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Texas Republicans in Congress took on Texas House Democrats on Thursday in a tense, four-hour congressional subcommittee meeting that drilled into the technicalities of voter restriction bills sitting in limbo back in Austin and at times erupted into angry accusations.

U.S. Rep. Pat Fallon, a freshman Republican from Sherman, was particularly fired up. At one point he accused Democratic state Rep. Nicole Collier of Fort Worth of calling her Republican colleagues racist.

She hadnt said her colleagues were racist, Collier said. Theyre uninformed.

Collier was one of three Texas House Democrats who testified before the civil rights and civil liberties subcommittee. She and colleagues Senfronia Thompson of Houston and Diego Bernal of San Antonio took questions from Democratic and Republican members alike explaining and defending their decision to flee to the nations capital and put the Texas Legislatures special session on hold.

Democrats have used their decampment in Washington to call national attention to the ongoing voting rights situation in Texas and to call for federal legislation that could preempt efforts by the state.

During opening remarks, Democratic U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, chair of the subcommittee, said House Bill 3 and Senate Bill 1 in the Texas Legislature were perhaps the most aggressive set of voting restrictions anywhere in the country and a draconian election overhaul.

He closed his remarks by urging Congress to pass the sweeping federal voting legislation known as the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act before it is too late.

The hearing followed a series of meetings between the Texas Democrats and some of the most influential Democrats in the country. But the For the People Act remains at a standstill due to a filibuster backed by the GOP and Democratic senators such as Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

Both of those acts, if passed, would restore aspects of the Voting Rights Act that were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013. In particular, the bills would reinstate federal preclearance of voting laws, which gives the federal government the power to vet state laws that could result in discrimination against voters of color.

Other aspects of the For the People Act include curbing partisan gerrymandering, creating nationwide automatic voter registration and allowing voters without ID to vote with a sworn statement of their identity.

Four Texas congressional Republicans who took part in the hearing were joined by one of the statehouse Republicans. State Rep. Travis Clardy, R-Nacogdoches, made a virtual appearance to set the record straight on the Texas bills, saying Democrats were misrepresenting the impacts of the legislation, and rejecting the notion that access to voting would be restricted.

Clardy said that the walkout would not have happened if his Democratic colleagues simply offered to improve the bills through debate and deliberation.

Its time to come home. Enough is enough, youve had your fun, he said.

But Collier pointed toward amendments that House Republicans had rejected and noted that more people had spoken against the bills than in support.

Our backs were against the wall, she said.

Also testifying was Nina Perales, vice president of litigation for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, an organization at the forefront of the voting rights issue in Texas for decades.

The Texas bills invite voter intimidation by poll watchers, she said, disputing Clardys claims. Section 3 of SB 1 and section 4 of HB 3 strip voters of the protections of privacy and security in the polling place, and invite vigilantism by poll watchers.

Texas has a long, well-documented history of discrimination that has touched upon the rights of African Americans and Hispanics to register to vote or to participate otherwise in the electoral process, she said, noting many instances in which federal courts have held that Texas laws discriminated against voters of color.

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, asked Thompson if the proposed restrictions felt like a revival of the Jim Crow era. Thompson said they did.

The Democratic legislators were grilled on their decision to leave Texas.

Now, are each of the three of you aware that you are, in fact, violating Texas law by being here right now and instead of being in Texas during the legislative session? And that it would be in order to arrest you in the state of Texas? asked U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Austin.

Im ready to be arrested, Thompson retorted. Im not violating the law, and Im representing my constituents.

Im not sure if those laws are constitutional, Bernal added.

A particularly long and heated exchange took place between Fallon and Collier after he asked her to clarify why she felt the Texas bills could affect voters of color.

It will have a disparate impact on people of color, Collier replied.

OK, and thats your view, Fallon said.

In closing, Bernal thanked the subcommittee for allowing him and his colleagues to speak, but acknowledged that little had been accomplished.

Its important to point out that weve exchanged a lot of platitudes here, but we have not had to debate about the actual components of the bill, he said. We can talk back and forth about our sort of hashtag messaging, but we have not had a substantive debate at large about the bill, because when we do, people see that were right.

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Texas House Democrats spar with congressional Republicans over their protest of state voting bills - The Texas Tribune

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) One of the Republican Partys most prominent rising stars is mocking new government recommendations calling for more widespread use of masks to blunt a coronavirus surge.

Did you not get the CDCs memo? Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis joked Wednesday before an almost entirely unmasked audience of activists and lawmakers crammed into an indoor hotel ballroom in Salt Lake City. I dont see you guys complying.

From Texas to South Dakota, Republican leaders responded with hostility and defiance to updated masking guidance from public health officials, who advise that even fully vaccinated people return to wearing masks indoors if they live in areas with high rates of virus transmission. The backlash reopened the culture war over pandemic restrictions just as efforts to persuade unvaccinated Americans to get shots appeared to be making headway.

Egged on by former President Donald Trump, the response reflects deep resistance among many GOP voters to restrictions aimed at containing a virus they feel poses minimal personal threat. The party is also tapping into growing frustration and confusion over ever-shifting rules and guidance.

But the resistance has real implications for a country desperate to emerge from the pandemic. Beyond vaccinations, there are few tools other than mask-wearing and social distancing to contain the spread of the delta variant, which studies have shown to be far more contagious than the original strain.

Many Republican leaders, however, are blocking preventative measures, potentially making it harder to tame virus outbreaks in conservative communities.

At least 18 Republican-led states have moved to prohibit vaccine passports or to ban public entities from requiring proof of vaccination. And some have prohibited schools from requiring any student or teacher to wear a mask or be vaccinated.

In its announcement, the CDC cited troubling new thus far unpublished research that found that fully vaccinated people can spread the delta variant just like the unvaccinated, putting those who havent received the shots or who have compromised immune systems at heightened risk. The CDC also recommended that all teachers, staff and students wear masks inside school buildings, regardless of vaccination status.

The backlash was swift.

We wont go back. We wont mask our children, declared Trump, who routinely cast doubt on the value of mask-wearing and rarely wore one in public while he was in office. Why do Democrats distrust the science?

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson called the new guidance disappointing and concerning and inconsistent with the overwhelming evidence surrounding the efficacy of the vaccines and their proven results.

He, like others, warned that the measure would undermine efforts to encourage vaccine holdouts to get their shots by casting further doubt on the efficacy of approved vaccines, which have been shown to dramatically decrease the risk of death or hospitalization, despite the occurrence of breakthrough cases.

Last week, White House officials reported that vaccination rates were on the rise in some states where COVID-19 cases were soaring, as more Republican leaders implored their constituents to lay lingering doubts aside and get the shots to protect themselves. That includes Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, who has pleaded with unvaccinated residents, saying they are the ones letting us down.

