Nov. 8, 2021, 4:43 p.m. ET

Daily Political Briefing

The Jan. 6 committee subpoenaed top Trump advisers, ramping up its investigation.

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Mark Meadows, a former White House chief of staff, was issued a subpoena on Thursday by the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol subpoenaed four of President Donald J. Trump’s closest advisers on Thursday, ramping up its scrutiny of what the former president was doing before and during the deadly riot.

The subpoenas, the first the panel has issued, seek information from Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff; Dan Scavino Jr., who was a deputy chief of staff; Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former adviser; and Kash Patel, the former Pentagon chief of staff.

The committee is demanding that the four men turn over documents by Oct. 7 and submit to depositions the following week.

“The select committee is investigating the facts, circumstances and causes of the Jan. 6 attack, and issues relating to the peaceful transfer of power, in order to identify and evaluate lessons learned and to recommend to the House and its relevant committees corrective laws, policies, procedures, rules or regulations,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and chairman of the committee, wrote in a statement announcing the subpoenas.

In letters transmitting the orders, the committee said it was seeking information about Mr. Trump’s actions in the run-up to and during the riot. Mr. Bannon reportedly communicated with Mr. Trump on Dec. 30 and urged him to focus his efforts on Jan. 6, the committee said. He also was present at a meeting at the Willard Hotel the day before the violence, when plans were discussed to try to overturn the results of the election the next day, the committee stated. He was quoted as saying, “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow.”

Mr. Meadows was involved in the planning of efforts to subvert the results of the election, the committee asserted. In Mr. Trump’s final weeks in office, he repeatedly pushed the Justice Department to investigate unfounded conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, according to emails provided to Congress, portions of which were reviewed by The New York Times.

Mr. Meadows was also in communication with organizers of the rally on Jan. 6 that preceded the violence, including Amy Kremer of Women for America First, the committee said.

Mr. Scavino was in contact with Mr. Trump and others who planned the rallies that preceded the violence of Jan. 6, and met with Mr. Trump on Jan. 5 to discuss how to persuade members of Congress not to certify the election for President Biden, the committee said.

Mr. Scavino promoted the Jan. 6 March for Trump on Twitter, encouraging people to “be a part of history.” Records indicate that Mr. Scavino was tweeting messages from the White House on Jan. 6, according to the panel.

Mr. Patel was serving as chief of staff to acting Secretary of Defense Christopher C. Miller during the attack, after Mr. Trump appointed him to replace Mark T. Esper as the top Pentagon official. According to documents provided by the Defense Department and published accounts, Mr. Patel was involved in discussions among senior Pentagon officials before and during the attack regarding security at the Capitol. Mr. Patel also was reportedly in constant contact with Mr. Meadows the day of the assault, the committee said.

The committee said it was scrutinizing reporting that the former president attempted to install Mr. Patel as deputy director of the C.I.A. in early December, a plan abandoned after Gina Haspel, the director at the time, threatened to resign.

“I am disappointed, but not surprised, that the committee tried to subpoena me through the press and violated longstanding protocol — which I upheld as a congressional staffer — by resorting to compulsory process before seeking my voluntary cooperation,” Mr. Patel said in a statement. “I will continue to tell the truth to the American people about the events of Jan. 6.”

Mr. Bannon, Mr. Meadows and Mr. Scavino did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The subpoenas come as the committee has demanded detailed records about Mr. Trump’s every movement and meeting on the day of the assault, in requests to federal agencies that suggested it was focusing on any involvement the former president might have had in the attack’s planning or execution.

Their swift issuance indicates that the panel is moving aggressively on its investigation, without pausing to negotiate with key witnesses who could furnish important information.

“Quick subpoenas like this are a sign they’re not messing around,” Elliot Williams, a legal analyst, wrote on Twitter.

The panel is scrutinizing what led to the violence that engulfed the Capitol as supporters of Mr. Trump stormed the building, brutalizing police officers and delaying for hours the official counting of electoral votes to formalize Mr. Biden’s victory. Little is known about what the former president was doing as he watched the mayhem unfold, or in the days leading up to it.

The committee sent record preservation demands last month to 35 technology companies, according to several people familiar with the documents who spoke about their contents on the condition of anonymity. Among hundreds of people whose records the committee is seeking to preserve are about a dozen House Republicans, including Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, who has threatened to retaliate against any company that complies.

On Thursday, Mr. McCarthy again criticized the committee, calling its work “more about politics than anything else.”

“There’s only two questions that this committee should actually be looked upon: Why was the Capitol left so ill-prepared, and how can we make sure this never happens again?” he said. “But that’s not what they’re focused on.”

The U.S. has deported more than 2,000 Haitians, including some families, from a Texas camp with plans to deport more.

