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      Arizona Voting Review Faces More Questions

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      A makeshift review of the vote in the state’s largest county has pleased followers of former President Donald J. Trump but is being widely criticized as a partisan exercise.Directly outside the Veterans Memorial Coliseum near downtown Phoenix, the Crazy Times Carnival wraps up an 11-day run on Sunday, a spectacle of thrill rides, games and food stands that headlines the Arizona State Fair this year.Inside the coliseum, a Republican-ordered exhumation and review of 2.1 million votes in the state’s November election is heading into its third week, an exercise that has risen to become the lodestar of rigged-vote theorists — and shows no sign of ending soon.Arizona’s Secretary of State Katie Hobbs noted the carnival’s presence outside the coliseum when she challenged the competence and objectivity of the review last week, expressing concern about the security of the ballots inside in an apparent dig at what has become a spectacle of a very different sort. There is no evidence that former President Donald J. Trump’s narrow loss in Arizona’s presidential election in the fall was fraudulent. Nonetheless, 16 Republicans in the State Senate voted to subpoena ballots in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and two-thirds of the state’s vote in November, for an audit to show Trump die-hards that their fraud concerns were taken seriously.As recently as a week ago, officials said the review would be completed by May 14. But with that deadline a week away, only about 250,000 of the county’s 2.1 million ballots have been processed in the hand recount that is a central part of the review, Ken Bennett, a liaison between those conducting the review and the senators, said on Saturday.At that rate, the hand recount would not be finished until August.The delay is but the latest snag in an exercise that many critics claim is wrecking voters’ confidence in elections, not restoring it. Since the State Senate first ordered it in December, the review has been dogged by controversy. Republicans dominate the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which supervised the election in the county. They said it was fair and accurate and opposed the review.After a week marked by mounting accusations of partisan skulduggery, mismanagement and even potential illegality, at least one Republican supporter of the new count said it could not end soon enough.“It makes us look like idiots,” State Senator Paul Boyer, a Republican from suburban Phoenix who supported the audit, said on Friday. “Looking back, I didn’t think it would be this ridiculous. It’s embarrassing to be a state senator at this point.”Civil-rights advocates say political fallout is the least of the concerns. They say the Arizona review is emblematic of a broader effort by pro-Trump Republicans to undermine faith in American democracy and shift control of elections to partisans who share their agenda. “This subpoena and this audit is not dissimilar to what’s happening with a number of bills being pushed nationally that basically take fair, objective processes and move them into partisan political bodies,” said Alex Gulotta, the state’s director of All Voting Is Local, a national voting-rights advocacy group. “This is not an aberration. This is a window into the future of where some people would like our elections to go.”Mr. Bennett, a former Republican secretary of state and onetime candidate for governor, said companies hired to conduct the review plan to hire more temporary workers to step up the pace of the count. But its conclusion is still weeks away.Cyber Ninjas contractors examining ballots from the 2020 general election at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix. Two previous election audits found no evidence of widespread fraud.Courtney Pedroza/Getty ImagesLater this month, workers will have to suspend work and move their entire operation — work stations, imaging equipment, stacks of uncounted ballots that cover much of the coliseum floor — into storage elsewhere in the building to make way for a spate of high-school graduation ceremonies long scheduled to take place the week of May 17.In an interview, Mr. Bennett said that no storage site had been selected, but that he was optimistic that the hand count would be wrapped up quickly.“When we come back, we’ll have the last week of May and all of June, but I don’t think it’s going to take that long,” he said. “The hand count should be done by the middle of June.”Senators have cast the review as a way to reassure those who have supported Mr. Trump’s baseless claim that his 10,457-vote loss in November is the result of a rigged election. While it will not change the outcome of the election, they said, it may put to rest any doubts about its results.But doubts about the true purpose blossomed when Karen Fann, the Republican president of the State Senate, hired a Florida firm, Cyber Ninjas, to conduct the review. Its chief executive had promoted on Twitter a conspiracy theory that Mr. Trump’s loss in Arizona was the result of rigged voting machines.Journalists, election experts and representatives of the secretary of state, whose office is responsible for elections in Arizona, have struggled with getting permission to observe the review, while the far-right One America News cable outlet has raised money to finance it and has been given broad access to the proceedings.Claims of partisanship ballooned after it was revealed that one man who was hired to recount ballots, former State Representative Anthony Kern of Arizona, was a leader of the local “stop the steal” movement and had been photographed on the steps of the U.S. Capitol during the riot on Jan. 6 in Washington. Mr. Kern had been on the Maricopa ballot, both as a Republican candidate for state representative and as a pro-Trump presidential elector.The review came under heavy fire last week from both the Arizona secretary of state and the federal Justice Department, which separately cited widespread reports that slipshod handling of ballots and other election items threatened to permanently spoil the official record of the vote. The Justice Department noted that federal law requires record to be kept intact under penalty of a fine or imprisonment. Some of the most serious questions involve the management of the review.On Wednesday, Katie Hobbs, the Arizona secretary of state, charged that the review was being conducted with uncertified equipment and that ballot counting rules were “a significant departure from standard best practices.”She wrote: “Though conspiracy theorists are undoubtedly cheering on these types of inspections — and perhaps providing financial support because of their use — they do little other than further marginalize the professionalism and intent of this ‘audit.’”After her claims drew a number of death threats from Trump supporters, Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona ordered state police protection this past week for Ms. Hobbs, a Democrat.The Justice Department raised issues about the protection of the ballots, and it also questioned whether another aspect of the process — a plan to go to voters’ homes to verify that they had actually cast ballots, as election records showed — could violate federal laws against intimidating voters.In her reply to the department, Ms. Fann defended the review, saying it is being conducted under “comprehensive and rigorous security protocols that will fully preserve all physical and electronic ballots, tabulation systems and other election materials.”But she appeared to back away from the plan to personally interview voters, stating that the State Senate “determined several weeks ago that it would indefinitely defer that component of the audit.”Boxes of Maricopa County ballots cast in the 2020 general election were brought to Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix to be examined and recounted as part of an audit ordered by the Arizona Senate.Pool photo by Matt YorkMs. Fann said in a letter on Friday that the Justice Department’s concerns were “misplaced” and that strict rules safeguarding documents and equipment were in place. On Saturday, Mr. Bennett said the concerns about the integrity of the process were “completely unfounded, and I believe they come from people who have always decided that they don’t want the audit at all.”Ms. Fann, who had largely remained silent about criticism of the review, chose last week to mount a public defense of it. Appearing in an interview on the Phoenix PBS news outlet, she applauded the role of One America News in supporting the review and said the Senate had no role in choosing Mr. Kern or others who counted votes.“I don’t know why he’s there or how he got there, but that’s one of the people that was selected, and that is what it is,” she said. “I don’t know that it’s a great thing, to be honest.”And she said that the news media had blown concerns about the objectivity and management of the review out of proportion.“They talk about conspiracy theories,” she said, referring to reports that the review is examining ballots for evidence of bamboo fibers and watermarks baselessly said to be signs of fraud. “But I tell you what, there’s almost a reverse conspiracy theory to demean this audit.”She suggested that her support of the review would be proved right in the end.“I think we’ll find irregularities that is going to say, you know what, there’s this many dead people voted, or this many who may have voted that don’t live here any more — we’re going to find those,” she said. “We know they exist, but everybody keeps saying, ‘You have no proof.’ Well, maybe we’ll get the proof out of this so we can fix those holes that are there.”More common is the notion that the review has become an alarming exercise in undermining faith in America’s elections.One expert on election law, David J. Becker, founder of the Center for Election Administration and Research in Washington, said Ms. Fann’s assurances about the integrity of ballots and other records appeared unlikely to satisfy the Justice Department.“There’s no question that contamination of ballots and records is an ongoing issue that raises serious concerns about federal law,” said Mr. Becker, a former lawyer in the Justice Department’s voting rights section. “We’ve never seen anything like this before, where some haphazard effort allows some unknown out-of-state contractor to start riffling through ballots. I think it’s pretty clear that the response does not resolve concerns about ballot integrity.” More

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      Could Matthew McConaughey Be All Right, All Right, All Right for Texas?

