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      Hill Harper, ‘Good Doctor’ Actor, Enters Senate Race in Michigan

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      Mr. Harper is challenging Representative Elissa Slotkin from the left and will have an uphill climb in a heated Democratic primary race in a 2024 presidential swing state.Hill Harper, an author and actor, on Monday entered Michigan’s 2024 Senate race, pledging to run to the left of Representative Elissa Slotkin, a moderate Democrat, in what is expected to be one of the most closely watched Democratic primary races in a 2024 presidential battleground state.Mr. Harper, a first-time candidate known for his roles on “CSI: NY” and “The Good Doctor,” began his campaign with a message focused on expanding Social Security and access to affordable health care, as well as tackling income inequality and student debt. In an interview, he said he planned to position himself as “the most progressive candidate” in the race and would work to bring jaded and unheard voters back into the Democratic fold.“It became clear to me that folks across Michigan don’t feel like they are being represented in Washington, D.C.,” he said, describing his conversations with people at farmers’ markets and union halls as he weighed his decision to run. The state’s Democratic leadership, which holds the governor’s office and both chambers of the Michigan Statehouse, he added, has “done a lot to move the state forward, but Washington is still broken.”The Democratic primary is likely to be followed by a heated general election against a tense backdrop. Donald J. Trump won this industrial Midwestern state by nearly 11,000 votes in 2016, and lost it to Joseph R. Biden Jr. by more than 150,000 votes in his 2020 re-election bid. Mr. Trump focused on the voting in Michigan in his efforts to subvert the 2020 election.As they head into the 2024 presidential cycle, Democrats will be concentrating on holding on to their midterm victories in Michigan in 2022, when protecting abortion rights galvanized the party nationwide.Mr. Harper’s supporters believe that, as a Black progressive, he will be able to draw a coalition of liberal and Black voters. His campaign could particularly resonate with Black voters in a state where the debate over race and representation has raged in some corners: The 2022 midterm election left Detroit, the nation’s largest majority Black city, without Black representation in Congress for the first time in decades.But Mr. Harper will face an uphill climb against Ms. Slotkin, a former C.I.A. analyst and three-term congresswoman who has built a track record as a seasoned campaigner and prolific fund-raiser. She has won three tough races for her House seat in a central Michigan district, which encompasses Lansing. Ms. Slotkin had more than $2.3 million cash in hand at the end of March, and is running on a platform focused on jobs and economic issues.She was the first in her party to declare her candidacy for the seat being vacated by Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat, and has the solid backing of establishment Democrats at the state and national level.That hasn’t dissuaded Mr. Harper and a handful of Democrats from jumping in, including Leslie Love, a former state lawmaker, and Pamela Pugh, who serves as president of the Michigan State Board of Education.For the Republicans, Nikki Snyder, a member of the State Board of Education, and Ezra Scott, a former Berrien County commissioner, are vying for the seat. More

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      Biden esquiva el rótulo de progresista a ultranza

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      A pesar de su alianza con los partidarios del derecho al aborto y los defensores LGBTQ, el presidente ha evitado hábilmente verse envuelto en batallas sobre temas sociales muy controvertidos.Hace más de una década, el presidente Joe Biden se adelantó de manera memorable a Barack Obama en cuanto al apoyo al matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo, pero en un evento para recaudar fondos en junio, cerca de San Francisco, no pudo recordar las letras LGBTQ.Aunque el Partido Demócrata ha hecho que la lucha por el derecho al aborto sea central en su mensaje político, Biden se declaró como “no muy partidario del aborto” la semana pasada.En un momento en el que los partidos políticos estadounidenses intercambian disparos feroces desde las trincheras de una guerra por las políticas sociales y culturales, el mandatario se mantiene al margen.Biden, un hombre blanco de 80 años que no está muy actualizado con el lenguaje de la izquierda, ha evitado en gran medida involucrarse en las batallas contemporáneas sobre el género, el aborto y otros temas sociales muy controvertidos, incluso cuando hace cosas como albergar lo que llamó “la celebración más grande del Mes del Orgullo jamás organizada en la Casa Blanca”.Los republicanos han tratado de empujarlo hacia esa batalla, pero parecen reconocer la dificultad: cuando los candidatos presidenciales del Partido Republicano prometen ponerle fin a lo que califican burlonamente como la cultura “woke”, a menudo apuntan sus dardos no directamente a Biden sino a las grandes corporaciones como Disney y BlackRock o al enorme “Estado administrativo” del gobierno federal. Los estrategas republicanos afirman que la mayor parte del mensaje de su partido sobre el aborto y las personas transgénero está dirigido a los votantes de las primarias, mientras que en las elecciones presidenciales se considera que Biden es mucho más vulnerable en temas relacionados con la economía, el crimen y la inmigración.La protección de Biden contra los ataques culturales podría parecer improbable para un presidente que ha defendido firmemente los derechos de la comunidad LGBTQ, y que es el líder de un partido que saca ventaja de la ola de políticas sobre el aborto y un hombre que le debe su presidencia al apoyo inquebrantable de los votantes negros de las primarias demócratas.A pesar de que a lo largo de los años ha adoptado posiciones que impulsaron a los demócratas —y luego al país— a adoptar actitudes más liberales en temas sociales, Biden se ha mantenido algo distante de los elementos de su partido que podrían plantearle problemas políticos. En junio, la Casa Blanca declaró que le había prohibido la entrada a una activista transgénero que había mostrado su pecho desnudo en su evento del Mes del Orgullo.Y aunque la edad de Biden se ha convertido en una de sus principales debilidades políticas, tanto sus aliados como sus adversarios dicen que también lo protege de los ataques culturales de los republicanos.Biden celebró el Mes del Orgullo en el jardín sur de la Casa Blanca el mes pasado.Pete Marovich para The New York Times“Todo el mundo quiere hablar de la edad que tiene Joe Biden, pero la verdad es que es su edad y su experiencia lo que le permite ser quien es y le permite decir las cosas y ayudar a las personas de una manera que nadie más puede”, afirmó Henry R. Muñoz III, exdirector de finanzas del Comité Nacional Demócrata. En 2017, en la boda de Muñoz, que es gay, Biden fue el oficiante de la ceremonia.Gran parte de la lealtad hacia Biden por parte de los demócratas de la comunidad LGBTQ proviene de su respaldo en 2012 a los matrimonios entre personas del mismo sexo, cuando Obama todavía se oponía oficialmente a eso. La posición de Biden se consideró políticamente arriesgada en ese momento, antes de que la Corte Suprema reconociera en 2015 el derecho de las parejas del mismo sexo a casarse, pero se ha convertido en algo de lo que se jactó durante su campaña de 2020.Biden también ha estado a la vanguardia en el reconocimiento de los derechos de las personas transgénero. En su primera semana en el cargo puso fin a la medida de la era de Donald Trump de prohibir la presencia de soldados transgénero en el Ejército. En diciembre, promulgó protecciones federales para los matrimonios entre personas del mismo sexo.Al mismo tiempo, Biden no ha adoptado la terminología de los activistas progresistas ni se ha dejado involucrar en debates públicos que podrían dejarlo fuera de la corriente política tradicional. El jueves, después del importante fallo de la Corte Suprema que puso fin a la acción afirmativa en las admisiones universitarias, una periodista le preguntó: “¿Esta es una corte rebelde?”Tras una breve pausa para pensar, Biden respondió: “Esta no es una corte normal”.Biden tampoco recuerda las palabras que la mayoría de los políticos estadounidenses utilizan para describir a la comunidad LGBTQ. En el evento de recaudación de fondos cerca de San Francisco el mes pasado, Biden lamentó la decisión de la Corte Suprema que el año pasado puso fin al derecho nacional al aborto y sugirió que ahora el objetivo de la corte serían los derechos de la comunidad gay.Manifestantes pro-LGBTQ protestaban ante una reunión del grupo conservador Moms for Liberty el viernes en Filadelfia.Haiyun Jiang para The New York TimesParafraseando a dos de los jueces conservadores, Biden afirmó: “No hay ningún derecho constitucional en las leyes para H, B… disculpen, para los gays, lesbianas, ya saben, para todo, todo el grupo. No hay protección constitucional”.Durante una parada en la Feria Estatal de Iowa durante su campaña de 2020, un agitador conservador que seguía a los candidatos presidenciales demócratas le preguntó a Biden: “¿Cuántos géneros existen?”