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      How Trump Kept Control of the G.O.P. After Jan. 6

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      Only weeks after instigating the Capitol riot, Donald Trump was back in command of the Republican Party.Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the political news in Washington and across the nation. We’re your hosts, Blake and Leah. Today, we have a guest item from our colleague Jeremy W. Peters, adapted from his forthcoming book, “Insurgency: How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever Wanted.” It will be published on Feb. 8.‘But the people like me the best, by far’Six weeks after the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, Donald Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, conducted a survey of Republicans that looked at how well liked the former president was among several distinct groups of voters within the party.It was the first time Fabrizio had done a detailed breakdown of the G.O.P. electorate since 2007, when he identified an emerging segment he called “Dennis Miller Republicans,” after the comedian who prides himself on being brash and politically incorrect. The growing sense of cultural isolation and anger among these Americans — conservatives, independents and former Democrats — shaped the contours of what would become the Trump movement.A veteran G.O.P. pollster who has worked on presidential campaigns going back to Patrick J. Buchanan’s first White House bid in 1992, Fabrizio saw how thoroughly Trump had remade the G.O.P. in his image — and how enduring his popularity remained, even after the attack on the seat of American democracy.The people who described themselves as the most committed Republicans were also the most likely to say they were committed to Trump, Fabrizio found in his post-Jan. 6 survey. Feelings about the former president, he explained in his analysis, were so intertwined with the understanding many voters had about what it meant to be a strong Republican that “Trumpism and party fidelity” were becoming one and the same.Trump hits bottomIn the immediate aftermath of Jan. 6, Trump’s enduring appeal was not so apparent. A Pew Research poll taken a few days after the attack showed his approval rating reaching the lowest point of his presidency — just 29 percent. Senior Republicans had spent the previous four years carefully avoiding direct conflict with Trump. Now, they felt a need to denounce him.Kevin McCarthy, the House G.O.P. leader, urged his colleagues to support a resolution to censure Trump for inciting the violence. And in a speech on Jan. 13, the day Trump was impeached for the second time, McCarthy was unambiguous about where he believed the blame fell. “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters,” he said.Even former Vice President Mike Pence, who on Jan. 6 was hustled out of the Senate chamber by Secret Service agents who were concerned he was a target, was angry enough to fume privately to a Republican senator, “After all the things I’ve done for him.”‘One day in January’The breach didn’t last long. And burying the memory of what happened on Jan. 6 — which Pence downplayed recently as “one day in January” — has become a necessity to maintaining power and relevance in today’s G.O.P.One year after that day in January, polls show that most Republicans see little need to re-examine — or even acknowledge — what happened. Around three-quarters of them still view Trump favorably, or roughly the same as when Fabrizio conducted his poll shortly after Jan. 6. And there is no surer sign that the Republican Party remains the party of Trump than the fact that there remains no obvious or able challenger to him in sight.McCarthy was among the first to change tack, visiting Trump’s Palm Beach estate in late January. After the two men posed for a photo, a Trump spokesperson released a statement announcing that the two men had agreed to work together to reclaim the House majority.“President Trump’s popularity has never been stronger than it is today, and his endorsement means more than perhaps any endorsement at any time,” the statement noted. McCarthy has since tried to derail the congressional commission investigating the attacks.No remorseNo one seems more intent on proving how damaging it is politically for a Republican to question Trump’s revisionist accounts of what happened in the 2020 election and on Jan. 6 than Trump himself.In an interview at Mar-a-Lago a few weeks after the attack, he suggested that Pence had jeopardized his political future by not heeding his demand to interfere with the counting of the Electoral College votes in Congress that day.“There was no downside,” Trump said. “So Mike could have done that. And I wish he did. I think it would have been much better for the country. I also think it would have been better for Mike.”He expressed little interest in discussing what harm might have befallen Pence, his beseechingly loyal lieutenant of four years, as rioters marauded through the halls of Congress calling for his execution. Their threats weren’t real, he insisted. “I think it was an expression. I don’t think they would have ever thought of doing it,” he said.As Republicans at first tried to dispel the idea that Trump’s dominance over the party would continue once he left office, many of them sounded like Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who said in a television interview a year ago that the G.O.P. belonged to no single person but to its voters — the people.Trump, however, offered a revealing clarification to Scott’s comment: “But the people like me the best, by far.”A former U.S. Capitol Police officer holding his inauguration badge.Philip Montgomery for The New York TimesWhat to read tonightFor The New York Times Magazine, Susan Dominus and Luke Broadwater interviewed more than 20 Capitol Police officers and their families about their emotional and physical scars after the Jan. 6 riot. Officers who have since left the department “said the failures of Jan. 6 were the most egregious of a series of management crises and errors.”Broadwater and Alan Feuer have written a preview of what the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attacks