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      In Georgia, Trump’s Attacks on Election Still Haunt Republicans

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentliveLatest UpdatesHouse Introduces ChargeMcConnell Said to Support ChargeHow Impeachment Might Work25th Amendment ExplainedAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyIn Georgia, Trump’s Attacks on Election Still Haunt RepublicansIn the aftermath of President Trump’s efforts to subvert the election, state officials face harassment and threats, and a district attorney is weighing an inquiry into the president’s actions.As absentee ballots were counted in Georgia, Joseph R. Biden Jr. overtook President Trump, eventually winning the state’s 16 electoral votes.Credit…Audra Melton for The New York TimesRichard Fausset and Jan. 12, 2021, 7:39 p.m. ETATLANTA — The impeachment charge that House Democrats have filed against President Trump stems from his role in inciting a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol last week. But included in the resolution is another element of Mr. Trump’s behavior that is also drawing condemnation as an abuse of presidential power: His pressure campaign to persuade Georgia officials to overturn his electoral loss in the state.Before inspiring a throng of supporters to attack the Capitol, Mr. Trump had previously sought to “subvert and obstruct” the results of his failed re-election effort, a draft article of impeachment released Monday reads, citing in particular the president’s extraordinary intervention in Georgia.Even if Democrats’ second effort to remove the president from office fails or fades, Mr. Trump’s efforts to subvert the will of Georgia’s voters will continue to resonate, both for the president and for politicians in Georgia. State elections officials continue to face harassment and death threats. A number of Georgia Republicans are now blaming Mr. Trump’s baseless accusations of election fraud for the losses by the state’s two Republican senators this month.And in Atlanta, the Fulton County district attorney is weighing whether to start a criminal investigation into Mr. Trump for a phone call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which the president exhorted him to “find” the votes that would deliver Mr. Trump victory.That call was part of a much broader push by Mr. Trump and his allies to subvert Georgia’s election results. The effort played out over two months and in the end was based on allegations of fraud that were consistently debunked by his fellow Republicans charged with overseeing the state’s election.Gabriel Sterling, one of the most outspoken of those officials, said in an interview this week that the president’s effort was both inappropriate and crude.“There was never an overarching strategy,” Mr. Sterling said, adding: “It was a series of tactical moves in an attempt to get a different outcome here. The president shouldn’t be trying to do things to put his thumb on the scale. I don’t care if it’s a Republican or a Democrat, no president should do that.”Mr. Trump’s relentless campaign to change the result first came to public attention in a startling act of intraparty discord six days after Election Day.Mr. Trump could face a criminal investigation in Georgia for exhorting top election official to “find” the votes that would deliver him victory.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesOn Nov. 9, the two Republican senators forced into Georgia runoff races, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, released a joint statement calling for the resignation of Mr. Raffensperger, a fellow Republican. The senators, who were both Trump loyalists, made hazy allegations that Mr. Raffensperger’s oversight of the election was marred by “mismanagement and lack of transparency.”An official in the secretary of state’s office, who requested anonymity because of the threats that were still coming in, said the office learned that same day that Mr. Trump was behind the statement; he had warned the two candidates that he would turn his Twitter account against them if they did not publicly call for Mr. Raffensperger to step down.The state official learned of the threat in a phone call with consultants from one of the two senators’ campaigns.There had been other, quieter attempts to move Mr. Raffensperger, a Trump supporter and lifelong Republican, more firmly and publicly into Mr. Trump’s camp. In January of last year, he rejected an offer to serve as honorary co-chair of the Trump campaign. He also rebuffed subsequent efforts to get him to publicly endorse the president, according to two state elections officials. The efforts, which Mr. Raffensperger rejected on the grounds that he needed to be seen as impartial, were first reported by ProPublica.The assault on Mr. Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp, who also is a Republican, came as Mr. Trump watched his chances of victory melt away, with swing states counting mountains of mail-in absentee votes that tilted the race in favor of his Democratic challenger, Joseph R. Biden Jr.In Georgia, David Shafer, the chair of the state Republican Party, assailed the vote-counting process in Fulton County, which encompasses much of Atlanta. Soon, a succession of Trump allies and aides, some of them much more powerful than Mr. Shafer, began exerting pressure on state officials to overturn the election results.One of them was Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. He called Mr. Raffensperger later that month, and asked him if he had the power to toss out mail-in votes from some counties, according to Mr. Raffensperger’s account of the call, which Mr. Graham has disputed.The president unleashed a barrage of tweets baselessly challenging his loss and calling for a special session of the Legislature to consider overturning the results. Conspiracy theories blossomed on the far-right fringes of the internet.On Dec. 1, Mr. Sterling, in an emotional news conference, implored Mr. Trump to stop claiming that the election had somehow been “rigged” against him.