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      D.A. in Georgia Trump Investigation Says Any Charges Would Be Announced This Summer

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      In a letter on Monday, the prosecutor said she would announce any indictments from her investigation into Donald J. Trump and his allies between July 11 and Sept. 1.ATLANTA — The prosecutor leading the investigation of former President Donald J. Trump and his allies in Georgia said on Monday that she is aiming to announce any indictments by mid-July at the earliest, according to a letter she sent to a top local law enforcement official.In her letter, Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., said that any charges would come during the court term that runs from July 11 to Sept. 1.In January, Ms. Willis said that charging decisions in the investigation were “imminent.” But her timetable has been delayed, in part because a number of witnesses have sought to cooperate as the investigation has neared an end. Local law enforcement also needs time to prepare for potential security threats, a point that Ms. Willis emphasized in the letter.Further complicating matters, Ms. Willis’s office filed a motion last week seeking the removal of a lawyer who is representing 10 Republicans who were part of a bogus slate of electors who sought to help Mr. Trump stay in power even after he lost the 2020 election in Georgia.“In the near future, I will announce charging decisions resulting from the investigation my office has been conducting into possible criminal interference in the administration of Georgia’s 2020 General Election,” Ms. Willis wrote in the letter, which was sent to the sheriff of Fulton County, Patrick Labat, and was first reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I am providing this letter to bring to your attention the need for heightened security and preparedness in coming months due to this pending announcement.”Ms. Willis’s office has spent more than two years investigating whether the former president and his allies illegally meddled in Georgia’s 2020 election, which Mr. Trump narrowly lost to President Biden.A special grand jury that heard evidence in the case for roughly seven months recommended more than a dozen people for indictments, and its forewoman strongly hinted in an interview with The New York Times in February that Mr. Trump was among them.Ultimately, it will be up to Ms. Willis to decide which charges to seek before a regular grand jury. Her letter, which was copied to a number of local officials, expressed grave concerns about courthouse security after her decisions are announced.“Open-source intelligence has indicated the announcement of the decisions in this case may provoke a significant public reaction,” Ms. Willis wrote. “We have seen in recent years that some may go outside of public expressions of opinion that are protected by the First Amendment to engage in acts of violence that will endanger the safety of our community. As leaders, it is incumbent upon us to prepare.”Security has been a concern of Ms. Willis’s for some time, and she has had some members of her staff outfitted with bulletproof vests. She wrote to the Atlanta field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in early 2022, a few months before the special grand jury began meeting to consider evidence and hear testimony in the case.In that letter, Ms. Willis asked that the F.B.I. conduct a risk assessment of the county courthouse in downtown Atlanta and “provide protective resources to include intelligence and federal agents.”Ms. Willis also noted in the F.B.I. letter that Mr. Trump, at a rally in Conroe, Texas, had called the prosecutors investigating him “vicious, horrible people,” and said he hoped “we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere because our country and our elections are corrupt.”Ms. Willis wrote that Mr. Trump had said at the same event that if re-elected, he might pardon people convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the United States Capitol. Armed pro-Trump protesters appeared around the Georgia State Capitol building a number of times in the weeks after the 2020 election, as Mr. Trump and his allies pushed false accusations of electoral fraud. On at least one occasion, armed counterprotesters were also in the streets.On Jan. 6, 2021, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of Georgia and his staff evacuated their offices at the State Capitol over concerns about a group of pro-Trump protesters, some armed with long guns, who were massing outside. Mr. Trump had previously called Mr. Raffensperger an “enemy of the people” for what Mr. Trump characterized as his mishandling of the Georgia election process.“We must work together to keep the public safe and ensure that we do not have a tragedy in Atlanta similar to what happened at the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021,” Ms. Willis wrote to the F.B.I.Last month, Mr. Trump’s legal team in Georgia filed a motion seeking to quash the final report of the special grand jury. Portions of that report, which remain sealed, recommend indictments for people who have not been specified. The motion also asks that Ms. Willis’s office be disqualified from the case.In a statement on Monday, the lawyers reiterated that they believed that the investigation so far has been a “deeply flawed legal process.”Richard Fausset More

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      Testimony Suggests Trump Was at Meeting About Accessing Voting Software in 2020

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      In a letter to federal officials, a liberal-leaning group highlighted testimony to the House Jan. 6 committee that described then-President Trump attending a meeting about the plan in December 2020.ATLANTA — Former President Donald J. Trump took part in a discussion about plans to access voting system software in Michigan and Georgia as part of the effort to challenge his 2020 election loss, according to testimony from former Trump advisers. The testimony, delivered to the House Jan. 6 committee, was highlighted on Friday in a letter to federal officials from a liberal-leaning legal advocacy group.Allies of Mr. Trump ultimately succeeded in copying the elections software in those two states, and the breach of voting data in Georgia is being examined by prosecutors as part of a broader criminal investigation into whether Mr. Trump and his allies interfered in the presidential election there. The former president’s participation in the discussion of the Georgia plan could increase his risk of possible legal exposure there.A number of Trump aides and allies have recounted a lengthy and acrimonious meeting in the Oval Office on Dec. 18, 2020, which one member of the House Jan. 6 committee would later call “the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency.” During the meeting, then-President Trump presided as his advisers argued about whether they should seek to have federal agents seize voting machines to analyze them for fraud.Testimony to the Jan. 6 committee from one aide who attended the meeting, Derek Lyons, a former White House staff secretary and counselor, was highlighted on Friday in a letter to the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation from Free Speech for People, a liberal nonprofit legal advocacy group. Mr. Lyons recounted that during the meeting, Rudolph W. Giuliani, then Mr. Trump’s personal attorney, opposed seizing voting machines and spoke of how the Trump campaign was instead “going to be able to secure access to voting machines in Georgia through means other than seizure,” and that the access would be “voluntary.”Other attendees offered similar testimony to the committee, which released its final report on the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in late December. Among those involved in the Oval Office discussion were two prominent pro-Trump conspiracy theorists: Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, and Sidney Powell, a lawyer who spread numerous falsehoods after the 2020 election and who also discussed Mr. Giuliani’s comments in her testimony.Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., is trying to clarify Mr. Trump’s role in a number of efforts to overturn his November 2020 election loss in Georgia — including the plan to gain access to voting machine data and software — and determine whether to recommend indictments for Mr. Trump or any of his allies for violating state laws.A spokesman for Ms. Willis’s office declined to comment Friday on Mr. Lyons’s testimony. Marissa Goldberg, an Atlanta-area lawyer representing Mr. Trump in Georgia, did not respond to a request for comment.In its letter, Free Speech for People argued that the testimony and other details that have been made public prove that Mr. Trump “was, at a minimum, aware” of an “unlawful, multistate plot” to access and copy voting system software. The group urged the Justice Department and the F.B.I. to conduct “a vigorous and swift investigation.”On Jan. 7, 2021, a small group working on behalf of Mr. Trump traveled to rural Coffee County, Ga., some 200 miles southeast of Atlanta, and gained access to sensitive election data; subsequent visits by pro-Trump figures were captured on video surveillance cameras.The group’s first visit to Coffee County occurred on the same day that Congress certified President Biden’s victory; the certification had been delayed by the storming of the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. The visitors to Coffee County apparently saw it as an ideal place to gather intelligence on what they viewed as voting irregularities: At one point, video footage shows the then-chair of the Coffee County Republican Party, Cathy Latham, appearing to welcome into the building the members of a forensics company hired by Ms. Powell.Ms. Latham was also one of the 16 pro-Trump fake electors whom Georgia Republicans had assembled in an effort to reverse the election results there.Text messages from that period indicate that some Trump allies seeking evidence of election fraud had considered other uses for the Coffee County election data and their analyses of it. One cybersecurity consultant aiding in the effort even raised the possibility, in a text message to other Trump allies in mid-January 2021, of using a report on Coffee County election data “to try to decertify” a highly consequential United States Senate runoff election that Democrats had just won in Georgia. CNN reported on the existence of that text message on Friday.The Trump allies who traveled to Coffee County copied elections software used across the state and uploaded it on the internet, creating the potential for future election manipulation, according to David Cross, a lawyer involved in civil litigation over election security in Georgia filed by the Coalition for Good Governance. The Coffee County data was also used earlier this year in a presentation to conservative activists that included unfounded allegations of electoral fraud, The Los Angeles Times has reported.Some of those involved with the Coffee County effort came to regret it. A law firm hired by SullivanStrickler, the consulting firm hired by Ms. Powell to help gain access to the county’s voting machines, would later release a statement saying that, “With the benefit of hindsight, and knowing everything they know now, they would not take on any further work of this kind.” More

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      Atlanta Prosecutor Seeks Removal of Lawyer in Trump Case

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      The lawyer represents 10 Georgia Republicans who were part of a plan to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election and keep Donald J. Trump in power.The lead prosecutor investigating election interference by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies in Georgia filed a motion on Tuesday accusing two defense lawyers ​​in the case of misconduct. The prosecutor, Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., sought to have one of the lawyers, Kimberly B. Debrow, thrown off the proceedings.Ms. Debrow represents 10 Georgia Republicans who were part of a bogus slate of electors for Mr. Trump under a broader plan to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election and keep him in power. According to the motion, some of the electors recently told prosecutors that Ms. Debrow and another attorney, Holly Pierson, had not informed them of offers of immunity in exchange for cooperation that were made last year.The filing noted that Ms. Pierson had previously told the court that she and Ms. Debrow had spoken to their clients about potential immunity offers, but that “none of their clients were interested.”Ms. Pierson represents David Shafer, the head of the Georgia Republican Party, who served as one of the fake electors. She and Ms. Debrow, who are being paid by the state party, had originally represented 11 electors until a judge forced them to separate Mr. Shafer from the other 10. In a statement, Ms. Pierson said that Ms. Willis’s allegations of misconduct were “entirely false,” adding that the court “already has documents in its possession” that prove it.“Sadly, the D.A.’s office continues to seem more interested in media attention, trampling on the constitutional rights of innocent citizens and recklessly defaming its perceived opponents, than in the facts, the law or the truth,” Ms. Pierson’s statement said.Ms. Willis’s office has spent more than two years investigating whether the former president and his allies illegally interfered with Georgia’s 2020 election, and is expected to seek indictments next month. It was not immediately clear if the latest development could delay the timetable.A special grand jury that heard evidence in the case for roughly seven months recommended more than a dozen people for indictments, and its forewoman strongly hinted in an interview with The New York Times this year that Mr. Trump was among them.Central to the investigation are the steps that Trump allies and state party officials took to assemble a group of 16 pro-Trump electors in December 2020, who then submitted bogus slates of Electoral College votes for Mr. Trump in hopes of reversing the election’s outcome in the state. Mr. Trump was directly involved in such efforts, which also took place in a number of other swing states, and called the head of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, to seek her assistance, according to