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      Sorting Out Blame in the Ukraine War

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      More from our inbox:‘Heart-Wrenching Testimony,’ but a Doomed Gun BillU.S. Inaction on Climate ChangeAn Insult to Poll WorkersUkrainian fighters of the Odin Unit, including some foreign fighters, survey a destroyed Russian tank in Irpin, Ukraine, in March.Daniel Berehulak for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “U.S. Helps Prolong Ukraine War” (Opinion guest essay, June 4):Christopher Caldwell essentially suggests that Russia has a claim to Crimea, that the U.S. should have let the Russians seize Ukraine to reduce destruction and loss of life, and that calling Vladimir Putin a war criminal made him commit more war crimes.This nonsensical self-flagellation ignores the prior Russian attacks on Georgia and the Donbas region of Ukraine, and the history of Mr. Putin’s desire to restore the U.S.S.R., at least geographically.Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for protection. Allowing the country to be ripped apart is morally corrupt and emboldens countries like Russia, and possibly China (regarding Taiwan) and others, by demonstrating that there are few real consequences to seizing territory.David J. MelvinChester, N.J.To the Editor:Christopher Caldwell is mistaken in blaming the United States for prolonging the war by sending advanced weapons to the Ukrainian military. The real responsibility for extending this conflict lies not with the U.S. but with the Ukrainians themselves.They have decided that it is better to suffer death and destruction than to succumb to a Russian effort to destroy their independence and freedom. In so doing, they have earned much of the world’s admiration while dealing a grievous blow to the cause of autocracies everywhere.Rather than “sleepwalking” into a conflict with Russia, America is enabling a brave people to take a stand against aggression now, making it less likely that the U.S. would have to face a far more costly war in the future.Steven R. DavidBaltimoreThe writer is a professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University.To the Editor:Christopher Caldwell writes most convincingly that prolonging the war in Ukraine is a recipe for disaster. With the United States fueling the war with weapons and logistics, Ukrainians are duped into thinking they can win.As Mr. Caldwell observes, U.S. policy has only resulted in thousands more deaths. If the Biden administration is to do the right thing, it will start by acknowledging the truths of Mr. Caldwell’s words.Jerome DonnellyWinter Park, Fla.‘Heart-Wrenching Testimony,’ but a Doomed Gun BillMiah Cerrillo, a fourth grader who survived the carnage in Uvalde by covering herself in a classmate’s blood and pretending to be dead, shared her ordeal in a prerecorded video.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “House Passes Bill to Impose Limits on Sales of Guns” (front page, June 9):So the House has passed a modest bill that seeks to stop ready access of weapons of war to people too young to drink, and it faces almost certain defeat in the Senate.It is my fervent hope that the doomed Senate vote is shown on prime-time television. Americans need to see how their senators vote; senators need to be held to account. Next time there is a mass shooting, and there will be a next time, we will know exactly who was complicit.Remember, America, we can change this. We are greater in number and influence than the N.R.A.Christine ThomaBasking Ridge, N.J.To the Editor:As I listened to the heart-wrenching testimony of the latest victims of gun violence, my thoughts turned to my energetic 21-month-old granddaughter. Not yet old enough for school, she has her whole life ahead of her, filled with birthdays, graduations, college, a career and, if she chooses, marriage and children.I’m 68 years old, and I’ll not likely live long enough to celebrate all of these milestones. My only question is: Will she?Robert D. RauchQueensTo the Editor:Re “Man With Pistol, Crowbar and Zip Ties Is Arrested Near Kavanaugh’s Home” (news article, June 9):The contrast is striking. A Supreme Court justice is threatened, but safe, and Mitch McConnell urges Congress to pass a bill to protect justices “before the sun sets today.”The same day, families of gun violence tell of personal tragedies that will never fade, children’s lives lost, and yet nothing but platitudes from the Republicans.Peter MandelsonBarrington, R.I.U.S. Inaction on Climate Change Ritzau Scanpix/Via ReutersTo the Editor:Re “Trump’s Policies Held Back U.S. in Climate Ranking” (news article, May 31):You report that the United States has moved from 15th to 101st place in the climate metrics used in the Environmental Performance Index, thanks to the refusal by Donald Trump and the Republicans to take action on climate change. Out of 177 nations we rank 101st.As a result we risk cities flooding, unprecedented heat waves, terrifying storms, widespread water shortages, the extinction of a million species of plants and animals, and severe food shortages.What is wrong with our country, our government leadership and our people? The window to avert catastrophic climate change is quickly closing. Look around you!Is it going to take huge amounts of human tragedy for us to act?Lena G. FrenchPasadena, Calif.An Insult to Poll WorkersElection workers in Philadelphia sorting through ballots the day after Election Day in 2020.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Continuing Republican claims of widespread voter fraud are insults to the honest, hard-working poll workers and volunteers who know the procedures and observe the laws that ensure that ballots are valid and counted properly.Those insults should be met with outrage, not only from those workers but also from the American public at large.David M. BehrmanHouston More

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      The Insurrection Didn’t End on Jan. 6. The Hearings Need to Prove That.

