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      In Wisconsin, Mandela Barnes Is Already Looking Past the Democratic Primary

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      The Wisconsin Democratic primary isn’t until Tuesday, but after three of his top rivals dropped out of the race last month, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes is already sharpening his attacks against his Republican opponent, Senator Ron Johnson.In ads and speeches, Mr. Barnes has started hitting Mr. Johnson on what he calls a pattern of hurting the state’s manufacturing industry and failing workers. As he aims to make the race a referendum on Mr. Johnson, Mr. Barnes has his own vulnerabilities, and Republicans are certain to try to portray him as too left wing for Wisconsin.But his strengths, and Mr. Johnson’s own polarizing qualities (he has pushed false theories about the coronavirus pandemic and doubts about the 2020 election), are setting up a race that could help decide control of the Senate.“What he pulled off is pretty impressive — to coalesce the entire field behind him in such a short time,” said Joe Zepecki, a Democratic strategist in Wisconsin. “He is getting a head start, and you have to sort of just tip your cap to him.”Mr. Barnes, 35, is entering the primary as the clear favorite after three of his main competitors dropped out of the race in the span of one week in late July: Alex Lasry, an executive with the Milwaukee Bucks; Tom Nelson, executive of Outagamie County; and Sarah Godlewski, the state’s treasurer. All three have endorsed him.To consolidate the support, Mr. Barnes, who is the state’s first Black lieutenant governor and would be its first Black senator if he were to win, ran a tight campaign squarely centered on jobs and rebuilding the middle class. In an interview, he said his campaign had benefited from the kind of coalition building he did as a community organizer. He also said it came down to a broader recognition among Democrats that the stakes are just too high for infighting.“This is about uniting the party, but it is also about uniting the state,” Mr. Barnes said.He leads in fund-raising and name recognition among his remaining rivals, including Kou Lee, a restaurant owner; Steven Olikara, a musician; Peter Peckarsky, an investigative reporter, lawyer and consultant; and Darrell Williams, a state emergency management administrator.He has racked up endorsements from both progressive Democrats like Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, as well as centrists including Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina.Wisconsin is one of the nation’s most fiercely contested political battlegrounds. Along with Michigan and Pennsylvania, it was one of the key states in the country’s industrial core that Mr. Trump won in 2016, shattering the Democratic “blue wall” and leading to his election.Democrats have since made somewhat of a comeback. In 2018, Tony Evers was elected governor and Senator Tammy Baldwin won re-election. In 2020, President Biden won the state by just over 20,000 votes.Understand the Aug. 2 Primary ElectionsWhile the Trump wing of the Republican Party flexed its muscle, voters in deep-red Kansas delivered a loud warning to the G.O.P. on abortion rights.Takeaways: Tuesday’s results suggest this year’s midterms are a trickier environment for uncompromising conservatives than Republicans once believed. Here’s what we learned.Kansas Abortion Vote: In the first election test since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Kansas voters resoundingly decided against removing the right to abortion from the State Constitution, a major victory for the abortion rights movement in a reliably conservative state.Trump’s Grip on G.O.P.: Primary victories in Arizona and Michigan for allies of former President Donald J. Trump reaffirmed his continued influence over the Republican Party.Winners and Losers: See a rundown of the most notable results.The Senate race is expected to be close. Mr. Johnson, 67, who is seeking his third term, is one of the most vulnerable Republicans this cycle. A recent Marquette University Law School poll showed he was viewed favorably by 37 percent of respondents and unfavorably by 46 percent. Additionally, Mr. Biden’s poll numbers are poor, and out-of-power parties typically perform well in the midterms during a president’s first term.Mr. Johnson has alienated many voters by suggesting that gargling with mouthwash could fend off Covid-19 and saying people who don’t like Wisconsin’s abortion laws can move. He has downplayed the U.S. Capitol attack, saying it didn’t “seem like an armed insurrection” and floating theories that Democrats edited videos to exaggerate the mob violence.And the House Jan. 6 committee this summer surfaced embarrassing evidence that Mr. Johnson wanted to hand-deliver fake elector votes from Michigan and Wisconsin to Vice President Mike Pence. Mr. Johnson acknowledged receiving the package but claimed he did not know where it came from or what it contained.But Mr. Barnes stuck to economic issues in his first attack television ad against Mr. Johnson, echoing his message throughout the Democratic primary. The ad criticizes Mr. Johnson for publicly praising outsourcing and defending a company that moved jobs to China from Wisconsin. On the trail, Mr. Barnes has been criticizing the senator over his comments suggesting Social Security and Medicare should be eliminated as federal entitlement programs and instead should be approved annually by Congress.Senator Ron Johnson has faced scrutiny for controversial remarks he made regarding the U.S. Capitol attack, Covid-19 and Wisconsin abortion laws. Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesMr. Johnson has pushed back against the criticism and has argued he stood up for small businesses when he pushed for a tax provision in the 2017 Republican tax law to level the playing field for them. “A manufacturer himself, Ron Johnson helped Wisconsin small businesses remain competitive with the big guys by making sure they got a tax cut that helped businesses all across the state survive the pandemic,” said Ben Voelkel, a spokesman for Mr. Johnson, pointing to the measure.The provision also benefited his family-run plastics company.Independent fact checkers have found that the claim from at least one Democratic group arguing Mr. Johnson’s vote for the law rewarded “companies that outsource to China” was false, and a 2021 study by university researchers found the law decreased incentives for U.S. firms to move operations out of the country.But fact checkers have also found Mr. Johnson’s tax provision overwhelmingly benefited ultrawealthy Americans over small businesses.Mr. Barnes has been the target of criticism as well. He has been cited for paying his property taxes late, and Republican activists and local leaders have sought to paint him as a far-left Democrat who supports stances like abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.“Mandela Barnes will speak out of both sides of his mouth to convince voters that he is a moderate,” said Mark Jefferson, the executive director of the Republican Party of Wisconsin.At one point, Mr. Barnes was photographed holding an “abolish ICE” shirt, though he has said that is not his position. More recently, he opposed the Biden administration’s proposal to end Title 42, a Trump-era policy that was introduced during the pandemic and has been used to turn away most migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. Mr. Barnes argued that Mr. Biden should first have a comprehensive plan to handle an increase in people crossing the border.Mr. Barnes, whose father worked third shift at a General Motors factory and whose mother was a longtime schoolteacher, is betting his record and biography will help him weather the attacks. He became a community organizer after watching former President Barack Obama speak at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.By the time he was 25 in 2012, Mr. Barnes had defeated an incumbent state lawmaker in Milwaukee, his hometown. He lost a Senate bid four years later, but he won his race to become lieutenant governor in 2018 with Mr. Evers at the top of the ticket and a strict focus on the economy.Katie Rosenberg, the mayor of Wausau, Wis., said Mr. Barnes was talking about the issues residents care about, including affordable child care and health care, the expansion of broadband and the need to stop the corporate takeover of family farms. Earlier this year, the two visited small businesses wracked by the pandemic. They even got tattoos in support of a local tattoo parlor. Mr. Barnes featured it on his TikTok.“I am an optimist,” Ms. Rosenberg said. “I think he can do this. He has a lot of momentum.” More

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      Chuck Schumer Delivers on Climate Change and Health Care Deal

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      WASHINGTON — Senator Chuck Schumer was huddled in his Capitol office on Thursday evening awaiting a climactic meeting with Kyrsten Sinema, a critical holdout on his painstakingly negotiated climate change, tax and health care deal, when the loud booms and flashes of a powerful thunderstorm shook Washington, setting the lights flickering.Mr. Schumer and his aides, so close to a signature legislative achievement to top off a surprise string of victories, glanced anxiously at one another and wondered if it was a bad omen. A 50-50 Senate, a pandemic that kept Democrats constantly guessing about who would be available to vote and the sheer difficulty of managing the nearly unmanageable chamber had left them superstitious.“I’ve been a worrier all my life, but a happy worrier,” said Mr. Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader.He needn’t have fretted. After a half-hour meeting, Mr. Schumer shook hands with Ms. Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, who agreed to lend her support to the legislation in exchange for a few revisions and some home-state drought relief. After a grueling overnight session, the Senate approved the sweeping measure on Sunday, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tiebreaking vote. The House was expected to follow suit later this week.It was a head-snapping change in fortune. Just a few weeks earlier, Mr. Schumer, the Democratic agenda and the party’s chances of retaining its bare Senate majority all seemed in sorry shape as last-gasp negotiations over the broad legislation appeared to collapse for good under the weight of resistance from Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia.Instead, Democrats not only landed their biggest prize — the party-line climate and tax legislation — but also capped off an extraordinarily productive run for a Congress better known for its paralysis. It included passage of the first bipartisan gun safety legislation in a generation, a huge microchip production and scientific research bill to bolster American competitiveness with China, and a major veterans health care measure.The series of successes was all the more sweet for Democrats because it came with the political benefit of Republicans making themselves look bad by switching their position and temporarily blocking the bill to help sick veterans, in what appeared to be a temper tantrum over the abrupt resurrection of the climate deal.