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      How Can We Still Be Talking About Trump?

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      Gail Collins: Happy Independence Day, Bret! Want to celebrate by talking about the Supreme Court?Bret Stephens: I was sorta thinking of a cookout on the patio with a nice bottle of rosé, but fire away.Gail: We were in such accord, gnashing our teeth over the decisions on abortion and guns. How about their deep-sixing environmental regulation? You still gnashing with me?Bret: You are referring to the ruling that says the Environmental Protection Agency can’t unilaterally reinvent the entire energy economy with an expansive interpretation of the Clean Air Act that Congress did not intend when it wrote the bill? I’d say the decision was the best thing the court did this term.Guessing you … don’t see it quite the same way.Gail: Well, um … no.Congress gave the E.P.A. extensive power when it comes to regulating carbon emissions. That’s because carbon emissions are a threat to the environment and a trigger for global warming.If Congress feels the E.P.A. is going too far, it has the power to override said regulations at any time. That hasn’t happened because — gee, I guess the Congressional majority feels global warming is a big deal.Bret: The case hinges on an interpretation of the word “system.” The Clean Air Act requires power plants to adopt “the best system of emission reductions.” The court’s conservatives took “system” to mean emission-controlling technologies at the plants themselves, not a vast regulatory mechanism that puts the entire American coal industry on a swift path to extinction.Gail: I think I told you that my father worked for a utility company, and I remember the agony he went through trying to deal with both the government regulators and the folks we called “the coal barons” in West Virginia. I have sympathy for the folks in the middle here, but not so much for the barons.Bret: I grew up listening to my father’s complaints about the way the Mexican government did business with the private sector. In case you ever wonder about my worship of the works of Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Gary Becker and Ronald Coase.Gail: We obviously need to keep directing help to the working people in the mining industry, but the government’s top job is to protect the nation and future generations from global warming.Bret: If Congressional Democrats — whose majority happens to hinge on a certain senator from West Virginia — want to make a case that global warming is the country’s No. 1 priority, they should do so openly rather than sneak regulatory actions that they can’t get through Congress through the E.P.A. bureaucracy. I hold no particular brief for the coal industry per se. But Democrats need to figure out a set of climate-change policies that don’t threaten people’s wallets, jobs or businesses. Trying to put coal out of business is just a big fat political gift to Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy.Aside from the court, Gail, last week’s big news enchilada was Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony before the House committee investigating Jan. 6. Did we just have a “this changes everything” moment?Gail: Well, we certainly had some “Holy cow — did you hear what Donald Trump did?” moments. But I’ve sadly gotten used to the idea that he can do almost anything and still keep his very, very large fan club of voters.Bret: Truest words ever spoken by Trump: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”Gail: Yeah, sigh. And I just don’t think there’s an appetite for trying to prosecute a former president for stuff he did while he was still in office. Am I being too cynical?Bret: Until last week, no. But, to quote from “Only Murders in the Building,” Hutchinson’s testimony “sends the investigation in a whole new direction.”I don’t mean the stuff about Trump trying to grab the steering wheel of his limo, which Hutchinson acknowledges she heard secondhand. I mean her overhearing Trump at the Jan. 6 rally yelling that he didn’t care if people were armed because they weren’t there to hurt him. And also her report that Trump instructed Mark Meadows to get in touch with Roger Stone and Mike Flynn, who in turn were apparently in touch with some of the most violent protesters on Jan. 5. If it’s true, that just seems like a textbook case of seditious conspiracy.There’s still a big question of the overall wisdom of a prosecution, however well-justified. If, God forbid, Trump runs and wins in 2024, the first thing he’ll do is find any pretext to prosecute Joe Biden, and then it’s off to the races. If you were in Merrick Garland’s shoes, what would you do? More

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      How Rules Fuel Populist Anger in Rural America

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      ROCK HALL, Md. — When Dave Harden decided to run for Congress as a Democrat on Maryland’s conservative Eastern Shore, a friend gave him a piece of free advice.“Democrats lose on three things: abortion, guns and regulations,” the friend said. “If you keep one, you have to give up the other two.”Abortion and gun rights have both inspired passionate activism and countless front-page news articles. Regulations — not so much. Yet nitpicky government rules remain a potent and underappreciated source of populist anger against Democrats, especially in rural areas.On the campaign trail, Mr. Harden has gotten an earful from voters about maddening and arbitrary restrictions: Why are wineries in Maryland limited to serving only 13 kinds of food? Why does a woman who sells her grandmother’s cobbler have to cough up tens of thousands of dollars to build a commercial kitchen? Why does a federal inspector have to be on hand to watch wild catfish get gutted — but not other kinds of seafood? The short answer is that restaurant associations tend to wield more political clout than wineries, and catfish farmers in Mississippi are more powerful than seafood harvesters in Maryland. Big businesses can afford to hire lawyers to help them cut through red tape and lobbyists to bend government rules to their will. Small businesses, especially in rural places, get slammed.Dave Harden campaigning during the annual fireman’s parade in Ocean City.“The claim of overregulation is especially animating on the political right,” Joshua Sewell of Taxpayers for Common Sense told me. He said misleading rumors that the Environmental Protection Agency planned to regulate farm dust or that President Biden’s Build Back Better plan would have taxed belching cows played right into the stereotype of Democrats as city folk who were infuriatingly eager to regulate almost anything in rural America.In 2006, Democrats and Republicans had similar views on government regulation of business: About 40 percent of Republicans said there was too much, compared to about 36 percent of Democrats. But the percentage of Republicans who felt that way climbed steadily under President Barack Obama, who enacted more economically significant rules than his predecessors. By the end of his first term, 84 percent of Republicans thought that government meddled too much in business, while only 22 percent of Democrats agreed, according to Gallup. Democrats were more likely to say that the government doesn’t regulate businesses enough.With business owners more likely to be Republicans and government workers more likely to be Democrats, you have the makings of a yawning partisan divide. Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to remove two rules for every new one that was put in place.Can Democrats flip the script and win over conservative districts, particularly small- business owners in those areas, by speaking out against government red tape? Mr. Harden, a 59-year-old former Foreign Service officer who is running for Congress in Maryland’s First District, is trying. He hopes to replace Andy Harris, the sole Republican in Maryland’s congressional delegation. (Mr. Harris voted to overturn the results of the presidential election in 2020 and reportedly once tried to bring a gun onto the House floor.)Mr. Harden greets Bobby Higgins, the owner of an all-you-can-eat crab house in Ocean City.Crabs are Maryland’s iconic cuisine.Mr. Harden must first win a July 19 primary against Heather Mizeur, a progressive herb farmer who once represented Montgomery County, a much more urban area, in the state legislature. Ms. Mizeur has more money and name recognition than Mr. Harden, but he believes he has a chance because she seems out of step with the conservative district, which is considered a safe Republican seat.Mr. Harden is trying to chart an alternative path for Democrats in rural areas. He’s no fan of Donald Trump. He left a 22-year career in the Foreign Service in 2018 because he didn’t want to serve the Trump administration. But when it comes to regulations, Mr. Harden doesn’t sound all that much different from Mr. Trump.“The regulations in rural economies are ridiculous,” he told me.Mr. Harden is trying to walk a difficult line, appealing to voters who are angry about government overreach without turning off the Democratic base. He says he doesn’t oppose reasonable environmental regulations, but he rails against rules that make it harder for small businesses to survive.It’s a message that comes naturally to him. He spent years trying to improve the business environments in Iraq and the Palestinian territories as a senior U.S.A.I.D. official. He led a program in the West Bank town of Jenin that opened up a border crossing with Israel and prevailed on the Israeli government to allow more Israeli cars into Jenin so that Israeli Arabs could shop there, helping to start an economic revival.Mr. Harden’s campaign manager, Marty Lostrom, on Chris Lingerman’s lawn. Lingerman’s shop, Chester River Seafood, is behind his house.Ford’s Seafood in Rock Hall, Md., is family-owned.Mr. Harden is now trying to bring those lessons home to Maryland, where he grew up. On a recent Saturday, he squinted out at Chesapeake Bay, riffing about how to promote local economic development with Capt. Rob Newberry, the head of the Delmarva Fisheries Association, which represents licensed watermen in the area. Captain Newberry is a Republican who once hung a sign cursing Joe Biden on his boat. But he supports Mr. Harden, who listens patiently to his complaints about regulations.Captain Newberry represents people who harvest crabs, Maryland’s iconic cuisine, from the Chesapeake Bay, and he complains that excessive regulations are putting watermen like him out of business. He contends that the roughly 1,800 fishermen, clammers, crabbers and oystermen in his association are among the most highly regulated workers in the state.Captain Newberry, right, listened as Mr. Harden spoke to Chris Lingerman, the owner of Chester River Seafood, about regulations that hurt watermen.A Maryland blue crab.“When you get halfway to work and you pull up at a stoplight, does a policeman pull you over?” he asked. “When you get into work, does he come in and bother you two or three times and ask you what are you doing, do you have a license? That happens to me every time I go out on the harbor.”Captain Newberry has grievances with people across the political spectrum: with the environmentalists who lobby for more restrictions on the watermen; with the cities and companies responsible for faulty wastewater treatment systems and runoff that pollutes the bay; and with Mr. Harris, the incumbent.He told me that Mr. Harris refused to speak out against a nonsensical regulation that stipulated that catfish had to be treated like meat under federal law. The rule, which advantages catfish farmers in states like Mississippi at the expense of foreign fish farmers and Maryland fishermen, requires federal inspectors to be on site when catfish get gutted, even though there’s little evidence of a risk to public health.The rule is so outrageous that the Government Accountability Office once called for it to be repealed. Yet it remains in place. When the watermen complained to their congressman, Mr. Harris arranged for the government to pay for the inspectors. But inspectors still have to be called in whenever a fisherman brings in catfish for processing. (Mr. Harris’s office said he’s still working on it.)Captain Newberry says he has become disillusioned with the political sausage-making behind government rules. But he still works within the system to try to change them. He testifies before lawmakers and serves on committees, hoping that it will make a difference.On the campaign trail, Mr. Harden has gotten an earful from voters about maddening and arbitrary restrictions.However, those same frustrations have led some other watermen to fall under the sway of the “sovereign citizens” movement, which preaches that the federal and state governments have no right to require licenses for hunting, driving or owning a gun. Some adherents believe that the local sheriff is the only legitimate authority under the Constitution. Beliefs about the illegitimacy of the federal government appeared to be at the root of an armed standoff between federal authorities and cattle ranchers in Nevada in 2014.Maryland’s Eastern Shore hasn’t seen anything like that, Somerset County’s sheriff, Ronald Howard, told me. But he said he has faced mounting pressure to defy state rules and allow watermen to harvest oysters from sanctuaries that have been declared off limits. He refused. “I said, ‘Look, if I interfere, that’s obstruction of my duties; I can be charged criminally,’” he told me. “I had one waterman tell me, ‘That’s a chance you’ve got to take.’”Sheriff Howard doesn’t blame the watermen; he blames the rigid rules made by politicians who rarely take the time to listen to rural people. That’s where Dave Harden sees an opening for himself, however slim.Democrats have to find a way to reconnect with rural America, Mr. Harden told me. Frank talk about regulations is a good place to start.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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      New York Fights Back on Guns and Abortion After Supreme Court Rulings

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      Lawmakers passed measures that would prohibit concealed weapons in many public places, as well as an amendment that would initiate the process of enshrining the right to abortion in the state constitution.A week after the Supreme Court issued monumental rulings loosening restrictions on carrying guns and overturning the constitutional right to abortion, New York enacted sweeping measures designed to blunt the decisions’ effects.In an extraordinary session convened by Gov. Kathy Hochul that began Thursday and carried late into Friday evening, the State Legislature adopted a new law placing significant restrictions on the carrying of handguns and passed an amendment that would initiate the process of enshrining the right to abortion in the state constitution.The new legislation illustrates the growing distance between a conservative-led court that has reasserted its influence in American political life and blue states such as New York — one of the most left-leaning in the nation, where all three branches of government are controlled by Democrats and President Biden easily triumphed over Donald J. Trump in 2020.As Republican-led states race rightward, the New York Legislature’s moves this week provided a preview of an intensifying clash between the court and Democratic states that will likely play out for years to come.