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      Bob Gibbs, House Republican Facing Primary Challenge in Ohio, Will Retire

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      The state’s redistricting process had drawn Mr. Gibbs into a primary fight against Max Miller, who served in the Trump White House and was endorsed by the former president.Representative Bob Gibbs of Ohio announced on Wednesday that he would not seek re-election, just as early voting got underway in the state. Ohio’s redistricting process had forced Mr. Gibbs, who has served in Congress since 2011, into a Republican primary against a Trump-backed challenger, Max Miller, among others.Mr. Gibbs said in a statement that the tumultuous effort to redraw the state’s congressional map had become a “circus,” and he criticized the last-minute changes to his rural district south of Cleveland.“It is irresponsible to effectively confirm the congressional map for this election cycle seven days before voting begins, especially in the Seventh Congressional District where almost 90 percent of the electorate is new,” he said.Mr. Gibbs’s name will still appear on the ballot in the district but signs will be posted at voting locations stating that votes for him will not be counted, said Rob Nichols, a spokesman for the Ohio Secretary of State, in a brief interview.Mr. Gibbs was facing a serious primary challenge from Mr. Miller, an aide to former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Miller last year when the Ohio candidate was aiming to unseat Representative Anthony Gonzalez, who had voted to impeach Mr. Trump. But Mr. Gonzalez said in September that he would not run for re-election.Mr. Gibbs and Mr. Gonzalez were later drawn into the new Seventh District. Mr. Gibbs voted against impeaching Mr. Trump after the Capitol riot and voted to overturn the results of the presidential election, positions that the former president has treated as litmus tests for which Republicans he will support in 2022.Mr. Miller on Wednesday praised Mr. Gibbs’s tenure.Ohio is losing one of its 16 congressional seats as part of the once-a-decade redistricting process after the latest census. The state’s efforts to redraw its district lines have been mired in legal challenges.In January, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected a congressional map drawn by the state’s Republican-dominated Redistricting Commission, calling it too partisan for a state where the G.O.P. has lately won about 55 percent of the statewide popular vote.Max Miller, an aide to former President Donald J. Trump, had originally aimed to unseat Representative Anthony Gonzalez.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThe court is planning to hold a hearing on the new congressional map sometime after the May 3 primary, and is hearing challenges to a fourth set of state legislative maps. Frank LaRose, Ohio’s Secretary of State, removed the state legislative races from the May 3 ballot and a new date for those elections has not been set.Jen Miller, the executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, echoed Mr. Gibbs’s frustration with redistricting. “Ohio is swingable but it doesn’t seem that way because we have this history of extreme gerrymandering,” she said.Redistricting is a potentially decisive factor in determining which party will control Congress. Both parties have sought to give themselves advantages in states across the country — giving rise to legal wrangling in several states, including New York, Maryland, Alabama and North Carolina.Michael Wines More

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      January 6 panel receives Trump lawyer emails about plan to block Biden victory

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      January 6 panel receives Trump lawyer emails about plan to block Biden victoryHouse panel receives 101 emails belonging John Eastman, concerning plans to obstruct certification of 2020 election result The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol has received a cache of emails belonging to Donald Trump’s lawyer, John Eastman, federal court documents filed on Tuesday show.The 101 emails were released to the committee after Judge David Carter ruled in federal court in California last week that Eastman, a hard-right supporter of the former US president, had not made a sufficient claim to attorney-client privilege.The cache of documents, sent between 4 and 7 January 2021, contains extensive communications between Eastman and others about plans to obstruct the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.These included proposed efforts to pressure Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, to reject or delay counting electoral college votes and weaponizing false allegations of voter fraud in numerous state lawsuits.In one email, which includes a draft memo for Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, recommending Pence reject some states’ electors during the 6 January congressional meeting, Carter ruled for disclosure as the communications were being used to plan criminal activity.