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      Liz Cheney’s Checkered History

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      Deep in her new book, “Oath and Honor,” Liz Cheney points out that the likeness of Clio, the Greek muse of history, is found in the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. “Clio is depicted riding in the chariot of time, making notes in the book in her hand,” Cheney writes, “as a reminder that what we do in the Capitol Building is written in the pages of history.”Cheney’s book is likewise an attempt to write the history of our time, a history in which Cheney has become a protagonist. Her telling of this history, though vital, is unnecessarily partial. If this book is intended as both “a memoir and a warning,” as its subtitle declares, Cheney delivers on only half of that promise.The warning Cheney issues is clear and persuasive: A second presidential term for Donald Trump would pose great risks to the nation’s democratic practices and identity. A retribution-minded, Constitution-terminating leader buttressed by unscrupulous advisers and ethically impaired lawyers could, she argues, “dismantle our republic.” As both a witness and a target of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol and as a leader of the House committee that investigated the attack, Cheney recognizes the power of the mob that Trump commands. She also understands the cowardice of his enablers in the Republican Party, the same kind of loyalists who would populate — or at least seek to justify — a second Trump administration.“The assumption that our institutions will protect themselves is purely wishful thinking by people who prefer to look the other way,” Cheney writes. And that was before Trump suggested that he would act dictatorially in his new term, if only on day one.As a memoir, however, Cheney’s book is overly narrow, and at times curiously uncurious. Yes, anyone interested in the author’s recollections from inside the House chamber on Jan. 6 will find plenty of material (when Jim Jordan of Ohio approached her to help “get the ladies” off the aisle, Cheney swatted his hand away, retorting, “Get away from me. You f — ing did this.”), and Cheney is unstinting in her contempt for Kevin McCarthy, then the Speaker of the House, whom she describes as unprincipled and unintelligent in roughly equal doses. (She even finds McCarthy less substantive and capable than Democratic leaders in the House, like Nancy Pelosi — a savage dig in G.O.P. world.)Yet, for all the insider detail Cheney offers, her memoir is truncated, treating the period between the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 attack as the beginning of history, or the only history that matters, as though no prior warnings about Trump had been warranted or even audible. Cheney once believed in the staying power of the country’s constitutional principles, she writes, “but all that had changed on January 6 of 2021.”Did nothing change for Cheney before Jan. 6? Not anything at all?Cheney, who has said elsewhere that she regrets voting for Trump in 2020, seems disinclined to revisit or reconsider in this book why she and so many others made their peace with earlier signs of Trump’s authoritarian, anti-constitutional impulses. Her explanation for voting against Trump’s first impeachment is thin; she wishes the Democrats had moved to subpoena John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, to gather additional evidence. It’s a grudging excuse from Cheney, who, as a former State Department official, no doubt can recognize when diplomacy is being manipulated for domestic political gain.Instead, she merely decries those who failed to pivot away from Trump after the 2020 election and Jan. 6, blaming their social-media silos and their exposure to pro-Trump news outlets like Fox News and Newsmax. A longtime Wyoming donor, for example, had “fallen for all the nonsense” about election fraud, Cheney writes, while a close family friend “fell for the lies, hook, line, and sinker.”I did not expect “Oath and Honor” to double as a mea culpa; in any case, Cheney does not seem the type to dabble much in remorse. Her courage in challenging her party over Trump’s election fantasies is hardly rendered meaningless by her prior support for Trump, and her leadership of the House Jan. 6 committee elevated patriotism over partisanship. But history did not in fact begin with that day of violence at the Capitol nearly three years ago. Trump’s unceasing deceit, his disdain for the norms of his office and his assault on the institutions of government spanned his presidency, not just its closing weeks. And his declarations of supposed electoral fraud against him far predated the 2020 presidential contest; his similar rants ahead of the 2016 election were rendered moot only by his unlikely victory.Whether they are elected officials, media personalities, lawyers, family friends or the mob itself, people don’t just swallow Trump’s lies hook, line and sinker all of a sudden. They are lured in, one speech, one deception, one promise at a time, until a lie becomes a worldview. The most serious Trump enablers may indeed include elected officials like McCarthy and his successor Mike Johnson, both of whom brazenly supported Trump’s attempt to undo the 2020 election, and who come in for serious grief in Cheney’s book. But they are not the only ones who, at key moments throughout the Trump presidency, preferred to look the other way. Even those former supporters turned vocal opponents owe some explanation of why their minds needed changing — if only because their transformation can help illuminate the mindset of those who decline to follow their lead.It is largely correct to write, as Cheney does, that “no amount of evidence would ever convince a certain segment of the Republican Party.” It is also largely unhelpful.The irony of the history Cheney highlights in “Oath and Honor” is that her focus on the final days of Trump’s term in late 2020 