“We’re not going backwards,” Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said at a news conference in Albany on Friday and who later that evening signed the gun bill into law. “They may think they can change our lives with the stroke of a pen, but we have pens, too.”She made remarks on the coming July 4 holiday, asking New Yorkers to remember what was being commemorated: “the founding of a great country that cherished the rights of individuals, freedoms and liberty for all.”“I am standing here to protect freedom and liberty here in the state of New York,” she added.During a special session of the New York State Legislature, lawmakers passed a new bill restricting concealed weapons.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesThe state’s new gun law bars the carrying of handguns in many public settings such as subways and buses, parks, hospitals, stadiums and day cares. Guns will be off-limits on private property unless the property owner indicates that he or she expressly allows them. At the last minute, lawmakers added Times Square to the list of restricted sites.The law also requires permit applicants to undergo 16 hours of training on the handling of guns and two hours of firing range training, as well as an in-person interview and a written exam. Applicants will also be subject to the scrutiny of local officials, who will retain some discretion in the permitting process.Enshrining the right to abortion in the state’s constitution will be more onerous. Amending the State Constitution is a yearslong process, which starts with passage by the Legislature. Then, after a general election, another session of the Legislature must pass the amendment before it is presented to voters in a ballot referendum.Key Results in New York’s 2022 Primary ElectionsOn June 28, New York held several primaries for statewide office, including for governor and lieutenant governor. Some State Assembly districts also had primaries.Kathy Hochul: With her win in the Democratic, the governor of New York took a crucial step toward winning a full term, fending off a pair of spirited challengers.Antonio Delgado: Ms. Hochul’s second in command and running mate also scored a convincing victory over his nearest Democratic challenger, Ana María Archila.Lee Zeldin: The congressman from Long Island won the Republican primary for governor, advancing to what it’s expected to be a grueling general election.N.Y. State Assembly: Long-tenured incumbents were largely successful in fending off a slate of left-leaning insurgents in the Democratic primary.But lawmakers took a first step on Friday when the legislature passed the Equal Rights Amendment, which along with guaranteeing rights to abortion and access to contraception, prohibited the government from discriminating against anyone based on a list of qualifications including race, ethnicity, national origin, disability or sex — specifically noting sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and pregnancy on the list of protected conditions.Some of the protected classes in the language of the measure appeared to anticipate future rulings from the court, which also indicated last week that it might overturn cases that established the right to same-sex marriage, same-sex consensual relations and contraception.“We’re playing legislative Whac-a-Mole with the Supreme Court,” said Senator Brad Hoylman, a Manhattan Democrat. “Any time they come up with a bad idea we’ll counter it with legislation at the state level.”“Civil liberties are hanging in the balance,” he added.New York Republicans, who have little sway in either legislative chamber, split over the Equal Rights Amendment, with seven voting in favor and 13 against. But they were united in opposition against the concealed carry bill, saying Democrats had tipped the balance much too heavily in favor of restrictions.“Instead of addressing the root of the problem and holding violent criminals accountable, Albany politicians are preventing law-abiding New Yorkers, who have undergone permit classes, background checks and a licensing process from exercising their constitutional right to keep and bear arms,” said Robert Ortt, the Republican leader in the Senate, who is from Western New York.The session in Albany took place just a week after the Supreme Court — now fully in the control of right-leaning justices, three of whom were appointed by Mr. Trump — moved forward on a pair of issues that have long animated conservatives.Last Thursday, it struck down New York’s century-old law that was among the strictest in the nation in regulating the public carrying of guns. The decision found that the law, which required that applicants demonstrate that they had a heightened need to carry a firearm in public, was too restrictive and allowed local officials too much discretion. The court invited states to update their laws.The following day, the court overturned Roe v. Wade, stripping Americans of the constitutional right to abortion nearly 50 years after it was first granted.New York will be the first of six states directly affected by the gun ruling to pass a new law restricting the carrying of guns. Similar legislation has been proposed in New Jersey, where a top legislative leader said this week it was possible lawmakers could be called back into session this summer to respond.Officials there have coordinated directly with their counterparts in New York, and the two laws are expected to share many features.Lawmakers in Hawaii have also said that they are working on new firearm legislation, while officials in California, Maryland and Massachusetts are discussing how the court’s decision should be addressed in their states.In an interview, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the Senate majority leader in New York, said that Democratic leaders were adamant that New York “model what state legislatures all over this nation can do to reaffirm the rights of their residents.”The State Senate majority leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, center, holds a news conference on Friday during the second day of the special legislative session in Albany.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesShe defended the new concealed carry restrictions as a common-sense safety measure that balanced Second Amendment interests laid out by the Supreme Court with concerns about legally carrying weapons into sensitive or crowded places, particularly in dense urban areas like New York City already facing a scourge of gun violence.“We didn’t want an open season,” Ms. Stewart-Cousins said. “In the environment that we are in, it is important to make sure that we are creating a process that respects what the Supreme Court has said but allows us to keep New Yorkers as safe as possible.”Republicans disagreed.“If you look at the sensitive areas, it’s the entire state, it’s everywhere,” said State Senator Andrew Lanza, a member of Republican leadership from Staten Island. “So much of New York is now considered a sensitive area for the purpose of this law that there is no such thing as a concealed permit anymore.”Andrew Lanza, center, the deputy minority leader, spoke against the New York State Senate’s gun safety legislation on Friday, saying, “There is no such thing as a concealed permit anymore.”Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesTwo other states, California and Vermont, have also moved closer to placing abortion protections in their constitutions. This week, lawmakers in California advanced a constitutional amendment enshrining the right, and in November, residents of both states will vote on whether to make the amendments law.Republican-led states are charging hard in the other direction. So far, seven have banned abortion since the justices’ decision last week. Another half dozen, including Texas and Tennessee, are expected to quickly follow suit. And voters in states like Kentucky and Kansas will soon decide whether to ban the practice via referendum.By pushing so quickly in New York to respond to both rulings, Ms. Hochul and Democratic legislative leaders have kept the state on a path set by her predecessor, Andrew M. Cuomo, during Mr. Trump’s presidency. Before allegations of sexual misconduct from a number of women led to his resignation, Mr. Cuomo was explicit in juxtaposing his agenda with the priorities of the Republican president, saying in late 2018 that he was declaring New York’s independence.State Senator Michael Gianaris of Queens, the deputy majority leader, said New Yorkers should expect more of the same in the coming years.“The Supreme Court seems intent on destroying this country one decision at a time,” he said in an interview. “Today, we made clear that New York will stand up against this rollback of rights that we’ve come to expect in the United States. You can expect we will continue doing this as the court keeps issuing horrible decisions.”Luis Ferré-Sadurní More

