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      Why Dr. Oz Is So Popular: American's Dysfunctional Attitude to Health

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      It’s perhaps an understatement to say that Americans have a difficult and contradictory relationship with our bodies.Every decade or so there is a new optimal way to feed ourselves, along with increasingly outlandish weight-loss regimens and whole categories of foods to champion or fear. We revel in the sophistication of medical science while widely distrusting it, and our politicians refuse to support a health care system in which everyone has access to basic, compassionate care. We are overly sedentary, but when we exercise we value strenuous over relaxing movement, strain over ease, striving over acceptance.No one embodies these obsessions better than Mehmet Oz, known as Dr. Oz to American daytime television viewers. Dr. Oz, who has styled himself as a kind of high priest in the church of American wellness, recently announced his candidacy in the Republican primary for an open Senate seat in Pennsylvania — a race that could decide control of the chamber.As Dr. Oz pursues this pivotal position, he should be seen as more than a celebrity turned politician. He’s rightly understood as a kind of quasi-religious leader, one who has set up his revival tent between a yoga studio and an urgent-care clinic, with the television cameras rolling. And many Americans are primed and ready to commit to his doctrine, which promises boundless possibility so long as we invest in individual responsibility — for our health and for everything else.This is worrying. As we collectively face yet another surge of coronavirus infections, leaders who extol individualism aren’t simply ineffective — they’re dangerous. If there’s anything we should be taking away from the past two years, it’s that autonomy and self-reliance are inadequate for 21st-century problems such as climate change, structural racism and the pandemic.The son of Turkish immigrants, born in Cleveland, and by all accounts a gifted surgeon, Dr. Oz gained notice as a frequent guest on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” appearances that earned him the tag “America’s doctor” and led to introduction of “The Dr. Oz Show” in 2009. Over 13 seasons, the frequent topics of the show, which at its height regularly drew over a million viewers per week, could also be a list of Americans’ biggest bodily anxieties: weight loss, cancer, weight loss, aging, weight loss, sleep problems, poop problems and oh, weight loss.Dr. Oz often describes his path from cardiothoracic surgeon to TV health expert with missionary zeal: “As I performed thousands of surgeries on patients whose hearts had been ravaged by obesity, I realized we needed to better educate people on how to take part in their own care,” he explained in testimony before a Senate committee in 2014. “And for that reason I went into the public life, in an effort to teach.”And his announcement that he is now making the leap from daytime television to national politics took on a downright rapturous tone: “I’m running for the Senate to empower you to control your destiny,” he wrote in an essay in The Washington Examiner, “to reinvigorate our great nation, and to reignite the divine spark that we should always be seeing in each other.”The thousands of on-air hours Dr. Oz has spent ministering to Americans’ health concerns have made him a multimillionaire, and also a controversial figure. He has praised unproven supplements such as sage leaf tea, green coffee bean extract and raspberry ketones as “miracles” for weight loss and was chastised by senators for doing so. He was part of a team at Columbia University that patented a device to strengthen damaged heart valves, and also was the target of a letter of protest by physicians who asked why the university kept him on the faculty since he had shown “an egregious lack of integrity by promoting quack treatments and cures in the interest of personal financial gain.”On Covid-19, Dr. Oz has been particularly contradictory. He has promoted the safety and efficacy of vaccines and masks, but also initially recommended the use of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid, based on a small and soon-discredited study. And his bid to represent Pennsylvania in the Senate is based on his promise to free Americans from some of the mask and vaccine mandates that his medical colleagues widely support.“We are Americans, and we can do anything we want,” he tweeted recently, alongside a Fox News clip of himself criticizing the Biden administration’s Covid-19 policies. “It’s time we get back to normal.”If there’s one consistent strain in Dr. Oz’s trajectory, it’s his belief in the power and responsibility of individuals to take control of their health and well being. Strikingly, in his essay announcing his candidacy, Dr. Oz doesn’t speak of unity or community, as many politicians do. Instead he identifies himself as a doctor who is “trained to tell it like it is because you deserve to hear our best advice and make your own decisions.”Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that this messianic diet guru would offer to cure us of all that ails us, physically and spiritually. The bigger question is why so many are ready to believe that organic, cold-pressed snake oil could stop us from aging, cure cancer, make us lose weight and end a pandemic?There’s something deeply American in Dr. Oz’s quest to reach a higher state via the improvement of the body. Its roots can be found, arguably, in the spiritual strivings of the Transcendentalists, the group of 19th-century nature-obsessed New England philosophers.Ralph Waldo Emerson’s notion of an “original relationship to the universe,” and his belief that there is a divine spirit in nature and in the human soul that does not require the doctrines and laws of organized Christianity, was radical in its time, but became foundational to the American concepts of individualism and self-reliance. These threads have been woven into everything from the prosperity gospel to my yoga teacher’s instructions to lift our arms over our heads and send our intentions “from Earth to sky through you.”The same ideas, filtered through the 21st-century preoccupation with wellness, quickly arrives at the idea that we shortchange ourselves by accepting what we are told by society — by doctors, scientists or government health officials — if it contradicts our individual instincts or