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      Adam Schiff: Don’t Forget That Many Republicans in Congress Enabled Trump’s Big Lie

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      On Dec. 27, 2020, more than six weeks after losing re-election, an infuriated President Donald Trump telephoned his acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen. Mr. Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, had announced his resignation less than two weeks earlier, after telling the president that the claims of election fraud Mr. Trump had been trumpeting were — as Mr. Barr later bluntly put it in testimony — “bullshit” and publicly affirming that there was no fraud on a scale that would affect the outcome of the election.With Mr. Rosen’s deputy, Richard Donoghue, also on the line, Mr. Trump launched into the same tired, disproved and discredited allegations he had propagated so often at rallies, during news conferences and on social media. None of it was true, and Mr. Donoghue told him so. According to Mr. Donoghue, Mr. Trump, exasperated that his own handpicked top appointees at the Justice Department would not affirm his baseless allegations, responded: “Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”It was a remarkable statement, even for a president who had serially abused the powers of his office. Having been told by the very department that had investigated his claims of fraud that they were untrue, Mr. Trump told the acting attorney general and his deputy to lie about it and said he would take it from there.That Mr. Trump was willing to lie so baldly about a matter at the heart of our democracy — whether the American people can rely on elections to ensure the peaceful transfer of power — now seems self-evident, even unremarkable, when we consider the violent attack on the Capitol he incited days later. But Americans shouldn’t lose sight of how this behavior indicts the former president, and not just the former president but the Republican members of Congress whom he knew would go along with his big lie.The report released Thursday from the Jan. 6 committee, on which I served, makes abundantly clear that there were multiple lines of effort to overturn the 2020 election. Some involved attempts to pressure state legislatures to declare the loser to be the winner. Others involved a fake electors plot, pressure on the vice president to violate his constitutional duty and efforts to force an elections official to “find” thousands of votes that didn’t exist. It was only when all of these other efforts failed that the president resorted to inciting mob violence to try to stop the transfer of power.But one line of effort to overturn the election is given scant attention, and that involved the willingness of so many members of Congress to vote to overturn it. Even after Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police put down the insurrection at great cost to themselves, the majority of Republicans in the House picked up right where they left off, still voting to overturn the results in important states.At one of our Jan. 6 committee hearings, the committee vice chair Liz Cheney, a Republican, called out her colleagues in Congress for their duplicity in the most searing terms: “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”With our work on the committee largely concluded, it will now fall to the Justice Department to ensure a form of accountability that Congress is not empowered to provide, and to vindicate the rule of law in a manner beyond our reach: through prosecution. Multiple laws were violated in the course of a broad attempt to overturn the election, and not just by the foot soldiers who broke into the Capitol building that day and brutally assaulted police officers, but also by those who incited them, encouraged them and, when it was all over, gave them aid and comfort. Bringing a former president to justice who even now calls for the “termination” of our Constitution is a perilous endeavor. Not doing so is far more dangerous.There is a growing disdain for the law and for our country’s institutions, and a frightening acceptance of the use of violence to resolve political disputes. Mr. Trump’s big lie has been one of the most powerful instigators of political violence, since it persuaded millions of people that the election they lost must have been rigged or fraudulent. If people can be convinced of that, what is left but violence to decide who should govern? The attack on the Capitol was an all too foreseeable consequence of Mr. Trump’s relentless effort to alienate the people from their government and from the most important foundation of governance: their right to vote.Even the Constitution cannot protect us if the people sworn to uphold it do not give meaning to their oath of office, if that oath is not informed by ideas of right and wrong, and if people are unwilling to accept the basic truth of things. None of it will be enough.But if we allow ourselves to be guided by facts — not factions — and if we choose our representatives based on their allegiance to the law and to the Constitution, then we should have every confidence that our proud legacy of self-government will go on. It is our hope that this report will make a small contribution to that effort. Our country has never before faced the kind of threat we documented. May it never again.Adam B. Schiff is a Democratic member of Congress from California and the author, most recently, of “Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could.”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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      Gen Z Problems: Maxwell Frost Is Struggling to Rent an Apartment