and early 2021 proves quite helpful in anticipating what the early days of a second term might bring. Most of those troublesome “adults in the room” from the first Trump administration will be gone, consigned to the green room instead of the Cabinet Room. No one will threaten to resign citing principles for the simple reason that they won’t have any; loyalty will be their chief qualification.Cheney recalls how Ronald Reagan described America’s orderly transfer of power every four years as “nothing less than a miracle,” and she worries of the dangers that loom when that transfer grows disorderly. The transition from an outgoing administration to an incoming one is “a time of heightened potential vulnerability” for the country, Cheney writes, and she notes how, immediately after the 2020 election, Trump subbed out key senior officials — including the defense secretary — in favor of more pliable replacements. “Why was he appointing inexperienced loyalists to the most senior civilian positions in the Pentagon at a moment when stability was key?” Cheney asks. (After her service on the Jan. 6 committee, Cheney is able to answer her own question, concluding that Trump was considering “deploying our military for some election-related purpose.”) The president also tried to replace the attorney general with someone willing to falsely assert in writing that the 2020 vote was corrupt; only when multiple senior Justice Department officials threatened to resign did Trump back down.Now imagine an administration staffed that way from the beginning, starting on Jan. 20, 2025, and buttressed by empowered collaborators in Congress, and you’ll grasp Cheney’s most serious warning. “I am very sad to say,” she acknowledges in her final pages, “that America can no longer count on a body of elected Republicans to protect our republic.” It’s a remarkable statement considering the political lineage of its author, but a defensible one. Just as the history Liz Cheney tells in “Oath and Honor” should go back further than the lies about 2020 and the scandal of Jan. 6, the damage of a second Trump term would extend far beyond whatever measures he might inflict on day one.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, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      The Supreme Court Can Stop Trump’s Delay Game

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      This is a good week to remember that, in the hours after Senate Republicans refused to convict Donald Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, Mitch McConnell, then the majority leader, offered a hint of future comeuppance for the former president. Mr. Trump, he said, was still liable for everything he did as president.“He didn’t get away with anything yet — yet,” Mr. McConnell said on the Senate floor on Feb. 13, 2021. “We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being accountable by either one.”Almost three years later, we are approaching the moment of truth. Mr. Trump, under federal indictment for his role in the insurrection, is attempting to evade legal accountability as he always has, by delay and misdirection.On Monday night, the case reached the Supreme Court, where litigation is normally measured in months, if not years. That’s understandable, especially when legal issues are complex or involve matters of great public significance. The course of justice is slow and steady, as the tortoise sculptures scattered around the court’s building at One First Street symbolize.But sometimes time is of the essence. That’s the case now, as the court weighs whether to expedite the case against Mr. Trump, who is trying to get his criminal charges thrown out a few weeks before the Republican primaries begin, and less than a year before the 2024 election.Last week after the federal trial judge, Tanya Chutkan, rejected Mr. Trump’s legal arguments that he is immune from prosecution, he appealed to the federal appeals court in Washington, a process that he clearly hoped would add weeks of delay. The special counsel Jack Smith countered by going directly to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to take the case away from the appeals court and rule quickly.It was, he acknowledged, “an extraordinary request” for “an extraordinary case.” The justices took the hint, ordering Mr. Trump to file his response by next week — lightning speed compared to the court’s usual pace.The prosecution was further complicated on Wednesday, when the justices agreed to hear a case challenging the government’s reliance on a particular obstruction charge against hundreds of Jan. 6 attackers, and against Mr. Trump himself.Prosecuting a presidential candidate during a campaign is not an ideal situation. Still, the justices were right not to sit on Mr. Smith’s appeal. The American people deserve to know, well before they head to the polls, whether one of the two probable major-party candidates for president is a convicted criminal — whether he is guilty, no less, of conspiring to subvert the outcome of a free and fair election to keep himself in power. The Jan. 6 trial — one of four Mr. Trump is expected to face over the coming months, and arguably the most consequential of all — is scheduled to start in early March, and it cannot move forward until the court decides whether he as a former president is immune from prosecution for his actions in office.The good news is there’s nothing stopping them. The justices are fully capable of acting fast when the circumstances demand. Consider the 2000 presidential election: the dispute over Florida’s vote count rocketed up to the court not once but twice in a matter of days in early December. The court issued its final opinion in Bush v. Gore, which was 61 pages in all, including dissents, barely 24 hours after hearing oral arguments.In 1974, the court managed to decide another hugely consequential case involving the presidency — Richard Nixon’s refusal to turn over his secret Oval Office tapes — over the course of a few weeks in