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      Democrats Are Failing to Defend Democracy

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      When it comes to elections, the Republican Party operates within a carapace of lies. So we rely on the Democrats to preserve our system of government.The problem is that Democrats live within their own insular echo chamber. Within that bubble convenient falsehoods spread, go unchallenged and make it harder to focus on the real crisis. So let’s clear away some of these myths that are distorting Democratic behavior:The whole electoral system is in crisis. Elections have three phases: registering and casting votes, counting votes and certifying results. When it comes to the first two phases, the American system has its flaws but is not in crisis. As Yuval Levin noted in The Times a few days ago, it’s become much easier in most places to register and vote than it was years ago. We just had a 2020 election with remarkably high turnout. The votes were counted with essentially zero fraud.The emergency is in the third phase — Republican efforts to overturn votes that have been counted. But Democratic voting bills — the For the People Act and its update, the Freedom to Vote Act — were not overhauled to address the threats that have been blindingly obvious since Jan. 6 last year. They are sprawling measures covering everything from mail-in ballots to campaign finance. They basically include every idea that’s been on activist agendas for years.These bills are hard to explain and hard to pass. By catering to D.C. interest groups, Democrats have spent a year distracting themselves from the emergency right in front of us.Voter suppression efforts are a major threat to democracy. Given the racial history of this country, efforts to limit voting, as some states have been implementing, are heinous. I get why Democrats want to repel them. But this, too, is not the major crisis facing us. That’s because tighter voting laws often don’t actually restrict voting all that much. Academics have studied this extensively. A recent well-researched study suggested that voter ID laws do not reduce turnout. States tighten or loosen their voting laws, often seemingly without a big effect on turnout. The general rule is that people who want to vote end up voting.Just as many efforts to limit the electorate don’t have much of an effect, the Democratic bills to make it easier to vote might not have much impact on turnout or on which party wins. As my Times colleague Nate Cohn wrote last April, “Expanding voting options to make it more convenient hasn’t seemed to have a huge effect on turnout or electoral outcomes. That’s the finding of decades of political science research on advance, early and absentee voting.”Higher turnout helps Democrats. This popular assumption is also false. Political scientists Daron R. Shaw and John R. Petrocik, authors of “The Turnout Myth,” looked at 70 years of election data and found “no evidence that turnout is correlated with partisan vote choice.”The best way to address the crisis is top down. Democrats have focused their energies in Washington, trying to pass these big bills. The bills would override state laws and dictate a lot of election procedures from the national level.Given how local Republicans are behaving, I understand why Democrats want to centralize things. But it’s a little weird to be arguing that in order to save democracy we have to take power away from local elected officials. Plus, if you tell local people they’re not fit to govern themselves, you’re going to further inflame the populist backlash.But the real problem is that Democrats are not focusing on crucial state and local arenas. The Times’s Charles Homans had a fascinating report from Pennsylvania, where Trump backers were running for local office, including judge of elections, while Democrats struggled to even find candidates. “I’m not sure what the Democratic Party was worried about, but it didn’t feel like they were worried about school board and judge of elections races — all of these little positions,” a failed Democratic candidate said.Democrats do not seem to be fighting hard in key local races. They do not seem to be rallying the masses so that state legislators pay a price if they support democracy-weakening legislation.Maybe some of the energy that has been spent over the past year analyzing and berating Joe Manchin could have been better spent grooming and supporting good state and local candidates. Maybe the best way to repulse a populist uprising is not by firing up all your allies in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C.The crisis of democracy is right in front of us. We have a massive populist mob that thinks the country is now controlled by a coastal progressive oligarchy that looks down on them. We’re caught in cycles of polarization that threaten to turn America into Northern Ireland during the Troubles. We have Republican hacks taking power away from the brave state officials who stood up to Trumpian bullying after the 2020 election.Democrats have spent too much time on measures that they mistakenly think would give them an advantage. The right response would be: Do the unsexy work at the local level, where things are in flux. Pass the parts of the Freedom to Vote Act that are germane, like the protections for elections officials against partisan removal, and measures to limit purging voter rolls. Reform the Electoral Count Act to prevent Congress from derailing election certifications.When your house is on fire, drop what you were doing, and put it out. Maybe finally Democrats will do that.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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      Kathy Hochul's Speech Is a Road Map to the Campaign That Lies Ahead

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul sought to exude decisiveness in crisis, previewing her efforts to run as the steady-hand candidate as she seeks her first full term.As Gov. Kathy Hochul delivered her most consequential speech since becoming chief executive of New York, she did not discuss the contested Democratic primary she is navigating to retain her seat, nor did she mention the likelihood of an expensive general election against a well-funded Republican.But in tone and substance, her address on Wednesday and accompanying 237 pages of policy proposals offered a road map to how she is approaching both dynamics.In her State of the State remarks, her first as governor, Ms. Hochul often emphasized core Democratic priorities, from combating climate change to expanding access to affordable child care. But she also moved to blunt more conservative messaging on matters of public safety, the economy and the culture wars that have raged around how to handle the coronavirus pandemic.“During this winter surge, our laser focus is on keeping kids in school, businesses open and New Yorkers’ lives as normal as possible,” she said, even as some Republicans seek to paint the Democratic Party as the party of lockdowns.Ms. Hochul assumed the governorship last August, taking over after former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo resigned in disgrace, and she is running for her first full term as governor this year at yet another moment of staggering challenges for the state.As coronavirus cases spike, parents grapple with uncertainty around schools,and the Omicron variant upends the fragile economic recovery, Ms. Hochul acknowledged the pain and exhaustion gripping many New Yorkers. But she also emphasized a record of accomplishment, in particular around vaccination rates, and sought to exude competence and decisiveness in crisis, offering a preview of her efforts to run as the steady-hand, above-the-fray candidate.A number of Democrats are seeking to challenge that image.Representative Thomas Suozzi of Long Island, a former Nassau County executive who has positioned himself to Ms. Hochul’s right on some issues and in tone, is sharply questioning her executive experience. He sometimes refers to the state’s first female executive as the “interim governor” — a move that could backfire with some voters — and he is working to cut into her base in the suburbs.