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      Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey Confirms He Will Not Run for Senate

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      Senator Mitch McConnell had been trying to recruit Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona to run, but former President Donald J. Trump had warned him against it.Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona reaffirmed his decision Thursday not to run for the Senate this year, dealing a blow to Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, while delighting former President Donald J. Trump, who for months had warned Mr. Ducey to stay out of the race.Mr. Ducey, who is term-limited as governor, was one of the most sought-after Republicans that Mr. McConnell had been trying to recruit. In a letter to donors, Mr. Ducey seemed to allude to Mr. Trump’s hectoring, saying: “These days, if you’re going to run for public office, you have to really want the job.”Angry that Mr. Ducey would not overturn Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s narrow 2020 victory in the state, Mr. Trump has rampaged for over a year, complaining about Mr. Ducey’s certification of the electoral results and threatening him about the Senate race.“Right now I have the job I want,” Mr. Ducey wrote, “and my intention is to close my years of service to Arizona with a very productive final legislative session and to help elect Republican governors across the country in my role as chairman of the Republican Governors Association.”Mr. Ducey’s decision was long expected. For months, he had told both reporters pressing him and Republicans courting him that he had little appetite to challenge Senator Mark Kelly, a first-term Democrat.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the 2022 election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering.Governors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.That did not stop Mr. McConnell, whose attempts to recruit two other Republican governors, Chris Sununu of New Hampshire and Larry Hogan of Maryland, into Senate races were also rebuffed.Taken together, the rejections illustrate the difficulty Senate Republicans are having in trying to lure mainstream conservative governors to serve in a party still shadowed by Mr. Trump and in a polarized capital that can offer less policymaking opportunity than statehouses. Moreover, many of the state executives are more interested in the presidency than the Senate.“By nature and by training I’m an executive,” wrote Mr. Ducey, who in an interview last month mused that senators seem only to “tweet all day, do a 5 p.m. news hit and go out for the rest of the night.”His candidacy, which would have tested Mr. Trump’s influence in a pivotal state, effectively hands Mr. Trump a victory without contest, the sort of win the former president’s intraparty antagonists are hoping to deny in a series of primaries this year.Given President Biden’s declining approval ratings and Arizona’s center-right tilt, Republicans might still be able to reclaim Mr. Kelly’s seat, which was previously held by Senator John McCain.It’s not clear which of the Republicans in the remaining field would be best-positioned to defeat Mr. Kelly, who began the year with $18 million in campaign cash. Attorney General Mark Brnovich has led a handful of lesser-known Republicans in some polls ahead of the August primary, but the race has been frozen as G.O.P. officials implored Mr. Ducey to run.A parade of prominent Republican leaders, including former President George W. Bush and Karl Rove as well as Mr. McConnell and his lieutenants, lobbied the Arizona governor, some sharing polling that indicated Mr. Trump’s declining influence in primaries.Gov. Doug Ducey with former President Donald J. Trump in 2020. Mr. Trump has complained about Mr. Ducey’s certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s narrow victory in the state.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe array of anti-Trump Republicans believed Mr. Ducey, a popular two-term governor and former chief of Cold Stone Creamery, would be their party’s strongest candidate and would also send a message about what they believe is Mr. Trump’s diminishing clout.“MAGA will never accept RINO Governor Doug Ducey of Arizona running for the U.S. Senate,” Mr. Trump said in a statement last month after a Times article detailed the wooing of the governor. “So save your time, money, and energy, Mitch!”In Mr. Ducey’s letter on Thursday, which was first reported by The Arizona Republic, he made no direct mention of Mr. Trump. But the governor did make a point to single out Mr. McConnell, who had been his most ardent pursuer.“The only downside about any of this is that it would be an honor to serve with Senator Mitch McConnell,” he wrote. “I consider him an historic figure and one of the Titans of the Senate, and I am supportive of everything he’s doing to elect Republican senators and wrest back control from Chuck Schumer.”Mr. Ducey, who became close to Mr. McConnell when the two collaborated on who would be appointed to fill Mr. McCain’s seat after his death in 2018, also indicated in the letter that he was considering “perhaps weighing in” with an endorsement in the Senate primary.For his part, Mr. Trump has not formally intervened in the primary — at least not in support of a candidate. More

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      How McConnell Hopes to Thwart Trump in the Midterms

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      Senator Mitch McConnell is working furiously to bring allies to Washington who will buck Donald J. Trump. It’s not going according to plan.PHOENIX — For more than a year, former President Donald Trump has berated Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona, savaging him for refusing to overturn the state’s presidential results and vowing to oppose him should he run for the Senate this year.In early December, though, Mr. Ducey received a far friendlier message from another former Republican president. At a golf tournament luncheon, George W. Bush encouraged him to run against Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat, suggesting the Republican Party needs more figures like Mr. Ducey to step forward.“It’s something you have to feel a certain sense of humility about,” the governor said this month of Mr. Bush’s appeal. “You listen respectfully, and that’s what I did.”Mr. Bush and a band of anti-Trump Republicans led by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky are hoping he does more than listen.As Mr. Trump works to retain his hold on the Republican Party, elevating a slate of friendly candidates in midterm elections, Mr. McConnell and his allies are quietly, desperately maneuvering to try to thwart him. The loose alliance, which was once thought of as the G.O.P. establishment, for months has been engaged in a high-stakes candidate recruitment campaign, full of phone calls, meetings, polling memos and promises of millions of dollars. It’s all aimed at recapturing the Senate majority, but the election also represents what could be Republicans’ last chance to reverse the spread of Trumpism before it fully consumes their party.Mr. McConnell for years pushed Mr. Trump’s agenda and only rarely opposed him in public. But the message that he delivers privately now is unsparing, if debatable: Mr. Trump is losing political altitude and need not be feared in a primary, he has told Mr. Ducey in repeated phone calls, as the Senate leader’s lieutenants share polling data they argue proves it.In conversations with senators and would-be senators, Mr. McConnell is blunt about the damage he believes Mr. Trump has done to the G.O.P., according to those who have spoken to him. Privately, he has declared he won’t let unelectable “goofballs” win Republican primaries.History doesn’t bode well for such behind-the-scene efforts to challenge Mr. Trump, and Mr. McConnell’s hard sell is so far yielding mixed results. The former president has rallied behind fewer far-right candidates than initially feared by the party’s old guard. Yet a handful of formidable contenders have spurned Mr. McConnell’s entreaties, declining to subject themselves to Mr. Trump’s wrath all for the chance to head to a bitterly divided Washington.Last week, Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland announced he would not run for Senate, despite a pressure campaign that involved his wife. Mr. Ducey is expected to make a final decision soon, but he has repeatedly said he has little appetite for a bid.Mr. Trump, however, has also had setbacks. He’s made a handful of endorsements in contentious races, but his choices have not cleared the Republican field, and one has dropped out.