Aurelia Butler

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    Sohei Kamiya Brings Trump-Style Populism to Japan’s Election

    With his calls to limit foreign workers, fight globalism and put “Japanese First,” Sohei Kamiya has brought a fiery right-wing populism to Japan’s election on Sunday.The crowd of 800 people were younger than those who typically attend political rallies in Japan. But they had gathered in the shadow of a smoking volcano to hear a populist upstart in Sunday’s parliamentary elections whose heated campaign speech would sound familiar to voters in the United States or Europe.They burst into cheers when Sohei Kamiya climbed to the top of a campaign truck decorated in the orange colors of his fledgling political party, Sanseito. Grabbing a microphone, he told them that Japan faced threats from shadowy globalists, lawbreaking foreigners and a corrupt domestic political establishment that was stifling the younger generation with taxes. His solution: a nationalist agenda that he calls “Japanese First.”“Japan must be a society that serves the interests of the Japanese people,” Mr. Kamiya told his applauding audience.The crowds who turn out to hear Mr. Kamiya speak are younger than those who typically attend political rallies in Japan.Ko Sasaki for The New York TimesMr. Kamiya founded the party and is one of its two sitting members in the Upper House. Elected to a six-year term in 2022, he is not on the ballot himself this year. But he has crossed Japan to campaign on behalf of Sanseito’s 54 candidates, a large number that reflects the new party’s big ambitions.Opponents and many domestic media reports have accused him of being xenophobic, saying he is directing public dissatisfaction with high prices and stagnant wages at Japan’s growing population of foreign residents. At campaign stops, small numbers of protesters hold up signs saying “no hate” toward non-Japanese.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Japan Election 2025: What to Know

    Shigeru Ishiba of the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party could face calls to resign if his party fares poorly in Sunday’s Upper House elections.Polls open on Sunday in Japan, where half of the seats in its Upper House of Parliament will be contested in the first national election since Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba took office last year. The emergence of right-wing populist parties that appeal to younger voters has threatened the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, with polls showing they could lose seats, and perhaps even their majority, in the chamber.Japan faces four big problems: difficult trade talks with Washington, a more assertive China, an aging population and the sharpest price increases in 30 years. Of these, the last has been the single biggest issue with voters, whose incomes have not kept pace. A hot-button issue has been the cost of rice, a vital staple that has doubled in price because of poor harvests and government policies.There is also a growing discontent with the United States, which no longer looks like the reliable partner it once was. Many Japanese have felt betrayed by the Trump administration’s threat to impose a 25 percent tariff on all of their country’s exports to the United States on Aug. 1, unless Tokyo opens up its already troubled rice market and agrees to buy more U.S.-made cars.Immigration has also emerged as an issue, as Japan has taken in an additional million workers over the past three years to fill jobs left vacant by the decline in the working-age population. While foreign residents make up only 3 percent of Japan’s population, populist parties like the Sanseito have won voters with calls to limit immigration.Here is a guide to the election and why it matters.What to Know:What’s happening on Sunday?What are the main issues?Who are the main players?What’s at stake?What’s happening on Sunday?Japan holds Upper House elections every three years; this cycle will decide who holds 124 of 248 seats. Voting takes place from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday, with exit polls released minutes after it ends. Official results will come early Monday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Democrats’ 2024 Autopsy Is Described as Avoiding the Likeliest Cause of Death

