An indictment accuses two Cochise County supervisors of interfering with the state canvass of votes. The county has been a hotbed of election conspiracy theories.Two Republican county supervisors in Arizona were indicted Wednesday on felony charges related to their attempts to delay the certification of 2022 election results.Kris Mayes, the state attorney general, announced in a statement that Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby, two of the three supervisors in Cochise County, face charges of interference with an election officer and conspiracy, criticizing what she described as their “repeated attempts to undermine our democracy.”Neither Ms. Judd nor Mr. Crosby could be reached for comment Wednesday.Last year, Ms. Judd and Mr. Crosby sought to order a hand count of the ballots that had been cast in Cochise, a heavily Republican rural county, citing conspiracy theories that had been raised by local right-wing activists. When a judge ruled against them, they voted to delay certification of the election before eventually relenting under pressure of a court order.The episode was closely watched by democracy advocates and election law experts, who saw in the supervisors’ machinations a worrying precedent. As Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him became widely accepted in the Republican Party, local Republican officials in several closely contested states used suspicion of the election system on the right to justify delaying the certification of 2022 election results.In an interview with The New York Times last year, Ms. Judd said she did not actually suspect there were any irregularities in the vote in Cochise County. She characterized the move as a protest against the election certification in Maricopa, the large urban county that includes Phoenix, where right-wing activists had made an array of unproven claims of malfeasance.“Our small counties, we’re just sick and tired of getting kicked around and not being respected,” Ms. Judd said.Katie Hobbs, then Arizona’s secretary of state, sued the supervisors last November, arguing that their protest, which threatened to delay the statewide canvass, would disenfranchise the county’s voters. (The county’s third supervisor, Ann English, a Democrat, has opposed the others’ actions.) Republican candidates lost their races for most of the top statewide races in Arizona’s election, in which Ms. Hobbs, a Democrat, was elected governor.In October, the local Herald/Review newspaper and Votebeat reported that Ms. Judd and Mr. Crosby were subpoenaed by Ms. Mayes, a Democrat elected last year, to appear before a state grand jury in the attorney general’s investigation.Although local Republican officials interfering with election systems in other states since 2020 have faced criminal indictments on other grounds, the Cochise indictments are the first criminal charges filed over a refusal to certify an election.Jared Davidson, a lawyer for Protect Democracy, a watchdog group, argued that the prosecution could set an important precedent.“Pushing for potential criminal accountability is an important message, not just to election deniers in Arizona but across the country that if they indulge conspiracy theories and ignore the law and try to disenfranchise voters, there are real consequences,” he said. More

Forty-seven defendants, including well-known figures like Joshua Wong, are charged with subversion under the national security law that China imposed in 2020.The political candidates represented the vanguard of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. Numbering in the dozens, they had planned to run for the city’s legislature in 2020, after months of turbulent protests calling for greater freedom from China.By the time the election was held, more than a year later, none of the candidates could run. Most were in jail, where many still languish today, charged with subversion in the largest case yet involving the national security law Beijing imposed on the city in 2020. Their arrests laid bare the lengths to which China’s government would go to crush dissent in Hong Kong, which was long accustomed to many of the freedoms of speech and assembly found in the West.After years of fits and starts, the trial involving the 47 pro-democracy lawmakers, academics and activists began on Monday at a courthouse in Hong Kong amid tight security. Large police vehicles lined the roads nearby as a line of more than 100 people snaked around the courthouse in the early morning, waiting to enter. Because there were so many defendants, the court broadcast the proceedings into several other rooms.Of the 47 defendants, only 16 are contesting the charges. The rest entered guilty pleas, including Joshua Wong, one of the most globally recognized Hong Kong pro-democracy figures, and Benny Tai, a former law professor. As one of the defendants, Ng Kin-wai, a former district official, took the stand, he declared, sarcastically: “I tried to commit subversion against the totalitarian regime, but failed. I plead guilty.”Most of the defendants, if not all, are expected to receive prison sentences, which could range from less than three years to life.Joshua Wong at a news conference in 2020.Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times“The trial of the 47 represents a turning point in the crackdown because it reveals the true purpose of the national security law,” said Victoria Hui, an associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame who studies Hong Kong.“They’re not targeting a small minority of people throwing petrol bombs,” Professor Hui said. “Those people have already been arrested. Instead, they’re targeting the legitimate opposition, people who believed there was still a little bit left to defend of Hong Kong’s autonomy and freedom.”Already, the defendants’ arrests and lengthy detention have dealt a blow to the remaining vestiges of civil society. The 47 defendants, who comprise 42 opposition candidates and five election organizers, come from a cross-section of Hong Kong — politicians, academics, union organizers and journalists.They include Claudia Mo, 66, a veteran journalist-turned-politician known to many as “Auntie Mo”; Eddie Chu, 45, a former legislator and early champion of the city’s “localist” movement, which aimed to preserve Hong Kong’s identity; Carol Ng, 52, an ex-flight attendant and labor activist; and Gwyneth Ho, 32, a former journalist, who famously reported from the scene of a mob attack on antigovernment demonstrators trapped in a subway station.Covid-19 in ChinaThe decision by the Chinese government to cast aside its restrictive “zero Covid” policy at the end of 2022 set off an explosive Covid outbreak.A Receding Wave: Two months after China abandoned its Covid rules, the worst seems to have passed, and the government is eager to shift attention to economic recovery. Economic Challenges: Years of Covid lockdowns took a brutal toll on Chinese businesses. Now, the rapid spread of the virus after a chaotic reopening has deprived them of workers and customers.Digital Finger-Pointing: The Communist Party’s efforts to limit discord over its sudden “zero Covid” pivot are being challenged with increasing rancor on the internet.To take stock of the group’s plight is to recognize how much Hong Kong has been transformed since pro-democracy protests erupted in 2019.A stream of people waiting to vote in an unofficial primary election in Hong Kong in 2020.Jerome Favre/EPA, via ShutterstockChina’s subsequent crackdown brought changes that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago: an ideological makeover of the public education system; the demise of one of Asia’s most staunchly independent media industries; the arrest of Hong Kong’s highest-ranking Roman Catholic cleric, the nonagenarian Cardinal Joseph Zen; and the erasure of political opposition in Hong Kong’s legislature, paving the way for passage of pro-Beijing laws like a “patriots only” litmus test for political candidates. The high degree of autonomy Hong Kong was promised for 50 years after Britain returned the former colony to China in 1997 has all but eroded.No change, however, has been more dramatic than those taking place in Hong Kong’s legal system, which has been superseded by the national security law — a harsh reality being felt acutely by the 47 democrats.They are charged with trying to subvert state power for their roles in an unofficial “primary election.” The poll was an attempt by the opposition to select its best candidates, as part of a last-ditch effort to win enough seats in the legislature to block the government’s budget. The budget maneuver, sanctioned under Hong Kong law, could have dissolved the legislature and forced Carrie Lam, then the city’s top official, to step down.Nearly three-quarters of the 47 democrats are currently in jail — and, in most cases, have been since they were formally charged nearly two years ago, on Feb. 28, 2021. Such long detention is unusual for Hong Kong, where defendants in other types of cases are often able to get bail. The national security law’s sweeping provisions, however, include a high threshold for bail, which in effect lets the authorities hold defendants for months or even years before trial. Critics say that amounts to a presumption that defendants are guilty.Supporters unfurling banners calling for the release of Hong Kong’s 47 defendants in 2021.Lam Yik Fei for The New York TimesSupporters of the activists say their detention has caused enormous mental strain, particularly for those held in solitary confinement. Some of them are already in prison, serving sentences on other charges. Sam Cheung, a 27-year-old elected official representing a small district, missed the birth of his first child. Tiffany Yuen, 29, another district official, was not permitted to leave prison for the funeral of her grandmother.Mr. Tai, the former law professor, is expected to receive the harshest sentence at the end of the 90-day trial because of his role devising the plan to hold the primary election.The security law requires judges to impose minimum sentences anywhere from three to 10 years, but defendants can receive lighter punishments if they testify against others. Prosecutors have already indicated that three of the 47 democrats who helped organize the primary had agreed to provide testimony.Activists and legal experts say the strategy is designed to sow mistrust among the defendants and, combined with the grueling detentions, break their morale, to make them more willing to cooperate with prosecutors. The coercive tactic, scholars say, highlights another way that Hong Kong is adopting norms from mainland China.