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      Ginni Thomas’s Texts Show Why Our Democracy Is in Danger  

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      A week has gone by and I’m still aghast. Still astonished. Still absorbing what Ginni Thomas said in those text messages to Mark Meadows, President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, as she urged him to overturn the 2020 election, and what she apparently believes in her poisoned mind.So let’s please, please move past Will Smith and the deconstruction of that ugly incident and reallocate our attention to her behavior. It has broader and more profound consequences. It also explains why, despite my efforts not to, I sometimes feel almost hopeless about this country’s present and future.“Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!” Thomas wrote to Meadows in the days following the election, her derangement and despair wrought in a bonanza of exclamation points. “You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice.”The precipice! I should haul out a few extra exclamation points myself, especially because Thomas went on to say that she and Meadows were watching “the Left” attempt “the greatest Heist of our History.”She’s up in arms. She’s uppercase. And she’s emblematic: Her gratuitously capitalized words distill what makes political discussion today so difficult and why our democracy is indeed in danger.“This Great President.” That’s no accidental pinkie — no clumsy thumb — on the shift key. Among today’s extreme partisans, who represent a frighteningly large slice of the electorate, a given president or politician is a commanding general in the battle of good versus evil. I mean Good versus Evil.Restraint is retro. Hyperbole is the order of the day. Thus, “precipice” is the new “edge,” “Heist” is the updated “scam,” and “of our History” is an essential qualifier, lest someone underestimate the threat and minimize the stakes.There’s no entertaining the thought that a majority of your fellow Americans may not share your views. In an age of extreme narcissism, that’s unimaginable, impossible, phantasmagorical.If the polls cast you in the minority, they’re wrong. If the vote runs contrary to your desires, it’s rigged. Or those fellow Americans just don’t matter, not like you do. You’re on the side of the angels. They’re trying to shepherd everyone into the abyss.That Manichaean mind-set is legible in Thomas’s language, which jettisons temperance and truth. There’s no oxygen for either in the right’s — excuse me, the Right’s — exaggerated sense of extreme grievance, which she so perfectly embodies.What a terrifying moment, in which the wife of a serving Supreme Court justice unabashedly exploits her insider access, ignores the idea of checks and balances, promotes conspiracy theories and essentially endorses insurrection. Her conduct isn’t some passing curiosity. It’s a sign of the times. And it’s a warning to us all.A Few Notes About ‘Don’t Say Gay’Octavio Jones/ReutersFlorida Gov. Ron DeSantis is right. The words “Don’t Say Gay” appear nowhere in the “parental rights” legislation that he signed on Monday, which bans discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity with young schoolchildren in Florida. “Don’t Say Gay” is the negative nickname that the law’s opponents have given it, and DeSantis has deftly portrayed that nomenclature as liberal hysteria and leftist overreach.But that, too, is unfair. There are reasons aplenty to balk at what Florida has done — to see it as more than a simple caveat affecting only students through the third grade. And I say that as someone who is not pushing instruction on matters gay or trans for students in that age range, who doesn’t care a whit whether a 7-year-old knows the name Harvey Milk, who agrees that parents’ sensibilities and sensitivities must be factored into how schools operate.Here’s what DeSantis doesn’t cop to: a vagueness in the legislation’s language that suggests its potential application to children well beyond the third grade. Look at the words I’ve boldfaced in this clause of the law: “Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade three or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” What additional prohibitions — what future muzzling — are those phrases opening the door to?It’s a necessary question, because it’s coupled with this one: What’s motivating the law’s promoters and supporters, who’ve lifted this issue above so many others with more relevance to, and impact on, the quality of Floridians’ everyday lives?In case you missed it, DeSantis’s press secretary, Christina Pushaw, framed the bill as an important defense against pedophiles’ recruitment of children into homosexual activity. There’s no other way to read this tweet of hers: “If you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children.” She’s paid to articulate DeSantis’s viewpoints, and she’s peddling perhaps the nastiest, cruelest homophobic stereotype there is.Under fire for those remarks, she said that she was using her personal Twitter account during her off-work hours. How very reassuring.For the Love of SentencesGetty ImagesIn the Times newsletter Read Like the Wind, the book critic Molly Young spins many magical sentences, sometimes within a single paragraph, like this one in a recent reflection on the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick and his novel “Ubik”: “It may be worth noting that what jelly beans were to President Reagan, amphetamine tablets were to Dick. The man simply loved his uppers. Sometimes I approximate his state of mind by bolting a Monster energy drink before settling in for some sci-fi. (My favorite flavor of Monster is called ‘Assault.’ It tastes like Coca-Cola mixed with poison.) The blurb on this copy of ‘Ubik’ describes Dick as ‘The most brilliant SF mind on any planet.’ Any planet!” (Thanks to Zoe Zagorski of Portland, Ore., and Conrad Macina of Landing, N.J., for nominating Molly’s prose.)Sticking with Times book critics, here’s Alexandra Jacobs in her recent review of “Truly, Madly,” by Stephen Galloway, which describes Vivien Leigh’s romance with a certain screen and stage legend named Laurence: “Her three-decade entanglement with Olivier, considered one of the greatest talents of his generation, was its own sort of doomed flight: It soared sharply into the heavens, then was rocked with turbulence before its inevitable tumble down to earth and straight through to hell.” (Sandy Peters, Phoenix)Also in The Times, Ligaya Mishan, contemplating lentils, had lyrical leguminous fun: “They start out as pebbles in the hand, hard and tiny — in certain parts of the world, they are the size against which all small things are measured. Then, in the pot, their little stony hearts melt. They soften, loosen up and let other flavors in. They’re still discrete, still individuals, but now joined in common cause, and they swell and grow plump, so you end up with more than twice as much, velvety and lush.” (Stella Liu, Manhattan)Paul Krugman noted: “Putin’s response to failure in Ukraine has been extremely Trumpian: insisting that his invasion is all going ‘according to plan,’ refusing to admit having made any mistakes and whining about cancel culture. I’m half expecting him to release battle maps crudely modified with a Sharpie.” (Avi Liveson, Chatham, N.J., and Valerie Masin, Boston, among others)And Bret Stephens, in his weekly back-and-forth with Gail Collins, wrote: “It looks like we have a new superinfectious subvariant of Covid to