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      Pence Calls Systemic Racism A ‘Left-Wing Myth'

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      Former Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday described systemic racism as a “left-wing myth” during a speech hosted by a Republican group in New Hampshire, adopting the racial politics of his former boss, President Donald J. Trump.But Mr. Pence, a potential candidate for a 2024 presidential run, also distanced himself from the former president, describing the Jan. 6 attack as “a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol.”“President Trump and I’ve spoken many times since we left office,” Mr. Pence said. “I don’t know if we’ll ever see eye-to-eye on that day.”The speech illustrated the careful balance Mr. Pence is aiming to strike in squaring the rhetoric of the Republican Party under Mr. Trump while standing by his opposition to Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.After focusing much of his speech on touting the achievements of the Trump administration, Mr. Pence took aim at “critical race theory,” a graduate school framework that has found its way into K-12 public education, asserting that young children are being taught “to be ashamed of their skin color.”“It is past time for America to discard the left-wing myth of systemic racism,” Mr. Pence said at the annual Lincoln Reagan Dinner hosted by the Hillsborough County Republicans in Manchester, N.H.“America is not a racist country,” Mr. Pence said to raucous applause, two days after President Biden commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre.Republicans have launched an energetic campaign in recent months aiming to dictate how historical and modern racism in America is taught in schools, and Mr. Pence indicated his support of efforts to ban critical race theory through legislation advanced in Republican-led states. Mr. Pence had previously targeted critical race theory in tweets and in his first speech in April after leaving office.Mr. Pence’s appeal to racial politics went beyond education. Discussing efforts to defund law enforcement agencies, the former vice president said “Black lives are not endangered by police, Black lives are saved by police,” co-opting the language of Black Lives Matter — a movement he had shunned in office. More

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      As Yang’s New York Ties Are Questioned, He Cites Anti-Asian Bias

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      Mr. Yang, who is seeking to make history as the city’s first Asian American mayor, says anti-Asian sentiment has crept into the campaign. Andrew Yang said that a New York Daily News cartoon played into anti-Asian stereotypes by characterizing him as a tourist.Andrew Seng for The New York TimesAndrew Yang, a son of Taiwanese immigrants and a leading candidate for mayor of New York City, took on issues of race and identity in extraordinarily personal terms on the campaign trail this week, seeking to reframe some criticisms of his candidacy as questions of his Americanness.Mr. Yang, a former presidential candidate, has in this race spoken out often and forcefully against a spike in anti-Asian violence that has alarmed many city residents.But his efforts to condemn anti-Asian racism entered a new phase this week, as he criticized unnamed opponents for questioning his New York credentials, while his typically private wife, Evelyn, appeared with him at a news conference to blast a cartoon that portrayed him as a tourist.The Yangs said the New York Daily News editorial cartoon played into anti-Asian stereotypes, and painted it as an example of subtle racism that had crept into the campaign.“It is not OK to use Andrew to make Asians the butt of racist jokes, especially during this time of unprecedented racial tension,” Ms. Yang said, her voice appearing to waver at times. “A time when Asians are being randomly attacked on our streets just because of how they look.”The joint news conference was called in part to denounce the cartoon, which the Daily News’s editorial board has defended, and in part to grapple with a spike in hate crimes and other attacks directed at Asian Americans. The Yangs spoke outside a subway stop in Queens on Tuesday, a day after a man of Asian descent had been pushed onto the tracks — one more incident in a string of violent assaults on Asian Americans across the city.The emotional appearance, which was later featured in part in a digital ad, also came as the mayoral race appears to be tightening in the final stretch. Mr. Yang, who repeated criticisms of the cartoon on CNN on Thursday, is seeking to make history as the city’s first Asian American mayor.From the beginning of his candidacy, Mr. Yang has banked on his ability to inspire significant turnout among Asian American voters, who have become an increasingly powerful force at the national level in recent campaigns.Even as Mr. Yang’s front-runner status has begun to slip in some recent polls, he has demonstrated growing traction with New York’s diverse Asian American community, landing the endorsement of Representative Grace Meng, the highest-ranking Asian American elected official in New York, earlier this month. And on Monday, State Senator John C. Liu of Queens, who has previously sounded skeptical of Mr. Yang, endorsed him, calling him “a bit our A.O.C.,” a reference to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.“It’s not easy to call out racism when it’s against you, because it’s not easy for anybody to cast themselves as the victim,” said Mr. Liu, who ran for mayor himself in 2013 and is known as a formidable surrogate and retail campaigner. “I’m very happy that he spoke out about it.”Mr. Yang, who was born in Schenectady, N.Y., and has lived in New York City for around 25 years, has faced vigorous scrutiny throughout the campaign over the depth of his civic ties to the city.His allies say that some of the mockery reinforces stereotypes that cast Asian Americans as outsiders — the “foreign tourist,” as Mr. Liu put it, as encapsulated in the cartoon. He has been ridiculed over his definition of a bodega and his knowledge of subway lines, and he sparked an incredulous online outcry after citing Times Square, near his Hell’s Kitchen apartment, as his favorite subway station.But Mr. Yang has also drawn criticism over the extent of his knowledge of municipal government and of the city’s fabric — issues that have nothing to do with his identity, but are central to questions surrounding his ability to govern.Indeed, he has never voted for mayor of the city he hopes to lead, or worked in its government. Before running for mayor, he has said, he “almost certainly” had never visited one of the city’s public housing developments. He has struggled to navigate any number of policy questions, from details about police disciplinary records to queries about the subway system.And he has in many ways branded himself as a political outsider who can think outside the constraints of a byzantine city bureaucracy.Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou of Manhattan said that it was legitimate and vital to question a candidate’s experience, but that there are ways to do so without raising questions of “belonging.”“I know what my experience brings to the table when I’m talking about different policies — that, to me, is important,” said Ms. Niou, who had previously supported Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, but withdrew that endorsement and has not backed anyone else. “You can talk about inexperience, you can talk about someone who has very little background knowledge about a particular policy issue. To say somebody is not belonging here is a whole other thing.”Art Chang, the only other Asian American seeking the Democratic mayoral nomination, said that he shared Mr. Yang’s criticism of the cartoon — but he was skeptical of Mr. Yang’s approach to addressing it, suggesting that other issues, like pandemic recovery, were more urgent..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“It’s fine to make a comment about a particular cartoon, but does it deserve more than a tweet? I’m not sure,” said Mr. Chang, a long-shot candidate. “If it had the word ‘Chang’ on the front, I would not have reacted the same way.”During his Tuesday appearance, Mr. Yang appeared reluctant to name names when asked which of his opponents were, in his view, casting doubt on his ties to the city — though he left the unmistakable impression that some contenders were doing just that.“Saying something like, ‘Welcome to New York,’ I just chalked it up to politics,” Mr. Yang said. “But if you have a pattern, particularly in an era when Asians are being cast as foreign and even being victimized on the basis of their race, then it becomes impossible to ignore.”Chris Coffey, his co-campaign manager, indicated on Thursday that the remarks referenced Mr. Stringer and Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, who has surpassed Mr. Yang in some recent polls. Both men have sharply questioned Mr. Yang’s qualifications to lead the city — and certainly, he has a mixed record of success in the business and nonprofit worlds.They have also jabbed him over the time he spent outside of New York City during the pandemic with his family (“Can you imagine trying to have two kids on virtual school in a two-bedroom apartment?” Mr. Yang asked), with Tyrone Stevens, a Stringer spokesman, remarking at the time, “We welcome Andrew Yang to the mayor’s race — and to New York City.”Mr. Yang’s comments were “a rebuke of any candidate who has tried to make Andrew an ‘other,’ and the two people that come to mind, for me at least, are Scott and Eric,” Mr. Coffey said. “I should also point out, Maya Wiley has been the opposite of that.”Both the Adams and Stringer camps fired back on Thursday with vigorous criticism of Mr. Yang’s ability to navigate the city’s political landscape, without otherwise touching on his identity.“Andrew Yang never voted in a local election then fled the city at its darkest hour,” said Evan Thies, an Adams spokesman, accusing Mr. Yang of returning to run for mayor. “That’s what Eric and so many New Yorkers think disqualifies him in this election.”Mr. Stevens said Mr. Yang has shown “ignorance of basic facts and issues.”“There has been a legitimate question from Day 1 of Mr. Yang’s candidacy, whether someone who’s never demonstrated any connection to the city’s civic life should be elected as its mayor,” he said. “To suggest my statement spoke to anything else is beyond disingenuous.”Mr. Liu, the state senator, said that there is “tremendous support” for Mr. Yang among Asian American voters — but he questioned the idea that voters felt particularly protective of him following the cartoon incident.“I don’t think voters tend to be defensive of candidates,” he said. Still, he went on, “The message we’ve all tried to project is, speak out, don’t be silent. It would have been, frankly, terrible if he didn’t speak out.” More

