fivethirtyeight--2020-06-21--Trump’s Latest Firing May Have Violated Four Core Values Of American Democracy

President Trump ’ s firing of Geoffrey Berman , the U.S. attorney in charge of investigating major crimes in the influential Southern District of New York , which includes Manhattan , is another move by the Trump administration that , though likely legal and not totally unprecedented , appears to violate core democratic values .
The firing was dramatic , with Attorney General William Barr announcing late on Friday night Berman ’ s resignation and a replacement .
Berman issued a statement roughly an hour later saying that he had not resigned and that Barr personally did not have the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nature of his appointment .
So on Saturday afternoon , Trump himself fired Berman , and Barr designated a different person to replace Berman than the one he had named on Friday .
The firing was also somewhat surprising given that Berman is a longtime Republican who not only donated to Trump ’ s first presidential campaign but also served on his transition team .
Yet underlying all the drama is something we ’ ve gotten used to in the Trump era : the breaking of democratic norms and values , which are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ve written about before , values are fundamental principles ( e.g.
, free speech ) , whereas norms are the unwritten rules we abide by ( don ’ t cut in line ) that sometimes reinforce those values ( Supreme Court justices don ’ t endorse political candidates , thereby bolstering the independence of the judicial and executive branches ) but also sometimes don ’ t .
So let ’ s look at Trump ’ s firing of Berman in the context of some of those values .
Under Berman ’ s leadership @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump lawyer and ally Rudy Giuliani , including Giuliani ’ s dealings with Ukranian officials that were scrutinized as part of the impeachment inquiry against Trump .
We don ’ t know the status of that investigation , whether Giuliani was likely to face criminal charges or even whether that investigation was a factor in the decision to oust Berman .
There is some logic to the idea that Department of Justice prosecutors should avoid making decisions close to the election that might influence its outcome — indicting the president ’ s attorney @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fact , Democrats in 2016 criticized then-FBI Director James Comey on these grounds , when he announced less than two weeks before Election Day that he was reviewing new evidence involving Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton ’ s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state .
That said , if Trump and Barr were trying to protect Giuliani ( and therefore Trump ) , it fits a pattern of Barr ’ s Justice Department seeming to extend special treatment to Trump allies .
In February , DOJ officials overruled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lighter sentence for longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone , who was convicted of lying to Congress , witness tampering and obstruction of justice .
All four prosecutors withdrew from the case — and one resigned — in protest of the decision .
Even more unusual was the decision in May by a Barr-appointed U.S. attorney in Washington , D.C. , to drop charges against Trump ’ s first national security adviser , Michael Flynn , even though Flynn had already pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI .
Not only did a career @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but federal appeals judges are considering not allowing the Justice Department to drop the charges .
The democratic value at play here is equal justice under the law — a person should not get unusually lenient treatment by the Justice Department if he or she is an ally of the president ’ s .
Arguably , previous presidents have violated this value — for example , as he was leaving office , Bill Clinton pardoned the ex-husband of a major Democratic Party donor .
The most alarming potential explanation of what happened to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him specifically for investigating Giuliani .
A milder version may be that the Southern District , under Berman ’ s leadership , demonstrated that it did not care about Trump ’ s preferences and would investigate whichever crimes it deemed important , no matter the potential ramifications for Trump .
Two years ago , the Southern District persuaded onetime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to plead guilty to a number of crimes , including violating campaign finance law , with Cohen suggesting his illegal behavior came at Trump ’ s behest .
( It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ himself from that case . )
So Barr and Trump may consider Berman insufficiently loyal to their interests and fear he would bring charges that would reflect badly on Trump or Republicans , even if Berman didn ’ t bring forward a case clearly linked to the president .
Indeed , the Trump administration has a long record of demoting , reassigning , firing or otherwise sidelining law enforcement officials who show independence from the White House : Comey , former FBI general counsel James Baker , former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump or his allies often hinted that Rod Rosenstein and Robert Mueller would be fired during their tenures as FBI deputy director and DOJ special counsel , respectively , in a manner seemingly designed to intimidate them .
Trump has also recently complained about current FBI Director Christopher Wray and hinted that he could be fired .
And Barr has implied that the Justice Department will seek to bring charges against those involved with initiating the investigations of the Trump campaign ’ s connections to Russia — in effect , criminalizing efforts that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it is not unprecedented for presidents to replace law enforcement officials .
Presidents in both parties traditionally replace with their own choices all the U.S. attorneys appointed by the previous administration , which often results in a wide partisan swap .
As president , Clinton fired the FBI director , and most notably , in what came to be known as the “ Saturday Night Massacre , ” then-President Richard Nixon purged the senior leadership of the Justice Department for refusing to quash an investigation of him — he was impeached and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ these moves .
The democratic value at stake here is the independence of law enforcement .
That ideal , that their decisions should be divorced from politics , is hard to maintain if key law enforcement officials are constantly worried about being fired by the president , attorney general or anyone else for political reasons .
It ’ s worth thinking about the initial bid to fire Berman on Friday night , because that is in part what made this move so problematic at first glance .
It appeared to be an attempt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the top of an important law enforcement agency ( the Southern District of New York ) someone more likely to be friendly to their interests .
Generally , when a political appointee like a U.S. attorney leaves , he or she is replaced by the No .
2 person in that office , usually a career civil service employee not formally aligned with either party .
But on Friday Barr announced that Berman would be temporarily replaced by Craig Carpenito , a U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey , a close @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Chris Christie , another Trump loyalist .
This is a pattern for Trump : removing the leaders of various government agencies or departments , ignoring normal succession procedures and passing over the people who would normally step in , and instead replacing them with Trump allies .
The temporary replacement ’ s role is essentially to do Trump ’ s bidding in a way that the removed person would not .
The most prominent example of this was when , after the 2018 midterm elections , Trump replaced Sessions with his chief of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Often , as in the case of Berman , Trump has removed someone appointed in a process he did not totally control ( usually Senate confirmation — in Berman ’ s case , he was installed by the judges of the Southern District ) with someone chosen solely by Trump for that particular role .
Trump ’ s controlling the executive branch in this way — minimizing the oversight of other branches — weakens checks on his executive power .
In this instance , however , Berman ’ s own chief deputy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ role .
That said , that Carpenito never actually made it into Berman ’ s former position doesn ’ t mean the move wasn ’ t still problematic in terms of oversight .
In indicting one Trump lawyer ( Cohen ) and investigating another ( Giuliani ) , the Southern District under Berman ’ s leadership was effectively conducting oversight of the president , since Giuliani in particular was basically executing Trump ’ s policy goals with Ukraine ( pressuring Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump was unhappy with that oversight and wants to limit it .
Trump ’ s attempts to stop oversight of his policy moves is also part of a pattern .
He has essentially refused to comply with any congressional investigations into his administration .
And over the past few months , he has fired a number of the inspectors general at federal agencies , the people formally charged with scrutinizing the executive branch .
The intelligence community inspector general played a key role in bringing forward the whistleblower ’ s complaints about the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , leading to the president ’ s impeachment .
Trump seems to now view all inspectors general as threats to his administration .
The democratic value at play here is oversight of the executive branch .
The Senate ’ s role in confirming executive branch appointees and the presence of inspectors general are ways in which a president in theory is not able to do whatever he wants with the executive branch .
Trump seems unwilling to abide by these constraints .
Having his personal lawyer conduct foreign policy puts that person out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ inspectors general .
Firing the U.S. attorney whose office was investigating the president ’ s lawyer signals that the president ’ s lawyer and the sphere of policy he is implementing is off limits .
The Berman firing , like the removals of several inspectors general , was done on a Friday night .
This is not the most important of these violations of democratic values .
Previous presidents — and plenty of other people outside of politics , for that matter — “ dump ” bad news on Friday nights , hoping @ @ @ @ @ @ @ journalists take off for the weekend .
That said , these firings are important for the reasons I have laid out above .
Trump ’ s seeming desire to obscure them suggests he wants to avoid careful examination of decisions that he no doubt is aware will be controversial .
Media and public scrutiny of presidential decisions is a core democratic value as well , even if other presidents have also neglected to maintain it .
And , again , this is a pattern for Trump .
In the past few weeks , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get CNN to retract — and apologize for — a poll showing Trump trailing Biden and to block the publication of former National Security Adviser John Bolton ’ s book , which is critical of Trump .
Presidents often complain about polls and dislike books critical of them but Trump ’ s actions go beyond those more traditional objections .
We recently wrote about how the administration ’ s decision to use chemical agents and rubber bullets on protesters outside the White House violated several democratic values .
Key officials involved in that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The firing of Berman may also backfire on Trump .
It could embolden more people , including some Republicans , to start criticizing the president for politicizing law enforcement decisions .
Berman ’ s decision to resist his firing and administration officials ’ distancing themselves from the White House protest incident suggest something else that should worry Trump : People in his administration may be reading and believing polls showing him trailing Biden , thinking Trump is likely to lose reelection in November and becoming more unwilling to do questionable things to stay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may not be president come January .

