Elections

Mr. Rutte, the country’s leader since 2010, announced the collapse of his government on Friday. New elections are expected this fall.Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the Netherlands’s longest-serving prime minister, said on Monday that he would step aside as his party’s leader and would be leaving politics in the coming months after his governing coalition collapsed last week.Mr. Rutte came to power in 2010 and earned the name “Teflon Mark” for his ability to weather political storms, but the failure of the four parties in his coalition to come to an agreement on the country’s migration policies set the stage for elections in the fall.The leader of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, Mr. Rutte, 56, remains in charge of a caretaker government.“This isn’t entirely without emotion,” he told reporters, according to the broadcaster NOS. “But it feels good to pass the baton.”Caroline van der Plas, leader of the Farmer-Citizen Movement, a pro-farmer party that swept local elections in the Netherlands this year, said that she welcomed the chance for voters to go to the polls this fall. Attje Kuiken, leader of the Labor Party, said on Twitter this weekend that “Mark Rutte is done governing.”Mr. Rutte’s coalition collapsed after he failed to convince the more centrist members of his coalition to back more restrictive migration policies, a sign of the potency of that issue in European politics.The government had been negotiating the terms of family reunification for refugees and also whether to create two classes of asylum: a temporary one for people fleeing conflicts, and a permanent one for people fleeing persecution.The goal of both proposals was to reduce the number of refugees, a reflection of the desire to head off right-wing parties outside the coalition who have been making political inroads by tapping into voter concerns about immigration.The other coalition parties were ready to agree to the two-tier asylum system, but they would not endorse Mr. Rutte’s proposal for a two-year waiting period before refugees already living in the Netherlands could be joined by their children.That impasse ultimately led Mr. Rutte to offer the resignation of his government to King Willem-Alexander in writing on Friday night.Mr. Rutte has long been known for a no-nonsense approach to politics and a modest lifestyle. He pays for his own coffees. When attending public events, he stands in line with everyone else. In true Dutch fashion, he prefers to ride his bicycle to work. On Saturday, Mr. Rutte drove himself to see the king in a Saab he has had for years.Mr. Rutte’s tenure has not been without scandal. In 2021, his government collapsed after a report showed a systemic failure by his government to protect thousands of families from overzealous tax inspectors. More

Mr. Harper is challenging Representative Elissa Slotkin from the left and will have an uphill climb in a heated Democratic primary race in a 2024 presidential swing state.Hill Harper, an author and actor, on Monday entered Michigan’s 2024 Senate race, pledging to run to the left of Representative Elissa Slotkin, a moderate Democrat, in what is expected to be one of the most closely watched Democratic primary races in a 2024 presidential battleground state.Mr. Harper, a first-time candidate known for his roles on “CSI: NY” and “The Good Doctor,” began his campaign with a message focused on expanding Social Security and access to affordable health care, as well as tackling income inequality and student debt. In an interview, he said he planned to position himself as “the most progressive candidate” in the race and would work to bring jaded and unheard voters back into the Democratic fold.“It became clear to me that folks across Michigan don’t feel like they are being represented in Washington, D.C.,” he said, describing his conversations with people at farmers’ markets and union halls as he weighed his decision to run. The state’s Democratic leadership, which holds the governor’s office and both chambers of the Michigan Statehouse, he added, has “done a lot to move the state forward, but Washington is still broken.”The Democratic primary is likely to be followed by a heated general election against a tense backdrop. Donald J. Trump won this industrial Midwestern state by nearly 11,000 votes in 2016, and lost it to Joseph R. Biden Jr. by more than 150,000 votes in his 2020 re-election bid. Mr. Trump focused on the voting in Michigan in his efforts to subvert the 2020 election.As they head into the 2024 presidential cycle, Democrats will be concentrating on holding on to their midterm victories in Michigan in 2022, when protecting abortion rights galvanized the party nationwide.Mr. Harper’s supporters believe that, as a