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      How About Some Predictions for the New Year?

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      Gail Collins: How about some predictions for the new year, Bret?I’ll start: House Republicans will flunk all their deficit-decreasing promises. The skyrocketing sales of those Trump digital trading cards will collapse and plunge streaking back to earth.Bret Stephens: C’mon, Gail — those are safe bets!Gail: OK, how about a pre-new year prediction? This week, the Jan. 6 committee will recommend criminal prosecution of Donald Trump, but the man’s never going to jail.Bret: Another pretty safe bet, I’m afraid.Gail: Sigh. Back to the future: What do you have in the way of thoughts about what’s going to happen in 2023?Bret: I’ll go bold, or semi-bold, so long as you promise not to hold these predictions against me in a year.Gail: Well, OK … maybe.Bret: First, the crypto collapse will continue and the whole crypto phenomenon will be exposed as the tulip bulb mania of our day.Second, President Biden will announce, after considerable holiday reflection, that he will not run for re-election, especially since he’s increasingly unlikely to face a rematch with the former guy.And third, Kevin McCarthy will not be the next speaker of the House.Gail: Well, I’ll give you number one — would never want to be known as a crypto collaborator. Sure hope you’re right on two: As I’ve said before, I’d love to see Biden follow Nancy Pelosi’s lead and give up the top leadership job for some other useful-but-not-in-charge-of-the-world gig.And on three: Fine, but who exactly are the Republicans going to pick? Any faves?Bret: Well, nobody in the current House Republican leadership. All of them are election deniers. And Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, gets special awfulness points because her ethics are purely situational. Also, nearly every House Republican who voted to impeach Trump after Jan. 6 is gone, so that further reduces my options.Gail: The woes of rational Republicans …Bret: I guess the House has the option of electing a speaker who is not a member. In that case, I’d probably look to a Republican I could respect, like Rob Portman, the outgoing senator from Ohio whose seat is being taken by J.D. Vance. Though, really, I doubt Portman would want the job. Today’s definition of a sane Republican is a retired Republican, a former Republican, or both.Gail, let’s look back on the old year, too. What do you rank as the best moment? And what was the worst?Gail: As a political person I’d have to say the elections were the best. Not just that the Democrats did much better than expected, but that many of the loathsome Trumpian Republicans were rejected in races a rational member of their party would have won.Bret: We are in total accord in the politics department. But I’d expand the categories a bit. The best moment, in terms of statesmanship, was President Volodomyr Zelensky’s Churchillian riposte to the American offer to get him out of Ukraine in the face of Russia’s invasion: “I need ammunition, not a ride.”Gail: I agree — that’s a keeper.Bret: The best moment in terms of courage has come from the magnificent women of Iran, leading a revolution against their misogynistic rulers. The best moment, cosmically, were the images of deep space and distant time taken by the Webb telescope. And probably the best moment, as far as future generations are concerned, was the fusion breakthrough by the brilliant scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It gave me faith not only that human ingenuity will ultimately solve our long-term energy and climate challenges, but also that the United States can continue at the frontiers of discovery.Gail: Super choices. Now we’ve got to tackle the worst. And I’m sorry to say that pretty much every year it’s a story about mass shooting. Actually, many stories about mass shootings: innocent citizens mowed down when they’re shopping, or going to school, or working at extremely nonviolent jobs or just out having a good time. Who can ever forget that student slaughter at Uvalde? And it was just a month ago that a gunman in Colorado killed five people and injured at least 18 others at an L.G.B.T.Q. nightclub.Bret: Not to mention the everyday gun violence that barely gets reported because it’s so ubiquitous.Gail: And unlike some of our other political crises — say, the Supreme Court ruling on abortion — the gun situation just doesn’t seem to get the political push it needs to get better. Will try to block the memory of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s recent quote-unquote joke about how it would have been so much better if the folks attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6 had been better armed.You?Bret: Agree again. I’d add that repulsive dinner between Donald Trump, Kanye West and the Holocaust-denier Nick Fuentes.Gail: Hmm. Mixed feelings on that one. True, Trump’s guest list was remarkably repulsive, even for him. But that kind of behavior shows he’s dreadful in ways even some of his previous supporters can appreciate. Which is kinda useful, given his already announced candidacy for a return to the White House.Bret: As in, “the worse, the better”? Not sure I agree: I think it was yet another case of “defining deviancy down,” as Pat Moynihan famously put it.Switching topics, Gail, we’ve got a huge migration crisis at the southern border, and it looks like it might get a lot worse as soon as the Title 42 policy permitting immediate deportations ends this week. Democrats seem … pretty nonchalant about this. Your thoughts?Gail: Bret, since the Republicans’ big new idea seems to be impeaching the secretary of Homeland Security, I don’t think you’ll win with a partisan critique.Bret: Impeachment is a dumb idea, but it wouldn’t hurt Biden to consider new management in that department. How about Bill Bratton, the former police commissioner of New York City and Los Angeles?Gail: I don’t have a good solution, but my immediate action plan would be to radically increase staffing at the border, raise the salaries of border patrol agents, expand and improve detention facilities and, on our side, get the Dreamers a clear and simple path to citizenship.Now, I’m very interested in your thoughts — except you already know