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      Who Is Will Hurd? 5 Things to Know About the Presidential Candidate

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      Mr. Hurd, a former congressman from a swing district in Texas, is a former undercover C.I.A. officer and a cybersecurity expert.Former Representative Will Hurd, a Republican from a swing district in Texas who served three terms, faces the daunting task of establishing himself in a field of much better-known presidential candidates.Here are five things to know about Mr. Hurd, who announced his 2024 bid on Thursday.He is a former C.I.A. officer.Mr. Hurd got a job with the C.I.A. straight out of college in 2000 and spent more than eight years as an undercover agent, with stints in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan.His first assignment with the C.I.A. came after Al Qaeda suicide bombers attacked the U.S.S. Cole, an American warship, killing 17 crew members. His next assignment came after Sept. 11.In an interview with The Guardian last year, he said the job had ended his engagement to a fiancée: “You know, it probably had a chilling effect on our relationship, especially when you confirm: ‘Hey babe, I actually work in the C.I.A., and we’re going to Islamabad. Pack your bags. Great!’”He has expertise in cybersecurity.Mr. Hurd has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Texas A&M University and, after leaving the C.I.A., worked as a senior adviser at a cybersecurity firm called FusionX.When he was elected to Congress in 2014, he made cybersecurity one of his main focuses and led the House Oversight Subcommittee on Information Technology.He organized a hearing in 2015 on encryption and its potential effects on law enforcement’s investigative abilities — an issue he discussed in an interview with Motherboard at a hacking conference that year. He opposed efforts backed by intelligence agencies to weaken encryption on smartphones.He has continued to work in the technology arena since leaving Congress in 2021, and joined the board of OpenAI, the artificial intelligence laboratory that developed ChatGPT.He has been critical of Trump.Mr. Hurd has not been shy about criticizing former President Donald J. Trump, and has done so since Mr. Trump first ran in 2016.In October 2016, after the release of the “Access Hollywood” recording in which Mr. Trump bragged about assaulting women, Mr. Hurd called on him to leave the presidential race. In 2017, he urged Mr. Trump to apologize for claiming there was violence “on many sides” during a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. And in 2018, in a guest essay for The New York Times, he wrote that Mr. Trump had “actively participated in a Russian disinformation campaign.”Mr. Hurd also denounced many components of Mr. Trump’s immigration policy — describing his proposed border wall as a “third-century solution to a 21st-century problem,” calling the separation of migrant children from their parents “unacceptable,” and saying that his ban on travelers from a list of majority-Muslim countries “endangers the lives of thousands of American men and women in our military, diplomatic corps and intelligence services.”He was an unusually bipartisan lawmaker.Mr. Hurd represented one of the most competitive congressional districts in the country — a vast, largely Hispanic stretch of South Texas that he won by 2.1 percentage points in 2014, 1.3 percentage points in 2016 and half a percentage point in 2018 — and his voting record reflected that.Breaking from Republican orthodoxy, Mr. Hurd supported legislation to end a government shutdown in 2019 and to protect L.G.B.T.Q. people from discrimination. He also pushed for immigration reform, including protecting young people from deportation.And he drew attention in 2017 for a live-streamed road trip from Texas to Washington with Beto O’Rourke, then a Democratic member of Congress.“My final message for my colleagues as I depart this body: Don’t treat bipartisanship like a four-letter word,” he said in his farewell speech from the House floor.Mr. Hurd did vote the Republican line most of the time. In 2015 and 2017, he supported bills to ban abortion after 20 weeks. And though he voted against repealing the Affordable Care Act in 2017, that was only after it became clear that the bill would pass anyway; he was opposed to the Obama-era policy. He also opposed the Iran nuclear deal and called for a more hawkish policy against the Islamic State.He was one of the only Black Republicans in Congress.When Mr. Hurd was first sworn into Congress in January 2015, he was one of only two Black Republicans in the House. By the time he left in January 2021, he was the only one.He is the son of a Black father and a white mother, and has spoken about his background and his experience as a person of color on many occasions.“Two centuries ago, I would have been counted as three-fifths of a person, and today, I can say I’ve had the honor of serving three terms in Congress,” he said in a statement upon announcing in 2019 that he would not run for re-election.At the time, he said he was leaving in part because he thought he could be more effective in electing more diverse Republicans to Congress from the outside — though that has not ended up being his professional focus. The number of Black Republicans in the House has rebounded slightly, to four. More

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      Christie Lashes Trump in New Hampshire, to Republicans Open to It

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      Missing from Chris Christie’s campaign stop: Republicans who are leaning toward Donald J. Trump but open to an alternative.Chris Christie brought his Talking Truth to Donald Trump performance back to New Hampshire on Wednesday evening, aiming a fresh quiver of poison darts at the former president. His talk pleased a small Trump-skeptical crowd, but raised the big question about Mr. Christie’s candidacy: Where are all the other Republican voters?For the most part, Mr. Christie was preaching to the choir. Submitting to more than 90 minutes of questions in a town hall format, he heard from an audience member who identified as a member of an extinct species, a “Rockefeller Republican”; from another who said he used to work for a Republican senator but hasn’t voted Republican since 2016; and from a woman who introduced herself by saying, “I’m a Democrat, and you intrigue me.”At times the linoleum-floored room in a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in Derry, with its circle of white folding chairs, took on the feeling of a therapy session for Republicans homeless in their party. “What in your opinion,” asked one man, “happened to the Republican Party? We know that Trump lied about the election, but why did so many of our fellow citizens believe that?”Since announcing his campaign two weeks ago, Mr. Christie has had a modest lift in early public polls of likely Republican primary voters in New Hampshire, nudging into third place, though still far behind Mr. Trump, the front-runner. At the same time, Mr. Christie, who has positioned himself as Mr. Trump’s most direct critic, tops the list of 2024 candidates that Republicans say they will never consider.Mr. Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, who was an early and eager Trump endorser in 2016 and stuck with him in 2020, presented himself on Wednesday as the lone truth-teller in the G.O.P. field — criticizing Mr. Trump as unfit for office, while mocking other primary rivals as too cowed to even challenge the former president’s lies about the 2020 election.“You want to beat the incumbent?” Mr. Christie said, meaning Mr. Trump. “Then you have to beat the incumbent.”Ticking off a list of others in the race — Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott and Asa Hutchinson among them — Mr. Christie said: “They can’t win if they’re not going to make the case against him.”He told voters to demand of every candidate, “Why are you defending the big lie that the election was stolen?”Referring to a Fox News interview with Mr. Trump this week, Mr. Christie said, in so many words, that it presented an emperor devoid of clothing. He said “the most disturbing thing” was Mr. Trump’s answer to why he didn’t return classified documents after receiving a subpoena in a case that led to his federal indictment.“His answer was I was too busy to go through all the boxes to comply with the grand jury subpoena,” said Mr. Christie, a former federal prosecutor. “I can guarantee that interview will be Exhibit 1 in the trial on the classified documents, because he essentially admitted to willful obstruction of justice.”Mr. Trump “just sat there and told his lawyer to lie,” Mr. Christie continued. “This is not the résumé of somebody you need behind the desk in the Oval Office again, and our party can do better.”There were about 50 people present, and about the same number of unfilled seats. A livestream of the town hall event never seemed to have more than about 125 viewers. A press contingent of about a dozen people spoke to the outsize interest in Mr. Christie’s campaign from the news media and pundits, because of the phenomenon of a mainstream candidate’s taking on a former president of his own party so bluntly.Missing from the room, however, was the core of the Republican Party: voters leaning toward Mr. Trump who have propelled his rise in recent months, but who are still open to an alternative. Nearly all the voters present seemed to have turned their backs on Mr. Trump — a narrow slice of the primary electorate.Mr. Christie took the fact in stride.“I’ve been in this race for two weeks — two weeks — and I went from zero in New Hampshire to 9 percent, four points behind Ron DeSantis,” he said, citing a survey last week for NH Journal, a Republican-leaning news site. The poll also found that Mr. Christie topped the “no way” list for the state’s Republican electorate.On the way out, Kerry MacDonald, a real estate title agent from Litchfield, acknowledged, “I will say openly that I was a Trump supporter” in 2020. “I realize that campaign is in absolute chaos.”“I just don’t think he’s capable of unifying the party,” he said of the former president. “Governor Christie, on the other hand, he’s very well-spoken, he’s a direct candidate. I like the fact he’s worked both sides of the aisle as a governor. I’m feeling very strongly as I walk out tonight.” More