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Trump vs. DeSantis: Tensions between the ex-president and Florida governor show the challenge confronting the G.O.P. in 2022.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.If Mr. Trump muscles his preferred candidates through primaries and the general election this year, it will leave little doubt of his control of the Republican Party, build momentum for another White House bid and entrench his brand of politics in another generation of Republican leaders.If he loses in a series of races after an attempt to play kingmaker, however, it would deflate Mr. Trump’s standing, luring other ambitious Republicans into the White House contest and providing a path for the party to move on.“No one should be afraid of President Trump, period,” said Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who won in 2020 without endorsing the then-president and has worked with Mr. McConnell to try to woo anti-Trump candidates.While there is some evidence that Mr. Trump’s grip on Republican voters has eased, polls show the former president remains overwhelmingly popular in the party. Among politicians trying to win primaries, no other figure’s support is more ardently sought.“In my state, he’s still looked at as the leader of the party,” Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri said.The proxy war isn’t just playing out in Senate races.Mr. Trump is backing primary opponents to incumbent governors in Georgia and Idaho, encouraged an ally to take on the Alabama governor and helped drive Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts into retirement by supporting a rival. The Republican Governors Association, which Mr. Ducey leads, this week began pushing back, airing a television commercial defending the Georgia governor, Brian Kemp, against his opponent, former Senator David Perdue. It was the first time in the group’s history they’ve financed ads for an incumbent battling a primary.“Trump has got a lot of chips on the board,” said Bill Haslam, the former Tennessee governor.Mr. McConnell has been careful in picking his moments to push back against the former president. Last week, he denounced a Republican National Committee resolution orchestrated by Mr. Trump’s allies that censured two House Republican Trump critics.As the former president heckles the soon-to-be 80-year-old Kentuckian as an “Old Crow,” Mr. McConnell’s response has been to embrace the moniker: Last week, he sent an invitation for a reception in which donors who hand over $5,000 checks can take home bottles of the Kentucky-made Old Crow brand bourbon signed by the senator.Mr. McConnell has been loath to discuss his recruitment campaign and even less forthcoming about his rivalry with Mr. Trump. In an interview last week, he warded off questions about their conflict, avoiding mentioning Mr. Trump’s name even when it was obvious to whom he was referring.If Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who is an outspoken Trump antagonist running for Senate this fall, wins her primary, it will show that “endorsements from some people didn’t determine the outcome,” he said.Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska at the Capitol last week. Senator Mitch McConnell and Mr. Trump are at odds over her reelection bid.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesMs. Murkowski appears well-positioned at the moment, with over $4 million on hand while her Trump-backed rival, Kelly Tshibaka, has $630,000.“He’s made very clear that you’ve been there for Alaska, you’ve been there for the team and I’m going to be there for you,” Ms. Murkowski said of Mr. McConnell’s message to her.Even more pointedly, Mr. McConnell vowed that if Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the second-ranking Senate Republican, faces the primary that Mr. Trump once promised, Mr. Thune “will crush whoever runs against him.” (The most threatening candidate, Gov. Kristi Noem, has declined.)The Senate Republican leader has been worried that Mr. Trump will tap candidates too weak to win in the general election, the sort of nominees who cost the party control of the Senate in 2010 and 2012.“We changed the business model in 2014, and have not had one of these goofballs nominated since,” he told a group of donors on a private conference call last year, according to a recording obtained by The New York Times.Mr. McConnell has sometimes decided to pick his battles — in Georgia, he acceded to Herschel Walker, a former football star and Trump-backed candidate, after failing to recruit Mr. Perdue to rejoin the Senate. He also came up empty-handed in New Hampshire, where Gov. Chris Sununu passed on a bid after an aggressive campaign that also included lobbying from Mr. Bush.In Maryland, Mr. Hogan was plainly taken with the all-out push to recruit him, although he declined to take on Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat.“Elaine Chao was working over my wife,” Mr. Hogan recalled of a lunch, first reported by The Associated Press, between Ms. Chao, the former cabinet secretary and wife of Mr. McConnell, and Maryland’s first lady, Yumi Hogan. “Her argument was, ‘You can really be a voice.’”Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, left, with Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland in Baltimore. Mr. McConnell has tried to recruit Mr. Hogan as a Senate candidate.Al Drago for The New York TimesMr. McConnell also dispatched Ms. Collins and Senator Mitt Romney of Utah to lobby Mr. Hogan. That campaign culminated last weekend, when Mr. Romney called Mr. Hogan to vent about the R.N.C.’s censure, tell him Senate Republicans needed anti-Trump reinforcements and argue that Mr. Hogan could have more of a platform in his effort to remake the party as a sitting senator rather than an ex-governor.“I’m very interested in changing the party and that was the most effective argument,” said Mr. Hogan, who is believed to be considering a bid for the White House.Mr. Romney lamented Mr. Hogan’s decision and expressed frustration. He claimed most party leaders share their view of the former president, but few will voice it in public.“I don’t see new people standing up and saying, ‘I’m going to do something here which may be politically unpopular’ — in public at least,” Mr. Romney said.At Mar-a-Lago, courtship of the former president’s endorsement has been so intense, and his temptation to pick favorites so alluring, that he regrets getting involved in some races too soon, according to three Republican officials who’ve spoken to him.In Pennsylvania’s open Senate race, Mr. Trump backed Sean Parnell, who withdrew after a bitter custody battle with his estranged wife. And in Alabama, the former president rallied to Representative Mo Brooks to succeed Senator Richard Shelby, who’s retiring. But Mr. Brooks, who attended the rally that preceded the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, is struggling to gain traction.One Republican strategist who has visited with Mr. Trump said the former president was increasingly suspicious of the consultants and donors beseeching him.