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      Dear Leader: A Near-Perfect Letter From a Trump Sycophant, Annotated

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      State Senate President Chris Kapenga of Wisconsin.Scott Bauer/Associated PressFormer President Donald Trump recently accused three Wisconsin Republican leaders of “working hard to cover up election corruption” as he continued pushing lies about the November presidential vote. Mr. Trump delights in turning his fire on members of his party who he feels are being insufficiently servile. Many promptly prostrate themselves; a few shrug it off.Then there is State Senate President Chris Kapenga of Wisconsin, one of the Republicans singled out by Mr. Trump. He responded to the former president with a letter that approaches North Korean-style levels of Dear Leader obsequiousness.It is tempting to dismiss Mr. Kapenga’s missive as a desperate plea for Mr. Trump to stop picking on him — which it is. But it also provides a valuable master class in the art of Trump sycophancy. The text of the letter below has been annotated for instructional purposes.Mr. President,One of the most frustrating things to watch during your presidency was the continued attacks on you from fake news outlets with no accountability to truth.It is helpful early on to slip in a common Trumpian term like “fake news” or “Deep State” or “alternative facts.” This makes clear that you are operating in the same alternative reality as Mr. Trump.I can’t imagine the frustration you and your family felt. Unfortunately, in our positions of public service, we have to accept the reality that often “truth” in the media is no longer based on facts but simply what one feels like saying.Media bashing is a requirement when soliciting Mr. Trump. If you’re not willing to go there, don’t even bother.This leads me to your recent press release stating that I am responsible for holding up a forensic audit of the Wisconsin elections. This could not be further from the truth.The segue here from sucking up to gentle criticism is a smidge bumpy. And keep in mind that “truth” is a malleable concept for Mr. Trump.Let me first say that very few people have the honor of being named publicly by a United States president.Now you’re back on track: Having raised your concern, it is best to immediately backpedal and layer on more flattery. Plowing ahead with the details of your complaint without proper fertilizing risks getting Mr. Trump’s dander up.I never imagined mine would be mentioned, much less in this light, from a President that I have publicly supported, and still support.The genius of this sentence is that it sounds as though you’re expressing gratitude, even as you are expressing dismay.I feel I need to respond even though you will likely never hear of it, as the power of your pen to mine is like Thor’s hammer to a Bobby pin.Bonus points for going with a deity from Norse mythology. Mr. Trump clearly has a soft spot for the region, to the point that he expressed a desire for more Norwegian immigrants and even eyed buying Greenland from Denmark.Nevertheless, I need to correct your false claim against me.Oof. Another misstep: “False” is such a harsh, judgmental word. Would have been safer to go with “inaccurate” or, better still, “imprecise.”I never received a call from you or any of your sources asking about the election audit. If you had, I would have told you that long before your press release I called the auditor in charge of the election audit that is taking place in Wisconsin and requested a forensic component to the audit.Suggesting that Mr. Trump has behaved in any way other than perfectly is always dicey. What saves you here is immediately following up with reassurances that you, in fact, behaved exactly as he wanted.Prior to owning several businesses, I was an auditor, so I understand the importance of this being done to determine what took place in the last election. This will help guide us as legislators to put fixes in place for any issues found, and more importantly, to ensure the integrity of elections moving forward.Deft, fast pivot to expressing solidarity with Mr. Trump’s contention that there were serious voting “issues” requiring legislative “fixes.”I made specific requests on procedures and locations, both of which I have not, nor will not, disclose. If I am not satisfied with the procedures performed, I will request additional work be done. If anyone illegally attempts to hinder information from being obtained, I will use my subpoena powers to get it.Always good to throw in a bit of tough-guy posturing about how none of the libs or Deep State plotters can stand in the way of your mission.This leads me back to your press release. It is false, and I don’t appreciate it being done before calling me and finding out the truth. This is what both of us have fought against.It is unclear what anyone is fighting against here, but clarity should never be an impediment to flattery.Being cut from similar cloth in our backgrounds, and knowing that reparation must always be of more value than the wrong done, I have two requests.Curiously, Wikipedia identifies Mr. Kapenga as an accountant and business owner who has been in state politics for more than a decade. This would appear to make him as similar to the high-flying reality TV star and New York real estate scion as corduroy culottes are to cheetah-skin hot pants.First, I ask that you issue a press release in similar fashion that corrects the information and also encourages people to support what I have requested in the audit.Smart to sweeten your real ask by pairing it with something that Mr. Trump wants.Second, you owe me a round of golf at the club of your choice.Valiant attempt to lighten the mood while also playing to Mr. Trump’s vanity regarding the family business. Plus, offering him the chance to beat you at golf is smart, even if it requires you to throw the round.I write this as I am about to board a plane due to a family medical emergency.Bold move to appeal to Mr. Trump’s humanity.In addition to my Trump socks, I will pull up my Trump/Pence mask when I board the plane, as required by federal law.This bit of toadyism may feel like it’s going too far, but, with Mr. Trump, too far is never enough. And it never hurts to take a shot at the feds.I figure, if the liberals are going to force me to wear a mask, I am going to make it as painful for them as possible.Always remember that the throbbing heart of Trumpism is owning the libs.I will continue to do this regardless of whether or not I ever hear from you.Nice dismount! Emphasizes that you have internalized Trumpian values and will live by them even if the former president does not heed your imploration.Thank you for doing great things as our president.Always close with straight-up bootlicking. Don’t try to be fancy — or subtle.Respectfully,Chris KapengaWisconsin Senate President More

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      Wisconsin G.O.P. Wrestles With Just How Much to Indulge Trump