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Haitian migrants camp at Parque Ecologico Braulio Fernandez in Ciudad Acuna, Coahuila state, Mexico, after they abandoned a large camp in Del Rio, Texas, on September 23, 2021.Credit...Paul Ratje/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The Biden administration has deported more than 2,000 Haitians since last week, a nearly even mix of single adults and families, out of the more than 12,000 that have been apprehended in a small Texas town by border officials, according to internal accounts.

Another 3,900 Haitians are in government custody and will be deported or put into removal proceedings, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Thursday night.

Nearly 4,000 of the migrants have been released with instructions to report to immigration officials, and thousands more are in the process of being interviewed, according to an official familiar with the information who was not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said during a news briefing on Thursday that officials had intended to rapidly turn away all of the single Haitian adults and migrant families who arrived since last week after crossing the Rio Grande into Del Rio, Texas.

But some migrant families, she said, have been allowed to stay, including some families with young children, because some authorities in Mexico would not accept migrant families with young, vulnerable children. Limited shelter capacity in Mexico has also hindered the administration from turning away some families, she said.

The Department of Homeland Security said about two-thirds of the Haitian migrants that had arrived were traveling in family groups. The department did not immediately respond to questions about who has been deported.

The agency said that as of Thursday, about 4,000 migrants were still waiting under a bridge in Del Rio, where at one point, 15,000 migrants were crammed together in squalid conditions, raising concerns of a potential humanitarian crisis.

The Biden administration’s response to the spike in migrants has drawn condemnations from immigration and human rights advocates, as well as members of the president’s own party. The senior U.S. envoy for Haiti policy resigned on Thursday over what he called the administration’s “inhumane, counterproductive decision” to send Haitian migrants back to a country that has been racked this summer by deadly natural disasters and political turmoil.

Images of Border Patrol agents on horseback pushing back Haitian migrants crossing the Rio Grande has sparked outrage, including by President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. The agents in question are under investigation for possibly mistreating migrants, and the horse patrol in Del Rio has been temporarily suspended, the Homeland Security Department said.

“Many of these vulnerable Haitian families have braved unforgiving terrain to reach our southern border and lawfully seek asylum,” Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the president and chief executive of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, a refugee-resettlement agency, said in a statement on Thursday. “Returning them home, or to third countries with no infrastructure to support them, is as dangerous as it is unconscionable. To do so without so much as an interview or court hearing is downright un-American.”

Ms. Psaki said the president was working to develop a “humane” immigration system, “but we’ve also reiterated that it is our objective to continue to implement what is law, and what our laws are and that includes border restrictions.”

Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting.

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A senior U.S. diplomat to Haiti resigns, citing the Biden administration’s ‘inhumane’ deportation policy.

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Haitian deportees arriving at the airport in Port-au-Prince, the capital, this week.Credit...Federico Rios for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The senior American envoy for Haiti policy said on Thursday that he had resigned over the “inhumane” and “counterproductive” deportations of Haitian migrants to a desperate country reeling from a political crisis and a deadly earthquake last month — a decision that has divided some of President’s Biden’s close advisers.

The diplomat, Daniel Foote, was appointed special envoy to Haiti in July, just weeks after President Jovenel Moïse was killed in his bedroom during a nighttime raid on his residence.

Thousands of Haitians have flocked to the Texas border, particularly in the past week, where they have crossed the Rio Grande into the United States and confronted Border Patrol agents on horseback before being deported.

Images of horse-mounted agents chasing Haitians have prompted outrage over the treatment of the migrants. On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security said that the horse patrol unit in Del Rio had been temporarily suspended, and that the agents’ actions were being investigated. Border Patrol agents have ridden horses to enforce security since the agency was created in 1924.

“I will not be associated with the United States’ inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life,” Mr. Foote wrote to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in a resignation letter dated Wednesday.

Mr. Foote also blasted a “cycle of international political interventions in Haiti” that “has consistently produced catastrophic results,” and he warned that the number of desperate people traveling to American borders “will only grow as we add to Haiti’s unacceptable misery.”

Mr. Foote, a career diplomat who had previously served as ambassador to Zambia and acting assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, confirmed the authenticity of his resignation letter on Thursday. It was reported earlier Thursday by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and PBS NewsHour.

In the past two months, after the assassination of Mr. Moïse, an earthquake and flash floods have killed more than 2,000 Haitians and left many more injured and displaced. That has only added to the toll that poverty, hunger and increasing violence already exact on the country.

Many of the Haitians who arrived at the U.S. border over the past week had traveled for months from Brazil and Chile, where they had been allowed to live and work after an earthquake struck Haiti in 2010. Many of them are expected to be deported.