“Mr. President, you have not condemned these actions or this language,” he said, expressing fury over the threats that election officials and poll workers were receiving. “It has to stop.”Shortly after the Nov. 3 election, Georgia’s two Republican senators called on Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, also a Republican, to step down.Credit…Brynn Anderson/Associated PressIt did not. On Dec. 3, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph Giuliani came to Georgia for a State Senate hearing and made a series of specious claims about voter fraud, even as officials from the secretary of state’s office debunked such claims at a separate hearing taking place just one floor below. The next day, the Trump campaign filed suit in Georgia to try to get the state’s election results overturned and was joined by the state party.On Dec. 5, Mr. Trump called Mr. Kemp to pressure him to call a special session of the Legislature to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory in the state. Just hours later, the president again criticized Mr. Kemp and Mr. Raffensperger at a rally that was putatively intended to bolster the electoral chances of Ms. Loeffler and Mr. Perdue. Two days later, after two recounts, Mr. Raffensperger certified Mr. Biden’s victory.By then, the schism within the party had widened. A senior official in the secretary of state’s office said at the time that the state party needed “to stop passing the buck for failing to deliver Georgia for Trump.”In the days before Christmas, Mr. Trump called the lead investigator for the Georgia secretary of state’s office, pressing the investigator to “find the fraud,” those with knowledge of the call have said. Around the same time, Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, made a surprise visit to Cobb County, with Secret Service agents in tow, to view an audit in process there. (“It smelled of desperation,” Mr. Sterling said in the interview. “It felt stunt-ish.”)The pressure campaign culminated during a Jan. 2 call by Mr. Trump to Mr. Raffensperger, which was first reported by The Washington Post. “I just want to find 11,780 votes,” Mr. Trump said on the call, during which Mr. Raffensperger and his aides once again dismissed the baseless claims of fraud..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1cs27wo{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1cs27wo{padding:20px;}}.css-1cs27wo:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}The Trump ImpeachmentFrom Riot to ImpeachmentThe riot inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, followed a rally at which President Trump made an inflammatory speech to his supporters, questioning the results of the election. Here’s a look at what happened and at the ongoing fallout:This video takes a look inside the siege on the capitol. This timeline shows how a crucial two hour period turned a rally into the riot.Several Trump administration officials, including cabinet members Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, announced that they were stepping down as a result of the riot.Federal prosecutors have charged more than 70 people, including some who appeared in viral photos and videos of the riot. Officials expect to eventually charge hundreds of others.House Democrats have begun impeachment proceedings. A look at how they might work.Of all of Mr. Trump’s efforts to change the Georgia results, it was this call, recorded and released to the public, that could end up causing him the most trouble. The impeachment resolution cites the call in asserting that the president “threatened the integrity of the Democratic system.”The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s voting system implementation manager, implored Mr. Trump to stop what had become an incessant barrage of baseless allegations that the election had somehow been “rigged.”Credit…Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated PressOn Jan. 5, Ms. Loeffler and Mr. Perdue lost their races, giving Democrats control of the Senate. A day later, Mr. Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol.The ramifications of Mr. Trump’s false claims of voter fraud continue in Georgia. Mr. Sterling said that his house, as well as Mr. Kemp’s, showed up on a website called “enemies of the people” that the F.B.I. concluded was part of an Iranian effort to disrupt the election.“I got doxxed again last night on Gab,” Mr. Sterling said Monday, referring to a site favored by right-wing extremists.Georgia Republicans were already confronting the daunting prospect of a Democratic Party reinvigorated by changing demographics and suburbanites’ growing distaste for Mr. Trump’s political style. Now they are left with a party badly split between the Trump supporters who continue to believe that the election was stolen from him and those who believe Mr. Trump’s fight to overturn the results was misguided.“I think that by President Trump going so far beyond even the date that Al Gore conceded hurt the Republican Party in the runoff,” said Martha Zoller, who chairs Georgia United Victory, the most prominent political action committee that backed Ms. Loeffler’s bid. “I think he had the right to pursue the avenues, but he should have called for peace and unity a lot sooner.”The legal ramifications of Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse the election here are uncertain — and complicated. Some legal scholars have said that Mr. Trump’s call to Mr. Raffensperger may have violated state and federal laws, though many note that a charge may be difficult to pursue.A spokesman for Fani Willis, Fulton County’s new prosecutor, did not return calls seeking comment this week.In a Jan. 3 letter to Mr. Raffensperger, David Worley, a Democratic member of the state elections board, said that probable cause might exist that Mr. Trump violated a Georgia law concerning solicitation to commit election fraud. State law makes it illegal for anyone who “solicits, requests, commands, importunes” or otherwise encourages others to engage in election fraud.In an interview this week, Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law expert at Georgia State University in Atlanta, said that Ms. Willis was facing a difficult decision of whether to use her office’s time and resources to go after the president, given her significant challenges at home, including a spike in Atlanta’s crime rate.But Mr. Kreis argued that the nature of the debate might have changed since the mob attacked the U.S. Capitol last Wednesday.“Now it well might be worth her time,” he said, “because there’s been real life-and-death consequences for these lies, as well as the president attacking state and local officials to do his bidding to overturn the election in an anti-democratic thrust.”Astead W. Herndon and Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      If It’s Still Trump Party, Many Republicans Like Me Will Leave

