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      Ryan Kelley Is Playing Up the Jan. 6 Charges Against Him

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      Ever since Ryan Kelley, a Republican candidate for governor in Michigan, was charged last month with trespassing and other crimes connected to the storming of the Capitol, he has openly embraced his status as a Jan. 6 defendant.On Friday, Mr. Kelley again leaned on a part of his biography that many candidates might have run from: He put a post on his official Facebook page demanding that “all the J6 prisoners” be released from federal custody.“Every American should be outraged,” wrote Mr. Kelley, who is not in custody as he awaits his trial. “Remember, you could be next for any reason ‘big government’ doesn’t approve of.”In early June, when he was charged with four misdemeanors connected to the riot at the Capitol, Mr. Kelley became the first person running in a major state or federal election to be charged in the attack. Prosecutors say he used “his hands to support another rioter” who was pulling down a metal barricade outside the building, and that he gestured “to the crowd, consistently indicating” that it should continue moving toward an entrance.With polls showing him lagging behind the front-runner, Tudor Dixon, a businesswoman and conservative commentator, and other candidates, Mr. Kelley, a real-estate broker, is unlikely to win the Republican primary on Aug. 2. The winner will face the incumbent, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat.As recently as Wednesday night, during a candidate debate, Mr. Kelley spoke openly about his Capitol riot charges, treating them as an asset, not a liability.He claimed, for example, that after his arrest, Airbnb shut down his account.“Look how hard these people are trying to silence me,” he said. “They’re not trying to silence any of the rest of you.” More

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      Republicans Sharpen Post-Roe Attacks on L.G.B.T.Q. Rights

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      Days after the Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion, Michigan’s Republican candidates for governor were asked if it was also time to roll back constitutional protections for gay rights.None of the five candidates came to the defense of same-sex marriage.“They need to revisit it all,” one candidate, Garrett Soldano, said at the debate, in Warren, Mich.“Michigan’s constitution,” said another candidate, Ralph Rebandt, “says that for the betterment of society, marriage is between a man and a woman.”Garrett Soldano, a Republican candidate for governor of Michigan, attacked “the woke groomer mafia” in one ad.Michael Buck/WOOD TV8, via Associated PressSince the Supreme Court decision last month overturning Roe v. Wade, anti-gay rhetoric and calls to roll back established L.G.B.T.Q. protections have grown bolder. And while Republicans in Congress appear deeply divided about same-sex marriage — nearly 50 House Republicans on Tuesday joined Democrats in supporting a bill that would recognize same-sex marriages at the federal level — many Republican officials and candidates across the country have made attacking gay and transgender rights a party norm this midterm season.In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton said after the Roe reversal that he would be “willing and able” to defend at the Supreme Court any law criminalizing sodomy enacted by the Legislature. Before that, the Republican Party of Texas adopted a platform that calls homosexuality “an abnormal lifestyle choice.”Demonstrators at the Texas Capitol in Austin rallied in March against an order by the governor that targeted medical treatments provided to transgender adolescents.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesIn Utah, the Republican president of the State Senate, Stuart Adams, said he would support his state’s joining with others to press the Supreme Court to reverse the right of same-sex couples to wed. In Arizona, Kari Lake, a candidate for governor endorsed by Donald J. Trump, affirmed in a June 29 debate her support for a bill barring children from drag shows — the latest target of supercharged rhetoric on the right.And in Michigan’s governor’s race, Mr. Soldano released an ad belittling the use of specific pronouns by those who do not conform to traditional gender roles (“My pronouns: Conservative/Patriot”) and accusing “the woke groomer mafia” of wanting to indoctrinate children.Some Democrats and advocates for L.G.B.T.Q. communities say the Republican attacks have deepened their concerns that the overturning of Roe could undermine other cases built on the same legal foundation — the right to privacy provided in the Fourteenth Amendment — and lead to increases in hate crimes as well as suicides of L.G.B.T.Q. youth.“The dominoes have started to fall, and they won’t just stop at one,” said Attorney General Dana Nessel of Michigan, a Democrat who was the first openly gay person elected to statewide office there. “People should see the connection between reproductive rights, L.G.B.T.Q. rights, women’s rights, interracial marriage — these things are all connected legally.”This year, Republican-led states have already passed numerous restrictions on transgender young people and on school discussions of sexual orientation and gender.In June, Louisiana became the 18th state, all with G.O.P.