Alan Blinder

The ruling, an early step in a legal confrontation that critics of abortion orchestrated to try to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, ensured that abortion services would remain available in the state, at least for now.

The Alabama law would have made it a felony for doctors to provide abortions in almost all circumstances, and it threatened them with up to 99 years in prison. The law did not include any exceptions for abortions in cases of rape or incest, allowing the procedure only when a woman’s health was at “serious” risk.

The preliminary injunction, which was issued by Judge Myron H. Thompson of the U.S. District Court in Middle Alabama, will remain in effect until the “court resolves the case in full.”

This article originally appeared in

Alabama Abortion Ban Is Blocked by a Federal Judge

A federal judge blocked Alabama’s near-total ban on abortions on Tuesday, stopping the legislation from taking effect next month.

But few, if any, of the university leaders knew that Newsom had already decided to sign the measure and push the state into a confrontation over the economics of college sports.

Even if the National Collegiate Athletic Association ultimately prevails in the courts or through other means, it must reckon more immediately with a question whose answer could reverberate from coast to coast: How could some of the mightiest brands in American athletics, backed by some of the most powerful, politically connected institutions in California, suffer such a stunning setback in a statehouse?

“It was always going to get out,” said State Sen. Scott Wilk, a Republican who is vice chairman of California’s Senate Education Committee. “But by the margins it got out, it was impressive. It was that perfect storm.”

Indeed, the final votes looked like lopsided football shutouts: Every legislator who cast a vote backed the measure to upend the model of amateur sports. Not one publicly sided with the wishes of the state’s universities or the top leaders of college athletics.

Interviews with the governor, lawmakers and other people familiar with the workings of the California Capitol suggested the NCAA and the universities were undone by a blend of forces, including an uneven lobbying effort and shrewd work by the bill’s lead sponsor. There was also sustained hostility toward the NCAA, which is based in Indianapolis, as a distant juggernaut; deep skepticism that the association was willing to make consequential changes to its long-standing rules; and a governor, himself a onetime baseball player at Santa Clara, who had pushed for changes in college sports.

One danger for the long besieged but freshly staggered NCAA is that California’s move could prove to be just the leading edge of legislative efforts around the country to reshape the model of athletes as amateurs, an idea that has dominated for generations as the foundation for building college sports into an industry worth billions of dollars. In recent weeks, lawmakers in other states have voiced support for ideas that sound much like the ones that gained consensus in Sacramento, and legislation is formally pending in some legislatures.

The NCAA, which has often worked through legal and public relations battles with only limited modifications to its rules, could halt that momentum among lawmakers by winning a court victory in California. In the meantime, though, it is not clear whether or how the NCAA might change its political strategy, which in California largely relied on member institutions and at least two letters from association leaders that mirrored long-repeated talking points and, state officials said, did little or nothing to advance their cause.

The NCAA said in a statement on Monday that it “agrees changes are needed” to its rules about endorsements. It asserted, though, that it — not lawmakers — should be in charge of crafting new, nationwide rules. It warned that it was “clear that a patchwork of different laws from different states will make unattainable the goal of providing a fair and level playing field” (an argument it echoed in its so far unsuccessful push for federal instead of state regulation of sports betting).

Multiple California universities and their allies — which together spent more than $500,000 lobbying state legislators on an array of issues this year — did not respond to messages or declined requests for interviews about what transpired in Sacramento after Senate Bill 206 was introduced in February.

But the governor and Democratic and Republican lawmakers depicted the NCAA as politically impotent in California, the nation’s most populous state, and its universities as often distracted or resigned in the months leading up to the bill’s signing. Worse yet, they said, the NCAA and the universities sent erratic, sometimes conflicting messages about the legislation’s strengths, weaknesses and potential consequences.

“They kept changing their argument,” said state Sen. Nancy Skinner, a Democrat who was the bill’s architect. But officials recalled one familiar and repeated plea: that California should give a previously announced NCAA committee time to come up with its own proposals, which are expected to be announced by late October.

Newsom, in an interview with The New York Times before he signed the legislation, said he had considered the group’s talks to be a bargaining chip. By his account, his office sought a private preview of the group’s tentative ideas. Had those possible proposals been convincing, he said, he might have been willing to derail, even by veto, the bill that is now law.

“They said, ‘We don’t have enough time to do that,’” Newsom recalled, “which said everything I needed to know about how sincere they are, and how far they’re willing to go.”

In a statement to The Times, the NCAA said it “offered to share the working group’s report when finished” and noted that it did not “have final information to share because the working group’s efforts are ongoing.” The association said, though, it had told California officials about the committee’s “current progress.”

Newsom said that other efforts to influence him had been similarly lackluster.

The University of California, which legislators said had seemed more focused on defeating a measure related to its work force, “didn’t say one word to me,” the governor recounted. A meeting with Stanford’s president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, proved unpersuasive. And, according to the governor, the NCAA enlisted Timothy White, the California State University chancellor, as an intermediary to make its case.

