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      Our Immigration System: ‘A Waste of Talent’

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      More from our inbox:Cruelty at the BorderLimiting the President’s Pardon PowersAre A.I. Weapons Next?U.S. Food Policy Causes Poor Food ChoicesMateo Miño, left, in the church in Queens where he experienced a severe anxiety attack two days after arriving in New York.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesTo the Editor:“As Politicians Cry Crisis, Migrants Get a Toehold” (news article, July 15) points up the irrationality of the U.S. immigration system. As this article shows, migrants are eager to work, and they are filling significant gaps in fields such as construction and food delivery, but there are still great unmet needs for home health aides and nursing assistants.The main reason for this disjunction lies in federal immigration law, which offers no dedicated visa slots for these occupations (as it does for professionals and even for seasonal agricultural and resort workers) because they are considered “unskilled.”Instead, the law stipulates, applicants must demonstrate that they are “performing work for which qualified workers are not available in the United States” — clearly a daunting task for individual migrants.As a result, many do end up working in fields like home health care but without documentation and are thus vulnerable to exploitation if not deportation. With appropriate reforms, our system would be capable of meeting both the country’s needs for essential workers and migrants’ needs for safe havens.Sonya MichelSilver Spring, Md.The writer is professor emerita of history and women’s and gender studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.To the Editor:We have refugee doctors and nurses who are driving taxi cabs. What a waste of talent that is needed in so many areas of our country.Why isn’t there a program to use their knowledge and skills by working with medical associations to qualify them, especially if they agree to work in parts of the country that have a shortage of doctors and nurses? It would be a win-win situation.There are probably other professions where similar ideas would work.David AlbendaNew YorkCruelty at the BorderTexas Department of Public Safety troopers look over the Rio Grande, as migrants walk by.Suzanne Cordeiro/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Officers Voice Concerns Over Aggressive Tactics at the Border in Texas” (news article, July 20):In the past year, I have done immigration-related legal work in New York City with recently arrived asylum seekers from all over the world: Venezuela, China, Honduras, Guatemala, Ecuador and Ghana. Most entered the U.S. on foot through the southern border. Some spent weeks traversing the perilous Darién Gap — an unforgiving jungle — and all are fleeing from horribly violent and scary situations.Texas’ barbed wire is not going to stop them.I am struck by the message of the mayor of Eagle Pass, Rolando Salinas Jr., who, supportive of legal migration and orderly law enforcement, said, “What I am against is the use of tactics that hurt people.” I desperately hope we can all agree about this.There should be no place for immigration enforcement tactics that deliberately and seriously injure people.I was disturbed to read that Texas is hiding razor wire in dark water and deploying floating razor wire-wrapped “barrel traps.” These products of Gov. Greg Abbott’s xenophobia are cruel to a staggering degree.Noa Gutow-EllisNew YorkThe writer is a law school intern at the Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.Limiting the President’s Pardon Powers Tom Brenner for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “U.S. Alleges Push at Trump’s Club to Erase Footage” (front page, July 28) and “Sudden Obstacle Delays Plea Deal for Biden’s Son” (front page, July 27):With Donald Trump campaigning to return to the White House while under felony indictment, and with Hunter Biden’s legal saga unresolved, there should be bipartisan incentive in Congress for proposing a constitutional amendment limiting the president’s pardon power.A proposed amendment should provide that the president’s “reprieves and pardons” power under Article II, Section 2, shall not apply to offenses, whether committed in office or out, by the president himself or herself; the vice president and cabinet-level officers; any person whose unlawful conduct was solicited by or intended to benefit any of these officials; or a close family member of any of these individuals.Stephen A. SilverSan FranciscoThe writer is a lawyer.To the Editor:Beyond asking “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” Donald Trump may now ask, “Where’s my Rose Mary Woods?”David SchubertCranford, N.J.Are A.I. Weapons Next? Andreas Emil LundTo the Editor:Re “Our Oppenheimer Moment: The Creation of A.I. Weapons,” by Alexander C. Karp (Opinion guest essay, July 30):Mr. Karp argues that to protect our way of life, we must integrate artificial intelligence into weapons systems, citing our atomic might as precedent. However, nuclear weapons are sophisticated and difficult to produce. A.I. capabilities are software, leaving them vulnerable to theft, cyberhacking and data poisoning by adversaries.The risk of proliferation beyond leading militaries was appreciated by the United States and the Soviet Union when banning bioweapons, and the same applies to A.I. It also carries an unacceptable risk of conflict escalation, illustrated in our recent film “Artificial Escalation.”J. Robert Oppenheimer’s legacy offers a different lesson when it comes to advanced general-purpose A.I. systems. The nuclear arms race has haunted our world with annihilation for 78 years. It was luck that spared us. That race ebbed only as leaders came to understand that such a war would destroy humanity.The same is true now. To survive, we must recognize that the reckless pursuit and weaponization of inscrutable, probably uncontrollable advanced A.I. is not a winnable one. It is a suicide race.Anthony AguirreSanta Cruz, Calif.The writer is the executive director and a co-founder of the Future of Life Institute.U.S. Food Policy Causes Poor Food Choices Steven May/AlamyTo the Editor:Re “Vegans Make Smaller Mark on the Planet Than Others” (news article, July 22):While I agree that people could help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by eating plants only, I find it crucial to note that food policy is the main reason for poor food choices.Food choices follow food policy, and U.S. food policy is focused on meat, dairy, fish and eggs. Our massive network of agriculture universities run “animal science” programs, providing billions of dollars’ worth of training, public relations, research, experimentation and sales for animal products.Our government provides subsidies to the meat, dairy, fish and egg industries far beyond what fruits, vegetables and other plant foods receive. Federal and state agriculture officials are typically connected to the meat or dairy industry. The public pays the cost of animal factories’ contamination of water and soil, and of widespread illness linked to eating animals since humans are natural herbivores.No wonder the meat, dairy, fish and egg industries have so much money for advertising, marketing and public relations, keeping humans deceived about their biological nature and what is good for them to eat.David CantorGlenside, Pa.The writer is founder and director of Responsible Policies for Animals. More

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      More Charges Against Trump

