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      10 Republicans on President Trump’s Sway in Georgia, Ohio and Pennsylvania

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      The nostalgia was powerful, and came with a twist.In the latest Times Opinion focus group, 10 Republican voters in swing states wished for an America before 8 percent inflation, before high gas prices, before the Ukraine war. Wished for a leader they saw as strong, commanding, feared. Wished for a party that, in the words of one, “put America first again.”They wished, in other words, for a return of President Donald Trump.But here’s the twist: When asked if they felt it was extremely important to vote for someone this year who embraces Mr. Trump’s agenda, eight of the 10 Republicans raised their hands. A few seconds later, when asked if it was extremely important to vote for someone who has the same style and personality as Mr. Trump, no one raised a hand.Throughout the 90-minute discussion with these Republicans, from Georgia, Ohio and Pennsylvania — three states with big primaries for Senate and governor this month — Mr. Trump’s record looked only better to them in hindsight, especially without the distraction of his “mean tweets” or personal manner. One Georgia Republican who didn’t vote for Mr. Trump in 2020 even said he’d consider supporting the former president if he ran again in 2024. “I don’t like what I’m seeing, as far as the direction that the country is headed,” this Republican said.As for the influence of Mr. Trump’s endorsements in party primaries this month, it was most potent when voters didn’t already have strong attachments to candidates, as our focus group moderator, Kristen Soltis Anderson, noted. The Ohio and Pennsylvania Republicans were mostly taking their cues from Mr. Trump in their Senate primaries; by contrast, the Georgia Republicans were more inclined to buck Mr. Trump and stick with their incumbent Republican governor, Brian Kemp, whom the former president is trying to oust in next week’s primary.This is the 10th group in our series America in Focus, which seeks to hear and understand the views of cross-sections of Americans whose voices are often not heard in opinion journalism. We conducted the discussion with Ms. Anderson, who does similar work for political candidates, parties and special interest groups. (Times Opinion paid her for the work.) This transcript has been edited for length and clarity; an audio recording and a video clip of the session are also included. Participants provided their biographical details.Kristen Soltis Anderson: If you had to pick a word or phrase for what matters most to you in the upcoming elections, what would it be?Jennifer (38, white, Georgia): Inflation and gas prices. We have an R.V. that takes diesel, so it’s been really hurting at the gas pump.Raquel (29, Hispanic, Pennsylvania): Inflation. Education for our children. Just teach them math, science and reading, and we’ll do the rest at home.Kim (58, white, Ohio): Inflation and border control.Justin (38, white, Ohio): The economy.Kristen (49, white, Pennsylvania): Economy.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I want to ask you about leaders you admire. Who is an American leader during your lifetime who you admired?Robert (60, white, Ohio): Ronald Reagan. He brought about a good feeling in America after we had been through a complete disaster with Jimmy Carter. Carter’s a wonderful guy, but it was just a disaster for four years. With Reagan, it came back — the flag waving, the patriotism. People feared us once again.Brandon (32, Black, Georgia): Andrew Yang. He has an eye towards the future with A.I. and robots taking all the jobs.Kimberly (38, white, Georgia): I know Donald Trump’s pretty controversial. But I’ll take mean tweets all day when I can afford my groceries and my gas for my kids and my family.Jennifer: George W. Bush. When 9/11 happened, I was a senior in high school. He kind of brought the country back together. And I just think he’s an overall pretty cool guy, nice family man, just very respectable.10 Republican Voters in Swing States on Trump’s Hold on the PartyKristen Soltis Anderson: My next question pivots to things that you’re looking for in candidates. When you’re trying to decide what candidate to vote for, what are the characteristics, qualities, viewpoints you are most looking for?Sanjeev (48, Asian, Georgia): Transparency. And I’m getting sick and tired of these politicians who’ve been in office 40, 50 years who don’t seem like they’re doing anything.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I saw a lot of heads nod when you said that. Raquel?Raquel: Honesty. And I watched the Senate debate for Pennsylvania’s election and saw a lot of the candidates throwing shade at each other instead of really speaking up about you. Tell me what you’re going to do.Justin: I’m looking for someone more moderate, someone that’s willing to work with both sides.Robert: Somebody honest. Trustworthy. It would be nice to have somebody that isn’t a millionaire already and understands what it’s like to have to pick, scrape, somebody who understands what it’s really like to not be able to go out and buy exactly what you want when you want it. And somebody strong, who walks into the room and commands it.Casey (52, white, Pennsylvania): I just wish younger and stronger people would get involved and start accepting new ideas and collaborate with each other instead of bickering back and forth. Compromise. Get to the point and get it done. Keep America living.Patrick Healy: So all of you are voting in the Republican primary elections in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Georgia. How confident are you that the votes in the Republican primaries will be counted fairly and accurately? Raise your hand if you are confident in that.[Six raise their hands.]Patrick Healy: And how many are not confident? We’ve got Kristen and Raquel. Raquel, what’s your concern there?Raquel: With the last presidential election, I feel like there were a lot of things that happened that haven’t been brought to light just yet. I just moved to Pennsylvania from Florida, so I’m not sure what the laws are here. But we should have to bring your ID, to vote in person, because through the mail, I feel like that’s kind of iffy.Patrick Healy: Kristen, what would make you feel more confident that votes were being counted fairly and accurately?Kristen: I don’t know. I mean, I think up until the last election with Trump, I felt confident in elections. And I think the mail voting definitely had a big issue. That’s a big reason for my feelings that it’s not really secure.Kristen Soltis Anderson: All right. So, early this month there was a primary in Ohio. I want to focus on the Senate race. Who did you choose and why?Robert: I ended up voting for J.D. Vance. I was not going to. I really liked what Mike Gibbons had to say. But I ended up going with J.D. Vance primarily because President Trump endorsed him. I trust a lot of the things President Trump did. I thought, “If this man endorses J.D. Vance, even after he stood publicly and said he was a No Trumper and a Never Trumper and he couldn’t stand him, there’s got to be something there.”Kim: I also chose J.D. Vance. And it was because of President Trump.Justin: I did research. I chose Matt Dolan. He was more moderate. I voted for Trump the last two times. As a person, I don’t like him, but I do like more what he did for the economy. I want someone more moderate in office. I’m tired of extremes both ways.Kristen Soltis Anderson: In Georgia, your primary is coming up May 24. The big race is between Brian Kemp, the incumbent governor, and a variety of challengers. President Trump has had some criticisms of Governor Kemp, and he has endorsed one of the challengers, David Perdue. For those who plan to vote for Brian Kemp, tell me why.Kimberly: I did vote for him the last time, and I will vote for him again. I think he’s done a great job handling Georgia through Covid. He’s done a great job with our economy. I hate that our primary is going to be split probably between him and Perdue. I think that’s just going to hurt us in the long run. But we’ll see what happens.Brandon: Well I voted for Kemp last time. And I felt like he kept most of his campaign promises. And he didn’t let Trump bully him. He’s going to get my vote again for that reason.Sanjeev: It’s going to come down to Kemp and Perdue, but I don’t know yet. I’m going to have to think about it a lot more and do some research.Kristen Soltis Anderson: OK. Kimberly, when you mentioned the primary being really divided, tell me a little bit more about what you mean by that.Kimberly: I’m a Trump supporter. I voted for him. I like generally what he does. But I think sometimes he takes things to the extreme and sometimes he needs to just butt out of the states’ elections. I know that he’s a big Perdue fan, but I really do think that Kemp did a great job with our economy. He did not get bullied by Trump. Or he did, but he didn’t give in to him.Patrick Healy: President Trump did ask Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Raffensperger for help after the 2020 election. Kimberly, you’re a Trump supporter. How sympathetic were you to Trump in regard to asking for help from Kemp and others? Or did you think he was crossing a line?Kimberly: I think when he initially reached out, he wasn’t crossing a line. I do think as time went on and he took it more on a personal level, the name calling he does — I just want to roll my eyes. Golly, man, chill. I mean, I am a supporter of him, but let’s be honest, anybody that’s his supporter has rolled their eyes at him a time or two as well.