contienda entre tres candidatos principales que se considera que pueden ofrecer cierta continuidad con el statu quo.Sandra Torres fue primera dama de 2008 a 2011, cuando estaba casada con el presidente Álvaro Colom. Se divorciaron cuando Torres intentó postularse por primera vez como candidata a la presidencia en 2011, en un intento de sortear una ley que prohíbe que los familiares del presidente puedan presentarse como candidatos.Torres fue detenida en 2019 en relación con violaciones de financiación de campaña, pero el caso fue cerrado por un juez en 2022 apenas unas semanas antes de que comenzara oficialmente la campaña, lo que le permitió postularse. Su plataforma destaca las promesas de ampliar los programas sociales, incluidas las transferencias de efectivo para los pobres.Sandra Torres en un evento electoral en Ciudad de GuatemalaDaniele Volpe para The New York TimesOtra de las principales candidatas, Zury Ríos, es hija de Efraín Ríos Montt, quien fue dictador de Guatemala a principios de la década de 1980 y ordenó tácticas extremas contra la insurgencia guerrillera y posteriormente fue condenado por genocidio en una sentencia pionera de 2013 por intentar exterminar a los ixiles, un pueblo maya indígena de Guatemala.Zury Ríos no se ha arrepentido de las acciones de su padre, y este año incluso llegó a negar que un genocidio sucedió. Cristiana evangélica, ha ganado popularidad entre los conservadores tras aliarse con figuras que pretenden frenar las iniciativas anticorrupción. Tras su paso por el Congreso, donde hizo hincapié en temas relacionados con las mujeres, ha centrado su campaña presidencial en la adopción de políticas de seguridad de línea dura para combatir la delincuencia.Edmond Mulet, otro de los principales aspirantes, fue diplomático y generalmente se inclina por puntos de vista conservadores. Mulet, cuyas propuestas incluyen la ampliación del acceso a internet y el suministro de medicamentos gratuitos, ha criticado la persecución de periodistas y fiscales, pero ha forjado vínculos con poderosas figuras políticas tradicionales, evitando el destino de los candidatos excluidos.Los sondeos de las últimas semanas apuntan a que ninguno de los tres podrá obtener una mayoría suficiente el domingo, lo que forzaría a una segunda vuelta el 30 de agosto.La descalificación de varios candidatos de la campaña presidencial ha puesto en duda la legitimidad de la votación del domingo.Daniele Volpe para The New York TimesLa contienda, según los expertos, revela lo efectiva que han sido los poderosos en erradicar cualquier fuente seria de disenso.“El uso del sistema judicial como un arma está haciendo que se marchen algunas de las mentes más brillantes del país e intimida a quienes se quedan”, dijo Regina Bateson, académica de la Universidad de Ottawa especializada en Guatemala. En su opinión, esa situación ha originado unas “elecciones que socavan la democracia”.Simon Romero es corresponsal nacional y cubre el suroeste de Estados Unidos. Ha sido jefe de las corresponsalías del Times en Brasil, los Andes y corresponsal internacional de energía. @viaSimonRomeroNatalie Kitroeff es la jefa de la corresponsalía del Times para México, Centroamérica y el Caribe. @Nataliekitro More

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      Guatemala Votes for President, but Candidates Are Excluded

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      Guatemala’s first round of elections on Sunday is as much about who’s not on the ballot as who is, after courts barred leading candidates from running.A Guatemalan judge walked into a meeting at the American Embassy last spring and pulled out a large quantity of cash: The money, she said, was a bribe from one of the president’s closest allies.The judge, Blanca Alfaro, helps lead the authority that oversees the country’s elections. She claimed the money had been given to her to gain influence over the electoral agency, according to a U.S. official briefed on the encounter and a person who was present and requested anonymity to discuss the details of a private meeting.American diplomats were shocked by the brazenness of the episode, but not by the allegations. In the volatile political climate consuming Guatemala in the run-up to presidential elections on Sunday, there has been one constant: a steady drumbeat of attacks on democratic institutions by those in power.In a country that has shifted from a staging ground for rooting out corruption to one where dozens of anticorruption officials have been forced into exile, the first round of voting will be as much about who is not on the ballot as who is.The nation’s electoral agency has disqualified every serious candidate in the race who could challenge the status quo, which is embodied by President Alejandro Giammattei, a conservative who critics accuse of pushing the country toward autocracy and who is barred from running for another term.The remaining front-runners are people with links to some segment of the political or economic elite. Alongside their names on the ballot will be several blank boxes, representing four candidates excluded from the process by the electoral authority.Judge Alfaro told American officials that she had received the bribe from Miguel Martínez, a close confidant of Mr. Giammattei’s and a key official in his party, said the person who attended the meeting and the U.S. official.She said the money she had with her amounted to 50,000 Guatemalan quetzales (the equivalent of more than $6,000), according to the person who was present.The Times has not substantiated Judge Alfaro’s claim that she was bribed. In an interview, Ms. Alfaro denied that she went to the embassy and made the allegation.