.Biden respondió: “Hay al menos tres. No intentes jugar conmigo, chico”.Luego, tal vez sin darse cuenta de que su inquisidor era un activista de derecha, Biden agregó: “Por cierto, el primero en declararse a favor del matrimonio fui yo”.Sarah McBride, una senadora del estado de Delaware que recientemente comenzó una campaña para convertirse en el primer miembro transgénero del Congreso, afirmó que el lenguaje de Biden le había permitido solidificar a los demócratas en una agenda social progresista y “llegar a comunidades y grupos demográficos que aún no están completamente en la coalición”.“No se deja atrapar por una retórica que no sea comprensible para un votante intermedio”, afirmó McBride.McBride también señaló que la edad de Biden es útil para defender los argumentos de los demócratas sobre temas sociales sin alienar a los votantes escépticos.“Su experiencia le permite decir cosas que creo que se escucharían como más radicales si las dijera un político más joven”, afirmó McBride.Como la mayoría de los estadounidenses han aceptado el matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo, los conservadores sociales han hecho de la oposición a los derechos de las personas transgénero un pilar de su política. Además, los republicanos que se postulan para remplazar a Biden tienden a centrarse en animar a los votantes de las primarias republicanas en vez de intentar convertir al presidente en un villano.“Es difícil retratar a un hombre blanco de 80 años como un férreo guerrero concienciado”, dijo Whit Ayres, encuestador de los candidatos republicanos desde hace mucho tiempo.El gobernador de Florida, Ron DeSantis, es quizás el principal proveedor del mensaje antiprogresista de los republicanos, lanzando improperios tanto en internet como en discursos. El último viernes de julio, su campaña incluso tachó a Trump de ser demasiado liberal en temas LGBTQ en un video controversial publicado en Twitter.En un mitin celebrado en junio en Tulsa, Oklahoma, DeSantis describió cómo se le acercaban veteranos militares que no querían que sus hijos y nietos se alistaran en las fuerzas armadas debido a los cambios políticos liberales instituidos por los demócratas, aunque el gobernador culpó a Obama tanto como a Biden.“Un ejército progre no será un ejército fuerte”, dijo DeSantis. “Hay que eliminar la politización. Y, en el primer día, arrancaremos todas las políticas de Obama-Biden para volver progre a las fuerzas armadas”.Biden nunca se ha presentado como un guerrero cultural de izquierda. Católico, hace mucho tiempo ha sido cauteloso con lanzarse de cabeza a las disputas por el derecho al aborto. Incluso cuando su campaña y su partido se preparan para hacer de su apuesta a la reelección un referendo sobre los esfuerzos republicanos para restringir aún más el aborto, Biden proclamó ante una multitud de donantes en los suburbios de Washington que él mismo no estaba muy ansioso por hacerlo.“¿Saben?, soy católico practicante”, dijo Biden la semana pasada. “No soy muy partidario del aborto. Pero ¿saben qué? Roe contra Wade estaba en lo correcto”.Durante mucho tiempo esa postura ha causado cierta consternación entre los demócratas. Hubo que esperar hasta junio de 2019, semanas después de comenzar su campaña de 2020 y bajo la inmensa presión de los aliados de su partido, para que Biden renunciara a su apoyo de larga data a la prohibición de la financiación federal de los abortos.Renee Bracey Sherman, fundadora de We Testify, un grupo que comparte historias de mujeres que han abortado, dijo que Biden tendría que adoptar una posición más enérgica a favor del derecho al aborto para animar a los votantes liberales en 2024. Sugirió que, de la misma manera que Biden recibe a equipos deportivos de campeonato en la Casa Blanca, debería invitar a mujeres que han abortado para vayan y cuenten sus historias.“Las elecciones de mitad de mandato muestran que los estadounidenses están con el aborto”, dijo Bracey Sherman. “El aborto tiene un índice de aprobación más alto que él. Debería subirse a la ola del aborto”.Kristi Eaton More

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      For Yusef Salaam, a Landslide Just Might Be the Best Revenge

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      After his wrongful conviction as one of the Central Park Five was overturned, Mr. Salaam found it hard to rebuild his life. Now he stands to take office next year.This week, 34 years after he and four other teenage boys who barely knew one another were bound together by notorious failures of justice, Yusef Salaam was officially declared the winner in the Democratic primary for a seat in New York’s City Council, having received almost 64 percent of the vote. Given that more than three-quarters of voters in the district identify as Democrats, we can assume that beginning in January, he will represent Harlem, where he grew up, was arrested and returned after serving nearly seven years in prison for a crime he did not commit.The crime — the rape and near-fatal beating of a 28-year-old investment banker who was jogging in Central Park one night in April 1989 — came to define a late-20th century city plagued by entwined crises of violence, ferocious racial polarization and worsening inequity. The boys, known as the Central Park Five, were convicted on the grounds of coerced false confessions. In Mr. Salaam’s case, there wasn’t even recorded evidence of an admission of guilt. No DNA evidence linked any of the accused assailants to the victim; they were exonerated in 2002 only after the actual offender, an imprisoned serial rapist, came forward and provided forensic evidence that proved his culpability.Mr. Salaam’s electoral victory is as much a poetic correction as it is a political success. It signals not only a triumph over an entrenched political establishment — his rivals were longtime elected officials in their 60s and 70s — but also over an idealistic brand of progressivism embodied by the incumbent councilwoman Kristin Richardson Jordan, whose popularity fell off quickly. A young Democratic Socialist elected two years ago on a platform of “radical love” and police abolitionism, Ms. Jordan dropped out of the race in May when her defeat seemed certain.From the vantage of middle age — Mr. Salaam is now 49 — he can reflect and say that Harlem has been poorly governed for a long time. “When I look at 125th Street, I see rats, drugs, empty lots, the need for wraparound services,” he said during a conversation a few days before the race was called. “We’ve had legends here, but we have not had the full investment our tax dollars require.”Six years ago, Mr. Salaam moved to Georgia; Harlem had become so expensive. He returned at the end of last year. He sees the lack of affordable housing as the area’s chief concern, and he is committed to working with developers to create more. The problem, as he sees it, is that too often when “developers are coming into a community to develop, we are usually called to the meeting after they have decided to do whatever they are going to do.”Ms. Jordan did not show the same kind of flexibility. One reason she fell into disfavor with Harlemites was that she effectively killed a project on 145th Street that would have delivered hundreds of apartments at below-market rates; she insisted there were not enough for those in the lowest income brackets. Ultimately, the developer used the land for a truck depot.Mr. Salaam’s ascent suggests the political appeal of lived experience over the attraction of outlier ideologies that have been cultivated at a privileged distance. Ms. Jordan is also from Harlem, but she is the daughter of doctors, a graduate of the Calhoun School (a private school on the Upper West Side) and Brown, a poet and an independent publisher focused on the work of literary activists. After the murder of George Floyd, much of the rhetoric around defunding police seemed intentionally hyperbolic, a means to an end of reducing, not eliminating the presence of police. Ms. Jordan, though, held a literal, more absolutist view.