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      Mark Zuckerberg Ends Election Grants

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      Mark Zuckerberg, who donated nearly half a billion dollars to election offices across the nation in 2020 and drew criticism from conservatives suspicious of his influence on the presidential election, won’t be making additional grants this year, a spokesman for the Facebook founder confirmed on Tuesday.The spokesman, Ben LaBolt, said the donations by Mr. Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, were never intended to be a stream of funding for the administration of elections.The couple gave $419 million to two nonprofit organizations that disbursed grants in 2020 to more than 2,500 election departments, which were grappling with a shortfall of government funding as they adopted new procedures during the coronavirus pandemic.The infusion of private donations helped to pay for new ballot-counting equipment, efforts to expand mail-in voting, personal protective equipment and the training of poll workers.It also sowed seeds of mistrust among supporters of former President Donald J. Trump. Critics referred to the grants as “Zuckerbucks” and some frequently claimed, without evidence, that the money was used to help secure Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. Several states controlled by Republicans banned private donations to election offices in response.“As Mark and Priscilla made clear previously, their election infrastructure donation to help ensure that Americans could vote during the height of the pandemic was a one-time donation given the unprecedented nature of the crisis,” Mr. LaBolt said in an email on Tuesday. “They have no plans to repeat that donation.”The Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit group with liberal ties that became a vessel for $350 million of the contributions from Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan in 2020, announced on Monday that it was shifting to a different model for supporting the work of local election administrators.During an appearance on Monday at the TED2022 conference in Vancouver, Tiana Epps-Johnson, the center’s executive director, said that the organization would begin a five-year, $80 million program to help meet the needs of election departments across the country.Called the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, the program will draw funding through the Audacious Project, a philanthropic collective housed at the TED organization, the center said. Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan are not involved in the new initiative, Mr. LaBolt said.At the event on Monday, Ms. Epps-Johnson said the grants distributed by the center in 2020 helped fill a substantial void of resources for those overseeing elections in the United States. One town in New England, she said without specifying, was able to replace voting equipment from the early 1900s that was held together with duct tape.“The United States election infrastructure is crumbling,” Ms. Epps-Johnson said.In addition to the Center for Technology and Civic Life, Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan gave $69.6 million to the Center for Election Innovation & Research in 2020. At the time, that nonprofit group said that the top election officials in 23 states had applied for grants.Republicans have been unrelenting in their criticism of the social media mogul and his donations.While campaigning for the U.S. Senate on Tuesday in Perrysburg, Ohio, J.D. Vance, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author who has undergone a conversion to Trumpism, continued to accuse Mr. Zuckerberg of tipping the election in 2020 to Mr. Biden.Mr. Vance, a venture capitalist, hasn’t exactly sworn off help from big tech. He counts Peter Thiel, a departing board member of Mr. Zuckerberg’s company, Meta, and a major donor to Mr. Trump, as a top fund-raiser. Mr. Thiel has also supported Blake Masters, a Republican Senate candidate in Arizona.In an opinion piece for The New York Post last October, Mr. Vance and Mr. Masters called for Facebook’s influence to be curbed, writing that Mr. Zuckerberg had spent half a billion dollars to “buy the presidency for Joe Biden.”In Colorado, Tina Peters, the top vote-getter for secretary of state at the state Republican Party’s assembly last weekend, has been a fierce critic of Mr. Zuckerberg, even after her arrest this year on charges stemming from an election security breach. Ms. Peters, the Mesa County clerk, is facing several felonies amid accusations that she allowed an unauthorized person to copy voting machine hard drive information. More

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      An Arizona Democrat Tries to Hang On in a Trump-Tilting District

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      Representative Tom O’Halleran of Arizona is seeking re-election as his district leans further toward Trump. His strategy? Don’t change. “I am,” he says, “who I am.”Arizona has a history of producing lightning-rod members of Congress, like Representative Paul Gosar. But the Arizona politician you should be paying attention to — and who can potentially tell us a great deal about Democrats’ hopes of avoiding a 2022 wipeout in the House — probably isn’t on your radar.That would be Representative Tom O’Halleran, a Democrat who has been in office since 2017 and who started out his political career as something few Democrats can claim — a Republican.O’Halleran’s district was redrawn in 2020 and became tougher and Trumpier. Many say he’s doomed to fail, but O’Halleran is unfazed. Despite all the challenges Democrats face in the midterms this year — President Biden’s low approval ratings, historical precedent for the party in power, overheating inflation — O’Halleran believes old-fashioned retail politics will come through for him. His approach is an example of the stubborn yet necessary hope that Democrats can both localize and personalize their races in order to overcome a punishing national environment.