Republican Party

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Will Return to Spotlight With Appearance at CPAC

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPolitical memoA Quiet Life Out of the Spotlight? Not for This Former PresidentMost presidents leave the White House and adopt low profiles. Donald Trump is returning to the national stage with a prominent appearance at a conservative conference on Sunday.A statue of former President Donald Trump at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday. His grip on the Republican Party remains strong.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesFeb. 27, 2021Updated 4:50 p.m. ETFor decades, the normal course of action for presidents departing the White House has been to lie low and let their successors have the stage to themselves in their first months in office.But Donald J. Trump was never a normal president. And less than two months after he departed Washington as a twice-impeached leader whose supporters stormed the Capitol to try to thwart the certification of a democratic election, Mr. Trump will attract a national spotlight as the final act at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Sunday.“His presidency was unlike any other, so why would we expect his post-presidency to be like any other?” said James Carville, the Democratic strategist most associated with former President Bill Clinton’s success in 1992. When Mr. Clinton left office in early 2001, it was also as an impeached president. But Mr. Clinton took at least some time out of view before emerging with a philanthropic group that he went on to build up for years.Of Mr. Trump, Mr. Carville said, “It would have been utterly surprising if he would have gone away and worked on a memoir or taught a Zoom class at a state university.”Mr. Trump is set to deliver a closing speech at CPAC that is expected to be a withering critique of President Biden’s first few weeks in office, touching on topics ranging from shuttered schools to immigration policy, said an adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the unfinished speech.He isn’t expected to deliver a lengthy list of his own accomplishments in office and will aim to sound more like the candidate he was in 2016 than the campaigner he was in 2020, the adviser said. And there will be some focus on the future of the Republican Party.When former President Barack Obama left office, he was photographed kite-surfing in February 2017, a relaxed smile on his face. His predecessor, George W. Bush, made clear his disdain for Washington and his eagerness to escape it. Karl Rove, the architect of Mr. Bush’s campaign, called it “highly unusual” for a former president not to give the incoming chief executive a grace period of his own silence.Mr. Trump has been relatively selective in speaking publicly since he left the White House, after being cautioned by advisers not to say anything that might make him a larger target for the various prosecutors considering or pursuing investigations related to him. Without his Twitter feed and the presence of reporters assigned to cover the presidency, the attention that Mr. Trump craves so deeply has been in short supply.Yet his grip on the Republican Party remains strong. Members of Congress, fearing backlash from Mr. Trump’s voters, have made plain their desire to move past any discussion of responsibility for months of helping Mr. Trump spread the baseless claim that the election was stolen from him by shadowy forces in the Democratic Party.He was widely hailed on the first day of the CPAC convention Friday.“Let me tell you right now,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said, “Donald J. Trump ain’t goin’ anywhere.” Even Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader who at one point let it be known that he might vote to convict Mr. Trump in his second impeachment trial, told Fox News this week that he would support Mr. Trump if he were to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2024.To that end, Mr. Trump is serious at the moment about running for president a third time in 2024. While some aides expect that he ultimately won’t go through with another bid, his musings could have a chilling effect on his party.“There was never a consideration of, Should George H.W. Bush run again?” said Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, which organizes the conference. Mr. Trump is “in a different place, and he’s also still incredibly popular with the people who voted for him.”Mr. Trump has discussed with aides the possibility of writing a book. And he has started putting together a political operation with long-serving aides including Bill Stepien, the campaign manager at the end of 2020; Justin Clark, the counsel on his campaign; and Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, his former campaign manager and deputy campaign manager. Brad Parscale, who was removed as the 2020 campaign manager last summer, remains in the Trump circle and is handling Mr. Trump’s email system.Jason Miller, Mr. Trump’s senior adviser, remains close to him. And Mr. Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., is set to take a more active role in his political organization than he previously had.Most members of that group had an hourslong meeting on Thursday with Mr. Trump, for whom few former aides are ever permanently cast aside.The former president is setting up a process for people looking to receive his endorsement, but he has made it clear that he is also determined to extract vengeance against Republicans who crossed him by questioning his lies about the election or by voting in support of impeachment. On Friday, he endorsed a former aide, Max Miller, as a primary challenger to Representative Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, who voted in favor of impeachment.What remains to be seen at CPAC is whether Mr. Trump will attempt to revive his false statements about a “rigged” 2020 election. His advisers are imploring him not to, and they say the hope is that Mr. Trump will focus on suggesting changes to election rules across the country.Even if he doesn’t say it himself, CPAC — once a forum for conservative ideas with a strong libertarian strain — has been transformed into a cult of personality around Mr. Trump. So far at the four-day gathering, a golden statue of Mr. Trump has been pushed around the Orlando, Fla., venue, with no apparent sense of irony. The event is being held away from Washington, its customary home, because regulations intended to slow the spread of Covid-19 are more lax in Florida.Mr. Trump’s false claims of voter fraud have already gotten a boost at the gathering; a panel titled “How Judges & Media Refused to Look at the Evidence” was conducted on Friday.In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Mr. Rove wrote that Mr. Trump should steer away from his desire to discuss payback against other Republicans.“Mr. Trump took this approach in his disastrous campaign stop the night before the Jan. 5 Georgia Senate runoffs,” Mr. Rove wrote. “If he repeats it at CPAC, he’ll be speaking to the shrinking share of the electorate that believes his every claim.” He urged Mr. Trump to take a “more constructive” approach.Few Republicans believe that Mr. Trump has the discipline to drop his desire for attention for long, if at all. Already, he has shown flashes of behaving like the political gadfly in search of attention he was in the years leading up to his run in 2016.When Mr. Trump was considering a bid for president as early as 2011, he used his Twitter feed and his frequent Fox News appearances to inject himself into nearly every topic in the news cycle. Mr. Trump’s advisers insist that he says he is happier without his Twitter feed.But just a few weeks out of office, Mr. Trump has at times relied on the same impulse: getting media attention for topics in the news, such as the death of the radio host Rush Limbaugh or the car accident that felled the golfer Tiger Woods, to speak to an audience that is already supportive of him.“In 2013 and 2014, Mr. Trump wanted ‘to be part of the action,’” recalled Sam Nunberg, a former adviser to the Trump campaign in 2016. Now, as a former president, Mr. Nunberg said, Mr. Trump “has ‘to be part of the action’ to keep his precarious grip as the leading contender for the 2024 G.O.P. primary.”“The reality is that speaking at CPAC so soon after becoming only the 10th president to lose re-election is a sign of weakness,” Mr. Nunberg said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Stolen-Election Myth Fuels G.O.P. Push to Change Voting Laws

