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World

Presidential Vote Counting to Get Revamp After Donald Trump Tried to Reverse 2020 Loss

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WASHINGTON—For the first time in more than a century, Congress is poised to pass legislation that would revamp the process of certifying presidential electors, a direct response to efforts by former President

Donald Trump

and his supporters to overturn the 2020 election results. 

The Electoral Count Reform Act has been attached to a $1.65 trillion yearlong spending package currently moving through Congress that is expected to become law this week. The ECRA is the result of nearly a year of bipartisan Senate negotiations to update an 1887 law that came into focus during the certification of the presidential results on Jan. 6, 2021. 

Current law requires Congress to convene for a joint session on Jan. 6 after a presidential election to count and ratify the 538 electoral votes certified by the 50 states and District of Columbia. The vice president, serving as president of the Senate, has the duty to count the votes in a joint session of Congress. 

In 2021, Mr. Trump pressured then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject some electors unilaterally. Mr. Pence refused, saying such a move was beyond his power. After Mr. Trump urged his supporters to march on the Capitol in a speech on the Ellipse, a pro-Trump mob overran the Capitol, temporarily interrupting the proceedings. After Congress reconvened, 139 House Republicans and eight Senate Republicans voted against certifying the election results. 

The new legislation would make it clear that the vice president’s role is merely to count the votes publicly and that he or she has no power to alter the results. It also would significantly raise the threshold to sustain an objection to a state’s electors to one-fifth of both chambers, up from one House member and one senator now. 

The proposal would also provide for an expedited federal court challenge if a state attempts to delay or tamper with election results. The bill holds that the court decision is final and requires Congress to accept that decision.

The current Electoral Count Act “is a time bomb under democracy, and we learned on Jan. 6 that its ambiguities and confusing terms are very dangerous,” said Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats.

Sen.

Susan Collins

(R., Maine) credited the work of a group of 15 senators who span the ideological spectrum in negotiating the bill. “The events of Jan. 6 clearly brought home the flaws in the law,” she said.

The Biden administration called the changes “a vital piece of legislation.”

Sen.

Josh Hawley

(R., Mo.) said he opposed changes to the current law. Mr. Hawley was the first senator to say he would object to the results of the 2020 presidential election, a move that forced lawmakers to debate and vote to affirm the states’ tallies on Jan. 6, 2021. As Mr. Hawley entered the Capitol ahead of the joint session that day, he was photographed fist-pumping to cheers from the pro-Trump crowd gathered outside.

“I think it’s fine, this is the democratic process,” Mr. Hawley said about the current rules. “I don’t think the objection caused the riot.” 

Other lawmakers have used the process outlined in the Electoral Count Act to object to election results in recent years. Some Democrats objected, unsuccessfully, to certification of both of former President

George W. Bush

‘s wins as well as Mr. Trump’s.

In both cases the Democratic nominee for president had already conceded and wasn’t supportive of the objections. Mr. Trump has continued to call for overturning the results and to claim falsely that he won the 2020 election.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack made four criminal referrals for Mr. Trump to the Justice Department on Monday after investigating the lead-up and attack itself. Mr. Trump has denied wrongdoing related to the riot. The Justice Department is currently conducting a parallel investigation of the events.

“I don’t care whether they change The Electoral Count Act or not, probably better to leave it the way it is so that it can be adjusted in case of Fraud,” Mr. Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday.

Mr. Trump has said the planned changes show that the vice president did indeed have the power to block electors under current law. Backers say they are trying to eliminate any loopholes that could be exploited by future candidates, including Mr. Trump.

Among the Electoral Count Reform Act provisions included in this week’s spending package is a requirement that each state’s governor, unless specified in the state’s laws or constitution, submit the slate of electors. That would keep states from submitting false electors as some sought to do in 2020. 

It also would prevent state legislatures from overriding the popular vote in their states by declaring a “failed election,” except in narrowly defined “extraordinary and catastrophic” events.

Edward Foley, the director of Election Law at Ohio State University said the bill’s most significant provision is making sure the courts are the final backstop in case of false electors.

“We can look to courts as being the branch of government that is most immune from this kind of political denialism,” he said.

The version included in the spending bill is the Senate version, which had 38 co-sponsors, including both Majority Leader

Chuck Schumer

(D., N.Y.) and Minority Leader

Mitch McConnell

(R., Ky.).

In September, the House passed its own version of the legislation, 229-203. Nine Republicans joined Democrats in voting to pass the House bill. None of them are returning to Congress next year.

Write to Eliza Collins at eliza.collins@wsj.com and Lindsay Wise at lindsay.wise@wsj.com

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US

GOP Gains College-Educated and Minority Voters in Slim House Pickup

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In making modest gains in House seats this year, Republicans drew more support from minority and college-educated voters than in other recent elections, chipping away at important pillars of the Democratic coalition in ways that could better position the party for the next election.

Republicans narrowed the Democratic advantage among Latino voters, Black voters and white women with college degrees—important components of the Democratic voter pool—according to AP VoteCast, a large survey of midterm participants. GOP House candidates won a majority of white women in the nation’s suburbs, a swing group that helped power the Democratic Party to its House majority in 2018 and backed President Biden in 2020.

