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      Raskin Brings Expertise on Right-Wing Extremism to Jan. 6 Inquiry

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      The Democrat from Maryland has been delving into the rising threat of white nationalism and white supremacy for five years. He will lead the inquiry’s hearing on the subject on Tuesday.WASHINGTON — When Representative Jamie Raskin enters a Capitol Hill hearing room on Tuesday to lay out what the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack has uncovered about the role of domestic extremists in the riot, it will be his latest — and potentially most important — step in a five-year effort to crush a dangerous movement.Long before the Jan. 6, 2021, assault, Mr. Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, had thrown himself into stamping out the rise of white nationalism and domestic extremism in America. He trained his focus on the issue after the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., five years ago. Since then, he has held teach-ins, led a multipart House investigation that exposed the lackluster federal effort to confront the threat, released intelligence assessments indicating that white supremacists have infiltrated law enforcement and strategized about ways to crack down on paramilitary groups.Now, with millions of Americans expected to tune in, Mr. Raskin — along with Representative Stephanie Murphy, Democrat of Florida — is set to take a leading role in a hearing that promises to dig deeply into how far-right groups helped to orchestrate and carry out the Jan. 6 assault at the Capitol — and how they were brought together, incited and empowered by President Donald J. Trump.“Charlottesville was a rude awakening for the country,” Mr. Raskin, 59, said in an interview, rattling off a list of deadly hate crimes that had taken place in the years before the siege on the Capitol. “There is a real pattern of young, white men getting hyped up on racist provocation and incitement.”Tuesday’s session, set for 1 p.m., is expected to document how, after Mr. Trump’s many efforts to overturn the 2020 election had failed, he and his allies turned to violent far-right extremist groups whose support Mr. Trump had long cultivated, who in turn began assembling a mob to pressure Congress to reject the will of the voters.Supporters of President Donald J. Trump at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Jason Andrew for The New York Times“There were Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, the QAnon network, Boogaloo Boys, militia men and other assorted extremist and religious cults that assembled under the banner of ‘Stop The Steal,’ ” Mr. Raskin said, referring to the movement that spread Mr. Trump’s lie that the 2020 election had been stolen from him. “This was quite a coming-out party for a lot of extremist, antigovernment groups and white nationalist groups that had never worked together before.”It has long been known that the mob was energized by Mr. Trump’s Twitter post on Dec. 19, 2020, in which he called for his supporters to come to Washington for a rally on Jan. 6 that would “be wild.” Mr. Raskin and Ms. Murphy plan to detail a clear “call and response” between the president and his extreme supporters.“There’s no doubt that Donald Trump’s tweet urging everyone to descend upon Washington for a wild protest on Jan. 6 succeeded in galvanizing and unifying the dangerous extremists of the country,” Mr. Raskin said.Mr. Raskin has hinted at disclosing evidence of more direct ties between Mr. Trump and far-right groups, though he has declined to preview any. The panel plans to detail known links between the political operative Roger Stone, a longtime ally of Mr. Trump’s, the former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, and the extremist groups.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 7Making a case against Trump. More

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      An Anti-Trump Republican Group Is Back for the Midterms