keep us awake at night. Forget Omicron, now we’ve got Omigod.” (Kris Schaff, Omaha, Neb., and Larry Berman, Westfield, N.J.)In National Parks magazine, Jacob Baynham reported on a positive reaction to the meatless, fungus-based breakfast patties he cooked for his family one morning: “Our disobedient dog begged at my feet, an endorsement tempered by the fact that he also eats mouth guards, used tissues and socks.” (Peter Alexander, Longmont, Colo.)In a review of “Brezhnev: The Making of a Statesman,” by Susanne Schattenberg, in The London Review of Books, Neal Ascherson wrote: “Polish communism was dead, though it took nearly eight years for the nation to wriggle out from under the corpse.” (George Milman, Beverly Hills, Calif.)And in his Weekly Dish newsletter on Substack, Andrew Sullivan pondered the rebirth of imperial Russia with this observation: “The greatest mistake liberals make when assessing reactionaryism is to underestimate it. There is a profound, mesmerizing allure — intensified by disillusion with the shallows of modernity — to the idea of recovering some great meaning from decades or centuries gone by, to resurrect and resuscitate it, to blast away all the incoherence and instability of postmodern life into a new collective, ancient meaning.” (Stephen Ranger, Toronto)To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here, and please include your name and place of residence.On a Personal Note (Reader Mailbag Edition)ReganFrank BruniI’ve felt the lash of your anger when I’ve written harshly about a public figure you admire. I’ve experienced the sting of your disappointment when I’ve praised a book or movie that you then checked out and didn’t like at all. In a manner that pleases me — because it tells me that you’re engaged — you’re quick to give me feedback, bitter as well as sweet.And you let me have it about my possible miscoloring of a beautiful bird.I wrote last week about “flares of orange” outside my windows in Chapel Hill, N.C., and I guessed that those were cardinals flying by. Many of you were scandalized and sent me emails noting that cardinals are red. You recommended apps that could help me with my avian ineptitude. You urged me to educate myself about the natural world. I could feel myself being marched off to flora-and-fauna boot camp — which is probably where I indeed belong.My feathered friends are definitely cardinals, and they may well have been more red than orange — my grasp of color is less than firm. But cardinals, it turns out, can be orange or at least orange-ish red. They’re chromatically noncommittal. I was probably being sloppy with my description of those “flares,” but maybe my yard’s cardinals are special? I’ll keep an eye peeled and a color wheel at hand and I’ll let you know.You wrote me, too, with a complaint that I’ve also fielded from many of you in the past: Where’s Regan? When a few newsletters go by without any photo of, or tribute to, my canine companion, some of you object and others actually worry.I’m happy to alleviate your concern with the picture at the top of this section of the newsletter. It’s Regan rolling around recently in the front yard, just for the tactile sensation and pure fun of it. She does that sometimes when she’s excited, or when there’s a perfect nip in the air, or maybe when she’s bored, or possibly when she feels some generous impulse to entertain me. Down she goes and around she twists. Each of my giggles prompts more of her squiggles. We have this down to a clownish science.Many of you also point out errors of language, and Ervin Duggan of Davidson, N.C., flagged my statement last week that Ted Cruz, so odious during the confirmation hearing for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, at least deserved points for “gumption.” “Gumption” actually or usually means initiative or resourcefulness, and I indeed didn’t intend to compliment the Texas senator for either. I was steering toward something more along the lines of audacity and took a wrong turn. Maybe I had, in my mind, “bumption,” which isn’t a word according to several dictionaries I consulted but has, in the past, circulated a bit as a kin to overblown arrogance. Cruz possesses that in spades.Judge Jackson doesn’t, as best I can tell. None of you complained that in my assessment of the hearing, I never digressed from my disgust over many senators’ bad behavior to praise her for a preternatural degree of restraint. But I’ll say it: I should have. She comported herself with dignity, which strikes me as the ideal cornerstone of judicial character. More

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      The Political Lives of Clarence and Ginni Thomas

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      Rob Szypko, Rikki Novetsky, Chelsea Daniel and Marc Georges and Dan Powell and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherA series of text messages released in the past week show how Ginni Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court, urged White House officials to push to overturn the result of the 2020 election.There has never been a spouse of a sitting justice who has been as overt a political activist as Ms. Thomas — and that presents a real conundrum for the court.On today’s episodeJo Becker, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.For two decades, Clarence, left, and Ginni Thomas have been waging a battle against what they see as the liberal order.Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesBackground readingThe long crusade of the Thomases has taken them from the fringes of the conservative movement to the very center of it.In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, Ginni Thomas was involved in a range of efforts to keep President Donald J. Trump in power.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.Transcripts of each episode are available by the next workday. You can find them at the top of the page.Jo Becker contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Kaitlin Roberts, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Chelsea Daniel, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky and John Ketchum.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Sofia Milan, Desiree Ibekwe, Wendy Dorr, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli and Maddy Masiello. More

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      Texts Show Ginni Thomas’s Embrace of Conspiracy Theories

