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      Impeachment Case Argues Trump Was ‘Singularly Responsible’ for Capitol Riot

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentDivisions in the SenateList of Senators’ StancesTrump ImpeachedHow the House VotedKey QuotesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyImpeachment Case Argues Trump Was ‘Singularly Responsible’ for Capitol RiotThe House managers cited the Constitution’s framers in urging that Donald J. Trump be convicted and disqualified from holding office. Mr. Trump’s lawyers said the Senate had no jurisdiction.“If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,”  Donald J. Trump told his supporters at a rally in Washington on Jan. 6. Credit…Kenny Holston for The New York TimesNicholas Fandos and Feb. 2, 2021Updated 8:35 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — The House impeachment managers on Tuesday laid out their case against Donald J. Trump, asserting that he was “singularly responsible” for the deadly assault on the Capitol last month and must be convicted and barred from holding public office.In an 80-page brief filed on Tuesday, the managers outlined the arguments they planned to make when the Senate opens Mr. Trump’s trial next week, contending that the former president whipped his supporters into a “frenzy” as part of a concerted campaign to cling to power. Spinning a vivid narrative of a harrowing day when lawmakers were forced to flee as a violent pro-Trump mob breached the Capitol, the prosecutors also reached back centuries to bolster their case, invoking George Washington and the Constitutional Convention.“The framers of the Constitution feared a president who would corrupt his office by sparing ‘no efforts or means whatever to get himself re-elected,’” wrote the nine House Democrats, led by Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, quoting directly from the 1787 debate in Philadelphia. “If provoking an insurrectionary riot against a joint session of Congress after losing an election is not an impeachable offense, it is hard to imagine what would be.”In Mr. Trump’s own shorter filing, specked with typos and stripped of the former president’s usual bombast, his lawyers flatly denied that he had incited the attack and repeatedly argued that the Senate “lacks jurisdiction” to try a former president. They repeatedly urged an immediate dismissal of the single charge against him, “incitement of insurrection.”“The Senate of the United States lacks jurisdiction over the 45th president because he holds no public office from which he can be removed, rendering the article of impeachment moot and a non-justiciable question,” the lawyers, Bruce L. Castor Jr. and David Schoen, wrote in their 14-page response to the charge.Their other broad argument was that Mr. Trump’s remarks on Jan. 6 and in the weeks before were constitutionally protected. While they did not argue explicitly that Mr. Trump had won the 2020 election, as some said he wanted his legal team to do, the lawyers sought to shroud his false claims of widespread voter fraud in free-speech arguments.They effectively argued that Mr. Trump believed he “won it by a landslide,” and therefore was within his First Amendment rights to “express his belief that the election results were suspect.” His claims could not be disproved, they added, because there was “insufficient evidence.”President Biden won the election by about seven million votes, according to results certified by every state. Dozens of cases Mr. Trump brought alleging voting fraud or improprieties were tossed out or decided against him, many times by Republican-appointed judges, for lack of evidence.The impeachment filings provided the clearest preview yet of the legal strategies that are likely to shape a politically fraught impeachment trial of Mr. Trump — his second in just over a year — that is scheduled to begin in earnest in the Senate on Tuesday. They indicated that both sides expected drawn-out debates over the constitutionality of a trial, as much as Mr. Trump’s culpability for what took place.Despite their initial criticisms, a majority of Republican senators now appear to be lining up once again to acquit Mr. Trump. But the arguments could determine the difference between a near-party-line verdict like the one that capped the former president’s first trial in 2020 or a more bipartisan rebuke that could constrain any future political ambition he harbors.Though senators have yet to agree to a final set of rules to govern the proceeding, both parties appear to share an interest in an exceedingly swift trial, without new witnesses or fact-finding, that could conclude as soon as Saturday, Feb. 13. That would be far shorter than any presidential impeachment trial in history. But Republicans are eager to turn a page on a divisive former president, and Democrats are impatient to turn to advancing the agenda of the current one.The House impeachment managers, led by Representative Jamie Raskin, right, submitted an 80-page brief blaming Mr. Trump for the violent attack.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesIf Mr. Trump’s lawyers were trying to reassure Republican senators that they could dismiss the case without confronting its merits, the House managers were aiming instead to force them to confront the terror of the Capitol riot with an unusually visceral prosecution. They have compiled hours of footage from Parler, Twitter and elsewhere that they plan to play from the well of the Senate next week to compel Republicans to face Mr. Trump’s conduct head on, rather than retreating behind arguments around the process.The approach was evident in their legal brief, which was more dramatic in parts than a typical courtroom filing. It follows Mr. Trump from his early-summer warnings about a “rigged” election up to his last, futile attempts to target Congress’s Jan. 6 counting session to snatch victory away from President Biden.All the while, the managers argued, Mr. Trump was issuing a “call to mobilize” to his supporters to “stop the steal.” He invited them to come to Washington in early January. Then used a speech on the Ellipse outside the White House just before the attack to urge them to “fight like hell” and march to the Capitol to confront members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence.The calls incited the mob to action, they argued, citing videos posted on social media in which supporters of Mr. Trump can be heard yelling “invade the Capitol building” after he urges them to “show strength.”“He summoned a mob to Washington, exhorted them into a frenzy, and aimed them like a loaded cannon down Pennsylvania Avenue,” the managers wrote.Unlike the first impeachment case against Mr. Trump, which centered on his pressure campaign on Ukraine, this one has bipartisan support and the prosecutors appear poised to make frequent use of Republicans’ own criticisms of Mr. Trump. Their brief quoted Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach, as well as Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, who said publicly that Mr. Trump “provoked” the mob.In making constitutional arguments in favor of Mr. Trump’s conviction, though, they reached hundreds of years further back, arguing that Mr. Trump had not only prompted violence but threatened the tradition of the peaceful transfer of power begun by Washington. They also cited debates by the founders about who would be subject to impeachment and when, as well as a 19th-century impeachment trial of a former war secretary, to assert that the Senate clearly had a right to try Mr. Trump even after he left office.“There is no ‘January exception’ to impeachment or any other provision of the Constitution,” the managers wrote. “A president must answer comprehensively for his conduct in office from his first day in office through his last.”They also insisted that the First Amendment right to free speech could not shield Mr. Trump from responsibility for inciting violence that would seek to do harm to the Constitution, undermining all the rights enshrined there, including free speech.The president’s filing was narrower by design, with a lengthier, more detailed brief due from his lawyers early next week. Still, the contours of their defense were becoming clear.The lawyers said Democrats had misinterpreted Mr. Trump’s actions and his intent, denying that he was responsible for the Capitol riot or that he intended to interfere with Congress’s formalizing of Mr. Biden’s win. They said his words to supporters on Jan. 6 — “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore” — were not meant as a call to violent action, but were “about the need to fight for election security in general.”