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      Pennsylvania Court Orders Undated Ballots to Be Counted, Siding With McCormick For Now

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      David McCormick, who was trailing Dr. Mehmet Oz by fewer than 1,000 votes, had sued to have ballots without handwritten dates on their return envelopes counted.Update: David McCormick conceded the exceedingly close race for the Republican nomination for Senate in Pennsylvania on Friday to Dr. Mehmet Oz. Read the news story.A Pennsylvania court ordered election officials on Thursday to count undated mail-in ballots for now in a nationally watched Republican Senate primary, granting a temporary injunction to David McCormick as he trailed Dr. Mehmet Oz amid a statewide recount.Fewer than 1,000 votes separate Mr. McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, from Dr. Oz, the celebrity physician backed by former President Donald J. Trump, in a race that could ultimately determine control of the divided Senate.The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania concluded that a May 23 lawsuit by Mr. McCormick had raised sufficient claims that a state law requiring voters to hand-write the date on return envelopes for mail-in ballots could lead to their disenfranchisement.Republicans have fought to enforce the rule, siding with Dr. Oz in the lawsuit.In the 42-page opinion, Renée Cohn Jubelirer, the court’s president judge, directed county election boards to report two sets of tallies to the acting secretary of the commonwealth, one that includes the undated ballots and one that does not. That way, when a final decision is made on whether to accept the ballots, the judge wrote, the vote count will be readily available.In the opinion, Judge Cohn Jubelirer said there was no question that the contested ballots had been returned by the May 17 deadline.“The court notes that no party has asserted, or even hinted, that the issue before the court involves allegations of fraud,” she wrote. “The parties have agreed that this election was free and fair.”A campaign spokeswoman for Mr. McCormick lauded the court order in a statement on Friday.“We are pleased the court agrees on ensuring valid Republican votes that were signed and returned on time, as shown by their time-stamp, are counted so the party can get behind a strong nominee in the fall,” the campaign spokeswoman, Jess Szymanski, said.Casey Contres, the campaign manager for Dr. Oz, declined to comment about the decision on Friday.Judge Cohn Jubelirer wrote that the court’s guidance should be uniform, noting that some counties had decided to accept the undated ballots and others had not.“Without court action, there exists the very real possibility that voters within this commonwealth will not be treated equally depending on the county in which they vote,” she wrote. “The court begins with the overarching principle that the Election Code should be liberally construed so as not to deprive electors of their right to elect a candidate of their choice.”The treatment of undated mail-in ballots is at the heart of another legal dispute in Pennsylvania. That one is before the U.S. Supreme Court, which on Tuesday paused the counting of those ballots in a judicial race in Lehigh County, Pa., a case that could reverberate in the G.O.P. Senate primary.Understand the Battle Over U.S. Voting RightsCard 1 of 6Why are voting rights an issue now? More

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      Jocelyn Benson: Protests at Judges’ Homes Must Be Legal, but They Aren’t Effective

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      It was close to 9 p.m. on a Saturday in early December of 2020. My son, then age 4, and I were putting the finishing touches on our Christmas tree as “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” played in the background.That’s when the sound of voices amplified by bullhorns first penetrated our living room. The peace, serenity and holiday spirit of the evening broke as a group of about 20 protesters, some of whom I later learned from the Michigan State Police were armed, gathered outside my home. The protesters — who believed the lie that the November 2020 election had been stolen from Donald Trump — woke our neighbors with a string of threats, vitriol and provocations. They screamed for me to “come outside” and show myself so that they could confront me about doing my duty as secretary of state and chief election officer and refusing to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Michigan — which President Biden won by more than 154,000 votes. “No audit, no peace,” they yelled.I carried my son upstairs and ran bath water loudly to drown out the noise. I worked to stay calm, but I was acutely aware that only one unarmed neighborhood security guard on my front porch stood between my family and the growing crowd. Would the protesters attempt to enter my home? Would a stray bullet enter or ricochet into my son’s bedroom? How long until law enforcement arrived? What would happen when it did?I thought back to that evening when I saw the recent images of people gathering for candlelight vigils outside the homes of U.S. Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito and John Roberts to express their opposition to the leaked draft opinion suggesting an end to the right to abortion in America. By all accounts, these abortion rights demonstrations have been peaceful, and no one was armed or posed an imminent threat. Still, I found the images alarming.Protest is a kind of theater, as abortion rights activists who dressed as characters from “The Handmaid’s Tale” outside the home of Justice Amy Coney Barrett know. The performance is not just for the target of the protests but also for anyone who sees it via news images or video or social media. The fact is, a group of people targeting just one person, at home, particularly at night, appears menacing. That’s true even if that person is one of the nine most powerful judges in the country or is Michigan’s secretary of state.The location of the protests, outside the homes of public officials, is the point critics have seized on to denounce them. Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia has criticized the protests and asked the federal government to take action against those who engage in them. Florida’s lawmakers went so far as to ban “picketing and protesting” at any person’s private residence; when signing the bill, Gov. Ron DeSantis used fiery language about banning “unruly mobs” and “angry crowds.”I believe such bans to be unconstitutional. The right of all Americans to peacefully assemble must be protected. But that doesn’t mean that protesting at the homes of public officials is effective.Protest is not always polite, and there are times when impolite or even uncivil protests help to raise awareness of continuing injustices that otherwise go unseen or unaddressed. One example I look to is that of Representative John Lewis, who suffered a skull fracture when he faced off with state troopers while marching nonviolently for civil rights in Selma, Ala., in 1965. Mr. Lewis left us with the mandate to “get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”Since working in Alabama in the late 1990s, investigating hate groups and hate crimes, I have been inspired by Mr. Lewis and those other brave foot soldiers in Selma who stood at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 to demand the American promise of democracy be fulfilled for every citizen. That powerful protest dramatized and made visible the injustices that African Americans were forced to endure in the South and elsewhere. The image of white state troopers and deputized bystanders beating the protesters sparked outrage across the nation. It inspired broad support for the civil rights movement and led the U.S. Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in August 1965.Banning or restricting protest silences necessary dissent and closes off an avenue to shine a light on injustices, to get the attention of government officials and the public. The role of any public servant is to listen and respond to the concerns of all the citizens we serve, particularly those whose voices and perspectives are marginalized. In cases where people are dismissed, silenced or blocked from seeking change at the ballot box or through a breakdown of other democratic norms and institutions, protest may be the only means to effect change. In those cases, peaceful acts of dissent or civil disobedience can be enormously powerful.It’s also important to recognize, however, that not all protests are successful at prompting change. I expect that those who gathered outside my home also felt shut out from power when they screamed at me that night. But showing up at my home to shout falsehoods about an election because they didn’t like the results did not help their cause. Many were there because they’d been lied to, told by people with immense power — including the departing president — that the 2020 election was “stolen,” though it was not.Days later, a colleague told me of hearing that Mr. Trump had suggested in a White House meeting that I should be arrested, charged with treason and executed. (After I discussed this on NBC News recently, a spokesman for Mr. Trump accused me of lying.) These protesters attempted to bully me into abdicating my duty to protect the will of the people of Michigan. But the people who made me fear for my family that night also emboldened me to do my job with integrity.In national coverage of the incident, people saw an angry group, some of them armed, outside the home of a woman and her young son. A month before the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol, it was an early and alarming demonstration of how far some were willing to go to try to undermine a fair election.A protest’s success is partly a matter of its effect. The march in Selma made a huge difference to the country. The bullying outside my home failed miserably.The success or failure of the abortion rights protests outside the justices’ homes isn’t clear. They were cheered on and defended as peaceful by many who were similarly upset by the Supreme Court’s likely new position on Roe v. Wade. But still, the targeting of individual officials at home opened the protests up to criticism, which distracted from their important cause.I will always advocate the power, and critical importance, of peaceful protest, which is a right that must be protected, even if it means protesters can sit peacefully or shout menacingly outside the homes of elected and appointed officials like the Supreme Court justices — or me and my family.But if the goal is to change minds, history and my own experience underscore that protesting outside an official’s home is rarely if ever effective at achieving the goals of those gathering — and oftentimes, it backfires.Jocelyn Benson (@JocelynBenson) is Michigan’s secretary of state. She is the author of “State Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process” and a 2022 recipient of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.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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      Prosecutors Move Quickly on Jan. 6 Cases, but Big Questions Remain

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      In the year since the assault on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, more than 700 people have been arrested, with little public indication from the Justice Department of how high the investigation might reach.By almost any measure, the criminal investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is a prosecutorial effort of unparalleled complexity and scope.For an entire year, federal agents in almost every state have been poring over mounting stacks of tipster reports, interviews with witnesses, public social media posts and private messages obtained by warrants. They have also collected nearly 14,000 hours of video — from media outlets, surveillance cameras and police-worn body cameras — enough raw footage that it would take a year and a half of around-the-clock viewing to get through it.While the Justice Department has called the inquiry one of the largest in its history, traditional law enforcement officials have not been acting alone. Working with information from online sleuths who style themselves as “Sedition Hunters,” the authorities have made more than 700 arrests — with little sign of slowing down.The government estimates that as many as 2,500 people who took part in the events of Jan. 6 could be charged with federal crimes. That includes more than 1,000 incidents that prosecutors believe could be assaults.As of this week, more than 225 people have been accused of attacking or interfering with the police that day. About 275 have been charged with what the government describes as the chief political crime on Jan. 6: obstructing Congress’s duty to certify the 2020 presidential vote count. A little over 300 people have been charged with petty crimes alone, mostly trespassing and disorderly conduct.But a big question hangs over the prosecutions: Will the Justice Department move beyond charging the rioters themselves?So far, the department has provided no public indication of the degree to which it might be pursuing a case against former President Donald J. Trump and the circle of his allies who helped inspire the chaos with their baseless claims of election fraud. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland is scheduled to give a speech on Wednesday, one day before the anniversary of the attack on the Capitol, but is not expected to provide any signals about the direction of the department’s investigation. A spokeswoman said he would not address any specific cases or individuals.On Capitol Hill, the House select committee on Jan. 6 is interviewing witnesses and has issued subpoenas to a number of high-profile figures allied with Mr. Trump. And with Mr. Garland and the Justice Department remaining mum about their intentions, members of the committee have signaled a willingness to exert pressure on the department, saying they would consider making criminal referrals if their investigation turns up evidence that could support a prosecution against Mr. Trump or others.Even the prosecutions of those who rioted at the Capitol have presented an array of moral and legal challenges that have bedeviled judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers.Overworked courts have tried to balance the laborious exchange of discovery materials with speedy trial protections and to manage the bleak conditions at Washington’s local jails where some defendants are being held without bail. They have also faced a fundamental, underlying tension: how to mete out justice on an individual level to hundreds of defendants who together helped form a violent mob.Jacob Chansley, the so-called QAnon Shaman, was sentenced to 41 months.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesPleas and SentencesWith rare speed for a large-scale prosecution, more than 160 people — or slightly more than 20 percent of all who have been charged — have pleaded guilty at this point. Of those, not quite half have already been sentenced.A few weeks ago, Robert Palmer, a Florida man who hurled a fire extinguisher at police officers, was sentenced to more than five years in prison, the longest term handed down so far. In November, one of the most familiar figures in the attack — Jacob Chansley, the so-called QAnon Shaman, who breached the Senate floor in a horned helmet with a fur draped over his shoulders — was sentenced to 41 months, a term he is appealing.Beneath the headlines, however, there has been a steady stream of penalties for lower-profile defendants: bricklayers, grandmothers, college students, artists, church leaders and long-haul truckers who, by and large, have admitted to little more than illegally entering the Capitol.Many, if not most, have avoided incarceration, sentenced to probation or stints of home confinement. Others have received only modest sentences, ranging from a few weeks to a few months.In court, those accused of minor crimes have almost always expressed remorse, saying their behavior was foolish, embarrassing or out of character. Some have broken into tears or, in one case, physically collapsed. Others have vowed never to attend a political rally again.Federal judges have taken slightly different positions on how to punish the defendants. Judge Trevor N. McFadden, appointed by Mr. Trump, often prefaces his sentences by calling the events that day “a national embarrassment” — though he has frequently declined to jail petty offenders. Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, an Obama appointee, has often given sentences higher than those requested by the government. Her go-to phrase: “There must be consequences.”Judge Amit P. Mehta told John Lolos, a defendant clearly steeped in election fraud conspiracies, that not only had he been lied to, but those who had done the lying were not “paying the consequences.”“Those who orchestrated Jan. 6 have in no meaningful sense been held accountable,” said Judge Mehta, another Obama appointee. “In a sense, Mr. Lolos, I think you are a pawn.”Prosecutors are using an unusual law to charge many of the rioters: the obstruction of an official proceeding before Congress.Pool photo by Erin SchaffLegal ChallengesFrom the start, prosecutors faced a unique legal problem: Never before had members of Congress been forced from the House and Senate floors while finalizing the transition of presidential power. What law should be used to charge this crime?The government settled on an unusual obstruction law — the obstruction of an official proceeding before Congress. It brought the charge against scores of people believed to have disrupted the democratic process, often alongside more traditional counts of trespassing, vandalism and assault.The obstruction law, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, had a few advantages. First, it allowed the authorities to avoid deploying more politically fraught — and harder-to-prove — counts like sedition or insurrection.It also permitted prosecutors to home in on the specific behavior of defendants and judge how much their actions contributed to the chaos that day. If someone went deep into the Capitol, say, or took some other action that helped to chase officials from their duties, chances are they have been charged with an obstruction count.But many defense lawyers have claimed the law was wrongly used.Passed in 2002 as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which sought to clamp down on corporate malfeasance, the measure was initially intended to prohibit things like shredding documents or tampering with witnesses in congressional inquiries. Defense lawyers have argued that prosecutors have stretched the law beyond its scope and used it to criminalize behavior that too closely resembles ordinary protest protected by the First Amendment.In the past few weeks, however, five federal judges have ruled that the law is valid, and it now seems certain it will be permitted in scores of Jan. 6 prosecutions, including some that will soon go to trial.More than 160 people have pleaded guilty so far to charges stemming from the riot. The first trials are scheduled to begin in February.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesTrials to Begin SoonThe earliest Capitol riot trials are scheduled to begin next month. When the proceedings start, jurors will most likely get a glimpse of how the government believes members of the mob worked together.The first trial, set to begin on Feb. 24, will focus on Robert Gieswein of Colorado, a self-proclaimed militiaman charged with assaulting officers with a chemical spray.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      Trump’s ‘Team Kraken’ Lands in Hot Water

