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      Mark Meadows’s 2020 Vote Is Under Investigation in North Carolina

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      Records show that Mr. Meadows cast an absentee ballot from the address of a remote mobile home, but reports have cast doubt on whether he lived there.North Carolina officials said on Thursday that they planned to investigate whether Mark Meadows, who as former President Donald J. Trump’s chief of staff helped amplify false claims of voter fraud in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election, cast a legal vote in that year’s presidential race.The North Carolina Department of Justice has asked the State Bureau of Investigation to examine whether Mr. Meadows broke the law when he registered to vote, and voted from, a remote mobile home where he did not live, said Nazneen Ahmed, a spokeswoman for Josh Stein, the state attorney general, who is a Democrat.“We have asked the S.B.I. to investigate and at the conclusion of the investigation, we’ll review their findings,” Ms. Ahmed said.Law enforcement officials in Macon County, a rural community in the mountains of western North Carolina, first became aware of questions surrounding Mr. Meadows’s voter registration last week after The New Yorker revealed that he had voted from a home where he did not live, the local district attorney, Ashley Welch, wrote in a letter to the state Justice Department.“Until being contacted by the media, I was unaware of any allegations of voter fraud surrounding Mark Meadows,” she wrote.Mr. Meadows did not respond to messages Thursday evening. He has not yet offered any public explanation for his 2020 voter registration.The letter and the state investigation were first reported on Thursday by WRAL, a television station in Raleigh, N.C.North Carolina voter registration records show that Mr. Meadows and his wife, Debra, registered to vote at a three-bedroom mobile home in Scaly Mountain, N.C., six weeks before the 2020 election. He voted absentee by mail from that address, according to the state records.The former owner of the Scaly Mountain home told The New Yorker that she did not believe Mr. Meadows had ever visited the residence. A neighbor told the magazine Ms. Meadows had stayed there only one or two nights.Before he registered to vote at the Scaly Mountain home, Mr. Meadows had voted in 2018 from a home in Transylvania County, N.C., and in 2016 from Asheville, N.C., according to North Carolina records.In 2021, he also registered to vote in Virginia, where he and his wife own a condominium in the Washington suburbs, ahead of that state’s contentious election for governor.In her letter, Ms. Welch asked state officials to investigate Mr. Meadows because she had a conflict of interest. Mr. Meadows, Ms. Welch said, contributed to her 2014 campaign and appeared in political advertisements for her. At the time, Mr. Meadows was a member of Congress representing eastern North Carolina.“It is in the best interest of justice and the best interest of the people of North Carolina that the Attorney General’s office handles the prosecution of this case,” Ms. Welch wrote. More

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      The Supreme Court Did the Right Thing. I’m Still Worried.

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      State legislatures are, and always have been, creatures of state constitutions, bound by the terms of those constitutions and subject to the judgments of state courts.This has important implications for the nature of state legislative power. The federal Constitution may give state legislatures the power to allocate electoral votes and regulate congressional elections, but that power is subject to the limits imposed by state constitutions.Imagine what could happen if that were not the case. Imagine, instead, that state legislatures had plenary power over federal elections, which would allow them to overrule state courts, ignore a governor’s veto and even nullify an act of Congress. State legislatures would, in essence, be sovereign, with unchecked power over the fundamental political rights of those citizens who lived within their borders.This change would both unravel and turn the clock back on our constitutional order, with states acting more like the quasi-independent entities they were before the Civil War and less as the subordinate units of a national polity.But that, apparently, is what some Republicans want.Recently, Republicans in North Carolina and Pennsylvania asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block congressional maps drawn by their state courts. Their argument was based on a revolutionary doctrine that would tee up this fundamental change to the American political system.The challenges, which failed, stemmed from the effort to gerrymander Democrats out of as much power as possible. In North Carolina, the proposed gerrymander was so egregious that the state Supreme Court ruled that it was in violation of the state’s constitution. The court drew a new map to rectify the problem. In Pennsylvania, likewise, state courts drew a new congressional map after Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, vetoed the heavily gerrymandered map produced by the Republican-led legislature.The North Carolina Supreme Court’s ruling and the Pennsylvania governor’s veto should have been the last word. Both were acting in accordance with their state constitutions, which bind and structure the actions of the state legislatures in question. For Republicans, however, those checks on their power are illegitimate. Their argument, in brief, is that neither state courts nor elected executives have the right to interfere with or challenge the power of state legislatures as it relates to the regulation of federal elections.Nestled at the heart of the Republican argument is a breathtaking claim about the nature of state legislative power. Called the “independent state legislature” doctrine, it holds that Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution — which states that “the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of choosing Senators” — gives state legislatures total power to