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      Why Rick Scott and Mitch McConnell Are Feuding Over Midterm Elections

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      Senator Rick Scott has an 11-point plan to “rescue America.” Senator Mitch McConnell would rather he not.Republican insiders have long worried that they could blow a golden opportunity to retake the Senate this year. And while most are confident that a red wave will still wash enough of their candidates ashore in November to win a majority, some doubt occasionally creeps in.The latest reason: an ongoing disagreement between two of the top Republicans in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, and Rick Scott, the leader of the party’s campaign arm. At issue is the “11-Point Plan to Rescue America” that Scott has presented as a platform for the midterms, and that McConnell has emphatically rejected.And while Scott has said that the plan is just his opinion, developed using his own campaign funds, Democrats have been all too happy to pin its provisions on the Republican Party writ large.They’ve seized on one bullet point in particular, which reads: “All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount. Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax.” That idea polls badly, according to Morning Consult, though other provisions of Scott’s plan are popular.On Thursday, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee paid for a truck-mounted billboard to troll Senate Republicans during their one-day retreat. “Senate Republicans’ Plan: Raise Your Taxes,” the billboard read.Never mind that McConnell has brushed back Scott, telling reporters at the Capitol last week, “We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people, and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years. That will not be part of a Republican Senate majority agenda. We will focus instead on what the American people are concerned about: inflation, energy, defense, the border and crime.”McConnell also made it clear who was in charge. “If we’re fortunate enough to have the majority next year, I’ll be the majority leader,” he said. “I’ll decide, in consultation with my members, what to put on the floor.”Scott defended himself last week in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, saying his plan had “hit a nerve” with Washington elites, whom he accused of misleading voters about the sustainability of federal deficits and entitlement programs.“Part of the deception is achieved by disconnecting so many Americans from taxation,” he wrote. “It’s a genius political move. And it is bankrupting us.”Scott’s plan has some powerful backers, including the Heritage Foundation, which plans to host him for an event later this month. The think tank has long advocated “broadening the base,” the preferred term on the right for increasing the number of Americans who are subject to taxation.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the 2022 election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.“Conservatives in this country are demanding an ambitious, conservative agenda,” said Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation. “Therefore, it excites us to see members talking that way.”Democrats dust off a playbookScott’s plan is a fortuitous turn of events for Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, Democrats say.“Chuck, I’m sure, is salivating,” said Jim Kessler, a former Schumer aide who is now an executive vice president at Third Way, a center-left think tank.In the first sentence of a letter to his Senate colleagues this week, Schumer wrote, “As Senate Republicans debate their plan to increase taxes on millions of working Americans, Senate Democrats have focused on ways to get rising prices under control to help working families.”Senate Democrats are considering holding hearings, and possibly a series of votes, to highlight Scott’s plan and to force Republicans to take uncomfortable positions on it.It’s a playbook that Schumer has run before. In 1995, as a member of the House representing New York, he used Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” to accuse Republicans of trying to force cuts in popular spending programs. Gingrich, who became the speaker of the House in 1995 — either because or despite that plan, depending on whom you ask — has embraced Scott’s platform.“That was probably the first thing that Chuck did that showed him as a national political leader,” recalled Kessler. With Scott’s plan, he said of Schumer, “I’m sure he sees it and says to himself, ‘I’ve taken this apart before.’”Privately, Democrats are realistic about their chances of hanging onto the Senate, and say they must seize the “gift” Scott has given them to force Republicans onto the defensive. On the day of the State of the Union, for instance, Senate Democrats ran an ad accusing McConnell of fighting “for the same wealthy insiders who get rich by keeping prices high.”During their own retreat on Wednesday, Democrats heard a presentation by Geoff Garin, a pollster, that impressed many of the senators present. Garin’s surveys have found that more voters blame the coronavirus pandemic, “China and foreign supply chains” and “large corporations raising prices to increase their profits” than they do President Biden for inflation.“The bottom line here is that Democrats have a very strong case to prosecute on rising costs,” Garin said.Republicans see the attack on Scott as a desperation play in what could be a difficult election for Senate Democrats, who must defend incumbents in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and New Hampshire while trying to pick up seats in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.“If I were them, I would try to use it, too,” said Justin Sayfie, a Republican consultant who runs an influential Florida political news website. “But they’re going to have to put a lot of money behind it. How much penetration are they going to be able to get with a message about Rick Scott?”Two visions of how to winMcConnell and Scott have a fundamental difference of opinion about how to win the Senate, people who have studied both men say.There’s McConnell, the calculating insider, who is leery of putting forward a political agenda that could open Republicans up to Democrats’ attacks. Republicans have long memories of how, in past election cycles, Democrats have had success in accusing them of wanting to cut popular programs like Medicare and Social Security.“McConnell hates variables,” said Kessler, the former Schumer aide. “He’s like a boxer who likes to cut off the sides of the ring.”In January, when a reporter asked McConnell what his agenda might be if Republicans retake the majority, he replied simply: “That is a very good question. And I’ll let you know when we take it back.”Then there’s Scott, the ambitious outsider, a former businessman whose presidential aspirations are no secret. He’s rankled some of his fellow Republican senators by taking broad swipes at Washington — despite leading the committee in charge of electing more of them.And while they share the same goal of winning back the Senate, aides and allies of both men have sniped at one another through the press, particularly over their relationship with Donald Trump.Scott has cultivated a relationship with the former president — he made sure to send copies of his plan to Mar-a-Lago — while McConnell at times has condemned Trump, who in turn refers to the Senate minority leader as “the Old Crow.” Trump has even tried to recruit Scott as a future majority leader, according to a Politico account.McConnell’s office declined to comment.“There will always be critics, but we don’t waste much time worrying about the opinions of Democrat operatives or anonymous Washington consultants,” said Chris Hartline, the communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which Scott chairs. Asked what the Heritage Foundation would say to Senate leaders like McConnell, Roberts said, “We’re grateful for their service, and we’re looking forward to them embracing Senator Scott’s plan or coming up with a plan of their own.”What to read The U.S. Census Bureau says the 2020 census seriously undercounted the number of Hispanic, Black and Native American residents, even though its overall population count of 323.2 million was largely accurate, Michael Wines and Maria Cramer report.In February, the Consumer Price Index rose at its fastest pace in 40 years. Biden blamed Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, for the increase, though inflation has been a problem for months, Jeanna Smialek reports.As oil prices rise, many governments are working to boost global production, potentially neglecting longer-term efforts to cut use of fossil fuels to fight climate change. Brad Plumer, Lisa Friedman and David Gelles report.postcardVice President Kamala Harris called for an investigation into potential war crimes by the Russian military, during a visit to Poland on Thursday.Andrzej Lange/EPA, via ShutterstockTwo V.P.s, one message for UkraineThe world got a glimpse of two potential future presidents today, in what we’re told was a sheer coincidence.Vice President Kamala Harris was visiting Poland, where she met with the country’s leaders, called for an investigation into potential war crimes by the Russian military, held a round-table event with displaced survivors from the war in Ukraine and appeared with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada in a show of Western solidarity.It so happened that her predecessor, Mike Pence, was in Ukraine on the same day as Harris’s trip. Along with his wife, Karen, he met with some of the refugees who are living in camps near the border with Poland. As Pence noted on Twitter, more than 2 million Ukrainians have fled the country over the last 12 days, according to U.N. figures.Pence’s trip comes as the former vice president tries to establish himself as a leader of the Republican Party on foreign policy ahead of a possible 2024 run. Last week, Pence blasted unnamed people in the party who, he said, were “apologists for Putin,” the Russian leader.Our colleague, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, a White House correspondent, was traveling with Harris and sending dispatches from Poland all day long. According to a background briefing by an unnamed senior administration official, he reported, teams for the former vice president and the current vice president were “not in contact.”Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.— Blake & LeahIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Why Redistricting May Lead to a More Balanced U.S. Congress