“It is denied that President Trump incited the crowd to engage in destructive behavior,” they wrote. In another section, they denied that Mr. Trump had “threatened” Georgia’s Republican secretary of state or “acted improperly” when he demanded during a January phone call that the official “find” the votes needed to overturn his loss in that state and vaguely warned of a “criminal offense.”The lawyers reprised an argument against the constitutionality of the trial popular with Republican senators. They asserted that a plain reading of the Constitution — which does not explicitly discuss what to do with an official impeached but not tried before he leaves office — does not permit the Senate to try a former president.But they also said that Mr. Trump “denies the allegation” that his claims that he won the election were false. If that argument plays a central role in the trial, Republican senators could quickly find themselves painfully wedged between a conspiracy theory they fear could do lasting damage to their party and millions of their own voters who believe it.Mr. Trump’s response appeared to be somewhat hastily assembled after the former president shook up his legal team just 48 hours before the brief was due; the response, for example, was addressed to the “Unites States Senate.”In an interview later, Mr. Schoen pointed to another potential argument that could help Mr. Trump: that at least some of the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol planned their attack in advance, suggesting that the former president was not the inciting force.“I have no reason to believe anyone involved with Trump was in the know,” he said of the violence that unfolded at the Capitol. Still, he conceded the heart of the defense would lie elsewhere.Nicholas Fandos More

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      How Trump Is Pocketing Donors' Cash for the Future

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTrump’s Sleight of Hand: Shouting Fraud, Pocketing Donors’ Cash for FutureWith breathless, often misleading appeals, the former president promised small donors that he was using the money to fight the election results, but in fact stored much of it for future use.Protesters outside the Supreme Court in December. Many Republican grass-roots donors were drawn in by former President Donald J. Trump’s false promises and “stop the steal” message after the November election.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesShane Goldmacher and Feb. 1, 2021Updated 10:01 p.m. ETFormer President Donald J. Trump and the Republican Party leveraged false claims of voter fraud and promises to overturn the election to raise more than a quarter-billion dollars in November and December as hundreds of thousands of trusting supporters listened and opened their wallets.But the Trump campaign spent only a tiny fraction of its haul on lawyers and other legal bills related to those claims. Instead, Mr. Trump and the G.O.P. stored away much of the money — $175 million or so — even as they continued to issue breathless, aggressive and often misleading appeals for cash that promised it would help with recounts, the rooting out of election fraud and even the Republican candidates’ chances in the two Senate runoff races in Georgia.What fraction of the money Mr. Trump did spend after the election was plowed mostly into a public-relations campaign and to keep his perpetual fund-raising machine whirring, with nearly $50 million going toward online advertising, text-message outreach and a small television ad campaign.Only about $10 million spent by Mr. Trump’s campaign went to actual legal costs, according to an analysis of new Federal Election Commission filings from Nov. 4 through the end of the year.Far more is now sitting in the coffers of a new political action committee, Save America, that Mr. Trump formed after the election and that provides him a fat war chest he can use to pay advisers, fund travel and maintain a political operation. Mr. Trump’s new PAC had $31 million in the bank at the end of 2020 and an estimated $40 million more sitting in a shared party account waiting to be transferred into it.Mr. Trump’s extraordinary success raising money came mostly from grass-roots and online contributors drawn to his lie that the election result would soon be somehow wiped away. Only about a dozen donors gave $25,000 or more to one of Mr. Trump’s committees after Nov. 24. (The lone six-figure donation came from Elaine J. Wold, a major Republican donor in Florida.)“Sophisticated donors are not dumb,” said Dan Eberhart, a major Republican donor who has supported Mr. Trump in the past. “They could see through what Trump was trying to do.”A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment.One of the few five-figure checks deposited in December came from the National Fraternal Order of Police PAC. But its executive director, James Pasco, said the group had actually issued the $25,000 donation in early November. He said he did not know why it hadn’t been cashed until December.“The optics of this are terrible,” Mr. Pasco lamented. “We in no way questioned the election at any point, or were involved in an effort to forestall the results.”Still, many Republican grass-roots donors were drawn in by Mr. Trump’s false promises and “stop the steal” message. He fomented intense opposition to the inauguration of President Biden, which eventually culminated in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol as flag-waving Trump supporters violently sought to disrupt the certification of Mr. Biden’s victory.All told, more than two million donations flowed to the former president and his shared committees with the Republican National Committee from Nov. 24 to the end of the year. Mr. Trump’s fund-raising did stall drastically after the Electoral College certified Mr. Biden as the winner on Dec. 14.In the two weeks leading up to that day, Mr. Trump and the R.N.C. had raised an average of $2.9 million every day online; in the two weeks after, the average was $1.2 million, according to records from WinRed, the Republican digital donation platform.Despite that slowdown, Mr. Trump still outpaced the online fund-raising of the two Republican senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who were competing in the Georgia runoff elections that would determine control of the chamber in the last 39 days of the year, which the most recent federal filings cover.Mr. Trump and his shared committees with the R.N.C. raised $80 million online during that period; Ms. Loeffler and Mr. Perdue combined for closer to $75 million. Both Senate candidates lost.“Absolutely that money was misdirected,” Mr. Eberhart said. “I would have loved to see half that money go to the Georgia Senate races.”Mr. Trump’s campaign appears to have contributed nothing to the Georgia races, despite fund-raising appeals that emphasized the importance of the races; the R.N.C. reported $7.9 million in expenditures aiding Ms. Loeffler and Mr. Perdue.A host of corporations and major donors mostly ignored Mr. Trump in the weeks after the election and poured money instead into the Georgia runoffs. Donations included a $5 million check from the American Petroleum Institute and hundreds of thousands more from oil giants like Chevron and Valero, which were fearful of the impact of a Democratic-controlled Senate.Mr. Trump spoke at a campaign rally in Valdosta, Ga., in December. His campaign appears to have contributed nothing to the Georgia Senate runoffs.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesKenneth Griffin, the chief executive of the financial firm Citadel, donated $10 million to the main Senate Republican super PAC in November. Mr. Griffin’s firm now faces scrutiny for some of its investments related to the GameStop stock that soared last month in a Reddit-driven populist revolt.Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive of the private equity giant Blackstone, who has known Mr. Trump for decades and donated to him in the past, said publicly by mid-November that Mr. Biden had most likely won. Around that time, he gave $15 million to the same Senate Republican super PAC focused on Georgia.