Presidential Election of 2020 Archivi - Page 208 of 283 - politic-news.space

More stories

100 Shares129 Views
in Elections
Why Georgia is Bracing for More Political Hurricanes
by Aurelia Butler 13 March 2021, 09:00
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Political Hurricane Blew Through Georgia. Now It’s Bracing for More.The country’s most hotly contested state has calmed down after months of drama, court fights and national attention (even the death threats have slowed). But new storms are on the horizon.Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, who became a target of former President Donald J. Trump for defending the validity of the state’s election results.Credit…Audra Melton for The New York TimesMarch 13, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETATLANTA — The death threats finally appeared to be subsiding, Brad Raffensperger was happy to report.“I haven’t gotten one in a while,” said Mr. Raffensperger, Georgia’s embattled secretary of state, expressing hope that political passions might be cooling off in the state — though “cooling off” is relative in the country’s most heated battleground.Not since Florida’s presidential recount of 2000 has one state’s election cycle drawn so much national — even international — scrutiny. Polarizing figures, expensive campaigns and breathless plotlines have become a seemingly permanent feature of elections here. Analysts have identified Georgia as a major bellwether of the nation’s cultural, economic and demographic realignment, as well as a prime battlefield for showdowns over such fundamental civic matters as the right to vote.When exactly did this reliably Republican and relatively sleepy political sphere become such a vital center of contention and intrigue?Why does seemingly every politically interested observer in America have — à la Ray Charles — Georgia on their mind?The landmark event was President Biden’s becoming the first Democrat at the top of the ticket to carry Georgia since 1992, in what was the most closely decided state in last year’s presidential race. Former President Donald J. Trump appeared especially fixated on the state and made it the main focus of his efforts to reverse the results of the national election. Georgia then played host to double runoff contests in January that flipped control of the Senate to Democrats.The fervor and spotlight will endure: The state is a focal point for the nation’s persistent voting rights battle, as Republicans move swiftly to roll back ballot access in what opponents say is clear targeting of Black voters with echoes of Jim Crow-era disenfranchisement.In 2022, the Peach State’s race for governor is likely to include perhaps the Democratic Party’s leading champion of voting rights, Stacey Abrams, in a replay of the 2018 grudge match between her and Gov. Brian Kemp, the Republican incumbent. One of the two Democrats who won their races in January, Senator Raphael Warnock, will also have to turn around and defend his seat next year in a race that Republicans are already eyeing as they seek to reclaim the chamber. Several local and national Republicans — including Mr. Trump — have tried to recruit the former University of Georgia football legend Herschel Walker to run for the seat, which could lend another wrinkle to the state’s political story, as if it needed one.Adding to the chaos, Mr. Kemp has become the target of a vendetta by Mr. Trump, who has condemned him for not doing more to deliver (or poach) victory for him in Georgia in November. This has also made Georgia the unquestioned center of the internal disputes that have roiled the Republican Party since November. Mr. Trump has seemed intent on making the state a key stop on a revenge tour he has waged against Republicans he has deemed insufficiently loyal to him — Mr. Kemp and Mr. Raffensperger chief among them.“It just feels like a hurricane blew through here politically in the last few campaigns that just keeps carrying over,” said former Senator Saxby Chambliss, a Republican from the state.Stacey Abrams is seen as likely to run again for governor of Georgia in 2022, in a potential rematch of her 2018 race against Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican.Credit…Nicole Craine for The New York TimesSenator Jon Ossoff, who prevailed alongside Mr. Warnock in the runoffs, said that “there’s a tension and complexity to the total arc of Georgia’s history that manifests itself in this particular moment.” That tension, he added, “is continually being expressed in our politics.”Towering stakes in a shifting statePeople tend to speak of Georgia politics these days in the most dramatic of terms: A struggle is underway “for the soul of Georgia,” and the New South in general. Every week seems to bring a new “existential battle” over some defining issue. A “foundational tension” is playing out in the racial politics of a place considered both a cradle of the civil rights movement and a pillar of the old Confederacy.Some days, state officials said, the stakes feel too high, the energy too charged and the language too extreme.“In my opinion, that’s not healthy, and that’s not what America should be,” said Gabriel Sterling, another top election overseer who, like Mr. Raffensperger, gained a national profile as Mr. Trump challenged Mr. Biden’s victory in the state with false claims of rampant voter fraud. (Mr. Trump’s phone call to Mr. Raffensperger in December, pressuring him to “find” enough votes to overturn the results, was disclosed by The Washington Post and led Georgia prosecutors to open a criminal investigation into the former president.)“You’re not supposed to live and die by these elections,” Mr. Sterling said, noting that in a healthy democracy, the “normal” number of death threats directed at an official like him would be “zero.” He and Mr. Raffensperger were sitting in a tavern near the Georgia Capitol early this month, monitored by a security detail. They were unwinding after another day of pitched political battle in which the Republican-controlled legislature passed an election bill that would create a raft of new ballot restrictions.Republicans are now worried that their slipping grip on Georgia could make it a perennial swing state. Mr. Chambliss said that white suburban women, who have been the key component of the state’s Republican coalition, had defected en masse in recent years, more drastically around Atlanta than in other growing metropolitan areas around the country.Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff scored momentous victories for the Democratic Party when they won their runoff elections in January. Credit…Nicole Craine for The New York Times“The animosity toward Trump is real, and that’s a group that Republicans need to be courting in a heavy way,” Mr. Chambliss said. He added that such a goal would not be easy to achieve as long as Mr. Trump kept involving himself in the state’s politics.“A lot of us have been standing on mountaintops screaming that our margins in the suburbs have been collapsing,” said Brian Robinson, a Republican political consultant in Georgia. Much of the recent focus on those electoral shifts, he said, flowed from the tiny margin of votes separating Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump in the state. That segued to the saturation media coverage of the Senate runoffs, the Republican election challenges and, of course, Mr. Trump’s conduct after Nov. 3.“Everything became all about Georgia,” Mr. Robinson said. “I was getting interviewed by newspapers from Switzerland.”The transformation of Georgia’s politics is largely a story of rapidly changing demographics. Atlanta is among the fastest-growing cities in the country, its suburbs evolving from a white Republican hotbed to a more diverse and progressive population of college-educated “knowledge workers.” Metropolitan Atlanta has attracted a substantial influx of younger immigrants and transplants from more crowded and expensive cities in the Northeast and the West.Likewise, the racial makeup has shifted rapidly. “Our demography is reflective of where many states are, and where the nation is headed,” said Ms. Abrams, who added that the majority of Georgia’s population was expected to be nonwhite by the end of this decade. “Politically, Georgia reflects what happens when all of these things come together. It’s a difficult thing to navigate on a national scale, and Georgia is the living embodiment of this.”A Democratic-led push for voting rightsThe point of convergence for much of this ferment has been the protracted struggle over voting rights. Ms. Abrams, who founded the political advocacy and voter registration group Fair Fight Action, has received broad credit for helping capture the state’s electoral votes for Mr. Biden and the Senate seats for Democrats.She became a voting rights cause célèbre herself in 2018 after enduring a bitter defeat in a governor’s race marred by accusations of voter suppression against Mr. Kemp in his former capacity as Georgia’s secretary of state. Ms. Abrams has to this day refused to concede defeat; Mr. Kemp, who oversaw the purging of hundreds of thousands of Georgians from the state’s voter rolls during his tenure, denied any wrongdoing. He declined to comment for this article.Ms. Abrams said that Republicans could not match the political energy and the demographic momentum that have propelled Democrats in Georgia, other than to pursue laws that would make it harder for traditional Democratic constituencies, such as African-Americans, to vote.The legislation currently making its way through the Capitol includes strict limits on weekend voting, a measure that could significantly impede the traditional role of Black churches in fostering civic engagement. A bill that passed the Georgia Senate early this month would repeal “no-excuse” absentee voting and require more stringent voter identification measures. The state’s political patriarch, the 96-year-old former President Jimmy Carter, said this past week that he was “disheartened, saddened and angry” about the legislation.Mr. Ossoff, left, and Mr. Warnock on Capitol Hill this month. Mr. Warnock will have to run for re-election next year in a race that Republicans are targeting.Credit…J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press“We know that some version of this bill is likely to pass because Republicans face an existential crisis in