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      2023’s Biggest, Most Unusual Race Centers on Abortion and Democracy

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      The election for a swing seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court has huge policy stakes for the battleground state. Cash is pouring in, and some of the candidates have shed any pretense of judicial neutrality.In 10 weeks, Wisconsin will hold an election that carries bigger policy stakes than any other contest in America in 2023.The April race, for a seat on the state’s evenly divided Supreme Court, will determine the fate of abortion rights, gerrymandered legislative maps and the governor’s appointment powers — and perhaps even the state’s 2024 presidential election if the outcome is again contested.The court’s importance stems from Wisconsin’s deadlocked state government. Since 2019, Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, has faced off against a Republican-controlled Legislature with near-supermajority control thanks to one of the country’s most aggressive partisan gerrymanders, itself approved last year by the Wisconsin justices.Wisconsin’s Supreme Court has been left to arbitrate a host of thorny issues in the state, and has nearly always sided with Republicans. But now, with a conservative justice retiring, liberals hope to reverse many of those decisions by taking control of the open seat and its 10-year term.“If you change control of the Supreme Court from relatively conservative to fairly liberal, that will be a big, big change and that would last for quite a while,” said David T. Prosser Jr., a conservative former justice who retired from the court in 2016.The contest will almost certainly shatter spending records for a judicial election in any state, and could even double the current most expensive race. Wisconsinites are set to be inundated by a barrage of advertising, turning a typically sleepy spring election into the latest marker in the state’s nonstop political season. The seat is nonpartisan in name only, with officials from both parties lining up behind chosen candidates.Indeed, the clash for the court is striking because of how nakedly political it is.While past state judicial candidates and United States Supreme Court nominees have largely avoided weighing in on specific issues — instead pitching opaque judicial philosophies and counting on voters or senators to read between the lines — some of the Wisconsin contenders are making all but explicit arguments for how they would rule on topics that are likely to come before the court.Judge Janet Protasiewicz has argued that abortion should be “a woman’s right to choose.”Caleb Alvarado for The New York TimesJanet Protasiewicz, a liberal county judge from a Milwaukee suburb, is leading the charge on both fund-raising and the new approach to judicial campaigning, shedding the pretense that she does not hold firm positions on the hottest-button issues. She turned heads this month at a candidate forum when she declared the state’s gerrymandered legislative maps “rigged.”In an interview last week, Judge Protasiewicz argued that abortion should be “a woman’s right to choose”; said that Gov. Scott Walker’s 2011 law effectively ending collective bargaining rights for most public employees was unconstitutional; and predicted that, if she won, the court would take up a case seeking to invalidate the Republican-drawn state legislative and congressional maps put in place last year.Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.2023 Races: Governors’ contests in Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi and mayoral elections in Chicago and Philadelphia are among the races to watch this year.Voting Laws: The tug of war over voting rights is playing out with fresh urgency at the state level, as Republicans and Democrats seek to pass new laws before the next presidential election.A Key Senate Contest: Representative Ruben Gallego, a progressive Democrat, said that he would run for the Senate in 2024 in a potential face-off with Senator Kyrsten Sinema.Democrats’ New Power: After winning trifectas in four state governments in the midterms, Democrats have a level of control in statehouses not seen since 2009.“Obviously, if we have a four-to-three majority, it is highly likely that we would be revisiting the maps,” she said.The other liberal candidate, Judge Everett Mitchell of Dane County, which includes Madison, the state capital, said in an interview that “the map lines are not fair.”Both candidates have also expressed full-throated support for the right to an abortion, which became illegal last summer under a law that was enacted in 1849 but that is being challenged by the state’s Democratic attorney general in a case likely to come before the court this year.Their declarations signify how the race is transmogrifying into a statewide election like any other in Wisconsin, a perpetual political battleground. Like November’s contests for governor, state attorney general and the Senate, the court election is set to be dominated by a focus on abortion rights (for Democrats) and crime (for Republicans).“We’re still on the November hangover where the top two issues were crime and abortion,” said Mark Graul, a Republican political operative in the state who is a volunteer for Jennifer R. Dorow, a conservative Waukesha County judge in the Supreme Court race. Judge Dorow presided over the trial last fall of a man convicted of killing six people by driving through a 2021 Christmas parade.Jennifer R. Dorow, a conservative Waukesha County judge, presided over the trial last fall of a man convicted of killing six people by driving through a 2021 Christmas parade.Caleb Alvarado for The New York TimesJudge Dorow and another conservative, Dan Kelly, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who lost a 2020 election to retain his seat, will compete against the two liberals in an officially nonpartisan Feb. 21 primary to replace Justice Patience D. Roggensack, who is retiring.The top two will advance to an April 4 general election, with the winner joining a court that is otherwise split between three conservative and three liberal justices.In narrowly divided Wisconsin, a one-seat edge is all the majority needs to change the state’s politics.In recent years, in addition to approving the Republican-drawn maps, the court has ruled that most drop boxes for absentee ballots are illegal; struck down Mr. Evers’s pandemic mitigation efforts; stripped regulatory powers from the state schools superintendent, a Democrat; allowed political appointees of Mr. Evers’s Republican predecessor to remain in office long past the expiration of their terms; and required some public schools to pay for busing for parochial schools.Many of those cases, which Democrats hope to roll back, were brought to the court by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a think tank and legal organization that has served as the leading edge of the state’s conservative movement. The group’s founder, Rick M. Esenberg, said the court’s role ought to be upholding laws precisely as legislators have written them — not proposing major changes to them.“Having control of the judiciary shouldn’t mean that you can make new policy,” Mr. Esenberg said. “Some judicial candidates have spoken as if that’s exactly what’s at stake. And for them, it may well be.”The conservative candidates, Justice Kelly and Judge Dorow, have been less forthright about how they would rule, but both have left ample clues for voters. Justice Kelly last year participated in an “election integrity” tour sponsored by the Republican Party of Wisconsin. Judge Dorow, who was so well known in the Milwaukee suburbs that people dressed as her last Halloween, said in a 2016 legal questionnaire that the worst U.S. Supreme Court decision was Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 decision that struck down anti-sodomy laws.From left, Judge Dorow, Dan Kelly, Everett Mitchell and Judge Protasiewicz at a forum in Madison this month.John Hart/Wisconsin State Journal, via Associated PressBoth have ties to former President Donald J. Trump. In 2020, Mr. Trump endorsed Justice Kelly and praised him at a Milwaukee rally. Judge Dorow’s husband, Brian Dorow, was a security official for Trump campaign events in Wisconsin. Neither Justice Kelly nor Judge Dorow agreed to be interviewed.The race has already broken state fund-raising records for a judicial race. Judge Protasiewicz — whose campaign on Tuesday released a cheeky video teaching Wisconsinites how to say her name: pro-tuh-SAY-witz — raised $924,000 last year, more than any Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate ever in the year before an election. Judge Dorow and Justice Kelly each raised about one-third as much, while Judge Mitchell collected $115,000.Far more money will flow in from outside groups and the state’s political parties, which have no limits on what they may receive and spend. Both parties are expected to direct tens of millions of dollars to their favored general election candidates.Justice Kelly has the support of the billionaire Uihlein family, whose political action committee pledged last year to spend millions of dollars on his behalf. So far, the Uihleins’ contributions have amounted to just $40,000 — a pair of maximum individual contributions to his campaign. Last year the Uihlein-backed super PAC spent $28 million in Wisconsin’s Senate race; Richard and Liz Uihlein contributed an additional $2.8 million to the state Republican Party.Dan Curry, a spokesman for Fair Courts America, the Uihleins’ political action committee, declined to answer questions about the family’s spending plans in the Supreme Court race.The enormous stakes in the race so far have not been matched by commensurate public interest. Marquette University Law School, which conducts Wisconsin’s most respected political polls, has no plans to survey voters about the Supreme Court election, said Charles Franklin, the poll’s director.Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said there was no question that spending on the race would eclipse the most expensive U.S. judicial race on record, a $15 million campaign in 2004 for the Illinois Supreme Court, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.Mr. Wikler, who has spent recent weeks stumping for cash from major Democratic donors, said he hoped to make the race a national cause célèbre for liberals along the lines of Jon Ossoff’s 2017 House campaign in Georgia or the referendum on abortion rights in Kansas last year.Last year, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that most drop boxes for ballots were illegal, a decision that could be revisited with a new justice.Lauren Justice for The New York TimesHe cited the court’s 4-to-3 ruling in December 2020 that rejected the Trump campaign’s effort to invalidate 200,000 votes cast in Milwaukee County and Dane County — an argument that has resonated with top Democrats in Washington worried that a more conservative court could reach an opposite conclusion in the future.“Wisconsin is extremely important for the presidency,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said in an interview. “The Supreme Court is the firewall to an extreme Legislature that wants to curtail voting rights. And so this election is very important, not just for Wisconsin, but for the country.”Eric H. Holder Jr., the former attorney general who leads the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, plans to campaign in the state after the primary.For Wisconsin Democrats, the election is an opportunity to imagine a world in which they can exert some control over policy rather than simply trying to block Republican proposals, after a dozen years of playing defense.In an interview last month, Mr. Evers called the race “a huge deal.” His election lawyer, Jeffrey A. Mandell, said that if a liberal candidate won, Mr. Mandell would ask the State Supreme Court to take direct action to invalidate the state’s legislative maps on Aug. 2, the day after the new justice is seated.Kelda Roys, a Democratic state senator, said the campaign would focus almost entirely on abortion rights — because the next justice will be in position to overturn the state’s ban and because, she argued, the midterms showed that it was a winning issue.“It’s going to be abortion morning, noon and night,” Ms. Roys said, “even more than November was.”Kitty Bennett More