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      This year’s congressional map, despite continued gerrymandering, is poised to have a nearly equal number of districts that lean Democratic and Republican.For years, America’s congressional map favored Republicans over Democrats.But that may not remain the case for long.In a departure from a decades-long pattern in American politics, this year’s national congressional map is poised to be balanced between the two parties, with a nearly equal number of districts that are expected to lean Democratic and Republican for the first time in more than 50 years.Despite the persistence of partisan gerrymandering, between 216 and 219 congressional districts, out of the 435 nationwide, appear likely to tilt toward the Democrats, according to a New York Times analysis based on recent presidential election results. An identical 216 to 219 districts appear likely to tilt toward Republicans, if the maps enacted so far withstand legal challenges. To reach a majority, a party needs to secure 218 districts.The surprisingly fair map defies the expectations of many analysts, who had believed that the Republicans would use the redistricting process to build an overwhelming structural advantage in the House, as they did a decade ago.As recently as a few months ago, it had seemed likely that Republicans could flip the six seats they needed to retake the House through redistricting alone. Instead, the number of Republican-tilting districts that voted for Donald J. Trump at a higher rate than the nation is poised to decline significantly, from 228 to a figure that could amount to fewer than the 218 seats needed for a majority. Democrats could claim their first such advantage since the 1960s, when the Supreme Court’s “one person, one vote” ruling and the enactment of the Voting Rights Act inaugurated the modern era of redistricting.A Republican Electoral Edge CrumblesIn 2022, the U.S. congressional map is poised to be balanced between Democrats and Republicans after decades of dominance by the G.O.P., a political surprise resulting from gerrymandering on both sides and more courts and commissions drawing the districts. More

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      Republicans Wrongly Blame Biden for Rising Gas Prices

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      They have pointed to the Biden administration’s policies on the Keystone XL pipeline and certain oil and gas leases, which have had little impact on prices.WASHINGTON — As gas prices hit a high this week, top Republican lawmakers took to the airwaves and the floors of Congress with misleading claims that pinned the blame on President Biden and his energy policies.Mr. Biden warned that his ban on imports of Russian oil, gas and coal, announced on Tuesday as a response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, would cause gas prices to rise further. High costs are expected to last as long as the confrontation does.While Republican lawmakers supported the ban, they asserted that the pain at the pump long preceded the war in Ukraine. Gas price hikes, they said, were the result of Mr. Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline, the temporary halt on new drilling leases on public lands and the surrendering of “energy independence” — all incorrect assertions.Here’s a fact check of their claims.What Was Said“This administration wants to ramp up energy imports from Iran and Venezuela. That is the world’s largest state sponsor of terror and a thuggish South America dictator, respectively. They would rather buy from these people than buy from Texas, Alaska and Pennsylvania.”— Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, in a speech on Tuesday“Democrats want to blame surging prices on Russia. But the truth is, their out-of-touch policies are why we are here in the first place. Remember what happened on Day 1 with one-party rule? The president canceled the Keystone pipeline, and then he stopped new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters.”— Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader, in a speech on Tuesday“In the four years of the Trump-Pence administration, we achieved energy independence for the first time in 70 years. We were a net exporter of energy. But from very early on, with killing the Keystone pipeline, taking federal lands off the list for exploration, sidelining leases for oil and natural gas — once again, before Ukraine ever happened, we saw rising gasoline prices.”— Former Vice President Mike Pence in an interview on Fox Business on TuesdayThese claims are misleading. The primary reason for rising gas prices over the past year is the coronavirus pandemic and its disruptions to global supply and demand.“Covid changed the game, not President Biden,” said Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, which tracks gasoline prices. “U.S. oil production fell in the last eight months of President Trump’s tenure. Is that his fault? No.”“The pandemic brought us to our knees,” Mr. De Haan added.In the early months of 2020, when the virus took hold, demand for oil dried up and prices plummeted, with the benchmark price for crude oil in the United States falling to negative $37.63 that April. In response, producers in the United States and around the world began decreasing output.As pandemic restrictions loosened worldwide and economies recovered, demand outpaced supply. That was “mostly attributable” to the decision by OPEC Plus, an alliance of oil-producing countries that controls about half the world’s supply, to limit increases in production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Domestic production also remains below prepandemic levels, as capital spending declined and investors remained reluctant to provide financing to the oil industry.Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has only compounded the issues.“When you throw a war on top of this, this is possibly the worst escalation you can have of this,” said Abhiram Rajendran, the head of oil market research at Energy Intelligence, an energy information company. “You’re literally pouring gasoline on general inflationary pressure.”These factors are largely out of Mr. Biden’s control, experts agreed, though they said he had not exactly sent positive signals to the oil and gas industry and its investors by vowing to reduce emissions and fossil fuel reliance.Mr. De Haan said the Biden administration was “clearly less friendly” to the industry, which may have indirectly affected investor attitudes. But overall, he said, that stance has played a “very, very small role pushing gas prices up.”President Biden announced a ban on imports of Russian oil in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesMr. Rajendran said the Biden administration had emphasized climate change issues while paying lip service to energy security.“There has been a pretty stark miscalculation of the amount of supply we would need to keep energy prices at affordable levels,” he said. “It was taken for granted. There was too much focus on the energy transition.”But presidents, Mr. Rajendran said, “have very little impact on short-term supply.”“The key relationship to watch is between companies and investors,” he said.It is true that the Biden administration is in talks with Venezuela and Iran over their oil supplies. But the administration is also urging American companies to ramp up production — to the dismay of climate change activists and contrary to Republican lawmakers’ suggestions that the White House is intent on handcuffing domestic producers.Speaking before the National Petroleum Council in December, Jennifer M. Granholm, the energy secretary, told oil companies to “please take advantage of the leases that you have, hire workers, get your rig count up.”Understand Rising Gas Prices in the U.S.Card 1 of 5A steady rise. More

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      There Are Glimmers of Hope for Biden. Or Maybe Slivers.

