Presidential Election of 2020

Subterms

    More stories

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Side by Side With (Bernie) Sanders

      by

      THE FIGHTING SOULOn the Road With Bernie SandersBy Ari Rabin-HavtSo much has happened to shape American politics since Bernie Sanders ended his second presidential campaign — the pandemic, Donald Trump’s election denial, the Jan. 6 Capitol siege, the war in Ukraine — it’s easy to overlook the Vermont senator’s place in political history.To a remarkable degree for a failed presidential candidate, Sanders has had an enduring impact on the Democratic Party. In the wake of his 2016 and 2020 campaigns, Democrats have tacked sharply to the left on issues like college debt, health care and social welfare. Even in defeat, Sanders remains a progressive hero, with a new perch for influencing policy as the Senate Budget Committee chairman.For all that, Sanders is not well known on the granular level — his management style, tastes and quirks — in a way that is common for national politicians. Into that vacuum comes Ari Rabin-Havt’s engaging memoir of the 2020 Sanders campaign, “The Fighting Soul: On the Road With Bernie Sanders.”Rabin-Havt, a former deputy campaign manager, offers an insider’s view of the gruff, no-frills, democratic socialist — a politician who “hated the political part of political campaigns” like fund-raising and hobnobbing. He was so clueless about party pooh-bahs that he did not recognize the Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, a major Democratic donor.Rabin-Havt was with the senator when he had a campaign-trail heart attack in October 2019. Feisty even in an ambulance, Sanders quizzed E.M.T.s about their jobs and benefits. Asked to rate his pain on a 1-to-10 scale, he snapped with an expletive: “That is a (nonsense) question. I have no idea.”The heart attack was a watershed that looked like the end of the campaign. Then 78, Sanders already faced questions about whether he was too old to be president, and was losing ground to Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden.Surprisingly, the health scare helped revive Sanders’s fortunes. While he was still in the hospital, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called to offer her coveted endorsement, which brought fresh momentum and was central to a “Bernie Is Back” campaign.He dominated early voting rounds as Biden floundered. After Biden’s South Carolina primary triumph, other Democratic contenders dropped out, leaving Sanders the last rival standing. Then, after quitting, Sanders became a reliable team player, working hard to elect the Democratic nominee.Rabin-Havt says his book’s principal goal is not to dwell on why the senator lost. Still, that question lingers over the narrative. Rabin-Havt’s explanation, common among Sanders loyalists, is that the party establishment, aided by the mainstream media, rallied behind Biden to keep Sanders from winning the nomination. “The Democratic Party is a disorganized institution,” he writes, “but it would organize against Bernie Sanders in a way they had not against any other candidate — Democratic or Republican.”He rejects suggestions from some Democrats — including former President Obama, in a 2018 meeting with Sanders here recounted in fresh detail — that he would have had a better shot if he’d reached beyond his base or moderated his message. But if he had followed that advice, Rabin-Havt writes, Sanders would have become a different politician and lost core backers. There’s the rub: The uncompromising consistency that thrilled supporters and put Sanders within reach of the nomination was an obstacle to building a broader coalition to win it.The book ends with a glimpse of how the iconoclastic outsider now appreciates the satisfactions of being a Senate insider. Sanders had a big hand in shaping President Biden’s first major accomplishment — a pandemic-relief bill brimming with progressive policies.“We got something done here, didn’t we?” he told Rabin-Havt after the bill passed. “This is fun.” More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      In France, a Victory and a Warning

