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      Solomon Peña Cheered Trump on Jan. 6. Now He’s Accused of Targeting Democrats.

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      Solomon Peña, who lost his bid to become a New Mexico lawmaker, faces charges in a series of shootings. “He had a belief process that he was cheated,” the Albuquerque police chief said.ALBUQUERQUE — A former Republican candidate accused of orchestrating attacks on the homes of Democratic rivals cited the need to threaten “civil war” to achieve political change, according to police investigators, who said that a bullet fired in the attacks passed close enough to a sleeping girl to leave her face spattered with dust.The series of shootings in the wake of the November elections followed other episodes of politically motivated violence across the country in recent months — including an attack on the husband of Speaker Nancy Pelosi — and rattled the political establishment in New Mexico, where Democrats hold both chambers of the Legislature and the governor’s office.After seeking a state legislative seat, Solomon Peña, 39, a supporter of Donald J. Trump who attended the pro-Trump rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, refused to concede, despite losing by 48 percentage points to an incumbent in a district that has long voted for Democrats. He was arrested on Monday in connection with the shootings at the homes of four Democratic officials.“He had a belief process that he was cheated,” Chief Harold Medina of the Albuquerque Police Department said in an interview on Tuesday. The police filed a rash of charges against Mr. Peña, including criminal solicitation, attempted aggravated battery, shooting at an occupied dwelling, shooting from a moving vehicle and conspiracy.Mr. Peña, who previously served time in prison for burglary and other crimes, took part in at least one of the attacks himself, according to the criminal complaint in the case, trying to fire an AR-15 rifle at the home of Linda Lopez, a state senator.“To me, it’s very concerning, what his actions were, and the impact they could have on our democracy,” Chief Medina said. “He was trying to intimidate some of our elected officials.”A voter cast a ballot in Albuquerque in November. Mr. Peña refused to concede his race despite losing by 48 percentage points.Adria Malcolm for The New York TimesMr. Peña, who was still being held on Tuesday, could not be reached for comment, and it was unclear whether a lawyer was representing him in the case.It was uncertain how he came to be the only Republican candidate in the race for a state legislative seat representing part of Albuquerque. But when Democrats sought unsuccessfully to disqualify him from running, citing his criminal record, the spokesman for the state House Republican leadership came to Mr. Peña’s defense, insisting he should be allowed to run.He received 26 percent of the vote, against 74 percent for his opponent, election results showed.In a statement, the Republican Party of New Mexico said “these recent accusations against Solomon Peña are serious, and he should be held accountable if the charges are validated in court. We are thankful that nobody was injured by his actions. If Peña is found guilty, he must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”Understand the Events on Jan. 6Timeline: On Jan. 6, 2021, 64 days after Election Day 2020, a mob of supporters of President Donald J. Trump raided the Capitol. Here is a close look at how the attack unfolded.A Day of Rage: Using thousands of videos and police radio communications, a Times investigation reconstructed in detail what happened — and why.Lost Lives: A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died in connection with the attack.Jan. 6 Attendees: To many of those who attended the Trump rally but never breached the Capitol, that date wasn’t a dark day for the nation. It was a new start.Mr. Peña’s arrest comes as concerns over political violence have grown after several high-profile incidents, including the attack on Paul Pelosi, a conspiracy to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and stalking charges filed against an armed man at the Seattle home of Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington.Though there have been some notable attacks and threats of violence from people on the left, scholars who study political violence say that most violent episodes with a political bent in recent years have been committed by right-wing extremists or people with conservative-leaning views.Mr. Peña was in the crowd listening to Mr. Trump’s speech on Jan. 6, 2021, according to videos collected by online sleuths, before Trump supporters attacked the Capitol in a bid to keep the president in power. There is no evidence, however, that Mr. Peña passed into a restricted area on the Capitol grounds or entered the building with the mob that day.Mr. Peña served nearly seven years in prison in New Mexico on charges including burglary and larceny, and then obtained an undergraduate degree in political science from the University of New Mexico after being released from prison in 2016.In July 2010, according to a lawsuit later filed by Mr. Peña, he was working in the cafeteria of the Lea County Correctional Facility when another inmate threw butter at him, and then head-butted him. Mr. Peña responded by gouging the attacker’s eyes before guards separated them.In his lawsuit, Mr. Peña claimed that several prison officials had violated his constitutional rights because he was fired from his kitchen job after the fight. In self-filed, handwritten court papers, he complained that “prison authorities want the prisoners to be stupid, uneducated and uninformed (and drug-addicted) so they can do whatever they want to the prisoners.”A judge dismissed Mr. Peña’s claims.The shootings that appeared to target Democratic officials began on Dec. 4, when someone fired eight rounds at the home of Adriann Barboa, a Bernalillo County commissioner, according to the Albuquerque police. On Dec. 8, shots were fired at the home of State Representative Javier Martinez. Three days later, on Dec. 11, a shooting targeted the home of another Bernalillo County commissioner, Debbie O’Malley. Then came the shooting at Ms. Lopez’s house in early January.State Senator Linda Lopez showed where bullets hit the garage door of her house in Albuquerque.Adolphe Pierre-Louis/The Albuquerque Journal, via Associated PressMs. Lopez’s 10-year-old daughter told her mother after the shooting that she believed “a spider woke her up by crawling on her face,” the complaint against Mr. Peña said. But the next morning, Ms. Lopez found bullet holes in her home. “As it turned out, sheetrock dust was blown onto Linda’s daughter’s face and bed” from a bullet passing through her bedroom above her head, the complaint said.Investigators said in a statement after Mr. Peña was arrested on Monday that they had tied him to the men accused of carrying out the shootings through text messages he sent them “with addresses where he wanted them to shoot at the homes,” as well as cash