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      Pennsylvania Governor’s Race Takes on Huge Stakes for Abortion Rights

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      Now that the Supreme Court has struck down Roe v. Wade, the most important election this year in America when it comes to abortion will be the contest for governor of Pennsylvania.Josh Shapiro, the state’s Democratic attorney general, is facing off against Doug Mastriano, a Republican state senator who has vowed to make abortion illegal. If Mr. Mastriano wins, the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania legislature is all but certain to move to undo the state’s existing law allowing abortion.“Roe v. Wade is rightly relegated to the ash heap of history,” Mr. Mastriano said on Friday. “As the abortion debate returns to the states, Pennsylvania must be prepared to lead the nation in being a voice for the voiceless.”Mr. Shapiro denounced the ruling. “The stakes in this governor’s race could not be more clear,” he said. “The contrast between me and my dangerous opponent could not be greater.”Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania attorney general and Democratic nominee for governor, has pledged to protect abortion rights.Jeff Swensen for The New York TimesNowhere else is a governor’s race so pivotal. In Wisconsin, where the Republican-led Legislature has battled with Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat who is seeking re-election, a pre-Roe law forbidding abortion automatically went back into effect after Friday’s decision. Mr. Evers has pledged to fight for abortion rights, but he faces a wall of opposition from Republican state legislators.This week, Mr. Evers ordered Wisconsin’s lawmakers to the State Capitol in Madison for a special session meant to reverse an 1849 law outlawing abortion. Republicans ended the session on Wednesday without taking action.In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, has backed a series of creative legal arguments to block the state’s 1931 law outlawing abortion from taking effect. In May, a state judge ruled that the law would not immediately go into effect after an eventual Supreme Court ruling on Roe.Ms. Whitmer has also supported an effort to place a referendum on the November ballot to enshrine abortion rights in Michigan’s Constitution.Three other states will have questions about abortion decided directly by voters in November.Kansas and Kentucky have referendums asking voters to affirm that their state constitutions do not guarantee a right to abortion. In Vermont, the ballot will contain a question that would enshrine a person’s right to control their own reproductive choices in the state’s Constitution.Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas, a Democrat who supports abortion rights, faces a difficult re-election bid. Her likely Republican opponent, Derek Schmidt, the state’s attorney general, opposes abortion rights.After Friday’s ruling, Republican governors praised the decision and sought to press the party’s advantage. In Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin said Friday that he would seek a ban on abortion after 15 weeks — though such a move is unlikely to be successful given that Democrats control the State Senate.“Virginians want fewer abortions, not more abortions,” Mr. Youngkin said. “We can build a bipartisan consensus on protecting the life of unborn children.”Virginia’s next round of state legislature elections won’t take place until 2023; Mr. Youngkin, who took office in January, is prohibited from seeking a second consecutive term.Gov. Phil Bryant of Mississippi, a Republican whose state capital was the origin of Friday’s Supreme Court case, said state lawmakers would exercise a “moral duty to protect life at all stages.”“The pro-life movement also understands that our fight is just beginning,” Mr. Bryant said. “In the coming days, our efforts to assert the full dignity of every human life will become more important.”Some Republicans minimized the significance of the ruling even as they cheered it. Mr. Mastriano, speaking in Binghamton, N.Y., where he appeared alongside and endorsed Andrew Giuliani in New York’s Republican primary for governor, called the political furor a distraction.“Sadly, the other side wants to distract us about, you know, Jan. 6,” said Mr. Mastriano, who chartered buses for his supporters to attend the rally that led to the Capitol attack. “Or they want to distract us about Covid. Or distract us about, you know, Roe v. Wade.”Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois called on the state’s Democratic-led General Assembly to convene a special session to protect abortion rights.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesDemocratic governors cast the Supreme Court’s decision as a catastrophic move — and the first step toward a broader rollback of women’s rights.Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois said he had pressed President Biden during his recent visit to Chicago to be more forceful in defending abortion rights. He said Illinois, which is surrounded by states where abortion is illegal or is likely to be outlawed soon, had “a special obligation” to make abortion accessible not just to its citizens but also to visitors.“We’re an island in the Midwest, in the country, all around us are anti-choice legislatures and state laws and governors,” Mr. Pritzker said in an interview on Friday. “The only thing that will allow us to reverse the terrible direction things are going is electing pro-choice Democratic governors, pro-choice Democratic legislators.”Democratic candidates for governor in states with Republican-controlled legislatures like Georgia, Arizona and Texas said they would fight for abortion rights if elected — though in practice there is little they could do toward that goal given Republican opposition.“I will work with the legislature to reverse the draconian law that will now rule our state,” said Stacey Abrams, the Democrat running for governor of Georgia.Neil Vigdor More

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      Court Ruling on Guns: The Legislature’s Options

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      It’s now up to Albany to pass restrictions on gun ownership that would be allowed under the Supreme Court decision invalidating New York’s law.Good morning. It’s Friday. We’ll look at what the Legislature can do now that the Supreme Court has invalidated New York’s concealed-carry gun law. We’ll also look at how changing demographics are reflected in a House race in Manhattan.Michael Reynolds/EPA, via ShutterstockIn procedural terms, the Supreme Court decision striking down New York’s concealed-carry gun law sent the case back to lower courts. In practical terms, the decision sent the issue of gun control and gun violence to lawmakers in Albany, where Gov. Kathy Hochul called the ruling “shocking, absolutely shocking.”She was preparing to sign a school safety bill when the Supreme Court decision was announced and became visibly angry as she described the 6-to-3 ruling, which was built on a broad interpretation of the Second Amendment that is likely to make it harder for states to restrict guns. Hochul said she would call the Legislature back to Albany for a special session, probably next month, and that aides had already prepared draft legislation with new restrictions.She also said the state was considering changing the permitting process to create basic qualifications for gun owners, including training requirements. And she said New York was considering a system where businesses and private property owners could set their own restrictions on firearms.In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams said the decision was “just not rooted in reality” and “has made every single one of us less safe from gun violence.”“There is no place in the nation that this decision affects as much as New York City,” he said.But the question of the day was what the Legislature in Albany could do.