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      Prominent conservatives who worked to oust Donald Trump in 2020 are back — with a plan to spend at least $10 million to defeat candidates who embraced the former president’s conspiracy theories about that election.The group of conservatives, the Republican Accountability PAC, has identified G.O.P. candidates whose extreme views its leaders deem dangerous to the future of American democracy.In 14 races across six key swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — the group has decided to throw its weight behind those candidates’ Democratic opponents.The PAC has already claimed a hand in several victories in Republican primaries — notably, the incumbent Brad Raffensperger’s win against Jody Hice, the Trump-backed candidate in the Georgia secretary of state race.In the remaining major primaries, it plans to spend heavily to bolster Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, whose leading role in the House investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol has made her a villain and a turncoat to many on the right.Donald Trump, Post-PresidencyThe former president remains a potent force in Republican politics.Grip on G.O.P.: Donald J. Trump is still a powerful figure in his party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.2024 Campaign?: Republicans are bracing for Mr. Trump to announce an unusually early bid for the White House, a move intended in part to shield him from the damaging revelations emerging from Jan. 6 investigations.Endorsement Record: While Mr. Trump has helped propel some G.O.P. candidates to primary victories, he’s also had notable defeats. Here’s where his record stands so far in 2022.A Modern-Day Party Boss: Hoarding cash, doling out favors and seeking to crush rivals, Mr. Trump is behaving like the head of a 19th-century political machine.Elsewhere, the group expects to focus on portraying Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, as well outside the mainstream of G.O.P. politics.And it will do so by finding what Sarah Longwell, a longtime Republican strategist and a leading organizer of various anti-Trump initiatives including the Republican Accountability PAC, called “credible messengers” — voters who resemble the college-educated, suburban moderates who are without a home in either major party.Longwell, who runs a podcast for The Bulwark called “The Focus Group,” has drawn on her team’s research on what motivates this constituency in particular, which has little appetite for the often crude, aggressive form of campaigning that Trump has fostered across the Republican Party.Longwell’s barometer for who qualifies as an anti-democracy Republican isn’t just whether Trump has issued an endorsement, but whether they echo the former president’s conspiratorial views on elections. She has little interest in parsing whether Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, for instance, has a more nuanced position on the integrity of the 2020 election than, say, Blake Masters in Arizona.“There are not people in these races who are, you know, running as post-Trump candidates,” she said.Watching for Trump’s roleLongwell acknowledges the difficulty of the task at hand, given President Biden’s unpopularity and Americans’ widespread public anger over the price of gas and groceries. But she said the political environment could shift if Trump jumps into the 2024 fray before the midterms — a move that would instantly “put Trump on the ballot” and perhaps push a significant fraction of Republican voters to shun the most-Trump-leaning candidates.One important criterion for Longwell for jumping into a race is the quality of the Democratic nominee — Republicans will find it easier to support moderate candidates, in the mold of Biden’s 2020 run, than it is to back Bernie Sanders-style progressives.With a little over four months to go before Election Day, Longwell’s team has raised $6 million so far. It plans to run ads targeting potentially persuadable Republicans on digital platforms, as well as via direct mail, billboards, TV and radio.Longwell is prioritizing many of the same areas a previous version of the group, Republican Voters Against Trump, homed in on in 2020: places like Bucks and Dauphin counties in Pennsylvania and Pima County in Arizona, which are teeming with frustrated Republicans who may have voted in past elections for John McCain or Mitt Romney.Part of the challenge, Longwell acknowledged, is to create a “permission structure” for these voters to break with their party.“People are very tribal, they’re very partisan,” Longwell said. “And they’re frustrated, nationally, with Democrats, right?”What to read tonightCassidy Hutchinson’s electrifying testimony last month before the House committee investigating the Capitol riot has jolted top Justice Department officials into discussing the politically sensitive topic of Donald Trump more directly, at times in the presence of Attorney General Merrick Garland, Katie Benner and Glenn Thrush report.Democrats in Congress, under pressure to act after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, are planning to hold doomed votes this week on legislation seeking to preserve access to abortions.Can states that ban abortions also forbid residents to travel to get the procedure? Adam Liptak explores the newly urgent question of a constitutional right to travel.The chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, said she would step down next month, which will allow Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, to appoint a replacement who could be friendlier to the party as lawmakers in Albany continue to codify and consider stronger laws on guns and abortion.Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.— BlakeIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Dueling Weaknesses

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      The Times has released its first poll of the 2022 midterm cycle.In 2016, when The New York Times’s pollsters asked Americans whether they planned to vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, more than 10 percent said they would not support either one. They said that they would instead vote for a third-party candidate or not vote at all.Four years later, the situation was different. Joe Biden was a more popular nominee than Clinton had been, while some of Trump’s skeptics had come around to supporting him. Less than 5 percent of voters told pollsters that they didn’t plan to vote for either major party nominee.This morning, The Times is releasing its first poll of the 2022 midterm campaign. And one of the main messages is that Americans again seem to be as dissatisfied with the leading candidates as they were in 2016. “This felt like a poll from 2016, not from 2020,” Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, told me.Voters on the Direction of the CountryDo you think the United States is on the right track, or is it headed in the wrong direction?

      Note: Polls prior to 2020 are Times/CBS surveys of U.S. adults, with the wording “Do you feel things in this country are generally going in the right direction or do you feel things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track?”

      Based on a New York Times/Siena College poll of 849 registered voters in the United States from July 5-7, 2022.By Marco HernandezThe poll included a question about whether people would vote for Biden or Trump in 2024 if the two ended up being the nominees again. The question did not present any options other than Biden and Trump — yet 10 percent of respondents volunteered that they did not plan to support either one. The share was even higher among voters under 35 and lower among older voters.Similarly unpopularThis level of dissatisfaction is a reflection of the huge, dueling weaknesses of the two parties.The Democratic Party has two core problems. First, Biden’s job approval rating is only 33 percent (similar to Trump’s worst ratings during his presidency), partly because of frustration over inflation and the continuing disruptions to daily life stemming from the pandemic. Second, Democrats’ priorities appear out of step with those of most Americans.Congressional Democrats have spent much of the past year bickering, with a small number of moderates blocking legislation that would reduce drug prices, address climate change and take other popular steps. Many Democrats — both politicians and voters, especially on the party’s left flank — also seem more focused on divisive cultural issues than on most Americans’ everyday concerns, like inflation.“The left has a set of priorities that is just different from the rest of the country’s,” Nate said. “Liberals care more about abortion and guns than about the economy. Conservative concerns are much more in line with the rest of the country.”On the other hand, Nate points out, “Republicans have serious problems of their own.”Trump remains the party’s dominant figure — and he is roughly as unpopular as Biden. The two men’s personal favorability ratings are identical in the Times poll: 39 percent. Many voters, including independents and a noticeable minority of Republicans, are offended by the events of Jan. 6 and Trump’s role in them.Republicans also face some vulnerabilities from the recent Supreme Court decisions. The court has issued aggressive rulings, including overturning Roe v. Wade, that take policy to the right of public opinion on some of the same issues where many Democrats are to the left of it.If not Biden …All of this leads to a remarkable combination of findings from the poll. Biden looks like the weakest incumbent president in decades; 61 percent of Democrats said they hoped somebody else would be the party’s 2024 nominee, with most of them citing either Biden’s age or performance. Yet, when all voters were asked to choose between Biden and Trump in a hypothetical matchup, Biden nonetheless held a small lead over Trump, 44 percent to 41 percent.Democrats’ Reasons for a Different CandidateWhat’s the most important reason you would prefer someone other than Joe Biden to be the Democratic Party’s 2024 presidential nominee?