he had paid them.In a text message that Mr. Peña sent to one of the accused gunmen in November, according to the criminal complaint, he highlighted a cryptic passage from a book that was unknown to investigators: “It was only the additional incentive of a threat of civil war that empowered a president to complete the reformist project.”That quote appears in the book “Stuffing the Ballot Box,” a 2002 academic study about fraud and electoral reform in Costa Rica.The belief that civil war is unavoidable in the United States or should be fought to protect conservative values has been a frequent rallying cry on the right in recent months, if not for years.Ms. Barboa, the county commissioner whose home was targeted in the first attack, said in an interview that Mr. Peña had come to her home after the election to argue that it had been fraudulent. “He was aggressive and seemed to be acting erratic,” she recalled. “He claimed there was no way he could have lost, even though he lost in a landslide.”Ms. Barboa said that Mr. Peña seemed to have visited her home, as well as that of Ms. O’Malley, who was also targeted in the shootings, because the Bernalillo County Board of Commissioners certifies election results. The visit to Ms. Barboa’s home took place before the commission certified the results, she said. (Mr. Peña ran against another Democrat, Miguel Garcia, who does not appear to have been the subject of an attack.)Video surveillance from Ms. O’Malley’s home later showed Mr. Peña driving by in a black 2022 Audi — the same car that a witness saw speeding away from the area around Ms. O’Malley’s home when it was targeted on Dec. 11, the criminal complaint said.According to a confidential witness cited by the police in the complaint, Mr. Peña was not pleased that the first shooting attacks against Democratic officials were carried out late at night, when the politicians and their families might have already been sleeping, and that the shots were fired high up on the walls of some homes.“Solomon wanted the shootings to be more aggressive,” the witness told investigators, according to the complaint. In the last attack, on the home of Ms. Lopez on Jan. 3, the witness said that Mr. Peña and two gunmen he hired got into a stolen red truck and drove there.Mr. Peña was armed with an AR-15, but the gun seems to have jammed and did not fire correctly, according to the complaint. But other shots fired from the vehicle struck Ms. Lopez’s home, including the room where her daughter was sleeping.Shortly after the attack, police officers arrested Jose Trujillo, 21, at a traffic stop and found that shell casings at Ms. Lopez’s home matched a handgun confiscated from Mr. Trujillo, according to investigators. Officers detained Mr. Trujillo on an unrelated felony warrant and found that he was driving a car owned by Mr. Peña, the police said, adding that they also found a large amount of cash, more than 800 pills believed to be fentanyl and numerous firearms in the car.Chief Medina said Mr. Peña could face more charges as the police continued their investigation. “We continue to peel off layers, like an onion,” he said.Kirsten Noyes More

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      This Is How Red States Silence Blue Cities. And Democracy.

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      NASHVILLE — January in Nashville ushers in two forces for chaos: erratic weather and irrational legislators. Both are massively disruptive. Neither is surprising anymore.In the age of climate change, Mark Twain’s old joke about New England — if you don’t like the weather, just wait a few minutes — is true all over the country. But even careening between thunderstorms and snow, sometimes in a single day, erratic weather is easier to cope with than the G.O.P. Unlike human beings, weather isn’t supposed to be rational.Neither, it seems, are Republicans, at least not anymore, and a blue city that serves as the capital of a red state had better brace itself when the legislature arrives in town. Nothing good ever comes when the Tennessee General Assembly reconvenes, but any Nashvillian paying attention understood that this time the usual assaults would be unusually bad.Last year, when Nashville’s Metro Council voted not to support the state’s bid for the city to host the 2024 Republican National Convention, retaliation was widely understood to be inevitable, according to Nashville’s NPR affiliate, WPLN News.Now we know what shape retaliation will take: Last week, on the first day of the new legislative session, Republicans in both the Tennessee House and Senate introduced legislation that would cut our Metro Council in half. (The bills ostensibly apply to all city governments with a legislative body larger than 20 members, but that’s just Nashville.) If passed, the law would overturn not only a 60-year history but also the will of the Nashville people, who voted in 2015 to keep its 40-member council intact.The new bills set a “dangerous precedent,” according to the Democratic House caucus chair, John Ray Clemmons. “The G.O.P. supermajority’s continued efforts to overstep into local affairs and usurp the decision-making authority of local officials for the purpose of centralizing more and more power at the state level is concerning,” Mr. Clemmons told The Tennessean. “Ultimately, Nashville families know what’s best for Nashville.”Metro Council is larger than the legislative branch of every American city except Chicago and New York, cities that dwarf Nashville. There are good arguments for reducing its size, which is the result of compromises made in 1962 when residents of Davidson County voted to form a metropolitan government, but that’s a different question. What matters here is that the state of Tennessee is once again interfering in the self-governance of the blue city that drives the economic engine of the entire red state. And state lawmakers are doing it for absolutely no reason but spite.There is, of course, a long history of legislative pre-emption in Tennessee. The tactic is also used by Democratic-controlled legislatures, but it is especially egregious in Southern states governed by Republican supermajorities. Just last week, another state lawmaker here introduced a bill that would ban local governments from helping residents fund out-of-state abortions — a policy that members of Nashville’s council have already proposed.It’s no surprise that the party of voter suppression and disenfranchisement is also the party of undermining local governance. But it’s worse this year, or at least it feels worse this year, because this year Nashville voters can’t count on representation at the national level either.The South used to be the land of the Yellow Dog Democrat — someone who would vote a straight Democratic ticket even if the Democratic candidate were a yellow dog — but those days are long gone. There are still legions of Democrats down here, as well as a growing number of voters who are left of the mainstream Democratic Party, but they are clustered in college towns and growing cities like Nashville, where they live and work