“The draft memo pushed a strategy that knowingly violated the Electoral Count Act, and Dr Eastman’s later memos closely track its analysis and proposal,” the ruling says. “The memo is both intimately related to and clearly advanced the plan to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.”Neither Trump nor Eastman have been charged with crimes relating to 6 January and the order on Eastman’s emails was made in civil court.Others references to emails in the judge’s ruling allude to other plans Eastman was involved in.“In a different email thread,” Carter writes, “Dr Eastman and a colleague consider how to use a state court ruling to justify Vice-President Pence enacting the plan. In another email, a colleague focuses on the ‘plan of action’ after the January 6 attacks, not mentioning future litigation.”The sprawling select committee investigation, chaired by the Democratic congressman Bennie Thompson from Mississippi, has interviewed more than 800 people as part of its investigation into the events on January 6.On Tuesday, Thompson confirmed that Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter, had appeared before the committee, marking the first time a member of the immediate Trump family had appeared.Reports indicated her testimony lasted about eight hours. The testimony followed an appearance before the committee by her husband, Jared Kushner, the previous week.TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump lawyer discussed plans to block Biden victory, emails reveal

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      Trump lawyer discussed plans to block Biden victory, emails revealJanuary 6 panel receives 101 emails belonging John Eastman, concerning plans to obstruct certification of 2020 election result The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol has received a cache of emails belonging to Donald Trump’s lawyer, John Eastman, federal court documents filed on Tuesday show.The 101 emails were released to the committee after Judge David Carter ruled in federal court in California last week that Eastman, a hard-right supporter of the former US president, had not made a sufficient claim to attorney-client privilege.The cache of documents, sent between 4 and 7 January 2021, contains extensive communications between Eastman and others about plans to obstruct the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.These included proposed efforts to push Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, to reject or delay counting electoral college votes and weaponizing false allegations of voter fraud in numerous state lawsuits.In one email, which includes a draft memo for Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, recommending Pence reject some states’ electors during the 6 January congressional meeting, Carter ruled for disclosure as the communications were being used to plan criminal activity.“The draft memo pushed a strategy that knowingly violated the Electoral Count Act, and Dr Eastman’s later memos closely track its analysis and proposal,” the ruling says. “The memo is both intimately related to and clearly advanced the plan to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.”Neither Trump nor Eastman have been charged with crimes relating to 6 January and the order on Eastman’s emails was made in civil court.Others references to emails in the judge’s ruling allude to other plans Eastman was involved in.“In a different email thread,” Carter writes, “Dr Eastman and a colleague consider how to use a state court ruling to justify Vice-President Pence enacting the plan. In another email, a colleague focuses on the ‘plan of action’ after the January 6 attacks, not mentioning future litigation.”The sprawling select committee investigation, chaired by the Democratic congressman Bennie Thompson from Mississippi, has interviewed more than 800 people as part of its investigation into the events on January 6.On Tuesday, Thompson confirmed that Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter, had appeared before the committee, marking the first time a member of the immediate Trump family had appeared.Reports indicated her testimony lasted about eight hours. The testimony followed an appearance before the committee by her husband, Jared Kushner, the previous week.TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Fourth House Republican who voted to impeach Trump announces retirement

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      Fourth House Republican who voted to impeach Trump announces retirement Ex-president issues mocking statement after Congressman Fred Upton of Michigan says he will not stand in midterms The Michigan congressman Fred Upton has become the fourth of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump over the Capitol attack to announce his retirement in November.The others are Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a member of the January 6 committee, Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio and John Katko of New York. The retirements are seen as further boosting Trump’s power and influence with Republicans.Republicans who let Trump ‘bully’ party will seal midterms defeat, GOP senator saysRead moreUnderscoring his control of the party, Trump issued a brief but celebratory statement, saying: “UPTON QUITS! Four down and six to go. Others losing badly, who’s next?”Liz Cheney of Wyoming, another member of the January 6 committee, is among the six remaining Republicans who voted to impeach and now face Trump-backed challengers.Upton made his announcement on the House floor. He did not refer to his impeachment vote.He said: “I work daily on all things Michigan, particularly with Debbie Dingell [a Democrat], and we’ve been hitting the road to push for civility.