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      Democrats Enter the Fall Armed With Something New: Hope

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      Vulnerable incumbent Democratic senators like Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada are already planning events promoting the landmark legislation they passed over the weekend. Democratic ad makers are busily preparing a barrage of commercials about it across key battlegrounds. And the White House is set to deploy Cabinet members on a nationwide sales pitch.The sweeping legislation, covering climate change and prescription drug prices, which came together in the Senate after more than a year of painfully public fits and starts, has kicked off a frenetic 91-day sprint to sell the package by November — and win over an electorate that has grown skeptical of Democratic rule.For months, Democrats have discussed their midterm anxieties in near-apocalyptic terms, as voters threatened to take out their anger over high gas prices and soaring inflation on the party in power. But the deal on the broad new legislation, along with signs of a brewing voter revolt over abortion rights, has some Democrats experiencing a flicker of an unfamiliar feeling: hope.“This bill gives Democrats that centerpiece accomplishment,” said Ali Lapp, the president of House Majority PAC, a Democratic super PAC.In interviews, Democratic strategists, advisers to President Biden, lawmakers running in competitive seats and political ad makers all expressed optimism that the legislation — the Inflation Reduction Act — would deliver the party a necessary and powerful tool to show they were focused on lowering costs at a time of economic hardship for many. They argued its key provisions could be quickly understood by crucial constituencies.“It is easy to talk about because it has a real impact on people every day,” Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, the White House deputy chief of staff, said in an interview. The measure must still pass the House and could come up for a vote there later this week. “It’s congressional Democrats who’ve gotten it done — with no help from congressional Republicans.”Senator Chuck Schumer on Sunday after Democrats in the Senate passed the climate and tax bill.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesWhether Democrats can keep the measure in the spotlight is another matter. On Monday evening, former President Donald J. Trump said the F.B.I. had searched his Palm Beach, Fla., home, a significant development that threatened to overshadow the news of the Senate deal and that gave already-energized Republicans a new cause to circle the wagons around Mr. Trump.Still, for younger voters, who polls have shown to be cool to Mr. Biden and his party, the package contains the most sweeping efforts to address climate change in American history. For older voters, the deal includes popular measures sought for decades by Democrats to rein in the price of prescription drugs for seniors on Medicare. And for both the Democratic base and independents, the deal cuts against the Republican argument that a Democratic-controlled Washington is a morass of incompetence and gridlock unfocused on issues that affect average Americans.“It’s very significant because it shows that the Democrats care about solving problems, it shows that we can get things done and I think it starts to turn around some of the talk about Biden,” said Representative Dina Titus, a Nevada Democrat running in a competitive re-election race, alluding to angst about the president as his national approval rating has hovered around 40 percent.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsKansas Abortion Vote: After a decisive victory for abortion rights in deep-red Kansas, Democrats vowed to elevate the issue nationwide, while some Republicans softened their stands against abortion.Wisconsin Primary: Former President Donald J. Trump’s supporters have turned the false notion that his 2020 defeat can still be reversed into a central issue ahead of the state’s G.O.P. primary for governor.Election Deniers: In Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, Republicans who dispute the legitimacy of the 2020 election are on a path toward winning decisive control over how elections are run.Senate Races: The key question with less than 100 days until the fall election: Can Democratic candidates in crucial Senate contests continue to outpace President Biden’s unpopularity? Adding to the Democratic Party’s brightening outlook were the results of the Kansas referendum on abortion rights last week, when a measure that would have removed abortion protections from the Kansas Constitution was overwhelmingly defeated. It was a stark reminder of the volatile and unpredictable political impact of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.Voters in Lawrence, Kan., last week when the state abortion referendum was defeated.Katie Currid for The New York Times“I can kind of feel it on the streets, that there’s some change in momentum,” Ms. Titus said.Indeed, in recent days, Democrats pulled ahead of Republicans for the first time this year when voters were asked which party they would prefer to control Congress — the so-called generic ballot test — according to polling averages maintained by the data-journalism website FiveThirtyEight.There is no guarantee of success in selling the bill. Last year, the White House shepherded through a rare bipartisan infrastructure deal. But its passage, which drew great fanfare in Washington, did little to arrest the continual decline in Mr. Biden’s approval ratings — and many Americans were still unaware that the measure passed months later, polling showed.Republicans say the new legislation could galvanize their own base against an expansive progressive wish list that has been decades in the making, just as the passage of the Affordable Care Act preceded the Republican wave of 2010.