This self-inflicted setback encourages skepticism and vaccine hesitancy at a time when the goal is to prevent serious illnesses and deaths from COVID-19 through vaccination, Parson tweeted. This decision only promotes fear & further division among our citizens.

The announcement will unfortunately only diminish confidence in the vaccine and create more challenges for public health officials people who have worked tirelessly to increase vaccination rates, echoed Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, who has banned mask and vaccine mandates in his state.

In his Wednesday speech, DeSantis took particular aim at the CDCs call for kids to wear masks in the classroom.

Its not healthy for these students to be sitting there all day, 6-year-old kids in kindergarten covered in masks, he said though there is no evidence that wearing masks is harmful to children older than toddler age.

And in South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem called out the CDC for shifting its position on masking AGAIN. She said that those who are worried about the virus can get vaccinated, wear a mask or stay home, but that Changing CDC guidelines dont help ensure the publics trust.

On Capitol Hill, some Republicans were in revolt after the Capitols attending physician sent a memo informing members that masks would again have to be worn inside the House at all times.

The change set off a round robin of insults, with Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy a moron after McCarthy tweeted, The threat of bringing masks back is not a decision based on science, but a decision conjured up by liberal government officials who want to continue to live in a perpetual pandemic state.

The mandate also prompted an angry confrontation, as Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., verbally assailed Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah, who exited the House chamber and walked past her without a face covering.

Conservatives also forced a vote to adjourn the chamber in protest to the mandate, which was defeated along mostly party lines.

We have a crisis at our border, and were playing footsie with mask mandates in the peoples House, railed Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, the motions sponsor. The American people are fed up. They want to go back to life. They want to go back to business. They want to go back to school without their children being forced to wear masks.

The nation is averaging nearly 62,000 new COVID-19 cases a day, and the vast majority of those hospitalized and dying havent been vaccinated. As of Sunday, 69% of American adults had received one vaccine dose, and 60% had been fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.

Last year, early on in the pandemic, public health officials told Americans that masks offered little protection against the virus (and could even increase the risk of infection). The guidance was driven by a lack of knowledge about how the novel virus spread and a desire to save limited mask supplies for medical workers. But the CDC soon changed course and advised Americans to wear masks indoors and outdoors if they were within 6 feet (1.8 meters) of one another.

Then in April of this year, as vaccination rates rose sharply, the agency eased its guidelines, saying fully vaccinated Americans no longer needed to wear masks outdoors unless they were in big crowds of strangers. In May, the guidance was eased further, saying fully vaccinated people could safely stop wearing masks outdoors in crowds and in most indoor settings.

Subsequent CDC guidance said fully vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks at schools, either.

Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House principal deputy press secretary, on Wednesday defended the changes, saying the CDC did exactly what it was supposed to do.

The CDC has to adapt to the virus, she said, and unfortunately because not enough Americans have stepped up to get vaccinated, they had to provide new guidance to help save lives.

___

Colvin reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix, Alan Fram in Washington, Summer Ballentine in Jefferson City, Mo., and Alexandra Jaffe aboard Air Force One contributed to this report.

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CDC mask guidance met with hostility by leading Republicans - Associated Press

Sarah Huckabee Sanders may not be the White House press secretary anymore, but when an opportunity for some Donald Trump image management presents itself, shes still got it. As the spread of the COVID-19 delta variant and rising caseloads coincides with stagnant vaccination rates and heightened concerns about health misinformation, the Arkansas candidate for governor put her platform to good use in an op-ed Sunday that urged people to get inoculated with the Trump vaccine.

The gubernatorial candidate highlighted how caseloads and hospitalizations are rising exponentially in the state shes running in, which has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, and cited data about the benefits of getting vaccinated, noting that if getting vaccinated was safe enough for [President Trump and his family], I felt it was safe enough for me. Sanderss persuasion tactics also brought in right-wing talking points politicizing the public health issue, such as through bashing Dr. Anthony Fauci and the Biden administration, as well as scorning liberal media outlets that did not give President Trump and his team the credit they are due.

On the downside, Sanderss rhetoric isnt exactly factual, and it will likely add to mistrust of the current administration. But it will likely resonate with her Republican base, many of whom may be resistant to the idea of getting the COVID vaccine. The urgent need for those holdouts to change their mind has necessitated a certain type of strategic communication. What [holdouts] dont want is to be indoctrinatedtheyre willing to be vaccinated, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said on ABCs This Week Sunday, noting one of the places where our leaders have fallen down is theyre not explaining the facts to Republicans hesitant or completely unwilling to get the shot. These folks do not respond to being ordered to do those things, he said, noting its a libertarian type of response to perceived government overreach. You have to walk them through the logic of this, he said.

Some Republican officials are increasingly adopting that approach as parts of the party shift their messaging to promote the vaccine, including some lawmakers who have either actively or passively fueled vaccine reluctance, the Associated Press reports. After holding off on getting vaccinated for months, Rep. Steve Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican, shared photos of himself receiving his first dose earlier this month and called it safe and effective. The Louisiana congressmans decision comes as his state, where only 36% of eligible residents are fully vaccinated, confronts a delta-fueled surge in hospitalizations and infections.

Even conservative leaders now are having a hard time figuring out how to rein in what had primarily been a propaganda campaign, and they are now realizing their constituencies are particularly vulnerable, Eric Ward, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told the AP. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida whose 2022 reelection campaign merch includes beer koozies that say Dont Fauci My Florida, recently noted that nearly all COVID-19 hospitalizations are among unvaccinated people and affirmed that these vaccines are saving lives. Theres been an overall shift in some corners of Fox Newsa network that has for months amplified misinformation and politicized the shots.

By now, though, it may be too little, too late. Once you are opposed, it is very hard to change that position. And thats whats happening right now, Republican pollster Frank Luntz told the AP. Some officials are now urging constituents to use common sense, as Alabama governor Kay Ivey did last week, though without indicating that shell impose new safety restrictions in her state. These folks are choosing a horrible lifestyle of self-inflicted pain, she said of unvaccinated people. I can encourage you to do something, but I cant make you take care of yourself. Republican Governor Chris Sununu of New Hampshire seemed similarly resigned to his states diminished vaccination rates, telling the AP that there are no new measures to encourage vaccination on the immediate horizon and its folks individual responsibility. If someone hasnt been vaccinated at this point, theyve made that conscious decision not to.

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The Republican Reckoning on COVID Vaccines Has Finally Arrived - Vanity Fair

WASHINGTON Republicans have made Americans concerns over rising prices their primary line of attack on President Bidens economic agenda, seeking to derail trillions of dollars in spending programs and tax cuts by warning that they will produce rocketing 1970s-style inflation.