      by

      More from our inbox:Church Support of the ‘Big Lie’When Tragedy Strikes, Grandma and Grandpa Are ThereReturning to AustraliaRussian Disinformation, Then and NowHandwritten Archives, to Capture HistoryCampaign posters featuring Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, in the French town of Roye, where two out of three voters backed Ms. Le Pen.James Hill for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “In France, Macron Defeats Le Pen for Presidency” (front page, April 25):That the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen came as close as she did to defeating Emmanuel Macron in France is further confirmation that extremists are successfully normalizing autocrat-friendly nationalist messaging.Ms. Le Pen, a longtime sympathizer of President Vladimir Putin of Russia, said in her concession speech, “The ideas we stand for are reaching new heights,” Le Monde reported.As chilling as that sounds, she’s correct, and the world should pay closer attention. But for now, those in the West who embrace free thinking, democracy and even just a scintilla of globalism can breathe a very brief sigh of relief.Cody LyonBrooklynTo the Editor:My dear French friends, you may have won a battle by re-electing Emmanuel Macron, but you are losing the war. So long as the reach of the bigoted right wing grows, France is losing.When in the midst of a gunfight, and with the other side getting stronger, dodging one bullet is no reason to celebrate.Peter MailleLa Grande, Ore.To the Editor:Has anyone noticed that Marine Le Pen, the loser, has actually accepted the results of the election and conceded? What a novel idea!And Vive la France!Irene Bernstein-PechmèzeQueensTo the Editor:I recall an earlier election when another Le Pen made it to the second round. In 2002, Marine’s father, Jean-Marie, was crushed 82 percent to 18 percent by the conservative Jacques Chirac. Leftist voters did their republican duty, voting against those who would put an end to democracy itself.The French do not like Emmanuel Macron. But they remember fascism. Perhaps if Americans had such memories, they would better defend the democracy that they are losing, bit by bit, every day.Bob NelsonYuma, Ariz.Church Support of the ‘Big Lie’ Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “The Stolen-Election Falsehood Goes to Church” (front page, April 25):You report that some evangelical pastors are hosting events dedicated to Donald Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen and promoting the cause to their congregations.To the extent that such a charge is true, do these churches still retain any semblance of a religious exemption from federal and state taxes, which prohibits political campaign activity? Just wondering.Michael PeskoeMiami BeachTo the Editor:How do church leaders who preach from the new King James Version of the Bible — “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” John 8:32 — perpetuate a lie?Talk about cognitive dissonance.Harriet VinesChapel Hill, N.C.To the Editor:Of all the scary articles in The Times about Ukraine, Russia, wildfires, climate change, Marine Le Pen, Ron DeSantis and more, I found the one about evangelical pastors by far the scariest.Ellen SchafferPalm Coast, Fla.When Tragedy Strikes, Grandma and Grandpa Are ThereMia Scala, 6, hugs her grandfather Angelo Conti, 74, while waiting for a Girl Scouts meeting to start.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesTo the Editor:“When Parents Are Lost to Covid, Grandparents Step In,” by Paula Span (news article, April 14), not only recognizes the role that grandparents are playing in the wake of Covid, it also acknowledges that “extended family has always been the first line of defense in the wake of such tragedies.”For my book on the history of American grandmothers, many of the 75 women I interviewed told about a 1950s grandmother who stepped up — took the grandchildren into her home or went to live in the grandchild’s home — when things fell apart because of parents’ death, divorce or illness.None of the grandmothers had anticipated this refilling of their empty nests, all of them struggled with the responsibility, and all of their granddaughters-turned-grandmothers now look back with awe at what their grandmothers did for them.One notable change from then to now: Grandfathers in the 1950s were not active in their care the way older men are today, another example of how feminism has improved family life.Engagement with grandchildren is not just a delightful extra in family life, it is also a serious form of insurance. Should a tragedy mean that grandchildren must live with grandparents, that painful transition is eased if the elders and the kids have experience with one another aside from holidays and have built trust over time.No grandparent wants the custodial job, but every grandparent should consider time with grandchildren as an investment in their security.Victoria Bissell BrownHavertown, Pa.The writer, a retired professor of American history at Grinnell College, is working on a book titled “The Nana Project.”Returning to AustraliaFamilies reuniting at the Sydney International Airport.To the Editor:Re “A Post-Lockout Reunion of Yearning and Dread,” by Isabella Kwai (Sydney Dispatch, April 10):The last time I had been home to Australia to see my entire family was in May 2019. At one point, over Zoom, my sister told me that it was as if I had flown to the moon and never returned.The plane home in January was completely full of anxious expats and earnest American grandparents eager to see newly minted Aussie grandbabies. All the arrival hugs were tighter and longer than they had ever been. The smiles were wider and the welcomes longer — even from the custom officials! And maybe the accents were even broader!And … yes … if I could have bottled the dawn laughter from the troop of cheeky kookaburras camped outside my Brisbane window just days before I returned to the U.S., I would have.Patricia RyanWest Lafayette, Ind.Russian Disinformation, Then and NowTo the Editor:The state-sponsored disinformation spread to the Russian people is an old game. In the 1930s my father traveled to Russia. As was required, he had an Intourist guide with him at all times. As they became more friendly, she started to ask him about life in the U.S.“You live in New York,” she said. “Tell me about the skyscrapers that fall down.” He could not convince her that such things were not happening. She told him that all Russians knew about the frequently falling skyscrapers and was disappointed that he couldn’t be more candid with her about it.The acceptance of such nonsense appears to be embedded by a long history, though the current pernicious version is surprising in an era of greater access to outside information.Ty DillardSanta Fe, N.M.Handwritten Archives, to Capture HistoryTo the Editor:Re “Preserving a Couple’s ’60s Insights,” by Douglas Brinkley (Arts pages, April 19):Doris Kearns Goodwin sums up the special role of archives in the last lines of this excellent and informative article:“Oh, how I love old handwritten letters and diaries. I feel as if I’m looking over the shoulder of the writer. History comes alive!”How sad that in today’s world of computers and “no paper,” the progression from draft to final speech or report will no longer exist in many cases. The “delete” key has replaced crossing out, rewriting by hand and literally cutting and pasting.Some of us fear that using only the computer means that there will be no file of marked-up notes or previous drafts for historians to see and then give us that looking-over-the-shoulder feeling. That will keep history from coming alive.Sally DorstNew YorkThe writer is a retired magazine editor. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Merrick Garland Finds His Footing as Attorney General

