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      Justice Dept. Seeking to Question Pence in Jan. 6 Investigation

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      Prosecutors want to speak with the former vice president as a witness to former President Donald Trump’s efforts to remain in power, and he is said to be considering how to respond.The Justice Department is seeking to question former Vice President Mike Pence as a witness in connection with its criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to stay in power after he lost the 2020 election, according to two people familiar with the matter.Mr. Pence, according to people familiar with his thinking, is open to considering the request, recognizing that the Justice Department’s criminal investigation is different from the inquiry by the House Jan. 6 committee, whose overtures he has flatly rejected.Complicating the situation is whether Mr. Trump would try to invoke executive privilege to stop him or limit his testimony, a step that he has taken with limited success so far with other former officials.Mr. Pence was present for some of the critical moments in which Mr. Trump and his allies schemed to keep him in office and block the congressional certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. An agreement for him to cooperate would be the latest remarkable twist in an investigation that is already fraught with legal and political consequences, involving a former president who is now a declared candidate to return to the White House — and whose potential rivals for the 2024 Republican nomination include Mr. Pence.Thomas Windom, one of the lead investigators examining the efforts to overturn the election, reached out to Mr. Pence’s team in the weeks before Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed a special counsel on Friday to oversee the Jan. 6 investigation and a separate inquiry into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents, according to one of the people familiar with the matter. Mr. Garland has said that the appointment of the special counsel, Jack Smith, will not slow the investigation.Officials at the Justice Department declined to comment. A spokesman for Mr. Pence also declined to comment.The discussions about questioning Mr. Pence are said to be in their early stages. Mr. Pence has not been subpoenaed, and the process could take months, because Mr. Trump can seek to block, or slow, his testimony by trying to invoke executive privilege.Mr. Trump has cited executive privilege to try to stop other former top officials from talking with investigators. While those efforts have generally been unsuccessful in stopping testimony by the officials to a federal grand jury, they have significantly slowed the process.Mr. Trump’s efforts to slow or block testimony included asserting executive privilege over testimony from two of Mr. Pence’s top aides: his former chief of staff, Marc Short, and his general counsel, Greg Jacob. But both men returned for grand jury interviews after the Justice Department, in a closed-door court proceeding, fought the effort to apply executive privilege.Mr. Pence, who rebuffed Mr. Trump’s efforts to enlist him in the plan to block certification of the Electoral College results, has been publicly critical of Mr. Trump’s conduct in the run-up to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol and on the day of the attack, when members of a pro-Trump mob were chanting “Hang Mike Pence.”Understand the Events on Jan. 6Timeline: On Jan. 6, 2021, 64 days after Election Day 2020, a mob of supporters of President Donald J. Trump raided the Capitol. Here is a close look at how the attack unfolded.A Day of Rage: Using thousands of videos and police radio communications, a Times investigation reconstructed in detail what happened — and why.Lost Lives: A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died in connection with the attack.Jan. 6 Attendees: To many of those who attended the Trump rally but never breached the Capitol, that date wasn’t a dark day for the nation. It was a new start.During an appearance in New Hampshire in August, Mr. Pence indicated he was open to appearing before the House Jan. 6 committee, which had been pushing to have him tell his story, but he offered a caveat.“If there was an invitation to participate, I’d consider it,” Mr. Pence said at the time. But he added that he was concerned that speaking to a congressional committee would violate the doctrine of separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches. “But as I said, I don’t want to prejudge. If ever any formal invitation” came, he said, “we’d give it due consideration.”However, in interviews for the release of his new book, “So Help Me God,” Mr. Pence has been more emphatic in his opposition to providing testimony to the House committee, asserting that “Congress has no right to my testimony” about what he witnessed.