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      Eric Greitens Tests the Limits of the Trump Scandal-Survival Playbook

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      A leading Republican candidate for Senate in Missouri, Greitens faces new allegations from his ex-wife that join a long list of controversies. But for now, he’s staying in the race.Lurid allegations of blackmail, sexual misconduct and child abuse would doom most politicians.Not Eric Greitens. Or at least not yet.Until recently, the former Missouri governor was the undisputed leader of the state’s Senate race, despite facing years of scandals. Republicans have urged him to drop out amid fears that his possible victory in the Aug. 2 primary could hand a seat in the chamber to Democrats — or at least force the G.O.P. to stomach an unpalatable candidate in a state that should be undisputed Republican turf.Pressure has grown on Greitens in recent weeks over allegations made in court filings by his ex-wife, Sheena Chestnut Greitens. In a statement to a Missouri judge first published on Tuesday, she said he had become “unhinged” and “threatening.”Sheena Greitens, a scholar of Asian geopolitics, had previously accused her former husband of abusive behavior, including an alleged incident that loosened one of their son’s teeth. In her new statement, she said she stood ready to provide “photographic evidence” of the child’s injuries “at the appropriate time.”Instead of stepping aside, Eric Greitens has made a brazen attempt to defy political gravity. Short on cash and bereft of allies, he has vowed to fight on, arguing without evidence that national Republican figures are conspiring with his ex-wife to sully his reputation, which she denies.“I want to tell you directly, Karl Rove and Mitch McConnell,” Greitens said late last month in a video shared on his social media accounts. “Hear me now. You are disgusting cowards. And we are coming for you.”Greitens has denied all wrongdoing, and on Tuesday, Tim Parlatore, a lawyer for the candidate, said in a statement that the alleged abusive behavior “never happened” and accused Sheena Greitens of lying.A shrinking base of supportNews of Sheena Greitens’s latest statement rippled through Republican political circles in Missouri, where anxiety over the former governor’s bid to replace the retiring Senator Roy Blunt was already extremely high. Greitens, a former Navy SEAL and Rhodes scholar, resigned as governor in 2018 amid allegations that he had tied up his former hairdresser, taken an explicit photo of her and threatened to make it public if she revealed their sexual affair.“The latest revelations that hit this morning will upend his candidacy and will mean catastrophic shrinkage in his effort,” said Peter Kinder, a Republican former Missouri lieutenant governor who is supporting one of Greitens’s opponents, Representative Vicky Hartzler. The other major contender in the Republican primary is Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who has the backing of some in the state party establishment.There are some signs that Greitens’s support is softening. The latest public poll of the primary, by the Trafalgar Group, showed Greitens falling into second place among likely primary voters for the first time. Another recent survey commissioned by Schmitt’s campaign showed similar results. And on Saturday, in what some saw as evidence of his growing difficulties, Greitens skipped a Republican Party event in Taney County, one of the bigger annual gatherings of activists in the state. The turmoil in the Republican primary has complicated Donald Trump’s efforts to influence the outcome. Some party insiders had feared that Trump would endorse Greitens, who has tailored his campaign message around “defending President Trump’s ‘America First’ policies” and has questioned the 2020 presidential election results.After the previous round of allegations by Sheena Greitens, Trump issued a statement praising “the big, loud and proud personality of Congressman Billy Long,” who is also running for the Missouri Senate seat but has failed to gain much traction. “This is not an Endorsement, but I’m just askin’?” Trump said.Eric Greitens has struggled to raise money, with finance reports showing that his campaign had less than $300,000 in the bank as of January. Super PACs supporting Greitens have received large donations from two Republican billionaires, Richard Uihlein, a shipping magnate, and Bernard Marcus, a founder of Home Depot. Greitens has also brought in nearly $900,000 through his joint fund-raising committee, and a spokesman said his upcoming fund-raising report would show that the campaign had raised a “six-figure” sum of money since Sheena Greitens made her first statement.But James Harris, a Republican lobbyist who has been talking with Missouri donors and activists about the race, said, “They’re really just done with him.” Harris recounted a conversation with a donor who recently turned down a fund-raising pitch by Greitens, saying his wife would “kill me” if he gave money to the former governor.And now, the entry into the race of an heiress to a beer-company fortune threatens to make the general election competitive.Trudy Busch Valentine, an heiress to the Anheuser-Busch fortune, is a well-known donor in Missouri.Hillary Levin/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, via Associated PressDemocrats’ dilemma: The heiress or the veteran?Republicans are warily eyeing the newly announced campaign of Trudy Busch Valentine, who is the daughter of August Busch Jr., the Anheuser-Busch beer baron who died in 1989.A registered nurse who grew up on her family’s 281-acre estate, Grant’s Farm, Busch Valentine is making empathy central to her campaign message.“It seems we have lost our ability to be understanding and compassionate for each other,” she said in her announcement video. “We have so much more that unites us than divides us.”In the video, she also spoke about her son’s death in 2020 from opioid abuse.