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I had you down as a Perdue voter, Jennifer.Jennifer: Yeah. I wasn’t really sure. But the more I think about it, I’m probably going to go back with Kemp again. I voted for him to begin with. I think he’s done a pretty good job. I wasn’t a huge fan of how he handled a lot of the Covid stuff, but —Kristen Soltis Anderson: In what way?Jennifer: I understand you need to get businesses going. But I mean, there was still just a huge pandemic going. And I have family members that are immunocompromised, and it’s just like, are you really thinking about the health of others?Kristen Soltis Anderson: Pennsylvania has a Senate primary race on Tuesday. Former President Trump has endorsed Dr. Mehmet Oz. Who are you leaning towards at the moment?Kristen: I’m leaning towards Dr. Oz just because Trump endorses him. I voted for Trump twice. I don’t like him as a person, but I did like what he did when he was in office.Raquel: I’m going to vote for Kathy Barnette. She is pro-life, and that’s really important to me. That’s one of my No. 1 issues as to why I would vote for somebody. And she comes across as just the most genuine person. She’s a byproduct of rape. Her mom decided to keep her at a very young age. And it goes to show you can do it. You know what I mean? So I think it’s amazing.Casey: I’m leaning towards Oz because Trump’s backing him up.Patrick Healy: Kristen and Casey, do you think, if President Trump hadn’t endorsed Dr. Oz, that you would definitely still be voting for him?Kristen: I’m not sure. I mean, I like him on TV.Casey: I’d probably be open to more candidates.Patrick Healy: I’d love to see a show of hands of those of you who say it’s extremely important that a candidate do the following things. Raise your hand if it’s extremely important that a candidate show that they can work in a bipartisan way with Democrats.[Two raise their hands.]Patrick Healy: Next one is fight against the media — who says that’s an extremely important thing for a candidate to do?[One raises a hand.]Patrick Healy: Win over swing voters?[Five raise their hands.]Patrick Healy: Push to overturn Roe v. Wade?[Five raise their hands.]Patrick Healy: Support the same sort of agenda as Donald Trump?[Eight raise their hands.]Have the same style and personality as Donald Trump?[No one raises a hand.]Kim: I have something to say.Patrick Healy: Please.Kim: I want a strong person that is not going to take any crap. And sometimes you have to be blunt. You just have to because you have to stand up against whatever that’s not right. So I’m kind of like halfway hand for what you asked. I just wanted to explain why.Patrick Healy: Is there a candidate running who embodies Donald Trump’s agenda but not his personality?Kimberly: So Herschel Walker is running on the Republican ticket for Senate in Georgia. I think he follows really closely with Trump’s agenda. I haven’t seen the personality as much.Patrick Healy: To go back to those who said that it’s extremely important to you that the candidate support turning over Roe v. Wade, let’s talk about that.Raquel: I think life begins at conception. I used to get picked on at school, when we had debates in class, I was the odd one out for being pro-life. Even in college I used to get called names. I’m not going to repeat them, but it was really crazy how an ethics class — I’m the odd one out. So I think it’s time to stand strong in your belief. And if I’m pro-life, then that’s 100 percent.Patrick Healy: Is there anyone who has concerns about overturning Roe v. Wade?Justin: Personally I am pro-choice. And with that leak, it almost makes me want to, when the primaries come around, vote Democratic. I mean, I think it’s almost crazy that they’re going to overturn something that has been law for that long. It’s not my body. I have a mom, three sisters. I’m just pro-choice.Brandon: In my younger years, I was more pro-choice. But as I’ve gotten older, I’m more pro-life. I think it’s going to be one of those things that generations from now, you’re going to look back and it’s going to be one of those things that you can’t believe was ever legal.Kimberly: Since I was old enough to vote, a candidate’s stance on abortion has been a reason I will or will not vote for a candidate. So I’m very much pro-life. And I think that it will go back to the states, like it should.Patrick Healy: Kimberly, is that what you want to see — each state decides? Or would you ultimately like to see a national ban for all states on abortion?Kimberly: That’s a very slippery slope question. Because if I say I want there to be a ban on abortion for the entire United States, then if the Democrats have something that they want to ban, that would affect me. I choose to live in what until recently has been a very conservative state. I’m not moving to California because I know what goes on in California and I know their laws. I don’t want to be there. So I don’t want to say, “Well, they can’t have abortions in California.” Religiously, it’s a conviction of mine. I’m 100 percent pro-life. But I don’t want to say I would want to see a national ban, because it goes both ways: If we want to ban something, then we have to be OK when they want to ban something.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I want to bring the conversation back to Donald Trump. Show of hands — how many of you think it’s good that Donald Trump is making a lot of endorsements in different races right now?[Four raise their hands.]Robert: I think he’s looking for people that will support his agenda. And he knows that he is extremely popular in x number of states, Ohio being one of them. And I think J.D. Vance, he came from way behind and ended up winning. And he won pretty handily. And there’s only one thing I can attribute to it. I didn’t know Vance. I never read his book. But I thought, well, President Trump doesn’t usually put his name on anything that’s a losing battle.Kristen: All right.Robert: Trump said way back in 2016, you’re going to get tired of winning, winning, winning. We really did win, win, win with a lot of things. And I just can’t think of anything except to attribute it to him and his policies. And I’m thinking if we can just clone or mirror some of the things he did, just bit by bit, piece by piece in some of the states, maybe we can get back on the road to recovery and abolish some of this craziness, like a war on fossil fuels in Ohio.Kristen Soltis Anderson: There’s a presidential election on the horizon. A show of hands — how many of you would say Donald Trump should run for president in 2024?[Eight raise their hands.]Sanjeev: I liked his first term. Not everything he did, but for the most part, I liked him, so I’d like to vote for him again. He’s got that business world perspective that he brings.Kristen: I think people can see the difference now that he’s not in office and what’s going on. I think when he was in office, people were more focused on him not being very presidential. Now that he’s not in office and we see what is happening, you can see what he did. It’s clearer now.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I want to ask a slightly different question. If Donald Trump runs for president again and there are other Republicans who are also running for president, how many of you think you would probably choose Donald Trump over other Republicans in a primary race?[Seven raise their hands.]Kristen Soltis Anderson: It’s most of the same hands.Raquel: That’s a tough one because I am really hoping that DeSantis says he’s going to run for president. I really like him as a governor. I think it comes down to giving someone new a chance and seeing if they could work, too.Kimberly: You know Trump’s qualified. You know he can do it. Do we want to stick with somebody that we know is going to probably come in and get us back on track and help us, or do we say, “We’re going to give you a chance”? Do we gamble our future here?Justin: So I’m torn on if he should run. But I would definitely vote for him in the primary just because he’s pro-America, he’s more about the economy. I think if he would have won his election again, I don’t think Russia would have probably invaded Ukraine.Patrick Healy: Justin, a quick follow-up. You are interested in moderate politicians. You’re pro-choice. You mentioned some issues with Trump’s style. And yet you are drawn to him.Justin: So if I can explain it, I think he’s more about the economy. And that’s my No. 1 issue is the economy. Yes, I differ with a lot of people with being pro-choice, but the economy is my No. 1 thing.Kim: I would vote for him again. Like someone else said, you can see the difference with when he was president. Biden — it’s like night and day.Patrick Healy: Is there anyone in the group who did not vote for Donald Trump in 2020 but who would consider voting for him if he ran again in 2024?Brandon: Well I voted for a third party in 2020. So I think this time around, I’ve seen the things that are happening. And I don’t like what I’m seeing, as far as the direction that the country is headed. So, yes, I’m going to consider voting for him.