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“The numbers indicate that our party has been more successful than we previously knew in getting voters of color moving to the GOP,’’ said Neil Newhouse, a veteran pollster who led polling for several GOP presidential nominees. “Ever since I got involved in politics more than 40 years ago, that’s been a long-term goal of the party.”

The voter shifts helped Republicans win a majority of House votes nationally, preliminary results show, but weren’t strong enough to bring the party substantial gains in House seats. Republicans have so far lost a net of one seat in the Senate, with the final tally to be decided in Georgia’s runoff election next month. Still, the gain among these groups “tells me that Republicans are potentially well-positioned to win a national election, if we can replicate this,’’ Mr. Newhouse said.

House members-elect following a group photo on the Capitol steps a week after the midterm vote.



Photo:

Leah Millis/Reuters

Ruy Teixeira, a demographer at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, said the shift among Latino voters was particularly noteworthy and extends a move toward the GOP that was a feature of the last two presidential elections. “They lost quite a bit among Latinos, and the swing was significant,” he said.

Many caveats apply in drawing lessons from a midterm election. Far fewer voters participate than in a presidential contest. The voter shifts detected by AP VoteCast varied widely by state and by whether an election had the potential to restrict legalized abortion. Voters’ choices this year might have been driven more by their views of former President

Donald Trump

and of candidates who copied his style of politics, than by their views of the two parties. Mr. Trump is now a declared candidate for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024.

The AP VoteCast survey, which included more than 94,000 midterm voters nationwide, found a number of significant shifts in voter preferences:

—Latino voters favored Democratic House candidates by 17 percentage points—giving 56% support to Democrats and 39% to Republicans—a far slimmer lead than the 28-point edge that helped President Biden win in 2020 or the 34-point Democratic advantage in the last midterm elections, in 2018.

—Black voters gave 14% of their support to GOP House candidates, compared with 8% in the elections of two and four years ago.

—White women with college degrees, who had backed Democrats by 19 points in the last midterms and by 21 points in the 2020 presidential election, tipped toward Democrats by a far narrower 6 points this year.

—Republicans won an outright majority of white women in the suburbs, carrying the group by 6 percentage points. Suburban white women had backed Mr. Biden by 5 points, and Democratic House candidates in 2018 by 7 points. Female voters overall, who account for over half the electorate, favored Democrats by a single percentage point, down from 12 points and 15 points in the last two elections, respectively.

Some Democrats cautioned that little could be read into results from a midterm election with special conditions. The fate of legalized abortion was a pressing issue in some states, which helped Democratic candidates, and was less salient in others.

“I’m skeptical, because it wasn’t a national presidential election, and because you have such differences state by state,’’ said Elaine Kamarck, a veteran of the Clinton administration White House who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Analysts said that more data were needed to better understand what the variations among voter groups from state to state meant to the election outcomes. Some early clues suggest that the Latino voter shift boosted the GOP vote share in some House races, even if the shift didn’t produce a victory.

In some Latino-rich House districts in California, Democratic candidates won their elections with far smaller vote margins than the party produced two years earlier. Rep.

Norma Torres

of Southern California, for example, won by 12 points in preliminary results in a district that Mr. Biden carried by 28 points.

Republicans cut into Democratic margins in two heavily Latino House districts in South Texas. Democratic Rep.

Vicente Gonzalez

won re-election by 8 points in a district that Mr. Biden had carried by 15 points, while Republican Monica De La Cruz won in a newly created district by 9 points, which Mr. Trump had carried by 3 points.

In a third South Texas House district, Democratic Rep.

Henry Cuellar

won re-election by a larger margin than Mr. Biden won in 2020.

Carlos Odio, co-founder of Equis Research, a Democratic-aligned firm that focuses on Latino voters, said the Hispanic vote varied significantly by state.

Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D., Texas) celebrating a victory that had a slimmer margin than President Biden’s in 2020.



Photo:

Denise Cathey/Associated Press

“Florida was an unmitigated disaster for Democrats across the board. But it is especially true among Latino voters,’’ he said. Republicans won a majority of the Hispanic vote for the first time since 2006, Mr. Odio said. Republicans carried heavily Latino Miami-Dade County, the state’s largest, “something that was unthinkable in the Obama era,’’ he said.

Republicans boosted their share of voters who don’t have a four-year college degree. They also dominated among white voters in rural areas and small towns, winning a commanding 70% of those voters—producing an advantage of about 40 points—compared with leads of about 30 points two years and four years ago.

The AP VoteCast survey was conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for The Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press and Fox News.

Write to Aaron Zitner at aaron.zitner@wsj.com and Anthony DeBarros at Anthony.Debarros@wsj.com

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World

Donald Trump’s Fate in Justice Department Probes Headed for Special Counsel

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WASHINGTON—Attorney General

Merrick Garland

appointed a former federal and international war-crimes prosecutor as special counsel on Friday to oversee Justice Department investigations into former President

Donald Trump.

Jack Smith, who once led the Justice Department unit that investigates public corruption and since 2018 was the chief prosecutor at The Hague investigating war crimes in Kosovo, will be the third special counsel in five years to examine issues involving Mr. Trump.

He will lead both the probe into the handling of classified documents at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and oversee key aspects of the sprawling Justice Department investigation into efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election loss.