“I have no relationship with Miguel Martínez,” she told The New York Times. “I doubt that 50,000 quetzales can be brought into the embassy because you go through so many security measures.”Mr. Martínez denied giving Judge Alfaro a bribe, saying he had never met with her. He said he was aware of an effort by people who were unable to participate in the elections “to get me involved in some legal situation” with the American Embassy.“Now we are realizing that this is the legal situation they are trying to involve me in,” Mr. Martínez said, “to affect the electoral process that is being carried out in a clean and democratic way.”Later, Mr. Martínez told reporters that The Times would soon publish an account of Ms. Alfaro’s trip to the embassy in a statement captured on video and circulated widely on social media. “This is something malicious they want to do to destabilize the elections,” Mr. Martínez said in the video. When asked about the Ms. Alfaro’s allegations and the embassy’s response, a State Department spokeswoman, Christina Tilghman, said, “We do not confirm the existence of alleged meetings nor discuss the contents of diplomatic discussions.”Ms. Tilghman said that whenever the American government receives allegations of corruption that “meet evidentiary requirements under U.S. regulations and law,” it imposes sanctions or otherwise punishes those involved.The actions of the electoral authority have led civil rights groups to question whether Sunday’s presidential contest can truly be considered free and fair.“Legality is not the same as legitimacy,” said Juan Francisco Sandoval, a former anticorruption prosecutor who now lives in the United States and is among the dozens of prosecutors and judges who have gone into exile in recent years.The vote, he said, will be marred both by “arbitrary rulings” on who was allowed to run, and a surge in illicit campaign financing using public funds.Though from different ideological backgrounds, at least three of the excluded candidates were viewed as unsettling to Guatemala’s political establishment.One of them, Carlos Pineda, positioned himself as an outsider businessman and used TikTok to become a front-runner in the polls.“They went after us because we were climbing so much in the polls that we could make history by winning in the first round,” said Mr. Pineda, referring to the fact that if no one wins more than 50 percent of the vote, a runoff will be held between the top two candidates. “This election is illegitimate.”Carlos Pineda at a demonstration protesting his exclusion from the race. Daniele Volpe for The New York TimesAnother barred candidate, Thelma Cabrera, is a leftist from a Maya Mam family trying to organize Guatemala’s Indigenous peoples, who account for roughly half the population, into a unified political force. A third, Roberto Arzú, is a right-wing scion of a political family who had positioned himself as an opponent of the country’s elites.Blanca Alfaro, center, and Irma Elizabeth Palencia Orellana, in yellow, magistrates of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, the authority overseeing Sunday’s election. Daniele Volpe for The New York TimesMr. Giammattei, prohibited by law from seeking re-election, has remained silent about the barring of several top contenders. The race has largely become a contest among three leading candidates who are viewed as providing some continuity with the status quo.Sandra Torres was the first lady from 2008 to 2011, when she was married to President Álvaro Colom. They divorced when Ms. Torres first sought to run for president in 2011 (Guatemalan law prohibits a president’s relatives from running for office).Ms. Torres was arrested in 2019 in connection with campaign finance violations, but the case was dismissed by a judge in 2022 just weeks before campaigning officially got underway, allowing her to run. Her platform highlights promises to expand social programs, including cash transfers for the poor.Sandra Torres at a rally in Guatemala City. Daniele Volpe for The New York TimesAnother leading candidate, Zury Ríos, is the daughter of Efraín Ríos Montt, a dictator of Guatemala in the early 1980s who ordered extreme tactics against a guerrilla insurgency and was convicted of genocide in 2013 for trying to exterminate the Ixil, a Mayan people indigenous to Guatemala. Ms. Ríos has been unrepentant about her father’s actions, going so far as to deny this year that the genocide happened. An evangelical Christian, she gained popularity among conservatives after allying with figures seeking to blunt anticorruption initiatives. When she served in Congress, she emphasized women’s issues, but on the presidential campaign trail she has stressed adopting hard-line security policies to combat crime.Another top contender, Edmond Mulet, is a former diplomat who generally hews to conservative views. Mr. Mulet, whose proposals include expanding internet access and providing free medicines, has criticized the persecution of journalists and prosecutors, but has also forged ties with powerful entrenched political figures, avoiding the fate of excluded candidates.Polls in recent weeks suggest that none of the three are expected to come close to winning a majority of the votes on Sunday, which would force a runoff on Aug. 30.The disqualification of several candidates from the presidential race has raised question about the legitimacy of Sunday’s vote.Daniele Volpe for The New York TimesThe contest, experts said, lays bare how effective Guatemala’s power brokers have been at extinguishing any real source of dissent.