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      Prosecuting Nazi War Criminals

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      More from our inbox:A Resource for New York City VotersTruth, Race and Reconciliation  Illustration by The New York Times; photographs from the Gerson FamilyTo the Editor:Re “Immigration Lies, Past and Present” (Opinion guest essay, April 27):Daniela Gerson, in her tribute to her father, presents a misleading picture of the Office of Special Investigations in the U.S. Department of Justice, where her father served in 1980 and 1981. I was the director of that office, and Allan Gerson was a lawyer on my staff.To say that O.S.I. “did not prosecute Nazis based on their wartime crimes, but rather because they had lied on immigration forms” misunderstands the cases we presented. We proved those lies as a necessary predicate to proving the crimes themselves, to show that their entry was unlawful.The trials, and the judgments against them that followed, depended entirely on the compelling proof of their criminal actions. We had neither the purpose nor the desire to concern ourselves with those who, like Mr. Gerson’s parents, had merely lied on immigration forms, and certainly not those who, like them, were survivors of Nazi crimes.As federal prosecutors (we eschewed the characterization of “Nazi hunters”), our mandate from Congress and the attorney general was to present cases against Nazi criminals to secure the loss of their citizenship and their eventual deportation. Anyone who sat in the courtroom would have witnessed the prosecution of those criminals in full and fair trials, their complicity conclusively proved by the Nazis’ own documentation and the testimony of those who survived their crimes. That includes the federal judges who rendered the decisions of denaturalization and deportation.As Ms. Gerson states, her father left O.S.I. after 18 months, but at no time did he ever suggest to me any discontent with our “tactics,” our investigations and lawsuits, or the legal basis on which they securely rested.In April, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum awarded the Office of Special Investigations its highest honor, the Elie Wiesel Award. Howard M. Lorber, the museum’s chairman, said:“While true justice for the victims of the Holocaust is not possible, [Ambassador] Stuart Eizenstat and the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Special Investigations have each worked tirelessly in different ways to secure a measure of justice for the survivors and accountability for the perpetrators. We are honored to recognize their achievements and decades-long dedication to these noble pursuits.”That honor was not conferred on O.S.I. for the prosecution of lies on immigration forms.Allan A. RyanNorwell, Mass.The writer was director of the Office of Special Investigations at the Justice Department from 1980 to 1983 and is the author of “Quiet Neighbors: Prosecuting Nazi War Criminals in America.”A Resource for New York City VotersTo the Editor:Re “New York’s Electing a Mayor. New Yorkers Yawn” (front page, April 27):The last year has put a tremendous strain on millions who have lost a loved one, become extremely ill or faced financial hardship. Given the circumstances, it’s understandable that many New Yorkers are oblivious to the citywide primary elections on June 22.In addition to these circumstances, there are more than 400 candidates running for various offices in the city, and ranked-choice voting will be used for the first time.The people who win the primaries in less than seven weeks will most likely be the ones to shape our city for a generation to come. We need as many New Yorkers engaged in this election as possible to ensure that our city’s recovery benefits us all.If people feel overwhelmed by the prospect of educating themselves about who is running, that can’t be allowed to happen. That’s why we started ElectNYC.org, a comprehensive, nonpartisan guide to the 2021 elections, so voters can feel empowered to make the best choices for themselves and their communities.New Yorkers need a place where they can easily get unbiased information about who is running, where they stand on important issues and how to cast a ballot. We encourage everyone to use this valuable resource ahead of the June primary.Betsy GotbaumNew YorkThe writer is executive director of Citizens Union and a former New York City public advocate.Truth, Race and ReconciliationWilliam Sylvester White Jr., who was appointed to the rank of Ensign in the U.S. Naval Reserve during World War II, Chicago, 1940.Illustration by Alexandria Valentine; photograph by Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Black Troops Deserve Better” (Opinion guest essay, April 22):Theodore R. Johnson helps us all understand how systemic racism has corrupted our country. Now we need a truth and reconciliation commission to put these cases into their context.We will never reach a fair and equitable society until these issues are brought into the light of day. Denying that our country has been systemically racist and that this affects our world today is a falsehood.If we review the truth, maybe politicians will then take reparations arguments seriously.Daniel DziedzicRochester Hills, Mich. More

