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      Newsmax Debate Lends N.Y. Governor’s Race a Far-Right Glow

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      The four Republican candidates for governor of New York faced off in their third and final debate before the June 28 primary.The four Republican candidates for governor of New York made their closing pitch to voters on Tuesday night, voicing devotion to President Trump and his policies, disdain for gun control and abortion, and worries about crime and immigration. The debate, at Kodak Center in Rochester, N.Y., was hosted by Newsmax, a network known for amplifying the Republican Party’s rightward tilt, and represented the third and final clash between the quartet of conservatives vying to unseat Gov. Kathy Hochul, the incumbent Democrat who is expected to win her own primary on June 28.And as was fitting for its host, the candidates spent much of the debate playing to the party’s base, as well as taking shots at the Democratic incumbent.“Kathy Hochul is going to get fired,” said Representative Lee M. Zeldin, a four-term congressman from Long Island, who was chosen as his party’s designee at a party convention earlier this year. “I’m looking forward to removing her from this office.”Mr. Zeldin, the putative front-runner in a race with little definitive polling, was joined by Rob Astorino, the former Westchester County executive making his second run for governor; Andrew Giuliani, the son of the former New York City mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani; and Harry Wilson, a corporate turnaround specialist.In the first two Republican debates, hosted by networks in New York City, Mr. Giuliani was required to participate from a separate location, because he was unvaccinated, something he says comports with his general disdain for government mandates, a sentiment echoed by the other candidates, despite the lifting of many pertaining to Covid.But on Tuesday, he was welcomed into the fray, smiling in front of a live audience, which openly cheered and jeered the candidates.A Guide to New York’s 2022 Primary ElectionsAs prominent Democratic officials seek to defend their records, Republicans see opportunities to make inroads in general election races.Governor’s Race: Gov. Kathy Hochul, the incumbent, will face off against Jumaane Williams and Tom Suozzi in a Democratic primary on June 28.Adams’s Endorsement: The New York City mayor gave Ms. Hochul a valuable, if belated, endorsement that could help her shore up support among Black and Latino voters.15 Democrats, 1 Seat: A Trump prosecutor. An ex-congressman. Bill de Blasio. A newly redrawn House district in New York City may be one of the largest and most freewheeling primaries in the nation.Maloney vs. Nadler: The new congressional lines have put the two stalwart Manhattan Democrats on a collision course in the Aug. 23 primary.Offensive Remarks: Carl P. Paladino, a Republican running for a House seat in Western New York, recently drew backlash for praising Adolf Hitler in an interview dating back to 2021.“It’s nice to be with you in person,” he said.Mr. Giuliani, 36, has tried to position himself as the race’s most right-wing candidate, saying, for instance, on Tuesday that he would “bring morality back to this state” in reference to abortion. He has also professed belief in conspiracy theories that Mr. Trump had won the 2020 election, the outcome of which he called “one of the greatest crimes in American history.”Mr. Giuliani, who is making his first run for public office, worked for four years in the Trump administration and has actively sought the former president’s backing, saying that he uses Mr. Trump and his father as a model for what kind of governor he would be.Mr. Zeldin, once considered a moderate, has also been a staunch supporter of Mr. Trump, though on Monday night he stopped short of saying the election was stolen. On Tuesday, Mr. Zeldin seemed more zealous about Mr. Trump’s legacy, saying he believed that the former president’s border wall should be completed.The debate is the latest sponsored by Newsmax, which has found a niche in conservative circles in the wake of the 2020 election, often by broadcasting baseless theories about the race. The company has since been sued by several companies which make election technologies.The candidates answered questions from the debate moderator, Eric Bolling, a Newsmax host.NewsmaxIn early May, the network was the host of a Republican debate for a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania, moderated by Greta Van Susteren, which included spirited discussion of the drug trade across the nation’s southern border, the perils of “wokeness,” and whether China should pay “reparations for Covid.” (The primary’s winner, the celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, said yes, as did several others.)The moderator on Tuesday was Eric Bolling, a former Fox News host who has conducted a number of interviews with Mr. Trump, including one on Monday in which the former president said that “so many” of the rioters who ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were “well-behaved.”In addition to hot-button social issues, Mr. Bolling also asked policy questions about inflation, Medicaid fraud and economic concerns, with Mr. Wilson promising property tax and income tax cuts, something embraced by the other candidates as well.Republicans haven’t won a statewide race in New York in two decades, but are hopeful in a year in which Democrats are facing serious political headwinds, with Ms. Hochul polling poorly on issues like crime and the economy, and waging a low-key campaign thus far.Despite the recent racist massacre at a Buffalo supermarket, about 70 miles to the west of the debate site, none of the candidates supported any new gun control, with Mr. Zeldin saying the state’s gun laws — some of the strongest in the nation — “go too far as is.”Mr. Astorino, who lost in 2014 to the incumbent, Andrew M. Cuomo, has stressed his experience as an executive in Westchester County, describing a state “in chaos” and arguing during the debate that a “leftist agenda” was “coddling criminals.”Mr. Wilson suggested something similar, saying, “the problem is criminals, the mentally ill, and the purveyors of hate,” rather than law-abiding New Yorkers.Likewise, Mr. Wilson has said that New York has been mismanaged, but has conspicuously stayed clear of most social issues; a top official in President Obama’s automotive task force, who says he did not vote for Mr. Trump, Mr. Wilson has sought to find a middle lane in the race, voicing support for abortion rights, for instance.A lawyer and active military reservist, Mr. Zeldin periodically tried to convey a sense of statesmanship in earlier debates, reeling off a series of policy proposals, including allowing fracking in the state and rolling back changes in bail laws that conservatives have successfully used against Democrats in previous elections.At the same time, however, Mr. Wilson and Mr. Zeldin have had a series of fiery exchanges. Monday night in Manhattan, each man called the other a “fraud.”The animus was evident again on Tuesday, with other candidates joining in on attacks, including Mr. Giuliani, who called