“The outcome is very certain today, and the country should move on,” Mr. Schwarzman said in late November.Mr. Trump did incur some legal costs, though there were no disclosed payments to some of the best-known figures in his failed legal fight, including Sidney Powell, the lawyer who spread conspiracy theories and held one news conference in the lobby of the R.N.C., and Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former president’s personal lawyer.Mr. Giuliani’s firm was reimbursed for $63,423 in travel in mid-December. (Another firm run by an ally of Mr. Giuliani, the former New York police commissioner Bernard B. Kerik, was also paid $20,130 in travel reimbursements; Mr. Trump pardoned Mr. Kerik last year for his 2010 conviction on eight felonies.)All told, the Trump campaign paid more than a dozen law firms, including $1.6 million to Kasowitz Benson Torres, more than $500,000 to Jones Day and about $600,000 to Dechert. The law firm of Kurt Hilbert, who was on Mr. Trump’s phone call pressuring the Republican secretary of state in Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” votes to overturn the election outcome, was paid more than $480,000. A $3 million payment went to the Wisconsin Elections Commission to pay for a recount.One major Republican donor, C. Boyden Gray, who contributed more than $2 million to Republicans in the 2020 cycle, also provided legal consulting for Mr. Trump, earning $114,000.The Trump operation continued to spend on fund-raising, pouring millions into a secretive limited liability company, American Made Media Consultants, for online and text-message advertising. Family members of Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence once served on the board of the company, which had more than $700 million in spending flow through it during the 2020 campaign.In the postelection period, more than $63 million in spending flowed through the company from committees linked to Mr. Trump.The Republican National Committee ended the year with more than $80 million in the bank after the fund-raising blitz, and the party is entitled to a share of the $63 million more in two shared accounts with Mr. Trump. Per an agreement, the R.N.C. collected 25 cents for every dollar Mr. Trump raised online through their joint account in December.One of Mr. Trump’s shared committees with the R.N.C. spent nearly $235,000 on books through a company, Reagan Investments, that has also done work for a PAC controlled by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. The Trump campaign offered signed copies of a book by Mr. Cruz last fall to donors who gave $75 or more.And, as they have since the beginning of his candidacy in 2015, Mr. Trump’s campaign accounts patronized his businesses in the postelection period.The Trump Victory committee paid $34,000 to the Trump Hotel Collection in its final 2020 filing. The same committee also paid a Trump-owned limited liability company that operates a private plane, DT Endeavor, $39,200 on Nov. 24.Another Trump campaign committee paid $75,000 in rent to the Trump Tower building in December.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      It’s Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Party Now

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyIt’s Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Party NowShe embarrasses some Republicans, but she’s no outlier.Opinion ColumnistFeb. 1, 2021, 7:35 p.m. ETCredit…Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSteve King, the Republican former congressman from Iowa, must feel robbed. Two years ago, he was stripped of all his committee assignments after asking, in an interview with The New York Times, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” The Republican Party threw its weight behind King’s primary challenger, and he was whisked off the national stage, no longer to embarrass colleagues who prefer that racist demagogy be performed with enough finesse to allow for plausible deniability.Since then, standards have changed. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, is every bit as bigoted as King, and 10 times as unhinged. By now, you’ve surely heard her theory that California wildfires might have been caused by a space laser controlled by Jewish bankers. That wasn’t Greene’s first foray into anti-Semitism; in 2018 she shared a notorious white nationalist video in which a Holocaust denier claimed that “Zionist supremacists have schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation.”Recently, Greene met with a far-right British commentator, Katie Hopkins, who has described migrants as “cockroaches” and said she doesn’t care if they die. Greene told her, “I would love to trade you for some of our white people here that have no appreciation for our country.” She described the results of the 2018 midterms as “an Islamic invasion of our government.” Greene endorsed calls for the execution of prominent Democrats and agreed with Facebook posts claiming that the Parkland and Sandy Hook school shootings were hoaxes. She harassed one of the Parkland massacre’s young survivors.As it happens, this week House Republicans are seeking to punish a prominent woman in their ranks — but it’s not Greene. A big chunk of the House Republican caucus is reportedly trying to oust Liz Cheney of Wyoming from leadership because she voted to impeach Donald Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection.Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House leader, is meeting with Greene, but it’s far from clear that he’ll act against her, because she represents much of their party’s base. When The New Yorker’s Charles Bethea met a group of Greene’s local supporters last year, they were generally familiar with QAnon, and several agreed that Democrats are controlled by Satan. There’s a reason Kelly Loeffler, who needed to get out the pro-Trump vote, touted Greene’s endorsement when she was trying to hold on to her Georgia Senate seat.Some decent Republicans imagine they’re in a battle for their party’s soul. Representative Adam Kinzinger, who like Cheney voted to impeach Trump, recently started a PAC devoted to fighting the forces that led to Greene’s rise and the Capitol rampage. “The time has come to choose what kind of party we will be,” he said in an introductory video. The thing is, Republicans already have chosen.Just look at the party’s state affiliates. On Jan. 4, the Arizona G.O.P. retweeted a “Stop the Steal” activist who’d pronounced himself willing to “give my life” to overturn the election. Said the party’s official account: “He is. Are you?” An Arizona lawmaker has since introduced a bill that would let the Legislature, controlled by Republicans, override the presidential vote of the state’s increasingly Democratic citizenry.The Oregon Republican Party approved a resolution suggesting that the Capitol siege was a “false flag” attack. The Texas Republican Party has adopted the QAnon slogan “We are the storm” as its motto, though it insists there’s no connection. The chairman of Wyoming’s Republican Party, who attended Trump’s rally on Jan. 6, said he might be open to secession.Greene is not the outlier in this party. Kinzinger is.American conservatism — particularly its evangelical strain — has fostered derangement in its ranks for decades, insisting that no source of information outside its own self-reinforcing ideological bubble is trustworthy.If you’re steeped in creationism and believe that elites are lying to you about the origins of life on earth, it’s not a stretch to believe they’re lying to you about a life-threatening virus. If what you know of history is the revisionist version of the Christian right, in which God deeded America to the faithful, then pluralism will feel like the theft of your birthright. If you believe that the last Democratic president was illegitimate, as Trump and other birthers claimed, then it’s not hard to believe that dark forces would foist another unconstitutional leader on the country.There was a moment, after the Capitol riot, when it seemed as if a critical mass of the Republican Party was recoiling at what it had created. But the moment passed, because it would have required the party’s putative leaders to defy too many of their followers. Senator Mitch McConnell floated openness to convicting Trump in a Senate trial, but ended up voting that such a trial was unconstitutional. Fox News, finger to the wind, purged many of its real journalists and gave the conspiracy theorist Maria Bartiromo a prime-time tryout.On Monday Politico reported that if Republicans don’t strip Greene of committee assignments, Democrats will try to do it, bringing the issue to the House floor. Republican members will have the chance to distance themselves from her. If they don’t, it will be because they know she belongs.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.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Tim Ryan Is Said to Plan Senate Bid

