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      U.S. Quietly Resumes Deportation Flights Deep Into Mexico

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      The flights had been paused for nearly two years, but the authorities are taking more forceful measures to discourage migrants from repeatedly trying to cross into the United States.The United States has quietly resumed deporting some Mexicans on flights that carry them far from the southern border, U.S. and Mexican officials said, a move designed in part to discourage them from repeatedly trying to cross into the United States.The first flight to Morelia, a city in central Mexico hundreds of miles from the nearest U.S. border crossing, took off on Tuesday carrying more than 100 Mexicans, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details.A senior Mexican official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the flights were expected to continue on a regular basis.Tuesday’s flight was the first of its kind in nearly two years. U.S. authorities more commonly deport Mexicans over land, near the border. But the number of Mexicans crossing into the United States has spiked in recent months, prompting U.S. authorities to find more forceful ways to discourage people from making the trip north.The Biden administration is struggling to contain one of the largest surges of uncontrolled immigration in American history, with people fleeing poverty, political instability and violence in Central America, South America and elsewhere. Last week, President Biden tried to address a growing political liability by imploring Congress to grant him the power to shut down the border.The United States paused deportation flights for Mexicans in 2022, when officials turned their attention to the skyrocketing number of migrants arriving from countries including Haiti and Venezuela.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      House Republicans Release Impeachment Charges Against Mayorkas

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      The articles accuse the homeland security secretary of refusing to uphold the law and breaching the public trust in his handling of immigration. A House committee is scheduled to approve them on Tuesday.House Republicans on Sunday released two articles of impeachment against Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, charging President Biden’s top immigration official with refusing to uphold the law and breaching the public trust in his handling of a surge of migration at the U.S. border with Mexico.Leaders of the House Homeland Security Committee laid out their case against Mr. Mayorkas ahead of a Tuesday meeting to approve the charges, paving the way for a quick House vote as soon as early next month to impeach him. It would be the culmination of Republicans’ attacks on Mr. Biden’s immigration policies and an extraordinary move given an emerging consensus among legal scholars that Mr. Mayorkas’s actions do not constitute high crimes and misdemeanors.The push comes as House Republicans, egged on by former President Donald J. Trump, dig in against a bipartisan border compromise Mr. Mayorkas helped to negotiate with a group of senators, which Mr. Biden has vowed to sign. House G.O.P. lawmakers have dismissed the agreement as too weak and argued that they cannot trust Mr. Biden to crack down on migration now when he has failed to in the past.The charges against Mr. Mayorkas, should they be approved by full the House, are all but certain to fizzle in the Democratic-led Senate, where Mr. Mayorkas would stand trial and a two-thirds majority would be needed to convict and remove him. But the process would yield a remarkable election-year political spectacle, effectively putting Mr. Biden’s immigration record on trial as Mr. Trump, who has made a border crackdown his signature issue, seeks to clinch the Republican presidential nomination to run against him.The first impeachment article essentially brands the Biden administration’s border policies an official crime. It accuses Mr. Mayorkas of willfully and systematically flouting laws requiring migrants to be detained by carrying out “catch and release” policies that allow some to stay in the United States pending court proceedings and others fleeing certain war-torn and economically ravaged countries to live and work in the country temporarily. Immigration laws grant the president broad leeway to do both.The second article charges Mr. Mayorkas with lying to Congress about whether the border was secure and obstructing lawmakers’ efforts to investigate him.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      How Biden’s Promises to Reverse Trump’s Immigration Policies Crumbled

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      President Biden has tried to contain a surge of migration by embracing, or at least tolerating, some of his predecessor’s approaches.Immigration was dead simple when Joseph R. Biden Jr. was campaigning for president: It was an easy way to attack Donald J. Trump as a racist, and it helped to rally Democrats with the promise of a more humane border policy.Nothing worked better than Mr. Trump’s “big, beautiful wall” that he was building along the southern border. Its existence was as much a metaphor for the polarization inside America as it was a largely ineffective barrier against foreigners fleeing to the United States from Central America.“There will not be,” Mr. Biden proclaimed as he campaigned against Mr. Trump in the summer of 2020, “another foot of wall constructed.”But a massive surge of migration in the Western Hemisphere has scrambled the dynamics of an issue that has vexed presidents for decades, and radically reshaped the political pressures on Mr. Biden and his administration. Instead of becoming the president who quickly reversed his predecessor’s policies, Mr. Biden has repeatedly tried to curtail the migration of a record number of people — and the political fallout that has created — by embracing, or at least tolerating, some of Mr. Trump’s anti-immigrant approaches.Even, it turns out, the wall.On Thursday, Biden administration officials formally sought to waive environmental regulations to allow construction of up to 20 additional miles of border wall in a part of Texas that is inundated by illegal migration. The move was a stunning reversal on a political and moral issue that had once galvanized Mr. Biden and