Mr. Zeldin “a child” and a “flip-flopper” on his support for Mr. Trump.Mr. Zeldin fired back at Mr. Giuliani, too, saying that his claim to fame was famously mugging for the camera during his father’s first inauguration in 1994, and then being mocked on “Saturday Night Live.” He belittled Mr. Giuliani’s time with the Trump administration, describing his duties as “Chick-fil-A runner at the White House.”The debate descended into a fit of cross-talk and bickering after Mr. Bolling asked whether the candidates would commit to endorsing the primary winner, something Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Astorino and Mr. Wilson agreed to.Mr. Zeldin, though, was more circumspect, saying merely that he’d “be supporting the primary winner next Tuesday,” while implying it would be him.Despite the clashes, there were some lighter moments. Mr. Giuliani has been regularly joined by his father on the campaign trail, including on Tuesday in Rochester. He was asked whether he was merely running on his family name, an accusation that also dogged Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat whose father was also governor, and who resigned last August.“People would say, ‘Well, with a famous last name its easy to run in politics,’” Mr. Giuliani said. “I would tell you with a name like Andrew, it’s very difficult to be the leading candidate for governor.” More

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      How Katie Britt Used Political Savvy to Trounce Mo Brooks in Alabama

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      At a gathering of Alabama Republicans last year, Katie Britt and her husband strategically positioned themselves at the end of a receiving line to shake hands with former President Donald J. Trump.Ms. Britt, a lawyer and former chief of staff for Senator Richard Shelby, had recently announced her campaign to fill the seat being vacated by her former boss, who is retiring. Mr. Trump had already endorsed her opponent, Representative Mo Brooks — but the couple hoped to sow some doubt in Mr. Trump’s mind, according to four people familiar with the encounter.As the couple greeted Mr. Trump, Ms. Britt’s husband, Wesley Britt — a burly retired N.F.L. lineman — mentioned to the former president that he had once played for the New England Patriots. “The only time you’ve met me, I think I was wrapped in a towel in the Patriots locker room,” Mr. Britt was said to have told Mr. Trump, who found it hilarious and replied that Robert K. Kraft, the team’s billionaire owner, “likes me very much.”From then on, Ms. Britt positioned herself as a formidable competitor with savvy political skills who persistently tried to convince Mr. Trump that she deserved his endorsement instead.In March, Mr. Trump gave Ms. Britt half of what she wanted, withdrawing his endorsement of Mr. Brooks — at that point far behind in the polls — because, he said, the far-right congressman had gone “woke.” Then, this month, with Ms. Britt clearly on track to prevail, the former president backed her, seemingly in an attempt to pad his endorsement record.Ten months after her brief exchange with Mr. Trump last August, Ms. Britt claimed victory in the Republican primary runoff for Alabama’s open Senate seat on Tuesday, capping a hard-fought campaign for her party’s nomination against Mr. Brooks. In a state with a deep-seated conservative bent, she is all but assured of winning in the general election in November.Ms. Britt is also one step closer to making history as the first woman in Alabama to be elected to the Senate. Her Democratic opponent is a pastor, Will Boyd, who has made unsuccessful runs for Senate, House and lieutenant governor.Shortly after the polls closed Tuesday, Mr. Shelby, who has known Ms. Britt since the days when she was an intern in his office, said he was overjoyed for her.“She is an outstanding person — she has got the brains, the drive and the compassion,” he said.Ms. Britt, 40, is seen as part of a younger generation of pro-Trump Republicans, and her husband’s banter with Mr. Trump was viewed by those familiar with the encounter as an astute move that proved essential to her nomination.Ms. Britt entered the primary with little name recognition and long odds against Mr. Brooks, who boasted more than a decade of experience in the House and gained Mr. Trump’s backing after he riled up the crowd at the former president’s rally before the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.But Mr. Trump rescinded his support for Mr. Brooks in March as Mr. Brooks struggled to gain traction under an avalanche of attack ads and criticism of his decision to urge an audience at a Trump rally to leave the 2020 election behind. “Katie Britt, on the other hand, is a fearless America First Warrior,” Mr. Trump said in a statement this month as he endorsed Ms. Britt.That move did not completely wipe out Mr. Brooks, who still managed to clinch a second-place finish in Alabama’s May 24 primary, garnering 29 percent of the vote. Ms. Britt pulled in 45 percent, short of the majority that would have avoided a runoff between the two top vote-getters.Ms. Britt fashioned herself as an “Alabama First” candidate, playing off Mr. Trump’s “America First” presidential campaign slogan, and centered her run on her Christian faith, hard-line border enforcement policies and ties to the business community.As an aide for Mr. Shelby, one of the Senate’s most senior members, she worked on some of his signature issues, including a sweeping Republican package of tax cuts in 2017, confirmation of conservative judges and a push for a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.She most recently served as the head of the Business Council of Alabama, a powerful lobbying group, and led a “Keep Alabama Open” campaign in November 2020 against coronavirus pandemic restrictions that required nonessential businesses to close or limit services. She also opened the council’s resources, typically reserved to paying members, to all small businesses amid the health crisis.On policy, Ms. Britt and Mr. Brooks had ideological differences: He represented a more aggressive brand of arch conservatism as a founding member of the Freedom Caucus while Ms. Britt, like Mr. Shelby, was seen as more focused on economic development. But in oratorical style, she echoed the hard-right talking points that have become commonplace messaging in the Republican Party.“When I look at what’s happening in Washington, I don’t recognize our country,” Ms. Britt said in a video introducing herself to voters. “The leftists are attacking our religious freedoms and advancing a socialist agenda. In Joe Biden’s America, people can collect more money staying at home than they can earn on the job.”The campaigns and supporters of Ms. Britt, Mr. Brooks and a third top competitor in the race, Mike Durant, a former Army pilot, spent millions of dollars on negative ads.Mr. Brooks and his supporters tried to paint Ms. Britt as a lobbyist and a RINO — a favored insult used by Trump supporters for politicians they believe are Republicans in name only.She shot back with attacks portraying Mr. Brooks as a career politician. It also helped that Mr. Brooks had a poor showing at Mr. Trump’s Alabama rally last August, just after Ms. Britt began her quiet campaign to sway the former president to her cause. What started as an enthusiastic response for Mr. Brooks that night turned to boos when he urged those in the audience to put the 2020 presidential election behind them and focus on 2022 and 2024.Mr. Trump called him back onstage for a second appearance, calling him “a fearless warrior for your sacred right to vote.”Later, when the former president took back his endorsement of Mr. Brooks, he said the congressman had made a “horrible mistake” with his comments at that fateful rally. More