Ms. McDaniel’s testimony to the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.At least one of the electors not represented by Ms. Debrow or Ms. Pierson has an immunity deal in place and has cooperated with the prosecution, people with knowledge of the case have said.Ms. Willis’s new motion comes as other electors are seeking immunity deals, with indictment decisions looming. According to a legal analysis by the Brookings Institution, the fake electors could potentially face criminal liability for interfering with elections, among other charges.Ms. Willis has indicated that she may bring broader state racketeering or conspiracy charges, which could apply to some of the bogus electors and a number of other people, including Mr. Trump, who were involved in several schemes to overturn the Georgia results.The filing on Tuesday indicates that Ms. Willis’s office is still actively investigating, even though the special grand jury completed its work in January. During recent discussions with prosecutors, some of the fake electors represented by Ms. Debrow claimed that another elector, whom she also represents, broke the law, but that they themselves “were not party to these additional acts,” according to the new filing.The fact that Ms. Debrow is representing people who are making accusations against another of her clients amounts to an untenable conflict, the district attorney’s office said.“Ms. Debrow’s continued participation in this matter is fraught with conflicts of interest that rise to the level of her being disqualified from this case in its entirety,” the filing said.During their recent discussions with some of the fake electors, investigators in Ms. Willis’s office were told “that no potential offer of immunity was ever brought” to those electors last year, despite assurances to the court by Ms. Pierson.Clark D. Cunningham, a law professor and ethics specialist at Georgia State University who has been following the case closely, said that if the conduct described in the filing did take place, “that’s the kind of conduct that can get a lawyer disbarred.”Ms. Debrow, in a statement late Tuesday, called the motion “baseless, false and offensive.”“None of my clients have committed any crimes, and they necessarily have not implicated themselves or each other in any crimes,” she said.Last year, Ms. Debrow and Ms. Pierson together represented the 10 electors and Mr. Shafer until Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court, who is handling the case, decided that Mr. Shafer needed separate counsel. Mr. Shafer has been informed that he is among the targets of the investigation who could face criminal charges, according to people with knowledge of the case.Mr. Trump’s legal team, in a filing in March, assailed the special grand jury proceedings as “confusing, flawed and, at times, blatantly unconstitutional.”The Atlanta case is not the only legal issue Mr. Trump faces. Earlier this month, the former president pleaded not guilty in Manhattan to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, in a case tied to his role in a hush-money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels. He is also under investigation by Jack Smith, a special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, for his role in the events leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and retaining sensitive government documents at his home in Florida. More

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      The ‘Diploma Divide’ Is the New Fault Line in American Politics

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      The legal imbroglios of Donald Trump have lately dominated conversation about the 2024 election. As primary season grinds on, campaign activity will ebb and wane, and issues of the moment — like the first Trump indictment and potentially others to come — will blaze into focus and then disappear.Yet certain fundamentals will shape the races as candidates strategize about how to win the White House. To do this, they will have to account for at least one major political realignment: educational attainment is the new fault line in American politics.Educational attainment has not replaced race in that respect, but it is increasingly the best predictor of how Americans will vote, and for whom. It has shaped the political landscape and where the 2024 presidential election almost certainly will be decided. To understand American politics, candidates and voters alike will need to understand this new fundamental.Americans have always viewed education as a key to opportunity, but few predicted the critical role it has come to play in our politics. What makes the “diploma divide,” as it is often called, so fundamental to our politics is how it has been sorting Americans into the Democratic and Republican Parties by educational attainment. College-educated voters are now more likely to identify as Democrats, while those without college degrees — especially white Americans, but increasingly others as well — are now more likely to support Republicans.It’s both economics and cultureThe impact of education on voting has an economic as well as a cultural component. The confluence of rising globalization, technological developments and the offshoring of many working-class jobs led to a sorting of economic fortunes, a widening gap in the average real wealth between households led by college graduates compared with the rest of the population, whose levels are near all-time lows.According to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, since 1989, families headed by college graduates have increased their wealth by 83 percent. For households headed by someone without a college degree, there was relatively little or no increase in wealth.Culturally, a person’s educational attainment increasingly correlates with their views on a wide range of issues like abortion, attitudes about L.G.B.T.Q. rights and the relationship between government and organized religion. It also extends to cultural consumption (movies, TV, books), social media choices and the sources of information that shape voters’ understanding of facts.This is not unique to the United States; the pattern has developed across nearly all Western democracies. Going back to the 2016 Brexit vote and the most recent national elections in Britain and France, education level was the best predictor of how people voted.This new class-based politics oriented around the education divide could turn out to be just as toxic as race-based politics. It has facilitated a sorting of America into enclaves of like-minded people who look at members of the other enclave with increasing contempt.The road to political realignmentThe diploma divide really started to emerge in voting in the early 1990s, and Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016 solidified this political realignment. Since then, the trends have deepened.In the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden defeated Mr. Trump by assembling a coalition different from the one that elected and re-elected Barack Obama. Of the 206 counties that Mr. Obama carried in 2008 and 2012 that were won by Mr. Trump in 2016, Mr. Biden won back only 25 of these areas, which generally had a higher percentage of non-college-educated voters. But overall Mr. Biden