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      The Politics of Gloom: Suburban Women Voice Concerns

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      Some voters aren’t sold on the idea that an election will save them from their anguish.Earlier this week, 10 women from across the country met on Zoom and talked for two hours as part of a focus group on politics. All of the women were white, lived in the suburbs and had been identified as swing voters. One was a mother from Iowa who owns a small business. Another teaches special education in Florida. And there was a school bus driver from Pennsylvania.The session was sponsored by several liberal groups who invited us to tune in but asked us not to identify the participants or the organizations. They cited a need to protect the participants’ privacy and to separate the views of the focus group from the views of the sponsoring organizations.The women first responded to a question about how things were going in the country. The most optimistic answer might have been “uncertain.” The others shared that they were “nervous,” “concerned,” “frustrated” and “irritated.”The teacher from Florida spoke about struggling to keep up with medical bills for her cancer treatment. “I thought I was ahead but I keep falling behind,” she said. One recently split up with her spouse over how seriously to take Covid. One devotes an entire day every weekend to running her errands, so she can save money on gas.“It’s been the worst time,” said an educational consultant in Pennsylvania. “I can’t believe that we’re living through this.”This focus group of 10 women is a grain of sand on the beach that is the American electorate. But they open a window into a widespread gloom that helps explain why some voters doubt that the Biden administration can fulfill its promise to restore their lives to normal. These women are consumed by the problems that the federal government has said it’s trying to solve, but they seem to believe that the government lacks the power to fix them.Focus groups are but one data point in the run-up to an election. A professional mediator guides the group’s discussion, with the goal of revealing perspectives that don’t usually get captured in polling, which is a far more scripted and fast-paced interaction.Focus groups can provide anecdotes to explain trends in polling, and the organizers tend to group voters by their demographics. The organizer of this focus group is conducting sessions with multiple demographic groups; the one we were invited to this week happened to center on the views of white women. The participants were identified as swing voters because they had expressed misgivings about their past votes — some of the women had voted for Donald Trump, while others had voted for President Biden.Democrats need support from suburban women if they want to keep their House and Senate majorities in November. The women in the focus group didn’t necessarily dislike Biden. They supported the infrastructure law and opposed measures that restrict voting access. They applauded Biden for his hot-mic moment — the one when he muttered a disparaging remark about a Fox News reporter. They disliked Trump, and they were disgusted with those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6.Despite all of that, they weren’t eager to vote for Democrats in the midterm elections in November.“I can’t really have any hope for 2022 coming up,” said a woman from Tennessee who works for a professional wrestling company. “So they’re not giving me any sort of ambition to feel like I have any sort of trust in the government to fix things or at least get the ball going in the right direction.”A Look Ahead to the 2022 U.S. Midterm ElectionsIn the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are 10 races to watch.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.Campaign Financing: With both parties awash in political money, billionaires and big checks are shaping the midterm elections.Key Issues: Democrats and Republicans are preparing for abortion and voting rights to be defining topics.Democrats know they need to campaign on their accomplishments to preserve their majorities. Biden himself has suggested that he needs to do a better job telling voters what his administration and Democrats in Congress have done. But, as these women made clear, just talking to voters isn’t enough. Democrats need to make sure voters feel the effects of their efforts, too.“It’s absolutely essential that by Election Day, these suburban women are looking at Washington and seeing it as a place that can get things done,” said Meredith Kelly, a Democratic strategist.Learning ‘how to play in the sandbox’The women in the focus group did not know that the moderator guiding the discussion was a Democrat or that the sponsors were liberal organizations. All they knew before logging on was that they would be observed, though they did not know by whom. Some of them refused to answer a few questions, saying they were not informed enough to form an opinion. And some of them said they usually avoided talking about politics.When they were asked how they saw their role in the midterm elections, they laughed. “The suckers,” an Arizona mother answered. “We’re that automated laugh reel,” joked a woman in Utah.They saw Washington more as a playground than as a place where problems get solved.“At the end of the day you need to learn how to play in the sandbox together,” an interior designer from Georgia said, lamenting about bickering politicians.When it came to the infrastructure law, some of the women agreed that Democrats had included nonessential items that had nothing to do with roads or bridges. But they also thought Republicans should have voted to pass it anyway.“We need it, so whatever’s shoved in there at this point, just take it,” the Georgia woman said.They generally agreed that Biden stood out from other politicians for being “empathetic.” But even if they believed that Biden had wanted to make a difference, they didn’t think he was an exception to the rule. They seemed to doubt that any politician could solve the country’s biggest problems.The women expressed that corporations and the wealthiest Americans wielded the most power, not politicians. But they didn’t think there was anything the government could do to make corporations pay their fair share — these companies always find loopholes, they argued.After two hours of venting their frustrations, they concluded the conversation with an excoriation of the rioters who stormed the Capitol.“How did we let it get that bad?” asked the woman in Utah.With that, the moderator told them their time was up. She asked them to type up final thoughts before they logged off. One immediately left the call, while the others took a moment to say their goodbyes. The teacher in Florida, who spoke of struggling with cancer, was the last to sign off.“Thank you,” she told the moderator. “I got a lot out of it.”What to read tonightIn Washington State, Black voters’ ballots were rejected four times as often as those of white voters in the 2020 election, Mike Baker reports. All of those ballots were thrown out because of problems with voters’ signatures.Biden spoke alongside Mayor Eric Adams of New York to assert his support for law enforcement and other measures to increase public safety, Katie Glueck, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Michael Wilson report.Sarah Bloom Raskin, the nominee for vice chair of supervision at the Federal Reserve, has an even narrower path to being confirmed if Senator Ben Ray Luján is out while recovering from a stroke. Raskin, who is well-known in the banking industry, is married to Representative Jamie Raskin.the former guyDonald Trump endorses David Perdue for governor of Georgia.Perdue for GovernorThe Kool-Aid ManRemember those old commercials in which a giant, smiling pitcher of Kool-Aid interrupts a baseball game or a wedding, bursting through a wall to share the joy of a sugary beverage?From the Republican establishment’s perspective, the role of the Kool-Aid Man was played this week by the former president, who crashed the proverbial party in two states: Georgia and New Hampshire.In Georgia, Trump cut his first face-to-camera ad for a candidate, David Perdue. At Trump’s urging, the former senator is challenging Brian Kemp, the sitting governor, in the upcoming Republican primary.“The Democrats walked all over Brian Kemp,” Trump says in the ad. “Brian Kemp let us down. We can’t let it happen again.”It’s an allusion to Trump’s false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him in Georgia, and another way to air his anger that Kemp refused to go along with his efforts to overturn the vote. The district attorney in Georgia’s Fulton County is investigating Trump for seeking to improperly influence the outcome of that election.“While President Trump brought jobs back from overseas, David Perdue made a career outsourcing them to China, Mexico and other countries,” Cody Hall, a spokesman for the Kemp campaign, said of the ad. “That’s not America First — that’s David Perdue padding his own wallet on the backs of hardworking Americans.”As for New Hampshire, Trump’s on-and-off political lieutenant, Corey Lewandowski, told a conservative radio host that the former president had empowered him to find a primary challenger for the state’s moderate Republican governor.​​“The president is very unhappy with the chief executive officer of the State of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu,” Lewandowski told Howie Carr, a Boston-area radio personality. “And Sununu, in the president’s estimation, is someone who’s never been loyal to him. And the president said it would be really great if somebody would run against Chris Sununu.”A spokesperson for Sununu did not respond to a request for comment. But Larry Hogan, the Republican governor of Maryland, had plenty to say about Trump’s intervention.“This is another outrageous example of the Trump cancel culture that will do nothing except help elect more Democrats,” Hogan said. He added, “If we double down on failure and focus on the former president’s strange personal grievances, then we will deserve the result.”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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      Trump v. DeSantis: Does the Florida Governor Really Have a Shot?

