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      Jan. 6 Inquiry Votes Aren’t Costing G.O.P. Incumbents in Primaries, Yet

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      When 35 Republicans defied Donald J. Trump to vote in favor of an independent, bipartisan investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, they immediately braced for backlash from the former president’s most loyal voters.But it hasn’t quite hit as hard as expected — at least not yet.Only one of the 35 has lost a primary challenge, while least 10 of the 13 incumbents in contested races had survived primary challenges as of Wednesday. (Nine of the 35 who voted for the panel opted to retire or have resigned.)The fate of two incumbents whose races had elections on Tuesday still has not been determined, with Representative David Valadao of California expected to advance to the November election after appearing to finish second in Tuesday’s open primary and Representative Michael Guest of Mississippi being pushed into a June 28 runoff after narrowly trailing Michael Cassidy.The lone casualty so far has been Representative David McKinley of West Virginia, who lost a May primary to Representative Alex Mooney, a Republican colleague who had been endorsed by Mr. Trump in the newly drawn Second District. Their districts were consolidated after West Virginia lost a seat in the House because of the state’s declining population.There are plenty of high-profile opportunities for Mr. Trump in the months ahead to settle scores with Republicans who voted for the plan to form the independent commission, a proposal that ultimately died in the Senate. A House committee that is investigating the riot at the Capitol will hold a televised hearing in prime time on Thursday.Here are some key races involving Republicans who voted for a commission:In Wyoming, Representative Liz Cheney was ousted last year from her House leadership post and punished by Republicans in her home state after voting to impeach Mr. Trump for his role in the Capitol attack. She will face Harriet Hageman, a Trump-endorsed challenger, in an Aug. 16 primary that is drawing national attention.In South Carolina, Representative Tom Rice is fighting for his survival in a seven-way primary that features Russell Fry, a state legislator who was endorsed by Mr. Trump. Mr. Rice also voted for impeachment and said he was willing to stake his political career on that position.In Michigan, where Mr. Trump’s attempts to domineer the Republican Party have encountered some notable setbacks, Representative Peter Meijer has drawn the wrath of the former president. Calling Mr. Meijer a “RINO” — a Republican in name only — Mr. Trump endorsed John Gibbs, the conservative challenger to Mr. Meijer in the Aug. 2 primary.As a result of redistricting in Illinois, Representative Rodney Davis is locked in a primary battle with Representative Mary Miller, a House colleague who has been endorsed by Mr. Trump. The primary is June 28. Ms. Miller was one of 175 Republicans who voted against the commission in the House, which is controlled by Democrats.In Florida, the pro-Trump America First political committee named Representative Carlos Gimenez as its “top target for removal from Congress.” Mr. Gimenez will face two challengers in the Aug. 23 primary, including Ruth Swanson, who has said that the 2020 election was “thrown” and has contributed campaign funds to Project Veritas, the conservative group. More

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      ‘Lexi’s voice demands action’: family of Uvalde victims beg Congress to address gun violence