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      Republicans’ National Power Struggle Goes Local in Rural Pennsylvania

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      In one deep-red pocket of rural Pennsylvania, three warring factions each claim to represent the Republican Party. Tensions boiled over in a scuffle over a booth at a farm show.BUTLER, Pa. — Zach Scherer, a 20-year-old car salesman and Republican activist in Pennsylvania’s Butler County, decided to run for a seat on the county commission this year — a move that ordinarily would mean seeking the endorsement of local Republican Party leaders.In Butler County, this raised an unusual question: Which Republican Party?Last spring, the officially recognized Butler County Republican Committee was divided by a right-wing grass-roots insurgency, then divided again by a power struggle among the insurgents. There have been a lawsuit, an intervention by the state Republican Party and a dispute over a booth at the local farm show.Butler, a rural county in western Pennsylvania where Donald J. Trump won nearly twice as many votes as Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020, now has three organizations claiming to be the true tribune of local Republicans. All of them consider the others illegitimate.“There is, in effect, no committee,” said Al Lindsay, a four-decade veteran of the local party, who was ousted as committee chairman last year.The partisans in Pennsylvania agree about one thing, if not much else: Their fight is a microcosm of the national struggle for control over the Republican Party, one that began with Mr. Trump but has been inflamed by the party’s weak showing in the midterm elections.Al Lindsay was ousted as Butler County Republican committee chairman last year.Justin Merriman for The New York TimesThat struggle has played out in national arenas like Kevin McCarthy’s days-long fight to win the speakership of the U.S. House of Representatives, and in a contentious race for the chair of the Republican National Committee ahead of this week’s meeting.But it is being fought just as intensely at state and county levels, as Trump loyalists and right-wing activists who took control of party organizations in recent years face resistance from rivals who blame them for the party’s losses in November.Such conflicts often occur below the radar of even local news outlets. But they are likely to shape state parties’ abilities to raise money, recruit candidates, settle on a 2024 presidential nominee and generally chart a path out of the party’s post-Trump presidency malaise.“We believe that the way we’re going to change our national scene is by changing our local committees,” said Bill Halle, the leader of one of the two insurgent factions within the Butler party.Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.2023 Races: Governors’ contests in Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi and mayoral elections in Chicago and Philadelphia are among the races to watch this year.Voting Laws: The tug of war over voting rights is playing out with fresh urgency at the state level, as Republicans and Democrats seek to pass new laws before the next presidential election.2024 Presidential Race: As the 2024 primary approaches, the wavering support of evangelical leaders for Donald J. Trump could have far-reaching implications for Republicans.Democrats’ New Power: After winning trifectas in four state governments in the midterms, Democrats have a level of control in statehouses not seen since 2009.Tensions Flare After Midterm LossesThe current rifts date most directly to Mr. Trump’s loss in 2020, when his relentless claims of a stolen election divided Republican leaders between those who took up Mr. Trump’s cause and those who wanted to move on. In several closely contested states, state party leaders loudly supported his election claims, and backed the Republican candidates who earned Mr. Trump’s endorsements by doing the same. But many of those candidates were extreme or erratic politicians who would go on to lose in November, and their nominations have caused enduring divisions. .A sign for the Butler PA Patriots, one of the three factions fighting for power in the county. Justin Merriman for The New York TimesIn Michigan, major G.O.P. donors pulled back after the state party co-chair, Meshawn Maddock, took the unusual step of openly supporting election deniers favored by Mr. Trump ahead of the party’s nominating convention. Those candidates all lost in a statewide G.O.P. rout in November. In Georgia, Brian Kemp, the Republican governor seeking re-election, went so far as to build his own political organization separate from the state Republican Party, whose chairman, David Shafer, backed Trump-endorsed Republican primary candidates. Mr. Shafer is among the targets of a special grand jury investigating whether Mr. Trump and his allies interfered in the 2020 election. “I think it’s unforgivable,” Jay Morgan, the Georgia party’s executive director in the 1980s, said of Mr. Shafer’s handling of the party. Mr. Morgan, who is now a lobbyist in Atlanta, said he has not recommended that any of his corporate clients donate to the state party. “It breaks my heart,” he said.Mr. Shafer did not respond to a request for comment.In Nevada, multiple former officials in the state party have called on its current chair, Michael McDonald, to resign after the party backed several losing election-denying candidates.“The Republican Party could be great here; it really could,” said Amy Tarkanian, the former chairwoman of the Nevada G.O.P., who was expelled from her county Republican committee after endorsing the Democratic attorney general candidate last summer. “But they made themselves irrelevant with their toxicity.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Republican officials with state parties in Michigan, Georgia and Nevada did not respond to requests for comment.Precinct Strategy Gets PushbackIn the days after the 2020 election, influential Trump allies like Stephen K. Bannon, who hosts the popular “War Room” podcast, promoted the “precinct strategy”: a Tea Party-era blueprint for taking over local party committees by running activists for the low-level posts that often go unfilled.County committees typically have a say in state party affairs, endorse and campaign for local candidates and sometimes appoint election workers. The precinct strategy aimed to use the committees to wrest control from longtime party leaders whom right-wing activists considered to be weak or dismissive of their ambitions.“What the establishment has said for years is, ‘I may not be what you want, but I’m not a Democrat, so you have to support me.’ That ends up being an excuse for ignoring the base,” said Sam Faddis, the leader of a statewide coalition of self-described “patriot” groups in Pennsylvania. A former C.I.A. operations officer, Mr. Faddis has appeared often on Mr. Bannon’s podcast.In Butler County, a largely blue-collar region of farmland and aging steel mills north of Pittsburgh, the cause was taken up by Mr. Scherer, who voted for the first time as a high school senior in 2020. Incensed by what he believed to have been a stolen election, he formed a group called the Butler PA Patriots, which soon found its place in Mr. Faddis’s statewide coalition.Downtown Butler. The county is heavily Republican, and voted for Donald J. Trump by a two-to-one margin over President Biden.Kristian Thacker for The New York TimesAfter watching videos of Mr. Bannon advocating the precinct strategy, he began recruiting local candidates. “I told them what we wanted to do,” he said, “which was take over the Republican Party.”His group scouted potential candidates by identifying “super voters” — registered Republicans who had voted in two consecutive elections — and canvassing personal networks on Facebook and Telegram. Corey Check, a 20-year-old member of the Patriot group who ran for committeeman in his township, said he recruited one candidate for committeewoman after noticing a cardboard cutout of Mr. Trump in front of her house and knocking on the door. Mr. Scherer’s Patriot group made common cause with Mr. Halle, a born-again evangelical pastor, who had recently clashed with Mr. Lindsay and other local committee leaders.Both Mr. Halle and Mr. Lindsay agree that their disputes were less over ideology than what the party apparatus was best used for. Mr. Halle saw it as a vehicle for remaking a state party whose compromises on Covid quarantines, mail-in voting and responses to 2020 election fraud claims he considered unacceptable. Mr. Lindsay — who describes himself as strongly anti-abortion and favored investigating the 2020 election outcome in Butler County — saw it chiefly as a vehicle for electing Republicans.“Our opponents were Democrats — or that’s what we thought,” Mr. Lindsay said. “These people were not interested in that. They were interested in attacking Republicans.”Led by Mr. Lindsay, the county committee sued to block Mr. Halle, Mr. Scherer and others from incorporating their own organization under a similar name. In the spring primary, the insurgents won a majority of the committee seats in the county, but months of convoluted procedural fighting and legal wrangling followed.Matters came to a head in August, when members of the old and new guards tussled over the committee’s booth at the Butler Farm Show, prompting the event’s head of security to intervene — an episode that, mortifyingly for the Republican activists, took place in view of the county Democrats’ own booth.“We believe that the way we’re going to change our national scene is by changing our local committees,” said Bill Halle, the leader of one of the two insurgent factions within the Butler party.Justin Merriman for The New York TimesLater that month, the state party stepped in and recognized Gary Vanasdale, a local lawyer backed by Mr. Halle’s group, as the rightful county chair. But the insurgency splintered quickly after its victory. Mr. Halle has continued to operate the corporation as a kind of shadow party, accusing Mr. Vanasdale of “fraudulently using our name” and demanding that he turn over the party’s assets.Meanwhile, the United Republicans of Butler County, a third group consisting of longtime party members, including Mr. Lindsay, has emerged, too, and earned the backing of some Republican officials in the county.Jondavid Longo, the mayor of the town of Slippery Rock and a Republican committeeman, said in an email that that group was “trusted by legitimate candidates and leaders to get the work done and deliver tangible results for the Republican Party.”Mr. Vanasdale said he welcomed the other groups’ energies, but was quick to note that only his committee was formally recognized by the state party.“There’s only one N.F.L.,” Mr. Vanasdale, a youth football coach, said. “There’s a bunch of other leagues that want to compete with that. They’re all advancing football. I’m fine with that.”Some have pleaded for unity. “WE ARE ALL REPUBLICANS,” Mr. Scherer wrote in an email to members of the two insurgent factions in September, on the eve of the midterms, “and it is time to work together to fight the RINO” — Republicans in name only — “establishment and the liberals running our country, and state.”A paperweight on Al Lindsay’s desk in Butler serves as a reminder of President Ronald Reagan. Justin Merriman for The New York TimesBut others on the right view the current turmoil as a rocky but necessary phase in the Republican Party’s transformation. They blame the state party’s and donors’ tepid support for the losses of the party’s more right-wing candidates in November. (The Pennsylvania Republican Party declined to comment.)“The establishment in Pennsylvania is not shy,” Mr. Faddis said. “Look at what they did with Mastriano.” Doug Mastriano, a champion of the state’s right wing, won the Republican primary for governor last year but lost badly in the general election to the Democrat, Josh Shapiro.Mr. Faddis said his coalition was educating activists in more counties across Pennsylvania on the precinct strategy in order to build on last year’s local victories. “We are absolutely trying to get all of the groups in the state pushing in the same direction,” he said. More