“New York needs a common-sense governor who has executive experience to manage Covid, take on crime, reduce taxes and help troubled schools,” Mr. Suozzi said in a statement after her speech.Jumaane D. Williams, the New York City public advocate who lost the 2018 lieutenant governor’s race to Ms. Hochul by 6.6 percentage points, is running as a self-declared “activist elected official” with close ties to New York’s left-wing political movement, which can play an important role in energizing parts of the primary electorate. He said on Wednesday that some of her proposals were not sufficiently “bold” to meet the challenges of the moment — a view echoed by leaders of a number of left-wing organizations.“Discussion of these issues is important, acknowledged and appreciated,” Mr. Williams said in a statement. “But that discussion must be accompanied by the political courage to envision and enact transformational change for New York City and across the state.”Former Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City has also taken steps toward a run.Attorney General Letitia James had been Ms. Hochul’s most formidable opponent, but she dropped her bid for governor last month, and on Wednesday she stood next to the governor, applauding. Ms. James’s exit cleared the way for Ms. Hochul to rapidly lock down more institutional support from unions and elected officials, and she is expected to post a formidable fund-raising haul later this month.Ms. Hochul, who has referred to herself as a “Biden Democrat,” on Wednesday sounded by turns like a centrist who welcomes big business and an old-school politician keenly focused on the needs of working-class New Yorkers.For example, she called for efforts to bolster the salaries of health care workers “so those doing God’s work here on Earth are no longer paid a minimum wage.”Ms. Hochul, who wore an all-white outfit to honor the women’s suffrage movement at her inauguration, did so again on Wednesday.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesBut at another point, she pledged that New York would be “the most business-friendly and worker-friendly state in the nation.”Ms. Hochul laid out a number of measures to bolster the social safety net, and she also endorsed some left-leaning criminal justice proposals, including a “jails-to-jobs” program and other efforts to help formerly incarcerated people access employment and housing.She also pledged to pursue a five-year plan to offer 100,000 affordable homes, though some housing advocates thought she should have offered far more comprehensive protections since the state’s eviction moratorium is poised to expire. And she laid out a bevy of climate, infrastructure and transportation-related initiatives.If many aspects of the speech played into concerns of rank-and-file Democratic voters and union officials, Ms. Hochul also repeatedly made overtures to a broader ideological and geographical swath of voters who will power the general election. (“I think I have a personal experience with just about every pothole in New York as well, especially on the Long Island Expressway,” she said, referring to an important political battleground.).A Guide to the New York Governor’s RaceCard 1 of 6A crowded field. More

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      The Law of Unintended Political Consequences Strikes Again

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      The killing of George Floyd and the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests that followed drove an exceptionally large increase in foundation grants and pledges to criminal and racial justice reform groups and other causes, ranging from the United Negro College Fund to the Center for Antiracist Research and from the National Museum of African American History to the Yes 4 Minneapolis campaign to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department.Candid — a website that connects “people who want to change the world with the resources they need to do it” — published “What does Candid’s grants data say about funding for racial equity in the United States?” by Anna Koob on July 24, 2020.Koob wrote:In the months since George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police, we witnessed a surge in attention to longstanding anti-Black racism in the United States. Although racial inequality is hardly a new phenomenon, the public reaction to these events does feel bigger and more broad based, a trend that’s reflected in the well-documented rapid increase in related philanthropic giving to racial equity in a matter of weeks.Before Floyd’s death, Candid found that philanthropies provided “$3.3 billion in racial equity funding” for the nine years from 2011 to 2019. Since then, Candid calculations revealed much higher totals for both 2020 and 2021: “50,887 grants valued at $12.7 billion” and “177 pledges valued at $11.6 billion.”Among the top funders, according to Candid’s calculations, are the Ford Foundation, at $3 billion; Mackenzie Scott, at $2.9 billion; JPMorgan Chase & Co. Contributions Program, at $2.1 billion; W.K. Kellogg Foundation, $1.2 billion; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, $1.1 billion; Silicon Valley Community Foundation, $1 billion; Walton Family Foundation, $689 million; The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, $438 million; and the Foundation to Promote Open Society, $350.5 million.There are Democratic strategists who worry about unintended political consequences that could flow from this surge in philanthropic giving. Rob Stein, one of the founders of the Democracy Alliance, an organization of major donors on the left, argued in a phone interview that while most foundation spending is on programs that have widespread support, “when progressive philanthropists fund groups that promote extreme views like ‘defunding the police’ or that sanction ‘cancel culture,’ they are exacerbating intraparty conflict and stoking interparty backlash.” The danger, according to Stein, is that “some progressive politicians and funders are contributing to divisiveness within their ranks and giving fodder to the right.”Matt Bennett, senior vice president of Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, argued in an email:Whether inadvertent or not, some progressive foundations are funding work that is shortsighted and harmful to the long-term progress they hope to achieve. We recognize that every successful movement has people and institutions playing a variety of roles. There are folks whose job it is to push the envelope and others whose job it is to work within the system to make change. Some need to push the envelope and some need to assemble the compromise that can pass. That’s all part of the process.However, Bennett continued, “It’s crystal clear that some ideas being pushed by activists and funded by lefty foundations go beyond that paradigm, treading into territory that is flat-out politically toxic and that undermine our collective goals.”Bennett cited a post-2020 election study commissioned by Third Way and other groups that “found that Republicans used ‘Defund the Police’ as a cudgel against moderate Democrats, and it played a major role in the loss of more than a dozen House seats. These losses brought us to the brink of handing an insurrectionist the Speaker’s gavel.”