The exchange, which the California State system declined to discuss, yielded no breakthroughs for the universities.

“He said, ‘I get it — I respect your point of view, they have a different point of view, so be it,’” Newsom said. “We didn’t have to indulge in flights of fancy and overly indulging ourselves with arguments that all of us are very familiar with.”

Indeed, the bill’s opponents faced a Capitol where views had hardened quickly, especially after the NCAA’s president, Mark Emmert, warned in June that California universities could be punished if the bill became law.

“This is one of those issues that is nonpartisan,” said Skinner, whose bill drew support from Republicans in part because they saw a reliance on the markets to resolve what they perceived as a stark inequity.

“They exploit young people to their detriment for a profit, and it’s offensive,” Wilk, a former trustee at a community college, said of the NCAA.

Years of public polling that showed rising support for compensating college athletes for their talents did not go unnoticed in Sacramento. Still, it was not until the final debate in the state Senate, lawmakers said, that the prospect of unanimous chambers became reality.

State Sen. Brian Jones, a Republican from San Diego County who said he had not been aggressively lobbied either way, said he arrived on the Senate floor expecting to oppose the bill. The debate, though, led him to reconsider his thinking, as did a series of pointed queries from one of his children, a community college volleyball player.

“He was just asking questions, he wasn’t advocating one way or the other,” Jones said. “As I had to answer his questions, I kind of had to come up with answers that made sense. I just worked myself into supporting it.”

There are other political perils on the horizon for the NCAA. In New York, a state senator has filed legislation that effectively mirrors the California law and adds an expensive twist: a requirement that colleges pay 15% of the money earned from sports ticket sales to student-athletes.

On Monday, the day Newsom announced his move in California, legislators in Florida and Illinois filed bills of their own. Federal lawmakers, as well as officials in Colorado, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Washington state, have also signaled unease with the NCAA’s way of doing business. Even in states where college sports are prized passions, the association and its policies have gradually grown more alarming.

“I think you could very well see a groundswell in statehouses across the country against the NCAA,” said Trey Lamar, a state representative in Mississippi who once filed a bill to limit how the association conducts investigations in the state.

“They just flat-out overstep their bounds in so many different areas,” said Lamar, who was a running back at Mississippi. “They’ve gotten too big for their britches, and they need to come back to the table.”

After Newsom’s decision became public Monday morning, the NCAA chose not to repeat its threat that universities there could be barred from competition. California’s major universities seemed to adopt a more conciliatory approach, hoping that state officials might reconsider the law’s provisions.

And at the University of California, Los Angeles, Chip Kelly, one of the nation’s highest paid college football coaches, said he saw the law as “progress.”

“The NCAA,” he said, “will have to make their adjustment.”

NCAA's Defeat in California Shows Limits of a Besieged Juggernaut

The word went out minutes into last Wednesday’s meeting of California State trustees: The university had asked Gov. Gavin Newsom to veto a bill to let student-athletes seek money beyond the costs of attendance.

In an indictment announced Tuesday, the operative, L. McCrae Dowless Jr., was accused of obstruction of justice and illegal possession of an absentee ballot, among other charges. Seven other people were also indicted in connection with the election fraud inquiry, but prosecutors said the charges against one person were inadvertent and would be dismissed.

In the indictment, prosecutors alleged that Dowless directed others in the criminal mishandling of absentee ballots and that “spoiled absentee ballots were counted.” Dowless’ crimes, the indictment said, “served to undermine the integrity of the absentee ballot process and the public’s confidence in the outcome of the electoral process.”

“This offense was done with deceit and intent to defraud and against the peace and dignity of the state,” said the indictment, which a grand jury in Wake County returned Tuesday.

Through his lawyer, Dowless, who worked during the 2018 campaign for Mark Harris, the Republican nominee in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, has denied wrongdoing, and a woman who answered the phone at his lawyer’s office Tuesday afternoon declined to comment.

Harris, who eventually gave up his bid to be elected to Congress, has also denied any role in any election fraud.

But state elections regulators and investigators concluded that Dowless, who had worked for Democratic and Republican politicians alike over the years, had overseen a network of people who collected absentee ballots — a violation of North Carolina law — and sometimes completed them while he was a contractor for Harris’ campaign.

Although officials never proved that Dowless’ group touched enough ballots in and around Bladen County to account for the entirety of Harris’ 905-vote edge, the State Board of Elections decided in February to order a new vote. At the time, the chairman of the elections board, Robert Cordle, cited “the corruption, the absolute mess with the absentee ballots” and described the November election as “tainted.”

Voters in the district, which includes part of Charlotte, will pick a new congressman in September. Harris is not a candidate, but last year’s Democratic candidate, Dan McCready, is running for the seat against Dan Bishop, who became the Republican nominee in May.