President Trump’s firing of Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney in charge of investigating major crimes in the influential Southern District of New York, which includes Manhattan, is another move by the Trump administration that, though likely legal and not totally unprecedented, appears to violate core democratic values.
The firing was dramatic, with Attorney General William Barr announcing late on Friday night Berman’s resignation and a replacement. Berman issued a statement roughly an hour later saying that he had not resigned and that Barr personally did not have the right to fire him due to the nature of his appointment. So on Saturday afternoon, Trump himself fired Berman, and Barr designated a different person to replace Berman than the one he had named on Friday. The firing was also somewhat surprising given that Berman is a longtime Republican who not only donated to Trump’s first presidential campaign but also served on his transition team.
Yet underlying all the drama is something we’ve gotten used to in the Trump era: the breaking of democratic norms and values, which are two distinct concepts. As we’ve written about before, values are fundamental principles (e.g., free speech), whereas norms are the unwritten rules we abide by (don’t cut in line) that sometimes reinforce those values (Supreme Court justices don’t endorse political candidates, thereby bolstering the independence of the judicial and executive branches) but also sometimes don’t. So let’s look at Trump’s firing of Berman in the context of some of those values.
Equal justice under the law
Under Berman’s leadership, the Southern District was reportedly investigating Trump lawyer and ally Rudy Giuliani, including Giuliani’s dealings with Ukranian officials that were scrutinized as part of the impeachment inquiry against Trump. We don’t know the status of that investigation, whether Giuliani was likely to face criminal charges or even whether that investigation was a factor in the decision to oust Berman. There is some logic to the idea that Department of Justice prosecutors should avoid making decisions close to the election that might influence its outcome — indicting the president’s attorney is arguably such an example. In fact, Democrats in 2016 criticized then-FBI Director James Comey on these grounds, when he announced less than two weeks before Election Day that he was reviewing new evidence involving Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.
That said, if Trump and Barr were trying to protect Giuliani (and therefore Trump), it fits a pattern of Barr’s Justice Department seeming to extend special treatment to Trump allies. In February, DOJ officials overruled career prosecutors and asked for a significantly lighter sentence for longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone, who was convicted of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstruction of justice. All four prosecutors withdrew from the case — and one resigned — in protest of the decision. Even more unusual was the decision in May by a Barr-appointed U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., to drop charges against Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, even though Flynn had already pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. Not only did a career prosecutor quit that case as well, but federal appeals judges are considering not allowing the Justice Department to drop the charges.
The democratic value at play here is equal justice under the law — a person should not get unusually lenient treatment by the Justice Department if he or she is an ally of the president’s. Arguably, previous presidents have violated this value — for example, as he was leaving office, Bill Clinton pardoned the ex-husband of a major Democratic Party donor.
Independence of law enforcement
The most alarming potential explanation of what happened to Berman is that Barr tried to fire him specifically for investigating Giuliani. A milder version may be that the Southern District, under Berman’s leadership, demonstrated that it did not care about Trump’s preferences and would investigate whichever crimes it deemed important, no matter the potential ramifications for Trump. Two years ago, the Southern District persuaded onetime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to plead guilty to a number of crimes, including violating campaign finance law, with Cohen suggesting his illegal behavior came at Trump’s behest. (It’s worth noting that Berman recused himself from that case.)
So Barr and Trump may consider Berman insufficiently loyal to their interests and fear he would bring charges that would reflect badly on Trump or Republicans, even if Berman didn’t bring forward a case clearly linked to the president.
Indeed, the Trump administration has a long record of demoting, reassigning, firing or otherwise sidelining law enforcement officials who show independence from the White House: Comey, former FBI general counsel James Baker, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Trump or his allies often hinted that Rod Rosenstein and Robert Mueller would be fired during their tenures as deputy attorney general and DOJ special counsel, respectively, in a manner seemingly designed to intimidate them. Trump has also recently complained about current FBI Director Christopher Wray and hinted that he could be fired.
And Barr has implied that the Justice Department will seek to bring charges against those involved with initiating the investigations of the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia — in effect, criminalizing efforts that bring scrutiny to the president.
Again, it is not unprecedented for presidents to replace law enforcement officials. Presidents in both parties traditionally replace with their own choices all the U.S. attorneys appointed by the previous administration, which often results in a wide partisan swap. As president, Clinton fired the FBI director, and most notably, in what came to be known as the “Saturday Night Massacre,” then-President Richard Nixon purged the senior leadership of the Justice Department for refusing to quash an investigation of him — he was forced to resign in part because of these moves.
The democratic value at stake here is the independence of law enforcement. That ideal, that their decisions should be divorced from politics, is hard to maintain if key law enforcement officials are constantly worried about being fired by the president, attorney general or anyone else for political reasons.
Accountability and oversight
It’s worth thinking about the initial bid to fire Berman on Friday night, because that is in part what made this move so problematic at first glance. It appeared to be an attempt by Barr and Trump to install at the top of an important law enforcement agency (the Southern District of New York) someone more likely to be friendly to their interests. Generally, when a political appointee like a U.S. attorney leaves, he or she is replaced by the No. 2 person in that office, usually a career civil service employee not formally aligned with either party. But on Friday Barr announced that Berman would be temporarily replaced by Craig Carpenito, a U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, a close ally of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, another Trump loyalist.
This is a pattern for Trump: removing the leaders of various government agencies or departments, ignoring normal succession procedures and passing over the people who would normally step in, and instead replacing them with Trump allies. The temporary replacement’s role is essentially to do Trump’s bidding in a way that the removed person would not. The most prominent example of this was when, after the 2018 midterm elections, Trump replaced Sessions with his chief of staff at the time, Matt Whitaker. Often, as in the case of Berman, Trump has removed someone appointed in a process he did not totally control (usually Senate confirmation — in Berman’s case, he was installed by the judges of the Southern District) with someone chosen solely by Trump for that particular role.
Trump’s controlling the executive branch in this way — minimizing the oversight of other branches — weakens checks on his executive power. In this instance, however, Berman’s own chief deputy, Audrey Strauss, stepped into the role.
That said, that Carpenito never actually made it into Berman’s former position doesn’t mean the move wasn’t still problematic in terms of oversight. In indicting one Trump lawyer (Cohen) and investigating another (Giuliani), the Southern District under Berman’s leadership was effectively conducting oversight of the president, since Giuliani in particular was basically executing Trump’s policy goals with Ukraine (pressuring Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden). Berman’s firing suggests Trump was unhappy with that oversight and wants to limit it.
Trump’s attempts to stop oversight of his policy moves is also part of a pattern. He has essentially refused to comply with any congressional investigations into his administration. And over the past few months, he has fired a number of the inspectors general at federal agencies, the people formally charged with scrutinizing the executive branch. The intelligence community inspector general played a key role in bringing forward the whistleblower’s complaints about the Trump administration’s dealings with Ukraine, leading to the president’s impeachment. Trump seems to now view all inspectors general as threats to his administration.
The democratic value at play here is oversight of the executive branch. The Senate’s role in confirming executive branch appointees and the presence of inspectors general are ways in which a president in theory is not able to do whatever he wants with the executive branch. Trump seems unwilling to abide by these constraints. Having his personal lawyer conduct foreign policy puts that person out of the purview of the Senate or inspectors general. Firing the U.S. attorney whose office was investigating the president’s lawyer signals that the president’s lawyer and the sphere of policy he is implementing is off limits.
Media and public scrutiny
The Berman firing, like the removals of several inspectors general, was done on a Friday night. This is not the most important of these violations of democratic values. Previous presidents — and plenty of other people outside of politics, for that matter — “dump” bad news on Friday nights, hoping it will get less media coverage as journalists take off for the weekend.
That said, these firings are important for the reasons I have laid out above. Trump’s seeming desire to obscure them suggests he wants to avoid careful examination of decisions that he no doubt is aware will be controversial.
Media and public scrutiny of presidential decisions is a core democratic value as well, even if other presidents have also neglected to maintain it.
And, again, this is a pattern for Trump. In the past few weeks, he and his aides have sought to get CNN to retract — and apologize for — a poll showing Trump trailing Biden and to block the publication of former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s book, which is critical of Trump. Presidents often complain about polls and dislike books critical of them but Trump’s actions go beyond those more traditional objections.
We recently wrote about how the administration’s decision to use chemical agents and rubber bullets on protesters outside the White House violated several democratic values. Key officials involved in that incident now seem to regret it. The firing of Berman may also backfire on Trump. It could embolden more people, including some Republicans, to start criticizing the president for politicizing law enforcement decisions.
Berman’s decision to resist his firing and administration officials’ distancing themselves from the White House protest incident suggest something else that should worry Trump: People in his administration may be reading and believing polls showing him trailing Biden, thinking Trump is likely to lose reelection in November and becoming more unwilling to do questionable things to stay in good standing with a man who may not be president come January.
CORRECTION (June 22, 2020, 8:37 a.m.) An earlier version of this article incorrectly described the events that preceded former President Richard Nixon’s resignation. The House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment against Nixon amid the Watergate scandal, but he resigned before the full House held an impeachment vote. Nixon was not impeached by the full House of Representatives.
CORRECTION (JUNE 23, 2020, 7:05 a.m.) An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Rod Rosenstein had served as deputy director of the FBI under President Trump. Rosenstein was the deputy attorney general.
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fivethirtyeight--2020-06-22--Is Police Reform A Fundamentally Flawed Idea?