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      A revised indictment details his unusual handling of classified documents.Donald Trump is facing more criminal charges in a federal case accusing him of mishandling classified documents.The new allegations are in a revised indictment from the special counsel’s office released last night. It added three charges: attempting to “alter, destroy, mutilate, or conceal evidence”; asking someone else to do so; and a new count under the Espionage Act.Today’s newsletter will explain the new charges and why they matter to the case.The chargesThe first two charges are connected. Prosecutors said that Trump asked the property manager of Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home, to have surveillance camera footage deleted. That video was important to the special counsel’s investigation into whether boxes of documents were moved to avoid complying with a federal subpoena.The property manager, Carlos De Oliveira, is now also charged in the case. He told a Mar-a-Lago information technology expert that “‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted,” according to the revised indictment. After the employee said he did not know how to delete the footage, or whether he had the right to do so, De Oliveira restated the request from “the boss” and asked, “What are we going to do?”The third charge, under the Espionage Act, concerns a memorable scene from the original indictment. An audio recording captured Trump at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., showing visitors a classified document that detailed battle plans against Iran. Trump could be heard admitting to having the document and acknowledging that it was confidential.Now that at least one of the charges is linked to the Iran document, the recording could become more damning in court, by directly tying Trump’s own remarks to one of the crimes that he’s accused of.The indictment indicates that prosecutors have the document itself and details the dates that Trump possessed it, undermining his earlier claims that he never had it and was simply blustering.Trump’s campaign called the new accusations a “desperate and flailing attempt” by the Justice Department to undercut him.The bottom lineAs this newsletter has noted before, it is not unusual for federal officials to misplace or accidentally keep classified documents when they leave office. Such files were found in the homes of President Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence. What is unusual in Trump’s case is his attempts to keep the papers, even after federal officials asked him to return them.The new charges help demonstrate the exceptional nature of Trump’s actions. If the accusations are true, Trump not only tried to keep documents that he knew he was not supposed to have, but he also tried to cover up his attempts to hold onto the files by deleting video evidence.More on the indictmentSome legal experts think De Oliveira is likely to end up cooperating with prosecutors to avoid prison time. “This is a defendant who has almost no choice but to flip,” Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney, said on MSNBC.But the new charges may slow the case, currently set to go to trial next May, and could even push it past the 2024 election. “For Trump, his best defense is delay,” Kim Wehle, a University of Baltimore law professor, writes in The Bulwark.Trump’s lawyers met yesterday with the special counsel’s office, which is also investigating his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Charges in that case — which appear likely soon — would add substantially to Trump’s legal peril. (Track all the Trump investigations here.)The Times’s Charlie Savage annotated the indictment.THE LATEST NEWSExtreme WeatherLiam Warner, 5, cooling off at a playground in Manhattan.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesJuly is on track to be the hottest month globally since record-keeping began in 1850.The Northeast faces another day of oppressive heat and humidity, with the heat index reaching as high as 110 in New York.Dangerous heat is expected to settle into the Southeast by the weekend. See the forecast.The Labor Department will increase heat-safety inspections in construction and agriculture and for other vulnerable workers.PoliticsThe Senate passed bipartisan military policy legislation, setting up a clash with the House, which added conservative mandates on abortion and gender to its version of the bill.After budget troubles and staff layoffs, Ron DeSantis began a slimmed-down reboot of his presidential campaign in Iowa.Mitch McConnell’s apparent medical episode has stirred talk about who could succeed him as the Senate Republican leader.War in UkraineUkrainian soldiers fire toward Russian positions on the front line.Efrem Lukatsky/Associated PressUkraine’s offensive made small gains, but the scope of the assaults and their toll remained unclear.Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, promised free grain to several African countries after his blockade on Ukrainian exports disrupted the global food supply.EconomyThe U.S. economy grew 2.4 percent in the second quarter, more than experts expected.Economists increasingly think that the U.S. can bring down inflation without causing a recession. But they’ve been wrong about that before.Other Big StoriesThe Justice Department will investigate allegations of violence and discrimination by the police in Memphis, months after the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols.Russian oligarchs in Britain have gotten permits to spend lavishly on perks like private chefs and chauffeurs, despite ostensibly having their bank accounts frozen.Google has begun plugging A.I. language models into robots, giving them the equivalent of artificial brains.A judge ordered the release of three of the “Newburgh Four,” who were convicted in 2010 of a plot to blow up synagogues. The judge suggested that the F.B.I. invented the conspiracy.“Everybody’s punching bag”: Former classmates said the suspect in the Gilgo Beach serial killings was an outcast with a mean streak.OpinionsThe pain of losing a loved one to an overdose is crushing. But prosecuting drug dealers as murderers does more harm than good, Maia Szalavitz says.Here are columns by Thomas Friedman on Saudi-Israeli relations, Paul Krugman on Twitter’s rebrand and Michelle Goldberg on Republicans’ push to impeach Biden.MORNING READSThe annual swan census on the River Thames in Britain.Neil Hall/EPA, via ShutterstockThe king’s swans: An annual bird count on the Thames found a worrisome drop.Titanium clouds: Astronomers have come across the shiniest planet ever found.“Phubbing”: Ignoring a partner in favor of your phone can breed distrust.Modern Love: Learning to hear “no,” in acting, friendship and romance.Lives Lived: Julian Barry’s scripts for a Broadway play and Hollywood movie about Lenny Bruce became definitive portraits of the comedian as a truth teller who drove himself mad in a righteous struggle against hypocrisy. Barry died at 92.WOMEN’S WORLD CUPA hip-check from a Dutch player sparked a flash of anger and the only U.S. goal in the teams’ tie.Nigeria upset Australia, the tournament’s co-host, which is in danger of failing to advance to the knockout rounds.OTHER SPORTS NEWSNew coach bluster: In an interview, Broncos coach Sean Payton said his predecessor Nathaniel Hackett’s performance last season was “one of the worst coaching jobs in the history of the N.F.L.”Home safe: Bronny James, LeBron James’s son, was discharged from the hospital after a cardiac arrest during a practice.An unbelievable day: Shohei Ohtani spent the first half of a doubleheader throwing a shutout and the second hitting two home runs. He sounds energized for the Angels’ surprise playoff push.ARTS AND IDEAS Dani PendergastTricks for a better vacation: Traveling is wonderful but can be taxing, whether you’re planning for a group or coping with delays. The Times’s Travel desk has tips for managing. One expert noted that during a flight delay, it’s easier to get help if you leave the gate, where crowds gather, and find your airline’s service desk. And when traveling with a group, ease stress by having a different person take ownership of each day’s activities.More on cultureRandy Meisner, a founding member of the Eagles, died at 77.“Back to the Future: The Musical,” which opens on Broadway next week, follows a story that will be familiar to fans of the film.Jim Gaffigan, a master of family-friendly comedy, goes darker in his new stand-up special.THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …James Ransom for The New York TimesStick with Fritos in this taco salad.Upgrade your ice cube trays.Cool off with this portable fan.Save your skin — check whether it’s time to toss products.Take our news quiz.GAMESHere is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was unlovely.And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle and Sudoku.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — GermanCorrection: A chart in yesterday’s newsletter misstated the change in gross domestic product for the first quarter of 2023. It grew 2 percent, not 2.6 percent.P.S. Simon Romero is joining The Times’s Mexico City bureau to cover migration, climate change and more.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. More

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      Do You Know a Politically Motived Prosecution When You See One?

