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      The Eagerness of Ginni Thomas

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      Ginni Thomas has become a problem.You don’t have to be a left-wing, anti-Trump minion of the deep state to think it’s a bad look for American democracy to have the wife of a Supreme Court justice implicated in a multitentacled scheme to overturn a free and fair presidential election. But that is where this political moment finds us.A longtime conservative crusader, Ms. Thomas increasingly appears to have been chin deep in the push to keep Donald Trump in power by any means necessary. Her insurrection-tinged activities included hectoring everyone from state lawmakers to the White House chief of staff to contest the results. She also swapped emails with John Eastman, the legal brains behind a baroque plot to have Vice President Mike Pence overturn the election that may have crossed the line from sketchy into straight-up illegal. Along the way, Ms. Thomas peddled a cornucopia of batty conspiracy theories, including QAnon gibberish about watermarked ballots in Arizona.Even by the standards of the Trumpified Republican Party, this is a shameful turn of events. And after extended negotiations, Ms. Thomas has finally agreed to voluntarily testify soon before the Jan. 6 House committee. Her lawyer has declared her “eager” to “clear up any misconceptions about her work relating to the 2020 election.”No doubt we’re all looking forward to her clarifications. But many people would be even more eager to have a bigger question addressed: How is it that someone with such evident contempt for democracy, not to mention a shaky grip on reality, has run amok for so long at the highest levels of politics and government?The most obvious answer is that Ms. Thomas is married to a very important man. And Washington is a town that has long had to contend, and generally make peace, with the embarrassing or controversial spouses and close kin of its top power players (Martha Mitchell, Billy Carter, Ivanka and Jared…).But even within this context, Ms. Thomas has distinguished herself with the aggressiveness and shamelessness of her political activities, which she pursues with total disregard for the conflicts of interest that they appear to pose with her husband’s role as an unbiased, dispassionate interpreter of the law.In another era, this might have prompted more pushback, for any number of reasons. But Ms. Thomas has benefited from a couple of cultural and political shifts that she has shrewdly exploited. One touches on the evolving role of power couples and political spouses. The other, more disturbing, is the descent of the Republican Party down the grievance-driven, conspiracy-minded, detached-from-reality rabbit hole.If most of America has come around to two-income households, Washington is overrun with bona fide power couples and has fashioned its own set of rules, official and unofficial, for dealing with them. Among these: It is bad form to suggest that a spouse should defer to his or her partner’s career, other than when explicitly required, of course. (A notable exception is the presidency, in which case the first lady is in many ways treated as if it were still 1960.) Though plenty of folks discuss it sotto voce, publicly musing that a couple’s work life might bleed into their home life is considered insulting — even sexist, if the spouse being scrutinized is a woman.The Thomases have been playing this card for years. Ms. Thomas has forged all sorts of ties with individuals and groups with interests before her husband and his colleagues. In the chaotic aftermath of the 2000 presidential election, she was helping the conservative Heritage Foundation identify appointees for a new Republican administration, even as her husband was deliberating over the outcome of the race. When people grumble about perceived conflicts — or Ms. Thomas’s perpetual political crusading in general — the couple and their defenders complain that they are being held to different standards from others. They are adamant that of course the Thomases can stay in their respective lanes.With a slightly different spin of the wheel, Ms. Thomas might have wound up a public figure in her own right, out picking fights and spreading chaos in the mold of Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. Back in 1986, as a young lawyer fighting against policies like maternity leave and comparable worth, she was named one of “28 young women of promise” by Good Housekeeping. At the time, she expressed a desire to run for Congress. But the next year she married Clarence, and his subsequent appointment to the Supreme Court scrambled her trajectory. “I’m kind of stuck here,” she told The Wall Street Journal in 1997, when asked about her youthful congressional dreams.Instead, Ms. Thomas has for decades operated in a kind of gray zone: Her professional identity and influence are not wholly defined by her husband, but they are inextricably bound up in his importance. She has endeavored to make the most of a tricky situation. And without question, she has been helped by — and she has capitalized on — the shift in her party toward its right wing. For Ginni Thomas could not be Ginni Thomas without the mainstreaming of conspiracy culture and heavy-duty grievancemongering in the G.O.P.Ms. Thomas has long been one to get swept up in the passion of causes and movements. In her early years in Washington, she joined the Lifespring self-help craze, which many people criticized as a cult. She eventually extracted herself from the group and went on to become an anti-cult activist.During the Obama era, she threw herself into the Tea Party revolution with gusto, cultivating connections and credibility with the party’s angry populist wing. When Mr. Trump came to power, she threw herself even harder into the MAGAverse — which is more a cult of personality than a political movement.Ms. Thomas goes in for sharp-edge partisanship and evil-libs-are-destroying-America demagogy. Finding so many like-minded warriors in Mr. Trump’s Republican Party freed her up to really let her freak flag fly.During his presidency, she would approach administration officials about people she thought should be fired or hired. She would occasionally pop in to visit with Mr. Trump at the White House. For one formal sit-down, she brought along a bunch of her conservative allies for what inexplicably morphed into part gripe fest — with attacks on everyone from transgender people to Republican congressional leaders to members of Mr. Trump’s administration — and part quasi-prayer session.Much like Mr. Trump, she took to social media with a vengeance, pushing out lib-bashing memes and other partisan red meat. Her efforts to meddle in the 2020 election were merely the high point — or, rather, low point — in a long and tireless career of crusading.Not that Ms. Thomas’s work is finished. The MAGAfied Republican Party is one in which her most outrageous views and behavior are ever more at home. This does not seem to trouble her extremely powerful husband or much of her party — at least not enough for anyone to seriously consider holding her accountable. Given all this, the most disturbing question we really should be looking to clarify may be: What on earth will she get up to next?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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      Turkish Author Ece Temelkuran Sees a Contested U.S. Election Through the Lens of an Attempted Coup

