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      What a Reversal of Roe v. Wade Might Mean for the Midterms

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      Abortion, it almost goes without saying, is a singularly fraught issue. Pew Research describes the complexity in a May 6 report, “America’s Abortion Quandary”: “A majority of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, but many are open to restrictions; many opponents of legal abortion say it should be legal in some circumstances.”Pew continues: “Relatively few Americans on either side of the debate take an absolutist view on the legality of abortion — either supporting or opposing it at all times, regardless of circumstances.”A majority of the Supreme Court, however, appears to be prepared to take on this unwieldy, intensely personal subject by overturning the 1973 landmark decision Roe v Wade. “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Justice Alito wrote in a draft opinion supported by four other justices. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.” The decision as written would in fact transfer jurisdiction over the laws governing abortion to the states, 26 of which “are certain or likely” to adopt laws banning “abortion, and those abortion bans would apply to both procedural and medication abortion,” according to the Guttmacher Institute.In a May 3 interview with The Harvard Gazette, Laurence Tribe, a law professor at the school, argued that the public image of the Supreme Court has been badly “damaged by the obviously partisan divisions within the court” and exacerbated “by the court’s ham-handed attempts to persuade people that the political and ideological orientation of justices on the right or on the left somehow has nothing to do with the way they view legal issues.”Tribe described the Alito draft as “a savage attack” on the Roe decision, and while it may yet be moderated, Tribe said:I think it’s important for people to recognize that the thrust of the decision and the dramatic and radical approach it takes to interpreting the Constitution’s unenumerated rights, narrowly and stingily, will not depend on the tone. That is, the opinion, whether it’s delivered in a velvet glove or not, is going to be an iron fist. The court is really announcing that it’s laying down the gauntlet with respect to rights like those recognized in Lawrence v. Texas, in terms of sexual intimacy, and Obergefell v. Hodges, in terms of the right to marry.As long ago as February 2006, Ronald Dworkin, a law professor at N.Y.U. who died in 2013, anticipated in The New York Review of Books the probability that Alito would become an absolutist member of the Supreme Court’s conservative wing:His dissent in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Pennsylvania case in which the Supreme Court later reaffirmed its earlier Roe v. Wade protection of abortion rights, was of course of particular concern. Alone on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, he voted to uphold a provision of the Pennsylvania law that required married women to inform their husbands before seeking an abortion, except women who could prove that their husbands were not the father of the child or that they would be subject to physical abuse if they told their husbands.At one level, the likelihood that the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade would seem to be an ideal vehicle to invigorate the left. Such a decision, in political terms, would amount to the imposition of a major change in social policy, by a bare 5-to-4 majority of an unelected court, against the will of a majority of the electorate.In other words, at a time of growing anxiety over authoritarian trends in the Republican Party, the autocratic nature of a court decision jettisoning Roe has the potential to inflame an already divided nation.“Research generally shows that anger is an emotion that mobilizes people to act, and many will certainly be angered by this decision,” Brian Schaffner, a political scientist at Tufts and at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard, wrote by email in response to my inquiry. “We saw Republicans use the teaching of Critical Race Theory in schools as a way of mobilizing their supporters with anger in 2021, but overturning Roe seems quite likely to enrage a much larger share of the population and could lead to a much different calculus for what we might expect in November.”Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, similarly argued that upending Roe would have the “strong potential to mobilize the liberals, mobilize women voters, and mobilize low-propensity Democrats. 91 percent of Democrats and liberals support access to abortion and 71 percent of young voters support the same.”Lake added two other points. First, “Americans always think of us going forward, not reversals, not taking away rights, not losing things, not losing freedoms,” and second:There is an interesting overlap with the Jan. 6 hearings. The Trump Republicans are showing the lengths they will go to to overrule the will of the people and fundamentally change our system in ways voters never thought possible. These are fundamental attacks on our country. And voters believe this is the start not the end.Surveys show that a decisive majority opposes overturning Roe v. Wade. In a CBS News survey conducted May 4 to 6, for example, 64 percent said Roe should be “kept as it is” and 36 percent said it should be “overturned.”There are a number of countervailing factors, however, not least of which is public ambivalence.Perhaps most important, before the Alito draft opinion became public, abortion did not rank high on the list when voters were asked to identify issues of importance to them. In an April 30 to May 3 YouGov/ Economist survey, abortion ranked at the bottom of 14 issues when respondents were asked if they were “very important” to them, behind jobs and the economy, crime, national security, education and health care. The YouGov/Economist poll was conducted over four days, and only on the last day and a half did the Alito opinion become public.Since Politico revealed the contents of the draft opinion on May 2, however, there are some indications that the salience of abortion is increasing.YouGov conducted a separate survey for Yahoo News from May 3 to May 6, covering the first four days during which the Alito draft received widespread publicity. Among key Democratic constituencies, abortion shot up the list of most important issues: From November to May the share of Democrats describing abortion at their most important issue rose to 20 percent from 4 percent.There are at least three other hurdles facing Democrats seeking to mobilize voters in the 2022 midterm elections using the overturning of Roe to motivate turnout.First, the number of women undergoing abortions has been declining steadily. The Guttmacher Institute found that the abortion rate for every 1,000 women between ages 15 and 44 reached a high of 29.3 in 1980 and 1981. Since then, the rate has declined to 13.5 per 1,000 in 2017.Second, a majority of abortions now rely upon abortifacient drugs instead of surgery. The Guttmacher Institute found that in 2020, 54 percent of abortions were performed using mifepristone and misoprostol, the two-drug combination that is known as medication abortion or the abortion pill.Third, the share of women getting abortions who are either high income or white has declined rapidly. FiveThirtyEight reported last January that in 1975, 65 percent of women getting abortions were white and 31 percent were Black or members of other minorities; by 2017, 47 percent were white and 49 percent minority members.Caitlin Myers, a professor of economics at Middlebury who has written extensively on reproductive issues, was pessimistic about the likelihood of abortion functioning as a liberal mobilizing issue. She wrote by email:The brunt of the impacts of a Roe reversal will be felt by young, poor, and Black women living in the Deep South and Midwest. Will their plight mobilize the left? I don’t know. But I will observe that