“Twenty months ago, my oldest son died of an opioid overdose,” Busch Valentine said. “Matt’s death brought us so much sadness, but his death also reignites the passion in me to make a positive difference for others, this time on a larger scale.”Busch Valentine has never held elected office, but she’s a well-known donor in Missouri. Democrats expect her to plow her personal fortune into her campaign, with a focus on winning back some of the white rural voters who have defected to Republicans in recent elections. She is close friends with Claire McCaskill, the last Democrat to win a Senate seat in Missouri.Busch Valentine is already facing questions about her past. And she’ll first have to dispatch her main rival in the Democratic primary, Lucas Kunce, a retired Marine and former Pentagon official whose campaign could hardly be more different.In an interview, Kunce said he was running to “fundamentally change who has power in this country.” He explained how he grew up keenly aware of his parents’ struggles with money — recalling how his family went bankrupt when his sister was born — and laughingly described participating in medical experiments at a V.A. hospital to earn money while he was in college.A veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Kunce said he was disgusted by how American politicians had spent hundreds of billions of dollars on those conflicts while starving their own communities of resources.“There’s always money for war and Wall Street, never for stuff back home,” he said.Kunce has sworn off money from corporate PACs and federal lobbyists, and his campaign says it has raised nearly $3 million, primarily from grass-roots donations online. He’s as critical of Democrats as he is of Republicans; voters in Missouri have lost faith in both parties, he said.“People feel betrayed by Democrats,” Kunce said. “They think they don’t stand up for working people anymore.”Kirsten Noyes More

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      Herschel Walker, the Worst Candidate, Trump-Approved

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      Let’s just be blunt. No one, and I mean not one person, would seriously believe that Herschel Walker, the former football star and current leading contender for the Republican Senate nomination in Georgia, was at the top of his class at the University of Georgia.Yet Walker has claimed just that for years, saying multiple times that he graduated in the top 1 percent of his class.As CNN reported Friday, Walker never graduated from college. He left to play professional football. Furthermore, according to CNN: “A profile of Walker from 1982 in The Christian-Science Monitor and an article in The New York Times said he maintained a B average at the school. Walker himself told The Chicago Tribune in 1985 he maintained a 3.0 before his grades dropped.”But wait, that wasn’t the only problematic boast Walker made about his grades.In his 2008 book about suffering from dissociative identity disorder, Walker says that he grew up as a “fat kid” who stuttered (twin “sins” in his judgment), that his teachers looked through him as if he hadn’t been there and that the older children ridiculed him as “stupid.”But, Walker wrote: “If I’m proud of anything I did in my high school career, it’s what I did in the classroom that I reflect on and relish the most. I did more than just shed the ‘stupid’ label placed on me as a result of my speech impediment. I shed it, erased it and rewrote it with the titles: Beta Club president and class valedictorian.”CNN’s KFile reviewed Walker’s high school yearbooks and coverage of him in local newspapers at the time and could find no evidence to support the claim that he was a high school valedictorian.No one wants to be insensitive about a speech impediment or any other disorder, but exaggerating is exaggerating, and lying is lying. It goes to the character of the man much more than any physical or psychological condition.His consistent record of inflating his academic credentials isn’t the only thing to suggest that he’s highly problematic.He has also been accused by his ex-wife of making multiple threats against her life. In 2005 she secured an order of protection against him.As The Associated Press reported: “When his book was released, she told ABC News that at one point during their marriage, her husband pointed a pistol at her head and said, ‘I’m going to blow your f’ing brains out.’ She filed for divorce in 2001, citing ‘physically abusive and extremely threatening behavior.’”Now, after months of not seriously challenging Walker, some Georgia Republicans are waking up to the reality that they may have made a grave mistake and that he is likely to lose if he advances to the general election.And they have only Donald Trump to blame. Walker’s campaign was all Trump’s doing and at Trump’s urging.Raphael Warnock became the first Black senator in Georgia’s history, as well as the first popularly elected Black Democratic senator from the South, because of Black voters, who voted him into office just one day before rioters stormed the Capitol. In fact, Black voters were the majority of the coalition that elected him, according to exit polls — the first time that was the case for any Black senator.The results of Warnock’s race, along with Jon Ossoff’s simultaneous runoff election, tipped the balance of the Senate and sent shock waves through Georgia’s political establishment.Within months, state Republicans were speculating about Walker challenging Warnock in 2022.As The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote last summer about what then was still a potential run by Walker: “Herschel Walker hasn’t lived in Georgia for decades. He’s never held public office, doesn’t attend the sort of Republican events that are mainstays on the political calendar and has bypassed the backslapping fund-raising circuit that helps decide winners and losers in the state’s premier races.”But none of those obstacles got in the way. Trump weighed in last March, writing in a statement: “Wouldn’t it be fantastic if the legendary Herschel Walker ran for the United States Senate in Georgia?” The statement continued, “He would be unstoppable, just like he was when he played for the Georgia Bulldogs, and in the N.F.L. He is also a GREAT