“That’s the sort of thing that could really set a spark to the powder keg — in the same way that the midnight passage of Obamacare was the moment that electrified Republican voters and started to really pull independents in our direction,” said Steven Law, who leads the main Republican super PAC devoted to Senate races.Republican assaults on the legislation — for bulking up the Internal Revenue Service, for creating a green energy “slush fund,” as Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, has called it, and for expanding spending programs despite the bill’s Inflation Reduction Act title — have already begun. 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      Chuck Schumer Delivers on Climate Change and Health Care Deal

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      WASHINGTON — Senator Chuck Schumer was huddled in his Capitol office on Thursday evening awaiting a climactic meeting with Kyrsten Sinema, a critical holdout on his painstakingly negotiated climate change, tax and health care deal, when the loud booms and flashes of a powerful thunderstorm shook Washington, setting the lights flickering.Mr. Schumer and his aides, so close to a signature legislative achievement to top off a surprise string of victories, glanced anxiously at one another and wondered if it was a bad omen. A 50-50 Senate, a pandemic that kept Democrats constantly guessing about who would be available to vote and the sheer difficulty of managing the nearly unmanageable chamber had left them superstitious.“I’ve been a worrier all my life, but a happy worrier,” said Mr. Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader.He needn’t have fretted. After a half-hour meeting, Mr. Schumer shook hands with Ms. Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, who agreed to lend her support to the legislation in exchange for a few revisions and some home-state drought relief. After a grueling overnight session, the Senate approved the sweeping measure on Sunday, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tiebreaking vote. The House was expected to follow suit later this week.It was a head-snapping change in fortune. Just a few weeks earlier, Mr. Schumer, the Democratic agenda and the party’s chances of retaining its bare Senate majority all seemed in sorry shape as last-gasp negotiations over the broad legislation appeared to collapse for good under the weight of resistance from Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia.Instead, Democrats not only landed their biggest prize — the party-line climate and tax legislation — but also capped off an extraordinarily productive run for a Congress better known for its paralysis. It included passage of the first bipartisan gun safety legislation in a generation, a huge microchip production and scientific research bill to bolster American competitiveness with China, and a major veterans health care measure.The series of successes was all the more sweet for Democrats because it came with the political benefit of Republicans making themselves look bad by switching their position and temporarily blocking the bill to help sick veterans, in what appeared to be a temper tantrum over the abrupt resurrection of the climate deal.“We’ve had an extraordinary six weeks,” Mr. Schumer said in an interview, calling the climate, health and tax measure “the most comprehensive piece of legislation affecting the American people in decades.”It was far from certain he could attain this result. Mr. Schumer, who unlike his predecessors is not known as a master tactician or gifted legislator, has struggled to produce for long stretches, needing every single vote from an ideologically mixed Democratic membership. Even his allies wondered whether he was too driven by a need to be liked or his own personal political considerations in warding off a potential primary challenge from his left to be capable of the kind of ruthlessness that would be needed.Mr. Schumer said it was stamina, not bare knuckles, that had been the main requirement.“This is the hardest job I’ve ever had, with a 50-50 Senate, a big agenda and intransigent Republicans,” Mr. Schumer said. He cited a persistence instilled in him by his father, who ran an exterminating company and died last year, as a motivating factor. “Keep at it, keep at it. Look at all the pitfalls we have faced to get this done.”What’s in the Democrats’ Climate and Tax BillCard 1 of 6A new proposal. More

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      Biden’s Remarkable Summer