June and July. The court’s ruling, which came out during its summer recess, went against Mr. Nixon and led to his resignation shortly after.The stakes in both cases were extraordinary, effectively deciding who would (or would not) be president. In both cases, the justices knew the country was waiting on them, and they showed they have no trouble resolving a legal dispute rapidly. The Jan. 6 charges against Mr. Trump are similarly consequential. Never in American history has a sitting president interfered with the peaceful transfer of power. No matter their positions on Mr. Trump and his eligibility to run again, all Americans have a compelling interest in getting a verdict in this case before the election.For that to happen, the Supreme Court needs to rule on Mr. Trump’s claim of executive immunity, one of a narrow category of appeals that can stop a trial in its tracks rather than having to wait until after conviction to be filed. The former president’s argument is that his actions to overturn the election were taken in the course of his official duties, and thus that he is absolutely immune from prosecution for them. It’s an absurd claim, as Judge Chutkan explained in denying it on Dec. 1.“Whatever immunities a sitting president may enjoy, the United States has only one chief executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass,” she wrote. “Defendant’s four-year service as commander in chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens.”Mr. Trump made two additional arguments, involving double jeopardy and the First Amendment, that were even weaker than the immunity claim, and Judge Chutkan denied those as well. She was probably tempted to toss out all of them as frivolous, as so many of Mr. Trump’s delaying tactics, dressed up as legal arguments, turn out to be. Instead she erred on the side of caution because no one has ever made such arguments, so there is no legal precedent for assessing their validity.Of course, the reason no one has made these arguments is that no former president has been criminally charged before. This is classic Trump, freeloading on everyone else’s respect for the law. You can drive 100 m.p.h. down the highway only if you are confident the other cars will stay in their lanes.The irony is that, even as he seeks to delay and obstruct the justice system, Mr. Trump is bolstering the case for a speedy trial thanks to his repeated threatening outbursts on social media. He has attacked the judge, the prosecutor and others, including those who are likely to testify against him. Statements like those endanger the safety of witnesses and the basic fairness of the trial, and have resulted in a gag order against the former president, but they are routine for a man who has spent a lifetime acting out and daring decent Americans everywhere to do something, anything, to stop him.“He keeps challenging the system to hold him accountable,” Kristy Parker of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan advocacy group, told me. Most any other defendant who behaved in this way would risk being thrown in jail for violating the conditions of their bail, she said, but “no one wants to see him locked up prior to trial. It’s not going to be good for American society.”She was referring to the propensity for threats and violence that Mr. Trump’s supporters, egged on by their overlord, have shown in the face of any attempt to hold him to account. At this point, however, many Americans have accepted that risk as part of the price of cleansing the nation of a uniquely malicious political figure. We know the violence is coming, just as we know Mr. Trump will claim that any election he doesn’t win is rigged against him.“The best way to do anything about this is to have the trial soon,” Ms. Parker said. Right now, there are nine people in America who can help guarantee that is what happens.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, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Do Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis Stand a Chance?

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      Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | AmazonAnna Foley and Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesWatching the Republican primary debates can feel like a study in self sabotage. In the latest one, which Donald Trump skipped, the candidates spent most of their time attacking one another — not the guy who is 50 points ahead in the polls.But there is a logic to it. Candidates are trying to position themselves as the party’s alternative to the former president. And to do that, they have to push one another aside and unite the roughly 40 percent of Republicans who are still up for grabs.This week, we ask anti-Trump Republicans: What’s stopping their coalition from getting on the same page? And with the early contests fast approaching, is it too late? We travel to a debate night watch party for Nikki Haley in New Hampshire and check in with Bob Vander Plaats, an influential Iowa evangelical and supporter of Ron DeSantis.About ‘The Run-Up’“The Run-Up” is your guide to understanding the 2024 election. Through on-the-ground reporting and conversations with colleagues from The New York Times, newsmakers and voters across the country, our host, Astead W. Herndon, takes us beyond the horse race to explore how we got to this unprecedented moment in American politics. New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      La Corte Suprema analizará el cargo de obstrucción en el caso de Trump por el asalto del 6 de enero

