Presidential Election of 2020

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      Jan. 6 Panel Subpoenas Trump's Lawyers

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      The House committee issued six subpoenas to people who worked on legal aspects of the former president’s bid to invalidate the 2020 election.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol on Tuesday subpoenaed a half-dozen lawyers and other allies of former President Donald J. Trump who promoted false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 election and worked to overturn his loss.Those who were sent subpoenas for documents and testimony participated in a range of attempts to invalidate Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, including filing lawsuits, pressuring local election officials to change the results and drafting proposed executive orders to seize voting machines.“The select committee is seeking information about attempts to disrupt or delay the certification of electoral votes and any efforts to corruptly change the outcome of the 2020 election,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said in a statement. “The six individuals we’ve subpoenaed today all have knowledge related to those matters and will help the select committee better understand all the various strategies employed to potentially affect the outcome of the election.”More than 550 witnesses have testified before the committee, which is tasked with writing an authoritative report about the violence of a year ago that left more than 150 police officers injured and resulted in several deaths.The committee also intends to make recommendations to prevent such an episode from happening again, and is considering making criminal referrals should its investigators uncover any crimes not already charged by the Justice Department.The subpoenas issued on Tuesday direct the witnesses to sit for interviews in March.Among those summoned was Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who the panel said “promoted false claims of election fraud to members of Congress” and participated in a call in which Mr. Trump tried to pressure Georgia’s secretary of state to “‘find’ enough votes to reverse his loss there.”Ms. Mitchell was also in contact with Mr. Trump on Jan. 6 and the days before, the committee said it had learned.Kenneth Chesebro, another lawyer who was subpoenaed on Tuesday, promoted legal theories within the Trump campaign supporting the use of slates of bogus electors in states the former president lost. Mr. Chesebro told the Trump campaign his efforts would “‘bolster’ the argument for delaying the electoral certification” and make the public believe the election “‘was likely rigged, and stolen by Biden and Harris, who were not legitimately elected,’” the committee wrote in a letter accompanying Mr. Chesebro’s subpoena.The committee also issued a subpoena to Christina Bobb, who works for One America News Network and was reportedly involved in efforts to draft an executive order for Mr. Trump that would have directed federal agencies to seize voting machines in numerous states. Ms. Bobb was present in the “war room” of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, in the Willard Hotel on Jan. 6, the committee said.Ms. Bobb is said to be writing a book about Jan. 6 and interviewed Mr. Trump for the project, meaning she would most likely have notes that the committee could obtain through a subpoena.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3The first trial. More

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      Jan. 6 Panel Subpoenas Lawyers Who Worked to Overturn Trump’s Loss

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      The House committee issued six subpoenas to people who worked on legal aspects of the former president’s bid to invalidate the 2020 election.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol on Tuesday subpoenaed a half-dozen lawyers and other allies of former President Donald J. Trump who promoted false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 election and worked to overturn his loss.Those who were sent subpoenas for documents and testimony participated in a range of attempts to invalidate Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, including filing lawsuits, pressuring local election officials to change the results and drafting proposed executive orders to seize voting machines.“The select committee is seeking information about attempts to disrupt or delay the certification of electoral votes and any efforts to corruptly change the outcome of the 2020 election,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said in a statement. “The six individuals we’ve subpoenaed today all have knowledge related to those matters and will help the select committee better understand all the various strategies employed to potentially affect the outcome of the election.”More than 550 witnesses have testified before the committee, which is tasked with writing an authoritative report about the violence of a year ago that left more than 150 police officers injured and resulted in several deaths.The committee also intends to make recommendations to prevent such an episode from happening again, and is considering making criminal referrals should its investigators uncover any crimes not already charged by the Justice Department.The subpoenas issued on Tuesday direct the witnesses to sit for interviews in March.Among those summoned was Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who the panel said promoted false claims of election fraud to members of Congress and participated in a call in which Mr. Trump tried to pressure Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes to reverse his loss there.Ms. Mitchell was also in contact with Mr. Trump on Jan. 6 and the days prior, the committee said it had learned.Kenneth Chesebro, another lawyer who was subpoenaed on Tuesday, promoted legal theories within the Trump campaign supporting the use of slates of bogus electors in states the former president lost. Mr. Chesebro told the Trump campaign his efforts would “‘bolster’ the argument for delaying the electoral certification” and make the public believe the election “‘was likely rigged, and stolen by Biden and Harris, who were not legitimately elected,’” the committee wrote in a letter accompanying Mr. Chesebro’s subpoena.The committee also issued a subpoena to Christina Bobb, who works for One America News Network and was reportedly involved in efforts to draft an executive order for Mr. Trump that would have directed federal agencies to seize voting machines in numerous states. Ms. Bobb was present in the “war room” of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, in the Willard Hotel on Jan. 6, the committee said.Ms. Bobb is said to be writing a book about Jan. 6 and interviewed Mr. Trump for the project, meaning she would most likely have notes that the committee could obtain through a subpoena.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3The first trial. More

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      Barr Rebukes Trump as ‘Off the Rails’ in New Memoir