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      Ece Temelkuran, a Turkish author, sees parallels between Donald Trump’s claims of election theft and the 2016 attempt to depose Recep Tayyip Erdogan.This article is from a special report on the Athens Democracy Forum, which convenes this week in the Greek capital to examine the ways in which self-governance might evolve.When President Donald J. Trump announced in November 2020 that he had been robbed of victory in the presidential election that month, the author and political commentator Ece Temelkuran (pronounced eh-jeh) drew direct parallels with her homeland, Turkey.“Make no mistake, this is an attempted coup,” she wrote in an editorial for The Guardian. “If it were happening in Turkey, the world’s media would not think twice about calling it so.”Ms. Temelkuran spoke from experience. She lived through the July 2016 coup attempt against the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and left the country to avoid the crackdown that followed. Three years later, she published “How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship,” a nonfiction book that charted a democratic country’s potential slide into authoritarianism.Ms. Temelkuran was born into a political family. Her mother was a student activist who was imprisoned after a military coup in Turkey in the 1970s and rescued by a young lawyer whom she would go on to marry.When she was 16, Ms. Temelkuran started writing for a feminist magazine and went on to become one of Turkey’s most widely read political commentators.She remains a high-profile commentator today while she lives in Hamburg, Germany, where she is a fellow at the New Institute’s Future of Democracy program.In a recent interview, Ms. Temelkuran spoke of the threats to democracy in the West and in her native Turkey. This conversation has been edited and condensed.Since you published your book “How to Lose Your Country,” a few things have happened. Mr. Trump is no longer in power. Nor is the British prime minister Boris Johnson, who championed Britain’s exit from the European Union. How do you view the world today?I think there’s too much optimism, and also too much pessimism. The optimists think that if they get rid of Boris Johnson or Trump, everything will be back to normal in terms of democracy — that we can just fix a few mechanisms in the democratic machine, and we will be fine after that. I think this is a deeper crisis: a cluster of crises, actually, that we have to look deeper into.The crisis of democracy is very much intertwined with the crisis of capitalism. There is no way out, unless we address the issue of social equality.Ece Temelkuran is an author and political commentator who lives in Hamburg, Germany, where she is a fellow at the New Institute’s Future of Democracy program.Roberto Ricciuti/Getty ImagesYou say democracy in its present form is dead, because capitalism is essentially incompatible with democracy. Can you explain?Right-wing populist movements did not suddenly appear in the last 10 years. We have to go back to the 1980s to understand what really is happening in the world today, especially in terms of democracy.Democracy stands on the fundamental promise of equality and social justice. Capitalism does not promise social justice. If people are not equal in real terms, meaning financially and economically, how can you promise them equality as citizens?Why do you believe that capitalism is at odds with social justice?People pretend as if the rights that workers enjoy — Sundays off, eight-hour work days, etc. — are all thanks to capitalism. In fact, whatever the working classes have achieved or earned has come after a very long and hard struggle against the ruling classes.The depoliticization of society in the 1970s and 1980s contributed to an infantilization of citizens — to their perception of politics as being dirty. This massive depoliticization contributed to the right-wing populist movements of today. That’s why we have all these masses who believe that Trump is the savior, or that Brexit will make Britain great again.Another consequence was that we were made to be afraid of words like socialism, social democracy, regulation, financial regulation. These words became taboo after the 1970s.We’ve ended up in a place where we don’t even allow ourselves to think of a better system than capitalism. It is as if the end of capitalism were to lead to the end of the world.You use the word fascism to describe political realities in the West. That word has serious historical resonance. Why use it?Because I think we should use that word. We were made to believe that fascism was buried in the battlefields of the Second World War. The version that wears boots and uniform was buried, yes. But fascism does not just come in a uniform and boots, marching in goose step. If freedom of speech, freedom of organization, and the rights of the working classes are oppressed, that builds up to fascism.In countries such as the United States and Britain, the democratic establishment is powerful enough to protect itself. But in countries where the political and democratic establishment is not mature enough, you see fully formed oppression. There is no doubt that these are regimes that we can easily call fascism — in Turkey, in India, and in several other countries.Parliamentary democracies aren’t suddenly going to turn Hitlerian, are they?They don’t need to. At the time of Hitler, there was a need to be oppressive and violent because there was a massive union movement in Germany and the rest of Europe, a socialist movement. Nowadays, there is no such thing. So why use violence? They can use post-truths or social media to manipulate people, to spread misinformation and so on.If we can shift global politics to being more progressive, then we can get rid of these movements. At the moment, the center of the political spectrum is empty. Centrist politicians don’t have a story with which to mobilize and organize people. There’s a vacuum.Take French President Emmanuel Macron, for example. Why is he there? Because everybody is so afraid of far-right leader Marine Le Pen. For the last decade, at least, voting has become a tool to protect us from the worst.This is not politics. It’s a survival reaction.Unless the center opens its arms to the left and to progressives, there is no way out for democracy in the world.Turkey was for a long time a model when it came to the transition to democracy in the Muslim world. What’s going on there now?It’s a massive form of dictatorship. But then these dictatorships do not have to use violence. Now they’re using a different political tool, which is this very wide web of political money that spans the entire country. Even the smallest sympathizer to the party is getting this money. They have a good life. If you are part of the party, or in the party circle, you have a life. Otherwise, it’s not just economic transactions that are impossible. You cannot exercise your basic rights as a citizen.There are first-class citizens who are submissive to the party or Erdogan, and the others. The others, as Erdogan has said, are welcome to leave, and they are leaving. There is a massive brain drain from Turkey at the moment. It’s another tragic story. Doctors, nurses, well-educated people, academics: They’re all leaving.What’s the way out?The way out, which Turkish political forces are in a very inadequate way trying at the moment, is coming together: for all the opposition parties, despite their political differences, to come together and, in the interests of democracy, participate in elections. More

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      House Jan. 6 Panel Faces Key Decisions as It Wraps Up Work

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      The committee investigating what led to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol will hold its first hearing since July on Wednesday, entering the final stage of its inquiry.WASHINGTON — A day before resuming its televised hearings and with only months remaining before it closes up shop, the House Jan. 6 committee is wrangling over how best to complete its work, with key decisions yet to be made on issues that could help shape its legacy.The panel, whose public hearings this summer exposed substantial new details about former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election, must still decide whether to issue subpoenas to Mr. Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence.It has yet to settle on whether to enforce subpoenas issued to Republican members of Congress who have refused to cooperate with the inquiry, or what legislative recommendations to make. It must still grapple with when to turn its files over to the Justice Department, how to finish what it hopes will be a comprehensive written report and whether to make criminal referrals. It cannot even agree on whether Wednesday’s hearing will be its last.The panel has not disclosed the topics it intends to cover in the 1 p.m. hearing, its first since July. But it is still working to break new ground with its investigation.It recently had a breakthrough when Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, agreed to a voluntary interview about her role in seeking to keep Mr. Trump in office. That interview is expected to take place within weeks.The committee also issued a subpoena to Robin Vos, the Republican House speaker in Wisconsin whom Mr. Trump tried to pressure as recently as July to overturn the 2020 election, suggesting that the panel tracked Mr. Trump’s activities long after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and his departure from office two weeks later. (Mr. Vos has sued to try to block the committee’s subpoena.)