“It’s also clear,” in Bennett’s view,that this work has led to a backlash, and it’s not confined to white voters. In Minneapolis, where a Defund the Police ballot initiative failed by a wide margin in November, it performed worst in the two districts with the heaviest Black populations. You have probably seen the Pew Research from October that showed declining support across the board for less funding for police. What’s even more striking is that on the question of whether police budgets should grow or shrink, Black and Hispanic Democrats are more in favor of higher police budgets than white Democrats. None of that is the fault of the foundations, but it is vital for them to fully appreciate the political context for their funding.Any foundation, Bennett declared,that completely ignores the political impact of their advocacy is violating the Hippocratic oath. They can and must keep their eye on the politics of the movements they advance. And they must balance shifting the long-term narrative of causes they support with the near-term political consequences of their actions. If they don’t, they may inadvertently provide potent political fodder to the illiberal, antidemocratic Trumpian G.O.P., and thereby endanger our republic.Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic, wrote at the end of November, “It’s an undeniable fact that Democratic Party elites, progressive activists, foundation and think-tank officials, and most opinion journalists are well to the left of the party’s rank and file.”It’s possible, Tomasky continued, “that certain issues, or ways of talking about certain issues, will be established as litmus tests within the party that could be quite problematic for Democrats trying to run in purple districts.”Tom Perriello, a former congressman from Virginia who is now executive director of George Soros’s Open Society-U.S., strongly defends the role of foundations. Leading up to the 2020 election, foundations invested “$700 million in voter protection that probably held democracy together,” he said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “Philanthropy saved the day.”Critics who focus on the small set of controversial foundation programs that may be used by Republicans against Democrats, Perriello said, fail to recognize that “what is hurting Democrats is that there is not a core economic message and that allows Republicans to set these (cultural and racial) issues as a priority.”Perriello cited same-sex marriage as an example of philanthropy initially “pushing the Overton window” farther than the electorate was willing to go, but, over time, “now it’s a winning issue.”Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, argued in a phone interview that no consideration is — or can be — given to partisan political consequences:We make no calculations about how our grantees give credibility or not to the Democratic Party. That is of no concern to the Ford Foundation, or to me personally.Walker continued: “We support organizations that are working toward more justice and more inclusion in America, but we have no interest in the Democratic Party’s strengths or weaknesses.”I asked Walker about the concerns raised by Stein and Bennett. “We support issues that are about progress and inclusion and justice, but the chips fall where they fall,” Walker said.I also asked Walker about a subject that became a central issue in the 2021 Virginia governor’s race: “critical race theory.” Walker said that the foundation supports proponents of the theory “because we believe there is value in understanding how race is a factor in our legal system,” adding that the foundation does not support the views of its grantees “100 percent of the time, but at the end of the day we believe in certain ideas of justice and fairness in our society.”Kristen Mack, a managing director at the MacArthur Foundation, replied by email to my inquiry about foundation spending:Our grantmaking is intended to further our programmatic strategies, each of which is based on a theory of change and clear set of goals. We are aware of the larger context in the fields in which we work and recognize that our goals may be perceived by some as leaning toward a political point of view or party. Our overarching mission, however, is to create a more just, verdant and peaceful world, which is in our view a result that would be welcomed by people across the political spectrum. We are careful not to involve ourselves in, or to make decisions based on, strengthening or opposing any political party.The Nov. 2 Minneapolis election provided a case study of the complex politics of the defund-the-police movement. Voters in Minneapolis rejected — by 56 percent to 44 percent — an amendment to the city charter that would have dismantled the police department and replaced it with a department of public safety.All three wards with majorities or pluralities of Black voters — wards 4, 5 and 6 — voted against the amendment by margins larger than the citywide average, at 61.2 percent to 38.8 percent. Voters in three other of the city’s 13 wards — 8, 9 and 10 — strongly supported the amendment to disband the police department, 57 percent to 43 percent. Voters in wards 8, 9 and 10 are majority or plurality white, with whites making up 54.1 percent of the population of the three wards taken together, according to data provided to The Times by Jeff Matson of the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs at the University of Minnesota.The battle over the amendment reverberated into the races for City Council, resulting in the defeat of some incumbents who supported dismantling the police department.Esme Murphy of Minneapolis television station WCCO interviewed several of the victors:“Emily Koski, a mother of two in south Minneapolis, defeated Ward 11 incumbent Jeremy Schroeder, one of the strongest voices who in June of 2020 called for defunding the Minneapolis police.”Koski told Murphy, “I felt this was the time to step up and make sure that we are actually listening to all of our community members and I feel like they felt they had been shut out.”Similarly, in northern Minneapolis, Murphy reported: “LaTrisha Vetaw beat incumbent Phillipe Cunningham. He too was a strong supporter of replacing the police. ‘I ran because I love this community and we deserve so much better in this community than what we were getting.’”The single largest contribution, $650,000, to the Yes 4 Minneapolis PAC, the leading group seeking approval of the charter amendment to dismantle the police department, was from Soros’s Open Society Policy Center.Some philanthropies, in the view of Larry Kramer, president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, have inadvertently become trapped in the politics of polarization. In a phone interview, Kramer contended:Too many — on both left and right — believe they are just one punch away from knocking the other side out. The problem, they say, is that we haven’t gone far enough, the reason we haven’t crushed the other side is because we are trimming our sails. I don’t think they see how they are widening the divide and making the fundamental problem worse.This set of beliefs in particularly problematic at this juncture, Kramer continued, because “the public has lost faith in all our institutions. Neoliberalism is dead, but in the absence of something better, people are drifting toward ethnonationalism as a way to explain what seems wrong about the world to them.”Instead of looking for a knockout punch, Kramer argued, “with neoliberalism dead, something will replace it. The challenge is to find something