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I want to ask about some other folks in the Republican Party who might consider running for president in 2024. I’m going to say a name. If you have heard of this person before, give me one word or phrase that comes to mind when you think about that person. We will start off with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.Jennifer: I just kept hearing his name in regards of Covid and Florida being a hotbed and all that stuff.Sanjeev: The same things that Jennifer just mentioned. He was keeping pretty much everything open, and Covid was having big outbreaks. And so nationally he was getting a lot of negative press.Justin: Same. I remember during Covid he didn’t want to lock down. He wanted the state to stay open.Kimberly: Disney — I think that Disney got into the political field and thought they were going to just go on and say what they wanted to say. And I think it’s potentially going to bite them in the rear because he’s like, “OK, if you want to be political, we’ll be political.”Kristen Soltis Anderson: What do you think of when you think of former vice president Mike Pence?Robert: I think he’s an honest, God-fearing man that probably would do what’s right. Although I don’t know that he’s as firm as Trump, I think he’s an honest man.Kristen: I don’t think he’s as strong as Trump.Kim: I lost a lot of respect. I do like him being a Christian man, but he isn’t strong. He doesn’t have the backbone.Kristen Soltis Anderson: Thoughts about Chris Christie?Kristen: Yeah, don’t like him. I don’t think he’s honest. I think he’s for himself, not for the people, and he’s just a fool.Justin: With Christie and Mike Pence, I think they’re both career politicians. That’s someone that I don’t want in the office. I’d rather a businessman come to the office.Robert: I think he’s a powerful guy. And I think whatever he says, he’s going to do along the lines of Trump.Raquel: I feel like they’re just part of the same old politicians.Kristen Soltis Anderson: What do folks think about Texas Senator Ted Cruz in one word?Raquel: I donated money to him. He’s pro-life. And he’s on Instagram a lot speaking up against a lot of big money people.Justin: The first thing that came to mind was when he flew to Mexico and got caught during Covid. I think he was a hypocrite.Brandon: I think he would be my second choice. I hope that it would be between him and DeSantis.Kristen Soltis Anderson: And would DeSantis be your first choice in that matchup?Brandon: Yes, because DeSantis is a little bit stronger. And I feel like we need to regain our standing in the world.Kristen Soltis Anderson: Jennifer, any of these folks seem appealing to you?Jennifer: I guess the best one out of them would be Pence, I guess. Just because he was from the Trump time. But Cruz, I would say no. A little too religious for me mixing in with politics.Kristen Soltis Anderson: So my last question then to each of you is: If you had to give the Republican Party some advice, what would that advice be?Kimberly: I would say stop cowering to the Democrats all the time. Stand up. You have so many people in this country that support you. And maybe we’re just quieter. The media don’t talk about us. But you have a huge base. So stop cowering down to them and stop being intimidated by them. And if they want to play — I don’t want to say dirty games, but — let’s play the same games they play. Stop saying we’re going to take the high road all the time. No. Give it back to them. Say the truth.Kristen Soltis Anderson: Are there particular things that you think Republicans have cowered over when it comes to —Kimberly: Trump was really one of those people that was like, “I’m not taking anybody’s crap. And I’m going to give it right back to you. Maybe I tweet about you for 15 days and how much you suck. At least I’m tweeting, at least I’m saying something.”Kristen Soltis Anderson: Kristen, what would your advice be to the Republican Party?Kristen: Just get us back on track. Get the economy back on track and just put America first again.Kristen Soltis Anderson: Justin?Justin: The economy, bringing jobs back to America. In Ohio, in Columbus, in New Albany, we’re having that Intel plant come to Ohio. So I’d like to see those kind of things happen.Raquel: I think it would be to stand strong by your beliefs and stand up for yourself. Have a voice. Be mean if you have to be mean but stand true to your beliefs. Don’t cower to others just because you’re in a room with other people that don’t believe in the same thing you do.Kim: I would say Republicans need to unite. If they are united and had the backbone, we would be in a much better place right now.Robert: It’d be, get this economy back to where we’re in the plus side instead of the minus. And let’s get a constitutional amendment on term limits in every elected office in this country. It’s long overdue. I’m tired of seeing both D’s and R’s that are 80 years old standing there, can hardly even say two words together. And they’re supposed to be representing us. That wasn’t intended to be a career job. Serve your community, then go back home and do your thing at home.Brandon: Focus on healing the country, and let’s try to get away from everything being so partisan and so far left and so far right.Casey: Don’t beat around the bush. Just get to the point and stick your ground.Sanjeev: Stop fighting with each other and work together for the party and the greater good.Kristen Soltis Anderson: OK. Jennifer, last one’s to you.Jennifer: I would say definitely put the economy first. And maybe not talk about the social stuff as much and kind of be more moderate. Because a lot of things just seem really far right or really far left and just need a happy medium. We’re missing a happy medium.Patrick Healy is the deputy Opinion editor. Adrian J. Rivera is an editorial assistant in Opinion.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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      Georgia Candidates Try to Outdo One Another on ‘Woke Mob’ in Schools

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      Georgia’s race for governor perfectly captures the degree to which the classroom has become a conservative battleground.On Sunday, the Republican candidates gathered for their third and final debate before the May 24 primary. Some promoted the lie that Donald Trump had won in 2020 and called for tighter election security (another way of articulating a desire to suppress votes). Several railed against Covid mandates (especially masks) and stoked fears of rising crime.There were the obligatory mentions of the “woke mob” and random mentions of George Soros. There was even a reference to “the communist, liberal, leftist agenda of the Green New Deal.” (One candidate suggested that the government was pushing Chinese solar panels on Georgia farmers as part of its “communist” agenda.)But, more than anything else, the supposed indoctrination of children in schools took center stage.I’m not sure that liberals and Democrats fully appreciate the degree to which Republicans are promoting parental rights as a way of wooing back some of the suburban white women who strayed from the party during the Trump years.Democrats wave their list of policies at voters like a self-satisfied child waves their homework. But instead of being met with praise and stickers, they are met by an electorate in which an alarming number frowns on fact and is electrified by emotions — fear, anger and envy.There were five candidates onstage during the debate, and four of the five — including the sitting governor, Brian Kemp, and his chief competitor, former Senator David Perdue — rattled on about classroom indoctrination.As Kemp put it: “We’re going to make sure that we pass a bill this year that our kids aren’t indoctrinated in the classroom. That we protect them from obscene materials and a lot of the other things.”Perdue followed up by going even further: “Right now, the No. 1 thing we can do for our teachers and our parents and most of all our children is to get the woke mob out of our schools in Georgia. I mean, that’s what’s happening right now. We have a war for the minds of our children. When they’re trying to teach first graders about gender choice, that’s the thing that we’ve got to stand up to.”On the debate stage, from left, Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, former Senator David Perdue and Kandiss Taylor.Pool photo by Brynn AndersonAnother candidate, Kandiss Taylor, an educator herself, went further still. “We not only have C.R.T. and S.E.L. and comprehensive sex education teaching transgender perversion to our children,” she said, referring to critical race theory and social-emotional learning, “we also have anti-white racism that has not been addressed by the current administration. It has taken over our schools, and it’s ruining the students. It’s ruining the environment.”S.E.L. is a teaching technique that, research suggests, can boost academic performance. But it is a practice that conservatives view with suspicion, thinking it could abet lessons about race and gender. God forbid children should become more emotionally intelligent. Their empathy might grow, and with it a better understanding of others. In that way, I can understand why it would unnerve oppressors.In her closing comments, Taylor ratcheted up her inflammatory language: “We’re going to ensure that boys aren’t in our girls’ bathrooms and girls aren’t in our boys’ bathrooms, and