“The hardest thing for the Legislature is to calmly write legislation that is not going to please everybody,” said Paul Finkelman, the chancellor and a distinguished professor at Gratz College in Philadelphia, who follows the New York Legislature. “It’s not going to please everyone who says we’ve got to get rid of firearms. That’s not where the world lives today.”He suggested setting an age threshold for gun permits, much like the ones for drivers’ licenses, and taxing firearms, much like gasoline or cigarettes.Vincent Bonventre, a professor at the Albany Law School, said the Legislature could restrict the possession of firearms by categories, putting guns out of the reach of convicted felons or people convicted of misdemeanors involving violence, for example. “It’s going to take some thought” to develop restrictions that would pass muster, “but not that much,” he said.Jonathan Lowy, the chief counsel of the gun control group Brady, has argued that letting more people carry hidden handguns would mean more violent crime — “in other words, more Americans will die,” he wrote in the New York University Law Review last year. On Thursday, the group estimated that more than 28,000 people had died from gun violence since the case was argued before the court last Nov. 3.Among those shot was Zaire Goodman, 21, who survived the May 14 supermarket massacre in Buffalo, N.Y. On Thursday his mother, Zeneta Everhart, said she feared the Supreme Court decision would contribute to more gun violence.“What else has to happen before this country wakes up and understands that the people in this country don’t feel safe?” she asked. “The government, the courts, the lawmakers — they are here to protect us, and I don’t feel protected.”WeatherIt will be mostly sunny, with temperatures reaching the high 70s. At night, it will be mostly clear with temps around the high 60s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until July 4 (Independence Day).The latest New York newsBrittainy Newman for The New York TimesCoronavirus vaccinesMandates: Mayor Eric Adams has not enforced the city’s coronavirus vaccine mandate for private businesses, and has no plans to do so.Parents’ relief: Families seeking vaccine shots for their children under age 5 trickled into vaccine hubs in Harlem and the Bronx. One parent said vaccinating his 3-year-old after 18 months of waiting gave him “peace of mind.”More local newsPenn Station woes: Nearly everyone agrees that something must be done to fix the chaos at Penn Station. Now comes the hard part of devising a solution that will steer clear of controversy.Maxwell’s sentencing: Federal prosecutors in Manhattan asked a judge to sentence Ghislaine Maxwell to at least 30 years in prison for helping Jeffrey Epstein recruit and abuse girls.Why Jewish political power has ebbed in New YorkRepresentative Carolyn Maloney, left, and Representative Jerrold Nadler are running against each other.Mary Altaffer/Associated PressAs recently as the 1990s, about half of the lawmakers whom New York City voters sent to the House of Representatives were Jewish. Now there is one, Representative Jerrold Nadler, and he is fighting for political survival because his district was combined with parts of Representative Carolyn Maloney’s on the Upper East Side. She’s running against him in the Aug. 23 primary. (That’s the right date. The congressional primaries are not being held next Tuesday with the primaries for statewide offices like governor and lieutenant governor. A federal judge ordered the House primaries delayed after the congressional districts were redrawn.)Last month we looked at the collision course that Nadler and Maloney are on. This week I asked my colleague Nicholas Fandos, who covers politics in New York, to put the race in the context of a changing New York.New York was long the center of Jewish political power in the United States. As recently as the 1990s, lawmakers who were Jewish made up about half of New York City’s delegation in the House of Representatives. What changed?It’s a complicated story, but it largely boils down to demographic change. New York’s Jewish population peaked in the 1950s, when one in four New Yorkers were Jewish. Today, there are about half as many Jewish residents in the city, and they tend to vote less cohesively than they once did. The exceptions are growing ultra-Orthodox communities, primarily in Brooklyn.Redistricting over the years has really reinforced this pattern.At the same time, New Yorkers of Black, Latino and Asian heritage have been gaining seats at the table that they historically did not have. So where in the early ’90s, eight New York City House members were Jewish, today nine of the 13 members representing parts of the city are Black or Latino, and another is Asian American.How did redistricting help Nadler in the past, and what happened this time around?Nadler’s current district was that way by design. Mapmakers in the past intentionally stitched together Jewish communities on the West Side of Manhattan with growing Orthodox ones in Brooklyn’s Borough Park, sometimes going to great lengths to connect them.But this year, a court-appointed mapmaker severed the connection. The mapmaker, it seems, was not persuaded that the communities shared enough interests to remain connected in such a geographically counterintuitive way.What about Nadler’s opponent in the primary, Representative Carolyn Maloney. She’s a Presbyterian running in what’s believed to be the most Jewish district in the country.Maloney is competing hard for the Jewish vote. She has been racking up endorsements. On the campaign trail, she touts a bill she’s passed on Holocaust education and her opposition to President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, which Israel’s government vehemently opposed at the time. (Nadler supported the deal.)What about pro-Israel political groups? Which one are they backing, Nadler or Maloney?So far, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which has been quite active in Democratic primaries this year, is staying neutral, or supporting both candidates actually. J Street, the pro-Israel lobby that tries to be a liberal counterweight to AIPAC, is raising money for Nadler.METROPOLITAN diaryDoughnut manDear Diary:It was 1950. My grandmother would pick me up after school on Seventh Street near Avenue B and take me for ice cream and a pretzel rod or some other treat.On this particular day, she said we were going to the Second Avenue Griddle, my favorite place for jelly doughnuts. They were topped with crunchy sugar. You could bite into them anywhere, and real raspberry jam would ooze onto your fingertips.I could hardly contain my excitement as we walked the three long avenue blocks to Second Avenue. We walked into the store, and the counterman handed me a doughnut in wax paper. I bit into it and immediately had jelly all over my face. I was in doughnut heaven.The counterman motioned for me to come behind the counter. He pointed to a tray of freshly baked doughnuts and handed me a clean white apron that hung to my ankles. Then he handed me a doughnut in wax paper and showed me how to glide it onto the nozzle of the jelly machine.With my free hand, I was to push the handle of the machine slowly down so the jelly streamed into the doughnut without shooting out the other side. I became proficient enough to move things along, and soon all the doughnuts were filled.I washed my hands and handed the apron back when I was finished. My grandmother and I left for home.“Your Uncle Lenny must love you very much,” she said as we were walking. “If the owner of the store had come in, he would have been in a lot of trouble.”— Sandy SnyderIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you on Monday. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Melissa Guerrero More

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      ‘Patriotic and Honest Republicans’ Telling the Truth