    An audit being conducted by the D.N.C. is not looking at Joe Biden’s decision to run or key decisions by Kamala Harris’s team, according to six people briefed on the report.The Democratic National Committee’s examination of what went wrong in the 2024 election is expected to mostly steer clear of the decisions made by the Biden-turned-Harris campaign and will focus more heavily instead on actions taken by allied groups, according to interviews with six people briefed on the report’s progress.The audit, which the committee is calling an “after-action review,” is expected to avoid the questions of whether former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. should have run for re-election in the first place, whether he should have exited the race earlier than he did and whether former Vice President Kamala Harris was the right choice to replace him, according to the people briefed on the process so far.Nor is the review expected to revisit key decisions by the Harris campaign — like framing the election as a choice between democracy and fascism, and refraining from hitting back after an ad by Donald J. Trump memorably attacked Ms. Harris on transgender rights by suggesting that she was for “they/them” while Mr. Trump was “for you” — that have roiled Democrats in the months since Mr. Trump took back the White House.Party officials described the draft document as focusing on the 2024 election as a whole, but not on the presidential campaign — which is something like eating at a steakhouse and then reviewing the salad.Producing a tough-minded public review of a national electoral defeat would be a politically delicate exercise under any circumstance, given the need to find fault with the work and judgment of important party leaders and strategists. It is particularly fraught for the new D.N.C. chairman, Ken Martin, who promised a post-election review from his first day on the job but whose first few months in the role have been plagued by infighting and financial strains.“We are not interested in second-guessing campaign tactics or decisions of campaign operatives,” said Jane Kleeb, the Nebraska Democratic chairwoman, who heads the association of Democratic state chairs and is a close ally of Mr. Martin. “We are interested in what voters turned out for Republicans and Democrats, and how we can fix this moving forward.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    How a Sequoia Capital Partner’s Mamdani Posts Dragged the Firm Into Politics

    Sequoia Capital, which backed Nvidia, Google and Apple when they were start-ups, has long stayed above the fray. But one partner’s post about Zohran Mamdani set off a chain reaction.Roelof Botha arrived last week at the annual Allen & Company conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, to meet and mingle with tech and media moguls. A controversy brewing back home followed him to the exclusive retreat.Mr. Botha, the managing partner of Sequoia Capital, a storied Silicon Valley venture capital firm, was repeatedly asked at the event about a colleague, Shaun Maguire, two people with knowledge of the matter said. Mr. Maguire — perhaps Sequoia’s most outspoken partner — had posted on X on July 4 that Zohran Mamdani, the progressive Democrat running for New York City mayor, came from a “culture that lies about everything” and was lying to advance “his Islamist agenda.”Mr. Maguire’s post was immediately condemned across social media as Islamophobic. More than 1,000 technologists signed an open letter calling for him to be disciplined. Investors, founders and technologists have sent messages to the firm’s partners about Mr. Maguire’s behavior. His critics have continued pressuring Sequoia to deal with what they see as hate speech and other invective, while his supporters have said Mr. Maguire has the right to free speech.In Sun Valley, Mr. Botha listened, but remained neutral, the people with knowledge of the matter said.Roelof Botha, the managing partner at Sequoia Capital, arriving at the Allen & Company conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, where people repeatedly asked him about Mr. Maguire. Brendan Mcdermid/ReutersFor half a century, Sequoia has tried to maintain that neutrality, even as rival venture capital firms such as Andreessen Horowitz and Founders Fund started taking political stances. But as Mr. Maguire has increasingly made inflammatory comments, including saying that diversity, equity and inclusion “kills people,” Sequoia is now in a place that its leaders never wanted to be: smack in the middle of the culture wars.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Rubio Restricts U.S. Criticism of Tainted Foreign Elections

    A State Department cable telling officials to avoid comments on the “fairness or integrity” of most elections continues a U.S. turn away from promoting democratic values abroad.The State Department will sharply restrict its commentary on the legitimacy of foreign elections to “rare” occasions, according to a new directive from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that continues the Trump administration’s turn away from promoting democracy abroad.In an official cable to diplomatic and consular posts on Thursday, Mr. Rubio said that public comments on foreign elections “should be brief, focused on congratulating the winning candidate and, when appropriate, noting shared foreign policy interests.”Such messages, the agency memo added, “should avoid opining on the fairness or integrity of an electoral process, its legitimacy, or the democratic values of the country in question.” The directive applied to the department’s domestic offices and foreign posts, Mr. Rubio said.The New York Times obtained the text of the cable, which was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.It has long been standard practice for the U.S. government to call out foreign elections tainted by fraud, intimidation and other tactics. Doing so puts pressure on corrupt or unethical governments, encourages democratic opposition movements and bolsters America’s moral standing, diplomats say.As it had done in previous administrations, the State Department under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. criticized foreign votes frequently, including what it called a “pantomime election” in Nicaragua, “election fraud” in Belarus and “democratic backsliding” after a disputed vote in the Republic of Georgia.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Mamdani Meets Jeffries in Brooklyn as He Seeks to Expand His Coalition

