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      On the Docket: Atlanta v. Trumpworld

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      ATLANTA — The criminal investigation into efforts by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies to overturn his election loss in Georgia has begun to entangle, in one way or another, an expanding assemblage of characters:A United States senator. A congressman. A local Cadillac dealer. A high school economics teacher. The chairman of the state Republican Party. The Republican candidate for lieutenant governor. Six lawyers aiding Mr. Trump, including a former New York City mayor. The former president himself. And a woman who has identified herself as a publicist for the rapper Kanye West.Fani T. Willis, the Atlanta area district attorney, has been leading the investigation since early last year. But it is only this month, with a flurry of subpoenas and target letters, as well as court documents that illuminate some of the closed proceedings of a special grand jury, that the inquiry’s sprawling contours have emerged.For legal experts, that sprawl is a sign that Ms. Willis is doing what she has indicated all along: building the framework for a broad case that could target multiple defendants with charges of conspiracy to commit election fraud, or racketeering-related charges for engaging in a coordinated scheme to undermine the election.“All of these people are from very disparate places in life,” Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State University, said of the known witnesses and targets. “The fact that they’re all being brought together really suggests she’s building this broader case for conspiracy.”What happened in Georgia was not altogether singular. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol has put on display how Mr. Trump and his allies sought to subvert the election results in several crucial states, including by creating slates of fake pro-Trump electors. Yet even as many Democrats lament that the Justice Department is moving too slowly in its inquiry, the local Georgia prosecutor has been pursuing a quickening case that could pose the most immediate legal peril for the former president and his associates.Whether Mr. Trump will ultimately be targeted for indictment remains unclear. But the David-before-Goliath dynamic may in part reflect that Ms. Willis’s legal decision-making is less encumbered than that of federal officials in Washington by the vast political and societal weight of prosecuting a former president, especially in a bitterly fissured country.But some key differences in Georgia law may also make the path to prosecution easier than in federal courts. And there was the signal event that drew attention to Mr. Trump’s conduct in Georgia: his call to the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, whose office, in Ms. Willis’s Fulton County, recorded the president imploring him to “find” the 11,780 votes needed to reverse his defeat.A House hearing this past week discussed a phone call in which President Donald J. Trump asked Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” an additional 11,780 votes.Shawn Thew/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Trump’s staff did not comment, nor did his local counsel. When Ms. Willis opened the inquiry in February 2021, a Trump spokesman described it as “simply the Democrats’ latest attempt to score political points by continuing their witch hunt against President Trump.” Lawyers for 11 of the 16 Trump electors, Kimberly Bourroughs Debrow and Holly A. Pierson, accused Ms. Willis of “misusing the grand jury process to harass, embarrass and attempt to intimidate the nominee electors, not to investigate their conduct.”Last year, Ms. Willis told The New York Times that racketeering charges could be in play. Whenever people “hear the word ‘racketeering,’ they think of ‘The Godfather,’” she said, before explaining that charges under Georgia’s version of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act could apply in any number of realms where corrupt enterprises are operating. “If you have various overt acts for an illegal purpose, I think you can — you may — get there,” she said.The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 8Numerous inquiries. More

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      Why Trump Is Weakening

