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      House Panel Recommends Contempt Charge for Stephen Bannon

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      The committee scrutinizing the Jan. 6 Capitol riot said the former White House counselor had “multiple roles relevant to this investigation.”The House select committee investigating the Capitol riot voted 9-0 to recommend charging the former White House counselor with criminal contempt of Congress for defying its subpoena.Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesWASHINGTON — One day before a mob of former President Donald J. Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol, Stephen K. Bannon, a former top adviser to Mr. Trump, made a prediction to listeners of his radio show.“Now we’re on, as they say, the point of attack — the point of attack tomorrow,” Mr. Bannon said on Jan. 5 as he promoted a plan hatched by Mr. Trump and far-right Republican lawmakers to try to overturn President Biden’s victory the next day, when Congress would meet to formalize the election results. “It’s going to kick off. It’s going to be very dramatic.”It is because of comments like that, which foreshadowed the violence that played out during the Capitol riot, that the House committee investigating the assault is interested in questioning Mr. Bannon. But the former counselor to Mr. Trump has refused to cooperate with the inquiry, citing the former president’s claim of executive privilege.The panel voted unanimously on Tuesday to recommend charging Mr. Bannon with criminal contempt of Congress for defying its subpoena, sending the issue to the House. Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader, said members would hold a vote on Thursday. The chamber is expected to approve the move and hand the matter over to the Justice Department for prosecution.“The rule of law remains under attack right now,” said Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee. “If there’s no accountability for these abuses — if there are different sets of rules for different types of people — then our democracy is in serious trouble.“Mr. Bannon will comply with our investigation,” he added, “or he will face the consequences.”Mr. Thompson said he expected the full House to “quickly” take up the matter.The high-profile confrontation is the first of several that promise to test the boundaries of executive privilege — the presidential prerogative to keep official communications secret — and will determine how far the House committee will be able to go in uncovering the story behind the deadliest attack on the Capitol in two centuries.Mr. Trump has filed his own federal lawsuit that touches on similar questions, suing both the chairman of the investigative committee and the head of the National Archives, the custodian of his presidential records, to block the release of material the panel has requested.Many Democrats fear that case, as well as any the Justice Department might decide to bring against Mr. Bannon, may drag on for months, potentially long enough for Republicans to gain the House majority in 2022 and bury the inquiry — and with it, any hope of revealing fresh information about what precipitated the riot.Members of the committee, which is controlled by Democrats, believe that Mr. Bannon has crucial information about plans to undermine Mr. Biden’s victory, including conversations Mr. Bannon had with Mr. Trump in which he urged the former president to focus his efforts on Jan. 6.In a report recommending the House find Mr. Bannon in contempt, the committee repeatedly cited comments he made on his radio show on Jan. 5 — when Mr. Bannon promised “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow” — as evidence that “he had some foreknowledge about extreme events that would occur the next day.”Investigators wrote that Mr. Bannon appeared to “have had multiple roles relevant to this investigation,” including in constructing the “Stop the Steal” public relations effort to spread the lies of a fraudulent election that motivated the attack, and participating in events from a ‘‘war room” organized at a Washington, D.C., hotel with other allies of Mr. Trump who were seeking to overturn the election.The group included members of the Trump campaign’s legal team, including Rudolph W. Giuliani and John C. Eastman; and prominent proponents of false election fraud claims, including Russell Ramsland Jr. and Boris Epshteyn; as well as Trump ally Roger J. Stone Jr., who left the hotel with members of the Oath Keepers militia group acting as bodyguards, the committee wrote.“It’s not going to happen like you think it’s going to happen,” Mr. Bannon told his audience on Jan. 5. “It’s going to be extraordinarily different. And all I can say is: Strap in.”Robert J. Costello, Mr. Bannon’s lawyer, has informed the committee that his client would not comply, citing Mr. Trump’s directive for his former aides and advisers facing subpoenas to invoke immunity and refrain from turning over documents that might be protected under executive privilege.Late Monday, Mr. Bannon and his lawyer sought to delay the vote, citing Mr. Trump’s lawsuit seeking to block the disclosure of White House files related to his actions and communications surrounding the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Mr. Thompson quickly denied the request for a delay.The panel was set to charge Mr. Bannon with criminal contempt of Congress for defying its subpoena.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesUnder federal law, any person summoned as a congressional witness who refuses to comply can face a misdemeanor charge that carries a fine of $100 to $100,000 and a jail sentence of one month to one year.During the Tuesday committee meeting, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the committee’s vice chairwoman, directed a comment to her Republican colleagues, warning them that following Mr. Trump’s lies was a prescription for “national self-destruction.”“Almost all of you know in your hearts that what happened on Jan. 6 was profoundly wrong,” she said. “You know that there is no evidence of widespread election fraud sufficient to overturn the election; you know that the Dominion voting machines were not corrupted by a foreign power. You know those claims are false.”But both Mr. Bannon’s and Mr. Trump’s cases raise novel legal issues. The case against Mr. Bannon is untested because he has not been an executive branch official since he left the White House in 2017, and any conversations he may have had with Mr. Trump pertaining to Jan. 6 are likely to have fallen outside the former president’s official duties. No court has definitively said whether conversations with private citizens are covered by executive privilege, which is generally extended in relation to conversations or documents that pertain to presidential duties..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION 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.css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}And the Biden administration has refused to assert executive privilege over any of Mr. Trump’s Jan. 6-related material, saying that it would not be in the public interest to keep secret the details of a plot to thwart the peaceful transfer of power.Committee members said they were confident that they would prevail in their push to obtain the information.“The former president’s clear objective is to stop the select committee from getting to the facts about Jan. 6, and his lawsuit is nothing more than an attempt to delay and obstruct our probe,” Mr. Thompson and Ms. Cheney wrote in response to Mr. Trump’s suit. “Precedent and law are on our side.”Claims of executive privilege date back to the very first congressional investigation, in George Washington’s administration, said Douglas L. Kriner, a professor of government at Cornell University and author of the book “Investigating the President: Congressional Checks on Presidential Power.”However, Mr. Bannon’s situation is different from many previous cases in which the privilege was invoked.