Georgia,” Ms. Abrams said. By the same token, Democrats could face a crisis of their own if Republicans succeed at enacting more restrictive voting laws in Georgia and several other states with Republican-controlled legislatures.Mr. Ossoff, who at 34 is the youngest member of the Senate, said Georgia had become a textbook case of how political and generational realignment “can change power dynamics in a way that has massive national implications.”Mr. Ossoff’s life trajectory has offered him a firsthand view of these shifts. He grew up in a suburban Atlanta congressional district that was once represented in the House by Newt Gingrich, the Republican speaker, and is now represented by Lucy McBath, an African-American Democrat.Mr. Ossoff began his career as an intern for the civil rights pioneer and Georgia congressman John Lewis, became the first Jewish senator from the Deep South and entered the chamber with first Black senator to represent Georgia, Mr. Warnock. He now sits at a Senate desk that was once occupied by the fierce civil rights opponent Richard Russell and the staunch segregationist Herman Talmadge. In accordance with Senate tradition, both long-dead senators carved their initials in the desk, though Mr. Ossoff said he had yet to do that himself.Republicans haltingly plan their next movesGeorgia Republicans say it would be shortsighted to think that legislation alone can stem the state’s recent tide of red to blue. Nor is it clear whether the most powerful motivating force in their party — Mr. Trump — has in fact motivated just as many voters to support Democrats in and around Atlanta.This dynamic has extended to Trump acolytes like Representative Marjorie Taylor-Greene, the first-term Republican from the state’s northwest corner, whose far-right views, incendiary language and promotion of conspiracy theories have made her the biggest new attention magnet in Congress, for better or worse. “I have always subscribed to having a big tent,” Mr. Chambliss said. “By the same token, I don’t know where some of these people who wander into the tent ever come from.”Former Senator Kelly Loeffler, the Republican businesswoman whom Mr. Kemp appointed to replace the retiring Johnny Isakson in late 2019, announced plans last month to start a voter registration group of her own, geared toward disengaged conservatives. Ms. Loeffler, who lost to Mr. Warnock, envisions the organization, Greater Georgia, as a Republican counterbalance to Ms. Abrams’s efforts.Ms. Loeffler said she had committed a seven-figure sum of her own money to seed the effort. “When I stepped out of the Senate, I heard people say consistently that ‘someone needs to do something about Georgia,’” Ms. Loeffler said.Former Senator Kelly Loeffler said she had no timetable for deciding whether she would run again for the Senate in 2022.Credit…Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesMs. Loeffler did not say precisely what “needs to be done about Georgia” whether she meant only finding new ways to reach and register conservative voters or working to support Republican-driven laws that would discourage Democrats from voting. Ms. Abrams dismissed the effort as “a shallow attempt at mimicry” and “a vile attempt to limit access based on conspiracy theories.”Ms. Loeffler said she was merely “working to ensure that voters trust the process of voting.” She leaned heavily on phrases like “transparency,” “uniformity” and “election integrity,” which critics deride as false pretenses for Republican efforts to impose voter suppression measures. “There’s no question that many Georgians did not trust the process,” she said.Ms. Loeffler’s brief foray into elective politics began in January 2020, during Mr. Trump’s first Senate impeachment trial. She immediately began running for her November re-election, in a campaign that included Representative Doug Collins, a firebrand Republican and fierce defender of Mr. Trump who continually derided Ms. Loeffler as a “RINO” (Republican in name only) who was not adequately devoted to the former president. She then spent much of her brief Senate career trying to display her fealty to Mr. Trump — an effort that included a campaign ad literally portraying her as to the right of Attila the Hun.Ms. Loeffler, 50, said she had no timetable for deciding whether she would run against Mr. Warnock in what would be a rematch for her old seat. As for what other Republicans might run, speculation has produced (as it does) a colorful wish list, from Ms. Greene to Mr. Walker. David Perdue, the former Republican senator who was defeated by Mr. Ossoff, said last month that he would not run in 2022, and Mr. Trump has been trying to enlist Mr. Collins to take on Mr. Kemp in a Republican primary bid.Mr. Walker, the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner, signed his first professional football contract in the ’80s with Mr. Trump’s United States Football League team, the New Jersey Generals, and maintains a close friendship with his former boss. A native of Wrightsville, Ga., Mr. Walker is a Republican who has encouraged African-Americans to join the party, and he has not ruled himself out for 2022.He is also unquestionably beloved in his home state, and the feeling appears to be mutual, though Mr. Walker currently lives in Texas.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
100 Shares169 Views
in Elections
Democrats Are Anxious About 2022 — and 2024
by Aurelia Butler 10 March 2021, 10:54
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyDemocrats Are Anxious About 2022 — and 2024The fretting starts with the party’s declining share of the Hispanic vote, but it doesn’t end there.Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C. on politics, demographics and inequality.March 10, 2021Credit…Chip Litherland for The New York TimesIn the wake of the 2020 election, Democratic strategists are worried — very worried — about the future of the Hispanic vote. One in 10 Latinos who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 switched to Donald Trump in 2020.Although the Hispanic electorate is often treated as a bloc, it is by no means a monolith. It is, in fact, impossible to speak of “the Hispanic vote” — in practice it is variegated by region, by country of origin, by ideology, by how many generations have lived in the United States, by depth of religiosity (and increasingly denomination), as well as a host of other factors.From 1970 to 2019, the number of Latinos in the United States increased from 9.6 million to 60.6 million, according to Pew Research. The number is projected by the census to reach 111.2 million, or 28 percent of the nation’s population, by 2060.Public Opinion Strategies, which conducts surveys for NBC News/Wall Street Journal, provided me with data on presidential voting from 2012 to 2020 that show significant Republican gains among the roughly 30 percent of Black and Hispanic voters who self-identify as conservative.From 2012 to 2020, Black conservatives shifted from voting 88-7 for the Democratic candidate to 76-17. Black conservative allegiance to the Democratic Party fell by less, from 75 percent Democratic, 9 percent Republican to 71 percent Democratic, 16 percent Republican.The changes in voting and partisan allegiance, however, were significantly larger for self-identified Hispanic conservatives. Their presidential vote went from 49-39 Democratic in 2012 to 67-27 Republican in 2020. Their partisan allegiance over the same period went from 50-37 Democratic to 59-22 Republican.The 2020 expansion of Republican voting among Hispanics and Asian-Americans — and to a lesser extent among African-Americans — deeply concerns the politicians and strategists seeking to maintain Democratic control of the House and Senate in 2022, not the mention the White House in 2024.The defection of Hispanic voters, together with an approximately 3 point drop in Black support for Joe Biden compared with Hillary Clinton, threatens a pillar of Democratic competitive strength, especially among Black men: sustained high margins of victory among minority voters whose share of the population is enlarging steadily.The increased level of support for the Republican Party among minority voters has raised the possibility that the cultural agenda pressed by another expanding and influential Democratic constituency — well-educated, young activists with strongly progressive views — is at loggerheads with the socially conservative beliefs of many older minority voters — although liberal economic policies remain popular with both cohorts. This social and cultural mismatch, according to some observers, is driving a number of minority voters into the opposition party.Joshua Estevan Ulibarri, a partner in the Democratic polling firm, Lake Research, argues that a substantial number of Latinos do not view themselves as people of color, reject a political alliance based on that bond and “want to be seen as white or as part of the mainstream.”Ulibarri emailed me to say that he believes that “Hispanics see what white America has done to Black America, and the backlash leads to more G.O.P. votes.”In shifting their vote from Democratic to Republican, Ulibarri contends, “it is not just partisan identity they are shedding, but also some racial identity as well.” In the past, “they may have been conservative and Latino, but you were Latino first and the way you were treated as a group and discriminated against trumped some ideology. Now, less so.”The Democratic Party, Ulibarri said, is responsible in part for the losses it has suffered:It is not just conservative men who have drifted away from Democrats. More and more younger people are identifying less with my party not because they are Republican or conservative, but because Democrats do not keep their word; Democrats are weak. And who wants to align with the weak?Ian F. Haney López, a law professor at Berkeley, who wrote about the danger to the Democrats of Hispanic defections in a September 2020 Times oped, expanded his argument in an email on the Lake Research study of Hispanic voters, which found most Latinos fell into three categories.The first, roughly a quarter of the Hispanic population, is made up of those who self-identify as people of color, according to the study, “as a group that, like African Americans, remains distinct over generations.” More
113 Shares119 Views
in Elections
Why Is Space Command Moving Into Mo Brooks’s Backyard?