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      In early 2016, as Jeb Bush floundered, the Republican establishment began to throw its support behind a different politician from Florida who seemed as if he could defeat the upstart Donald Trump. Senator Marco Rubio was 44 and handsome, and had put together a somewhat impressive legislative record during his five years in office. National Review called Rubio a “Republican dream” and hedge fund managers were donating millions to his campaign. Trump led comfortably in the polls, but it was still early, as G.O.P. insiders reminded us, and they still hadn’t put their thumbs fully on the scale. We all know how the story ends: Rubio wasn’t able to mount any sort of credible challenge to Trump and withdrew after just a few months.Today, we are hearing about yet another Florida politician in his early 40s — Gov. Ron DeSantis — who, according to many of those same establishment figures, will collect a vast majority of support from donors. And he is already the subject of plenty of positive media coverage. The headlines about DeSantis are eerily similar to those about Rubio in 2016: “The Rise of Ron DeSantis,” “Why Never-Trumpers Should Bet on DeSantis Now” and “Looks Like Ron DeSantis Could Turn Into Trump’s Personal Nightmare.” If DeSantis runs for president, his job won’t be so much to win the presidency on his own merits, but rather to stop Donald Trump.How seriously should we take DeSantis’s chances?Trump holds sizable margins in pretty much every poll you can find, but some of the numbers are tightening. Last week, the polling firm Echelon Insights published a raft of data on the Florida governor. It found that Trump’s lead over DeSantis among G.O.P. voters, which, according to its own poll, was 62 percent to 22 percent of respondents in October, had shrunk to 57 percent to 32 percent as of late January. Perhaps the most compelling bit of information Echelon found was that while 54 percent of Republicans thought “Trump was a great president and should remain the leader of the Republican Party,” 22 percent said Trump “was a great president but it is time for the Republican Party to find a new leader” and 18 percent said Trump “was not a great president and the Republican Party would be better off without his influence.” Which means that 40 percent of G.O.P. voters are at least open to the possibility of someone new.So things, perhaps, aren’t quite as locked up as they might appear, Kristen Soltis Anderson, a co-founder of Echelon Insights, told me. When asked whether Trump should run again, many of the respondents to her poll showed “a shocking level of ambivalence” to that question, she said. These people were not never-Trumpers or center-of-right Republicans; they were people who had thought Trump had done a good job but also now believed that it might be time for a fresh voice.These polls, of course, measure sentiment at a fixed moment in time. Given that, it’s difficult to know exactly what to make of a seeming growing hesitancy among Republican voters about Trump, or, for that matter, what it says about DeSantis’s shot.What’s clearer is that Trump has some built-in advantages that are unlikely to change.When the election machine truly kicks in, Trump will no doubt garner a vast majority of the media attention once again. He obviously enjoys unrivaled name recognition. And Trump’s absence from office this term could give him an edge because he has not had to take the blame for what now feels like an endless pandemic. That burden has mostly been shouldered by Joe Biden and can explain, in large part, the president’s tanking approval numbers.Plus, a December University of Massachusetts Amherst poll found that only 21 percent of Republicans thought that Joe Biden won a legitimate victory in 2020, a number that hasn’t budged much over time. There’s also some evidence that shows that G.O.P. voters who think the election was illegitimate appear more likely to vote.When all these things are considered, DeSantis, then, should be seen more as a primary challenger to a popular incumbent. Nobody since the advent of the modern-day presidential primary has successfully unseated an incumbent for the nomination.There’s also a question of timing at play here. DeSantis’s recent rise to national prominence has come from his handling of the pandemic — he has become the loudest anti-lockdown voice in the national conversation and can point to his repeated refusal to shut down his state. This might be a popular stance in 2022, but it’s hard to imagine how it will play in two years. If Covid is shutting down schools and businesses in two years, we will most likely be looking at a vastly different country. If we have returned to some semblance of normalcy, it’s quite possible that nobody will really care how DeSantis handled the pandemic.Anderson believes that DeSantis’s success comes in large part from his willingness to fight, a trait that Trump, of course, also possesses. While she thinks that DeSantis has a chance, she also pointed to the former Wisconsin governor and presidential candidate Scott Walker as a cautionary tale. “Walker is an interesting example of someone who captured the conservative imagination because he was fighting with the teachers unions, and he was standing strong against those Democratic legislators,” Anderson said. “And yet, when push came to shove, that effort fizzled out. And so if you’re DeSantis, you want to avoid that path of being someone who gets a lot of attention and a lot of interest because, hey, you were fighting the right fights at the right time against the right people.” This approach works to a certain extent, Anderson said, but there are also times when things just don’t translate onto the national stage.DeSantis’s stances on Covid have garnered him a reasonable amount of national name recognition. Last month, a Reuters poll found that 80 percent of Republican voters had at least heard of him. If this were a normal Republican election run-up, DeSantis would probably be leading right now: An Echelon Insights poll from December that did not include Trump found that DeSantis comfortably led all other potential G.O.P. nominees. But Trump’s path to power is littered with the campaigns of other upstart Republican candidates who checked off all the right boxes and got along well with the establishment. Is it really reasonable to think DeSantis’s fate will be any different?Have feedback? Send a note to kang-newsletter@nytimes.com.Jay Caspian Kang (@jaycaspiankang), a writer for Opinion and The New York Times Magazine, is the author of “The Loneliest Americans.” More

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      Republicans Who Voted to Impeach Trump Out-Raised Primary Rivals

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      Despite their pariah status in their party, House Republicans who broke with the former president have raised more than their G.O.P. foes.WASHINGTON — All seven House Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald J. Trump and are seeking re-election have out-raised their primary opponents, many of whom have received Mr. Trump’s backing, according to campaign disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission this week.In Wyoming, Representative Liz Cheney, who was all but exiled by her party for bluntly condemning Mr. Trump’s false election claims and has emerged as one of the lead lawmakers on the special committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, raked in $2 million during the last quarter, entering 2022 with nearly $5 million in cash on hand. Her opponent, Harriet Hageman, who has drawn the vociferous support of Mr. Trump and his family, raised $443,000 last quarter and has about $380,000 cash on hand.Representative Fred Upton, a centrist who has held his seat in southwest Michigan for more than three decades, brought in $726,000 and has about $1.5 million cash on hand, well ahead of the challenger Mr. Trump has endorsed, Steve Carra, a state representative who raised $134,000 last quarter and has $200,000 cash on hand.Joe Kent, a Trump-backed Army Special Forces veteran prolific on social media and conservative talk shows, appeared to come closer to matching the fund-raising totals of his opponent, Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, but still trailed her in both quarterly hauls and cash on hand.The disclosures illustrate the foothold that establishment conservatives and well-funded political action committees still hold among the party’s donor class, despite Mr. Trump’s continuing grip on the Republican base. They also reflect how the former president’s endorsements, which he has dangled as threats over Republican lawmakers he deems insufficiently loyal to him, have yet to translate into significant donations for the candidates he backs.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Trump vs. DeSantis: Tensions between the ex-president and Florida governor show the challenge confronting the G.O.P. in 2022.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.By contrast, Mr. Trump’s political operation is doing far better than his party in raking in money, having raised more than $51 million in the second half of 2021 and entering 2022 with more than double the cash on hand of the Republican National Committee.“The massive fund-raising hauls of some of these incumbents reflects a lot of people’s support for the positions they took,” said Alex Conant, a veteran Republican political strategist. “There’s only a handful of them, but they have a huge donor pool to draw from. And Trump has always struggled to translate his political capital to others.”Even with their hulking war chests, the Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump last year for his role in inciting the Capitol riot are expected to face grueling primary battles after inflaming the wrath of conservative voters. Some may still opt to retire, joining three of their colleagues who also voted to impeach Mr. Trump and already said they would not run for re-election in 2022.Mr. Upton said in a statement on Wednesday that he saw his fund-raising numbers as evidence of a “hunger for restoring civility and solving pressing problems” that was “resonating with people across America,” but added that he was still deliberating over whether he would run for re-election.Some of the financial disparities reflect straggling primary fields that have yet to be narrowed or candidates who only decided recently to enter their races. In South Carolina, for example, Mr. Trump endorsed a primary challenger to Representative Tom Rice on Tuesday, elevating Russell Fry, a state representative, over Graham Allen, a conservative media personality who had raised the most money in a crowded primary. Mr. Rice’s latest disclosure showed him with five times as much cash on hand as Mr. Allen.