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      Media narratives are driven by trajectory.Things get better or worse. People rise and fall. Maybe there is an upstart sensation who threatens the establishment. Maybe there is a spectacular fall from grace. Maybe there is a comeback. Regardless of the story, the direction of movement is what matters.Joe Biden got caught in one of those narratives: that things were going badly and people were losing confidence. Then, of course, the polls backed up that narrative, which provided a patina of proof.But the truth is that news narratives and polls are symbiotic. The narratives help shape what people believe, which is then captured by the polls, and those polling results are then fed back into news narratives as separate, objective and independent fact.“Joe Biden can’t catch a break” was a neat narrative. Every new disappointing data point fit snugly within it. But reality doesn’t play by media rules. It is often much more nuanced.As the legendary football coach Lou Holtz once put it: “You’re never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you’re never as bad as they say when you lose.”Biden has had some bad months, to be sure, but there is no way to get around the fact the last month or so has been stellar for the administration.On the economic front, as of Wednesday, gas prices had fallen for 50 consecutive days, down 86 cents from the record average high of $5.02 on June 14, according to CNN. The jobs market has also shown incredible resilience. Friday’s jobs report alone far outpaced expectations.There are challenges. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, inflation increased “9.1 percent for the 12 months ending June, the largest 12-month increase since the period ending November 1981.” This doesn’t invalidate that Biden has had a good month; it only underscores the complexities of any news story.On the legislative front, in June, Biden signed the most significant federal gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years. Two weeks ago, his big spending bill, Build Back Better, which everyone thought was dead, was resurrected in the trimmed down form of the Inflation Reduction Act. Now, all Senate Democrats have gotten behind the bill and it has passed in that body. These developments don’t erase legislative disappointments like the failure of the voter protection bill or the police reform bill, but they are victories nonetheless.There are foreign policy wins, like the killing of the Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri in Afghanistan, and the overwhelming vote in the Senate in favor of expanding NATO to include Finland and Sweden, a direct reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And the Russians have suggested that they are open to discussing a prison swap to free Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan, both of whom are still being held in Russian custody. Here, again, there are challenges. For instance, tensions are heating up with China, particularly after a visit to Taiwan by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.Then, there is the uber issue of the Supreme Court striking down the right to an abortion. This was a gutting disappointment to liberals, and many have accused the White House of not reacting strongly enough.But it appears that the issue has roused some otherwise disinterested or dispassionate voters and may help Democrats to hold off a massive wave of Republican wins in the midterms. We need look no further than Kansas, a state that voted strongly for Trump in 2020, but that last week voted even more strongly to keep the right to an abortion in the state Constitution.Biden’s string of victories may not yet be enough to shift the narrative about him from spiraling to rebounding, but a fair read of recent events demands some adjustment.The White House must also shift its messaging, from defensive to offensive. I’ve never truly bought the argument that Biden’s polling was bad because he simply wasn’t doing enough to tout his accomplishments. There were some periods where the disappointments actually seemed to carry more weight than his achievements.But that’s not the case now, and the administration must seize this moment, and not be shy about shouting about its wins.This is one area where Donald Trump succeeded: boasting. When he was campaigning in 2016, he claimed that if he was elected, people might even “get tired of winning.” As he put it, people would say: “Please, please, it’s too much winning. We can’t take it anymore. Mr. President, it’s too much.” To which he said he would respond: “No it isn’t. We have to keep winning. We have to win more.”He would go through his term bragging about how anything that happened on his watch was the biggest and best.We now know that the Trump presidency was a disaster that nearly destroyed the country, but, if a failure like Trump can crow about all he did, even when the evidence wasn’t there, then surely Biden can find a way to do a little crowing of his own, particularly during one of the most successful stretches of his presidency.Biden, you did it. Boast about it.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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      Adams Won’t Let Up on Bail Reform, Putting Pressure on Hochul

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      Mayor Eric Adams is calling forcefully for another round of changes to state bail law, putting pressure on Gov. Kathy Hochul as she runs for a full term in November.Hours before Mayor Eric Adams held a news conference on Wednesday to argue that an “insane, broken system” allowed repeat offenders to keep getting arrested and then released without bail in New York City, Gov. Kathy Hochul issued something of a pre-emptive strike.Four months ago, the governor and the State Legislature tightened New York’s bail laws for the second time in three years, making more crimes bail-eligible and giving judges additional discretion to consider both the severity of a case and a defendant’s repeat offenses when setting bail.But the mayor, dissatisfied with the city’s crime rates, was again putting the ball back in her court.At her own news conference, the governor, visibly peeved, brought up the recent bail law