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      Other young adults, who have poor credit history and are frustrated with expensive rental application fees, can relate to the housing troubles of the first Gen Zer elected to Congress.WASHINGTON — At 25, Representative-elect Maxwell Frost will be youngest member of Congress. He’s also in debt, after maxing out credit cards to win Florida’s 10th Congressional District seat.He said he was upfront about his bad credit when he applied for a one-bedroom apartment in Washington, D.C., where he now has to live part-time for at least the next two years. A broker, he said, told him that was fine. He paid a $50 application fee and then was denied the apartment because of his poor credit history.Mr. Frost, the first Gen Zer elected to Congress and a Democrat, took to Twitter in early December to voice his frustration: “This ain’t meant for people who don’t already have money.”While most other Gen Zers haven’t accrued campaign debt, Mr. Frost’s housing woes have generated a wide range of commiserating among Gen Z Twitter users who have short credit histories and less capital to afford expensive deposits and application fees.Mr. Frost said he also lost hundreds of dollars last year when he was searching for housing in his home district in Orlando.“Application fees are becoming a source of revenue for management companies,” Mr. Frost said in an interview. “We live in a world right now where you can run an extensive background check for $15, why are fees up to $200? Why do we use a credit score to determine if an applicant can pay rent when there’s so many things that hurt someone’s credit score?”The fees are the sour cherry on top of a brutal housing market: Last month, the typical asking rent in the United States was over $2,000, up from $1,850 in November 2021 and $1,600 in November 2020, according to data from Zillow. For Washington D.C., the typical asking rent was over $2,200 last month, a figure that’s been following the national trajectory.Some Gen Zers see no feasible way to get a place of their own: Nearly a third of people between the ages of 18 and 25 are living at home permanently, one recent report found.Raegan Loheide, 25, started looking for a new apartment with their partner and their current roommate last May. Mx. Loheide, a barista, was living in an apartment in Queens, but said their mental and physical health was deteriorating from a series of maintenance issues that their landlord refused to fix, including a roach infestation, holes in the ceiling, a lack of heat and a broken toilet.“We didn’t feel safe,” Mx. Loheide said.But in the months following, Mx. Loheide, their roommate and their partner applied to five apartments — spending hundreds of dollars on application fees — all of which they were rejected from.“The first rejection was because we didn’t have a third guarantor,” Mx. Loheide said. “I kept asking the brokers ‘why?’ but I barely ever got a real answer.”Eventually, Mx. Loheide felt they had no choice but to stay in their current apartment, even if it meant an emotional toll and more landlord troubles.“We couldn’t move,” Mx. Loheide said. “We kept expanding our budgets and scraping together more to afford to relocate, but what good is that if we can’t even get approved?”Why Landlords Care About Your CreditCredit is one of the tools property owners have to utilize to tell upfront if a tenant will be able to make their rent payments, said Jay Martin, the executive director of the Community Housing Improvement Program, a trade association for 4,000 property managers and owners in New York.“Property owners have a fiduciary duty to figure out that the applicants that they’re screening are going to be able to pay the rent that they are applying for, because they have mortgages that they’ll have to pay with the rent money that they are collecting,” Mr. Martin said.Mr. Martin added that the money from application fees “is not in any way a form of revenue for management companies, brokers or property owners.” The fee, Mr. Martin said, goes toward covering the cost of running the background checks, credit checks and other screening processes.Still, some tactics and motives have drawn criticism.Brokers also may encourage people who will likely get denied from an apartment application to apply anyway, for financial incentives or in hopes of raising their statistics on how many applicants they can bring in, said Felipe Ernst, a faculty member in Georgetown’s masters of real estate program and founder of a D.C.-based real estate development firm.While it can create more competition for an apartment and give a landlord more options to choose from, it can negatively impact potential renters who are already struggling since application fees, which can add up to hundreds of dollars, are almost always nonrefundable, he said.“It’s borderline unethical to put someone in the wringer, knowing that they won’t get approved,” Mr. Ernst said. “But at the same time, you need to have a realistic look on your finances. I don’t go to a Ferrari dealership if I can only buy a Honda.”Vipassana Vijayarangan could not live with her boyfriend as planned because her lack of credit disqualified her from renting an apartment with him.Todd Midler for The New York TimesSettling for a Room or a CouchFor people desperate to rent apartments, they are just searching high and low for somewhere to live.In 2018, Vipassana Vijayarangan had to move to D.C. on short notice for a new job. She stayed in an Airbnb until she had pay stubs for a rental application, and with her partner, she found a suitable two-bedroom apartment to apply to in Washington’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.“I told the agent in an email, ‘I’m very interested in this apartment, but I do not have any credit,’” Ms. Vijayarangan, 31, said. “When I lived in the U.S. on a student visa, I didn’t have — and was not allowed — to get a social security card. So it was impossible for me to even apply for the secured version of a credit card until I had work authorization.”Similar to Mr. Frost’s situation, the broker assured Ms. Vijayarangan that her lack of credit wouldn’t be a problem, but in the end, her application was denied.Ms. Vijayarangan, who now works as a data scientist in New York, eventually rented a room in a rowhouse from an immigrant landlord who understood her situation, she said. But, Ms. Vijayarangan and her partner, an American citizen who had a more established credit history, ended up living apart because he could get approved but she could not. “That could have been the first time that we were living together and building a life together,” she said. “We didn’t get to do that.”Mr. Frost is now the proxy for discouraged Gen Zers, but he is just the latest in the storied tradition of members of congress lamenting the process of finding a secondary residence in D.C. after being elected. Through the years, representatives and senators have opted to split a place with one another or even sleep in their offices to save money.In an interview last week, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, said that she has previously “dealt with very similar issues.”In 2018, just after she was first elected and was set to be the youngest woman to serve in Congress, she told The Times, “I have three months without a salary before I’m a member of Congress. So, how do I get an apartment? Those little things are very real.”Similarly, Representative Mondaire Jones, Democrat of New York, said he also ran up debt when he first ran for office.“This place is not set up for people who are not independently wealthy,” Mr. Jones said. “People here don’t understand wealth inequality because they’ve not experienced it.”Mr. Frost has a budget of less than $2,000 a month. He’s looking for a studio apartment within walking distance of the U.S. Capitol since he does not intend to have a car or a driver to chauffeur him. His geographic hopes have restricted his apartment hunt to a few gentrifying neighborhoods.Unsure when he’ll finally secure a place to live, he plans to continue couch surfing for a few months to save money and find an apartment in one of his desired neighborhoods.“I was very close to taking out a loan, which would mean spending a lot of personal money to pay back the loan,” Mr. Frost said. “Rent problems are not just mine. There are millions of Americans that have these same problems.” More

