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      How Much Are Latinos Shifting Right?

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      So far, the data remains mixed. And the defection of Ryan Guillen, a Texas state lawmaker, to the G.O.P. may not have been driven solely by ideology.Sign up here to get On Politics in your inbox on Tuesdays and Thursdays.For years, State Representative Ryan Guillen of Texas was regarded as the most conservative Democratic legislator in Austin. He was one of just a few from the party to vote in favor of carrying handguns without a permit, and the sole Democrat in the House chamber to vote for the state’s new law banning most abortions. He remained popular in his Rio Grande Valley district, winning re-election last year by 17 percentage points.Then came the news this month: He was switching parties.“After much consideration and prayer with my family, I feel that my fiscally conservative, pro-business, and pro-life values are no longer in step with the Democratic Party of today,” Mr. Guillen said.It’s an old saw in politics: I haven’t changed, the party has changed. And in the past, it has been fairly applied to both Republicans and Democrats. Mr. Guillen has portrayed himself as part of a trend of Hispanic voters moving toward the Republican Party, especially in South Texas, where Donald J. Trump made major inroads during the 2020 election. But it’s too soon to tell just how much of a lasting shift the movement represents.The Republican Party has been reaching out to Latino voters for decades, particularly in Texas. Former President George W. Bush famously courted them with his “compassionate conservatism.” And it was former President Ronald Reagan who told his Hispanic outreach director that he would have the easiest job in the world, because “Hispanics are already Republicans, they just don’t know it yet.”Historically, roughly 30 percent of Hispanic voters have chosen to vote Republican in presidential elections, a number that increased slightly in 2020, surprising many Democrats. Republicans, unsurprisingly, celebrated the shift and have portrayed it as a seismic shift that could transform the parties.“Republicans’ enthusiasm and sense of momentum ebbs and flows, and this is a moment of high enthusiasm,” said Geraldo Cadava, a professor of history at Northwestern University and the author of the book “The Hispanic Republican.” “They want to capitalize on the momentum they feel like they have right now. They really think the energy is on their side, but they have to prove that 2020 wasn’t just a blip.”So far, the data remains mixed. While there was some dampened enthusiasm among Latino voters during the recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, for example, an analysis from the Latino Policy & Politics Initiative at the University of California, Los Angeles, showed that Latino-heavy precincts overwhelmingly backed Newsom’s remaining in office.But in San Antonio this month, Democrats lost another State House seat to a Hispanic Republican, John Lujan.Now, many Democrats are openly worried, with some calling Hispanics the new swing voter group.“Democrats have to prove that they can stop their losses, and they have to show these voters they are hearing them and caring about them,” Dr. Cadava said.Of course, perception can drive reality: If Latinos believe that Democrats take them for granted, they are more likely to vote for Republican candidates, according to analysis from Equis Research, a Washington-based firm that focuses on Latino voters across the country.Mr. Guillen, who did not respond to several messages from The Times, has fiercely embraced his new party, appearing with Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas during his party switch announcement and welcoming an endorsement from Mr. Trump by enthusiastically recalling how his signs “covered South Texas” during the presidential election. (Four years after Hillary Clinton won the district by 13 percentage points, Mr. Trump won by the same margin in 2020.)“Something is happening in South Texas, and many of us are waking up to the fact that the values of those in Washington, D.C., are not our values, not the values of most Texans,” Mr. Guillen told reporters during his announcement. “The ideology of defunding the police, of destroying the oil and gas industry and the chaos at our border is disastrous for those of us who live here in South Texas.”But ideology may not have been the only driver of Mr. Guillen’s decision, which came after Republican-controlled redistricting turned his legislative district from a Republican-leaning district into one that would most likely be solidly red.Mr. Guillen has brushed aside suggestions that he simply switched parties to stay in office, telling reporters that his 2020 victory as a Democrat showed his allegiance with voters in the district.“I have found that my core beliefs align with the Republican Party,” he said. “I am confident that my switch today is the right decision.”Mr. Abbott, for his part, portrayed Mr. Guillen’s flip as inevitable.“It’s something that has been, candidly, the worst-kept secret in the Capitol,” he said. “Ryan, we’re glad you finally came out of the closet.”On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is 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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      Republicans Have a Golden Opportunity. They Will Probably Blow It.

