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      Maryland Judge Throws Out Democrats’ Congressional Redistricting Map

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      The ruling, in which the judge said Democrats had drawn an “extreme gerrymander,” was the first time this redistricting cycle that the party’s legislators had a congressional map defeated in court.A Maryland judge ruled on Friday that Democrats in the state had drawn an “extreme gerrymander” and threw out the state’s new congressional map, the first time this redistricting cycle that a Democratic-controlled legislature’s map has been rejected in court.The ruling by Senior Judge Lynne A. Battaglia of the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County found that the map drawn by Democrats had “constitutional failings” and ignored requirements of focusing on “compactness” and keeping similar communities together.“All of the testimony in this case supports the notions that the voice of Republican voters was diluted and their right to vote and be heard with the efficacy of a Democratic voter was diminished,” Judge Battaglia wrote in her opinion.The congressional map drawn by Democrats would have most likely guaranteed them at least seven of Maryland’s eight House seats, or 87 percent of the state’s seats. President Biden carried the state with 65 percent of the vote in 2020.Judge Battaglia ordered the General Assembly to redraw the map by March 30, an extraordinarily tight deadline for a complicated process that often takes weeks, and she set a hearing for the new map for April 1. This year, the Maryland Court of Appeals moved the state’s primary election from June 28 to July 19 because of pending legal challenges to the new map.Democrats across the country have taken a much more aggressive tack this redistricting cycle than they have in the past, seeking to counteract what they have long denounced as extreme Republican gerrymanders from the 2010 cycle. Republicans’ map-drawing gains that year helped the party maintain power in the House of Representatives despite a Democratic victory at the presidential level in 2012. Democratic state legislatures in New York, Illinois and Oregon drew new maps this year that would have given them a significant advantage over Republicans — and congressional delegations at odds with the overall partisan tilt of each state. 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.Rather than looking to aggressively add new seats this cycle, Republicans, for the most part, have sought to shore up their previous advantages in gerrymandered maps in states like Texas and Georgia, removing competition and packing Democrats together in deeply blue districts.Maryland was one of the few states during the last redistricting cycle where Democrats enacted an aggressive gerrymander, pushing to add a Democratic seat to the state’s delegation, which consisted of six Democrats and two Republicans at the time. The eventual map added a batch of new Democratic voters to the Sixth District, leading to the defeat of Representative Roscoe Bartlett, a 20-year Republican incumbent. Former Gov. Martin O’Malley, a Democrat and former presidential candidate, has since acknowledged in a court deposition that the goal of the last redistricting process was to draw a map that was “more likely to elect more Democrats rather than less.”Judge Battaglia’s decision comes as state courts have emerged as a central battleground for parties and voters to challenge maps by calling them partisan gerrymanders, after a 2019 Supreme Court ruling that partisan gerrymandering could not be challenged at the federal level. This year, state courts in Ohio and North Carolina have tossed out maps drawn by legislators as unconstitutional gerrymanders. Judge Battaglia, who was appointed by former Gov. Parris N. Glendening, a Democrat, is a former U.S. attorney in Maryland. She also served as chief of staff to former Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, a Democrat from Maryland. Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, a Republican whose veto of the map was overridden by the Democratic-controlled legislature, praised the decision and called on the General Assembly to pass a map drawn by an independent commission he created. “This ruling is a monumental victory for every Marylander who cares about protecting our democracy, bringing fairness to our elections, and putting the people back in charge,” Mr. Hogan said in a statement. The office of Brian Frosh, the attorney general of Maryland and a Democrat, said that it was reviewing the decision and that it had not yet decided whether to appeal it.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Nebraska Congressman Convicted in Campaign Finance Case

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      Representative Jeff Fortenberry was accused of lying to F.B.I. agents investigating illegal foreign donations.LOS ANGELES — A Nebraska congressman was convicted Thursday on charges that he lied to federal authorities about having received an illegal campaign contribution from a foreign citizen.Representative Jeff Fortenberry was convicted in federal court in Los Angeles on one count of falsifying and concealing material facts and two counts of making false statements. Each carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, according to the United States Department of Justice. A sentencing hearing was set for June 28.“The lies in this case threatened the integrity of the American electoral system and were designed to prevent investigators from learning the true source of campaign funds,” said Tracy L. Wilkison, one of the prosecutors.Mr. Fortenberry’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But outside the courthouse, Mr. Fortenberry said that the process had been unfair and that he would appeal immediately, according to The Associated Press.In October, when he was charged, the congressman vowed to fight the accusations and maintained his innocence.