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      L. Lin Wood played a starring role in the failed legal effort to alter the results of the 2020 election on behalf of former President Donald Trump. But Mr. Wood, a lawyer, now wants everyone to know that he had no real involvement in the suit to decertify the vote in Michigan, despite his name appearing on it.“I do not specifically recall being asked about the Michigan complaint,” he said on Monday, “but I had generally indicated to Sidney Powell that if she needed a quote-unquote trial lawyer, I would certainly be willing or available to help her.” Ms. Powell, you may recall, is the legal eagle who vowed to “release the Kraken” on supposed 2020 election fraudsters, thus earning the pro-Trump legal crusade its mythic nickname.Mr. Wood was just trying to support his Kraken co-counsel.Mr. Wood’s, um, clarifications were made to a federal judge during a hearing on whether he, Ms. Powell and several other lawyers should be sanctioned over the Michigan case. The city of Detroit, among other entities, has accused the pro-Trump legal team of abusing the court system by pursuing a frivolous, error-riddled case. The city wants the offending lawyers punished financially and referred for possible disbarment.Sidney PowellElijah Nouvelage/ReutersMonday’s virtual proceedings did not bode well for Team Kraken. U.S. District Court Judge Linda Parker expressed skepticism bordering on dismay about some of the evidence and experts from the original case. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen an affidavit that has made so many leaps,” she marveled at one point. “How could any of you as officers of the court present this affidavit?”Generally speaking, it’s not a good sign when a judge is characterizing one’s evidence in terms such as “fantastical,” “speculative,” “bad faith,” “obviously questionable” and “layers of hearsay.” Judge Parker brushed back Ms. Powell’s assertion that the complaint’s 960 pages of affidavits proved “due diligence,” countering, “Volume, certainly for this court, doesn’t equate with legitimacy or veracity.”The hearing ground on for six hours, with so much back talk and smack talk that the court reporter had to ask the participants to tone things down so that she could do her job. At day’s end, all parties were given two weeks to submit additional arguments.Mr. Wood was not the only defendant eager to downplay his role. The lawyer for Emily Newman, another member of the Michigan Kraken team, said his client spent a mere five hours on the case and that her role was “de minimis.” More generally, the defendants maintain that the entire hearing is outrageous and baseless and — surprise! — that they are being unjustly persecuted. “I have practiced law for 43 years and have never witnessed a proceeding like this,” Ms. Powell said.But here’s where the political and legal paths diverge for those perpetuating Mr. Trump’s election lies. The legal world has ethical, professional standards by which members are expected to abide. When they violate said standards, they can’t simply whine or bluster their way out of trouble with partisan demagogy. They need to justify their actions to judges and professional groups who have a clear grasp of the issues — and who deal with slick talkers for a living.This is the situation in which Team Kraken and some other Trump legal enablers find themselves. Michigan is just one of several states where suits are underway against the lawyers who pursued baseless election-fraud complaints. Last month, a New York appellate court suspended the law license of Rudy Giuliani, one of Mr. Trump’s most aggressive apparatchiks, for making “demonstrably false and misleading statements” about the 2020 election. The Texas bar is looking into whether the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, committed professional misconduct in challenging the election results. The state bar of Georgia, where Mr. Wood’s practice is based, is investigating his behavior.No doubt, the legal system hosts an abundance of carnival barkers and political hacks. Just this week, Jenna Ellis, a former Trump campaign legal adviser, announced her departure from the Republican Party, accusing its leaders of failing to stand up for Mr. Trump and for “true conservatives.” She is particularly miffed at the Republican National Committee’s chief legal counsel, Justin Riemer, for having reportedly spoken ill of her push to invalidate the 2020 results. “What Rudy and Jenna are doing is a joke and they are getting laughed out of court,” Mr. Riemer wrote in a November email, according to a new book by Michael Wolff. “They are misleading millions of people who have wishful thinking that the president is going to somehow win this thing.”Ms. Ellis has demanded the resignation of top party officials, including Ronna McDaniel, the R.N.C.’s chairwoman, and says she will not return to the fold until the party “comes back home to conservatives.”Such theatrics may thrill MAGA fans — and even more so the former president. But they are unlikely to sway jurists or other arbiters tasked with reviewing the behavior of officers of the court.Mr. Trump’s alternative facts hold less sway over some realms than others.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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      McGahn Breaks Little New Ground in Closed-Door Testimony