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      Last weekend I considered what the Democratic Party should expect from politics after Covid — the hope of revived popularity for Joe Biden under return-to-normalcy conditions, the danger that the left-tilting party might be losing ground across multiple different demographic groups. Now, after an interlude of giving thanks, let’s consider how post-Covid politics might look from the Republican side.Republicans have a lot to be thankful for. In the years since George W. Bush their party has staggered around without a governing ideology, veering from one style of fantasy politics to another, and twice nominated a ridiculously unfit reality-television star for the presidency. Yet through it all the party has never collapsed, never fallen more than a little distance out of power and almost always retained a certain capacity to block the Democrats, which is the only thing its constituencies can agree on.This pattern seems unlikely to be broken even if Biden’s poll numbers bounce back across 2022 and 2023. In that scenario Republicans will still probably narrowly recapture the House of Representatives, returning to the position that they held immediately after last November’s election — as a minority coalition, but a large one rather than a rump, which thanks to its structural advantages can always hope to hold at least part of Congress and ride a few lucky breaks into the White House.But in a way, that advantage is also the core Republican weakness, and the party’s good fortune in avoiding profound punishment for all its follies is the reason those follies will probably continue. The problems in the Democratic Party — the danger that its progressive turn is costing it conservative-leaning minority votes, even as anti-Trump suburban voters could swing back to the G.O.P. — create an opportunity for Republicans to win real popular majorities at the national level, on the scale of Bush in 2004 if not quite Ronald Reagan. But the fact that they don’t need to be a majority coalition to exercise a certain power means that they’re more likely to choose badly, and stay roughly where they are.The alternative, the best-case post-Covid scenario for the party, was visible in Glenn Youngkin’s Virginia campaign, which essentially blended elements from Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 with Mitt Romney in 2012, while shedding the baggage that kept both men from winning popular-vote majorities. Youngkin has a Romney-esque persona — the corporate suit and genial family man — but where the man from Bain Capital ended up captive to party dogma on taxes and entitlement cuts, the former Carlyle Group executive promised higher education spending and tax cuts that benefit the lower-middle class, playing against the corporate-Republican and supply-side stereotypes.Meanwhile, Youngkin imitated Trump not just in his relatively populist promises but also in his willingness to pick cultural fights — in this case, on critical race theory in schools — that other moderate Republicans might shy away from. But then in most other ways he was an anti-Trump: decent rather than bullying, reasonable rather than paranoid, keeping conspiracism at a distance, reassuringly competent rather than apocalyptic.So that’s all the G.O.P. needs nationally to fully exploit its post-Covid opportunities — a more populist economic agenda, a willingness to take the fight to the progressive left (but with a smile) and an end to Trumpian conspiracism.But do enough actors in the party really want that combination? At the elite level there is a clutch of politicians and candidates who keep groping for a more populist agenda and a group of nationalist intellectuals who think they’re on the cusp of imposing one upon the party. But there is still a larger group of lawmakers, strategist and donors who are very comfortable having no agenda whatsoever, or falling back on the familiarity of upper-bracket tax cuts and pretend budget cuts as soon as they’re restored to power.Among the party’s voters, activists and media personalities, meanwhile, there remains a clear appetite not for the Youngkin-style appropriation of certain parts of Trumpism, but for Donald Trump in full — nourished by the plausible belief that populists and social conservatives can’t entirely trust more-corporate Republicans, the implausible belief that Trump’s nastiness helped him more than it hurt him, the false belief that he actually won the 2020 election, plus the very America-in-2021 desire for politics to be high-stakes TV entertainment rather than boring attempts to cobble together governing majorities.And here’s the thing: Between the Democratic Party’s weaknesses, Biden’s age and the unimpressiveness of his possible successors, Republicans could very easily be competitive in 2024 while renominating Trump and campaigning on a purely negative agenda.Sure, they can’t expect to govern effectively that way, and they’d be throwing away a potentially golden opportunity. But in the end the race would be close, there would be some exciting constitutional-crisis possibilities in the aftermath, and if the Democrats pulled it out, well, their majorities would be slim and 2026 would be just around the corner.And if there’s anything we’ve learned over the past 15 years, it’s that the chance to enjoy a little bit of power without any real responsibility is impossible for Republicans to resist.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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      That ‘Team Beto’ Fund-Raising Email? It Might Not Be From Beto.

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      Mimicking official correspondence is an age-old marketing trick. But look-alike emails suggesting links to Beto O’Rourke’s campaign for governor show the tactic has accelerated in the digital era.Kenneth Pennington, a top digital strategist for Beto O’Rourke, had a simple plan.Mr. O’Rourke would announce his bid for governor of Texas early on a recent Monday morning and then Mr. Pennington would break the news via email to Mr. O’Rourke’s lucrative list of supporters, a loyal following that had already raised tens of millions of dollars for Mr. O’Rourke in his past bids for the Senate and the White House.But Mr. Pennington soon noticed something troubling: a parallel wave of look-alike emails from groups completely unaffiliated with the O’Rourke campaign that were designed to capitalize on the Texas Democrat’s moment. The emails used subject lines, sender names and URLs embedded with phrases like “team Beto” and “official Beto.” And in most cases, none of the money these emails eventually raised went directly to the campaign.Mr. O’Rourke still brought in more than $2 million from 31,000 donors, the largest 24-hour sum that any new candidate has announced this year, his campaign said. But for Mr. Pennington and the rest of the campaign, the nagging question was how much more they might have hauled in if other Democratic groups hadn’t been so busy siphoning off their share.