-led legislatures, to ban transgender students from playing on sports teams that match their gender identity. Laws to prohibit transitioning medical treatments to people under 18, such as puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries — which advocates call gender-affirming care — have been enacted by four states. And after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a law in March banning classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in early grades, more than a dozen other states moved to imitate it.In all, over 300 bills to restrict L.G.B.T.Q. rights have been introduced this year in 23 states, according to the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy organization.The bills under consideration focus not on same-sex marriage but on transgender youth, on restricting school curriculums and on allowing groups to refuse services to L.G.B.T.Q. people based on religious faith. Most of the measures have no chance of passage because of opposition from Democrats and moderate Republicans.Still, the Human Rights Campaign had characterized 2021 as the worst year in recent history for anti-L.G.B.T.Q. laws after states passed seven measures banning transgender athletes from sports teams that match their gender identity. So far in 2022, those numbers are already higher.Officials and television commentators on the right have accused opponents of some of those new restrictions of seeking to “sexualize” or “groom” children. Grooming refers to the tactics used by sexual predators to manipulate their victims, but it has become deployed widely on the right to brand gay and transgender people as child molesters, evoking an earlier era of homophobia.Some conservative advocacy groups that poured resources into transgender restrictions insist that they are not focused on challenging the 2015 Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage. But many L.G.B.T.Q. advocates say they believe their hard-won rights are under attack.“The far right is emboldened in a way they have not been in five decades,” said State Representative Daniel Hernandez Jr. of Arizona, a Democrat and a co-founder of the Legislature’s L.G.B.T.Q. caucus. “In addition to trying to create even more restrictions on abortion, they are going after the L.G.B.T.Q. community even more.”Republicans say the laws focused on transgender youth are not transphobic — as the left sees them — but protect girls’ sports and put the brakes on irreversible medical treatments.In Utah in March, state lawmakers in Salt Lake City listened to a protest against transgender athletes.Samuel Metz/Associated PressThey said the issues have the power to peel away centrist voters, who polling shows are less committed to transgender rights than to same-sex marriage. A Washington Post-University of Maryland survey in May found 55 percent of Americans oppose letting transgender girls compete on girls’ high school teams. In a Gallup poll last year, 51 percent of Americans said changing one’s gender is “morally wrong.”“I believe these are enormous issues for swing voters and moderates,” said Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, a group that opposes civil rights protections for L.G.B.T.Q. people and plans to spend up to $12 million on ads before November.One of the group’s ads goes after Representative Peter Meijer, a Michigan Republican facing a primary challenge next month, for co-sponsoring a House bill that pairs anti-discrimination protections for L.G.B.T.Q. people with exemptions for religious groups. Saying the bill “would put men in girls’ locker rooms,” the ad asks, “Would you trust Meijer with your daughter?”By contrast, Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, said “hate has no place” in the state after he vetoed an anti-transgender sports bill. Had it become law, he said, the ban would have “a devastating impact on a vulnerable population already at greater risk of bullying and depression.”A 2022 survey by the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention group, found that nearly one in five transgender or gender-nonconforming young people had attempted suicide in the past year. L.G.B.T.Q. youth who feel accepted in their schools and community reported lower rates of suicide attempts.The surge in transgender restrictions reflects a reversal of fortune for social conservatives from just a few years ago, when a focus on “bathroom bills” produced a backlash. A North Carolina law passed in 2016 requiring people to use public restrooms matching their birth gender contributed to the defeat of the Republican governor who signed it.“It made a lot of folks wary of going after transgender rights,” said Gillian Branstetter, a communications strategist for the A.C.L.U. who is transgender.But that changed with the focus on sports teams and transitioning medicine for minors, she said.On the right, the transgender restrictions have been pushed by advocacy groups that have long opposed L.G.B.T.Q. rights and in some cases consulted in the drafting of legislation. And on the left, the wave of legislation has been used by liberal organizations to mobilize their base, fund-raise and help turn out voters in midterm primaries in a hostile national political climate for Democrats.In Arizona, where Republicans control the Legislature and the governor’s office, a law enacted this year bars trans girls from competing on sports teams aligned with their gender and on transitioning surgery for people under 18.“My colleagues on the right have spent more time demonizing me and the L.G.B.T.Q. community than I’ve ever seen,” said Mr. Hernandez, the state representative, who is running in the Democratic primary for Congress on Aug. 2 in a Tucson-area seat.In the Arizona primary for governor, Ms. Lake, the Trump-endorsed candidate who is leading in some polls, seized on a recent uproar over drag performers — in response to a viral video of children at a Dallas drag show — to demonstrate her sharp shift to the right.