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      A transcript of the former White House counsel’s appearance, which ended a two-year dispute between the Justice Department and Congress over a subpoena, will be made public next week.WASHINGTON — Donald F. McGahn II, the former White House counsel, answered detailed questions from Congress behind closed doors on Friday about President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to impede the Russia investigation. But Mr. McGahn provided few new revelations, according to people familiar with his testimony.The fact that Mr. McGahn spoke to Congress at all was significant after a multiyear legal battle by the Trump Justice Department to block an April 2019 subpoena for his testimony. That dispute ended last month, when President Biden’s Justice Department, House Democrats and a lawyer for Mr. McGahn reached a compromise under which he finally showed up.Still, the interview by the House Judiciary Committee, attended by only a half dozen or so lawmakers on a summer Friday when Congress was on recess, was an anticlimactic conclusion to a saga that once dominated Capitol Hill. When Democrats first subpoenaed Mr. McGahn, they believed his testimony under oath and on live television could help build public support for impeaching Mr. Trump for obstruction of justice and other matters.Instead, in the time it took to sort out a tangled legal battle, questions about the events Mr. McGahn witnessed have largely faded into the background or been carefully detailed by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. Mr. Trump’s presidency turned up newer issues for which the House impeached him twice — and the Senate acquitted him both times.“I believe we have been vindicated in terms of the intimacy of his involvement and the ultimate conclusions of the Mueller report,” Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat of Texas, told reporters as she exited the session. “The Congress has to be respected with its subpoena and oversight responsibilities.“Today, we asserted that right,” she added.But under the strict limits imposed by the terms of the deal, Mr. McGahn’s appearance broke little new ground, according to those familiar with it, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it. The agreement limited questioning to matters that were described in the publicly available portions of Mr. Mueller’s report.Mr. McGahn will have up to a week to review a transcript for accuracy before it is made public. But the people said that he hewed closely to the account he had already given the special counsel, often telling committee lawyers that his recollections of events from four years ago were no longer sharp.Republicans were pleased to declare the interview a waste of time as they left the session after more than five hours of questioning.“Today, we have the House Democrats on the Judiciary Committee relitigating the Mueller report,” said Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee. “Don McGahn hasn’t been White House counsel for three years.”Mr. McGahn was a witness to many episodes described in the second volume of the Mueller report, which centered on potential obstruction of justice issues; his name appears there more than 500 times.In June 2017, for example, Mr. Trump called Mr. McGahn at home and ordered him to tell Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, to fire Mr. Mueller over a dubious claim that the special counsel had a conflict of interest. Mr. McGahn refused and was prepared to resign before Mr. Trump backed off, according to the Mueller report.After the report became public, Mr. Trump claimed on Twitter that he had never told Mr. McGahn to fire Mr. Mueller. Two people familiar with the hearing on Friday said that the session had spent a lengthy period going over that episode, and that Mr. McGahn had testified under oath that the account in Mr. Mueller’s report was accurate.The report also described a related episode that followed a January 2018 report by The New York Times that first brought to public light Mr. Trump’s failed attempt to have Mr. Mueller fired. Mr. Trump tried to bully Mr. McGahn into creating “a record stating he had not been ordered to have the special counsel removed” while also shaming the lawyer for taking notes about their conversations. But Mr. McGahn refused to write the memo.Mr. McGahn was also a major witness to several other episodes recounted in the obstruction volume of Mr. Mueller’s report, including the White House’s handling of the Justice Department’s concerns that Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, was vulnerable to blackmail by Russia over false statements he had made about his conversations with the country’s ambassador. Mr. McGahn was also part of deliberations leading to Mr. Trump’s firing of James B. Comey Jr., the F.B.I. director.Mr. Trump had directed Mr. McGahn to speak with Mr. Mueller’s investigators in 2017. In 2019, as it became clear that Mr. McGahn had become a chief witness to many of Mr. Trump’s actions that raised obstruction of justice concerns, the president’s allies — like his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani — began attacking him.The attacks left Mr. McGahn in a delicate position. He is a hero to the conservative legal movement because he was the chief architect of the Trump administration’s judicial selection process, which filled the federal bench with Federalist Society-style appointees. But Mr. McGahn’s law firm, Jones Day, has many Republican-oriented clients; if Mr. Trump were to order the party faithful to shun the firm as punishment, it could be financially devastating.Democrats were eager to claim Mr. McGahn’s testimony on Friday as a victory despite the lack of new disclosures, saying it upheld the principle that a White House could not prevent a key administration official from testifying before Congress. It added a second precedent to one created in 2009, when the new administration of President Barack Obama struck a deal to end litigation he had inherited over whether President George W. Bush’s former White House counsel, Harriet Miers, would testify about firings of United States attorneys.But because the compromise agreement to permit Mr. McGahn to testify effectively cut short the litigation, a federal appeals court never issued any binding precedent to resolve the long-running ambiguity over whether Congress can sue the executive branch in a subpoena dispute. That means the next time such a clash arises, Mr. Biden or a future president can again stonewall Congress and litigate the same issue all over again.Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said Mr. McGahn “shed new light on several troubling events today.” But the congressman also described the belated nature of the testimony as a mixed bag.“In one sense, today is a great victory for congressional oversight. By securing Mr. McGahn’s testimony, we have made clear that the executive branch must respect our subpoenas,” he said. “On the other hand, two years is clearly too long to wait to enforce a valid subpoena, and the Trump era has taught us that Congress can no longer depend on good-faith cooperation with our committees.”Mr. Nadler said he planned to advance legislation that would resolve legal disputes over subpoenas to executive branch officials more quickly. More

