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      Shapiro: ‘Dangerous’ Republican rival Mastriano could override will of voters

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      Shapiro: ‘Dangerous’ Republican rival Mastriano could override will of votersDemocratic nominee for Pennsylvania governor says if Mastriano wins he could wield power to choose his own slate of electors and overturn presidential election results Josh Shapiro, who was nominated this week as the Democrats’ candidate for governor in the electorally critical state of Pennsylvania, has accused his Republican rival of intending to override the democratic will of voters and pick his own winners in future elections.Shapiro launched his attack on Doug Mastriano in an interview on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. He called Mastriano, a far-right state senator, “dangerous and divisive” and warned that were he to become Pennsylvania’s governor he could wield power to choose his own slate of presidential electors as a means of overturning the results of the 2024 presidential election.“Senator Mastriano has made it clear that he will appoint electors based on his belief system,” Shapiro said. “He is essentially saying, ‘Sure you can go vote, but I will pick the winner’. That’ is incredibly dangerous.”Republicans just nominated one of the most radical governor candidates in history | Judd LegumRead moreFears about the anti-democratic leanings of Mastriano have rippled across Pennsylvania and through the country since he won the Republican primary last week. Were he to go on to defeat Shapiro, the state’s current attorney general, in November he would have considerable powers at his disposal to support what would in effect be an insurrection.As governor, he would theoretically be able to refuse to certify the results of an election even though it had been conducted freely and fairly. He would also have the power to appoint Pennsylvania’s secretary of state – the position that controls all elections in the state.Donald Trump endorsed Mastriano for the governor nomination shortly before the primary. The move was seen as rewarding the candidate’s loyalty in backing the former president’s attempt to cling to power illegitimately in 2020 – as well as paving the ground for a possible similar attempt at insurrection in 2024.Mastriano was one of the most avid proponents of Trump’s “big lie” that electoral fraudsters stole the 2020 race against Joe Biden from him. He was present at the US Capitol on 6 January when Trump supporters and white supremacist extremists made their violent attempt to throw out the election results and keep Trump in office.“Senator Mastriano wants to take us to a divisive and dark place,” Shapiro told CNN. “He has openly talked about, if he were governor, with a stroke of a pen doing away with voting machines which had votes that he didn’t agree with.”Republican ‘big lie’ supporters triumph in sign of Trump’s enduring powerRead morePennsylvania has been a vital swing state in recent presidential elections. Trump won the commonwealth by 44,000 votes in 2016, but he lost it to Biden four years later by 82,000 votes.Mastriano is seen as being so extreme by Democratic strategists that the Shapiro campaign went to the lengths of running adverts during the primary that appeared to boost the Republican state senator – presumably on the principle that his far-right tendencies would make him easy to beat in November. The ad called Mastriano “one of Donald Trump’s strongest supporters” and said if he won the Republican nomination “it’s a win for what Donald Trump stands for”.Shapiro was asked by CNN whether the move was an irresponsible attempt to help a candidate “because you think you can beat him”. The Democratic nominee denied the claim, saying he ran the ad as a way of getting an early start on the general election campaign.TopicsPennsylvaniaDemocratsRepublicansUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022US elections 2024newsReuse this content More

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      Josh Shapiro Defends Primary Ad Tying Doug Mastriano to Trump

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      Mr. Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, said he was eager to start the general election campaign.Josh Shapiro, the newly nominated Democratic candidate for governor in Pennsylvania, defended on Sunday a television ad he ran that appeared to elevate the standing of the Republican rival he will face in November — a man Mr. Shapiro has called the country’s most extreme candidate for governor.The ad is part of a long-held strategy among campaign tacticians: elevate your most extreme rival, and peel away disaffected moderates from that rival’s party come November. Last week, Axios noted that the rise of far-right, Trump-aligned candidates could test this theory and that Democrats are “trying to engineer the rise of ultra-MAGA candidates they feel will be easier to defeat in a general election.”But in today’s highly polarized environment, in which party affiliation is deeply interwoven with people’s sense of identity, that strategy could backfire, as many Democrats were stunned