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      Want to Know Why Democrats Lose Rural America?

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      STORM LAKE, Iowa — Democrats are getting their derrières handed to them by the kickers and the Busch Light drinkers from out here on the edge of the Great Plains all the way to Appalachia, where the Republicans roam.So what do the Democrats do?Dump the Iowa caucuses into the ditch. At the hand of President Biden, no less. He decreed that South Carolina’s primary should go first on the presidential nominating calendar, displacing Iowa. The Democratic National Committee seems happy to oblige.We get it. Let someone else take a turn up front. But discarding Iowa is not a great way to mend fences in rural America — where the Democratic brand has become virtually unmarketable. The Democratic big shots hated Iowa’s pride of place since the caucuses rose to prominence a half-century ago because money couldn’t control the outcome. Jimmy Carter broke through from Plains, Ga., with nothing but a toothy smile and an honest streak. Candidates were forced to meet actual voters in village diners across the state. We took our vetting role seriously — you had better be ready to analyze Social Security’s actuarial prospects.Candidates weren’t crazy about it. The media hated Storm Lake ice in January. We did a decent, if imperfect, job of winnowing the field. Along with New Hampshire, we set things up so South Carolina could often become definitive, which it will be no longer.Iowa has its problems. We are too white. The caucuses are complicated, confusing and clunky. The evening gatherings in homes, school gyms and libraries are not fully accessible and not as convenient as a primary for people with jobs and kids at home.But diversity did have a chance here. Barack Obama was vaulted to the White House. Iowa actively encouraged Black candidates to challenge the white establishment. Mr. Obama beat Hillary Clinton here. Iowa had no problem giving a gay man, Pete Buttigieg, and a Jewish democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders, the two top tickets out to New Hampshire last cycle. Black, white or Latino, it’s organization that matters in Iowa. You have to herd your people to the caucus and keep them in your pen for an hour while other campaigns try to poach them. It’s town hall democracy. Mr. Obama won with it. Candidates who ran feeble campaigns have to blame something. Latinos in Storm Lake overwhelmingly caucused for Mr. Sanders. Julián Castro can complain all he wants.The talking heads say Iowa messed up by not reporting the results quickly. The problem was that a cellphone app suggested to the Iowa Democratic Party by the Democratic National Committee crashed. The democratic process worked — the app didn’t.Anyone looking for an excuse to excise Iowa and further alienate rural voters could find one. The time was ripe.Mr. Biden doesn’t owe Iowa a thing. He finished fourth in the caucuses. He did owe Representative James Clyburn, the dean of South Carolina Democrats, big time for an endorsement just ahead of the Palmetto State primary, where Black voters put Mr. Biden over the top. It was sweet payback. We get that, too.Actually, the caucuses haven’t been the best thing for Iowa. The TV ads never stop. It puts you in a bad mood to think everything is going wrong all the time. We asked good questions, and the candidates gave good answers, then forgot about it all. Despite all the attention, nothing really happened to stop the long decline as the state’s Main Streets withered, farmers disappeared, and the undocumented dwell in the shadows. Republican or Democrat, the outcome was pretty much the same. At least the Republicans will cut your taxes.So it’s OK that South Carolina goes first. Iowa can do without the bother. The Republicans are sticking with Iowa, the Democrats consider it a lost cause. No Democratic state senator lives in a sizable part of western Iowa. Republicans control the governor’s office, the Legislature and soon the entire congressional delegation. Nobody organized the thousands of registered Latino voters in meatpacking towns like Storm Lake. Democrats are barely trying. The results show it.The old brick factory haunts along the mighty Mississippi River are dark, thanks to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton and everyone else who sold us out for “free trade.” Keokuk, the gate city to the river, was once a bustling industrial and shipping hub but recently lost its hospital. Your best hope in rural Jefferson was to land a casino to save the town. You essentially can’t haul a load of hogs to the packinghouse in a pickup anymore — you need a contract and a semi. The sale barn and open markets are quaint memories. John Deere tractor cabs will be made in Mexico, not Waterloo. Our rivers are rank with manure. It tends to frustrate those left behind, and the resentment builds to the point of insurrection when it is apparent that the government is not here to help you.It’s hard to feel from 30,000 feet. So Donald Trump landed in Sioux City on the eve of the midterm election to claim his stake before a large crowd buffeted by the gales out of Nebraska. “The Iowa way of life is under siege,” Mr. Trump bellowed. “We are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation.”They loved him. The Democrats view the crowd as deplorable, and told Iowa to get lost.Art Cullen is the editor of The Storm Lake Times and author of “Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper.”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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      What Are the Politics of Elon Musk? It’s Complicated.