In January , Philip McHarris was driving from New Haven to Boston to visit a friend when he saw a familiar sight in his rearview mirror — flashing police lights .
It was late at night , and McHarris pulled into a gas station and waited , as he had done many times before , for the state trooper to approach his window .
The problem , the trooper said , was the way McHarris had pulled off at an exit .
Then he said that the highway where McHarris had been driving was a drug trafficking route , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for drugs .
McHarris explained that he was a Ph.D. student in sociology and African American Studies at Yale who had just left campus for the weekend .
But while the officer walked away to his car , McHarris quickly took a video of himself and sent it to his mother and sisters .
“ I said , ‘ This cop thinks I ’ m trafficking in drugs , ’ ” McHarris said .
“ ‘ I just wanted to let you know that I tried and I love you .
I really @ @ @ @ @ @ @ let McHarris go with a warning .
It didn ’ t spiral into one of the deadly encounters that make the front pages of newspapers , where a Black man is killed at the hands of a police officer .
The officer had even been relatively courteous , assuring McHarris that the stop wasn ’ t the result of racial profiling .
But that just reinforced for McHarris how poorly the officer understood the racial dynamics of the interaction — much less the fear he felt throughout the encounter , and couldn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ What good is it if a cop is being nice to me while asking to search the car ?
” he said .
“ What I care about is that I got pulled over in the first place , and I ’ m sitting here thinking maybe this random gas station is the last thing I ’ ll see.
” Years ago , McHarris came to the conclusion that because of interactions like this , department-level policing reforms aren ’ t enough .
And as a scholar who studies policing and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , McHarris is part of a small network of activists who have also spent years working to defund police departments , redistribute the money to other parts of the social safety net , like housing , education and transportation , and create new systems for ensuring public safety .
But now their work is suddenly everywhere .
After the police killing of George Floyd , the Minneapolis City Council voted to dismantle its police department amid growing calls from protesters to “ defund the police.
” And it ’ s not just Minneapolis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Portland , Ore. , are mulling similar ideas .
The exact meaning of the slogan varies a lot depending on who you ask .
Even the Minneapolis city council members who voted to disband say their move comes with qualifications .
But broadly , it involves a seismic shift in the way we think about public safety — and who is being kept safe .
Some critics of the defunding movement have argued that getting rid of the police would be counterproductive — in their absence , who would keep the streets @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s time to stop tinkering around the edges of a system that many people in heavily policed communities say is causing more harm than good .
“ These police reforms are implemented over and over again and Black people are still being brutalized and murdered , ” he said .
“ Nobody is saying we can ’ t have mechanisms to promote safety .
It just won ’ t look like the police.
” Defunding the police is a big departure from the reforms we ’ ve seen before .
But although there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how sweeping change should be , pretty much everyone we spoke with agrees that the system is broken , efforts to measure it are highly flawed , and now is the moment to think big about how to fix it .
In many ways , the movement to defund the police is exposing gaping holes in how we measure what good police work really is , and how we gauge a reform ’ s success .
Because after decades of research on policing and police reform , we still don ’ t know @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , how their presence actually affects the people who experience police violence , and what people in those communities want from reform .
On its surface , large majorities of Americans support “ police reform.
” But “ reform ” is vague and gets complicated fast .
For one thing , the police aren ’ t a single entity .
There are more than 15,000 law enforcement agencies scattered throughout the U.S. , which means that any change has to be piecemeal .
And it ’ s also hard to figure out what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to compare them .
Within a single metro area , multiple departments could be operating under different rules or different standards of rule enforcement , and even using different definitions of particular buzzword-heavy reforms like “ community policing.
” That lack of uniformity makes it difficult to compare police departments that have implemented similar policies .
“ To understand if a police reform is actually working the way you want , you need to be able to see what officers do in the field and figure out whether the reform you ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Emily Owens , a criminology professor at the University of California , Irvine .
“ We don ’ t really have the data or the studies right now for me to say with confidence , ‘ We know that these reforms work and these don ’ t. ’ ” What ’ s more , the data that exists is full of holes — and bias .
Even when researchers try to document whether the police are doing a good job or how departments might improve , they ’ re often conducting those studies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the story .
Policing data is imperfect .
Due to a lack of systematic or reliable data on police misconduct , the fact that the data we do have is mostly from police departments themselves , and an emphasis on crime and police presence , it ’ s liable to miss important variables such as nature of police interactions with the public , or the fact that plenty of illegal or violent behavior happens in places and populations where police aren ’ t looking for it .
Case in point : The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is one of the best researched policing techniques and — after some 40-odd randomized controlled trials , by one expert ’ s count — also the one with the most evidence supporting its effectiveness .
The basic idea is that crime is clustered throughout a city or neighborhood , so police should target those areas that see higher levels of crime .
But there are still a lot of unavoidable caveats .
For instance , when scientists identify hot spots and measure whether policing in those locations has been effective , what they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ statistics , said Cody Telep , a criminology professor at Arizona State University .
That isn ’ t necessarily the same thing as measuring safety ( real or perceived ) in a community , he told us .
After all , about half of all violent crimes are never reported to the police at all .
So the appearance of a hot spot in the data doesn ’ t necessarily mean that ’ s where the most dangerous criminal activity is actually happening — something Telep ’ s team saw firsthand when it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ police in Seattle with drug-related calls to the emergency medical services in the same city .
It turns out there was a lot of drug activity the police were missing entirely .
Crime , then , and particularly crimes reported to police , are not a great metric by which to judge where the most crime in a city is happening and how dangerous that area feels to the people who live there .
Nor is a reduction in crime the end-all , be-all metric to tell you whether police are doing good @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a good metric , but I would add to that , at what cost ?
” said Rod Brunson , a professor at Northeastern University ’ s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice .
These statistics also don ’ t tell researchers anything about what police should be doing in a hot spot — or what police do in communities every day .
Researchers have established that it ’ s effective to spend more time in certain parts of town … but , Telep said , have offered little guidance on what police @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And even if police were given guidelines on what they should be doing , nobody currently keeps track of metrics that would show what those officers were actually doing .
That ’ s about to change , at least partially — under an executive order issued by President Trump last week , the Department of Justice will begin maintaining an anonymized database of police misconduct .
But there ’ s still a catch : The only time we find out about what police do in their day-to-day work is when someone complains @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said Wesley Skogan , professor emeritus of political science at Northwestern University .
That means there ’ s no incentive toward good behavior — even though some research suggests that positive interactions with police can improve public attitudes toward them .
“ The fact about policing is it ’ s two people in a car , in the night .
What we know about what they do is when they choose to fill out a form , ” Skogan said .
But even in the situations where it is possible to get good @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a reform has been successful depends a lot on your perspective .
In general , research tends to focus on metrics that are easy to quantify : Did a reform lead to fewer police killings ?
Fewer civilian complaints ?
More fired officers ?
But those measures don ’ t really account for the human and social cost of police violence , and they don ’ t tell us much about whether people in overpoliced communities are actually feeling safer .
Part of the problem is that we don ’ t have a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ effects of dealing with the police on an everyday basis .
But qualitative research can give us a window into how a heavy police presence can stoke feelings of deep mistrust .
In a study of young people in Baltimore conducted shortly after the killing of Freddie Gray , Yale sociologist and law professor Monica Bell concluded that although the people she was studying were very concerned about violence in their communities , they didn ’ t see police as protectors .
“ It ’ s not just that people are being brutally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it ’ s the routine , daily messaging of — they are going to be watching you in your neighborhood , they ’ re going to mace you at your school , ” she said .
“ People will even report that a police officer behaved in the ‘ correct ’ manner but they still walk away with a deep sense that they ’ ve experienced a broader racism , a broader sense of exclusion that quantitative measures can ’ t easily capture.
” Analysis of conversations with people in heavily policed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ found a similar result : To the people in the study , the police seemed like they were everywhere — except when their help was actually needed .
The deep-rooted perception that the police are there to monitor you , not protect you , is hard both to measure and undo .
“ There ’ s a very strong perception that the police are there to protect and serve the white community on the other side of the city or the suburbs , ” said Gwen Prowse , a Ph.D. candidate in political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and one of the study authors .
“ The idea is — if you only see me as a criminal and you don ’ t see me as a full member of this society , how can you protect me ?
” And without input from the people who actually experience police violence , attempts to evaluate police reforms can end up reflecting what the researchers — and not the people who are affected — think is important .
“ There ’ s this weird business where people think data can solve everything @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the community is actually part of the problem , ” said Bocar Ba , a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School who studies economics and crime .
Use of force is one such example — just as police departments have different definitions of what constitutes “ excessive force , ” so can researchers .
For instance , the idea that there is an “ optimal ” or “ reasonable ” use of force may prompt researchers or policymakers to ignore or discount lower-level incidents that were still quite traumatic for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the people deciding what an ‘ optimal ’ use of force is ?
” said Ba .
“ Are they the people who are experiencing brutality themselves ?
In almost all cases , no.
” Meanwhile , researchers are just starting to scratch the surface of how an uneasy and often violent relationship with police shapes other aspects of people ’ s lives .
A recent study of students in an urban Southwest school district found that proximity to police shootings harmed high school students ’ performance .
That ’ s in line @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in schools may actually decrease high school graduation rates .
But these types of social costs aren ’ t easily priced in when researchers evaluate whether a reform succeeded or failed .
It ’ s becoming increasingly clear , too , that the reforms we ’ ve already tried are running headlong into other difficult to measure , difficult to fix forces , like police culture .
Encounters between police and civilians are often violent because police officers are taught to think of themselves as always being in danger , according to research @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Texas .
At the same time , Skogan said , police culture tends to discount things people at community meetings say they are actually interested in — like controlling traffic or reducing public drinking — as boring .
These are the kinds of problems that make activists like Arissa Hall , the director of National Bail Out , argue that simply reducing contact between police and civilians , and replacing the police with other community resources , is a much better way to address police violence .
There might not be many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the positive effect of reducing police presence and investing in housing and education can already be seen in other places .
“ Abolishing police departments might seem impractical , but there aren ’ t police officers on every street corner in affluent white neighborhoods , ” she said .
“ We have actual models and examples of what it means to decenter the police and invest in people ’ s quality of life.
” There ’ s a lot of research to support the idea that putting more money into resources that improve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ care , housing and education — can reduce crime .
The more nebulous question is how removing funding for police departments will affect public safety .
But Jennifer Doleac , an economics professor at Texas A & M University who studies crime , suggested policymakers and researchers should prioritize listening to the experiences of people who are interacting with police and make sure those are taken into account when deciding which policies are implemented and how to evaluate their success .
“ Clearly , the system that we have now isn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Doleac said .
“ So can I see risks to significantly rolling back funding for police departments ?
Sure .
But there ’ s also a big , big risk in doing too little right now .
”