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      HOUSTON — When I first heard the rumors that Matthew McConaughey was considering a run for governor of Texas, my reaction was fury. Did he not recall Kinky Friedman, the musician-comedian-novelist-gadfly whose candidacy in 2006 helped blow up the Democratic vote and gave us Rick Perry as governor for 14 years?Did he not understand that being governor of the second largest state involves a lot more than cogitating, as Mr. McConaughey does in a commercial sitting at the wheel of a Lincoln MKC, how to get around Old Cyrus the bull, who blocks his path on a desolate West Texas highway? You can’t always back up, turn around and “take the long way,” mister.Just what, I wondered, has Mr. McConaughey been smoking?Celebrities turned politicians have a very mixed record. See: Davy Crockett, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse Ventura, Ronald Reagan and, of course, the 45th president. But in a state as dazed and confused as Texas, we don’t need David Wooderson sitting in the statehouse telling us everything is going to be all right, all right, all right.Or do we? Our previous and current governors, Mr. Perry and his successor, Greg Abbott, have done nothing while claiming just that. Maybe Mr. McConaughey could do better.It isn’t news to anyone that many Texans abhor government interference. Mr. Perry seems to think that extends to keeping warm when temperatures drop to record lows. After a cataclysmic storm knocked out the state’s power grid in February, he said, “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business” — a sentiment probably not shared by the friends and families of the 111 people (or more) who died of hypothermia and other storm-related causes.The current legislative session — with Republicans in full control — has been grim. You can’t say they mind government interference when things like women’s reproductive systems or voting rights are involved.What some Republicans call “election integrity” (and others call voter suppression) has been high on the agenda. Despite protests from once powerful conservatives in the business community, the Legislature is looking at proposals that would put new restrictions on early voting, empower partisan poll watchers and the like. And there are moves to make abortion even more difficult for women to obtain in a state that has already imposed severe limits on the procedure and to restrict the rights of Texas’ transgender children and their parents to make their own medical decisions.It was amid this bleak news that I started reconsidering my attitude toward a possible Governor Bongo (For the uninformed: Mr. McConaughey was once arrested at his home in Austin, stoned and naked, for an exuberant session of bongo drumming in the wee hours).Yes, thinking that things couldn’t possibly get worse is never a great way to choose a candidate. But I don’t seem to be alone in thinking that a man who has played a lawyer in the movies might be better for Texas than the lawyers who play at being leaders in the Capitol. An April poll from The Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas at Tyler, revealed that Mr. McConaughey would trounce Mr. Abbott, 45 percent to 33 percent, with 22 percent opting for “someone else” — let’s hope Willie Nelson keeps his hat out of the ring.Since last November, Mr. McConaughey has been hinting about a run. I didn’t consider his memoir, “Greenlights,” a campaign biography, but it could certainly serve that purpose. Some of his pals who interviewed him on the virtual book tour could even serve in his administration: Brené Brown, a self-help dynamo and research professor at the University of Houston, could bring shame awareness education to just about any regulatory board. The voluble Woody Harrelson could replace any Abbott toady remaining on the Public Utility Commission.Mr. Abbott has categorically refused to tap the bloated Rainy Day Fund to help Texans who suffered in the storm, while Mr. McConaughey’s “We’re Texas” virtual concert raised over $7 million in a matter of hours for freeze relief. (A headline in Texas Monthly declared that “Matthew McConaughey and Beyoncé Did More for Texas Than Ted Cruz.”) He can also be a lot more inspirational than his predecessors on his YouTube channel and Instagram; when he wears his glasses and slicks back those sable waves, he looks at least as gubernatorial as Mr. Perry.Mr. McConaughey’s politics are a bit of a mystery, though we can assume that marijuana legalization might get a boost if he were in charge. He’s been fairly vocal about gun control without going nuclear like Beto O’Rourke. But a recent review of Mr. McConaughey’s voting record by The Texas Tribune revealed he’s been a no-show for primary races since 2012.Of the tactics on both sides of the politician spectrum he has said that “it curdles my stomach, man — I have not appreciated it.” Would Mr. McConaughey run as a Democrat or a Republican? That’s as much a mystery as the meaning of his soliloquy at the end of “True Detective.”Texas may not be ready for a philosopher king as a candidate, much less governor, but it sure would be fun to watch Mr. McConaughey debate Mr. Abbott and ambush him with a sensible line like this one from “Greenlights”: “I’ve found that a good plan is to first recognize the problem, then stabilize the situation, organize the response, then respond.”Or this one, delivered with Mr. McConaughey’s interstellar spelling: “Knowin the truth, seein the truth and tellin the truth are all different experiences.”May the best man win, man.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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      As Texas Voting Restrictions Near Passage, Democrats Stage Protest

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      The former presidential aspirants Beto O’Rourke and Julián Castro spoke to a crowd demonstrating outside the State Capitol.AUSTIN, Texas — A day after the Texas House of Representatives voted to make it harder to cast a ballot in a state that already has some of the nation’s most restrictive voting laws, leading Democrats and hundreds of supporters gathered outside the State Capitol on Saturday to protest against legislation steaming toward approval in the Republican-led Legislature. “This is the single greatest attack on our democracy, not just in our lifetime, but perhaps in the lifetime of this very democracy,” said former Representative Beto O’Rourke, who was a Democratic presidential candidate in the 2020 presidential primary.He was joined by a second former Democratic presidential aspirant, Julián Castro, the former San Antonio mayor.Saturday’s rally came a day after the State House of Representatives had voted, 78 to 64, to pass Senate Bill 7, which opponents continued to attack as an assault on voting rights despite a number of modifications added by Democrats. The bill now heads back to the State Senate, where representatives from the two chambers will meet in a conference committee to resolve differences between the two versions in the final three weeks of the session.Mr. O’Rourke, citing what he described as “a moment of despair,” reminded the crowd that the Texas bills are among more than 360 Republican-backed measures that are being considered or have been enacted in legislatures across the country that would limit the right to vote.Mr. Castro, who was secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Obama administration, said the voting measures underscored a Republican motto: “If you can’t beat ’em, cheat ’em.”