by Aurelia Butler 10 March 2021, 09:00
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyWhy Is Space Command Moving Into Mo Brooks’s Backyard?The congressman from Huntsville, Ala., was quick to claim that the 2020 election was stolen. His district continues to get special treatment.Ms. McWhorter, who grew up in Birmingham, Ala., is writing a book about Huntsville, Ala., and the Cold War space race.March 10, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETAs uncommon as it is for the White House to worry about where the Pentagon puts its people and hardware, President Biden may need to follow the example of his predecessor and take a hard look at the site selection for U.S. Space Command. It tells a tale of two cities, Colorado Springs and Huntsville, Ala., and reveals a lot about our modern-day season of stunt guillotines and Trumpist revolutionaries.The Trump administration’s decision to move Space Command — the Defense Department’s coordinating body for space-related military operations — from Colorado Springs to Huntsville came one week after the congressman from Huntsville, Mo Brooks, took the stage at President Donald Trump’s last-stand rally on Jan. 6, invoked the patriotic ancestors who “sacrificed their blood, their sweat, their tears, their fortunes and sometimes their lives,” and rasped at the crowd, “Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America?”Rumors of Trumpian quid pro quo ensued, especially from Aerospace Alley in Colorado, which seemed to have the advantage of incumbency over five other contenders. (Space Command was based in Colorado Springs from 1985 to 2002 and was deactivated for 17 years before being revived. It is not to be confused with Mr. Trump’s military legacy, Space Force, the littlest branch of the armed services.)Was the Huntsville pick Mr. Trump’s thank-you to Mr. Brooks, the very first member of Congress to declare, in December, that he would challenge Mr. Biden’s victory on Jan. 6? Or perhaps bug off to Colorado for repudiating Mr. Trump along with Republican senator Cory Gardner last November?The Defense Department’s inspector general has agreed to review the transfer, which won’t occur until 2026 at the earliest. But even if the study finds that Huntsville beat out Colorado Springs on the merits, would the Biden administration have cause to rescind the move? Or put another way, should law-abiding taxpayers be asked to send their government’s treasure to a district whose chosen representative was at the fore of the government’s attempted overthrow (or whatever that was)?Roughly half of Huntsville’s economy already comes from federal spending, and most of that money is dedicated to the defense and security of the United States. Yet for 10 years, the city has been represented in Congress by an anti-government nihilist whose crusade has ultimately endangered democracy itself. The riot fueled by Mr. Brooks’s big lie of a stolen election also contributed to the death of one of his constituents and resulted in the arrest of another North Alabama man, a military veteran whose truckload of weaponry included machetes and a crossbow with bolts.Reasonable Americans might ask whether our national security should be entrusted to a community in which a significant portion of the work force may not believe that Mr. Biden is the legitimate commander in chief. (When I asked Mr. Brooks by email whether he considered Mr. Biden the legitimate president, he did not answer the question.)History advises that collective punishment is rarely a good teacher. That is why Huntsville should try to live up to its reputation as the forward-looking, high-tech standout in an underdeveloped Heart of Dixie and redeem itself through a little enlightened self-interest. As the 2020 election deniers found their precedent in the Compromise of 1877, which anointed President Rutherford B. Hayes and not coincidentally ended Reconstruction, Huntsville could begin a reverse process of self-Reconstruction by rejecting Confederate politics and bringing them in line with its Union purpose.Huntsville has long had an exceptionalist attitude toward the rest of the state. Even Mr. Brooks plays into the local “most Ph.D.s per capita” urban legend as the nerd-demagogue with a degree in politics and economics from Duke.There’s no question that Huntsville is competent to host Space Command. It has called itself the Rocket City since the 1950s, when Wernher von Braun and the German engineers who built Hitler’s V-2 rocket — the first long-range ballistic missile — were imported to make missiles for the U.S. Army. The group had switched over to NASA by 1961, when John F. Kennedy decided the United States should send a man to the moon, which happened in 1969, courtesy of the German-American team’s Saturn V rocket.Huntsville’s Marshall Space Flight Center was the biggest of the Apollo-boom NASA installations in the so-called Space Crescent of federal money leveraged to the Southland — scything from Cape Canaveral, Fla., to the Manned Spacecraft Center in East Texas. The reason Houston gets to hear about the problem is undoubtedly related to its being in the home state of Lyndon B. Johnson. Especially as a senator and as vice president, he helped shape the space program as an agent of economic reconstruction; he expected social progress to flow from it throughout the South. His presidency’s civil rights program, after all, was also framed in economic terms, as a War on Poverty.Among the grinding obstacles to Johnson’s aspirations was George C. Wallace, Alabama’s “Segregation forever!” governor and Mr. Trump’s John the Baptist. In the fall of 1964, it was impossible in Alabama to vote to re-elect the sitting president. (Its Democratic electors were unpledged, meaning, basically, that they would vote in the Electoral College for whomever Wallace told them to.)And so after a visit with Alabama business leaders that October, NASA’s head, James Webb, threatened to pull high-level Marshall personnel — and their portion of the multimillion-dollar payroll — out of the state. The practical reason was that von Braun could not recruit talent to a place so egregious on civil rights. And on a personal note, Webb was not crazy about how unappreciative Alabama was toward the government that fed it.NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center stayed intact, thanks in good part to Huntsville’s impressive advocates in Congress. Its former representative John Sparkman was the junior senator to the still powerful Franklin Roosevelt point man Lister Hill and had been Adlai E. Stevenson’s running mate on the 1952 Democratic ticket. Representative Robert Jones was a stoic Johnson ally — and later a key sponsor of the 1972 Clean Water Act (undermined by Mr. Trump).The reason you probably haven’t heard of them is that their more positive legacies were eclipsed by their racist votes. Still, when Johnson gave him permission to expediently oppose his poverty bill, Jones replied, “My conscience won’t let me.” Decades later, his successor Mr. Brooks consulted his conscience after the sacking of the Capitol and found that “fascist ANTIFA” was likely to blame.Not surprisingly, the local committee of business leaders and state officials that wooed Space Command to Huntsville “did not coordinate our efforts with Congressman Brooks,” as a Chamber of Commerce spokesman told me by email. But historically, the educated, white-collar Alabamians that are Huntsville’s proud base have tended to regard their more deplorable politicians as harmless if not useful.Consider one of Mr. Brooks’s largest donors, the law firm of McDaniel & McDaniel. One of its co-founders, Mark McDaniel, is a Democrat turned self-described “very moderate Republican” who currently recognizes the legitimacy of Mr. Biden’s election — “Oh, absolutely I do,” he told me, adding, “I don’t think it was a hoax, and Covid is real.”Even so, he said he does not intend to “bail out on” his friend. “Mo Brooks is just a decent human being,” he said, plus the two guarded each other on rival basketball teams in high school. Shortly before Mr. Trump left office, Mr. Brooks announced the president’s appointment of Mr. McDaniel to a U.S. Agency for International Development advisory board.And what of Mr. Brooks’s top corporate donors, including the household names of the military-industrial complex? Asked if they would follow the lead of the other brand-name companies that have pledged to withhold cash from Congress’s election-rejection caucus, Lockheed Martin and Boeing would not commit to anything beyond a pause in political contributions. Northrop Grumman did not respond to several inquiries.As for the homegrown defense contractors behind Mr. Brooks — Radiance Technologies, Torch Technologies and Davidson Technologies — it may require some bottom-line blowback from the congressman’s free-enterprise extremism to make them appreciate the democracy that has so enriched them.Perhaps they would take their representative more seriously if the Biden administration decided to take his anti-government rhetoric literally and withdrew — along with the 1,400-job prospect of Space Command — the Army Materiel Command, the FBI’s so-called second headquarters and NASA, which is overseeing the launch vehicle for the coming Artemis lunar missions (and employs Mr. Brooks’s son).The stakes of enabling Mr. Brooks increase as the unbowed congressman — facing a censure resolution from House colleagues and a lawsuit filed by Representative Eric Swalwell against him, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Rudy Giuliani — eyes the Senate seat that Alabama’s quasi-independent senior senator, Democrat turned Republican Richard Shelby, is vacating in 2023. A win would make Mr. Brooks the junior senator to his election-defying confederate Tommy Tuberville, the civically illiterate former football coach who also carried Huntsville’s Madison County in November.While the inspector general is evaluating the Space Command decision, Colorado Springs may want to order up some blue #usspaceCOm T-shirts to replace the MAGA red ones the local Chamber of Commerce distributed for Mr. Trump’s visit there last year. Colorado is hardly Alabama, what with two Democratic senators and an openly gay governor.But Doug Lamborn, the congressman from Colorado Springs, is his state’s answer to Mo Brooks: anti-gay, anti-PBS, anti-“war on Christmas.” He voted against certifying Mr. Biden’s election on Jan. 6, after the Capitol was stormed by his constituents Klete Keller, who was an Olympic swimmer, and Robert Gieswein, who is suspected of being a Three Percenter.Given the long reach of Trumpism and the reluctance of multinational defense industries to take a stand against even a hypothetical Senator Mo Brooks, Alabama is beginning to look like a state of mind without borders.Diane McWhorter, who is writing a book about Huntsville and the Cold War space race, is the author of “Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution.”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.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
150 Shares159 Views