They have seized on the increasing costs of gasoline, used cars, and other goods and services to accuse the president of stoking Bidenflation, first with the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill he signed in March and now with a proposed $3.5 trillion economic bill that Democrats have begun to draft in the Senate.

There are unusually large amounts of uncertainty over the path of inflation in the coming months, given the vagaries around restarting a pandemic-stricken economy. Yet even many economists who worry that high prices will linger longer than analysts initially expected say there is little reason to believe the problem will worsen if Mr. Biden succeeds in his attempts to bolster child care, education, paid leave, low-emission energy and more.

Theres been a lot of fear-mongering concerning inflation, Joseph E. Stiglitz, a liberal economist at Columbia University, said on Tuesday during a conference call to support Mr. Bidens economic plans. But the presidents spending proposals, he said, are almost entirely paid for.

If they are passed as proposed, he added, there is no conceivable way that they would have any significant effect on inflation.

The debate over the effects of the proposals has nothing to do with the current angst over inflation, said Mark Zandi, a Moodys Analytics economist who has modeled Mr. Bidens plans.

Still, rising inflation fears have forced the president and his aides to shift their economic sales pitch to voters. The officials have stressed the potential for his efforts to lower the cost of health care, housing, college and raising children, even as they insist the current bout of inflation is a temporary artifact of the pandemic recession.

The administrations defense has at times jumbled rapid price increases with inflation-dampening efforts that could take years to bear fruit. And officials concede that the president recently overstated his case on a national stage by claiming incorrectly that Mr. Zandi had found his policies would reduce inflation.

The economics of the inflation situation are muddled: The United States has little precedent for the crimped supply chains and padded consumer savings that have emerged from the recession and its aftermath, when large parts of the economy shut down or pulled back temporarily and the federal government sent $5 trillion to people, businesses and local governments to help weather the storm. The economy remains seven million jobs short of its prepandemic total, but employers are struggling to attract workers at the wages they are used to paying.

But the political danger for Mr. Biden, and opportunity for Republicans who have sought to derail his plans, is clear.

The price index that the Federal Reserve uses to track inflation was up nearly 4 percent in May from the previous year, its fastest increase since 2008. Republicans say it is self-evident that more spending would further inflame those increases a new rationale for a longstanding conservative attack on the vast expansion of government programs that Mr. Biden is proposing.

July 29, 2021, 7:29 p.m. ET

Nine out of 10 respondents to a new national poll for The New York Times by the online research firm Momentive, which was previously known as SurveyMonkey, say they have noticed prices going up recently. Seven in 10 worry those increases will persist for an extended period. Half of respondents say that if the increases linger, they will pull back on household spending to compensate.

Administration officials acknowledge that inflation worries are softening consumer confidence, including in the University of Michigans survey of consumer sentiment, even as the economy rebounds from recession with its strongest annual growth rate in decades.

The issue has given Mr. Bidens opponents their clearest and most consistent message to attack an agenda that remains popular in public opinion polls.

Theres no question we have serious inflation right now, Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, told CNNs State of the Union on Sunday. There is a question about how long it lasts. And Im just worried that the risk is high that this is going to be with us for a while. And the Fed has put itself in a position where its going to be behind the curve. You combine that with massively excess spending, and it is a recipe for serious problems.

Some Republicans say a portion of Mr. Bidens spending plans would not drive up prices particularly the bipartisan agreement he and senators are negotiating to invest nearly $600 billion in roads, water pipes, broadband and other physical infrastructure. But the party is unified in criticizing the rest of the presidents proposals in a way that many economists say ignores how they would actually affect the economy.

Some of the proposals would distribute money directly and quickly to American consumers and workers by raising wages for home health care workers, for example, and continuing an expanded tax credit that effectively functions as a monthly stipend to all but the highest-earning parents. But they would also raise taxes on high earners, and much of the spending would create programs that would take time to find their way into the economy, like paid leave, universal prekindergarten and free community college.

Some conservative economists worry that the relatively small slice of immediate payments would risk further heating an already hot economy, driving up prices. The direct payments in the proposals would exacerbate pre-existing inflationary pressures, put additional pressure on the Fed to withdrawal monetary policy support earlier than it had planned, and put at risk the longevity of the recovery, said Michael R. Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Other economists in and outside the administration say those effects would be swamped by the potential of the spending programs like paid leave to reduce inflationary pressure.

The economics of these investments strongly belies the Republican critique because these are investments that will yield faster productivity growth, greater labor supply, the expansion of the economys supply side which very clearly dampens inflationary pressures, not exacerbates them, Jared Bernstein, a member of Mr. Bidens Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview.

Administration officials pivoted their sales pitch on the presidents agenda last week to emphasize the potential for his plans to reduce prices.

Mr. Bidens agenda is about lowering costs for families across the board, Mike Donilon, a senior adviser at the White House, told reporters. He said officials believed they were in a strong position against Republican attacks on inflation, in part by citing Mr. Zandis recent analysis. The president also referred to that analysis last week during a forum in Ohio on CNN, saying it had found that his proposals would reduce inflation.

The Moodys analysis did not say that; instead, it found that some of Mr. Bidens spending plans could help relieve price pressures several years from now. It specifically cited proposals to build additional affordable housing units nationwide, which could help hold down rents and housing prices and reduce the cost of prescription drugs.

White House officials concede that Mr. Biden overstated the analysis but point to more measured remarks in a speech this month, when he said his plans would enhance our productivity raising wages without raising prices.

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Inflation Is New Battle Line as Republicans and Biden Spar Over Spending - The New York Times

Michael Meister/Arizona Republic/Pool

Maricopa County ballots from the 2020 general election are examined and recounted by contractors hired by the Arizona Senate in an audit at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix on May 11, 2021.

Critics of the partisan, Republican-led review of the 2020 election in Maricopa County say whatever claims are made by contractors conducting the audit will be unreliable and likely biased.

But while theyre dismissive of what a final report to Arizona Senate Republicans will say, they are worried about what happens after that how the report will be used.

It could be weeks, if not months, before Cyber Ninjas and other firms hired by Senate President Karen Fann (R-Prescott) conclude their work and report their findings. Its important to remember what wont happen when thats all over.

Biden has been inaugurated. So he's president. As far as I know, the only way you can remove him is to impeach him, said Paul Bender, a constitutional law professor at Arizona State University.

Bender said the Constitution doesnt spell out a process to decertify or revoke election results after those results are finalized by Congress a demand made by Republicans like Sen. Wendy Rogers.

Howard Fischer/Capitol Media Services

Arizona Senate President Karen Fann on May 8, 2020.