we’re going to fight about anything involving the building of a wall.Bret: Like John Cleese’s Basil Fawlty, I promise not to mention the wall.Gail: A gift for the holidays!Bret: The administration and the courts have a point that Title 42, as a public-health measure, is an awkward legal tool to control the border. Problem is, it’s what we’ve got. And we already have a crisis as far north as New York City as officials deal with a migration crisis on a scale we’ve never seen before. If we don’t control it — not over the coming years, but right now — we’re going to have a full-scale humanitarian crisis here in the United States, along with a cudgel that nativists will use for a generation against those of us who support a generous but controlled immigration policy.Gail: I guess we’re at least in agreement that something must be done.Bret: The other thing to worry about for next year is a possible recession. The housing and manufacturing sectors are already in a big slump. Job cuts in our own industry, too. Even Goldman Sachs is laying off thousands of employees, which can’t be a good sign. Your advice?Gail: Well, a good time for the government to create some more jobs — including maybe some in border security, as I was saying. And a very bad time to dillydally about funding basic operations in the new year.Bret: You know, I wouldn’t be against restarting something like the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps.Gail: I can understand the Republicans wanting to flex their muscles — even itty-bitty muscles — when they take control of the House. But they’re going to be so distracted by showboating over crime, immigration and Hunter Biden that they’d be well advised to let the Democrats do as much as they can on budgetary matters now.How about you?Bret: Gail, what else? Cut government red tape when it comes to permitting and other barriers to doing business in America. Cut taxes to offset the effects of rising interest rates. Increase the number of EB-5 visas tenfold, to 100,000 a year, to attract job creators to the United States. Allow large infrastructure projects like the Keystone XL pipeline to create thousands of blue-collar jobs and enhance our energy security in North America.I know these suggestions must come as a total surprise to you ….Gail: I’m shocked! Guess we’ll be going into the new year continuing to disagree about what’s red tape and what’s critical protection of the consumer, the environment and —Well, we’ve got all of 2023 to argue about that. But there’ll be no more World Cup debates! Before we go, tell me your thoughts about Argentina’s big win.Bret: Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooool!Greatest. Game. Ever.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      How Will History Remember Jan. 6?

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      Far-right groups stockpiling guns and explosives, preparing for a violent overthrow of a government they deem illegitimate. Open antisemitism on the airwaves, expressed by mainstream media figures. Leading politicians openly embracing bigoted, authoritarian leaders abroad who disdain democracy and the rule of law.This might sound like a recap of the last few years in America, but it is actually the forgotten story told in a remarkable new podcast, Ultra, that recounts the shocking tale of how during World War II, Nazi propagandists infiltrated far-right American groups and the America First movement, wormed into the offices of senators and representatives and fomented a plot to overthrow the United States government.“This is a story about politics at the edge,” said the show’s creator and host, Rachel Maddow, in the opening episode. “And a criminal justice system trying, trying, but ill-suited to thwart this kind of danger.”Maddow is, of course, a master storyteller, and never lets the comparisons to today’s troubles get too on the nose. But as I hung on each episode, I couldn’t help think about Jan. 6 and wonder: Will that day and its aftermath be a hinge point in our country’s history? Or a forgotten episode to be plumbed by some podcaster decades from now?When asked about the meaning of contemporary events, historians like to jokingly reply, “Ask me in 100 years.” This week, the committee in the House of Representatives investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot will drop its doorstop-size report, a critical early installment in the historical record. Journalists, historians and activists have already generated much, much more material, and more is still to come.In January, a Republican majority will take over the House and many of its members have pledged to begin their own battery of investigations, including an investigation into the Jan. 6 investigation. What will come from this ouroboros of an inquiry one cannot say, but it cannot help but detract from the quest for accountability for the events of that day.Beyond that, polling ahead of this year’s midterm elections indicated that Americans have other things on their minds, perhaps even more so now that the threat of election deniers winning control over voting in key swing states has receded. But what it means for the story America tells itself about itself is an open question. And in the long run, that might mean more accountability than our current political moment permits.Why do we remember the things we remember, and why do we forget the things we forget? This is not a small question in a time divided by fights over history. We all know the old saying: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. But there is another truism that to my mind often countervails: We are always fighting the last war.The story that Maddow’s podcast tells is a doozy. It centers on a German American named George Sylvester Viereck, who was an agent for the Nazi government. Viereck was the focus of a Justice Department investigation into Nazi influence in America in the 1930s. For good reason: Lawmakers helped him in a variety of ways. One senator ran pro-German propaganda articles in magazines under his name that had actually been written by Viereck and would deliver pro-German speeches on the floor of Congress written by officials of the Nazi government. Others would reproduce these speeches and mail them to millions of Americans at taxpayer expense.Viereck