“There’s profound separation-of-powers issues,” Mr. Pence told The New York Times in an interview. “And it would be a terrible precedent.”But Mr. Pence, according to people familiar with his thinking, sees the Justice Department inquiry differently given that it is a criminal investigation. His testimony could be compelled by subpoena, though none has been issued.The former vice president is being represented by Emmet Flood, a veteran Washington-based lawyer who served as the lead Trump White House lawyer dealing with the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, into possible conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016.Mr. Flood is representing several other top White House officials who find themselves as witnesses in the range of congressional and Justice Department investigations into Mr. Trump, including Mr. Short.An increasing number of high-ranking officials in Mr. Trump’s administration have received grand jury subpoenas as part of the Justice Department’s inquiry into a wide array of efforts to overturn the election, including a plan to create fake slates of pro-Trump electors in key swing states that were won by Mr. Biden.The wide-ranging subpoenas sought information on a host of subjects that included the fake elector plan, attempts to paint the election as having been marred by fraud and the inner workings of Mr. Trump’s main postelection fund-raising vehicle, the Save America PAC.The effort to seek an interview with Mr. Pence puts both the department and the former vice president in uncharted territory.Mr. Pence is considering a campaign for president in 2024, in a race that Mr. Trump has already announced his candidacy for. And Mr. Biden’s Justice Department is seeking to use Mr. Pence as a potential witness against Mr. Trump; either could end up as rivals to Mr. Biden should he run again, which he has indicated is likely.Mr. Pence has written in detail in his book about Mr. Trump’s efforts to stay in power and the pressure campaign he imposed on his vice president beginning in December 2020.Among other interactions he describes, Mr. Pence details how Mr. Trump summoned him to the Oval Office on Jan. 4 to meet with a conservative lawyer named John Eastman, who repeatedly argued that Mr. Pence could exceed the ceremonial duties of overseeing the Electoral College certification by Congress. Mr. Eastman was promoting the notion that Mr. Pence had the power to set aside the results from states where Mr. Trump was still trying to challenge the outcome.Mr. Pence writes about telling Mr. Trump that he did not have such authority. In an interview with The Times in connection with the book, Mr. Pence was forceful, saying that he was blunt with Mr. Trump that he could not do what he wanted.“In the weeks before Jan. 6, I repeatedly told the president that I did not have the authority to reject or return electoral votes,” Mr. Pence said in the interview. “It was clear he was getting different legal advice from an outside group of lawyers that, frankly, should have never been let in the building.”In that period of time, Mr. Trump began to publicly pressure Mr. Pence, as well as officials in Georgia, to go along with his efforts to remain in office. At the same time, Mr. Trump began using his Twitter account to try to draw a crowd to Washington for a “protest” at the Ellipse near the White House on Jan. 6, the day of the congressional certification.The Times has previously reported that Mr. Pence’s chief of staff, Mr. Short, called Mr. Pence’s lead Secret Service agent, Tim Giebels, to his West Wing office on Jan. 5, 2021. When Mr. Giebels arrived at Mr. Short’s office, the chief of staff said that the president was going to turn on the vice president, and that they would have a security risk because of it, a conversation that Mr. Short described to the House select committee. The committee released a video snippet of Mr. Short discussing it at one of its public hearings this year.Mr. Trump addressed the crowd at the Ellipse at midday on Jan. 6 and again pressured Mr. Pence, whom he had called a few hours earlier in a further effort to persuade him to go along with the last-ditch plan to block the certification.In his address at the Ellipse, Mr. Trump said: “You’re never going to take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.”He went on: “So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do. And I hope he doesn’t listen to the RINOs and the stupid people that he’s listening to.”A short time later, Mr. Trump’s supporters marched to the Capitol, where Mr. Pence was. Hundreds of them stormed the building, smashing windows and barreling through doors, forcing Mr. Pence, his wife and his daughter to flee his office in the Capitol and take refuge on a loading dock underground. He stayed there, working to get the situation under control as Mr. Trump watched the coverage of the riot on television at the White House.Mr. Pence wrote about the experience in his book, and has since described his