      Asked of 191 respondents who said they planned to vote in the 2024 Democratic primary and who preferred a candidate other than Joe Biden in a New York Times/Siena College poll from July 5-7, 2022.By The New York TimesOther polls — by YouGov and Harris, for example — suggest Biden would fare better against Trump than Vice President Kamala Harris would. These comparisons are a reminder that Biden won the nomination in 2020 for a reason: He is one of the few nationally prominent Democrats who doesn’t seem too liberal to many swing voters. Biden, in short, is a wounded incumbent in a party without obviously stronger alternatives.There is still a long time between now and the 2024 election, of course. Perhaps Biden’s standing will improve, or another Democrat — one who wins a tough race this year, for instance, like Stacey Abrams or Senator Raphael Warnock in Georgia — will emerge as a possibility. Perhaps Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence or another Republican will defeat Trump for the nomination. Perhaps Biden or Trump (or both) will choose not to run.The level of voter dissatisfaction also raises the possibility that a third-party candidate could attract enough support to influence the outcome, Nate adds.For now, though, each party’s biggest strength appears to be the weakness of its opponent.Related: My colleague Shane Goldmacher has more details and analysis on Biden’s approval rating. In the coming days, The Times will be releasing other results from the poll, including on the Republican Party, the midterm races and more.More on politicsSteve Bannon agreed to testify before the Jan. 6 panel, days before his trial for contempt of Congress is set to begin.Pressure from Trump allies and a fear of leaks: Here’s why the Jan. 6 committee rushed Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony.In a small town in New Hampshire, one man tried to impose a change so drastic it jolted a community out of political indifference.THE LATEST NEWSWar in UkraineRussia needs more soldiers, but isn’t resorting to a national draft. Instead, the Kremlin is offering cash and employing strong-arm tactics.Fellow players of Brittney Griner, who is detained in Russia on drug charges, honored her at the W.N.B.A. All-Star Game.Other Big Stories“I kept waiting for someone to come,” said Arnulfo Reyes, a teacher at Robb Elementary School.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesA taunting gunman and 78 minutes of terror: A teacher who survived the Uvalde shooting recounted the desperate wait for a rescue.An American firm said U.S. spies quietly backed its plans to buy NSO, a blacklisted Israeli company that makes spyware.A wildfire in Yosemite National Park that has spread over 2,000 acres is threatening centuries-old giant sequoia trees.Get ready for astronomical records to be broken: NASA will unveil the first pictures from the new James Webb Space Telescope tomorrow.Novak Djokovic won his 21st major trophy, beating Nick Kyrgios in the Wimbledon men’s singles final.OpinionsThe history of Prohibition suggests Americans will rebel against abortion bans, Michael Kazin argues.We need more male contraceptives, Stephanie Page and John Amory write.Gail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss election season, Elon Musk and more.MORNING READSMany millennials feel behind, indebted and unable to live up to expectations.From left; Tracy Nguyen, Lila Barth and Christina Rateau for The New York TimesEconomic anxiety: Thirty millennials discuss their real fears about money.Where is Pete Panto? A union leader on the Brooklyn docks disappeared 81 years ago.Cilantrophilia: A love affair with cilantro, told through illustrations.Metropolitan Diary: A pizza lesson in Brooklyn and other tales from the city.Quiz time: The average score on our latest news quiz was 8.9. Try to beat it.A Times classic: Perfume, cologne, parfum … what’s the difference?Advice from Wirecutter: Beautiful rugs to hide an ugly floor.Lives Lived: Susie Steiner, the author of the Manon Bradshaw detective novels, was declared legally blind from a rare disease months before she sold her first book. She died at 51.SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETICWayne Rooney’s stunning return: England’s all-time leading soccer scorer will become the head coach of Major League Soccer’s D.C. United. He has significant work ahead.How TV dictates the future of college football: The question is simple enough, which college football teams really drive the biggest TV audiences? That calculation tells us plenty about the future of a sport in disarray.Russian soccer’s dramatic demise: Russia hosted a World Cup as recently as 2018. Now? Their domestic league has been gutted, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Who won the 2022 N.H.L. Draft? The grades are in for every team.ARTS AND IDEAS Vanessa Braganza’s decoding process.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesA decoded cipherA scholar claims she has uncovered a hidden message from Catherine of Aragon, the first of Henry VIII’s eight wives, Jennifer Schuessler writes in The Times.The scholar, Vanessa Braganza, became fascinated with the sketch of a pendant that featured a dense tangle of letters. Using a process akin to “early modern Wordle,” Braganza says, she deciphered the image, which spells out the names of Henry and Catherine.What makes it particularly interesting, Braganza argues, is that the pendant was likely commissioned not by the king, but by Catherine herself, as a way of asserting her place in history as Henry was preparing to divorce her. “It really helps us understand Catherine as a really defiant figure,” she says.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookChristopher Simpson for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Prop Stylist: Paige Hicks.Gazpacho is perfect when it is too hot to eat but you need cold, salt and lunch.What to Watch“Thor: Love and Thunder,” the fourth “Thor” movie in 11 years, is sillier than its predecessors, Manohla Dargis writes.What to ReadThree new memoirs that cover addiction, fatherhood and transgender identity.Now Time to PlayThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was obedience. Here is today’s puzzle.Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Not for kids (five letters).And here’s today’s Wordle. After, use our bot to get better.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — DavidP.S. Boris Yeltsin became Russia’s first freely elected president, The Times reported 31 years ago today.Here’s today’s front page.“The Daily” is about abortion laws. On “Popcast,” what’s next for Jack Harlow?Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      Stephen Bannon Agrees to Testify to Jan. 6 Panel