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      ‘Lexi’s voice demands action’: family of Uvalde victims beg Congress to address gun violenceKimberly Rubio wept as she described the harrowing events of 24 May and asked for strengthened gun laws from Congress 01:59Kimberly and Felix Rubio went twice to Robb Elementary school on the morning of 24 May, first to attend an end-of-year awards ceremony for their youngest son and then to attend one for their daughter, Lexi, who was in the fourth grade.They beamed with pride as Lexi was honored with the “good citizen” award and recognized for earning straight As. To celebrate, they promised to take her for ice cream later that night.“In the reel that keeps scrolling across my memories, she turns her head and smiles back at us to acknowledge my promise,” Kimberly Rubio told a House oversight committee via video link on Wednesday. “And then we left.”Uvalde survivor, 11, tells House hearing she smeared herself with friend’s blood Read moreThrough tears she continued: “I left my daughter at that school and that decision will haunt me for the rest of my life.”Felix Rubio sat silently next to his wife, eyes downcast as she described the harrowing events that followed: their desperate, hours-long search for their children. Relief when a teacher said their son was safe, and the moment they realized Lexi, their “intelligent, compassionate and athletic” daughter who dreamed of attending law school would not live to graduate the fourth grade.“That opportunity was taken from her; she was taken from us,” her mother said.Lexi Rubio was among the 19 students and two teachers killed when a gunman armed with an assault-style rifle stormed a pair of adjoining classrooms and opened fire. She was 10.“We don’t want you to think of Lexi as just a number,” Kimberly Rubio said. “So today we stand for Lexi, and her voice demands action.”The oversight committee hearing on gun violence was scheduled in the wake of successive mass shootings in recent weeks that have claimed the lives of dozens of Americans in Buffalo, New York; Uvalde, Texas, and elsewhere. The committee heard from a pediatrician, a police commissioner, the mayor of New York and experts on the issue of gun violence, who almost uniformly echoed the Rubios’ call for action.But perhaps the most heart-rending testimony came from 11-year-old Miah Cerrillo, a fourth-grader at Robb elementary school. In a pre-taped video, Miah, wearing a shirt that said “live by the sun” with sunflowers, recounted how the gunman appeared in their classroom as they scrambled to hide behind desks and the rows of backpacks. He told her teacher “goodnight” before shooting her in the head, she said.The gunman then shot her classmates and then her friend who was huddling next to her. “I thought he would come back to the room, so I grabbed blood and put it all over me,” she said.Roy Guerrero, the sole pediatrician in Uvalde, said the horror of tending to the small bodies “pulverized” by bullets fired by an AR-15-style semi-automatic weapon, embedded memories he said “no prayer could ever relieve”.Guerrero said he could save children from broken bones and bacterial infections, but only Congress could save them from the scourge of gun violence.“Making sure that our children are safe from guns, that’s the job of politicians and leaders,” he said, adding: “We are bleeding out and you are not there.”The Rubios pleaded with Congress to change gun laws and prevent more communities from experiencing the overwhelming tragedy that has consumed Uvalde, where Lexi’s classmates are still being buried.Kimberly Rubio asked Congress to raise the age to 21 for purchases of military-style assault rifles, like the one that killed Lexi, as well as for strengthening background checks on gun buyers and repealing the immunity that shields gun manufacturers from being held liable.As lawmakers chase an elusive deal on gun control, Kimberly Rubio urged a consensus: “At this moment, we ask for progress.”Appearing on Capitol Hill, Miah’s father, Miguel Cerrillo, said something had to change. In brief, tearful testimony, he told the committee that the shooting had changed his daughter.“I came because I could’ve lost my baby girl,” he said. “She’s not the same little girl that I used to play with and run with … because she was Daddy’s little girl.”“I wish something would change,” he concluded, breaking down in tears. Congresswoman Rashida Talib led him out of the hearing room by hand.The still-raw display of emotions underscored the depths of America’s gun violence crisis. But it also emphasized the gaping partisan divide that simmered and then flared on the floor of the House ahead of what was expected to be a party-line vote on a suite of gun reform measures.“It is my hope that all my colleagues will listen with an open heart as gun violence survivors and loved ones recount one of the darkest days of their lives,” said congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat of New York and the chair of the oversight committee. “This hearing is ultimately about saving lives, and I hope it will galvanize my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to pass legislation to do just that.”The committee also heard from Zeneta Everhart, who recounted in graphic detail how close she came to losing her son, Zaire Goodman, who was shot in the neck during a racist mass shooting at the Tops Friendly supermarket in Buffalo where he worked. Thirteen people were shot in the assault, 10 fatally.“Let me paint a picture for you: my son Zaire has a hole in the right side of his neck, two on his back and another on his left leg. Caused by an exploding bullet from an AR-15,” she said. “As I clean those wounds I can feel pieces of that bullet in his back.”“I want you to picture that exact scenario for one of your children,” she said. “This should not be your story or mine.”Everhart said it was naive to say, as so many do in the wake of senseless acts of violence, that the attacks do not represent “who we are as a nation”. Speaking as the descendant of enslaved Americans, she said the racist violence that erupted in a Buffalo supermarket last month had ugly roots in the nation’s founding.“Hear me clearly,” she said. “This is exactly who we are.”The committee also heard from Lucretia Hughes, a conservative activist invited to testify by Republicans. In fervent remarks to the committee, she said her son was killed in 2016 by a convicted felon who had illegally obtained a firearm. Gun control laws, which she described as “steeped in racism”, did little to save her son, she said.“Y’all are delusional if you think it’s going to keep us safe,” Hughes said of the calls for new firearms restrictions. Citing the widely-criticized response by law enforcement officers in Uvalde, she added: “We must prepare to be our own first responders.”But children and teachers shouldn’t have to bear that responsibility, Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, told the committee. The number of students who will never get to “live into their brilliance” is unconscionable, and yet it fails to capture the totality of the long-lasting physical and emotional damage wrought by these attacks, she said.“Students across our country are writing goodbye notes and wills – just in case,” she exclaimed. “Unfortunately their fear is perfectly rational.”In the video to the committee, Miah Cerrillo was asked if she feels safe at school.Miah shook her head no.“Why not?”“Cause,” she said slowly, fidgeting as children often do, “I don’t want it to happen again.”“You think it’s going to happen again?”Miah nods her head. Yes, she thinks it will.Kimberly Rubio also fears it will happen again. But she hopes, in honor of her daughter, that it can happen less, that, perhaps, with new laws and new restrictions, there will be fewer mothers in the future whose children go to school and never come home.“Somewhere out there, there’s a mom listening to our testimony and thinking, ‘I can’t even imagine their pain,’ not knowing that our reality will one day be hers,” she said. “Unless we act now.”TopicsUS school shootingsTexas school shootingBuffalo shootingHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsUS CongressUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