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      In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas was involved in a range of efforts to keep President Donald J. Trump in power.Two days after the 2020 election, Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, texted an old friend, Mark Meadows, the chief of staff to President Donald J. Trump.She sent messages that had been making the rounds on pro-Trump sites, where anger over the election echoed her own raw feelings, including this passage: “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.”Then she added of this fanciful, if chilling, set of conspiracy theories: “I hope this is true.”She texted Mr. Meadows again the next day. “Do not concede,” she wrote. “It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back.”The messages were among a flurry of text traffic between Ms. Thomas and Mr. Meadows that was revealed this past week, part of a trove of documents previously turned over to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. (Ms. Thomas has openly opposed the committee and called for Republicans who serve on it to be expelled from the House Republican conference.)A hard-line conservative activist, Ms. Thomas had long been viewed with suspicion by the Republican establishment. Yet her influence had risen during the Trump administration, especially after Mr. Meadows, who like Ms. Thomas has roots in the Tea Party movement, became chief of staff. Now, an examination of her texts, woven together with recent revelations of the depth of her efforts to overturn the election, shows how firmly she was embedded in the conspiratorial fringe of right-wing politics, even as that fringe was drawing ever closer to the center of Republican power.The disclosures add urgency to questions about how Ms. Thomas may have leveraged her marriage to Justice Thomas, who would be ruling on elections cases throughout the battle over the 2020 vote and beyond. As his wife agitated for Mr. Trump and his aides to turn aside the election results, Justice Thomas was Mr. Trump’s staunchest ally on the Supreme Court and has remained so. This year, in January, he was the only justice who noted a dissent when the court allowed the release of records from the Trump White House related to the Jan. 6 attack.Calls intensified this past week for Justice Thomas to step aside from such cases. Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said on Friday that Justice Thomas “needs to recuse himself from any case related to the Jan. 6 investigation, and should Donald Trump run again, any case related to the 2024 election.”The Thomases have been a fiercely close couple for decades. In his memoir, Justice Thomas wrote that they were “one being — an amalgam” and called her his “best friend.” She often uses similar language to describe her husband.In one of his texts to Ms. Thomas, Mr. Meadows called the election a “fight of good versus evil” and added: “Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues.”“Thank you!! Needed that!” Ms. Thomas replied. “This plus a conversation with my best friend just now… I will try to keep holding on. America is worth it!”Ms. Thomas’s texts to Mr. Meadows tap into a deep well of debunked conspiracy theories. References to the rounding up of elected officials, reporters and bureaucrats for military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay are drawn from QAnon, which imagines Satan-worshipping leaders running the country and trafficking children.Yet in the days after the election, Ms. Thomas had far more standing to take action than most who embraced such canards. As Mr. Trump courted Justice Thomas during his years in office — curious about his popularity among the Republican base and also about rumors that he might retire, aides said — the justice’s wife won increasing access to the White House.Though some Trump aides came to view her with such suspicion that they assembled opposition research meant to damage her standing with Mr. Trump — among other things, she pressed the president to hire people who could not pass background checks, the aides said — her clout grew with time.The arc of her political career had also led her to a powerful new platform. Ms. Thomas had started out working for establishment right-leaning organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. But her desire for more radical change had led her to the Tea Party, and increasingly to the party’s fringes. Mr. Meadows, who was appointed chief of staff in March 2020, held similar views and has attended meetings of Groundswell, a group that Ms. Thomas founded in 2013 after consulting with Stephen K. Bannon, who would later become Mr. Trump’s chief strategist.With their brand of conservatism ascendant, Ms. Thomas had been appointed in 2019 to the nine-member board of CNP Action, an offshoot of a secretive but influential conservative group called the Council for National Policy, whose membership includes leaders of the National Rifle Association, the Family Research Council and the Federalist Society.The New York Times Magazine, in a profile of the Thomases published last month, detailed CNP Action’s assertive role in efforts to overturn the presidential election. That included circulating a document to its members in November 2020 urging them to pressure Republican lawmakers in swing states to challenge the results and appoint alternate slates of electors: “Demand that they not abandon their Constitutional responsibilities during a time such as this,” the document said.Text messages between Ms. Thomas and Mark Meadows were part of a trove of documents turned over by Mr. Meadows to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.Al Drago for The New York TimesIn one of her texts, the contents of which were earlier reported by The Washington Post and CBS News, Ms. Thomas sent Mr. Meadows a link to a video featuring Steve Pieczenik, a former State Department official who was claiming that mail-in ballots had been watermarked as part of an elaborate government sting operation to catch voter fraud. Mr. Pieczenik previously appeared on a webcast with the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and claimed that the 2012 school massacre in Newtown, Conn., was a false-flag operation, a notion that has been thoroughly debunked.On Nov. 19, Ms. Thomas promoted the efforts of Sidney Powell, the Trump lawyer who spent much of the postelection period spreading conspiracy theories. “Sidney and her team are getting inundated with evidence of fraud,” Ms. Thomas wrote to Mr. Meadows. “Make a plan. Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down.”That same day, Ms. Powell held a news conference with Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington. There, she laid out baseless allegations that a cabal that included Chinese software firms, international shell companies and the financier George Soros had conspired to hack America’s voting machines.At that time, Ms. Powell was in the early stages of preparing four federal lawsuits that would present this purported plot as a reason for judges to overturn the election results. She nicknamed her suits the “Krakens,” referring to a giant octopus-like sea creature.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3Virginia Thomas’ text messages. More

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      Real Justice: Justice Jackson

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      WASHINGTON — A snarling pack of white male Republicans ripping apart a poised, brainy Black woman at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, using sordid innuendos and baseless claims about race and porn to smear her, as her pained family sits behind her.It has been 31 years since I watched this scene, disgusted, when Anita Hill was questioned during confirmation hearings for Justice Clarence Thomas. Now Ketanji Brown Jackson has been cast into the same medieval torture chamber on Capitol Hill, with Democrats once more struggling to shield their witness from being mauled.This time, the male Torquemadas were joined by a female inquisitor, Marsha Blackburn. The Tennessee Republican is all magnolia Southern charm — until she spits venom.