write rules for congressional elections and direct the appointment of presidential electors, unbound by state constitutions and free from the scrutiny of state courts.This isn’t a new theory, exactly. In his concurring opinion in Bush v. Gore in 2000 — joined by justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — Chief Justice William Rehnquist argued that under Article II, any “significant departure from the legislative scheme for appointing Presidential electors presents a federal constitutional question.” Meaning, in short, that a state court could go beyond its authority in adjudicating state election law. The other two Republican-appointed justices on the court, Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O’Connor, declined to join Rehnquist’s concurrence, even as they voted to stop the counting and give George W. Bush the win.For 20 years, the doctrine lay dormant. It was resurrected, in 2020, by allies of Donald Trump, who needed some constitutional pretense for their attempt to overturn his defeat. Before the election, a number of state courts had ordered state governments to make accommodations for the pandemic, citing state constitutions. Elsewhere, governors, secretaries of state and state boards of election took matters into their own hands, bypassing the legislature (and using their own authority under the law) to accommodate voters. When, after the election, the Trump campaign sued either to throw out ballots or to invalidate results, its lawyers offered the “independent state legislature” doctrine as justification. So too did supporters of Trump who wanted Republican legislatures to void election results and choose electors who would give the president a second term.The basic problem with this doctrine is that it’s bunk. “The text of the Elections and Electors clauses is silent as to the role of state constitutions, but the subsequent history is anything but,” the legal scholar Michael Weingartner writes in a draft article on the theory of independent state legislatures. “Since the Founding, state constitutions have both directly regulated federal elections and constrained state legislatures’ exercise of their authority under the Clauses.” What’s more, over the past century, “nearly every election-related state constitutional provision was either approved and presented to voters by state legislatures or placed on the ballot and enacted by voters directly.” Even if the federal Constitution is vague on the full scope of state legislative power to regulate elections, both history and practice have fixed the meaning of the relevant clauses in favor of constraint. State constitutions (and state courts) do in fact regulate state legislatures as it relates to election law.Some proponents of the “independent state legislature” doctrine argue that theirs represents the original understanding of the Elections and Electors clauses in the Constitution. Another researcher, Hayward H. Smith, says otherwise. “The history demonstrates beyond cavil that the founding generation understood that ‘legislatures’ would operate as normal legislatures, not independent legislatures, with respect to both procedure and substance,” he writes. In fact, he notes, a review of every state constitution adopted in the 19th century reveals “that both explicit and nonexplicit limitations on ‘legislatures’ were widespread before, during, and after the Civil War.”There’s simply no basis for the claim that the Constitution grants state legislatures this kind of unaccountable power over the conduct of federal elections. It runs counter to the basic idea behind the American political system, that is, the sharing and separation of power among competing and overlapping institutions. It defeats the purpose of this delicate balance to give state legislatures plenary power over federal elections (to say nothing of how it is incongruent with the elite frustration over the scope of states’ power that gave rise to the Constitution in the first place).Thankfully, the Supreme Court rejected the challenge from Republicans in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Still, there may be four votes for the theory of the “independent state legislature.” In a 2020 dissent from the majority on the question of whether Pennsylvania should count certain mail-in ballots, Justices Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh appeared sympathetic to the doctrine. Neil Gorsuch endorsed it outright, writing that “The Constitution provides that state legislatures — not federal judges, not state judges, not state governors, not other state officials — bear primary responsibility for setting election rules.”Dissenting from the court’s decision in the North Carolina case, Alito called the question of state legislative power an issue of “great national importance,” a clear signal that he is open to the arguments of Republican legislators. Kavanaugh concurred. “I agree with Justice Alito that the underlying Elections Clause question raised in the emergency application is important, and that both sides have advanced serious arguments on the merits. The issue is almost certain to keep arising until the Court definitively resolves it.”It is unclear where the newest justice, the Trump appointee Amy Coney Barrett, stands on the doctrine, although she appears to have voted with the majority in these particular cases.It is a good thing that the Supreme Court has decided not to throw out more than 230 years of precedent and practice for the sake of a bizarre and anti-democratic reading of the Constitution. But previous Supreme Courts have endorsed bizarre and anti-democratic readings of the Constitution — the Constitution itself has an uneasy relationship with American democracy — and this court, especially, has been more hostile than friendly to the more expansive view of our democratic rights.We can breathe a sigh of relief, for now, but when it comes to the future of the “independent state legislature” doctrine, the worst may still be on the horizon.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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      Mark Meadows Spread Trump’s Voter Fraud Claims. Now His Voting Record Is Under Scrutiny.