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      Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump campaign manager and White House adviser, made the abrupt about-face after the former president authorized him to talk to investigators.WASHINGTON — With his criminal trial for contempt of Congress approaching, Stephen K. Bannon, an ally of former President Donald J. Trump’s who was involved in his plans to overturn the 2020 election, has informed the House committee investigating the Capitol attack that he is now willing to testify, according to two letters obtained by The New York Times.His decision is a remarkable about-face for Mr. Bannon, who until Saturday had been among the most obstinate and defiant of the committee’s potential witnesses. He had promised to turn the criminal case against him into the “misdemeanor from hell” for the Justice Department.But with the possibility of two years in jail and large fines looming on the horizon, Mr. Bannon has been authorized to testify by Mr. Trump, his lawyer told the committee late on Saturday in a letter, which was reported earlier by The Guardian.The former president had previously instructed Mr. Bannon and other associates not to cooperate with the panel, claiming that executive privilege — a president’s power to withhold certain internal executive branch information, especially confidential communications involving him or his top aides — compelled them to stay silent. But in recent days, as several witnesses have come forward to offer the House panel damning testimony about his conduct, Mr. Trump has grown frustrated that one of his fiercest defenders has not yet appeared before the committee, people close to him said.“Mr. Bannon is willing to, and indeed prefers, to testify at your public hearing,” Robert J. Costello, Mr. Bannon’s lawyer, wrote to Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 7Making a case against Trump. More

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      Cassidy Hutchinson: Why the Jan. 6 Committee Rushed Her Testimony

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      Sequestered with family and security, Ms. Hutchinson, 26, has in the process developed an unlikely bond with Representative Liz Cheney, the panel’s vice chairwoman.WASHINGTON — The day before Cassidy Hutchinson was deposed for a fourth time by the Jan. 6 committee, the former Trump White House aide received a phone message that would dramatically change the plans of the panel and write a new chapter in American politics.On that day in June, the caller told Ms. Hutchinson, as Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chairwoman, later disclosed: A person “let me know you have your deposition tomorrow. He wants me to let you know he’s thinking about you. He knows you’re loyal. And you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition.”At Ms. Hutchinson’s deposition the next day, committee members investigating the attack on the Capitol were so alarmed by what they considered a clear case of witness tampering — not to mention Ms. Hutchinson’s shocking account of President Donald J. Trump’s behavior on Jan. 6, 2021 — that they decided in a meeting on June 24, a Friday, to hold an emergency public hearing with Ms. Hutchinson as the surprise witness the following Tuesday.The speed, people close to the committee said, was for two crucial reasons: Ms. Hutchinson was under intense pressure from Trump World, and panel members believed that getting her story out in public would make her less vulnerable, attract powerful allies and be its own kind of protection. The committee also had to move fast, the people said, to avoid leaks of some of the most explosive testimony ever heard on Capitol Hill.In the two weeks since, Ms. Hutchinson’s account of an unhinged president who urged his armed supporters to march to the Capitol, lashed out at his Secret Service detail and hurled his lunch against a wall has turned her into a figure of both admiration and scorn — lauded by Trump critics as a 21st-century John Dean and attacked by Mr. Trump as a “total phony.”Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony also pushed the committee to redouble its efforts to interview Pat A. Cipollone, Mr. Trump’s White House counsel, who appeared in private before the panel on Friday. His videotaped testimony is expected to be shown at the committee’s next public hearing on Tuesday.Ms. Hutchinson and Representative Liz Cheney, the vice chairwoman of the Jan. 6 committee, have developed an unlikely bond.Doug Mills/The New York TimesNow unemployed and sequestered with family and a security detail, Ms. Hutchinson, 26, has developed an unlikely bond with Ms. Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and onetime aide to former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell during the George W. Bush administration — a crisis environment of another era when she learned to work among competing male egos. More recently, as someone ostracized by her party and stripped of her leadership post for her denunciations of Mr. Trump, Ms. Cheney admires the younger woman’s willingness to risk her alliances and professional standing by recounting what she saw in the final days of the Trump White House, friends say.“I have been incredibly moved by young women that I have met and that have come forward to testify in the Jan. 6 committee,” Ms. Cheney said in concluding a recent speech at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif.When she mentioned Ms. Hutchinson’s name, the audience erupted in applause.Influence Beyond Her YearsThe path that led a young Trump loyalist to become a star witness against the former president was not exactly prefigured by Ms. Hutchinson’s biography.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 7Making a case against Trump. More