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      G.O.P. Seeks to Empower Poll Watchers, Raising Intimidation Worries

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      Republicans in several states are pushing bills to give poll watchers more autonomy. Alarmed election officials and voting rights activists say it’s a new attempt to target voters of color.HOUSTON — The red dot of a laser pointer circled downtown Houston on a map during a virtual training of poll watchers by the Harris County Republican Party. It highlighted densely populated, largely Black, Latino and Asian neighborhoods.“This is where the fraud is occurring,” a county Republican official said falsely in a leaked video of the training, which was held in March. A precinct chair in the northeastern, largely white suburbs of Houston, he said he was trying to recruit people from his area “to have the confidence and courage” to act as poll watchers in the circled areas in upcoming elections.A question at the bottom corner of the slide indicated just how many poll watchers the party wanted to mobilize: “Can we build a 10K Election Integrity Brigade?”As Republican lawmakers in major battleground states seek to make voting harder and more confusing through a web of new election laws, they are simultaneously making a concerted legislative push to grant more autonomy and access to partisan poll watchers — citizens trained by a campaign or a party and authorized by local election officials to observe the electoral process.This effort has alarmed election officials and voting rights activists alike: There is a long history of poll watchers being used to intimidate voters and harass election workers, often in ways that target Democratic-leaning communities of color and stoke fears that have the overall effect of voter suppression. During the 2020 election, President Donald J. Trump’s campaign repeatedly promoted its “army” of poll watchers as he publicly implored supporters to venture into heavily Black and Latino cities and hunt for voter fraud.Republicans have offered little evidence to justify a need for poll watchers to have expanded access and autonomy. As they have done for other election changes — including reduced early voting, stricter absentee ballot requirements and limits on drop boxes — they have grounded their reasoning in arguments that their voters want more secure elections. That desire was born in large part out of Mr. Trump’s repeated lies about last year’s presidential contest, which included complaints about insufficient poll watcher access.Now, with disputes over the rules governing voting now at a fever pitch, the rush to empower poll watchers threatens to inject further tension into elections.Both partisan and nonpartisan poll watching have been a key component of American elections for years, and Republicans and Democrats alike have routinely sent trained observers to the polls to monitor the process and report back on any worries. In recent decades, laws have often helped keep aggressive behavior at bay, preventing poll watchers from getting too close to voters or election officials, and maintaining a relatively low threshold for expelling anyone who misbehaves.But now Republican state lawmakers in 20 states have introduced at least 40 bills that would expand the powers of poll watchers, and 12 of those bills in six states are currently progressing through legislatures, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.In Texas, the Republican-controlled Legislature is advancing legislation that would allow them to photograph and video-record voters receiving assistance, as well as make it extremely difficult for election officials to order the removal of poll watchers.The video-recording measure has particularly alarmed voting rights groups, which argue that it could result in the unwanted identification of a voter in a video posted on social media, or allow isolated incidents to be used by partisan news outlets to craft a widespread narrative.“If you have a situation, for example, where people who are poll workers do not have the ability to throw out anybody at the polls who is being disruptive or anyone at the polls who is intimidating voters, that’s essentially authorizing voter intimidation,” said Jon Greenbaum, chief counsel for the nonpartisan Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.Republicans have been increasingly open in recent years about their intent to line up legions of supporters to monitor the polls. Following the lead of Mr. Trump, they have often framed the observational role in militaristic tones, amplifying their arguments of its necessity with false claims of widespread fraud. Just three years ago, the courts lifted a consent decree that for more than three decades had barred the Republican National Committee from taking an active role in poll watching; in 2020, the committee jumped back into the practice.In Florida, Republicans in the State Legislature passed a new election bill on Thursday that includes a provision allowing one partisan poll watcher per candidate on the ballot during the inspection of votes. The measure carries the potential to significantly overcrowd election officials. The bill also does not stipulate any distance that poll watchers must keep from election workers.In Michigan, a G.O.P. bill would allow challengers to sit close enough to read poll books, tabulators and other election records, and would let them challenge a voter’s eligibility if they had “a good reason.”The Republican drive to empower poll watchers adds to the mounting evidence that much of the party continues to view the 2020 election through the same lens as Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly argued that his losses in key states must have been because of fraud.President Donald J. Trump on the morning after the election. His campaign promoted an “army” of poll watchers.Doug Mills/The New York Times“It seems like the No. 1 goal of these laws is to perpetuate the Big Lie,” said Dale Ho, the director of the Voting Rights Project at the A.C.L.U. “So when you get these unfounded charges that there was fraud or cheating in the election and people