Dowless was charged in February with a series of felonies connected to the general election in 2016 and the primary balloting in 2018. In both elections, according to indictments that were filed in Wake County, Dowless’ conduct “served to undermine the integrity of the absentee ballot process and the public’s confidence in the outcome of the electoral process.”

Until now, though, Dowless had not been charged in connection with the 2018 general election. But his prosecution was widely expected as federal and state investigators spent months gathering evidence.

Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the state Board of Elections, said in a statement Tuesday that the misconduct linked to Dowless had “effectively disenfranchised voters” in the 9th District.

“North Carolina voters should be confident that state officials will continue to be vigilant and pursue any individuals or organizations that attempt to undermine our elections,” she said. “Democracy is best served by holding those who attempt to thwart it accountable.”

In an interview in February, Lorrin Freeman, the Wake County district attorney, said she and other investigators had been waiting for the elections board to conclude its work before they turned their focus to last year’s general election.

“What has been challenging about this case and this investigation is that, as has been widely reported, certain activity has gone on for years,” Freeman, who began investigating Dowless’ activities in Bladen County after the local prosecutor recused himself, said in her suite of offices in Raleigh, the North Carolina capital. “The more interviews you do, the more interviews you have to do.”

The 9th District has been without representation since January, when the term of Rep. Robert M. Pittenger expired. Harris narrowly defeated Pittenger in a Republican primary in May 2018.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/us/mccrae-dowless-indictment.html" id="c8de710a-4ecd-37ea-a949-560265fecb0e">The New York Times</a>.

Election Fraud in North Carolina Leads to New Charges for Republican Operative

A Republican operative in North Carolina has been charged in connection with a voter-turnout effort that investigators said was intended to manipulate the results of a now-overturned general election for Congress last year.

The Republican-controlled Senate, faced with procedural disputes and intraparty debate over details of the measure, abruptly adjourned until Tuesday. Chaos spilled into public view on the Senate floor, but it neither definitively advanced nor sank the proposal that is the nation’s most far-reaching effort to curb abortion this year.

The measure would effectively ban most abortions at every stage of pregnancy and criminalize the procedure for doctors, who could be charged with a felony and face up to 99 years in prison for performing an abortion unless a woman’s health was at “serious” risk. On Thursday, in a maneuver that helped set off a chorus of shouts and screams on the Senate floor, some Republicans sought to abandon provisions that would have allowed exceptions to the abortion ban in cases of rape or incest.

The House has already passed a measure without such exceptions, and a Senate committee added them Wednesday, stirring anger from some who thought they watered down the effort to ban abortion as broadly as possible and to force a new look at Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark case that legalized abortion up to the point when a fetus is viable outside the womb, usually about 24 weeks into a pregnancy. Although the Senate removed the exceptions Thursday, the provision could be restored before a final vote.

In the end, with the Alabama chamber in turmoil and even senior lawmakers flabbergasted, Thursday served as a preview of the debate that will play out once the bill returns to the Senate floor as soon as next week.

“If we want to talk about privacy, I would want to talk about the right of privacy of that unborn child,” said state Sen. Clyde Chambliss, a Republican from the Montgomery area. “That child has a right to develop and be delivered without its privacy being invaded, invaded by forceps and scalpels. That’s what this bill is about today.”

Democrats have complained that the measure would nearly eliminate abortion rights in Alabama, and they have argued that lawmakers should spend more time on the state’s most pressing issues, not national cultural battles. But they have also conceded that the bill is very likely to pass the Legislature.

“We will probably spend more money on legal fees on this particular case than it takes for us to be able to bring healthy babies into the world,” Sen. Bobby Singleton, the top Democrat in the chamber, said Thursday. “But we’re willing to do legislation for grandstanding versus the ability to look at the human factor and allow a woman to have her own choice.”

The legislation has moved through Montgomery, the Alabama capital, just as opponents of legal abortion in the South and beyond have been encouraged and emboldened by the realignment of the Supreme Court with the arrival of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. This year, especially in the South and Midwest, state lawmakers have pursued a range of proposals to limit abortions, including so-called heartbeat bills that essentially ban abortions at six weeks of pregnancy.

Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, has not committed to signing the measure into law if it reaches her desk, but many state lawmakers expect her eventual support.

Opponents of the legislation have vowed to sue to block the measure if it becomes law. They said that they would argue that Alabama would have unlawfully restricted access to abortion, a right that the courts have repeatedly reaffirmed since Roe.

“Passing bills that they know will be struck down in federal court are a waste of millions of taxpayer dollars that could be going to address the urgent needs in our communities,” the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama said in a statement. “Ignoring those needs in favor of scoring political points is an irresponsible use of their power and privilege.”