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      The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol begins its hearings tonight for the American public, hoping to shine a spotlight on the discoveries from its months of painstaking inquiry. How should we measure success?As veterans of congressional and other official misconduct investigations, we will be watching for whether the committee persuades the American people that the insurrection didn’t end on Jan. 6, 2021, but continues, in places all across the country; motivates Americans to fight back in the midterm elections; and, if warranted, encourages prosecutors to bring charges against those who may have committed crimes, up to and including former President Donald Trump.The future of our democracy may well depend on the achievement of these objectives.First, the committee must use the televised hearings to emphasize to viewers that Jan. 6 was but one battle in a wider war against American democracy. Yes, there are gaping holes that remain to be filled in on the events of the day itself, like Mr. Trump’s 187-minute refusal to intervene while the mob was violently attacking the Capitol and the 457-minute gap in White House phone records. But the hearings must widen the scope to a larger narrative that begins in the run-up to the insurrection and continues in its long aftermath.The through-line of that narrative runs roughly from Mr. Trump’s declaration in August 2020 that the election could be “the greatest fraud in history” to his attacks through misinformation and spurious lawsuits on a fair election and his exhortation to his supporters to march to the Capitol on Jan. 6 and continues in the scores of “Big Lie”-driven bills and midterm candidates roiling American politics from coast to coast.The committee enjoys an advantage for its presentation: the absence of Republicans like Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz, who have too often brought a circus atmosphere to House hearings. Mr. Jordan was barred from serving by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, when the committee was being formed, and House Republican leadership subsequently boycotted broader representation. Fortunately, two Republicans are serving — Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. A bipartisan, unified committee will ensure that the drama will come from the story itself rather than the shenanigans of some committee members.The hearings must also inspire action. In this setting, that would normally mean triggering legislative reforms. After Watergate, Congress passed new laws as safeguards against systemic abuse. But with today’s politics, new bills are unlikely to see broad support. The committee must navigate around that logjam — and explain that the Big Lie is still going strong and motivate Americans to defeat it at the ballot box.Just last week, in Pennsylvania, Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Trump-endorsed election skeptic, became the Republican Senate nominee. If he becomes the deciding vote in a closely divided Senate, that will not bode well for reform legislation to prevent election sabotage — and for honest certification of future presidential electors.In Pennsylvania, Dr. Oz will actually be the less intense “Stop the Steal” Republican candidate. Doug Mastriano, who was a leader in efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state (and was subpoenaed by the committee), won the Republican primary for governor. Across the country, Mr. Trump has endorsed over 180 Republican candidates, most of whom have supported his false stolen-election claims. This year, they have, in effect, set up a counternarrative to the committee’s work.To elucidate the threat to democracy, the committee doesn’t need to wade into overt electioneering. It simply needs to maintain a relentless focus on the continuing threat of the Big Lie.The committee can do that without sacrificing bipartisanship and by maintaining objectivity because no party has a monopoly on pro-democracy candidates, as proved by the officials of both parties who came together to defend democracy in 2020. In other nations where democracy has been threatened, leaders of widely varying ideologies have set aside partisanship and joined forces against illiberalism. The bipartisan committee and other Democrats and Republicans must make clear the larger stakes represented by Mr. Trump’s election-denying allies.Finally, the hearings should compile and make accessible as much evidence as it can to aid federal and state prosecutors who might bring charges against possible wrongdoers. Ultimately, it’s up to those prosecutors — most prominently at the Justice Department and in Fulton County, Ga. — to act on the evidence. But the committee can motivate and support them. Hearings that develop a coherent, grounded and galvanizing narrative necessary for a successful prosecution will help prosecutors, as well as the media and the public, to understand any possible crimes.If the evidence warrants it, the committee should not shy away from transmitting criminal referrals. Alternatively, it could share a Watergate-style “road map” that could serve as a guide to the evidence without drawing legal conclusions. Congress has amassed a mountain of information over the course of its investigation — which includes taking over 1,000 depositions — and prosecutors should benefit from that.The ultimate success of the committee rests on whether it uses the hearings to build a partnership with American voters to see the truth of what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, and what is still happening.Norman Eisen served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first Trump impeachment. E. Danya Perry is a former federal prosecutor and a New York State corruption investigator.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Trump and Unreleased Video Expected to Be Focus of First Jan 6. Hearing

