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      The Last Lesson of the Jan. 6 Committee

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      The hearings of the House select committee on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol presented a careful, convincing and disturbing account of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. They provided an abundance of detail about what we’ve long known: that Mr. Trump and his allies engaged not only in an assault on Congress, but on democracy itself.The work done by the committee over the past 18 months may be even more important than its report, which is expected to be released Thursday. The long months of scouring investigation and the carefully staged hearings, in which the evidence of Mr. Trump’s malfeasance was presented to the public, were critical elements in the nation’s full understanding of the attack on the Capitol. Through the work of these hearings, Congress showed that the best possible answer to political violence lay in the tools that were right at hand: the rule of law, checks and balances, testimony given under oath and the careful process of bureaucracy.Like a slow-motion replay, the committee’s work also gave Americans a second chance to comprehend the enormity of what transpired on Jan. 6. It seems plausible, as some members of the panel have asserted, that the hearings made protecting democracy a significant issue in the midterm elections and helped to persuade voters to reject some election deniers who ran for state offices. The sustained attention on Mr. Trump’s conduct in his final days in office is also valuable as he mounts a renewed campaign for the presidency. And the hearings focused the attention of the public and policymakers on the extremist groups that participated in the attack on the Capitol and that pose a threat of renewed violence.Congressional hearings are often filled with the distraction of partisan squabbling, grandstanding and detours into tangential subjects. The Jan. 6 committee was different, and the American people were better off for it. Mr. Trump and others refused to answer subpoenas from the committee, which would have given them an opportunity to answer questions and make their case. Their refusal is unfortunate; they deserve the chance to defend themselves and present their account of the facts, and Americans deserve the chance to hear from them. They’re still due that chance, and Mr. Trump may still have his say in a court of law.The seven Democrats and two Republicans who served on the committee captured the attention of Americans who may not have been sufficiently informed or alarmed about Mr. Trump’s role in the events of Jan. 6 to take notice. The two Republicans on the committee, Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, deserve particular credit for defying their own party to participate. Their presence, and the damning testimony delivered by Mr. Trump’s own aides and allies, conveyed the message that some things are necessarily more important than loyalty to a political party.Americans have also learned, thanks to these hearings, exactly how close this country came to even greater tragedies. Rioters came within 40 feet of Vice President Mike Pence. A Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clark, in late December 2020 sought to send a letter — based on lies — to officials in Georgia and potentially several other key states that warned of election irregularities and called for a special legislative session to select alternate slates of presidential electors.The lesson, in part, is that our democracy is inescapably fragile. It requires Americans, and those who serve them as elected officials and in law enforcement, to act in good faith. The committee rightly spent many hours of its work documenting the actions of all those local, state and federal officials who defied Mr. Trump’s demands and acted in many different ways to protect democracy.The dangers remain clear and present, so this work is not complete. House Republicans will be in the majority come January, including many who sought to overturn President Biden’s victory, and some who encouraged the rioters.Political violence is on the rise, especially among right-wing extremists.And Mr. Trump is running for president again on a platform of his grievances, still insistent that he did not lose the last election, still refusing to accept the rule of law. He is, in fact, escalating his rhetoric.The nation needs to respond to these threats. Congress needs to pass the reforms to the electoral process that are included in the year-end omnibus spending bill. Law enforcement can do more to crack down on extremist violence. Voters should reject Mr. Trump at the polls.As the select committee’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, emphasized at its final hearing on Monday, the government should continue to pursue those responsible for the Jan. 6 attack and to hold them accountable.More than 900 people already have been charged with crimes related to the attack on the Capitol, and several hundred of those have either been convicted or pleaded guilty. Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the extremist Oath Keepers group, was convicted of seditious conspiracy in November. Jury selection has begun in the federal trial of Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, another extremist group, who faces similar charges.The committee called upon the Justice Department to also bring criminal charges against Mr. Trump and the lawyer John Eastman, for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including Mr. Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack. The Justice Department is still engaged in its own investigation. As we wrote in August, if there is sufficient evidence to establish Mr. Trump’s guilt on a serious charge in a court of law, then he should be charged and tried; the same goes for all of the others whom the committee referred to the Justice Department.Mr. Thompson, urging action on all these fronts, said that as a nation, “We remain in strange and uncharted waters.” Yet the hearings also underscored that the country is better off with clarity and truth.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Musk Lifted Bans for Thousands on Twitter. Here’s What They’re Tweeting.