is planning, and Broadwater explained what the panel can actually accomplish.Pro-Trump groups are raising money and holding events that “seem intended to reinforce the former president’s grip on the Republican Party and its donors,” Kenneth P. Vogel and Shane Goldmacher report.Time is running out for New York’s bipartisan redistricting commission to draw new congressional and state legislative maps, which makes it increasingly likely that Democratic supermajorities in the Legislature will have the final word instead, Nicholas Fandos writes.The New York Times asked parents about child care during the pandemic, and Maggie Astor shared a handful of responses.reply allWhat you want to knowWe asked what you wanted to read in 2022, and readers of On Politics certainly delivered.Our inbox was full of your questions about voting access and your personal experiences with the pandemic, not to mention requests to learn more about individual political figures and international politics.We’ve bookmarked these ideas for future newsletters, but in the meantime we noted a real sense of anxiety about polarization and the survival of democratic institutions. A few examples below:“How do we fix this? Did folks in 1850 ask the same question? How do you stop a tidal wave? And yet there is still drivers ed and wrestling tournaments and Xmas and college applications and the new iPhone.” — Amy Vansen, Michigan“We’ve lived through a lot of political crises but this is one mess we would hope not to leave behind for our children and grandchildren to deal with.” — Jaime McBrady, Medellín, Colombia“When I read in today’s story ‘just as election season begins in earnest,’ I cursed. I am very tired of hearing everything related to the election prospects of the parties so far ahead of the event.” — Keith Johnson, SeattleOne more thing…Senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat who lives in Richmond, was among hundreds of drivers stranded in traffic on I-95 after an unusually severe winter storm hit the Washington, D.C. area.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      How to Stop Trump and Prevent Another Jan. 6

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      On Christmas morning, I woke up early and flipped on CNN, where I found the newscaster toggling among three news stories — two really depressing ones and an amazingly uplifting one.The first depressing story was the rapid spread of the Omicron variant. The other was the looming anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection. Both the threat from the virus and the distorted beliefs about the attack on the Capitol were being fueled by crackpot conspiracy theories circulated by Facebook, Fox News and Republican politicians.But then there it was — sandwiched between these two disturbing tales — a remarkable story of U.S. and global collaboration to reach a new scientific frontier.It was the launch at 7:20 a.m. Christmas Day of the James Webb Space Telescope. According to NASA, “thousands of scientists, engineers and technicians” — from 306 universities, national labs and companies, primarily in the U.S., Canada and Europe — contributed “to design, build, test, integrate, launch and operate Webb.”JM Guillon/ESAThank you, Santa! What a gift to remind us that a level of trust to do big, hard things together is still alive on planet Earth. By operating from deep in space, Smithsonian magazine noted, “Webb will help scientists understand how early galaxies formed and grew, detect possible signatures of life on other planets, watch the birth of stars, study black holes from a different angle and likely discover unexpected truths.”I love that phrase — unexpected truths. We have launched a space telescope that can peer far into the universe to discover — with joy — unexpected truths.Alas, though, my joy is tempered by those two other stories, by the fact that here on Earth, in America, one of our two national parties and its media allies have chosen instead to celebrate and propagate alternative facts.This struggle between those seeking unexpected truths — which is what made us great as a nation — and those worshiping alternative facts — which will destroy us as a nation — is THE story on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurgency, and for the coming year. Many people, particularly in the American business community, are vastly underestimating the danger to our constitutional order if this struggle ends badly.If the majority of G.O.P. lawmakers continue to bow to the most politically pernicious “alternative fact” — that the 2020 election was a fraud that justifies empowering Republican legislatures to override the will of voters and remove Republican and Democratic election supervisors who helped save our democracy last time by calling the election fairly — then America isn’t just in trouble. It is headed for what scientists call “an extinction-level event.”Only it won’t be a comet hurtling past the Webb telescope from deep space that destroys our democracy, as in the new movie “Don’t Look Up.”No, no — it will be an unraveling from the ground up, as our country, for the first time, is unable to carry out a peaceful transfer of power to a legitimately elected president. Because if Donald Trump and his flock are able in 2024 to execute a procedural coup like they attempted on Jan. 6, 2021, Democrats will not just say, “Ah shucks, we’ll try harder next time.” They will take to the streets.Right now, though, too many Republicans are telling themselves and the rest of us: “Don’t look up! Don’t pay attention to what is unfolding in plain sight with Trump & Company. Trump won’t be the G.O.P.’s candidate in 2024.”Who will save us?God bless Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the two Republican House members participating on the Jan. 6 investigation committee. But they are not enough. Kinzinger is retiring and the G.O.P. leadership, on Trump’s orders, is trying to launch Cheney into deep space.I think our last best hope is the leadership of the U.S. business community, specifically the Business Roundtable, led by General Motors C.E.O. Mary Barra, and the Business Council, led by Microsoft C.E.O. Satya Nadella. Together