Black progressive, he will be able to draw a coalition of liberal and Black voters. His campaign could particularly resonate with Black voters in a state where the debate over race and representation has raged in some corners: The 2022 midterm election left Detroit, the nation’s largest majority Black city, without Black representation in Congress for the first time in decades.But Mr. Harper will face an uphill climb against Ms. Slotkin, a former C.I.A. analyst and three-term congresswoman who has built a track record as a seasoned campaigner and prolific fund-raiser. She has won three tough races for her House seat in a central Michigan district, which encompasses Lansing. Ms. Slotkin had more than $2.3 million cash in hand at the end of March, and is running on a platform focused on jobs and economic issues.She was the first in her party to declare her candidacy for the seat being vacated by Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat, and has the solid backing of establishment Democrats at the state and national level.That hasn’t dissuaded Mr. Harper and a handful of Democrats from jumping in, including Leslie Love, a former state lawmaker, and Pamela Pugh, who serves as president of the Michigan State Board of Education.For the Republicans, Nikki Snyder, a member of the State Board of Education, and Ezra Scott, a former Berrien County commissioner, are vying for the seat. More

Over decades, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin amassed considerable clout in Russia and built businesses in at least 15 countries. His whereabouts and the future of his extensive portfolio are now uncertain.A chocolate museum in St. Petersburg. A gold mine in the Central African Republic. Oil and gas ventures off the Syrian coast.The economic ventures of Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a former hot dog seller turned Wagner group warlord who staged a brief mutiny against Russia’s military last month, stretch far beyond the thousands of mercenaries he deployed in Ukraine, Africa and the Middle East.Through a vast network of shell companies and intermediaries, Mr. Prigozhin’s activities have included catering, producing action movies, making beer and vodka, cutting timber, mining diamonds and hiring people to sow disinformation in elections abroad, including the 2016 U.S. election.The exact size of his business is a mystery.A worker removes the logo of the Wagner Group from a building in St. Petersburg, Russia, after Mr. Prigozhin’s rebellion.Anatoly Maltsev/EPA, via ShutterstockWith Mr. Prigozhin’s whereabouts unknown, the fate of his sprawling empire is uncertain. President Vladimir V. Putin has said Russia financed Mr. Prigozhin’s enterprises, but it’s unclear how much control the Kremlin has over the business network, which reaches thousands of miles away from Moscow, experts say.“It will certainly not look exactly as it has, in terms of who is leading it, how much oversight the Kremlin will have, and how long the leash it will allow Wagner to operate with,” said Catrina Doxsee, an expert on irregular warfare at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based research organization.Here is a look at Mr. Prigozhin’s business interests.Russia and UkraineCatering, real estate and mercenaries.From his humble beginnings as an amateur cross-country skier and former convict, Mr. Prigozhin carved a path through the tumult of post-Soviet Russia, laying the foundations for his empire by opening hot dog kiosks in 1990 and later providing catering for the Kremlin — earning him the nickname “Putin’s chef.”Over the decades, he secured billions in state contracts and controlled an extensive portfolio of businesses, mostly in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city and his birthplace.Mr. Prigozhin’s ventures have included construction, catering and entertainment. He ran a media company, which has begun being dismantled since his mutiny, and pioneered troll farms that sought to shape the 2016 American presidential election. His companies run hotels, restaurants, business centers and a gourmet grocery store on St. Petersburg’s main thoroughfare.Vladimir V. Putin of Russia with Mr. Prigozhin, right, in a photograph released by Russian state media, during a 2010 tour of Mr. Prigozhin’s catering business in St. Petersburg.Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik, via Associated PressWhether his businesses made consistent profits is not clear: Some have gone under, others have stayed afloat. Over the years, Mr. Prigozhin used money from state contracts paid to some of his companies to finance his other projects, including shadowy tasks apparently ordered by the Kremlin.