better than ethnonationalism — a way to think about the relationship of government and markets to people that is better suited to a 21st-century economy and society.”Jonathan Chait, a columnist for New York magazine, wrote an essay in late November on the dilemmas of the Biden presidency, “Joe Biden’s Big Squeeze,” in which he argued that progressive foundationshave churned out studies and deployed activists to bring left-wing ideas into the political debate. At this they have enjoyed overwhelming success. In recent years, a host of new slogans and plans — the Green New Deal, “Defund the police,” “Abolish ICE,” and so on — have leaped from the world of nonprofit activism onto the chyrons of MSNBC and Fox News. Obviously, the conservative media have played an important role in publicizing (and often distorting) the most radical ideas from the activist left. But the right didn’t invent these edgy slogans; the left did, injecting them into the national bloodstream.Nonprofits on the left, Chait argued, “set out to build a new Democratic majority. When the underpinnings of its theory collapsed, the movement it built simply continued onward, having persuaded itself that its ideas constituted an absolute moral imperative.”Chait went on:The grim irony is that, in attempting to court nonwhite voters, Democrats ended up turning them off. It was not only that they got the data wrong — they were also courting these “marginalized communities” in ways that didn’t appeal to them. For the reality is that the Democratic Party’s most moderate voters are disproportionately Latino and Black.The defeat of Democratic candidates up and down the ticket in the 2021 Virginia election renewed the intraparty debate.ALG Research, the major polling firm in the Joe Biden campaign, conducted, along with Third Way, a postelection study of the 2021 Virginia governor’s race, in which Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, defeated Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic nominee. The ALG study of swing voters, which I have reported on in past columns, found, for example, that Republican highlighting of critical race theory had a subtle effect on voters:CRT in schools is not an issue in and of itself, but it taps into these voters’ frustrations. Voters were nearly unanimous in describing the country as divided and feeling that politics is unavoidably in their faces.While the voters ALG studied knew that critical race theory had not been formally adopted as part of Virginia’s curriculum, the report continued,they felt like racial and social justice issues were overtaking math, history, and other things. They absolutely want their kids to hear the good and the bad of American history, at the same time they are worried that racial and cultural issues are taking over the state’s curricula. We should expect this backlash to continue, especially as it plays into another way where parents and communities feel like they are losing control over their schools in addition to the basics of even being able to decide if they’re open or not.As my colleague Jeremy W. Peters wrote in a postelection analysis last year, criticshave argued that Democrats are trying to explain major issues — such as inflation, crime and school curriculum — with answers that satisfy the party’s progressive base but are unpersuasive and off-putting to most other voters. The clearest example is in Virginia, where the Democratic candidate for governor, Terry McAuliffe, lost his election after spending weeks trying to minimize and discredit his opponent’s criticisms of public school education, particularly the way that racism is talked about. Mr. McAuliffe accused the Republican, Glenn Youngkin, of campaigning on a “made-up” issue and of blowing a “racist dog whistle.”But, Peters continued:About a quarter of Virginia voters said that the debate over teaching critical race theory, a graduate-level academic framework that has become a stand-in for a debate over what to teach about race and racism in schools, was the most important factor in their decision, and 72 percent of those voters cast ballots for Mr. Youngkin, according to a survey of more than 2,500 voters conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago, a nonpartisan research organization.For leaders of the Democratic Party, these developments pose a particularly frustrating problem because they pay an electoral price for policy proposals and rhetoric that are outside party control.Some might argue that Republicans have the same problem in reverse, but that is not the case. The Republican Party cannot rein in its radical wing and has shown no real inclination to do so. Worse, to succeed in 2022 and 2024, it may not need to.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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      A Year After Jan. 6: ‘Democracy Is at Risk’

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      Readers worry about the future of our Republic.To the Editor:Re “Every Day Is Jan. 6 Now” (editorial, Jan. 2):We are very close to losing our Republic. I know we are tired after the last few years, but we have had a year to lick our wounds and we must rise up and push back on the Big Lie and hold all of the people who propagated this lie accountable. Period.We are past the “when they go low, we go high” point. The majority of us know that Donald Trump attempted a coup. Where is the Democratic Party with good countermessaging? We need to play the Republicans’ game — harsh, quick and now.We need to brand ourselves the Patriot Party and take away that claim from them. We need to point out through advertisements, billboards, etc., that the acts of Mr. Trump and the Republicans who supported him were seditious. We need to bring all of our advocacy groups together, put aside our causes for now and unite to save our country.A plea for my fellow patriots to write to their representatives, push back on misinformation, use billboards and advertisements, and reach out to notable people and news sources to roar.Susan M. McDonnellFort Pierce, Fla.To the Editor:Although The Times may be ringing in the new year with an alarm bell warning of the ongoing threat that the “stop the steal” movement poses to our democracy, I fear that President Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland intend to lower the decibels.Regardless of how important the congressional investigation may be, Donald Trump and his supporters have exploited the weaknesses in Congress’s investigative process and powers. A congressional report may preserve facts for posterity but will change nothing. Only a criminal grand jury investigation can ferret out the truth and demand accountability by issuing criminal indictments.I believe that the president and his attorney general are concerned about the inevitable accusations of political prosecution, the cycle of recriminations such proceedings might ignite, and energizing a Trump movement fueled by grievance and reveling in victimhood. Maybe they presume the powers of normality will prevail to fend off future assaults on our electoral process, just as they had in 2020.Which strategy is the best is currently a matter of debate. What is certain is that in short order we will learn whether Ben Franklin was right to worry about whether we can keep our Republic.Asher FriedCroton-on-Hudson, N.Y.To the Editor:“Every Day Is Jan. 6 Now” evinces the paternalistic mentality that is likely to result in the Democrats facing a wipeout in the November 2022 elections. The evident panic in the editorial reflects the realization that Republicans are poised to retake the House this year. Why are Democrats polling so poorly? Perhaps it is because a dogmatic ideology