“So far as you get a guilty plea, that gives the regime the opportunity to make the point that these wrongdoers have known the error in their ways,” said Eva Pils, a law scholar at Kings College London who studies China.The penalizing of political opposition in Hong Kong’s legislature paved the way for the passage of pro-Beijing laws, including a “patriots-only” litmus test for political candidates.Anthony Kwan/Getty ImagesBy pressuring the defendants individually, the authorities also undermine the democracy movement overall, said Ted Hui, a former lawmaker who fled Hong Kong a month before the 47 were arrested.While acknowledging the emotional distress the group was under, Mr. Hui said that for any defendant to provide evidence that could implicate another would amount to a betrayal.“I understand the circumstances, but I’m still angry and heartbroken,” Mr. Hui said by telephone from Adelaide, Australia. “I also cannot say it’s entirely their fault, because the circumstances are created by the pressures of the regime. This has hurt the democracy movement. That is one of the goals achieved by the regime — to divide us.”The trial has stirred difficult and complicated emotions within the small community of lawmakers and activists who were able to flee Hong Kong before they could be arrested.Nathan Law, a prominent pro-democracy advocate and candidate in the primary election who escaped days before the passage of the national security law, said it was painful to read about close friends and fellow activists such as Mr. Wong facing long prison terms.“They were just participating in a primary election,” Mr. Law said from London. “None of us would think of that as something that would be named as subversion that could lead to years of imprisonment.” “Through these cases, you also understand that the Hong Kong we used to know is gone,” he said.The trial of the 47 is one of several national security cases winding their way through Hong Kong’s courts. Few have attracted more attention than that of Jimmy Lai, the 75-year-old founder of the tabloid newspaper Apple Daily, which was forced to close down in 2021. Mr. Lai, a longtime critic of China’s ruling Communist Party, has been serving a five-year, nine-month sentence on what human rights groups say are trumped-up charges of fraud. He is also facing trial on the national security offense of colluding with foreign forces.The ratcheting-up of prosecutions marks the beginning of a new, more authoritarian era in Hong Kong, observers say, one in which political persecution will be used to strike fear in people so that few will consider protesting or challenging Beijing’s authority again.“What they’re trying to do is to redraw the lines of acceptable, peaceful political activity,” said Thomas Kellogg, the executive director of the Center for Asian Law. More

The former New Jersey governor has relentlessly taunted Donald Trump, hoping for a dramatic onstage confrontation. It appears he is not going to get what he wants.After months of relentless taunting and hyping a debate clash with former President Donald J. Trump, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey turned to chiding.“If you qualify for the stage, which Trump has, not showing up is completely disrespectful to the Republican Party, who made you their nominee twice, and to the Republican voters, whose support you’re asking for again,” Mr. Christie told reporters on Friday outside the famed Versailles Cuban restaurant in Miami.Mr. Christie built his entire presidential candidacy toward a marquee confrontation with Mr. Trump, relentlessly goading him and needling him as a coward in a clear effort to tempt the quick-to-anger former president into showing up to the debate on Wednesday in Milwaukee.It appears Mr. Trump will not take the bait, other than swiping back at Mr. Christie on social media and in speeches. Last week, he signaled that he planned to skip the first Republican debate and instead sit for an interview with Tucker Carlson that will be broadcast online at the same time.Mr. Trump’s absence could lead to an anticlimactic scene at the debate, with Mr. Christie forced to launch unrequited broadsides through the airwaves without the fireworks of a Trump response.Mr. Christie and his campaign say there’s upside for him if Mr. Trump does not appear onstage. John Tully for The New York Times“They have been taunting each other back and forth on Twitter and campaign town halls, so it robs Christie of a big moment that he is looking for if Trump doesn’t show up onstage,” said Ryan Williams, a Republican strategist and veteran of two presidential campaigns. “You can use the debate to get the anti-Trump message out that he’s pushing, but you’re going to lack that viral moment if the two of them aren’t looking at each other face to face.”Yet Mr. Christie and his team also see an opportunity if the pugnacious and unpredictable former president is not onstage. Mr. Christie, a confident debater and the only Trump critic in the Republican field with any kind of foothold, could shine in the vacuum, using candidates who have been far more deferential to Mr. Trump as a stand-in for him.Mr. Christie tried out that kind of approach at a town hall event in Miami on Friday, chastising Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida over his super PAC’s disclosure of debate strategy memos, which called for him to defend Mr. Trump against Mr. Christie’s attacks onstage.If Mr. DeSantis ends up doing so, Mr. Christie said he had one piece of advice: “Get the hell out of the race.”In an interview this month during his surprise visit to Ukraine, Mr. Christie said he was not particularly bothered by the prospect of a debate without Mr. Trump.