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyIn Statehouses, Stolen-Election Myth Fuels a G.O.P. Drive to Rewrite RulesRepublican legislators want big changes to the laws for elections and other aspects of governance. A fight over the ground rules for voting may follow.Poll workers preparing absentee ballots for tabulation in Lansing, Mich.Credit…Bryan Denton for The New York TimesFeb. 27, 2021Updated 1:44 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Led by loyalists who embrace former President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claims of a stolen election, Republicans in state legislatures nationwide are mounting extraordinary efforts to change the rules of voting and representation — and enhance their own political clout.At the top of those efforts is a slew of bills raising new barriers to casting votes, particularly the mail ballots that Democrats flocked to in the 2020 election. But other measures go well beyond that, including tweaking Electoral College and judicial election rules for the benefit of Republicans; clamping down on citizen-led ballot initiatives; and outlawing private donations that provide resources for administering elections, which were crucial to the smooth November vote.And although the decennial redrawing of political maps has been pushed to the fall because of delays in delivering 2020 census totals, there are already signs of an aggressive drive to further gerrymander political districts, particularly in states under complete Republican control.The national Republican Party joined the movement this past week by setting up a Committee on Election Integrity to scrutinize state election laws, echoing similar moves by Republicans in a number of state legislatures.Republicans have long thought — sometimes quietly, occasionally out loud — that large turnouts, particularly in urban areas, favor Democrats, and that Republicans benefit when fewer people vote. But politicians and scholars alike say that this moment feels like a dangerous plunge into uncharted waters. The avalanche of legislation also raises fundamental questions about the ability of a minority of voters to exert majority control in American politics, with Republicans winning the popular vote in just one of the last eight presidential elections but filling six of the nine seats on the Supreme Court.The party’s battle in the past decade to raise barriers to voting, principally among minorities, young people and other Democrat-leaning groups, has been waged under the banner of stopping voter fraud that multiple studies have shown barely exists. “The typical response by a losing party in a functioning democracy is that they alter their platform to make it more appealing,” Kenneth Mayer, an expert on voting and elections at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said. “Here the response is to try to keep people from voting. It’s dangerously antidemocratic.”The most conspicuous of the Republicans’ efforts are a slew of bills raising barriers to casting votes, particularly mail-in ballots.Credit…Robert Nickelsberg for The New York TimesConsider Iowa, a state that has not been a major participant in the past decade’s wars over voting and election rules. The November election saw record turnout and little if any reported fraud. Republicans were the state’s big winners, including in the key races for the White House and Senate.Yet, in a vote strictly along party lines, the State Legislature voted this past week to cut early voting by nine days, close polls an hour earlier and tighten rules on absentee voting, as well as strip the authority of county auditors to decide how election rules can best serve voters.State Senator Jim Carlin, a Republican who recently announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate, made the party’s position clear during the floor debate: “Most of us in my caucus and the Republican caucus believe the election was stolen,” he said.State Senator Joe Bolkcom, a Democrat, said that served as justification for a law that created “a voting system tailored to the voting tendency of older white Republican voters.”“They’ve convinced all their supporters of the big lie. They don’t see any downside in this,” he said in an interview. “It’s a bad sign for the country. We’re not going to have a working democracy on this path.”The issues are particularly stark because fresh restrictions would disproportionately hit minorities just as the nation is belatedly reckoning with a racist past, said Lauren Groh-Wargo, the chief executive of the voting advocacy group Fair Fight Action. The Republican push comes as the rules and procedures of American elections increasingly have become a central issue in the nation’s politics. The Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal-leaning law and justice institute at New York University, counts 253 bills in 43 states that seek to tighten voting rules. At the same time, 704 bills have been introduced with provisions to improve access to voting.The push also comes as Democrats in Congress are attempting to pass federal legislation that would tear down barriers to voting, automatically register new voters and outlaw gerrymanders, among many other measures. Some provisions, such as a prohibition on restricting a voter’s ability to cast a mail ballot, could undo some of the changes being proposed in state legislatures.Such legislation, combined with the renewed enforcement of federal voting laws, could counter some Republican initiatives in the 23 states where the party controls the legislature and governor’s office. But neither that Democratic proposal nor a companion effort to enact a stronger version of the 1965 Voting Rights Act stands any chance of passing unless Democrats modify or abolish Senate rules allowing filibusters. It remains unclear whether the party has either the will or the votes to do that.“Most of us in my caucus and the Republican caucus believe the election was stolen,” State Senator Jim Carlin of Iowa said of Donald J. Trump’s loss to President Biden.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesOn the legal front, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on Tuesday in an Arizona election lawsuit that turns on the enforcement of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. That section is the government’s main remaining weapon against discriminatory voting practices after the court struck down another provision in 2013 that gave the Justice Department broad authority over voting in states with histories of discrimination.Those who back the Republican legislative efforts say they are needed to restore flagging public confidence in elections and democracy, even as some of them continue to attack the system as corrupt. In Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, for example, the chairs of House election committees refused for weeks or months to affirm that President Biden won the election. The chairs in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin urged U.S. House members or former Vice President Mike Pence to oppose the presidential electors certified after Mr. Biden won those states’ votes.Some respected Republican lawmakers reject charges that election proposals are bad-faith attempts to advance Republican power. “These are really big tweaks. I get that,” said State Senator Kathy Bernier, who heads an election committee in Wisconsin. “But we do this routinely every session.” Ms. Bernier said the party’s election-law bills, two of which would strengthen ID requirements for absentee ballots and limit ballot drop boxes to one per municipality, were honest efforts to make voting more secure.That said, proposals in many states have little or nothing to do with that goal. Georgia Republicans would sharply limit early voting on Sundays, when many Black voters follow church services with “souls to the polls” bus rides to cast ballots. On Friday, a State Senate committee approved bills to end no-excuse absentee voting and automatic voter registration at motor vehicle offices.Iowa’s legislation, passed this past week, also shortens the windows to apply for absentee ballots and petition for satellite polling places deployed at popular locations like college campuses and shopping centers.Bills in some states to outlaw private donations to fund elections are rooted in the unproven belief, popular on the right, that contributions in 2020 were designed to increase turnout in Democratic strongholds. The nonprofit Center for Technology and Civic Life distributed the $400 million that the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated to underwrite coronavirus protective equipment, polling place rentals, drop boxes and other election needs.Unsurprisingly, some of the most vigorous efforts by Republicans are in swing states where last year’s races for national offices were close.An early voting site for Georgia’s Senate runoff at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta in December. Credit…Erik S Lesser/EPA, via ShutterstockRepublicans in Georgia, which Mr. Biden won by roughly 12,000 votes, lined up this week behind a State Senate bill that would require vote-by-mail applications to be made under oath, with some requiring an additional ID and a witness signature.Arizona Republicans are backing bills to curtail the automatic mailing of absentee ballots to voters who skip elections, and to raise to 60 percent the share of votes required to pass most citizen ballot initiatives. Legislatures in at least five other Republican-run states are also considering bills making it harder to propose or pass citizen-led initiatives, which often involve issues like redistricting or tax hikes where the party supports the status quo.And that is not all: One Arizona Republican has proposed legislation that would allow state lawmakers to ignore the results of presidential elections and decide themselves which candidate would receive the state’s electoral votes.In Wisconsin, where gerrymanders of the State Legislature have locked in Republican control for a decade, the Legislature already has committed at least $1 million for law firms to defend its redistricting of legislative and congressional seats this year. The gerrymander proved impregnable in November; Democrats received 46 percent of the statewide vote for State Assembly seats and 47 percent of the State Senate vote, but won only 38 percent of seats in the Assembly and 36 percent in the Senate.In New Hampshire, where Republicans took full control of the Legislature in November, the party chairman, Stephen Stepanek, has indicated he backs a gerrymander of the state’s congressional map to “guarantee” that at least one of the state’s two Democrats in the U.S. House would not win re-election.