“Hopefully civility and bipartisanship versus discord can rule not rue the day.”Upton, whose close relationship with Joe Biden caused Biden a headache during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, also said he had “worked with seven administrations, seven House speakers, none of them would call me a rubber stamp.“If it’s good policy for Michigan, it’s good enough for all of us. As the vice-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, we have pushed the envelope to get things done.”Upton did mention Trump in reference to his vote last year for Biden’s “real, honest-to-goodness infrastructure bill which passed 69 to 30 in the Senate but then hit the rocks here in the House, barely surviving Trump’s opposition despite his call for a proposal twice as expensive with no pay-fors”.Upton’s support for the bill earned him death threats. In one message, which he shared, a man called him a “fucking piece of shit traitor” and said: “I hope you die. I hope everybody in your fucking family dies.”Parties that hold the White House often suffer in the first midterms after a presidential election. Republicans are favoured to take the House this year.Had Upton run for re-election, redistricting would have forced him to face off with another Republican congressman, Bill Huizenga, who has Trump’s endorsement.On Monday, Upton told NBC Trump was “a little bit on the scorched earth path”.Asked what message he would send Trump if he beat Huizenga, he said: “Well, it’s that he’s not as strong as he might have thought that he was.“But … if we run, we’re gonna run our own race. I’m not changing my votes. I don’t cast political votes. I’m not afraid to vote for or against my party when I think they’re right or wrong. Some of the folks here are so beholden to Trump that they don’t accept those of us that are willing to stand up.”He also reiterated his support for investigations of the Capitol attack and said: “If we’re going to be in the majority, we have to appeal to more than just the Trump [supporters]. They’re not a majority in the country. They may be a majority within our party, but not particularly in the midwest.“They are not a majority among all voters, and that’s why you’ve got to have the appeal that can reach across just that … hardcore party base that really is unforgiving.”The next day, however, he decided not to run.Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the Republican whip, told reporters: “This was a decision [Upton] had to make looking at the dynamics of a member-on-member race.”Gonzalez, a former NFL player who nonetheless declined to face his own challenge, said he would step down last September. As he did so, he cited “toxic dynamics” inside the Republican party.TopicsRepublicansHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsMichiganDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      These Days, ‘Help Wanted’ Has So Many Meanings

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      Gail Collins: Bret, let’s relax and talk about long-term goals that we totally do not share. For instance, how would you feel about raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour?Bret Stephens: Why not raise the standard of living for everyone by making the minimum wage $100? Just kidding. I think the correct figure is $0.Gail: If your goal is a self-supporting populace that doesn’t depend on government aid, you’ve got to make sure employers are shelling out at least minimal survival salaries. The current bottom line is $7.25 an hour. Nobody can live on that.Bret: I’m taking my $0 cue from a famous Times editorial from 1987, which made the case that “those at greatest risk from a higher minimum wage would be young, poor workers, who already face formidable barriers to getting and keeping jobs.” The editorial may be old but the economic logic is right. Raising the minimum wage is a well-intentioned idea that won’t help its intended beneficiaries. It will hurt them by giving companies like McDonald’s additional incentives to move toward even more automation.Tell me why I’m wrong.Gail: Well, I could quote an editorial from 2020 that said raising the minimum wage “ought to be a priority of economic policymakers ….”And you know, I was once the Times Opinion editor, and the editorial page does evolve in its outlook. Back when the Civil Rights Act passed in the 1960s, our editorial writers made fun of the idea of applying it to gender employment discrimination, theorizing that federal enforcers “may find it would have been better if Congress had just abolished sex itself” and warning it could lead to male Bunnies at the Playboy clubs.Bret: I’m sure we agree that The Times has been wrong about many things in the past — and might even be wrong about a thing or two in the present. I’m still not seeing how the economics have changed since the 1980s.Gail: A higher minimum wage might cause some employers to reduce the number of jobs, at least temporarily. But the danger there is always way overplayed, and those higher-paid minimum wage workers will be spending their new money to lift the economy.Bret: We are living through a period of deep labor shortages, especially in service industries, that allows workers to bargain for higher wages. That makes raising the minimum wage a faulty solution to a fading problem. But I see your point, and this is one of those issues on which conservatives and liberals will argue forever — or at least until automation and robots make it moot.Gail: Meanwhile, on a totally completely different subject, last week we missed the chance to converse about The Slap. Any lingering thoughts about Will Smith hitting Chris Rock at the Oscars?Bret: The truly nauseating part was the standing ovation Smith got for his interminable, self-pitying acceptance speech after hitting Rock. It’s a good reminder of why the American romance with Hollywood is coming to an end, as our colleague Ross Douthat reminded us recently. The best thing the Oscars could do now is to cancel itself.Gail: I have to confess, my husband and I are really into the Oscars. Not the program, which I acknowledge is frequently dreadful. But all the run-up publicity encourages us to catch some fine movies in the more obscure categories like foreign films. I’ll bet you haven’t seen “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom.”Bret: Should I? The only movie I’ve seen in ages is “King Richard,” which, I have to admit, I liked.Gail: I truly hated Will Smith’s performance in “King Richard.”Bret: Really?Gail: Really, from the start. Don’t know why he turned me off, but acting-wise, I’d go with the yak from Lunana every time.As to The Slap, one of the many things that ticked me off was the whole gender aspect. If a female comedian made fun of an actor’s hair loss, would anybody expect his wife to come storming up and slug the offender? No, in part because a guy going semi-bald is regarded as normal. In part because physical violence is still sort of accepted for men.Bret: If the other Rock, Dwayne Johnson, had made the same joke in Chris Rock’s place, it would have been interesting to watch Smith try to slap him.Gail: Chris Rock’s joke was in bad taste the way a lot of the jokes you hear in public performances are in bad taste. It’s presumed that some people’s feelings may get hurt. Someday I’m going to make a list of all the age-related laugh lines comics in their 40s make about people who are older.Bret: Speaking of tasteless jokes, how about Madison Cawthorn?Gail: You mean the part when the young congressman from North Carolina claimed Washington was a wild place where people he admired invited him to orgies and snorted cocaine? I want to say right off the bat that Cawthorn’s behavior should not be a blot on the reputation of 26-year-olds in general.Bret: To fall afoul of House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, as Cawthorn did, is like having George Carlin rebuke you for an excessively foul mouth.Gail: Cawthorn’s Republican colleagues in the House sure are ready to dump him, but Donald Trump seems to still be in his corner.Sort of amazing how consistent our former president is in gravitating to the worst politicians imaginable.Bret: If by some miracle Democrats hang on to one or both houses of Congress this November, it will be because of Cawthorn, Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and other would-be G.O.P. candidates trying to be just like them — the Radioactive Republicans. Trump’s embrace of these characters diminishes his chances of being renominated in 2024.In that respect, my money is on Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, winning the Republican nomination and facing the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, in the general, with Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado as their respective running mates. Placing any bets of your own?Gail: Impressed by your long-range thinking. If for some reason Trump doesn’t run again — which I can’t really imagine — DeSantis certainly has positioned himself to be next in line. By being as loathsome as possible. I find him completely appalling, but you’re mainly opposed to him as a Trump backer, right? How would you rate him as governor?Bret: I’m no fan of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. But Democrats underestimate DeSantis at their peril. Florida is hopping, Miami feels like the hottest destination in the country and, barring some scandal or mishandled crisis, DeSantis is going to crush his most likely Democratic opponent, Charlie Crist, in his race for re-election this fall. He also has a genius for baiting liberals and the media and he’s figured out a way to triangulate between the evangelical, business and Trumpian wings of the Republican Party.Long and short of it: If Biden doesn’t dramatically turn his presidency around to boost the Democratic brand and Trump doesn’t torpedo DeSantis’s candidacy out of