to learn in 2016.During the Republican primary in Pennsylvania, Mr. Shapiro, the state’s attorney general, ran an ad that called State Senator Doug Mastriano “one of Donald Trump’s strongest supporters.” The ad went on to say that Mr. Mastriano “wants to end vote by mail. He led the fight to audit the 2020 election. If Mastriano wins, it’s a win for what Donald Trump stands for.”Mr. Mastriano was a central figure in Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and, if he wins in November, he could be in a position to overturn the results of the state’s election in 2024.On Sunday, the CNN host Dana Bash asked Mr. Shapiro if it was “irresponsible” to boost a candidate like Mr. Mastriano “because you think you can beat him.”It was not, Mr. Shapiro said. For weeks, Mr. Mastriano led the crowded Republican field, according to public and private polling, and Mr. Shapiro, who was uncontested for the Democratic nomination, said he was eager to have voters understand the choice they would soon face.“What we did was start the general election campaign and demonstrate the clear contrast, the stark differences between he and I,” Mr. Shapiro said. More

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      Ginni Thomas Urged Arizona Lawmakers to Overturn Election

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      The wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote to legislators in a crucial swing state after the Trump campaign’s loss in 2020.In the weeks after the 2020 presidential election, Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, twice lobbied the speaker of the Arizona House and another lawmaker to effectively reverse Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s popular-vote victory and deliver the crucial swing state to Donald J. Trump.Ms. Thomas, known as Ginni, a right-wing political activist who became a close ally of Mr. Trump during his presidency, made the entreaties in emails to Russell Bowers, the Republican speaker, and Shawnna Bolick, a Republican state representative. Ms. Bolick’s husband, Clint, once worked with Justice Thomas and now sits on the Arizona Supreme Court.The emails came as Mr. Trump and his allies were engaged in a legal effort to overturn his defeats in several battleground states. While the Arizona emails did not mention either presidential candidate by name, they echoed the former president’s false claims of voter fraud and his legal team’s dubious contention that the power to choose electors therefore rested not with the voters but with state legislatures.“Do your constitutional duty,” Ms. Thomas wrote the lawmakers on Nov. 9. On Dec. 13, with Mr. Trump still refusing to concede on the eve of the Electoral College vote, she contacted the lawmakers again.“The nation’s eyes are on you now,” she warned, adding, “Please consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you do not stand up and lead.”After she sent her first round of emails, but before the second round, Mr. Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, more directly pressured Mr. Bowers. They called him and urged him to have the state legislature step in and choose Arizona’s electors.Mr. Bowers could not be reached for comment on Friday. In a statement to The Arizona Republic, a spokesman said that Mr. Bowers never saw Ms. Thomas’s email. He ended up rebuffing all the requests to intervene, even in the face of protests outside his house.Ms. Bolick, who did not return requests for comment and is now running to become Arizona’s next secretary of state on a platform to “restore election integrity,” proved more of an ally. She thanked Ms. Thomas for reaching out, writing that she hoped “you and Clarence are doing great!” Among other things, she would go on to urge Congress to throw out Arizona’s presidential election results and award the state’s Electoral College votes to Mr. Trump.The emails, reported earlier by The Washington Post and obtained by The New York Times, were part of a letter-writing campaign hosted on FreeRoots, a political advocacy platform. On Friday, Mark Paoletta, a lawyer and close friend of the Thomases, said on Twitter that Ms. Thomas “did not write the letter and had no input in the content,” but rather merely “signed her name to a pre-written form letter that was signed by thousands of citizens.”“How disturbing, what a threat!” he wrote, dismissing the revelations as a “lame story.” He added: “A private citizen joining a letter writing campaign, hosted by a platform that served both conservative and liberal causes. Welcome to America.”In fact, the emails are a reflection of the far broader and more integral role that Justice Thomas’s wife played in efforts to delegitimize the election and install Mr. Trump for a second term — efforts that culminated on Jan. 6, 2021, with a protest called the “March to Save America” that turned into a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol.As a string of revelations by The Times and other outlets in recent months has demonstrated, Ms. Thomas actively supported and participated at the highest levels in schemes to overturn the election. Those efforts have, in turn, cast a spotlight on her husband, who from his