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      William P. Barr’s memoir of his time as attorney general under George H.W. Bush and then again under Donald J. Trump defends his more recent leadership of the Justice Department.WASHINGTON — Former Attorney General William P. Barr writes in a new memoir that former President Donald J. Trump’s “self-indulgence and lack of self-control” cost him the 2020 election and says “the absurd lengths to which he took his ‘stolen election’ claim led to the rioting on Capitol Hill.”In the book, “One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General,” Mr. Barr also urges his fellow Republicans to pick someone else as the party’s nominee for the 2024 election, calling the prospect of another presidential run by Mr. Trump “dismaying.”“Donald Trump has shown he has neither the temperament nor persuasive powers to provide the kind of positive leadership that is needed,” Mr. Barr writes.The memoir — an account of Mr. Barr’s time as attorney general under President George H.W. Bush and then again under Mr. Trump — defends his own actions in the Trump administration that led to sharp criticism of a Justice Department setting aside its independence to bend to White House pressure.Mr. Barr was long considered a close ally of Mr. Trump. But the two fell out toward the end of the Trump administration, when Mr. Barr refused to go along with Mr. Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election had been stolen.In a statement last June, Mr. Trump denounced his former attorney general, calling him a “swamp creature” and a “RINO” — meaning Republican in Name Only — who “was afraid, weak and frankly, now that I see what he is saying, pathetic.”For his part, Mr. Barr portrays Mr. Trump as a president who — despite sometimes displaying “the menacing mannerisms” of a strongman ruler as a “schtick” to project an image of strength — had operated within guardrails set up by his advisers and achieved many conservative policy goals. But Mr. Trump “lost his grip” after the election, he writes.“He stopped listening to his advisers, became manic and unreasonable, and was off the rails,” Mr. Barr writes. “He surrounded himself with sycophants, including many whack jobs from outside the government, who fed him a steady diet of comforting but unsupported conspiracy theories.”Throughout the book, Mr. Barr scorns the news media, accusing them of “corruption” and “active support for progressive ideology.” The political left, he writes, became radicalized during President Barack Obama’s second term. He compares its support for social justice issues to “the same kind of revolutionary and totalitarian ideas that propelled the French Revolution, the Communists of the Russian Revolution and the fascists of 20th-century Europe.”Mr. Barr also denounces the inquiry by the F.B.I. and then the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, into links between Russia and Trump campaign aides in 2016. He writes that “the matter that really required investigation” was “how did the phony Russiagate scandal get going, and why did the F.B.I. leadership handle the matter in such an inexplicable and heavy-handed way?”Mr. Barr rejects as “drivel” the criticism that his summary of the special counsel’s report that he issued before the report became public was distorted in a way that favored Mr. Trump. Mr. Barr insists that his description — including his declaration that Mr. Trump did not commit obstruction of justice — was “entirely accurate.”In defending that conclusion, Mr. Barr writes that it was a “simple fact that the president never did anything to interfere with the special counsel’s investigation.”But his book does not address any of the specific incidents that Mr. Mueller’s report laid out as raising potential obstruction-of-justice concerns, such as the fact that Mr. Trump dangled a pardon at his former campaign chairman, Paul J. Manafort, while urging Mr. Manafort not to cooperate with the inquiry.In a chapter titled “Upholding Fairness, Even for Rascals,” Mr. Barr defends his handling of two other cases arising from the Mueller investigation. Mr. Barr writes that it was “reasonable” for him to overrule line prosecutors and seek a more lenient sentence for Mr. Trump’s ally Roger J. Stone Jr.And addressing his decision to drop the prosecution of Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, for lying to the F.B.I. — even though Mr. Flynn had already pleaded guilty — he writes that the evidence was insufficient, the F.B.I.’s handling of the case had been “an abuse of power” and Mr. Mueller’s charges against him were not “fair.”As he did while in office, Mr. Barr laments that Mr. Trump’s public comments about the Justice Department undermined his ability to do his job.“Even though I was basing decisions on what I thought was right under the law and facts, if my decisions ended up the same as the president’s expressed opinion, it made it easier to attack my actions as politically motivated,” he writes.Mr. Barr also describes resisting Mr. Trump’s bidding in some cases. He declined to charge the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey Jr. for allegedly leaking classified information; insisted that the administration had run out of time to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 census; and rejected Mr. Trump’s “bad” idea that he could use an executive order to end birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants.Lawyers at the White House and the Justice Department had to talk Mr. Trump out of those ideas, which could be “bruising” and amounted to “eating grenades,” Mr. Barr writes.On the scandal that led to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment, in which Mr. Trump withheld aid to Ukraine as leverage to try to get Ukraine’s president to announce an investigation into Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Barr was scathing.He calls it “another mess — this one self-inflicted and the result of abject stupidity,” a “harebrained gambit” and “idiotic beyond belief.” But while Mr. Barr describes the conversation Mr. Trump had with Ukraine’s president on the topic as “unseemly and injudicious,” he maintains that it did not rise to a “criminal offense.”Similarly, Mr. Barr writes that he did not think Mr. Trump’s actions before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — which he had condemned in a statement the day after as “orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress” and “a betrayal of his office and his supporters” — met the legal standard for the crime of incitement, even though they were “wrong.”The book opens with a Dec. 1, 2020, meeting with Mr. Trump hours after Mr. Barr gave an interview contradicting the president’s claims of a stolen election, saying the Justice Department had “not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”Mr. Trump was furious, he writes, accusing Mr. Barr of “pulling the rug out from under me” and saying he must “hate Trump.” After Mr. Barr says he explained why claims of various fraud were unfounded, he offered to resign and Mr. Trump slammed the table and yelled “accepted!” Mr. Trump reversed himself as Mr. Barr left the White House, but Mr. Barr stepped down before the end of the month.His book expands on that theme, going through specific “fact-free claims of fraud” that Mr. Trump has put forward and explaining why the Justice Department found them baseless. He lists several reasons, for example, that claims about purportedly hacked Dominion voting machines were “absolute nonsense” and “meaningless twaddle.”“The election was not ‘stolen,’” Mr. Barr writes. “Trump lost it.” More