say, ‘Well, that’s not detected,’ the purveyors of these lies say, ‘That’s because we weren’t able to observe.’”After the election last year, complaints that poll watchers had not been given enough access, or that their accusations of improperly cast ballots had been ignored, fueled numerous lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign and its Republican allies, nearly all of which failed.In Texas, the leaked video of the Harris County Republican Party’s training, which was published by the voting rights group Common Cause, recalled a similar episode from the 2010 midterm elections.That year, a Tea Party-affiliated group in Houston known as the King Street Patriots sent poll watchers to downtown polling locations. The flood of the mostly white observers into Black neighborhoods caused friction, and resurfaced not-too-distant memories when racial intimidation at the polls was commonplace in the South.The King Street Patriots would eventually evolve into True the Vote, one of the major national organizations now seeking more voting restrictions. Last year, True the Vote joined several lawsuits alleging fraud in the election (all failed) and led countrywide drives to try to recruit more poll watchers.Access for poll watchers is considered sacred by Texas Republicans; in the Legislature, they cited the difficulty in finding observers for drive-through voting and 24-hour voting as one of their reasons for proposing to ban such balloting methods.“Both parties want to have poll watchers, need to have poll watchers present,” State Senator Bryan Hughes, a Republican who sponsored the chamber’s version of the bill, said in an interview last month. “That protects everyone.”While the antagonistic language from the Trump campaign about its poll watchers was already a flash point in November, Democrats and voting rights groups are worried that relaxed rules will lead to more reports of aggressive behavior.In 2020, there were at least 44 reports of inappropriate behavior by poll watchers in Harris County, according to county records obtained by The New York Times. At one polling site on the outskirts of Houston, Cindy Wilson, the nonpartisan election official in charge, reported two aggressive poll watchers who she said had bothered voters and repeatedly challenged the staff.“Two Poll watchers stood close to the black voters (less than 3 feet away) and engaged in what I describe as intimidating behavior,” Ms. Wilson wrote in an email to the Harris County clerk that was obtained by The Times through an open records request.Ms. Wilson said she was not sure which campaign or party the observers were representing.Of course, plenty of interactions with poll workers went smoothly. Merrilee C. Peterson, a poll watcher for a local Republican candidate, worked at a different site, the NRG Arena, and reported no tensions of note.“We still had some of the problems of not thinking we were allowed to get close enough to see,” she said. “But once the little kinks were worked out, quite frankly we worked very well with the poll workers.”In Florida, crowding was the chief concern of election officials.Testifying before state senators, Mark Earley, the vice president of the Florida Supervisors of Elections, said that “as an association, we are very concerned” about the number of poll watchers who would now be allowed to observe the process of duplicating a voter’s damaged or erroneously marked ballot. He said it presented “very grave security risks.”Mr. Earley was backed by at least one Republican, State Senator Jeff Brandes, who found the provision for poll watchers unnecessary and dangerous.“I don’t think we should have to install risers in the supervisor of elections offices or bars by which they can hang upside down in order to ensure that there is a transparent process,” Mr. Brandes said.A crowd that included many Michigan Republicans banged on the windows as workers counted absentee ballots in Detroit on Nov. 4. Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesBut perhaps no other state had a conflict involving poll watchers erupt onto cable news as Michigan did. On Election Day and the day after in November, Republican poll watchers grew increasingly obstructive at the TCF Center in Detroit, where absentee ballots were counted as it became clear that Mr. Trump was losing in the state.It began with a huddle of Republican observers around midday on Nov. 4, according to affidavits from Democratic poll watchers, nonpartisan observers and election officials.Soon after, the Republicans “began to fan out around the room,” wrote Dan McKernan, an election worker.Then they ramped up their objections, accusing workers of entering incorrect birth years or backdating ballots. In some cases, the poll watchers lodged blanket claims of wrongdoing.“The behavior in the room changed dramatically in the afternoon: The rage in the room from Republican challengers was nothing like I had ever experienced in my life,” wrote Anjanette Davenport Hatter, another election worker.Mr. McKernan wrote: “Republicans were challenging everything at the two tables I could see. When the ballot envelope was opened, they would say they couldn’t see it clearly. When the next envelope was opened, they made the same complaint. They were objecting to every single step down the line for no good reason.”The chaos provided some of the basis for Michigan officials to debate whether to certify the results, but a state board did so that month.Now, the Republican-controlled Legislature in Michigan is proposing to bar nonpartisan observers from acting as poll watchers, allowing only partisan challengers to do so.While widespread reports of intimidation never materialized last year, voting rights groups say the atmosphere after the election represents a dangerous shift in American elections.“It really hasn’t been like this for decades, generally speaking, even though there’s a long and storied history of it,” said Michael Waldman, a legal expert at the Brennan Center. Aggressive partisan poll watchers, he said, were “a longstanding barrier to voting in the United States, and it was also largely solved. And this risks bringing it back.” More