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      Special Counsel Who Hunted for a Deep-State Conspiracy Presents Muted Findings

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      John H. Durham, the Trump-era special counsel, criticized the F.B.I. during a six-hour hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.John H. Durham, the Trump-era special counsel who for four years pursued a politically fraught investigation into the Russia inquiry, told lawmakers on Wednesday that F.B.I. officials had exhibited confirmation bias — even as he defended his work against Democratic accusations that he became a partisan tool.In a nearly six-hour hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, Mr. Durham rarely offered new information, repeatedly saying he did not want to go beyond his report. That approach echoed an appearance in 2019 before the same committee by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the investigation into possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.The hearing may be the final — official, at least — chapter in the complex saga of the Russia investigation and former President Donald J. Trump’s repeated efforts to reframe it as a deep-state plot, which has been a source of turbulence in American political life for more than six years. Mr. Durham retired after completing his report last month, and Senate Democrats have not invited him to testify.For years, Mr. Trump and his allies stoked expectations that Mr. Durham would find a conspiracy lurking in the origins of the Russia investigation and would prosecute high-level officials. But Mr. Durham developed only two peripheral cases, both of which ended in acquittals, while citing flaws in the F.B.I.’s early investigative steps he attributed to confirmation bias.“There were identified, documented, significant failures of a highly sensitive, unique investigation that was undertaken by the F.B.I.,” Mr. Durham said. “The investigation clearly reveals that decisions that were made were made in one direction. If there was something that was inconsistent with the notion that Trump was involved in a well-coordinated conspiracy with the Russians, that information was largely discarded or ignored.”The hearing was largely a predicable display of partisanship, with each party trading claims about the merits of the underlying investigation into Russia’s attempt to manipulate the 2016 election in Mr. Trump’s favor. Mr. Mueller documented myriad links between Russia and Trump campaign officials, but did not charge any Trump associate with a criminal conspiracy with Russia.Republicans railed against the Russia investigation as unjustified and portrayed it as politically motivated and corrupt, focusing on flawed wiretap applications and text messages in which F.B.I. officials expressed animus toward Mr. Trump.Democrats defended it as legitimate and necessary by turning to the substance of Mr. Mueller’s work. Not only did he indict numerous Russians — and win convictions of multiple Trump associates on other crimes — but he also uncovered how the Trump campaign’s chairman had shared internal polling and strategy with a Russian and Ukrainian political consultant the government says is a Russian intelligence agent, among other things.For large portions of the hearing, Mr. Durham served as a foil for both purposes, as lawmakers on each side asked questions intended to affirm whatever facts or claims they wanted to emphasize.President Donald J. Trump, Attorney General William P. Barr and their allies in Congress stoked expectations that Mr. Durham would find a “deep state” conspiracy.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesMuch of his own critique of the investigation was familiar territory. The most factually grounded portions — especially errors and omissions in a set of wiretap applications that relied in part on claims in the so-called Steele dossier, a dubious compendium of what turned out to be opposition research indirectly funded by the Clinton campaign — echoed a December 2019 report by the Justice Department’s inspector general. Mr. Durham repeated those findings, but offered no concrete new suggestions for reforms.Other parts were more ephemeral. After Mr. Durham’s initial effort to find intelligence abuses at the heart of the Russia investigation came up empty, he shifted to hunting for a basis to blame the Clinton campaign. He used court filings and his report to insinuate that the campaign set out to defraud the F.B.I. and frame Mr. Trump, although he never charged any such conspiracy. Some Republicans, however, treated that idea as established fact.“What role did the Clinton campaign play in this hoax?” asked Representative Tom McClintock, Republican of California, adding, “Exactly what was the ‘Clinton Plan?’”But some of Mr. Trump’s staunchest supporters expressed disappointment that Mr. Durham did not live up to the grander expectations that he would put high-level officials in prison and prove a deep-state conspiracy.For example, Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, insisted that suspicions about collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia emerged because of an operation by Western intelligence agencies — a conspiracy theory that Mr. Durham set out to prove but failed to find evidence to support. Mr. Gaetz said Mr. Durham had let the country down, and compared the special counsel’s inquiry to the Washington Generals, the basketball team whose job is to lose in exhibition games against the Harlem Globetrotters.“When you are part of the cover-up, Mr. Durham, then it makes our job harder,” Mr. Gaetz said.Mr. Durham replied that Mr. Gaetz’s comments were “offensive.”Representative Matt Gaetz suggested that Mr. Durham was part of a cover-up.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesBut while most of the Republicans on the committee gave Mr. Durham a warmer welcome, he did not always say things that supported their position. Mr. Durham called Mr. Mueller a “patriot” and did not contradict any of his findings. He said that Russia did interfere in the 2016 election — and characterized that intelligence operation as a “significant threat.”Pushed by Representative Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, to go beyond his report’s conclusion that F.B.I. agents had acted with “confirmation bias” and accuse them in his testimony of having taken steps motivated by political favoritism, Mr. Durham demurred, saying that “it’s difficult to get into somebody else’s head.”And he said that the F.B.I. had “an affirmative duty” to open some kind of investigation into the allegation that served as the Russia investigation’s basis — an Australian diplomat said that a Trump campaign adviser had made a comment suggesting that the campaign had advance knowledge that Russia would anonymously dump out hacked Democratic emails.Still, he also testified that “in my view,” that information did not amount to “a legitimate basis to open as a full investigation” and that the bureau ought to have opened it as a lower-tier inquiry, like an “assessment” or a “preliminary” investigation. That went slightly beyond his report, which had argued that opening the inquiry at a lower level would have been better.The Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, concluded in 2019 that the same information was a sufficient basis to open a “full” counterintelligence inquiry.Throughout the hearing, Democrats pressed Mr. Durham to acknowledge or explain certain findings from a New York Times article in January examining how his inquiry became roiled by internal dissent and ethical disputes.Mr. Durham rarely offered new information, repeatedly saying he did not want to go beyond his report. Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesThey asked him, for example, why his longtime deputy, Nora R. Dannehy, resigned from his team in September 2020. The Times reported that she did so in protest after disputes over prosecutorial ethics, including the drafting of a potential interim report before the 2020 election.Mr. Durham spoke highly of Ms. Dannehy but declined to say why she had resigned. He called the Times article “unsourced” but did not deny its findings, adding, “To the extent The New York Times wrote an article suggesting certain things, it is what it is.”Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, asked Mr. Durham whether it was true, as the Times also reported, that when he and Attorney General William P. Barr traveled to Italy to pursue a certain pro-Trump conspiracy theory, Italian officials denied it but passed on a tip about unrelated financial crimes linked to Mr. Trump.Mr. Barr decided the allegation, whose details remain unclear, was too serious to ignore but had Mr. Durham control an investigation into it, and he filed no charges, The Times reported.“The question’s outside the scope of what I think I’m authorized to talk about — it’s not part of the report,” Mr. Durham replied, but added: “I can tell you this. That investigative steps were taken, grand jury subpoenas were issued and it came to nothing.” More