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      Your Friday Briefing: The U.S. Will Train More Ukraine Troops

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      Plus: Chinese companies are hit by U.S. trade restrictions.The U.S. said it would more than double the training provided to Ukraine’s military next year.Brendan Hoffman for The New York TimesThe U.S. will train more Ukrainian troopsThe Pentagon plans to train 600 to 800 Ukrainian troops — one battalion — each month in advanced battlefield tactics at a base in Germany, starting next year. That’s a major increase: Right now, the U.S. trains about 300 people each month.President Biden approved the broader training effort this week, according to two U.S. officials. The Pentagon has already trained 610 Ukrainians to operate an advanced rocket launcher. The troops have used the system to devastating effect, hitting targets far behind Russian lines.Next year, the U.S. will train bigger groups of Ukrainians on various strategies, such as coordinating ground infantry troops with artillery support. The decision to step up training comes as the administration is poised to send a Patriot antimissile battery, America’s most advanced ground-based air defense system, in response to urgent demands from Kyiv.Other updates:The U.S. announced new sanctions on prominent Russians.A Ukrainian Army surveillance team is using infrared technology to try to locate and strike Russian positions.Moscow’s propagandists are broadcasting clips from American cable news and Chinese media to spin a narrative that Russia is winning.Limiting the flow of technology to global rivals has become a key part of U.S. foreign policy.Oliver Contreras for The New York TimesChinese companies hit by U.S. trade restrictionsThe U.S. restricted 36 companies and organizations from accessing American technology that could be used for military purposes, in its latest effort to impede China’s development of advanced semiconductors.In October, the U.S. announced sweeping limits on semiconductor exports to China, both from American companies and those in other countries that use U.S. technology.U.S. officials say that China has increasingly blurred the lines between its military and civilian industries. In response, Chinese diplomats said that the U.S. “has been stretching the concept of national security” and “abusing export control measures.”Details: Yangtze Memory Technology Corporation, which was said to be in talks with Apple to potentially supply components for the iPhone 14, is on the list.Related: Years of Covid restrictions have left behind a collective trauma, Li Yuan writes. Some now want the government to apologize for its hard-line approach, a quixotic hope.Britain’s free health care has long been a national point of pride.Henry Nicholls/ReutersU.K. nurses strike for the first timeBritish nurses went on strike yesterday for the first time in the 74-year history of the National Health Service.The walkout is one of a series of labor actions taking place across Britain this month as sky-high inflation, rising interest rates and a recession put pressure on workers. Rail employees, airport baggage handlers and ambulance workers are also scheduled to stage walkouts over the next several weeks. The nurses are planning a second 12-hour strike next Tuesday.The labor actions come at a time when the health service is in crisis: There have been record delays for ambulance responses and a major backlog for medical procedures, among many other problems.Demands: The nurses are calling for a 19 percent pay increase and better working conditions, which they say will make the profession more attractive and help address staffing shortages. The government has said the pay demands are “unaffordable.”Quotable: “We were out supposedly clapping for our nurses and all of our N.H.S. workers during the pandemic, and here we are treating them like trash,” one supporter said. THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificFiji’s incumbent surged ahead after the app went down. The opposition leader had a lead beforehand.Saeed Khan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFour political leaders in Fiji said the country should stop vote counting after the results app experienced a glitch, The Associated Press reports.India has successfully tested a long-range ballistic missile that could carry nuclear weapons, Al Jazeera reports.Around the WorldTedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the leader of the W.H.O., said that Eritrean forces had killed his uncle and 50 others in Tigray, despite a cease-fire.The European Central Bank and the Bank of England both raised interest rates by half a percentage point, in an effort to fight stubborn inflation.A U.N. peacekeeper from Ireland was shot and killed in southern Lebanon.Boris Becker, the former German tennis champion, returned home after he was freed from a British prison. He hid his assets in a bankruptcy case.U.S. NewsThe House passed a bill that would allow Puerto Ricans to vote on whether the island should be an independent country or a U.S. state. Elon Musk said he had sold another $3.6 billion of Tesla’s stock, perhaps in an effort to prop up Twitter. He’s now sold $23 billion this year.New York City will ban sales of dogs, cats and rabbits starting in 2024 in an effort to crack down on commercial breeders.Claudine Gay will be the first Black person to lead Harvard.The Week in CultureHarry spoke about his strained relationship with Prince William, the heir to the throne.Ben Birchhall/Associated PressIn the latest episodes of “Harry & Meghan,” Harry blames a tabloid for Meghan’s miscarriage.Adriano Pedrosa, who turned around São Paulo’s leading art museum, will oversee the 2024 Venice Biennale.The famously private author Thomas Pynchon sold his archive. But there are no photographs of him in it.Inmates in France picked a winner in an offshoot of the Goncourt, the country’s top literary prize.