Presidential Election of 2020

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      Why Jim Banks and Jim Jordan Were Blocked From the Capitol Riot Panel

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      Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was barring them from a committee scrutinizing the attack based on Democrats’ concerns about their “statements made and actions taken” around the assault.WASHINGTON — The two House Republicans Speaker Nancy Pelosi barred from a select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol are both staunch defenders of former President Donald J. Trump who backed his efforts to invalidate the election and have opposed investigating the assault on Congress.Ms. Pelosi said she had decided to disqualify Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio and Jim Banks of Indiana because of widespread Democratic dismay about “statements made and actions taken by these members.”Her decision enraged Republican leaders, who announced that they would boycott the investigation altogether. But Democrats insisted that the pair’s support for the election lies that fueled the deadly attack and their subsequent statements downplaying the violence that occurred that day were disqualifying.Here is a roundup of what they have said.‘No way’ Trump should concede, Jordan said as he helped plan the challenge to Biden’s victory.Mr. Jordan said in December that there was “no way” Mr. Trump should concede the election, even after the Electoral College certified Mr. Biden’s victory.“No. No way, no way, no way” Mr. Trump should concede, he told CNN in December, adding: “We should still try to figure out exactly what took place here. And as I said, that includes, I think, debates on the House floor — potentially on Jan. 6.”Later that month, he participated in a meeting at the White House, where Republican lawmakers discussed plans with Mr. Trump’s team to use the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 to challenge the election outcome.‘There was something wrong with this election’: Jordan continued to suggest Biden’s victory was illegitimate.“Americans instinctively know there was something wrong with this election,” Mr. Jordan said, arguing for invalidating electoral votes for Mr. Biden on Jan. 6. “During the campaign, Vice President Biden would do an event and he’d get 50 people at the event. President Trump at just one rally gets 50,000 people.”‘Democrats created this environment’: Jordan compared the riot to racial justice protests.Mr. Jordan has repeatedly sought to equate the attack on the Capitol to unrest around last summer’s racial justice protests, and accused Democrats of hypocritically trying to punish Mr. Trump for the riot while refusing to condemn left-wing violence. He signaled that he would use the Jan. 6 investigation to push that narrative.“I think it’s important to point out that Democrats created this environment, sort of normalizing rioting, normalizing looting, normalizing anarchy, in the summer of 2020, and I think that’s an important piece of information to look into,” Mr. Jordan said this week.He also said the select committee was a politically motivated effort to harm Mr. Trump, calling it “impeachment Round 3.”Banks questioned the ‘legality’ of some votes cast in the 2020 election.Mr. Banks, the chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, took a more reserved approach when discussing Mr. Trump’s election fraud claims, telling constituents he had questions “about the legality of some votes cast in the 2020 election” while steering clear of some of the former president’s more fantastical claims.But like Mr. Jordan, he supported a Texas lawsuit seeking to toss out key Biden victories and voted to overturn the results in Congress.Banks claimed the select committee was created ‘to malign conservatives.’Mr. Banks released a statement after he was chosen to serve as the top Republican on the panel that seemingly referred to the violent rioters as patriotic Americans expressing their political views. He said he would use the committee to turn the spotlight back on Democrats, scrutinizing why the Capitol was not better prepared for the attack, as well as unrelated “political riots” last summer during the national wave of protest against systemic racism.“Make no mistake, Nancy Pelosi created this committee solely to malign conservatives and to justify the left’s authoritarian agenda,” Mr. Banks said. “I will not allow this committee to be turned into a forum for condemning millions of Americans because of their political beliefs.” More

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      Pelosi Bars Trump Loyalists From Jan. 6 Inquiry, Prompting a G.O.P. Boycott