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      La decisión de admitir el caso complicará y quizá retrase el inicio del juicio de Trump, que ahora está previsto que se celebre en Washington en marzo.La Corte Suprema aceptó el miércoles analizar un caso que podría poner en entredicho el procesamiento de cientos de alborotadores que irrumpieron en el Capitolio el 6 de enero de 2021 y retrasar —o limitar el alcance— del juicio del expresidente Donald Trump por cargos federales de intentar anular su derrota electoral.Lo que está en juego es si el gobierno puede acusar a los imputados en los casos en virtud de una ley federal que tipifica como delito la obstrucción corrupta de un procedimiento oficial. La ley está en el centro de los procesamientos de muchos partidarios de Trump que, en 2020, trataron de bloquear la certificación de la victoria de Joe Biden en el Congreso. También es una parte clave del proceso federal que acusa a Trump de conspirar para mantenerse en el poder, a pesar de la voluntad de los votantes.La decisión de admitir el caso complicará y quizá retrase el inicio del juicio de Trump, que ahora está previsto que se celebre en Washington en marzo. Es probable que la sentencia definitiva de la Corte Suprema, que es posible que no se produzca hasta junio, aborde la viabilidad de dos de los principales cargos contra Trump. Y podría obstaculizar de manera grave los esfuerzos del fiscal especial, Jack Smith, para responsabilizar al expresidente de la violencia desatada por sus partidarios en el Capitolio.La eventual decisión de la corte también podría invalidar las condenas que ya se han dictado contra decenas de seguidores de Trump que participaron en el asalto. Eso supondría un duro golpe para las acusaciones del gobierno en los casos de los disturbios del 6 de enero.El caso que la corte admitió afecta a Joseph Fischer, acusado de siete cargos por su participación en el ataque al Capitolio. Los fiscales afirman que agredió a la policía mientras el Congreso se reunía para certificar los resultados de las elecciones de 2020. Al igual que otros cientos de alborotadores cuyas acciones perturbaron el procedimiento de certificación en el Capitolio, Fischer fue acusado del cargo de obstrucción, formalmente conocido como 18, USC, 1512.Fischer solicitó la desestimación de una parte de la acusación presentada en virtud de la ley de obstrucción, que se aprobó como parte de la Ley Sarbanes-Oxley de 2002, una medida dirigida principalmente contra los delitos de cuello blanco. Los fiscales han utilizado habitualmente la acusación de obstrucción, en lugar de cargos más polémicos como insurrección o conspiración sediciosa, para describir cómo los miembros de la turba pro-Trump perturbaron el traspaso pacífico del poder presidencial.El año pasado, el juez Carl J. Nichols, del Tribunal Federal de Distrito de Washington, accedió a la petición de desestimación de Fischer, afirmando que la ley exigía que los acusados realizaran “alguna acción con respecto a un documento, registro u otro objeto”, algo que, según él, faltaba en la conducta de Fischer en el Capitolio.Un panel dividido de tres jueces del Tribunal de Apelaciones de EE. UU. para el Circuito del Distrito de Columbia revocó finalmente la decisión del juez Nichols, dictaminando que la ley “se aplica a todas las formas de obstrucción corrupta de un procedimiento oficial”. Tres acusados del 6 de enero, entre ellos Fischer, le pidieron finalmente a la Corte Suprema que decidiera si la ley se había aplicado correctamente en el caso del Capitolio.La acusación de obstrucción nunca fue fácil de incluir en los casos derivados del asalto al Capitolio. Cuando se aprobó a principios de la década de 2000, la ley pretendía frenar la prevaricación empresarial al prohibir cosas como la destrucción de documentos o la manipulación de testigos o pruebas.Los abogados defensores que representan a los alborotadores del 6 de enero han argumentado que los fiscales federales ampliaron indebidamente su alcance para abarcar la violencia que estalló en el Capitolio e interfirió en el procedimiento en el que los legisladores se habían reunido para certificar los resultados de las elecciones.Los abogados también discreparon con el uso de la acusación contra las personas que irrumpieron en el Capitolio, afirmando que muchas no actuaban de forma “corrupta”, como exige la ley, porque creían que protestaban contra unas elecciones robadas.“La ley se ha utilizado para criminalizar en exceso los casos del 6 de enero”, dijo Norm Pattis, abogado de Jake Lang, uno de los tres acusados que recurrieron a la Corte Suprema. “El Congreso nunca pretendió eso”.Pattis dijo que la revisión de la corte era “significativa” en cientos de causas penales derivadas de la revuelta del Capitolio y que era “una razón más para retrasar la causa de 2024 contra Donald Trump”.Dos de los cuatro cargos de la acusación federal de interferencia electoral contra Trump se basan en el cargo de obstrucción. Se le acusa de obstruir personalmente el procedimiento de certificación en el Capitolio el 6 de enero y también se enfrenta a un cargo de conspirar con otras personas para obstruir el procedimiento.La revisión de la corte, aunque es potencialmente perjudicial para la acusación, no afectaría a los otros dos cargos contra Trump. Uno de ellos lo acusa de conspirar para defraudar a Estados Unidos mediante la mentira de que le habían robado las elecciones, en un esfuerzo por revertir su derrota. El otro lo acusa de conspirar para privar a millones de estadounidenses del derecho a que se cuenten sus votos.Sin embargo, si la Corte Suprema determina que la ley de obstrucción no se aplica al ataque de la turba en el Capitolio, podría paralizar los planes de Smith de responsabilizar a Trump de la violencia.Documentos judiciales recientes sobre el caso de las elecciones han sugerido claramente que los fiscales planeaban utilizar la acusación de obstrucción para mostrar al jurado videos gráficos del ataque al Capitolio y tal vez introducir el testimonio de los alborotadores que afirman que asaltaron el edificio siguiendo instrucciones de Trump.La posibilidad de que la corte revise —y pueda invalidar— el recuento de obstrucción se ha cernido sobre el caso de las elecciones de Trump durante meses. Pero la reciente decisión de la corte se produjo en un momento especialmente delicado: dos días después de que Smith pidiera a los jueces que aceleraran la apelación de los distintos intentos de Trump de anular el caso basándose en alegaciones de inmunidad presidencial.Aunque la Corte Suprema aún no ha decidido si considerará los argumentos de inmunidad de Trump, en una semana se ha visto profundamente implicado en el procedimiento de injerencia electoral. Sus decisiones sobre la acusación de obstrucción y sobre la inmunidad podrían alterar radicalmente la forma, el alcance y el calendario del caso, que durante mucho tiempo ha parecido que sería la primera de las cuatro acusaciones a las que se enfrentaría Trump.La fiscala general, Elizabeth Prelogar, había instado a los jueces a denegar la revisión del caso, alegando que la ley era lo suficientemente amplia como para abarcar las acciones de Fischer aunque no se vieran afectados documentos u otros objetos.