“Our hearings have demonstrated the essential culpability of Donald Trump, and we will complete that story,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the committee.But the committee has debated whether and how to highlight certain information related to the Jan. 6 attack. For instance, some members and staff have wanted to hold a hearing to highlight the panel’s extensive work investigating the law enforcement failures related to the assault, but others have argued that doing so would take attention off Mr. Trump.And it has struggled in recent weeks with staff departures and is facing public criticism from a former aide, Denver Riggleman, who says it has not been aggressive enough in pursuing connections between the White House and the rioters.The final stages of its planned 18 months of work are playing out against a shifting political climate. Polls suggest that Democrats could lose control of the House in November’s midterm elections. Mr. Trump is showing every intention of seeking the presidency again, and the committee’s Republican vice chairwoman, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who lost her primary in August, appears to be positioning herself as the party’s anti-Trump White House candidate for 2024, with the panel’s conclusions as part of her platform.Ms. Cheney on Saturday seemed to contradict other committee members by describing this week’s hearing as unlikely to be the last. Other members, including the committee’s chairman, have said it would likely be their final presentation.With that backdrop, Wednesday’s hearing could be seen as the first step in the closing stages of the committee’s work.“What they have to do is strategic,” said Norman L. Eisen, who was special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2020, including for the first impeachment and trial of Mr. Trump. “The first part of the end game is to close the deal with the American people.”The panel set high expectations for itself by revolutionizing what a congressional hearing could look like. Preparing for the hearing on Wednesday has consumed the committee’s focus in recent weeks..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“They’ve pretty uniformly met and exceeded expectations,” Mr. Eisen said. “And when you’ve done that eight times, that suggests that you know what you’re doing. I suspect part of the reason that they took a lengthy hiatus — and by all reports worked very hard over the summer — was to be able to come back in September with a bang.”To some degree, the committee is now competing for attention with other investigations into Mr. Trump and his allies. The New York attorney general has filed a sweeping fraud suit against Mr. Trump and his family. Prosecutors in Georgia are conducting grand jury interviews about efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s loss there. And the Justice Department is now conducting criminal inquiries into both the events that led to the Jan. 6 attack and Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents he took with him upon leaving the White House.To help with its end game, the panel has quietly rehired John Wood, a former federal prosecutor who is close to Ms. Cheney. Before he left the panel for a brief, unsuccessful run for U.S. Senate in Missouri, Mr. Wood led the committee’s “Gold Team,” which investigated Mr. Trump and his inner circle.It has also expanded its number of staff members from about 50 up to 57, according to Congress’s latest financial data, and has spent about $5.3 million over its first year in existence.But at the same time, the committee has had five staff members put in resignation notices in recent weeks. Among them is Amanda Wick, a former federal prosecutor who was featured in a committee hearing and led the panel’s “Green Team,” which investigated the money trail connected to Jan. 6, including political donations and the funding of the rallies that preceded the violence.The hearing on Wednesday is expected to feature new video of the Jan. 6 attack and also new clips of some of the committee’s hundreds of interviews with witnesses.Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, said the panel would focus some of its energy on ongoing threats to democracy, such as 2020 election deniers gaining power over election systems.“We have found additional information,” Ms. Lofgren said. “We worked throughout the summer.”The panel’s investigators pursued a number of topics this summer, traveling to Copenhagen, for example, to review footage shot by a documentary film crew of the political operative and Trump confidant Roger J. Stone Jr. Committee members have hinted that some of that material could turn up in Wednesday’s hearing.They held closed-door interviews with senior Trump administration officials in an effort to uncover more about the period between Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters attacked Congress, and Jan. 20, when President Biden was sworn in, including talks about invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office.The panel at one point considered inviting generals who worked for Mr. Trump to deliver firsthand accounts of his behavior. (The idea has not moved forward.)Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said the panel recently received a trove of documents from the Secret Service in response to a subpoena it issued after the news that agents’ text messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, had been lost.A spokesman for the agency said the Secret Service provided a “significant level of detail from emails, radio transmissions, Microsoft Teams chat messages and exhibits that address aspects of planning, operations and communications surrounding January 6th.” But the spokesman said the documents did not include any additional text messages, such as those sought by the committee that were erased during an upgrade of phones.Members of the committee had originally seen their investigation, and the possibility of a criminal referral, as a way of putting pressure on the Justice Department to pursue a criminal case. But with federal prosecutors now investigating elements of Mr. Trump’s efforts to retain power despite losing at the ballot box, the House committee is considering a new suggestion for the information it uncovered about Mr. Trump and his allies raising money by promoting baseless assertions about election fraud: making a referral to the Federal Election Commission, a largely toothless body that can weigh abuses of campaign finance laws.“F.E.C. would be a good possibility,” Mr. Thompson said. “Obviously we looked seriously at some of the fund-raising that went on around Jan. 6.”Members have also been discussing what legislative recommendations they should make. Last week, to close off the possibility of another president trying to have a vice president block the certification by Congress of the Electoral College results, Ms. Cheney and Ms. Lofgren introduced an overhaul of the Electoral Count Act, which quickly passed the House. (A somewhat different version is awaiting action in the Senate.)Members are also discussing reforms to the Insurrection Act, legislation related to the 14th and 25th amendments and regulation of militia groups. Members also are likely to recommend improvements to Capitol security.Not all the panel’s recommendations have found agreement. Mr. Raskin, for instance, has pushed for recommending the Electoral College be eliminated, but that idea has been met with resistance from Ms. Cheney and others and is unlikely to be included in the final recommendations.Maggie Haberman More

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      Does It Matter That Investigators Are Closing In on Trump?