Democrats like no other.The funds for the wall had been approved by Congress during Mr. Trump’s tenure, and on Friday, the president said he had no power to block their use.Hundreds of those seeking asylum in the United States wait to be processed near the border wall in El Paso, Texas.Justin Hamel for The New York Times“The wall thing?” Mr. Biden asked reporters on Friday. “Yeah. Well, I was told that I had no choice — that I, you know, Congress passes legislation to build something, whether it’s an aircraft carrier wall or provide for a tax cut. I can’t say, ‘I don’t like it. I’m not going to do it.’”White House officials said that they tried for years, without success, to get Congress to redirect the wall money to other border priorities. And they said Mr. Biden’s lawyers had advised that the only way to get around the Impoundment Control Act, which requires the president to spend money as Congress directs, was to file a lawsuit. The administration chose not to do so. The money had to be spent by the end of December, the officials said.Asked on Thursday whether he thought a border wall works, Mr. Biden — who has long said a wall would not be effective — said simply: “No.”Still, human rights groups are furious, accusing the president of abandoning the principles on which he campaigned. They praise him for opening new, legal opportunities for some migrants, including thousands from Venezuela, but question his recent reversals on enforcement policy.“It doesn’t help this administration politically, to continue policies that they were very clear they were against,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, the executive director of America’s Voice, an immigrant rights organization. “That muddles the message and undermines the contrast that they’re trying to make when it comes to Republicans.”“This president came into office with a lot of moral clarity about where the lines were,” she added, noting that he and his aides “need to sort of decide who they are on this issue.”Mr. Biden had previously adopted some of his predecessor’s policies, including the pandemic-era Title 42 restrictions that blocked most migrants at the border until they were lifted earlier this year. Those have still failed to slow illegal immigration, and the issue has become incendiary inside his own party, driving wedges between Mr. Biden and some of the country’s most prominent Democratic governors and mayors, whose communities are being taxed by the cost of providing for the new arrivals.Eric Adams, the Democratic mayor of New York, has blamed the administration for a situation that he says could destroy his city. J.B. Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois and an ally of Mr. Biden, wrote this week in a letter to the president that a “lack of intervention and coordination” by Mr. Biden’s government at the border “has created an untenable situation for Illinois.”Bedding for asylum seekers temporarily housed at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesIn comments to reporters at an event opposing book banning, Mr. Pritzker said that he had recently “spoken with the White House” on the matter “to make sure that they heard us.”The moment underscores the new reality for the president as he prepares to campaign for a second term. His handling of immigration has become one of his biggest potential liabilities, with polls showing deep dissatisfaction among voters about how he deals with the new arrivals. With record numbers of migrants streaming across the border, he can no longer portray it in the simple terms he did a few years ago.Since taking office, Mr. Biden has tried to balance his stated desire for a more humane approach with strict enforcement that aides believe is critical to ensure that migrants do not believe the border is open to anyone.This spring, the president announced new legal options for some migrants from several countries — Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti. He also has expanded protections for hundreds of thousands of migrants already in the United States, allowing more of them to work while they are in the country temporarily.But the more welcoming policies have been balanced by tougher ones.Earlier this year, Mr. Biden approved a new policy that had the effect of denying most immigrants the ability to seek asylum in the United States, a move that human rights groups noted was very similar to an approach that Mr. Trump hailed as a way to “close the border” to immigrants he wanted to keep out.The president and his aides have responded to the increased number of migrants by calling for more border patrol agents. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, bragged on Wednesday about the surge in border enforcement that Mr. Biden has pushed for.“Let’s not forget,” she said. “The president got 25,000 Border Patrol, additional Border Patrol law enforcement, at the border.”In a budget request to Congress, the Biden administration has asked for an additional $4 billion for border enforcement, including 4,000 more troops, 1,500 more border patrol agents, overtime pay for federal border personnel and new technology to detect drug trafficking.And on Thursday, the administration announced that it would resume deporting Venezuelans who arrive illegally, essentially conceding that the policy of creating legal immigration options from that country had failed to stem the tide of new arrivals like they had expected.Ben LaBolt, the White House communications director, said Mr. Biden proposed an immigration overhaul on his first day in office that he noted has been blocked by Republican lawmakers.“He has used every available lever — enforcement, deterrence and diplomacy — to address historic migration across the Western Hemisphere,” Mr. LaBolt said, adding that the administration is “legally compelled” to spend the wall money. “President Biden has consistently made clear that this is not the most effective approach to securing our border.”Despite early reports that the number of migrants had dropped this summer, crossings have soared again this fall. Border Patrol agents arrested about 200,000 migrants in September, the highest number this year, according to an administration official who spoke anonymously to confirm the preliminary data.Still, the administration’s announcement about new construction of a wall was a surprise to many of the president’s allies, who had repeatedly heard Mr. Biden join them in condemning Mr. Trump for trying to seal the country off from immigrants.On Friday, the president, who has long insisted a wall would be ineffective, said he has no power to block the use of funds already approved during Mr. Trump’s tenure.