shoulder to shoulder with old-school conservatives and rabid Donald Trump supporters alike. Joe Biden won Nashville with almost 65 percent of the vote.But thanks to a brutally gerrymandered election map, we didn’t send a moderate Democrat, one who could reasonably represent the interests of both Nashville liberals and Nashville conservatives, to Washington this year. Instead, the newly mutilated Nashville is represented by three of the most militant right-wingers the state has ever elected.This particular injustice likely seems irrelevant to anybody who doesn’t live here. Occurring as it does among so many other political injustices in a nation moving rapidly toward minority rule, even the utter disenfranchisement of an entire American city is hard to get particularly worked up about.But you ought to be worked up about it. You ought to be protesting in the streets about it because what is happening in Tennessee, and in so many other states governed by Republican supermajorities, goes a long way toward explaining what is happening in the U.S. Congress.Andy Ogles, for example, is the newly elected congressman from Tennessee’s redrawn Fifth District, a seat held for two decades by Rep. Jim Cooper back when the seat still included all of Nashville. In Washington, Mr. Ogles immediately allied himself with the nihilist wing of the Republican Party, voting 11 times against Rep. Kevin McCarthy for the speakership. In Nashville, then, we have gone from being represented by a member of the Blue Dog Coalition of fiscally conservative Democrats to being represented by a founding member of what might well be called the Dead Dog Caucus. What else should we call legislators who have no interest in legislating?In dismembering Nashville to create three Republican voting districts, in other words, the Tennessee General Assembly managed only to nationalize its own brand of chaos. And maybe that was the whole point.Mark E. Green, an ardent Trump supporter who represents Tennessee’s Seventh District, which now includes parts of Nashville, is a vocal election denier. Mr. Green is one of 34 Republican members of Congress who exchanged text messages with the former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows as the far-right flank of the party sought nominal justification to overturn the results of a free and fair election. Even after the Jan. 6 riot, Mr. Green voted not to certify the 2020 presidential election. As Holly McCall, the editor in chief of the nonprofit news site the Tennessee Lookout, writes, such behavior from elected officials has “seeded our voting public with mistrust that continues to harm our democracy.”But wrecking American democracy is not enough for the Dead Dog Party. Last fall Mr. Green flew to Brazil to do the same thing in that much more fragile democracy. In a trip paid for by the American Conservative Union, he met with Brazilian lawmakers pushing to change election laws. The meeting’s agenda: to discuss “voting integrity policies.” We know what happened next: Thanks in part to one of Nashville’s representatives in Congress, anti-democracy riots are now an American export.Meanwhile, here at home, Mr. Green has just been named chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.Margaret Renkl, a contributing Opinion writer, is the author of the books “Graceland, at Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South” and “Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      A Colossal Off-Year Election in Wisconsin

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      Lauren Justice for The New York TimesConservatives have controlled the court since 2008. Though the court upheld Wisconsin’s 2020 election results, last year it ruled drop boxes illegal, allowed a purge of the voter rolls to take place and installed redistricting maps drawn by Republican legislators despite the objections of Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat. More

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      Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia Juggles Local Issues and National Ambition

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      Virginia’s Republican governor is considering a presidential run, but a divided state legislature may thwart his ambitions for conservative policy victories.VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Gov. Glenn Youngkin headlined a rally on Saturday outside the red-brick City Hall here, urging voters to back a fellow Virginia Republican in a special election for State Senate.It was part of a broader effort by the governor to use the 2023 session of the Virginia legislature to bolster his conservative credentials and agenda as he tests a possible presidential run in 2024. “I need Kevin in the Senate to help me get it done, so we have to win this election now,” Mr. Youngkin told the crowd, referring to Kevin Adams, the State Senate candidate.But Tuesday’s election was a bust for Mr. Youngkin and Virginia Beach Republicans: Mr. Adams was narrowly defeated, Democrats flipped the Republican-held seat he was seeking and one of the governor’s prominent right-wing initiatives — a 15-week abortion ban — seemed all but doomed as Democrats expanded their narrow majority in the upper chamber of the General Assembly.Mr. Youngkin’s 2021 election in blue Virginia instantly set off speculation about a potential White House run in 2024. In just his second year in office, he has had both a local and national focus.The governor has laid out priorities beyond abortion for the legislative session that begins this week: a proposed $1 billion in tax cuts, improving crisis mental health care and luring 2,000 police officers from other states that, as he put it, “do not support law enforcement.” He has also cultivated big donors and Republican voters outside Virginia, traveling widely before the midterms to support 15 Republican candidates for governor and appearing frequently on Fox News, where he advances the “parents’ matter” agenda that helped get him elected.Mr. Youngkin campaigned in October in Arizona with Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor. She lost her race.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesIn September, Mr. Youngkin stumped for Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, who won his race.Audra Melton for The New York TimesBut unlike some other potential Republican contenders in 2024, Mr. Youngkin is facing home state political dynamics that make it harder to notch clean conservative victories.Although other Republican governors testing the presidential waters enjoy Republican-led statehouses — in New Hampshire, Florida and South Dakota — Mr. Youngkin has a divided legislature. After the G.O.P. defeat in the special election for State Senate, Democrats hold a 22-18 majority. Republicans control the House of Delegates.