in Elections
Covid-19 Relief Bill Fulfills Biden’s Promise to Expand Obamacare, for Two Years
by Aurelia Butler 9 March 2021, 00:30
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutGuidelines After VaccinationAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPandemic Relief Bill Fulfills Biden’s Promise to Expand Obamacare, for Two YearsWith its expanded subsidies for health plans under the Affordable Care Act, the coronavirus relief bill makes insurance more affordable, and puts health care on the ballot in 2022.President Biden after delivering remarks on the Affordable Care Act in November. The changes to the health law would cover 1.3 million more Americans.Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York TimesMarch 8, 2021WASHINGTON — President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill will fulfill one of his central campaign promises, to fill the holes in the Affordable Care Act and make health insurance affordable for more than a million middle-class Americans who could not afford insurance under the original law.The bill, which will most likely go to the House for a final vote on Wednesday, includes a significant, albeit temporary, expansion of subsidies for health insurance purchased under the act. Under the changes, the signature domestic achievement of the Obama administration will reach middle-income families who have been discouraged from buying health plans on the federal marketplace because they come with high premiums and little or no help from the government.The changes will last only for two years. But for some, they will be considerable: The Congressional Budget Office estimated that a 64-year-old earning $58,000 would see monthly payments decline from $1,075 under current law to $412 because the federal government would take up much of the cost. The rescue plan also includes rich new incentives to entice the few holdout states — including Texas, Georgia and Florida — to finally expand Medicaid to those with too much money to qualify for the federal health program for the poor, but too little to afford private coverage.“For people that are eligible but not buying insurance it’s a financial issue, and so upping the subsidies is going to make the price point come down,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy expert and professor at the University of Pennsylvania who advised Mr. Biden during his transition. The bill, he said, would “make a big dent in the number of the uninsured.”But because those provisions last only two years, the relief bill almost guarantees that health care will be front and center in the 2022 midterm elections, when Republicans will attack the measure as a wasteful expansion of a health law they have long hated. Meantime, some liberal Democrats may complain that the changes only prove that a patchwork approach to health care coverage will never work.“Obviously it’s an improvement, but I think that it is inadequate given the health care crisis that we’re in,” said Representative Ro Khanna, a progressive Democrat from California who favors the single-payer, government-run system called Medicare for All that has been embraced by Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, and the Democratic left.“We’re in a national health care crisis,” Mr. Khanna said. “Fifteen million people just lost private health insurance. This would be the time for the government to say, at the very least, for those 15 million that we ought to put them on Medicare.”Mr. Biden made clear when he was running for the White House that he did not favor Medicare for All, but instead wanted to strengthen and expand the Affordable Care Act. The bill that is expected to reach his desk in time for a prime-time Oval Office address on Thursday night would do that. The changes to the health law would cover 1.3 million more Americans and cost about $34 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.Representative Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey, who helped draft the health law more than a decade ago and leads the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has called it “the biggest expansion that we’ve had since the A.C.A. was passed.”But as a candidate, Mr. Biden promised more, a “public option” — a government-run plan that Americans could choose on the health law’s online marketplaces, which now include only private insurance.“Biden promised voters a public option, and it is a promise he has to keep,” said Waleed Shahid, a spokesman for Justice Democrats, the liberal group that helped elect Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive Democrats. Of the stimulus bill, he said, “I don’t think anyone thinks this is Biden’s health care plan.”Just when Mr. Biden or Democrats would put forth such a plan remains unclear, and passage in an evenly divided Senate would be an uphill struggle. White House officials have said Mr. Biden wants to get past the coronavirus relief bill before laying out a more comprehensive domestic policy agenda.Senators Bill Hagerty and Chris Coons at the Capitol on Saturday during a series of votes on amendments to the relief bill.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesThe Affordable Care Act is near and dear to Mr. Biden, who memorably used an expletive to describe it as a big deal when he was vice president and President Barack Obama signed it into law in 2010. It has expanded coverage to more than 20 million Americans, cutting the uninsured rate to 10.9 percent in 2019 from 17.8 percent in 2010.The Coronavirus Outbreak More
150 Shares159 Views
in Elections
Pandemic Relief Bill Fulfills Biden’s Promise to Expand Obamacare, for Two Years
by Aurelia Butler 9 March 2021, 00:30
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPandemic Relief Bill Fulfills Biden’s Promise to Expand Obamacare, for Two YearsWith its expanded subsidies for health plans under the Affordable Care Act, the coronavirus relief bill makes insurance more affordable, and puts health care on the ballot in 2022.President Biden after delivering remarks on the Affordable Care Actin November. The changes to the health law would cover 1.3 million more Americans.Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York TimesMarch 8, 2021Updated 8:30 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill will fulfill one of his central campaign promises, to fill the holes in the Affordable Care Act and make health insurance affordable for more than a million middle-class Americans who could not afford insurance under the original law.The bill, which will most likely go to the House for a final vote on Wednesday, includes a significant, albeit temporary, expansion of subsidies for health insurance purchased under the act. Under the changes, the signature domestic achievement of the Obama administration will reach middle-income families who have been discouraged from buying health plans on the federal marketplace because they come with high premiums and little or no help from the government.The changes will last only for two years. But for some, they will be considerable: The Congressional Budget Office estimated that a 64-year-old earning $58,000 would see monthly payments decline from $1,075 under current law to $412 because the federal government would take up much of the cost. The rescue plan also includes rich new incentives to entice the few holdout states — including Texas, Georgia and Florida — to finally expand Medicaid to those with too much money to qualify for the federal health program for the poor, but too little to afford private coverage.“For people that are eligible but not buying insurance it’s a financial issue, and so upping the subsidies is going to make the price point come down,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy expert and professor at the University of Pennsylvania who advised Mr. Biden during his transition. The bill, he said, would “make a big dent in the number of the uninsured.”But because those provisions last only two years, the relief bill almost guarantees that health care will be front and center in the 2022 midterm elections, when Republicans will attack the measure as a wasteful expansion of a health law they have long hated. Meantime, some liberal Democrats may complain that the changes only prove that a patchwork approach to health care coverage will never work.“Obviously it’s an improvement, but I think that it is inadequate given the health care crisis that we’re in,” said Representative Ro Khanna, a progressive Democrat from California who favors the single-payer, government-run system called Medicare for All that has been embraced by Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, and the Democratic left.“We’re in a national health care crisis,” Mr. Khanna said. “Fifteen million people just lost private health insurance. This would be the time for the government to say, at the very least, for those 15 million that we ought to put them on Medicare.”Mr. Biden made clear when he was running for the White House that he did not favor Medicare for All, but instead wanted to strengthen and expand the Affordable Care Act. The bill that is expected to reach his desk in time for a prime-time Oval Office address on Thursday night would do that. The changes to the health law would cover 1.3 million more Americans and cost about $34 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.Representative Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey, who helped draft the health law more than a decade ago and leads the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has called it “the biggest expansion that we’ve had since the A.C.A. was passed.”But as a candidate, Mr. Biden promised more, a “public option” — a government-run plan that Americans could choose on the health law’s online marketplaces, which now include only private insurance.“Biden promised voters a public option, and it is a promise he has to keep,” said Waleed Shahid, a spokesman for Justice Democrats, the liberal group that helped elect Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive Democrats. Of the stimulus bill, he said, “I don’t think anyone thinks this is Biden’s health care plan.”Just when Mr. Biden or Democrats would put forth such a plan remains unclear, and passage in an evenly divided Senate would be an uphill struggle. White House officials have said Mr. Biden wants to get past the coronavirus relief bill before laying out a more comprehensive domestic policy agenda.Senators Bill Hagerty and Chris Coons at the Capitol on Saturday during a series of votes on amendments to the relief bill.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesThe Affordable Care Act is near and dear to Mr. Biden, who memorably used an expletive to describe it as a big deal when he was vice president and President Barack Obama signed it into law in 2010. It has expanded coverage to more than 20 million Americans, cutting the uninsured rate to 10.9 percent in 2019 from 17.8 percent in 2010.The Coronavirus Outbreak More
113 Shares189 Views
in Elections
¿Por qué los hombres latinos votan por los republicanos?