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      Democrats said Representatives Jim Banks and Jim Jordan, who amplified Donald J. Trump’s lies of a stolen election and opposed investigating the assault, could not be trusted to scrutinize it.WASHINGTON — Speaker Nancy Pelosi moved on Wednesday to bar two of former President Donald J. Trump’s most vociferous Republican defenders in Congress from joining a select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, saying their conduct suggested they could not be trusted to participate.In an unusual move, Ms. Pelosi announced that she was rejecting Representatives Jim Banks of Indiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio, both of whom amplified Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud, joined their party’s efforts to challenge President Biden’s victory on Jan. 6 and have opposed efforts to investigate the assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters. She agreed to seat the other three Republicans who had been chosen for the panel.But Ms. Pelosi said she could not allow the pair to take part, based on their actions around the riot and comments they had made undercutting the investigation. Mr. Banks, who has equated the deadly attack to unrest during the racial justice protests last summer, said the Jan. 6 inquiry was created to “malign conservatives and to justify the left’s authoritarian agenda.” Mr. Jordan, one of the biggest cheerleaders of Mr. Trump’s attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 election, pressed Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud on the House floor as protesters breached the Capitol, and has called the select committee “impeachment Round 3.”The speaker’s decision drew an angry response from Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, who announced that Republicans would boycott the panel altogether. He seized on Ms. Pelosi’s intervention as confirmation of his charge that the investigation was nothing more than a political exercise to hurt the G.O.P.The partisan brawl, unfolding even before the select committee has begun its work, underscored the difficult task it faces in scrutinizing an attack on the lawmakers now charged with dissecting it. It was also the latest evidence of how poisonous relations have become between the two parties, especially in the House, in the aftermath of Mr. Trump’s defeat and the violent bid to block certification of the outcome.Many Democrats no longer wish to work with or hear from Republicans who helped spread Mr. Trump’s lie of a stolen election, especially those who led the effort and have sought to downplay the severity and significance of the assault that it inspired. Some said allowing two of the most prominent defenders to serve on a panel examining the attack was akin to allowing criminals to investigate their own crimes.In a statement, Ms. Pelosi said she had rejected Mr. Banks and Mr. Jordan “with respect for the integrity of the investigation, with an insistence on the truth and with concern about statements made and actions taken by these members.”“The unprecedented nature of Jan. 6 demands this unprecedented decision,” she added.A visibly agitated Mr. McCarthy hastily called a news conference to condemn Ms. Pelosi’s move and accuse her of excessive partisanship. He pledged to carry out a Republican-only investigation into the events of Jan. 6, focused on how Ms. Pelosi should have done more to protect the Capitol from a mob of Trump loyalists.“Why was the Capitol so ill-prepared for that day, when they knew on Dec. 14 that they had a problem?” Mr. McCarthy said, referring to Democrats. “Pelosi has created a sham process.”In a television studio on Capitol Hill, Mr. McCarthy, Mr. Banks and Mr. Jordan — appearing with the three other Republicans chosen to sit on the panel — sought to divert blame for the riot from Mr. Trump and their own political supporters who carried it out, instead faulting Democrats who they said had not adequately planned for the onslaught.Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, the chairman of the select committee, said he would “not be distracted by sideshows” and pledged to move forward with the panel’s work, including its first public hearing next week where Capitol and District of Columbia police officers are set to testify about how they fought off the mob.Ms. Pelosi had quietly debated her options with Democratic members of the panel, who had expressed reservations about allowing firebrands like Mr. Jordan and Mr. Banks to serve on the committee.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMs. Pelosi had quietly debated her options with Democratic members of the panel, who had expressed reservations about allowing firebrands like Mr. Jordan and Mr. Banks, so closely associated with Mr. Trump’s efforts to undermine the election, to serve alongside them.“There are people who want to derail and thwart an investigation and there are people who want to conduct an investigation,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the panel. “That’s the fault line here.”Democrats received high-profile backing from Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Mr. McCarthy’s former No. 3 whom Ms. Pelosi appointed to the committee after she was ousted from her leadership position in May for criticizing Mr. Trump.“The rhetoric that we have heard from the minority leader is disingenuous,” Ms. Cheney told reporters on the steps of the Capitol. “At every opportunity, the minority leader has attempted to prevent the American people from understanding what happened, to block this investigation.”She said Ms. Pelosi had been right to bar Mr. Jordan and Mr. Banks from the panel, saying that Mr. Jordan was a potential “material witness” and Mr. Banks had “disqualified himself” with recent comments disparaging the committee’s work.Mr. Banks has come under criticism for arranging a recent trip for House Republicans to join Mr. Trump at the southwestern border, in which a participant in the Capitol riot at times served as a translator. He had also released a combative statement Monday night in which he blamed the Biden administration for its response to the riot — which occurred during the final days of the Trump administration — and said he would not allow the committee “to be turned into a forum for condemning millions of Americans because of their political beliefs.”On Wednesday, both he and Mr. Jordan accused Ms. Pelosi of failing to secure the Capitol from the rioters, who stalked her through the corridors on Jan. 6, chanting “Nancy.”Congressional leaders do not oversee security in the Capitol, though they hire those who do. It is controlled by the Capitol Police Board, which includes the House and Senate sergeants-at-arms and the architect of the Capitol. At the time of the attack, the House sergeant-at-arms, Paul D. Irving, had been on the job since 2012, when he was hired under Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio. The Senate sergeant-at-arms at the time, Michael Stenger, was hired in 2018 when Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, led the chamber.Mr. Jordan, who has called the committee’s work a political attack on Mr. Trump, was among a group of House Republicans who met with the former president in December to help plan the effort to challenge Mr. Biden’s victory. Democratic members of the select committee were considering calling him as a witness in their investigation.Ms. Cheney reportedly clashed with Mr. Jordan on the House floor on Jan. 6, blaming him for the riot, according to a new book by two reporters for The Washington Post.Ms. Pelosi had said she would accept Mr. McCarthy’s three other nominees to the panel — Representative Rodney Davis of Illinois, Representative Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota and Representative Troy Nehls of Texas — and said she encouraged Mr. McCarthy to offer two new picks to replace Mr. Jordan and Mr. Banks.But following Mr. McCarthy’s lead, those three also said they would not participate.“I was certainly prepared to help this committee get to the truth,” said Mr. Nehls, brandishing a binder of research. “But unfortunately, Speaker Pelosi has shown she’s more interested in playing politics.” More

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      Tom Brady Jokes About Election Results as Buccaneers Visit White House