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      As the criminal indictments of Donald Trump continue to pile up like boxes in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom, the former president’s defenders have settled on a response: They don’t claim their man is innocent of the scores of federal and state charges against him — a tough case to make under the circumstances. Instead they accuse the Biden administration and Democratic prosecutors of politicizing law enforcement and cooking up an insurance policy to protect President Biden, who trails Mr. Trump in some polls about a very possible 2024 rematch.“So what do they do now?” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy asked last week, after Mr. Trump announced that he had received a second target letter from the special counsel Jack Smith, this time over his role in the Jan. 6 attack. “Weaponize government to go after their No. 1 opponent.”Gov. Ron DeSantis, one of the few plausible Republican nominees besides Mr. Trump, warned that the government is “criminalizing political differences.”It’s not only about Mr. Trump; griping about politicized law enforcement has become a cottage industry on the right these days. No sooner did Republicans take back the House of Representatives than they formed a Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which meets regularly to air grievances and grill witnesses about their supposed anti-conservative animus, including Christopher Wray, the (Trump-nominated) F.B.I. director.If you’re feeling bewildered by all the claims and counterclaims of politicization, you’re not alone. Take the F.B.I.’s probe of ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign, which is still being hashed out in the halls of Congress seven years later: In February, Democratic lawmakers demanded an investigation of the investigators who investigated the investigators who were previously investigated for their investigation of a transnational plot to interfere in a presidential election. Got that?But even if the charge of politicized justice is levied by a bad-faith buffoon like Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the chairman of the weaponization subcommittee, it is a profoundly important one. There is no simple way to separate politics completely from law enforcement. The Justice Department will always be led by a political appointee, and most state and local prosecutors are elected. If Americans are going to have faith in the fairness of their justice system, every effort must be taken to assure the public that political motives are not infecting prosecutors’ charging decisions. That means extremely clear rules for investigators and prosecutors and eternal vigilance for the rest of us.At the same time, politically powerful people must be held to the same rules as everyone else, even if they happen to be of a different party from those investigating them. So how to distinguish an investigation or prosecution based solely on the facts from one motivated improperly by politics?Sometimes the investigators make it easy by just coming out and admitting that it’s really political. Mr. McCarthy did that in 2015, when he bragged on Fox News that the House Benghazi hearings had knocked a seemingly “unbeatable” Hillary Clinton down in the polls. More recently, James Comer of Kentucky, who heads the House committee that is relentlessly investigating Hunter Biden, made a similar argument about the effect of the committee’s work on President Biden’s political fortunes. (Mr. Comer tried to walk back his comment a day later.)More often, though, it takes some work to determine whether an investigation or prosecution is on the level.The key thing to remember is that even if the subject is a politically powerful person or the outcome of a trial could have a political impact, that doesn’t necessarily mean the action itself is political. To assume otherwise is to “immunize all high-ranking powerful political people from ever being held accountable for the wrongful things they do,” said Kristy Parker, a lawyer with the advocacy group Protect Democracy. “And if you do that, you subvert the idea that this is a rule-of-law society where everybody is subject to equal justice, and at the same time you remove from the public the ability to impose any accountability for misconduct, which enables it to happen again.”In May, Protect Democracy published a very useful report, co-written by Ms. Parker, laying out several factors that help the public assess whether a prosecution is political.First, what is the case about? Is there straightforward evidence of criminal behavior by a politician? Have people who are not powerful politicians been prosecuted in the past for similar behavior?Second, what are top law-enforcement officials saying? Is the president respecting due process, or is he demanding investigations or prosecutions of specific people? Is he keeping his distance from the case, or is he publicly attacking prosecutors, judges and jurors? Is the attorney general staying quiet, or is he offering public opinions on the guilt of the accused?Third, is the Justice Department following its internal procedures and guidelines for walling off political interference? Most of these guidelines arose in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, during which President Richard Nixon ordered the department to go after his political enemies and later obstructed the investigation into his own behavior. Until recently, the guidelines were observed by presidents and attorneys general of both parties.Finally, how have other institutions responded? Did judges and juries follow proper procedure in the case, and did they agree that the defendant was guilty? Did an agency’s inspector general find any wrongdoing by investigators or prosecutors?None of these factors are decisive by themselves. An investigation might take a novel legal approach; an honest case may still lose in court. But considering them together makes it easier to identify when law enforcement has been weaponized for political ends.To see how it works in practice, let’s take a closer look at two recent examples: first, the federal investigations into Mr. Trump’s withholding of classified documents and his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and, second, the investigation by John Durham into the F.B.I.’s Russia probe.In the first example, the Justice Department and the F.B.I., under Attorney General Merrick Garland, waited more than a year to pursue an investigation of Mr. Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack with any urgency — largely out of the fear that they would be seen as politically motivated.With a punctiliousness that has exasperated many liberals, Mr. Garland has kept his mouth shut about Mr. Smith’s prosecutions, except to say that the department would pursue anyone responsible for the Jan. 6 attack. Mr. Garland almost never mentions Mr. Trump by name. And Mr. Smith has been silent outside of the news conference he held last month to announce the charges in the documents case.In that case, Mr. Smith presented a tower of evidence that Mr. Trump violated multiple federal laws. There are also many examples of nonpowerful people — say, Reality Winner — who were prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to years in prison for leaking a single classified document. Mr. Trump kept dozens. Even a federal judge who was earlier accused of being too accommodating to Mr. Trump has effectively signaled the documents case is legitimate, setting a trial date for May and refusing the Trump team’s demand to delay it until after the 2024 election.In the Jan. 6 case, the government has already won convictions against hundreds of people for their roles in the Capitol attack, many involving some of the same laws identified in Mr. Smith’s latest target letter to Mr. Trump.