“We’ve had an extraordinary six weeks,” Mr. Schumer said in an interview, calling the climate, health and tax measure “the most comprehensive piece of legislation affecting the American people in decades.”It was far from certain he could attain this result. Mr. Schumer, who unlike his predecessors is not known as a master tactician or gifted legislator, has struggled to produce for long stretches, needing every single vote from an ideologically mixed Democratic membership. Even his allies wondered whether he was too driven by a need to be liked or his own personal political considerations in warding off a potential primary challenge from his left to be capable of the kind of ruthlessness that would be needed.Mr. Schumer said it was stamina, not bare knuckles, that had been the main requirement.“This is the hardest job I’ve ever had, with a 50-50 Senate, a big agenda and intransigent Republicans,” Mr. Schumer said. He cited a persistence instilled in him by his father, who ran an exterminating company and died last year, as a motivating factor. “Keep at it, keep at it. Look at all the pitfalls we have faced to get this done.”What’s in the Democrats’ Climate and Tax BillCard 1 of 6A new proposal. More

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      Fetterman Plans His Return to Campaign Trail in Pennsylvania Senate Race

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      Three months after John Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senate nominee, was sidelined by a stroke, he is planning to return to the campaign trail with a rally next Friday.Mr. Fetterman, the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, announced on Friday that he will hold the rally in Erie, Pa., his team said. He is facing Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor and Republican nominee, in one of the nation’s marquee Senate battles.Pennsylvania may offer the Democrats their best chance at picking up a U.S. Senate seat, and Mr. Fetterman’s general election debut, on the cusp of the intense fall campaign season, will be closely watched. For weeks after the stroke in May, he remained largely out of the public eye, releasing brief video clips as he recovered. In June, his campaign acknowledged that he also had a heart condition called cardiomyopathy. Mr. Fetterman said that he had “almost died,” and he promised to focus on his recovery.He has slowly begun to emerge, greeting volunteers in July and attending some in-person fund-raisers, while Dr. Oz has criticized him for his absence from the trail. Some who have listened to Mr. Fetterman at fund-raising events in recent weeks have said that he appears energetic but that it was sometimes evident that he was grasping for a word — something Mr. Fetterman has acknowledged.“I might miss a word every now and then in a conversation, or I might slur two words,” Mr. Fetterman told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last month. “Even then, I think that’s infrequent.” He added, “I feel like we are ready to run.”While Mr. Fetterman himself has had a light in-person campaign schedule, he and his team have maintained a relentless pace on social media, pursuing a range of creative tactics to cast Dr. Oz as more at home in New Jersey — which had been his longtime principal residence — than in Pennsylvania, where he says he now lives, in a Philadelphia suburb.Mr. Fetterman’s campaign tapped Nicole Polizzi of “Jersey Shore” fame — better known as Snooki — to record a video for Dr. Oz declaring that “Jersey will not forget you.” And Stevie Van Zandt, a renowned musician and actor who has reached legend status in his home state, recorded a direct-to-camera message to Dr. Oz urging him to “come on back to Jersey where you belong. And we’ll have some fun, eh?” For his part, Dr. Oz, a heart surgeon, has unveiled a site that criticizes Mr. Fetterman as a “basement bum” over his absence from the campaign trail. He has also sought to link Mr. Fetterman to President Biden, who has struggled with anemic approval ratings, and to Senator Bernie Sanders, whom Mr. Fetterman backed in the 2016 presidential primary.Public polling shows Mr. Fetterman with a sizable lead over Dr. Oz. But Pennsylvania is perhaps the ultimate swing state, and the race may tighten significantly before Election Day. On Friday, Mr. Fetterman’s campaign announced that it surpassed one million individual contributions since he announced his candidacy last year.“Whoever wins Erie County will win Pennsylvania,” Mr. Fetterman said in a statement announcing his plans for a rally. “Erie County is Pennsylvania’s most important bellwether county.” More

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      It’s a Long Leap From Sports Team Owner to U.S. Senator