In the statement, issued before the bill’s turbulent appearance on the Senate floor, the ACLU warned, “If the full Senate and governor insist on passing this bill, they will see us in court.”

Although the bill’s supporters expect it to be blocked in at least one lower court, they hope that the Supreme Court will ultimately seize on the legal battle to reconsider its essential holding in Roe.

“Our position is just simply that the unborn child is a person, and the bill goes directly to that,” said state Rep. Rich Wingo, a Republican who supported the legislation. “Courts can do — and have done — many things good and bad, but we would hope and pray that they would go and that they would overturn Roe.”

Alabama, a conservative state where Republicans dominate politics and where the number of abortion clinics has fallen over the years, has long sought to limit abortion access. Last year, voters supported an amendment to the Alabama Constitution that declared that the “public policy of this state is to recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, including the right to life.”

In the past, lawmakers set a 48-hour waiting period for abortions; mandated that women receive counseling before undergoing procedures; and required minors to receive consent for an abortion from a parent or legal guardian.

It was not immediately clear when the Senate would resume its consideration of the measure and how Republicans would settle the matter of rape and incest exceptions, which some of the Republican Party’s leading figures support.

Democrats, though, seemed to sense an opportunity to depict at least some Senate Republicans as reckless with their power over the chamber’s business.

“I know you all are for this bill, and I know this bill is going to pass,” Sen. Vivian Davis Figures, a Democrat and one of the few women in the Alabama Legislature, told Republicans on the floor Thursday. “You all are going to get your way, but at least treat us fairly and do it the right way.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/us/alabama-abortion-ban.html" id="79736523-5da1-3e37-adc1-16c7e923879c">The New York Times</a>.

Amid Chaos, Alabama Lawmakers Delay Vote on Far-Reaching Abortion Ban

The Alabama Senate on Thursday postponed debate on a proposal to outlaw most abortions in the state, delaying the measure that is intended to serve as a direct challenge to the Supreme Court’s holding that a woman has a constitutional right to end a pregnancy.

The measure would effectively ban most abortions at every stage of pregnancy and criminalize the procedure for doctors, who could face up to 99 years in prison for performing an abortion unless a woman’s health was at “serious” risk. On Thursday, in a maneuver that helped set off a chorus of shouts and screams on the Senate floor, some Republicans sought to abandon provisions that would have allowed exceptions to the abortion ban in cases of rape or incest.

Democrats have complained the measure would nearly eliminate abortion rights in Alabama, and they have argued that lawmakers should spend more time on the state’s most pressing issues, not national cultural battles. But they have conceded that the bill is very likely to pass the Legislature.

The party chairman, Robin Hayes, was charged with five counts, including bribery and conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud. The indictment accuses Hayes, a former congressman, of helping to route $250,000 in bribes to the re-election campaign of Mike Causey, the insurance commissioner.

Hayes, the most prominent of four people who were charged, did not respond to a message. Causey, who reported his concern to authorities, was not charged in the indictment, which a grand jury returned last month, and did not immediately comment.

In a statement, Causey said his department “continues to cooperate with the federal authorities on this investigation.” He otherwise declined to comment.

But Tuesday, federal officials depicted Hayes and the others who were indicted, including Greg E. Lindberg, chairman of an investment firm and a prolific political contributor, as unscrupulous power brokers who wanted to use campaign donations to influence Causey and his agency’s work.

“These men crossed the line from fundraising to felonies when they devised a plan to use their connections to a political party to attempt to influence the operations and policies of the North Carolina Department of Insurance,” John A. Strong, the special agent in charge of the FBI office in Charlotte, North Carolina, said in a statement.

The charges against Hayes represent only the latest chapter of tumult in North Carolina Republican politics. In February, the state board of elections ordered a new vote in the 9th Congressional District after it concluded that a voter-turnout operation, financed by the Republican candidate’s campaign, had tainted last November’s election.

On Monday, Hayes announced he would not seek another term as state party chairman. In a statement announcing the decision, the party cited “recent, although temporary, issues with his mobility.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/us/north-carolina-republican-chairman-indicted.html" id="3c3e9832-7ae0-3b9f-a3ce-add40921020e">The New York Times</a>.

The chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party has been charged in connection with an effort to bribe the state’s insurance commissioner through campaign donations, according to a federal indictment that was unsealed Tuesday.

North Carolina GOP Chairman Indicted in Corruption Probe

On Monday, Hayes announced that he would not seek another term as state party chairman. In a statement announcing the decision, the party cited “recent, although temporary, issues with his mobility.”

Causey, who reported his concern to authorities, was not charged in the indictment, which a grand jury returned last month, and did not immediately comment. Hayes, the most prominent of four people who were charged, did not respond to a message.

Richard Cohen, president of the SPLC since 2003, cited “recent events” in an email to staff members Friday, writing that he had asked the center’s board to open a search for an interim president “in order to give the organization the best chance to heal.”