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      The former president set off infighting among state Republicans by saying they were not working hard enough to challenge the 2020 results, accusing them of covering up “election corruption.”Wisconsin Republicans were already going to great lengths to challenge the 2020 election results. They ordered a monthslong government audit of votes in the state. They made a pilgrimage to Arizona to observe the G.O.P. review of votes there. They hired former police officers to investigate Wisconsin’s election and its results.But for Donald J. Trump, it wasn’t enough.In a blistering statement last week on the eve of the state party’s convention, the former president accused top Republican state lawmakers of “working hard to cover up election corruption” and “actively trying to prevent a Forensic Audit of the election results.”Wisconsin Republicans were alarmed and confused. Some circulated a resolution at the convention calling for the resignation of the top Republican in the State Assembly, Speaker Robin Vos, who in turn announced the appointment of a hard-line conservative former State Supreme Court justice to oversee the investigation. The Republican State Senate president released a two-page letter addressed to Mr. Trump that said his claims about Republicans were false — but that made sure to clarify in fawning language the state party’s allegiance to the former president.“The power of your pen to mine is like Thor’s hammer to a Bobby pin,” the Senate president, Chris Kapenga, wrote, adding that he was wearing “Trump socks” and a “Trump-Pence mask” while boarding a commercial flight.It was all a vivid illustration of Mr. Trump’s domineering grip on the Republican Party, and of his success in enlisting officials up and down its hierarchy in his extraordinary assault on the legitimacy of the last presidential election. Nearly eight months after Election Day, Republicans are reviewing results in at least three states — Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia — and are trying to do so in others, including Michigan and Pennsylvania.They are likely to have little material success, since the results have long been certified and President Biden has been in office for months. But the effort to challenge state election results has raised doubts about the routine certification of future voting outcomes. It is also likely to have a far-reaching intangible impact on the acceptance of election results in a country where a significant majority of Republicans tell pollsters they believe the current president’s victory was illegitimate.In Wisconsin, Republicans have followed the lead of other G.O.P.-controlled states in passing a raft of new voting restrictions, though they are certain to be vetoed by Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat. But Mr. Trump’s demands to the state party to do more to indulge his election falsehoods have frustrated leading Republicans while exposing the Devil’s bargain that many G.O.P. lawmakers have made with him: Acceding to his ultimatums is never sufficient.“The legislative approach they’re taking to fix these problems with our voting systems is good,” said Matt Batzel, the Wisconsin-based national executive director of American Majority, a conservative grass-roots training organization. “But it was good for the base three months ago, and there’s shiny new things happening like the Arizona audit and the grass-roots moves on.”The competing narratives collided last weekend at the Republican Party of Wisconsin’s state convention, a typically sleepy off-year gathering that was instead dominated by Mr. Trump’s accusation that Republican leaders themselves were complicit in election wrongdoing.Wisconsin G.O.P. leaders expressed shock. In his otherwise ingratiating two-page letter, Mr. Kapenga, the State Senate president, pushed back forcefully on Mr. Trump’s claims. Mr. Vos, the Assembly speaker, who last month hired two former police officers to investigate the 2020 results, announced on Saturday that he had also hired Michael Gableman, a conservative former State Supreme Court justice who in November suggested that the election had been “stolen” from Mr. Trump, to oversee the inquiry.In an interview on Monday, Mr. Vos expressed his loyalty to Mr. Trump but argued that the former president is not a permanent fixture in Republican politics. He said Mr. Trump’s statement had come after seeing an incorrect report in the news media or receiving “bad information from his staff.”“I supported 95 percent of what Donald Trump did as president, right, which is as high as anybody could ever ask for because nobody’s perfect,” Mr. Vos said. “I’m not going to say the conservative movement lives or dies on whether or not Donald Trump is in the White House.”Michael Gableman, a conservative former State Supreme Court justice, spoke at a rally in support of former President Donald J. Trump after the election in November.Mike De Sisti/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, via USA Today NetworkIn a separate interview on Monday, Mr. Gableman declined to directly respond to questions about whether he believed Mr. Trump or President Biden was the rightful winner in Wisconsin, which Mr. Biden won by 20,682 votes out of about 3.3 million cast. Instead he, echoing other Republicans’ justification of their inquiries into the 2020 election, said the aim was to assuage doubts about how it was conducted — even though such doubts continue to be stoked by Mr. Trump and his allies.“Like a significant percentage of my fellow citizens, I am unsure of who the winner of the November 2020 presidential race in Wisconsin was when it is considered in the light of only those ballots that should lawfully have been counted,” Mr. Gableman said. “My hope is that this investigatory process will significantly reduce cause for such similar doubts in the future.”Few Republicans in the country swung harder and faster for Mr. Trump than those in Wisconsin. In the 2016 presidential primary, Scott Walker, the state’s governor at the time — whose own campaign ended after 71 days with a warning against nominating Mr. Trump — organized the party’s entire political and local media apparatus behind Senator Ted Cruz of Texas in what amounted to a last-ditch effort to stop Mr. Trump.Mr. Cruz won the state, the last one he’d carry before ending his campaign a month later. Most, but not all, Wisconsin Republicans quickly got on board with Mr. Trump. Paul D. Ryan, then the House speaker, dragged his feet on endorsing Mr. Trump. Charlie Sykes, at the time the most influential conservative talk radio host in the state, never did, and quit his job to become a Never-Trump commentator.Now, as they have in Georgia and Arizona, Mr. Trump’s false claims that he won Wisconsin’s presidential contest threaten to split Republicans. At the party convention on Saturday, Mr. Trump delivered a prerecorded message reiterating the lie that he won the state — though he didn’t mention any of the legislative leaders he had criticized the night before.“We had actually great results in Wisconsin,” Mr. Trump said. “As you know, in 2016 we won, and as you also know, in 2020 we won, but that hasn’t been so adjudged yet.”Mr. Kapenga’s letter to Mr. Trump was a telling distillation of the delicate way Republicans try to navigate the former president’s whims, combining ego-stroking and gentle pushback. He lightly scolded Mr. Trump for broadcasting misinformation, saying, “It is false, and I don’t appreciate it being done before calling me and finding out the truth,” before softening it with a request to play golf with Mr. Trump “at the club of your choice.”The letter concludes: “I write this as I am about to board a plane due to a family medical emergency. In addition to my Trump socks, I will pull up my Trump/Pence mask when I board the plane, as required by federal law. I figure, if the liberals are going to force me to wear a mask, I am going to make it as painful for them as possible. I will continue to do this regardless of whether or not I ever hear from you. Thank you for doing great things as our President.”Mr. Vos and Mr. Kapenga have advanced legislation to make absentee voting harder and forbid the mass collecting of early votes that the city clerk in Madison, the liberal state capital, engaged in last fall. But they have so far resisted, while not ruling out, calls to subpoena large numbers of 2020 votes and embark on an Arizona-style audit.“I want to see what Arizona actually discovers,” Mr. Vos said. “What’s legal in Arizona might be illegal here.”Robin Vos, the Assembly speaker, hired three former police officers last month to investigate the 2020 election results.Amber Arnold/Wisconsin State Journal, via Associated PressAt the convention Mr. Vos faced a resolution, which was handily defeated, that called for his resignation for not sufficiently defending Mr. Trump’s false election claims. Still, there were few voices condemning Mr. Trump.Yet one former state assemblyman, Adam Jarchow, defended Wisconsin Republican leaders in a rare statement from a Republican attacking the former president.“This is dumb and insane,” Mr. Jarchow, who has been a stalwart Trump supporter, said in a text message statement. “Trump is outside of his mind if he thinks any of those three would do what he is accusing them of.”He added: “If Trump thinks this is helpful, it’s not. It does what he did in — Georgia — which cost us the damn Senate.”Wisconsin Democrats, desperate to re-elect Mr. Evers next year and eager to win the seat held by Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican, have few ways to impede the G.O.P. investigation. Mark Spreitzer, the ranking Democrat on the State Assembly’s elections committee, said that in the absence of allegations that 2020 ballots were tampered with, there was little space for the investigation to conclude in a way that would satisfy Mr. Trump and his loyalists. (Unlike in Arizona, the false arguments that Mr. Trump won Wisconsin rest on the idea that some ballots were improperly collected, not that the ballots themselves were compromised.)“It’s been clear since the beginning that there isn’t much of a sense of direction among the Republicans,” Mr. Spreitzer said. “It’s not clear to me that they know how to tie a bow on this at the end. There isn’t going to be a smoking gun. How do you close this out?.”Some local Wisconsin Republicans are not waiting for the state investigations and are trying to take matters into their own hands. In rural Clark County, where Mr. Trump won 67 percent of the vote, the Republican Party chairwoman took out an advertisement this week in a weekly newspaper, The Shopper, seeking to raise $1,000 for a manual recount of the 15,000 ballots cast there in November. She encouraged other county parties to do the same.“The only way to vindicate the results,” wrote Rose LaBarbera, the G.O.P. chairwoman, “is to count the votes again.” More