“The Little Mermaid” will be added to the National Film Registry, along with two dozen other films.Our Styles desk picked their best photos of 2022.A Morning Read“It’s a better hobby than playing video games,” said Talil al-Humaidi’s father.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesFalconry — one of Qatar’s oldest traditions — now involves modern training methods. Drones drag pigeons high into the sky, to teach the falcons to hunt.SPORTSIn the only other World Cup final of his career, Lionel Messi lost to Germany in 2014. Richard Heathcote/Getty ImagesThe World Cup finalFrance will play Argentina at 6 p.m. local time on Sunday in Qatar. (That’s 8:30 p.m. in Delhi, midnight in Seoul and 2 a.m. on Monday in Sydney.)Argentina will rally behind Lionel Messi, who has never won a World Cup. Now, he has a final, glorious chance at soccer immortality. At 35, Messi is arguably the finest player of all time.France, though, has his heir apparent: Kylian Mbappé, 23, who is the tournament’s leading scorer. France won the last World Cup, in 2018, and is now the first country in over 20 years to qualify for consecutive finals.What else: Croatia and Morocco will play on Saturday for third place.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookAndrew Scrivani for The New York TimesMake pancakes for breakfast this weekend.What to Read“Eccentric Lives,” a collection of cheeky obituaries from Britain’s Daily Telegraph, includes one about a viscount who shot at a hot-air balloon.What to Watch“The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari” recounts an eruption off the coast of New Zealand that left several groups of tourists struggling to survive.ExerciseDo you really need to stretch?TravelIn just a weekend in Seoul, you can hike fortress walls, bike along the Han River and taste mung bean pancakes at a covered market.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Space between (three letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. Have a lovely weekend! I’ll be back on Monday. — AmeliaP.S. Sam Stejskal of The Athletic joined CNN to debate who’s the greatest soccer player ever.“The Daily” is about Russia’s draft. You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      In Fiji’s Closely Observed Election, a Former Coup Leader Is Ahead

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      In a region where China and the United States fight for influence, observers await results from the vote to choose the island nation’s prime minister — and to see if the outcome will be respected.It was a clash between two former coup leaders, set against the backdrop of a remote and palm-fringed vacation destination that has, of late, taken on outsized importance in a battle for primacy in the Pacific between the United States and China.And with the military constitutionally permitted to intervene if it saw fit, that contest was one with the potential to become extremely volatile.So, as voters went to the polls for the general election on Wednesday, focus turned to Fiji, an island nation known regionally for its stormy politics and which experienced four coups between 1987 and 2006. This was the country’s third general election since they were reintroduced to the Constitution in 2013.In preliminary results, Sitiveni Rabuka, the leader of the People’s Alliance party — who led Fiji’s first coup in 1987 — appeared to have secured a narrow victory against the strongman incumbent, Prime Minister Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama. Mr. Bainimarama, widely known by the first name Frank, himself seized power with the help of the military in 2006, before winning democratic elections in 2014 and 2018.The vote count is expected to take as long as two days, with ballots trickling in from outer islands and remote villages. The first set of results was delayed by a matter of hours, as the country’s election results app worked only intermittently. Late on Wednesday night, the release of provisional results was placed on hold as the Fijian Election Office contended with operational difficulties.But as of Wednesday night, Mr. Rabuka’s party, the People’s Alliance, had taken a convincing lead over Mr. Bainimarama’s party, Fiji First.Whether Mr. Bainimarama intends to honor the results remains unclear. Speaking to foreign reporters before the results were released, the former leader said he would “of course” respect the outcome of the election, even if they were not in his favor. He added: “Haven’t they got any intelligent reporters from Australia to come ask me a better question than that?”But experts have warned that Mr. Bainimarama may yet seek to intervene with the support of the military, with which he maintains a close relationship. The country’s Constitution gives final control over citizens’ “security, defense and well-being” to the military, a clause that is widely understood to mean that it has the right to intervene if it sees fit.Election officials preparing to open ballot boxes for counting in Suva on Wednesday.Saeed Khan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“It will come down to how the military leadership sees it,” said Dominic O’Sullivan, a professor of political science at Charles Sturt University in Australia. Though the head of the military had in recent days encouraged people to vote and vowed not to interfere, he added, “You can’t take that as an absolute, unbreakable commitment, because it does have the constitutional power.”Before results were counted, Mr. Rabuka suggested that Mr. Bainimarama might appeal to the court system in the event that his party was not the victor. “I’m hoping for a flood of votes in our favor,” he said, “so that if he makes any attempt at going through that system, that course, it will be futile.”Fiji, with a population of about a million people and by far the largest economy of its region, grew closer to China in 2006 after an initial burst of investment from Beijing. The funding was particularly timely as Fiji faced damaging sanctions from Australia and New Zealand related to the coup in which Mr. Bainimarama came to power.The relationship with China could enter a new, more distant phase under Mr. Rabuka, who earlier this year indicated that he would prefer closer ties to Australia, a longtime ally of Fiji, instead of signing a mooted security pact with Beijing.The early election