person. Run Herschel, run!”Trump kept up the pressure. He told the “The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show” in June that Walker had told him he was going to run, and Trump thought he would. The former president said, “I had dinner with him a week ago. He’s a great guy. He’s a patriot. He’s a very loyal person.”But why? Why Walker? Sure, he was an old Trump friend and ally, but he wasn’t a politician and hadn’t publicly expressed a desire to become one.Well, there were a few reasons, all of them part of a callous racial calculus, one in which Trump is well trained. First and foremost, Walker is Black. To many in the G.O.P., his race blunts the idea that Republicans are appealing to racists, relieves the pressure on Trump supporters for supporting a racist and gives them a shot at winning more of Georgia’s Black voters.Walker could be a tool and a weapon. But no weapon — at least not this weapon — formed by Trump shall prosper.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 and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

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      Battleground Nevada

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      The state will help determine Senate control in this year’s midterm elections. Nevada, perhaps more than any other state, has showcased the potential for a more diverse America to move the country’s politics to the left. Rising numbers of Asian American and Latino residents have helped Democrats win the state in the past four presidential elections. The party also holds both of Nevada’s Senate seats.How Nevada’s population has changed More

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      Nevada’s Economic Turmoil Threatens a Democratic Stronghold

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      LAS VEGAS — Scars from the coronavirus pandemic are still visible here. Housing prices skyrocketed, with rents rising faster than almost anywhere else in the country. Roughly 10,000 casino workers remain out of work. Gas prices, now more than $5 a gallon, are higher than in every other state except California.Amid a flagging economy, the state Democrats held up as a national model for more than a decade — registering and turning out first-time voters — has become the epitome of the party’s difficulties going into the 2022 midterm elections.Democrats have long relied on working-class and Latino voters to win Nevada, but the loyalty of both groups is now in question. Young voters who fueled Senator Bernie Sanders’ biggest victory in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary remain skeptical about President Biden. And Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Nevada Democrat and the country’s first Latina senator, is one of the party’s most endangered incumbents.She must overcome the president’s sagging approval ratings, dissatisfaction with the economy and her own relative anonymity. And she lacks the popularity and deep ties with Latino voters that Senator Harry M. Reid, who died in December, harnessed to help build the state’s powerful Democratic machine. The state has long been a symbol of the Democratic Party’s future by relying on a racially diverse coalition to win elections, but those past gains are now at risk.“There’s a lot of frustration on the ground that no one is listening,” said Leo Murrieta, the director of Make the Road Nevada, a liberal advocacy group. “They are not wrong. It’s hard to talk about the possibility of tomorrow when your todays are still torn apart.”Nevada, which Mr. Biden carried in 2020, has been a linchpin for Democrats in presidential elections since 2008. But an election-cycle pattern that has alarmed Democrats has emerged. The party dominates in presidential elections but struggles during the midterms when a Democrat is in the White House. Democratic turnout takes a steep drop, largely because of the state’s highly transient population, and Republicans gain ground.Itzel Hernandez, an organizer with the advocacy group Make the Road Nevada, spoke with Francisco Lozano, 56, in North Las Vegas. Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesIn 2014, the last midterm election with a Democrat in the White House, the state’s turnout dropped 46 percent compared to the previous presidential election, ushering in Republican control of the state legislature. This year, Republican victories could unseat the Democratic governor, Steve Sisolak, and the state’s three Democratic members of Congress while also replacing Ms. Cortez Masto with a 2020 election denier in the Senate.Beyond turnout, a deeper problem for Democrats is that the state has been turning, ever so slightly, less blue. The state’s share of registered Democrats has fallen — from 39.4 percent in 2016 to 33.6 percent in February, according to figures from the Nevada secretary of state. At the same time, more than 28 percent of registered voters are now unaffiliated with any party, an increase from 20 percent in 2016. Officials said the spike in unaffiliated voters stems from an automatic voter registration system Nevada voters adopted in 2018.The state’s economy has shown some signs of improvement. Joblessness in Reno is down to some of the lowest numbers in a century. Democrats are counting on the region, which has attracted new residents, many from California, and become something of a tech hub. But with more than 70 percent of the state’s population living in Clark County, which is home to Las Vegas, the election is likely to be decided on the outcome there. In interviews with Las Vegas voters, the economy overshadowed all other issues. There was a sense of optimism among some, but they worried that they would not have enough money for the basics — rent, food, gas.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the 2022 election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.“What I care about is opportunity and the economy,” said Angel Clavijo, 23, who voted for the first time in 2020. Though he cast his ballot for Mr. Biden, Mr. Clavijo said he was not registered with either party.Angel Clavijo, 23, was able to maintain his job at a resort through the pandemic, but roughly 10,000 casino employees are still out of work.Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesThough he was able to keep his job as a housekeeper at The Venetian Resort through the pandemic, Mr. Clavijo watched anxiously as his parents’ bills stacked up. “I really can’t say I’m paying a lot of attention to politics right now,” he said. “I’m not just going to vote by party.”Margarita Mejia, 68, a retired hotel worker, said she has voted for most of her life for Democrats but sat out the 2020 election as she helped her family and friends deal with the pandemic.“It was depressing, being alone, struggling for everything,” said Ms. Mejia, who was selling clothing, stuffed animals and art from her front yard last week. “I don’t know what the government does for us, even when they say they want to help.”Margarita Mejia, 68, a retired hotel worker, said one of her biggest concerns was paying the rent.Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesMr. Clavijo and Ms. Mejia could not name Nevada’s incumbent senator up for re-election — Ms. Cortez Masto, whose seat is critical if the Democrats want to maintain control of the Senate.Despite five years in the Senate and eight years as Nevada’s attorney general, Ms. Cortez Masto remains unknown by a broad swath of the Nevada electorate, as a result of her longtime aversion to publicity, cautious political demeanor and Nevada’s transient voters.Almost half the voters on Nevada’s rolls have registered since Ms. Cortez Masto was last on the ballot in 2016, according to an analysis by TargetSmart, a Democratic data firm. Her own internal polling found that nearly a quarter of Latinos didn’t have an opinion on the race between her and Adam Laxalt, a former Nevada attorney general who is likely to be her Republican opponent in the general election.The Cortez Masto campaign began reintroducing her to Latino audiences earlier this month with a Spanish-language television advertisement that leaned heavily on telling her life story as a political pioneer and her family’s history in the military.Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada at the U.S. Capitol last year.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesIt gave a generous interpretation of her biography: Her father, Manny Cortez, was one of the most powerful figures in Las Vegas during stints on the Clark County Commission and later as the head of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. In that role, he approved the ubiquitous Las Vegas marketing phrase, “What happens here, stays here.”“He didn’t start at the top,” Mr. Reid said from the Senate floor after Mr. Cortez died in 2006, “but he ended up there.”Mr. Cortez, who maintained a close friendship with Mr. Reid, operated as a behind-the-scenes player. While that served him as a political operator, it may not help his daughter in this year’s high-profile race that will help determine control of the Senate.“He was never a guy who went out and sought attention from the media,” said Jon Ralston, the longtime Nevada journalist. “She is kind of an exaggerated version of him in many ways.”Gas prices in Nevada are more than $5 a gallon, higher than in every other state except California.Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesThe Texas Station hotel and casino in Las Vegas has remained closed.Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesThat aversion to seeking the spotlight has left Ms. Cortez Masto as essentially a generic Democrat in a midterm year when being yoked to Mr. Biden is a political hazard. A January poll from The Nevada Independent showed Mr. Biden’s approval rating in the state at just 41 percent.Ms. Cortez Masto declined to be interviewed.“No state was hit harder than Nevada, and we’re recovering quickly because Catherine fought to get the relief our hospitality industry needed, supporting the tens of thousands of workers who rely on our tourism economy,” a spokesman, Josh Marcus-Blank, said in a statement.Jeremy Hughes, a Republican who was a campaign adviser to Dean Heller, the former Republican senator, said Ms. Cortez Masto would have difficultly separating herself from Mr. Biden and the national party’s diminished brand.“Every data point I’ve seen points to Hispanic voters being more open to supporting a Republican this cycle than any in recent memory,” Mr. Hughes said. “If the economy is the No. 1 issue on voters’ minds across the country, in Nevada and especially among Hispanic voters, it’s the No. 1, 2 and 3 issue.”But Democrats say that her likely Republican opponent, Mr. Laxalt, is unlikely to win over moderate voters. Mr. Laxalt, whose father and grandfather both served in the Senate, ran the Trump campaign’s effort to overturn Nevada’s 2020 election results.Democrats are also counting on more economic improvement in Las Vegas, where the economy took a hit with the abrupt shutdown of the Strip but has started to be revived with crowded casinos.Paul Madrid, who calls himself a “lifelong working-class Democrat,” cutting a client’s hair at the Eastside Cutters barbershop in Las Vegas.Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesOn a recent sunny afternoon in east Las Vegas, Paul Madrid and Daniel Trujillo took a break in front of the barbershop they’ve run for the last 20 years. Business has been brisk lately, and the pair described themselves as relieved that the worst was behind them. Still, they have winced while watching the price of gas tick up at the station across the street.Mr. Madrid, 52, called himself a “lifelong working-class Democrat” and said he had tried to pay less attention to politics since former President Donald J. Trump left office. As frustrated as he’s been, he is likely to vote for Democrats in November. But he said he felt less loyal than he once did.“Something’s got to change,” he said. “We’ve got to put the country before party. I’ve got to stay positive. My business is back, customers are back and I just want this all to be over with.” More

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      Income Taxes for All? Rick Scott Has a Plan, and That’s a Problem.