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      Giuliani Law License Suspension: Read the Document

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      all ballots cast in the presidential audit.9 The hand audit, which relied exclusively on the

      printed text on the ballot-marking device, or bubbled-in the choice of the absentee

      ballot, confirmed the results of the election with a zero percent risk limit. Respondent’s

      statement that the vote count was inaccurate, without referencing the hand audits, was

      misleading. By law, this audit was required to take place following the election and be

      completed no later than December 31, 2020 (Ga Ann § 21-2-498). Respondent’s

      statements were made while the hand audit was proceeding and after it concluded. We

      understand that Dominion has sued respondent for defamation in connection with his

      claims about their voting machines (Complaint, US Dominion, Inc. v Giuliani, 1:21-cv-

      00213, US District Court, District of Columbia [Washington], January 25, 2021).

      Consequently, we do not reach the issue of whether respondent’s claims about the

      Dominion voting machines were false, nor do we need to.

      statements about the results of the Georgia election count are false. Respondent

      provides no basis in this record for disputing the hand count audit. Respondent made

      these statements at least on December 3, 2020 when appearing before the Georgia

      Legislature’s Senate Judiciary Committee, during a December 6, 2020 episode of the

      radio show Uncovering the Truth, during a December 22, 2020 episode of his radio

      show Chat with the Mayor, he alluded to it in a December 27, 2020 episode of

      9 In this motion, because the AGC only relies on the audit referred to in the Georgia Secretary of State’s January 6, 2021 letter to Congress, we only consider this one audit. Georgia’s election results were, however, actually audited three times, and no evidence of widespread fraud was discovered (Daniel Funke, Fact check: No evidence of fraud in Georgia election results (June 1, 2021), https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/06/01/fact-check-georgia- audit-hasnt-found-30-000-fake-ballots/5253184001/ [last accessed June 12, 2021]).

      In view of the hand counts conducted in Georgia, we find that respondent’s

      17 More

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      Michigan Republicans Debunk Voter Fraud Claims in Unsparing Report

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      The report, produced by a G.O.P.-led committee in the State Senate, exposes false claims made about the 2020 election by Trump allies in Michigan and other states.A committee led by Michigan Republicans on Wednesday published an extraordinary debunking of voter fraud claims in the state, delivering a comprehensive rebuke to a litany of accusations about improprieties in the 2020 election and its aftermath.The 55-page report, produced by a Michigan State Senate committee of three Republicans and one Democrat, is a systematic rebuttal to an array of false claims about the election from supporters of former President Donald J. Trump. The authors focus overwhelmingly on Michigan, but they also expose lies perpetuated about the vote-counting process in Georgia.The report is unsparing in its criticism of those who have promoted false theories about the election. It debunks claims from Trump allies including Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow; Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former president’s lawyer; and Mr. Trump himself.Yet while the report eviscerates claims about election fraud, its authors also use the allegations to urge their legislative colleagues to change Michigan’s voting laws to make absentee voting harder and limit the availability of drop boxes for absentee ballots, as Republicans have done in other swing states as they try to limit voting.“This committee found no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud in Michigan’s prosecution of the 2020 election,” the authors wrote, before adding: “It is the opinion of this committee that the Legislature has a duty to make statutory improvements to our elections system.”Michigan Republicans, who control the state’s Legislature, have for weeks debated a series of new voting restrictions. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, has said she will veto the legislation, but Michigan law allows citizens to circumvent the governor by collecting 340,047 signatures.Michigan’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said on Wednesday that she hoped Republican lawmakers would use the report to “cease their attempts to deceive citizens with misinformation and abandon legislation based on the lies that undermine our democracy.”Here are some of the conclusions from the Michigan report that debunked Trump allies’ claims about the election:Referring to Antrim County in Northern Michigan — where local election officials briefly and inadvertently transposed voting numbers before correcting them, leading to false conspiracy theories about voting machines — the report suggests that Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, a Democrat, should “consider investigating those who have been utilizing misleading and false information about Antrim County to raise money or publicity for their own ends.” It adds that anyone who promoted the Antrim County theories as the prime evidence of a nationwide conspiracy to steal the election had left “all other statements and actions they make in a position of zero credibility.”The Voter Integrity Project, a right-wing group, has said that 289,866 “illegal votes” were cast in Michigan. The report’s authors called 40 people from the group’s list of supposed voters who received absentee ballots without requesting them and found just two who said they had been sent unrequested ballots. One was on the state’s permanent absentee voter list. The other voted absentee in the 2020 primary election and may have forgotten about checking a box then to request an absentee ballot in the general election.The report found that the chaos that unfolded after Election Day as votes were counted at the TCF Center in Detroit was the fault of Republican operatives who called on supporters to protest the count. “The Wayne County Republican Party and other, independent organizations, ought to issue a repudiation of the actions of certain individuals that created a panic and had untrained and unnumbered persons descend on the TCF Center,” the report states.Claims that Dominion Voting Systems machines in Michigan and other states had been hacked to change results were false, the report said. The committee’s chairman, State Senator Ed McBroom, a Republican, called Georgia officials to investigate claims made by Jovan Pulitzer, who said he had access to manipulate vote counts. Mr. Pulitzer’s testimony “has been demonstrated to be untrue and a complete fabrication,” the report said. “He did not, at any time, have access to data or votes, let alone have the ability to manipulate the counts directly or by the introduction of malicious software to the tabulators. Nor could he spot fraudulent ballots from non-fraudulent ones.”Of Mr. Lindell’s wide-ranging claims of fraud and impropriety in vote-counting systems, the report states that “this narrative is ignorant of multiple levels of the actual election process,” before embarking on a lengthy debunking of his claims.While Mr. Trump claimed that more votes had been cast in Detroit than people who live there, the report found that turnout in the city was under 50 percent of eligible voters and about 37 percent of its population.No ballots were secretly “dumped” at the Detroit vote-counting center. “A widely circulated picture in media and online reports allegedly showed ballots secretly being delivered late at night but, in reality, it was a photo of a WXYZ-TV photographer hauling his equipment,” the report states. More

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      Para Netanyahu, al igual que para Trump, solo un ‘fraude’ puede explicar su derrota