“We’re here today to say no,” added Mr. Castro. “We will not stand for that.”Mr. O’Rourke and Mr. Castro were the headliners among nearly a dozen speakers who appeared before up to 500 spectators in what was described as the largest gathering outside the State Capitol during this year’s legislative session.Owen Shroyer, representing the conservative website Infowars, prominently inserted himself at the front of the crowd, clutching a microphone and frequently shouting disruptive comments at the speakers.The former presidential candidate Julián Castro spoke at the rally on Saturday.Mikala Compton/ReutersThe voting issue has become one of the most contentious elements in a session featuring a number of other hot-button issues including further restrictions on abortion, allowing the unlicensed carrying of guns and curtailing of transgender people’s rights. Gov. Greg Abbott has described the voter bills as “emergency” legislation needed to ensure integrity in the election system and combat voter fraud, although he and other Republicans have acknowledged that there has been minimal evidence of fraud in recent Texas elections.Critics have assailed the voter measures as comparable to the abuses of Jim Crow, an era in which the white political power structure in Texas and other Southern states used tactics such as the now-unconstitutional poll tax and literacy tests to perpetuate segregation and suppress minority voters.House members passed Senate Bill 7 at 3 a.m. on Friday, sending it back to the Senate to resolve differences between the two chambers before the May 31 adjournment. Before the final vote on Friday, House Republican leaders accepted a number of amendments, such as reduction of criminal penalties proposed under an earlier version of the bill for various infractions committed by election officials, including unauthorized removal of a poll watcher.During legislative discussion, State Representative Rafael Anchía, a Democrat, questioned State Representative Briscoe Cain, the Republican chair of the House Elections Committee, on the use of the phrase “purity of the ballot box” in the legislation. The phrase was used in the Texas Constitution and during the Jim Crow era as the basis for excluding Black residents from all-white primaries. The phrase was from removed from the bill.Democrats said the bill still contains unacceptable provisions that could hinder voting among minorities, older people and urban residents trying to avoid long lines to vote. One provision prohibits counties from distributing unrequested mail-in ballots to voters, which would bar a repeat of a Harris County initiative that drew fierce opposition from Republican officials.The Texas business community, which initially remained largely silent, has also intensified its opposition, with more 200 businesses warning that the measures could restrict voter access and undercut the Texas economy. American Airlines and Dell Technologies, the first to oppose the bills, have since been joined by other companies including Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Etsy, Patagonia, Warby Parker and Gearbox.A recurring theme throughout the hour-and-a-half-long rally was that the fight was not over even though the session was nearing adjournment and Republicans held the upper hand. Representative Chris Turner, the Democratic leader in the House, said Republicans could count on legal action if Democrats were unable to block the bills in the Legislature.“We’ll see them in court,” he said. 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      Trump Still Has Iron Grip on Republicans

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      The vilification of Liz Cheney and a bizarre vote recount in Arizona showed the damage from his assault on a bedrock of democracy: election integrity.Locked out of Facebook, marooned in Mar-a-Lago and mocked for an amateurish new website, Donald J. Trump remained largely out of public sight this week. Yet the Republican Party’s capitulation to the former president became clearer than ever, as did the damage to American politics he has caused with his lie that the election was stolen from him.In Washington, Republicans moved to strip Representative Liz Cheney of her House leadership position, a punishment for denouncing Mr. Trump’s false claims of voter fraud as a threat to democracy. Lawmakers in Florida and Texas advanced sweeping new measures that would curtail voting, echoing the fictional narrative from Mr. Trump and his allies that the electoral system was rigged against him. And in Arizona, the state Republican Party started a bizarre re-examination of the November election results that involved searching for traces of bamboo in last year’s ballots.The churning dramas cast into sharp relief the extent to which the nation, six months after the election, is still struggling with the consequences of an assault by a losing presidential candidate on a bedrock principle of American democracy: that the nation’s elections are legitimate.They also provided stark evidence that the former president has not only managed to squelch any dissent within his party but has also persuaded most of the G.O.P. to make a gigantic bet: that the surest way to regain power is to embrace his pugilistic style, racial divisiveness and beyond-the-pale conspiracy theories rather than to court the suburban swing voters who cost the party the White House and who might be looking for substantive policies on the pandemic, the economy and other issues. The loyalty to the former president persists despite his role in inciting his supporters ahead of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, with his adherents either ignoring, redefining or in some cases tacitly accepting the deadly attack on Congress.“We’ve just gotten so far afield from any sane construction,” said Barbara Comstock, a longtime party official who was swept out of her suburban Virginia congressional seat in the 2018 midterm backlash to Mr. Trump. “It’s a real sickness that is infecting the party at every level. We’re just going to say that black is white now.”Yet as Republicans wrap themselves in the fantasy of a stolen election, Democrats are anchored in the day-to-day business of governing a nation that is still struggling to emerge from a deadly pandemic.Strategists from both parties say that discordant dynamic — two parties operating in two different realities — is likely to define the country’s politics for years to come.At the same time, President Biden faces a broader challenge: what to do about the large segment of the public that doubts his legitimacy and a Republican Party courting the support of that segment by pushing bills that would restrict voting and perhaps further undermine faith in future elections. A CNN poll released last week found that nearly a third of Americans, including 70 percent of Republicans, said Biden had not legitimately won enough votes to win the presidency.Representative Liz Cheney, the third-ranking Republican in the House, is expected to be removed from her leadership post next week after speaking out against Mr. Trump.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesWhite House aides say Mr. Biden believes that the best way to restore some faith in the democratic process is demonstrating that government can deliver tangible benefits — whether vaccines or economic stimulus checks — to voters.Dan Sena, a Democratic strategist who oversaw the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s strategy to win the House during the last midterm elections, said the Republican focus on cultural issues, like bans on transgender athletes, was a “win-win” for his party. Many Democrats will face only scattershot attacks on their agenda while continuing to run against the polarizing rhetoric of Mr. Trump, which helped the party flip suburban swing districts in 2018 and 2020.“I would much rather have a record of siding with Americans on recovery,” Mr. Sena said. “Which tale do the American public want to listen to — what Democrats have done to get the country moving again or Donald Trump and his culture war?”Mr. Biden predicted during the campaign that Republicans would have an “epiphany” once Mr. Trump was gone and would revert to being the party he knew during his decades in the Senate. When asked about Republicans this week, Mr. Biden lamented that he didn’t understand them anymore and appeared slightly flummoxed about the “mini-revolution” in their ranks.