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      Texas Republicans Approve Far-Right Platform Declaring Biden’s Election Illegitimate

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      The platform, which was voted on at the Republican state party convention in Houston, was the latest sign of Texas conservatives moving further to the right.The Republican Party in Texas made a series of far-right declarations as part of its official party platform over the weekend, claiming that President Biden was not legitimately elected, issuing a “rebuke” to Senator John Cornyn for his work on bipartisan gun legislation and referring to homosexuality as “an abnormal lifestyle choice.”The platform was voted on in Houston at the state party’s convention, which concluded on Saturday.The resolutions about Mr. Biden and Mr. Cornyn were approved by a voice vote of the delegates, according to James Wesolek, the communications director for the Republican Party of Texas. The statements about homosexuality — as well as additional stances on abortion that called for students to “learn about the Humanity of the Preborn Child” — were among more than 270 planks that were approved by a platform committee and voted on by the larger group of convention delegates using paper ballots. The results of those votes were still pending on Sunday, but Mr. Wesolek said it was rare for a plank to be voted down by the full convention after being approved by the committee.The resolutions adopting the false claims that former President Donald J. Trump was the victim of a stolen election in 2020 as well as the other declarations were the latest examples of Texas Republicans moving further to the right in recent months. Republicans control both chambers of the legislature, the governor’s mansion and every statewide office, and have used their dominance to push tough anti-abortion legislation, create supply-chain problems by temporarily adding additional state inspections at the border and renominate the Trump-backed state attorney general over a member of the Bush family in a primary runoff in May.Mr. Wesolek disputed the notion that the declarations were tied to the state party’s rightward tilt. “That was the will of the body,” Mr. Wesolek said on Sunday. “We pride ourselves on being a grass-roots party.”State party conventions in Texas have at times been venues for publicly airing internal rifts. In 2012, Gov. Rick Perry was loudly booed at the state Republican convention when he said he was backing the powerful lieutenant governor over Ted Cruz in a contested primary for Senate. On Friday, Mr. Cornyn — a key negotiator in the gun talks with Democrats — was booed by convention goers during a speech in which he tried to assure Republicans that the new legislation would not infringe on the rights of gun owners.The state party’s resolution embracing the baseless 2020 stolen-election claims stated that “substantial election fraud in key metropolitan areas significantly affected the results in five key states in favor of” Mr. Biden. The state party, the resolution continued, rejected “the certified results of the 2020 Presidential election, and we hold that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States.”The resolution encouraged Republicans to “show up to vote” in November, and to “bring your friends and family, volunteer for your local Republicans and overwhelm any possible fraud.”Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gun violence in Washington last week.Anna Rose Layden for The New York TimesState Representative Steve Toth, a Republican who represents part of Montgomery County, a Houston suburb, said he left the convention before voting on the resolutions, but he expressed support for them. He said he hoped the Biden resolution would “encourage Republicans and Democrats to come together and to call for a forensic audit” of the 2020 election.Jason Vaughn, 38, a Republican delegate from Houston, claimed credit for adding the “show up to vote” language in the Biden resolution. “My fear is that if we keep telling people the election was stolen, they’re going to not go and vote,” Mr. Vaughn said.Mary Lowe, a delegate from the Fort Worth suburbs who was focused on education issues at the convention, said she was surprised the 2020 election results were a focus of attention by her Republican colleagues. But, she added, “I don’t know too many people that felt that Biden won.”Ms. Lowe, the chairwoman of the Tarrant County chapter of a group known as Moms for Liberty, said she was among those delegates openly critical of Mr. Cornyn. But she added that she was embarrassed by the booing and did not participate in it.“I don’t believe that booing is polite,” Ms. Lowe said. “I feel elected officials should be treated with proper decorum.”Jamie Haynes, 47, a Republican delegate who lives in the Texas Panhandle with her husband and who says that, together, they own “a lot of guns,” said the boos directed at Mr. Cornyn showed there was a “resounding strong opinion that Republicans do not want their gun rights shaved — not just taken away — but even just shaved in any form.”The resolution rebuking Mr. Cornyn that passed at the convention opposed red flag laws, which allow guns to be seized from people deemed to be dangerous. Those laws, according to the resolution, “violate one’s right to due process and are a pre-crime punishment of people not adjudicated guilty.”The homosexuality plank passed the platform committee by a vote of 17 to 14, according to Mr. Vaughn, an openly gay member of the committee who voted against it.“It does nothing to move us forward as a party and gain voters,” he said in a video of the committee meeting. In an interview, Mr. Vaughn said the shift at the convention was the result of a small number of people who “make the process miserable because they want to do all this extreme, far-right stuff.”Mr. Toth disagreed, saying that on abortion, gay rights and the 2020 election, the Republican Party has been consistent in sticking to its conservative principles. “Defense of marriage? Abortion? Second Amendment? Where have we moved to the right?” he asked. “The Republicans have always been strong defenders of constitutional family values.”One Texas congressman and Democrat, Representative Colin Allred, called the Republican Party’s actions regressive.“The Texas Republican Party is trying to take us back to a time when women couldn’t make decisions about their own bodies and when Americans lived in fear that they would be punished for being themselves,” Mr. Allred said in a statement. More

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      Amid Jan. 6 Revelations, Election Lies Still Dominate the G.O.P.