More than 2,000 Haitians have been deported in the past week, with more flights scheduled, and thousands have been allowed into the country, according to an official familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to publicly discuss the matter. As of Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security said that about 4,000 migrants, most of them Haitian, were being held in a temporary staging area under the Del Rio International Bridge in Texas, as agents process them.

The rise in Haitian migration began in the months after Mr. Biden reversed some of President Donald J. Trump’s strictest immigration policies and projected a more welcoming tone toward migrants.

But so far in his presidency, Mr. Biden has struggled to balance tough measures to secure the southwestern border against his campaign promise to show compassion to migrants who want to come to the United States for a better life. That has led to a divide among some top aides, including Susan E. Rice, the White House domestic policy adviser, who support measures that serve as immigration deterrents, and progressives who are trying to hold him to his pledge of delivering a humane system.

In May, the Biden administration extended temporary protected status for 150,000 Haitians already living in the United States. Two months later, the order was extended again for Haitians who were in the United States before July 29.

But tens of thousands more Haitians have tried to cross into the United States since then, despite not qualifying for the program. Facing the highest level of border crossings in decades, the Biden administration has stepped up enforcement of policies intended to slow their entry.

On Thursday, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, described officials as “horrified” by the images of Haitians being confronted by border agents on horseback and said the president was working to develop a “humane” immigration system.

“But we’ve also reiterated that it is our objective to continue to implement what is law, and what our laws are and that includes border restrictions,” Ms. Psaki said.

Thousands of other Haitian migrants, however, have been allowed to enter the United States and will wait for their cases to go through the backlogged immigration court system.

Mr. Foote said in his resignation letter that his recommendations were “ignored and dismissed.”

“Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed,” he wrote.

In response, the State Department’s spokesman, Ned Price, said that some proposals for dealing with Haiti’s compounding instability over the summer were rejected, and were “even harmful to our commitment to the promotion of democracy in Haiti.”

“No ideas are ignored, but not all ideas are good ideas,” Mr. Price said. He did not elaborate.

The Biden administration’s approach to Haiti was somewhat unusual, said Representative Andy Levin, Democrat of Michigan, in that Mr. Foote was appointed as special envoy to the nation even though a Senate-confirmed ambassador already had been serving there. The ambassador, Michele J. Sison, was nominated in April for a senior job at the department’s headquarters in Washington, but her confirmation has been stalled.

Mr. Levin, a chairman of the House Haiti Caucus, said the Biden administration was “propping up” the government of Ariel Henry, Haiti’s acting prime minister, who was accused last week of being linked to Mr. Moïse’s assassination. Mr. Henry swiftly removed the country’s chief prosecutor, who had leveled the accusation, setting off a power struggle among political factions as Haitians struggle to survive. Mr. Henry has denied any connection to the murder.

Mr. Levin said the Biden administration had fallen far short of helping empower civil society, religious leaders and human rights groups in Haiti who oppose Mr. Henry’s government or have otherwise demanded reforms.

“The Haitian people are crying out for the opportunity to chart their own country’s future, and the United States is ignoring their pleas,” Mr. Levin told reporters on Thursday.

In a phone call with Mr. Henry on Monday, Mr. Blinken said he appreciated the Haitian government’s help in receiving the deported migrants but also pressed for a full investigation into Mr. Moïse’s killing.

In a statement, the State Department said it was committed to working with the Haitian government and others to strengthen democracy, the rule of law, economic growth, security and the protection of human rights.

The department said the United States and the United Nations’ immigration agency were trying to ensure that Haitians who are deported receive a meal, a hygiene kit and $100 when they land in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital.

The statement also thanked Mr. Foote for his service.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting.

House approves $1 billion for the Iron Dome as Democrats feud over Israel.

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Israel’s Iron Dome defense system intercepted more than 90 percent of the rockets launched by Hamas in May.Credit...Corinna Kern for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday overwhelmingly approved $1 billion in new funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, after a debate that exposed bitter divisions among Democrats over U.S. policy toward one of its closest allies.

The vote was 420 to 9 to help Israel replace missile interceptors used during heavy fighting in a devastating rocket and missile war with the Palestinians in May, reflecting the widespread bipartisan support in Congress for Jerusalem that has persisted for decades.

But the lopsided vote came only after days of acrimony between progressives who have accused Israel of human rights abuses and other lawmakers, including party leaders, who said they were appalled and astonished by their colleagues’ refusal to fund a defense system to protect Israeli civilians.

Bitter recriminations over the measure spilled onto the House floor on Thursday, as some progressive Democrats who were opposed called Israel an “apartheid state” and proponents hurled accusations of antisemitism. By the end, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a vocal critic of Israel who had come under scathing criticism from pro-Israel activists for refusing to back the measure, was in tears after switching her “no” vote to “present.”