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      President Biden’s administration has revived a tradition of championship invitations that had grown sporadic under former President Donald J. Trump.WASHINGTON — Until a few hours before kickoff, Tom Brady was questionable for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ celebration of their Super Bowl title at the White House. He was the most prolific winner of titles and decliner of presidential invitations in league history.But when the band struck up and President Biden strode onto the South Lawn to meet the championship team, Mr. Brady, the quarterback and seven-time N.F.L. champion, was there, smiling in a dark suit and sunglasses, leading a small procession including his coach, his team’s owner and the commander in chief himself.A few minutes later he was back in the spotlight, tossing off political jokes like slant routes, mostly targeting Mr. Biden’s predecessor, Donald J. Trump, a longtime friend of Mr. Brady’s.Mr. Brady first needled Mr. Trump’s baseless claims that he actually won the 2020 presidential election, which many Trump supporters still believe. The quarterback said many people did not believe the Buccaneers could win the championship last year.“I think about 40 percent of the people still don’t think we won,” Mr. Brady said.“I understand that,” Mr. Biden said.Mr. Brady turned to Mr. Biden. “You understand that, Mr. President?” he said.Mr. Biden smiled. “I understand that,” he said again.“Yeah,” Mr. Brady continued. “And personally, you know, it’s nice for me to be back here. We had a game in Chicago where I forgot what down it was. I lost track of one down in 21 years of playing, and they started calling me ‘Sleepy Tom.’ Why would they do that to me?”Mr. Biden — whom Mr. Trump frequently called “Sleepy Joe” during the campaign — played along. “I don’t know,” he said.Mr. Brady, 43, is the most accomplished signal caller in N.F.L. history. After leading the New England Patriots to six championships in his first two decades in the league, he quarterbacked Tampa Bay to a 31-9 Super Bowl victory over the Kansas City Chiefs in February, shortly after Mr. Biden was inaugurated. It earned him and his teammates a request to visit the president at the White House.But as of Monday, White House officials could not say for sure if he planned to attend.Mr. Brady missed several presidential team visits under Mr. Trump and President Barack Obama after winning previous Super Bowls. He last trekked to a White House title ceremony in 2005, when George W. Bush was in office. His attendance this time around was rumored on Monday, then confirmed by photos posted to social media on Tuesday morning.Mr. Biden has in recent weeks also hosted the World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers, as his administration revives a tradition of championship invites that had grown sporadic under Mr. Trump after many players boycotted the festivities. An N.F.L. champion last visited the White House in 2017.On Tuesday, while Mr. Brady’s teammates stood on risers and baked in the heat of the White House lawn, the president praised the Bucs for their persistence in reeling off an unbeaten run to the championship after starting the season with seven wins and five losses.“This is a team that didn’t fold, got up, dug deep,” the president said. “It’s an incredible run.”He singled out Tampa Bay receiver Chris Godwin, who was born and raised in the same states as Mr. Biden. “Born in Pennsylvania, raised in Delaware,” the president said. “Where I come from, that’s a heck of a combination, man.”The president could not resist sprinkling in a few stories of his own, less accomplished football career. And he could not resist ribbing Mr. Brady — and himself — about their ages.“A lot has been made about the fact that we have the oldest coach ever to win a Super Bowl and the oldest quarterback to win the Super Bowl,” said Mr. Biden, who at 78 was the oldest person ever sworn in as president. “Well, I’ll tell you right now: You won’t hear any jokes about that from me. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing wrong with being the oldest guy to make it to the mountaintop.”Eventually, Mr. Biden gave way to the team owner, Bryan Glazer, and coach, Bruce Arians, and then to Mr. Brady and his comedy routine.When the laughter from the relatively small crowd on the lawn died down, Mr. Brady and the Buccaneers prepared to give the president a customary personalized jersey, with “Biden” across the back and the number 46, for Mr. Biden’s presidency. The band prepared to play Queen’s “We Are the Champions” while players, including the quarterback, posed for photos with onlookers including several Florida politicians.But first Mr. Brady had one more joke, about how he planned to make the most of the remainder of his time at the White House.“We’re going to challenge — 11 of us — 11 White House interns to game of football here on the lawn,” Mr. Brady said.“And we intend to run it up on you guys, so get ready to go.” More

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      How The Cleveland House Race Between Turner and Brown Captures Democrats' Generational Divide