lifetime perch on the Supreme Court has issued opinions favoring Mr. Trump’s efforts to both reverse his loss and stymie a congressional investigation into the events of Jan. 6.This February, The New York Times Magazine reported on Ms. Thomas’s role on the board of C.N.P. Action, a conservative group that had instructed members to adopt letter-writing tactics — of the kind she personally used in Arizona — to pressure Republican lawmakers in swing states to circumvent voters by appointing alternate electors.C.N.P. Action had also circulated a newsletter in December 2020 that included a report targeting five swing states, including Arizona, where Mr. Trump and his allies were pressing litigation. It warned that time was running out for the courts to “declare the elections null and void.” The report was co-written by one of Mr. Trump’s leading election lawyers, Cleta Mitchell, a friend of Ms. Thomas.And in the lead-up to the rally on Jan. 6, Ms. Thomas played a mediating role, uniting feuding factions of planners so that there “wouldn’t be any division,” one of the organizers, Dustin Stockton, later told The Times.Ms. Thomas declined to speak to The Times for that article, but a few weeks later, in an interview with a friendly conservative outlet, she denied playing any role in the organization of the rally, even as she acknowledged attending it. (She said she left before Mr. Trump addressed the crowd.)But she has adamantly opposed a fuller inquiry into the insurrection. Last December, she co-signed a letter calling for House Republicans to expel Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger from their conference for joining the committee investigating the Capitol riot, saying it brought “disrespect to our country’s rule of law” and “legal harassment to private citizens who have done nothing wrong.”And in late March, The Post and CBS reported that she had sent a series of text messages to Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, imploring him to take steps to reverse the election. Ms. Thomas urged him to “release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down,” invoking a slogan popular on the right that refers to a set of conspiratorial claims that Trump supporters believed would overturn the vote. In the text messages, she also indicated that she had been in contact with the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, about a post-election legal strategy.Democrats expressed outrage. In a letter after the text messages were reported, two dozen Democrats, including Senators Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker, wrote: “Given the recent disclosures about Ms. Thomas’s efforts to overturn the election and her specific communications with White House officials about doing so, Justice Thomas’s participation in cases involving the 2020 election and the January 6th attack is exceedingly difficult to reconcile with federal ethics requirements.”Still, it remains an open question whether the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack will seek an interview with Ms. Thomas. In March, people familiar with the committee’s work signaled a desire to ask Ms. Thomas to voluntarily sit for an interview. But the committee has yet to do so, and its chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, told reporters that Ms. Thomas had not come up recently in the panel’s discussions.Justice Thomas has remained defiant amid questions about his own impartiality, resisting calls that he recuse himself from matters that overlap with his wife’s activism. Earlier this year, when the Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 to allow the release of records from the Trump White House related to Jan. 6, Justice Thomas was the sole dissenter. In February last year, he sharply dissented when the court declined to hear a case brought by Pennsylvania Republicans seeking to disqualify certain mail-in ballots.The latest revelations about his wife follow a speech last week in which he lambasted protests in front of the houses of justices after a draft opinion was leaked that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion case. “I wonder how long we’re going to have these institutions at the rate we’re undermining them,” he told a conference of fellow conservatives. “And then I wonder when they’re gone or destabilized, what we’re going to have as a country.”And he flashed at his own partisanship in claiming that the left’s protests lacked the decorum of the right — while failing to mention last year’s attack on the Capitol, or protests like those in front of Mr. Bowers’s house.“You would never visit Supreme Court justices’ houses when things didn’t go our way,” he said. “We didn’t throw temper tantrums. It is incumbent on us to always act appropriately and not to repay tit for tat.”Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife have frequently appeared at political events despite longstanding customs of the Supreme Court.Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesThe Thomases have long defied norms of the high court, where justices often avoid political events and entanglements and their spouses often keep low profiles. No spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice has ever been as overt a political activist as Ms. Thomas. C.N.P. Action, where she sits on the board, is a branch of the Council for National Policy, a secretive conservative organization that includes leaders from the National Rifle Association and the Family Research Council, a Christian advocacy group. Ms. Thomas also founded an organization called Groundswell that holds a weekly meeting of influential conservatives, many of whom work directly on issues that have come before the Supreme Court.Justice Thomas, for his part, has frequently appeared at political events hosted by advocates hoping to sway the court. He and his wife sometimes appear together at such events, and often portray themselves as standing in the breach amid a crumbling society.“It’s very exciting,” Ms. Thomas said during a 2018 Council for National Policy meeting, “the fact that there’s a resistance on our side to their side.”Luke Broadwater More

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      Summer Lee, a Progressive Democrat, Wins House Primary in Pennsylvania

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      PITTSBURGH — State Representative Summer Lee, a progressive Democrat who could become the first Black woman to represent Pennsylvania in Congress, won an expensive and fiercely fought primary battle on Friday after three days of vote-counting, defeating a more centrist contender who was the favorite of the party establishment.After a string of primary losses for the national left-wing movement in 2021 and a mixed record in the first months of 2022, Ms. Lee’s narrow victory, called by The Associated Press, amounts to a significant win for that slice of the party, amid a vigorous battle over the direction of the Democratic Party that will be playing out in races around the country over the coming weeks. Ms. Lee, 34, who overcame heavy outside spending against her, had the endorsements of leading progressive figures including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and local figures including Mayor Ed Gainey of Pittsburgh and some labor groups. Mr. Sanders held a rally with Ms. Lee last week. Ms. Lee defeated her chief rival, Steve Irwin, a lawyer and former head of the Pennsylvania Securities Commission who had amassed substantial support from the party establishment. Mr. Irwin gained the endorsement of Representative Mike Doyle, whose retirement opened the seat.In a statement before the race was called, Mr. Irwin called Ms. Lee a “passionate, dynamic voice and strong leader for our region.”Even before the race was called, left-leaning leaders and organizations in the party were declaring victory while more moderate party strategists seemed demoralized by the result, even as more centrist candidates won other races this week.“Against an obscene amount of dark money, Summer Lee pulled off a stunning victory,” read a fund-raising appeal from Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s team. Her “victory demonstrates the strength of the growing, organized progressive and democratic socialist movement,” the message said.Among the outside groups that intervened in the race was a super PAC aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which paid for a barrage of advertising attacking Ms. Lee.She also defeated candidates including Jerry Dickinson, an associate professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh.Ms. Lee, who won a 2018 State House primary with the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America, is a supporter of sweeping policies including Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, and she has spoken forcefully about the need to defend abortion rights and combat racial injustice.The 12th District in the Pittsburgh area is considered safely Democratic in the general election. More

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      Trump loyalist’s primary win prompts election fears in Pennsylvania

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      Trump loyalist’s primary win prompts election fears in PennsylvaniaDoug Mastriano promoted Trump’s voter fraud myth – if he becomes governor, could he block a result he doesn’t like? As Donald Trump tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, there were few officials more willing to help than Doug Mastriano, then a little-known Pennsylvania state senator.Mastriano, a retired army colonel first elected in 2019, regularly communicated with Trump in the weeks after the election. He helped arrange a pseudo-hearing weeks after election day in which the Trump campaign presented baseless claims of fraud. Mastriano helped facilitate a plan to appoint a fake set of electors in Pennsylvania for Trump after Joe Biden won the state by more than 80,000 votes. He embraced and promoted a fringe, anti-democratic legal theory that state legislatures can override the results of an election and appoint its own electors. He was also at the US capitol on January 6, and helped bus supporters there. He pushed an unofficial review of election equipment that prompted the state to decertify election machines in a county. He has been subpoenaed by the January 6 committee. He supported