      by

      During a recent swing through the South, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland chatted up participants in a police program in Georgia aimed at redirecting youth who had sold bottled water on interstate highways into less dangerous work. He announced funding to address policing problems like the use of excessive force. He talked about mental health support, an issue he has thought about since he saw firsthand how officers who responded to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing struggled to process the horror.For all of the attention on the Justice Department’s investigation into the Jan. 6 attack, the trip was focused on the everyday work of being the attorney general, fighting crime and serving as a steward of law enforcement. Over two days in Georgia and Louisiana, Mr. Garland, in interviews with The New York Times on his plane and later in Baton Rouge, would say only that the assault on the Capitol “completely wiped out” any doubts he had about taking the post.“I felt that this was exactly why I had agreed to be attorney general in the first place,” he said. “Jan. 6 is a date that showed what happens if the rule of law breaks down.”By most accounts, becoming attorney general was a tough adjustment for a former appeals judge who had last worked at the Justice Department in the late 1990s. But more than a year into his tenure, colleagues say that a cautious leader has found some footing, more a prosecutor now than a deliberator.In interviews, a dozen administration officials and federal prosecutors, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions, said Mr. Garland, 69, initially ran his office like a judge’s chambers, peppering even Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco and Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta with the kind of granular questions that clerks might expect while writing his opinions.But the slow pace that characterized Mr. Garland’s early months has somewhat quickened. Decisions that took weeks at the outset can now take a day. And with more top officials confirmed, he can be less directly involved in the department’s day-to-day work.Mr. Garland has said that the department must remain independent from improper influence if it is to deliver on its top priorities: to uphold the rule of law, keep the nation safe and protect civil rights.Mr. Garland and his chief of staff, Matt Klapper, in Atlanta. Career employees at the Justice Department say they no longer feel the political pressure they did during the Trump administration.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesHe has notched victories. Many career employees say they no longer feel pressure to satisfy blatantly political demands, as they did under the previous administration. The department created a unit dedicated to fighting domestic terrorism and charged important cybercrime cases. Prosecutors won high-profile convictions in the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black jogger, and George Floyd, a Black motorist.But in a significant setback, prosecutors failed to win convictions against four men accused of plotting to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. The Bureau of Prisons remains plagued by violence, sexual abuse and corruption. And Democrats still castigate Mr. Garland for not moving more aggressively to indict former President Donald J. Trump for trying to undo his election loss. Republican critics accuse him of using the department to improperly wade into culture wars, including fights over school curriculums and the pandemic response.A Challenging First YearSeated on a sofa in the U.S. attorney’s office in Baton Rouge, Mr. Garland detailed the chaos he encountered when he took the reins in March 2021. Colleagues said that if the typical transition between parties is like relay racers passing a baton, this was a runner searching for a stick dropped on the track.Trump administration officials who expected to spend their final weeks preparing briefing binders for the incoming administration instead parried false cries of voter fraud and absorbed the horror of the Capitol attack. Mr. Trump’s refusal to acknowledge his defeat shortened the transition process. The Biden team would not be up to speed on every issue that awaited them.The first order of business was the nine-week-old Jan. 6 investigation, which entailed a nationwide manhunt and hundreds of criminal cases.Mr. Garland and his top officials, Ms. Monaco and Ms. Gupta, issued policy memos, filed lawsuits and secured indictments related to federal executions, hate crimes, domestic extremism and voter suppression, among other concerns.Vanita Gupta, the associate attorney general, speaking with Mr. Garland in Baton Rouge. Mr. Garland initially ran the Justice Department in a deliberative style, but the pace has quickened.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesMs. Gupta scrutinized corporate mergers and initiated reviews of police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville, Ky. Ms. Monaco’s office, which oversees the Jan. 6 inquiry, eased tensions between prosecutors and officials on the case. She closed the federal prison in Manhattan to address subpar conditions, and is pushing for more Bureau of Prisons reforms.Soft-spoken and slight, Mr. Garland has an understated manner that makes him easy to underestimate, associates said. But they insisted that his questions were always probing, and that he seemed to remember every answer.Some aides said he was slow to shift the department away from postures that had hardened during the Trump era. He took four months to reaffirm a longstanding policy that strictly limits the president’s contact with the department and to curb the seizure of reporters’ records. The department sued Georgia three months after the state passed a restrictive voting law, frustrating the White House.Prosecutors were told over a year ago to expect a new memo allowing them to forgo harsh mandatory minimum sentences, such as those for nonviolent drug dealers who had sold crack rather than cocaine. They are still waiting.In a move that some aides believe reflected the unusually high level of detail he needed to feel prepared, Mr. Garland often dispatched Ms. Monaco to attend White House meetings in his place. This year, he has attended nearly all of them.Ms. Monaco’s office overcame hiccups, too. It did not play its traditional management role under its predecessor, and she had to ease information bottlenecks. Exceedingly wary about cybercrime, she used a pseudonymous email address. That precaution, normally taken by attorneys general, gave those outside her staff the impression that she was difficult to reach.“I’m delegating more,” Mr. Garland said in the interview. “It’s easier to deal with crises every day, and new decisions, if you’re not still working on the old ones.” With Covid risks easing, he has held more meetings of the kind he attended in Georgia and Louisiana, and has met in person more frequently with his leadership team.Mr. Garland meeting with local law enforcement officers at the Justice Department’s office in Atlanta. Mr. Garland has held more in-person meetings as Covid risks have eased.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesHe will not say when he intends to step down, but administration officials believe that he would willingly serve beyond the midterm election.Protecting the Rule of LawFor most of a 90-minute flight to Atlanta on a 12-seat government plane, Mr. Garland sat near the front, editing speeches, conferring with his chief of staff and juggling updates from Washington. In a quiet moment in the interview, he spoke with seeming relish about his prior life as a prosecutor. He recalled uncovering a State Department record that proved a witness had lied, and shining a flashlight behind a document to show a judge and jury that a defendant had doctored it with correction fluid.As a special assistant to Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti in 1979, Mr. Garland helped codify reforms that stemmed from President Nixon’s abuses of power. After a stint in private practice, he became a top department official under Attorney General Janet Reno. He supervised the investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing, that era’s most serious domestic terrorism attack, before joining the federal appeals court in Washington.Mr. Garland, then an associate deputy attorney general, speaking to the news media in 1995 about the trial of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber.Rick Bowmer/Associated PressMr. Biden asked Mr. Garland to lead the department the day before Mr. Trump’s supporters stormed Congress. At home on Jan. 6 writing his acceptance speech, Mr. Garland watched the attack unfold on television.“Failure to make clear by words and deed that our law is not the instrument of partisan purpose” would imperil the country, Mr. Garland said the next day, when his nomination was announced.The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 6Numerous inquiries. More

