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      Senator Catherine Cortez Masto Hopes History Repeats as She Faces Adam Laxalt

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      LAS VEGAS — In 2010, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada beat back a deep-red wave and dire national predictions for his political career when he pulled out a re-election victory against a Tea Party-endorsed candidate. He was a Democratic powerhouse with name recognition, pugilistic instincts and a state political machine long in the making behind him.Twelve years later, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, who replaced him in Congress, finds herself in a re-election battle in November against the Trump wing of the Republican Party. But Ms. Cortez Masto is not as well known as her Senate predecessor and mentor, the so-called Reid Machine is not as strong as it had been during his tenure and Democrats are facing an even tougher national political landscape.“When you take that all together — this is why Nevada’s Senate contest is one of the most competitive races in the country,” said Mike Noble, a pollster who works in the state.Ms. Cortez Masto, the state’s former attorney general, easily won the Democratic nomination in Tuesday’s primary election. But she remains one of the most vulnerable Democratic senators this midterm season, as she prepares for a general-election contest against Adam Laxalt, a Republican who has embraced former President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claims of a 2020 stolen election.A combination of local, national and personal challenges confront her in a high-profile race — state voting trends that favor Republicans, a national climate working against Democratic incumbents, and her own tendencies to stay out of the limelight and operate behind the scenes.But she and her supporters point to her past hard-fought victories, most recently in 2016, when she beat her Republican rival by 2 percentage points to become the first Latina elected to the Senate.“I’ve always been in tough races,” Ms. Cortez Masto said in an interview in February.Adam Laxalt greeted voters in Moapa Valley, Nev., on Saturday.Joe Buglewicz for The New York TimesIn Nevada, the influential network of seasoned operatives, field organizers and volunteers that has fueled crucial Democratic victories for years is still a major force in the state’s politics. It now includes a newer crop of progressive groups. But the loss of Mr. Reid, who died in December 2021 after a struggle with pancreatic cancer, has been hard felt.President Biden won Nevada by only 2 percentage points during the 2020 election. Ms. Cortez Masto will now have to overcome the president’s low approval ratings and voters’ dissatisfaction with the economy. Nevada, whose sprawling hotel and entertainment industries heavily rely on tourism, was among the states most battered by the coronavirus pandemic, and high unemployment rates and rising living costs have opened Democrats to a constant line of attack from Republicans on crime, jobs and inflation.“In November, voters are going to see the prices at the pump, see the inflation when they go to the grocery store and know that they have Catherine Cortez Masto to thank for that,” said Jeremy Hughes, a Republican who was a campaign adviser to Dean Heller, the former Republican senator.Understand the June 14 Primary ElectionsTakeaways: Republicans who embraced former President Donald J. Trump’s election lies did well in Nevada, while his allies had a mixed night in South Carolina. Here’s what else we learned.Winners and Losers: Here is a rundown of some of the most notable wins and losses.Election Deniers Prevail: Republicans who deny the 2020 election’s result are edging closer to wielding power over the next one.Nevada Races: Trump-inspired candidates captured key wins in the swing state, setting the stage for a number of tossup contests against embattled Democrats.Texas Special Election: Mayra Flores, a Republican, flipped a House seat in the Democratic stronghold of South Texas. Her win may only be temporary, however.The election will largely hinge on who shows up to the polls. Mr. Reid’s political apparatus had been crucial to mobilizing multiracial coalitions of working-class and Latino voters. But sharp drops in Democratic participation in Nevada midterm elections have most recently given Republicans an advantage. The state’s transient population also makes it difficult for political candidates and elected officials to build name recognition.Voters line up outside a polling place in Las Vegas Tuesday.Bridget Bennett for The New York Times“The challenge for everyone on the ticket in Nevada is turnout,” said Representative Dina Titus, a Democrat who is facing her own tough bid for re-election this year for her Las Vegas seat.Mr. Laxalt has largely centered on turning out his base by stirring voter outrage over undocumented immigrants, the economy and pandemic school closures and restrictions. He has already begun to attack Ms. Cortez Masto as a vulnerable incumbent in line with Biden administration policies.The grandson of a former Nevada senator and son of a former New Mexico senator, Mr. Laxalt served as co-chairman of the 2020 Trump campaign in Nevada, and led Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state. He was endorsed by both Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, two of the most popular figures in the Republican Party.In a memo released the day after the Tuesday primary, Scott Fairchild, Ms. Cortez Masto’s campaign manager, painted Mr. Laxalt as a corrupt politician and “an anti-abortion extremist” focused on promoting Mr. Trump’s “big lie.” Her supporters see him as a flawed candidate, pointing to his failed bid for governor in 2018 and his attempt to block a federal investigation as attorney general into some of his wealthiest donors, including the Koch brothers.At campaign rallies and in interviews with Fox News and on conservative podcasts, Mr. Laxalt has repeatedly sought to tie Ms. Cortez Masto to Biden policies, criticizing her on crime, inflation and immigration. In a statement, John Burke, communications director for the Laxalt campaign, called criticism from his Democratic opponent a distraction from Ms. Cortez Masto’s role in the “current economic catastrophe.”“Our state wants change and Nevadans know it’s impossible to get it with her,” he said.Despite the change in Nevada’s political environment, many Democrats still see a playbook for success for Ms. Cortez Masto in Mr. Reid’s successful 2010 run for a fifth term against Sharron Angle, a former state lawmaker who pushed voter fraud claims and harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric long before Mr. Trump did.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterm races so important? More

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      What to Watch in Tuesday’s Primary Elections

