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    John Curtis, a Moderate House Republican, Wins Utah’s Senate Primary

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    Representative John Curtis, a centrist Republican, won his party’s primary for U.S. Senate in Utah on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, beating a more conservative candidate endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Curtis, who has held a House seat in eastern Utah since 2017, has portrayed himself as a moderate workhorse in the image of the senator whose seat he is vying to fill: Mitt Romney, a former presidential candidate who said he was retiring to make way for a “new generation of leaders.”Mr. Curtis, 64, is perhaps not the fresh-faced successor Mr. Romney, 77, had imagined. But Mr. Curtis, a member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus and a leader of Republican efforts to address climate change in Congress, is a clear heir apparent to Mr. Romney’s centrist style of politics.Unlike Mr. Romney, Mr. Curtis is not a vocal critic of Mr. Trump. Mr. Romney, who voted twice to remove Mr. Trump from office during the former president’s two impeachment trials in the Senate, had pleaded with his fellow Republicans to unite behind an alternative to the former president for 2024.While Mr. Curtis declined to support Mr. Trump in the 2016 election, he largely backed his agenda once he was elected to Congress. But he refused to support Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. In the midst of this year’s Senate primary race, and seeking to polish his conservative bona fides, Mr. Curtis defended the former president’s vow to prosecute his political enemies if elected president.“I think it’s just human nature to feel the way that President Trump has expressed himself,” Mr. Curtis said during a debate ahead of the primary.Still, he faced attacks from his main primary opponent, Trent Staggs, the mayor of Riverton, Utah, for not being sufficiently supportive of the former president. Mr. Trump had endorsed Mr. Staggs, describing him in a video last weekend as “a little bit of a long shot” but “MAGA all the way.” For months, polls showed Mr. Curtis leading the race by a wide margin.Mr. Curtis began his political career as a Democrat. He unsuccessfully ran for the Utah State Senate in 2000, and then served for a year as the chair of the Democratic Party in Utah County. He ran for mayor of Provo as a Republican in 2009, and served in that position until 2017.That year, when Representative Jason Chaffetz, the influential chair of the House Oversight Committee, abruptly retired from his House seat in eastern Utah, Mr. Curtis jumped into the race, winning the Republican primary with 40 percent of the vote and defeating his Democratic opponent in the special election in a landslide. Mr. Curtis has since cruised to re-election to three full terms in the House. More

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      One Week That Revealed the Struggles of the Anti-Abortion Movement

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      The movement looks for a path forward: “Is the goal the absolute abolition of abortion in our nation?”The Southern Baptist Convention voted to condemn in vitro fertilization at its annual meeting in Indianapolis this week, over the objections of some members.Conservative lawyers pushing to sharply restrict medication abortion lost a major case at the Supreme Court, after pursuing a strategy that many of their allies thought was an overreach.Former president Donald J. Trump told Republicans in a closed-door meeting to stop talking about abortion bans limiting the procedure at certain numbers of weeks. In one chaotic week, the anti-abortion movement showed how major players are pulling in various directions and struggling to find a clear path forward two years after their victory of overturning Roe v. Wade.The divisions start at the most fundamental level of whether to even keep pushing to end abortion or to move on to other areas of reproductive health, like fertility treatments. A movement that once marched nearly in lock step finds itself mired in infighting and unable to settle on a basic agenda.In some cases, hard-liners are seizing the reins, rejecting the incremental strategy that made their movement successful in overturning Roe. Other abortion opponents are backing away, sensing the political volatility of the moment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Is the Fight Against Big Oil Headed to the Supreme Court?

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      The Supreme Court may soon decide the fate of dozens of cases brought by cities and states that seek to hold fossil fuel companies accountable.Over the past several years, dozens of cities and states have sued big oil companies, seeking to hold the producers of fossil fuels accountable for their role in causing climate change. All of the cases follow more or less the same script: they claim that oil companies like Exxon and Chevron deceived the public by concealing their understanding of the devastating effects of global warming, and seek to make those companies pay for the billions of dollars in damages now being caused by rising seas and extreme weather. So far, none of those cases has gone to trial. But this week, a closely watched case out of Hawaii took what could be a pivotal step toward the Supreme Court and have a cascading effect on the legal fight to hold fossil fuel companies accountable.The case was brought by the city of Honolulu against Sunoco and other big oil companies in 2020. Last year, the Hawaii state supreme court ruled the case could go to trial. But a coalition of energy firms, including ExxonMobil and Chevron, appealed that decision, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the case from moving forward. On Monday, the Supreme Court asked the Biden administration’s solicitor general for its opinion on the appeals. That may sound like a technicality. But to legal experts, it’s a sign that the case has the attention of the justices. The Supreme Court reviews many appeals each year, but only seeks input from the solicitor general in cases it is actively considering taking up. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Is This the End for Mandatory D.E.I. Statements?