“His challenge is that he can talk about things, but because of the political environment of Virginia, which is different from, let us say, Florida, he can by no means accomplish these conservative goals,” said Bob Holsworth, the founding director of the School of Government at Virginia Commonwealth University.Mr. Youngkin’s rising profile has attracted the attention of former President Donald J. Trump, whose unusually early announcement of a third presidential campaign in November was aimed in part at clearing the Republican field for 2024. On his social media platform, Mr. Trump wrote on Nov. 11 that his endorsement of Mr. Youngkin had cemented the governor’s 2021 victory. And Mr. Trump also made a racist remark about Mr. Youngkin’s name.“Young Kin (now that’s an interesting take. Sounds Chinese, doesn’t it?) in Virginia couldn’t have won without me,” the former president said in a series of posts on Truth Social.Mr. Youngkin’s victory — becoming the first Republican elected governor of Virginia since 2009 — stemmed from appealing to the Trump-centric base while keeping Mr. Trump himself at arm’s length to win suburban voters, whom he wooed with promised tax cuts. But he has now signaled a more aggressive approach toward Mr. Trump.Mr. Youngkin became the first Republican governor of Virginia since 2009.Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesIn a brief interview before the rally on Saturday in Virginia Beach, Mr. Youngkin rejected Mr. Trump’s taunt about his name as the opposite of how he deals with people.“I do not roll that way,” Mr. Youngkin said. “I do not call people names. I treat people well, and I believe that’s the way that everyone should behave and sometimes in politics I think folks forget that.”Since the midterms, when many Trump-endorsed candidates lost their races, some of Mr. Youngkin’s backers perceive Mr. Trump’s influence on the wane and the opportunities for challengers on the rise. Furthermore, the former president has all but disappeared into his Florida estate after announcing his bid for re-election.Mr. Youngkin is little known to Republican voters beyond Virginia, barely registering in early primary polls. His main appeal is to political consultants and to the donor class, those who connect with him as a wealthy former co-chief executive of the Carlyle Group, a financial investment firm.Ron DeSantis, Florida’s pugilistic governor, is the leading Trump alternative. But Youngkin supporters paint him as a worthy alternative with a more affable, less prickly personality, someone who transitioned easily from a corporate glad-hander to a first-time candidate. Supporters envision Mr. Youngkin winning over droves of primary voters in the intimate campaign settings of Iowa and New Hampshire.“He’s got this very likable persona,” said Tom Davis, a former Republican congressman from Virginia. “He’s not angry. He walks into a room and he smiles.” Mr. Davis called Mr. DeSantis “the shiny new object right now,” but added, “When you get into one-on-one campaigning, I would just say Glenn is a natural.”Jimmy Centers, a Republican strategist in Iowa, said Mr. Youngkin’s championing of parent rights — over how America’s racial history is taught or what books students can be exposed to — grabbed the attention of conservatives nationally in 2021. But now, Mr. Centers said, Mr. Youngkin needs to build on that victory.“One could argue he was the first candidate to demonstrate parental rights was a winning issue,” Mr. Centers said. “That issue and his position will open doors for him in Iowa and other states, but my sense is that voters and caucusgoers will also want to measure results now that he is in office.”Mr. Youngkin, who is 56, insisted on Saturday that he had no timeline for making up his mind about a presidential run.“There’s no plans for decisions,” he said. “What there really is a plan for is to focus on delivering the agenda when Virginians hired me.”Mr. Youngkin signing executive orders on his first day in office in 2022.Steve Helber/Associated PressA political action committee Mr. Youngkin set up to support the campaigns of fellow Virginia Republicans and to tend to his own political future raised $4.8 million from donations of $10,000 or more through last year, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. The PAC paid $94,183 in 2022 to Axiom Strategies, a top G.O.P. consulting firm.Jeff Roe, the head of Axiom and Mr. Youngkin’s chief political adviser, addressed major Youngkin donors at a September retreat at a luxury resort outside Charlottesville. No specific plans were laid for 2024, according to attendees.“Youngkin is obviously somebody I’d very much like to run,” said Ray Washburne, a major G.O.P. donor from Dallas, who attended. But he said he wanted to hear more about Mr. Youngkin’s potential strategy, and gauge his legislative achievements, before making a lasting commitment. “After he finishes this session, let’s see what that world looks like.”Virginia Republicans were lowering expectations for the new legislative session even before this week’s special election solidified Democrats’ State Senate majority. The Virginia Beach race drew tens of thousands of dollars from pro- and anti-abortion groups. After Roe v. Wade was overturned last year, tossing abortion regulation down to the states, Mr. Youngkin told an anti-abortion forum he would “gleefully” sign any bill “to protect life.” In December, while unveiling a new state budget, he proposed a 15-week abortion ban.At the rally in Virginia Beach, however, Mr. Youngkin did not mention abortion once in an eight-minute speech. It suggested he wished to draw no further attention to an issue on which he could not deliver a conservative victory.The special election was a preview of a more important crucible for the governor this fall, when every seat in both legislative chambers is on the ballot.If Republicans hold their House majority and flip the Senate, the governor can present himself nationally as a giant slayer, someone who fully turned around a blue state. If, however, his party suffers further setbacks, Mr. Youngkin will have fewer claims on conservatives outside Virginia.Mr. Youngkin in Lansing, Mich., campaigning for Tudor Dixon, the candidate for governor who lost her race.Emily Elconin for The New York TimesCampaigning widely for Republicans running for governor last year, including Kari Lake in Arizona and Tudor Dixon in Michigan, both of whom lost, Mr. Youngkin was sometimes trailed by a media crew filming him for future TV ads. He appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News last week to denounce a Virginia high school for delaying notification to students who earned distinction on a national test. “They didn’t want the other students to feel bad,” Mr. Youngkin said.Although Mr. Youngkin issued an executive order on his first day in office banning teaching critical race theory in K-12 schools (educators said it wasn’t taught in the first place), other initiatives have gone less smoothly. A revision of state history standards, influenced by Youngkin appointees, was withdrawn after an uproar that it downplayed slavery as a cause of the Civil War and referred to Native Americans as the “first immigrants.” More

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      Does a Newly Elected G.O.P. Assemblyman Really Live in Brooklyn?

