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      Melissa Carone, an Election Denier Who Was Parodied by ‘S.N.L.,’ Is Disqualified

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      Melissa Carone was supposed to be a star witness for Rudolph W. Giuliani on his election denial tour, but she is perhaps better known as a caricature on “Saturday Night Live” — a mercurial purveyor of wild conspiracy theories about fraud and miscounted ballots whom Mr. Giuliani shushed in the middle of her testimony.Her next move was to run for the legislature in Michigan, joining a host of election deniers across the nation who have sought public office since former President Donald J. Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joseph R. Biden Jr.But her plans were short-circuited on Tuesday, when the Michigan Department of State disqualified Ms. Carone, 35, a former election contractor, as a Republican primary candidate for a State Senate seat outside of Detroit.The office said that Ms. Carone, along with 10 other legislative candidates, had made false statements on an affidavit that candidates were required to submit to election administrators. On one of the forms that was signed by Ms. Carone, she had attested that she did not have any unpaid fines for election law violations and that all of her public campaign filings were up-to-date. The county clerk where Ms. Carone was running for office said on Wednesday that had not been the case.It was the second time in recent months that Ms. Carone had been disqualified as a candidate: The Macomb County Clerk & Register of Deeds barred her in March from the Aug. 2 primary for state representative.When she signed the affidavit, Ms. Carone had owed at least $125 in late fees for missing the deadline twice for quarterly campaign filings in 2021, according to a letter from the clerk that was obtained by The New York Times. She had also failed to file an annual statement for 2022 for her campaign and an amendment to a quarterly report last October, the letter said.Ms. Carone, who was played by the “Saturday Night Live” cast member Cecily Strong in the show’s cold open in December 2020, blamed the situation on a former campaign manager whom she said in an interview on Wednesday did not file the paperwork.She accused Republican election officials and the party’s leaders of conspiring to keep her off the ballot.“This is how our elected officials keep good candidates from getting elected,” Ms. Carone said. “I’m going to fight it. Even if I don’t end up on the ballot, my voice will be heard. I’m not going anywhere. I will still be exposing these establishment sellout RINOs in the Michigan G.O.P.”Anthony G. Forlini, a Republican who is the Macomb County clerk, said on Wednesday that his office had been following the law and that the disqualification of Ms. Carone was not politically motivated.“From our standpoint, she was kicked off the ballot because she basically perjured herself,” Mr. Forlini said.Mr. Forlini said that it is a felony in Michigan to make a false statement on affidavits like those signed by candidates.“We’re just sticking to the letter of the law,” he said. “She likes the drama, and she’s been feeding on it.”Mr. Forlini said that he could not speak to the specifics of Ms. Carone’s recent disqualification by the Michigan Department of State, a separate agency headed by Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat who is secretary of state.A spokeswoman for that agency said on Wednesday that she could not further discuss the nature of the false statements that led to Ms. Carone’s disqualification, which was announced in conjunction with the other candidates who were barred on Tuesday.A receipt filed with the secretary of state’s office showed that Ms. Carone had paid $125 in late fees with a check on March 24, three days after she signed the affidavit attesting that she did not owe anything.Gustavo Portela, a spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party, rejected Ms. Carone’s assertions that there was a concerted effort to keep her off the primary ballot.“Terrible candidates seem to find it hard to take accountability for themselves so they pass the blame to others,” he said in an email on Wednesday.Ms. Carone claimed she was contracted by Dominion Voting Systems, an election technology company that has been the target of a baseless pro-Trump conspiracy theory about rigged voting machines. The company called her claims defamatory and sent her a cease and desist letter.During an election oversight hearing held by legislators in Michigan in December 2020, she testified that she had observed over 20 acts of fraud — not counting ballots found in rivers and under a rock — and that at least 30,000 ballots had been counted multiple times. A judge in Wayne County Circuit Court had already found Ms. Carone’s claims — made in an affidavit seeking to stop the certification of votes — were “not credible.”At times combative and glib, Ms. Carone’s performance was widely mocked, including by “Saturday Night Live.”“To be honest with you, I didn’t watch it for a really long time,” she said on Wednesday. “I think it’s funny. That kind of stuff doesn’t make me mad. I don’t care.” More

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      California Has Record Budget Surplus as Rich Taxpayers Prosper

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      SACRAMENTO — Buoyed by the pandemic prosperity of its richest taxpayers, California expects a record $97.5 billion surplus, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday, as he proposed a $300.6 billion state budget that also was a historic mark.“No other state in American history has ever experienced a surplus as large as this,” Mr. Newsom said, outlining revisions to spending he first proposed in January for the 12 months starting in July.Once again, as California heads into a gubernatorial election, the massive surplus allows Mr. Newsom to sprinkle cash across the state. Among the governor’s proposals: rebates for nearly all Californians to offset the effects of inflation, which is expected to exceed 7 percent in the state next year; retention bonuses of up to $1,500 for health care workers; expanded health care, in particular for women seeking abortions; three months of free public transit; and record per-pupil school funding. California also had a substantial surplus last year as the governor fended off a Republican-led recall.Mr. Newsom warned, however, that state budget planners have been “deeply mindful” of the potential for an economic downturn. California’s progressive tax system is famously volatile because of its reliance on the taxation of capital gains on investment income.“What more caution do we need in terms of evidence than the last two weeks?” the governor asked. The S&P 500, the benchmark U.S. stock index, has been nearing a drop of 20 percent since January, a threshold known as a bear market. Some other measures, including the Nasdaq composite, which is weighted heavily toward tech stocks, have already passed that marker.A little more than half of the surplus would go to an assortment of budgetary reserves and debt repayments, with almost all of the additional spending devoted to one-time outlays under the governor’s plan, which still needs to be approved by lawmakers.Legislative leaders have generally supported the notion of inflation relief, although the method remains a matter for negotiations. Some lawmakers are pushing for income-based cash rebates, while the governor is proposing to tie the relief to vehicle ownership because he says it would be faster and would cover residents whose federal aid is untaxed. Mr. Newsom’s fellow Democrats control the Legislature.“People are feeling deep stress, deep anxiety,” Mr. Newsom said. “You see that reflected in recent gas prices now beginning to go back up.”In a statement, the president pro tempore of the State Senate, Toni G. Atkins, and the chair of the committee that oversees budgeting in the chamber, Senator Nancy Skinner, noted that the plan for abortion funding, in particular, was in line with Democrats’ legislative agenda and called the governor’s proposals “encouraging.” More

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      How Overturning Roe Could Backfire for Republicans