    • 150 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Kemp and Perdue Debate, Looking Back at 2020 and Ahead to Abrams

      by

      Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia and his Republican primary opponent, former Senator David Perdue, bickered over the previous election — and over who would be more likely to defeat Stacey Abrams in November. ATLANTA — Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia and former Senator David Perdue, a former ally who is challenging him in the Republican primary next month, met in an explosive first debate on Sunday night that was marked by a lengthy rehashing of the 2020 election’s outcome and testy attacks each other’s veracity.During the hourlong exchange, the candidates sparred over their conservative bona fides, a handful of policy issues popular on the right and who would ultimately be the stronger candidate against Stacey Abrams in November.Mr. Perdue, who was defeated in a runoff last year by Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, repeatedly echoed former President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 election had been “stolen and rigged” against the two of them, though multiple ballot recounts confirmed they had lost fair and square. Mr. Perdue, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump to challenge Mr. Kemp in the May 24 primary, assailed Mr. Kemp for refusing to call a special Georgia legislative session to try to overturn the election’s results.Mr. Perdue insisted he would still be a sitting United States senator if Mr. Kemp hadn’t “caved.”But when Mr. Perdue claimed that he had repeatedly asked Mr. Kemp to call such a special session, the governor pushed back forcefully, reminding voters of the many days he and his family had spent on Mr. Perdue’s campaign bus, trying in vain to help him win a second term. “Folks, he never asked me,” Mr. Kemp said. And when Mr. Perdue repeatedly accused the governor of lying, Mr. Kemp challenged him to produce witnesses to back up his claims.Each man portrayed the other unfavorably in light of 2020: Mr. Perdue said Mr. Kemp had betrayed Republican voters by failing to overturn the election, and Mr. Kemp pointed to Mr. Perdue’s loss to Mr. Ossoff as proof that he is too weak to defeat Ms. Abrams, the Democrat who narrowly lost to Mr. Kemp in 2018 and is making a second run for governor this year.Ms. Abrams’s candidacy loomed large over the entire evening, as both men underlined the danger they said she posed to Georgia if she wound up in the governor’s mansion. While Mr. Kemp holds a double-digit lead over Mr. Perdue in several polls, Mr. Perdue sought to remind voters of Mr. Kemp’s 1.4-percentage-point victory margin in 2018.“He barely beat Stacey Abrams in ’18, when I helped him secure President Trump’s endorsement, which he still today doesn’t think helped him at all,” Mr. Perdue said. The slugfest never let up, as a focus on Georgia policy issues in the debate’s second half-hour devolved into a fight over who was more authentically conservative, each candidate seeking to outflank the other from the right on education, public safety and jobs. Mr. Kemp doubled down on his support for a bill that prohibits teaching of “divisive concepts” on race and history, saying that Republicans in the state “passed this piece of legislation to make sure that our kids are not going to be indoctrinated in our schools,” and that curriculums should focus on “the facts, not somebody’s ideology.”But Mr. Perdue accused Mr. Kemp of abrogating his responsibility to protect students, parents and teachers alike. “They need to make sure that the woke mob’s not taking over the schools, and you’ve left them high and dry,” he said, asserting that the Atlanta schools were “teaching kids that voter ID is racist.”Answering a question about Latino voters, Mr. Perdue criticized Mr. Kemp’s record on immigration, recalling a 2018 campaign ad in which Mr. Kemp promised to use his own pickup truck to “round up illegals.” “Governor, what happened? Your pickup break down?” Mr. Perdue asked.Mr. Kemp said that the Covid-19 pandemic had intervened, saying that “picking up” people would only have helped spread infection in the state — and then reminded voters, for the umpteenth time, of Mr. Perdue’s defeat last year.“The fact is, if you hadn’t lost your race to Jon Ossoff, we wouldn’t have lost control of the Senate, and we wouldn’t have the disaster that we have in Washington right now,” Mr. Kemp said.A few clear-cut policy rifts did come into view over Georgia-specific issues.The two took opposite views of a new factory to produce electric trucks that is being built by Rivian Automotive in the state. Mr. Kemp exalted the project for the thousands of jobs it is expected to create, while Mr. Perdue cited an investment by the Democratic megadonor George Soros to dismiss Rivian as a “woke company,” saying that the project would redirect Georgians’ tax dollars into Mr. Soros’s pocket.Mr. Perdue attacked Mr. Kemp from several angles over rising crime in Atlanta, saying the governor had shrunk the size of the Georgia State Patrol and faulting him for failing to get behind an effort by some residents of Atlanta’s wealthy Buckhead neighborhood, alarmed about the surge in violent crime, to secede from the city. He accused the governor of staying out of the fray over the Buckhead secession movement for the sake of the “big company cronies downtown that are his big donors, that are desperate to not let that happen.”Mr. Kemp said he had raised troopers’ salaries, enhanced their training, created a crime suppression unit and deployed more troopers in metro Atlanta. And he pointed to his signing this month of a law allowing Georgians to carry concealed firearms without a permit.That was another way of fighting crime, he said.“The bad people already have the guns,” Mr. Kemp said. “We’re trying to give law-abiding citizens the ability to protect themselves, their family and their property.”Right to the end, both candidates were on message, and the message was largely a dim view of each other.In his closing, Mr. Perdue called Mr. Kemp a “weak governor trying to cover up a bad record.”Mr. Kemp, in his own summation, said Mr. Perdue was attacking his record in office “because he has none of his own, which is why he didn’t win his Senate race.” More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      A Crusade to Challenge the 2020 Election, Blessed by Church Leaders