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      Voter Fraud Unit in Arizona Will Shift Focus to Voter Rights

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      Kris Mayes, the state’s new Democratic attorney general, is shifting gears on election issues in an office her Republican predecessor created.Arizona’s new Democratic attorney general, Kris Mayes, is redirecting an election integrity unit her Republican predecessor created, focusing its work instead on addressing voter suppression. The shift by Ms. Mayes is one of her first acts since she took office this month.The unit’s former leader, Jennifer Wright, meanwhile, has joined a legal effort to invalidate Ms. Mayes’s narrow victory in the November election.“Under my predecessor’s administration, the election integrity unit searched widely for voter fraud and found scant evidence of it occurring in Arizona,” Ms. Mayes said in a statement provided by her office on Monday. “That’s because instances of voter fraud are exceedingly rare.”The former attorney general, Mark Brnovich, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate last year, created the office to investigate voter fraud complaints in Arizona, a battleground state.Ms. Mayes said in the statement that she did not share the priorities of Mr. Brnovich, whom she described as being preoccupied with voter fraud despite isolated cases. The office has five pending voter fraud investigations, as of late October, and a spokesman for Ms. Mayes said on Monday that there was no plan yet for how to proceed with them.Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.2023 Races: Governors’ contests in Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi and mayoral elections in Chicago and Philadelphia are among the races to watch this year.Voting Laws: The tug of war over voting rights is playing out with fresh urgency at the state level, as Republicans and Democrats seek to pass new laws before the next presidential election.2024 Presidential Race: As the 2024 primary approaches, the wavering support of evangelical leaders for Donald J. Trump could have far-reaching implications for Republicans.Democrats’ New Power: After winning trifectas in four state governments in the midterms, Democrats have a level of control in statehouses not seen since 2009.Mr. Brnovich did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Republicans in Arizona have amplified conspiracy theories and fraud claims since the 2020 election and the midterms last year, when the attorney general’s race ended with a recount that was decided by 280 votes.Ms. Mayes said that protecting voting access and limiting voter suppression would be at the forefront of her administration.“I will also use this unit to protect elections officials, election volunteers and poll workers against threats of violence and against interference in our elections,” she said. In addition, the unit will seek to defend vote-by-mail rules, which she said “90 percent of Arizonans enjoy and in many cases depend on.”Ms. Wright, a former assistant attorney general who had led the election integrity unit for Mr. Brnovich, announced last week that she had begun a new role as a lawyer for Abraham Hamadeh, the Republican who lost to Ms. Mayes and is planning to continue his legal efforts to try to overturn the election.Ms. Wright referred questions on Monday about her new role to the campaign of Mr. Hamadeh, who was part of a group of prominent election deniers seeking statewide office in Arizona during the midterms.In December, his legal efforts to overturn his election loss were dismissed in court and a recount confirmed his defeat. The outcome dealt another blow to Arizona Republicans who entered the midterms with heightened expectations for victory, seizing on high inflation and President Biden’s flagging job approval numbers. Instead, Democrats won most of the marquee statewide offices.Election deniers pointed to technical glitches on Election Day, which disrupted some ballot counting in Arizona’s most populous county, Maricopa, to fuel conspiracy theories and baseless claims. They also tried to seize on the undercounting of 500 ballots in Pinal County, outside Phoenix, which officials attributed to human error and which has been the basis of Mr. Hamadeh’s latest efforts to overturn the election.“Not only do I believe Abe is right, but I also believe that he will be successful in his election contest, and that is why I have joined this fight,” Ms. Wright said in a statement provided by Mr. Hamadeh’s campaign. “I look forward to getting Kris Mayes out of the office she should have never occupied in the first place.”In Arizona, a cauldron of election denialism, Mr. Brnovich represented somewhat of an enigma, defending the state’s vote count after the 2020 presidential election. His stance drew the ire of former President Donald J. Trump, who sharply criticized Mr. Brnovich last June and endorsed Mr. Brnovich’s Republican opponent, Blake Masters, who won the Senate primary but lost in the general election.But Mr. Brnovich has also suggested that the 2020 election revealed “serious vulnerabilities” in the electoral system and said cryptically on the former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon’s podcast last spring, “I think we all know what happened in 2020.” More