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      Many reinstated users are tweeting about topics that got them barred in the first place: Covid-19 skepticism, election denialism and QAnon.Since Elon Musk bought Twitter in October, the self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” has ad-libbed his way through the company’s moderation policies.He initially argued that bans should be reserved for spam accounts, offering “amnesty” to thousands of suspended users and reinstating former president Donald J. Trump. Last week, he suspended several journalists, claiming they had shared public flight data revealing his private location. (Many of the bans were later reversed.)To gauge how Mr. Musk’s content decisions influenced Twitter’s content, The New York Times analyzed tweets from more than 1,000 users whose accounts were recently reinstated. The posts were collected for The Times by Bright Data, a social media tracking company, using a list of reinstated users identified by Travis Brown, a Berlin-based software developer who has tracked extremism on Twitter.Most of the reinstated accounts were deeply partisan — often vocal supporters of Mr. Trump — and they appeared eager to bring their fiery takes back to the social network. It was not clear from the data why the users were originally suspended or why they were reinstated, though their post histories suggest many were banned as Twitter cracked down on Covid-19 and election-related misinformation.Imran Ahmed, the founder and chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said the message Mr. Musk sent to the formerly suspended users was clear: “‘Welcome back, welcome home.”Inside Elon Musk’s TwitterA Management Guru?: To many, Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter may look like an unmitigated disaster. But his unsparing style has still made him a hero to leaders in Silicon Valley.Rival Platforms: Twitter rolled out a new policy to prevent users from sharing links and user names from rival social platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Mastodon. After a backlash from users, the policy was curtailed.Account Suspensions: Twitter’s decision to suspend (and later reinstate) the accounts of several journalists set off a heated debate about free speech and online censorship.A Flood of Bots: People protesting China’s Covid rules shared their demonstrations on Twitter. But despite Mr. Musk’s vow to remove bots, spam accounts drowned out their posts.Twitter and Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.“I finally got this account back after being banned for being a #Republican thanks @elonmusk,” one user tweeted. Just 10 minutes later, the same person wrote: “Joe Biden is an illegitimate president and the 2020 election was stolen.”Here is some of what these users have been saying on Twitter since their return.Covid-19 misinformation and vaccine doubtsDuring the pandemic, Twitter introduced a policy that banned misinformation about the virus, suspending over 11,000 accounts, including many prominent users, after they pushed falsehoods. But in November of this year, after Mr. Musk took control of the company, Twitter said that it would no longer enforce that policy.Several reinstated users who were banned after the Covid-19 policies went into effect started posting again about the virus and its vaccines. Some raised doubts about the effectiveness of vaccines or suggested, without evidence, that vaccines kill people.Several posts mentioned “Died Suddenly,” a misleading documentary released this year that claimed people were dying from the vaccine. Others shared their own unsupported anecdotes.“If you watched ‘Died Suddenly’ here is more confirming evidence,” one user tweeted, adding a link to a website titled “Covid Jab Side Effects.” Before being banned in January 2021, the user had posted several times about Covid-19, including posts that the virus was not dangerous.Election fraudTwitter cracked down on election fraud conspiracy theories after the 2020 election, suspending thousands of accounts that pushed false and misleading ideas about the election results. Hundreds of users have since returned to Twitter, pushing those ideas once again.Many reinstated users focused on close races in the midterm elections, including the governor’s race in Arizona and the Senate race in Pennsylvania. Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor in Arizona, lost her race but has refused to concede, citing problems with the voting process and claiming fraud. Many reinstated users echoed her ideas.Those tweets recycled falsehoods and conspiracy theories from the 2020 election, including that voting machines were rigged to influence the outcome.“Voters, not voting machines, used to decide elections in Arizona,” one reinstated user tweeted. “That’s no longer the case.”QAnonQAnon, the online conspiracy theory, appeared to reach its peak on Jan. 6, 2021, when hundreds of Mr. Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol Building. Twitter suspended over 70,000 accounts linked to the group afterward. But many of the movement’s core ideas have continued playing a significant role in the far-right imagination.On Twitter, reinstated users have returned to familiar themes in QAnon lore, raising questions about prominent Democrats and their association with Jeffrey Epstein, a former financier who was charged with child sex trafficking and is a central figure in QAnon conspiracies.They have claimed without evidence that Democrats and Hollywood personalities are engaged in widespread sex trafficking and pedophilia. And they have also repeated claims that liberals are “grooming” children using drag performances and sex education.“I just was reinstated today after 2 years of permanent suspension,” wrote one reinstated user with “QAnon” in his user name. “I guess I owe that to the new owner thank you Elon Musk.” More

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      America’s Toxic Gun Culture Is Invading Our Politics

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      This editorial is the fifth in a series, “The Danger Within,” urging readers to understand the danger of extremist violence and possible solutions. Read more about the series in a note from Kathleen Kingsbury, the Times Opinion editor.