“Elections have consequences,” he told the news outlet Seacoastonline. He did not respond to a request for comment.And in Nebraska, one of only two states that award electoral votes in presidential contests by congressional district, conservatives have proposed to switch to a winner-take-all model after Mr. Biden captured an electoral vote in the House district containing Omaha, the state’s sole Democratic bastion.Conversely, some New Hampshire Republicans would switch to Nebraska’s current Electoral College model instead of the existing winner-take-all method. That would appear to help Republicans in a state where Democrats have won the past five presidential elections.Pennsylvania’s Legislature is pushing a gerrymander-style apportionment of State Supreme Court seats via a constitutional amendment that would elect justices by regions rather than statewide. That would dismantle a lopsided Democratic majority on the court by creating judicial districts in more conservative rural reaches.Many Republicans argue — and some election experts at times agree — that fears about restrictive election laws among Democrats and civil liberties advocates can be overblown. Republicans point to record turnout in November as proof that restrictive laws do not suppress votes.Ms. Bernier of Wisconsin, for example, said she saw little problem with a bill that would allot one ballot drop box for voters in towns like New Berlin, with 40,000 residents, and one for voters in Milwaukee, with 590,000 residents. There were no drop boxes at all, she noted, until state officials made an emergency exception during the pandemic.“The Legislature could say that no drop boxes are necessary at all,” she said. Nathaniel Persily, a Stanford University political scientist and election expert, said he disagreed. Presidential elections always draw more voters, he said, but the grunt work of democracy often occurs in off-year votes for lesser offices where interest is lower. In those elections, “if there are barriers placed in the way of voters, they’re not going to turn out,” he said.Mike Noble, a Phoenix public-opinion expert, questioned whether the Arizona Legislature’s Trumpian anti-fraud agenda has political legs, even though polls show a level of Republican belief in Mr. Trump’s stolen election myth that he calls “mind-boggling.”Republicans who consider themselves more moderate make up about a third of the party’s support in Arizona, he said, and they are far less likely to believe the myth. And they may be turned off by a Legislature that wants to curtail absentee ballot mailings in a state where voters — especially Republicans — have long voted heavily by mail.“I don’t see how a rational person would see where the benefit is,” he said.Some other Republicans apparently agree. In Kentucky, which has some of the nation’s strictest voting laws, the solidly Republican State House voted almost unanimously on Friday to allow early voting, albeit only three days, and online applications for absentee ballots. Both were first tried during the pandemic and, importantly, were popular with voters and county election officials.If that kind of recognition of November’s successes resonated in other Republican states, Mr. Persily and another election scholar, Charles Stewart III of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in a recent study, it could bode well for easing the deep divisions over future election rules. If the stolen election myth continues to drive Republican policy, Mr. Persily said, it could foretell a future with two kinds of elections in which voting rights, participation and faith in the results would be significantly different, depending on which party had written the rules.“Those trajectories are on the horizon,” he said. “Some states are adopting a blunderbuss approach to regulating voting that is only distantly related to fraud concerns. And it could mean massive collateral damage for voting rights.”Susan C. Beachy More

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Loyalists Spurn ‘Failed Republican Establishment of Yesteryear’

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTrump Loyalists Spurn ‘Failed Republican Establishment of Yesteryear’At an annual gathering of conservatives, devotees of Donald J. Trump pledged their fealty to him and issued grave warnings about the political left.Attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference posed for photos with a metallic statue of former President Donald J. Trump on Friday in Orlando, Fla.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesElaina Plott and Feb. 26, 2021, 7:57 p.m. ETORLANDO, Fla. — One month after Donald J. Trump left office, thousands of his conservative allies and other far-right leaders on Friday began trying to center the Republican Party around the grievances of his presidency, pushing false claims about the American voting system, denouncing what they called liberal cancel culture and mocking mask-wearing.Gathering at the first major conference of pro-Trump conservatives since his defeat, the politicians and activists sought to affirm their adherence to a conservatism as defined by Mr. Trump, and the need to break with many of the policies and ideas that had animated the American right for decades.Some speakers at the event, the annual gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference, went as far as to declare the traditional Republican Party all but dead. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is seen as a possible candidate for president in 2024, vowed that conservatives would never return to “the failed Republican establishment of yesteryear.” Others firmly asserted Mr. Trump’s standing as the party’s leader and waved off the talk among some Republicans about moving on from the former president.“Let me tell you right now,” said Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, “Donald J. Trump ain’t goin’ anywhere.”The line earned the loudest applause of the conference’s events on Friday morning, the start of a three-day affair that will culminate with a speech by Mr. Trump on Sunday afternoon.To the extent the speakers addressed policy at all, it was to stake out hard-line positions on China, immigration and, to a degree, the laissez-faire economic policies that had allowed tech giants like Amazon, Facebook and Google to amass so much power.But the conference’s opening-day agenda was anchored chiefly in grave warnings about an impending breakdown of American society at the hands of “woke mobs” and “Marxist leftists”; complaints about censorship of conservatives; a false insistence that the 2020 presidential election had been “rigged”; and a suspicion of anyone who did not share their resolve to fight back and stand with Mr. Trump.At the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla., on Friday, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas made light of his recent trip to Cancún, Mexico, which drew criticism as he fled the state during a deadly winter storm.CreditCredit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesAs the conference got underway, Democrats in Washington neared a House vote on a coronavirus relief package worth nearly $2 trillion that has blanket Republican opposition. Yet even as the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, sporting a “No Pelosi Payoffs” button, railed against the measure in the Capitol on Friday, there was scant mention of it or anything else related to President Biden’s agenda.The Republican speakers, instead, won applause by focusing on the themes that animated the party during Mr. Trump’s presidency — the us-versus-them politics, the preoccupation with personality over policy — all while scarcely even mentioning Mr. Biden’s name.It was not until Donald Trump Jr. and his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, took the stage near the end of Friday’s sessions that anyone offered an extended critique of Mr. Biden’s first month in office. Yet the former president’s eldest son spent nearly as much time ridiculing Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-ranking House Republican and a Trump critic, as he did confronting the current president.“Liz Cheney and her politics are only slightly less popular than her father at a quail hunt,” said the younger Mr. Trump, a nearly 15-year-old reference to a hunting accident that didn’t quite land with the college students dotting the audience.Other speakers used their time to belittle Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, who voted twice to impeach Mr. Trump, drawing laughs and applause.After days of Republicans proclaiming there would be no civil war in the party, the attacks represented a stark reminder that Mr. Trump and his closest associates are determined to purge their critics.If that was not clear enough from the rhetoric onstage in Orlando, the former president signaled his determination to exact vengeance by releasing a statement Friday afternoon announcing his support for a former aide, Max Miller, who is attempting to unseat Representative Anthony Gonzalez, an Ohio Republican. Mr. Gonzalez voted last month to impeach Mr. Trump.“We represent the pro-Trump, America-first wing of the conservative movement,” declared Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, who in January traveled to Wyoming to call for Ms. Cheney’s ouster. “Turns out populism is popular.”A cutout of President George Bush at the convention. Some speakers went as far as to declare the traditional Republican Party all but dead.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesMr. DeSantis suggested that the current threat posed by the left was too dangerous for conservatives to concern themselves with the finer points of policy.