“Congressman Tom Rice of South Carolina, the coward who abandoned his constituents by caving to Nancy Pelosi and the radical left, and who actually voted against me on impeachment hoax #2, must be thrown out of office ASAP,” Mr. Trump wrote in his endorsement.Mr. Rice shot back with a retort of his own: “I’m glad he’s chosen someone. All the pleading to Mar-a-Lago was getting a little embarrassing. I’m all about Trump’s policy. But absolute pledge of loyalty, to a man that is willing to sack the Capitol to keep his hold on power, is more than I can stomach.”For Trump-backed candidates, more help from the boldfaced names of the party’s right flank is likely on the way. On Tuesday evening, a day after campaigns were required to file their latest Federal Election Commission disclosures, Mr. Kent held a fund-raiser with Mr. Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., at which couples that donated or raised $25,000 were invited to attend a private reception and take a picture with the former president.Mr. Kent has previously complained on Twitter that Ms. Herrera Beutler was “running on America Last PACs not grass roots donations,” referring to big-money political action committees that once dominated campaign fund-raising, rather than the small-dollar contributions that are a growing source of financing for Republican campaigns.But as Ms. Hageman’s fund-raising totals illustrate, Mr. Trump’s backing alone does not guarantee an immediate financial windfall. Mr. Trump has targeted Ms. Cheney as one of his most high-profile detractors in Congress, hammering away at her for months and vowing to depose her. Last month, his son, Donald Trump Jr., joined an elite fund-raiser for Ms. Hageman hosted by tech billionaire Peter Thiel at his Miami compound. The donations raised there were not reflected on the report her campaign submitted this week.Ms. Hageman has chalked up Ms. Cheney’s fund-raising prowess to support from Democrats and out-of-state Republicans. A spokesman for Ms. Hageman’s campaign said she had raised more than half of her funds from within Wyoming.Establishment Republicans have rallied to Ms. Cheney’s side. Former President George W. Bush gave her the maximum donation of $5,800, while Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, and former Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, have each helped raise money for her.Mr. Bush also gave to Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who voted to convict Mr. Trump at his impeachment trial and is also facing a Trump-backed primary challenger. Ms. Murkowski out-raised that challenger, Kelly Tshibaka, raising $1.2 million last quarter, while Ms. Tshibaka raised about $600,000.“If you’d seen 100 Republicans voting to impeach Trump, the donor pool would have been more diluted,” Mr. Conant said. “They’re in a unique position to raise a lot of money.”Rachel Shorey More

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      How N.Y. Democrats Are Leading a ‘Master Class’ in Gerrymandering

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      The maps approved by Democrats in the New York State Legislature could lead their party to seize as many as three House seats from Republicans.Democrats across the nation have spent years railing against partisan gerrymandering, particularly in Republican states — most recently trying to pass federal voting rights legislation in Washington to all but outlaw the practice.But given the same opportunity for the first time in decades, Democratic lawmakers in New York adopted on Wednesday an aggressive reconfiguration of the state’s congressional districts that positions the party to flip three seats in the House this year, a greater shift than projected in any other state.The new lines would shape races in New York for a decade to come, making Democrats the favorites in redrawn districts currently held by Republicans on Long Island, Staten Island and in Central New York. They would also help tighten the party’s hold on swing seats ahead of what is expected to be a strong Republican election cycle, all while eliminating a fourth Republican seat upstate altogether.Legal and political experts immediately criticized the new district contours as a blatant and hypocritical partisan gerrymander. And Republicans, who were powerless to stop it legislatively in Albany, threated to challenge the map in court under new anti-gerrymandering provisions in New York’s Constitution, though it was unclear if they could prove partisan intent.Overall, the new map was expected to favor Democratic candidates in 22 of New York’s 26 congressional districts. Democrats currently control 19 seats in the state, compared with eight held by Republicans. New York is slated to lose one seat overall this year because of national population changes in the 2020 census.“It’s a master class in how to draw an effective gerrymander,” said Michael Li, senior counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, which has also sounded alarms about attempts by Republicans to gerrymander and pass other restrictive voting laws.“Sometimes you do need fancy metrics to tell, but a map that gives Democrats 85 percent of the seats in a state that is not 85 percent Democratic — this is not a particularly hard case,” he said. Democratic leaders in Albany rejected the charge, saying they were confident that the new districts were entirely legal and largely wrought by adjusting for population shifts that favor their candidates.State Senator Michael Gianaris, the deputy majority leader and leader of a task force that drew the lines, said that mapmakers had been “very conscious of potential legal pitfalls” and “more than complied” with the extensive list of standards outlined by the state. He said the maps were fair.“It’s a dangerous game to prognosticate on how elections are going to turn out before they are held,” he said. “Voters have the final say in all these districts, but it shouldn’t surprise anyone in a state as deep blue as New York, the results would reflect the reality on the ground.”Understand Redistricting and GerrymanderingRedistricting, Explained: Answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.New York: Democrats’ aggressive reconfiguration of the state’s congressional map is one of the most consequential in the nation.Texas: Republicans want to make Texas even redder. Here are four ways their proposed maps further gerrymandered the state’s House districts.Many of the party’s operatives and voters were less bashful in their support of gerrymandering, arguing that Democrats could not afford to take the high road when Republicans have shown no similar inclination.Both parties have weaponized redistricting for years in the larger battle for control of the House of Representatives, but Republicans recently have been more effective in doing so, based on their control of large states like Texas and Florida, and the decision by liberal bastions like California to adopt nonpartisan redistricting commissions to handle the process.On balance, their practices have also drawn greater legal scrutiny, often related to charges of racial gerrymandering. So far, state and federal courts have considered challenges to maps advanced by Republicans in several states, including Ohio, North Carolina and Alabama, and late last year the Justice Department sued Texas over new congressional maps that it said violated the Voting Rights Act’s protections for Black and Latino voters.At the same time, Republican-led states have attracted attention from the Justice Department after they advanced a series of new election laws making it more difficult to vote.In New York, the redistricting cycle began, perhaps naïvely, in the hopes that a bipartisan outside commission — approved by voters in 2014 — would deliver a balanced, common-sense map.Instead, the commission stuck to party lines and was unable to reach consensus last month, kicking control of the process back to the State Legislature, where Democrats have amassed rare supermajorities in recent years. Those majorities, plus control of the governorship, gave them the power for the first time in decades to draw maps as they saw fit.Democratic leaders swiftly released their own maps in a matter of days, forgoing any public hearings and largely keeping even their own members in the dark about the new lines until they became public.Wednesday’s vote fell mostly along party lines, as Democrats limited defections to narrowly pass the map in the Assembly, 103 to 45, and the Senate, 43 to 20.The Legislature planned to proceed as soon as Thursday to pass state legislative maps drawn by Democrats divvying up State Senate and Assembly districts. Most notably, they were expected to help solidify Democrats’ hold of the State Senate in an election year when Republicans are trying to reclaim a chamber they controlled for all but three years between the mid-1940s and 2019.Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, is widely expected to sign all the maps into law in the coming days.But Republicans were already taking steps on Wednesday to prepare a lawsuit challenging at least the congressional lines as unconstitutional in state court. Several good-governance groups in the state said they agreed with the Republicans’ view, though it was unclear if they would sign onto a suit.“The congressional maps are clearly unconstitutional under the new anti-gerrymandering provisions,” said John Faso, a former Republican congressman who is helping coordinate the effort between Albany Republicans and the National Republican Redistricting Trust. “There is a decent likelihood that there will be litigation as a result of it, but when and where I could not say.”Senator Michael Gianaris, the deputy majority leader, defended the Democrats’ redrawn maps as being fair and constitutional.Hans Pennink/Associated PressAny court case would likely hinge on how judges interpret language included in the same 2014 constitutional amendment that created the defunct redistricting commission and how Democrats actually arrived at their lines. The language has not previously been tested in court and says that districts “shall not be drawn to discourage competition” or boost one party or incumbent candidate over another.New York State courts have historically been reluctant to overturn plans passed by the Legislature. But Richard H. Pildes, a constitutional law professor at New York University, said that could change this year based on the new anti-gerrymandering language and the example set by other states’ courts that have grown more comfortable blocking gerrymandered plans.“The provision is written in a strict prohibitory language,” Mr. Pildes said. “Proving that was what actually took place will inevitably trigger these debates about were these lines drawn to preserve particular communities of interest or a range of legitimate purposes.”How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      What America Would Look Like in 2025 Under Trump