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      Lester Chang, a newly elected Republican representing a Brooklyn district, faces questions over whether he lives in the borough or in Manhattan.As Democrats returned to Albany to begin the 2023 legislative session on Wednesday, the politically explosive question of whether to remove a newly elected Assembly Republican hung over their triumphant homecoming.Democrats elected the first woman as governor of New York and retained their supermajorities in both chambers in November. But their return to the State Capitol this week was consumed by a divisive debate over whether to expel Lester Chang, a Republican war veteran who staged a surprise victory last year to unseat an entrenched 36-year Democratic incumbent in Brooklyn.Mr. Chang’s Democratic foes have accused him of actually living in Manhattan, not Brooklyn, thus failing to meet the residency requirements — a claim Mr. Chang has forcefully denied.Democrats in the Assembly are navigating uncharted territory as they consider whether to oust Mr. Chang from the lower chamber, setting up the potential of a protracted legal battle and sparking accusations from Republicans that Democrats are undermining the will of voters.“Any challenges to his eligibility should have been presented long before the election, not after the results were certified,” said Will Barclay, the Republican minority leader in the Assembly. “Blocking his path to being seated is not a precedent that should be set.”There is also intraparty distress: Some Democrats have raised concerns that removing Mr. Chang, who is Chinese American, could lead to political blowback from Asian Americans, a bloc of voters that has increasingly gravitated toward Republicans in recent elections.Ron Kim, a Democrat from Queens who is Korean American, described the situation as a political “tough spot,” saying that “a lot of Chinese voters feel like this is an effort to take away a Chinese person who was elected by the people in that community.”“In the short run, if you move forward with removing him, there will be a strong backlash from the Asian community,” he said. “In the long run, you also don’t want to see someone with even an ounce of a fraudulent background.”Following an Assembly hearing and subsequent report last month, Mr. Chang’s fate hung in the balance Wednesday, when lawmakers gaveled themselves into session and took part in a host of ceremonial duties, taking oaths of office and re-electing their respective legislative leaders.It was at first unclear if Democrats would seek to block Mr. Chang from taking office altogether, but he was ultimately allowed to take his seat this week.He received a name plate in the Assembly chamber, participated in a ceremonial swearing-in on Tuesday, and signed a formal oath of office that was sent to the New York State Department of State, according to a spokesman for Assembly Republicans. On Wednesday, in a show of solidarity, Republicans erupted into thunderous applause when Mr. Chang cast his first vote, for Mr. Barclay as leader of the chamber, in the cavernous Assembly.“It’s a distraction from the people’s business,” Mr. Chang, who became the first Asian American to represent Brooklyn in the Assembly, said in an interview on Wednesday.The last time the Assembly expelled one of its own was over a century ago in 1920, when several socialist lawmakers were voted out during the anti-communist Red Scare.Democrats may challenge assemblyman Lester Chang’s presence in Albany on residency grounds. Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesDemocrats in the Assembly met privately on Tuesday for about three hours to discuss the issue. Many lawmakers voiced their support for removing Mr. Chang, but others said they were more ambivalent about taking such an extraordinary step, according to people familiar with the closed-door discussions.Running in a South Brooklyn district that is heavily Democratic, Mr. Chang stunned Democrats in November when he narrowly defeated Peter J. Abbate Jr., a Democrat who had comfortably held the seat since 1986. His victory, in a diversifying district that is now majority Asian American, was part of a stronger than expected showing by Republicans who ran on a tough-on-crime platform statewide.Reeling from the defeat, Democrats began raising questions about whether Mr. Chang had met the residency requirements outlined in the State Constitution: In a redistricting year like 2022, candidates are required to have been a resident of the county that they are running in for at least one year before Election Day.Democrats pointed to the fact that, in 2021, Mr. Chang voted in Manhattan, where he has a rent-stabilized apartment he once shared with his late wife and that he didn’t change his voting registration until earlier last year. But Mr. Chang has argued that he also maintained a residence in the same house in the Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn where he grew up, and where his mother, who suffers from dementia, still lives and whom he now cares for.“Home is home, 50 years, you can’t erase that,” Mr. Chang said. “I have my baseball cards, I have my yearbooks, I have all those memories. That’s home.”The imbroglio over Mr. Chang’s residency — and what constitutes a residence for the purposes of running for office — played out during a tense hearing held by the Assembly judiciary committee on Dec. 21 in which a special counsel hired by Democrats repeatedly sought to poke holes into Mr. Chang’s account, citing different records in which Mr. Chang listed his Lower Manhattan apartment as his residence.Mr. Chang and his legal team sought to rebuff those efforts, in part, with affidavits signed by Mr. Chang’s sister and neighbors, who said Mr. Chang had maintained a residence in Brooklyn. They also accused Democrats of trying to overturn Mr. Chang’s election, pointing to the fact that they did not object to Mr. Chang’s candidacy in the courts before Election Day, the norm when disputing residency requirements.“This residency issue was raised only after Lester Chang won,” Mr. Chang’s lawyer, Hugh H. Mo, said in an interview on Wednesday. “The Democrats were blindsided, they didn’t expect him to win.”The hearing was part of an investigation into Mr. Chang’s residency that was ordered by Carl E. Heastie, the Assembly speaker, after the election.Mr. Heastie has argued that the inquiry is purely a constitutional matter, not a political consideration, but has acknowledged the optics of potentially undermining the democratic process.