Midterm Elections (2022)

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      As Midterms Near, Biden Warns Republicans Seek to Dismantle Democratic Legislation

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      The president told MSNBC that G.O.P. lawmakers could undo Democrats’ legislative victories if they regained control of Congress.WASHINGTON — President Biden warned on Friday that Republicans could upend legislative victories achieved under his administration and a Democratic Congress if the G.O.P. were to win control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.“They don’t have a platform other than to tear down what I’ve been able to do, we’ve been able to do.” Mr. Biden told an MSNBC news anchor, according to NBC News. “And I don’t know what they’re for.”He also vowed to veto a federal abortion ban if Republicans regain majorities of Congress and seek to pass such legislation. G.O.P. candidates have sought to avoid the subject as polls show a majority of voters support abortion rights.“The president has to sign it. I’ll veto it,” he said.Democrats pulled out a recent series of legislative victories heading into campaign season, after passing sweeping health, climate and tax legislation earlier this year. Those include an infusion of funding into America’s semiconductor industry to counter China and expanded medical benefits for veterans who were exposed to toxins from burn pits on military bases and a gun safety package.“These last several weeks all I’m doing is saying here’s what we’re for, here’s what they’re for and make a choice and vote,” Biden said in the interview with the MSNBC journalist Jonathan Capehart. “And I think people are going to show up and vote like they did last time.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBoth parties are making their final pitches ahead of the Nov. 8 election.Where the Election Stands: As Republicans appear to be gaining an edge with swing voters in the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress, here’s a look at the state of the races for the House and Senate.Biden’s Low Profile: President Biden’s decision not to attend big campaign rallies reflects a low approval rating that makes him unwelcome in some congressional districts and states.What Young Voters Think: Twelve Americans under 30, all living in swing states, told The Times about their political priorities, ranging from the highly personal to the universal.In Minnesota: The race for attorney general in the light-blue state offers a pure test of which issue is likely to be more politically decisive: abortion rights or crime.Most recently, Mr. Biden vowed to wipe out up to $20,000 in student loan debt, which he touted on the campaign trail on Friday, noting that the program has received 22 million applications since it opened last week.But that plan was dealt a blow with a ruling by an appeals court Friday on a case brought by several Republican-led states. And a number of Republicans in Congress have targeted some of the administration’s key legislative measures..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Several House Republicans, including the top G.O.P. member of the committee that oversees entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, said they would back repealing the law that reduced prescription drug costs for seniors if their party took control of the House in November.Mr. Biden has previously warned that Republicans pose a threat to Social Security and Medicare, as Democrats paint the fate of America’s social safety net programs as a central campaign issue. He has also promised to continue to push forward on Democratic priorities in the next two years, like codifying abortion rights, strengthening gun control laws and instituting police reform, all measures that would be nonstarters with Republican majorities in the House and Senate.“What do you think they’re going to do?” Mr. Biden said at an event last month, criticizing a plan drafted by Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, that would allow Social Security and Medicare to “sunset” if Congress did not extend the programs with new legislation.In his MSNBC interview, Mr. Biden dismissed polls that showed that the majority of voters disproved of his handling of the economy. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found Republicans have an edge among likely voters going into November, with many voters citing worries about the economy, an issue on which Republican candidates have heavily campaigned.Mr. Biden has kept a low profile on the campaign trail, choosing to avoid rallies and instead touting his legislative victories in smaller events. He reiterated on Friday to MSNBC that he intends to seek re-election in 2024, though he said he had not made a formal decision. More

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      GOP Voter Fraud Crackdowns Falter as Charges Are Dropped in Florida and Texas