“Whatever problems exist at the SPLC happened on my watch, so I take responsibility for them,” Cohen wrote.

Cohen’s leadership of the center, one of the nation’s wealthiest and best-known nonprofit groups, has been under siege in recent weeks.

On March 14, a group of employees wrote to the center’s leaders and warned that “allegations of mistreatment, sexual harassment, gender discrimination and racism threaten the moral authority of this organization and our integrity along with it.”

After the center announced that it had fired Morris Dees, its charismatic co-founder, for misconduct, another group of employees sent a separate letter accusing the center’s leadership of being “complicit in decades of racial discrimination, gender discrimination, and sexual harassment and/or assault.”

Dees, 82, has denied any wrongdoing.

The change in leadership at the SPLC, which is widely known for its analyses of extremism and hate groups, is unfolding at a precarious moment for the nonprofit.

After the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the organization’s ranks swelled, and its endowment surged. Ten days before his dismissal was announced, Dees told board members that the center had attracted more than 200 new employees.

But under Cohen, the SPLC was also accused of overreaching in its efforts to stamp out hate. Last year, it reached a $3.375 million settlement for wrongly including a British activist and his organization in a guide to “anti-Muslim extremists.”

There were also internal troubles at the SPLC, with dissent and concerns about its treatment of people of color. In one of the letters written by staff members, workers noted the small number of black people in leadership ranks and that many employees had observed that people of color had been “pushed out, fired, removed from positions of leadership” or had to leave “due to discrimination and a lack of opportunities.”

After Dees’ firing, the center announced a review of its workplace culture — an examination its board ultimately said would be overseen by Tina Tchen, who was chief of staff to Michelle Obama. Even before Tchen was hired, some employees suggested a review would not be enough and demanded “real leadership change.”

Cohen is one of several senior SPLC leaders to depart, or make plans to do so, this month. In addition to Dees and Cohen, Rhonda Brownstein, the center’s legal director, submitted her resignation this week. She did not respond to a request for comment.

Meredith Horton, the deputy legal director and among the highest-ranking black women in the center’s history, said this month that she, too, would leave.

In a resignation announcement, Horton, who has not responded to interview requests, wrote that there was “more work to do” to guarantee that the SPLC was “a place where everyone is heard and respected and where the values we are committed to pursuing externally are also being practiced internally.”

Cohen forwarded Horton’s resignation email to the entire staff. He wrote that executives intended to “ensure that our workplace reflects our values.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/us/splc-richard-cohen-resigns.html" id="8378955e-4f7b-3304-a941-f9b153adba07">The New York Times</a>.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The president of the Southern Poverty Law Center told staff members Friday that he would step down from the crusading civil rights nonprofit, which has been roiled by charges of racism and sexual harassment and ousted its co-founder last week.

Southern Poverty Law Center President Plans Exit Amid Turmoil

After Dees’ firing, the center announced that it would review its workplace culture, as well as its policies and practices. Some employees still demanded “real leadership change.”

“You saw things that you wouldn’t believe,” Trump told reporters after he surveyed a neighborhood that was among the most gravely damaged during Sunday’s outbreak, which left at least 23 people dead and spawned a tornado with estimated winds of 170 mph.

Later, Trump traveled to Providence Baptist Church — the hub of a sprawling volunteer relief effort that has taken shape in east Alabama in recent days. Local officials said he was expected to also meet with relatives of those killed and emergency workers.

A few hundred people lined a two-lane county highway near the church, hoping for a glimpse of Trump from the roadside grass or from the cemetery across the street. When his motorcade arrived, it passed 23 white crosses, one for each of the storm’s victims. Just before Trump left the church, he and the first lady, Melania Trump, approached the display. The couple walked the row of crosses, pausing at each one.

The president’s trip came three days after he approved a disaster declaration for Lee County, where residents are eligible for grants for temporary housing and home repairs and loans for uninsured property. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has already approved more than $42,000 in assistance in the county. The agency said that five applications had been approved and that more were being processed.

FEMA — and U.S. presidents — have long grappled with the aftermath of severe storms in the South, where hundreds of deaths in the past decade alone have been attributed to tornadoes. Trump is the fourth consecutive president, at least, to visit Alabama to survey tornado damage.

But as Trump and the Beauregard community mourned the dead, the state was preparing for the possibility of more severe weather. Although forecasters have gradually become more concerned about dangerous weather in Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee, experts said that Alabama remained in some jeopardy.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/us/trump-alabama.html" id="cc933867-7ae0-3e4f-a551-cb8c0d47a0e9">The New York Times</a>.

BEAUREGARD, Ala. — President Donald Trump traveled Friday to tornado-battered Alabama, where he heralded the federal response and tried to comfort a grieving, stunned community.