when I drive around liberal Vermont I see plenty of lawn signs supporting Ukraine and Black Lives Matter, but have yet to see one supporting abortion rights.Eitan Hersh, a professor of political science at Tufts, noted that a Supreme Court decision overturning Roe “would reinvigorate mass organizing on the left,” but, he added, “there’s a caveat” in the vitality of the grass-roots infrastructure the right has built over decades:Even with all the news about the leaked court opinion, I’m not sure it sinks in for most Democrats what a long-term, deeply organized mass movement was behind the change. In addition to the development of the conservative legal movement and their nomination strategies, we have seen activists organizing in state legislatures preparing for this moment for decades. It took a very long time, a lot of patience and a lot of hard work from ordinary activists.Hersh’s point is well taken, but there is a counter argument. Over those same decades, while conservatives made their case that abortion was immoral and tantamount to homicide, social scientists have quietly but steadily produced detailed research reports describing the social benefits that have been spurred by the Roe decision. Such studies have had limited visibility as far as the general public is concerned, but are surfacing or resurfacing now that Roe is facing an imminent upheaval.In “Abortion and Selection,” for example, Elizabeth Ananat, Jonathan Gruber, Phillip Levine and Douglas Staiger, economists at Barnard, M.I.T., Wellesley and Dartmouth, argue that their research provides “evidence that lower costs of abortion led to improved outcomes in the form of an increased likelihood of college graduation, lower rates of welfare use, and lower odds of being a single parent.”In conclusion, the authors write:Our findings suggest that the improved living circumstances experienced by the average child born after the legalization of abortion had a lasting impact on the lifelong prospects of these children. Children who were “born unwanted” prior to the legalization of abortion not only grew up in more disadvantaged households, but they also grew up to be more disadvantaged as adults.Gruber wrote by email that he, like many others, is “pro-choice on the grounds of women’s reproductive freedom,” but too few people recognize “that ending abortion rights imposes enormous additional costs to society.”Gruber continued:The very states that oppose abortion rights are the ones that engage in poorly designed tax cuts that leave them without the resources to support their neediest citizens. So ending abortion rights is basically imposing a large new tax on all citizens to support millions of unwanted, and disadvantaged, children — a tax that these governments are then unwilling to finance.Ananat elaborated on a related point in an email:We also know from recent research that has followed women who were unable to get an abortion under new laws — because they came to a clinic just after instead of just before a gestational cutoff in their state — that it is the case today that those who were unable to get a wanted abortion are much more likely to be poor in the years afterward, much more likely to get evicted, are in much worse mental and physical health, are much more likely to be in an abusive relationship. Their existing children — 60 percent of women seeking an abortion are already mothers — end up with poorer developmental outcomes. All of these results portend badly for their futures and their children’s.Ananat argued that the role of abortion in coming elections depends on whether “the enormity of this news” sinks into the public,particularly given the signals coming from the court and from state legislatures of an interest in complete bans on anything affecting a fertilized egg, including lifesaving surgeries such as for ectopic pregnancies and bans on some kinds of contraception and fertility treatments. Saliently for coalition-building, these medically necessary abortions, as well as contraception like IUDs and Plan B and interventions like IVF, are used by a much broader and more privileged cross-section of women than the low-income, politically marginalized women who are most impacted by laws that represent restrictions rather than abolition. And then some politicians are talking about taking on other rights guaranteed under Griswold, Obergefell, Loving, etc., which may help an even broader group of people see the linked fate of these civil rights.Many Republican elected officials are legitimizing liberal fears.Republicans in the Louisiana House have approved legislation in committee that would apply criminal homicide charges to both the woman and the abortion provider. In Idaho, Brent Crane, chairman of the House State Affairs Committee, announced on May 6 that he will hold hearings on legislation banning emergency contraception and abortion pills. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, told USA Today that if Republicans win control of Congress and the White House in 2024, a national abortion ban is “possible,” noting that “with regard to the abortion issue, I think it’s pretty clear where Senate Republicans stand.” The governor of Mississippi, Tate Reeves, was equivocal when asked if the state might make contraceptives like the Plan B pill or IUDs illegal: “That’s not what we are focused on at this time.”Perhaps most ominously for those on the left, Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, told The Times, “If a dog catches a car, it doesn’t know what to do. We do.”I asked two Republican pollsters — Ed Goeas and Whit Ayres — about the possible consequences of a court ruling overturning Roe. Their replies could best be described as restrained.Goeas emailed me back: “I increasingly have come to believe that neither Republicans nor Democrats represent the majority of the American public that is truly centrist. Not moderate but centrist.”In the case of the abortion debate, Goeas continued,the overwhelming majority do not fall into the category of abortion on demand or no abortion in any case. Most fall into a category of abortions with limits. That’s where the real discussion has been for decades, even though many of those people may call themselves pro-life or pro-choice.Many people “dread the thought of a loud, ugly fight over Roe v. Wade,” Goeas argued. “The fight may still rage on because of our increasingly electing members from the two extremes. If it does, I believe centrist America will just turn down the volume.”Ayres argued that “most Americans are torn about the issue” and have remained so over time:Opinions on abortion have been remarkably stable, unlike opinions on gay marriage, which have moved with lightning speed. I am convinced that our children and grandchildren will still be arguing about the morality of abortion.Ayres downplayed the prospect of a Supreme Court decision having a major influence on the outcome of the 2022 elections:Abortion has never been considered as important as issues that affect almost everyone like inflation, unemployment, Covid, and crime. But the people who do care about it care incredibly intensely, so this Supreme Court decision, if it follows the Alito draft, will energize those people on both sides of the issue.Ryan Enos, a political scientist at Harvard, was less equivocal:At first blush, the overturning of Roe certainly seems like it could be a mobilizing event: it involves a medical procedure that is extremely common and has been experienced by a large portion of women in the United States and could materially affect the lives of millions of people. In some states, it will be the rare instance of the state taking away a right that people have previously enjoyed. To my knowledge, this has not happened since Southern states moved to strip voting rights after the end of Reconstruction.At the same time, Enos continued:Your typical voter has only a vague notion of the ideological composition of the court, let alone how it got that way. While the Republican hijacking of the court to push an ideological agenda seems like a grave injustice to many of us, understanding why this is an injustice takes a level of engagement with politics that most voters simply don’t have.Instead, Enos argued:A more likely way for Roe to matter is that the most active Democrats, those who donate money and volunteer, will be animated for the midterm. Democrats were so animated by Donald Trump that they brought an energy to the election in 2020 that was impossible for them to sustain. While this might return in 2024 if Trump is on the ballot, it was not going to be there in 2022 without a catalyzing force — overturning Roe might be that force.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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      4 Takeaways From Tuesday’s Primaries in Nebraska and West Virginia