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      Despite the terrible reality of the war in Ukraine, rising inflation and record gas prices, a faint ray of sunshine has fallen on Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. According to strategists for both parties, the Democrats now have a 50-50 chance of retaining control of the Senate in the midterm elections, crucial for the appointment of federal judges, but nowhere near enough electoral strength to give them a shot at keeping their House majority.Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, agrees that “Biden is finally getting some good news after a long period of horrible events,” but those pluses stand against the more sustained setbacks the president has experienced.Ayres argued in an email that Bidendrove his own job approval down by hanging onto an obviously hopeless BuildBackBetter, muddying his bipartisan success on the infrastructure bill. He ran as a center-left moderate but tried to govern as a progressive. That had two results: raising the hopes of liberals, when it was obvious he was never going to get Manchin or Sinema, before dashing those hopes, leaving liberals demoralized. On top of that, he left a bunch of people who voted for him thinking they were sold a bill of goods. Along with the fiasco of the Afghanistan withdrawal, he squandered majority job approval.Ayres noted:It’s hard to imagine Republicans not winning the House, given historical trends and Biden’s lousy job approval ratings. Control of the Senate depends on the kinds of candidates Republicans nominate. Nominate sane governing Republicans like Rob Portman, Richard Burr and Pat Toomey, and the Senate is theirs. Nominate far-right wing-nut cases and the Senate stays in the hands of the Democrats.Still, Biden has had some significant success and Republicans face serious obstacles.On the plus side for Democrats: The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in February, employers added 678,000 new jobs and unemployment fell to 3.8 percent. Meanwhile, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection disclosed on March 3 that it has “has a good-faith basis for concluding that the president and members of his campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States.”Politico reported on March 8:President Joe Biden’s approval rating is on the rise — for now — in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Biden’s State of the Union address last week. Multiple surveys over the past week, including a new Politico/Morning Consult poll out Tuesday, show a modest-to-moderate uptick in voters’ views of Biden’s job performance, up from his low-water mark earlier this year.And then there is the setback that never materialized: While many predicted the post-2020 census redrawing of congressional districts would be a disaster for Democrats, in practice the new congressional lines are a wash. “We now estimate Democrats are on track to net 4 to 5 more House seats than they otherwise would have won on current maps, up from two seats in our previous estimate,” David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report wrote on Feb. 24.On the negative side for Republicans: Donald Trump’s admiration for and long courtship of Vladimir Putin has begun to backfire, causing conflict within Republican ranks; and these intraparty tensions have been compounded by Mike Pence’s growing willingness to challenge Trump, as well as by an internal strategy dispute between Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, and Senator Rick Scott, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.Steve Rosenthal, a former political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. who now heads The Organizing Group, a political consulting firm, contended in an email that the Biden administration has done a poor job promoting its successes:We’ve been canvassing white working-class voters in Southwestern PA and in the Lehigh Valley. They have no idea what the president and the Democrats in Congress have already done that directly impacts the issues they raise. When they hear about Biden sending $7 billion to PA for their roads, bridges and schools, they’re moved by it. This isn’t rocket science.“It’s a volatile environment,” Rosenthal adds: “Covid, war in Ukraine, inflation — and a lot can happen between now and November. But I definitely like the hand the Democrats are playing better this week than last. For now, let’s take it one week at a time.”Dean Baker, a co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal-leaning think tank, made a similar case in his emailed response to my inquiries:On the economic front, President Biden and the Democrats really need to up their game in pushing their record and their agenda. We have had record job growth since Biden took office, and somehow the economy is supposed to be a liability for the Democrats? If the shoe were on the other foot, the Republicans would be plastering the job numbers across the sky. This is the best labor market in more than half a century. Workers can leave jobs they don’t like for better ones; that is a really great story.In Baker’s view:Biden and the Democrats really need to move forward on what they can get from his Build Back Better agenda. This means sitting down with Senator Manchin and figuring out what he will go for. It is kind of mind-boggling that they didn’t do this last spring.The point, Baker argued, “is to get something that will have as much benefit as possible — climate tops the list — and push it through quickly.”Baker wrote that he has “no idea if the Democrats can hold one or both chambers in November, but things are looking somewhat better,” especially in the Senate, where “the Republicans are having trouble getting strong candidates in many potential swing states like New Hampshire, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia and possibly even Ohio. This raises the possibility of the Democrats picking up seats.”Control of the House, where Democrats hold a slim 222-211 majority, will be another matter after the coming election.Frances Lee, a political scientist at Princeton, made the case in an email thatIt would be a major historical anomaly if Democrats retain control of the House in 2022. One of the most predictable features of American politics is the loss of seats in Congress for the president’s party at the midterm. Even presidents with majority public approval still almost always see losses for their party in Congress. With Democrats’ margin so narrow, the party just cannot spare any losses.Biden’s favorability rating, currently averaging 41.6 percent according to Real Clear Politics, would have to rise “above 60 percent — like George W. Bush in 2002 or Bill Clinton in 1998 — before it would become reasonable to expect Democrats to avert a loss of House control,” Lee observed. “Since the advent of public opinion polling, all presidents with approval ratings below 60 percent have seen losses of congressional seats at the midterm, in every case more than the 5 seats that Democrats can spare in 2022.”Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm, provided historical data to The Times based on Gallup polling and House election outcomes in nonpresidential contests from 1962 to 2018. When the president’s approval rating was 60 percent or higher, the president’s party gained one seat; when the rating was in the 49 percent to 59 percent range, the president’s party lost an average of 12 seats; when the favorability rating fell below 49 percent, the average loss was 39 House seats. Biden, with eight months until the midterms, is well below that mark.The picture, according to Lee,is not entirely bleak. The employment recovery is strong; the pandemic seems to be abating. The battle for the Senate is more evenly matched, and Republicans have come up short in some high-profile candidate recruitment efforts. But Democrats have no margin for error. Any losses given a 50-50 balance will tip Senate control to Republicans. In a midterm year, one would have to rate that outcome as the more likely outcome.Lee suggested that “the more plausible question for Biden is how bad things are likely to get for Democrats.”She pointed out:Thirty House Democrats have already retired rather than run for re-election. Inflation is expected to be running well above Federal Reserve targets through the rest of 2022. Even though Biden has been able to rally the democratic world in opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, few experts expect a favorable outcome of the conflict on any near-term horizon. The pandemic has defied predictions to date, and public patience is wearing thinner.Charlie Cook, founder of the Cook Political Report, argued in an email that Biden is in a deep hole very difficult to climb out of:Between the Mexican border, not anticipating a rush across the border when Trump left town, being caught flat-footed, Kabul made the fall of Saigon look fairly dignified, ignoring/dismissing inflation. The worst sin for most voters, inflation, hurts 100 percent of people, a totally unrealistic legislative agenda, party line vote on coronavirus package, 7.5 months to get half of what they wanted on infrastructure, he has pretty much soiled his nest. Republican voters are hyper-motivated, Democratic voters lethargic, independents alienated, doesn’t sound terribly promising to me.Alex Theodoridis, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, is pessimistic about Democratic prospects, but less so than Cook.Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Theodoridis wrote by email, “is an awkward one for GOP elites and voters. They have spent the last few years downplaying the nefariousness of Putin’s regime and portraying Ukraine as a hopelessly corrupt hotbed of profiteering for the Biden family.”This message, he continued, hastrickled down to the Republican rank-and-file. UMass Poll data from 2020 and 2021 show that Republicans, on average, rate Democrats, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and even people who vote for Democrats, as greater threats to America than Vladimir Putin and Russia. In the weeks before the invasion, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon and Donald Trump, among others, peddled takes flattering to Putin. This stance has grown uncomfortable as Russia and Putin have clearly played the role of unprovoked aggressor and Ukrainians and Zelensky emerge as both sympathetic and heroic.But, in Theodoridis’s view, the “positive signs for Biden and Democrats over the last couple weeks” do not “yet rise to the level of changing the expectation that 2022 will likely follow the historical pattern of midterm loss for the president’s party. And, Democrats have precious little margin with which to sustain any loss of seats.”There are still major uncertainties to be resolved before Election Day, Nov. 8. These include the possibility that Trump will be embroiled in criminal charges and the chance that Trump himself will become an albatross around the neck of the Republican Party.The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a Mississippi case that could unwind Roe and bar access to abortion for millions of women with the political response quite likely to cost the Republican Party a significant number of votes. Trump’s legal status, in turn, will be determined by prosecutors in Georgia, New York and possibly the United States Justice Department.Finally, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a wild card, giving rise, among other things, to mounting speculation about Trump’s judgment and his fitness for office.On Feb. 22, the day after Putin said he would recognize the independence of Luhansk and Donetsk, two regions in eastern Ukraine, Trump remarked, “This is genius”— a comment in line with Trump’s history of fulsomely praising Putin.On March 2, Trump tried to cut his losses and abruptly told Maria Bartiromo of Fox News that the invasion amounted to a “holocaust” and Russia must “stop killing these people.” He condemned the Russian military: “They’re blowing up indiscriminately, they’re just shooting massive missiles and rockets into these buildings and everybody is dying​.”On March 5, speaking at a meeting of top Republican donors in New Orleans, Trump wandered farther afield, suggesting, however insincerely, that the United States should paste Chinese flags on F-22s and “bomb the [expletive] out of Russia.”On Feb. 27, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas was clearly discomfited by George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” when Stephanopoulos, speaking of Trump, noted:Last night, he finally condemned the invasion, but he also repeated his praise of Putin, calling him smart.Earlier in the week, he called him pretty smart. He called him savvy. He says NATO and the U.S. are dumb.Are you prepared to condemn that kind of rhetoric from the leader of your party?Pressed repeatedly, Cotton ducked repeatedly:George, if you want to know what Donald Trump thinks about Vladimir Putin or any other topic, I’d encourage you to invite him on your show. I don’t speak on behalf of other politicians. They can speak for themselves.Mike Pence, on the other hand, has determined that his best strategy as he continues to explore a presidential bid is to defy Trump.“Ask yourself, where would our friends in Eastern Europe be today if they were not in NATO?” Pence asked the Republican National Committee donors on March 4. “Where would Russian tanks be today if NATO had not expanded the borders of freedom? There is no room in this party for apologists for Putin.”The biggest unknown on the political horizon is the repercussions of the sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies on Russia, which are certain to raise energy and food costs, exacerbating the administration’s continuing difficulties with rising prices.“War and sanctions means higher inflation,” The Economist warned on March 5. “Things could get much worse should sanctions expand in scope to cover energy purchases or if Russia retaliates against them by reducing its exports.” On Tuesday, the Biden administration announced that it was banning Russian oil imports.“JPMorgan Chase,” The Economist went on,projects that a sustained shut-off of the Russian oil supply might cause prices to rise to $150 per barrel, a level sufficient to knock 1.6 percent off global G.D.P. while raising consumer prices by another 2 percent. The stagflationary shock would carry echoes of the Yom Kippur war of 1973, which sparked the first of the two energy crises of that decade.A political minefield lies ahead and negotiating this terrain will require more tactical and strategic skill than the Biden administration has demonstrated in its 14 months in office.This is especially relevant in the context of another explosive unknown, the possibility of the largest land war in Europe since 1945 metastasizing into a global conflict.In an essay he posted on Monday, “The Nuclear Threat Is Back,” Mohamed ElBaradei, the recipient of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize and the former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, argues that “beyond the bloodshed and needless destruction, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also increased the risk of radiation leaks and even nuclear war” — events, it is almost needless to say, that would create mind-boggling suffering, throw current electoral calculations into disarray and raise the stakes of every political decision we make.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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      Indicted. Under F.B.I. Investigation. And Still Popular With Texas Republicans.