“Can you provide a definition for the word woman?” Blackburn asked Judge Jackson, invoking the controversy over a transgender swimmer from the University of Pennsylvania. Blackburn’s question inspired Tucker Carlson to later hold up a graphic of a woman’s reproductive system, along with a silhouette of a woman so shapely that Roger Ailes would have approved.What is a woman? Jackson shows that a woman is someone who stays cool in the face of calumny and is headed for the Supreme Court. And that will be justice for Justice Jackson.A better question might be: What is a senator?Is it a dolt who cares more about boosting unrealistic presidential ambitions with distorted information than making the Senate, for once, look like a dignified body?Feral Republicans took an exemplary record and twisted it to make Jackson look like an enabler of pedophiles. Tom Cotton all but accused her of lying, just as Arlen Specter accused Hill of perjury — based on nothing.Less than a year ago, Lindsey Graham voted to confirm Jackson for the D.C. Court of Appeals, calling her “qualified.” Now he berates her with odd questions and seems to blame her for Brett Kavanaugh’s grilling. If only John McCain could appear to him like Hamlet’s father’s ghost and slap him into shape.Perhaps Joe Biden sees his selection of Judge Jackson as a sort of expiation for his dismal performance as committee chairman for the Hill-Thomas hearings. Biden allowed the Republicans to run wild, and then he shut down the hearings before Hill’s backup witnesses testified. He cleared the path for Clarence Thomas, a liar and sexual harasser, to ascend to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court and impose his far-right views on the country.As Jill Abramson wrote in the Times Opinion section, the court’s 6-3 majority now “seems to be reshaping itself in Justice Thomas’s image.”In a speech at Notre Dame last year, Thomas lamented, “We have lost the capacity, even I think as leaders, to not allow others to manipulate our institutions when we don’t get the outcomes we like.”And yet manipulating institutions is exactly what his wife, Ginni, tried to do. As Bob Woodward and Robert Costa reported in a Washington Post-CBS News bombshell, the conservative activist worked frantically to overturn the results of the 2020 election, calling it an “obvious fraud,” as Donald Trump and his allies were vowing to go to her husband’s court to nullify Biden’s win.Ginni Thomas has had a chip on her shoulder since the Hill-Thomas hearings — she shamelessly left Hill a voice message in 2010 asking for an apology — and no doubt she thought if she could help claw back the presidency from Biden, that would be sweet revenge.In a cascade of text messages, she urged Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to get Trump back into the Oval. “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!” she pleaded, adding, “The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.” Ginni — who attended the Jan. 6 rally before the raid on the Capitol started — urged Meadows to “Release the Kraken.”The Republicans badgering Judge Jackson aren’t asking a single question about the explosive revelations regarding Ginni Thomas — and nor are the rest of their party. Did the justice know what his wife was doing? Was he OK with it? Does he accept that he must recuse himself from cases dealing with Jan. 6 and the election?Apparently not. “Justice Thomas has already participated in two cases related to the 2020 election and its aftermath, despite his wife’s direct involvement in the so-called Stop the Steal efforts,” Jane Mayer reported in The New Yorker.When the court rejected Trump’s request to prevent the Jan. 6 committee from getting his records relating to the attempt to overturn the election results, Thomas was the sole dissenter. Do the records implicate Ginni?Stephen Gillers, a judicial ethicist, told Mayer that it was Clarence Thomas’s duty to know about Ginni’s crusade: “‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ is not an acceptable strategy for the Thomases’ marriage.”Thomas should never have been on the court. Now that we know his wife was plotting the overthrow of the government, he should get off or be thrown off. You can’t administer justice when your spouse is running around strategizing for a coup.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 Texts Expose Rift in House Jan. 6 Panel

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      There is debate within the committee investigating the assault on the Capitol over whether to seek testimony from the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas about her efforts to overturn the 2020 election.WASHINGTON — Buried in the thousands of documents that Mark Meadows, former President Donald J. Trump’s final White House chief of staff, turned over late last year to the House committee examining the Jan. 6 attack were text messages that presented the panel with a political land mine: what to do about Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas.The messages showed that Ms. Thomas relentlessly urged Mr. Meadows to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which she called a “heist,” and indicated that she reached out to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, about Mr. Trump’s legal efforts to keep power. She even suggested the lawyer who should be put in charge of that effort.The public disclosure of the messages on Thursday focused new attention on one avenue of the investigation and risked creating a rare rift within the committee about how aggressively to pursue it, including whether to seek testimony from Ms. Thomas, who goes by Ginni.In the Thomases, the committee is up against a couple that has deep networks of support across the conservative movement and Washington, including inside the committee. The panel’s Republican vice chairwoman, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, has led the charge in holding Mr. Trump to account for his efforts to overturn the election, but has wanted to avoid any aggressive effort that, in her view, could unfairly target Justice Thomas, the senior member of the Supreme Court.So although a debate has broken out inside the committee about summoning Ms. Thomas to testify, the panel at this point has no plans to do so, leaving some Democrats frustrated. That could change, however: On Friday, despite the potential for political backlash, Ms. Cheney indicated she has no objection to the panel asking Ms. Thomas for a voluntary interview.A New York Times Magazine investigation last month examined the political and personal history of Ms. Thomas and her husband. That included her role in efforts to overturn the election from her perch on the nine-member board of CNP Action, a conservative group that helped advance the “Stop the Steal” movement, and in mediating between feuding factions of organizers “so that there wouldn’t be any division around Jan. 6,” as one organizer put it.During that period, the Supreme Court was considering a number of cases related to the election, with Justice Thomas taking positions at times sympathetic to Mr. Trump’s efforts to challenge the outcome.This month, Ms. Thomas acknowledged attending the rally that preceded the violence in an interview with a conservative news outlet, but otherwise downplayed her role. Then came disclosure of the texts to Mr. Meadows, the contents of which were earlier reported by The Washington Post and CBS News.If the committee does not summon Ms. Thomas, some legal analysts said, it runs the risk of appearing to have a double standard. The panel has taken an aggressive posture toward many other potential witnesses, issuing subpoenas for bank and phone records of both high-ranking allies of the former president and low-level aides with only a tangential connection to the events of Jan. 6.