“It’s hard to imagine how this jeopardizes national security,” Mr. Kriner said of releasing documents from the Trump administration. “It doesn’t involve a current ongoing administration that might be harmed in any way, and it doesn’t even involve the right to frank and open conversation between the president and other advisers within the administration.”The committee vote comes as some Senate Republicans are holding up the confirmation of Mr. Biden’s nominee for the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., who would oversee charges against defendants related to the Jan. 6 attack, including any potential charges against Mr. Bannon.Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, has put a hold on the nomination of Matthew M. Graves to lead the office, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s nonvoting delegate, said she was confident Mr. Graves would eventually win approval, but that his nomination had become mired in Republican hostility around the effort to investigate the Capitol riot.“It really isn’t related to him at all,” Ms. Norton said. “It’s partisan. It does relate to Jan. 6. It’s a tantrum, really.”Mr. Lee’s office did not respond to a request for comment.Emily Cochrane More

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      What We Learned in the Latest Campaign Cash Reports

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      Financial disclosures show who has the early money edge in key races, as well as the value of a Trump endorsement.Sign up here to get On Politics in your inbox on Tuesdays and Thursdays.A startling amount of money is pouring into American elections, especially the race for control of Congress in 2022. Every House and Senate candidate in the country was recently required to detail their spending and fund-raising through the end of September. Here are some takeaways, tidbits and trends from those financial reports.How Trump factors inFormer President Donald J. Trump has been doing a lot of endorsing in Republican primaries ahead of the 2022 midterms. His backing is, by far, the most coveted in the party. But a Trump blessing has not necessarily translated to a cash boom for those Senate hopefuls he backs, the records show.In Alabama, Mr. Trump is supporting Representative Mo Brooks — who has literally worked the endorsement into his logo — but Mr. Brooks was nonetheless badly out-raised for the second consecutive quarter, pulling in only $670,000 compared with $1.5 million for Katie Boyd Britt, a former chief of staff to Senator Richard Shelby.In Alaska, Mr. Trump is supporting Kelly Tshibaka, a primary challenger to Senator Lisa Murkowski, who voted to convict Mr. Trump in his second impeachment trial. Ms. Murkowski doubled Ms. Tshibaka’s haul. In North Carolina, Mr. Trump’s preferred choice, Representative Ted Budd, was narrowly edged by former Gov. Pat McCrory.In Pennsylvania, Mr. Trump’s endorsement did seem to boost Sean Parnell, who has been a regular on Fox News and whose fund-raising doubled in the most recent quarter. But Mr. Parnell still faces a former Trump-appointed ambassador, Carla Sands, in the Senate primary and she gave her campaign $3 million from her personal fortune.In House races, Mr. Trump has made clear he is focused on defeating those who voted to impeach him. One such Republican has already retired. But none of the other nine House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump in January were out-raised last quarter by a primary challenger, with Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming setting the pace by raising $1.7 million. (In some races, challengers combined to out-raise the Republican incumbent.)One notable fund-raising haul was from Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina. She verbally lacerated Mr. Trump in January for his incitement of the Capitol riot but ultimately didn’t vote to impeach. She has since, as my colleague Catie Edmondson put it over the summer, “quietly backpedaled into the party’s fold.” Now, the $973,000 she raised is among the highest sums for a freshman.The House leaderboardAmong the rank and file, the strongest Democratic fund-raiser in the House was, by far, Representative Katie Porter of California, who represents a swingy region in Orange County. She raised $2.7 million and spent only $1 million — and now has $14.5 million in the bank. That could help her no matter how her district is redrawn in 2022 — or in a potential future Senate bid. One problem with the latter is that the only House member with more money currently in their treasury is Representative Adam Schiff, another ambitious Democrat from California with $15.3 million in his treasury.On the Republican side, Representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas has emerged as a top fund-raiser, pulling in nearly $3 million. But Mr. Crenshaw was spending far more to raise those funds: He spent roughly 88 percent of what he raised in the third quarter, records show, including more than $1 million related to direct mail.On the left, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York continues to be one of her party’s strongest fund-raisers, bringing in nearly $1.7 million. On the right, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the freshman congresswoman from Georgia, has continuously stirred controversy and cashed in along the way, raising $1.5 million, roughly the same sum as Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of Mr. Trump’s favorite pugilists on the Hill.In the political center, two moderate Democrats, Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Tom Suozzi of New York, both topped the $1 million threshold.Democrats have an early money edge in key Senate racesTo keep the Senate next year, Democrats must first defend four incumbents up for re-election in the battleground states of Nevada, New Hampshire, Georgia and Arizona. The good news for the party is that all four incumbents far out-raised their Republican challengers, with Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia raising the most of anyone in the country, $9.5 million.The picture is murkier in three Republican-held battlegrounds: North Carolina and Pennsylvania, where the Republican incumbents are retiring, and Wisconsin, where Senator Ron Johnson has not said for certain if he is running again. Democrats face potentially messy primaries in all three races as do Republicans in the two open seats.But in each of the three states, the top fund-raiser last quarter between the two parties was a Democrat (not including those donating to themselves, like Sands).In Florida, Representative Val Demings, a Democrat, has emerged as the surprise fund-raising star of the cycle, raising nearly $8.5 million — nearly $2.5 million more than the Republican she is challenging, Senator Marco Rubio. But Ms. Demings is spending extraordinary sums to raise that money — $5.6 million in the last quarter alone, much of it devoted to Facebook ads seeking new online contributors.What campaigns are spending to raise money — known in the industry as the burn rate — is a key indicator, because it shows how much of what is raised will be available when voters are paying closer attention.Of the top dozen Senate fund-raisers last quarter, Ms. Demings had the highest burn rate at 66 percent.One Democratic senator on the ballot in 2022 actually spent more than she raised last quarter: Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire. She raised $3 million last quarter, but she spent $3.1 million. Records show she made a $1.5 million media buy to highlight her work for veterans.The early ad was an unusual strategic choice. Most operatives believe TV ads that air a year from an election will be long forgotten when voting begins. But with money already flooding key states, the ad could be a chance to make an early, positive impression, especially with outside Republican groups on the airwaves.nine days of ideas to remake our futureAs world leaders gather in Glasgow for consequential climate change negotiations, join us at The New York Times Climate Hub to explore answers to one of the most urgent questions of our time: How do we adapt and thrive on a changing planet? Glasgow, Scotland, Nov. 3-11; in person and online. Get tickets at nytclimatehub.com.On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      FBI Raids Homes Linked to Russian Oligarch Oleg Deripaska