The back and forth was the latest flare-up in a long-simmering feud between an energized new generation of progressive Democrats — many of them people of color — that has demanded an end to conditions-free aid to Israel and others in the party who argue that the United States must not waver in its backing for Israel’s right to defend itself. The internal tensions come as a growing number of Democrats in Washington, prodded by the party’s left flank, say they are no longer willing to give the country a pass for its treatment of the Palestinians, a shift that has unsettled top Israeli officials.

The tensions erupted at an inopportune time for the party, as Democrats are toiling to bridge internal divisions over domestic policy to salvage President Biden’s agenda.

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Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, changed her vote from “no” to “present.”Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

The dispute began this week, after progressives revolted at the inclusion of the Iron Dome funding in an emergency spending bill, effectively threatening to shut down the government rather than support the money. Democratic leaders were forced to strip it out of that bill, which passed the House on Tuesday, and arrange a separate vote to approve the Iron Dome money.

“I will not support an effort to enable war crimes and human rights abuses and violence,” Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, said on Thursday. “We cannot be talking only about Israelis’ need for safety at a time when Palestinians are living under a violent apartheid system and are dying from what Human Rights Watch has said are war crimes.”

The liberals’ maneuver roiled many other Democrats, who said their colleagues’ opposition to funding Israel’s defense was beyond the pale. They noted that during the peak of fighting in May, the Iron Dome intercepted more than 90 percent of the flurry of Hamas-launched rockets that would have otherwise landed in civilian-populated areas.

In an angry speech, Representative Ted Deutch, Democrat of Florida, said he would not allow “one of my colleagues to stand on the floor of the House of Representatives and label the Jewish democratic state of Israel an apartheid state.”

“To falsely characterize the state of Israel is consistent with those who advocate for the dismantling of the one Jewish state in the world,” he said. “When there is no place on the map for one Jewish state, that’s antisemitism, and I reject that.”

Despite the angst, only eight Democrats — as well as one Republican, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky — ultimately opposed the measure.

Minutes before the vote closed, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez tearfully huddled with her allies before switching her vote to “present.” The tableau underscored how wrenching the vote was for even outspoken progressives, who have been caught between their principles and the still powerful pro-Israel voices in their party. (A spokesman for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez declined to comment on her change of position.)

Another Democrat, Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia, also voted present.

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Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, said she would not “support an effort to enable war crimes and human rights abuses and violence.”Credit...Rebecca Cook/Reuters

Privately, some progressive lawmakers were furious with Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat, who pushed for the vote on Iron Dome funding after it was removed from the broader spending bill this week.

His maneuver appeared to be intended to calm Israeli officials, who had watched with alarm as the fight unfolded on Capitol Hill and had closely followed previous efforts by young, liberal lawmakers to cut off U.S. military aid to Israel.

After Yair Lapid, Israel’s minister of foreign affairs, called Mr. Hoyer and emphasized the need for the House to approve the request as soon as possible, the congressman assured him that progressives’ initial revolt was no more than a “technical delay,” according to an account of the call released by Mr. Lapid’s office. Hours later, Mr. Hoyer announced that the House would vote to approve the funding later in the week.

Other top Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, rose on Thursday in support of the legislation. They argued that passing the additional funding was crucial to protecting Israeli civilians and noted that it was an extension of a deal that President Barack Obama struck in 2016.

“This bill demonstrates that Congress’ commitment to our friend and ally Israel is bipartisan and ironclad,” Ms. DeLauro said. “It fulfills our moral imperative to protect the lives of innocent civilians and helps build the foundations for peace.”

But progressive critics offered harsh words about Israel’s conduct and argued that strong backing for the nation in Congress should come to an end. Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, said the United States should no longer continue to provide Israel with funding “without addressing the underlying issue of the occupation.”

“This is not about one country,” she said. “If human rights are truly to guide our foreign policy, we need to act like it everywhere. Otherwise, our words ring hollow.”

Eyeing an opportunity to peel away Jewish voters from the Democratic Party, House Republicans cast the altercation as a transgression against Israel. They said progressives’ refusal to allow the funding to pass as part of the broader spending bill was a missed opportunity to support Israel, even though Republicans opposed the measure en masse.

“By blocking funding to resupply the Iron Dome, Democrats made the choice to abandon an opportunity to stand with Israel and its citizens,” said Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican.

The House on Thursday also approved by a 316-to-113 vote a $740 billion annual defense bill that would add about $24 billion more to the Pentagon’s budget than Mr. Biden requested. It also would require that women register for the selective service and reform the military justice system to move cases of sexual assault and harassment outside of the chain of command to an office of special prosecutors.

Lawmakers also approved amendments to the bill that would require the Biden administration to prohibit U.S. military support for the Saudi-led coalition’s war against the Houthis in Yemen and to create a bipartisan panel to investigate the failures of the war in Afghanistan.