“The frustrating thing,” Mr. Pennington said, “is we will never know how much we lost.”Welcome to the sometimes-sketchy world of online campaign fund-raising, where misdirection and misleading everyday Americans — often older Americans — to maximize clicks and cash is increasingly a dark art form.Imitating others and mimicking official correspondence with postage-paid mailers is an age-old trick that marketers have used since long before the internet. The tactic has been adapted and updated for the digital era — and appears to be accelerating in prevalence in the political sphere.At stake can be millions of dollars in an era when mass online political donating is in vogue in both parties. Copycatting Mr. O’Rourke’s brand surged in popularity recently, but on the Republican side, mimicking the brand of former President Donald J. Trump has been common for months.In some cases, established organizations are simply capitalizing on the day’s big news or the politician of the moment to gin up excitement among their own supporters with some verbal sleight-of-hand. In others, political action committees with anodyne names are raising funds in the name of a popular politician that they have no affiliation with at all. Mr. Pennington described such groups as “leeches” and “scam PACs.”Where the money goes from there can be murky, though big payments to the operatives and consulting firms that operate those PACs have drawn increasing scrutiny from political colleagues, regulators and law enforcement alike.Some of these operations are legal, sometimes burying the requisite disclaimers in the fine print. Others may not be. This month, the Justice Department charged three political operatives with running a scheme that prosecutors said defrauded small donors of $3.5 million.“I am not at all surprised that unscrupulous actors are essentially impersonating popular Democratic campaigns to try to raise money,” said Josh Nelson, a Democratic digital strategist who runs a firm, The Juggernaut Project, focused on growing email lists more ethically. “That’s the unfortunate trend we’ve seen.”Mr. Nelson has been publicly pressuring progressives to abandon more deceptive fund-raising tactics, and has asked the leading Democratic technology companies to intervene because new laws are unlikely to stiffen penalties for deception anytime soon.“Ultimately, I think it is going to take technology vendors cracking down on these tactics,” Mr. Nelson said.For now, there seems to be little that the most aggressive politicians and PACs in both parties won’t say to raise more money from online supporters.“Your covid test result,” read the alarming subject line of a fund-raising email from the campaign arm of House conservatives the day before Mr. O’Rourke entered the governor’s race. (The email was about mobilizing opposition to a Covid-19 vaccine mandate.)A new favorite tactic of the Republican National Committee has been making it appear as if supporters have urgent and overdue bills. “WARNING: Payment Incomplete” has been the sender line of more than 15 party emails since August, including one just before Thanksgiving. (A warning this week was about membership status as “Trump Social Media Founding Supporter.”)The day after Mr. O’Rourke’s announcement, the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, sent an email to supporters who had not ordered anything, using “Your Order Confirmation” as the sender and “Order ID: 73G526S” as the subject line. (The email was an effort to sell “Let’s Go Brandon” wrapping paper, which references a popular conservative phrase that has become a stand-in for an insult aimed at President Biden.)The House Conservatives Fund, the Republican National Committee and Mr. Abbott’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.Some of these examples may seem like easily detectable and even harmless deceptions. But strategists in both parties say a huge share of online cash is raised from older Americans who are less adroit online and have a harder time separating fact from hyperbole. The reason that so-called Nigerian prince scams exist, after all, is because people fall for them.When Mr. O’Rourke ran for Senate in 2018, he shattered Democratic fund-raising records, and his entry into the 2022 governor’s race has been highly anticipated. His campaign team held discussions before the announcement about how to limit the funds that less scrupulous actors might try to cannibalize.Two PACs sent out similar emails suggesting they were raising money for Mr. O’Rourke, using “team beto” and “official beto” in the URLs of their donation links. But all of the funds went directly to the PACs instead of the campaign.And outside groups did pounce almost immediately.“Official: Beto is in!!” came one such message the morning his run was announced. It listed its sender as “Team Beto (BSP).”The “BSP” stood for Blue South PAC, a new political action committee that sprung up this year and was among the more aggressive imitators of Mr. O’Rourke’s campaign. The group sent no less than five emails from a sender that included the phrase “Team Beto” in the campaign’s first three days.“At the very least, they’re trying to trick people into opening the email as if it’s from the campaign,” Mr. Pennington said, adding that he raced to send out the campaign’s first fund-raising message sooner than planned when he saw others already arriving.In one solicitation, the link to the Blue South PAC donation page on ActBlue, the Democratic digital donation-processing site, was highlighted in bright yellow and appeared as if it belonged to the campaign: actblue.com/donate/team-beto.Those who clicked were greeted by a message: “Show your support by donating and joining Team Beto!” Except 100 percent of the funds went to the Blue South PAC, according to the fine print on the donation page.A related group, Defeat Republicans, deployed a nearly identical email, featuring a similar URL highlighted in yellow: actblue.com/donate/official-beto.Both groups are linked to the same digital strategist, Zach Schreiber, who emailed a statement on behalf of both Blue South PAC and Defeat Republicans saying that their digital strategy was “in line with the industry best practices.”“Our community looks to us for news, action alerts, and opportunities to help elect Democrats,” the statement said, adding that the PACs “look forward to working with the Beto campaign.”Founded in the summer of 2020, Defeat Republicans raised almost $1 million in less than a year through the end of June 2021. In that time, federal records show it paid Mr. Schreiber $133,000 and directed another $208,000 to a firm, Opt-In Strategies, that lists him as a consultant on its website. Blue South PAC had spent only about $37,000 through the end of June, with more than one-third of the spending going to another consulting firm, UpWave Digital Solutions, founded by Mr. Schreiber.Federal records show that Defeat Republicans has given more than $400,000 to Democratic campaigns. The biggest chunk, $230,000, went to Jennifer Carroll Foy, who ran for governor of Virginia as a Democrat; Ms. Foy’s campaign paid Opt-In Strategies $67,500 for “list acquisition,” state records show. The PACs also said it had contributed $5,000 to Mr. O’Rourke.Plenty of other groups with missions that bear little relation to Mr. O’Rourke’s campaign seized on his entry into the race. These PACs have no formal affiliation with Mr. O’Rourke, even as they cite his campaign in fund-raising, and have no obligation to spend any of what they collect to help him.One PAC, The Majority Rules, ostensibly devoted to ending partisan gerrymandering, wrote an email to its list on Mr. O’Rourke’s first day that read, “The first 24 hours after a campaign announces are critical to its success. We still need another 103 grassroots Democrats to step up before midnight to give Beto the momentum he needs.”All the funds went to the PAC.A solicitation email sent from a PAC called 314 Action.Another PAC, 314 Action, devoted to electing scientists, sent an email with the subject line “BREAKING: Beto is running for Texas governor” the day he entered the race. The funds went to the PAC. The sender line in that email displayed as “Beto O’Rourke Update” — a format that industry insiders say can make it appear, at a glance, as if the politicians themselves sent the missive. (Directly using a politician’s name alone without consent is generally not allowed because it is seen as writing directly in his or her voice without authorization.)A nonprofit arm of 314 Action has announced it will spend up to $500,000 this year targeting four Republican governors, including Mr. Abbott of Texas. Joshua Morrow, the executive director of the 314 Action groups, did not respond to questions about the group’s fund-raising tactics but said in a statement that Mr. Abbott is “at the top of the list” of “anti-science politicians” they will target into 2022.314 Action uses other techniques to lure potential supporters, including sending three emails so far this month from “BREAKING from NBC News.” Another set of 314 Action emails used “NBC News Alert” in the sender line in September.Mr. Nelson, the Democratic digital strategist pressing his industry to curb such tactics, said groups keep doing it because it works — at least in the short term. But he worries that over time bad actors could poison the well for the whole party if donors stop trusting political groups with their money.“Ultimately there is a real risk that we’re going to push donors away,” he said. More