In January, Philip McHarris was driving from New Haven to Boston to visit a friend when he saw a familiar sight in his rearview mirror — flashing police lights. It was late at night, and McHarris pulled into a gas station and waited, as he had done many times before, for the state trooper to approach his window. The problem, the trooper said, was the way McHarris had pulled off at an exit. Then he said that the highway where McHarris had been driving was a drug trafficking route, and asked if he could search the car for drugs.
McHarris explained that he was a Ph.D. student in sociology and African American Studies at Yale who had just left campus for the weekend. But while the officer walked away to his car, McHarris quickly took a video of himself and sent it to his mother and sisters. “I said, ‘This cop thinks I’m trafficking drugs,’” McHarris said. “‘I love you and I’m trying my best to navigate this.’”
Eventually, the officer let McHarris go with a warning. It didn’t spiral into one of the deadly encounters that make the front pages of newspapers, where a Black man is killed at the hands of a police officer. The officer had even been relatively courteous, assuring McHarris that the stop wasn’t the result of racial profiling. But that just reinforced for McHarris how poorly the officer understood the racial dynamics of the interaction — much less the fear he felt throughout the encounter, and couldn’t shake even after he drove away. “What good is it if a cop is being nice to me while asking to search the car?” he said. “What I care about is that I got pulled over in the first place, and I’m sitting here thinking maybe this random gas station is the last thing I’ll see.”
Years ago, McHarris came to the conclusion that because of interactions like this and his own research on policing, department-level policing reforms aren’t enough. And as a scholar who works alongside the Movement for Black Lives, McHarris is part of a small network of activists who have also spent years working to defund police departments, redistribute the money to other parts of the social safety net, like housing, education and transportation, and create new systems for ensuring public safety. But now their work is suddenly everywhere. After the police killing of George Floyd, the Minneapolis City Council voted to dismantle its police department amid growing calls from protesters to “defund the police.” And it’s not just Minneapolis — officials in Los Angeles, Denver and Portland, Ore., are mulling similar ideas.
[Related: The States Taking On Police Reform After The Death Of George Floyd]
The exact meaning of the slogan varies a lot depending on who you ask. Even the Minneapolis city council members who voted to disband say their move comes with qualifications. But broadly, it involves a seismic shift in the way we think about public safety — and who is being kept safe. Some critics of the defunding movement have argued that getting rid of the police would be counterproductive — in their absence, who would keep the streets safe? But McHarris said it’s time to stop tinkering around the edges of a system that many people in heavily policed communities say is causing more harm than good. “These police reforms are implemented over and over again and Black people are still being brutalized and murdered,” he said. “Nobody is saying we can’t have mechanisms to promote safety. It just won’t look like the police.”
Defunding the police is a big departure from the reforms we’ve seen before. But although there are disagreements between activists and researchers about how sweeping change should be, pretty much everyone we spoke with agrees that the system is broken, efforts to measure it are highly flawed, and now is the moment to think big about how to fix it. In many ways, the movement to defund the police is exposing gaping holes in how we measure what good police work really is, and how we gauge a reform’s success. Because after decades of research on policing and police reform, we still don’t know that much about what police are doing, how their presence actually affects the people who experience police violence, and what people in those communities want from reform.
On its surface, large majorities of Americans support “police reform.” But “reform” is vague and gets complicated fast. For one thing, the police aren’t a single entity. There are more than 15,000 law enforcement agencies scattered throughout the U.S., which means that any change has to be piecemeal. And it’s also hard to figure out what departments are actually doing, or how to compare them. Within a single metro area, multiple departments could be operating under different rules or different standards of rule enforcement, and even using different definitions of particular buzzword-heavy reforms like “community policing.”
[Related: How Americans Feel About ‘Defunding The Police’]
That lack of uniformity makes it difficult to compare police departments that have implemented similar policies. “To understand if a police reform is actually working the way you want, you need to be able to see what officers do in the field and figure out whether the reform you’re looking at changed that,” said Emily Owens, a criminology professor at the University of California, Irvine. “We don’t really have the data or the studies right now for me to say with confidence, ‘We know that these reforms work and these don’t.’”
What’s more, the data that exists is full of holes — and bias. Even when researchers try to document whether the police are doing a good job or how departments might improve, they’re often conducting those studies using metrics that help tell only part of the story. Policing data is imperfect. Due to a lack of systematic or reliable data on police misconduct, the fact that the data we do have is mostly from police departments themselves, and an emphasis on crime and police presence, it’s liable to miss important variables such as nature of police interactions with the public, or the fact that plenty of illegal or violent behavior happens in places and populations where police aren’t looking for it.
Case in point: The practice of hot spot policing. This is one of the best researched policing techniques and — after some 40-odd randomized controlled trials, by one expert’s count — also the one with the most evidence supporting its effectiveness. The basic idea is that crime is clustered throughout a city or neighborhood, so police should target those areas that see higher levels of crime.
But there are still a lot of unavoidable caveats. For instance, when scientists identify hot spots and measure whether policing in those locations has been effective, what they’re really looking at is crime statistics, said Cody Telep, a criminology professor at Arizona State University. That isn’t necessarily the same thing as measuring safety (real or perceived) in a community, he told us. After all, about half of all violent crimes are never reported to the police at all. So the appearance of a hot spot in the data doesn’t necessarily mean that’s where the most dangerous criminal activity is actually happening — something Telep’s team saw firsthand when it compared the locations of drug-related calls to police in Seattle with drug-related calls to the emergency medical services in the same city. It turns out there was a lot of drug activity the police were missing entirely.
Crime, then, and particularly crimes reported to police, are not a great metric by which to judge where the most crime in a city is happening and how dangerous that area feels to the people who live there. Nor is a reduction in crime the end-all, be-all metric to tell you whether police are doing good work. “Certainly reducing crime is a good metric, but I would add to that, at what cost?” said Rod Brunson, a professor at Northeastern University’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice.
