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      Trump Makes Another Pitch to Appeals Court on Immunity in Election Case

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      The filing was the last step before an appeals court in Washington will hold a hearing on the crucial issue next week.Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump on Tuesday made their final written request to a federal appeals court to grant Mr. Trump immunity to charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, arguing the indictment should be tossed out because it arose from actions he took while in the White House.The 41-page filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was the final step before the defense and prosecution debate the issue in front of a three-judge panel next Tuesday.The dispute over immunity is the single most important aspect of the election interference case, touching not only on new questions of law but also on consequential issues of timing. The case is scheduled to go to trial in Federal District Court in Washington in early March, but has been put on hold until Mr. Trump’s efforts to have the charges tossed on immunity grounds are resolved.In their filing to the appeals court, Mr. Trump’s lawyers repeated some of the arguments they had made in earlier submissions. They claimed, for instance, that a long history of presidents not being charged with crimes suggested that they all enjoyed immunity. They also said that prosecuting Mr. Trump now could unleash a chain reaction of other presidents being indicted.“The 234-year unbroken tradition of not prosecuting presidents for official acts, despite vociferous calls to do so from across the political spectrum, provides powerful evidence of it,” D. John Sauer, a lawyer who has handled Mr. Trump’s appeals, wrote of the idea of executive immunity.Mr. Sauer added: “The likelihood of mushrooming politically motivated prosecutions, and future cycles of recrimination, are far more menacing and crippling to the presidency than the threat of civil liability.”Mr. Trump’s lawyers raised another, even more audacious argument: that because he had been acquitted by the Senate during his second impeachment of inciting insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, he could not be tried in a criminal court in the election interference case.But both legal experts and some of the senators who acquitted Mr. Trump have disagreed with that position — not least because the federal charges he is facing are not analogous to those he faced during his impeachment.The issue of Mr. Trump’s immunity claims is legally significant because the question of whether former presidents can be criminally liable for things they did in office has not been tested in court. Mr. Trump is the first former president to have been charged with crimes.But the appeal of the immunity issue has revolved around more than the question of whether Mr. Trump should eventually stand trial on the election charges. It has also touched on the separate, but equally critical, question of when the trial should occur.Prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, have been trying for weeks to keep the trial on schedule, arguing that the public has an enormous interest in a speedy prosecution of Mr. Trump, the Republican Party’s leading candidate for the presidency.Mr. Trump’s lawyers, pulling in the opposite direction, have used every lever at their disposal to slow the case down, hoping to delay a trial until after the 2024 election is decided. If that happened and Mr. Trump won, he would have the power to simply order the charges against him dropped.The immunity challenge is being considered by Judge Karen L. Henderson, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush, and by Judges Florence Y. Pan and J. Michelle Childs, who were put on the bench by President Biden.On Tuesday, before Mr. Trump’s court papers were filed, the judges informed both sides in the case that they should be prepared at the hearing next week to discuss issues raised in several friend-of-the-court briefs that have been submitted.One of the briefs argued that the issue of immunity should never have been subject to an immediate appeal, but rather should have been raised only if Mr. Trump were convicted. Another maintained that Mr. Smith had been improperly appointed to the role of special counsel and lacked the “authority to conduct the underlying prosecution.”Last month, fearing that a prolonged appeal could delay the case from going in front of a jury, Mr. Smith made an unusual request to the Supreme Court: He asked the justices to step in front of the appeals court and consider the case first.Although the justices rejected his petition, they are likely to get the case again after the appeals court makes its decision. More

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      Tracking State Efforts to Remove Trump From the 2024 Ballot

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      States with challenges to Trump’s candidacy Trump disqualified, decision appealed Decision pending Challenge dismissed or rejected Alaska Ariz. Calif. Colo. Conn. Del. Fla. Idaho Kan. La. Maine Mass. Mich. Minn. Mont. Nev. N.H. N.J. N.M. N.Y. N.C. Okla. Ore. Pa. R.I. S.C. Texas Utah Vt. Va. W.Va. Wis. Wyo. Formal challenges to Donald J. Trump’s […] More

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      Haley’s Civil War Gaffe Complicates Her New Hampshire Push