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      A federal candidate backed by former President Donald J. Trump won a contested primary for the second consecutive week on Tuesday, as Representative Alex Mooney resoundingly defeated Representative David McKinley in West Virginia in the first incumbent-vs.-incumbent primary race of 2022.But Mr. Trump’s endorsement scorecard took a hit in Nebraska, where his preferred candidate for governor, Charles W. Herbster, lost in a three-way race to Jim Pillen, a University of Nebraska regent who had the backing of the departing Gov. Pete Ricketts.Here are four takeaways from primary night in Nebraska and West Virginia:Trump successfully notched a win in West Virginia.On paper, West Virginia’s new Second Congressional District should have given an advantage to Mr. McKinley, 75, who had previously represented a larger area of its territory as he sought a seventh term. But Mr. Mooney, 50, who once led the Republican Party in neighboring Maryland, nonetheless romped across nearly the entire district, with the exception of the state’s northern panhandle, on Tuesday.Mr. Trump’s endorsement is widely seen as powering the Mooney campaign in one of the states where the former president has been most popular.Representative Alex Mooney of West Virginia at a rally last week in Greensburg, Pa., hosted by former President Donald J. Trump.Gene J. Puskar/Associated PressThroughout the race, Mr. Mooney slashed at Mr. McKinley as a “RINO” — “Republican in name only” — and took aim at some of his aisle-crossing votes, including for the bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed Congress last year and the bipartisan legislation to create the commission examining the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.Mr. Trump sided with Mr. Mooney early on, and invited him to appear alongside him at a rally in Pennsylvania last week. There, Mr. Trump joked that Mr. Mooney should defeat Mr. McKinley “easily.” He largely did, with landslide-level margins topping 70 percent in some of the eastern counties that border Maryland.The race comes a week after Mr. Trump helped J.D. Vance win an expensive Ohio Senate primary, and it again showed his influence when endorsing House and Senate candidates.Biden’s approach to governance suffered a defeatPresident Biden was not on the ballot in the West Virginia House race. But his belief that voters will reward members of Congress who put partisanship aside to get things done took another blow.Mr. McKinley seemingly fit very much in the long West Virginia tradition of bring-home-the-bacon lawmakers (See: Robert C. Byrd).Mr. McKinley had campaigned alongside Gov. Jim Justice, a Democrat-turned-Republican, and turned to Senator Joe Manchin III, a Democrat, in the closing stretch as a pitchman.But Republican primary voters were in no mood for compromise.“Liberal David McKinley sided with Biden’s trillion-dollar spending spree,” said one Mooney ad that began with the narrator saying he had a “breaking MAGA alert.”On Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Biden delivered a speech acknowledging that he had miscalculated in his belief that Trump-style Republicanism would fade with Mr. Trump’s departure. “I never expected — let me say — let me say this carefully: I never expected the Ultra-MAGA Republicans, who seem to control the Republican Party now, to have been able to control the Republican Party,” Mr. Biden said.On Tuesday evening, voters in West Virginia reaffirmed where the power in the party lies.Trump’s pick stumbles in a governor’s raceMr. Herbster had tried to make the Nebraska governor’s primary a referendum on Mr. Trump. He called it “a proxy war between the entire Republican establishment” and the former president. He cited Mr. Trump at every opportunity. He appeared with him at a rally.But the race became about Mr. Herbster himself, after he faced accusations of groping and unwanted contact from multiple women in the final weeks of the race.Voters instead went with Mr. Pillen, a former University of Nebraska football player, who had also run as a conservative choice with the backing of the departing governor. A third candidate, Brett Lindstrom, a state senator from outside Omaha, had campaigned for support from the more moderate faction of the party.Charles W. Herbster on Tuesday night in Lincoln, Neb., after losing the Republican primary for governor.Terry Ratzlaff for The New York TimesMr. Herbster becomes the first Trump-endorsed candidate to lose in a 2022 primary — but most likely not the last.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Trump, the Primaries and the ‘Populism of Resentment’ Shaping the G.O.P.

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      May is chock-full of primary elections, and they are starting to provide a picture of how deep the G.O.P. is entrenched in Trumpism. J.D. Vance, the 37-year-old venture capitalist and author of the acclaimed memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” won the Republican Senate primary in Ohio — with the endorsement of Donald Trump. The rise of Vance paints a telling portrait of how the G.O.P. is evolving in its appeal to its conservative base. Vance eagerly sought Trump’s endorsement and praise. Does it mean that the party is becoming a “populism of tribal loyalty,” as suggested by one of today’s guests?[You can listen to this episode of “The Argument” on Apple, Spotify or Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]Today on “The Argument,” host Jane Coaston wants to know what this month’s Republican primary elections can actually tell us about the future of the G.O.P. and if it signals more Trump in 2024. She is joined two conservative writers, David French and Christopher Caldwell.French is a senior editor of “The Dispatch” and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. Caldwell is a contributing writer for New York Times Opinion. “I don’t think anyone disputes that there’s a wide open lane for populist incitement,” French says. “I think the issue with J.D. Vance and the issue with the Republican Party in general is this move that says, we’re going to indulge it. We’re going to stoke it.”Mentioned in this episode:“The Decline of Ohio and the Rise of J.D. Vance” by Christopher Caldwell in The New York Times“What if There Is No Such Thing as ‘Trumpism’?” by Jane Coaston in The National Review(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThoughts? Email us at argument@nytimes.com or leave us a voice mail message at (347) 915-4324. We want to hear what you’re arguing about with your family, your friends and your frenemies. (We may use excerpts from your message in a future episode.)By leaving us a message, you are agreeing to be governed by our reader submission terms and agreeing that we may use and allow others to use your name, voice and message.“The Argument” is produced by Phoebe Lett, Elisa Gutierrez and Vishakha Darbha. Edited by Alison Bruzek and Anabel Bacon. With original music by Isaac Jones and Pat McCusker. Mixing by Pat McCusker. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta with editorial support from Kristina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. More

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      Few Republicans Confront Trump. What Distinguishes Them?