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      Nina Turner’s move from Bernie Sanders’s campaign co-chairwoman to House candidate has highlighted a Democratic divide between impatient young activists and cautious older voters.WARRENSVILLE HEIGHTS, Ohio — Nina Turner had just belted out a short address to God’s Tabernacle of Faith Church in the cadences and tremulous volumes of a preacher when the Rev. Timothy Eppinger called on the whole congregation to lay hands on the woman seeking the House seat of greater Cleveland.“She’s gone through hell and high water,” the pastor said to nods and assents. “This is her season to live, and not to die.”On Aug. 3, the voters of Ohio’s 11th District will render that judgment and with it, some indication of the direction the Democratic Party is heading: toward the defiant and progressive approach Ms. Turner embodies or the reserved mold of its leaders in Washington, shaped more by the establishment than the ferment stirring its grass roots.Democrats say there is little broader significance to this individual House primary contest, one that pits two Black women against each other in a safe Democratic district that had been represented by Marcia Fudge before she was confirmed as President Biden’s secretary of housing and urban development.Yet in the final weeks of the campaign, the party establishment is throwing copious amounts of time and money into an effort to stop Ms. Turner, a fiery former Cleveland councilwoman and Ohio state senator known beyond this district as the face and spirit of Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaigns, a co-chairwoman in 2020 and a ubiquitous surrogate for the socialist senator.That suggests leaders understand that the outcome of the race will be read as a signal about the party’s future. It has already rekindled old rivalries. The Congressional Black Caucus’s political action committee has endorsed Ms. Turner’s main rival, Shontel Brown, the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party chairwoman. So have Hillary Clinton and the highest-ranking Black member of the House, James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, who will be campaigning here this weekend for Ms. Brown. They argue that Ms. Brown is the better candidate, with a unifying message after four divisive years of Donald J. Trump.Ms. Brown sees herself as liberal, but she would move step by step, for instance embracing Mr. Biden’s call for adding a “public option” to the Affordable Care Act before jumping straight to the single-payer Medicare-for-all health care system Ms. Turner wants.“I’m not one to shy away from a challenge or conflict; I just don’t seek it out,” said Ms. Brown, who sees the differences as more style than substance. “And that’s the major difference: I’m not looking for headlines. I’m looking to make headway.”In turn, liberal activists around the country have rushed to Ms. Turner’s defense, with money, volunteers and reinforcements. Her campaign has raised $4.5 million for a primary, $1.3 million in the last month. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York will be knocking on doors for her the same weekend Mr. Clyburn will be in town. Mr. Sanders will join the fray in person the last weekend before Election Day.“She would be a real asset for the House,” Mr. Sanders said. “She is a very, very strong progressive, and I hope very much she is going to win.”Supporters of Shontel Brown say she presents a more unifying message after four years of the Trump administration.Mike Cardew/Akron Beakon Journal, via USA Today NetworkThe race has captured less an ideological divide than a generational split, pitting older voters turned off by the liberal insurgency’s disparagement of Democratic leaders and brash demands for rapid change against younger voters’ sense of urgency and anger about the trajectory of the country and world being left to them.At every turn here, Ms. Turner hits on the struggles of her city, the poorest large municipality in the country, but also America’s mountain of student debt, its inequity in health care and a climate crisis that has left the West parched and burning, the ice caps melting and Europe digging out from a deluge.Cleveland’s mayor, Frank Jackson, has endorsed Ms. Turner, as has The Plain Dealer. But Ms. Brown has the most reliable voters, many of them older, more affluent and white.For Ms. Turner to win, she needs people like Dewayne Williams, 31 and formerly incarcerated, who came out in the rain on Saturday to the Gas on God Community Giveaway, for $10 worth of free gas in one of Cleveland’s most dangerous neighborhoods.“I’m just young, don’t know much about politics, but I know she’s a good woman,” Mr. Williams said, growing emotional after Ms. Turner leaned into his car to give him a hug. Given his experience in the prison system, he said, “the changes she’s trying to do — to even care a little bit about that situation — I definitely appreciate.”“Oh man,” Mr. Williams added, “you’ve got to have a loud voice. You’ve got to be loud so people can hear.”The outcome of the special election could reverberate through the party. Progressive primary challengers have already declared — and are raising impressive sums, far more than previous challengers — to take on Representatives Carolyn B. Maloney in New York, Danny K. Davis in Chicago, John Yarmuth in Louisville and Jim Cooper in Nashville. They are hoping to build on the successes of Representatives Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman in New York, Ayanna S. Pressley in Boston, Marie Newman in Chicago and Cori Bush in St. Louis — all of whom have knocked off Democratic incumbents since 2018.All of them face opposition from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Congressional Black Caucus and a new political action committee, Team Blue, started by Representatives Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic Caucus chairman; Josh Gottheimer, a moderate from New Jersey; and Terri A. Sewell, a Black Caucus member from Alabama.