that sees political opposition as a threat to be suppressed, surveilled, hounded or outlawed is itself a direct threat to our democracy.Political pluralism is a central tenet of our democracy and must be protected from both the reckless zeal of the mob and the self-righteous zeal of the elites. Ultimately, the American people are the caretakers of our democracy, having never failed to fulfill that obligation.Barry ZimanAlexandria, Va.To the Editor:I agree completely with your editorial. Unfortunately, our citizens are in denial. What you describe is terrifying, but denial is even more terrifying. Democracy is at risk, and the filibuster and the courts are collaborating against the will of the people. Without taking drastic measures, the majority will be ruled by the minority for years to come, by a party that denies truth to retain power.The House committee investigating Jan. 6 might be our last hope to save democracy. We need the public to hear the truth.Linda GravellWaterbury Center, Vt.To the Editor:You correctly observe that Democrats and the American public in general are “underestimating the threat facing the country.” Our democratic government remains in peril, as swing states enact laws that permit postelection nullification.Prosecutors and judges who face the insurrectionists in court are also showing a lack of appreciation of the seriousness of Jan. 6 and its ongoing threat to our democracy.Why are convicted rioters (even those who physically assaulted police officers defending the Capitol) getting off with no prison sentences or only three to five years? Why are so many of the Capitol attackers being charged with misdemeanors (such as trespassing or destruction of federal property) rather than with felonies up to and including insurrection and sedition?L. Michael HagerEastham, Mass.The writer is co-founder and former director general of the International Development Law Organization in Rome.To the Editor:You cite President Benjamin Harrison’s belief that the Constitution guarantees to all Americans a republican form of government. He added that “the essential features of such a government are the right of the people to choose their own officers” and to have their votes counted equally in making that choice.It is slightly ironic, however, that Harrison was elected president (in 1888) despite losing the popular vote.Donald IslerIrvington, N.Y.To the Editor:On the basis of information gathered so far by the congressional Jan. 6 committee, one can stipulate that not only did President Donald Trump, while in office, cry “Fire!” when there was no fire (i.e., the Big Lie about a stolen election), but he also did not cry “Fire!” when one was raging — for 187 minutes of presidential dereliction of duty on Jan. 6.Manfred WeidhornFair Lawn, N.J. More

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      ¿Qué significa el 6 de enero para Estados Unidos?

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      Un año después del humo y los vidrios rotos, de la horca simulada y la violencia demasiado real de ese día atroz, es tentador hacer una retrospectiva e imaginar que, de hecho, podemos simplemente hacer una retrospectiva. Es tentador imaginar que lo que sucedió el 6 de enero de 2021 —un asalto mortal en la sede del gobierno de Estados Unidos incitado por un presidente derrotado en medio de una campaña desesperada por frustrar la transferencia de poder a su sucesor— fue terrible pero que ahora está en el pasado y que nosotros, como nación, hemos podido avanzar.Es un impulso comprensible. Después de cuatro años de caos, crueldad e incompetencia, que culminaron en una pandemia y con el trauma antes impensable del 6 de enero, la mayoría de los estadounidenses estaban impacientes por tener algo de paz y tranquilidad.Hemos conseguido eso, en la superficie. Nuestra vida política parece más o menos normal en estos días: el presidente perdona pavos y el Congreso se pelea por la legislación de presupuesto. Pero si escarbamos un poco, las cosas están lejos de ser normales. El 6 de enero no está en el pasado: está presente todos los días.Está en los ciudadanos de a pie que amenazan a funcionarios electorales y otros servidores públicos, está en quienes preguntan “¿Cuándo podemos usar las armas?” y prometen asesinar a los políticos que se atrevan a votar con conciencia. Son los legisladores republicanos que luchan por hacer que el voto sea más difícil para las personas y, si votan, que sea más fácil subvertir su voluntad. Está en Donald Trump, quien continúa avivando las llamas del conflicto con sus mentiras desenfrenadas y resentimientos ilimitados y cuya versión distorsionada de la realidad todavía domina a uno de los dos principales partidos políticos de la nación.En pocas palabras, la república enfrenta una amenaza existencial por parte de un movimiento que desdeña de manera abierta la democracia y que ha demostrado su disposición a usar la violencia para conseguir sus propósitos. Ninguna sociedad autónoma puede sobrevivir a una amenaza así negando que esta existe. Más bien, la supervivencia depende de mirar al pasado y hacia el futuro al mismo tiempo.Encarar de verdad la amenaza que se avecina significa entender plenamente el terror de ese día hace un año. Gracias en gran medida a la labor tenaz de un comité bipartidista en la Cámara de Representantes, una toma de conciencia está en proceso. Ahora sabemos que la violencia y el caos transmitidos en vivo a todo el mundo fue solo la parte más visible y visceral de un esfuerzo por revertir las elecciones. Ese esfuerzo llegaba hasta el Despacho Oval, donde Trump y sus aliados planearon un autogolpe constitucional.Ahora sabemos que los principales legisladores republicanos y figuras de los medios de comunicación de derecha entendieron en privado lo peligroso que era el asalto y le pidieron a Trump que lo detuviera, incluso cuando públicamente decían lo contrario. Ahora sabemos que quienes pueden tener información crítica sobre la planificación y ejecución del ataque se niegan a cooperar con el Congreso, incluso si eso significa ser acusado de desacato criminal.Por ahora, el trabajo del comité continúa. Ha programado una serie de audiencias públicas para exponer estos y otros detalles, y planea publicar un informe completo de sus hallazgos antes de las elecciones intermedias de este año. Después de los comicios, si los republicanos recuperan el control de la Cámara, como se espera, indudablemente el comité será disuelto.Aquí es donde entra la mirada hacia el futuro. A lo largo del año pasado, legisladores republicanos en 41 estados han intentado promover los objetivos de los alborotadores del 6 de enero, y lo han hecho no rompiendo leyes, sino promulgándolas. Se han propuesto cientos de proyectos de ley y se han aprobado casi tres decenas de leyes que facultan a las legislaturas estatales para sabotear sus propios comicios y anular la voluntad de sus votantes, según el recuento activo de un consorcio no partidista de organizaciones a favor de la democracia.Algunos proyectos de ley cambiarían las reglas para hacer más fácil que los legisladores rechacen los votos de sus ciudadanos si no les gusta el resultado. Otros proyectos legislativos reemplazan a los funcionarios electorales profesionales con figuras partidistas que podrían tener un interés claro en que gane su candidato predilecto. Y, otros más intentan criminalizar los errores humanos de funcionarios electorales, en algunos casos incluso con amenaza de cárcel.Muchas de estas leyes se están proponiendo y aprobando en estados que suele ser cruciales en las elecciones, como Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia y Pensilvania. A raíz de la votación de 2020, la campaña de Trump se enfocó