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      Uvalde survivor, 11, tells House hearing she smeared herself with friend’s blood

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      Uvalde survivor, 11, tells House hearing she smeared herself with friend’s blood Miah Cerrillo recounts at gun violence hearing how she watched as her teacher and friends were shot and acted quickly to save herself01:59An 11-year-old survivor of the elementary school massacre in Uvalde, Texas testified before the House oversight committee on Wednesday, as lawmakers continued to try to reach a compromise on gun control legislation after a series of devastating mass shootings.‘It all happened too fast’: injured Uvalde teacher recounts school shootingRead moreThe House hearing came two weeks after an 18-year-old opened fire at Robb elementary school, killing 19 children and two teachers, and three weeks after 10 people were killed at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.Miah Cerrillo, a fourth-grader at the Uvalde school, recounted how she watched as her teacher and friends were shot and acted quickly to save herself. Miah covered herself in a friend’s blood and played dead until she was able to reach her teacher’s phone and call police.In her recorded testimony, Miah said she no longer felt safe at school.“Because I don’t want it to happen again,” she said.The slow police response to the Uvalde shooting has been the focus of intense scrutiny and criticism.Miah was joined by other families affected by gun violence, including Felix and Kimberly Rubio, whose daughter Lexi died in Uvalde, and Zeneta Everhart, whose son Zaire Goodman was injured in Buffalo. Ten people were killed there, in a supermarket by another gunman with an AR-15-style rifle.“We don’t want you to think of Lexi as just a number,” Rubio told the committee. “She was intelligent, compassionate and athletic. So today we stand for Lexi, and as her voice we demand action.”Gun control experts and New York mayor Eric Adams also testified at the hearing on the need to restrict access to firearms and, by extension, reduce violent crime.“It is high noon in America, time for every one of us to decide where we stand on the issue of gun violence,” Adams said. “I am here today to ask every one of you, and everyone in this Congress, to stand with me to end gun violence and protect the lives of all Americans.”But the emotional and searing testimony did not stop Republicans on the committee rehashing talking points about why they oppose gun restrictions.“Kneejerk reactions to impose gun control policies that seek to curtail our constitutional right to bear arms are not the answer,” said James Comer, the Republican ranking member.The Democratic chair of the committee, Carolyn Maloney, criticized Republican efforts to deflect attention from the need to reform gun laws.“They have blamed violent video games. They have blamed family values. They have even blamed open doors. They have blamed everything but guns,” Maloney said. “But we know the United States does not have a monopoly on mental illness, video games or any other excuse. What America does have is widespread access to guns.”The House was working on Wednesday to pass gun control proposals which would raise the age requirement to buy semi-automatic weapons from 18 to 21 and enact a federal extreme risk protection order for gun access, known as a “red-flag” law.The House has already passed bills to expand background checks for firearm purchases and increase the time gun sellers must wait for checks to be completed.But all those bills are unlikely to pass the 50-50 Senate, where 60 votes are needed to pass most legislation. A bipartisan group of senators has been negotiating over a potential compromise on gun control, but any legislation that can make it through the Senate will probably be far narrower than proposals approved by the House.Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, indicated on Tuesday that Democrats’ proposal to raise the age requirement for purchasing semi-automatic weapons was unlikely to be included in the Senate bill.“That can be in the discussion, but right now we’re trying to work on things where we have agreement,” Tillis told CNN. “We’ve got a lot of people in the discussion. We’ve got to get 60 votes.”Despite such disputes, senators have voiced confidence that they can craft a compromise bill. Members of the group met again Wednesday, and John Cornyn, a Republican of Texas, expressed hope that they would soon strike an agreement.“I think it’s reasonable to expect in the next couple weeks, maybe this work period, that that would be – I’m just speaking for myself – an aspirational goal,” Cornyn said. “But obviously, we have 100 senators who are free agents, and they can do anything they want on whatever timetable.”02:08The families whose lives have been forever altered by gun violence came to the House on Wednesday with specific demands.Everhart asked for more schools to teach Black history so children would understand the violent history of white supremacy, given that the Buffalo shooter voiced support for racist conspiracy theories.Rubio also called on lawmakers to ban assault rifles, raise the age requirement to purchase semi-automatic weapons and enact a national “red flag” law.“We understand that for some reason, to some people – to people with money, to people who fund political campaigns – that guns are more important than children. So at this moment, we ask for progress,” Rubio said.“Somewhere out there, there’s a mom listening to our testimony thinking, ‘I can’t even imagine their pain’ – not knowing that our reality will one day be hers unless we act now.”TopicsUS school shootingsTexas school shootingBuffalo shootingUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