“He has become more judicious so not everybody who runs down to Mar-a-Lago for the weekend gets endorsed on Monday,” said Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, another Trump ally.Mr. Trump has made clear he wants the Senate candidates he backs to oust Mr. McConnell from his leadership perch, and even considered making a pledge to do so a condition of his endorsement. Few have done so to date, a fact Mr. McConnell considers a victory. “Only two of them have taken me on,” he crowed, alluding to Ms. Tshibaka in Alaska, and Eric Greitens, the former Missouri governor running for an open seat.But Mr. McConnell’s biggest get yet would be Mr. Ducey.Mr. Trump, right, has supported Representative Mo Brooks’s run for a Senate seat in Alabama.Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesWith broad popularity and three statewide victories to his name, the term-limited governor and former ice cream chain executive would be a strong candidate against Mr. Kelly, who has nearly $19 million in the bank — more than double the combined sum of the existing Republican field.To some of the state’s Republicans, Mr. Ducey could send a critical message in a swing state. “It would say we’re getting tired of this,” said Rusty Bowers, speaker of the Arizona State House, who encouraged Mr. Ducey to stand up to Mr. Trump’s “bully caucus.”Mr. Ducey also has been lobbied by the G.O.P. strategist Karl Rove, the liaison to Mr. Bush, who sought to reassure the governor that he could win.Mr. Ducey said he believed that this year’s “primaries are going to determine the future of the party.” However, he sounded much like Mr. Hogan and Mr. Sununu when asked about his enthusiasm for jumping into another campaign.“This is the job I’ve wanted,” he said.He noted there was one prominent member of the Trump administration, though, who has been supportive. Former Vice President Mike Pence “encouraged me to stay in the fight,” Mr. Ducey said. More

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      Will Trump's Election Lies Become a Litmus Test for Republicans?

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      Upcoming primaries will test whether embracing Donald J. Trump’s election falsehoods is a litmus test for Republican voters.WASHINGTON — More than a year after the 2020 election, Donald J. Trump’s false claims of election fraud remain a destabilizing force for the Republican Party, dividing an activist base galvanized by a lie from elites in Washington who are hoping to hold the party together long enough to win back power in Congress in the upcoming midterm elections.The tension flared this week as Republicans were forced to either explain or denounce a party resolution characterizing the deadly events of Jan. 6 as “legitimate political discourse.” But the episode was a only a preview of the battles ahead, with a series of upcoming primary contests pitting candidates loyal to Mr. Trump against those who, to varying degrees, resist his distortions about the election.Those races, in Alaska, Georgia, North Carolina, Wyoming and elsewhere, promise to amplify calls for election audits, claims of fraud and a recasting of events surrounding the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. That debate will test the extent to which embracing Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 election — and attempts to downplay the violence that followed — has become a new litmus test for Republican voters.“It still is a burning ember of passion for the base,” said Matt Batzel, the national executive director of American Majority, an organization that trains conservative grass-roots activists. “If those in Washington try to move on, there is going to be even a greater disconnect and greater frustration with their leadership, resulting in more tension and arguments within the party.”That prospect is alarming for some Republicans who worry about the long-term consequences of embedding Mr. Trump’s false claims into the foundation of the party. Far more Republicans, however, expressed concern this week about the near-term consequences: With President Biden’s approval ratings falling well below half of voters, many Republicans fear that debate will be a distraction ahead of a 2022 midterm election in which they are otherwise well positioned to take back power.“The more we talk about Jan. 6, the less we talk about how Biden hasn’t been successful,” said Steven Frias, a Republican committeeman from Rhode Island.Mr. Frias was among the estimated two dozen of 168 Republican National Committee members who voted last week against the party’s resolution to censure Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, the two Republicans working with congressional Democrats to investigate the Jan. 6 riot.Barriers around the Capitol have remained in place since the Jan. 6 riots in 2021.Michael A. McCoy for The New York TimesMr. Frias said he did not think the party should censure a member “unless that Republican has engaged in some kind of criminal or unethical conduct.” He also lamented the resolution’s “unforced error” declaring that Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger were participating in the “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, quickly tried to clarify the phrase, saying that the party did not intend to include the rioters in that description — though such a distinction was not in the adopted text.That explanation did not prevent a rare public fight between Republican elected officials in Washington and the leaders of their party apparatus. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, and other Republicans at the Capitol publicly denounced the censure. “We saw it happen,” Mr. McConnell said of the Jan. 6 riot. “It was a violent insurrection.”The Trump era has shown repeatedly how Republican leaders, including Mr. McConnell, will briefly confront the Trump wing of the party, before ultimately realigning themselves with their voters, especially as elections near. Those who do not — such as former Senators Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee — typically exit elected politics.“Mitch McConnell does not speak for the Republican Party, and does not represent the views of the vast majority of its voters,” Mr. Trump said in a statement on Wednesday.More than 70 percent of Republicans believe the 2020 election was illegitimate, according to a Washington Post poll last month. And the Pew Research Center found in a poll released Tuesday that 57 percent of Republicans believe Mr. Trump bears no responsibility for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — a number 11 points higher than a year ago.Protesters demanding a forensic audit of the 2020 presidential election in front of the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing, Mich., on Tuesday.Emily Elconin/ReutersFalse beliefs about the 2020 election were most intense among those who consume conservative media, according to a Public Religion Research Institute survey conducted in the fall. The poll found that 82 percent of Fox News viewers and 97 percent of those who consume far-right channels such as OAN and Newsmax believe the election was stolen.In Washington, party strategists and senators have mostly been loath to discuss the growing election denialism in the party’s ranks, either hoping it would fade with time or not wanting to challenge their voters. Now, as midterm elections near, Republican leaders close to the activists, volunteers and local leaders who power the party say that this sentiment is impossible to ignore.