en los resultados electorales en estos estados: demandó para reclamar un recuento o trataba de intimidar a los funcionarios para que encontraran votos “faltantes”. El esfuerzo fracasó, en buena medida debido al profesionalismo y la integridad de los funcionarios electorales. Desde entonces, muchos de esos funcionarios han sido despojados de su poder o expulsados de sus cargos y reemplazados por personas que dicen abiertamente que las últimas elecciones fueron fraudulentas.De este modo, los disturbios del Capitolio continúan presentes en los congresos estatales de todo Estados Unidos, en una forma legalizada y sin derramamiento de sangre y que ningún oficial de policía puede detener y que ningún fiscal puede juzgar en un tribunal.Esta no es la primera vez que las legislaturas estatales intentan arrebatarle el control de los votos electorales a sus ciudadanos, ni es la primera vez que se advierte de los peligros que entraña esa estrategia. En 1891, el presidente Benjamin Harrison advirtió al Congreso del riesgo de que ese “truco” pudiera determinar el resultado de una elección presidencial.La Constitución garantiza a todos los estadounidenses una forma republicana de gobierno, dijo Harrison. “Las características esenciales de tal gobierno son el derecho del pueblo a elegir a sus propios funcionarios” y que sus votos se cuenten por igual al tomar esa decisión. “Nuestro principal peligro nacional”, agregó, es “el derrocamiento del control de la mayoría mediante la supresión o distorsión del sufragio popular”. Si una legislatura estatal lograra sustituir la voluntad de sus votantes por la suya, “no es exagerado decir que la paz pública podría estar en peligro serio y generalizado”.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      The Capitol Riot Was Inevitable

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      In December 1972, the critic Pauline Kael famously admitted that she’d been living in a political bubble. “I only know one person who voted for Nixon,” she said. “Where they are, I don’t know. They’re outside my ken.” A pithier version of her quote (“I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.”) has been used to exemplify liberal insularity ever since, both by conservative pundits and by the kind of centrist journalists who have spent the past several years buzzing in the ears of heartland diner patrons, looking for clues about Donald Trump’s rise.The most important fact about the Trump era, though, can be gleaned simply by examining his vote tallies and approval ratings: At no point in his political career — not a single day — has Mr. Trump enjoyed the support of the majority of the country he governed for four years. And whatever else Jan. 6 might have been, it should be understood first and foremost as an expression of disbelief in — or at least a rejection of — that reality. Rather than accepting, in defeat, that much more of their country lay outside their ken than they’d known, his supporters proclaimed themselves victors and threw a deadly and historic tantrum.The riot was an attack on our institutions, and of course, inflammatory conservative rhetoric and social media bear some of the blame. But our institutions also helped produce that violent outburst by building a sense of entitlement to power within America’s conservative minority.The structural advantages that conservatives enjoy in our electoral system are well known. Twice already this young century, the Republican Party has won the Electoral College and thus the presidency while losing the popular vote. Republicans in the Senate haven’t represented a majority of Americans since the 1990s, yet they’ve controlled the chamber for roughly half of the past 20 years. In 2012 the party kept control of the House even though Democrats won more votes.And as is now painfully clear to Democratic voters, their party faces significant barriers to success in Washington even when it manages to secure full control of government: The supermajority requirement imposed by the Senate filibuster can stall even wildly popular legislation, and Republicans have stacked the judiciary so successfully that the Supreme Court seems poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, an outcome that around 60 percent of the American people oppose, according to several recent polls. Obviously, none of the structural features of our federal system were designed with contemporary politics and the Republican Party in mind. But they are clearly giving a set of Americans who have taken strongly to conservative ideology — rural voters in sparsely populated states in the middle of the country — more power than the rest of the electorate.With these structural advantages in place, it’s not especially difficult to see how the right came to view dramatic political losses, when they do occur, as suspect. If the basic mechanics of the federal system were as fair and balanced as we’re taught they are, the extent and duration of conservative power would reflect the legitimate preferences of most Americans. Democratic victories, by contrast, now seem to the right like underhanded usurpations of the will of the majority — in President Biden’s case, by fraud and foreign voters, and in Barack Obama’s, by a candidate who was himself a foreign imposition on the true American people.But the federal system is neither fair nor balanced. Rather than democratic give and take between two parties that share the burden of winning over the other side, we have one favored party and another whose effortful victories against ever-lengthening odds are conspiratorially framed as the skulduggery of schemers who can win only through fraud and covert plans to import a new electorate. It doesn’t help that Republican advantages partly insulate the party from public reproach; demagogy is more likely to spread among politicians if there are few electoral consequences. This is a recipe for political violence. Jan. 6 wasn’t the first or the deadliest attack to stem from the idea that Democrats are working to force their will on a nonexistent conservative political and cultural majority. We have no reason to expect it will be the last.And while much of the language Republican politicians and commentators use to incite their base seems outwardly extreme, it’s important to remember that what was done on Jan. 6 was done in the name of the Constitution, as most Republican voters now understand it — an eternal compact that keeps power in their rightful hands. Tellingly, during his Jan. 6 rally, Mr. Trump cannily deployed some of the language Democrats have used to decry voting restrictions and foreign interference. “Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy,” he said. “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. Today we will see whether Republicans stand strong for the integrity of our elections.”The mainstream press has also had a hand in inflating the right’s sense of itself. Habits like the misrepresentation of Republican voters and operatives as swing voters plucked off the street and the constant, reductive blather about political homogeneity on the coasts — despite the fact that there were more Trump voters in New York City in 2016 and 2020 than there were in both Dakotas combined — create distorted impressions of our political landscape. The tendency of journalists to measure the wisdom of policies and rhetoric based on their distance from the preferences of conservative voters only reinforces the idea that it’s fair for politicians, activists and voters on the left to take the reddest parts of the country into account without the right taking a reciprocal interest in what most Americans want.That premise still dominates and constrains strategic