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyIf It’s Still Trump Party, Many Republicans Like Me Will LeaveI need to believe that if I stick with the G.O.P., I will have a fighting chance at changing its direction.Ms. Mair is a Republican strategist.Jan. 12, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETJustin Amash of Michigan, who as a House member left the Republican Party in 2019 and declined to run for re-election. Credit…Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesThe remaining days in the presidency of Donald Trump now number in the single digits. That should also be the number of days until the Republican Party begins the post-Trump era, and Trump-disdaining Republicans like me can fully re-engage with it.But it isn’t. Instead, we face a situation in which Mr. Trump clearly lost the 2020 election — and yet the pressure for us to ditch the party is even more intense than it was before Nov. 3. He has behaved horribly since the election, which is no surprise, and hit an abject low point last week. Despite his role in the sacking of the Capitol, he has (also not surprisingly) refused to resign from office — but what is shocking is that so many Republicans in Congress have expressed downright hostility against forcing him out.So many of us — who would otherwise consider ourselves Republicans — increasingly feel that either Mr. Trump goes, or we go. If he remains, we will be left with no choice but to leave the party, even though right now might otherwise be the exact time to double down, not ditch, and reassert conservative principles. The costs of people like me leaving could be grave, not just for the party but for American politics.Many former Republicans who deeply dislike Mr. Trump have already done so. Steve Schmidt, who ran John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, announced last year that he was becoming a Democrat. Representative Justin Amash of Michigan left the Republican Party in 2019 and has urged others to ditch it for a third party (perhaps the Libertarian Party). Evan McMullin, who ran for president as an independent in 2016, has urged fellow NeverTrumpers to “further develop an intellectual and political home” that is “outside of any party,” and told them that “if the Republican Party continues on its current path, launch a party to challenge it directly.”And yet, there are real pragmatic and practical reasons for Trump-loathing Republicans not to take a walk and in fact to step up our involvement with the party.For starters, if Mr. Trump’s elevation to head of the Republican Party showed anything, it demonstrated that it is far easier to influence its direction when you are part of it. Before 2016, the party was for free trade, legal immigration and, above all, a strong national defense, hawkish on Russia and in favor of global defense alliances. In a relatively short amount of time, with Mr. Trump as leader, the party drastically changed its position on those issues.But people forget that as pronounced as the mutation of the party under Mr. Trump was, it was not without precedent. In my lifetime, since the mid-1970s, the party has endorsed presidential candidates who often emphasized different views of conservatism. Each of them — from Gerald Ford to Donald Trump — changed the character of the Republican Party, some more, like Ronald Reagan, and some less, like George H.W. Bush.Sure, they were all generally less tax-happy than their Democratic rivals and favored more conservative judges. But they — and their respective power bases — also didn’t agree on everything, and sometimes disagreed on a lot. Frequently, they were battling one another to attain dominance within the party. But they all achieved a period of power and control because they stayed and engaged in those battles.This is what Republicans like Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah understand — and they were all on the ballot during the Trump years and won handily.If you leave, the people you abhor stay and get to run the whole show. If you stay, you can at least ask questions, offer criticisms, block some objectionable actions and fly the flag for people like you. And things will change — perhaps not immediately for the better, but inevitably.Still, right now, a lot of us are feeling more like Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who seems to be exploring the view that if Mr. Trump does not resign and Republicans don’t help to eject him, she cannot exist as a Republican anymore. As the conservative blogger and my friend Ed Morrissey, who after the Capitol incursion chose to “disaffiliate” from the party, wrote, “It’s impossible to act as though Republicans are republican, especially while its leadership makes clear that it doesn’t care one whit about the party’s own foundational principles.”That may be where many of us — those of us who were explicitly NeverTrump, and even those who were willing to cut the president a lot more slack — wind up.One problem is that, eventually, voters will want change. And when Democrats have been in charge of too many things for too long, even a Republican Party that has moved in a direction that many would describe as, well, deplorable will prove electable.This is what we saw some of in California and Florida last year. California is dominated by Democrats and has been seen to be moving in an ever increasingly liberal direction. But in November, voters there reinstalled Republicans in a bunch of swing congressional districts.In Florida, some Hispanic voters decided that if it was a choice between an authoritarian-inclined Republican Party or a Democratic Party with several high-profile, media-attention-grabbing members willing to proclaim themselves as socialists, they’d take the authoritarians.I don’t want to leave the Republican Party. But I need to believe that if people like me stay, we will have a fighting chance at changing the direction of the party.So elected Republicans need to force Mr. Trump out of office, one way or another, to avoid further attrition in the ranks and the risk that the party devolves into something even worse than what we have seen over the last week.Liz Mair (@LizMair), a strategist for campaigns by Scott Walker, Roy Blunt, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina and Rick Perry, is the founder and president of Mair Strategies, which consulted for Georgia United Victory before the runoff elections. She also served as the Republican National Committee’s online communications director in 2008.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.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Georgia Senate Race Is Proof: The South Is Really Changing