“I’m not somebody that stokes the fire,” O’Halleran, 76, said in an interview last week. “I’m somebody that tries to keep it in the area where it’s contained so that we can continue to use it effectively.”Even before it was redrawn, O’Halleran’s district, which includes most of eastern Arizona, was highly competitive. Donald Trump carried it in 2016, the year O’Halleran won his seat. He has held it since then thanks in part to recruiting problems by Republicans, who have put forward an array of over-the-top and underwhelming candidates.This year, the Republican primary field includes a former contender on the reality TV show “Shark Tank” and a QAnon conspiracy theorist.But now the district is even friendlier to Republicans: Trump won 53 percent of its voters in 2020. Some Republicans argue that in this political environment, any conservative candidate who wins the primary will win the general election, so it’s less important for the party than it has been in the past to find a superstar candidate.“There’s a limit to how far you can outrun your party before political gravity eventually catches up with you, especially in a year like this,” said Calvin Moore, a spokesman for the Congressional Leadership Fund, House Republicans’ super PAC.O’Halleran has only so much control over his electoral fate, with the political world anticipating a Republican wave that flips the House. Some Democrats merely hope that O’Halleran and a few of the party’s other candidates in tough races can hold on and deny Republicans an overwhelming majority.In that scenario, O’Halleran is at the front lines of Democrats’ defense, defying the partisanship of his district as he has done multiple times before. And the way the Republican primary is shaking out, it’s very possible that O’Halleran could end up with another weak opponent in the general election.He feels confident either way.“I was a Republican, remember?” he said. “I’m the same person then as I am now. And so I think people will remember that.”‘I am who I am’You won’t find O’Halleran talking about progressive policies on cable news or criticizing his Republican colleagues in the newspaper. It’s all part of his political strategy.A former police officer in Chicago, he was first elected to the Arizona Legislature as a Republican in 2000, and served in both chambers through 2009. After losing his State Senate seat to a more conservative candidate, he unsuccessfully ran to return to the state Legislature as an independent, then ran for the U.S. House as a Democrat in 2016.He claims to do more town hall events than anybody else in Arizona. And while he acknowledges that fame allows some members of Congress to fill their campaign coffers and help build enthusiasm, he says that’s not for him.When asked how he’d respond to concerns from voters about gas prices and inflation, he launched into an explanation that included a description of a chart presented at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, sprinkled with mentions of supply and demand. When asked how he’d fit that message into a 30-second ad, he responded, “What will be in the 30-second campaign ad is my sincerity.”He said this race would come down to how much his constituents trust him, the same as in past races. That’s one reason he’s not changing his approach, even though he now has new constituents.“I am who I am,” he said, adding, “If I start changing because of that, that’s going to say to them I’m willing to make changes based on my ability to get elected versus my ability to help lead.”The competition across the aisleO’Halleran also dismisses the idea that he’s been lucky with his Republican competition over the years.In 2016, he was challenged by a former sheriff who had stepped down from Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign after being accused of threatening to deport his ex-boyfriend. In 2018, O’Halleran faced an Air Force veteran who had already lost a few House contests. In 2020, a challenger who struggled with fund-raising in 2018 struggled once again.This year, the crowded Republican primary includes Ron Watkins, a former website administrator who is widely believed to have played a major role in writing the anonymous QAnon posts. Republicans doubt that Watkins will make it far. He last reported having raised just over $50,000, behind three other Republicans who have made federal campaign filings.But even the candidate perceived to be most appealing to the establishment — Eli Crane, the top Republican fund-raiser — has positions that would be tough to defend with moderates. He’s a former member of the Navy SEALs, former contender on “Shark Tank” and has boasted that he supported decertifying the 2020 election. His top competition for the nomination might be State Representative Walt Blackman, a decorated veteran who once praised the Proud Boys.When asked about the primary field, Republican strategists did not express much excitement, but they were also confident their party would win the seat anyway. And even if a candidate who is underwhelming at fund-raising wins the nomination, they expect outside groups to help out.The expensive Phoenix media market might not have seemed worth the investment in previous years, but with such a promising national environment and the district’s new partisan composition, Republicans expect it’ll be worth the effort this time.“Candidates and campaigns always matter,” said Brian Seitchik, an Arizona-based Republican consultant. “Having said that, with the redraw of that congressional district and a hyper-favorable environment for Republicans, I’d say that race is going to be the Republicans’ race to lose in November.”But O’Halleran’s team remains optimistic. Rodd McLeod, a Democratic consultant who is working with O’Halleran, maintains that the congressman’s relationships with constituents run deeper than partisanship.