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      The party was making headway with suburban women on crime, schools and inflation. Now the abortion debate is front and center.ATLANTA — For months, Republicans have been poised to make inroads in the diverse and economically comfortable suburbs of cities like Atlanta. The moderate communities here swung toward Democrats in recent years, led by women appalled by Donald J. Trump. But lately, rampant inflation and rising crime have taken a political toll on President Biden and his party.Sandra Sloan, 82, is the kind of voter Republicans are counting on to help them reclaim this contested section of a newly purple state. Yet Ms. Sloan, a retired high school teacher who lives in Atlanta’s upscale Buckhead neighborhood, is uneasy about the party for one main reason.“I am a Republican, but I still believe that it’s a woman’s right to choose,” Ms. Sloan said.Ms. Sloan said she had followed the news recently about a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion striking down Roe v. Wade, as well as the passage of anti-abortion legislation in states like Texas and Oklahoma. She said she was not sure how she would ultimately vote in the fall, but abortion rights would be a factor.“We still don’t know, after the draft, when it’s finished what it will say,” Ms. Sloan said. “But leaving it to just men — I’m sorry, no.”It is voters like Ms. Sloan, in communities like Buckhead, who may represent the greatest challenge for Republicans in a renewed national debate over the rights of women to legally terminate a pregnancy.“I am a Republican, but I still believe that it’s a woman’s right to choose,” Sandra Sloan, a resident of Atlanta, said.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesShould the Supreme Court strike down Roe in the sweeping manner of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s draft opinion, it would unleash a ferocious state-by-state battle over abortion regulations — and introduce a powerful new issue into the calculus of voters who might otherwise be inclined to treat the midterm election as an up-or-down vote on Mr. Biden’s performance in the presidency. Moderate women who have tilted back toward the Republicans might now have second thoughts; young people who feel let down by Mr. Biden could well find motivation to vote Democratic out of a feeling of fear and indignation about the Supreme Court.The urgency of the abortion issue could be particularly intense in Georgia, where state lawmakers in 2019 passed a ban on abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy, knowing at the time that existing Supreme Court precedent would forbid the law from going into effect. If that precedent is overturned, then Georgia voters could find themselves living under one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the country.National Democrats have indicated they intend to campaign on the issue ahead of the midterms in November. On Wednesday, Senate Democrats voted to provide a broad guarantee of abortion rights nationwide, though they knew the bill lacked enough support to overcome Republican opposition.Many Republicans, however, are hesitant to discuss abortion outright. On the campaign trail, Republican candidates have been encouraged by party leaders to focus on the economy, crime and the border, according to a memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee obtained by Axios.From Opinion: A Challenge to Roe v. WadeCommentary by Times Opinion writers and columnists on the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.Gail Collins: The push to restrict women’s reproductive rights is about punishing women who want to have sex for pleasure.Jamelle Bouie: The logic of the draft ruling is an argument that could sweep more than just abortion rights out of the circle of constitutional protection.Matthew Walther, Editor of a Catholic Literary Journal: Those who oppose abortion should not discount the possibility that its proscription will have some regrettable consequences. Even so, it will be worth it.Gretchen Whitmer, Governor of Michigan: If Roe falls, abortion will become a felony in Michigan. I have a moral obligation to stand up for the rights of the women of the state I represent.State Senator Jen Jordan, a Democrat running for attorney general of Georgia, said she expected the abortion rights issue to eclipse other concerns as a top consideration for voters.Previously, Ms. Jordan said she had been campaigning on issues related to the cost of living, vowing to crack down on price gouging. The leaked Supreme Court opinion “completely changed the conversation,” she said.“I think fundamental rights is a little bit above the day-to-day economic issues that have been batted around,” Ms. Jordan said.In closely divided states and congressional districts around the country, many moderate voters suddenly find themselves choosing between a Democratic Party that has disappointed them since taking power in 2021, and a Republican Party newly emboldened to enact a right-wing social agenda that makes many voters deeply uneasy.That could create a major challenge for Republicans in their efforts to win back the centrist and center-right communities that shunned them during the Trump years and turned America’s suburbs — from areas near Atlanta and Philadelphia to Minneapolis and Salt Lake City — into at least a temporary political desert for the party. That exodus was particularly pronounced among centrist and even Republican-leaning white women, a constituency that tends to favor abortion rights with modest limitations.Should the Supreme Court strike down Roe v. Wade, it would unleash a ferocious state-by-state battle over abortion regulations.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesChristine Matthews, a pollster who has studied the abortion issue and worked in the past for Republicans, said she expected abortion rights to become a top concern of the 2022 elections. But she said it was too soon to gauge how voters would prioritize abortion rights as an issue relative to other close-to-home considerations, like the cost and availability of consumer goods.“We’ve never been in a situation like this,” Ms. Matthews said, adding, “We are in a situation where abortion rights are now being threatened in a way they haven’t been in nearly 50 years.”Voters, she added, were likely to see six-week abortion bans like Georgia’s as “well outside the mainstream.”National Republicans have attempted to mute the political impact of Roe by urging their candidates to focus on unpopular elements of the Democratic Party’s position on abortion, shifting the focus from the hard-line views of the right and making Democrats defend their opposition to most limits on abortion. In Washington, Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, acknowledged it was possible that Republicans might seek to ban abortion at the federal level but stopped well short of pledging to do so.Some Republicans have been far less guarded about their intentions on abortion regulation. Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a conservative Republican who signed the six-week ban, is facing a primary challenge from a former senator, David Perdue, who is demanding that Mr. Kemp call a special session of the state legislature to outlaw abortion altogether.Other swing states have passed strict abortion laws, including a 15-week ban in Arizona, and Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin have introduced a measure to ban the procedure after six weeks. The most extreme restrictions have been proposed in deeply conservative states like Louisiana, where legislators debated a bill that would have classified abortion as a form of homicide, and would have made it possible to bring criminal charges against women who end their pregnancies. Lawmakers scrapped the bill on Thursday before it reached a vote.Many moderate voters find themselves choosing between a Democratic Party that has disappointed them, and a Republican Party newly emboldened to enact a right-wing social agenda that makes many voters uneasy.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesIn Wisconsin, where the offices of an anti-abortion group were set on fire on Sunday, Republicans are defending a Senate seat and seeking to defeat Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat. A crackdown on abortion could alienate some of the moderate voters who would otherwise be reliable Republican votes. The state already has a dormant law, enacted in 1849, that bans abortion in nearly all cases. The current Republican front-runner for governor, Rebecca Kleefisch, has said she totally opposes abortion.Plenty of voters feel more conflicted. Nancy Turtenwald, 64, of West Allis, Wis., an inner-ring suburb of Milwaukee, said she had voted Republican her entire life but also supported abortion rights. Ms. Turtenwald said she would prefer that abortion not be the main issue in the country’s political discourse, citing access to health care, the cost of gas and housing, and the availability of baby formula as more important issues.The State of Roe v. WadeCard 1 of 4What is Roe v. Wade? More