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      Chris Christie Is Doing Something Very, Very Important

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      Chris Christie made a complete fool of himself back in 2016, fan-dancing obsequiously around Donald Trump, angling for a crucial role in his administration, nattering on about their friendship, pretending or possibly even convincing himself that Trump could restrain his ego, check his nastiness, suspend his grift and, well, serve America. But then Christie, the former two-term governor of New Jersey, had plenty of company. And he never did style himself as some saint.It’s all water under the George Washington Bridge now. The Chris Christie of the current moment is magnificent. I don’t mean magnificent as in, he’s going to win the Republican presidential nomination. I don’t mean I’m rooting for a Christie presidency and regard him as the country’s possible salvation.But what he’s doing in this Republican primary is very, very important. It also couldn’t be more emotionally gratifying to behold. He’s telling the unvarnished truth about Trump, and he’s the only candidate doing that. A former prosecutor, he’s artfully, aggressively and comprehensively making the case against Trump, knocking down all the rationalizations Trump has mustered and all the diversions he has contrived since his 37-count federal indictment.None of the other candidates comes close. They’ve for the most part gagged themselves or decided to play laughable word games about who Trump is, what he has done and what he may yet do.It’s as if they’re looking at this wild and repugnant hyena, it has democracy in its jaws, and they know they should call it what it is and acknowledge what it’s poised to devour, but they’ve decided that merely hinting at that is candor and courage enough: “I think it might be nice if we Republicans gave an herbivore a crack at the presidency”; “Let’s think about what a post-scavenger era for the Republican Party would look like.”Then there’s Christie: “That’s one nasty, second-rate carnivore with no place on our savanna.” Never has a statement of the bestially obvious been so revolutionary.In a poll released on Friday by The New Hampshire Journal, Christie had pulled into third place among Republicans in the state, far behind Trump, who had 47 percent of the vote, but not far behind Ron DeSantis, who had just 13. Christie had 9, followed by Mike Pence with 5. That partly reflects Christie’s decision to make his initial stand, so to speak, in New Hampshire. But it also reflects something else: He’s excellent at this.Christie is to DeSantis what a Roman candle is to a scented votive. He explodes in a riot of color. DeSantis, on his best days, flickers.My enchantment with Christie’s fireworks makes me a cliché. In an observant and witty analysis in The Atlantic on Monday with the headline “Chris Christie, Liberal Hero,” David Graham inventoried the adoring media coverage Christie has garnered, noting that while there’s zero evidence that Christie could actually win the contest he has entered, “pundits are swooning.”But the swoon isn’t about Christie’s prospects. It’s about the hugely valuable contrast to other Republican presidential candidates that he’s providing. And about this: The health of American democracy hinges on a reckoning within the Republican Party, and that won’t come from Democrats saying the kinds of things that Christie is now. They’ve been doing that for years. It’ll come — if it even can — from the words and warnings of longtime Republicans who know how to get and use the spotlight.Did you see Christie’s CNN town hall last week? Have you watched or listened to any of his interviews? He’s funny. He’s lively. He’s crisp. And he’s right. Over the past few weeks, he has described Trump’s behavior as “vanity run amok.” Trump himself is “a petulant child.”At the town hall: “He is voluntarily putting our country through this. If at any point before the search in August of ’22 he had just done what anyone, I suspect, in this audience would have done, which is said, ‘All right, you’re serious? You’re serving a grand jury subpoena? Let me just give the documents back,’ he wouldn’t have been charged. Wouldn’t have been charged with anything even though he had kept them for almost a year and a half.”Other candidates, who prefer not to talk about the charges against Trump, are reportedly worried that his indictment will mean ceaseless chatter about him and extra difficulty promoting their own (muted and muddled) messages. Josh Barro, on his Substack newsletter Very Serious, nailed the absurdity of that, pointing out that Trump’s front-runner status and enormous lead over all of them guarantee that he’ll always monopolize the conversation, indictment or no indictment.“The Republican nomination campaign cannot — and will not — be about anything but Donald Trump, and the media is not going to invite them on TV to talk about topics other than Donald Trump,” Barro wrote. “So, since they are going to talk about Donald Trump all the time, they had better talk about why he should not be nominated.” Christie is getting invitations and attention because he is doing precisely that. Maybe, just maybe, some of them will take note and wise up.To the conundrum of what, if Christie qualifies for the Republican primary debates, he’ll do about the required pledge that he support whoever winds up getting the party’s nomination, he has apparently found a solution that’s suited to Republicans’ willful and nihilistic captivity to Trump, the stupidity of the pledge and the stakes of the race: He’ll sign what he must and later act as he pleases.“I will do what I need to do to be up on that stage to try to save my party and save my country,” he told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday morning.Chris Christie, superhero? He has his own supersize vanity. He is arguably playing the only part in the crowded primary field available to him. And those dynamics may have as much to do with his assault on Trump as moral indignation does. Even so, saving his party and country agrees with him.DeSantis, Pence, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley and other Republican presidential candidates are clearly telling themselves that they can’t do any good down the road if at this intersection they provoke Trump and run afoul of his supporters. Where have we heard that before? It’s a version of what Christie said to himself in 2016. He now sees the folly of that fable.For the Love of SentencesLaurence Olivier in the 1948 movie version of “Hamlet.”Everett CollectionSeveral Shakespeare-conscious, pest-minded lines in Maureen Dowd’s “To Jail or Not to Jail” column in The Times constituted perhaps the most-nominated passage of writing in this newsletter feature’s history: “We can’t shuffle off the mortal coil of Trump. He