These statistics also don’t tell researchers anything about what police should be doing in a hot spot — or what police do in communities every day. Researchers have established that it’s effective to spend more time in certain parts of town … but, Telep said, have offered little guidance on what police should do once they’re there.
And even if police were given guidelines on what they should be doing, nobody currently keeps track of metrics that would show what those officers were actually doing. That’s about to change, at least partially — under an executive order issued by President Trump last week, the Department of Justice will begin maintaining an anonymized database of police misconduct. But there’s still a catch: The only time we find out about what police do in their day-to-day work is when someone complains or files a report about it, said Wesley Skogan, professor emeritus of political science at Northwestern University. That means there’s no incentive toward good behavior — even though some research suggests that positive interactions with police can improve public attitudes toward them. “The fact about policing is it’s two people in a car, in the night. What we know about what they do is when they choose to fill out a form,” Skogan said.
[Related: Republicans And Democrats Agree On The Protests But Not Why People Are Protesting]
But even in the situations where it is possible to get good data on real-world police behavior, whether a reform has been successful depends a lot on your perspective. In general, research tends to focus on metrics that are easy to quantify: Did a reform lead to fewer police killings? Fewer civilian complaints? More fired officers? But those measures don’t really account for the human and social cost of police violence, and they don’t tell us much about whether people in overpoliced communities are actually feeling safer.
Part of the problem is that we don’t have a good way to measure or track the effects of dealing with the police on an everyday basis. But qualitative research can give us a window into how a heavy police presence can stoke feelings of deep mistrust. In a study of young people in Baltimore conducted shortly after the killing of Freddie Gray, Yale sociologist and law professor Monica Bell concluded that although the people she was studying were very concerned about violence in their communities, they didn’t see police as protectors. “It’s not just that people are being brutally beaten or shot and killed by police, it’s the routine, daily messaging of — they are going to be watching you in your neighborhood, they’re going to mace you at your school,” she said. “People will even report that a police officer behaved in the ‘correct’ manner but they still walk away with a deep sense that they’ve experienced a broader racism, a broader sense of exclusion that quantitative measures can’t easily capture.”
Analysis of conversations with people in heavily policed communities by a group of political scientists found a similar result: To the people in the study, the police seemed like they were everywhere — except when their help was actually needed. The deep-rooted perception that the police are there to monitor you, not protect you, is hard both to measure and undo. “There’s a very strong perception that the police are there to protect and serve the white community on the other side of the city or the suburbs,” said Gwen Prowse, a Ph.D. candidate in political science and African American studies at Yale and one of the study authors. “The idea is — if you only see me as a criminal and you don’t see me as a full member of this society, how can you protect me?”
And without input from the people who actually experience police violence, attempts to evaluate police reforms can end up reflecting what the researchers — and not the people who are affected — think is important. “There’s this weird business where people think data can solve everything, but data without thoughtful engagement with the community is actually part of the problem,” said Bocar Ba, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School who studies economics and crime.
Use of force is one such example — just as police departments have different definitions of what constitutes “excessive force,” so can researchers. For instance, the idea that there is an “optimal” or “reasonable” use of force may prompt researchers or policymakers to ignore or discount lower-level incidents that were still quite traumatic for the person involved. “Who are the people deciding what an ‘optimal’ use of force is?” said Ba. “Are they the people who are experiencing brutality themselves? In almost all cases, no.”
Meanwhile, researchers are just starting to scratch the surface of how an uneasy and often violent relationship with police shapes other aspects of people’s lives. A recent study of students in an urban Southwest school district found that proximity to police shootings harmed high school students’ performance. That’s in line with other research indicating that having police in schools may actually decrease high school graduation rates. But these types of social costs aren’t easily priced in when researchers evaluate whether a reform succeeded or failed.
It’s becoming increasingly clear, too, that the reforms we’ve already tried are running headlong into other difficult to measure, difficult to fix forces, like police culture. Encounters between police and civilians are often violent because police officers are taught to think of themselves as always being in danger, according to research by sociologist Michael Sierra-Arévalo of the University of Texas. At the same time, Skogan said, police culture tends to discount things people at community meetings say they are actually interested in — like controlling traffic or reducing public drinking — as boring.
[Related: How The Police See Issues Of Race And Policing]
These are the kinds of problems that make activists like Arissa Hall, the director of National Bail Out, argue that simply reducing contact between police and civilians, and replacing the police with other community resources, is a much better way to address police violence. There might not be many precedents for disbanding police departments, but the positive effect of reducing police presence and investing in housing and education can already be seen in other places. “Abolishing police departments might seem impractical, but there aren’t police officers on every street corner in affluent white neighborhoods,” she said. “We have actual models and examples of what it means to decenter the police and invest in people’s quality of life.”
There’s a lot of research to support the idea that putting more money into resources that improve people’s lives — like health care, housing and education — can reduce crime. The more nebulous question is how removing funding for police departments will affect public safety. But Jennifer Doleac, an economics professor at Texas A&M University who studies crime, suggested policymakers and researchers should prioritize listening to the experiences of people who are interacting with police and make sure those are taken into account when deciding which policies are implemented and how to evaluate their success.
“Clearly, the system that we have now isn’t working for a lot of people,” Doleac said. “So can I see risks to significantly rolling back funding for police departments? Sure. But there’s also a big, big risk in doing too little right now.”
How cable news is talking about the protests — and why it matters | FiveThirtyEight