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      Alex Lasry, son of a majority owner of the Milwaukee Bucks, learned there’s a difference between making fans happy and appealing to voters.MILWAUKEE — When Alex Lasry dropped out of the Democratic primary for Senate in Wisconsin on Wednesday, he said “there was no path to victory,” something no owner of a sports franchise ever wants to admit. He said he had concluded he could not beat Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and urged voters to rally behind Barnes to defeat the Republican incumbent, Senator Ron Johnson, in November.Lasry, 35, is a son of a billionaire owner of the Milwaukee Bucks, and has an ownership stake of his own valued at more than $50 million. He made the team, the 2021 N.B.A. champion, the centerpiece of his campaign by playing up the work he had done as a Bucks executive to help build Fiserv Forum and deliver higher wages to union workers. He frequently donned Bucks quarter zips, vests and other gear. He even traveled around the state with the N.B.A. trophy, drawing criticism for using it as a campaign prop.There are plenty of former athletes and coaches who have made the jump from the playing field or the sideline to Capitol Hill: Bill Bradley, J.C. Watts, Tom Osborne and, more recently, Tommy Tuberville.But it is much less common for the owners of sports franchises, whose faces are not so familiar, to inspire the same level of electoral fandom.Lasry’s wife, Lauren, held their daughter, Eleanor, as he spoke with a fairgoer. A native of Manhattan, he moved to Milwaukee in 2014 to work as a Bucks executive.Sara Stathas for The New York TimesSome owners have had a hard time keeping sports out of the conversation. During his unsuccessful Republican primary campaign for Senate in Ohio, Matt Dolan, whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians, was lambasted by former President Donald J. Trump over the team’s decision to change its name from the Indians, which Trump mocked as a sop to the politically correct.And in Georgia, Kelly Loeffler attacked the Black Lives Matter movement, so incensing members of the W.N.B.A. team she owned at the time, the Atlanta Dream, that they campaigned against her. She lost her Senate seat to Raphael Warnock, whose 2022 opponent is Herschel Walker, the former N.F.L. running back.Senator Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, a previous owner of the Bucks, was a rare team owner who made it to Washington. But he was already a known quantity through his family’s grocery and department stores and as chair of the state Democratic Party.“Herb Kohl put in the legwork,” said State Senator Chris Larson, a Milwaukee County Democrat who dropped out of the primary last August and endorsed Barnes. “Lasry and his family were just trying to come in and buy that.”Alex Lasry grew up in Manhattan as a son of Marc Lasry, a hedge fund manager and Democratic fund-raiser. A star point guard for his high school team who continues to play pickup basketball regularly, Alex Lasry moved to Milwaukee in 2014, after his father was part of a group that purchased the Bucks that year from Kohl for $550 million.Marc Lasry, center, celebrated after the Milwaukee Bucks defeated the Phoenix Suns to win the 2021 N.B.A. championship at Fiserv Forum.Jonathan Daniel/Getty ImagesWhen he began his Senate candidacy in February 2021, Alex Lasry had to overcome skepticism that his résumé was light on accomplishments and heavy on nepotism. By late June, he had surged to a clear second in a crowded field of longtime politicians, according to a Marquette Law School survey. He had also lined up an impressive roster of supporters — including Cavalier Johnson, the mayor of Milwaukee — as well as labor leaders who credited him with being a strong community presence.“I find him very easy to talk to, very down to earth,” said Daniel Bukiewicz, president of the Milwaukee Building & Construction Trades Council.Lasry largely self-funded his campaign, pouring $12.3 million into it even though he initially said he would depend on grass-roots support. In the second quarter of 2022, his campaign spent $6.7 million — or more than his Democratic rivals combined.He also had some notable donors from the sports world, like Jerry Reinsdorf and Michael Reinsdorf of the Chicago Bulls, who were beaten by the Bucks in the playoffs this year, and Stephen Pagliuca and David Bonderman, owners of the Boston Celtics, the team that bounced the Bucks from the playoffs. Other contributors were Adam Silver, the N.B.A. commissioner; Jason Kidd, the Bucks coach when Lasry arrived in Milwaukee; Casey Close, a prominent sports agent; and Rachel Nichols, a former ESPN broadcaster.Alex Lasry, left, celebrated with Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and Tom Barrett, mayor of Milwaukee, in March 2019 after the announcement that the Democratic National Convention would be held at Fiserv Forum. Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, via Associated PressOn his Senate disclosure form, filed in August 2021, Lasry listed $100 million to $273 million in assets. One investment was his partnership in Sazes Partners, a family holding company, records show.Through Sazes, Lasry reported owning $5 million to $25 million of Sessa Capital, a private equity fund. John Petry, the founder of Sessa Capital, has played in charity poker tournaments with Marc Lasry to benefit Education Reform Now, a nonprofit advocacy group.The Lasry family’s ties to Sazes did not become public before he quit the race, but they might have caused a stir if they had. Sessa is the fourth-biggest shareholder in Chemours, a manufacturer of PFAS, which have been linked to cancer and are often called “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down in water. Chemours is among the companies being sued for environmental contamination — including, last week, by Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul of Wisconsin.Asked last week about Lasry’s substantial family stake in a major Chemours shareholder, Christina Freundlich, a campaign spokeswoman, said that Lasry applauded the efforts of Evers and Kaul “holding any and all polluters accountable” and that he has urged Congress to establish PFAS regulations.No matter. By Wednesday it was game over. At a news conference in front of the Fiserv Forum, Barnes praised Lasry’s campaign, saying he departs without having made any new enemies.That’s a notable achievement for a politician or a sports owner.Kitty Bennett More