results come after a bitter contest and amid a government clampdown on supporters of opposition parties and the press. In one high-profile example, a pro-opposition lawyer who had made light of an error in a legal document was convicted of contempt of court, a sign of Fiji’s eroding civil liberties.With little pre-election polling, analysts have struggled to predict an outcome. For 48 hours until the election ended, Fiji underwent a media blackout, in which all political parties were forbidden from campaigning. Citizens were prohibited from making political posts on social media, displaying banners and wearing colors or logos of parties. Those who break the rules could be subject to stiff penalties, including prison.Even with little coverage from the news media in Fiji itself, there were early signs that Mr. Bainimarama’s support might be declining, including a dwindling voter share over the last two elections. There is also a sense of disgruntlement among voters about some of the economic challenges the country faces in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, which devastated its all-important tourism industry.“The government’s been in office for a while, and people tend to tire of long-term governments,” said Professor O’Sullivan.Even Mr. Bainimarama’s government had sought to appeal to calls for a fresh face, running on a platform of reform, with the slogan “We are the change.”Frank Bainimarama leaving a polling station in Suva on Wednesday.Mick Tsikas/EPA, via ShutterstockTurnout in the election was also exceptionally low: Late in the day, Mohammed Saneem, the Fijian election supervisor, called on voters to come to the polls, with 51 percent of voters having cast a ballot as of an hour before polls closed. In the 2006 election, voter turnout was at 64 percent.The situation was concerning, Mr. Saneem told reporters after the polls had closed. He added: “Every Fijian had sufficient time to vote. We have significant numbers of people who did not come to vote.”The Fijian electoral base skews young, with more than 50 percent of registered voters being younger than 40, while 86 percent of candidates on the ballot are over 40. Mr. Bainimarama, 68, is a 16-year veteran of Fijian politics, while Mr. Rabuka, 74, has been a fixture of Fijian political life since 1987.The reluctance to come to the polls may communicate a wider sense of cynicism about the freedom and fairness of the election, said Professor O’Sullivan. “With the two likely contenders for prime minister being former coup leaders, it may be that people think, ‘Is it really democracy?’” More

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      Kyrsten Sinema Brings Bad Tidings for Democrats in 2024

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      Arizona was on the cusp of seating a Democratic governor alongside two Democratic senators for the first time since 1951 when Senator Kyrsten Sinema abruptly announced last week she is leaving the Democratic Party to become an independent.The move was met with harsh criticism from the left, which saw it as another in a series of self-aggrandizing acts that risk sacrificing the Democratic Party’s power and President Biden’s legislative agenda for her personal benefit.Polls make it clear that Ms. Sinema is reviled by a large segment of her now-former party. In a recent Civiqs poll of likely voters, she was at a meager 7 percent approval among Arizona Democrats. Her switch to declare herself an independent may seem like a desperate act to hold on to the Senate seat she won in 2018 by fewer than three percentage points.It may be that. But for Democrats looking ahead to 2024, her move compounds the difficulties of what is promising to be a brutal Senate map and suggests some hard truths about the party’s chances in Arizona and places like it.The Donald Trump era may have given Democrats in Arizona a bit of a blue mirage. They were very successful in the midterms: Senator Mark Kelly won re-election, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs will be the new governor, and Adrian Fontes will become the secretary of state.But it seems that the Democrats’ success is not simply the result of permanent shifts in Arizona’s demographics. Before Mr. Trump’s 2020 defeat, Arizona voted for five consecutive Republican presidential candidates and, before Ms. Sinema’s win in 2018, had not elected a single Democratic senator since 1976. Arizona’s electorate has certainly grown, urbanized and diversified, but registration percentages haven’t changed much since 2012. Today, 35 percent of Arizona registered voters are registered Republicans; 34 percent are Independents; and 31 percent are Democrats.Democrats’ recent victories were presaged by overtly moderate Democratic candidates running against opponents endorsed by Mr. Trump. Ms. Sinema’s path to the Senate was buoyed by her opponent’s irreparably damaging association with Mr. Trump.In announcing her departure from the Democratic Party, Ms. Sinema argued that representing Arizona as an independent will “provide a place of belonging for many folks across the state and the country who also are tired of the partisanship.” She is not wrong on that point: Over a quarter of Americans say they dislike both parties according to Pew Research Center. Only 6 percent said so in 1994.For independent voters, it is disdain for partisanship — not moderate ideology — that drives most of them to buck the party label. A vast majority of independents, 75 to 90 percent, have no trouble identifying their preferred party, and they nearly always vote for it. It is the rancor and incivility associated with partisanship that dissuades independents from publicly showing their true colors.Independent voters are hardly a uniform voting bloc: Generally, they just about evenly divide between those who hold liberal views and usually vote for Democrats and those who are conservative and usually vote for Republicans.The bad news for Ms. Sinema — and perhaps for Democrats — is that independent candidates rarely succeed. Without a sizable Republican or Democratic base, an independent will struggle to cobble together ideologically incompatible voters who are bonded primarily by their reluctance to publicly identify with the party they secretly support.This is one area where the Trump effect has come into play. In recent Arizona elections, the state’s independents have shown that they appear to be more favorable to Democrats than Republicans. In the state’s Senate race, exit polls suggest that independents backed Mr. Kelly over his Trump-endorsed opponent, Blake Masters, by 16 percentage