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      Harvard and M.I.T. no longer require applicants for teaching jobs to explain how they would serve underrepresented groups. Other schools may follow.For years, conservatives condemned the use of diversity statements by universities, which ask job applicants to detail their commitment to improving opportunities for marginalized and underrepresented groups.Critics called such statements dogmatic, coercive and, in one lawsuit seeking to end the practice in California, “a modern day loyalty oath” that recalled when professors were required to denounce the Communist Party.But the use of diversity statements continued to grow, and eventually became a requisite when applying for a teaching job at many of the country’s most selective universities. That seems to be changing.Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have each recently announced that they will no longer require diversity statements as a part of their hiring process for faculty posts.The decisions by two of the nation’s leading institutions of higher learning could influence others to follow suit.“The switch has flipped as of now,” said Jeffrey S. Flier, the former dean of Harvard Medical School. Many professors on hiring committees, he said, may have been reluctant to voice their concerns about mandatory diversity statements before now. “But I think the large, silent majority of faculty who question the implementation of these programs and, in particular, these diversity statements — these people are being heard.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Civil Liberties Make for Strange Bedfellows

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      Last Thursday, Sonia Sotomayor helped protect the country from Donald Trump, and she did it in an unexpected way — by defending the National Rifle Association.Let me explain.Attempts to target the free speech of political opponents are often the first sign of a decline into authoritarianism. As Frederick Douglass wrote in 1860, after an angry mob shut down an abolitionist event in Boston, “No right was deemed by the fathers of the Government more sacred than the right of speech.”“Liberty,” he went on, “is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.”That’s exactly right, and that’s why Sonia Sotomayor’s opinion for a unanimous Supreme Court upholding the free speech rights of the N.R.A. against a hostile attack from a Democratic official in New York has ramifications well beyond New York politics and well beyond the battle over gun rights. By upholding the free speech rights of the N.R.A., the Supreme Court reinforced the constitutional wall of protection against vengeful government leaders, including Trump.Here’s what happened. In 2017, Maria Vullo, who was then the superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services, began investigating the N.R.A. Carry Guard insurance program. As the court’s opinion explains, Carry Guard was an insurance affinity program in which the N.R.A. offered insurance that “covered personal-injury and criminal-defense costs related to licensed firearm use” and even “insured New York residents for intentional, reckless and criminally negligent acts with a firearm that injured or killed another person.”Under the affinity program, the N.R.A. would offer the insurance as a member benefit and various insurance companies, including Chubb Limited and Lloyd’s of London, would underwrite the insurance and the N.R.A. would take a cut of the premium payments.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump and Allies Assail Conviction With Faulty Claims

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      After former President Donald J. Trump was found guilty, he and a number of conservative figures in the news media and lawmakers on the right have spread false and misleading claims about the Manhattan case.After former President Donald J. Trump was found guilty of all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, he instantly rejected the verdict and assailed the judge and criminal justice system.His loyalists in the conservative news media and Congress quickly followed suit, echoing his baseless assertions that he had fallen victim to a politically motivated sham trial.The display of unity reflected the extent of Mr. Trump’s hold over his base.The former president and his supporters have singled out the judge who presided over the case, denigrated the judicial system and distorted the circumstances of the charges against him and his subsequent conviction.Here’s a fact check of some of their claims.What Was Said“We had a conflicted judge, highly conflicted. There’s never been a more conflicted judge.”— Mr. Trump in a news conference on Friday at Trump Tower in ManhattanThis is exaggerated. For over a year, Mr. Trump and his allies have said Justice Juan M. Merchan should not preside over the case because of his daughter’s line of work. Loren Merchan, the daughter, served as the president of a digital campaign strategy agency that has done work for many prominent Democrats, including Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign.Experts in judicial ethics have said Ms. Merchan’s work is not sufficient grounds for recusal. When Mr. Trump’s legal team sought his recusal because of his daughter, Justice Merchan sought counsel from the New York State Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics, which said it did not see any conflict of interest.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Trump’s Most Loyal Supporters Are Responding to the Verdict