Trump Surveys Damage in Alabama

“While the setup through the weekend is not as potent as what we saw last weekend, we still have to be vigilant with severe storms as we are now in our spring severe weather season in Alabama,” Scott Martin, an Alabama meteorologist, wrote in an analysis Friday. “If you strictly rely on outdoor sirens for your way of receiving warnings, you don’t have much hope.”

Trump Surveys Tornado Damage in Alabama

“We have another storm system, very powerful, that will begin entering the state” on Saturday, Kevin Laws, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said at a news conference in the county where 23 people were killed Sunday. “Most of the entire state’s going to be under a significant risk.”

The Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center issued a separate forecast that showed much of the South, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and the Carolinas, in at least some jeopardy over the weekend. Meteorologists, who predicted Sunday’s outbreak with striking precision, are expected to refine their forecast in the coming days.

Laws said there was a possibility that the eastern half of Alabama, which includes the communities that were hit hardest last weekend, would ultimately face “somewhat more of a minimal risk.”

The Weather Service’s early warnings came on the morning that local authorities announced that no one remained missing in the aftermath of Sunday’s outbreak, which spawned a series of tornadoes, including one that traveled for about 70 miles.

“We are now confident that we have accounted for all of the individuals that we had unaccounted for,” said Sheriff Jay Jones of Lee County, where all of the deaths occurred.

The county coroner, Bill Harris, said four people remained in intensive care units Wednesday morning.

President Donald Trump, who approved a federal disaster declaration for Lee County on Tuesday, is expected to visit the region Friday to survey the damage. And Gov. Kay Ivey opened her State of the State address Tuesday night with a tribute to the victims.

Residents said repeatedly this week they had already begun to turn their attention toward rebuilding efforts that are likely to stretch for months, at least.

“We don’t know why it happened,” said Richard Brown Sr., principal of Beauregard High School, where he has worked since 1971. “It’s just part of life. There are always some ups and downs, and you have to take the good with the bad, and the good Lord is in charge.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/06/us/alabama-storm-tornado.html" id="77c59d7f-a68c-36ad-a7e4-17ba511be59f">The New York Times</a>.

New Storm Threat in Alabama as Search for Tornado Missing Ends

BEAUREGARD, Ala. — Days after ferocious tornadoes killed almost two dozen people and devastated block after block of eastern Alabama, officials warned Wednesday that the state should brace for the possibility of more trouble this weekend.

The consequences of the tornado came into greater focus Wednesday, as Alabama Power estimated that 116 homes were so crippled that they could not receive electrical service. But officials like Harris said they believed the death toll from the tornado, the deadliest in the United States since 2013, was unlikely to rise.

“We are still in a standby mode,” he said, “just on the outside chance that they find somebody, which is not likely.”

Trump’s visit to the area Friday is certain to call attention to the region’s plight, and residents said repeatedly this week they had already begun to turn their attention toward rebuilding efforts that are likely to stretch for months, at least.

The state elections board, which concluded last month that fraud had tainted November’s voting for the seat, ruled Monday that a new open primary would be held in the district on May 14 and a new general election on Sept. 10.

The off-year race, likely to be competitive, expensive and closely scrutinized for signs of new misconduct, drew a handful of candidates even before the board set the schedule. The filing period for candidates begins next week.

There is scarce precedent for a start-to-finish redo of a congressional election, and officials in both parties are bracing for a season of sharp-edged advertisements and high-profile campaign stops, after a scandal that left North Carolina voters shaken.

Republicans, frustrated and embarrassed by how the fleeting victory of Mark Harris in November unraveled after the revelation that his campaign financed an illicit voter-turnout effort, are expected to mount an aggressive attempt to retain the seat, which the party has held since 1963.

And Democrats, energized by the scandal that subsumed Harris and their sooner-than-expected shot at the seat, are similarly poised for a vigorous campaign. Leading Democrats have already begun to coalesce behind Dan McCready, who trailed Harris by 905 votes after last fall’s balloting.

But there will not be a rematch between the two men, at least this time. Harris, who has denied any knowledge of the misconduct that his campaign financed, announced last Tuesday that he would not run in the new election. The next day, state authorities arrested L. McCrae Dowless Jr., the Harris campaign contractor who oversaw the illicit effort, after his indictment for obstruction of justice and other charges.

Harris, an evangelical pastor from Charlotte, has endorsed Stony Rushing, a commissioner from Union County, for the Republican nomination in the 9th, which includes part of Charlotte and stretches eastward, encompassing all or parts of Fayetteville, Lumberton, Monroe and Rockingham.

The campaign begins at a moment when North Carolina voters are signaling worries about the way elections are conducted in the state.

In an Elon University poll of North Carolina registered voters, just more than half of respondents reported that they thought election fraud was a “major problem” in the state. According to the study, which the university released Friday, about 60 percent of voters said they were “somewhat confident” that future elections would be fair.