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      Finally, a Dr. Oz Show That I Really Want to Watch

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      I must have watched a few whole episodes of “The Dr. Oz Show” when I wrote a long profile of Mehmet Oz for The Times Magazine back in 2010, but afterward? Please. I’m a glutton, but not for punishment, and the snippets of the show that I’d happen upon convinced me that snippets sufficed. Oz was more huckster than healer, more showman than shaman, grinning dopily as he sacrificed his integrity on the altar of ratings. I encountered enough Faustian parables of that ilk as a journalist covering politics. I didn’t need them in my daytime television.But I’m enthralled by Oz’s newest production, by which I mean his campaign for the Senate. It may be my favorite Senate race ever.By “favorite” I don’t mean that it inspires me, at least not to anything but disputably clever prose. I mean that it has such a surfeit of unlikely details, such a concentration of modern political themes.Such enormous stakes, too. While Republicans are very likely to win back the House in November 2022, thanks to the normal midterm pendulum swing and voters’ profound economic anxiety, Democrats have a real chance to hold on to the Senate, and their fate probably rests on a few key contests, including the one in Pennsylvania between Oz, the Republican nominee, and John Fetterman, his Democratic rival. They’re vying for the seat being vacated by Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican who’s retiring.You couldn’t script a matchup like this. Oz, an accomplished surgeon, has spent decades enshrining himself as a trim, taut, manically energetic paradigm of peak health; I sometimes look at him and just see a big bowl of leafy greens and ancient grains dressed with low-fat yogurt. I look at Fetterman and see a sausage pizza. (I think I mean that as a compliment.)Fetterman, the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, suffered a stroke just days before the Democratic primary in May and spent the next two months off the campaign trail, in recovery. He said recently that his hearing still isn’t what it used to be. He also disclosed that he’d been diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat in 2017 but hadn’t faithfully taken his prescribed medication or even returned to the doctor over the next five years.So it’s the health truant versus the health tyrant.But it’s also the television wizard versus the Twitter wiseacre. Oz knows how to woo and wow a small-screen audience, but, as the subhead of an excellent recent article by Matthew Cantor in The Guardian noted, Fetterman “is wielding social media might against star power.”The Fetterman campaign operates in extreme meme mode, trolling Oz in particular for being a New Jerseyan in unpersuasive Pennsylvania drag. It deconstructed the décor in an Oz campaign video to show that he was speaking from a room in his New Jersey manse. It hired the “Jersey Shore” star Nicole (Snooki) Polizzi to beckon Oz home in a video clip that got more than three million views on Twitter.It followed that inspired mischief with a video in which another recognizable ambassador for New Jersey — the guitarist Steven Van Zandt, who plays in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band and had a role in “The Sopranos” — cautions Oz about his Pennsylvania misadventure.But the most devastating recent Oz taunt came from outside the Fetterman campaign, in the form of an ad that documented the doctor’s recurring promotion of bogus miracle cures and used footage from “The Wizard of Oz” to shame him for it. Dorothy, Toto and the gang never performed a nobler service.Oz is off. He responded to the sneak Snooki attack with a cringe-inducing game of famous-acquaintance one-upmanship. “She’s been on my show,” he told Dom Giordano, a Philadelphia talk-radio host. “I know all these celebrities. I could actually have celebrities do my campaign for me.”Take that, John Fetterman! You may have a consistent political ideology. Oz has been to the Emmys.Therein lies a Republican predicament. With Oz in Pennsylvania, Herschel Walker in Georgia and, to a lesser extent, J.D. Vance in Ohio, the party has nominated Senate candidates whose star statuses aren’t paired with comparable political acumen and whose flaws or fumbles have given their Democratic counterparts a better chance than they might have had against more experienced, more traditional candidates.Fame is funny that way. It can be redeemed for many things but not for everything. And the blessing of Donald Trump — which Oz, Vance and Walker all received — is funny, too. It giveth in the primary only to taketh away in the general, or at least (fingers crossed) that’s a distinct possibility.Despite Fetterman’s stroke and convalescence, he has been raising much more money than Oz has. He was more than five points ahead of Oz in two June polls. The National Review columnist Jim Geraghty called Oz “the wildly underperforming Ford Pinto