      by

      Some evangelical pastors are hosting events dedicated to Trump’s election falsehoods and promoting the cause to their congregations.COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The 11 a.m. service at Church for All Nations, a large nondenominational evangelical church in Colorado’s second-largest city, began as such services usually do. The congregation of young families and older couples swayed and sang along to live music. Mark Cowart, the church’s senior pastor, delivered an update on a church mission project.Then Mr. Cowart turned the pulpit over to a guest speaker, William J. Federer.An evangelical commentator and one-time Republican congressional candidate, Mr. Federer led the congregation through an hourlong PowerPoint presentation based on his 2020 book, “Socialism — The Real History from Plato to the Present: How the Deep State Capitalizes on Crises to Consolidate Control.” Many congregants scribbled in the notebooks they had brought from home.“I believe God is pushing the world to a decision-making moment,” Mr. Federer said, building toward his conclusion. “We used to have national politicians that held back the floodgates of hell. The umbrella’s been ripped after Jan. 6, and now it’s raining down upon every one of us. We had politicians that were supposed to certify that — and instead they just accepted it. And, lo and behold, an anti-Christian spirit’s been released across the country and the world.”Evangelical churches have long been powerful vehicles for grass-roots activism and influence on the American right, mobilized around issues like abortion and gay marriage. Now, some of those churches have embraced a new cause: promoting Donald J. Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.In the 17 months since the presidential election, pastors at these churches have preached about fraudulent votes and vague claims of election meddling. They have opened their church doors to speakers promoting discredited theories about overturning President Joe Biden’s victory and lent a veneer of spiritual authority to activists who often wrap themselves in the language of Christian righteousness.For these church leaders, Trump’s narrative of the 2020 election has become a prominent strain in an apocalyptic vision of the left running amok.“What’s going on in our country right now with this recent election and the fraudulent nature of that?” Mr. Cowart, who did not respond to multiple requests for comment, asked in a sermon last year. “What is going on?”It’s difficult to measure the extent of churches’ engagement in the issue. Research suggests that a small minority of evangelical pastors bring politics to the pulpit. “I think the vast majority of pastors realize there is not a lot of utility to being very political,” said Ryan Burge, an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University and a Baptist pastor.The Church for All Nations in Colorado Springs. Stephen Speranza for The New York TimesStill, surveys show that the belief in a fraudulent election retains a firm hold on white evangelical churchgoers overall, Mr. Trump’s most loyal constituency in 2020. A poll released in November by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 60 percent of white evangelical respondents continued to believe that the election was stolen — a far higher share than other Christian groups of any race. That figure was roughly 40 percent for white Catholics, 19 percent for Hispanic Catholics and 18 percent for Black Protestants.Among evangelicals, “a high percentage seem to walk in lock step with Trump, the election conspiracies and the vigilante ‘taking back of America,’” said Rob Brendle, the lead pastor at Denver United Church, who recalled that when he criticized some Christians’ embrace of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in a sermon the Sunday after the riot, he lost about a hundred members of his congregation, which numbered around 1,500 before the pandemic.Rob Brendle, the lead pastor of Denver United Church, said that when he criticized the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol the Sunday after the riot, he lost about a hundred congregants.Kevin Moloney for the New York TimesHe thinks many fellow clergy may share that view. “I think the jury’s still out, but it’s not a fringe,” he said.Some of the national evangelical figures who supported Mr. Trump during his presidency and his 2020 campaign, like Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church in Dallas, separated themselves from his insistence that the election was stolen. Franklin Graham, the son of evangelist Billy Graham and the president of Samaritan’s Purse, equivocated. Writing on Facebook the month after the election, Mr. Graham acknowledged Mr. Biden’s victory but said that when Mr. Trump claimed the election was rigged against him, “I tend to believe him.”Others embraced Mr. Trump’s claims or argued for the preservation of his rule in spite of his loss. Shortly after the election was called for Mr. Biden, Paula White, a Florida televangelist who served as the White House faith adviser during Mr. Trump’s presidency, led a prayer service in which she and others called upon God to overturn the election.Pastor Greg Locke of Global Vision Bible Church holding a service in his church’s parking lot in 2020.Brett Carlsen/Getty ImagesGreg Locke, a preacher who leads the Global Vision Bible Church in Mount Juliet, Tenn., spoke alongside Alex Jones of Infowars at a “Rally for Revival” demonstration in Washington the night before the Jan. 6 attack. Mr. Locke offered a prayer for the Proud Boys, the violent far-right group, and for Enrique Tarrio, the organization’s leader who has since been indicted on charges of conspiracy for his role in the Capitol insurrection.Mr. Locke — whose congregation is relatively small, but who claims a social media audience in the millions — is one of more than a dozen pastors who have appeared onstage at the ReAwaken America Tour: a traveling roadshow that has featured far-right Republican politicians, anti-vaccine activists, election conspiracists and Trumpworld personalities, including Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a central figure in the effort to overturn the election in late 2020.Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn spoke at a ReAwaken America Tour event in Phoenix in January.Mark Peterson/ReduxThe event has drawn crowds of thousands of Trump supporters in nine states in the past year. All but one of the tour’s stops have been hosted by megachurches, and the tour is sponsored by a charismatic Christian media company.The performances wrap the narrative of election fraud in a megachurch atmosphere, complete with worship music and prayer, and have drawn criticism from some Christian clergy. When the tour came to a church in San Marcos, Calif., this month, a local Methodist minister denounced it as an “irreligious abomination” in an opinion essay.Smaller churches, meanwhile, have proven an important support network for the individual activists who now travel the country promoting the narrative of a stolen election.“Churches and bars, baby. That’s where it was happening in 1776,” wrote Douglas Frank, a high school math and science teacher in Ohio whose widely debunked analyses of the 2020 results have been influential with election conspiracists, in a Telegram post last month. So far this year, more than a third of the speeches he has promoted on his social media accounts have been hosted by churches or religious groups.Douglas Frank, a high school math teacher from Ohio with ties to former President Trump, presented his theories of election fraud to about 100 people in the Missouri State Capitol in January.David Carson/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, via Associated PressSeth Keshel, a former Army captain and military intelligence analyst who worked alongside Mr. Flynn in the weeks immediately after the election, is a popular draw with the same crowds. He attributed the prevalence of churches on the circuit to the instincts of local organizers.“Most conservatives are evangelicals and naturally think ‘church’ as a venue,” he wrote in an email. “There are some pastors more fired up about elections and liberty but not all.”Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5Signs of progress. More