people aren’t being raped. And we’re going to get rid of kindergarten teachers — men with beards and lipstick and high heels — teaching our children. We’re going to get back to being moral in Georgia.”As a white woman, and mother of three, Taylor is in the demographic that Republicans are trying to attract. But she is also a near-perfect encapsulation of the party’s fringe.During the debate, she chastised Kemp for not contesting the 2020 results in Georgia, saying: “Donald Trump won. He won. We have a fraudulent pedophile in the White House because Governor Kemp failed.” The idea that Satan-worshiping pedophiles are running the country is a central belief of QAnon.The day after the debate, Taylor tweeted a video with a caption that read in part: “I am the ONLY candidate bold enough to stand up to the Luciferian Cabal. Elect me governor of Georgia, and I will bring the Satanic Regime to its knees.”As ominous music plays in the background, she shifts from satanic cabals to human sacrifice, saying: “Back in biblical times, human sacrifice was a form of demonic worship. We’re still doing it, in present day, by killing our unborn. It’s the same demons. It’s the same sacrifice. It’s the same sin. It’s just a different time.”She is endorsed by Mike Lindell, the Trump-supporting MyPillow C.E.O., and L. Lin Wood, the Trump lawyer who spun ludicrous conspiracies about the 2020 election being stolen from Trump.It might be tempting to laugh off people like Taylor as fringe candidates and thinkers, but Republicans have a way of folding those people’s ideas — scrubbed of the originators’ taint — into the mainstream. Even when the messenger is wrong, the party often views the message as right.Maybe the fact that the Supreme Court seems poised to overturn Roe v. Wade will dramatically alter the outcome of this year’s elections, pushing women — including many of the suburban white women Republicans are so desperate to win over — to vote against the Republicans in protest. Maybe.It could affect not only party alignments, but also turnout.But Republicans are more than a year into this parental rights campaign, so I doubt their strategy will be much altered. The question will be whether the oppression of women’s rights will outweigh what the Republicans are pushing: oppression as a parental right.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 and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

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      Georgia Jury to Consider Whether Trump Illegally Interfered in 2020 Election

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      The panel will have up to a year to recommend whether the prosecutor should pursue criminal charges against the former president and his allies.ATLANTA — As the criminal investigation of Donald J. Trump by Manhattan prosecutors appears to be stalling out, the separate investigation into whether the former president and his allies illegally interfered with Georgia’s 2020 election results took a significant step forward on Monday, as 23 people were chosen to serve on a special investigative grand jury.The panel will focus exclusively on “whether there were unlawful attempts to disrupt the administration of the 2020 elections here in Georgia,” Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of the Fulton County Superior Court told 200 potential jurors who had been called to a downtown Atlanta courthouse swarming with law enforcement agents.The ability of the special grand jury to subpoena witnesses and documents will help prosecutors, who have encountered resistance from some potential witnesses who have declined to testify voluntarily. The panel will have up to a year to issue a report advising District Attorney Fani T. Willis on whether to pursue criminal charges.Some legal experts have said the inquiry could be perilous for Mr. Trump, who, in a January 2021 phone call, asked Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” enough votes to put Mr. Trump ahead of his Democratic rival, Joseph R. Biden Jr., in Georgia’s presidential election tally.The seating of the Georgia grand jury comes as a criminal inquiry in Manhattan has come to an apparent standstill. Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, is said to be concerned about the strength of the New York case, which focuses on whether Mr. Trump exaggerated the value of assets in annual financial statements. People close to the investigation have told The New York Times that the inquiry may lose steam if other witnesses do not step up to cooperate.In the Georgia case, a group of legal experts, in an analysis published last year by the Brookings Institution, wrote that the call to Mr. Raffensperger, and other postelection moves by Mr. Trump, put the former president at “substantial risk” of criminal charges in Georgia, including racketeering, election fraud solicitation, intentional interference with performance of election duties and conspiracy to commit election fraud.The investigation is also likely to look at Trump allies who inserted themselves into election administration matters in Georgia, including Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani; Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina; and Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff. The investigation is within the purview of the Fulton County district attorney because many of the actions in question took place in or involved phone calls to officials in Fulton County, which includes the State Capitol building in downtown Atlanta and numerous government offices.In addition to the call with Mr. Raffensperger, Mr. Trump has publicly described how he called Gov. Brian Kemp after the election and asked him to call a special election to “get to the bottom” of “a big election-integrity problem in Georgia.” Mr. Trump also called Chris Carr, the state attorney general, asking him not to oppose a lawsuit challenging the election results in Georgia and other states, and Mr. Raffensperger’s chief investigator, asking her to find “dishonesty” in the election.In January 2021, Mr. Trump asked Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” enough votes to put Mr. Trump ahead in Georgia’s presidential election tally.Audra Melton for The New York TimesThe investigations into such matters were already underway, Judge McBurney said in court on Monday. “But now it’s time for 26 members of our community to participate in that investigation,” he said, referring to the 23 jurors and three alternates.Judge McBurney told potential jurors to announce that they had a potential conflict if they were convinced that a crime had definitely been committed in regard to the 2020 elections — or if they were convinced that no crimes at all had occurred. Roughly 25 said they had such a conflict.The special grand jurors will issue subpoenas, hear testimony and review documents. The meetings will be confidential, and jurors will not be allowed to discuss the proceedings outside of their meetings. But the judge noted that witnesses could speak about the proceedings publicly if they so wished.In January, a majority of the judges in the Fulton County Superior Court system approved Ms. Willis’s request for the special grand jury, allowing it to meet for up to a year beginning May 2. After the panel makes recommendations regarding criminal prosecutions, it will be up to Ms. Willis, a Democrat, to return to a regular grand jury to seek criminal indictments.Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University, said that impaneling the grand jury was a sign that prosecutors had acknowledged the complexity, sensitivity and unique nature of the case. Among other things, Ms. Willis has raised the possibility that Mr. Trump and his allies violated the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO. Like the federal RICO law, which has been used to target the Mafia and other organized crime networks, Georgia’s state racketeering statute is a tool that can be used to go after a broad range of groups that take part in patterns of criminal conduct. Proving that case would require a deep examination of multiple moving parts.Among them, potentially, are a call that Mr. Graham made to Mr. Raffensperger asking whether mail-in votes could be discarded in counties with high rates of questionable ballot signatures; a visit Mr. Meadows made to suburban Atlanta to monitor an election audit there; and postelection appearances that Mr. Giuliani made before state legislative committees in which he asked for an alternative pro-Trump slate of electors to be appointed.“There’s a lot more than just the phone call,” said Mr. Kreis, who added that the case involved areas of the law that were “underdeveloped.”“We don’t have a lot of claims or potential claims that someone violated Georgia law by soliciting election fraud, because you’d have to be pretty crazy to go to the secretary of state’s office to demand a change in vote tabulations,” he said. “These are things so brazen it’s almost beyond belief.”Mr. Trump has other legal challenges to overcome in the wake of his one-term presidency, all of them taking on greater importance given the fact that he appears to be positioning himself to make another presidential run in 2024.The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 7Numerous inquiries. More

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      The fight over voting continues. Here’s the latest.