of Republican Senate candidates.”Not even a Tesla in vain search of a charging station? Whatever the beleaguered vehicle’s make and model, I can’t take my eyes off this car wreck.For the Love of SentencesAl Drago/Associated PressPerhaps the most nominated sentence of the week was by a Times critic who appears frequently in this feature, James Poniewozik, about how quickly social media accounts screen-grabbed and mocked new images of Senator Josh Hawley fleeing the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot: “To paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz, it was the continuation of politics by other memes.” (Thanks to David Carlyon of Manhattan and Keith Herrmann of Raleigh, N.C., among others, for drawing attention to this.)Monica Hesse, in The Washington Post, weighed in on what Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee, had been through: “Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) reportedly said that Cheney’s failure to support Trump after the insurrection was like looking up in the stands to ‘see your girlfriend on the opposition’s side.’ The sexism was breathtaking: The idea that the third-highest ranking Republican in the House would be thought of not as a senior member of the party but as a groupie whose loyalty could be thrown on and off like a letterman jacket.” (Phil Carlsen, South Portland, Maine)Also in The Post, Matt Bai questioned the praise for the former Trump aides Sarah Matthews and Matthew Pottinger: “If we have Matthews and Pottinger to thank for airing the truth about Trump’s final days, then we have them to thank for that legacy, too.” (Mark Van Loon, Hamilton, Mont.)And Paul Schwartzman had fun analyzing the uncertain fortunes of Representative Jerry Nadler of New York: “Nadler’s Jewishness has taken on new importance since redistricting has left him in a pickle.” (Michael Schooler, Washington, D.C.)Stepping back to marvel at what has become of Republicans in the Trump era, Tom Nichols wrote in his newsletter in The Atlantic: “In the Before Times, we still argued over politics instead of whether communist Muslims had taken over our Venezuelan voting machines with help from the Italian space program.” (Jim Price, Oak Park, Ill.)Taking stock from a different vantage point, Gail Collins wrote in The Times: “Donald Trump got elected president and those of us who make fun of politicians for a living moved into a land of perpetual opportunity.” (Steve Cohen, Reston, Va.)Moving away from politics — because who doesn’t want to? — Joshua Sokol pondered the amazing recent photographs from the James Webb Space Telescope in the context of the revelatory, epochal pictures from space telescopes past: “Will anything land as hard as the Apollo shots? Or the Hubble pics, plastered on science classroom walls and aped by everyone from Terrence Malick to the ‘Thor’ movies? We’ll see. But for now, at least, the tap is open, and the universe is pouring in.” (Harry Schaefer, Silver Spring, Md.)In The Times, J. Kenji López-Alt rhapsodized about the various deployments of onions in a burger suffused with them, including “gnarled, nearly burned shreds that frizzle out of the burger’s edges the way my daughter draws hair with crayons.” (Jeannie Ianelli, Seattle)Alexis Soloski profiled Neil Patrick Harris: “His personality is fizz and bounce, with just a touch of guile. He tends to look like he is up to something. Something fun.” (Katie Baer, Pittsboro, N.C.)And in The Los Angeles Times, the theater critic Charles McNulty wrote: “If the Cheesecake Factory were a musical, it would no doubt look and sound much like ‘Moulin Rouge.’ The temptations are obvious, the portions huge and the goal is satiety to point of button-popping exhaustion.” (Robert Potter, Los Angeles)To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here, and please include your name and place of residence.Bonus Regan Picture!Frank BruniI’ve marveled in past newsletters at the crazy variety of positions in which my beloved Regan sleeps. Almost as confounding is the variety of places where she sleeps. I can find no rhyme, reason or pattern to her choices, many of which seem to fly in the face of comfort.Here she is below the dining room table. Does she imagine herself in some wolf’s den — some cave? There’s a couch upstairs that she likes to put half, but only half, of her body under. And one night out of every 100, she departs from her usual habit of jumping onto my bed and instead flattens herself and crawls all the way beneath it. The space there is so tight that I once had to pull her out of it in the morning.She seemed strangely unfazed. And characteristically well rested.On a Personal NoteGetty ImagesIs the real Glenn Thompson the congressman who voted against marriage equality last week or the father who, three days later, attended his gay son’s wedding to another man and gave a loving speech about how happy he was for the couple?Friends keep asking me that, as if being gay and writing about politics affords me some special insight. Nope. I have only the same curiosity and pique that so many others do. I have questions. I have observations.Thompson is a Republican who represents a conservative Pennsylvania district. He joined 156 other House Republicans — the overwhelming majority of them — in voting no on a bill that Democrats had put forward to codify same-sex marriage and interracial marriage into law before the Supreme Court could potentially revisit the 2015 ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. The bill passed anyway.I