“He could be the guy,” McLeod said, “who outlasted the wave.”What to read Donald Trump endorsed Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor, for the Republican nomination in Pennsylvania’s Senate race, Trip Gabriel reports.The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is split on whether to make a criminal referral of Trump to the Justice Department, Michael S. Schmidt and Luke Broadwater report.The Biden administration has long been torn over how to handle Trump-era immigration policies, report Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Michael D. Shear and Eileen Sullivan.Fiona Hill, who advised Trump and his predecessors on Russia, connects the Jan. 6 attack to the invasion of Ukraine, in an article by Robert Draper in The New York Times Magazine.at issue“What we have going for us,” said Jane Kleeb, Nebraska’s Democratic Party chairwoman, “is that we are small — small but mighty.”Walker Pickering for The New York TimesNebraska wants to be the next IowaFor the last 50 years, Nebraska’s role in presidential primaries has largely been as a place with a good airport for traveling to western Iowa.Now, with Iowa’s first-in-the-nation spot in grave peril after the last two Democratic caucuses were flubbed, Nebraska is ready to enter the contest to knock its neighbor off the beginning of the Democratic presidential nominating calendar.“Nebraska is going to go for it,” Jane Kleeb, the state’s Democratic Party chairwoman, told me.She will lobby her fellow Democratic National Committee members to back Nebraska in jumping to the front of the nominating line, she said. Republicans, meanwhile, remain committed so far to keeping Iowa first.Among the Democrats, Nebraska will have competition. New Jersey offered itself last month to the D.N.C., and Michigan’s Democratic officials are also lobbying to go first.Both are big states dominated by urban areas in expensive media markets. The appeal of the traditional early states — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada — is that they in theory are small enough to build grass-roots campaigns that aren’t just television productions.Kleeb’s pitch is that Nebraska has inexpensive media markets in Omaha, Lincoln and Grand Island; a recent record, unlike Iowa, of sending one of its electoral votes to Democratic presidential candidates; a mix of urban, suburban and rural voters; a significant Latino population at 11 percent; and plenty of Fortune 500 companies — and Warren Buffett — to help underwrite party-building in the state.“We know that we will be going up against a big Midwest state like Michigan,” she said. “What we have going for us is that we are small — small but mighty.”A shift from Iowa to Nebraska would keep rural issues front and center for an increasingly urban Democratic Party. Candidates would have to become fluent in pipeline and eminent domain politics, where Kleeb got her political start, and learn to embrace the runza, the unofficial state sandwich of Nebraska.— Leah (Blake is on vacation)Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      With New York District Lines On Hold, Judge Blesses Possible Backup Plan

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      A state appeals court judge approved the use of a special master to draw new congressional districts that could be used if the existing maps are thrown out.A New York appeals court judge on Friday signed off on the appointment of a neutral expert to prepare new congressional district lines that could be used if the state’s highest court upholds a lower-court ruling that struck down maps drawn by Democratic lawmakers.The judge, Justice Stephen K. Lindley of the Fourth Appellate Department, emphasized in his decision that the substitute maps would only be a backup measure meant to preserve a range of possible remedies as the courts consider a broader legal challenge to the maps brought by Republicans.But Justice Lindley’s directive raised the specter that an increasingly tangled fight over New York’s freshly drawn congressional districts could yet veer away from Democrats months after they enacted a map that favors their candidates in 22 of 26 districts, and require the state to delay this year’s primary contests from June until August.The political stakes are high: With the two parties locked in a national battle for control of the House, the swing of just a few seats in New York could theoretically be the difference between a Democratic or Republican majority in Washington next year.So far, only one trial court judge — a Republican from rural Steuben County — has weighed in on the case. The judge, Patrick F. McAllister, struck down all of the state’s legislative districts last week as a violation of a 2014 state constitutional amendment that outlawed partisan gerrymandering. He ordered lawmakers to redraw the lines with bipartisan support or hand the process over to a special master.What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Analysis: For years, the congressional map favored Republicans over Democrats. But in 2022, the map is poised to be surprisingly fair.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Democrats appealed the decision and they believe they will prevail at either the Appellate Division or at the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court. They argue that the maps’ partisan tilt reflects the makeup of a heavily Democratic state like New York, not an attempt to skew the lines for partisan advantage.Justice Lindley provided for that possibility, too. Even as he gave Justice McAllister approval to appoint a special master to create “standby” maps, Justice Lindley opted to keep in place a stay on most of the lower-court ruling, effectively allowing the election to proceed under the current district maps for now.“The stay will, among other things, allow candidates for Congress, State Senate and Assembly to file designating petitions by the statutory deadline, and allow the boards of elections to accept such petitions,” he wrote.If the courts ultimately find that the maps are consistent with the State Constitution, the primaries would proceed as planned in June. If the maps are struck down, the courts would have to decide whether to delay the primaries and order replacement maps, or allow this year’s contests to go forward as scheduled using the Democratic lines and wait until the next election cycle — or schedule special elections — to fix them.A final decision is expected around the end of April.Allowing a special master to begin working on backup lines now may increase the chances that the courts could lock in place replacement maps before this year’s elections if they rule against Democrats. The Legislature would almost certainly be given an opportunity by the court to correct them first.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Jackson Confirmation Aside, G.O.P. Sees an Opening With Black Voters