carried college-educated voters by 15 points.In the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats carried white voters with a college degree by three points, while Republicans won white non-college voters by 34 points (a 10-point improvement from 2018).This has helped establish a new political geography. There are now 42 states firmly controlled by one party or the other. And with 45 out of 50 states voting for the same party in the last two presidential elections, the only states that voted for the winning presidential candidates in both 2016 and 2020 rank roughly in the middle on educational levels — Pennsylvania (23rd in education attainment), Georgia (24th), Wisconsin (26th), Arizona (30th) and Michigan (32nd).In 2020, Mr. Biden received 306 electoral votes, Mr. Trump, 232. In the reapportionment process — which readjusts the Electoral College counts based on the most current census data — the new presidential electoral map is more favorable to Republicans by a net six points.In 2024, Democrats are likely to enter the general election with 222 electoral votes, compared with 219 for Republicans. That leaves only eight states, with 97 electoral votes — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — up for grabs. And for these states, education levels are near the national average — not proportionately highly educated nor toward the bottom of attainment.The 2024 mapA presidential candidate will need a three-track strategy to carry these states in 2024. The first goal is to further exploit the trend of education levels driving how people vote. Democrats have been making significant inroads with disaffected Republicans, given much of the party base’s continued embrace of Mr. Trump and his backward-looking grievances, as well as a shift to the hard right on social issues — foremost on abortion. This is particularly true with college-educated Republican women.In this era of straight-party voting, it is notable that Democrats racked up double-digit percentages from Republicans in the 2022 Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania governors’ races. They also made significant inroads with these voters in the Senate races in Arizona (13 percent), Pennsylvania (8 percent), Nevada (7 percent) and Georgia (6 percent).This represents a large and growing pool of voters. In a recent NBC poll, over 30 percent of self-identified Republicans said that they were not supporters of MAGA.At the same time, Republicans have continued to increase their support with non-college-educated voters of color. Between 2012 and 2020, support for Democrats from nonwhite-working-class voters dropped 18 points. The 2022 Associated Press VoteCast exit polls indicated that support for Democrats dropped an additional 14 points compared with the 2020 results.However, since these battleground states largely fall in the middle of education levels in our country, they haven’t followed the same trends as the other 42 states. So there are limits to relying on the education profile of voters to carry these states.This is where the second group of voters comes in: political independents, who were carried by the winning party in the last four election cycles. Following Mr. Trump’s narrow victory with independent voters in 2016, Mr. Biden carried them by nine points in 2020. In 2018, when Democrats took back the House, they carried them by 15 points, and their narrow two-point margin in 2022 enabled them to hold the Senate.The importance of the independent voting bloc continues to rise. This is particularly significant since the margin of victory in these battleground states has been very narrow in recent elections. The 2022 exit polls showed that over 30 percent of voters were independents, the highest percentage since 1980. In Arizona, 40 percent of voters in 2022 considered themselves political independents.These independent voters tend to live disproportionately in suburbs, which are now the most diverse socioeconomic areas in our country. These suburban voters are the third component of a winning strategy. With cities increasingly controlled by Democrats — because of the high level of educated voters there — and Republicans maintaining their dominance in rural areas with large numbers of non-college voters, the suburbs are the last battleground in American politics.Voting in the suburbs has been decisive in determining the outcome of the last two presidential elections: Voters in the suburbs of Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Phoenix determined the winner in the last two presidential elections and are likely to play the same pivotal role in 2024.These voters moved to the suburbs for a higher quality of life: affordable housing, safe streets and good schools. These are the issues that animate these voters, who have a negative view of both parties. They do not embrace a MAGA-driven Republican Party, but they also do not trust Mr. Biden and Democrats, and consider them to be culturally extreme big spenders who aren’t focused enough on issues like immigration and crime.So in addition to education levels, these other factors will have a big impact on the election. The party that can capture the pivotal group of voters in the suburbs of battleground states is likely to prevail. Democrats’ success in the suburbs in recent elections suggests an advantage, but it is not necessarily enduring. Based on post-midterm exit polls from these areas, voters have often voted against a party or candidate — especially Mr. Trump — rather than for one.But in part because of the emergence of the diploma divide, there is an opening for both political parties in 2024 if they are willing to gear their agenda and policies beyond their political base. The party that does that is likely to win the White House.Doug Sosnik was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton from 1994 to 2000 and is a senior adviser to the Brunswick Group.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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      Republicans Face Setbacks in Push to Tighten Voting Laws on College Campuses

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      Party officials across the country have sought to erect more barriers for young voters, who tilt heavily Democratic, after several cycles in which their turnout surged.Alarmed over young people increasingly proving to be a force for Democrats at the ballot box, Republican lawmakers in a number of states have been trying to enact new obstacles to voting for college students.In Idaho, Republicans used their power monopoly this month to ban student ID cards as a form of voter identification.But so far this year, the new Idaho law is one of few successes for Republicans targeting young voters.Attempts to cordon off out-of-state students from voting in their campus towns or to roll back preregistration for teenagers have failed in New Hampshire and Virginia. Even in Texas, where 2019 legislation shuttered early voting sites on many college campuses, a new proposal that would eliminate all college polling places seems to have an uncertain future.“When these ideas are first floated, people are aghast,” said Chad Dunn, the co-founder and legal director of the UCLA Voting Rights Project. But he cautioned that the lawmakers who sponsor such bills tend to bring them back over and over again.