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      In Donald Trump’s quest to sustain his dominance over the Republican Party, his claim to have been robbed of victory in 2020 has been a crucial talisman, lending him powers denied to previous defeated presidential candidates. By insisting that he was cheated out of victory, Trump fashioned himself into a king-in-exile rather than a loser — an Arthur betrayed by the Mordreds of his own party, waiting in the Avalon of Mar-a-Lago to make his prophesied return.As with many forms of dark Trumpian brilliance, though, the former president is not exactly in conscious control of this strategy. He intuited rather than calculated his way to its effectiveness, and he seems too invested in its central conceit — the absolute righteousness of his “Stop the Steal” campaign — to modulate when it begins to reap diminishing returns.That’s a big part of why 2022 hasn’t been a particularly good year for Trump’s 2024 ambitions. Across 2021, he bent important parts of the G.O.P. back to his will, but in recent months his powers have been ebbing — and for the same reason, his narrative of dispossession, that they were initially so strong.While Ron DeSantis, his strongest potential rival, has been throwing himself in front of almost every issue that Republican primary voters care about, Trump has marinated in grievance, narrowed his inner circle, and continued to badger Republican officials about undoing the last election. While DeSantis has been selling himself as the scourge of liberalism, the former president has been selling himself mostly as the scourge of Brian Kemp, Liz Cheney and Mike Pence.Judging by early primary polling, the DeSantis strategy is working at the Trump strategy’s expense. The governor is effectively tied with the former president in recent polls of New Hampshire and Michigan, and leading him easily in Florida — which is DeSantis’s home state, yes, but now Trump’s as well.These early numbers don’t prove that Trump can be beaten. But they strongly suggest that if his case for 2024 is only that he was robbed in 2020, it won’t be enough to achieve a restoration.This is not because the majority of Republicans have had their minds changed by the Jan. 6 committee, or suddenly decided that actually Joe Biden won fair and square. But the committee has probably played some role in bleeding Trump’s strength, by keeping him pinned to the 2020 election and its aftermath, giving him an extra reason to obsess about enemies and traitors and giving his more lukewarm Republican supporters a constant reminder of where the Trump experience ended up.By lukewarm supporters, I mean those Republicans who would be inclined to answer no if a pollster asked them if the 2020 election was fairly won, but who would also reject the conceit — as a majority of Republicans did in a Quinnipiac poll earlier this year — that Mike Pence could have legitimately done as Trump wished on Jan. 6.That’s a crucial distinction, because in my experience as well as in public polling, there are lots of conservatives who retain a general sense that Biden’s victory wasn’t fair without being committed to John Eastman’s cockamamie plans to force a constitutional crisis. In the same way, there are lots of conservatives who sympathize in a general way with the Jan. 6 protests while believing that they were essentially peaceful and that any rioting was the work of F.B.I. plants or outside agitators — which is deluded, but still quite different from actively wishing for a mob-led coup d’état.So to the extent that Trump is stuck litigating his own disgraceful conduct before and during the riot, a rival like DeSantis doesn’t need the lukewarm Trump supporter to believe everything the Jan. 6 committee reports. He just needs that supporter to regard Jan. 6 as an embarrassment and Trump’s behavior as feckless — while presenting himself as the candidate who can own the libs but also turn the page.A counterargument, raised on Friday by New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait, is that so long as those lukewarm supporters still believe the 2020 election was unfair, Trump will have a trump card over any rival — because if you believe a steal happened, “you are perfectly rational to select a candidate who will acknowledge the crime and do everything to prevent it from reoccurring.”But it seems just as possible for the lukewarm supporter to decide that if Trump’s response to being robbed was to first just let it happen and then ask his vice president to wave a magic wand on his behalf, then maybe he’s not the right guy to take on the Democratic machine next time.There is more than one way, in other words, for Republican voters to decide that the former president is a loser. The stolen-election narrative has protected him from the simplest consequence of his defeat. But it doesn’t prevent the stench of failure from rising from his well-worn grievances, his whine of disappointment and complaint.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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      There Are 100 People in America With Way Too Much Power