“The weaponization of the judicial system is driving some of the brightest minds in the country to leave and intimidating anyone that’s left,” said Regina Bateson, a scholar at the University of Ottawa who specializes in Guatemala. The result, she said, is an “election undermining democracy.” More

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      The Supreme Court Finally Strikes the Right Balance on Voting Rights

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      One of the most important realities of American life is this: No nation can fully undo the effects of 345 years of state-sanctioned bigotry — from slavery to Jim Crow — in 59 years. The time period between the arrival of the first slaves on colonial shores in 1619 and the abolition of legalized discrimination with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 is simply too long, the discrimination too ingrained and the distortion of society too great to wave the wand of legal and cultural reform and quickly realize the dream of American equality.At the same time, there’s another vital American reality: Through grit, determination and immense courage, Black Americans and other marginalized communities have made immense gains, the hearts of countless white Americans have indeed changed and America is a far better and fairer place than it was in even the recent past.And now, at last, in the vital area of voting rights, Supreme Court authority reflects both these truths.Earlier this month, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in a case called Allen v. Milligan that surprised many legal observers by striking down an Alabama redistricting map that would have preserved the state’s recent tradition of maintaining only one majority Black district out of seven in a state with a 27 percent Black population.Voting in Alabama is extremely racially polarized. For example, in the 2020 presidential election, 91 percent of Black voters in the state voted for Joe Biden, while only 20 percent of white voters did so. In practice, this persistent polarization, combined with GOP-drawn district maps, has meant that Black voters were able to elect only one of Alabama’s seven congressional representatives.Voting rights jurisprudence is extremely complicated, but I’ll do my best to be succinct and accurate in describing both the issues and one key reason for the surprise: The author of the majority opinion in Allen — which, again, generally cheered liberals and disappointed conservatives — was Chief Justice John Roberts. Ten years ago, he had written one of the most contentious Supreme Court opinions of the 21st century, Shelby County v. Holder.In Shelby County, a sharply divided 5-to-4 court gutted key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by striking down elements of Section 4 that required the federal government to “preclear” or preapprove changes to the voting laws of a limited number of American states, counties and townships, essentially placing these jurisdictions under federal supervision to prevent them from enacting (or, more precisely, re-enacting) discriminatory voting laws. Each of the jurisdictions had an especially pernicious history of racial discrimination in voting.The states included seven of the old Confederacy, plus Alaska and Arizona, as well as a handful of counties and towns in other states (including the counties of New York, Bronx and Kings, or Brooklyn, in New York City, each of which had extraordinarily low Hispanic voter registration rates as well as a legacy of English literacy tests). In 1966, the Supreme Court had upheld the Voting Rights Act in an 8-to-1 decision, holding that “exceptional conditions can justify legislative measures not otherwise appropriate.”In 2013, however, the Roberts court decided that some of those “exceptional conditions” no longer pertained. As Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “Census Bureau data indicate that African American voter turnout has come to exceed white voter turnout in five of the six States originally covered by §5, with a gap in the sixth State of less than one half of one percent.”The decision didn’t gut the entire act. Section 2, which prohibits “denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote” on the basis of race, remained in force. But the meaning of Section 2 has been a subject of intense debate. Gerrymandering has been at the heart of that debate.If a state “cracks” a Black community (i.e., splits it apart into multiple districts) or “packs” one (i.e., concentrates its voters into supermajority districts) in a manner that leaves Black voters with diminished voting power, does that violate the