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Boss Trump, ‘the Sorest Loser of All Time’

      by

      More from our inbox:Does Our Patent System Need to Be Reformed?Former President Donald J. Trump took the stage at a Save America rally in Michigan earlier this month.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “The Mar-a-Lago Machine: Trump as a Modern-Day Party Boss” (front page, April 18):This disturbing and prescient article makes for painful reading. Everything that the hopeful pundits of 2020 predicted — that Donald Trump would fade away after his defeat, that he would run out of money, that his legal troubles would overwhelm him, that he would be exposed as a cheap, huckstering demagogue — has proved wrong.Instead he has emerged stronger than ever, with his legal troubles melting away, money pouring in and vast numbers of Americans fervently supporting him.Since 2020, those same hopeful pundits have been predicting that Mr. Trump won’t run in 2024 and that other Republicans somehow have a chance. But of course he will; why wouldn’t he? And when he does, he will be hard to beat.There is a kind of awful inevitability about Mr. Trump and his gang of Mar-a-Lago sycophants. It will be a dark day for our country if he once again becomes president.Tim ShawCambridge, Mass.To the Editor:“Trump’s Allies Keep Up Fight to Nullify Vote” (front page, April 19) is disturbing. But this never-ending effort to reverse the 2020 election keeps reminding everyone that Donald Trump is a loser — the sorest loser of all time.And one thing we know that Donald Trump detests is a loser.So as the months go by and turn into years, as the court cases and investigations proceed, Mr. Trump continues to remind us he is a loser. No matter how much he and his friends try, while defying facts, logic and the law, no matter how many tantrums he throws or lies he tells, he not only reminds us he’s a loser. He also reminds himself.Rick BeardsleyBoca Raton, Fla.Does Our Patent System Need to Be Reformed? Illustration by Rebecca Chew/The New York Times; photographs by Yevgen Romanenko, moi/amanaimagesRF, Westend61 and Marie Hickman, via Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Save America’s Patent System” (editorial, Sunday Review, April 17):I commend The Times’s editorial board for making a compelling case for reform of our patent system. I have an incurable cancer. The drugs keeping me alive — which carry a list price of more than $900,000 annually — will one day stop working, so I care deeply about innovation and new drug development. But drugs don’t work if people can’t afford them.When a drug company makes a truly inventive discovery, it should be rewarded with a patent and receive a fair return. But the drug industry would have you believe that every patent granted is an indicator of innovative achievement. That couldn’t be further from the truth.In fact, the industry’s anti-competitive practices actually inhibit innovation. Neither new patents nor new drugs necessarily equal real innovation. Worse, in too many cases manufacturers are gaming America’s patent system to prevent competition and block affordable generic and biosimilar drugs from coming to market.We can — and should — bring down monopoly prices by empowering Medicare to negotiate, but we must also reform our patent system to address the drivers that lead to unjustified monopolies in the first place.David MitchellBethesda, Md.The writer is the founder of Patients for Affordable Drugs Now.To the Editor:America’s biopharmaceutical research companies support solutions that will lower health care costs, while some of the policies outlined in the editorial would simply harm patients.Biopharmaceutical innovation is difficult and risky, with only 12 percent of medicines in the pipeline entering clinical trials ever achieving F.D.A. approval. Patents play an essential role in encouraging innovation by helping fuel the investments that result in new treatments and cures.Patents do not establish a monopoly on treating a condition. Instead, they propel progress. A new patent on a product provides protection only for the invention it protects — it does not provide additional exclusivity for underlying products. Contrary to the editorial board’s assertion, the Patent and Trademark Office is not issuing sham patents.Drugmakers should continue researching ways their medicines can help tackle different diseases, treat new patient populations, like children, and make lifesaving treatments, like chemotherapy, more tolerable for patients. Progress is a good thing, and it should be encouraged, not punished.The Restoring the America Invents Act would benefit big patent infringers, like many big technology companies, and make the legal landscape more uncertain for researchers focused on bringing forward new medical advances for patients.Anne McDonald PritchettWashingtonThe writer is senior vice president, policy, research and membership, for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.To the Editor:It shouldn’t be controversial to expect patented inventions to be new and useful, but it is. That’s because a handful of big companies treat the Patent Office like an A.T.M.: a reliable source of cash for the cost of a small fee. Because the Patent Office depends on those fees, it treats companies applying for protection like customers to be served instead of applicants to be evaluated. What about members of the public who depend on patented technology to earn a living, get an education, or access medical care? We get ignored.The editorial board is absolutely right: The patent system needs to change. But those who benefit from it most will fight tooth and nail to protect it. We need the new director of the Patent Office to prioritize the public’s interest and the patent system’s purpose — promoting scientific and technological progress — no matter how loud the cries of private companies accustomed to five-star service.Alex MossSouth Pasadena, Calif.The writer is executive director of the Public Interest Patent Law Institute.To the Editor:Your editorial wrongly targets our innovative insulin drug, Glargine, as an example of using patents to create a monopoly, ignoring that it has had biosimilar competition since 2016. Focusing on the patents for our delivery device is misleading because they have not prevented the development and sale of biosimilar Glargine products, let alone those with other non-infringing delivery methods.To make its case, the editorial board tied patents to the cost of medicine, which too many Americans struggle to afford. But Sanofi offers a comprehensive insulin safety net, giving uninsured patients ready access to free and low-cost insulin, while commercially insured patients all qualify for co-payment assistance that lowers out-of-pocket costs for most patients to $10 or less. And every Sanofi insulin is included in a Medicare program that caps costs for seniors.We are wary of imperiling a patent system that has put the U.S. first in biomedical innovation and generic drug penetration. We believe that the board would benefit readers by telling the complete story.Adam GluckWashingtonThe writer is senior vice president and head of U.S. corporate affairs at Sanofi. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Filing Provides New Details on Trump White House Planning for Jan. 6