efforts to decertify the election, which is legally impossible.The Republican primaries are a tug-of-war between rightwing and even-righter-wing | Lloyd GreenRead moreThis week, Republican voters in Pennsylvania nominated Mastriano to be their governor.If elected this fall, there seems to be little doubt Mastriano would be willing to use his power to reject the results of a free and fair election in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state in US presidential elections. As governor, he would be responsible for certifying the election, and could refuse to sign off on an outcome he disagrees with. He would also be responsible for appointing a secretary of state, charged with overseeing elections in the state and signing off on the results. (Pennsylvania is one of three states where the secretary of state is appointed, not elected).“We really need voters to be paying attention to how dangerous it is to have someone in a position like the governor who does not believe in the elections or in our system, who has cast so much doubt on the 2020 elections and would be in a great position of power,” said Lizzie Ulmer, senior vice-president for communications at States United Action, which is tracking election deniers running for office across the US. “It’s really important to not fall into that trap of thinking ‘OK, these are really extreme candidates’. Because they’re not fringe candidates, they’re raising money. They’re campaigning on these issues.”David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said: “If a governor would not certify an election in which his candidate lost, which had been upheld by the courts and election officials throughout the state, that’s incredibly dangerous – period. That’s incredibly dangerous in a state where that governor gets to appoint the chief election official, who might share similar inclinations.”While Becker has said courts would ultimately thwart any effort to block the certification of a lawful election, Becker said he was worried about the confusion that would arise from a governor refusing to accept election results.“I am very concerned about what happens in the meantime. And what messages are used to inflame the base of the losing party to act in a way that is anti-democratic and perhaps violent,” he said. Mastriano is one of a number of candidates who refuse to accept the results of the 2020 election and are seeking elected offices in which they would play a key role in overseeing the 2024 election. Candidates in Michigan, Nevada, and Minnesota have already earned their party’s nomination and there is a closely-watched primary for the top election office in Georgia on Tuesday.“What we’ve seen is that there are a number of elected officials within the Republican caucus that are still advocating or supporting this notion that the 2020 presidential elections were stolen,” said Khalif Ali, the executive director of the Pennsylvania chapter of Common Cause. “We’re not just talking about a gubernatorial race, we’re talking about the very essence of democracy in this state and in this country.”Mastriano has embraced the possibility of getting to overturn an election, saying he already has a secretary of state picked out (he has declined to say who). “I get to appoint the secretary of state, who is delegated from me the power to make the corrections to elections, the voting logs and everything. I could decertify every machine in the state with the stroke of a pen,” he said in a March radio interview.“He’s saying that part out loud,” said Ulmer. “It goes to show just how prevalent and mainstream the far right and the big lie supporters have made this issue. It’s so wild to think about. They really are campaigning, raising money, and generating a lot of interest and support from carrying this thing forward.”Mastriano has also said he might “reset” voter registration in Pennsylvania and “start all over,” something that would likely violate federal law. He has pledged to eliminate the state’s contract with “compromised voting machine companies,” even though there’s no evidence any machines were compromised in 2020. He wants to end no-excuse mail-in voting, which passed the state legislature with Republican support.Mastriano, who grew up in New Jersey, joined the military in 1986, and was deployed to the West-German Czechoslovakia border before being sent to Iraq, according to a New Yorker profile of him last year. A few years ago, he began attending events hosted by the New Apostolic Reformation, a group whose goal it is “to return the United States to an idealized Christian past”, according to the New Yorker. He is often described as a christian nationalist, embracing the belief that America should be a Christian nation.Beyond elections, Mastriano has embraced other extreme policies. He has signaled his support for a complete ban on abortion, with no exceptions for rape or incest. He railed against Covid-19 restrictions, at one point falsely questioning whether mRNA vaccines were actually vaccines. He has supported legislation that would require teaching the Bible in public schools, according to The New Yorker, and allow adoption agencies to discriminate against same-sex couples. If elected, Mastriano has pledged to be more conservative than some of the most conservative governors in the country.