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      Edward Durr Jr.: The Trump Republican Who’s Riding High in New Jersey

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      “If anything, my election showed nobody’s untouchable,” said Edward Durr Jr., who pulled off a stunning victory to win a New Jersey State Senate seat.Edward Durr Jr., a Republican who this month toppled New Jersey’s second most powerful lawmaker, had three children under 13 when a mortgage company began foreclosure proceedings on his 1,200-square-foot, one-story home in South Jersey in 1997.Within two years, he and his first wife had filed for bankruptcy, identifying $64,784.99 in debts to J.C. Penney, an insurance company and a bank, court records show.“My kids didn’t really know what was going on,” said Mr. Durr, who dropped out of high school when his father, a self-employed carpenter, got sick and needed help at work. “We kind of sheltered them from that.”Two decades later, New Jersey’s high property taxes and cost of living would become centerpieces of Mr. Durr’s campaign, cementing his improbable win against Steve Sweeney, a Democrat who had held a near-final say over all legislation in Trenton as president of the State Senate.A commercial truck driver, he describes himself as a “blue-collar, Christian, Second Amendment supporter.” He is a strong backer of former President Donald J. Trump, who called to congratulate him on his win, and an opponent of vaccine and mask mandates and what he calls government “tyranny.”Mr. Durr’s victory and the region’s strong Republican turnout are considered emblematic of evaporating enthusiasm for Democrats in suburban and rural areas and wide dissatisfaction with President Biden. That mix contributed to a Republican win in Virginia and Gov. Philip D. Murphy’s unexpectedly close re-election in New Jersey, and is seen as an ominous sign for the Democratic Party ahead of next year’s congressional midterms.“If anything, my election showed nobody’s untouchable,” Mr. Durr said.During the campaign, Democratic operatives used mailers and a video ad to highlight Mr. Durr’s past financial troubles, but he won by about 2,300 votes anyway, pulling off one of the biggest political upsets in state history.“Not for nothing,” said Steve Kush, a Republican consultant who worked with Mr. Durr’s campaign, “but those kinds of attacks actually backfired this time. There’s a lot of other people going through some very hard times. Who hasn’t had problems with financing?”Since the Nov. 2 election, Mr. Durr, 58, has become a mini-celebrity, unable to walk through Walmart or ShopRite or pick up chicken wings from his local pub, Wilson’s, without being asked to pose for a selfie.Mr. Durr, a Republican who won an upset race against one of the most powerful Democrats in New Jersey, has said his newfound fame made him queasy.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesHe does not take office until Jan. 11. But he is already using a new domain name, edthetrucker.com, to raise funds for re-election and hawking “Ed the Trucker” hats, “Riding DURRty” bumper stickers and “Dangerous Durr” T-shirts and mugs, co-opting a term Mr. Murphy used to describe him.His campaign flew so far under the radar that it was not until after Election Day that a reporter for WNYC, a public radio station, publicized incendiary comments he had made on Twitter that disparaged the Muslim Prophet Muhammad and called Islam a “false religion.”On the day Mr. Sweeney conceded, Mr. Durr met with Muslim leaders at a masjid near his campaign headquarters, reiterating his public apology for the comments and offering a commitment to “stand against Islamophobia and all forms of hate.”“As long as you know somebody, it’s hard to hate somebody — don’t you think?” he told reporters gathered outside, holding a Quran given to him during a two-hour meeting with members of the state’s Council on American Islamic Relations. “It’s very easy to hate somebody that you don’t know.”At home in Logan Township, 15 miles outside Philadelphia, Mr. Durr himself remains largely unknown. He did not win a majority of votes in the Democrat-led town where he lives near the Delaware River, in an area known as Repaupo.In Penns Grove, where the three-bedroom, one-bath house he lost in foreclosure last sold for $22,000, neighbors said they had not heard of him before Election Day, if at all.“He didn’t win his own town,” said Frank Minor, Logan’s Democratic mayor. “That tells you a lot right there.”“He’s been anti-Muslim, anti-vax,” Mr. Minor added. “He’s a Trump Republican. That’s what he is. That’s what he’s going to do.”After disparaging Islam, Mr. Durr met with Muslim leaders at Al Minhal Academy of Islamic Education in Washington Township, N.J. He left carrying a Quran.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesRural and predominantly white, southern New Jersey is one of the most conservative parts of the state. Democrats in Mr. Durr’s district outnumber Republicans, yet Mr. Trump narrowly won more votes than his Democratic opponent in 2016 and in 2020.Buoyed by Mr. Sweeney and the influence of George E. Norcross III, a well-connected political boss, Democrats controlled most local and state offices. That also changed on Election Day.Mr. Durr’s two Republican running-mates ousted incumbent Democrats in the Assembly, and Republicans flipped two seats on the Gloucester County Board of Commissioners, the legislative body where Mr. Sweeney cut his political teeth.Mr. Durr said he shed 55 pounds during the campaign, weight loss he attributed to walking and knocking on doors in places Republicans seldom consider competitive: Mr. Sweeney’s hometown, West Deptford, and the city of Bridgeton, a tight-knit enclave of mostly Latino immigrants.“People were, like, shocked,” Mr. Durr said. “They’d say, ‘Nobody’s ever been here.’”Mr. Durr said he hoped to keep his job as a truck driver for the Raymour & Flanigan furniture chain, and the health insurance it provides, even after he is sworn in as a senator, a part-time position that pays $49,000. Lawmakers who took office after 2010 are not eligible for health coverage.He rides a 2012 Harley-Davidson motorcycle, spoils his three pit bulls — “I call them my fur babies” — and, with his five siblings, takes care of his mother, a recent widow who lives next door.Before joining the furniture company, he worked in construction and said he often held multiple jobs, including making pastries for Dunkin’ Donuts and working in a farm supply store. During two growing seasons, he drove trucks for East Coast Sod and Seed.