spite — two big ifs, I’ll admit — DeSantis is going to be awfully hard to defeat in a general election. How would you propose to beat him?Gail: As far as his current re-election race in Florida goes, this is one of those contests where the impartial experts, asked to comment on the opposition’s chances, say things like “There’s always hope.” Don’t think I’m going to invest any energy in dreaming of a DeSantis defeat this year. But definitely going to keep watching him warily on the national level. I’m kinda fascinated that right now he’s at war with Disney over the Magic Kingdom’s defense of gay rights. Who’d have thought?Bret: Strange to say this, but one of the few things Trump did to the G.O.P. that I liked was try to push it to embrace gay rights. So much for that.The larger question here is how far private companies like Disney should go to take politically divisive positions, especially when corporate executives are dealing with a more politically active work force. My general sense is that it’s a bad idea for them to do so — but an even worse idea for politicians to punish them for essentially making business decisions. If people are offended by Disney’s stances, they’re free to skip Disney World.Gail: Florida aside, it’s gonna be a heck of an election year. One of my own fascination points is Ohio, my old home state, where there seem to be more Republicans running for the Senate than squirrels in Central Park. Recently one of them tweeted that when it comes to Ukraine, “We’ve got our own problems.”Bret: You’re referring to J.D. Vance of “Hillbilly Elegy” fame, whose political views seem to spin about as fast as the revolving doors at Macy’s. The last time I saw him, right before the election in 2016, we were on Fareed Zakaria’s show agreeing that Donald Trump should lose. One of us stuck to his guns.Gail: Any contest you’re focused on at the moment? If you want a break until the end of March Madness, I would totally understand …Bret: The only contest that really matters to me right now is the one between Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin, between democracy and darkness. On this, I’m happy that you and I and most Americans are on the same page — whatever people like Vance, Tucker Carlson and the rest of the mental wet-burp gang happen to think.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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      Sarah Palin Announces She’s Running for Congress in Alaska

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      Ms. Palin released a statement on Friday that she was entering the race to replace Representative Don Young, who died last month.Sarah Palin, a former Alaska governor and the Republican nominee for vice president in 2008, said Friday that she was entering the race for Alaska’s lone congressional seat, marking her return to national politics after she helped revive the anti-establishment rhetoric that has come to define the Republican Party.She will be joining a crowded field of nearly 40 candidates to fill the House seat left vacant by Representative Don Young, whose unexpected death last month has spurred one of the largest political shifts in the state in 50 years.Ms. Palin said in a statement that she planned to honor Mr. Young’s legacy, while painting a dystopian picture of a nation in crisis and criticizing the “radical left,” high gas prices, inflation and illegal immigration.“America is at a tipping point,” she said in the statement. “As I’ve watched the far left destroy the country, I knew I had to step up and join the fight.”Ms. Palin has suggested launching various campaigns for elected office several times in the years since August 2008, when Senator John McCain plucked her from obscurity and named her as his running mate on the Republican presidential ticket.But after a long hiatus from political life, Ms. Palin had hinted in recent weeks that she was more serious than she had been in the past about running for office again. In a recent appearance on Fox News with Sean Hannity, Ms. Palin said, “There is a time and a season for everything.”And she invoked former President Donald J. Trump as an inspiration. The two had shared a stage in 2016 when she endorsed him for president. “We need people like Donald Trump, who has nothing to lose. Like me,” she said.On the conservative cable network Newsmax, she did not rule out the possibility of running for Mr. Young’s seat last week, saying that she would consider it an honor. “If I were asked to serve in the House and take his place, I would be humbled and honored,” Ms. Palin told the network. “In a heartbeat, I would.”In her statement on Friday, Ms. Palin pointed to her legacy of service in Alaska, where she was first elected to the City Council in Wasilla three decades ago. She said she still lives in Wasilla and said her loyalty would remain with the state even if she was sent to Washington.Echoing the red-meat politics that have energized Republican voters, she said the nation needed leaders who would “combat the left’s socialist, big-government, America-last agenda.”Her decision to enter the race came as she has received national attention for suing The New York Times for