“You guys think Ron DeSantis is good? Amateur,” Mastriano cracked, adding: “We love you, Ron, but this is Pennsylvania. This is where the light of liberty was set in 1776, where this nation was born,” he said earlier this month, according to NBC News.He has promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory, and spoke at a conference in April organized by far-right activists who have promoted the movement.Ulmer, from States United and Ali, from Common Cause, both said it would be a mistake to dismiss Mastriano as too extreme to win a statewide election.“I take every candidate who has won their party’s nomination seriously,” Ali said. “He’s made a number of inflammatory statements, and I think we should absolutely believe him and take him seriously as the Republican nominee.”TopicsDonald TrumpPennsylvaniaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Democrats, the Midterm Jinx Is Not Inevitable

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      In November, the Democrats are widely expected to lose the House and probably also the Senate. Large defeats are the norm for a new president’s first midterm. A harbinger is a president’s approval rating, and President Biden’s stands at a lackluster 41.1 percent.But standard political history may not be a good guide to 2022. The Democrats are facing long odds, but there are several reasons this could be an unusual political year.For starters, Donald Trump is just as likely to hobble Republicans as he is to energize them. Mr. Trump will not be on the ballot, but many of his surrogates will. He has endorsed over 175 candidates in federal and state elections, and in his clumsy efforts to play kingmaker, Mr. Trump has promoted some badly compromised candidates and challenged party unity.In the Georgia primary for governor, a Trump surrogate, Sonny Purdue, is polling well behind Mr. Trump’s nemesis, the incumbent Brian Kemp. In the Georgia Senate race, Mr. Trump’s endorsed candidate, Herschel Walker, is running away from his past and locked in a tight race against the incumbent Raphael Warnock. It may not happen again, but in 2020, Mr. Trump’s meddling backfired and helped Democrats take two Senate seats.To hold the Senate, Democrats need to defend incumbents in New Hampshire, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia. But they have pickup opportunities in several states.In Pennsylvania, the popular lieutenant governor John Fetterman, an economic populist, will run against the winner of a close Republican primary, either the celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz or the financier David McCormick. Mr. Oz, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump, has a very slight edge, as well as a very slight connection to Pennsylvania, having lived in New Jersey for many years. Either nominee would most likely alienate part of the Trump base, and neither is remotely populist.In Ohio, Mr. Trump’s endorsement helped the author and venture capitalist executive J.D. Vance prevail. In the general election, we will get a test of the divisive culture-war populism of Mr. Vance versus the genuine pocketbook populism of Representative Tim Ryan — the kind that keeps re-electing Ohio’s Democratic senator, Sherrod Brown.For Democrats to succeed in many of these races, their base will have to be energized — but at the moment, it is not. Still, there’s hope: Even if the ubiquitous lunacy of Mr. Trump doesn’t wake Democrats up, the likelihood of abortion being banned in half the country probably will.If the leaked opinion in the Supreme Court abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, becomes law in an official June decision, it will not just allow states to criminalize abortion, but will turn doctors into agents of the state when they treat women for miscarriages. This extremism on women’s health does not have the support of most voters.The Democratic revival of 2017-20 began with the epic women’s marches of January 2017. If Democrats are more competitive than expected this year, it will be in part because women are galvanized, especially women in the Democratic base but also independent or “soft Republican” college-educated suburban women.Something like this happened in 2017, when large numbers of liberals and moderates, appalled by Mr. Trump’s presidency, saw the 2018 election as a firebreak. That year, Democrats made a net gain of 40 seats in the House, and historic turnout gains in 2018, relative to the previous midterm, were a great benefit for Democrats.All will depend on how closely 2022 resembles 2018. With the electorate so divided, there are relatively few swing voters — but potentially dozens of swing districts. How they swing depends entirely on turnout.A Democratic effort reminiscent of grass roots groups in 2017 is beginning to gear up. For example, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland sponsors a Democracy Summer for college students who want to get out and organize. This idea has been picked up in dozens of other congressional districts.Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, in the January 2021 runoff election that won him a Senate seat, helped pioneer a technique called paid relational organizing. He hired some 2,800 Georgians to reach out to their own peer networks to win support for Mr. Ossoff. Now several people who worked with Senator Ossoff are taking this strategy national.Other events this summer may have bearing on the fall. The House panel investigating the attack of Jan. 6, 2021, will hold public hearings in June. Closer to the midterms, it will release its final report, which will put Republicans on the spot to answer for their defense of an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Mr. Trump will surely continue to insist the 2020 election was stolen, but most Republicans will be whipsawed between the demands of Mr. Trump and his base and their wish to focus on more winning issues.Mr. Trump’s own behavior is exposing all the latent fissures in the contradictory coalition that narrowly elected him. Democratic candidates will be reminding Americans of the potential menace of a second Trump term. If Mr. Trump rejoins Twitter, he will remind them himself.Even so, Republican extremism is at risk of being overshadowed by economic conditions, none more than inflation. Federal Reserve economists project that inflation could begin to subside by fall. As with so much in politics, sheer luck and timing will play a role in the Democrats’ prospects and the future of our Republic.Stranger things have happened than a Democrat midterm resurgence. A wipeout is still likely, but far from inevitable — if Democrats can get organized.Robert Kuttner is a co-editor of The American Prospect and the author of “Going Big: FDR’s Legacy, Biden’s New Deal, and the Struggle to Save Democracy.”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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      A Pennsylvania Election Storm Brews Again, This Time in a G.O.P. Primary

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      The Republican primary for Senate in Pennsylvania is about to get even wilder.The campaigns for David McCormick and Dr. Mehmet Oz, that election’s top two finishers, are obsessively monitoring the steady drip of numbers coming from the secretary of state’s office as well as from key counties.As of early Thursday evening, McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, and Oz, a celebrity surgeon who was endorsed by Donald Trump, were separated by a little over 1,000 votes, although the statewide results often lag the results in individual counties. Election officials have not yet declared a winner, and are not likely to do so anytime soon. Both campaigns are preparing for the possibility of a bruising recount.So, apparently, is Trump, who urged Oz to “declare victory” on Wednesday in a post on his Truth Social website.“It makes it much harder for them to cheat with the ballots that they just happened to find,” Trump added, though no evidence has emerged of any wrongdoing by the McCormick campaign or its allies.On a background call with reporters on Thursday, a senior official with the McCormick campaign argued that the combination of outstanding votes in several counties, plus military ballots that are yet to be counted, would put McCormick ahead. The official said the campaign believed there were more than 15,000 absentee ballots still uncounted, adding that the McCormick operation had invested heavily in its absentee voting program.“Facts show that the counting of valid absentee ballots is very likely to put @DaveMcCormickPA on top,” tweeted Mike Pompeo, a former secretary of state under Trump who is a top surrogate for McCormick. Both men are alumni of West Point, where McCormick was captain of the wrestling team before going on to serve in Iraq as a member of the 82nd Airborne Division.The Oz campaign likewise is projecting victory, citing the fact that Oz led McCormick in the official statewide count as of Thursday afternoon. But the gap has narrowed since Tuesday.The office of the Pennsylvania secretary of the commonwealth estimated that there were about 8,700 Republican absentee and mail ballots to be counted as of Thursday evening, a spokeswoman said in an email. Counties are required to report their unofficial results by 5 p.m. on May 24.McCormick leads by nine percentage points among mail absentee ballots cast so far, according to an analysis by Nate Cohn of The New York Times. If he leads among the uncounted mail ballots by a similar amount — and that’s not assured, Cohn says, as late-arriving mail ballots can differ from early mail ballots — then McCormick could squeak ahead of Oz as early as Friday.Pennsylvania law mandates a recount if the results of an election are within half a percentage point, and many close observers expect that might still be the case by next Thursday, the deadline for election officials to order a statewide re-examination of votes.