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      Jan. 6 Panel Questions Cipollone on Pardons and Trump’s Election Claims

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      Pat A. Cipollone, the former White House counsel for President Donald J. Trump, appeared before the House committee investigating the Capitol attack for roughly eight hours on Friday.WASHINGTON — Pat A. Cipollone, who served as White House counsel for President Donald J. Trump, was asked detailed questions on Friday about pardons, false election fraud claims and the former president’s pressure campaign against Vice President Mike Pence, according to three people familiar with his testimony before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.The panel did not press him to either corroborate or contradict some specific details of explosive testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide who captivated the country late last month with her account of an out-of-control president willing to embrace violence and stop at nothing to stay in power, the people said.During a roughly eight-hour interview conducted behind closed doors in the O’Neill House Office Building, the panel covered some of the same ground it did during an informal interview with Mr. Cipollone in April. In the session on Friday, which took place only after Mr. Cipollone was served with a subpoena, investigators focused mainly on Mr. Cipollone’s views on the events of Jan. 6 and generally did not ask about his views of other witnesses’ accounts.Mr. Cipollone, who fought against the most extreme plans to overturn the 2020 election but has long held that his direct conversations with Mr. Trump are protected by executive privilege and attorney-client privilege, invoked certain privileges in declining to answer some of the committee’s questions.Tim Mulvey, a spokesman for the panel, said the committee “received critical testimony on nearly every major topic in its investigation, reinforcing key points regarding Donald Trump’s misconduct and providing highly relevant new information that will play a central role in its upcoming hearings.”“This includes information demonstrating Donald Trump’s supreme dereliction of duty,” Mr. Mulvey said. “The testimony also corroborated key elements of Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony.”The panel recorded Mr. Cipollone on video with potential plans to use clips of his testimony at upcoming hearings. Aides have begun strategizing about whether and where to adjust scripts to include key clips, one person said. The next hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.In the interview, Mr. Cipollone was asked about Mr. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election. The panel has asked similar questions of top Justice Department officials, White House lawyers and Trump campaign officials, who have testified that they did not agree with the effort to overturn the 2020 election.Mr. Cipollone also broke with Mr. Trump in response to questions about the former president’s pressure campaign against Mr. Pence, which included personal meetings, a profane phone call and even a post on Twitter attacking the vice president as rioters stormed the Capitol pledging to hang him, people familiar with the testimony said.Mr. Cipollone’s agreement to sit for an interview before the panel had prompted speculation that his testimony could either buttress or contradict the account of Ms. Hutchinson, who attributed some of the most damning statements about Mr. Trump’s behavior to Mr. Cipollone. For instance, she testified that Mr. Cipollone told her on the morning of Jan. 6 that Mr. Trump’s plan to accompany the mob to the Capitol would cause Trump officials to be “charged with every crime imaginable.”Two people familiar with Mr. Cipollone’s actions that day said he did not recall making that comment to Ms. Hutchinson. Those people said the committee was made aware before the interview that Mr. Cipollone would not confirm that conversation were he to be asked. He was not asked about that specific statement on Friday, according to people familiar with the questions.“Why are Pat Cipollone & his lawyers letting the J6 Committee get away with suborning Cassidy Hutchinson’s perjury?” Mr. Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who has also testified before the panel, wrote on Twitter on Saturday. “Only cowards let the Left bully them into sitting quietly instead of speaking up and telling the truth. Stop hiding on background, Pat. Grow a spine & go on record.”Mr. Mulvey said there was no “preinterview agreement to limit Cipollone’s testimony” and any suggestion otherwise was “completely false.”Among other subjects, Mr. Cipollone was asked in the interview about conversations in which presidential pardons were discussed.The committee did not press Mr. Cipollone to either corroborate or contradict some specific details of testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide who appeared before the panel last month.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMs. Hutchinson has testified that on Jan. 7, the day after the assault on the Capitol, Mr. Trump wanted to promise pardons for those involved in the attack, but Mr. Cipollone argued to remove language making such a promise from remarks that the president was to deliver.She has also testified that members of Congress and others close to Mr. Trump sought pardons after the violence of Jan. 6.An adviser to Mr. Cipollone declined to comment on his appearance before the panel.“He was candid with the committee,” Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and a member of the panel, said on CNN on Friday. “He was careful in his answers, and I believe that he was honest in his answers.”She added, “We gained some additional insight into the actual day, Jan. 6.”Ms. Lofgren said Mr. Cipollone did not contradict other witnesses. “There were things that he might not be present for or in some cases could not recall with precision,” she said.Mr. Cipollone’s testimony came after he reached a deal to testify before the panel, which had pressed him for weeks to cooperate and issued him a subpoena last month.Mr. Cipollone was a witness to key moments in Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the election results, including discussions about sending false letters to state officials about election fraud and seizing voting machines. He was also in direct contact with Mr. Trump on Jan. 6 as rioters stormed the Capitol.Mr. Trump has railed against Mr. Cipollone’s cooperation. On Thursday, he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social: “Why would a future President of the United States want to have candid and important conversations with his White House Counsel if he thought there was even a small chance that this person, essentially acting as a ‘lawyer’ for the Country, may someday be brought before a partisan and openly hostile Committee in Congress.” More