“I actually believe in moving toward a world without cops,” she told The Nation in a 2021 interview. Not long after she was elected to the council, two police officers were killed in her district during a domestic violence call, and she found herself widely criticized for expressing sympathy not just for the slain men but also for the person accused of killing them. Despite what he suffered at the hands of a warped system, Mr. Salaam maintains a position on policing that is comparatively moderate, calling for better and more sensitive policing, not a world without it.One of his political supporters is a former corrections officer who first encountered Mr. Salaam in a Lower Manhattan courthouse in the early stages of his long ordeal. The officer, Derrick Taitt, believed in the innocence of the five teenagers from the outset. He recalled seeing them in court for the first time. “It’s just an experience I’ll never forget — going home that day,” he said. “I walked from Centre Street to 14th. I couldn’t get on the train because my head hurt so badly.” As the president of the Community Association of the East Harlem Triangle and a lifelong resident of the neighborhood, Mr. Taitt, who is now 68, has witnessed an unsettling resurgence of crack in the area recently, and he maintains that Mr. Salaam could not have built a viable campaign on anti-law-enforcement sentiment.When I spoke with Mr. Salaam, he ended our conversation for afternoon prayer. He has been a practicing Muslim for most of his life, and the notion of a career in political leadership was born, against all odds, not long after he was arrested. He could not help but see uncanny similarities between his own story and that of his namesake, the prophet Yusef, in the Quran who was thrown into a well, sold into slavery, wrongly accused of rape and imprisoned. Ultimately he rose to a position of authority in his kingdom.“I was just blown away,” Mr. Salaam told me. “For me reading that as a young person, it was a seed that was planted.”After his conviction was overturned, he re-entered the world at 23, to endure the predictable indignities common to those who have been incarcerated. One of his first jobs after prison was working construction at a Mitchell-Lama apartment complex on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. When the company he was working for found out who he was, he said, he was fired. The experience provided a terrible insight. “Prison is about continuous punishment,” he said. “But if you survive prison, every single door for success will be shut in your face.”Many people in the community supported him when he was released, Mr. Salaam’s mother, Sharonne, told me. But many others did not. “You still have that boiling sensation as you try to move on with your life,” said Ms. Salaam, who was teaching at the Parsons School of Design when her son was arrested. Exoneration did not bring peace for everyone. “It was easier for Yusef to move on and see a path forward.”After the construction job, Mr. Salaam worked in tech at Weill Cornell, became a motivational speaker, wrote books, received a lifetime achievement award from Barack Obama and helped to raise 10 children — seven of his own and three stepchildren.He would like to bring more public bathrooms to Harlem. He worries about the effects of global warming on people who make their living as outdoor vendors. He wants people to look inward and to look outward, to try to stay positive. Yet to this day he has not had an apology from any of the prosecutors in his case. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Upper Manhattan voters have embraced him overwhelmingly. A landslide can be the best revenge. More

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      The Biden-Trump Rematch Is Already Here

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      One of the most significant developments in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election has emerged largely under the radar. From 2016 to 2022, the number of white people without college degrees — the core of Donald Trump’s support — has fallen by 2.1 million.Over the same period, the number of white people who have graduated from college — an increasingly Democratic constituency — has grown by 13.3 million.These trends do not bode well for the prospects of Republican candidates, especially Trump. President Biden won whites with college degrees in 2020, 51-48, but Trump won by a landslide, 67-32, among whites without degrees, according to network exit polls.Even so, there is new data that reflects Trump’s ongoing and disruptive quest for power.In a paper published last year, “Donald Trump and the Lie,” Kevin Arceneaux and Rory Truex, political scientists at Sciences Po-Paris and Princeton, analyzed 40 days of polling conducted intermittently over the crucial period from Oct. 27, 2020, through Jan. 29, 2021.The authors found that Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him has had continuing ramifications:The lie is pervasive and sticky: the number of Republicans and independents saying that they believe the election was fraudulent is substantial, and this proportion did not change appreciably over time or shift after important political developments. Belief in the lie may have buoyed some of Trump supporters’ self-esteem.In reaction to the lie, Arceneaux and Truex write, “there was a significant rise in support for violent political activism among Democrats, which only waned after efforts to overturn the election clearly failed.”Endorsement of the lie pays off for Republicans, Arceneaux and Truex argue: “Republican voters reward politicians who perpetuate the lie, giving Republican candidates an incentive to continue to do so in the next electoral cycle.”These trends are among the most striking developments setting the stage for the 2024 elections.Among the additional conditions working to the advantage of Democrats are the increase in Democratic Party loyalty and ideological consistency; the political mobilization of liberal constituencies by adverse Supreme Court rulings; an initial edge in the fight for an Electoral College majority; and the increase in nonreligious voters along with a decline in churchgoing believers.These and other factors have prompted two Democratic strategists, Celinda Lake and Mike Lux, to declare, “All the elements are in place for a big Democratic victory in 2024.” In “Democrats Could Win a Trifecta in 2024,” a May 9 memo released to the public, the two even voiced optimism over the biggest hurdle facing Democrats, retaining control of the Senate in 2024, when as many as eight Democratic-held seats are competitive while the Republican seats are in solidly red states:While these challenges are real, they can be overcome, and the problems are overstated. Remember that this same tough Senate map produced a net of five Democratic pickups in the 2000 election, which Gore narrowly lost to Bush; six Democratic pickups in 2006, allowing Democrats to retake the Senate; and two more in 2012. If we have a good election year overall, we have a very good chance at Democrats holding the Senate.Republican advantages include high rates of crime (although modestly declining in 2023 so far), homelessness and dysfunction in cities run by Democrats; a parents’ rights movement opposed to teaching of so-called critical race theory and gender-fluid concepts; and declining public support for gay rights and especially trans rights.There are, needless to say, a host of uncertainties.One key factor will be the salience on Election Day of issues closely linked to race in many voters’ minds, including school integration, affordable housing, the end of affirmative action, crime, urban disorder and government spending on social programs. As a general rule, the higher these issues rank in voters’ priorities, the better Republicans do. In that respect, the success of conservatives in barring the use of race in college admissions has taken a Republican issue off the table.Frances Lee, a political scientist at Princeton, noted in an email that in the “sour environment” of today’s politics, “many voters may be tempted toward a protest vote, and it is likely that there will be some options available for such voters.” It is not clear, Lee added, “what No Labels will do, but the potential there introduces considerable additional uncertainty.”Asked what factors he would cite as crucial to determining the outcome of the 2024 election, Ray La Raja, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, pointed out by email:The economy is the source of the most uncertainty — it is doing well, although inflation is not fully tamed. Will things continue to improve and will Biden start to get credit? This is especially important for white working-class voters in swing states like Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory, documents growing Democratic unity in two 2023 papers, “Both White and Nonwhite Democrats Are Moving Left” and “The Transformation of