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesIn a notice published in the Federal Register on Thursday, Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, said that easing environmental and other laws was necessary to expedite construction of sections of a border wall in South Texas, where thousands of migrants have been crossing the Rio Grande daily to reach U.S. soil.“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States,” Mr. Mayorkas said.In a statement later, Mr. Mayorkas made clear the administration would prefer to spend the money on other areas, “including state-of the-art border surveillance technology and modernized ports of entry.”There have always been barriers at the border, and Democrats have voted for funding to construct them. But before Mr. Trump arrived on the scene, they were placed in high-traffic locations and were often short fences or barriers designed to prevent cars from crossing.Mr. Trump changed that. He pushed for construction of a wall across the entire 2,000-mile border with Mexico, eventually building or reinforcing barriers along roughly 450 miles. And he insisted on a 30-foot tall wall made of steel bollards, painted black to be more intimidating. At various points, Mr. Trump said he wanted to install sharp, pointed spikes at the top of the wall to skewer migrants who tried to climb over it.The walls being constructed by Mr. Biden’s administration will be different, border officials said. They will be 18 feet tall, not 30. And they will be movable, not permanent, to allow more flexibility and less environmental damage.But the image of an ominous and even dangerous barrier — designed to send a message of “keep out” to anyone who approached — underscored the yearslong opposition from Democrats, including Mr. Biden, to its construction. At the end of 2018, the federal government shut down for 35 days — the longest in its history — over Democratic refusal to meet Mr. Trump’s demands for $5.7 billion to build the wall.For Mr. Biden, the politics of immigration have changed significantly since then.Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York put it bluntly in a letter to the president at the end of August, as New York City struggled to deal with tens of thousands of new migrants.“The challenges we face demand a much more vigorous federal response,” she wrote. “It is the federal government’s direct responsibility to manage and control the nation’s borders. Without any capacity or responsibility to address the cause of the migrant influx, New Yorkers cannot then shoulder these costs.” More

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      Fact-Checking Ramaswamy’s Claims on Campaign Trail, Including on Climate and Jan. 6

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      The upstart Republican candidate has made inaccurate claims about climate change as well as the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, while mischaracterizing his own positions and past comments.Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and author, commanded considerable attention during the first Republican primary debate as his standing was rising in national polls.Railing against “wokeism” and the “climate cult,” Mr. Ramaswamy has staked out unorthodox positions on a number of issues and characterized himself as the candidate most likely to appeal to young and new conservative voters.Here’s a fact check of his recent remarks on the campaign trail and during the debate.Climate change denialWhat Mr. Ramaswamy Said“There was this Obama appointee, climate change activist, who also believes as part of this Gaia-centric worldview of the earth that water rights need to be protected, which led to a five- to six-hour delay in the critical window of getting waters to put out those fires. We will never know, although certain science points out to the fact that we very well could have avoided those catastrophic deaths, many of them, if water had made it to the site of the fires on time.”— at a conservative conference in Atlanta in AugustThis lacks evidence. Mr. Ramaswamy was referring to M. Kaleo Manuel, the deputy director for Hawaii’s Commission on Water Resource Management, and overstating his ties to President Barack Obama as well as the potential effect of the requested water diversion.First, Mr. Manuel is not an “Obama appointee” but rather participated in a leadership development program run by the Obama Foundation in 2019. Mr. Ramaswamy and other conservative personalities have derided comments Mr. Manuel made last year when he said that native Hawaiians like himself used to consider water something to “revere” and something that “gives us life.”On Aug. 8, the day wildfire engulfed a historic town in Hawaii, Mr. Manuel was contacted by the West Maui Land Company, a real estate developer that supplies water to areas southeast of the town of Lahaina on Maui island, The New York Times has reported. Noting high winds and drought, the company requested permission to fill a private reservoir for fire control, though the reservoir was not connected to fire hydrants. No fire was blazing in the area at the time.The water agency asked the company whether the fire department had made the request, received no answer and said that it needed the approval of a farmer who relied on the water for his crops. The company said that it could not reach the farmer, but that the agency approved the request hours later.Asked for evidence of Mr. Ramaswamy’s claim that filling the reservoir when initially requested would have prevented deaths from the fire, a spokeswoman said it was “common sense — if you can put out a fire faster using water, you can save lives.”But state officials have said it is unlikely that the delay would have changed the course of the fire that swallowed Lahaina, as high winds would have prevented firefighters from gaining access to the reservoir. In an Aug. 10 letter to the water agency, an executive at the West Maui Land Company acknowledged that there was no way to know whether “filling our reservoirs” when initially requested would have changed the outcome, but asked the agency to temporarily suspend existing water regulations. The executive, in another letter, also wrote that “we would never imply responsibility” on Mr. Manuel’s part.What Mr. Ramaswamy Said“The reality is more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change.”