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyLies, Damn Lies, and GeorgiaThe election of Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff is a clear message: The South truly is changing.Contributing Opinion WriterJan. 11, 2021A public art installation in Atlanta.Credit…Damon Winter/The New York TimesNASHVILLE — It’s impossible not to notice how many members of Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election were white Southerners — more than half the legislators who professed to believe Donald Trump’s lie that the election was stolen are people who represent the American South. Even after his supporters, egged on by the president himself, staged a violent insurrection inside the United States Capitol, these craven, feckless legislators would not vote to certify the results of an election that has survived the scrutiny of more than 60 baseless challenges in various courts.Others, including my own state’s two senators, entered the Senate chamber on Jan. 6 fully intending to join them but were moved by the violent attack on the Capitol to reverse course. “These actions at the US Capitol by protestors are truly despicable and unacceptable,” tweeted Marsha Blackburn, a Republican senator from Tennessee. “I condemn them in the strongest possible terms. We are a nation of laws.”We are also a nation of free and fair elections, but somehow Ms. Blackburn had managed to ignore that necessary part of our democratic compact. She was not alone in her tardy about-face. All across the Southern states, politicians scrambled to reassert their own faith in the rule of law after publicly flouting it for weeks — or years, depending on when you start counting.Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, belatedly recognizing the nature of his own constituency, called the insurrectionists “terrorists, not patriots.”“Violence is abhorrent and I strongly condemn today’s attacks on our Capitol,” tweeted Senator Kelly Loeffler, Republican of Georgia, who had just spent two months running for re-election while simultaneously joining the president in insisting that the election was rigged.With such elected “leaders” representing this region — and with the insurrectionists parading through our nation’s Capitol carrying Confederate battle flags and other symbols of white supremacy — it’s not surprising that so many people outside the South seem to believe that the voters who support Marsha Blackburn, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Loeffler, not even to mention Donald Trump, are the only people who live here.All I can say is thank God for Georgia.In the runoff elections last week, the good people of Georgia sent two Democrats to Washington, D.C.: the Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock, the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once served as a co-pastor, and Jon Ossoff, a Jewish film executive who ran for Senate with the blessing of John Lewis, the civil rights activist and longtime member of Congress who passed away in July. In electing them, Georgia delivered the Senate to Democrats and at the same time offered a clear illustration of something Southerners, liberal and conservative alike, have known for years: The American South in the midst of profound change.This is not a story of 21st century carpetbaggers moving to the South to take advantage of our cheap cost of living and then blowing up our longstanding election patterns, an argument I’ve heard from more than one conservative Southerner.Partly, as other writers have noted, what is changing in the South is the demographic makeup. Urban and suburban voters, and the residents of college towns, are more apt to be progressive, and that’s true whether they’re homegrown or new residents. Every red state in the region has them. Think of Memphis and Nashville. Think of Chapel Hill and Birmingham and Louisville and New Orleans and Austin. As small towns dry up and jobs in the countryside disappear, it only stands to reason that these ever-growing cities and their suburbs will eventually loosen the stranglehold that rural voters have always had over elections in the South — at least in statewide elections, where gerrymandered districts don’t matter.But Republicans still hold the power in almost all Southern state legislatures (Virginia’s is the exception, and only since 2019), and they will continue to do everything possible to make it harder for Democrats to vote. In Georgia, state legislators are already eyeing new ways to avoid a repeat of the elections that turned Georgia blue. Consequently, change in the South may always be of the two-steps-forward-one-step-back variety.Which brings us to the other major explanation for why the South is changing: Liberals and progressives keep fighting back. Stacey Abrams is the face of this fight, and she is rightly credited with flipping Georgia two years after unapologetic voter-suppression tactics ended her own hopes of serving as governor. But the New Georgia Project, the mighty voter-outreach organization that Ms. Abrams and her colleagues have built to register new voters and persuade long disenfranchised Black and brown voters not to give up on the democratic process, has analogues across the South. These efforts may be less visible than Ms. Abrams’s, and some of them are still embryonic, but they are growing.That’s why Democrats down here haven’t completely lost heart, despite consistently losing elections to Republicans on one side and despite being chastised by liberals outside the South on the other. (“Everyday Democrats need to see beyond the electoral map to acknowledge the folks pushing for liberal ideas even in the reddest of areas,” the Kentucky novelist Silas House notes in a new essay for The Atlantic. “If they don’t, the cultural divide will grow only wider.”)In addition to voting demographics and voter outreach, a small but not inconsequential explanation for the changing political landscape of the South is that Donald Trump has finally inspired a change of heart in plenty of white Southerners. You won’t find them waving banners at political rallies or posting diatribes on social media, but they are here.Many of them sat out the last election, true, but others quietly, bravely cast their votes for Democrats, often for the first time in their lives, because this president has made them see how thin the veneer of democracy really is in today’s Republican Party. It isn’t easy for them to defy their entire family or their entire church to vote for candidates who stand for fairness and inclusion, but they did it in 2020, and already in 2021, and I believe that their numbers will continue to grow.I hope you’ll remember them, and all the passionate liberal activists here, too, the next time you see a sea of red on an election map. I hope you’ll remember them the next time a Southern statehouse passes another law that constrains the rights of L.G.B.T.Q. citizens or guts public education or makes it harder to choose an abortion but easier to buy a gun. I hope you’ll look beyond the headlines to what is also happening here, often at great risk to those who are making it happen. Because Georgia is the clearest proof yet that this is not our grandfather’s Southland anymore. And it will never be again.Margaret Renkl is a contributing opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South. She is the author of the book “Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss.”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.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Despite Chaos and Big Losses, Republicans Still Control Most of Georgia