“I think the Republicans are further away from trying to figure out who they are and what they stand for than I thought they would be at this point,” he said.But for much of the past week, Republicans put on vivid display exactly what they now stand for: Trumpism. Many have adopted his approach of courting white grievance with racist statements, and Republican-led legislatures across the country are pushing through restrictions that would curtail voting access in ways that disproportionally impact voters of color. There are also high-stakes electoral considerations. With his deeply polarizing style, Mr. Trump motivated his base and his detractors alike, pushing both parties to record voter turnout in the 2020 election. His total of 74 million votes was the second-highest ever, behind only Mr. Biden’s 81 million, and Mr. Trump has shown an ability to turn his political supporters against any Republican who opposes him.That has left Republicans convinced that they must display unwavering fealty to a departed president to retain the voters he won over. “I would just say to my Republican colleagues: Can we move forward without President Trump? The answer is no,” Senator Lindsey Graham said in an interview on Fox News this week. “I’ve determined we can’t grow without him.”In some ways, the former president is more diminished than ever. Defeated at the polls, he spends his time at his Florida resort playing golf and entertaining visitors. He lacks the bully pulpit of the presidency, has been banished from Twitter and failed this week to have his account restored by Facebook. He left office with his approval rating below 40 percent, the lowest final first-term rating for any president since Jimmy Carter in 1979.Still, his dominance over Republicans is reflected from Congress to statehouses. Local and federal lawmakers who have pushed their party to accept the results of the election, and thus Mr. Trump’s loss, have faced a steady drumbeat of censure and primary challenges. Those threats appear to be having an impact: The small number of Republican officials who have been critical of Mr. Trump in the past, including the 10 who voted for his impeachment in February, remained largely silent this week, refusing interview requests and offering little public support for Ms. Cheney.Her likely replacement, Representative Elise Stefanik, publicly promoted herself for the post and moved to establish her Trump bona fides by lending credence to his baseless voter fraud claims in interviews with hard-right supporters of the former president.The state Republican Party in Arizona undertook a quixotic re-examination of the November election results.Pool photo by Matt YorkThe focus on the election has crowded out nearly any discussion of policy or party orthodoxy. The Heritage Action scorecard, which rates lawmakers on their conservative voting records, awarded Ms. Cheney a lifetime score of 82 percent. Ms. Stefanik, who has a more moderate voting record but is a far more vocal supporter of the former president, scored 52 percent.Ms. Stefanik and many other Republican leaders are betting that the path to keeping the electoral gains of the Trump era lies in stoking their base with the populist politics that are central to the president’s brand, even if they repel swing voters.After months of being fed lies about the election by the conservative news media, much of the party has come to embrace them as true. Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist who has been conducting focus groups of Trump voters for years, said that since the election she had found an increased openness to what she calls “QAnon curious,” a willingness to entertain conspiracy theories about stolen elections and a deep state. “A lot of these base voters are living in a post-truth nihilism where you believe in nothing and think that everything might be untrue,” said Ms. Longwell, who opposed Mr. Trump. Some Republican strategists worry that the party is missing opportunities to attack Mr. Biden, who has proposed the most sweeping spending and tax plans in generations.“Republicans need to go back to kitchen-table issues that voters really care about, sprinkle in a little culture here and there but not get carried away,” said Scott Reed, a veteran Republican strategist who helped crush right-wing populists in past elections. “And some of them are making an industry out of getting carried away.”While clinging to Mr. Trump could help the party increase turnout among its base, Republicans like Ms. Comstock argue that such a strategy will damage the party with crucial demographics, including younger voters, voters of color, women and suburbanites. Already, intraparty fights are emerging in nascent primaries as candidates accuse each other of disloyalty to the former president. Many party leaders fear that could result in hard-right candidates’ emerging victorious and eventually losing general elections in conservative states where Republicans should prevail, like Missouri and Ohio.“To declare Trump the winner of a shrinking minority, that’s not a territory you want to head up,” Ms. Comstock said. “The future of the party is not going to be some 70-year-old man talking in the mirror at Mar-a-Lago and having all these sycophants come down and do the limbo to get his approval.”Yet those who have objected to Mr. Trump — and paid the price — say there’s little political incentive to pushing against the tide. Criticizing Mr. Trump, or even defending those who do, can leave elected officials in a kind of political no man’s land: seen as traitorous to Republican voters but still too conservative on other issues to be accepted by Democrats and independents.“It’s becoming increasingly difficult, it seems, for people to go out on the stump and defend somebody like Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney,” former Senator Jeff Flake, who endorsed Mr. Biden and was censured by the Arizona Republican Party this year, said during a panel appearance at Harvard this week. “About 70 percent of Republicans probably genuinely believe that the election was stolen, and that’s debilitating. It really is.” More

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      Liz Cheney Refuses to Lie, So Elise Stefanik Steps Up

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      Even by the standards of the Republican Party’s descent into Trumpian nihilism, the latest bloodletting within the ranks of its congressional leadership is gripping — the car crash next to the dumpster fire that you can’t look away from.House Republicans are on track next week to oust Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming as conference chairwoman, the third-highest position in the conference. Ms. Cheney is being purged for her stubborn refusal to accept — much less peddle — the dangerous, crackpot lie that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. In today’s G.O.P., fealty to the defeated president’s false allegation of electoral fraud is the ultimate litmus test.Ms. Cheney has not simply failed this test, repeatedly — she brandishes her defiance like a weapon.On Monday, Mr. Trump issued a proclamation: “The Fraudulent Presidential Election of 2020 will be, from this day forth, known as THE BIG LIE!” Ms. Cheney fired back on Twitter (from which the former president is still banned): “The 2020 presidential election was not stolen. Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.”