“It doesn’t change my perspective or my tactical approach,” he said. “Because if he’s not there, it just means two things. One, he’s afraid to be on the same debate stage and defend his record. And two, you know, this is a guy who, by not showing up, just gives me more time. So it’s OK. Either way, I win.”Mr. Christie and his advisers see the debate as a forum built to the former governor’s strengths. Comfortable in unscripted moments in front of cameras, Mr. Christie has a confrontational style, hewed from years in the trenches of New Jersey politics, that has served him well in past debates, and he has over a decade of experience participating in them through two campaigns for governor and his 2016 run for president.To prepare for Wednesday, he has been huddling with close advisers to go over topics at the heart of the campaign and anticipate different scenarios that may arise as he navigates the chaos of an eight-lectern stage. He has been heavily focused on the debate, bringing it up in casual conversations with both advisers and political acquaintances as he takes the temperature of the race.At the same time, his preparations have a bare-bones nature. There are no mock debates, no fake stages with podiums, no advisers suiting up for the roles of Mr. Trump or Mr. DeSantis.Mr. Christie and his advisers see the debate as a forum built to the former governor’s strengths. David Degner for The New York TimesIn part, he is informed by his experience during the 2016 presidential debates, when he notably avoided attacking Mr. Trump. (He has said on the campaign trail that he was the only candidate to go speak to Mr. Trump during commercial breaks.) Mr. Christie was quick to pounce on his other rivals, including a now-famous exchange with Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.“There it is,” Mr. Christie said, interrupting Mr. Rubio, who had pivoted to a line about former President Barack Obama during an exchange with Mr. Christie. “The memorized 25-second speech. There it is, everybody.”That dismissive riposte sent the Rubio campaign spiraling, with headlines concluding that Mr. Christie had exposed Mr. Rubio as a robotic candidate reliant on consultants and that the Florida senator had “choked.” After polling near second or third place in New Hampshire before the debate, Mr. Rubio finished fifth in the state’s primary race less than a week later.Built into the question of how Mr. Christie treats this week’s debate is just how much Republican voters want to see someone caustically rip into Mr. Trump, whether he is onstage or not.Despite his mounting legal problems, Mr. Trump remains exceptionally popular within the party. And Mr. Christie’s constant provocations, beyond endearing the former governor to some moderate Republicans, have also turned him into something of a #Resistance hero among liberals who will not be voting in a G.O.P. primary.Waiting for a flight at Kennedy International Airport in New York early this month, Mr. Christie was approached for a photo by a fellow traveler, Jessica Rutherford, who told him she appreciated his broadsides against Mr. Trump and hoped he would continue.“You’re like Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re our only hope!” she told him.But Ms. Rutherford, an intellectual property lawyer from Wilton, Conn., and a Democrat, conceded that she was unlikely to vote for Mr. Christie in November 2024 if he were to win the Republican primary.Undaunted, Mr. Christie made his pitch. “I’ll be awake in meetings with foreign leaders,” he offered, in a jab at President Biden’s age.“Reagan wasn’t awake in meetings with foreign leaders,” Ms. Rutherford shot back.“I bet you didn’t vote for him, either,” Mr. Christie replied.Patricia Mazzei More

A citizen ballot initiative took redistricting out of the hands of partisan legislators. The result: competitive political districts — and an example of how to push back against hyperpartisanship.One of the country’s most gerrymandered political maps has suddenly been replaced by one of the fairest.A decade after Michigan Republicans gave themselves seemingly impregnable majorities in the state Legislature by drawing districts that heavily favored their party, a newly created independent commission approved maps late Tuesday that create districts so competitive that Democrats have a fighting chance of recapturing the State Senate for the first time since 1984.The work of the new commission, which includes Democrats, Republicans and independents and was established through a citizen ballot initiative, stands in sharp contrast to the type of hyperpartisan extreme gerrymandering that has swept much of the country, exacerbating political polarization — and it may highlight a potential path to undoing such gerrymandering.With lawmakers excluded from the mapmaking process, Michigan’s new districts will much more closely reflect the overall partisan makeup of the hotly contested battleground state.