points, and self-identified moderates favored Mr. Kelly by 30 percentage points. Ms. Hobbs similarly won the independent vote against her Trump-endorsed opponent, Kari Lake, by seven percentage points, and she won self-identified moderates by 20 percentage points.Indeed, recent survey data I collected across Arizona shows that independents look much more like Democrats than Republicans when it comes to their disdain for Mr. Trump. Even among those Arizona independents who say they lean toward the Republican Party, 40 percent see the state G.O.P. as “too conservative.”Given repeated Republican losses, it seems that Arizona Republicans — and independents, who have a large say in Arizona’s electoral outcomes — have rejected Mr. Trump as well as his chosen nominees, and this has helped usher in a wave of Democratic candidates, Ms. Sinema included.When a state’s status shifts to swing, it is often attributed to demographic change in the electorate. But in Arizona, that is not likely the case, or at least that isn’t the full story. And this is why the outlook for Democrats might be troubling.Sure, Arizona boasts high population growth in urban areas like Maricopa County. But voter data does not support theories that a transforming electorate is shifting electoral tides. Over time, voter registration percentages have shown Republicans declining slightly but maintaining their numerical advantage.That shift is probably better attributed to changes in the politicians who are running rather than to the people deciding whether to vote for them.If she had remained a Democrat, Ms. Sinema would not be the first politician who faced harsh criticism for frustrating her party, and many of them prevailed in subsequent elections. Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska are examples.If nothing changes and Ms. Sinema runs for re-election, her former party will be left in a pickle. She probably can’t win as an independent, especially if her popularity doesn’t improve quickly, but a Democrat (like Representative Ruben Gallego, who has hinted at a Senate bid) running against Ms. Sinema and a Republican is also unlikely to win.So for Democrats, Ms. Sinema has made a daunting Senate map in 2024 even worse. There will be 33 Senate seats up for re-election, and Democrats will defend 23 (including Ms. Sinema’s). Three of those seats are in states that Mr. Trump won by at least eight percentage points in 2020: Montana, Ohio and West Virginia.When Republicans in Arizona and other states leave Mr. Trump behind, Democrats will lose this electorally useful foil. States where Democrats enjoyed upset victories against MAGA Republicans might see some of their gains rolled back, especially if the Republican Party rejects Mr. Trump and elevates candidates who better represent more of the party’s voter base.Ms. Sinema’s move has just added another degree of difficulty to a formidable Senate puzzle for Democrats in 2024 — and beyond.Samara Klar is a political scientist at the University of Arizona and an author of “Independent Politics: How Disdain for Parties Leads to Political Inaction.”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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      Sununu on Trump: ‘He’s Not Scaring Anyone Out of the Race’

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      In a wide-ranging interview, Chris Sununu, the New Hampshire governor, called the Republican presidential primary a tossup. As for Trump? “He’s not clearing the field.”Confident and even brash, Chris Sununu is one of the most popular governors in America. In a year when many Republicans struggled, he was re-elected in New Hampshire by more than 15 percentage points. The way to win, he says, is not “ranting and raving” about cultural topics but the old-fashioned way: listening carefully to voters and talking about solutions to their most pressing problems.Sununu thinks Republicans need to relearn the “basic tenets of politics.” He’s no fan of Donald Trump, and he thinks the former president will be eminently beatable in the Republican primary. He also says it’s “insulting” of Democrats to demand that New Hampshire give up its traditional place in the presidential calendar to suit the “personal whims” of President Biden, who he predicts will eventually be pushed aside by Democratic power brokers in Washington or bow out on his own.The New Hampshire governor, who is often discussed as a possible presidential contender in 2024, had a lot to say over the course of a 40-minute interview. Here’s a transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity:Let’s talk about what happened in the midterm elections. A lot of people are blaming Donald Trump for choosing candidates in primaries who struggled in November. Is it that simple?No, no, no, no. Look, there’s a lot of different pieces here. It’s not just about former President Trump. It’s about the candidates themselves. They were bad candidates because they had a bad message, right? Often they made Trump a part of their message. And that just isn’t what voters wanted.A lot of candidates forgot the most basic tenets of politics: I need more votes than the other side. And it isn’t just about catering to a base or firing up your base. You need to listen to independents. You need to listen to all of the voting constituencies to see what the issues are for voters.There was also a little bit of manipulation of the primary process by Democrats. We saw it right here in New Hampshire with our U.S. Senate race. You effectively had the opposing party trying to pick your party’s candidate. Democrats were good at defining our candidates for us.Some Republicans say that candidates were too focused on hot-button cultural topics like transgender athletes competing in women’s sports, or books in school libraries. Do you agree with that critique?Yes. I agree that candidates focused on the wrong issues. I don’t mind addressing cultural issues; of course we need to. But it’s how you as a candidate stand up for it — not just ranting and raving, but hopefully inspiring folks to really believe in you as the person who can be a positive agent of change for those issues.Democrats talk about how abortion was a really powerful issue for them. You supported a 24-week ban, right?Yeah, I signed that. The Legislature put it in the budget. I’m pro-choice, but it’s a provision that I think most Americans would support. It’s very late — the third trimester.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

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      Is the Supreme Court About to Upend American Election Laws?