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      The hearings have demolished the myth of a stolen presidential election, but with the 2022 primary season in full tilt, the revelations have not loosened the grip of the lie on Republicans.WASHINGTON — It was all a lie, the tales of stuffed ballot drop boxes, rigged voting machines, and constitutional “flexibility” that would have allowed Vice President Mike Pence to nullify the 2020 election results and send them back to Republican state legislatures.The first three hearings of the House Jan. 6 committee have deeply undercut, if not demolished, the postelection myths repeated incessantly by former President Donald J. Trump and his supporters and embraced and amplified by Republicans in Congress.A parade of Republican witnesses — his attorney general, William P. Barr, his daughter Ivanka Trump, and his own campaign lawyers — knew he had lost the election and told him so. Mr. Trump was informed that the demands he was making of Mr. Pence to block his defeat unilaterally were illegal. Even the most active coup plotter, the conservative lawyer John C. Eastman, conceded before Jan. 6 that his scheme was illegal and unconstitutional, then sought a presidential pardon after it led to mob violence.Yet the most striking revelation so far may be how deeply Mr. Trump’s disregard for the truth and the rule of law have penetrated into the Republican Party, taking root in the fertile soil of a right-wing electorate stewing in conspiracy theories and well tended by their media of choice. The Republican response to the hearings — a combination of indifference, diversion and doubling down — reflects how central the lie of a stolen election has become to the party’s identity.In Washington, Republicans in Congress have neither broken with Mr. Trump nor expended much energy trying to rebut the investigation’s findings. And from Nevada’s secretary of state race to Michigan’s contest for governor, Republican candidates have embraced the fictional conspiracy in their 2022 campaigns.“I have been fighting for safe, honest and transparent elections since before Jan. 6, and that fight continues,” said Michigan State Representative Steve Carra, whose re-election run has been blessed by Mr. Trump and who said Friday he has watched some but not much of the hearings. “Absentee ballots sent out unsolicited, signature verification relaxed, drop boxes all over the place, especially in Democratic area — it all deserves further scrutiny.”Like mint in the garden, the seeds that the Trump team planted between Election Day 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021, are now growing out of control, aided by the former president’s allies.Jarome Bell, a leading candidate to challenge Representative Elaine Luria, Democrat of Virginia, has been traveling her Republican-leaning district showing voters a film by the right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza that pushes the bogus fraud claims. The hearings, he said on Friday, have had “no impact on me. ‘2000 Mules’ has a bigger impact on what truly happened.” He added, “the 1/6 commission is the cover-up.”Despite coverage of the hearings, at least one lawmaker lamented that his constituents were not paying much attention.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesJon Rocha, a candidate for state representative in Michigan who has Mr. Trump’s backing, also cited the film and bragged that he had watched none of the hearings, “not even a 30-second clip.”One reason the falsehoods have flourished is the failure of Republicans who do not believe them to push back. Before the Jan. 6 hearings began, Republican leaders promised a robust “rapid response” effort to counter the narratives that would emerge.The Themes of the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsMaking a Case Against Trump: The committee appears to be laying out a road map for prosecutors to indict former President Donald J. Trump. But the path to any trial is uncertain.Day One: During the first hearing, the panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Day Two: In its second hearing, the committee showed how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers in declaring victory prematurely and relentlessly pressing claims of fraud he was told were wrong.Day Three: Mr. Trump pressured Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing.But there has been no such pushback from the Republican National Committee or any other organization to revelations that Mr. Trump continued to pressure Mr. Pence to overturn the election results, even after having been told doing so was illegal.No Republican leader offered a response to the testimony of retired federal appeals court Judge J. Michael Luttig, a revered conservative, who said on Thursday that Mr. Trump gave Mr. Pence an order whose execution would have prompted “the first constitutional crisis since the founding of the Republic.”None bothered to counter the panel’s finding, revealed on Monday, that Mr. Trump and his campaign raised hundreds of millions of dollars from supporters based on the false pretense of massive election fraud, using money collected for an election defense fund that did not exist.Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate minority leader, has chosen not to engage on the issue at all. And to the extent that they are trying to counterprogram the hearings, House Republicans have been prodding voters to look elsewhere — to rising gas prices, inflation and migrants at the southern border.Only Mr. Trump seems particularly irritated by the exercise, appalled by the testimony of his daughter, who shared details of his abusive phone call with Mr. Pence on the morning of Jan. 6 and said she trusted Mr. Barr’s judgment when he said that the 2020 election was not stolen.