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      States Turn to Tax Cuts as Inflation Stays Hot

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      WASHINGTON — In Kansas, the Democratic governor has been pushing to slash the state’s grocery sales tax. Last month, New Mexico lawmakers provided $1,000 tax rebates to households hobbled by high gas prices. Legislatures in Iowa, Indiana and Idaho have all cut state income taxes this year.A combination of flush state budget coffers and rapid inflation has lawmakers across the country looking for ways to ease the pain of rising prices, with nearly three dozen states enacting or considering some form of tax relief, according to the Tax Foundation, a right-leaning think tank.The efforts are blurring typical party lines when it comes to tax policy. In many cases, Democrats are joining Republicans in supporting permanently lower taxes or temporary cuts, including for high earners.But while the policies are aimed at helping Americans weather the fastest pace of inflation in 40 years, economists warn that, paradoxically, cutting taxes could exacerbate the very problem lawmakers are trying to address. By putting more money in people’s pockets, policymakers risk further stimulating already rampant consumer demand, pushing prices higher nationally.Jason Furman, an economist at Harvard University who was an economic adviser under the Obama administration, said that the United States economy was producing at full capacity right now and that any additional spending power would only drive up demand and prices. But when it comes to cutting taxes, he acknowledged, the incentives for states do not always appear to be aligned with what is best for the national economy.“I think all these tax cuts in states are adding to inflation,” Mr. Furman said. “The problem is, from any governor’s perspective, a lot of the inflation it is adding is nationwide and a lot of the benefits of the tax cuts are to the states.”States are awash in cash after a faster-than-expected economic rebound in 2021 and a $350 billion infusion of stimulus funds that Congress allocated to states and cities last year. While the Biden administration has restricted states from using relief money to directly subsidize tax cuts, many governments have been able to find budgetary workarounds to do just that without violating the rules.Last week, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a $1.2 billion tax cut that was made possible by budget surpluses. The state’s coffers were bolstered by $8.8 billion in federal pandemic relief money. Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, hailed the tax cuts as the largest in the state’s history.“Florida’s economy has consistently outpaced the nation, but we are still fighting against inflationary policies imposed on us by the Biden administration,” he said.Adding to the urgency is the political calendar: Many governors and state legislators face elections in November, and voters have made clear they are concerned about rising prices for gas, food and rent.“It’s very difficult for policymakers to see the inflationary pressures that taxpayers are burdened by right now while sitting on significant cash reserves without some desire to return that,” said Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects with the Center for State Tax Policy at the Tax Foundation. “The challenge for policymakers is that simply cutting checks to taxpayers can feed the inflationary environment rather than offsetting it.”The tax cuts are coming in a variety of forms and sizes. According to the Tax Foundation, which has been tracking proposals this year, some would be phased in, some would be permanent and others would be temporary “holidays.”Next month, New York will suspend some of its state gas taxes through the end of the year, a move that Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said would save families and businesses an estimated $585 million.In Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, has called for gradually lowering the state’s corporate tax rate to 5 percent from 10 percent — taking a decidedly different stance from many of his political peers in Congress, who have called for raising corporate taxes. Mr. Wolf said in April that the proposal was intended to make Pennsylvania more business friendly.States are acting on a fresh appetite for tax cuts as inflation is running at a 40-year high.OK McCausland for The New York TimesMr. Furman pointed to the budget surpluses as evidence that the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package handed too much money to local governments. “The problem was there was just too much money for states and localities.”A new report from the Tax Policy Center, a left-leaning think tank, said total state revenues rose by about 17.6 percent last year. State rainy day funds — money that is set aside to cover unexpected costs — have reached “new record levels,” according to the National Association of State Budget Officers.Yet those rosy budget balances may not last if the economy slows, as expected. The Federal Reserve has begun raising interest rates in an attempt to cool economic growth, and there are growing concerns about the potential for another recession. Stocks fell for another session on Monday, with the S&P 500 down 3.2 percent, as investors fretted about a slowdown in global growth, high inflation and other economic woes.Cutting taxes too deeply now could put states on weaker financial footing.The Tax Policy Center said its state tax revenue forecasts for the rest of this year and next year were “alarmingly weak” as states enacted tax cuts and spending plans. Fitch, the credit rating agency, said recently that immediate and permanent tax cuts could be risky in light of evolving economic conditions.“Substantial tax policy changes can negatively affect revenues and lead to long-term structural budget challenges, especially when enacted all at once in an uncertain economic environment,” Fitch said.The state tax cuts are taking place as the Biden administration struggles to respond to rising prices. So far, the White House has resisted calls for a gas tax holiday, though Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said in April that President Biden was open to the idea. The administration has responded by primarily trying to ease supply chain logjams that have created shortages of goods and cracking down on price gouging, but taming inflation falls largely to the Fed.The White House declined to assess the merits of states’ cutting taxes but pointed to the administration’s measures to expand fuel supplies and proposals for strengthening supply chains and lowering health and child care costs as evidence that Mr. Biden was taking inflation seriously.“President Biden is taking aggressive action to lower costs for American families and address inflation,” Emilie Simons, a White House spokeswoman, said.The degree to which state tax relief fuels inflation depends in large part on how quickly the moves go into effect.Gov. Laura Kelly backed a bill last month that would phase out the 6.5 percent grocery sales tax in Kansas, lowering it next January and bringing it to zero by 2025. Republicans in the state pushed for the gradual reduction despite calls from Democrats to cut the tax to zero by July.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 6What is inflation? More

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      If Biden’s Plan Is Like a ‘New Deal,’ Why Don’t Voters Care?