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      The House panel investigating the attack will lead its public sessions with video testimony from people close to the former president and footage revealing the role of the Proud Boys.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol plans to open a landmark series of public hearings on Thursday by playing previously unreleased video of former President Donald J. Trump’s top aides and family members testifying before its staff, as well as footage revealing the role of the Proud Boys, a right-wing extremist group, in the assault.Committee aides say the evidence will show that Mr. Trump was at the center of a “coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election” that resulted in a mob of his supporters storming the halls of Congress and disrupting the official electoral count that is a pivotal step in the peaceful transfer of presidential power.The 8 p.m. hearing is the first in a series of six planned for this month, during which the panel will lay out for Americans the full magnitude and significance of Mr. Trump’s systematic drive to invalidate the 2020 election and remain in power.“We’ll demonstrate the multipronged effort to overturn a presidential election, how one strategy to subvert the election led to another, culminating in a violent attack on our democracy,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and a member of the committee. “It’s an important story, and one that must be told to ensure it never happens again.”The prime-time hearing will feature live testimony from a documentary filmmaker, Nick Quested, who was embedded with the Proud Boys during the attack, and a Capitol Police officer, Caroline Edwards, who was injured as rioters breached barricades and stormed into the building.The committee also plans to present what aides called a small but “meaningful” portion of the recorded interviews its investigators conducted with more than 1,000 witnesses, including senior Trump White House officials, campaign officials and Mr. Trump’s family members.Mr. Trump’s elder daughter Ivanka Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his son Donald Trump Jr. are among the high-profile witnesses who have testified before the panel.Mr. Quested, a British documentarian who has worked in war zones such as Afghanistan, spent a good deal of the postelection period filming members of the Proud Boys, including the group’s former chairman, Enrique Tarrio, who has been charged with seditious conspiracy in connection with the Capitol riot. Mr. Quested accompanied the Proud Boys to pro-Trump rallies in Washington in November and December 2020 and was on the ground with members of the group on Jan. 6, when several played a crucial role in breaching the Capitol.Mr. Quested was also present with a camera crew on the day before the attack, when Mr. Tarrio met in an underground parking garage near the Capitol with a small group of pro-Trump activists, including Stewart Rhodes, the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers militia. Late in the day on Jan. 6, Mr. Quested and his crew were with Mr. Tarrio in Baltimore, filming him as he responded in real time to news about the riot.Ms. Edwards, a well-respected Capitol Police officer, is believed to be the first officer injured in the attack, when she sustained a concussion during an assault at a barricade at the base of Capitol Hill. A man who has been charged with taking part in the assault, Ryan Samsel, told the F.B.I. during an interview more than a year ago that just before he approached the barricade, a high-ranking member of the Proud Boys, Joseph Biggs, had encouraged him to confront the police.Other officers around the building recall hearing Officer Edwards calling for help over the radio — one of the first signs that mob violence was beginning to overrun the police presence. Months after the attack, she continued to have fainting spells believed to be connected to her injuries.A committee aide said Mr. Quested and Officer Edwards would describe their experiences, including “what they saw and heard from the rioters who tried to occupy the Capitol and tried to stop the transfer of power.”The committee’s investigators believe Mr. Quested overheard conversations among the Proud Boys during the planning for Jan. 6.Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the committee chairman, and Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the vice chairwoman, are expected to lead the presentation of the panel’s evidence and question the witnesses.The session will kick off an ambitious effort by the committee, which was formed in July after Republicans blocked the creation of a nonpartisan commission to investigate the attack, to lay out for Americans the full story of an unprecedented assault on U.S. democracy that led to a deadly riot, an impeachment and a crisis of confidence in the political system that continues to reverberate.The hearings are unfolding five months before midterm elections in which the Democrats’ majority is at stake, at a time when they are eager to draw a sharp contrast between themselves and the Republicans who enabled and embraced Mr. Trump, including the members of Congress who abetted his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Other hearings are expected to focus on various aspects of the committee’s investigation, including Mr. Trump’s promotion of the lie that the election had been stolen, despite being told his claims were false; his attempts to misuse the Justice Department to help him cling to power; a pressure campaign on Vice President Mike Pence to throw out legitimate electoral votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr.; the way the mob was assembled, and how it descended on Washington on Jan. 6; and the fact that Mr. Trump did nothing to stop the violence for more than three hours while the assault was underway.The Jan. 6 panel has not yet committed to the full slate of witnesses for the six televised hearings, and it is still discussing the possibility of public testimony with several prominent Trump-era officials.Among the witnesses the committee has formally approached to testify next week are Jeffrey A. Rosen, the former acting attorney general, and Richard P. Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, according to two people briefed on the matter.Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue have told multiple congressional committees that Mr. Trump and his allies pressured the department to falsely say that it had found voter fraud and to use its power to undo the election results. Last May, Mr. Rosen took part in a public hearing of the House Oversight and Reform Committee on events leading up to the assault on the Capitol.The Jan. 6 committee is still in informal talks with Pat A. Cipollone, the former White House Counsel, as well as Byung J. Pak, the former U.S. attorney in Atlanta, who abruptly resigned on Jan. 4, 2021, after learning that Mr. Trump planned to fire him for not finding voter fraud, according to those people familiar with the discussions.Mr. Cipollone would be able to speak on a range of issues, including Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department and his unwillingness to accept the results of the election, despite the fact that officials time and again failed to uncover fraud.Mr. Pak could have information pertaining to Georgia, a battleground state that Mr. Trump was particularly fixated on.Alan Feuer More

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      Jan. 6 Inquiry Votes Aren’t Costing G.O.P. Incumbents in Primaries, Yet

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      When 35 Republicans defied Donald J. Trump to vote in favor of an independent, bipartisan investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, they immediately braced for backlash from the former president’s most loyal voters.But it hasn’t quite hit as hard as expected — at least not yet.Only one of the 35 has lost a primary challenge, while least 10 of the 13 incumbents in contested races had survived primary challenges as of Wednesday. (Nine of the 35 who voted for the panel opted to retire or have resigned.)The fate of two incumbents whose races had elections on Tuesday still has not been determined, with Representative David Valadao of California expected to advance to the November election after appearing to finish second in Tuesday’s open primary and Representative Michael Guest of Mississippi being pushed into a June 28 runoff after narrowly trailing Michael Cassidy.The lone casualty so far has been Representative David McKinley of West Virginia, who lost a May primary to Representative Alex Mooney, a Republican colleague who had been endorsed by Mr. Trump in the newly drawn Second District. Their districts were consolidated after West Virginia lost a seat in the House because of the state’s declining population.There are plenty of high-profile opportunities for Mr. Trump in the months ahead to settle scores with Republicans who voted for the plan to form the independent commission, a proposal that ultimately died in the Senate. A House committee that is investigating the riot at the Capitol will hold a televised hearing in prime time on Thursday.Here are some key races involving Republicans who voted for a commission:In Wyoming, Representative Liz Cheney was ousted last year from her House leadership post and punished by Republicans in her home state after voting to impeach Mr. Trump for his role in the Capitol attack. She will face Harriet Hageman, a Trump-endorsed challenger, in an Aug. 16 primary that is drawing national attention.In South Carolina, Representative Tom Rice is fighting for his survival in a seven-way primary that features Russell Fry, a state legislator who was endorsed by Mr. Trump. Mr. Rice also voted for impeachment and said he was willing to stake his political career on that position.In Michigan, where Mr. Trump’s attempts to domineer the Republican Party have encountered some notable setbacks, Representative Peter Meijer has drawn the wrath of the former president. Calling Mr. Meijer a “RINO” — a Republican in name only — Mr. Trump endorsed John Gibbs, the conservative challenger to Mr. Meijer in the Aug. 2 primary.As a result of redistricting in Illinois, Representative Rodney Davis is locked in a primary battle with Representative Mary Miller, a House colleague who has been endorsed by Mr. Trump. The primary is June 28. Ms. Miller was one of 175 Republicans who voted against the commission in the House, which is controlled by Democrats.In Florida, the pro-Trump America First political committee named Representative Carlos Gimenez as its “top target for removal from Congress.” Mr. Gimenez will face two challengers in the Aug. 23 primary, including Ruth Swanson, who has said that the 2020 election was “thrown” and has contributed campaign funds to Project Veritas, the conservative group. More

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      6 Takeaways From Tuesday’s Elections