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      At CPAC, Trump Misleads About Biden, a Russian Pipeline and Gas Prices

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      The former president made inaccurate claims about his border wall, the Biden administration and a Russian pipeline, among other topics.Former President Donald J. Trump repeated familiar boasts and grievances in a keynote speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday.Mr. Trump repeatedly invoked the lie that the 2020 election was “rigged” and mounted exaggerated attacks on President Biden. Even as he condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an “atrocity” and praised the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as a “brave man,” he repeated his misleading claim that the Obama administration had merely provided Ukraine with “blankets.”Here’s a fact-check.What Mr. Trump Said“The wall will be quickly completed. We’ll build the wall and complete the wall in three weeks. It took two and half years on the wall, two and half years just to win all the litigation, over 11 lawsuits that they threw at us. And we have it just about finished, and I said they can’t be serious. They don’t want to close up the little loops.”False. During his campaign in 2016, Mr. Trump promised to construct a 1,000-mile-long border wall that would be paid for by Mexico. By the time he left office, his administration had constructed 453 miles of border wall, most of which replaced or reinforced existing barriers. In places where no barriers previously existed, the administration built a total of 47 miles of new primary wall.Mr. Trump’s vow that he would have been able to complete the wall within three weeks also does not track with the initial construction pace. Construction of replacement barriers in Calexico, Calif., began in February 2018, the first border wall project under Mr. Trump. Construction of the first new section of wall in the Rio Grande Valley began in November 2019. That amounts to 12.9 miles of replacement wall and 3.3 miles of new wall per month.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.What Mr. Trump Said“Just one year ago, we had the most secure border in U.S. history, record low gas prices.”False. When Mr. Trump left office in January 2021, the national average price of a gallon of gasoline for that month was $2.42. That is not a record low. Gas prices fell to $2.21 in January 2015 under former President Barack Obama, $1.13 under former President George W. Bush and $0.96 under former President Bill Clinton.What Mr. Trump Said“I’m the one who ended his pipeline. He said you’re killing me with the pipeline. Nobody else ended his pipeline. Biden came in. He approved it.”This is misleading. Mr. Trump was referring to the status of a natural gas pipeline between Russia and Germany under his administration and that of President Biden. In fact, American presidents — and most European countries other than Germany and France — have consistently opposed the project, but they have limited say in whether the pipeline is built.Mr. Trump signed a law imposing sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in December 2019, prompting a suspension in construction. But by then, most of the pipeline had already been built, with 2,100 kilometers laid and 300 kilometers remaining. Construction resumed a year later in 2020.The current White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, described Nord Stream 2 as a “bad deal” that divides Europe and leaves Ukraine and Central Europe vulnerable to Russian manipulation. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the Biden administration’s opposition was “unwavering.”But the State Department nonetheless lifted sanctions on the company building the pipeline in May 2021. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, this might be because “the administration’s ability to prevent the pipeline from becoming operational is limited” while sanctions “could jeopardize U.S.-German and U.S.-European cooperation in other areas, including countering Russian aggression.”Mr. Biden issued new sanctions on the pipeline this week after Germany announced that it would suspend the certification of the pipeline in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.What Mr. Trump Said“The reason we’ve got soaring gas prices is because Biden has shut down American energy, canceled our oil and gas leases just two days ago. Two days ago, they canceled many oil and gas leases because of the environment.”This is misleading. The Biden administration indefinitely halted new federal oil and gas leases and permits in response to a court ruling. It did not revoke existing leases. A federal judge had blocked the way the administration was calculating the cost of climate change, leading the administration to pause regulatory decisions that relied on the metric. More

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      ‘I’ll Stand on the Side of Russia’: Pro-Putin Sentiment Spreads Online

