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      Abandoned by Trump, Mo Brooks Is Now Open to Testifying About Jan. 6

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      Stinging from his resounding defeat in Alabama’s Republican runoff for the Senate on Tuesday and a snub from former President Donald J. Trump, Representative Mo Brooks now appears to be willing to testify as part of the Jan. 6 investigation.Mr. Brooks signaled on Wednesday that he would comply with an impending subpoena from the bipartisan House committee that is leading the inquiry into the attack on the Capitol — but only under certain conditions.His comments to the media, reported by CNN on Wednesday, came one day after he lost a bitter primary runoff to Katie Britt. Mr. Trump withdrew his endorsement of Mr. Brooks in March when he began slipping in the polls, and gave his support to Ms. Britt in the final weeks of the campaign.Mr. Brooks bemoaned his loss, telling a Politico reporter that the “bad guys won.”He hinged his willingness to testify before the House committee on being able to do so “in public so the public can see it — so they don’t get bits and pieces dribbled out,” Mr. Brooks said, according to CNN.The congressman added that he would only testify about matters related to Jan. 6, 2021, and that he wanted to see copies of documents that he might be asked about beforehand, the network reported.Mr. Brooks was not available for an interview on Thursday, and his office declined to elaborate on his comments.Mr. Brooks, a hard-right Republican and a once-fierce ally of Mr. Trump’s whom the former president has accused of becoming “woke,” has drawn intense scrutiny for his actions preceding the violence on Jan. 6.Outfitted in body armor at a rally before the siege, Mr. Brooks exhorted Mr. Trump’s election-denying supporters to start “kicking ass.”Investigators have also sought to question Mr. Brooks about his interactions with Mr. Trump in the aftermath of the attack. They zeroed in on Mr. Brooks’s comments in March, when he said that Mr. Trump had, since leaving office, repeatedly asked him to illegally “rescind” the 2020 election, remove President Biden and force a new special election.But as of Wednesday, Representative Bennie G. Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the head of the Jan. 6 committee, acknowledged that Mr. Brooks still had not been served with a subpoena. Mr. Thompson said that process servers in Washington had been unable to track down Mr. Brooks because he had been campaigning in Alabama.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 6Making a case against Trump. More

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      Who Won and Who lost in Tuesday’s Elections

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      Voters in Alabama, Georgia, Virginia and Washington, D.C., weighed in on elections for the Senate, House and other offices on Tuesday. And officials in Texas announced the results of a recount in a closely watched Democratic primary for the House.Here is a rundown of some of the most notable wins and losses:AlabamaKatie Britt, a former lobbyist and chief of staff to Senator Richard Shelby, convincingly defeated Representative Mo Brooks in a runoff for the Republican nomination for Senate. Former President Donald J. Trump had initially endorsed Mr. Brooks, but he withdrew that support in March as the congressman’s poll numbers sagged. This month, in the race’s final days, Mr. Trump endorsed Ms. Britt.GeorgiaMike Collins, the owner of a trucking company, easily captured the Republican runoff in Georgia’s 10th Congressional District, brushing aside Vernon Jones, a former state lawmaker who had the backing of Mr. Trump.Rich McCormick, a physician and retired Marine, defeated Jake Evans, the former chair of Georgia’s ethics commission and the son of a Trump administration ambassador, in the Republican primary runoff for Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District. Mr. Evans had been endorsed by Mr. Trump.Bee Nguyen, a state representative, won the Democratic nomination for secretary of state. She will face the Republican incumbent, Brad Raffensperger, who resisted Mr. Trump’s demands to “find” additional votes that would help him overturn the 2020 presidential contest in the state.Jeremy Hunt, a well-funded retired Army captain backed by top Republican leaders, was defeated by Chris West, a lawyer and Air National Guard officer, in the Republican primary in the Second Congressional District. Mr. West will face Representative Sanford Bishop Jr., a moderate Democrat.VirginiaJen Kiggans, a state senator, picked up the Republican nomination in the Second Congressional District, handily beating Jarome Bell, who had called for the execution of people convicted of voter fraud. Ms. Kiggans will face Representative Elaine Luria, a Democrat, in what is expected to be a highly competitive House race in the fall.Yesli Vega, a sheriff’s deputy on the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, prevailed in the Republican primary in the state’s Seventh Congressional District. She will take on Representative Abigail Spanberger, an embattled Democrat.Washington, D.C.Mayor Muriel Bowser, who is seeking a third term, won her Democratic primary.TexasRepresentative Henry Cuellar, the nine-term congressman from South Texas, has defeated his progressive challenger, Jessica Cisneros, a lawyer, according to a recount of ballots from their May 24 runoff. In November, Mr. Cuellar will face Cassy Garcia, a former aide to Senator Ted Cruz who won the Republican nomination.Maya King and Jazmine Ulloa contributed reporting. More