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      Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, earned the most votes in Tuesday’s G.O.P. primary. His embrace of Trumpism has helped him weather a series of allegations.SAN ANTONIO — The race for Texas attorney general is asking Republicans to determine how many indictments and allegations of corruption are too many. The answer may be there is no limit — so long as the candidate has an endorsement from former President Donald J. Trump.Ken Paxton, the Trump-backed attorney general, was indicted and arrested on criminal securities-fraud charges that are still pending. He has faced calls for his resignation after several of his top aides claimed he abused his office by helping a wealthy donor. And he has been serving as the state’s top lawyer while under threat of a possible new indictment, as the F.B.I. investigates the abuse-of-office and bribery accusations.“The voters of Texas will tolerate a great deal,” said State Senator Kel Seliger, a moderate Republican who is a former mayor of Amarillo. “They think if somebody is ideologically in sync with them, that’s what matters. I would have thought in Texas that moral example is more important, but apparently it’s not.”In the pre-Trump era, indictments and investigations by federal law enforcement could have been fatal to a Republican campaign. But Mr. Trump has instilled a deep mistrust in government institutions like the F.B.I. Mr. Paxton took the unusual step of authorizing an investigation of an F.B.I. investigation — he appointed a special prosecutor to look into the federal probe of the wealthy donor, an Austin real estate investor named Nate Paul whose home and offices were raided by federal agents.The litany of allegations against Mr. Trump has allowed acolytes like Mr. Paxton to claim that they, too, are victims of a government conspiracy.“That’s the Biden F.B.I., the Biden D.O.J.,” Mr. Paxton said in a recent interview with a Fox News reporter. “They were under investigation by my office. I don’t know what they are going to do. All I can tell you is that we were doing the right thing. We are going to continue to do the right thing. I don’t control what the Biden White House does.”Since the 2020 election, Mr. Paxton has made himself among the nation’s foremost Trump defenders, filing an audacious lawsuit with the Supreme Court seeking to delay certification of the results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He spoke at the Jan. 6 rally in Washington that preceded the attack on the United States Capitol, won an endorsement from Mr. Trump and earned praise from him at the former president’s rally outside Houston. And he has overlooked the fact that, although he has claimed otherwise, the federal abuse-of-power investigation began under Mr. Trump’s F.B.I., not Biden’s.In the Republican primary on Tuesday in Texas, Mr. Paxton won 43 percent of the vote, a soft showing for an incumbent but one indicative of the three well-funded challengers who saw him as politically vulnerable. Since Texas requires primary candidates to win a majority of the vote to advance to the general election, Mr. Paxton faces a May 24 runoff against the scion of the most famous family in modern Texas politics: George P. Bush, the state’s land commissioner who is the nephew of one president and the grandson of another.The Paxton-Bush runoff crystallized immediately as a contest between an incumbent with ethical and legal issues and a challenger who cannot escape the establishment brand of his family name. In Texas Republican circles, some operatives cast the race as prison stripes versus pinstripes.Mr. Paxton has withstood his legal woes by delivering on the issues that drive Texas conservatives. He’s used his office as the state’s chief culture-war litigator — defending the new Texas abortion law, suing the Biden administration to force the federal government to continue building the border wall and joining a right-wing push to criminalize medical care for transgender youth. Days before the primary, he issued an opinion stating that certain medical treatments for transgender children could be considered child abuse, treatments that doctors describe as gender-affirming care.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the 2022 election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering.Governors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.Mr. Paxton did not take long to attack Mr. Bush as a symbol of the moderate conservative politics that Mr. Trump has all but excised from the Republican Party.“What has happened with performance by the Bushes over the last decade, it’s been disappointing,” Mr. Paxton said Wednesday during an interview on a conservative talk radio show in Lubbock. “I think a lot of Republicans have had enough of it. The Bushes have had their chance. It’s time for the dynasty to end.”George P. Bush spoke at a candidate forum in Midland last month. Mr. Paxton did not attend the event.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesThat a top elected official in Texas could make such a stunning anti-Bush remark and face no political consequences illustrates just how loyal Texas Republicans have become to Mr. Trump and Trumpism.In Mr. Bush, Mr. Paxton has a near-perfect foil for a runoff election that is likely to have half or less the turnout from Tuesday’s primary. Mr. Bush has been an enthusiastic supporter of Mr. Trump, but his father, Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida and a 2016 presidential candidate, and his uncle, former President George W. Bush, have been harsh critics.At a debate last month, the younger Mr. Bush said President Biden was the rightful winner of the 2020 election and called Mr. Paxton’s lawsuit to block the election results “frivolous” — statements Mr. Paxton’s campaign is using to attack Mr. Bush as insufficiently conservative.Mr. Bush said in radio interviews in recent days that he has contacted Mr. Trump’s advisers to suggest that he switch his endorsement from Mr. Paxton. A Trump aide said that was extremely unlikely. And Mr. Paxton said he spoke with Mr. Trump himself and extracted a pledge that the former president would continue to support him through the runoff.Still, Mr. Bush, whose father was savaged as “low energy” by Mr. Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, is not conceding Mr. Trump’s support. Last summer he distributed red koozies with a silhouette of himself shaking hands with Mr. Trump and a quote from the former president: “This is the only Bush that likes me! This is the Bush that got it right.”Mr. Bush signaled he will lean into Mr. Paxton’s ethical and legal issues, which have long been talked about in Texas political circles. In 2014, after Mr. Paxton was first elected attorney general but had not yet taken office, he was accused of taking a $1,000 pen that belonged to another lawyer. (He later returned it and said the episode was a simple mistake.) The State Bar of Texas is also investigating whether Mr. Paxton committed professional misconduct by challenging the 2020 presidential election results.In his own radio interview in Lubbock, Mr. Bush said the F.B.I. investigation and the securities-fraud case “are a matter of public record and should be discussed.” Mr. Bush’s campaign spokeswoman did not return repeated messages this week. Mr. Paxton declined to be interviewed.Mr. Paxton has denied wrongdoing in the securities case and has rejected claims that he accepted bribes in office. Last August, his office produced a 374-page report that cleared him of any wrongdoing and said there was “no evidence” he had accepted a bribe. “A.G. Paxton committed no crime,” the report issued by his office stated.There have been signals that Mr. Paxton’s litany of controversies has tested the limits of Texas Republicans’ patience with him. Representative Chip Roy, a conservative who used to work for Mr. Paxton, called for his resignation in 2020. Along with Mr. Bush, Mr. Paxton’s primary challengers included Representative Louie Gohmert, who gave up a safe East Texas congressional seat to run against him, and Eva Guzman, who resigned from the Texas Supreme Court to challenge him in the primary.During his campaign, Mr. Gohmert predicted Mr. Paxton would face a new federal indictment after winning the Republican nomination and lose the general election to a Democrat. If Mr. Paxton indeed wins the nomination but is defeated in November, it would be a devastating first for Republicans: No Democrat has won any statewide office in Texas since 1994.In the Democratic primary for attorney general, Rochelle Garza, a South Texas civil rights lawyer, garnered the most votes and is headed for a runoff. Her Democratic opponent remained unclear. The third-place vote-getter, Lee Merritt, a civil rights lawyer, said in a statement he was not ready to concede to the second-place candidate, Joe Jaworski, a former mayor of Galveston, because military and other ballots were still being counted. Ms. Garza said she was confident the attorney general’s office could be flipped from red to blue. In 2018, Mr. Paxton won re-election by narrowly defeating his opponent, Justin Nelson, by 3.56 percentage points.Mr. Paxton has brushed off any suggestion of a Democratic victory in the fall. “In this country, allegations don’t convict you,” he said in the Lubbock radio interview.Mr. Paxton’s aides said Texas Republicans don’t care about the allegations and controversies surrounding his office. They claimed credit for attacking Mr. Gohmert and Ms. Guzman in order to allow Mr. Bush to advance to the runoff. After the Paxton campaign attacked Ms. Guzman in television advertisements in the closing days before the primary, she dropped from winning 21 percent of the vote during the early-voting period to just 14 percent of the vote on Tuesday.