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      Should Biden Emphasize Race or Class or Both or None of the Above?

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      Should the Democratic Party focus on race or class when trying to build support for new initiatives and — perhaps equally important — when seeking to achieve a durable Election Day majority?The publication on April 26 of a scholarly paper, “Racial Equality Frames and Public Policy Support,” has stirred up a hornet’s nest among Democratic strategists and analysts.The authors, Micah English and Joshua L. Kalla, who are both political scientists at Yale, warned proponents of liberal legislative proposals thatDespite increasing awareness of racial inequities and a greater use of progressive race framing by Democratic elites, linking public policies to race is detrimental for support of those policies.The English-Kalla paper infuriated critics who are involved in the Race-Class Narrative Project.The founder of the project, Ian Haney López, a law professor at Berkeley and one of the chairmen of the AFL-CIO’s Advisory Council on Racial and Economic Justice, vigorously disputes the English-Kalla thesis. In his view, “Powerful elites exploit social divisions, so no matter what our race, color or ethnicity, our best future requires building cross-racial solidarity.”In an email, López wrote me that the English and Kalla studyseems to confirm a conclusion common among Democratic strategists since at least 1970: Democrats can maximize support among whites, without losing too much enthusiasm from voters of color, by running silent on racial justice while emphasizing class issues of concern to all racial groups. Since at least 2017, this conclusion is demonstrably wrong.English and Kalla, for their part, surveyed 5,081 adults and asked them about six policies: increasing the minimum wage to $15; forgiving $50,000 in student loan debt; affordable housing; the Green New Deal; Medicare for All; decriminalizing marijuana and erasing prior convictions.Participants in the survey were randomly assigned to read about these policies in a “race, class, or a class plus race frame,” English and Kalla write.Those given information about housing policy in a “race frame” read:A century of housing and land use policies denied Black households access to homeownership and neighborhood opportunities offered to white households. These racially discriminatory housing policies have combined to profoundly disadvantage Black households, with lasting, intergenerational impact. These intergenerational impacts go a long way toward explaining the racial disparities we see today in wealth, income and educational outcomes for Black Americans.Those assigned to read about housing policy in a “class frame” were shown this:Housing is the largest single expense for the average American, accounting for a third of their income. Many working-class, middle-class, and working poor Americans spend over half their pay on shelter. Twenty-one million American families — over a sixth of the United States — are considered cost-burdened, paying more for rent than they can afford. These families are paying so much in rent that they are considered at elevated risk of homelessness.The “race and class group” read a version combining both race and class themes.English and Kalla found thatWhile among Democrats both the class and the class plus race frames cause statistically significant increases in policy support, statistically indistinguishable from each other — among Republicans the class plus race frame causes a statistically significant decrease in policy support. While the race frame also has a negative effect among Republicans, it is not statistically significant.Among independents — a key swing group both in elections and in determining the levels of support for public policies — English and Kalla found “positive effects from the class frame and negative effects from both the race and class plus race frames.”A late February survey of 1,551 likely voters by Vox and Data for Progress produced similar results. Half the sample was asked whether it would support or oppose zoning for multiple-family housing based on the argument thatIt’s a matter of racial justice. Single-family zoning requirements lock in America’s system of racial segregation, blocking Black Americans from pursuing economic opportunity and the American dream of homeownership.The other half of the sample read that supporters of multiple-family zoningsay that this will drive economic growth as more people will be able to move to high opportunity regions with good jobs and will allow more Americans the opportunity to get affordable housing on their own, making it easier to start families.The voters to whom the racial justice message was given were split, 44 in support, 43 in opposition, while those who were given the economic growth argument supported multiple-family zoning 47-36.After being exposed to the economic growth message, Democrats were supportive 63-25, but less so after the racial justice message, 56-28. Republicans were opposed after hearing either message, but less so in the case of economic growth, 35-50, compared to racial justice 31-60.López founded the Race-Class Narrative Project along with Anat Shenker-Osorio, a California-based communications consultant, and Heather McGhee, a former president of Demos, a liberal think tank and author of the recent book, “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together.”I asked López about the English-Kalla paper. He was forthright in his emailed reply:As my work and that of others demonstrates, the most potent political message today is one that foregrounds combating intentional divide-and-conquer racial politics by building a multiracial coalition among all racial groups. This frame performs more strongly than a class-only frame as well as a racial justice frame. It is also the sole liberal frame that consistently beats Republican dog whistling.Shenker-Osorio faulted English and Kalla’s work for being “unsurprising”:If you tell someone to support a policy because it will benefit a group they’re not part of, and that doesn’t work as well as telling them to support a policy they perceive will help them — this isn’t exactly shocking.Testing the effectiveness of messages on controversial issues, Shenker-Osorio continued, has to be done in the context of dealing with the claims of the opposition:Politics isn’t solitaire and so in order for our attempts to persuade conflicted voters to work, they must also act as a rebuttal to what these voters hear — incessantly — from our opposition. A class-only message about, say, minimum wage, held up against a drumbeat of “immigrants are taking your jobs” or racially-coded caricatures of who is in minimum wage jobs doesn’t cut through. Neither does a message about affordable housing credits or food stamps when the opposition will just keep hammering home the notion of “lazy people” wanting “handouts.”Unless Democrats explicitly address race, Shenker-Osorio wrote, millions of whites, flooded with Republican messages demonizing minorities, will continue to beprimed to view government as taking from “hard working people” (coded as white) and handing it to “undeserving people” (coded as Black and brown). If we do not contend with this basic fact — and today’s unrelenting race baiting from the right — then Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” will simply continue to haunt us. In other words, if the left chooses to say nothing about race, the race conversation doesn’t simply end. The only thing voters hear about the topic are the lies the right peddles to keep us from joining together to demand true progressive solutions.The Race-Class Narrative Project, which has conducted extensive surveys and focus groups, came to the conclusion that race could effectively be addressed in carefully worded messages.For instance:No matter where we come from or what our color, most of us work hard for our families. But today, certain politicians and their greedy lobbyists hurt everyone by handing kickbacks to the rich, defunding our schools, and threatening our seniors with cuts to Medicare and Social Security. Then they turn around and point the finger for our hard times at poor families, Black people, and new immigrants. We need to join together with people from all walks of life to fight for our future, just like we won better wages, safer workplaces, and civil rights in our past.The race-class project also tested the efficacy of a class only message — “We need elected leaders who will reject the divide and conquer tactics of their opponents and put the interests of working people first” — versus a race and class message that simply added the phrase “whether we are white, Black or brown” to read:We need elected leaders who will reject the divide and conquer tactics of their opponents and put the interests of working people first, whether we are white, Black or brown.The result? The race and class message did substantially better than the class alone message among both base Democratic voters and persuadable voters. Base Democrats approved of the class message 79-16 and approved of the race and class message 86-11. Fewer persuadable voters approved of the class message than disapproved, 42-45, while more approved than disapproved of the race and class message, 48-41.I asked Shenker-Osorio how well she thinks Biden is doing when he talks about race:It’s definitely hit or miss. Sometimes he uses what I shorthand as “dependent clause” messaging where you name race after you’ve laid out an economic problem or offered an economic solution — e.g. “It’s getting harder for people to make ends meet, and this impacts [X Group] in particular.” This doesn’t work. For many people of color, this feels like race is an afterthought. For many whites, it feels like a non sequitur.At other times, Shenker-Osorio continued, Bidendoes what we’ve seen work: begin by naming a shared value with deliberate reference to race, describe the problem as one of deliberate division or racial scapegoating, and then close with how the policy he is pushing will mean better well-being or justice or freedom for all working people.In partial support of the Shenker-Osorio critique, Jake Grumbach, a political scientist at the University of Washington, emailed me to say:The English and Kalla survey experiment was done in a particular context that did not include Republican messaging, media coverage and imagery, and other content that “real-world” politics cannot escape. If Republicans use race, whether through dog whistles or more overt racism, then it might be the case that Democratic “class only” appeals will fall flat as voters infer racial content even when Democrats don’t mention race.Another “important piece of context,” Grumbach wrote, “is that Biden is an older white man, which, research suggests, makes his policy appeals sound more moderate to voters than the actually more moderate Obama proposals.” More