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      With inflation, war and the pandemic looming larger, Democrats who hope that the browbeating of Ketanji Brown Jackson will rally Black voters behind their candidates may be disappointed.The spectacle created by Republican senators with presidential ambitions as they browbeat the first Black woman nominated to the Supreme Court — after which 47 Republicans voted against her on Thursday — might have seemed like glaring evidence that the G.O.P. had written off the Black vote this November.Far from it. In rising inflation, stratospheric gas prices, lingering frustrations over Covid and new anxieties over the war in Ukraine, Republicans see a fresh opening, after the Obama and Trump eras, to peel away some Black voters who polls show are increasingly disenchanted with the Biden administration.Thanks to gerrymandering, Republicans need not win over too many Black voters to affect a handful of races, and dozens of Black Republican House candidates — a record number of them — are reshaping the party’s pitch.If anything, the G.O.P.’s treatment of the Supreme Court nominee, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, was a testimony to the party’s confidence that amid so many more powerful political forces and more consuming objects of public attention, their handling of her confirmation simply didn’t matter much.“I think the Black people that this would turn off weren’t voting for Republicans anyway, no matter what,” said Wesley Hunt, a Black Army veteran and a Republican newcomer to politics who is running for a deep-red Texas House seat.Senate Republican leaders had warned colleagues before the confirmation fight to keep the proceedings civil and cordial, clearly worried that the sight of a phalanx of white Republican inquisitors would turn voters off in an election year. But if Democrats still believe that Judge Jackson’s rough treatment will energize Black voters to come out this November and vote Democratic in big numbers, it appears likely that they will be disappointed.For frustrated voters of all colors who are struggling to pay their bills and fill their tanks, November’s vote may simply be a chance to vote against the party in power.“We are not a monolith,” said Jennifer-Ruth Green, a Black Air Force veteran who is running for Congress in Northwestern Indiana as a Republican. “We see inflation and gas prices. Voters are not stupid.”In Gary, Ind., Roshaun Knowles, 42, a cosmetologist taking a break at the Billco Barber Shop, summed up how the confirmation hearings would play as she considered her vote this fall. She said she had felt despair as an accomplished Black woman was interrogated by white senators who, she believed, lacked Judge Jackson’s intellect and poise.Roshaun Knowles said she had felt despair at the grilling of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson by Republican senators but was unhappy with President Biden. “He hasn’t been doing anything,” she said. “What has he done?Carlos Javier Ortiz for The New York Times“To be in a room full of white people asking her questions about where she learned what she learned and what she is capable of — you know, it didn’t sit well with me,” Ms. Knowles said. “She should have been treated as a white man would have been treated,” she added.But, she said, vaccine mandates cost her a job as a property manager for a housing authority after she refused to get the shot. Stimulus checks kept too many people out of the work force. And President Biden? “He hasn’t been doing anything,” she said. “What has he done?”Ms. Knowles said she was leaning toward voting Republican this fall, as she did in 2020, when she voted for Donald J. Trump, after voting for Hillary Clinton four years before and for Barack Obama twice.Republicans on the campaign trail and over the airwaves are pressing the image of a faltering Democratic leadership that has no clue how to handle economic uncertainty, the persistent pandemic and rising crime. When Republican officials are asked about the party’s strategy toward Black voters, they invariably call on the few Black Republican elected officials and candidates to make the pitch. But tellingly, Black Republican candidates such as Ms. Green and John James, who is running for a Michigan House seat, are not advertising their party affiliations, just their biographies — a sign that the G.O.P. brand remains toxic in some corners.And Republican outreach efforts amount to little more than seizing on Black disaffection with Democrats.Paris Dennard, director of Black media affairs for the Republican National Committee, said the party had opened eight community centers nationwide to engage Black voters. Candidates like Mr. Hunt are proof that the party’s message is inspiring Black Republicans to run, he said.But a message focused on Democrats’ shortcomings deprives Black voters of hearing about policies they actually want, said Leah Wright Rigueur, author of “The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power.”“It’s an incredibly effective strategy, but it’s also insidious,” said Dr. Rigueur, an associate professor of history at Johns Hopkins University. “It only works when there’s that dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party.”It does work, however, even with Black voters who during the Obama and Trump years were remarkably united behind the Democratic Party.