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      ‘An egregious act’: debt ceiling deal imperils the environment, critics say

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      The deal to raise the US debt ceiling will have significant ramifications for the climate and nature, by fast-tracking a controversial gas pipeline in West Virginia and limiting the scope of environmental reviews for future developments, environmentalists have warned.The agreement struck between Joe Biden and Republicans who control the House of Representatives states the Mountain Valley pipeline is “required in the national interest” and should be issued its necessary permits within 21 days and be shielded from legal challenge by those who object to it.Environmentalists reacted in outrage at the deal, arguing the 300-mile (480km) pipeline, which will bring fracked gas from West Virginia to southern Virginia, will endanger hundreds of waterways, threaten landscapes including the nearby Appalachian trail and worsen the climate crisis.“Singling out the Mountain Valley pipeline for approval in a vote about our nation’s credit limit is an egregious act,” said Peter Anderson, Virginia policy director at Appalachian Voices, a campaign group that has charted hundreds of environmental violations by the project across the two states.“By attempting to suspend the rules for a pipeline company that has repeatedly polluted communities’ water and flouted the conditions in its permits, the president and Congress would deny basic legal protections, procedural fairness and environmental justice to communities along the pipeline’s path.”The pipeline was recently provided a key approval by the federal government to go through a stretch of forest but is currently stymied by court action that has dogged it for years. Mountain Valley has just 20 miles (30km) left to complete but is several years behind schedule due to opposition from green groups and nearby residents who risk having their land taken for the project.However, Joe Manchin, the West Virginia senator, coal baron and the Senate’s leading beneficiary of campaign donations from gas pipeline interests, has vigorously lobbied for the pipeline’s construction and appears to have prevailed in his quest. Manchin, a centrist Democrat, is considered a valued swing vote in an evenly divided Senate.“I am pleased speaker [Kevin] McCarthy and his leadership team see the tremendous value in completing the [Mountain Valley pipeline] to increase domestic energy production and drive down costs across America and especially in West Virginia,” Manchin said in a statement that did not mention Biden. “I am proud to have fought for this critical project and to have secured the bipartisan support necessary to get it across the finish line.”The White House has framed the debt ceiling deal as one that has protected Biden’s key climate achievements, such as the numerous provisions for clean energy support in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, which Republicans were keen to strip away in negotiations.But the agreement does not include any measures to accelerate the expansion of electricity transmission, a crucial factor in whether the shift to renewables will actually materialize, while acceding to Republican demands to curtail the environmental reviews of developments such as oil and gas pipelines.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUnder the deal, reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act, the US’s first national environmental law, will be limited to just two years for federal projects.Environmental groups, already angered by Biden’s ongoing embrace of large fossil fuel projects, such as the recently approved Willow oil drilling operation in Alaska, said these provisions mean that Democrats should block the debt deal when it is voted upon in Congress this week.“President Biden made a colossal error in negotiating a deal that sacrifices the climate and working families,” said Jean Su, energy justice program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Congress should reject these poison pills and pass a clean debt ceiling bill.” More

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      Suspect named in baseball bat attack at Democratic congressman’s office

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      Police in Virginia on Monday named the suspect in a violent attack in which two staffers for a Democratic congressman were assaulted with a baseball bat, requiring hospital treatment.Xuan Kha Tran Pham, 49, was arrested after the attack at Gerry Connolly’s office in Fairfax. Connolly told CNN one staff member was hit in the head while the other, an intern on her first day in the job, was hit on the side.Connolly said the attacker, a constituent, caused widespread damage to the office, including shattering glass and breaking computers.“The thought that someone would take advantage of my staff’s accessibility to commit an act of violence is unconscionable and devastating,” Connolly said in a statement.He told CNN the suspected attacker “was filled with out of control rage”.A police spokesperson, Sgt Lisa Gardner, said police were called at about 10.50am. Connolly was not at the office, Gardner said, adding that some staff members hid during the attack.Acts of political extremism, including ones targeting lawmakers, have become increasingly common in the US.Last October, Paul Pelosi, husband of the former Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi, was attacked in his home in San Francisco by a man armed with a hammer.Afterwards, the Michigan representative Debbie Dingell predicted “somebody is going to die”.Speaking to Axios, Dingell said that two years previously, after the now fired Fox News host Tucker Carlson broadcast a segment about her, she “had men outside my home with assault weapons that night”.The Democratic governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, was the target of a rightwing kidnap plot foiled by law enforcement.Justice Samuel Alito, meanwhile, has complained of an increase in threats to members of the supreme court. Last year, a man was charged with attempting to kill Brett Kavanaugh, like Alito a member of the 6-3 conservative majority.Connolly, 73, has represented the 11th congressional district in Virginia since 2009. A prominent Democratic voice in Congress, he frequently spars with Republicans who control the House.Connolly last week criticised CNN’s decision to host Donald Trump for a town hall in New Hampshire, telling Fox News that the event was a “travesty”.“Why would you put a liar and a convicted criminal on a town hall?” Connolly asked during his appearance on the network. “And why would you give him that privilege? … To me, it is frankly reprehensible.”Trump is not a convicted criminal. Last week, in a civil case in New York, he was found liable for sexual assault and defamation against the writer E Jean Carroll.On Monday, Connolly thanked police and emergency medical professionals. The person who attacked his office was taken into custody, he said, adding that his focus was on ensuring his staff members were “receiving the care they need”.“I have the best team in Congress,” Connolly said. “My district office staff make themselves available to constituents and members of the public every day.”Mark Warner, one of two Democratic senators from Virginia, said: “Intimidation and violence – especially against public servants – has no place in our society. This is an extraordinarily disturbing development, and my thoughts are with the staff members who were injured.”Jason Miyares, the Republican attorney general of Virginia, wished Connolly’s staff members well and said: “Political violence is always unacceptable. The coward who did this should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”But Dan Goldman, a Democratic congressman from New York, linked the attack to remarks about political violence by Republicans.“This is horrifying,” Goldman wrote. “From ‘very fine people on both sides’” – which Donald Trump said about violence at a far-right march in Virginia in 2017 – “to calling January 6 a ‘peaceful protest’, there are serious consequences when elected officials refuse to condemn or outright glorify political violence.” More