act? It certainly does if it’s done with an explicit racial motive.But what if the state claims that the motive isn’t racial, but partisan? The Supreme Court has long granted states greater leeway to tilt the partisan playing field, and in a 2019 case, Rucho v. Common Cause, it seemed to throw up its hands entirely, holding that complaints against partisan gerrymandering weren’t “justiciable.” In other words, the solution to partisan gerrymandering abuses should be located in the political branches of government, not the courts.This ruling potentially created an immense opening for disguised racial gerrymanders, especially in heavily racially polarized states. Even worse, Alabama wanted the Supreme Court to modify existing precedent to give states even greater leeway in the face of claims of race discrimination. If Alabama prevailed, a Republican-dominated state could crack or pack Black communities and say that it was done not because the communities were Black, but because they were Democratic. Though the result — less Black representation in Congress — would be the same, the motive would be legal.Or would it? In Allen, Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the three Democratic-appointed justices said no, not always. Under highly racially polarized voting conditions, Supreme Court authority will require the creation of majority-minority districts when, to quote Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence, “(i) a State’s redistricting map cracks or packs a large and ‘geographically compact’ minority population and (ii) a plaintiff’s proposed alternative map and proposed majority-minority district are ‘reasonably configured.’”To translate the legalese: States and regions that are highly racially polarized can’t fracture or compress minority voting districts when reasonably drawn alternative maps would more closely maintain the relative power of minority voters. If anything, by reaffirming and clarifying existing precedents in the face of substantial legal doubt, the Court strengthened Section 2.I know that’s a lot to take in, but here’s where things get interesting. If you peruse recent exit polls, you’ll quickly observe that many of the old preclearance states retain exactly the kind of racially polarized voting patterns that, thanks to the Allen ruling, can trigger judicial skepticism. I quoted Alabama’s voting stats above. But what about other old preclearance states? In 2020, 77 percent of white Louisiana voters voted for Donald Trump, and 88 percent of Black voters voted for Joe Biden. In Mississippi, 81 percent of white voters voted for Trump and 94 percent of Black voters voted for Biden. In South Carolina, 69 percent of white voters voted for Trump and 92 percent of Black voters voted for Biden.While I certainly won’t argue that most white voters in those states are racist (indeed, a supermajority of voters in South Carolina supported Tim Scott, a Black Republican, for Senate), those numbers are not the American norm. Racial polarization exists more broadly, but not to the same extent. Nationally, for example, 55 percent of white voters voted for Trump, while 92 percent of Black voters voted for Biden. In some states, such as California and New York, Joe Biden received a majority of white and Black votes.Racially polarized voting isn’t proof of racism in any given voter’s heart. But it is part of the legacy of American bigotry and racial divisions. By preserving and clarifying the core of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — especially when voting is highly racially polarized — and by rejecting Alabama’s effort to limit Section 2, Chief Justice Roberts has subtly limited the reach of his own precedent. Now, thanks to Allen, many preclearance states will face greater scrutiny — unless and until their own cultural and political changes bring them closer to broader American partisan norms.That’s the legal impact, but there’s a cultural impact as well. In a tangible way, Chief Justice Roberts, along with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson brought the court’s precedent closer in line with the nation’s reality. Our country has made real progress in addressing racist violations of voting rights. The ruling in Shelby County reflected that encouraging truth. At the same time, our nation still hasn’t cleansed itself of racism or fully addressed the legacy of bigotry. The court’s holding in Allen acknowledged that sad fact.The law does not always align with the facts of American life, but in this case, the Supreme Court has brought it closer to proper balance. The Court is an embattled institution, yet it still retains some bipartisan wisdom. America has come so very far, so we must not despair as if all is lost. America still has so far to go, so we must not celebrate as if all is won.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Biden’s Defense of Global Democracies Is Tested by Political Turmoil