has burrowed, tick-like, into the national bloodstream, causing all kinds of septic responses.” (Thanks to Phyllis Wolf of Albuquerque, N.M., and Avon Crawford of Norwalk, Iowa, among many, many others, for shining a spotlight on that.)In The Globe and Mail of Toronto, Andrew Coyne assessed the current Trumpian crossroads: “So we come to the present pass, with the world’s most powerful nation, with all of its magnificent history and intricate constitutional architecture, at the mercy of a pathological narcissist, trembling at the thought of bringing him to justice — as if it were the act of applying the law to him, and not his brazen defiance of it, that were the anomaly.” Coyne also commented on how Trump, in the wake of his federal indictment, is trying “to bring the whole U.S. justice system down around him.” “This is not the reaction of a normal person,” he continued. “It is not even the reaction of a mob boss. It is the reaction of a Batman villain.” (Stella Deacon, Toronto, and Julie Fleming, Toronto)In The Guardian, Jonathan Freedland wrote: “The three tenors of showman populism, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Silvio Berlusconi, reached the top through a combination of telegenic clownishness, ‘I alone can fix it’ braggadocio and a shared strain of narcissistic nationalism — and now one faces the judgment of the courts, another has fled the judgment of his peers, while the third contemplates the judgment of the heavens.” (Harriette Royer, Rochester, N.Y.)Let’s pivot from Trump and Trump analogues to Trump sycophants. In The Atlantic, Tom Nichols described how J.D. Vance, who once spoke with such disparaging and devastating accuracy about Trump, did a self-serving about-face in his 2022 Senate race in Ohio and, reprogrammed by that victory, never looked back: “What he once wore as electoral camouflage is now tattooed all over him, in yet another fulfillment of the late Kurt Vonnegut’s warning that, eventually, ‘we are what we pretend to be.’” (Debbie Landis, Garrison, N.Y.)On to books! John Williams noted in The Washington Post that most of the novels of Cormac McCarthy, who died last week, were “quite Old Testament in spirit — the purpose of evil is none of your business, keep suffering — until, arguably, ‘The Road,’ a story of a father and son at the end of the world with increasingly loud echoes of Christian symbology. ‘All the Pretty Horses’ made McCarthy literary famous; ‘The Road’ made him Oprah Winfrey famous.” (Jim Osteen, Washington, D.C.)Also in The Post, in a review of Lorrie Moore’s new novel, “I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home,” Ron Charles explained that for Moore, the hospice is “a mordant metaphor for human existence, a place where laughter isn’t the best medicine, it’s the only medicine: All we’ve got left is a collection of bedpans and deadpans.” (John Jacoby, Cambridge, Mass.)In The Salt Lake Tribune, Courtney Tanner fashioned a clever start to her article about one of the more unexpected recent examples of book banning: “In the beginning, a parent filed a challenge to have the Bible removed from Davis School District libraries, citing passages describing sex and violence. The district said let there be a review of the book. And it was so.” (Yoram Bauman, Salt Lake City)In The Times, Suzanne Garfinkle-Crowell wrote: “Teenagers suffer for many reasons. One is being fragile and in formation — a human construction site.” (Virginia Wise, Woodstock, Vt.)And Amy Nicholson reviewed the new movie “Elemental,” calling it “the latest Pixar premise to feel like someone laced the cafeteria’s kombucha keg with ayahuasca.” (Abigail Kent, Alameda, Calif.)To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.On a Personal NoteGetty ImagesI’ve never been one for watching movies on planes, at least not on one of those shrunken screens embedded in the back of the seat in front of me. (My iPad is a different matter.) The picture quality is awful. The audio is mush. Together they’re barely an approximation of the director’s and the cast members’ intents. It’s like reading an aggressively abridged novel in which every adjective has been deleted and blackberry jam smudged across parts of every other page. You get the gist, but in a soulless, messy fashion.I am, however, a fervent guesser of movies on planes: I half-watch the movies chosen by passengers in seats near me, trying to figure out what’s going on, filling in the blanks with assumptions and imagination, doing a bit of amateur lip-reading, doing a lot of detective work.What might Drew Barrymore be telling Adam Sandler? Across several flights, I’ve seen disconnected, out-of-order scenes from their rom-com “50 First Dates,” so I have some ideas about the movie and of course an opinion of it without knowing whether either is remotely on the mark. I sort of like the nebulousness and irresolution of that. They match the dull images and fuzzy sound. I’m not doing a disservice to the experience of the movie in a proper setting. I’m turning it into something entirely different, part Rorschach, part game.Ben Affleck is preternaturally grave in “The Accountant,” which seems like great, tense fun. While I’ve assembled probably 60 percent of “50 First Dates” from the jigsaw-puzzle pieces of my oblique angle, soundless perusals of it, I’ve put together at least 80 percent of Affleck’s thriller. I mean, I’m confident it’s a thriller. There are firearms, chases, ominous shots of important rooms and august buildings in Washington, D.C.When you half-watch a movie this way, without the soundtrack nudging you or the plot points lucidly laid out, you develop a new appreciation for the different editing rhythms, visual compositions and palettes of different genres. You know the emotional key in which the movie is being played even if you deduce little else about it. For a true movie lover, that’s a peculiar delight.Hey, we all have our viewing quirks. It turns out that a big fraction of Americans watch everything with the subtitles turned on, and by everything I’m including and principally mean movies and shows in English. It’s not translation they’re looking for. It’s — I don’t know — reassurance, extra clarity. Devin Gordon explored and explained that phenomenon in a terrifically engaging recent article in The Atlantic, and I’m happy to report that he was as baffled and unsettled as I am.What I do on planes is the opposite of that. Instead of beating back confusion, I embrace it. Or, really, take advantage of it. That line that Drew just delivered must have been hilarious. That encounter Ben just had was surely terrifying. Half-watched, quarter-understood movies are like trailers: They’re all promise and no letdown, which is a welcome inversion of much of life. More

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      Few of Trump’s G.O.P. Rivals Defend Justice Dept. Independence