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      For the most part on Tuesday, primary voters in seven states from New Jersey to California showed the limits of the ideological edges of both parties.A liberal district attorney, Chesa Boudin, was recalled in the most progressive of cities, San Francisco, but conservative candidates carrying the banner of former President Donald J. Trump did not fare well, either.For all the talk of sweeping away the old order, Tuesday’s primaries largely saw the establishment striking back. Here are some takeaways.California called for order.Wracked by the pandemic, littered with tent camps, frightened by smash-and-grab robberies and anti-Asian-American hate crimes, voters in two of the most progressive cities sent a message on Tuesday: Restore stability.In Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest city, Rick Caruso, a billionaire former Republican who rose to prominence on the city’s police commission, blanketed the city with ads promising to crack down on crime if elected mayor.His chief opponent, Karen Bass, a veteran Democratic congresswoman, argued that public safety and criminal justice reform were not mutually exclusive, and disappointed some liberal supporters by calling to put more police officers on the street. The two are headed for a November mayoral runoff.Rick Caruso with supporters at his election night event Tuesday in Los Angeles.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesAnd in San Francisco, voters who were once moved by Chesa Boudin’s plans as district attorney to reduce the number of people sent to prison ran out of patience with seemingly unchecked property crime, violent attacks on elderly residents and open drug use during the pandemic. They recalled him.Statewide, the Democratic attorney general, Rob Bonta, advanced easily to the general election runoff. Mr. Bonta is a progressive, but was careful to stress that criminal justice reform and public safety were both priorities.The choices seemed to signal a shift to the center that was likely to reverberate through Democratic politics across the nation. But longtime California political observers said the message was less about ideology than about effective action. “This is about competence,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, who served in local government in Los Angeles for nearly four decades and is now the director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles.“People want solutions,” he said. “They don’t give a damn about left or right. It’s the common-sense problem-solving they seem to be missing. Government is supposed to take care of the basics, and the public believes the government hasn’t been doing that.”For House Republicans, the Jan. 6 commission vote still matters.In May 2021, 35 House Republicans voted for an independent, bipartisan commission to look at the events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.At first blush, the vote should not have mattered much: The legislation creating the commission was negotiated by the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, John Katko of New York, with the blessing of the Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy of California. Besides, the commission was filibustered by Republicans in the Senate and went nowhere.Representative Michael Guest voting on Tuesday in Brandon, Miss.Hannah Mattix/The Clarion-Ledger, via Associated PressBut Tuesday’s primaries showed that the vote still mattered. In Mississippi, Representative Michael Guest, one of the 35, was forced into a June 28 runoff with Michael Cassidy, who ran as the “pro-Trump” Republican and castigated the incumbent for voting for the commission. In South Dakota, Representative Dusty Johnson, another one of the 35, faced similar attacks but still mustered 60 percent of the vote.In California, Representative David Valadao, who also voted for the commission, struggled to keep pace with his Democratic challenger, State Assemblyman Rudy Salas, as a Republican rival, Chris Mathys, took votes from his supporters on the right.In all, now, 10 of the 35 will not be back in the House next year, either because they resigned, retired or were defeated in primaries. And more are likely to fall in the coming weeks.In New Jersey, it is all about name recognition.In New Jersey on Tuesday, two familiar names won their party nominations to run for the House in November: for the Republicans, Thomas Kean Jr., the son and namesake of a popular former governor; for the Democrats, Robert Menendez, son and namesake of the sitting senator.Robert Menendez Jr. with voters in West New York, N.J., last week.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesMr. Menendez goes into the general election the heavy favorite to win New Jersey’s heavily Democratic Eighth Congressional District and take the seat of Albio Sires, who is retiring.The younger Mr. Kean has a good shot, too. He narrowly lost in 2020 to the incumbent Democrat, Representative Tom Malinowski, but new district lines tilted the seat toward the Republicans, and Mr. Malinowski has faced criticism for his failure to disclose stock trades in compliance with a recently enacted ethics law.MAGA only gets you so far.Candidates from the Trump flank of the Republican Party could have done some real damage to the prospects of a so-called red wave in November, but with the votes still being counted, far-right candidates in swing districts did not fare so well.National Republicans rushed in to shore up support for a freshman representative, Young Kim, whose narrowly divided Southern California district would have been very difficult to defend, had her right-wing challenger, Greg Raths, secured the G.O.P.’s spot on the ballot. It looked as though that would not happen.In Iowa’s Third Congressional District, establishment Republicans got the candidate they wanted to take on Representative Cindy Axne in State Senator Zach Nunn, who easily beat out Nicole Hasso, part of a new breed of conservative Black Republicans who have made social issues like opposing “critical race theory” central to their political identity.And if Mr. Valadao hangs on to make the November ballot for California’s 22nd Congressional District, he will