anger that Mr. Trump was “reckless” and “endangered” Mr. Pence and his family.Despite Mr. Pence being a witness to a range of Mr. Trump’s actions in office, an interview of the former vice president would be the first time that he has been questioned in a federal investigation of Mr. Trump.Mr. Pence was in the room for many of the key events examined by Mr. Mueller in the obstruction investigation, but Mr. Pence’s lawyer at the time managed to get him out of having to testify.The lawyer, Richard Cullen, met with Mr. Mueller and his team, telling them that Mr. Pence believed Mr. Trump had not obstructed justice and what he would say if questioned.Mr. Mueller’s team never followed up to question Mr. Pence, and he was never cited as a witness against Mr. Trump in Mr. Mueller’s final report.Glenn Thrush More

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      In New Book, Pence Reflects on Trump and Jan. 6

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      “You’re too honest,” President Donald J. Trump said as he pressured his vice president to intervene to block Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.Former President Donald J. Trump told Mike Pence that he was “too honest” when he balked at the idea he could unilaterally sway the outcome of the 2020 election as Mr. Trump mounted an intense pressure campaign to bend Mr. Pence to his will, the former vice president writes in his upcoming memoir.In “So Help Me God,” to be published Tuesday, Mr. Pence offers not only his first extensive comments about his experiences with Mr. Trump after the election and during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters, but also his first lengthy reflections on the 2016 campaign and the four years that followed.Mr. Pence describes in detail Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure him into blocking congressional certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory through the ceremonial role he would play on Jan. 6. Mr. Trump became preoccupied with the idea that Mr. Pence could do something, although Mr. Pence’s chief lawyer had concluded that there was no legal authority for him to act on Mr. Trump’s behalf.Mr. Pence describes escaping rioters at the Capitol on the day he presided over the certification of the 2020 election results.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesHe writes that questions about whether there had been election fraud were swirling around Mr. Trump’s advisers early on. “Jared Kushner called me that day for advice,” he writes about the Saturday after Election Day. “He asked if I thought that fraud had taken place in the election.” Mr. Pence writes that he replied that there was likely some fraud in the election but he doubted it was why they lost.Mr. Trump, Mr. Pence writes, tried various means of pressuring him, including mentioning that Mr. Pence was trending on Twitter in connection with speculation about what he would do. “If you want to be popular,” Mr. Trump said, suggesting that he should not take part in the certification at all, “don’t do it.”By the first days of 2021, when Representative Louis Gohmert, Republican of Texas, sued to try to force Mr. Pence to declare the winner of the election, Mr. Trump was upset that his vice president opposed the suit.“You’re too honest,” Mr. Trump said, according to Mr. Pence, who recounts Mr. Trump telling him that “hundreds of thousands are gonna hate your guts” and “people are gonna think you’re stupid.”Mr. Pence describes in the book how Mr. Trump worked with the conservative lawyer John Eastman to press him into doing something that the vice president was clear that he could not and would not do. He writes that on the morning of Jan. 6, Mr. Trump twisted the knife again in a phone call.“You’ll go down as a wimp,” the president told the vice president. “If you do that, I made a big mistake five years ago!”Donald Trump announcing Mike Pence as his running mate in July 2016. “Seeing those people tearing up the Capitol infuriated me,” Mr. Pence says he told the president after the Jan. 6 riot.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe vice president also shares dramatic details about escaping the rioters who had entered the Capitol while he was presiding over the certification that day. He confirms that he refused to leave the building when his lead Secret Service agent, Tim Giebels, pushed for him to do so as protesters swarmed the building, some chanting “Hang Mike Pence.”“I told my detail that I wasn’t leaving my post,” Mr. Pence writes. “Mr. Giebels pleaded for us to leave. The rioters had reached our floor. I pointed my finger at his chest and said: ‘You’re not hearing me, Tim. I’m not leaving! I’m not giving those people the sight of a 16-car motorcade speeding away from the Capitol.’”When they went to an underground loading dock, Mr. Giebels tried getting Mr. Pence into a car just as a place to wait, but he declined.Mr. Pence also confirms that Mr. Trump never reached out to him to check on his safety. But when Mr. Kushner and Ivanka Trump asked Mr. Pence to meet with Mr. Trump five days after the riot, he agreed.