thinking within the Democratic Party. A year after the Capitol attack and all the rent garments and tears about the right’s radicalism and the democratic process, the party has failed to deliver promised political reforms, thanks to opposition from pivotal members of its own Senate caucus — Democrats who argue that significantly changing our system would alienate Republicans.Given demographic trends, power in Washington will likely continue accruing to Republicans even if the right doesn’t undertake further efforts to subvert our elections. And to fix the structural biases at work, Democrats would have to either attempt the impossible task of securing broad, bipartisan support for major new amendments to the Constitution — which, it should be said, essentially bars changes to the Senate’s basic design — or pass a set of system-rebalancing workarounds, such as admitting new states ⁠like the District of Columbia. It should never be forgotten that fully enfranchised voters from around the country gathered to stage a riot over their supposedly threatened political rights last January in a city of 700,000 people who don’t have a full vote in Congress.Jan. 6 demonstrated that the choice the country now faces isn’t one between disruptive changes to our political system and a peaceable status quo. To believe otherwise is to indulge the other big lie that drew violence to the Capitol in the first place. The notion that the 18th-century American constitutional order is suited to governance in the 21st is as preposterous and dangerous as anything Mr. Trump has ever uttered. It was the supposedly stabilizing features of our vaunted system that made him president to begin with and incubated the extremism that turned his departure into a crisis.Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) is a contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of a regular newsletter about American politics. His first book, “The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding,” will be published by Random House.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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      Imagine It’s 2024, and Republicans Are Declaring Trump President

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      It’s Election Day 2024. President Biden and former President Donald Trump have been locked in battle for months, with Mr. Biden holding a stable, sizable lead in the popular vote but much narrower leads in key swing states like Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona. Turnout has been exceptionally high, nearly matching 2020 levels.The outcome will clearly come down to those three key states — all with Republican legislative majorities that put in place laws making them the final arbiters of electoral disputes. As the counting in the three proceeds, Democratic Party representatives raise a hue and cry that it is proceeding unfairly, with significant numbers of valid ballots being rejected without proper cause. State election officials (mostly pro-Trump Republicans) declare that there is no substance to these objections. All three conclude that Mr. Trump won their states’ electors, and with them the presidency.Is it likely that Democratic voters would accept this result without protest and a constitutional crisis (and perhaps even violent protest)?I think the answer is no, and I suspect most Democrats reading this would agree with me. And that’s why, notwithstanding all the good arguments for reforming our electoral system, there is no legislative solution to the deepest problem threatening American democracy: the profound lack of trust in the legitimacy of the opposition.The scenario I described above is precisely what multiple observers have been warning about in the year since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Republican legislatures in several states have revised their election statutes to give themselves more authority over the conduct of elections in their states, reducing the authorities of state secretaries of state, governors and county election officials in the process. From the perspective of anyone who isn’t a Republican, those moves look like preparation to commit fraud and to do so with legal impunity.Many of those legislators, however, will say that their moves are intended to shore up confidence in the electoral system — that they are, in fact, a response to those same terrible events of Jan. 6. Their voters believe — wrongly, as at least a few of those same Republican officials will admit — that the 2020 election was decided unfairly, on the basis of fraudulent votes. At a minimum, more and more mainstream Republicans are arguing, voting procedures were capriciously changed by biased election officials and judges using the pandemic as an excuse in a way that unfairly advantaged Democrats. Therefore, they need to take these kinds of steps to convince their voters that the election will be conducted fairly.Perhaps they are right that this is what it would take to convince their voters. If they are, though, they will succeed only by undermining the confidence of the other party in those same election results. The same, sadly, is likely true of proposed Democratic attempts to shore up confidence in the electoral system.It seems to have been largely forgotten, but in 2020, despite extraordinary strain, the system worked. As independent observers have attested, no meaningful fraud marred the election. Turnout was extremely high for both parties despite pandemic conditions, attesting to the lack of effective voter suppression as well. Republican officeholders at all levels of government were pressed to find fraud that didn’t exist, to decertify valid results and otherwise to undermine the integrity of the election. They overwhelmingly resisted that pressure. The same is true of the judicial branch, which rejected out of hand the Trump campaign’s spurious legal challenges.None of that, however, was sufficient to persuade tens of millions of Trump voters that their candidate actually lost. On the contrary: When forced to choose between President Trump’s baseless assertions and the conclusions of those Republicans duly charged with overseeing the election, these voters chose Mr. Trump over members of their own party who acted with integrity. The rioters on Jan. 6 turned to violence because they believed that the election was stolen, and they believed that despite all the authorities, Democrats and Republicans, actually responsible for running it saying otherwise.That’s not a problem that can be solved by tinkering with the mechanics of elections oversight. It’s entirely possible that worthwhile reforms to limit political grandstanding could fuel distrust by Democrats in the legitimacy of elections.Take the Electoral Count Act, a particular focus of concern because of John Eastman’s memo suggesting, absurdly, that it granted Vice President Mike Pence the authority to unilaterally set aside certified electoral votes. The act was originally passed to prevent a repeat of the disputed election of 1876, during which Congress — previously responsible for resolving such disputes — deadlocked over which electors to approve from three states that submitted dueling slates. The act reduced Congress’s role and aimed to provide clear rules for how and when states must approve their slates to avoid disputes.Those provisions can — and should — be clarified, to eliminate the possibility that a future vice president might do what Mike Pence refused to, or that future representatives and senators could baselessly undermine popular confidence in election integrity as numerous Republicans have done in the wake of the last election.But what any such reform