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      What distinguishes the few Republicans willing to confront Donald Trump?Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, was so appalled by Donald Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack that he signaled to colleagues shortly afterward that he was open to convicting Trump in an impeachment trial — and barring him from holding office again. A month later, however, McConnell voted to acquit him.Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House, told colleagues in the days after Jan. 6 that he was going to call Trump and urge him to resign. But McCarthy soon changed his mind and instead told House members to stop criticizing Trump in public.By now, this pattern is familiar. (It’s a central theme of “This Will Not Pass,” a new book about the end of Trump’s presidency, by my colleagues Alex Burns and Jonathan Martin, which broke the news of McCarthy’s comments.)Many prominent Republicans have criticized Trump, sometimes in harsh terms, for fomenting violence, undermining democracy or making racist comments. Privately, these Republicans have been even harsher, saying they disdain Trump and want him gone from politics.But they ultimately are unwilling to stand up to him. They believe that doing so will jeopardize their future in the Republican Party, given Trump’s continued popularity with the party’s voters. “Republican lawmakers fear that confronting Trump, or even saying in public how they actually feel about him, amounts to signing their political death warrant,” Jonathan Martin told me. “For most of them, it’s not more complicated than that.”There have been only a few exceptions. If you follow politics, you can probably tick off the most prominent names: Liz Cheney, the House member from Wyoming; Mitt Romney, a senator representing Utah; and Larry Hogan, the governor of Maryland.All three of them happen to have something in common: They grew up around politics, as the children of nationally known officials.A long-term viewLiz Cheney’s father, Dick, capped a long political career by serving as vice president, and her mother, Lynne, was a high-profile chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Mitt Romney’s father, George, was a presidential candidate, cabinet secretary and governor of Michigan. Larry Hogan’s father, Lawrence, was the only Republican on the House Judiciary Committee to vote for each article of impeachment against Richard Nixon.Together, the three make up “a kind of shadow conscience of the party,” as Mark Leibovich, now an Atlantic writer, has put it.Other than their stance on Trump, the three have many differences. They come from different political generations — Romney, who’s 75, has run for president twice, while Hogan, 65, and Cheney, 55, did not hold elected office until the past decade. They also have different ideologies. Cheney is deeply conservative on most policy questions, while Hogan is a moderate, and Romney is somewhere in between.From left, Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney and Larry Hogan.From left: Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times; Stephen Speranza for The New York Times; Andrew Mangum for The New York TimesIf anything, these differences make their shared family histories more telling. All three are treating politics as involving something larger than the next election or their own career ambitions. They have a multigenerational view of the Republican Party and American democracy. They expect that both will be around after they have left the scene — as they have watched their parents experience.That view has led all of them to prioritize their honest opinion about Trump over their career self-interest.In Hogan’s case, the stance arguably brings little downside, because he governs a blue state and is barred from running for a third term. But Cheney has already lost her post as a Republican House leader and faces a primary challenge from a candidate both Trump and McCarthy support. Romney will likely face his own challenge in 2024.“Unlike the bulk of their colleagues who are eager to remain in office, Romney and Cheney have decided continuing to serve in Congress is not worth the bargain of remaining silent about an individual they believe poses a threat to American democracy,” Jonathan told me. “They also can’t understand why Republican colleagues they respect don’t share their alarm.”In an interview for Jonathan’s and Alex’s book, Cheney specifically mentions her disappointment with McConnell: “I think he’s completely misjudged the danger of this moment.”Last night’s electionsNebraska and West Virginia held primaries last night, and they produced a split decision for Trump’s preferred candidates.In West Virginia, where redistricting forced two Republican House members to face each other, Alex Mooney beat David McKinley. Trump had endorsed Mooney.McKinley had the support of both the Republican governor, Jim Justice, and Democratic Senator Joe Manchin. McKinley had recently voted for President Biden’s infrastructure law and for the creation of a bipartisan Jan. 6 commission.Mooney received 54 percent of the vote, to McKinley’s 36 percent.In Nebraska’s Republican primary for governor, Jim Pillen, a University of Nebraska regent, won, with 33 percent of the vote, despite not having Trump’s support.Trump instead backed Charles Herbster, an agribusiness executive who attended the rally that preceded the Jan. 6 attack; multiple women have accused Herbster of groping them. Herbster received 30 percent of the vote.More in PoliticsSteve Schmidt, a former aide to John McCain, apologized for lying to discredit a 2008 Times article about McCain’s relationship with a female lobbyist.For financial help and counsel, Hunter Biden has turned to a Hollywood lawyer.Pentagon officials will testify about U.F.O.s before a House panel next week, the first such hearing in more than 50 years.Elon Musk said he would reverse Twitter’s ban of Trump.THE LATEST NEWSWar in UkraineClearing remains of a Russian tank in Ukraine yesterday.David Guttenfelder for The New York TimesDespite its stumbles, the Russian military has seized much of eastern Ukraine. It could soon control the Donbas region.The House passed $40 billion more in aid for Ukraine, totaling about $53 billion over two months.A leader of the punk protest band Pussy Riot escaped Russia, wearing a disguise.U.S. EconomyBiden called bringing down inflation his “top domestic priority.” The government will release inflation figures this morning.Some Fed officials are acknowledging that they responded too slowly to rapid price rises last year. Now they’re forced to constrain the economy more abruptly.But for millions of Americans, these are boom times.The Senate confirmed Lisa Cook as the first Black woman to serve as a Federal Reserve governor.Other Big StoriesA shooting investigation in New Jersey in 2020.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesGun-related homicides in the U.S. reached their highest recorded number, rising 35 percent in 2020. The toll on young Black men was the worst.Shireen Abu Akleh, a journalist for Al Jazeera, was fatally shot in the West Bank during clashes between the Israeli military and Palestinians.A shortage of baby formula in the U.S. has caused some parents to drive for hours in search of supplies.A judge in Boston found the celebrity chef Mario Batali not guilty of groping a woman at a bar in 2017.Tom Brady will join Fox Sports as its lead N.F.L. analyst after he retires.In his 11th career start, Reid Detmers of the Angels threw a no-hitter against Tampa Bay.OpinionsThe F.D.A.’s proposed ban on menthol cigarettes — which Big Tobacco has long targeted at Black people — is overdue, Keith Wailoo says.