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      The marquee races on Tuesday are taking place in South Carolina, where two Republican House members are facing Trump-backed challengers, and in Nevada, where Republicans are aiming to sweep a host of Democratic-held seats in the November general election.Voters in Maine and North Dakota will also go to the polls, and in Texas, Republicans hope to grab the Rio Grande Valley seat of Representative Filemon Vela, a Democrat who resigned in March.The primary season has had more extensive Election Days, but Tuesday has plenty of drama. Here is what to watch.In South Carolina, a showdown with TrumpRepresentatives Tom Rice and Nancy Mace crossed former President Donald J. Trump in the opening days of 2021 as the cleanup crews were still clearing debris from the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. Mr. Rice was perhaps the biggest surprise vote in favor of impeachment — as a conservative in a very conservative district, he was risking his political career.Ms. Mace voted against impeachment, but in her first speech in Congress that January, she said the House needed to “hold the president accountable” for the Capitol attack.So Mr. Trump backed two primary challengers: State Representative Russell Fry against Mr. Rice, and the conservative Katie Arrington against Ms. Mace.Representative Tom Rice speaking with supporters in Conway, S.C., last week.Madeline Gray for The New York TimesIn Ms. Mace’s case, the Trump world is divided. Mr. Trump’s first United Nations ambassador, Nikki Haley, and one of his chiefs of staff, Mick Mulvaney, both South Carolinians, are backing the incumbent freshman.That is, in part, because Ms. Arrington has a poor track record: In 2018, after beating then-Representative Mark Sanford in the Republican primary after he castigated Mr. Trump, she then lost in November to a Democrat, Joe Cunningham. (Mr. Cunningham, who was defeated by Ms. Mace in 2020, is hoping for a comeback this year with a long-shot bid to defeat the incumbent governor, Henry McMaster.)Republicans worry that an Arrington victory on Tuesday could jeopardize the seat, which stretches from Charleston down the affluent South Carolina coast.Mr. Rice’s path to victory on Tuesday will be considerably harder, but he remains defiant about his impeachment vote. “Defending the Constitution is a bedrock of the Republican platform. Defend the Constitution, and that’s what I did. That was the conservative vote,” he said in a June 5 interview on ABC’s “This Week,” adding, “There’s no question in my mind.”Battleground NevadaCalifornia may have a larger number of seats in play, but no state is as thoroughly up for grabs as Nevada. Three out of four of the state’s House seats are rated tossups — all three of which are now held by Democrats. Other tossup races include the Senate seat held by Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, and the governorship held by Steve Sisolak, also a Democrat. A Republican sweep would do real damage, not only to the Democrats’ narrow hold on Congress, but also to their chances in the 2024 presidential election if Nevada is close: It’s better to have the governor of a state on your side than on the other side.But first, Republican voters need to sort through a vast array of candidates vying for each position. Joe Lombardo, the sheriff of Las Vegas’s Clark County, is the favorite for the Republican nomination to challenge Mr. Sisolak. He has Mr. Trump’s endorsement and echoes Mr. Trump’s language in his pledge to “take our state back.”Eight candidates are vying to challenge Ms. Cortez Masto, but Adam Laxalt, the former Nevada attorney general who lost to Mr. Sisolak in 2018, is clearly favored.Adam Laxalt, a Republican Senate candidate, with supporters in Moapa Valley, Nev., last week.Joe Buglewicz for The New York TimesRepresentative Dina Titus, a Democrat, also has eight Republicans competing to challenge her, including a former House member, Cresent Hardy. But it’s Carolina Serrano, a Colombian American immigrant, who has the backing of Republican leaders and the Trump world alike, with endorsements from Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, the party’s No. 3 House leader, as well as Mr. Laxalt and Richard Grenell, a pugilistic former national security official in the Trump administration.Five Republicans hope to challenge Representative Susie Lee, a Democrat. Among them, April Becker, a real estate lawyer, has raised the most money by far and has the backing of the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, as well as Ms. Stefanik, Ms. Haley and Mr. Laxalt.The potential G.O.P. challengers to Representative Steven Horsford, a Democrat, are most clearly divided between the Trump fringe and the party’s mainstream. Sam Peters, an insurance agent, is backed by the far-right Arizona congressmen Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, who both have been tied to extremist groups, as well as the right-wing rocker Ted Nugent. Annie Black, an assemblywoman running in the primary against Mr. Peters, is more mainstream.A harbinger brewing in South TexasWhen Mr. Vela decided to resign from the House instead of serving out the rest of his term, he most likely did not know the stakes he was creating for the special election to fill his seat for the remaining months of this year.Republicans are trying to make a statement, pouring money into the traditionally Democratic Rio Grande Valley district to support Mayra Flores. She has raised 16 times the amount logged by her closest Democratic competitor, Dan Sanchez.A campaign sign for Mayra Flores in Brownsville during the Texas primary in March.Denise Cathey/The Brownsville Herald, via Associated PressA Flores victory would be proclaimed by Republicans as a sign of worse to come for Democrats in November.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Trump Is Still a Threat

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      Donald Trump is a cancer on this country.Not only because of the way that he has behaved in it and at its helm, but because of the way that he has fundamentally changed it.On Thursday night, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection held the first of what will be a series of public hearings. The hearing was methodical and, at times, sensational. It underscored and buttressed the alarming, central thesis: Trump, as president of the United States, took aim at the democratic process of the United States by inciting a riot at the Capitol, among other things.Throw any adjective at it — brazen, shocking, outrageous, unprecedented — they are all insufficient to capture the enormity of what he did. A president with an autocratic fetish — one who assumed office with a welcome assist from the autocratic ruler of Russia — nearly hobbled the government of the most powerful country on the planet.Yet, with all of this, a poll published in February by the Pew Research Center found that fewer Americans believed that Trump bore responsibility for the Jan. 6 riot than they did in its immediate aftermath. Nearly six in 10 Republicans believed that he bore no responsibility at all for the rioting, compared to 46 percent the year before, and in June 2021, 66 percent of Republicans said that Trump “definitely” or “probably” won the 2020 election.The committee’s hearing may put a dent in those numbers, but if history is our guide, his cult will remain unflappable and intact.This is the legacy of Trump: the alteration of our political reality.As was made clear during Thursday’s hearing, multiple people told Trump that he had lost the election and that there was no widespread fraud. It appears that he wasn’t laboring under a delusion when he attempted to steal the election; he was raging his own lie about that election.Lying was a life skill for Donald Trump. But, before