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      More from our inbox:But Your 2020 Election Was Not Fraudulent?The Supreme Court’s Ruling on Religion and SchoolsDon’t Erase Tolstoy’s NameBook Browsing, in a BookstoreThe Jan. 6 committee heard from a group of witnesses who were pressured by former President Donald J. Trump to overturn the election.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump Pressured States to Comply on Fake Electors” (front page, June 22):There is a silver lining that I did not expect in the Jan. 6 hearings. I am a lifelong Democrat. The Republicans in the news over the last several years have been frightening in their cruel and vicious remarks and extreme agendas on race relations, gay marriage and abortion and, most important, in their devotion to the ex-president.But the hearings have brought some very reasonable, patriotic and honest Republicans to the front. There are people who voted for Donald Trump and supported his platform, but when faced with his drive to overturn a fair election, they are coming through. They are telling the truth about the lies and corruption and putting their careers and maybe their lives on the line.It gives me hope that there is a way out of the nightmare of the last administration’s corruption and a way forward with sane debate and compromise.Joan BancroftDenverTo the Editor:Of all the crimes Donald Trump may have committed, or inspired his deluded faithful to commit, the malicious attack on two election workers, Wandrea Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, is the single most shameless act of deceit and cowardice of his entire pathetic career.Two humble women worked selflessly during a pandemic to uphold our democracy. Donald Trump misused the power of the presidency to maliciously destroy the good reputation of these women in his quest to undermine our democracy.If no other details or testimony from these hearings are remembered, future generations will ask how someone who had no sense of decency could actually be president of the United States.Asher FriedCroton-on-Hudson, N.Y.To the Editor:As the victims of threats and verbal assaults, Wandrea Moss, her mother and other members of the family should be as eligible to receive 24/7 security and peace of mind as Brett Kavanaugh and other Supreme Court justices and their families. We owe them their lives back.Lois BerkowitzOro Valley, Ariz.But Your 2020 Election Was Not Fraudulent?A resolution adopting the false claim that former President Donald J. Trump was the victim of a stolen election in 2020 was passed by Republican state-party delegates in Texas.Leah Millis/ReutersTo the Editor:Re “Texas G.O.P. Adopts Stolen Election Claims” (news article, June 20):Many Republicans who reject President Biden’s 2020 victory are occupying seats in statehouses or in Congress to which they themselves were elected in that very same “illegitimate” election. If that election was so fraudulent, how could these same Republican election deniers (so conveniently) accept their own 2020 elections?David E. CohenNorth Haledon, N.J.The Supreme Court’s Ruling on Religion and Schools Pete Marovich for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Justices Deliver Win to Schools Based in Faith” (front page, June 22):Whatever you may think of government offers to pay the tuition for the private education of children, the paying of that tuition to religious institutions is clearly a violation of the First Amendment’s prohibition against the government establishment of religion, despite the current Supreme Court’s majority holding to the contrary.There is no more clear government support of religious institutions than sending public money their way, exactly the kind of government action that the First Amendment prohibits. It is not the court’s duty to support religion, only to guarantee that government stays out of the business of religion and does not prohibit its free exercise.What we have instead is a court bent on strengthening religion in this country. Never mind that the Constitution provides otherwise.Bruce NeumanWater Mill, N.Y.To the Editor:Once a state provides funding for private schools, it cannot then refuse to fund religious schools. People who believe that this exclusion is justified based on the “separation of church and state” are getting it wrong.Andrea EconomosHartsdale, N.Y.Don’t Erase Tolstoy’s NameTo the Editor:Re “So Long, Tolstoy Station? Cities ‘Decolonize’ by Erasing Russian Names” (news article, June 8):Having visited Ukraine, including Kyiv, in more peaceful times, I can certainly understand that eliminating the names of prominent Russians from public places in an effort to “decolonize” this wonderful nation is very much in order. However, the name of the author Leo Tolstoy, a true person of peace and good will, should remain.Tolstoy was one of the greatest, most positive influences on both Gandhi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Among many other actions, Gandhi named a farm he established, as a refuge for passive resisters and their indigent families, the Tolstoy Farm.James K. RileyPearl River, N.Y.Book Browsing, in a BookstoreApps have struggled to reproduce the kind of real-world serendipity that puts a book in a reader’s hand.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesTo the Editor:The headline on your June 9 article about browsing in bookstores read, “Can Any App Capture This Experience?” The answer is obvious — of course not.Book browsing is a physical experience, involving visual, tactile and sometimes even olfactory sensations. In a physical bookshop, people are moved to pull a book off a shelf and take a closer look for many reasons, some obvious, some subtle and some downright mysterious.Every book browser has experienced those magical instances in which they have found books they weren’t looking for or even knew existed, but which to some degree affected their life.The possibility of making another such serendipitous discovery is why people love to browse in bookstores. It can’t be engineered or made subject to an algorithm.M.C. LangChevy Chase, Md. More

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      Supreme Court Allows Undated Ballots in Pennsylvania Election

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      A state law required mailed ballots to be accompanied by a signed and dated declaration, but a federal appeals court ruled that undated declarations sufficed.WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said on Thursday that election officials in Pennsylvania may count mailed ballots accompanied by voters’ declarations that were signed but not dated. The court’s order came in a tight race for a seat on a state court, but it is likely to affect other contests in the state as well.The court’s brief order gave no reasons, which is typical when the justices act on emergency applications.The court’s three most conservative members — Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch — dissented, saying that the court should address the issue presented in the case in time for the November elections.The case concerned a state law enacted in 2019 that permitted all registered voters to vote by mail. The law required voters using mailed ballots to “fill out, date and sign” a declaration printed on the outside of the return envelope that said they were qualified to vote.The Supreme Court’s order let stand a ruling from a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, which said the part of the state law requiring the declarations to be dated ran afoul of a provision of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964. The provision prohibits government officials from denying the right to vote “because of an error or omission” if it “is not material in determining whether such individual is qualified under state law to vote.”The case arose from an election in November 2021 for a seat on the Lehigh County Court of Common Pleas in which David Ritter, a Republican, leads Zachary Cohen, a Democrat, by 71 votes. The local elections board determined that it would also count 257 undated ballots, and challenges in state and federal court followed.It was undisputed that the undated ballots were received by Election Day and that the elections board had accepted ballots with incorrect dates, including birth dates, rejecting only missing ones.The suit, brought by five voters who had submitted undated ballots, argued that the federal law required that all 257 undated ballots be counted. The voters, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Supreme Court that requiring a date served no purpose.“The handwritten date is so inconsequential that the Board of Elections accepted ballots where voters wrote any date whatsoever on the return envelope, even dates from decades ago,” the voters’ brief said. “The county clerk affirmed he would have accepted envelope dates from the future. Yet voters who mistakenly omitted the envelope date were disenfranchised.”In March, Judge Joseph F. Leeson Jr. of the Federal District Court in Allentown, Pa., rejected the suit, saying that only the attorney general was authorized to sue under the federal law.The Third Circuit disagreed, saying that the voters were entitled to sue and that the requirement of a dated declaration did not help determine whether the voter was qualified. “The requirement is material if it goes to determining age, citizenship, residency or current imprisonment for a felony,” Judge Theodore A. McKee wrote, concluding that adding a date to a signature did not aid in those determinations.Justice Alito, writing for the three dissenters, said the federal law did not appear to address the requirement that voters date their declarations.“When a mail-in ballot is not counted because it was not filled out correctly, the voter is not denied ‘the right to vote,’” he wrote. “Rather, that individual’s vote is not counted because he or she did not follow the rules for casting a ballot.”Understand the Battle Over U.S. Voting RightsCard 1 of 6Why are voting rights an issue now? More