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      The former Trump aide listed a mobile home in rural North Carolina as his residence at the same time that he was running operations at the White House.Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff who helped former President Donald J. Trump spread false claims of voter fraud in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, is facing questions about his own voting record, following a report that he registered to vote from a North Carolina mobile home where he did not live.There’s no indication that Mr. Meadows, a former congressman from North Carolina, ever resided — or even spent the night — at the rural mountain home, according to The New Yorker, which first reported on the residence that Mr. Meadows listed on his 2020 voter registration.While it’s not unusual for politicians to maintain residency in their home states, even as they spend most of their time in Washington, Mr. Meadows’s arrangement stood out for its timing and details. Mr. Meadows claimed the modest mobile home with a rusted roof as his residence at the same time that he was running day-to-day operations at the White House and was frequently warning of the possibility of voter fraud.Neither Mr. Meadows nor his wife, Debra, responded to calls or messages Tuesday. Mr. Meadows’s spokesman, Ben Williamson, also did not respond to calls or messages.North Carolina voter registration records show that Mr. Meadows and his wife registered to vote at the three-bedroom mobile home in Scaly Mountain, N.C., six weeks before the 2020 election. Records show that he voted absentee by mail from that address and that Ms. Meadows voted early, in person.Mr. Meadows’s exact connection to the home is unclear. He never owned it. On a voter registration application submitted on Sept. 19, 2020, Mr. Meadows stated that he intended to move in the following day.North Carolina law requires that a voter live at their address for 30 days before the election in which they are voting. It is a felony to file a fraudulent voter registration application, though prosecutions are rare and typically do not lead to jail sentences.Only a registered voter from Macon County, which includes Scaly Mountain along the Georgia border, can file a challenge to Mr. Meadows’s voter registration. Patrick Gannon, a spokesman for the North Carolina Board of Elections, said Tuesday that there have been no voter challenges filed against Mr. Meadows.Before and after the 2020 election, Mr. Meadows was among the foremost amplifiers of Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud. During an August 2020 interview on CNN, he warned of fraud in voting by mail and said people are able to register to vote in multiple places at once, leading to fraud.“Anytime you move, you’ll change your driver’s license, but you don’t call up and say, ‘Hey, by the way, I’m re-registering,’” Mr. Meadows said.Voters are not required to notify a state’s election officials about a move. Mr. Meadows, in fact, is currently registered in both North Carolina and Virginia.Virginia voter registration forms obtained by The New York Times show that nearly a year after registering at the mountain mobile home, on Sept. 13 and Sept. 15, 2021, Mr. Meadows and Ms. Meadows registered to vote at a condominium in the Old Town neighborhood of suburban Alexandria, Va. Property records show that Mr. and Ms. Meadows purchased the unit in July 2017.Both Mr. Meadows and Ms. Meadows voted early in person in Virginia’s heated election for governor in 2021, Virginia election records show. In that contest, Glenn Youngkin became the first Republican elected governor of Virginia in 12 years.In the weeks after the 2020 election, Mr. Meadows served as a revolving door between Mr. Trump and an array of lawyers, supporters and conspiracy theorists who aimed to overturn the election results to keep Mr. Trump in the White House. He introduced Mr. Trump to Mark Martin, a former North Carolina Supreme Court justice who told the then-president, falsely, that Vice President Mike Pence could stop the congressional certification of the Electoral College results.In January 2021, Mr. Meadows facilitated the call between Mr. Trump and Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, in which Mr. Trump asked Mr. Raffensperger to “to find 11,780 votes” to overturn President Biden’s victory in the state.During Mr. Trump’s presidency, several members of his White House inner circle, including Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, and Steve Bannon, an on-again-off-again adviser, were registered to vote in two states. There was no evidence that any of them voted twice in the same election.At the time he registered to vote in Scaly Mountain, Mr. Meadows was said to be considering running for the Senate seat to be vacated after the 2022 election by Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina. Shortly after the 2020 election, Mr. Meadows said he would not run for the Senate.The owner of the home when Mr. Meadows registered there told The New Yorker that Ms. Meadows reserved it for two months sometime in the past few years, but stayed at the home for just one or two nights. Mr. Meadows never visited, the former homeowner, who asked that her name not be used, told the magazine.The former homeowner did not respond to messages. The current owner, who bought the property in 2021, also did not respond to messages.A neighbor, Tammy Talley, told the magazine that she is a friend of the couple’s and that Ms. Meadows and her adult children stayed at the home on at least one occasion. A message left at Ms. Talley’s home was not returned Tuesday.Two weeks after Mr. Meadows registered to vote at the Scaly Mountain address, his wife submitted an absentee ballot request on his behalf. Mr. Meadows’s absentee ballot request was first reported by WRAL-TV in Raleigh, N.C.Before he registered to vote at the Scaly Mountain home, Mr. Meadows had voted in 2018 from a home in Transylvania County, N.C., and in 2016 from Asheville, N.C., according to North Carolina records.Kitty Bennett More

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      Supreme Court Allows Court-Imposed Voting Maps in North Carolina and Pennsylvania