“They kicked God out of schools and welcomed the Drag Queens,” Ms. Lake said in a tweet last month. “They took down our Flag and replaced it with a rainbow.” And Republican leaders in the Arizona Legislature, denouncing “sexual perversion,” called for a law barring children from drag shows.Kari Lake, left, at a rally in Tucson. Ms. Lake, the Trump-endorsed candidate for governor in Arizona, has seized on a recent uproar over drag performers.Rebecca Noble/ReutersBut a drag performer in Phoenix, Rick Stevens, accused Ms. Lake, who he said had been a friend for years, of hypocrisy. “I’ve performed for Kari’s birthday, I’ve performed in her home (with children present) and I’ve performed for her at some of the seediest bars in Phoenix,” he wrote on Instagram.Mr. Stevens, who goes by the stage name Barbra Seville, posted photos of the two of them together — one with Ms. Lake next to him while he is dressed in drag, and another when he is in drag and wearing Halloween-style skull makeup while she poses alongside him dressed as Elvis.In a debate, Ms. Lake insisted Mr. Stevens was lying about performing at her home and her campaign threatened to sue him for defamation.In Michigan, meanwhile, Ms. Nessel, the Democratic attorney general, joked at a civil rights conference in June that drag queens “make everything better,” and added, “A drag queen for every school.” In response, Tudor Dixon, a Republican candidate for governor, called this month for legislation letting parents sue school districts that host drag shows, despite there being no evidence that a district had ever done so.“We’re taking the first step today to protecting children,” Ms. Dixon said. More

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      Why Republicans Are Having Gas Pains

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      Until just the other day, Republicans and conservative media loved, just loved talking about the price of gasoline. Indeed, “Remember how cheap gas used to be under Trump?” became a sort of all-purpose answer to everything. Is there now overwhelming evidence that the former president conspired in a violent attempt to overthrow the 2020 election? “Real America doesn’t care about the January 6th Committee. Gas is over $5 a gallon!” declared Representative Jim Jordan.But now gas prices are falling. They’re down more than 50 cents a gallon at the pump; wholesale prices, whose changes normally show up later in retail prices, are down even more, suggesting that prices will keep falling for at least the next few weeks. And there’s a palpable sense of panic on Fox News, which has been reduced to whining about how the White House is taking a “victory lap.”Actually, from what I can see, Biden administration officials are being remarkably restrained in pointing out the good news (which is probably a result of a slowing global economy). The larger point, however, is that Republican politicians’ focus on gas prices is profoundly stupid. And if it’s coming back to bite them, that’s just poetic justice.Why is focusing on gas prices stupid? Let me count the ways.First, while presidential policy can have big effects on many things, the cost of filling your gas tank isn’t one of them. For the most part, gasoline prices reflect the price of crude oil — and crude prices are set on world markets, which is one reason inflation has soared around the world, not just in the United States. Government spending in the Biden administration’s early months may have contributed to overall U.S. inflation — we can argue about how much — but has hardly anything to do with gas prices.Second, while gas was indeed cheap in 2020, it was cheap for a very bad reason: Global demand for oil was depressed because the world economy was reeling from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.Third, even before the pandemic struck, gas prices were unsustainably low.Little-known fact: Prices at the pump plunged during President Barack Obama’s second term, falling from about $3.70 a gallon in mid-2014 — around $4.50 in 2022 dollars — to $2.23 on the eve of the 2016 election. News reports at the time marveled at Obama’s diffidence about claiming credit.What happened? Mostly a boom in fracking, which increased U.S. oil production so much that it drove prices down around the world. As it turned out, however, that production boom didn’t make financial sense. Energy companies borrowed huge sums to invest in new drilling but never generated enough revenue to justify the cost. The fracking industry lost hundreds of billions even before the pandemic struck.So high gas prices weren’t President Biden’s fault, and given the disappearance of the forces that used to keep gas cheap, it’s hard to think of any policy — short of creating a global depression — that would bring prices down to $2 a gallon, or even $3 a gallon. Not that Republicans are offering any real policy proposals anyway.But the G.O.P. nonetheless went for the cheap shot of trying to make the midterm elections largely about prices at the pump. And this focus on gas is now giving the party a bellyache, as gas prices come down.It is, after all, hard to spend month after month insisting that Biden deserves all the blame for rising gas prices, then deny him any credit when they come down. The usual suspects are, of course, trying, but it’s not likely to go well.Some right-wing commentators are trying to pivot to a longer view, pointing out that gas prices are still much higher than they were in 2020. This happens to be true. But so much of their messaging has depended on voter amnesia — on their supporters not remembering what was really going on in 2020 — that I have my doubts about how effective this line will be.More broadly, many Wall Street analysts expect to see a sharp drop in inflation over the next few months, reflecting multiple factors, from falling used car prices to declining shipping costs, not just gas prices. Market expectations of near-term inflation have come way down.If the analysts and the markets are right, we’re probably headed for a period in which inflation headlines are better than the true state of affairs; it’s not clear whether underlying inflation has come down much, if at all. But that’s not an argument Republicans, who have done all they can to dumb down the inflation debate, are well placed to make.This has obvious implications for the midterm elections. Republicans have been counting on inflation to give them a huge victory, despite having offered no explanation of what they’d do about it. But if you look at the generic ballot — which probably doesn’t yet reflect falling gas prices — rather than Biden’s approval rating, the midterms look surprisingly competitive.Maybe real Americans do care about violent attacks on democracy, overturning Roe v. Wade and so on after all.If we continue to get good news on inflation, November may look very different from what everyone has been expecting.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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      The Hole in the Center of American Politics