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      The conflict over sweeping new restrictions on voting, largely confined to statehouses and governors’ desks since 2020, is spilling over into the midterm elections.About two dozen states have tightened laws regulating matters like who is eligible to vote by mail, the placement of drop boxes for absentee ballots and identification requirements. Many of the politicians driving the clampdown can be found on the ballot themselves this year.Here are some of the latest developments.In Pennsylvania, the four leading Republican candidates for governor all said during a debate on Wednesday that they supported the repeal of no-excuse absentee voting in that state.In 2020, about 2.6 million people who were adapting to pandemic life voted by mail in Pennsylvania, more than a third of the total ballots cast. But Republicans, smarting over President Donald J. Trump’s election loss to Joseph R. Biden Jr. and promulgating baseless voter fraud claims, have since sought to curtail voting by mail. A state court in January struck down Pennsylvania’s landmark law expanding absentee voting, a ruling that is the subject of a pending appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court.Lou Barletta, one of the four on the debate stage and a former congressman, asserted that no-excuse absentee voting was conducive to fraud.“Listen, we know dead people have been voting in Pennsylvania all of our lives,” Mr. Barletta said. “Now they don’t even have to leave the cemetery to vote. They can mail in their ballots.”Several states had already conducted elections primarily through mail-in voting before the pandemic, with there being little meaningful evidence of fraud. They include Colorado and Utah, a state controlled by Republicans.Elsewhere in Pennsylvania, officials in Westmoreland County, which includes the suburbs east of Pittsburgh, voted this week to scale back the number of drop boxes used for absentee ballots to just one. The vote was 2-to-1, with Republicans on the Board of Commissioners saying that the reduction from several drop boxes would save money. The lone Democrat said that the change would make it more difficult for people to send in their ballots.In Arizona, two Trump-endorsed Republican candidates — Kari Lake in the governor’s race and Mark Finchem for secretary of state — sued election officials this month to try to stop the use of electronic voting machines in the midterm elections. Helping to underwrite the lawsuit, along with similar efforts in other states, is Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief executive.In Nevada, a push by Republicans to scale back universal mail-in voting while introducing a new voter ID requirement ran into a major setback on Monday when two different judges in Carson City invalidated those efforts.In Georgia, Brian Kemp, the Republican governor, signed a bill on Wednesday empowering the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to pursue criminal inquiries into election fraud, an authority solely held by the secretary of state in the past. More

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      Kemp and Perdue Debate, Looking Back at 2020 and Ahead to Abrams

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      Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia and his Republican primary opponent, former Senator David Perdue, bickered over the previous election — and over who would be more likely to defeat Stacey Abrams in November. ATLANTA — Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia and former Senator David Perdue, a former ally who is challenging him in the Republican primary next month, met in an explosive first debate on Sunday night that was marked by a lengthy rehashing of the 2020 election’s outcome and testy attacks each other’s veracity.During the hourlong exchange, the candidates sparred over their conservative bona fides, a handful of policy issues popular on the right and who would ultimately be the stronger candidate against Stacey Abrams in November.Mr. Perdue, who was defeated in a runoff last year by Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, repeatedly echoed former President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 election had been “stolen and rigged” against the two of them, though multiple ballot recounts confirmed they had lost fair and square. Mr. Perdue, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump to challenge Mr. Kemp in the May 24 primary, assailed Mr. Kemp for refusing to call a special Georgia legislative session to try to overturn the election’s results.Mr. Perdue insisted he would still be a sitting United States senator if Mr. Kemp hadn’t “caved.”But when Mr. Perdue claimed that he had repeatedly asked Mr. Kemp to call such a special session, the governor pushed back forcefully, reminding voters of the many days he and his family had spent on Mr. Perdue’s campaign bus, trying in vain to help him win a second term. “Folks, he never asked me,” Mr. Kemp said. And when Mr. Perdue repeatedly accused the governor of lying, Mr. Kemp challenged him to produce witnesses to back up his claims.Each man portrayed the other unfavorably in light of 2020: Mr. Perdue said Mr. Kemp had betrayed Republican voters by failing to overturn the election, and Mr. Kemp pointed to Mr. Perdue’s loss to Mr. Ossoff as proof that he is too weak to defeat Ms. Abrams, the Democrat who narrowly lost to Mr. Kemp in 2018 and is making a second run for governor this year.Ms. Abrams’s candidacy loomed large over the entire evening, as both men underlined the danger they said she posed to Georgia if she wound up in the governor’s mansion. While Mr. Kemp holds a double-digit lead over Mr. Perdue in several polls, Mr. Perdue sought to remind voters of Mr. Kemp’s 1.4-percentage-point victory margin in 2018.“He barely beat Stacey Abrams in ’18, when I helped him secure President Trump’s endorsement, which he still today doesn’t think helped him at all,” Mr. Perdue said. The slugfest never let up, as a focus on Georgia policy issues in the debate’s second half-hour devolved into a fight over who was more authentically conservative, each candidate seeking to outflank the other from the right on education, public safety and jobs. Mr. Kemp doubled down on his support for a bill that prohibits teaching of “divisive concepts” on race and history, saying that Republicans in the state “passed this piece of legislation to make sure that our kids are not going to be indoctrinated in our schools,” and that curriculums should focus on “the facts, not somebody’s ideology.”But Mr. Perdue accused Mr. Kemp of abrogating his responsibility to protect students, parents and teachers alike. “They need to make sure that the woke mob’s not taking over the schools, and you’ve left them high and dry,” he said, asserting that the Atlanta schools were “teaching kids that voter ID is racist.”Answering a question about Latino voters, Mr. Perdue criticized Mr. Kemp’s record on immigration, recalling a 2018 campaign ad in which Mr. Kemp promised to use his own pickup truck to “round up illegals.” “Governor, what happened? Your pickup break down?” Mr. Perdue asked.Mr. Kemp said that the Covid-19 pandemic had intervened, saying that “picking up” people would only have helped spread infection in the state — and then reminded voters, for the umpteenth time, of Mr. Perdue’s defeat last year.“The fact is, if you hadn’t lost your race to Jon Ossoff, we wouldn’t have lost control of the Senate, and we wouldn’t have the disaster that we have in Washington right now,” Mr. Kemp said.A few clear-cut policy rifts did come into view over Georgia-specific issues.The two took opposite views of a new factory to produce electric trucks that is being built by Rivian Automotive in the state. Mr. Kemp exalted the project for the thousands of jobs it is expected to create, while Mr. Perdue cited an investment by the Democratic megadonor George Soros to dismiss Rivian as a “woke company,” saying that the project would redirect Georgians’ tax dollars into Mr. Soros’s pocket.Mr. Perdue attacked Mr. Kemp from several angles over rising crime in Atlanta, saying the governor had shrunk the size of the Georgia State Patrol and faulting him for failing to get behind an effort by some residents of Atlanta’s wealthy Buckhead neighborhood, alarmed about the surge in violent crime, to secede from the city. He accused the governor of staying out of the fray over the Buckhead secession movement for the sake of the “big company cronies downtown that are his big donors, that are desperate to not let that happen.”Mr. Kemp said he had raised troopers’ salaries, enhanced their training, created a crime suppression unit and deployed more troopers in metro Atlanta. And he pointed to his signing this month of a law allowing Georgians to carry concealed firearms without a permit.That was another way of fighting crime, he said.“The bad people already have the guns,” Mr. Kemp said. “We’re trying to give law-abiding citizens the ability to protect themselves, their family and their property.”Right to the end, both candidates were on message, and the message was largely a dim view of each other.In his closing, Mr. Perdue called Mr. Kemp a “weak governor trying to cover up a bad record.”Mr. Kemp, in his own summation, said Mr. Perdue was attacking his record in office “because he has none of his own, which is why he didn’t win his Senate race.” More

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      Will Democrats Soon Be Locked Out of Power?