It's over. The election is over, Bender said. Once that's happened, you can't go back and redo this thing.

Though some in her Republican caucus wish that were possible, Fann has made it a point to say the election review isnt about overturning former President Donald Trumps loss.

This isn't about the 2020 [election]. It's not about Republicans. It's about election integrity, Fann said after a briefing with Cyber Ninjas two weeks ago.

Instead, Fann has described the election review in Maricopa County as a fact-finding mission for state legislators.

And with that information, gives us the tools to be able to either tweak existing legislation or create new legislation to make sure that the sanctity is always there, Fann said.

That's jarring to critics of the election review, like Republican Stephen Richer, the newly elected Maricopa County recorder. Richer has said hes open to legislative discussions about ways to improve elections, but he also says Cyber Ninjas cant be trusted.

We don't put stock in what they're going to say one way or another, he said. We stand by because of the previous audits, because of the previous hand counts and because of the previous professionals who have looked at this election, and because of the previous courts that have looked at this election, including eight court challenges we stand by this election.

Election experts say Fanns firms have used faulty methodology to recount votes and inspect voting equipment, and critics point to signs of bias from Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan, who has spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and recently appeared in a film purporting to show the election was rigged.

Alex Gulotta, the Arizona state director of All Voting Is Local, said Republican lawmakers have stopped listening to the election experts local officials like the Maricopa County recorder and election director and instead lean on the advice of firms that he says think fraud is a foregone conclusion.

Arizona House Democrats

Raquel Tern is the Democratic State Representative for Legislative District 30.

This is the opposite of smart, Gulotta said. Everything that you would do to make smart policy, this sham election review doesn't do it; this sham election review undermines it.

Democratic Rep. Raquel Tern said its likely Republicans will recycle election policies that failed to pass in 2021 and reintroduce legislation in 2022.For example, Logan has said, without evidence, that Maricopa County election workers stopped verifying signatures on early-ballot envelopes a required step before votes are counted, a claim county officials deny.

Bills like an attempt to add new ID requirements to voting-by-mail could be reintroduced, with the report from the audit cited as justification.

Those bills are going to still be there and people are going to try to move them forward, Tern said.

Tern is well aware that GOP bills often get recycled year after year and how that persistence pays off. Its also possible Republican senators could call for a special session before the end of the year to address the reports findings.

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Cyber Ninjas Is Preparing An Audit Report For Arizona Senate Republicans. How Will They Use It? - KJZZ

Ten years ago, Republicans pulled off what would later be described as the most audacious political heist of modern times.

It wasnt particularly complicated. Every 10 years, the US constitution requires states to redraw the maps for both congressional and state legislative seats. The constitution entrusts state lawmakers with the power to draw those districts. Looking at the political map in 2010, Republicans realized that by winning just a few state legislative seats in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, they could draw maps that would be in place for the next decade, distorting them to guarantee Republican control for years to come.

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Republicans executed the plan, called Project Redmap, nearly perfectly and took control of 20 legislative bodies, including ones in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Then, Republicans set to work drawing maps that cemented their control on power for the next decade. Working behind closed doors, they were brazen in their efforts.

In Wisconsin, lawmakers signed secrecy agreements and then drew maps that were so rigged that Republicans could nearly hold on to a supermajority of seats with a minority of the vote. In Michigan, a Republican operative bragged about cramming Dem garbage into certain districts as they drew a congressional map that advantaged Republicans 9-5. In Ohio, GOP operatives worked secretly from a hotel room called the bunker, as they tweaked a congressional map that gave Republicans a 12-4 advantage. In North Carolina, a state lawmaker publicly said he was proposing a map that would elect 10 Republicans to Congress because he did not think it was possible to draw one that would elect 11.

This manipulation, called gerrymandering, debased and dishonored our democracy, Justice Elena Kagan would write years later. It allowed Republicans to carefully pick their voters, insulating them from the accountability that lies at the foundation of Americas democratic system. Now, the once-a-decade process is set to begin again in just a few weeks and Republicans are once again poised to dominate it. And this time around things could be even worse than they were a decade ago.

The redistricting cycle arrives at a moment when American democracy is already in peril. Republican lawmakers in states across the country, some of whom hold office because of gerrymandering, have enacted sweeping measures making it harder to vote. Republicans have blocked federal legislation that would outlaw partisan gerrymandering and strip state lawmakers of their authority to draw districts.

Advances in mapmaking technology have also made it easier to produce highly detailed maps very quickly, giving lawmakers a bigger menu of possibilities to choose from when they carve up a state. It makes it easier to tweak lines and to test maps to ensure that their projected results will hold throughout the decade.

Im very worried that well have several states, important states, with among the worst gerrymanders in American history, said Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a law professor at Harvard, who closely studies redistricting. Thats not good for democracy in those states.

In 2019, the supreme court said for the first time there was nothing federal courts could do to stop even the most excessive partisan gerrymandering, giving lawmakers a green light to be even more aggressive. And because of the supreme courts 2013 decision in the landmark Shelby County v Holder case, places with a history of voting discrimination will no longer have to get their maps approved by the federal government for the first time since 1965. Its a lack of oversight that could embolden lawmakers to attempt to draw districts that could dilute the influence of minority voters.

The gerrymandering clock is ticking. There is a consensus that Republicans could use the redistricting process to draw maps that will allow them to retake the House of Representatives in 2022. In state capitols where Republicans have control, there are already discussions about how aggressive lawmakers should be when they carve up districts for the next decade.

Texas, Georgia, Florida and North Carolina are all states where Republicans have complete control over the redistricting process and where experts are on high alert for GOP efforts to gerrymander districts. And even though Democrats are at a severe redistricting disadvantage overall, there are a handful of states Illinois, New York and Maryland where Democrats hold control of state government and can use that control to draw maps to their advantage.

Even though gerrymandering poses a uniquely dangerous threat to democracy, for decades, the process has largely gone under the radar. The mapmaking process is a complex, technical one, difficult to understand for average citizens. While some of the most egregiously gerrymandered districts are obviously contorted, it can be difficult to spot a gerrymander with the naked eye. And even if it were easy, lawmakers have largely taken the process behind closed doors, blocking the public from what they are seeing.

Thats set to change this year too.

Democrats and grassroots groups have spent the last few years educating citizens about the process and building up an army of volunteers across the country to closely monitor mapmaking. Part of that effort has been teaching people how to use publicly available technology to draw their own electoral maps.

Its an entirely new world than 10 years ago in terms of public mapping software. The capacity for the wide public to draw their own maps and identify their own communities, said Moon Duchin, a mathematician who leads the MGGG redistricting lab at Tufts University, which has built publicly available mapping tools.