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      Republican politicians who don’t support Donald Trump have made starkly different choices over the last five years.Some, like Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, have tempered their criticism of the 45th president — opposing him at times, while accommodating him at others in service of their partisan objectives.A smaller coterie of others, like Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, have opposed Trump vigorously — in her case, voting to impeach him and helping lead the House investigation into his conduct on Jan. 6, 2021. On Thursday evening, Cheney will again take center stage as the Jan. 6 panel holds what is expected to be its final prime-time hearing of July.As Peter Baker writes, Cheney and her allies are betting that history’s judgment will eventually vindicate their choices, while insisting that her motives are not political.“I believe this is the most important thing I’ve ever done professionally,” Cheney told Baker in an interview, “and maybe the most important thing I ever do.”Thus far, however, the accommodationists have carried the day. McConnell worked closely with the Trump White House to stock the federal judiciary with more than 200 conservative judges, realizing a decades-long project that culminated with the hard-right transformation of the Supreme Court and the reversal of Roe v. Wade.Republicans are also poised to retake the House in November, and possibly the Senate, even though the official organs of the party have rallied behind Trump and, in the case of the Republican National Committee, helped pay his considerable legal bills.Is the center still vital?Still, Trump’s consolidation of the base of the Republican Party — the MAGA die-hards who wouldn’t blanch if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue, proverbially speaking — has left a vacuum at the center of American politics that both parties have jostled to fill.Democrats seized the middle in the 2018 midterms, retaking the House by focusing on kitchen-table issues like health care, while setting themselves up to win full control of Congress two years later. Republicans have countered this year by seizing on inflation and various cultural issues in an attempt to portray Democrats as out of the mainstream.One reason behind all this political volatility: College-educated suburban voters have bounced around from election to election, making that bloc a kind of no-man’s land between two entrenched camps.Vacuums like this always attract political entrepreneurs, and there has been a flourishing of activity aimed at these voters. On Politics has covered a lot of that new energy over the past few months, from new parties popping up to megadonor-backed independent ballot initiatives to cash-flush super PACs mucking around in Republican primaries.In previous years, groups with names like “No Labels” and “Third Way” have claimed the mantle of political centrism. But partisan voters have generally scoffed at those efforts, suspecting them of being Trojan horses for corporate donors. Other centrist initiatives, like the anti-communist, pro-labor group Americans for Democratic Action, faded in influence as their historical moment passed.David Greenberg, a historian of American politics at Rutgers University, said there was a “huge number of people who are disaffected from where the Democratic Party seems to be going,” along with the exhaustively documented and better organized never-Trump Republicans.But he noted that structural impediments like the Electoral College had made it difficult for third parties and other groups to establish themselves, even when voters seem sympathetic to their arguments.An illustration for the cover of Harper’s Weekly in 1912 portrayed Theodore Roosevelt, who ran for president under the banner of the “Bull Moose Party.”Getty ImagesOn occasion, charismatic figures like Theodore Roosevelt, who ran for president in 1912 under the banner of the “Bull Moose Party,” have tried to galvanize the middle of the electorate and run against both poles. More often, though, attempts to break Democrats’ and Republicans’ chokehold on the system have foundered owing to a lack of strong leaders.Greenberg marveled at the irony, too, that so many Americans now feel that the two major parties have been driven to appeal only to their respective bases.“If you really go back historically, it was thought that our two-party system itself was a bulwark against extremism,” he said — as opposed to multiparty systems in places like Weimar Germany that allowed radical groups to assume power without ever commanding a majority of voters.A Missouri compromiseOne of the more interesting centrist-y experiments out there is happening in Missouri, where a former Republican senator, John Danforth, is backing an independent candidate for Senate, John Wood. A former Danforth aide, Wood was most recently a prosecutor on the Jan. 6 panel.In an interview, Danforth said his goal was to provide an alternative to two major political parties that, in his view, have each gone off course in their own way.“The problem is not just in Trump or the Republican Party,” Danforth said, though he said he was disturbed that Republicans were attacking the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election and of court cases ratifying the results.“But on the other hand,” he added, “we have identity politics, we have the cancel culture. We have the whole sort of presentation of America as oppressors and victims. And that’s not healthy, either.”