“He looked tired, and his voice seemed more faint than usual,” Mr. Pence writes of Mr. Trump at that point.“‘How are you?’ he began. ‘How are Karen and Charlotte?’”Mr. Pence writes that he “replied tersely that we were fine” and told him that his wife and daughter had been at the Capitol on Jan. 6. “He responded with a hint of regret,” Mr. Pence recounts. “‘I just learned that.’ He then asked, ‘Were you scared?’”Mr. Pence replied that he was angry: “You and I had our differences that day, Mr. President, and seeing those people tearing up the Capitol infuriated me.”Mr. Trump began to protest that “people were angry, but his voice trailed off,” Mr. Pence writes, adding that he told Mr. Trump that he needed to let it go. “Yeah,” Mr. Trump replied quietly.As they talked, Mr. Pence writes, Mr. Trump said “with genuine sadness in his voice”: “What if we hadn’t had the rally? What if they hadn’t gone to the Capitol?” He added, “It’s too terrible to end like this.”Mr. Pence offers up views about key moments in the administration, such as relocating the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, as well as the controversy over Mr. Trump’s remarks regarding the march of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va.He defended Mr. Trump, insisting that he thought the criticisms had been unfair. “Donald Trump is not antisemitic,” Mr. Pence insists. “He’s not a racist or a bigot. I would not have been his vice president if he was.”He also writes admiringly about Mr. Kushner and John Kelly, the second White House chief of staff, who he said brought a sense of order to the West Wing. However, he had much harsher words for Mark Meadows, the final chief of staff to Mr. Trump, who has been a focus of some of the investigations into what led to the Capitol riot.“In the waning days of the administration, one of his successors, Mark Meadows, a congressman from North Carolina, would fling the doors to the Oval Office wide open, allowing people in who should not even have set foot on the White House grounds, let alone have access to Trump,” Mr. Pence writes. More

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      Mike Pence Visits Georgia as Gov. Brian Kemp Plays Up Early Turnout

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      CUMMING, Ga. — Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, flanked by former Vice President Mike Pence and several fellow state Republican candidates, stressed the importance of voter turnout Tuesday in a campaign swing through Atlanta’s northern suburbs.With a week to go until Election Day, Mr. Pence ticked through a list of Mr. Kemp’s conservative policy achievements on crime and abortion, and underscored the role that Georgia — where Democrats have made significant inroads over the last four years — will play in national politics.“We need Georgia to lead the way to a great American comeback by re-electing Gov. Brian Kemp,” Mr. Pence told a crowd of supporters at a rally near the town square in Cumming, about 30 miles northeast of Atlanta.Their joint appearance came during the final four days of early voting in Georgia. Mr. Kemp is leading his Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, in most polls but implored his supporters to ignore those numbers and turn out. He noted that the party had trailed Democrats in the size and scale of its field operations in recent elections — and that his campaign had helped finance a renewed effort for the 2022 midterms.He pointed to Georgia’s record early vote turnout numbers as proof of the success of that operation — and to rebut complaints from Democratic leaders and voting rights advocates who say the state’s new voting law is suppressive because of its tighter restrictions on ballot drop boxes, voting schedules and absentee ballots, among other provisions.Ms. Abrams has said repeatedly that high turnout numbers do not negate potential voter suppression, an idea that Mr. Kemp called “fuzzy Washington, D.C., math.”“We’re seeing record turnout,” he said. “I would encourage people to go vote and vote for somebody that has been truthful with you.”Mr. Pence, who also campaigned alongside Mr. Kemp last spring as the incumbent fended off a primary challenge from a candidate backed by former President Donald J. Trump, is one of several high-profile Republicans steering clear of Mr. Trump who will visit Georgia on Mr. Kemp’s behalf in the coming days. Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona will campaign alongside Mr. Kemp on Wednesday and Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, will join the bus tour on Thursday and Friday. More

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      Mike Pence Runs Toward Abortion Fight