— in the first Republican debate on WednesdayFalse. There is no evidence to support this assertion. A spokeswoman for Mr. Ramaswamy cited a 2022 column in the libertarian publication “Reason” that argued that limiting the use of fossil fuels would hamper the ability to deliver power, heat homes and pump water during extreme weather events. But the campaign did not provide examples of climate change policies actually causing deaths. The World Meteorological Organization, a United Nations agency, estimated in May that extreme weather events, compounded by climate change, caused nearly 12,000 disasters and a death toll of 2 million between 1970 and 2021. Extreme heat causes about 600 deaths in the United States a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A 2021 study found that a third of heat-related deaths could be attributed to climate change. In campaign appearances and social media posts, Mr. Ramaswamy has also pointed to a decline in the number of disaster-related deaths in the past century, even as emissions have risenThat, experts have said, is largely because of technological advances in weather forecasting and communication, mitigation tools and building codes. The May study by the World Meteorological Organization, for example, noted that 90 percent of extreme weather deaths occur in developing countries — precisely because of the gap in technological advances. Disasters are occurring at increasing frequencies, the organization has said, even as fatalities decrease.Mr. Ramaswamy, a millennial, has described himself as the candidate most likely to appeal to young and new conservative voters.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesJan. 6 and the 2020 electionWhat Mr. Ramaswamy Said“What percentage of the people who were armed were federal law-enforcement officers? I think it was probably high, actually. Right? There’s very little evidence of people being arrested for being armed that day. Most of the people who were armed, I assume the federal officers who were out there were armed.”— in an interview with The Atlantic in JulyFalse. Mr. Ramaswamy has echoed the right-wing talking point that the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol did not involve weapons and was largely peaceful. His spokeswoman argued that he was merely asking questions.But as early this month, 104 out of about 1,100 total defendants have been charged with entering a restricted area with a dangerous or deadly weapon, according to the Justice Department. At least 13 face gun charges.It is impossible to know just how many people in the crowd of 28,000 were armed, as some may have concealed their weapons or chosen to remain outside of magnetometers set up at the Ellipse, a sprawling park near the White House, where Mr. Trump held his rally. Still, through those magnetometers, Secret Service confiscated 242 canisters of pepper spray, 269 knives or blades, 18 brass knuckles, 18 stun guns, 30 batons or blunt instruments, and 17 miscellaneous items like scissors, needles or screwdrivers, according to the final report from the Jan. 6 committee.What was SaidChris Christie, former governor of New Jersey: “In your book, you had much different things to say about Donald Trump than you’re saying here tonight.”Mr. Ramaswamy: “That’s not true.”— in the Republican debateMr. Ramaswamy was wrong. During the debate, Mr. Ramaswamy vigorously defended Mr. Trump, calling him “ the best president of the 21st century.” Mr. Christie was correct that Mr. Ramaswamy was much more critical of Mr. Trump in his books.In his 2022 book, “Nation of Victims,” Mr. Ramaswamy wrote that despite voting for Mr. Trump in 2020, “what he delivered in the end was another tale of grievance, a persecution complex that swallowed much of the Republican Party whole.”Mr. Ramaswamy added that he was “especially disappointed when I saw President Trump take a page from the Stacey Abrams playbook,” referring to the Democratic candidate for Georgia governor who, after her 2018 defeat, sued the state over accusations of voter suppression. Moreover, he wrote, Mr. Trump’s claims of electoral fraud were “weak” and “weren’t grounded in fact.”In his 2021 book, “Woke Inc.,” Mr. Ramaswamy described the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol as a “a disgrace, and it was a stain on our history” that made him “ashamed of our nation.”And after the Jan. 6 attack, Mr. Ramaswamy wrote on Twitter, “What Trump did last week was wrong. Downright abhorrent. Plain and simple.”Foreign policyWhat Mr. RAMASWAMY said“Much of our military defense spending in the last several decades has not actually gone to national defense.”— in an interview on the Fox Business Network in AugustFalse. A spokeswoman for Mr. Ramaswamy said he was comparing military aid to foreign countries and “homeland defense.” But the amount the United States has spent on security assistance pales in comparison to general military spending and homeland security spending.According to the federal government’s foreign assistance portal, military aid to other countries ranged from $6 billion to $23 billion annually from the fiscal years 2000 to 2022, peaking in the fiscal years 2011 and 2012 when aid to Afghanistan alone topped $10 billion a year.In the past two decades, the Pentagon’s annual budget ranged from over $400 billion to over $800 billion. Operation and maintenance is the largest category of spending (36 percent) and includes money spent on fuel, supplies, facilities, recruiting and training, followed by compensation for military personnel (23 percent), procurement of new equipment and weapons (19 percent), and research and development (16 percent).The Department of Homeland Security itself has an annual budget that has increased from $40 billion in the 2004 fiscal year, when the agency was created, to over $100 billion in the 2023 fiscal year.Mr. Ramaswamy’s claim reflects a common misconception among American voters, who tend to overestimate the amount spent on foreign aid. Foreign aid of all categories — including military aid as well as assistance for health initiatives, economic development or democratic governance — makes up less than 1 percent of the total federal budget. In comparison, about