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      The “Plan to Rescue America” is dividing the party and cheering Democrats, and its author, Senate Republicans’ top campaign official, won’t stop talking about it.WASHINGTON — Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the somewhat embattled head of the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, said one utterly indisputable thing on Thursday when he stood before a packed auditorium of supporters at the conservative Heritage Foundation: His plan for a G.O.P. majority would make everyone angry at him, Republicans included.It was an odd admission for the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. His leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has repeatedly told Mr. Scott to pipe down about his “11-Point Plan to Rescue America,” with its call to impose income taxes on more than half of Americans who pay none now, and to sunset all legislation after five years, presumably including Social Security and Medicare.It has divided his party, put Mr. Scott’s own candidates in awkward positions, and is already featured prominently in Democratic advertising. But after Thursday, it is clear the Republicans have not figured out how to address their Rick Scott problem.“Washington’s full of a bunch of do-nothing people who believe that no conservative idea can ever happen, nothing will change for the better as long as they’re in charge, and that’s why we’re going to get rid of them,” the senator said, ambiguous about who exactly “they” were. “So Republicans are going to complain about the plan. They’ll do it with anonymous quotes, some not so anonymous. They’ll argue that Democrats will use it against us in the election. I hope they do.”The senator insisted on the Heritage Foundation stage that his plan would raise taxes on no one, only to concede to reporters after the talk that it would — or that it wouldn’t, he couldn’t decide.“The people that are paying taxes right now — I’m not going to raise their rates; I’ve never done it,” he said, before adding: “I’m focused on the people that can go to work, and decided to be on a government program and not participate in this. I believe whether it’s just a dollar, we all are in this together.”But most adults who pay no income tax do work, and the plan makes no distinctions. “All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount. Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax,” it states.Last year, 57 percent of U.S. households paid no income tax, but that was by design. Successive Republican tax cuts, including President Donald J. Trump’s tax cut of 2017, which greatly expanded the standard deduction, took tens of millions of workers off the income tax rolls, though virtually all of them pay Social Security, Medicare and sales taxes.And for all of Mr. Scott’s evasions, the criticism is not coming just from the “militant left” that he denounced. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated that ensuring all households pay at least $100 in income taxes would leave families making about $54,000 or less with more than 80 percent of the tax increase. Those making less than about $100,000 would shoulder 97 percent of the cost.His leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, right, has repeatedly told Mr. Scott to pipe down about his plan.Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times“Let me tell you what would not be a part of our agenda,” Mr. McConnell told reporters in early March. “We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people, and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years.”For Democrats, Mr. Scott is a gift. The 2022 campaign is shaping up as a conventional midterm, focused on the economy under Democratic control. That means inflation, gas prices and candidate ties to an unpopular president.“If you’re in power and you’re presiding over inflation, sorry, it’s tough to be you,” Representative Patrick McHenry, Republican of North Carolina, told The Ripon Society, a conservative research group, this week.Mr. Scott’s plan has allowed Democrats to talk about the alternative: what Republicans would do with power. Mr. Scott’s plan is chock-full of language about making children say the Pledge of Allegiance, prohibiting the government from asking citizens their race, ethnicity or skin color, and declaring that “men are men, women are women and unborn babies are babies.”But its economic section has been the focus. Beyond taxing everyone, under the plan, all federal laws would sunset in five years. “If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again,” the plan says. Taken literally, that would leave the fate of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to the whims of a Congress that rarely passes anything so expansive.Democrats are gleefully calling attention to it, even going so far as to promote the Republican senator’s speaking engagement on Thursday.“The chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee has put it on record in a document,” said David Bergstein, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, “and we are taking his word for it.”Mr. Scott’s ideas threaten to bring Republicans back to an economic argument they waged — and lost — before Mr. Trump won over wide swaths of white working-class voters with his pledges to leave entitlements alone and cut their taxes.In 2012, the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, committed a disastrous gaffe when he was caught on tape describing 47 percent of Americans as wealth takers, not wealth makers. In 2001, Jim DeMint, a House member from South Carolina at the time, who like Mr. Romney went on to the Senate, asserted that if more than half of Americans paid no taxes, they would vote to expand government largess for themselves and make others pay for it.