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      After marinating in conspiracy theories and Donald J. Trump’s Russia stance, some online discourse about Vladimir Putin has grown more complimentary.The day before Russia invaded Ukraine, former President Donald J. Trump called the wartime strategy of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia “pretty smart.” His remarks were posted on YouTube, Twitter and the messaging app Telegram, where they were viewed more than 1.3 million times.Right-wing commentators including Candace Owens, Stew Peters and Joe Oltmann also jumped into the fray online with posts that were favorable to Mr. Putin and that rationalized his actions against Ukraine. “I’ll stand on the side of Russia right now,” Mr. Oltmann, a conservative podcaster, said on his show this week.And in Telegram groups like The Patriot Voice and Facebook groups including Texas for Donald Trump 2020, members criticized President Biden’s handling of the conflict and expressed support for Russia, with some saying they trusted Mr. Putin more than Mr. Biden.The online conversations reflect how pro-Russia sentiment has increasingly penetrated Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, right-wing podcasts, messaging apps like Telegram and some conservative media. As Russia attacked Ukraine this week, those views spread, infusing the online discourse over the war with sympathy — and even approval — for the aggressor.The positive Russia comments are an extension of the culture wars and grievance politics that have animated the right in the United States in the past few years. In some of these circles, Mr. Putin carries a strongman appeal, viewed as someone who gets his way and does not let political correctness stop him.“Putin embodies the strength that Trump pretended to have,” said Emerson T. Brooking, a resident senior fellow for the Atlantic Council who studies digital platforms. “For these individuals, Putin’s actions aren’t a tragedy — they’re a fantasy fulfilled.” Support for Mr. Putin and Russia is now being expressed online in a jumble of facts, observations and opinions, sometimes entwined with lies. In recent days, commenters have complimented Mr. Putin and falsely accused NATO of violating nonexistent territorial agreements with Russia, which they said justified the Russian president’s declaration of war on Ukraine, according to a review of posts by The New York Times.Others have spread convoluted conspiracy theories about the war that are tinged with a pro-Russia sheen. In one popular lie circulating online, Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump are working together on the war. Another falsehood involves the idea that the war is about taking down a cabal of global elites over sex trafficking.In all, pro-Russian narratives on English-language social media, cable TV, and print and online outlets soared 2,580 percent in the past week compared to the first week of February, according to an analysis by the media insights company Zignal Labs. Those mentions cropped up 5,740 times in the past week, up from 214 in the first week of February, Zignal said.The narratives have flourished in dozens of Telegram channels, Facebook groups and pages and thousands of tweets, according to The Times’s review. Some of the Telegram channels have more than 160,000 subscribers, while the Facebook groups and pages have up to 1.9 million followers.(It is difficult to be precise on the scope of pro-Russian narratives on social media and online forums because bots and organized campaigns make them difficult to track.)Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square, in Kyiv this week. The square was the center of Ukraine’s 2014 revolution.Brendan Hoffman for The New York TimesThe pro-Russia sentiment is a stark departure from during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was viewed by many Americans as a foe. In recent years, that attitude shifted, partly helped along by interference from Russia. Before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Kremlin-backed groups used social networks like Facebook to inflame American voters, creating more divisions and resistance to political correctness.After Mr. Trump was elected, he often appeared favorable to — and even admiring of — Mr. Putin. That seeded a more positive view of Mr. Putin among Mr. Trump’s supporters, misinformation researchers said.“Putin has invested heavily in sowing discord” and found an ally in Mr. Trump, said Melissa Ryan, the chief executive of Card Strategies, a consulting firm that researches disinformation. “Anyone who studies disinformation or the far right has seen the influence of Putin’s investment take hold.”At the same time, conspiracy theories spread online that deeply polarized Americans. One was the QAnon movement, which falsely posits that Democrats are Satan-worshiping child traffickers who are part of an elite cabal trying to control the world.The Russia-Ukraine war is now being viewed by some Americans through the lens of conspiracy theories, misinformation researchers said. Roughly 41 million Americans believe in the QAnon conspiracy theory, according to a survey released on Thursday from the Public Religion Research Institute. This week, some QAnon followers said online that Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was simply the next phase in a global war against the sex traffickers.Lisa Kaplan, the founder of Alethea Group, a company that helps fight online misinformation, said the pro-Russia statements were potentially harmful because it could “further legitimize false or misleading claims” about the Ukraine conflict “in the eyes of the American people.”Not all online discourse is pro-Russia, and Mr. Putin’s actions have been condemned by conservative social media users, mainstream commentators and Republican politicians, even as some have criticized how Mr. Biden has handled the conflict.“Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is reckless and evil,” Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, said in a statement on Twitter on Thursday.On Tuesday, Representative Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois who was censured recently by the Republican Party for participating in the committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, criticized House Republicans for attacking Mr. Biden, tweeting that it “feeds into Putin’s narrative.”Understand Russia’s Attack on UkraineCard 1 of 7What is at the root of this invasion? 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      Progressive Jessica Cisneros Challenges Rep. Cuellar in Texas