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      Virginia’s Youngkin Pauses on Possible 2024 Campaign

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      Glenn Youngkin was seen as a promising candidate after he was elected governor of Virginia, a Democratic-leaning state. But he appears to be putting national aspirations on hold.Virginia’s governor is putting the presidential hoopla on ice.Gov. Glenn Youngkin, the Republican whose surprising election in a blue-trending state set off instant talk of a presidential run, has tapped the brakes on 2024, telling advisers and donors that his sole focus is on Virginia’s legislative elections in the fall.Mr. Youngkin hopes to flip the state legislature to a Republican majority. That could earn him a closer look from rank-and-file Republicans across the country, who so far have been indifferent to the presidential chatter surrounding him in the news media, and among heavyweight donors he would need to keep pace alongside more prominent candidates. He has yet to crack 1 percent in polls about the potential Republican field.Backing away for now is also a bow to political reality. Mr. Youngkin has a shortage of clean conservative victories in the divided Virginia legislature, compared with, say, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who stole much of Mr. Youngkin’s thunder on “parents’ rights” issues in education.An effort by Mr. Youngkin last year to raise his profile by campaigning for Republicans around the country fizzled when most proved too extreme for voters and lost their races.Tellingly, Mr. Youngkin’s two top political advisers, who guided his gubernatorial victory and were mapping out a 2024 strategy, both took jobs this month with a super PAC that supports the presidential candidacy of Mr. DeSantis.Asked about his presidential decision timeline this week, Mr. Youngkin said, “Listen, I didn’t write a book, and I’m not in Iowa or New Hampshire or South Carolina.” Instead, he said, he is putting his full focus on November’s statewide Virginia election, when all 140 seats in both chambers of the General Assembly are on the ballot. A decision to enter the 2024 campaign in November would be historically late, well past the first Republican debate in August.“I am wholly focused on the Commonwealth of Virginia, and I’m looking forward to these elections,’’ Mr. Youngkin said during an appearance to promote Virginia’s agricultural exports. Standing outdoors at a terminal for barges near Richmond — dressed in a blue suit and tie rather than the red fleece vest he wore while seeking office, a symbol of his suburban dad-ness — the governor, 56, said that gaining majorities in the legislature “is what this year is all about.”His political fund-raising committees announced last week that they had collected $2.75 million in the first three months of the year, surpassing the best quarterly results of any prior Virginia governor and providing a war chest that could help Republicans in local races.Success, however, is far from assured. Virginia Democrats plan to campaign heavily on Mr. Youngkin’s unsuccessful push for a 15-week abortion ban, an issue that has mobilized voters in state after state since the reversal of Roe v. Wade.Mr. Youngkin in January at a rally for Kevin Adams, a Senate candidate, in Virginia Beach.Kristen Zeis for The New York Times“There is no amount of money that is going to overcome the regressive policies that Glenn Younkin and the MAGA Republicans have been trying to impose on Virginia,” said Susan Swecker, the chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Virginia.She predicted that suburban voters who favored Mr. Youngkin in 2021 would broadly reject Republicans, after the Supreme Court ended the national right to abortion last year and as conservatives press for national restrictions, most recently through a federal judge in Texas who revoked the 23-year-old approval of a common abortion pill.“We’re going to remind voters of this every single day: Don’t treat women like second-class citizens,” Ms. Swecker said.Republicans are counting on Mr. Younkgin’s strong job approval rating, 57 percent in a poll last month from Roanoke College, and his fund-raising prowess as a wealthy former financial executive who can connect with the G.O.P. donor class well beyond his state.Francis Rooney, a former Republican congressman from Florida whose family owns construction, real estate and insurance businesses, donated $100,000 to Mr. Youngkin in November.“We need to be doing things as Republicans to get back to a broader majority,’’ said Mr. Rooney, praising the governor’s appeal to independents and some Democratic voters. But when asked what Mr. Youngkin had told donors about his presidential ambitions, he said, “I don’t think anybody knows other than him.”Recently, Mr. Youngkin’s top political strategist, Jeff Roe, who continued to advise him after guiding the 2021 race, signed on as a consultant to a super PAC preparing the ground for a DeSantis presidential run.Another top Youngkin strategist, Kristin Davison, joined the same DeSantis group, Never Back Down. (Mr. Roe and Ms. Davison also continue to consult for Mr. Youngkin.)The day after Mr. Roe’s new job was reported, Mr. Youngkin named a new adviser to run his political action committee, Spirit of Virginia. That strategist, Dave Rexrode, has a long history in local Virginia elections.“If you look at where House and Senate districts are in play, the governor has a high job approval in all these districts,” Mr. Rexrode said. “They like what he’s doing in Richmond, and they want to send allies to work with the governor.”In his first year in office, Mr. Youngkin signed a bill giving parents a veto over schoolbooks with “sexually explicit content,’’ a measure rooted in one mother’s objection to Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” in the curriculum. Elizabeth Frantz/ReutersVirginia’s legislative races will be contested based on new maps that were drawn without regard for incumbents, deeply scrambled familiar political geographies and led to a wave of retirements. Both parties consider the House of Delegates, where Republicans hold a slight majority, and the State Senate, which Democrats narrowly control, to be in play.In his first year in office with the divided legislature, Mr. Youngkin won $4 billion in tax cuts while giving teachers a 10 percent raise in a budget deal with Democrats. He also signed a bill giving parents a veto over schoolbooks with “sexually explicit content,” a measure rooted in one mother’s objection to Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” in the curriculum.This year, Democrats stopped Mr. Youngkin’s proposed 15-week abortion ban. But on his own, he has rolled back the policies of earlier governors of both parties that automatically restored voting rights to people leaving prison. He has used executive orders to try to rescind environmental mandates from previous administrations, including on power-plant emissions and gas-powered vehicles.On Monday, Mr. Youngkin was asked about the ruling by the Texas judge last week invalidating the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. If upheld, it would reduce access to abortions for Virginia women, even though abortion is legal in the state.Mr. Youngkin said he didn’t “have much of an opinion” on the case, which is making its way through appeals courts. “And we’ll just have to wait to see how that gets finalized,” he said.If Mr. Youngkin does wait until after November’s elections to enter the presidential primary, he not only will miss the first Republican debate in August, but he will also start considerably behind his potential rivals in fund-raising and voter attention. He would be bucking recent history, when very few presidential hopefuls waited past summer and none went on to win their party nomination.But the 2024 cycle could be different, with former President Donald J. Trump directing fire and fury at early challengers who pick up steam, notably Mr. DeSantis, who has fallen back in polls.Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said missing the first debate could be a blessing. “The people who are in it are going to get banged up” by Mr. Trump, he said.If Virginia Republicans win control of both chambers of the legislature, Mr. Youngkin would emerge as “the fresh face, the new conqueror” of a state that, through 2020, was under full Democratic control, Mr. Sabato said.Given the electoral losses Republicans have repeatedly suffered in the Trump era, Mr. Youngkin “can step in and promise to put the party together,” he added. At least, he said, “that’s their theory.” More