those two groups represent the roughly 200 most powerful companies in America, with 20 million employees. Although formally nonpartisan, they lean center-right — but the old center-right, the one that believed in the rule of law, free markets, majority rule, science and the sanctity of our elections and constitutional processes.Collectively, they are the only responsible force left with real leverage on Trump and the Republican lawmakers doing his bidding. They need to persuade their members — now — not to donate a penny more to any local, state or national candidate who has voted to dismantle the police or dismantle the Constitution.Yes, that’s false equivalency. Nothing is as big as the Trump cult’s threat to our constitutional order. But it’s still relevant. For a lot of Americans, watching a smash-and-grab gang ransack their local mall and violent crime jump — and then seeing the far-left trying to delegitimize, defund or dismantle their police — is just as frightening as those trying to dismantle their Constitution on the Capitol mall.Joseph Prezioso/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesI believe there are many Americans in the center-left and center-right who vigorously oppose both, and they think it’s a disgrace when progressives tell them not to worry about the first or when Trumpers tell them not to worry about the second.When you take both seriously, many more people will listen to you on both. Individually, in their hometowns — like mine, Minneapolis — business leaders have effectively pushed back on dismantling the police. Now it is time for America’s business leaders to just as forcefully push back on the Trump Republicans trying to dismantle the Constitution.Why should they risk alienating pro-Trump lawmakers who soon may control both the House and the Senate? Besides love of country?Let me put it crassly: Civil wars are not good for business. I lived inside one in Lebanon for four years. Corporate America shouldn’t be lulled by 2021’s profits, because once a country’s institutions, laws, norms and unstated redlines are breached — and there is no more truth, only versions, and no more trust, only polarization — getting them back is almost impossible.Can’t happen here? It sure can.Rick Wilson, a longtime G.O.P. strategist opposed to Trump, recently described to The Washington Post what will happen if the campaign by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and other Trump cultists succeeds to get more Big Lie promoters elected in 2022 — and the G.O.P. takes the House or Senate or both: “We’re looking at a nihilistic Mad Max hellscape. It will be all about the show of 2024 to bring Donald Trump back into power.” He added, “They will impeach Biden, they will impeach Harris, they will kill everything.”So what will big business do? I wish I were more optimistic.CNBC reported Monday that data compiled by the watchdog group Accountable.US “shows that political action committees of top corporations and trade groups — including the American Bankers Association, Boeing, Raytheon Technologies, Lockheed Martin and General Motors — continued to give to the Republican election objectors.”Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US, said in a statement: “Major corporations were quick to condemn the insurrection and tout their support for democracy — and almost as quickly, many ditched those purported values by cutting big checks to the very politicians that helped instigate the failed coup attempt. The increasing volume of corporate donations to lawmakers who tried to overthrow the will of the people makes clear that these companies were never committed to standing up for democracy in the first place.”The leaders of these companies are totally underestimating the chances that our democratic institutions will unravel. And if American democracy unravels, the whole world becomes unstable. That will not exactly be good for business, either.Neutrality is not an option anymore. As Liz Cheney put it on Sunday: “We can either be loyal to Donald Trump or we can be loyal to the Constitution, but we cannot be both.”So, my New Year’s wish is that item one on the agenda for the next meetings of both the Business Roundtable and the Business Council will be: Which side are we on?The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Election Falsehoods Surged on Podcasts Before Capitol Riots, Researchers Find

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      A new study analyzed nearly 1,500 episodes, showing the extent to which podcasts pushed misinformation about voter fraud.Weeks before the 2020 presidential election, the conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck outlined his prediction for how Election Day would unfold: President Donald J. Trump would be winning that night, but his lead would erode as dubious mail-in ballots arrived, giving Joseph R. Biden Jr. an unlikely edge.“No one will believe the outcome because they’ve changed the way we’re electing a president this time,” he said.None of the predictions of widespread voter fraud came true. But podcasters frequently advanced the false belief that the election was illegitimate, first as a trickle before the election and then as a tsunami in the weeks leading up to the violent attack at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to new research.Researchers at the Brookings Institution reviewed transcripts of nearly 1,500 episodes from 20 of the most popular political podcasts. Among episodes released between the election and the Jan. 6 riot, about half contained election misinformation, according to the analysis.In some weeks, 60 percent of episodes mentioned the election fraud conspiracy theories tracked by Brookings. Those included false claims that software glitches interfered with the count, that fake ballots were used, and that voting machines run by Dominion Voting Systems were rigged to help Democrats. Those kinds of theories gained currency in Republican circles and would later be leveraged to justify additional election audits across the country.Misinformation Soared After ElectionThe share of podcast episodes per week featuring election misinformation increased sharply after the election.