revisions. “I’m not sure why everybody intentionally ignores this,” she said. “But people are out there and, you know, people trying to make political calculations based on this.”She did not mention Mr. Adams, a fellow Democrat, by name, or, for that matter, her Republican opponent in November, Representative Lee Zeldin. But both Mr. Adams and Mr. Zeldin have hammered the governor on the state’s approach to bail and have made similar claims about how the bail laws have affected crime rates.Mr. Adams, who has based much of his mayoral platform on reducing crime, even made use of physical props on Wednesday to illustrate his point. He made his remarks next to poster boards detailing the crimes of individuals he said were some of the city’s worst recidivists. (Mr. Adams said his lawyers forbade him from releasing the individuals’ names.)Mayor Adams gave examples of how some repeat offenders had committed multiple crimes after being released without bail.Natalie Keyssar for The New York TimesThe mayor and his police officials also unleashed a litany of statistics they said demonstrated the severity of the problem.“Our recidivism rates have skyrocketed,” Mr. Adams said. “Let’s look at the real numbers. In 2022, 25 percent of the 1,494 people arrested for burglary committed another felony within 60 days.”He added: “In 2017, however, just 7.7 percent went on to commit another crime.”In 2019, state lawmakers rewrote bail law so that fewer people awaiting trial landed behind bars because they could not afford to post bail. Law enforcement agencies have furiously fought the law, whose implementation came at the beginning of the pandemic, during which gun crime rose in cities around the country.After a wave of criticism, lawmakers agreed upon a set of changes in 2020 that added two dozen crimes to the list of serious charges for which a judge could impose cash bail.The second revisions to bail law came earlier this year, after Mr. Adams demanded further changes, angering many lawmakers.But Mr. Adams said tougher revisions are still needed. He called on the state to allow judges to more frequently take dangerousness into account when deciding to set bail, and to have some juveniles’ cases play out in criminal court rather than family court.He insisted on Wednesday that he was not trying to target the governor, his ostensible political ally whom he endorsed less than two months ago. Ms. Hochul, likewise, chose to highlight the programs she and the mayor had worked on together, and the ways they were “in sync.”The mayor and governor have made a point of projecting political comity, a new tone after years of public feuding between their predecessors, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio.But the uptick in crime and Mr. Adams’s laserlike focus on the issue threatens to strain their relationship.Murders and shootings are down slightly this year, but major crimes including burglaries have risen more than 35 percent.Mr. Adams, a former police captain, sometimes turns to hyperbole to describe the situation. In May, he said he had never seen crime at these levels, despite serving as a police officer in the 1980s, when crime was far, far higher. Today’s murder rate, for example, is roughly on par with 2009, when Michael R. Bloomberg was mayor.But Mr. Adams ran for office on the premise that he would bring down crime, and his political imperatives threaten to collide with Ms. Hochul’s, who has every incentive to cast herself as firmly in control of the situation.Many left-leaning advocates, as well as some political leaders, have pushed the state to not undo changes made to the bail laws in recent years.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesLegislative leaders in Albany have recoiled at Mr. Adam’s recent comments. When a reporter last week asked the mayor if he wanted a special session to address bail reform, and the mayor responded in the affirmative, Michael Gianaris, the deputy majority leader in the Senate, compared him to Republicans.“It’s sad Mayor Adams has joined the ranks of right wingers who are so grossly demagoguing this issue,” Mr. Gianaris said. “He should focus less on deflecting from his own responsibility for higher crime and more on taking steps that would actually make New York safer.”When Mr. Adams pressed for the second wave of changes to the law earlier this year, Ms. Hochul adopted the cause as her own, expending significant political power to do so. The effort met with fierce opposition in the Legislature, with one lawmaker going on a hunger strike to oppose the Hochul plan.And while Ms. Hochul was ultimately successful in winning alterations, the effort left a stain on her relationship with the Legislature.Among other things, the 2022 revisions made more crimes eligible for bail, and gave judges additional discretion to consider whether a defendant is accused of causing “serious harm” to someone, or has a history of using or possessing a gun. The new changes did not, however, impose a dangerousness standard that Mr. Adams is now pressing for, which criminal justice advocates argue is subject to racial bias.Mr. Adams’s decision to push for even more changes has created an opening for Mr. Zeldin, who last week held a news conference to voice support for Mr. Adams’s calls for a special session to address bail reform.