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      DeSantis Attempts to Woo Young Evangelicals at Liberty University

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      The Florida governor pitched himself as a defender of traditional values to students at Liberty University, an important stage for Republican presidential hopefuls.The morning after signing one of the nation’s most stringent abortion bills into law, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida pitched himself to thousands of evangelical college students as a defender of truth, common sense and morality in the public square.“Yes, the truth will set you free,” Mr. DeSantis said, invoking the words of Christ. “Because woke represents a war on truth, we must wage a war on woke.”Mr. DeSantis spoke to about 10,000 students at Liberty University’s twice-weekly convocation service, which the school bills as “the world’s largest gathering of Christian students.”He was introduced by pastor Jonathan Falwell, recently named the school’s chancellor, who drew sustained applause when he mentioned Mr. DeSantis’s signing of the abortion law on Thursday night. The law prohibits the procedure past six weeks.Mr. DeSantis did not explicitly mention the abortion law. He opened his speech on a personal note, thanking the audience for their prayers after his wife’s cancer diagnosis in 2021.“The prayers have been answered,” he said. He went on to tout his record in Florida on an array of issues including new restrictions on gender-affirming medical treatments.“We chose facts over fear, we chose education over indoctrination, we chose law and order over rioting and disorder,” Mr. DeSantis said. “We did not back down.”Students listened to a band playing Christian worship music before Mr. DeSantis’s speech. Eze Amos for The New York TimesThe visit was part of Mr. DeSantis’s national tour of centers of conservative influence as he builds momentum for his widely anticipated entry into the 2024 presidential campaign. More than that, it was a crucial opportunity to gauge, and perhaps advance, his relationship status with evangelical Christians — a voting bloc that helped vault Donald J. Trump to the presidency and appears to be open to new presidential suitors.Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., has long been an important stop for Republican politicians and conservative celebrities eager to reach the campus’s undergraduates.It is the stage where Senator Ted Cruz of Texas announced his candidacy in 2015. It is also where Mr. Trump introduced himself to a wider evangelical audience, pitching himself as the defender of a Christianity under attack — and famously referred to “Two Corinthians” in a fumbled attempt to speak the same language as his listeners.Ultimately, Mr. Trump did not need to “speak evangelical” to win them over. He won an even higher share of the white evangelical vote in 2020 than he did in 2016. Though some evangelical leaders have signaled they would consider supporting another Republican candidate, many remain loyal to Mr. Trump and have so far shown few signs of abandoning him en masse over his recent indictment.For Mr. DeSantis, the question is whether he can loosen that extraordinary bond.Jesse Hughes, a junior at Liberty, had been hoping to hear Mr. DeSantis offer a more intimate account of how his faith influenced his approach to governing and helped him navigate challenges like his wife’s cancer diagnosis. Instead, he said he mostly heard material he recognized from Mr. DeSantis’s other speeches.Still, he is impressed with Mr. DeSantis’s record in Florida, including his approach to abortion legislation, education, and “how he’s willing to take bold stances and not cave to media pressure.” Under Mr. DeSantis, the state has banned discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in some elementary school grades. Mr. Hughes read Mr. DeSantis’s recent memoir, “The Courage to Be Free,” but said he found little to help him understand the governor’s personal spiritual life. “There are references to his faith, but he doesn’t go into much detail on anything,” he said.Jesse Hughes, a student at Liberty University, is impressed with Mr. DeSantis’s record but said he was hoping to hear the governor talk about how his faith helped him navigate challenges.Eze Amos for The New York Times Mr. Hughes brushed off the indictment against Mr. Trump as “political persecution.” But he also said that many of his fellow students are ready to move past Mr. Trump.Mr. Hughes, 21, is the president of the campus’s College Republicans club, which is conducting a small informal poll of student preferences in the primary. Hours before the poll closed on Friday, Mr. DeSantis had 53 percent of the vote to Mr. Trump’s 31 percent, with former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley at 13 percent.