“The human toll of this misinformation”: Amanda Makulec lost her baby. Antivaxxers falsely claimed Covid vaccines caused his death.MORNING READSElizabeth Olsen is now the Marvel actress with the most hours clocked.Rosie Marks for The New York TimesWanda Maximoff: How Elizabeth Olsen came into her powers.Farewell to the iPod: After 22 years, Apple is ending production.Transition: More trans men are opting for phalloplasty, one of medicine’s most complex procedures.Literature: Her novel was pulled for plagiarism. So was her explanation.Advice from Wirecutter: Tips for organizing your closet.Lives Lived: Alfred C. Baldwin III was the lookout for the Watergate break-in, tasked with warning the burglars if law enforcement was approaching. He later became a witness for the government. He died, at 83, in 2020, though the news only recently came to light.ARTS AND IDEAS The Azerbaijan Grand Prix in 2021.Clive Rose/Getty ImagesF1 in AmericaFormula 1, an international motor-racing sport, attracts a global audience. Historically, its attempts to break through in the U.S., where NASCAR reigns supreme, haven’t been very successful — until now.In 2017, Liberty Media, an American company, purchased Formula 1. Liberty executives saw it as “one of the few truly global sports, on the scale of FIFA or the Olympics, that could still capture a gigantic live audience,” Austin Carr writes in Bloomberg.In the years since, the sport’s footprint in the U.S. has grown. The Netflix docuseries “Drive to Survive,” which focuses on the drivers’ personalities, is among the most popular shows on the platform. The sport is adding new races in the U.S. — in Miami this year and Las Vegas next year — and viewership is higher than ever for ESPN’s broadcasts.Before the Netflix show premiered in 2019, the driver Daniel Ricciardo said one or two fans would recognize him in the U.S. “At customs when I landed in the States, I’d be like, ‘Oh, I’m an F1 driver,’ and they’d ask, ‘Is that like NASCAR?’ ” Ricciardo told Bloomberg. “After the first season, every day I was out somewhere someone would come up being like, ‘I saw you on that show!’”For more: Take a 3-D tour of a Formula 1 car.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookDavid Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.Mushroom stroganoff is a vegetarian version of the dish that is just as rich and decadent.What to Watch“Heartstopper” tells a heartwarming boy-meets-boy tale through live action and animation.What to Read“Either/Or,” Elif Batuman’s follow-up to “The Idiot,” follows the same character into her second year at Harvard.Late NightThe hosts discussed Trump’s Twitter account.Now Time to PlayThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was monoxide. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: 52 cards (four letters).If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — DavidP.S. Thousands of rail car factory workers in Chicago walked off the job 128 years ago today, beginning the Pullman Strike.Here’s today’s front page.“The Daily” is about abortion providers. On “The Argument,” a debate about Trump’s influence.Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      Jim Pillen Wins Nebraska’s G.O.P. Primary for Governor Over Trump-Endorsed Rival

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      Jim Pillen, a University of Nebraska regent backed by the state’s powerful Ricketts political machine, has won the Republican primary for Nebraska governor, defeating a scandal-marred millionaire who had the backing of former President Donald J. Trump.The Associated Press declared Mr. Pillen the winner over his main rivals, Charles W. Herbster, a Trump-endorsed agribusiness executive who funded his own campaign and, in the race’s final weeks, was accused of groping women, and Brett Lindstrom, a state senator who appealed to the moderate wing of the party.Mr. Pillen’s victory makes him an overwhelming favorite to become Nebraska’s next governor in November. Democrats have not won a statewide election since 2006. The party nominated Carol Blood, a state senator from the Omaha suburbs.Mr. Herbster is the first candidate endorsed by Mr. Trump to lose a Republican primary in 2022. Many more Trump-endorsed candidates are facing stiff headwinds in coming primaries, starting with contests for governor in Idaho next week and in Georgia on May 24.Mr. Pillen, in his victory remarks in Lincoln, pledged to run an administration focused on education and agriculture, two pillars of the state. He said he would promote Nebraska to both attract new residents and keep young people from leaving for other states.“We all agree, we’re all in unison, we never ever, ever, give up on kids,” he said. “We’re going to invest the farm in our kids, so all of our kids know, the grass is greenest in Nebraska.”Mr. Pillen, 66, ran a campaign predicated on the idea that Nebraska Republicans were satisfied with the administration of Gov. Pete Ricketts, his main political benefactor and most prominent supporter, who is stepping down because of term limits. Mr. Ricketts spent millions on television advertising backing Mr. Pillen while attacking Mr. Herbster and Mr. Lindstrom.Once Mr. Herbster began to gain traction in the race, the mild-mannered Mr. Pillen adopted some of his rival’s right-wing positions on social issues. He sought to bar the teaching of critical race theory in the University of Nebraska system and came out against allowing transgender athletes from competing in high school girls’ sports in the state.Mr. Pillen, a former defensive back for the University of Nebraska’s football team, became a highly successful veterinarian and pig farmer in the state. In addition to Mr. Ricketts’s backing, he had endorsements from a handful of the state’s most prominent figures, including Tom Osborne, his college football coach, who was also a three-term member of Congress from western Nebraska, and the comedian Larry the Cable Guy, who was raised on a farm in the state’s southeastern corner.Much to the frustration of his opponents, Mr. Pillen skipped all of the televised debates during the primary campaign, opting instead to hold hundreds of small meetings with voters across the state. Mr. Pillen’s opponents argued that he lacked charisma and was not prepared to discuss the state’s issues; Mr. Pillen said he was building coalitions away from the prying eyes of the news media.Mr. Lindstrom sought to rebuild the type of Republican coalitions that existed before Mr. Trump’s rise. He appealed to educated professionals in the state’s urban centers of Omaha and Lincoln and put political distance between himself and Mr. Trump — saying that the 2020 election was legitimate and that he would prefer “a new face” to lead the Republican Party in 2024.While Mr. Lindstrom made a late charge in the polls, most of the race became a proxy fight between Mr. Ricketts and Mr. Trump, to whom Mr. Herbster yoked his political identity. He talked like Mr. Trump, adopted many of Mr. Trump’s policy positions and pledged to drain “the swamp” in Lincoln, the state capital.In other Nebraska races, Mike Flood, a state senator from Norfolk who owns radio and television stations across the state, won