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      ‘The G.O.P. Has Gone Even Farther to the Right Than I Expected’: Three Writers Talk About the Midterms

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      Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted an online conversation with Lis Smith, a Democratic communications strategist, and Matthew Continetti of the American Enterprise Institute about a month of primaries, how they have shaped the midterms and what Democrats and Republicans can hope for and expect.FRANK BRUNI: On Tuesday, at least 19 children and two teachers were killed in the latest mass school shooting in a country that has witnessed too many of them. In my heartfelt (and heartsick) opinion, that should change the political landscape. But, realistically, will it?LIS SMITH: It should, but I unfortunately don’t think it will move the needle a ton.MATTHEW CONTINETTI: I agree. Unfortunately, history suggests that the political landscape won’t change after the horror in Texas.There’s a long and terrible list of school shootings. Each incident has been met with public horror and with calls for gun controls. But little has happened to either reduce the number of guns in America or to shift power to advocates for firearm regulation.SMITH: After Sandy Hook, we did see a number of states — Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, New York — take strong action on gun control, and I still believe that we will most likely see gun-control legislation on the state versus the federal level.And this does raise the stakes of the midterms. It will allow Democrats in marginal, suburban seats to use the issue against their Republican opponents, given that nearly every Republican in the House voted against H.R. 8, which would implement background checks and common-sense restrictions of the sort that have had broad public support.BRUNI: After that cheery start, let’s pull back and zoom out to a bigger picture. Have the primaries so far conformed to your expectations — or are there particular results or general patterns that surprise you and that challenge, or throw into doubt, your assumptions about what will happen in November?CONTINETTI: I’d say they are shaping up as one might expect. The president’s party rarely does well in midterms. The Biden Democrats appear to be no exception. What has surprised me is the depth of public disillusionment with President Biden, his party and the direction of the country. My guess is Democrats are surprised as well.SMITH: We have seen common-sense Democrats like Shontel Brown in Ohio, Valerie Foushee in North Carolina and Morgan McGarvey in Kentucky win against far-left Democrats, and that’s a good thing for the party and our chances in November.The G.O.P. has gone even farther right than I expected. Just look at Doug Mastriano, who won the Republican governor’s primary in Pennsylvania. He funded buses to shuttle people to the Capitol on Jan. 6 and helped efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state. He opposes abortion without exceptions. He makes Ron DeSantis look like Charlie Baker.BRUNI: Matt, do ultra-MAGA Republican candidates like him or for that matter Ted Budd in the North Carolina Senate race potentially undermine what might otherwise be a red-wave year? I’m thinking about a guest essay you wrote for The Times not long ago in which you raised the concern that Donald Trump and his minions would spoil things. Does that concern persist?CONTINETTI: Indeed, it does. Where Republicans got the idea that Trump is a political winner is a mystery to me. By the end of his presidency, Democrats were in full control of government. And he has been unpopular with the independents and suburban moderates necessary for any party to win a majority.I draw a distinction, though, between Mastriano and Budd. Mastriano is, as you say, ultra-MAGA. Even Trump was wary of him until the very end of the primary. Budd is a more typical fusion of conservative movement traits with Trump MAGA traits. If I had to guess, Budd is more likely to win than Mastriano.BRUNI: Lis, is Matt splitting hairs? I mean, in the House, Budd voted to overturn the 2020 election results. I worry that we’re cutting certain Republican conspiracists a break because they’re not as flagrant conspiracists as, say, Marjorie Taylor Greene or Madison Cawthorn.SMITH: It’s splitting hairs a bit. But he’s right — Mastriano proved so polarizing and so toxic that you had a former Trump adviser in Pennsylvania, David Urban, say that he was too extreme. He was too MAGA for the MAGA crowd. The G.O.P. has been more welcoming of Budd, but he also wanted to overturn 2020 and he also opposes abortion in every instance. North Carolina voters have a history of turning back candidates with extreme social views. That’s one of the reasons Roy Cooper won his first race for governor — the G.O.P. overreached on the bathrooms issue, the law that restricted restroom access for transgender people.BRUNI: What shall we call “too MAGA for MAGA”? Mega-MAGA? Meta-MAGA? Maxi-MAGA? Regardless, we keep asking, after every primary: What does this say about Trump’s level of sway? Is that question distracting us from bigger, more relevant ones?SMITH: Trump is a factor here, but Democrats really need to keep the focus on these candidates and their beliefs and make this an election between the Democratic candidate and the Republican candidate. As we saw in Virginia, Democrats can’t rely on painting their opponents as Trump 2.0 — they need to explicitly define and disqualify the opposition, and these mega-MAGA extremists give us plenty of material. The people who aren’t as out there as Mastriano give us plenty of material, too.BRUNI: Matt, I know you’re not here to help Democrats, but if you were advising them, what would you tell them to do to head off a possible or probable midterms drubbing?CONTINETTI: If I were a Democratic consultant, the first thing I would tell my clients would be to take shelter from the storm. There is no escaping Biden’s unpopularity. The best hope for Democratic incumbents is to somehow denationalize their campaigns. Even that probably won’t be enough to escape the gravitational pull of Biden’s declining job approval.BRUNI: Lis, the “plenty of material” you refer to must include abortion. Along those lines, do you see anything potentially happening in the months ahead that could change the trajectory of the midterms? For example, what if the Supreme Court in June in fact overturns Roe or further weakens gun regulations? What about hearings on the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol?SMITH: Roe is an example of something that could change the trajectory of the election. I usually think of the presidential election as when the broad electorate turns out and midterms as when pissed-off voters come out to vote. The Supreme Court taking away something that has been a fundamental right for 50 years will definitely piss people off and bring some of the Biden voters who might have otherwise voted Republican this year back into our corner. But voters have more reasons to be angry than just Roe.BRUNI: What are you thinking of? I’d like to hear it and then what Matt has to say about it.SMITH: We need to be screaming from the rooftops about what the Republicans in Congress are doing. They voted against the American Rescue Plan (then took credit for the checks that went to American households), mostly voted against infrastructure (then took credit for projects in their districts), mostly voted against capping the price of insulin, voted against stopping oil companies from price gouging, mostly voted against a bill that would include importing baby formula.Why? Because they want to impose as much misery as possible