the American Electorate.”As a result of these trends toward intraparty consensus, there has been a steady drop in the percentage of Democratic defections to the opposition, as the party’s voters have become less vulnerable to wedge-issue tactics, especially wedge issues closely tied to race.From 2012 to 2020, Abramowitz wrote in the Transformation paper, “there was a dramatic increase in liberalism among Democratic voters.” As a result of these shifts, he continued, “Democratic voters are now as consistent in their liberalism as Republican voters are in their conservatism.”Most important, Abramowitz wrote, therise in ideological congruence among Democratic voters — and especially among white Democratic voters — has had important consequences for voting behavior. For many years, white Democrats have lagged behind nonwhite Democrats in loyalty to Democratic presidential candidates. In 2020, however, this gap almost disappeared with white Democratic identifiers almost as loyal as nonwhite Democratic identifiers.Three Supreme Court decisions handed down in the last week of June — rejecting the Biden administration’s program to forgive student loan debt, affirming the right of a web designer to refuse to construct wedding websites for same-sex couples and ruling unconstitutional the use of race by colleges in student admissions — are, in turn, quite likely to increase Democratic turnout more than Republican turnout on Election Day.Politically, one of the most effective tools for mobilizing voters is to emphasize lost rights and resources.This was the case after last June’s Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which eliminated the right to abortion and in the 2022 midterm elections mobilized millions of pro-choice voters. By that logic, the three decisions I mentioned should raise turnout among students, gays and African Americans, all Democratic constituencies.My Times colleague Jonathan Weisman argued in a July 1 article, “Supreme Court Decisions on Education Could Offer Democrats an Opening,” that the rulings giveDemocrats a way to shift from a race-based discussion of preference to one tied more to class. The court’s decision could fuel broader outreach to the working-class voters who have drifted away from the party because of what they see as its elitism.In addition, Weisman wrote, “Republicans’ remarkable successes before the new court may have actually deprived them of combative issues to galvanize voters going into 2024.”The education trends favoring Democrats are reinforced by Americans’ changing religious beliefs. From 2006 to 2022, the Public Religion Research Institute found, the white evangelical Protestant share of the population fell from 23 percent to 13.9 percent. Over the same period, the nonreligious share of the population rose from 16 to 26.8 percent.Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University, found that the nonreligious can be broken down into three groups: atheists, who are the most Democratic, voting 85-11 for Biden over Trump; followed by agnostics, 78-18 for Biden; and those Burge calls “nothing in particular,” 63-35 for Biden.The last of the pro-Democratic developments is an initial advantage in Electoral College votes, according to an analysis at this early stage in the contest.Kyle D. Kondik, managing editor of Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, published “Electoral College Ratings: Expect Another Highly Competitive Election” last week.“We are starting 260 electoral votes worth of states as at least leaning Democratic,” Kondik writes, “and 235 as at least leaning Republican,” with “just 43 tossup electoral votes at the outset.”In other words, if this prediction holds true until November 2024, the Democratic candidate would need to win 20 more Electoral College votes while the Republican nominee would need to win 35.The competitive states, Kondik continues, “are Arizona (11 votes), Georgia (16) and Wisconsin (10) — the three closest states in 2020 — along with Nevada (6), which has voted Democratic in each of the last four presidential elections but by closer margins each time.”In the case of Arizona, Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford, argued in an email that domestic migration from California to Arizona is substantial enough to help shift the state from red to purple.“In some recent work we have done comparing California, Arizona and Texas,” Cain added, “we find that the movement of Californians is greater in absolute numbers to Texas, but proportionately more impactful to Arizona.”People who move, Cain continued,make Arizona a bit more polarized and close to the Arizona purple profile. They contribute to polarized purpleness. Enough move over a four-year period to have a measurable impact in a close race. Unlike immigrants, domestic migrants can become voters instantly.How about the other side of the aisle?Daniel Kreiss, a professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of North Carolina, writing by email, cited the Republican advantage gained from diminished content regulation on social media platforms: “This platform rollback stems broadly from Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, which gave other platforms a green light to drop electoral and public health protections.”The beneficiaries of this deregulation, Kreiss continued, are “Trump and Republicans more broadly who use disinformation as a strategic political tool.”These content regulation policies are a sharp policy shift on the part of the owners and managers of social media websites, Bridget Barrett, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Media, Communication and Information, and Kreiss write in a June 29 paper, “Platforms Are Abandoning U.S. Democracy.”They argue that in the aftermath of the 2020 electionplatforms took serious steps to protect elections and the peaceful transfer of power, including creating policies against electoral disinformation and enforcing violations — including by Trump and other candidates and elected officials. And deplatforming the former president after an illegitimate attempt to seize power was a necessary step to quell the violence.More recently, Barrett and Kreiss note, “social media platforms have walked away from their commitments to protect democracy. So much so that the current state of platform content moderation is more like 2016 than 2020.”Frances Lee pointed out that Cornel West’s entry into the presidential election as a candidate of the Green Party will siphon some liberal voters away from Biden: “West has announced a presidential bid and has now moved from the People’s Party to the Green Party, which will have ballot access in most states,” she wrote.Insofar as West gains support, it will in all likelihood be at Democrats’ expense. West is a prominent figure in progressive circles and his agenda is explicitly an appeal to the left.In a June 28 appearance on C-SPAN, West declared:We need jobs with a living wage. We need decent housing, quality education, the basic social needs. You can imagine disproportionately Black and brown are wrestling with poverty. The abolition of poverty and homelessness. I want jobs with a living wage across the board. I want a U.S. foreign policy that is not tied to big money and corporate interests.While West will draw support from very liberal Democrats, there is another factor that may well weaken Democratic support among some moderate voters: the seeming insolubility of homeless encampments, shoplifting, carjacking and crime generally in major cities. This has the potential to tilt the playing field in favor of Republican law-and-order candidates, as it did in the 2023 Wisconsin Senate race and in suburban New York House contests.In 2022, crime ranked high among voter concerns, but Republicans who campaigned on themes attacking Democrats as weak on crime met with mixed results.A recent trend raising Republican prospects is the Gallup Poll finding that the percentage of people “who say gay or lesbian relations are morally acceptable” fell by 7 percentage points, from a record high of 71 percent in 2022 to 64 percent this year.There was a six-point drop among Democrats on this question, from 85 to 79 percent approval, and a precipitous 15-point falloff among Republicans, 56 to 41 percent. Independents, in contrast, went from 71 percent approval to 72 percent. The overall decline reversed 20 years of steadily rising approval, which has grown from 39 percent in 2002 to 71 percent in 2022. Gallup also found that the public is holding increasingly conservative views on key issues related to gender transition.Asked “Do you think transgender athletes should be able to play on sports teams that match their current gender identity or should only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth gender?” the public favored