“The Special Counsel is authorized to prosecute federal crimes arising from the investigation of these matters,” Mr. Garland said in a brief memo naming Mr. Smith to the post. The memo said Mr. Smith’s remit doesn’t include cases against those who were physically present at the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

The appointment comes three days after Mr. Trump announced another bid for the presidency and would mark the naming of the third independent prosecutor in five years to examine issues involving Mr. Trump.

Jack Smith previously led the Justice Department unit that investigates public corruption.



Photo:

U.S. Department of Justice

The move reflects the sensitivity of Mr. Garland overseeing any investigation into Mr. Trump now that he is a declared presidential candidate. President Biden, who has said he intends to run for re-election in 2024, nominated Mr. Garland to head the Justice Department in part for the former judge’s promise to insulate the agency from political influence.

Some legal experts have anticipated such an appointment. Regulations governing special counsels provide for the attorney general to name an outsider if he determines that the investigation or prosecution presents a conflict of interest for the department and recusals of certain officials wouldn’t be enough to overcome the concerns.

Some former Justice Department officials and prosecutors have said such an appointment wouldn’t do much to allay criticism of the FBI and Justice Department by Mr. Trump and his supporters. There are few people with the necessary prosecutorial experience and nonpartisan reputation who would be willing to take on the post, those people say.

A special-counsel appointment won’t entirely eliminate the appearance of a conflict, as Mr. Garland and other senior Justice Department officials are still likely to be involved in some decision-making related to the probe, according to people familiar with past special counsels.

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol voted in mid-October to issue a subpoena for relevant documents and testimony under oath from former President Donald Trump. Photo: Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters

Write to Aruna Viswanatha at Aruna.Viswanatha@wsj.com and Sadie Gurman at sadie.gurman@wsj.com

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US

Republicans in Strong Position to Retake House as Counting Continues

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WASHINGTON—Republicans remained poised to win control of the House of Representatives with more than a dozen races still uncalled Monday, as Congress returned to work and new members set to take office next year began orientation.

Democrats are projected to hold their Senate majority after a weekend win in Nevada, giving them the 50 seats needed to control the chamber. A final Senate race, in Georgia, is set for a runoff on Dec. 6 because neither candidate got a majority.

In the House, the GOP appeared on track to win the barest of majorities, nonpartisan analysts said. On Sunday night, additional vote tallies in California and Arizona put Republican candidates in striking distance of victory, though those races hadn’t been called.

“Dems’ dreams of holding the House majority probably died tonight,” David Wasserman, the House editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, tweeted Sunday, referring to shifts toward Republicans in three races in those states.

Republicans currently have won 212 House seats with Democrats at 204, according to the Associated Press tally. A party needs 218 for a majority in the chamber. The GOP could end up only a couple of seats above that number, and the party got a boost Sunday by flipping a seat held by Democrats in Oregon.

Headed into the election, Democrats had a 220-212 majority, with three vacancies.

The possibility of an extremely narrow GOP majority is already creating challenges for Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.). Mr. McCarthy is running to be speaker assuming Republicans take back the House, but he is meeting resistance from his party’s right flank, which now has greater leverage to influence the vote.

Mr. McCarthy will need a simple majority of his conference during Tuesday’s leadership vote, to be selected as the party’s preference for leader. To become speaker, he will need a majority of the full House in a vote in January.

Rep. Andy Biggs (R., Ariz.) plans to run against Mr. McCarthy for the post, according to people familiar with the matter. The ally of former President

Donald Trump

is unlikely to get enough votes to win, but the candidacy could provide a gauge of opposition to Mr. McCarthy.

Allies of Mr. McCarthy made calls to Democratic Rep.

Henry Cuellar

of Texas over the weekend and asked him if he would switch parties to expand the GOP majority, according to five people familiar with the calls.

Mr. Cuellar turned them down, according to multiple people. A spokesman for Mr. McCarthy said the calls weren’t made at the request of Mr. McCarthy. “Anyone suggesting this is simply exercising in fan fiction,” said spokesman Mark Bednar.

Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader

Mitch McConnell

(R., Ky.) was also facing pushback from some of his Republican members, who questioned whether the party should delay the leadership election until after the Georgia runoff, in which Republican

Herschel Walker

is facing Democratic incumbent Sen.

Raphael Warnock.

The Senate GOP elections are set for Wednesday.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The Senate GOP elections are set for Wednesday.



Photo:

SARAH SILBIGER/REUTERS

New members are in Washington this week for orientation. Some who hadn’t had their races called were also invited and would be included in leadership votes. House Democrats will vote for their leadership later this month and the Senate is expected to keep their same top leaders.

Democrats had performed better than expected in the midterm elections, even with the anticipated loss of the House majority. They picked up a GOP-held Senate seat and flipped some House seats, including in Washington over the weekend.

Of the remaining uncalled competitive House races, a half-dozen were in California. They included the re-election contests of Democratic Reps.

Katie Porter

and

Mike Levin

and GOP Reps. David Valadao, Mike Garcia and Michelle Steel as well as one open seat. Both parties were also intensely watching close contests in Arizona, Colorado and Oregon.