      Note: Among the most popular political talk show podcasts evaluated by Brookings, using a selection of keywords related to electoral fraud between Aug. 20, 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021.Source: The Brookings InstitutionThe New York TimesThe new research underscores the extent to which podcasts have spread misinformation using platforms operated by Apple, Google, Spotify and others, often with little content moderation. While social media companies have been widely criticized for their role in spreading misinformation about the election and Covid-19 vaccines, they have cracked down on both in the last year. Podcasts and the companies distributing them have been spared similar scrutiny, researchers say, in large part because podcasts are harder to analyze and review.“People just have no sense of how bad this problem is on podcasts,” said Valerie Wirtschafter, a senior data analyst at Brookings who co-wrote the report with Chris Meserole, a director of research at Brookings.Dr. Wirtschafter downloaded and transcribed more than 30,000 podcast episodes deemed “talk shows,” meaning they offered analysis and commentary rather than strictly news updates. Focusing on 1,490 episodes around the election from 20 popular shows, she created a dictionary of terms about election fraud. After transcribing the podcasts, a team of researchers searched for the keywords and manually checked each mention to determine if the speaker was supporting or denouncing the claims.In the months leading up to the election, conservative podcasters focused mostly on the fear that mail-in ballots could lead to fraud, the analysis showed.At the time, political analysts were busy warning of a “red mirage”: an early lead by Mr. Trump that could erode because mail-in ballots, which tend to get counted later, were expected to come from Democratic-leaning districts. As ballots were counted, that is precisely what happened. But podcasters used the changing fortunes to raise doubts about the election’s integrity.Election misinformation shot upward, with about 52 percent of episodes containing misinformation in the weeks after the election, up from about 6 percent of episodes before the election.The biggest offender in Brookings’s analysis was Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former adviser. His podcast, “Bannon’s War Room,” was flagged 115 times for episodes using voter fraud terms included in Brookings’ analysis between the election and Jan. 6.“You know why they’re going to steal this election?” Mr. Bannon asked on Nov. 3. “Because they don’t think you’re going to do anything about it.”As the Jan. 6 protest drew closer, his podcast pushed harder on those claims, including the false belief that poll workers handed out markers that would disqualify ballots.“Now we’re on, as they say, the point of attack,” Mr. Bannon said the day before the protest. “The point of attack tomorrow. It’s going to kick off. It’s going to be very dramatic.”Mr. Bannon’s show was removed from Spotify in November 2020 after he discussed beheading federal officials, but it remains available on Apple and Google.When reached for comment on Monday, Mr. Bannon said that President Biden was “an illegitimate occupant of the White House” and referenced investigations into the election that show they “are decertifying his electors.” Many legal experts have argued there is no way to decertify the election.Election Misinformation by PodcastThe podcast by Stephen K. Bannon was flagged for election misinformation more than other podcasts tracked by the Brookings Institution.

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      Episodes sharing electoral misinformation
      Note: Among the most popular political talk show podcasts evaluated by Brookings, using a selection of keywords related to electoral fraud between Aug. 20, 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021.Source: Brookings InstitutionBy The New York TimesSean Hannity, the Fox News anchor, also ranked highly in the Brookings data. His podcast and radio program, “The Sean Hannity Show,” is now the most popular radio talk show in America, reaching upward of 15 million radio listeners, according to Talk Media.“Underage people voting, people that moved voting, people that never re-registered voting, dead people voting — we have it all chronicled,” Mr. Hannity said during one episode.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      ¿Qué significa el 6 de enero para Estados Unidos?

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      Un año después del humo y los vidrios rotos, de la horca simulada y la violencia demasiado real de ese día atroz, es tentador hacer una retrospectiva e imaginar que, de hecho, podemos simplemente hacer una retrospectiva. Es tentador imaginar que lo que sucedió el 6 de enero de 2021 —un asalto mortal en la sede del gobierno de Estados Unidos incitado por un presidente derrotado en medio de una campaña desesperada por frustrar la transferencia de poder a su sucesor— fue terrible pero que ahora está en el pasado y que nosotros, como nación, hemos podido avanzar.Es un impulso comprensible. Después de cuatro años de caos, crueldad e incompetencia, que culminaron en una pandemia y con el trauma antes impensable del 6 de enero, la mayoría de los estadounidenses estaban impacientes por tener algo de paz y tranquilidad.Hemos conseguido eso, en la superficie. Nuestra vida política parece más o menos normal en estos días: el presidente perdona pavos y el Congreso se pelea por la legislación de presupuesto. Pero si escarbamos un poco, las cosas están lejos de ser normales. El 6 de enero no está en el pasado: está presente todos los días.Está en los ciudadanos de a pie que amenazan a funcionarios electorales y otros servidores públicos, está en quienes preguntan “¿Cuándo podemos usar las armas?” y prometen asesinar a los políticos que se atrevan a votar con conciencia. Son los legisladores republicanos que luchan por hacer que el voto sea más difícil para las personas y, si votan, que sea más fácil subvertir su voluntad. Está en Donald Trump, quien continúa avivando las llamas del conflicto con sus mentiras desenfrenadas y resentimientos ilimitados y cuya versión distorsionada de la realidad todavía domina a uno de los dos principales partidos políticos de la nación.En pocas palabras, la república enfrenta una amenaza existencial por parte de un movimiento que desdeña de manera abierta la democracia y que ha demostrado su disposición a usar la violencia para conseguir sus propósitos. Ninguna sociedad autónoma puede sobrevivir a una amenaza así negando que esta