“Un acusado obstruye un procedimiento oficial impidiendo físicamente que se lleve a cabo, como ocurrió aquí cuando los demandantes y otras personas ocuparon violentamente el Capitolio durante varias horas e impidieron así que la sesión conjunta del Congreso realizara su trabajo”, escribió.Añadió que, en cualquier caso, se trataba de documentos.“Impedir que los miembros del Congreso validaran los certificados estatales constituye, por tanto, una obstrucción centrada en las pruebas”, escribió, añadiendo que la revisión era prematura. “Como mínimo, debería permitirse al gobierno presentar su caso ante un jurado y demostrar que los peticionarios obstruyeron un procedimiento impidiendo (en parte) que los responsables de la toma de decisiones pertinentes vieran las pruebas en el momento y lugar especificados para ese efecto”.Independientemente de cómo se pronuncie finalmente la Corte Suprema, es probable que los abogados de Trump utilicen su decisión de revisar la acusación de obstrucción para reforzar sus argumentos de que el juicio en Washington debería aplazarse, quizá hasta después de que se decida la campaña presidencial de 2024.Desde el inicio del caso, Trump ha seguido una persistente estrategia de retraso. Si puede retrasar el juicio hasta después de las elecciones y ganar la contienda, estaría en condiciones de ordenar sencillamente que se retiraran los cargos contra él.Alan Feuer cubre el extremismo y la violencia política para el Times, centrándose en los casos penales relacionados con el atentado del 6 de enero en el Capitolio y contra el expresidente Donald Trump. Más sobre Alan FeuerAdam Liptak cubre la Corte Suprema y escribe Sidebar, una columna sobre novedades jurídicas. Licenciado por la Facultad de Derecho de Yale, ejerció la abogacía durante 14 años antes de incorporarse al Times en 2002. Más sobre Adam Liptak More

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      Trump and His Allies Descend on Iowa

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      The former president will also campaign in New Hampshire and Nevada, a burst of activity less than five weeks before voting begins.Former President Donald J. Trump kicked off a flurry of campaign activity on Wednesday with an eye toward a decisive victory in Iowa that would crush his Republican rivals’ hopes of emerging with any kind of momentum in the presidential primary.He’ll have a little help from his friends.Mr. Trump gave a speech in Coralville, a small city in eastern Iowa, on Wednesday, before planned stops in New Hampshire, the second nominating state, and Nevada, third on the primary calendar, over the weekend. Mr. Trump will return to Iowa on Tuesday for a speech in Waterloo, a city in the northeastern part of the state.But as Mr. Trump is shoring up support in the other early states, prominent surrogates will hit the ground in Iowa on his behalf in a display of the particular advantages he enjoys as the former president and the primary’s dominant front-runner. In the coming week, his campaign will hold events in Iowa with Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, a conservative firebrand and one of Mr. Trump’s closest allies in Congress, and Ben Carson, the former president’s secretary of housing and urban development.Mr. Trump enters this campaign stretch buoyed by recent polling that shows him holding his edge in the primary and in a strong position against President Biden in next year’s general election should the pair meet for a rematch. Mr. Trump’s allies in the Republican-led House of Representatives have approved a formal impeachment inquiry of Mr. Biden that could have ramifications for the president’s campaign even as their investigations thus far have failed to produce evidence of high crimes or misdemeanors.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      America’s Thirst for Authoritarianism

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      Around the world, authoritarianism is ascendant and democracy is in decline.A 2022 report from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance found that “over the past six years, the number of countries moving toward authoritarianism is more than double the number moving toward democracy” and that nearly half of the 173 countries assessed were “experiencing declines” in at least one metric of democracy.The United States wasn’t impervious to this trend. The report found that America was “moderately backsliding” on its democracy.But I fear that we’re now on the precipice of fully turning away from democracy and toward a full embrace of authoritarianism. The country seems thirsty for it; many Americans appear to be inviting it.Confidence in many of our major institutions — including schools, big business, the news media — is at or near its lowest point in the past half-century, in part because of the Donald Trump-led right-wing project to depress it. Indeed, according to a July Gallup report, Republicans’ confidence in 10 of the 16 institutions measured was lower than Democrats’. Three institutions in which Republicans’ confidence exceeded Democrats’ were the Supreme Court, organized religion and the police.And as people lose faith in these institutions — many