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      What will happen if the political tables are turned, and the Republican Party wins the White House in 2024 and the House and Senate along the way?One clue is that Donald Trump is an Orban worshiper — that’s Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, a case study in the aggressive pursuit of a right-wing populist agenda.In his Jan. 3 announcement of support for Orban’s re-election, Trump declared: “He is a strong leader and respected by all. He has my Complete support and Endorsement for re-election as Prime Minister!”What is it about Hungary under Orban that appeals so powerfully to Trump?“Call it ‘soft fascism,’ ” Zach Beauchamp of Vox.com, wrote on Sept. 13, 2018:a political system that aims to stamp out dissent and seize control of every major aspect of a country’s political and social life, without needing to resort to “hard” measures like banning elections and building up a police state. One of the most disconcerting parts of observing Hungarian soft fascism up close is that it’s easy to imagine the model being exported. While the Orban regime grew out of Hungary’s unique history and political culture, its playbook for subtle repression could in theory be run in any democratic country whose leaders have had enough of the political opposition.In “How the American Right Fell in Love With Hungary,” in The New York Times Magazine, Elizabeth Zerofsky quotes Rod Dreher, the combative conservative blogger, on Orban’s immigration policies — building a fence on the border to keep Muslims out, for example. “If you could wind back the clock 50 years, and show the French, the Belgian and the German people what mass immigration from the Muslim world would do to their countries by 2021, they never, ever would have accepted it” Dreher remarked.In contrast to conservatism as practiced in the United States, Zerofsky writes about Hungary under Orban: “Here was this other, European tradition of Catholic conservatism, that was afraid neither of a strong state, nor of using it to promote a conservative vision of life.”In the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Alexander Cooley and Daniel H. Nexon, political scientists at Barnard and Georgetown, argue that Orban has “emerged as a media darling of the American right,” receiving high praise from Tucker Carlson, “arguably the single most influential conservative media personality in the United States.”The Conservative Political Action Conference, “a major forum of the American right, plans to hold its 2022 annual meeting in Hungary,” Cooley and Nexon write. What has Orban done to deserve this attention?The two authors briefly summarize Orban’s record: “Orban consolidated power through tactics that were procedurally legal but, in substance, undercut the rule of law. He stacked the courts with partisans and pressured, captured, or shut down independent media.”Cooley and Nexon demonstrate a parallel between what has taken place in Hungary and current developments in the United States: “Orban’s open assault on academic freedom — including banning gender studies and evicting the Central European University from Hungary — finds analogies in current right-wing efforts in Republican-controlled states to ban the teaching of critical race theory and target liberal and left-wing academics.”In an email, Nexon elaborated:There is definitely a transmission belt of ideas between the U.S. and European right; for various stripes of conservatives — reactionary populists, integrationists, ethnonationalists — Hungary is becoming what Denmark is for the left: part real-life model, part idealized dreamscape.Trump and Orban, Nexon continued,are both opportunists who’ve figured out the political usefulness of reactionary populism. And Trump will push the United States in a broadly similar direction: toward neo-patrimonial governance. During his first term, Trump treated the presidency as his own personal property — something that was his to use to punish enemies, reward loyalists and enhance his family’s wealth. If he wins in 2024, we’re likely to see this on steroidsTrump, in Nexon’s view, will be unable to match Orban — by, for example, installing a crony “as president of Harvard” or forcing “Yale to decamp for Canada” — butIt’s pretty clear that he’ll be better at installing absolute loyalists at the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense. So, if Trump succeeds, we’ll be able to find a lot of similar parts, but it won’t be the same model. I suspect it will be worse. The U.S. is a large federation with a lot of capacity for private violence, a major international footprint, and a multi-trillion-dollar economy. Hungary is a minor player in a confederation dominated by democratic regimes.Cooley stressed in an email the “active networking among right-wing political associations and groups with Orban,” citing the Jan. 24 endorsement of Orban’s re-election by the New York Young Republican Club:Today, both the United States of America and countries in Europe like Hungary face an existential crisis. The ruling elite and political establishment’s failed leadership and ideology have eroded the meaning and purpose of citizenship. For those against this ideology and for the preservation of Western civilization for all countries in the West, it is imperative that we stand in support of one another as national communities.Orban’s appeal to the right flank of the Republican Party, in Cooley’s view, lies in anideology — which rests on redefining the meaning of “the West” away from liberal principles and toward ethnonational ideals and conservative values — and his strategy for consolidating power is to close or take over media, stack the courts, divide and stigmatize the opposition, reject commitments to constraining liberal ideals and institutions, and publicly target the most vulnerable groups in society — e.g. refugees.Orban has described Hungary under his rule as an “illiberal democracy.” In 2019, Freedom House downgraded Hungary from “free” to “partly free,” making it “the first country in the European Union that is not currently classified” as “free,” according to the Budapest Business Journal.I asked a number of European scholars about the agenda Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress would be most likely to push in 2025.In a March 2021 paper “Authoritarian Values and the Welfare State: The Social Policy Preferences of Radical Right Voters,” Philip Rathgeb, a professor of social policy at the University of Edinburgh, Marius R. Busemeyer and Alexander H. J. Sahm, both of the University of Konstanz, surveyed voters in eight Western European countries to determine “what kind of welfare state do voters of populist radical right parties want and how do their preferences differ from voters of mainstream left- and right-wing parties.”Rathgeb and his co-authors found that populist European voterswant a particularistic-authoritarian welfare state, displaying moderate support only for “deserving” benefit recipients (e.g., the elderly), while revealing strong support for a workfare approach and little support for social investment.Rathgeb wrote in an email:From an ideological perspective, it wouldn’t surprise me if Trump prioritized Medicare over Medicaid, given that the former is targeted at the “deserving” poor, i.e., the elderly and disabled. A pro-elderly outlook is very typical of the radical right in Europe too, because the beneficiaries of schemes like Medicare are typically native (white) citizens who have demonstrated their willingness to “work hard” over their lifetime, thus being deserving of welfare support. By contrast, I expect little support, perhaps even cuts, for Medicaid.Rathgeb noted that populist parties oppose social investment policies because such programs are often based onprogressive gender values and a commitment to “lifelong learning.” For example, public provision of childcare helps working women to reconcile work-family life (vs. the male breadwinner model), while training and education foster social mobility in the “knowledge economy” (e.g., high-end services). These ideological considerations are reinforced by material interests, as the main target groups of social investment policies (i.e., the new middle classes, including women and the young with high levels of education) are distant from the typical radical right voter, who usually displays lower levels of formal education.In an email, Busemeyer described some of the differences and similarities between Trumpism and European populism:In Europe, the welfare state and social policy more generally are much ingrained in people’s minds. This means that in the U.S., Trumpism goes along with criticism about the welfare state in general (see the attempts of the Trump administration