existe. Más bien, la supervivencia depende de mirar al pasado y hacia el futuro al mismo tiempo.Encarar de verdad la amenaza que se avecina significa entender plenamente el terror de ese día hace un año. Gracias en gran medida a la labor tenaz de un comité bipartidista en la Cámara de Representantes, una toma de conciencia está en proceso. Ahora sabemos que la violencia y el caos transmitidos en vivo a todo el mundo fue solo la parte más visible y visceral de un esfuerzo por revertir las elecciones. Ese esfuerzo llegaba hasta el Despacho Oval, donde Trump y sus aliados planearon un autogolpe constitucional.Ahora sabemos que los principales legisladores republicanos y figuras de los medios de comunicación de derecha entendieron en privado lo peligroso que era el asalto y le pidieron a Trump que lo detuviera, incluso cuando públicamente decían lo contrario. Ahora sabemos que quienes pueden tener información crítica sobre la planificación y ejecución del ataque se niegan a cooperar con el Congreso, incluso si eso significa ser acusado de desacato criminal.Por ahora, el trabajo del comité continúa. Ha programado una serie de audiencias públicas para exponer estos y otros detalles, y planea publicar un informe completo de sus hallazgos antes de las elecciones intermedias de este año. Después de los comicios, si los republicanos recuperan el control de la Cámara, como se espera, indudablemente el comité será disuelto.Aquí es donde entra la mirada hacia el futuro. A lo largo del año pasado, legisladores republicanos en 41 estados han intentado promover los objetivos de los alborotadores del 6 de enero, y lo han hecho no rompiendo leyes, sino promulgándolas. Se han propuesto cientos de proyectos de ley y se han aprobado casi tres decenas de leyes que facultan a las legislaturas estatales para sabotear sus propios comicios y anular la voluntad de sus votantes, según el recuento activo de un consorcio no partidista de organizaciones a favor de la democracia.Algunos proyectos de ley cambiarían las reglas para hacer más fácil que los legisladores rechacen los votos de sus ciudadanos si no les gusta el resultado. Otros proyectos legislativos reemplazan a los funcionarios electorales profesionales con figuras partidistas que podrían tener un interés claro en que gane su candidato predilecto. Y, otros más intentan criminalizar los errores humanos de funcionarios electorales, en algunos casos incluso con amenaza de cárcel.Muchas de estas leyes se están proponiendo y aprobando en estados que suele ser cruciales en las elecciones, como Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia y Pensilvania. A raíz de la votación de 2020, la campaña de Trump se enfocó en los resultados electorales en estos estados: demandó para reclamar un recuento o trataba de intimidar a los funcionarios para que encontraran votos “faltantes”. El esfuerzo fracasó, en buena medida debido al profesionalismo y la integridad de los funcionarios electorales. Desde entonces, muchos de esos funcionarios han sido despojados de su poder o expulsados de sus cargos y reemplazados por personas que dicen abiertamente que las últimas elecciones fueron fraudulentas.De este modo, los disturbios del Capitolio continúan presentes en los congresos estatales de todo Estados Unidos, en una forma legalizada y sin derramamiento de sangre y que ningún oficial de policía puede detener y que ningún fiscal puede juzgar en un tribunal.Esta no es la primera vez que las legislaturas estatales intentan arrebatarle el control de los votos electorales a sus ciudadanos, ni es la primera vez que se advierte de los peligros que entraña esa estrategia. En 1891, el presidente Benjamin Harrison advirtió al Congreso del riesgo de que ese “truco” pudiera determinar el resultado de una elección presidencial.La Constitución garantiza a todos los estadounidenses una forma republicana de gobierno, dijo Harrison. “Las características esenciales de tal gobierno son el derecho del pueblo a elegir a sus propios funcionarios” y que sus votos se cuenten por igual al tomar esa decisión. “Nuestro principal peligro nacional”, agregó, es “el derrocamiento del control de la mayoría mediante la supresión o distorsión del sufragio popular”. Si una legislatura estatal lograra sustituir la voluntad de sus votantes por la suya, “no es exagerado decir que la paz pública podría estar en peligro serio y generalizado”.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      ‘American Gadfly’ Review: A Candid Candidacy

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      This documentary goes behind the scenes of Mike Gravel’s oddball run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.A victory lap for a campaign that never sought to win, the documentary “American Gadfly” goes a long way toward explaining Mike Gravel’s perplexing run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.Gravel, the former two-term Alaska senator who pursued the 2008 nomination in earnest, and who died last year at 91, merely tried to qualify for the 2020 cycle’s debates. His run, which lasted for four months in 2019, was mainly the brainchild of two teenagers, David Oks and Henry Williams, who saw Gravel as a storied figure who wouldn’t prevail but could raise hell and push the political discussion leftward. Gravel sat on the sidelines and handed over his Twitter account.“My real end goal has always been to have Bernie Sanders pick up our platform plank,” Williams says at a staff meeting in the movie. Later in the film, in June 2019, Williams says he hopes half the candidates, “possibly including us,” will soon drop out, so that voters can vet contenders with a chance. Casting Tim Ryan, Bill de Blasio and John Delaney as villains — while somewhat incongruously praising Marianne Williamson, who aided Gravel’s fund-raising efforts — the movie suggests that Gravel had more substance than better-publicized long shots.The director, Skye Wallin, presents the correctness of Oks and Williams’s cause as a given. If you can get past that ingenuousness, “American Gadfly” is enjoyable as a chronicle of teenage idealism and its frustrations. (In Iowa, Oks bemoans the inefficiency of meeting and greeting voters.) Gravel, in his appearances, comes across as avuncular, eager to share ideas but even more eager to encourage young acolytes.American GadflyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      The Unsung Heroes of the 2020 Presidential Election