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      RICHMOND, Va. — As Chris Frelke surveyed the Thomas B. Smith Community Center, he conceded that the beige-and-green cinder block structure was not much to look at. But Mr. Frelke, the parks director in Virginia’s capital, spoke with excitement describing the image in his mind’s eye: One day, there would be a pristine new complex capable of providing services from child care to community college classes.That dream complex is not some remote fantasy. The city of Richmond intends to build it in the next few years using $20 million from the American Rescue Plan, President Biden’s trillion-dollar coronavirus-relief law. Richmond will receive a total of $155 million, a cash infusion that its Democratic mayor, Levar Stoney, called “a once-in-a-lifetime sort of investment.”“This is akin to our New Deal,” Mr. Stoney said.Unlike the New Deal, however, this $1.9 trillion federal investment in American communities has barely registered with voters. Rather than a trophy for Mr. Biden and his party, the program has become a case study in how easily voters can overlook even a lavishly funded government initiative delivering benefits close to home.Mr. Biden’s popularity has declined in polls over the past year, and voters are giving him less credit for the country’s economic recovery than his advisers had anticipated. In Virginia, Democrats got shellacked in the 2021 off-year elections amid the country’s halting emergence from the depths of the pandemic.Ambivalence among voters stems partly from the fact that many of the projects being funded are, for now, invisible.At Richmond’s Southside Community Center, slated to balloon in capacity with the help of rescue plan funding, Linda Scott, a 75-year-old pickleball enthusiast, said she had heard nothing of the coming upgrades.“I know that we’re getting lots of money,” said Ms. Scott, a self-described independent who voted for Mr. Biden. “But what we’re doing with it, I’m not sure.”Thirteen months after Mr. Biden signed the emergency package, that money is starting to fuel a wave of investment on city infrastructure, public services and pilot programs unlike any in decades.“You tell them about the American Rescue Plan,” Mr. Biden has said to House members, “and they say, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’”Doug Mills/The New York TimesCity and county leaders are spending confidently, boasting of the generational improvements they are making with the help of Mr. Biden’s legislation.The city of Richmond plans to use $78 million to create four activity centers, overhauling two existing facilities and building two. Rescue plan money will also fund more than $30 million on affordable housing initiatives and smaller amounts on public safety and health.Mr. Stoney allowed that it was not clear how much voters had processed that barrage of spending when the projects were far from completion. In cities like his, the money must make its way through city councils and contract-bidding processes; in some states, the path to deploying funds has been even longer as governors wrangle with conservative legislatures.“I wish we could snap our fingers and say: Oh, there’s a new community center right here today!” Mr. Stoney said.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the 2022 election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.Other initiatives will kick in faster but affect fewer people: In Richmond, the mayor’s office has endorsed a grant of about $350,000 to Daily Planet Health Services, clinics for low-income residents, to expand capacity to care for people without homes.Richmond plans to use more than $30 million from federal rescue plan funds on affordable housing initiatives.Parker Michels-Boyce for The New York TimesDr. Patricia Cook, the organization’s chief medical officer, said the money could be applied quickly: “We’d be able to fill the rooms that day.”Getting voters excited about the American Rescue Plan is a tall order when so many are preoccupied with the price of gasoline and the cost and availability of other basic goods — concerns the emergency-spending bill was not designed to address.A Gallup poll in March found that more Americans said they worried a great deal about inflation than any other issue. Crime and homelessness, both targets of rescue spending, were not far behind.The American Rescue Plan, which also funded direct relief payments to voters and health programs like vaccine distribution, has been criticized by Republicans and some economists for pumping too much money into the economy and probably contributing to inflation.Mr. Stoney said he had encouraged the White House to work with mayors and treat them as the “tip of the spear” in promoting its aid. Many Americans were still in a gloomy mood because of the pandemic, the mayor said, and Democrats had not done a very good job of communicating about the plan.“Not just the president, but it’s difficult even for us sometimes to break through some of the noise that’s out there,” he said.Mayor Levar Stoney of Richmond says that if Democrats don’t find a way to effectively convey their role in the rescue plan to voters, then Republicans would take credit for spending the money.Parker Michels-Boyce for The New York TimesOnce in a LifetimeThe political predicament confronting Mr. Biden and his party was embedded in the structure of the American Rescue Plan. Within the $1.9 trillion law, a $350 billion fund for state and local governments was designed to meet a dire set of circumstances along the lines of the Great Recession: a potentially catastrophic short-term budget shortfall followed by a slow economic recovery.Mr. Biden declared it would help states and municipalities rehire all “those laid-off police officers, firefighters, teachers and nurses.”The $350 billion in rescue funds would be handed out by 2022 in increments, with recipients given until 2026 to spend it. That timeline was meant to gird states and cities against another economic slowdown, said Gene Sperling, the presidential adviser overseeing the rescue plan.Yet rather than limping through a recovery, the country enjoyed the fastest economic growth in nearly four decades and saw the unemployment rate plummet. Government revenues surged across much of the country, and governors of once-beleaguered states, like California and Minnesota, announced proposals to give residents tax cuts or one-time rebates.Some state and local government payrolls are smaller than they were before the pandemic; many municipalities face a backlog in services from courts to coroners’ offices, and they are not immune to inflation and fuel shocks.The rescue spending still represents something of an insurance policy against a new recession. But for state and local leaders, the money is clearly something more than that.As government revenues began returning, the Treasury Department issued guidance encouraging cities and counties to treat rescue funding as a flexible resource that could be deployed for purposes faintly related to Covid-19.Some initiatives will kick in faster but affect fewer people: In Richmond, the mayor’s office has endorsed a grant of about $350,000 to Daily Planet Health Services, a network of clinics for low-income residents.Parker Michels-Boyce for The New York TimesIf municipalities could make the case that a social problem worsened because of the pandemic, then they could probably use rescue plan funding.Under the federal legislation, Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz knows that Toledo, Ohio, is due $180 million over two years, a colossal sum for a city of about 270,000 people.His administration outlined a combination of short- and long-term improvements, including demolishing blighted buildings, creating affordable housing projects and targeted spending on public safety and child care.Mr. Kapszukiewicz is a rare Democrat who may have been helped politically by the funding. The mayor won re-election by a wide margin in November; in his victory speech, he cited the American Rescue Plan as a reason for his city to be optimistic.