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      Vulnerable Democrats, Seeking Distance From the Left, Offer a Midterm Agenda

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      The plan aims to inoculate Democrats in conservative-leaning states from Republican attacks on cultural issues, underscoring how successful the G.O.P. has been at weaponizing them.WASHINGTON — A cluster of House Democrats from conservative-leaning districts is circulating a reworked legislative agenda for the coming election season that would embrace some of President Biden’s most popular initiatives and tackle rising prices while distancing lawmakers from the left’s most divisive ideas.The plan, obtained by The New York Times, seeks to inoculate the most vulnerable Democrats from the culture wars pursued by Republicans trying to win back the congressional majority. Its existence underscores how successful Republicans have been at weaponizing issues like pandemic-related school closures and “defund the police” efforts against Democrats in politically competitive districts.The draft agenda was written by Representatives Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, Steven Horsford of Nevada, Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, Dean Phillips of Minnesota and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan. It includes almost 75 bipartisan bills already drafted and broader bullet points such as “Combat Rising Costs for Food, Gas, Housing and Utilities,” “Reduce Prescription Drug Prices, Co-Pays and Deductibles” and “Fight Crime & Invest in Law Enforcement.”Rather than proposing cuts to funding for police departments, for example, it suggests financing the hiring of additional officers, especially in rural and small-town departments — though it would also fund body cameras and training, demands from liberal critics of law enforcement. Taking on Republican efforts to end mask mandates and school closures, the agenda includes legislation to “re-establish faith in America’s public health system and ensure preparedness for future pandemics, so that our economy and schools can remain open.”The plan avoids other items popular with progressives, such as a $15 minimum wage and a universal, single-payer “Medicare for all” insurance system, but it embraces some of the most broadly popular health care initiatives in Mr. Biden’s now-moribund Build Back Better Act: an agreement to allow Medicare to negotiate the prices of some of the most expensive drugs on the market and an expansion of Medicare to cover vision, dental and hearing care.Representative Steven Horsford of Nevada, one of the authors of the draft agenda.Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesWith their wafer-thin congressional majority and a president whose approval ratings are mired around 42 percent, Democrats are facing formidable headwinds in November’s midterm elections. The document, though stuffed with actual legislation, is more notable for its political message than for its policy details — in part because it omits any mention of how to pay for its initiatives.Some of its headline initiatives are not backed by the legislation below those programs. The plan promotes “Combating the Climate Crisis,” for instance, but the bills listed on that topic address the reliability and resilience of the electricity grid, top concerns for climate change deniers.But the agenda’s authors hope to at least revive a sense of momentum in a Democratic Congress that has entered the doldrums since enactment of a $1.2 trillion infrastructure law in November, followed by the Senate’s stymying of House-passed climate and social safety net legislation and a far-reaching voting rights bill.It is no accident that the document is circulating just before Mr. Biden’s State of the Union address on March 1, and the following week’s House Democratic “issues” retreat.The dozens of bills listed in the agenda all have Democratic and Republican authors, many of them endangered either by anti-Democratic momentum or by challengers endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump.One such bill, written by Representatives Debbie Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, and Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, would make permanent Medicare tele-health expansions undertaken during the pandemic. There is a diabetes prevention bill by Representatives Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado, and Tom Rice of South Carolina, a Republican who, like Ms. Cheney, voted to impeach Mr. Trump. An expansion of tax-favored education savings accounts is co-sponsored by Ms. Spanberger and Representative Fred Upton of Michigan, another Republican who voted to impeach. Also included is a significant expansion of eligibility for child and adult nutrition programs, drafted by Representatives Suzanne Bonamici, Democrat of Oregon, and Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Washington Republican facing a serious Trump-backed challenge for her impeachment vote.There are even incentives for utilities to invest in cybersecurity written by Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, the Democrat who has raised the contempt of the left by blocking the social policy and climate change bill in the Senate, and refusing to join his party in changing the filibuster rule to pass voter protection legislation over Republican opposition.But most striking is how the draft agenda takes on issues that appear to be dominating the campaign trail, even if they have not generated much debate on the floors of the House and the Senate.To beat back inflation, one bill the group is pushing would “prohibit” foreign governments from participating in cartel-like activities, a hit at OPEC that would have no real impact. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission would be granted the authority to order refunds for natural gas bills “that are unjust, unreasonable, unduly discriminatory or preferential.” And assistance would be given to new and small meat processors to combat monopoly pricing from the few dominant meat processors, an effort already underway by the Biden administration.Rising crime rates across the country would also receive attention, through an expansion of existing grants to local law enforcement, new safety requirements for ride-hailing companies, stronger reporting requirements for electronic communication service providers to help track child predators and a new federal crime designation for “porch pirates” who steal packages from home stoops.One measure included in the agenda appears to accept the Republican talking point that the coronavirus was created in a laboratory in China, then covered up by the World Health Organization — assertions that have been challenged repeatedly by scientific researchers.The Never Again International Outbreak Prevention Act, by Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick, Republican of Pennsylvania, and Conor Lamb, a centrist Democrat running for the Senate in Pennsylvania, “would provide accountability with respect to international reporting and monitoring of outbreaks of novel viruses and diseases, sanction bad actors and review the actions of the World Health Organization.” More

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      How Redistricting Made Park Slope and Staten Island Into an Unlikely Pair

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      New congressional maps that merge conservative Staten Island with liberal Park Slope will aid Democratic efforts to win a Republican-held House seat in New York.At The Original Goodfella’s, a well-known Staten Island pizzeria where photographs of Republican politicians are prominently displayed, the news sank in painfully: This borough, a rare conservative outpost of New York City, was being tossed into a congressional district with the liberal residents of Park Slope, Brooklyn.“Park Slope is more of a younger crowd with yuppies, hipsters,” said Carlo D’Angelo, 28, a Trump supporter who, when asked about who won the 2020 presidential election, said, “Only the man in the sky, only God, knows.”Staten Island was more “family-oriented and traditional,” he added, speaking near a framed display of a fork that ex-mayor Bill de Blasio, a Park Slope resident, scandalously used to eat pizza. “It’s two different, completely different, viewpoints.”The feeling was mutual outside the Park Slope Food Coop, the famously liberal Brooklyn grocery where social consciousness pervades every aisle, in a neighborhood that is home to many left-leaning families. Pamela Plunkett, 57, stood nearby, across the street from a meditation center, as she questioned how the wildly divergent politics and needs of residents in the new district would work.“I hate to say it, they’re one of the five boroughs, but it’s almost like they’re an outlier,” she said of Staten Island, noting differences in attitudes around issues including politics and the pandemic. “That’s why I’m worried about being grouped in with them.”The once-in-a-decade redistricting effort has created unusual congressional district lines all over the country, reflecting a partisan process embraced by Republicans and Democrats alike. But perhaps no other district in New York City contains constituencies so clearly in opposition to each other as the reconstituted 11th, whose new lines are expected to better position the Democratic Party to seize a seat now held by Representative Nicole Malliotakis, the lone Republican in the New York City delegation. Max Rose, a Democrat, is hoping that the inclusion of Park Slope, Brooklyn, in the 11th Congressional District will aid his chances of regaining his seat.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesOn Staten Island, the occasional “Thin Blue Line” flag in support of law enforcement flutters in spacious front yards of single-family homes, while in dense brownstone Brooklyn, “Black Lives Matter” signs have often dotted windows, reflecting national debates over both crime and police brutality. Voters on either side of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge are often vocal about their political identities — but many liberal Brooklynites joined marches to protest the Trump presidency, while conservative Staten Islanders embraced him early, even with other Republicans in the running in 2016.“They put two communities together that have literally nothing in common other than they happen to all live in the same city,” said City Councilman David Carr, a Staten Island Republican. “In terms of values, in terms of interests, they couldn’t be further apart. And they’ve created a district that’s going to be permanently at war with itself.”The new lines reflect an aggressive reconfiguration of the state’s congressional districts led by Democratic lawmakers, creating clearer opportunities to flip several House seats in this year’s midterm campaigns, as Democrats strain to maintain their congressional majority in a difficult political environment.What to Know About Redistricting and GerrymanderingRedistricting, Explained: 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.