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      Toward the end of my Tuesday column on the Senate, I gestured toward the idea of making it into something like the British House of Lords, which has limited power to veto legislation or make policy. Most democracies with bicameral national legislatures have done something similar, empowering their lower, popular chambers and weakening their upper chambers.The Canadian Senate, for example, acts mainly as a council of revision, amending legislation that comes out of the House of Commons. It can reject legislation, but it rarely exercises that power. The Australian Senate has much more power to block legislation from the House, but the chamber is more democratic than its American counterpoint in that it is apportioned by proportional representation.The United States stands alone with a Senate that is powerful enough to grind the entire legislature to a halt. You could end the filibuster, of course, and that would improve things, but it would take a constitutional amendment to do any root and branch reform of the Senate.Let’s say that amendment was on the table. What would it say?What I would write is simple. I would repeal the 17th Amendment, returning the election of senators to each state legislature, and restoring the federal nature of the chamber. But to compensate for the end of popular election of senators, I would also strip the Senate of its power to introduce or veto legislation.In my vision, the Senate would be a council of revision that continues to represent the states as states. I think this is necessary because the United States will likely be a federal democracy for as long as it exists, and the system should probably accommodate the interests of state governments (insofar as they exist) in one way or another.My Senate could not block House legislation, but it could offer amendments if it chose to take action. Those amendments would then be voted on by a conference committee of House and Senate members, for final approval. If the Senate decides to hold a bill for revision, it has a set amount of time — let’s say 60 days — with which to act. If it does not act in that time, the bill is deemed passed and goes to the president for signing.The Senate would retain its oversight powers as well as its power to approve treaties and offer “advise and consent” to the president for judicial and executive branch nominees. But “advise and consent” would mean an actual hearing and an actual vote.The idea is to move the locus of policymaking back to the House of Representatives (which I would like to enlarge to at least 600 members), and to make it the most important chamber in the operation of government. In this scheme, it might be worth extending House terms to three years to reduce the pressures of campaigning and allow members more time to develop expertise, should they seek it.My basic principle here is that the popular chamber of Congress should also be the most influential one. You see some of this in the Constitution as written — Article I, Section I establishes the Congress and Section II establishes the House — but I’d like to make it the defining part of our constitutional system. I also think that we’d have a more agile and effective government if we removed the veto point that is the Senate.My scheme for transforming the structure of American government is a little broader and more nuanced than this (I’d like to extend federal representation to territories and Americans abroad, for example), but these are the basics of a major part of it. The Senate is too powerful. Let’s cut it down to size.What I WroteMy Tuesday column was on the problem of the Senate:It may seem odd to blame the institution for this outcome. It’s not as if there is any alternative to passing legislation through both chambers of Congress. But it’s also no accident that climate legislation has repeatedly been passed in the House only to collapse in the Senate. It is no accident that, as a general rule, the upper chamber is where popular legislation goes to die or, if it isn’t killed, where it is passed in truncated and diminished form, like the recent (and lackluster) bipartisan gun bill. The Senate was built with this purpose in mind. It was designed to keep the people in check — to put limits on the reach of democracy and the scope of representation.And my Friday column was on the problem of the Electoral College (a recurring theme, I know):The Electoral College makes it difficult to see that each state contains a multitude of political perspectives, and that our democracy might be a little healthier if the vote of a Seattle Republican mattered as much for the outcome of a presidential election as that of a Green Bay Democrat.Now ReadingErwin Chemerinsky in defense of judicial review for The American Prospect.Corey Robin on Clarence Thomas for The New Yorker.Sarah Jones on the anti-abortion movement for New York magazine.Vanessa Williamson on taxation for Dissent.B.D. McClay on sore winners for The Outline.Feedback If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to your friends. They can sign up here. If you want to share your thoughts on an item in this week’s newsletter or on the newsletter in general, please email me at jamelle-newsletter@nytimes.com. You can follow me on Twitter (@jbouie), Instagram and TikTok.Photo of the WeekI took this years ago at a Civil War re-enactment marking the 150th anniversary of the surrender at Appomattox. The Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant re-enactors were having a coffee and relaxing a bit before the day’s festivities.Now Eating: Curried Broccoli and Cauliflower SaladThis recipe is from the wonderful book “Jubilee: Recipes From Two Centuries of African American Cooking,” by Toni Tipton-Martin. It is very easy to put together, and very, very good. This recipe makes enough for about four people, and you can easily double it if you’re cooking for a group. I didn’t make any adjustments to the salad the last time I made it, but what I will recommend is to make your own mayonnaise. It’s pretty easy, and the results are far superior to anything you can get from the store.Ingredients4 slices bacon½ cup mayonnaise¼ cup sugar1 tablespoon cider vinegar¼ teaspoon curry powder or more, to tasteSalt2 cups broccoli florets, trimmed and cut into bite-size pieces¼ cup sliced celery.2 cups cauliflower florets, trimmed and cut into bite-size pieces⅓ cup plus one tablespoon raisins⅓ cup plus one tablespoon toasted slivered almondsDirectionsIn a medium skillet, cook the bacon over medium-high heat until crisp, about 7 minutes. Drain on paper towels and crumble when cool enough to handle. Reserve the fat for another use.In a small bowl, mix together the mayonnaise, sugar, vinegar, curry powder, and salt to taste.In a serving bowl, layer the broccoli florets, celery, and cauliflower. Pour on all the dressing. Add a layer of raisins, then almonds, then top with the bacon. Cover with a tightfitting lid or plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 8 hours or overnight. Toss before serving. More

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      The Myth of the Good Trump Official