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      The administration’s Summit for Democracy begins this week amid crises in several countries allied with the United States, including Israel.WASHINGTON — A political crisis in Israel and setbacks to democracy in several other major countries closely allied with the United States are testing the Biden administration’s defense of democracy against a global trend toward the authoritarianism of nations like Russia and China.President Biden will deliver remarks on Wednesday at the second White House-led Summit for Democracy, which Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken kicked off on Tuesday morning.The three-day, in-person and virtual event comes as Mr. Biden has boasted, more than once, that since he became president “democracies have become stronger, not weaker. Autocracies have grown weaker, not stronger.”Casting a cloud over the long-planned gathering is a move by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government to weaken the power of Israel’s judiciary, a plan that his opponents call an existential threat to the country’s 75-year democratic tradition.But that is only the most vivid sign of how autocratic practices are making inroads around the world.Proposed changes to Israel’s judiciary have starkly divided society and ignited huge protests this week.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York TimesBiden administration officials are also warily eyeing countries like Mexico, which has moved to gut its election oversight body; India, where a top opposition political leader was disqualified last week from holding a post in Parliament; and Brazil, where the electoral defeat last year of the autocratic president, Jair Bolsonaro, was followed by a riot in January that his supporters orchestrated at government offices in Brasília, the capital.Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to postpone the proposed judicial changes under intense political pressure may slightly ease the awkwardness of Israel’s participation in the summit, where he is set to deliver prerecorded video remarks. Mexico, India and Brazil will also participate.Mr. Netanyahu’s retreat came after private admonitions from Biden officials that he was endangering Israel’s cherished reputation as a true democracy in the heart of the Middle East.In a briefing for reporters on Monday, John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, said that Mr. Biden had “strongly” urged Israel’s government to find a compromise to a judicial plan that has starkly divided society and ignited huge protests. Asked whether the White House might disinvite Israel from the summit, Mr. Kirby said only that Israel “has been invited.”But the larger troubles remain for Mr. Biden, who asserted in his State of the Union address last month that the United States had reach “an inflection point” in history and that during his presidency had begun to reverse a worldwide autocratic march.Democracy activists call that a debatable proposition, and U.S. officials acknowledge that the picture is nuanced at best.On the positive side of the ledger, U.S. officials and experts say, Mr. Biden has rallied much of the democratic world into a powerful coalition against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In a speech during his visit to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, last month marking the anniversary of the invasion, Mr. Biden repeated his assertion about the growing strength of democracies against autocracies and said that the war had forced the United States and its allies to “stand up for democracy.”Damage in Siversk, Ukraine, this month. U.S. officials and experts say Mr. Biden has rallied much of the democratic world into a powerful coalition against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesMr. Biden has also rallied democratic nations to take firmer stands against Chinese influence around the world at a time when experts say Beijing is looking to export its model of governance.And some argue that Mr. Biden has been a savior of democracy by winning the 2020 presidential election — defeating President Donald J. Trump, a U.S. leader with authoritarian tendencies — and by containing for now Mr. Trump’s efforts to reject the results of that election and myriad other democratic norms.“Without suggesting that the fight has been won, or that Biden is doing everything right, I think we need to give him credit for helping to save American democracy and standing up to the great authoritarian powers,” said Tom Malinowski, a former Democratic congressman from New Jersey.But Mr. Biden’s claim that autocracies have grown weaker faces a stark reality in some nations.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia may find himself economically isolated and militarily challenged in Ukraine. But he still has strong political support in Russia and has even consolidated power through a crackdown on dissent that has driven hundreds of thousands of Russians from the country.In Beijing, Xi Jinping was awarded a third five-year term this month not long after suppressing protests against his government’s coronavirus policies. In its latest official worldwide threat assessment, the U.S. intelligence community found that arms of the Chinese Communist Party “have become more aggressive with their influence campaigns” against the United States and other countries.President Xi Jinping of China was awarded a third five-year term this month not long after suppressing protests against his government’s coronavirus policies. Wu Hao/EPA, via ShutterstockBiden officials conceived a democracy summit during the 2020 campaign to address a belief