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      The evolution of the Republican Party under the influence of former President Donald J. Trump calls into question a post-Watergate norm.Donald J. Trump has promised that if he wins back the presidency he will appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family.But he’s not the only Republican running for president who appears to be abandoning a long-established norm in Washington — presidents keeping their hands out of specific Justice Department investigations and prosecutions.Mr. Trump, who leads the G.O.P. field by around 30 percentage points in public national polls, wields such powerful influence that only a few of his Republican rivals are willing to clearly say presidents should not interfere in such Justice Department decisions.After Mr. Trump’s vow to direct the Justice Department to appoint a “real” prosecutor to investigate the Bidens, The New York Times asked each of his Republican rivals questions aimed at laying out what limits, if any, they believed presidents must or should respect when it comes to White House interference with federal law enforcement decisions.Their responses reveal a party that has turned so hard against federal law enforcement that it is no longer widely considered good politics to clearly answer in the negative a question that was once uncontroversial: Do you believe presidents should get involved in the investigations and prosecutions of individuals?Mr. Trump’s closest rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, has flatly said he does not believe the Justice Department is independent from the White House as a matter of law, while leaving it ambiguous where he stands on the issue of presidents getting involved in investigation decisions.Mr. DeSantis’s spokesman, Bryan Griffin, wrote in an email that comments the governor made on a recent policy call “should be instructive to your reporting.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said the president can lawfully exert more direct control over the Justice Department and F.B.I. than has traditionally been the case.Jason Henry for The New York TimesIn the comments, Mr. DeSantis says that “the fundamental insight” he gleans from the Constitution is that the Justice Department and F.B.I. are not “independent” from the White House and that the president can lawfully exert more direct control over them than traditionally has been the case.“I think presidents have bought into this canard that they’re independent, and that’s one of the reasons why they’ve accumulated so much power over the years,” Mr. DeSantis said. “We will use the lawful authority that we have.”But the context of Mr. DeSantis’s remarks was mostly about a president firing political appointees and bureaucrats at the Justice Department and the F.B.I., not about a president ordering them to target specific people with investigations and prosecutions. Mr. Griffin did not respond when asked in a follow-up on this point.Mr. Trump has portrayed his legal troubles as stemming from politicization, although there is no evidence Mr. Biden directed Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Mr. Trump. Under Mr. Garland, Trump-appointed prosecutors are already investigating Mr. Biden’s handling of classified documents and on Tuesday secured a guilty plea from Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter, on tax charges.Especially since Watergate, there has been an institutional tradition of Justice Department independence from White House control. The idea is that while a president can set broad policies — directing the Justice Department to put greater resources and emphasis on particular types of crimes, for example — he or she should not get involved in specific criminal case decisions except in rare cases affecting foreign policy.This is particularly seen as true for cases involving a president’s personal or political interests, such as an investigation into himself or his political opponents.But even in his first term, Mr. Trump increasingly pressed against that notion.William P. Barr, left, Mr. Trump’s attorney general, refused Mr. Trump’s baseless demand that he say the 2020 election had been corrupt.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesIn the spring of 2018, Mr. Trump told his White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, that he wanted to order the Justice Department to investigate his 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton, and James B. Comey Jr., the former head of the F.B.I. Mr. McGahn rebuffed him, saying the president had no authority to order an investigation, according to two people familiar with the conversation.Later in 2018, Mr. Trump publicly demanded that the Justice Department open an investigation into officials involved in the Russia investigation. The following year, Attorney General William P. Barr indeed assigned a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney, John Durham, to investigate the investigators — styling it as an administrative review because there was no factual predicate to open a formal criminal investigation.Mr. Trump also said in 2018 and 2019 that John F. Kerry, the Obama-era secretary of state, should be prosecuted for illegally interfering with American diplomacy by seeking to preserve a nuclear accord with Iran. Geoffrey S. Berman, a former U.S. attorney in Manhattan whom Mr. Trump fired in 2020, later wrote in his memoir that the Trump Justice Department pressured him to find a way to charge Mr. Kerry, but he closed the investigation after about a year without bringing any charges.And as the 2020 election neared, Mr. Trump pressured Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham to file charges against high-level former officials even though the prosecutor had not found a factual basis to justify any. In his own memoir, Mr. Barr wrote that the Durham investigation’s “failure to deliver scalps in time for the election” eroded their relationship even before Mr. Barr refused Mr. Trump’s baseless demand that he say the 2020 election had been corrupt.Where Mr. Trump’s first-term efforts were scattered and haphazard, key allies — including Jeffrey B. Clark, a former Justice Department official who helped Mr. Trump try to overturn the 2020 election — have been developing a blueprint to make the department in any second Trump term more systematically subject to direct White House control.Against that backdrop, Vivek Ramaswamy, one of the long-shot G.O.P. challengers, has pledged to pardon Mr. Trump if Mr. Ramaswamy wins the presidency. He said that as a constitutional matter, he thinks a president does have the power to direct prosecutors to open or close specific criminal investigations. But he added that “the president must exercise this judgment with prudence in a manner that respects the rule of law in the country.”Vivek Ramaswamy said he would respect the post-Watergate norm regarding Justice Department independence.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesAsked if he would pledge, regardless of his views on what the law may technically allow presidents to do, to obey the post-Watergate norm, Mr. Ramaswamy replied: “As a general norm, yes.”Two Republican candidates who are both former U.S. attorneys unequivocally stated that presidents should not direct the investigations or prosecutions of individuals. Tellingly, both are chasing votes from anti-Trump moderate Republicans.Chris Christie, a former New Jersey governor who was a U.S. attorney in the George W. Bush administration, said he knew “just how important it is to keep prosecutors independent and let them do their jobs.”“No president should be meddling in Department of Justice investigations or cases in any way,” Mr. Christie added. “The best way to keep that from happening is with a strong attorney general who can lead without fear or favor.”And Asa Hutchinson, a former Arkansas governor and congressman who served as a U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration, said that “preserving an independent and politically impartial Department of Justice in terms of specific investigations is essential for the rule of law and paramount in rebuilding trust with the American people.”A spokesman for former Vice President Mike Pence, Devin O’Malley, was terse. He said a president could remove senior law enforcement officials and expressed some support for Justice Department independence. But he declined to add further comment when pressed.“Mike Pence believes that the president of the United States has the ability to hire and fire the attorney general, the F.B.I. director, and other D.O.J. officials — and has, in fact, pledged to do so if elected — but also believes the D.O.J. has a certain level of independence with regard to prosecutorial matters,” Mr. O’Malley said.Mr. Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, through a spokesman, expressed some support for Justice Department independence.John Tully for The New York TimesMost other candidates running against Mr. Trump landed in what they apparently deemed to be a politically safer space of blending general comments about how justice should be administered impartially with vague accusations that the Biden-era Justice Department had targeted Republicans for political reasons.Many did not specifically point to a basis for those accusations. Among a broad swath of conservatives, it is taken as a given that the F.B.I. and Justice Department must be politically motivated against them on a variety of fronts, including the scrutiny over the 2016 Trump campaign’s links to Russia, the prosecution of people who rioted at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and the Trump documents case.Matt Gorman, a senior communications adviser for Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, declined to say whether or not Mr. Scott believed presidents should interfere in specific investigations. He pointed only to Mr. Scott’s comments on the most recent “Fox News Sunday” appearance.In those remarks, Mr. Scott said: “We have to clean out the political appointments in the Department of Justice to restore confidence and integrity in the D.O.J. Today, we want to know that in our justice system, Lady Justice wears a blindfold and that all Americans will be treated fairly by Lady Justice. But today, this D.O.J. continues to hunt Republicans while they protect Democrats.”Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, also provided an ambiguous answer through her spokeswoman, Chaney Denton. She pointed to two specific conservative grievances with law enforcement: Seven years ago, Hillary Clinton was not charged over using a private email server while secretary of state, and the Trump-era special counsel, Mr. Durham, wrote a report this year criticizing the Russia inquiry.“The Department of Justice should be impartial, but unfortunately it is not today,” Ms. Denton said. “The Durham Report, the non-prosecution of Hillary Clinton, and other actions make it clear that a partisan double standard is being applied. The answer is not to have both parties weaponize the Justice Department; it’s to have neither side do it.”“The Department of Justice should be impartial,” a spokeswoman for Nikki Haley said, without getting into specifics.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesWhen specifically pressed, Ms. Denton declined to say whether Ms. Haley believes presidents should get involved in prosecutions or investigations of individuals.One recent entrant to the race, Mayor Francis X. Suarez of Miami, disavowed the post-Watergate norm, putting forward a premise that law enforcement officials are currently politically biased and so his White House interference would be to correct that purported state of affairs.“I certainly would not promise that I would allow a biased department operate independently,” he said in part of a statement. “I believe it is the president’s responsibility to insist that justice is delivered fairly without bias or political influence.”A spokesman for Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, Lance Trover, was even more vague.“Gov. Burgum believes that citizens’ faith in our institutions is the foundation of a free and just society and will not allow them to be a political enforcement extension of the party in power as we have seen in failed countries,” he said. “If Americans have distrust in the Justice Department when he takes office, he will do what it takes to restore the American people’s faith in the Department of Justice and other bedrocks of our democracy.” More