entering politics, he mostly used it as a tool to inflate his assets and his ego and to sell gold-plated aspiration to new-money social climbers. His entire brand was packaging garish people’s interpretations of glamour.In that world, he regularly skirted the rules. But when he entered politics, he found rules that were in some cases even more fungible than those covering finance. Many of the constraints on the president were customs and traditions. There were rules that no one had ever pushed to enforce, because previous presidents conformed to them.In some ways, the only thing constraining Trump as president was the unwillingness of other officials — many of whom he could appoint or replace at will — to break the rules.He was like a pirate landing among an Indigenous population. Instead of appreciating the elegance of the culture and history of its rites, he focused on its weaknesses, scheming ways to exploit it, and if need be, destroy it.Donald Trump didn’t create the modern American right, but he arrived in a moment when it was thirsty for unapologetic white nationalism, when it was terrified of white replacement and when it had flung open its arms in its willingness to embrace fiction.He quickly understood that these impulses, which establishment Republicans had told their base to suppress and only whisper, were the things the base wanted to hear shouted, things the base wanted to cheer.Now, millions of Americans have fallen for a lie and follow a liar.This means that our politics still exist in Trump’s shadow. Republican politicians, afraid to buck him and afraid of the mob he controls, toe the line for him and parrot his lies. The conservative media echo chamber, hermetically sealed and resistant to reality, ensures that Trump propaganda is repeated until it is accepted without examination.The Democrats also exist in Trump’s shadow. A large part of the reason Joe Biden was selected as the Democratic nominee was not because he had the most exciting set of policies, but because Democrats desperately wanted to beat Trump, and saw Biden as the safest bet to do so.Now that he has been elected, many factions of his winning coalition feel like constituencies held hostage. Any critique of Biden, even mild and legitimate, must be tempered so as not to give ammunition to the Mar-a-Lago Menace who looks poised to attempt another run for the White House.If he does, this country could well tear itself apart. And I make that statement with absolutely no hyperbolic intent. Indeed, it is not clear to me that this country can survive him calling the shots from the sidelines now.The political system has proved too compromised by Trump’s own influence to hold Trump accountable in a way that ends this nightmare. Now, the legal system is all we have left, and Trump has been harder to pinch than flesh slathered in tanning oil.We must now wait to see if the committee has the goods not to change the minds of voters, which feels increasingly like a lost cause, but to change the minds — or quicken the spirits — of prosecutors at the Department of Justice.Trump has changed America, but we can still prevent him from destroying 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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      If You Must Point Fingers on Inflation, Here’s Where to Point Them

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      As the midterm elections draw nearer, a central conservative narrative is coming into sharp focus: President Joe Biden and the Democratic-controlled Congress have a made a mess of the American economy. Republicans see pure political gold in this year’s slow-motion stock market crash, which seems to be accelerating at the perfect time for a party seeking to regain control of Congress in the fall.The National Republican Congressional Committee in a tweet last month quipped that the Democratic House agenda includes a “tanking stock market.” Conservatives have been highlighting a video clip from 2020 when then-president Donald Trump warned about a Joe Biden presidency: “If he’s elected, the stock market will crash.” Right wing pundit Sean Hannity’s blog featured the clip under the headline: “TRUMP WAS RIGHT.”But the narrative pinning blame for the economy’s woes squarely on Democrats’ shoulders elides the true culprit: the Federal Reserve. The financial earthquakes of 2022 trace their origin to underground pressures the Fed has been steadily creating for a over a decade.It started back in 2010, when the Fed embarked on the unprecedented and experimental path of using its power to create money as a primary engine of American economic growth. To put it simply, the Fed created years of super-easy money, with short-term interest rates held near zero while it pumped trillions of dollars into the banking system. One way to understand the scale of these programs is to measure the size of the Fed’s balance sheet. The balance sheet was about $900 billion in mid-2008, before the financial market crash. It rose to $4.5 trillion in 2015 and is just short of $9 trillion today.All of this easy money had a distinct impact on our financial system — it incentivized investors to push their money into ever riskier bets. Wall Street-types coined a term for this effect: “search for yield.” What that means is the Fed pushed a lot of money into a system that was searching for assets to buy that might, in return, provide a decent profit, or yield. So money poured into relatively risky assets like technology stocks, corporate junk debt, commercial real estate bonds, and even cryptocurrencies and nonfungible tokens, known as NFTs. This drove the prices of those risky assets higher, drawing in yet more investment.The Fed has steadily inflated stock prices over the last decade by keeping interest rates extremely low and buying up bonds — through a program called quantitative easing — which has the effect of pushing new cash into asset markets and driving up prices. The Fed then supercharged those stock prices after the pandemic meltdown of 2020 by pumping trillions into the banking system. It was the Fed that primarily dropped the ball on addressing inflation in 2021, missing the opportunity to act quickly and effectively as the Fed chairman, Jerome Powell, reassured the public that inflation was likely to be merely transitory even as it gained steam. And it’s the Fed that is playing a frantic game of financial catch-up, hiking rates quickly and precipitating a wrenching market correction.So, now the bill is coming due. Unexpectedly high inflation — running at the hottest levels in four decades — is forcing the Fed to do what it has avoided doing for years: tighten the money supply quickly and forcefully. Last month, the Fed raised short-term rates by half-a-percentage point, the single largest rate hike since 2000. The aggressiveness of the move signaled that the Fed could take similarly dramatic measures again this year.A sobering realization is now unfolding on Wall Street. The decade of super-easy money is likely over. Because of inflation’s impact, the Fed likely won’t be able to turn on the money spigots at will if asset prices collapse. This is the driving force behind falling stock prices, and why the end of the collapse is probably not yet in sight. The reality of a higher-interest-rate world is working its way through the corridors of Wall Street and will likely topple more fragile