“It speaks volumes to where they want us to be going as a party,” said Kina Collins, who is challenging Mr. Davis. “The message is, ‘You’re not welcome, and if you try to come in, we’re going to pony up the resources to silence you.’”Ms. Turner spoke with voters at a Gas on God Community Giveaway in Cleveland on Saturday.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMs. Turner said she wanted the race to be about her issues: single-payer Medicare for all, a $15-an-hour minimum wage, canceling student loan debt and other centerpieces of the Sanders movement she helped create. She said she had been warned from the beginning of her candidacy that Washington Democrats would unite around an “anyone but Nina” candidate.But on Sunday, even she seemed surprised by the bitter turn the contest had taken. The Congressional Black Caucus PAC’s intervention particularly rankled. With the rise of liberal groups like Justice Democrats dedicated to unseating entrenched Democrats in safe seats, the caucus has emerged as something of an incumbent protection service.It backed Representative William Lacy Clay Jr. of Missouri, a caucus member, in his unsuccessful bid to stave off a Black challenger, Ms. Bush, last year, and Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio, now the chairwoman of the caucus, in her successful bid to beat a Justice Democrat.But the PAC also backed Representative Eliot Engel of New York, who is white, last year against his progressive challenger, Mr. Bowman, who is Black.And now, inexplicably to Ms. Turner and her allies, the powerful Black establishment is intervening in an open-seat race between two Black candidates.“I don’t begrudge anybody wanting to get involved in the race,” Ms. Turner said, “but the entire Congressional Black Caucus PAC? That’s sending another message: Progressives need not apply.”Mr. Clyburn’s high-profile intervention is especially striking. In endorsing Ms. Brown, Mr. Clyburn said he was choosing the candidate he liked best, not opposing Ms. Turner. But he did speak out against the “sloganeering” of the party’s left wing.Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the highest-ranking Black Democrat in the House, has endorsed Ms. Brown.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesIn Cleveland, not everyone appreciated the distinction.“They want somebody they can control, and they want somebody to fall in line,” said State Representative Juanita Brent, who backs Ms. Turner. She said she had a message for Mr. Clyburn: “Congressman, with all due respect, stay out of our district.”Ms. Brown, younger than Ms. Turner, with an easygoing demeanor that does not match the Turner campaign’s description of her negative campaigning, pushed back hard against the characterization of her as a Washington puppet.Her campaign is staffed by help from SKDK, a powerhouse Democratic political firm stocked with old hands from the Clinton and Obama days. Her endorsements include moderate House Democrats like Mr. Gottheimer, many of whom are motivated by Ms. Turner’s favorable statements on Palestinian rights.But Ms. Brown insists she is no pawn for establishment Democrats.“You should ask the people who have tried to control me,” she said. “You will find that I am an independent thinker. I am one that likes to gather all of the facts and make an informed decision.”At Alfred Grant’s motorcycle shop in Bedford, Ohio, where Ms. Brown was dropping by a show of motorcycle muscle on Saturday night, older Black voters backed her campaign’s assessment of Ms. Turner: You either love her or you really don’t.“It seems to me that Nina tends to work for herself more than working together,” Roberta Reed said. “I mean, I need people who are going to work together to make it all whole.”“She’s going to help the Biden-Harris agenda; that means a lot,” Denise Grant, Mr. Grant’s wife, said of Ms. Brown, hitting on her biggest talking point. “We don’t need anybody fighting with Biden there.”Her husband jumped in, expressing weariness of the kind of confrontational politics that Ms. Turner embraced. “We did four years of foolishness,” he said. “Now it’s calmed down. That’s how politics should be. I don’t have to look at you every day.”Ms. Turner does not back down from that critique. Voters can take it or leave it.“My ancestors would have never been set free but for somebody bumping up against the status quo and saying, ‘You will not enslave us anymore,’” she said.Parishioners prayed over Ms. Turner at God’s Tabernacle of Faith Church on Sunday.Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times“Martin Luther King, Minister Malcolm X, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, Fannie Lou Hamer — I’m just giving examples of people who I’m sure folks who believe in the status quo wish had been nicer,” she said.At God’s Tabernacle of Faith, Pastor Eppinger teed up Ms. Turner with a rousing sermon inspired by the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel.“How long will you walk through dead schools, dead communities, dead governments?” he thundered. “Can these dry bones live?”Ms. Turner, in a bright yellow dress, removed her matching, bright yellow mask, and answered, “All Sister Turner is saying is, we need somebody to speak life into the dry bones of City Hall, the dry bones in Congress, and if God blesses me to go to that next place, I am going to continue to stand for the poor, the working poor and the barely middle class. Can these dry bones live?”To that, the 50 or so parishioners gave an amen. More