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      Throughout the Trump era it was a frequent theme of liberal commentary that their political party represented a clear American majority, thwarted by our antidemocratic institutions and condemned to live under the rule of the conservative minority.In the political context of 2016-20, this belief was overstated. Yes, Donald Trump won the presidential election of 2016 with a minority of the popular vote. But more Americans voted for Republican congressional candidates than Democratic congressional candidates, and more Americans voted for right-of-center candidates for president — including the Libertarian vote — than voted for Hillary Clinton and Jill Stein. In strictly majoritarian terms, liberalism deserved to lose in 2016, even if Trump did not necessarily deserve to win.And Republican structural advantages, while real, did not then prevent Democrats from reclaiming the House of Representatives in 2018 and the presidency in 2020 and Senate in 2021. These victories extended the pattern of 21st century American politics, which has featured significant swings every few cycles, not the entrenchment of either party’s power.The political landscape after 2024, however, might look more like liberalism’s depictions of its Trump-era plight. According to calculations by liberalism’s Cassandra, David Shor, the convergence of an unfavorable Senate map for Democrats with their pre-existing Electoral College and Senate disadvantages could easily produce a scenario where the party wins 50 percent of the congressional popular vote, 51 percent of the presidential vote — and ends up losing the White House and staring down a nearly filibuster-proof Republican advantage in the Senate.That’s a scenario for liberal horror, but it’s not one that conservatives should welcome either. In recent years, as their advantages in both institutions have increased, conservatives have defended institutions like the Senate and the Electoral College with variations of the argument that the United States is a democratic republic, not a pure democracy.These arguments carry less weight, however, the more consistently undemocratic the system’s overall results become. (They would fall apart completely in the scenario sought by Donald Trump and some of his allies after 2020, where state legislatures simply substitute their preferences for the voters in their states.)The Electoral College’s legitimacy can stand up if an occasional 49-47 percent popular vote result goes the other way; likewise the Senate’s legitimacy if it tilts a bit toward one party but changes hands consistently.But a scenario where one party has sustained governing power while lacking majoritarian support is a recipe for delegitimization and reasonable disillusionment, which no clever conservative column about the constitutional significance of state sovereignty would adequately address.From the Republican Party’s perspective, the best way to avoid this future — where the nature of conservative victories undercuts the perceived legitimacy of conservative governance — is to stop being content with the advantages granted by the system and try harder to win majorities outright.You can’t expect a political party to simply cede its advantages: There will never be a bipartisan constitutional amendment to abolish the Senate, on any timeline you care to imagine. But you can expect a political party to show a little more electoral ambition than the G.O.P. has done of late — to seek to win more elections the way that Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon won them, rather than being content to keep it close and put their hopes in lucky breaks.Especially in the current climate, which looks dire for the Democrats, the Republicans have an opportunity to make the Electoral College complaint moot, for a time at least, by simply taking plausible positions, nominating plausible candidates and winning majorities outright.That means rejecting the politics of voter-fraud paranoia — as, hopefully, Republican primary voters will do by choosing Brian Kemp over David Perdue in the Georgia gubernatorial primary.It means rejecting the attempts to return to the libertarian “makers versus takers” politics of Tea Party era, currently manifested in Florida Senator Rick Scott’s recent manifesto suggesting tax increases for the working class — basically the right-wing equivalent of “defund the police” in terms of its political toxicity.And it means — and I fear this is beyond the G.O.P.’s capacities — nominating someone other than Donald Trump in 2024.A Republican Party that managed to win popular majorities might still see its Senate or Electoral College majorities magnified by its structural advantages. But such magnification is a normal feature of many democratic systems, not just our own. It’s very different from losing the popular vote consistently and yet being handed power anyway.As for what the Democrats should do about their disadvantages — well, that’s a longer discussion, but two quick points for now.First, to the extent the party wants to focus on structural answers to its structural challenges, it needs clarity about what kind of electoral reforms would actually accomplish something. That’s been lacking in the Biden era, where liberal reformers wasted considerable time and energy on voting bills that didn’t pass and also weren’t likely to help the party much had they been actually pushed through.A different reform idea, statehood for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, wouldn’t have happened in this period either, but it’s much more responsive to the actual challenges confronting Democrats in the Senate. So if you’re a liberal activist or a legislator planning for the next brief window when your party holds power, pushing for an expanded Senate seems like a more reasonable long ball to try to train your team to throw.Second, to the extent that there’s a Democratic path back to greater parity in the Senate and Electoral College without structural reform, it probably requires the development of an explicit faction within the party dedicated to winning back two kinds of voters — culturally conservative Latinos and working-class whites — who were part of Barack Obama’s coalition but have drifted rightward since.That faction would have two missions: To hew to a poll-tested agenda on economic policy (not just the business-friendly agenda supported by many centrist Democrats) and to constantly find ways to distinguish itself from organized progressivism — the foundations, the activists, the academics — on cultural and social issues. And crucially, not in the tactical style favored by analysts like Shor, but in the language of principle: Rightward-drifting voters would need to know that this faction actually believes in its own moderation, its own attacks on progressive shibboleths, and that its members will remain a thorn in progressivism’s side even once they reach Washington.Right now the Democrats have scattered politicians, from West Virginia to New York City, who somewhat fit this mold. But they don’t have an agenda for them to coalesce around, a group of donors ready to fund them, a set of intellectuals ready to embrace them as their own.Necessity, however, is the mother of invention, and necessity may impose itself upon the Democratic Party soon enough.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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      Trial Alleging Voter Suppression in 2018 Abrams-Kemp Georgia Race Begins