also provided moral and financial support to a range of virulently antisemitic and racist organizations across the United States, along with paramilitary groups called the Silver Shirts and the Christian Front. Members of these groups sought to violently overthrow the government of the United States and replace it with a Nazi-style dictatorship.This was front-page news at the time. Investigative reporters dug up scoop after scoop about the politicians involved. Prosecutors brought criminal charges. Big trials were held. But today they are all but forgotten. One leading historian of Congress who was interviewed in the podcast, Nancy Beck Young, said she doubts that more than one or two people in her history department at the University of Houston knew about this scandal.Why was this episode consigned to oblivion? Selective amnesia has always been a critical component of the American experience. Americans are reared on myths that elide the genocide of Indigenous Americans, the central role of slavery in our history, America’s imperial adventures and more. As Susan Sontag put it, “What is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating: that this is important, and this is the story about how it happened.”Our favorite stories are sealed narrative boxes with a clear arc — a heroic journey in which America is the hero. And it’s hard to imagine a narrative more cherished than the one wrought by the countless books, movies and prestige television that remember World War II as a story of American righteousness in the face of a death cult. There was some truth to that story. But that death cult also had adherents here at home who had the ear and the mouthpiece of some of the most powerful senators and representatives.It also had significant support from a broad swath of the American people, most of whom were at best indifferent to the fate of European Jewry, as “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” a documentary series by the filmmakers Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein that came out in September, does the painful work of showing. A virulent antisemite, Rev. Charles E. Coughlin, hosted by far the biggest radio show in the country. At his peak in the 1930s about 90 million people a week tuned in to hear his diatribes against Jews and communism.In some ways, it is understandable that this moment was treated as an aberration. The America First movement, which provided mainstream cover for extremist groups, evaporated almost instantly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Maybe it was even necessary to forget. When the war was over there was so much to do: rebuild Europe, integrate American servicemen back into society, confront the existential threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Who had the time to litigate who had been wrong about Germany in the 1930s?Even professional historians shied away from this period. Bradley Hart, a historian whose 2018 book “Hitler’s American Friends” unearthed a great deal of this saga, said that despite the wealth of documentary material there was little written about the subject. “This is a really uncomfortable chapter in American history because we want to believe the Second World War was this great moment when America was on the side of democracy and human rights,” Hart told me. “There is this sense that you have to forget certain parts of history in order to move on.”As anyone who has been married for a long time knows, sometimes forgetting is essential to peace. Even countries that have engaged in extensive post-conflict reconciliation processes, like South Africa and Argentina, were inevitably limited by the need to move on. After all, you make peace with your enemies, not your friends.The aftermath of Jan. 6 is unfolding almost like a photo negative of the scandal Maddow’s podcast unfurls. With very few exceptions almost everyone involved in the pro-Nazi movement escaped prosecution. A sedition trial devolved into a total debacle that ended with a mistrial. President Harry Truman, a former senator, ultimately helped out his old friend Senator Burton K. Wheeler, a figure in the plot to disseminate Nazi propaganda, by telling the Justice Department to fire the prosecutor who was investigating it.But the major political figures involved paid the ultimate political price: they were turfed out of office by voters.Many of the perpetrators of the Jan. 6 riot, on the other hand, have been brought to justice successfully: Roughly 900 people have been arrested; approximately 470 have pleaded guilty to a variety of federal charges; around 335 of those charged federally have been convicted and sentenced; more than 250 have been sentenced to prison or home confinement. Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, was convicted of seditious conspiracy, the most serious charge brought in any of these cases. In their report to be released this week, the Jan. 6 committee is expected to recommend further criminal indictments. One big question looming over it all is whether former President Donald Trump will be criminally charged for his role in whipping up the frenzy that led to the assault on the Capitol.A broader political reckoning seems much more distant. Election deniers and defenders of the Jan. 6 mob lost just about every major race in swing states in the 2022 midterms. But roughly 200 Republicans who supported the lie about the 2020 election being stolen won office across the country, The New York Times reported.What larger narrative about America might require us to remember Jan. 6? And what might require us to file it away as an aberration? The historian’s dodge — “ask me in 100 years” — is the only truly safe answer. But if the past is any guide, short-term political expediency may require it to be the latter.After all, it is only now that decades of work by scholars, activists and journalists has placed chattel slavery at the center of the American story rather than its periphery. What are the current battles about critical race theory but an attempt to repackage the sprawling, unfinished fight for civil rights into a tidy story about how Black people got their rights by appealing to the fundamental decency of white people and by simply asking nicely? In this telling, systematic racism ended when Rosa Parks could sit in