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      Many saw in the jury’s finding a rejection of themselves, of their values and even of democracy itself. The sense of grievance erupted as powerfully as the verdict itself.From the low hills of northwest Georgia to a veterans’ retreat in Alaska to suburban New Hampshire, the corners of conservative America resounded with anger over the New York jury’s declaration that former President Donald J. Trump was guilty.But their discontent was about more than the 34 felony counts that Mr. Trump was convicted on, which his supporters quickly dismissed as politically motivated.They saw in the jury’s finding a rejection of themselves, and the values they believed their nation should uphold. Broad swaths of liberal America may have found long-awaited justice in the trial’s outcome. But for many staunch Trump loyalists — people who for years have listened to and believed Mr. Trump’s baseless claims that the system is rigged against him, and them — the verdict on Thursday threatened to shatter their faith in democracy itself.“We are at that crossroads. The democracy that we have known and cherished in this nation is now threatened,” Franklin Graham, the evangelist, said in an interview from Alaska. “I’ve got 13 grandchildren. What kind of nation are we leaving them?”Echoing him was Marie Vast, 72, of West Palm Beach, Fla., near Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. “I know a lot of people who say they still believe in our government,” she said, “but when the Democrats can manipulate things this grossly, and use the legal system as a tool to get the outcome they want, the system isn’t working.”Among more than two dozen people interviewed across 10 states on Friday, the sentiments among conservatives were so strong that they echoed the worry and fear that many progressives described feeling after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade almost two years ago.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Seven Theories for Why Biden Is Losing (and What He Should Do About It)

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      It’s not Joe Biden’s poll numbers that worry me, exactly. It’s the denial of what’s behind them.Among likely voters, Biden is trailing Donald Trump by one point in Wisconsin and three points in Pennsylvania. He’s ahead by a point in Michigan. Sweeping those three states is one route to re-election, and they’re within reach.Still, Biden is losing to Trump. His path is narrowing. In 2020, Biden didn’t just win Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He also won Arizona, Georgia and Nevada. Now he’s behind in those states by six points, nine points and 13 points in the latest Times/Siena/Philadelphia Inquirer poll. Have those states turned red? No. That same poll finds Democrats leading in the Arizona and Nevada Senate races. The Democrats are also leading in the Senate races in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.National polls find Democrats slightly ahead of Republicans for control of congress. The “Never Biden” vote now looks larger than the “Never Trump” vote. The electorate hasn’t turned on Democrats; a crucial group of voters has turned on Biden.This week, the Biden team appeared to shake up the race by challenging Trump to two debates. One will take place early, on June 27. The other will be in September. Biden’s video was full of bluster. “Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020,” he said. “Since then, he hasn’t shown up for a debate. Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal. I’ll even do it twice.”Biden, it seemed, was calling Trump’s bluff. He wanted the fight. But Biden wants fewer debates, not more. On the same day, he pulled out of the three debates scheduled by the Commission on Presidential Debates for September and October. He rebuffed the Trump campaign’s call for four debates. “I’ll even do it twice” is misdirection. He’ll only do it twice.This is bad precedent and questionable politics. Debates do more to focus and inform the public than anything else during the campaign. Biden is cutting the number of debates by a third and he’s making it easier for future candidates to abandon debates altogether.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kansas City’s Harrison Butker Draws Intense Criticism for Graduation Speech

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      Kansas City’s Harrison Butker quoted Taylor Swift lyrics while telling men to be “unapologetic in your masculinity” and women to focus on being homemakers.Harrison Butker of the Kansas City Chiefs is one of the best place-kickers in the N.F.L. That is enough to make him somewhat famous in the football world, but players of his position aren’t typically known by more casual observers — unless they do something especially great or terrible on the field.Last weekend, with the N.F.L. solidly in its off-season, Mr. Butker found himself at the center of a great deal of vitriol on social media, and it had nothing to do with his job.On Saturday, Mr. Butker delivered a 20-minute commencement address to the graduates of Benedictine College, a conservative Catholic school in Atchison, Kan., about 50 miles northwest of Kansas City. He packed his speech full of conservative political discourse, railing against “degenerative cultural values and media.” He rebuked President Joe Biden for his stance as a Catholic who supports abortion rights, and urged women to forgo careers so that they could support their husbands.“I can tell you that my beautiful wife, Isabelle, would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother,” Mr. Butker said. “I’m on this stage today and able to be the man I am because I have a wife who leans into her vocation.”He added: “It cannot be overstated that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More