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.New York: Democrats’ aggressive reconfiguration of the state’s congressional map is one of the most consequential in the nation.Legal Battles: State supreme courts in North Carolina and Ohio struck down maps drawn by Republicans, while the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily restored Alabama’s map.Before redistricting, the district was anchored in Staten Island and included parts of more conservative southern Brooklyn enclaves. Under the new lines, the district sweeps into many neighborhoods that are home to wealthy liberal voters and younger left-wing activists — though neither part of the district is monolithic: There are Staten Island Democrats and some Brooklyn conservatives, especially in the Bay Ridge area.In 2020, the district supported Mr. Trump by about 10 percentage points. If the new district lines were in place for the 2020 election, the district would have backed President Biden by roughly the same margin, according to data compiled by the City University of New York.Ms. Malliotakis said the new lines seemed aimed at “silencing the voices of the current district, and tilting the scale to give whoever the Democratic nominee is an advantage.”Representative Nicole Malliotakis, a Republican, defeated the Democratic incumbent, Max Rose, in New York’s 11th Congressional District in 2020.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesThe Staten Island Republican Party dubbed redistricting plans “cancel culture,” an effort to “subvert the voices of Staten Islanders by tying our borough to de Blasio’s Park Slope.”Democrats have defended the congressional maps as fair, while Republicans have filed a lawsuit, which may face an uphill battle.“Had we sought out people that voted the same way in order to keep them together, that would have been the definition of illegal gerrymandering,” said State Senator Michael Gianaris, a Democrat and leader of a task force that drew the lines. “Maybe at the end of the day, this will have the effect of bringing people together,” he said.That will be exceedingly difficult in the 11th, should the lines hold.But whatever the evident governing difficulties, a fierce battle is unfolding to represent the district as Ms. Malliotakis, who has tied herself closely to Mr. Trump and voted against certifying the results of the 2020 election, runs for re-election. She also broke with her party to vote for the infrastructure bill.While candidates in many races face difficult balancing acts between appealing to the most die-hard partisans in a primary and achieving broader appeal in a general election, those tensions will be thrown into sharp relief in the 11th District.“It certainly gives the Democratic nominee a very good chance,” said John Mollenkopf, director of the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center of CUNY, of the new district lines. “But that’s going to take a Democratic nominee who can appeal to the more conservative Democrats on Staten Island.”How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      How the Fight Over Abortion Rights Has Changed the Politics of South Texas

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      In the Laredo region, long a Democratic stronghold, that single issue appears to be driving the decision for many voters, the majority of whom are Catholic.LAREDO, Texas — Like the majority of her neighbors in the heavily Latino community of Laredo, Angelica Garza has voted for Democrats for most of her adult life. Her longtime congressman, Henry Cuellar, with his moderate views and opposition to abortion, made it an easy choice, she said.But as up-and-coming Democratic candidates in her patch of South Texas have leaned ever more liberal, Ms. Garza, a dedicated Catholic, cast a ballot for Donald Trump in 2016, primarily because of his anti-abortion views.In choosing Mr. Trump that year and again in 2020, Ms. Garza joined a parade of Latino voters who are changing the political fabric of South Texas. In the Laredo region, where about nine out of 10 residents are Catholic, many registered voters appear to be driven largely by the single issue of abortion.“I’m willing to vote for any candidate that supports life,” said Ms. Garza, 75. “That’s the most important issue for me, even if it means not voting for a Democrat.”With a pivotal primary election just a week away, Ms. Garza is ready to to turn away from Democrats. Pointing at a wall covered in folkloric angel figurines at the art store she owns in Laredo, she explained why: “They are babies, angels, and I don’t think anyone has the right to end their life. We have to support life.”Angelica Garza voted for Donald Trump in 2016 because of his anti-abortion views.