“I think it would be a dereliction not to bring her in and talk to her,” said Kimberly Wehle, a University of Baltimore law professor who has closely tracked the committee’s work. “It certainly is inconsistent with their neutral, ‘find the facts where they go’ type of approach to this.”The committee’s light touch with Ms. Thomas to date reflects a number of considerations by both members and investigators, according to people familiar with the inquiry. Some saw the pursuit of Ms. Thomas as a distraction from more important targets. Others worried that pursuing Ms. Thomas could by implication sully the reputation of Justice Thomas, an icon among the Republican base. Still others argued that the panel could not know the full extent of her role without further questioning. And some members of the committee saw the text messages for the first time on Thursday.Text messages show that Ms. Thomas relentlessly urged the president’s chief of staff to overturn the 2020 presidential election.Susan Walsh/Associated PressThe lack of consensus also underscores the extent to which Justice Thomas’s shadow, including his network of supporters and former clerks, looms over various aspects of the investigation. Three of Justice Thomas’s former clerks — a federal judge, a top committee investigator and a key adviser to Mr. Trump — have major roles in the matter.A main strategist in the effort to try to overturn the election, the lawyer John Eastman, was a former clerk of Justice Thomas’s. John Wood, one of the Jan. 6 committee’s top investigators and another former Thomas clerk, is leading the so-called gold team examining Mr. Trump’s inner circle. And a federal judge, Carl J. Nichols, who is hearing cases related to the Capitol riot, is also a former clerk of Justice Thomas’s.This dynamic was on display during a deposition in December of Mr. Eastman, who was subpoenaed by the committee to talk about his role in helping Mr. Trump try to overturn the election. Mr. Wood began the questioning by noting that Mr. Eastman had once served as a clerk to Justice Thomas.“Like you, John,” Mr. Eastman shot back.For at least several weeks, the committee’s senior level has discussed whether to call Ms. Thomas to testify, as well as whether to issue subpoenas for any other communications she may have had with the White House or the president’s legal team about the election, including a message she told Mr. Meadows she sent to Mr. Kushner, according to people with knowledge of the investigation.There are plenty of leads to pursue. The committee could recall Dustin Stockton, a rally organizer who told The Times about a conversation he had with Caroline Wren, a Republican who helped raise money for the Jan. 6 “March for America,” in which she described Ms. Thomas’s peacemaking role. They could also recall Amy Kremer and Jenny Beth Martin, two rally organizers close to Ms. Thomas, to ask about her postelection communications with them.It could subpoena records from not only Ms. Thomas, but also CNP Action, which was deeply involved in the effort to spread falsehoods about the election. Investigators could ask her the name of the friend she was referring to when she wrote back to thank Mr. Meadows, saying: “Needed that! This plus a conversation with my best friend just now…I will try to keep holding on.” (Ms. Thomas and her husband have publicly referred to each other as their best friends.) Ultimately, they could ask her whether she had discussed Mr. Trump’s fight to overturn the election with her husband.Ms. Thomas said she attended a rally on Jan. 6 before the pro-Trump mob attacked the Capitol.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesJustice Thomas has declined to comment on the matter, through a representative. A lawyer for Ms. Thomas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Privately, some Republicans conceded that Ms. Thomas’s texts to Mr. Meadows were a mistake — particularly ones in which she urged Mr. Meadows to make Sidney Powell, a lawyer who had advocated conspiracy theories about voting machines being hacked, the face of the legal team. Yet the Republicans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they worried about being seen as critical of Ms. Thomas, predicted that if Democrats increased pressure on the Thomases, the right would counter with more calls for investigations of Democrats if Republicans win back the House in the November elections.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3Virginia Thomas’ text messages. More

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      Justice Thomas Ruled on Election Cases. Should His Wife’s Texts Have Stopped Him?

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      The nature of the text messages was enough to require recusal, legal experts said. But the Supreme Court has traditionally left such decisions to the discretion of the justice in question.WASHINGTON — The disclosure that Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, had sent a barrage of text messages to the Trump White House urging efforts to overturn the 2020 election brought into sharp focus the conflict of interest her political activism has created — and the lack of a clear-cut remedy.It is one thing, experts in legal ethics said on Friday, for the spouse of a Supreme Court justice to express political views, even ones shot through with wild conspiracy theories. That may not by itself require the justice’s recusal from cases touching on those views.But the text messages from Ms. Thomas, a longtime conservative activist who goes by Ginni, revealed something quite different and deeply troubling, experts said.The messages from Ms. Thomas to Mark Meadows, President Donald J. Trump’s chief of staff, sent during and just after the fraught weeks between the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, demonstrated that she was an active participant in shaping the legal effort to overturn the election.“I’m not sure how I would have come out if we just had a lot of texts from her saying that ‘this is terrible,’ said Amanda Frost, a law professor at American University in Washington.“But she wasn’t doing just that,” Professor Frost said. “She was strategizing. She was promoting. She was haranguing.”The texts were among about 9,000 pages of documents that Mr. Meadows turned over to the congressional committee investigating the Capitol attack. Democrats immediately seized on the disclosure to draw attention to the conflicts they said were presented by Ms. Thomas’s political activities and to press Justice Thomas to recuse himself from cases concerning the election and its aftermath. Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said that Justice Thomas’s “conduct on the Supreme Court looks increasingly corrupt” and that he had been “the lone dissent in a case that could have denied the Jan. 6 committee records pertaining to the same plot his wife supported.”Justice Thomas, Mr. Wyden said, “needs to recuse himself from any case related to the Jan. 6 investigation, and should Donald Trump run again, any case related to the 2024 election.”But Justice Thomas, who was released from the hospital on Friday after being treated for the last week for flulike symptoms, has long been a pillar of the conservative establishment. Republicans, even those who have distanced themselves from Mr. Trump and the more extreme wing of their party, showed no interest in pressuring him to recuse himself.Ms. Thomas’s text messages were heated and forceful, urging Mr. Meadows to pursue baseless legal challenges. “Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History,” one said.Ms. Thomas’s activities should have prompted Justice Thomas to disqualify himself from cases related to them, said Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University.