“Five and a half years ago, a person from overseas illegally moved money to my campaign,” Mr. Fortenberry said in a video he posted online at the time. “I didn’t know anything about this.”He was convicted after a weeklong trial.Mr. Fortenberry, a Republican who has been in Congress for almost two decades, received a $30,000 donation to his re-election campaign at a fund-raiser in 2016, according to the federal indictment in the case. Foreign citizens are prohibited from donating to U.S. election campaigns.Rather than report the contribution in an amended filing with the Federal Election Commission or return the money, as federal law dictates, prosecutors said Mr. Fortenberry kept it and told investigators in 2019 that he had been unaware of any contributions made by foreign citizens.The charges did not stem from the donation itself, which came from Gilbert Chagoury, a Lebanese Nigerian billionaire who was accused of conspiring to make illegal campaign contributions to American politicians in exchange for access to them.The charges came after prosecutors said Mr. Fortenberry denied knowing that the donation, which had been funneled through an intermediary, were from Mr. Chagoury — even after the congressman told a cooperating witness, a fund-raiser referred to in court filings as Individual H, that the donation “probably did come from Gilbert Chagoury.”Federal investigators first interviewed Mr. Fortenberry in 2019 as part of an investigation into Mr. Chagoury, who admitted to giving $180,000 to four candidates from June 2012 to March 2016. Mr. Fortenberry was one of those four.Mr. Chagoury ultimately reached a deal with the U.S. government and paid a $1.8 million fine.In court documents, prosecutors said Mr. Chagoury had been told to donate to “politicians from less-populous states because the contribution would be more noticeable to the politician and thereby would promote increased donor access.”Katie Benner contributed reporting. More

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      U.S. House Candidate Ends Run After Uproar Over Behavior at Sleepover

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      Abby Broyles of Oklahoma said on Thursday that she had checked into rehab “to focus on myself and my happiness” weeks after apologizing for drinking and swearing at children.A Democratic candidate for Congress in Oklahoma has ended her campaign one month after she apologized for verbally abusing children attending a sleepover at a friend’s home.The candidate, Abby Broyles, a former investigative television reporter who ran an unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2020, said she was ending her bid to represent Oklahoma’s Fifth Congressional District “to focus on myself and my happiness,” according to a Medium post published on Thursday.In the essay, Ms. Broyles, 32, described how she “hit rock bottom” after the sleepover incident last month.She described being in an emergency room on March 2, less than two weeks after the apology.“I drank heavily in my hotel room, more than 1,300 miles away in an effort to hide and took sleeping pills, anguishing in pain reading about myself on social media and in tabloid articles,” she wrote.Ms. Broyles also said she had “struggled with mental health issues including self-worth, severe anxiety and insomnia for about 20 years.”Ms. Broyles, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday, has said that she has no memory of what happened during the Feb. 11 sleepover where she had mixed alcohol and sleep medication. About eight girls ages 12 and 13 attended the sleepover, where they watched the movie “Titanic,” according to NonDoc Media, a journalism nonprofit in Oklahoma.When first contacted by NonDoc Media for comment, Ms. Broyles seemed to deny that she was at the party. After a TikTok video showed otherwise, she gave an interview to KFOR-TV, an Oklahoma City station where she once worked.In the interview, Ms. Broyles said that she had “blacked out” after drinking wine and taking a sleeping medication. She said that her friend, who was hosting the sleepover, had given her medicine that she had never taken before.After the sleepover episode made national headlines, Ms. Broyles said she had received death threats and had been harassed by online trolls. She also wrote that she had “lost support” from Democratic leaders. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which Ms. Broyles said “announced it was distancing itself” from her after the episode, did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment on Thursday.“The news cycle was the longest nine days of my life,” she continued. “I didn’t even feel safe staying in my own home due to the threats I received.”Alone in a hotel room this month, Ms. Broyles became overwhelmed with self-doubt, she said in the post. “Surrounded by empty wine and liquor bottles, I stared at the dark circles under my eyes in the bathroom mirror, and this time, I didn’t just tell myself I’m ‘not good enough,’” she wrote. “This time I told myself I was done.”“I don’t remember what all I drank before I sent a couple suicidal texts to close friends and sent a tweet out that said, ‘You guys win. I’ll just kill myself,’” she continued. “I blacked out and woke up on a gurney.”Ms. Broyles was seeking her party’s nomination in June to run against Representative Stephanie Bice, the Republican incumbent serving her first term. In 2020, Ms. Broyles ran to unseat Senator James Inhofe, a Republican.Toward the end of her statement, Ms. Broyles said that she had checked into a rehabilitation center recently.She said she was sharing her story “because I should’ve gotten help sooner, and if you’re suffering, please know, there is help. Unfortunately, I had to hit rock bottom to realize it.”If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 (TALK) or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. More

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      Victor Fazio, Longtime Democratic Leader in the House, Dies at 79

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      Known for his ability to work across the aisle, he represented the Sacramento area from 1979 to 1999 and rose to become chairman of the House Democratic caucus.Victor Fazio, a longtime Democratic member of Congress from California who served in House leadership for several years, died on March 16 at his home in Arlington, Va. He was 79.The cause was cancer, according to a statement from his former congressional office.Mr. Fazio represented the Sacramento area from 1979 to 1999. As a member of the House Appropriations Committee, he helped bring home funding for numerous projects, including a multimillion-dollar environmental institute at the University of California, Davis. He also lobbied for the funds to protect 3,700 acres of wetlands west of Sacramento as a refuge; dedicated by President Bill Clinton in 1997, it is known as the Vic Fazio Yolo Wildlife Area.Known for his low-key, bipartisan style, he often worked in partnership with the powerful California Republican representative Jerry Lewis, who died last year.Perhaps Mr. Fazio’s most difficult period was his tenure as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 1994 — the year that Republicans, led by Representative Newt Gingrich, took control of the House for the first time in 40 years.Still, because of Mr. Fazio’s ability to work across the aisle, his colleagues chose him the next year as chairman of the House Democratic caucus.Mr. Fazio stood behind the speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, as Mr. Gingrich’s fellow Republican representatives Bill Thomas (partly hidden) and Tom DeLay