on the American people so that voters blame Biden and vote Republican in November. It’s really cynical, dark stuff. And then when they win, they want to criminalize abortions and ensure that we never have free and fair elections again. That’s my rant.CONTINETTI: Voters will hear a lot of what Lis is saying before November, but the Democrats’ problem is that they are in power as inflation comes roaring back after a 40-year absence. I am open to the idea that the end of Roe v. Wade may induce pro-choice voters off the sidelines in some swing districts, but in the weeks since the leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion, the evidence of a pro-abortion-rights surge among voters is scattered at best. As the great Mark Shields likes to say, “When the economy is bad, the economy is the only issue.” Right now the economy is the issue, and it’s hurting the Democratic Party.BRUNI: As we were all typing, Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat who’s running for governor in Texas, where this latest horrible massacre occurred, interrupted a news conference being held by the incumbent Republican governor, Greg Abbott, to shout at Abbott that he was doing nothing to stop such bloodshed. In its urgency and passion, is that smart politics that could make a difference, Lis?SMITH: That’s a great example of going on the offensive, generating the emotion and pissed-off-ness that Democrats need to turn out our voters in the midterms. We often lose the gun debate because it’s about policy particulars. If Democrats can channel the outrage that a lot of Americans feel — particularly parents — toward the politicians who are just sitting behind tables and choosing inaction and make this about political courage, we can potentially flip the script. Sometimes these sorts of confrontations can come across as a little stunt-y, but in this case, it was executed well and made Governor Abbott and his lackeys look cowardly.CONTINETTI: O’Rourke is running 10 points behind Abbott, and I don’t think his outburst will help him close that gap. Many Democrats believe that pissed-off-ness is the key to winning elections, but I don’t know what evidence there is for that case. The key to winning elections is to appeal to independent voters and moderates in the suburbs.SMITH: Trump’s whole pitch is to play on grievances! And midterm elections are traditionally where voters air their grievances: They’re mad about inflation, mad about gas prices — in 2018, they were mad about Republicans’ trying to repeal Obamacare. This is a strategy that appeals to independent and moderate voters in the suburbs — they are often with Democrats on abortion, with us on guns.CONTINETTI: As you know, Trump did not win the popular vote in either 2016 or 2020. Pissed-off-ness gets you only so far. I agree that it helps when you are the out party in a national election and can blame the incumbent for poor economic and social conditions. Whether getting angry will work in Texas this year and for this candidate is another matter.BRUNI: Matt, why aren’t the Republicans who are losing to other Republicans in these primaries, as Lis put it earlier, “screaming from the rooftops” about election irregularities and rigged results the way they do when they lose to Democrats? Either a state holds trustworthy elections or it doesn’t, no?CONTINETTI: We’ve been reminded in recent weeks of what you might call Trumpian Exceptionalism. Whenever Trump loses, he says the result is fraudulent. He’s been urging his choice in the Pennsylvania Senate primary, Mehmet Oz, to declare victory in a race too close to call. Yet Oz has refrained, as have other Trump picks like the former senator David Perdue, who lost in a landslide in Georgia to the incumbent governor, Brian Kemp. Is there a Republican future in which candidates regularly ignore Trump? Some of us hope so. Though we’ve learned not to hope too much.BRUNI: Let’s end with a lighting round of short questions. At this point, just over five months out, what percentage chance would you say the Democrats have of holding the House? The Senate?CONTINETTI: Math, much less statistics, has never been my strong suit. Let’s just say that the Democrats have a very slim chance of holding the House and a slightly less-than-even chance of holding the Senate.SMITH: Emphasis on “at this point”: 51 percent chance Democrats hold the Senate, 15 percent House.BRUNI: In 2028 or 2032, will we be talking about Sarah Huckabee Sanders, possible Republican presidential nominee?!?!SMITH: Wow, I’ve never thought of that, but I can see it. At some point the Republicans will nominate a woman for president — let’s hope that you didn’t just conjure this one.CONTINETTI: I can see that, too — maybe that’s when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will make her presidential debut as well.BRUNI: Thoughts on Herschel Walker (potentially) in the Senate, in five words or less.SMITH: Death of an institution.CONTINETTI: Fun to watch.BRUNI: Lastly, in one sentence without too many conjunctions and clauses, give me a reason not to feel too despondent-verging-on-hopeless about our political present and immediate future?SMITH: We’ve gotten through worse.CONTINETTI: When you study history, you are reminded that America has been through a lot like this before — and worse — and has not only endured but prospered. We’ll get through this moment. It will just take time.Sorry, that’s three sentences — but important ones!Frank Bruni (@FrankBruni) is a professor of public policy at Duke, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk,” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter and can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Matthew Continetti (@continetti) is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism.” Lis Smith (@Lis_Smith), a Democratic communications strategist, was a senior adviser to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign and is the author of the forthcoming memoir “Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story.”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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      Ginni Thomas Urged Arizona Lawmakers to Overturn Election

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      The wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote to legislators in a crucial swing state after the Trump campaign’s loss in 2020.In the weeks after the 2020 presidential election, Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, twice lobbied the speaker of the Arizona House and another lawmaker to effectively reverse Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s popular-vote victory and deliver the crucial swing state to Donald J. Trump.Ms. Thomas, known as Ginni, a right-wing political activist who became a close ally of Mr. Trump during his presidency, made the entreaties in emails to Russell Bowers, the Republican speaker, and Shawnna Bolick, a Republican state representative. Ms. Bolick’s husband, Clint, once worked with Justice Thomas and now sits on the Arizona Supreme Court.The emails came as Mr. Trump and his allies were engaged in a legal effort to overturn his defeats in several battleground states. While the Arizona emails did not mention either presidential candidate by name, they echoed the former president’s false claims of voter fraud and his legal team’s dubious contention that the power to choose electors therefore rested not with the voters but with state legislatures.“Do your constitutional duty,” Ms. Thomas wrote the lawmakers on Nov. 9. On Dec. 13, with Mr. Trump still refusing to concede on the eve of the Electoral College vote, she contacted the lawmakers again.“The nation’s eyes are on you now,” she warned, adding, “Please consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you do not stand up and lead.”After she sent her first round of emails, but before the second round, Mr. Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, more directly pressured Mr. Bowers. They called him and urged him to have the state legislature step in and choose Arizona’s electors.Mr. Bowers could not be reached for comment on Friday. In a statement to The Arizona Republic, a spokesman said that Mr. Bowers never saw Ms. Thomas’s email. He ended up rebuffing all the requests to intervene, even in the face of protests outside his house.Ms. Bolick, who did not return requests for comment and is now running to become Arizona’s next secretary of state on a platform to “restore election integrity,” proved more of an ally. She thanked Ms. Thomas for reaching out, writing that she hoped “you and Clarence are doing great!” Among other things, she would go on to urge Congress to throw out Arizona’s presidential election results and award the state’s Electoral College votes to Mr. Trump.The emails, reported earlier by The Washington Post and obtained by The New York Times, were part of a letter-writing campaign hosted on FreeRoots, a political advocacy platform. On Friday, Mark Paoletta, a lawyer and close friend of the Thomases, said on Twitter that Ms. Thomas “did not write the letter and had no input in the content,” but rather merely “signed her name to a pre-written form letter that was signed by thousands of citizens.”“How disturbing, what a threat!” he wrote, dismissing the revelations as a “lame story.” He added: “A private citizen joining a letter writing campaign, hosted by a platform that served both conservative and liberal causes. Welcome to America.”In fact, the emails are a reflection of the far broader and more integral role that Justice Thomas’s wife played in efforts to delegitimize the election and install Mr. Trump for a second term — efforts that culminated on Jan. 6, 2021, with a protest called the “March to Save America” that turned into a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol.As a string of revelations by The Times and other outlets in recent months has demonstrated, Ms. Thomas actively supported and participated at the highest levels in schemes to overturn the election. Those efforts have, in turn, cast a spotlight on her husband, who from his lifetime perch on the Supreme Court has issued opinions favoring Mr. Trump’s efforts to both reverse his loss and stymie a congressional investigation into the events of Jan. 6.This February, The New York Times Magazine reported on Ms. Thomas’s role on the board of C.N.P. Action, a conservative group that had instructed members to adopt letter-writing tactics — of the kind she personally used in Arizona — to pressure Republican lawmakers in swing states to circumvent voters by appointing alternate electors.C.N.P. Action had also circulated a newsletter in December 2020 that included a report targeting five swing states, including Arizona, where Mr. Trump and his allies were pressing litigation. It warned that time was running out for the courts to “declare the elections null and void.” The report was co-written by one of Mr. Trump’s leading election lawyers, Cleta Mitchell, a friend of Ms. Thomas.And in the lead-up to the rally on Jan. 6, Ms. Thomas played a mediating role, uniting feuding factions of planners so that there “wouldn’t be any division,” one of the organizers, Dustin Stockton, later told The Times.Ms. Thomas declined to speak to The Times for that article, but a few weeks later, in an interview with a friendly conservative outlet, she denied playing any role in the organization of the rally, even as she acknowledged attending it. (She said she left before Mr. Trump addressed the crowd.)But she has adamantly opposed a fuller inquiry into the insurrection. Last December, she co-signed a letter calling for House Republicans to expel Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger from their conference for joining the committee investigating the Capitol riot, saying it brought “disrespect to our country’s rule of law” and “legal harassment to private citizens who have done nothing wrong.”And in late March, The Post and CBS reported that she had sent a series of text messages to Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, imploring him to take steps to reverse the election. Ms. Thomas urged him to “release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down,” invoking a slogan popular on the right that refers to a set of conspiratorial claims that Trump supporters believed would overturn the vote. In the text messages, she also indicated that she had been in contact with the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, about a post-election legal strategy.Democrats expressed outrage. In a letter after the text messages were reported, two dozen Democrats, including Senators Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker, wrote: “Given the recent disclosures about Ms. Thomas’s efforts to overturn the election and her specific communications with White House officials about doing so, Justice Thomas’s participation in cases involving the 2020 election and the January 6th attack is exceedingly difficult to reconcile with federal ethics requirements.”Still, it remains an open question whether the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack will seek an interview with Ms. Thomas. In March, people familiar with the committee’s work signaled a desire to ask Ms. Thomas to voluntarily sit for an interview. But the committee has yet to do so, and its chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, told reporters that Ms. Thomas had not come up recently in the panel’s discussions.Justice Thomas has remained defiant amid questions about his own impartiality, resisting calls that he recuse himself from matters that overlap with his wife’s activism. Earlier this year, when the Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 to allow the release of records from the Trump White House related to Jan. 6, Justice Thomas was the sole dissenter. In February last year, he sharply dissented when the court declined to hear a case brought by Pennsylvania Republicans seeking to disqualify certain mail-in ballots.The latest revelations about his wife follow a speech last week in which he lambasted protests in front of the houses of justices after a draft opinion was leaked that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion case. “I wonder how long we’re going to have these institutions at the rate we’re undermining them,” he told a conference of fellow conservatives. “And then I wonder when they’re gone or destabilized, what we’re going to have as a country.”And he flashed at his own partisanship in claiming that the left’s protests lacked the decorum of the right — while failing to mention last year’s attack on the Capitol, or protests like those in front of Mr. Bowers’s house.“You would never visit Supreme Court justices’ houses when things didn’t go our way,” he said. “We didn’t throw temper tantrums. It is incumbent on us to always act appropriately and not to repay tit for tat.”Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife have frequently appeared at political events despite longstanding customs of the Supreme Court.Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesThe Thomases have long defied norms of the high court, where justices often avoid political events and entanglements and their spouses often keep low profiles. No spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice has ever been as overt a political activist as Ms. Thomas. C.N.P. Action, where she sits on the board, is a branch of the Council for National Policy, a secretive conservative organization that includes leaders from the National Rifle Association and the Family Research Council, a Christian advocacy group. Ms. Thomas also founded an organization called Groundswell that holds a weekly meeting of influential conservatives, many of whom work directly on issues that have come before the Supreme Court.Justice Thomas, for his part, has frequently appeared at political events hosted by advocates hoping to sway the court. He and his wife sometimes appear together at such events, and often portray themselves as standing in the breach amid a crumbling society.“It’s very exciting,” Ms. Thomas said during a 2018 Council for National Policy meeting, “the fact that there’s a resistance on our side to their side.”Luke Broadwater More

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      Democrats, the Midterm Jinx Is Not Inevitable