“He had an obligation not to sit in any case related to the election, the Jan. 6 committee or the Capitol invasion,” he said.Professor Frost agreed that the situation was “an easy case.”“When your spouse is conversing with people who have some control over litigation to challenge an election,” she said, “you shouldn’t be sitting on the Supreme Court deciding that election or any aspect of it.”But Justice Thomas did participate in a ruling in January on an emergency application from Mr. Trump asking the court to block release of White House records concerning the attack on the Capitol. The court rejected the request, in a sharp rebuke to the former president.Only Justice Thomas noted a dissent, giving no reasons.He also participated in the court’s consideration of whether to hear a related appeal, one in which Mr. Meadows filed a friend-of-the-court brief saying that “the outcome of this case will bear directly” on his own efforts to shield records from the House committee investigating the attacks beyond those he had provided.The Supreme Court last month refused to hear the case, without noted dissent. There was no indication that Justice Thomas had recused himself.In December 2020, around the time of the text messages, Justice Thomas participated in a ruling on an audacious lawsuit by Texas asking the court to throw out the election results in four battleground states. The court rejected the request, with Justices Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. issuing a brief statement suggesting the majority had acted too soon in shutting the case down.In February 2021, Justice Thomas addressed election fraud in a dissent from the Supreme Court’s decision to turn away a challenge to Pennsylvania’s voting procedures.Ms. Thomas’s messages urged Mark Meadows, President Donald J. Trump’s chief of staff, to pursue baseless legal challenges.Oliver Contreras for The New York Times“We are fortunate that many of the cases we have seen alleged only improper rule changes, not fraud,” he wrote. “But that observation provides only small comfort. An election free from strong evidence of systemic fraud is not alone sufficient for election confidence.”Justice Thomas did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.All federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, are subject to a federal law on recusal. The law says that “any justice, judge or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”Judging by the nature of the text messages and the uproar over them, that provision alone is enough to require Justice Thomas’s recusal, legal experts said.A more specific provision concerning relatives, including spouses, might also apply to his situation. Judges should not participate, the law says, in proceedings in which their spouse has “an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.”Professor Gillers said the word “interest” was the key.“By writing to Meadows, who was chief of staff and active in the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement, she joined the team resisting the results of the election,” Professor Gillers said. “She made herself part of the team and so she has an interest in the decisions of the court that could affect Trump’s goal of reversing the results.”The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 6Numerous inquiries. More

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      Ginni and Clarence Thomas Are Making a Mockery of the Supreme Court

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      What did Justice Clarence Thomas know, and when did he know it?The question usually gets directed at politicians, not judges, but it’s a fair one in light of the revelation on Thursday that Justice Thomas’s wife, Ginni, was working feverishly behind the scenes — and to a far greater degree than she previously admitted — in a high-level effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.As The Washington Post and CBS News first reported, Ms. Thomas, a supremely well-connected right-wing agitator, was in constant communication with the White House in the weeks following the election, strategizing over how to keep Donald Trump in office despite his incontrovertible loss. “Do not concede,” she texted to Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, on Nov. 6, the day before the major news networks called the election for Joe Biden. “It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back.” (To date, Mr. Trump has not conceded.)In dozens of messages with Mr. Meadows over several weeks, Ms. Thomas raged over baseless allegations of voter fraud and shared unhinged conspiracy theories, including one that the “Biden crime family” was in the process of being arrested and sent to Guantánamo Bay for “ballot fraud.”“Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!” Ms. Thomas wrote at one point. “The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”Ms. Thomas had already acknowledged some involvement in the fight over the 2020 election count, recently confirming that she attended the Jan. 6 Stop the Steal rally in Washington, but she said she went home before Mr. Trump spoke to the crowd and before a mob of hundreds stormed the Capitol in a violent attempt to block the certification of Mr. Biden’s Electoral College victory. The texts reveal that her efforts to subvert the election were far more serious than we knew.Now recall that in January, the Supreme Court rejected Mr. Trump’s request to block the release of White House records relating to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. Mr. Meadows had submitted a brief in the case supporting Mr. Trump. The court’s ruling came as an unsigned order, with only one noted dissent: from Justice Thomas.Perhaps Justice Thomas was not aware of his wife’s text-message campaign to Mr. Meadows at the time. But it sure makes you wonder, doesn’t it?And that’s precisely the problem: We shouldn’t have to wonder. The Supreme Court is the most powerful judicial body in the country, and yet, as Alexander Hamilton reminded us, it has neither the sword nor the purse as a means to enforce its rulings. It depends instead on the American people’s acceptance of its legitimacy, which is why the justices must make every possible effort to appear fair, unbiased and beyond reproach.That may seem naïve, particularly in the face of the crippling assaults on the court that Mitch McConnell and his Senate Republicans have carried out over the past six years in order to secure a right-wing supermajority that often resembles a judicial policy arm of the Republican Party — starting with their theft of a vacancy that was President Barack Obama’s to fill and continuing through the last-second confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett while millions of voters were already in the process of casting Mr. Trump out of office.And yet the public’s demand for basic fairness and judicial neutrality is not only proper but critical to the court’s integrity, as the justices, whoever nominated them, are well aware. Partly in response to the court’s tanking public-approval ratings, several of them have grown increasingly outspoken in defense of their independence. (Though not all of them.)The most obvious way for justices to demonstrate that independence in practice, of course, is to recuse themselves from any case in which their impartiality might reasonably be questioned. It does not matter whether there is, in