the Republican nomination to the Lincoln-based congressional seat vacated by former Representative Jeff Fortenberry, who resigned after he was convicted of lying to the F.B.I. in a campaign finance investigation.Mr. Flood defeated Mr. Fortenberry, who remained on the ballot but did not mount a campaign, and Curtis Huffman, an accountant.Democrats in Omaha nominated Tony Vargas, a state senator, to face Representative Don Bacon, a moderate Republican who is seeking his fourth term. Mr. Vargas, the son of immigrants from Peru, is a former public-school teacher in Omaha who served on the city’s school board before he was elected to the Nebraska Legislature.The House Democrats’ campaign arm is optimistic Mr. Vargas can be competitive in November, despite the difficult national environment for the party.Mr. Bacon is one of 10 House Republicans who hold a district carried by President Biden in 2020. But in the last two elections, Omaha Democrats nominated Kara Eastman, a democratic socialist who did not appeal to centrist voters in the district. Mr. Vargas has not campaigned on the left-wing issues Ms. Eastman promoted. More

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      Alex Mooney Rides Trump Endorsement to West Virginia House Primary Win

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      Representative Alex Mooney handily defeated a House colleague and fellow Republican, David McKinley, in a primary in West Virginia that again proved both the power of an endorsement by former President Donald J. Trump and the weight that right-wing ideology holds with Republican primary voters.Mr. Mooney, a four-term House Republican known more as a conservative warrior than a legislator, used Mr. Trump’s endorsement to overcome a distinct disadvantage: The redrawn district he was running in included far more of Mr. McKinley’s old district than Mr. Mooney’s. The huge margins Mr. Mooney was able to run up in the fast-growing counties from his old district along the Maryland state line proved too great for Mr. McKinley, and the result was called on Tuesday night by The Associated Press. But Mr. Mooney’s victory stretched deep into Mr. McKinley’s home turf, blanketing the new district, including counties in the West Virginia panhandle that jut between Ohio and Pennsylvania.It was a thorough repudiation of Mr. McKinley’s pragmatism, which led him to vote for the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill co-written by West Virginia’s centrist Democratic senator, Joe Manchin III, and for the creation of a bipartisan commission to examine the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.“He is a liberal RINO Republican,” Mr. Mooney said of his opponent at his closing rally last week, using the acronym for “Republicans in name only,” a conservative slur. “In order for our party to be successful, we need to take these RINOs out in primaries.” Mr. Mooney promised he “would fight for the values of our country, not go along to get along with the Democrats.”Mr. Mooney’s convincing win is all the more stunning in a state that once revered politicians, such as Senator Robert C. Byrd, who brought back copious amounts of money from Washington to help the impoverished hills and hollers of Appalachia.Mr. Mooney had blanketed the state with radio and television advertisements that featured Mr. Trump offering him the former president’s “complete and total endorsement,” while slamming Mr. McKinley for voting for the infrastructure bill and the Jan. 6 commission.But Mr. Trump did not sweep into the state for a last-minute get-out-the-vote rally, a decision that campaign aides to Mr. McKinley had hoped would keep the race close. Mr. McKinley had the backing of West Virginia’s governor, Jim Justice, and Mr. Manchin. And he had hoped the infrastructure bill would be an asset, not a liability. But that appeared to be a miscalculation, as West Virginia is also a place that gave Mr. Trump 69 percent of the vote in 2020.By turning the primary into a contest between a Trump-focused partisan and an incumbent running on his record of legislating, the two Republicans elevated the race for the Second District into something of a signal of how a possible Republican House majority might govern next year. In the end, ideology won out easily. Mr. Mooney had voted against certifying the 2020 election for President Biden, while Mr. McKinley agreed Mr. Biden had won.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      How Trump Helped Transform Nebraska Into a Toxic Political Wasteland

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      LINCOLN, Neb. — In the old days, Charles W. Herbster, a cattle baron and bull semen tycoon who used his fortune and influence to get into Donald Trump’s good graces, almost certainly would have been forced to pull out of Nebraska’s Republican primary for governor by now. In recent weeks, eight women, including a state senator, have come forward to allege that Mr. Herbster groped them at various Republican events or at beauty pageants at which he was a judge.But this is post-shame, post-“Access Hollywood” America, so Mr. Trump traveled to Nebraska last week for a rally at the I-80 Speedway between Lincoln and Omaha to show his continued support for Mr. Herbster. “He is innocent of these despicable charges,” Mr. Trump said. And Mr. Herbster, in true Trump fashion, has not only denied the allegations but also filed a defamation suit against one of his accusers and started running a television ad suggesting that the claims are part of a political conspiracy.Mr. Herbster sees conspiracies everywhere — conspiracies to destroy him, conspiracies to undermine Mr. Trump, conspiracies to unravel the very fabric of the nation. “This country is in a war within the borders of the country,” he told the crowd at the Starlite Event Center in Wahoo on Thursday, a few days before Tuesday’s primary election. Over more than an hour, Mr. Herbster, dressed in his trademark cowboy hat and vest, unspooled a complex and meandering tale of the threat to America, interspersed with labyrinthine personal yarns and long diatribes about taxes.It was convoluted but (as best I can understand) goes something like this: The coronavirus was manufactured in a lab in China and released into the United States in early 2020 by “illegals” from Mexico who were also smuggling Chinese-made fentanyl across the border. One of the smugglers, he said, had enough fentanyl in a single backpack to kill the entire population of Nebraska and South Dakota. The goal of this two-pronged attack, he explained, was to create a panic, stoked by Facebook and $400 million of Mark Zuckerberg’s money, to justify allowing voting by mail. Then, through unspecified means, the Chinese government used those mail-in ballots to steal the election — though Mr. Herbster hates that word. “They didn’t ‘steal’ it,” he told the crowd, his finger raised. “Do not use that terminology. They did not ‘steal’ it. They rigged it.”To state the obvious: This is not what political speech in Nebraska used to sound like.Mr. Herbster is challenging the allegations of eight women that he groped them.Mary Anne AndreiFor half a century, from 1959 to the inauguration of Barack Obama as president in 2009, my home state, the state near the geographical middle of the country, prided itself on being politically centrist as well. Over that span, it elected four Democrats and three Republicans to the U.S. Senate. We had six Republican