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      Her failure to mention slavery in response to a question about the causes of the Civil War has given Chris Christie fresh ammunition as they compete for the anti-Trump vote.Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor seeking the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, appears to have weathered a holiday-season gaffe on the causes of the Civil War, but the controversy over her answer, which neglected to mention slavery, was a gift to a rival, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.And that fresh ammunition may be the most lasting fallout for her effort to catch former President Donald J. Trump in the nation’s first Republican primary in New Hampshire on Jan. 23.With less than two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Ms. Haley is expected back in southern New Hampshire on Tuesday for a two-day campaign swing, working to maintain the momentum that has lifted her to second place in the state. But the final week of 2023 was a particularly rocky one. She flubbed the name of the Iowa Hawkeyes’ star basketball player Caitlin Clark, stirred anger and frustration among the independent and moderate factions of her base over her Civil War answer at a Berlin, N.H., town hall meeting, then potentially provoked the anti-Trump faction again when she said she would pardon Mr. Trump should he be convicted.Mr. Christie, who will be in the state on Thursday and Friday, has seized on Ms. Haley’s gaffe, and both of their campaigns are at a pivotal moment. They have long been on a collision course in New Hampshire, which Mr. Christie has made his do-or-die state and where Ms. Haley has been climbing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Conservative Group Wins Legal Victory Over 2020 Voting Challenges in Georgia

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      The group, True the Vote, had been accused by the liberal organization Fair Fight of violating the Voting Rights Act by intimidating voters. A judge rejected the claims.A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that a conservative group’s efforts to challenge the eligibility of hundreds of thousands of voters in the Senate runoff elections in Georgia in early 2021 did not violate the Voting Rights Act under a clause outlawing voter suppression.In a 145-page opinion, the judge, Steve C. Jones of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, wrote that the court “maintains its prior concerns” regarding how the group, True the Vote, sought to challenge voters’ eligibility. But he said that Fair Fight, the liberal voting rights group that brought the lawsuit against True the Vote, had failed to show that the efforts were illegal.The decision was relatively narrow, applying only to Judge Jones’s district in northern Georgia, and will do little to change the status quo: Right-wing election groups have already tried to help bring thousands of challenges to voter registrations in states across the country.But the opinion is likely to encourage conservative activists hunting for voter fraud during the 2024 presidential election. Election officials and voting rights groups have expressed worries about these efforts, warning that an expanded campaign to challenge voters en masse could intimidate people away from the ballot box. True the Vote and similar groups, taking a cue from former President Donald J. Trump, have often spread false theories about election fraud.“Any of these decisions that allows these kinds of mass challenges to go forward embolden that movement,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, the director of the Voting Rights Project at the A.C.L.U.In his opinion, Judge Jones wrote that evidence from Fair Fight and individual voters in the trial did not amount to intimidation under an important section of the Voting Rights Act known as Section 11(b), which outlaws any attempt to “intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate” any voter or act of voting.“While the court believes that actions increasing the difficulty to vote if paired with other conduct might give rise to a Section 11(b) violation in some circumstances, increased difficulty alone does not constitute voter intimidation,” Judge Jones wrote.Voting rights experts said the ruling could raise the bar of what constitutes voter intimidation under the Voting Rights Act, and said it was yet another court decision that chipped away at the protections in the landmark law.“He took a very narrow view of what constitutes intimidation,” Ms. Lakin said. “But raising the bar of what you need to show altogether will make demonstrating voter intimidation claims more difficult, at least in the Northern District of Georgia.”In a footnote in the decision, Judge Jones, who was appointed to his post by President Barack Obama, was careful not to give a blessing to tactics like True the Vote’s.“In making this conclusion, the court, in no way, is condoning TTV’s actions in facilitating a mass number of seemingly frivolous challenges,” he wrote. He added: “TTV’s list utterly lacked reliability. Indeed, it verges on recklessness.”Fair Fight sued True the Vote three years ago, after the conservative group organized challenges in December 2020 questioning the eligibility of more than 250,000 registered Georgia voters. To spur right-wing activists to help challenge voters, True the Vote created a $1 million reward fund and offered bounties for evidence of “election malfeasance.”Fair Fight argued in its lawsuit that finding actual fraud or ineligible voters was only a secondary concern for True the Vote, and that the real intention was to frighten Democratic-leaning voters from turning out in what were expected to be razor-thin runoff elections that would determine control of the United States Senate.Catherine Engelbrecht, the president of True the Vote, celebrated the ruling as “an answer to the prayers of faithful patriots across America.”“Today’s ruling sends a clear message to those who would attempt to control the course of our nation through lawfare and intimidation,” Ms. Engelbrecht wrote in a statement. “American citizens will not be silenced.”Fair Fight, in a lengthy statement, said that federal courts were not adequately protecting Americans from ramped-up attacks on voting rights.“While there is much to make of the court’s 145-page opinion, Fair Fight is disappointed that Georgians and voters nationwide must continue to wait for our federal courts to impose accountability in the face of widespread and mounting voter intimidation efforts,” Cianti Stewart-Reid, the executive director of Fair Fight, said in the statement.It was unclear whether the group planned to appeal the decision. More