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      Trump, Covid and the Loneliness Breaking America

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      I wasn’t planning on reading any of the new batch of Donald Trump books. His vampiric hold on the nation’s attention for five years was nightmarish enough; one of the small joys of the post-Trump era is that it’s become possible to ignore him for days at a time. More

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      2022 Midterm Elections: Democrats See Early Edge in Senate Map

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      Early fund-raising has given Democrats cause for optimism in key states as Republicans split over how closely to align with Donald Trump’s preferences. Six months into the Biden administration, Senate Democrats are expressing a cautious optimism that the party can keep control of the chamber in the 2022 midterm elections, enjoying large fund-raising hauls in marquee races as they plot to exploit Republican retirements in key battlegrounds and a divisive series of unsettled G.O.P. primaries.Swing-state Democratic incumbents, like Senators Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Mark Kelly of Arizona, restocked their war chests with multimillion-dollar sums ($7.2 million and $6 million, respectively), according to new financial filings this week. That gives them an early financial head start in two key states where Republicans’ disagreements over former President Donald J. Trump’s refusal to accept his loss in 2020 are threatening to distract and fracture the party.But Democratic officials are all too aware of the foreboding political history they confront: that in a president’s first midterms, the party occupying the White House typically loses seats — often in bunches. For now, Democrats hold power by only the narrowest of margins in a 50-50 split Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as the tiebreaker to push through President Biden’s expansive agenda on the economy, the pandemic and infrastructure.The midterms are still more than 15 months away, but the ability to enact new policy throughout Mr. Biden’s first term hinges heavily on his party’s ability to hold the Senate and House.Four Senate Democratic incumbents are up for re-election in swing states next year — making them prime targets for Republican gains. But in none of those four states — New Hampshire, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia — has a dominant Republican candidate emerged to consolidate support from the party’s divergent wings. Out of office and banished from social media, Mr. Trump continues to insist on putting his imprint on the party with rallies and regular missives imposing an agenda of rewarding loyalists and exacting retribution against perceived enemies. That does not align with Senate Republican strategists who are focused singularly on retaking the majority and honing messages against the Democrats who now fully control Washington.“The only way we win these races is with top-notch candidates,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who used to work on Senate races. “Are Republicans able to recruit top-notch candidates in the Trump era?”Of the seven contests that political handicappers consider most competitive in 2022, all but one are in states that Mr. Biden carried last year.“We’re running in Biden country,” said Matt Canter, a Democratic pollster involved in Senate races. “That doesn’t make any of these races easy. But we’re running in Biden country.”The campaign filings this week provided an early financial snapshot of the state of play in the Senate battlefield, where the total costs could easily top $1 billion. Other than the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, the top fund-raiser among all senators in the last three months was Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina. Mr. Scott collected $9.6 million in the months after his State of the Union response, an eye-opening sum that has stoked questions about his 2024 ambitions.Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina collected $9.6 million in the months after his State of the Union response.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesBut critical races remain unsettled for Republicans. The party is still trying to find compelling Senate candidates in several states, with Chris Sununu, the governor of New Hampshire, considered the highest priority for recruitment, to challenge Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat who raised $3.25 million in the last three months. A bevy of Republican senators have lobbied Mr. Sununu to enter the race, and Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who leads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, went so far as to ask activists at a conservative conference last week to “call Chris Sununu” and urge him to run.“If he does, we will win,” Mr. Scott said.Mr. Scott has similarly pursued the former attorney general of Nevada, Adam Laxalt, saying last month that he expected Mr. Laxalt to run against Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto, the Democratic incumbent.The unexpected retirements of Republican senators in Pennsylvania and North Carolina have opened seats and opportunities for Democrats in those swing states, but the path to victory is complicated. In both, Democrats must navigate competitive primaries that pit candidates who represent disparate elements of the party’s racial and ideological coalition: Black and white; moderate and progressive; urban, suburban and more rural.In Pennsylvania, the Democratic lieutenant governor, John Fetterman, has emerged as one of the strongest fund-raising newcomers, taking in $2.5 million in the quarter. Val Arkoosh, a county commissioner in a Philadelphia suburb, raised $1 million, and Malcolm Kenyatta, a state legislator seeking to become the nation’s first openly gay Black senator, raised $500,000. Representative Conor Lamb, a moderate from outside Pittsburgh, is also considering a run.In Wisconsin, a third Republican incumbent, Senator Ron Johnson, has wavered for months over whether he will seek a third term. Mr. Johnson raised only $1.2 million in the last quarter, just enough to carry on but not quite enough to dispel questions about his intentions.Whether or not Mr. Johnson runs, Wisconsin is among the top Democratic targets in 2022 because Mr. Biden carried it narrowly in 2020. Perhaps nothing has better predicted the outcome of Senate races in recent cycles than a state’s presidential preferences.Lt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, has emerged as one of the strongest fund-raisers among newcomers as he pursues the state’s open Senate seat.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesIn Florida, national Democrats have all but anointed Representative Val Demings, a Black former police chief in Orlando who was vetted by the Biden team for vice president, in a state that has repeatedly proved just out of reach.Ms. Demings raised $4.6 million in her first three weeks, topping Senator Marco Rubio, the Republican incumbent, who raised $4 million over three months. (Ms. Demings spent more than $2.2 million on digital ads raising that sum, records show.)Two other G.O.P. retirements in redder states, Ohio and Missouri, have further destabilized the Republican map, providing at least a modicum of opportunity for Democrats in Trump territory. Republicans face heated primaries in both states.In Ohio, the Republican candidates include the former party chair, Jane Timken; the former state treasurer, Josh Mandel, who has run for Senate before; the best-selling author J.D. Vance; and two business executives, Bernie Moreno and Mike Gibbons.The leading Democrat is Representative Tim Ryan, a moderate who ran briefly for president in 2020, and who entered July with $2.5 million in the bank.In Missouri, the early efforts to woo Mr. Trump have been plentiful, and that includes spending at his Florida resort.Two potential candidates have trekked to Mar-a-Lago for fund-raisers or to meet with the former president, including Representatives Billy Long and Jason Smith. Mr. Long reported spending $28,633.20 at the club, filings show; Mr. Smith, who also attended a colleague’s fund-raiser on Thursday at Mr. Trump’s Bedminster property in New Jersey, according to a person familiar with the matter, paid $4,198.59 to Mar-a-Lago.“I’m expecting someone to start flying over Bedminster with a banner at some point,” said one Republican strategist involved in Senate races, who requested anonymity because, he said half-jokingly, it could end up being one of his candidates buying the banner.Representative Val Demings of Florida is running for the Democratic nomination to challenge Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe biggest name in Missouri is Eric Greitens, the former governor who resigned after accusations of abuse by a woman with whom he had an extramarital affair. He raised less than $450,000. Among his fund-raisers is Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr., and his campaign also made payments to Mar-a-Lago.Three other Republicans in the race out-raised Mr. Greitens: Representative Vicky Hartzler, Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Mark McCloskey, the man best known for waving his gun outside his St. Louis home as protesters marched last year. Some national Republican strategists are worried that if Mr. Greitens survives a crowded primary, he could prove toxic even in a heavily Republican state.Mr. Scott has pledged to remain neutral in party primaries, but Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, has long preferred promoting candidates he believes can win in November.“The only thing I care about is electability,” Mr. McConnell told Politico this year. With Mr. Scott on the sidelines, a McConnell-aligned super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, is expected to do most of the intervening.Mr. Trump, who is often at cross-purposes with Mr. McConnell, has appeared especially engaged in the Arizona and Georgia races, largely because of his own narrow losses there. He has publicly urged the former football player Herschel Walker to run in Georgia — Mr. Walker has not committed to a campaign — and attacked the Republican governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, even after Mr. Ducey has said he is not running for Senate. Some Republican operatives continue to hope to tug Mr. Ducey into the race.Mr. Trump delivered one early Senate endorsement in North Carolina, to Representative Ted Budd, who raised $953,000, which is less than the $1.25 million that former Gov. Pat McCrory pulled in. Some Republicans see Mr. McCrory as the stronger potential nominee because of his track record of winning statewide. In Alaska, Kelly Tshibaka is running as a pro-Trump primary challenger to Senator Lisa Murkowski, who voted to convict Mr. Trump after his second impeachment. Ms. Murkowski, who has not formally said if she is running again, raised more than double Ms. Tshibaka in the most recent quarter, $1.15 million to $544,000.In Alabama, Mr. Trump gave another early endorsement to Representative Mo Brooks and recently attacked one of his rivals, Katie Britt, who is the former chief of staff of the retiring incumbent, Senator Richard Shelby. Ms. Britt entered the race in June, but she out-raised Mr. Brooks, $2.2 million to $824,000. A third candidate, Lynda Blanchard, is a former Trump-appointed ambassador who has lent her campaign $5 million.Mr. Brooks won over Mr. Trump for being among the earliest and most vocal objectors to Mr. Biden’s victory. The photo splashed across Mr. Brooks’s Senate website is him speaking at the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the riot at the Capitol. In his recent filing, one of Mr. Brooks’s larger expenses was a $25,799 tab at Mar-a-Lago.“The map tilts slightly toward the Democrats just based on the seats that are up,” said Brian Walsh, a Republican strategist who has worked on Senate races. “But the political environment is the big unknown, and the landscape can shift quickly.”Rachel Shorey More

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      Two Men Charged With Plotting to Blow Up California Democratic Headquarters