“The whole point of this campaign is: We have to heal the country,” Danforth said.A consummate Republican insider, Danforth grew up in elite circles in St. Louis and attended Princeton University and Yale Law School, where he also picked up a master’s degree in divinity. After a stint in corporate law, he was elected state attorney general, then became a senator at the dawn of the slow Republican takeover of Missouri politics.At a time when politicians tend to find more success by railing against Washington elites, Danforth, 85, is an unapologetic defender of the old ways of doing business. He was especially offended by the storming of the Capitol, an event that led him to break with Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri politician he mentored and helped usher into office in 2018.Supporting Hawley, Danforth told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch after the freshman lawmaker greeted the Capitol mob with a raised fist on Jan. 6, was “the worst mistake I ever made in my life.”And while Danforth professed optimism about Wood’s chances, which most Missouri political analysts rate as poor, he said he felt compelled to try.“We are not a corrupt system,” he said. “We are not a system that people should attack, either in the Capitol Building or by this take-up-arms view of politics. That’s why I’m doing this. I have to do it. You know, I just feel that I must.”What to readAfter evading the coronavirus for more than two years, President Biden tested positive, the White House announced on Thursday. My colleagues in Washington have more on his condition. Vice President Kamala Harris tested negative.In Opinion, eight columnists for The New York Times explain what they got wrong, and reflect on why they changed their minds.Mallory McMorrow, the state senator in Michigan whose April speech denouncing Republicans’ “groomer” attacks earned her a national following on the left, has become a powerful fund-raiser for her fellow Democrats.— BlakeIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Bret Stephens: I Was Wrong About Trump Voters

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      Sean DongThe worst line I ever wrote as a pundit — yes, I know, it’s a crowded field — was the first line I ever wrote about the man who would become the 45th president: “If by now you don’t find Donald Trump appalling, you’re appalling.”This opening salvo, from August 2015, was the first in what would become dozens of columns denouncing Trump as a unique threat to American life, democratic ideals and the world itself. I regret almost nothing of what I said about the man and his close minions. But the broad swipe at his voters caricatured them and blinkered me.It also probably did more to help than hinder Trump’s candidacy. Telling voters they are moral ignoramuses is a bad way of getting them to change their minds.What were they seeing that I wasn’t?That ought to have been the first question to ask myself. When I looked at Trump, I saw a bigoted blowhard making one ignorant argument after another. What Trump’s supporters saw was a candidate whose entire being was a proudly raised middle finger at a self-satisfied elite that had produced a failing status quo.I was blind to this. Though I had spent the years of Barack Obama’s presidency denouncing his policies, my objections were more abstract than personal. I belonged to a social class that my friend Peggy Noonan called “the protected.” My family lived in a safe and pleasant neighborhood. Our kids went to an excellent public school. I was well paid, fully insured, insulated against life’s harsh edges.Trump’s appeal, according to Noonan, was largely to people she called “the unprotected.” Their neighborhoods weren’t so safe and pleasant. Their schools weren’t so excellent. Their livelihoods weren’t so secure. Their experience of America was often one of cultural and economic decline, sometimes felt in the most personal of ways.It was an experience compounded by the insult of being treated as losers and racists —clinging, in Obama’s notorious 2008 phrase, to “guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”No wonder they were angry.Anger can take dumb or dangerous turns, and with Trump they often took both. But that didn’t mean the anger was unfounded or illegitimate, or that it was aimed at the wrong target.Trump voters had a powerful case to make that they had been thrice betrayed by the nation’s elites. First, after 9/11, when they had borne much of the brunt of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, only to see Washington fumble and then abandon the efforts. Second, after the financial crisis of 2008, when so many were being laid off, even as the financial class was being bailed out. Third, in the post-crisis recovery, in which years of ultralow interest rates were a bonanza for those with investable assets and brutal for those without.Oh, and then came the great American cultural revolution of the 2010s, in which traditional practices and beliefs — regarding same-sex marriage, sex-segregated bathrooms, personal pronouns, meritocratic ideals, race-blind rules, reverence for patriotic symbols, the rules of romance, the presumption of innocence and the distinction between equality of opportunity and outcome — became, more and more, not just passé, but taboo.It’s one thing for social mores to evolve over time, aided by respect for differences of opinion. It’s another for them to be abruptly imposed by one side on another, with little democratic input but a great deal of moral bullying.This was the climate in which Trump’s campaign flourished. I could have thought a little harder about the fact that, in my dripping condescension toward his supporters, I was also confirming their suspicions about people like me — people who talked a good game about the virtues of empathy but practice it only selectively; people unscathed by the country’s problems yet unembarrassed to propound solutions.I also could have given Trump voters more credit for nuance.For every in-your-face