“Some people are very supportive of what happened on Jan. 6 and angry at the government’s response. Some people are offended by what happened on Jan. 6,” said Jane Brady, the chairwoman of the state Republican Party in Delaware, who voted in favor of the censure resolution. “I’ve got to rally those individuals on both sides to vote for our local candidates.”Some of the strongest condemnations of the censure resolution came from senators who are farthest from needing to face the voters.“The Republican Party started this year with a decided advantage on the issues that will determine the outcome of the fall elections,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine. “But every moment that is spent re-litigating a lost election or defending those who have been convicted of criminal behavior moves us further away from the goal of victory this fall.”Ms. Collins, like Mr. McConnell, won re-election in 2020 and will not be on the ballot again until 2026.Key Developments in the Jan. 6 InvestigationCard 1 of 3White House phone records. More

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      Mitch McConnell vs. Republicans

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      Making sense of the G.O.P. leader’s squabble with his own party.Mitch McConnell has a long history of playing hardball — even changing the rules of American politics — to benefit the Republican Party.He has opposed limits on campaign finance, knowing that corporations and the wealthy donate to Republicans. As the Republican Senate leader, he has helped turn the filibuster into a normal tactic. He has boasted about his desire to damage the presidencies of both Barack Obama and Joe Biden. And McConnell in 2016 refused to consider any Supreme Court nominee by Obama, effectively flipping the seat back to a Republican nominee.In each of the cases, McConnell has been willing to break with precedent in ways that many historians and legal scholars consider dangerous. He often seems to put a higher priority on partisan advantage than on American political traditions or even the national interest, these scholars say.So how is the country supposed to make sense of McConnell’s actions this week?On Tuesday, he criticized the Republican National Committee for its response to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The committee — the party’s official organization — had described the events of Jan. 6 as “legitimate political discourse” and censured Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, two House members who are helping investigate the riot.McConnell repudiated his own party. “We saw what happened,” he told reporters. “It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election, from one administration to the next. That’s what it was.”G.O.P., favoredThe remarks were striking because McConnell’s position on Jan 6. — and on Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud that inspired the attack — has been inconsistent. At first, McConnell harshly criticized Trump for inciting it, only to back off. He voted to acquit Trump of impeachment charges, effectively keeping Trump as the party’s dominant figure.“To this day McConnell has been unwilling to impose any political consequences on Trump,” Amanda Carpenter of The Bulwark, a conservative publication, has written. McConnell also waited more than a month to acknowledge that Biden had won the 2020 election.Still, I think there is a consistent explanation for McConnell’s behavior, whatever you think of it.McConnell’s biggest goals are plain to see. He wants to hold power and ensure that the federal government’s policies are largely conservative, pro-business and anti-regulation.Downplaying his rifts with Trump serves these goals. It helps the Republican Party remain united and increases its chances of winning elections. McConnell is surely savvy enough to understand that Trump appeals to some voters whom past Republicans did not win.At the same time, Trump alienates other voters whom Republicans have historically won, like the suburbanites who helped Democrats flip Arizona and Georgia in 2020. Fully aligning with the violence and lies of the Jan. 6 movement, as the R.N.C. did last week, brings potential political costs.McConnell understands that, as well. He remembers the 2010 midterms, when far-right “unelectable candidates” — a phrase he used last month, when recalling that year — lost winnable races.“This isn’t what he wants at all,” Carl Hulse — The Times’s chief Washington correspondent, who has been covering McConnell for years — told me, referring to the R.N.C. statement.The current political atmosphere looks quite favorable to Republicans, as Carl noted. Polls suggest they are heavily favored to retake the House and may retake the Senate, too. The Democratic Party is divided over President Biden’s agenda, and many Democrats seem out of step with public opinion on Covid-19 policies and several social issues. “It’s highly likely to be a situation where the wind is at our backs,” McConnell recently told CNN about this year’s campaign.Republicans also have some large long-term advantages, like control of the Supreme Court and the Senate’s built-in bias toward small states.Put all this together, and you start to understand why even somebody whose only goal was maximizing Republican power might choose to speak out against a violent insurrection that tried to overturn an election on Republicans’ behalf. In today’s political environment, such extremism might be both unnecessary and counterproductive.‘Partially courageous’Of course, there is another potential motivation for McConnell. He may genuinely believe in a hardball approach to partisan power while also opposing the fraudulent overturning of an election result. McConnell, who has spent decades working on Capitol Hill, was “personally appalled by what happened on Jan. 6,” Carl said.To people who are alarmed about the threats to American democracy, this principled explanation would be modestly encouraging.“He’s been only partially courageous,” said Richard Hasen, an election-law expert and the author of a new book on political disinformation. Even as he has overturned long-lasting political traditions, he has “drawn the line on election subversion,” Hasen told me.I also asked Daniel Ziblatt, a Harvard professor and a co-author of “How Democracies Die,” for his thoughts, and his email response is worth excerpting:When democracies face political violence, it’s almost as important how mainstream parties respond to it — Do they condemn it unambiguously and consistently? McConnell’s words were unambiguous (the good news) but he hasn’t been consistent (the bad news).The story isn’t over. Indeed, I fear he, and certainly his party are engaging in what I would call the “semi-loyalists’ swerve” — condemning anti-democratic behavior one day, backtracking the next, being ambiguous the next.The broader point is this: A democracy can’t survive in the way we have come to expect when one of two major political parties behaves as a party of authoritarians or democratic semi-loyalists. And that’s where the American Republican Party is today.An important thing to watch, Ziblatt said, is how McConnell and other Republicans react in coming weeks to the findings of the Jan. 6 investigation.THE LATEST NEWSThe VirusAn elementary school in Newton, Mass., this month.Tony Luong for The New York TimesIllinois, Massachusetts and Rhode Island joined other Democratic-leaning states lifting mask mandates.The changes leave school districts in charge of their own mask rules.Prime Minister Boris Johnson outlined plans to lift England’s remaining restrictions within weeks.PoliticsChuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested that they were open to banning members of Congress from trading stocks.The National Archives found possible classified information in documents Trump took from the White House.J. Michelle Childs, a federal judge on Biden’s Supreme Court short list and a graduate of public schools, is getting bipartisan praise.Violent threats against members of Congress surged after Trump became president.The OlympicsNathan Chen won the gold that eluded him in 2018.