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      The Perils of Slow Vote-Counting and Delayed Election Results

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      Slow vote counts were the bane of the 2020 elections, inviting bogus fraud charges. But they’re not going away anytime soon.What happens when Election Day lasts for weeks?The short, glib answer to that question is that Jan. 6 happens — as we learned dramatically this week when Cassidy Hutchinson, a young former aide to Mark Meadows, gave testimony that put former President Donald Trump at the center of that day’s chaos and violence.The somewhat longer answer is that there’s so much static over how votes should be counted that we’ve seen the same dysfunctional scene twice since 2020 in the same state.First came the presidential election, where Trump seized on a slow vote count in Pennsylvania to cry fraud, declare victory and sow doubt about Joe Biden’s victory there and elsewhere.Round Two came about a month ago when the former president raised the specter of election cheating again and urged Dr. Mehmet Oz, his favored candidate in the race for Pennsylvania’s United States Senate seat, to prematurely declare victory in a Republican primary election — a week into the tally of ballots.Oz sidestepped Trump’s suggestion and eventually won, by just 951 votes. Trump’s insinuations of criminality vanished as quickly as they had surfaced.But in an angry, polarized nation, it was a reminder of how easily a laggard vote count can be exploited to discredit election results. And it raises the question of what will happen this November, when some counts in midterm elections are inevitably delayed — or in 2024, when the stakes will be immeasurably higher.Charles H. Stewart III, an election analyst at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said it’s a problem unlikely to go away soon, because, for a mix of reasons having to do with civil rights and also convenience, American voters have played a role in creating it.“Over the last couple of decades, we’ve enjoyed an expansion of access to the ballot and convenience of voting,” he said. “And nine times out of ten, that expansion has occurred without regard to the blocking and tackling of election administration.”Translation: Many voters, including Republican voters, love the shift to mail ballots, early voting, voting within minutes of registering, drop boxes and other efforts to make voting easier and more accessible. But those innovations make voting costlier and more complex — and governments have neither ponied up money nor changed election laws to deal with it.Outside experts say election officials already need well over $2 billion just to replace aging voting machines and beef up security against both physical and cyber attacks. And that doesn’t include the cost of improvements like high-speed ballot scanners, envelope-opening machines and additional employees that would make counting faster. Some of these ideas are under discussion on Capitol Hill.Elections have always run long because of the days of backstage work, validating tallies and verifying questionable ballots, that has to happen even when winners are declared early.The public never saw that sausage-making. But now it is causing delays in some states, opening the door to much of the misinformation and disinformation that is clouding election results and casting doubt on the integrity of the vote.Different parties, different views of the problemAdvocates on the left and right see different problems.California can be particularly thorny because of how slowly and unevenly it counts in votes. In 2018, The Associated Press called one Central Valley congressional race for Representative David Valadao, a Republican, only to make a rare retraction when the Democrat pulled ahead weeks later.More recently, the slow vote-counting in last month’s primaries caused a shift in final results from the initial tallies. On election night, the early leader in the Los Angeles mayoral contest, the mall developer and self-styled crimefighter was Rick Caruso. He now trails a more liberal Democrat, Karen Bass, who argued that “Los Angeles cannot arrest its way out of crime.”Progressives complained, loudly, about how the initial results — in Los Angeles and from the successful recall of San Francisco’s district attorney — were framed as a warning about the potency of crime, including in this newspaper. Some progressive prosecutors won, such as Diana Becton in Contra Costa County, whose campaign received a late $1 million ad blitz fund by a PAC linked to the liberal financier George Soros.On the right, Trump and like-minded candidates are quick to claim fraud whenever a slow vote count leaves one of them endangered or defeated. And Republican officeholders, increasingly hostile to voting by mail, may see little incentive to make it work better.But there is a whiff of hypocrisy to many of their claims: In Nevada, a Republican candidate for secretary of state, Jim Marchant, argued on the campaign trail that every winner of a state election since 2006 had actually been “installed by the deep-state cabal” — only to declare that “Nevadans made their voices heard” when he won the state’s primary in mid-June.Swamped by vote by mailIf laggard election results encourage misinformation, deliberate or otherwise, the obvious remedy is to count votes faster, and declare winners sooner. So why aren’t states doing that?In California, at least, a leisurely tally is effectively state policy. The state embraces mail ballots — about two thirds of votes are cast via mail or drop box — and accepts properly postmarked mail ballots up to a week late. In a state that mails out 22 million absentee ballots for every election, processing that takes time.In some other states, the swing to mail voting has swamped election officials who can’t afford high-speed equipment to process ballot envelopes. And while 37 states allow at least some processing of mail ballots as they come in, laws in other states force workers to wait until Election Day before even opening ballot envelopes, much less counting votes and verifying signatures.That was the case this spring in Pennsylvania, which sent out nearly 910,000 mail ballots to voters who requested them. To compound the task, a printing error forced a days-long hand recount of some 21,000 mail ballots.Election judges in Denver counting votes during the primary on Tuesday.Daniel Brenner for The New York TimesDoing it rightThat said, states like Oregon, Colorado and Utah conduct all-mail elections seamlessly and report results promptly. And Wisconsin, which also bars opening mail ballots before Election Day, managed to report 2020 general election results by 3 a.m. on the day after the polls closed.