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      A trial is underway to determine whether Georgia’s handling of the 2018 election for governor was discriminatory, in a case brought by Stacey Abrams’s voting rights group.The 2018 race for governor in Georgia ended in a bitter dispute between Brian Kemp, a Republican who was serving as secretary of state at the time, and Stacey Abrams, the Democratic challenger who accused the state of voter suppression.The election, won by Kemp, was plagued by long lines, especially in communities of color where wait times occasionally exceeded two hours. And Kemp’s office put 53,000 voter registrations on hold under the state’s “exact match” rule, which requires that voters’ registration information exactly match what is on file with the state’s Department of Driver Services or Social Security Administration. Many of those 53,000 were Black voters, according to an investigation by The Associated Press in 2018.After the election, Fair Fight Action, the voting rights group founded by Abrams, sued the state, claiming its election practices were illegal and discriminatory.Now, more than three years after the suit was filed, the trial began on Monday in Atlanta — the first federal voting rights trial in Georgia in over a decade. Abrams is now in the middle of a second campaign for governor, a rematch with Kemp.After Judge Steve C. Jones tossed parts of the original lawsuit last year, Fair Fight opened its case challenging three specific tenets of the Georgia election system. These tenets, the group says, make it harder for people to vote, especially Black voters.“Through the three practices at issue in this case — exact match, affirmative mismanagement of the voter rolls and failure to train on absentee ballot cancellations — these defendants have erected a series of roadblocks — roadblocks that propose unjustifiable burdens on eligible voters in violation of both the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act,” Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, a lawyer for Fair Fight and the other plaintiffs, said in her opening statement.The office of Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state and the defendant in the case, has said repeatedly that the state has already beaten back most of the claims in court, and accused Fair Fight of playing politics.“They ran this litigation like a campaign,” Joshua B. Belinfante, a lawyer for the secretary of state, said in his opening remarks. He continued: “What the evidence will show is what the plaintiffs allege is part of a campaign is not what is happening on the ground in Georgia elections.”Echoes from the pastFair Fight and other groups have challenged Georgia’s election laws on both constitutional grounds and under a provision of the Voting Rights Act known as Section 2. The trial represents one of the first marquee challenges using this provision after the Supreme Court weakened its protections for voting rights last year.In her opening remarks, Lawrence-Hardy spoke of John Lewis, the Georgia Democrat and civil rights icon who died in 2020. And she drew comparisons between the current legal battle and the state’s history of suppressing voters. Georgia was one of the states that were put under special federal oversight by the Voting Rights Act when it was signed in 1965 because of the history of discrimination at the polls in those states.“The methods may be different than in the past, but the state’s creation of barriers to voting in Georgia have the same impact, particularly for people of color and immigrants who meet all eligibility requirements to vote in Georgia’s elections,” Lawrence-Hardy said. She added that when the state first proposed the exact-match identification policy in 2009, Georgia was still under federal oversight and the Justice Department rejected the initial proposal.The trial, which is expected to last roughly a month, will feature dozens of voters who claim that their right to vote was foiled by the state’s rules and regulations, with anecdotes from both the 2018 and the 2020 elections. Election workers will also testify.“You’ll hear how these election workers, who come from all political persuasions and demographic roots, operate under extraordinarily trying circumstances,” Belinfante, the lawyer for the secretary of state, said in his opening remarks. “And you’ll hear how at the end of the day they just want to get it right.”But the trial will not focus on the state’s controversial new voting law that was passed last year and that added numerous new restrictions on voting. The lawsuit was filed before that law was introduced and passed.A window of opportunityThough Raffensperger is on the defense, the trial also presents a political opportunity for the sitting secretary of state, who is seeking re-election. After he rebuffed Donald Trump’s entreaties to “find” enough votes to subvert the election in Georgia, Raffensperger became a key target of Trump, who has endorsed a well-funded challenger in Representative Jody Hice, a Republican who has publicly claimed that Trump won the election in Georgia.Raffensperger has not backed down from saying Trump legitimately lost the 2020 election in Georgia, a stance that has put him at odds with a segment of the Republican base who will be deciding his fate in the May 24 primary.But the trial has allowed Raffensperger the opportunity to attack Abrams and embrace issues that help endear him to the Republican base, such as noncitizen voting. Republicans have focused on noncitizens voting in their hunt for widespread voter fraud (there is no evidence of swaths of noncitizens voting, nor of widespread fraud) and also to justify new policies. Lawyers for Fair Fight contend that part of the “exact match” process could result in citizens being prevented from voting, including newly naturalized citizens.“I want to make sure it is citizen-only voting here in the state of Georgia,” Raffensperger said in a brief news conference before the trial began on Monday. “We are defending this basic protection of the integrity of Georgia’s elections.”Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, has accused Fair Fight of playing politics with the lawsuit. Dustin Chambers/ReutersWhat to read President Biden announced that the Environmental Protection Agency would lift summertime regulations on E15, an ethanol-gasoline blend, the latest sign that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed the White House to embrace fossil fuels.U.S.-backed news outlets and Ukrainian activists’ efforts to deliver news to Russians are starting to show signs of working, sowing doubt in the Kremlin’s accounts of the invasion.North Carolina dropped Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, from its voter rolls, as officials investigate whether he fraudulently cast a ballot in the state in 2020.in the moment Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas used the migrant drop-off as a fund-raising opportunity. Joel Martinez/The Monitor, via Associated PressTexas sends a bus to … Fox News The arrival of a busload of migrants sent to Washington by Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas made for quite the event.Not so much on the ground, but on cable news, on Twitter and in fund-raising emails.In response to the Biden administration’s plans to end a Trump-era pandemic policy that turned away most unauthorized migrants at the border, Abbott pledged to put immigrants on charter buses and send them to Washington. This morning, the first bus arrived near Union Station, with Fox News camera crews ready to record the moment.Understand the Battle Over U.S. Voting RightsCard 1 of 6Why are voting rights an issue now? More

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      In Georgia, Trump Tries to Revive a Sputtering Campaign

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      The former president held a rally in rural Georgia on Saturday in an attempt to jump-start David Perdue’s campaign to unseat Gov. Brian Kemp.COMMERCE, Ga., — When Donald Trump recruited David Perdue to run for governor of Georgia, Mr. Trump’s allies boasted that his endorsement alone would shoot Mr. Perdue ahead of the incumbent Republican governor, Brian Kemp. Georgia Republicans braced for an epic clash, fueled by the former president’s personal vendetta against Mr. Kemp, that would divide the party.But two months out from the Republican primary election, Mr. Perdue’s campaign has been more underwhelming than epic. In an effort to boost Mr. Perdue and put his own stamp on the race, Mr. Trump came to Georgia on Saturday for a rally for Mr. Perdue and the slate of candidates the former president has endorsed. Thousands of Trump supporters turned out in the small city of Commerce, 70 miles northeast of Atlanta and about 20 miles outside of Mr. Kemp’s hometown, Athens.Early polls have steadily shown Mr. Perdue, a former senator, trailing Mr. Kemp by about 10 percentage points. The governor has the backing of many of the state’s big donors and remains far ahead of Mr. Perdue in fund-raising. After pursuing a deeply conservative legislative agenda, Mr. Kemp has secured support from most of the top state leaders and lawmakers, even those who have, until now, aligned with Mr. Trump.Mr. Perdue’s sputtering start may hint at a deeper flaw in Mr. Trump’s plan to punish the governor for refusing to work to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results: Mr. Trump’s grievances may now largely be his alone. While polls show many G.O.P. voters believe lies about fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election, there is little evidence that Republicans remain as fixated on the election as Mr. Trump. The challenge for Mr. Perdue, as well as for other candidates backed by Mr. Trump, is to make a case that goes beyond exacting revenge for 2020.