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      As Republicans Push Voting Laws, They Disagree on Strategy

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      Trump-friendly state lawmakers trying to enact new voting laws are facing pockets of opposition from fellow Republicans who argue that some measures go too far or would hurt the party’s own voters.John Kavanagh, a Republican state representative in Arizona, recently ran through a list of what he called “bad election bills that were introduced by Republicans.”One would have allowed the Legislature to overturn the results of a presidential election even after they had been certified. Another would have required that early ballots be dropped off only at drop boxes that are attended. A third would have repealed the state’s hugely popular permanent early voting list, which allows voters to receive a ballot in the mail for every election.All three measures were also stopped by Republicans in Arizona, even as the party pushes other bills that would enact tighter regulations on early voting in the state — just a few months after President Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate since 1996 to carry the Southwestern battleground.This G.O.P. resistance to certain voting legislation reflects an awkward and delicate dance within the party: As state lawmakers loyal to former President Donald J. Trump try to please him and his supporters by enacting new voting limits across the country, they are facing pockets of opposition from other Republicans who argue that some of the bills go too far or would hurt their own voters.These Republicans see themselves as moderating forces on bad bills. And they are instead proposing less stringent measures that they say will improve the efficiency and security of early voting now that so many more people are using it because of changes brought about by the coronavirus pandemic. They acknowledge, however, that their timing is bad. Pushing for any bill that includes new requirements for voting after an election that went more smoothly than many expected raises an inevitable question: Why now, if not to try to thwart Democrats?The number of Republicans willing to speak out is modest compared with the many Trump-friendly lawmakers in G.O.P.-controlled state capitols who continue to validate the former president’s false claims of fraud by proposing harsh new voting measures. And even when other lawmakers in the party are successful in softening or stopping these, the outcome often remains new restrictions on voting — however small or subtle — that Democrats say are unnecessary and that are likely to disproportionately affect Black, Latino and poor voters.But there is a difference between the public perception of these new laws and bills and the reality, Republicans say. Many of the most restrictive provisions have never made it past the bill-drafting phase or a legislative committee, halted by Republican leaders who say it is counterproductive to limit forms of voting that are convenient and that people in both parties prefer. (Republicans in states like Arizona have amassed such power in state legislatures in no small part because for many years their own voters embraced voting by mail.) And some Republicans have criticized as anti-democratic efforts to empower state legislators to reject the will of voters.The Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix. A Republican bill to allow the state’s Legislature to overturn certified presidential election results was never assigned to a committee.Courtney Pedroza for The New York TimesThe latest Republican voting proposal to fall flat because of intraparty resistance was a “wet signature” requirement in Florida, which was set to be dropped from a bill that advanced out of a State Senate committee on Tuesday. The rule, which would have mandated a signature written by hand rather than a digital signature, was cut in part over concerns about its potential effect on older voters.In Arizona, Mr. Kavanagh, a committee chairman in the state House of Representatives, noted that Republicans’ bill to allow the Legislature to overturn certified presidential election results had never even been assigned to a committee.Neither was the proposed measure to repeal the permanent early voting list, which is how more than three million voters in Arizona get their ballots.Mr. Kavanagh said the list was “tremendously popular with Democrats, Republicans and independents,” and therefore made no sense to do away with.Most proposals like these — inspired by a misinformation campaign from Mr. Trump and allies like Rudolph W. Giuliani, who pressured Republican lawmakers to interfere with their state’s certification process — are dead, not just in Florida and Arizona but also in other states like Georgia, where Republicans set off a national uproar over voting rights. “But that part never got written, or was rarely covered in the newspapers,” Mr. Kavanagh said.This year in Florida, lawmakers introduced legislation to ban drop boxes, limit who can collect ballots for other voters and restrict access to people in voting lines, among other provisions. The proposals were met with swift and forceful opposition from county elections supervisors, perhaps none whose opinion carried more weight than D. Alan Hays of Lake County. Mr. Hays, a conservative Republican who had previously served in the State Senate for 12 years, told his former colleagues at a legislative hearing last month that their bill was a “travesty.”“In my role as supervisor of elections, I’m focusing on policy,” he said in an interview. “I don’t pay any attention to party. If it’s a good idea, we should give it every opportunity to succeed. And if it’s a bad idea, we should do everything we can to stop it from being implemented.”He and other supervisors worked phones and emails to explain to lawmakers the nuances of how elections are run and why some of their provisions would be impractical. This month, after the controversy over Georgia’s new voting law, the Florida House softened its version of the voting bill; the proposal that ultimately passed out of the State Senate committee on Tuesday did not include some of the most stringent original provisions, like a ban on drop boxes (the availability of which it still limits).“To their credit, the legislators have shown great appreciation and respect for our opinions,” Mr. Hays said.Republicans who want to see changes to election law that would have far less of an impact on how votes are cast say that some of the proposals introduced by pro-Trump lawmakers are not helping. And these bills are muddying the waters, they say, in areas of the law like ballot security, where there used to be more bipartisan agreement.Poll workers sorting absentee ballots in Decatur, Ga., after the state’s Senate runoff elections early this year. Some top Republican election officials in Georgia, including Gabriel Sterling, have voiced opposition to parts of the state’s new voting law.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesSome Republicans say that in less polarized times, these measures wouldn’t be attracting nearly as much controversy because even divisive issues like requiring a form of identification to vote had some bipartisan support.A 2005 bipartisan commission led by former President Jimmy Carter and James A. Baker, the former secretary of state under Ronald Reagan, recommended requiring identification for all voters, but allowed for a flexible interpretation of what that could be, like a utility bill. That report also stated what independent elections experts say is still true: that absentee ballots remain the most susceptible to fraud, though fraud is exceptionally rare. In the very few instances that fraud has been caught and prosecuted, as in North Carolina in 2018, it often involves absentee ballots.Most Republicans argue that measures are needed to safeguard and streamline absentee voting, especially because it was so prevalent last year during the pandemic — and popular with voters. In Georgia, Gabriel Sterling, a top Republican election official who bucked his party and Mr. Trump in December by denouncing claims of voter fraud as false and dangerous, said he didn’t agree with everything in the state’s new law. He took particular issue with the provisions that seem intended to punish his boss, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican who also pushed back against Mr. Trump’s voter fraud lies, by stripping him of his voting power as a member of the State Election Board.Mr. Sterling speaking to reporters in Atlanta in November. He said that over all, he believed Georgia’s new voting law was “a boring bill.”Megan Varner/Getty ImagesBut Mr. Sterling said he believed that over all, “It is a boring bill,” adding: “It is not the end of the world.”He argued that “there was going to be a cleanup bill” to address voting given that record numbers of people voted early and by mail for the first time, creating considerable strain on local elections officials. And he pointed to local elections jurisdictions that were overextended with large numbers of signatures to match on absentee ballots.On the one hand, he said, the government can hire staff members and pay them $10 an hour to compare signatures. On the other hand, he said that requiring an I.D. number like the last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number or a driver’s license number, as Georgia now does, seemed more efficient. “You’re saying, ‘Does the number match?’” he said. “‘Does it not match?’ It’s a very simple thing.”He blamed Republicans for trying to placate Mr. Trump’s supporters by introducing bills they knew would never pass — and which, in some cases, lawmakers didn’t fully believe were good policy. They just knew it was good base politics, he said.“Essentially the leadership of the House and the Senate said to their members, ‘Introduce whatever you have to so your people are OK,’” Mr. Sterling said.That was a mistake, Mr. Sterling added, but not necessarily surprising. “There’s a lot of voters who believe the lie, and we are a representative democracy.”Patricia Mazzei More