the front of the bus. Anything that even lightly challenges finality of racial progress is at best an unwelcome rupture in the narrative matrix; at worst it is seen as a treasonous hatred of America.History, after all, is not just what happened. It is the meaning we make out of what happened and the story we tell with that meaning. If we included everything there would be no story. We cannot and will not remember things that have not been fashioned into a story we tell about ourselves, and because we are human, and because change is life, that story will evolve and change as we do.There is no better sign that our interpretation of history is in for revision than the Hollywood treatment. Last week it was reported that Steven Spielberg, our foremost chronicler of heroic World War II tales, plans to collaborate with Maddow to make Ultra into a movie. Perhaps this marks the beginning of a pop culture reconsideration of America’s role in the war, adding nuance that perturbs the accepted heroic narrative.And so I am not so worried about Jan. 6 fading from our consciousness for now. One day, maybe decades, maybe a century, some future Rachel Maddow will pick up the story and weave it more fully into the American fabric, not as an aberration but a continuous thread that runs through our imperfect tapestry. Maybe some future Steven Spielberg will even make it into a movie. I bet it’ll be a blockbuster.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Donald Trump Faces a Week of Headaches on Jan. 6 and His Tax Returns

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      The House panel investigating the Capitol attack is set to release its report and may back criminal charges against the former president, while a separate committee could decide to release his tax returns.After more than five years of dramatic headlines about controversies, scandals and potential crimes surrounding former President Donald J. Trump, the coming week will be among the most consequential.On Monday, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol by Mr. Trump’s supporters will hold what is almost certainly its final public meeting before it is disbanded when Republicans take over the majority in the new year.The committee’s members are expected to debate criminal referrals to the Justice Department in connection with the riot and Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power, which culminated on Jan. 6 as the pro-Trump mob tried to thwart the certification of his successor’s 2020 electoral victory. The biggest topic is whether to recommend that Mr. Trump face criminal charges.On Tuesday, the House Ways and Means Committee will meet privately to discuss what to do with the six years of Mr. Trump’s tax returns that it finally obtained after nearly four years of legal efforts by Mr. Trump to block their release.The committee could release them publicly, which would most likely be done in the final days of Democratic control of Congress.And on Wednesday, the Jan. 6 committee is expected to release its report on the attack, along with some transcripts of interviews with witnesses.Taken together, this week will point a spotlight on both Mr. Trump’s refusal to cede power and the issue that he has most acutely guarded for decades, the actual size of his personal wealth and his sources of income.Understand the Events on Jan. 6Timeline: On Jan. 6, 2021, 64 days after Election Day 2020, a mob of supporters of President Donald J. Trump raided the Capitol. Here is a close look at how the attack unfolded.A Day of Rage: Using thousands of videos and police radio communications, a Times investigation reconstructed in detail what happened — and why.Lost Lives: A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died in connection with the attack.Jan. 6 Attendees: To many of those who attended the Trump rally but never breached the Capitol, that date wasn’t a dark day for the nation. It was a new start.“Trump has spent decades avoiding transparency and evading accountability,” said Tim O’Brien, the author of “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald.” “Now both are rushing toward him in the forms of possible tax disclosures and a criminal referral. However much he might want to downplay the significance of all of that, it’s momentous.”Any public release of his tax information would come as Mr. Trump seeks another White House bid, a time in which he’s facing multiple investigations without the immunity that the presidency gave him from indictment.The Justice Department is investigating Mr. Trump’s mishandling of presidential records and classified material, and it remains to be seen whether either he or anyone around him is charged in that case.How much new information will be disclosed this week is unclear. Over the course of more than a year and a half, through nearly a dozen public hearings, the Jan. 6 committee has used testimony and information culled from over 1,000 witnesses to present Mr. Trump as being at the center of an effort to remain in power and thwart the results of a free and fair election.The Justice Department has been conducting a simultaneous investigation but has not been working in lock step with congressional investigators.A congressional referral to the Justice Department does not obligate prosecutors to act. Nonetheless, some of Mr. Trump’s advisers are privately concerned about what the House committee will recommend.Some of Mr. Trump’s tax information is already in the possession of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, whose predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr., spent years investigating Mr. Trump and his company.Mr. Trump is also facing a civil suit filed by the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who has alleged a widespread practice of fraud over a decade by the former president, his children and his company. Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer and lawyer, helped spur that investigation with testimony before a House committee in 2019 in which he discussed how Mr. Trump, who has always fought anyone asserting he’s worth less than he claims to be, valued his properties.The New York Times has also investigated Mr. Trump’s tax returns, including information from 2020. The investigation showed that Mr. Trump paid no federal income tax for 11 of 18 years The Times examined.Mr. Trump reacted with fury to that investigation. And the possibility of a public disclosure of his tax information looms especially large for Mr. Trump, who has fiercely guarded his actual net worth and the sources of his income.For years leading up to 2016, associates in New York City predicted that, despite repeated feints about a potential campaign, he would never declare because he would have to make his financial information available.He did submit a federally required personal financial disclosure, but during the 2016 presidential campaign he refused to release his tax returns, a voluntary disclosure nearly every candidate has provided since President Richard M. Nixon. Voters had no ability to analyze where the wealthiest person ever to run for president in the United States was getting some of his money, and how much of it he sent the government in taxes.During a debate in 2016, his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, took note of the rare times that Mr. Trump had been forced to disclose his earnings and tax payments.“The only years that anybody’s ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn’t pay any federal income tax,” Mrs. Clinton said.Mr. Trump fired back: “That makes me smart.”Through myriad congressional and Justice Department investigations, including ones related to whether his 2016 campaign conspired with Russian officials to sway the election that year, Mr. Trump has repeatedly attacked the investigations, calling them a “witch hunt.” For decades he has insisted that he is a victim whenever he faces scrutiny. Mr. Trump had the same response when his company was convicted of 17 charges of tax fraud and other financial improprieties roughly two weeks ago.But the details that could become public after this week are more consequential, Mr. O’Brien argued, as Mr. Trump prepares to woo voters for his third run for the presidency.“There’s existential consequences on the legal side and reputation and business ones on the tax side,” Mr. O’Brien said. More

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      Sam Bankman-Fried and Allies’ Political Donations Under Scrutiny by US

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      Federal prosecutors appear to be focusing on possible wrongdoing by cryptocurrency executives, rather than by Democratic or Republican politicians. But the inquiries widen an explosive campaign finance scandal.WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are seeking information from Democrats and Republicans about donations from the disgraced cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried and two former executives at the companies he co-founded.In the days after Mr. Bankman-Fried was arrested on Monday and charged with violations including a major campaign finance scheme, the prosecutors reached out to representatives for campaigns and committees that had received millions of dollars from Mr. Bankman-Fried, his colleagues and their companies.A law firm representing some of the most important Democratic political organizations — including the party’s official campaign arms, its biggest super PACs and the campaigns of high-profile politicians such as Representative Hakeem Jeffries — received an email from a prosecutor in the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York. The email sought information about donations from Mr. Bankman-Fried, his colleagues and companies, according to people familiar with the request, who insisted on anonymity to discuss an ongoing law enforcement matter.The prosecutors have reached out to representatives of other Democratic campaigns that received money linked to the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which Mr. Bankman-Fried co-founded, according to two other people familiar with the matter. Prosecutors are also investigating donations to Republican campaigns and committees by another FTX executive who was a top financier on the right, according to a person familiar with the situation.So far, Mr. Bankman-Fried is the only executive to face charges. Since emerging as a leading political megadonor in the months before the 2020 election, he has donated nearly $45 million, primarily to Democratic campaigns and committees that are now scrambling to distance themselves.There has not been any suggestion that political campaigns and groups engaged in wrongdoing related to the donations they received. The Justice Department’s inquiries appear to be an effort to gather evidence against Mr. Bankman-Fried and other former FTX executives, rather than against their political beneficiaries.But the prosecutors’ requests widen what has quickly become one of the biggest campaign finance scandals in years, as both Democrats and Republicans grapple with questions about their eagerness to tap into a stream of cash from a murky and largely unregulated industry that emerged suddenly as a powerful political player.The fallout has been swift and is only growing, as lawmakers, operatives for political action committees and their lawyers try to minimize the damage.Some politicians — including Mr. Jeffries, the incoming Democratic leader in the House, and Representative-elect Aaron Bean, a Republican from Florida — either returned donations linked to FTX or gave the money to charity after the company became embroiled in scandal. Other groups say they are setting the cash aside for possible restitution to victims of the alleged scheme.Prosecutors said FTX was a “house of cards” through which Mr. Bankman-Fried and others diverted customer money to buy expensive real estate in the Bahamas, invest in other cryptocurrency firms, provide themselves with personal loans and make political contributions of tens of millions of dollars intended to influence policy decisions on cryptocurrency and other issues.What to Know About the Collapse of FTXCard 1 of 5What is FTX? More

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      Restaurateur, Political Donor, Tipster: The Many Roles of FTX’s Ryan Salame