“I believe that judges should have discretion to weigh dangerousness and flight risk and past criminal records and seriousness of the offense on far more offenses,” Mr. Zeldin said.A poll this week found that Ms. Hochul has a 14-point lead over Mr. Zeldin — “an early but certainly not insurmountable lead,” according to the pollster at Siena College.Gov. Hochul said that judges and prosecutors had the “tools they needed” to improve public safety, but had not deployed them effectively.Anna Watts for The New York TimesThe mayor on Wednesday took pains to insist that he and Mr. Zeldin were not, in fact, joined at the hip.“We must have a broken hip, because he clearly doesn’t get it,” Mr. Adams said of Mr. Zeldin. “He has voted against all of the responsible gun laws in Congress.”The Legal Aid Society, the main legal provider for poor New Yorkers, said in a statement on Wednesday that the Adams administration was trying to “cherry-pick a handful of cases to misguide New Yorkers and convince them that bail reform is responsible for all of society’s ills.”Ms. Hochul was more circumspect in her criticism, instead focusing on the recent revisions to the bail laws. She said that the changes gave judges and district attorneys “the tools they need” to improve public safety and suggested that those who failed to utilize them should answer to voters.“I believe in accountability at all levels,” she said. “And you know, people can’t just be saying that they don’t have something when they do have it.”Jonah E. Bromwich More

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      Lawmakers Urge Electoral Count Changes to Fix Flaws Trump Exploited

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      Lawmakers in both parties are eager to act after former President Donald J. Trump and his allies sought to exploit a 135-year-old law to overturn the 2020 election.Senators from both parties pressed for legislation that would update the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act, closing loopholes that former President Trump and his allies tried to exploit to reverse the 2020 election results.Sarah Silbiger for The New York TimesWASHINGTON — Determined to prevent a repeat of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, backers of an overhaul of the federal law governing the count of presidential electoral ballots pressed lawmakers on Wednesday to repair the flaws that President Donald J. Trump and his allies tried to exploit to reverse the 2020 results.“There is nothing more essential to the orderly transfer of power than clear rules for effecting it,” Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and one of the lead authors of a bill to update the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act, said Wednesday as the Senate Rules Committee began its review of the legislation. “I urge my colleagues in the Senate and the House to seize this opportunity to enact the sensible and much-needed reforms before the end of this Congress.”Backers of the legislation, which has significant bipartisan support in the Senate, believe that a Republican takeover of the House in November and the beginning of the 2024 presidential election cycle could make it impossible to make major election law changes in the next Congress. They worry that, unless the outdated statute is changed, the shortcomings exposed by Mr. Trump’s unsuccessful effort to interfere with the counting of electoral votes could allow another effort to subvert the presidential election.“The Electoral Count Act of 1887 just turned out to be more troublesome, potentially, than anybody had thought,” said Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, the senior Republican on the rules panel. “The language of 1887 is really outdated and vague in so many ways. Both sides of the aisle want to update this act.”But despite the emerging consensus, lawmakers also conceded that some adjustments to the proposed legislation were likely given concerns raised by election law experts. In attempting to solve some of the old measure’s problems, experts say, the new legislation could create new ones.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 9Making a case against Trump. More

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      The Anti-Abortion Movement Needs Minority Rule

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      One side effect of Roe v. Wade was that it allowed the anti-abortion movement to pretend to be on the side of democracy. True, the decision was popular, and majorities since the 1970s have wanted to see abortion legal in at least some circumstances. But Roe prevented duly elected state governments from passing abortion restrictions that were in some cases also popular with their constituents. The goal of the anti-abortion movement was and remains national prohibition. Its language called for returning the matter to the state voters.The stunning result in an abortion referendum in Kansas on Tuesday, however, shows that even in a very red state, bans cannot necessarily survive contact with democracy. Kansas has its own version of Roe, a 2019 State Supreme Court decision holding that the state Constitution protects “a woman’s right to make decisions about her body, including the decision whether to continue her pregnancy.” The referendum, the first statewide test of electoral sentiment about abortion post-Roe, asked voters whether they wanted to change the Constitution so the Republican-controlled Legislature could ban abortions. They did not.When I spoke to pro-choice organizers last month, they were cautiously optimistic that the vote would be close, though they worried about its timing. Rather than scheduling the referendum for the general election, Republicans put it on the primary ballot, when conservative turnout is typically higher. The pro-choice side needed