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      State courts had ruled that earlier maps for congressional elections had been warped by partisan gerrymandering. Democrats stand to benefit from the justices’ decision.The Supreme Court on Monday allowed congressional maps that had been approved by state courts in North Carolina and Pennsylvania to stand, giving Democrats an advantage in this year’s election in two key states.In issuing the orders, the Supreme Court rejected requests by Republicans to restore maps approved by G.O.P.-controlled state legislatures. Those district lines were thrown out and replaced by courts in both states after challenges by Democrats.Under the new court-imposed maps in both states, Democrats are likely to gain more seats than they would have under the legislature-approved versions.But in the North Carolina case, there were signs that at least four of the court’s more conservative justices could later rule that state courts are powerless to change congressional maps adopted by state legislatures.Such a ruling would fundamentally alter how congressional elections are conducted and amplify partisan gerrymandering, allowing the party that controls the legislature to draw voting districts favoring its candidates.But that will not happen before this fall’s election.Stanton Jones, a lawyer for some of the plaintiffs who had challenged the North Carolina map, said the Supreme Court’s order meant that “North Carolina voters will now be able to vote in free and fair congressional elections this year.”He said that for now, the order signaled an end to “a decade of extreme Republican gerrymanders.”Still, the court’s three most conservative members — Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch — said they would have blocked the North Carolina map because it was likely that the State Supreme Court had violated the Constitution in overriding the State Legislature.What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.New York: Democrats’ aggressive reconfiguration of the state’s congressional map is one of the most consequential in the nation.Legal Battles: The U.S. Supreme Court let stand voting maps that had been approved by state courts in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, giving Democrats a temporary win.“There must be some limit on the authority of state courts to countermand actions taken by state legislatures when they are prescribing rules for the conduct of federal elections,” Justice Alito wrote.Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh filed a short concurring opinion agreeing that the question posed by the case was a substantial one. But he said the court should address it in the ordinary course rather than in response to an emergency application.Taken together, the two opinions suggested that there are four justices ready to add a case on the question to the court’s docket when it is next presented in a petition seeking the court’s review rather than on what critics call the court’s shadow docket. It takes four votes to grant such review.But it takes five votes to prevail. The swing vote would almost certainly belong to Justice Amy Coney Barrett.In a second order in the Pennsylvania case, the court provisionally turned down a similar application on technical grounds without noted dissent.The North Carolina Supreme Court had rejected a map drawn by Republican lawmakers that effectively gave their party at least 10 of the state’s 14 House seats, notwithstanding that voters statewide are roughly equally divided between the two parties.A three-judge panel of the state Superior Court in Raleigh instead adopted a new map drawn by a nonpartisan panel of redistricting experts that appeared to split North Carolina’s congressional districts roughly equally between Republicans and Democrats. It gave each party six relatively safe House seats and made the other two competitive.After the State Supreme Court refused to block that ruling, Republican state officials asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in.In the Pennsylvania case, the State Supreme Court adopted a map that appears to give Republicans nine fairly safe seats and Democrats eight, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. Each party currently holds nine House seats, but Pennsylvania will lose a seat next year because of reapportionment after the 2020 census.Voters and a Republican candidate for the House sued state officials in federal court to challenge the new map. When they did not receive immediate relief, they asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.Both emergency applications relied on the Elections Clause of the Constitution, which says “the times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.” That meant, the challengers argued, that the state legislature has sole responsibility for drawing congressional districts and that state courts have no role to play.“The question presented here,” North Carolina Republicans wrote in their application, “goes to the very core of this nation’s democratic republic: what entity has the constitutional authority to set the rules of the road for federal elections.”How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      North Carolina Court Rejects Republican Gerrymander of Maps

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      The State Supreme Court said maps of the state’s 14 House districts and state legislative districts violated guarantees of free elections, speech and assembly.The North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday upended Republican efforts to lock in political dominance in the state, saying that congressional and state legislative maps were partisan gerrymanders that violated the State Constitution.The ruling requires the Republican-controlled legislature not only to submit new maps to the court, but to offer a range of statistical analyses to show “a significant likelihood that the districting plan will give the voters of all political parties substantially equal opportunity to translate votes into seats” in elections.The requirement rebuffed the argument against redrawing the maps that the legislature offered in oral arguments before the court this week: that the court had no right to say whether and when political maps cross the line from acceptable partisanship into unfairness.The justices’ 4-3 decision, split along party lines, not only sets a precedent for judging the legality of future maps in the state, but could play an important role in the struggle for control of the House of Representatives in elections this November. The Republican-drawn maps had effectively allotted the party control of at least 10 of the 14 House seats the state will have in the next Congress, even though voters statewide are roughly equally divided between the two parties.It was a challenge to earlier partisan maps in North Carolina and Maryland that led the U.S. Supreme Court to end decades of federal debate over the constitutionality of partisan gerrymanders, ruling in 2019 that they were political issues beyond its jurisdiction. The justices said then that Congress and state courts should rule on the question, and lawyers for the plaintiffs in the case said on Friday that the new ruling carried out that mandate to the letter.Understand Redistricting and GerrymanderingRedistricting, Explained: Answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.New York: Democrats’ aggressive reconfiguration of the state’s congressional map is one of the most consequential in the nation.Texas: Republicans want to make Texas even redder. Here are four ways their proposed maps further gerrymandered the state’s House districts.