being central to maintaining the social contract that democracies offer — they can lose faith in democracy itself. People then lose their fear of a candidate like Trump — who tried to overturn the previous presidential election and recently said that if he’s elected next time, he won’t be a dictator, “except for Day 1” — when they believe democracy is already broken.In fact, some welcome the prospect of breaking it completely and starting anew with something different, possibly a version of our political system from a time when it was less democratic — before we expanded the pool of participants.In Tim Alberta’s new book, “The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory,” he explains that many evangelical Christians have developed, in the words of the rightist Southern Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress, an “under siege” mentality that has allowed them to embrace Trump, whose decadent curriculum vitae runs counter to many of their stated values. It allows them to employ Trump as muscle in their battle against a changing America.This kind of thinking gives license — or turns a blind eye — to Trump’s authoritarian impulses.And while these authoritarian inklings may be more visible on the political right, they can also sneak in on the left.You could also argue that President Biden, whose approval numbers are languishing, is being punished by some because he isn’t an authoritarian and therefore isn’t able to govern by fiat: Many of his initiatives — voter protections, police reform, student loan forgiveness — were blocked by conservatives. Could he have fought harder in some of these cases? I believe so. But in the end, legislation is the province of Congress; presidents are bound by constitutional constraints.Trump surely appeals to those who want a president who’ll simply bulldoze through that bureaucracy, or at least expresses contempt for it and is willing to threaten it.Furthermore, Trump’s chances will probably be helped by the portion of the electorate misjudging the very utility of voting. There are still too many citizens who think of a vote, particularly for president, as something to throw to a person they like rather than being cast for the candidate and party more likely to advance the policies they need.And there are too many who think that a vote should be withheld from a more preferable candidate as punishment for not delivering every single thing on their wish lists — that choosing not to vote at all is a sensible act of political protest rather than a relinquishing of control to others. Abstinence doesn’t empower; it neuters.If you want a democracy to thrive, the idea that voting is a choice is itself an illusion. Voting is about survival, and survival isn’t a choice. It’s an imperative. It’s an instinct.It’s a tool one uses for self-advancement and self-preservation. It’s an instrument you use to decrease chances of harm and increase chances of betterment. It is naïve to use it solely to cosign an individual’s character; not to say that character doesn’t count — it does — but rather that its primacy is a fallacy.Voting isn’t just an expression of your worldview but also a manifestation of your insistence on safety and security.And to top it off, as Democratic Representative Ro Khanna of California told me over the weekend, the Obama coalition that Biden will rely on in 2024 is “under a lot of stress” with the issue of the Israel-Hamas war, and that coalition can be mended by “a foreign policy that is rooted in the recognition of human rights,” which includes “taking seriously the calls for a neutral cease-fire and the end to violence.”On Tuesday, Biden warned that Israel risks losing international support because of “indiscriminate bombing,” but he has yet to endorse a cease-fire.With Republicans beaconing authoritarianism, and without an intact Obama coalition to thwart it, our democracy hangs by a thread.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, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Judge Pauses Trump Election Case Amid Appeal of Immunity Issue

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      The decision by the judge to freeze the case came as the former president’s lawyers asked an appeals court to move slowly in considering his claims that he is immune from prosecution.A federal judge on Wednesday put on hold all of the proceedings in former President Donald J. Trump’s trial on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election as his lawyers asked an appeals court to move slowly in considering his claim that he is immune from prosecution in the case.The separate but related moves were part of an ongoing struggle between Mr. Trump’s legal team and prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, over the critical question of when the trial will actually be held. It is now scheduled to begin in Washington in March.On Wednesday morning, Mr. Trump’s lawyers asked the federal appeals court to avoid setting an expedited schedule as it considered whether to dismiss the election subversion charges based on the former president’s sweeping claims of executive immunity.In a 16-page filing that blended legal and political arguments, the lawyers asked a three-judge panel of the court not to move too quickly in mulling the question of immunity, saying that a “reckless rush to judgment” would “irreparably undermine public confidence in the judicial system.”