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      Agents investigating whether Oleg Deripaska violated U.S. sanctions searched homes he has used in New York and Washington, D.C.Agents raided homes that Oleg V. Deripaska had used in New York’s Greenwich Village and on Washington’s Embassy Row, as part of an investigation into whether he violated sanctions the United States imposed on him.Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated PressF.B.I. agents on Tuesday morning searched homes linked to the Russian oligarch Oleg V. Deripaska in New York’s Greenwich Village and on Washington’s Embassy Row as part of an investigation into whether he violated sanctions imposed on him by the United States, according to people with knowledge of the matter and a spokeswoman for Mr. Deripaska.The searches were carried out more or less simultaneously by agents in New York and Washington and were part of an investigation by the F.B.I. and federal prosecutors from the office of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, the people said.Mr. Deripaska, an aluminum magnate with ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, was a client of Paul Manafort, who served for several months as Donald J. Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016 and was convicted in 2018 of financial fraud and other crimes.A spokesman for the F.B.I. office in New York would say only that the agents were “conducting a law enforcement operation pursuant to a law enforcement investigation,” and did not provide details on the nature or scope of the inquiry. A spokesman for the Southern District declined to comment.But a spokeswoman for Mr. Deripaska issued a statement confirming the searches, and saying that the investigation was related to U.S. sanctions.“The F.B.I. is carrying out a search at two houses — located in Washington and New York — belonging to Mr. Deripaska’s relatives,” said the spokeswoman, Larisa Belyaeva. “The searches are being carried out on the basis of two court orders, connected to U.S. sanctions.”The agents searching the Greenwich Village house arrived in the early morning hours in about half a dozen SUVs and were seen leaving the building carrying several large flat rectangular boxes like those used to transport paintings.The raid on the home in Washington was reported earlier by NBC News.In 2018, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions against Mr. Deripaska and his mammoth aluminum company, saying he had profited from the “malign activities” of Russia around the world. In announcing the sanctions, the Trump administration cited accusations that Mr. Deripaska had been accused of extortion, racketeering, bribery, links to organized crime and even ordering the murder of a businessman.Mr. Deripaska denied the allegations supporting the sanctions, and his allies contended that the sanctions were punishment for refusing to play ball with the Americans.The Trump administration lifted the sanctions against Mr. Deripaska’s companies in 2019 under an agreement intended to reduce his control and ownership, though a confidential document showed the deal may have been less punitive than advertised, leaving him and his allies with majority ownership of his most important company.Weeks later, Mr. Deripaska unsuccessfully sued the U.S. government to overturn the sanctions on him, alleging they were levied without due process and were based on unproven smears that fell outside the sanctions program.In the lawsuit, Mr. Deripaska’s lawyers claimed that the sanctions had cost him billions of dollars, made him “radioactive” in international business circles, and exposed him to criminal investigation and asset confiscation in Russia.The sanctions restrict his ability to own property or do business in the United States.Mr. Deripaska’s ability to travel to the United States has also been restricted in the past, though he had managed visits to New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Hawaii before the sanctions, people familiar with his travel said.And he has also been a subject of investigations by the F.B.I. and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn for several years, according to people with knowledge of those inquiries, but it is unclear whether the searches have any connection to those matters.The oligarch also came under scrutiny from the special counsel investigating ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, because of his connections to Mr. Manafort.Mr. Deripaska hired Mr. Manafort and signed his firm to a $10-million-a-year contract in 2006 at least partly to help him with his visa, which the U.S. government revoked. Mr. Deripaska eventually fired Mr. Manafort and his partner and later sued them over an unsuccessful telecommunications venture they had pursued together.Mr. Deripaska was a client of Paul Manafort, who served for several months as Donald J. Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016.Evgenia Novozhenina/ReutersBut after Mr. Manafort joined Mr. Trump’s campaign in 2016, he instructed his deputy to periodically provide confidential Trump campaign polling data to an associate that the deputy understood would be shared with Mr. Deripaska, according to a report issued by the Senate Intelligence Committee. During the campaign, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department unsuccessfully tried to turn Mr. Deripaska into an informant, signaling that they might provide help with his trouble in getting visas for the United States in exchange for information on possible Russian aid to Mr. Trump’s campaign. Mr. Deripaska told the American investigators that he disagreed with their theories about Kremlin collusion in the campaign.Property records show that the homes searched by the F.B.I. on Tuesday — a sprawling mansion in an affluent neighborhood in Northwest Washington and a three-story historic Greenwich Village townhouse that was once a speakeasy called the Pirate’s Den and later home to Mayor Jimmy Walker’s paramour — are owned by opaque limited liability corporations.The L.L.C. that owns the Greenwich Village property is connected to a person identified in British court filings as a cousin of Mr. Deripaska.Nate Schweber More

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      Virginia’s Governor Race Holds Clues for Control of Congress in 2022