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      TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Former Vice President Mike Pence shared his vision for a post-Roe America on Thursday evening, supporting efforts to further limit abortion rights, even as many in the Republican Party are running away from the issue in the final stretch of the midterm elections.“Our work must also go far beyond simply working to make abortion illegal,” Mr. Pence said to a banquet hall of about 1,200 people. “We must continue to work to make it unthinkable, changing hearts and minds.”Mr. Pence, who has made abortion a centerpiece of his political platform since his days as a congressman from Indiana, was speaking at a fund-raiser for a crisis pregnancy center. Such centers, supported by anti-abortion activists, do not refer clients for abortion but rather encourage adoption or parenting.Mr. Pence’s call to make abortion “unthinkable” is language often used by people who ultimately want the procedure to be banned from conception, with few exceptions. He has said that abortion ought to be outlawed in every state. Mr. Pence, who appears to be weighing a possible run for president in 2024, is leaning into the rightward edge of anti-abortion activism, hoping to become the standard-bearer for a movement now facing new obstacles from within its own ranks.His elevation of the anti-abortion cause comes as other leaders in the party view the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade as politically toxic to Republicans. Privately they’ve highlighted the unpopularity of the decision to overturn federal abortion rights among crucial independent voters. Others have urged their candidates to focus on other issues, like inflation and crime, and to avoid detailed questions about their opposition to abortion rights.But Mr. Pence’s remarks reflect the views of the powerful, socially conservative wing of the party, which sees the June decision as politically expedient and just the beginning of its ambitions to change abortion law nationwide.It was the latest in a series of similar addresses he has given for conservative groups across the country that oppose abortion, including appearances at fund-raisers for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and Concerned Women for America in Washington.In his comments, Mr. Pence used other language of the movement, suggesting that fetuses should have rights as people — a legal fight that many consider the next frontier in the clash over reproductive rights.“Under Roe, unborn children were segregated into a caste of second-class citizens, devoid of the most basic human rights,” Mr. Pence said. “Those days are over.”Mr. Pence called on every state to “ensure that the resources, benefits, programs and protections that are available to children and their families are also extended to the unborn.” He urged a ban that would prohibit abortions based on the race, gender or disability of the fetus, and called for the end of abortion pills and “mail-order abortion.”He also called for paring back “the tangle” of adoption regulations, and for employers who pay for employee travel for abortion to promote adoption instead. His proposals received much applause, and shouts of “Amen.”“Remember who you are fighting for,” he said. “I believe with all my heart that the day will come that the right to life is the law of the land in every state.” More

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      Mike Pence and His Group Keep a 2024 Dream Alive

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      As he travels the country publicly backing Republican candidates and conservative causes ahead of the midterm elections, former Vice President Mike Pence has also been quietly huddling with donors and building a political operation that could serve as a springboard to a 2024 presidential campaign.Mr. Pence held a retreat with donors and allies at a Utah ski resort over the course of three days late last month that was organized by a nonprofit group he has used to highlight causes animating social conservatives. Those priorities include restricting abortion access, expanding the role of religion in public life, barring transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports and fighting corporate social and environmental initiatives.At the retreat, Mr. Pence and his wife, Karen Pence, mingled with major donors of the sort whose support would be critical to a presidential bid.One donor, Art Pope, a North Carolina businessman, said, “I personally would like to see him run for president,” but he added that there had been no formal discussions about it.Instead, donors were treated to panels featuring high-profile conservative figures discussing some of those hot-button Republican causes, according to an attendee, as well as an appearance by the Fox News host Sean Hannity and the debut of a slick campaign-style video paid for by Mr. Pence’s group, Advancing American Freedom.Tensions have been growing between Mr. Pence and his former