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      La transición democrática de Israel está programada para el domingo, pero nada es seguro en medio de la campaña del actual primer ministro que busca destruir a la coalición de sus oponentes.TEL AVIV, Israel — El primer ministro Benjamin Netanyahu considera que Israel está presenciando “el mayor fraude electoral de su historia”. Para Donald Trump, la derrota del pasado noviembre fue “el crimen del siglo”. Al parecer, el vocabulario de los dos hombres coincide porque el abrumador sentido de invencibilidad de ambos se desconcierta ante el proceso democrático.El domingo, Naftali Bennett, un nacionalista de derecha, asumirá el cargo de primer ministro de Israel, si el parlamento lo aprueba, pero el ataque furioso de Netanyahu contra su probable sucesor no muestra signos de amainar. Netanyahu dijo que existe una conspiración del “Estado profundo”.Netanyahu acusa a Bennett de ejecutar una “liquidación del país”. Un “gobierno de capitulación” es lo que espera a Israel después de una elección “robada”, dice. En cuanto a los medios, supuestamente están tratando de silenciarlo a través del “fascismo total”.Aunque parece que finalmente se producirá una transición democrática y pacífica, nada es seguro en Israel.Los ataques del partido de Netanyahu, Likud, contra el pequeño partido de Bennett, Yamina, han sido tan atroces que algunos políticos de Yamina han necesitado escoltas. Idit Silman, una representante de Yamina en la Knéset, el parlamento israelí, dijo en una entrevista en Canal 13 que un manifestante afuera de su casa le había dicho que estaba dolido por lo que estaba pasando su familia y agregó: “Pero no te preocupes, en la primera oportunidad que tengamos, te mataremos”.Naftali Bennett en la Knéset, el parlamento de Israel, el lunesFoto de consorcio de Maya AlleruzzoLa apoteosis de los métodos intransigentes de Netanyahu ha dejado la violencia en el aire. Los eventos del 6 de enero en Estados Unidos, cuando una turba incitada por Trump irrumpió en el Capitolio, no están lejos de la mente de los israelíes.“Durante 12 años, Netanyahu se convenció de que cualquier otra persona que gobernara Israel constituiría una amenaza para su existencia”, dijo Dahlia Scheindlin, una analista política. “Sus tácticas enérgicas presentan un desafío directo para una transición pacífica del poder”.La división y el miedo han sido las herramientas políticas preferidas de Netanyahu; y al igual que Estados Unidos, Israel está dividido, hasta el punto en que el jefe del servicio de seguridad interna de Israel, el Shin Bet, advirtió hace unos días sobre “un discurso extremadamente violento e incitador”. Fue una advertencia inusual.La policía ha dicho que no permitirá una marcha de corte nacionalista que había sido programada para que el jueves transitara por zonas de mayoría musulmana en la Ciudad Vieja de Jerusalén, pero las opiniones al respecto están aumentando entre los políticos de derecha después de que la marcha original del Día de Jerusalén fuera cancelada el mes pasado debido al lanzamiento de cohetes de Hamás.El martes, el gabinete de seguridad de Netanyahu decidió reprogramar la marcha para el próximo 15 de junio, a una ruta que se acordará con la policía. Netanyahu ve la marcha como un importante símbolo de la soberanía israelí.Celebrar la marcha sería jugar con fuego, como demostró la corta guerra con Hamás el mes pasado. Al parecer, ahora le corresponderá al gobierno de Bennett resolver ese problema.No se ha presentado ninguna evidencia que respalde las afirmaciones de que el futuro gobierno de Bennett es todo menos el producto legítimo de las elecciones libres y justas realizadas en marzo en Israel, el cuarto proceso electoral llevado a cabo desde 2019, mientras que Netanyahu, acusado de cargos de soborno y fraude, se ha esforzado en preservar el poder.Netanyahu define a la endeble coalición de ocho partidos de Bennett, que van desde partidos de extrema derecha a partidos de izquierda, como un “peligroso” gobierno de izquierda. Pero no fue la izquierda la que derrotó al primer ministro.Son políticos de derecha como Bennet y Gideon Saar, el futuro ministro de Justicia, quienes se convencieron de que Netanyahu se había convertido en una amenaza para la democracia israelí.Hace tres meses los carteles electorales en Jerusalén mostraban a Netanyahu, a la derecha, y a sus rivales, Gideon Saar, Naftali Bennett y Yair Lapid.Ahmad Gharabli/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHaciendo referencia al suicidio masivo de judíos que se negaron a someterse al yugo romano en Masada, durante un discurso en el que explicaba su decisión de liderar un gobierno alternativo, Bennett dijo que Netanyahu “quiere llevarse consigo a todo el campo nacional y a todo el país a su propia Masada”.Fue una imagen extraordinaria, especialmente del exjefe de gabinete de Netanyahu, y captó la creciente impresión entre muchos israelíes de que el primer ministro estaba decidido, a cualquier precio, a usar la supervivencia política como herramienta para detener el proceso penal en su contra.“Debería haber renunciado cuando surgió la acusación en 2019”, dijo Yuval Shany, profesor de Derecho en la Universidad Hebrea de Jerusalén y exdecano de su Facultad de Derecho. “Cualquier político razonable habría dimitido. En cambio, se apresuró a atacar el poder judicial. A la larga, pareció que su principal objetivo político era lograr la inmunidad ante un acuerdo para su enjuiciamiento”.En otras palabras, lo personal, es decir mantenerse fuera de la cárcel, se había convertido en algo primordial para Netanyahu. Tanto es así que estaba dispuesto a socavar las instituciones fundamentales del Estado de derecho y la democracia, como la Corte Suprema, un poder judicial independiente y una prensa libre. En este sentido, los arrebatos de los últimos días han sido más una culminación que algo nuevo..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“Se convirtió en un político que haría todo lo posible, sin limitaciones”, dijo Shany.Está en compañía de otros líderes conocidos. Netanyahu, cuya inesperada victoria electoral en 2015 le dio una nueva sensación de omnipotencia, estableció vínculos estrechos con Viktor Orbán, el primer ministro húngaro, y con Trump. Netanyahu se sintió atraído por mandatarios de todo el mundo que tenían la intención de centralizar el poder en nuevos modelos antiliberales.Netanyahu y Trump en la Casa Blanca, el año pasado. Para ambos políticos ha sido difícil aceptar que sus derrotas electorales puedan explicarse por cualquier cosa que no sea un fraude.Doug Mills/The New York TimesLo que Netanyahu necesitaba, durante todas esas elecciones en Israel, era una mayoría lo suficientemente fuerte como para cambiar las leyes fundamentales del país con el propósito de hacer ilegal el enjuiciamiento a un primer ministro que esté en el cargo y quitarle a la Corte Suprema el poder de derogar esa legislación.Nunca obtuvo esa mayoría.“No hay duda de que quería reducir y minimizar la autoridad de revisión judicial de la Corte Suprema sobre la legislación de la Knéset y las decisiones administrativas de los órganos gubernamentales”, dijo Yohanan Plesner, presidente del Instituto de la Democracia de Israel. “Pero los controles y contrapesos de nuestra joven democracia están intactos”.Este domingo, es probable que esos controles y contrapesos lleven a Israel a un cambio democrático de gobierno. Pero Israel, a diferencia de Estados Unidos, es una democracia parlamentaria más que presidencial. Netanyahu no irá a un refugio soleado junto a un campo de golf. Como presidente de Likud, ejercerá un poder considerable.“No desaparecerá y no se callará”, dijo Merav Michaeli, líder del Partido Laborista, miembro de la nueva coalición. “Y llevará mucho tiempo reparar el daño”.El gobierno entrante está revisando la legislación que establecería un límite de dos mandatos para un primer ministro y obligaría a cualquiera que haya dirigido el país durante ocho años a pasar cuatro años fuera de la Knéset. Esto muestra cómo la democracia israelí se ha visto sacudida por los 15 años de Netanyahu en el poder.Merav Michaeli, dirigente del Partido Laborista de Israel e integrante de la coalición anti-Netanyahu, en una conferencia celebrada hace tres meses cerca de Tel AvivJack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNir Orbach, uno de los miembros del partido de derecha de Bennett que ha sido atacado por el Likud y que es objeto de presiones para cambiar de opinión sobre el apoyo a la nueva coalición, publicó su opinión en Facebook:“No es una decisión simple, pero responde a la realidad de esta vida en la que nos levantamos cada mañana con más de 700 días de inestabilidad gubernamental, una crisis civil, discursos violentos, y una sensación de caos, como al borde de la guerra civil”.Esa publicación es una buena expresión del agotamiento israelí ante la lucha retorcida de Netanyahu por la supervivencia política.Michaeli explicó: “Netanyahu ha estado erosionando la democracia de Israel durante mucho tiempo”. Haciendo referencia al asesinato de Yitzhak Rabin en 1995, continuó: “Recuerde, aquí tuvimos a un primer ministro asesinado. Estamos en una lucha constante por el temperamento y el alma de Israel. Pero prevaleceremos”.Los próximos días pondrán a prueba esa afirmación. Bennett instó a Netanyahu a “dejarse llevar” y abandonar su política de “tierra arrasada”. Pero esperar una salida cortés del primer ministro parece tan descabellado como habría sido esperarla del expresidente estadounidense, quien también afirmó que su derrota solo podía ser un robo.Roger Cohen es el jefe de la oficina de París del Times. Fue columnista de Opinión de 2009 a 2020. Ha trabajado para el Times durante más de 30 años y ha sido corresponsal extranjero y editor extranjero. Criado en Sudáfrica y Gran Bretaña, es estadounidense naturalizado. @NYTimesCohen More