“Then, six, eight, 10 years later, these terrible ideas become law,” he said.Turnout in recent cycles has surged for young voters, who were energized by issues like abortion, climate change and the Trump presidency.They voted in rising numbers during the midterms last year in Kansas and Michigan, which both had referendums about abortion. And college students, who had long paid little attention to elections, emerged as a crucial voting bloc in the 2018 midterms.But even with such gains, Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the voting rights program for the Brennan Center for Justice, said there was still progress to be made.“Their turnout is still far outpaced by their older counterparts,” Mr. Morales-Doyle said.Now, with the 2024 presidential election underway, the battle over young voters has heightened significance.Between the 2018 and 2022 elections in Idaho, registration jumped 66 percent among 18- and 19-year-old voters, the largest increase in the nation, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. The nonpartisan research organization, based at Tufts University, focuses on youth civic engagement.Gov. Brad Little of Idaho gave his approval to a law that bans student ID cards as a form of voter identification.Kyle Green/Associated PressOut of 17 states that generally require voter ID, Idaho will join Texas and only four others — North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina and Tennessee — that do not accept any student IDs, according to the Voting Rights Lab, a group that tracks legislation.Arizona and Wisconsin have rigid rules on student IDs that colleges and universities have struggled to meet, though some Wisconsin schools have been successful.Proponents of such restrictions often say they are needed to prevent voter fraud, even though instances of fraud are rare. Two lawsuits were filed in state and federal court shortly after Idaho’s Republican governor, Brad Little, signed the student ID prohibition into law on March 15. “The facts aren’t particularly persuasive if you’re just trying to get through all of these voter suppression bills,” Betsy McBride, the president of the League of Women Voters of Idaho, one of the plaintiffs in the state lawsuit, said before the bill’s signing.A fight over out-of-state students in New HampshireIn New Hampshire, which has one of the highest percentages in the nation of college students from out of state, G.O.P. lawmakers proposed a bill this year that would have barred voting access for those students, but it died in committee after failing to muster a single vote.Nearly 59 percent of students at traditional colleges in New Hampshire came from out of state in 2020, according to the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education at Tufts.The University of New Hampshire had opposed the legislation, while students and other critics had raised questions about its constitutionality.The bill, which would have required students to show their in-state tuition statements when registering to vote, would have even hampered New Hampshire residents attending private schools like Dartmouth College, which doesn’t have an in-state rate, said McKenzie St. Germain, the campaign director for the New Hampshire Campaign for Voting Rights, a nonpartisan voting rights group.Sandra Panek, one of the sponsors of the bill that died, said she would like to bring it back if she can get bipartisan support. “We want to encourage our young people to vote,” said Ms. Panek, who regularly tweets about election conspiracy theories. But, she added, elections should be reflective of “those who reside in the New Hampshire towns and who ultimately bear the consequences of the election results.”A Texas ban on campus polling places has made little headwayIn Texas, the Republican lawmaker who introduced the bill to eliminate all polling places on college campuses this year, Carrie Isaac, cited safety concerns and worries about political violence.Voting advocates see a different motive.“This is just the latest in a long line of attacks on young people’s right to vote in Texas,” said Claudia Yoli Ferla, the executive director of MOVE Texas Action Fund, a nonpartisan group that seeks to empower younger voters.Students at the University of Texas at Austin lined up to cast their ballots on campus during the 2020 primary. A new proposal would eliminate all college polling places in the state.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesMs. Isaac has also introduced similar legislation to eliminate polling places at primary and secondary schools. In an interview, she mentioned the May 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers — an attack that was not connected to voting.“Emotions run very high,” Ms. Isaac said. “Poll workers have complained about increased threats to their lives. It’s just not conducive, I believe, to being around children of all ages.”The legislation has been referred to the House Elections Committee, but has yet to receive a hearing in the Legislature. Voting rights experts have expressed skepticism that the bill — one of dozens related to voting introduced for this session — would advance.G.O.P. voting restrictions flounder in other statesIn Virginia, one Republican failed in her effort to repeal a state law that lets teenagers register to vote starting at age 16 if they will turn 18 in time for a general election. Part of a broader package of proposed election restrictions, the bill had no traction in the G.O.P.-controlled House, where it died this year in committee after no discussion.And in Wyoming, concerns about making voting harder on older people appears to have inadvertently helped younger voters. A G.O.P. bill that would have banned most college IDs from being used as voter identification was narrowly defeated in the state House because it also would have banned Medicare and Medicaid insurance cards as proof of identity at the polls, a provision that Republican lawmakers worried could be onerous for older people.“In my mind, all we’re doing is kind of hurting students and old people,” Dan Zwonitzer, a Republican lawmaker who voted against the bill, said during a House debate in February.But some barriers are already in placeGeorgia has accepted student IDs only from public colleges and universities since 2006, so students at private institutions, including several historically Black colleges and universities, must use another form of identification.Georgia has accepted student IDs only from public colleges and universities since 2006, a rule that means students at private institutions, like several historically Black colleges and universities, must use another form of identification. Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesIn Ohio, which has for years not accepted student IDs for voting, Republicans in January approved a broader photo ID requirement that also bars students from using university account statements or utility bills for voting purposes, as they had in the past.The Idaho bill will take effect in January. Scott Herndon and Tina Lambert, the bill’s sponsors in the Senate and the House, did not respond to requests for comment, but Mr. Herndon said during a Feb. 24 session that student identification cards had lower vetting standards than those issued by the government.“It isn’t about voter fraud,” he said. “It’s just making sure that the people who show up to vote are who they say they are.”Republicans contended that nearly 99 percent of Idahoans had used their driver’s licenses to vote, but the bill’s opponents pointed out that not all students have driver’s licenses or passports — and that there is a cost associated with both.Mae Roos, a senior at Borah High School in Boise, testified against the bill at a Feb. 10 hearing.“When we’re taught from the very beginning, when we first start trying to participate, that voting is an expensive process, an arduous process, a process rife with barriers, we become disillusioned with that great dream of our democracy,” Ms. Roos said. “We start to believe that our voices are not valued.” More