“These ads clearly cost Eva a spot in the runoff,” Dick Weekley, the senior chairman of the mainstream Republican group Texans for Lawsuit Reform, which endorsed Ms. Guzman, wrote in an email to supporters after the primary.Both Mr. Paxton and Mr. Bush are certain to continue to pitch themselves as the true steward for Trump supporters among Texas Republicans.“It’s easy for me to say that I wouldn’t grovel for the Trump endorsement,” said Jerry Patterson, Mr. Bush’s predecessor as land commissioner and a Republican who is anti-Trump but is backing Mr. Paxton. “It’s just damn distasteful for George P. At some point you just have to have some pride in your own integrity.”Yet Mr. Patterson said he has no problem with Mr. Paxton doing Mr. Trump’s bidding about the 2020 election and constantly stressing his Trump bona fides.“For Paxton that came naturally,” Mr. Patterson said. “It’s not contrived.”Kirsten Noyes More

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      Florida Senate Passes Voting Bill to Create Election Crimes Agency

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      The bill would make Florida one of the first states to have a force dedicated to election crimes and voter fraud, despite such offenses being exceedingly rare.The Florida Senate passed a sweeping new bill overhauling the state’s electoral process, adding new restrictions to the state election code and establishing a law enforcement office dedicated solely to investigating election crimes.The bill, which passed 24-14, now goes to the state’s House of Representatives, where it could pass as soon as next week and land on the desk of Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, who is expected to sign it. One Republican, State Senator Jeff Brandes, voted against it. A Democratic senator, Loranne Ausley, initially voted yes, but immediately posted on Twitter that she “pushed the wrong button” and has since changed her vote.Though Republicans in the state had passed another sweeping voting law in May of last year, Mr. DeSantis made election reform one of the top priorities for this legislative session as well. Both efforts come after the 2020 election in Florida was without any major issues, and Republicans in the state touted it as a “gold standard” for election administration.The legislation is poised to become the first major election-related bill to pass this year in a critical battleground state, and it would indicate no sign of cresting for the wave of new election laws, adding more restrictions to voting, that began last year — with 34 laws passed in 19 states.The core of the bill is the establishment of a permanent election crimes office within the Department of State, which would make Florida one of the first states to have an agency solely dedicated to election crimes and voter fraud, despite such offenses being exceedingly rare in the United States. An investigation last year by The Associated Press found fewer than 475 potential claims of fraud out of 25.5 million ballots cast for president in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.The new office would assist the secretary of state’s office in investigating complaints and allegations, initiating their own independent inquiries and overseeing a voter fraud hotline. It would include an unspecified number of investigators, and Mr. DeSantis would also appoint at least one special officer in each of the regional offices of the State Department of Law Enforcement to investigate election crimes.The bill would also raise the penalties on those collecting and submitting more than two absentee ballots from a misdemeanor to a felony.Voting rights groups are worried that the continuing criminalization of the voting process could both frighten voters away from participating and leave election officials fearing prosecution over honest mistakes.“Involving law enforcement with this sort of vague mandate obviously creates issues and can have certainly a detrimental effect in terms of the ability of voters to cast ballots if they’re worried about law enforcement involvement,” said Daniel Griffith, the policy director at Secure Democracy USA, a nonpartisan organization focused on elections and voter access. “And it has a detrimental effect on election officials if they’re worried that there’s going to be law enforcement over their shoulder.”Previously, investigations into election fraud were handled by Florida’s secretary of state, the Department of Law Enforcement and the attorney general. Democrats argued that the bill effectively creates a new agency to do work that was done by existing agencies. The agency’s creation, Democrats say, is just a political ploy to signal that Florida and Mr. DeSantis are staying tough on an issue core to both the Republican base and to former President Donald J. Trump.“Why are we doing this?” said State Senator Lori Berman during debate on Friday. “The only thing I can think is that we’re motivated by the ‘Big Lie’ that the elections nationwide didn’t take place in a proper manner. But we know that is not true.”State Senator Travis Hutson, the sponsor of the bill and a Republican, defended it during debate on Friday, stating that having a dedicated force would both uncover more fraud and make the state able to handle more allegations.“We did have great elections, the governor mentioned that,” said Mr. Hutson. “But I would submit to you that we can always do better.”He added: “I will say there is no voter intimidation or no suppressing votes in this bill.”The new election office drew criticisms from some Republican members as well, who argued that it was unnecessary.“For 15 people to go after what is potentially a handful of complaints that will ultimately be substantiated is just absolutely almost comical,” said Mr. Brandes during debate on Friday, referring to suggestions from the executive branch that they assign 15 investigators to the office. “So I am not going to support this bill today.”Uniformed law enforcement officials have been used in the past to deter and suppress voters. In 1982, the Republican National Committee dispatched a group of armed, off-duty police officers known as the National Ballot Security Task Force to linger around New Jersey polling locations during a closely contested governor’s election. The Democratic National Committee sued, forcing the R.N.C. into a consent decree to ban such tactics.Those memories appeared to be still on the minds of lawmakers in the Florida legislature. During debate on Thursday, State Senator Victor Manuel Torres Jr. asked Mr. Hutson, the sponsor of the bill: “Will these individuals be in uniform or civilian attire?”Mr. Hutson responded that the current enforcement arm of the secretary of state dresses in civilian attire, and that members of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement are likely to be uniformed.In addition to the new Office of Election Crimes and Security, the bill adds other new restrictions to voting, including banning ranked-choice voting; raising the cap on fines of third-party registration groups from $1,000 to $50,000; extending a ban on private funding for election administration to include the “cost of any litigation”; and replacing references to “drop boxes” with “secure ballot intake stations.” More

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      In Greene and Boebert, Democrats See a Helpful Political Target