by Aurelia Butler 8 March 2021, 23:35
@media (pointer: coarse) {
.nytslm_outerContainer {
overflow-x: scroll;
-webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch;
}
}
.nytslm_outerContainer {
display: flex;
align-items: center;
/* Fixes IE */
overflow-x: auto;
box-shadow: -6px 0 white, 6px 0 white, 1px 3px 6px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.15);
padding: 10px 1.25em 10px;
transition: all 250ms;
-ms-overflow-style: none;
/* IE 10+ */
scrollbar-width: none;
/* Firefox */
background: white;
margin-bottom: 20px;
z-index: 1000;
}
@media (min-width: 1024px) {
.nytslm_outerContainer {
margin-bottom: 0px;
padding: 13px 1.25em 10px;
}
}
.nytslm::-webkit-scrollbar {
display: none;
/* Safari and Chrome */
}
.nytslm_innerContainer {
margin: unset;
display: flex;
align-items: center;
}
@media (min-width: 600px) {
.nytslm_innerContainer {
margin: auto;
min-width: 600px;
}
}
.nytslm_title {
padding-right: 1em;
border-right: 1px solid #ccc;
}
@media (min-width: 740px) {
.nytslm_title {
max-width: none;
font-size: 1.0625rem;
line-height: 1.25rem;
}
}
.nytslm_spacer {
width: 0;
border-right: 1px solid #E2E2E2;
height: 45px;
margin: 0 1.4em;
}
.nytslm_list {
font-family: nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;
display: flex;
width: auto;
list-style: none;
padding-left: 1em;
flex-shrink: 0;
align-items: baseline;
justify-content: center;
}
.nytslm_li {
margin-right: 1.4em;
flex-shrink: 0;
font-size: 0.8125rem;
line-height: 0.8125rem;
font-weight: 600;
padding: 1em 0;
}
#nytslm .nytslm_li a {
color: #121212;
text-decoration: none;
}
#nytslm .nytsmenu_li_current,
#nytslm .nytslm_li a:hover,
#nytslm .nytslm_li a:active,
#nytslm .nytslm_li a:focus {
color: #121212;
border-bottom: 2px solid #121212;
padding-bottom: 2px;
}
.nytslm_li_live_loud:after {
content: ‘LIVE’
}
.nytslm_li_live_loud {
background-color: #d0021b;
color: white;
border-radius: 3px;
padding: 4px 6px 2px 6px;
margin-right: 2px;
display: inline-block;
letter-spacing: 0.03rem;
font-weight: 700;
}
.nytslm_li_upcoming_loud {
border: 1px solid #d0021b;
color: #d0021b;
border-radius: 3px;
padding: 4px 6px 2px 6px;
margin-right: 2px;
display: inline-block;
letter-spacing: 0.03rem;
font-weight: 700;
}
.nytslm_li_upcoming_loud:before {
content: ‘Upcoming’
}
.nytslm_li_loud a:hover,
.nytslm_li_loud a:active,
.nytslm_li_loud a:focus {
border-bottom: 2px solid;
padding-bottom: 2px;
}
.nytslm_li_updated {
color: #777;
}
#masthead-bar-one {
display: none;
}
.electionNavbar__logoSvg {
width: 80px;
align-self: center;
display: flex;
}
@media(min-width: 600px) {
.electionNavbar__logoSvg {
width: 100px;
}
}
.nytslm_notification {
border-left: 1px solid #ccc;
font-family: nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;
padding-left: 1em;
}
.nytslm_notification_label {
color: #D0021B;
text-transform: uppercase;
font-weight: 700;
font-size: 0.6875rem;
margin-bottom: 0.2em;
letter-spacing: 0.02em;
}
.nytslm_notification_link {
font-weight: 600;
color: #121212;
display: flex;
align-items: center;
}
.nytslm_notification_headline {
font-size: 0.875rem;
line-height: 1.0625rem;
}
.nytslm_notification_image_wrapper {
position: relative;
max-width: 75px;
margin-left: 10px;
flex-shrink: 0;
}
.nytslm_notification_image {
max-width: 100%;
}
.nytslm_notification_image_live_bug {
position: absolute;
text-transform: uppercase;
bottom: 7px;
left: 2px;
font-size: 0.5rem;
background-color: #d0021b;
color: white;
border-radius: 3px;
padding: 4px 4px 2px 4px;
font-weight: 700;
margin-right: 2px;
letter-spacing: 0.03rem;
}
/* No hover state on in app */
.Hybrid .nytslm_li a:hover,
.Hybrid .nytslm_li_loud a:hover {
border-bottom: none;
padding-bottom: 0;
}
.Hybrid #TOP_BANNER_REGION {
display: none;
}
.nytslm_st0 {
fill: #f4564a;
}
.nytslm_st1 {
fill: #ffffff;
}
.nytslm_st2 {
fill: #2b8ad8;
}
Fotos de la turba en el Capitolio
Elecciones en Georgia
6 falsedades sobre la elección
Ataque a la democracia
La diversidad del voto latino
“),e+=””+b+””,e+=””,d&&(e+=””,e+=””,e+=”Live”,e+=””),e+=””,e}function getVariant(){var a=window.NYTD&&window.NYTD.Abra&&window.NYTD.Abra.getAbraSync&&window.NYTD.Abra.getAbraSync(“STYLN_elections_notifications”);// Only actually have control situation in prd and stg
return[“www.nytimes.com”,”www.stg.nytimes.com”].includes(window.location.hostname)||(a=”STYLN_elections_notifications”),a||”0_control”}function reportData(){if(window.dataLayer){var a;try{a=dataLayer.find(function(a){return!!a.user}).user}catch(a){}var b={abtest:{test:”styln-elections-notifications”,variant:getVariant()},module:{name:”styln-elections-notifications”,label:getVariant(),region:”TOP_BANNER”},user:a};window.dataLayer.push(Object.assign({},b,{event:”ab-alloc”})),window.dataLayer.push(Object.assign({},b,{event:”ab-expose”})),window.dataLayer.push(Object.assign({},b,{event:”impression”}))}}function insertNotification(a,b){// Bail here if the user is in control
if(reportData(),”0_control”!==getVariant()){// Remove menu bar items or previous notification
var c=document.querySelector(“.nytslm_innerContainer”);if(c&&1 30 * 60 * 1000) return restoreMenuIfNecessary();
// Do not update DOM if the content won’t change
if(currentNotificationContents!==a.text&&window.localStorage.getItem(“stylnelecs”)!==a.timestamp)// Do not show if user has interacted with this link
// if (Cookie.get(‘stylnelecs’) === data.timestamp) return;
{expireLocalStorage(“stylnelecs”),currentNotificationContents=a.text;// Construct URL for tracking
var b=a.link.split(“#”),c=b[0]+”?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-elections-notifications&variant=1_election_notifications&region=TOP_BANNER&context=Menu#”+b[1],d=formatNotification(c,a.text,a.kicker,a.image);insertNotification(d,function(){var b=document.querySelector(“.nytslm_notification_link”);return b?void(b.onclick=function(){window.localStorage.setItem(“stylnelecs”,a.timestamp)}):null})}})}(function(){navigator.userAgent.includes(“nytios”)||navigator.userAgent.includes(“nyt_android”)||window.stylnelecsHasLoaded||(// setInterval(getUpdate, 5000);
window.stylnelecsHasLoaded=!0)})(),function(){try{if(navigator.userAgent.includes(“nytios”)||navigator.userAgent.includes(“nyt_android”)){var a=document.getElementsByClassName(“nytslm_title”)[0];a.style.pointerEvents=”none”}}catch(a){}}(); More
88 Shares169 Views
in Elections
What Went Right in the 2020 Election
by Aurelia Butler 8 March 2021, 18:39
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyon techWhat Went Right in the 2020 ElectionIt wasn’t all a mess. Here’s how the government and tech companies tamed foreign interference.CreditCredit…By Rad MoraMarch 8, 2021Updated 2:39 p.m. ETThis article is part of the On Tech newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it weekdays.A lot went wrong after the 2020 election in the United States. But here’s one thing that went right during it: A risk everyone worried about — foreign election interference — mostly failed.That showed what is possible when government officials and technology companies are laser focused on a problem, effectively coordinate and learn from their past mistakes.But the false narrative that the election was stolen, culminating in a mob attack on the U.S. Capitol, also pointed to the limits of those efforts. The Russians or the Chinese didn’t delegitimize our election. We did it to ourselves.Today, I want to explore the glass half-full view. The largely averted threat of foreign election meddling was a success that shouldn’t be overlooked.What went wrong the last timeLet me first remind you what happened around the 2016 election. Russian hackers pilfered documents from the Democratic National Committee and tried to muck around with state election infrastructure. Digital propagandists backed by the Russian government also fanned information on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and elsewhere that sought to erode people’s faith in voting or inflame social divisions.Powerful American institutions — notably local, state and federal government officials as well as large internet companies — were slow to tackle the problem or had initially dismissed it. The effect of the hacking and trolling wasn’t clear, but the worry was that foreign governments would regularly seek to disrupt U.S. elections and that it would contribute to Americans’ lack of trust in our systems and with one another.What happened in 2020Some foreign governments, including Russia and Iran, tried to disrupt our elections again, but it mostly didn’t work. The same U.S. institutions and digital defenses that failed four years earlier largely held strong this time.“The progress that was made between 2016 and 2020 was remarkable,” said Camille François, chief innovation officer at Graphika, a firm that analyzes manipulation of social networks.What changed in government and techOne major shift after 2016 was that federal government officials and the state and local officials who run elections overcame initial mistrust to collaborate more effectively on voting threats. Matt Masterson, who until recently was a senior adviser on election security for the Department of Homeland Security, said coordination was the biggest change that helped shore up digital defenses in election management systems.