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      Rejecting Biden’s Win, Rising Republicans Attack Legitimacy of Elections

      by

      The next generation of aspiring G.O.P. congressional leaders has aggressively pushed Donald Trump’s false fraud claims, raising the prospect that the results of elections will continue to be challenged through 2024.A Republican House candidate from Wisconsin says he is appalled by the violence he witnessed at the Jan. 6 rally that turned into the siege at the Capitol. But he did not disagree with G.O.P. lawmakers’ effort to overturn the presidential election results that night.In Michigan, a woman known as the “MAGA bride” after photos of her Donald J. Trump-themed wedding dress went viral is running for Congress while falsely claiming that it is “highly probable” the former president carried her state and won re-election.And in Washington State, the Republican nominee for governor last year is making a bid for Congress months after finally dropping a lawsuit challenging his 2020 defeat — a contest he lost by 545,000 votes.Across the country, a rising class of Republican challengers has embraced the fiction that the 2020 election was illegitimate, marred by fraud and inconsistencies. Aggressively pushing Mr. Trump’s baseless claims that he was robbed of re-election, these candidates represent the next generation of aspiring G.O.P. leaders, who would bring to Congress the real possibility that the party’s assault on the legitimacy of elections, a bedrock principle of American democracy, could continue through the 2024 contests.Dozens of Republican candidates have sown doubts about the election as they seek to join the ranks of the 147 Republicans in Congress who voted against certifying President Biden’s victory. There are degrees of denial: Some bluntly declare they must repair a rigged system that produced a flawed result, while others speak in the language of “election integrity,” promoting Republican re-examinations of the vote counts in Arizona and Georgia and backing new voting restrictions introduced by Republicans in battleground states.They are united by a near-universal reluctance to state outright that Mr. Biden is the legitimately elected leader of the country.Contractors working for Cyber Ninjas, a company hired by the Republican-controlled Arizona State Senate to review the state’s 2020 election results, moving supplies last month at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix.Courtney Pedroza for The New York Times“I would not have voted to certify Jan. 6, not without more questions,” said Sam Peters, a Nevada Republican who is campaigning for a Las Vegas-area House seat. He said he was not sure that Mr. Biden had legitimately won Nevada, even though the president did so by more than 33,000 votes.It’s unclear how long the reluctance to accept unfavorable electoral outcomes will remain a central focus of the party, and to what degree Republicans might support widespread election challenges up and down the ballot in the future.But Republicans’ unwavering fealty to the voter fraud myth underscores an emerging dynamic of party politics: To build a campaign in the modern G.O.P., most candidates must embrace — or at least not openly deny — conspiracy theories and election lies, and they must commit to a mission of imposing greater voting restrictions and making it easier to challenge or even overturn an election’s results. The prevalence of such candidates in the nascent stages of the party primaries highlights how Mr. Trump’s willingness to embrace far-flung falsehoods has elevated fringe ideas to the mainstream of his party.Over a year before the midterm elections, many of the fledgling primary races remain in flux, with scores of potential candidates still weighing bids. The Census Bureau’s delays in producing detailed population data have pushed the redistricting process back until at least September, which has impeded the recruitment of candidates for both parties.The result is that Republicans who have jumped into campaigns early tend to be those most loyal to Mr. Trump and the party base. Several among this new class of Republicans are likely to win their races, helped by historical trends favoring the party out of the White House, and a head start on fund-raising and meeting potential voters.Victories by these Republicans would expand the number of congressional lawmakers who have supported overturning the 2020 results, raising new doubts about whether Americans can still count on the routine, nonpartisan certification of free and fair elections.In South Carolina, Ken Richardson, a school board chairman, is challenging Representative Tom Rice, who voted to impeach Donald J. Trump. Mr. Richardson said he would not have voted to certify the 2020 results.Sean Rayford for The New York TimesMr. Peters already has a list of questions he would ask before voting to certify the 2024 election results, should he be in Congress then.“I’ll want to know that the elections have been transparent and that the states that have certified their elections did not have significant issues and questions that still haven’t been answered,” he said in a recent interview. “I want to know that the states have certified them properly.”Mr. Trump and his allies remain relentlessly focused on the false claims about the election. Steve Bannon, the on-and-off Trump adviser, said in an interview late last month with NBC News that challenging the results of the 2020 election was a “litmus test” for Republican candidates running in 2022 primary races. The former president has been pushing reviews of last year’s results, like a widely criticized Republican-commissioned audit in Arizona, and he continued his effort in a speech in North Carolina last weekend.Some party strategists fear that the denials of the election outcome could hurt candidates who progress to the general election in the crucial swing districts Republicans must win to take control of Congress.Polling shows a significant disconnect between Republicans and independent voters. A recent survey from Quinnipiac University found that two-thirds of Republicans believed Mr. Biden’s victory was not legitimate, an opinion shared by just 28 percent of independent voters.