to get people to show up on a day when they weren’t used to voting. As far as I can tell, no one expected the 18-point landslide in a state that voted for Donald Trump by 15 points.Then again, maybe we should have. It’s not uncommon for abortion bans to fail in state referendums. In 2006, South Dakota voters overturned a strict abortion ban, a direct challenge to Roe, by 11 points. In 2011, Mississippi voters rejected a constitutional amendment defining a fertilized egg as a person by 17 percentage points. Even in the most conservative parts of the country, many people recoil from strict abortion bans.I hope Kansas sends a message to other red states that have passed draconian abortion prohibitions or are weighing them. I’m not sure it will, because those bans are often an expression not of democratic wishes, but of lawmakers’ insulation from democratic accountability. An extreme example is Wisconsin, a purple state with a Democratic governor that voted for Joe Biden in the last election. When Roe was overturned, there was widespread confusion about whether an 1849 abortion ban had gone back into effect, and as a result, abortion services have been halted.There is little reason to think that this is what the people of Wisconsin want, but it’s not clear if they can pass a law to change it, because state legislative maps are drawn in a way that gives Republicans an overwhelming advantage. According to a University of Wisconsin Law School analysis, if Democrats and Republicans got the same number of votes, Republicans would win 64.8 percent of State Senate seats, and Democrats around 35.2 percent.Obviously, this doesn’t mean that the backlash to the Supreme Court decision jettisoning Roe won’t have important electoral implications. Since it came down, polls show a shift toward Democrats in the midterm congressional vote. Some politicians, like Nicole Malliotakis, the only Republican member of Congress from New York City, will likely be damaged by their opposition to legal abortion.Still, votes for abortion rights don’t automatically translate into votes for Democrats, because partisan identification is often more powerful than issue preference. In 2020, Missouri voters approved a constitutional amendment expanding Medicaid eligibility, but the state has continued to favor Republicans overwhelmingly. The same year, Florida’s voters opted to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour even as they gave a majority to Trump.Clearly, however, there are substantial numbers of voters outraged by abortion bans and ready to express their anger at the ballot box. Kansas’s secretary of state predicted that turnout on Tuesday would be 36 percent. It ended up being closer to 50 percent, almost as high as in the 2018 general election.The anti-abortion movement has already been aided by minority rule. Roe’s end was made possible because a president who lost the popular vote was able to put three judges on the Supreme Court. The filibuster means that even with the support of the pro-choice Republican senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, the Senate can’t codify any of Roe’s protections.As time goes on, and the harrowing consequences of abortion bans pile up, abortion opponents will need ever greater limits on popular sovereignty in order to impose their regime on an unwilling nation. The cause of “life,” as abortion opponents define it, will likely merge with the broader Republican campaign to disenfranchise those it defines as outside the blessed circle of real Americanness.In a recent New York Times Magazine cover story, Charles Homans described how the “Stop the Steal” movement transcended Donald Trump. “The hole he punched in American democracy, out of sheer self-interest, had allowed his followers to glimpse a vision of the country restored to its divinely ordained promise that lay beyond that democracy — but also beyond him,” wrote Homans. The Kansas referendum demonstrated that democracy in America can still work, and why the forces of religious authoritarianism are so set on destroying it.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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      Kansas Votes to Preserve Abortion Rights Protections in Its Constitution

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      OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — Kansas voters resoundingly decided against removing the right to abortion from the State Constitution, according to The Associated Press, a major victory for the abortion rights movement in one of America’s reliably conservative states.The defeat of the ballot referendum was the most tangible demonstration yet of a political backlash against the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that had protected abortion rights throughout the country. The decisive margin came as a surprise, and after frenzied campaigns with both sides pouring millions into advertising and knocking on doors throughout a sweltering final campaign stretch.“The voters in Kansas have spoken loud and clear: We will not tolerate extreme bans on abortion,” said Rachel Sweet, the campaign manager for Kansans for Constitutional Freedom, which led the effort to defeat the amendment.told supporters that a willingness to work across partisan lines and ideological differences helped their side win.“The voters in Kansas have spoken loud and clear: We will not tolerate extreme bans on abortion,” Ms. Sweet said.At a campaign watch party in suburban Overland Park, abortion rights supporters yelled with joy when MSNBC showed their side with a commanding lead.