Empowered with those maps, members of the public can better challenge lawmakers on their justification for drawing strange-looking maps, said William Desmond, a redistricting expert who advised Arizonas redistricting commission in 2010 and is working with Californias this year.

Members of the public and interested parties, theres going to be a lot more avenues open to them if they want to try their hand at drawing their own districts, he said. If they want to test the claims, like, OK you said you can only do this if you split these counties, lets see if I can take a whack at it. Theres lots more ways you can do it this time, and a lot higher level of quality.

Technology aside, theres also some hope that 2021 wont be a repeat of 2011, when Republicans dominated redistricting. While Republicans do have a huge advantage in drawing the districts, its not as severe as it was in 2011. In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, two of the most gerrymandered states a decade ago, Republicans still control the state legislatures, but now have Democratic governors who will be able to veto egregiously extreme maps.

Adam Kincaid, the director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, a GOP group focused on redistricting, downplayed the effects of Project Redmap.

Redmap has kind of taken on this mythos about what it was and what it was not. The reality was Redmap was a campaign to raise money to fund state legislative races around redistricting, he said. The best guardrails for gerrymandering have always been the American electorate. Shifting electorates break gerrymandering.

But critics argue that severe partisan gerrymandering prevents shifting electorates from being heard. In Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, Republicans have maintained a majority in the seats in the state legislature for the entire decade even as Democrats have won gubernatorial and other statewide races.

Kincaid agreed there would be significantly more public interest in the process this year than there had been in years past.

A decade ago the number of press calls I got could be counted on one hand. Really on one finger, he said.

Some states are also choosing to strip lawmakers of their ability to draw districts altogether. In Michigan, a group of novice organizers successfully passed a constitutional amendment in 2018 to put redistricting in the hands of an independent commission composed of four Democrats, four Republicans and five independents. The commission has strict partisan fairness requirements it must follow as it draws maps. Colorado and Virginia will also use commissions to draw districts this year, after voters approved ballot initiatives.

The gerrymandering last decade was so extreme that I think it has created this backlash. You see it in the reforms that have passed in a number of states. And you also see it in greater public awareness about gerrymandering, said Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice.

At the same time, he added, I think for Republicans they also learned that this actually does work. They actually can do this with micro-precision.

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Republicans poised to rig the next election by gerrymandering electoral maps - The Guardian

CANTON State Rep. Thomas West and panelists Wednesday night sought to inspire an audience of more than 50 to spread the word that the once-a-decade redrawing of congressional and state legislative district lines will determineif their congressional membersand state legislators truly represent them.

Thepandemic, how the criminal justice system affects people of color, crime, quality of life, climate change, the rising cost of living, the economy, jobs, infrastructureand immigration have been at the forefront of many voters' minds.

West, a Democrat fromCanton, and other speakers faced the challenge of adding to that list the topic of redistricting, a complicated and seemingly arcane process that significantly affects political influence. The town hall was held at the Metropolitan Event Centre in downtown Canton.

No Republicans spoke at the town hall, and there was no indication any Republicans participated. West said anyone was welcome to speak.

The speakers criticizedGov. Mike DeWine for not yet convening the Ohio Redistricting Commission, which he mustdo by August under a constitutional amendment approved by voters in 2015.

They say that the commission can start holding public hearings before the U.S. Census Bureau is expected to deliver crucial, updated population data from 2020 on which new congressional and state legislative districts will be based.

Districts must roughly be equal in population. The data is about four months late due to the difficulties of collecting the information during the pandemic last year, the bureau says.

The redistricting commission's job is to produce new district maps for Ohio House and Ohio Senate districts. The commission must release the first proposed maps by Sept. 1. It's also charged with producing a new congressional district map if the Ohio General Assembly fails to do so with sufficient support from Democrats.

The commission will be made up of the governor, Ohio secretary of state, state auditor, a Republican appointee of the Ohio House speaker, a Republican appointee of the Ohio Senate president, a Democratic appointee of the minority leader in the House and a Democratic appointee of the minority leader in the Senate.

Republicans will have five seats and Democrats two seats on the commission.

If an insufficient number of commission members of both parties can't agree on a district map, then the commission can only issue maps that would last for the 2022 and 2024 elections. And the process would start all over with new districts for the next six years.

While the Ohio Constitution now bans partisan gerrymandering, Democrats are suspicious that Republicans, whocontrol the process, will find ways to circumvent the safeguards.

So the speakers Wednesday urged the public to assert pressure on Republicans not to gerrymander the maps.

Katy Shanahan, the Ohio director for All on the Line, a group against gerrymandering, told the town hall audience that gerrymandering is "a form of cheating" that resulted in Republicans holding super majorities in the Ohio House and Senate despite them not winning a super majority of votes. And that Ohio is "home to one of the most gerrymandered districts in the country."

She said gerrymandering splits communities. Shanahan said she lived on a north Columbus street near the district border where much of her neighborhood was in another congressional district. But her district also included far away Mansfield and Zanesville.

"We're trying to minimize the difference between how we vote and who actually represents us," said Shanahan. "... We have a once-in-a-decade opportunity to right the ship of our democracy in this state and to get the fair maps that we deserve and that we've been denied for the last decade."

Randy Gonzalez, the former chairman of the Stark County Democratic Party, said Democrat Joyce Healy-Abrams in the 2012 election against Republican incumbent Bob Gibbs raised $250,000. While she won the portion of Stark County in the 7th Congressional District, she lost in the other counties in the district that are predominately rural.

Gonzalez, the Jackson Township fiscal officer, said after what happened to Healy-Abrams, it's become difficult to recruit talented Democratic challengers to run against Gibbs of Lakeville in Holmes County because the district has such a high proportion of Republican voters.

State Sen. Vernon Sykes, a Democrat fromAkron, was a town hall panelist who was involved in negotiating constitutional amendments designed to prevent gerrymandering.

"Hopefully, we're going to make some improvements and definitely not be considered the worst gerrymandered state in the nation," he said.

Reach Robert at (330) 580-8327 or robert.wang@cantonrep.com. Twitter: @rwangREP.

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Town Hall speakers say redistricting will decide whether people are represented fairly - Canton Repository

Since the end of the Trump Presidency, Republicans have been ratcheting up the doom-and-gloom quotient in their rhetoric. By this spring, they settled on a narrative of permanent crisisto be blamed on President Biden, of course. There was the Biden Border Crisis. The Crime Crisis. The Inflation Crisis and its corollary, the High-Gas-Price Crisis. The Critical-Race-Theory Crisis. Even, this week, the Ben & Jerrys-Is-Mean-to-Israel Crisis. America under Biden, to hear them tell it, has become a hellscape of disasters. In June, the House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, issued a letter to his colleagues. Our country is in crisis, he declared. Republicans stand against the impending malaise and stand for a greatness that we reached just a few years ago. The one crisis that Republicans have tended not to mention is the actual onethat is, the pandemic. When Republican politicians have focussed on COVID in recent months, its often been to give Donald Trump credit for the vaccines, while simultaneously accusing the Biden Administration of forcing those same vaccines on unwilling Americans.