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      How Kevin McCarthy Forged a Bond With Marjorie Taylor Greene

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      The close alliance that has developed between the speaker and the hard-right Georgia Republican explains his rise, how he might govern and the heavy influence of the extremes on the new House G.O.P. majority.WASHINGTON — Days after he won his gavel in a protracted fight with hard-right Republicans, Speaker Kevin McCarthy gushed to a friend about the ironclad bond he had developed with an unlikely ally in his battle for political survival, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.“I will never leave that woman,” Mr. McCarthy, a California Republican, told the friend, who described the private conversation on the condition of anonymity. “I will always take care of her.”Such a declaration from Mr. McCarthy would have been unthinkable in 2021, when Ms. Greene first arrived on Capitol Hill in a swirl of controversy and provocation. A former QAnon follower who had routinely trafficked in conspiratorial, violent and bigoted statements, Ms. Greene was then widely seen as a dangerous liability to the party and a threat to the man who aspired to lead Republicans back to the majority — a person to be controlled and kept in check, not embraced.But in the time since, a powerful alliance developed between Ms. Greene, the far-right rabble-rouser and acolyte of former President Donald J. Trump, and Mr. McCarthy, the affable fixture of the Washington establishment, according to interviews with 20 people with firsthand knowledge of the relationship, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss it.Their political union — a closer and more complex one than has previously been known — helps explain how Mr. McCarthy rose to power atop a party increasingly defined by its extremes, the lengths to which he will go to accommodate those forces, and how much influence Ms. Greene and the faction she represents have in defining the agenda of the new House Republican majority.“If you’re going to be in a fight, you want Marjorie in your foxhole,” Mr. McCarthy said. Both he and Ms. Greene agreed to brief interviews for this article. “When she picks a fight, she’s going to fight until the fight’s over. She reminds me of my friends from high school, that we’re going to stick together all the way through.”It is a relationship born of political expediency but fueled by genuine camaraderie, and nurtured by one-on-one meetings as often as once a week, usually at a coffee table in Mr. McCarthy’s Capitol office, as well as a constant stream of text messages back and forth.Mr. McCarthy has gone to unusual lengths to defend Ms. Greene, even dispatching his general counsel to spend hours on the phone trying to cajole senior executives at Twitter to reactivate her personal account after she was banned last year for violating the platform’s coronavirus misinformation policy.Ms. Greene, in turn, has taken on an outsize role as a policy adviser to Mr. McCarthy, who has little in the way of a fixed ideology of his own and has come to regard the Georgia congresswoman as a vital proxy for the desires and demands of the right-wing base that increasingly drives his party. He has adopted her stances on opposing vaccine mandates and questioning funding for the war in Ukraine, and even her call to reinvestigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol to show what she has called “the other side of the story.”Mr. McCarthy’s agenda, Ms. Greene said, “if he sticks to it, will easily vindicate me and prove I moved the conference to the right during my first two years when I served in the minority with no committees.”When Ms. Greene entered Congress in January 2021, she was viewed by Republican leaders as a headache.Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times‘Kevin Did This to You’It was a right-wing conspiracy theory that first came between Mr. McCarthy and Ms. Greene, but not in the way that many people think.When Ms. Greene entered Congress in January 2021, Republican leaders viewed her as a headache, and Mr. McCarthy regarded her as potentially beyond redemption. During her primary, social media posts had emerged in which she embraced the QAnon conspiracy theory and warned of “an Islamic invasion of our government.”A Divided CongressThe 118th Congress is underway, with Republicans controlling the House and Democrats holding the Senate.A Wide-Ranging Inquiry: The House approved the creation of a committee to scrutinize what Republicans say is the “weaponization” of government against conservatives. Democrats and historians see dark historical parallels.Abortion: As part of an anti-abortion rights effort, House Republicans pushed through a bill that could subject doctors who perform abortions to criminal penalties.I.R.S. Funds: Republicans in the House voted to cut funding for the Internal Revenue Service, as conservative lawmakers try to kneecap President Biden’s $80 billion overhaul of the agency.Nebraska: Former Gov. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, a Republican, was appointed as the state’s next senator, replacing Ben Sasse, who resigned to become president of the University of Florida.Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican, had intervened to oppose Ms. Greene — an affront she would not forget — but Mr. McCarthy, who eschews confrontation and conflict, would not go that far. He issued a statement through a spokesman condemning the statements, but did not endorse her opponent.Weeks after Ms. Greene was sworn in, more conspiracy-laden posts surfaced, including diatribes in which she had questioned whether a plane really flew into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, and endorsed the executions of Democratic politicians including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Barack Obama.Outraged Democrats demanded that Mr. McCarthy oust her from congressional committees, and when he made no move to do so, they scheduled a vote to do it themselves. As the pressure built, some of Ms. Greene’s far-right allies told her yet another conspiratorial story that she believed: Mr. McCarthy, they said, was secretly working with Ms. Pelosi to strip her of power.Enraged, Ms. Greene stormed into Mr. McCarthy’s office in the Capitol late one night in February 2021 and handed him a letter signed by local Republican leaders in her district, urging him to keep her on her committees. They had received “countless” messages, they said, from their voters who were intent on supporting her.It served as a not-so-subtle warning to Mr. McCarthy that the Republican base would be outraged if he did not ensure she kept her committee seats. Mr. McCarthy tried to explain to Ms. Greene that he agreed that what Democrats were doing was outrageous, but that as minority leader, he had neither the power nor the votes to stop it..