guarantee you that there were opposing votes in addition to Thompson’s by Republicans with gay relatives and friends whom they otherwise support. But in a testament to the human talents for compartmentalization and rationalization, those Republicans performed a mental split of public and private, of professional and personal, that permitted them to vote in violation of cherished relationships.I suppose some of them believe that you can fully embrace a gay person without endorsing that person’s right to marry, but that’s a feat of moral needle-threading well beyond my ken. Others probably reasoned that they had to vote as they did to save their jobs or to safeguard other priorities. Life is indeed all about trade-offs.But how do you trade away your own son’s dignity? And what do you say to him after you’ve done so, or when he’s cutting his wedding cake?Thompson’s son hasn’t really spoken out. Neither has Thompson’s son-in-law. Maybe that reflects an impressive capacity for forgiveness and grace. Maybe the young men are just focused, for now, on honeymooning.Or maybe they try to look at the bright side. There’s indeed a bright side here: In an era of profound partisanship, 47 House Republicans joined 220 House Democrats to support the marriage equality bill, and there’s a definite chance that it can garner just enough Republican support in the Senate to prevent a filibuster. That speaks to how much progress has been made on the gay-rights front over recent decades and how much the country has changed.It doesn’t erase my concerns about many Republicans’ resurgent vilification of gay people, slandered as “groomers” by a hateful contingent within the party. But it suggests a strain of understanding, a ray of enlightenment. That consoles me somewhat. I hope it consoles Thompson’s son, too. More

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      Senator Raphael Warnock uses a new ad to pressure Herschel Walker to commit to a debate.

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      ATLANTA — A new advertisement from Raphael Warnock, Georgia’s incumbent Democratic senator, pushes the state’s Republican Senate nominee, Herschel Walker, to debate Mr. Warnock.“Stop dodging. Commit to debates,” reads an onscreen message in the 30-second television spot, which began airing in Georgia’s top four media markets on Tuesday, juxtaposed against Mr. Walker’s recent comments about his openness to debating Mr. Warnock.The ad is part of a weekslong saga between the two candidates: While Mr. Walker has repeatedly pledged to debate Mr. Warnock, his campaign has not accepted invitations to any of the three matchups scheduled for this fall. Mr. Warnock has committed to attending an Oct. 16 debate hosted by the Atlanta Press Club, in addition to two others in Macon and Savannah later that month; those dates have not yet been finalized.During a news conference in Athens, Ga., last Wednesday, Mr. Walker told reporters that he would be “ready to go” for the Oct. 16 debate if the two campaigns “negotiate and we get everything right.”His spokeswoman, Mallory Blount, later issued a statement saying that Mr. Walker’s campaign “doesn’t care about the old way of doing things” and that any debate it ultimately agreed to “must have a fair and equitable format and unbiased moderator.”Mr. Warnock’s campaign has used Mr. Walker’s hesitance to underscore its argument that he is not prepared to serve in the Senate.“I don’t know if Herschel Walker is scared for voters to hear what he has to say, or scared for voters to hear that he’s unprepared to speak on the issues that matter most to the people of Georgia,” Quentin Fulks, Mr. Warnock’s campaign manager, said in a statement. “There’s a clear choice in the race for Senate, and we hope Herschel Walker will be true to his word and commit to joining us at three debates.” More

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      in Elections

      There Are 100 People in America With Way Too Much Power

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      Toward the end of my Tuesday column on the Senate, I gestured toward the idea of making it into something like the British House of Lords, which has limited power to veto legislation or make policy. Most democracies with bicameral national legislatures have done something similar, empowering their lower, popular chambers and weakening their upper chambers.The Canadian Senate, for example, acts mainly as a council of revision, amending legislation that comes out of the House of Commons. It can reject legislation, but it rarely exercises that power. The Australian Senate has much more power to block legislation from the House, but the chamber is more democratic than its American counterpoint in that it is apportioned by proportional representation.The United States stands alone with a Senate that is powerful enough to grind the entire legislature to a halt. You could end the filibuster, of course, and that would improve things, but it would take a constitutional amendment to do any root and branch reform of the Senate.Let’s say that amendment was on the table. What would it say?What I would write is simple. I would repeal the 17th Amendment, returning the election of senators to each state legislature, and restoring the federal nature of the chamber. But to compensate for the end of popular election of senators, I would also strip the Senate of its power to introduce or veto legislation.In my vision, the Senate would be a council of revision that continues to represent the