structures before it’s all over.After the stock and bond markets adjust downward, for example, investors must evaluate the true value of other fragile towers of risky assets, like corporate junk debt. The enormous market for corporate debt began to collapse in 2020, but the Fed stopped the carnage by directly bailing out junk debt for the first time. This didn’t just save the corporate debt market, but added fuel to it, helping since 2021 to inflate bond prices. Now those bonds will have to be re-priced in light of higher interest rates, and history indicates that their prices will not go up.And while the Fed is a prime driver of this year’s volatility, the central bank continues to evade public accountability for it.Just last month, for instance, the Senate confirmed Mr. Powell to serve another four-year term as Fed chairman. The vote — more than four to one in favor — reflects the amazingly high level of bipartisan support that Mr. Powell enjoys. The president, at a White House meeting in May, presented Mr. Powell as an ally in the fight against inflation rather than the culprit for much of this year’s financial market volatility. “My plan is to address inflation. It starts with a simple proposition: Respect the Fed and respect the Fed’s independence,” the president said.This leaves the field open for the Republican Party to pin the blame for Wall Street’s woes on the Democratic Party’s inaction. As Jim Jordan, the Republican congressman from Ohio, phrased it on Twitter recently, “Your 401k misses President Trump.” This almost certainly presages a Republican line of attack over the summer and fall. It won’t matter that this rhetoric is the opposite of Mr. Trump’s back in 2018 and 2019, when the Fed was tightening and causing markets to teeter. Back then, Mr. Trump attacked Mr. Powell on Twitter and pressured the Fed chairman to cut interest rates even though the economy was growing. (The Fed complied in the summer of 2019.) But things are different now. Mr. Biden is in office, and the Fed’s tightening paves a clear pathway for the Republican Party to claim majorities in the House and Senate.Republicans have also honed in on Mr. Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, meant to mitigate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, as a cause for runaway inflation. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen rejected that, noting in testimony before members of Congress: “We’re seeing high inflation in almost all of the developed countries around the world. And they have very different fiscal policies. So it can’t be the case that the bulk of the inflation that we’re experiencing reflects the impact” of the American Rescue Plan.Democrats would be wise to point to the source of the problem: a decade of easy money policies at the Fed, not from anything done at the White House or in Congress over the past year and a half.The real tragedy is that this fall’s election might reinforce the very dynamics that created the problem in the first place. During the 2010s, Congress fell into a state of dysfunction and paralysis at the very moment when its economic policymaking power was needed most. It should be viewed as no coincidence that the Fed announced that it would intensify its experiments in quantitative easing on Nov. 3, 2010, the day after members of the Tea Party movement were swept into power in the House. The Fed was seen as the only federal agency equipped to forcefully drive economic growth as Congress relegated itself to the sidelines.With prices for gas, food and other goods still on the rise and the stock market in a state of flux, there may still be considerable pain ahead for consumers. But Americans shouldn’t fall for simplistic rhetoric that blames this all on Mr. Biden. More than a decade of monetary policy brought us to this moment, not 17 months of Democratic control in Washington. Voters should be clear-eyed about the cause of this economic chaos, and vote for the party they think can best lead us out of it.Christopher Leonard (@CLeonardNews) is the author, most recently, of “The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy” and executive director of the Watchdog Writers Group at the Missouri School of Journalism.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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      Should Biden Run in 2024? Democratic Whispers of ‘No’ Start to Rise.

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      In interviews, dozens of frustrated Democratic officials, members of Congress and voters expressed doubts about the president’s ability to rescue his reeling party and take the fight to Republicans.Midway through the 2022 primary season, many Democratic lawmakers and party officials are venting their frustrations with President Biden’s struggle to advance the bulk of his agenda, doubting his ability to rescue the party from a predicted midterm trouncing and increasingly viewing him as an anchor that should be cut loose in 2024.As the challenges facing the nation mount and fatigued base voters show low enthusiasm, Democrats in union meetings, the back rooms of Capitol Hill and party gatherings from coast to coast are quietly worrying about Mr. Biden’s leadership, his age and his capability to take the fight to former President Donald J. Trump a second time.Interviews with nearly 50 Democratic officials, from county leaders to members of Congress, as well as with disappointed voters who backed Mr. Biden in 2020, reveal a party alarmed about Republicans’ rising strength and extraordinarily pessimistic about an immediate path forward.“To say our country was on the right track would flagrantly depart from reality,” said Steve Simeonidis, a Democratic National Committee member from Miami. Mr. Biden, he said, “should announce his intent not to seek re-election in ’24 right after the midterms.”Democrats’ concerns come as the opening hearing of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol made clear the stakes of a 2024 presidential election in which Mr. Trump, whose lies fueled a riot that disrupted the peaceful transfer of power, may well seek to return to the White House.For Mr. Biden and his party, the hearings’ vivid reminder of the Trump-inspired mob violence represents perhaps the last, best chance before the midterms to break through with persuadable swing voters who have been more focused on inflation and gas prices. If the party cannot, it may miss its final opportunity to hold Mr. Trump accountable as Mr. Biden faces a tumultuous two years of a Republican-led House obstructing and investigating him.Most top elected Democrats were reluctant to speak on the record about Mr. Biden’s future, and no one interviewed expressed any ill will toward Mr. Biden, to whom they are universally grateful for ousting Mr. Trump from office.But the repeated failures of his administration to pass big-ticket legislation on signature Democratic issues, as well as his halting efforts to use the bully pulpit of the White House to move public opinion, have left the president with sagging approval ratings and a party that, as much as anything, seems to feel sorry for him.That has left Democratic leaders struggling to explain away a series of calamities for the party that all seem beyond Mr. Biden’s control: inflation rates unseen in four decades, surging gas prices, a lingering pandemic, a spate of mass shootings, a Supreme Court poised to end the federal right to an abortion, and key congressional Democrats’ refusal to muscle through the president’s Build Back Better agenda or an expansion of voting rights.Rising inflation has increased prices of groceries and other everyday goods for voters, in a worry for Democrats.Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWorries about age, and a successorTo nearly all the Democrats interviewed, the president’s age — 79 now, 82 by the time the winner of the 2024 election is inaugurated — is a deep concern about his political viability. They have watched as a commander in chief who built a reputation for gaffes has repeatedly rattled global diplomacy with unexpected remarks that were later walked back by his White House staff, and as he has sat for fewer interviews than any of his recent predecessors.“The presidency is a monstrously taxing job and the stark reality is the president would be closer to 90 than 80 at the end of a second term, and that would be a major issue,” said David Axelrod, the chief strategist for Barack Obama’s two winning presidential campaigns.“Biden doesn’t get the credit he deserves for steering the country through the worst of the pandemic, passing historic legislation, pulling the NATO alliance together against Russian aggression and restoring decency and decorum to the White House,” Mr. Axelrod added. “And part of the reason he doesn’t is performative. He looks his age and isn’t as agile in front of a camera as he once was, and this has fed a narrative about competence that isn’t rooted in reality.”Understand the June 7 Primary ElectionBy showing little enthusiasm for progressive and Trumpian candidates alike, voters in seven states showed the limits of the ideologies of both parties.Takeaways: For all the talk of sweeping away the old order, the primaries on June 7 largely saw the establishment striking back. Here’s what else we learned.Winners and Losers: Here is a rundown of some of the most notable wins and losses.California Races: The recall of a progressive prosecutor showed the shifting winds on criminal justice. In Los Angeles, Rick Caruso and Representative Karen Bass are heading to a runoff mayoral election.New Mexico’s Governor Race: Mark Ronchetti, a former television meteorologist, has won New Mexico’s Republican nomination for governor.Mr. Biden has repeatedly said that he expects to run again in 2024. But if he does not, there is little consensus about who would lead the party.Vice President Kamala Harris, left, with Katherine Tai, the U.S. trade representative, at the White House in May. If Mr. Biden does not run in 2024, Ms. Harris is seen as likely to jump into the race, but she would probably have competition.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesFew Democrats interviewed expect that high-profile leaders with White House ambitions would defer to Vice President Kamala Harris, who has had a series of political hiccups of her own in office.These Democrats mentioned a host of other figures who lost to Mr. Biden in the 2020 primary: Senators Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey; Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg; and Beto O’Rourke, the former congressman who is now running for Texas governor, among others.Mr. Biden’s supporters insist he has the country on the right track, despite the obstacles.“Only one person steered a transition past Trump’s lies and court challenges and insurrection to take office on Jan. 20: Joe Biden,” said Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to the president, citing strong jobs numbers and efforts to combat the pandemic.Other Biden allies dismissed suggestions that any other Democrat would do better than him in 2024.“This the same hand-wringing that we heard about Barack Obama in 2010 and 2011,” said Ben LaBolt, who worked on Mr. Obama’s campaigns.Cristóbal Alex, who was a senior adviser for the Biden campaign and was the deputy cabinet secretary in the White House until last month, said Mr. Biden was the only Democrat who could win a national election.Mr. Alex said it was the responsibility of congressional Democrats to highlight Mr. Biden’s successes and pass legislation he, and most of them, campaigned on.Cristóbal Alex, a former senior adviser to the Biden campaign, said the president was the only Democrat who could win a national election.Shuran Huang for The New York Times“I am worried that leaders in the party aren’t more aggressively touting the success of the administration,” he said. “The narrative needs to shift, and that can only happen with a powerful echo chamber combined with action in Congress on remaining priorities. The American people feel unsettled.”Nikki Fried, the Florida agriculture commissioner who is running for governor, said she would welcome Mr. Biden to campaign with her in Florida, but stopped short of endorsing him for a second term. “There is a lot of time between now and 2024,” she said.Still, public polling shows that Mr. Biden is at a low point in his popularity among Democratic voters. A survey last month from The Associated Press found Mr. Biden’s approval among his fellow party members at 73 percent — the lowest point in his presidency, and nine points lower than at any point in 2021. There is little recent public polling asking if Democrats want Mr. Biden to seek a second term, but in January just 48 percent of Democrats wanted him to run again, according to The A.P.’s polling.‘We’re lacking in the excitement’Elected Democrats are cautious about openly discussing Mr. Biden’s future.“I’m not allowed to have feelings right now,” said Jasmine Crockett, a Texas state representative who last month won a primary runoff for a heavily Democratic House seat based in Dallas. “When you’re an incoming freshman, you just don’t get to.”Jasmine Crockett, a Texas state representative who is likely to head to Congress next year, said Democrats needed to do more to build enthusiasm among voters.Emil Lippe for The New York TimesStill, Ms. Crockett lamented a stark enthusiasm gap between Republicans, who in Texas have passed legislation to restrict voting rights and abortion rights while expanding gun rights, and Democrats, who have not used their narrow control of the federal government to advance a progressive agenda.“Democrats are like, ‘What the hell is going on?’” Ms. Crockett said. “Our country is completely falling apart. And so I think we’re lacking in the excitement.”Many Democratic leaders and voters want Mr. Biden to fight harder against Republicans, while others want him to seek more compromise. Many of them are eyeing 2024 hoping for some sort of idealized nominee — somebody who isn’t Mr. Biden or Ms. Harris.Hurting Mr. Biden the most, said Faiz Shakir, who was campaign manager for Mr. Sanders in 2020, is a perception of weakness.Mr. Shakir circulated a memo in April stating that Mr. Sanders “has not ruled out” running in 2024 if Mr. Biden does not. In an interview, Mr. Shakir said he believed that Mr. Biden could beat Mr. Trump a second time — but that if Republicans nominate a newer face, like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Mr. Biden may not be the best choice.“If it’s DeSantis or somebody, I think that would be a different kind of a challenge,” Mr. Shakir said.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      The Insurrection Didn’t End on Jan. 6. The Hearings Need to Prove That.