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      Kean Will Face Malinowski, and Another Menendez Is on the Rise

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      Tom Kean Jr., the son of a popular two-term New Jersey governor, beat six Republican opponents Tuesday to win the nomination to compete against Representative Tom Malinowski, an embattled Democrat accused of ethical lapses, in what is shaping up to be the state’s most competitive midterm contest.Another son of a storied New Jersey political family, Robert Menendez Jr., easily won a Democratic House primary, making it likely that he and his father and namesake, the state’s senior senator, will serve together in the Capitol.Mr. Malinowski, 56, in a swipe at Mr. Kean’s three unsuccessful campaigns for Congress, said: “I want to do this job. He just wants to have this job.”Mr. Kean, 53, who narrowly lost to Mr. Malinowski in 2020, said his opponent had “squandered” the opportunity to serve New Jersey during two terms in Washington.Mr. Kean’s primary opponents had challenged him from the right as they competed for the support of conservative Republican voters aligned with former President Donald J. Trump. Outside a school near Mr. Kean’s home in Westfield, N.J., where he voted on Tuesday with his wife and daughters, a sign parroting one of Mr. Trump’s favorite labels read, “Warning RINO alert.”But just after midnight, he was more than 22 percentage points ahead of his closest opponent in a race that was seen at least in part as a measure of Mr. Trump’s grip on the Republican Party in a state better known for a moderate brand of Republican politics once epitomized by leaders like Mr. Kean’s father, Gov. Thomas H. Kean.The largely suburban Seventh Congressional District is filled with the type of affluent, well-educated voters who helped Democrats take control of the House in 2018.During the last midterm cycle, Democrats in New Jersey flipped four seats — many of which, including Mr. Malinowski’s, are again seen as potential battlegrounds.As he runs for re-election, Mr. Malinowski is facing allegations that he failed to report stock trades as required. He is also running in a district that gained more Republican-leaning towns when the borders were redrawn to reflect demographic changes in the 2020 census.But late Tuesday, Mr. Malinowski’s campaign got a potential boost from an unlikely camp: Republicans hoping to make a home for centrist voters with the creation of a new party, the Moderate Party. The new party, which will almost certainly face legal challenges, has filed nominating petitions on behalf of Mr. Malinowski.Mr. Menendez won in a largely urban district where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans five to one; winning the primary in the Eighth Congressional District, which includes parts of New Jersey’s two largest cities, is often tantamount to victory in the general election.A lawyer making his first run for office, Mr. Menendez had an array of political and union support early on — as well as crucial backing from his father, also a Democrat and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Just after midnight, when The Associated Press called the race for Mr. Menendez, he was 70 percentage points ahead of his main challenger, David Ocampo Grajales.If he wins in November, Mr. Menendez, 36, will occupy a seat held for a decade by Representative Albio Sires, a Democrat who announced in December he would not run for re-election.Mr. Ocampo Grajales, the son of immigrants from Colombia, said last week that he had entered the race to give Democrats a viable alternative to a handpicked candidate.“It’s not so much who Menendez is himself, but what he represents: more of the same,” said Mr. Ocampo Grajales, 25.The New Jersey congressional candidate Tom Kean Jr., with his family, after voting at Wilson Elementary School in Westfield, N.J., on Tuesday.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesA Republican primary in a central New Jersey swing district represented by Andy Kim, a Democrat running for his third term in Congress, was the state’s most colorful contest.Bob Healey Jr., a former singer in a punk band who helps run his family’s yacht-manufacturing company, beat two challengers, Nicholas J. Ferrera and Ian A. Smith, with the backing of the Republican Party.In March, Mr. Smith, the former owner of a gym that repeatedly flouted Covid-19 lockdown rules, was charged with driving under the influence, reviving talk of his past conviction for vehicular homicide. He served time in prison for killing a teenager in 2007 while under the influence of alcohol, and has pleaded not guilty to the new charges.“I may have sung in my past about killing someone,” Mr. Healey said during a debate in May. “Ian actually did kill someone.”By midnight, the winner of the Republican primary to face Representative Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat competing for re-election to a fourth term, had not yet been called.Frank Pallotta, a wealthy former investment banker who lost to Mr. Gottheimer two years ago, was 5 percentage points ahead of Nick De Gregorio, a Marine Corps veteran, with about 85 percent of the vote counted.Mr. Pallotta won the endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump in 2020, but not this time. He also had raised significantly less money than Mr. De Gregorio, who had emphasized his service in combat roles in Iraq and Afghanistan.“We did everything we possibly could, and we left no stones unturned,” Mr. De Gregorio said as he watched the returns come in from the Republican Party headquarters in Bergen County. “We went out there and we listened to what the voters had to say.”Mr. Menendez will be a heavy favorite in November against Marcos Arroyo, a housing inspector from West New York, N.J., who was the lone Republican candidate to enter the race.Mr. Menendez has said that, if elected, he would focus on expanding access to early childhood education and issues that affect the cost of living in New Jersey, where property owners pay some of the nation’s highest taxes.“One of the things we’ve focused on — just because we don’t know the climate that we’re going to be walking into, should we win — is trying to think about what Democratic proposals haven’t been passed yet that we can have bipartisan support for,” Mr. Menendez said in an interview on Saturday.Before being appointed to the Senate in 2006, Senator Menendez held the House seat that his son is now seeking. The borders of the district, formerly the 13th Congressional District, have since been redrawn slightly.The state debuted a new electronic voting system in November, but this was the first time that New Jersey voters were offered a chance to cast ballots in person, on machines, during a primary election.Still, with no statewide races on the ballot, turnout was low.“We were told that we were the fourth and fifth people in our district to be voting today,” Gov. Philip D. Murphy said on Tuesday morning, “and they’ve been open for a while.”Shlomo Schorr contributed reporting. More