“I don’t think Biden’s really even in office,” Robert Sanders scoffed as he cut hair in Gary, echoing criticism from the political right about the 79-year-old president. “I think he’s being escorted through office.”The softening of Mr. Biden’s approval among Black voters is a clear warning to Democrats. Approval of the president among Black registered voters slid to 62 percent in March from 83 percent last summer in an NBC News poll and was not affected by the Supreme Court fight, said Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm that conducted the survey with the Democratic firm Hart Research.The percentage of Black voters in the poll who said they strongly approved of the president’s performance fell to 28 percent last month, from 46 percent between April and August of last year. And intensity of support predicts turnout in elections.Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster who is Black, said polls were picking up a reversion to the days before Mr. Obama energized Black voters positively and Mr. Trump then energized them negatively. Before 2008, he noted, it was normal for 12 percent to 14 percent of the Black electorate to vote Republican.“What is more problematic is the lack of energy levels among younger voters, particularly younger African Americans,” Mr. Belcher said, noting that young voters of color in 2018 had delivered Democrats the House. “It’s a not-excited, disenchanted, frustrated, younger electorate right now, more like the electorate of 2014 and 2010 than 2018 — and that’s disastrous.”Democratic officials say they are responding with Black voter mobilization projects that have started earlier than in previous midterm cycles. Last spring, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee hired organizers in five battleground states to focus on key Democratic constituencies. On Thursday, the committee announced a new round of ad purchases with Black news outlets.Chris Taylor, a committee spokesman, said efforts by Republicans to court Black voters were disingenuous given the voting records among those in the party on pandemic relief, criminal justice reform and clean air and water legislation.“Nearly every Republican in Congress opposed our priorities,” said Mr. Taylor, who is Black.Because of gerrymandered district lines, most Republican candidates for the House do not need many — if any — Black voters. But in districts like Indiana’s First, with its narrow Democratic lean and a Republican target on its back, a Republican challenger will need to make inroads with Black voters, or at least hope for soft turnout for Democrats.Mr. Cruz talking with Senator Josh Hawley and Senator Marsha Blackburn during a break in the confirmation hearing for Judge Jackson last month.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesJudge Jackson’s rough reception does not appear to be a threat to that hope. Even Black voters who watched the hearings attentively were surprisingly forgiving of her Republican inquisitors.“I don’t think she was treated fairly,” said Greg Fleming, 72, a financial adviser in Gary. “But that’s the way things are in this country. In today’s climate, unfortunately, it’s to be expected.”Like Indiana’s First, Georgia’s Second District still leans Democratic, but if a candidate can chip into its rural Black vote, he has a strong chance. For Jeremy Hunt, an Army veteran and Black candidate running in the Republican primary to challenge Representative Sanford Bishop, a long-serving Democrat who is also Black, the Supreme Court is not part of his calculus.“We can talk about Republicans versus Democrats, but ultimately, that’s not what voters want to hear from us as leaders,” Mr. Hunt said. “There is a huge temptation to get into national-level stuff and make it about what’s going on, you know, on different levels, but a big part of our campaign is keeping it local.”Still, when he talks about what is afflicting local farmers and truckers, Mr. Hunt said, he invariably comes back around to the economy, gas prices and inflation.Black voters were the most likely to say they were personally falling behind because of inflation, according to the NBC News poll. And that is producing anxieties that Republicans are eager to exploit.Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, one of two Black Republicans in the House, said Republicans had nothing to apologize for in the Jackson confirmation process.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesRepresentative Byron Donalds of Florida, one of two Black Republicans in the House, said: “We’ve got rich Black people. We’ve got rich white people. We have poor Black people. We have poor white people. If you’re poor in the United States, you’re feeling the effects of $4.30 gasoline. You’re feeling the effects of home heating oil prices that have gone up 60 percent. You’re feeling the impacts of meat and bread and milk, all going up dramatically.”Mr. Donalds said he had watched most of Judge Jackson’s hearings and had seen nothing that Republicans needed to apologize for.“Never once did they go into her personal life,” he said. “Never once did they go into her personal background. Never once were their accusations about her character.”With Democrats disappointing and Republicans offering a weak alternative, some Black voters said they didn’t know where to turn politically.In Gary, Mr. Fleming said he worried about the rising power of the Democratic left wing. But until more Republicans drop their “conspiracy theories” and extreme comments, he said, they weren’t much of an option.“I mean, they thought everything that happened on Jan. 6 was AOK? That’s crazy,” Mr. Fleming said. “If a Mitt Romney-type Republican ran, I could go for that. But Republicans, they’re on another planet right now. I can’t even call them far right. They’re defying gravity.” More

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      Bob Gibbs, House Republican Facing Primary Challenge in Ohio, Will Retire