      A year ago, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky posted a Christmas photo on Twitter. In it, Mr. Massie, his wife and five children pose in front of their ornament-bedecked tree. Each person is wearing a big grin and holding an assault weapon. “Merry Christmas! ps. Santa, please bring ammo,” Mr. Massie wrote on Twitter.The photo was posted on Dec. 4, just four days after a mass shooting at a school in Oxford, Mich., that left four students dead and seven other people injured.The grotesque timing led many Democrats and several Republicans to criticize Mr. Massie for sharing the photo. Others lauded it and nearly 80,000 people liked his tweet. “That’s my kind of Christmas card!” wrote Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who then posted a photo of her four sons brandishing similar weapons.These weapons, lightweight and endlessly customizable, aren’t often used in the way their devotees imagine — to defend themselves and their families. (In a recent comprehensive survey, only 13 percent of all defensive use of guns involved any type of rifle.) Nevertheless, in the 18 years since the end of the federal assault weapons ban, the country has been flooded with an estimated 25 million AR-15-style semiautomatic rifles, making them one of the most popular in the United States. When used in mass shootings, the AR-15 makes those acts of violence far more deadly. It has become the gun of choice for mass killers, from Las Vegas to Uvalde, Sandy Hook to Buffalo.The AR-15 has also become a potent talisman for right-wing politicians and many of their voters. That’s a particularly disturbing trend at a time when violent political rhetoric and actual political violence in the United States are rising.Addressing violent right-wing extremism is a challenge on many fronts: This board has argued for stronger enforcement of state anti-militia laws, better tracking of extremists in law enforcement and the military, and stronger international cooperation to tackle it as a transnational issue. Most important, there is a civil war raging inside the Republican Party between those who support democracy and peaceful politics and those who support far-right extremism. That conflict has repercussions for all of us, and the fetishization of guns is a pervasive part of it.The prominence of guns in campaign ads is a good barometer of their political potency. Democrats have sometimes used guns in ads — in 2010, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, running for the Senate, shot a hole through a copy of the cap-and-trade climate bill with a single-shot hunting rifle. Since then, guns have all but disappeared from Democratic messaging. But in the most recent midterm elections, Republican politicians ran more than 100 ads featuring guns and more than a dozen that featured semiautomatic military-style rifles.In one of the most violent of those ads, Eric Greitens, a Republican candidate for Senate in Missouri and a former Navy SEAL, kicks in the door of a house and barges in with a group of men dressed in tactical gear and holding assault rifles. Mr. Greitens boasts that the group is hunting RINOs — a derogatory term for “Republicans in name only.” The ad continues, “Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.”Twitter flagged the ad, Facebook banned it for violating its terms of service, and Mr. Greitens lost his race for office. He may have been playacting in the ad, but many other heavily armed people with far-right political views are not. Openly carried assault rifles have become an all too common feature of political events around the country and are having a chilling effect on the exercise of political speech.This intimidating display of weaponry isn’t a bipartisan phenomenon: A recent New York Times analysis examined more than 700 demonstrations where people openly carrying guns showed up. At about 77 percent of the protests, those who were armed “represented right-wing views, such as opposition to L.G.B.T.Q. rights and abortion access, hostility to racial justice rallies and support for former President Donald J. Trump’s lie of winning the 2020 election.”As we’ve seen at libraries that host drag queen book readings, Juneteenth celebrations and Pride marches, the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms is fast running up against the First Amendment’s right to peaceably assemble. Securing that right, and addressing political violence in general, requires addressing the armed intimidation that has become commonplace in public places and the gun culture that makes it possible.A growing number of American civilians have an unhealthy obsession with “tactical culture” and rifles like the AR-15. It’s a fringe movement among the 81 million American gun owners, but it is one of several alarming trends that have coincided with the increase in political violence in this country, along with the spread of far-right extremist groups, an explosion of anti-government sentiment and the embrace of deranged conspiracy theories by many Republican politicians. Understanding how these currents feed one another is crucial to understanding and reversing political violence and right-wing extremism.The American gun industry has reaped an estimated $1 billion in sales over the past decade from AR-15-style guns, and it has done so by using and cultivating their status as near mythical emblems of power, hyper-patriotism and manhood. Earlier this year, an investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform found that the gun industry explicitly markets its products by touting their military pedigree and making “covert references to violent white supremacists like the Boogaloo Boys.” These tactics “prey on young men’s insecurities by claiming their weapons will put them ‘at the top of the testosterone food chain.’”This marketing and those sales come at a significant cost to America’s social fabric.In his recent book “Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry That Radicalized America,” Ryan Busse, a former firearms company executive, described attending a Black Lives Matter rally with his son in Montana in 2020. At the rally, dozens of armed men, some of them wearing insignia from two paramilitary groups — the 3 Percenters and the Oath Keepers — appeared, carrying assault rifles. After one of the armed men assaulted his 12-year-old son, Mr. Busse had his epiphany.“For years prior to this protest, advertising executives in the gun industry had been encouraging the ‘tactical lifestyle,’” Mr. Busse wrote. The gun industry created a culture that “glorified weapons of war and encouraged followers to ‘own the libs.’”The formula is a simple one: More rage, more fear, more gun sales.A portion of those proceeds are then funneled back into politics through millions of dollars in direct contributions, lobbying and spending on outside groups, most often in support of Republicans.All told, gun rights groups spent a record $15.8 million on lobbying in 2021 and $2 million in the first quarter of 2022, the transparency group OpenSecrets reported. “From 1989 to 2022, gun rights groups contributed $50.5 million to federal candidates and party committees,” the group found. “Of that, 99 percent of direct contributions went to Republicans.” More

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      Trump Is Unraveling Before Our Eyes, but Will It Matter?