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesVoters like Ms. Garza are worrying Democratic leaders, whose once tight grip and influence on the Texas-Mexico border region has loosened in recent electoral cycles. Republicans have claimed significant victories across South Texas, flipping Zapata County, south of Laredo on the bank of the Rio Grande, and a state district in San Antonio. They also made gains in the Rio Grande Valley, where the border counties delivered so many votes for Mr. Trump in 2020 that they helped negate the impact of white voters in urban and suburban areas of the state who voted for Joe Biden.Much is at stake in Laredo, the most populous city of the 28th Congressional District, where Latinos are a majority, and which stretches from the eastern tip of San Antonio and includes a western chunk of the Rio Grande Valley. Since the district was drawn nearly three decades ago, the seat has been held by Democrats. Mr. Cuellar has represented the district since 2005. His moderate and sometimes conservative views — he was the only Congressional Democrat to vote against a U.S. House bill that would have nullified the state’s near-total ban on abortion that went into effect last September — have frequently endeared him to social conservatives and Republicans.But he now finds himself locked in a tight fight against a much more liberal candidate backed by the progressive wing of the party that includes Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Mr. Cuellar, whose home was raided last month by the F.B.I. as part of an investigation that neither he nor the government has disclosed, beat his opponent, Jessica Cisneros, by four percentage points in 2020.Should he lose the primary on March 1 to Ms. Cisneros, a 28-year-old immigration lawyer who supports abortion rights, the path to flip the House of Representatives could very well run through South Texas, as Republicans have vowed an all-in campaign focused on religious and other conservative values. More

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      Kevin McCarthy Backs Liz Cheney’s Challenger, Escalating a Party Feud

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      The top House Republican’s unusual intervention in a primary marked the party’s latest move against Ms. Cheney, who has been a vocal critic of Donald J. Trump.WASHINGTON — Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, on Thursday endorsed Representative Liz Cheney’s G.O.P. rival for Wyoming’s sole congressional seat, taking the unusual step of intervening in a party primary to oust a onetime ally who has become the prime political target of former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. McCarthy said he was backing Harriet Hageman, a pro-Trump candidate who has repeated the former president’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, in a race that has become a prominent test for the Republican Party.“I look forward to welcoming Harriet to a Republican majority next Congress, where together, we will hold the Biden administration accountable and deliver much-needed solutions for the American people,” Mr. McCarthy said in a statement. “The most successful representatives in Congress focus on the needs of their constituents.”It was an extraordinary move for a leader who is aiming to become speaker of the House if his party wins control of Congress in November’s midterm congressional elections, and has worked to toe a fine line between his far right flank and more mainstream conservatives.Congressional leaders rarely involve themselves in primary races against sitting members, but Mr. McCarthy’s move was the latest escalation of the Republican Party effort to exile Ms. Cheney for speaking out forcefully against Mr. Trump and participating in a House investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. After initially defending her, Mr. McCarthy last year led a push to strip Ms. Cheney of her No. 3 position in House Republican leadership.In a statement, Jeremy Adler, a spokesman for Ms. Cheney, provided the verbal equivalent of an eyeroll, suggesting that Mr. McCarthy’s statement of support for Ms. Hageman was a reflection of her weakness.“Wow, she must be really desperate,” Mr. Adler said.Mr. McCarthy’s endorsement came about two weeks after the Republican National Committee voted to censure Ms. Cheney and Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, for participating in the inquiry into the deadly riot at the Capitol. The resolution said the pair was involved in “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse,” the party’s clearest statement to date that it considered the riot and the efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election that fueled it defensible.Harriet Hageman speaks with guests at a fundraiser in Rock Springs, Wyo.Kim Raff for The New York TimesMr. McCarthy last week defended the R.N.C., saying the committee had a right to pass its resolution.In contrast, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, castigated the party for doing so, stating that “traditionally, the view of the national party committees is that we support all members of our party, regardless of their positions on some issues.”Key Developments in the Jan. 6 InvestigationCard 1 of 3Piecing the evidence together. More

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      Kathleen Rice Announces Her Retirement From Congress