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      How Katie Britt Used Political Savvy to Trounce Mo Brooks in Alabama

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      At a gathering of Alabama Republicans last year, Katie Britt and her husband strategically positioned themselves at the end of a receiving line to shake hands with former President Donald J. Trump.Ms. Britt, a lawyer and former chief of staff for Senator Richard Shelby, had recently announced her campaign to fill the seat being vacated by her former boss, who is retiring. Mr. Trump had already endorsed her opponent, Representative Mo Brooks — but the couple hoped to sow some doubt in Mr. Trump’s mind, according to four people familiar with the encounter.As the couple greeted Mr. Trump, Ms. Britt’s husband, Wesley Britt — a burly retired N.F.L. lineman — mentioned to the former president that he had once played for the New England Patriots. “The only time you’ve met me, I think I was wrapped in a towel in the Patriots locker room,” Mr. Britt was said to have told Mr. Trump, who found it hilarious and replied that Robert K. Kraft, the team’s billionaire owner, “likes me very much.”From then on, Ms. Britt positioned herself as a formidable competitor with savvy political skills who persistently tried to convince Mr. Trump that she deserved his endorsement instead.In March, Mr. Trump gave Ms. Britt half of what she wanted, withdrawing his endorsement of Mr. Brooks — at that point far behind in the polls — because, he said, the far-right congressman had gone “woke.” Then, this month, with Ms. Britt clearly on track to prevail, the former president backed her, seemingly in an attempt to pad his endorsement record.Ten months after her brief exchange with Mr. Trump last August, Ms. Britt claimed victory in the Republican primary runoff for Alabama’s open Senate seat on Tuesday, capping a hard-fought campaign for her party’s nomination against Mr. Brooks. In a state with a deep-seated conservative bent, she is all but assured of winning in the general election in November.Ms. Britt is also one step closer to making history as the first woman in Alabama to be elected to the Senate. Her Democratic opponent is a pastor, Will Boyd, who has made unsuccessful runs for Senate, House and lieutenant governor.Shortly after the polls closed Tuesday, Mr. Shelby, who has known Ms. Britt since the days when she was an intern in his office, said he was overjoyed for her.“She is an outstanding person — she has got the brains, the drive and the compassion,” he said.Ms. Britt, 40, is seen as part of a younger generation of pro-Trump Republicans, and her husband’s banter with Mr. Trump was viewed by those familiar with the encounter as an astute move that proved essential to her nomination.Ms. Britt entered the primary with little name recognition and long odds against Mr. Brooks, who boasted more than a decade of experience in the House and gained Mr. Trump’s backing after he riled up the crowd at the former president’s rally before the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.But Mr. Trump rescinded his support for Mr. Brooks in March as Mr. Brooks struggled to gain traction under an avalanche of attack ads and criticism of his decision to urge an audience at a Trump rally to leave the 2020 election behind. “Katie Britt, on the other hand, is a fearless America First Warrior,” Mr. Trump said in a statement this month as he endorsed Ms. Britt.That move did not completely wipe out Mr. Brooks, who still managed to clinch a second-place finish in Alabama’s May 24 primary, garnering 29 percent of the vote. Ms. Britt pulled in 45 percent, short of the majority that would have avoided a runoff between the two top vote-getters.Ms. Britt fashioned herself as an “Alabama First” candidate, playing off Mr. Trump’s “America First” presidential campaign slogan, and centered her run on her Christian faith, hard-line border enforcement policies and ties to the business community.As an aide for Mr. Shelby, one of the Senate’s most senior members, she worked on some of his signature issues, including a sweeping Republican package of tax cuts in 2017, confirmation of conservative judges and a push for a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.She most recently served as the head of the Business Council of Alabama, a powerful lobbying group, and led a “Keep Alabama Open” campaign in November 2020 against coronavirus pandemic restrictions that required nonessential businesses to close or limit services. She also opened the council’s resources, typically reserved to paying members, to all small businesses amid the health crisis.On policy, Ms. Britt and Mr. Brooks had ideological differences: He represented a more aggressive brand of arch conservatism as a founding member of the Freedom Caucus while Ms. Britt, like Mr. Shelby, was seen as more focused on economic development. But in oratorical style, she echoed the hard-right talking points that have become commonplace messaging in the Republican Party.“When I look at what’s happening in Washington, I don’t recognize our country,” Ms. Britt said in a video introducing herself to voters. “The leftists are attacking our religious freedoms and advancing a socialist agenda. In Joe Biden’s America, people can collect more money staying at home than they can earn on the job.”The campaigns and supporters of Ms. Britt, Mr. Brooks and a third top competitor in the race, Mike Durant, a former Army pilot, spent millions of dollars on negative ads.Mr. Brooks and his supporters tried to paint Ms. Britt as a lobbyist and a RINO — a favored insult used by Trump supporters for politicians they believe are Republicans in name only.She shot back with attacks portraying Mr. Brooks as a career politician. It also helped that Mr. Brooks had a poor showing at Mr. Trump’s Alabama rally last August, just after Ms. Britt began her quiet campaign to sway the former president to her cause. What started as an enthusiastic response for Mr. Brooks that night turned to boos when he urged those in the audience to put the 2020 presidential election behind them and focus on 2022 and 2024.Mr. Trump called him back onstage for a second appearance, calling him “a fearless warrior for your sacred right to vote.”Later, when the former president took back his endorsement of Mr. Brooks, he said the congressman had made a “horrible mistake” with his comments at that fateful rally. More