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.But Ms. Greene did not believe Mr. McCarthy, a person familiar with her thinking said. After she was booted off the Education and Budget Committees, members of her inner circle told her, “Don’t forget: Kevin did this to you.”Mr. McCarthy has gone to unusual lengths to defend Ms. Greene.Tom Brenner for The New York Times‘The Principal’s Office’The relationship remained fraught throughout Ms. Greene’s first year in Congress, as the same pattern played out again and again in their interactions. A controversy would erupt over an outrageous comment Ms. Greene had made, then Mr. McCarthy would summon her to deal with the matter privately.Ms. Greene would joke to friends, “Uh-oh, I’ve been called to the principal’s office.”But even as she continued to traffic in offensive conspiracy theories and spoke at a white nationalist rally, Mr. McCarthy refused to punish her and often refrained from even criticizing her comments until pressed by reporters. It was a calculated choice by Mr. McCarthy, who leads more by flattery and backslapping than through discipline.And by early 2022, Ms. Greene had begun to believe that Mr. McCarthy was willing to go to bat for her. When her personal Twitter account was shut down for violating coronavirus misinformation policies, Ms. Greene raced to Mr. McCarthy’s office in the Capitol and demanded that he get the social media platform to reinstate her account, according to a person familiar with the exchange.Instead of telling Ms. Greene that he had no power to order a private company to change its content moderation policies, Mr. McCarthy directed his general counsel, Machalagh Carr, to appeal to Twitter executives. Over the next two months, Ms. Carr would spend hours on the phone with them arguing Ms. Greene’s case, and even helped draft a formal appeal on her behalf.The efforts were unsuccessful at the time, but they impressed Ms. Greene and revealed how far Mr. McCarthy was prepared to go to defend her. It was part of a broader and methodical courtship of the hard right by Mr. McCarthy that included outreach to conservative media figures and Mr. Trump’s hard-line immigration adviser Stephen Miller.He had studied the two previous Republican speakers of the House, former Representatives John A. Boehner of Ohio and Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, a person familiar with his thinking said, and concluded that one of their fatal errors had been unnecessarily isolating far-right members, who in turn made their lives miserable. So Mr. McCarthy set out to do the opposite.Ms. Greene whipped votes on the House floor to support Mr. McCarthy during his fight to become speaker.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesApproaching SymbiosisStill, the alliance between Mr. McCarthy and Ms. Greene did not truly begin to flourish for several more months. At a party in the Dallas suburbs at the home of Arthur Schwartz, a G.O.P. consultant and outside adviser to Mr. McCarthy, Ms. Greene found herself in the corner of a great room chatting with Devin Nunes, the former top Republican on the Intelligence Committee and a committed Trump ally.Mr. Nunes told Ms. Greene about the time he had witnessed Mr. McCarthy yelling at Representative Steny H. Hoyer, the Maryland Democrat who was then the majority leader, for his party’s decision to remove Ms. Greene from her committees, and threatening that he would do the same to Democrats when Republicans came to power.Ms. Greene recalled it as the first time she had heard from somebody she trusted that Mr. McCarthy had defended her, rather than conspired with Democrats to blackball her. “That conversation had a big impact on me,” she said.From then on, the two settled into a kind of symbiotic relationship, both feeding off what the other could provide. Ms. Greene began regularly visiting Mr. McCarthy, frequently dropping by his office, and he began inviting her to high-level policy discussions attended by senior Republicans and praising her contributions.He was impressed not only by Ms. Greene’s seemingly innate understanding of the impulses of the party’s hard-right voters, but also by her prowess at building her own brand. He once remarked to allies with wonder at how Ms. Greene, as a freshman, was already known by a three-letter monogram: M.T.G. “She knows what she’s doing,” Mr. McCarthy marveled privately. “You’ve got A.O.C. and M.T.G.”After Republicans underperformed expectations in the midterm elections, winning only a narrow majority and guaranteeing that Mr. McCarthy would have a tough fight to become speaker, Ms. Greene was quick to begin barnstorming the right-wing media circuit as one of his top surrogates, using her conservative credentials to vouch for his. As her peers on the far-right flank of the party refused to support Mr. McCarthy, subjecting the Republican leader to a four-day stretch of defeats, Ms. Greene was unflinching in her support, personally whipping votes on the House floor and strategizing on calls with Mr. Trump.Ms. Greene’s support for Mr. McCarthy created a permission structure for other G.O.P. lawmakers to do the same.Representative Barry Moore, Republican of Alabama, said in an interview that when conservatives back home sought an explanation for his support for Mr. McCarthy, he would comfort them by replying: “Well, Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor Greene are standing with Kevin McCarthy. And so am I.”The relationship has also paid off for Ms. Greene, no longer the fringe backbencher stripped of her power. Republican leaders announced last week that she would serve on two high-profile committees: Oversight and Homeland Security. She is also likely to be appointed to a new Oversight select subcommittee to investigate the coronavirus, according to a source familiar with Mr. McCarthy’s thinking who was not authorized to preview decisions that have yet to be finalized.It is already clear that she is influencing Mr. McCarthy’s policy agenda.Ms. Greene has taken on an outsize role as an adviser to Mr. McCarthy.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesAfter Ms. Greene had told Mr. McCarthy that vaccine mandates were morally wrong and that he needed to stop them, he fought vociferously — and successfully — to include the repeal of the military coronavirus vaccine mandate in last year’s defense bill. After she told him that the party faithful could not understand why Congress continued to send money to help Ukraine secure its borders, when the United States’ southern border was not secure, Mr. McCarthy helped pave the way for Republicans on the Foreign Affairs Committee to put forward and support a bill sponsored by Ms. Greene, who does not sit on the panel, demanding that Congress audit American aid sent to Ukraine.And after she told Mr. McCarthy that many people imprisoned for their actions during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol were being victimized, he signaled that Republicans would start an inquiry of their own digging into the work of the panel that was investigating the assault.“People need to understand that it isn’t just me that deserves credit,” Ms. Greene said. “It is the will and the voice of our base that was heard, and Kevin listened to them. I was just a vehicle much of the time.”In the early hours of Jan. 7, after Mr. McCarthy had finally clinched the speakership on the 15th ballot and pallets of champagne were being wheeled into his new office, Ms. Greene opted not to join the celebration. But she sent him a text message the next day telling Mr. McCarthy how happy and proud she was — and how she could not wait to get started.Kitty Bennett More