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      Elon Musk has tweeted about political topics regularly since taking over Twitter, often belittling some liberal causes. But what he stands for remains largely unclear.He has called himself an independent and a centrist, yet “economically right of center, maybe.” He has said he was until recently a supporter of only Democrats and voted for President Biden. He’s encouraged people to vote Republican, which he said he did for the first time this year. Last year, he once even declared himself indifferent about politics, saying he’d rather stay out of it altogether.Elon Musk, ever a bundle of contradictions and inconsistencies, has long made his politics tricky to pin down. To many of his critics, though, his relentless flurry of tweets in the six weeks since he took over Twitter has exposed his true conservative bent, and intensified their fears that he would make the social network more susceptible to right-wing misinformation.And at times, he’s made it hard to argue with that. He has said he’d welcome former President Donald J. Trump back on Twitter; suggested that Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was lying about the attack at their home that left him hospitalized; and reinstated accounts that have trafficked in offensive ethnic stereotypes and bigotry, including for the artist formerly known as Kanye West. (Mr. Musk later suspended Mr. West’s account again after the rapper-entrepreneur posted an image of a swastika.)His copious tweeting has generated huge amounts of attention. In a 24-hour period late this week, he tweeted more than 40 times, often with little rhyme or reason. He criticized the Biden administration’s deal with Russia that freed Brittney Griner, the Women’s National Basketball Association star. He asked Elton John to clarify his complaint about misinformation flourishing unchecked on Twitter. At times, Mr. Musk was acting like Twitter’s in-house customer service representative, boasting about new features and improved functions.And maybe that is a big part of the point — improving the image of his new $44 billion property, which he has said repeatedly is in dire financial straits.Yet Mr. Musk, who did not respond to a request for comment, continues to defy easy political categorization. His views have been described as libertarian, though these days his politics seem more contrarian than anything else. He is more clear about what he is against than what he is for.It’s true Mr. Musk certainly sounds a lot like a Republican — and, sometimes, a lot like Mr. Trump — with his missives on Twitter against “woke” politics and Covid restrictions, his attacks on “elite” media and his efforts to draw attention to allegations that Hunter Biden profited from his father’s political clout.More on Elon Musk’s Twitter TakeoverAn Established Pattern: Firing people. Talking of bankruptcy. Telling workers to be “hard core.” Twitter isn’t the first company that witnessed Elon Musk use those tactics.Rivals Emerge: Sensing an opportunity, new start-ups and other social platforms are racing to dethrone Twitter and capitalize on the chaos of its new ownership under Mr. Musk.The ‘Twitter Files’: Mr. Musk and Matt Taibbi, an independent journalist, set off an intense debate with a release of internal Twitter documents regarding a 2020 decision to restrict posts linking to a report in the New York Post about Hunter Biden.Hard Fork: The Times podcast looks at Mr. Musk’s two-day clash with Apple, which he had accused of trying to sabotage Twitter before saying the “misunderstanding” had been resolved.But where Mr. Musk has seemed most in line with the G.O.P. of Mr. Trump is in the tenor of his political commentary, which if anything seems more spiritedly anti-left than ideologically pro-right. While he has not been shy about sharing his disdain for many Democrats, his enthusiasm for Republicans has been more muted. He has stressed repeatedly that his problems are with extremists on both ends of the political spectrum.“To be clear, my historical party affiliation has been Independent, with an actual voting history of entirely Democrat until this year,” he wrote on Twitter the day before the midterm election. “And I’m open to the idea of voting Democrat again in the future.”As with many people who describe themselves as politically independent now, the hostility Mr. Musk harbors toward Democrats appears to have drawn him closer to the Republican Party over the last few years. He considers himself as part of the “center 80% of people, who wish to learn, laugh & engage in reasoned debate.”He has eagerly encouraged his followers to weigh in with their views on the country’s culture wars and traded tweets with some of the right’s favorite punching bags, like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. When she criticized his plan to charge Twitter users $8 a month to have a verified account with one of the social media service’s signature blue check marks — “Lmao at a billionaire earnestly trying to sell people on the idea that ‘free speech’ is actually a $8/mo subscription plan,” she wrote — he dismissed her.“Your feedback is appreciated, now pay $8,” Mr. Musk shot back.Many of his recent tweets have had that kind of “own the libs” tone, the shorthand on the right for when conservatives think they’ve deftly, often sarcastically, swatted down a liberal. A couple of weeks ago, he posted video on Twitter of a closet full of T-shirts with the slogan “#stay woke” that he said he had found at the social media company’s headquarters. Then he followed up with a tweet that linked to a Justice Department report that undercut one of the central narratives of the mass protests against police brutality: that Michael Brown, a Black teenager killed by the police in Ferguson, Mo., had his hands raised when a white officer shot him.On occasion, his remarks have raised concerns that he has planted himself firmly among right-wing conspiracy theorists. When he tweeted about the attack on Ms. Pelosi’s husband, he shared the unfounded claim that there was “a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye.” He later deleted the tweet, which linked to an article from a fringe website.He also said he would support Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for president in 2024, though his endorsement was not especially resounding. He merely replied “Yes” when someone on Twitter asked him. Mr. DeSantis, a hard-line conservative, would be an odd choice for someone who professes to want centrist governance in Washington.Mr. Musk has always claimed his concerns with Twitter’s previous management were about the ability of a small group of the company’s employees whom he described as “far left” to censor content. And over the past week, he has cheered on tweets about internal communications before he took over. The communications, which were given to two writers who have posted their findings on Twitter, calling them the Twitter Files, showed how the company went about deciding what information got suppressed.It’s been a mixed bag of revelations. Some showed how Twitter employees made it harder to see tweets from a Stanford University professor who warned about how Covid lockdowns could harm children — a view many public health experts have come around to accept well after the fact. Other documents show how more conventional, conspiracy-theory-embracing conservatives were shut down, like Dan Bongino, the radio host who was one of the biggest amplifiers of lies about the 2020 election.Mr. Musk has not professed to have any profound attachment to Republican policies, though, which is consistent with his posture before taking over Twitter.He has been highly critical of climate change deniers and said he’s proud of how Tesla forced the rest of the automobile industry to embrace electric vehicles. In 2020, he revealed that he’d spoken to Mr. Trump numerous times about the importance of developing sustainable energy, which the former president dismissed in favor of traditional fossil fuel-based sources. And Mr. Musk quit Mr. Trump’s business councils after the administration pulled out of the Paris climate accord.In an interview with The New York Times in 2020, he described his politics as “middle-of-the-road.” “I’m socially very liberal. And then economically right of center, maybe, or center. I don’t know. I’m obviously not a communist.”His political giving supports that claim. According to the Federal Election Commission, which reports spending in federal but not state races, he has donated just shy of $1 million since 2003 to candidates as conservative as former President George W. Bush and as