“The manifest public interest lies in the court’s careful and deliberate consideration of these momentous issues with the utmost care and diligence,” wrote D. John Sauer, a lawyer who is handling the appeal for Mr. Trump.On Wednesday afternoon, the trial judge overseeing the election case, Tanya S. Chutkan, handed Mr. Trump a victory by suspending all “further proceedings that would move this case towards trial” until the appeal of the immunity issue is resolved.Mr. Trump’s lawyers had requested the pause when they first decided to challenge Judge Chutkan’s rejection of the former president’s immunity claim. Mr. Trump had argued in his initial motion to dismiss the case that he was “absolutely immune” to the election interference charges because they were based on actions he took while he was in office.The former president’s filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit came two days after prosecutors working for Mr. Smith asked the same judges to fast-track the appeal. The prosecutors argued that keeping the underlying case moving forward would vindicate the public’s interest in a speedy trial.Mr. Smith has also filed a parallel request to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to consider the immunity issue even before the appeals court does and to issue their decision quickly. Mr. Trump’s lawyers have until Dec. 20 to respond to that request.In another move on Wednesday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a separate case with a bearing on Mr. Trump’s prosecution. The court said it would consider whether the former president and hundreds of people who have been prosecuted for the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol can be charged in those cases under a federal law that makes it a crime to corruptly obstruct or impede an official proceeding.Winning the appeal of the immunity issue has been only one of Mr. Trump’s goals. All along, he and his lawyers have had an alternate strategy: to delay the trial on election interference charges for as long as possible.If Mr. Trump is able to postpone the trial until after next year’s election and ultimately wins the race, he will have the power to simply order the charges to be dropped. Holding a trial after the race would also mean that voters would not have had a chance to hear any of the evidence that prosecutors collected about Mr. Trump’s expansive efforts to reverse the results of the previous election.Mr. Smith’s team has never explicitly suggested that they are worried that if Mr. Trump is re-elected he will use his political victory as a means to quash his legal problems. Instead, they have framed their concerns about the scheduling of the case in a different way, saying they are seeking to protect the enormous public interest in seeing the case resolved in a timely fashion.Mr. Sauer rejected that position in his filing to the appeals court, accusing Mr. Smith of using the case to damage Mr. Trump’s candidacy.“The date of March 4, 2024, has no talismanic significance,” he wrote. “Aside from the prosecution’s unlawful partisan motives, there is no compelling reason that date must be maintained.”Mr. Trump’s lawyers have long complained that the trial is itself a form of election interference. They say that the scheduled start date of March 4 is just one day before Super Tuesday, the most important date in the primary election season.Mr. Trump’s legal team has used its immunity appeal to launch political attacks against Mr. Smith and the Biden administration and cast the indictment as a partisan effort to derail Mr. Trump’s third bid for the White House.“The prosecution has one goal in this case: to unlawfully attempt to try, convict and sentence President Trump before an election in which he is likely to defeat President Biden,” Mr. Sauer wrote. In his appellate papers, Mr. Sauer also complained that the sped-up schedule Mr. Smith has asked for would require Mr. Trump’s legal team to “work round-the-clock through the holidays.” “It is as if the special counsel growled, with his Grinch fingers nervously drumming, ‘I must find some way to keep Christmas from coming,’” Mr. Sauer wrote, quoting the famous Dr. Seuss book.In a sign of how just how fast they would like to move, prosecutors responded to Mr. Sauer’s filing within a matter of hours.“The public’s need for a speedy resolution of these important legal issues,” they wrote, “take precedence over personal scheduling issues.” More

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      in Elections

      Justices to Decide Scope of Obstruction Charge Central to Trump’s Jan. 6 Case

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      A ruling by the Supreme Court could affect the cases of hundreds of people charged in connection with the Capitol attack — and potentially the prosecution of Donald J. Trump.The Supreme Court agreed on Wednesday to hear a case that could upend the prosecutions of hundreds of rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and delay — or limit the scope of — former President Donald J. Trump’s trial on federal charges of trying to overturn his election defeat.At issue is whether the government can charge defendants in the cases under a federal law that makes it a crime to corruptly obstruct an official proceeding. The law is at the heart of the prosecutions of many members of the pro-Trump mob that sought to block the congressional certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in 2020. It is also a key part of the federal indictment accusing Mr. Trump of plotting to remain in power despite the will of the voters.The decision to hear the case will complicate and perhaps delay the start of Mr. Trump’s trial, now scheduled to take place in Washington in March. The Supreme Court’s ultimate ruling, which may not arrive until June, is likely to address the viability of two of the main counts against Mr. Trump. And it could severely hamper efforts by the special counsel, Jack Smith, to hold the former president accountable for the violence of his supporters at the Capitol.The court’s eventual decision could also invalidate convictions that have already been secured against scores of Mr. Trump’s followers who took part in the assault. That would be an enormous blow to the government’s prosecutions of the Jan. 6 riot cases.The case the court agreed to hear involves Joseph Fischer, who was indicted on seven charges for his role in the Capitol attack. Prosecutors say he assaulted the police as Congress met to certify the results of the 2020 election. Like hundreds of other rioters