conferred, during a news conference on Capitol Hill in 1995.Karin Anderson for The New York TimesAfter he retired from Congress, he worked at a public relations firm in Washington led by Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman. He later joined the Washington office of the powerhouse law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and was regularly named to the annual list of top lobbyists by the political newspaper The Hill. He retired from Akin Gump in 2020.Victor Herbert Fazio Jr. was born in Winchester, Mass., on Oct. 11, 1942. His father was an insurance salesman, his mother a homemaker and dress shop manager.He earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., in 1965 before going to California on a Caro Foundation fellowship.In 1970, he co-founded California Journal magazine, now defunct, which covered state government and politics, and served in the California State Assembly before winning his House seat in 1978.His first marriage, to Joella Mason, ended in divorce. His second wife, Judy Neidhardt Kern, whom he married in 1983, died in 2015.In 2017, he married Kathy Sawyer. In addition to her, he is survived by a daughter from his first marriage, Dana Fazio Lawrie; two stepchildren, Kevin and Kristie Kern; and four granddaughters. A daughter, Anne Noel Fazio, died in 1995. More

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      It’s Never a Good Time for the Hunter Biden Story

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      Gail Collins: Bret, here’s one question I don’t think I ever asked you before: What do you think of daylight saving time?Bret Stephens: About the same way I feel about Volodymyr Zelensky. The light of the West.Gail: Your ability to have everything remind you of foreign affairs is awesome.I was sorta impressed the other day when the Senate voted unanimously to make daylight saving time permanent, year-round. What’s the last thing they agreed about that easily?Bret: Invading Afghanistan?Gail: I think switching back and forth is stupid. But many sleep scientists seem to think standard time — winter time — is healthier. So I’ll go with them, just to be difficult.Bret: This is a major difference between liberals and conservatives. Modern-day liberals are often quite happy to defer to the wisdom of experts, at least when it comes to subjects like public health or economics. Whereas those of us who are conservative tend to be — skeptical. We prefer the wisdom of crowds, or markets, to the wisdom of the purportedly wise. It goes back to William F. Buckley Jr.’s famous line that he’d rather “be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory than by the Harvard University faculty.”Gail: Do you happen to know what William F. Buckley Jr.’s position on daylight saving time was?Bret: Given that daylight savings was initially signed into law by Woodrow Wilson, I’d have to assume Buckley would have been against it.Gail: And you know, if the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory did take control, polls suggest we’d very likely be right in line for Medicare for all and universal early childhood education.Bret: Isn’t that because people love liberal policy ideas until you show them the price tag?On a gloomier subject, Joe Biden has now called Vladimir Putin a “war criminal,” a “murderous dictator” and a “pure thug.” Hard to disagree with the characterizations, but is it prudent?Gail: Well, in the grand scheme of things I’d say Biden could have been more … restrained.Bret: I’m happy he said it. It reminds me of Ronald Reagan calling the Soviet Union the “evil empire,” which liberals once considered provocative but had the benefit of being absolutely true.Gail: Ukraine’s troops seem to be doing way better than people expected, and even if average Russian citizens aren’t allowed to know about that, they can’t help noticing that their economy is cratering.So what happens next? I’m just terrified Putin will feel cornered and drop a nuclear bomb or do something else that’s planet-destructive. Am I being paranoid?Bret: The scary thing is that you’re being completely rational.Gail: Truly scary if I’m being rational on foreign affairs.Bret: If Russian forces are capable of firing on a nuclear power station, they’re capable of worse. And Russia’s battlefield incompetence, along with its mounting losses, is probably tempting Putin to use chemical weapons or even a tactical nuclear weapon to win a war his generals can’t.Gail: Yep, that’s my nightmare.Bret: On the other hand, it’s in Putin’s interest to make us think he’s capable of anything: It’s his version of Richard Nixon’s “madman theory” of international relations, in which a leader cultivates the appearance of being capable of anything in order to terrify his adversary into backing down. The best thing Biden can do is continue to provide our Ukrainian friends with all the means we can offer so they can defend themselves by themselves, without us getting into combat directly. I understand why Biden is reluctant to impose a no-fly zone, but I don’t get why he won’t supply the Ukrainian air force with fighter jets or any other equipment they ask for.Gail: Meanwhile, on the domestic front, have you been keeping an eye on the primary elections? There’s a big Republican fight coming up this spring in Georgia, where Donald Trump and his folks are trying to nominate Herschel Walker for a Senate race. Despite allegations of violent behavior toward his ex-wife and his recent demand to know why there are still apes if evolution works the way scientists say it does. And then there’s a primary this summer in Wyoming, where Liz Cheney is fighting to keep her House seat ….Bret: People often forget that Cheney actually supported Trump in the 2016 election, only to become a convinced anti-Trumper after she saw the guy in action. Her main challenger in this race, Harriet Hageman, went in the opposite direction: from fervent Never Trumper in 2016 to a fervent Trumper today. Cheney has a big campaign war chest and she could still pull off a win, at least if Wyoming Democrats switch parties to vote for her in the primary.Gail: Well, if Wyoming Republicans can reward Cheney for her independence, I promise to stop complaining that a state with a population of less than 600,000 has the same number of Senators as California, which has nearly 40 million.Bret: I feel just the same way about Vermont and Texas. But about Cheney’s chances, I wouldn’t bet on them. A party with a cult-of-personality problem is like a person with a substance abuse problem, meaning they’re going to ride the addiction to rock bottom.By the way: Did you read The Times’s account of the government’s investigation into Hunter Biden’s tax and foreign-business affairs? The news here has less to do with Hunter himself and more with the fact that those emails recovered from