liberal as Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat. More recently, in 2020, he donated to senators of both political parties — including Chris Coons and Gary Peters, both Democrats, and Susan Collins and John Cornyn, both Republicans.Often, it seems, his posts are motivated by personal pique, not political philosophy. He’s criticized the Biden administration, for instance, as “not the friendliest” and for excluding Tesla, the world’s largest electric vehicle maker, from a White House summit on zero-emission vehicles in August 2021. His speculation on the reason for the exclusion: General Motors and the other car companies invited are union companies; Tesla is not. “Seems to be controlled by unions,” he complained at the time.Many of the views he has espoused on Twitter over the last two years have become popular in today’s Republican Party but are hardly exclusive to card-carrying Republicans. His criticism of progressives he views as overly censorious and sanctimonious is a sentiment many on the left have expressed. And his public condemnation of strict Covid containment measures in 2020 channeled what would become a growing skepticism of widespread public health restrictions. Though he was more exercised about them than most. “Fascist,” he once declared.Often, his tweets can seem to imply he leans in one direction when it’s just as likely that he is trying to court controversy. How to interpret, for instance, a post last week of what he said was an image of his bedside table? It had a revolver on it and a musket in a wooden case decorated with an image of George Washington crossing the Delaware River during the Revolutionary War.“Greetings, I’m Musket, Elon Musket,” he wrote.A few days later, he sounded pleased with himself as he remarked on the way Twitter had changed since his purchase was completed in October. “So many interesting posts on Twitter these days!” More

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      Sinema Adds Intrigue and Democratic Fury to Arizona’s 2024 Senate Race

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      Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s announcement that she would become an independent left Democrats in her state, many of whom have long wanted to defeat her in a primary, facing a new political calculus.The one constant in Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s political career, from her start as a left-wing rabble rouser and Ralph Nader aide to her announcement on Friday that she was leaving the Democratic Party to become an independent, is her boundless ability to draw attention to herself.Less than 72 hours after Democrats celebrated winning Georgia’s Senate race and the presumed 51st vote in the chamber, Ms. Sinema yanked the focus of the political world in Washington and Arizona back to her.This time, it was not another agenda-stymieing disagreement with the party that spent millions electing her to office, but instead a declaration that she was breaking with Democrats entirely, at least in name.“I’m going to be the same person I’ve always been. That’s who I am,” Ms. Sinema said in a two-minute video on Twitter on Friday morning, adding, “Nothing is going to change for me.”Democrats believe — or hope — that little will change in Congress, where Ms. Sinema will keep her Democratic committee assignments and where her defection will not change her former party’s control of the Senate.But in Arizona’s Democratic circles, distaste for the senator runs deep, and her announcement immediately shifted the spotlight to the 2024 race for her Senate seat.Democrats in the state have long presumed that she would run for re-election and that she was all but certain to face a difficult primary challenge, possibly from Representative Ruben Gallego, who has regularly criticized her over the past two years, or from Representative Greg Stanton, who signaled his interest on Friday. Ms. Sinema, however, left her potential rivals guessing, batting away questions about future bids for office.Hannah Hurley, a spokeswoman for Ms. Sinema, suggested that the senator had long promised to be an independent voice for the state, citing an ad from her 2018 campaign that emphasized a “fiercely independent record” and a “reputation for working across the aisle.”“Independent, just like Arizona,” the spot said.“She is not focused at all on campaign politics,” Ms. Hurley said of Ms. Sinema, who declined an interview on Friday afternoon.Democrats in Arizona signaled on Friday that they still planned to support a candidate against Ms. Sinema, whether it ends up being Mr. Gallego, Mr. Stanton or someone else. National Democratic leaders were cagey on Friday about how they would approach the 2024 race or a potential independent Sinema campaign. One main worry for Democrats is that running a strong candidate against Ms. Sinema in the general election might inadvertently help elect a Republican.Representatives for Senate Democrats’ campaign arm and for Senate Majority PAC, the leading Democratic super PAC devoted to Senate races, declined to comment on Friday afternoon about Ms. Sinema’s move. Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and majority leader, said that Ms. Sinema would keep her committee positions. “Kyrsten is independent,” he said in a statement. “That’s how she’s always been.”And the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said in a statement that President Biden expected to “continue to work successfully” with Ms. Sinema but did not address her 2024 prospects.Ms. Sinema was elected to the Senate in 2018, filling the seat of another party apostate, Senator Jeff Flake, a Republican who declined to seek re-election after breaking with President Donald J. Trump. He is now Mr. Biden’s ambassador to Turkey.The working assumption in Arizona political circles has long been that progressive anger at Ms. Sinema was concentrated among Democratic political activists, and that she could survive a primary from her left. But recent polling suggests that she has lost the confidence of many Arizona voters outside the center-right Chamber of Commerce types whom she has cultivated with the latest iteration of her political identity.A Civiqs survey conducted shortly before Election Day found she had an approval rating of just 7 percent among the state’s Democrats, 27 percent among Republicans and 29 percent among independents.Moderate Republicans uncomfortable with Mr. Trump’s politics have turned Arizona from a red state into a political battleground, swinging to Mr. Biden in 2020 and helping Democrats triumph in statewide elections last month against a Trump-backed slate of candidates. Ms. Sinema’s calculation in leaving the Democratic Party is that those voters can lift her to victory on their own.The Trumpian makeover of the Arizona Republican Party has also alarmed Democrats who want their candidates to be a forceful opposition — not present themselves as ideologically ambiguous.“Everything she’s done has been in the service of Kyrsten Sinema,” said Ian Danley, a progressive political consultant in Phoenix. “There’s really no other way to describe the decisions she makes. She cares about attention. She cares about setting herself up for the next thing.”The Democratic grumbling has Mr. Gallego and Mr. Stanton leaving little pretense about their ambitions to challenge Ms. Sinema in 2024. Mr. Gallego, a Harvard graduate and Marine veteran, has been a regular presence on cable news whenever Ms. Sinema alienates the party base, and his lively and occasionally profane Twitter feed often criticizes her. On Friday, he called her decision a “betrayal” of volunteers who knocked on doors in triple-digit heat to elect her as a Democrat.Ms. Sinema won election with the help of left-leaning groups in Arizona, but many of them quickly soured on her.