      by

      Testimony disclosed by the House committee investigating the attack showed that Mark Meadows and Freedom Caucus members discussed directing marchers to the Capitol as Congress certified the election results.WASHINGTON — Before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Trump White House officials and members of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus strategized about a plan to direct thousands of angry marchers to the building, according to newly released testimony obtained by the House committee investigating the riot and former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.On a planning call that included Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff; Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer; Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio; and other Freedom Caucus members, the group discussed the idea of encouraging supporters to march to the Capitol, according to one witness’s account.The idea was endorsed by Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, who now leads the Freedom Caucus, according to testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Mr. Meadows, and no one on the call spoke out against the idea.“I don’t think there’s a participant on the call that had necessarily discouraged the idea,” Ms. Hutchinson told the committee’s investigators.The nearly two-mile march from the president’s “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse to the Capitol, where parts of the crowd became a violent mob, has become a focus of both the House committee and the Justice Department as they investigate who was responsible for the violence.Mr. Meadows and members of the Freedom Caucus, who were deeply involved in Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election, have condemned the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and defended their role in spreading the lie of a stolen election.Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony and other materials disclosed by the committee in a 248-page court filing on Friday added new details and texture to what is publicly known about the discussions in Mr. Trump’s inner circle and among his allies in the weeks preceding the Jan. 6 assault.Read the Jan. 6 Committee’s Filing in Its Lawsuit With Mark MeadowsThe committee alleged that Mark Meadows, the final chief of staff for President Donald J. Trump, was told that an effort to try to overturn the 2020 election using so-called alternate electors were not “legally sound” and that Jan. 6 could turn violent, but he pushed forward with plans to hold a rally in Washington anyway.Read Document 248 pagesThe filing is part of the committee’s effort to seek the dismissal of a lawsuit brought against it by Mr. Meadows. It disclosed testimony that Mr. Meadows was told that plans to try to overturn the 2020 election using so-called alternate electors were not “legally sound” and that the events of Jan. 6 could turn violent. Even so, he pushed forward with the rally that led to the march on the Capitol, according to the filing.The filing also disclosed new details of Mr. Meadows’s involvement in attempts to pressure Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, over Mr. Trump’s loss there.At rallies in Washington in November and December of 2020, Mr. Trump’s supporters did not march to the Capitol and mostly refrained from violence. But on Jan. 6, Mr. Trump encouraged a crowd of thousands to march to the building, telling them: “You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength.” He did so after the White House’s chief of operations had told Mr. Meadows of “intel reports saying that there could potentially be violence on the 6th,” according to the filing.Two rally organizers, Dustin Stockton and his fiancée, Jennifer L. Lawrence, have also provided the committee with evidence that they were concerned that a march to the Capitol on Jan. 6 would mean “possible danger” and that Mr. Stockton’s “urgent concerns” were escalated to Mr. Meadows, according to the committee.In his book, “The Chief’s Chief,” Mr. Meadows said Mr. Trump “ad-libbed a line that no one had seen before” when he told the crowd to march, adding that the president “knew as well as anyone that we wouldn’t organize a trip like that on such short notice.”Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony contradicts those statements.She said Mr. Meadows had said “in casual conversation”: “Oh, we’re going to have this big rally. People are talking about it on social media. They’re going to go up to the Capitol.”Police officers resisted protesters outside the Capitol on Jan. 6.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesA mob of protesters breaching the building.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesAnd, speaking about the planning call involving Mr. Meadows and Freedom Caucus members, a committee investigator asked her whether Mr. Perry supported “the idea of sending people to the Capitol on January the 6th.”“He did,” Ms. Hutchinson replied.A spokesman for Mr. Perry, who has refused to speak to the committee, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The Justice Department and the committee both have been investigating the question of how the crowd moved from the Ellipse to the Capitol.Committee investigators have, for instance, obtained draft copies of Mr. Trump’s speech. This month, they pressed its author, Stephen Miller, a former top White House adviser, on whether Mr. Trump’s repeated use of the word “we” had been an effort to direct his supporters to join him in moving on the Capitol to stop Congress from certifying his defeat.Rally planners, such as the prominent “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander, also had a hand in getting people to move from the Ellipse to the Capitol. Mr. Alexander, at the request of aides to Mr. Trump, left the speech before it was over and marched near the head of a crowd that was moving toward the building.Joining Mr. Alexander that day was Alex Jones, the founder of the conspiracy-driven media outlet Infowars, who encouraged the crowd by shouting about 1776.On Wednesday, Mr. Jones revealed that he had recently asked the Justice Department for a deal under which he would grant a formal interview to the government about his role in the events of Jan. 6 in exchange for not being prosecuted.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5Signs of progress. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Meadows Was Warned Jan. 6 Could Turn Violent, House Panel Says