“He was on time,” said Andy Mottel, the manager of the Pilesgrove, N.J., farm, which transports sod across the country and provides the field grass for Yankee Stadium. “He worked every day. He has that strong voice — very knowledgeable about sports.”Mr. Durr completed his G.E.D. through Gloucester City High School, and he has made no secret of his unease with his sudden stardom. (“I feel like I’m about to throw up,” he said the day Mr. Sweeney conceded.) He will be a member of the minority party in the State House, making it unlikely he will have significant power to steer or stonewall legislation.When ticking off his legislative priorities, he mentions goals like “bringing jobs here, bringing businesses here,” and he is the first to say he has a lot to learn about how Trenton works. “If it’s an issue that concerns New Jersey citizens, I’m going fight for it,” he said.It was his fourth campaign for public office. He ran for State Assembly as an independent in 2017 and as a Republican in 2019, and he ran last year for Logan Township council.It is unclear how much he spent to win. The latest financial reports show he spent roughly $2,300, but he has said that the final figure will be between $5,000 and $10,000.New Jersey has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country, and Mr. Durr said he originally decided to run for public office after learning he could not get a license to carry a concealed weapon.“I’ve been on every military base as a truck driver on the East Coast,” he said. “Why am I being refused my right to self-protect? The Second Amendment says I have a right to self-protect.”Mr. Durr’s Islamophobic remarks in 2019 were not his only controversial comments on social media.He also appeared to equate public acquiescence to pandemic-related mandates to remaining silent during the Holocaust. After a violent racist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, he offered comments reflecting the legitimacy of “both sides,” a position similar to Mr. Trump’s initial response.Officials with the Islamic council said that they worried that Mr. Durr’s past hate speech, left unchecked, could lead to violence. During the meeting at the masjid, they offered him examples of relatives who had been targeted for being Muslim.Three people who participated said that he was engaged and appeared genuine in his desire to learn more about the Muslim faith. The group shared snacks, and Mr. Durr observed a 10-minute prayer service.“He was open minded,” said John Starling, the imam of a mosque in Cherry Hill, N.J. “He was without hesitation ready to make the situation right.”Atiya Aftab, who teaches in the Middle Eastern Studies program at Rutgers University and also attended the meeting, said she understood it as the start of an ongoing conversation.“I’m not second-guessing his intent,” Professor Aftab said. “I did feel that it was genuine and authentic. But ultimately it’s actions that will speak louder than words.”Camille Furst contributed reporting and Susan C. Beachy contributed research. More

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      G.O.P. Cements Hold on Legislatures in Battleground States

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      Democrats were once able to count on wave elections to win back key statehouses. Republican gerrymandering is making that all but impossible.Republicans are locking in newly gerrymandered maps for the legislatures in four battleground states that are set to secure the party’s control in the statehouse chambers over the next decade, fortifying the G.O.P. against even the most sweeping potential Democratic wave elections.In Texas, North Carolina, Ohio and Georgia, Republican state lawmakers have either created supermajorities capable of overriding a governor’s veto or whittled down competitive districts so significantly that Republicans’ advantage is virtually impenetrable — leaving voters in narrowly divided states powerless to change the leadership of their legislatures.Although much of the attention on this year’s redistricting process has focused on gerrymandered congressional maps, the new maps being drafted in state legislatures have been just as distorted.And statehouses have taken on towering importance: With the federal government gridlocked, these legislatures now serve as the country’s policy laboratory, crafting bills on abortion, guns, voting restrictions and other issues that shape the national political debate.“This is not your founding fathers’ gerrymander,” said Chris Lamar, a senior legal counsel at the Campaign Legal Center who focuses on redistricting. “This is something more intense and durable and permanent.”This redistricting cycle, the first one in a decade, builds on a political trend that accelerated in 2011, when Republicans in swing states including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan drew highly gerrymandered state legislative maps.Since those maps were enacted, Republicans have held both houses of state government in all three places for the entire decade. They never lost control of a single chamber, even as Democrats won some of the states’ races for president, governor and Senate.All three of those Northern states are likely to see some shift back toward parity this year, with a new independent commission drawing Michigan’s maps, and Democratic governors in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania will probably force the process to be completed by the courts.Gerrymandering is a tool used by both parties in swing states as well as less competitive ones. Democrats in deep-blue states like Illinois are moving to increase their advantage in legislatures, and Republicans in deep-red states like Utah and Idaho are doing the same.But in politically contested states where Republicans hold full control, legislators are carefully crafting a G.O.P. future. They are armed with sharper technology, weakened federal voting statutes and the knowledge that legal challenges to their maps may not be resolved in time for the next elections.In Texas, North Carolina and Ohio, Republican governors have signed into law new maps with a significant advantage for the party. Georgia is moving quickly to join them.Republicans say that the growth of such heavily skewed legislatures is both the result of the party’s electoral victories and of where voters choose to live.State legislative districts are by nature much smaller in population than congressional districts, meaning they are often more geographically compact.As Democratic voters have crowded into cities and commuter suburbs, and voters in rural and exurban areas have grown increasingly Republican, G.O.P. mapmakers say that they risk running afoul of other redistricting criteria if they split up those densely populated Democratic areas across multiple state legislative districts.“What you see is reflective of the more even distribution of Republican and right-leaning voters across wider geographic areas,” said Adam Kincaid, the director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust. Trying to draw more competitive legislative districts, he said, would result in “just a lot of squiggly lines.”He pointed to maps in Wisconsin that were proposed by a commission created by Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat. Under those designs, Republicans would still have a majority in both state legislative chambers (though with significantly smaller margins).“They’re limited by geography,” Mr. Kincaid said. “There’s only so many things you can do to spread that many voters across a wide area.”Democrats note that Republicans are still cracking apart liberal communities — especially in suburbs near Akron and Cleveland in Ohio and in predominantly Black counties in northern and central North Carolina — in a way that helps the G.O.P. and cuts against a geographical argument.