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      Best- and Worst-Case Outcomes of the Jan. 6 Public Hearings

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      On Thursday, a bipartisan House select committee will begin public hearings on the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. The weeks ahead will be awash with news as the committee reveals what happened in the days and weeks before the attack — and to what extent the rioters were emboldened, or enabled, by the White House and Republican lawmakers.To wade through the news and help us understand what to pay attention to as the hearings unfold, host Jane Coaston calls upon two experts on the Republican Party.[You can listen to this episode of “The Argument” on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]Nicole Hemmer is an author and historian of conservative media. Ross Douthat is a Times Opinion columnist. They give their takes on what narratives might play out in the hearings and comment on the danger of far-right extremism in the G.O.P. “I don’t see an incentive structure that pulls the Republican Party in general away from procedural extremism, or even really at the moment, anything that pulls them back to a majoritarian democratic process,” Hemmer says.Mentioned in this episode:“What Oprah Winfrey Knows About American History That Tucker Carlson Doesn’t” by Nicole Hemmer in The New York Times“Are We Witnessing the Mainstreaming of White Power in America?” episode from The Ezra Klein Show“Why Would John Eastman Want to Overturn an Election for Trump?” by Ross Douthat in The New York Times(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Samuel Corum/Getty ImagesThoughts? Email us at argument@nytimes.com or leave us a voice mail message at (347) 915-4324. We want to hear what you’re arguing about with your family, your friends and your frenemies. (We may use excerpts from your message in a future episode.)By leaving us a message, you are agreeing to be governed by our reader submission terms and agreeing that we may use and allow others to use your name, voice and message.“The Argument” is produced by Phoebe Lett, Elisa Gutierrez and Vishakha Darbha. Edited by Alison Bruzek and Anabel Bacon. With original music by Isaac Jones and Pat McCusker. Mixing by Pat McCusker. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta with editorial support from Kristina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. More

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      Katie Porter Will Face Scott Baugh in the Fall.