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      In November, the Democrats are widely expected to lose the House and probably also the Senate. Large defeats are the norm for a new president’s first midterm. A harbinger is a president’s approval rating, and President Biden’s stands at a lackluster 41.1 percent.But standard political history may not be a good guide to 2022. The Democrats are facing long odds, but there are several reasons this could be an unusual political year.For starters, Donald Trump is just as likely to hobble Republicans as he is to energize them. Mr. Trump will not be on the ballot, but many of his surrogates will. He has endorsed over 175 candidates in federal and state elections, and in his clumsy efforts to play kingmaker, Mr. Trump has promoted some badly compromised candidates and challenged party unity.In the Georgia primary for governor, a Trump surrogate, Sonny Purdue, is polling well behind Mr. Trump’s nemesis, the incumbent Brian Kemp. In the Georgia Senate race, Mr. Trump’s endorsed candidate, Herschel Walker, is running away from his past and locked in a tight race against the incumbent Raphael Warnock. It may not happen again, but in 2020, Mr. Trump’s meddling backfired and helped Democrats take two Senate seats.To hold the Senate, Democrats need to defend incumbents in New Hampshire, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia. But they have pickup opportunities in several states.In Pennsylvania, the popular lieutenant governor John Fetterman, an economic populist, will run against the winner of a close Republican primary, either the celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz or the financier David McCormick. Mr. Oz, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump, has a very slight edge, as well as a very slight connection to Pennsylvania, having lived in New Jersey for many years. Either nominee would most likely alienate part of the Trump base, and neither is remotely populist.In Ohio, Mr. Trump’s endorsement helped the author and venture capitalist executive J.D. Vance prevail. In the general election, we will get a test of the divisive culture-war populism of Mr. Vance versus the genuine pocketbook populism of Representative Tim Ryan — the kind that keeps re-electing Ohio’s Democratic senator, Sherrod Brown.For Democrats to succeed in many of these races, their base will have to be energized — but at the moment, it is not. Still, there’s hope: Even if the ubiquitous lunacy of Mr. Trump doesn’t wake Democrats up, the likelihood of abortion being banned in half the country probably will.If the leaked opinion in the Supreme Court abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, becomes law in an official June decision, it will not just allow states to criminalize abortion, but will turn doctors into agents of the state when they treat women for miscarriages. This extremism on women’s health does not have the support of most voters.The Democratic revival of 2017-20 began with the epic women’s marches of January 2017. If Democrats are more competitive than expected this year, it will be in part because women are galvanized, especially women in the Democratic base but also independent or “soft Republican” college-educated suburban women.Something like this happened in 2017, when large numbers of liberals and moderates, appalled by Mr. Trump’s presidency, saw the 2018 election as a firebreak. That year, Democrats made a net gain of 40 seats in the House, and historic turnout gains in 2018, relative to the previous midterm, were a great benefit for Democrats.All will depend on how closely 2022 resembles 2018. With the electorate so divided, there are relatively few swing voters — but potentially dozens of swing districts. How they swing depends entirely on turnout.A Democratic effort reminiscent of grass roots groups in 2017 is beginning to gear up. For example, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland sponsors a Democracy Summer for college students who want to get out and organize. This idea has been picked up in dozens of other congressional districts.Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, in the January 2021 runoff election that won him a Senate seat, helped pioneer a technique called paid relational organizing. He hired some 2,800 Georgians to reach out to their own peer networks to win support for Mr. Ossoff. Now several people who worked with Senator Ossoff are taking this strategy national.Other events this summer may have bearing on the fall. The House panel investigating the attack of Jan. 6, 2021, will hold public hearings in June. Closer to the midterms, it will release its final report, which will put Republicans on the spot to answer for their defense of an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Mr. Trump will surely continue to insist the 2020 election was stolen, but most Republicans will be whipsawed between the demands of Mr. Trump and his base and their wish to focus on more winning issues.Mr. Trump’s own behavior is exposing all the latent fissures in the contradictory coalition that narrowly elected him. Democratic candidates will be reminding Americans of the potential menace of a second Trump term. If Mr. Trump rejoins Twitter, he will remind them himself.Even so, Republican extremism is at risk of being overshadowed by economic conditions, none more than inflation. Federal Reserve economists project that inflation could begin to subside by fall. As with so much in politics, sheer luck and timing will play a role in the Democrats’ prospects and the future of our Republic.Stranger things have happened than a Democrat midterm resurgence. A wipeout is still likely, but far from inevitable — if Democrats can get organized.Robert Kuttner is a co-editor of The American Prospect and the author of “Going Big: FDR’s Legacy, Biden’s New Deal, and the Struggle to Save Democracy.”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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      The Bloody Crossroads Where Conspiracy Theories and Guns Meet

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      Gail Collins: Bret, you and I live in a state that has some of the toughest gun laws in the country. But that didn’t stop a teenager with a history of making threats from getting his hands on a semiautomatic rifle and mowing down 10 people at a supermarket in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo on Saturday.Bret Stephens: It’s sickening. And part of a grotesque pattern: the racist massacre in Charleston in 2015, the antisemitic massacre in Pittsburgh in 2018, the anti-Hispanic massacre in El Paso in 2019 and so many others. There’s a bloody crossroads where easy access to weapons and increasingly commonplace conspiracy theories meet.I have diminishing faith that the usual calls for more gun control can do much good in a country with way more than 300 million guns in private hands. Please tell me I’m wrong.Gail: Sane gun control won’t solve the problem, but it’ll help turn things around — criminals and mentally ill people will have a harder time getting their hands on weapons. And the very fact that we could enact restrictions on firearm purchases would be a sign that the nation’s whole attitude was getting healthier.Bret: Wish I could share your optimism, but I’ve come to think of meaningful gun control in the United States as the ultimate Sisyphean task. Gun control at the state level doesn’t work because guns can move easily across state lines. Gun control at the federal level doesn’t work because the votes in Congress will never be there. I personally favor repealing the Second Amendment, but politically that’s another nonstarter. And the same Republican Party that opposes gun control is also winking at, if not endorsing, the sinister Great Replacement conspiracy theory — the idea that liberals/Jews/the deep state are conspiring to replace whites with nonwhite immigrants — that appears to have motivated the accused shooter in Buffalo.Bottom line: I’m heartbroken for the victims of this massacre. And I’m heartbroken for a country that seems increasingly powerless to do anything about it. And that’s just one item on our accumulating inventory of crippling problems.Gail: You know, we thought the country was going to be obsessed with nothing but inflation this election year. But instead, it’s hot-button social issues like guns, and of course we’ve spent the last few weeks reacting to the Supreme Court’s upcoming abortion decision, which probably won’t actually be out for weeks.Bret: And may not end up being what we were led to expect by the leaked draft of Justice Alito’s opinion. I’m still holding out hope — faint hope, because I fear that the leaking of the decision will make the conservative justices, including Justice Gorsuch and Chief Justice Roberts, less open to finding a compromise ruling that doesn’t overturn Roe.Gail: Is it possible things will get even more intense