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      The Life and Courage of Daniel Ellsberg, ‘a True American Hero’

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      More from our inbox:Setbacks in the Fight Against Maternal MortalityA Trump Victory in 2024 Would Be ‘a Dark Day for Us All’‘A Small Slice of Hope’Diversity in OrchestrasDaniel Ellsberg and his wife, Patricia. His disclosure in 1971 of the Pentagon Papers and its fallout left a stamp on history that defined the bulk of his life.Donal F. Holway/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Daniel Ellsberg, 1931-2023: Whistleblower Who Unveiled U.S. Deceit in Pentagon Papers” (obituary, front page, June 17):Thank you for the excellent obituary recounting the life, career and legacy of Daniel Ellsberg.I had the pleasure and honor of meeting Mr. Ellsberg in 2010 during one of the Portland, Ore., screenings of the documentary film about him, “The Most Dangerous Man in America.”After the Q. and A., I approached him and began to thank him, but even as I was about to tell him that I was born in Saigon during the Tet offensive of 1968, I began to lose my composure and eventually broke down in front of the entire crowd.Through my tears, gasps for air and apologies, I tried to convey my gratitude for a life that might have been drastically altered if it were not for his acts of courage, which I believe helped bring about the end of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. With a patient smile, one palm gently placed on my shoulder, and the other still engaged in our handshake, he whispered his response, “Thank you.”It’s impossible to know where I would have ended up as the half-American child of a U.S. soldier if the U.S. had not gotten out of Vietnam a couple of years after the Pentagon Papers were released.Where would my mother and I have found ourselves, as well as those thousands of U.S. service personnel and millions of refugees and noncombatants whose destinies were tethered to the clandestine decisions of bureaucrats, politicians and war planners?It’s really hard to calculate, but fortunately in part because of Mr. Ellsberg, I’ll never have to do the math.Mien YockmannVancouver, Wash.To the Editor:The obituary of Daniel Ellsberg is a heroic story of courage, character and determination, when those virtues are sorely missing on the current American political scene. His efforts leaked the story of government deception and led to a Supreme Court decision in favor of a free, uncensored press, and to the Watergate crimes and the fall of President Richard Nixon.What a difference between Mr. Ellsberg’s unauthorized possession of classified documents and that of our ex-president, who did not risk his freedom for the American people, but for his vulgar self-interest.Robert S. AprilNew YorkTo the Editor:Thanks for your excellent obituary of Daniel Ellsberg. His speaking truth to power has been a powerful gift to humanity!I was a good friend of Dan’s and had the privilege of being arrested and going to jail with him for protesting nuclear weapons and the wars in Central America, Iraq and Afghanistan. He devoted his life to speaking out and acting to prevent and stop wars and the suicidal nuclear arms race.Preparing for and threatening nuclear war is unconscionable. Inspired by Dan’s life, we need to step up to the plate and work to stop this crime against humanity before it is too late. Hopefully others will be inspired by Dan’s courage to become whistleblowers and speak truth in the face of the lies and half-truths by politicians and the mass media.Thanks, Dan, for inspiring us to continue the good work you had been doing.David HartsoughSan FranciscoThe writer is a co-founder of World Beyond War and Nonviolent Peaceforce.To the Editor:As I read about Daniel Ellsberg, my first reaction was gratitude. A man willing to speak truth to power, whatever cost he might personally pay. A true American hero. One can only wish there were more like him today.Lisa DickiesonWashingtonSetbacks in the Fight Against Maternal MortalityYeabu Kargbo, 19, rests post-delivery at a rural health center in northern Sierra Leone.Photographs by Malin Fezehai for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Sierra Leone Is Giving Me Hope,” by Nicholas Kristof (column, June 4):Mr. Kristof is right to highlight the achievements in improving maternal and child health and reducing extreme poverty. Too much “doom and gloom” can mask all the good we have achieved and can drive donor fatigue and complacency.Yet even as we celebrate those achievements, the combination of Covid-19, humanitarian crises, climate change and the rising cost of living have been rolling back progress. The decline in maternal deaths by an average of 2.7 percent per year between 2000 and 2015 has paused: Maternal mortality did not decline globally between 2016 and 2020.Donor aid for reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health, which shot up by 10 percent from 2016 to 2017, has been on a downward trend, with a 2.3 percent decline between 2019 and 2021.And still today, seven of every 10 maternal deaths are in Africa, and Black women in America are almost three times more likely to die in childbirth than non-Hispanic white women.We can be proud of progress earlier this century, but a series of crises has shown us how fragile that was. We need new commitments, action and strong advocacy to reverse the recent negative trends.Helen ClarkAuckland, New ZealandThe writer is a former prime minister of New Zealand and the chair of the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health.A Trump Victory in 2024 Would Be ‘a Dark Day for Us All’ Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump Allies Plan to Stifle Justice Dept.” (front page, June 16):For me, the scariest thing about the former president’s candidacy is not Donald Trump himself — there have always been demagogues in American politics. Nor is it the craven politicians who enable his anti-American views for their own gain, or even the tens of millions of Americans who fervently support these views. The scariest thing is the quiet preparation in the Republican Party to take actions based on these views if Mr. Trump becomes president again.Last time, Mr. Trump chose underlings like Jeff Sessions and William Barr — well-known figures who possessed at least a shred of honor, and who refused his most extreme demands. He won’t make that mistake if elected a second time.Mr. Trump has always brought out the worst in people, and he has bent and twisted the Republican Party into something unrecognizable. A Trump victory in 2024 would allow him similarly to twist all of America into something nightmarish. It would be a dark day for us all.Tim ShawCambridge, Mass.‘A Small Slice of Hope’A photograph taken with a prism lens of a television image of Donald Trump after his federal court arraignment. Damon Winter/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “I Won’t Let Trump Invade My Brain,” by David Brooks (column, June 16):It is difficult to retain a sense of optimism about the future these days when surrounded by the narcissism of our politicians, the angry voices of our fellow citizens and our decaying planet.Mr. Brooks’s column brought me some comfort and a small slice of hope that maybe there are still enough of us who believe in ethical behavior and a real commitment to the common good that there is some hope for our planet and our collective future.Chris HarringtonPortland, Ore.Diversity in OrchestrasSaul Martinez for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Diversity Improves, but Not for All” (Arts, June 17):So orchestras are now eager to find more Black players? For generations, while these orchestras were using cronyistic and outright discriminatory hiring practices, Black musicians found greater meaning and commercial success in their own traditions, from the blues and jazz to soul and hip-hop.If orchestras are now truly intent on supporting Black Americans, rather than simply making their own enterprises appear more visibly inclusive, perhaps they could consider programming more Black music.Ben GivanSaratoga Springs, N.Y.The writer is an associate professor of music at Skidmore College. More