Luke Broadwater contributed reporting.

A correction was made on 
Sept. 23, 2021

An earlier version of this article misstated the final tally for the funding vote. It was 420 to 9, not 490 to 9.

How we handle corrections

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Texas, under pressure from Trump, announces a ‘full forensic audit’ of the 2020 election in four counties.

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Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas was asked by former President Donald J. Trump to back legislation to create a “forensic audit of the 2020 election.”Credit...Lucas Jackson/Reuters

Eight and a half hours after former President Donald J. Trump made a public demand for Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas to back legislation to create a “forensic audit of the 2020 election,” the Texas secretary of state’s office announced a “comprehensive forensic audit” of the results from four of the state’s largest counties.

The quick response by state officials in Texas, which Mr. Trump carried last year by more than five percentage points, was the latest example of the former president’s enduring influence over the Republican Party, particularly when it comes to his efforts to undermine public confidence in the legitimacy of his loss last year to President Biden.

“Governor Abbott, we need a ‘Forensic Audit of the 2020 Election,’” Mr. Trump said in a midday open letter to Mr. Abbott. “Texans know voting fraud occurred in some of their counties.”

Texas is currently without a secretary of state, after the May retirement of Ruth Ruggero Hughs. Mr. Abbott, a Republican, has yet to appoint a successor.

Nevertheless, the office released a two-sentence statement late Thursday stating that it would examine ballots from the 2020 election in Collin, Dallas, Harris and Tarrant Counties. The news release called those counties the “two largest Democrat counties and two largest Republican counties” in the state, but of the four, only Collin County backed Mr. Trump against Mr. Biden in the 2020 election. The statement said the audit process had already begun.

Since Arizona Republicans began a review of more than 2 million ballots in Maricopa County, Trump-aligned Republicans across the country have sought to replicate the effort. In Wisconsin, a former State Supreme Court justice is investigating the election results and said Monday that an audit of ballots is possible. Pennsylvania Republicans last week sought driver’s license data and Social Security numbers for every voter in the state as part of an inquiry into the 2020 election there.

The various reviews have not uncovered any significant evidence of fraud or impropriety in the vote counting. But they have created a new kind of security risk as third parties gain access to voting equipment and raised questions about the use of public resources to investigate Republican conspiracy theories.

To date, there have been no serious allegations that the Texas election was flawed.

Texas Democrats called the audit the latest attempt by Mr. Abbott and the state’s Republicans to cater to Mr. Trump.

“This is all an organized effort to overturn the will of the people in an effort to fuel the ‘Big Lie’ and stroke Trump’s ego,” said Gilberto Hinojosa, the chairman of the Texas Democratic Party.

Voting rights groups sue Ohio over a Republican-controlled revision of state voting districts.

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The Ohio Redistricting Commission held the first of its nine public hearings at Cleveland State University on Aug. 23. Credit...Julie Carr Smyth/Associated Press

The American Civil Liberties Union and other voter rights groups filed a lawsuit on Thursday challenging the newly drawn state legislative districts enacted last week by a Republican-dominated commission in Ohio, an opening salvo in what is likely to be a series of confrontations across the country as the once-in-a-decade redistricting process unfolds.

In a suit filed in the Ohio Supreme Court, the rights groups accuse the Ohio Redistricting Commission of engaging in “extreme partisan gerrymandering” that violates the state’s constitution in formalizing the redrawn districts, which the suit says “are intended to, and will, entrench a Republican veto-proof supermajority in both chambers of Ohio’s General Assembly for the next four years.”

Alora Thomas-Lundborg, a senior staff attorney with the A.C.L.U.’s Voting Rights Project, said that the suit was the first to challenge a statewide redistricting map drawn using the results of the 2020 census. “Ohio may be the canary in the coal mine from what we can expect from a partisan-dominated map-drawing process,” she said.

The map was enacted in a party-line vote on Sept. 16, with the commission’s five Republicans — including Gov. Mike DeWine; Secretary of State Frank LaRose; Keith Faber, the state’s auditor; and Matt Huffman, the president of the State Senate — prevailing over its two Democrats. But Mr. DeWine foresaw a legal challenge.

“We know that this matter will be in court,” Mr. DeWine said, according to the ABC channel News5Cleveland. “I’m not judging the bill one way or another, that’s up to a court to do. What I am sure in my heart is that this committee could have come up with a bill that was much more clearly, clearly constitutional and I’m sorry we did not do that.”

Ahead of this redistricting cycle, Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved measures amending the state Constitution to limit partisan gerrymandering. A review by the Ohio Supreme Court of the constitutionality of the new map would be the first real test of whether the amendment works as intended.