birth gender by 28 points, 62-34, in May 2021. In May 2023, the margin grew to 41 points, 69-28.Similarly, Gallup asked “Regardless of whether or not you think it should be legal, please tell me whether you personally believe that in general it is morally acceptable or morally wrong to change one’s gender.” In May 2021, 51 percent said morally wrong, 46 percent said acceptable. In May 2023, 55 percent said morally wrong, 43 percent said acceptable.President Biden is a strong supporter of transgender rights. On March 31, the White House released “Statement From President Joe Biden on Transgender Day of Visibility,” in which Biden vowed:My administration will never quit fighting to end discrimination, to stand against unjust state laws, and to guarantee everyone the fundamental right and freedom to be who they are. We’ll never stop working to create a world where everyone can live without fear; where parents, teachers and whole communities come together to support kids, no matter how they identify; and every child is surrounded by compassion and love.Republican candidates are moving in the opposite direction. At the Faith and Freedom conference last month in Washington, Mike Pence promised to “end the gender ideology that is running rampant in our schools, and we will ban chemical and surgical gender transition treatment for kids under the age of 18.”Ron DeSantis told the gathering:The left is lighting the fire of a cultural revolution all across this land. The fire smolders in our schools. It smolders in corporate board rooms. It smolders in the homes of government. We’re told that we must accept that men can get pregnant. We are told to celebrate a swimmer who swam for three years on the men’s team, then switches to the women’s team and somehow is named the women’s champion.The 2020 election raised a new concern for Democrats: Trump’s success in increasing his support from 2016 among Latino voters.Kyle Kondik’s analysis shows that Nevada (17 percent of the vote was Hispanic in 2020) and Arizona (19 percent was Hispanic) are two of the four tossup states in 2024. This suggests that the Latino vote will be crucial.While acknowledging the gains Trump and fellow Republicans have made among Latino voters, a June 2023 analysis of the 2022 election, “Latino Voters & The Case of the Missing Red Wave,” by Equis, a network of three allied, nonpartisan research groups, found that with the exception of Florida, “at the end of the day, there turned out to be basic stability in support levels among Latinos in highly contested races.” In short, the report’s authors continued, “the G.O.P. held gains they had made since 2016/2018 but weren’t able to build on them.”In Florida, the report documented a six-year collapse in Democratic voting among Hispanics: In 2016, Hillary Clinton won 66 percent of the Latino vote; in 2020, Biden won 51 percent and in 2022 Democratic congressional candidates won 44 percent.The Equis study also pointed to some significant Democratic liabilities among Latino voters: Substantial percentages of a key bloc of pro-Democratic Hispanics — those who say they believe Democrats “are better for Hispanics” — harbor significant doubts about the party. For example, 44 percent agreed that “Democrats don’t keep their promises” and 44 percent agreed that “Democrats take Latinos for granted.”In addition, the percentage of Latino voters describing immigration as the top issue — a stance favoring Democrats — has nose-dived, according to the Equis analysis, from 39 percent in 2016 to 16 percent in 2020 and 12 percent in 2022.Where, then, does all this contradictory information leave us as to the probable outcome of the 2024 election? The reasonable answer is: in the dark.The RealClearPolitics average of the eight most recent Trump vs. Biden polls has Trump up by a statistically insignificant 0.6 percent. From August 2021 to the present, RealClear has tracked a total of 101 polls pitting these two against each other. Trump led in 56, Biden 38, and the remainder were ties.While this polling suggests Trump has an even chance, surveys do not fully capture the weight of Trump’s indictments and falsehoods on his own candidacy and, as evidenced in competitive races in 2022, on Republicans who are closely tied to the former president.Among the key voters who, in all likelihood, will pick the next president — relatively well-educated suburbanites — Trump has become toxic. He is, at least in that sense, Biden’s best hope for winning a second term.Even before the votes are counted on Nov. 5, 2024, the most important question may well turn out to be: If Trump is the Republican candidate for a third straight time and loses the election for a second, will he once again attempt to claim victory was stolen from him? And if he does, what will his followers — and for that matter, everyone else — do?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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      Pro-Vaccine Views Are Winning. Don’t Fear the Skeptics.

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      With Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, vaccine skepticism has been back in the headlines. Though Kennedy has said he isn’t anti-vaccine and that his children have had vaccines, and his campaign manager (the former Democratic congressman and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich) says calling Kennedy “anti-vax” is a “left-handed smear,” Kennedy continues to suggest a link between vaccines and autism — a link that has leaned heavily on flawed and retracted science. He’s also been a vocal opponent of Covid vaccines.When a flurry of April polls indicated that Kennedy would enjoy double-digit support in a Democratic primary, I wondered if the respondents knew about his views on vaccines and agreed with them, if they were intrigued about the possibility of a contested primary or if they just had warm feelings about the Kennedy name. I worried that Covid vaccine skepticism had potentially sullied Americans’ feelings about all vaccines: If a meaningful slice of the Democratic electorate was either vaccine hesitant or indifferent to vaccine skepticism, I’d be concerned about dangerous diseases like polio, diphtheria, measles and mumps making a comeback.I was relieved, then, to see a survey from Pew Research in May that found that in 2023, 88 percent of American adults believe that the benefits of the M.M.R. (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine outweigh the risk — the same percentage that Pew found in 2016 and 2019. Per Pew, there’s been some softening in vaccine trust, particularly among Republicans and white evangelical Christians (who lean Republican), and this jibes with Republicans’ negative views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and several other government agencies. But overall, the picture isn’t dire.When you look at rates of vaccination among young children for potentially dangerous infectious diseases, the data is encouraging. According to a study published in January in the C.D.C.’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report:Vaccination coverage among young children has remained high and stable for most vaccines, although disparities persist. The National Immunization Survey-Child identified no decline overall in routine vaccination coverage associated with the Covid-19 pandemic among children born during 2018-2019, although declines were observed among children living below the federal poverty level and in rural areas.Per the C.D.C., for children born in 2018 and 2019, coverage was over 90 percent for the polio, M.M.R., hepatitis B and varicella (chickenpox) vaccines. A major barrier to receiving vaccines seems to be access to health care — according to the C.D.C., “The proportion of children who were unvaccinated by age 24 months was eight times higher for uninsured compared with privately insured children.”Even for children who missed routine visits and vaccine doses in the darkest days of 2020, the C.D.C. “did not identify any consistent or persistent decline in vaccination coverage associated with the Covid-19 pandemic.” When there were “transient declines” in coverage of some vaccines, children appeared to catch up with their doses at later dates.Acceptance of Covid vaccines is also one the rise in the United States. In a survey of Covid vaccine acceptance in 23 countries in 2022, published in January in the journal Nature, researchers found that 80.2 percent of Americans accepted the Covid vaccine, higher than the global average of 79.1 percent. (Vaccine acceptance was defined as “having received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine and, if not, willingness to take the Covid-19 vaccine when it is available to them.”)Still, parents in the United States are more hesitant about getting