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      The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol begins its hearings tonight for the American public, hoping to shine a spotlight on the discoveries from its months of painstaking inquiry. How should we measure success?As veterans of congressional and other official misconduct investigations, we will be watching for whether the committee persuades the American people that the insurrection didn’t end on Jan. 6, 2021, but continues, in places all across the country; motivates Americans to fight back in the midterm elections; and, if warranted, encourages prosecutors to bring charges against those who may have committed crimes, up to and including former President Donald Trump.The future of our democracy may well depend on the achievement of these objectives.First, the committee must use the televised hearings to emphasize to viewers that Jan. 6 was but one battle in a wider war against American democracy. Yes, there are gaping holes that remain to be filled in on the events of the day itself, like Mr. Trump’s 187-minute refusal to intervene while the mob was violently attacking the Capitol and the 457-minute gap in White House phone records. But the hearings must widen the scope to a larger narrative that begins in the run-up to the insurrection and continues in its long aftermath.The through-line of that narrative runs roughly from Mr. Trump’s declaration in August 2020 that the election could be “the greatest fraud in history” to his attacks through misinformation and spurious lawsuits on a fair election and his exhortation to his supporters to march to the Capitol on Jan. 6 and continues in the scores of “Big Lie”-driven bills and midterm candidates roiling American politics from coast to coast.The committee enjoys an advantage for its presentation: the absence of Republicans like Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz, who have too often brought a circus atmosphere to House hearings. Mr. Jordan was barred from serving by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, when the committee was being formed, and House Republican leadership subsequently boycotted broader representation. Fortunately, two Republicans are serving — Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. A bipartisan, unified committee will ensure that the drama will come from the story itself rather than the shenanigans of some committee members.The hearings must also inspire action. In this setting, that would normally mean triggering legislative reforms. After Watergate, Congress passed new laws as safeguards against systemic abuse. But with today’s politics, new bills are unlikely to see broad support. The committee must navigate around that logjam — and explain that the Big Lie is still going strong and motivate Americans to defeat it at the ballot box.Just last week, in Pennsylvania, Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Trump-endorsed election skeptic, became the Republican Senate nominee. If he becomes the deciding vote in a closely divided Senate, that will not bode well for reform legislation to prevent election sabotage — and for honest certification of future presidential electors.In Pennsylvania, Dr. Oz will actually be the less intense “Stop the Steal” Republican candidate. Doug Mastriano, who was a leader in efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state (and was subpoenaed by the committee), won the Republican primary for governor. Across the country, Mr. Trump has endorsed over 180 Republican candidates, most of whom have supported his false stolen-election claims. This year, they have, in effect, set up a counternarrative to the committee’s work.To elucidate the threat to democracy, the committee doesn’t need to wade into overt electioneering. It simply needs to maintain a relentless focus on the continuing threat of the Big Lie.The committee can do that without sacrificing bipartisanship and by maintaining objectivity because no party has a monopoly on pro-democracy candidates, as proved by the officials of both parties who came together to defend democracy in 2020. In other nations where democracy has been threatened, leaders of widely varying ideologies have set aside partisanship and joined forces against illiberalism. The bipartisan committee and other Democrats and Republicans must make clear the larger stakes represented by Mr. Trump’s election-denying allies.Finally, the hearings should compile and make accessible as much evidence as it can to aid federal and state prosecutors who might bring charges against possible wrongdoers. Ultimately, it’s up to those prosecutors — most prominently at the Justice Department and in Fulton County, Ga. — to act on the evidence. But the committee can motivate and support them. Hearings that develop a coherent, grounded and galvanizing narrative necessary for a successful prosecution will help prosecutors, as well as the media and the public, to understand any possible crimes.If the evidence warrants it, the committee should not shy away from transmitting criminal referrals. Alternatively, it could share a Watergate-style “road map” that could serve as a guide to the evidence without drawing legal conclusions. Congress has amassed a mountain of information over the course of its investigation — which includes taking over 1,000 depositions — and prosecutors should benefit from that.The ultimate success of the committee rests on whether it uses the hearings to build a partnership with American voters to see the truth of what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, and what is still happening.Norman Eisen served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first Trump impeachment. E. Danya Perry is a former federal prosecutor and a New York State corruption investigator.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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      Trump and Unreleased Video Expected to Be Focus of First Jan 6. Hearing

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      The House panel investigating the attack will lead its public sessions with video testimony from people close to the former president and footage revealing the role of the Proud Boys.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol plans to open a landmark series of public hearings on Thursday by playing previously unreleased video of former President Donald J. Trump’s top aides and family members testifying before its staff, as well as footage revealing the role of the Proud Boys, a right-wing extremist group, in the assault.Committee aides say the evidence will show that Mr. Trump was at the center of a “coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election” that resulted in a mob of his supporters storming the halls of Congress and disrupting the official electoral count that is a pivotal step in the peaceful transfer of presidential power.The 8 p.m. hearing is the first in a series of six planned for this month, during which the panel will lay out for Americans the full magnitude and significance of Mr. Trump’s systematic drive to invalidate the 2020 election and remain in power.