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      The state’s redistricting process had drawn Mr. Gibbs into a primary fight against Max Miller, who served in the Trump White House and was endorsed by the former president.Representative Bob Gibbs of Ohio announced on Wednesday that he would not seek re-election, just as early voting got underway in the state. Ohio’s redistricting process had forced Mr. Gibbs, who has served in Congress since 2011, into a Republican primary against a Trump-backed challenger, Max Miller, among others.Mr. Gibbs said in a statement that the tumultuous effort to redraw the state’s congressional map had become a “circus,” and he criticized the last-minute changes to his rural district south of Cleveland.“It is irresponsible to effectively confirm the congressional map for this election cycle seven days before voting begins, especially in the Seventh Congressional District where almost 90 percent of the electorate is new,” he said.Mr. Gibbs’s name will still appear on the ballot in the district but signs will be posted at voting locations stating that votes for him will not be counted, said Rob Nichols, a spokesman for the Ohio Secretary of State, in a brief interview.Mr. Gibbs was facing a serious primary challenge from Mr. Miller, an aide to former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Miller last year when the Ohio candidate was aiming to unseat Representative Anthony Gonzalez, who had voted to impeach Mr. Trump. But Mr. Gonzalez said in September that he would not run for re-election.Mr. Gibbs and Mr. Gonzalez were later drawn into the new Seventh District. Mr. Gibbs voted against impeaching Mr. Trump after the Capitol riot and voted to overturn the results of the presidential election, positions that the former president has treated as litmus tests for which Republicans he will support in 2022.Mr. Miller on Wednesday praised Mr. Gibbs’s tenure.Ohio is losing one of its 16 congressional seats as part of the once-a-decade redistricting process after the latest census. The state’s efforts to redraw its district lines have been mired in legal challenges.In January, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected a congressional map drawn by the state’s Republican-dominated Redistricting Commission, calling it too partisan for a state where the G.O.P. has lately won about 55 percent of the statewide popular vote.Max Miller, an aide to former President Donald J. Trump, had originally aimed to unseat Representative Anthony Gonzalez.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThe court is planning to hold a hearing on the new congressional map sometime after the May 3 primary, and is hearing challenges to a fourth set of state legislative maps. Frank LaRose, Ohio’s Secretary of State, removed the state legislative races from the May 3 ballot and a new date for those elections has not been set.Jen Miller, the executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, echoed Mr. Gibbs’s frustration with redistricting. “Ohio is swingable but it doesn’t seem that way because we have this history of extreme gerrymandering,” she said.Redistricting is a potentially decisive factor in determining which party will control Congress. Both parties have sought to give themselves advantages in states across the country — giving rise to legal wrangling in several states, including New York, Maryland, Alabama and North Carolina.Michael Wines More

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      Fred Upton, House Republican Who Supported Impeachment, Will Retire

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      Mr. Upton is the fourth House Republican who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump to decline to run for re-election.Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican who has served in the House for more than three decades, announced his retirement on Tuesday, becoming the fourth House Republican who voted to impeach former President Donald J. Trump to decline to run for re-election.Of the 10 House Republicans to vote for Mr. Trump’s impeachment last year, the others who have chosen retirement are Representatives Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio and John Katko of New York.“This is it for me,” Mr. Upton said in an emotional departure speech on the House floor, lamenting the divisiveness of politics today. “Hopefully civility and bipartisanship versus discord can rule and not rue the day.”Mr. Upton, whose long career included a stint as chairman of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, had seen his Western Michigan district redrawn after reapportionment, and he was facing a tough primary campaign against Representative Bill Huizenga, whom Mr. Trump has endorsed.In retiring, Mr. Upton invoked his early service in the Reagan administration, where he worked in the Office of Management and Budget. “Reagan worked both sides of the aisle to get things done, caring less about who got the credit,” Mr. Upton said. “And I made a promise that such a principle would be my guiding light.”He was followed immediately on the floor by a Democrat, Representative Debbie Dingell of Michigan, who called his retirement a “loss for this country.”“Fred and I always managed to disagree without vitriolic rhetoric,” she said, calling him a “best friend” to her late husband, former Representative John Dingell, who died in 2019. More

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      Judge Keeps New York’s New Electoral Map Intact for Now

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      The stay by an appellate judge puts on hold a lower-court ruling that New York’s newly drawn congressional and legislative districts were unconstitutional.A New York appellate judge on Monday hit the brakes on a sweeping lower-court decision that invalidated newly drawn legislative districts favorable to Democrats and threatened to throw the state’s election season into turmoil.Justice Stephen K. Lindley of New York’s Fourth Appellate Department in Rochester issued the temporary stay after state Democratic leaders formally contested the lower court’s opinion last week that the maps were unconstitutional and, in some cases, gerrymandered for partisan gain.He did not address the merits of the case but indicated that he hoped to expedite his own ruling on whether the lines were constitutional.