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      Next Time Trump Tries to Steal an Election, He Won’t Need a Mob

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      Last week, the Supreme Court announced it would hear arguments in Moore v. Harper, a challenge to North Carolina’s new congressional map.The long and short of the case is that North Carolina Republicans proposed a gerrymander so egregious that the state Supreme Court ruled that it violated the state’s Constitution. Republicans sought to restore the legislative map, citing the “independent state legislature doctrine,” which asserts that state legislatures have almost absolute power to set their own rules for federal elections. Once passed into law, then, those rules cannot be overturned — or even reviewed — by state courts.A Republican victory at the Supreme Court would, according to the election law expert Rick Hasen, “radically alter the power of state courts to rein in state legislatures that violate voting rights in federal elections. It could essentially neuter the ability of state courts to protect voters under provisions of state constitutions against infringement of their rights.”This radical interpretation of the Elections Clause of the Constitution also extends to the Presidential Electors Clause, such that during a presidential election year, state legislatures could allocate Electoral College votes in any way they see fit, at any point in the process. As I argued earlier this year, we could see Republican-led states pass laws that would allow them to send alternative slates of electors, overruling the will of the voters and doing legally what Donald Trump and his conspirators pressured Republicans in Arizona and Georgia to do illegally. Under the independent state legislature doctrine, the next time Trump tries to overturn the results of an election he lost, he won’t need a mob.There are many problems with this doctrine beyond the outcomes it was engineered to produce. Some are logical — the theory seems to suggest that state legislatures are somehow separate and apart from state constitutions — and some are historical. And among the historical problems is the fact that Americans have never really wanted to entrust their state legislatures with the kind of sweeping electoral powers that this theory would confer.For most of the first 50 years of presidential elections, there was no uniform method for the allocation of electors. In the first truly competitive race for president, the election of 1800, two states used a winner-take-all system where voters cast ballots to pick their electors directly, three states used a system where electors were chosen on a district-by-district basis, 10 states used a system where the legislature simply chose the electors, and one state, Tennessee, used a combination of methods.Methods changed from election to election depending on partisan advantage. Virginia moved from the district system in 1796 to the winner-take-all “general ticket” in 1800 to ensure total support for Thomas Jefferson in his contest against John Adams. In retaliation, Adams’s home state of Massachusetts abandoned district elections for legislative selection, to ensure that he would get all of its electors.This kind of manipulation continued until the mid-1830s, when every state save South Carolina adopted the “general ticket.” (South Carolina would not allow voters to directly choose electors until after the Civil War.)Beginning in 1812, however, you can start to see the public and its elected officials turn against this use of state legislative power.Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party was still in power. James Madison, his longtime friend and political ally, was president. But he, and the war he was now fighting, were unpopular.Most members of Congress had backed Madison’s call for war with Great Britain. But it was a partisan vote with most Republicans in favor and every Federalist opposed.The reasons for war were straightforward. The “conduct of her government,” said Madison in his message to Congress requesting a declaration of war, “presents a series of acts hostile to the United States as an independent and neutral nation.” Among those acts were impressment of American seaman (“thousands of American citizens, under the safeguard of public law and of their national flag, have been torn from their country”) and attacks on American commerce (“British cruisers have been in the practice also of violating the rights and the peace of our coasts.”).In fighting Britain, the administration and its allies hoped to pressure the crown into a more favorable settlement on these maritime issues. They also hoped to conquer Canada and shatter British influence in the parts of North America where it allied with Native tribes to harass American settlers and stymie American expansion.Those hopes crashed into reality, however, as an untrained and inexperienced American militia flailed against British regulars. And as the summer wore on, bringing him closer and closer to the next presidential election, Madison faced defeat abroad and division at home. In New England especially, his Federalist opponents used their hold on local and state offices to obstruct the war effort.“In Hartford,” writes the historian Donald Hickey in “The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict,” “Federalists sought to end loud demonstrations by army recruiters by adopting a pair of city ordinances that restricted public music and parades.” In Boston, “the Massachusetts legislature threatened to sequester federal tax money if militia arms due to the state under an 1808 law were not delivered.”Fearing defeat in the presidential race as a result of this anger and discontent over the war, Republicans did everything they could to secure Madison’s victory. The historian Alexander Keyssar details these shenanigans in the book “Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?” He notes that,In North Carolina, which had utilized a district system since 1796, the legislature announced that it would choose electors by itself: its majority feared that Madison might lose the state to DeWitt Clinton, who ran with the support of both Federalists and dissident Republicans.On the other side, “the Federalist legislature in New Jersey announced, just days before the election, that it was canceling the scheduled balloting and appointing electors of its own.” And in Massachusetts, the Republican-led senate and Federalist-led lower house could not agree on a method for choosing electors. “In the end,” notes Keyssar, “an extra legislative session had to be convened to save the state from losing its electoral votes altogether.”Madison was re-elected, but according to Keyssar, the attempt on both sides to manipulate the outcome “ignited firestorms of protest and recrimination.” A number of lawmakers would try, in the immediate aftermath and the years that followed, to amend the Constitution to end legislative selection of electors and mandate district-based elections for the Electoral College.District elections, according to one supportive congressman, were best because they fit the “maxim that all legitimate power is derived from the people” and because they would reduce the chance that “a man may be elected to the first office of the nation by a minority of votes of the people.”This concern for democracy (or “popular government”) was a big part of the case for reform. For Senator Mahlon Dickerson of New Jersey, allowing legislators to choose electors without giving voters a say was “the worst possible system” as it “usurped” power from the people and departed from “the spirit if not from the letter of the Constitution.”Even at this early juncture in our nation’s history, many Americans believed in democratic participation and sought to make the institutions of the Republic more receptive to the voice of the people. One supporter of district elections, Representative James Strudwick Smith of North Carolina, put it simply: “You will bring the election near to the people, and, consequently you will make them place more value on the elective franchise, which is all-important in a republican form of Government.”There is a somewhat common view that the counter-majoritarianism of the American system is acceptable because the United States is a “Republic, not a democracy.” That notion lurks behind the idea of the “independent state legislature,” which would empower partisans to limit the right of the people to choose their leaders in a direct and democratic manner.But from the start, Americans have rejected the idea that their system is somehow opposed to more and greater democracy. When institutions seemed to subvert democratic practice, the voters and their representatives pushed back, demanding a government more responsive to their interests, desires and republican aspirations. It is not for nothing that the men who claimed Jefferson as their political and ideological forefather labeled their party “The Democracy.”As Americans recognized then, and as they should recognize now, the Constitution is not a charter for states or state legislatures, it is a charter for people, for our rights and for our right to self-government.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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      Internal Inconsistencies