While the contest for House control continued, Senate Democrats celebrated their victory, and the closely watched gubernatorial race in Arizona between Republican Kari Lake and Democrat

Katie Hobbs

remained too close to call. Ms. Hobbs was ahead Sunday evening by about 1 percentage point, with about 160,000 more ballots expected to be counted.

While Ms. Lake had a path to victory, she would need to overperform in all remaining ballots. The campaign manager for Ms. Hobbs, the Arizona secretary of state, released a statement Sunday night calling her “the unequivocal favorite to become the next governor of Arizona.”

In the key swing states of Arizona, Nevada, Michigan and Pennsylvania, candidates who made false claims about the 2020 election ran for positions that can exert great influence over election administration. Here’s a look at some of the results of those midterm races, and what it means for future elections. Illustration: Laura Kammermann

Write to Eliza Collins at eliza.collins+1@wsj.com. and Chad Day at Chad.Day@wsj.com

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World

Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu Holds Slight Edge in Election Exit Polls

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TEL AVIV—Former Israeli Prime Minister

Benjamin Netanyahu

was holding on to an edge over his rivals in exit polls for Israel’s fifth election in four years, but the projections showed his lead as marginal and the outcome could change as more votes are tallied.

According to figures from an exit poll by Israel’s public broadcaster Kan, updated slightly before 1 a.m. Wednesday Israel time, Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party was projected to win 30 seats in Israel’s parliament, or Knesset. His bloc of right-wing and religious allies was projected to win 62 seats out of the 120-seat Knesset.

That gives him an advantage over Israel’s current centrist Prime Minister

Yair Lapid,

who has vowed to form a government without Mr. Netanyahu and whose Yesh Atid party was projected to have won 23 seats, according to Kan. Mr. Lapid’s bloc was projected to win 54 seats, according to the latest exit poll.

Supporters of Benjamin Netanyahu’s party on the eve of the vote displayed a banner saying ‘only Likud can.’



Photo:

menahem kahana/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Early on Wednesday morning, Mr. Netanyahu took the stage in front of a crowd of cheering supporters in Jerusalem to tell them they were “on the cusp of a very great victory.”

“We need to wait for the final results. But one thing is already clear: Our path, the Likud’s path, has proven itself,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

About 71.3% of eligible voters headed to the ballot box, the highest tally since 2015, according to Israel’s Central Elections Committee. By 6 a.m. in Israel, only about 34% of the vote had been counted, making the results fluid.

Mr. Netanyahu has promised voters he would form what would be the country’s most right-wing and religious coalition in its history. It would include an alliance of far-right and religious lawmakers proposing tough measures to quell Palestinian unrest in the West Bank and pass legislation to weaken Israel’s judiciary. The joint leader of that alliance is the far-right lawmaker

Itamar Ben-Gvir,

whose Religious Zionism party received 15 seats, according to Kan, making it the third-largest party in the Knesset.

Mr. Netanyahu has vowed to make Mr. Ben-Gvir a minister if he forms a government. Mr. Ben-Gvir is requesting control of the public-security ministry, which would give him control of the country’s police force.

Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Religious Zionism party was projected to win the third-largest number of seats.



Photo:

AMIR COHEN/REUTERS

Mr. Ben-Gvir, who was convicted in 2007 of incitement to racism and supporting a terrorist organization, was best known in Israel for defending Israelis accused of violent attacks against Palestinians in court, before rising to prominence over the past year on a law-and-order campaign. He has told voters that he hopes to make Israelis safer by deporting people who he believes undermine the Jewish state, executing terrorists and giving immunity to Israeli troops and police who shoot and kill Arabs who are seen holding stones or Molotov cocktails before they throw them.

At Mr. Ben-Gvir’s election-night party in Jerusalem, activists enthusiastically cheered the exit-poll results, dancing in circles while waving blue-and-white Israeli flags.

“It feels like Independence Day,” said Alon Hazon, 47 years old, from Holon in central Israel. “We’re ready to take our country back.”

Arab citizens of Israel have expressed fear over Mr. Ben-Gvir. Riham Abu Nar, 19, who works at a kindergarten in Jaffa, said she was voting for the Arab-led Hadash-Ta’al party to prevent Mr. Ben-Gvir from gaining power.

“Itamar is really racist,” said Ms. Abu Nar, who is an Arab citizen of Israel. “He’s obsessed with Arabs. Our lives will be in danger if he’s in government.”

Mr. Ben-Gvir has denied that he is a racist.

The Islamist Ra’am party, which broke a taboo to join the previous government, received five seats in the Kan poll, while the Arab-led alliance of Hadash-Ta’al received four seats.

Mr. Netanyahu’s apparent parliamentary majority could be lost if the Palestinian nationalist Balad party crosses the electoral threshold of 3.25% of the total vote. According to Kan’s exit poll, Balad has 3.1% of the total vote.

Prime Minister Yair Lapid leads a centrist secular party allied with right-wing, left-wing and Arab factions.



Photo:

Ariel Schalit/Associated Press

Israelis remain split over whether Mr. Netanyahu—who was the nation’s longest-serving prime minister and was ousted last year—should return to power. He is beloved by a large number of Israelis, many of whom refer to him as “the King of Israel.” But he has been unable to lead his Likud party to a decisive victory since 2015, as Israelis on both the right and left remain torn over whether he should serve as prime minister while on trial for corruption.