libel.Ms. Palin claimed that The Times defamed her when it published a 2017 editorial erroneously linking her political rhetoric to a mass shooting. A jury threw out the suit, a day after the federal judge in the case indicated he would dismiss the claims if the jury ruled in her favor because her legal team had failed to meet the high legal standards for public figures who claim defamation. The Times, which acknowledged and corrected the error in question soon after it was published, has not lost a libel case in an American courtroom in at least 50 years.Mr. Young, 88, who was the longest-serving Republican in Congress and who was first elected in 1973, died on March 18. The scramble among potential candidates to fill his unexpired term started almost immediately. Friday was the deadline to file official paperwork, and the Alaska Division of Elections had received submissions from 37 candidates by Friday afternoon.A special election will be held on June 11. The top four candidates who get the most votes move ahead to the special general election on Aug. 16. The state will be using a unique “top four” system for the first time. The regular open primary for Mr. Young’s seat and the special general election are being held on the same day, a move that might lead to confusion.Ms. Palin will face a host of both far-right and establishment Republican rivals, including Nick Begich III, the Republican scion of Alaskan political royalty; State Senator Joshua Revak, an Iraq war veteran who previously worked for Mr. Young; and Tara Sweeney, who served in the Trump administration as assistant secretary of the interior for Indian affairs.“She certainly has a constituency,” Art Hackney, a consultant on Mr. Revak’s campaign, said of Ms. Palin, adding that “whoever wants to file” will have to “bring it on” to defeat Mr. Revak.Ms. Palin will also have some formidable progressive challengers, including Al Gross, a former orthopedic surgeon who ran unsuccessfully for Senate in 2020 and is running as an independent, and Christopher Constant, an openly gay Democrat who is a member of the Anchorage Assembly.Ms. Palin, who became one of only three women to run on a major party’s presidential ticket, had declined to seek the presidency in 2012, when several of the activists who would help Mr. Trump get elected tried to convince her to run against former President Barack Obama.Lately, she has been back on Fox News, which once employed her as a contributor for $1 million a year, laying the groundwork for her campaign. 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      Democratic Hopes and Anxiety Rise Over the Jan. 6 Panel

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      As the congressional committee investigating the Capitol riot races to conclude its work, the political stakes are increasing along with the legal expectations.It’s one of the X factors that could, in theory, alter the contours of this year’s midterm elections: What does the Jan. 6 committee have in its pocket?The bipartisan House investigation of the assault on the U.S. Capitol is “entering a critical stage,” as the panel’s vice chair, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, put it this week — and it is kicking up a lot of dust along the way.On Monday, the committee voted to recommend that two onetime aides to former President Donald Trump, Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino, be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with congressional subpoenas. Also Monday, a federal judge wrote that it was “more likely than not” that Trump had broken the law by trying to disrupt a joint session of Congress and conspiring to defraud the United States.Investigators have identified a nearly eight-hour gap in Trump’s call logs from Jan. 6 and are discussing whether to demand the former president’s mobile phone records. They’re also looking into whether a Trump tweet from December 2020, in which he invited his supporters to swarm Washington on Jan. 6, constituted incitement. Lawmakers on the panel are constantly weighing the value of trying to gather additional information against the danger that the former president and his allies will bog them down in time-consuming litigation.“We’re playing beat-the-clock here against Trump’s inner coterie,” Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, told reporters this week.The Justice Department’s own inquiries are proceeding in parallel, and a grand jury has convened in Washington to investigate the planning of the pre-riot rallies. But that work is shrouded in mystery, and pressure is growing on Attorney General Merrick Garland to produce results. Federal law enforcement officials have arrested more than 775 people suspected of involvement in the Capitol riot, but they have yet to charge any member of Trump’s inner circle with a crime.As a political matter, Democrats hope the committee’s work will highlight what they say is the extremism of House Republicans, anchoring them to Trump. And though voters are currently preoccupied with inflation and the war in Ukraine, Democrats expect that a series of upcoming public hearings and reports about Jan. 6 will put Republicans’ anti-democratic behavior on display for the American people to judge.