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      LAREDO, Texas — Two years ago, a 26-year-old immigration lawyer named Jessica Cisneros came within 3.6 percentage points of pushing out the longtime Democratic congressman here, running aggressively on the progressive vision of the national liberals who had bankrolled her insurgent campaign.This time around, at the ripe age of 28, she’s scorching the already brown earth of South Texas, attacking Representative Henry Cuellar not so much for his conservative policy positions, but for being what she describes as a corrupt politician — rich, out of touch with his poor constituents, and quite possibly a felon.“We’re going after him,” Ms. Cisneros said at a picnic table outside the taqueria next to her campaign headquarters, with the confidence of a seasoned political street fighter. “Everything we’ve been doing has been very intentional.”Texas will kick off the 2022 primary season on Tuesday, launching what promises to be a grueling series of contests that could pull both Democrats and Republicans toward their political extremes, while testing the grips that President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump have over their respective parties.In South Texas, another test is developing over the power of identity politics and whether liberals can answer the fears that conservatives are stoking about “open borders,” “critical race theory” and rising crime. In the primary campaign for Texas’ 28th district, it is Mr. Cuellar’s experience versus Ms. Cisneros’s storytelling: the powerful and connected versus the underdogs, the community, the “pueblo.”There have been many changes here since Ms. Cisneros first challenged Mr. Cuellar, but the most significant may have been the shock for both parties of seeing Hispanic voters lurch toward Mr. Trump in 2020. Zapata County, just south of here, is heavily Latino; Hillary Clinton won it by more than 30 points in 2016, then it went to Mr. Trump by about five points. Ms. Clinton’s 60-point margin in Starr County, which is 96 percent Latino, shriveled to a five-point advantage for Mr. Biden.In response, Ms. Cisneros is running a campaign against the 17-year incumbent that could easily have been engineered by a Republican. She still favors Medicare for All, a $15 minimum wage, more liberal immigration policies and abortion rights, but those have not been her focus.Instead, she has played up her biography and hit Mr. Cuellar hard on rising prices. She has portrayed him as a Washington insider, greasing his pockets with money from big corporations, and presented herself as embodying the struggling community he left behind.“My medicines cost more, insurance more,” intones an older Latina in one of Ms. Cisneros’s most recent ads, as the woman sweeps the stoop of her modest house and laments that nothing has changed in Laredo. “Now it’s food and gas, but we don’t make more. If you ask me, Henry Cuellar has been in Washington too long.”The mysterious raid last month by the F.B.I. of Mr. Cuellar’s Laredo home and campaign office presented a late, potentially devastating twist that seemed to confirm all that Ms. Cisneros had been saying of the congressman — and she pounced on it.Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a fellow progressive, campaigned recently for congressional candidate Jessica Cisneros in San Antonio.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesJustice Democrats, the progressive insurgent group that has greatly bolstered her campaign, has piled on with a decidedly nonideological advertisement blanketing South Texas that accuses Mr. Cuellar of hitching rides on donors’ private jets, fixing his BMW with campaign cash and drawing that raid by the F.B.I.Progressives have been on a losing streak of late. In August, a hero of the left, Nina Turner, lost a special election in Cleveland to a candidate backed by establishment Democrats. Representative Marie Newman of Illinois, who in 2020 defeated one of the last House Democrats who opposed abortion, is under an ethics investigation, accused of enticing a primary rival out of the race two years ago with a promised job in her congressional office. Democratic leaders have struggled to distance themselves from the sloganeering of “Defund the police,” while Republicans have demonized progressive views on race and gender.A Guide to the 2022 U.S. Midterm ElectionsIn the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering.Governors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.Like Ms. Cisneros, liberal organizations are trying to adjust.“We are definitely aware of the Trump swing,” said Waleed Shahid, a spokesman and strategist for Justice Democrats, which helped Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Cori Bush of Missouri and Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts defeat veteran Democratic incumbents over the past four years.Mr. Cuellar and his supporters have greeted the onslaught with disbelief. The veteran Democrat may be the last in the House who opposes abortion, and he has taken a tougher line on immigration, border security and law enforcement than many of his colleagues. But that is not what the campaign seems to be about.