fact, a conflict of interest; the mere appearance of bias or conflict should be enough to compel Justice Thomas or any other member of the court to step aside.Many of them have over the years, out of respect for the court as an institution and for the public’s faith in their probity. Just this week, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson vowed that if confirmed she would recuse herself from an upcoming case challenging Harvard’s affirmative-action policies, because of her multiple personal and professional connections to the university. Legal-ethics experts are not even in agreement that her recusal would be necessary, but Judge Jackson is right to err on the side of caution.Justice Thomas has paid lip service to this ideal. “I think the media makes it sound as though you are just always going right to your personal preference,” he said in a speech last year. “That’s a problem. You’re going to jeopardize any faith in the legal institutions.”Bench memo to the justice: You know what jeopardizes public faith in legal institutions? Refusing to recuse yourself from numerous high-profile cases in which your wife has been personally and sometimes financially entangled, as The New Yorker reported in January. Especially when you have emphasized that you and she are melded “into one being.” Or when you have, as The Times Magazine reported last month, appeared together with her for years “at highly political events hosted by advocates hoping to sway the court.”Ms. Thomas’s efforts, and her husband’s refusal to respond appropriately, have been haunting the court for years, but this latest conflagration shouldn’t be a close call. “The texts are the narrowest way of looking at this,” Stephen Gillers, a New York University law professor and one of the nation’s foremost legal-ethics experts, told me. “She signed up for Stop the Steal. She was part of the team, and that team had an interest in how the court would rule. That’s all I need to know.” He said he has over the years resisted calling for Justice Thomas’s recusal based on his wife’s actions, “but they’ve really abused that tolerance.”Yes, married people can lead independent professional lives, and it is not a justice’s responsibility to police the actions of his or her spouse. But the brazenness with which the Thomases have flouted the most reasonable expectations of judicial rectitude is without precedent. From the Affordable Care Act to the Trump administration’s Muslim ban to the 2020 election challenges, Ms. Thomas has repeatedly embroiled herself in big-ticket legal issues and with litigants who have wound up before her husband’s court. All the while, he has looked the other way, refusing to recuse himself from any of these cases. For someone whose job is about judging, Justice Thomas has, in this context at least, demonstrated abominably poor judgment.If Justice Thomas were sitting on any other federal court in the country, he would likely have been required by the code of judicial ethics to recuse himself many times over. But the code does not apply to Supreme Court justices, creating a situation in which the highest court in the land is also the most unaccountable.This is not tolerable. For years, Congress has tried in vain to extend the ethics code to the Supreme Court. For the sake of fundamental fairness and consistency, the code must apply to all federal judges; it would at the very least force the hand of those like Justice Thomas who seem unmoved by any higher sense of duty to the institution or to the American people who have agreed to abide by its rulings.The court is in deep trouble these days, pervaded by what Justice Sonia Sotomayor recently called the “stench” of partisanship — a stench arising in no small part from the Thomases’ behavior. It is hard to imagine that the other justices, regardless of their personal politics, aren’t bothered.No one should have to choose between their devotion to their spouse and their duty to the nation. But Justice Thomas has shown himself unwilling or unable to protect what remains of the court’s reputation from the appearance of extreme bias he and his wife have created. He would do the country a service by stepping down and making room for someone who won’t have that problem.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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      These Senators Grilling Judge Jackson Have Ambitions Beyond Senate

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      Four of the senators on the panel grilling Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson are known to have dreams beyond the walls of the U.S. Senate.Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a future president, the old saw goes.So as the Senate Judiciary Committee convenes this week to consider the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for a Supreme Court seat, we’ll be watching the panel not just for probing questions about her judicial philosophy but also for clues to 2024.Four Republican senators on the committee have flashed signs of larger aspirations, and they share a lot else in common. All are men who are roughly within a decade of one another in age. All have one or two Ivy League degrees. Each has sought to mold the Republican Party in his own image. And all approach these hearings knowing they are just as much onstage as Jackson is.For the supremely ambitious, a Supreme Court nomination battle is an irresistible opportunity. It’s a chance to build email lists, rustle up campaign cash and impress base voters. Remember how Kamala Harris used the Brett Kavanaugh hearings to preview her 2020 presidential run?It’s still early to be thinking about the 2024 presidential race, but candidates are already engaged in “shadow jockeying,” said Bob Vander Plaats, an influential Iowa conservative. “Everybody’s waiting to see what Trump does.”Even so, Republican activists are looking for a champion, said Rachel Bovard, a senior director of policy at the Conservative Partnership Institute. “They want to see that you have a pulse,” she said.But big hearings can be perilous, too. Senators can’t be seen as “playing for the cameras,” Quin Hillyer, a conservative columnist, told us. More and more Republican voters, he said, want “toughness without histrionics.”With that in mind, here are the four Republican senators to watch:Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas is a foreign policy hawk, particularly on China.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesThe hard-linerTom Cotton, 44, of Arkansas has two degrees from Harvard and served in Iraq and Afghanistan as an Army Ranger. He’s been an increasingly frequent visitor to Iowa and New Hampshire of late — telltale signs that he has caught the presidential bug.Cotton is a foreign policy hawk, particularly on China. But he has also staked out hard-right positions on domestic policy, with calls to restrict legal immigration and roll back criminal justice reforms.In a speech this month, Cotton embraced the Republican Party’s “proud, patriotic and populist” direction under Trump. “We’re the party of the common man, the worker, the farmer, the cop on the beat,” he said. But he broke with Trump over the First Step Act, which he blamed for the early release of “child predators, carjackers and gang members.”Senator Ted Cruz of Texas at CPAC in Orlando, Fla., last month.