“There’s a sense of the constitution needs to be respected,” Mr. Heastie told WNYC on Wednesday. “But I’ll also say that I don’t want to make it seem like it’s been lost on the members that an election did happen.”A subsequent report by the special counsel, released on Dec. 31, outlined evidence showing Mr. Chang may have lived in Manhattan — it said he was effectively a “visitor” in Brooklyn — but stopped short of making a recommendation.An expulsion could very well be contested in the courts, and the Assembly may decide to refer the matter to Letitia James, the state attorney general. If so, the ambiguity around his residency could end up benefiting Mr. Chang, according to Jerry H. Goldfeder, an election lawyer.“Under the executive law, she can bring a lawsuit to remove him,” he said. “But, frankly, because it’s not an open-and-shut case, it’s doubtful a court would do it.” More

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      Surprise in Pennsylvania: Republicans Back a (Former?) Democrat for Speaker

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      Representative Mark Rozzi, long a moderate Democrat, pledged not to caucus with either party as speaker of the closely divided state House of Representatives. Many questions remain.HARRISBURG, Pa. — The new legislative session began at noon on Tuesday, and despite the cheery bouquets and wide-eyed family members, the statehouse was humming with nervous anticipation. For weeks, it had been unclear which party could claim a majority in the state House of Representatives: the Democrats won more seats in November, but because of a death and two resignations, the Republicans had more members for now.The election of a speaker, the new House’s first piece of business, was going to put this fiercely debated question to the test.After a long afternoon of suspense, and to the surprise of nearly everyone in the House, the choice was made: a moderate Democrat from the Reading area, nominated by two Republicans, who was on almost no one’s radar and who pledged in his first speech to be “the commonwealth’s first independent speaker.”“I’m sure a lot of you didn’t see this coming today,” the new speaker, Representative Mark Rozzi, said at the rostrum.Harrisburg is not the only capital where the mere act of deciding who is in charge has proved fraught in the early days of the new year. Before the session in Pennsylvania began, the repeated botched attempts by Republicans in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to elect a speaker in the U.S. House of Representatives were playing out on televisions in the Pennsylvania statehouse. Meanwhile, Democratic state representatives next door in Ohio helped elect a Republican House speaker there who is not as conservative as the candidate backed by most Republicans in their supermajority.The fights in Washington and Ohio were ideological, but the maneuvering in Pennsylvania was largely about strategy, given the bizarre circumstances leading up to Tuesday’s vote. Democrats outperformed expectations on Election Day in Pennsylvania, winning a U.S. Senate seat, the governor’s office and, perhaps most surprising of all, control of the state House, where they had been out of power for more than a decade.It was only a one-seat majority, though, and one of the winning candidates had died a few weeks before the November election. Then, in early December, two Democrats who had been re-elected to the House and at the same time had been elected to higher offices resigned their House seats.At issue in the weeks that followed was whether “majority” meant the party that the voters in the most districts had chosen, or the party that had the most members at the moment the session began. The Democrats argued for the former, the Republicans the latter. The question was put to the courts, even as Republicans and Democrats held dueling swearing-in ceremonies last month for House majority leader.Democrats are heavily favored to win the special elections to fill the three vacant seats, but the first of those votes won’t take place until at least Feb. 7. So the looming question as the session opened Tuesday was which party would control the House for now, while Republicans have a 101-99 advantage.Few lawmakers, it seemed, began the day Tuesday thinking of Mr. Rozzi as a candidate for speaker. Members recited the Pledge of Allegiance at a swearing-in ceremony.Matt Smith/Associated PressThe significance was not just symbolic, even in a state where power was already divided, with a Republican-controlled State Senate and a Democratic governor. Republicans hoped to vote on several constitutional amendments that would not require Gov. Josh Shapiro’s signature; one would require voters to show identification at the polls and another would give the legislature the power to reject regulations put in place by the executive branch. Democrats were worried that the Republicans would also change the rules of the House if they briefly won control, making it hard to elect a new speaker after the Democrats retook the majority.Caucuses and party leaders gathered all morning on Tuesday to discuss strategy, talks that continued in the afternoon in smaller huddles on the House floor. A vote to adjourn without picking a speaker deadlocked at 100-100, with one Republican voting with the Democrats.Then the clerk called for nominations for speaker. What came next were a series of surprises. First, Representative Jim Gregory, a Republican representing a district outside Altoona, stood and named Mr. Rozzi, a Democrat.“As we are gathered in this chamber today, we must look at our razor-thin majorities,” Mr. Gregory said, urging the members to put “people over politics.” Then another lawmaker, the Republican House whip, seconded the nomination.All eyes turned toward the Democrats, and specifically toward Representative Joanna McClinton, the Democratic leader, who had been expected to become the first Black woman to serve as speaker of the Pennsylvania House. Ms. McClinton announced that she supported the nomination of Mr. Rozzi.With 16 Republicans, including party leaders, joining all of the Democrats, Mr. Rozzi won the speakership, defeating a traditionally conservative Republican who only minutes earlier had been the presumptive Republican choice.Virtually no one in the House other than Mr. Gregory and Mr. Rozzi, it seemed, had recognized Mr. Rozzi as a candidate when the day began. Mr. Gregory said afterward that he raised the idea with Republican leaders shortly before nominating him on the floor. Mr. Gregory had developed a good working relationship with Mr. Rozzi, but he also saw nominating him as a way to outflank an almost assured Democratic majority.