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      The decision by Representative Kathleen Rice of New York makes the number of Democrats leaving Congress the largest since 1992, as midterm elections loom.WASHINGTON — Representative Kathleen Rice of New York announced on Tuesday that she would not seek re-election, making her the 30th House Democrat to opt for an exit ahead of what is expected to be a difficult midterm election cycle in which the party appears headed for losses.Ms. Rice’s retirement announcement marked a grim milestone for House Democrats: The number planning to leave Congress is now the biggest since 1992, a sign of the party’s lack of confidence that it will be able to hold the majority this fall. Ms. Rice, a moderate, provided no explanation for her unexpected departure. She announced it on her 57th birthday, saying only that she was moving on to the “next chapter” of her life.“As elected officials, we must give all we have and then know when it is time to allow others to serve,” Ms. Rice, a former prosecutor who has represented part of Long Island’s Nassau County since 2015, said in a statement.Of the departing group, 22 House Democrats have said they are retiring, while eight are seeking another office. So far, 13 Republicans have also said they will not seek re-election.“House Democrats know their majority is doomed and have a choice: retire or lose,” said Michael McAdams, communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the party’s House campaign arm.A Look Ahead to the 2022 U.S. Midterm ElectionsIn the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are 10 races to watch.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering.Governors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Campaign Financing: With both parties awash in political money, billionaires and big checks are shaping the midterm elections.Key Issues: Democrats and Republicans are preparing for abortion and voting rights to be defining topics.Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader, has predicted that more than 30 Democrats will announce their retirement “because they see what the future holds.”Some Democrats shrugged off the news of Ms. Rice’s retirement as the loss of a safe seat, where she will most likely be replaced by another Democrat. Ms. Rice’s district was not affected by the recent redrawing of New York’s political map, and in 2020, she won her race against the G.O.P. candidate, Douglas Tuman, by about 56 percent. President Biden won her district by 12 points in the 2020 presidential election.But optimistic Republicans said that margin put New York’s 4th congressional district within reach in the event of a red wave, noting that a G.O.P. candidate won the governor’s race last fall in Virginia, a state Mr. Biden won by about 10 points.Ms. Rice, who made a lasting, powerful enemy in Speaker Nancy Pelosi after vocally opposing her bid for House Speaker in 2016 and 2018, was viewed as someone who did not enjoy the job.She had become increasingly marginalized in the ranks of House Democrats, where the loudest voices are typically from a new generation of progressives, and where her history with Ms. Pelosi had cost her opportunities. In 2019, for instance, Ms. Pelosi lobbied for other members to gain a seat on the powerful Judiciary Committee over Ms. Rice, according to Politico, despite Ms. Rice’s background as a prosecutor and her seniority.Representative Josh Gottheimer, a centrist Democrat from New Jersey, called Ms. Rice’s retirement “a huge loss for New York, Congress and common-sense, bipartisan governing.”“I imagine the polarization in D.C. has become so poisonous and the dysfunction so deep that more and more members want nothing to do with the absurdity of it all,” said Representative Ritchie Torres, a progressive Democrat of New York.But some liberal Democrats joined Republicans in celebrating the news of her retirement.“Rep. Kathleen Rice retiring to spend more time with her big pharma lobby family,” Leah Greenberg, the co-founder of Indivisible, a grass-roots progressive organization, said in a Twitter post reacting to her announcement.Ms. Rice, who sits on the Energy and Commerce committee as well as the Homeland Security committee, was a registered Republican until 2005, when she became a Democrat to run for district attorney in Nassau County.In Congress, she has been best known as one of the few women arguing that the party needed a fresh perspective at the top and that the lack of an obvious candidate to challenge Ms. Pelosi was a “symptom of stagnant leadership.” In 2016, she was also the first Democrat to publicly support Representative Tim Ryan’s challenge to Ms. Pelosi as House leader. Ms. Rice also voted against Ms. Pelosi in 2018. Both times, Ms. Pelosi was elected despite the efforts to topple her.Ms. Rice supported Ms. Pelosi’s bid for speaker in 2021, but the relationship remained strained.Ms. Pelosi’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Ms. Rice’s planned departure. More

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      Peter Thiel, the Right’s Would-Be Kingmaker

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      The wine flowed. Donald Trump Jr. mingled with the guests. And Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire and host of the event, had a message for the well-heeled crowd: It was time to clean house.The fund-raiser at Mr. Thiel’s Miami Beach compound last month was for a conservative candidate challenging Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming for a spot on the ballot in November’s midterm elections. Ms. Cheney, one of several Republicans who had voted to impeach President Donald J. Trump on charges of inciting the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol, was the face of “the traitorous 10,” Mr. Thiel said, according to two people with knowledge of the event, who were not authorized to speak publicly. All of them had to be replaced, he declared, by conservatives loyal to the former president.Mr. Thiel, who became known in 2016 as one of the biggest donors to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, has re-emerged as a key financier of the Make America Great Again movement. After sitting out the 