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      In Ad, Shotgun-Toting Greitens Asks Voters to Go ‘RINO Hunting’

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      A right-wing Senate candidate accompanies a squad of heavily armed men as they storm a home looking for ‘Republicans in name only.’Eric Greitens, a Republican candidate for the United States Senate in Missouri, released a violent new political advertisement on Monday showing himself racking a shotgun and accompanying a team of men armed with assault rifles as they stormed — SWAT team-style — into a home in search of “RINOs,” or Republicans in name only.“Join the MAGA crew,” Mr. Greitens, a former Navy SEAL, declares in the ad. “Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.”The ad by Mr. Greitens was just the latest but perhaps most menacing in a long line of Republican campaign ads featuring firearms and seeking to equate hard-core conservatism with the use of deadly weapons.It was posted online less than a week after the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol showed how threats by former President Donald J. Trump against his own vice president, Mike Pence, had helped to instigate the mob attack on the building.During a hearing by the committee on Thursday, J. Michael Luttig, a former federal judge widely respected by conservatives, suggested that Mr. Trump and his allies posed a “clear and present danger to American democracy.”The use of violent rhetoric has steadily increased in Republican circles in recent months as threats and aggressive imagery have become more commonplace in community meeting rooms, congressional offices and on the campaign trail.While much of the violent speech and image-making by Republicans has been aimed at Democrats, some of it, as in Mr. Greitens’s ad, has been focused on fellow party members thought to be insufficiently conservative.On Sunday, Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois and a member of the Jan. 6 committee, published a letter addressed to his wife from someone who had threatened to execute the couple.By midafternoon on Monday, Twitter had hidden Mr. Greitens’ new ad behind a warning saying that it violated rules about “abusive behavior.” Facebook removed the ad altogether.Mr. Greitens’s campaign made no apologies for it, however. “If anyone doesn’t get the metaphor, they are either lying or dumb,” said Dylan Johnson, the campaign manager.The ad by Mr. Greitens, a former Missouri governor, comes as his campaign for Senate has stumbled following lurid allegations of blackmail, sexual misconduct and child abuse. In March, Mr. Greitens’s former wife, Sheena Greitens, accused him of abusive behavior, including an incident she recounted that loosened one of their son’s teeth. A number of Republicans, including Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, called on Mr. Greitens then to quit the race.Mr. Greitens has sought an endorsement from Mr. Trump, so far without success. His campaign chair is Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancée of Donald Trump Jr.Experts have warned that violent rhetoric can often result in actual physical violence.“When individuals feel more confident and legitimate in voicing violent sentiments, it can encourage others to feel more confident in making actual violence easier,” said Robert Pape, who studies political violence at the University of Chicago. “Unfortunately, this is a self-reinforcing spiral.”Some Republicans criticized Mr. Greitens for posting the ad.“Every Republican should denounce this sick and dangerous ad from Eric Greitens,” Barbara Comstock, a former Republican congresswoman from Virginia, said on Monday. “This is just a taste of the ‘clear and present danger’ that Judge Luttig talked about last week.” More