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      Here’s what to know about a court case that could change the way Americans vote — and who decides how they do.For months, my inbox has been bombarded by anxious Democrats and election experts wanting to talk about a once-obscure legal theory that could fundamentally alter the way Americans vote.Known as the independent state legislature doctrine, it holds, in its purest form, that state constitutions have little to no ability to constrain state legislatures. The doctrine emerged from a novel interpretation of the U.S. Constitution’s Elections Clause, which grants states the authority to set the “time, places and manner” of federal elections.At the core of the dispute is whether the framers intended the word “legislature” in the document to be understood strictly, or whether they meant that other institutions — like state courts, governors and secretaries of state — also had important roles to play in setting and interpreting the rules around elections and voting.A fringe version of the doctrine entered the public discussion last year when it emerged that one of Donald Trump’s lawyers, John Eastman, had written a memo arguing that it even allowed state lawmakers to send their own slate of presidential electors to Washington.The Supreme Court has traditionally been gun-shy about encroaching on state courts, especially when they are interpreting their own constitutions.But a more mainstream conservative position, embraced by the Republican Party and rejected by Democrats, started gaining support on the right amid legal battles over the accommodations some states made for voters during the pandemic, like the expansion of mail voting.If adopted, the doctrine would, among other things, bar state courts from ensuring that state laws comply with a requirement, common in many state constitutions, that elections be “free and fair” — with potentially vast implications for rules on redistricting, citizen-led commissions and voting. Understand the U.S. Supreme Court’s New TermCard 1 of 6A race to the right. More

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      For Sunak, Like Biden, Dullness Could Be a Secret Weapon

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      For all their differences, President Biden and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain share a challenge: operating in the wake of a larger-than-life predecessor. They have tactics in common, too.LONDON — For years, Boris Johnson and Donald J. Trump were viewed as populist twins — flamboyant, scandal-scarred, norm-busting figures, acting in a trans-Atlantic political drama. With both out of office, at least for now, a more timely and intriguing comparison is between Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and President Biden.Though they differ by obvious metrics — young vs. old, conservative vs. liberal — Mr. Sunak and Mr. Biden are using strikingly similar methods to govern in the wake of their larger-than-life predecessors. Both have tried to let the steam out of their countries’ hothouse politics by making a virtue of being, well, a little boring.The similarities are more than stylistic: Both lead parties that are divided between centrist and more extreme forces, whether to the right, for Mr. Sunak, or the left, for the American president. And both are dogged by poor poll numbers, in part because of economic ills but also because their pragmatic, undramatic style can seem ill-suited to the polarized politics of post-Brexit Britain and post-Trump America.For Mr. Sunak, who took office in October amid an economic crisis and after months of political upheaval that left his Conservative Party exhausted and unpopular, Mr. Biden might offer a blueprint for political rehabilitation.Two years into his term, Mr. Biden has confounded the skeptics, with the Democratic Party performing unexpectedly well in the midterm elections, in defiance of historical trends that typically punish the party in power.“Boris and Trump were generalists, short on details and ideologically flexible, but the sheer force of their personality brought them to the top, and eventually led to their downfalls,” said Frank Luntz, an American political strategist and pollster who was a classmate of Mr. Johnson’s at Oxford University.“Rishi and Biden are the exact opposite,” Mr. Luntz continued. “Not particularly great communicators, quite often trapped in the weeds of details, but able to move their governments forward because of their detailed knowledge and experience.”President Biden and Jill Biden after returning from Camp David on Sunday.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesCircumstances forced both leaders to press for emergency legislation right off the bat: Mr. Biden, to cushion the damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic; Mr. Sunak, to counter the disastrous foray into trickle-down tax policy engineered by his immediate predecessor, Liz Truss. That spooked financial markets, sent the British pound into a tailspin and drove up interest rates.After passing his Covid relief bill, Mr. Biden managed to push through ambitious legislation to combat climate change. With narrow majorities in the House and especially in the Senate, he had to fend off progressives in his party and win over centrists like Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, who held up that bill until he negotiated compromises with