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      Power move: Stacey Abrams’ next act is the electrification of the US

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      Stacey Abrams has been hailed as a masterly community organizer, after she helped turn out the voters that secured two Senate seats for Democrats in once solidly red Georgia. She has also run twice – unsuccessfully – for state governor. For her next move, she’s not focusing on electoral power so much as power itself.Recently she left the world of campaign politics and took a job as senior counsel for the non-profit Rewiring America. Her role will focus on helping thousands of people across America wean their homes and businesses off fossil fuels and on to electricity, at a moment when scientists have given a “final warning” about the need to curb greenhouse gas emissions and prevent global catastrophe.“We are at an inflection point where we can choose to electrify,” she said in an interview. “We don’t have to do it everywhere, all at once. If you want to see what the future looks like, we start building it here and now.”The impetus for her role comes from significant moves taken by the Biden administration. When he signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) last year, President Joe Biden hailed it as “the biggest step forward on climate ever”. It includes a sprawling array of tax credits, rebates and other incentives to help people electrify their lives.“The government has basically filled a bank account for you with thousands of dollars that will help you go electric,” Abrams said.Her mission is to help people access that so-called bank account.“You can improve your indoor air quality, make cooking quick and easy, make being cool in the summer and warm in the winter, and be more affordable,” Abrams said. “But we have to talk about it.”Abrams is perhaps best known for registering 800,000 voters in Georgia through her voting rights advocacy organization Fair Fight Action. She wants to use a similar playbook with electrification, and doing so could benefit many of the same people whose voices risked going unheard in elections.Low-income communities and communities of color have long had to contend with polluting, inefficient appliances. This has an impact on public health by increasing the risk of asthma and leads to higher utility bills that take a bigger bite out of households’ income. The IRA takes aim at some of those wrongs, with tax credits and rebates that can help those households swap in heat pumps, induction stoves and electric vehicles for their gas-powered counterparts.But figuring out what incentives you qualify for and how to access them can be involved, to say the least. While Rewiring America has a calculator that lets individuals suss out what IRA benefits they can snag, Abrams will be taking that and other tools to the community level. She highlighted how houses of worship could be prime places to talk about the IRA and a potential target for outreach.And she hopes to work with local leaders such as teachers, mayors and city council members to make the IRA a kitchen table issue. Enlisting them will, she hopes, eventually lead to neighbors talking to neighbors about how much money they saved on a new induction stove or how much more comfortable their home was during a heatwave thanks to a newly installed heat pump.“You meet people where they are, not where you want them to be,” she said. “That means understanding the lives they’re living and the questions they have and who they go to to talk about their questions.”While the IRA has the potential to be transformative, it’s also not enough to electrify every household in the country. The law has billions set aside for home upgrades, but more resources will be needed to achieve the Biden administration’s goal of reducing US emissions up to 52% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAn analysis by the Rhodium Group found the law has the potential to cut emissions by up to 42%. And that it could reduce home energy bills by $717 to $1,146 by 2030.Abrams said that, based on her experience in the arena of voting rights, the prospect of such benefits could help foster an electrification movement. “As people get more, they expect more,” she said. “The most sustainable movement is when people expect more and are willing to work for more.”This isn’t Abrams’ first foray into climate. She was quick to point out her college senior thesis was on environmental justice and that she interned with the Environmental Protection Agency. During her tenure in the Georgia house of representatives, she also worked as minority leader to help pass a bill that included the state’s biggest influx of cash for public transportation.Ultimately, the Biden administration wants the US to reach net zero by mid-century. It might be hard to imagine that occurring – a distant future, when perhaps technologies that are only nascent today like carbon dioxide removal will be more widespread, almost every car and home will be electric, and the inequalities targeted by the IRA and Biden’s executive orders will have dwindled.That scenario can read a bit like science fiction – a genre of which Abrams is a well-known fan.“In almost every sci-fi story, it begins with what decisions people are making long before the story takes place,” she said. More

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      in Elections

      Trump’s Georgia Lawyers Seek to Quash Special Grand Jury Report