to get rid of Obamacare), whereas in Europe, it’s really more about “welfare chauvinism,” i.e., protecting the good old welfare state for “deserving” people, namely hard-working natives.In addition, Busemeyer wrote, “there is a strong ‘corporatist’ element in the Trump movement (i.e., business elites), whereas in European right-wing populism that’s typically not the case.”The right-wing populist movements on both continents, he continued,are similar in their rejection of a liberal attitude toward globalization, both regarding the economic side as well as the identity part of globalization. Also, they both subscribe to a traditional role model in the family and traditional gender roles.Cécile Alduy, a professor at Stanford who studies French politics and the far right, wrote in an email:If in 2024 Trump or a Ron DeSantis wins the presidency and Republicans control both the House and Senate, the general agenda would be a backlash against any anti-discrimination, against inclusive policies implemented by the Biden administration, for an attempt to shift further the Supreme Court pendulum toward anti-abortion, for Originalist constitutionalists, for implementing voter suppression policies and for federal funding limitations on some forms of speech (critical race theory, the teaching or research of segregation, anti-Semitism or racism in the States) as well for as a return to extremely restrictive anti-immigration policies (rebuilding the Wall; for curbing down further visa and green cards, and for increasing deportations).The Republican agenda, Alduy argues,would be fueled by increased moral panic about white America’s decline, a professed sense of having been spoliated and ‘stolen the election,’ and a renewed sentiment of impunity for his most extreme backers from the Jan. 6 insurrection. My bet is that there is an active plan to reshape the political system so that elections are not winnable by Democrats, and the State be run without the foundation of a democracy.Trump has made it clear that he is a Viktor Orban superfan.Photo Illustration by The New York Times; Photographs by Attila Kisbenedek/AFP,Attila Kisbenedek/AFP via Getty Images, Cooper Neill for The New York TimesTrump signaled his intentions at a rally last week in Conroe, Texas, declaring that in the case of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, “If it requires pardons, then we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.”Trump went on: “If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere.”Or take Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who may challenge Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. On April 10, 2021, DeSantis signed the Combating Public Disorder Act into law, which his office described as “a robust approach to uphold the rule of law, to stand with those serving in law enforcement and enforce Florida’s zero tolerance policy for violent and disorderly assemblies.”On Sept. 9, 2021, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, issued a 90-page opinion declaring that the law’s “vagueness permits those in power to weaponize its enforcement against any group who wishes to express any message that the government disapproves of” and that “the lawless actions of a few rogue individuals could effectively criminalize the protected speech of hundreds, if not thousands, of law-abiding Floridians.”On Dec. 15 DeSantis proposed the “Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (W.O.K.E.) Act,” which would give parents the right to sue school systems if they believe their children are being taught “critical race theory” with a provision granting parents the right to collect attorneys’ fees if they win.The enactment of laws encouraging citizens to become private enforcers of anti-liberal policies has become increasingly popular in Republican-controlled states. Glenn Youngkin, the newly elected governor of Virginia, has created a “tip line” that parents can used to report teachers whose classes cover “inherently divisive concepts, including Critical Race Theory.”Youngkin told an interviewer:We have set up a particular email address, called helpeducation@governor.virginia.gov, for parents to send us any instances where they feel that their fundamental rights are being violated, where their children are not being respected, where there are inherently divisive practices in their schools. We’re asking for input right from parents to make sure we can go right to the source as we continue to work to make sure that Virginia’s education system is on the path to reestablish excellence.“We’re seeing dozens of G.O.P. proposals to bar whole concepts from classrooms outright,” the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent wrote earlier this week:The Republican governor of Virginia has debuted a mechanism for parents to rat out teachers. Bills threatening punishment of them are proliferating. Book-banning efforts are outpacing anything in recent memory.In a parallel strategy focused on abortion, Texas Republicans enacted “The Texas Heartbeat Act” in May, legislation that not only bans abortions as soon as a fetal heartbeat is detected but also turns private citizens into enforcers of the law by giving them the power to sue abortion providers and any person whoknowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion, including paying for or reimbursing the costs of an abortion through insurance or otherwise, if the abortion is performed or induced in violation of this subchapter, regardless of whether the person knew or should have known that the abortion would be performed or induced in violation of this subchapter.Winners of such suits would receive a minimum of $10,000 plus court costs and other fees.Not to be outdone, Republican members of the New Hampshire legislature are pushing forward legislation that proclaims thatNo teacher shall advocate any doctrine or theory promoting a negative account or representation of the founding and history of the United States of America in New Hampshire public schools which does not include the worldwide context of now outdated and discouraged practices. Such prohibition includes but is not limited to teaching that the United States was founded on racism.The use of citizens as informants to enforce intrusions of this sort is, to put it mildly, inconsistent with democratic norms — reminiscent of East Germany, where the Stasi made use of an estimated 189,000 citizen informers.One of the early goals of a Trump White House backed by Republican congressional majorities, in the view of Harry Holzer, a professor of public policy at Georgetown, would be the immediate rollback of legislation and executive orders put in place by the Biden administration:The first priority of a Trump or DeSantis presidency would be to undo any major changes Biden had implemented through executive orders. That would include a vaccination/testing mandate for health care workers, environmental regs, bolstering A.C.A. and anything Biden had done on race relations or immigration.A critical issue for both Senate Republicans and a second Trump administration would be whether to eliminate the filibuster to prevent Democratic Senators from blocking their wilder legislative plans.Holzer remarked that he is “sure” thatthey would love to pass laws outlawing mask mandates in schools, the teaching of Critical Race Theory or liberal voting rules, but they won’t have 60 votes in the Senate for that unless they also manage to kill or limit the filibuster. If they kill the filibuster, they might try to outlaw abortion, although Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and others would balk at that.Herbert P. Kitschelt, a political scientist at Duke, emailed a selection of likely Republican initiatives:The new government will use regulatory measures to support the sectors and industries that support it most in terms of electoral votes and party funding: carbon industries, the construction sector, domestic manufacturing.The Republican regime will exit from all participation in efforts to stop global warming.The politics of a populist Republican administration will aim at undermining American democracy and changing the “level playing field” in favor of a party-penetrated state apparatus.Kitschelt cites Orban as a model for Trump in achieving the goals ofUndermining the professionalism and neutrality of the judiciary, starting the with Attorney General’s office.Undermining the nonpartisanship of the military, using the military for domestic purposes to repress civil liberties and liberal opposition to the erosion of American democracy.Redeploying the national domestic security apparatus — above all the F.B.I. — for partisan purposes.Passing libel legislation to harass and undercut the liberal media and journalists with the objective to drive them economically out of business, while simultaneously consolidating conservative media empires and social websites.The politics of cultural polarization, Kitschelt argues, “will intensify to re-establish the U.S. as a white Christian-Evangelical country,” although simultaneouslyefforts will be made to attract culturally traditionalist strands in the Hispanic community. The agenda of the culture war may shift to gender relations, emphasizing the “traditional” family with male authority. At the margin, this may appeal to males, including minorities.Kitschelt’s last point touches on what is sure to be a major motivating force for a Republican Party given an extended lease on life under Trump: the need to make use of every available tool — from manipulation of election results, to enactment of favorable voting laws to appeals to minority voters in the working class to instilling fear of a liberal state run amok — to maintain the viability of a fragile coalition in which the core constituency of white “non-college” voters is steadily declining as a share of the electorate. It is an uphill fight requiring leaders, at least in their minds, to consider every alternative in order to retain power, whether it’s democratic or authoritarian, ethical or unethical, legal or illegal.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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      Who Believes in Democracy?