have vanquished a candidate on his right who made Mr. Valadao’s vote to impeach Mr. Trump central to his campaign.Ethics matter.Two primary candidates entered Republican primaries on Tuesday with ethical clouds hanging over their heads: Representative Steven Palazzo in Mississippi and Ryan Zinke in Montana.In 2021, the Office of Congressional Ethics released a report that said Mr. Palazzo had used campaign funds to pay himself and his wife at the time nearly $200,000. He reportedly used the cash to make improvements on a riverside property that he was hoping to sell. Voters in Mississippi’s Fourth District gave him only about 32 percent of the vote, forcing him into a runoff on June 28.Former Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke with voters in Butte, Mont., last month.,Matthew Brown/Associated PressMr. Zinke left what was then Montana’s only House seat in 2017 to become Mr. Trump’s first interior secretary. He departed that post in 2019 with a number of ethics investigations examining possible conflicts of interest and questionable expenditures of taxpayer funds. Still, when Mr. Zinke declared to run for Montana’s new First District, he was widely expected to waltz back to the House.Instead, he was in an extremely tight race with Dr. Al Olszewski, an orthopedic surgeon and former state senator who had come in a distant third when he tried to run for his party nomination for governor in 2020, and fourth when he vied for the Republican nomination to run for the Senate in 2018.If at first you don’t succeed …Dr. Olszewski may not win, but his improved performance could be an inspiration to other past losers. The same goes for Michael Franken, a retired admiral who on Tuesday won the Democratic nomination to challenge Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa in November.Mr. Franken has the résumé for politics: He is an Iowa native and led a remarkable career in the Navy. But losing often begets more losing, and in 2020, he came in a distant second to Theresa Greenfield for the Democratic nod to take on Senator Joni Ernst.Ms. Greenfield was defeated that November, and for all his tales of triumph over past adversity, Mr. Franken is likely to face the same fate this fall. Mr. Grassley will be 89 by then, but Iowans are used to pulling the lever for the senator, who has held his seat since 1981. Despite Mr. Grassley’s age, the seat is considered safely Republican. More

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      Who won and who lost in Tuesday’s primary elections.

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      Voters in seven states weighed in on key contests in Tuesday’s primaries. Here is a rundown of some of the most notable wins and losses:CaliforniaSan Francisco recalled its progressive district attorney, Chesa Boudin. Mr. Boudin had enacted sweeping overhauls since being elected two years ago and faced criticism that those changes led to increases in crime.Rick Caruso, the billionaire developer, and Representative Karen Bass will square off in a runoff contest to be the mayor of Los Angeles.Gov. Gavin Newsom, who last year easily beat back a Republican-led recall effort, will face State Senator Brian Dahle, a Republican.Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, will advance to the November runoff after his first place finish in the open primary for that office. A second candidate has not been determined yet.Representative Michelle Steel, a freshman Republican, will face Jay Chen, a Democrat and Navy reservist.Scott Baugh, a former leader of the California Assembly, fended off a crowded Republican field on Tuesday to earn the right to challenge Representative Katie Porter.Representative Mike Garcia, a Republican, will face Christy Smith, a former Democratic state legislator, for the third time.Kevin Kiley, a Republican state legislator backed by former President Donald J. Trump, will compete against the Democrat, Kermit Jones, who is a Navy veteran and physician, in the Third Congressional District.New JerseyRobert J. Menendez Jr., the son of Senator Bob Menendez, won his House Democratic primary in the Eighth Congressional District.Tom Kean Jr., a former lawmaker and the son of a two-term New Jersey governor, won the Republican nomination in the state’s Seventh Congressional District. He now faces Representative Tom Malinowski, the Democratic incumbent.IowaSenator Charles E. Grassley, 88, easily won his primary race and will run against Mike Franken, a retired Navy admiral who won the Democratic primary for Senate.State Senator Zach Nunn won the Republican nomination for Iowa’s Third Congressional District. Mr. Nunn will face Representative Cindy Axne, the Democratic incumbent.New MexicoMark Ronchetti, a former Albuquerque television meteorologist, was the Republican’s pick to challenge Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat.Gabe Vasquez, a Las Cruces city councilor, won the Democratic nomination for New Mexico’s Second Congressional District. Mr. Vasquez will face Representative Yvette Herrell, the Republican incumbent.Raúl Torrez, the Bernalillo County district attorney, defeated Brian Colón, the state auditor, in the Democratic primary for attorney general.South DakotaVoters defeated an effort to increase the level of support needed to pass most voter-initiated referendums to 60 percent from a majority.Gov. Kristi Noem won her Republican primary, and so did Senator John Thune.MississippiRepresentative Steven Palazzo, a Republican facing an ethics investigation, was forced into a runoff election in his party’s primary, according to The Associated Press. It has not yet been announced who he will face later this month. More

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      Jan. 6 Hearings Give Democrats a Chance to Recast Midterm Message