MAGA warrior there were plenty of ambivalent Trump supporters, doubtful of his ability and dismayed by his manner, who were willing to take their chances on him because he had the nerve to defy deeply flawed conventional pieties.Nor were they impressed by Trump critics who had their own penchant for hypocrisy and outright slander. To this day, precious few anti-Trumpers have been honest with themselves about the elaborate hoax — there’s just no other word for it — that was the Steele dossier and all the bogus allegations, credulously parroted in the mainstream media, that flowed from it.A final question for myself: Would I be wrong to lambaste Trump’s current supporters, the ones who want him back in the White House despite his refusal to accept his electoral defeat and the historic outrage of Jan. 6?Morally speaking, no. It’s one thing to take a gamble on a candidate who promises a break with business as usual. It’s another to do that with an ex-president with a record of trying to break the Republic itself.But I would also approach these voters in a much different spirit than I did the last time. “A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall,” noted Abraham Lincoln early in his political career. “If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.” Words to live by, particularly for those of us in the business of persuasion.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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      Trump Urged Legislator to Overturn His 2020 Defeat in Wisconsin

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      Donald J. Trump called Robin Vos, the speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, on July 9 and pushed him to support a resolution to retract the state’s 10 electoral votes for President Biden.Donald J. Trump called a top Republican in the State Legislature in Wisconsin in recent days to lobby for a measure that would overturn his 2020 loss in the state to President Biden, the latest signal that the former president remains undaunted by congressional and criminal investigations into his election meddling.Mr. Trump’s advisers said the former president saw an opening to press the Republican official, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, after a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling prohibited the use of most drop boxes for voters returning absentee ballots.Since drop boxes were used during the 2020 election, Mr. Trump argued, the state should be able to invalidate the results of that election. He pushed Mr. Vos to support a resolution that would retract the state’s 10 electoral votes cast for Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump’s advisers said the phone call took place on July 9 — the day after the court issued its opinion.There is no mechanism in Wisconsin law to rescind the state’s electoral votes, nor does the United States Constitution allow for a state’s presidential election to be overturned after Congress has accepted the results. Still, Mr. Trump has persisted.Mr. Vos has repeatedly told Mr. Trump and his allies that decertifying the former president’s loss would violate the state’s Constitution.Mr. Trump “has a different opinion,” Mr. Vos told a television station in Milwaukee, WISN-TV, which first reported the phone call on Tuesday. Mr. Vos did not respond to messages on Wednesday.The call is only the latest indication that Mr. Trump remains fixated on nullifying the 2020 presidential contest 18 months after Mr. Biden replaced him in the White House. He has continued to prioritize his lies that he won the last election as he aims to influence the next one, signaling to his supporters that undermining the 2020 election should be the predominant issue for the party.His actions come as a prosecutor in Georgia is gathering evidence into whether Mr. Trump violated laws in his attempt to overturn results in the state. Mr. Trump’s own team was already concerned about potential legal consequences from the deluge of devastating testimony revealed by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.And Mr. Trump may have created more legal headaches for himself when he phoned a witness in the House committee’s investigation after a hearing on June 29. Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a Republican serving as the panel’s vice chairwoman, has said information about Mr. Trump’s call to the witness has been turned over to the Justice Department.In the past 10 days, Mr. Trump has endorsed candidates in Arizona and Oklahoma based in part on their support for his attempts to overturn the election or his criticisms of the House investigation.Supporters of former President Donald J. Trump rallied at the Wisconsin State Capitol shortly after the 2020 election.Lauren Justice for The New York Times“We won in 2020,” Mr. Trump said in a statement on Tuesday reiterating his endorsement of David Farnsworth for a State Senate seat in Arizona. Mr. Farnsworth is running against Rusty Bowers, who is the Republican speaker of the Arizona House and who has been critical of the former president’s attempts to overturn the election. In the statement, Mr. Trump called Mr. Bowers a “weak and pathetic” Republican who “didn’t have the guts to do anything about the rigged and stolen election.”Mr. Trump has never stopped looking for ways to undo the results of the 2020 election, and his desire to keep talking about his false claims of widespread fraud has intensified as investigations into his conduct have become more focused.In Arizona, a review of the 2020 vote failed to change the outcome and instead affirmed the result. Mr. Trump’s allies have come up empty in their bid to overturn the results in Georgia. In recent months, his allies have instead focused their attention on Wisconsin, where Mr. Vos has tried to accommodate Mr. Trump’s increasing demands about the 2020 election for more than a year.When Mr. Trump called for an audit of the state’s votes days ahead of the Republican Party of Wisconsin’s 