“The U.S. Supreme Court said it’s up to state courts to rein in partisan gerrymandering, and that’s exactly what the North Carolina Supreme Court has done,” said Elisabeth Theodore of the law firm Arnold & Porter. “The court’s direction is clear: The General Assembly must stop cheating and draw fair new maps so that North Carolinians can have a fair say in who governs them.”But one longtime scholar of the state’s politics, Michael Bitzer of Catawba College in Salisbury, N.C., said the Republican legislature could take the case yet again to the U.S. Supreme Court.Citing their brief in the state case, he said the legislators might argue that the state court’s decision violates the provision in the U.S. Constitution that gives Congress the ultimate right to decide the “times, places and manner” of elections.The decision comes as both federal and state courts have lately proved a bulwark against some excessive gerrymanders. A state court in Ohio rejected maps drawn by Republicans in the state legislature last month as unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders, and a federal court in Alabama ruled last month that Republicans had to redraw their congressional map to create a second district that gave minorities a fair shot at electing their preferred candidate.The legal decisions have been a boon for Democrats, who started the latest redistricting cycle at a significant disadvantage. Republicans controlled the map-drawing process in 187 congressional districts, while Democrats were able to draw 75 districts.The court decisions in North Carolina, Ohio and Alabama all forced Republicans back to the drawing table and are likely to result in either more competitive seats or opportunities for Democrats in the midterm elections.The 2019 Supreme Court decision on partisan gerrymandering has led opponents of partisan maps to take their arguments from federal courts to the state benches, where constitutions often give more legal protections to voters. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court gave them an important victory in 2018, striking down Republican-drawn maps that the justices said violated the State Constitution.In the North Carolina case, a lower court said last month that even though the state and congressional maps were extreme partisan gerrymanders by any measure, the State Constitution nevertheless did not outlaw them.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Trump’s Grip on G.O.P. Faces New Strains

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      Shifts in polls of Republicans, disagreements on endorsements and jeers over vaccines hint at daylight between the former president and the right-wing movement he spawned.About halfway into his Texas rally on Saturday evening, Donald J. Trump pivoted toward the teleprompter and away from a meandering set of grievances to rattle off a tightly prepared list of President Biden’s failings and his own achievements.“Let’s simply compare the records,” Mr. Trump said, as supporters in “Trump 2024” shirts cheered behind him, framed perfectly in the television shot.Mr. Trump, who later went on to talk about “that beautiful, beautiful house that happens to be white,” has left increasingly little doubt about his intentions, plotting an influential role in the 2022 midterm elections and another potential White House run. But a fresh round of skirmishes over his endorsements, fissures with the Republican base over vaccines — a word Mr. Trump conspicuously left unsaid at Saturday’s rally — and new polling all show how his longstanding vise grip on the Republican Party is facing growing strains.In Texas, some grass-roots conservatives are vocally frustrated with Mr. Trump’s backing of Gov. Greg Abbott, even booing Mr. Abbott when he took the stage. In North Carolina, Mr. Trump’s behind-the-scenes efforts to shrink the Republican field to help his preferred Senate candidate failed last week. And in Tennessee, a recent Trump endorsement set off an unusually public backlash, even among his most loyal allies, both in Congress and in conservative media.The Tennessee episode, in particular, showed how the Make America Great Again movement that Mr. Trump birthed is maturing to the point where it can, at times, exist separate and apart from — and even at odds with — Mr. Trump himself.Mr. Trump remains, overwhelmingly, the most popular and powerful figure in the Republican Party. He is the polling front-runner in 2024, an unmatched fund-raising force and still able to fill fairgrounds with huge crowds. But after issuing roughly 100 endorsements in races nationwide, Mr. Trump will face a gantlet of proxy tests of his political strength in the coming months, just as public polls show his sway over the G.O.P. electorate is not what it once was.“Things feel like they’ve been shifting,” said Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster who regularly surveys Mr. Trump’s standing in the party. “It’s a strong attachment. It’s one that very likely would win a Republican primary today. But is it the same ironclad, monolithic, Soviet-like attachment that we saw when Donald Trump was the incumbent president? No, it is not.”Monica Trobaugh from Coldspring, Texas, poses for a photo.Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesTrump supporters wait for the former president to arrive.Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesIn a recent Associated Press survey, 44 percent of Republicans said they did not want Mr. Trump to run for president again, while a potential G.O.P. rival in 2024, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, has narrowed the gap in other way-too-early snapshots of a hypothetical primary — new signs of potential vulnerability for the former president. In a reversal from Mr. Trump’s White House days, an NBC News poll in late January found that 56 percent of Republicans now define themselves more as supporters of the Republican Party, compared to 36 percent who said they are supporters of Mr. Trump first.The Trump-first faction had accounted for 54 percent of Republican voters in October 2020. The erosion since then spanned every demographic: men and women, moderates and conservatives, people of every age.Among the biggest swings was in a group widely seen as Mr. Trump’s most loyal constituency: white Republicans without college degrees, who went from 62 percent identifying first with Mr. Trump to 36 percent.Frank Luntz, a prominent G.O.P. pollster, said Republican support for the former president is moving in complex ways — simultaneously both intensifying and diminishing.“The Trump group is smaller today than it has been in five years, but it is even more intense, more passionate and more unforgiving of his critics,” Mr. Luntz said. “As people slowly drift away — which they are — those who are still with him are even stronger in their support.”Mr. Trump said that if he were elected to a new term as president, he would consider pardoning those prosecuted for attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesMr. Trump faces further complications to a comeback, including an ongoing investigation in Georgia over his attempt to pressure state officials to overturn the election and an inquiry in New York into his business practices.Betting against Mr. Trump’s hold on the G.O.P. has been a losing proposition, both for pundits and Republican rivals, for the better part of a decade, and he retains broad support in the party apparatus itself. As the Republican National Committee holds its winter meeting in the coming days in Salt Lake City, the party’s executive committee is expected to discuss behind closed doors whether to continue paying some of the former president’s personal legal bills.Even some Trump-skeptical Republican strategists note that any softening of support has come after a year in which Mr. Trump did not seek to command public attention as thoroughly as he can.He was back in the spotlight at Saturday’s Texas rally, an event that had the feel of a music festival, with anti-Biden chants of “Let’s go Brandon!” breaking out spontaneously. Amid the “Trump Won” flags, however, some conservative activists grumbled about the endorsement of Mr. Abbott, criticizing the governor’s early Covid-19 lockdowns and management of the border.On stage, Mr. Abbott himself faced shouts of “RINO” — for “Republican in name only” — and some boos, which he overwhelmed by leading the crowd in a chant of “Let’s go Trump!” As Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas greeted the crowd, one attendee gave him a thumbs-down sign.Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesDon Huffines, a former state senator who is challenging Mr. Abbott in the Republican primary, courted Trump supporters.Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesIn his remarks, Mr. Trump seemed to be guarding his far-right flank when he declared that, “if I run and I win,” he would consider pardoning people who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol last year.One key split that has emerged between Mr. Trump and his base is over vaccines. He has been jeered at past appearances — both when urging supporters to get vaccinated and after he said he got a booster shot himself — and he now focuses on opposing federal mandates, while simultaneously trying to take credit for the speed of the vaccines’ arrival.Mr. Trump notably avoided the word “vaccine” on Saturday, referring only to “Operation Warp Speed” — his administration’s effort to produce a vaccine.Jennifer Winterbauer, who has “We the People” tattooed on her forearm, got to the Trump rally — her sixth — days in advance, sleeping in her truck to be among the first in line. She said she believed Mr. Trump was “sent by God to save this country.” Still, she disagrees with him on the vaccine.Jennifer Winterbauer arrived days before the rally began and secured a spot among the very first in line so she could be up front when Mr. Trump began his speech. Meridith Kohut for The New York Times“I don’t think he should be promoting it at all,” she said. “I’ve had Covid and I’ve had the flu, and the flu was much worse.”Vaccine and Covid policies have also been the subject of simmering tensions with Mr. DeSantis, who has declined to say if he received a vaccine booster. Mr. Trump said “gutless” politicians dodge such questions.Mr. Ruffini polled Mr. Trump vs. Mr. DeSantis last October and again this month. Then, Mr. Trump led by 40 percentage points; now, the margin is 25. But among Republicans familiar with both men, the gap was just 16 points, and narrower still, only nine points, among those who liked them both.“His voters are looking at alternatives,” Mr. Ruffini said of Mr. Trump. While there is scant evidence of any desire for an anti-Trump Republican, Mr. Ruffini said, there is openness to what he called a “next-generation Trump candidate.”At the Texas rally, David Merritt, a 56-year-old private contractor in a cowboy hat, described himself as “more of a Trump guy” than a Republican. But if he were not to run in 2024?David Merritt, a 56-year-old private contractor, described himself as “more of a Trump guy” than a devoted Republican.Meridith Kohut for The New York Times“Probably Ron DeSantis would be my next choice,” Mr. Merritt said. Because he was the most like Mr. Trump of the Republican candidates.In Washington, Republican congressional leaders have diverged sharply in their approaches to Mr. Trump.Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House minority leader, has been solicitous, huddling with Mr. Trump for roughly an hour last Tuesday at Mar-a-Lago to talk over House races and the political landscape, according to people familiar with the meeting. Mr. McCarthy is seen as keeping Mr. Trump close as he seeks to win the majority for his party this fall and the speakership for himself.In the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, is not on speaking terms with Mr. Trump, and his allies continue to court Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, an outspoken anti-Trump Republican, to run for Senate.Beyond polling, Mr. Trump has repeatedly held up his “almost unblemished record” of primary endorsements as a barometer of his power. When Lou Dobbs, the pro-Trump media personality, asked Mr. Trump last week if the G.O.P. was still united behind him, he replied, “Well, I think so. Everybody I endorse just about wins.”In North Carolina, Mr. Trump has promoted the Senate candidate he endorsed, Representative Ted Budd, by trying to convince Representative Mark Walker to abandon the primary and run for the House again. Mr. Walker threatens to divide the pro-Trump vote and help a third candidate, former Gov. Pat McCrory, a more traditional Republican.On Thursday, Mr. Walker announced he was staying in the Senate race anyway.Though Mr. Trump’s endorsements have sometimes been haphazard, despite ongoing efforts to formalize the process, few have drawn pushback more swiftly than his backing of Morgan Ortagus, who was an aide to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and was once floated as a possible White House press secretary.Saturday’s rally was in deep-red Montgomery County, Texas. Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesMs. Ortagus, with her family in tow, met with Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago last Monday and discussed a Tennessee House seat for which she is not even an official candidate yet, according to three people familiar with the meeting; by the next evening, Mr. Trump had endorsed her unannounced run.“Trump has this completely wrong,” Candace Owens, a prominent figure in pro-Trump media, wrote on Twitter.Ms. Owens threw her support to Robby Starbuck, a rival candidate with ties to the Trump activist movement. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia quickly endorsed Mr. Starbuck, too, and Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, typically a staunch Trump ally, promoted one of Mr. Starbuck’s videos.Gavin Wax, an outspoken pro-Trump activist and president of the New York Young Republican Club, who criticized the Ortagus and Abbott endorsements, said the political environment now made it possible to air such grievances. “It’s a lot easier to have these divisions begin to brew when he’s out of office,” Mr. Wax said of Mr. Trump.“He still remains the top dog by a long shot, but who knows,” Mr. Wax said. “It’s one of those things where, a million cuts — it will eventually start to do damage.”J. David Goodman More

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      In North Carolina, a Pitched Battle Over Gerrymanders and Justices