The suit cites a wide, consistent gap between the share of votes that Republican candidates have drawn and their share of seats in the Ohio Legislature over the past 10 years.

“Republicans maintained a hammerlock on supermajority status in elections between 2012 and 2020 — at times controlling more than 65 percent of the seats in the Ohio House of Representatives and 75 percent of the seats in the Ohio State Senate, even though their statewide vote share over the decade ranged from only 46.2 percent to 59.7 percent,” the suit said, citing official election results.

Two years ago, a federal court tossed out the map of congressional districts that Ohio had used for most of the past decade, ruling that Republicans had given themselves an illegal partisan advantage that effectively predetermined the outcome of federal elections.

Mr. Huffman, the commission member who serves as State Senate president, defended the commission’s map last week in an opinion essay in The Columbus Dispatch and accused detractors of trying to apply their own kind of gerrymandering.

“The commission map is both constitutional and compliant with the directives approved under the Constitutional amendment passed by voters in 2015,” Mr. Huffman said. “Make no mistake, special interest groups tried very hard to undermine the process by pressuring members to accept so-called ‘representational fairness.’”

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Abortion providers in Texas ask the Supreme Court to rapidly review the state’s tough new abortion law.

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Abortion providers in Texas asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to revisit their challenge to a state law that bans most abortions after six weeks and was designed to evade review in federal court. Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

Texas abortion providers asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to take a second look at their challenge to a state law that bans most abortions after six weeks, empowers private individuals to sue those who provide or “abet” the service, and was designed to evade review in federal court.

On Sept. 1, the court refused to block the law in a 5-to-4 ruling that cited the “complex and novel” procedural questions it presented. Since then, abortion providers in Texas have turned away most patients seeking the procedure.

In the filing on Thursday, the providers asked the court to employ a rarely invoked procedure that would allow the issue to leapfrog an appeals court. That procedure, known as “certiorari before judgment,” has been called into play in cases involving national crises, like President Harry S. Truman’s seizure of the steel industry and President Richard M. Nixon’s refusal to turn over tape recordings to a special Watergate prosecutor.

The providers said the court should use the procedure to decide what they said was a pressing question: “Whether a state can insulate from federal-court review a law that prohibits the exercise of a constitutional right by delegating to the general public the authority to enforce that prohi­bition through civil actions.”

The Texas law, known as S.B. 8, has novel features. It bars state officials from enforcing it and instead deputizes private individuals to sue anyone who performs the procedure or “aids and abets” it.

That makes it hard for abortion providers to know whom to sue, as lawsuits seeking to block laws as unconstitutional typically name the officials charged with enforcing them as defendants. When the providers filed suit in federal court, they named, among others, every state trial court judge and county court clerk in Texas.

The appeals court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, has not yet issued a decision in the providers’ appeal. But “the writing is on the wall,” the providers told the Supreme Court on Thursday. “And although the Fifth Circuit expedited the appeal, it will not hold argument until December at the earliest.”

“Meanwhile,” they wrote, “Texans are in crisis.”

Biden taps Saule Omarova, who has suggested big banks are too powerful, to regulate them.

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Saule Omarova, President Biden’s pick to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, was a policy adviser at the Treasury Department under President George W. Bush.Credit...United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs

President Biden has chosen Saule Omarova, a Cornell Law School professor, to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the regulator overseeing the largest U.S. banks, the White House announced on Thursday.

If confirmed, Ms. Omarova, who grew up in what is now Kazakhstan, will be the first woman and the first nonwhite person to serve as comptroller of the currency. The agency is charged with setting policy around the businesses that banks engage in — from traditional ones like mergers and lending to newer efforts like cryptocurrency.

“If confirmed, I will work hard to make sure that our banks remain stable, strong and serve the needs of the American people,” Ms. Omarova said in a statement provided to The New York Times.

Ms. Omarova’s nomination caps a monthslong search for the top banking regulator’s job; the Biden administration dropped two earlier candidates because progressive and moderate Democrats couldn’t agree on them. But Ms. Omarova’s nomination will require Senate confirmation — potentially an uphill battle given the 50-50 split between Republican senators and the Democratic caucus.

In her academic work, Ms. Omarova has proposed bold changes to the financial system, but those proposals — most notably an idea for a public infrastructure investment authority modeled on the structure of the Federal Reserve system — would not be easy to introduce from a post atop the O.C.C.

Instead, in setting a policy agenda, Ms. Omarova is likely to draw on the basic philosophy she has laid out in her work on the relationship the government should have to banks. She has criticized the notion that taxpayers often have to clean up messes left by the private sector in times of crisis but are left out of a proportionate share of private industry’s successes in prosperous times.