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesMr. Stanton, a former Phoenix mayor who holds Ms. Sinema’s old House seat, on Friday tweeted what appeared to be a snapshot of a poll showing him leading Ms. Sinema by 40 percentage points in a hypothetical matchup.Her decision, he wrote, “isn’t about a post-partisan epiphany. It’s about political preservation.”Arizona’s progressive organizations and officials were already wary of Ms. Sinema during her 2018 run for Senate, but at the time no Democrat in the state had won election to the chamber in three decades. They collectively held their noses to turn out the vote for her in hopes that she would reciprocate their support once in office.Once Ms. Sinema became the linchpin of Senate Democrats’ narrow governing majority in 2021, those groups began publicly fuming at Ms. Sinema, whom they accused of abandoning her promises on immigration, health care and the environment. Ms. Sinema dismissed their complaints, echoing her general practice of dodging journalists in Washington and Arizona.When she theatrically turned a thumbs-down on a Senate vote in March 2021 to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour, it was the last straw for her party’s base. When she skipped votes to participate in Ironman triathlons or spent weeks as an intern at a Sonoma County winery, it served only to cement her reputation among progressives that she had removed herself from the concerns of working-class Arizonans.In the fall of 2021, activists from LUCHA, one of the groups that worked to elect Ms. Sinema, confronted her at Arizona State University. Activists followed Ms. Sinema into a bathroom and demanded that she explain why she had not done more to push for a pathway to citizenship for about eight million undocumented immigrants. The protesters said they had taken the drastic action only because Ms. Sinema did not hold town-hall meetings or answer calls from constituents. Protesters have also chased her through airports and followed her into a high-priced fund-raising event at an upscale resort.“We are not surprised that she would once again center herself,” said Alejandra Gomez, the executive director of LUCHA. “This is another unfortunate, selfish act. It is yet another betrayal — there have been a slew of betrayals, but this is one of the ultimates, because voters elected her as Democrat, and she turned her back on those voters.”But some of Ms. Sinema’s allies argue that she has been consistently clear about having an independent streak.“I love that she’s going to be even freer now to just do the right thing,” said Tammy Caputi, a Scottsdale City Council member who is herself a political independent, adding that Ms. Sinema had long been leery of being “straitjacketed by partisan politics.”She went on, “I’m hoping that Kyrsten’s decision to become an independent will spark other people to think long and hard about being overly attached to one party.”But for many Arizonans and Ms. Sinema’s fellow senators, the big question is whether or not she will run again in 2024, which she neglected to clarify in her video announcement, an op-ed article in The Arizona Republic or news media interviews that were released on Friday morning. Because she keeps a tight political circle of advisers and speaks little to the news media, there has long been far more speculation than explanation about her motivations.“Anybody that underestimates Senator Sinema is being foolish,” said Representative Raúl Grijalva, a liberal Arizona Democrat who said he planned to support Mr. Gallego if he ran. “She’s going to be formidable if she decides to run.”Ms. Sinema and a bipartisan group of senators discussing infrastructure legislation last year. She does not hold town-hall meetings with constituents, and rarely speaks with the news media.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesA person familiar with Mr. Stanton’s deliberations confirmed that he was considering running for Senate in Arizona in 2024 as a Democrat. The person confirmed that the image from a poll that Mr. Stanton tweeted on Friday was from a statewide survey in which he had tested his potential candidacy for Senate.In an interview on Friday, Mr. Gallego said Ms. Sinema’s rush to announce her party switch soon after the outcome of the Georgia race fit neatly into her career trajectory.“I wish she would have waited for the Democrats at least to enjoy a couple more days after the victory,” he said. “But, you know, she’s not known really for thinking of others.”Mr. Gallego said he would make a decision about what office to seek in 2024 in the new year. He had just gotten off the phone with his mother, who was catching up on the news.“She said: ‘I heard Sinema is not running. Make sure to talk to me before you do anything,’” Mr. Gallego said. More

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      This Case Should Never Have Made It to the Supreme Court

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      “The most important case for American democracy” in the nation’s history — that’s how the former appeals court judge J. Michael Luttig described Moore v. Harper, an extraordinary lawsuit that the Supreme Court considered in oral arguments Wednesday morning. Judge Luttig, a conservative and a widely respected legal thinker, is not one for overstatement. Yet most Americans aren’t paying attention to the case because it involves some confusing terminology and an arcane legal theory. It is essential that people understand just how dangerous this case is to the fundamental structure of American government, and that enough justices see the legal fallacies and protect our democracy.First, the back story on the case: In 2021, North Carolina lawmakers redrew their congressional maps. The state had 13 districts at the time, and its voters were more or less evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. But the Republicans who are in control of North Carolina’s legislature didn’t want fair maps; they wanted power. In one of the most egregious gerrymanders in the nation, they drew 10 seats intended to favor themselves.The North Carolina courts were not amused. A panel of three trial judges found that the 2021 maps were “intentionally and carefully designed to maximize Republican advantage” — so much so that Republicans could win legislative majorities even when Democrats won more votes statewide. The State Supreme Court struck down the maps, finding they violated the North Carolina Constitution’s guarantees of free elections, free speech, free assembly and equal protection.That should have been the end of it: A state court applying the state Constitution to strike down a state law. But North Carolina’s Republican lawmakers appealed, arguing that the U.S. Constitution does not give state courts authority to rule on their congressional maps — even though the legislature had passed a law authorizing the courts to review redistricting plans like these. Instead, the lawmakers are relying on an untested theory that asserts that state legislatures enjoy nearly unlimited power to set and change rules for federal elections.In 2000 the chief justice at the time, William H. Rehnquist, proposed the idea in his concurring opinion on Bush v. Gore, and the independent state legislature theory has been floating around the fringes of right-wing legal circles ever since.To be clear, this is a political power grab in the guise of a legal theory. Republicans are trying to see if they can turn state legislatures — 30 of which are controlled by Republicans — into omnipotent, unaccountable election bosses with the help of the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court. The theory has no basis in law, history or precedent. The idea that state lawmakers exist free of any constraints imposed by their constitution and state courts makes a mockery of the separation of powers, which is foundational to the American system of government. By the North Carolina lawmakers’ logic, they possess infinite power to gerrymander districts and otherwise control federal elections. It is a Constitution-free zone where no one else in the state — not the governor, not the courts, not the voters through ballot initiatives — has any say.On Wednesday morning, Justice Elena Kagan rejected the theory out of hand, saying it “gets rid of the normal checks and balances on the way big governmental decisions are made in this country. And you might think that it gets rid of all those checks and balances at exactly the time when they are needed most.”In practice, the theory that the petitioners in the case are seeking to use would turn hundreds of state constitutional provisions into dead letters in federal elections. For instance, 48 states affirmatively guarantee a right to vote in their constitutions. (The federal Constitution still does not.) Most state constitutions guarantee free, fair, equal or open elections. Even the secret ballot — so fundamental to American democracy — is a creature of state constitutions. If the justices accept the most aggressive version of the independent state legislature theory that the petitioners want them to and even if they accept a weaker version, provisions like these could become invalid overnight, because the theory holds that state constitutions have no authority to impose any regulations on federal elections. (The Constitution and federal law remain supreme, so challenges to state legislative actions could still be brought in federal courts.)Some of the justices insist that they