that autocratic influence had been spreading for years, destabilizing and undermining Western governments. They also worried about a growing perception that political chaos and legislative paralysis in places like Washington and London — or in Israel, which held five elections in three years before Mr. Netanyahu narrowly managed to form his coalition — was creating a sense around the world that democracies could not deliver results for their people.Mr. Biden’s first Summit for Democracy, in December 2021, featured uplifting language from world leaders and group sessions on issues like media freedom and rule of law in which countries could trade best practices on strengthening their democracies and share advice on countering foreign efforts to manipulate politics and elections.The summit this week will include about 120 countries and will be hosted by Costa Rica, the Netherlands, South Korea and Zambia in addition to the United States.Recent democratic trends can be described as mixed at best. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual democracy index found last year that in 2021, the first year of Mr. Biden’s presidency, “global democracy continued its precipitous decline.” More recently, the same survey found that in 2022, democracy had “stagnated.”Mr. Biden hosted a Summit for Democracy from the White House in 2021.Doug Mills/The New York TimesSimilarly, a report released this month by Freedom House, a nonprofit group that monitors democracy, human rights and civil liberties around the world, found that global freedom had slipped for the 17th year in a row, by its measurement. But the group also reported that the steady decline might have plateaued and that there were just slightly more countries showing a decrease in freedoms compared with those whose records were improving.“This seems like a critical moment,” said Yana Gorokhovskaia, an author of the Freedom House report. “The spread of decline is clearly slowing. It hasn’t stopped.”That has been clear in some countries. Last month, Mexican lawmakers passed sweeping legislation hobbling the election oversight body that is widely credited with steering the country from decades of one-party rule. Critics say the country’s populist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has shown some troubling autocratic tendencies.In India, opponents of the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, have complained for years that he is weakening the democratic tradition of the world’s second-largest country by population by cracking down on critics and religious minorities. The concerns reached a new level with the expulsion from Parliament of Rahul Ghandi, a prominent opponent of Mr. Modi’s, a day after a court found him guilty of criminal defamation for a line in a campaign speech in 2019 in which he likened Mr. Modi to two thieves with the same name.And after supporters of Mr. Bolsonaro — who blamed electoral fraud for his narrow defeat in December — stormed government buildings in Brazil’s capital, Mr. Biden condemned “the assault on democracy.”Supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil stormed government buildings in Brasília, the capital, in January.ReutersDemocratic setbacks have also occurred in West Africa, where there have been coups in Mali and Burkina Faso in recent years. In Nigeria, a country of 220 million people, experts say that the presidential election in February appeared suspect.In Europe, thousands of people in the Republic of Georgia have taken to the streets to protest a measure that would curb what the government calls “foreign agents,” but which activists say is an effort to crack down on nongovernmental organizations and news media groups. The State Department called a March 7 parliamentary vote approving the measure “a dark day” for democracy in Georgia, which U.S. officials have tried to support against the influences of Russia, its neighbor.The tumult over Israel’s democracy has been particularly shocking to U.S. officials and experts who have long seen the country as a paragon of democratic values and an especially bright example in a region long plagued by dictatorship.And the summit this week will notably exclude two members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Hungary and Turkey, whose autocratic political systems have grown no less repressive during Mr. Biden’s tenure.Still, some people who track democratic trends say they are optimistic.“Perhaps the most striking indication of democracy’s forward movement over the last two years has been the election of President Biden, and the election of President Lula in Brazil,” said Sarah Margon, the director of foreign policy at Open Society-U.S.Those events “sent a critical message to people who are looking to defeat autocrats or leaders with autocratic tendencies,” added Ms. Margon, whom Mr. Biden nominated last year to the State Department’s top position for human rights and democracy. (Her nomination expired after Republican opposition and was not renewed in January.)But many world leaders profess to be unmoved by critiques from democracy advocates, especially from U.S. officials.“If they want to have a debate on this issue, let’s do it,” Mr. López Obrador said last month. “I have evidence to prove there is more liberty and democracy in our country.” More