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      The tight governor’s race in Virginia is a proving ground for strategies that could help determine control of Congress next year.Terry McAuliffe, the Democrat running for governor of Virginia, distilled the election into a single sentence.“It all adds up to the same thing here: Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump,” he said the other day.Contests for governor in Virginia have long been a barometer of the national political mood a year into a new presidency. For Democrats, the stakes have never seemed higher: A defeat for Mr. McAuliffe, a popular former governor seeking his old job back, could deal a devastating blow to the party’s confidence heading into next year’s midterms and to its strategy of running against Mr. Trump even when he is not on the ballot.For Republicans the stakes are less fraught: Their nominee, Glenn Youngkin, a first-time candidate, could lose narrowly given Virginia’s increasingly blue tinge but still represent a proof of concept that a G.O.P. candidate can unite the party’s moderates and hard-liners without going all in on Trumpism.Whether it is Mr. McAuliffe hammering away at Mr. Trump’s attempts to subvert the 2020 election or Mr. Youngkin walking a Trump tightrope — nodding to the base on election fraud, while keeping the former president partly at arm’s length — Mr. Trump has been an unavoidable factor in the Virginia campaign.The unexpectedly close contest, which is effectively the opening act of the 2022 midterms, will also test the two parties’ appeal to the most crucial and coveted voters nationwide — those in populous and diverse suburbs, who are widely expected to decide the Virginia race as well as control of Congress next year.“I think every Democrat is following Virginia as a bellwether,” Gordon Hintz, the Democratic leader of Wisconsin’s State Assembly, said. “It definitely set the tone in 2017 for the 2018 cycle.”Beyond the broad-brush strategies, each candidate has landed on a favorite issue in the final two weeks before the Nov. 2 election, both of which are likely to feature prominently in races elsewhere. For Mr. McAuliffe, the issue is abortion rights, newly under threat in the Supreme Court. For Mr. Youngkin, the issue is parental control of schools, which could broaden his appeal to independents who abandoned the G.O.P. under Mr. Trump.Polls show a statistically tied race in Virginia, with worrying implications for President Biden, who easily won the state. Democrats say they are battling stiff but temporary headwinds: rising inflation, the lingering pandemic and an impression of Democratic incompetency in Washington, where the party has been in a stalemate over passing its big domestic priorities.“Youngkin, to his credit, has done a real good job of maintaining the loyalty of the Trump base while attempting to generate some suburban defections from the Democratic Party,’’ said Bob Holsworth, a longtime Virginia political analyst. “If a Republican can win in Virginia talking about critical race theory, about his pro-life beliefs — a state Biden carried by 10 points — it would be far more than a wake-up call for Democrats. It would be somebody playing reveille in their bedrooms with a trumpet.”Virginians, who vote for governor a year after presidential elections, have a long record of rebuking the party that holds the White House. Mr. McAuliffe’s win in 2013, a year after President Barack Obama was re-elected, was the sole exception in four decades. During the Trump years, the state swung even more toward Democrats in state and federal elections, driven by college-educated voters in the suburbs of Northern Virginia and Richmond who rejected the president’s divisive leadership.Terry McAuliffe is trying to link his opponent to Donald Trump as a way to motivate voters.Eze Amos for The New York TimesMr. Biden’s capture of 54 percent of suburban voters nationally last year was chiefly what put him in the White House. Suburbanites tipped battleground states including Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona. They also hold the key to the majority of competitive House races in 2022. Whether Democrats have earned suburbanites’ long-term allegiance or Mr. Biden merely “rented” them, as strategists like to put it, is a major question that the Virginia election could help clarify.Republicans think they already know the answer. “The closeness of this race suggests the suburban swing voter is moving back to Republicans fast,’’ said Dan Conston, president of the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC that focuses on House races. “That is a warning sign for the many incumbent Democrats in swing suburban districts.’’But Democrats believe that fear of Trumpism will keep the suburbs in their corner. Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, chairman of the Democrats’ 2022 congressional campaign arm, said recently he was advising members in competitive suburban seats to run against “Trump toxicity without Trump on the ballot.”“You’ve got to remind them the other side is for insurrection, when we’re trying to do infrastructure,” Mr. Maloney said, speaking to the liberal podcast “Pod Save America.” “They’re for fighting, when we’re trying to fix problems.’’From the beginning, Mr. McAuliffe’s playbook has been to fuse Mr. Youngkin with Mr. Trump in voters’ minds. A new TV ad this week tries to link Mr. Youngkin to the former president’s equivocation about the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville in 2017.Mr. McAuliffe was handed fresh ammunition last week when Mr. Trump phoned in an endorsement of Mr. Youngkin to a rally that began by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance using a flag that organizers said had been carried on Jan. 6 in Washington. Mr. McAuliffe pounced, and Mr. Youngkin, who had not attended the rally, issued a statement calling the use of the flag “weird and wrong.”Glenn Youngkin, center, is focusing on parental control of schools, which could broaden his appeal to independents.Eze Amos for The New York TimesMr. Youngkin has tried to straddle the party’s divisions, appealing to Mr. Trump’s devotees as well as to moderate Republicans and independents. The enthusiasm edge that some polls show Virginia Republicans hold over Democrats suggests he has had some success in uniting the party.That’s not an easy feat. “Youngkin seems more adept at trying to avoid Trump,’’ said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster who is working for several Senate candidates in competitive 2022 races. “The degree to which that is successful will be a strong signal to lots of races around the country.”Mr. Youngkin began the general election emphasizing the conventional Republican issues of taxes and job creation, but he is now aggressively leaning into conservative attacks on the way race is taught in schools and on giving parents more control.A yearlong uproar in Loudoun County, targeting school board members over policies about racial equity and transgender students, suggests that Mr. Youngkin may be able to harness an issue that not only turns out conservatives, but persuades some suburban moderates.Jon Seaton, a Republican strategist from Virginia, said the schools issue was breaking through to suburban parents. “In my little focus group on the sidelines of soccer games on weekends — I’m fairly certain they didn’t vote for Trump in 2020 — at least some are extremely frustrated by what’s going on in the public schools,’’ said Mr. Seaton, who consults for candidates around the country. “It’s certainly possible that education, for the first time in a very long time, becomes something that Republican candidates run on.’’Pressing the issue, Mr. Youngkin has spent more than $1 million on a TV ad that plucks a statement of Mr. McAuliffe’s from a debate slightly out of context, in which he said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”A Fox News poll of likely Virginia voters conducted last week showed a split decision on education. By a 23-point margin, parents among likely voters said they should have a say in what schools teach. However, when asked which candidate they backed, parents preferred Mr. McAuliffe 53 to 43 percent.For Mr. McAuliffe’s part, abortion is the issue he has leaned into in the race’s final stretch, spending heavily on a TV ad showing hidden-camera video of Mr. Youngkin acknowledging that he must publicly downplay his opposition to abortion to win independent voters, but promising to go “on offense” if elected.A second McAuliffe TV ad on abortion predicted that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade and featured Mr. Youngkin saying he opposed adding a right to an abortion to Virginia’s constitution.Historically, a single-minded focus on abortion has driven mostly conservative voters. Now that abortion opponents appear on the brink of achieving what they have long sought, the power of the issue may shift toward Democrats. Its ability to motivate voters is receiving a trial run in Virginia. More