“How can a free nation survive when a majority of its citizens, now dependent on government services, no longer have the incentive to restrain the growth of government?” he asked during a Heritage Foundation lecture, calling for all Americans to pay some income taxes.The vision of affluent Republicans counseling struggling workers to pay more taxes while they pay less was central to Mr. Trump’s critique of the party in the 2016 campaign.And Mr. Scott is an unlikely bearer of his revanchist message. He’s the richest man in Congress, worth around $260 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In 2002, the sprawling hospital chain he ran agreed to pay more than $880 million to settle the Justice Department’s longest-running inquiry into health care fraud, including $250 million returned to Medicare to resolve charges contested by the government.Fellow Republicans are not rushing to embrace Mr. Scott’s plan.“I think it’s good that elected officials put out what they’re for, and so I support his effort to do it,” said Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, among the most endangered Republicans up for re-election in November. “That’s what he’s for.”But for Republican candidates, the issue is getting awkward. In Arizona, Jim Lamon, a Republican seeking to challenge the Democratic incumbent, Senator Mark Kelly, first called the plan “pretty good stuff” only to have his campaign retreat from that embrace.Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said of the plan, “It’s good that people offer ideas.” His Democratic challenger, Representative Val B. Demings, nevertheless ran an ad on social media accusing him of embracing it.At a Republican Senate debate in Ohio on Monday, the current front-runner, Mike Gibbons, called the plan “a great first draft in trying to set some things we all believe in,” adding, “The people that don’t believe them probably shouldn’t be Republicans.”J.D. Vance, a candidate aligned with Mr. Trump’s working-class appeal, fired back: “Why would we increase taxes on the middle class, especially when Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook pay a lower tax rate than any middle-class American in this room or in this country? It’s ridiculous.”Even as he denied his plan would do that, Mr. Scott on Thursday was bold in the criticism of his fellow Republicans, who are relying on him to help them win elections this fall. Timidity is “the kind of old thinking that got us exactly where we are today, where we don’t control the House, the White House or the Senate,” he said, adding: “It’s time to have a plan. It’s time to execute on a plan.” More

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      Biden’s Center-Leaning Budget Bends to Political Reality

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      With his party facing potentially gale-force headwinds in the midterm elections, President Biden released a budget on Monday that tacks toward the political center, bowing to the realities facing endangered Democrats by bolstering defense and law enforcement spending and tackling inflation and deficit reduction in service of what he called a “bipartisan unity agenda.”Under the plan, the left wing’s hopes for a peace dividend at the end of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would be scotched in favor of a new Great Powers military budget that would bring the Defense Department’s allocation to $773 billion, an increase of nearly 10 percent over the level for fiscal 2021. Rather than cuts, Mr. Biden pledges to bolster the nation’s nuclear weapons program, including all three legs of the nuclear “triad”: bombers, land-based intercontinental missiles and submarines.“We are at the beginning of a decisive decade that will determine the future strategic competition with China, the trajectory of the climate crisis, and whether the rules governing technology, trade and international economics enshrine or violate our democratic values,” the budget states, justifying large increases to project U.S. military and diplomatic strength globally.Far from defunding the police and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, two popular slogans on the left, the budget robustly funds both. Customs and Border Protection would receive $15.3 billion, ICE $8.1 billion, including $309 million for border security technology — a well-funded effort to stop illegal migration. The nation’s two primary immigration law enforcement agencies would see increases of around 13 percent.The budget even includes $19 million for border fencing and other infrastructure.Federal law enforcement would receive $17.4 billion, a jump of nearly 11 percent, or $1.7 billion over 2021 levels. And the president, acknowledging widespread concerns that are driving Republican attacks against Democrats, vows to tackle the rise in violent crime.The proposals track with some of the main attack lines Republicans are using against Democrats in the run-up to the November contests, as they portray Mr. Biden and his allies in Congress as weak on security, soft on crime and profligate with federal spending to the point of damaging the economy.Liberal Democrats would see some of their priorities addressed, including “through substantial funding for climate programs and “environmental justice” initiatives, as well as changes to incarceration policy. But many on the left will be disappointed. In lieu of broad student debt forgiveness, an executive order that many Democrats have been pressing for since Mr. Biden’s inauguration, the Education Department’s student lending services would receive a huge increase, 43 percent, to $2.7 billion.Swing-district Democrats who have been pressing Mr. Biden to address widespread concerns about rising prices would be able to point to a number of programs to combat inflation, the biggest issue weighing down their prospects. The president promises large-scale efforts to unclot supply-chain bottlenecks that are raising costs and large-scale deficit reduction that could cool the economy. More