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      The co-chief executive of an FTX unit who told regulators about wrongdoing at the exchange was a big Republican donor. He also bought restaurants.In Western Massachusetts, Ryan Salame was known as a local boy turned hometown hero who struck gold as a top executive at FTX, the now-collapsed cryptocurrency exchange, and used some of that wealth to buy a few small restaurants in the area.In Washington, D.C., Mr. Salame was hailed as a “budding Republican megadonor,” bankrolling candidates and political action committees, and establishing FTX’s presence as a crypto heavyweight invested in shaping the regulation of the nascent industry.Now, Mr. Salame has emerged as a central player in the scandal surrounding FTX after he told regulators in the Bahamas, where the exchange was based, that FTX was misappropriating billions in customer funds to prop up an allied crypto trading firm called Alameda Research.On Monday, Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, was arrested in the Bahamas, accused of lying to investors, lenders and customers about the close financial dealings between FTX and Alameda, and committing fraud by using both companies as a “piggy bank.” Prosecutors said Mr. Bankman-Fried used customer funds to trade, buy expensive real estate, invest in other crypto firms, make political contributions and extend personal loans to executives.So far, Mr. Bankman-Fried, who is being held without bail in a Bahamas prison, is the only FTX executive charged with wrongdoing. But Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, said the investigation is continuing and prosecutors are not done charging individuals.Mr. Salame’s activities may be scrutinized, given that he was pivotal to FTX’s political influence operation along with Mr. Bankman-Fried. Mr. Salame, a former co-chief executive of FTX Digital Markets, the company’s subsidiary in the Bahamas, also received a $55 million personal loan from Alameda.Mr. Salame (pronounced Salem) did not return multiple requests for comment. His lawyer, Jason Linder at Mayer Brown, also did not return requests for comment.Born in Sandisfield, Mass., a town of just 1,000 people in the Berkshires, Mr. Salame worked briefly at the accounting giant EY. In 2019, he graduated from Georgetown University with a master’s in finance before landing a job at Alameda in Hong Kong. He later moved to FTX in the Bahamas, where he was a primary point of contact between the exchange and the local government.Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday.Mario Duncanson/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Salame was not in Mr. Bankman-Fried’s inner circle, but he was fiercely loyal to him, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Bankman-Fried and his closest advisers all shared a purported commitment to giving away most of the money they made under the banner of “effective altruism.”By contrast, Mr. Salame said at times that he was in crypto because it was a way to get rich, according to a person who knows him. He enjoyed expensive cars, flew on private jets and had a reputation for hard partying.What to Know About the Collapse of FTXCard 1 of 5What is FTX? More

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      Why Kevin McCarthy Is Struggling to Get Republicans in Line

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      Only a few weeks remain for the would-be House speaker to rally enough support to take power.The most fascinating election of 2023 is not happening in a presidential battleground like Arizona or Pennsylvania. It’s taking place in Washington, D.C., where Representative Kevin McCarthy of California is laboring mightily to become speaker of the House — a job he has long coveted.When the full House votes for speaker on Jan. 3, McCarthy will need the backing of a majority of all members. And with the party’s narrow hold on power, even a small number of Republican defections could imperil his bid. The uncertainty over McCarthy’s fate is roiling the G.O.P. while helping Democrats who want to portray Republicans as dysfunctional and hopelessly in thrall to extremists.Most of the action is taking place behind closed doors. But McCarthy’s allies and a rump faction of ultraconservative lawmakers have been dueling one another through the Beltway news media as January approaches, giving us glimpses of the jockeying and negotiations. The battle for speaker is taking place as Democrats try to push through a critical year-end spending bill that House Republicans almost universally oppose.The past week has brought a few developments — many of them baffling even to Capitol Hill insiders. On Friday, seven conservative hard-liners issued a lengthy list of demands to the would-be speaker, mostly involving obscure procedural rules. On Tuesday, a group of nearly 50 moderates aligned with McCarthy said they would oppose some of those ideas. Then on Wednesday, news broke that a different group of five anti-McCarthy members led by Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona had made a pact to vote as a bloc, one way or another. If they stick together, those five are enough to deny McCarthy his gavel, and it is not clear how he gets them to yes.But it’s also not clear that Republicans have another viable option. To reinforce that point, McCarthy’s allies have begun distributing buttons saying “O.K.” — as in “Only Kevin.”Annie Karni, a congressional correspondent for The New York Times, has been tracking the race closely. Here is our conversation, edited lightly for length and clarity:How large a faction are the McCarthy holdouts? Is it just the die-hards like Biggs and three or four others that some are calling the Never Kevins?Let me just start by saying that no one has any idea if McCarthy is going to pull this out. Reporters are asking Republicans. Republicans are asking reporters. The smartest people watching this closely are unwilling to make predictions at this point. McCarthy is playing it all very close to the vest. He’s not including other members of his leadership team in his deliberations or his calculations.As for your question, publicly, the Never Kevins are a small bunch: At least four people have said they are hard nos.But 31 House Republicans voted “no” on nominating McCarthy for the position back in November. How many of them were simply doing so to make a point but are ultimately for him? How many are still at “no” but keeping it to themselves, at least for now? McCarthy doesn’t necessarily know the entire list of people he has to win