“None of us in public life have ever had an opportunity like this,” Mr. Kapszukiewicz said.Cities and counties cannot enact programs that would go bankrupt once the money expires. That has encouraged governments to use it on one-time investments that could be completed by the 2026 deadline — and underwrite policy experiments on a limited scale.Construction on a home that will be offered for sale through the Maggie Walker Community Land Trust in Richmond.Parker Michels-Boyce for The New York TimesMayor Michelle Wu of Boston, a progressive Democrat, has pledged to spend hundreds of millions on affordable housing initiatives. Ms. Wu, who campaigned on eliminating fares for mass transit, is using about $8 million of rescue plan money — from more than half a billion allotted to her city — to make three bus lines free for two years.She hopes demonstrating the value of free transit will create momentum to enact the policy without federal money.“Our goal is to resist the temptation to divvy up these funds into 10,000 photo ops,” Ms. Wu said, “and instead truly focus on transformational change.”Ms. Wu said she had been up front with her constituents that the federal money made her transit policy possible, but she said many were not focused on its origins.“I think if you talk to people out and about, living their lives in our neighborhoods, they don’t care where the funding comes from,” she said.The potential of these programs is unproven, and in many cases years away — a challenge for Democrats who would like to run on a record of concrete accomplishments this fall.“You tell them about the American Rescue Plan,” Mr. Biden said to House members, “and they say, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’”Linda Scott said she had heard nothing of the coming upgrades to Richmond’s Southside Community Center. “I know that we’re getting lots of money, but what we’re doing with it, I’m not sure,” she said.Parker Michels-Boyce for The New York TimesChris Frelke, Richmond’s parks director, said the city would spend $78 million creating four community centers.Parker Michels-Boyce for The New York Times‘It Just Does Not Connect’A short drive from Richmond’s Thomas B. Smith Community Center is where the city of Richmond ends and Chesterfield County begins. A historically Republican suburb that is wealthier and whiter than Virginia’s capital city, Chesterfield County has already received more than $34 million through the American Rescue Plan. A second installment of that size is due later.The Republican-led county board has announced a major upgrade of parks and other construction projects, including a school and police station.The county’s finances remained sturdy throughout the pandemic and are now so robust that the board of supervisors approved a reduction in the real estate tax. The rescue plan funding allowed the county to accelerate some projects, local officials said, but they would likely have undertaken many of them without federal help.Christopher Winslow, the Republican chair of the county board, said the projects would have a “long-lasting and significant effect on citizens.” But in a fiscally robust county like his, Mr. Winslow said, the funding was less a rescue than a “bonanza.”By the time the first tranche of rescue money arrived, Mr. Winslow said, there was “a sense that the real pain was largely behind us.” That view is shared by many Republicans in Congress, who criticized the original price tag of the legislation and proposed clawing back some of the money.During a recent meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors, several White House officials, including Mitch Landrieu, the former New Orleans mayor, urged city leaders to do more to promote the rescue money — or risk seeing Congress redirect some of the funding elsewhere.After shedding its conservative roots to back Mr. Biden for president in 2020, Chesterfield County shifted back to the right to support a Republican, Glenn Youngkin, for governor.Lashrecse Aird, a former Democratic state legislator who represented a slice of Chesterfield County, said the rescue plan was of “no value whatsoever” to Democrats in Virginia’s 2021 elections. Ms. Aird, who lost her seat in the House of Delegates in November, said voters were scarcely aware of the federal aid.“It just does not connect. That is just the honest to goodness truth,” Ms. Aird said. “Even when you’re talking about schools, so much of this stuff is so far down the line before it’s anything you can see.”Richmond’s Southside Community Center is slated to balloon in size and capacity.Parker Michels-Boyce for The New York Times More

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      Only the Feds Can Disqualify Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene

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      The events of Jan. 6, 2021, are casting a long shadow over the midterm elections. Voters in North Carolina are seeking to bar Representative Madison Cawthorn from running for re-election to his House seat, and those in Georgia are trying to do the same to Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.These voters have filed complaints with state elections officials arguing that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment disqualifies members of Congress who engage in insurrection from appearing on the congressional ballot. (Challenges to other elected officials have also begun involving other candidates.)But these challenges face an intractable problem: Only the federal government — not the states — can disqualify insurrectionists from congressional ballots. States cannot unilaterally create procedures, unless authorized by federal statute, to keep accused insurrectionists off the congressional ballot.If these members of Congress engaged in insurrection, then the U.S. House of Representatives may exclude them, or federal prosecutors may charge them with the federal crime of insurrection. But in light of an important 1869 judicial decision, the cases against Mr. Cawthorn and Ms. Greene — which are currently mired in both state and federal proceedings — cannot remove the candidates from the congressional ballot.The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 in the wake of the Civil War. Section 3 disqualified many former Confederates from holding certain public offices if they had taken an oath to support the U.S. Constitution but subsequently, as Section 3 declares, “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.” Since 1868, the federal judiciary has had few occasions