“It’s one of those things that is in the water with these very online, very loud and very active primary voters,” said David Kochel, a Republican strategist and veteran of Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush’s presidential campaigns. “It’s a problem and it’s dangerous for the party to continue to flirt with this conspiracy theory, but I don’t think Republicans are really paying a price for it.”The election-skeptical Republicans span safe districts and battlegrounds. Derrick Van Orden, running for a second time in a Democratic-held district in western Wisconsin that Mr. Trump carried in 2020, published an op-ed article defending his attendance at the Jan. 6 rally near the Capitol, saying he had gone to “stand for the integrity of our electoral system.”A “Stop the Steal” demonstrator outside the Capitol on Jan. 3 as members of the new Congress were sworn in. Three days later, rioting Trump supporters broke into the building.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMany Republicans are simply trying to deflect the question of Mr. Biden’s legitimacy with pledges to crack down on voter fraud, rebuild “election integrity” and support more voting restrictions.In December, State Senator Jen Kiggans of Virginia, campaigning for a competitive U.S. House seat based around Norfolk, issued a nearly 900-word statement on Facebook detailing her commitment to restoring “voter confidence” but making no mention of Mr. Biden or whether she disputed the 2020 results. (Her primary opponent, Jarome Bell, said during an interview with Mr. Bannon that people involved in election fraud should be sentenced “to death.”)“I agree with you 100% that it is right to question the electoral process and to hold those accountable who are responsible for ensuring our elections are conducted fairly with the utmost integrity,” Ms. Kiggans wrote in her statement.Even Republican candidates who acknowledge Mr. Biden as the legitimate winner say potential fraud needs to be addressed. Mary Ann Hanusa, a former official in President George W. Bush’s administration who is running for Congress in Iowa, said she would have voted to certify Mr. Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, but she added that because of the coronavirus, changes to voting practices in several states “were made outside of law and when you do that, it really opens up the door to fraud.”Senate primaries so far seem to be competitions to decide which candidates can cast themselves as the strongest allies of Mr. Trump and his quixotic quest to overturn the election results.Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama, who spoke at Mr. Trump’s Jan. 6 rally, is seeking a promotion to the Senate. Representative Ted Budd of North Carolina, whom Mr. Trump endorsed during his speech on Saturday night, introduced his Senate campaign with a video promising to “make sure our elections are fair” — a barely coded reference to Mr. Trump’s claims.In Ohio, a super PAC called the USA Freedom Fund is attacking official and prospective candidates for being insufficiently loyal to the former president and “America First” principles, while backing Josh Mandel, the Republican former Ohio state treasurer.“I am the only candidate in Ohio who gets up wherever he speaks around the state and has the guts to say this election was stolen from Donald J. Trump,” Mr. Mandel said last month on a podcast hosted by Mr. Bannon.Perhaps no 2022 House candidate embodies the new Republican ethos more than Loren Culp, a former one-man police department from rural Republic, Wash., who made his name by refusing to enforce a new state gun law in 2018. He spent weeks refusing to concede the governor’s race last year, and he sued state officials before dropping his lawsuit in January under pressure from the state attorney general.In an interview last week, Mr. Culp said he believed fraud had cost him the election, despite his loss by more than half a million votes to Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat.Now Mr. Culp is running to unseat Representative Dan Newhouse, a four-term Republican from a conservative and largely rural central Washington district who voted to impeach Mr. Trump in January. Mr. Culp said that he had a better chance of winning a House election than a statewide one because, he argued, Washington’s all-mail election system makes fraud too easy to perpetuate in the Seattle area.Loren Culp, right, Republicans’ nominee for governor of Washington last year, at a rally in Mount Vernon in August. He spent weeks refusing to concede the race and sued state officials.Elaine Thompson/Associated Press“I don’t believe that a real conservative will win a statewide race in Washington until we go back to in-person voting,” Mr. Culp said, echoing the skepticism of mail voting that Mr. Trump pushed for months leading into November. “Congressional districts are smaller geographical areas with less people dealing with the ballots. So it’s a whole lot easier to keep tabs on things.”Republican candidates’ 2020 skepticism comes as the party’s base voters, moving in near-lockstep with Mr. Trump and influential voices in the conservative media, have told pollsters that they, too, believe Mr. Biden was not the legitimate winner. G.O.P. candidates say it does not take much for their constituents to raise questions about the election to them.In South Carolina, Ken Richardson, a school board chairman who is challenging Representative Tom Rice, who voted to impeach Mr. Trump, said his events were regularly delayed because voters inundated him with questions about the election.“When I go to give a speech, it takes 10 to 15 minutes before I can start, because the election is the first thing anybody wants to talk about,” Mr. Richardson, who said he would not have voted to certify the 2020 election, said in a recent interview. “I go ahead and let them get it out of their system and then I can get started.”“There’s definitely a reason to doubt,” he added. “There’s doubt out there.”And then there is Audra Johnson, who became briefly famous in 2019 after wearing a “Make America Great Again” wedding dress created by Andre Soriano, a conservative fashion designer.Ms. Johnson is now running against Representative Peter Meijer of Michigan, a Republican who supported impeachment. She believes Mr. Trump was the rightful winner last year and said that, if elected, she would work to audit voting machines, enact a national voter identification law and create more “transparency” in election results.“It’s coming down to the point where anybody can vote in our elections,” she said. “That’s not how the system is supposed to be set up.” More

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      Democratic Report Raises 2022 Alarms on Messaging and Voter Outreach