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      Ron DeSantis Stokes the Flames

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      Lynne Sladky/Associated PressFor Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, it’s been a busy month of turning up the heat on divisive cultural issues. He is weighing a
      Republican presidential run based, in large part, on foiling what he sees as liberal values in schools, companies and government.Here is what he’s been doing → More

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      Despite Red Flags, G.O.P. Backed Candidate Now Charged in Shootings

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      “We could have picked apart this guy,” one Republican leader in New Mexico said of Solomon Peña, who is accused of organizing attacks on the homes of four Democratic officials.ALBUQUERQUE — The former Republican candidate accused of targeting the homes of Democrats in drive-by shootings had routinely called for locking up 2020 election officials in Guantánamo Bay. He promoted conspiracy theories about solar power, feminism and “the demonic theories of the Globalist Elites.” He had been demoted twice by the U.S. Navy and served nearly seven years in prison for burglary.Yet powerful party leaders in New Mexico not only gave the first-time candidate, Solomon Peña, 39, full-throated endorsements, they also opened their checkbooks to fund his race for a state legislative seat in central Albuquerque long held by Democrats. Some knew about his prison record but said they felt that he had turned his life around. Local and state authorities now say they are investigating whether drug money helped fund his campaign.“He came across to me as a very respectful, thoughtful young man,” said Harvey Yates, an oilman and former chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party, who donated $5,000 to Mr. Peña’s election effort. Now, Mr. Yates acknowledges that he may have made a mistake. He said that he felt “very bad, very sad” for Mr. Peña, “who I think really had possibilities.”The police say that after losing his race by a landslide in November — he received 26 percent of the vote — and refusing to concede, Mr. Peña organized shootings at the homes of prominent Democrats, including two who certified the election results. The attacks came at a time of growing fears across the country about a trend of political violence, mostly from the right wing, including the attack on the husband of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a conspiracy to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.In New Mexico, the case also highlights the internal struggles among Republicans as election deniers like Mr. Peña — who was in the crowd for President Donald J. Trump’s speech in Washington on Jan. 6, according to videos collected by online sleuths — fill the ranks of candidates seeking elected office. Other Republicans such as Audrey Trujillo, who ran for secretary of state, embraced conspiracy theories about elections, school shootings and Covid-19 vaccines.Many of those election deniers lost in New Mexico, mirroring similar Republican setbacks in other parts of the country. The results helped the state’s Democrats solidify their control of both houses in the state Legislature, the governor’s office and the entire congressional delegation, sparking recriminations over the Republicans’ loss of power.Michael Candelaria, a prominent state Republican who until recently was the party chairman in Valencia County, near Albuquerque, said the Peña case laid bare a dilemma in a state where Democrats have steadily expanded their sway in recent years: how to appeal to some of Mr. Trump’s most ardent supporters, who refused to accept his 2020 re-election defeat, without alienating other voters who reject the lies and conspiracy theories.“You don’t take a group of people whose support you want and tell them, ‘You’re a bunch of crazies,’” Mr. Candelaria said. “You’re going to have some extremists that you have to figure out how to keep their support.”But Mr. Candelaria, who has pushed for leadership changes in the state party, said that Mr. Peña’s arrest showed the risks of promoting such figures. “Had we done some good vetting, we could have picked apart this guy, but no, we don’t do a good job of picking candidates,” he said.It was unclear how much Republican leaders had examined Mr. Peña’s background. Steve Pearce, a former member of Congress who is now chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party, did not respond to requests for comment.Some Republicans are now bracing for more revelations about Mr. Peña, who was arrested on Monday and charged with criminal solicitation, attempted aggravated battery, shooting at an occupied dwelling, shooting from a moving vehicle and conspiracy. The police called him the “mastermind” behind a conspiracy in which four other men were paid to shoot at the homes of two county commissioners and two state legislators, and said that he personally participated in at least one of the shootings.As part of their investigation, Albuquerque police detectives said they were also examining whether Mr. Peña used proceeds from narcotics trafficking to finance his campaign, and whether campaign laws were violated. The New Mexico attorney general’s office will lead the investigation into Mr. Peña’s campaign finances, a spokeswoman for the office said on Friday.The turn in the investigation came after detectives learned through witness interviews that Mr. Peña had identified individuals to funnel contributions from an unknown source into his campaign, according to Gilbert Gallegos, a spokesman for the department. Investigators said they are focusing on José Trujillo, who is also accused in the shootings, and Mr. Trujillo’s mother, Melanie Griego, who are listed as donating a total of $9,150 to Mr. Peña’s campaign.Police arrested Mr. Trujillo on Jan. 3, shortly after the shooting targeting the Albuquerque home of Linda Lopez, a state senator. In the car that Mr. Trujillo was driving, which the police say is owned by Mr. Peña, investigators say they found 893 fentanyl pills and $3,036 in cash, as well as a firearm matching shell casings found at Ms. Lopez’s home.Mr. Peña made his first court appearance on Wednesday and did not enter a plea. Roberta Yurcic, a lawyer representing him, said she couldn’t comment on specific aspects of her client’s background, including his military demotions and work history. “The investigation into the charges against my client is ongoing,” she added. “Mr. Peña has a right to a fair trial.”Javier Martinez, a Democrat whose home was targeted in the attacks after the November election, said that he had “never experienced anything like this before.” Mr. Martinez, who took over this month as New Mexico’s speaker of the House, tied Mr. Peña’s extremism to the election lies voiced by Mr. Trump.“The previous president, I think, really exploited some of those feelings,” Mr. Martinez said. “And we’ve seen it play out in different ways, including the insurrection in Washington, D.C., including this set of events here in our own backyard.”Mr. Peña presented himself as someone on the mend, leading groups in prayer at political meetings and telling neighbors that he did not drink or take drugs. But he made little effort to hide his extreme views. His campaign website denounced “the demonic theories of the Globalist Elites and their foreign counterparts,” called feminism “demonicism,” and said the 2020 election had been rigged against Mr. Trump by “enemy combatants” who “must be placed in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for the remainder of their natural lives.”During his campaign, Mr. Peña highlighted his time as a Navy hospital corpsman assigned to a Marine division in Okinawa, Japan. But promotion data provided by the U.S. Navy’s public affairs office shows that Mr. Peña hardly served with distinction. He was demoted twice during his four years in the service and left the military in 2004 at the lowest possible rank. The Navy was unable to provide the reasons for Mr. Peña’s demotions.Mr. Peña ran on a platform of cracking down on crime, despite his own criminal history. He served nearly seven years in prison in New Mexico on charges including burglary and larceny after being part of a “smash-and-grab” crew that slammed vehicles into retail stores, including a Kmart in Albuquerque, then stole items, according to court records.After being released from prison in 2016, Mr. Peña tried selling cars at a dealership in Albuquerque but lasted less than a month before he was fired for showing up late, court records from a lawsuit filed by Mr. Peña in 2017 show. (The case was dismissed.) Mr. Peña also enrolled at the University of New Mexico, obtaining a political science degree in 2021, the same year that his voting rights were restored after his prison term.Mr. Peña appears to have run for the Republican nomination for the state legislative seat unopposed. In October, he received an endorsement from the Republican National Hispanic Assembly’s New Mexico chapter. Ronnie Lucero, the chairman of both the group’s national organization and the state chapter, said that he had spoken with Mr. Peña at events during the campaign, and that the candidate had filled out a questionnaire asking about his professional, financial and criminal history before the group endorsed him.The group did not see Mr. Peña’s criminal record as disqualifying, Mr. Lucero said, adding: “At the time that we made the endorsement, there was the impression that he’d got his life together and he’s one of those second-chance stories that would turn out to be something good and positive for the community.“It was a bad decision that we made, and regretfully,” he said. “But we can’t read the future.”When asked about some of the extremist rhetoric on Mr. Peña’s campaign website, Mr. Lucero said that he had not seen the statements — although they were published before the endorsement, according to the Internet Archive — and that they would have given him pause if he had.Some Republican officials defended the apparent lack of vetting before the party establishment put its support behind Mr. Peña, which included defending him when his opponent sought to have him disqualified from the race because of his criminal record, which could potentially have prohibited him from taking office.“The Republican Party did not recruit him,” said Representative Bill Rehm, a Republican state legislator from Albuquerque, adding that he did not think the party establishment should vet candidates. “He, like anyone else, can sign up to run for whatever office.”John Ismay More

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      Republicans Under Pressure as Anti-Abortion Activists Call for a National Ban