“The Republican Party is at a turning point,” she warned in a May 5 opinion piece in The Washington Post, “and Republicans must decide whether we are going to choose truth and fidelity to the Constitution.”Clearly, such apostasy cannot stand.But with a House leadership dominated by white men, and a party plagued by a longstanding gender gap, Republican lawmakers recognize the potential risk of replacing their top-ranking woman with another white guy. Such bad optics. So it is that Republican House leaders have been whipping votes to install another woman in the job, Representative Elise Stefanik of New York.Unlike Ms. Cheney, Ms. Stefanik is happy — make that eager — to go along with Mr. Trump’s pernicious election-fraud fiction. Just this week, she sat down for interviews with Steve Bannon, Mr. Trump’s onetime political guru, and Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump aide, to praise the former president and suggest that there are many, many questions that still need to be answered about the outcome. Among other Trumpist talking points, she accused judicial officers in Pennsylvania of “unconstitutional overreach,” and she endorsed the sketchy election audit that Republicans are conducting in Arizona.Ms. Stefanik is assumed to have more than enough votes lined up to replace Ms. Cheney. Her ascension is considered close to a done deal.Here’s where things really get awkward. Aside from her Trump bootlicking, Ms. Stefanik is a terrible pick to help lead House Republicans, with both an ideology and a political style ill-suited to the conservative zeitgeist. At least they were until recently. In aiming to swap out Ms. Cheney with Ms. Stefanik, Republican leaders are revealing — again — just how hollow their party has become and how far it has fallen.With her establishment pedigree and her neocon foreign policy views, Ms. Cheney may not be a perfect fit for today’s Republican Party, but she is a rock-ribbed conservative who has for years fought fiercely in the party trenches. Like her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, she is tough and aggressive, and she delights in lobbing partisan bombs at Democrats. She is pro-torture and anti-abortion. In other words, she has long been the kind of Republican that Democrats love to hate.Ms. Stefanik, on the other hand … Most of America had never heard of the New York lawmaker before her emergence as a passionate Trump defender during his first impeachment. Her toadiness has only grown since, earning ever more love from Mr. Trump. On Wednesday, he endorsed her for conference chairwoman.But before all that, Ms. Stefanik was seen as an exemplar of the kinder, gentler future of the Republican Party. Elected in 2014 at age 30, the polished, media-savvy Harvard alumna was a fresh, friendly, moderate face that many hoped would help the G.O.P. shed its image as a bunch of angry old white guys. Pro-business and uninterested in culture warring, she fit in well with the party’s establishment wing. Her first political job was in the Bush 43 White House. In 2017, she was elected co-chair of the Tuesday Group (since renamed the Republican Governance Group), a caucus of moderate, centrist House Republicans.Ms. Stefanik’s voting record reflects this brand. She has a measly 44 percent lifetime score from the American Conservative Union — compared to Ms. Cheney’s 78 percent — and a 56 percent from the conservative Heritage Action, versus Ms. Cheney’s 82 percent. Ms. Stefanik’s ratings from conservative groups like FreedomWorks and the Club for Growth are even lower (37 percent and 35 percent), and both organizations have come out against her joining leadership. During Mr. Trump’s presidency, Ms. Stefanik voted with him 77.7 percent of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight, but Ms. Cheney did 92.9 percent of the time.One of Ms. Stefanik’s top priorities has been to improve her party’s image with women and, more specifically, to get more Republican women elected. Her PAC is credited with having contributed to the victories of several women in this year’s freshman House class. Her efforts, which can run up against the G.O.P.’s professed disdain for identity politics, have occasionally put off some party brethren.Ms. Stefanik is, in short, the kind of Republican that conservatives generally love to hate.Despite the seal of approval from Mr. Trump and some congressional leaders, not everyone is thrilled by the idea of Ms. Stefanik’s likely promotion. Some of her male colleagues have grumped that they were not even considered for the post because of their gender. The conference vice chair, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, has reportedly been griping about the “coronation.”Trickier still, some hard-core MAGA loyalists suspect Ms. Stefanik of being a pretender — a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” as one far-right site put it — and are raising a stink about her voting record and political background. Lou Dobbs, the deep-MAGA former TV host, declared her a RINO — that is, a Republican in name only. Her more creative critics at the website Revolver coined a fresh term for her: TINO — Trumpist in name only. They also dubbed her “another neocon establishment twit.”So much for Republican unity.To be fair, having sold their soul to Mr. Trump, Republican lawmakers cannot allow Ms. Cheney to remain in leadership. Unlike most of her colleagues, she refuses to let the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol fade from memory, pretend it was no big deal or falsely claim that it was perpetrated by lefty extremists. Every word out of her mouth is an indictment not merely of Mr. Trump but also of her fellow lawmakers’ degeneracy and opportunism.Ms. Stefanik, by contrast, is scrambling to reassure MAGA voters that she is worthy of their support. In addition to doubling down on election-fraud nonsense, she has been test-driving a more populist, own-the-libs persona, whining about “cancel culture” and “Trump derangement syndrome” and the anti-conservative bias of Big Tech.In other words, Ms. Stefanik is forsaking the ideology and the political brand that brought her to Congress as she grovels before the gold-plated altar of Trumpism. All this to impress the followers of a defeated president who would just as soon see the Republican Party burned to ash.In that sense, she may be a perfect leader for her House colleagues after all.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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      Florida's New Voting Rights Law Explained

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      Voting rights groups filed lawsuits shortly after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation reducing voting access in the battleground state. Critics said the law will disproportionately affect people of color.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican, signed new voting restrictions into law on Thursday, reducing voting access in one of the nation’s critical battleground states.Florida, which former President Donald J. Trump won by about three percentage points in 2020, is the latest Republican-controlled state, following Georgia, Montana and Iowa, to impose new hurdles to casting a ballot after November’s elections.Voting rights experts and Democrats say that some provisions of the new law will disproportionately affect voters of color.Here’s a guide to how the law changes voting in Florida.What are the changes in the new law?The law, Senate Bill 90, limits the use of drop boxes where voters can deposit absentee ballots, and adds more identification requirements for anyone requesting an absentee ballot. It also requires voters to request an absentee ballot for each two-year election cycle, rather than every four years, under the previous law. Additionally, it limits who can collect and drop off ballots.The law also expands a current rule that prohibits outside groups from holding signs or wearing political paraphernalia within 150 feet of a polling place or drop box, “with the intent to influence