“Our previous good and strong governments were led by Bibi,” said Likud voter Avigayil Neuman, 28, from Jerusalem’s Rehavia neighborhood, referring to Mr. Netanyahu by his nickname.

“I’m sick of right-wing governments led by Netanyahu,” said Dana Lenzini, a teacher from Tel Aviv. She cast her vote for Mr. Lapid’s Yesh Atid party, saying he had done a fine job in the four months he has been premier.

Mr. Netanyahu’s trial on corruption charges, now over two years old, was a rallying cry for his opponents in the past but doesn’t loom as large in this election, with prosecutors suffering some courtroom setbacks. Still, the trial underscores the stakes for Mr. Netanyahu, who denies any wrongdoing. His potential coalition allies say they will pass legislation that will make him immune from prosecution. He denies that he is seeking re-election to evade the trial.

The fragmented nature of the Israeli political landscape means that parties must form coalitions to govern.



Photo:

Daniel Rolider/Getty Images

Mr. Lapid, who leads a centrist secular party but allies with right-wing, left-wing and Arab factions, has warned voters that women, LGBT Israelis and Arab citizens are all at risk of seeing their rights diminished if Mr. Netanyahu and his right-wing and religious coalition are ushered into power. Mr. Lapid has cast the election as a choice over Israel’s future as a democratic state.

“I know that they’ve already declared the end of democracy a thousand times,” Mr. Lapid said Wednesday. “But this time it’s not a threat. It’s the election promise of the third-largest party in Israel and opposition leader

Benjamin Netanyahu

is entirely dependent on them.”

Aviv Bertele, 42, who runs a Hebrew language school in Tel Aviv, said he voted for the left-wing Meretz party despite being more right-wing because he wants lawmakers who can fight against people such as Mr. Ben-Gvir, whose alliance he fears could limit the rights of LGBT people and women.

“As a member of the LGBT community, and as someone who considers himself a feminist, I think we owe it to ourselves to protect ourselves from fascist forces like Itamar Ben-Gvir,” he said. “These elections are crucial to determine whether Israel will go in a liberal way or become something like Iran or Saudi Arabia.”

The result of the fifth ballot is likely to become clearer Wednesday, when Israel’s election committee will have finished the bulk of the vote tally. Under Israeli law, parties must win at least 3.25% of the vote to enter the Knesset. The fragmented nature of the Israeli political landscape means that parties must form coalitions to secure a parliamentary majority and govern. The process is likely to drag on for weeks, if not months. Analysts aren’t ruling out a sixth election.

In the coming days, Israeli President

Isaac Herzog

will choose the leader he believes has the best likelihood of assembling a governing coalition, usually that of the party that wins the most seats or receives the most recommendations to form a government by fellow lawmakers. That person has six weeks to try to cobble together a majority coalition that includes the support of smaller parties.

Write to Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com

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World

In Brazilian Presidential Election Former Leftist President Wins First Round as Voters Rebuff Current President

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Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva waves to supporters on general elections day in São Paulo on Sunday.



Photo:

Rodrigo Paiva/Getty Images

SÃO PAULO—Former president

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

took the most votes in Sunday’s first round of Brazil’s presidential elections, edging ahead of President

Jair Bolsonaro

by pledging to focus on the poverty and unemployment made worse by the pandemic and the ensuing global economic crisis.

Mr. da Silva, a standard-bearer of the Latin American left who is widely popular among the poor despite having been jailed on a corruption conviction in 2018, clinched 47.7% of the vote. The tally was just shy of the majority he needed to win outright, with 95.7% of votes counted Sunday night, according to Brazil’s electoral court.

Brazil’s right wing leader notched 43.8% of the votes—far more than the 36-37% support that polls from Datafolha and Ipec said that the ex-army captain would garner. Allies of Mr. Bolsonaro also swept to victory in elections that saw voters cast ballots for members of congress and state governors.

A supporter in São Paulo on Sunday embraced former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.



Photo:

Marcelo Chello/Associated Press

Both men emerge from a field of 11 candidates and will likely go head-to-head in a runoff vote on October 30.

Write to Samantha Pearson at samantha.pearson@wsj.com and Luciana Magalhaes at Luciana.Magalhaes@wsj.com

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Appeared in the October 3, 2022, print edition as ‘Brazilians Back Former Leftist President.’

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US

Hopeful Signs for Democrats in the 2022 Midterms

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The race to the midterm elections will accelerate after Labor Day—and if past is prologue, Democrats are likely to lose control of at least one legislative chamber. But current facts are more ambiguous than the historical record.

Midterm elections are usually referendums on the incumbent president and his party. Although President Biden’s job approval remains low (as it has been for the past year), it appears to have improved by 2 to 3 percentage points in recent weeks. If this trend continues, the president will be less of a drag on his party’s candidates than he was at his nadir.

Surprisingly, Democrats remain tied with Republicans in the generic congressional ballot, which reflects national preferences for the parties’ House candidates. If this is still true on Election Day, Republican gains will be much smaller than they were in 1994 and 2010. Other factors—including the record low number of truly competitive House districts—point in the same direction.