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential TransitionliveLatest UpdatesMoves to ImpeachHow impeachment Might WorkBiden Focuses on CrisesHow Mob Stormed CapitolAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDespite Chaos and Big Losses, Republicans Still Control Most of GeorgiaDemocrats had huge breakthroughs in winning the presidential vote and two Senate runoff elections. But power in the state’s government largely remains in the hands of Republicans.Republicans prayed at their election night party in Atlanta on Tuesday. The party lost both Senate races after earlier losing the presidential vote in the state.Credit…Brandon Bell/Getty ImagesRichard Fausset and Jan. 10, 2021Updated 8:40 a.m. ETATLANTA — For two months, Georgia Republicans have watched their party descend into a morass of betrayal, chaos and blame. A top state election official accused President Trump of fomenting a “civil war” among fellow Republicans as he pressured the governor and the secretary of state to help overturn his electoral defeat.And, of course, there was the sting of defeat itself — in both the presidential race and the two Georgia Senate runoff elections last week, which relegated Republicans to minority status in both houses of Congress.But then there was Lauren McDonald Jr., a veteran state public service commissioner who goes by Bubba.Mr. McDonald was the third Republican candidate on Tuesday’s runoff ballot. And his 42,000-vote victory in a race in which many voters’ likely motivation was simple party affiliation was a comforting signal to many Georgia Republicans that their party was in better shape than shocking defeats at the top of the ballot might have indicated.Brian Robinson, a longtime Republican and a Georgia political consultant, said the party had certainly been left shaken by it all. However, he added, “Bubba McDonald showed there’s still a pretty strong generic Republican vote out there.”The recent trio of high-stakes Democratic victories in Georgia, fueled by the state’s changing demographics and by distaste for Mr. Trump, may mean that Georgia has finally achieved battleground status. And Democrats, observing a Republican house divided, are hoping for more. They are particularly focused on defeating incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp in 2022, anticipating that Stacey Abrams — Georgia Democrats’ biggest national star since Jimmy Carter — will take on Mr. Kemp in a rematch of their close and bitter 2018 race.But none of that will be easy in a state that retains a strong conservative streak, and where Republicans control most of the levers of power. Every statewide elected office in state government is currently in Republican hands. And Democrats, who had hoped to make big inroads in the state legislature, netted only two State House seats and one State Senate seat in November’s elections, leaving Republicans with comfortable majorities in both houses. Indeed, the possibility of enduring Republican strength in Georgia may illustrate the limits of the damage the Trump era may end up having beyond Washington, particularly in places where the G.O.P. has spent years building solid state parties that cater to a receptive conservative voting base. Republicans cemented or broadened gains in legislatures and state offices around the country even while they were losing the White House and the Senate.Mr. McDonald, in an interview on Friday, noted that he had been an early supporter of Mr. Trump’s and continued to count himself as one. “In my opinion, he’s been a very strong president,” he said. “But let’s turn the page and move on.”Even optimistic Georgia Republicans concede that it is difficult to know how badly the Republican brand has been damaged by Mr. Trump, particularly after he incited a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, and after his incessant and baseless argument that the election was stolen from him in Georgia and elsewhere. (Mr. McDonald declined to comment when asked his opinion about the storming of the Capitol.)Lauren McDonald, the Georgia public service commissioner, who goes by Bubba, was the only Republican to win in the runoff election last week.Credit…Erik S Lesser/EPA, via ShutterstockIt is also difficult to assess Mr. Trump’s influence after he leaves the White House. In Georgia, for instance, he has threatened to back a Republican primary challenger for governor as a means of punishing Mr. Kemp for his lack of fealty.Charles S. Bullock III, a political scientist at the University of Georgia, noted that Mr. Trump continued to have many ardent fans in the state and that many of them believed the election had been stolen. Even if Mr. Kemp were to survive a primary challenge from a Trumpist candidate, such a challenge could siphon off supporters and contributors before he even had the chance to square off against the formidable Ms. Abrams.More generally, Dr. Bullock said, Republicans should be nervous with their margins in statewide races having dwindled year after year. “The two parties may be just about evenly matched going into 2022,” he said. “But the trends have been moving toward the Democrats.”Some hoped that the widespread disgust over the storming of the Capitol would “break the spell of the cult” surrounding Mr. Trump, as Mr. Robinson described it. Mr. Kemp strongly condemned the action Wednesday, calling it “un-American.”The Presidential TransitionLatest UpdatesUpdated Jan. 10, 2021, 10:04 a.m. ETPatrick Toomey becomes the second Republican senator to call for Trump’s resignation.Federal authorities charge a man they say traveled to Washington for the rally and texted about shooting Pelosi.Inaugural donor list includes tech companies.Mr. Trump has been a dominant and fearsome force among Georgia Republicans, capable of elevating or debilitating the prospects of a candidate with a tweet. Yet after losing his own re-election campaign and then being blamed for the defeats in the Senate races, his grasp has eroded considerably, so much so that some party leaders and elected officials saw him as a liability and a cautionary tale of what could happen when a party was commandeered by a single personality.Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, one of the Republican state officials who became a target after resisting the president’s campaign of pressure to overturn his loss, contends that, ultimately, he will be vindicated.“I think that an overwhelming majority of the voters will come back our direction and reward us,” Mr. Duncan said. “And if they don’t see that as a valuable trait of their lieutenant governor, then I don’t want to represent them. I’ll be perfectly fine getting defeated if they don’t reward or recognize the value of honesty and integrity. I’m not their guy.”When Mr. Trump is taken out of the equation, Republicans’ fundamentals are indeed strong in Georgia, at least for the immediate future. Their legislative dominance means that Republicans this year will control the decennial redrawing of state legislative and congressional district maps, giving them the ability to protect their own and create new problems for some sitting Democratic office holders. In the legislative session that begins Monday, Republicans are promising to impose strict new limits on voting in the wake of record voter turnout.Republican legislators and state officials have discussed eliminating no-excuse absentee voting, which surged in popularity in the pandemic. They have also considered eliminating drop boxes for absentee ballots, curbing unsolicited absentee ballot applications and requiring a photo identification requirement for mail-in ballots.Georgia’s Republican House speaker, David Ralston, said he was unlikely to support eliminating no-excuse absentee voting. But any attempts to curtail the current system are likely to be cited by Democrats as examples of voter suppression, a charge they have leveled against Mr. Kemp, a former secretary of state, for years.Moreover, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, one of the two Democratic Senate victors this week along with Jon Ossoff, will have to run for re-election in 2022, because, in defeating Senator Kelly Loeffler, he is technically finishing out the term of the retired former Senator Johnny Isakson. He is likely to be a top target for national Republicans.The activists who have been helping drive turnout and bolster Democrats know they have their work cut out for them.President Trump threatened to back a different Republican candidate for governor as a means of punishing Gov. Brian Kemp, above, for his lack of fealty.Credit…Dustin Chambers for The New York Times“It’s going to remain a purple state,” said Esteban Garces, a co-executive director of Poder Latinx, an organization that had been heavily involved in registering and mobilizing Latino voters in Georgia during the recent elections.“They were narrow, and that’s the truth of it,” Mr. Garces said of the recent wins by Democrats in the presidential and Senate races. “That means the work on the ground is going to have to be replicated time and again.”Kelly Dietrich, the chief executive of the National Democratic Training Committee, an organization that prepares Democrats to run for elected office, said he was “bullish” on Mr. Warnock’s 2022 run, as well as for other Democratic candidates in Georgia. “It’s that long-term infrastructure required to build long-term power,” he said of the work being done.He added that Republicans would be weighed down by the identity crisis left in the wake of the Trump administration.“This reckoning is their own doing,” Mr. Dietrich said. “They’ve created a monster, and they can’t control it.”Some reckoning has already begun. This week, Erick Erickson, the influential conservative radio host and Trump critic, called for the resignation of the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, David Shafer, a staunch supporter of the president who also promulgated claims of electoral fraud after Mr. Trump’s loss. Mr. Erickson argued that that strategy, which might have depressed Republicans’ desire to turn out in the runoff, ran counter to Republicans’ interests. (Mr. Shafer could not be reached for comment.)The invasion of the U.S. Capitol may also continue to have political repercussions in Georgia. On Friday, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that a robocall telling Trump supporters to march on the Capitol and “fight to protect the integrity of our elections” had been put out by the Rule of Law Defense Fund, an arm of the Republican Attorneys General Association. That group is chaired by Chris Carr, the Georgia attorney general.Katie Byrd, a spokeswoman for Mr. Carr, said Friday that Mr. Carr had “no knowledge” of the decision to put out the robocall and noted that he had publicly condemned “the violence and destruction we saw at the U.S. Capitol.”And despite some of the positive signs, Republicans are also weighing how the last days of the Trump era have weakened them and are ruminating on the future of their party’s collective identity. Trey Allen, a Republican commissioner in Columbia County, near Augusta, said the party would have to move beyond being defined by a single personality and focus on classic conservative themes that are still popular with many Georgia voters.“We will hopefully tighten up our platform,” said Mr. Allen, a self-described Reagan Republican who voted for Mr. Trump twice, “and focus on the things that make conservatives who they are: strong economy, strong military, less government, more freedoms.”Mr. Duncan said that Republicans needed to prioritize policy over personality. He imagined what he described as “G.O.P. 2.0,” a version of the party that embraced traditional conservative ideals while also being more empathetic and having a more gentle tone, to win back voters who rejected Mr. Trump’s vitriolic style.“If we don’t learn from our mistakes,” he said, “we’re going to continue to lose from our mistakes. This is the perfect moment in time to start G.O.P. 2.0 and realize we can never let a person be more important than a party.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      With Georgia Senate Wins, Democrats Solidify Power in Washington