“It just comes down to process and procedure and having the right equipment,” said Claire Woodall-Vogg, the executive director of the Milwaukee Board of Election Commissioners.Wisconsin doesn’t require signature verification of ballots, which speeds counting considerably, she said. But the purchase of additional high-speed tabulators also has allowed the city to process more than twice as many ballots in the same amount of time.Just because the tallies can be accelerated does not mean that they will be. The next two elections face challenges that could prolong counts even further.One is a potential shortage of poll workers, deterred from volunteering because of threats of violence. Another is a shortfall of money, now that some states have barred help from outside groups that donated hundreds of millions of dollars to finance local election work in 2020.A third is an exodus of seasoned election administrators, who are retiring in droves after the pressures of the 2020 election cycle. Running a secure election is an extraordinarily complex task, and that institutional knowledge will be hard to replace, said Jennifer Morrell, a former election official in Colorado and Utah and now a partner in The Elections Group, a consulting firm.And that could lead to more cracks in fraying foundations of American democracy.“Overall, I think election administration is better today than it’s ever been,” Ms. Morrell said. “The flip side is that the misinformation and election conspiracies are bigger than they’ve ever been. I’m super concerned.”We want to hear from you.Tell us about your experience with this newsletter by answering this short survey.What to readThe Supreme Court term that ended on Thursday was the most conservative since 1931, Adam Liptak writes in a sweeping assessment of the Roberts Court’s achievements, with help from graphics by Alicia Parlapiano.Annie Karni looks at “the 20-somethings who help the 70-somethings run Washington,” a city teeming with ambitious young people who have more power than you might think.A question rarely asked: How will states like Texas handle the surge in babies now that abortion is largely illegal there?viewfindeRCassidy Hutchinson testifying on Tuesday before the House committee investigating the Capitol riot.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesA momentous hearingOn Politics regularly features work by Times photographers. Here’s what Haiyun Jiang told us about capturing the image above:Doug Mills, the well-known New York Times photographer, always reminds me not to take scenes on Capitol Hill for granted, even if I have seen them a thousand times. So I always try to approach photo coverage with a fresh eye, striving to make frames of aesthetic and storytelling value.When I covered the Jan. 6 House committee hearing featuring testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to President Donald J. Trump’s final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, I was in the “cuts” — meaning I had the freedom to move around the room, as opposed to being in the “well,” where you are stationed between the committee members and the witness and have very little room to move.I tried to show what I saw by capturing a fuller picture. As I stood on the side, photographers formed a curve with their cameras, and the audience, even the stenographers, focused on the witness. So I decided to include all of those characters in the frame, taking people into the hearing room and hopefully making them feel present.Thanks for reading. Enjoy the July 4 holiday; we’ll see you on Tuesday.— BlakeWere you forwarded this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Why on Earth Is Pelosi Supporting the Trumpists?

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      The Democratic Party is behaving recklessly and unpatriotically. So far, Democrats have spent tens of millions to help Trumpist candidates in Republican primaries.In Illinois alone, the Democratic Governors Association and Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker spent at least $30 million to attack a Trumpist’s moderate gubernatorial opponent. In Pennsylvania, a Democratic campaign spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads intended to help a Trumpist candidate win the G.O.P. gubernatorial primary. A political action committee affiliated with Nancy Pelosi worked to boost far-right Republican House candidates in California and Colorado.They are doing it because they think far-right Trumpist candidates will be easier to beat in the general elections than more moderate candidates.What the Democrats are doing is sleazy in the best of circumstances. If you love your country more than your party, you should want the best candidates to advance in either party. And in these circumstances, what they are doing is insane: The far-right candidates whom Democrats are supporting could easily wind up winning.Many Democrats, living in their own information bubble and apparently having learned nothing from 2016, do not seem to understand the horrific electoral landscape they are facing. They do not seem to understand how much their business-as-usual approach could lead to a full Republican takeover in 2025 — which as this week’s Jan. 6 insurrection hearing reminded us yet again, would be a disaster for our democracy.Many Democrats hope that the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision will mobilize their voters for the coming midterms, and that seems to have happened, at least in the short term. But I’m convinced this election will primarily be about the economy and the existential state of the country. Things look extremely grim for the ruling party.A staggering 83 percent of Americans believe the economy is poor or not so good, according to a May Wall Street Journal-NORC poll. And an equally staggering 83 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country, according to a Gallup poll.Parties get punished when they make mistakes. Recently, Democrats have made the kind of mistakes that make voters furious.Liberal economists underestimated the inflation threat, and Democratic fiscal policy, ignoring that threat, seems to have escalated it. The Democratic Party as a whole became associated with progressives who saw policing simply through a racial injustice lens. That’s an important lens, but progressives ignored the public safety lens and were unprepared for the widespread public anger over the increase in crime.Similarly, many progressives argued that cancel culture wasn’t a thing or was being severely exaggerated. Americans who are afraid to think out loud think the left has become too censorious, and the Democratic Party once again is held guilty by association. Progressives have also largely failed to address the shortcomings of their governing model. The rampant inequality, homelessness and other social ills plaguing San Francisco and other cities are there for all to see.We are living in an age of menace, an age when people feel unsafe on a variety of fronts. These are ages when voters tend to flock to conservative parties, which they associate with law and order.And then there is the underlying problem, which has gone unaddressed since Donald Trump surged to his unexpected victory in 2016, which is that while Democrats support many popular policies, progressives are associated with a series of social and cultural values that are unpopular with most Americans. According to a new More in Common survey, 69 percent of Americans believe that America is a country where if you get a good education, develop your talents and are open to innovation, you can do anything. Only 36 percent of progressive activists agree with this.That’s just a basic difference in how people see the country, and