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      A new report, in perhaps the most thorough soul-searching done by either party this year, points to an urgent need for the party to present a positive economic agenda and rebut Republican misinformation.Democrats defeated President Donald J. Trump and captured the Senate last year with a racially diverse coalition that delivered victories by tiny margins in key states like Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin.In the next election, they cannot count on repeating that feat, a new report warns.A review of the 2020 election, conducted by several prominent Democratic advocacy groups, has concluded that the party is at risk of losing ground with Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters unless it does a better job presenting an economic agenda and countering Republican efforts to spread misinformation and tie all Democratic candidates to the far left.The 70-page report, obtained by The New York Times, was assembled at the behest of three major Democratic interest groups: Third Way, a centrist think tank, and the Collective PAC and the Latino Victory Fund, which promote Black and Hispanic candidates. It appears to be the most thorough act of self-criticism carried out by Democrats or Republicans after the last campaign.The document is all the more striking because it is addressed to a victorious party: Despite their successes, Democrats had hoped to achieve more robust control of both chambers of Congress, rather than the ultra-precarious margins they enjoy.Read the reportThree prominent Democratic groups, Third Way, the Collective PAC and the Latino Victory Fund, conducted a review of the 2020 election.Read Document 73 pagesIn part, the study found, Democrats fell short of their aspirations because many House and Senate candidates failed to match Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s support with voters of color who loathed Mr. Trump but distrusted the Democratic Party as a whole. Those constituencies included Hispanic voters in Florida and Texas, Vietnamese American and Filipino American voters in California, and Black voters in North Carolina.Overall, the report warns, Democrats in 2020 lacked a core argument about the economy and recovering from the coronavirus pandemic — one that might have helped candidates repel Republican claims that they wanted to “keep the economy shut down,” or worse. The party “leaned too heavily on ‘anti-Trump’ rhetoric,” the report concludes.“Win or lose, self-described progressive or moderate, Democrats consistently raised a lack of strong Democratic Party brand as a significant concern in 2020,” the report states. “In the absence of strong party branding, the opposition latched on to G.O.P. talking points, suggesting our candidates would ‘burn down your house and take away the police.’”Former Representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Democrat who lost re-election in South Florida in November, said in an interview that she had spoken with the authors of the report and raised concerns about Democratic outreach to Hispanic voters and the party’s failure to rebut misinformation in Spanish-language media.“Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has in some ways lost touch with our electorate,” Ms. Mucarsel-Powell said. “There is this assumption that of course people of color, or the working class, are going to vote for Democrats. We can never assume anything.”The report, chiefly written by a pair of veteran Democratic operatives, Marlon Marshall and Lynda Tran, is among the most significant salvos yet in the Democratic Party’s internal debate about how it should approach the 2022 elections. It may stir skepticism from some quarters because of the involvement of Third Way, which much of the left regards with hostility.A fourth group that initially backed the study, the campaign finance reform group End Citizens United, backed away this spring. Tiffany Muller, the head of the group, said it had to abandon its involvement to focus instead on passing the For the People Act, a sweeping good-government bill that is stuck in the Senate.Former Representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Democrat, lost re-election in South Florida last year. She remains worried about her party’s outreach to Hispanic voters.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesMr. Marshall and Ms. Tran, as well as the groups sponsoring the review, have begun to share its conclusions with Democratic lawmakers and party officials in recent days, including Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.The study spanned nearly six months of research and data analysis that scrutinized about three dozen races for the House and the Senate, and involved interviews with 143 people, including lawmakers, candidates and pollsters, people involved in assembling the report said. Among the campaigns reviewed were the Senate elections in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, as well as House races in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Dallas, and in rural New Mexico and Maine.The study follows an internal review conducted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that was unveiled last month. Both projects found that Democratic candidates had been hobbled by flawed polling and pandemic-imposed limitations on campaigning.In the D.C.C.C. report, the committee attributed setbacks at the congressional level to a surge in turnout by Trump supporters and an inadequate Democratic response to attacks calling them police-hating socialists.Some lawmakers on the left have complained that criticism of left-wing messaging amounts to scapegoating activists for the party’s failures.Yet the review by Third Way, the Collective PAC and the Latino Victory Fund goes further in diagnosing the party’s messaging as deficient in ways that may have cost Democrats more than a dozen seats in the House. Its report offers a blunt assessment that in 2020, Republicans succeeded in misleading voters about the Democratic Party’s agenda and that Democrats had erred by speaking to voters of color as though they are a monolithic, left-leaning group.Representative Tony Cárdenas of California, who helms the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s political action committee, embraced that critique of Democratic messaging and said the party should discard the assumption “that voters of color are inherently more progressive.”“That’s been a ridiculous idea and that’s never been true,” Mr. Cárdenas said, lamenting that Republicans had succeeded in “trying to confuse Latino voters with the socialism message, things of that nature, ‘defund the police.’”Quentin James, the president of the Collective PAC, said it was clear that “some of the rhetoric we see from coastal Democrats” had been problematic. Mr. James pointed to the activist demand to “defund” the police as especially harmful, even with supporters of policing overhauls.“We did a poll that showed Black voters, by and large, vastly support reforming the police and reallocating their budgets,” Mr. James said. “That terminology — ‘defund’ — was not popular in the Black community.”A report by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee attributed the party’s setbacks to a surge in turnout by Trump supporters and an inadequate Democratic response to Republican attacks.Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesKara Eastman, a progressive Democrat who lost her bid for a House seat based in Omaha, said Republicans had succeeded in delivering a “barrage of messages” that tarred her and her party as being outside the mainstream. Ms. Eastman said she had told the authors of the 2020 review that she believed those labels were particularly damaging to women.Matt Bennett, a Third Way strategist, said the party needed to be far better prepared to mount a defense in the midterm campaign.“We have got to take very seriously these attacks on Democrats as radicals and stipulate that they land,” Mr. Bennett said. “A lot of this just didn’t land on Joe Biden.”Democrats maintained a large advantage with voters of color in the 2020 elections, but the report identified telling areas of weakness. Mr. Biden and other Democrats lost ground with Latino voters relative to the party’s performance in 2016, “especially among working-class and non-college voters in these communities,” the report found.The report found that a surge in Asian American turnout appeared to have secured Mr. Biden’s victory in Georgia but that Democratic House candidates ran behind Mr. Biden with Asian American voters in contested California and Texas races. In some important states, Democrats did not mobilize Black voters at the same rate that Republicans did conservative white voters.“A substantial boost in turnout netted Democrats more raw votes from Black voters than in 2016, but the explosive growth among white voters in most races outpaced these gains,” the report warns.There has been no comparable self-review on the Republican side after the party’s severe setbacks last year, mainly because G.O.P. leaders have no appetite for a debate about Mr. Trump’s impact.Republicans will continue to have structural advantages in Washington because of congressional gerrymandering and the disproportionate representation of rural white voters in the Senate and the Electoral College. Erin Scott for The New York TimesThe Republican Party faces serious political obstacles, arising from Mr. Trump’s unpopularity, the growing liberalism of young voters and the country’s growing diversity. Many of the party’s policies are unpopular, including cutting social-welfare and retirement-security programs and keeping taxes low for the wealthy and big corporations.Yet the structure of the American electoral system has tilted national campaigns toward the G.O.P., because of congressional gerrymandering and the disproportionate representation of rural white voters in the Senate and the Electoral College.Democratic hopes for the midterm elections have so far hinged on the prospect of a strong recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and on voters’ regarding Republicans as a party unsuited to governing.Representative Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, a moderate Democrat who was briefed on the findings of the report, called it proof that the party needed a strong central message about the economy in 2022.“We need to continue to show the American people what we’ve done, and then talk incessantly across the country, in every town, about how Democrats are governing,” Ms. Sherrill said.Largely unaddressed in the report is the immense deficit Democrats face among lower-income white voters. In its conclusion, however, Mr. Marshall and Ms. Tran write that Democrats need to deliver a message that includes working-class whites and matches the G.O.P.’s clear “collective gospel” about low taxes and military strength.“Our gospel should be about championing all working people — including but not limited to white working people — and lifting up our values of opportunity, equity, inclusion,” they write. More

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      At Once Diminished and Dominating, Trump Prepares for His Next Act