the vaccines for their kids than for themselves. Though 33.1 percent of American parents were hesitant about the vaccine in 2022, that was a nearly 12.9 percent decrease in hesitancy from 2021 — with time, more parents are able to trust that the vaccines’ benefits matter. (Hesitancy for children among parents was defined as “having reported ‘no’ to the question of whether children received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine and also ‘unsure/no opinion’, ‘somewhat disagree’ or ‘strongly disagree’ to the question of whether children will take a Covid-19 vaccine when available to them.”That it was going to take time for parents to get comfortable with Covid vaccines for their kids was predictable. As Dr. Aaron Carroll, a pediatrician and the chief health officer at Indiana University, wrote for The Atlantic in 2021: “Parents tend to be skeptical of new vaccines. Whenever one is introduced, many of them are initially hesitant to adopt it.” He went on to explain that though the highly effective varicella vaccine was approved in 1995, “uptake levels were initially low, with only 34 percent of eligible adolescents fully immunized by 2008,” despite recipients showing few side effects. But now, as noted above, the vaccination rate for varicella is over 90 percent.Two years ago, when I talked to parents who were skeptical about Covid vaccines for their children, they weren’t broadly anti-vaccine. They were worried about the newness of the vaccines, about allergies and about side effects. As one mom put it, “I’m not anti-vax but this all seems just too fast for me. I don’t want my children to be responding to those lawyer ads you see on TV 25 years from now. You know the ones: ‘If you were under the age of 16 in the years 2021-2022 and received the Covid-19 vaccination you could be entitled to compensation …’.”I know there’s some concern that amplifying Kennedy’s beliefs about vaccines will make the vaccine hesitant even more hesitant. But I wonder if all of the attention paid to vaccine skeptics in recent years could be having the opposite effect — that people are being exposed to skeptics’ unfettered theories on podcasts and social media and ultimately finding those views unconvincing. In June, my Opinion colleague Michelle Goldberg went to a Kennedy rally to talk to some of his supporters and she wrote: “As media coverage has made Democrats more aware of Kennedy’s conspiratorial views, his support has fallen; a recent St. Anselm poll had him at only 9 percent” among registered voters in the early and influential primary state of New Hampshire.Many scientific experts have worked to promote accurate and up-to-date information about vaccines, including Covid vaccines. In some cases, they’ve spent a lot of social capital in their efforts to debunk falsehoods. Many journalists have asked vaccine skeptics tough questions. Simply shaming those who don’t want to get their children vaccinated, for whatever reason, is not effective.What does work? As Dr. Katelyn Jetelina and Dr. Kristen Panthagani write for the newsletter Your Local Epidemiologist, some people have serious, good-faith questions about vaccines, and they shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand:Legitimate concerns exist. In fact, the vast majority of people who have questions or doubts about vaccines don’t outright deny vaccines as beneficial. They are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.Answering people with valid questions needs to be scientists’ priority. We need to meet them where they are, answer their questions from a place of empathy not condescension, equip trusted messengers, and anticipate concerns so we can prevent information voids that will otherwise be filled with false rumors.This is happening all the time. And looking at the data, I have confidence that it’s working. More

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      Biden Sidesteps Any Notion That He’s a ‘Flaming Woke Warrior’

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      Despite his alliance with abortion-rights supporters and L.G.B.T.Q. advocates, the president has deftly avoided becoming enmeshed in battles over hotly contested social issues.President Biden memorably jumped the gun on Barack Obama in endorsing same-sex marriage more than a decade ago, but at a June fund-raiser near San Francisco, he couldn’t recall the letters L.G.B.T.Q.And even as the Democratic Party makes the fight for abortion rights central to its political message, Mr. Biden last week declared himself “not big on abortion.”At a moment when the American political parties are trading fierce fire from the trenches of a war over social and cultural policy, the president is staying out of the fray.White, male, 80 years old and not particularly up-to-date on the language of the left, Mr. Biden has largely avoided becoming enmeshed in contemporary battles over gender, abortion and other hotly contested social issues — even as he does things like hosting what he called “the largest Pride Month celebration ever held at the White House.”Republicans have tried to pull him in, but appear to recognize the difficulty: When G.O.P. presidential candidates vow to end what they derisively call “woke” culture, they often aim their barbs not directly at Mr. Biden but at big corporations like Disney and BlackRock or the vast “administrative state” of the federal government. Republican strategists say most of their party’s message on abortion and transgender issues is aimed at primary voters, while Mr. Biden is seen as far more vulnerable in a general election on the economy, crime and immigration.Mr. Biden’s armor against cultural attacks might seem unlikely for a president who has strongly advocated for L.G.B.T.Q. people, the leader of a party whose fortunes ride on the wave of abortion politics, and a man who owes his presidency to unbending support from Black Democratic primary voters.Yet despite adopting positions over the years that pushed Democrats — and then the country — to embrace more liberal attitudes on social issues, Mr. Biden has kept himself at arms’ length from elements of his party that could pose him political problems. In June, the White House said it had barred a transgender activist who went topless at its Pride event.And while Mr. Biden’s age has become one of his chief political weaknesses, both his allies and adversaries say it also helps insulate him from cultural attacks by Republicans.Mr. Biden held a celebration of Pride Month on the South Lawn of the White House last month.Pete Marovich for The New York Times“Everybody wants to talk about how old Joe Biden is, but the truth of the matter is it’s his age and his experience allow him to be who he is and allow him to say the things and to help people in a way that nobody else can,” said Henry R. Muñoz III, a former Democratic National Committee finance director. Mr. Muñoz, who is gay, had Mr. Biden serve as his wedding officiant in 2017.Much of Mr. Biden’s loyalty from L.G.B.T.Q. Democrats stems from his 2012 endorsement of same-sex marriages when Mr. Obama was still officially opposed to them. Mr. Biden’s position was seen as politically risky at the time, before the Supreme Court in 2015 recognized the right of same-sex couples to marry, but has evolved into something he bragged about during his 2020 campaign.He has also been on the forefront of recognizing transgender rights. In his first week in office, Mr. Biden ended the Trump-era ban on transgender troops in the military. In December, he signed into law federal protections for same-sex marriages.At the same time, Mr. Biden has not adopted the terminology of progressive activists or allowed himself to be drawn into public debates that might leave him outside the political mainstream. On Thursday, after the Supreme Court’s major ruling ending affirmative action in college admissions, a reporter asked him, “Is this a rogue court?”Pausing to think for a moment, Mr. Biden responded, “This is not a normal court.”He also does not always remember the words most American politicians use to describe same-sex people. At the fund-raiser near San Francisco last month, Mr. Biden lamented the Supreme Court’s decision last year that ended the national right to an abortion and suggested the court was coming for gay rights next.Pro-L.G.B.T.Q. demonstrators protesting outside a gathering of the conservative group Moms for Liberty on Friday in Philadelphia. Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesParaphrasing two of the conservative justices, he said: “There’s no constitutional right in the law for H-B, excuse me, for gay, lesbian, you know, the whole, the whole group. There’s no constitutional protection.”During a stop at the Iowa State Fair during his 2020 campaign, a conservative provocateur trailing the Democratic presidential candidates asked Mr. Biden, “How many genders are there?”Mr. Biden replied: “There are at least three. Don’t play games with me, kid.”Then, perhaps not realizing that his inquisitor was a right-wing activist, Mr. Biden added: “By the way, first one to come out for marriage was me.”Sarah McBride, a Delaware state senator who recently began a campaign to become the first transgender member of Congress, said Mr. Biden’s language gave him the ability to solidify Democrats behind a progressive social agenda and “reach communities and demographics that are not yet fully in the coalition.”“He’s not getting caught up on rhetoric that isn’t understandable for your middle-of-the-road voter,” Ms. McBride said.She also pointed to Mr. Biden’s age as helpful for making Democrats’ case on social issues without alienating skeptical voters.“His background allows him to say things that I think would be heard as more radical if they were said by a younger politician,” she said.As majorities of Americans have accepted gay marriage, social conservatives have made opposition to transgender rights a mainstay of their politics. And Republicans running to displace Mr. Biden have tended to focus on energizing G.O.P. primary voters rather than making a villain out of the president.“It’s hard to paint an 80-year-old white man as a flaming woke warrior,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime pollster for Republican candidates.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is perhaps the leading purveyor of Republicans’ anti-“woke” message, throwing barbs both online and in speeches. On Friday, his campaign cast even Mr. Trump as too liberal on L.G.B.T.Q. issues in a provocative video posted on Twitter.At a June rally in Tulsa, Okla., Mr. DeSantis described being approached by military veterans who don’t want their children and grandchildren joining the armed forces because of liberal policy changes instituted by Democrats — though the governor blamed Mr. Obama as much as he did Mr. Biden.“A woke military is not going to be a strong military,” Mr. DeSantis said. “You got to get the politicization out of it. And on Day 1, we’re ripping out all the Obama-Biden policies to woke-ify the military.”Mr. Biden has never presented as a left-wing culture warrior. A Catholic, he has long been wary about jumping headlong into fights over abortion rights. Even as his campaign and party are preparing to make his re-election bid a referendum on Republican efforts to further restrict abortion, Mr. Biden proclaimed to a crowd of donors in suburban Washington that he himself was not eager to do so.“You know, I happen to be a practicing Catholic,” Mr. Biden said last week. “I’m not big on abortion. But guess what? Roe v. Wade got it right.”That stance has long caused some consternation among Democrats. It took until June 2019, weeks after beginning his 2020 campaign and under immense pressure from allies in his party, for Mr. Biden to renounce his long-held support for banning federal funding for abortions.Renee Bracey Sherman, the founder of We Testify, a group that shares women’s stories of having abortions, said Mr. Biden would need to adopt a more forceful position in favor of abortion rights to energize liberal voters in 2024. She suggested that in the same way Mr. Biden hosts championship sports teams at the White House, he should invite women who have had abortions to come and tell their stories.“The midterms show that Americans love abortion,” Ms. Bracey Sherman said. “Abortion has a higher approval rating than he does. He should be riding the abortion wave.”Kristi Eaton More

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      Pro-Kennedy Super PAC Says It Has Raised $10 Million

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      A super PAC backing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said an even mix of Republicans and Democrats contributed to its $10.25 million haul. A political action committee supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign has raised a total of $10.25 million, one of its leaders said on Monday, a signal that his long-shot challenge to President Biden has gained traction among donors, including many Republicans.The precise level of fund-raising by the super PAC, American Values 2024, will not be known until later this month, when political action committees file midyear reports with the Federal Election Commission. But Tony Lyons, Mr. Kennedy’s publisher and the super PAC’s co-chair, said that the $10.25 million included two “very large” donations that each exceed $1 million, and that the contributions came from a “right down the middle” mix of Republicans and Democrats.Mr. Kennedy, a 69-year-old environmental lawyer and prominent skeptic of vaccines and prescription medications, often cites contorted statistics and unfounded theories. He has gained a foothold in the race, even as he has railed against the Democratic Party, accused public health authorities of corruption and increasingly embraced conservative figures and causes.Mr. Kennedy will not come close to summoning the kind of financial support that will flow to Mr. Biden, who as the incumbent has the might of the Democratic National Committee and a robust donor infrastructure behind him. Mr. Kennedy’s support among Democrats has reached as high as 20 percent in polls, although a poll conducted in June by the Saint Anselm College Survey Center put his Democratic support in New Hampshire at 9 percent. He has also appealed to prospective voters outside the party: A Quinnipiac University poll in June found that 40 percent of Republicans viewed him favorably, compared with 31 percent of independents and 25 percent of Democrats.Mr. Biden’s campaign has not yet announced fund-raising numbers. The super PAC American Values 2024 was formed last year as the People’s Pharma Movement, and was initially financed by $500,000 in contributions from Mark Gorton, a New York City investor, records show. Mr. Gorton, who is supporting Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy, has said he knows Mr. Kennedy through the “health freedom” movement, which broadly opposes vaccinations and the regulation of health practices.The committee was renamed this past spring, after Mr. Kennedy entered the race for the Democratic nomination in April. A majority of the $10.25 million has come since then, Mr. Lyons said. As recently as the first week of June, the PAC’s total haul was $5.7 million, committee officials said, indicating that nearly $5 million more arrived in the weeks before the June 30 reporting deadline. The range of political affiliations among the donors, Mr. Lyons said, showed that “there really are people across the political spectrum who feel he’s going to fight corruption in government and corporate takeover of government agencies.” In recent speeches and appearances, Mr. Kennedy has leaned on his family’s storied political history, and framed his race as a bid to “heal the divide” in American politics, which he has described as being captive to corporate power.The PAC is separate from his campaign, which last week sent out requests to hit a $5 million goal to close out its first full quarter of fund-raising. On Friday, the campaign boasted of a $1 million haul in a 24-hour period. Dennis Kucinich, the former presidential candidate and former Ohio congressman who is serving as Mr. Kennedy’s campaign manager, said the campaign expected to make a fund-raising announcement this week. Official numbers will be filed with the F.E.C. this month.A second group supporting Mr. Kennedy, Common Sense PAC, was formed in Los Angeles in April by Sofia Karstens, an actress who has been active in the health freedom movement. Common Sense hosted a fund-raiser for Mr. Kennedy last month in San Francisco along with two tech investors, David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya. That event raised nearly $1 million, Ms. Karstens said.Ms. Karstens did not have the PAC’s latest total fund-raising immediately available on Monday. More

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      In North Carolina, a Voting Rights Clash Ahead of 2024