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      A central theme of the Jan. 6 hearings has been Republican redemption. A parade of Republican witnesses has testified to being pushed beyond the limits of their loyalty to Donald Trump. For some, the breaking point came when he tried to enlist them in a scheme to overturn state elections. Others revolted at the former president’s attempts to corrupt the Justice Department, or at his role in inciting an insurrection. A rioter, awakened to Trump’s lies, testified about being misled; in a poignant moment after the seventh hearing, he apologized to the Capitol Police.Republican Representative Liz Cheney, the Jan. 6 committee’s vice chair, has been perhaps its most prominent voice. At Thursday’s prime-time hearing, the last until September, she painted die-hard believers in Trump’s big lie as noble victims. “Donald Trump knows that millions of Americans who supported him would stand up and defend our nation were it threatened,” said Cheney. “They would put their lives and their freedom at stake to protect her. And he is preying on their patriotism. He is preying on their sense of justice. And on Jan. 6, Donald Trump turned their love of country into a weapon against our Capitol and our Constitution.”It is a sign of the committee Democrats’ love of country that they have allowed the hearings to proceed this way. They are crafting a story about Jan. 6 as a battle between Republican heroism and Republican villainy. It seems intended to create a permission structure for Trump supporters to move on without having to disavow everything they loved about his presidency, or to admit that Jan. 6 was the logical culmination of his sadistic politics.If you believe, as I do, that Trump’s sociopathy makes him a unique threat to this country’s future, it makes sense to try to lure Republicans away from him rather than damn them for their complicity. There is a difference, however, between a smart narrative and an accurate one. In truth, you can’t cleave Trump and his most shameless antidemocratic enablers off from the rest of the Republican Party, because the party has been remade in his image. Plenty of ex-Trump officials have come off well in the hearings, including the former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger, the former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and, in video testimony, the former White House counsel Pat Cipollone. That shouldn’t erase the ignominy of having served Trump in the first place.An image of Senator Josh Hawley gesturing to insurrectionists on Jan. 6.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesI have a lot of respect for Cheney, who is likely sacrificing her future in Republican politics in her attempt to hold Trump accountable, and for the bravery of witnesses like Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified despite the Trump camp’s reported attempt to intimidate her. But whatever they say now, the witnesses who worked for Trump enabled his mounting authoritarianism. Each contributed, in his or her own way, not just to Jan. 6, but also to eroding our democracy so that Jan. 6 may be just a prequel. Each helped bring us to a point where, according to a recent survey, more than half of Americans believe a civil war will erupt in the United States in the near future.“It was a privilege to serve in the White House,” Pottinger said during his testimony on Thursday. “I’m also very proud of President Trump’s foreign policy accomplishments.”Pottinger worked for the Trump administration from its beginning until Jan. 7, 2021. He was one of many who didn’t resign over Trump’s defense of the rioters in Charlottesville, Va., his attempted extortion of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine or his claims to have won an election he clearly lost, to cite just a few milestones. During Pottinger’s testimony, he said that Jan. 6 “emboldened our enemies by helping give them ammunition to feed a narrative that our system of government doesn’t work, that the United States is in decline.” But there’s no way to separate that from the rest of Trump’s legacy, or from Pottinger’s own. He shouldn’t be proud.One of the few Trumpists who seems to have really reckoned with what she participated in is Stephanie Grisham, who is Trump’s former press secretary, though she never held a news conference. “I don’t think I can rebrand; I think this will follow me forever,” she told New York magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi last year. “I believe that I was part of something unusually evil.”They all were, everyone who kept that catastrophic administration functioning at a minimal level while Trump built the cult of personality that made Jan. 6 possible. It’s important to remember their culpability because Trump is probably going to run for president again, and he could win. If he does, Republicans who like to think of themselves as good people, who don’t want to spend their lives in the right-wing fever swamps, will be faced with the question of whether to serve him. They will see the former Trump officials who were able to rebrand despite sticking with him almost to the end, and they might think there’s not much to lose.In his bracing book, “Why We Did It: A Travelogue From the Republican Road to Hell,” Tim Miller, a former Republican National Committee spokesman, tries to understand why friends and associates who once hated Trump eventually submitted to him. “There were thousands of people who at some level complied with Trump who weighed the costs,” he wrote. “Who knew the dangers,” who might have chosen a different path if “they could have imagined a different, more fulfilling future for themselves.” The Jan. 6 committee is trying, against the suck of Trump’s dark gravity, to point the way to such a future. To do that, it has been liberal with absolution. That doesn’t mean absolution is deserved.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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      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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      in Elections

      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