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      The former president speaks on Saturday to the North Carolina Republican convention, as he resumes political speeches and rallies.WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump, the former president of the United States, commutes to New York City from his New Jersey golf club to work out of his office in Trump Tower at least once a week, slipping in and out of Manhattan without attracting much attention.The place isn’t as he left it. Many of his longtime employees are gone. So are most of the family members who once worked there with him and some of the fixtures of the place, like his former lawyer Michael D. Cohen, who have since turned on him. Mr. Trump works there, mostly alone, with two assistants and a few body men.His political operation has also dwindled to a ragtag team of former advisers who are still on his payroll, reminiscent of the bare-bones cast of characters that helped lift a political neophyte to his unlikely victory in 2016. Most of them go days or weeks without interacting with Mr. Trump in person.But as he heads to the North Carolina Republican convention on Saturday night, in what is billed as the resumption of rallies and speeches, Mr. Trump is both a diminished figure and an oversized presence in American life, with a remarkable — and many say dangerous — hold on his party.Even without his favored megaphones and the trappings of office, Mr. Trump looms over the political landscape, animated by the lie that he won the 2020 election and his own fury over his defeat. And unlike others with a grievance, he has been able to impose his anger and preferred version of reality on a substantial slice of the American electorate — with the potential to influence the nation’s politics and weaken faith in its elections for years to come.Still blocked from Twitter and Facebook, he has struggled to find a way to influence news coverage since leaving office and promote the fabrication that the 2020 election was stolen from him.Some party leaders, like the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, are pretending he doesn’t exist anymore, while being deferential when Mr. Trump cannot be ignored.Others, like Senator Rick Scott of Florida, have tried to curry favor by presenting Mr. Trump with made-up awards to flatter his ego and keep him engaged in helping Senate Republicans recapture a majority in 2022.Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian, said Mr. Trump had defied the model of ex-presidents who lose an election and tend to fade away, and the experience of Richard M. Nixon, who was treated like a pariah in the way Mr. Trump has managed to avoid.As for being simultaneously big and small, Mr. Beschloss said: “He’s big if the metric is that politicians are afraid of him, which is one metric of power in Washington. Many Republican leaders are terrified of him and abasing themselves in front of him.”Jason Miller, an adviser to the former president, agreed on Mr. Trump’s control over the party.“There are two types of Republicans inside the Beltway,” Mr. Miller said. “Those who realize President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party and those who are in denial.”Even in defeat, Mr. Trump remains the front-runner for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2024 in every public poll so far. Lawmakers who have challenged his dominance of the party, like Representative Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican who implored her colleagues to reject him after the Jan. 6 riot by his supporters at the Capitol, have been booted from Republican leadership.From his strange dual perch of irrelevance and dominance, Mr. Trump has been narrowly focused on three things — his repeated, false claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” and his support for efforts to try to overturn the results; the state and local investigations into the practices of the Trump Organization; and the state of his business.Mr. Trump, who White House officials said watched with pleasure as his supporters stormed the Capitol and disrupted the Jan. 6 certification of the Electoral College vote, has told several people he believes he could be “reinstated” to the White House this August, according to three people familiar with his remarks. He has been echoing a theory promulgated by supporters like Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow, and Sidney Powell, the lawyer being sued for defamation by election machine companies for spreading conspiracy theories about the safety of their ballots.President Biden’s victory, with more than 80 million votes, was certified by Congress once the Jan. 6 riot was contained. There is no legal mechanism for reinstating a president, and the efforts by Republicans in the Arizona Senate to recount the votes in the state’s largest county have been derided as fake and inept by local Republican officials, who say the result is a partisan circus that is eroding confidence in elections.Nonetheless, Mr. Trump has zeroed in on the Arizona effort and a lawsuit in Georgia to insist that not only will he be restored to office, but that Republicans will also retake the majority in the Senate through those same efforts, according to the people familiar with what he has been saying.Mr. Trump’s supporters demonstrated outside the Dallas County elections office in Dallas in November.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesHe has pressed conservative commentators and writers to echo his claims that the election was rigged. His focus has intensified in recent weeks, coinciding with the empaneling of a special grand jury by Cyrus Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, into his businesses.Frustrated by the lack of coverage, he has expressed his anger in news releases that still refer to him as the “45th President of the United States.”“Next time I’m in the White House there will be no more dinners, at his request, with Mark Zuckerberg and his wife,” he said in a statement on Friday after Facebook announced it would keep its ban against him in place for at least two years. “It will be all business!”Last week, he shut down his blog after hearing from friends that the site was getting little traffic and making him look small and irrelevant, according to a person familiar with his thinking.Some of his aides are not eager to engage with him on his conspiracy theories and would like to see him press a forward-looking agenda that could help Republicans in 2022. People in his circle joke that the most senior adviser to the former leader of the free world is Christina Bobb, a correspondent with the far-right, eternally pro-Trump One America News Network, whom he consults regularly for information about the Arizona election audit.It remains to be seen what he says about the 2020 election during his appearance in North Carolina.Mr. Trump was eager to take back the microphone on Saturday night in Greenville, where aides said he planned to attack Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, as well as the Biden administration.“Joe Biden wants American taxpayers to pay reparations,” Mr. Trump was expected to say, according to an aide involved in drafting the speech. “I want the Chinese to pay American taxpayers reparations.”Mr. Trump’s first post-presidential rally is scheduled for later in June, followed by more appearances both for himself, paid for by his super PAC, and on behalf of House Republicans who support his agenda, advisers said.He has been so eager for an audience that he is even billed as a speaker who will appear live, via Jumbotron, at a rally in New Richmond, Wis., where the other headliners are Diamond and Silk, the MAGA movement social media stars, and Dinesh D’Souza, who received a presidential pardon from Mr. Trump for a felony conviction of making illegal campaign contributions.Despite the modest nature of some of the events he is interested in attaching his name to, even some his biggest detractors are loath to write him off.“I wish I was more confident it was ridiculous,” said Bill Kristol, a prominent “Never Trump” conservative. “It’s missing the forest through the trees to fail to see how strong he is.”Contractors packing boxes containing ballot tallies during the much-criticized Arizona Senate’s review of the vote in state’s largest county.Courtney Pedroza for The New York TimesBoth of his 2020 campaign managers, Bill Stepien and Brad Parscale, are on Mr. Trump’s payroll and still involved in his world. But Mr. Trump is episodically enraged with most members of his team.This time around, Jared Kushner, his son-in-law who oversaw his 2020 campaign operation, has mostly dropped out, telling the small circle of advisers around the ex-president that he wants to focus on writing his book and establishing a simpler relationship with Mr. Trump, where he is just a son-in-law. Donald Trump Jr. has stepped in as the most politically involved family member in his father’s life.Susie Wiles, the veteran Florida political consultant whom the former president and everyone in his orbit credit with winning the critical state in 2016 and again in 2020, oversees Mr. Trump’s fund-raising operation from Florida, shepherding the weekly conference call of the skeletal team that still runs the post-presidential operation.In the evenings, Mr. Trump has attended fund-raisers at his Bedminster, N.J., golf course, both for his own political action committee and for Republican candidates.But he has been eager to get back to holding rallies, announcing states where he planned to travel to before his team had finalized any venues or dates.“If you’re a one-term president, you usually go quietly into the night,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian. “He sees himself as leading the revolution, and he’s doing it from the back of a golf cart.” More