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      Dealing setbacks to Republican-led voter fraud prosecutions, judges in Florida and Texas this week dropped charges against two former felons who had been accused of casting ballots when they were not eligible to do so because of their status as offenders.Robert Lee Wood, one of those two felons, was part of an August roundup spearheaded by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican, on voter fraud.On Friday, a circuit court judge in Miami-Dade County granted a motion to dismiss two felony charges related to voter fraud against Mr. Wood, 56, who spent two decades in prison for second-degree murder. Mr. Wood was among the 20 people who were recently arrested in Florida on voter fraud charges and became the first defendant to have them dropped.And on Monday, a district court judge in Texas set aside the indictment of Hervis Earl Rogers, a Houston man who gained widespread attention for waiting seven hours to vote during the 2020 primary election. Last year, Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general and a Republican, charged Mr. Rogers with voting illegally because he was on parole.A lack of evidence of widespread voter fraud has not stopped Republicans from aggressively pursuing it in states where they hold power. Now, the unraveling of the two high-profile cases has compromised the legitimacy of those efforts.Bryan Griffin, a spokesman for Mr. DeSantis, said in an email on Friday that the state disagreed with the dismissal of charges against Mr. Wood and would appeal the ruling.“The state will continue to enforce the law and ensure that murderers and rapists who are not permitted to vote do not unlawfully do so,” Mr. Griffin said. “Florida will not be a state in which elections are left vulnerable or cheaters unaccountable.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBoth parties are making their final pitches ahead of the Nov. 8 election.Where the Election Stands: As Republicans appear to be gaining an edge with swing voters in the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress, here’s a look at the state of the races for the House and Senate.Biden’s Low Profile: President Biden’s decision not to attend big campaign rallies reflects a low approval rating that makes him unwelcome in some congressional districts and states.What Young Voters Think: Twelve Americans under 30, all living in swing states, told The Times about their political priorities, ranging from the highly personal to the universal.In Minnesota: The race for attorney general in the light-blue state offers a pure test of which issue is likely to be more politically decisive: abortion rights or crime.The ruling by Judge Milton Hirsch of the 11th Judicial Circuit was limited to jurisdictional issues and not Mr. Wood’s voting status. It said that state prosecutors did not have standing in what was a local criminal proceeding. The prosecutors had tried to argue that they did have jurisdiction, because Mr. Wood’s voter application and ballot were processed in another county.“Given that elections violations of this nature impact all Florida voters, elections officials, state government, and the integrity of our republic, we continue to view the Florida Office of Statewide Prosecution as the appropriate agency to prosecute these crimes,” Mr. Griffin said.Larry Davis, a lawyer for Mr. Wood, said in an interview on Friday that his client was approached in the summer of 2020 by a voter drive representative at a Miami-area Walmart asking if he wanted to register to vote.When Mr. Wood told the person that he was a convicted felon, the person said that a state constitutional amendment had restored voting rights to felons and so he filled out an application, according to Mr. Davis. The amendment, however, excluded people convicted of murder or felony sex offenses and required them to apply separately to have their rights reinstated.Mr. Wood received a voter card from the state six or seven weeks after filling out the application, said Mr. Davis, who described the dramatic scene when his client was arrested at 6 a.m. in August.“The house was surrounded with police that had automatic weapons,” Mr. Davis said. “They wouldn’t even let him get dressed and they took him to jail.”In Florida, a conviction of voter fraud requires proof of intent. Mr. Davis said “there’s absolutely no proof” that his client willfully broke the law.The legal setback for Mr. DeSantis, who is running for re-election in November and has White House ambitions, came days after the release of body camera footage from law enforcement officers in the Tampa area who carried out similar arrests. In the videos, the people arrested seemed puzzled and appeared to have run afoul of the law out of confusion rather than intent.Mr. Davis said that he had requested the body camera footage from Mr. Wood’s arrest, but had not yet received it.In the case of Mr. Rogers in Texas, Judge Lisa Michalk of the 221st District Court in Montgomery County, which is about 40 miles north of Houston, ruled on Monday that Mr. Paxton as Texas’s attorney general did not have the authority to independently prosecute criminal offenses under the Election Code.A spokeswoman for Mr. Paxton did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday.In a statement, Mr. Rogers expressed his relief that the indictment had been set aside.“I am thankful that justice has been done,” Mr. Rogers said. “It has been horrible to go through this, and I am so glad my case is over. I look forward to being able to get back to my life.”Tommy Buser-Clancy, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and one of the lawyers who represented Mr. Rogers, in a statement this week lamented what happened to Mr. Rogers.“He never should have been prosecuted in the first place, and this ruling allows him to put this traumatic ordeal behind him and move on with his life,” Mr. Buser-Clancy said. More

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      The Proud Boys Presented Dan Cox With a Gift. Now, He Says He Didn’t Keep It.