“Prosecutors will hear all sorts of allegations that it’s all political, that it will damage the republic for all of history,” Ms. Parker, who previously worked as a federal prosecutor, told me. “But they have to charge through that if what they’ve got is a case that on the facts and law would be brought against anybody else.”President Biden’s behavior has been more of a mixed bag. He and his advisers are keen to advertise his disciplined silence about Mr. Trump’s legal travails. “I have never once — not one single time — suggested to the Justice Department what they should do or not do,” he said in June. Yet he has commented publicly and inappropriately on both investigations over the years.It’s impossible to justify these remarks, but it is possible to consider them in light of the other factors above and to decide that Mr. Smith’s investigations are not infected with a political motive.Contrast that with the investigation by John Durham, the federal prosecutor appointed by Mr. Trump’s attorney general Bill Barr in 2019 to investigate the origins of the F.B.I.’s Trump-Russia probe.Even before it began, the Durham investigation was suffused with clear political bias. Mr. Trump had repeatedly attacked the F.B.I. over its handling of the Russia probe and called for an investigation, breaching the traditional separation between the White House and the Justice Department. Mr. Barr had also spoken publicly in ways that seemed to prejudge the outcome of any investigation and inserted himself into an investigation focused on absolving Mr. Trump of wrongdoing.Not every investigation or prosecution will offer such clear-cut evidence of the presence or absence of political motivations. But as with everything relating to Mr. Trump, one generally doesn’t have to look far to find his pursuit of vengeance; he has taken to describing himself as the “retribution” of his followers. If he wins, he has promised to obliterate the Justice Department’s independence from the presidency and “go after” Mr. Biden and “the entire Biden crime family.”For the moment, at least, Mr. Trump is not the prosecutor but the prosecuted. And there should be no fear of pursuing the cases against him — especially those pertaining to his attempts to overturn his loss in 2020 — wherever they lead.“If we can’t bring those kinds of cases just because the person is politically powerful, how do we say we have a democracy?” asked Ms. Parker. “Because in that case we have people who are above the law, and they are so far above the law that they can destroy the central feature of democracy, which is elections, in which the people choose their leaders.”Source photograph by pepifoto, via Getty Images.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      In Louisiana, Gov. Edwards Staves Off Certain Conservative Policies for Now

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      John Bel Edwards, the only Democratic governor in the Deep South, has successfully vetoed bills that have glided into law elsewhere in the region. Soon, he’ll leave office.The Republican supermajority in the Louisiana State Legislature pushed through a bill this year banning gender-transition care for minors, along with other legislation banning Covid vaccine requirements in schools and any classroom discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation.It was the kind of aggressive social policy agenda that has gained traction in conservative states across the country. But unlike in most such states, where Republican bills glide into law, lawmakers in Louisiana had to return to the Capitol last week, more than a month after the session ended, to try to claw the legislation back from the brink of failure.The reason: John Bel Edwards, the lone Democratic governor in the Deep South. He has used vetoes with some success as a bulwark against conservative legislation in a state where Republicans have had a lock on the legislature for more than a decade.In Louisiana, governors have a history of successfully wielding vetoes; most years, lawmakers have not even bothered trying to override them.But this year, legislators decided to test that power, reconvening to consider overriding more than two dozen vetoes at a moment when Republicans have tightened their control of the legislature and when Mr. Edwards, who is finishing his second term, is on his way out.“You voted for this before,” State Representative Raymond J. Crews, a Republican, told his colleagues on Tuesday as he asked them to support overriding the veto of his bill, which would require schools to refer to transgender students by the names and genders on their birth certificates. “I hope you’ll do that again.”Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards has successfully used vetoes as a bulwark against certain conservative legislation in a state where Republicans have had a lock on the legislature for more than a decade.Jodi Hilton for The New York TimesMr. Crews did not get enough votes. In fact, by the time lawmakers adjourned late Tuesday, all but one of Mr. Edwards’s vetoes still stood. The single exception was the ban on transition care for minors, a bill that the Republicans had channeled most of their energy and resources into resuscitating.The outcome of the session, which lawmakers raced through on Tuesday, was one last demonstration of how Mr. Edwards, a two-term governor leaving office next year, has succeeded at checking the influence of Republican lawmakers — to an extent.“It’s kind of hard to be too disappointed — we actually did override the veto on a very important bill,” said State Representative Alan Seabaugh, a Republican who led a faction of some of the most conservative lawmakers.Still, he acknowledged, Mr. Edwards posed a formidable obstacle. “It really shows what an influence a liberal Democrat governor has over Republican legislators,” Mr. Seabaugh said.Although many in the governor’s own party would dispute the portrayal of Mr. Edwards — an anti-abortion, pro-gun rights moderate — as a liberal, there was still widespread agreement that his departure in January could bring about a significant shift in the state’s political dynamic.Many recognize a strong possibility of a Republican succeeding Mr. Edwards, setting the stage for Louisiana to veer even more to the right, after several decades of the governorship flipping back and forth between the two parties.The Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge.Emily Kask for The New York TimesThe state has an all-party “jungle primary” in October. Polls show Jeff Landry, the state’s deeply conservative attorney general, as the front-runner, along with Shawn Wilson, a Democrat and former secretary of transportation and development.In a state where former President Donald J. Trump won by 20-point margins in 2016 and 2020, Mr. Edwards’s political survival has hinged on the appeal of his biography — he is a West Point graduate and a sheriff’s son — and on his blend of social conservatism and progressive achievements, including expanding Medicaid, that fits Louisiana’s unique political landscape.He has angered many in his own party with his vehement opposition to abortion rights and his restraint in criticizing Mr. Trump, who as president went to great lengths to campaign against Mr. Edwards’s re-election.Still, even Democrats who are critical of Mr. Edwards have seen him as a vital barrier against conservative policies that have easily advanced in neighboring states.“I do think that there’s always room for being a more vocal ally and a more staunch ally to our community,” Quest Riggs, who helped found the Real Name Campaign, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group in New Orleans, said of the governor. “But on the other hand, his vetoes have been a political tool that has been necessary to offset the mobilization by the evangelical right in Louisiana.”Last year, lawmakers succeeded in overriding a governor’s veto for the first time in three decades, reinstating a Congressional map that Mr. Edwards had objected to because it included only one district with a majority of Black voters despite the fact that one-third of the state’s population is Black. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for a legal challenge to the map to move forward.Many recognize a strong possibility of a Republican succeeding Mr. Edwards. Louisiana has an all-party “jungle primary” in October, and polls show Jeff Landry, the state’s deeply conservative attorney general, as the front-runner.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesAlso last year, Mr. Edwards allowed a bill that excluded female transgender students from school sports to become law without his signature, predicting a veto would be overridden.Mr. Edwards said last week that he had issued 319 vetoes in his eight years as governor, and that 317 of them had been sustained. “Usually, we have been able to find common ground to move Louisiana forward,” he said.On Tuesday, lawmakers blitzed through the vetoed bills, including measures that denied parole for dangerous offenders and prevented “foreign adversaries” from owning agriculture land.Overriding a veto requires a two-thirds majority vote in both houses, and the Republicans have a supermajority by just a thin margin. Two Republican state representatives were absent on Tuesday, and a few in the House and Senate crossed party lines to oppose some overrides, infuriating their more conservative colleagues.When the ban on gender-transition care came up, lawmakers described conflicting perceptions of what it means to protect children. Supporters of the bill said it would safeguard young people from treatments they claim are dangerous and untested, even though there is broad agreement among major medical associations in the United States that such care can be beneficial for many patients.Critics of the ban argue that it would imperil a small, vulnerable population of young people by denying them medically necessary care. Most of the 20 other states that have passed similar legislation are facing lawsuits, and judges have already temporarily blocked a few of the bans.In the House, the vote to override the veto passed 76 to 23, with seven Democrats joining the Republicans. In the Senate, it passed 28 to 11. Republicans seized the sole successful override as a victory.