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      Trump to Skip CNN Debate in Iowa to Attend Fox News Town Hall

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      Donald J. Trump is expected to participate in a Fox News town hall on the same day, the network announced Tuesday.A Republican presidential primary debate that CNN plans to host in Des Moines next week will be a one-on-one showdown between Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, who are fighting to emerge from the state’s caucuses as the definitive alternative to former President Donald J. Trump.Both Mr. DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, are long shots to win the caucuses, given that they are trailing Mr. Trump in polls of Iowans by more than 30 points on average. But if either one is to have even a small chance of claiming the nomination, that person needs to drive the other out of the race, which they could do — or at least take a first step toward doing — by beating them for second place in Iowa.Mr. Trump did not participate in the official debates sponsored by the Republican National Committee last year, and he will not participate in the CNN debate in Iowa either. (The Iowa event will be followed by a similar one in New Hampshire.) And no other candidate qualified by the deadline on Tuesday.Participants needed at least 10 percent support in three national or Iowa polls that met CNN’s criteria, including at least one poll of likely Iowa caucusgoers. The entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy; former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who has largely ignored Iowa in favor of campaigning in New Hampshire; and former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas did not meet that mark.In a post on X saying he wouldn’t participate even if he qualified, Mr. Ramaswamy expressed anger at CNN over the network’s fact-checking of the conspiracy theories he advanced during a town-hall event last month and about CNN anchors’ and commentators’ criticism of him. He also faulted the network for rejecting some polls that the Republican National Committee accepted to qualify candidates for its debates.He said he would instead do a live show with the right-wing commentator Tim Pool on Jan. 10, the night of the debate. Mr. Trump is scheduled to participate in his own counterprogramming: a town-hall event that Fox News announced on Tuesday.Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley both criticized Mr. Trump’s refusal to participate.“With only three candidates qualifying, it’s time for Donald Trump to show up,” Ms. Haley said in a statement. “As the debate stage continues to shrink, it’s getting harder for Donald Trump to hide.”A spokesman for Mr. DeSantis, Andrew Romeo, said Mr. Trump was “scared” to defend his record and said mockingly, “If it would make the debate more inviting, we would gladly agree to make it a seated format where the former president would be more comfortable.”Nicholas Nehamas More

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      Trump’s Most Ambitious Argument in His Bid for ‘Absolute Immunity’