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      ‘The Senate Needs a Soul’

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      Raphael Warnock claims he’s not a politician, though he certainly sounds like one and serves as one. The U.S. senator from Georgia, who has long been the pastor at Martin Luther King Jr.’s former church, says that his “entry into politics is an extension” of his work on a range of what he sees as moral issues, such as health care, criminal-justice reform and voting rights.Warnock became Georgia’s first Black senator in January 2021, when he narrowly beat the Republican incumbent, Kelly Loeffler, in a special runoff election. And he is set for yet another tough political battle ahead, against Herschel Walker, the former N.F.L. player, who in addition to his celebrity status also has an endorsement from Donald Trump. The stakes are high: “God knows these days, the Senate needs a soul,” Warnock says.[You can listen to this episode of “Sway” on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]In this conversation, Kara Swisher talks to Warnock about his path from the pulpit to the Senate and the religious journey he traces in his recent memoir, “A Way Out of No Way.” She presses him on whether he can beat his celebrity opponent and asks what shadow Trump casts on this election. And they discuss the contrast between the jubilation he felt on his history-making victory and the horror that unfolded less than 24 hours later, as a mob attacked his “new office,” the Capitol, on Jan. 6.(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Keven LoweryThoughts? Email us at sway@nytimes.com.“Sway” is produced by Nayeema Raza, Blakeney Schick, Caitlin O’Keefe and Wyatt Orme, and edited by Nayeema Raza; fact-checking by Kate Sinclair; music and sound design by Isaac Jones and Sonia Herrero; mixing by Carole Sabouraud and Sonia Herrero; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski. More

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      Senator Catherine Cortez Masto Hopes History Repeats as She Faces Adam Laxalt