one-sixth of federal spending goes to national defense, according to the Congressional Budget Office.Outside of official government figures, researchers at Brown University have estimated that since Sept. 11, military spending in the United States has exceeded $8 trillion. By that breakdown, the United States has spent $2.3 trillion in funding for overseas fighting versus $1.1 trillion in homeland security defenses. But that figure also includes spending that cannot be neatly categorized as overseas versus domestic defense spending: $1.3 trillion in general military spending increases and medical care, $1.1 trillion in interest payments and $2.2 trillion for future veterans care.What Was SaidNikki Haley, former United Nations ambassador: “You want to go and defund Israel, you want to give Taiwan to China. You want to go and give Ukraine to Russia.”Mr. Ramaswamy: “Let me address that. I’m glad you brought that up. I’m going to address each of those right now. This is the false lies of a professional politician.”— in the Republican debateBoth exaggerated. Ms. Haley omitted nuance in describing Mr. Ramaswamy’s foreign policy positions, but her characterizations are far from “lies.”In interviews and campaign appearances, Mr. Ramaswamy has said that he views the deal to provide Israel with $38 billion over 10 years for its security as “sacrosanct.” But he has said that by 2028, when the deal expires, he hopes that Israel “will not require and be dependent on that same level of historical aid or commitment from the U.S.”In a nearly hourlong speech at the Nixon Library this month, Mr. Ramaswamy said his administration would “defend Taiwan if China invades Taiwan before we have semiconductor independence in this country,” which he estimated he could achieve by 2028. But, he continued, “thereafter, we will be very clear that after the U.S. achieves semiconductor independence, our commitments to send our sons and daughters to put them in harm’s way will change.”On Russia’s war in Ukraine, Mr. Ramaswamy has said he would “freeze the current lines of control” — which includes several southeastern regions of Ukraine — and pledge to prohibit Ukraine from being admitted to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization if Russia ended its “alliance” with China. (The two countries do not have a formal alliance.)Lisa Friedman contributed reporting.We welcome suggestions and tips from readers on what to fact-check on email and Twitter. 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

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      How the Right Became the Left and the Left Became the Right

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      One of the master keys to understanding our era is seeing all the ways in which conservatives and progressives have traded attitudes and impulses. The populist right’s attitude toward American institutions has the flavor of the 1970s — skeptical, pessimistic, paranoid — while the mainstream, MSNBC-watching left has a strange new respect for the F.B.I. and C.I.A. The online right likes transgression for its own sake, while cultural progressivism dabbles in censorship and worries that the First Amendment goes too far. Trumpian conservatism flirts with postmodernism and channels Michel Foucault; its progressive rivals are institutionalist, moralistic, confident in official narratives and establishment credentials.These reversals are especially evident in a pair of prominent headlines from the last week. If you had been told at any point from, say, 1970 to 2005 that a disturbed-seeming man living in the Bay Area with a history of involvement with nudist activists and the hemp jewelry trade had allegedly followed his paranoid political delusions into a plan to assault an important national politician, the reasonable assumption would have been that his delusions belonged to the farthest reaches of the left and therefore his target was probably some notable Republican.By the same token, if you had been told in George W. Bush’s presidency that a trove of government documents would reveal the Department of Homeland Security essentially trying to collude with major corporations to regulate speech it considers dangerous or subversive, an effort extending from foreign threats to domestic ones, you would have assumed that this was all Republican overreach, a new McCarthyism — and that progressives would be up in arms against it.In our world, though, things are otherwise. The man who allegedly attacked Paul Pelosi while hunting the speaker of the House did, seemingly, belong to left-wing, Left Coast culture in the not-so-distant past. But at some point in his unhappy trajectory, he passed over to the paranoias of the extreme right — probably not in some semi-rational radicalization process in which he watched too many attack ads against Nancy Pelosi but more likely in a dreamlike way, the nightmares of QAnon matching his mental state better‌ than the paranoias of the left.His journey’s violent endpoint was singular and extreme, but this kind of left-to-right migration has more normal correlatives: the New Age-QAnon overlap, the Covid-era migration of formerly left-wing skeptics of Big Pharma onto right-wing shows and platforms, the way that all doubts about the medical establishment are now coded as right-wing, Trumpy, populist.And the political right’s response to the Pelosi attack reflects these shifts as well. The ethos of Fox Mulder in “The X-Files,” “Trust no one,” is a now dominant value on the right, which in this case encouraged a swift leap from reasonable questions about the details of the assault, based on inaccurate initial reports, to a very specific narrative about a gay assignation that the cops and the Pelosis were presumably covering up.As of this writing, several public references to this theory from prominent conservatives have been deleted. But the cover-up narrative will probably survive indefinitely as a reference point, an underground “truth,” like the left-wing conspiracies of old.One of those deleted tweets belonged to Elon Musk, the new impresario of Twitter, and it inevitably became an exhibit in the case for liberal panic over his takeover: What could be more indicative of the platform’s imminent descent into a democracy-destroying hellscape than conspiracy theories spread by the Chief Twit himself?But the alternative to Musk’s reign was clarified by the second