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      In the weeks immediately surrounding the midterm elections, Donald Trump called for the “termination” of constitutional rule, openly embraced the conspiratorial QAnon movement, pledged support for the Jan. 6 rioters and hosted, over dinner at Mar-a-Lago, the white supremacist Nicholas Fuentes and Ye (once known as Kanye West), both of whom are prominent antisemites.Does every step Trump takes off the deep end make him a greater liability for the Republican Party, potentially leading to a second Biden term, the loss of the party’s precarious control of the House and an across-the-board weakening of Republican candidates up and down the ticket — from the U.S. Senate to local school boards?Will Trump’s wrecking ball bid for the presidency fracture his party? Will Trump’s extremism prompt the mainstream right — Mitch McConnell, Ron DeSantis, Glenn Youngkin, Nikki Haley and all the rest — to rise up in revolt? How are the worsening intraparty fissures likely to play out over the next two years?Most of the strategists and scholars to whom I posed these questions outlined scenarios in which a Trump candidacy is mainly helpful to the Democratic Party and its candidates. They often cited the hurdles confronting those seeking to nominate a more mainstream candidate.“The Republican Party faces a lose-lose proposition as long as Trump is politically active,” Martin Wattenberg, a political scientist at the University of California-Irvine, wrote by email in response to my inquiry.“If Trump succeeds in getting the nomination again, it would seem that his brand is so damaged among Independents and some Republicans that he will be unelectable,” Wattenberg continued. “And if Trump loses his nomination fight, it seems highly likely that he will charge that he is a victim of voter fraud and damage the legitimacy of the Republican nominee.”If that were not enough to satisfy Trump’s thirst for vengeance, Wattenberg suggested that “it is certainly conceivable that he would mount an independent candidacy and split some of the Republican vote. Continuing his fight as an independent would enable him to continue to raise big sums of money and attract the attention that he so intently craves. All in all, it could well be a disaster for the G.O.P.”While Trump has suffered setbacks on both the political and the legal front, no one I contacted suggested that he should be counted out in the 2024 nomination fight. Instead, just as was the case in 2016, the most favorable situation in 2024 for Trump would be a multicandidate field, as opposed to a single opponent who could consolidate those opposed to him.“It is hard to see President Trump getting more votes in 2024 than he did in the 2020 general election,” Arthur Lupia, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, said by email:Still, if he has 16 primary election opponents like he did in 2016, his name recognition and loyal base will give him real advantages in securing the nomination. He will get 30-40 percent of every vote, leaving the other 15 candidates to split the remaining 60-70 percent. Unless someone like DeSantis can clear the others out quickly, Trump will maintain an advantage.The split in the Republican Party, Lupia continued,has been brewing for several decades. The Tea Party is a focal point and a precursor to the current populist movement. The evolving split within the G.O.P. represents a divide between people who believe in government but want to run it according to conservative principles and an approach that increasingly questions the legitimacy of government itself.Lupia argued that “Despite that split, there is little or no chance that either faction will split off into a third party”:The rules of the American electoral system are stacked against third parties at nearly every turn. The fact that the U.S.A. elects nearly all members of Congress and state legislatures from single-member districts makes it difficult for third parties to win elections. To have viable third parties, you typically need legislators elected from multi-member districts (imagine that your Congressional district sent the top three vote getters to Congress instead of just one).While exploring various scenarios, Robert Erikson, a political scientist at Columbia, warned that there was a substantial chance that unanticipated and unpredictable developments would radically change the course of politics over the next two years and beyond:I think we should consider the likelihood of something very different. Suppose for instance it turns out that DeSantis cannot attract G.O.P. primary election voters and is just another bland Scott Walker. What then? The aftermath would be hard to imagine.Instead, Erikson wrote by email,We should steel ourselves for the possibility that the G.O.P. future turns out like nothing like we imagine today. The same is true regarding the Democrats’ presidential nominee if Biden does retire before 2024. That outcome might be something we could not imagine today. Trump critics have continually predicted that his latest outrage would be his downfall. Not even Jan. 6 caused a revolt within the G.O.P. G.O.P. leaders are too fearful of Trump’s baseBut, Erikson argued,If the fall comes, it could be swift and decisive. The template is the fate of Joe McCarthy. He seemed invincible, with the full support of elements of the American right. Then, following Joseph Welch’s condemnation in his “Have you no sense of decency?” speech, McCarthy was defeated, and swiftly. The circumstances of McCarthy’s downfall may seem hard to believe today. But this is what can happen to a bully when they do lose their power of intimidation.I asked Erikson and others how serious the current divisions within the Republican Party are.“The fissures in the Republican Party are larger than usual, but still comparable to those that regularly occur in American political parties,” he replied, but “compared to the realignment of the parties in the civil-rights era, the current conflict in the Republican Party is mild.”Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California-San Diego, sees some potential for destructive intraparty conflict:Republicans have a real dilemma, because they can’t win without the MAGA faction and are having a hard time winning with it. It comprises at least half the party so they have no choice but to try to keep it in the fold. I think they will succeed; opposition to Biden and the Democrats unites them for the time being at least.Would the defeat of Trump in the primaries by DeSantis, Youngkin or another candidate provoke a damaging schism in the general election?Jacobson replied by email:Depends on how Trump reacts if he is denied the nomination. If it comes about because of his legal difficulties or because he appears to be increasingly off the rails (e.g., demanding we ignore laws and the Constitution to put him back in the White House NOW), then the MAGA faction may look to a DeSantis (if not Youngkin) to take up their banner. If it is an all-out battle through the primaries, then whoever backs the losing side might be disinclined to show up in 2024.But, Jacobson cautioned, “Never underestimate the motivating force of negative partisanship; you really have to hate Democrats and want your party in power to show up and vote for someone with Herschel Walker’s character, but the vast majority of Georgia Republicans” did so.Trump, Jacobson wrote,is still very popular in the party at about 75 percent favorable in the recent Economist/YouGov and Quinnipiac polls. I think if the nomination took place now, he would certainly be the winner. But given his legal jeopardy and recent behavior that seems even more self-destructive than usual, on top of his damage to the Republican cause in 2022, I think Republican leaders and conservative pundits will be making every effort to keep him off the ticket to avoid losing again in 2024.A key question, according to Jacobson, is whether Trump’spursuit of self-preservation leads him to back away from the crazy tweets and wacko supporters or to embrace them even further. If the former, non-MAGA Republicans may treat him as they always have. If the latter, he will put them in a real bind. They’ve shown a capacity to put up with a lot over the years, but the combination of losing winnable elections and the constant humiliation of having to answer, or duck answering, for Trump’s latest folly may finally turn them openly against him. If he fights back as hard as he is capable of, the party will split.Robert Nickelsberg/Getty ImagesI posed the same question to all those I queried for today’s column:Is it possible to quantify the size of the extremist vote in the Republican primary electorate? By this, I mean not only active supporters of the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, QAnon etc., but also the presumably larger constituency of those who sympathize with the aims of these groups — those with high levels of racial hostility that they want to see expressed in the political system, and those who are particularly fearful that they will be, or already have been, displaced from their position of status?Only Jacobson offered an answer:I took a quick look at some survey data I’ve been gathering over the past two years. One set of questions (27 surveys) ask if people approve of or support or have a favorable opinion of the people who invaded the Capitol on Jan. 6. The results are quite consistent regardless of how the question is framed, with no trend over the two years: An average of 25 percent of Republicans have positive things to say about insurrectionists.Another question, asked 20 times by the Economist/YouGov poll in between August and December 2021: “How likely or unlikely do you think it is that Donald Trump will be reinstated as President before the end of 2021? An average of 22 percent of Republicans said it was very or somewhat likely that he would be reinstated. Finally, 20 percent of Republicans responding to an April 2022 Economist/YouGov poll said it was definitely true that “Top Democrats are involved in elite child sex-trafficking rings.”My estimate is thus 20-25 percent of the Republican electorate can be considered extremists.The continued polarization of the two parties, especially at the extreme left and right, creates complex interactions within each party and between each party.Trump, according to David Hopkins, a political scientist at Boston College, transformed the political environment in ways that have made it difficult, if not impossible, for other prominent Republicans to renounce some of the more extreme groups:The reason Republican politicians are often reluctant to explicitly separate themselves from the Proud Boys, QAnon, or other groups on the right-most fringe isn’t that those groups cast a lot of votes in either Republican primaries or general elections. It’s that denouncing those groups would make a candidate sound like a liberal, or at least like someone who buckles under pressure from liberals.Trump, Hopkins notes, “became a hero to Republican voters not just by adopting conservative policy positions, but also by refusing to make rhetorical concessions to Democrats, journalists, and other perennial conservative nemeses.”Sean Westwood, a political scientist at Dartmouth, contended in an email thatThe Republican Party is in the midst of an identity crisis. Traditional Republicans who push national defense, support for NATO and economic stability are fighting against insurgents who oppose these core tenets of the Republican brand. To these insurgents, isolationism and protectionism are the new mantra.In this struggle for the power to set the agenda in the House of Representatives, Westwood argued, the Republicans’ mediocre performance in the 2022 midterm elections empowered the party’s right wing:The great irony is that the defeat of the red wave gave more power to the extremes of the Republican Party. Had the red wave reshaped Congress, Republicans would have had a strong majority and could have governed with a more traditional policy platform, but because their margin of control is so narrow the new Speaker has no choice but to try to appease the Freedom Caucus and other extremes.Robert Y. Shapiro, a political scientist at Columbia, suggested that Republican Party leaders could make a concerted effort to block a Trump nomination, but it might take more fortitude than they have exhibited in the past. “This is one plausible resolution: first and foremost, if Republicans are thinking rationally and give highest priority to winning, they should see that Biden would defeat Trump in 2024 since he did so in 2020,” Shapiro wrote, “and since then Trump has been damaged by Jan. 6 and other investigations, and election deniers got trounced in 2022. DeSantis has been polling better than Trump against Biden and Youngkin probably would too.”One