when it’s announced? And what’s your take on what we’ve seen so far?Bret: Much more intense and largely for the reasons you laid out in your terrific column last week: Abortion rights are about much more than abortion rights. They’re also about sex and all that goes with it: pleasure, autonomy, repression, male responsibility for the children they father and the great “who decides” questions of modern democracy. The justices will have to gird for more protests outside their homes.What do you think? And is there any chance of crafting an abortion rights bill that could get more than 50 votes in the Senate?Gail: Well, maybe if everybody hunkered down and tried to come up with something that would lure a few Republicans who say they support abortion rights like Susan Collins. Many Democrats don’t want to water down their bill and really there’s not much point in making the effort since they’d instantly run into the dreaded filibuster rule.Bret: Wouldn’t it have helped if Democrats had devised a bill that a majority could get behind, rather than one that had no chance of winning because it went well beyond Roe v. Wade by banning nearly all restrictions on abortions?Gail: Given the dispiriting reality of Senate life — 60 votes, Joe Manchin, etc., etc. — I can see why Chuck Schumer has pretty much given up the fight to change anything on that front and is just focused on drawing attention to the whole abortion issue in this year’s elections.Bret: Shortsighted. Democrats need to secure their moderate flank, including lots of voters who want to preserve abortion rights but have strong moral reservations about late-term abortions. It just makes the party seem beholden to its most progressive, least pragmatic flank, which is at the heart of the Democrats’ political problem.Gail: Now whatever happens isn’t going to directly affect folks who live in states like New York. But when I look at states that have already passed abortion bans in anticipation of a court decision, I do worry this won’t be the end of the story — that the legislatures might move further to ban at least some kinds of contraceptives, too.Am I being overly paranoid?Bret: It’s hard for me to imagine that happening, unless Republicans also intend to repeal the 19th Amendment to keep women from throwing them out of political office. Even most conservative women in America today probably don’t want to return to the fingers-crossed method of birth control.Can I go back to something we said earlier? How do you feel about the protests outside of the justices’ homes?Gail: Pretty much all in the details. The Supreme Court members have lifetime appointments and they’re immune from the normal constraints on public officials who have to run for re-election or who work for a chief executive who has to run for re-election.So I support people’s right to make their feelings known in the very few ways they have available. As long, of course, as the demonstrators are restrained and the justices and their families are provided with very good security.You?Bret: It seems like a really bad idea for a whole bunch of reasons. If the hope of the protesters is to get the justices to change their vote by making their home life unpleasant, it probably accomplishes the opposite: People generally don’t respond well to what they perceive as harassment. Those homes are also occupied by spouses and children who should have the right to remain private people. It’s also a pretty glaring temptation to some fanatic who might think that he can “save Roe” through an act of violence. And, of course, two can play the game: What happens when creepy far-right groups decide to stage protests outside the homes of Justices Kagan and Sotomayor and soon-to-be Justice Jackson?Gail: Well, I guess we’ll get to have this fight again. Meanwhile, let me switch to something even more, um, divisive. Baby formula!Bret: I wish I could joke about it, but it’s a seriously unfunny story.Gail: A plant that manufactures brands like Similac was shut down after concerns were raised about possible contamination. Things will eventually go back to normal, at least I hope they do, but in the meantime the supply dropped by about half.Lots to look into on how this happened. But it’s a reminder that parents have to rely on four companies for almost all the nation’s formula supply. Which then should remind us of the virtue of antitrust actions that break up mega-corporations.Bret: One lesson here is that when the F.D.A. decides to urge a “voluntary recall” of something as critical as baby formula, as it effectively did in February, it had better be sure of its reasons and think through the entire chain of potential consequences to public health. Another lesson is that when our regulations are so extreme that we won’t allow the formula made in Europe to be sold here commercially, something is seriously wrong with those regulations.Gail: I’ll go along with you about the imports from Europe, after noting that importation from Canada was restricted by the Trump administration.Bret: We will mark that down on the ever-expanding list of things we hate about Trump.Gail: However, recalling formula that’s given bacterial infections — some fatal — to babies doesn’t seem all that radical to me.Bret: I agree, of course, but it isn’t clear the bacteria came from the plant in question and surely there must have been a way to deal with the problem that didn’t create an even bigger problem.The broader point, I think, is that our zero-tolerance approach to many kinds of risk — whether it’s the possible contamination of formula or shutting down schools in reaction to Covid — is sometimes the riskiest approach of all. How did the most advanced capitalist country in the world become so incapable of weighing risks? Is it the ever-present fear of lawsuits or something else?Gail: Part of the problem is a general — and bipartisan — eagerness to restrict imports on stuff American companies produce.Bret: Am I hearing openness on your part to a U.S.-E.U. free trade agreement? That would solve a lot of our supply-chain problems and annoy protectionists in both parties.Gail: Yeah, but the last thing we ought to do is respond to an event like the formula shortage by saying, “Oh gosh, no more federal oversight of imports!” Really, there’s dangerous stuff out there and we need to be protected from it.Bret: Well, of course.Gail: Let’s move on to the upcoming elections. Really fascinated by that Pennsylvania Senate primary. Particularly on the Republican side, where we’re seeing a super surge from Kathy Barnette, a Black, very-very-conservative-to-reactionary activist. The other leaders are still Trump’s favorite, Mehmet Oz, and David McCormick, former head of the world’s largest hedge fund.Bret: Nice to see a genuinely competitive race.Gail: Barnette is doing very well despite — or maybe because of — her record of anti-Muslim rhetoric.A pretty appalling trio by my lights, but do you have a favorite?Bret: I’m in favor of the least crazy candidate on the ballot.Gail: Excellent standard.Bret: The problem the G.O.P. has had for some time now is that in many states and districts, not to mention the presidential contest, the candidate most likely to win a primary is least likely to win a general election. Republican primaries are like holding a heavy metal air guitar contest in order to compete for a place in a jazz ensemble, if that makes any sense.Gail: Yeah, although that particular music contest does sound sorta fascinating.Bret: Question for you, Gail: Do you really think President Biden is going to run for re-election? Truly, honestly? And can you see Kamala Harris as his successor?Gail: Well, I’m of the school that says Biden shouldn’t announce he’s not running and embrace lame duckism too early. But lately I have been wondering if he’s actually going to try to march on through another term.Which would be bad. The age thing aside, the country’s gotten past the moment when all people wanted in a chief executive was a not-crazy person to calm things down.Bret: If Biden decides to run, he’ll lose in a landslide to anyone not named Trump. Then again, if he decides to run, then he’ll also be tempting Trump to seek the Republican nomination.Gail: If Kamala Harris runs we will have to … see what the options are.Bret: I’ve always thought Harris would be a great secretary general of the United Nations. When does that job come open again?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