Senator Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, the top Republican on the Senate banking committee, which will take up Ms. Omarova’s nomination first, said in a statement emailed to journalists that he had “serious reservations about her nomination.” He characterized her writings as containing “extreme leftist ideas.”

It is not clear whether most Democrats will embrace Ms. Omarova, but she already has support from progressive members of the Senate.

“Saule is an excellent choice to oversee and regulate the activities of our nation’s largest banks, and I have no doubt she’ll be a fearless champion for consumers,” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said in a statement emailed to The Times.

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Democrats work to iron out budget differences as White House talks continue.

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Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, was one of the Democrats who met with President Biden on Wednesday.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

Top Democrats on Capitol Hill tried to resolve their disagreements over a multi-trillion-dollar social safety net and climate package on Thursday, as President Biden and his team planned another day of negotiations with key lawmakers to find a legislative path to enact his domestic policy agenda.

Democratic leaders claimed progress toward a deal, announcing that they had agreed upon an array of possible ways to pay for it. But they offered no details about what programs would be included or what the total cost would eventually be, and what they called a “framework agreement” appeared to be modest.

The Senate Finance Committee chairman, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, and the House Ways and Means Committee chairman, Representative Richard Neal, signed off on provisions that their respective committees already saw eye to eye on: a top income tax rate of 39.6 percent, which affluent taxpayers faced before President Donald J. Trump cut it to 37 percent in 2017; a crackdown on tax-preferred conservation easements, often used by the rich to lower taxation on historical properties; and closing a loophole, famously used by Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire, that can shield huge investment gains from taxation within an individual retirement account.

They agreed that the plan should fulfill Mr. Biden’s call to raise taxes on corporations and capital gains, but did not settle on rates for those items, according to aides familiar with the discussions who detailed them on the condition of anonymity. And they committed to trying to find common ground on their other priorities, such as Mr. Wyden’s proposal to tax the wealth gains of billionaires.

The talks came on a day when Mr. Biden and administration officials were expected to continue meetings focused on advancing both a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and a broader $3.5 trillion domestic policy plan that most Democrats now concede will have to be scaled back to win passage.

Party leaders hope to coalesce around a compromise on the social safety net bill by Monday, when a vote is planned on the infrastructure measure. But agreement on a total cost, which programs to include and which to jettison, and how to pay for it will involve painful choices for a divided caucus.

Still, Democratic leaders predicted they would ultimately deliver both measures to Mr. Biden’s desk.

“I’m confident we will pass both bills,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters during her weekly news conference at the Capitol.

Mr. Biden spent much of Wednesday in meetings with Democratic leaders and nearly two dozen lawmakers, listening to the concerns of the feuding factions in his party over his two top domestic priorities.

Moderates are pressing for quick action on the Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill, while progressives have vowed to withhold their votes for that measure until approval of the far broader social safety net measure that is to include vast new investments in climate, education, health and social programs.

Mr. Biden urged moderates who have balked at the size of that package to put forward an overall spending level that they could support, as well as the priorities they wanted to see funded, according to senators and aides.

Democrats are aiming to pass the legislation on a party-line vote using a fast-track budget process known as reconciliation that shields it from a filibuster and allows it to pass on a simple majority vote. But because of their slim margins of control on Capitol Hill, Mr. Biden needs the support of every Democrat in the Senate and can lose as few as three in the House to win enactment of the plan.

But progressive lawmakers who want to see the reconciliation bill completed first pressed Mr. Biden on Wednesday to weigh in with House Democratic leaders against holding a Monday vote on the infrastructure legislation. Concerned that their more conservative-leaning colleagues may refuse to support the larger plan once the infrastructure measure is enacted, liberal Democrats have said they will withhold their votes for that bill until the reconciliation plan clears Congress.

The House is planning a largely symbolic vote on a bill to uphold abortion rights.

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Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois, left, and Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Republican of Washington, right, at a House Rules Committee hearing on Monday where a bill protecting the right to an abortion was on the agenda.Credit...J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press

House Democrats plan on Friday to push through broad legislation to uphold abortion rights, taking urgent action after a major Supreme Court setback as they brace for a ruling next year that could further roll back access to abortion nationwide.

The House vote will be largely symbolic given that the bill, the Women’s Health Protection Act, has little chance of advancing because of Republican opposition in the Senate. But House Democrats’ decision to consider it reflects their view that the issue could resonate strongly in the midterm elections next year, particularly if female voters see the Supreme Court action as a threat to rights that many believed had been long settled.

Democrats moved swiftly to schedule action on the measure after the court refused this month to block a Texas law that prohibits most abortions after six weeks of gestation. It would guarantee the right to abortion through federal law, pre-empting hundreds of state laws governing the procedure around the country. Democrats argue that it would codify Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a constitutional right to abortion.