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      Gail Collins: Bret, which do you think is more of a threat to Trump’s political future, the classified document drama at Mar-a-Lago or the legal challenge to his businesses in New York?Bret Stephens: Gail, I suspect the most serious threats to Trump’s future, political or otherwise, are Big Macs and KFC buckets. Otherwise, I fear the various efforts to put the 45th president out of business or in prison make it considerably more likely that he’ll wind up in the White House as the 47th president. How about you?Gail: Sigh. You’re probably right but I’m still sorta hoping New York’s attorney general can hit him in the pocketbook. He’s super vulnerable when it comes to his shady finances — I’m even surprised he can find lawyers who have confidence they’ll keep being paid.Bret: No doubt the Trump Organization was run with the kind of fierce moral and financial rectitude you’d expect if Elizabeth Holmes had been put in charge of Enron. But the essential currency of Trumpism is drama, and what the New York and U.S. attorneys general have done is inject a whole lot more of it into Trump’s accounts.Gail: I don’t think the news that Letitia James accused him of fudging his financial statements will upset the base — they’ve always known this is a guy who responded to the World Trade Center terror attack by bragging that his tower was now the highest building in Lower Manhattan.Bret: A graceless building, by the way, far surpassed by the Chrysler Building, for those who care about architectural rivalries.Gail: Maybe I need to stop obsessing about this and take a look at the rest of the public world. Anything got your attention in particular?Bret: Am I allowed a rant?Gail: Bret, rants are … what we do.Bret: The investigation of Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, which looks like it’s about to fall apart, is an F.B.I. disgrace for the ages. It should force heads to roll. And Congress needs to appoint a Church-style committee or commission to reform the bureau. After the Ted Stevens fiasco, James Comey’s disastrous interventions with Hillary Clinton’s emails, and the bureau misrepresenting facts to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as part of its investigation of Trump and Russia, something dramatic has to change to save the F.B.I. from continuing to lose public trust.Gail: Are you upset by the investigation or the fact that the investigation is failing?Bret: I’m upset by a longstanding pattern of incompetence tinged by what feels like political bias. I don’t like Gaetz’s politics or persona any more than you do. But what we seem to have here is a high-profile politician being convicted in the court of public opinion of some of the most heinous behavior imaginable — trafficking a minor for sex — until the Justice Department realizes two years late that its case has fallen apart. We have a presumption of innocence in this country because we tend to err the most when we assume the worst about the people we like the least.Gail: Nothing nobler than ranting about a basic moral principle on behalf of a deeply unattractive victim.Bret: He’s the yang to Lauren Boebert’s yin. But no American deserves to be smeared this way.Gail: While we’re on the general subject of crime let’s talk bail reform. Specifically, New York’s new system, under which a judge basically lets out arrestees not accused of violent felonies. New info suggests this may be increasing crime. But I’m sticking with my support for the concept. Suspects who haven’t yet been tried shouldn’t get different treatment based on their ability to come up with bail.Your turn …Bret: New York’s bail reform laws are egregious because we’re now the only state that forbids judges from considering the potential danger of a given suspect. It leads to crazy outcomes, like the guy who tried to stab Representative Lee Zeldin at a campaign stop in July and was released hours later.Another problem is that too many cities effectively decriminalized misdemeanors like shoplifting and have given up prosecuting a lot of felonies, which tends to encourage an anything-goes mentality among the criminally minded. We really need a new approach to crime, of the kind that Joe Biden and Bill Clinton pushed back in the early 1990s, when the Democrats finally determined to be a law-and-order party again.Gail: Biden’s generally held to a middle course that doesn’t drive anybody totally crazy. That’s why he got elected, after all. How would you say he’s doing these days?Bret: I’m giving him full marks on supporting Ukraine. And I know Democrats have this whole “Dark Brandon” thing given Biden’s legislative victories, along with the chance that Democrats might hold the Senate thanks to bad Republican candidates. But I still don’t see things going well. Food prices keep going up-up-up and we’re heading for a bad-bad-bad recession.You?Gail: Going for Not At All Bad. Otherwise known as N.A.A.B.Bret: I’m approaching the point of T.O.T.W.I. T.: The Only Thing Worse Is Trump.Gail: You’re way off.Biden may not have mobilized Congress the way we hoped, but he’s gotten quite a bit done — from funding the ever-popular infrastructure programs to reducing health care costs for the working and middle classes to finally, finally giving the Internal Revenue Service some funds to do its work more efficiently.But he lost you after infrastructure, right?Bret: He’s governed so much further to the left than I would have liked. Change of subject: What governor’s races are you following?Gail: It’s always a lot harder to focus on other states’ governors than the senators but I gotta admit this year I’m hooked on …Well, let’s start with one we’re going to disagree about. I’m guessing there’s no way you could be rooting for Beto O’Rourke in Texas, right?Bret: Ah, no, except as a performance artist. When are Texas Democrats going to nominate a centrist who stands a modest chance of winning a statewide race?What about the New York race? I don’t suppose you could have warm feelings for Lee Zeldin, could you?Gail: Well, to get Zeldin as their gubernatorial nominee, New York Republicans passed up a bid by Rudy’s son Andrew Giuliani, so I’d definitely put Zeldin in the Could Be Worse category.Bret: Hochul’s main achievement to date has been to get taxpayers to put up $850 million for a new Bills stadium in Buffalo. That makes her perfect for Albany, which I don’t mean as a compliment.Gail: Yeah, her Buffalo obsession is pretty irritating. But about Texas — Abbott is one of those Make Everything Worse Republicans, who most recently made the headlines by shipping busloads of migrants to northern cities. A move that did nothing to solve anything, but did help expose what a jerk he is.Really, nothing Beto has ever done is that awful.Bret: That’s because Beto has never done anything.One Democrat I am excited about is Maryland’s Wes Moore, whom I know slightly and impresses me greatly. His book, “The Other Wes Moore,” will soon be required reading the way Barack Obama’s “Dreams From My Father” used to be. And, just to be clear, that’s me saying that Moore could one day be president.Who else?Gail: Your bipartisanship