the discarded laptop were his, despite the best efforts by Twitter and other social media and news media companies to bury or not look closely enough at that fact on the eve of the 2020 election.Gail: I’m so glad our colleagues are still doing strong reporting on this story — Hunter Biden’s scummy business dealings shouldn’t be swept under the rug any more than anyone else’s.Bret: Not to mention those paintings he tried to sell for up to $500,000 a canvas in nontransparent sales. Nothing at all fishy there.Gail: That said, I have to admit I’ve never found Hunter’s behavior criminal — just very, very depressing. Fragile son in a family buffeted by tragedy, grows up to have a drug problem and makes a lot of money by working for companies that presumably like to have a famous American politician’s relative to trot around.Bret: The D.O.J.’s investigation will tell.Gail: Some of Hunter’s behavior was obviously unseemly in the extreme. Any new evidence needs to be carefully examined to see if Hunter’s behavior ever went past that into actual criminality — did he claim, for instance, that he could deliver favors from the government because he was Joe Biden’s son?So far I haven’t seen it, but whenever Hunter’s name comes up, I do find myself holding my breath.Bret: The book to read on this subject is “The Bidens,” by Politico’s Ben Schreckinger. It’s no right-wing hit job, which makes its description of Hunter’s business dealings that much more damning. But what really bothered me was the not-so-subtle media effort to bury the email story right before the election as some kind of “Russian disinformation” campaign. If someone had discovered that, say, Ivanka Trump had left a laptop at a repair shop stuffed with emails about 10 percent being held “for the big guy”— to use a reference that appears to be to Joe Biden, which comes from one of the emails found on Hunter’s computer — would the story have been treated with kid gloves?Gail: Well, Ivanka is a much tidier person. Your mentioning her does remind me that it’s never been clear to me exactly how much, if any, of the campaign donations Trump’s been piling up are going to his kids’ activities.Not trying to downplay the Hunter story, but in the grand scheme of things I still think his misdeeds are going to wind up as a sidebar on the Biden saga. Feel free to remind me I said that if half the family winds up indicted.Bret: I honestly hope not. The world needs another White House corruption scandal like I need a hole in my head, to borrow a line from one of the better songs of the 1990s.Gail: On another subject entirely — have you noticed that earmarks are back?Bret: Don Young dies but pork is forever. I don’t think pork is such a bad thing in the grand scheme of things. It brings projects to constituents who need them and makes politics a whole lot more fun to cover. What do you think?Gail: Makes me sorta sad remembering John McCain’s long, long battle to get rid of them. The biggest problem, as I remember, wasn’t lawmakers trying to get some special bridge overpass for their district; it was lawmakers trying to get a contract for some big, unnecessary project that would go to one of their donors.Now we’re stunned that the Senate can come together on daylight saving time. Guess things are just darker now than in the olden days.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Ohio Supreme Court Intensifies a Redistricting Map Standoff

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      Years ago, voters created a commission to make political maps fairer. Now the State Supreme Court is blocking maps drawn by the Republican-led commission, saying nothing has changed.A bipartisan majority of Ohio Supreme Court justices has ratcheted up an extraordinary legal standoff over the state’s political boundaries, rejecting — for the third time in barely two months — new maps of state legislative districts that heavily favor the Republican Party.The decision appears likely to force the state to postpone its primary elections, scheduled to take place on May 3, until new maps of both state legislative seats and districts for the United States House of Representatives pass constitutional muster.The court’s ruling late Wednesday was a blunt rebuff of the Ohio Redistricting Commission, a Republican-dominated body that voters established in 2015 explicitly to make political maps fairer, but that now stands accused of trying to fatten already lopsided G.O.P. majorities in the state’s legislature and the U.S. House.Ohio has become the heart of a nationwide battle over political boundaries that has assumed life-or-death proportions for both Republicans and Democrats, one in which courts like Ohio’s have played an increasingly crucial role.With redistricting complete in all but five states, Democrats have erased much of a huge partisan advantage that Republicans had amassed on the House of Representatives map by dominating the last round of redistricting in 2011. Democrats have also rolled back some of the Republican gerrymanders that have allowed the party to dominate state legislatures.The minority justices in the 4-to-3 ruling in Ohio, all Republicans, said in a bitter dissent that the decision “decrees electoral chaos” by upending election plans and fomenting a constitutional crisis. But the four majority justices, led by Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, a Republican, said it was the Redistricting Commission that was creating chaos by repeatedly drawing maps that violated the State Constitution’s mandate for political fairness.Constitutional scholars and Ohio political experts have said the Redistricting Commission had been betting that the high court would be forced to approve its maps so that it would not shoulder blame for disrupting statewide elections. The court has already complained of foot-dragging by the commission, threatening last month to hold its members in contempt for failing to produce a new state legislative map on time.“There’s this attitude that ‘if we can’t get our way with the court, we’re going to try to run out the clock on them,’” Paul De Marco, a Cincinnati lawyer who specializes in appeals cases, said of the Redistricting Commission, which is made up of five Republicans, including Gov. Mike DeWine, and two Democrats.With the ruling this week, the court effectively called the commission’s bluff.“This court is not a rubber stamp,” Justice Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, wrote in a concurring opinion. “By interpreting and enforcing the requirements of the Ohio Constitution, we do not create chaos or a constitutional crisis — we work to promote the trust of Ohio’s voters in the redistricting of Ohio’s legislative districts.”The stalemate is playing out in a state whose 15 House seats — the seventh-largest congressional delegation in the nation — represent the second-largest trove of congressional districts whose boundaries remain to be drawn for this year’s midterm elections. (Florida, with 28 House seats, is the largest.) The delegation’s partisan makeup could determine control of an almost evenly divided House of Representatives.