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential TransitionliveLatest UpdatesCalls for Impeachment25th Amendment ExplainedTrump Officials ResignHow Mob Stormed CapitolAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWith Georgia Senate Wins, Democrats Solidify Power in WashingtonSenator Chuck Schumer will fulfill his ambition of becoming majority leader as Senator Mitch McConnell returns to heading the minority, shifting the policy agenda as Joe Biden takes office.Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, leaving his office on Wednesday, with framed portraits of former majority leaders behind him.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesJan. 7, 2021Updated 7:34 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — The stunning Democratic wins in two Georgia Senate races this week upended Washington’s power structure overnight, providing an unexpected opening to the incoming Biden administration by handing unified control of Congress to Democrats, who will be tested by governing with spare majorities.The victories by Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff mean that Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, will control the Senate floor rather than Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and a man Democrats have long seen as the main impediment to their legislative ambitions.The momentous shift occurred even as a violent siege of the Capitol on Wednesday, egged on by President Trump, made clear the staunch refusal of his supporters to acknowledge President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the winner of the election, an explosive last gasp of Republican protest before Democrats assume full control. Thrust together at a secure location with top congressional leaders after being evacuated during the mayhem, Mr. McConnell found himself congratulating Mr. Schumer on his newfound status. In a wholesale change that will shift the policy agenda after Mr. Biden’s inauguration, liberals — including Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the democratic socialist who will now lead the Budget Committee — will head Senate panels, rather than conservatives. Legislation from the Democratic-controlled House that had languished in the Senate will now get consideration across the Rotunda.The abrupt shift in circumstances invigorated Democrats who had been deflated in November when they failed to gain a Senate majority on Nov. 3 despite Mr. Biden’s victory. Given the traditional advantage Republicans have had in Georgia runoff elections, many Democrats had become resigned to the prospect that they would be sentenced to another two years in the Senate minority, stymied in delivering on Mr. Biden’s priorities.“We sure did not take the most direct path to get here, but here we are,” said Mr. Schumer, happy with the outcome any way he could get it, a result that put him in reach of fulfilling his ambition of becoming majority leader after four years as the chief of the minority.While the change in Senate control is momentous, particularly in easing the way for Mr. Biden to fill administration jobs and judicial vacancies, it does not mean that Democrats can have their way on everything — or even most things.The Democratic majority in the House shrank in the last election, emboldening Republicans and giving Speaker Nancy Pelosi less wiggle room in what is likely her last term. More than half of House Republicans voted to throw out certified presidential election results from Arizona and Pennsylvania overnight Wednesday and Thursday without evidence of fraud, reflecting both the extreme character of the House Republican conference and what is sure to be a reluctance to work with Mr. Biden.With the Senate divided 50 to 50 and Democrats in charge only by virtue of the tiebreaking power of the vice president, the filibuster also looms large. Democrats will need to attract at least 10 Republicans to advance most bills while contending with demands from the left for bolder action now that their party will control all of Congress.Democrats conceded the difficulties but still welcomed the reversal of fortune.“It is not all going to be easy, but it is certainly better than being 52-48 and President Biden playing ‘Mother, May I?’ with Leader McConnell in moving any legislation to the floor,” said Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, one of the incoming president’s closest allies on Capitol Hill.Yet Mr. McConnell, newly elected to his seventh term, has been in the position of leading the minority before and has proved effective in obstructing Democratic priorities.The Presidential TransitionLatest UpdatesUpdated Jan. 7, 2021, 9:15 p.m. ETBetsy DeVos, education secretary, is second cabinet member to resign.Here’s what Trump’s cabinet members have said about the storming of the Capitol.Lawmakers fear a coronavirus outbreak after sharing close quarters in lockdown.During President Barack Obama’s first term, Democrats had a filibuster-proof 60 votes for a period, and Mr. McConnell still managed to confound Democrats while gradually chipping away at their majority. Republicans took control in 2015, mainly through emphasizing party unity against Democratic initiatives.As minority leader, Mr. McConnell can be expected to employ the same tactics while focusing on the 2022 midterm elections and seeking to regain his Senate power. That will make the first two years of Mr. Biden’s administration extremely important when it comes to accomplishing any major priority.Republicans said they recognized that the legislative environment will be drastically different.“It’s the agenda, an agenda shift — totally changed,” said Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia. “They’re going to have the ability to run things from the House and, you know, shift the emphasis.”When the Senate last had a 50-to-50 split in 2001, the two leaders, the Republican Trent Lott of Mississippi and the Democrat Tom Daschle of South Dakota, worked out a power-sharing agreement. But those two leaders had a much deeper relationship than Mr. McConnell and Mr. Schumer — they had worked cooperatively on the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton — and the Senate was less polarized than it is today.Mr. Schumer and Mr. McConnell will need to engage in talks to come up with some sort of governing framework.“I assume in the next couple weeks, Schumer and Mitch will sit down and kind of figure out how this is going to work,” said Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican. “We had a little bit of a pattern back in 2000, but times have changed. It’s different now.”Perhaps the biggest difference will be the committee chairmen, representing a significant swing in ideology. Besides Mr. Sanders, for example, Senator Sherrod Brown, the progressive Ohio Democrat and strong labor ally, is set to be head of the Banking Committee and will have a markedly different agenda than that of the outgoing Republican chairman, Senator Michael D. Crapo of Idaho.Mr. Brown said his first order of legislative business would be addressing the effect of the coronavirus pandemic and relief provisions set to expire, including an eviction moratorium.“We need to fix a lot of the damage Trump’s done, and then there’s pent-up demand for a whole lot of things,” Mr. Brown said. “What do we do about climate and about racial inequality, about wealth inequality, about structural racism?”Among other notable committee changes would be Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon as head of the tax-writing Finance Committee, and Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois as chairman of the Judiciary Committee rather than Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, who was a chief driver of the Republican push to install more than 200 conservative judges on the nation’s federal courts the past four years. Senator Patty Murray of Washington, an aggressive backer of health law changes, is in line for the health committee.With the even partisan split, Democrats have begun talking about employing a special legislative process called reconciliation that applies budget rules to eliminate the threat of a filibuster, but what can be accomplished with that approach is limited. Activists are encouraging Democrats to try to eliminate the 60-vote filibuster to take advantage of their power while they have it.“A window of opportunity like this may not come around again for a long while,” said Brian Fallon, a former Schumer aide and head of the progressive group Demand Justice. “It is almost overwhelming to think of all the opportunities for legislating that now exist, but the priority must be democratic reforms that make institutions like the Senate and our courts more aligned with the will of the people.”But a handful of centrist Democrats, including Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana, have said they have no interest in gutting the filibuster, instead regarding it as a way to force the kind of compromise they think could restore the Senate’s ability to legislate.“Bipartisan legislation tends to stand the test of time, and so hopefully we continue to work together and have it be encouraged by the filibuster,” Mr. Tester said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      }