don’t — they can’t — pay attention to the real-world outcomes of their rulings. They’re just interpreting law. By that logic, this case should be rejected on its merits.First, the theory is based on bad legal interpretation. The Constitution uses the word “legislature” in describing who has the power to regulate federal elections. Because of this word, the theory’s supporters claim, state legislatures have nearly unlimited power in that realm. But as Judge Luttig has noted, the theory has “literally no support” in the Constitution. To the contrary, the framers who wrote the Constitution were concerned that state legislatures had too much power, not too little. The text they wrote makes many references to the powers of those legislatures and of Congress, but it never says or implies that they are immune to review by the judicial branch.Second, the theory is based on bad history. The best evidence its supporters offer is a two-century-old document that has long been known to be fraudulent. Written in 1818 by Charles Pinckney of South Carolina, a founding father, it is purported to be a replica of the plan for government that he introduced three decades earlier at the Constitutional Convention. But what he submitted in 1818 was not the real deal. James Madison suspected this immediately, as have virtually all historians to examine it in the years since.When the theory’s supporters sought to claim that the practices of early state legislatures proved that their side should win, Justice Sonia Sotomayor responded, “Yes. If you rewrite history, it’s very easy to do.”Third, if the Supreme Court accepts this theory, it will create a logistical nightmare in states across the country. That’s because the theory applies only to federal elections, not state elections, in which state courts unquestionably have a role to play. As a result, there would be two sets of rules operating at the same time, one for federal elections and one for state elections. Chaos and confusion would reign.Most important, the Supreme Court has already implicitly rejected the theory many times over. In precedents stretching back decades, the court has made clear that state courts have the power to set limits on what lawmakers can do when it comes to federal elections. As recently as 2019, the court rejected a plea for it to stop the extreme partisan gerrymandering in North Carolina and other states. In doing so, Chief Justice John Roberts explained that this is exactly the role that state courts should play. “Provisions in state statutes and state constitutions can provide standards and guidance for state courts to apply,” he wrote.At Wednesday’s argument, Justice Samuel Alito appeared to reject that premise. He accused elected state court judges, like those in North Carolina, of being political actors themselves. “There’s been a lot of talk about the impact of this decision on democracy,” said Justice Alito, who has given openly partisan speeches to outside groups and voted consistently in alignment with Republican policy priorities. “Do you think that it furthers democracy to transfer the political controversy about districting from the legislature to elected supreme courts where the candidates are permitted by state law to campaign on the issue of districting?”Another way to appreciate the absurdity of the theory is to consider who has come out for and against it. On one side, a large and bipartisan group of judges, government officials, former lawmakers, leading historians and constitutional scholars from across the political spectrum have rejected it. These include a co-founder of the right-wing legal group the Federalist Society, the chief justices of all 50 states, multiple Republican former governors and secretaries of state and civil rights organizations.On the other side, you will find a far smaller and less bipartisan cast of characters — among them, the Republican National Committee, a group of Republican state attorneys general and John Eastman, a former law professor last seen helping Donald Trump plan an illegal and unconstitutional coup to stay in office (an act that has exposed Mr. Eastman to a real risk of criminal prosecution).That so many justices would take the theory seriously is bad enough. Three of them — Justices Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas — appear to favor the independent state legislature theory, as they suggested in an opinion in an earlier stage of the case. Justice Brett Kavanaugh has also indicated his openness to it. It’s worse when the public trust in and approval of the court have fallen to historic lows, thanks largely to aggressively partisan recent opinions, as this board has argued.There’s an old saying that only close cases make it to the Supreme Court. If they weren’t close, they would have been resolved in the lower courts. But Moore v. Harper isn’t a remotely close case. A ruling for the North Carolina lawmakers would flood the federal courts with election litigation that normally plays out in the states, upending the balance of federalism that defines American government. That’s not a conservative result; it’s a dangerously radical one.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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      Losing Another Runoff, Georgia Republicans Weigh an Election Shake-Up

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      Some in the party said that additional changes to election rules were likely, after Senator Raphael Warnock’s victory put a new spotlight on a major 2021 voting law passed by the G.O.P.As Georgia Democrats won their third Senate runoff election in two years, the party proved it had crafted an effective strategy for triumphing in a decades-old system created to sustain segregationist power and for overcoming an array of efforts to making voting more difficult. Republicans, meanwhile, were quietly cursing the runoff system, or at least their strategy for winning under a state law they wrote after losing the last election.The various post-mortems over how Georgia’s runoff rules shaped the state’s Senate outcome on Tuesday put a spotlight on a major voting law passed by the Republican-led General Assembly last year. Some Republicans acknowledged that their efforts to limit in-person early voting days might have backfired, while others encouraged lawmakers to consider additional restrictions next year.With Georgia poised to remain a critical political battleground and with Republicans holding gerrymandered majorities in both chambers of its state legislature, some in the party said that additional election law changes were likely.Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who oversees the state’s voting procedures, said in an interview on Wednesday that there would be a debate next year over potential adjustments to Georgia’s runoff laws and procedures after Senator Raphael Warnock’s victory.Mr. Raffensperger said he would present three proposals to lawmakers. They include forcing large counties to open more early-voting locations to reduce hourslong lines like the ones that formed at many Metro Atlanta sites last week; lowering the threshold candidates must achieve to avoid a runoff to 45 percent from 50 percent; and instituting a ranked-choice instant-runoff system that would not require voters to come back to the polls again after the general election.Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said there would be a debate next year over potential changes to Georgia’s runoff laws and procedures. Audra Melton for The New York Times“The elected legislators need to have information so they can look at all the different options that they have and really see what they’re comfortable with,” Mr. Raffensperger said.Understand the Georgia Senate RunoffNew Battlegrounds: Senator Raphael Warnock’s win shows how Georgia and Arizona are poised to be the next kingmakers of presidential politics, Lisa Lerer writes.A Rising Democratic Star: Mr. Warnock, a son of Savannah public housing who rose to become Georgia’s first Black senator, is a pastor and politician who sees voting as a form of prayer.Trump’s Bad Day: The loss by Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate, capped one of the worst days for former President Donald J. Trump since he announced his 2024 bid.Republicans are not the only ones hoping to end Georgia’s requirement that a runoff take place if no candidate in a general election wins at least half of the vote. Democrats have long viewed the practice — a vestige of racist 1960s efforts to keep Black candidates or candidates backed by Black voters from taking office — as an additional hurdle for working-class people of color.Park Cannon, a Democratic state representative from Atlanta who was arrested last year after knocking on the closed door behind which Gov. Brian Kemp signed the state’s voting law, said that last Friday, she had driven for 30 minutes and then waited an hour to vote early in person.Runoffs, Ms. Cannon said, “are not to the benefit of working families.” She added, “It’s very difficult to, within four weeks of taking time off to vote, have to do that again.”Since the law was passed in 2021, Georgia Democrats have criticized the new barriers to voting that it set in place. During the runoff, Mr. Warnock, a Democrat, spared no opportunity to highlight the law and characterize it as the latest in a decades-long push to minimize the influence of Black voters and anyone who opposed Republican control.His stump speech featured a regular refrain reminding supporters that Georgia Republicans had sought to prohibit counties from opening for in-person early voting on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, after the state’s Republican attorney general and Mr. Raffensperger concluded that doing so was in violation of state law. Mr. Warnock and Democrats sued, and a state judge agreed to allow for the Saturday voting.