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.The Ohio Supreme Court is also in a standoff with the Redistricting Commission over the state’s congressional map, having already rejected one version in January as too partisan. It is considering a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the commission’s newly redrawn map of Ohio congressional districts, which would create solidly Republican seats in 10 of the 15 districts. The map would leave Democrats with three safe seats and two competitive seats where the party would hold slight edges.The fight over the maps could well move to federal court, where Republicans have asked that a three-judge panel be created to consider instituting the Redistricting Commission’s rejected maps so that elections can proceed. Chief Judge Algenon L. Marbley of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio declined to act on Monday, noting that the State Supreme Court was considering the maps.But Judge Marbley, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, indicated that he would step in if there were “serious doubts that state processes will produce a state map in time for the primary election.”In North Carolina, Pennsylvania and some other states, state supreme courts have played decisive roles in redistricting this year, casting aside gerrymanders in favor of fairer maps often drawn by nonpartisan experts. The Ohio court is at an impasse because the State Constitution allows the court to reject maps it deems unconstitutional, but gives it no clear authority to make maps more fair, much less to adopt ones that the commission did not draw. Maureen O’Connor, the chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court and a Republican, said the state’s G.O.P.-dominated Redistricting Commission was creating chaos by repeatedly drawing maps that violated the Ohio Constitution’s mandate for political fairness. Earl Gibson III/Getty ImagesIt wasn’t supposed to be this way.Ohioans thought they had abolished hyperpartisan political maps for good seven years ago, when they resoundingly approved a constitutional amendment that took mapmaking authority away from politicians in the legislature and gave it to the new commission. That referendum ended a long struggle between voting rights advocates and political leaders of both parties, who had resisted any change in the mapmaking process.The two sides struck a compromise that gave politicians control of the Redistricting Commission, filling its seven seats with elected officials and their appointees, generally favoring the party in power. In return, voting rights groups were granted one of their wishes: a constitutional mandate that the commission draw maps that “correspond closely to the statewide preferences of the voters of Ohio,” based on the previous decade’s elections.Seven in 10 voters approved the 2015 amendment. Three years later, another amendment effectively extended the deal to congressional maps.“This issue is proof that when you work together in a bipartisan manner, you can accomplish great things,” Matt Huffman, a Republican state representative from Lima who campaigned for the 2015 amendment, said after it passed.Today Mr. Huffman is the president of the State Senate and sits on the Redistricting Commission. But he now says that the constitutional requirement that maps reflect voters’ preferences was only “aspirational” — a view the Supreme Court rejected in January.Jen Miller, the executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, said that “we mobilized more than 12,000 Ohioans to advocate for fair maps through emails, phone calls and even submitting their own maps.”She added: “What’s disappointing, and shocking for most of us, is that it’s business as usual. Nothing has changed.”How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      How a Murdoch Hopes to Save American Democracy

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      Kathryn Murdoch is trying to change how elections are run. It’s a work in progress.Over the last decade, as America’s two dominant political parties pulled farther apart, a group of centrist-minded donors was growing increasingly frustrated.A gridlocked Congress made bipartisan policy wins close to impossible. Campaign-finance reform? The Supreme Court effectively put a stake in it in 2010. Climate legislation? Time and again, it hit a phalanx of Republican opposition.“Basically, everything that we were looking at would run up against a nonfunctioning government,” said Kathryn Murdoch, who has become a leader of a network of donors seeking to change the way Americans choose their elected officials.Fix the election system, the thinking goes, and the government will begin to run more smoothly. But when Murdoch’s family foundation, Quadrivium, examined the democracy reform movement, they found it too anemic and fractured to be effective.“Everything was very subscale, it seemed very clear to me — smart people, good ideas, a lot of data backing all of it up, but subscale for the problem, and not a lot of collaboration or, frankly, enough funds,” Murdoch said in an interview.The daughter-in-law of Rupert Murdoch, the Australian media mogul, Kathryn Murdoch has often found herself at odds with the conservative politics of her family’s TV, print and radio empire. Murdoch, a registered independent who is American, spent years funding efforts to slow climate change, only to encounter political obstacles at nearly every turn. Her new focus is building a movement to reshape American democracy itself, and she has set a goal of mobilizing $100 million to do so over the 2020 and 2022 election cycles.This focus has meant pitching her fellow philanthropists on why they should donate to democracy groups rather than to their own causes.“There’s not necessarily a special-interest group that is helping to ensure the integrity of the system,” said Marc Merrill, a software entrepreneur and donor who works with Murdoch on political overhaul projects. “Well, that’s an opportunity.”Murdoch’s problem with primariesMurdoch quickly determined that the chief villain was the partisan primary.It was aiding extremist candidates like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia. It was forcing moderate Republican senators like Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska to cater to the right wing rather than to the center of the electorate. And it was souring voters on politics. Murdoch has the statistics at her fingertips: In 2020, just 10 percent of Americans effectively elected 83 percent of the House. Only 17 percent of general elections for House seats were competitive.