time and time again Democratic politicians have been punished for the messages that come out of progressive educational and cultural institutions.The Republican Party has grown pretty extreme over the past few years. But it’s important to remember Americans believe that the Democratic Party has grown extreme, too. According to a CNN survey, 46 percent of Americans believe the G.O.P. is “too extreme” and 48 percent believe the Democratic Party is “too extreme.” My guess is that this is not about Democratic domestic policies, many of which are popular, but about progressive cultural and social stances. It’s about people feeling alienated from metropolitan elites.I’ve had a recurring mystification over the past six years: How is it possible that Democrats are not crushing these guys? The G.O.P. has worked full time to disgrace itself over these years. And yet experts expect the Republicans to easily retake the House and perhaps the Senate. That’s kind of amazing when you stop to think about it.And this is all going to get catastrophically worse for Democrats if the economy further deteriorates and if a recession comes.In 2020 Biden was the candidate who didn’t seem to be pinioned to the coastal elites. But Democrats are still being battered because of that association. And what are they doing to fix the problem? Spending money to support Trumpists.Those crazies could be running the country in a few years.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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      Women Will Save Us

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      Men are pack animals.Not all of us, of course, but male culture is ordered by hierarchies of power, with the apex being the alpha. It can be toxic and problematic, ill-considered and tribal, but it is also deeply embedded in our society and resistant to modification.The pack mentality is particularly prevalent in politics, where even men of principle drift toward the centers of gravity.Donald Trump rose to power, and continues to pose a threat to this country, by pretending to be an alpha male and exploiting the pack behavior of politicians, particularly the Republican men with the most power.Nothing illustrates pack behavior better than the immediate aftermath of the insurrection: Some Republicans briefly turned on Trump and blamed him, believing him injured and weakened by the episode. But, when he appeared to survive it, they quickly, obsequiously, fell back into line, tails tucked.Both the men in the Capitol and the man on the street exhibit pack behavior.In a gym in Brooklyn a few months ago, I overheard a group of friends loudly discussing politics. Two were white, and one was Black.The two white men were boasting about Trump, how much they loved his bravado. Even if there were drawbacks, they were overcome by this one positive attribute. The Black man interjected with comments about Trump’s racism, but the two white men dodged and dismissed it. They wanted to focus on his strength and his power.This is why I have come to fully, religiously believe that if this country is to be saved, it will be women who do the saving.The riveting testimony of the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson on Tuesday only reinforced my belief. She did what so many men around the president have refused to do: She spoke up in service of the truth and the country.This is not to say that there haven’t been men who have acted heroically in the face of recent threats to the country, but the women have truly distinguished themselves, which is even more remarkable in politics, which even now is dominated by men.There were the brave women who came forward with sexual assault allegations against Donald Trump, even though they were being attacked and vilified. I don’t want to fail to mention Christine Blasey Ford, who testified to her allegations against Brett Kavanaugh.There was Nancy Pelosi, who held the line as best she could when Republicans held the majority, and expedited an aggressive liberal agenda when Democrats regained the majority.She also oversaw not one, but two impeachment votes against Trump, the first on accusations of soliciting foreign interference for the 2016 election, and the second on allegations of inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection.In fact, in 2020, no group of voters voted more strongly to oust Trump than Black women. In fact, regardless of their race, more women voted to get rid of Trump than men, although a majority of white women still voted for him.Then, there is this point: America will rue the day that it did not elect Hillary Clinton president in 2016. There was an open Supreme Court seat when people were casting their ballots, and it still didn’t motivate enough Democrats to turn out to the polls or convince enough undecided voters to support her.Sure, there were overlapping factors operating in that cycle — Russian interference, the media’s lopsided treatment of Clinton and Trump, Anthony Weiner’s laptop and James Comey’s outrageous 11th-hour announcement — but sexism was also one of them.Now we have a Supreme Court poised to plunge us into an era of regression. But even there, we must take note of the women. When Ketanji Brown Jackson is sworn in on Thursday, the entire liberal arm of the court will be female. They may not be able to blunt the rulings of the theocratic majority, but this trio of women will compose the dissents, outline the moral argument, and lay the groundwork for future courts more inclined to undo the damage wreaked by this one.The change could start as soon as this fall, if enough women, riled up by the Dobbs decision, head to the polls to punish Republicans for putting them in this position.It is conventional wisdom that parties in power lose seats during the midterms, but in this cycle many women in this country are mad as hell about the loss of their civil rights and therefore may challenge that conventional wisdom.In two generic congressional polls taken in the days after the court handed down its decision in Dobbs, the Democrats held a significant lead over the Republicans. There are months to go before the elections, but this finding is interesting and must be unsettling for Republicans.In the meantime, it is women like Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Cori Bush who are pushing for an aggressive response to the abortion decision, while President Biden hews to his institutionalist instincts.It simply feels in this moment that women, more than men, have a clarity about the danger we face and the courage demanded to fight it.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 and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

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      Five Takeaways From Tuesday’s Elections