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      In a motion filed on Monday, the lawyers ask that the Fulton County district attorney’s office be recused from the criminal investigation into election interference in the state in 2020.ATLANTA — Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump filed a motion in a Georgia court on Monday seeking to quash the final report of a special grand jury that investigated whether Mr. Trump and some of his allies interfered in the 2020 election results in Georgia. The motion also seeks to “preclude the use of any evidence derived” from the report, and asks that the office of Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, be recused from the case.The move comes as Mr. Trump has started pushing back more broadly against several criminal investigations into his conduct. Over the weekend, Mr. Trump said in a social media post that he would be arrested on Tuesday as part of an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney into a hush money payment he made to to a porn actress, and called on his supporters to protest.In Georgia, Mr. Trump is seen as having two main areas of legal jeopardy: the calls he made in the weeks after the 2020 election to pressure state officials to overturn the results there, and his direct involvement in efforts to assemble an alternate slate of electors, even after three vote counts affirmed President Biden’s victory in the state. Experts have said that Ms. Willis appears to be building a case that could target multiple defendants with charges of conspiracy to commit election fraud or charges related to racketeering.Notice of the filing appeared in the official court docket on Monday morning, but the filing itself was not yet public, so the lawyers’ reasoning was not yet clear. Mr. Findling acknowledged that he had filed it on Mr. Trump’s behalf, along with Ms. Little and another lawyer from Mr. Findling’s firm, Marissa Goldberg.Last month, Mr. Trump’s lawyers in the Georgia case, Drew Findling and Jennifer Little, said that the forewoman of the special grand jury in Fulton County had “poisoned” the inquiry there by granting a number of media interviews in which she discussed details of the jury’s work. Last week, five other jurors discussed aspects of their work in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.The Fulton County special grand jury was sworn in last May and met behind closed doors for months, hearing testimony from 75 witnesses. It did not have the power to issue indictments; rather, it produced a report containing recommendations on whether and whom to indict. Portions of the report were released in January, but key sections remain under seal, including those detailing which people the jury believes should be indicted, and for what crimes.Drew Findling, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, in Atlanta in 2021.Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated PressIn interviews late last month with a number of news outlets, the forewoman, Emily Kohrs, did not divulge specific details of the jury’s recommendations, although she told The New York Times that the jury had recommended indictments for more than a dozen people. Asked if Mr. Trump was among them, she said: “You’re not going to be shocked. It’s not rocket science.”In her round of interviews, Ms. Kohrs, 30, said she was trying to carefully follow rules set out by the judge presiding over the case, Robert C.I. McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court. Judge McBurney has not barred the jurors from talking, though he told them not to discuss their deliberations.Lawyers for Mr. Trump argued after Ms. Kohrs spoke publicly that in discussing the case, she had divulged a number of matters that they believed constituted “deliberations.” Judge McBurney, however, noted at the time, in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, that “deliberations” only covered discussions they had privately in the jury room. Other aspects of their work could be discussed publicly, he said.Even given this leeway, the six jurors who have spoken with news outlets have played it conservatively, declining to discuss whom they had singled out as meriting indictment.In some of Ms. Kohrs’s television news interviews, she sometimes used light and playful language, prompting some critics to charge that the grand jury’s deliberations seemed to have lacked the gravity befitting a criminal inquiry into a former president. Ms. Kohrs was even the subject of a “Saturday Night Live” skit.But some legal experts said they doubted whether Ms. Kohrs’s comments would have much of an impact on the Georgia case. Any criminal indictments would be issued by a regular grand jury.Mr. Trump announced a new presidential campaign in November, and he is leading his Republican opponents in most polls. But his legal troubles present him with challenges that have few, if any, precedents in American history. No president, sitting or former, has ever been charged with a crime.Before his public statements this weekend anticipating an imminent indictment in New York, Mr. Trump had sent out numerous fund-raising emails criticizing prosecutors in the various cases against him and portraying him as a victim of partisan forces. “The Left has turned America into the ‘Investigation Capital of the World,’ as our country’s enemies brilliantly plot their next move to destroy our nation,” he stated in one such email on March 13.The New York investigation is being led by Manhattan’s district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg. Prosecutors working in Mr. Bragg’s office have indeed signaled that an indictment of Mr. Trump could be imminent. Mr. Trump’s declaration that he would be arrested on Tuesday appears to involve guesswork on his part, however; after his post on his Truth Social website, a spokesperson issued a statement saying that Mr. Trump did not have direct knowledge of the timing of any arrest. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump’s legal woes pick up speed as Republican 2024 race heats up

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      As Donald Trump runs again for the White House, he’s dogged by four criminal investigations that have gained momentum, including two focused on Trump’s zealous drive to overturn his 2020 election loss, raising the odds he will face charges in one or more inquiries in coming weeks or months, say former federal prosecutors.All four inquiries have accelerated in recent months with numerous subpoenas to close Trump associates and testimony by key witnesses before grand juries in Washington DC, Georgia and New York, that pose growing legal threats to Trump, plus several of his ex-lawyers and allies.Two investigations are homing in on Trump’s nonstop efforts to thwart his 2020 election loss with bogus fraud charges, while others are looking into Trump’s retention of hundreds of classified documents post his presidency, and Trump’s role in a $130,000 hush money payment in 2016 to porn star Stormy Daniels with whom he allegedly had an affair.An indictment of Trump in the Daniels hush money case could even come within days. Trump’s fears over the issue even prompted him to post on social media about being arrested this week in New York, triggering a flood of Republicans to issue statements of support despite Trump calling for protests against any such move.The four inquiries have been examining separately whether Trump violated several laws including obstruction of an official proceeding and defrauding the United States by his actions to overturn the 2020 election, and breaking other statutes.The multiple investigations of Trump, two of which are being led by justice department special counsel Jack Smith, are unparalleled for an ex president – especially as he seeks the White House again, say ex-prosecutors.“It seems quite possible, or even likely, that Trump will be defending himself in four different criminal cases as he is campaigning for president in 2024,” said Barbara McQuade, former US attorney for eastern Michigan. “Making court appearances in New York, Georgia, Florida and Washington DC while also maintaining a campaign schedule may prove to be a daunting task.”McQuade added: “Trump, no doubt, will use criminal charges as a fundraising tool and as a way to portray himself as the eternal victim. On some level, he may relish the spectacle of it all, but it seems likely that accountability is headed his way.”Other ex-prosecutors say Trump’s legal travails are unique for a presidential candidate.