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      The ‘New Redlining’ Is Deciding Who Lives in Your Neighborhood

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      If you care about social justice, you have to care about zoning.Housing segregation by race and class is a fountainhead of inequality in America, yet for generations, politicians have been terrified to address the issue. That is why it is so significant that President Biden has proposed, as part of his American Jobs Act, a $5 billion race-to-the-top competitive grants program to spur jurisdictions to “eliminate exclusionary zoning and harmful land use policies.”Mr. Biden would reward localities that voluntarily agree to jettison “minimum lot sizes, mandatory parking requirements and prohibitions on multifamily housing.” The Biden administration is off to an important start, but over the course of his term, Mr. Biden should add sticks to the carrots he has already proposed.Although zoning may seem like a technical, bureaucratic and decidedly local question, in reality the issue relates directly to three grand themes that Joe Biden ran on in the 2020 campaign: racial justice, respect for working-class people and national unity. Perhaps no single step would do more to advance those goals than tearing down the government-sponsored walls that keep Americans of different races and classes from living in the same communities, sharing the same public schools and getting a chance to know one another across racial, economic and political lines.Economically discriminatory zoning policies — which say that you are not welcome in a community unless you can afford a single-family home, sometimes on a large plot of land — are not part of a distant, disgraceful past. In most American cities, zoning laws prohibit the construction of relatively affordable homes — duplexes, triplexes, quads and larger multifamily units — on three-quarters of residential land.In the 2020 race, Mr. Biden said he was running to “restore the soul of our nation,” which had been damaged by President Donald Trump’s embrace of racism. Removing exclusionary barriers that keep millions of Black and Hispanic people out of safe neighborhoods with strong schools is central to the goal of advancing racial justice. Over the past several decades, as the sociologist Orlando Patterson has noted, Black people have been integrated into the nation’s political life and the military, “but the civil-rights movement failed to integrate Black Americans into the private domain of American life.”Single-family exclusive zoning, which was adopted by communities shortly after the Supreme Court struck down explicit racial zoning in 1917, is what activists call the “new redlining.” Racial discrimination has created an enormous wealth gap between white and Black people, and single-family-only zoning perpetuates that inequality.While exclusionary zoning laws are especially harmful to Black people, the discrimination is more broadly rooted in class snobbery — a second problem Mr. Biden highlighted in his campaign. As a proud product of Scranton, Pa., Mr. Biden said he would value the dignity of working people and not look down on anyone. The elitism Mr. Biden promised to reject helps explain why in virtually all-white communities like La Crosse, Wis., efforts to remedy economic segregation have received strong pushback from upper-income whites, and why middle-class Black communities have sometimes shown fierce resistance to low-income housing.If race were the only factor driving exclusionary zoning, one would expect to see such policies most extensively promoted in communities where racial intolerance is highest, but in fact the most restrictive zoning is found in politically liberal cities, where racial views are more progressive. As Harvard’s Michael Sandel has noted, social psychologists have found that highly-educated elites “may denounce racism and sexism but are unapologetic about their negative attitudes toward the less educated.” Class discrimination helps explain why, despite a 25 percent decline in Black-white residential segregation since 1970, income segregation has more than doubled.By addressing a problem common to America’s multiracial working class, reducing exclusionary barriers could also help promote Mr. Biden’s third big goal: national unity. Today, no two groups are more politically divided from each other than working-class whites and working-class people of color. For centuries, going back to Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, right-wing politicians have successfully pitted these two groups against each other, but every once in a while, America breaks free of this grip, and lower-income and working-class people of all races come together and engage in what the Rev. William Barber II calls “fusion politics.”It happened in 1968, when Mr. Biden’s hero Robert Kennedy brought together working-class Black, Latino and white constituencies in a presidential campaign that championed a liberalism without elitism and a populism without racism. It happened again in 1997 and 2009 in Texas, when Republican legislators representing white working-class voters and Democrats representing Black and Hispanic constituencies came together to support (and then to defend) the Texas top 10 percent plan to admit the strongest students in every high school to the University of Texas at Austin, despite the opposition of legislators representing wealthy white suburban districts that had dominated admissions for decades. And a similar coalition appears to be coming together in California, over the issue of exclusionary zoning. State Senator Scott Wiener, who has been trying to legalize multifamily living spaces, told me that Republican and Democratic legislators representing working-class communities have supported reform, while the opponents have one thing in common: They represent wealthier constituents who “wanted to keep certain people out of their community.” More