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      The former president says his acquittal by the Senate in his second impeachment trial, for inciting insurrection, bars any prosecution on similar grounds.There is almost nothing in the words of the Constitution that even begins to support former President Donald J. Trump’s boldest defense against charges that he plotted to overturn the 2020 election: that he is absolutely immune from prosecution for actions he took while in office.A federal appeals court will hear arguments on the question next week, and the panel will consider factors including history, precedent and the separation of powers. But, as the Supreme Court has acknowledged, the Constitution itself does not explicitly address the existence or scope of presidential immunity.In his appellate brief, Mr. Trump said there was one constitutional provision that figured in the analysis, though his argument is a legal long shot. The provision, the impeachment judgment clause, says that officials impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate are still subject to criminal prosecution.The provision says: “Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States: But the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law.”All the clause says in so many words, then, is that “the party convicted” in the Senate can still face criminal prosecution. But Mr. Trump said the clause implied something more.The clause “presupposes that a president who is not convicted may not be subject to criminal prosecution,” Mr. Trump’s brief said.A friend-of the-court brief from former government officials said Mr. Trump’s position had “sweeping and absurd consequences,” noting that a great many officials are subject to impeachment.“Under defendant’s interpretation,” the brief said, “the executive would lack power to prosecute all current and former civil officers for acts taken in office unless Congress first impeached and convicted them. That would permit countless officials to evade criminal liability.”Mr. Trump also made a slightly narrower but still audacious argument: “A president who is acquitted by the Senate cannot be prosecuted for the acquitted conduct.”Mr. Trump was, of course, acquitted at his second impeachment trial, on charges that he incited insurrection, when 57 senators voted against him, 10 shy of the two-thirds majority needed to convict.The idea that the impeachment acquittal conferred immunity from prosecution may come as a surprise to some of those who did the acquitting.Take Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, who voted for acquittal. Shortly afterward, in a fiery speech on the Senate floor, he said the legal system could still hold Mr. Trump to account.“We have a criminal justice system in this country,” Mr. McConnell said. “We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”That suggests that Mr. Trump’s reading of the clause is far from obvious, but the Justice Department has said that it is not wholly implausible. In 2000, its Office of Legal Counsel issued a 46-page memorandum devoted to just this question. It was called “Whether a Former President May Be Indicted and Tried for the Same Offenses for Which He was Impeached by the House and Acquitted by the Senate.”The argument that such prosecutions run afoul of the Constitution “has some force,” according to the memo, which was prepared by Randolph D. Moss, now a federal judge. But, it went on, “despite its initial plausibility, we find this interpretation of the impeachment judgment clause ultimately unconvincing.”It added: “We are unaware of any evidence suggesting that the framers and ratifiers of the Constitution chose the phrase ‘the party convicted’ with a negative implication in mind.”More fundamentally, the memo said, “impeachment and criminal prosecution serve entirely distinct goals.” Impeachment trials involve political judgments. Criminal trials involve legal ones.In a brief filed on Saturday, Jack Smith, the special counsel, wrote that “acquittal in a Senate impeachment trial may reflect a technical or procedural determination rather than a factual conclusion.” The brief noted that at least 31 of the 43 senators who voted to acquit Mr. Trump at the impeachment trial said they did so at least in part because he was no longer in office and thus not subject to the Senate’s jurisdiction.Mr. Trump’s reading of the provision “would produce implausibly perverse results,” Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing his trial in Federal District Court in Washington, wrote in a decision last month rejecting Mr. Trump’s claim of absolute immunity.She noted that the Constitution permits impeachment for a narrow array of offenses — “treason, bribery or other high crimes or misdemeanors.”Under Mr. Trump’s reading, Judge Chutkan wrote, “if a president commits a crime that does not fall within that limited category, and so could not be impeached and convicted, the president could never be prosecuted for that crime.”“Alternatively,” she went on, “if Congress does not have the opportunity to impeach or convict a sitting president — perhaps because the crime occurred near the end of their term, or is covered up until after the president has left office — the former president similarly could not be prosecuted.”She added that President Gerald R. Ford’s pardon of former President Richard M. Nixon, who resigned as calls to impeach him for his role in the Watergate scandal grew, would have been unnecessary under Mr. Trump’s reading. More

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      Looking Ahead to 5 Things That Will Shape the 2024 Election