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      LAS VEGAS — In 2010, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada beat back a deep-red wave and dire national predictions for his political career when he pulled out a re-election victory against a Tea Party-endorsed candidate. He was a Democratic powerhouse with name recognition, pugilistic instincts and a state political machine long in the making behind him.Twelve years later, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, who replaced him in Congress, finds herself in a re-election battle in November against the Trump wing of the Republican Party. But Ms. Cortez Masto is not as well known as her Senate predecessor and mentor, the so-called Reid Machine is not as strong as it had been during his tenure and Democrats are facing an even tougher national political landscape.“When you take that all together — this is why Nevada’s Senate contest is one of the most competitive races in the country,” said Mike Noble, a pollster who works in the state.Ms. Cortez Masto, the state’s former attorney general, easily won the Democratic nomination in Tuesday’s primary election. But she remains one of the most vulnerable Democratic senators this midterm season, as she prepares for a general-election contest against Adam Laxalt, a Republican who has embraced former President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claims of a 2020 stolen election.A combination of local, national and personal challenges confront her in a high-profile race — state voting trends that favor Republicans, a national climate working against Democratic incumbents, and her own tendencies to stay out of the limelight and operate behind the scenes.But she and her supporters point to her past hard-fought victories, most recently in 2016, when she beat her Republican rival by 2 percentage points to become the first Latina elected to the Senate.“I’ve always been in tough races,” Ms. Cortez Masto said in an interview in February.Adam Laxalt greeted voters in Moapa Valley, Nev., on Saturday.Joe Buglewicz for The New York TimesIn Nevada, the influential network of seasoned operatives, field organizers and volunteers that has fueled crucial Democratic victories for years is still a major force in the state’s politics. It now includes a newer crop of progressive groups. But the loss of Mr. Reid, who died in December 2021 after a struggle with pancreatic cancer, has been hard felt.President Biden won Nevada by only 2 percentage points during the 2020 election. Ms. Cortez Masto will now have to overcome the president’s low approval ratings and voters’ dissatisfaction with the economy. Nevada, whose sprawling hotel and entertainment industries heavily rely on tourism, was among the states most battered by the coronavirus pandemic, and high unemployment rates and rising living costs have opened Democrats to a constant line of attack from Republicans on crime, jobs and inflation.“In November, voters are going to see the prices at the pump, see the inflation when they go to the grocery store and know that they have Catherine Cortez Masto to thank for that,” said Jeremy Hughes, a Republican who was a campaign adviser to Dean Heller, the former Republican senator.Understand the June 14 Primary ElectionsTakeaways: Republicans who embraced former President Donald J. Trump’s election lies did well in Nevada, while his allies had a mixed night in South Carolina. Here’s what else we learned.Winners and Losers: Here is a rundown of some of the most notable wins and losses.Election Deniers Prevail: Republicans who deny the 2020 election’s result are edging closer to wielding power over the next one.Nevada Races: Trump-inspired candidates captured key wins in the swing state, setting the stage for a number of tossup contests against embattled Democrats.Texas Special Election: Mayra Flores, a Republican, flipped a House seat in the Democratic stronghold of South Texas. Her win may only be temporary, however.The election will largely hinge on who shows up to the polls. Mr. Reid’s political apparatus had been crucial to mobilizing multiracial coalitions of working-class and Latino voters. But sharp drops in Democratic participation in Nevada midterm elections have most recently given Republicans an advantage. The state’s transient population also makes it difficult for political candidates and elected officials to build name recognition.Voters line up outside a polling place in Las Vegas Tuesday.Bridget Bennett for The New York Times“The challenge for everyone on the ticket in Nevada is turnout,” said Representative Dina Titus, a Democrat who is facing her own tough bid for re-election this year for her Las Vegas seat.Mr. Laxalt has largely centered on turning out his base by stirring voter outrage over undocumented immigrants, the economy and pandemic school closures and restrictions. He has already begun to attack Ms. Cortez Masto as a vulnerable incumbent in line with Biden administration policies.The grandson of a former Nevada senator and son of a former New Mexico senator, Mr. Laxalt served as co-chairman of the 2020 Trump campaign in Nevada, and led Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state. He was endorsed by both Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, two of the most popular figures in the Republican Party.In a memo released the day after the Tuesday primary, Scott Fairchild, Ms. Cortez Masto’s campaign manager, painted Mr. Laxalt as a corrupt politician and “an anti-abortion extremist” focused on promoting Mr. Trump’s “big lie.” Her supporters see him as a flawed candidate, pointing to his failed bid for governor in 2018 and his attempt to block a federal investigation as attorney general into some of his wealthiest donors, including the Koch brothers.At campaign rallies and in interviews with Fox News and on conservative podcasts, Mr. Laxalt has repeatedly sought to tie Ms. Cortez Masto to Biden policies, criticizing her on crime, inflation and immigration. In a statement, John Burke, communications director for the Laxalt campaign, called criticism from his Democratic opponent a distraction from Ms. Cortez Masto’s role in the “current economic catastrophe.”“Our state wants change and Nevadans know it’s impossible to get it with her,” he said.Despite the change in Nevada’s political environment, many Democrats still see a playbook for success for Ms. Cortez Masto in Mr. Reid’s successful 2010 run for a fifth term against Sharron Angle, a former state lawmaker who pushed voter fraud claims and harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric long before Mr. Trump did.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterm races so important? More