to interpret Section 3. As a result, the courts are largely in uncharted territory. Nevertheless, there is some important on-point precedent.An 1869 case concerning Hugh W. Sheffey is instructive for the Jan. 6 litigation and how courts might see things today. Mr. Sheffey took an oath to support the Constitution but later served as a member of the Confederate Virginia legislature, thereby actively supporting the Confederacy.After the war, he served as a state court judge. As Judge Sheffey, he presided over the trial and conviction of Caesar Griffin for shooting with an intent to kill. Later, Mr. Griffin challenged his conviction in federal court. He argued that Section 3 should have disqualified Mr. Sheffey from serving as judge. Griffin’s case, as it is known, was heard on appeal by the federal circuit court in Virginia. Salmon P. Chase, the chief justice of the United States and an appointee of President Abraham Lincoln, presided over the appeal. Chief Justice Chase ruled against Mr. Griffin, finding that Section 3 did not disqualify Judge Sheffey, despite the fact that he had taken an oath to support the U.S. Constitution and that it was “admitted,” as the case stated, that he later committed a Section 3 disqualifying offense.Chief Justice Chase reasoned “that legislation by Congress is necessary to give effect to” Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — and that “only” Congress can enact that legislation. Chief Justice Chase added that the exclusion of disqualified office holders “can only be provided for by Congress.” Congress must create the procedure that would determine if a defendant violated Section 3. Section 5 of the 14th Amendment emphasizes this principle: Congress, it states, “shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”In short, Griffin’s case teaches that in legal terms, Section 3 is not self-executing — that is, Congress must establish, or at least authorize, the process that affords accused insurrectionists an opportunity to contest the allegations brought against them.Mr. Cawthorn and Ms. Greene deny that they engaged in insurrection and oppose any assertion that they violated the law, which would include Section 3 disqualifying offenses. Moreover, in the Cawthorn and Greene cases, the plaintiffs have not pointed to any federal legislation authorizing the states to police Section 3 by disqualifying accused insurrectionists from the congressional ballot. Without federal authorization, state elections boards and even state courts could very well be powerless to make determinations about congressional candidates and Section 3.There may be another way, based on an existing statute, to disqualify a candidate from congressional ballots: the Insurrection Act of 1862. This legislation, which predated the 14th Amendment, mirrors one of the disqualifying offenses established in Section 3.The modern Insurrection Act is virtually unchanged from the statute Lincoln signed in 1862. If the Justice Department indicts and succeeds in convicting Mr. Cawthorn, Ms. Greene or others of insurrection under that act, then on that basis, state elections boards and state courts may remove these candidates from the congressional ballot.Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesBut so far, the Justice Department has not charged any congressional candidates with inciting or engaging in an insurrection or with any other disqualifying offenses. Most of the Jan. 6 federal charges have been based on things like property crimes or for obstructing official proceedings or assaulting officers rather than insurrection.If the Justice Department does not secure a conviction of a Section 3 disqualifying offense before the state ballot is printed (the primary in North Carolina is scheduled for May 17 and the one in Georgia for May 24), then, generally, state boards of election and even state courts will be powerless to remove otherwise eligible congressional candidates from the ballot.Recently, some scholars and advocates have contested Chief Justice Chase’s opinion in Griffin’s case as precluding the state challenges against Mr. Cawthorn and Ms. Greene. In their view, even in the absence of a federal statute, state election officials who conclude that a person engaged in insurrection may proceed to remove that candidate from the congressional ballot. There is no Supreme Court precedent that squarely forecloses that position. Moreover, Chief Justice Chase’s decision was not rendered by the United States Supreme Court, and so it is not controlling precedent. On Monday, a federal court in Georgia allowed the state court disqualification proceeding to go forward against Representative Greene. The federal judge did so without citing or distinguishing Griffin’s case.Still, we think the chief justice’s opinion is persuasive; we expect state and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, will likely follow this historically entrenched position. Chief Justice Chase’s approach is the simplest path. If the courts find that Section 3 is not self-executing, there is no need for state election officials to decide far more politically charged questions about whether Mr. Cawthorn and Ms. Greene — and potentially, looking ahead to 2024, Donald Trump — engaged in insurrection.Congress has not authorized the states to enforce Section 3 by striking congressional candidates from the ballot. Thus, state courts and elections boards lack jurisdiction to exclude alleged insurrectionists from the congressional ballot. In such circumstances, state governments must let the people decide who will represent them in Congress.Josh Blackman is a law professor at South Texas College of Law Houston. S.B. Tillman is an associate professor at the Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology. They recently wrote a law review article about the application of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to President Trump.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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      Trump Allies Are Still Feeding the False 2020 Election Narrative

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      Fifteen months after they tried and failed to overturn the 2020 election, the same group of lawyers and associates is continuing efforts to “decertify” the vote, feeding a false narrative.A group of President Donald J. Trump’s allies and associates spent months trying to overturn the 2020 election based on his lie that he was the true winner.Now, some of the same confidants who tried and failed to invalidate the results based on a set of bogus legal theories are pushing an even wilder sequel: that by “decertifying” the 2020 vote in key states, the outcome can still be reversed.In statehouses and courtrooms across the country, as well as on right-wing news outlets, allies of Mr. Trump — including the lawyer John Eastman — are pressing for states to pass resolutions rescinding Electoral College votes for President Biden and to bring lawsuits that seek to prove baseless claims of large-scale voter fraud. Some of those allies are casting their work as a precursor to reinstating the former president.The efforts have failed to change any statewide outcomes or uncover mass election fraud. Legal experts dismiss them as preposterous, noting that there is no plausible