is making me feel guilty. But about the governors — one other guy who fills me with rancor is my ongoing obsession, Ron DeSantis of Florida, who’s terrible in all the ways Abbott is terrible but much worse since he’s already a serious presidential candidate.Bret: And an effective governor who knows how to drive liberals crazy and whose state is attracting thousands of exiles from New York, California and other poorly governed, highly taxed blue states.Gail: Sorry but having empty space to develop and few social services to support doesn’t make you effective, just well positioned.But go on ….Bret: Speaking of DeSantis, how do you think he’d fare in a theoretical matchup against California’s Gavin Newsom?Gail: Oh boy, that’s pretty theoretical. DeSantis worries me because his policies are terrible — cruel and terrible. But he’s an obsessive campaigner with a smart pitch.Have to admit I don’t have much of a feel for Newsom — in general it’s hard to be a national candidate if you’re running as a Democrat from a state that’s very liberal. Liberal for good and historic reasons, but hard to sell to folks in Kansas or North Carolina.Here’s another Republican governor I’ve been mulling — what about Brian Kemp in Georgia?Bret: I’m generally not a fan of Southern Republicans. But Kemp did stand his ground against three election deniers: David Perdue in 2022, Donald Trump in 2020 and Stacey Abrams in 2018.Gail: Kemp is one of those Republicans — like Mike Pence and Liz Cheney — who I admire for their principled stands while realizing I would never vote for them. His abortion position, for instance, is appalling. So he goes in my Honorable But Wrong list.We’re cruising toward the final stage of the Senate campaigns, too, Bret. Let me leave you with the thought that Arizona is looking great for my side and Ohio maybe conceivably possible.Bret: And who’da thunk I’d be rooting for Democrats in both races?Gail: Wow. To be continued.Bret: In the meantime, Gail, I recommend reading Richard Sandomir’s beautiful obituary for two Jewish sisters who survived the Holocaust and passed away a few weeks ago in Alabama, 11 days apart. It’s a nice reminder of how much we all have to live for — and to wish all of our readers, Jewish or otherwise, a good and sweet new year.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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      This Threat to Democracy Is Hiding in Plain Sight

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      Illustration by Rebecca Chew/The New York Times; photograph by Stephen Maturen, via Getty ImagesIn the weeks after the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump and his allies were unable to get far in their attempts to prove widespread voter fraud. There were two reasons for that.First, there wasn’t any, as numerous investigations by journalists, expert reports and court rulings showed. But second, Republican election officials in multiple states repeatedly said that their counts and recounts were accurate, and they defended the integrity of the election. For all the pressure that the Trump camp brought to bear, well-trained, civic-minded election workers carried out their duty to maintain the machinery of American voting.Many top Republican Party officials and lawmakers have spent the last two years striking back, and drawn the most attention for their efforts to pass “voter integrity” laws that aim to make voting more onerous under the guise of preventing fraud. From January 2021 to May of this year, just under three dozen restrictive laws had been passed in nearly 20 states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.These are pernicious laws, and they undermine Americans’ hard-won rights to vote. But just as important is the matter of who counts the votes, and who decides which votes count and which do not.This is where Mr. Trump’s allies have focused much of their scheming since his re-election defeat. Their mission is to take over America’s election infrastructure, or at least key parts of it, from the ground up by filling key positions of influence with Trump sympathizers. Rather than threatening election officials, they will be the election officials — the poll workers and county commissioners and secretaries of state responsible for overseeing the casting, counting and certifying of votes.Imagine a legal Jan. 6. It’s bureaucratic, boring, invisible — and it might actually succeed.These efforts require attention and mobilization from Americans across the political spectrum. America’s system of voting is complex and decentralized, with most of the oversight done at the state and local level by thousands of elected and appointed officials, along with poll workers. While it is outdated and inconvenient in many places, this system has worked relatively well for roughly 200 years.But Mr. Trump’s attempts to subvert the election also revealed the system’s vulnerabilities, and his allies are now intently focused on exploiting those pressure points to bend the infrastructure of voting to their advantage. Their drive to take over election machinery county by county, state by state, is a reminder that democracy is fragile. The threats to it are not only violent ruptures like the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol but also quieter efforts to corrupt it.A key element of this strategy is dismantling the bulwarks that stopped the assault on democracy in 2020. In Georgia, the top state election official, Brad Raffensperger, its secretary of state, refused Mr. Trump’s request to help steal the election by agreeing to “find” 11,780 additional votes. In Michigan, the Board of State Canvassers certified Joe Biden’s victory despite Mr. Trump’s aggressive meddling. A host of other state and local officials, many of them Republicans, pushed back on similarly antidemocratic machinations.Mr. Trump and his allies have set about removing and replacing these public servants, through elections and appointments, with more like-minded officials. In some cases, the effort has failed. (In Georgia’s Republican primary this year, Mr. Trump backed a losing candidate in a vendetta against Mr. Raffensperger.) But in other states, Republicans have embraced election deniers as candidates, including for secretary of state.In Nevada, the Republican secretary of state nominee, Jim Marchant, maintains that the 2020 presidential race was rigged and that he would not have certified Mr. Biden’s win in Nevada. He blames voting fraud for his own failed House run that year and has said that Nevada voters haven’t truly elected their leaders in years because the system is so rigged.Mr. Marchant is a part of the America First Secretary of State Coalition, whose candidates are campaigning for measures that would make it more difficult for Americans to vote, such as by limiting voting to a single day and aggressively purging voter rolls. They have the financial backing of pro-Trump election deniers including Mike Lindell, the founder of MyPillow, and Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.com.The Republicans’ pick in Michigan, Kristina Karamo, is also an America First candidate. She gained political notice