In Senate races, candidate quality matters more. As has happened repeatedly in recent cycles, Republicans appear to have damaged their prospects during primary contests by choosing nominees who have more appeal with their party’s base than with statewide electorates. In Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona, nominees backed by

Donald Trump

trail their Democratic opponents, several by wide margins.

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In the race to succeed

Pat Toomey,

the two-term Republican senator from Pennsylvania, Democrat Lt. Gov.

John Fetterman

leads TV personality

Mehmet Oz

by double digits. In Ohio—which Mr. Trump carried by wide margins in 2016 and 2020—Democratic Rep.

Tim Ryan

has moved out to a 4.5-point lead over political neophyte J.D. Vance. If Democrats can pick up this seat, which Republicans have held since 1999, the GOP’s chances of retaking the Senate will be dealt a possibly fatal blow, even if

Herschel Walker

and

Blake Masters

manage to eke out victories over Democratic incumbents in Georgia and Arizona.

Inflation will do more than any other issue to shape this year’s midterms, and broad-based price increases have tilted polls toward the Republicans since last fall. But even on this issue recent trends have been favorable for Democrats. According to the AAA’s daily survey, gasoline prices have fallen to $3.95 a gallon from a peak of $5.02 two months ago. Lower shipping prices and a strengthening dollar should hold down the prices of imported goods, and bloated inventories will force retailers to give consumers some relief. Although July’s more positive inflation report—which showed a modest reduction in year-over-year inflation, to 8.5% from 9.1%—doesn’t necessarily signal a trend, a sustained decline between now and November could persuade some voters that the worst is behind them.

In midterm elections, turnout is variable—and crucial. When Democratic interest in the 2014 cycle was muted, Republicans added 13 House seats to their already substantial majority. In 2018, by contrast, Democrats surged to the polls to express their opposition to President Trump and gained 41 seats, retaking the majority after eight years in opposition.

Democrats’ enthusiasm about going to the polls this fall had substantially trailed Republicans’—but recent events have narrowed the gap. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Democratic interest in the midterms surged. The passage of the major energy-and-climate bill that many Democrats had given up for dead further lifted their spirits.

The abortion issue could prove a game-changer. As the results of Kansas’ Aug. 2 referendum indicate, the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization isn’t popular, and severe restrictions on abortion are even less so. Eighty-five percent of Americans favor allowing abortions in cases of rape, incest and risks to the mother’s life, and a strong majority believe that the procedure should be widely available during the first trimester of pregnancy. While only 3 in 10 Americans favor abortion on demand, less than 1 in 10 support an outright ban. Most voters accept abortion in some circumstances but not others, and candidates who appear dogmatic or extreme will pay a price at the polls. By a margin of 25 points, voters favor protections for abortion in their state constitutions—a position backed by most demographic groups and even by one-third of Republicans.

Women care about this issue, which now trails only inflation in their list of top concerns. The pain of loss typically outweighs the satisfaction of gain, and tens of millions of pro-choice women have suffered a loss that until recently seemed unimaginable. If Democrats do better than expected this November, the justices who voted to overturn Roe will be a big piece of the explanation.

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Trump’s Final Days Draw Scrutiny as Handling of Documents Investigated

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WASHINGTON—In the final weeks of the Trump administration, the West Wing started to empty out. White House trade adviser

Peter Navarro

was spotted carting away a framed photograph of the U.S. and Chinese presidents facing off. The chief of staff’s wife was seen packing a stuffed bird into her car.

President

Donald Trump

remained preoccupied with overturning his November 2020 election loss. He spent his last days meeting with lawyers, plotting how to settle scores with Republicans who voted to impeach him after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol and negotiating over pardons with his advisers, former aides said.

At 12:50 a.m. on Jan. 20, 2021, his last day in office, he issued a list of 143 pardons and commutations, generating more presidential records required to be turned over to the National Archives.

Boxes outside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in the final days of the Trump administration.



Photo:

Erin Scott/Reuters

The result was a rushed and chaotic exit from the White House that is now at the center of a federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents and other presidential material after leaving office.

“If you only start packing with two days left to go, you’re just running low on time,” a former aide said. “And if he’s the one just throwing things in boxes, who knows what could happen?”

Another former aide said uncertainty pervaded the West Wing in the final weeks as the president continued to contest the election. “It was a weird time,” the aide said. “It was like, are we doing this? Are we not doing this?”

Last Monday, FBI agents removed 11 sets of classified documents—including some marked as top secret and meant to be available only in special government facilities—from Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort after a federal magistrate judge in Florida approved a search warrant. It couldn’t be determined when those records were stored at the resort, during his presidency or after it.

Much is still unknown about why the records ended up at Mar-a-Lago and what the motivations were for those who put them there. Officials have noted that since Mr. Trump left office, his team had at least two specific government requests to provide the material to the National Archives.

In January this year, 15 boxes were retrieved by the National Archives after its request. In the spring, the Justice Department subpoenaed additional records. Some documents were turned over in a June meeting between Trump lawyers and Justice Department officials, but investigators concluded that more documents remained, prompting the search.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers and representatives have said that they were in negotiations with the government when the FBI showed up and that they have complied with Justice Department requests.