    No endorsement emerged from the meeting between Zohran Mamdani and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, but both said the gathering had been productive.In the weeks since Zohran Mamdani decisively won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, many elected officials and prominent unions have become converts, embracing his viral messaging about making the city more affordable.But some leaders, like Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, have been more cautious, praising Mr. Mamdani but still needing some persuasion. On Friday, Mr. Mamdani began making inroads on his persuasion tour, meeting for an hour with Mr. Jeffries in his Brooklyn congressional district in East New York in an effort to get to know him better.There was no endorsement announcement after the meeting, but both leaders spoke positively afterward.The meeting was “constructive, candid and community-centered, with a particular focus on affordability,” said Justin Chermol, a spokesman for Mr. Jeffries.The men discussed public safety, antisemitism, gentrification and efforts by Democrats to take back control of the House next year, and they “agreed to reconvene shortly” with other leaders, including other members of the New York City congressional delegation, Mr. Chermol said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    NY Agrees to Settle Ex-Cuomo Aide’s Harassment Claims for $450,000

    The former executive aide, Brittany Commisso, accused Andrew M. Cuomo of groping her when he was governor. The state did not admit wrongdoing.New York State has agreed to pay $450,000 to settle claims from a woman who accused Andrew M. Cuomo of groping her in 2020, when he was the governor and she was an executive aide, according to a settlement document reviewed by The New York Times.The settlement, with Brittany Commisso, is the second one the state has made this year in connection with Mr. Cuomo’s treatment of women while in office. Mr. Cuomo resigned in 2021 amid accusations he harassed 11 women, including Ms. Commisso. He is now running for mayor of New York City.Under the terms of the agreement, which will need a judge’s approval, Ms. Commisso would drop all claims against the state, including an accusation that she was retaliated against after coming forward about her experience. She also agreed not to seek employment with the executive chamber through 2030. The deal does not include any admission of wrongdoing on the part of the state or Mr. Cuomo.Mariann Wang, a lawyer for Ms. Commisso, called the settlement “a complete vindication of her claims.”It is a blow to the former governor, who has been trying to reinvent himself as a friendly and trustworthy figure as he struggles to mount a political comeback. A representative for Mr. Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, said that the state had agreed to settle the suit over Mr. Cuomo’s objections.This week, Mr. Cuomo announced that he would continue his bid for mayor as an independent after losing the Democratic nomination to Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist from Queens.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Gabbard Claims Obama Administration Tried to Undermine Trump in 2016

    Democrats denounced a report issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence as politically motivated and error-ridden.The Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Friday issued the latest in a series of reports from the Trump administration attempting to undermine the eight-year-old assessment that Russia favored the election of Donald J. Trump in 2016.Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said the information she was releasing showed a “treasonous conspiracy in 2016” by top Obama administration officials to harm Mr. Trump.Democrats denounced the effort as politically motivated, error-ridden and in contradiction with previous reviews of the assessment.Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called Ms. Gabbard’s accusation of treason “baseless.”Intelligence agencies and Senate investigators spent years reviewing the work, and concluded that during the 2016 election, the Russians conducted probing operations of election systems to see if they could change vote outcomes. While they extracted voter registration data in Illinois and Arizona, and probed in other states, there was no evidence that Moscow’s hackers attempted to actually change votes.The Obama administration assessment never contended that Russian hackers manipulated votes.Russia also conducted influence operations to change public opinion. That included using fake social media posts to sow division among Americans and leaking documents stolen from the Democratic National Committee to denigrate Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More