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      THE STEALThe Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Election and the People Who Stopped ItBy Mark Bowden and Matthew TeagueOn Nov. 23, 2020, Aaron Van Langevelde, a little-known 40-year-old Republican, did something routine, but — in the Trump era — something also heroic: He helped stop a plot to overturn the presidential election.As a member of the Michigan Board of State Canvassers, Van Langevelde calmly and modestly voted to certify the results of the election to reflect the will of the voters, not the candidate his party preferred. He did it without rhetorical flourish. He did it despite tremendous pressure from President Donald J. Trump and his allies, who were pushing lies and disinformation to undermine the outcome.“John Adams once said, ‘We are a government of laws, not men,’” Van Langevelde said in a brief speech that would make him a villain of the far right and lead to his ouster from the board. “This board needs to adhere to that principle here today.”Scenes like this played out across the country: in Wisconsin, where Rohn Bishop, the Republican Party chair in Fond du Lac, stood up to Trumpian lies; in Arizona, where Clint Hickman, the chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, ducked the president’s phone calls; in Pennsylvania, where Valerie Biancaniello, a Republican activist and Trump campaign head in Delaware County, demanded evidence instead of conspiracies.The unheralded and mostly unknown Republicans active in local politics who refused to go along with Trump’s lies — and played a key role in preserving American democracy — are the main subject of “The Steal,” by the journalists Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague. At 230 pages of text, their book is a lean, fast-paced and important account of the chaotic final weeks of the Trump administration.Several major works have already been published about those last days, including “Peril,” from Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, and “I Alone Can Fix It,” by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker. (Those books by Washington Post journalists have served as source material for the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.) In fact, the opening scene of “The Steal,” depicting Trump’s internal mind-set, is sourced to “Frankly, We Did Win This Election,” by Michael C. Bender of The Wall Street Journal.But what “The Steal” offers is a view of the election through the eyes of state- and county-level officials. We see Biancaniello confronting her fellow Republicans, who were raising hell at a vote-counting center (“Do you understand that you can suspect something, but it means nothing if you don’t have evidence,” she tells one); and Bishop, whom the authors call in one sense maybe “the most authentic Republican in America,” explaining to a fellow Republican: “Dude, I voted for the same guy you did. I’m just telling you it wasn’t stolen; these ballots weren’t illegally cast.”In Maricopa County, Hickman listened to claims of fraud, but concluded that the count was accurate, and then refused to take Trump’s telephone calls. “What did the president expect of him?” Bowden and Teague write. “Nothing honorable.”As I was reading “The Steal,” I was reminded of the line in the HBO show “Succession” said by Logan Roy, the domineering patriarch of a conservative media empire, as he tries to corrupt an F.B.I. investigation: “The law is people, and people is politics, and I can handle people.”Trump and his allies were betting on handling Republican officials at the local, state and federal levels (including Vice President Mike Pence and the members of Congress). Those people still had to formalize the results.As someone who was trapped in the Capitol on Jan. 6 and has covered the aftermath, I found it easy to become consumed with the names of the men and women who attempted to carry out Trump’s bidding: John Eastman, the lawyer who wrote a memo on how to overturn the election; Phil Waldron, who circulated a message on Capitol Hill with wild claims about voting machines; Sidney Powell, the conspiracy theorist who raised millions to spread disinformation.Those Trump allies appear in “The Steal,” but Bowden and Teague highlight other names as well. The plot to overturn the election failed, the authors write, because it was “stopped by the integrity of hundreds of obscure Americans from every walk of life, state and local officials, judges and election workers.”As Americans, we would do well to remember them. More

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      The Capitol Riot Was Inevitable

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      In December 1972, the critic Pauline Kael famously admitted that she’d been living in a political bubble. “I only know one person who voted for Nixon,” she said. “Where they are, I don’t know. They’re outside my ken.” A pithier version of her quote (“I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.”) has been used to exemplify liberal insularity ever since, both by conservative pundits and by the kind of centrist journalists who have spent the past several years buzzing in the ears of heartland diner patrons, looking for clues about Donald Trump’s rise.The most important fact about the Trump era, though, can be gleaned simply by examining his vote tallies and approval ratings: At no point in his political career — not a single day — has Mr. Trump enjoyed the support of the majority of the country he governed for four years. And whatever else Jan. 6 might have been, it should be understood first and foremost as an expression of disbelief in — or at least a rejection of — that reality. Rather than accepting, in defeat, that much more of their country lay outside their ken than they’d known, his supporters proclaimed themselves victors and threw a deadly and historic tantrum.The riot was an attack on our institutions, and of course, inflammatory conservative rhetoric and social media bear some of the blame. But our institutions also helped produce that violent outburst by building a sense of entitlement to power within America’s conservative minority.The structural advantages that conservatives enjoy in our electoral system are well known. Twice already this young century, the Republican Party has won the Electoral College and thus the presidency while losing the popular vote. Republicans in the Senate haven’t represented a majority of Americans since the 1990s, yet they’ve controlled the chamber for roughly half of the past 20 years. In 2012 the party kept control of the House even though Democrats won more votes.And as is now painfully clear to Democratic voters, their party faces significant barriers to success in Washington even when it manages to secure full control of government: The supermajority