with her unsubstantiated claims to have witnessed election fraud as a poll watcher in Detroit in 2020. She has also promoted the baseless conspiracy theories that Dominion voting machines flipped votes in Mr. Biden’s favor and that Jan. 6 was a false flag operation conducted by “antifa posing as Trump supporters.”The most outrageous G.O.P. choice may be Arizona’s Mark Finchem. Mr. Finchem has in the past identified as a member of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia group, and he spoke at a QAnon convention last year. He was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, although he denies being within about 500 yards of the building. As a member of the Arizona House of Representatives, he introduced a resolution this year to decertify the 2020 election in multiple counties, and was a sponsor of a bill to empower the Republican-led Legislature to overturn election results.Mr. Finchem wants to ban early voting and put limits on mail-in voting. In April, he filed a federal lawsuit, backed by Mr. Lindell, to block the use of electronic vote-counting machines in Arizona in the midterms. (It was dismissed.)Installing election deniers as top election officials is just one element of this plan. Much less visible, but just as important, is the so-called precinct strategy, in which Trump allies are recruiting supporters to flood the system by signing up to work in low-level election positions such as poll workers. A prominent promoter of the precinct strategy was Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser. Last year, Mr. Bannon rallied the listeners of his “War Room” podcast to sign up as precinct committee members. “We’re going to take this back village by village … precinct by precinct,” he proclaimed in May 2021.The call was answered. An investigation by ProPublica in the summer of 2021 found a surge in Republicans signing up to be precinct officers or equivalent lowest-level officials in key counties. Of the 65 counties contacted, 41 reported a collective increase of at least 8,500 new sign-ups following Mr. Bannon’s call to arms. (ProPublica found no such spike on the Democratic side.)The precinct strategy has been endorsed by Mr. Trump — who declared it a way to “take back our great country from the ground up” — and adopted by segments of the Republican Party.Mr. Bannon is appealing to his supporters’ sense of civic duty by asking them to be more involved in their local election process. But unsettling details of what this effort entails emerged this summer after Politico acquired videos of Republican operatives discussing strategy with activists.New election recruits would attend training workshops on how to challenge voters at polling places, explained Matthew Seifried, the Republican National Committee’s election integrity director for Michigan, in one of the recordings. These poll workers would have access to a hotline and a website staffed by “an army” of Republican-friendly lawyers prepared to help with challenges. “We’re going to have more lawyers than we’ve ever recruited, because let’s be honest, that’s where it’s going to be fought, right?” Mr. Seifried said at a meeting last October.As testimony during the Jan. 6 committee hearings revealed, the legal challenges presented by Trump allies to the 2020 election quickly collapsed in part because they lacked even the most basic documentation. But carried out as designed, the precinct strategy means that even if, ultimately, there are no instances of fraud and most of the challenges to individual voters fall apart, they could still bog down the voting by causing delays and introducing unnecessary friction and confusion, giving cover to a state election official or state legislature to say that an election is tainted and therefore invalid.In some parts of the country, this is already happening. This summer, an all-Republican county commission in rural New Mexico refused to certify the primary election results because of unsubstantiated suspicions of fraud. New Mexico’s secretary of state, a Democrat, intervened and asked the state Supreme Court to order the commission to certify the results. Two commissioners relented, but the third, Couy Griffin, refused. He admitted that his suspicion of fraud was not founded on any evidence: “It’s only based on my gut feeling and my own intuition, and that’s all I need.”(Mr. Griffin, who attended the Jan. 6 melee at the Capitol, was later ruled to be ineligible to hold office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars from public office anyone who has sworn an oath to the Constitution and later engages in insurrection.)After the May primary election in Pennsylvania, three Republican-controlled counties refused to count several hundred mail-in ballots on which voters had failed to write a date on the envelope. The administration of Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, filed suit, and last month, a judge ruled that the ballots had to be included in the results, finally clearing the way for the primaries to be certified. (State officials learned of a fourth county that had done something similar.)Litigation is an important tool in tackling this threat. But it will not save the day. The problem is too big, says Marc Elias, a Democratic voting rights lawyer. “For every one place you try to solve this in court, there are five additional places where it is happening,” he said.The real threat to America’s electoral system is not posed by ineligible voters trying to cast ballots. It is coming from inside the system.All those who value democracy have a role to play in strengthening and supporting the electoral system that powers it, whatever their party. This involves, first, taking the threat posed by election deniers seriously and talking to friends and neighbors about it. It means paying attention to local elections — not just national ones — and supporting candidates who reject conspiracy theories and unfounded claims of fraud. It means getting involved in elections as canvassers or poll watchers or precinct officers. (Mr. Bannon has the right idea about civic participation; he just employs toxic lies as motivation.)And it means voting, in every race on the ballot and in every election. To this end, employers have a role to play as well, by giving workers time off to vote and encouraging them to do so.The task of safeguarding democracy does not end with one election. Mr. Trump and others looking to pervert the electoral process are full of intensity and are playing a long game. Only an equally strong and committed countervailing force will meet that challenge.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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      Georgia Official Says County’s Voting Equipment Will Be Replaced