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      The antics of Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, as well as recent stumbles by other Republicans, have drawn unflattering attention to their party.WASHINGTON — Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are two backbench freshmen in the House minority, powerless in the official hierarchy and unlikely to gain much power even in a likely Republican majority next year.But their antics, violations of decorum and association with white nationalists have elevated their profile far beyond their positions, and Democratic operatives are determined to make them the face of the Republican Party in the looming election season.The two are not the only Republicans bringing unwanted attention to the party, and some of the division in the party’s ranks is being amplified by internal disputes, not by Democrats. Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, earned a public rebuke this week from Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, for putting out a campaign manifesto that called for raising taxes on the poor and cutting Social Security.On Wednesday, a little-known Republican, Representative Van Taylor of Texas, abruptly dropped his re-election bid after operatives on the party’s right flank — angered by his vote to create a bipartisan commission to examine the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — revealed pornographic text messages that he had sent to a paramour.But it is the faces of Ms. Boebert of Colorado and Ms. Greene of Georgia that are splashing across social media, political videos and advertising, after they both stood and heckled President Biden during his State of the Union address on Tuesday. Ms. Boebert shouted at the president just as he was referring to the death of his son Beau Biden.Not since President Donald J. Trump used racially charged language in 2019 to castigate the liberal women of color in “the Squad” have freshmen House members received quite so much attention. Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota and Mr. Trump’s favorite Squad target, said there were big differences.For one, Ms. Boebert and Ms. Greene intentionally provoke responses to stay front and center, she said, while she and Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan were more often sought out by critics.On Monday, Ms. Greene was publicly rebuked by the House Republican leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, over her appearance at a far-right conference with ties to white supremacy. The next day, she and Ms. Boebert heckled Mr. Biden and tried unsuccessfully to strike up a chant of “build the wall” during his State of the Union address.And while Democrats routinely condemn their own for statements they consider out of the mainstream, Republicans rarely do, instead providing Ms. Greene, Ms. Boebert and others on the far right with platforms to broadcast their messages, such as the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida.“With us, the opinion pieces by Democratic pundits are already prewritten, and there’s a lot of scolding that happens within the caucus,” Ms. Omar said. “That’s not what happens with their party.”Mr. McCarthy did say that Ms. Greene’s appearance last week at the far-right conference was “appalling and wrong,” promising to have a talk with her, but that does not compare to the criticism that rained down on Ms. Omar when she used an antisemitic trope to suggest that support for Israel was driven by money. Mr. McCarthy has also said Ms. Greene will be given back the committee assignments that Democrats stripped from her if Republicans control the House next year.Speaker Nancy Pelosi, at her weekly news conference on Thursday, repeated perhaps the only criticism that a Republican leveled at Ms. Boebert and Ms. Greene after their heckling at the State of the Union.“Let me just say this,” Ms. Pelosi said. “I agree with what Senator Lindsey Graham said: ‘Shut up.’”Republican leaders have an easier political task than Democrats as they seek to keep voters focused on what they are seeing in their daily lives, such as inflation, soaring energy prices and ongoing frustrations with the coronavirus pandemic.“Democrats don’t have a clue what moves voters and are desperately trying to distract from their record of higher prices, soaring crime and a crisis along our southern border,” said Michael McAdams, the communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee.Ms. Boebert’s staff did not respond to requests for comment, and Ms. Greene declined to speak to The New York Times. But she has remained defiant in the face of criticism. In December, she told the former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, “We are not the fringe; we are the base of the party.”For that reason alone, Democratic operatives say they have every right to elevate the visibility of Ms. Greene and Ms. Boebert and tie them to other Republicans who have refrained from criticizing them even as they have castigated the two Republicans serving on the committee investigating the 2021 attack on the Capitol, Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said the House Democrats’ campaign arm had not decided how central to make the two lawmakers in the coming campaign season.The committee is “making investments where they do the most good,” he said. “If that means making them the face of the party, we will do it. If it means ignoring them, we will do it, because the point is to win the House, not to win an argument.”“But,” he added, “their actions are disgraceful, from attending white supremacy conferences to yelling at the president when he’s talking about his fallen son.”Democratic allies are not so reticent. Jon Soltz, the chairman and co-founder of VoteVets, a liberal veterans organization, said the group was testing messages with voters to tie incumbent House Republicans in districts that lean Democratic to far-right figures in the Republican Party.The attack might not work in conservative-leaning districts, he said, but it could against Republicans whose seats emerged from redistricting as more Democratic, such as Representative Nicole Malliotakis’s in New York and Representative Mike Garcia’s in Southern California.Representative Lauren Boebert shouted at President Biden just as he was referring to the death of his son Beau Biden.Pool photo by Sarahbeth Maney“There’s some rather crazy rhetoric that comes out of their mouths, and behavior like you saw from them at the State of the Union,” Mr. Soltz said. “There are a lot of independents in suburban districts that might have leaned to Biden by five or six points, but Democrats now have to go get those voters back.”Another Democratic political operation, American Bridge, is tying Ms. Greene to Herschel Walker, the former University of Georgia football star recruited by Mr. Trump to challenge Senator Raphael Warnock, Democrat of Georgia, this fall.Jessica Floyd, the president of American Bridge, said on Thursday that the group’s efforts were crafted to make the midterm elections a choice between what she called a Republican Party of extremists against a Democratic Party focused on the economy and governance — not a referendum on Mr. Biden, whose approval ratings are dangerously low.Voters “know and don’t like the sort of extreme positions that Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert embody,” she said.She added, “That’s an opportunity for Democrats, and I think that we should seize on it.” More

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      In Georgia's Secretary of State Race, 2020 Is Still on the Ballot

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      A normally sleepy secretary of state race has become a critical barometer of Republicans’ views of the last election — and of Trump.We have a dispatch tonight from our colleague Nick Corasaniti, who traveled to Georgia last week to report on the Republican primary between Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, and Representative Jody Hice, a challenger backed by Donald Trump.MACON, Ga. — At a regional airport in central Georgia, Representative Jody Hice offered a quick summation at the top of his remarks to a crowd of voters. Hice’s political situation requires repeated explanation — why he’s leaving a safe seat in Congress to run for a bureaucratic state government post.“I feel with all my heart that our last election was massively compromised right here in Georgia,” he told the crowd of roughly two dozen voters last week.The audience responded in unison: “Amen.”The last election, indeed, was not massively compromised in Georgia, as multiple audits and hand recounts affirmed. But as the normally sleepy races for secretary of state have suddenly become critical battlegrounds, Georgia remains on the front lines. It’s the site of the most high-profile Republican primary for secretary of state, between Hice and the incumbent, Brad Raffensperger, who drew the ire of Donald Trump for refusing to acquiesce to his attempts to overturn the election.Hice’s campaign shows just how political these secretary of state races have become across the country, contests to determine who will oversee the supposedly apolitical task of administering elections. Hice spent last week barnstorming Georgia as if the primary election was a week away. (It’s actually scheduled for May 24.) He held four stops a day by chartering a private jet to crisscross the state, a flex of financial and organizational muscle that is more often found in a race for governor, Senate or even president.In a roughly 10-minute stump speech at the airport in Macon, Hice touted his conservative credentials as a member of the House Freedom Caucus, noted Trump’s endorsement and attacked Democratic attempts in Congress to write new federal voting legislation. But he avoided many of the specific and disproven conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. He instead focused on broader, though still disproven, allegations about voting in Georgia.