“We can sit around and have academic debates about conservative policy, we can do that,” he said. “But the question is, when the Klieg lights get hot, when the left comes after you: Will you stay strong, or will you fold?”For Republicans eyeing a presidential bid in 2024, Mr. Trump’s influence was deeply felt, with Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Cruz and others stressing their willingness to “fight.” It was unclear what, exactly, they were pledging to fight for, but everyone seemed to agree on what they were mobilizing against.Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri had hardly finished reminding the audience that he had objected to the certification of Mr. Biden’s election before the crowd erupted in cheers and offered him a standing ovation. “I stood up, I said, ‘We ought to have a debate about election integrity,’” Mr. Hawley said.Notably, though, Mr. Hawley used more of his speech to lash tech companies than he did to defend Mr. Trump or litigate the election.“The Republican Party, once upon a time we were the party of trustbusters,” he said. “We invented the concept. It’s time to reclaim that legacy.”Similarly, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas — another potential 2024 presidential candidate whose ambitions Mr. Trump could block — took aim at what he portrayed as the excesses of the left.“There is no more pernicious threat to America than the rejection of our founding principles, and our heritage and our traditions,” he said, vowing to “never bend the knee to a politically correct mob.”For all their base-pleasing rhetoric, though, Mr. Cotton and Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who also addressed the conference, were rewarded with only polite applause for their policy-oriented statements from an audience seemingly not ready to move on from last year’s election.When Mr. Hawley attempted a riff on “Joe Biden’s America,” someone in the audience yelled: “Trump!”Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, took aim at what he portrayed as the excesses of the left.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesFor his part, Mr. Cruz used much of his speech to focus on a more pressing matter: damage control.His appearance came just days after he traveled to Cancún, Mexico, for a vacation in the midst of a deadly snowstorm in Texas, and Mr. Cruz tried to defuse the controversy with humor.“I got to say, Orlando is awesome,” he said while opening his speech. “It’s not as nice as Cancún — but it’s nice!”Mr. Cruz had been roundly criticized by prominent Democrats for abandoning his constituents in a time of strife. But among Friday’s attendees, the moment made for a winning laugh line.In an address titled “Bill of Rights, Liberty and Cancel Culture,” Mr. Cruz urged the left and the media to “lighten up” about many of the issues that have defined America in the past year.Shortly before Mr. Cruz’s speech, CPAC organizers had been jeered by the audience when they paused the program to plead with them to wear their masks. Still, Mr. Cruz went ahead in making fun of pandemic-era rules like mask-wearing in restaurants, and he also joked about the protests against police brutality that spread across major cities last summer, some of which became violent.There had been no such demonstrations in Houston, he said, “because let’s be very clear: If there had been, they would have discovered what the people of Texas think about the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms.” Again, the audience laughed.At previous incarnations of this convention, particularly in the aftermath of Republican losses, there were vows to return to first principles.In an illustration of how Mr. Trump has transformed the party, however, there was strikingly little mention of curbing spending at a moment when congressional Democrats are moving to restore earmarks.Similarly, the policy issues that were raised were more oriented around race and identity than the sort of Christian conservatism that once shaped the G.O.P. Abortion was barely mentioned, and there was little talk of sexuality, even though House Democrats passed a bill broadening L.G.B.T. rights on Thursday.Mr. Gaetz did mock the decision to remove the gender prefix from the Mr. Potato Head brand. Yet even that reference was in the spirit of what he suggested was a more pressing issue. “Mr. Potato Head was America’s first transgender doll and even he got canceled,” he said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Republicans Grapple With Raising the Minimum Wage

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRepublicans Grapple With Raising the Minimum WageThe politics of a $15 minimum wage are increasingly muddled, but some Republicans are gravitating toward a higher base pay, citing the economic needs of working-class Americans.A grocery store cashier in Charlottesville, Va., on Friday. The state is among those with the highest share of hourly paid workers earning at or below the federal minimum wage.Credit…Eze Amos for The New York TimesAlan Rappeport and Feb. 26, 2021Updated 7:44 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — The policy debate over raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour is the latest fault line between Democrats, who largely support the idea, and Republicans, who generally oppose such a sharp increase as bad for business.But it is also revealing new fissures in the Republican Party, which is straining to appeal to its corporate backers, some of whom believe that more than doubling the minimum wage would cut deeply into their profits, and the working-class wing, which fueled President Donald J. Trump’s rise and would stand to gain from a pay increase.After decades of either calling for the abolishment of a federal minimum wage or arguing that it should not be raised, Republicans are beginning to bow to the realities facing the party’s populist base with proposals that acknowledge the wage floor must rise. President Biden is likely to try to capitalize on that shift as he tries to deliver on his promise to raise the minimum wage, even if it does not make it into the $1.9 trillion aid package because of a ruling Thursday evening by the Senate parliamentarian.For years, Republicans have embraced the economic arguments that were laid out in a letter this month to Congress by Americans for Tax Reform, the Club for Growth and other conservative groups that promote free enterprise. They point to studies that assert mandated wage increases would lead to job losses, small-business closures and higher prices for consumers. And they make the case that the economic trade-offs are not worth it, saying that more jobs would be lost than the number of people pulled from poverty and that those in states with a lower cost of living — often conservative-leaning states — would bear the brunt of the fallout.In 2016, as Republicans moved further to the right, moderate candidates such as Jeb Bush, a former Florida governor, and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, argued forcefully that the federal minimum wage did not need to be raised above $7.25, which is where it still stands today. Mr. Bush said the matter of wages should be left to the private sector, while Mr. Rubio warned about the risk of making workers more costly than machines.But Republicans have at times grappled with the challenging politics of a position that so clearly sides with business interests. In the 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, said that he believed that the federal minimum wage should rise in step with inflation, as measured by the national Consumer Price Index.And after arguing early on in his 2016 campaign that wages were already too high, Mr. Trump later said he could support a $10 minimum wage.That is the number that Mr. Romney, now a Republican senator from Utah, and Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, introduced in a plan that would gradually raise the minimum wage to $10 over four years and then index it to inflation every two years.On Friday, Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, went a step further by matching the proposal that Democrats have made for a $15 minimum wage. His plan comes with a big caveat, however, and would apply only to businesses with annual revenue of more than $1 billion.“Megacorporations can afford to pay their workers $15 an hour, and it’s long past time they do so, but this should not come at the expense of small businesses already struggling to make it,” Mr. Hawley said.The proposal drew a sharp rebuke from David McIntosh, the president of the Club for Growth, who suggested that Mr. Hawley was adopting bad policies in a bid to appeal to Mr. Trump’s voters. He said that his organization would not support Republicans who promoted minimum wage increases and said that they should be pushing for payroll tax cuts to give workers more take-home pay.