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      The men consulted with an antigovernment paramilitary organization and hoped to start a “movement” that could keep former President Donald J. Trump in office.Angered by the results of the 2020 presidential election, two men in Northern California plotted for months to blow up the state Democratic Party headquarters in Sacramento, according to federal authorities.The men, who face conspiracy and weapons charges, consulted with an antigovernment paramilitary organization, hoping to start a “movement” that could keep former President Donald J. Trump in office. Using encrypted messaging apps, they discussed various targets, including the Governor’s Mansion as well as Twitter and Facebook offices, court documents said.“I want to blow up a democrat building bad,” documents quoted one defendant, Ian Benjamin Rogers, 45, as texting to the other man, Jarrod Copeland, 37.The suspected plot is the latest in a range of antigovernment activity linked to the 2020 election and its aftermath, some of it involving paramilitary groups.Mr. Rogers was arrested on Jan. 15 on state weapons charges after a search of his home and business turned up some 50 firearms, thousands of rounds of ammunition and five pipe bombs, court papers said. He has been held in jail in Napa County since his arrest.Black powder, pipes and other bomb-making material as well as various military manuals like the “U.S. Army Improvised Munitions Handbook” were also found, prosecutors said. Mr. Copeland was arrested on Thursday, when he and Mr. Rogers were indicted in federal court in San Francisco on charges of conspiring to attack the Democratic headquarters. Mr. Rogers also faces federal weapons charges.Mr. Copeland is accused of obstruction of justice charges and is suspected of erasing his communications about the plot after he learned that Mr. Rogers had been arrested. The charges of conspiracy to commit arson carry potential jail sentences of up to 20 years.Colin L. Cooper, a lawyer for Mr. Rogers, denied the charges. “He had nothing to do whatsoever with planning to storm the Democratic headquarters up in Sacramento,” Mr. Cooper said.John A. Ambrosio, Mr. Copeland’s lawyer, said he had entered a plea of not guilty and declined further comment. Mr. Copeland said in the documents that he thought Mr. Rogers just wanted to “blow off steam,” and that he did not take the threats seriously.In late November, according to the indictment, the two men began using text messages to discuss possible Democratic targets, including George Soros, a high-profile donor, before settling on the John L. Burton Democratic Headquarters in Sacramento.A month later, Mr. Copeland messaged to say he had contacted an antigovernment paramilitary group with the aim of gathering support for their “movement.” The two groups he mentioned in seeking help were the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters.Court papers said both Mr. Copeland and Mr. Rogers had been previously affiliated with the Three Percenters, whose name is based on the false premise that just 3 percent of American colonists fought the British in the Revolutionary War.A photograph of a Three Percenters sticker on a vehicle said to belong to Mr. Rogers was included in the documents.In text messages, Mr. Rogers said the two men should begin their attacks after the presidential inauguration on Jan. 20.In one of the texts obtained by the federal agents, Mr. Rogers wrote, “The democrats need to pay.” In reference to Mr. Trump, he added, “I hope 45 goes to war if he doesn’t I will.”Mr. Rogers ran an auto repair company in the city of Napa that specialized in servicing high-end British vehicles. When asked in a 2014 interview with a local news organization which person he admired most, his first response was Mr. Trump.Mr. Copeland, from Vallejo, joined the military in December 2013 but was arrested on desertion charges in both 2014 and 2016, when he received a dishonorable discharge, the court papers said. He is the manager at a tool company.The two men discussed the probability that they would be labeled terrorists but waved off the issue. “We will get tagged as domestic terrorists,” Mr. Copeland wrote at one point. Mr. Rogers responded, according to the court documents, “Like I care what we are labeled,” adding, “I just hope our actions will make others to get involved.”Kitty Bennett More

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      Republicans Now Have Two Ways to Threaten Elections