“It’s a one-way street, it’s a rigged deal, it’s a disgrace,” a thoroughly unrepentant Mr. Trump said on Friday at a speech in Nashville in which he called Jan. 6 “a simple protest that got out of hand” as he continued spinning out false claims and grand conspiracy theories of election fraud.But if his allies in Republican leadership are not countering the message that the attack was fueled by lies, neither are they acknowledging that the election was not stolen.And 50 years to the day after henchmen of Richard M. Nixon broke into Democratic headquarters in the Watergate Hotel, the hearings sparked by the two scandals are highlighting just how dramatically the Republican Party has changed. Then, key Republican leaders reacted to increasingly damning revelations about their president by siding with the Democrats and forcing Mr. Nixon from power. Today, Republican leaders are either silent or contemptuous of the committee uncovering a steady stream of misdeeds by Mr. Trump.Representatives Bennie Thompson, Liz Cheney, and Adam B. Schiff “will not stop lying about their political opponents,” Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, wrote on Twitter, referring to the Democratic chairman from Mississippi, Republican vice chairwoman from Wyoming and Democratic member from California.Representative Peter Meijer of Michigan, one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump for inciting Jan. 6, said the hearings have so far been “a reminder of how deeply divided, even from an information consumption standpoint, we are.”Many of his constituents have not even seen the videotaped testimony laying out the case against Mr. Trump — only footage of police removing barricades to let rioters into the Capitol on Jan 6. Some blame nonexistent F.B.I. provocateurs for the violence, in line with a debunked conspiracy theory embraced by the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and others on the right.Representative Kevin McCarthy of California and other Republican leaders held a news conference in the Capitol on Thursday to attack the committee’s work.Michael A. McCoy for The New York TimesMr. Meijer said he has heard far more from constituents on the right lamenting the “Jan. 6 political prisoners” than those in the center demanding accountability for the attack.Most voters, though, are not paying attention, said Representative David Valadao of California, another Republican to vote for impeachment.“Talking to voters at home right now — I mean, the fuel prices, food prices, baby formula, you name it,” Mr. Valadao said. “There’s just so many things that people are focused on right now that they’re just not paying attention to the Jan. 6 stuff as much as I know a lot of folks would want them to.”Asked if the hearings might do Republicans a favor by making it easier to find an alternative presidential nominee in 2024 than Mr. Trump, he responded: “I don’t know if enough people are paying attention where it’ll have that big of an impact.”But in a Republican primary season fueled by pro-Trump fervor, many candidates have emerged as their party’s nominees for top offices in large part because they campaigned on the falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen by President Biden.The Republican nominees for governor in Pennsylvania, secretary of state in Nevada, Senate in Nevada, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, and attorney general in Texas all tried to overturn the 2020 election or embraced false claims of voter fraud.Mayra Flores, a Texas Republican who won a House seat in a special election on Tuesday, has declined to say whether Mr. Biden won in 2020, telling The San Antonio Express-News: “I’m speaking just in general. There is voter fraud.”And there is more to come. State Representative Ron Hanks, vying to challenge Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat, in Colorado’s Republican primary June 28, marched to the Capitol on Jan. 6 and launched his campaign with an ad showing him shooting a fake Dominion voting machine, a device central to a sprawling conspiracy theory about votes purportedly stolen by foreign powers from Mr. Trump.On Monday, the committee showed a videotaped deposition in which Mr. Barr at one point could barely suppress his laughter at the absurdity of such stories and testified that Mr. Trump would have had to be “detached from reality” if he believed them.In Michigan, a wild contest to choose the Republican to challenge Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is narrowly led by Ryan Kelley, a real estate broker who was arrested this month and charged with participating in the Jan. 6 riot. Mr. Rocha, the state house candidate in Western Michigan, said voters were far more concerned about gas prices and empty store shelves than the Jan. 6 hearings, then offered that voters in fact are still very angry about “election integrity.”“They did it in 2020. Now they’re finding new avenues to remove Republicans from the ballot this year,” he said.In Arizona, the leading Republican candidate for governor, Kari Lake, has made her “stolen election” claims central to her campaign. Mark Finchem, a candidate for secretary of state, was at the front steps of the Capitol on Jan. 6. And Blake Masters, who hopes to challenge Senator Mark Kelly, the incumbent Democrat, suggested baselessly that “one-third of the people outside of the Capitol complex on Jan. 6 were actual F.B.I. agents.”Annie Karni More

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      What Watergate Highlights About the Jan. 6 Hearings

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      On the anniversary of the June 17, 1972, break-in, alumni of the hearings gather for a reunion. They had it easier than the Jan. 6 committee, they say.WASHINGTON — In the grandly marbled space of the Russell Senate Office Building known as the Kennedy Caucus Room, where a bipartisan select committee held nationally televised hearings to investigate the burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate a half-century ago, alumni of that inquiry gathered Friday evening to reminisce — and issue warnings.Their remarks, somber and theatrical as the room itself, were pitched to a present-day investigative body: the House select committee probing the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.“Some things change, and some things remain the same,” said a host of the gathering, Rufus L. Edmisten, the deputy chief counsel for the Senate select committee that investigated Watergate. “What hasn’t changed between Watergate and Jan. 6 is how money has stolen our democracy.”The Watergate inquiry, a more than two-year combined effort on the part of both Senate and House committees, the special prosecutor’s office, a federal grand jury and the media, has been widely hailed as an investigatory gold standard and potential model for the Jan. 6 committee.It is seen as a triumph of assiduous digging and partisan-free statesmanship with made-for-Hollywood heroes: There was the heavy-jowled Senate Watergate Committee chairman, Sam Ervin of North Carolina; John Dean, President Richard M. Nixon’s former counsel, an owlish figure whose riveting testimony thoroughly implicated the president in covering up the Watergate break-in that took place in the small hours of June 17, 1972; and Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two Washington Post reporters who broke