over.Has McCarthy won back any of the 31?That’s hard to answer, since it was a secret ballot and we don’t know who those 31 Republicans were. But it’s not a great sign for him that in the same vote, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana had unanimous support in his race to become the No. 2 House Republican next year. In other words, for these people, it isn’t an attack on the leadership. This is an attack on McCarthy.But it also might not mean that much. For context, all this turmoil is in line with how this phase of the process has played out in the past, for lawmakers who eventually won the speakership. Paul Ryan lost 43 votes in the secret ballot phase in 2015. Nancy Pelosi, in 2018, lost 32 votes. They both eventually emerged victorious and became speaker.What do the die-hards want? Is this just “blackmail,” as former Speaker Newt Gingrich wrote this week? Do they have some kind of ideal outcome in mind?This is what makes it extra tough for McCarthy. He has to contend with something that no Democrat has had to face: a sizable group that was sent to Congress explicitly to obstruct. Some of the people he is attempting to bargain with don’t seem to have a price. They’re not motivated by legislating as much as they are about shrinking the federal government, or upending it completely.That being said, the real sticking point is what’s known in congressional jargon as the “motion to vacate,” a term we try to avoid using in news stories because it’s meaningless to most readers. What it would do is change the rules to allow any member to force a snap floor vote to get rid of the speaker at any time. The holdouts want McCarthy to commit to allowing a vote like that. So far, that’s been a nonstarter for him; he understandably views the prospect as handing his enemies a loaded political weapon.Bottom line: It seems like McCarthy is dealing with some chaos agents, which makes his process a lot more difficult than it was for Pelosi in 2018. Back then, she also had to negotiate her way to the speakership, but she was dealing with a caucus made up of members with specific demands that she could address.The alternative to McCarthy is unlikely to be his current opponent, Biggs. The Beltway chatter is that if McCarthy fails to get the necessary votes on the House floor, someone of more stature than Biggs, like Scalise or Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, could potentially get drafted into becoming a speaker candidate.You reported this week, with Maggie Haberman and Catie Edmondson, that Donald Trump had been making calls to House members to ask them to support McCarthy. What were you able to learn about the arguments he had been making, and how that was resonating?Yes, we reported that Trump had been calling members who are ambivalent, at best, about McCarthy serving as speaker.Trump is not that gung-ho about McCarthy, we understand, although some of the top people around him are very pro-McCarthy. Nonetheless, Trump has been calling Republican lawmakers because he doesn’t see a viable alternative and believes McCarthy is better for him than an improbable scenario where the job goes to a moderate who can draw some Democratic votes.Trump’s thinking is in line with how a lot of people are viewing this: OK, so you don’t love Kevin McCarthy. But what’s the real alternative? Regarding Trump and McCarthy, their relationship over the course of the past few years has had its ups and downs, but usually lands back at cordial. Friendly. Not particularly close. But not bad.Also, it’s good to remember that Trump officially endorsed McCarthy’s bid for speaker. So it’s in his interest, in terms of his personal scorecard of wins and losses, to have his endorsee pull this out.One more dynamic worth a fleeting mention: Trump is making calls for McCarthy, and yet one of Trump’s biggest allies in Congress, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, is one of the most vocal obstacles to McCarthy’s bid. Why can’t Trump get Gaetz to cease and desist? Trump has yet to make a big public campaign on McCarthy’s behalf that would resonate with constituents of these members and put more pressure on them.So many of the concessions McCarthy has made thus far are about arcane issues, like funding formulas. But he has also welcomed into the fold far-right figures like Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona and promised to restore their committee assignments. Has that bargain been worth it, from his perspective?Definitely. McCarthy wants to be speaker. He’s known as an aggressive fund-raiser, an affable people person, and generally a go-along-to-get-along guy. He’s not an ideologue, which means that he’s less scary to some Democrats than, say, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio. But it also means he’s not bothered by making compromises for these far-right members, if it means getting where he wants.Greene has been publicly vouching for McCarthy. It’s funny — before the midterm elections, when there were questions about what could happen to thwart McCarthy’s plans to become speaker, it seemed like Greene or Trump could pose the biggest problems for him. If Trump, for instance, turned on him, the thinking was that Trump’s influence on the far right of the Republican Party would cost McCarthy critical votes.But here we are, with Trump and Greene on Team McCarthy. And yet he’s still working hard to close the sale.What to readThree Michigan men were sentenced to prison terms for their roles in the plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Eliza Fawcett has the details.A new lawsuit alleges that the New York attorney general, Letitia James, shielded her former chief of staff from harassment claims, Jeffrey C. Mays reports.Trump teased a big announcement this week. It turns out he was selling digital trading cards, in what Michael C. Bender describes as a baffling move.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Gary Peters on How Democrats Held and Expanded Their Senate Majority