the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York.The Biden PresidencyHere’s where the president stands after the midterm elections.A Defining Issue: The shape of Russia’s war in Ukraine — and its effects on global markets —  in the months and years to come could determine President Biden’s political fate.Beating the Odds: Mr. Biden had the best midterms of any president in 20 years, but he still faces the sobering reality of a Republican-controlled House for the next two years.2024 Questions: Mr. Biden feels buoyant after the better-than-expected midterms, but as he turns 80, he confronts a decision on whether to run again that has some Democrats uncomfortable.Legislative Agenda: The Times analyzed every detail of Mr. Biden’s major legislative victories and his foiled ambitions. Here’s what we found.Mr. Sunak, who has a more than 70-seat majority in Parliament, may not face as much legislative needle-threading in passing his package of tax increases and spending cuts. But he does have to contend with an increasingly unruly Tory Party, which is making it difficult for him to settle a trade dispute with the European Union over Northern Ireland, overhaul Britain’s cumbersome planning rules for home building, or even construct onshore windmills.“He’s being pushed around by various factions in the Tory Party,” said Kim Darroch, a former British ambassador to the United States. “Biden, by contrast, is quite resolute about his moderate, centrist principles.”While Mr. Sunak’s allies make no explicit comparisons between him and Mr. Biden, several have claimed his quiet, unflashy competence is restoring stability after the political roller-coaster of the last three months. On returning to the cabinet as a senior minister, Michael Gove declared “boring is back,” and joked that it was the government’s “utter determination to try to be as dull as possible.”Asked in an interview whether the motif of Mr. Sunak’s leadership was that “boring is the new sexy,” Mark Harper, the transport secretary, smiled and replied: “What he’s about is a government that’s grown up, that grips the issues that people are concerned about and gets on with governing.”Mr. Sunak and his wife, Akshata Murty, returning to 10 Downing Street last month after visiting a food and drinks market promoting British small businesses.Pool photo by Toby MelvilleUnlike Mr. Biden, 80, whose aides still periodically find themselves having to clean up unguarded statements, Mr. Sunak, 42, rarely commits a gaffe. His cautious persona and stilted speaking style have drawn comparisons to John Major, who in 1990 succeeded a more forceful prime minister, Margaret Thatcher.Mr. Major’s electoral record was mixed: He surprised many by winning a modest majority of 21 in the general election in 1992. But that victory was followed swiftly by a financial crisis that sapped his reputation and paved the way for a landslide victory five years later by the Labour Party leader, Tony Blair.This time, the crisis struck before Mr. Sunak took office. But it leaves him with no more than two years to rescue his party before the next election, and he faces the headwinds of soaring inflation, rising interest rates, labor unrest and a recession. Depending on when Mr. Sunak chooses to call that vote, there is a chance that American voters could be electing a president around the same time.Will Mr. Biden be in that race? The chances of his running again rose after the midterms, not to mention the president’s proposal to rearrange the Democratic Party’s primary calendar, so that South Carolina, which resurrected his presidential fortunes in 2020, will now vote first, ahead of the Iowa caucus.There is no evidence that Mr. Biden and Mr. Sunak talked politics in their first face-to-face meeting as leaders at a summit in Indonesia last month. Indeed, given their disparity in age, background and politics, there is little indication they will develop the kind of rapport enjoyed by, say, Mr. Blair and President Bill Clinton. When the Tories elected Mr. Sunak as leader, Mr. Biden hailed it as a “groundbreaking milestone,” though he added, “As my brother would say, ‘Go figure.’”At the moment, the oddsmakers are betting against Mr. Sunak. There is even speculation that if the Conservatives get thrashed in local elections next May, his enemies might move against him and try to reinstall Mr. Johnson. But Mr. Sunak’s allies hope for a Biden-like surprise, which could give him a solid base for the next general election (it must take place by January 2025).Given Labour’s formidable lead in opinion polls — and a Labour leader, Keir Starmer, who rivals Mr. Sunak in competence over charisma — few analysts see a path for Mr. Sunak to a convincing victory. But some think the outcome could be much closer than some of Labour’s supporters now expect. For one thing, Mr. Sunak’s poll ratings exceed those of his battered party, which is the reverse of Mr. Biden and the Democrats before the midterm elections.“There is a big difference between what voters think of the Conservative Party and what voters think of Sunak,” said Peter Kellner, a polling expert. “The big question now is whether the Tory Party drags Sunak’s ratings down, or Sunak drags the Tory Party’s ratings up.”Those are the same questions handicappers were asking about Mr. Biden in the anxious days leading up to the midterms. If both he and Mr. Sunak are in still office in 2025, it will be proof that boring is not only back, but political gold. More