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      Book Review: ‘Midnight in Washington,’ by Adam Schiff

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      MIDNIGHT IN WASHINGTONHow We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still CouldBy Adam SchiffThe impact of Donald J. Trump’s presidency on the Republican Party has been a story well told, from reporters and scholars to Republicans of all stripes. Less frequently related, to the detriment of the reading public and the American voter, has been Trump’s impact on the Democratic Party.Few Democrats at the outset of 2016 believed he could be nominated, let alone win the presidency. “The G.O.P. is not that suicidal” and the “Democratic Party is not that lucky,” Representative Adam Schiff of California assured audiences that year. So naturally, when Trump became the Republican standard-bearer, Democratic lawmakers were at once horrified and delighted. They were shocked Republicans would nominate somebody they viewed as wildly unfit for the job but thrilled because surely the electorate would reject a crass demagogue and the party that enabled him.Voters would eventually punish Republicans, but it took Trump’s failed campaign for a second term before Democrats were able to claim control of the White House, House and Senate. In the meantime, Democratic leaders were left to grapple with what his ascent said about the country, their colleagues and the very system of American government.Few Democratic officials have done so in print, however, because they are still serving and because the Trump story is still unfolding. Schiff is one of the first to try to account for the last five, tumultuous years in American politics. As the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a top lieutenant to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Schiff is well positioned to deliver insights on the time of Trump, at least from the perspective of a Democratic insider.“Midnight in Washington” delivers on that promise. Fittingly for a regular on television news shows, Schiff’s volume reads like a well-composed MSNBC segment on the Trump presidency — but with behind-the-scenes details on the working of Congress to go with the liberal commentary. The book is also something of a midlife memoir, as Schiff recalls his career as a prosecutor, his early campaigns and his first years in Congress following his 2000 election. There are recurring touches about his wife, Eve — yes, he notes, Adam and Eve — and some attempts at grounding himself by recounting how his two children responded to his Trump-era fame. (His daughter, borrowing Trump’s favorite insult for him, told him why so many strangers now recognized him: “Well, Dad, it’s the pencil neck.”) Mostly, though, this is a blistering indictment of Trump and his Republican enablers set alongside a what-I-saw-at-the-revolution account of Schiff’s role investigating Trump’s misdeeds..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The 61-year-old congressman is, understandably, appalled at Trump’s blithe disregard for the country’s foundational political norms. To read this recent history is to remember how brazen Trump was when, for example, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked him in 2019 if in his 2020 re-election bid he’d accept information from a foreign power on an opponent or contact the F.B.I. “I think maybe you do both,” Trump replied, adding: “I think I’d take it.”The heart of the book is the first impeachment of the former president: Schiff oversaw the inquiry from his committee perch and then served as the lead impeachment manager. He moves far more quickly through Jan. 6 and the second, more historically significant impeachment, in part because he was not as central a figure in those events.After the House voted to impeach Donald Trump, Dec. 18, 2019; Adam Schiff on left.Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesIn more readable prose than most politicians are known to produce, Schiff recounts his conversations at high-stakes moments during Trump’s tenure. There was the time he and Pelosi determined that, with evidence growing that Trump had pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joseph R. Biden Jr., they decided to drop their longstanding reluctance to pursue impeachment. Speaking with Pelosi on his cellphone in a parking lot in September 2019, Schiff told her he thought it was time to move ahead on impeachment — but that he was appearing on a Sunday television news show the following day and did not want to get ahead of her. “You just tell ’em what you think,” the speaker responded in her clipped style, before taking his measure one last time as they hung up: “Are you ready to do this?” she asked.Just as vivid, if certainly one-sided, are Schiff’s vignettes about his Republican colleagues on the Intelligence Committee. Revealing conversations and text messages, he portrays them as reasonably good-faith actors at the outset of Trump’s tenure before becoming foot soldiers for the White House. These are names only the most committed political follower will recognize — Devin Nunes, Trey Gowdy, Michael Conaway — but in some ways their stories are more telling, and certainly fresher, than one more account of Trump raging in the Oval Office.After Schiff was told that Gowdy, a now-retired South Carolinian, was uneasy about holding public hearings into connections between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia, Schiff tracked down his colleague in the Republican cloak room. In Schiff’s telling, Gowdy confessed that the real reason for his reluctance was that Republican lawmakers felt the then-F.B.I. director James Comey’s recent public testimony, acknowledging a federal investigation into Trump’s campaign, had been “an unmitigated disaster.”