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      What Republicans Say About Their Risky Balancing Act on Abortion

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      The historic Dobbs ruling has hurt the party electorally, but G.O.P. lawmakers are still moving to pass more restrictive laws. These two realities represent the defining political fallout of the end of Roe v. Wade.In the year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, one of the country’s most emotionally charged issues has come to be defined by two seemingly contradictory political realities.In competitive general elections, abortion rights emerged as among the greatest electoral strengths for Democrats and, often, a clear liability for Republicans: Americans say at record levels that they support at least some access to the procedure, and the issue has fueled Democratic victories across the nation.At the same time, Republican-dominated state legislatures have moved rapidly to sharply limit or ban access to abortion. Activists are demanding that G.O.P. presidential candidates make firm commitments about federal restrictions, and are urging ever-further-reaching legislation in the states.This headlong rush into risky territory for the national Republican Party — and the extraordinary backlash against some of those measures — represents the enduring political fallout of the Supreme Court decision, which transformed a partisan standoff 50 years in the making.Anti-abortion activists and some Republican strategists applaud the approach of many state legislatures, arguing that voters expect their lawmakers to deliver on upholding one of the core tenets of the conservative movement.“If you can, you must,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the major anti-abortion rights group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. “To fail to do that would, politically, would be a disaster for pro-life voters who put them in office.”Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said Republican candidates needed to be “very clear on what it means to be ambitious for life.” Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesBut as the anniversary of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe arrives on Saturday, interviews with more than a dozen Republican lawmakers, strategists and anti-abortion activists paint a portrait of a party still struggling to find a consensus on abortion policy, and grappling with how to energize core base voters on the issue without alienating swing voters.Many observers see the wave of new restrictions, which vary in gestational limit and exceptions and have sometimes been held up in court, as a function of several factors: years of promises and pent-up energy on the right; deeply held convictions about when life begins; and gerrymandering that has often left Republican lawmakers more worried about far-right primary challenges than about turning off moderate voters in general elections.But for a critical slice of Republicans — those who represent competitive districts in state legislatures or in Congress, who support some degree of abortion rights, or, in some cases, presidential candidates — the issue presents a particularly difficult balancing act.Their decisions and calculations are at the heart of the tensions over the abortion debate within the Republican Party in the post-Roe era.“I was hearing from both sides strongly,” said State Representative Mike Caruso of Florida, a Republican who opposed a measure — ultimately signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis — that forbids abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, with a few exceptions. “It was pretty much a ban on abortion.”“I’ve got seven children, been through nine pregnancies,” he added. “I don’t think I ever knew, we ever knew, that we were pregnant prior to six weeks.”But, demonstrating the vastly different views on the issue within the party, State Representative Mike Beltran of Florida said that while he voted for the measure, “frankly, I don’t think it goes far enough.”“All these bills were huge compromises,” said Mr. Beltran, who said he personally opposed abortion rights without exception, suggesting that if a mother’s life was in danger, barring ectopic pregnancies, the answer could often be to deliver the fetus, even months prematurely. “We should suffer electoral consequences if we don’t do what we said we would do.”State Representative Mike Beltran of Florida opposes abortion rights without exception.Tori Lynn Schneider, via SipaAnti-abortion activists and lawmakers have vigorously made a version of that argument to Republican candidates, sometimes citing polling to show lawmakers what they believe voters in a particular state will accept. (Some of these surveys are commissioned by abortion opponents, and their findings can be at odds with public polling.)“It’s a fundamental issue to Republicans to protect life,” said Tami Fitzgerald, the executive director of the North Carolina Values Coalition. She supported the state’s new ban on most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy, though she wants restrictions that go much further, calling a six-week ban “step two.”“A candidate needs the pro-life voters in order to win,” she added.In an interview this month, Ms. Dannenfelser of Susan B. Anthony urged candidates to be “very clear on what it means to be ambitious for life” while seeking to draw contrasts with Democrats on the issue, warning of the risks of being defined by the other side.This is not a “theoretical messaging moment,” she said. “This is real life.”In the presidential contest, though, some of the candidates have tried to skirt questions about what national restrictions they would support. Contenders including former President Donald J. Trump — who helped muscle through Supreme Court justices who made overturning Roe possible — have indicated that they think the issue should be resolved by the states, though Mr. Trump has also been vague on the issue.“Their hesitancy to communicate has been frustrating,” Ms. Dannenfelser said, referring broadly to the field. But the debate stage, she said, is “going to be where the rubber meets the road, and our bright-red line saying that you must have a 15-week or better limit or we can’t support you.”Yet when Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina last year proposed a federal ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy with some exceptions, he ignited immediate resistance from numerous fellow Republicans, evidence that some in the party see political peril in a national ban.Senator Lindsey Graham last year proposed a federal ban on abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy, and faced immediate resistance.Evelyn Hockstein/ReutersAnd polling has shown that most Americans support at least some abortion rights, especially early in pregnancy.A Gallup survey released last week found that a record-high 69 percent of Americans, including 47 percent of Republicans, believed that abortion should generally be legal in the first three months of pregnancy.“That just makes me wonder if maybe there is some room for nuance there within the party,” said Lydia Saad, the director of U.S. social research at Gallup. “But nuance isn’t generally very successful in politics.”In some states, Republican lawmakers have cast bans with some exceptions that begin after 12 weeks, toward the end of the first trimester, as something of a middle ground. And from Nebraska to South Carolina, there have indeed been lawmakers who said they could not back a six-week ban but indicated that they were more comfortable with 12 weeks, even as such proposals have drawn condemnation from some in local business and medical communities.In North Carolina, Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, vetoed the 12-week ban. He and other abortion rights supporters warned that the measure would interfere with critical medical decisions and create dangerous barriers for women seeking abortions.But Republicans, who recently gained narrow veto-proof majorities in North Carolina, quickly sought to override Mr. Cooper’s move. The effort forced some of their members into contortions.Republicans in North Carolina overrode Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of a 12-week abortion ban.Kate Medley for The New York TimesState Representative Ted Davis Jr., a Republican, indicated during his campaign last year that he backed the state’s law allowing abortions up to 20 weeks of pregnancy. When the state legislature took up the 12-week measure, he skipped the vote.But citing factors including loyalty to his caucus, frustration with the other side and constituents who, he said, seemed split on the veto override, he ultimately joined fellow Republicans to override the veto, helping to ensure that the more restrictive measure prevailed.Still, he tried to draw a distinction between the two votes.“What concerns me is what’s going to happen in the future as far as access to abortion,” he said. “Are Republicans now going to try to restrict it even further?”Other lawmakers have sought to punish women who seek abortions, or those who help them. Some Republican lawmakers in South Carolina moved — unsuccessfully — to treat abortion at any stage of pregnancy as homicide, which can carry the death penalty.That measure would have given “more rights to a rapist than a woman who’s been raped,” said Representative Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican who flipped a seat from a Democrat in 2020. “That’s where the conversation has gone.”Abortion-rights supporters protesting outside the Supreme Court last June on the day Roe was overturned.Shuran Huang for The New York Times“They listen to some of the extreme voices, and they operate and vote and legislate out of fear,” she said. “They’re not hearing from the rest of the electorate, the 95 percent of the folks who vote in elections. They’re hearing from the 5 percent who say, ‘You’re not Republican if you don’t want to ban abortions with no exceptions.’”Even in her conservative state, there were pockets of Republican resistance to efforts to pass a near-total abortion ban. A six-week ban passed the legislature but is now tied up in court.“I probably will draw a primary challenger,” conceded State Senator Katrina Shealy, who opposed that measure, with its many requirements for women seeking abortions. She has already been censured by a local Republican county party.Some on the far right, she suggested, “don’t want people to wear masks. They don’t want people to get vaccines.”They believe, she said, that “they should have full rights — but don’t let women make this decision. And that’s not right.” More