voters,” an increase from the previous 100 feet.Why are people upset?The new law weakens key parts of an extensive voting infrastructure that was built up slowly after the state’s chaotic 2000 election. In 2020, that infrastructure allowed Florida to ramp up quickly to accommodate absentee balloting and increased drop boxes during the coronavirus pandemic.Voters of color are most reliant on after-hours drop boxes, critics of the law say, as it’s often more difficult for them to both take hours off during the day and to organize transportation to polling places.Republican legislators promoting the bill offered little evidence of election fraud, and argued for limiting access despite their continued claims that the state’s 2020 election was the “gold standard” for the country.Florida has a popular tradition of voting by mail: In the 2016 and 2018 elections, nearly a third of the state’s voters cast ballots through the mail.In both years, more Republicans than Democrats voted by mail. But in 2020, more than 2.1 million Democrats cast mail ballots, compared with 1.4 million Republicans, after Mr. Trump claimed repeatedly that expanding mail-in voting would lead to fraud.Has voter fraud been a problem in Florida?Voting ran smoothly in 2020, by all accounts.“There was no problem in Florida,” said Kara Gross, the legislative director and senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. “Everything worked as it should. The only reason they’re doing this is to make it harder to vote.”And Mr. DeSantis has praised Florida’s handling of November’s elections, saying that his state has “the strongest election integrity measures in the country.”But on the need for the new law, he said: “Florida took action this legislative session to increase transparency and strengthen the security of our elections.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Are other states pursuing similar restrictions?Yes. The Texas House of Representatives passed a similar measure this week after a lengthy debate. The bill will soon be taken up by the state’s Republican-controlled Senate. Other states including Arizona, Michigan and Ohio are considering their own bills.What can we expect to happen next?Voting rights groups filed lawsuits shortly after Mr. DeSantis signed the bill into law during a live broadcast on a Fox News morning program.The League of Women Voters of Florida, the Black Voters Matter Fund and the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans joined in one suit, arguing that “Senate Bill 90 does not impede all of Florida’s voters equally.”“It is crafted to and will operate to make it more difficult for certain types of voters to participate in the state’s elections, including those voters who generally wish to vote with a vote-by-mail ballot and voters who have historically had to overcome substantial hurdles to reach the ballot box, such as Florida’s senior voters, youngest voters, and minority voters.”Another suit was brought by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Disability Rights Florida and Common Cause, who argued that the law violates constitutional protections and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.The law took effect immediately, and will be in force for the 2022 election, when Mr. DeSantis is up for re-election. 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      And Then There Was One: G.O.P. Defends Its Last Seat in Queens

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      The party struggles to hold on in an increasingly diverse borough, even as it fights its own internal battles.In heavily Democratic Queens, Councilman Eric Ulrich is a political oddity: He’s the only Republican elected to public office in the borough, and one of the only ones remaining in New York City outside of Staten Island.“One is the loneliest number,” Mr. Ulrich said.A white moderate, Mr. Ulrich has won four elections over his 12-year term representing District 32 in southern Queens. But because of term limits, he cannot run for re-election, making the race to replace him something of a last stand for Republicans in the borough.While Queens has long leaned Democratic, its Republican Party has for decades maintained a presence in citywide party politics, and up until less than a decade ago kept a grip on a handful of public offices.But waves of immigrants have transformed Queens into one of the most ethnically diverse counties in the nation, while a steady progressive shift in the borough’s politics has all but banished Republicans from elected office.The county party still has a base, in absolute terms: There are roughly 140,000 registered Republicans in Queens, the most of any borough in the city and more than in many large American cities. Those voters have helped two Republican mayors win five elections over the last 30 years in a city that is overwhelmingly Democratic.But the Queens Republican Party has been hampered by long-running feuds that have driven members out and hindered its ability to embrace those waves of immigrant voters, even though many of them espouse conservative values, said Tom Long, chairman of the Queens County Conservative Party, which endorses many Republicans in Queen races. And the party has suffered a series of public embarrassments, most recently in February when Philip Grillo, a district leader, was arrested for participating in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots in Washington, D.C. Mr. Grillo retains his position while his case is adjudicated.“The division is killing the Republican Party,” Mr. Long said. “The average person gets disgusted and walks away.”Such discord has provided an opening for Democrats to eliminate Queens Republicans entirely from public office this year. There are several Democratic candidates vying in the June 22 primary for the chance to claim Mr. Ulrich’s seat in the November general election.District 32 is demographically and ideologically split: The northern portion voted heavily for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020 and has seen the kind of influx of immigrants — including Latino, Indo-Caribbean, Bangladeshi and Punjabi — that has made Queens a model of diversity. To the south, Blue Lives Matter flags and bumper stickers are ubiquitous in neighborhoods like the Rockaways and Breezy Point, a gated community at the southwestern tip of the district that is an enclave of white conservatism. It is one of the few areas in the city that voted overwhelmingly for Donald J. Trump in 2020. Despite the large number of Republicans in Queens, registered Democrats still outnumber them roughly by three to one in District 32, though that difference is much narrower than the seven-to-one edge that Democrats enjoy boroughwide. Democrats say it is time to replace Mr. Ulrich with a leader who better reflects the immigrants and voters of color who have largely replaced white voters in the district’s northern stretches.Felicia Singh and her opponents in the Democratic primary for a city council seat say it is time for a council member who better represents their district in southern Queens.Jackie Molloy for The New York TimesTo win, they have to defeat Joann Ariola, 62, who is both the chairwoman of the Queens Republican Party and its candidate to save the District 32 seat. “Being the Republican, there’s pressure on me,” she said, “But I have lot of support in the district.”Ms. Ariola, a longtime civic leader in Howard Beach, a mostly white, Republican-leaning neighborhood, is running partly on a tough-on-crime platform that she hopes resonates with voters frustrated with liberal city leaders like Mayor Bill de Blasio, who she says has mismanaged the city and implemented policies that have helped lead to a rise in violent crime.