scenario under the Constitution for returning Mr. Trump to office.But just as Mr. Eastman’s original plan to use Congress’s final count of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, to overturn the election was seen as far-fetched in the run-up to the deadly Capitol riot, the continued efforts are fueling a false narrative that has resonated with Mr. Trump’s supporters and stoked their grievances. They are keeping alive the same combustible stew of conspiracy theory and misinformation that threatens to undermine faith in democracy by nurturing the lie that the election was corrupt.The efforts have fed a cottage industry of podcasts and television appearances centered around not only false claims of widespread election fraud in 2020, but the notion that the results can still be altered after the fact — and Mr. Trump returned to power, an idea that he continues to push privately as he looks toward a probable re-election run in 2024.Democrats and some Republicans have raised deep concerns about the impact of the decertification efforts. They warn of unintended consequences, including the potential to incite violence of the sort that erupted on Jan. 6, when a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters — convinced that he could still be declared the winner of the 2020 election — stormed the Capitol. Legal experts worry that the focus on decertifying the last election could pave the way for more aggressive — and earlier — legislative intervention the next time around.“At the moment, there is no other way to say it: This is the clearest and most present danger to our democracy,” said J. Michael Luttig, a leading conservative lawyer and former appeals court judge, for whom Mr. Eastman clerked and whom President George W. Bush considered as a nominee to be the chief justice of the United States. “Trump and his supporters in Congress and in the states are preparing now to lay the groundwork to overturn the election in 2024 were Trump, or his designee, to lose the vote for the presidency.”Most of Mr. Trump’s aides would like him to stop talking about 2020 — or, if he must, to focus on changes to voting laws across the country rather than his own fate. But like he did in 2020, when many officials declined to help him upend the election results, Mr. Trump has found a group of outside allies willing to take up an outlandish argument they know he wants to see made.The efforts have been led or loudly championed by Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow; Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser; Stephen K. Bannon, the former White House chief strategist; and Boris Epshteyn, an aide and associate of Mr. Trump’s.Another key player has been Mr. Eastman, the right-wing lawyer who persuaded Mr. Trump shortly after the election that Vice President Mike Pence could reject certified electoral votes for Mr. Biden when he presided over the congressional count and declare Mr. Trump the victor instead.Mr. Eastman wrote a memo and Mr. Epshteyn sent an email late last year to the main legislator pushing a decertification bill in Wisconsin, laying out a legal theory to justify the action. Mr. Eastman met last month with Robin Vos, the speaker of the State Assembly, and activists working across the country, a meeting that was reported earlier by The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.Jefferson Davis, an activist from Wisconsin, said he had asked Mr. Eastman to join the meeting after hearing about his work on behalf of Mr. Trump following the election.“If it was good enough for the president of the United States,” Mr. Davis said in an interview, “then his expertise was good enough to meet with Speaker Vos in Wisconsin on election fraud and what do we do to fix it.”Mr. Vos has maintained that the Legislature has no pathway to decertification, in line with the guidance of its own lawyers.John Eastman, left, has made clear that he has no intention of dropping his fight to show that the election was stolen.Jim Bourg/Reuters“There is no mechanism in state or federal law for the Legislature to reverse certified votes cast by the Electoral College and counted by Congress,” the lawyers wrote, adding that impeachment was the only way to remove a sitting president other than in the case of incapacity.But Mr. Eastman has made clear that he has no intention of dropping his fight to prove that the election was stolen. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack has said his legal efforts to invalidate the results most likely violated the law by trying to defraud the American people. A federal judge recently agreed, calling Mr. Eastman’s actions “a coup in search of a legal theory.”Legal experts say his continued efforts could increase his criminal exposure; but if Mr. Eastman were ever to be charged with fraud, he could also point to his recent work as evidence that he truly believed the election was stolen.“There are a lot of things still percolating,” Mr. Eastman said in an interview with The New York Times last fall. He claimed that states had illegally given people the ability to cast votes in ways that should have been forbidden, corrupting the results. And he pointed to a widely debunked video from State Farm Arena in Atlanta, which he claimed showed that tabulation ballots were run through counting machines multiple times during the election.Charles Burnham, Mr. Eastman’s lawyer, said in a statement that he “was recently invited to lend his expertise to legislators and citizens in Wisconsin confronting significant evidence of election fraud and illegality. He did so in his role as a constitutional scholar and not on behalf of any client.”The fringe legal theory that Mr. Eastman and Mr. Epshteyn are promoting — which has been widely dismissed — holds that state lawmakers have the power to choose how electors are selected, and they can change them long after the Electoral College has certified votes if they find fraud and illegality sufficiently altered the outcome. The theory has surfaced in multiple states, including several that are political battlegrounds.As in Wisconsin, state legislators in Arizona drafted resolutions calling for the decertification of the 2020 election. In Georgia, a lawsuit sought to decertify the victories of the Democratic senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. And Robert Regan, a Republican favored to win a seat in the Michigan House, has said he wants to decertify the 2020 election either through a ballot petition or the courts.Mr. Bannon, Mr. Lindell and Mr. Epshteyn have repeatedly promoted decertification at the state level on Mr. Bannon’s podcast, “War Room,” since last summer, pushing it as a steady drumbeat and at times claiming that it could lead to Mr. Trump being put back into office. They have described the so-called audit movement that began in Arizona and spread to other states as part of a larger effort to decertify electoral votes.“We are on a full, full freight train to decertify,” Mr. Epshteyn said on the program in January. “That’s what we’re going to get. Everyone knows. Everyone knows this election was stolen.”Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3Debating a criminal referral. More

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      The Supreme Court Did the Right Thing. I’m Still Worried.