2021 state convention, Mr. Vos used the gathering to announce he would appoint a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, Michael Gableman, to investigate the election.Michael Gableman, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, was appointed to investigate the 2020 election results in the state. Daniel Brenner for The New York TimesIn February, Mr. Trump released a statement asking “who in Wisconsin is leading the charge to decertify this fraudulent Election?” Weeks later, Mr. Gableman’s report suggested that state legislators consider decertification.Mr. Vos repeatedly blocked efforts to hold a vote on decertification. Still, Mr. Vos met with leading proponents of decertification, something they held up as significant progress in their effort to undo the 2020 results.Mr. Trump and his allies have since turned on Mr. Vos. The former president has used his social media website to press Mr. Vos to act, and he released a statement on Tuesday suggesting that his supporters back Mr. Vos’s primary opponent if he fails to act.Mr. Vos is facing a spirited but underfunded primary challenger, Adam Steen, whose campaign hinges on the notion that Mr. Vos is not sufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump because he has blocked the decertification effort.And while Mr. Vos has not seen eye to eye with Mr. Trump on the election, his allies know the former president still holds a powerful grip on the party.An outside group supporting Mr. Vos in the primary recently mailed a flyer to Wisconsin Republicans with a picture of Mr. Vos and Mr. Trump sitting next to each other on a plane and smiling.“Leading the fight for election integrity!” the flyer reads.Maggie Haberman More

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      How Dan Cox Won the Republican Race for Maryland Governor

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      Maryland’s Republican contest for governor was the third election this year in which Democrats have effectively teamed up with Republicans loyal to former President Donald J. Trump to help a far-right candidate win a blue-state primary.Weeks ahead of Maryland’s Republican primary for governor, private Democratic polling showed the Trump-endorsed candidate, Dan Cox, with a slight lead over his establishment-backed rival, Kelly Schulz, a former cabinet secretary to Gov. Larry Hogan.But polls showed that once Republican voters were told Mr. Cox, who spent just $21,000 on TV and radio advertising, had been endorsed by Mr. Trump and held staunchly conservative views on abortion, his advantage ballooned.The Democratic Governors Association proceeded to spend more than $1.16 million on TV ads reminding Republican voters of Mr. Cox’s loyalty to Mr. Trump and endorsement from him.Mr. Cox won his race on Tuesday by double digits. He became the latest Republican primary winner to demonstrate both the power of the party’s far-right base in selecting G.O.P. nominees and the establishment wing’s inability to halt Democratic meddling in primaries.On Wednesday, Mr. Cox — who wrote on Twitter during the Capitol riot that Vice President Mike Pence was a “traitor” — dismissed the idea that he had been propped up by Democrats. They supported his primary bid in the belief that he cannot win the general election in Maryland, which Mr. Trump lost by 33 points in 2020.“The Democrats didn’t win this race,” Mr. Cox said in an interview on “Fox & Friends,” the morning program watched regularly by Mr. Trump. “The arguments of my opponent were replayed over and over again, smearing me.”The chief antagonist of Mr. Cox’s campaign was less any future Democratic opponent or even Ms. Schulz than it was Mr. Hogan, who won two terms as governor of an overwhelmingly Democratic state by focusing on Maryland’s economy while avoiding thorny social issues.Mr. Cox’s strategy of playing to the Trumpist base of the party won him a commanding primary victory, though tens of thousands of uncounted absentee ballots are likely to narrow his 16-point margin.Still, sowing division among Republicans and alienating moderate Democrats is the opposite of how Mr. Hogan won the last two elections. Mr. Cox is likely to face challenges broadening his support.Mr. Cox’s Democratic opponent is likely to be Wes Moore, a best-selling author and former nonprofit executive.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesIn the past, Mr. Cox has associated himself with followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory. He has tweeted the group’s hashtag, and in April he appeared at an event called Patriots Arise at a hotel in Gettysburg, Pa., that was organized by a right-wing social media influencer whose website has promoted a QAnon slogan.There, Mr. Cox promoted a similar brand of Christian nationalism that has animated the campaign of Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, who has endorsed Mr. Cox.“The Constitution does not give us our liberties. It merely protects those that were given by God,” Mr. Cox said at the event. “We have natural rights that supersede any governor, any government, any official, all of which is based upon the fact that we are created in his image.”Mr. Cox, in his Fox interview on Wednesday, played down the suggestion that he would not be able to build a winning coalition.But Mr. Hogan didn’t wait 24 hours before signaling that he would not vote for Mr. Cox. “The governor will not support the QAnon candidate,” said Mr. Hogan’s spokesman, Mike Ricci.Mr. Cox’s campaign manager, his daughter Patience Faith Cox, declined an interview request.The state’s business community, after eight years of being aggressively courted by Mr. Hogan, might soon turn to the Democrats.Rick Weldon, the president of the local chamber of commerce in Frederick, Md., said on Wednesday that he had better conversations about the needs of small businesses in the state with Wes Moore, who leads the still-uncalled Democratic primary, than with Mr. Cox, a state legislator from Frederick.