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      Trials, a Kennedy and the economy are among the variables to consider.A recent Trump caucus event in Waterloo, Iowa.Charlie Neibergall/Associated PressIt’s divisible by four. It’s a leap year. It’s a Summer Olympics year.It’s a presidential election year.Happy New Year?Whether the 2024 presidential election cycle brings you dread or excitement, there’s no doubt that the table is set for an extraordinary year.The potential for political turmoil has rarely seemed more obvious. Voters are deeply dissatisfied with the direction of the country and their options for president. President Biden’s approval rating is lower at this stage than for any president in the era of modern polling, dating to the 1940s. His likely opponent faces several criminal trials. Waiting in the wings, there’s an independent candidate with the last name Kennedy. The Democratic convention is even in Chicago.Here are just a few of the big topics that will shape the 2024 election.Can Nikki Haley win a state?Of all the items on this list, this is probably the least consequential. But it is first up on the calendar, with the early primary contests just a few weeks away, and a Haley win in New Hampshire or South Carolina is neither impossible nor irrelevant.Heading into the holidays, surveys showed Ms. Haley approaching or exceeding 30 percent in New Hampshire — putting her closer to an upset than it might look, given the volatile nature of early primaries.Her path to victory in New Hampshire is still fairly narrow. Her recent stumble in answering a question about the cause of the Civil War may halt her momentum. And even if she does defeat Donald J. Trump in the state, it’s hard to see her posing a serious threat to win the nomination, given the relatively narrow, factional character of her appeal.But if she regained her footing and did manage to pull off an upset in New Hampshire or South Carolina, it would still carry symbolic significance. It would be a reminder that the not-Trump wing of the Republican Party, while diminished and weakened, was still around. It would be a visible crack in Republican support for Mr. Trump, and it would happen just weeks before his scheduled trial in March.There’s a possible chain of events in which the combination of a trial and a Haley win winds up mattering more than we might guess today.The trial of Donald J. TrumpMaybe the criminal trial of Mr. Trump will not go down as “the greatest political spectacle of our lives” or something similarly grandiose, but it’s hard to think of anything like it that’s ever been scheduled on the political calendar.The trial promises to be the political center of gravity for the first half of the year, with the federal election subversion trial scheduled to begin on March 4 — the day before Super Tuesday in the G.O.P. primary — and then possibly lasting through the heart of the primary season, although delays are possible.It is hard to believe that a trial, in itself, will do grave political damage to Mr. Trump. After all, he endured the indictments unscathed. And he would probably amass enough delegates to win the Republican nomination even before the jury issued a verdict. The preponderance of Republican delegates will be awarded within a month of the start of the trial if it begins as scheduled.But there is a way a trial could matter: It might lead to a realization by Republican primary voters and elites that Mr. Trump is likely to be convicted. And whether they see it coming or not, a conviction isn’t the same as a trial or an indictment. It might be far more consequential.Recent polls — including New York Times/Siena College battleground polling in October — show Mr. Biden opening up a lead if Mr. Trump is convicted, let alone imprisoned. These polls should be taken with a grain of salt — they pose hypotheticals to voters, who mostly aren’t paying attention to Mr. Trump’s legal woes. But they’re a reminder that there are risks to his candidacy. In a close race, it might be decisive even if only a sliver of voters refuse to vote for a felon.At the same time, a conviction would offer a new path for those seeking to remove Mr. Trump from the ballot, whether by disqualifying him in the courts or by denying him the nomination at the Republican convention.Mr. Trump also faces a trial in Florida over his handling of classified material and in Georgia in an election case, although appeals and delays may carry them beyond the election. There’s also the coming Stormy Daniels case on the possible falsification of business records in New York, which is generally not seen as rising to the same level as the other cases.And let’s not forget the likely Supreme Court case about whether he’s disqualified to be president under the 14th Amendment.All of this is extraordinary to contemplate. Calling this simply “something to watch” is gross understatement. But that’s our politics nowadays.The new swing voteIf you’ve been following elections long enough, the term “swing voter” might conjure up images of soccer