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      The biggest question heading into Tuesday’s primaries was whether Democrats would be successful in guiding Republican voters to choose weak nominees for the general election.In Illinois, Democrats’ biggest and most sustained investment succeeded, but in Colorado, Republicans chose candidates who didn’t have nominal primary support from across the aisle, setting up several general elections that are expected to be very competitive.Elsewhere, far-right candidates remade Republican politics down the ballot in Illinois, while incumbents who aren’t facing ethics inquiries coasted to victories. And a special election in Nebraska was far closer than anyone expected.Here are five takeaways from Tuesday’s contests across eight states.Democratic meddling in G.O.P. primaries produces results … sometimes.Democrats have determined that it’s much easier to win a general election if you can handpick your opponent — especially if that opponent happens to be a far-right Republican who can easily be painted as an extremist.So in Colorado and Illinois, they tried to help those sorts of candidates.Such meddling isn’t a new phenomenon — it rose to prominence in the 2012 Missouri Senate race — but Democrats have used the risky strategy this year to prop up a series of underfunded far-right candidates running against Republican establishment favorites who were seen as a greater threat to Democrats in November.On Tuesday, Democrats learned that it’s possible to elevate a flawed Republican if he already has a functioning campaign, but that they can’t make something out of nearly nothing.In Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, the billionaire Democrat, spent $35 million to stop Mayor Richard C. Irvin of Aurora, a moderate Republican, while promoting Darren Bailey, a far-right state senator who once vowed to kick Chicago out of the state.Mr. Pritzker at a deli in Chicago on Tuesday. He backed Mr. Bailey in the belief that he would be a weaker general-election candidate than Mayor Richard C. Irvin of Aurora, a moderate Republican.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesMr. Bailey had been campaigning for more than a year and had his own billionaire patron, the conservative megadonor Richard Uihlein. Mr. Pritzker did such a good job stamping out Mr. Irvin that the mayor placed a distant third, more than 40 percentage points behind Mr. Bailey.“Tonight, J.B. Pritzker won the Republican primary for governor here in Illinois,” Mr. Irvin said in a concession speech. “He spent a historic amount of money to choose his own Republican opponent, and I wish Darren Bailey well.”Key Results in New York’s 2022 Primary ElectionsOn June 28, New York held several primaries for statewide office, including for governor and lieutenant governor. Some State Assembly districts also had primaries.Kathy Hochul: With her win in the Democratic, the governor of New York took a crucial step toward winning a full term, fending off a pair of spirited challengers.Antonio Delgado: Ms. Hochul’s second in command and running mate also scored a convincing victory over his nearest Democratic challenger, Ana María Archila.Lee Zeldin: The congressman from Long Island won the Republican primary for governor, advancing to what it’s expected to be a grueling general election.N.Y. State Assembly: Long-tenured incumbents were largely successful in fending off a slate of left-leaning insurgents in the Democratic primary.But the same tactics didn’t work in Colorado, where a shadowy Democratic group spent nearly $4 million attacking Joe O’Dea, a construction executive who supports some abortion rights, while trying to aid Ron Hanks, a far-right state representative who didn’t spend anything on television advertising.Mr. Hanks’s threadbare campaign raised just $124,000 — a pittance that in many places can barely pay for a competitive state legislative race. Democrats couldn’t help lift Mr. Hanks to victory if he couldn’t help himself.Mr. O’Dea now figures to give Colorado Democrats what they feared: a competitive general-election contest against Senator Michael Bennet, who has privately told people his race will be difficult.Colorado Republicans reject two election deniers.Not since Georgia’s elections over a month ago have Republican primary voters summarily rejected a slate of 2020 election deniers — but those contests were colored by former President Donald J. Trump’s failed quest for vengeance against Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.In two statewide races in Colorado, Republicans had a choice between a candidate who accepted the outcome of the 2020 election and one or more whose campaigns were animated by their rejection of the legitimacy of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.In both cases, voters chose the candidate tethered to reality.In the Senate race, Mr. O’Dea accepted the results of the election, while Mr. Hanks predicated his campaign on denying them. In a video announcing his campaign last year, Mr. Hanks shot a gun at what appeared to be a photocopier labeled as a Dominion voting machine.Joe O’Dea, a Republican who supports some abortion rights and accepts the outcome of the 2020 election, won his party’s nomination for Senate in Colorado.David Zalubowski/Associated PressAnd in the Republican primary for secretary of state, Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk, who is under indictment in relation to a scheme to find evidence that the 2020 election was fraudulent, placed third in a contest in which she was the best-known candidate.Ms. Peters and the second-place finisher, Mike O’Donnell, who has also promoted 2020 falsehoods, combined to win a majority of the vote, but both placed well behind Pam Anderson, a longtime local election official.The Colorado races are hardly emblematic of Republican voters nationwide. In Illinois, Mr. Bailey and Representative Mary Miller, who both refused to accept the 2020 results, strolled to victory in their primaries. New York Republicans gave nearly two-thirds of their primary vote for governor to Representative Lee Zeldin and Andrew Giuliani, who have also cast doubt on the results.It’s Darren Bailey’s party in Illinois.Mr. Bailey, the newly minted Republican nominee for governor of Illinois, didn’t just trounce a field of better-funded candidates (with a lot of help from Mr. Pritzker). His coattails extended down the ballot to lift an array of like-minded conservatives.Throughout Central and Southern Illinois, signs read “Trump-Bailey-Miller,” highlighting the alliance between the former president, Mr. Bailey and Ms. Miller. The congresswoman, who apologized last year after making an approving reference to Hitler, won her primary against Representative Rodney Davis after the two were drawn into a district together.Down the ballot, Mr. Bailey’s personal lawyer and traveling campaign companion, Thomas DeVore, was leading the Republican primary for attorney general over Steve Kim, a former staff member for Gov. Jim Edgar.Supporters of Mr. Bailey at his election night party in Effingham, Ill. Jim Vondruska/Getty ImagesA few of Mr. Bailey’s picks in state legislative races defeated rivals backed by campaign cash from Kenneth Griffin, the Chicago billionaire and chief benefactor of the Illinois Republican Party.One of Mr. Bailey’s chosen candidates for the Illinois House, Bill Hauter, a pediatric anesthesiologist at a hospital in Peoria, campaigned on a platform opposing public health restrictions to stem the coronavirus pandemic.Early Wednesday, Dr. Hauter was up by double digits in his open-seat primary for a Central Illinois district against a candidate funded in part by millions of dollars Mr. Griffin spread across the state to support moderate, establishment-friendly candidates in down-ballot primaries.“I’m up against a lot of money,” Dr. Hauter said in an interview at a Bailey campaign stop last week in Lincoln, Ill. “But money is not the motivation. It’s not message, it’s not supporters, it’s not enthusiasm. It’s not all these things that you need.”It still requires special circumstances to oust an incumbent.In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul fended off two challengers. Her late-in-the-game lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado, also coasted.And in other states, several members of Congress who were thought to be endangered prevailed:Representative Michael Guest of Mississippi, a Republican who was dogged by his vote for a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol;Representative Blake Moore of Utah, a Republican who allied himself with Senator Mitt Romney and Representative Liz Cheney, who are now apostates for much of their party;Representative Danny K. Davis of Illinois, a Democrat who narrowly held off a spirited campaign from a progressive challenger.Republican senators in Oklahoma and Utah also had little trouble winning renomination.But there are lines voters won’t let candidates cross. Representative Steven Palazzo, a Mississippi Republican, lost a runoff after the Office of Congressional Ethics concluded he had misused campaign money, including directing $80,000 toward a waterfront home he was trying to sell.Mr. Palazzo fell to Mike Ezell, a sheriff.Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York, center, after easily winning her Democratic primary on Tuesday.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesIn New York, Ms. Hochul was never believed to be in danger against her two challengers, one more liberal and one more conservative than she is.But Mr. Delgado’s victory was less assured. He faced a robust challenge from Ana María Archila, a former immigrant rights activist who made her name confronting Senator Jeff Flake in a Senate elevator during the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.Mr. Delgado, who joined Ms. Hochul’s administration in May after his predecessor resigned in scandal, still took about 60 percent of the vote in a three-way race.Surprisingly close, but no cigar, for Nebraska Democrats.Few outside the Cornhusker State paid much attention to the special election to fill the House seat vacated by former Representative Jeff Fortenberry, who resigned after he was convicted of lying to federal investigators. It was widely assumed that Mike Flood, a Republican state senator, would coast in Tuesday’s special election and again in November.But the combination of a low-turnout contest, an under-the-radar effort from local Democrats and anger over the Supreme Court’s decision last week ending the constitutional right to an abortion led the Democrat in the race, State Senator Patty Pansing Brooks, to come within a few points of Mr. Flood in a district Mr. Trump carried by double digits in 2020.“Nebraskans turned out to send a very loud and clear message that access to abortion services must be legal and protected,” said Jane Kleeb, the Nebraska Democratic Party chairwoman. “We can and will win in red states.”Mr. Flood and Ms. Pansing Brooks will face off again in November, and the incumbent will again be a heavy favorite. More

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      N.Y. Assembly Democrats Largely Repel Challenges From the Left

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      Long-tenured incumbents appeared likely to retain their seats, though an activist was ahead in a Hudson Valley race.In the Democratic primary for the New York State Assembly, a slate of left-leaning insurgents — running with the backing of the progressive Working Families Party and Democratic Socialists of America — had hoped to unseat a group of long-serving incumbents.But with election results still coming in early Wednesday, it seemed that the challengers had mostly fallen short.From New York City to Schenectady, numerous long-tenured lawmakers, like Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz of the Bronx, appeared poised to claim their party’s nomination and move on to the general election in November.Mr. Dinowitz, who was first elected in 1994, was leading his challenger, a former Senate aide, Jessica Altagracia Woolford, 62 percent to 38 percent, with 80 percent of the vote counted.“It has been the greatest honor to serve the community that raised me, that raised my family,” Mr. Dinowitz said in a statement declaring victory. “I’ve spent my career fighting for our progressive values and delivering, and I can’t wait to continue delivering for the North Bronx in Albany.”Key Results in New York’s 2022 Primary ElectionsOn June 28, New York held several primaries for statewide office, including for governor and lieutenant governor. Some State Assembly districts also had primaries.Kathy Hochul: With her win in the Democratic, the governor of New York took a crucial step toward winning a full term, fending off a pair of spirited challengers.Antonio Delgado: Ms. Hochul’s second in command and running mate also scored a convincing victory over his nearest Democratic challenger, Ana María Archila.Lee Zeldin: The congressman from Long Island won the Republican primary for governor, advancing to what it’s expected to be a grueling general election.N.Y. State Assembly: Long-tenured incumbents were largely successful in fending off a slate of left-leaning insurgents in the Democratic primary.Other Assembly members who turned back insurgents included Inez E. Dickens of Harlem and Nikki Lucas of Brooklyn, who defeated Working Families-backed challengers, as did Deborah Glick in the West Village and Angelo Santabarbara in Schenectady.The advantages of incumbency also benefited Democratic socialists in the Assembly, including Marcela Mitaynes, Emily Gallagher and Phara Souffrant Forrest. The ferocity of many of the Democratic primary races, which have included significant negative campaigning on both sides, have contributed to an tense intraparty contest.The state Democratic Party chairman, Jay Jacobs, contended that the primary challenges revealed the “arrogance” and impatience of progressive activists whose efforts he feared would endanger Democrats’ supermajorities in Albany.The tension was elevated by the involvement of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who endorsed a slate of candidates across the state.One of those candidates, Sarahana Shrestha, was leading the incumbent, Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, by just over 500 votes, with more than 95 percent of expected votes counted in the Hudson Valley district.Ms. Shrestha, a climate activist and graphic designer, was also backed by the Democratic Socialists of America and has promoted a fiercely progressive platform centered on the climate crisis. Her campaign attempted to paint Mr. Cahill, who has held the seat since 1992, as entrenched and out of touch.“Thank you to everyone who built this movement,” Ms. Shrestha posted to Twitter on Tuesday night. “We won because the Hudson Valley is ready to to lead this whole state forward in the fight for the beautiful future we deserve.”Despite coming together to pass landmark climate and marijuana legislation over the past few years, Democrats have disagreed over how far to the left they should steer the state.Last session saw Democratic lawmakers divided over whether or not to toughen the state’s bail laws so that more people could be held before trial, as requested by Gov. Kathy Hochul. And while some progressive approaches to acute problems — like offering tenants protections from eviction during the pandemic — easily garnered consensus, other permanent structural changes, like requiring landlords to have a “good cause” to evict tenants, and empowering the state’s power authority to build renewable energy, have met opposition.This year’s primary has been marred by chaos from the outset.After years of bifurcated primaries that confused voters and cost millions to administer, New York finally moved to collapse its local and federal primaries into one day in June.But hopes of simplicity were dashed when a judge ruled that Democrats had gerrymandered the state’s political maps. To accommodate the time it would take for the court-appointed special master to draw new nonpartisan maps, congressional and State Senate primaries were pushed back to Aug 23.Although Assembly lines were also declared to be unconstitutional, the primary still took place in June, alongside those for governor and lieutenant governor, for timing reasons. To further complicate matters, a judge ruled that Assembly lines will also need to be redrawn — but not until after this year’s round of lawmakers are elected using the maps deemed unconstitutional. More