requirement imposed by the Senate filibuster can stall even wildly popular legislation, and Republicans have stacked the judiciary so successfully that the Supreme Court seems poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, an outcome that around 60 percent of the American people oppose, according to several recent polls. Obviously, none of the structural features of our federal system were designed with contemporary politics and the Republican Party in mind. But they are clearly giving a set of Americans who have taken strongly to conservative ideology — rural voters in sparsely populated states in the middle of the country — more power than the rest of the electorate.With these structural advantages in place, it’s not especially difficult to see how the right came to view dramatic political losses, when they do occur, as suspect. If the basic mechanics of the federal system were as fair and balanced as we’re taught they are, the extent and duration of conservative power would reflect the legitimate preferences of most Americans. Democratic victories, by contrast, now seem to the right like underhanded usurpations of the will of the majority — in President Biden’s case, by fraud and foreign voters, and in Barack Obama’s, by a candidate who was himself a foreign imposition on the true American people.But the federal system is neither fair nor balanced. Rather than democratic give and take between two parties that share the burden of winning over the other side, we have one favored party and another whose effortful victories against ever-lengthening odds are conspiratorially framed as the skulduggery of schemers who can win only through fraud and covert plans to import a new electorate. It doesn’t help that Republican advantages partly insulate the party from public reproach; demagogy is more likely to spread among politicians if there are few electoral consequences. This is a recipe for political violence. Jan. 6 wasn’t the first or the deadliest attack to stem from the idea that Democrats are working to force their will on a nonexistent conservative political and cultural majority. We have no reason to expect it will be the last.And while much of the language Republican politicians and commentators use to incite their base seems outwardly extreme, it’s important to remember that what was done on Jan. 6 was done in the name of the Constitution, as most Republican voters now understand it — an eternal compact that keeps power in their rightful hands. Tellingly, during his Jan. 6 rally, Mr. Trump cannily deployed some of the language Democrats have used to decry voting restrictions and foreign interference. “Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy,” he said. “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. Today we will see whether Republicans stand strong for the integrity of our elections.”The mainstream press has also had a hand in inflating the right’s sense of itself. Habits like the misrepresentation of Republican voters and operatives as swing voters plucked off the street and the constant, reductive blather about political homogeneity on the coasts — despite the fact that there were more Trump voters in New York City in 2016 and 2020 than there were in both Dakotas combined — create distorted impressions of our political landscape. The tendency of journalists to measure the wisdom of policies and rhetoric based on their distance from the preferences of conservative voters only reinforces the idea that it’s fair for politicians, activists and voters on the left to take the reddest parts of the country into account without the right taking a reciprocal interest in what most Americans want.That premise still dominates and constrains strategic thinking within the Democratic Party. A year after the Capitol attack and all the rent garments and tears about the right’s radicalism and the democratic process, the party has failed to deliver promised political reforms, thanks to opposition from pivotal members of its own Senate caucus — Democrats who argue that significantly changing our system would alienate Republicans.Given demographic trends, power in Washington will likely continue accruing to Republicans even if the right doesn’t undertake further efforts to subvert our elections. And to fix the structural biases at work, Democrats would have to either attempt the impossible task of securing broad, bipartisan support for major new amendments to the Constitution — which, it should be said, essentially bars changes to the Senate’s basic design — or pass a set of system-rebalancing workarounds, such as admitting new states ⁠like the District of Columbia. It should never be forgotten that fully enfranchised voters from around the country gathered to stage a riot over their supposedly threatened political rights last January in a city of 700,000 people who don’t have a full vote in Congress.Jan. 6 demonstrated that the choice the country now faces isn’t one between disruptive changes to our political system and a peaceable status quo. To believe otherwise is to indulge the other big lie that drew violence to the Capitol in the first place. The notion that the 18th-century American constitutional order is suited to governance in the 21st is as preposterous and dangerous as anything Mr. Trump has ever uttered. It was the supposedly stabilizing features of our vaunted system that made him president to begin with and incubated the extremism that turned his departure into a crisis.Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) is a contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of a regular newsletter about American politics. His first book, “The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding,” will be published by Random House.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      In the Capitol’s Shadow, the Jan. 6 Panel Quietly Ramps Up Its Inquiry