“They were all interconnected, these vessels, in the sense of general management and in the sense of possible flow of funds,” said Marat Gabidullin, a former assistant of Mr. Prigozhin’s who fought for the Wagner group before seeking asylum in France.The Wagner group was paid almost $10 billion by the Russian government, according to Russian state media. Mr. Prigozhin secured contracts worth another $10 billion from the Kremlin for his catering company.On Thursday, the autocratic leader of Belarus, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, who intervened in the mutiny, signaled that at least some of Wagner’s fighting force could stay intact.“Wagner” carved into the wall of a classroom in a school in Velyka Oleksandrivka, Ukraine, which Russian soldiers occupied until the town was liberated by Ukrainian troops in October.David Guttenfelder for The New York TimesIn June, Mr. Prigozhin admitted that he used profits from lucrative state contracts to finance Wagner in Africa, Syria and elsewhere — but always “to pursue the interests of the Russian state.”“It all functions as a business model — he uses state resources to pursue various projects,” Mr. Gabidullin said. “And within this, he gets his own bonus.”AfricaSoldiers for hire, and interests in gold and timber.Wagner’s primary business in Africa is mercenaries: From Libya in the north to Mozambique in the south, the group has deployed troops in five African countries, providing security to presidents, propping up authoritarian leaders and fighting armed groups, often at a high cost for civilian populations.In the Central African Republic, Wagner provides security to the president, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, and trains the army. Observers have called the group’s actions in the nation “state capture” because of how Wagner has influenced political decisions to further its interests at the expense of the public.According to the United States, a military-led government in the West African nation of Mali has paid Wagner around $200 million since late 2021, essentially for mercenaries to fight against groups affiliated with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.Wagner operatives also helped boot out a decade-long United Nations peacekeeping operation, according to White House officials, forcing Mali to rely almost exclusively on Russia.Commandos trained by the Wagner group standing guard during Labor Day celebrations in Bangui, Central African Republic, in 2019.Ashley Gilbertson for The New York TimesBeyond mercenary work, businesses affiliated with Mr. Prigozhin have been present in more than a dozen countries. They mine gold in Sudan and the Central African Republic, where they also export timber, make beer and vodka, run a radio station, and have produced action movies and organized a beauty pageant.A firm affiliated with Mr. Prigozhin also controls the Central African Republic’s largest gold mine, and recently signed new mining permits there for the next 25 years. The mine could bring $100 million in revenues to the group each year, according to Hans Merket, a researcher on minerals for the Brussels-based IPIS organization.Fidèle Gouandjika, a top adviser to the country’s president, said Wagner had protected against rebels; made quality wood available to Central Africans through their timber business; and was selling cheap beer.“So we’re telling them, ‘Take some diamonds, take some gold,’” Mr. Gouandjika said about what Central African officials were offering Wagner for its services. “The West is jealous.”SyriaBashar al-Assad’s protectors and oil and gas explorers.As Mr. Prigozhin staged his mutiny last month, Russian troops in Syria surrounded several bases where Wagner mercenaries were stationed, including around the capital, Damascus. Fearing movement from Wagner fighters, Syrian forces set up checkpoints around the bases; the country’s intelligence services were put on alert; and telecommunications were jammed. The response was another sign of Mr. Prigozhin’s long reach.Officially, Russia intervened in Syria in late 2015 to help the authoritarian regime of President Bashar al-Assad turn the tide against rebels trying to oust him.But Russian paramilitary fighters with a group known as the Slavonic Corps were detected in Syria as early as 2013, experts say. Although detailed connections between the Slavonic Corps and Wagner remain unclear, many Wagner commanders were originally part of the corps, according to Gregory Waters, a scholar at the Middle East Institute.Wagner asserted its presence in Syria in 2017. While the Russian military brought in its air force and commanders, the bulk of its frontline personnel came from Wagner, Mr. Waters said.Wagner fighters both captured territory from rebels and the Islamic State and guarded oil and gas fields and Palmyra, an important tourist site.Wagner