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTim Ryan, a Top Democrat in Ohio, Is Said to Plan Senate BidMr. Ryan, who mounted a long-shot campaign for president in 2019, plans to compete for the state’s open Senate seat. His campaign will test Democrats’ strength in a state tilting to the right.Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio has argued that Democrats will build enduring majorities only if they reclaim support from a multiracial, working-class coalition of voters.Credit…Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesFeb. 1, 2021, 5:34 p.m. ETRepresentative Tim Ryan of Ohio plans to run for his state’s open Senate seat, Democrats who have spoken with him said, a bid that would test whether even a Democrat with roots in the blue-collar Youngstown region and close ties to organized labor can win in the increasingly Republican state.Mr. Ryan, an 18-year House veteran, has reached out to a host of Ohio and national Democrats in recent days about the seat now held by Senator Rob Portman, a Republican who stunned officials in both parties by announcing last week that he would retire.Former Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio, a Democrat who has been encouraging Mr. Ryan to run, said of the congressman, “I think he is the person with the best chance, given this political climate we’re in and given the way Ohio has been performing.”“He has the ability to appeal to a lot of independents, and Democrats will be very excited about this candidacy,” Mr. Strickland said.Mr. Ryan has also discussed his candidacy with Representative Marcy Kaptur, the longest-serving member in Ohio’s congressional delegation, and national labor leaders, including Lee Saunders of Afscme, while also receiving a nudge from Hillary Clinton.Asked about these conversations, Mr. Ryan said on Monday that he was “encouraged by their support, enthusiasm and commitment,” adding, “The U.S. Senate needs another working-class voice, and I’m very serious about the opportunity to continue representing the people of Ohio.”He is expected to declare his candidacy by the beginning of March, according to Democrats briefed on his planning.Long one of the country’s quintessential political battlegrounds, Ohio has turned sharply right since former President Donald J. Trump’s ascent. Mr. Trump carried the state by eight percentage points in 2016 and won it again by the same margin last year, even as Joseph R. Biden Jr. emphasized his working-class appeal and made a late push in the state.Senator Sherrod Brown is the only Democrat remaining in statewide office in Ohio. And even with his fiercely populist approach, Mr. Brown has lost ground among once-reliable Democrats in eastern Ohio, including those in the industrial area south of Lake Erie and in the more rural enclaves that trace the Ohio River.Mr. Ryan hails from Niles, Ohio, just north of Youngstown, a region filled with voters who are effectively Trump Democrats, many of them union members or retirees. He outperformed Mr. Biden in his district, but Democrats there suffered a series of losses in other down-ballot races.The question, should Mr. Ryan become his party’s nominee, is if he can win back these mostly white voters.Mr. Ryan has long considered running statewide, but in the past decided on seeking re-election to the House seat he first won in 2002, when he succeeded the famously fiery, and corrupt, James Traficant.Mr. Ryan mounted a long-shot bid for the presidency in 2019 with the same message he’s expected to carry into the Senate contest — that Democrats will build enduring majorities only if they reclaim support from a multiracial, working-class coalition of voters.Beyond elevating that argument, Mr. Ryan, 47, has another compelling reason to run for the Senate: As Republicans grow stronger in eastern Ohio, his district has become increasingly competitive, and the Republican Party could redraw the state’s districts to make it even more forbidding for him in 2022.While he has risen on the Appropriations Committee, Mr. Ryan has mostly given up on his hopes to join the House leadership, having been turned back in his 2016 challenge against Nancy Pelosi, then the minority leader.In Congress, Mr. Ryan has been a close ally of unions and has generally toed the Democratic line, shifting toward a stance in support of abortion rights in recent years. Even before formally announcing his bid, Mr. Ryan drew support from the state chapter of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which on Monday released a letter endorsing his undeclared candidacy.Mr. Ryan will enter the Senate race as an early front-runner. He is one of the few Democrats left in the state’s congressional delegation, and represents a region of the state the party is desperate to reclaim. He also has deep relationships with national leaders.On Saturday, Mrs. Clinton publicly encouraged Mr. Ryan to run for the Senate, repaying him for his support for her when she ran against Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential primary race.“You’re right, Kathy!” Mrs. Clinton wrote on Twitter, promoting a message from a Democratic activist in Ohio, Kathy DiCristofaro, who wrote that “Ohio needs leaders like @timryan to fight for working people.”Mr. Ryan also has an ally in the White House, having endorsed Mr. Biden in November 2019, a low ebb in the race for the candidate.It’s unlikely, though, that the congressman will run unopposed for the Senate nomination. One Democrat whose name has been floated for the seat, Mayor Nan Whaley of Dayton, said she was “thinking about it” when asked on the day Mr. Portman announced his retirement. Ms. Whaley is also considering a run for governor, though, and many Ohio Democrats believe she and Mr. Ryan would try to avoid clashing in a primary.Equally intriguing to some Democrats in the state is Dr. Amy Acton, who as the former director of Ohio’s Department of Health ran the coronavirus response effort last year for Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican. She is considering joining the race, The Plain Dealer of Cleveland reported last week, and received her own online boost when Connie Schultz, a longtime Ohio columnist and the wife of Mr. Brown, wrote on Twitter: “Imagine Dr. Amy Acton as Ohio’s next U.S. senator. I sure can.”The Republicans are likely to have an even more crowded primary field. The race appears to be wide open after the announcement last week by Representative Jim Jordan, the far-right Trump ally whom the former president awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, that he would remain in the House.A number of other House members may run, including Representative Steve Stivers, a Columbus-area lawmaker. A host of would-be self-funders are also eyeing the seat, including Jane Timken, the chair of the Ohio Republican Party.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      An Emboldened Extremist Wing Flexes Its Power in a Leaderless G.O.P.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Campaign to Subvert the 2020 ElectionTrump’s RoleKey TakeawaysExtremist Wing of G.O.P.