“What I’m seeing is definite interest in DeSantis, but not a rejection of Trump” among white evangelicals, said Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a historian at evangelical Calvin University in Michigan and the author of “Jesus and John Wayne.”Ms. Du Mez sees Mr. DeSantis making a similar appeal to conservative evangelicals as Mr. Trump did, positioning himself as a combative culture warrior who is “protecting the vulnerable Christians.” He may appeal to voters who are drawn to Mr. Trump but exhausted by the chaos that follows him, or doubtful of his chances to win in a general election, she said.But there is a trade-off. “What you gain in terms of stability in turning to DeSantis,” Ms. Du Mez said, “you lose in terms of charisma.”She said that most conservative evangelicals at this early stage seem genuinely open to either of the leading candidates. Among voters, at least, “it’s a friendly competition.”Mr. DeSantis spoke to about 10,000 students at Liberty University’s twice-weekly convocation service. Eze Amos for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis was raised in a Catholic family in Florida. “Growing up as a kid, it was nonnegotiable that I would have my rear end in church every Sunday morning,” he wrote in his memoir. He has an aunt who is a nun and an uncle who is a priest, both in Ohio. (Both declined to comment on their nephew’s religious upbringing.)Until now, he has deployed mentions of his personal faith fairly cautiously, while positioning himself as a defender of “God-fearing” people. In speeches, he often refers to putting on “the full armor of God” — a biblical reference and an evangelical touchstone — telling audiences to “stand firm against the left’s schemes.”He closed his speech at Liberty with another scripture reference, telling the crowd that “I will fight the good fight, I will finish the race, and I will keep the faith,” paraphrasing the apostle Paul in the book of 2 Timothy.Liberty University has long been an important stop for Republican presidential hopefuls.Eze Amos for The New York TimesDaniel Hostetter, the student body president, said his initial impression of Mr. DeSantis’s address was that it felt less personal than what he had heard from other politicians on Liberty’s stage, including former Vice President Mike Pence and Glenn Youngkin, the governor of Virginia.“I feel like I just don’t know as much about DeSantis as I’d like,” he said. In a candidate, he is looking for someone “who looks like Christ” — someone who is kind and “full of mercy” but will stand by his convictions.He noted that one of the biggest applause lines of the morning did not even come from Mr. DeSantis, but from Mr. Falwell, when he mentioned Florida’s new six-week abortion ban. He speculated that Mr. DeSantis may be waiting to see how the ban is received nationally.Abortion has become a thorny issue for Republicans in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. A portion of its base will settle for nothing less than the strongest restrictions, putting them out of step with the electorate as a whole and raising concerns about how any candidate who could win the Republican primary on the issue could then go on to win the general election. Sixty-four percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal in most cases, according to a poll this year from the Public Religion Research Institute.Daniel Griffith, a graduate student who leads a youth ministry at Liberty, said he was disappointed by some of Mr. DeSantis’s more aggressive rhetoric. He noted that the governor’s lines about “wokeness” got more applause than his recitation of his economic achievements in Florida. “I have friends who he would probably consider woke,” he said. “It gets the cheers, it gets the noise, which kind of stinks.”Mr. Griffith said he is leaning toward supporting Mr. DeSantis over Mr. Trump.“We chose facts over fear, we chose education over indoctrination, we chose law and order over rioting and disorder,” Mr. DeSantis said in his speech, referring to his record in Florida.Eze Amos for The New York Times“People are sick of the controversies and sick of the scandal,” he said. “Even at Liberty, we’ve had our own mess and we’re sick of that,” he added, comparing Mr. Trump’s outbursts and legal entanglements with the problems of a former president of the school, Jerry Falwell Jr.Mr. Falwell, a former president of Liberty, was one of Mr. Trump’s first prominent evangelical supporters. He endorsed Mr. Trump in January of 2016, about a week after the candidate spoke at Liberty’s convocation, and became one of his most vocal allies.Mr. Falwell resigned as president in 2020 in a haze of tawdry controversies and is currently suing the school over his retirement payments. The school named a new president in March, Dondi Costin, a former Air Force chaplain who was most recently the president of Charleston Southern University.Out of power and without a platform, Mr. Falwell is an observer in this election cycle, not an influencer. Reached at home on Wednesday, he said he no longer has Mr. Trump’s phone number.But his political instincts have not changed.“I’ve got nothing against DeSantis at all, I just don’t think he’s ready for prime time yet,” Mr. Falwell said, remarking that the governor “looks like a little boy.”He added, “I’m still 100 percent a Trump man.” More