So it was more than a bit surprising to see some Republicans this week kinda, sorta, maybe embrace a different message. The Louisiana congressman Steve Scalise, the Houses No. 2 Republican, posed for a photo of himself getting a vaccine shot, many months after he was eligible, and urged others to do the same. Get the vaccine, Scalise said, at a press conference on Thursday. I have high confidence in it. I got it myself. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a polio survivor who was never on board with his partys vaccine denialists and anti-maskers, warned, during his own press conference: either get vaccinated or get ready for more lockdowns. This is not complicated, McConnell said. Fox News, which, along with Facebook, has been among the countrys premier platforms for vaccine disinformation in recent months, started promoting a new get-vaccinated public-service announcement. Its prime-time star, the Trump confidant Sean Hannity, stared straight into the camera on Monday night and said, It absolutely makes sense for many Americans to get vaccinated.

These statements were not a coincidence; they were a cordinated political retreat. And no wonder: the new politics of the pandemic are following the alarming new math of the pandemic. With not quite half of the country48.8 per cent, to be exactfully vaccinated, cases of the new Delta variant are spiking upward across the United States, with particularly pronounced increases in large swaths of Trump country. At the end of June, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that eighty-six per cent of Democrats had at least one shot, versus fifty-two per cent of Republicansand the gap in vaccination rates is not closing but widening. As of July, thirty-five per cent of the population in counties that voted for Trump had been vaccinated, compared with nearly forty-seven per cent in counties that voted for Biden. By this week, new daily cases nationally were at their highest level since April. Deaths are increasing, too, while the number of new vaccinations is down to January levels.

The Republican pollster Glen Bolger told me that he didnt think the G.O.P.s about-face stemmed from a sudden fear of electoral debacle so much as a reflection of the alarming trend lines in red America. Until now, Republicans felt like we dont necessarily need to push on vaccines and tick off a significant portion of our base, so we wont talk about it, Bolger said. But, with cases increasing, that calculus changed. Its more of Hey, guess whos getting sick? Republicans, he said. Red America is facing a deadly fourth wave of the pandemic, and Republican politicians, or at least some, appear to have decided that they dont want to take the blame for killing off their own voters.

President Biden certainly noticed the rhetorical shift. Theyve had an altar call, some of those guys, Biden said, during a CNN town hall on Wednesday night. All of a sudden, theyre out there saying, Lets get vaccinated, lets get vaccinated.... Thats good. But Biden is having to do his own, somewhat less egregious, version of backpedalling, too. The President had set a goal of seventy per cent of American adults being vaccinated by July 4th. Even though that didnt happen, he went ahead with a huge party at the White House for some thousand mostly unmasked guests, including first responders and essential workers whove spent the past sixteen months battling the pandemicIndependence Day from the disease being the not very subtle message. But math is math, and the numbers are not good. On Wednesday night, at the town hall, Biden suggested that schoolchildren would probably have to wear masks when in-person classes resume this fall, and foreshadowed the reimposition of indoor mask mandates for the broader population that may soon be coming. (Confusingly, Biden added, But this is not a pandemic. Earlier, the President got the new reality right: Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated.) On Thursday, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, also seemed to indicate that such measures may be back on the table, with decisions to be driven by the C.D.C. She added, Weve never said that battle is over.

On Capitol Hillwhich, like the rest of Washington, has been rapidly returning to a pre-pandemic normal this summeralarms sounded once again when it was revealed this week that one vaccinated aide to Speaker Nancy Pelosi had tested positive for the coronavirus, along with several staffers in the extremely COVID-conscious White House. Everyone seemed to remember all at once a CNN poll from May which found that, although the entire Democratic membership of Congress had been vaccinated, the number was as low as forty-five per cent for House Republicans. When I went to the House for an interview, on Wednesday, I saw that some staffers were masking back up again. For a Wednesday-night reception that Pelosi held for the new House sergeant-at-arms, Axios reported, all guests were expected to wear a mask. On Thursday, Republicans had a press conference outside the Capitol for the ostensible purpose of prodding their voters to get the vaccine. There was a bit of that, as well as a lot of blame-shifting. A headline in the Times summed it up: House Republicans Use Vaccine Press Conference to Bash Democrats.

All the drearily predictable talking points reminded me that, if theres one thing weve all learned by now in the pandemic, its that public health and politics are one and the same: there is no way to separate them. Biden came into office pledging to follow the science, to vaccinate the country and lead the recovery. But he could not vaccinate the country against Fox News. There was no shot that could give viewers immunity to Tucker Carlson or Marjorie Taylor Greene. The result, for now, is that we have failed to achieve the herd immunity that would have wiped out COVID. Biden staked his Presidency on beating the virus and building back better. Politically speaking, though, theres not much point in talking about infrastructure deals or high-speed Internet if the pandemic is going to keep millions of Americans confined to their homes. Sothe irony of ironiesBidens political future may well come down to the persuadability of Trumps political base. And are they really persuadable? After all this, I find it almost impossible to believe that there is a way to persuade millions of vaccine-skeptical Republicans to embrace the shot that their leaders have been demonizing for months. Demagoguery is addictive, and its proved brutally effectiveeven for public health. Its more about what your team or your cable news network says than it is about reality, Bolger said, regretfully. At least both parties now seem to agree on one thing: the COVID Crisis isnt really over anymore.

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Suddenly, (Some) Republicans Are All In on the Vaccine - The New Yorker

The rhetoric has reached cities as small as Brackettville, Texas, where local officials signed a state of disaster letter declaring their rural border county under siege as immigrants invade. Republican governors in states nowhere near Mexico, including South Dakota and Ohio, are heeding the calls from Abbott and Arizona Governor Doug Ducey to send National Guard troops and other law enforcement agents to patrol the nations southwestern edge.

The Biden administration has turned every town into a border town, and every state into a border state, Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn told reporters last week, referencing migrant children flown into shelters in her state. Look at what we would be opening our country, our communities, our states, to, if this is allowed to continue.

Tough talk on border security and immigration has long been a staple of Republican politics, particularly during primaries, when politicians often vow to crack down on illegal immigration. But Trump took the rhetoric to a new level in both volume and intensity as president, frequently complaining of an invasion of nameless immigrants and depicting border crossers as criminals and killers in his rally speeches.