“This is another example of his ambition driving him to these populist positions that completely violate any principles he has about free markets,” Mr. McIntosh said in an interview.While the talking points surrounding the minimum wage have remained largely the same over the years, the politics are shifting partly because the federal wage floor has stagnated for so long — and a growing economic literature has suggested that the costs of higher wage floors may not be as significant as analysts once worried they might be.After rising gradually over the decades, the minimum has held steady at $7.25 an hour since 2009. Prices have gradually increased since then, so the hourly pay rate goes a shorter distance toward paying the bills these days: Today’s $7.25 is equivalent to $5.85 in 2009 buying power, adjusted by consumer price inflation.Given how low it is set, a relatively small share of American workers actually make minimum wage. About 1.1 million — 1.5 percent of hourly paid workers and about 0.8 percent of all workers — earned at or below the $7.25 floor in 2020.A restaurant worker last week in Brooklyn. The politics of the minimum wage are shifting partly because the federal wage floor has stagnated for so long.Credit…Jordan Gale for The New York TimesStates with the highest share of hourly paid workers earning at or below the federal minimum are often Southern — like South Carolina and Louisiana — and skew conservative. About seven in 10 states that have an above-average share of workers earning at or below the minimum wage voted Republican in the 2020 presidential election.While only a slice of the work force earns at or below the minimum, lifting the federal base wage to $15 would bolster pay more broadly. The $15 minimum wage would lift pay for some 17 million workers who earn less than $15 and could increase pay for another 10 million who earn just slightly more, based on a recent Congressional Budget Office analysis.Still, raising wages for as many as 27 million Americans is likely to come at some cost. The budget office, drawing on results from 11 studies and adjustments from a broader literature, estimated that perhaps 1.4 million fewer people would have jobs in 2025 given a $15 minimum wage.Some economists who lean toward the left have questioned the budget office’s conclusion.In research that summarized 55 different academic studies of episodes where a minimum wage was introduced or raised — 36 in the United States, 11 in other developed countries — Arindrajit Dube at the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that even looking at very narrow slices of workers who were directly affected, a 10 percent increase in minimum wage might lead to a 2 percent loss in employment. Looking at the effects for low-wage workers more broadly, the cost to jobs was “minute.”More recent work from Mr. Dube has found next to no employment impact from state and local minimum wage increases.Yet many Republicans have seized on the budget office’s job loss figure.In a column titled “How Many Jobs Will the ‘Stimulus’ Kill?” Stephen Moore, an adviser and ally of Mr. Trump’s, and the conservative economist Casey B. Mulligan suggest that the $15 federal minimum wage will cost a million jobs or more. Mr. Moore said in an email that they were relying on the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate.Still, a variety of economic officials emphasize that the cost to jobs of a higher minimum wage are not as large as once believed, and that the federal minimum wage has not kept up with inflation.“Higher minimum wages clearly do help the workers who are affected,” John C. Williams, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said during a virtual speech on Thursday. “There are some job losses,” but recent evidence suggests that it is not as many as once expected.There is precedent for raising the minimum wage toward $15, because as the federal base pay requirement has stagnated, states and localities have been increasing their own pay floors. Twenty states and 32 cities and counties raised their minimum wages just at the start of 2021, based on an analysis by the National Employment Law Project, and in 27 of those places, the pay floor has now reached or exceeded $15 an hour.The drive toward $15 started in 2012 with protests by fast-food workers and was initially treated as something of a fringe idea, but it has gained momentum even in states that are heavily Republican. Florida — which Mr. Trump won in November 2020 — voted for a ballot measure mandating a $15 minimum wage by 2026.Like in many of those local cases, Democrats are proposing a gradual increase that would phase in over time. Janet L. Yellen, the Biden administration’s Treasury secretary and former Fed chair, suggested in response to lawmaker questions after her confirmation hearing that the long runway could help mitigate any costs.“It matters how it’s implemented, and the president’s minimum wage will be phased in over time, giving small businesses plenty of time to adapt,” Ms. Yellen wrote.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Lawmakers Clash Over Call for Special Panel to Investigate Capitol Assault

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyLawmakers Clash Over Call for Special Panel to Investigate Capitol AssaultThe disputes are reminiscent of the fight surrounding the creation of the independent commission that conducted an inquiry into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.Speaker Nancy Pelosi was an early proponent of a special commission to fully investigate the Sept. 11 attacks and has called for a special panel to scrutinize the Capitol riot.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesFeb. 25, 2021, 7:12 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Republicans were leery of the prospect of an independent commission to investigate an assault that had shaken the nation and exposed dangerous threats, fearful that Democrats would use it to unfairly cast blame and a political shadow on them.Congress was already conducting its own inquiry, some of them argued, and another investigation was not needed. The commission could be a distraction at a vulnerable time, prompt the disclosure of national secrets or complicate the prosecution of those responsible.The year was 2001, but the clash 20 years ago over the creation of an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11 attacks bears unmistakable parallels to the one that is now raging in Congress over forming a similar panel to look into the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.To most Americans, the idea of a blue-ribbon commission to dig into the causes of the Capitol riot and the security and intelligence failures that led to the seat of government being ransacked would probably seem straightforward. But in recent days, it has become clear that, as in the past, devising the legislative and legal framework for such a panel is fraught with political difficulty, particularly in this case, when members of Congress experienced the attack themselves, and some now blame their colleagues for encouraging it.And this time, given the nature of the breach — an event inspired by President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, which were trumpeted by many Republicans — the findings of a deep investigation could carry heavy political consequences.The tensions intensified this week, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi floated a proposal for the creation of a special panel. Republican leaders denounced her initial plan, which envisioned a commission made up of seven members appointed by Democrats and four by Republicans.Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, called her idea “partisan by design,” and compared it unfavorably with the Sept. 11 commission, which was evenly divided. He also predicted that Democrats would use their influence on the panel to focus mainly on violent acts by Mr. Trump’s supporters — who planned and perpetrated the assault — suggesting that its mandate should be broadened to examine left-wing extremists.“If Congress is going to attempt some broader analysis of toxic political violence across this country, then in that case, we cannot have artificial cherry-picking of which terrible behavior does and does not deserve scrutiny,” Mr. McConnell said.Ms. Pelosi fired back on Thursday, saying she was disappointed in Mr. McConnell, who she said had earlier indicated his support for a commission similar to the one established after the Sept. 11 attacks.She accused Republicans of following the lead of Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, who suggested this week that the pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6 had actually been a mostly peaceful crowd seeded with a few “provocateurs,” including members of a loosely affiliated group of far-left anti-fascism activists, known as “antifa.” (The F.B.I. has said there is no evidence that antifa supporters had participated in the Capitol rampage.)“He was taking a page out of the book of Senator Johnson,” Ms. Pelosi said of Mr. McConnell. She added that the crucial aspect of devising the commission was to determine the scope of its work, dismissing the exact makeup of the panel as an “easily negotiated” detail.“I will do anything to have it be bipartisan,” Ms. Pelosi said.The independent, bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States was eventually formed and lauded for its incisive report published in July 2004. But first, there were myriad obstacles to its creation.“It was hard,” said Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee at the time who backed the independent panel over objections from the George W. Bush administration. He wanted a deeper look even though his own committee had conducted a revealing joint review with its House counterpart. “I thought it needed to be broader,” Mr. Shelby said.Ms. Pelosi, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee at the time, was an early proponent of a special commission to fully investigate the attack. She argued that any congressional review would almost certainly be too narrow and that an inquiry by the same government that had failed to prevent the attack would lack public credibility. Her proposal was rejected by the Republican-led House under pressure from the Bush administration, which feared disclosures of intelligence lapses and other shortcomings that could cost their party politically.Instead, Congress moved ahead with the joint inquiry by the House and Senate intelligence panels, which revealed a failure by the White House to heed warnings about a looming strike on the United States. But even those leading the inquiry believed an independent commission was needed to break free of congressional constraints.