“Here in Pennsylvania, we play two different games: Some people play checkers, and some people play chess,” Mr. Gregory said after the vote. “And I think what you just witnessed is a Democrat member who was in the majority leave the majority to go independent.”As the Republicans saw it, Mr. Rozzi’s move would mean that the Democrats could not achieve a majority even after the special elections. In the halls of the capitol afterward, Republicans mulled how such an evenly split House would operate: who would control committees, for example, and how they would be divvied up.But it had all happened so quickly that on Wednesday, there were far more questions than answers. Mr. Rozzi, who has been a reliable moderate Democrat during his tenure in the House, is best known for his efforts on behalf of victims of childhood sexual abuse. Having spoken openly of being raped by a priest as a child, Mr. Rozzi sponsored, along with Mr. Gregory, a constitutional amendment allowing victims to sue their abusers long after criminal statutes had expired. Mr. Rozzi pushed for a bill to extend the statute of limitations for sexual abuse cases, an issue he discussed in 2016 with the governor at the time, Tom Wolf.Nicole Bengiveno/The New York TimesIf the House and Senate vote on it early in the new session, that amendment could be on the ballot as soon as this May. Mr. Gregory said that making sure the House moved quickly on the amendment was the main reason that he and Mr. Rozzi had begun discussing their plan for the speakership.While Mr. Rozzi did emphasize in his initial remarks before the House that he aimed to be an independent speaker, pledging not to caucus with either party, it remained unclear what that would mean in practice.In a private meeting with Democrats after the vote on Tuesday, Mr. Rozzi assured them that he still considered himself a Democrat, comments first reported by SpotlightPA, a state news outlet, and confirmed by a Democratic House member.In response, the House Republican leader, Representative Bryan Cutler, said in a statement that Republicans “continue to believe what he committed to publicly in his address and what he promised to our leaders privately about fully becoming an Independent has not changed.”On Tuesday evening, after hours of hushed meetings, Mr. Rozzi briefly addressed a crowd of reporters in the capitol rotunda who were hungry for any information that would make sense of the day’s events.“I look forward to talking to you more about my plans as speaker, but such a heavy discussion deserves considered forethought,” the new House speaker of the fifth-largest state said, standing in the glare of spotlights at a hastily assembled lectern. “And as this was unexpected, I will be making no further comments tonight. Thank you.”Many of the lingering questions may not be answered until the House reconvenes, at a time to be set by the speaker. As of Wednesday afternoon, no date had been announced. More

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      Democrats, Feeling New Strength, Plan to Go on Offense on Voting Rights

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      After retaining most of the governor’s offices they hold and capturing the legislatures in Michigan and Minnesota, Democrats are putting forward a long list of proposals to expand voting access.NEW ORLEANS — For the last two years, Democrats in battleground states have played defense against Republican efforts to curtail voting access and amplify doubts about the legitimacy of the nation’s elections.Now it is Democrats, who retained all but one of the governor’s offices they hold and won control of state legislatures in Michigan and Minnesota, who are ready to go on offense in 2023. They are putting forward a long list of proposals that include creating automatic voter registration systems, preregistering teenagers to vote before they turn 18, returning the franchise to felons released from prison and criminalizing election misinformation.Since 2020, Republicans inspired by former President Donald J. Trump’s election lies sought to make voting more difficult for anyone not casting a ballot in person on Election Day. But in the midterm elections, voters across the country rejected the most prominent Republican candidates who embraced false claims about American elections and promised to bend the rules to their party’s advantage.Democrats who won re-election or will soon take office have interpreted their victories as a mandate to make voting easier and more accessible.“I’ve asked them to think big,” Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota said of his directions to fellow Democrats on voting issues now that his party controls both chambers of the state’s Legislature. Republicans will maintain unified control next year over state governments in Texas, Ohio, Florida and Georgia. In Texas and Ohio, along with other places, Republicans are weighing additional restrictions on voting when they convene in the new year.Democratic governors in Arizona and Wisconsin will face Republican-run legislatures that are broadly hostile to expanding voting access, while Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor-elect of Pennsylvania, is likely to eventually preside over one chamber with a G.O.P. majority and one with a narrow Democratic majority.And in Washington, D.C., the Supreme Court is weighing a case that could give state legislatures vastly expanded power over election laws — a decision with enormous implications for the power of state lawmakers to draw congressional maps and set rules for federal elections.Democrats have widely interpreted that case — brought by Republicans in North Carolina — as dangerous to democracy because of the prospect of aggressive G.O.P. gerrymandering and the potential for state legislators to determine the outcome of elections. But it would also allow Democrats to write themselves into permanent power in states where they control the levers of elections.The Supreme Court’s deliberation comes as many Democrats are becoming increasingly vocal about pushing the party to be more aggressive in expanding voting access — especially after the Senate this year failed to advance a broad voting rights package.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