“They are carving up Democratic voters where they can’t pack them,” said Garrett Arwa, the director of campaigns at the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. He argued that Democratic map proposals “all put forth better and more fair maps that I would say are far from a Rorschach test.”Democrats have fewer opportunities to unilaterally draw state legislative maps, particularly in battleground states. Of the 14 states where the margin of the 2020 presidential race was fewer than 10 percentage points, Democrats are able to draw state legislative maps in just one: Nevada. Republicans control the redistricting process in six of those 14 states. (The rest have divided governments, or their maps are drawn by commissions.)But when Democrats have had an opening, they have also enacted significant gerrymanders at the state legislative level. In Nevada, Democrats are close to finalizing a map that would give them supermajorities in both chambers of the Legislature, despite President Biden’s winning just 51 percent of the state’s vote last year.The same holds true in deeply blue states. In Illinois, newly drawn State Senate maps would give Republicans roughly 23 percent of seats in the chamber, even though former President Donald J. Trump won more than 40 percent of voters in the state in 2020.Republicans have taken two approaches to ensure durable majorities in state legislatures. The tactics in Texas and Georgia are more subtle, while Republicans in Ohio and North Carolina have taken more brazen steps.In Texas and Georgia, the party has largely eliminated competitive districts and made both Republican and Democratic seats safer, a move that tends to ward off criticism from at least some incumbents in the minority party.“Out of the 150 seats in the Texas House, only six of them are within seven points or closer,” said Sam Wang, the director of the Princeton Redistricting Project. Republicans now hold a 20-seat advantage in the chamber, 85 to 65, and the new maps will give the party roughly two more seats. So while the G.O.P. lawmakers did not try to draw an aggressive supermajority, “what they really did a good job of there is getting rid of competition and getting a reasonably safe majority for themselves,” Mr. Wang said.Understand How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      The Republicans We’re Thankful For

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      It has been a tough year for fans of American democracy. The sacking of the Capitol on Jan. 6 set the tone. Former President Donald Trump’s chokehold on the Republican Party continues to fuel its most unhinged impulses and elements. More than two-thirds of Republicans buy the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, according to a recent poll by Public Religion Research Institute, while 30 percent say violence may be needed to save the country.Too many party leaders who know better are playing along. The United States even made this year’s list of “backsliding” democracies, issued by the International IDEA think tank, which cited a “visible deterioration” that began in 2019.More prosaically, there have been the usual obstructionism and attempts to make the government as dysfunctional as possible that we have come to expect from congressional Republicans.Not exactly a glowing advertisement for the American way.But there have been exceptions, select Republicans who have put the public good ahead of partisan and personal interests — some more dramatically than others. Not that these folks are saints, or even consistent in their commitment. But these days, even glimmers of responsible, pro-democratic behavior amid the miasma of Trumpism merit a shout-out. So in the spirit of the season, let us give thanks for these rare Republican pockets of character and duty.1. Representative Liz Cheney. Who would have predicted that Dick Cheney’s superconservative daughter, long despised by many as a pro-torture, anti-abortion, warmongering chip off the old block, would wind up on the same side as Democrats on anything ever? Yet here we are. Ms. Cheney’s vote to impeach Mr. Trump (in his second round), her service on the Jan. 6 select committee, her steady drumbeat of warnings about the threat Mr. Trump’s lies pose to the nation — these shouldn’t be partisan issues, but in today’s G.O.P. they absolutely set her apart from the sniveling herd. (Plus, her running feud with Senator Ted Cruz is a delight.) In return, she was booted from the House leadership in May, and the Wyoming G.O.P. voted this month to stop recognizing her as a Republican. She is facing a fierce primary challenge next year, enthusiastically backed by Mr. Trump and some of her MAGA colleagues.2. Representative Adam Kinzinger. The Illinois lawmaker has been an outspoken Trump critic, voting for impeachment this year and serving on the Jan. 6 committee. Even some of his family members turned on Mr. Kinzinger for his betrayal of Mr. Trump, firing off a group letter in January proclaiming themselves “disgusted” and accusing him of joining the “devil’s army” of “Democrats and the fake news media.” Last month, after redistricting complicated his re-election prospects, Mr. Kinzinger announced his retirement from the House at the end of this term — though he left open the possibility of running for higher office.3. The impeachment backers. Ten House Republicans voted to impeach Mr. Trump last January for having incited the Jan. 6 insurrection attempt. In February, seven Senate Republicans voted to convict. These members upheld the Constitution and put country over party, so naturally they have been targeted for payback by the former president and his toadies.4. The infrastructure package supporters. For G.O.P. lawmakers, just doing one’s job has become risky business. This month, 13 Republican House members helped pass a badly needed bipartisan infrastructure package, putting constituents’ interests ahead of their party’s desire to deny the Democrats a legislative accomplishment. For their troubles, the 13 were trashed as “RINOs” by Mr. Trump and declared “traitors” by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who posted their office phone numbers on social media. The former Trump strategist Steve Bannon similarly posted the numbers of the 19 Republican senators who voted for the plan in August. The insults, invective and death threats promptly came rolling in.5. The Georgia vote defenders. Mr. Trump lost Georgia fair and square, but that didn’t stop him from trying to persuade state leaders to overturn the results and declare him the winner. Were it not for the spinal fortitude of people like Gov. Brian Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and the election official Gabriel Sterling in resisting the former president’s machinations, America could have been plunged into a full-blown constitutional crisis.6. Al Schmidt. The Republican on Philadelphia’s city commission, the three-member bipartisan board in charge of elections there, Mr. Schmidt went on “60 Minutes” the weekend after Election Day last November to dispute claims that the vote had been rigged. “Counting votes cast on or before Election Day by eligible voters is not corruption,” he said. “It is not cheating. It is democracy.” His office received death threats. Of course.7. Maricopa County Republican officials. Postelection audits have been one of Trumpworld’s go-to moves to undermine public confidence in the 2020 election. Arguably nowhere has this push been more pathetic than in Arizona, where Republican state lawmakers, unhappy with previous recounts of the voter-rich Maricopa County that verified President Biden’s victory, began their own partisan effort. The process proved so sketchy and embarrassing that Republican leaders in Maricopa denounced it as a “sham” and “a grift disguised as an audit.”8. Oregon state lawmakers who said no to mob violence. In June, Republicans in the State House joined the Democratic majority to expel a Republican colleague, Mike Nearman, who had let violent, armed, right-wing protesters into the State Capitol last December. (He objected to the building’s closure to the public because of Covid safety precautions.) It was the first such expulsion in the body’s history. Mr. Nearman’s was the only vote opposed.Apologies to any stand-up Republicans who got overlooked this time around. And here’s hoping that in the months to come, even more officials at all levels get fed up with licking Mr. Trump’s anti-democratic, filth-encrusted boots.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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      Sean Parnell Suspends G.O.P. Senate Bid in Pennsylvania