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      The story of voting rights in the United States looks less like a graph of exponential growth and more like a sine wave; there are highs and lows, peaks and plateaus.President Biden captured this reality in his address on Tuesday at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, where he spoke on the gathering threat to our democracy from the Republican Party’s twin efforts to suppress rival constituencies and seize control of state voting apparatuses.“There is an unfolding assault taking place in America today,” Biden said. “An attempt to suppress and subvert the right to vote in fair and free elections, an assault on democracy, an assault on liberty, an assault on who we are — who we are as Americans.”Biden is right. Americans today are witness to a ferocious attack on voting rights and majority rule. And as he points out, it is as focused on “who gets to count the vote” as it is on “who gets to vote.”Biden is also right to say, as he did throughout the speech, that these attacks are “not unprecedented.” He points to Jim Crow and the “poll taxes and literacy tests and the Ku Klux Klan campaigns of violence and terror that lasted into the ’50s and ’60s.”For obvious reasons, Jim Crow takes center stage in these discussions. But we should remember that it was part of a wave of suffrage restrictions aimed at working-class groups across the country: Black people in the South, Chinese Americans in the West and European immigrants in the North.“The tide of democratic faith was at low ebb on all American shores after the Grant administration, and it would be a mistake to fix upon a reactionary temper in the South as a sectional peculiarity,” the historian C. Vann Woodward wrote in “Origins of the New South, 1877-1913.”For as much as Jim Crow dominates our collective memory of voting restrictions, it is the attack on suffrage in the North in those last decades of the 19th century that might actually be more relevant to our present situation.The current assault on voting is a backlash, in part, to the greater access that marked the 2020 presidential election. More mail-in and greater early voting helped push turnout to modern highs. In the same way, the turn against universal manhood suffrage came after its expansion in the wake of the Civil War.A growing number of voters were foreign-born, the result of mass immigration and the rapid growth of an immigrant working class in the industrial centers of the North. “Between 1865 and World War I,” writes the historian Alexander Keyssar in “The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States,” “nearly twenty-five million immigrants journeyed to the United States, accounting for a large proportion of the nation’s World War I population of roughly one hundred million.”A vast majority arrived without property or the means to acquire it. Some were the Irish and Germans of previous waves of immigration, but many more were eastern and southern Europeans, with alien languages, exotic customs and unfamiliar faiths.“By 1910,” notes Keyssar, “most urban residents were immigrants or the children of immigrants, and the nation’s huge working class was predominantly foreign-born, native-born of foreign parents, or Black.”To Americans of older stock, this was a disaster in waiting. And it fueled, among them, a backlash to the democratic expansion that followed the Civil War.“A New England village of the olden time — that is to say, of some forty years ago — would have been safely and well governed by the votes of every man in it,” Francis Parkman, a prominent historian and a member in good standing of the Boston elite, wrote in an 1878 essay called “The Failure of Universal Suffrage.”Parkman went on:but, now that the village has grown into a populous city, with its factories and workshops, its acres of tenement-houses, and thousands and ten thousands of restless workmen, foreigners for the most part, to whom liberty means license and politics means plunder, to whom the public good is nothing and their own most trivial interests everything, who love the country for what they can get out of it, and whose ears are open to the promptings of every rascally agitator, the case is completely changed, and universal suffrage becomes a questionable blessing.In “The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910,” the historian J. Morgan Kousser takes note of William L. Scruggs, a turn-of-the-century scholar and diplomat who gave a similarly colorful assessment of universal suffrage in an 1884 article, “Restriction of the Suffrage”:The idea of unqualified or “tramp” suffrage, like communism, with which it is closely allied, seems to be of modern origin; and, like that and kindred isms, it usually finds advocates and apologists in the ranks of the discontented, improvident, ignorant, vicious, depraved, and dangerous classes of society. It is not indigenous to the soil of the United States. It originated in the slums of European cities, and, like the viper in the fable, has been nurtured into formidable activity in this country by misdirected kindness.Beyond their presumed immorality and vice, the problem with new immigrant voters — from the perspective of these elites — was that they undermined so-called good government. “There is not the slightest doubt in my own mind that our prodigality with the suffrage has been the chief source of the corruption of our elections,” wrote the Progressive-era political scientist John W. Burgess in an 1895 article titled “The Ideal of the American Commonwealth.”This claim, that Black and immigrant voters were venal and corrupt — that they voted either illegally or irresponsibly — was common.Here’s Keyssar:Charges of corruption and naturalization fraud were repeated endlessly: electoral outcomes were twisted by “naturalization mills” that, with the aid of “professional perjurers and political manipulators,” transformed thousands of immigrants into citizens in the weeks before elections.Out of this furious attack on universal male suffrage (and also, in other corners, the rising call for women’s suffrage) came a host of efforts to purify the electorate, spearheaded by progressive reformers in both parties. Lawmakers in Massachusetts passed “pauper exclusions” that disqualified from voting any men who received public relief on the day of the election. Republican lawmakers in New Jersey, targeting immigrant-dominated urban political machines in the state, required naturalized citizens to show naturalization documents to election officials before voting, intentionally burdening immigrants who did not have their papers or could not find them.Lawmakers in Connecticut endorsed an English literacy requirement, and California voters amended their state Constitution to disenfranchise any person “who shall not be able to read the Constitution in the English language and write his name,” a move meant to keep Chinese and Mexican Americans from the ballot box. The introduction of the secret ballot and the polling booth made voting less communal and put an additional premium on literacy — if you couldn’t read the ballot, and if no one was allowed to assist, then how were you supposed to make a choice?If suffrage restriction in the South was a blunt weapon meant to cleave entire communities from the body politic, then suffrage restriction in the North was a twisting maze of obstacles meant to block anyone without the means or education to overcome them.There were opponents of this effort to shrink democracy. They lost. Voter turnout crashed in the first decades of the 20th century. Just 48.9 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot in the 1924 presidential election, an all-time low. “There were fewer Republicans in the South because of Jim Crow voter suppression, and fewer Democrats in the North because of the active discouragement of working-class urban immigrant voters,” the historian Jon Grinspan notes in “The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy, 1865-1915.” “The efforts of fifty years of restrainers had succeeded. A new political culture had been born: one that had been cleaned and calmed, stifled and squelched.”It would take decades, and an epochal movement for civil rights, before the United States even came close to the democratic highs it reached in the years after Appomattox.With all of that in mind, let’s return to Biden’s speech.There was an urgency in what the president said in defense of voting rights, a sense that now is the only time left to act. “Look how close it came,” he said in reference to the attack on Congress on Jan. 6 and the effort to overturn the election. “We’re going to face another test in 2022: a new wave of unprecedented voter suppression, and raw and sustained election subversion. We have to prepare now.”Right now, of course, there is no path to passage for a voting bill that could address the challenges ahead. Not every Democrat feels the same sense of urgency as the president, and key Democrats aren’t willing to change the rules of the Senate in order to send a bill to Biden’s desk.It is possible that this is the right call, that there are other ways to block this assault on the franchise and that the attack on free and fair elections will stay confined to Republican-controlled states — meaning Democrats would need only a strategy of containment and not a plan to roll back the assault. But as we’ve seen, there is a certain momentum to political life and no guarantee of a stable equilibrium. The assault on voting might stay behind a partisan border or it might not.In other words, to borrow a turn of phrase from Abraham Lincoln on the question of democracy, this government will either become all of one thing or all of the other.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