recent illustration of our left-right reversal: a story from The Intercept, by Lee Fang and Ken Klippenstein, detailing the Department of Homeland Security’s migration into the social-media surveillance and the pressure the department has tried to exert on internet companies to flag and censor content along lines favored by the national security bureaucracy.On the surface, this is not a partisan story: The Intercept is a left-wing publication, and the current version of the D.H.S. anti-disinformation effort got started in the Trump administration.But everyone understands those efforts’ current ideological valence. The war on disinformation is a crucial Democratic cause, the key lawsuit filed against the Biden administration on these issues comes from Republican attorneys general (joined by doctors critical of the public-health establishment), and the most famous flashpoint remains the social-media censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story, which Fang and Klippenstein suggest followed from what one could reasonably call a deep-state pressure campaign.Meanwhile, according to a draft report from the D.H.S. obtained by The Intercept, the list of online subject areas that the department is particularly concerned about includes “the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic and the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine” — mostly areas where, whether in wisdom or in folly, the populist right is more likely to dissent from the establishment position.And for the future of Twitter, in particular, it’s notable that the Intercept story first points out that a committee advising DHS on disinformation policy included Twitter’s then-head of legal policy, trust and safety, Vijaya Gadde, and then notes that Gadde was one of the first people fired by Musk. It’s a tacit nod to the left-right switch: Under Musk the social-media giant is widely seen as moving “rightward,” but that could mean becoming less entangled with an arm of what was once George W. Bush’s national security state.The point of emphasizing this reversal isn’t to suggest that either side is likely to flip back. The evolving attitudes of right and left reflect their evolving positions in American society, with cultural liberalism much more dominant in elite institutions than it was a generation ago and conservatism increasingly disreputable, representing downscale constituencies and outsider ideas.But a stronger awareness of the flip might be helpful in tempering the temptations that afflict both sides. For progressives, that could mean acknowledging that the Department of Homeland Security’s disinformation wars, its attempted hand-in-glove with the great powers of Silicon Valley, would have been regarded as a dystopian scenario on their side not so long ago. So is it really any less dystopian if the targets are Trumpistas and Anthony Fauci critics instead of Iraq War protesters? And if it is a little creepy and censorious and un-American, doesn’t that make some of the paranoia evident on the right these days a little less unfathomable and fascist seeming, even a little more relatable?Then the Fox Mulder right might benefit from recalling the thing that conservatives — or this conservative, at least — used to find most insufferable about the anti-establishment left, which was not its skepticism but its credulity, not the eagerness to question official narratives but the speed with which implausible alternatives took root. (If parts of Oliver Stone’s “J.F.K.” make you understand where conspiracy theories come from, the part where the conspiracy gets “explained” should make you a Nixon Republican.)This is the key problem with the right today, whether the issue is the 2020 election or the Covid-vaccine debate or the attack on Paul Pelosi. Not the baseline of skepticism, not being attuned to weaknesses and inconsistencies in official narratives, not being open to scenarios of elite self-dealing and conspiracy and cover-up, all of which emphatically exist. It’s the swift replacement of skepticism with certainty, the shopping around for any narrative — even if it comes from Sidney Powell and Mike Lindell — to vindicate your initial theory, the refusal to accept that even institutions you reasonably mistrust sometimes get things right.Or to put this in terms of Musk and his hopes for Twitter: The ideal virtual town square would be a place where conservatives could discuss speculative, even conspiratorial theories of the day’s events — but also a place where they could be persuaded to abandon bad theories when the evidence dissolves them.Social-media and tribal incentives being what they are, that seems exceedingly unlikely. But if I had just paid billions to own a social media platform — and become both its main character and arguably the most important right-leaning figure in American life, pending the Donald Trump-Ron De‌ ‌Santis slugfest — I would be thinking about what it would take for a spirit of contrarianism and rebellion to aim, not simply at transgression, but at truth itself.In addition to my two weekly columns, I’m starting a newsletter, which will go out most Fridays and cover some of my usual obsessions — political ideas, religion, pop culture, decadence — in even more detail. You can subscribe here.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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      in Elections

      Christina Bobb, a Trump Lawyer, Is Under Justice Dept. Scrutiny

      by