Aides carrying boxes to the presidential helicopter as the Trump administration left the White House.



Photo:

Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Among the records taken by FBI agents is the December 2020 executive grant of clemency for the longtime Trump confidant

Roger Stone,

according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation inventory of the documents. In 2019, he was convicted in federal court of making false statements, witness tampering and trying to impede a congressional investigation into alleged Russian election interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Investigators, according to the search warrant released Friday, are seeking all records that could be evidence of violations of laws governing the gathering, transmission or maintenance of classified information; the removal of official government records; and the destruction of records in a federal investigation. The investigators have reached out to Trump aides who had knowledge of his records-management practices, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Trump’s office said in a statement Saturday that the former president had declassified the documents present at Mar-a-Lago. While a president has the power to declassify documents, there are federal regulations that lay out a process for doing so. Neither Mr. Trump nor his lawyers have publicly provided any evidence that he formally declassified the documents.

Compounding the problem was Mr. Trump’s tendency to ignore strict presidential-records laws and those governing the handling of classified information, according to former aides.

When

John Kelly

was chief of staff, the handling of classified and sensitive information in the White House alarmed him to such an extent that he sought to institute new protocols for the organization of such documents and for who was allowed to access them, Mr. Kelly said in an interview Saturday.


“It needed to be tightened up,” he said, adding that there was a lack of “deep understanding of the processes and procedures of security clearances and handling highly classified material.”

During Mr. Trump’s four years in office, he disclosed classified and sensitive information in conversations with foreign officials, on Twitter and to journalists.

In 2019, for instance, he told the journalist Bob Woodward that he had built a nuclear-weapons system that “you haven’t even seen or heard about.” Also that year, Mr. Trump sent a tweet saying the U.S. hadn’t been involved in an accident at an Iranian space facility and attached a satellite image that came from a highly classified U.S. reconnaissance satellite known as USA 224.

“Well, I guess that’s not classified anymore,” a National Security Council official told The Wall Street Journal at the time. Often, when classified information is shared publicly, it may be considered declassified.

Mr. Trump said at the time that he had an “absolute right” to release the photo.

The National Archives staff typically collects boxes of records throughout the length of an administration, sending its vans to the White House for materials that are marked and cataloged as they come in. That didn’t happen during the Trump years, said

Gary Stern,

a career Archives official, at a January 2021 panel organized by the American Historical Association.

FBI agents who searched former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home removed 11 sets of classified documents, including some marked as top secret, according to a search warrant released by a Florida court Friday. Photo illustration: Adele Morgan

“We really could not start picking up until January, and we couldn’t get it all done even by Jan. 20,” when President Biden was sworn into office, he said. He said the transfer process was more strained than usual in the Trump administration in part because White House officials and the then-president didn’t expect to lose the election.

In recent days, some Trump allies have blamed the General Services Administration, which assists with the moving process, for sending sensitive documents to Mar-a-Lago. Kash Patel, former chief of staff to the acting defense secretary, said on Fox News on Friday that the GSA had “mistakenly packed some boxes and moved them to Mar-a-Lago. That’s not on the president.”

Christina Wilkes, the GSA press secretary, said in a statement that the agency doesn’t make such decisions. “The responsibility for making decisions about what materials are moved rests entirely with the outgoing president and their supporting staff,” she said. “Any questions about the contents of any items that were delivered, e.g., documents, are the responsibility of the former President and his supporting staff and should be directed to their office.”

Former advisers said that beyond the Oval Office, other West Wing offices, including the counsel’s and staff secretary’s offices, had begun packing up after the election was called for Mr. Biden. Members of their offices were designated as point persons. Aides put presidential records in boxes for the Archives and documents that didn’t need to be retained into “burn bags,” the contents of which would be incinerated.

Some former aides said they had substantial leeway in determining what went where.

“It was not a vigorous process where they have oversight and they’re checking to make sure you did it,” said one former White House official, who described the process as haphazard, even by the freewheeling standards of the administration. The document sorting, the former official said, was “kind of like the honor system.”

Some former aides say they had substantial leeway in determining which documents went where.



Photo:

Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Shutterstock

During Mr. Trump’s term, aides often received documents that had been collected from the Oval Office and the White House residence to find them torn up, and would need to determine which to reassemble with tape so they could be preserved, a former aide said.

It wasn’t uncommon to walk into the Oval Office and see several zippered bags—made specifically for transporting classified material because they can be locked—sitting on the Resolute desk with the key in the lock, one former aide said. When aides travel with the bags, they are instructed to keep the keys separate.

The rare hard-copy briefing papers Mr. Trump would be given were typically in the form of a small binder of information aimed at preparing him for phone calls with foreign leaders, which Mr. Trump would occasionally hold on to. French President

Emmanuel Macron

—whom Mr. Trump in conversations with his aides referred to as “Little Emmanuel”—spoke regularly with Mr. Trump, including on the U.S. president’s personal cellphone, straying from protocol.

Among the materials FBI agents removed in their search of Mar-a-Lago last Monday was information related to the “President of France,” according to a list of items removed from the property.

Officials regularly transported classified information with the president to Mar-a-Lago and other properties he visited, which on its own isn’t unusual, former aides said. Mr. Trump as president had access at Mar-a-Lago to what is known as a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF, but didn’t always use it to view sensitive material, a former aide said.