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      New voting equipment will be installed in Coffee County, where allies of former President Donald J. Trump copied software and other data after the 2020 election.ATLANTA — Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, said on Friday that his office would replace voting equipment in Coffee County, where allies of former President Donald J. Trump and contractors working on Mr. Trump’s behalf copied software and other data after the 2020 election.But in a statement, a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit contending that Georgia’s statewide voting system is fundamentally insecure in the wake of the Trump allies’ visit to Coffee County called the changes “embarrassingly thin” and “cosmetic.” The statement said the server for the county’s election management system remained “potentially contaminated.”The move by Mr. Raffensperger, a Republican, comes after the plaintiffs complained that he was moving too slowly to address the security breach in Coffee County, which took place in January 2021. The Trump allies, presumably looking for evidence of fraud, copied data and software with the blessing of local elections officials.One Trump supporter involved in the breach, Scott Hall, said in a recorded phone call that the team that traveled to Coffee County, roughly 200 miles southeast of Atlanta, had “scanned all the equipment, imaged all the hard drives and scanned every single ballot.”Mr. Raffensperger’s office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation are investigating the breach, which Mr. Raffensperger referred to in a statement as “the unauthorized access to the equipment that former Coffee County election officials allowed in violation of Georgia law.”Understand Georgia’s Investigation of Election InterferenceCard 1 of 5An immediate legal threat to Trump. More

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      Trump Lawyers Push to Limit Aides’ Testimony in Jan. 6 Inquiry

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      The former president’s legal team is seeking to invoke attorney-client and executive privilege over grand jury testimony after waves of subpoenas went out to witnesses.Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump are engaged in a behind-the-scenes legal struggle to limit the scope of a federal grand jury investigation into the role he played in seeking to overturn the 2020 election, according to people familiar with the matter.The closed-door battle, unfolding in Federal District Court in Washington, has centered on how far Mr. Trump can go in asserting attorney-client and executive privilege as a means of keeping witnesses close to him from answering potentially damaging questions in their appearances before the grand jury, the people said.The issue is important because it will determine how much evidence prosecutors can get from an inner circle of some of Mr. Trump’s most trusted former lawyers and advisers. The outcome will help to shape the contours of the information that the Justice Department will be able to gather, as it looks into Mr. Trump’s involvement in the chaotic events after the election that culminated in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.That process continues even as the Justice Department also pursues a separate criminal investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of government documents that he took with him when he left office, including hundreds marked as classified.A federal appeals court this week blocked a lower court’s order that had stalled a key portion of the documents investigation. And on Friday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that the intelligence agencies had resumed a risk assessment of the classified material seized in the search last month of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s residence and private club in Florida. The work involves assessing the potential national security risk that would result from disclosure of the documents, the office announced.The court appearances by the lawyers in the battle over how expansively Mr. Trump would be able to claim privilege in the Jan. 6 investigation, as first reported by CNN, are proceeding under seal, like all matters concerning grand juries. As a general rule, issues that touch on federal grand juries in Washington are overseen by the district’s chief judge, Beryl A. Howell.The court fight comes as an increasing number of high-ranking officials in Mr. Trump’s administration have received grand jury subpoenas as part of the Justice Department’s inquiry into a wide array of efforts to overturn the election, including a plan to create fake slates of pro-Trump electors in key swing states that were won by Joseph R. Biden Jr.This month, more than 40 subpoenas were issued to a large group of former Trump aides — among them, Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff; Dan Scavino, his onetime deputy chief of staff for communications; and Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s top speechwriter and a senior policy adviser.The wide-ranging subpoenas sought information on a host of subjects that included the fake elector plan, attempts to paint the election as having been marred by fraud and the inner workings of Mr. Trump’s main postelection fund-raising vehicle, Save America PAC.The recent flurry of subpoenas came only days after Pat A. Cipollone, the chief lawyer in Mr. Trump’s White House, and his former deputy, Patrick Philbin, testified before the grand jury. In July, two top aides to former Vice President Mike Pence — Marc Short, Mr. Pence’s onetime chief of staff, and Greg Jacob, his former chief lawyer — also appeared in front of the grand jury.Pat A. Cipollone, the chief lawyer in the Trump White House, has testified before the grand jury.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesWhile the legal wrangling in front of Judge Howell is meant to be secret, three of Mr. Trump’s lawyers — M. Evan Corcoran, John Rowley and Timothy Parlatore — were seen on Thursday leaving the federal courthouse in Washington. Their appearance there was related, at least in part, to discussions about whether Mr. Trump’s assertions of privilege could limit the testimony of Mr. Short and Mr. Jacob, according to a person familiar with the matter.Mr. Parlatore declined to comment. Neither Mr. Corcoran nor Mr. Rowley returned messages seeking comment.Last week, The New York Times reported that Eric Herschmann, another lawyer who had worked in Mr. Trump’s White House, spent weeks this summer trying to get specific guidance from Mr. Corcoran, Mr. Rowley and Mr. Parlatore on how to handle questions that might raise privilege issues since he, too, had been summoned before the grand jury.In emails reviewed by The Times, Mr. Herschmann complained that a letter from Mr. Trump directing him to assert privilege in front of the grand jury — as other witnesses had — was not enough to allow him to avoid answering questions.