“The appeal will be greatly accelerated for obvious reasons, and I anticipate that a decision could be rendered within the next three weeks, if not sooner,” Justice Lindley wrote in a note instructing both Democrats and the Republicans challenging the maps to attend a Thursday hearing.In the short term, the stay means that the maps approved by the Democrat-led Legislature in February, as well as the state’s June primary calendar, will remain in effect. But it remains to be seen whether the maps will survive the appeals process.What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Analysis: For years, the congressional map favored Republicans over Democrats. But in 2022, the map is poised to be surprisingly fair.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Analysts generally believe the Appellate Division is more likely to defer to the Legislature’s prerogative to draw the maps and less likely to intercede in a way that would blow up this year’s elections calendar than was the lower court judge, Patrick F. McAllister, a State Supreme Court justice in rural Steuben County and a Republican.The outcome in New York has attracted intense national interest, with partisan control of three to four seats in the House of Representatives hanging in the balance at a time when the two parties are vying for the majority from coast to coast. The New York lines as currently construed promise to boost House Democrats while also safeguarding the party’s State Senate majority, prompting national Republicans to spend richly on the legal challenge.Inside New York, the tangled legal machinations have had a more immediate effect on candidates for office from both parties, who are watching the proceedings carefully.Before it was stayed, Justice McAllister’s decision had set campaigns racing to determine what districts — if any — they were actually running in. Candidates who had already spent a month gathering petitions to run in the newly drawn congressional, State Senate and Assembly districts faced the prospect that the lines would be erased, their costly work temporarily nullified and June’s primary elections postponed just days before the petitioning process was scheduled to end.“On the eve of the petitioning deadline, candidates — incumbents and insurgents alike — were thrown for a loop,” said Jerry H.​ Goldfeder, an elections lawyer at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan who advises Democratic candidates.He called it “a perfect example of why courts shouldn’t interfere with election procedures at the 11th hour.”Though Justice McAllister did not explicitly delay the primary, his order for lawmakers to redraw new district lines that could win bipartisan support almost certainly would have required the primary to be rescheduled.The ruling prompted the State Board of Elections to issue guidance late last week that prematurely said the decision had been stayed and advised candidates that “all other deadlines provided for by law are still in effect pending further court determinations and the petitions would still be due this week.”How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Sarah Palin Knows How to Get Attention. Can She Actually Win?

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      Endorsed by Donald Trump for Alaska’s lone House seat, the former vice-presidential candidate hopes she can mount a political comeback. But she’s not the phenomenon she once was.The last time Sarah Palin and Donald Trump shared a stage together, the former Alaska governor gave a meandering endorsement speech that displayed her inventiveness with the English language — and her instinctive connection to the Republican base.She spoke of “right wingin’, bitter clingin’, proud clingers of our guns, our God, and our religions and our Constitution” and railed against “squirmishes” abroad. It was 20 minutes of vintage Palinisms: “He’s going rogue left and right” — “No more pussy footin’ around!” — “Doggone right we’re angry!” — “us Joe six-packs.” BuzzFeed published the transcript in full, calling it “bizarre.”Beneath the malapropisms and the circumlocutions, though, Palin turned out to have a shrewder feel for Republican voters than those in the press who scorned her, and who underestimated him.Palin’s endorsement of Trump in January 2016 gave him credibility on the populist right at a crucial moment, though it didn’t put him over the top in Iowa, where Senator Ted Cruz of Texas won the caucuses that year. The move even briefly fueled speculation that the two might form a ticket — him the brash, unpredictable New York billionaire; her the snowmobile-drivin’, moose-huntin’ Mama Grizzly from Wasilla. Tabloid dynamite!Trump has now returned the favor, offering Palin his “Complete and Total Endorsement” in her race to succeed Representative Don Young, Alaska’s lone House member, who died on March 18.But six years after they shared that stage in Iowa, both Trump and Palin are somewhat diminished figures. He, of course, is a twice-impeached former president. And though he remains the Republican Party’s most powerful person, his endorsements don’t carry the punch they once did.Palin, meanwhile, has been left to lament, during her libel trial against The New York Times, how she lost her TV gigs and her national political platform. In October, the last time anyone tried to gauge her popularity in Alaska, Palin’s approval rating was just 31 percent, according to the Alaska pollster Ivan Moore.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.So the question must be asked: Can Donald Trump help Sarah Palin win?