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      The Michigan Democrat who led the party’s campaign effort credits candidate quality, abortion rights and the battleground map.WASHINGTON — Senator Gary Peters knows tough campaigns.A Michigan Democrat, he beat an eight-term Republican incumbent in 2008 to win a House seat and then survived the Tea Party wave in 2010 in a district the Republican governor carried by 26 points. Republicans targeted him for extinction in 2012 in a redistricting effort that placed his residence on the dividing line between three districts. He won again, after weathering a primary against a fellow Democratic incumbent.Then in 2014, Mr. Peters won Michigan’s open Senate seat in a year when Republicans picked up nine seats in the chamber, making him the only newly elected Democrat and the party’s incoming class of one. And in his 2020 re-election bid, he held off the Republican Party’s top recruit and $40 million in outside spending to win again, outperforming President Biden.This year, as the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Mr. Peters did not have a race of his own, but he applied some of the political lessons learned through his experience in difficult contests to forge a winning strategy for his party in multiple challenging campaigns featuring Democrats.“We had an incredibly sophisticated ground campaign that helped us, that allowed us to win even though the other side had spent millions of dollars against me,” Mr. Peters said of his own races. “I saw the power of a ground campaign in making sure your voters are voting.”He exceeded expectations in the midterm elections, helping Democrats add to their majority in a cycle that would typically favor Republicans, bolstering their 50-50 majority to a more functional 51-49.“Gary Peters did an amazing, amazing job as head of the D.S.C.C.,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and majority leader, who will benefit significantly from the extra Senate seat won in the election.Despite his electoral track record and chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Mr. Peters, 64, is not a particularly prominent figure in the Senate. But that status may change given the party’s showing in November.The New York Times interviewed Mr. Peters about his strategy and takeaways from the midterm election. It has been condensed and lightly edited.What was your secret?The secret is usually always hard work. We put in a lot of hard work. We were very disciplined. But I would say the No. 1 factor for us holding and expanding the majority was the quality of our candidates, especially vis-à-vis the quality of the opposition. Clearly, our candidates were superior. They had records to run on, records of accomplishment. They were aligned with the issues that people cared about, and the Republicans were out of touch, often very extreme. And when you compare the two candidates, it was clear for folks who should be their senator.Mr. Peters addressed a crowd at a rally for Democrats in Grand Rapids, Mich., last month.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesSo when Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Republicans had a “candidate quality” problem, you agreed with him?The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

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      DeSantis Is Showing Strength. He’s Also Vulnerable on His Right Flank.

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      For staunchly anti-abortion conservatives, the Florida governor’s 15-week ban doesn’t go far enough.In April, when Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a bill banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape or incest, he staked out a position as an unapologetic opponent of abortion rights.But now, as polls show DeSantis gaining strength in a hypothetical Republican presidential primary in 2024, he’s under pressure from conservatives to do more. More than perhaps any other issue, abortion is a potential point of vulnerability for the Florida governor — and a rare subject on which he has faced criticism from his right flank.“So far, we’ve actually been quite disappointed with Governor DeSantis,” said Andrew Shirvell, the founder and executive director of Florida Voice for the Unborn, a grass-roots anti-abortion group.And should DeSantis run for president, Shirvell said, “if there’s a big pro-life champion to contrast their record with Governor DeSantis’s record, there’s no doubt that he will be hit. That is his weak point.”It isn’t just DeSantis’s position that makes him a potential target for a future conservative rival; it’s also the state he represents.Florida is a paradox. It’s firmly in Republican hands now. But it also has one of the highest rates of abortion in the country — nearly twice the national average. And as surrounding states have tightened their laws, the number of women seeking abortion care in Florida clinics has roughly doubled, according to Planned Parenthood.“From my perspective, it’s terrible, but for those who would completely ban abortion, it’s not enough,” Anna Eskamani, a Democratic state lawmaker, said of the 15-week ban. “If he thought it was popular, DeSantis would have campaigned on that, and he didn’t. He wouldn’t even say ‘abortion.’”Polls show that somewhere between roughly half and two-thirds of the state’s residents would prefer that abortion remain legal in all or most cases. In battleground states this year, voters punished Republicans they deemed too extreme on abortion. All that might be giving DeSantis pause, even though he cruised to re-election by nearly 20 percentage points and would seem to have little to fear from Florida’s demoralized Democrats.“There’s always going to be a need for abortion care,” said Laura Goodhue, the executive director of the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates. “Ron DeSantis is fond of saying he’s in favor of freedom, yet he’s perfectly happy taking away people’s bodily autonomy.”Shifting post-Roe politicsAnti-abortion groups, however, sense a shifting political landscape after the Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn Roe v. Wade. In red states like Florida, where Republicans now hold supermajorities in both chambers of the State Legislature, they see a chance to push a maximalist agenda.What to Know About Donald Trump TodayCard 1 of 6Donald J. Trump is running for president again, being investigated by a special counsel again and he’s back on Twitter. Here’s what to know about some of the latest developments involving the former president:Documents investigation. More