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      If You Care About Social Justice, You Have to Care About Zoning

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      The Biden administration is off to a good start on housing, but there is much more it could be doing.Housing segregation by race and class is a fountainhead of inequality in America, yet for generations, politicians have been terrified to address the issue. That is why it is so significant that President Biden has proposed, as part of his American Jobs Act, a $5 billion race-to-the-top competitive grants program to spur jurisdictions to “eliminate exclusionary zoning and harmful land use policies.” Mr. Biden would reward localities that voluntarily agree to jettison “minimum lot sizes, mandatory parking requirements, and prohibitions on multifamily housing.” The Biden administration is off to an important start, but over the course of his term, Mr. Biden should add sticks to the carrots he has already proposed.Although zoning may seem like a technical, bureaucratic and decidedly local question, in reality the issue relates directly to three grand themes that Joe Biden ran on in the 2020 campaign: racial justice, respect for working-class people and national unity. Perhaps no single step would do more to advance those goals than tearing down the government-sponsored walls that keep Americans of different races and classes from living in the same communities, sharing the same public schools and getting a chance to know one another across racial, economic and political lines.Economically discriminatory zoning policies — which say that you are not welcome in a community unless you can afford a single-family home, sometimes on a large plot of land — are not part of a distant, disgraceful past. In most American cities, zoning laws prohibit the construction of relatively affordable homes — duplexes, triplexes, quads and larger multifamily units — on three-quarters of residential land.In the 2020 race, Mr. Biden said he was running to “restore the soul of our nation,” which had been damaged by President Donald Trump’s embrace of racism. Removing exclusionary barriers that keep millions of Black and Hispanic people out of safe neighborhoods with strong schools is central to the goal of advancing racial justice. Over the past several decades, as the sociologist Orlando Patterson has noted, Black people have been integrated into the nation’s political life and the military, “but the civil-rights movement failed to integrate Black Americans into the private domain of American life.”Single-family exclusive zoning, which was adopted by communities shortly after the Supreme Court struck down explicit racial zoning in 1917, is what activists call the “new redlining.” Racial discrimination has created an enormous wealth gap between white and Black people, and single-family-only zoning perpetuates that inequality.While exclusionary zoning laws are especially harmful to Black people, the discrimination is more broadly rooted in class snobbery — a second problem Mr. Biden highlighted in his campaign. As a proud product of Scranton, Pa., Mr. Biden said he would value the dignity of working people and not look down on anyone. The elitism Mr. Biden promised to reject helps explain why in virtually all-white communities like La Crosse, Wis., efforts to remedy economic segregation have received strong pushback from upper-income whites, and why middle-class Black communities have sometimes shown fierce resistance to low-income housing.If race were the only factor driving exclusionary zoning, one would expect to see such policies most extensively promoted in communities where racial intolerance is highest, but in fact the most restrictive zoning is found in politically liberal cities, where racial views are more progressive. As Harvard’s Michael Sandel has noted, social psychologists have found that highly-educated elites “may denounce racism and sexism but are unapologetic about their negative attitudes toward the less educated.” Class discrimination helps explain why, despite a 25 percent decline in Black-white residential segregation since 1970, income segregation has more than doubled.By addressing a problem common to America’s multiracial working class, reducing exclusionary barriers could also help promote Mr. Biden’s third big goal: national unity. Today, no two groups are more politically divided from one another than working-class whites and working-class people of color. For centuries, going back to Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, right-wing politicians have successfully pitted these two groups against each other, but every once in a while, America breaks free of this grip, and lower-income and working-class people of all races come together and engage in what the Rev. William Barber II calls “fusion politics.”It happened in 1968, when Mr. Biden’s hero, Robert Kennedy, brought together working-class Black, Latino, and white constituencies in a presidential campaign that championed a liberalism without elitism and a populism without racism. It happened again in 1997 and 2009 in Texas, when Republican legislators representing white working-class voters and Democrats representing Black and Hispanic constituencies came together to support (and then to defend) the Texas top 10 percent plan to admit the strongest students in every high school to the University of Texas at Austin, despite the opposition of legislators representing wealthy white suburban districts that had dominated admissions for decades. And a similar coalition appears to be coming together in California, over the issue of exclusionary zoning. State Senator Scott Wiener, who has been trying to legalize multifamily living spaces, told me that Republican and Democratic legislators representing working-class communities have supported reform, while the opponents have one thing in common: They represent wealthier constituents who “wanted to keep certain people out of their community.”Taking on exclusionary zoning also begins to address two other challenges the Biden administration has identified: the housing affordability crisis and climate change. Economists from across the political spectrum agree that zoning laws that ban anything but single-family homes artificially drive up prices by limiting the supply of housing that can be built in a region. At a time when the Covid-19 pandemic has left many Americans jobless and people are struggling to make rent or pay their mortgages, it is incomprehensible that ubiquitous government zoning policies would be permitted to make the housing affordability crisis worse by driving prices unnaturally higher. More