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesThe former Tea PartierTed Cruz, 51, of Texas ran for president once before and might again, his allies say. A graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School, Cruz has been a major force in Republican politics since entering the Senate in 2013.He has gone through three main phases during his time in Washington. First he was a Tea Partier known for defying Republican leaders over government spending. Then he was a presidential candidate who came in second to Trump in 2016 by running as a conservative true believer. And now he’s a beard-sporting Trump ally who preaches “America First” dogma with the zeal of a convert.Cruz once took to the national spotlight like a moth to flame. But in recent years, that spotlight has been harsh: His vacation to Cancún during a storm that left millions of Texans without electricity or running water drew withering scorn, and his recent apology to Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, for calling the Jan. 6 rioters “terrorists” was seen as groveling.He has been subdued about Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination, calling for her to be treated with “dignity and decorum.” After meeting her in his office last week, he joked on a podcast that he was “highly suspect” of her — for rejecting his offer of Cuban coffee.Close observers of Cruz say he appears less calculating, more relaxed and more authentically himself than in the past — potentially meaning he has set aside his presidential ambitions or simply that he’s trying out a different approach.“I think Cruz looks at it as, nobody’s going to beat him to the conservative lane,” said Mike DuHaime, a Republican strategist. “He may not need to pick every single fight.”Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri also speaking at CPAC last month.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesThe young upstartJosh Hawley, 42, of Missouri, is an evangelical Christian who promotes traditional values. That puts him on a potential collision course with Cruz and with former Vice President Mike Pence, said Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.Hawley has carved out a significant following on the right by going after tech companies for what he calls their alliance with the “radical left.” And though he has said he’s not running for president in 2024, he hasn’t exactly spurned the speculation, either.Hawley is an unapologetic supporter of the Jan. 6 protesters. And though he condemned the violence at the Capitol as “horrific,” his campaign has put a photo of himself hailing the Jan. 6 crowd on mugs (“the perfect way to enjoy Coffee, Tea, or Liberal Tears!”). He has raised millions by complaining that Democrats are attempting to “cancel” him. On March 1, he led his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference by noting his objection to the certification of the Electoral College votes. “I wasn’t backing down then; I haven’t changed my mind now,” he said to raucous applause.Allies say that Hawley, a Yale Law School graduate who clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts, sees the Supreme Court as his domain. Of the four senators, he’s the only one who has bucked the wishes of Senate Republican leaders by forcefully attacking Jackson’s record. Fact-checkers have found his claims wanting, and the White House called them “toxic.” He likely won’t be able to stop her confirmation. But the fact that Hawley is fighting Jackson’s nomination at all could endear him to Republicans who want a brawler in their corner.“His goal appears to be to make Ted Cruz look like the statesman of the group,” said Terry Sullivan, a Republican political consultant.Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska voted to convict Trump during his second impeachment.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesThe prairie philosopherBen Sasse, 50, of Nebraska is a former university president who has mapped out his own path as a sporadic Trump critic. Sasse has an undergraduate degree from Harvard and a doctorate from Yale. But unlike the other senators, he embraces and even flaunts his intellectual roots.Sasse wrote his dissertation about “culture-warring entrepreneurs” who seized on the debate over prayer in schools to power Ronald Reagan’s political ascent — an early expression of Sasse’s pox-on-both-houses approach to politics. A lone wolf in the Senate, Sasse often positions himself above what he derides as the “tribal” politics of Washington. In noting Jackson’s nomination, for instance, he said the Judiciary Committee has been “a place of grandstanding and rabid partisanship.”“Grandstanding” is a word Sasse employs frequently — as when he tangled last week on the Senate floor with Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat of Connecticut, over aid to Ukraine. The skirmish caught the eye of conservative pundits, who saw it as a sign that Sasse is seeking attention.But for what? If there’s a lane for Sasse in a coming presidential election, it’s likely as a Never Trumper or an independent. He voted to convict Trump during his second impeachment, a no-no for Republican base voters.What to read The ex-wife of Eric Greitens, a leading Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Missouri, accused him in court documents of knocking her down and confiscating her keys, phone and wallet during an argument in 2018.Republicans are relitigating the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation battle, Glenn Thrush writes, even as they prepare to question Jackson in confirmation hearings that began with opening statements on Monday.Erica L. Green looked back at Jackson’s years at Harvard University, where the future judge learned to navigate “one of the most elite and white institutions in the country.”FrameworkIn North Carolina, Pat McCrory, the Republican Senate candidate, released an ad accusing his opponent Ted Budd of being soft on Russia. via YouTubeRussia becomes a campaign liabilityTo understand just how rapidly the politics of foreign policy are shifting on the right, look no farther than North Carolina — where being associated with Donald Trump’s views on Russia is now a political problem.The state is electing a replacement this year for Senator Richard Burr, who is retiring. On the Republican side, the May 17 primary is largely a two-way contest between Pat McCrory, a former governor, and Representative Ted Budd, a far-right lawmaker who was endorsed by Trump.As the war in Ukraine broke out, McCrory released an ad accusing Budd of being soft on Russia. The ad shows a clip of Budd calling Vladimir Putin “intelligent” — much as Trump praised the Kremlin leader’s aggression as “genius.”“While Ukrainians bled and died,” a narrator scolds, “Congressman Budd excused their killer.”In a sign that McCrory’s attack might be landing, Budd’s allies responded with a response ad calling it “a low down, dirty hit job.” The ad quotes Budd as saying, “Putin is evil. He’s an international thug,” and emphasizes his support for Ukraine.Each side has spent only a few thousand dollars on the ads so far, indicating the goal was to generate free media coverage and not to reach voters directly.But the exchange underscores how being perceived as an apologist for Putin is suddenly a bad look in a Republican primary thanks to Volodymyr Zelensky, the charismatic president of Ukraine. By presenting an alternate model of strength and machismo, said Rick Tyler, a former Cruz aide, “Zelensky has changed the whole dynamic of the Republican Party.” Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.— Blake & LeahIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More