“This is as good as the federal government has worked on any issue in my experience,” Masterson said.He also credited efforts in states, notably Georgia, that created paper trails of ballots that could be audited quickly and provide more visibility into the vote counting to help increase people’s trust in the election process.The tech companies, François said, shifted to acknowledge their blind spots. For the first time, online powers including Facebook wrote policies specifically tackling foreign government meddling and put people in charge of stopping it. They also made it harder for foreign trolls to use some of their 2016 tactics, such as buying online advertisements to circulate divisive messages widely.Social media companies also started to publicly announce when they found campaigns by foreign governments that were used to mislead people online. François said that helped researchers and journalists better assess the techniques of foreign propagandists — and the shared knowledge helped internet companies stop trolling campaigns before they had a big impact.Cooperation improved between government and tech companies, too. There were regular meetings between major internet companies and the federal officials responsible for election protection to share information. And internet companies began to tell the public when the U.S. government tipped them off about foreign interference on their websites.Both François and Masterson said that an “aha” moment was the response to Iran’s effort to intimidate voters during the fall. National security officials said then that Iran had obtained some Americans’ voter-registration data, most of which was publicly available, to send deceptive messages that threatened voters.Because they were ready for threats like this, officials were able to make connections between voter intimidation in multiple states, identify the source of the menacing messages, inform election officials across the country and tell voters what was happening — all in about a day.“That couldn’t have happened in 2016, and it likely couldn’t have happened in 2018,” Masterson said. “That was what we had all trained for.”What’s nextWhile internet companies and the U.S. government caught up to the kinds of interference they faced in 2016, they failed at confronting the even trickier challenge of a campaign led by the president himself to cast doubt on the election process despite no substantial evidence. And foreign cyber attacks and online propaganda efforts certainly haven’t stopped.But it could have been much worse. A lot went right in the election because powerful institutions took the risk of foreign hacking and trolling seriously and rose to the challenge. That’s a hopeful lesson for future elections, the pandemic and other crises.Before we go …It’s a weird time to become rich: My colleague Erin Griffith writes that a booming market in tech stocks and I.P.O.s has created a conundrum for newly wealthy technologists. Buying a Ferrari in the middle of a pandemic might be tacky and pointless, so instead they’re paying for Snoop Dogg to lead cooking classes on Zoom or piling into luxury vans for road trips.How online shopping affected these smaller businesses: Amy Haimerl spoke to owners of a grocery store in Michigan, a fitness studio and other smaller businesses about shifting their operations to online shops during the pandemic. For some of them, e-commerce helped them stay afloat, but for others it was more hassle than help.Kids spending more time online is … complicated: Screen time “as a concept to track meticulously, to fret and panic about, to measure parents’ worth in — is no longer considered a valid framework in a pandemic world,” a Washington Post writer said.Hugs to thisA train of duckies snakes through an opening in half-frozen water.We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com.If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
113 Shares199 Views
in Elections
Inside the Lincoln Project’s Secrets, Side Deals and Scandals
by Aurelia Butler 8 March 2021, 16:32
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyInside the Lincoln Project’s Secrets, Side Deals and ScandalsA civil war broke out in the group as it antagonized Donald Trump, with leaders splintering over financial arrangements and revelations of online harassment by a top official.Credit…Mark HarrisDanny Hakim, Maggie Astor and March 8, 2021, 12:32 p.m. ETA few days before the presidential election, the leadership of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project gathered at the Utah home of Steve Schmidt, one of the group’s co-founders, and listened as he plotted out the organization’s future.None of the dissident Republican consultants who created the Lincoln Project a year earlier had imagined how wildly successful it would be, pulling in more than $87 million in donations and producing scores of viral videos that doubled as a psy-ops campaign intended to drive President Donald J. Trump to distraction. Confident that a Biden administration was on the horizon, Mr. Schmidt, a swaggering former political adviser to John McCain and Arnold Schwarzenegger, pitched the other attendees on his post-Trump vision for the project over a breakfast of bagels and muffins. And it was ambitious.“Five years from now, there will be a dozen billion-dollar media companies that don’t exist today,” he told the group, according to two people who attended. “I would like to build one, and would invite all of you to be part of that.”In fact, Mr. Schmidt and the three other men who started the Lincoln Project — John Weaver, Reed Galen and Rick Wilson — had already quietly moved to set themselves up in the new enterprise, drafting and filing papers to create TLP Media in September and October, records show. Its aim was to transform the original project, a super PAC, into a far more lucrative venture under their control.This was not the only private financial arrangement among the four men. Shortly after they created the group in late 2019, they had agreed to pay themselves millions of dollars in management fees, three people with knowledge of the deal said. One of the people said a contract was drawn up among the four men but not signed. A spokeswoman for the Lincoln Project was broadly dismissive and said, “No such agreement exists and nothing like it was ever adopted.”The behind-the-scenes moves by the four original founders showed that whatever their political goals, they were also privately taking steps to make money from the earliest stages, and wanted to limit the number of people who would share in the spoils. Over time, the Lincoln Project directed about $27 million — nearly a third of its total fund-raising — to Mr. Galen’s consulting firm, from which the four men were paid, according to people familiar with the arrangement.Conceived as a full-time attack machine against Mr. Trump, the Lincoln Project’s public profile soared last year as its founders built a reputation as a creative yet ruthless band of veteran operators. They recruited like-minded colleagues, and their scathing videos brought adulation from the left and an aura of mischievous idealism for what they claimed was their mission: nothing less than to save democracy.They also hit upon a geyser of cash, discovering that biting attacks on a uniquely polarizing president could be as profitable in the loosely regulated world of political fund-raising as Mr. Trump’s populist bravado was for his own campaign.Then it all began to unravel. By the time of the Utah meeting, the leaders of the Lincoln Project — who had spent their careers making money from campaigns — recognized the value of their enterprise and had begun to maneuver for financial gain. But other leaders had learned of the financial arrangement among the original founders, and they were privately fuming.Another major problem was festering: the behavior of Mr. Weaver, who for years had been harassing young men with sexually provocative messages.Allegations about Mr. Weaver’s conduct began appearing in published reports in The American Conservative and Forensic News this winter. In late January, The New York Times reported on allegations going back several years. The Times has spoken to more than 25 people who received harassing messages, including one person who was 14 when Mr. Weaver first contacted him.Fresh reporting by The Times found that Mr. Weaver’s inappropriate behavior was brought to the organization’s attention multiple times last year, beginning in January 2020, according to four people with direct knowledge of the complaints, though none of the warnings involved a minor. The Lincoln Project’s spokeswoman, Ryan Wiggins, said it would not comment on issues related to Mr. Weaver while an outside legal review of Mr. Weaver’s actions was ongoing. The group has hired the law firm Paul Hastings to conduct the review.Steve Schmidt, a former political adviser to John McCain and Arnold Schwarzenegger, is one of the co-founders of the Lincoln Project.Credit…Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty ImagesLast June, an employee for a company hired by the Lincoln Project warned in an email that Mr. Weaver’s conduct was “potentially fatal” to the organization’s image. The email, sent to a board member and circulated to other leaders, described multiple instances of harassment. It said Mr. Weaver’s behavior was already damaging relationships with vendors and offered to put leaders in contact with some of the men involved.Over the last month, The Times reviewed documents and conducted interviews with the founders and with scores of current and former contractors, executives, interns and men who were harassed by Mr. Weaver. Some spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations, and others because they feared retaliation from Lincoln Project leaders.The crisis surrounding Mr. Weaver, and the splintering of the group’s leadership, have cast the future of the Lincoln Project into doubt. Within weeks of the meeting in Utah, a battle erupted over who would control the group’s board. There would be threats to sue, to start rival groups and to back different board slates, as millions of dollars were moved in and out of the organization.Even people once associated with the group, including George T. Conway III, have called for its dissolution. But Mr. Schmidt’s faction intends to continue it as a modern media campaign against global forces of authoritarianism, while also monetizing the movement.Save for Mr. Weaver, the project’s top leadership — Mr. Schmidt, Mr. Galen and Mr. Wilson — has not changed. They are hoping that enough of its more than 500,000 donors will remain to keep its coffers filled.Mr. Schmidt, in a recent interview conducted shortly before he took a leave of absence, said this was no time to quit.