crucial but politically difficult step party leaders could take would be to unite behind — and endorse — a single candidate while pressuring the others to withdraw and, in Shapiro’s words, leave “only one such candidate opposing Trump in the primaries — otherwise multiple candidates would split the vote and Trump would be the party candidate, as happened in 2016.”Eric Groenendyk — a political scientist at the University of Memphis and a co-author of “Intraparty Polarization in American Politics” with Michael Sances and Kirill Zhirkov, political scientists at Temple University and the University of Virginia — wrote me by email:As party elites polarize, extreme partisans have reason to like it and identify more closely with their party, but not all partisans feel this way. Less extreme partisans have reason to like their party less. The part that is often overlooked is that these less extreme partisans also have reason to like the other party less, since that party is also moving away from them. If these less extreme partisans perceive both parties to be moving away from them at the same rate, they will still be closer to their own party, forcing the less extreme voters to adopt a ‘lesser of two evils’ justification for sticking with their party. And even if the other party is not moving away from the less extreme voters at the same rate, rehearsing negative thoughts about that party will also help them to rationalize sticking with their own party.This, in Groenendyk’s view,seems to be where many Republicans are stuck today. They are frustrated with the Trump wing of the party, but they can’t stomach voting for Democrats. The key point is that this shared hatred for Democrats is what’s holding their coalition together.Most of those I contacted downplayed the possibility that Trump would run as a third-party candidate if he were rejected as the Republican nominee, citing his aversion to losing and the logistical and financial difficulties of setting up a third party bid. Marc Hetherington, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina, disagreed.I asked Hetherington: “If a DeSantis or Youngkin were to defeat Trump for the nomination, would either of them alienate Trump’s supporters, or could either one keep those voters in the tent?”Hetherington replied, “As long as Trump doesn’t run as a third-party candidate or actively tell his supporters to stay home, I suspect they’ll still vote Republican. What motivates them is their hatred of the Democrats.”But, Hetherington wrote, “There is every reason to think that Trump might actually do those things” — tell his loyalists to stay home on Election Day or run as a third-party candidate — “if he’s not the nominee”:If he has proven anything over the years, it is that Trump cares about Trump. In deciding to contest the 2020 vote, he asked “What do I have to lose?” He didn’t think at all about what the country had to lose. If he thinks he benefits from splitting the party — even if doing so just makes him feel better because he gets to settle an old score — then he’ll do it.Westwood noted that “it is not clear what power Trump will have to fight with if he doesn’t get the nomination in 2024, especially if he happens to be in a prison cell, which is increasingly likely.”In fact, however, conviction and imprisonment would not, under the Constitution, preclude a Trump candidacy and might in fact provide additional motivation, both for him and his most zealous supporters. Zijia Song, a reporter at Bloomberg, laid out the possible criminal charges Trump could face on Nov. 15 and then posed the question, “Could any of this disqualify him as a presidential candidate?”Her answer:Broadly speaking, no. Article II of the US Constitution, which lays out qualifications for the presidency, says nothing about criminal accusations or convictions. Trump opponents see two possible avenues to challenging his eligibility, however. One is a federal law barring the removal or destruction of government records: It says anyone convicted of the offense is disqualified from federal office. This could conceivably apply to Trump if — and this is a big if — he’s charged and convicted for taking classified documents from the White House. The other is the 14th Amendment to the Constitution which says that nobody can hold a seat in Congress, or “any office, civil or military,” if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.”Which gets to the larger question that supersedes all the ins and outs of the maneuvering over the Republican presidential nomination and the future of the party.How, in a matter of less than a decade, could this once-proud country have evolved to the point at which there is a serious debate over choosing a presidential candidate who is a lifelong opportunist, a pathological and malignant narcissist, a sociopath, a serial liar, a philanderer, a tax cheat who does not pay his bills, a man who socializes with Holocaust deniers, who has pardoned his criminal allies, who encouraged a violent insurrection, who, behind a wall of bodyguards, is a coward, and who, without remorse, continuously undermines American democracy?The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Trump Embraces Extremism as He Seeks to Reclaim Presidency

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      As he gets his presidential campaign underway, Donald J. Trump has aligned himself with forces that used to be outside the mainstream of American politics.WASHINGTON — Former President Donald J. Trump made clear on Thursday night exactly where he stands in the conflict between the American justice system and the mob that ransacked the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power nearly two years ago.He stands with the mob.Mr. Trump sent a video statement of support to a fund-raiser hosted by a group calling itself the Patriot Freedom Project on behalf of families of those charged with attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “People have been treated unconstitutionally, in my opinion, and very, very unfairly, and we’re going to get to the bottom of it,” he said. The country, he warned, “is going communist.”The video underscored just how much the former president has aligned himself with forces that used to be outside the mainstream of American politics as he seeks to reclaim the White House through a rematch with President Biden in 2024. With the Justice Department targeting him as well as some of his