the story and became household names.But the committee’s work today faces hurdles that the Watergate investigators did not.The present-day panel is racing the clock, attempting to uncover all that it can with the recognition that Republicans may win back the House majority and pull the plug on the committee’s endeavors come January. Nixon was defiant, but not at the level of former President Donald J. Trump. And truth was not up for debate in 1973.A screen above the Jan. 6 committee showing former President Donald J. Trump and his family during Thursday’s hearing.Doug Mills/The New York Times“What we investigated was understood to be substantive and real,” said Gordon Freedman, who served as a staffer on Mr. Ervin’s committee. “We now live in an era where the truth has been eroded as a standard.”Watergate investigators also had the benefit of the secret recordings made by Nixon in the Oval Office. By contrast, Mr. Trump did not tape his private conversations and he shredded White House documents while in office. Several of his former aides have defied subpoenas issued by the Jan. 6 committee, some justifying their intransigence through “executive privilege,” a phrase that entered the lexicon in the Nixon era. But none of Nixon’s top advisers invoked it and instead elected to testify before Mr. Ervin’s committee — a reflection of a Republican Party far different from the one today.“It took a lot of guts for seven Republicans on the Judiciary Committee and three conservative Southern Democrats to do the right thing and vote to impeach Nixon,” said Elizabeth Holtzman, who 50 years after being elected to Congress and serving on the House Judiciary Committee is running for Congress again. “They didn’t do it to agree with me. They did it because they followed the truth. And they did it, really, because the American public forced them to.”The Themes of the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsMaking a Case Against Trump: The committee appears to be laying out a road map for prosecutors to indict former President Donald J. Trump. But the path to any trial is uncertain.Day One: During the first hearing, the panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Day Two: In its second hearing, the committee showed how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers in declaring victory prematurely and relentlessly pressing claims of fraud he was told were wrong.Day Three: Mr. Trump pressured Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing.Nixon of course did use executive privilege to avoid handing over what would prove to be some of the most damning taped conversations. Only after Leon Jaworski, the Watergate special prosecutor, prevailed in the Supreme Court did Nixon acquiesce, resulting in his resignation on Aug. 9, 1974.Mr. Jaworski, I should note, was my grandfather. I was two weeks shy of 15 when he was appointed by Nixon on Nov. 1, 1973, after Archibald Cox was fired on Nixon’s orders in what became known as the Saturday Night Massacre.As my grandfather would later maintain in his Watergate memoir, Nixon’s resignation proved that “no one — absolutely no one — is above the law.” That assessment deserves some qualification, however.Nixon was never indicted or much less convicted of any Watergate-related crimes. Against the wishes of the federal grand jury empaneled in the wake of the burglary, my grandfather declined to bring criminal charges against the president, and later signaled to the Ford administration that he would not challenge a presidential pardon.Nixon’s fate was an ignominious one, my grandfather insisted, saying, “A pardon isn’t just a beautiful document to frame and hand-hang on the wall.”Still, Nixon was free to write a best-selling memoir and to remain something of a Republican grandee all the way up to his death nearly two decades after he resigned in disgrace. Mr. Trump, meanwhile, remains the most influential member of his party after two impeachments and an electoral defeat he contests to this day.Despite the efforts of my grandfather and his investigators, and those of the media and Watergate committees, basic questions about the scandal remain unanswered. It is still unclear what, if any, advance knowledge Nixon had of the break-in. Though the president is on tape approving hush money payments to the defendants, it remains unknown whether he personally played a role in raising the funds. For that matter, the degree to which H.R. Haldeman, the White House chief of staff, and Attorney General John Mitchell directed illegal activities on a day-to-day basis has not come to light.Such questions, of course, are analogous to those currently faced by the Jan. 6 committee.Richard Ben-Veniste, one of my grandfather’s top deputies who was at the reunion, said he was asked by the Jan. 6 committee to offer advice. “Jan. 6 was the Saturday Night Massacre on steroids,” he said. “It was far more dangerous than what we thought was unthinkable: the appearance of a coup d’état when raw power replaced the rule of law. Nixon, for all his criminality and authoritarian sensibilities, possessed a sense of shame.”The continuum that stretches from Watergate to the present features a few ironies. During and after the Nixon scandals, congressional checks on executive power were enacted, including the War Powers Act of 1973 and modifications to the Federal Election Campaign Act. Those legislative initiatives led to charges of overreach and a counter-movement by some Republicans who wanted to restore power to the executive branch.One of them, a former Nixon White House aide named Dick Cheney, was elected to Congress four years after Nixon’s resignation. Mr. Cheney, of course, was vice president during the George W. Bush administration and his daughter, Liz Cheney, is the vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee who has sharply criticized Mr. Trump as an abuser of executive power.An additional irony following Nixon’s secretive presidency was the push for greater transparency in government: more sunlight, less smoke-filled rooms. But that effort has not necessarily translated into more efficient governance. To take a recent example, House conservatives led by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia freshman who was born three months before Nixon’s resignation, have used the virtue of legislative transparency as an argument for slowing the House Democrats’ agenda by insisting on roll call votes for everything on the legislative calendar.At the reunion, Representative Deborah Ross, a North Carolina Democrat, was mingling among the guests as she recalled listening to the Senate Watergate hearings at the age of 10 while driving cross-country in her family’s station wagon. Noting the coincidence of the Watergate anniversary taking place in the middle of the Jan. 6 committee hearings, Ms. Ross said that “the obvious thing the two scandals had in common was that we’re talking about two men who wanted to hang onto power no matter what. The irony is that Nixon would have won in 1972 anyway, if he hadn’t been so paranoid about the Democrats.”