“We’ll demonstrate the multipronged effort to overturn a presidential election, how one strategy to subvert the election led to another, culminating in a violent attack on our democracy,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and a member of the committee. “It’s an important story, and one that must be told to ensure it never happens again.”The prime-time hearing will feature live testimony from a documentary filmmaker, Nick Quested, who was embedded with the Proud Boys during the attack, and a Capitol Police officer, Caroline Edwards, who was injured as rioters breached barricades and stormed into the building.The committee also plans to present what aides called a small but “meaningful” portion of the recorded interviews its investigators conducted with more than 1,000 witnesses, including senior Trump White House officials, campaign officials and Mr. Trump’s family members.Mr. Trump’s elder daughter Ivanka Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his son Donald Trump Jr. are among the high-profile witnesses who have testified before the panel.Mr. Quested, a British documentarian who has worked in war zones such as Afghanistan, spent a good deal of the postelection period filming members of the Proud Boys, including the group’s former chairman, Enrique Tarrio, who has been charged with seditious conspiracy in connection with the Capitol riot. Mr. Quested accompanied the Proud Boys to pro-Trump rallies in Washington in November and December 2020 and was on the ground with members of the group on Jan. 6, when several played a crucial role in breaching the Capitol.Mr. Quested was also present with a camera crew on the day before the attack, when Mr. Tarrio met in an underground parking garage near the Capitol with a small group of pro-Trump activists, including Stewart Rhodes, the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers militia. Late in the day on Jan. 6, Mr. Quested and his crew were with Mr. Tarrio in Baltimore, filming him as he responded in real time to news about the riot.Ms. Edwards, a well-respected Capitol Police officer, is believed to be the first officer injured in the attack, when she sustained a concussion during an assault at a barricade at the base of Capitol Hill. A man who has been charged with taking part in the assault, Ryan Samsel, told the F.B.I. during an interview more than a year ago that just before he approached the barricade, a high-ranking member of the Proud Boys, Joseph Biggs, had encouraged him to confront the police.Other officers around the building recall hearing Officer Edwards calling for help over the radio — one of the first signs that mob violence was beginning to overrun the police presence. Months after the attack, she continued to have fainting spells believed to be connected to her injuries.A committee aide said Mr. Quested and Officer Edwards would describe their experiences, including “what they saw and heard from the rioters who tried to occupy the Capitol and tried to stop the transfer of power.”The committee’s investigators believe Mr. Quested overheard conversations among the Proud Boys during the planning for Jan. 6.Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the committee chairman, and Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the vice chairwoman, are expected to lead the presentation of the panel’s evidence and question the witnesses.The session will kick off an ambitious effort by the committee, which was formed in July after Republicans blocked the creation of a nonpartisan commission to investigate the attack, to lay out for Americans the full story of an unprecedented assault on U.S. democracy that led to a deadly riot, an impeachment and a crisis of confidence in the political system that continues to reverberate.The hearings are unfolding five months before midterm elections in which the Democrats’ majority is at stake, at a time when they are eager to draw a sharp contrast between themselves and the Republicans who enabled and embraced Mr. Trump, including the members of Congress who abetted his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Other hearings are expected to focus on various aspects of the committee’s investigation, including Mr. Trump’s promotion of the lie that the election had been stolen, despite being told his claims were false; his attempts to misuse the Justice Department to help him cling to power; a pressure campaign on Vice President Mike Pence to throw out legitimate electoral votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr.; the way the mob was assembled, and how it descended on Washington on Jan. 6; and the fact that Mr. Trump did nothing to stop the violence for more than three hours while the assault was underway.The Jan. 6 panel has not yet committed to the full slate of witnesses for the six televised hearings, and it is still discussing the possibility of public testimony with several prominent Trump-era officials.Among the witnesses the committee has formally approached to testify next week are Jeffrey A. Rosen, the former acting attorney general, and Richard P. Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, according to two people briefed on the matter.Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue have told multiple congressional committees that Mr. Trump and his allies pressured the department to falsely say that it had found voter fraud and to use its power to undo the election results. Last May, Mr. Rosen took part in a public hearing of the House Oversight and Reform Committee on events leading up to the assault on the Capitol.The Jan. 6 committee is still in informal talks with Pat A. Cipollone, the former White House Counsel, as well as Byung J. Pak, the former U.S. attorney in Atlanta, who abruptly resigned on Jan. 4, 2021, after learning that Mr. Trump planned to fire him for not finding voter fraud, according to those people familiar with the discussions.Mr. Cipollone would be able to speak on a range of issues, including Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department and his unwillingness to accept the results of the election, despite the fact that officials time and again failed to uncover fraud.Mr. Pak could have information pertaining to Georgia, a battleground state that Mr. Trump was particularly fixated on.Alan Feuer More

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      Takeaways From the N.Y. Governor Debate

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      The Democratic rivals of Gov. Kathy Hochul sought to attack her on varied issues, from the funding of a Buffalo Bills stadium to a decade-old endorsement from the N.R.A.Gov. Kathy Hochul took center stage on Tuesday night, finally facing her Democratic challengers in a debate that mostly played out as expected.Her rivals, Representative Thomas R. Suozzi of Long Island and Jumaane D. Williams, the New York City public advocate, attacked the governor at every opportunity, but failed to land an instantly memorable moment that could rattle the race.Mr. Williams, a standard-bearer of the party’s left wing, brandished his populist message while casting himself as the candidate who felt New Yorkers’ pain, occasionally attempting to link Ms. Hochul to her predecessor, Andrew M. Cuomo.Mr. Suozzi, a vocal centrist, reminded viewers of his years of experience in local government, and repeatedly sought opportunities to blame Ms. Hochul for failing to address crime, which he said was the most concerning issue for New Yorkers.And Ms. Hochul strove to project the equanimity of a leader: cool under fire, and already at work tackling the state’s many pressing issues.Ms. Hochul, who holds a commanding lead in public polls and in fund-raising, did not try to score points off her opponents, seeking mostly to leave the arena unscathed. In this, she emerged largely successful, taking the expected hits on her past support for gun rights and handling of the Buffalo Bills stadium deal, but holding her own under intense fire from the left and the right.The moderators quizzed candidates on a smorgasbord of topics, from congestion pricing and secondhand marijuana smoke to whether they believed in ghosts (in a rare moment of consensus, all vouched for some form of life after death).Here are some takeaways from the evening’s debate:Candidates try out their messages on public safetyMs. Hochul came into the debate ready for her opponents to attack her on crime, and the preparation paid off. She rattled off her projects — from the interstate gun task force, to violence disrupter programs, to the 10 gun bills she signed into law earlier in the week — that demonstrated the power of incumbency. And she took ownership over the tweaks to the state’s bail laws that she had pushed for, describing in detail the way in which changes would provide judges discretion to consider a defendant’s dangerousness, by using a specific set of criteria.