“They really don’t talk much about what they want to do, except in general terms,” Mr. Cuellar said. Instead, he said, “it’s attack, attack, attack, attack, attack, attack.”He said in January in a video statement on Twitter that the ongoing investigation — which appears linked to a broader inquiry into the political influence of Azerbaijan — will show “no wrongdoing on my part.”Supporters of Ms. Cisneros — and some Democratic thinkers — see in her shift a model for the party in the Trump era of personal politics. Republicans, and to some extent Mr. Cuellar, have created a frightening narrative that feels more urgent than any policy debates in Washington. That story contends that decent, hard-working people are playing by the rules, but strangers are pounding at the door, and neighbors are grabbing all they can from the government.Ian Haney López, a public law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied the Hispanic shift in South Texas, said Ms. Cisneros is using identity to try to galvanize support without alienating the white voters who remain the majority nationwide — though not in the 28th district of Texas.Since the rise of Trumpism, with its appeals to white grievance and fears, he said, Democrats have taken two approaches, both of which have failed. The progressive wing has called out Mr. Trump and his supporters as racist, and urged voters to band together to fight white racism.“That identity story casts the majority of Democratic voters as part of the problem,” he said. In addition, 2020 proved that tactic was also not helpful to the Democratic cause with people of color, especially Latinos. “You’re not going to get them to sign on to a story that says you’re on the margins, you’re widely hated, and your children’s lives will be truncated by racism.”Jessica Cisneros hands out campaign flyers in Laredo, Texas. She is supported by the same progressive group that helped Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Cori Bush of Missouri and Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts defeat veteran Democratic incumbents.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesMore centrist Democrats, recognizing the perils of that approach, have eschewed identity politics altogether and stuck with dry policy arguments — a strategy Mr. Lopez called “nonsense on stilts.”In Ms. Cisneros’s campaign, he sees an identity-first approach, in which she casually toggles between English and Spanish, speaks of identifying with South Texas and its struggles, contrasts that to the outsiders in Washington, then pivots to issues like health care and reproductive rights.After the Trump shake-up, the region could be ready for a new approach, said Cecilia Ballí, an anthropologist and researcher at the University of Houston who did extensive interviews in South Texas after Mr. Trump’s 2020 gains. For decades, the region has been run by insular political families like Mr. Cuellar’s. His brother is the sheriff of Laredo’s Webb County; his sister is a former municipal judge and tax collector there.Ms. Ballí said that with no real competition between the parties, Democrats have won loyalty with rallies and free food, but no emphasis on issues or retail politics. Mr. Trump’s brand of personality-driven, outsider bombast broke through to many disillusioned Hispanic voters.Ms. Cisneros agreed: “They’ve been voting Democrat for such a long time, and obviously, the poverty rate hasn’t gone down, the uninsurance rate hasn’t gone down. People still have to work two or three jobs just to make ends meet.” she said. Add the pandemic and a shutdown of border crossings that crippled Laredo commerce, “and I think that just led to the perfect storm.”Mr. Cuellar has weapons of his own: an unrivaled network of backers in the political establishment and a seat on the House Appropriations Committee, from which he has plied the sprawling district with federal largess, from $45,520,000 in transportation projects for Atascosa County in the district’s north to $15,142,000 for cattle health in Zapata County in the south.Then there are the fears that a Cisneros victory March 1 would hand newly confident Republicans the seat. Ms. Cisneros insists that she is the answer to the Republican rise, an outsider voice to give hope to the region’s frustrations. Redistricting changes actually made the 28th slightly more Democratic, with more voters from San Antonio’s Bexar County, a potential boon to Ms. Cisneros’s chances — on Tuesday and in November. The district shifted from 76.9 percent Hispanic to 75.3 percent, but a slight rise in Anglo voters could actually help Ms. Cisneros if those new voters are San Antonio liberals.But Mr. Cuellar beat his Republican challenger handily in 2020, with 58 percent of the vote, while Mr. Biden eked out 51.5 percent. Those Trump-Cuellar voters could move to the Republican House candidate that emerges from the seven-candidate primary.“If Henry loses, then they have won this seat,” Anna Cavazos Ramirez, a former Webb County attorney, said of the Republicans.The negative tone of Ms. Cisneros’s campaign has turned off some voters, who speculated that the raid last month — still unexplained — was somehow the work of her supporters. Pastor Tim Rowley, who ministers at one of Laredo’s largest evangelical congregations, Grace Bible Church, said the campaign had left him saddened.“Whether you’re Democrat or Republican, rather than getting up and fully debating the issues, it just seems to be a smear campaign,” he said, suggesting he would likely vote for Mr. Cuellar because “this has to stop.”Miguel Sanchez, 35, was not so quick to dismiss what he called “that incident,” when F.B.I. agents were seen carrying items from Mr. Cuellar’s Laredo home. Mr. Sanchez had come to a rally at Texas A&M International University for Beto O’Rourke, the Democrat running for Texas governor, but the longtime Cuellar supporter was giving the House primary a lot of thought.“Cisneros, she seems to be a breath of fresh air,” he said, adding, “It’s been a long time since we’ve had a grassroots-type Democrat.” As for the incumbent, Ms. Cisneros’s message has gotten through.“I don’t know,” Mr. Sanchez said, shaking his head. “We don’t need politicians like that in Washington.” More