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      Mo Brooks Says Trump Asked Him to Illegally ‘Rescind’ Election

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      Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama, who was involved in the former president’s efforts to challenge the election, made the charge after Mr. Trump took back his endorsement.Representative Mo Brooks, an Alabama Republican who was deeply involved in former President Donald J. Trump’s effort to use Congress to upend the 2020 election and stay in office, claimed on Wednesday that the former president had asked him repeatedly in the months since to illegally “rescind” the election, remove President Biden and force a new special election.Mr. Brooks made the extraordinary charge as the two onetime allies were engaged in a bitter political feud, and it was not immediately clear how their falling out related to the accusation. But the account from the Alabama congressman, who played a central role in challenging electoral votes for Mr. Biden on Jan. 6, 2021, suggested that Mr. Trump has continued his efforts to overturn his defeat and be reinstated.It marked the first time a lawmaker who was involved in Mr. Trump’s attempts to invalidate his election defeat has said that Mr. Trump asked for actions that, were they possible, would violate federal law.His statement came after Mr. Trump withdrew his endorsement of Mr. Brooks in the Republican primary for Alabama’s Senate seat, undercutting the congressman’s already slim chances in a crowded intraparty race.“President Trump asked me to rescind the 2020 elections, immediately remove Joe Biden from the White House, immediately put President Trump back in the White House, and hold a new special election for the presidency,” Mr. Brooks said in a statement on Wednesday. “As a lawyer, I’ve repeatedly advised President Trump that Jan. 6 was the final election contest verdict and neither the U.S. Constitution nor the U.S. Code permit what President Trump asks. Period.”In a subsequent text message, Mr. Brooks said Mr. Trump had made the request of him on “multiple occasions” since Sept. 1, 2021. He said the former president did not specify how exactly Congress would reinstall him as president, and Mr. Brooks repeatedly told him it was impossible.“I told President Trump that ‘rescinding’ the 2020 election was not a legal option. Period,” Mr. Brooks wrote.Mr. Brooks said Mr. Trump brought up the matter to him repeatedly over the past six months. He said he had initially hoped the requests were not connected to his endorsement in the Senate race, but now believes that Mr. Trump was dangling public support of Mr. Brooks’s candidacy as leverage to try to get a new election.“I hoped not but you’ve seen what happened today,” Mr. Brooks said in a text. “For emphasis, the conversations about Jan. 6, 2021 being the only 2020 remedy have been going off and on for 6+ months.”“I know what the legal remedy for a contested presidential election is,” he continued. “There is one and only one per the Constitution and U. S. Code and it occurs on the first Jan. 6 after each presidential election. Period. Game over after January 6.”Mr. Brooks’s high-profile break with Mr. Trump raised the possibility that he might cooperate with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, providing information the panel has so far been unable to secure about what Mr. Trump told his allies in Congress before, during and after the riot. Other Republicans involved in the effort to overturn the 2020 election — Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania — have refused requests from the panel for interviews.Mr. Brooks did not immediately respond to further questions. In his statement, he said he had fought on behalf of Mr. Trump “between Nov. 3 and Jan. 6” — “when it counted.”On Dec. 21, 2020, Mr. Brooks and other House Republicans met with Mr. Trump at the White House to discuss plans to object to the election. On Jan. 6, he wore body armor as he addressed the throng of Trump supporters who gathered at the Ellipse near the White House, telling them to “start taking down names and kicking ass.”“Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America?” Mr. Brooks said, prodding the crowd to cheer more loudly. “Will you fight for America?”Later on Capitol Hill, after a pro-Trump mob rampaged through the building, Mr. Brooks tried to object to electoral votes from several states for Mr. Biden. He also spread false claims that people who identify with antifa, a loose collective of antifascist activists, might have been responsible for the violence, and gave a speech on the floor falsely claiming the election was stolen from Mr. Trump.“Noncitizens overwhelmingly voted for Joe Biden in exchange for the promised amnesty and citizenship and, in so doing, helped steal the election from Donald Trump, Republican candidates and American citizens all across America,” Mr. Brooks said at the time.In retracting his endorsement of Mr. Brooks on Wednesday, Mr. Trump abandoned one of his most loyal acolytes in the House after months of simmering frustration and as polls showed Mr. Brooks falling behind in his state’s Republican primary.In a sign of the former president’s continued focus on the 2020 election, he cited Mr. Brooks’s remarks at a rally last summer urging voters to move on from Mr. Trump’s 2020 defeat.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3Requests to “rescind” the election. 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      ‘You Don’t Know Squat!’ and Other Signs of Our High-Minded Politics