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      A fight over who is fit to hear a redistricting case highlights what experts say is the growing influence of ideology and money over state supreme courts nationwide.It is the state that put the hyper in partisan politics, setting the blunt-force standard for battles over voting rights and gerrymanders that are now fracturing states nationwide.So it is unsurprising that North Carolina’s latest battle, over new political maps that decisively favor Republicans, is unfolding in what has become an increasingly contested and influential battlefield in American governance: the State Supreme Court.The court meets on Wednesday to consider whether a map drawn by the Republican-dominated legislature that gives as many as 11 of 14 seats in the next Congress to Republicans — in a state almost evenly divided politically — violates the State Constitution. Similarly lopsided state legislative maps are also being contested.But for weeks, both sides of a lawsuit have been waging an extraordinary battle over whether three of the court’s seven justices should even hear the case. Atop that, an influential former chairman of the state Republican Party has suggested that the legislature could impeach some Democratic justices, a move that could remove them from the bench until their fates were decided.The central issue — whether familial, political or personal relationships have rendered the justices unfit to decide the case — is hardly frivolous. But the subtext is hard to ignore: The Supreme Court has a one-justice Democratic majority that could well invalidate the Republican-drawn maps. Knocking justices off the case could change that calculus.“I think we’re at the brass-knuckles level of political fighting in this state,” said Michael Bitzer, a scholar of North Carolina politics at Catawba College in Salisbury, N.C. “It is a microcosm of the partisan polarization that I think we’re all experiencing. It’s just that here, it’s on steroids.”It also is a reminder that for all the attention on the U.S. Supreme Court this week after Justice Stephen G. Breyer announced his retirement, it is in Supreme Courts in states like North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio that many of the most explosive questions about the condition of American democracy are playing out.State Supreme Courts have become especially critical forums since the U.S. Supreme Court said in 2019 that partisan gerrymanders were political matters outside its reach.In North Carolina, the justices seem likely to reject calls for their recusal. The court said last month that individual justices would evaluate charges against themselves unless those justices asked the full court to rule.But the high stakes reflect what may happen elsewhere — and in some cases, already has. In Ohio, Justice Pat DeWine of the State Supreme Court rebuffed calls last fall to recuse himself from redistricting lawsuits in which his father — Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican — was a defendant. Days later, the state Republican Party urged a Democratic justice, Jennifer Brenner, to recuse herself because she had made redistricting an issue when running for office.Nationwide, 38 of 50 states elect justices for their highest court rather than appoint them. For decades, those races got scant attention. But a growing partisan split is turning what once were sleepy races for judicial sinecures into frontline battles for ideological dominance of courts with enormous sway over peoples’ lives.The U.S. Supreme Court issued 68 opinions in its last term. State Supreme Courts decide more than 10,000 cases every year. Increasingly, businesses and advocacy groups turn to them for rulings on crucial issues — gerrymandering is one, abortion another — where federal courts have been hostile or unavailing.Campaign spending underscores the trend. A new report from the Brennan Center for Justice, at New York University, concluded that a record $97 million was spent on 76 State Supreme Court races in the most recent election cycle. Well over four in 10 dollars came from political parties and interest groups, including the conservative nonprofit Judicial Crisis Network, which has financed national campaigns backing recent Republican nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court.Most interest group spending has involved so-called dark money, in which donors’ identities are hidden. Conservative groups spent $18.9 million in the 2019-20 cycle, the report stated, but liberal groups, which spent $14.9 million, are fast catching up.The money has brought results. In 2019, a $1.3 million barrage of last-minute advertising by the Republican State Leadership Committee was credited with giving the G.O.P.-backed candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Brian Hagedorn, a 6,000-vote victory out of 1.2 million cast.Liberal groups have not matched that success. But they have outspent conservatives in recent races in Michigan and North Carolina.“Two things are happening,” said Douglas Keith, a co-author of the Brennan Center report. “There are in-state financial interests that know these courts are really important for their bottom lines, so they’re putting money toward defeating or supporting justices to that end. And there are also national partisan infrastructures that know how important these courts are to any number of high-profile issues, and probably to issues around democracy and elections.”How important is easy to overlook. It is well known, for example, that President Donald J. Trump’s legal efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election were rejected by every court where he filed suit, save one minor ruling. But when Russell Wheeler, a Brookings Institution scholar and president of the nonpartisan Governance Institute, analyzed individual judges’ votes, he found a different pattern: 27 of the 123 state court judges who heard the cases actually supported Mr. Trump’s arguments.Twenty-one of the 27 held elected posts on State Supreme Courts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Both Michigan and Wisconsin are among the top five states in spending for Supreme Court races, the Brennan Center study found.Mr. Keith called that a red flag, signaling the rising influence of money in determining which judges define the rules for political behavior.North Carolina is another top-five state. Of $10.5 million spent on the state’s Supreme Court races in 2020, $6.2 million was devoted to a single race, for chief justice. Both figures are state records.The court has become increasingly partisan, largely at the Republican legislature’s behest. Legislators ended public financing for Supreme Court races in 2013, and made elections partisan contests in 2016.Anita Earls is one of three justices accused of conflict of interest in the redistricting case.Julia Wall/The News & Observer, via Associated PressBut Dallas Woodhouse, a former state Republican Party chair and columnist for the conservative Carolina Journal, said blame for the current tempest lay not with Republicans, but their critics. They kicked off the recusal battle last summer, he said, when the state N.A.A.C.P. sought to force two Republican justices to withdraw from a case challenging two referendums for constitutional amendments.Mr. Woodhouse crusaded against the demands in his columns, and the Supreme Court left the decision up to the justices, both of whom said this month that they would hear the case.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Madison Cawthorn Challenge Raises the Question: Who Is an ‘Insurrectionist’?