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      “There is no sense in avoiding or diluting the magnitude of this turn in our story: One major political party no longer accepts democracy.”The author of this sentence is the former Obama White House speechwriter Ben Rhodes, writing recently in The Atlantic, but it could have flowed from the keyboard of a hundred different writers in the post-Trump, post-Jan. 6 era. That conservatism and the Republican Party have turned against government by the people, that only the Democratic Party still stands for democratic rule, is an important organizing thought of political commentary these days.So let’s subject it to some scrutiny — and with it, the current liberal relationship to democracy as well.First, there’s a sense in which conservatism has always had a fraught relationship to mass democracy. The fear of mob rule, of demagogues rallying the masses to destroy a fragile social order, is a common theme in many different right-wing schools of thought, showing up among traditionalist defenders of aristocracy and libertarians alike.To these general tendencies, we can add two specifically American forms of conservative anxiety about the franchise: the fear of corrupt urban-machine politics that runs back through the 1960 presidential election to the age of Tammany Hall and the racist fear of African American political power that stamped the segregation-era South.Because all these influences touch the modern G.O.P., conservative skepticism about mass democracy was a somewhat normal part of American politics long before Trump came along — and some of what’s changed in the Trump era is just an events-driven accentuation of existing tendencies.Republicans have long feared voter fraud and noncitizen voting, for instance, but the fear — and for liberals, the oft-discussed hope — that demographic change could deliver permanent Democratic power have raised the salience of these anxieties. Likewise, Republicans have long been more likely to portray America as a republic, not a democracy, and to defend our system’s countermajoritarian mechanisms. But today this philosophical tendency is increasingly self-interested, because shifts in party coalitions mean that those mechanisms, the Senate and Electoral College especially, advantage Republicans somewhat more than in the recent past.But then things get complicated, because the modern Republican Party is also the heir to a strong pro-democracy impulse, forged in the years when Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon won crushing presidential-level majorities but conservatives felt themselves constantly balked by unelected powers, bureaucrats and judges especially.This experience left the right deeply invested in the idea that it represents the true American majority — moral, silent, what have you — while liberalism stands for elite power, anti-democratic forms of government, the bureaucracy and the juristocracy and the Ivy League.And that idea and self-image has remained a potent aspect of the right-wing imagination even as the old Nixon and Reagan majorities have diminished and disappeared: With every new age of grassroots activism, from the Tea Party to the local-education revolts of today, the right reliably casts itself as small-d democrats, standing boldly athwart liberal technocracy singing “Yankee Doodle.”Against this complicated backdrop, Donald Trump’s stolen-election narratives should be understood as a way to reconcile the two competing tendencies within conservatism, the intellectual right’s skepticism of mass democracy and comfort with countermajoritarian institutions with the populist right’s small-d democratic self-image. In Trump’s toxic dreampolitik there’s actually no tension there: The right-wing coalition is justified in governing from a minoritarian position because it deserves to be a true electoral majority, and would be if only the liberal enemy weren’t so good at cheating.So seen from within the right, the challenge of getting out from under Trump’s deceptions isn’t just a simple matter of reviving a conservative commitment to democracy. Trump has succeeded precisely because he has exploited the right’s more democratic impulses, speaking to them and co-opting them and claiming them for himself. Which means a conservative rival can’t defeat or replace him by simply accusing him of being anti-democratic. Instead the only plausible pitch would argue that his populism is self-limiting, and that a post-Trump G.O.P. could potentially win a more sweeping majority than the one his supporters want to believe he won already — one that would hold up no matter what the liberal enemy gets up to.But if that argument is challenging to make amid the smog of Trumpenkampf, so is the anti-Trump argument that casts American liberalism as the force to which anyone who believes in American democracy must rally. Because however much the right’s populists get wrong about their claim to represent a true American majority, they get this much right: Contemporary liberalism is fundamentally miscast as a defender of popular self-rule.To be clear, the present Democratic Party is absolutely in favor of letting as many people vote as possible. There are no doubts about the mass franchise among liberals, no fears of voter fraud and fewer anxieties than on the right about the pernicious influence of low-information voters.But when it comes to the work of government, the actual decisions that determine law and policy, liberalism is the heir to its own not exactly democratic tradition — the progressive vision of disinterested experts claiming large swaths of policymaking for their own and walling them off from the vagaries of public opinion, the whims of mere majorities.This vision — what my colleague Nate Cohn recently called “undemocratic liberalism” — is a pervasive aspect of establishment politics not only in the United States but across the Western world. On question after controverted question, its answer to “Who votes?” is different from its answer to “Who decides?” In one case, the people; in the other, the credentialed experts, the high-level stakeholders and activist groups, the bureaucratic process.Who should lead pandemic decision making? Obviously Anthony Fauci and the relevant public-health bureaucracies; we can’t have people playing politics with complex scientific matters. Who decides what your local school teaches your kids? Obviously teachers and administrators and education schools; we don’t want parents demanding some sort of veto power over syllabuses. Who decides the future of the European Union? The important stakeholders in Brussels and Berlin, the people who know what they’re doing, not the shortsighted voters in France or Ireland or wherever. Who makes important U.S. foreign policy decisions? Well, you have the interagency process, the permanent regional specialists and the military experts, not the mere whims of the elected president.Or to pick a small but telling example recently featured in this newspaper, who decides whether an upstate New York school district gets to retain the Indian as its high school mascot? The state’s education commissioner, apparently, who’s currently threatening to cut funds to the school board that voted to keep it unless they reverse course.Whereas the recent wave of right-wing populism, even when it doesn’t command governing majorities, still tends to champion the basic idea of popular power — the belief that more areas of Western life should be subject to popular control and fewer removed into the purview of unelected mandarins. And even if this is not a wise idea in every case, it is democratic idea, whose widespread appeal reflects the fact that modern liberalism really does suffer from a democratic deficit.Which is a serious problem, to put it mildly, for a movement that aspires to fight and win a struggle on behalf of democratic values. So just as a conservative alternative to Trump would need to somehow out-populist him, to overcome the dark side of right-wing populism, American liberalism would need to first democratize itself.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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      How Democrats Can Stop a Red Wave