states as states. I think this is necessary because the United States will likely be a federal democracy for as long as it exists, and the system should probably accommodate the interests of state governments (insofar as they exist) in one way or another.My Senate could not block House legislation, but it could offer amendments if it chose to take action. Those amendments would then be voted on by a conference committee of House and Senate members, for final approval. If the Senate decides to hold a bill for revision, it has a set amount of time — let’s say 60 days — with which to act. If it does not act in that time, the bill is deemed passed and goes to the president for signing.The Senate would retain its oversight powers as well as its power to approve treaties and offer “advise and consent” to the president for judicial and executive branch nominees. But “advise and consent” would mean an actual hearing and an actual vote.The idea is to move the locus of policymaking back to the House of Representatives (which I would like to enlarge to at least 600 members), and to make it the most important chamber in the operation of government. In this scheme, it might be worth extending House terms to three years to reduce the pressures of campaigning and allow members more time to develop expertise, should they seek it.My basic principle here is that the popular chamber of Congress should also be the most influential one. You see some of this in the Constitution as written — Article I, Section I establishes the Congress and Section II establishes the House — but I’d like to make it the defining part of our constitutional system. I also think that we’d have a more agile and effective government if we removed the veto point that is the Senate.My scheme for transforming the structure of American government is a little broader and more nuanced than this (I’d like to extend federal representation to territories and Americans abroad, for example), but these are the basics of a major part of it. The Senate is too powerful. Let’s cut it down to size.What I WroteMy Tuesday column was on the problem of the Senate:It may seem odd to blame the institution for this outcome. It’s not as if there is any alternative to passing legislation through both chambers of Congress. But it’s also no accident that climate legislation has repeatedly been passed in the House only to collapse in the Senate. It is no accident that, as a general rule, the upper chamber is where popular legislation goes to die or, if it isn’t killed, where it is passed in truncated and diminished form, like the recent (and lackluster) bipartisan gun bill. The Senate was built with this purpose in mind. It was designed to keep the people in check — to put limits on the reach of democracy and the scope of representation.And my Friday column was on the problem of the Electoral College (a recurring theme, I know):The Electoral College makes it difficult to see that each state contains a multitude of political perspectives, and that our democracy might be a little healthier if the vote of a Seattle Republican mattered as much for the outcome of a presidential election as that of a Green Bay Democrat.Now ReadingErwin Chemerinsky in defense of judicial review for The American Prospect.Corey Robin on Clarence Thomas for The New Yorker.Sarah Jones on the anti-abortion movement for New York magazine.Vanessa Williamson on taxation for Dissent.B.D. McClay on sore winners for The Outline.Feedback If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to your friends. They can sign up here. If you want to share your thoughts on an item in this week’s newsletter or on the newsletter in general, please email me at jamelle-newsletter@nytimes.com. You can follow me on Twitter (@jbouie), Instagram and TikTok.Photo of the WeekI took this years ago at a Civil War re-enactment marking the 150th anniversary of the surrender at Appomattox. The Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant re-enactors were having a coffee and relaxing a bit before the day’s festivities.Now Eating: Curried Broccoli and Cauliflower SaladThis recipe is from the wonderful book “Jubilee: Recipes From Two Centuries of African American Cooking,” by Toni Tipton-Martin. It is very easy to put together, and very, very good. This recipe makes enough for about four people, and you can easily double it if you’re cooking for a group. I didn’t make any adjustments to the salad the last time I made it, but what I will recommend is to make your own mayonnaise. It’s pretty easy, and the results are far superior to anything you can get from the store.Ingredients4 slices bacon½ cup mayonnaise¼ cup sugar1 tablespoon cider vinegar¼ teaspoon curry powder or more, to tasteSalt2 cups broccoli florets, trimmed and cut into bite-size pieces¼ cup sliced celery.2 cups cauliflower florets, trimmed and cut into bite-size pieces⅓ cup plus one tablespoon raisins⅓ cup plus one tablespoon toasted slivered almondsDirectionsIn a medium skillet, cook the bacon over medium-high heat until crisp, about 7 minutes. Drain on paper towels and crumble when cool enough to handle. Reserve the fat for another use.In a small bowl, mix together the mayonnaise, sugar, vinegar, curry powder, and salt to taste.In a serving bowl, layer the broccoli florets, celery, and cauliflower. Pour on all the dressing. Add a layer of raisins, then almonds, then top with the bacon. Cover with a tightfitting lid or plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 8 hours or overnight. Toss before serving. More