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      Virginia Rolls Back Voting Rights for Ex-Felons, Bucking Shaky Bipartisan Trend

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      State after state has eased restrictions on voting for former felons in recent years. But Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s reversal suggests growing wariness on the right.WASHINGTON — For more than a decade, states around the country have steadily chipped away at one of the biggest roadblocks to voting in the United States — laws on the books that bar former felons from casting a ballot.But there are now signs that trend could be reversing.Last month, Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, a Republican who took office a year ago, revealed that he had rescinded a policy of automatically restoring voting rights to residents who have completed felony sentences.In a February hearing, North Carolina’s Supreme Court, which has a 5-2 Republican majority, appeared deeply skeptical that a lower court had constitutional authority when it restored voting rights last year to people who had completed their sentences. A ruling is expected soon.And then there’s Florida — whose Republican-dominated Legislature effectively nullified a citizen ballot initiative granting voting rights to a huge number of former felons in 2020. That left all three states on a path toward rolling back state policies on restoring voting rights for former felons close to where they were 50 and even 100 years ago.Experts say that Virginia’s reversal, which does not affect people who have had their rights already restored, is unlikely to represent a dramatic change in the long-term trend among states toward loosening restrictions on voting by people with felony records. Such restrictions still deny the vote to some 4.6 million voting-age Americans — one in 50 potential voters. But that number is down nearly 25 percent since 2016.Last month, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, a Democrat, signed legislation expanding voting rights for former felons in the state, and the New Mexico State Legislature, also Democratic, enacted a law doing the same.What is clear, though, is that a shaky bipartisan consensus — that those who have paid their debts to society should be able to cast a ballot — has eroded, as political polarization has risen. The action by Mr. Youngkin is especially notable because it leaves Virginia as the only state in the nation that disenfranchises everyone who commits a felony. Under the State Constitution, a former felon’s rights can be restored only with the governor’s authorization.“We’d reached a point for the first time in recent memory, maybe ever, where there was not a single state in the country that disenfranchised everyone,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, the director of the voting rights program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. “It is disappointing that on an issue in Virginia that had gotten support from both sides of the aisle, they do seem to be taking a step backwards.”The backtracking spotlights the often-overlooked significance — legally and also politically — of a practice that has likely had a far greater impact on access to the ballot than more notorious voter suppression measures have.Voting rights battles are usually fought over cogs in the election machinery — ID requirements, drop boxes, absentee ballots — that can make it easy or hard to vote, depending on how much sand is tossed into them. The extent to which those battles shrink or expand the pool of voters is often impossible to measure.Not so with restoring the vote to former felons: Minnesota’s new law gives about 56,000 people access to the ballot; the North Carolina court ruling last year made another 56,000 eligible. The law awaiting the signature of New Mexico’s governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, would add another 11,000 to the list.The rollbacks, however, are significant. In 2020, Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature enacted a law that effectively negated a 2018 citizen ballot initiative that restored voting rights to perhaps 934,000 residents, according to the latest estimate. The law limits the vote only to former felons who pay all court costs, restitution and other fees, a yearslong task for many, made surpassingly difficult by the state’s jumbled record-keeping on court cases.That legislative change not only halted the nation’s largest rights-restoration effort but also led to the arrest — in what Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, billed as a crackdown on fraud — of 20 former felons who had registered or voted illegally — many, if not all, out of confusion over their eligibility.In Virginia, governors have used their constitutional powers to restore the vote to more than 300,000 former felons since Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, first made restoration automatic for some in 2013. Two Democratic governors, Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam, expanded that policy to include anyone freed from prison.By the time Mr. Northam left office in January 2022, a huge backlog of people eligible for restoration had been wiped out, said Kelly Thomasson, the official who handled rights restoration during Mr. Northam’s tenure as governor, in an interview. She said that roughly 1,000 to 2,000 newly eligible felons were being released from prison each month.After succeeding Mr. Northam, Mr. Youngkin initially restored voting rights to nearly 3,500 people in just his first four months in office. But that pace slowed dramatically to just 800 others in the next five months.A spokeswoman for Mr. Youngkin, Macaulay Porter, said in a statement that the governor “firmly believes in the importance of second chances for Virginians who have made mistakes,” and that he judges individual cases based on the law and the “unique elements of each situation.”She did not respond to requests to explain why new grants dropped sharply, or whether Republican resistance to restoring voting played a role in that decline.Although a Republican state legislator had once led Minnesota’s effort to give the vote to former felons, the policy became law this year with only a handful of Republican votes. In 2020, the Republican governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, used her executive power to implement an automatic restoration policy much like the one Virginia had in place before Mr. Youngkin changed it.Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa reacts after signing an executive order granting former felons the right to vote in August 2020.Charlie Neibergall/Associated PressBut Iowa, Virginia and Kentucky, another Republican state whose governors’ executive orders have loosened restrictive restoration policies temporarily, have been unable to win legislators’ support for amendments to state constitutions that would make those orders permanent.Some experts say that the resistance stems in part from the common but questionable belief among Republican partisans that allowing former felons to vote would boost Democratic turnout.Although an outsize share of those who complete felony sentences are members of minority groups that broadly tend to vote Democratic, most felons are white, and those with their demographic characteristics — below-average income and education, to name two — increasingly skew Republican.Disenfranchisement has complex legal roots, including the 14th Amendment, which, in addition to granting citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to formerly enslaved people, forbids withholding the right to vote “except for participation in rebellion, or other crime.”In Virginia, there are also antecedents that reflect the state’s history of suppressing the African American vote. The policy on rights restoration that Mr. Youngkin revived is rooted in a 1902 Virginia constitutional convention in which keeping Black residents from voting was an overriding priority.Experts say the potentially fleeting nature of executive actions like those in Kentucky — where Gov. Andy Beshear now automatically restores voting rights to former felons who had committed nonviolent crimes — and in Virginia sows confusion about voting rights. Critics say that bestowing a basic civic privilege becomes subject to the political whim of whoever is governor.Virginians who complete their prison sentences this year may wonder why those who left prison in 2021 are more entitled to cast a ballot than they are, said Christopher Uggen, a University of Minnesota sociologist and an expert on the disenfranchisement of former felons.“It harkens to an era when the king can give a thumbs up or thumbs down,” he said. “We wouldn’t necessarily accept this if it were happening in another area.”Kirsten Noyes More