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      Activists are pushing for tougher abortion restrictions, while politicians fear turning off swing voters who don’t support strict limits like a national ban.For decades, opposition to abortion was a crucial but relatively clear-cut litmus test for Republican candidates: support overturning a constitutional right to an abortion, back anti-abortion judges and vote against taxpayer funding for the procedure.But now, six months after the Supreme Court overturned federal abortion rights, the test has grown a whole lot harder — and potentially more politically treacherous.Even after a backlash in support of abortion rights cost Republicans key seats in the midterm elections, a restive socially conservative wing is pushing the party’s lawmakers to embrace deeper restrictions. That effort is likely to be on stark display on Friday in Washington, when anti-abortion activists gather for what is expected to be a lower-key version of their annual march. Historically, the event attracted top Republicans, including former President Donald J. Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence and former Speaker Paul Ryan. This year, the list of speakers circulated in advance included two lawmakers: Representative Steve Scalise, the Republican majority leader, and Representative Chris Smith, one of the leaders of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus.These activists and their allies are pressuring potential Republican presidential contenders to call for a national ban. Raising the stakes nearly two years before the 2024 contest, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, one of the most powerful anti-abortion groups, said that any candidate who does not support federal restrictions should be “disqualified” from winning the party’s nomination.But some Republican strategists worry that such a position could repel general-election swing voters, who polls show are turned off by the idea of a national ban.Other conservative activists are pushing for a new series of litmus tests that include restrictions on medication abortion, protections for so-called crisis pregnancy centers that discourage women from having abortions, and promises of fiercely anti-abortion appointees to run the Justice Department and the Food and Drug Administration.For Republican politicians, these activists are forcing the question of what, exactly, it means to be “pro-life” in a post-Roe v. Wade era.In Grand Rapids, Mich., last November, opponents rallied against Proposition 3, a ballot measure that sought to protect abortion rights. Democratic candidates, who supported Proposition 3, did well in the election.Brittany Greeson for The New York Times“This is coming. The pro-life movement is not going to be happy or thanking a candidate simply for saying they are pro-life,” said Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life of America, an anti-abortion group. “We’re in a position where we’re going to get down to the various candidates on how far they are going to go to protect women and children.”Some Republican officials and strategists argue that pitched debates over abortion rights in the midterms — and the party’s inability to quickly adopt a unified message on the issue — contributed to the G.O.P.’s weaker-than-expected performance in battleground states including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona.More on Abortion Issues in AmericaAt a Crossroads: As the 50th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling approaches, anti-abortion activists who fought to have the decision overturned are split about what they should focus on next.In Congress: Republicans used their new power in the House to push through legislation that could subject doctors who perform abortions to criminal penalties.Morning-After Pills: The Food and Drug Administration revised its guidance on the most commonly used emergency contraceptives, making clear they are not abortion pills.Abortion Pills: In a move that could significantly expand access to medication abortions, the F.D.A. moved to allow retail pharmacies to offer abortion pills in the United States.This view is shared by former President Donald J. Trump, who distanced himself this month from a social conservative wing that has been a pillar of his base when he blamed the “abortion issue” for the party’s loss of “large numbers of voters” in November.The comments set off an instant backlash from loyal supporters who once lauded him as the most anti-abortion president in history. Ms. Hawkins described Mr. Trump as “listening to swamp consultants.” The remarks also prompted ridicule from some Republican strategists who noted that Mr. Trump was often a liability in major races last year.Some potential 2024 candidates have begun tussling over the issue as they try to position themselves as the conservative movement’s next standard-bearer. Mr. Trump’s comments drew a rebuke from his former vice president, Mike Pence, who retweeted a statement from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America urging the former president and his possible rivals to embrace an “ambitious consensus pro-life position.”“Well said,” added Mr. Pence, who has cast himself as a true champion of the cause as he promotes the Supreme Court’s ruling in appearances at “crisis pregnancy centers” and movement galas.A spokesman for Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota has accused Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida of “hiding” behind his state’s ban on abortion past 15 weeks of pregnancy, while Ms. Noem has promoted her “aggressive” record on abortion restrictions.“Talking about situations and making statements is incredibly important, but also taking action and governing and bringing policies that protect life are even more important,” she said recently on CBS News..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.And Mr. DeSantis, who shied away from addressing abortion for most of the fall campaign, has said he is “willing to sign great life legislation” and has not ruled out support for a six-week ban.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a bill last year for a ban on abortions after 15 weeks, and he has said he would consider a six-week ban.John Raoux/Associated PressStill, it remains unclear what, exactly, is the new standard for being anti-abortion — even among those pushing for more restrictions. Is it enough to seek to ban abortions after 15 weeks? Or should the bar be roughly six weeks, like the measure that Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia signed into law? Should Republicans support exceptions for rape, incest and health of the mother — which Mr. Trump backs — or none at all? And how do you define health anyhow? Do psychiatric crises count?As some Republican-dominated statehouses prepare to further limit abortion, future presidential candidates are also likely to be asked about restrictive measures being proposed, including prosecuting those seeking abortion care in states where it is banned, targeting allies who help women travel across state lines for the procedure, criminalizing the mailing of abortion medication, and granting fetuses the same legal rights as people through fetal personhood bills.“Conservatives will not allow a Republican to be elected as their candidate that’s not pro-life,” said Penny Nance, the chief executive of Concerned Women for America, a group that argues that life begins at conception.Asked how conservatives now defined “pro-life” credentials — in terms of embracing abortion restrictions after a certain pregnancy threshold, simply looking for candidates who seemed to be fighters on the issue, or something else — Ms. Nance replied, “I think we’ll grapple with that.”Several activists have suggested that they expect this grappling to unfold in the context of a presidential primary campaign, as possible candidates race to demonstrate their anti-abortion bona fides.Democrats are avidly watching from the sidelines, keeping close tabs on the abortion stances of potential 2024 rivals. Their hope is that Republicans adopt positions that might be popular with their base but that will cost them the moderate suburbanites who are critical in the general election. Polling conducted by some Democratic strategists during the midterms found that voters strongly rejected any discussion of a national abortion ban.“They’re going to go for a national ban,” Celinda Lake, a longtime Democratic strategist and pollster, said in an interview around Election Day. “That is the most mobilizing statement, the most persuasive.”She added, “And their candidate is going to be pushed into saying it.”Still, after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, it remains an open question whether social conservatives hold the same king-making power in the primary as they did in 2016, or if they may be forced to accept a candidate who doesn’t go as far on their top issues as they would prefer.Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota has promoted her “aggressive” record on abortion restrictions.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressThe party remains divided over whether to support any national restrictions. In the House, the new Republican majority opened the session with a package of abortion legislation that did not include a national ban. Because Democrats control the Senate, none of the measures are expected to become law.“A great many Republicans still think the victory in Dobbs was pushing this down to the states,” Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist and longtime adviser to Senator Mitch McConnell, said when asked for his thoughts on the relatively limited action on Capitol Hill. “It is contradictory to simultaneously believe that and then push for a national regime on it.”Mr. Jennings said he thought restricting abortion access after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with some exceptions, was smart politics, a proposal that candidates could endorse for the states.But when Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina put forward that position in the form of a federal ban before the midterms, the proposal earned a backlash among some Republicans who viewed it, and its timing, as politically foolhardy.Still, in the final weeks of the midterms, many Republicans embraced a central message: a 15-week limit with exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother. They sought to push Democrats to define their own limits on gestational age — and falsely accused them of supporting “abortion until birth” if they refused. Nearly all Democrats support federal legislation that would reinstate a version of the standard set by Roe: permitting abortion until fetal viability, roughly 23 weeks, and after that point only if the pregnancy poses a risk to the mother’s health.Robert Blizzard, a veteran Republican pollster, noted that several Republican candidates who generally opposed abortion rights won major statewide races in places including Florida, Georgia and Iowa. But elsewhere, for candidates without clearly defined personal brands, he said, “voters can use the abortion issue as a test of how compassionate they are, and how pragmatic they are, in order to solve problems and get things done.”“There were some candidates we had running, specifically in statewide races, that just could never get past the favorability” issue with independent voters, he added.Mr. Blizzard emphasized that it was impossible to know what issues would motivate voters in the 2024 general election. But there is little doubt, he said, that Democrats will continue to use the abortion issue against Republicans — and that in the midterms they often did so effectively.“Every metric you would look at indicates that that energizes the left and energizes the Democratic base, which it certainly did,” he said. “In some cases, where we made the fight over other issues — whether the economy, inflation, the border, whatever else was going on in a particular state or district — we did, I think, well. But in places where we were not able to change the narrative of a race, we didn’t do well.”“In terms of going forward,” he went on, describing the political uncertainties surrounding the issue, “I don’t think anyone has a really solid answer for it.” More

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      States Push for New Voting Laws With an Eye Toward 2024