      by

      The committee investigating the attack also said in a filing that the former White House chief of staff proceeded with a plan for “alternate electors” despite being told it wasn’t legally sound.WASHINGTON — Mark Meadows, the final chief of staff for President Donald J. Trump, was told that plans to try to overturn the 2020 election using so-called alternate electors were not “legally sound” and that the events of Jan. 6 could turn violent, but he pushed forward with a rally anyway, the House committee investigating the Capitol attack alleged in a Friday night court filing.In the 248-page filing, lawyers for the committee highlighted the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, a White House aide in Mr. Meadows’s office, who revealed new details about the events that led to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress by a pro-Trump mob.“I know that there were concerns brought forward to Mr. Meadows,” Ms. Hutchinson told investigators at a deposition on March 7, adding: “I know that people had brought information forward to him that had indicated that there could be violence on the 6th. But, again, I’m not sure if he — what he did with that information.”Ms. Hutchinson — who testified twice before the panel in closed-door interviews in February and March — said Anthony M. Ornato, the former White House chief of operations, told Mr. Meadows that “we had intel reports saying that there could potentially be violence on the 6th. And Mr. Meadows said: All right. Let’s talk about it.”“But despite this and other warnings, President Trump urged the attendees at the January 6th rally to march to the Capitol to ‘take back your country,’” Douglas N. Letter, the general counsel of the House, wrote in the filing.Read the Jan. 6 Committee’s Filing in Its Lawsuit With Mark MeadowsThe committee alleged that Mark Meadows, the final chief of staff for President Donald J. Trump, was told that an effort to try to overturn the 2020 election using so-called alternate electors were not “legally sound” and that Jan. 6 could turn violent, but he pushed forward with plans to hold a rally in Washington anyway.Read Document 248 pagesThe committee put forward the evidence Friday to try to persuade a federal judge in Washington to throw out Mr. Meadows’s suit against the panel. Mr. Meadows is trying to block the committee’s subpoenas, which he called “overly broad and unduly burdensome,” including one sent to Verizon for his phone and text data.In response, the committee laid out numerous ways its lawyers say Mr. Meadows was deeply involved in the effort to the overturn the 2020 election. Those included his work furthering a scheme to direct certain battleground states to put forward pro-Trump electors even though their voters had chosen Joseph R. Biden Jr. and a pressure campaign in Georgia and other states to try to change the election outcome.Citing Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony, the panel said it had evidence “that Mr. Meadows and certain congressmen were advised by White House counsel that efforts to generate false certificates did not comply with the law.”Ms. Hutchinson told investigators that she heard lawyers from the White House Counsel’s Office say the plan for alternate electors was not “legally sound,” according to the filing.“The select committee’s filing today urges the court to reject Mark Meadows’s baseless claims and put an end to his obstruction of our investigation,” the leaders of the committee, Representatives Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, said in a statement. “Mr. Meadows is hiding behind broad claims of executive privilege even though much of the information we’re seeking couldn’t possibly be covered by privilege and courts have rejected similar claims because the committee’s interest in getting to the truth is so compelling.”A lawyer for Mr. Meadows did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The committee issued a subpoena in November to Ms. Hutchinson, who served as special assistant to the president for legislative affairs and was at the White House on Jan. 6 and with Mr. Trump when he spoke at the “Stop the Steal” rally that day. She also reached out directly to Georgia officials about Mr. Meadows’s trip to that state.She was present for key meetings and discussions in the White House in the buildup to Jan. 6.Ms. Hutchinson also told the panel that top White House lawyers had threatened to resign over extreme plans to seize voting machines, and that had helped persuade Mr. Meadows to back off that plan. “Once it became clear that there would be mass resignations, including lawyers in the White House Counsel’s Office, including some of the staff that Mr. Meadows worked closely with, you know, I know that did factor into his thinking,” she said.And she said members of Congress had urged a crowd to amass at the Capitol on Jan. 6.One investigator asked her whether Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, who is now the head of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, supported “the idea of sending people to the Capitol on January the 6th.”“He did,” Ms. Hutchinson replied.The panel also emphasized how personally involved Mr. Meadows was in attempts to pressure Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, over Mr. Trump’s loss there — so much so that Mr. Raffensperger ducked and ignored his phone calls, viewing them as improper.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5Signs of progress. More