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      Jennifer McClellan Wins in Virginia and Will Be State’s First Black Woman in Congress

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      Jennifer McClellan, a state senator, will fill the seat held by Representative A. Donald McEachin, who died in November.Jennifer McClellan, a veteran Democratic state senator, won a special election for Virginia’s Fourth Congressional District on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, making her the first Black woman to represent the state in Congress.Ms. McClellan, 50, will fill the seat formerly held by Representative A. Donald McEachin, who died Nov. 28 of colorectal cancer. She has cited Mr. McEachin as a mentor and was highly favored to win in the safely Democratic district, which stretches from Richmond, where she is based, to the rural counties along Virginia’s border with North Carolina.She defeated Leon Benjamin, a Republican Navy veteran and local pastor. Mr. Benjamin lost to Mr. McEachin by nearly 30 points in November.Virginia Democrats, including the party’s entire congressional delegation and many local and statewide officials, were quick to coalesce around Ms. McClellan’s candidacy during the primary in late December. Even though the accelerated election calendar set by Gov. Glenn Youngkin left her campaign with less than two weeks to turn out primary voters, she still won with nearly 85 percent of the vote, according to the state party.Ms. McClellan centered her campaign on legislation she spearheaded as a state senator — issues she championed, like voting rights, environmental protection and abortion access, often dovetailed with the national Democratic platform.“I passed legislation to protect our right to vote and our right to a clean environment. I led the fight for our reproductive freedom,” Ms. McClellan said in a television ad. “I’ll take that same fight with me to Congress.”In a January opinion essay for Essence magazine, Ms. McClellan also said that her identity as a Black female lawmaker would help shape her policy positions.“This election isn’t just about my lived experiences, it’s about elevating the experiences of so many whose voices have not been heard in our government,” she wrote.Ms. McClellan, a lawyer who is also the vice chair of the Virginia legislature’s influential Black caucus, has been frequently promoted as a rising star among state Democrats. This is her second run for statewide office: In 2021, she fell short in a crowded primary for governor.Susan Swecker, chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Virginia, said in a statement on Tuesday night: “Jennifer McClellan’s history-making victory as the first Black woman to be elected to Congress from Virginia will have ripple effects across the Commonwealth.”“Her leadership will expand upon the outstanding progress and advocacy for which we remember Congressman A. Donald McEachin — I cannot think of a better way to honor his life and legacy than with the new generation of leadership that Congresswoman-elect Jennifer McClellan will bring to Washington.” More