“People showed up in record numbers within the narrow confines of the time given to them by a state legislature that saw our electoral strength the last time and went after it with surgical precision,” Mr. Warnock said in his victory speech on Tuesday night in Atlanta. “The fact that voters worked so hard to overcome the hardship put in front of them does not eliminate the fact that hardship was put there in the first place.”Because of the new voting law, Tuesday’s runoff was held four weeks after the general election, rather than the nine-week runoff period under which Georgia’s high-profile Senate races in early 2021 unfolded. The nine-week runoff period that year had been ordered by a federal judge; runoff contests for state elections have always operated on a four-week timeline.Tuesday’s contest also included fewer days to vote and new restrictions on absentee ballots — and it ended with virtually the same result.The 3.5 million votes cast in Tuesday’s runoff amounted to 90 percent of the general-election turnout in the Senate race on Nov. 8. In 2021, when Mr. Warnock first won his seat, runoff turnout was 91 percent of the general-election turnout, which was higher because 2020 was a presidential year. The outpouring of voters in both years was orders of magnitude higher than in any prior Georgia runoff.A get-out-the-vote event on Tuesday near a polling site in Atlanta.Nicole Buchanan for The New York TimesThe booming turnout this year has led Georgia Republicans to insist that their voting law was not suppressive.“We had what I think was a nearly flawless execution of two huge elections in terms of turnout and in terms of accuracy and integrity,” said Butch Miller, a Republican leader in the Georgia State Senate who helped write the voting law and is leaving the chamber after losing the primary for lieutenant governor.Mr. Miller said he “didn’t care for” the way that some counties, including large Democratic-leaning ones in the Atlanta area, had opened for extra early voting days, a sentiment echoed by other Georgia Republicans after Mr. Warnock’s victory.The new law evidently had an effect on how Georgians voted. In the January 2021 runoffs, 24 percent of the vote came via absentee ballots that had been mailed to voters. On Tuesday, just 5 percent of the vote came through the mail, a result of restrictions on who could receive an absentee ballot and the shortening of the runoff period, which made it more difficult to request and receive a ballot within the allotted time period.The 2021 law also cut the amount of in-person early voting days to a minimum of five, but allowed Georgia’s counties to add more days before the state’s mandated early-voting week. The Warnock campaign pressed the state’s Democratic counties to open for early voting on the weekend after Thanksgiving, giving voters who were more likely to vote for the senator extra days to do so.But then Mr. Raffensperger sought to enforce a state law that forbids in-person early voting on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, leading to Mr. Warnock’s successful lawsuit.Jason Shepherd, a former chairman of the Cobb County Republican Party, said the push to stop Saturday voting “wasn’t worth the fight” and served to energize Democratic voters.“You can be completely right and it can send the wrong message, because it plays into the Democrats’ narrative about voter suppression,” Mr. Shepherd said on Wednesday.In the end, 28 of Georgia’s 159 counties opened for extra in-person early voting days. Of those, 17 ended up backing Mr. Warnock and 11 went for his Republican challenger, the former football star Herschel Walker.Compared with weekdays, when the entire state was open for in-person early voting, relatively few votes were cast on the extra voting days. Just over 167,000 votes in all were cast combined on the Saturday and Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, along with the Tuesday and Wednesday before the holiday, when just two counties opened for voting. By contrast, 285,000 to 352,000 votes were cast statewide on each day of weekday early voting.But voters who cast ballots during those extra in-person early voting days were likely to tilt heavily toward Mr. Warnock.The largest 14 counties to back Mr. Warnock — including seven in metropolitan Atlanta — all opened for extra early voting days. Just two of the 11 largest counties to back Mr. Walker opened for extra in-person early voting days.Maya King More

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      How Can Democrats Use Their Final Weeks in Power?

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      This article is part of the Debatable newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it on Wednesdays.The Democratic Party’s success in securing a 51st Senate seat in the Georgia runoff Tuesday is certainly consequential, but it did nothing to avert an imminent shift in the national political environment: On Jan. 3, Republicans will take control of the House of Representatives, and it will be two years at least — if not much longer, given historical trends — before Democrats again have the power to enact major legislation.This period between an election and the transition of power is known as a lame-duck session, and in recent years, it’s often when Congress has been most productive. How will Democrats make use of this one? Here are just some of the most pressing legislative priorities on the party’s agenda that could be accomplished without fear of a Republican filibuster in the Senate, or with the possibility of enough Republican votes to block such a move.Keeping the government — and the global financial system — runningCongress is staring down a Dec. 16 deadline to pass a budget for the 2023 fiscal year. If it doesn’t, the government could be forced to shut down, as it did in 2013 and twice in 2018, depriving hundreds of thousands of government workers of pay and disrupting public services.But an even more urgent threat, German Lopez of The Times recently wrote, is that Republicans will refuse to raise the limit on how much money the government can borrow, which Congress frequently must do to fund the budget it has approved. If the government hits the debt ceiling, which could happen early next year, it could eventually lose the ability to make debt payments and be forced, for the first time, to default, with potentially calamitous effects for the global economy.Once a pro forma administrative task, raising the debt ceiling became a matter of high-stakes brinkmanship during the Obama administration, as Republicans repeatedly leveraged the threat of default to push for spending cuts and regulatory rollbacks. In October, Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader hoping to become speaker, suggested that his party would deploy this strategy again to force “structural changes” to programs like Social Security and Medicare.Democrats have two options to avert financial crisis, Peter Orszag, a former director of the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office, explains: Win over enough Senate Republicans to form a filibuster-proof majority to raise the debt ceiling, or raise it unilaterally through the reconciliation process, which would require only 50 votes.