moms, security moms, Reagan Democrats, the white working class and countless other archetypes of the mostly white suburban voters who analysts said decided American elections over the last half century.But as 2024 begins, the voters poised to decide the election look very, very different from the swing voters of lore. They’re disproportionately young, Black and Hispanic.Whether these voters return to Mr. Biden is one of the biggest questions of the cycle, not only because it might decide the election but also because there’s a chance it could shape the trajectory of American politics for decades.As we’ve written countless times, there will be many opportunities over the next year for Mr. Biden to lure back these traditionally Democratic but disaffected voters. In the end, he might well approach or match his support from last time. If he does, perhaps all the debate over it will seem misplaced.But whatever the outcome, the reality of so many young, Black and Hispanic persuadable voters might powerfully shape the incentives facing the candidates and perhaps even the overall course of the race. For the first time, there’s a straightforward case that Democrats and Republicans alike have an incentive to focus more on Black, Hispanic and young voters than on white working-class voters. This might not yield any drastic changes in strategy, policy or messaging. But it would be surprising if it yielded no change at all.Eight years ago, Mr. Trump was kicking Univision out of news conferences. Now, he’s giving Univision exclusive interviews. This is just one small, early anecdote well before the campaign gets underway. The examples may be much more striking by Election Day.The third party?There’s another place that disaffected young, Black and Hispanic voters might go: a third-party candidate, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Mr. Kennedy doesn’t loom over the 2024 race quite the way Mr. Trump’s trials do. We don’t even know if Mr. Kennedy will successfully gain access to the ballot. But it’s another obvious X-factor that we can see coming, even if we don’t know how it might affect the race.The early polling — which shows Mr. Kennedy in the teens — seems plausible at this early stage. Around 20 percent of voters nationwide have unfavorable views of both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, and Mr. Kennedy has a brand name that past minor candidates like Gary Johnson, a libertarian in 2016, could never have dreamed of.Historically, most independent candidates fizzle. Mr. Johnson saw his support peak near 10 percent in July 2016, only to win 3.3 percent in November. Mr. Kennedy might fade for similar reasons, especially with the stakes of a Biden-Trump matchup seeming so large. On the other hand, Mr. Johnson was no Kennedy.Does another year help or hurt Biden?In many ways, the outlook for Mr. Biden in 2024 ought to be bright. The economy seems as if it’s finally about to land softly. His opponent is set to go on trial. And the voters he needs — young, Black and Hispanic — are the kinds of voters who Democrats would usually think are easiest to win back to their side.All this might ultimately propel Mr. Biden to re-election. Many incumbent presidents have gone on to win under fairly similar circumstances, with the help of a polarizing campaign and a growing economy.But there’s a catch: Some of these favorable winds have been at Mr. Biden’s back for most of the last year, and he appears weaker than ever.Despite an improving economy, Mr. Biden’s approval rating stands at just 39 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight. That’s a net eight points lower than it was a year ago. It’s also worse than any previous president on the last New Year’s Day before re-election. Satisfaction with the country is about as low as it was in 1980, 1992, 2008 and 2020 — years when the president’s party was defeated.One possibility, of course, is that it’s just a matter of time. The economic news has only turned unequivocally positive over the last few weeks or months. Consumer confidence is still below average, but it appears to be improving. That might start to help Mr. Biden’s ratings. If you squint at the numbers, you could argue it has already begun to do so: His approval rating is up about 1.5 points over the last three weeks.Unlike most presidents seeking re-election, Mr. Biden has also been hobbled by persistent questions about whether he should be the party nominee. Democrats have spent more time ruminating about his age than defending his record. His party will presumably put its doubts to the side and rally behind him once he secures the nomination over the summer. Maybe that’s when he’ll finally rejuvenate his support.But the other possibility is that time is not on his side. It might even be part of the problem.The president gets older every day. To the extent his age, stumbles and stutters explain why voters lack confidence in his leadership and the direction of the country, there’s not much reason to expect it to get better. It might get worse. More