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      Scott Baugh, the former leader of the California Assembly, fended off a crowded Republican field on Tuesday to earn the right to challenge Representative Katie Porter, a Democratic star, in November.The newly drawn 47th District of California leans slightly Democratic, but in a difficult year for President Biden’s party, Republicans would relish dimming Ms. Porter’s shine. Since she took her seat in the former Republican stronghold of Orange County in 2018, Ms. Porter has emerged as a powerhouse fund-raiser and a popular figure for the activist left.Democratic officials widely see her as an heir to the Senate seat now held by Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is not expected to seek re-election in November 2024, when she will be 91. A loss now would complicated Ms. Porter’s path.Representative Katie Porter, a powerhouse Democratic fund-raiser, at a campaign event on Saturday.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesMr. Baugh is the essence of the Orange County Republican establishment, having once headed the party in the county. With more than $1 million in his campaign accounts, he heads toward November in a respectable position. But his cash on hand pales in comparison with Ms. Porter’s $18 million in a widely watched race is likely to be expensive. More

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      Jan. 6 Hearings Give Democrats a Chance to Recast Midterm Message

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      With their majority at stake, Democrats plan to use the six high-profile hearings to refocus voters’ attention on Republicans’ role in the attack.WASHINGTON — Seventeen months after a mob of Donald J. Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol with false claims of a stolen election, House Democrats plan to use a landmark set of investigative hearings beginning this week to try to refocus voters’ attention on Jan. 6, aiming to tie Republicans directly to an unprecedented plot to undermine democracy itself.With their control of Congress hanging in the balance, Democrats plan to use made-for-television moments and a carefully choreographed rollout of revelations over the course of six hearings to remind the public of the magnitude of Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the election, and to persuade voters that the coming midterm elections are a chance to hold Republicans accountable for it.It is an uphill battle at a time when polls show that voters’ attention is focused elsewhere, including on inflation, rising coronavirus cases and record-high gas prices. But Democrats argue the hearings will give them a platform for making a broader case about why they deserve to stay in power.“When these hearings are over, voters will know how irresponsibly complicit Republicans were in attempting to toss out their vote and just how far Republicans will go to gain power for themselves,” said Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, the Democratic campaign chair.The select committee investigating the attack, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, says it has approached its work in a sober, apolitical manner and will present its findings as such. But it is clear that the hearings, coming five months before midterm elections in which Democrats are bracing for big losses, carry high political stakes.The hope among Democrats is that the committee’s findings, collected from 1,000 witnesses and over 140,000 documents, will do most of the messaging work for them. Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the committee, has promised the hearings will “blow the roof off the House.”They have retained an experienced television executive to ensure that happens and organized scores of watch parties across the country in hopes of generating interest. But they are facing an onslaught from Republicans who are bent on denying, downplaying and obfuscating the truth of what happened in their own messaging operation aimed at discrediting the inquiry.And Democrats are up against the reality that the raw emotions in the aftermath of the attack have faded, even among voters who care about the facts, as attention has turned to an ongoing war in Ukraine, gun violence at home and a deep pessimism about the state of the economy.Their task is to persuade voters that the Jan. 6 attack revealed bigger and more important issues at stake, including the Republican Party’s alignment with violent extremists and its decision to make adherence to the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen a test of membership.Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, said on Twitter that the hearings would “fully expose the cult’s extreme effort to overthrow the U.S. government.”A significant portion of the first hearing on Thursday evening will focus on the Proud Boys, a far-right group whose members have been charged with seditious conspiracy in connection with the storming of the Capitol, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke about it on the condition of anonymity.It is scheduled to include testimony from a documentary filmmaker, Nick Quested, who was embedded with the group during the storming of the building, and a Capitol Police officer, Caroline Edwards, who was injured in an assault said to be triggered by the Proud Boys.The goal is to provide the public with a more in-depth portrait of what unfolded on Jan. 6 than the images that played out on television that day, and to reveal the extent of what the panel called a “coordinated, multistep effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and prevent the transfer of power.”Norman L. Eisen, who was hired by the Judiciary Committee to serve as special counsel during the first Trump impeachment, said Democrats had learned from some of their successes and misfires during those hearings, but still faced challenges.