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      Mr. Parnell, who was endorsed by Donald Trump in one of the highest-profile 2022 Senate races, had been accused by his estranged wife of spousal and child abuse.Sean Parnell, a leading Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, suspended his campaign on Monday after a judge ruled that his estranged wife should get primary custody of their three children in a case in which she accused him of spousal and child abuse.Mr. Parnell, who was endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump, said he was “devastated” by the decision and planned to appeal.“There is nothing more important to me than my children, and while I plan to ask the court to reconsider, I can’t continue with a Senate campaign,” he said in a statement. “My focus right now is 100 percent on my children, and I want them to know I do not have any other priorities and will never stop fighting for them.”Mr. Parnell’s wife, Laurie Snell, testified in court this month that Mr. Parnell had repeatedly abused her and their children, choking her and hitting one of their children so hard that he left a welt on the child’s back. In a ruling last week that was made public on Monday, a Butler County judge wrote that he had found Ms. Snell to be “the more credible witness” and that he believed Mr. Parnell had committed “some acts of abuse in the past.”The Pennsylvania seat, currently held by Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican, is widely considered one of the most competitive Senate races in 2022. Several Democrats have announced their plans to run for the seat, including Conor Lamb, a congressman from outside Pittsburgh, and John Fetterman, the current lieutenant governor.Mr. Parnell, a former Army Ranger who received the Purple Heart after serving in Afghanistan, had been seen as a top Republican candidate, particularly after Mr. Trump endorsed him in September.But Mr. Parnell’s family history illustrated the concerns among some Republican leaders about the candidates that Mr. Trump has been supporting in G.O.P. primaries for close midterm races.Mr. Parnell narrowly lost a congressional bid in 2020, and one of his Republican rivals in the Senate race, Jeff Bartos, had attacked him over temporary protective orders he received in 2017 and 2018.Yet some Senate candidates backed by Mr. Trump have remained viable despite questions about their pasts: In Georgia, Herschel Walker, the former football star, is seen as a leading contender to challenge Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, despite facing repeated accusations of threatening his ex-wife.In the testimony by Mr. Parnell’s wife this month, she said that he once punched a closet door so hard that it hit the face of one of their children and left a bruise. At the time, Ms. Snell testified, Mr. Parnell told his child, “It was your fault and get out of here.” At another point, Mr. Parnell forced his wife out of their vehicle and left her on the side of the road, telling her to “go get an abortion,” she said in court.Mr. Parnell has denied all the allegations. He testified that he had “never raised a hand in anger towards my wife or any of our three children.”The judge granted Ms. Snell primary physical and sole legal custody of the children, who are between 8 and 12 years old, allowing Mr. Parnell to take them three weekends a month.“She described many incidents,” Judge James G. Arner wrote in his ruling. “She provided factual details of each incident, including when they happened and what happened. She testified in a convincing manner.”Mr. Parnell, on the other hand, was “somewhat evasive” and “less believable,” the judge ruled.“He was dressed very casually for his appearances in court, in blue jeans and untucked plaid shirts, which did not show respect for the seriousness of the occasion,” Judge Arner wrote. “While testifying he looked mainly in the direction of his attorneys and toward members of the news media in the back of the courtroom, rather than at me.”The judge also wrote that Mr. Parnell’s frequent travel had been a factor in the ruling.Kirsten Noyes contributed research. More

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      G.O.P. Is Energized, but ‘Trump Cancel Culture’ Poses a Threat

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      The former president, tightening his grip on the party as a haphazard kingmaker, threatens Republican incumbents and endorses questionable candidates.PHOENIX — As the country’s Republican governors met this week, there was an unmistakable air of celebration in the conference rooms and cocktail parties marking their annual postelection conference. Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin of Virginia was swarmed with well wishers and favor seekers who believed his victory in a liberal-leaning state offered the party a road map for next year’s midterm elections.Out of earshot of the reporters and donors congregating amid the palm trees and cactuses of the Arizona Biltmore resort, however, a more sober, less triumphant and all-too-familiar conversation was taking place among the governors: What could be done about Donald J. Trump?In a private meeting of the Republican Governors Association’s executive committee, Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland brought up Mr. Trump’s campaign of retribution against incumbent Republicans he dislikes — an effort that appears to be escalating, as the former president pushes former Senator David Perdue of Georgia to challenge Gov. Brian Kemp.“It’s outrageous, unacceptable and bad for the party,” Mr. Hogan said in an interview about the former president’s intervention, which he termed “Trump cancel culture.” And it’s happening, he added, “with House members, governors and senators.”Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona, chairman of the association, assured his fellow governors that the R.G.A. would support Republican incumbents, according to several governors in the room.One year after his defeat, Mr. Trump is not only still looming over the G.O.P., but also — along with his imitators — posing the biggest threat to what is shaping up to be a fruitful year for Republican candidates. With President Biden’s approval ratings mired below 50 percent — in some surveys, below 40 percent — and voters in a sour mood, Republicans are well positioned to make gains in Congress and statehouses across the country.But there is Mr. Trump, threatening primary challenges to some House Republicans in key swing districts, endorsing Senate candidates who make party leaders uneasy and recruiting loyalists to take out Republican governors from Idaho to Georgia.Mr. Youngkin’s success in a campaign in which his Democratic opponent relentlessly linked him to Mr. Trump has emboldened the former president to further tighten his grip on the party, one whose base remains deeply loyal to him.Moving beyond the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him this year, Mr. Trump is now threatening to unseat lawmakers who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill. He taunts Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell as an “old crow” on a near-daily basis, while demanding that Mr. McConnell be removed from his leadership post. And, most alarming to the clubby cadre of Republican governors, Mr. Trump has already endorsed two challengers against incumbent governors and is threatening to unseat others.