“It seems almost certain to me that the vote will be within 0.5 percent,” said Bruce Marks, a lawyer who in 2020 filed an amicus brief on Trump’s behalf disputing the election results in Pennsylvania.The Republican Senate candidate David McCormick in Pittsburgh on Tuesday as votes were being counted.Jeff Swensen/Getty ImagesBracing for legal challengesThe McCormick campaign, meanwhile, recently hired a G.O.P. operative known for his expertise in the dark arts of challenging election results.According to federal election records, the McCormick campaign paid the operative’s firm, Michael Roman and Associates, $7,000 on April 21 for “consulting services.”Roman was the director of Election Day operations for Trump’s re-election campaign in 2020, and he later played an instrumental role in advancing claims of voter fraud in Pennsylvania that courts repeatedly ruled were unfounded.In February, Roman was issued a subpoena by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The committee said it had obtained communications that showed his “involvement in a coordinated strategy to contact Republican members of state legislatures in certain states that former President Trump had lost and urge them to ‘reclaim’ their authority by sending an alternate slate of electors.”Roman worked closely with Rudolph Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, who promoted baseless conspiracy theories and pushed without success to overturn President Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania.Roman’s hiring suggests that McCormick’s campaign was gearing up for a potentially protracted fight even before Tuesday, the day of the primary. It also means that an operative who helped lead Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election results will now be pitted against a candidate endorsed by the former president.Marks said he had not been hired by either campaign, though he is close to Roman. In 1993, Roman helped Marks overturn a Pennsylvania State Senate election after arguing that the results had been tainted by voter fraud.The full scope of Roman’s duties was not immediately clear as of midday on Thursday, although two people familiar with his hiring said he had been brought on at least in part to help with the possibility of a disputed result. Roman did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.Asked about Roman’s responsibilities, Jess Szymanski, the press secretary for the McCormick campaign, said only, “We’ve got a lot of lawyers across the state.”What to readThe 2020 census undercounted the population of six states and overcounted in eight, but that won’t change the number of House seats allotted to each state during reapportionment, Michael Wines reports.The Oklahoma Legislature passed a bill that would be the country’s strictest abortion law, defining life as beginning at fertilization.Herschel Walker, the likely Republican nominee for a Georgia Senate seat, said that a ban on abortion should not include exceptions, Jonathan Weisman reports.Administration officials struggled to explain how President Biden’s authorization of the use of the Defense Production Act will alleviate a shortage of baby formula, reports Michael Shear.HOW THEY RUNRepresentative Mo Brooks with supporters in Huntsville, Ala.Elijah Nouvelage/ReutersUnder the radar, Mo Brooks reboundsRepresentative Mo Brooks’s Senate campaign seemed dead in the water after Donald Trump withdrew his endorsement. But nearly two months after Trump’s change of heart and one week before the Alabama primary, Brooks shouldn’t be counted out.In Alabama, a primary candidate must receive at least 50 percent of the vote to win the nomination. That’s unlikely to happen in this relatively crowded Republican Senate race, where the leading candidates are polling in the low 30s. The goal is to place in the top two before a runoff, which now seems within reach for Brooks.Different pollsters show Brooks battling with Michael Durant for the second spot, with Katie Britt consistently in the lead. But recently, these polls also indicate that Brooks has improved his standing.Shortly before Trump rescinded his endorsement in March, a Republican poll from The Alabama Daily News and Gray Television found Brooks lagging far behind in third place, with 16 percent. But a follow-up poll conducted in May found Brooks in second place with 28.5 percent. Separately, a poll from Emerson College and The Hill found Brooks improving his status from 12 percent in March to 25 percent in May.“Mo Brooks has just kept making his case to Alabama that he’s the most conservative guy in the race and voters seem to have responded,” Stan McDonald, the chairman of Brooks’s campaign, said in a statement.But part of Brooks’s recent success might be a result of something else. As his top two rivals spar, he has been on the receiving end of fewer television attack ads. Since April 26, candidates and outside groups have spent nearly $540,000 against Britt and $830,000 against Durant on broadcast television, according to AdImpact, compared with only $75,000 against Brooks.And while Brooks might be improving, Britt has held a lead in every recent public poll.“It’s clear from our strong momentum that Alabamians know that I am the best candidate to defend our Christian conservative values, fight for the America First agenda, and preserve the country that we know and love for our children and our children’s children,” Britt said in a statement.— Blake & LeahIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More