governors and five Democratic. The congressional delegations were predominately Republican, but Omaha and Lincoln elected Democrats as their mayors more often than not. The Nebraska Legislature remains officially nonpartisan, and as the country’s only unicameral legislature, it forced lawmakers for many years to engage in a politics of pragmatism.Now, Nebraska is so unfailingly Republican that the party’s primaries most often determine the outcomes of statewide races. How did the state become so right wing and devoted to Mr. Trump?Part of the answer is that Nebraska’s Democrats of a generation ago were never very liberal. They were usually socially moderate, pro-business, pro-military white guys, making them all but indistinguishable from old-line, Chamber of Commerce Republicans from the coasts. Senator Edward Zorinsky aggressively advocated military aid for Nicaragua during the Carter years. Senator Bob Kerrey voted for NAFTA. Senator Ben Nelson cast his vote in favor of Obamacare only after Senator Harry Reid promised him tens of millions in federal funding for Nebraska that came to be known as the Cornhusker Kickback.But it wasn’t just the Democrats who were middle of the road. Even our Republican senators were sometimes so moderate that you could barely distinguish them from centrist Democrats. Chuck Hagel, for example, was a two-term Republican senator during Bill Clinton’s and George W. Bush’s presidencies but later was Mr. Obama’s secretary of defense. Likewise, our Republican governors were fiscally and socially conservative, but they generally avoided the culture wars.Mr. Herbster told the crowd in Wahoo that that era is over. “This isn’t the good-old Dave Heineman days. This isn’t the good-old Charles Thone days. This isn’t the good-old Exon days,” he said, invoking the names of three centrist Nebraska governors, including J. James Exon, a Democrat who won over many Republicans by opposing tax increases and gay rights during the Carter administration.For half a century, Nebraska was politically centrist. According to Mr. Herbster, that era is over.Mary Anne AndreiIn Nebraska — as in the rest of the country — the polarization seemed to hasten about the time that Mr. Obama won the presidency. To be sure, much of the hardening against the Democratic Party specifically and ideals of tolerance and diversity more generally can be attributed to an unholy stew of angry commentary on Fox News, algorithmic political siloing on Facebook and the subsuming of Nebraska’s independent newspapers and television stations by Lee Enterprises and the Sinclair Broadcast Group.But Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, also attributes the extreme partisan vitriol to the Democratic National Committee’s decision to shift its resources away from rural red states like Nebraska, which was in part because Mr. Obama had slashed the committee’s resources.“Obama hated the D.N.C.,” Ms. Kleeb told me, “because he feels like they stabbed him in the back” by supporting Hillary Clinton over his upstart campaign in the 2008 presidential primary. Distrustful of the Democratic machine — and the party brand — Mr. Obama turned fund-raising efforts away from the D.N.C. and focused on building “progressive” organizations like Organizing for America, she said. But that created two problems.First, now cash-poor, the committee began to spend more selectively. In Nebraska, the monthly allotment went from $25,000 to $2,500. That 90 percent cut in party funding, Ms. Kleeb said, meant that Republican talking points often went unchallenged. “You’re not doing any organizing,” she said, “not because you don’t want to, not because you don’t know how to organize or create good messages, but because you don’t have the money to do it.”Second, Democrats were forced to push hard for bipartisan support on key issues, which often further muddled their messaging. Left-leaning state senators in Nebraska, for example, joined with conservative senators to ban the death penalty in 2015. (A subsequent ballot measure restored it.) In 2016 and 2017, the progressive environmentalist and pro-small-farm group Nebraska Communities United fought against the construction of a massive poultry-processing plant on the flood plain of the Lower Platte River by partnering with a local group that was afraid the plant would be staffed by Black Muslim immigrants from Somalia. Ms. Kleeb herself, when she was the director of Bold Nebraska, one of those progressive groups, helped to block the Keystone XL pipeline not by talking about its climate impact but by joining with conservative ranchers who were outraged that the power of eminent domain had been granted to a foreign corporation. The problem with that strategy over time, Ms. Kleeb acknowledges now, is that voters often walked away confused. “They don’t even know where the Democratic Party stands,” she said.Without a Democratic counterbalance, Republican primaries now determine most state races in Nebraska, so candidates are pulled further and further to the right in order to appease and appeal to an increasingly radical and angry base. In this year’s governor’s race, for example, Mr. Herbster’s top competitor, Jim Pillen, would seem to check all of the appropriate boxes for a Republican nominee in Nebraska. He’s endorsed by the current governor, Pete Ricketts. He is one of the largest hog producers in the country. He even played football for the Nebraska Cornhuskers during the glory years under Tom Osborne, who later represented Nebraska’s Third Congressional District.But as Mr. Herbster’s poll numbers have surged, Mr. Pillen has veered to the right, attacking “liberal professor groups” (though he is a member and former chair of the University of Nebraska’s Board of Regents) and running TV ads with an endorsement from the comedian Larry the Cable Guy. Last week, he posted on Twitter that he was the “only candidate to take action against CRT,” the “only candidate willing to fight the radical transgender agenda” and the “only candidate willing to call abortion what it is — murder.” (A third major candidate, Brett Lindstrom, has struck a less strident tone but holds many of the same beliefs.)Donald Trump praised Mr. Herbster at a rally in Greenwood, Neb., on May 1.Terry Ratzlaff for The New York TimesThe crowd where Mr. Trump spoke.Terry Ratzlaff for The New York TimesEven with that hard-line rhetoric, it will be hard for Mr. Pillen to beat Mr. Herbster’s direct endorsement from Mr. Trump. Thursday night, after the tables and chairs had been put away at the Starlite Event Center, the Herbster campaign hosted a call-in “telerally” with Mr. Trump, in which Mr. Trump praised the businessman as “a die-hard MAGA champ” and guaranteed that Mr. Herbster would “never bend to the RINOs” — Republicans in name only — like “Little Ben Sasse,” Nebraska’s junior senator, and Representative Don Bacon, whom Mr. Trump derided as “another beauty.” During Mr. Trump’s presidency, Mr. Sasse voted with him 85 percent of the time. Mr. Bacon voted with him 89 percent of the time. But Mr. Trump has considered both to be insufficiently loyal to him personally, and their political futures may be in jeopardy as a result. If so, they will be replaced by politicians who are more brazen in their contempt for the Democratic Party and for democratic ideals. That’s why the outcome of Nebraska’s Republican governor’s primary is almost immaterial.Yes, whoever emerges with the nomination will most likely become the next governor. And it would appear that Mr. Herbster retains the inside track, thanks to Mr. Trump — just as the former president has buoyed Mehmet Oz and Herschel Walker to the top of their primary Senate races in Pennsylvania and Georgia and lifted J.D. Vance from a packed Republican field in the Senate primary in Ohio. But it doesn’t matter whether these candidates actually win or not, because their conspiratorial and inflammatory rhetoric has overtaken the discourse, pushing all Republican candidates further and further toward the fringe. Regardless of how the final balloting turns out in Nebraska on Tuesday, the real victor will be Donald Trump.Republican primaries now determine most state races in Nebraska.Terry Ratzlaff for The New York TimesTed Genoways (@TedGenoways) is the author, most recently, of “This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Family Farm.” Starting this fall, he will be a president’s professor of media studies at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma.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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      What We’re Watching For in the Nebraska and West Virginia Primaries

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      Republican voters in the two states will choose nominees for governor and the House in races that pit Trump-backed candidates against rivals supported by each state’s governor.Two states are holding primary elections on Tuesday. In one, Joe Biden couldn’t crack 40 percent of the vote in 2020; in the other, he couldn’t even get to 30 percent.You guessed it: Most of the action is on the Republican side.In West Virginia, two Republican incumbents are battling for a newly drawn congressional district. In Nebraska, the Republican primary for governor has become a dead heat among three candidates.Across the aisle in Nebraska, Democrats are preparing to take another crack at an Omaha-based House seat — one with particular national relevance, considering it’s the one congressional district in the state that gave Joe Biden an Electoral College vote in 2020.Here’s what we’re watching.Trump’s endorsement battles with sitting G.O.P. governors Because Nebraska and West Virginia are so deeply Republican, the winners of Tuesday’s Republican primaries will be heavily favored to win in the November general election. The results will probably decide whether acolytes of Donald Trump will be elected to Congress and state executive offices.“That’s why all the attention is on the primary,” said Sam Fischer, a Republican strategist in Nebraska.Trump notched a victory in Ohio last week when J.D. Vance surged to the top of a crowded Republican primary after being endorsed by the former president. On Tuesday, the power of a Trump endorsement will be put to the test again.But in Nebraska and West Virginia, two of the candidates who lack support from Trump have a different asset: an endorsement from the state’s current governor.Unlike in Ohio, where Gov. Mike DeWine declined to endorse a Senate candidate as he faced a primary challenge of his own, the Republican governors of Nebraska and West Virginia appear to have had few qualms about endorsing candidates overlooked by Trump. In fact, both leaders — Gov. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska and Gov. Jim Justice of West Virginia — have publicly criticized Trump’s endorsement decisions in their respective states.In Nebraska, Trump backed Charles Herbster, a wealthy owner of an agriculture company. Ricketts, the departing governor, is term-limited, and has not only thrown his support behind a different candidate — Jim Pillen, a University of Nebraska regent — but also publicly disparaged Herbster.In West Virginia, Governor Justice threw his support to Representative David McKinley in the state’s House race after Trump had endorsed Representative Alex Mooney. Justice recently said he thought Trump had made a mistake.Which is more important in G.O.P. races: The messenger or the message?In both West Virginia and Nebraska, the candidates endorsed by the governor have accused Trump’s picks of being outsiders.McKinley calls his Trump-backed opponent “Maryland Mooney,” drawing attention to the congressman’s past in the Maryland Legislature and in the Maryland Republican Party. Keeping with the “M” theme, Pillen has criticized his rival as “Missouri Millionaire Charles Herbster,” citing reports that Herbster has a residence in Missouri.But if the messenger is more important than the message, the candidates endorsed by Trump have the edge.Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist who has worked with Mitch McConnell and George W. Bush, said that with high Republican enthusiasm this year, he expected strong turnout, meaning that some voters who would normally turn out only during a presidential race — that is, when Trump is on the ticket — are likely to vote in the midterms.Those voters are some of Trump’s most loyal followers — and some of the most wary of any other politician, Jennings said.“These are the new Trump Republicans who came into the party with him, and these are the people least likely to care what an establishment or incumbent politician would say,” he said.Two Republican candidates for governor in Nebraska, Brett Lindstrom, left, and Jim Pillen, at an election forum in Lincoln.Justin Wan/Lincoln Journal Star, via Associated PressIn Nebraska, the feud between Herbster and Pillen might have an unintended consequence. While they compete to be the Trumpiest and most authentically local candidates, voters could tire of the political sniping and throw their support behind Brett Lindstrom, a state senator who is the third main contender.“The main question is, are Nebraska primary voters going to ignore the negative attacks by Herbster and Pillen?” said Fischer, the Republican strategist in the state. “And will Lindstrom benefit from that?”There would be precedent. In a Republican primary for Senate in Nebraska in 2012, Deb Fischer won a narrow race after a bitter battle between two other candidates. And in another G.O.P. Senate primary in Indiana in 2018, two of the state’s congressmen engaged in a prolonged feud stemming from college decades earlier. Exhausted voters went with the little-known Mike Braun, now the state’s junior senator.How much do sexual misconduct allegations matter in Republican primaries? While Herbster has the most prized asset in the primary — Trump’s endorsement — he also faces the most serious questions about his personal history. Two women, including a Republican state senator, have publicly accused him of groping them at a political event in 2019.Herbster has taken an approach long embraced by Trump, denying the allegations and calling them a political hit job by his detractors.How voters respond to the allegations could signal — at least in Nebraska — where the G.O.P. base stands in tolerating candidates accused of mistreating women.“If you can win with these allegations in Nebraska, you can probably win anywhere,” said Mike DuHaime, a Republican strategist. But if Herbster loses, DuHaime said, Trump can point to the allegations against him as the culprit, rather than the waning power of his endorsement.Later this year in Georgia, another Trump-endorsed candidate who has faced allegations of domestic violence, Herschel Walker, is running for Senate, though he does not face a competitive primary.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More