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      Ivanka Trump in Talks With Jan. 6 Panel About Being Interviewed

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      Former President Donald J. Trump’s eldest daughter has yet to commit to appearing, but investigators regard her as an important witness to what he was doing and saying during the riot.WASHINGTON — Ivanka Trump, former President Donald J. Trump’s eldest daughter who served as one of his senior advisers, is in talks with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol about the possibility of sitting for an interview with the panel, according to two people familiar with the discussions.It was not immediately clear whether the negotiations, which aides described as preliminary, would result in Ms. Trump providing substantive information to the inquiry or whether they were simply a stalling tactic, as some committee aides fear. But it was the latest example of the panel trying to reach into the former president’s inner circle to ascertain what he was doing and saying as rioters stormed the Capitol in his name.Ms. Trump was one of several aides who tried and failed to persuade Mr. Trump to call off the violence that ultimately injured more than 150 police officers and sent lawmakers and the vice president, Mike Pence, fleeing for their lives.Ms. Trump’s lawyers have been in talks with the committee since January, when the panel sent her a letter requesting that she give voluntary testimony, according to a person familiar with the discussions.She has yet to agree on a date when she might talk with the committee’s investigators, and the panel has made no threat of an imminent subpoena, the people familiar with the discussions said. Those close to Ms. Trump said she had no intention of going down the road taken by her father’s ally Stephen K. Bannon, who refused to cooperate with the committee and then was indicted on contempt of Congress charges.“Ivanka Trump is in discussions with the committee to voluntarily appear for an interview,” a spokeswoman for Ms. Trump confirmed in a statement on Wednesday.Mr. Trump has not requested that his daughter defy the committee’s requests, as he has done with his other former top aides. And Ms. Trump would be unlikely to take any step that Mr. Trump did not know about and approve of, people familiar with her thinking said.Instead, the former president has portrayed his adult children as victims of an investigation that he has dismissed as illegitimate.The committee has emphasized that its questions would be limited to events directly related to the attack on the Capitol.Kenny Holston for The New York Times“It’s a very unfair situation for my children,” Mr. Trump told The Washington Examiner last month. “Very, very unfair.”Ms. Trump’s private discussions with the committee come as lawyers for the panel are also in talks with another potentially key witness: Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, who helped lead the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.During those discussions, Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer has made clear to the committee that the former New York mayor does not intend to provide information against Mr. Trump, under the argument that it would violate attorney-client privilege and Mr. Trump’s claims of executive privilege, but he is considering providing information about his dealings with members of Congress, according to a person familiar with the talks.As the Capitol was under siege, both Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump called lawmakers in an attempt to delay the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.The committee thus far has treated Ms. Trump with deference, seeking only her voluntary cooperation, insisting that its members respect her privacy and emphasizing that its questions would be limited to events directly related to the Jan. 6 attack.That is in part because members of the panel view her as a central witness in their inquiry and worry about a public backlash if it is seen as too aggressive with the former president’s family members. The committee has been reluctant to use its subpoena power against members of Mr. Trump’s family, the news media and members of Congress.The panel has already obtained some testimony about Ms. Trump’s interactions with her father concerning the Jan. 6 attack and the events that led to the violence.In a Jan. 20 letter to Ms. Trump, the committee said it had heard from Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general who was Mr. Pence’s national security adviser, about Mr. Trump’s refusal to condemn the violence as the mob engulfed the Capitol, despite White House officials — including Ms. Trump, at least twice — urging him to do so.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3Ivanka Trump. More

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      The Ginni Thomas Question