‘A lot of shenanigans’Core to Hice’s pitch on the campaign trail is that Raffensperger, his primary opponent, sent mail ballot applications to every voter on Georgia’s voting rolls and that all voter rolls were about 10 percent inaccurate. Sending out ballot applications, Hice said, “opened the door initially for all kinds of problems.”What he did not mention was that voters still needed to send in their applications and be verified by the state, so that each application was checked and verified before a voter could receive a ballot. And on the accuracy of the voter rolls, studies have varied, but more often than not inaccuracies occur because voters have moved locally.His supporters are more specific in their attacks on the 2020 election. They spoke in detail about a video that made the rounds in conservative media purporting to show election workers pulling ballots out from under a table. The workers, multiple state officials have confirmed, were simply continuing their counting after mistakenly taking a break.“The video of the ballots in a van coming in at three in the morning in the Fulton County counting room, that kind of tells you everything you need to know,” said Brad Ebel, 52, a Georgia delegate from Macon. “I think there was a lot of shenanigans that went on that were not lawful.”A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the 2022 election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering.Governors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.Ebel is not alone. In Georgia, 74 percent of Republican voters said there was widespread fraud in 2020, according to a recent poll by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, drew the ire of Donald Trump for refusing to overturn the 2020 election results. His primary challenger is backed by the former president.Audra Melton for The New York Times‘Pastor Q’ vs. the candidate of ‘truth’Raffensperger, for his part, has been busy making appearances on both conservative news sites and the mainstream press, seeking to match Hice’s statewide campaigning by utilizing his stature as the sitting secretary of state.In a recent interview, Raffensperger said that Hice “does not know what he’s talking about” regarding the absentee ballot process.“It’s just a myth that was made and propagated by people that had losing campaigns or didn’t do their job,” Raffensperger said. “The Republican Party and the Trump campaign did not have an absentee ballot chase program, whereas the other party did,” he added, referring to how political campaigns track absentee ballots and make sure voters return theirs.Raffensperger continually said he was the candidate of “the truth” and referred to his opponent as Pastor Q, a reference to the congressman’s former role as a pastor and his support for other candidates for secretary of state who have praised QAnon-style conspiracy theories.“At some point, Pastor Q endorsed them and they’ve endorsed him,” Raffensperger said. “And so that’s his position, and I think it’s untenable, and I believe that’s why he won’t be elected statewide.”When asked about his involvement with candidates who have appeared at pro-QAnon events, Hice said, “They reached out to us early about a meeting that I did not attend, but I’m in favor of any conservatives who will stand up and run for office.”‘I’m totally convinced President Trump won Georgia’Raffensperger is perhaps best known for rebuffing Trump’s request to “find 11,780 votes” in Georgia, one more than the amount he lost by, in a brazen attempt to overturn the election.When asked how he would respond had he received that call from Trump, Hice avoided a direct answer. But he appeared to side with Trump’s argument.“The context of the call was we need to make sure that legal ballots were counted and illegal ballots were not counted,” Hice said. “I’m totally convinced President Trump won Georgia had we had a true election that was fair, and that in essence is what the president was aware of. How do you continue finding ballots, ballots, ballots, ballots, days, days, days after the election, just enough for President Trump to lose?”Supporters of Hice backed the congressman’s view that Trump won Georgia.Representative Jody Hice campaigning for secretary of state in Macon, Georgia, last month. He said he is “totally convinced” that Trump would have won Georgia, echoing conspiracy theories.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“If you’re asking me do I think that there were things that occurred that were outside of what was correct and legal? Yes,” said Bert Adams, a Savannah resident who attended Hice’s meet-and-greet with her husband, Sam, in that Georgia city last Thursday. “And could that have led to a different outcome than the one that was correct and legal? Probably.”Though he remains focused on false allegations about the 2020 election, Hice also talked about state election law, and changes to it that he wants the Legislature to work on: banning drop boxes, banning outside funding and adding more limits to the absentee ballot process, though he did not specify those limits.Though he is the challenger, Hice has been by far the most prolific fund-raiser among candidates running for secretary of state, both in Georgia and around the country. He has raised more than $1.6 million since announcing his candidacy, and has roughly $650,000 in cash on hand.Yet as his single-engine turboprop jet sat idling outside in Macon, Hice made a closing plea.“We need your financial support,” he said. “It’s a huge endeavor, obviously, to reach out to the entire state.”What to readRussia laid siege to urban areas across Ukraine on Thursday, and the United Nations predicted that roughly a quarter of the population could be displaced. Our colleagues continue their live coverage.The confirmation hearing for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden’s Supreme Court nominee, will begin on March 21, Carl Hulse reports.Democrats won an early victory in a New York State redistricting case, when a judge indicated on Thursday that he would allow this year’s midterm elections to proceed using newly drawn district lines that heavily favor Democrats. Nicholas Fandos reports.In a court filing, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said that there was enough evidence to conclude that Trump and some of his allies may have conspired to commit fraud and obstruction in misleading Americans about the outcome of the 2020 election and attempting to overturn the result, Luke Broadwater and Alan Feuer report.Closing segmentJessica Cisneros addressing supporters in Laredo, Texas, on Tuesday. She is facing an incumbent in a runoff election for a congressional district in South Texas.Jason Garza for The New York TimesSpoiler alertAnyone on the ballot can win an election. It’s also true that anyone on the ballot can sway an election — without actually winning.On Tuesday, a little-known candidate who won a couple thousand votes in the Texas primaries has stretched out an already bitter Democratic race by more than two months.In Texas, candidates have to win at least 50 percent of the vote to win their party nomination. If no one gets at least 50 percent, the top two vote-getters advance to a runoff. On Tuesday, Representative Henry Cuellar, a longtime South Texas Democrat, received the most votes in his primary but fell short of the 50-percent threshold, pushing him into a runoff against Jessica Cisneros, a progressive immigration lawyer.As of Thursday afternoon, Cuellar had won 48.4 percent of the vote and Cisneros had 46.9 percent. A third liberal candidate, Tannya Benavides, had 4.7 percent. Attempts to reach Benavides were unsuccessful. She wasn’t anywhere near qualifying for the runoff in May, but she received just enough votes to prevent either candidate from winning the primary outright.They’re called spoiler candidates, but it’s not necessarily a fair descriptor.Major-party candidates who fail to win enough support are in many ways just as responsible for their losses as little-known candidates who earn a mere fraction of the vote. But spoiler candidates have helped shape American politics for better or for worse. One third-party candidate in Georgia told us that he has been a target of Republican ire — even death threats — for running in the 2020 Senate race.The candidate, Shane Hazel, a Libertarian, received 2.3 percent of the vote in the November general election in Georgia in 2020.David Perdue, who was the incumbent Republican senator, came less than half a percentage point shy of the 50 percent mark. Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, advanced to the runoff as well — and won the Senate seat. Ossoff’s victory, alongside Raphael Warnock’s, a fellow Georgia Democrat, gave their party control of the Senate.While Hazel and his supporters were thrilled that a scrappy campaign had influenced a marquee Senate race, he doesn’t call himself a spoiler. He might have angered Republicans for helping to thwart a Perdue victory, but he said his intention was to give voice to voters, not to simply send a race to a runoff.And he’ll be back on the ballot in 2022, but for a different office.“There are a lot of Republicans who are extremely upset,” Hazel said, “that I’m running for governor.”Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.— Blake & LeahIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More