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      If Netanyahu Goes, Israel's New Prime Minister Faces a Big Mess

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      After four election cycles, two years and one man in power since 2009, Israel appears to be on the brink of change. On Wednesday evening, eight wildly ideologically different political parties announced that they would establish a coalition, aligning behind Yair Lapid of the centrist party Yesh Atid (“There Is a Future”) and Naftali Bennett — a former leader of a council of West Bank settlers — of the nationalist party Yamina (“Rightward”) to remove longtime Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.But the new government is not yet a reality. The coalition still faces procedural and political hurdles. Ideological differences nearly killed the coalition in the negotiation stage. Mr. Netanyahu reportedly has no plans to resign and has big plans to sabotage his opponents.Despite all these vulnerabilities, Israel has the first chance in 12 years at a transition of power. And even if the new government has a short life expectancy, it must not settle for limited policies. New leadership means bold vision on the toughest issues in Israel. If it doesn’t provide a substantive vision behind the “anti-Bibi” brand, voters in the next elections, sooner or later, might decide there truly is no alternative.Three guiding values would lead Israel toward genuine change — not only a break from Netanyahu’s leadership, which Mr. Bennett recently described as being “dictated by personal and political considerations” while “creating a smoke screen of personality worship,” but also a new path for the future. To get there, this government must shun a nationalist, illiberal governing style, re-embrace democratic norms and articulate a policy to end the occupation.Setting out these values at the start is the new coalition’s most urgent task. The precarious government will struggle against time and tension to carry out policy — at the very least, it needs a vision.Most immediately, the new government must make a clean break from the divisive rhetoric that Mr. Netanyahu used to poison Israeli society. It won’t be easy. Mr. Bennett, who is designated to serve as the first prime minister in a rotation agreement with Mr. Lapid, and Ayelet Shaked, No. 2 in Mr. Bennett’s party, have been key actors in Israel’s far-right nationalist politics, as was Avigdor Lieberman, another coalition partner.But when Mr. Bennett announced his intentions to join Mr. Lapid’s government on Sunday, he spoke of unity and friendship, team spirit and compromises. For his part, Mr. Lapid has consistently projected calm and conciliation since receiving the mandate to form a government.Reconstituting Israeli leadership is not just about words, but also about Israel’s global orientation. Which leaders does Israel cultivate? Mr. Netanyahu courted the world’s authoritarians and ultranationalists, like Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Viktor Orban of Hungary, Donald Trump and Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan. A “change” government should ally with leaders who favor pragmatism and reason — like Joe Biden, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and Jacinda Ardern.Reversing the illiberal nationalism that thrived under Netanyahu is merely the first step to stanch the bleeding of Israeli democracy. The new government must also embrace democratic values and institutions. But that requires this hodgepodge of ideological bedfellows to actually agree on what those democratic values are.Israel’s democratic erosion has involved numerous aspects, including the passage of undemocratic legislation such as the nation-state law, a law legitimizing de facto housing discrimination, as well as a law to curtail public calls for boycott and one restricting free speech. Even the right-wing parties in the new government can, and must, refrain from this type of legislation. Ending incitement against Palestinian citizens in Israel, such as Mr. Netanyahu’s 2019 accusations that Arab Knesset members are terror supporters who want to destroy Israel, would be one step toward healing democracy.More complex for this government will be defending democratic checks and balances, particularly the independence of the Israeli judiciary. The farthest-right coalition leaders — mainly Ms. Shaked and Mr. Bennett — have made attacks on the Israeli judiciary central to their political mission in recent years. Gideon Saar, now slated to be justice minister, has demanded judicial reforms in line with their views.But Israel’s democracy is ailing not because the judiciary has overstepped its bounds, as the right wing argues. The problem with Israeli democracy is its refusal to define what Israel is: a theocracy, an aspiring democracy or an occupying power. All of which means nothing can be clarified if the government fails to address a third core issue: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Israel’s identity and democracy have been ambiguous since the birth of the state. But from 1967, the fog of Israel’s intentions regarding the occupied Palestinian territories became a scourge.Gershom Gorenberg’s classic book “The Accidental Empire” documents Prime Minister Levi Eshkol’s striking ambiguity about how much he would tolerate, or support, the settlement project at first. (He eventually did.) The country developed a long tradition of obfuscating its ultimate aim for the fate of those territories. Mr. Netanyahu was no different; in 2009 he announced support for a muddled vision for two states, then worked for years against such a solution, ultimately campaigning for West Bank annexation from 2019 to 2020, only to drop the plan when it no longer served him