opinions.It’s this American idea that health is a personal responsibility that gives rise to figures like Dr. Oz. In his individualist doctrine, when we get sick it’s generally at least partly our fault — there was probably a supplement we should have taken, a superfood we could have eaten more of or a junk food we should have eaten less of, a specialist we should have consulted.This American predilection for individualism is itself a public health risk in a pandemic, Ed Yong has argued in The Atlantic — one that has led to bad policy that puts everyone, especially the most vulnerable people, at risk. When reducing the spread of an infectious disease requires collective and individual action, “no one’s health is fully in their own hands,” Mr. Yong explains.And yet the idea that your health is in your own hands is key to Dr. Oz’s worldview. Despite what appears to be an earnest desire to help people, “The Dr. Oz Show” is not a public health effort. It’s a business. And by recommending products and services, Dr. Oz offers us opportunities to buy things — a very American way to feel empowered. He helps us find the perfect alchemy of diet, exercise and açaí berries to keep us spry, thin, and disease-free forever, as long as we can pay for it all out of pocket. In our individualist, consumerist society, wealth is health.This perhaps is the deeper, more primal appeal of what Dr. Oz is selling — the idea that if we can find the right guru, buy the right products and strive hard enough to manifest our best selves, we might just cheat death.Which of course we can’t. In this moment, when so much hangs in the balance, it’s a dangerous delusion.Annaliese Griffin is a journalist who covers culture, lifestyle and health.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Ron Johnson, G.O.P. Senator From Wisconsin, Will Seek Re-election

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      The renewed bid for office by Mr. Johnson, who has spread many false claims about the 2020 election and Covid, ensures that both parties will be highly invested in Wisconsin’s 2022 Senate race.WASHINGTON — Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin who over the last year has become the Senate’s leading purveyor of misinformation about elections and the coronavirus pandemic, announced Sunday that he would seek re-election to a third term.Mr. Johnson, 66, had pledged to step aside after two terms but opened the door to a third shortly before the 2020 presidential election. His entry into the race is certain to focus enormous attention on Wisconsin, a narrowly divided political battleground where Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, faces his own difficult re-election bid in a race that may determine control of the state’s election systems ahead of the 2024 presidential contest.“Today, I am announcing I will continue to fight for freedom in the public realm by running for re-election,” Mr. Johnson wrote in an essay published Sunday in The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Johnson’s decision follows an announcement Saturday from another Senate Republican weighing retirement, Senator John Thune of South Dakota, that he would seek a fourth term.The Wisconsin Senate contest is expected to be among the tightest in the country. Mr. Johnson is loathed by Democrats and has attracted a double-digit field of challengers vying to take him on in the general election. Local Democrats have been raising money for nearly a year to build a turnout machine for the 2022 midterm elections.When Mr. Johnson first entered politics in 2010 as a self-funding chief executive of a plastics company founded by his wife’s family, he defined himself as a citizen legislator in contrast with Senator Russ Feingold, a Democrat who had been in public office for 28 years. Mr. Johnson was carried into office by that year’s Tea Party wave, then beat Mr. Feingold again in 2016 as Donald J. Trump became the first Republican presidential nominee to win Wisconsin in 32 years.All along, Mr. Johnson pledged to serve no more than 12 years in the Senate, but he began to privately reconsider after the 2018 elections, when Democrats took back control of the House of Representatives and won narrow victories in Wisconsin’s statewide elections. He wrote Sunday that when he made reiterated his two-term pledge during his 2016 race he didn’t anticipate “the Democrats’ complete takeover of government and the disastrous policies they have already inflicted on America and the world.” Suddenly the leader of Wisconsin Republicans and the lone G.O.P. official elected to statewide office, Mr. Johnson wavered on his pledge as he became the subject of an intense lobbying campaign from Republicans in both Wisconsin and Washington. They argued that if he did not run again, the party would jeopardize a seat that could tilt the balance of the Senate in 2023.Mr. Johnson wrote that he was seeking a new term because “I believe America is in peril,” adding: “Much as I’d like to ease into a quiet retirement, I don’t feel I should.”This year, Mr. Johnson has been at the forefront of the two strongest strains of misinformation coursing through the Republican Party — false claims about election administration and public health.In the days after the 2020 election, he challenged Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. During a Senate hearing in February, he read into the record a report that falsely suggested the Trump-inspired Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol had been instigated by “fake Trump supporters.” In November, he began urging Wisconsin’s Republican state legislators to seize control of federal elections in the state, arguing that they could do so without the governor’s approval, despite decades-old rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court and the Wisconsin Supreme Court that say otherwise.Aside from Mr. Trump, there is perhaps no major Republican official who has made more false claims about the coronavirus and its vaccines than Mr. Johnson. He has said he will not get vaccinated, and has promoted discredited Covid-19 treatments and declined to encourage others to seek out the vaccines. In December, he falsely claimed that gargling with mouthwash could help stop transmission of the virus, an assertion that drew a rebuke from the manufacturer of Listerine.The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 6The global surge. More

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      La influencia de Donald Trump a un año del asalto al Capitolio