“Now things began to make a perverse sense,” Schiff writes, adding: “The hearing was a disaster in their eyes precisely because the public learned Trump campaign officials were under investigation, and that was evidently a fact that some of the Republican members of our committee would have preferred to remain secret.” This and similar realizations left Schiff in a state of near-despair about the opposition, although he had had congenial relationships with many of them through his career in Congress.For example, he once got along well with Nunes, a fellow Californian: The two would text about their favorite N.F.L. team, the Raiders. They both served on the House Intelligence Committee when Republicans were in the majority during the Obama years, and Nunes, Schiff writes, was “in the mold of a country club Republican.” Recounting Nunes’s transition to loyal MAGA man in the first year of Trump’s presidency, however, Schiff offers little by way of explanation. The only apparent attempt Schiff made to get through to Nunes resulted in his Republican colleague acting like something of a zombie. “He stared back at me impassively,” Schiff says.Schiff writes thoughtfully in the first chapters about the appeal of populist demagogues overseas, and how it could happen here, but he is less eager to delve too deeply into why Republican lawmakers fell into a Trump trance. Perhaps as a serving congressman, he senses political danger in pointing a finger at Republican voters who have made their party a personality cult.This suggests one reason that, as a genre, books by active politicians are typically not very edifying. Self-serving and less than candid about those they’ll need to further their careers — be they donors, voters or colleagues — the authors usually produce accounts that are closer to extended political pamphlets than works of history. Schiff’s is better than most, offering valuable contributions to the historical record. However, he’s still constrained by his present position and future ambitions.He muffles even mild criticism of Democratic lawmakers, though he’s clearly tempted to let loose as he alludes to those who, unlike him, have never faced a contested race. “Listening to the debates among my colleagues in Congress from time to time, I wished that all of them had run in a competitive general election just once,” he writes. Please, Mr. Schiff, go on.Perhaps he will when he retires. More

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      Trump Missed the Part About No Do-Overs

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      Bret Stephens: Gail, I know we don’t typically talk about office politics, but sometimes it’s hard to avoid — as when our friend and colleague Nick Kristof leaves us to run for governor of his home state of Oregon. Our readers ought to know what an incredible guy he is behind the scenes.Gail Collins: Bret, I am extremely proud to say that when I was the editor of this section, I lured Nick over from the news side to be a columnist.One of his early projects was to write about the vile goings-on in a remote African country. I can’t remember all the details. But it involved a short plane ride that cost about $10,000 because he was barred from entry and had to be flown in by a brave pilot who claimed to be transporting a barrel of wheat.Bret: Now you’re going to see Nick’s opponents accuse him of flying private.Gail: I was of course impressed by the work, but the small, evil part of my brain thought, “Wow, this guy is going to cost me a fortune.” Then I started getting his bills for the long trek through Africa that followed, and they were like, hotel: $2; dinner: $1.25.Bret: Nick is one of the few people I know who actively seeks out opposing points of view, which only makes him hold his own with greater depth and zero rancor. He and I probably disagree on 95 percent of policy issues (OK, Oregon lefties, make that 100 percent). But I never missed his columns because there was always something important and interesting to learn from them.Also, accounts of Kristof family holidays fill me with a sense of both awe and deep parental inadequacy.Moving from the inspiring to the debased, what do you think the chances are that Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy will ever challenge Donald Trump on his claims of election fraud?Gail: Well, about the same as my chances of competing in the next Olympics.Bret: Your chances are better.Gail: Watching the rally Trump had recently in Iowa, I was sort of fascinated by his apparent inability to focus on anything but the last election. Don’t think a 2020 do-over is at the top of anybody else’s list of priorities.Bret: It would be nice to think that his obsession with 2020 is solely a function of his personal insecurities. But there’s a strategy involved here, which is hard to describe as anything less than sinister. Within the Republican Party, he’s making the stolen-election fantasy a litmus test, which Republican politicians defy at the peril of either being primaried by a Trump toady or losing vital Trump voters in close elections. At the national level, he’s creating a new “stab in the back” myth to undermine the legitimacy of democracy itself.Of course Joe Biden’s job performance so far isn’t helping things.Gail: About our current commander in chief: Biden’s moving into troubled waters — through no fault of his own — as chances grow of strikes or some kind of work stoppage everywhere from the cereal industry to tractor factories. He’s vowed to be “the most pro-union president” in history. Am I right in guessing that’s not something you’d look forward to?Bret: Anyone remember a certain politician from the late 1970s named James Callaghan? He was the U.K.’s Labour prime minister during the “Winter of Discontent,” when the country seemed to be perpetually on strike. Those strikes were the proximate cause of Margaret Thatcher’s election in 1979, which is something the Biden administration might bear in mind before getting too close to the unions.Gail: Did I ever tell you that long ago, in days of yore, I was president of the union at a small paper in Milwaukee? We only formed it because the publisher was a truly evil guy who’d threaten to write editorials denouncing local businesses unless they invested in advertising. Went on strike and the publisher closed down the whole operation.Bret: He sounds like Mr. Burns from “The Simpsons.” You went on to bigger and better things.Gail: This is a prelude to saying that I think unions are critical to protecting the nation’s workers, but well aware that they don’t protect everybody who needs it.Bret: I still think the most pro-worker thing the White House can do is get the infrastructure bill passed. Biden dearly needs a political victory, especially one like infrastructure that will divide Republicans while keeping Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema on the Democratic side, as opposed to the social spending bill that unites Republicans and alienates those two.Gail: I’ll refrain from pointing out that Sinema appears to be the captive of big-donor business interests and that the climate change part of Biden’s bill is now under pressure because of Manchin’s ties to Big Coal.Instead, remind me how you came around to be on the side of Big Spending.Bret: I love your concept of “refraining.”In my perfect world, the federal government would be about one-third the size that it is today and we would privatize and regulate functions like the Post Office, Amtrak and Social Security. But we live with the reality of big government and a Democratic presidency, so I’d prefer my tax dollars to go into investments that produce blue-collar jobs in the short term and long-term returns in public utilization. Plus, a lot of our infrastructure could really use a major upgrade: Just think of New Jersey.Gail: Ah, New Jersey. Sending you sympathy, which you’ll have time to appreciate while caught in traffic jams and train backups.Bret: In the meantime, it looks like the commission Biden appointed to study reforms for the Supreme Court was divided on the idea of adding new justices. The commission also seemed lukewarm on other ideas, like term limits for justices. Personally, I’m pretty relieved, but some of my liberal friends seem to think this was a lost opportunity.Gail: I’d like to be on your side when it comes to court appointments. Having one arm of government that takes an apolitical, long-term view of the world is definitely desirable.I hate to say one more time that I remember when …But I remember when both parties regarded Supreme Court appointments as something special; everybody tried to join hands in search of candidates who were wise and willing to rise above short-term partisan concerns.Well, at least that’s what they said. And even pretending to be bipartisan is better than nothing.Bret: Forty years ago, Sandra Day O’Connor, Ronald Reagan’s first