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      The challenge to Representative Madison Cawthorn’s re-election bid could set a precedent to challenge other Republicans who encouraged the Jan. 6 attack.WASHINGTON — A group of lawyers is working to disqualify from the ballot a right-wing House Republican who cheered on the Jan. 6 rioters unless he can prove he is not an “insurrectionist,” disqualified by the Constitution from holding office, in a case with implications for other officeholders and potentially former President Donald J. Trump.The novel challenge to the re-election bid of Representative Madison Cawthorn, one of the House’s brashest supporters of Mr. Trump and the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, could set a precedent to challenge other Republicans who swore to uphold the Constitution, then encouraged the attack.While the House committee investigating the assault on the Capitol has so far been unsuccessful in its effort to force key members of Congress to cooperate with the inquiry, the North Carolina case has already prompted a legal discussion — one that is likely to land in court — about what constitutes an insurrection, and who is an insurrectionist.And for the first time, a lawmaker who embraced the rioters may have to answer for his actions in a court of law.“I don’t think we can have those persons who have engaged in acts of insurrection elected to office and serving in office in violation of their constitutional duties and oath,” said John R. Wallace, one of the lawyers on the case and a campaign finance and election law expert in Raleigh, N.C. He added, “It should not be difficult to prove you are not an insurrectionist. It only seems to be difficult for Madison Cawthorn.”Cases challenging the legitimacy of a candidate before election boards usually hinge on a candidate’s age, legal residency, place of birth or citizenship status, or the legitimacy of signatures in a candidacy petition.This case revolves around the little-known third section of the 14th Amendment, adopted during Reconstruction to punish members of the Confederacy who were streaming back to Washington to reclaim their elective offices — and infuriating unionist Republicans.That section declares that “no person shall” hold “any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath” to “support the Constitution,” had then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”Mr. Cawthorn, 26, who is in his first term in Congress, has denounced the case as an egregious misreading of the 14th Amendment, but he has retained James Bopp Jr., one of the most prominent conservative campaign lawyers in the country, as counsel.Mr. Bopp, in an interview, declared the matter “the most frivolous case I’ve ever seen,” but allowed that what he called an “unethical” exploitation of North Carolina law by “competent” lawyers could pose a real threat to Mr. Cawthorn — and by extension, to others labeled “insurrectionists” by liberal lawyers.“This is the real threat to our democracy,” he said. “Just by bringing the complaint, they might jeopardize a member of Congress running for re-election.”“They have multiple targets,” he added. “It just so happens that Madison Cawthorn is the tip of the spear.”That is because North Carolina’s election statute offers challengers a remarkably low bar to question a candidate’s constitutional qualifications for office. Once someone establishes a “reasonable suspicion or belief” that a candidate is not qualified, the burden shifts to the officeseeker to prove otherwise.If Mr. Cawthorn is labeled an “insurrectionist,” that could have broader ramifications. Other Republican House members, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Paul Gosar of Arizona, and Lauren Boebert of Colorado, face similar accusations, but their state’s election laws present higher hurdles for challenges to their candidate qualifications. If one of their colleagues is disqualified for his role in encouraging the rioters, those hurdles might become easier to clear.The lawyers challenging Mr. Cawthorn’s eligibility are using an amendment last invoked in 1920, when Representative Victor L. Berger, an Austrian-American socialist, was denied his seat representing Wisconsin after criticizing American involvement in World War I.If nothing else, the lawyers, including two former justices of the North Carolina Supreme Court, want to depose Mr. Cawthorn as part of discovery to question his actions before, during and after the attack on the Capitol.“There is, of course, much that we don’t know, and the statute allows discovery by deposition and the production of records,” Mr. Wallace said.There is much that is known. Whether it makes Mr. Cawthorn an “insurrectionist” would have to be determined by North Carolina’s Board of Elections, or more likely, by the state’s courts, where the board might punt the matter.Weeks after the 2020 election, Mr. Cawthorn told a conservative gathering to “call your congressman” to protest the results, adding, “you can lightly threaten them.” He promoted the “Save America” rally behind the White House on Jan. 6, writing on Twitter, “the future of this Republic hinges on the actions of a solitary few,” then adding “It’s time to fight.” At the rally, he riled the crowd from the stage with talk of election “fraud.”He later called those jailed for storming the Capitol “political hostages” and “political prisoners” that he would like to “bust” out of prison.A mob rushing the Capitol on Jan. 6 were met with tear gas.Kenny Holston for The New York Times“The Second Amendment was not written so that we can go hunting or shoot sporting clays. The Second Amendment was written so that we can fight against tyranny,” he would later say in Franklin, N.C. He added, “If our election systems continue to be rigged, and continue to be stolen, then it’s going to lead to one place, and it’s bloodshed.”Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 17The House investigation. More