fighters now guard Palmyra, an important tourist site in Syria.Omar Sanadiki/Associated PressU.S. intelligence officials have described Wagner’s goal in Syria as seizing oil and gas fields and protecting them for Mr. al-Assad.At least four companies linked to Wagner and registered in Russia have exploration permits for sites in Syria, according to Lou Osborn, an analyst at All Eyes on Wagner, an open-source research group. All have been placed under sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department.These activities have been central to Russia’s quest to become an energy superpower, said Candace Rondeaux, an expert on Wagner who is a senior director at New America, a Washington research group.“With Russia there’s no deconflicting or disentangling military interests from energy interest,” Ms. Rondeaux said.Mr. Gabidullin, the former Wagner fighter, said that Mr. Prigozhin’s far-reaching network abroad had grown too much for the Kremlin to fully control it.“He has so many specialists there,” he said. “It is the Ministry of Defense’s specialists who need to learn from his staff.” More

During New York City’s crack era in the early 1990s, with homicide tallies five times those of today, the authorities resorted to ruthless law enforcement.“The police would pull your car over at will, just because you were Black, and go through the car and your pockets,” said Derrick Hamilton, 57, who grew up in public housing in Brooklyn in the 1980s and was first arrested as a teen. “They’d pull your socks off, pull your pants off.”Crime fell across the country during the ensuing decades in a broad societal shift, and New York become one of America’s safest big cities and a thriving tourist destination. But in its darkest days police and prosecutors had cut corners and used tactics that left untold numbers of innocent people — mostly poor men of color — imprisoned on bogus murder, rape and robbery charges.The prisoners’ dogged legal challenges prompted reinvestigations helped by left-leaning prosecutors, advances in DNA testing, pressure from newly formed advocacy groups and generous government restitution, turning New York into a national hotbed of exoneration. In recent years, one innocent middle-aged man after another has been released, ravaged by years in prison, into a tamer city.There is no more striking personification of the change than Yusef Salaam, 49, who was arrested in the infamous 1989 Central Park jogger rape case, in which detectives coerced false confessions out of five Harlem teenagers. They were exonerated after years in prison.Last month, Mr. Salaam won a Democratic primary for a City Council seat, making him all but certain to become the first exoneree to hold elective office in the city.“It was inconceivable in the 1990s that Yusef Salaam could be elected to the City Council, but all these years later, there’s a change in the public consciousness and there’s now a willingness to put victims from that era in positions of authority,” said Joel Rudin, a lawyer who has handled dozens of wrongful conviction claims. “We’ve come a very long way.”Yusef Salaam said he was wrongly imprisoned by a brutal system of law enforcement working as it was designed.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesOnce, prosecutors’ offices were invested in defending bad convictions, but now they uncover them with review units in all five boroughs. Progressive district attorneys who campaigned on the issue have dismissed hundreds of lower-level convictions linked to discredited police officers.The cause has attracted wealthy patrons, as well as prestigious law firms now devoting pro bono work. It has become fodder for documentaries, docudramas and podcasts.For the exonerated, compensation cases are being settled for increasing amounts, often totaling well over $10 million. Over the past decade, the city has paid out about $500 million. And payouts for claims against New York State, another source of compensation, are among the country’s highest.Taken together with recoveries from civil rights cases, the more than $1 billion paid out to those wrongly convicted in New York is the highest of any state in the country by far, according to Jeffrey Gutman, a law professor at George Washington University. A small industry of private lawyers has sprung up to help former prisoners get paid, and to get paid themselves.The situation was engendered by a very different New York. For many residents, streets and subways were to be avoided after dark. Bryant Park in Midtown, today a revitalized urban gem, was a drug market. In 1990, there were nearly 2,250 murders, five times today’s totals.For the police, it was a time to crack down on minor offenses, and street crime units operated under the motto “We own the