nominee, was confirmed by the Senate in a vote of 99-0. The vote for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Bill Clinton’s first nominee, was 96-3. Since then, things have pretty much gone to hell.Gail: Mitch McConnell ruined the tradition by refusing to hold hearings on Barack Obama’s nominees. I truly doubt we’ll ever be able to return to the old ways. And if so, we should do some reorganizing. That might include term limits of maybe 18 to 20 years.Bret: I would quarrel a bit about whether the blame lies solely with Mitch. Some of us remember Harry Reid, when he was Senate majority leader, blocking qualified judges nominated by George W. Bush. But I also think a 20-year term-limited appointment to the high bench wouldn’t be the worst thing.Gail: By the way, speaking of long-running arguments, I see the New York City Council is thinking about tossing Thomas Jefferson’s statue out of City Hall. We’ve talked about this before, but any change in your feelings about whether we should withdraw that kind of honor from founding father slaveholders?Bret: My mind’s unchanged. If you’re going to get rid of Jefferson’s statute on that account, then why not get rid of the statues of George Washington, since he was also a slaveholder? For that matter, why not start a campaign to rename both the national capital and the state? This is the kind of dumb, symbol-chasing leftism that can only wind up helping Trump.Gail: Not arguing for renaming all the George Washington stuff, but it’d be nice to have a state named after, say, Susan B. Anthony.Bret: Anthony’s home state of Massachusetts should consider it. It would relieve the commonwealth of the sin of cultural appropriation and is also a lot easier to spell.We should be able to see our founders’ profound flaws while also honoring the fact that they established a republic in which the principle of human liberty and equality were able to take root and flourish as nowhere else, and in which the concept of a “more perfect union” is written into the Constitution. In the context of the late 18th century, that was an extraordinary step forward.Gail: Jefferson’s always been one of my least-favorite founders — his attitude toward women could be creepy even by 18th-century standards.Bret: Him and J.F.K. and a few other presidents I could mention.Gail: My rule is that big names of the past should be honored on the basis of their main thing — I’m OK with giving Columbus a holiday to commemorate his life as an explorer, as long as we spend a good part of it recalling his slaughter of Native Americans.Bret: Agree entirely. And preserve the names of Ohio’s capital and the Upper West Side’s premier institution of higher learning in the bargain.Gail: What bothers me about the Virginia founding fathers is that although they made inspiring speeches about liberty, most of them were focused on protecting their state institutions from federal intervention. Particularly plantation life and culture, which included slaves.The New-York Historical Society may be willing to take Jefferson’s statue on a “loan” and that seems like a good plan.Bret: That’ll give us something to keep arguing about.Gail: In the meantime, I’ll honor Jefferson for the Declaration of Independence. Always appreciate somebody who’s good with words. Which is why I enjoy our conversations, Bret. Bet I wouldn’t have nearly as much fun going back and forth with Thomas J.Bret: Nor I with Susan B.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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      As Trump Thunders About Last Election, Republicans Worry About the Next One

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      Donald Trump is the Republicans’ greatest asset in mobilizing voters. But some fret that his obsession with false claims about the 2020 election could cost the G.O.P. in 2022.Republicans believe they have a good shot at taking Congress next year. But there’s a catch.The G.O.P.’s ambitions of ending unified Democratic control in Washington in 2022 are colliding with a considerable force that has the ability to sway tens of millions of votes: former President Donald J. Trump’s increasingly vocal demands that members of his party remain in a permanent state of obedience, endorsing his false claims of a stolen election or risking his wrath.In a series of public appearances and statements over the last week, Mr. Trump has signaled not only that he plans to work against Republicans he deems disloyal, but also that his meritless claims that widespread voter fraud cost him the White House in 2020 will be his litmus test, going so far as to threaten that his voters will sit out future elections.“If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020,” Mr. Trump said in a statement last week, “Republicans will not be voting in ’22 or ’24. It’s the single most important thing for Republicans to do.”The former president’s fixation on disproved conspiracy theories is frustrating to many in his party who see it as needlessly divisive at a time when Republicans feel they are poised to take back the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate in the 2022 midterm elections. They worry he could cost Republicans otherwise winnable seats in Congress and complicate the party’s more immediate goal of winning the governor’s race in Virginia next month.The concern over Mr. Trump’s attempts to make all federal elections a referendum on him points to the larger debate among Republicans over what his role should be, as someone who remains singularly popular with the party’s base but is also a liability with swing voters and a motivator for Democrats to turn out.Some rising stars in the Republican Party — like Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, who ousted Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming from a House leadership post in a bitter intraparty fight over the Jan. 6 riots and Mr. Trump’s attempts to downplay them — have been clear: They want Mr. Trump to play a role in the 2022 midterms. Ms. Stefanik called him “an asset to Republicans on the ballot” at a fund-raiser last week.And top party strategists said they expected the former president to remain front and center in the Republicans’ campaign to retake control of the House. “He’s the leader of the party,” said Corry Bliss, a consultant to Republicans on congressional races. “The more energized and engaged he is, the better we’ll do.”But party officials believe Mr. Trump’s threat about his supporters staying home en masse is real. And the potency of his false claims about 2020 caught even some of his staunchest allies in the party off guard.The stakes are amplified by Mr. Trump’s increasingly pointed hints that he plans to be the party’s nominee in 2024.Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has been an outspoken supporter of Mr. Trump and the claims of voting irregularities during the 2020 election.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesRepresentative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has supported exhaustive audits of the 2020 results to look for evidence of voting irregularities that repeated reviews have failed to produce. Still, she has told colleagues that she was surprised by a recent survey of Republican voters in her district, according to one person who spoke with her about it.The internal survey found that 5 percent of Republican voters said they would sit out the 2022 election if the state of Georgia did not conduct a forensic audit of the 2020 election — a demand that some of Mr. Trump’s hard-core supporters have made. Another 4 percent said they would consider sitting out the election absent an audit.The possibility that nearly 10 percent of Republicans could sit out any election — even one in a solidly red district like the one held by Ms. Taylor Greene — was something Republican strategists said they found alarming.Since Mr. Trump left office, polls have repeatedly shown that large majorities of Republican voters want him to run in 2024. And roughly 40 percent of Republicans say they consider themselves to be primarily his supporters rather than supporters of the party — about the same share who said so last November, according to the political research firm Echelon Insights.Many Republicans don’t seem to want to hear anything critical about him. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center, for instance, highlighted the lack of an appetite for much dissent. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans, Pew found, said their party should not be accepting of elected officials who criticize Mr. Trump.Mr. Trump’s recent interference in the Virginia contest — where polls show the Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin, narrowly trailing his Democratic rival, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe — worried advisers to Mr. Youngkin’s campaign. They watched as their carefully scripted plan to keep the race focused on their candidate and on claims that Democrats have veered too far left became engulfed by news coverage of the former president praising Mr. Youngkin at a political rally last week.Mr. Trump remains overwhelmingly popular within the Republican party.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesSome Republicans said they feared they were watching a preview of the awkward and unpleasant dilemma their candidates would face for the foreseeable future, as Mr. Trump remains the most popular figure in their party, determining what candidates say and how voters think.“Here is where Trump is so destructive,” said Barbara Comstock, a former Republican member of Congress who lost her seat in suburban Virginia in 2018. That year, voters in swing districts across the country turned against centrist incumbents like her in a repudiation of Mr. Trump.Trump’s Bid to Subvert the ElectionCard 1 of 6A monthslong campaign. More

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      How Democrats Should Sell Themselves to Avoid Electoral Disaster

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      More from our inbox:Children’s Painful LossesMy Exercise Ethic  Cristina DauraTo the Editor:Re “Can Democrats Find a Winning Message?” (column, Sunday Review, Oct. 10):Ezra Klein’s discussion of David Shor’s predictions about impending disaster for the Democratic Party in upcoming Senate elections was both fascinating and frustratingly incomplete.For one, he did not discuss the specific seats in play and in jeopardy in 2022 and 2024. Surely local issues and the attractiveness of individual candidates will play some role in the outcome.Second, if a decent part of the Biden agenda finally becomes law and if the pandemic wanes, isn’t there a reasonable prospect that a significant piece of the electorate will want to keep it going? We keep hearing how popular infrastructure renewal and long-overdue safety net improvements are.Perhaps the ingrained disadvantages that Democrats face in the electoral system can be overcome by people feeling better about their lives. Messaging may well be less of a factor than Mr. Shor fears.Larry SimonbergBronxThe writer was a spokesman for Mayor Ed Koch of New York from 1983 to 1989.To the Editor:I’ll tell you why David Shor is wrong, like many of the consultants I’ve encountered who often have a brand rather than a unique skill: 1) Focus groups and polling aren’t real life. 2) Human beings are irrational actors and their motivations shift unpredictably. 3) Most voters don’t vote for issues; they vote for candidates who appear powerful, in charge and decisive.Donald Trump explains all of these things. Most of the issues he spotlights are unpopular in polling and focus groups, yet he got more than 70 million votes in 2020 and is quite likely going to win in 2024. Democrats need passionate, vital candidates, not reactive data jockeys.David BillottiRockville, Md.The writer is a communications consultant.To the Editor:The Trump base is not reclaimable by Democrats. Donald Trump exposed the undercurrent of anger, fear and racism lurking in our country and made expressing those feelings acceptable within the Republican Party. Worse, he prodded that base to vote. And there is every reason to believe that will happen again.The Democratic Party’s only hope is to appeal to moderate, traditional and rational Republicans who have already abandoned Mr. Trump and his minions. Policy communication alone doesn’t hold the power that David Shor thinks it does. Accomplishment is what is needed.The Democrats need to coalesce behind President Biden’s agenda, abandon the extreme progressive wish list, and pass the infrastructure and Build Back Better legislative initiatives. Then, and only then, will they have a product the American people are ready, maybe even eager, to buy.Jay AdolfNew YorkTo the Editor:As a 45-year marketing and communications professional, I think the messaging of the Democrats for the last 10 years has been feeble and chaotic. There has been no consistent, simple messaging from the Democratic National Committee. In contrast, the Republicans have had the discipline to do exactly that, albeit poisoned with lies.You want a winning message to combat the Big Lie about the stolen election? Start a campaign with a catchy slogan like “Trump has done zilch for you,” and hammer that message home over and over again.This is a battle over hearts and minds. These voters have been lied to, used as pawns, as dupes. It’ll take time, but once they get it, they will react in fury against Mr. Trump.Randolph W. HoblerNorwalk, Conn.To the Editor:Did I read this article correctly? Democrats need to hide who they are in order to win elections? What a damning, unintentional self-indictment.Richard SybertSeattleChildren’s Painful LossesAmethyst, 5, and a portrait of her father, Erin Tokley, a Philadelphia police officer who died from Covid-19 in March.Laurence Kesterson/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “120,000 Children Lost Caregivers to Covid” (news article, Oct. 8):I am usually a pretty stoic person, but the enormousness of pain reflected by the story about 120,000 children who have lost a parent or caregiver broke me.To think there are Americans running around screaming about the injustice of being asked to get a vaccine or wear a mask while the smallest shoulders among us are bearing the heaviest of burdens really makes you wonder what has happened to the soul of our country.Have we become so callous and vicious with one another that a tragedy like this is not enough to bring us together so we can fight this scourge as one?Michael ScottSan FranciscoMy Exercise Ethic  Ping ZhuTo the Editor:Re “Unable to Walk, She Needed to Run” (Science Times, Oct. 5):Elisabeth Rosenthal’s confession that her running is “more spiritual than pragmatic” struck a chord with my exercise ethic. As a longtime daily runner — three miles around the block with our fox terrier, Socks — I understand Dr. Rosenthal’s need to run, even after an accident.After two hip replacements, more than a decade ago, stopped my daily runs, I began substituting other exercise. It doesn’t work — not the elliptical, a bicycle or weight training.The only close relative to running I have found is aquafit classes. The thumping music and smiling water compatriots allow a mental escape from the daily grind and anxieties of living. But it’s a facsimile, not the real gold standard.So I wish Dr. Rosenthal a rapid return to running and to recapturing the “emotional sustenance running provides.”Mary Lake PolanNew Canaan, Conn. More