whose actions disrupted the certification proceeding in the Capitol, Mr. Fischer was charged with the obstruction count, formally known as 18 U.S.C. 1512.Mr. Fischer sought dismissal of a portion of the indictment brought under the obstruction law, which was passed as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, a statute aimed primarily at white-collar crime. Prosecutors have routinely used the obstruction charge, in lieu of more politically contentious counts like insurrection or seditious conspiracy, to describe how members of the pro-Trump mob disrupted the peaceful transfer of presidential power.Last year, Judge Carl J. Nichols of the Federal District Court in Washington granted Mr. Fischer’s motion to dismiss, saying that the law required defendants to take “some action with respect to a document, record or other object” — something he said was missing from Mr. Fischer’s conduct at the Capitol.A divided three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit eventually reversed Judge Nichols’s decision, ruling that the law “applies to all forms of corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding.” Three Jan. 6 defendants, including Mr. Fischer, ultimately asked the Supreme Court to decide whether the law had been properly applied to the Capitol attack.The obstruction charge was never an easy fit in the cases stemming from the storming of the Capitol. When it was passed in the early 2000s, the law was aimed at curbing corporate malfeasance by outlawing things like destroying documents or tampering with witnesses or evidence.Defense lawyers representing Jan. 6 rioters have argued that federal prosecutors improperly stretched its scope to cover the violence that erupted at the Capitol and interfered with the proceeding in which lawmakers had gathered to certify the results of the election.The lawyers also took issue with using the charge against people who stormed the Capitol, saying that many were not acting “corruptly,” as the law requires, because they believed they were protesting a stolen election.“The statute has been used to over-criminalize the Jan. 6 cases,” said Norm Pattis, a lawyer for Jake Lang, one of the three defendants who appealed to the Supreme Court. “Congress never intended that.”Mr. Pattis said the Supreme Court’s review was “significant” in hundreds of criminal cases stemming from the Capitol riot and was “yet another reason the 2024 case against Donald Trump should be delayed.”Two of the four counts in the federal election interference indictment against Mr. Trump are based on the obstruction charge. He has been accused of personally obstructing the certification proceeding at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and faces a separate count of conspiring with others to obstruct the proceeding.The Supreme Court’s review, while potentially damaging to the indictment, would not affect the other two charges against Mr. Trump. One accuses him of conspiring to defraud the United States by using relentless lies that the election had been stolen from him in an effort to reverse his defeat. The other charges him with plotting to deprive millions of Americans of the right to have their votes counted.Still, if the Supreme Court finds that the obstruction law does not apply to the mob attack at the Capitol, it could cripple plans by Mr. Smith to pin the violence on Mr. Trump.Recent court papers in the election case have strongly suggested that prosecutors were planning to use the obstruction charge as a way to show the jury graphic videos of the Capitol attack and perhaps even introduce testimony from rioters claiming that they stormed the building on Mr. Trump’s instructions.The possibility that the Supreme Court could review — and one day invalidate — the obstruction count has been looming over Mr. Trump’s election case for months. But the court’s decision to act on Wednesday came at a particularly delicate moment: two days after Mr. Smith asked the justices to fast-track an appeal of Mr. Trump’s separate attempts to have the case tossed out on broad claims of presidential immunity.While the Supreme Court has not yet decided whether to consider Mr. Trump’s immunity arguments, it has — in the span of a week — become deeply entangled in the election interference proceeding. Its decisions on the obstruction charge and on immunity could radically alter the shape, scope and timing of the case, which has long seemed as though it would be the first of the four indictments Mr. Trump is facing to go before a jury.Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar had urged the justices to deny review in the case, saying the law was broad enough to cover Mr. Fischer’s actions even if no documents or other objects were affected.“A defendant obstructs an official proceeding by physically blocking it from occurring — as happened here when petitioners and others violently occupied the Capitol for several hours and thereby prevented the joint session of Congress from doing its work,” she wrote.She added that documents were at issue in the case in any event.“Preventing the members of Congress from validating the state certificates thus constitutes evidence-focused obstruction,” she wrote, adding that review was premature. “At a minimum, the government should be permitted to present its case to a jury and prove that petitioners obstructed a proceeding by (in part) preventing the relevant decision makers from viewing the evidence at the time and place specified for that purpose.”Regardless of how the Supreme Court ultimately rules, Mr. Trump’s lawyers are likely to use its decision to review the obstruction charge to bolster their arguments that the trial in Washington should be postponed, perhaps until after the 2024 presidential race is decided.From the start of the case, Mr. Trump has pursued a persistent strategy of delay. If he can push the trial until after the election and win the race, he would be in a position to simply order the charges against him to be dropped. More