fivethirtyeight--2020-06-22--Politics Podcast: Progressives Challenge The Democratic Establishment In New York And Kentucky

The Democratic primaries in New York and Kentucky are shaping up to be a clash between the progressive and establishment @ @ @ @ @ In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast , the crew discusses the most notable @ @ @ @ @ s vote .
They also look at the latest trends in the spread of COVID-19 @ @ @ @ @ whether the numerous accusations of corruption against President Trump are shaping how voters or Republican @ @ @ @ @ can listen to the episode by clicking the “ play ” button in the audio @ @ @ @ @ it in iTunes , the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform .
If you @ @ @ @ @ learn how to listen .
The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Mondays and Thursdays .
Help @ @ @ @ @ by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes .
Have a comment , question @ @ @ @ @ polling vs. bad polling ” ?
Get in touch by email , on Twitter or @ @ @ @

The Democratic primaries in New York and Kentucky are shaping up to be a clash between the progressive and establishment blocs of the party. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew discusses the most notable contests ahead of Tuesday’s vote. They also look at the latest trends in the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S. and ask whether the numerous accusations of corruption against President Trump are shaping how voters or Republican lawmakers view him.
FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast: Progressives challenge the Democratic establishment
You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.
The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Mondays and Thursdays. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes. Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.


fivethirtyeight--2020-06-22--Do You Buy That … Trump Can Win In 2020 By Relying On The Midwest?

Do You Buy That … Trump Can Win In 2020 By Relying On The Midwest ?


fivethirtyeight--2020-06-23--Progressives Could Finally Win Something In New York And Kentucky

In this week ’ s FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast , the team discusses the dynamic between Democratic upstarts and the party @ @ @ @ @ to the polls in New York and Kentucky .

Progressives Could Finally Win Something In New York And Kentucky
In this week’s FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the team discusses the dynamic between Democratic upstarts and the party establishment as primary voters head to the polls in New York and Kentucky.


fivethirtyeight--2020-06-23--Today’s Elections In Kentucky And New York Are High-Stakes For The Progressive Movement