2020 presidential race, the venture capitalist this year is backing 16 Senate and House candidates, many of whom have embraced the lie that Mr. Trump won the election.To get these candidates into office, Mr. Thiel has given more than $20.4 million. That essentially puts him and Kenneth Griffin, the chief executive of the hedge fund Citadel, in a tie as the largest individual donors to Republican politics this election cycle, according to the nonpartisan research organization OpenSecrets.What sets Mr. Thiel’s spending apart, though, is its focus on hard-right candidates who traffic in the conspiracy theories espoused by Mr. Trump and who cast themselves as rebels determined to overthrow the Republican establishment and even the broader American political order. These campaigns have raised millions in small-dollar donations, but Mr. Thiel’s wealth could accelerate the shift of views once considered fringe to the mainstream — while making himself a new power broker on the right.“When you have a funder who is actively elevating candidates who are denying the legitimacy of elections, that is a direct assault on the foundation of democracy,” said Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at the left-leaning group New America, who studies campaign finance and hyperpartisanship.The candidates Mr. Thiel has funded offer a window into his ideology. While the investor has been something of a cipher, he is currently driven by a worldview that the establishment and globalization have failed, that current immigration policy pillages the middle class and that the country must dismantle federal institutions.Mr. Thiel has started articulating his thinking publicly, recently headlining at least six conservative and libertarian gatherings where he criticized the Chinese Communist Party and big tech companies and questioned climate science. He has taken issue with what he calls the “extreme dogmatism” within establishment institutions, which he said had sent the country backward.At an October dinner at Stanford University for the Federalist Society, he spoke about the “deranged society” that “a completely deranged government” had created, according to a recording of the event obtained by The New York Times. The United States was on the verge of a momentous correction, he said.“My somewhat apocalyptic, somewhat hopeful thought is that we are finally at a point where things are breaking,” Mr. Thiel said.Mr. Thiel, 54, has not publicly said what he believes about the 2020 election. But in Mr. Trump, he sees a vessel to push through his ideological goals, three people close to the investor said. The two men met recently in New York and at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla. Mr. Thiel also funded an app company run by John McEntee, one of Mr. Trump’s closest aides, two people with knowledge of the deal said.Unlike traditional Republican donors who have focused on their party’s winning control of Congress and the White House, Mr. Thiel has set his sights on reshaping the Republican agenda with his brand of anti-establishment contrarianism, said Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist.“I don’t think it’s just about flipping the Senate,” said Mr. Bannon, who has known Mr. Thiel since 2016. “I think Peter wants to change the direction of the country.”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.Mr. Thiel’s giving is expected to make up just a small fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars that are likely to flow through campaigns this cycle. But the amounts he is pouring into individual races and the early nature of his primary donations have put him on the radar of Republican hopefuls.In the past, many courted the billionaire Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson, the late casino magnate. This year, they have clamored for invitations to Mr. Thiel’s Los Angeles and Miami Beach homes, or debated how to at least get on the phone with him, political strategists said.Mr. Thiel personally vets the candidates he gives to, said three Republican strategists, who declined to be named for fear of retaliation. In addition to Harriet Hageman, the challenger to Ms. Cheney, he is backing Joe Kent and Loren Culp, both of whom are running against House Republicans in Washington State who voted to impeach Mr. Trump. He also gave to a political action committee associated with Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, who is not up for re-election this year. More

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      The Supreme Court Is Just Doing What the Supreme Court Does

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      Under a traditionally liberal view of the Supreme Court, its decision on Monday to uphold, at least for this year, a Congressional map in Alabama that intentionally weakens the voting strength of Black people in the state is a betrayal of its duty to protect the rights of minorities, racial and otherwise.Under a more historical view, it is the court doing what the court does.First, a little background on Monday’s decision. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act bars any voting law or procedure that “results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen to vote on account of race,” as the Department of Justice puts it. This includes situations where lawmakers have “cracked” minority communities into multiple districts in order to dilute the strength of their voters. To remedy this, courts can require states to create “majority-minority” districts in which these voters can then elect the candidates of their choice. This is especially important in places where voting is so polarized by race that minority communities are rarely, if ever, able to shape the outcome of an election.Last year, Alabama’s Republican-controlled Legislature drew and passed a Congressional map that packed a large number of Black voters into a single district encompassing the cities of Birmingham and Montgomery, while spreading the remaining voters throughout six majority white districts. By “packing” one group of Black voters and dispersing the rest, Alabama Republicans successfully reduced the voting strength of the entire Black community in the state, which accounts for 27 percent of its population.Black Alabamians filed suit. In January, after seeing evidence and hearing arguments from both sides, a three-judge district court panel (with two Trump appointees) agreed that the state had violated the Voting Rights Act. It ordered the Legislature to draw a new map containing a second majority-minority district. Republicans appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, where five members voted to stay the order, reinstating the original map.This, wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who voted with the majority, was not done “on the merits.” It was merely an attempt to keep the courts from disrupting the upcoming election which, he said, was “close at hand.” Except Alabama’s primary is not until May and its general election is not until November. There was, and there still is, plenty of time to draw new maps.In the view of Chief Justice John Roberts, who voted with the minority despite his hostility to the Voting Rights Act, “the District Court properly applied existing law in an extensive opinion with no apparent errors for our correction.” By granting a stay, the conservative majority has effectively changed the law, freeing Alabama (and other states) to devise the kinds of racial gerrymanders that the Voting Rights Act was in part written to prohibit. That is one reason my colleague Linda Greenhouse called the decision a “raw power play by a runaway majority that seems to recognize no stopping point.”But again, historically speaking, we should not see this as an exception to the rule, but as the rule.On July 9, 1868, the United States ratified the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. As the historian Eric Foner explains in “The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution,” the amendment was written, among other things, to “establish general principles about the rights of the freed people and of all Americans.” Within a decade, however, the Court had radically narrowed the scope of that amendment, construing it as “a vehicle for protecting corporate rights rather than those of the former slaves.”On Feb. 3, 1870, the United States ratified the 15th Amendment to the Constitution. It prohibited the national government and states from denying the right to vote on account of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” and gave Congress the power to enforce that prohibition with “appropriate legislation.” It was written, specifically, to extend suffrage to Black men. But in 1876, Foner notes, the Supreme Court “overturned the convictions of Kentucky officials who had conspired to prevent blacks from voting in a local election.”Writing for an 8-1 majority of the court, Chief Justice Morrison Waite conceded that the amendment grants “an exemption from discrimination in the exercise of the elective franchise on account of race,” but denied that it conferred the “right of suffrage” on anyone. His opinion opened the door to the kinds of restrictions — poll taxes, literacy tests and grandfather clauses — that Southern states would eventually use to disenfranchise their Black populations.In the 1870s, Congress passed laws to punish acts of violence meant to deprive Americans of their constitutional rights, to outlaw discrimination in public accommodations and to prohibit exclusion from jury service. In the 1880s, the Supreme Court either invalidated those laws or rendered them a dead letter. In his 1883 opinion for the majority in the Civil Rights Cases, which held that neither the 13th nor the 14th Amendments gave Congress the power to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals, Justice Joseph P. Bradley declared that, “When a man has emerged from slavery” there must be “some stage in the progress of his elevation when he takes the rank of a mere citizen, and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws.”It is Congress, and not the Supreme Court, that has, over time, done more to defend the civil and voting rights of all Americans. To do the same, the court has had to reverse its own work. As Nikolas Bowie, an assistant professor of law at Harvard, has written, “As a matter of historical practice, the Court has wielded an antidemocratic influence on American law, one that has undermined federal attempts to eliminate hierarchies of race, wealth, and status.”Barring the unexpected, and assuming the presidency continues to swing evenly between the two parties, conservatives can expect to hold the Supreme Court for at least a generation. But this won’t be a new frontier as much as a return to form.For most of its history, the Supreme Court — the 16 years of the Warren court notwithstanding — has been a friend to hierarchy and reaction. Thus, for Americans who want a more equal society, the Supreme Court has been, is and will continue to be an adversary, not an ally. Understanding that fact is the first step toward doing something about it.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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      in Elections