“We sent a clear signal,” Mr. Landry, the attorney general and candidate for governor, said in a video posted online, “that woke liberal agendas that are destructive to children will not be tolerated in Louisiana.”Lawmakers and observers contemplated how the political climate would be different during next year’s legislative session, particularly if Republicans were to maintain their supermajority and win the governor’s race.“What happens when they don’t have to hold back anymore?” said Robert E. Hogan, a political science professor at Louisiana State University, referring to Republican lawmakers if Democrats lose the governor’s race. “You’ll have a governor that’s powerful and on your side.”That prospect has inspired trepidation among some, especially within the L.G.B.T.Q. community, but has amplified ambitions among conservatives.Mr. Seabaugh, who is leaving the House because of term limits but is running for a Senate seat, envisions passing some of the same bills next year without the threat of a veto and rolling back Mr. Edwards’s agenda. “I don’t think we can do it all in one year,” Mr. Seabaugh said, “but I’m sure going to try.” More

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      Building a Legal Wall Around Donald Trump

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      The American legal system is on the cusp of a remarkable historical achievement. In real time and under immense pressure, it has responded to an American insurrection in a manner that is both meting out justice to the participants and establishing a series of legal precedents that will stand as enduring deterrents to a future rebellion. In an era when so many American institutions have failed, the success of our legal institutions in responding to a grave crisis should be a source of genuine hope.I’m writing this newsletter days after the Michigan attorney general announced the prosecution of 16 Republicans for falsely presenting themselves as the electors qualified to vote in the Electoral College for Donald Trump following the 2020 election. That news came the same day that the former president announced on Truth Social that he’d received a so-called target letter from Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. The target letter signals that the grand jury investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol is likely to indict Trump, perhaps any day now.On Monday, a day before this wave of news, the Georgia Supreme Court rejected a desperate Trump attempt to disqualify the Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis from prosecuting Trump and to quash a special grand jury report about 2020 election misconduct. Trump’s team filed their petition on July 13. The court rejected it a mere four days later. Willis can continue her work, and she’s expected to begin issuing indictments — including potentially her own Trump indictment — in August, if not sooner.Presuming another Trump indictment (or more than one) is imminent — or even if it is not — the legal response to Jan. 6 will continue. But to truly understand where we are now, it’s important to track where we’ve been. If you rewind the clock to the late evening of Jan. 6, 2021, America’s long history of a peaceful transfer of power was over, broken by a demagogue and his mob. To make matters worse, there was no straight-line path to legal accountability.Prosecuting acts of violence against police — or acts of vandalism in the Capitol — was certainly easy enough, especially since much of the violence and destruction was caught on video. But prosecuting Trump’s thugs alone was hardly enough to address the sheer scale of MAGA misconduct. What about those who helped plan and set the stage for the insurrection? What about the failed candidate who set it all in motion, Donald Trump himself?Consider the legal challenges. The stolen election narrative was promulgated by a simply staggering amount of defamation — yet defamation cases are difficult to win in a nation that strongly protects free speech. Trump’s legal campaign was conducted by unethical lawyers raising frivolous arguments — yet attorney discipline, especially stretching across multiple jurisdictions, is notoriously difficult.The list continues. Trump’s team sought to take advantage of ambiguities in the Electoral Count Act, a 19th-century statute that might be one of the most poorly written statutes in the entire federal code. In addition, Trump’s team advanced a constitutional argument called the independent state legislature doctrine that would empower legislatures to dictate or distort the outcomes of congressional and presidential elections in their states.There’s more. When we watched insurrectionists storm the Capitol, we were watching the culminating moment of a seditious conspiracy, yet prosecutions for seditious conspiracy are both rare and difficult. And finally, the entire sorry and deadly affair was instigated by an American president — and an American president had never been indicted before, much less for his role in unlawfully attempting to overturn an American election.Now, consider the response. It’s easy to look at Trump’s persistent popularity with G.O.P. voters and the unrepentant boosterism of parts of right-wing media and despair. Does anything make a difference in the fight against Trump’s lawlessness and lies? The answer is yes, and the record is impressive. Let’s go through it.The pro-Trump media ecosphere that repeated and amplified his election lies has paid a price. Fox News agreed to a stunning $787 million defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, and multiple defamation cases continue against multiple right-wing media outlets.Trump’s lawyers and his lawyer allies have paid a price. Last month the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld the bulk of a sanctions award against Sidney Powell and a Mos Eisley cantina’s worth of Trump-allied lawyers. A New York State appellate court temporarily suspended Rudy Giuliani’s law license in 2021, and earlier this month a Washington, D.C., bar panel recommended that he be disbarred. Jenna Ellis, one of Guiliani’s partners in dangerous dishonesty and frivolous legal arguments, admitted to making multiple misrepresentations in a public censure from the Colorado Bar Association. John Eastman, the former dean of Chapman University’s law school and the author of an infamous legal memo that suggested Mike Pence could overturn the election, is facing his own bar trial in California.Congress has responded to the Jan. 6 crisis, passing bipartisan Electoral Count Act reforms that would make a repeat performance of the congressional attempt to overturn the election far more difficult.The Supreme Court has responded, deciding Moore v. Harper, which gutted the independent state legislature doctrine and guaranteed that partisan state legislatures are still subject to review by the courts.The criminal justice system has responded, securing hundreds of criminal convictions of Jan. 6 rioters, including seditious conspiracy convictions for multiple members of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. And the criminal justice system is still responding, progressing steadily up the command and control chain, with Trump himself apparently the ultimate target.In roughly 30 months — light speed in legal time — the American legal system has built the case law necessary to combat and deter American insurrection. Bar associations are setting precedents. Courts are setting precedents. And these precedents are holding in the face of appeals and legal challenges.Do you wonder why the 2022 election was relatively routine and uneventful, even though the Republicans fielded a host of conspiracy-theorist candidates? Do you wonder why right-wing media was relatively tame after a series of tough G.O.P. losses, especially compared to the deranged hysterics in 2020? Yes, it matters that Trump was not a candidate, but it also matters that the right’s most lawless members have been prosecuted, sued and sanctioned.The consequences for Jan. 6 and the Stop the Steal movement are not exclusively legal. The midterm elections also represented a profound setback for the extreme MAGA right. According to an NBC News report, election-denying candidates “overwhelmingly lost” their races in swing states. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the relentless legal efforts also had a political payoff.And to be clear, this accountability has not come exclusively through the left — though the Biden administration and the Garland Justice Department deserve immense credit for their responses to Trump’s insurrection, which have been firm without overreaching. Multiple Republicans joined with Democrats to pass Electoral Count Act reform. Both conservative and liberal justices rejected the independent state legislature doctrine. Conservative and liberal judges, including multiple Trump appointees, likewise rejected Trump’s election challenges. Republican governors and other Republican elected officials in Arizona and Georgia withstood immense pressure from within their own party to uphold Joe Biden’s election win.American legal institutions have passed the Jan. 6 test so far, but the tests aren’t over. Trump is already attempting to substantially delay the trial on his federal indictment in the Mar-a-Lago case, and if a second federal indictment arrives soon, he’ll almost certainly attempt to delay it as well. Trump does not want to face a jury, and if he delays his trials long enough, he can run for president free of any felony convictions. And what if he wins?Simply put, the American people can override the rule of law. If they elect Trump in spite of his indictments, they will empower him to end his own federal criminal prosecutions and render state prosecutions a practical impossibility. They will empower him to pardon his allies. The American voters will break through the legal firewall that preserves our democracy from insurrection and rebellion.We can’t ask for too much from any legal system. A code of laws is ultimately no substitute for moral norms. Our constitutional republic cannot last indefinitely in the face of misinformation, conspiracy and violence. It can remove the worst actors from positions of power and influence. But it cannot ultimately save us from ourselves. American legal institutions have responded to a historical crisis, but all its victories could still be temporary. Our nation can choose the law, or it can choose Trump. It cannot choose both. More

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      Obstruction Law Cited by Prosecutors in Trump Case Has Drawn Challenges

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      Hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters have been charged with obstruction of an official proceeding, but the charge, which could be applied to former President Donald J. Trump, has come under scrutiny.Well before the prosecutors investigating Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election laid out for him three laws that could be the basis for an indictment, one of the statutes, covering obstruction of an official proceeding, had already been used against — and challenged by — scores of rioters who took part in the storming of the Capitol.The legal questions around applying the obstruction law to the attack on Jan. 6, 2021, have spawned a pair of federal appeals court cases — and could even end up in front of the Supreme Court. But while it might seem risky for the special counsel, Jack Smith, to include the obstruction count in an indictment before the attacks against it are resolved, the way in which the law is written could make it almost uniquely suited to charging Mr. Trump.The count — formally known in the penal code as 18 U.S.C. 1512(c)(2) — makes it a crime to “corruptly” obstruct, impede or interfere with any official government proceeding, and carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.In more than 300 Jan. 6 riot cases, prosecutors have used the law to describe the central event that day: the disruption of the Electoral College vote certification that was taking place inside the Capitol during a joint session of Congress.In general, defendants have been charged with the obstruction count when prosecutors believe they have evidence that their actions on Jan. 6 played some role in stopping the certification process or in chasing lawmakers away from their duties. But as soon as the charge began to be used in Capitol riot cases, defense lawyers started arguing that the government was stretching the statute far beyond its intended scope.By its plain text, the measure seemingly has nothing to do with mobs or riots. It was passed into law in 2002 as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which sought to clamp down on corporate malfeasance, and was initially meant to prohibit things like shredding documents or tampering with witnesses in congressional inquiries.In April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the use of the obstruction count, even while acknowledging that it had never been applied in quite the way it had been in the Jan. 6 cases.The decision by the three-judge panel — which included two Trump appointees — largely homed in on just one of the complaints against the statute. The panel said that any obstruction committed by rioters at the Capitol did not have to relate exclusively to the law’s original prohibitions against tampering with witnesses or destroying documents.But the panel reserved judgment on a separate challenge to the law, one involving the definition of the word “corruptly.” That issue could relate more directly to Mr. Trump, should he be charged with the count.In its arguments to the appeals court, the government said that acting corruptly should be broadly construed to include all sorts of unlawful behavior, such as destroying government property or assaulting police officers. The defense argued for a much narrower interpretation, seeking to define the term as acting illegally to procure something to directly benefit oneself.This challenge is at the center of the second appeals court case in Washington and could be decided any day now. It could also affect how the law applies to Mr. Trump: Unlike many of the rioters on the ground who stood to gain little for themselves by stopping the certification process on Jan. 6, Mr. Trump stood to gain something of immense personal value that day: a victory in the election.While it remains unknown how Mr. Smith might structure an obstruction charge, he could opt to use it to describe the pressure campaign that Mr. Trump and some of his allies mounted against Vice President Mike Pence. The president and lawyers close to him like John Eastman sought to strong-arm Mr. Pence into using his role in overseeing the election certification on Jan. 6 to unilaterally toss the race to Mr. Trump.Last year, the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 urged that Mr. Trump be charged with obstruction of an official proceeding among other counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and incitement to insurrection. But long before those recommendations were made, judges and lawyers involved in Jan. 6 criminal cases were exploring whether Mr. Trump’s behavior — specifically his attempts to pressure Mr. Pence — violated the obstruction count.In November 2021, for example, at an early hearing discussing the validity of the charge, James Pearce, a prosecutor who has handled many of the Justice Department’s thorniest Capitol riot legal issues, argued in court that if someone urged Mr. Pence to break the law on Jan. 6, it could qualify as a corrupt act of obstruction. While Mr. Pearce never mentioned Mr. Trump by name, it was clear he was discussing the former president’s attempts to get Mr. Pence to do his bidding that day.“One of the definitions of ‘corruptly’ is trying to get someone to violate a legal duty,” Mr. Pearce said.Mr. Smith’s election interference inquiry is not the first time prosecutors have used 1512(c)(2) as the basis for scrutinizing Mr. Trump. The provision was also instrumental in the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who examined whether Mr. Trump obstructed efforts to look for ties between Russia and his 2016 presidential campaign.In 2018, William P. Barr, before he got the job as Mr. Trump’s attorney general, wrote a memo to top officials in the Justice Department complaining that Mr. Mueller’s use of the obstruction count was “premised on a novel and legally insupportable reading of the law.”Mr. Mueller, Mr. Barr wrote, was “proposing an unprecedented expansion of obstruction laws” in an effort to find a way to charge Mr. Trump for actions that he had the constitutional power to carry out. (Mr. Mueller never sought to charge Mr. Trump.)Some legal experts have said that Mr. Trump could mount an attack against the obstruction charge, if it is brought by Mr. Smith, by arguing that he truly believed he had been robbed of victory by fraud in the election and, therefore, could not be accused of having acted corruptly.But last week, a senior federal judge in Washington, Royce C. Lamberth, found a high-profile Jan. 6 rioter guilty of the obstruction count despite the defendant’s repeated claims that he believed the election had been stolen.Judge Lamberth’s reasoning — which came in the case of Alan Hostetter, a former police chief turned yoga instructor from Southern California — made no mention of Mr. Trump’s potential criminal exposure, but it could set a legal basis for refuting any attempts by the former president to get around the law’s references to “corruptly.”“Even if Mr. Hostetter genuinely believed the election was stolen and that public officials had committed treason, that does not change the fact that he acted corruptly with consciousness of wrongdoing,” Judge Lamberth wrote. “Belief that your actions are serving a greater good does not negate consciousness of wrongdoing.” More