“Saving America starts by saving the G.O.P. from RINOs, sellouts and known losers!” Mr. Trump said last week, using the acronym for “Republicans in name only.”As Mr. Trump weighs a 2024 comeback, he is plainly determined to ensure that the party he could return to remains every bit as loyal to him as it was when he held office.“It’s very foreign to the conduct that we’re used to,” said Haley Barbour, the former Mississippi governor, who has worked with every Republican president and former president since Richard M. Nixon. Mr. Trump’s post-presidential predecessors, he said, “were scrupulous about not getting involved in primaries.”Representative Tom Emmer, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, accused the news media and Democrats of focusing too much on Mr. Trump. Yet it was House Republicans, led by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who invited the former president to headline the committee’s signature fall fund-raiser this month.Of the Republican incumbents Mr. Trump is targeting, Mr. Emmer said, “You’re talking about people that have run tough races and been very successful.”Governor Ducey assured the R.G.A. that he would support their incumbents and that he was not running for Senate.Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesBeyond targeting lawmakers he feels have not proved sufficiently faithful, Mr. Trump has also normalized aberrant behavior in Republican ranks and fostered a culture of fear among party officials who want to move on from his presidency or at least police their own members. After just two House Republicans voted to censure Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona for posting an animated video that depicted him killing a Democratic lawmaker, for example, Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Gosar’s re-election, affirming his status as a Republican in good standing.It is the former president’s insistence on playing a haphazard kingmaker, however, that is most troubling to Republican officials and strategists. In Pennsylvania, where the party is perhaps most at risk of losing a Senate seat, Mr. Trump endorsed Sean Parnell, a military veteran who has been accused by his ex-wife of spousal and child abuse.More broadly, Mr. Trump is complicating Mr. McConnell’s recruitment campaign by making clear his contempt for the sort of center-right Republicans who refuse to echo his lies about last year’s election. Two New England governors, Chris Sununu of New Hampshire and Phil Scott of Vermont, indicated this month that they would not run for the Senate, Mr. Hogan appears more intent on pursuing a long-shot presidential campaign, and Mr. Ducey continues to insist that he will not challenge first-term Senator Mark Kelly.“I’m not running for the United States Senate, and I’m 100 percent focused on this final year as Arizona’s governor,” Mr. Ducey said in Phoenix, while voicing his respect for Mr. McConnell, who is wooing him with the ardor and attentiveness of a college football coach pursuing a five-star high school quarterback.Mr. Ducey, who is one of Mr. Trump’s most frequent targets for his refusal to overturn Arizona’s vote for Mr. Biden, betrayed it-is-what-it-is fatigue with the former president. The governors would “control the controllable,” he said. Attempting to consider Mr. Trump’s role, he added, was like “trying to predict what can’t be predicted.”Most other Republican governors in Phoenix were just as uninterested in discussing Mr. Trump, displaying the sort of evasiveness many adopted while he was in office.Hustling to a panel session, Mr. Kemp dismissed a question about a challenge from Mr. Perdue by noting that he had already “made statements on that.” Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, who faces a challenge from former Representative Jim Renacci, said, “I don’t think the president is going to do that,” when asked about whether Mr. Trump would side with Mr. Renacci. Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama, whom Mr. Trump blames for not being allowed to hold a July 4 rally on the U.S.S. Alabama in Mobile, said she was “going to be fine” in her primary and then jumped in a waiting vehicle.And on the question of Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, perhaps the former president’s top Senate Republican target, the state’s governor, Mike Dunleavy, twice said only, “I’ll let people know,” when asked if he would support her.Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said he did not think Mr. Trump would side with DeWine’s challenger, former Representative Jim Renacci.Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesThe Republicans most willing to speak frankly about Mr. Trump were those open to 2024 presidential runs.Mr. Sununu, the New Hampshire governor and political scion, who this month infuriated Senate Republicans by ridiculing the Senate and declining to challenge Senator Maggie Hassan, said, “I think Brian Kemp is doing a phenomenal job.”In an earlier political era, that would have been unremarkable praise for a fellow Republican governor. But in a news conference at the meeting here, not one of four Republicans on the dais was willing to offer such a vote of confidence in the Georgia governor.Mr. Perdue has inched closer to challenging Mr. Kemp, saying in a radio interview this week that a lot of Georgians believe that “people in power haven’t fought for them, and caved in to a lot of things back in 2020,” and that he was “concerned about the state of our state.”As significant for the G.O.P.’s future, Mr. Sununu said, “Yeah, sure,” when asked if he was open to a presidential bid, and made clear he would not defer to Mr. Trump. “That’s a decision that I’m going to make based on what I can deliver, not based on what anyone else is thinking,” he said.The only other Republicans who appear at least willing to break with Mr. Trump on a case-by-case basis are Mr. McConnell and his top lieutenants. While they have rallied to the former football star Herschel Walker, whom Mr. Trump pushed to run for the Senate in Georgia, Mr. McConnell’s allies have made clear their support for Mr. Ducey and have stayed out of Senate races in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, where Mr. Trump has intervened.“At the end of the day, in most of these races, we’re going to have credible, competitive candidates,” said Steven Law, who runs a McConnell-aligned Republican super PAC. “There may be a few places where we need to be engaged to make sure we put our best foot forward.”Some Republican Senate strategists are having painful flashbacks to the last big G.O.P. wave, in 2010, when Republicans swept more than 60 seats in the House but several weak Republican candidates lost key Senate contests.“Republicans running bad candidates doesn’t guarantee Democrats will win,” said J.B. Poersch, president of the Senate Majority PAC, the leading Senate super PAC for Democrats. “But it sure does help.”For now, public surveys and internal party polling show that support for Democrats is eroding — the kind of political climate where even less-than-stellar Republican recruits might win.Perhaps what is giving Democrats the most solace is the calendar.“The silver lining is it’s November 2021 and not November 2022,” said John Anzalone, a Democratic pollster who worked on Mr. Biden’s campaign last year. He added, “We’re probably at the worst point.”But Jeff Roe, who was the chief strategist for Mr. Youngkin’s campaign, said past presumptions that Republican primary voters would give little consideration to electability may not be accurate after the party fell entirely out of power in 2020.“Electability used to be fool’s gold in Republican politics,” said Mr. Roe, who was Senator Ted Cruz’s campaign manager in his 2016 bid for president. “Now it’s not. Now it’s a factor. Ideology is not the only measure anymore.”He added, “The Republican electorate is allowing for imperfect nominees just to make sure we win.” More