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      in Elections

      Biden Hammers Republicans on the Economy, With Eye on 2024

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      The president has found a welcome foil in a new conservative House majority and its tax and spending plans, sharpening a potential re-election message.WASHINGTON — President Biden on Thursday assailed House Republicans over their tax and spending plans, including potential changes to popular retirement programs, ahead of what is likely to be a run for re-election.In a speech in Springfield, Va., Mr. Biden sought to reframe the economic narrative away from the rapid price increases that have dogged much of his first two years in office and toward his stewardship of an economy that has churned out steady growth and strong job gains.Mr. Biden, speaking to members of a steamfitters union, sought to take credit for the strength of the labor market, moderating inflation and news from the Commerce Department on Thursday morning that the economy had grown at an annualized pace of 2.9 percent at the end of last year. In contrast, he cast House Republicans and their economic policy proposals as roadblocks to continued improvement.“At the time I was sworn in, the pandemic was raging and the economy was reeling,” Mr. Biden said before ticking through the actions he had taken to aid the recovery. Those included $1.9 trillion in pandemic and economic aid; a bipartisan bill to repair and upgrade roads, bridges, water pipes and other infrastructure; and a sweeping industrial policy bill to spur domestic investment in advanced manufacturing sectors like semiconductors and speed research and development to seed new industries.Republicans have accused the Biden administration of fanning inflation by funneling too much federal money into the economy, and have called for deep spending cuts and other fiscal changes.Mr. Biden denounced those proposals, including a plan to replace federal income taxes with a national sales tax, curb safety net spending and risk a government default by refusing to raise the federal borrowing limit without deep spending cuts. Why, he asked, “would the Americans give up the progress we’ve made for the chaos they’re suggesting?”Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans have not yet released a detailed or unified economic agenda.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times“I will not let anyone use the full faith and credit of the United States as a bargaining chip,” Mr. Biden said, reiterating his refusal to negotiate over raising the debt limit. “The United States of America — we pay our debts.”But the president also sought to reach out to working-class voters — in places like his native Scranton, Pa. — who have increasingly voted for Republicans in recent elections. Mr. Biden said those voters had been left behind by American economic policy in recent years, and he tried to woo them back by promising that his policies would continue to bring high-paying manufacturing jobs that do not require a college degree to people who feel “invisible” in the economy.“They remember, in my old neighborhoods, why the jobs went away,” Mr. Biden said, vowing that under his policies “nobody’s left behind.”The Biden PresidencyHere’s where the president stands as the third year of his term begins.State of the Union: President Biden will deliver his second State of the Union speech on Feb. 7, at a time when he faces an aggressive House controlled by Republicans and a special counsel investigation into the possible mishandling of classified information.Chief of Staff: Mr. Biden plans to name Jeffrey D. Zients, his former coronavirus response coordinator, as his next chief of staff. Mr. Zients will replace Ron Klain, who has run the White House since the president took office two years ago.Voting Rights: A year after promising a voting rights overhaul in a fiery speech, Mr. Biden delivered a more muted message at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.The speech built on a pattern for Mr. Biden, who has found the new and narrow Republican majority to be both a political threat and an opportunity.Republicans in the chamber have begun a series of investigations into Mr. Biden, his family and his administration. They have also demanded deep cuts in federal spending in exchange for raising the borrowing limit, a position that risks an economic catastrophe given the huge sums of money that the United States borrows to pay for its financial obligations.The president has refused to tie any spending cuts to raising the debt limit and has called on Congress to increase the $31.4 trillion cap so the nation can continue paying its bills and avoid a federal default..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.But Mr. Biden, who is facing a divided Congress for the first time in his presidency, is increasingly acting as if the newly empowered conservatives have given him a political opening on economic policy. As he prepares for a likely re-election bid in 2024, he is seizing on the least popular proposals floated by House members to cast himself as a champion of the working class, retirees and economic progress.Mr. Biden’s speech on Thursday waded deep into policy details, including the acreage of western timber burned in fires linked to climate change, the global breakdown of advanced chip production and the average salary of new manufacturing jobs, as he recounted his legislative accomplishments.House Republicans have not yet released a detailed or unified economic agenda, and they have not made a clear set of demands for raising the debt limit, though they largely agree that Mr. Biden must accept significant spending curbs.But members and factions of the Republican conference have pushed for votes on a variety of proposals that have little support among voters, including raising the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare and replacing the federal income tax with a national sales tax.Mr. Biden has sought to brand the entire Republican Party with those proposals, even though it is not clear if the measures have majority support in the conference or will ever come to a vote. Former President Donald J. Trump, who has already announced his 2024 bid for the White House, has urged Republicans not to touch the safety-net programs. Other party leaders have urged Republicans not to rule out those cuts. “We should not draw lines in the sand or dismiss any option out of hand, but instead seriously discuss the trade-offs of proposals,” Senator Michael D. Crapo of Idaho, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, wrote in an opinion piece for Fox News, in which he called for Mr. Biden to negotiate over raising the debt limit.Representative Kevin Hern, Republican of Oklahoma, who sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, told a tax conference in Washington this week that there are “lots of problems” with the plan to replace the income tax with a so-called fair tax on consumption. Those include incentives for policymakers to allow prices to rise rapidly in the economy in order to generate more revenue from the sales tax, he noted.“Let’s just say it’s going to be very interesting,” Mr. Hern said at the D.C. Bar Taxation Community’s annual tax conference. “I haven’t found a Ways and Means member that’s for it.”Despite those internal disagreements, Mr. Biden has been happy to pick and choose unpopular Republican ideas and frame them as the true contrast to his economic agenda. He has pointedly refused to cut safety-net programs and threatened to veto such efforts.“The president is building an economy from the bottom up and the middle out, and protecting Social Security and Medicare,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, told reporters this week. “Republicans want to cut Social Security, want to cut Medicare — programs Americans have earned, have paid in — and impose a 30 percent national sales tax that will increase taxes on working families. That is what they have said they want to do, and that is clearly their plan.”The focus on Republicans has allowed Mr. Biden to divert the economic conversation from inflation, which hit 40-year highs last year but receded in the past several months, though it remains above historical norms. On Thursday, he chided Republicans for a vote to reduce funding for I.R.S. enforcement against wealthy tax cheats — a move the Congressional Budget Office says would add to the budget deficit, and which Mr. Biden cast as inflationary.“They campaigned on inflation,” Mr. Biden said. “They didn’t say if elected, they planned to make it worse.”Progressive groups see an opportunity for Mr. Biden to score political points and define the economic issue before the 2024 campaign begins in earnest. That is in part because polls suggest Americans have little appetite for Social Security or Medicare cuts, and have far less focus on the national debt than House Republicans do.“It is a political gift,” said Lindsay Owens, the executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, a liberal nonprofit in Washington. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump ally Matt Schlapp sued by Herschel Walker aide over groping claim