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      Living and Struggling With Long Covid

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      More from our inbox:Being Jewish in AmericaBlack Voters, Beware the G.O.P.Liz Cheney’s Book: ‘Too Little, Too Late’Students Know We Need Free SpeechHolly StapletonTo the Editor:Re “What Reporting on Long Covid Taught Me,” by Ed Yong (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 22):As a Covid long-hauler (going on three years now!), I found it validating and even supportive to read Mr. Yong’s essay. It was particularly validating to have the acknowledgment of post-exertional malaise (PEM). This so aptly describes much of my life.For example, I apologize to my dog before going on a shorter-than-usual walk. I have to plan for seemingly mundane tasks of self-care and home care: taking a shower, changing clothes, doing the dishes, sweeping my apartment, doing laundry, etc. I put these tasks in my calendar, and even then the expectation of the aftermath makes me feel incapable, desperate and overwhelmed.I appreciated Mr. Yong’s astute acknowledgment that symptoms are often dismissed because of sexism (I’m transgender). And I was denied disability because it was determined that I was functional enough to wrap silverware in napkins. Yes indeed, treatment is not only a medical issue, but also a social one.Mr. Yong made it clear that his journalism has been transformed by doing research in a more integrative manner, especially actually being with current long-haulers. I’m immensely grateful to him for his journalism and to The Times for publishing it.(I earned my Ph.D. in 2012, and it’s taken me two days to write this.)River Jackson-PatonDallasTo the Editor:Ed Yong’s guest essay is right on point. Long Covid is real, and the public needs to be educated about it.My experience with Covid is that of a former registered nurse in the thick of it. I watched so many patients and co-workers get sick, some dying, some getting better, and some who are still struggling with long Covid.It is very hard for me to hear someone, usually an anti-vaxxer, say, “They should just let everyone get Covid and get it over with.”I hear this quite often and my response is always, “Are you familiar with long Covid?” I always get one of two responses: “No” or “That’s made up.” Then I try to educate.Donna HuntAtascadero, Calif.To the Editor:I appreciate Ed Yong’s extraordinary reporting on long Covid and his opinion piece about the health care system’s failure to take chronic illness patients seriously. What many do not realize is that years and even decades before the pandemic caused long Covid, many patients, including me, struggled to find doctors and treatments for many of the same health problems that long Covid patients face.I cannot give you a single name for our illness because it does not yet exist. I and countless other patients have a slew of diagnoses, including autoimmune diseases, mast cell disorders, connective tissue disorders and dysautonomia. Many of us are disabled and homebound or bedbound.Doctors for these disorders were already hard to find, and the surge of long Covid patients has made accessing knowledgeable care more difficult. I hope the increased demand will inspire more doctors to study and treat these conditions. Now that even more patients are suffering, we need to stop dismissing this constellation of illnesses.Rachel GravesTacoma, Wash.Being Jewish in AmericaPhotographs of some of the hostages captured by Hamas on display by the Western Wall in Jerusalem.Ohad Zwigenberg/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Why I Can’t Stop Writing About Oct. 7,” by Bret Stephens (column, Dec. 20):American democracy has promised a land, as Mr. Stephens says, “in which you didn’t have to hide.” Mr. Stephens writes despairingly about the loss of this promise, and there’s no doubt that, today, America’s promise feels remote to many. For Jews, an eroding democracy brings with it a profound sense of trauma and fear.Yet the most appropriate Jewish response to this challenge is not despair, but determination. If our institutions are buckling, let’s reinforce them with forums for civic learning. If our civic culture is fraying, let’s repair it with opportunities for dynamic and respectful conversation. If our democracy is under threat, let’s take actions that strengthen it — right now, and in communities across the country.For nearly two and a half centuries, even amid painful setbacks, the United States has offered one of the last, best places to be Jewish — not because it catered to Jews, but because its democratic pluralism, albeit aspirational and imperfect from the beginning, allowed minorities like ours an opportunity to live freely.When that democratic pluralism struggles, we shouldn’t prematurely mourn its loss. We should repair it instead. This is not naïveté; it’s the agency our parents and grandparents came here looking for.Aaron DorfmanNew YorkThe writer is the executive director of A More Perfect Union: The Jewish Partnership for Democracy, a network of synagogues and Jewish groups.Black Voters, Beware the G.O.P.Kshaun Williams says he has seen his life become harder because of rising inflation under President Biden.José Ibarra Rizo for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Black Voters in Georgia Say Biden Has Forgotten Them,” by Mara Gay (Opinion, Dec. 24):Ms. Gay cautions that Black voters in Georgia feel ignored and abandoned and may desert the Democratic Party in the coming presidential election. While her conclusions are highly debatable, there is no such doubt regarding the alternative.The Republican Party of Donald Trump has rolled back voting rights, gerrymandered predominantly Black districts, eliminated or scaled back social programs that aid the poor and sent federal troops to crack down on anti-racism protests.Should Georgia’s Black voters leave the Democrats for the Republicans, they will quickly learn the real meaning of abandonment.Tom GoodmanPhiladelphiaLiz Cheney’s Book: ‘Too Little, Too Late’Jonathan Ernst/ReutersTo the Editor:It’s with some relief that I read Carlos Lozada’s Dec. 21 column, “Liz Cheney’s Checkered History of the Trump Era.”Ms. Cheney worries about the prospect of another Donald Trump tenure in the White House, but I worry just as much about Ms. Cheney’s rush to sainthood as she plugs her new book and her ostensibly revised views.As Mr. Lozada reminds us, Ms. Cheney, right along with other Trump molls and henchmen in the G.O.P., long pledged obeisance to Mr. Trump. She — no less than the people she now criticizes — got us to this awful, scary time and place, and she shouldn’t get a pass now for what is at best a clear case of “too little, too late.”Beth Z. PalubinskyPhiladelphiaStudents Know We Need Free SpeechTim EnthovenTo the Editor:Re “Students Can Show Us the Way to Free Speech,” by Sophia Rosenfeld (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 18):Ms. Rosenfeld’s essay thoughtfully reminds us that we, as the parenting, teaching and older generations, don’t always have better answers to questions about free speech than our children and students. Indeed, as Ms. Rosenfeld writes, “The sky really isn’t falling.” Our youth are more capable of finding reasonable solutions than we think.I recently attended my son’s college graduation. For weeks before going, I loathed what I thought would surely be a depressing carnival of elite righteousness. Instead, I experienced something far more reassuring about our future.I conversed with my son’s classmates to hear their views about free speech, wokeness and education. Not surprisingly, they are intelligent, insightful, compassionate, but most of all, keenly aware of what is broken. They are respectful and friendly to each other, even when they disagree.Now is the time for the preachy older generations to step aside and trust the younger generations. They can and are navigating the treacherous waters of our time just fine.Nao MatsukataBethesda, Md. More