That overwrought invasion language, which Republican officials are now echoing to criticize Bidens border policies, plays into far right and, explicitly, white supremacist tropes that fuel anxiety among white voters about the dilution of their political power, historians and political analysts said, and that could have deadly consequences. Two recent white supremacist shooting suspects, Robert Bowers in Pittsburgh and Patrick Crusius in El Paso, Texas, cited invaders and a Hispanic invasion in the lead-up to their crimes.

Republicans say they have legitimate reasons to raise fears about the situation at the border, pointing to apprehensions that reached a 20-year high in June and rising summer temperatures that havent had their usual effect of deterring crossings.

The National Republican Congressional Committee has been blasting out a weekday newsletter dubbed the Biden Border Crisis, with what it lists as Bidens policy failures, as congressional Republicans head down to the Rio Grande Valley for boat tours of the border.

Democrats created a border crisis, and it keeps getting worse, NRCC spokeswoman Torunn Sinclair said. Their inability and unwillingness to stem the flow of drugs and migrants illegally crossing the US-Mexico border will cost them their House majority.

Democrats defend Bidens approach to the border, pointing out that the crossings started to hit new peaks under Trump, as well, even as Trump took hardline and inhumane measures to deter migrants.

But several polls suggest the GOP lines of attack may be having an effect. A Harvard CAPS-Harris poll released in June found approval for Bidens handling of immigration had dropped since February, from 56 percent to 52 percent, the lowest rating out of any of the eight issues polled. Another Washington Post-ABC News poll from July found 51 percent of Americans disapproved, making immigration Bidens lowest ranking issue in that poll, as well.

The use of more inflammatory language around immigration, including painting migrants as criminals, is not new to the Republican Party.

Anti-immigrant sentiment has approached the partys mainstream at various times since Congress passed legislation in 1965 tackling immigration reform and civil rights and most recently in California, Arizona, and Texas, where the Latino population has grown.

Pat Buchanan, who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 1992 and 1996, wrote books that warned about immigrant invasions eroding Western society, and years before Trump, Iowa Representative Steve King called for a border wall and compared immigrants to dogs.

But Buchanan was shunned from his party and King ousted from his committees for his rhetoric as recently as 2018. Trump, who slammed Buchanan as a Hitler lover in 1999 before cribbing his language on immigration years later, has been embraced.

After Trump rode that message into the White House, his attorney general Jeff Sessions and Trump aide Stephen Miller played to white grievances as they reshaped the nations approach to immigration and the US-Mexico border, drastically curbing the path to asylum, limiting legal forms of migration, and making the vilification of immigrants they deemed unwanted a consistent and open theme of the Trump presidency.

We tend to think of Trump as undisciplined and scattered and unorganized, but when it came to his immigration during the four years of his presidency, he had a laser focus, said Geraldo Cadava, an associate professor of history at Northwestern University and author of The Hispanic Republican.

The Trump administrations anti-immigrant language, coupled with its harsh policy approach, resonated with the mix of white power activists, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists who first came together in the aftermath of the Vietnam War to seek to create a separate white ethnostate, experts said. Now, some of the movements ideas permeate in the mainstream immigration debate, most notably echoes of the Great Replacement trope a racist conspiracy theory with roots in early 20th century French nationalism. It asserts that elites are using Black and brown immigrants from Africa and the Middle East to replace native white Europeans around the world.

By moving from the fringe to the mainstream, [the anti-immigrant rhetoric] provides cover to a much more radical and anti-Democratic strain in white power politics, said Kathleen Belew, a historian at the University of Chicago, who has studied the movement for 15 years.

In April, Tucker Carlson, the popular Fox News pundit, took a version of those views to prime time when he said Democrats planned to maintain power by changing the countrys population, and that they wanted to replace the current electorate with more obedient voters from the Third World.

Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin dipped into similar language on Fox Business just weeks later. The Biden administration wants complete open borders, Johnson said. And you have to ask yourself why? Is it really they want to remake the demographics of America to ensure their that they stay in power forever? Is that whats happening here?

To be sure, immigration is a thorny issue that has stumped both Republican and Democratic administrations over the past three decades and many Republican voters and politicians view it with nuance, saying they want tighter restrictions against illegal immigration but better treatment of people caught in the system.

Still, dehumanizing and more extreme language has surged as congressional and state-level Republicans have sought to keep Trumps border policies, claiming that migrants crossing the US-Mexico border are bringing drugs, crime, and disease; that federal officials are clandestinely moving immigrants into quiet and presumably predominantly white suburbs and neighborhoods nationwide; and that the newcomers are putting a strain on social services.

The language stirs fears of demographic change at a time when many Republicans are still rallying around an ex-president who declined to condemn white supremacist groups. We are just in this moment now where everyone is trying to figure out how far to the right, how far into white nationalism can the GOP go and still maintain a sense of legitimacy, said Laura Gmez, a law professor at the University of California who has written on race, Latino voters, and immigration in the United States.

Perhaps nowhere has the language been more pervasive than in Texas, where white nativist conspiracy theories that Mexicans plan to reconquer the Southwest have percolated since at least the 19th century, and where as recently as August 2019, a self-proclaimed white supremacist opened fire at a Walmart in El Paso, killing 23 people.

In a racist online screed he wrote before the crime, the suspect parroted the Great Replacement theory, as well as Trump and Texas Republican rhetoric, as he warned against the Hispanic invasion of the state.

That hasnt stop Abbott from echoing Trump as he has raised alarm over the carnage fueled by people who are coming across the border. At a press conference that included Trump last month by the border wall, Abbott denounced a rise in criminal migrants, and pledged to complete the steel-rod fence to stop communities from being overrun.

We need to emphasize exactly why we are doing this, Abbott said. We are doing this because our fellow Texans and our fellow Americans, they are being threatened every single day.

Standing nearby, Trump sternly looked on.

Reach Jazmine Ulloa at jazmine.ulloa@globe.com or on Twitter: @jazmineulloa.

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Stoking fears of immigrants has been part of the Republican platform for decades. But something is different this time - The Boston Globe

Its a summer of worry for some Pennsylvania Republicans.

A rocky July has increased concern among some party insiders that theyre lacking marquee candidates for critical statewide races next year.

First came a public blowup between likely gubernatorial candidate Bill McSwain and former Attorney General Bill Barr. Some prominent GOP donors and operatives saw it as a daft mistake that reinforced questions about his political acumen. Those insiders, largely from Southeastern Pennsylvania, have spoken to a political veteran from McSwains backyard former U.S. Rep. Jim Gerlach of Chester County to gauge his interest in running for governor, according to four people familiar with the conversations, and some are hopeful that additional candidates join the fray.