“Right now, the city is off the track,” she said. “It is absolutely a derailed train and needs to be brought back to the center.”She said cuts in police funding and bail-reform measures have helped turn the city into “a blood-soaked shooting gallery” that is driving New Yorkers away. She also opposes the mayor’s plan to close Rikers Island and build smaller jails across the five boroughs.Mr. Ulrich said he was supporting Ms. Ariola, and that he believed she could win in November.“People in this district vote for the person, not the party,” he said. “They are willing to vote for a moderate Republican when the Democrat is too liberal.”But not all Queen Republicans agree. Ms. Ariola’s campaign has already been affected by the kind of vitriolic infighting that has divided borough Republicans for years.The Queens Republican Patriots, a splinter faction within the county party, backed a local businessman, Steve Sirgiovanni, to run against Ms. Ariola in the primary. Her team responded by getting him ousted from the ballot over his petition filings, a ruling his campaign is appealing.Joe Concannon, who founded the Queens Republican Patriots in 2018, said party leaders have become more fixated on battling fellow Republicans than on battling Democrats. The focus, he said, should be on building the party through fund-raising, enrollment and recruiting moderate Democrats frustrated with the leftward drift of their party.For decades, handfuls of Queens Republicans managed to win elections in the borough despite its demographic and political shifts. But in 2012, Councilman Peter Koo, a Republican, switched parties to the Democrats, citing excessive Republican infighting. In 2013, Republican Councilman Dan Halloran, whose belief in Paganism had already made him a controversial figure, left office after becoming embroiled in a bribery scheme to sell a spot on the Republican ballot.Mr. Concannon complained that the county organization has come under the stranglehold of Bart and John Haggerty, two brothers from Forest Hills who are its vice chairman and executive director. (John Haggerty was convicted in 2011 of stealing $1.1 million in funds from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s campaign. Released in 2015, he has since resumed a leadership role.)Mr. Concannon said the brothers helped install Ms. Ariola in 2017 as a figurehead, while retaining the real power in the party.Bart Haggerty denied Mr. Concannon’s accusation. “Joann Ariola runs the Queens Republican Party,” he said, and referred further questions to Ms. Ariola. Ms. Ariola likewise pushed back, calling Mr. Concannon and his supporters “a group of incompetent people” without standing in the party. “They’re squawking loudly from the sidelines but that’s exactly where they are, on the sidelines,” she said. “They’re not in the game.”Despite the infighting, Queens Republicans remain largely united behind their ongoing support for Mr. Trump, and county Democratic leaders see the District 32 race as an opportunity for borough voters to effectively rebuke the county’s pro-Trump voters, said Representative Gregory Meeks, a Queens congressman who heads the borough’s Democratic Party.Of course, discord is common within political organizations. Queens Democratic Party leaders have been criticized by more progressive members as remaining too moderate. In a Democratic primary for a City Council seat in Flushing, several candidates recently formed a coalition against Sandra Ung, the candidate backed by county party leaders, as a show of force against the party.Michael Reich, the executive secretary of the Queens Democratic Party, said it would make a “full court press” for the primary victor, including campaign volunteers, help from local Democratic clubs and appearances by local elected Democratic officials.County Democratic leaders opted not to endorse a candidate in the primary because local district leaders could not agree on a favorite and because it was difficult to isolate a front-runner, given the vagaries of the city’s new ranked-choice voting rules, which will allow voters to select their top five candidates.There are several moderate Democrats in the primary, including Kaled Alamarie, 52, a city planner; Helal Sheikh, 41, a former city schoolteacher; Bella Matias, a founder of an education nonprofit; and Mike Scala, 38, a lawyer and activist from Howard Beach who won the Democratic primary for the council seat in 2017 before losing to Mr. Ulrich.Ms. Singh campaigned in a garment shop in Ozone Park.Jackie Molloy for The New York TimesAnother candidate, Felicia Singh, 32, a former teacher, hopes to ride a progressive political wave that has swept much of Queens in recent years, most notably with the 2018 election of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose district includes parts of Queens and the Bronx.Changing demographics are palpable in Ozone Park, a large part of the district’s northern section that in the 1990s was still an Italian stronghold where the mobster John Gotti once had his clubhouse and threw mammoth Fourth of July parties. Today, Bengali, Guyanese and Indian immigrants have moved in, Punjabi music blasts from passing cars and cricket games can be seen in schoolyards.Ms. Singh, campaigning outside the sari and pizza shops along 101st Street in Ozone Park, promised voters a “revolution of change.”Some Democrats believe that November could see not just a defeat for the Queens Republicans, but the election of the district’s first nonwhite council member.Thanks to ranked-choice voting, like-minded groups of voters now have a greater chance of electing a candidate who reflects their preferences — even if he or she is not their first choice — rather than splitting their vote among multiple candidates, said Evan Stavisky, a Democratic political strategist.In one scenario, voters of color could split their votes among multiple candidates of color — as most of the Democratic candidates are — and wind up essentially “agreeing” on a candidate who may not be their top choice. Ms. Singh said she would tackle issues that affect working-class immigrants, like her father, a 66-year-old Indian immigrant who became a victim of the taxi medallion crisis after declaring bankruptcy on his loan, leaving him in danger of losing the family’s Ozone Park house.“Now you have candidates of color who are ready to represent a community that has been neglected,” she said. More

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      Republicans Attack Democrats as Liberal Extremists to Regain Power

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      As Democrats prepare to run on an ambitious economic agenda, Republicans are working to caricature them as liberal extremists out of touch with voters’ values.WASHINGTON — Minutes after a group of congressional Democrats unveiled a bill recently to add seats to the Supreme Court, the Iowa Republican Party slammed Representative Cindy Axne, a Democrat and potential Senate candidate, over the issue.“Will Axne Pack the Court?” was the headline on a statement the party rushed out, saying the move to expand the court “puts our democracy at risk.”The attack vividly illustrated the emerging Republican strategy for an intensive drive to try to take back the House and the Senate in the 2022 midterm elections. Republicans are mostly steering clear of Democrats’ economic initiatives that have proved popular, such as an infrastructure package and a stimulus law that coupled pandemic relief with major expansions of safety-net programs, and are focusing instead on polarizing issues that stoke conservative outrage.In doing so, they are seizing on measures like the court-expansion bill and calls to defund the police — which many Democrats oppose — as well as efforts to provide legal status to undocumented immigrants and grant statehood to the District of Columbia to caricature the party as extreme and out of touch with mainstream America.Republicans are also hammering at issues of race and sexual orientation, seeking to use Democrats’ push to confront systemic racism and safeguard transgender rights as attack lines.The approach comes as President Biden and Democrats, eager to capitalize on their unified control of Congress and the White House, have become increasingly bold about speaking about such issues and promoting a wide array of party priorities that languished during years of Republican rule. It has given Republicans ample fodder for attacks that have proved potent in the past.