“We’re watching the votes come in, we’re seeing the changes of some of the counties where Donald Trump had a huge percentage of the vote, and we’re seeing that just decimated,” said Jo Dee Adelung, 63, a Democrat from Merriam, Kan., who knocked on doors and called voters in recent weeks.She said she hoped the result sent a message that voters are “really taking a look at all of the issues and doing what’s right for Kansas and not just going down party lines.”The vote in Kansas, three months before the midterm elections, was the first time American voters weighed in directly on the issue of abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade this summer. The referendum, watched closely by national figures on both sides of the abortion debate, took on added importance because of Kansas’ location, abutting states where abortion is already banned in nearly all cases. More than $12 million has been spent on advertising, split about evenly between the two camps. The amendment, had it passed, would have removed abortion protections from the State Constitution and paved the way for legislators to ban or restrict abortions.“We’ve been saying that after a decision is made in Washington, that the spotlight would shift to Kansas,” said David Langford, a retired engineer from Leawood, Kan., who wants the amendment to pass, and who reached out to Protestant pastors to rally support.The push for an amendment was rooted in a 2019 ruling by the Kansas Supreme Court that struck down some abortion restrictions and found that the right to an abortion was guaranteed by the State Constitution. That decision infuriated Republicans, who had spent years passing abortion restrictions and campaigning on the issue. They used their supermajorities in the Legislature last year to place the issue on the 2022 ballot.That state-level fight over abortion limits took on far greater meaning after the nation’s top court overturned Roe, opening the door in June for states to go beyond restrictions and outlaw abortions entirely. The Roman Catholic Church and other religious and conservative groups spent heavily to back the amendment, while national supporters of abortion rights poured millions of dollars into the race to oppose it.Canvassers supporting Amendment 2 left literature at a resident’s door last week in Olathe, Kan.Chase Castor for The New York TimesSupporters of the amendment have said repeatedly that the amendment itself would not ban abortion, and Republican lawmakers have been careful to avoid telegraphing what their legislative plans would be if it passed.“Voting yes doesn’t mean that abortion won’t be allowed, it means we’re going to allow our legislators to determine the scope of abortion,” said Mary Jane Muchow of Overland Park, Kan., who supported the amendment. “I think abortion should be legal, but I think there should be limitations on it.”If the amendment had passed, though, the question was not whether Republicans would try to wield their commanding legislative majorities to pass new restrictions, but how far they would go in doing so. Many Kansans who support abortion rights said they feared that a total or near-total abortion ban would be passed within monthsAbortion is now legal in Kansas up to 22 weeks of pregnancy.“I don’t want to become another state that bans all abortion for any reason,” said Barbara Grigar of Overland Park, Kan., who identified herself as a moderate and said she was voting against the amendment. “Choice is every woman’s choice, and not the government’s.”A Pew Research Center survey published last month found that a majority of Americans said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and that more than half of adults disapproved of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe.Kansas has been a focal point of the national abortion debate at least since 1991, when protesters from across the country gathered in Wichita and blocked access to clinics during weeks of heated demonstrations that they called the Summer of Mercy.At times, the state has seen violence over the issue. In 1986, a Wichita abortion clinic was attacked with a pipe bomb. In 1993, a woman who opposed abortion shot and injured Dr. George Tiller, one of only a few American physicians who performed late-term abortions. In 2009, another anti-abortion activist shot and killed Dr. Tiller at his Wichita church.In recent years, and especially in the weeks since Roe fell, Kansas has become a haven of abortion access in a region where that is increasingly rare.Even before the Supreme Court’s action, nearly half of the abortions performed in Kansas involved out-of-state residents. Now Oklahoma and Missouri have banned the procedure in almost all cases, Nebraska may further restrict abortion in the next few months, and women from Arkansas and Texas, where new bans are in place, are traveling well beyond their states’ borders.Kansas is reliably Republican in presidential elections, and its voters are generally conservative on many issues, but polling before the referendum suggested a close race and nuanced public opinions on abortion. The state is not a political monolith: Besides its Democratic governor, a majority of Kansas Supreme Court justices were appointed by Democrats, and Representative Sharice Davids, a Democrat, represents the Kansas City suburbs in Congress.Representative Sharice Davids speaks at an election watch party hosted by Kansans for Constitutional Freedom in Overland Park, Kansas.Arin Yoon for The New York TimesMs. Davids’s district was once a moderate Republican stronghold, but it has been trending toward Democrats in recent years. Her re-election contest in November in a redrawn district may be one of the most competitive House races in the country, and party strategists expect the abortion debate to play an important role in districts like hers that include swaths of upscale suburbs.Political strategists have been particularly attuned to turnout in the Kansas City suburbs, and are seeking to gauge how galvanizing abortion is, especially for swing voters and Democrats in a post-Roe environment.