“I will not rely on your say-so that privileges apply here and be put in the middle of a privilege fight between D.O.J. and President Trump,” Mr. Herschmann, a former prosecutor, wrote in one of the emails, referring to the Justice Department.Mr. Herschmann repeatedly implored Mr. Corcoran and Mr. Rowley to go to court seeking an order from a judge “precluding me from answering questions based on privilege assertions by President Trump,” according to the emails. They ignored his request for many days, before ultimately filing a motion under seal on Sept. 1, just hours before Mr. Herschmann was set to testify, the emails showed. Mr. Herschmann’s grand jury appearance was postponed.Attorney-client privilege is not an ironclad protection for lawyers and can be swept aside in cases where crimes have been committed. In July, for instance, a federal judge in California denied the attorney-client privilege claims of the lawyer John Eastman after finding that Mr. Eastman and Mr. Trump had likely conspired together to obstruct the certification of the presidential election on Jan. 6. Under the judge’s decision, Mr. Eastman was forced to give the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 a trove of his emails.In a somewhat similar fashion, Mr. Trump asserted executive privilege over a batch of his White House records that the House committee wanted to examine as part of its inquiry — even though Mr. Biden, as the current president, had waived executive privilege over the documents.In January, after lower courts had weighed in, the Supreme Court effectively rejected Mr. Trump’s claims and allowed the committee to use records. But an opinion by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh that accompanied the decision suggested that Mr. Trump should have some residual power to assert executive privilege.“A former president must be able to successfully invoke the presidential communications privilege for communications that occurred during his presidency, even if the current president does not support the privilege claim,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote. “Concluding otherwise would eviscerate the executive privilege for presidential communications.”Julian E. Barnes More

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      Ahead of Midterms, Trump Eyes Television Ads to Help GOP Candidates

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      Donald J. Trump, sitting on a huge campaign war chest, is eyeing a raft of television ads to help Republican candidates in the midterm elections, people familiar with the talks say.Former President Donald J. Trump is considering launching a raft of television ads to bolster Republicans in key races around the country, signaling a shift in political strategy as campaigns head into the final stretch of the midterm elections, according to people familiar with the deliberations.Mr. Trump’s team has looked most closely at airing ads in Georgia and Pennsylvania, but Republicans involved cautioned that no decisions had been made.Trump advisers have also debated whether television spots would be the most effective use of the former president’s political war chest, in part because the cost would be significantly greater than for candidates themselves with just six full weeks left in the midterm campaigns. While federal law keeps ad rates low for political candidates, those same protections are not afforded to political action committees.“An outside group coming in this late could pay three or four times as much at this point,” said Ken Goldstein, a University of San Francisco professor who studies political advertising. “There’s a definite advantage to reserving early.”While Mr. Trump has spent much of the past year being courted by Republicans seeking his endorsement and holding campaign rallies for a few of his favorites, he has been reluctant so far to share many of the spoils of his prodigious fund-raising.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Inflation Concerns Persist: In the six-month primary season that has just ended, several issues have risen and fallen, but nothing has dislodged inflation and the economy from the top of voters’ minds.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate candidate in Georgia claimed his business donated 15 percent of its profits to charities. Three of the four groups named as recipients say they didn’t receive money.North Carolina Senate Race: Are Democrats about to get their hearts broken again? The contest between Cheri Beasley, a Democrat, and her G.O.P. opponent, Representative Ted Budd, seems close enough to raise their hopes.Echoing Trump: Six G.O.P. nominees for governor and the Senate in critical midterm states, all backed by former President Donald J. Trump, would not commit to accepting this year’s election results.His political committee, Save America, has raised $124 million since last year and spent nearly 20 percent of it, much of that on staging rallies, travel, consultants and legal bills. Little has been spent directly on helping other candidates.But with Republican Senate campaigns and outside groups facing cash concerns, aides to several Republican contenders have said privately that Mr. Trump could help more by spending on their behalf than by traveling to their states to host his beloved mega-rallies.Some Republicans have urged Mr. Trump’s team to spend on digital media platforms instead of on television, arguing that his group’s dollars would go further by helping candidates recruit volunteers, raise money and build out an online presence to help spread campaign messages.During the past three weeks in Georgia and Pennsylvania, Republican candidates and outside groups have spent about $2 million more than their Democratic counterparts on television, according to AdImpact, an ad tracking firm. But for the final six weeks, Democrats have reserved nearly $14 million more than Republicans in television advertising in Georgia and $12 million more in Pennsylvania.“We know all of these, battleground races, are going to be extremely tight,” said David Bergstein, communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “In the final months of the campaign, Democrats are going to make sure voters know everything they need to.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.One person familiar with the decision making said that Mr. Trump’s team understood that campaigns had varying needs, and that it was considering pouring money into television ads, digital advertising and get-out-the-vote operations.As a first concrete step, Mr. Trump has approved a new super PAC, run by some of his key aides that will be used to spend money on midterm candidates.Make America Great Again Inc., or MAGA Inc., has signed up Chris LaCivita, a veteran Republican operative with a long career in Senate campaigns, as its chief strategist. Its polling will be overseen by Tony Fabrizio, who worked on both of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaigns.Taylor Budowich, the former president’s communications director and a senior adviser on the 2020 re-election campaign, will be the group’s executive director. News of the group’s formation was first reported Friday by Politico.“President Trump is committed to saving America, and Make America Great Again Inc. will ensure that is achieved at the ballot box in November and beyond,” Mr. Budowich said in a statement.MAGA Inc. has also enlisted Meredith O’Rourke, a veteran Republican fund-raiser, to head the finance team and Sergio Gor, another longtime G.O.P. operative, as a senior adviser. The communications team will be staffed by Steven Cheung, a former White House aide, and Alex Pfeiffer, a former producer for the Fox News host Tucker Carlson. More