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      Donald Trump Says ‘Secret’ Document He Described on Tape Referred to News Clippings

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      “There was no document,” the former president said on Fox News as he gave some of his most expansive remarks on the case that led to his federal indictment.Former President Donald J. Trump claimed to a Fox News anchor in an interview on Monday that he did not have a classified document with him in a meeting with a book publisher even though he referred during that meeting to “secret” information in his possession.The July 2021 meeting — at Mr. Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J. — was recorded by at least two people in attendance, and a transcript describes the former president pointing to a pile of papers and then saying of Gen. Mark A. Milley, whom he had been criticizing: “Look. This was him. They presented me this — this is off the record, but — they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him.”On the recording, according to two people familiar with its contents, Mr. Trump can be heard flipping through papers as he talks to a publisher and writer working on a book by his final White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Mr. Trump and the people in the meeting do not explicitly say what document the former president is holding.According to the transcript, Mr. Trump describes the document, which he claims shows General Milley’s desire to attack Iran, as “secret” and “like, highly confidential.” He also declares that “as president, I could have declassified it,” adding, “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”But in the interview on Monday, with the Fox News anchor Bret Baier, Mr. Trump denied that he had been referring to an actual document and claimed to have simply been referring to news clippings and magazine pieces.“There was no document,” Mr. Trump insisted. “That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things. And it may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document. I didn’t have a document per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.”Apparently playing down the information from the recording, he added, “I don’t think that I’ve ever seen a document from Milley.”The audio recording is a key piece of evidence in an indictment charging Mr. Trump with illegally holding on to 31 sensitive government documents, some of which were highly classified and included information about U.S. nuclear and military capabilities. The indictment was filed this month by Jack Smith, a special counsel appointed by the Justice Department, in Federal District Court in Miami. The indictment also accused Mr. Trump of conspiring with one of his aides, Walt Nauta, to evade a grand jury subpoena issued last May for all classified material in his possession.General Mark A. Milley testifying during a budget hearing in Congress this year. Pete Marovich for The New York TimesA description of a typewritten document by General Milley appears in Mr. Meadows’s book, unattributed and stated as fact.Criminal defendants usually avoid speaking publicly about details of any charges in their case, for fear of their remarks being used against them. The interview was broadcast on the same day that a federal magistrate judge in Mr. Trump’s case issued a protective order instructing him not to reveal any evidence that had been turned over to his legal team as part of the discovery process.While the interview did not seem to violate that order, his remarks represented some of his most expansive comments about the nearly two years that federal officials spent trying to retrieve material from his presidency that belongs to the government. The comments were also the latest in a string of shifting stories that he and his allies have offered since it became public that officials at the National Archives and Records Administration recovered 15 boxes of material from Mr. Trump in January 2022.Earlier in the interview with Mr. Baier, Mr. Trump appeared to concede that even after the Justice Department issued a subpoena last year for all classified documents in his possession, he delayed complying with it in order to separate any personal records that might have been among them.“Before I send boxes over, I have to take all of my things out,” Mr. Trump said. “These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things.”Mr. Trump also acknowledged that he did not immediately comply with an earlier request to return government records to the archives, telling Mr. Baier that he gave the archives “some” and maintaining, “I was very busy, as you’ve sort of seen.”A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In February 2022, after the public learned that Mr. Trump had returned classified material to the archives, the former president directed aides to issue a statement saying he had returned everything to the government. The final statement the Trump team released did not make this claim.But the draft version of that statement became a focus of prosecutors who were entering evidence and hearing testimony before a grand jury in Florida, according to two people familiar with the matter.Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination for 2024, and his allies have offered evolving explanations for his possession of classified material and repeated refusals to return it. He has insisted the documents all belonged to him as personal records. He has also claimed that he declassified everything he removed before it left the White House, through a so-called standing order that material was declassified when it left the Oval Office to go to the White House residence. Former senior White House officials said no such order existed.And last month, Mr. Trump’s lawyers wrote a letter to Congress saying that his staff “quickly packed everything into boxes and shipped them to Florida,” leaving the impression that Mr. Trump himself did not go through the material and was unaware of what was in the boxes when they were packed.The indictment contradicted that claim, with prosecutors saying that Mr. Trump was “personally involved in this process” and “caused his boxes, containing hundreds of classified documents, to be transported from the White House to the Mar-a-Lago club.”In his interview with Mr. Baier, the former president indicated that he did sort through some boxes after they were sent from Washington to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida.At one point, Mr. Baier asked Mr. Trump why he did not simply hand the material over.“I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out,” Mr. Trump said. “I don’t want to hand that over to NARA yet.” More