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAn Emboldened Extremist Wing Flexes Its Power in a Leaderless G.O.P.As more far-right Republicans take office and exercise power, party officials are promoting unity and neutrality rather than confronting dangerous messages and disinformation.With Republicans struggling amid an absence of leadership, Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, is trying to promote unity while saying she is not going to ride herd or impose top-down decision making on the party.Credit…Al Drago for The New York TimesAnnie Karni and Feb. 1, 2021Updated 10:44 a.m. ETWASHINGTON — Knute Buehler, who led Oregon’s Republican ticket as the candidate for governor in 2018, watched with growing alarm in recent weeks as Republicans around the nation challenged the reliability of the presidential election results.Then he watched the Jan. 6 siege at the United States Capitol in horror. And then, to his astonishment, Republican Party officials in his own state embraced the conspiracy theory that the attack was actually a left-wing “false flag” plot to frame Trump supporters.The night after his party’s leadership passed a formal resolution promoting the false flag theory, Mr. Buehler cracked open a local microbrew and filed to change his registration from Republican to independent. “It was very painful,” he said.His unhappy exit highlighted one facet of the upheaval now underway in the G.O.P.: It has become a leaderless party, with veterans like Mr. Buehler stepping away, luminaries like Senator Rob Portman of Ohio retiring, far-right extremists like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia building a brand on a web of dangerous conspiracy theories, and pro-Trump Republicans at war with other conservatives who want to look beyond the former president to the future.With no dominant leader other than the deplatformed one-term president, a radical right movement that became emboldened under President Donald J. Trump has been maneuvering for more power, and ascending in different states and congressional districts. More moderate Republicans feel increasingly under attack, but so far have made little progress in galvanizing voters, donors or new recruits for office to push back against extremism. Instead, in Arizona, the state Republican Party has brazenly punished dissent, formally censuring three of its own: Gov. Doug Ducey, former Senator Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain, the widow of former Senator John McCain. The party cited their criticisms of Mr. Trump and their defenses of the state’s election process.In Wyoming, Representative Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, headlined a rally on Thursday to denounce Representative Liz Cheney for her vote to impeach Mr. Trump. Joining Mr. Gaetz by phone hookup was Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s son, who has been working to unseat Ms. Cheney and replace her with someone he believes better represents the views of her constituents — in other words, fealty to his father.In Kentucky, grass-roots Republicans tried to push the state party to pass a resolution urging Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, to fully support Mr. Trump in next month’s impeachment trial. The effort failed.And in Michigan, Meshawn Maddock, a Trump supporter who pushed false claims about voter fraud and organized buses of Republicans from the state to attend the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, is running unopposed to become the new co-chairman of the state party. While marching from the Ellipse to the Capitol on Jan. 6, Ms. Maddock praised the “most incredible crowd and sea of people I’ve ever worked with.”Rioters after breaching the Capitol building on Jan. 6 during a joint session of Congress to certify the Electoral College victory of Joseph R. Biden Jr.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesNothing is defining and dividing the G.O.P. more than loyalty to Mr. Trump and his false claims about the election.“You’ve got 41 percent of the country, including a lot of independents, who think the election was stolen,” said Scott Reed, the former political director for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a veteran Republican consultant. “That’s an amazing number. It takes months for a party that loses a national election to re-gel.”There are still Republican officials who are responsible for the party’s political interests — but these people are under their own kinds of pressure, preaching unity to factions that have no desire to unite.Perhaps the most prominent party official right now is Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee and a close ally of Mr. Trump’s. In an interview on Friday, she condemned the “false flag” resolution passed by Oregon Republicans and sounded exasperated at the public brawling in her party.“If you have a family dispute, don’t go on ‘Jerry Springer,’” Ms. McDaniel said. “Do it behind closed doors. It’s my role to call them and explain that if we don’t keep our party united and focused on 2022, we will lose. If we are attacking fellow Republicans and cancel culture within our own party, it is not helpful to winning majorities.”At the same time, Ms. McDaniel made clear that she was not going to impose top-down decision making on the party, noting that the role of the R.N.C. was to stay neutral in primaries. She said she planned to do so in the 2022 midterm elections, barring more extreme behavior emerging.“It depends if there’s more egregious things, if there’s a David Duke situation,” she said. “Marjorie Taylor Greene is trying to distance herself from those things and there’s going to be an investigation. I trust the voters. I have a lot of faith in the voters to pick who’s best to represent them.”On Monday, Mr. McConnell took a stronger stand against Ms. Greene, denouncing her “loony lies and conspiracy theories” and saying they amounted to a “cancer” on the Republican Party, even as he did not mention her by name. For some Republicans deeply critical of Mr. Trump, the former president’s departure from Washington has not led to an improved era for the party. Rather, they see a party that doesn’t have the leadership to stand up to its most extreme and divisive factions.“Kevin McCarthy has been more critical of Liz Cheney than he has been of Marjorie Taylor Greene,” Bill Kristol, the conservative writer and a “Never Trump” Republican, said of the House Republican leader. “That’s pretty astonishing. That’s the bottom line. It’s one thing to have party unity, but at some point there have to be boundaries.”Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia spoke at a campaign rally on Jan. 4 with President Donald J. Trump in support of Georgia’s Republican senators.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesSenior Republicans are still figuring out exactly where those are after four years of defending Mr. Trump, who burst past boundaries all the time. Ms. McDaniel said she was concerned by some of the language that has been used by Ms. Greene, who before she was elected to Congress expressed support for executing prominent Democrats like Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Ms. McDaniel called the comments “atrocious” and said “they need to be condemned.” She added: “They are inaccurate. They are very, very dangerous.”But she stopped short of condemning Ms. Greene outright and gave her the benefit of the doubt for her past disturbing comments. “She has said they’re not from her,” Ms. McDaniel said. “There does need to be an investigation, and I trust that Kevin McCarthy will handle that within his own caucus.”When pressed, Ms. McDaniel said that some G.O.P. resolutions and statements needed to be disavowed, citing Oregon’s false flag resolution. “I know our state party chairs are doing the best they can to represent their voters, but that statement goes too far,” she said.And she expressed regret about letting Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former president’s personal lawyer and the former mayor of New York, and Sidney Powell, another member of Mr. Trump’s legal team who spread conspiracy theories, hold a news conference at the R.N.C. headquarters in Washington.“When I saw some of the things Sidney was saying, without proof, I certainly was concerned it was happening in my building,” she said. “There are a whole host of issues we had to deal with — what is the liability of the R.N.C., if these allegations are made and unfounded?”Despite the attempts of Ms. McDaniel, who remains closely allied to Mr. Trump, to bring the party together, many lifelong Republicans feel that there is no place for them in it.In Washington State, Chris Vance had for years dedicated himself to the Republican movement as both a politician and as the party chairman. But in 2016, when he ran unsuccessfully for Senate, he found himself in conflict with many Republican voters in his state, who disagreed on issues including trade agreements, immigration and the role of NATO. That disconnect has only grown over the past four years, he said.