boss, Donald J. Trump. They have endorsed opposing candidates in several Republican primary races this year, and Mr. Trump has repeatedly criticized Mr. Pence for refusing to delay the certification of the 2020 election results hours after the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.And as Mr. Trump teases his intent to run for president again in 2024 despite facing mounting investigations of his business, his handling of classified material and his role in the Capitol attack, he has signaled that he would choose a different running mate, saying that Mr. Pence committed “political suicide” on Jan. 6.In a New York Times/Siena College poll of Republican voters in July, only 6 percent said they would vote for Mr. Pence if he ran for the 2024 G.O.P. presidential nomination, compared with 49 percent who said they would back Mr. Trump and 25 percent who supported Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.Another prospective candidate, Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, held his own donor retreat last month.Mr. Pence has walked a tricky line as he tries to set himself apart from what many in the G.O.P. see as Mr. Trump’s worst impulses..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-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs 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.The former vice president has said that Mr. Trump is “wrong” that Mr. Pence had the legal authority to override the results of the election, and has urged Republicans to accept the outcome and look toward the future.At the same time, two of Mr. Pence’s top aides testified to a federal grand jury in Washington as part of the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into the events surrounding the riot.The campaign-style video released by Advancing American Freedom at the retreat includes footage of Mr. Pence and Mr. Trump together during their time in office, and refers to the “Trump-Pence administration.” But it also features Mr. Pence declaring in a speech that “conservatives need to be focused on the challenges Americans are facing today and offer a bold and positive agenda.”According to the attendee, the retreat included panels on so-called cancel culture, with the right-wing commentator Candace Owens; on the future of the anti-abortion movement after the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade; and on energy policy, with David Bernhardt, a former interior secretary in the Trump administration who oversaw the rollback of environmental policies opposed by the oil and gas industry.Another panel featured the conservative investor Vivek Ramaswamy discussing efforts to push back against corporations that promote their commitment to environmental, social and governance causes, known as E.S.G., that generally align with a Democratic agenda. That opposition, which Mr. Pence has written about, has gained traction as an issue on the right.Advancing American Freedom, which was created in April 2021, is registered under a section of the tax code that does not require the group to reveal its donors or much information about its finances. It has yet to file an annual report with the I.R.S. that will show top-line financial figures.Advancing American Freedom said it had raised more than $10 million to date, and it announced at the retreat that it was planning a $35 million budget for 2023 for the group and a sister organization.Its money can be used to pay for a political operation for Mr. Pence in advance of a potential presidential bid, but its primary purpose cannot be supporting electoral campaigns by him or anyone else.The group has hired aides, waded into court fights over abortion rules and spent millions of dollars on ads attacking Democratic candidates.Mr. Pence also maintains a political action committee that has raised more than $920,000 this cycle and has helped fund his political efforts. More

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      A Chess Champion’s Warning About Ukraine and U.S. Democracy

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      Seeing the Russian invasion as part of a war on democracy that poses a serious threat to the United States, Garry Kasparov is leading a push to keep Western countries engaged in the fight.It’s been 17 years since Garry Kasparov, a child of the Soviet Union who became a grandmaster at age 22, stepped down from the world of competitive chess.Bruce Pandolfini, who wrote a book on Kasparov’s showdown with Deep Blue, the IBM chess computer, described his play this way: “Even when he can’t calculate the end result conclusively, he can make sophisticated generalizations.”Kasparov, now an activist and author, sees a world rife with dangers to democracy — and he is determined to do something about it.And though he professes to dislike comparisons between his brand of chess and his brand of geopolitical analysis, Kasparov takes pride in seeing what he calls the “big picture” of rising authoritarianism and democratic malaise. In a prescient 2015 book that, as he reminded me, The New York Times dinged in a review at the time as “somewhat tedious,” he urged Americans to take Vladimir Putin’s threats seriously.