“It’s going to be an enormous exclamation point on the fact that House Republicans are dangerous,” said Simon Rosenberg, the president of NDN, a center-left think tank.Republican Party leaders counter that the panel is seeking to criminalize “legitimate political discourse,” and have censured its two Republican members for their involvement in the Jan. 6 inquiry. This week, a lobbyist close to Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, took the extraordinary step of hosting a fund-raising event for Cheney’s primary opponent, and more than 50 House Republicans attended the gathering.But, ultimately, the Jan. 6 committee will be judged by whether Americans view its findings as authoritative, fair and comprehensible, said Garrett Graff, the author of a new history of the Watergate scandal. Recalling the disappointment many Democrats felt upon the unveiling of Robert Mueller’s spare, legalistic account of the dealings between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia, Graff said it was important for lawmakers to grab the public’s attention with a compelling narrative of the Jan. 6 events.“Congress can assign moral blame and moral responsibility in a way that Mueller couldn’t and Garland can’t,” Graff said. “I think it’s possible that the Jan. 6 committee can surprise us.”Members of the Jan. 6 committee have treaded carefully in trying to interview Trump allies.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesWhere will the investigation go next?To try to make some sense of it all, we spoke with Luke Broadwater, a congressional reporter for The Times who has been covering the investigation for months. Our conversation, edited lightly for length and clarity:There’s been a constant dribble of news about the House investigation. Where would you say the inquiry stands? Is it in the final stages?I would say it’s in the third quarter, to use a sports metaphor. The committee has interviewed 800 witnesses, which is a ton, but there are probably at least 100 more people they’d like to talk to and some witnesses they want to re-interview.And the people they haven’t met with include some of the most important: Mike Pence, Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph Giuliani and Ivanka Trump.The committee is still shooting for public hearings in May, though I would not be surprised if those get pushed back again.You wrote this week about the hourslong gap in the records of Trump’s phone calls on the day of Jan. 6. Why are investigators so interested in that?The committee is highly interested in Trump’s activities the day of the Capitol riot, especially what he was doing for the 187 minutes during which he delayed making any statement to call off the violence. The committee has argued that his lack of action makes him culpable for the violence and sheds light into his mind-set.But the call logs are blank for the duration of the riot, so that presents a challenge for investigators as they try to determine exactly whom Trump was talking to during that pivotal time.This week, the panel heard from Jared Kushner, the former president’s son-in-law. What’s the holdup with the others you mentioned: Pence, Giuliani and Ivanka Trump?Each case is different, but each witness has been engaged in negotiations with the committee. Two of Pence’s top aides have already testified, causing his team to argue, according to what I’m told, that they have supplied the committee with plenty of testimony that alleviates the need for the former vice president to appear. Giuliani has made clear that he does not intend to provide information against Trump, but he is considering providing information about his dealings with members of Congress, according to a person familiar with the negotiations. Ivanka Trump is also negotiating. Each of these is a sensitive dance, in which the committee wants to get information out of the witness without threatening him or her in a way that could lead to a contempt of Congress charge but no information.Our colleagues wrote that Attorney General Merrick Garland is under “growing political pressure” to move more aggressively with the Justice Department’s criminal inquiry. Is that a complaint you hear from House members, too?Yes, constantly — particularly with regard to the criminal contempt of Congress referral against Mark Meadows, Trump’s final chief of staff. Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, has encouraged Garland to move “with alacrity” against Meadows. And Representative Elaine Luria, Democrat of Virginia, made this statement this week: “Attorney General Garland, do your job so that we can do ours.”That said, there are signs the Justice Department investigation has entered a new phase. A grand jury in Washington has recently issued subpoenas (one of which we were able to review) that seek information about people “classified as V.I.P. attendees” at Trump’s Jan. 6 rally and about members of the executive and legislative branches who were involved in the “planning or execution” of any attempt to delay the certification of the 2020 election.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 4Justice Department widens inquiry. More