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      Republicans like their chances in November. But politics can change quickly.A “red wave” is building this year — or so we’re told.Republicans are confident that the country’s sour mood will sweep them back into power in Congress, mainly because Americans are fed up with the coronavirus and inflation. They think they’ll pick up 30 or so House seats and four or five seats in the Senate.“It’s crystal clear,” said Corry Bliss, a partner at FP1 Strategies, a consulting firm that helps Republicans. He added: “The red wave is coming. Period. End of discussion.”But what if that’s wrong? We asked about two dozen strategists in both parties what would need to happen for Democrats to hold the House and Senate in November. And while we’re not making any predictions, it’s possible that Democrats could retain control of Congress. Difficult, but possible.Democrats have 222 seats in the House, and 50 seats in the Senate. That means Republicans need to pick up just six House seats and one Senate seat to take full control of Congress.Here’s what needs to happen for Democrats to pull off an upset in 2022:Biden voters show upPundits often make it sound like voters are judiciously studying each party’s arguments and forming conclusions. But that’s not really the way American politics works. Modern elections are much more about mobilization (getting your supporters to the polls) than persuasion (convincing the other side’s supporters to switch), though both matter.Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by more than 7 million votes in 2020. So for Democrats, winning in 2022 means figuring out how to get as many of those people as possible to vote, even though Trump won’t be on the ballot this time.“Their primary motivation for voting in the last election was defeating Trump,” said Guy Cecil, chairman of Priorities USA, which on Monday announced a $30 million program of digital ads aimed at reaching what he calls “new Biden voters” in seven swing states.The last two elections — the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential vote — saw the biggest turnout in history. That means there’s an unusual amount of uncertainty among insiders about which voters will show up in 2022.Regaining a sense of normalcyEvery person we spoke with agreed: This is the biggest unknown.While voters are upset about high prices today, inflation and the coronavirus could be down to manageable levels by the summer. Several strategists say it is also essential, politically speaking, that schools are fully open in September. If all of that happens, Democrats could enter the midterms as the party that defeated Covid and brought the economy roaring back to life, or at least fight Republicans to a draw on both issues.But the White House is well aware that it’s not really in control — the virus is.“The script’s not written yet for the remainder of the year,” said Representative Brad Schneider of Illinois, chair of the New Democrat Coalition, a group of House moderates.A Look Ahead to the 2022 U.S. Midterm ElectionsIn the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are 10 races to watch.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.Campaign Financing: With both parties awash in political money, billionaires and big checks are shaping the midterm elections.Key Issues: Democrats and Republicans are preparing for abortion and voting rights to be defining topics.Biden finds a winning messageFor months, Democrats have fretted that the White House was too slow to recognize inflation as a political problem, and was too mired in endless congressional negotiations. That’s changing.President Biden has been speaking more frequently about the issue, at the urging of moderate Democrats. “The president is recognizing his superpower, which is empathy,” said Representative Dean Phillips, a Democrat in a swing district in Minnesota.Sean McElwee, executive director of the group Data for Progress, told us that the president should embrace what he calls “solverism” — basically, being seen on TV every day tackling the problems that voters care about.After a fall characterized by damaging infighting, Democrats have been working to bring more harmony to their messages. With the State of the Union address coming up, President Biden has a chance to rally the country around his vision and the improving economic numbers. But with the fate of Build Back Better now in question, what will he talk about, exactly?Redistricting being more or less evenDemocrats feel good about the maps that have been approved so far. For now, there are only three Democrats running in House districts that Trump won in 2020, and nine Republicans in districts that Biden won.But a few unknowns remain. The Democratic-controlled State Legislature in New York is still weighing how aggressively to redraw the state’s maps. Courts have yet to render final judgments in Alabama, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. And in Florida, Republicans are divided between Gov. Ron DeSantis’s maps and those proposed by the State Senate.We do know that many of the House districts that are up for grabs in November are in the suburbs, which have shifted left in recent elections. That could help Democrats. Liberal strategists point out that Republicans won’t be able to benefit from the massive margins that they run up in rural areas and they also note that the seats Republicans picked up in 2020 were the easy ones.To which Republicans counter: Look at what happened in suburban Virginia, where Glenn Youngkin pared back the party’s past losses to win the governor’s race.The Supreme Court overturns Roe v. WadeIn that Virginia race, the Democrat, Terry McAuliffe, spent millions of dollars portraying Youngkin as an extremist on abortion. Democrats were convinced that the issue would help them with suburban women in particular, and McAuliffe predicted that abortion would be a “huge motivator” for voters. His campaign ran three different ads on the subject, which collectively aired more than 1,000 times.It didn’t work.Youngkin danced around the issue, while saying he preferred to focus on the economy, jobs and education. According to exit polls conducted by Edison Research, just 8 percent of voters said abortion mattered most to their decision, the least of five preselected topics.But abortion could come roaring back as a voting issue if the Supreme Court issues a clear repudiation of Roe v. Wade this year. Should that happen, many Democrats say it could help their candidates in Senate races, where they can highlight Republican positions that polls suggest are out of the mainstream.Republican candidates go hard rightDemocrats are watching Republican primary campaigns closely, clipping and saving remarks that the candidates are making that could prove hard to defend in a general election. The need to cater to Trump’s hard-line base of voters has made the Republican brand toxic, they say. But that’s where the consensus ends.Endangered Democrats want to localize their races as much as possible, and prefer to talk about kitchen-table issues like jobs and the economy. Nationally, Democrats are still debating how to communicate their alarm about the state of American democracy, which can come across as either abstract to voters or simply more partisan noise.For now, Democrats are planning to use Jan. 6 as just one of several data points to portray Republicans as extremists on a range of issues, including abortion and climate.“I don’t think this election is going to easily fall into the traditional pattern, and it’s because of the radicalization of the Republican Party,” said Simon Rosenberg, the head of the New Democrat Network.Trump seizes center stageAfter the Virginia governor’s race, Democratic strategists launched various efforts to study the lessons of that campaign. One takeaway: Talking about Trump also energizes Republicans, which makes it tricky for Democrats to make the former president a central issue in 2022.Democrats have also found that it’s not effective simply to associate a Republican candidate with Trump, as McAuliffe did in Virginia. They believe they need to indict Republican candidates directly. But there’s an ongoing debate about whether Democratic candidates need to do this themselves, or have outside groups run attack ads on their behalf.The former president has endorsed dozens of candidates who in one way or another agree with his false notion that the 2020 election was stolen. On Sunday evening, he said it outright — claiming, falsely, that then-Vice President Mike Pence “could have overturned the election” on Jan. 6, 2021.If Democrats manage to hang on to their congressional majorities, Trump will be a major factor.What to readTrump had a greater role than previously known in plans to use his national security agencies to seize voting machines, our colleagues report.Marc Short, who was chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence, has testified before the congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Luke Broadwater reports.Katie Rogers reports that the White House has chosen Doug Jones, the former Democratic senator from Alabama, to shepherd its Supreme Court pick through the nomination process in the Senate.briefing bookGov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota filed amendments to a series of old F.E.C. reports.