Between a suddenly competitive Senate race in Kentucky and the possible ouster of four entrenched incumbents in New York , Tuesday ’ s primary elections feature the largest-scale confrontation yet between the Democratic establishment and the party ’ s progressive wing .
In New York especially , the primaries will test the political muscle of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , who has thrown her weight behind several progressives running for Congress and state legislature .
In addition , four other states ( Mississippi , North Carolina , South Carolina and Virginia ) will hold their primaries or primary runoffs , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that we ’ ll be watching closely .
Regardless , don ’ t wait up late tonight for results ; because the coronavirus has forced most states to conduct elections predominantly by absentee ballot , it could take more than a week to learn who won the day ’ s biggest races .
New York won ’ t start counting its absentee ballots until June 30 , and at least a third of Kentucky counties , including the two biggest , will not release any results until that date either .
The highest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in the Bluegrass State .
For months , Amy McGrath , a former Marine who gained national attention for her strong but unsuccessful House run in 2018 , seemed like a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination to take on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell .
Helped by her own national following , an intense Democratic desire to defeat McConnell and the backing of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee , McGrath raised massive sums of money for the race — $ 41.1 million as of June 3 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , there were some signs of resistance to McGrath .
A few Democrats in Kentucky ’ s state legislature have backed state Rep. Charles Booker , while some progressive activists support farmer and former Marine Mike Broihier .
Recently , however , Booker — who would be Kentucky ’ s first Black senator — has gained attention for speaking out about racial inequality at local protests against police violence , which have carried special meaning in Louisville as the hometown of Breonna Taylor , a young Black woman whom police shot and killed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s leadership impressed the state ’ s two biggest newspapers , which endorsed him , and even galvanized progressives nationally : Ocasio-Cortez , Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren endorsed Booker in the final weeks of the race .
Now , polls show a tight race between McGrath and Booker , and it ’ s not clear which candidate will come out ahead .
Either way , though , McConnell will remain a heavy favorite in November ; he leads both McGrath and Booker by double digits in hypothetical matchups .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ we ’ re watching , including eight matchups between establishment and insurgent candidates and five incumbents who could theoretically lose their safe seats .
The most direct clash between the two wings of the party is in the 16th District , where 16-term Rep. Eliot Engel is being challenged by former middle school principal Jamaal Bowman .
Unlike some other Democrats who have faced progressive primary challenges this year , Engel is pretty liberal ( according to DW-Nominate , he ’ s more liberal than 64 percent of the current House Democratic Caucus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton , Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Gov .
Andrew Cuomo .
However , Engel has been criticized for neglecting his district ; he rode out the first two months of the pandemic in Washington , D.C. , even as his Bronx- and Westchester County-based district became a coronavirus hotspot , and a hot mic caught him pleading to speak at a press conference about the anti-police-violence protests by saying , “ if I didn ’ t have a primary , I wouldn ’ t care.
” That @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out and endorsing Bowman , gave Bowman momentum ; the Justice Democrats and the Working Families Party had been backing Bowman for months , but he also now has the support of Ocasio-Cortez , Sanders and The New York Times editorial board .
Bowman ’ s campaign says it also raised more than $ 600,000 from June 1-12 , although Engel had spent more and had more cash on hand as of June 3 .
And a Data for Progress poll conducted for Bowman gave the challenger a surprisingly wide 10-point lead , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its internal polls show Engel ahead .
A few of New York City ’ s other incumbents also face notable challenges , though a lack of polling means it ’ s hard to gauge how serious they are .
• In the Brooklyn-based 9th District , community organizer Adem Bunkeddeko is back for a rematch with seven-term Rep. Yvette Clarke after losing to her just 53 percent to 47 percent in the 2018 Democratic primary .
Ideologically , both Clarke and Bunkeddeko are staunch progressives , so this contest is more about approach @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to take PAC money ; Bunkeddeko is not .
The addition of two new candidates this year — one progressive , one conservative aiming to appeal to the district ’ s Orthodox Jewish community — adds even more unpredictability .
• In the tri-borough ( Manhattan , Brooklyn and Queens ) 12th District , 14-term Rep. Carolyn Maloney also confronts a familiar face : attorney Suraj Patel , who lost to Maloney 60 percent to 40 percent in 2018 .
However , democratic socialists Lauren Ashcraft and Peter Harrison are also running this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vote .
As of June 3 , Maloney , an ideologically median Democrat and chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee , had outspent her three challengers combined , $ 2.0 million to $ 754,186 .
• In the 10th District , which zigzags across Manhattan and Brooklyn , Rep. Jerrold Nadler faces two challengers : former New York Deputy Secretary of Economic Development Lindsey Boylan and former Andrew Yang staffer Jonathan Herzog .
Although Nadler , who played a starring role in President Trump ’ s impeachment proceedings as chair of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pretty progressive voting record , Boylan and Herzog have argued he is all bark and no bite .
As of June 3 , Boylan had spent $ 749,902 , almost as much as Nadler ’ s $ 1.1 million .
That said , in Nadler ’ s nearly 30 years as a congressman , he has never come close to losing renomination , so it might be an uphill battle for Boylan or Herzog to dethrone him .
• Finally , there ’ s one place anti-establishment forces are playing defense : Ocasio-Cortez @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Bronx .
Former CNBC anchor Michelle Caruso-Cabrera , a fiscal conservative , says “ AOC is MIA ” in the district and blames her for scuttling Amazon ’ s plan to build a second headquarters in New York City .
With the help of deep-pocketed business executives and more than a few Republicans , Caruso-Cabrera has raised an impressive $ 2.0 million in an effort to unseat the first-term incumbent .
Of course , Ocasio-Cortez has raised a whopping $ 10.5 million , so it seems as if the 14th is still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other dark-blue open seats , many liberals are fighting to prevent the nomination from going to someone who might actually vote with Republicans .
In the South Bronx 15th District , New York City Council Member Rubén Díaz , Sr. , is a conservative Democrat who opposes abortion , has claimed that city government is “ controlled by the homosexual community ” and is openly considering a vote for Trump this fall .
But as the patriarch of a Bronx political dynasty — he represented the area in the state Senate for 15 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ borough president — Díaz has enough of a base to be a front-runner in the fractured , 12-candidate field .
Liberals are split on their preferred alternative : Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders endorsed affordable-housing activist Samelys López , while the Black political establishment has rallied around Assemblyman Michael Blake .
And symbolic of Democrats ’ indecision , the political arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus is backing New York City Council Member Ritchie Torres , but the caucus ’ s chair , Rep. Joaquin Castro , has endorsed former City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first openly LGBT elected official , may be the candidate best positioned to beat Díaz .
As of June 3 , he had spent the most money in the race , at $ 856,531 ( although Blake was not far behind at $ 705,648 ) .
And a Data for Progress poll in May found Díaz with 22 percent , Torres with 20 percent and no other candidate above 6 percent .
However , 34 percent of likely voters were still undecided .
Up the Hudson River , in the suburban 17th District @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a top contender for the Democratic nod — despite his seven years as a member of the Independent Democratic Conference , a breakaway group of Democrats who handed control of the state Senate to Republicans .
But after multiple polls showed Carlucci in strong position , progressives ( including Ocasio-Cortez ) united behind attorney Mondaire Jones , and Jones took 25 percent to Carlucci ’ s 11 percent in a more recent Public Policy Polling survey .
However , at 14 percent each in the poll , former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Adam Schleifer are still in the hunt as well .
Schleifer in particular has one big advantage : millions of dollars in pharmaceutical stock .
He has invested almost $ 4 million of his own money in his campaign , allowing him to spend four times more than any other candidate .
All the seats above will almost certainly remain in Democratic hands this fall no matter who wins the primary .
But upstate , in the Syracuse-based 24th District , Democrats ’ choice of nominee could affect their chances against vulnerable GOP @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democratic candidates , professor Dana Balter and Navy veteran Francis Conole , disagree on only a few things : health care ( Balter supports Medicare for All , Conole a public option ) and who is more electable .
( As the Democrats ’ previous nominee , Balter lost to Katko by 5 points in 2018 , even though the district had voted for Clinton by nearly 4 points two years earlier .
However , that was a stronger performance than Katko ’ s 2016 opponent , even after adjusting for the national @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the two had spent similar sums of money ( around $ 700,000 ) , but Balter ’ s name recognition may carry the day : According to a GBAO Strategies poll for her campaign , she led 60 percent to 31 percent as of early June .
The parties will also decide their nominees in four other New York swing seats : the 1st , 2nd , 11th and 22nd .
Of these , only the Democratic primary in the 1st District , which covers eastern Long Island , is in any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be businessman Perry Gershon , who lost to GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin here by 4 points in 2018 .
But self-funding chemistry professor Nancy Goroff outspent him $ 1.6 million to $ 979,063 , and as of late May Goroff ’ s internal polling showed the two roughly tied .
Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming then responded with her own internal poll giving herself and Goroff 29 percent each , with Gershon at 22 percent .
Fleming spent just $ 598,608 but earned a notable endorsement from progressive actor Cynthia Nixon .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , you might also be interested in one non-primary election happening Tuesday .
Nine months after ex-Rep. Chris Collins resigned and pleaded guilty to insider trading , New York ’ s 27th District is finally holding a special election to replace him .
The GOP tapped state Sen. Chris Jacobs as its nominee in January , while Democrats are fielding former Grand Island Town Supervisor Nate McMurray , who came within 1,088 votes of unseating Collins in 2018 .
However , Jacobs is a far less damaged candidate than Collins was , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by 24 points .
Therefore , Jacobs is a heavy favorite to win , but the exact margin will be worth watching as a barometer of the national mood .
So far this cycle , despite wide Democratic leads in presidential and congressional generic ballot polls , special-election results have not indicated a consistent Democratic overperformance .