“They are putting the ball on the tee, handing me the club and putting the wind at my back,” said Jeff Kaufmann, the chairman of the Iowa Republican Party.Democrats argue that Republicans are focusing on side issues and twisting their positions because the G.O.P. has nothing else to campaign on, as Democrats line up accomplishments to show to voters, including the pandemic aid bill that passed without a single Republican vote.“That was very popular, and I can understand why Republicans don’t want to talk about it,” said Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, the new chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “But we’re going to keep reminding folks who was there when they needed them.”The contrast is likely to define the 2022 races. Democrats will sell the ambitious agenda they are pursuing with Mr. Biden, take credit for what they hope will continue to be a surging economy and portray Republicans as an increasingly extreme party pushing Donald J. Trump’s lies about a stolen election. Republicans, who have embraced the false claims of election fraud and plan to use them to energize their conservative base, will complain of “radical” Democratic overreach and try to amplify culture-war issues they think will propel more voters into their party’s arms.A release from the National Republican Senatorial Committee highlighted what it called the “three pillars” of the Democratic agenda: “The Green New Deal, court packing and defund the police,” even though the first two are far from the front-burner issues for Mr. Biden and Democratic leaders and the third is a nonstarter with the bulk of the party’s rank and file.President Biden and Democrats have promoted a wide array of party priorities that languished during years of Republican rule.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesLast week Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, sought to thrust a new issue into the mix, leading Republicans in protest of a proposed Biden administration rule promoting education programs that address systemic racism and the nation’s legacy of slavery. He has taken particular aim at the 1619 Project, a journalism initiative by The New York Times that identifies the year when slaves were first brought to America as a key moment in history.“There are a lot of exotic notions about what are the most important points in American history,” Mr. McConnell said on Monday during an appearance in Louisville. “I simply disagree with the notion that The New York Times laid out there that year 1619 was one of those years.”Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the Republicans’ Senate campaign arm, has been explicit about his strategy.“Now what I talk about every day is do we want open borders? No. Do we want to shut down our schools? No. Do we want men playing in women’s sports? No,” Mr. Scott said during a recent radio interview with the conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt.“Do we want to shut down the Keystone pipeline? No. Do we want voter ID? Yes,” he continued. “And the Democrats are on the opposite side of all those issues, and I’m going to make sure every American knows about it.”Democrats who have fallen victim to the Republican cultural assault concede that it can take a toll and that their party needs to be ready.“It was all these different attacks that were spread all over mainstream media, Spanish-language media, Facebook, WhatsApp,” said Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a former Democratic House member from South Florida who was defeated last year after Republicans portrayed her as a socialist who was anti-police. “A lot of it was misinformation, false attacks.”She said Democrats must begin taking steps now to combat Republican misdirection, warning that their legislative victories might not be enough to appeal to voters.“We can have a great policy record,” she said, “but we need to be present in our communities right now, reaching out to all of our constituencies to tell them we are working for them, that their health and their jobs are our priorities.”On the Supreme Court issue, progressive groups began pushing the idea of an expansion after Mr. Trump was able to appoint three justices, including one to a vacancy that Republicans blocked Barack Obama from filling in the last year of his presidency and another who was fast-tracked right before last year’s election.Hoping to neutralize the issue, some Senate Democrats who will be on the ballot next year have made it clear that they would oppose expanding the court, and the bill seems to be going nowhere at the moment. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would not bring any court bill to the floor until at least after a commission named by Mr. Biden to study the matter issued its report, which is due in six months. The president has been cool to the expansion idea as well.The office of Ms. Axne, the only Democrat in Congress from Iowa, did not respond to requests for reaction to the Republican attacks on her over the court plan. In an interview with MSNBC, Ms. Axne said that she, like Ms. Pelosi, would await the findings of the commission.But Republicans are not waiting to try to score political points. They say more moderate Republican voters and independents who broke with the party during the Trump years have been alienated by the call to enlarge the court and other initiatives being pushed by progressives.One key for Republicans next year will be winning back suburban voters while running campaigns that also energize the significant segment of their supporters who are fiercely loyal to Mr. Trump and want the party to represent his values. That may be a difficult balance to achieve, as evidenced this week when Republican leaders moved to strip Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming of the party’s No. 3 leadership post for calling out the former president’s false election claims.Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said it would matter less what Republicans said about Democrats than what his party was able to accomplish.“The one thing that will win people over, no matter what they do, is whether we can deliver,” he said. “They are doing what appeals to their base, but the voters in the middle, including a good chunk of Republican voters, actually care about getting things done.”Instead of focusing on Democrats’ economic initiatives that have proved popular, Republicans are seizing on measures like a bill to expand the Supreme Court.Al Drago for The New York TimesMr. Peters said Democrats would be better positioned to rebut attacks such as those that falsely portray them as pressing to defund the police after voters had experienced two years of the party holding power.“President Biden and the caucus have been very clear that we are not about defunding the police, we are about making sure police have the resources they need to do their jobs,” he said. “Ultimately, it is about how it is impacting people’s lives.”Mr. Kaufmann, the Republican leader in Iowa, begged to differ. He said he believed the hot-button issues Republicans were homing in on would drive voters more than “the nuance of tax policy and who gets credit for the vaccine.” He is eager to get started.“Some of this stuff is really controversial,” he said. “These are all very bold and clearly delineated issues. I can use this to expand the base and get crossover voters.” More