politically. Meanwhile the occupation deepens, Palestinian independence disintegrates, and the consequences accelerate: In March, the International Criminal Court announced it would be investigating Israel and Palestinian militant groups for possible war crimes; foreign and domestic human rights groups have charged the country with apartheid. A fresh conflict exploded just weeks ago, sparking shocking ethnic violence among Israel’s own citizens.Neither of the first two aims — ending illiberal nationalism, nor strengthening democracy — can happen without a vision of how to end occupation. And there are only two real routes.One option is to revive the commitment toward a two-state solution — preferably in the updated, more humane form of a two-state confederation based on open borders and cooperation rather than hard ethnic partition. The other is to acknowledge the reality of permanent Israeli control and begin handing out full rights to all people under Israel’s control, equally, by law.Here the future coalition can easily run aground, with two right-wing parties — Yamina and New Hope — that broadly reject either approach. But these two parties hold just 13 seats out of 61 in the coalition. Yair Lapid heads the largest party in the new government, which he created. He needs to push this new government to set a new course on ending the conflicts.Without a permanent government, budget or substantive lawmaking on large-scale policy for two years, the country is at a standstill. The escalation with Hamas may flare again. Israel’s election nightmare has been a manifestation of the country’s deepest disagreements. If the new leaders are serious about their promised “change coalition,” they need to start with a vision even if they don’t complete the job.After all, Moses didn’t enter the promised land either, but at least he showed the way.Dahlia Scheindlin is a political analyst living in Tel Aviv and a policy fellow at the Century Foundation.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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      2 Leading Manhattan D.A. Candidates Face the Trump Question

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      Alvin Bragg and Tali Farhadian Weinstein both had dealings with President Donald J. Trump’s administration that Mr. Trump could try to use against them.Whoever wins the race to become the next Manhattan district attorney will take over one of the most contentious, highest-profile criminal investigations in the office’s history: the inquiry into former President Donald J. Trump and his business.Two of the leading candidates in the Democratic primary field, Alvin Bragg and Tali Farhadian Weinstein, have had past contacts with Mr. Trump’s administration — dealings that could become an issue if one of them becomes district attorney.Mr. Bragg, a former official with the New York attorney general’s office, reminds voters frequently that in his former job, he sued Mr. Trump’s administration “more than a hundred times.”Ms. Farhadian Weinstein, who once served as general counsel to the Brooklyn district attorney, has been less vocal about Mr. Trump. She only occasionally notes her involvement in a successful lawsuit against the Trump administration. And she has not spoken publicly about once interviewing with Trump administration officials for a federal judgeship early in his term.Mr. Bragg and Ms. Farhadian Weinstein are among eight Democratic candidates vying to replace Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the district attorney, who is not running for re-election. With the primary less than one month away, Mr. Trump continues to loom over the race.Mr. Vance’s office recently convened a grand jury that will hear evidence about Mr. Trump and his company, according to a person with knowledge of the matter — a sign that the investigation could soon intensify.Tali Farhadian Weinstein attended a meeting on White House grounds to discuss a federal judgeship.Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesMr. Bragg and Ms. Farhadian Weinstein have raised more money than any of their opponents, and both say they have the prosecutorial experience to take over the office.But each would also bring particular experiences to the Trump investigation that the former president, based on his past actions, seems likely to weaponize against them: Mr. Bragg’s history of legal conflict with Mr. Trump and Ms. Farhadian Weinstein’s previously undisclosed discussion of a judicial post with Trump administration lawyers.Andrew Weissmann, a former senior prosecutor under Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who investigated Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, said he expected Mr. Trump to target the next district attorney just as he had attacked Mr. Mueller, whom the former president had called a “true Never Trumper” and “totally conflicted.”“No matter who gets elected, he’s going to do opposition research, and assuming an indictment’s brought or anything close to that, he’s going to do what he did with the special counsel,” Mr. Weissmann said.The impaneling of a new grand jury, first reported by The Washington Post, follows years of investigation by Mr. Vance, who has focused on possible financial crimes at the Trump Organization, including tax and bank-related fraud.Prosecutors were already using grand juries to issue subpoenas, obtain documents and hear some testimony, but the new grand jury is expected to hear from a range of witnesses in the coming months. There is no indication that the investigation has reached an advanced stage or that prosecutors have decided to seek charges against Mr. Trump or his company.Mr. Trump’s advisers have said that he will try to impugn the motives of the prosecutors investigating him. After The Post’s report came out, Mr. Trump called the inquiry “purely political” and said that “our prosecutors are politicized.”That is an attack that he might wield against Mr. Bragg, who has repeatedly brought up his many lawsuits against Mr. Trump and his administration, referring to a period in 2017 to 2018 when he served as a senior official under successive New York attorneys general, Eric Schneiderman and Barbara D. Underwood.One of the most prominent of the office’s lawsuits, filed in June 2018, accused the Donald J. Trump Foundation and the Trump family of what Ms. Underwood called “a shocking pattern of illegality,” and ultimately led to the foundation’s dissolution.Alvin Bragg worked in the New York State attorney general’s office when suits against President Donald J. Trump were filed.Andrew Seng for The New York TimesMr. Bragg, at a Democratic candidate forum in December, cited that lawsuit as one reason he was qualified to oversee the district attorney’s Trump investigation.