“One of the benefits of a subsequent round of hearings is that you can avoid those interferences,” said Bob Graham, a Democratic senator from Florida and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee at the time.Senator Mitch McConnell denounced the initial Democratic proposal for a commission made up of seven members appointed by Democrats and four by Republicans as “partisan by design.”Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesSenators Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, and John McCain, Republican of Arizona, responding to calls from the families of those killed on Sept. 11, pushed forward with a proposal for an independent panel. They built on a long tradition of the United States taking such steps after shattering events like the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy assassination. But the plan encountered stiff resistance from the Bush administration, which finally agreed to its creation in late 2002 after one last round of foot dragging.As the commission began public hearings in the spring of 2003, Ms. Pelosi lamented that it had taken so long but lauded the determination required to make it a reality.“Through the persistence of a member of this commission, former Congressman Tim Roemer, as well as that of Senators McCain and Lieberman, this body was established and has begun its critical work,” she said then.In the case of the Jan. 6 assault, Congress this week began its own set of hearings into what went wrong. Some lawmakers privately suggested that their work could be sufficient and that an independent panel would be redundant. And at his confirmation hearing on Monday to be attorney general, Judge Merrick B. Garland warned that he supported the idea of an independent inquiry only as long as it would not derail the prosecution of any of those charged in the assault.The current Congress is much more polarized than it was in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and the creation of the commission is complicated by the fact that Democrats are highly skeptical of the motives of Republicans. Democrats see some of them as complicit in fueling the attack by spreading falsehoods about the presidential election being stolen and then challenging the electoral vote count on Jan. 6.On Wednesday, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the No. 5 Democrat, accused top Republicans of not acting in good faith and setting a “bad tone” by joining the unsuccessful effort to overturn the election results.“All of that said, Speaker Pelosi still presented the framework to the Republicans, which then, of course, instead of leading to some kind of good-faith conversation from them, they immediately launched into a partisan political attack,” Mr. Jeffries said.But Republicans have suspicions of their own. Even those who have backed the idea of a commission say they will not accept a proposal they see as giving Democrats the upper hand in determining the course of the commission’s work.“It has to be independent,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas. “This can’t be the Nancy Pelosi commission.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Full CPAC 2021 Guide: Trump, Cruz, Pompeo and More

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Campaign to Subvert the 2020 ElectionKey TakeawaysTrump’s RoleGeorgia InvestigationExtremist Wing of G.O.P.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhat to Watch For at CPAC: Trump, Cruz, Pompeo and MoreEven more than usual, the Conservative Political Action Conference this year will be a barometer for the Republican Party, newly out of power in Washington and trying to chart a way back.Former President Donald J. Trump in October at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa. On Sunday, he is scheduled to give the culminating speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesFeb. 25, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETStarting on Friday, a medley of conservative politicians, commentators and activists will descend on Orlando, Fla., for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, commonly known as CPAC. In years past, the event has been a reliable barometer for the base of the Republican Party, clarifying how its most devout members define the institution now, and what they want it to look like in the future.For the party’s leadership, those questions have become especially urgent in the aftermath of former President Donald J. Trump’s election loss in November, not to mention the riot at the Capitol carried out last month by Trump supporters. The party has hardened over the past four years into one animated by rage, grievance and — above all — fealty to Mr. Trump. The days ahead will help illuminate whether it’s likely to stay that way.What is Trump’s influence on the event?The former president is scheduled to deliver the culminating speech of the conference at 3:40 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, but his presence will be felt throughout the event. Recent polls show that a majority of Republicans falsely believe the election was stolen from Mr. Trump, and the agenda this year indicates that subjects like voter fraud will be top of mind.On Friday morning, panelists including Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama, who has enthusiastically backed Mr. Trump’s claims of fraud, will gather onstage for a 35-minute segment called “Protecting Elections: Why Judges & Media Refused to Look at the Evidence.” That theme picks up again on Sunday morning, when speakers will discuss what they call the “Failed States” of Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada — states that Joseph R. Biden Jr. won in November, and where Mr. Trump’s legal efforts to overturn the results sputtered.The 45th president won’t be the only Trump to make an appearance. On Friday afternoon, Donald Trump Jr. will speak under the vague banner of “Reigniting the Spirit of the American Dream.” He’ll be introduced by Kimberly Guilfoyle, his girlfriend and a former Fox News personality.In other words, when it comes to the elder Mr. Trump, expect this year’s CPAC to feel similar to the past four — from the number of times his name is invoked to the audience’s eagerness to hear from the man himself.What issues are on the agenda?As conservatives look for a message to rally around ahead of the midterm elections in 2022, the CPAC agenda previews the uphill battle awaiting them. The agenda includes panels on the debt, abortion, education, Big Tech and “cancel culture.” But with so many segments anchored in the 2020 election, the conference appears to be less about mapping the party’s future than relitigating its past.Except for one particular day, that is. Nowhere on the agenda is there any reference to Jan. 6 — not the pro-Trump march in Washington, the chants of “stop the steal,” nor the demonstration that devolved into a riotous mob storming the Capitol. Prominent Republican politicians have tried to pin the riot on antifa and other left-wing movements or groups, and CPAC will reveal how conservative voters regard the events of that day nearly two months later.Senators Mike Lee and Ted Cruz walking through the Capitol subway on Tuesday. Both are set to speak at CPAC.Credit…Erin Scott for The New York TimesWho’s eyeing 2024?A speaking slot at CPAC is prime real estate for ambitious Republicans. This year, a number of those eager to claim the mantle of a post-Trump G.O.P. have managed to nab one. With the event being held in his state, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has perhaps the most coveted spot on the schedule apart from that of Mr. Trump himself — he’ll deliver the conference’s kickoff address on Friday at 9 a.m.Other rumored 2024 candidates include Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who will speak on the “Bill of Rights, Liberty, and Cancel Culture” on Friday at 10:50 a.m.; Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who will discuss “Keeping America Safe” at 12:55 p.m. that day; and Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who is up at 2:55 p.m. for a discussion on “Unlocking Our Churches, Our Voices, and Our Social Media Accounts.”Mr. Scott is immediately followed on the schedule by Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, whose speech is simply titled “Remarks.”Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, and Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota will anchor the lineup on Saturday. He will speak on the Bill of Rights at 1:35 p.m. and she will address the audience at 3:50 p.m.; no topic is listed for her speech.Looming over them all, of course, is Mr. Trump. If the former president’s popularity with the base holds firm, the 2024 election could revolve around whether he chooses to run. If he does, few Republicans are likely to challenge him for the nomination. If he doesn’t, candidates will pour as much energy into earning his endorsement as they do into their ground game in Iowa.And so at CPAC, 2024 hopefuls are likely to deliver their speeches in a familiar mode: to an audience of one.Who won’t be there?With the Republican Party looking to take back the White House in 2024, who isn’t speaking at CPAC this year is as telling as who is.The most notable absence from the lineup is former Vice President Mike Pence. He has kept a low profile since Jan. 6, when some rioters called for his execution and Mr. Trump declined to take action to stop the mob. Politico first reported that Mr. Pence had declined an invitation to speak at CPAC.Also absent from the agenda is Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina who served under Mr. Trump as ambassador to the United Nations. Ms. Haley is another rumored contender for 2024, and her absence from the conservative conference may signal an attempt to occupy a more moderate lane in the party in the years ahead.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      We Still Have to Worry About the Supreme Court and Elections