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      The Last Lesson of the Jan. 6 Committee

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      The hearings of the House select committee on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol presented a careful, convincing and disturbing account of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. They provided an abundance of detail about what we’ve long known: that Mr. Trump and his allies engaged not only in an assault on Congress, but on democracy itself.The work done by the committee over the past 18 months may be even more important than its report, which is expected to be released Thursday. The long months of scouring investigation and the carefully staged hearings, in which the evidence of Mr. Trump’s malfeasance was presented to the public, were critical elements in the nation’s full understanding of the attack on the Capitol. Through the work of these hearings, Congress showed that the best possible answer to political violence lay in the tools that were right at hand: the rule of law, checks and balances, testimony given under oath and the careful process of bureaucracy.Like a slow-motion replay, the committee’s work also gave Americans a second chance to comprehend the enormity of what transpired on Jan. 6. It seems plausible, as some members of the panel have asserted, that the hearings made protecting democracy a significant issue in the midterm elections and helped to persuade voters to reject some election deniers who ran for state offices. The sustained attention on Mr. Trump’s conduct in his final days in office is also valuable as he mounts a renewed campaign for the presidency. And the hearings focused the attention of the public and policymakers on the extremist groups that participated in the attack on the Capitol and that pose a threat of renewed violence.Congressional hearings are often filled with the distraction of partisan squabbling, grandstanding and detours into tangential subjects. The Jan. 6 committee was different, and the American people were better off for it. Mr. Trump and others refused to answer subpoenas from the committee, which would have given them an opportunity to answer questions and make their case. Their refusal is unfortunate; they deserve the chance to defend themselves and present their account of the facts, and Americans deserve the chance to hear from them. They’re still due that chance, and Mr. Trump may still have his say in a court of law.The seven Democrats and two Republicans who served on the committee captured the attention of Americans who may not have been sufficiently informed or alarmed about Mr. Trump’s role in the events of Jan. 6 to take notice. The two Republicans on the committee, Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, deserve particular credit for defying their own party to participate. Their presence, and the damning testimony delivered by Mr. Trump’s own aides and allies, conveyed the message that some things are necessarily more important than loyalty to a political party.Americans have also learned, thanks to these hearings, exactly how close this country came to even greater tragedies. Rioters came within 40 feet of Vice President Mike Pence. A Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clark, in late December 2020 sought to send a letter — based on lies — to officials in Georgia and potentially several other key states that warned of election irregularities and called for a special legislative session to select alternate slates of presidential electors.The lesson, in part, is that our democracy is inescapably fragile. It requires Americans, and those who serve them as elected officials and in law enforcement, to act in good faith. The committee rightly spent many hours of its work documenting the actions of all those local, state and federal officials who defied Mr. Trump’s demands and acted in many different ways to protect democracy.The dangers remain clear and present, so this work is not complete. House Republicans will be in the majority come January, including many who sought to overturn President Biden’s victory, and some who encouraged the rioters.Political violence is on the rise, especially among right-wing extremists.And Mr. Trump is running for president again on a platform of his grievances, still insistent that he did not lose the last election, still refusing to accept the rule of law. He is, in fact, escalating his rhetoric.The nation needs to respond to these threats. Congress needs to pass the reforms to the electoral process that are included in the year-end omnibus spending bill. Law enforcement can do more to crack down on extremist violence. Voters should reject Mr. Trump at the polls.As the select committee’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, emphasized at its final hearing on Monday, the government should continue to pursue those responsible for the Jan. 6 attack and to hold them accountable.More than 900 people already have been charged with crimes related to the attack on the Capitol, and several hundred of those have either been convicted or pleaded guilty. Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the extremist Oath Keepers group, was convicted of seditious conspiracy in November. Jury selection has begun in the federal trial of Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, another extremist group, who faces similar charges.The committee called upon the Justice Department to also bring criminal charges against Mr. Trump and the lawyer John Eastman, for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including Mr. Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack. The Justice Department is still engaged in its own investigation. As we wrote in August, if there is sufficient evidence to establish Mr. Trump’s guilt on a serious charge in a court of law, then he should be charged and tried; the same goes for all of the others whom the committee referred to the Justice Department.Mr. Thompson, urging action on all these fronts, said that as a nation, “We remain in strange and uncharted waters.” Yet the hearings also underscored that the country is better off with clarity and truth.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More