Although the poll suggested that Democratic respondents were slightly more anxious about the potential for fraud than Republicans, the survey, which had a margin of sampling error of 3.4 percent, reflected bipartisan concerns in the wake of the 9th District’s scandal.

“Now, months out from the tainted 9th District election, North Carolina voters are broadly skeptical of elections in the state,” Jason Husser, an associate professor of political science at the university and director of the poll, wrote in a summary that accompanied the survey’s release. “A majority of the electorate has clear concerns about the fairness of future elections and the extent of fraud.”

State election officials have already said they would send staff members to Bladen and Robeson counties — the epicenters of the scandal — “to monitor and assist with the elections process.”

The newly elected House, which convened in January without a representative from the 9th District, has two other vacancies. On May 21, Pennsylvania voters in the 12th District will pick a replacement for former Rep. Tom Marino, a Republican who resigned in January.

And North Carolina’s 3rd District will hold a special election on July 9 or Sept. 10, depending on whether a primary runoff is required, to fill the seat of Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr. Jones, a Republican who represented much of the state’s Atlantic coast, died in February.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/us/north-carolina-special-election-house-ninth.html" id="6ce8e56a-1937-3717-a105-4dd9af06a499">The New York Times</a>.

North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District will remain without representation in the House until at least September.

North Carolina Sets New Date for Redo Election in Congressional House Race

The campaign contractor, L. McCrae Dowless Jr., was among five people charged in Wake County, North Carolina, in connection with misconduct related to absentee ballots. The prosecutions were a vigorous legal backlash against a rare instance of election fraud and cast a still-darkening shadow over North Carolina, where state regulators recently ordered a new election in the 9th Congressional District after finding that Dowless had orchestrated an illicit scheme for Mark Harris, the Republican candidate.

“These indictments should serve as a stern warning to anyone trying to defraud elections in North Carolina,” Kim Strach, the executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in a statement.

The charges that were unsealed on Wednesday were not tied to the 2018 general election, which investigators are still examining and which Harris once appeared to have won by 905 votes. Instead, this week’s indictments were linked to an election in 2016, when Dowless worked for a different candidate, and the 2018 primary, when he was effectively on the Harris campaign’s payroll.

But the indictments describe many of the same activities that investigators believe played out last fall, when Harris was locked in a tight race with Dan McCready, the Democratic nominee. Dowless, for instance, was accused of directing his associates to harvest absentee ballots from voters and instructing workers to sign ballot envelopes as if they had been legitimate witnesses. North Carolina law typically forbids third parties from handling absentee ballots.

During parts of both the 2016 and 2018 elections, the indictments said, Dowless’ conduct “served to undermine the integrity of the absentee ballot process and the public’s confidence in the outcome of the electoral process.” According to the indictment, spoiled ballots were tabulated in both races, including the 2018 primary, when Harris defeated Rep. Robert M. Pittenger by 828 votes. In that contest, Harris won 437 of the 456 ballots cast through the mail in Bladen County, the hub of Dowless’ operation.

It was not clear on Wednesday how many ballots were compromised and counted during the primary.

Dowless’ lawyer did not respond to a message, and a woman who answered the phone at her office in Elizabethtown, North Carolina, declined to comment. Last week, after Dowless declined to testify during an evidentiary hearing before the state elections board, the lawyer, Cynthia Singletary, said, “I don’t think he’s done anything wrong.”

But to others who observed the proceedings in the state capital, where regulators heard days of testimony about Dowless’ work and reputation, he was all but certain to face prosecution — an outcome that Democrats and Republicans alike said seemed appropriate.

In an interview on Friday, the day after the elections board ordered a new vote, the prosecutor overseeing the criminal inquiry said she expected a grand jury to return its first charges within a month. On Tuesday, the grand jurors acted, but the indictments remained under seal until Dowless, 63, was arrested.

“What has been challenging about this case and this investigation is that, as has been widely reported, certain activity has gone on for years,” the prosecutor, Lorrin Freeman, said last week. “The more interviews you do, the more interviews you have to do.”

Freeman, who is the Wake County district attorney and began investigating Dowless’ activities in Bladen County after the local prosecutor recused himself, said on Wednesday that Dowless had been arrested in the morning and was taken to Raleigh for processing. Dowless’ secured bond was set at $30,000, and he was ordered to avoid contact with anyone who was identified in the indictments.

Four other people were also indicted and face charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice and of illegally possessing absentee ballots. One of the four was also accused of falsely signing the voter certification on an absentee ballot.

Prosecutors could eventually seek additional charges against Dowless or his associates, especially in connection with the 2018 general election. The federal authorities have not said whether they are investigating Dowless.

Dowless has some familiarity with the criminal justice system, and his record includes felony convictions for perjury and fraud. But his background did not keep him from working for Harris, as well as other Democratic and Republican politicians who were seeking office in southeastern North Carolina.