“Mr. Cox is a crusader,” Mr. Weldon said. “Crusaders, once they get elected, make relatively ineffective elected officials.”Democrats’ backing of Mr. Cox was helped by Ms. Schulz’s minimal attempts to define him as unelectable. She never attacked him in television ads, hoping to employ the Hogan strategy of appealing to all manner of Republicans while also winning a substantial amount of Democratic votes in November.Kelly Schulz, Mr. Cox’s top rival, raised about $2.5 million through early July — about five times as much as he took in.Matt Roth for The New York TimesOfficials at the Democratic Governors Association bore no guilt about elevating a series of election-denying, Trump-loyal candidates who would seek to ban abortion, among a range of other measures, if they prevail in November.David Turner, a spokesman for the D.G.A., said his organization was focused on “winning these elections in November.” If giving a boost to far-right candidates increases the chances that Democrats will prevail, he said, it is worth the risk of placing in a governor’s mansion someone like Mr. Cox, Mr. Mastriano or Darren Bailey, an Illinois state senator who was the beneficiary of $35 million of Democratic advertising before winning his primary last month.“If the Republican Party had more leaders and less cowards at the top willing to speak truth to their voters, this lane wouldn’t even exist,” Mr. Turner said.Ms. Schulz had raised about $2.5 million through early July — about five times as much as Mr. Cox took in.But unlike Gov. Brian Kemp in Georgia, who imported a host of ambitious Republicans looking to create some daylight between themselves and Mr. Trump with voters, Ms. Schulz never sought to make her contest a referendum on Trumpism.Campaigning with national Republican figures would have made an already difficult general election much harder, said Doug Mayer, Ms. Schulz’s senior adviser.“You don’t play to win the primary, you play to win the general,” Mr. Mayer said. “In Maryland, that is a very, very, very difficult line to walk.”Mr. Cox’s Democratic opponent is likely to be Mr. Moore, a best-selling author and former nonprofit executive. Mr. Moore holds a 35,000-vote lead over Tom Perez, a former Democratic National Committee chairman. At least 169,000 Democratic absentee votes remain to be counted, but the number could be more than 300,000: Ballots postmarked by Tuesday will count as long as they are received by July 29.On Thursday morning, election officials across Maryland will begin processing the absentee ballots received in the mail and in drop boxes. The counting is expected to take several days.Elizabeth Dias More

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      Pence Backs Trump Loyalists and Skeptics in House Elections

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      WASHINGTON — As Representative Darin LaHood, Republican of Illinois, prepared to campaign with Mike Pence, the former vice president, in his district last month, he braced for a backlash from his party’s right-wing base.Just days before, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol had re-created in chilling detail how Mr. Pence had resisted President Donald J. Trump’s orders to overturn his defeat in Congress — and how Mr. Trump’s demands had put the vice president’s life at risk.Mr. LaHood’s fears of MAGA protesters and hostility to Mr. Pence never materialized; the former vice president received a warm welcome from the crowd at a Lincoln Day dinner in Peoria and at a closed-door fund-raising lunch with the congressman in Chicago, according to people who attended. But the concerns about how Mr. Pence would be received highlighted the awkward dynamic that has taken hold as the former vice president quietly campaigns for Republican members of Congress ahead of the midterm elections.House Republicans helped Mr. Trump spread the election lies that brought Mr. Pence within 40 feet of a mob that stormed the Capitol clamoring for his execution, and the vast majority of them remain publicly loyal to Mr. Trump, still the biggest draw and the most coveted endorsement on the campaign trail.But privately, many of them hope their party might soon return to some version of its pre-2016 identity — when Mr. Pence was regarded on the right as a symbol of conservative strength, not cowardice — and want to preserve a relationship with him in that case.Mr. Pence, who served six terms as a congressman from Indiana, has been eager to campaign for congressional candidates, particularly in the Midwest. He is seeking to carve out a viable lane of his own for a potential presidential run in 2024, even if it means helping some lawmakers who continue to spout the election lies that imperiled him.Mr. Pence spoke at an event for Representative Darin LaHood, right, in Peoria, Ill., last month.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesOver the past year, Mr. Pence has appeared at campaign events for more than a dozen members of Congress, happily attending steak fries, picnics and fund-raisers that have at times brought in half a million dollars apiece for candidates.Overall, his aides said, he has helped to raise millions of dollars for House Republicans, many of whom still see him as a well-liked former colleague who often played the role of Trump administration emissary to Congress. On Wednesday, his alliance with congressional Republicans will be on display when he speaks on Capitol Hill as a guest of the Republican Study Committee, a conservative caucus.That followed an appearance Tuesday night at a “Young Guns” fund-raising dinner hosted by Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader, at Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse in Washington. Mr. Pence’s appearance there was described by an attendee as akin to a homecoming for him. Mr. Trump was mentioned only in the context of discussing the “Trump-Pence accomplishments.”Key Themes From the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarCard 1 of 5The state of the midterms. More