“And if not for the tapes!” chimed in Judi Dash, whose late father, Sam Dash, served as the chief counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee.Two former members of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, Jill Wine-Banks and George Frampton, were at the reunion discussing the work of the Jan. 6 committee over cocktails. “I was very skeptical at first about the committee only televising six or eight hearings,” Ms. Wine-Banks said. “But I think they’ve done an excellent job, even without having the narrator we had, John Dean.”Turning to Mr. Frampton, she said, “For all that Nixon did, I’m not sure I ever felt democracy was in danger like it is now. Did you?”“Oh, certainly a little bit,” Frampton said. More

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      Trump Attacks Mike Pence for Not Rejecting Electoral Votes in 2020

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      In a speech, Donald J. Trump was undeterred by the Jan. 6 House committee’s account of how his rioting supporters menaced the vice president, and the panel’s dismantling of many of his election lies.A day after the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault illustrated the serious danger that rioters posed to Mike Pence, former President Donald J. Trump unleashed a new attack on the man who had served him as vice president, criticizing him for refusing to interfere with the Electoral College certification of the 2020 presidential contest.Speaking on Friday afternoon before a faith-based group, Mr. Trump said that “Mike did not have the courage to act” in trying to unilaterally reject the Electoral College votes that were being cast for Joseph R. Biden Jr.On Thursday, the House panel demonstrated that Mr. Trump and his advisers were told repeatedly that Mr. Pence had no power to block the certification and that doing so would violate the law, but pressed him to try anyway.The committee also used witnesses to dismantle and debunk Mr. Trump’s false claims of widespread election fraud — arguments that he repeated in his keynote speech on Friday at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Nashville.Mr. Trump has grown angry watching the hearings, knowing that he lacks a bully pulpit from which to respond, according to his advisers. He used much of his Friday address to repeat his false election claims and to denigrate Mr. Pence.The Themes of the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsMaking a Case Against Trump: The committee appears to be laying out a road map for prosecutors to indict former President Donald J. Trump. But the path to any trial is uncertain.Day One: During the first hearing, the panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Day Two: In its second hearing, the committee showed how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers in declaring victory prematurely and relentlessly pressing claims of fraud he was told were wrong.Day Three: Mr. Trump pressured Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing.Most striking was the context for the attack on Mr. Pence, whose presence on the presidential ticket in 2016 was critical to reassuring evangelical voters that Mr. Trump, a thrice-married New York real estate developer whose first divorce was tabloid fodder for months and who had supported abortion rights, had become sufficiently conservative on social issues.Mr. Pence, who often talks about his religious faith, is a favorite among the kind of voters attending the conference. But that did not stop Mr. Trump from denouncing him from the stage on Friday.After repeating claims about election fraud that have been widely debunked, including by his former attorney general, William P. Barr, Mr. Trump turned his sights on Mr. Pence.First, he insisted that he had not called Mr. Pence a “wimp” in a phone call with the vice president on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, even though Mr. Trump’s former aide Nick Luna had testified under penalty of perjury about such a comment. “I don’t even know who these people are,” Mr. Trump told the crowd.“I never called Mike Pence a wimp,” said Mr. Trump, whose daughter Ivanka was present for the call and later told her chief of staff that Mr. Trump had effectively called Mr. Pence a coward, using a vulgarity. Then, Mr. Trump went on to describe Mr. Pence as weak.“Mike Pence had a chance to be great. He had a chance to be, frankly, historic,” the former president said. “But just like Bill Barr and the rest of these weak people,” he said, Mr. Pence “did not have the courage to act.” The comment was met with applause.Mr. Trump continued to mock Mr. Pence, whose aides testified that he had told Mr. Trump repeatedly that he did not have the power to dismiss Mr. Biden’s Electoral College victory or declare a 10-day recess in the congressional session to send the votes back to states to be re-examined.“Mike Pence had absolutely no choice but to be a human conveyor belt,” Mr. Trump said.Mr. Trump also mischaracterized the 1801 certification of Thomas Jefferson’s presidential victory — a process that Jefferson, then the vice president, oversaw — to argue that Mr. Pence should have used that model to keep Mr. Trump in office.“I said to Mike, ‘If you do this, you can be Thomas Jefferson,’” Mr. Trump said. “And then after it all went down, I looked at him one day and I said, ‘Mike, I hate to say this, but you’re not Thomas Jefferson.’”Marc Short, Mr. Pence’s former chief of staff, said this conversation never happened. Mr. Short did not comment more broadly on Mr. Trump’s speech.Mr. Trump also complained that the House committee had edited videos of his former aides’ testimony so that they were not played in full context. He appeared to be referring indirectly to testimony by his daughter Ivanka, whose remarks have been used against her father in two hearings.Speaking of the mob that left his speech at the Ellipse on Jan. 6 and swarmed the Capitol, Mr. Trump remained defensive. “It was a simple protest,” he said. “It got out of hand.” More

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      Should Biden Run for Re-election in 2024?