“I want the Lincoln Project to be one of the premier pro-democracy organizations,” he said. “We believe there is a real autocratic movement that is a threat to democracy and has a floor of 40 percent in the next election. And the pro-democracy side cannot be the gentle side of the debate.”An unexpectedly fast riseIt was not initially clear that the Lincoln Project would be so wildly successful. Then, last May, it released its “Mourning in America” video, a play on a Reagan-era commercial that laid the failures of the country’s pandemic response squarely at Mr. Trump’s feet.The commercial prompted a late-night Twitter barrage from Mr. Trump to his tens of millions of followers. He derided the project as “a group of RINO Republicans who failed badly 12 years ago, then again 8 years ago, and then got BADLY beaten by me,” adding, “They’re all LOSERS.”Mr. Trump’s outburst gave the Lincoln Project a flood of attention it could have only hoped for. Fund-raising surged. In June, the billionaire investor Stephen Mandel donated $1 million, while Joshua Bekenstein, a co-chairman of Bain Capital, and David Geffen each donated $100,000; Mr. Geffen has since given $500,000 in total. (David Dishman, the executive director of the David Geffen Foundation, said that Mr. Geffen’s donations were “specific to their work around the 2020 election cycle.”)It was the start of a wave of contributions, not all from financial powerhouses like Mr. Geffen. The Lincoln Project raised more than $30 million from people who gave less than $200.A hiring spree began, and the organization spread its wings, creating a communications shop, a political division, podcasts and political shows for its website. It went from “eight or 10 people on the first of May, to like 60-plus by late or early July,” Mr. Galen said. “We scaled up enormously quickly.”Initially, the project operated much like a pirate ship. Typical workplace management practices were lacking. The organization has no chief executive. Two of its largest contractors, who were billing the Lincoln Project, were given seats on the three-member board of directors, a breach of normal governance practices.The executive structure was malleable: The two contractors on the board, for instance, Ron Steslow and Mike Madrid, who were each involved in reaching voters through digital advertising and data targeting, were also referred to as co-founders. So were Mr. Conway and Jennifer Horn, a former head of the Republican Party in New Hampshire who joined early on and played a leading role in outreach to independents and Republicans.“This thing was literally a pop-up stand,” said Mr. Conway, an unpaid adviser who had no real operational role before stepping away from the organization last summer. “It was an organization that got big really fast, and more money came in than anyone could have imagined. It was just catch as catch can.”Amid the rapid growth, it was the core group of original founders, led by Mr. Schmidt, who wielded operational control. “I had zero decision-making power,” Sarah Lenti, a Republican political consultant who at one point served as the group’s executive director, said in an interview.Ms. Lenti, who has worked on four G.O.P. presidential campaigns in a variety of roles, added that she “was never privy to what founders were making.”If liberals viewed the Lincoln Project’s mission as noble, the four Republicans who started it had long been practitioners of bare-knuckled political brawling.Mr. Wilson was a longtime G.O.P. strategist known for producing jagged attack ads, like one in 2002 that claimed former Senator Max Cleland, a Georgia Democrat who had lost both legs and his right hand in Vietnam, lacked the courage to defend America against terrorists.The other three were alumni of Mr. McCain’s presidential campaigns. Mr. Weaver is a brooding and mercurial Texan whom Mr. McCain nicknamed Sunny. Mr. Schmidt, played by Woody Harrelson in the movie “Game Change,” championed Sarah Palin as Mr. McCain’s vice-presidential nominee in 2008, a decision he later called a mistake. He and Mr. Weaver are not remembered fondly by the McCain family, judging by a recent tweet from Meghan McCain, the former senator’s daughter, who said that in recent years, “no McCain would have spit on them if they were on fire.”Mr. Galen, once a Schmidt lieutenant and now an equal partner, said of presidential campaigns, “It’s not Montessori school.”Rick Wilson is a longtime Republican strategist known for producing jagged attack ads against Democrats.Credit…Brad Barket/Getty ImagesAs money poured in, robust cost controls were lacking, with founders reaping management fees. And while big payments are common in politics, other Lincoln Project officials and employees were shocked at the scale when federal records revealed that nearly $27 million had been paid to Mr. Galen’s consulting firm, Summit Strategic Communications. It is not known how much of that each of the four received. Their private arrangement shielded even from other senior officials the size of the individual payments.The Lincoln Project directed nearly $27 million to Reed Galen’s consulting firm, from which the four original founders were paid.Credit…Robin Marchant/Getty Images“Based on public reports, I clearly was not compensated anywhere near as lavishly as others seemingly were, earning a small fraction of what some of my male counterparts did,” Ms. Horn said in a recent statement.Obscuring payments via intermediary firms can violate campaign finance laws, but it is unclear whether the Lincoln Project crossed that line.Ms. Wiggins, the spokeswoman, said Summit was one of the prime contractors that managed and performed work for the Lincoln Project, citing voter outreach efforts and placing advertisements. “All prime contractors and subcontractors were paid in accordance with industry standards,” she said.Mr. Galen was also earning commissions on nearly $13.3 million directed to another contractor, Ashton Media, which placed the group’s television ads, a former Lincoln Project official said. The project declined to discuss the commissions but said in a statement that it was “standard practice” to use “either a percentage, fixed-fee or hybrid model for media buying.”Jan Baran, a longtime Republican campaign finance lawyer, said that it was “customary and customarily controversial” for campaign consultants to steer business to their own firms, but that, typically, candidates and PACs negotiate those fees down. What makes the Lincoln Project different, he said, is that “the consultants are their own client, so I’m guessing the negotiations wouldn’t have been as rigorous.”The Lincoln Project’s advertisements ceaselessly needled and called out President Donald J. Trump.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesUnaddressed complaintsIn the midst of the Lincoln Project’s overnight success last summer, a troubling email arrived.“I’m writing regarding a pattern of concerning behavior by Weaver that has been brought to my attention by multiple people,” it began. “In addition to being morally and potentially legally wrong, I believe what I’m going to outline poses an immediate threat to the reputation of the organization, and is potentially fatal to our public image.”The email was sent to Mr. Steslow, the Lincoln Project contractor and board member, by an employee at his company, Tusk, which handled the project’s digital advertising. It described a wide array of allegations dating from 2014 to 2020, including what it called a “bait-and-switch situation” around 2015 in which Mr. Weaver offered to discuss a political job with a young man, then tried to bring him to his hotel room instead. It also said that Mr. Weaver had continued to harass people after the Lincoln Project was founded in late 2019, and that he had “mixed suggestive commentary with official T.L.P. marketing work.”The Times obtained a portion of the message, and multiple people who have read it provided detailed descriptions of the rest. It included an offer to provide more information if Lincoln Project leaders requested it.This was not the first time that allegations of harassment by Mr. Weaver had been reported to project leaders. In January, five months before the email was sent, another person working for Tusk had raised concerns with Mr. Steslow.Ms. Lenti said she was told last March, when she was executive director, that Mr. Weaver “had a history of flirting with gentlemen over Twitter in an inappropriate fashion.”Mr. Steslow pressed unsuccessfully for some time to have Mr. Weaver pushed out, five people with knowledge of the matter said. While he informed other Lincoln Project officials as early as February 2020 of his concerns, three of the people said, there are conflicting accounts of who learned about Mr. Weaver, what they learned and when.Mr. Schmidt has been adamant that he had “no awareness or insinuations of any type of inappropriate behavior,” only rumors that Mr. Weaver was gay, even as concerns about harassment were percolating within the organization he was helping run. Mr. Galen was made aware of the June email, the five people with knowledge of the matter said; he declined to comment on the issue, citing the outside legal review the Lincoln Project has commissioned.John Weaver, accused of harassing young men, took a medical leave from the Lincoln Project in August.Credit…Open Mind/CUNY-TV, via YouTubeThe Lincoln Project did not begin an internal review into Mr. Weaver’s conduct until after the email from the Tusk employee arrived in June. It was led by the group’s general counsel, Matt Sanderson, but was limited in scope, according to Ms. Lenti and others. Ms. Lenti said that to her knowledge, only two people who had complained about Mr. Weaver’s messages were contacted. The June email contained many more allegations that were never followed up on.