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      Su influencia sobre el partido muestra, una vez más, que el expresidente es capaz de sobreponerse a casi cualquier periodo de indignación, sin importar su intensidad.Hace un año, el mismo día en que partidarios febriles de Donald Trump irrumpieron en el Capitolio de Estados Unidos en una revuelta violenta que mancilló el símbolo de la democracia estadounidense, la dirigencia del Comité Nacional Republicano estaba reunida en el hotel Ritz-Carlton de la Isla de Amelia, Florida, a unos 1120 kilómetros de distancia.En Washington, el futuro político de Trump jamás se había visto tan sombrío, y se debilitaba con rapidez. Había perdido las elecciones y, a modo de protesta, su personal de alto nivel estaba renunciando. Sus aliados más importantes lo repudiaban. Pronto sería expulsado de las redes sociales.Pero los cimientos de un renacimiento político, al menos dentro de su partido, estuvieron allí desde el principio.Con los vidrios rotos y los escombros aún desperdigados por las instalaciones del Capitolio, más de la mitad de los republicanos de la Cámara de Representantes votaron en contra de la certificación de las elecciones, repitiendo el falso argumento de fraude planteado por Trump. Aunque el comité nacional del partido redactó un comunicado en el que condenaba la violencia (sin mencionar el nombre de Trump), algunos miembros del comité presionaron para que se añadiera una muestra de solidaridad hacia la perspectiva de la muchedumbre que asaltó el Capitolio. Sus peticiones tuvieron que ser rechazadas.La mañana siguiente, Trump hizo una llamada por altavoz a la reunión del comité. “¡Lo amamos!”, gritaron algunos de los asistentes.“Muchos de quienes venimos de los estados del noreste solo resoplamos”, dijo Bill Palatucci, integrante del comité nacional republicano procedente de Nueva Jersey y un importante detractor de Trump dentro del partido. Pero fue más común la postura de miembros como Corey Steinmetz, de Wyoming, quien dijo en una entrevista que culpar a Trump por los acontecimientos del 6 de enero “no fue más que una mentira desde el principio”.En este momento, el Partido Republicano le sigue perteneciendo en gran medida a Trump, y ha transformado sus mentiras sobre el robo de las elecciones en un artículo de fe, e incluso en una prueba de fuego que intenta imponer con los candidatos que respalda en las elecciones primarias de 2022. Es el patrocinador más codiciado del partido, su principal recaudador de fondos y quien va adelante en las encuestas para la nominación presidencial de 2024.Trump también es una figura profundamente divisiva, impopular entre el electorado más general y bajo investigación por sus prácticas empresariales y su intromisión en las actividades de las autoridades electorales en el condado de Fulton, Georgia. Sigue siendo el mismo político cuya Casa Blanca presenció cuatro años de derrotas devastadoras para los republicanos, entre ellas las de la Cámara de Representantes y el Senado. Y pese a que unos cuantos republicanos dispersos alertan de manera pública que el partido no debería ceñirse a él, son más quienes, en privado, se preocupan por las consecuencias.No obstante, a un año de incitar el asalto al Capitolio para frustrar por la fuerza la certificación de las elecciones, su poder inigualable dentro del Partido Republicano es un testimonio de su influencia constante en la lealtad de las bases del partido.Su regreso —si acaso se necesitaba entre los republicanos— es el ejemplo más reciente de una lección permanente de su turbulenta etapa en la política: que Trump puede sobrevivir a casi cualquier periodo de indignación, sin importar su intensidad.Understand the Jan. 6 InvestigationBoth the Justice Department and a House select committee are investigating the events of the Capitol riot. Here’s where they stand:Inside the House Inquiry: From a nondescript office building, the panel has been quietly ramping up its sprawling and elaborate investigation.Criminal Referrals, Explained: Can the House inquiry end in criminal charges? These are some of the issues confronting the committee.Garland’s Remarks: Facing pressure from Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that the D.O.J. would pursue its inquiry into the riot “at any level.”A Big Question Remains: Will the Justice Department move beyond charging the rioters themselves?Los reflectores apuntan a otra parte. El escándalo se desvanece. Y luego, él reescribe la historia.El relato distorsionado que Trump ha creado en torno al 6 de enero es que “la verdadera insurrección tuvo lugar el 3 de noviembre”, el día en que perdió unas elecciones que fueron libres y justas.Hubo un breve momento, como consecuencia del asalto del 6 de enero, en el que los dirigentes republicanos de la Cámara de Representantes y el Senado tuvieron la oportunidad de cortar por lo sano con Trump, mientras los demócratas se apresuraban para llevarlo a juicio político.“No cuenten conmigo”, había dicho en el Senado Lindsey Graham, senador republicano por Carolina del Sur que era un aliado incondicional de Trump. “Ya basta”.Pero a los votantes republicanos no les afectó tanto como a algunos legisladores republicanos que apenas lograron escapar de la violencia ese día y se encontraban en un momento decisivo. Una encuesta de AP-NORC reveló que después de un mes, a principios de febrero de 2021, solo el 11 por ciento de los republicanos dijeron que Trump tenía mucha o bastante responsabilidad por el asalto al Capitolio; en la actualidad, esa cifra es del 22 por ciento.Los políticos republicanos se realinearon con rapidez para coincidir con la opinión pública. En menos de una semana, Graham estaba de nuevo al lado de Trump en el avión presidencial y, el año pasado, en repetidas ocasiones visitó los campos de golf de Trump para ser visto con el expresidente.Tal vez el primer apoyo renovado a Trump que tuvo mayores consecuencias provino de Kevin McCarthy, el líder republicano de la Cámara de Representantes que el 13 de enero había dicho que Trump “tiene responsabilidad” por la revuelta. Para finales del mes, ya iba en un avión con destino a Mar-a-Lago para intentar hacer las paces.Un artículo sobre la reunión privada se publicó antes de tiempo. “¿Tú la filtraste?”, le dijo Trump a McCarthy dos veces, según dos personas informadas sobre la discusión. McCarthy dijo que no.Trump sonrió sutilmente y se encogió de hombros, con lo que parecía reconocer que McCarthy no había sido quien había filtrado