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      State legislatures are, and always have been, creatures of state constitutions, bound by the terms of those constitutions and subject to the judgments of state courts.This has important implications for the nature of state legislative power. The federal Constitution may give state legislatures the power to allocate electoral votes and regulate congressional elections, but that power is subject to the limits imposed by state constitutions.Imagine what could happen if that were not the case. Imagine, instead, that state legislatures had plenary power over federal elections, which would allow them to overrule state courts, ignore a governor’s veto and even nullify an act of Congress. State legislatures would, in essence, be sovereign, with unchecked power over the fundamental political rights of those citizens who lived within their borders.This change would both unravel and turn the clock back on our constitutional order, with states acting more like the quasi-independent entities they were before the Civil War and less as the subordinate units of a national polity.But that, apparently, is what some Republicans want.Recently, Republicans in North Carolina and Pennsylvania asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block congressional maps drawn by their state courts. Their argument was based on a revolutionary doctrine that would tee up this fundamental change to the American political system.The challenges, which failed, stemmed from the effort to gerrymander Democrats out of as much power as possible. In North Carolina, the proposed gerrymander was so egregious that the state Supreme Court ruled that it was in violation of the state’s constitution. The court drew a new map to rectify the problem. In Pennsylvania, likewise, state courts drew a new congressional map after Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, vetoed the heavily gerrymandered map produced by the Republican-led legislature.The North Carolina Supreme Court’s ruling and the Pennsylvania governor’s veto should have been the last word. Both were acting in accordance with their state constitutions, which bind and structure the actions of the state legislatures in question. For Republicans, however, those checks on their power are illegitimate. Their argument, in brief, is that neither state courts nor elected executives have the right to interfere with or challenge the power of state legislatures as it relates to the regulation of federal elections.Nestled at the heart of the Republican argument is a breathtaking claim about the nature of state legislative power. Called the “independent state legislature” doctrine, it holds that Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution — which states that “the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of choosing Senators” — gives state legislatures total power to write rules for congressional elections and direct the appointment of presidential electors, unbound by state constitutions and free from the scrutiny of state courts.This isn’t a new theory, exactly. In his concurring opinion in Bush v. Gore in 2000 — joined by justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — Chief Justice William Rehnquist argued that under Article II, any “significant departure from the legislative scheme for appointing Presidential electors presents a federal constitutional question.” Meaning, in short, that a state court could go beyond its authority in adjudicating state election law. The other two Republican-appointed justices on the court, Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O’Connor, declined to join Rehnquist’s concurrence, even as they voted to stop the counting and give George W. Bush the win.For 20 years, the doctrine lay dormant. It was resurrected, in 2020, by allies of Donald Trump, who needed some constitutional pretense for their attempt to overturn his defeat. Before the election, a number of state courts had ordered state governments to make accommodations for the pandemic, citing state constitutions. Elsewhere, governors, secretaries of state and state boards of election took matters into their own hands, bypassing the legislature (and using their own authority under the law) to accommodate voters. When, after the election, the Trump campaign sued either to throw out ballots or to invalidate results, its lawyers offered the “independent state legislature” doctrine as justification. So too did supporters of Trump who wanted Republican legislatures to void election results and choose electors who would give the president a second term.The basic problem with this doctrine is that it’s bunk. “The text of the Elections and Electors clauses is silent as to the role of state constitutions, but the subsequent history is anything but,” the legal scholar Michael Weingartner writes in a draft article on the theory of independent state legislatures. “Since the Founding, state constitutions have both directly regulated federal elections and constrained state legislatures’ exercise of their authority under the Clauses.” What’s more, over the past century, “nearly every election-related state constitutional provision was either approved and presented to voters by state legislatures or placed on the ballot and enacted by voters directly.” Even if the federal Constitution is vague on the full scope of state legislative power to regulate elections, both history and practice have fixed the meaning of the relevant clauses in favor of constraint. State constitutions (and state courts) do in fact regulate state legislatures as it relates to election law.Some proponents of the “independent state legislature” doctrine argue that theirs represents the original understanding of the Elections and Electors clauses in the Constitution. Another researcher, Hayward H. Smith, says otherwise. “The history demonstrates beyond cavil that the founding generation understood that ‘legislatures’ would operate as normal legislatures, not independent legislatures, with respect to both procedure and substance,” he writes. In fact, he notes, a review of every state constitution adopted in the 19th century reveals “that both explicit and nonexplicit limitations on ‘legislatures’ were widespread before, during, and after the Civil War.”There’s simply no basis for the claim that the Constitution grants state legislatures this kind of unaccountable power over the conduct of federal elections. It runs counter to the basic idea behind the American political system, that is, the sharing and separation of power among competing and overlapping institutions. It defeats the purpose of this delicate balance to give state legislatures plenary power over federal elections (to say nothing of how it is incongruent with the elite frustration over the scope of states’ power that gave rise to the Constitution in the first place).Thankfully, the Supreme Court rejected the challenge from Republicans in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Still, there may be four votes for the theory of the “independent state legislature.” In a 2020 dissent from the majority on the question of whether Pennsylvania should count certain mail-in ballots, Justices Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh appeared sympathetic to the doctrine. Neil Gorsuch endorsed it outright, writing that “The Constitution provides that state legislatures — not federal judges, not state judges, not state governors, not other state officials — bear primary responsibility for setting election rules.”Dissenting from the court’s decision in the North Carolina case, Alito called the question of state legislative power an issue of “great national importance,” a clear signal that he is open to the arguments of Republican legislators. Kavanaugh concurred. “I agree with Justice Alito that the underlying Elections Clause question raised in the emergency application is important, and that both sides have advanced serious arguments on the merits. The issue is almost certain to keep arising until the Court definitively resolves it.”It is unclear where the newest justice, the Trump appointee Amy Coney Barrett, stands on the doctrine, although she appears to have voted with the majority in these particular cases.It is a good thing that the Supreme Court has decided not to throw out more than 230 years of precedent and practice for the sake of a bizarre and anti-democratic reading of the Constitution. But previous Supreme Courts have endorsed bizarre and anti-democratic readings of the Constitution — the Constitution itself has an uneasy relationship with American democracy — and this court, especially, has been more hostile than friendly to the more expansive view of our democratic rights.We can breathe a sigh of relief, for now, but when it comes to the future of the “independent state legislature” doctrine, the worst may still be on the horizon.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