“My strength in chess was the big picture,” Kasparov said in an interview on Tuesday. “I could look at the position and see how things connected to one side or the other.”Kasparov’s latest gambit is promoting what he views as two essential, connected ideas: that Putin’s war in Ukraine is a war for democracy itself, and that Western democracies are in peril unless their citizens fight for democratic values at home.“I grew up in the Soviet Union, so I experienced undemocratic rule,” Kasparov said. “And while I never thought America was even close to this kind of desperation, when you look at history, the real threat in democracy comes when you have polarization.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Trouble for Nevada Democrats: The state has long been vital to the party’s hold on the West. Now, Democrats are facing potential losses up and down the ballot.Democrats’ House Chances: Democrats are not favored to win the House, but the notion of retaining the chamber is not as far-fetched as it once was, ​​writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Latino Voters: A recent Times/Siena poll found Democrats faring far worse than they have in the past with Hispanic voters. “The Daily” looks at what the poll reveals about this key voting bloc.Michigan Governor’s Race: Tudor Dixon, the G.O.P. nominee who has ground to make up in her contest against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, is pursuing a hazardous strategy in the narrowly divided swing state: embracing former President Donald J. Trump.With Russia’s war effort flagging in Ukraine, Kasparov senses “panic” among authoritarian leaders from North Korea to Venezuela, because, he said, they view Putin as a man with “almost mystical powers.”Here in the United States, Kasparov said, “It also could be a great moment for us to revise our commitment to democracy,” adding, “Because, let’s be honest, there was complacency.”His organization, the Renew Democracy Initiative, has already distributed about $4 million in humanitarian aid in Ukraine, and is in the early stages of a multimillion-dollar communications campaign to buck up support for the war in the United States and Europe. Western leaders should push to end the conflict as soon as possible, Kasparov argues, by giving Ukraine the heavy weapons its leaders say they need.“We’re fighting the devil right now,” said Hennadii Nadolenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian minister of foreign affairs who has worked with Kasparov’s group to brief Americans on the war. “Without U.S. help, we couldn’t survive.”Last year, Renew Democracy teamed up with CNN on “Voices of Freedom,” an editorial series that involved dissidents from around the world telling their stories. The group also organized an open letter, signed by 52 dissidents from 28 countries, warning that “to win the global fight against authoritarianism, America must once again believe in and live up to its own values.”A green-card holder with a Croatian passport, Kasparov said that he and other dissidents had an “objective” vantage point on U.S. democracy that gave them the credibility to speak difficult truths.When we talked, Kasparov was feuding online with Elon Musk, the Tesla founder. On Monday, Musk floated a 280-character proposal to end the war in Ukraine that, to Kasparov, seemed too friendly to the Kremlin. He called Musk’s proposal “moral idiocy.”The exchange was typical of two Kasparov traits: A combative polemical style and a conviction in the righteousness of his own beliefs. His frank criticism of six U.S. presidents, Barack Obama and Donald Trump included, has at times alienated one side or another. But that, he said, had only reinforced his concerns about political polarization.Kasparov’s response to Americans of all stripes is that although their democracy may be teetering, it’s still a beacon of hope to millions around the world. And as the war in Ukraine shows, maintaining it requires constant vigilance.“You have to be an active member of society,” he said. “You have to be engaged. That is the message.”What to readRepublicans rallied behind Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee for Senate in Georgia, after allegations that he had paid for an abortion, Shane Goldmacher, Maya King and Lisa Lerer report.House Majority PAC, a group allied with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said it had raised $134 million so far this year. But Democrats may still struggle to hold the lower chamber.Adam Liptak reports that the Supreme Court appeared to be leaning toward Alabama during oral arguments in a case with implications for Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.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