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Campaign to Subvert the 2020 ElectionKey TakeawaysTrump’s RoleGeorgia InvestigationExtremist Wing of G.O.P.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyWe Still Have to Worry About the Supreme Court and ElectionsThe justices are about to consider whether the Voting Rights Act applies to policies that restrict the vote.Contributing Opinion WriterFeb. 25, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Damon Winter/The New York TimesWhen the Supreme Court on Monday rejected Pennsylvania Republicans’ after-the-fact effort to invalidate late-arriving mailed ballots, it was tempting to suppose that the country’s courthouse doors had finally closed on this most litigated of presidential elections.If only it were that simple.True, in denying the Republicans’ petitions, the court didn’t issue an opinion. Of the four votes necessary to accept a case, these two cases (treated by the court as one) garnered only three. So for the official record, the only outcome in Republican Party of Pennsylvania v. DeGraffenreid and in Corman v. Pennsylvania Democratic Party was “denied.”But the three justices who would have accepted the cases — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — issued dissenting opinions that provide both a road map and a rationale for the Supreme Court’s future intervention in the quintessentially state matter of how to conduct elections.Remember Bush v. Gore, the case that decided the 2000 presidential election, in which five justices voted to overturn the Florida Supreme Court’s handling of a statewide recount? That decision was based on a theory of equal protection so wacky that the majority opinion insisted that “our consideration is limited to the present circumstances” — that is to say, don’t dare invoke this poor excuse for an opinion as a precedent.That didn’t stop Justice Thomas from citing Bush v. Gore in his dissenting opinion on Monday, and he did so in a particularly shameless fashion. The language he cited wasn’t even from the Bush v. Gore majority opinion, but rather from a separate concurring opinion filed in that case by only three of the majority justices, who argued that the Florida Supreme Court had violated the U.S. Constitution by substituting its will for that of the state Legislature. Justice Thomas invoked that minority portion of the decision to assert that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was constitutionally out of bounds when, citing both the Covid-19 pandemic and the collapse of the Postal Service as its reasons, it added three postelection days for lawful receipt of mailed ballots.He went on to warn that fraud was “more prevalent with mail-in ballots,” citing as evidence a 1994 Federal District Court case, an article in this newspaper from 2012 and the 2018 Republican ballot-harvesting fraud in North Carolina. Such occurrences, he said, raise “the likelihood that courts will be asked to adjudicate questions that go to the heart of election confidence.” This was the reason, he argued, that the Supreme Court should have taken and decided the Pennsylvania cases before the next election cycle.In his inventory of ballot fraud, Justice Thomas of course could not refer to fraud in the 2020 election, because there wasn’t any. Not a problem:We are fortunate that many of the cases we have seen alleged only improper rule changes, not fraud. But that observation provides only small comfort. An election free from strong evidence of systemic fraud is not alone sufficient for election confidence. Also important is the assurance that fraud will not go undetected.In other words, Justice Thomas would have it both ways: If there was fraud, the court needed to intervene, and if there was no fraud, the court needed to intervene because the fraud might simply be undetected. Despite his disclaimer, the entire structure of his opinion, suggesting that something bad had happened even if no one could prove it, is fairly read as validating the essence of the Trump narrative.Justice Alito, in a separate dissenting opinion that Justice Gorsuch also signed, was more circumspect about the fraud issue. His emphasis was the urgency of stopping state courts from substituting their judgment for that of the legislatures. He said that even though the election was over and late ballots were too few to have made a difference in Pennsylvania’s vote totals, state courts could be expected to behave in the same way in the future unless the Supreme Court used this occasion to stop them.There are several things to note about the Pennsylvania cases. The most obvious is the absence of a fourth vote. In an initial round in the Pennsylvania cases, in mid-October, Justice Brett Kavanaugh had provided Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch with a fourth vote to grant a stay of the state court decision. But a stay requires five votes rather than four. With Amy Coney Barrett not yet confirmed, the eight justices divided 4 to 4, and the stay was denied without opinions. Justice Kavanaugh withheld his vote on Monday, without explanation. Maybe he decided this was a propitious time to offer some cover for Chief Justice John Roberts, who has voted in nearly all the election cases this fall with the three remaining liberal justices.Justice Barrett was also silent. During her confirmation hearing, Senate Democrats had pressed her to promise recusal from any election cases, given that President Donald Trump had said he needed a prompt replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg so that he would have a majority of justices voting his way in any election disputes. Justice Barrett did not recuse herself from the Pennsylvania case. Perhaps her decision not to provide the fourth vote her dissenting colleagues needed was a kind of de facto recusal, in recognition that the optics of voting to hear a last-ditch Trump appeal would be awkward, to say the least.The deeper question raised by Monday’s development is why Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch are so intent on what would seem to be a counterintuitive goal for conservatives: curbing the power of state courts. I’m cynical enough to think it has to do with how these three understand the position of state legislatures and state courts in today’s political climate. It’s been widely reported that Republican-controlled legislatures are rolling out bills by the dozens to restrict access to the polls, aimed at discouraging the kind of turnout that produced Democratic victories in Georgia last month. The vote-suppression effort has become so aggressive that some Republicans are starting to worry about voter backlash, according to a recent Washington Post article.State courts, on the other hand, are capable of standing in the way of this strategy. When state high-court judges are elected, as they are in many states, they typically run in statewide races that are not subject to the gerrymandering that has entrenched Republican power in states that are much more balanced politically than the makeup of their legislatures reflects. What better way to disable the state courts in their democracy-protecting role than to push them to the sidelines when it comes to federal elections.So there is no way the Supreme Court is finished with elections. Next Tuesday, as it happens, the justices will hear a crucial voting rights case. The case, from Arizona, asks the court to decide for the first time how Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 applies to policies that restrict the vote, through such measures as voter ID requirements.Section 2, which pertains nationwide, is the major remaining provision of the Voting Rights Actfollowing the Supreme Court’s dismantling of the act’s Section 5, in the 2013 Shelby County case. That section barred certain states and smaller jurisdictions from making changes in their election procedures without first receiving federal permission, known as “preclearance.” Section 5 provided vital protection in parts of the country where racism had not released its grip on the levers of power.The issue now is whether Section 2 can be deployed to fill that gap. It prohibits any voting practice that “results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” It has typically been used to challenge redistricting plans that dilute the electoral power of racial and ethnic minorities. The question of whether it can be useful in challenging the wave of vote-suppression schemes, which can present complex problems of proof, hands the justices arguably the most important civil rights case of their current term.With the country exhausted and still reeling from the turmoil of the 2020 election and its bizarre aftermath, the urge not to think about elections for a while is powerful. I share it. But it’s a luxury the Supreme Court hasn’t given us, not now, not as long as some justices have more to say.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

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      How to Keep Extremists Out of Power