would do is push more authority back down to the state level or over to the judicial branch. What happens if those actors behave in a corruptly partisan manner? With key state legislatures in Republican hands and with the Supreme Court dominated by Republican appointees inclined to give latitude to those same state legislatures in setting electoral rules, it’s not hard to imagine many Democrats in 2024 concluding that by reforming the act they had disarmed themselves.Some Democrats, therefore, have called for federalizing America’s unusually decentralized national elections, to override the possibility of partisan state legislature interference in either the conduct of the election or the vote count and certification of the winners. Because the constitution vests a great deal of authority at the state level, some of these proposals might well face constitutional challenges — but even if they passed muster, what would they achieve? They would invest more power in Congress, which might well be in Republican hands. How confident would Democrats be in an election in 2024 ultimately overseen by Kevin McCarthy in the House and Mitch McConnell in the Senate?Nor would investing that power in another state-level authority be assured to fare better. After the 2020 election, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, was a hero for refusing to compromise his integrity. But in the 2000 election, the independent authority responsible for running the election in Florida was Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a Republican who was widely distrusted by Democrats for what they saw as favoritism to George W. Bush. This distrust was a mirror of Republicans’ own distrust of the recount process as conducted in a number of Democratically controlled counties in South Florida. It was distrust all the way up and all the way down. It ended only because Al Gore accepted the authority of the Supreme Court.There are potential reforms that could significantly improve the democratic accountability of our system and reduce the scope for either party to skew the process. Taking redistricting out of the hands of state legislatures and entrusting it to nonpartisan bodies is an obvious example. Breaking up the largest states, or creating multimember congressional districts, are more profound reforms that could empower currently underrepresented political minorities from both camps. There are likely deals to strike on voting rights that could provide better security against both fraud and suppression.Such reforms, however, will never be trusted if they are enacted on a purely partisan basis to plainly partisan ends. Even if they are responding to real distortions, and are formally neutral, they will be perceived and opposed as illegitimate partisan grabs if they aren’t undertaken cooperatively. They won’t break the cycle of distrust or prevent a recurrence of Jan. 6 any more than widespread agreement among nonpartisan observers that the 2020 election was fair did so.The problem is not that America is incapable of conducting an election with integrity. We just did, under some of the most difficult conditions.The problem is that too many Americans — predominantly Republicans today, but perhaps Democrats tomorrow — do not believe or accept the results, and that their leaders — again, predominantly Republicans today, but perhaps Democrats tomorrow — are willing and eager to cater to that mistaken conviction.That’s a problem that can’t be legislated away. It can be resolved only by the parties themselves committing that demagogy will stop at the election’s edge. Until that happens, American democracy will be in crisis, no matter what laws we pass to protect it.Noah Millman is a political columnist at The Week and the film and theater critic at Modern Age.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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      Representative Bobby Rush, Longtime Illinois Democrat, Will Retire

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      The decision by the pastor and civil rights activist added to a wave of Democrats deciding not to run for re-election in a difficult midterm cycle.WASHINGTON — Representative Bobby L. Rush, the most senior Illinois House lawmaker, said on Monday that he planned to retire at the end of the year, adding to a wave of Democrats who have decided against seeking re-election in what is expected to be a tough midterm cycle for the party.Mr. Rush, 75, a pastor and former Black Panther who built himself into an electoral powerhouse in his district on the South Side of Chicago, said in an announcement video obtained by The New York Times that he wanted to focus on his ministerial work and his family.“I’m not retiring — I’m returning home,” Mr. Rush said in the video, in which he reflected on nearly three decades of service in Congress and earlier battles with a rare cancer. “I’m returning to my church. I’m returning to my family.”“Being a member of Congress — although it’s powerful — it can be very limited,” he added, saying he would be broadening his horizons. “I think I’ll be more effective because I have the gift of a 75-year-old, and that’s wisdom.”In an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, where he disclosed his plans, Mr. Rush said his decision came after a conversation with his 19-year-old grandson, Jonathan, saying that he did not want his grandchildren “to know me from a television news clip or something they read in a newspaper.”Two dozen House Democrats have now announced their plans to either retire or seek a different political office before the November election, when many Democrats fear they will lose control of the House. With the departure of several senior lawmakers, Democrats face a loss of institutional knowledge and experience.Although Mr. Rush’s district is heavily Democratic and unlikely to switch parties, the House Republican campaign arm gloated over what Mike Berg, a spokesman, described as evidence that “Democrats are abandoning ship as fast as possible because they know their majority is doomed.”Mr. Rush is set to hold a news conference at Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Chicago on Tuesday. The funeral of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black teenager whose murder by two white men helped shape the civil rights movement, was held at the church in 1955.Before winning the seat in 1992, Mr. Rush enlisted in the Army, helped found the Illinois Black Panther Party and served as a Chicago alderman. As he climbed in Democratic electoral politics, he faced criticism from some other Black activists that he had become too mainstream, but he defeated multiple bids to oust him, including a primary challenge by former President Barack Obama, then a state senator. He was set to face another primary this year.In the 16-minute video, Mr. Rush reflected on the critical funding he had funneled toward his district and the legislation he had shepherded into law. He has long fought against gun violence and continued his civil rights activism in the House, breaching chamber rules on dress in 2012 when he wore a hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses to honor Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager killed in Florida.The speech, he said in the video, was a chance to “let the whole world see that although I’m a member of Congress, I’m still a Black man in America who’s fighting for justice and equality.”He vowed to continue pushing for bills to be passed before his retirement, including the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, which would explicitly make lynching a federal crime.“I’m going to get this bill passed,” he pledged. More