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      We have a Times investigation of Ginni and Clarence Thomas — as well as the latest news from Ukraine.Early in the Reagan administration, several Christian conservative leaders founded a group called the Council for National Policy. It soon turned into what my colleague David Kirkpatrick has described as “a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country.” One of its main functions was introducing political activists to wealthy donors who could finance their work.After Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, the group’s political arm, known as C.N.P. Action, sprang into action. It encouraged its members to spread stories about “election irregularities and issues” in five swing states that Joe Biden had won narrowly. The goal was to persuade Republican state legislators to adopt Trump’s false claims about election fraud — and then award their states’ electoral votes to him, overturning Biden’s victory.One vocal proponent of the effort was a C.N.P. board member who had spent decades in conservative politics. In the lead-up to the Jan. 6 rally at the Capitol, she reportedly mediated between feuding factions so that they would work together to plan it. On the day of the rally, she posted a message on Facebook: “GOD BLESS EACH OF YOU STANDING UP or PRAYING!”This board member’s name is Ginni Thomas, and she is married to Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving justice on the Supreme Court. Today, The Times Magazine has published an investigation of Ginni Thomas’s work and its connections to her husband, written by Danny Hakim and Jo Becker.I recognize that conflict-of-interest questions involving the work of spouses can be difficult to resolve. On the one hand, people generally deserve the right to have their own careers, separate from their spouses’. On the other hand, the privilege of being a top government official seems to call for a higher standard of neutrality than most jobs would.But I don’t think you need to resolve that debate to be concerned about the Thomases’ recent actions. You simply need to acknowledge this: The spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice played an active role in an effort to overturn the result of a presidential election, hand victory to the loser and unravel American democracy.That Supreme Court justice, in turn, seemed to endorse the effort. When Trump’s attempt to undo the election’s outcome came before the Supreme Court, six of the nine justices ruled against him. But Thomas was one of three justices who sided with Trump and, his dissent echoed the arguments of C.N.P. Action, as Danny and Jo explain. Thomas effectively argued for giving partisan state legislators more control over elections and their outcomes.Roberts vs. ThomasThe Times Magazine story has more details, including:After the Jan. 6 rally turned into a violent attack on the Capitol, C.N.P. advised its members to defend the rioters. And Thomas herself signed a letter criticizing the House committee investigating the attack. The investigation, the letter said, “brings disrespect to our country’s rule of law” and “legal harassment to private citizens who have done nothing wrong.” (Ginni Thomas also made baseless accusations of election fraud in 2018, The Washington Post has reported.)The Thomases have used his position as a justice to advance her causes as an operative. During the Trump presidency, White House aides were surprised when Justice Thomas brought an uninvited guest — his wife — to a scheduled lunch with the president.I also recommend a recent New Yorker article on the couple, by Jane Mayer. It notes that the Supreme Court has exempted itself from some conflict-of-interest rules that apply to all other judges. In reporting the story, Mayer uncovered previously unknown payments to Ginni Thomas from conservative activists — including a group involved in a case before the Supreme Court.The result, Mayer told NPR, is “the appearance of a conflict of interest that undermines the public confidence that the court is ruling in favor of justice rather than in favor of a justice’s pocketbook.”I’m especially struck that the Thomases have been willing to mix Supreme Court cases with both their own finances and partisan politics at a time when the justices seem so worried about the court’s image.Several justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, have recently given speeches insisting that the justices are neutral arbiters of the law rather than partisan figures. Justice Stephen Breyer has argued that the court’s authority depends on “a trust that the court is guided by legal principle, not politics,” and Justice Amy Coney Barrett has said, “This court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks.”Justice Thomas has made a version of this argument himself, saying that a justice is not “like a politician” who makes a decision based on “personal preference.” His actions send a different message, though. They seem to acknowledge that the court is indeed a political body.THE LATEST NEWSUkraine-RussiaUkrainian soldiers at the front.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesPresident Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops into two separatist regions of Ukraine after recognizing the territories’ independence.In a fiery speech, Putin laid claim to Ukraine as a country “created by Russia.” History suggests otherwise.The U.S. and its allies condemned Russia at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council.President Volodymyr Zelensky told the people of Ukraine to stay calm. “We are on our own land,” he said. “We are not afraid of anything or anyone.”President Biden made three critical decisions about how to handle Russia’s provocations.Why would a war in Ukraine be different from most other modern wars? Yesterday’s Morning newsletter explained.The VirusCommuters in London this month.Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockPrime Minister Boris Johnson lifted all restrictions in England and announced an end to most free testing.Studies suggest that one booster shot is enough to protect most people from severe illness for an extended period.Neil Cavuto, a Fox News host who is immunocompromised, said that he had been hospitalized with Covid and that “had I not been vaccinated at all, I wouldn’t be here.”Big tech companies are betting that offices are still the future.Mask wearing at a national park in Rwanda helped protect great apes.Other Big StoriesEquipment at a safe injection site in New York.David Dee Delgado for The New York TimesA Biden administration plan to reduce drug deaths includes clean-needle exchanges, reviving a decades-old fight with conservatives.Colombia decriminalized abortion. Mexico and Argentina recently made similar moves.Japan’s bid to label gold mines as World Heritage sites has stoked tensions with South Korea, evoking memories from Japan’s imperial past.Horse racing officials overturned the outcome of the 2021 Kentucky Derby because the winner, Medina Spirit, failed a drug test.The Beijing Olympics had the smallest prime-time audience of any Winter Games.OpinionsUkraine’s comic-turned-president is in over his head, Olga Rudenko argues.This is Putin’s war. But the U.S. and NATO aren’t entirely innocent, Thomas Friedman writes.These women don’t want it all. In a Times Opinion focus group, they say they want better.MORNING READSHank weighs 500 pounds.Bear LeagueHank the Tank: An “exceptionally large” bear keeps breaking into California houses.Psychology and the Good Life: A happiness professor says anxiety is destroying her students.Corner Office: At the Sierra Club, a focus on race, gender and the environment, too.A Times classic: Is that dress white and gold, or blue and black?Advice from Wirecutter: Protect against hearing loss.Lives Lived: Dr. Paul Farmer made it his life mission to bring quality health care to poor people in Haiti and Rwanda. He died at 62.ARTS AND IDEAS Christopher Simpson for The New York TimesNew ways to bakeBaking is a science: Measure ingredients carefully, mix them together the right way and it should turn out as planned. As in all sciences, though, experimentation is key — sometimes doing things the wrong way can yield exciting results.A new feature from NYT Cooking presents 24 innovative baking recipes. Did you know that 7Up can replace baking soda and baking powder? Or that dunking a tray of freshly cooked brownies into an ice bath can make them rich and fudgy?For more — including a mango pie, Earl Grey cookies and a single-bowl chocolate cake — open the collection of recipes.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookAndrew Scrivani for The New York TimesSalmon burgers are best when the center stays the color of salmon.What to WatchHere’s what’s fact and what’s fiction in HBO’s “The Gilded Age.”TheaterAmber Gray is saying goodbye to Persephone, the “Hadestown” character she took from Off Broadway to London to Broadway.Late NightSeth Meyers discussed Donald Trump’s social media site.Now Time to PlayThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was childlike. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Diner on “Gilmore Girls” (five letters).If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — DavidP.S. The Times won two George Polk Awards for investigations, one about the assassination of Haiti’s president and the other about U.S. airstrikes.Here’s today’s front page.“The Daily” is about Russia.Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More