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      After a video emerged on Friday of the Trump-backed candidate for Maryland governor, Dan Cox, accepting a gift from the Proud Boys, the Republican sought to distance himself from the extremist group connected to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.The encounter took place on July 19 in Frederick County, Md., as Mr. Cox, a state legislator, was basking in the afterglow of his resounding victory in the Republican primary for governor, according to the video, published by The Washington Post.A young man in a black polo shirt with the extremist group’s insignia on it approached Mr. Cox and shook his hand, the video showed. In his other hand, he was bearing a token of appreciation for Mr. Cox, who has made a litany of false claims about the 2020 election.“Here, this is a present from the Maryland Proud Boys to you,” the man said, drawing a quizzical look from Mr. Cox. “It’s a comb. Proud Boys comb.”In the video, which The Post reported had been publicly accessible on Mr. Cox’s Vimeo account but vanished later on Friday after the newspaper inquired about it, Mr. Cox asked the man his name and said that it was nice to meet him. The man gave only his first name: Henry.In a statement on Friday, Mr. Cox — whose far-right credentials were highlighted by Democrats in the primary, hoping they would become a liability in the blue state’s general election — played down the exchange.“In the noise of the victory celebration, it was hard to hear what was being said,” Mr. Cox said. “I was a surprised by him handing me something, and frankly, I did not even keep the comb. I had never seen him before, and I have not seen him since. I have no affiliation with anyone involved in violence on January 6th, period.”Mr. Cox’s campaign did not answer follow-up questions about the video’s disappearance.In a poll conducted in late September by The Post and the University of Maryland, Mr. Cox trailed his Democratic opponent, Wes Moore, by 32 percentage points in the open-seat race for Maryland’s governorship.As Donald J. Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, Mr. Cox wrote on Twitter that Vice President Mike Pence was a “traitor” because of his refusal to overturn the election of Joseph R. Biden Jr. as president. In a letter to the Maryland General Assembly’s legislative ethics committee, Mr. Cox later expressed his regrets about what he described as a “poor choice of word.”On the day of the Jan. 6 attack, Mr. Cox chartered three buses from his home county to the pro-Trump rally in Washington, but he has said that he did not march to the Capitol.Last year, Mr. Cox said that Mr. Trump was “the only president that I recognize right now” and argued that Mr. Biden had been “installed” in the White House. He has also made false claims about voter fraud in Frederick County.Dozens of members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group, have been indicted in connection with the assault on the Capitol. Several of the group’s leaders are facing charges of seditious conspiracy. Their role in the siege has received major attention from the congressional committee investigating the attack. More

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      Super PAC Aligned with Senate G.O.P. Cuts Off New Hampshire TV Ads

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      In a sign that New Hampshire is at risk of falling off the map of Senate battleground states, the main super PAC aligned with Senate Republicans said on Friday that it was canceling $5.6 million in television ads that it had reserved in the state for the final two weeks of the race.Republicans in New Hampshire, which was once seen as one of the party’s top chances to pick up a seat in 2022, nominated Don Bolduc, a Trump-style retired Army general, to run against Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat. Mr. Bolduc has sparred with the state’s popular governor, Chris Sununu, a Republican who tagged Mr. Bolduc in turn as a “conspiracy-theory extremist.”National Republicans had spent money late in the race to prevent Mr. Bolduc’s nomination, but he won the primary in September anyway. Mr. Bolduc has promoted hard-right views, suggesting he would consider abolishing the F.B.I. and asserting that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald J. Trump — before reversing himself immediately after the primary, and then seeming to backtrack from that reversal. Mr. Bolduc has also been adamant that if he wins, he will not support Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky as the party leader. “As the cycle comes to a close, we are shifting resources to where they can be most effective to achieve our ultimate goal: winning the majority,” said Steven Law, the president of the super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, which is aligned with Mr. McConnell.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBoth parties are making their final pitches ahead of the Nov. 8 election.Where the Election Stands: As Republicans appear to be gaining an edge with swing voters in the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress, here’s a look at the state of the races for the House and Senate.Biden’s Low Profile: President Biden’s decision not to attend big campaign rallies reflects a low approval rating that makes him unwelcome in some congressional districts and states.What Young Voters Think: Twelve Americans under 30, all living in swing states, told The Times about their political priorities, ranging from the highly personal to the universal.In Minnesota: The race for attorney general in the light-blue state offers a pure test of which issue is likely to be more politically decisive: abortion rights or crime.A spokeswoman for Mr. Bolduc said he would continue to meet voters “one by one” in town halls, in defiance of the national group’s vote of no confidence.“General Bolduc has defied the naysayers from the beginning and that’s the same approach he is going to take through the finish line to victory,” the spokeswoman, Kate Constantini, said in a statement.Asked if the Bolduc campaign considered the withdrawal of support to be payback for Mr. Bolduc’s rejection of Mr. McConnell as party leader, Rick Wiley, a senior adviser to Mr. Bolduc, said, “You would have to ask them.”The move by the Senate Leadership Fund comes two weeks after the National Republican Senatorial Committee canceled its television reservations in the state.At the time, Chris Hartline, the communications director for the N.R.S.C., said, “We’re glad to see Republican outside forces showing up in a big way in New Hampshire, with millions in spending pledged to take down Maggie Hassan in the final stretch.”Now those outside forces are retreating, as well.Mr. Hartline said on Friday that “our most recent polling has the race inside the margin of error.”“Don Bolduc is working his tail off and has turned it into a tossup,” he said. “There’s no reason to think he can’t win this race.”The decision puzzled some Republicans. Tom Rath, a longtime Republican activist and leader in New Hampshire, wrote on Twitter of the ad cancellation, “Seems odd given recent polling showing race within the margin.”Matt Schlapp, the chair of the American Conservative Union, called the move “odd” as well, saying the race was “almost tied.”Of Mr. Bolduc, Mr. Schlapp wrote on Twitter while misspelling his name: “If he does pull it out without Senate help he will become their worst nightmare. Keep your eyes on NH.”An internal poll released on Thursday by the Bolduc campaign showed Ms. Hassan leading Mr. Bolduc by 49 percent to 47 percent among likely voters, within the margin of error.Ms. Hassan entered October with $4.8 million. Mr. Bolduc had less than $800,000. More