“I think what we gave the judges is better than this vague term that can be subjective and many times used against the individual because of the color of their skin,” Ms. Hochul said.Her response helped dilute the line of attack from Mr. Suozzi, who has placed crime at the center of his platform. He still insisted that the governor had done “nothing to fix bail reform.” He later stressed the need for a comprehensive mental health plan and argued that the police and social workers should be able to remove mentally ill people from the streets to get humane care and treatment.Mr. Williams agreed that there was a need for mental health support, but said that the police need not be responding to mental health crises. In a personal moment, he described being nearly removed from a train because of his Tourette’s syndrome, saying that his experiences would position him best to tackle public safety and mental illness with humanity.“These things are not theoretical to me,” he said. “It’s not just things I read about in the paper or see on TV. These are things that I’ve dealt with, my family’s dealt with, my constituents have dealt with.”Scrutiny of the Buffalo Bills stadium dealThere was one glaring subject that Mr. Suozzi and Mr. Williams brought up repeatedly during the debate: the deal Ms. Hochul struck with the Buffalo Bills in late March to subsidize the construction of a new N.F.L. stadium using $850 million in state and local funds.Ms. Hochul’s rivals sought to cast the deal — which some recent polls show could be unpopular among voters — as wasteful spending of taxpayer money at a time the state has other pressing needs.The deal made for a digestible talking point that Ms. Hochul’s foes used to criticize her — not only for its large price tag, but also for the secretive nature of the negotiations that led to the deal.Mr. Suozzi relentlessly pivoted to his attack lines on the Buffalo Bills, forcibly inserting the topic even when asked a question about abortion rights or about the prospect of a casino in Manhattan.“When it came to the Buffalo Bills stadium, she got something done that nobody thought could be done,” Mr. Suozzi said. “It was the most lucrative deal in the history of the N.F.L.”Mr. Williams accused Ms. Hochul of prioritizing the wealthy owners of the Buffalo Bills over investments in violence prevention programs or reducing inequality, saying “people are suffering” in Buffalo.Ms. Hochul repeatedly defended the deal, which was aimed at ensuring that the football team did not abandon the state. She cited the construction jobs it would create and said it “was the best we could do for the taxpayers of New York.”“Every part of the state has regional priorities,” she said. “The Buffalo Bills are the identity of western New York the way Broadway is to New York City. It’s part of who they are. I made sure that they’re going to stay there for the next 30 years.”Hochul’s decade-old courtship of the N.R.A.In 2012, Ms. Hochul won the backing of the National Rifle Association, an endorsement she was once very proud of but has since come to regret.Still, neither the moderators nor her opponents were able to push Ms. Hochul to extrapolate beyond the position she’s taken in the past — namely that it was in the past, and that she previously represented a very conservative House district in Western New York.“Where’s the principle in that?” Mr. Suozzi said of Ms. Hochul’s reference to political necessity. “I don’t understand that.”“We are 10 years behind because people in Congress were doing the bidding of the N.R.A.,” Mr. Williams said.Ms. Hochul says that she has evolved, and hopes that voters will judge her by her recent actions — like the gun safety legislation she signed into law — rather than past ones.But if voters are looking to impose a purity test on guns, Mr. Suozzi suggested that Ms. Hochul would fail.“All three of us up here support the gun legislation that’s been passed. It’s great. It’s wonderful. It’s fantastic,” Mr. Suozzi said at one point. “Only one of us standing up here has ever been endorsed by the N.R.A.”Hochul remained noncommittal on several issuesSince taking office, Ms. Hochul has been adept at avoiding positions on some of the most divisive policy issues in Albany, whether to avoid creating a political maelstrom, alienating voters or disrupting her negotiations with legislative leaders.She continued to thread that needle on Tuesday night, remaining noncommittal on a number of topics du jour.She said she was still considering whether to sign a recently passed bill that would impose a two-year moratorium on cryptocurrency mining at fossil fuel plants, insisting that donations and support from the cryptocurrency industry would not influence her decision.Asked whether the state should compensate families whose loved ones died in nursing homes during the pandemic, Ms. Hochul said it was something she was looking into, but that she would put together a blue ribbon commission to investigate the pandemic response in nursing homes. (Mr. Suozzi did not directly answer the question, while Mr. Williams said he supported compensation.)In other instances, she leaned on a philosophy of governing she has emphasized before: her desire to empower and respect the autonomy of local governments.She said, for example, that she respected New York City’s decision to allow people with green cards to vote in local elections, but would leave any expansion to localities. Mr. Suozzi said voting should be reserved for citizens, while Mr. Williams said noncitizens should be “civically engaged.”Asked whether a casino should be built in Manhattan, Ms. Hochul, a Buffalo native, said she would not place her “finger on the scale,” and would be “open-minded” to different locations for a new casino in the downstate region, where they were not previously authorized.Mr. Williams, who is from Brooklyn, said he wasn’t sure Manhattan would be the best place for a casino, while Mr. Suozzi said he was not opposed to it but emphasized the need for public hearings around such a decision.Measuring the damage done by Brian Benjamin’s arrestWhen Ms. Hochul’s former lieutenant governor, Brian A. Benjamin, was arrested on federal bribery and fraud charges in April, many political analysts predicted that his arrest could upend and jeopardize the governor’s campaign and her comfortable lead in public polls.Ms. Hochul had handpicked Mr. Benjamin, a former state senator from Harlem, as her lieutenant governor and running mate last year. But her team’s flawed vetting process of Mr. Benjamin overlooked, and failed to uncover, ethical red flags that eventually led to his arrest.Ms. Hochul, however, has trudged on: She recently appointed Antonio Delgado, a former congressman from the Hudson Valley, as her new lieutenant governor, and successfully removed Mr. Benjamin’s name from the ballot.On Tuesday night, Mr. Benjamin’s name, and the corruption scandal that led to his demise, barely registered, even if Mr. Suozzi sporadically sought to link his arrest to what he described as Ms. Hochul’s failure to fully clean up corruption in Albany.Ms. Hochul described Mr. Benjamin’s arrest and subsequent resignation as a disappointment.“I promised the voters of New York and the people of the state that I would do everything I can to restore their faith in government,” she said. “That was a setback.” More