Between a suddenly competitive Senate race in Kentucky and the possible ouster of four entrenched incumbents in New York, Tuesday’s primary elections feature the largest-scale confrontation yet between the Democratic establishment and the party’s progressive wing. In New York especially, the primaries will test the political muscle of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has thrown her weight behind several progressives running for Congress and state legislature.
In addition, four other states (Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia) will hold their primaries or primary runoffs, but there are no special races of note that we’ll be watching closely. Regardless, don’t wait up late tonight for results; because the coronavirus has forced most states to conduct elections predominantly by absentee ballot, it could take more than a week to learn who won the day’s biggest races. New York won’t start counting its absentee ballots until June 30, and at least a third of Kentucky counties, including the two biggest, will not release any results until that date either.
Kentucky
The highest contested office on the ballot today is the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in the Bluegrass State. For months, Amy McGrath, a former Marine who gained national attention for her strong but unsuccessful House run in 2018, seemed like a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination to take on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Helped by her own national following, an intense Democratic desire to defeat McConnell and the backing of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, McGrath raised massive sums of money for the race — $41.1 million as of June 3, even more than McConnell. But locally, there were some signs of resistance to McGrath. A few Democrats in Kentucky’s state legislature have backed state Rep. Charles Booker, while some progressive activists support farmer and former Marine Mike Broihier.
Recently, however, Booker — who would be Kentucky’s first Black senator — has gained attention for speaking out about racial inequality at local protests against police violence, which have carried special meaning in Louisville as the hometown of Breonna Taylor, a young Black woman whom police shot and killed at her home in March. Booker’s leadership impressed the state’s two biggest newspapers, which endorsed him, and even galvanized progressives nationally: Ocasio-Cortez, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren endorsed Booker in the final weeks of the race. Now, polls show a tight race between McGrath and Booker, and it’s not clear which candidate will come out ahead. Either way, though, McConnell will remain a heavy favorite in November; he leads both McGrath and Booker by double digits in hypothetical matchups.
New York
The Empire State has 10 House races we’re watching, including eight matchups between establishment and insurgent candidates and five incumbents who could theoretically lose their safe seats.
The most direct clash between the two wings of the party is in the 16th District, where 16-term Rep. Eliot Engel is being challenged by former middle school principal Jamaal Bowman. Unlike some other Democrats who have faced progressive primary challenges this year, Engel is pretty liberal (according to DW-Nominate, he’s more liberal than 64 percent of the current House Democratic Caucus), and he has the support of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Gov. Andrew Cuomo. However, Engel has been criticized for neglecting his district; he rode out the first two months of the pandemic in Washington, D.C., even as his Bronx- and Westchester County-based district became a coronavirus hotspot, and a hot mic caught him pleading to speak at a press conference about the anti-police-violence protests by saying, “if I didn’t have a primary, I wouldn’t care.”
FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast: Progressives challenge the Democratic establishment
That gaffe, plus another progressive challenger dropping out and endorsing Bowman, gave Bowman momentum; the Justice Democrats and the Working Families Party had been backing Bowman for months, but he also now has the support of Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders and The New York Times editorial board. Bowman’s campaign says it also raised more than $600,000 from June 1-12, although Engel had spent more and had more cash on hand as of June 3. And a Data for Progress poll conducted for Bowman gave the challenger a surprisingly wide 10-point lead, although Engel’s campaign claims that its internal polls show Engel ahead.
A few of New York City’s other incumbents also face notable challenges, though a lack of polling means it’s hard to gauge how serious they are.
In two other dark-blue open seats, many liberals are fighting to prevent the nomination from going to someone who might actually vote with Republicans. In the South Bronx 15th District, New York City Council Member Rubén Díaz, Sr., is a conservative Democrat who opposes abortion, has claimed that city government is “controlled by the homosexual community” and is openly considering a vote for Trump this fall. But as the patriarch of a Bronx political dynasty — he represented the area in the state Senate for 15 years, and his son is now borough president — Díaz has enough of a base to be a front-runner in the fractured, 12-candidate field.
Liberals are split on their preferred alternative: Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders endorsed affordable-housing activist Samelys López, while the Black political establishment has rallied around Assemblyman Michael Blake. And symbolic of Democrats’ indecision, the political arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus is backing New York City Council Member Ritchie Torres, but the caucus’s chair, Rep. Joaquin Castro, has endorsed former City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito. Torres, the Bronx’s first openly LGBT elected official, may be the candidate best positioned to beat Díaz. As of June 3, he had spent the most money in the race, at $856,531 (although Blake was not far behind at $705,648). And a Data for Progress poll in May found Díaz with 22 percent, Torres with 20 percent and no other candidate above 6 percent. However, 34 percent of likely voters were still undecided.
[Related: Our 2020 National Polling Averages]
Up the Hudson River, in the suburban 17th District, state Sen. David Carlucci is likewise a top contender for the Democratic nod — despite his seven years as a member of the Independent Democratic Conference, a breakaway group of Democrats who handed control of the state Senate to Republicans. But after multiple polls showed Carlucci in strong position, progressives (including Ocasio-Cortez) united behind attorney Mondaire Jones, and Jones took 25 percent to Carlucci’s 11 percent in a more recent Public Policy Polling survey. However, at 14 percent each in the poll, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Evelyn Farkas and former Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Schleifer are still in the hunt as well. Schleifer in particular has one big advantage: millions of dollars in pharmaceutical stock. He has invested almost $4 million of his own money in his campaign, allowing him to spend four times more than any other candidate.
All the seats above will almost certainly remain in Democratic hands this fall no matter who wins the primary. But upstate, in the Syracuse-based 24th District, Democrats’ choice of nominee could affect their chances against vulnerable GOP Rep. John Katko. The two main Democratic candidates, professor Dana Balter and Navy veteran Francis Conole, disagree on only a few things: health care (Balter supports Medicare for All, Conole a public option) and who is more electable. (As the Democrats’ previous nominee, Balter lost to Katko by 5 points in 2018, even though the district had voted for Clinton by nearly 4 points two years earlier. However, that was a stronger performance than Katko’s 2016 opponent, even after adjusting for the national environment.) As of June 3, the two had spent similar sums of money (around $700,000), but Balter’s name recognition may carry the day: According to a GBAO Strategies poll for her campaign, she led 60 percent to 31 percent as of early June.
The parties will also decide their nominees in four other New York swing seats: the 1st, 2nd, 11th and 22nd. Of these, only the Democratic primary in the 1st District, which covers eastern Long Island, is in any real doubt. The initial front-runner seemed to be businessman Perry Gershon, who lost to GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin here by 4 points in 2018. But self-funding chemistry professor Nancy Goroff outspent him $1.6 million to $979,063, and as of late May Goroff’s internal polling showed the two roughly tied. Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming then responded with her own internal poll giving herself and Goroff 29 percent each, with Gershon at 22 percent. Fleming spent just $598,608 but earned a notable endorsement from progressive actor Cynthia Nixon.
If you’ve read this far, you might also be interested in one non-primary election happening Tuesday. Nine months after ex-Rep. Chris Collins resigned and pleaded guilty to insider trading, New York’s 27th District is finally holding a special election to replace him. The GOP tapped state Sen. Chris Jacobs as its nominee in January, while Democrats are fielding former Grand Island Town Supervisor Nate McMurray, who came within 1,088 votes of unseating Collins in 2018. However, Jacobs is a far less damaged candidate than Collins was, and Trump carried this Western New York seat by 24 points. Therefore, Jacobs is a heavy favorite to win, but the exact margin will be worth watching as a barometer of the national mood. So far this cycle, despite wide Democratic leads in presidential and congressional generic ballot polls, special-election results have not indicated a consistent Democratic overperformance.