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      Republicans, whose edge in the state has narrowed in recent years, have gone on offense politically, leading to clashes over voting access and control over elections.A closely watched political fight is developing in North Carolina over voting rights and control of elections, as Democrats aim to recapture a presidential battleground and Republicans look to win back the governor’s office.Much as Georgia, Florida and Texas drew an outpouring of national attention and political cash as Republicans moved to restrict voting in the heated months after the 2020 election, North Carolina is poised for headline-grabbing confrontations over nearly every lever of the electoral apparatus.In the Republican-led legislature, the State House is considering two bills passed by the Senate that would sharply alter how elections are run, adding voting restrictions and effectively neutering the state elections board, which is now controlled by Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat. And in a looming redistricting clash, the newly conservative State Supreme Court has ordered lawmakers to redraw the state’s congressional and state legislative maps, which will most likely be far friendlier to Republicans.In North Carolina, every little edge could matter: The state, despite a long string of Republican presidential victories interrupted by Barack Obama’s 2008 triumph, has grown increasingly close. Donald J. Trump squeezed by in 2020 by just over a percentage point, and President Biden’s allies have signaled that they plan to invest in the state in 2024, seeing it as potentially winnable. Mr. Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and other Republican candidates have already held events in North Carolina as they contend for their party’s nomination.“North Carolina is one of the states that have both of the factors that exacerbate this,” said Wendy Weiser, the vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice, referring to Republican attempts to wield more power over voting and elections. “It is a battleground state and a state that has a history of discrimination in voting.”She added, “It is definitely one of the most critical states to be worried about.”Seismic shifts in North Carolina politics cleared the runway for Republicans to go on offense. They now have veto-proof legislative majorities after a Democratic representative defected to the G.O.P. in April, limiting what Mr. Cooper can halt. And conservatives captured the State Supreme Court in last year’s elections, upending it from a 4-to-3 liberal lean to a 5-to-2 conservative advantage.Republicans gained veto-proof majorities in the North Carolina General Assembly this spring, and last year they won control of the State Supreme Court. Travis Dove for The New York TimesBehind the scenes, a network of right-wing activists and election deniers led by Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who played a key role in efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election, has been meeting with North Carolina lawmakers, pushing its priorities and helping shape certain provisions.Across the country, Republicans continue to try to tighten voting laws, arguing that they are needed to protect “election integrity” and pointing to voters’ Trump-fueled worries about election fraud.So far this year, at least 11 states have passed 13 laws adding such restrictions, according to the Brennan Center. That is a slightly slower clip than in 2021, when Republican-led legislatures passed a flurry of voting laws, often in response to election lies spread by Mr. Trump and his supporters.North Carolina has a particularly tortured past on voting rights. Under the Voting Rights Act, parts of the state were forced to obtain federal clearance to change voting laws because of their history of racially discriminatory election rules. More recently, in 2016, a federal court struck down a Republican-led voter identification law, saying it had targeted “African Americans with almost surgical precision.”Republicans have defended the latest measures. State Senator Warren Daniel, one of the primary sponsors of the bill to change voting laws, said on the chamber floor that the measure “increases confidence and transparency in our elections.” He added that certain changes, including a provision requiring that all absentee ballots be received by the time polls close on Election Day, would bring North Carolina in line with many other states.Democrats, however, have denounced the voting proposals, with one state senator, Natasha Marcus, going so far as to call them a “jumbo jet of voter suppression.” During final debate on the bill, she said it “includes a lot of problematic things that are going to dissuade people from voting, throw out ballots, and suppress the votes of certain people in a way that I think is discriminatory and anti-democratic.”A key provision would effectively eliminate same-day voter registration and replace it with a system in which voters would cast provisional ballots, then be required to follow up and verify their identities. Only some forms of identification would be acceptable: Data from the State Board of Elections found that in the four general elections since 2016, over 36 percent of voters who used same-day registration had provided IDs that the new law would not allow.Gov. Roy Cooper at an abortion-rights rally in downtown Raleigh, N.C., in May. Republicans will seek to reclaim the governor’s office next year.Kate Medley for The New York TimesIn 2016, when Republican state lawmakers tried to eliminate same-day registration, a Federal District Court found that it was “indisputable that African American voters disproportionately used” that method of voting. Black voters, the court found, made up 35 percent of same-day registrants in the 2012 election, while representing only 22 percent of the electorate.The new legislation also makes mail voting more complicated, adding a requirement that voters’ signatures be verified and a “two-factor” authentication process that would be unique to North Carolina and has left voting experts confused as to how it would work. As in other states, far more Democrats in North Carolina now vote by mail, with Mr. Trump and his allies instilling a widespread Republican distrust of the practice. In the 2022 midterm elections, more than 157,000 people in the state voted by mail. Forty-five percent were Democrats, and 35 percent were independents.As Republican lawmakers wrote the legislation, they received outside help.Three G.O.P. lawmakers, including Mr. Daniel, met in May with Ms. Mitchell, the Trump-allied lawyer, and Jim Womack, a leader of the North Carolina Election Integrity Teams. That organization is part of a national network of right-wing election activists coordinated in part by Ms. Mitchell, who declined to comment.The two activists pressed the lawmakers on their laundry list of changes to election laws, including measures on same-day registration, absentee ballots and maintenance of voter lists, according to a video in which Mr. Womack summarized the meeting. The video was obtained by Documented, a liberal investigative group, and shared with The New York Times.“Same-day registration, we’re all in agreement, violent agreement, that same-day registration will now be a provisional ballot,” Mr. Womack said in the video of the meeting. “So if you’re going to same-day register, it’s going to give you at least a little bit of time, maybe 7 to 10 days, to have a chance at researching and challenging that voter under the law as opposed to where it is now, where it’s less than 24 hours’ opportunity to do that.”Mr. Daniel declined to answer questions about the role Ms. Mitchell and Mr. Womack played in drafting the bills.Republicans have defended their proposed voting measures, saying that they will increase confidence in elections.Kate Medley for The New York TimesA 2017 law aiming to restructure the state election board was struck down by the State Supreme Court. Now that the court is more conservative, Republicans have resurrected the effort.Currently, Mr. Cooper appoints all five members of the board, but only three can be Democrats. Under the Republican proposal, the board would have eight members, all appointed by state lawmakers — four by Democratic leaders and four by Republican ones.State Senator Paul Newton, the bill’s Republican sponsor, introduced it as a measure “intended to take partisan advantage out of elections administration entirely.”The bill would all but certainly cause deadlock on many major election issues — a prospect that has alarmed election officials and democracy experts.The current election board, after reports of harassment of election officials in 2022, stepped in with rules limiting access for poll watchers, a move that angered conservatives.And there is one big unknown: What would happen if the new election board deadlocked over the certification of an election?That possibility is unaddressed in the bill. Phil Berger, the Republican leader of the State Senate, told The News and Observer that any such deadlock would probably send the matter to the courts, where decisions could depend on the partisan lean of the judge or court in question.“That’s a tell right there,” said Robyn Sanders, a counsel at the Brennan Center. “It seems pretty clear to me that it was deliberately designed so that there would be those kinds of situations.” More