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      The Ins and Outs of America’s Shrug at the Threat to Democracy

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      With voters distracted by other issues and election denial flourishing, the country has what academics call a legitimacy problem.One way to read the striking results of the New York Times/Siena College poll released this week is that democracy is not shaping up to be the driver of votes that many on the left hoped it would be.The obvious reason is that inflation is a far more immediate issue on the minds of most voters, who are watching their savings evaporate or struggling to pay their bills. That’s Abraham Maslow 101: Physiological needs of food and shelter will always take priority over abstractions.But another way to interpret the survey is as yet more confirmation that American democracy is indeed in trouble.In a Twitter Spaces conversation today with Ruth Igielnik, a staff editor for news surveys who worked on this week’s poll, and Nick Corasaniti, a national correspondent on the politics team, we unpacked why, even though 71 percent of voters agreed that democracy was at risk, only 7 percent said that democracy’s fragile state was the most important problem facing the country. You can listen to our discussion here.Ruth noted that voters’ responses to the question “What one or two words do you think summarize the current threat to democracy?” were all over the map.Some said “election deniers” or “Donald Trump,” while others said “Joe Biden,” “inflation and taxes” or “the one percent, a.k.a. Wall Street and hedge funds.” Another person said “our division” — that is, political polarization itself.Nick, who recently returned from a reporting trip in Michigan, added some texture from tagging along during voter canvassing in Detroit and its suburbs, as well as in Saginaw, a city of about 50,000 people in the center of the state. Biden carried Saginaw County by just a few hundred votes in 2020.“We encountered a ton of voters, and not a single one of them brought up any issues of democracy,” Nick said.He added that the organizers, as they prepared the canvassers for what they should expect to encounter, told them: “You’re going to hear about issues like, why are our wages so low when we’re a predominantly union town? Why are prescription drug prices so persistently high? Why are there potholes in the road? Why can’t I get a garbage can?”Lonna Atkeson, who studies political psychology at Florida State University, said voters were just thinking rationally. When it comes to protecting democracy, she noted, each side sees the other as the problem.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBoth parties are making their final pitches ahead of the Nov. 8 election.Where the Election Stands: As Republicans appear to be gaining an edge with swing voters in the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress, here’s a look at the state of the races for the House and Senate.Biden’s Low Profile: President Biden’s decision not to attend big campaign rallies reflects a low approval rating that makes him unwelcome in some congressional districts and states.What Young Voters Think: Twelve Americans under 30, all living in swing states, told The Times about their political priorities, ranging from the highly personal to the universal.In Minnesota: The race for attorney general in the light-blue state offers a pure test of which issue is likely to be more politically decisive: abortion rights or crime.“So there’s not really much to go on there other than to vote for your own party,” Atkeson said, “whereas the economy is a clear signal. It’s on your doorstep. You feel it every day. Maybe there’s something that can be done about that.”A legitimacy problemMost serious experts on democracy — academics who study governments around the world, and why they fall apart — would say that election deniers are the real danger.And the new Times/Siena poll shows that millions of them are out there, despite zero evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. As Nick wrote in an article explaining the poll results, “Twenty-eight percent of all voters, including 41 percent of Republicans, said they had little to no faith in the accuracy of this year’s midterm elections.”There’s an academic term for that: a legitimacy problem.Seymour Martin Lipset, a sociologist and political scientist who did seminal work on what makes democracies successful, published an influential paper in 1959 called “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy.”At the time, he was trying to understand two main questions: why Europe veered toward extremist ideologies like fascism and communism after World War I, and whether the nascent democracies forged by fire and blood in World War II were sustainable.Lipset defined democracy this way: “a political system which supplies regular constitutional opportunities for changing the governing officials.”The United States still meets that pretty basic requirement. Despite Trump’s bellowing about a stolen election, and his efforts to whip up the mob that assaulted the Capitol, Biden duly assumed office in 2021 after a near-disastrous handover of power. The system held, albeit tenuously.But Lipset’s framework should alarm us today because, as the Times poll suggests, nearly half the country still doesn’t consider Biden the legitimate president.Many of Donald Trump’s supporters deny the legitimacy of the last presidential election.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesPretend the U.S. is a foreign country; how would we explain what is happening? Two years on, the fever that powered an attempt to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power has not broken, and it’s still being stoked every day by the loser of the previous election.As Lipset wrote, “If a political system is not characterized by a value system allowing the peaceful ‘play’ of power — the adherence by the ‘outs’ to decisions made by ‘ins’ and the recognition by ‘ins’ of the rights of the ‘outs’ — there can be no stable democracy.”Lipset also defined a stable democracy as the absence “of a major political movement opposed to the democratic ‘rules of the game’” — which required, he thought, that “no totalitarian movement, either Fascist or Communist, received 20 percent of the vote.”The one silver lining in the poll? Only 17 percent of the voters who saw democracy as threatened said there was a need to go “outside the law” to fix the problem. And of those voters, just 11 percent said the answer would be to “take up arms/violence/civil war.”Then again, maybe that’s no silver lining at all: By my math, that would still be over a million people. Buckle up.What to read on democracyA South Florida man became the first of 20 defendants ensnared in Gov. Ron DeSantis’s voter fraud dragnet to have charges dropped, ABC News reports.The midterm legal battles have already begun: The Democratic National Committee has filed a court motion to try to stop Republicans in Pennsylvania who want to disqualify mail-in ballots without handwritten dates on them.Tens of thousands of transgender people could be disenfranchised in the November elections because of strict voter ID laws and other rules in their states, according to Rolling Stone.Nonwhite voters were 30 percent more likely to have their vote-by-mail application or ballot rejected compared with white voters in Texas, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which analyzed data from the March primary.Election offices large and small across the country are contending with internal threats that could undermine the integrity of the midterms: election deniers holding positions of power in them, CNN reports.The head of a major federal union warned this week that demonization of the Internal Revenue Service by some Republicans could put the agency’s employees in danger.Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, is stepping up his courtship of right-wing fringe figures, including adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory, The Philadelphia Inquirer reports.viewfinderSupporters of Stacey Abrams at a campaign event in Athens, Ga.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesOn the trail in GeorgiaA couple of hundred people had gathered to wait for a glimpse of Stacey Abrams by the time her purple bus pulled up in College Square in Athens, Ga. Abrams’s supporters have often spoken to me about how inspiring it is for them to see her running for office when for so long Black women have organized politically behind the scenes.I crept to the center of the crowd for a photo of Abrams as she spoke. At one point, I turned around and captured this image of a group of racially diverse and multigenerational women. To me, it represented a key group of her supporters and their feelings about her candidacy and the future.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      In a Race Rife With Antisemitism Concerns, Mastriano Adviser Calls Shapiro ‘At Best a Secular Jew’