“They’re going to see how to advise their candidates to talk about the issue, they’re going to be looking at every political handicap,” said James Carville, the veteran Democratic strategist. “Every campaign consultant, everybody is watching this thing like it’s the Super Bowl.”As the election approached, and especially since the Supreme Court decision, rhetoric on the issue became more heated. Campaign signs on both sides have been vandalized, police officials and activists have said. In the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park, vandals targeted a Catholic church, defacing a building and a statue of Mary with red paint.Before the vote on Tuesday, which coincided with primary elections, Scott Schwab, the Republican secretary of state, predicted that around 36 percent of Kansas voters would participate, up slightly from the primary in 2020, a presidential election year. His office said that the constitutional amendment “has increased voter interest in the election,” a sentiment that was palpable on the ground.“I like the women’s rights,” said Norma Hamilton, a 90-year-old Republican from Lenexa, Kan. Despite her party registration, she said, she voted no. More

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      Biden Savors Much-Needed Victories. But Will the Highs Overshadow the Lows?

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      With the midterm elections around the corner, the challenge for President Biden is to make sure his latest successes resonate with Americans who remain deeply skeptical about the future.WASHINGTON — President Biden and his top advisers have tried for months to press forward amid a seemingly endless drumbeat of dispiriting news: rising inflation, high gas prices, a crumbling agenda, a dangerously slowing economy and a plummeting approval rating, even among Democrats.But Mr. Biden has finally caught a series of breaks. Gas prices, which peaked above $5 a gallon, have fallen every day for more than six weeks and are now closer to $4. After a yearlong debate, Democrats and Republicans in Congress passed legislation this past week to invest $280 billion in areas like semiconductor manufacturing and scientific research to bolster competition with China.And in a surprise turnabout, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a Democrat who had single-handedly held up Mr. Biden’s boldest proposals, agreed to a deal that puts the president in a position to make good on promises to lower drug prices, confront climate change and make corporations pay higher taxes.“The work of the government can be slow and frustrating and sometimes even infuriating,” Mr. Biden said at the White House on Thursday, reflecting the impatience and anger among his allies and the weariness of his own staff. “Then the hard work of hours and days and months from people who refuse to give up pays off. History is made. Lives are changed.”Even for a president who has become used to the highs and lows of governing, it was a moment to feel whipsawed. Since taking office 18 months ago, Mr. Biden has celebrated successes like passage of the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill and slogged through crises like the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. Gas prices soared; now they are coming down. Unemployment is at record lows even as there are signs of a looming recession.The president’s brand of politics is rooted in a slower era, before Twitter, and sometimes it can pay off to have the patience to wait for a deal to finally emerge. But now, with congressional elections coming up in a few months, the challenge for Mr. Biden is to make sure his latest successes resonate with Americans who remain deeply skeptical about the future.The magnitude of the Senate deal was received like a splash of icy water across Washington, which had all but written off the possibility that Mr. Biden’s far-reaching ambitions could be revived this year. Republicans moved quickly to attack the proposal, with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, deriding what he described as “giant tax hikes that will hammer workers.”The Senate deal puts the president in a position to make good on his promise to confront climate change.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesInside the West Wing, aides were forced to scramble to come up with talking points for a deal almost no one saw coming. If Congress manages to pass the compromise reached with Mr. Manchin, they argue, it will move the country to the forefront on addressing the globe’s changing climate and lower drug prices even as it raises money from corporations to lower the federal budget deficit.The deal would give Medicare the power to negotiate lower prices for millions of Americans, extend health care subsidies under the Affordable Care Act for three years and require corporations to pay a minimum tax — something many progressive Democrats have been demanding for years.Key Themes From the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarCard 1 of 6The state of the midterms. More