“Michigan’s a jump ball, and this is a jump-ball map,” said Michael Li, a senior counsel who focuses on redistricting at the Brennan Center for Justice. “There’s a lot of competition in this map, which is what you would expect in a state like Michigan.”The commission’s three new maps — for Congress, the State House and the State Senate — restore a degree of fairness, but there were some notable criticisms. All of the maps still have a slight Republican advantage, in part because Democratic voters in the state are mostly concentrated in densely populated areas. The map for the State House also splits more than half of the state’s counties into several districts, despite redistricting guidelines that call for keeping neighboring communities together.The maps may also face a legal challenge from Black voters in the Detroit area, to whom the commission tried to give more opportunities for representation by unpacking them, or spreading them among more legislative districts.Redistricting at a GlanceEvery 10 years, each state in the U.S is required to redraw the boundaries of their congressional and state legislative districts in a process known as redistricting.Redistricting, Explained: Answers to your most pressing questions about redistricting and gerrymandering.Breaking Down Texas’s Map: How redistricting efforts in Texas are working to make Republican districts even more red.G.O.P.’s Heavy Edge: Republicans are poised to capture enough seats to take the House in 2022, thanks to gerrymandering alone.Legal Options Dwindle: Persuading judges to undo skewed political maps was never easy. A shifting judicial landscape is making it harder.Detroit’s State Senate delegation will jump to nine members from five, and its State House delegation to 15 representatives from nine. But local Black elected officials and civil rights groups contend that while the intention may have been noble, the result actually dilutes Black voting strength, not only in general elections but also in primaries, in which elections for Black legislators are almost always decided.The reduced percentages of Black voters in some of the new districts may prevent candidates from winning primary elections on the strength of the Black vote alone, those critics say.“The goal of creating partisan fairness cannot so negatively impact Black communities as to erase us from the space,” said Adam Hollier, a state senator from the Detroit area. “They think that they are unpacking, because that is the narrative that they hear from across the country, without looking at what that means in the city of Detroit.”Republicans were also discussing possible challenges to the new maps.“We are evaluating all options to take steps necessary to defend the voices silenced by this commission,” Gustavo Portela, a Michigan G.O.P. spokesman, said in a statement Wednesday, without elaborating on whose voices he meant.The G.O.P. advantage in Michigan’s Legislature has held solid for years even as Democrats carried the state in presidential elections and won races for governor and U.S. Senate. In 2014, Senator Gary Peters, a Democrat, won the seat formerly held by Carl Levin by more than 13 percentage points. Yet in the same year, Republicans in the State Senate expanded their supermajority, winning 27 of 38 seats.So great a divergence between statewide and legislative elections is often a telltale sign of a gerrymandered map. And a lawsuit in 2018 unearthed emails in which Republicans boasted about packing “Dem garbage” into fewer districts and ensuring Republican advantages “in 2012 and beyond.”But the new State Senate map would create 20 seats that President Biden would have carried in 2020 and 18 that former President Donald J. Trump would have carried, giving Democrats new hopes of competitiveness.The new maps offer no guarantee that Democrats will win either chamber, however. And in a strong year for the G.O.P., which 2022 may be, Republicans could retain their advantage in the Legislature and could also come away with a majority of the state’s new 13-seat congressional delegation.The congressional map includes three tossup seats where the 2020 presidential margin was less than five points, and two more seats that could be competitive in a wave year, with presidential margins of less than 10 points. Two current Democratic representatives, Haley Stevens and Andy Levin, were drawn into the same district, setting up a competitive primary in the 11th District. Both declared their intention to run on Tuesday.The State House will also feature at least 20 competitive districts.Preserving such competition, election experts say, is one of the key goals in redistricting reform.“This is the quintessential success story of redistricting,” said Sam Wang, director of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. “These maps treated the two parties, Democrats and Republicans, about as fairly as you could ever imagine a map being. In all three cases, whoever gets the most votes statewide is likely to control the chamber or the delegation. And there’s competition in all three maps.”Understand How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More