“What I hear all the time is that there are people who want to work on legislation, but they can’t before their primary, because they are terrified — and particularly if there’s an extreme Trumpy candidate or something like that,” Murdoch said. “They’re terrified of being seen as bipartisan. And that’s absolutely the wrong thing for the American people.”Murdoch says she now sees a “clear path” to fixing what ails American democracy, even if it takes years. A big part of the solution, in her view, is getting rid of partisan primaries altogether.On that much, advocates agree — though they may differ on the remedy required.In addition to Murdoch, several other donors have bankrolled the idea of eliminating partisan primaries. John and Laura Arnold, a billionaire couple from Texas, are big financial backers. So is Mike Novogratz, a Wall Street financier. Katherine Gehl, the former chief executive of a food company and co-author of “The Politics Industry,” a political reform manifesto, is an influential proponent.“How can we take that weapon away from people using it for those self-interested, narrow purposes?” Laura Arnold asked in a podcast discussion on partisan primaries with Gehl, who is pushing her own alternative called “final-five voting.”The biggest factor energizing those in the movement to reform American democracy is former President Donald Trump, whose attacks on the integrity of the election system alarmed many donors.Travis Dove for The New York TimesThe Trump factorThe biggest factor energizing advocates is Donald Trump, whose attacks on the integrity of the American election system and endorsements of fringe candidates have alarmed many donors.“After Trump got elected, things started to shift toward structural issues of democracy,” said Lee Drutman, who studies election reform as a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. “And the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol was a galvanizing moment.”A separate group, launched by Novogratz, has been enlisting philanthropists to each pledge 1 percent of their net worth toward “protecting democracy” and said it had already raised $87 million toward a goal of $250 million in pledges by 2024.Most proposed changes include some variation on ranked-choice voting, a system that allows voters to select their preferred candidates in order. New York City used the system in its Democratic primary for mayor last year, to great media fanfare — a breakout moment for what previously had been an obscure cause promoted by a small and scattered group of activists.Before then, ranked-choice proponents had notched a few quieter wins. In Maine, voters pushed through a ballot initiative in 2016 to become the first state to allow the system in elections for federal office. Alaska followed in 2020 with a similar ballot initiative, and 51 cities across the country have adopted ranked choice in some form or another.Proponents of ranked-choice voting argue it will make campaigns more civil, save money, lessen the polarization that is poisoning American politics and give voters more choices. And while the data is still out on many of those claims, surveys do show that voters tend to like it.One detractor has been Sherrie Swensen, the clerk of Salt Lake County, Utah, a state that has embraced ranked-choice voting in municipal elections. Swensen, whose position includes overseeing elections, said the system was “very complex to implement,” as it took weeks to figure out how to design new ballots.The democracy lobbyMurdoch is plowing resources and much of her energy into Unite America, a collection of groups that backs organizations, campaigns and candidates that support her reform goals. Unite America is meant to be a “cross-partisan” meeting ground for donors and activists, she said. “It’s a group of people,” Murdoch added with a chuckle, “with a wide variety of reasonable opinions.”Its executive director is Nick Troiano, a 32-year-old activist who ran for office as an independent in Pennsylvania at 24. Troiano has recruited a staff of hard-nosed political operatives from both parties, hoping to develop a cadre of seasoned campaigners who can steer investments and advise ballot initiatives in new states.“One thing that we’ve learned is we have to professionalize running these campaigns, and some of the best political talent that’s out there is sometimes locked up in the parties,” Troiano said.Murdoch and Merrill have also invested in Citizen Data, a nonpartisan outfit that provides voter information and analytical tools to groups that don’t have access to the two parties’ vast data resources.In the short term, Troiano expects what he calls “the primary problem” to get worse before it gets better. He noted that only a few dozen House seats are expected to be competitive this year, according to the Cook Political Report, even though redistricting has shaped up to be more balanced than many expected.“The important thing is to take on the winner-take-all mind-set in American politics,” said Rob Ritchie, the head of FairVote, a nonpartisan election reform group. Ritchie predicts that between five and 10 states will be using some version of ranked-choice voting for presidential primaries by 2024, along with dozens more cities.Unite America’s official goals are somewhat more modest: help at least four new states start nonpartisan primaries and ranked choice in federal elections by 2024, using the Alaska model. Along with Alaska, several other states have already been largely “liberated” from partisan primaries, in Troiano’s estimation: California, Louisiana, Nebraska and Washington.Over the long term, Murdoch says, she is starting to feel more optimistic about American politics.“When you’re outside of it, it’s very easy to be completely depressed and cynical and say, ‘It can never get fixed. There’s too much money involved. It’s all going to hell in a handbasket,’” Murdoch said. “But from the inside, if you join in and actually start doing it, you realize that we can get it done.”What to read The war in Ukraine has ushered in a new era of foreign policy, aligning the United States more closely with Europe and re-energizing its leadership role, Michael Crowley and Edward Wong report. Here is our live coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Biden are suggesting different midterm slogans, with some vulnerable House Democrats revolting against the name “build back better,” Jonathan Martin reports.American Bridge, the Democratic super PAC, accused Trump of violating campaign-finance law by spending political funds on a 2024 presidential bid without formally declaring himself a candidate, Shane Goldmacher reports.how they runGlenn Youngkin’s victory in the Virginia race for governor last year has been attributed to parents who were upset about the state’s coronavirus response. New data has suggested otherwise. Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesVirginia’s ‘silver surge’Did angry school parents really sway the Virginia governor’s race?A new analysis by the Democratic-aligned firm TargetSmart suggests that conventional wisdom is wrong.Drawing on newly available voting records, the firm found that turnout among voters aged 75 or older went up by 59 percent in 2021 compared with the 2017 election for governor.As for those angry parents, when TargetSmart looked at counties where schools closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, it found no comparable surge for Republicans.“In fact,” TargetSmart’s Tom Bonier writes, “the biggest swings towards Republicans occurred in southwestern Virginia, where schools were open for in-person instruction for most of the year.”None of this means Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s focus on “parents’ rights” and critical race theory in schools did not affect his defeat of former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate. But it does suggest that we should be skeptical of first impressions.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

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      in Elections

      House Democrats Push Biden to Build a Better Midterm Message

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      House Democrats have been pressing the president to come up with a bumper-sticker-worthy slogan. The White House says it’s sharpening its message.WASHINGTON — After offering her customary lavish praise of President Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi got to the business at hand at a White House meeting last month on the midterm elections.Democrats, Ms. Pelosi told Mr. Biden and a group of his aides, need a more succinct and consistent message. The speaker, who has long been fond of pithy, made-for-bumper-sticker mantras, offered a suggestion she had heard from members: Democrats deliver.What Ms. Pelosi did not fully detail that February evening was that some of her party’s most politically imperiled lawmakers were revolting against Mr. Biden’s preferred slogan, “Build back better,” believing it had come to be a toxic phrase that only reminded voters of the party’s failure to pass its sweeping social policy bill. And what the president and his advisers did not tell the speaker was that they had already surveyed “Democrats deliver” with voters — and the response to it was at the bottom of those for the potential slogans they tested, according to people familiar with the research.No new campaign message was agreed to that day — or since. Mr. Biden is now absorbed by the war in Europe. Facing the biggest foreign policy crisis of his presidency, he is hardly consumed with the looming midterm elections, let alone trying to devise a catchy slogan. Still, his advisers acknowledge that the crisis in Ukraine presents a chance for a reset, perhaps the president’s best opportunity to restore his standing before November.Democrats are pleading with him to come up with a sharper message. With inflation hitting another 40-year high and gas prices spiking because of the boycott on Russian oil, they remain angst-ridden about their prospects in the fall, in large part because the president’s approval ratings remain in the 40s, and even lower in some pivotal states, even after a recent bump.Democrats who once thought the key to their political success would be beating back the pandemic and restoring the economy are deflated to find that falling coronavirus positivity rates and rising employment numbers — and even foreign policy leadership — have barely moved public opinion.“The economy is strong, and America is once again leading in freedom’s fight against tyranny,” Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota said. “But we all know that politics isn’t predicated on what’s real, rather on how people feel.”Representative Dean Phillips at a news conference with fellow members of the Problem Solvers Caucus outside the U.S. Capitol in December.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesRepublicans have plenty of their own divisions over message — and messengers. As long as former President Donald J. Trump retains his grip on the party, Democrats have a chance to remind up-for-grabs voters what is at stake this year and beyond.Still, White House aides acknowledge the pressure to revamp their strategy. They have been frustrated by how little credit they have received for enacting major legislation such as the Covid relief bill or bipartisan infrastructure legislation.“You tell them about the American Rescue Plan, and they say, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’” Mr. Biden, in a burst of candor, said at the House Democratic retreat on Friday, alluding to the $1.9 billion Covid measure he signed a year ago that is but a dim memory for most voters.The president’s advisers point to the State of the Union address — which emphasized pragmatism over bold progressive goals — as a blueprint for his message in coming months and note that, according to their research, cutting drug costs was among the most popular proposals in the speech.They also are considering a handful of executive orders that would please their base, on matters including the cancellation of some student loan debt, and are determined to enact legislation lowering the costs of prescription drugs, according to Democrats familiar with his plans.Some Democrats say they have been cheered by signs that the White House, and particularly Ron Klain, the chief of staff, are now focused on inflation after initially arguing last year that the increase was transitory. During a recent meeting with a group of House Democrats, Mr. Klain resisted a request to spend more federal dollars aiding restaurants in part because it could be seen as adding to inflationary pressures, according to an official at the meeting.To the relief of Democrats in Congress, the White House is dropping the “Build back better” catchphrase. The administration is also attempting to pin the blame on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for rising gas prices, hoping it will at least dilute Republican attacks over the issue.Mr. Biden’s midterm priorities aren’t taking a back seat to the war in Ukraine, the White House insists. Senior officials acknowledge that they regret their all-consuming focus on the Afghanistan withdrawal last summer, and as one said, they will not let the West Wing “become a bunker” at the expense of domestic politics.Democrats are counting on it.Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado, a Democrat who is on the ballot this fall, said he had privately urged Mr. Biden to put reducing consumer costs at the center of his agenda.