la reunión. “Pero es bueno para los dos, Kevin”, dijo Trump. Un portavoz de McCarthy se negó a comentar, mientras que un portavoz de Trump negó que se hubiera producido ese intercambio.Después, el comité de acción política (PAC, por su sigla en inglés) de Trump publicó una foto de los dos juntos.Dentro del Senado, el líder republicano, Mitch McConnell había sido más firme al acusar a Trump. “El presidente Trump es el responsable, en términos prácticos y éticos, de provocar los acontecimientos de este día”, declaró en un discurso en el pleno del Senado y añadió: “El líder del mundo libre no puede pasar semanas vociferando que fuerzas sombrías nos están robando el país y luego parecer sorprendido cuando la gente le cree y hace cosas imprudentes”.Pero al final, McConnell votó por absolver a Trump en su juicio político cuando se le acusó de exhortar a la insurrección.Ahora Trump y McConnell no se dirigen la palabra, pese a que el senador por Florida Rick Scott, quien encabeza el órgano de campaña del Partido Republicano en el Senado, ha estado muy atento con Trump e incluso le otorgó el nuevo premio de “Defensor de la libertad” en un viaje que realizó en abril a Mar-a-Lago.Ese mismo fin de semana, en un evento de recaudación de fondos del Comité Nacional Republicano, Trump destrozó a McConnell mientras hablaba con donadores al proferir un burdo insulto a su inteligencia.Al salir del cargo, Trump había dicho en un momento de ira que crearía un tercer partido, aunque cerró la posibilidad a esa idea en su primer discurso pospresidencial a fines de febrero, en la Conferencia de Acción Política Conservadora de activistas pro-Trump.En cambio, dijo, planeaba retomar el dominio del Partido Republicano y purgarlo de sus críticos.“Deshacerme de todos ellos”, dijo.Trump ya ha apoyado a candidatos en casi 100 contiendas de las elecciones intermedias y ha instituido la temporada de elecciones primarias de 2022 como un periodo de venganza contra los republicanos que se atrevieron a contrariarlo. A algunos asesores les preocupa que su amplia serie de respaldos lo exponga a posibles derrotas contundentes que podrían implicar un debilitamiento de su influencia en el electorado republicano.Sin embargo, Trump ha reclutado contrincantes para sus detractores más fuertes del partido, como Liz Cheney, representante por Wyoming, quien fue expulsada de la dirigencia de la Cámara de Representantes por rehusarse, en sus propias palabras, a “difundir las perniciosas mentiras de Trump” sobre las elecciones de 2020.Whit Ayres, un experimentado encuestador republicano, señaló que el respaldo de Trump tiene mucho peso en las primarias, pero es “una peligrosa arma de dos filos” en los distritos indecisos.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      On Jan. 6 Anniversary, Biden Goes After Trump and Trumpism

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      In a speech marking the anniversary of the Capitol riot, the president confronted Trumpism, even as he refused to utter his predecessor’s name.WASHINGTON — For most of his first year in office, President Biden has bet that he could move the country past the divisiveness of his predecessor by restoring a sense of normalcy to the White House, practicing the traditional brand of politics he learned over decades in the Senate and as vice president — and largely ignoring the man he refers to as “the former guy.”It didn’t work.So on Thursday, Mr. Biden put aside his hopes of no longer having to engage directly with Donald J. Trump and went aggressively at him, using an impassioned speech in the Capitol to make clear the urgent necessity of confronting Mr. Trump — and Trumpism.“We saw it with our own eyes. Rioters menaced these halls, threatening the life of the speaker of the house, literally erecting gallows to hang the vice president of the United States of America,” Mr. Biden said from National Statuary Hall.“What did we not see?” he continued. “We didn’t see a former president who had just rallied the mob to attack, sitting in the private dining room off the Oval Office in the White House, watching it all on television and doing nothing for hours as police were assaulted, lives at risk, the nation’s capitol under siege.”Later, Mr. Biden was even more blunt, even as he refused to utter Mr. Trump’s name. “He was just looking for an excuse, a pretext, to cover for the truth,” he said of Mr. Trump’s lies about election fraud. “He’s not just a former president. He’s a defeated former president.”The extraordinary moment, in which a sitting president accused his predecessor of holding “a dagger at the throat of America, at American democracy,” marked a sharp pivot in Mr. Biden’s strategy for dealing with Mr. Trump and his continuing promotion of the baseless assertion that the 2020 election was marred by fraud.The president’s speech tacitly acknowledged that his predecessor, far from fading away, remains the most potent force in Republican politics and a credible rival to Mr. Biden in 2024. And for Mr. Biden, who throughout the last year has articulated the importance of promoting democracy over autocracy around the world, it also signaled his willingness to confront more directly the challenges Mr. Trump poses to democratic values at home, which have shown little sign of dissipating in the year since a violent mob tried to block the certification of Mr. Biden’s election victory.Understand the Jan. 6 InvestigationBoth the Justice Department and a House select committee are investigating the events of the Capitol riot. Here’s where they stand:Inside the House Inquiry: From a nondescript office building, the panel has been quietly ramping up its sprawling and elaborate investigation.Criminal Referrals, Explained: Can the House inquiry end in criminal charges? These are some of the issues confronting the committee.Garland’s Remarks: Facing pressure from Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that the D.O.J. would pursue its inquiry into the riot “at any level.”A Big Question Remains: Will the Justice Department move beyond charging the rioters themselves?The approach has its risks, not least in providing Mr. Trump with better opportunities to hit Mr. Biden with broadsides of his own — an opening that Mr. Trump seized on Thursday with a series of angry statements accusing the president of supporting “open borders,” “unconstitutional mandates” and “corrupt elections.”But continuing to ignore his predecessor carries real peril for Mr. Biden as well. Recent polling suggests that millions of