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyHow to Keep Extremists Out of PowerEvery political reform proposal must be judged by its ability to fuel or weaken extremist candidates.Mr. Pildes has spent his career as a legal scholar analyzing the intersection of politics and law and how that impacts our elections.Feb. 25, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Shay Horse/NurPhoto, via Getty ImagesAmerican democracy faces alarming risks from extremist forces that have rapidly gained ground in our politics. The most urgent focus of political reform must be to marginalize, to the extent possible, these destabilizing forces.Every reform proposal must be judged through this lens: Is it likely to fuel or to weaken the power of extremist politics and candidates?In healthy democracies, they are rewarded for appealing to the broadest forces in politics, not the narrowest. This is precisely why American elections take place in a “first past the post” system rather than the proportional representation system many other democracies use.What structural changes would reward politicians whose appeal is broadest? We should start with a focus on four areas.Reform the presidential nomination processUntil the 1970s, presidential nominees were selected through a convention-based system, which means that a candidate had to obtain a broad consensus among the various interests and factions in the party. “Brokered conventions” — which required several rounds of balloting to choose a nominee — offered a vivid demonstration of how the sausage of consensus was made. In 1952, for example, the Republican Party convention selected the more moderate Dwight D. Eisenhower over Robert A. Taft, the popular leader of the more extreme wing of the party, who opposed the creation of NATO.Our current primary system shifted control from party insiders to voters. Now, in a primary with several credible contenders, a candidate can “win” with 35 percent of the vote. This allows polarizing candidates to win the nomination even if many party members find them objectionable. (In 2016, Donald Trump won many primaries with less than 40 percent of the vote.)How can we restore some of the party-wide consensus the convention system required? The parties can use ranked-choice voting, which allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. This rewards candidates with broad appeal to a party’s voters, even if they have fewer passionate supporters. In this system, a candidate intensely popular with 35 percent of the party’s voters but intensely disliked by much of the rest would not prevail. A candidate who is the first choice of only 35 percent but the second choice of another 50 percent would do better. Ranked-choice voting reduces the prospects of factional party candidates. Presidents with a broad base of support can institute major reforms, as Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan demonstrated.Reform the party primariesMany incumbents take more extreme positions than they might otherwise endorse because they worry about a primary challenge.One way to help defang that threat is to eliminate “sore-loser” laws. These laws, which exist in some form in 47 states, bar candidates who have lost in a party primary from running in the general election as an independent or third-party candidate. Thus, if a more moderate candidate loses in a primary to a more extreme one, that person is shut out from the general election — even if he or she would likely beat the (sometimes extreme) winners of the party primaries. One study finds that sore-loser laws favor more ideological candidates: Democratic candidates in states with the law are nearly six points more liberal and Republicans nearly nine-to-10 points more conservative than in states without these laws.Though Alaska has a sore-loser law, Senator Lisa Murkowski’s 2010 re-election is still instructive. That year, as an incumbent, she lost the Republican primary to a conservative candidate endorsed by the Tea Party and Sarah Palin. But the state permitted an exception to the sore-loser law for write-in candidates, and Ms. Murkowski, running as a write-in Republican candidate, won the general election.If sore-loser laws are eliminated, that reform should be combined with ranked-choice voting in the general election. That would ensure that in a multicandidate general election, the winner would reflect a broad consensus. Other ideas for restructuring primaries to minimize the existence of factional candidates include one adopted by Alaska voters in November: The top four candidates in a single primary move on to the general election, where the winner is chosen through ranked-choice voting.Reform gerrymanderingMany reformers agree on the need to take redistricting out of the hands of partisan state legislatures and give it to a commission. In several recent state ballot initiatives, voters have endorsed this change. But that still raises a question: What constitutes a fair map?Redistricting reform should have as a goal the creation of competitive election districts. Competitive districts pressure candidates from both the left and the right, which creates incentives to appeal to the political center. They also encourage more moderate candidates to run in the first place, because they know they have a greater prospect of winning than in a district whose seat is safe for the other party.In safe seat districts, as long as a candidate survives the primary, that person is assured of winning the general election — which means primary candidates don’t have to move toward the center.The sources of centrism in the House or Senate frequently come from politicians in swing districts or states. In the recent House impeachment, for example, the percentage of Republicans elected with 57 percent of the vote or less who voted for impeachment was more than double that of Republicans elected with more than 57 percent of the vote. Similarly, it was Democrats holding competitive seats who resisted the initial impeachment of President Trump, until news broke of his call with Ukraine.Not every district can be made competitive. But in 2018, maps that emphasized competitiveness could have produced at least 242 highly competitive districts, although only 72 races actually were competitive. The more senators and representatives who face competitive pressures in their general elections, the larger the forces of compromise and negotiation will be in Congress.The goal of creating competitive districts should not take a back seat to approaches that focus on whether the partisan outcomes match vote shares in a particular map. In these approaches, the closer a plan comes to matching the number of seats one party gets to its statewide share of the vote, the fairer that map is deemed to be. So, if 55 percent of the statewide vote goes to Democrats, then Democrats should have roughly 55 percent of the seats in the state Legislature and the U.S. House delegation from the state. The problem comes when a fair partisan map produces candidates, in getting to that 55 percent overall, who are all elected from seats so safe for one party, they never have to compete for voters in the center.If we want to reduce extremist forces in our politics, candidates should have to appeal to a diverse set of interests and voters in competitive districts as much as possible.Reform campaign-finance reformThe way campaigns are financed also has major effects on the types of candidates who run and win.Campaign-finance efforts are now rightly focused on “leveling up” campaign dollars — by providing public funds to candidates — rather than trying to “level down” by imposing caps on election spending. That shift is partly a result of Supreme Court doctrine, but also of the difficulties of narrowing the number of channels through which money can flow to candidates.But publicly financed elections can take at least two different basic forms, and the form taken can have significant ramifications for whether the forces of extremism are further accentuated or limited.In the traditional form of public financing, which is used in around 11 states that have public financing, the government provides grants of campaign funds to the qualified candidates.In the other form — which has taken up much of the reform energy in recent years — the government provides matching funds for small donations. This based on a matching-funds program that has existed in New York City for a number of years.The campaign-finance reform proposal that House Democrats passed after the 2018 midterms, which is now a focus of the Democratic agenda, would include a small-donor matching program. The legislation would provide $6 in public funds to candidates for every dollar they raise in small donations (those of $200 or less), up to a certain level.But there is a risk that making public funding proportional to small donations will accelerate polarization and extremism even further. Research suggests small donors are more ideologically extreme than average citizens and donate to ideologically more extreme candidates. In his campaigns, Mr. Trump raised a higher percentage of his contributions from small donors than any major-party presidential nominee in history.Numerous studies have shown that in general, individual donors (large and small) are the most ideological source of money in politics. Traditional public financing is far more neutral in the types of candidates who benefit.In debating campaign-finance reform, we must focus not just on the values of participation or equality but also on the overall effects different approaches to reform are likely to have on political extremism or moderation.Jan. 6 provided a painful demonstration of the dangerous currents gathering in American political culture. Every proposed election reform must now be measured against this reality to make sure political reform furthers American democracy.Richard H. Pildes is a professor at New York University’s School of Law and an author of the casebook “The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process.”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