“They need to have three things: the attention-grabbing power of new evidence, the spontaneous drama created by live witnesses and the oldest trick in the book: telling a good story,” Mr. Eisen said. “The risk is, there’s an enormous amount of anticipation and buildup.”Still, some Democratic operatives believe the political payoff could be substantial, both in energizing the party’s core supporters and in appealing to independent voters who may turn against Republicans based on what they see and hear.Anat Shenker-Osorio, the founder of ASO Communications, a progressive political consulting firm, has been conducting focus groups with voters. She said both Democratic “base surge voters” and “swing voters” were motivated by increased attention on the Capitol riot.“Jan. 6 is very much salient and highly negative to these likely midterm voters,” Ms. Shenker-Osorio told activists on a recent call promoting the hearings.Democrats have met with networks about carrying the hearing live in prime time. Activists have scheduled more than 90 watch events in various states, including a “flagship” event at the Robert A. Taft Memorial and Carillon in Washington, where a large screen will be set up and attendees will get free ice cream.“It’s everything from a family-gathering-in-the-living-room-type event to hosting it in a union hall to hosting it on a big field with a Jumbotron,” said Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of the progressive group Public Citizen.In an attempt to keep the hearing from becoming too dry and disconnected from the visceral reality of the attack, the committee is tentatively planning to play video of the Capitol attack and considering airing clips of key testimony from high-profile witnesses, such as the former White House advisers Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.As it tries to deliver the equivalent of the Watergate hearings for the streaming era, the committee has brought on the former president of ABC News, James Goldston, a move reported earlier by Axios, to help fit the hearings into six tight episodes, running between 90 minutes and 2.5 hours.The committee has brought on the former president of ABC News, James Goldston, to help create six tight episodes from the hearings.Bennett Raglin/Getty ImagesRepublican lawmakers have already begun pushing a counternarrative to dismiss the hearings as nothing more than political theater at a moment when Americans are more concerned with kitchen-table issues like the rising price of gas and a baby formula shortage.“Instead of focusing on $5 gas, 6,000 illegal immigrants a day, record fentanyl deaths, or the violent criminals terrorizing America democrats use taxpayer money on a TV producer for the prime time political infomercial from the Jan 6th circus,” Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said on Twitter on Monday.Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, the No. 3 Republican who was Mr. Trump’s chief defender during the first impeachment hearing, will oversee the effort to discredit the committee’s findings, coordinating with Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, and Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee. They plan to book Republican lawmakers on television to push a debunked claim that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is to blame for the attack.Representative Elise Stefanik, who emerged as Mr. Trump’s chief defender during the first impeachment hearing, has begun referring to the committee’s work as a “political sham witch hunt.”Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMs. Stefanik has begun referring to the committee’s work as a “political sham witch hunt,” echoing the same language Mr. Trump used to try to undermine Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. A person familiar with Republican plans said they also had a “rapid response” operation to try to counter the committee’s revelations.The hearings are expected to flesh out various aspects of the investigation, including Mr. Trump’s promotion of a lie of a stolen election, despite being told his claims were false; his attempts to misuse the Justice Department to cling to power; the pressure campaign on Vice President Mike Pence to persuade him to throw out electoral votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr.; how the mob assembled and descended onto D.C. on Jan. 6; and how Mr. Trump did nothing to stop the violence for more than three hours while the assault was underway.The Jan. 6 committee is tentatively planning to play video of the Capitol attack and considering airing clips of key testimony from high-profile witnesses.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesThe committee has not yet nailed down the full slate of witnesses and is still discussing the possibility of public testimony with several high-profile Trump-era officials.The panel is waiting for Jeffrey A. Rosen, the former acting attorney general, and Richard P. Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, to respond to formal requests to testify, according to two people briefed on the matter.Both Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue have already told multiple congressional committees that Mr. Trump and his allies pressured the department to say falsely that it had found voter fraud and to use its power to undo the results.The committee is still in informal talks with Pat A. Cipollone, the former White House counsel, as well as Byung J. Pak, the former U.S. attorney in Atlanta who abruptly resigned on Jan. 4, 2021, after learning that Mr. Trump planned to fire him for not finding voter fraud, according to those people familiar with the discussions.Katie Benner More