“They are intent on being a Trump cheering society,” said Mr. Vance, who has since left the party. “I don’t think the party can be saved. I think it needs to be broken up, smashed and blown to bits.”Some Republican strategists said that when Democrats in Congress began trying to pass legislation, it would become easier for Republicans to remember they are on the same team.“Over time, the Pelosi-Schumer-Biden agenda, in that order, will unite the Republican Party,” said Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence. He called Ms. Greene an “outlier member” of the G.O.P. conference and said that “the obituaries of the G.O.P. are premature.”Others in the party conceded that there were few levers of control: A rise in low dollar fund-raising, for instance, means that some big donors who favor more moderate agendas are losing influence in politics. Ms. Greene said Friday that nearly 60,000 small donors had given $1.6 million to her campaign account since the beginning of what she called a “smear campaign” against her by the news media.Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, at a news conference on Capitol Hill.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesMr. McCarthy, people familiar with his thinking said, felt hamstrung by Ms. Greene and believed that the only way to deal with her was to tolerate her. On Saturday, Ms. Greene tweeted that she had spoken to Mr. Trump and he had offered his support, which may undercut attempts to modulate her behavior.At the state level, Republican leaders are grappling with how to keep Trump loyalists engaged while trying to steer the party away from fringe conspiracy theories.“Trump was a value add to our party,” said Jennifer Carnahan, the Minnesota Republican Party chairwoman. “We saw a level of growth in Minnesota we hadn’t seen in a long time. We want those people to stay engaged. We want them to vote again in two years.” She added: “We also need to remember that one of the things that makes America so great is having free and fair elections. Biden was inaugurated; he is our president.”National party officials like Ms. McDaniel who are seeking to unite the party in order to win back majorities in 2022 are in a difficult position of trying to do so without disavowing Republicans who are attacking other Republicans.In the middle of all the division is Mr. Trump. He still wields power over his party even out of office and barred from Twitter, as was clear when Mr. McCarthy visited him last week to discuss his help in 2022 races.But Mr. Reed said the party needed to look beyond Mr. Trump if it wanted to win again. “A strong party always looks to the future for leaders, not to the past,” he said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      After Record Turnout, Republicans Are Trying to Make It Harder to Vote

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAfter Record Turnout, Republicans Are Trying to Make It Harder to VoteThe presidential election results are settled. But the battle over new voting rules, especially for mail-in ballots, has just begun.Hundreds of people waited in line in Marietta, Ga., during early voting for last year’s presidential election.Credit…Ron Harris/Associated PressJan. 30, 2021, 2:18 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — In Georgia, Arizona and other states won by President Biden, some leading Republicans stood up in November to make what, in any other year, would be an unremarkable statement: The race is over. And we lost, fair and square.But that was then. Now, in statehouses nationwide, Republicans who echoed former President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claims of rampant fraud are proposing to make it harder to vote next time — ostensibly to convince the very voters who believed them that elections can be trusted again. And even some colleagues who defended the legitimacy of the November vote are joining them.According to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, state legislators have filed 106 bills to tighten election rules, generally making it harder to cast a ballot — triple the number at this time last year. In short, Republicans who for more than a decade have used wildly inflated allegations of voter fraud to justify making it harder to vote, are now doing so again, this time seizing on Mr. Trump’s thoroughly debunked charges of a stolen election to push back at Democratic-leaning voters who flocked to mail-in ballots last year.In Georgia, where the State House of Representatives has set up a special committee on election integrity, legislators are pushing to roll back no-excuse absentee voting. Republicans in Pennsylvania plan 14 hearings to revisit complaints they raised last year about the election and to propose limitations on voting.Arizona Republicans have subpoenaed November’s ballots and vote tabulation equipment in Maricopa County, a Democratic stronghold that includes Phoenix. Legislators are taking aim at an election system in which four in five ballots are mailed or delivered to drop boxes.Those and other proposals underscore the continuing power of Mr. Trump’s campaign to delegitimize the November election, even as some of his administration’s top election experts call the vote the most secure in history. And they reflect longstanding Republican efforts to push back against efforts to expand the ability to vote.Proposals to toughen voting laws underscore the continuing power of Donald J. Trump’s campaign to delegitimize the election. Credit…Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesDemocrats have their own agenda: 406 bills in 35 states, according to the Brennan Center, that run the gamut from giving former felons the vote to automatically registering visitors to motor vehicle bureaus and other state offices. And Democrats in the Senate will soon unveil a large proposal to undergird much of the election process with what they call pro-democracy reforms, with lowering barriers to voting as the centerpiece. Near-identical legislation has been filed in the House.“There’s going to be a rush in the next year to legislate certain types of election reforms,” said Nate Persily, a Stanford University law professor and co-director of the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project. “The jury is still out on whether the lesson from this election will be that we need to make voting as convenient as possible, or whether there will be a serious retrenchment that makes voting less accessible.”In truth, who controls a given legislature will largely decide what chances a bill has.In the 23 states wholly run by Republicans, Democratic bills expanding ballot access are largely dead on arrival. The same is true of Republican proposals to restrict ballot access in the 15 states completely controlled by Democrats.But in some states where legislators’ control and interests align, the changes could be consequential.In Arizona, where Democrats captured a second Senate seat and Mr. Biden eked out a 10,500-vote victory, lawmakers are taking aim at an election system in which absentee ballots have long been dominant.One bill would repeal the state’s no-excuse absentee ballot law. Others would pare back automatic mailings of absentee ballots to the 3.2 million voters who have signed up for the service. One ardent advocate of the stolen-election conspiracy theory, State Representative Kevin Payne of Maricopa County, would require that signatures on all mail ballots be notarized, creating an impossibly high bar for most voters. Yet another bill, paradoxically, would require early ballots that are mailed to voters to be delivered by hand.Legislators in Arizona are taking aim at an election system in which four in five ballots are mailed or delivered to drop boxes.Credit…Pool photo by Ross D. FranklinIn Georgia, where Mr. Biden won by fewer than 12,000 votes, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp, both Republicans, have repeatedly defended the election results. The two are nevertheless supporting stricter voting requirements.A proposal by Republicans in the State Senate to eliminate no-excuse absentee ballots — a quarter of the five million votes cast in November — has drawn opposition even before it has been filed. But Republicans broadly support a bill to require submitting a photocopied identification card such as a driver’s license with both applications for absentee ballots and the ballots themselves. Mr. Raffensperger has said he supports that measure and another to make it easier to challenge a voter’s legitimacy at the polls.Brian Robinson, a Republican political consultant in Atlanta, said, “The overall purpose of these reforms is to restore faith in our election systems.” He added, “That’s not to say that it was a giant failure; that’s to say that faith has been diminished.”He allowed that Mr. Trump’s false charges of fraud “drives a lot of the loss of faith among Republicans,” but he also took aim at Democrats, noting that the Democrat who lost the 2018 governor’s race, Stacey Abrams, also had refused to concede, saying voter suppression had caused an “erosion of our democracy.”