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      From a nondescript office building, a few dozen investigators and members of Congress are rushing to dissect what led to the worst attack on the Capitol in centuries.WASHINGTON — Behind closed doors inside a nondescript office building at the foot of Capitol Hill on a recent chilly morning, the House inquiry into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was in full swing.As congressional staff aides shuffled through the halls going about their normal business, investigators quietly pulled shades over the windows in conference rooms on several different floors and posted “Do Not Disturb” signs.In one such room sat Ali Alexander, a prominent organizer of the Stop the Steal rallies with ties to far-right members of Congress who worked to help Donald J. Trump invalidate his 2020 election loss.A floor below was Kash Patel, a former Pentagon chief of staff involved in discussions about Capitol security. He had been in constant contact with Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, on Jan. 6.Facing questions elsewhere in the building were John Eastman, a lawyer who plotted with Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results; and Christopher Krebs, the Trump administration’s most senior cybersecurity official, who was fired after systematically dismantling Mr. Trump’s false declarations that the presidency had been stolen from him.The committee scrutinizing the pro-Trump mob attack has conducted much of its inquiry in private, drawing public attention mostly for the legal fights it is waging over access to evidence from Mr. Trump and some of his top lieutenants. But from a warren of offices in the O’Neill House Office Building in Southwest Washington, a few dozen investigators and members of Congress have ramped up a sprawling and elaborate investigation into the worst American attack on democracy in centuries.In recent weeks, with the anniversary of the riot looming on Thursday, the panel has redoubled its efforts in the face of mounting resistance from the former president. It is rushing to make as much progress as possible before January 2023. Republicans are favored to regain control of the House this fall, and if they do, that is when they would take power and almost certainly dissolve the inquiry.“We worked on Christmas and on New Year’s Day,” said Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee. “The window for getting the job done requires weekends and holidays too. There’s a really firm commitment on the part of the staff to get it done.”Working in color-coded teams, investigators have interviewed more than 300 witnesses, from White House officials close to Mr. Trump to the rioters themselves, and are sorting through more than 35,000 documents. During its first three months, from July through September, the committee had fewer than 30 staff members and spent about $418,000, according to the latest documents filed with the House. Since then, the panel has increased its staff to about 40 and is looking to hire more investigators.Soon, the inquiry will enter a new phase, with plans to hold a series of public hearings in early spring to lay out some of its findings. Those will feature, among other topics, state election officials testifying to the security and accuracy of the 2020 election. A final report will be issued, “obviously before the November elections,” Mr. Thompson said.Understand the U.S. Capitol RiotOn Jan. 6, 2021, a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol.What Happened: Here’s the most complete picture to date of what happened — and why.Timeline of Jan. 6: A presidential rally turned into a Capitol rampage in a critical two-hour time period. Here’s how.Key Takeaways: Here are some of the major revelations from The Times’s riot footage analysis.Death Toll: Five people died in the riot. Here’s what we know about them.Decoding the Riot Iconography: What do the symbols, slogans and images on display during the violence really mean?For now, the O’Neill building is the main hub of activity, where, depending on the day, the political operative Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser to Mr. Trump, might appear outside flashing his signature Nixon-style “V for victory” sign to a sea of news cameras; or a lawyer for a Jan. 6 rally planner might arrive promoting a “treasure trove” of documents he says will leave senior Trump allies “quivering in their boots.” Reporters often dart up and down hallways trying to catch up to the various witnesses leaving the interview rooms.Inside, investigators and members of the nine-person committee are questioning witnesses, with the lawmakers — juggling busy schedules of floor votes and other congressional hearings — often bouncing between the interviews on a direct TV feed.“We are participating in the depositions and interviews regularly, and these are quite lengthy,” said Representative Elaine Luria, Democrat of Virginia and a member of the committee. “Even with other work that we have to do throughout the day, members are joining regularly to ask questions about specific areas.”The so-called green team is following the money trail connected to Mr. Trump’s efforts to promote the baseless assertion that he was the rightful winner of the election, including whether any groups defrauded contributors with false statements about widespread election fraud.The gold team is scrutinizing any plans Mr. Trump made with members of Congress to try to overturn the election and his pressure campaign on local, state and Justice Department officials to try to keep himself in power.Domestic violent extremist groups, such as the QAnon movement and the militia groups, the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, are the focus of the purple team. A fourth, the red team, is digging into the Jan. 6 rally planners and the Stop the Steal movement.The committee is led by Mr. Thompson and Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, who serves as vice chairwoman. Its top two investigators — both former U.S. attorneys — also come from different parties.Timothy J. Heaphy, whom President Barack Obama named U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, is the Jan. 6 committee’s chief investigative counsel; and John Wood, whom President George W. Bush hired as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri, is the committee’s senior investigative counsel.Mr. Wood, an ally of Ms. Cheney, is closely supervising the team focused on Mr. Trump’s direct involvement.One witness recently interviewed by the committee said arriving at the O’Neill building, a gleaming glass-encased behemoth, was like entering the British intelligence agency’s headquarters, with its modern lines and sterile feel. A congressional staffer escorted him up an elevator to a room with a U-shaped table and a large television on the wall. The TV had a live remote feed through which members of the committee could watch and listen.The witness said that before the deposition questioning began, he had been presented with a large binder full of evidence that investigators had collected on him. The lawyers conducting the inquiry were often “adversarial and hostile” in tone, he said, and were interested in the most minute details, even the moods and emotions of the people they were asking about.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More