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      More from our inbox:A Threat to Free SpeechG.O.P. Election DeniersRepublicans Against Birth ControlPresident Biden with Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, center, and Jon Tester of Montana. Many Democratic officials and voters bear no ill will toward Mr. Biden, but would like a new face to lead the party.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:“Biden in 2024? Many in Party Whisper, ‘No’” (front page, June 12) raises the question of why so many Democrats seem to be down on President Biden. He is guiding the U.S. out of the pandemic, encouraged and signed major infrastructure legislation, galvanized the international coalition that has enabled Ukraine to resist Russia’s horrific invasion and appointed highly qualified judges who are diverse in terms of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ideology and experience, and who promise to counter the deleterious effects of Donald Trump appointees.These and many other accomplishments comprise an excellent record for a president’s first 17 months, especially when the Democrats possessed a razor-thin Senate majority.Carl TobiasRichmond, Va.The writer is a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law.To the Editor:A breathtakingly common theme, whether we read about gun massacres, the economy, climate legislation or crumbling infrastructure, is that our nation feels in crisis, rudderless, lacking a moral compass.I have great admiration for the decent, calm, highly experienced Joe Biden. But it is now clear to me that our nation needs a much more assertive, energetic leader who can move hearts, minds and legislation against a tsunami of Republican obstructionism, the selfish noncooperation of select Democratic senators, and the relentless lies and conspiracies masquerading as news.This is a herculean task. I’m not sure who is up to it. But I think Howard Dean is right. Go younger. And go bolder. We need someone with big ideas and the negotiating ability to move public opinion and legislation forward.Sally PeabodyPeabody, Mass.To the Editor:“Biden in 2024? Many in Party Whisper, ‘No’ ” is a thoughtful, interesting analysis of the many pros and cons of President Biden’s running again. But I think many of the points raised are irrelevant, because the controlling issue is the president’s age.The idea that a man in his 80s (he would be 82 when inaugurated for a second term and 86 by its end) would have the energy to do such a demanding job is simply wrong. I say this as a 90-year-old man who is able to cook, walk, drive, see friends and take part in public life.But it is clear that anyone’s energy in their 80s is greatly diminished. And as David Axelrod is quoted as saying, “The presidency is a monstrously taxing job.”Eric WolmanLittle Silver, N.J.To the Editor:President Biden may be down but it’s premature to count him out. In 1948 Harry Truman faced similar problems. Few people gave him any chance of winning the presidency. The economy was bad. The world was a mess. He was too blunt for most people. Many felt he was not up to the job. Support within his own party was disintegrating, just as Mr. Biden’s support is declining.What happened? Truman did not give up, and he won the election. Will Mr. Biden be the 21st-century Truman?Paul FeinerGreenburgh, N.Y.A Threat to Free Speech Pablo DelcanTo the Editor:The New York Times editorial board has said it plans to identify threats to free speech and offer solutions.One of the most dangerous threats to free speech is the tremendous growth over three to four decades of government agencies, businesses and others barring employees from speaking to journalists. Sometimes bans are total. Sometimes they prohibit contact unless authorities oversee it, often through public information offices.Legal analysis from the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information finds that such constraints in public agencies, although very common, are unconstitutional. Many courts have agreed.Despite our pride in some outstanding journalism, no news outlet overcomes all the blockages and intimidation of sources that this censorship creates. Quite enough information is successfully hidden to be corrosive.The press should not be taking the risk of assuming that what we get is all there is when so many people are silenced. We should be openly fighting these controls.Haisten WillisKathryn FoxhallTimothy WheelerMr. Willis and Ms. Foxhall are chair and vice chair, respectively, of the Freedom of Information Committee, Society of Professional Journalists. Mr. Wheeler is chair of the Freedom of Information Task Force, Society of Environmental Journalists.G.O.P. Election DeniersJim Marchant in Carson City, Nev., in March 2021. He is the Republican nominee for Nevada secretary of state and an organizer of a Trump-inspired coalition of candidates who falsely insist the 2020 election was stolen.Ricardo Torres-Cortez/Las Vegas Sun, via Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Far-Right Election Deniers Pressing Closer to Controlling Votes” (news analysis, June 16):The alarming rise of far-right Republicans who could hold significant sway over the electoral systems of several swing states leaves me feeling incredibly worried.That we as citizens of the United States would ever have to even ponder whether or not the candidate who won the majority of votes would be certified as the victor in an election is nothing short of horrifying.Despite knowing better, far too many self-serving Republicans have allowed their party to become a den of showy snake oil salesmen and women who peddle conspiracies and mistruths. The dangerous state our democracy finds itself in now is their responsibility.Cody LyonBrooklynRepublicans Against Birth ControlHailey Kramer, the chief nurse practitioner at Tri-Rivers Family Planning, said her patients make clear that birth control is a deeply personal decision.Whitney Curtis for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Missouri Battle on Birth Control Gives Hint of a Post-Roe Nation” (front page, June 14):Those same Republican conservatives who advocate personal responsibility not only want to ban all abortions for women. Now they also want to deprive women of their ability to prevent pregnancy by taking away funding for methods of birth control.It’s illogical and unconscionable, but sadly no longer unthinkable.Merri RosenbergArdsley, N.Y. More