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      With their majority at stake, Democrats plan to use the six high-profile hearings to refocus voters’ attention on Republicans’ role in the attack.WASHINGTON — Seventeen months after a mob of Donald J. Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol with false claims of a stolen election, House Democrats plan to use a landmark set of investigative hearings beginning this week to try to refocus voters’ attention on Jan. 6, aiming to tie Republicans directly to an unprecedented plot to undermine democracy itself.With their control of Congress hanging in the balance, Democrats plan to use made-for-television moments and a carefully choreographed rollout of revelations over the course of six hearings to remind the public of the magnitude of Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the election, and to persuade voters that the coming midterm elections are a chance to hold Republicans accountable for it.It is an uphill battle at a time when polls show that voters’ attention is focused elsewhere, including on inflation, rising coronavirus cases and record-high gas prices. But Democrats argue the hearings will give them a platform for making a broader case about why they deserve to stay in power.“When these hearings are over, voters will know how irresponsibly complicit Republicans were in attempting to toss out their vote and just how far Republicans will go to gain power for themselves,” said Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, the Democratic campaign chair.The select committee investigating the attack, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, says it has approached its work in a sober, apolitical manner and will present its findings as such. But it is clear that the hearings, coming five months before midterm elections in which Democrats are bracing for big losses, carry high political stakes.The hope among Democrats is that the committee’s findings, collected from 1,000 witnesses and over 140,000 documents, will do most of the messaging work for them. Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the committee, has promised the hearings will “blow the roof off the House.”They have retained an experienced television executive to ensure that happens and organized scores of watch parties across the country in hopes of generating interest. But they are facing an onslaught from Republicans who are bent on denying, downplaying and obfuscating the truth of what happened in their own messaging operation aimed at discrediting the inquiry.And Democrats are up against the reality that the raw emotions in the aftermath of the attack have faded, even among voters who care about the facts, as attention has turned to an ongoing war in Ukraine, gun violence at home and a deep pessimism about the state of the economy.Their task is to persuade voters that the Jan. 6 attack revealed bigger and more important issues at stake, including the Republican Party’s alignment with violent extremists and its decision to make adherence to the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen a test of membership.Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, said on Twitter that the hearings would “fully expose the cult’s extreme effort to overthrow the U.S. government.”A significant portion of the first hearing on Thursday evening will focus on the Proud Boys, a far-right group whose members have been charged with seditious conspiracy in connection with the storming of the Capitol, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke about it on the condition of anonymity.It is scheduled to include testimony from a documentary filmmaker, Nick Quested, who was embedded with the group during the storming of the building, and a Capitol Police officer, Caroline Edwards, who was injured in an assault said to be triggered by the Proud Boys.The goal is to provide the public with a more in-depth portrait of what unfolded on Jan. 6 than the images that played out on television that day, and to reveal the extent of what the panel called a “coordinated, multistep effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and prevent the transfer of power.”Norman L. Eisen, who was hired by the Judiciary Committee to serve as special counsel during the first Trump impeachment, said Democrats had learned from some of their successes and misfires during those hearings, but still faced challenges.“They need to have three things: the attention-grabbing power of new evidence, the spontaneous drama created by live witnesses and the oldest trick in the book: telling a good story,” Mr. Eisen said. “The risk is, there’s an enormous amount of anticipation and buildup.”Still, some Democratic operatives believe the political payoff could be substantial, both in energizing the party’s core supporters and in appealing to independent voters who may turn against Republicans based on what they see and hear.Anat Shenker-Osorio, the founder of ASO Communications, a progressive political consulting firm, has been conducting focus groups with voters. She said both Democratic “base surge voters” and “swing voters” were motivated by increased attention on the Capitol riot.“Jan. 6 is very much salient and highly negative to these likely midterm voters,” Ms. Shenker-Osorio told activists on a recent call promoting the hearings.Democrats have met with networks about carrying the hearing live in prime time. Activists have scheduled more than 90 watch events in various states, including a “flagship” event at the Robert A. Taft Memorial and Carillon in Washington, where a large screen will be set up and attendees will get free ice cream.