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesNathan Chen won gold with a dominant performance in men’s figure skating.Chloe Kim won her second gold in halfpipe snowboarding. (See how she pulled off her tricks.)Officials have delayed the medal ceremony for team figure skating. CNN and others report that a Russian skater failed a drug test.Here are The Times’s photos of the day and the current medal count — as well as a guide to watching the events.Other Big StoriesColorado is trying to change its approach to road construction to address climate change.A former casino executive was sentenced to a year and a day in prison for a bribery scheme to get his daughter into U.S.C.The N.F.L. will investigate sexual harassment allegations against Daniel Snyder, the owner of the Washington Commanders.A geomagnetic storm fueled by an outburst of the sun knocked out dozens of satellites.Why doesn’t America have enough truckers? It’s a stressful, exhausting, lonely job.OpinionsCheap chicken comes at a high cost, this Times Opinion video shows.Become a regular at a restaurant, bar or coffee shop, Xochitl Gonzalez suggests in The Atlantic.Facebook has coasted on others’ inventions for so long that it’s forgotten how to innovate, Farhad Manjoo writes.MORNING READSRivian trucks during the company’s initial public offering.Brendan Mcdermid/ReutersElectric vehicles: Rivian was a stock market hit, but it’s struggling to actually produce trucks.Sim Senate: Politics can be a serious business. One former journalist turned it into a video game.Drink up: Winemakers are desperate to win over the White Claw generation.Advice from Wirecutter: The secret to delicious coffee? A reliable grinder.A Times classic: How not to wear a face mask.Lives Lived: Ashley Bryan brought diversity to children’s literature, writing and illustrating books that retold African folk tales. He died at 98.ARTS AND IDEAS From left, Rick Glassman, Albert Rutecki and Sue Ann Pien star in “As We See It.”From left: Maggie Shannon for The New York Times; Ryan Collerd for The New York Times; Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesChildren grow up“A lot of what we read about and see about autism is about children with autism,” said Jason Katims, a producer on “Friday Night Lights,” “Parenthood” and other television shows.Katims himself created a young character on “Parenthood” with Asperger’s syndrome, inspired partly by his own son. But children with autism grow up, even if you wouldn’t necessarily know it from popular culture. When television and movies do include adults on the spectrum, they are often savants, like Dustin Hoffman’s character in “Rain Man.”Katims’s latest show, “As We See It,” sets out to portray a more realistic version of adult autism. It’s a dramedy on Amazon Prime that follows three young adults who are navigating life, love, family and less typical challenges in Los Angeles. The three lead actors are all on the spectrum.The goal, Katims said, is to create a show that is both deeply respectful and full of laughs. “He has this ability to sort of be very sincere and very sweet and then all of the sudden, just crack you up,” Sosie Bacon, who plays a behavioral aide on the show, told The Associated Press.More recommendations: 50 shows to watch on Netflix now.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookRyan Liebe for The New York TimesRosemary-paprika chicken with fries is a delightful sheet-pan dinner.What to Listen ToThe dishy podcast “Celebrity Book Club” delves into the bizarre genre of memoirs by the rich and famous.What to ReadLaura Kipnis’s book “Love in the Time of Contagion” is about how relationships, including her own, have changed during the pandemic.Now Time to PlayThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was vanguard. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Like some slippers and memories (five letters).If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — DavidP.S. Somini Sengupta will become the anchor of the Climate Fwd newsletter.Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about mask mandates. On the Modern Love podcast, what teenage anthems teach us about love.Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      McConnell Denounces R.N.C. Censure of Jan. 6 Panel Members

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      Senator Mitch McConnell joined a chorus of Republicans distancing themselves from the committee’s action, describing the Capitol riot as “a violent insurrection.”WASHINGTON — Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, pushed back hard on Tuesday against the Republican Party’s censure of Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and its characterization of the Jan. 6 riot as “legitimate political discourse,” saying the riot was a “violent insurrection.”The remarks from Mr. McConnell, the normally taciturn Kentucky Republican, added to a small but forceful chorus of G.O.P. lawmakers who have decried the action that the Republican National Committee took on Friday, when it officially rebuked Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger for participating in the House investigation of the Jan. 6 attack, accusing them of “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, said it was “not the job” of the Republican National Committee to censure Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, and called the attack on Jan. 6 a “violent insurrection.”Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesMr. McConnell repudiated that description, saying of the events of Jan. 6, 2021: “We saw it happen. It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election, from one administration to the next. That’s what it was.”He made the remarks to reporters outside Senate Republicans’ closed-door weekly lunch, where his aides had signaled in advance that he was to make an important statement on the R.N.C.’s action.Mr. McConnell’s comments were a rebuke of how far the party has gone to deny the reality of the violence that unfolded during the bloody assault on the Capitol, sending lawmakers from both parties running for safety. More than 150 people were injured in the attack, which led to several deaths, and nearly 750 individuals have been criminally charged in connection with it.In the days since the Republican National Committee passed the resolution at its winter meeting in Salt Lake City, a handful of Republicans have criticized the move as everything from a political distraction to a shame on the party. Mr. McConnell, who orchestrated the impeachment acquittal of former President Donald J. Trump and blocked the naming of an independent, bipartisan commission to examine the attack, was among the most blunt in his defense of the only Republicans serving on the committee that rose from that proposal’s ashes.“Traditionally, the view of the national party committees is that we support all members of our party, regardless of their positions on some issues,” he said. “The issue is whether or not the R.N.C. should be sort of singling out members of our party who may have different views of the majority. That’s not the job of the R.N.C.”Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, by contrast, defended the resolution on Tuesday, telling a CNN reporter that it was meant to condemn the House committee’s targeting of conservatives who were nowhere near Washington on Jan. 6 and had nothing to do with either the attack or the broader effort to overturn the 2020 election.Mr. McCarthy, who has refused to speak with the House inquiry about his conversations with Mr. Trump during and around the Jan. 6 attack, has been consulting with William A. Burck, a prominent Washington lawyer, about how to navigate the investigation as he braces for a possible subpoena.The censure, pushed by allies of former President Donald J. Trump, was just over one page long, but it has sent Republicans into turmoil, exposing the party’s fissures while underscoring how its fealty to Mr. Trump continues to define everything it does. It has disrupted efforts by congressional Republicans to turn the page from Jan. 6 and focus instead on what they see as the failings of President Biden and the Democratic Party in an election year.At a news conference on Tuesday, House Republicans wanted to spend their time blaming Mr. Biden for a worsening fentanyl crisis, but virtually every question was about the party’s resolution.Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, described the Jan. 6 commission as “political theater about punishing partisan opponents.”Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times“Republicans have been very clear, we condemn the violence on Jan. 6. We also condemn the violence in 2020 as violent criminals attacked federal buildings including parts of Washington, D.C.,” said Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, the House Republican Conference chairwoman, equating racial justice protests with the deadly assault on the Capitol. She added that “we believe the Jan. 6 commission is political theater about punishing partisan opponents.”Some Republicans defended the resolution by noting that it encapsulated the party’s view of what had happened on Jan. 6.“Whatever you think about the R.N.C. vote, it reflects the view of most Republican voters,” said Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri. “In my state, it’s not helpful to have a bunch of D.C. Republicans commenting on the R.N.C.”Senator Mitt Romney of Utah was among a small but vocal group of Republicans who were outraged by the R.N.C. censure. Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesBut others were clearly appalled. Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, who castigated the resolution as shameful on Friday before the party vote, told reporters on Monday that he had exchanged texts about it with the Republican National Committee chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, who is also his niece.“Anything that my party does that comes across as being stupid is not going to help us,” he said.Inside the Republican National Committee, the resolution has led to an intensive round of finger-pointing. Several members said they never intended to suggest that those who rioted on Jan. 6, 2021, were “engaged in legitimate political discourse,” even as they conceded the censure resolution’s language said just that.The resolution, which was drafted by David Bossie, a longtime conservative operative aligned with Mr. Trump, and Frank Eathorne, the Wyoming Republican Party chairman, started out as an effort to expel Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger from the House Republican Conference. But committee members decided against calling for such a move, and instead settled on a censure.An early draft condemned the two representatives for participating in “a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in nonviolent and legal political discourse,” but “nonviolent and legal” was ultimately taken out and replaced with “legitimate,” according to a person familiar with the drafting who attributed the revision to a routine editing decision.Latest DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3A G.O.P. resolution. More

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      Censuring Reps. Cheney and Kinzinger Sets Off Republican Food Fight

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      Punishing Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger was a blunder, many in the party say.Republicans had Democrats right where they wanted them: on the ropes.Then on Friday, the Republican National Committee voted to censure Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the two House Republicans on the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.The text of the resolution made no distinction between peaceful protesters and those who stormed the Capitol, referring to that day’s events simply as “legitimate political discourse.” The R.N.C. also backed a primary challenge against Cheney, whose high-profile criticism of Donald Trump has made her a top target on the right.It was one of those polarizing moments that forced other Republicans to react, with some — notably, a bunch of sitting U.S. senators — denouncing the national committee’s move as “wrong” and “absurd.”In the view of many Republicans, censuring two of their own was much like that old saw attributed to Charles Maurice de Tallyrand-Périgord, the 19th-century French diplomat: Worse than a crime, it was also a mistake.As President Biden grapples with soaring inflation, a pandemic that isn’t yet over and general public malaise over the two, why change the subject?“Certainly it wasn’t the right thing to do, and certainly it wasn’t the politically smart thing to do,” said Josh Venable, a former deputy finance director for the R.N.C. “It doesn’t take David Axelrod or Karl Rove to figure that out.”Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican and a man who chooses his words carefully, rejected the R.N.C.’s decision on Tuesday.“We saw what happened,” he said. “It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election from one administration to the next. That’s what it was.”‘When we became the news’This is the kind of intramural food fight that the press loves — and political operatives despise when their own party is on the proverbial menu.“When I was at the R.N.C. in 2010, our worst days were when we became the news,” said Doug Heye, a Republican communications consultant. “G.O.P. senators and members know this, and it’s why you’re seeing them speak out.”But while Cheney has Republican friends in the Senate, she has few, if any, in the House. Allies of Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, see her as a political opportunist who has made their lives more difficult — a thoughtless colleague who failed to appreciate his attempts after the 2020 election to shield her from the wrath of her colleagues on the right.Fielding a question on the controversy on Tuesday, Representative Elise Stefanik, who replaced Cheney as the third-ranking House Republican last year, offered a curt response. “My reaction is the R.N.C. has every right to take any action,” she said, “and the position I have is that you’re ultimately held accountable to voters in your district.”Translation: Cheney deserves to lose her seat, and if the Republican Party wants to aid in the process, so be it.The Trump questionThere’s a lot going on here worth unpacking.One obvious motive behind censuring Cheney and Kinzinger was to place them outside the bounds of respectable Republican Party company. Their presence on the Jan. 6 committee is a constant source of irritation for the party, giving Democrats bipartisan cover for an investigation that Republicans have sought to cast as a partisan vendetta.But the larger point of tension is the same existential question that the Republican Party has been wrestling with since 2015, when a certain New York real estate mogul glided down that golden escalator: What to do about Donald Trump? And whose view of the party should prevail — his, or those of establishment leaders like McConnell?Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served as former communications director in Trump’s White House before quitting over his stolen election claims, said the R.N.C.’s censure of Cheney and Kinzinger would “damage the Republican Party more broadly and going into 2024.”She’s among around 150 Republicans who signed a statement this week condemning the move as a betrayal of the party’s “founding principles” and a signal that it “no longer welcomes people of conscience.”‘An opportunity lost’Then there are Republicans who express a more parochial concern — a party consumed with internal strife will have a harder time defeating Democrats in the upcoming midterms.“Americans are scared of the future because of inflation, because of crime, and what do we talk about? A stolen election,” said Dick Wadhams, a Republican strategist in Colorado.As Matt Continetti, the former editor of the Free Beacon, a conservative website, put it, “Any minute Republicans spend re-litigating 2020 or downplaying the events of Jan. 6, 2021, is an opportunity lost.”Chris Stirewalt, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said the censure could be a sign that Republicans are getting too confident about the prospects of a “red wave” election in the fall.“Democrats are certainly still in line for a serious thumping this year, but it is now possible to see how — if the economy and virus keep moving in the right direction — divisions of this kind of ugliness could screw up Republicans’ chances at a big win,” he said.What to read tonightNate Cohn analyzes recent polling that found that “the desire to return to normalcy has approached or even overtaken alarm about” Covid-19 itself.Prosecutors released a “revealing glimpse of their strategy” for the first trial stemming from the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Alan Feuer reports. Their evidence includes surveillance videos and text messages.The Secret Service escorted Doug Emhoff, the second gentleman, out of Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., because of a bomb threat. The school was also evacuated.LISTENING POSTA protest in Brooklyn on Monday showed solidarity with Canadian truckers.Justin Lane/EPA, via ShutterstockTruckin’Fox News was of one mind on Monday evening: America needs a movement of disaffected truckers just like the one in Canada.Tucker Carlson used his monologue to celebrate the Canadian truckers, whose protests against vaccine mandates have paralyzed Ottawa and threatened the flow of trade with the United States. Tech companies, Carlson complained, are censoring their online organizing efforts while mainstream media outlets are supposedly ignoring the story.“Instead, everyone in New York and D.C. and Los Angeles is cheering on the national security state and its alliance with Silicon Valley as they come together to crush a human rights movement,” he said.Laura Ingraham used the truckers mainly to criticize CNN for its coverage of what she lauded as “Canada’s expanding freedom convoy.”“The regime media knows exactly what’s happening in Canada and it scares the heck out of them,” Ingraham said. “Just think: Honking, really loud honking, may keep Joe from his 12 hours of sleep a night.”It’s hard to say how many people are ready to take up the cause.One of the main groups calling for a truckers’ protest in Washington, which calls itself “The People’s Convoy,” has nearly 50,000 followers on Facebook and another 40,000 on Telegram. Another group, “Convoy to D.C. 2022,” had more than 130,000 members before Facebook shut it down for violating the site’s policies on vaccine misinformation. Several truckers’ groups have announced plans to drive to Washington to protest vaccine mandates on March 1.Canadian researchers have linked the truckers to conspiracy theorists and anti-government extremists, and have noted how much of the support for their sit-in has come from the United States.Jared Holt, a researcher who studies extremist movements, said the online activity appeared to be aimed at “manufacturing sentiment” that wasn’t fully organic. It reminded him of the recent demonstration by anti-vaccine advocates on the National Mall, which drew a modest crowd in late January.“They’re hoping they can animate the imagination of similarly minded people here,” Holt said.Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      I’ll Bet on Susan Collins Over the Resistance

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      Here are two anecdotes from the still-unspooling saga of Jeff Zucker, no longer the head of CNN. First, from the aftermath: According to The Los Angeles Times, in a meeting between some of the network’s staffers and its corporate leadership, the CNN correspondent Jamie Gangel shared that four members of the congressional committee investigating Jan. 6 had called to say that Zucker’s exit left them “devastated for our democracy.”Second, from the background to Zucker’s departure: We already knew that he blessed the wild prime-time lovefest between the brothers Cuomo, the CNN anchor and the New York governor. But now it’s being reported by The New York Post that Zucker helped arrange the absurd interviews, sometimes through the influence of his paramour, a former Andrew Cuomo communications director, and even allegedly gave the New York governor advice on how to swat at Donald Trump during his famous Covid-19 briefings.You can put these anecdotes together and get a decent understanding of what went wrong in important parts of American media during the Trump presidency. The powerful belief that only CNN — indeed, only Jeff Zucker — stood between democracy and authoritarianism encouraged the abandonment of normal journalistic standards, the sacrifice of sobriety and neutrality to what Armin Rosen, writing for UnHerd, dubs the “centrist-branded panic industry.”Undergirding this shift, at CNN and elsewhere, was a theory that the way to blunt Trump’s demagogic power was to assemble the broadest possible coalition of elites in media and politics, to establish moral clarity and create an effective cordon sanitaire.In 2016, I believed in this strategy, urged it on Republicans during the primaries and participated in it — along with most conservative commentators I respected — by opposing Trump’s election in the fall.But then Trump won — with a minority of the vote, yes, but all that elite opposition couldn’t even get Hillary Clinton to 49 percent, and the Republicans won more votes nationally than Democrats in House elections, paying no obvious price for having nominated Trump. The American people listened to the Never Trump alliance, fanned out across our newspapers and magazines and networks, and delivered their verdict: For every Republican we persuaded, a different sort of swing voter seemed to discover that maybe there were good reasons to take a chance on Trump.What followed in Trump’s presidency was a doubling down on the elite-opposition strategy — but increasingly I doubted its approach. In its most sincere form the anti-Trump front became paranoid and credulous, addled by the Steele dossier and lost in Twitter doomscrolling. In its more careerist form, it became a racket for former Republican consultants. And in general it became its own ideological echo chamber, a circle of clarity closed to anyone with doubts.In detaching somewhat, I remained an anti-Trump conservative; after the 2020 election’s aftermath, it’s safe to say that I’m forever Never Trump. But I decided that fundamentally the elite-consolidation strategy was a failure — that it succeeded in 2020 only because of the pandemic and that it may fail in 2024 — and that if Trump were to be permanently