      Christina Bobb is a former Marine and a fervent believer that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald J. Trump. She went to work for him and quickly found herself enmeshed in an obstruction investigation.WASHINGTON — This spring, one of the lawyers representing former President Donald J. Trump made an urgent, high-stakes request to Christina G. Bobb, who had just jumped from a Trump-allied cable network to a job in his political organization.The former president was in the midst of an escalating clash with the Justice Department about documents he had taken with him from the White House at the end of his term. The lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, met Ms. Bobb at the president’s residence and private club in Florida and asked her to sign a statement for the department that the Trump legal team had conducted a “diligent search” of Mar-a-Lago and found only a few files that had not been returned to the government.Ms. Bobb, a 39-year-old lawyer juggling amorphous roles in her new job, was being asked to take a step that neither Mr. Trump nor other members of the legal team were willing to take — so she looked before leaping.“Wait a minute — I don’t know you,” Ms. Bobb replied to Mr. Corcoran’s request, according to a person to whom she later recounted the episode. She later complained that she did not have a full grasp of what was going on around her when she signed the document, according to two people who have heard her account.Ms. Bobb, who relentlessly promoted falsehoods about the 2020 election as an on-air host for the far-right One America News Network, eventually signed her name. But she insisted on adding a written caveat before giving it to a senior Justice Department official on June 3: “The above statements are true and correct to the best of my knowledge.”Her sworn statement, hedged or not, was shown to be flatly false after the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, which recovered about 100 additional highly sensitive government documents, including some marked with the highest levels of classification. And prosecutors are now investigating whether her actions constitute obstruction of justice or if she committed other crimes.On Friday, Ms. Bobb sat for a voluntary interview with Justice Department lawyers in Washington, according to three people familiar with the situation. She told them that another Trump lawyer, Boris Epshteyn, contacted her the night before she signed the attestation and connected her with Mr. Corcoran. Ms. Bobb, who was living in Florida, was told that she needed to go to Mar-a-Lago the next day to deal with an unspecified legal matter for Mr. Trump.In her meeting with the department — a development reported by NBC News on Monday — Ms. Bobb, who was accompanied by her criminal defense lawyer, John Lauro, emphasized that she was working as part of a team rather than as a solo actor when she signed the statement attesting to the return of all the documents, the people said.Mr. Corcoran, she told the Justice Department, had walked her through how he had conducted a search of a storage facility at Mar-a-Lago for the documents. She said she had believed at the time she signed the attestation in June that it was accurate, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.Ms. Bobb has made clear that she is not taking an adversarial position toward Mr. Trump in answering the Justice Department’s questions. She told investigators that before she signed the attestation, she heard Mr. Trump tell Mr. Corcoran that they should cooperate with the Justice Department and give prosecutors what they wanted — an assurance that would come to ring hollow as the investigation proceeded and became a bitter court fight.The Justice Department declined to comment. Ms. Bobb, Mr. Corcoran and a spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to requests for comment. A lawyer for Mr. Epshteyn did not respond to an email seeking comment.Ms. Bobb has been a fervent promoter of baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump.Josh Ritchie for The New York TimesMs. Bobb’s trajectory is a familiar one in Mr. Trump’s orbit: a marginal player thrust by ambition and happenstance into a position where her profile and prospects are elevated, but at the cost of serious legal and reputational risk.But she stands out for a varied background — she is a former Marine who served in Afghanistan and a failed political candidate who jettisoned a conventional career to become a far-right cable news host — and for the tensile strength of her baseless conviction that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump.More on the Trump Documents InquirySupreme Court Request: The Justice Department urged the justices to reject a request from former President Donald J. Trump asking the court to intervene in the litigation over documents seized from his Florida estate.Documents Still Missing?: A top Justice Department official told Mr. Trump’s lawyers in recent weeks that the agency believed he had not returned all the records he took when he left the White House, according to two people briefed on the matter.Deflecting Demands: Mr. Trump spent a year and a half deflecting, delaying and sometimes leading aides to dissemble when it came to demands from the National Archives and the Justice Department to return the material he had taken, interviews and documents show.Dueling Judges: The moves and countermoves by a federal judge and the special master she appointed reflect a larger struggle over who should control the rules of the review of the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago.In the past two years, Ms. Bobb has emerged as one of his truest of true believers, embracing conspiracy theories with a fervor that has at times seemed over the top even to her colleagues, according to interviews with a dozen people who have worked with her over the past several years.Ms. Bobb has not been shy about expressing her opinions on conservative news outlets, speaking expansively about the court-authorized F.B.I. search and her low opinion of those who executed it.“I don’t believe that there was any classified material in there, though I’m sure the F.B.I. will say that there is,” she said in an interview with the conservative activist Dinesh D’Souza two days after the warrant was executed.Another conservative activist, Mike Farris, asked if she was concerned by the Justice Department’s aggressive approach.“I’m not too worried about it,” she replied. “They are all a bunch of cowards; they don’t have anything.”Ms. Bobb was present in the pro-Trump “command center” at the Willard Hotel in Washington before the Capitol attack, along with Rudolph W. Giuliani and other Trump stalwarts.She acted as Mr. Giuliani’s go-between with state officials in Arizona and helped fund-raise for a recount in Maricopa County that Republican leaders called a “sham.” She drafted a memo and participated in meetings to discuss a plan to appoint alternate slates of electors to reverse legitimate state election results. And Ms. Bobb created the computer file used to draft a proposal, never carried out, for Mr. Trump to issue an executive order for the federal government to seize voting machines..