Americans are at least somewhat willing to tolerate or support political violence against partisan opponents.Republican-controlled states are considering or enacting restrictions on voting rights. Supporters of Mr. Trump are seeking to control the machinery of elections in key states, potentially giving them the power to block an outcome they oppose. Substantial majorities of Republicans in polls say they believe the results of the 2020 election were illegitimate.Mr. Trump’s influence over the Republican Party remains strong — he is trying to be its de facto kingmaker and he is polling as its front-runner for the 2024 presidential election. His false statements on election fraud continue to divide Americans. Last month, the two presidents shared a rare occurrence: commending each other. In an effort to address vaccine hesitancy among many Trump supporters — unvaccinated Americans are disproportionally Republican — Mr. Biden praised the previous administration’s work on coronavirus vaccines, prompting Mr. Trump to express gratitude.Since his inauguration, Mr. Biden has repeatedly condemned the violent assault on the Capitol and has even criticized Mr. Trump by name on a few occasions. Yet before Thursday, he had never as president taken such a direct, aggressive tone against Mr. Trump and his falsehoods, or the Republicans who have enabled him.“He values power over principle,” Mr. Biden said of Mr. Trump. “Because he sees his own interests as more important than his country’s interest, and America’s interest. And because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our constitution.”Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist, said returning to a contentious tit-for-tat would only alienate Trump supporters the administration was hoping to vaccinate.“We can save millions of lives globally, but when we tear each other apart like we did on Jan. 6, the damage can be irreparable,” Mr. Luntz said.Since his inauguration, Mr. Biden has repeatedly condemned the violent assault on the Capitol but had not taken such a direct, aggressive tone against Mr. Trump and his falsehoods before Thursday.Al Drago for The New York TimesIt was not clear whether Mr. Biden’s willingness to take on Mr. Trump so directly signaled a lasting shift in messaging or a one-off driven by the exigencies of the anniversary. Mr. Biden was described as deeply involved in the preparation of the speech and determined to make sure that it took on not just the mob but the former president who inspired it.At the same time, however, Mr. Biden wanted to avoid signaling that he had given up on bipartisanship altogether and gave himself a rhetorical escape hatch by including a line declaring that he “will always seek to work together” with those Republicans “who support the rule of law and not the rule of a single man.”Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      Jimmy Carter: I Fear for Our Democracy

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      One year ago, a violent mob, guided by unscrupulous politicians, stormed the Capitol and almost succeeded in preventing the democratic transfer of power. All four of us former presidents condemned their actions and affirmed the legitimacy of the 2020 election. There followed a brief hope that the insurrection would shock the nation into addressing the toxic polarization that threatens our democracy.However, one year on, promoters of the lie that the election was stolen have taken over one political party and stoked distrust in our electoral systems. These forces exert power and influence through relentless disinformation, which continues to turn Americans against Americans. According to the Survey Center on American Life, 36 percent of Americans — almost 100 million adults across the political spectrum — agree that “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.” The Washington Post recently reported that roughly 40 percent of Republicans believe that violent action against the government is sometimes justified.Politicians in my home state of Georgia, as well as in others, such as Texas and Florida, have leveraged the distrust they have created to enact laws that empower partisan legislatures to intervene in election processes. They seek to win by any means, and many Americans are being persuaded to think and act likewise, threatening to collapse the foundations of our security and democracy with breathtaking speed. I now fear that what we have fought so hard to achieve globally — the right to free, fair elections, unhindered by strongman politicians who seek nothing more than to grow their own power — has become dangerously fragile at home. More

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      Why Republicans Keep Falling for Trump’s Lies

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      When called upon to believe that Barack Obama was really born in Kenya, millions got in line. When encouraged to believe that the 2012 Sandy Hook murder of twenty children and six adults was a hoax, too many stepped up. When urged to believe that Hillary Clinton was trafficking children in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor with no basement, they bought it, and one of them showed up in the pizza place with a rifle to protect the kids. The fictions fed the frenzies, and the frenzies shaped the crises of 2020 and 2021. The delusions are legion: Secret Democratic cabals of child abusers, millions of undocumented voters, falsehoods about the Covid-19 pandemic and the vaccine.While much has been said about the moral and political stance of people who support right-wing conspiracy theories, their gullibility is itself alarming. Gullibility means malleability and manipulability. We don’t know if the people who believed the prevailing 2012 conspiracy theories believed the 2016 or 2020 versions, but we do know that a swath of the conservative population is available for the next delusion and the one after that. And on Jan. 6, 2021, we saw that a lot of them were willing to act on those beliefs.The adjective gullible comes from the verb to gull, which used to mean to cram yourself with something as well as to cheat or dupe, to cram someone else full of fictions. “Not doubting I could gull the Government,” wrote Daniel Defoe in 1701, and Hannah Arendt used the word gullible repeatedly in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” published in 1951. “A mixture of gullibility and cynicism is prevalent in all ranks of totalitarian movements, and the higher the rank