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      A senior adviser to Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, on Friday seemed to openly question the faith of Mr. Mastriano’s Democratic opponent, Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, in a contest that has been shaped more by concerns over antisemitism than perhaps any other major race in the country.“Josh Shapiro is at best a secular Jew in the same way Joe Biden is a secular Catholic,” Jenna Ellis, a former lawyer for the Trump campaign who worked to overturn the 2020 election, wrote on Twitter, commenting on a headline that noted Mr. Shapiro’s faith. Ms. Ellis branded the two Democrats as “extremists,” pointing to gender surgery for minors and distorting their positions on abortion rights.“Doug Mastriano is for wholesome family values and freedom,” wrote Ms. Ellis, who is not Jewish.Mr. Shapiro, 49, the state’s attorney general, is an observant Jew whose faith is a central part of his public identity. He keeps kosher, prioritizes Sabbath dinner with his family and is a Jewish day school alum. “These attacks on Attorney General Shapiro and on all people of faith are another reminder of the stakes of this race,” said Manuel Bonder, a spokesman for the Shapiro campaign. “Our campaign is staying focused on bringing people together to defeat Mastriano’s dangerous extremism.”Mr. Mastriano, a far-right Republican who promotes Christian power and disdains the separation of church and state, has alarmed a broad swath of Pennsylvania’s Jewish community with his rhetoric and his associations.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBoth parties are making their final pitches ahead of the Nov. 8 election.Where the Election Stands: As Republicans appear to be gaining an edge with swing voters in the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress, here’s a look at the state of the races for the House and Senate.Biden’s Low Profile: President Biden’s decision not to attend big campaign rallies reflects a low approval rating that makes him unwelcome in some congressional districts and states.What Young Voters Think: Twelve Americans under 30, all living in swing states, told The Times about their political priorities, ranging from the highly personal to the universal.In Minnesota: The race for attorney general in the light-blue state offers a pure test of which issue is likely to be more politically decisive: abortion rights or crime.He has attacked Mr. Shapiro for attending and sending his children to a Jewish day school that Mr. Mastriano called a “privileged, exclusive, elite” school and said it evinced Mr. Shapiro’s “disdain for people like us,” remarks that seemed to be a dog whistle.His campaign also paid $5,000 to the far-right social media platform Gab, on which the man accused of perpetrating the October 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting — believed to be the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history — had posted antisemitic screeds. In defending Mr. Mastriano and responding to backlash, the platform’s founder, Andrew Torba, deployed antisemitic language.Mr. Mastriano, after a bipartisan outcry, released a statement saying that he rejected “antisemitism in any form.” But a late September campaign finance report showed that Mr. Mastriano had accepted a $500 donation from Mr. Torba in July. Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, wrote on Twitter that “the Mastriano campaign that repeatedly has employed anti-Jewish stereotypes and engaged with antisemites has no grounds to comment” on Mr. Shapiro’s level of observance.The Mastriano campaign did not respond to questions about why it was important to question Mr. Shapiro’s faith or how he practices it, or what it means to be “at best” a secular Jew or Catholic. Efforts to seek comment from Ms. Ellis were not immediately successful, but on Twitter she rejected criticism of her remarks. Mr. Biden often referenced his religion on the campaign trail, and he is a regular churchgoer who once memorably defended the Democratic Party as one of faith.“The next Republican that tells me I’m not religious, I’m going to shove my rosary beads down their throat,” Mr. Biden said in 2005, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer.Mr. Biden supports abortion rights. But his views on the matter have evolved over his decades in public life and he has been open about his struggles to reconcile the teachings of his faith with the complexities of the abortion issue.Separately, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia released a statement in response to a “false and hurtful statement” from Mr. Mastriano, without mentioning him by name.Mr. Mastriano recently made false claims that the hospital “is grabbing homeless kids and kids in foster care, apparently, and experimenting on them with gender transitioning.”The hospital, responding to a question about Mr. Mastriano’s remarks, said in the statement that “providing the best and most compassionate care to all children, inclusive of their gender identity, is central to the mission and values of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.” It added: “We stand in complete support of our colleagues and the patients and families they serve. We admire their strength and resilience during this ongoing period of difficulty.” More

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      There Is a Way to Make America Safe for Democracy