“I was not made privy to any written report, if there was ever one, and to my knowledge only the two gentlemen were interviewed,” Ms. Lenti said, adding that Mr. Weaver himself had not been interviewed.Mr. Sanderson declined to comment, citing the legal inquiry.By the time the Lincoln Project was founded, Mr. Weaver had been harassing young men online for years. In the most aggressive messages reviewed by The Times, he explicitly offered professional help or mentorship in exchange for sex. Other times, he asked young men about their height, weight and other measurements, and suggested they get drinks or travel together.Mr. Weaver took a medical leave in August, quieting internal dissent. But soon afterward, he was included as an equal partner in Mr. Schmidt’s proposed private media venture. Axios reported in late October that the Lincoln Project was “weighing offers from different television studios, podcast networks and book publishers.”That was news to Mr. Steslow, Mr. Madrid and Ms. Horn, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. It exacerbated tensions that had been simmering since the summer, when the trio had resisted a brief effort by the original founders to strip them of their titles as co-founders, the people said.By Oct. 30, Mr. Steslow, Mr. Madrid and Ms. Horn were already on edge as they gathered at Mr. Schmidt’s Utah house, listening as he outlined his vision for a media company. And it was soon made clear to them that they would not be equal partners. Though Mr. Schmidt had already brought Mr. Weaver in on the media deal, he referred to him indirectly as a “black box” that needed to be resolved, but didn’t give details.Mike Madrid was installed as a board member but was often referred to as a co-founder.Credit…Max WhittakerWhat Mr. Schmidt didn’t say was that the four original principals had already signed a 27-page agreement for TLP Media that named Mr. Schmidt as manager and required each to chip in $100,000 for an equal share, according to a copy reviewed by The Times.Asked about those documents, Ms. Wiggins, the spokeswoman, said: “This is an inactive company — it only ever existed on paper, never conducted any business, and was never capitalized by its due date, making it null. There are no plans to use this business in the future.”Game changeNot long after the election, with relationships fraying over the group’s finances, Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Wilson sought to formalize their control of the project by pushing to join the board of directors, multiple people with knowledge of the effort said. Mr. Steslow and Mr. Madrid were sent a resolution to sign that would add Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Wilson to the board. Mr. Steslow and Mr. Madrid instead requested a meeting to discuss the proposal. They were rebuffed.A bitter standoff began. With Mr. Steslow and Mr. Madrid still in control of the board, Mr. Galen, aligned with Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Wilson, set up a new entity of their own called Lincoln Project 2024. In December, they moved millions of dollars from the existing Lincoln Project into companies they controlled, which would have left behind a hollowed-out shell, several people with knowledge of the dispute said. (Mr. Galen said, “Anything regarding this, I can’t speak to.”)Mr. Steslow and Mr. Madrid, threatened with litigation by the original founders, asked to review the organization’s books, as well as information related to Mr. Galen’s consulting firm.Mr. Conway tried to mediate. “I told them all these threats and counter-threats are going to blow up the organization and destroy something that had done so much good,” he said.It was only during the course of that mediation, Mr. Conway added, that he first learned something about Mr. Weaver’s behavior. Mr. Steslow and Mr. Madrid told him they were concerned that Mr. Weaver might still be getting paid despite having sent inappropriate messages to young political consultants, Mr. Conway said, though he added that he wasn’t given details or told that it involved people who worked with the project.In the end, the transferred funds were returned to the Lincoln Project, Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Wilson joined the board, and a settlement was reached with Mr. Steslow and Mr. Madrid, who departed in December.Both declined to comment, citing a confidentiality agreement. While the organization has publicly offered to waive such agreements, several people with knowledge of the matter said the offers were limited.Jennifer Horn, a former chairwoman of the New Hampshire Republican Party, left the Lincoln Project in January.Credit…Matt Rourke/Associated PressThe infighting remained largely invisible until January, when reports surfaced about Mr. Weaver’s conduct. Ms. Horn soon departed, assailing fellow leaders’ handling of the situation and saying she had only recently become aware of it. “When I spoke to one of the founders to raise my objections and concerns, I was yelled at, demeaned and lied to,” she said.Recriminations were swift. Ms. Horn’s private Twitter messages were posted to the project’s official Twitter account, then quickly taken down, a highly unusual breach of privacy; her lawyers have given notice of a potential lawsuit.Mr. Schmidt retreated, leaving the board he had only recently joined. He also apologized to Ms. Horn for letting “my anger turn a business dispute into a public war” and called her “an important and valuable member of our team.”Those comments were part of a lengthy statement in which Mr. Schmidt said the Weaver episode had reawakened his anger at sexual abuse he had experienced as a boy, as he sought to explain the group’s widely criticized response.“I am incandescently angry about it,” he said of Mr. Weaver’s actions. “I know the journey that lies ahead for every young man that trusted, feared and was abused by John Weaver.”Rehabilitation projectAs the Lincoln Project tries to reboot, in some ways little has changed. The project is still controlled by three of the four men who started it. Cognizant of a lack of diversity in the organization — all four original founders are white — they have asked Tara Setmayer, a Black senior adviser and former House Republican communications director, to lead a transition advisory committee.Ms. Setmayer called the project a movement of people “who decided to get involved to help rehabilitate our democracy.” But from the start, it has blended money with mission. For some, like Mr. Conway, there was no money involved. For others, it was incredibly lucrative.Few have been more omnipresent than Mr. Schmidt, who has gleefully brawled with the Trumps. Remarking on images of the family’s last Jan. 20 photo op, he tweeted, “Uday and Qusay looking sad,” conflating Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump with the sons of Saddam Hussein. “Crying Ivanka. Glorious indeed.”George T. Conway III, an unpaid adviser who had no real operational role, has called for the Lincoln Project’s dissolution.Credit…Joshua Roberts/ReutersStuart Stevens, a longtime media consultant who has taken an increasingly prominent role in the project, cried during an interview while talking about his commitment to the cause.“I helped create this monster that is the current Republican Party,” Mr. Stevens wrote in a follow-up email. He called the recent tumult at the Lincoln Project “a rough couple of weeks,” adding: “This isn’t supposed to be easy. We’re human. We make mistakes. There’s stress at the highest level. All you can do is acknowledge, take responsibility and move on.”Whether donors will keep the spigot open, especially with Mr. Trump both outside the White House and off Twitter, remains to be seen.“I’ve been talking to a lot of donors,” Mr. Stevens said. “The support is tremendous. Most of them have been involved in business and had a few rough times. They were drawn to Lincoln Project not because we were H.R. geniuses but because we knew how to fight and were willing to take on our own party. That hasn’t changed.”But the Weaver problem will linger.“The attacks that are coming on us from Donald Trump Jr. and all these other people, they’re gleeful — they love the gift that John Weaver gave them,” Mr. Wilson said in an emotional monologue on the group’s video program “The Breakdown” last month. “What he’s given them is a weapon in their hands.”Shane Goldmacher More

Presidential Election of 2020

More stories

Why Georgia is Bracing for More Political Hurricanes

Democrats Are Anxious About 2022 — and 2024

Why Is Space Command Moving Into Mo Brooks’s Backyard?

Covid-19 Relief Bill Fulfills Biden’s Promise to Expand Obamacare, for Two Years

Pandemic Relief Bill Fulfills Biden’s Promise to Expand Obamacare, for Two Years

¿Por qué los hombres latinos votan por los republicanos?

What Went Right in the 2020 Election

Inside the Lincoln Project’s Secrets, Side Deals and Scandals

ITALIAN LANGUAGE

ENGLISH LANGUAGE