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Dominion Voting Systems is suing Ms. Bobb and OAN for promoting unsubstantiated claims that the company was part of a vote-switching scheme to favor Joseph R. Biden Jr. The House committee investigating the Capitol riot subpoenaed Ms. Bobb in March to testify about her “attempts to disrupt or delay” certification of the election and her reported involvement in drafting the executive order.She complied, but provided no proof when pressed on her claims about the election, according to a congressional aide with knowledge of her testimony.Ms. Bobb blurred the lines between covering Mr. Trump and working for him:She offered a dour after-action report of the failed attempt to appoint alternate electors to overturn the election in a previously undisclosed memo she sent to Mr. Trump on March 29, 2021, while working for OAN. The memo, obtained from a person to whom it was later forwarded, was marked “ATTORNEY CLIENT PRIVILEGE” even though she was not on Mr. Trump’s legal team at the time.“If three states changed their electors, the result of the election would have flipped,” Ms. Bobb wrote, adding a caveat at the end: It was “unclear” whether the Supreme Court would have supported the elector scheme.It is not known if Mr. Trump read it. He seems to have a mixed opinion of Ms. Bobb’s on-air work, however, grousing that she was too flattering to him in several OAN interviews, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.After leaving the Department of Homeland Security, Ms. Bobb became a host on the far-right One America News Network.Gabby Jones/BloombergMs. Bobb, a standout soccer and volleyball player during her high school years in the Phoenix area, graduated with a joint business and law degree from San Diego State University and California Western School of Law in 2008.She joined the Marine Corps, going through officer candidate school and completing a grueling basic training course in May 2010 as one of 16 women in a class of 280. She served in the Judge Advocate General’s office, representing Marines in disciplinary hearings, and was assigned for a time in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, as an operational law attorney consulting combat commanders on the legality of military operations.Those experiences, Ms. Bobb has suggested, were front of mind as she stood in the sweltering Mar-a-Lago parking lot angrily observing F.B.I. agents carrying out the search warrant. “Every service member can tell you that you have an affirmative obligation to disregard an unlawful order,” she told Mr. Farris in August.Ms. Bobb left the Marines after two years to work for a law firm in San Diego, where she served as a junior lawyer in three trademark infringement cases brought by CrossFit against local gym operators, according to court records.Ms. Bobb, second from right, during a meeting about a ballot review at the Arizona Senate in Phoenix in July 2021. In the postelection period, she blurred the lines between her work for One America News and her advocacy of Mr. Trump.Joseph Cooke/The Republic / USA TODAY NETWORKAround that time, she made her first foray into politics, running as an independent for a House seat in a predominantly Democratic district in San Diego. She kept a defiantly low profile, criticizing politicians who craved the “limelight,” maintaining a bare-bones website and raising no money.“I understand that it might not work, but it might,” she told a reporter covering the race in 2014.It did not. Ms. Bobb finished last in a field of eight, with 929 votes. She did not challenge the result.A few years later, she moved to Washington; in mid-2019, she was selected for an administrative job at the Department of Homeland Security — executive secretary. She served as a conduit for external correspondence, and her name was often attached to important memos, largely drafted by others, such as a list of locations where Mr. Trump’s border wall was to be built.The job also entailed another responsibility: ensuring compliance with federal records laws.Colleagues remember Ms. Bobb as hardworking and professional, with a bearing more military than political (she retained the habit of referring to superiors as “sir” and “ma’am”). But it soon became clear that the department’s leadership, while satisfied with her work, was not wowed with it and had no intention of promoting her, two former co-workers said.In late 2019, she requested a position in the policy unit of Customs and Border Protection but left after only a few months, they said.At that point, Ms. Bobb made an abrupt career shift, applying for a job with the San Diego-based OAN, where her connection to homeland security seemed to have been a selling point.The network’s conservative owners viewed immigration as their top priority and wanted to bolster their coverage. Ms. Bobb’s first on-air interview was with her former boss Chad Wolf, the acting homeland security secretary.It was after Election Day 2020 that she seemed to find her calling, airing multiple reports of unproven electoral fraud, culminating in a lengthy February 2021 segment, “Arizona Election Heist,” which promoted debunked and dubious claims about her home state.After the election, Ms. Bobb was also a fixture at meetings where Trump hard-liners like John Eastman and Sidney Powell discussed plans to reverse the results — which initially raised questions about whether she was embedded for reporting purposes or committed to the cause. Participants quickly concluded it was the latter, according to one of them.By December, she was back-channeling requests from Mr. Giuliani to Republican state officials in Arizona, pressuring them to authorize a recount of the Maricopa voting, despite a statewide canvass that confirmed Mr. Biden’s 10,000-vote margin of victory.“Mayor Giuliani asked me to send you these declarations,” Ms. Bobb wrote to one leader, accompanied by affidavits, according to an email obtained by American Oversight, a left-leaning watchdog group.By March 2022, Ms. Bobb decided to leave OAN and relocated to Florida to be closer to Mr. Trump and some of the senior leadership of the Trump-affiliated Save America PAC, taking a staff job that paid $144,600 a year, according to federal campaign finance records.While she has been a fixture on the airwaves and social media, Ms. Bobb requested that her name be redacted from the signed attestation about the documents when it was unsealed in late August, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.It leaked anyway.Susan C. Beachy More