      .nytslm_li_loud a:hover,
      .nytslm_li_loud a:active,
      .nytslm_li_loud a:focus {
      border-bottom: 2px solid;
      padding-bottom: 2px;
      }

      .nytslm_li_updated {
      color: #777;
      }

      #masthead-bar-one {
      display: none;
      }

      .electionNavbar__logoSvg {
      width: 80px;
      align-self: center;
      display: flex;
      }

      @media(min-width: 600px) {
      .electionNavbar__logoSvg {
      width: 100px;
      }
      }

      .nytslm_notification {
      border-left: 1px solid #ccc;
      font-family: nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;
      padding-left: 1em;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_label {
      color: #D0021B;
      text-transform: uppercase;
      font-weight: 700;
      font-size: 0.6875rem;
      margin-bottom: 0.2em;
      letter-spacing: 0.02em;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_link {
      font-weight: 600;
      color: #121212;
      display: flex;
      align-items: center;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_headline {
      font-size: 0.875rem;
      line-height: 1.0625rem;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_image_wrapper {
      position: relative;
      max-width: 75px;
      margin-left: 10px;
      flex-shrink: 0;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_image {
      max-width: 100%;
      }

      .nytslm_notification_image_live_bug {
      position: absolute;
      text-transform: uppercase;
      bottom: 7px;
      left: 2px;

      font-size: 0.5rem;
      background-color: #d0021b;
      color: white;
      border-radius: 3px;
      padding: 4px 4px 2px 4px;
      font-weight: 700;
      margin-right: 2px;
      letter-spacing: 0.03rem;
      }

      /* No hover state on in app */
      .Hybrid .nytslm_li a:hover,
      .Hybrid .nytslm_li_loud a:hover {
      border-bottom: none;
      padding-bottom: 0;
      }

      .Hybrid #TOP_BANNER_REGION {
      display: none;
      }

      .nytslm_st0 {
      fill: #f4564a;
      }

      .nytslm_st1 {
      fill: #ffffff;
      }

      .nytslm_st2 {
      fill: #2b8ad8;
      }

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      “),e+=””+b+””,e+=””,d&&(e+=””,e+=””,e+=”Live”,e+=””),e+=””,e}function getVariant(){var a=window.NYTD&&window.NYTD.Abra&&window.NYTD.Abra.getAbraSync&&window.NYTD.Abra.getAbraSync(“STYLN_elections_notifications”);// Only actually have control situation in prd and stg
      return[“www.nytimes.com”,”www.stg.nytimes.com”].includes(window.location.hostname)||(a=”STYLN_elections_notifications”),a||”0_control”}function reportData(){if(window.dataLayer){var a;try{a=dataLayer.find(function(a){return!!a.user}).user}catch(a){}var b={abtest:{test:”styln-elections-notifications”,variant:getVariant()},module:{name:”styln-elections-notifications”,label:getVariant(),region:”TOP_BANNER”},user:a};window.dataLayer.push(Object.assign({},b,{event:”ab-alloc”})),window.dataLayer.push(Object.assign({},b,{event:”ab-expose”})),window.dataLayer.push(Object.assign({},b,{event:”impression”}))}}function insertNotification(a,b){// Bail here if the user is in control
      if(reportData(),”0_control”!==getVariant()){// Remove menu bar items or previous notification
      var c=document.querySelector(“.nytslm_innerContainer”);if(c&&1 30 * 60 * 1000) return restoreMenuIfNecessary();
      // Do not update DOM if the content won’t change
      if(currentNotificationContents!==a.text&&window.localStorage.getItem(“stylnelecs”)!==a.timestamp)// Do not show if user has interacted with this link
      // if (Cookie.get(‘stylnelecs’) === data.timestamp) return;
      {expireLocalStorage(“stylnelecs”),currentNotificationContents=a.text;// Construct URL for tracking
      var b=a.link.split(“#”),c=b[0]+”?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-elections-notifications&variant=1_election_notifications&region=TOP_BANNER&context=Menu#”+b[1],d=formatNotification(c,a.text,a.kicker,a.image);insertNotification(d,function(){var b=document.querySelector(“.nytslm_notification_link”);return b?void(b.onclick=function(){window.localStorage.setItem(“stylnelecs”,a.timestamp)}):null})}})}(function(){navigator.userAgent.includes(“nytios”)||navigator.userAgent.includes(“nyt_android”)||window.stylnelecsHasLoaded||(// setInterval(getUpdate, 5000);
      window.stylnelecsHasLoaded=!0)})(),function(){try{if(navigator.userAgent.includes(“nytios”)||navigator.userAgent.includes(“nyt_android”)){var a=document.getElementsByClassName(“nytslm_title”)[0];a.style.pointerEvents=”none”}}catch(a){}}(); More