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      Thailand’s Prime Minister Vote Puts Coalition at Risk

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      The progressive Move Forward Party has failed to form a government, leaving members of the liberal opposition scrambling to find alternatives.After winning the general election in May, the progressive Move Forward party in Thailand promised to introduce bold democratic reforms in the Southeast Asian nation. But last week, the party suffered an embarrassing defeat in Parliament when its candidate of choice failed to muster enough votes to win the premiership and form a government.Now, as Parliament gathers on Wednesday to vote for prime minister for a second time in less than a week, the fragile coalition that Move Forward has cobbled together is on the verge of falling apart. At stake may be the fate of democracy in a nation that has repeatedly tried to overturn military rule and in a region where autocracy is on the rise.“Thailand is not ready to change,” said Pongkwan Sawasdipakdi, a political scientist at Thammasat University in Bangkok. “People in the establishment are not going to let change happen.”Opposition parties tend to come and go in Thailand. Each time, they face rough headwinds brought on by the military-appointed Senate and royalist allies that form the bedrock of the country’s conservative political establishment.Move Forward’s predecessor, the Future Forward Party, was dissolved by the Thai government in 2020 after being accused of violating election law. The leader of Move Forward, Pita Limjaroenrat, is under investigation for owning undisclosed shares of a media company, which could disqualify him from office.Supporters see both cases as flagrant moves by the establishment to block the opposition from wresting power from the ruling conservative government.If the Move Forward coalition falls short on Wednesday, that may be a prelude to another cycle of unrest in Thailand, which was rocked by widespread pro-democracy protests during the coronavirus pandemic. But analysts say the opposition could offer a compromise: a new coalition led by the populist Pheu Thai Party, a familiar name in Thai politics that hews much closer to the status quo.Mr. Limjaroenrat reacting after failing to muster enough votes to win the premiership last week.Rungroj Yongrit/EPA, via ShutterstockAfter Wednesday, Pheu Thai could try to form an alternate coalition that appeals to voters who thought Move Forward was pushing for too much change, as well as to the conservative establishment, whose dismal performance in the election has left it with few options for maintaining its present grip on power.Forming a new opposition coalition will present its own challenges for Pheu Thai.For any new coalition to stand a chance, it needs to include conservative and military-backed parties, which will make demands that will likely run counter to the wishes of Move Forward voters. Those supporters, rather than backing the new government, may choose to take to the streets.“There will be protests,” said Phit Bunwiwatthanakan, 32, a Move Forward voter who owns a cat cafe in the northern Thai city of Chiang Rai. “People feel that, since they won the election, their people have a right to form a government.”There is also a possibility that Mr. Pita may not be given the opportunity to stand for renomination on Wednesday. He has said that if it becomes clear Move Forward cannot get him approved as prime minister, the party would allow Pheu Thai to lead the same coalition.The sort of compromises Pheu Thai might be willing to make in order to form its own coalition are unclear. The party, which won the second-largest vote share in the election, was established by Thailand’s most famous politician, the populist leader Thaksin Shinawatra, who has been living in exile after being ousted by a coup and accused of corruption. Many of Mr. Thaksin’s populist policies remain popular among Thais.“Pheu Thai’s really in the driver’s seat for deciding the future of Thailand,” in part because the establishment will likely try to dissolve Move Forward, said David Streckfuss, a historian and the author or “Truth on Trial in Thailand.”With the vote on Wednesday unlikely to end with a new government in power, analysts are already looking ahead to a third vote, which could happen as early as Thursday.Winning the premiership requires a simple majority of votes in the 500-seat House of Representatives and the 250-seat, military-appointed Senate. Pheu Thai has 141 seats, just 10 less than Move Forward, so it would need conservative parties to cobble together a new coalition.A coalition built by Pheu Thai would likely be led by Srettha Thavisin, 60, a property mogul with little political experience, but who is seen as a more palatable option to the generals than Mr. Pita, the Move Forward candidate. (Paetongtarn Shinawatra, 36, the youngest daughter of Mr. Thaksin, had been an early front-runner in the general election, but told reporters on Tuesday that the party would support Mr. Srettha as prime minister.)Paetongtarn Shinawatra, right, and Sretta Thavisin, left, accompanied by key members of the Pheu Thai Party at party headquarters in Bangkok, in May.Rungroj Yongrit/EPA, via ShutterstockTo some Pheu Thai supporters, Move Forward’s tactics, including its refusal to water down its ambitious plans challenging the military and the monarchy, look unworkable in a hierarchical society where pragmatic, palace-friendly parties tend to do best.Pheu Thai cannot deliver on economic priorities if Move Forward leaders “keep complaining about social issues and laws,” Sanpiti Sittipunt, the son of the governor of Bangkok, wrote on Instagram on Tuesday. He added that Move Forward should “listen to the adults.”By defecting from the opposition coalition formed by Move Forward, Pheu Thai could damage its political brand and that of its figurehead, Mr. Thaksin. But the long-term reputational damage might be worth another chance at power, analysts said, particularly if a compromise with the military involved getting permission for Mr. Thaksin to return from exile in Dubai.For now, Pheu Thai is still publicly projecting unity with Move Forward. This week, the two allies and their six smaller partners agreed that Mr. Pita would stand again for the second vote for prime minister on Wednesday.If street protests swell across Thailand after the votes are cast, the fear is that the military would feel compelled to restore order with gunfire, as it did in 2010, or even with a coup, as it did four years later.Any protests would probably only escalate if a military figure became prime minister again, following the lead of the current one, former Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha. Analysts say there is still an outside chance that the conservative establishment could nominate its own candidate for a third vote, such as Gen. Prawit Wongsuwan, 77, a top official in the current government.Anti-government protesters gathering at Ratchaprasong Intersection in the commercial center of Bangkok, in 2020.Adam Dean for The New York TimesEvery possible move to break the current political impasse risks creating more problems, said Jatuporn Prompan, a former protest leader and Pheu Thai lawmaker. A prolonged state of limbo without a prime minister could lead to raging demonstrations, followed by a crackdown, and perhaps another coup.“This is why the country’s in a crisis,” he said.Ms. Paetongtarn, Mr. Thaksin’s youngest daughter, said that Pheu Thai was eager to get to work on developing the economy and improving the lives of ordinary people. “If we focus on the small picture, it’s one of who’s up and this and that,” she told reporters on Tuesday. “But the country has to move on already.”Muktita Suhartono More

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      Spanish Vote Threatens Efforts to Recover Franco’s Victims