“I have investigated Trump and his children and held them accountable for their misconduct with the Trump Foundation,” Mr. Bragg said. “I know how to follow the facts and hold people in power accountable.”Mr. Bragg acknowledged that Mr. Trump could seek to make an issue of his history if he wins. Asked how he would contend with accusations of bias from the former president, Mr. Bragg said he had been attentive to what he had said publicly — and what he had not said.“It is a fact that I have sued Trump more than a hundred times,” Mr. Bragg said. “I can’t change that fact, nor would I. That was important work. That’s separate from anything that the D.A.’s office may be looking at now.”A spokeswoman for Ms. Farhadian Weinstein, Jennifer Blatus, accused Mr. Bragg of attacking Mr. Trump “for political advantage every chance he gets,” in contrast to what Ms. Blatus characterized as her candidate’s “judicious approach.”In an emailed statement, Ms. Farhadian Weinstein explained her reluctance to speak about a potential attack on her by Mr. Trump.“I have repeatedly declined requests to discuss a hypothetical argument that a current subject of an investigation in the Manhattan D.A.’s office might make — that’s the only proper approach for open matters the next D.A. will inherit,” she said.She also criticized Mr. Bragg for hosting a fund-raiser with Daniel S. Goldman, a former House lawyer who worked on Mr. Trump’s first impeachment.Ms. Farhadian Weinstein’s meeting with Trump administration lawyers over the judgeship occurred in 2017, early in the Trump administration.A friend of Ms. Farhadian Weinstein, the Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman, suggested her as a candidate for a district court judgeship to Avi Berkowitz, then a special assistant to Jared Kushner, Mr. Feldman said. He did so on his own initiative, he said. (Two years later, in 2019, Mr. Feldman testified against Mr. Trump at his first impeachment hearing.)Ms. Farhadian Weinstein, who had previously applied for a judgeship during the administration of President Barack Obama, received a phone call from the Trump administration out of the blue, she told an associate. It is not unusual for lawyers with judicial aspirations to seek judgeships regardless of political party — Ms. Farhadian Weinstein has been registered as both an independent and a Democrat in recent years — and she took the meeting at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House grounds.But the meeting, which included lawyers John Bash and Gregory G. Katsas from the White House Counsel’s Office, became heated during a disagreement over constitutional law, the associate said, and the conversation never went further.A former administration official who was familiar with the meeting did not remember its being characterized as heated and called it a “perfunctory” interview set up to appease the former president’s son-in-law.A person close to Mr. Kushner said that while Mr. Kushner would periodically pass along to the White House Counsel’s Office recommendations people would make for judges, he has no memory of Ms. Farhadian Weinstein being discussed. There is no evidence Mr. Trump personally knew of Ms. Farhadian Weinstein’s interest in a judgeship or of her trip to meet with the White House lawyers.While Ms. Farhadian Weinstein’s interview for a judgeship in 2017 could become fodder for the former president’s political attacks should she become district attorney, legal experts said it raised no ethical concerns, nor would it require that she recuse herself from the office’s investigation into Mr. Trump and his organization.Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause New York, a good government advocacy group, said in an interview that while Ms. Farhadian Weinstein would not have been required to disclose the meeting publicly in the district attorney’s race, the information was “certainly relevant to the job she’s applying for.”“It’s information that voters will want to consider, and it’s up to them to decide how this factors into their ultimate choice,” Ms. Lerner said.William K. Rashbaum More

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      The Year in Charts

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Year in ChartsA tour of the major trends, from Covid-19 spread to political polarization, that affected Americans this year.Mr. Rattner served as counselor to the Treasury secretary in the Obama administration. Lalena Fisher is a graphics editor for The Times.Dec. 31, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Daniel Roland/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIf 2019 was the Year of Trump, then 2020 was the Year of Covid-19 and Trump. Only the most devastating pandemic in a century could have bumped our loudmouthed president into second place. That is, until Joe Biden also took him down a peg, in a free and fair election with an unambiguous result — except in the world of Trump. And oh yes, all of this occurred during the biggest recession since the Great Depression.Not all of this year’s ugliness can be charted. In particular, the death of George Floyd certainly should be high on the list of what made 2020 so awful, and so should how President Trump abetted the tensions that have divided America. But that still leaves plenty of material for this, my ninth annual year in charts.As early as January, experts at the World Health Organization told us the virus was coming. That was followed in March by eruptions in Italy, Spain and elsewhere. Yet we did little under the leadership of a president who kept telling us it would “go away.” Even after the coronavirus nearly brought the New York City area to its knees, the Trump administration responded feebly. Many parts of the country — particularly places where Mr. Trump remained popular — refused to take simple precautions like wearing masks.By fall, the greatest country on earth led the developed world in total cases. More than 340,000 Americans have died, more than the number killed in combat in World War II. More