defeated, one of two things needed to happen: Either some adaptation from Republicans, one that might seem ugly or compromised in its own way (as you see now, say, in Ron DeSantis’s winks and nods to anti-vaxxers), or some shift that made the leftward-lurching Democrats seem less dangerous to cross-pressured Americans.So those are the two questions that this column takes up regularly: Can there be Trumpism without Trump, and what’s so unappealing or frightening about progressivism and the Democratic Party? And the consistency of those themes clearly sometimes exasperates people who think they amount to moral equivalence or denial about how awful the Republican Party has become.I don’t mind those critiques, but I will close this exercise in navel-gazing with a concrete example of where I think that they go wrong. For the united front of Never Trump, there’s no greater heroine at the moment than Liz Cheney, and no clearer embodiment of Republican cowardice than Susan Collins, the Maine moderate who even now won’t say definitively that she’ll oppose Trump if he’s the 2024 nominee.I also admire Cheney’s direct anti-Trumpism, as I’ve admired it from Mitt Romney, and now even a little from Mike Pence. (Yes, it’s a low bar.) But if you believe, reasonably, that the immediate danger posed by Trump’s demagogy involves an attempted Electoral College theft in 2024, then Cheney’s work is a lot less important than the bipartisan effort underway in the Senate to reform the Electoral Count Act. And that effort is being steered, with some success so far, by Collins.Maybe the effort will ultimately fail. But it’s quite possible that the most important response to the events of Jan. 6 will be shepherded by Republicans playing a careful inside game, with the cautious navigation of the senior senator from Maine more essential than a thousand essays about never giving Trumpism an inch.That’s not a heroic view of how democracies are stabilized and demagogues finally retired. But if the choice is between this unheroism and the mentality that gave us Jeff Zucker and the brothers Cuomo, for now I’m inclined to bet on Susan Collins.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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      Are New Voting Bill Talks for Real or for Show?

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      Senators involved in the negotiations underway say the discussions are serious and substantive, but some Democrats remain wary.WASHINGTON — Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, was finally closing in on a hard-fought agreement with Republicans on a gun safety measure, following a string of horrific shootings in 2019, when the talks suddenly collapsed.New plans in the House to impeach President Donald J. Trump meant that Republicans were no longer in the mood to compromise with Democrats on anything, and the emerging accord went the way of so many seemingly promising ones on Capitol Hill in recent years, stymied by Republicans who said they were willing to accept some sort of deal — just not that one.“The world has become so polarized that our Republican colleagues come so very close to closing a deal, but then they begin staring down the abyss of their base and they recoil,” said Mr. Blumenthal, who attributed the Republican recalcitrance to fear of a political backlash for any cooperation with Democrats.The same has been true for other politically charged issues where efforts at compromise have ended up going nowhere in Congress. Republicans initially seemed willing to engage on legislation addressing immigration and police misconduct, for example, only to abruptly pull back, blaming Democrats for what they called unreasonable demands or a refusal to take hard steps that might anger their liberal supporters.So as a rump group of senators in both parties has recently ramped up discussions aimed at reaching a compromise on voting legislation, leading Democrats who saw their far broader voting rights package stall in the Senate last week have been wary.They worry that the emerging legislation could be a distraction from the pressing issue their bill was meant to address — Republican voter-suppression efforts at the state level — and amount to little more than cover for Republicans who want to appear interested in protecting election integrity despite uniformly opposing Democrats’ voting rights bill.They have taken note that Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and minority leader, has blessed the effort — a telltale sign, say Democrats who have learned to be endlessly suspicious of his motives, that it might go nowhere.The Democratic fear is that once the moment passes and attention shifts away from election law to spending issues and now a contentious Supreme Court nomination, the talks will fizzle and Democrats will be left with nothing to show for their voting rights drive, even as the 2022 midterms loom and the 2024 election is just over the horizon.But leaders of the talks that now include at least 16 senators divided between Republicans and Democrats say they are substantive, gaining momentum and could produce legislation that might prevent another Jan. 6-style confrontation by focusing on fixing the deficiencies in the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act.They point to the bipartisan infrastructure measure that many of the same lawmakers were able to produce last year as their model for negotiations, and as proof that compromise is still possible.“I’m encouraged by the fact that almost every day, someone calls me and asks to join our group,” said Senator Susan Collins, the centrist Republican from Maine and a leader of the compromise effort. She characterized its members, who met virtually this week, as ranging from “pretty conservative to pretty liberal.”“This is a serious, committed group of senators from both sides of the aisle,” she said in an interview. “This is not a surface effort.”Aiding the outlook for the talks is the fact that Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, is also now encouraging them. He is taking what one ally described as a wait-and-see attitude after initially lashing out at the potential compromise as a ruse to undercut the Democratic voting rights package.A separate group that includes Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota and chair of the Rules Committee, and Angus King, the Maine independent, is drafting comparable legislation.Virtually all Democrats back the idea of fixing the Electoral Count Act, which lays out the ceremonial process by which Congress makes an official count of the presidential election results to confirm the victor, to guard against its being exploited in the way that Mr. Trump and his allies attempted to do so.But they caution that it is no substitute for their proposals, which focus on countering efforts to make it harder for minorities to vote and restoring parts of the landmark Voting Rights Act.“I don’t think anybody is against fixing the piece,” Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, said about the electoral vote counting process. “But nobody should pretend that this in any way solves the bigger issues regarding the attack on our democracy.”Ms. Collins, however, says that the focus on how presidential electoral votes are tallied should be the aim of any new voting legislation as a direct response to the assault on the Capitol last January by Mr. Trump’s supporters seeking to interfere with the tally.“That the Democrats didn’t put anything on the Electoral Count Act in their 735-page bill is astounding to me given the link to Jan. 6,” Ms. Collins said.Understand the Battle Over U.S. Voting RightsCard 1 of 5Why are voting rights an issue now? 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