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      The people who claim widespread election fraud have made little effort to put together a logical argument.More than 100 Republican nominees for statewide office or Congress this year have falsely claimed that election fraud helped defeat Donald Trump in 2020. Almost 150 members of Congress — more than half of the Republicans serving there — went so far as to vote to overturn the 2020 election result.These claims of election fraud have become the mainstream Republican position. In some places, winning a nomination virtually requires making such statements. In other places, the claims appear to carry little political cost, at least in the primaries. And very few elected Republicans have been willing to denounce the falsehoods.Given the prominence of the issue, it’s jarring to see how little effort its proponents have put into making an argument on behalf of their claims. They have offered no good evidence, because there is not any. They have also failed to offer even a logically consistent argument. Consider:If anything, the rare examples of cheating from 2020 tend to involve Trump supporters. Prosecutors charged three registered Republicans living at The Villages, a Florida retirement community, with voting more than once in the presidential election. One of them has since pleaded guilty: he both voted in Florida and cast an absentee ballot in Michigan.Trump and his allies have never explained how other Republicans could have done so well if fraud were widespread. In the 2020 House elections, Republicans gained 14 seats. In the Senate, Democrats did win a 50-50 split, but the party lost races in Maine, Montana and North Carolina that it had hoped to win. In the 2021 elections, Republicans did well again, winning the governor’s race in Virginia. It’s hardly a picture consistent with Democratic election rigging.During the 2022 primaries, most Republican candidates have accepted the results without claiming fraud. That’s been true even of candidates who lost their races, as my colleagues Reid Epstein and Nick Corasaniti have reported. Examples include Representative Madison Cawthorn in North Carolina; Representative Mo Brooks in the Senate primary in Alabama; and two Trump-backed candidates in Georgia. When Trump supporters lose to other Republicans, they generally accept defeat.Loyalty, not logicOf course, the claims of voter fraud are not going away. If Trump runs again, he will probably allege cheating in any election that he loses. At least some other Republicans now seem likely to do the same, perhaps in response to close or unexpected losses in 2022.A “Stop the Steal” protester in 2020.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesBut the lack of any substantive argument to back up these claims suggests that even some of the people making them may not believe them. The claims have instead become a way for many Republicans to show loyalty to their party and to signal that they consider Democrats to be inherently illegitimate holders of power.Sometimes, these signals are tinged with racism, as Brandon Tensley of CNN has noted: The fraud claims often involve cities with heavily Black or Latino populations, like Detroit, Philadelphia and Milwaukee. Rudy Giuliani, for example, alleged — without any evidence — that residents of Camden, N.J. (roughly 90 percent of whom are Black or Latino) illegally vote in Philadelphia (which, unlike Camden, is in a swing state). In Alabama, Brooks has said fraud occurs largely in Birmingham and other heavily Democratic cities.The spread of such lies has left many historians and political scientists anxious about the future of American democracy. There is no shortage of subjects on which Democrats and Republicans can reasonably — even passionately or angrily — disagree: How much should the country restrict abortion? What about gun use? Or immigration? How high should taxes or government benefits be?All those issues are valid matters of debate in a democracy. When one side loses a struggle, it can look for ways to regroup and win the next one.But a concerted campaign to delegitimize political opponents — through falsehoods and without much of an attempt at logical argument — is something quite different. It’s an attempt not to win a democratic contest but to avoid one.For moreThe Washington Post has compiled a list of the current Republican nominees who support Trump’s false election claims, and The Times has listed the congressional Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 election.In coming primaries in Arizona and Michigan, candidates who have made false fraud claims are trying to win the Republican nomination to become secretary of state, overseeing elections.THE LATEST NEWSBritainBoris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister, at Downing Street yesterday.John Sibley/ReutersBoris Johnson is stepping down. He’s planning to serve as prime minister until the fall.His resignation comes after days of political drama and calls for him to quit from within his Conservative Party. More than 50 government ministers or aides had left.It’s unclear who will succeed Johnson. The Conservative Party will start a leadership contest that will determine who will be the next prime minister.War in UkraineThe main train station in Lviv in April.Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York TimesAbout six million Ukrainians are displaced within the country and nearly five million others have fled to other Europe countries.President Biden told the wife of Brittney Griner, the basketball star detained in Russia, that the U.S. would pursue “every avenue” to bring the player home.PoliticsBiden has tried to remain above the partisan fray. Some Democrats wish he were more of a fighter, The Times’s Michael Shear writes.James Comey and Andrew McCabe, former F.B.I. officials who clashed with Trump, were both subjected to rare, intensive I.R.S. audits.The Jan 6. committee will interview the former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who fought Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Joe Rogan said that he had refused to have Trump on his podcast, calling him “an existential threat to democracy.”Other Big StoriesFed officials are planning another big interest rate increase, even as the economy shows some signs of cooling.The Highland Park shooter had been able to legally buy weapons, even after police encounters and despite Illinois’s relatively strict laws.The glaciers of the Alps are buckling under the summer heat that is now common in Europe.A California jury found a man guilty of murder in the 2019 shooting of the rapper Nipsey Hussle.A judge sentenced Jerry Harris, a star of the Netflix documentary “Cheer,” to 12 years in prison for sex crimes involving minors.An explosion destroyed part of the Georgia Guidestones, a mysterious monument promoted as “America’s Stonehenge.”OpinionsWhat’s an ectopic pregnancy? What does Plan B do? Take Times Opinion’s Post-Roe sex ed quiz.Medical debt burdens Americans mostly because they’re underinsured rather than uninsured, Aaron Carroll argues.MORNING READSArt: She paid $90,000 for a Marc Chagall painting. Now a French panel wants to destroy it.Wimbledon: Singles matches get attention, but doubles are “a joy to play.”Roommates: A gecko and a possum family, living together in harmony.A Times classic: The science of veganism.Advice from Wirecutter: Packing cubes for smarter traveling.Lives Lived: Willie Lee Morrow was a barber in San Diego when a friend brought him a gift from Nigeria: a wooden comb meant to tease out curly hair. Morrow created what came to be known as the Afro pick. Morrow died at 82.SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC Two teams can shake up college football: Rivals Oregon and Washington can dramatically shift the future for two major conferences. Meanwhile, all eyes remain on what Notre Dame is about to do. Tension is building as the college football landscape shifts.Are N.H.L. players being held in Russia? A Russian star appears in jeopardy of not being able to return to the United States. This scenario has been a concern for league executives this off-season.An N.B.A. player faces NFT scrutiny: A veteran player co-founded an NFT community, but now many investors feel they have been swindled.For access to all Athletic articles, subscribe to New York Times All Access or Home Delivery.ARTS AND IDEAS Trevor Rainbolt identifies countries in seconds.Jack Bool for The New York TimesGen Z geographyThe premise of the online game GeoGuessr is simple: You’re dropped somewhere in the world, seen through Google’s Street View, and must guess where you are. Often that means clicking to move through the landscape and scanning for clues.Trevor Rainbolt, 23, has found online fame posting videos in which he locates himself in seconds, The Times’s Kellen Browning writes. His geography skills verge on wizardry — he can identify a country by the color of its soil — and his highlights regularly get millions of views on TikTok.“Candidly, I haven’t had any social life for the past year,” Rainbolt said. “But it’s worth it, because it’s so fun and I enjoy learning.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookChristopher Testani for The New York TimesRoast peaches with boneless chicken thighs in the oven, and let them meld with those flavorful drippings.What to WatchIn the movie “Hello, Goodbye and Everything in Between,” an adaptation of a young adult novel, two high school seniors agree to break up in a year.What to ReadThese books will guide you through Berlin.Now Time to PlayThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was chutzpah. Here is today’s puzzle.Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Our world (five letters).And here’s today’s Wordle. After, use our bot to get better.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — DavidP.S. The word “whackadoodle” appeared in The Times for the first time, in an article about the Georgia Guidestones.Here’s today’s front page.“The Daily” is about an anti-abortion campaigner. On “First Person,” a gay Ukrainian soldier. On the Modern Love podcast, a nanny’s secret world.Matthew Cullen, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More