There, Dowless built a reputation as a savvy organizer of effective absentee ballot efforts that, at least sometimes, seemed to rely on criminal conduct and a network of workers with little legal knowledge but a need for quick cash. In 2017, just months after Dowless worked for one of Harris’ rivals during a campaign for Congress, Harris hired him for his 2018 House bid. In doing so, Harris ignored the misgivings of one of his sons, who memorialized his concerns in an email that became public last week.

“The key thing that I am fairly certain they do that is illegal is that they collected the completed absentee ballots and mail them all at once,” John Harris wrote to his father in 2017.

Mark Harris repeatedly denied that he knew of any wrongdoing by Dowless or others in his operation, which his campaign spent tens of thousands of dollars to underwrite. Indeed, he insisted that Dowless had explicitly assured him that his effort would involve nothing improper. But Harris, who appeared to mislead investigators during his testimony, ultimately decided last Thursday that he would support a new election.

State officials are expected to meet on Monday to set a schedule for the new election, which will include a primary and be conducted as if a member of Congress had died or resigned. McCready, last year’s Democratic candidate, said on Friday that he would enter the race. On Tuesday, Harris cited his health and announced that he would not be a candidate.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/us/mcrae-dowless-indicted.html" id="865d9cc4-7797-39ba-a679-467e7a8c16d5">The New York Times</a>.

North Carolina Operative Indicted Over Tainted Ballots in 2 Elections

The North Carolina political operative who oversaw a fraud-ridden voter-turnout effort on behalf of a Republican congressional candidate was arrested on Wednesday, a prosecutor said, after a grand jury accused him of a series of felonies.

The campaign contractor, L. McCrae Dowless Jr., was among five people charged in Wake County, North Carolina, in connection with misconduct related to absentee ballots. Dowless faces the gravest charges, including three counts of felonious obstruction of justice.

Although Dowless has come under scrutiny for his work for Mark Harris, last year’s Republican candidate for Congress in the 9th District, the charges that were unsealed Wednesday are not connected to the 2018 general election, which investigators are still examining. Instead, this week’s indictment was tied to the 2016 election, when Dowless worked for a different candidate, and the 2018 primary, when he worked for Harris.

But the indictment, which was made public six days after the North Carolina State Board of Elections ordered a new contest in the 9th District, describes many of the same activities that investigators believe played out again last fall. In one section of the indictment, for instance, Dowless is accused of directing his associates to harvest absentee ballots from voters and instructing workers to sign ballot envelopes as if they had been legitimate witnesses. North Carolina law typically forbids third parties from handling those ballots.

In the wake of last week’s evidentiary hearing in Raleigh, in which state regulators heard days of testimony about Dowless’ work and reputation, it was all but certain that he would face prosecution. In an interview Friday, Lorrin Freeman, district attorney for Wake County, said she expected a grand jury to bring its first charges within a month.

On Tuesday, the grand jurors acted. Freeman, who began investigating Dowless’ activities in Bladen County after the local district attorney recused himself, said in an email Wednesday afternoon that Dowless had been arrested in the morning and that authorities were transporting him to Raleigh for processing.

Harris said Tuesday that he would not run in the new contest. His Democratic rival from last year, Dan McCready, entered the race Friday.

The North Carolina political operative who oversaw a fraud-ridden voter-turnout effort on behalf of a Republican congressional candidate was arrested Wednesday, a prosecutor said, after a grand jury’s secret indictment this week.

North Carolina Operative Indicted in Connection with Absentee Voter Fraud

In the months since Harris’ narrow apparent victory — by a 905-vote margin — began to draw attention and investigation, Dowless has been among the central figures of inquiry. He worked for Democratic and Republican candidates over the years and was elected to a low-level office himself in Bladen County, but his shadowy tactics and criminal convictions for perjury and fraud transformed him into an object of suspicion.

Last week, Dowless, through his lawyer, declined to testify before the elections board.

Harris, who has denied any personal knowledge of wrongdoing by Dowless or his associates, acknowledged that he hired Dowless in April 2017. But last Thursday, faced with days of evidence of wrongdoing by campaign workers and after offering “incorrect” testimony to the elections board, Harris called for a new election.

He said Tuesday that he would not run in the new contest, which has not been scheduled. His Democratic rival from last year, Dan McCready, entered the race Friday.

Dowless, 63, faces the gravest set of accusations, including three counts of felonious obstruction of justice, and could ultimately face other charges.

The charges are not related to the 2018 general election, which investigators are continuing to examine, but instead focus on the 2016 general election and last year’s primary.

L. McCrae Dowless Jr., the North Carolina political operative whose illicit voter-turnout effort on behalf of a Republican congressional candidate led the state to order a new election, has been indicted, a North Carolina prosecutor said Wednesday. Four other people were also charged.

Alan Blinder

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