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      Republicans are focused on voter ID rules and making it harder to cast mail ballots, while Democrats are seeking to expand access through automatic voter registration.The tug of war over voting rights and rules is playing out with fresh urgency at the state level, as Republicans and Democrats fight to get new laws on the books before the 2024 presidential election.Republicans have pushed to tighten voting laws with renewed vigor since former President Donald J. Trump made baseless claims of fraud after losing the 2020 election, while Democrats coming off midterm successes are trying to channel their momentum to expand voting access and thwart efforts to undermine elections.States like Florida, Texas and Georgia, where Republicans control the levers of state government, have already passed sweeping voting restrictions that include criminal oversight initiatives, limits on drop boxes, new identification requirements and more.While President Biden and Democrats in Congress were unable to pass federal legislation last year that would protect voting access and restore elements of the landmark Voting Rights Act stripped away by the Supreme Court in 2013, not all reform efforts have floundered.In December, Congress updated the Electoral Count Act, closing a loophole that Mr. Trump’s supporters had sought to exploit to try to get Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election results on the day of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.Now the focus has returned to the state level. Here are some of the key voting measures in play this year:Ohio Republicans approve new restrictions.Ohioans must now present a driver’s license, passport or other official photo ID to vote in person under a G.O.P. measure that was signed into law on Jan. 6 by Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican.The law also set tighter deadlines for voters to return mail-in ballots and provide missing information on them. Absentee ballot requests must be received earlier as well.Republicans, who control the Legislature in Ohio, contend that the new rules will bolster election integrity, yet they have acknowledged that the issue has not presented a problem in the state. Overall, voter fraud is exceedingly rare.Several voting rights groups were quick to file a federal lawsuit challenging the changes, which they said would disenfranchise Black people, younger and older voters, as well as those serving in the military and living abroad.Texas G.O.P. targets election crimes and ballot initiatives.Despite enacting sweeping restrictions on voting in 2021 that were condemned by civil rights groups and the Justice Department in several lawsuits, Republican lawmakers in Texas are seeking to push the envelope further.Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.2023 Races: Governors’ contests in Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi and mayoral elections in Chicago and Philadelphia are among the races to watch this year.Democrats’ New Power: After winning trifectas in four state governments in the midterms, Democrats have a level of control in statehouses not seen since 2009.G.O.P. Debates: The Republican National Committee has asked several major TV networks to consider sponsoring debates, an intriguing show of détente toward the mainstream media and an early sign that the party is making plans for a contested 2024 presidential primary.An Important Election: The winner of a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in April will determine who holds a 4-to-3 majority in a critical presidential battleground state.Dozens of bills related to voting rules and election administration were filed for the legislative session that began this month. While many are from Democrats seeking to ease barriers to voting, Republicans control both chambers of the Texas Legislature and the governor’s office. It is not clear which bills will gain the necessary support to become laws.Some G.O.P. proposals focus on election crimes, including one that would authorize the secretary of state to designate an election marshal responsible for investigating potential election violations.“Similar bills have passed in Florida and in Georgia,” said Jasleen Singh, a counsel in the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “We should be concerned about whether this will happen in Texas as well.”Under another bill, a voter could request that the secretary of state review local election orders and language on ballot propositions and reject any that are found to be “misleading, inaccurate or prejudicial,” part of a push by Republicans in several states to make it harder to pass ballot measures after years of progressive victories.One proposal appears to target heavily populated, Democratic-controlled counties, giving the state attorney general the power to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate voter fraud allegations if local officials decline to do so. Another bill goes further, allowing the attorney general to seek an injunction against local prosecutors who don’t investigate claims of voter fraud and pursue civil penalties against them.A 19-year-old registering to vote in Minnesota, where Democrats introduced a bill that would allow applicants who are at least 16 years old to preregister to vote. Tim Gruber for The New York TimesDemocrats in Minnesota and Michigan go on offense.Democrats are seeking to harness their momentum from the midterm elections to expand voting access in Minnesota and Michigan, where they swept the governors’ races and legislative control.In Minnesota, the party introduced legislation in early January that would create an automatic voter registration system and allow applicants who are at least 16 years old to preregister to vote. The measure would also automatically restore the voting rights of convicted felons upon their release from prison and for those who do not receive prison time as part of a sentence.In Michigan, voters approved a constitutional amendment in November that creates a nine-day early voting period and requires the state to fund absentee ballot drop boxes. Top Democrats in the state are also weighing automatic voter registration and have discussed criminalizing election misinformation.Pennsylvania Republicans want to expand a voter ID law.Because of the veto power of the governor, an office the Democrats held in the November election, Republicans in Pennsylvania have resorted to trying to amend the state constitution in order to pass a voter ID bill.The complex amendment process, which ultimately requires putting the question to voters, is the subject of pending litigation.Both chambers of the Legislature need to pass the bill this session in order to place it on the ballot, but Democrats narrowly flipped control of the House in the midterms — and they will seek to bolster their majority with three special elections next month.“If the chips fall in a certain way, it is unlikely that this will move forward and it might quite possibly be dead,” said Susan Gobreski, a board member of the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania. “But it ain’t dead yet.”Gov. Josh Shapiro has indicated an openness to compromise with Republicans on some voting rules.“I’m certainly willing to have an honest conversation about voter I.D., as long as that is something that is not used as a hindrance to voting,” Mr. Shapiro said in an interview in December.First-time voters and those applying for absentee ballots are currently required to present identification in Pennsylvania, but Republicans want to expand the requirement to all voters in every election and have proposed issuing voter ID cards. Critics say the proposal would make it harder to vote and could compromise privacy.Mr. Shapiro has separately said he hoped that Republicans in the legislature would agree to change the state’s law that forbids the processing of absentee ballots and early votes before Election Day. The ballot procedures, which can drag out the counting, have been a flash point in a series of election lawsuits filed by Republicans.Georgia’s top election official, a Republican, calls to end runoff system.Early voting fell precipitously in Georgia’s nationally watched Senate runoff in December after Republicans, who control of state government, cut in half the number of days for casting ballots before Election Day.Long lines at some early-voting sites, especially in the Atlanta area, during the runoff led to complaints of voter suppression.But the G.O.P. lost the contest, after a set of runoff defeats a year earlier that gave Democrats control of the Senate.Now Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who is Georgia’s secretary of state and its top election official, wants to abandon the runoff system altogether, saying that the condensed timeline had put added strain on poll workers.Critics of ranked-choice voting cited the system as being instrumental to the re-election last year of Senator Lisa Murkowski, a centrist Republican.Ash Adams for The New York TimesRepublicans in Alaska want to undo some voting changes approved in 2020.After a special election last year and the midterms, when Alaska employed a novel election system for the first time, some conservatives reeling from losses at the polls have directed their ire at a common target: ranked-choice voting.At least three Republican lawmakers have introduced bills seeking to repeal some of the electoral changes that were narrowly approved by voters in 2020, which introduced a “top-four” open primary and ranked-choice voting in general elections. In addition to deciding winners based on the candidate who receives the most votes, the bills also seek to return to a closed primary system, in which only registered party members can participate.Supporters of the new system contend that it sets a higher bar to get elected than to simply earn a plurality of votes.But critics have called the format confusing. Some have blamed it for the defeat of Sarah Palin, the Republican former governor and 2008 vice-presidential nominee, in a special House election in August and again in November for the same office.They also cited the system as being instrumental to the re-election last year of Senator Lisa Murkowski, a centrist Republican who angered some members of her party when she voted to convict Mr. Trump at his impeachment trial after the Jan. 6 attack.Still, Republican foes of ranked-choice elections could face hurdles within their own party. According to The Anchorage Daily News, the incoming Senate president, a Republican, favors keeping the system in place.Nebraska Republicans aim to sharply curb mail voting.Nebraska does not require voters to provide a reason to vote early by mail, but two Republican state senators want to make wholesale changes that would mostly require in-person voting on Election Day.Under a bill proposed by Steve Halloran and Steve Erdman, G.O.P. senators in the unicameral legislature, only members of the U.S. military and residents of nursing homes and assisted living facilities could vote by mail.The measure would further require all ballots to be counted on Election Day, which would become a state holiday in Nebraska, along with the day of the statewide primary.The League of Women Voters of Nebraska opposes the bill and noted that 11 of the state’s 93 counties vote entirely by mail under a provision that gives officials in counties with under 10,000 people the option to do so.“This is an extreme bill and would be very unpopular,” MaryLee Mouton, the league’s president, said in an email. “When most states are moving to expand voting by mail, a bill to restrict vote by mail would negatively impact both our rural and urban communities.”In the November election, Nebraskans overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative that created a statewide photo ID requirement for voting.A Republican bill in Missouri would hunt for election fraud.In Missouri, where Republicans control the governor’s office and Legislature, one G.O.P. bill would create an Office of Election Crimes and Security. The office would report to the secretary of state and would be responsible for reviewing election fraud complaints and conducting investigations.Its investigators would also be authorized to enter poling places or offices of any election authority on Election Day, during absentee voting or the canvass of votes. More