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesFilings cleanupAs our colleague Shane Goldmacher was digging on Monday through the glut of campaign disclosures covering the last quarter of 2021, he noticed updates to some very old filings.The filings, from as far back as 2017, were from the Keeping Republican Ideas Strong Timely & Inventive PAC. That’s better known as KRISTI PAC, as in Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, the former Republican congresswoman who created the committee.Governor Noem filed amendments to no fewer than 16 old Federal Election Commission reports this week. The amendments appeared mostly minor. But what is more interesting is that she was making those at all. It is the kind of cleanup that politicians typically do when they are considering a future run for president, mindful that opposition researchers will be looking for any slip-ups to feed to the press.The KRISTI PAC treasurer, Kevin Broghamer, simply told the F.E.C. that the PAC had “conducted a comprehensive review and reconciliation of all financial activity since January 1, 2017.”A spokesman for Noem, Joe Desilets, said that Broghamer had been asked to conduct the review “to ensure the governor’s committees were wholly compliant and amend any filings as needed. Unfortunately there isn’t anything else to read into with the amended filings.”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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      Billionaires and Big Checks Shape 2022 Midterm Elections Battle

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      The party committees for Democrats and Republicans each raised about $400 million in 2021, with control of the House and Senate up for grabs in 2022.Billionaires cut giant checks to super PACs. Small donors gave online in mass quantities. Multimillionaires poured money into their own campaigns. And both political parties announced record-setting hauls in 2021.The 2022 midterm elections were awash in political money even before the year began, according to new Federal Election Commission campaign disclosures made on Monday.With control of both chambers up for grabs — the Senate is knotted at 50-50 and Democrats are clinging to a narrow majority in the House — the two parties were almost equally matched when it came to fund-raising last year. The Democratic and Republican national committees, as well as the main House and Senate committees, pulled in nearly identical sums — about $400 million each.On the Republican side, several primary contests in the coming months will pit the Trump wing of the party against more traditional Republicans.Senator Lisa Murkowski, the only Republican up for re-election in 2022 to have voted for former President Donald J. Trump’s impeachment, faces a right-wing challenge from Kelly Tshibaka, a Trump-endorsed rival.Among Ms. Murkowski’s donors in December was George W. Bush, who listed his occupation as “former president.” Overall, Ms. Murkowski raised nearly $1.4 million and reported entering 2022 with $4.2 million cash on hand. Ms. Tshibaka raised $602,000 and had $634,000 cash on hand.Former President George W. Bush with the first lady, Laura Bush, and Senator Lisa Murkowski, left, at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska, in 2005. Michael Dinneen/Associated PressMr. Bush made one other symbolic donation: the legal maximum of $5,800 to Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, one of the most outspoken anti-Trump Republicans in Congress.Like Ms. Murkowski, Ms. Cheney out-raised her Trump-backed challenger, Harriet Hageman, collecting $2 million to Ms. Hageman’s $443,000 last quarter, though money is often not the determining factor in outcomes, especially in high-profile cases that garner significant media attention.The battleground contests expected to determine which party is in the Senate majority are shaping up to be especially expensive. In Georgia, Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, was the top 2022 Senate fund-raiser, collecting $9.8 million in the fourth quarter. Mr. Warnock had nearly $23 million at the end of the year.A Look Ahead to the 2022 U.S. Midterm ElectionsIn the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are 10 races to watch.In the House: Republicans appear poised to capture enough seats to take control, thanks to redistricting and gerrymandering alone.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: Both parties are preparing for abortion rights and voting rights to be defining topics.His likely Republican opponent, the former football player Herschel Walker, was urged to run by Mr. Trump. Mr. Walker has emerged as one of the strongest new Republican fund-raisers, raising $5.4 million, with $5.4 million in the bank.In Florida, Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican, raised $5.2 million and has $10.5 million in the bank; his expected Democratic challenger, Representative Val Demings, out-raised him by collecting $7.2 million, though she has less cash on hand, at $8.2 million.While candidates face contribution limits of $2,900 each for the primary and general election, there is no limit on what the ultrarich can pour into campaigns through super PACs. The billionaire liberal philanthropist George Soros seeded his own political committee with $125 million, new disclosures show, a sign that he will yet again continue to be a major financier on the left.Big money flowed, in particular, to super PACs focused on control of Congress.In the House, the leading Republican super PAC and linked nonprofit announced raising twice as much money as the equivalent House Democratic groups, $110 million compared to $55 million last year.The disclosed donors to the House Democratic super PAC in the second half of the year included the media executive Fred Eychaner ($4 million), the LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman ($1.45 million) and the philanthropist Connie Ballmer and the real estate developer George Marcus ($1 million each). Mr. Eychaner also gave $4 million to the Senate Democratic super PAC.The top donors to the House Republican super PAC were Patrick G. Ryan, an insurance magnate who gave $10 million, and Ken Griffin, a hedge fund manager who also gave $10 million.Mr. Griffin also gave $5 million to the main Republican Senate super PAC, making him its largest donor in the second half of the year.In addition, Mr. Griffin gave $5 million to a Pennsylvania-focused super PAC, which has opposed Dr. Mehmet Oz, the surgeon and former television show host running in the Republican primary there. Among his opponents is David McCormick, who is the former chief executive of a prominent hedge fund and who entered the race after the filing deadline.Dr. Oz contributed more than $5 million to his own race — one of multiple wealthy Republican candidates powering their Senate campaigns with their own money. Jeff Bartos, another Republican candidate in Pennsylvania, gave his campaign $1.3 million.In Arizona, Jim Lamon, a former energy executive, has put more than $8 million of his own money into his primary Senate run.In Ohio, the Senate race is crowded with wealthy Republican self-funders who have lent or donated money to their own campaigns: Mike Gibbons, an investment banker ($11.4 million); Jane Timken, a former party chair ($3.5 million); Bernie Moreno, a former car dealer ($3.75 million); and Matt Dolan, whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians ($10.5 million).Some of Mr. Dolan’s family members put an additional $3 million into a super PAC.In Alabama, Mike Durant, who was in one of the Black Hawk helicopters that was shot down in Somalia in 1993, put more than $4 million into his run. Mr. Durant faces a former top aide to Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, Katie Britt, who raised $1.2 million last quarter and has $4.1 million cash on hand.Mr. Trump has endorsed a third Alabama candidate, Representative Mo Brooks, whose fund-raising has flagged. Mr. Brooks raised only $386,000 in the fourth quarter, down sharply from his previous two quarters.Big money also poured into the campaigns of some politicians who are not even on the ballot this year, reflecting the high stakes of the legislative battles that have raged on Capitol Hill over President Biden’s agenda.Two moderate Democratic senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who have not committed to supporting Mr. Biden’s signature domestic bill, raised bigger sums than some facing competitive contests, even though neither is up for election again until 2024.Ms. Sinema raised nearly $1.6 million in the fourth quarter — more than four times what she raised in the first quarter of 2021. Nearly 98 percent of her money came from larger contributions. Some of her contributions were from traditional Republican donors, including Nelson Peltz, an investor; Harlan Crow, a real estate developer; and Mike Fernandez, a health care industry investor.Mr. Manchin also raised almost $1.6 million, of which more than $300,000 came from PACs. More