      G.O.P. Lawsuit Casts N.Y. Congressional Maps as Brazen Gerrymandering

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      A Republican-led legal effort faces an uphill battle to overturn newly drawn congressional districts, which Democrats have defended as lawful.A Republican-led group of voters filed a lawsuit late Thursday challenging New York’s freshly drawn congressional maps as unconstitutional, a day after Democratic lawmakers in Albany approved district lines that would heavily favor their party in its battle to retain control of the House.The 67-page suit argued that the new district lines violated a 2014 state constitutional amendment meant to protect against partisan district drawing, saying that Democrats had “brazenly enacted a congressional map that is undeniably politically gerrymandered in their party’s favor.”“This court should reject it as a matter of substance, as the map is an obviously unconstitutional partisan and incumbent-protection gerrymander,” said the lawsuit, which was brought by a group of 14 voters.The lawsuit, which was widely expected, is likely to face an uphill battle: State courts have traditionally been reluctant to reject maps drawn by lawmakers, and it can be difficult to prove that maps that favor one political party were drawn illegally.But the lawsuit was filed in State Supreme Court in Steuben County, a Republican stronghold in the state’s Southern Tier where judges may be more sympathetic to claims of Democratic political gerrymandering.The outcome of the challenge could hinge on how a state judge interprets an anti-gerrymandering provision in the 2014 amendment that has not been tested in court before, as well as the process lawmakers followed to draw the lines.“The question is whether the court will reject 50 years of precedent and reject the plan,” said Jeffrey Wice, a senior fellow at New York Law School’s Census and Redistricting Institute.Understand Redistricting and GerrymanderingRedistricting, Explained: 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.New York: Democrats’ aggressive reconfiguration of the state’s congressional map is one of the most consequential in the nation.Texas: Republicans want to make Texas even redder. Here are four ways their proposed maps further gerrymandered the state’s House districts.The judge could uphold or reject the maps, and potentially compel Democrats to redraw them — or appoint a special master to do so in a nonpartisan way should the Legislature prove unable to. The decision, if appealed, may eventually wind its way to the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court.Democrats have rejected the charge of gerrymandering, arguing that the new lines are a fair representation of a state that is overwhelmingly Democratic and where population changes over the last decade have only served to further depopulate conservative rural areas and grow urban and suburban communities that tend to be more favorable to their party.The newly drawn maps in New York position Democrats to potentially flip three House seats in November, the largest projected shift in any state.The challenge against the maps comes as both parties continue their attempts to leverage the redistricting process nationwide, with Republicans often doing so more effectively because of their majorities in large states like Texas. Republican maps are being challenged in several states.State lawmakers in New York had long been in charge of drawing the lines, but the 2014 amendment created a 10-member bipartisan redistricting commission tasked with drawing balanced maps devoid of the type of gerrymandering that had plagued the state over decades.But the commission, as many in Albany expected, became deadlocked and failed to agree on a single set of maps last month. That mean that, under the process outlined in the law, the power to redraw the maps was reverted to the Legislature, where Democrats hold supermajorities in both chambers.Shortly after, Democratic lawmakers moved swiftly to draw and consider their own district lines. No public hearings were held, a move that was decried by Republicans and good-government groups, but which Democrats justified as necessary in order to comply with a time-sensitive electoral calendar.Democrats passed the maps on Wednesday and Gov. Kathy Hochul, a fellow Democrat, signed them into law the following day.“We are 100 percent confident that the lines are in compliance with all legal requirements,” said Mike Murphy, a spokesman for Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the Democratic majority leader in the State Senate. “They are a gigantic step forward for fairer representation and reflect the strength and diversity of New York like never before”Democrats in New York currently hold 19 seats, while Republicans control eight seats. The new maps, which include one less seat as a result of population loss, would favor Democrats in 22 of the state’s 26 congressional districts.The lawsuit filed on Thursday outlined instances, from Staten Island and Brooklyn to Long Island and the North Country, in which, the plaintiffs said, lawmakers deliberately redrew district lines to give Democrats an overall edge.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More