“The sheer number and diversity of criminal investigations of Trump’s conduct are totally unprecedented for a major candidate in modern times,” said Dan Richman, a Columbia University law professor and ex-prosecutor in New York southern district.The criminal inquiry by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, into Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 defeat in Georgia with his high-pressure call to the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, on 2 January 2021 asking him to “find 11,780 votes”, and other calls, is expected to bring charges against him and some close allies in coming months, say ex-prosecutors.In late January, Willis said a special grand jury had completed a seven-month inquiry involving interviews with 75 witnesses in her investigation which reportedly had at least 17 targets, including Trump and his former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.A number of indictments have reportedly been recommended by the special grand jury, and Willis has said a decision is “imminent” about convening a regular grand jury that Georgia law requires before she brings any charges.Separately, Smith’s inquiry into Trump’s drive to thwart Joe Biden’s election seems to be in its late stages, in light of subpoenas this year to former vice-president Mike Pence and Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, both potentially key witnesses to Trump’s drive to block Biden from taking office. Ex-prosecutors say Meadows is a subject of the investigation.Those subpoenas “show that the January 6 investigation is serious and narrowing,” said Paul Pelletier, former acting chief of the justice department’s fraud section.Smith has secured grand jury testimony from other key figures including Pence’s former top aide Marc Short and his former chief counsel Greg Jacob, plus former White House counsel Pat Cipollone as part of his inquiry into whether Trump’s actions before and during 6 January 2021 violated an official proceeding and defrauded the government.On another legal front, Smith has also been leading a wide ranging inquiry into Trump’s retention of hundreds of classified documents at Mar a Lago after he left the White House, a potential violation of three laws – the Presidential Records Act, obstruction and the Espionage Act.Meanwhile, a grand jury convened by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, to look into Trump’s alleged arranging hush money payments of $130,000 via his ex-lawyer Michael Cohen to Daniels in 2016, heard testimony from Cohen this week.Last week, Trump declined an invitation by the DA’s office to testify, a sign reportedly that he could soon be indicted.Trump has blasted all the investigations as politically motivated and said he’s done nothing illegal, decrying Smith’s appointment as “part of a never ending witch-hunt”.But ex-prosecutors see huge legal headaches ahead for Trump, and probable charges at least in the Georgia invsstigation.“With the Manhattan DA now presenting evidence to a grand jury, Trump now faces four credible criminal investigations – unprecedented for the most hardened criminals, never mind a former president who is seeking to enter the White House again,” Pelletier said.“Of all the investigations, Georgia appears likely to bring the most serious charges imminently against Trump. The Mar-a-Lago document investigation has picked up speed, but, frustratingly, appears to be on a more cautious and deliberate track.”Other former federal prosecutors see strong signs that in Georgia charges against Trump, and some of his top lawyers and allies are coming.“There is little doubt that a number of indictments are on the horizon in Georgia. My sense is that the Fulton county DA is putting the final touches on bringing Rico [racketeering] charges involving Trump and others” said former US attorney Michael Moore, of Georgia.“Trump will surely be the main player, and I expect to see some well-known names in upcoming indictments,” adding that Trump, as well as Meadows and Giuliani “are likely to each see more of the inside of a courtroom than any of them might like”.Trump has dubbed his call to Raffensperger as “perfect”.Moore noted: “There will be an unavoidable overlap of efforts by the Fulton DA and the special counsel. The efforts to overturn the 2020 election had both state and federal implications even while dealing with the same facts.“The ability of the special counsel to delve into conduct across many jurisdictions may prove especially useful when looking at the efforts to string together the fake electors schemes in multiple states,” referring to a scheme the justice department has focused on involving efforts by Giuliani and others to replace electors in key states Biden won with Trump electors.Other ex-prosecutors note significant overlap between the Georgia probe investigation and the special counsel’s, both of which threaten Trump, Giuliani, ex-Trump lawyer John Eastman and others.“While Trump’s calls to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and other Georgia state officials appear to be at the center of the Fulton county DA’s probe, that investigation likely extends to efforts by Trump’s legal team, including Rudy Giuliani, to convince Georgia legislators to overturn the election results,” said Richman.“Yet the legal team’s nationwide efforts by Giuliani, Eastman and others – encouraged by Trump to an extent that will need to be clarified – to present slates of phony electors to Congress and to otherwise disrupt the electoral certification also seems to be at the heart of one prong of Jack Smith’s federal investigation.”Not surprisingly, Trump’s legal expenses to fend off these investigations and other legal headaches involving personal and corporate matters have been hefty.According to federal records, Trump spent about $10m last year out of his political action committee to pay law firms representing him in the four criminal inquiries, plus cases involving the Trump Organization and lawsuits.Those costs will surely mount for Trump as the investigations ratchet up subpoenas of top former Trump allies to build their cases before grand juries, as Smith has been doing in the two inquiries he’s spearheading.“Prosecutors tend to conduct investigations in concentric circles, starting at the outer edges and then progressing ever inward with the target at the center,” McQuade said. “They want to arm themselves with as much information as possible when they question those who are closest to the target. Now that Smith is serving subpoenas on Meadows and Pence, it seems that he has entered the final circle of his investigation.”Little wonder that as Trump runs for the White House again, quite a few Republicans are feeling very edgy.“It does not bode well for the Republican party if Trump should be indicted and win the nomination,” said former Pennsylvania Republican congressman Charlie Dent. “The electoral outcome would be disastrous for the GOP. How much losing can we take?” More