the more cynicism weighs down gullibility,” she wrote. That is, among those gulling the public, cynicism is a stronger force; among those being gulled, gullibility is, but the two are not so separate as they might seem.Distinctions between believable and unbelievable, true and false, are not relevant for people who have found that taking up outrageous and disprovable ideas is instead an admission ticket to a community or an identity. Without the yoke of truthfulness around their necks, they can choose beliefs that flatter their worldview or justify their aggression. I sometimes think of this straying into fiction as a kind of libertarianism run amok — we used to say “you’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.” Too many Americans now feel entitled to their own facts. In this too-free marketplace of ideas, they can select or reject ideas, facts or histories to match their goals, because meaning has become transactional.But gullibility means you believe something because someone else wants you to. You’re buying what they’re selling. It’s often said that the joiners of cults and subscribers to delusions are driven by their hatred of elites. But in the present situation, the snake oil salesmen are not just Alex Jones, QAnon’s master manipulators and evangelical hucksters. They are senators, powerful white Christian men, prominent media figures, billionaires and their foundations, even a president. (Maybe the belief that these figures are not an elite is itself a noteworthy delusion.)It’s true that these leading lights of the right often portray themselves as embattled outsiders. But they’re not; they’re the status quo gone rogue. They are still powerful, still insiders, but something even more potent is changing — you could call it the zeitgeist or the arc of justice or historical momentum or just demographic reality. The world is moving on; those who’d rather it stand still are eager to push narratives depicting these shifts as degeneration and white Christian heterosexual America as profoundly imperiled.A lot of conspiracy theories are organic or at least emerge from true believers on the margins when it comes to topics like extraterrestrials, but those at the top of conservative America have preached falsehoods that further the interest of elites, and those at the bottom have embraced them devoutly. Though when we talk about cults and conspiracies we usually look to more outlandish beliefs, climate denial and gun obsessions both fit this template.Both originated as industry agendas that were then embraced by both right-wing politicians and the right-leaning public. For decades, the fossil fuel industry pumped out ads and reports, and supported lobbyists and front groups misleading the public on the science and import of climate change. The current gun cult is likewise the result of the National Rifle Association and the gun industry pushing battlefield-style weapons and a new white male identity — more paramilitary than rural hunter — along with fear, rage and racist dog whistles. I think of it as a cult, because guns serve first as totems of identity and belonging, and because the beliefs seem counterfactual about guns as sources of safety rather than danger when roughly 60 percent of gun deaths are suicides and self-defense by gun is a surpassingly rare phenomenon.Right-wing political fictions have a long history, from Joe McCarthy’s bluffs about communists in the government to the United Nations’ black helicopters of 1990s paranoia to an endless stream of stories portraying immigrants, Jews, Muslims, gay men then and trans people now as sinister threats. The digital age and then the pandemic caused many of us to withdraw further from contact with people unlike ourselves, and pundits and social media offered those “others” back as phantasms and gargoyles leering at us through the filters.We all have confirmation biases, and of course leftists and moderates have also entertained delusions and paranoia — about extraterrestrials, vaccines and political assassinations, for instance. But mainstream figures in the center and the left are not pushing radically counterfactual stuff akin to the conservative lies about Covid-19, let alone trying to instigate or whitewash the kind of violence we saw on Jan. 6. Democrats operate on the basis of reasonably factual premises and usually accept the authority of science, law and history, while Republicans uninhibitedly push whatever’s most convenient for their goals and incendiary for their base. More

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      Prosecutors Move Quickly on Jan. 6 Cases, but Big Questions Remain

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      In the year since the assault on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, more than 700 people have been arrested, with little public indication from the Justice Department of how high the investigation might reach.By almost any measure, the criminal investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is a prosecutorial effort of unparalleled complexity and scope.For an entire year, federal agents in almost every state have been poring over mounting stacks of tipster reports, interviews with witnesses, public social media posts and private messages obtained by warrants. They have also collected nearly 14,000 hours of video — from media outlets, surveillance cameras and police-worn body cameras — enough raw footage that it would take a year and a half of around-the-clock viewing to get through it.While the Justice Department has called the inquiry one of the largest in its history, traditional law enforcement officials have not been acting alone. Working with information from online sleuths who style themselves as “Sedition Hunters,” the authorities have made more than 700 arrests — with little sign of slowing down.The government estimates that as many as 2,500 people who took part in the events of Jan. 6 could be charged with federal crimes. That includes more than 1,000 incidents that prosecutors believe could be assaults.As of this week, more than 225 people have been accused of attacking or interfering with the police that day. About 275 have been charged with what the government describes as the chief political crime on Jan. 6: obstructing Congress’s duty to certify the 2020 presidential vote count. A little over 300 people have been charged with petty crimes alone, mostly trespassing and disorderly conduct.But a big question hangs over the prosecutions: Will the Justice Department move beyond charging the rioters themselves?So far, the department has provided no public indication of the degree to which it might be pursuing a case against former President Donald J. Trump and the circle of his allies who helped inspire the chaos with their baseless claims of election fraud. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland is scheduled to give a speech on Wednesday, one day before the anniversary of the attack on the Capitol, but is not expected to provide any signals about the direction of the department’s investigation. A spokeswoman said he would not address any specific cases or individuals.On Capitol Hill, the House select committee on Jan. 6 is interviewing witnesses and has issued subpoenas to a number of high-profile figures allied with Mr. Trump. And with Mr. Garland and the Justice Department remaining mum about their intentions, members of the committee have signaled a willingness to exert pressure on the department, saying they would consider making criminal referrals if their investigation turns up evidence that could support a prosecution against Mr. Trump or others.Even the prosecutions of those who rioted at the Capitol have presented an array of moral and legal challenges that have bedeviled judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers.Overworked courts have tried to balance the laborious exchange of discovery materials with speedy trial protections and to manage the bleak conditions at Washington’s local jails where some defendants are being held without bail. They have also faced a fundamental, underlying tension: how to mete out justice on an individual level to hundreds of defendants who together helped form a violent mob.Jacob Chansley, the so-called QAnon Shaman, was sentenced to 41 months.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesPleas and SentencesWith rare speed for a large-scale prosecution, more than 160 people — or slightly more than 20 percent of all who have been charged — have pleaded guilty at this point. Of those, not quite half have already been sentenced.A few weeks ago, Robert Palmer, a Florida man who hurled a fire extinguisher at police officers, was sentenced to more than five years in prison, the longest term handed down so far. In November, one of the most familiar figures in the attack — Jacob Chansley, the so-called QAnon Shaman, who breached the Senate floor in a horned helmet with a fur draped over his shoulders — was sentenced to 41 months, a term he is appealing.Beneath the headlines, however, there has been a steady stream of penalties for lower-profile defendants: bricklayers, grandmothers, college students, artists, church leaders and long-haul truckers who, by and large, have admitted to little more than illegally entering the Capitol.Many, if not most, have avoided incarceration, sentenced to probation or stints of home confinement. Others have received only modest sentences, ranging from a few weeks to a few months.In court, those accused of minor crimes have almost always expressed remorse, saying their behavior was foolish, embarrassing or out of character. Some have broken into tears or, in one case, physically collapsed. Others have vowed never to attend a political rally again.Federal judges have taken slightly different positions on how to punish the defendants. Judge Trevor N. McFadden, appointed by Mr. Trump, often prefaces his sentences by calling the events that day “a national embarrassment” — though he has frequently declined to jail petty offenders. Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, an Obama appointee, has often given sentences higher than those requested by the government. Her go-to phrase: “There must be consequences.”Judge Amit P. Mehta told John Lolos, a defendant clearly steeped in election fraud conspiracies, that not only had he been lied to, but those who had done the lying were not “paying the consequences.”“Those who orchestrated Jan. 6 have in no meaningful sense been held accountable,” said Judge Mehta, another Obama appointee. “In a sense, Mr. Lolos, I think you are a pawn.”Prosecutors are using an unusual law to charge many of the rioters: the obstruction of an official proceeding before Congress.Pool photo by Erin SchaffLegal ChallengesFrom the start, prosecutors faced a unique legal problem: Never before had members of Congress been forced from the House and Senate floors while finalizing the transition of presidential power. What law should be used to charge this crime?The government settled on an unusual obstruction law — the obstruction of an official proceeding before Congress. It brought the charge against scores of people believed to have disrupted the democratic process, often alongside more traditional counts of trespassing, vandalism and assault.The obstruction law, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, had a few advantages. First, it allowed the authorities to avoid deploying more politically fraught — and harder-to-prove — counts like sedition or insurrection.It also permitted prosecutors to home in on the specific behavior of defendants and judge how much their actions contributed to the chaos that day. If someone went deep into the Capitol, say, or took some other action that helped to chase officials from their duties, chances are they have been charged with an obstruction count.But many defense lawyers have claimed the law was wrongly used.Passed in 2002 as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which sought to clamp down on corporate malfeasance, the measure was initially intended to prohibit things like shredding documents or tampering with witnesses in congressional inquiries. Defense lawyers have argued that prosecutors have stretched the law beyond its scope and used it to criminalize behavior that too closely resembles ordinary protest protected by the First Amendment.In the past few weeks, however, five federal judges have ruled that the law is valid, and it now seems certain it will be permitted in scores of Jan. 6 prosecutions, including some that will soon go to trial.More than 160 people have pleaded guilty so far to charges stemming from the riot. The first trials are scheduled to begin in February.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesTrials to Begin SoonThe earliest Capitol riot trials are scheduled to begin next month. When the proceedings start, jurors will most likely get a glimpse of how the government believes members of the mob worked together.The first trial, set to begin on Feb. 24, will focus on Robert Gieswein of Colorado, a self-proclaimed militiaman charged with assaulting officers with a chemical spray.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      Election Falsehoods Surged on Podcasts Before Capitol Riots, Researchers Find