Some aides grew concerned when the president would ask to hold on to a sensitive document while at his Florida resort because they didn’t always know where the document would end up, the aide said.

Mr. Trump took pride in the letters he received from foreign leaders, including those from North Korean leader

Kim Jong Un,

whose letters Mr. Trump used to read aloud to “anyone who walked into the Oval Office,” one of his top advisers recalled.

At least one of those letters was taken to Mar-a-Lago, and was among the 15 boxes of documents that the National Archives retrieved from the resort in January.

—Jess Bravin and Andrew Restuccia contributed to this article.

Write to Rebecca Ballhaus at Rebecca.Ballhaus@wsj.com, Vivian Salama at vivian.salama@wsj.com and Alex Leary at alex.leary@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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World

Biden Faces Fresh Domestic Challenges After Europe Summits

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President Biden returned from Europe with a deal to expand the NATO alliance and plans for the biggest U.S. military footprint in the continent since the Cold War. But awaiting him back home was a host of domestic challenges, including intraparty frustration with his response to the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning abortion rights, continuing economic worries and questions about the fate of his legislative agenda.

With some fellow Democrats calling for him to be more forceful on abortion, Mr. Biden endorsed making an exception to filibuster rules to pass legislation codifying Roe v. Wade into law, as he wrapped up his trip. And on his first day back, he met virtually with Democratic governors, some of whom continued to push Mr. Biden to make more use of federal resources to protect access to abortion.

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House Approves Increase in Debt Ceiling, Sending Measure to Biden

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WASHINGTON—Congress passed a measure raising the government’s borrowing limit by $2.5 trillion, sending to President Biden’s desk legislation that is expected to push the next debt-ceiling standoff past the midterm elections.

The Senate voted 50-49 to approve the legislation in the afternoon, and the House later passed it 221-209. The Treasury Department, which has been taking such steps as suspending certain investments to conserve cash, has warned lawmakers that it could be unable to meet the country’s obligations as soon as Wednesday if the debt ceiling isn’t raised.

Final passage of the debt ceiling increase through Congress concludes weeks of work on the issue. In an effort to keep their political distance from the ceiling increase, Republicans negotiated an agreement allowing Senate Democrats to raise the borrowing limit along party lines, instead of with the 60 votes typically needed to advance legislation in the Senate.

That procedural agreement was codified in a separate piece of legislation that the Senate passed last week with bipartisan support.

In a sign of the complicated politics of the debt limit vote, Senate Majority Leader

Chuck Schumer

(D., N.Y.) thanked Republicans for working with Democrats on the procedural agreement and avoiding the brinkmanship that marked the issue earlier this year.

Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, right, on Tuesday.



Photo:

jim lo scalzo/EPA/Shutterstock

“No brinkmanship, no default on the debt, no risk of another recession: responsible governing has won on this exceedingly important issue. The American people can breathe easy and rest assured there will not be a default,” he said. “I thank the Republican leader and my Republican colleagues who voted with us to address this issue.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), meanwhile, criticized Democrats for allowing more borrowing. Raising the debt limit doesn’t authorize new spending, but instead allows the government to issue new debt to pay for existing obligations, such as Social Security benefits and interest on the debt.

“Later today, every Senate Democrat is going to vote on party lines to raise our nation’s debt limit by trillions of dollars,” Mr. McConnell said.

As lawmakers prepare for another hike in the debt ceiling, WSJ’s Greg Ip explains why it’s economically feasible for the U.S. to keep borrowing, as long as interest rates stay low.

Lawmakers have in recent years largely suspended the debt limit for a period of time, but Republicans had sought to force Democrats to sign on to a specific level of debt.

Authorizing enough debt to last through the midterm elections was part of the negotiations between Messrs. McConnell and Schumer, according to people familiar with the matter. Democrats landed on $2.5 trillion, rather than a much larger increase that would allow lawmakers to avoid the issue for years, as an amount that would fulfill the country’s obligations for roughly that long, according to one of the people.

The legislative legerdemain needed to craft the multistep procedural agreement and raise the debt limit this year is a sign of the difficulty lawmakers may face on the issue in 2023.

Republicans are favored to win control of the House in next year’s midterms, meaning future negotiations over the issue could become more fraught. The agreement between Messrs. McConnell and Schumer disappointed many Republicans, who wanted the GOP to do more to resist a debt-limit increase.

Addressing another piece of year-end business, the Senate voted 86-13 on Tuesday to advance the National Defense Authorization Act, a $778 billion defense policy and budget bill that includes a 2.7% pay raise for troops and money for military construction, ships and aircraft. The legislation also creates an independent commission to study the Afghanistan War and makes historic changes to the military-justice system, removing commanders’ authority to make prosecutorial decisions about some serious crimes such as sexual assault, murder and kidnapping.

Final passage of the bill is expected in the Senate on Wednesday, with bipartisan support. It will then head to President Biden’s desk for his signature.

Write to Andrew Duehren at andrew.duehren@wsj.com

Copyright ©2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the December 15, 2021, print edition as ‘Senate Approves Measure To Raise Borrowing.’

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