“I think she’s the favorite right now,” said Kristopher Knauss, a political consultant in Alaska. But that does not mean Palin is a lock.What’s going for herPalin enters the race with some significant advantages.She’ll have near-universal name recognition. She should be able to raise significant sums of money from small donors — a must, given how soon the June 11 primary will be held. She was a popular governor, though by the end of her tenure, her approval rating had slunk from the low 90s to the mid-50s. And the national interest in the race will lead to free media coverage that her opponents can’t match.Palin and Trump share much in common. She ran for governor in 2006 as an outsider taking on a corrupt political establishment. In 2008, as the vice-presidential running mate for Senator John McCain of Arizona, she pioneered the raucous style of political rallies that Trump would turn into the defining feature of his 2016 run. Many of his campaign themes were first hers: battling the media, railing at cultural elites, trashing Washington insiders.Like Trump, Palin parlayed her celebrity into a reality TV show — “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” which was produced by Mark Burnett, the mastermind of “The Apprentice.” The show got decent ratings, but was canceled after just one season.The two saw each other as kindred spirits, their allies say. In 2011, when Palin was flirting with a presidential run, she visited New York and sat down with Trump and his wife for pizza at Famous Famiglia. (They shared “a pepperoni pizza, a sausage pizza and a meatball pizza,” according to an account at the time by our colleague Trip Gabriel.)Today, Palin is being represented by Michael Glassner, who was the chief operating officer of Trump’s 2020 campaign. The two go way back: Glassner worked with Palin on the McCain campaign, then was the chief of staff of Palin’s political action committee before Trump hired him as his national political director.But that was all long ago, and Palin is no longer a novelty — she’s a 58-year-old former governor who hasn’t held office in more than a decade, and whose star has faded considerably.Trump has backed Palin in her race to succeed Representative Don Young, Alaska’s lone House member, who died on March 18.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesWhat’s going against herPalin’s strong name recognition is unlikely to be decisive, said Mike Murphy, a former McCain adviser. Noting her high negative ratings, he said “Palin fatigue” could doom her chances among voters who revered Young and take his replacement seriously.“Crazy times deserve crazy politicians, so it’s not impossible that she wins,” Murphy said. “Though I would bet against it.”Palin will be competing in a huge field — 51 candidates, including Santa Claus.That’s partly by design. The voting system Alaska adopted in 2020 was meant to encourage a wide range of candidates to compete. Rather than begin with separate primary elections held by the major political parties, the race will start with one primary that is open to everyone who qualifies. The top four candidates then advance to a general election in which voters rank their favorites.The system was intended to discourage negative campaigning. Because voters’ second choices are factored into the results, candidates must be careful not to alienate voters who support their rivals. In the New York mayor’s race, this led some candidates to form alliances and campaign together. Does Palin have the discipline to play nice?“Ultimately, someone’s got to get to 50 percent,” said Moore, the pollster. “That’s tough to do when 56 percent don’t like you.”Moore said that in the fall, when he modeled Palin’s inclusion in a hypothetical four-way Senate general election between Senator Lisa Murkowski, the Republican incumbent; Kelly Tshibaka, the hard-right Republican challenger; and Elvi Gray-Jackson, a Democratic state lawmaker, Palin was eliminated in the first round.Alaska’s fierce independent streak could also hurt Palin’s chances. More than 60 percent of its voters are not registered members of either major political party, and Trump is not especially popular. According to Moore, 43 percent of Alaskans have a “very negative” opinion of the former president.“Alaskans don’t like people from ‘outside’ telling them how to vote,” said Dermot Cole, an author and political blogger in Alaska. For that reason, he said, Trump’s endorsement is unlikely to carry much weight.Why Palin would want to return to politics is a bit of a mystery. She never enjoyed being governor, according to emails published by a disgruntled former aide, and she always seemed to resent the bruising coverage she received from the national news media. Alaska political observers could not recall her participating in any local causes over the 13 years since she announced that she would not be finishing her term, either.That abrupt departure, in favor of cultivating her national celebrity status, could undermine whatever advantages her famous name and Trump’s endorsement have given her, several of the observers said.“When she quit, she lost a great deal of whatever support she had left,” Cole said.But Palin has always made her own choices. Announcing her resignation in July 2009, she explained that she had no intention to do the expected.“We’re fishermen,” she said. “We know that only dead fish go with the flow.”What to read tonightPresident Biden called Russian attacks on civilians in Bucha, a suburb of Ukraine’s capital, a “war crime.” And an analysis of satellite images by The Times refuted claims by Russia that the killings in Bucha had occurred after its soldiers had left the town. Read the latest on the war in Ukraine.Democrats’ calls for the Justice Department to take more aggressive action in the Jan. 6 investigation are putting pressure on Attorney General Merrick Garland, who has maintained a deliberative approach.A major report from a United Nations panel found that while nations have made some progress in moving away from fossil fuels, they need to move much faster to retain any hope of preventing a perilous future for the planet.As Republican activists aggressively pursue conservative social policies in state legislatures across the country, liberal states are taking defensive actions, our colleagues Shawn Hubler and Jill Cowan report. This flurry of action is intensifying the differences between life in liberal- and conservative-led parts of the country — and it’s a sign of the consequences when state governments are controlled increasingly by single parties.Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.— Blake & LeahIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More