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      Trump ally Matt Schlapp sued by Herschel Walker aide over groping claimChair of American Conservative Union denies claim from 2022 midterms campaign as lawyer says countersuit could be filed A staffer for Herschel Walker’s Republican Senate campaign filed a lawsuit against the prominent conservative activist Matt Schlapp on Tuesday, accusing Schlapp of groping him during a car ride in Georgia before last year’s midterm election.Schlapp denies the allegation. His lawyer said they were considering a countersuit.The battery and defamation lawsuit was filed in Alexandria circuit court in Virginia, where Schlapp lives, and seeks more than $9m in damages.It accuses Schlapp of “aggressively fondling” the staffer’s “genital area in a sustained fashion” while the staffer drove Schlapp back to his hotel from a bar in October, on the day of a Walker campaign event. The allegations were first reported by the Daily Beast.The staffer filed the lawsuit anonymously as “John Doe”, citing his status as an alleged sexual assault victim and fearing backlash from supporters of Schlapp, a longtime adviser to Donald Trump and chair of the American Conservative Union, which organizes the Conservative Political Action Conference.The lawsuit accuses Schlapp and his wife, Mercedes, who was Trump’s White House director of strategic communications, of defamation and conspiracy, citing Matt Schlapp’s repeated denials and alleged attempts by both to discredit the staffer.In a statement, the lawyer Charlie Spies accused the staffer of trying to harm the Schlapp family.“The complaint is false and the Schlapp family is suffering unbearable pain and stress due to the false allegation from an anonymous individual,” Spies said, adding that the legal team was “assessing counter-lawsuit options”.According to the lawsuit, Matt Schlapp was in Georgia in the waning days of the general election season to campaign for Walker, the former University of Georgia football star who lost a runoff election to the Democratic senator Raphael Warnock. The lawsuit alleges that after the staffer drove Schlapp back to Atlanta following a campaign event, Schlapp invited the staffer to join him for drinks.The two ended up at a local bar, where Schlapp, according to the suit, “sat unusually close” to the accuser, “such that his leg repeatedly contacted, and was in almost constant contact with Mr Doe’s leg”.The staffer said he offered to drive Schlapp back to his hotel but during the car ride Schlapp allegedly placed his hand on the staffer’s leg without consent, leaving him “frozen with shock, mortification and fear from what was happening, particularly given Mr Schlapp’s power and status in conservative social circles”.When they reached the hotel, the suit alleges, Schlapp invited the staffer up to his room, but the staffer declined. He later informed senior campaign aides about what had happened and recorded a video recounting the events.“As a direct and proximate result of Mr Schlapp’s battery upon Mr Doe, Mr Doe suffered damages, including without limitation shock, mortification, horror, humiliation, and distress,” the suit reads.A former campaign official said the staffer had done everything right, including notifying his superiors, and said the campaign acted swiftly to make sure he knew he was believed. The staffer had been scheduled to drive Schlapp to an event the next morning, but was advised to inform Schlapp alternative transportation had been arranged, according to the filing. Schlapp did not attend the event and would not have been welcome, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.Timothy Hyland, a lawyer representing the staffer, sent a statement from his law firm calling Schlapp a “sexual predator”.“Our client takes no joy in filing this lawsuit,” it said. “However, Mr Schlapp has had ample time to accept responsibility and apologize for his despicable actions. But instead of doing the right thing, Mr Schlapp, Ms Schlapp, and their friends and associates embarked on a ridiculous, spurious and defamatory attempt to smear the reputation of Mr Schlapp’s victim.”TopicsRepublicansUS politicsVirginiaGeorgiaUS crimenewsReuse this content More