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      A new study analyzed nearly 1,500 episodes, showing the extent to which podcasts pushed misinformation about voter fraud.Weeks before the 2020 presidential election, the conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck outlined his prediction for how Election Day would unfold: President Donald J. Trump would be winning that night, but his lead would erode as dubious mail-in ballots arrived, giving Joseph R. Biden Jr. an unlikely edge.“No one will believe the outcome because they’ve changed the way we’re electing a president this time,” he said.None of the predictions of widespread voter fraud came true. But podcasters frequently advanced the false belief that the election was illegitimate, first as a trickle before the election and then as a tsunami in the weeks leading up to the violent attack at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to new research.Researchers at the Brookings Institution reviewed transcripts of nearly 1,500 episodes from 20 of the most popular political podcasts. Among episodes released between the election and the Jan. 6 riot, about half contained election misinformation, according to the analysis.In some weeks, 60 percent of episodes mentioned the election fraud conspiracy theories tracked by Brookings. Those included false claims that software glitches interfered with the count, that fake ballots were used, and that voting machines run by Dominion Voting Systems were rigged to help Democrats. Those kinds of theories gained currency in Republican circles and would later be leveraged to justify additional election audits across the country.Misinformation Soared After ElectionThe share of podcast episodes per week featuring election misinformation increased sharply after the election.

      Note: Among the most popular political talk show podcasts evaluated by Brookings, using a selection of keywords related to electoral fraud between Aug. 20, 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021.Source: The Brookings InstitutionThe New York TimesThe new research underscores the extent to which podcasts have spread misinformation using platforms operated by Apple, Google, Spotify and others, often with little content moderation. While social media companies have been widely criticized for their role in spreading misinformation about the election and Covid-19 vaccines, they have cracked down on both in the last year. Podcasts and the companies distributing them have been spared similar scrutiny, researchers say, in large part because podcasts are harder to analyze and review.“People just have no sense of how bad this problem is on podcasts,” said Valerie Wirtschafter, a senior data analyst at Brookings who co-wrote the report with Chris Meserole, a director of research at Brookings.Dr. Wirtschafter downloaded and transcribed more than 30,000 podcast episodes deemed “talk shows,” meaning they offered analysis and commentary rather than strictly news updates. Focusing on 1,490 episodes around the election from 20 popular shows, she created a dictionary of terms about election fraud. After transcribing the podcasts, a team of researchers searched for the keywords and manually checked each mention to determine if the speaker was supporting or denouncing the claims.In the months leading up to the election, conservative podcasters focused mostly on the fear that mail-in ballots could lead to fraud, the analysis showed.At the time, political analysts were busy warning of a “red mirage”: an early lead by Mr. Trump that could erode because mail-in ballots, which tend to get counted later, were expected to come from Democratic-leaning districts. As ballots were counted, that is precisely what happened. But podcasters used the changing fortunes to raise doubts about the election’s integrity.Election misinformation shot upward, with about 52 percent of episodes containing misinformation in the weeks after the election, up from about 6 percent of episodes before the election.The biggest offender in Brookings’s analysis was Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former adviser. His podcast, “Bannon’s War Room,” was flagged 115 times for episodes using voter fraud terms included in Brookings’ analysis between the election and Jan. 6.“You know why they’re going to steal this election?” Mr. Bannon asked on Nov. 3. “Because they don’t think you’re going to do anything about it.”As the Jan. 6 protest drew closer, his podcast pushed harder on those claims, including the false belief that poll workers handed out markers that would disqualify ballots.“Now we’re on, as they say, the point of attack,” Mr. Bannon said the day before the protest. “The point of attack tomorrow. It’s going to kick off. It’s going to be very dramatic.”Mr. Bannon’s show was removed from Spotify in November 2020 after he discussed beheading federal officials, but it remains available on Apple and Google.When reached for comment on Monday, Mr. Bannon said that President Biden was “an illegitimate occupant of the White House” and referenced investigations into the election that show they “are decertifying his electors.” Many legal experts have argued there is no way to decertify the election.Election Misinformation by PodcastThe podcast by Stephen K. Bannon was flagged for election misinformation more than other podcasts tracked by the Brookings Institution.

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      Episodes sharing electoral misinformation
      Note: Among the most popular political talk show podcasts evaluated by Brookings, using a selection of keywords related to electoral fraud between Aug. 20, 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021.Source: Brookings InstitutionBy The New York TimesSean Hannity, the Fox News anchor, also ranked highly in the Brookings data. His podcast and radio program, “The Sean Hannity Show,” is now the most popular radio talk show in America, reaching upward of 15 million radio listeners, according to Talk Media.“Underage people voting, people that moved voting, people that never re-registered voting, dead people voting — we have it all chronicled,” Mr. Hannity said during one episode.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More