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      Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesHey, it’s spring, people — all kinds of fun things coming around the bend. Picnics! Postpandemic parties! Senatorial primaries!Hey, we’re still citizens, right? Come on. Get focused.Let’s take a look at a couple of the biggest upcoming political contests: races in Ohio and Pennsylvania. In Ohio there are approximately 10,000 people running for the Republican Senate nomination. Things can get pretty intense. One recent candidate forum featured Mike Gibbons, an investment banker, yelling “You don’t know squat!” at one of his adversaries, a former state treasurer, Josh Mandel, who retorted, “Two tours in Iraq!”Another major figure in the Ohio primary is Jane Timken, a former party official who is running as “the real Trump conservative.” A lot of Republicans are trying to hitch their wagon to that shifty star.What do you think “real Trump conservative” actually means? The conservative who’ll increase the national debt by more than a third? Or the conservative who got Vladimir Putin to toe the line by threatening to blow up churches in Moscow? That’s Rudy Giuliani’s latest Trump story, and I can’t summon the energy to wonder whether it actually happened.There’s a general Republican assumption that the key to winning a primary is getting Donald Trump’s endorsement, and yeah, that’s probably true. Unless he changes his mind and takes it back. Did you notice what happened at the end of that big, massively promoted fund-raising contest that promised the winner a trip to have dinner with him in New Orleans? The one where he claimed he’d already “booked you a ticket”?Nothing! According to The Washington Post, nobody actually got the prize. Now really, if you were one of the many donors who sent in a contribution hoping for that one-on-one, do you feel:A. Disappointed but understanding that Trump has a lot to do, what with the lawsuits and criminal conspiracy accusations and all.B. Hopeful there’ll be another contest that’ll start off with eight or 10 drinks with a Trump campaign adviser.C. Totally alienated and planning to vote only for a Republican Senate primary candidate who never mentions Trump by name.OK, I know you understand there are no such candidates. But let’s go back to those Senate primaries. The early voting states are mainly Republican, so there’s not a heck of a lot of drama on the Democratic side. Except, maybe, for Pennsylvania.The two best-known contenders there are Representative Conor Lamb and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman. Lamb won a big upset victory in a 2018 congressional election during which his opponent sneered that Lamb was “someone who’s young and idealistic, who still hopes he can change the world.” Which, at the time, I felt might go down as the most depressing political attack in modern history.Fetterman is 6-foot-8, shaves his head, sports a goatee and has a well-documented habit of showing up for public events wearing baggy shorts; he once wore them at a visit to a bridge collapse — a wardrobe choice that was notable both because he was there to meet President Biden and because it was freezing.On the Republican side, Dr. Mehmet Oz, who became famous as a health guru on Oprah Winfrey’s show, is running against about a trillion other hopefuls. The most prominent is David McCormick, who would probably like you to think of him as a former under secretary of the Treasury, rather than a former hedge fund C.E.O. who still needs to answer some questions about the Pennsylvania teachers’ retirement fund.Oz, who’s been photographed kissing his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, got a rather muted comment from Winfrey, who responded to news of his candidacy by saying, staunchly, “One of the greatest things about our democracy is that every citizen can decide to run for public office.” He may not have Oprah, but he has been endorsed by none other than Sean Hannity.Ohio is going to have to pick somebody to succeed Senator Rob Portman, a Republican who ranked fairly high on the bipartisanship meter, at least by our current pathetic standards. The major Republican candidates are all desperately courting a Trump endorsement, so it’s likely that in the future we’re going to see less hands-across-the-table from Ohio and more stop-the-steal.On the plus side, it’s been lively. During that recent debate, Gibbons rather grudgingly acknowledged that women were “probably” oppressed by being denied the right to vote but added that “there were not a lot of women that were in combat in World War I and World War II.”Mandel’s campaign issues page starts right off with “Fighting for President Trump’s America First agenda.” Gibbons calls himself “Trump tough.” And Timken, the candidate who was endorsed by Portman, is now billing herself as “the real Trump conservative.”If you’re a Democrat, there are two ways to view these Republican Senate primaries. One is to hope the nominee is somebody so nuts, he or she will have less of a chance of winning in the fall. The other is to figure that if there’s very likely going to be a Republican majority next year, we’d be better off with as many reasonable Republicans as possible.Reasonable Republicans who feel obliged to treat Donald Trump like the Second Coming. What can I tell you? We live in America, not Shangri-La.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