“When you’re running against an incumbent governor, it’s a referendum on the incumbent,” said Eric Tanenblatt, a chief of staff to former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, the former senator’s cousin. “And if the incumbent has a good track record, it’s going to be hard to defeat him.”Mr. Tanenblatt backed David Perdue’s past Senate campaigns, including his losing bid last year. But Mr. Tanenblatt is now among the Republicans worried that Mr. Perdue is merely distracting the party from its top goal: fending off the likely Democratic nominee, Stacey Abrams.“Donald Trump’s not on the ballot. And there has to be a compelling reason why you would vote out an incumbent,” Mr. Tanenblatt said. “I don’t think there is one.”Former President Donald J. Trump listens as David Perdue speaks in Commerce, Ga., on Saturday.Audra Melton for The New York TimesAll seven of Mr. Trump’s endorsed candidates spoke at the rally. Nearly every speaker echoed Mr. Trump’s false election claims, placing the blame on Dominion voting machines and Democratic lawmakers for Republicans’ 2020 losses in Georgia. Mr. Perdue took things further, however, placing the blame for his Senate campaign loss and Mr. Trump’s defeat on Mr. Kemp.“Let me be very clear. Very clear,” Mr. Perdue said to the crowd. “In the state of Georgia, thanks to Brian Kemp, our elections were absolutely stolen. He sold us out.” How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.Mr. Perdue’s allies argue that Governor Kemp’s track record is forever tainted by his refusal to try to overturn the election results or call a special legislative session to review them, even though multiple recounts confirmed Joe Biden’s win.“That’s the wound with the salt in it right now that hasn’t healed,” said Bruce LeVell, a former senior adviser to Mr. Trump based in Georgia. “David Perdue is the only one that can unify the Republican Party in the state of Georgia. Period.”Michelle and Chey Thomas, an Athens couple attending the rally, said they were unsure whether they would support Mr. Perdue in the primary or vote to re-elect Mr. Kemp as they knew little of Mr. Perdue before Saturday. Like many attendees, they were unsure if they could trust the results of the 2020 election. And Mr. Kemp, they believe, did not exercise the full extent of his power in November 2020.“A lot of candidates say they are going to do something and don’t,” Ms. Thomas said. Mr. Kemp, she added, “could’ve done a lot better job.”The candidates endorsed by Mr. Trump include Herschel Walker, a former Heisman Trophy winner running for Senate; U.S. Representative Jody Hice, a candidate for secretary of state; Vernon Jones, a former Democrat now running for Congress; and John Gordon, a conservative lawyer who helped Mr. Trump defend his false election claims in court. Mr. Trump this week endorsed Mr. Gordon’s bid for state attorney general.Mr. Kemp has had years to guard himself against a challenge from the party’s Trump wing. He was one of the first governors to roll back Covid-19 restrictions in early 2020, drawing the support of many on the right who were angry about government-imposed lockdowns. Last year, he signed into law new voting restrictions that were popular with the Republican base. And in January, the governor backed a law allowing people to carry a firearm without a permit and another banning mailed abortion pills.That record, Kemp supporters argue, won over Republican base voters, even those who agree with Mr. Trump that Mr. Kemp did not do enough to fight the election results in Georgia.“I think they’ve turned the page on the election,” said State Senator Clint Dixon, a Republican representing the Atlanta suburbs. “And folks that may have been upset about that, still, they see that Governor Kemp is a proven conservative leader that we need.”Of Mr. Trump’s rally, he added: “I don’t think it does much. And the polls are showing it.”In early March, a Fox News poll of Georgia Republican primary voters showed Mr. Kemp ahead of Mr. Perdue by 11 percentage points.Mr. Kemp has amassed a war chest of more than $12.7 million, compared with the $1.1 million Mr. Perdue has raised since entering the race in December. The Republican Governors Association has also cut more than $1 million in ads supporting Mr. Kemp — the first time the organization has taken sides in a primary race. (Since December, Ms. Abrams has been raising more than both men, bringing in $9.3 million by January.)Mr. Kemp has worked to line up key Republican leaders — or keep them on the sidelines. Earlier this month, he appointed Sonny Perdue chancellor of the state’s university system. The former governor intends to remain neutral in the primary, according to people familiar with his plans.Since losing Georgia by fewer than 12,000 votes in 2020, Mr. Trump has tried to turn the state’s politics into a proxy war over his election grievances. He blamed Mr. Kemp for his loss, saying he did not win Georgia because the governor refused to block certification of the results. Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn the results is under criminal investigation.Mr. Trump saw Mr. Kemp’s refusal as disloyal, in part because Mr. Trump endorsed the governor in a 2018 primary, helping to propel him to a decisive win.“It is personal,” said Martha Zoller, a Georgia-based conservative radio host and former aide to both Mr. Kemp and Mr. Perdue. “President Trump believes that he made Brian Kemp.”Gov. Brian Kemp spoke to supporters at the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta this month.Ben Gray/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated PressNow Mr. Perdue’s campaign is looking for the same boost from Mr. Trump. Although Mr. Perdue’s ads, social media pages and campaign website note that he is endorsed by Mr. Trump, Mr. Perdue’s campaign aides believe many voters are not yet paying attention and do not know that he has Mr. Trump’s support. The former corporate executive has been a Trump ally, but he hardly exuded the bombast of his political benefactor during his one term in the Senate.Mr. Perdue is now running to the right of Mr. Kemp. He recently campaigned with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene at a rally in her rural northwest Georgia district, even after the congresswoman appeared at a far-right conference with ties to white supremacy.At the rally, Mr. Perdue lamented the “assault” on Georgia’s elections and reminded the crowd that he “fought for President Trump” in November 2020. At the time, he said, he asked not only for Mr. Kemp to call a special legislative session, but also for the resignation of Georgia’s current secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger — remarks received with loud applause.Although Mr. Perdue’s campaign has largely focused on the 2020 election, he and Mr. Kemp have split over other issues. Mr. Perdue opposed construction of a Rivian Automotive electric truck factory in the state, saying that the tax incentives it brings could benefit wealthy liberal donors. Mr. Kemp embraced the deal as a potential economic boon.Mr. Perdue also split with Mr. Kemp when Mr. Perdue gave his support to a group of residents in Atlanta’s wealthy Buckhead neighborhood who are seeking to secede from the city. The idea gained traction among some who were concerned about rising crime rates in Atlanta, but the effort is now stalled in the state legislature.If Mr. Trump was concerned about the campaign, he didn’t show it at the rally. Before bringing Mr. Perdue onstage later in the evening, he promised supporters that the former senator would champion election integrity and defeat Stacey Abrams.“That’s a big crowd of people,” he said. “And they all love David Perdue.” More