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      in Elections

      A Broken Redistricting Process Winds Down, With No Repairs in Sight

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      WASHINGTON — The brutal once-a-decade process of drawing new boundaries for the nation’s 435 congressional districts is limping toward a close with the nation’s two political parties roughly at parity. But the lessons drawn from how they got there offer little cheer for those worried about the direction of the weary American experiment.The two parties each claimed redistricting went its way. But some frustrated Democrats in states like Texas, Florida and Ohio sounded unconvinced as Republicans, who have controlled the House in 10 of the last 15 elections despite losing the popular vote in seven of them, seemed to fare better than Democrats at tilting political maps decisively in their direction in key states they controlled.At the least, political analysts said, Republicans proved more relentless at shielding such maps from court challenges, through artful legal maneuvers and blunt-force political moves that in some cases challenged the authority of the judicial system.And, to many involved in efforts to replace gerrymanders with competitive districts, the vanishing number of truly contested House races indicated that whoever won, the voters lost. A redistricting cycle that began with efforts to demand fair maps instead saw the two parties in an arms race for a competitive advantage.“Once the fuel has been added to the fire, it’s very hard to back away from it,” said Kathay Feng, the national redistricting director for the advocacy group Common Cause. “Now it’s not just the operatives in the back room, which is where it started. It’s not just technology. It’s not just legislators being shameless about drawing lines. It’s governors and state officials and sometimes even courts leaning in to affirm these egregious gerrymanders.”Democrats pulled nearly even — in terms of the partisan lean of districts, if not the party’s prospects for success in the November midterms — largely by undoing some Republican gerrymanders through court battles and ballot initiatives, and by drawing their own partisan maps. But the strategy at times succeeded too well, as courts struck down Democratic maps in some states, and ballot measures kept party leaders from drawing new ones in others.New York is a particularly glaring example. In April, the seven Democratic justices on New York’s highest court blew up an aggressive gerrymander of the state’s 26 congressional districts that had been expected to net Democrats three new House seats. The court’s replacement map, drawn by an independent expert, pits Democratic incumbents against each other and creates new swing districts that could cost Democrats seats.Weeks later in Florida, where voters approved a ban on partisan maps in 2010, the State Supreme Court, comprising seven Republican justices, declined to stop the implementation of a gerrymander of the state’s 28 congressional districts. The ruling preserves the new map ordered by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, that could net his party four new House seats. The ruling cited procedural issues in allowing the map to take effect, but many experts said there was never much doubt about the result.In New York, Democrats ignored a voter-approved constitutional mandate that districts “not be drawn to discourage competition” or favor political parties. And in Republicans’ view, Democrats sabotaged a bipartisan commission that voters set up to draw fair maps.“The Democrats seriously overreached,” said John J. Faso, a Republican and former New York state assemblyman and U.S. representative. The bipartisan commission, he added, “is what people voted for.”What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Deepening Divides: As political mapmakers create lopsided new district lines, the already polarized parties are being pulled even farther apart.But in Ohio, Republicans who gerrymandered congressional and state legislative districts this spring also ignored a voter-approved constitutional ban on partisan maps. They not only successfully defied repeated orders by the State Supreme Court to obey it, but suggested that the court’s chief justice, a Republican, be impeached for rejecting the maps drawn by the state’s Republican-dominated redistricting commission.State Representative Doug Richey of Missouri, a Republican, showed fellow lawmakers a proposed congressional redistricting map in May.David A. Lieb, Associated PressOf the approximately 35 states where politicians ultimately control congressional redistricting — the remainder either rely on independent commissions or have only one House seat — the first maps of House seats approved in some 14 states fit many statistical measures of gerrymandering used by political scientists.One of the most extreme congressional gerrymanders added as many as three new Democratic House seats in staunchly blue Illinois. Texas Republicans drew a new map that turned one new House seat and eight formerly competitive ones into G.O.P. bastions.Republicans carved up Kansas City, Kan.; Salt Lake City; Nashville; Tampa, Fla.; Little Rock, Ark.; Oklahoma City and more to weaken Democrats. Democrats moved boundaries in New Mexico and Oregon to dilute Republican votes.Most gerrymanders were drawn by Republicans, in part because Republicans control more state governments than Democrats do. But Democrats also began this redistricting cycle with a built-in handicap: The 2020 census markedly undercounted Democratic-leaning constituencies, like Blacks and Hispanics.Because those missed residents were concentrated in predominantly blue cities, any additional new urban districts probably would have elected Democrats to both congressional and state legislative seats, said Kimball W. Brace, a demographer who has helped Democratic leaders draw political maps for decades.Undoing those gerrymanders has proved a hit-or-miss proposition.Lawsuits in state courts dismantled Republican partisan maps in North Carolina and Democratic ones in New York and Maryland. But elsewhere, Republicans seized on the Supreme Court’s embrace of a once-obscure legal doctrine to keep even blatant gerrymanders from being blocked. The doctrine, named the Purcell principle after a 2006 federal lawsuit, says courts should not change election laws or rules too close to an election — how close is unclear — for fear of confusing voters.Alabama’s congressional map, drawn by Republicans, will be used in the November election, even though a panel of federal judges ruled it a racial gerrymander. The reason, the Supreme Court said in February, is that the decision came too close to primary elections.The delay game played out most glaringly during the extended process in Ohio, where ballot initiatives approved by voters in 2015 established a bipartisan redistricting commission that Republicans have dominated. Federal judges ordered the gerrymandered G.O.P. maps of Ohio House and Senate districts to be used for this year’s elections, even though the state’s high court had rejected them.When a State Supreme Court deadline for the commission to submit maps of legislative districts for legal review came due last week, Republicans simply ignored it.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More