“The president and the administration need to be attentive to the difficulties that real people are facing in the real world,” Mr. Polis said, recounting his message to the president on a phone call with other governors last month. “He’s a good listener. It’s just a matter of how it gets translated into policies, and we haven’t seen that yet from the White House.”Other prominent Democrats have also privately voiced discontent to Mr. Biden. Those ranks include Democrats who may also run for president and some who already have. Speaking to a friend last month, Hillary Clinton expressed concern that Mr. Biden was not offering a compelling narrative to voters about his presidency, according to a person familiar with the conversation.In addition to Mr. Biden’s policy plans, his advisers say they are taking steps to focus more aggressively on the election and on building good will with restive lawmakers.Biden officials said the president and Vice President Kamala Harris had both stepped up their fund-raising efforts for the Democratic National Committee in February, engaging major donors in one-on-one video conversations that had bolstered the committee’s coffers. There are discussions about expanding the White House political operation by dispatching a senior adviser, Cedric Richmond, to the D.N.C., which administration aides are frustrated with.Also, in hopes of quieting grumbles about Mr. Biden’s lack of engagement, his advisers say they plan to open up the White House to lawmakers, hosting them at the White House movie theater and bowling alley and reviving popular events like the Easter Egg Roll and West Wing tours.Nowhere is there more alarm in the party ranks than among House Democrats, many of whom have long felt that Mr. Biden and his aides, with their decades of service in the Senate, were overly focused on the other chamber.Most outspoken are incumbents facing difficult elections.Mr. Biden with Mayor Andy Schor and Representative Elissa Slotkin in Lansing, Mich., in October.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOne of them, Representative Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, had been privately pushing party leaders to salvage some elements of the sweeping social welfare legislation that Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia appeared to have torpedoed at the end of last year. Ms. Slotkin’s idea: Hold a summit-style gathering with House and Senate leaders and find consensus.That did not happen. Ms. Pelosi did hold a meeting in her office last month with Ms. Slotkin and other Democrats from competitive districts. The gathering devolved into a session of griping about the White House and pleas with the speaker to tell Mr. Biden to stop using the phrase “Build back better.”Ms. Slotkin declined to discuss private conversations but was blunt about her exasperation. “It would be helpful if the White House, the Senate and the House were all on the same page on those priorities,” she said.Asked if she was happier after the State of the Union, she shot back, “Words are good; deeds are better.”Some of her colleagues are voting with their feet: 31 House Democrats have said they will not run for re-election, the highest number in the caucus since 1992.Not all of the ire is aimed at Mr. Biden. Lawmakers view Ms. Pelosi as a political force but a de facto lame duck who is all but certain to join the exodus if Republicans reclaim the majority. They complain that they have received little guidance from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has sought to mollify members by talking up better-than-expected results from the redistricting process.The new maps, though, are little comfort to the lawmakers like Representative Dina Titus of Nevada, a poster child for the anguish of congressional Democrats.Representative Dina Titus of Nevada. Her tourism-dependent district was hit hard by the pandemic; Nevada still has some of the highest unemployment levels in the country.Joe Buglewicz for The New York TimesMs. Titus sought an ambassadorship but didn’t get one because Democrats couldn’t risk losing her seat. Her district became more competitive through redistricting. She is facing a primary from the left despite her largely progressive record. And she is running in tourism-dependent Nevada, which still has some of the highest unemployment levels in the country.Mr. Biden has set foot in the state only once as president, when he flew in for former Senator Harry Reid’s funeral.“They haven’t had time to come up with a plan because every day is some new crisis,” Ms. Titus said of the White House. Maybe, she wondered, there is no return to normal in polarized times.“You get expectations up that you can bring people together, you can negotiate, you got international experience, and then it’s a new world,” she said.Representative Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, another Democrat who is facing a tough re-election campaign, used the same word.“Let’s manage expectations,” Ms. Wild said, conceding that “as a party we overshot on” the social welfare measure that ran aground with Mr. Manchin.It’s hardly just swing district Democrats who are frustrated. As Mr. Biden’s approval rating has taken a significant hit among younger and nonwhite voters, other party leaders are urging him to address the concerns of those constituencies.Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York had broader advice for the president going forward: “Speak to more progressive policies, and speak to issues that impact people of color specifically.”Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesRepresentative Jamaal Bowman of New York said he had called Mr. Klain after Mr. Biden’s State of the Union speech to relay his alarm that the president had made the case against defunding the police without more robustly addressing police misconduct. (White House aides noted that the president had explicitly pledged “to hold law enforcement accountable.”)Mr. Bowman offered this advice for the president: “Speak to more progressive policies, and speak to issues that impact people of color specifically.”At a closed-door retreat for Senate Democrats that Mr. Biden attended on Wednesday, Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia pressed the president to cancel student loan debt, according to Democrats in the room.“Good policy, good politics,” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said of wiping away student debt.That advice, though, is bumping against the concerns of moderate Democrats, who are pushing Mr. Biden to pivot to the political center. Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey has spearheaded what he calls a “common sense” agenda and shared it with Mr. Klain, who was interested in some elements but mostly wanted to know what could pass the Senate. More