“Any Democrats averse to taking such a painful vote now should consider how much leverage their party will lose once Republicans control the House — and how much higher the risk of default will be then,” he writes in The Washington Post.The trade-off, however, is that raising the debt ceiling with only Democratic votes would take much longer — about two weeks — than if Republicans were on board. “This might crowd out Democrats’ ability to pass almost any other legislative priority while they still control both chambers,” notes Catherine Rampell in The Washington Post.Preventing a repeat of Jan. 6Given concerns about the integrity of the 2024 presidential election, another major Democratic priority is modernizing the Electoral Count Act, a 1887 law governing the Electoral College counting procedure. The law’s ambiguous language became the legal basis for Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, culminating in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.Reforming the law to prevent such schemes has bipartisan support: Nearly 40 senators, including 16 Republicans, have signed on to a bill introduced in the Senate over the summer, and the House passed its own bill in September.“Both the Senate and House bills are far better than what we have right now, and either one would go a long way to ensuring that the electoral-count law cannot be used as a tool for subverting the election in 2024 or beyond,” the Times editorial board wrote last month. “Congress needs to pass the overhaul now, when it has willing majorities in both houses and well before anyone casts a ballot in 2024.”Reforming the immigration systemNearly two years after President Biden proposed the most comprehensive immigration reform since the Reagan administration, Democrats have made very little headway on the issue. But this week, there were signs of a potential breakthrough when a bipartisan pair of senators reportedly drafted a framework for legislation that would create a pathway to citizenship for two million DACA recipients and improve the asylum system. In exchange, it also contains provisions for expediting the deportation of migrants who fail to qualify for asylum and continuing the use of Title 42, a Trump-era emergency public health order that restricts the right to claim asylum.Some immigration advocates have called on congressional Democrats to seize the opportunity. “House Republicans are not likely to allow any measures to improve immigration matters to reach a vote, preferring to have the political issue for the next elections rather than solutions,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice. “This year and the remaining weeks in this Congress present the best opportunity to enact legislation.”But obstacles to a bipartisan immigration deal are formidable. Republican senators “might decide that the G.O.P. won’t get any credit even if the effort succeeds — that credit might go to President Biden — and that it’s better to retain the permanent ‘border crisis’ as an issue,” writes Greg Sargeant of The Washington Post. On the Democratic side, he adds, “the continuation of Title 42, which has been a human rights disaster, and the beefed up removal process might make it a nonstarter among progressives in both chambers.”De-escalating the war on drugsAs overdoses soar and public opinion turns against the war on drugs, proponents of drug law reform say there may be an opening for Congress to save lives by passing bipartisan measures like the Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment Act, which would increase access to medication used to treat opioid addiction, and the Medicaid Re-Entry Act, which would reduce disruptions in medical care for people who have just been released from jail or prison.Another bill called the EQUAL Act, which would end the federal sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine offenses, already has more than 10 Republican co-sponsors, “so it can withstand a filibuster and seems ripe for some action this lame-duck session,” Udi Ofer, a professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, said last month.Staying ahead of the coronavirusThe Biden administration last month asked Congress for an additional $9 billion to fund its response to the coronavirus pandemic, which is still killing more than 280 Americans per day and remains a leading cause of death in the United States.Some of the $9 billion would go toward researching long Covid and ensuring continued access to vaccines and treatments, which have fallen out of reach for more and more uninsured Americans as federal money has dried up.About $5 billion would go toward creating a program in the mold of Operation Warp Speed, to develop next-generation therapeutics and vaccines, like nasal sprays that could block more infections and universal, variant-proof coronavirus shots.Many scientists believe that nasal vaccines could be crucial to reducing Covid’s disease burden, but the United States has lagged other countries in developing one because of underinvestment. Congressional Republicans have rebuffed requests for more pandemic funding, having accused the administration of mishandling previous allocations. They have also questioned the necessity of more aid, pointing to Biden’s declaration in September that “the pandemic is over.”Democrats now find themselves in the awkward position of trying to make the case for more funding without admitting error: “While COVID-19 is no longer the disruptive force it was when the president took office,” the White House wrote in a November letter to Congress, “we face the emergence of new subvariants in the United States and around the world that have the potential to cause a surge of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths, particularly as we head into the winter months.”Protecting marriage equalityOne major legislative effort that is likely to advance is the Respect for Marriage Act, which would enshrine federal protections for same-sex and interracial marriage. The issue took on newfound importance this summer after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the court “should reconsider” the 2015 precedent establishing the right of gay couples to marry.Some conservatives have dismissed the bill as a response to an imaginary threat and one that endangers religious liberties; many liberals argue the bill doesn’t go far enough, since it wouldn’t prevent states from refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Nonetheless, the measure attracted enough Republican support to pass in the Senate last week and is expected to win final approval in the House.To some, the success of a bill that was considered just a few months ago to be dead on arrival suggests there might be opportunities for more congressional breakthroughs, albeit within a very limited window. “As with the same-sex marriage bill, bipartisan legislation revising the 19th century Electoral Count Act wasn’t politically possible before the midterm elections and wouldn’t be once Trumpian Republicans are in charge of the House schedule in four weeks,” writes Jackie Calmes, a columnist for The Los Angeles Times. “Enjoy these few weeks of what passes for bipartisanship as Congress waddles to its end. You won’t be seeing much of that over the next two years.”Do you have a point of view we missed? Email us at debatable@nytimes.com. Please note your name, age and location in your response, which may be included in the next newsletter.READ MORE“Can Republicans and Democrats Find a Way Forward on Immigration?” [The New York Times]“What should Democrats do in the lame-duck Congress?” [The Economist]“Same-Sex Marriage Bill Passes Senate After Bipartisan Breakthrough” [The New York Times]“Here’s how Congress can make the lame-duck session a mighty one”[The Washington Post] More

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      Warnock’s Narrow Victory Over Walker in Georgia