Meanwhile, in the states critical 2022 U.S. Senate race, fund-raising reports this month showed the leading GOP contenders all lagging behind the top Democrats. None of the major Republican Senate candidates has ever won elected office, a stark contrast with the emerging Democratic field that includes an array of well-established officeholders.

The anxiety is hardly universal in the GOP, and many Republicans remain confident in their chances, dismissing the chatter as predictable political carping. But the early stages of the two races have some in the partys establishment wing worried the GOP could blow a golden opportunity in 2022, when other factors are shaping up in their favor. Democrats could face the political backlash that usually confronts the presidents party in midterm elections. And Republicans are pointing to inflation, crime, and controversies over how schools teach students about racism as issues that could set the stage for big gains across the country.

Republicans are hoping the governors race delivers total control in Harrisburg (they already hold the legislature), while the Senate contest is one of a handful that could decide control of the chamber and with it the fate of President Joe Bidens agenda.

In a state as closely divided as Pennsylvania, the strength of individual candidates can make a difference in races that could come down to a few percentage points.

READ MORE: Bill McSwain tried to walk a political tightrope on Trumps election lies. Bill Barr cut it.

For most, the GOP concerns are more acute in the gubernatorial race, according to interviews with Republican or conservative donors and operatives. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal private discussions and candidly assess their partys potential nominees.

Much of the worry comes from the Philadelphia region, where the party is driven by a more pre-Trump establishment. After seeing Republicans decimated in the suburbs in recent years, theres a fear that a weak or Trump-styled gubernatorial nominee could sink even more down-ballot candidates in competitive local races.

We have quality candidates in the race now for both governor and Senate and they are working very hard, said Vince Galko, a Republican operative who has long worked on suburban races. There remains a faction of the donor base that are keeping the door open for potential other candidates that may emerge.

Guy Ciarrocchi, president of the Chester County Chamber of Business and Industry, said he has heard from several people about running for governor himself, and I am listening though many in the party doubt he can muster a serious challenge.

Like Gerlach, Ciarrocchi is also from McSwains home county, suggesting that potential rivals dont see McSwain, a former U.S. attorney, as an insurmountable force. Gerlach did not respond to messages seeking comment.

People are naturally questioning whos out there on the governors side and whos going to be the right candidate, said Josh Novotney, a GOP lobbyist from Philadelphia who has worked on statewide campaigns.

The GOP critics especially see State Sen. Doug Mastriano (R., Franklin), a likely gubernatorial candidate, as a lightning rod who could win a fractured primary but make the Republican ticket unpalatable in a general election. Former U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta is well-liked personally. But many Republicans believe he ran a lackluster 2018 campaign against Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and fear a repeat as he now campaigns for governor.

Both are vocal Trump supporters.

McSwain was seen as a potential alternative with a prosecutors tough-on-crime resume and potential appeal in the states populous suburbs. But some argue his brawl with Barr undercut his main selling points.

McSwain, Trump revealed, had written to the former president suggesting he was blocked from investigating voter fraud allegations. But Barr, his former boss, said McSwain had crafted an intentionally misleading letter, admitted to doing it to curry favor with Trump, and had just wanted to flap his gums for publicity. He said McSwain had license to investigate.

Other Republicans doubted the incident would really hurt McSwain, especially so early in the race, before he has even officially entered the contest. Its early, few voters are paying attention, and many in the GOP have soured on Barr because he rejected Trumps baseless fraud claims.

I wouldnt be shocked if some people were concerned, but I dont think it was that much damage Novotney said. I actually think it helps in a primary.

Like others, he noted that insiders aired similar concerns when Toomey was the leading Senate candidate before the 2010 election. Toomey went on to win two Senate terms before deciding against seeking reelection next year, opening the door to a GOP free-for-all. Establishment Republicans were also initially horrified when Trump won their presidential nomination in 2016, only to come around when he won.

READ MORE: Pennsylvanias 2022 Senate candidates just filed new fund-raising reports. Heres what the money tells us.

Several Republicans said these kind of complaints often arise as consultants try to drum up business by luring new people into the race. They scoffed at the idea that Gerlach could ride in as a winning candidate he hasnt run a campaign since 2012.

Everybodys just starting to get a feel for everybody, said Joe Vichot, the Republican chairman in Lehigh County. I do not have a concern for the strength of the field.

He said the GOP has a diverse range of Senate options and that the pro-Trump stylings of Mastriano and Barletta could help in much of the state.

His agenda over the four years, and what he was running on in 2020, was outstanding, Vichot said. I would never discourage anyone from sticking to that platform.

In contrast to his 2018 Senate run, Barletta has kept a busy early campaign schedule. He has visited 30 of the states 67 counties since joining the governors race in May, his campaign said.

Wed be happy to put his record up against existing candidates or any who might come forward, said Barletta adviser Tim Murtaugh.

McSwains camp pointed to his resume and appointment by Trump to be the top federal prosecutor in the Philadelphia region.

Bill McSwain is a conservative, a U.S. Marine, and was trusted by President Trump to aggressively prosecute violent criminals in Philadelphia as U.S. Attorney, McSwain spokesman James Fitzpatrick said in a statement.

A Mastriano spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Theres less worry on the Senate race, where insiders see credible options, but an acknowledgment that none of the GOP contenders have stood out so far.

The two most prominent candidates, Montgomery County real estate developer Jeff Bartos and Allegheny County former Army ranger Sean Parnell, failed to reach $600,000 in fund-raising during the period covering April, May, and June. They were outdone by a lesser-known candidate, conservative commentator Kathy Barnette (though Bartos added $440,000 of his own money to boost his campaign fund, and raised far more earlier in the race).

READ MORE: Pennsylvania Republicans have a path to victory in 2022. Pro-Trump candidates may not follow it.

Three different Democratic hopefuls, meanwhile, were near or above the $1 million mark in the same stretch. Donations are often used as an early measure of whether candidates can appeal to political diehards.

While arguing theres time for Bartos and Parnell to grow, GOP operatives are also watching to see if Barnette can keep it up, or if new entrant Carla Sands, Trumps former ambassador to Denmark, can make a mark. One major question is whether Sands will put some of her considerable wealth behind her campaign.

Some Republicans noted that in a race with such high stakes, national political groups will spend big to help narrow fund-raising shortfalls.

In 2016, it was Democrats who worried they lacked a strong candidate for that years key Senate race. Eventual nominee Katie McGinty came within 1.5 percentage points of beating Toomey.

Its a reminder that Pennsylvania races are often excruciatingly close, no matter what. But also that even marginal differences can matter.

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Pa. Republicans see a big opportunity in 2022. But some are worried their candidates might blow it. - The Philadelphia Inquirer