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      Spain’s left-wing government has tried to accelerate exhumations of mass graves left from the dictatorship. If it wins Sunday’s election, the right may end that.When she first heard of a project to exhume and identify the remains of hundreds of Civil War victims — her grandfather possibly among them — Ángela Raya Fernández said she was “filled with hope, a lot of hope.”Ever since she was a girl, she had heard stories about how her father’s father, José Raya Hurtado, was executed during the Spanish Civil War, his body ignominiously dumped in a ravine by forces loyal to Gen. Francisco Franco. She had only ever known him from black-and-white photos: round glasses, a receding hairline and a resolute gaze.“We’ve long hoped that somebody could find him and give him a dignified burial,” said Ms. Raya, a soft-spoken, 62-year-old librarian.But with general elections Sunday and polls predicting a right-wing victory, Ms. Raya and her family, along with thousands of others, fear that years of efforts to find their loved ones may suddenly grind to a halt.A photo of José Raya Hurtado, who is believed to have been executed during the Spanish Civil War, is affixed to a tree in Viznar, Spain.The conservative Popular Party, which grew partly from Francoist roots, has pledged to repeal a memory law passed last autumn under the current Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, aimed at accelerating the exhumations. A possible alliance between the conservatives and the far-right Vox party, which has long opposed attempts to address the crimes of the past, has only heightened these fears.“It would be a catastrophe,” Ms. Raya said, “a huge step backward.”The to and fro over the memory law reflects how the traumas of Spain’s 1936-39 Civil War and Franco’s subsequent dictatorship, which ended with his death in 1975, still divide the country today.To some, Franco, a nationalist, consolidated Spain’s postwar economic growth and served as an anti-Communist bulwark. To many others, his rule was one of repression, marked by mass executions, exile for thousands and the abduction of children.An estimated 100,000 people were executed by Franco’s supporters during and after the Civil War, and buried in more than 2,000 mass graves scattered across the country.Some 2,200 people were shot by Franco’s firing squads against a wall in Paterna that is still pockmarked with bullet holes.No one dared disturb those sites in a country where Franco’s legacy has long been left unexamined. Conservatives, in particular, have argued that exhumations would only reopen old wounds.For the left, the silence has been anything but therapeutic, even enraging. During the dictatorship, Spaniards were forbidden to talk about the killings. An amnesty law, passed in 1977, hoped to draw a line under the crimes of the past, but in effect made forgetting a crucial part of the effort to heal a divided nation in transition to democracy.“It was a culture of silence,” said Agustín Gómez Jiménez, 49, a health worker who recounted how his father had long refused to even show a picture of his own father, executed in 1936.Mr. Gómez said it took his sister rummaging through their father’s belongings to finally find some pictures, five years ago. One of them shows their grandfather on a beach, holding hands with his small, soon-to-be-orphaned son. “I have goose bumps just thinking my father hid the photos. He was so traumatized,” he said.Agustín Gómez Jiménez and his sister Maria Del Mar Gómez with a portrait of their grandfather who was executed in 1936.The first efforts to deal with the mass graves began in 2007, when a center-left prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, passed a “law of historical memory” that lent government support to exhumations.But the legislation was slow to take effect and when the conservative Popular Party took power in 2011, the conservatives promptly defunded the law.It took another decade, the commitment of Spanish left-wing-controlled regions and last year’s law — which created a census and a national DNA bank to help locate and identify the remains — for the exhumations to finally gain momentum.Such efforts are evident in Viznar, a small, whitewashed village perched in the mountains overlooking Granada. For three years, a team of archaeologists has been digging in the ravine where Ms. Raya’s and Mr. Gómez’s grandfathers were buried along with about 280 other victims, including possibly the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca.On a recent morning, the researchers were hunched over a 3-by-13-foot pit, using brushes and small blades to delicately remove the earth covering eight skeletons. Their spines and femurs were interlaced, a sign that bodies had been dumped one upon the other. Several skulls were pierced by round holes, evidence that the victims had been shot in the head.Researchers excavate skeletons in a mass grave in Viznar.“It’s a page of our history that was blank and that we’re writing today,” said Francisco Carrión Méndez, the archaeologist coordinating the project, standing beside the grave. Many relatives, he explained, want to find their loved ones and rebury them because “their dignity was stolen.”Mr. Carrión pointed to photos of the victims that families had hung on nearby pines: a university rector with slicked-back hair; an imposing-looking barmaid. “They shouldn’t be forgotten,” he said.Not everyone agrees. At the entrance of the ravine, a sign paying tribute to the victims has been defaced by graffiti reading “¡Viva Franco!” To which someone responded: “Fascism must not be discussed, it must be destroyed.”“In Spain,” García Lorca once wrote, “the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world.”To date, the remains of 75 people have been recovered in Viznar. The passage of time and lack of records about the killings make identification difficult, so researchers are using bone samples to perform DNA tests in a Granada laboratory. The first results are expected this fall.The small town of Viznar, where a team of archaeologists has been digging in a ravine with about 280 victims, including possibly the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca.But many relatives worry it will be too late.“Who’s responsible for the samples? Who?” Francisca Pleguezuelos Aguilar, 73, anxiously asked a perplexed forensic expert during a recent visit to the laboratory.Pointing at a window behind which two lab assistants in white overalls were showing the DNA testing process to families, Ms. Pleguezuelos said she worried that the conservatives would block the study of the samples if they win this week’s general elections.She wasn’t the only one afraid. “They’ll paralyze all the projects,” said María José Sánchez, a great-niece of the barmaid who was killed, her eyes swollen with tears. “The curtain is about to fall again.”A spokesperson for the Popular Party suggested that exhumations could continue after the elections, saying that “relatives have the right to claim the bodies of their loved ones.”But many relatives said they remembered how Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s previous conservative prime minister, boasted of having cut public funding for the 2007 memory law to zero.Researchers identify bodies in Viznar, where the remains of 75 people have been discovered so far.The possibility of a national alliance between the conservative Popular Party and the hard-right Vox party — which polls suggest will be the only way for the right to secure a majority in Parliament — has only exacerbated the fears of victims’ families.In recent weeks, they have been looking anxiously at local governing coalitions forged between the two parties following regional elections in May: they almost always included plans to clamp down on memory projects.“The central government is our last bulwark, our Alamo fortress,” said Matías Alonso Blasco, who represents families in the Valencia region, where the right recently took political control. “If it falls, it’s over.”Several representatives of Vox declined to comment for this article.In the Valencia region, the new right-wing coalition said, “the norms that attack reconciliation in historical matters will be repealed.” Many took it as a reference to the 2017 local memory law that has helped excavate about two-thirds of the area’s 600 mass graves.Many of the bodies were recovered from the cemetery of Paterna, a suburb of Valencia. There, some 2,200 people were shot by Franco’s firing squads against a wall that is still pockmarked with bullet holes. So numerous are the mass graves that they have been given numbers.Standing between two wooden signs marked 100 and 101, Marilyn Ortíz Bono said the body of her grandfather had yet to be identified because the remains found in the grave where he is believed to have been buried had decayed too much.Ms. Ortíz said that shortly after Vox gained power in the Valencia region, she sent a sample of her DNA to a state-funded laboratory, hoping to get the identification process completed before the general elections.“I haven’t heard back from them,” she said. “I’m afraid I never will.”An old Spanish Republican flag lies on a mass grave in the cemetery in Paterna. More