violent allies, Mr. Trump’s antigovernment jeremiads lately sound like those once relegated to the outer edges of the political spectrum.He has embraced extremist elements in American society even more unabashedly than in the past. The video comes as Mr. Trump has been using music sounding like a QAnon theme song at recent rallies and hosting for dinner Kanye West, a rap star under fire for antisemitic statements, and Nick Fuentes, a prominent white supremacist.And it comes just two days after the conviction of Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, placed Mr. Trump at the spiritual heart of a seditious conspiracy to illegitimately keep power in a way that is unparalleled in American history.Mr. Trump’s acceptance, if not outright courtship, of the militant right comes as the Republican establishment blames him for the party’s failure to do better during the November midterm elections. Republican officeholders, led by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the party leader in the upper chamber, argue that Mr. Trump’s promotion of candidates based on fidelity to his false claims about the 2020 election cost them seats.“Trump is doubling down on his extremist and cult leader profile,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of “Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present” and a history professor at New York University. “For someone of Trump’s temperament, being humiliated by people turning away from him will only make him more desperate and more inclined to support and associate with the most extremist elements of society. There is no other option for him.”His former dinner guests fanned the flames on Thursday with fresh incendiary comments on the Infowars show of Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist. “I like Hitler,” said Mr. West, who now goes by the name Ye, adding that “Hitler has a lot of redeeming qualities.” He added that “we got to stop dissing Nazis all the time,” and he denied that the Holocaust happened.At another point, Mr. Fuentes voiced his support for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, calling himself “very pro-Putin” and “very pro-Russia.” Ye agreed: “I am also.”The verdict in the Oath Keepers case underscored Mr. Trump’s alignment with a right-wing militia deemed a danger by the government. The trial effectively established that there was an illegal plot to keep Mr. Trump in power despite his defeat in the 2020 election, whether the former president was directly involved or simply inspired it through the lies he spread.What to Know About Donald Trump TodayCard 1 of 4Donald J. Trump is running for president again, being investigated by a special counsel again and he’s back on Twitter. Here’s what to know about some of the latest developments involving the former president:Documents case. More

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      Republican-Controlled County in Arizona Holds Up Election Results

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      Republican local officials are threatening to disrupt the final tally of midterm votes in one more sign of the politicization of elections.Republican officials in an Arizona county voted on Monday to hold up certification of local results in this month’s midterm elections, reflecting an expansion of partisan battles into obscure elements of the election system and largely uncharted legal territory.The Cochise County board of supervisors refused to certify the results, although members cited no issues with the count or problems in the vote. In Mohave County, Republican supervisors delayed a vote to certify the election, but then backtracked and certified the vote on Monday.The move is unlikely to significantly stall the final results of this year’s elections; state officials have said that if necessary they will pursue legal action to force the board’s certification. But it represents a newfound willingness by some Republican officeholders to officially dispute statewide election results they dislike, even when the local outcomes are not in doubt.“Our small counties, we’re just sick and tired of getting kicked around and not being respected,” said Peggy Judd, one of two Republican supervisors in Cochise who voted to delay the certification of county results until Friday.Ms. Judd described the move as a protest over the election in Maricopa County, where Republican candidates have claimed — with no evidence — widespread voter disenfranchisement, largely as a result of ballot printing errors.Similar actions have taken place in Pennsylvania, where activists have sued to block certification in Delaware County, and Republican election officials in Luzerne County voted against certification, forcing a deadlock on the county election board after one of the three Democratic board members abstained from voting.In Arizona and Pennsylvania as in most states, elections are run by county governments, which must then certify the results. The act was regarded as little more than a formality until the 2020 election.Since then, local Republican officials aligned with the election denier movement have occasionally tried to use their position to hold up certification. The tactic has become more widespread this year and earned encouragement from Republican candidates and right-wing media personalities.“People were suppressed and disenfranchised,” Charlie Kirk, the conservative pundit, said on his radio show this month. Mr. Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, which is based in Phoenix, cheered on Cochise and Mohave officials in their efforts: “We’re not going to let this one go.”These actions have mostly unfolded in heavily Republican counties and have only rarely been prompted by suspicions about local elections. More often, local Republican officials and activists have described the actions as an effort to complicate or at least protest the certification of elections elsewhere that they claim have been compromised.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

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      The Republican Party and the Scourge of Extremist Violence

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      This editorial is the fourth in a series, The Danger Within, urging readers to understand the danger of extremist violence — and offering possible solutions. Read more about the series in a note from Kathleen Kingsbury, the Times Opinion editor.