“Both sides have dipped their toes in those waters,” he said.But it’s clear that Republicans are now dipping much more than their toes. Democrats and some voting-rights advocates say the Republican agenda on voting is less about lost trust than lost elections. A Republican election official in suburban Atlanta said as much this month, arguing for tougher voting laws that reduce turnout after Democratic candidates won both of the state’s Senate seats in runoffs.“They don’t have to change all of them,” said Alice O’Lenick, who heads the Gwinnett County Board of Registrations and Elections, “but they have got to change the major parts of them so we at least have a shot at winning.”Marc Elias, a Democratic lawyer who led legal battles against restrictive voting rules last year, said the reason for the state’s voting-law crackdown was transparent. “These were elections that withstood the scrutiny of two recounts, an audit and a whole lot of attention in the political arena and the courts,” he said. “The only reason they’re doing this is to make voting harder because they didn’t like the results. And that’s shameful.”A Republican election official in Georgia argued for voting laws that reduce turnout after the Democratic candidates won both of the state’s Senate seats in runoffs.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesIndeed, a handful of bills seem to make no bones about their partisan goals. One Arizona proposal would give the Legislature the power to decide presidential elections by overriding the secretary of state’s certification of electoral votes.Bills in Arizona, Mississippi and Wisconsin would end the practice of awarding all electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the statewide vote. Instead, they would be allotted according to votes in congressional districts — which in Republican states are generally gerrymandered to favor Republicans. In Arizona, the Legislature also would choose two electors.In the last election, the moves would have reduced Mr. Biden’s electoral vote total by 11 votes.Nebraska, on the other hand, would do the reverse with a similar partisan outcome: The state now awards presidential electors by congressional district, but legislation would move the state to the winner-take-all system. One of Nebraska’s three House districts voted for Mr. Biden in November.Even Republicans in states where the November election was not close are proposing to tighten voting laws. In Texas, a state with perhaps the nation’s strictest voting rules and one of the lowest levels of turnout, the state party has declared “election integrity” the top legislative priority. Among other proposals, legislators want to cut the time allotted for early voting, limit outsiders’ ability to help voters fill out ballots and require new voters to prove they are citizens.Republicans who control the Pennsylvania Legislature have mounted one of the most aggressive campaigns, even though any laws they enact probably would have to weather a veto by the state’s Democratic governor.A handful of Republican state lawmakers want to abolish no-excuse absentee voting only 15 months after the Legislature approved it in an election-law package backed by all but two of its 134 G.O.P. members who cast votes. The main supporter of the bill, State Senator Doug Mastriano, has claimed that Mr. Biden’s victory in the state is illegitimate, and spent thousands of dollars to bus protesters to the Jan. 6 demonstration that ended in the assault on the Capitol.Rolling back the law appears a long shot. But there seems to be strong Republican support for other measures, including eliminating drop boxes for absentee ballots, discarding mail-in ballots with technical errors and ending a grace period for receiving ballots mailed by Election Day.State Representative Seth Grove, the Republican chair of the committee holding 14 hearings into election practices, said at the initial gathering on Jan. 21 that he was not interested in dwelling on the 2020 election. “We want a better process going forward, and we’re committed to that,’’ Mr. Grove said.But at that hearing, legislators grilled Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, for three hours on her emailed guidance to county election officials before the Nov. 3 vote. In an interview, Ms. Boockvar said the purpose of the hearings was to further undermine voters’ confidence in democracy and to “lay the groundwork for disenfranchisement.’’“We are at a watershed, and we have a choice to make right now,” she said. “Acknowledge the truth — have public, vocal, strong support for the strength and resilience of our democracy. Or we can continue to perpetuate the lies.”Kathy Boockvar, Pennsylvnia’s secretary of state, said Republicans were intent on undermining confidence in democracy.Credit…Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesIn Washington, a Democratic agenda can be seen in the latest version of a far-ranging elections and voting bill that passed the House last year but died in the Republican-controlled Senate.This time, the Democrat-controlled Senate will file its own version, with committee hearings expected in February.Its voting provisions include allowing automatic and same-day voter registration, 15 days of early voting, no-excuse voting by mail, and online voter registration, as well as the restoration of voting rights nationwide to felons who complete their sentences. In one fell swoop, it would set minimum standards for American federal elections that would erase a host of procedural barriers to casting a ballot.It also would require the states to appoint independent and nonpartisan commissions to draw political boundaries, eliminating the profusion of gerrymanders that the Supreme Court said in 2019 were beyond its authority to control.Few expect much chance of passage in a deeply divided Senate, but the Democratic leaders in both houses have made it the first bill of the new congressional session, a statement that — symbolically, at least — it is the first priority of the new Democratic majority.Whether any of it goes beyond symbolism remains to be seen.Trip Gabriel More

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      I’m Not Actually Interested in Mitch McConnell’s Hypocrisy

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyI’m Not Actually Interested in Mitch McConnell’s HypocrisyTo make his case for the filibuster, he has essentially rewritten the history of the Senate.Opinion ColumnistJan. 29, 2021Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesOn Tuesday, Mitch McConnell, now the Senate minority leader, spoke in defense of the legislative filibuster.“When it comes to lawmaking, the framers’ vision and our history are clear. The Senate exists to require deliberation and cooperation,” McConnell declared. “James Madison said the Senate’s job was to provide a ‘complicated check’ against ‘improper acts of legislation.’ We ensure that laws earn enough buy-in to receive the lasting consent of the governed. We stop bad ideas, improve good ideas and keep laws from swinging wildly with every election.”He went on: “More than any other feature, it is the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to end debate on legislation that achieves this.”It’s hard to take any of this seriously. None of McConnell’s stated concern for the “lasting consent of the governed” was on display when Senate Republicans, under his leadership, tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act by majority vote. Nor was there any interest in “deliberation and cooperation” when Republicans wanted a new round of corporate and upper-income tax cuts.If anything, the filibuster stymies that deliberation and cooperation by destroying the will to legislate at all. It makes bipartisanship less likely by erasing any incentive to build novel coalitions for particular issues. If, under the filibuster, there’s no difference between 51 votes for immigration reform and 56 votes (or even 59), then what’s the point of even trying? Why reach out to the other side if there’s almost no way you’ll reach the threshold to take action? And on the other side, why tinker with legislation if you know it’s not going to pass? When there’s no reason to do otherwise, why not act as a rigid, unyielding partisan?It’s obvious that McConnell’s commitment to the filibuster is instrumental. The filibuster on executive branch nominations of appointees and federal judges was sacred — he condemned the Democrats’ use of the “nuclear option” to get rid of it in 2013 — until President Trump needed Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and then it was bye-bye to the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees that McConnell’s predecessor as Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, had left intact. If the reconciliation process didn’t exist, and Republicans needed 60 votes for upper-income tax cuts, there’s almost no doubt McConnell would have killed the legislative filibuster in 2017, for the sake of his party’s signature priority.I’m not actually that interested in McConnell’s hypocrisy. I’m interested in his history. To make his case for the indispensable importance of the legislative filibuster, McConnell has essentially rewritten the history of the Senate. He has to create a new narrative to serve his current interests.The truth is that the filibuster was an accident; an extra-constitutional innovation that lay dormant for a generation after its unintentional creation during the Jefferson administration. For most of the Senate’s history after the Civil War, filibusters were rare, deployed as the Southern weapon of choice against civil rights legislation, and an occasional tool of partisan obstruction.Far from necessary, the filibuster is extraneous. Everything it is said to encourage — debate, deliberation, consensus building — is already accomplished by the structure of the chamber itself, insofar as it happens at all.In the form it takes today, the filibuster doesn’t make the Senate work the way the framers intended. Instead, it makes the Senate a nearly insurmountable obstacle to most legislative business. And that, in turn, has made Congress inert and dysfunctional to the point of disrupting the constitutional balance of power. Legislation that deserves a debate never reaches the floor; coalitions that could form never get off the ground.In quoting Madison, McConnell frames the filibuster as part of our constitutional inheritance. It is not. The filibuster isn’t in the Constitution. The Senate, like the House of Representatives, was meant to run on majority rule.Remember, the framers had direct experience with supermajority government. Under the Articles of Confederation, each state had equal representation and it took a two-thirds vote of the states for Congress to exercise its enumerated powers. Without the consent of nine states (out of 13), Congress could not enter treaties, appropriate funds or borrow money. And the bar to amendment, unanimity, was even higher. The articles were such a disaster that, rather than try to amend them, a group of influential elites decided to scrap them altogether.For a taste of this frustration, read Alexander Hamilton in Federalist no. 22, which contains a fierce condemnation of supermajority rule as it was under the articles:The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching toward it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority.Hamilton is especially angry with the effect of the supermajority requirement on governance.In those emergencies of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of its government, is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must, in some way or other, go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority, in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good.Delegates to the constitutional convention considered and rejected supermajority requirements for navigation acts (concerning ships and shipping), regulation of interstate commerce and the raising of armies. Majorities would have the final say everywhere except for treaties, amendments and conviction in an impeachment trial.To make the Senate slow-moving and deliberative, the framers would not raise barriers to action so much as they would insulate the body from short-term democratic accountability. That meant indirect election by state legislatures, staggered terms of six years and a small membership of two senators per state. And at ratification, that is where the Senate stood: a self-consciously aristocratic body meant to check the House of Representatives and oversee the executive branch, confirming its appointments and ratifying its foreign agreements.The filibuster doesn’t enter the picture until years later, as an accident of parliamentary bookkeeping. In 1806, on the advice of Vice President Aaron Burr (who thought it redundant), the Senate dropped the “previous question” — a motion to end debate and bring an item up for immediate vote — from its rules. Without a motion to call the previous question, however, an individual senator could, in theory, hold the floor indefinitely.It took 31 years for someone to actually do it. The first known filibuster took place in 1837, when several Whig senators tried unsuccessfully to block a Democratic bill to reverse an 1834 censure of President Andrew Jackson and expunge it from the congressional record. Even then, the filibuster was not widely used until the second half of the 19th century, as the parties, and thus the Senate, grew more polarized along party lines.The filibuster as we understand it developed in the 20th century. In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson called on Senate Democrats to reform the filibuster as a war measure after Republicans successfully filibustered a bill to arm merchant ships. Democrats obliged and created a “cloture” rule to end debate with a two-thirds vote of the chamber. In 1975, the Senate reduced that threshold from two-thirds to three-fifths, or 60 votes in a 100-member body.Throughout this time, filibusters were uncommon. It was perfectly possible for the Senate to debate, deliberate and come to consensus without the supermajority requirement McConnell and the Republican caucus have imposed on virtually all legislation since 2009.The point of comparison for the Senate as McConnell has shaped it is the middle of the 20th century, when a conservative coalition of Republicans and Dixiecrats made the chamber a graveyard of liberal legislation and social reform. Consensus didn’t matter. Power did. And it wasn’t until liberals wrested power from this coalition — in the House as well as the Senate — that they could take the initiative and begin work on an otherwise popular agenda.There is no question the Senate is supposed to be slow, even sluggish. But it’s not supposed to be an endless bottleneck. The framers wanted stability in government, not stagnation. What we have now, with the filibuster intact, is a Senate that can barely move.This isn’t just a problem for President Biden and the Democratic Party; it’s a problem for the entire constitutional order. Our system is built around Congress; Congress makes laws, Congress holds the purse strings, Congress hands out mandates, Congress checks the president and makes sure the judiciary stays in its lane.When Congress doesn’t act, other actors take up the slack. The story of our democracy these last 10 years is, in part, the story of how a listless, sclerotic Senate broke Congress and pushed the other branches to govern in its stead, with the president and the courts making as much policy as they can without congressional input, with all the capriciousness, whiplash and uncertainty that can come from that.If you don’t like presidents governing through executive order, then you should want an active, energetic Congress that embraces its constitutional mandate to rule over the whole country and direct its government. If you want that, you should oppose the filibuster.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.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More