“It’s everything from a family-gathering-in-the-living-room-type event to hosting it in a union hall to hosting it on a big field with a Jumbotron,” said Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of the progressive group Public Citizen.In an attempt to keep the hearing from becoming too dry and disconnected from the visceral reality of the attack, the committee is tentatively planning to play video of the Capitol attack and considering airing clips of key testimony from high-profile witnesses, such as the former White House advisers Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.As it tries to deliver the equivalent of the Watergate hearings for the streaming era, the committee has brought on the former president of ABC News, James Goldston, a move reported earlier by Axios, to help fit the hearings into six tight episodes, running between 90 minutes and 2.5 hours.The committee has brought on the former president of ABC News, James Goldston, to help create six tight episodes from the hearings.Bennett Raglin/Getty ImagesRepublican lawmakers have already begun pushing a counternarrative to dismiss the hearings as nothing more than political theater at a moment when Americans are more concerned with kitchen-table issues like the rising price of gas and a baby formula shortage.“Instead of focusing on $5 gas, 6,000 illegal immigrants a day, record fentanyl deaths, or the violent criminals terrorizing America democrats use taxpayer money on a TV producer for the prime time political infomercial from the Jan 6th circus,” Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said on Twitter on Monday.Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, the No. 3 Republican who was Mr. Trump’s chief defender during the first impeachment hearing, will oversee the effort to discredit the committee’s findings, coordinating with Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, and Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee. They plan to book Republican lawmakers on television to push a debunked claim that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is to blame for the attack.Representative Elise Stefanik, who emerged as Mr. Trump’s chief defender during the first impeachment hearing, has begun referring to the committee’s work as a “political sham witch hunt.”Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMs. Stefanik has begun referring to the committee’s work as a “political sham witch hunt,” echoing the same language Mr. Trump used to try to undermine Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. A person familiar with Republican plans said they also had a “rapid response” operation to try to counter the committee’s revelations.The hearings are expected to flesh out various aspects of the investigation, including Mr. Trump’s promotion of a lie of a stolen election, despite being told his claims were false; his attempts to misuse the Justice Department to cling to power; the pressure campaign on Vice President Mike Pence to persuade him to throw out electoral votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr.; how the mob assembled and descended onto D.C. on Jan. 6; and how Mr. Trump did nothing to stop the violence for more than three hours while the assault was underway.The Jan. 6 committee is tentatively planning to play video of the Capitol attack and considering airing clips of key testimony from high-profile witnesses.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesThe committee has not yet nailed down the full slate of witnesses and is still discussing the possibility of public testimony with several high-profile Trump-era officials.The panel is waiting for Jeffrey A. Rosen, the former acting attorney general, and Richard P. Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, to respond to formal requests to testify, according to two people briefed on the matter.Both Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue have already told multiple congressional committees that Mr. Trump and his allies pressured the department to say falsely that it had found voter fraud and to use its power to undo the results.The committee is still in informal talks with Pat A. Cipollone, the former White House counsel, as well as Byung J. Pak, the former U.S. attorney in Atlanta who abruptly resigned on Jan. 4, 2021, after learning that Mr. Trump planned to fire him for not finding voter fraud, according to those people familiar with the discussions.Katie Benner More

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      Iowa: How to Vote, Where to Vote and What’s on the Ballot

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      Senator Charles E. Grassley, at 88 years old, is standing for re-election, as is Representative Cindy Axne. Here’s what to know about voting in today’s primary elections in Iowa:How to voteThe deadline to request an absentee ballot was about two weeks ago (here’s the form). You can track the status of your absentee ballot on this site.Iowa permits people to register to vote on Election Day. Just go to your polling place with proof of ID and proof of residence. If you do not have the documents election officials require, “a registered voter from your precinct may attest for you,” according to the website for Iowa’s secretary of state. Look up whether you are already registered here.Where to voteYou can look up your polling location here. If you voted by mail, your ballot will be counted as long as it is received by officials before 8 p.m. local time on Election Day (which is also when polls close), or hand-delivered to your county auditor by that deadline.What’s on the ballotYou’ll be asked to pick candidates for U.S. Senate, as well as local offices. (Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, and Diedre DeJear, the Democratic nominee for governor, are not facing primary challenges.) Enter your address on this website to see what else is on your ballot today. More