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      Many Americans believe there’s something not quite right about majority rule — something threatening, something dangerous. It just feels wrong.We might be comfortable with decision-making by majorities at our P.T.A. meetings or when deciding on the theme for the next vacation Bible school, but we’re uneasy with the prospect when it comes to our politics. And our political lexicon is stocked with phrases and aphorisms that highlight the danger of majoritarian systems and even rebuke the concept outright.There are the usual warnings about the “tyranny of the majority”; there is the quip, commonly misattributed to Benjamin Franklin, that democracy is “two wolves and a lamb, voting on what to have for lunch”; and there is the oft-heard assertion — and I’ll admit a personal bête noire — that the United States is a “republic, not a democracy” and that democracy would be the ruin of American liberty. We are taught to imagine ourselves as potentially being at the awful mercy of most of our fellow citizens.Our collective suspicion of majority rule rests on the legitimate observation that a majority can be as tyrannical as any despot. As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “When I see the right and the ability to do everything granted to any power whatsoever, whether it is called people or king, democracy or aristocracy, where it is exercised in a monarchy or in a republic, I say: there is the seed of tyranny, and I seek to go live under other laws.”Americans take for granted the idea that our counter-majoritarian Constitution — deliberately written to constrain majorities and keep them from acting outright — has, in fact, preserved the rights and liberties of the people against the tyranny of majority rule, and that any greater majoritarianism would threaten that freedom.Well, what if that’s not true? Yes, majorities acting through our representative institutions have been overbearing and yes, the Supreme Court has occasionally protected the rights of vulnerable minorities, as well as those of the people at large. But there have been just as many, if not more, examples of the reverse: of majorities safeguarding the rights of vulnerable minorities and of our counter-majoritarian institutions freeing assorted bullies and bosses to violate them.I’ve written about some of these episodes before (and I’m hardly the only person to have drawn attention to them): how the court gutted both the Reconstruction amendments to the Constitution and the laws written to secure the lives of Black Americans, free and freed, from discrimination, violence and exploitation.If allowed to stand in full, the Civil Rights Act of 1875 — passed by only the third U.S. Congress to have Black members, who were elected in some of the first truly free elections in the South — would have outlawed discrimination in public accommodations like railroads, steamboats, hotels and theaters and prohibited jury exclusion on the basis of race. But the court, in an 1883 opinion, decided that neither the 13th nor the 14th Amendment gave Congress the power to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals.The advent of Jim Crow, similarly, had less to do in the beginning with a nefarious majority of voters rushing to the polls to subjugate their Black neighbors than with a long campaign of violence meant to neutralize Black voters and intimidate their white allies. The men who pioneered Jim Crow in Mississippi, for example, were by no means a majority, nor did they represent one in a state where a large part of the public was Black. As the historian C. Vann Woodward summarized it in “The Strange Career of Jim Crow,” “In spite of the ultimate success of disfranchisement, the movement met with stout resistance and succeeded in some states by narrow margins or the use of fraud.”There was, however, a majority vote to protect the rights of voters in the South. But that vote — the vote to pass the 1890 Federal Elections Bill, which would have empowered the national government to supervise elections in the former Confederate states — failed to overcome a Senate filibuster.We cannot know how American history would have unfolded in the absence of our counter-majoritarian institutions. But the example of Reconstruction and its aftermath suggests that if majorities had been able to act, unimpeded, to protect the rights of Black Americans, it might have been a little less tragic than what we experienced instead.It is an insight we can apply to the present. It’s not the national majority that threatens the right to vote or the right to bodily autonomy or that wants to strip transgender Americans of their right to exist in civil society (on that last point, 64 percent of Americans, according to the Pew Research Center, support laws or policies that would “protect transgender people from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces”). If it were up to majorities of Americans — and if, more important, the American political system more easily allowed majorities to express their will — then Congress would have already strengthened the Voting Rights Act, codified abortion rights into law and protected the civil rights of L.G.B.T.Q. Americans. Even the legislative victories most Americans rightfully admire — like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — were possible only with a supermajority of lawmakers assembled in the wake of a presidential assassination.If it were up to the national majority, American democracy would most likely be in a stronger place, not the least because Donald Trump might not have become president. Our folk beliefs about American government notwithstanding, the much-vaunted guardrails and endlessly invoked norms of our political system have not secured our democracy as much as they’ve facilitated the efforts of those who would degrade and undermine it.Majority rule is not perfect but rule by a narrow, reactionary minority — what we face in the absence of serious political reform — is far worse. And much of our fear of majorities, the legacy of a founding generation that sought to restrain the power of ordinary people, is unfounded. It is not just that rule of the majority is, as Abraham Lincoln said, “the only true sovereign of a free people”; it is also the only sovereign that has reliably worked to protect those people from the deprivations of hierarchy and exploitation.If majoritarian democracy, even at its most shackled, is a better safeguard against tyranny and abuse than our minoritarian institutions, then imagine how we might fare if we let majoritarian democracy actually take root in this country. The liberty of would-be masters might suffer. The liberty of ordinary people, on the other hand, might flourish.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