The bill’s authors say they began drafting it a decade ago in response to emerging efforts at the state level to impose stringent requirements on those seeking and providing abortions, as well as the increasingly conservative makeup of the court. They say that time is of the essence because the justices are set to rule next year on a Mississippi law that severely restricts abortions.

“It became very evident that we needed to have something that would push back against all these state restrictions,” said Representative Judy Chu, Democrat of California and the lead author of the measure. “We could see that change was possible at the Supreme Court, and we knew we had to make sure that Roe v. Wade was protected.”

But opponents of the law — including some Republicans who have supported abortion rights — argue that it would go far beyond the landmark court precedent, stripping states of much of their ability to regulate abortion and impose measures intended to make the procedure safe. They say it would lead to many more abortions in the late stages of pregnancy.

“This legislation is really about a mandate by the federal government that would demand abortion on demand, without any consideration for anyone, including the conscience of the provider,” said Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Republican of Washington and a chief foe of the bill.

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A week to remember, or forget, for the Biden White House.

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For the Biden administration, the last seven days of self-generated controversy, coupled with the re-emergence of chronic policy problems, have evoked uncomfortable comparisons with the upheaval of the Trump era.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Biden plowed into a pileup of crises on immigration, foreign affairs and federal spending over the past week — as an administration that promised steadiness and no-drama accomplishment struggled to regain lost traction and momentum.

Biden aides half-jokingly call the period that included the withdrawal from Afghanistan in August their “summer from hell.” But the fall has not brought much relief, and the last seven days of self-generated controversy, coupled with the re-emergence of chronic policy problems have evoked uncomfortable comparisons with the upheaval of the Trump era.

It is impossible to know if this just an ugly interlude before the big legislative victory Biden officials predict — or the kind of durable downturn that ultimately cost Democrats Congress and the White House.

But week’s end brought a sobering reminder of how just much ground Mr. Biden had lost, and how quickly he has lost it. A poll by the Pew Research Center released Thursday found that just 44 percent of U.S. adults now approve of how he is handling his job, with 53 percent disapproving — a flip of the 55-to-44 percent approval-disapproval rating he enjoyed back in July.

Moderates and progressives are still far apart on a deal to pass the big, bold legislative initiative upon which Mr. Biden has staked the fortunes of his presidency: a combined infrastructure and social spending plan whose scope and survival remains very much in question.

Early this week, the House passed a stopgap spending bill that would raise the expiring debt limit, but it is expected to hit a wall of Republican opposition in the Senate. So, on Thursday, President Biden’s budget office warned federal agencies to brace for the possibility of a government shutdown, a feature of almost every Trump-era budget fight.

Mr. Biden’s rough week began last Friday, when President Emmanuel Macron of France withdrew his ambassador to Washington in protest over Mr. Biden’s decision to provide nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, depriving France of a $66 billion contract.

After a few days, the two leaders patched things up, but Mr. Biden’s aggressive action seemed to contradict his conciliatory message to European allies, and even evoked comparisons with former President Donald J. Trump.

On the same day, Pentagon officials admitted that the last U.S. drone strike before American troops withdrew from Afghanistan was a tragic mistake that killed 10 civilians, including seven children — after claiming it had successfully stopped a terrorist attack.

Then there was the latest humanitarian calamity at the nation’s southern border, which played out, hour by hour, over the past week.

About 15,000 migrants from Haiti, an impoverished country rocked by natural disasters and political violence, sought entry to the country, with many sleeping under the international bridge in Del Rio, Texas.

The White House — under fire from conservatives and progressives — took a few days to settle on a policy as the images of the migrants, some being confronted by agents on horseback trying to corral them and force them back across the river to Mexico. In the end, the administration adopted a relatively tough line in keeping with the actions of previous administrations, deporting thousands of the refugees back to Haiti.

Republicans, led by Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, seized on the crisis to slam Democrats as soft on illegal immigration. If anything, these actions pleased Democrats even less.

Representative Maxine Waters, the blunt Democrat from Los Angeles, asked “What the hell are we doing here?” after watching video of Border Patrol agents on horseback chasing down Black migrants as they gripped and waved what appeared to be reins, prompting accusations that they had been using whips against the migrants. Ms Waters likened Mr. Biden’s actions to those of Mr. Trump.

Early Thursday, a senior State Department official recently tapped as a special envoy to Haiti abruptly resigned over the administration’s “inhumane, counterproductive decision” to send migrants back home to face physical danger.

Mr. Biden vowed Friday that the Border Patrol agents involved in the confrontation “will pay” after an investigation, calling the scene at the border “horrible to see.”

“It’s an embarrassment,” he said. “But beyond an embarrassment is dangerous, it’s wrong, it sends the wrong message around the world or sends the wrong message at home. It’s simply not who we are.”

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