      On Oct. 12, 2018, a crowd of Proud Boys arrived at the Metropolitan Republican Club in Manhattan. They had come to the Upper East Side club from around the country for a speech by the group’s founder, Gavin McInnes. It was a high point for the Proud Boys — which until that point had been known best as an all-male right-wing street-fighting group — in their embrace by mainstream politics.The Metropolitan Republican Club is an emblem of the Republican establishment. It was founded in 1902 by supporters of Theodore Roosevelt, and it’s where New York City Republicans such as Fiorello La Guardia and Rudy Giuliani announced their campaigns. But the presidency of Donald Trump whipped a faction of the Metropolitan Republican Club into “an ecstatic frenzy,” said John William Schiffbauer, a Republican consultant who used to work for the state G.O.P. on the second floor of the club.The McInnes invitation was controversial, even before a group of Proud Boys left the building and violently confronted protesters who had gathered outside. Two of the Proud Boys were later convicted of attempted assault and riot and given four years in prison. The judge who sentenced them explained the relatively long prison term: “I know enough about history to know what happened in Europe in the ’30s when political street brawls were allowed to go ahead without any type of check from the criminal justice system,” he said. Seven others pleaded guilty in the episode.And yet Republicans at the New York club have not distanced themselves from the Proud Boys. Soon after the incident, a candidate named Ian Reilly, who, former club members say, had a lead role in planning the speech, won the next club presidency. He did so in part by recruiting followers of far-right figures, such as Milo Yiannopoulos, to pack the club’s ranks at the last minute. A similar group of men repeated the strategy at the New York Young Republicans Club, filling it with far-right members, too.Many moderate Republicans have quit the clubs in disgust. Looking back, Mr. Schiffbauer said, Oct. 12, 2018, was a “proto” Jan. 6.In conflicts like this one —  not all of them played out so publicly — there is a fight underway for the soul of the Republican Party. On one side are Mr. Trump and his followers, including extremist groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. On the other side stand those in the party who remain committed to the principle that politics, even the most contentious politics, must operate within the constraints of peaceful democracy. It is vital that this pro-democracy faction win out over the extremists and push the fringes back to the fringes.It has happened before. The Republican Party successfully drove the paranoid extremists of the John Birch Society out of public life in the 1960s. Party leaders could do so again for the current crop of conspiracy peddlers. Voters may do it for them, as they did in so many races in this year’s midterm elections. But this internal Republican Party struggle is important for reasons far greater than the tally in a win/loss column. A healthy democracy requires both political parties to be fully committed to the rule of law and not to entertain or even tacitly encourage violence or violent speech. A large faction of one party in our country fails that test, and that has consequences for all of us.Extremist violence is the country’s top domestic terrorist threat, according to a three-year investigation by the Democratic staff members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which reported its findings last week. “Over the past two decades, acts of domestic terrorism have dramatically increased,” the committee said in its report. “National security agencies now identify domestic terrorism as the most persistent and lethal terrorist threat to the homeland. This increase in domestic terror attacks has been predominantly perpetrated by white supremacist and anti-government extremist individuals and groups.” While there have been recent episodes of violent left-wing extremism, for the past few years, political violence has come primarily from the right.This year has been marked by several high-profile acts of political violence: an attempted break-in at an F.B.I. office in Ohio; the attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of the speaker of the House; the mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo by a white supremacist; an armed threat against Justice Brett Kavanaugh; a foiled plan to attack a synagogue in New York. More