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      More from our inbox:Trump’s Very Bad DayThe Crypto IllusionEncourage BreastfeedingFood Buying That Reflects Our Values Nicole Craine for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Warnock Victory Hands Democrats 51st Seat in Senate” (front page, Dec. 7):Although I am relieved that Senator Raphael Warnock prevailed in the Georgia runoff, I am absolutely disgusted that this election was so close.We have lost our way as a country when we do not see that political leadership takes skill; knowledge of the law, the Constitution and history; the ability to negotiate and cooperate; and a worldview that is larger than your own.I would not be at all qualified to play professional football, and it was clear from the start that Herschel Walker did not have the knowledge or skill to be a U.S. senator.Dawn MenkenPortland, Ore.The writer is the author of “Facilitating a More Perfect Union: A Guide for Politicians and Leaders.”To the Editor:I have new respect for Herschel Walker: He gave a concession speech. He declared that he lost. He called on his supporters to respect their elected officials and to believe in America. He said he had no excuses for his loss because he put up a good fight. This probably reflects both who he is and his football heritage — you win but also lose games fair and square.He may have helped us back to the old pre-Trump norms. We may disagree with his views and abhor his scandals, but the most important thing is that he believes in democracy. Let’s hope Donald Trump watched that concession speech.When Mr. Walker said, “I want you to believe in America and continue to believe in the Constitution and believe in our elected officials most of all,” it could be the biggest takeaway of the election.James AdlerCambridge, Mass.To the Editor:Raphael Warnock was extremely lucky to win the Senate race in Georgia — lucky because he faced an opponent plagued by ignorance, myriad character flaws and an endorsement by Donald Trump. Almost certainly, a moderate Republican, Black or white, could have defeated Mr. Warnock, perhaps by a margin as large as the seven-plus percentage points that Brian Kemp scored over Stacey Abrams for the Georgia governorship just four weeks earlier.I am very happy about Mr. Warnock’s win, but it should not be interpreted as signaling a major shift in the political landscape of Georgia.Peter S. AllenProvidence, R.I.To the Editor:Every time the Republicans lose an election — most recently Tuesday in Georgia — the Times coverage predicts that the party will engage in “soul-searching,” suggesting that the G.O.P. has a desire to change course. Yet, again and again, the party persists in its pandering to far-right, anti-democratic forces of white nationalism and heteropatriarchy.The G.O.P. has made its soul abundantly clear. Perhaps some Republican voters have done their own soul-searching and decided to reject what their party has become.Pamela J. GriffithBrooklynTo the Editor:As a liberal Democrat I am very pleased with the results of the Georgia runoff and most of the rest of the 2022 U.S. Senate results in competitive races. How do we make sure that Donald Trump continues to influence the choice of Republican candidates for Senate in 2024?Michael G. RaitenBoynton Beach, Fla.Trump’s Very Bad Day Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Tuesday was a Trumpian negative hat trick: a defeat in the Senate runoff in Georgia, the conviction of the Trump Organization on tax fraud and other crimes, and a report of grand jury subpoenas from the special counsel to local officials in Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin.Of course the Republican Party has neglected to take any prior offramps to dump Donald Trump, most notably Jan. 6, so unfortunately the latest Trump failures will probably go by the wayside too. And the G.O.P. of yore — the party of Lincoln, T.R. and Ike — will continue to be the clown car it has become.Bill MutterperlBeverly Hills, Calif.The Crypto IllusionFederal authorities are trying to determine whether criminal charges should be filed against the founder of the crypto firm FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, and others over the company’s collapse.Winnie Au for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “‘It Just Angers Me.’ Crypto Crisis Drains Small Investors’ Savings” (front page, Dec. 6):Is it too early, or far too late, to suggest that “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is” in relation to the FTX and BlockFi difficulties? Should this concern be extended to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general?There was a time when people earned the coins in their wallets from the sweat on their brow rather than from a computer program most people can’t understand that creates imaginary coins to be stored in wallets that seem easy to rob or lose. It is, however, sad to read of people who have lost so much in such a short time.As a teacher, I wasn’t that well paid, and so I saved as much as I could to buy a house and set myself up for retirement by sensible, boring approaches. But the gains to be made from Bitcoin are in its questionable uses or in realizing the increase in its value before it drops. For me it seems to have no actual value or use, and I doubt that I am the only one who thinks that.It’s time for me to forget the world of imaginary computer profits and go back to a boring life on my unicorn farm.Dennis FitzgeraldMelbourne, AustraliaEncourage Breastfeeding Vanessa Leroy for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “What It Really Takes to Breastfeed a Baby” (news article, Dec. 6):As a pediatrician who spends many hours with new mothers and their babies discussing the challenges and difficulties that come with breastfeeding, I felt that this article was not as positive as it should have been. It focused on following mothers who were having a hard time keeping up their breastfeeding.These days, any literature or news related to breastfeeding should only be encouraging new mothers to breastfeed, not scaring them away from doing it and making it sound so hard while working and raising other children.In my practice, I share my own personal experiences of breastfeeding my three children, each for a year, while working in a busy pediatrics office. My stories are useful and effective in making the breastfeeding experience achievable to the new moms I meet.We need to reverse the steady decline of breastfeeding mothers in this country.Naomi JackmanPort Washington, N.Y.Food Buying That Reflects Our Values Pavel PopovTo the Editor:Re “Help Black Farmers This Holiday Season,” by Tressie McMillan Cottom (column, Nov. 30):New York State’s food procurement laws are an extension of the disenfranchisement of Black farmers. Provisions require that municipalities contract with farmers who sell their produce at the “lowest” cost. This often comes at the expense of small, hyperlocal farmers and bars them from entering negotiations for public contracts — meaning that opportunities to support historically marginalized food producers are currently limited in New York.The Good Food New York bill would democratize local food purchasing decisions by allowing municipalities to galvanize around racial equity, animal welfare, environmental sustainability, nutrition, local economies and workers’ rights — and contract with producers that uphold these values.It is more critical than ever to rectify the wrongs of this country’s past and prepare for a future where the strength of our food systems and supply chains will be tested by the consequences of climate change. New York State legislators, we are counting on you to make the right decision for our food futures.Ribka GetachewTaylor PateNew YorkThe writers are, respectively, director and campaign manager of the NY Good Food Purchasing Program Campaign for Community Food Advocates. More

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      Supreme Court Hears Case That Could Transform Federal Elections

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      The justices are considering whether to adopt the “independent state legislature theory,” which would give state lawmakers nearly unchecked power over federal elections.WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is hearing arguments on Wednesday about whether to adopt a legal theory that would radically reshape how federal elections are conducted. The theory would give state legislatures enormous and largely unchecked power to set all sorts of election rules, notably by drawing congressional maps warped by partisan gerrymandering.The Supreme Court has never endorsed the “independent state legislature” theory, but four of its conservative members have issued opinions that seemed to take it very seriously.The theory is based on a reading of the Constitution’s Elections Clause, which says: “The times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.”Proponents of the strongest form of the theory say this means that no other organ of state government can alter a legislature’s actions on federal elections. They say that state supreme courts cannot require state laws to conform to state constitutions, that governors may not use their veto power to reject bills about federal elections, that election administrators may not issue regulations adjusting legislative enactments to take account of, say, a pandemic and that voters may not create independent redistricting commissions to address gerrymandering.Understand the U.S. Supreme Court’s New TermCard 1 of 6A race to the right. More