night.”The desperation to catch and convict at any cost fostered “a willingness to bend the rules,” Mr. Rudin said.Emboldened detectives manufactured cases by manipulating witnesses, coercing confessions, using suggestive identification procedures and withholding exonerating evidence, he said. Locking up a certain percentage of innocent people was simply “collateral damage.”Since his release, Derrick Hamilton has used his skills as a paralegal trying to free other inmates from prison.Anthony Lanzilote for The New York TimesMr. Salaam said in an interview last week that he and the other members of the Central Park Five were “run over by the spiked wheels of justice,” thanks to detectives who knew which levers they could pull in 1989.“The system was operating exactly how it was designed,” he said. “These were people who were supposed to be protecting and serving us, but they literally built their careers off the backs of folks just like me.”As the city’s economy improved and unemployment declined throughout the 1990s, murder and other violent crime decreased. Bad arrests continued nonetheless.Rudolph W. Giuliani took office in 1994 with a pledge to crack down on crime through aggressive policing. His administration was plagued by allegations of police brutality and civil rights abuses, as well as wrongdoing like the torture of Abner Louima and killing of Amadou Diallo.The highest totals of bad convictions in the city came in 1997, when there were 22, of which 15 were for murder, as listed on the National Registry of Exonerations. The group lists at least 230 exonerations for New York City since 1989.“Detectives were expected to clear cases, and once they had made up their mind, they’d stop investigating,” said Irving Cohen, 80, who has represented about 15 wrongfully convicted New Yorkers since the late 1980s. He recalled receiving weekly letters from inmates asking for help. “There were a lot of homicides,” he said. “They did whatever they had to do to get the person convicted, whether they believed the person was guilty or not.”Irving Cohen, left, has represented wrongly convicted New Yorkers since the 1980s.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesMr. Salaam’s exoneration in 2002 was a stunning reversal, one of the first cases that showed the pitfalls of New York’s wholesale justice. A convicted murderer and serial rapist admitted that he was responsible for the attack, and the Manhattan district attorney’s office filed court papers clearing Mr. Salaam and the other members of the Central Park Five.But some police officials continued to blame the wrongly convicted men despite D.N.A. evidence. The district attorney at the time, Robert M. Morgenthau, found no coercion by officers or prosecutors.Many dismissed cases involved a relative handful of officers, including Louis Scarcella, a former Brooklyn homicide detective whose conduct has led to the review of dozens of cases and to at least eight murder convictions being overturned. Mr. Scarcella has denied any wrongdoing.One of his cases was that of Mr. Hamilton, who served more than 20 years on a 1991 murder charge. He litigated from prison, with limited access to phones and correspondence materials. He drafted briefs from a cramped cell, researched cases in a meager law library and wrote legal letters longhand from solitary confinement.For Mr. Hamilton, things changed when a key eyewitness came forward years after his conviction to say that Mr. Scarcella had coerced her into lying.Louis Scarcella’s conduct as a Brooklyn homicide detective led to at least eight murder convictions being overturned.John Taggart for The New York TimesThe case was taken up by the Brooklyn district attorney’s conviction integrity unit, which, with more than 30 exonerations since 2014, is one of the most robust units in the nation and one reason the borough has by far the highest number of overturned convictions of any in the city, with 88 on the national registry.In 2019, after the Bronx prosecutors’ conviction integrity unit and the Innocence Project presented new evidence, a judge vacated the 1989 murder conviction of Huwe Burton, who had been coerced by detectives into a false confession at age 16.The Bronx district attorney, Darcel Clark, said that detectives had used the discredited practices of the era.“What they did was not necessarily wrong — that is the way things were done then,” she told The New York Times in 2019. “For 1989, that was standard practice for the N.Y.P.D., but now we know better.”Huwe Burton was wrongly convicted at 16 and spent decades in prison. The district attorney said detectives had followed the norms of 1989.Gregg Vigliotti for The New York TimesSome disagree. Police and prosecutors are almost never disciplined for misconduct, including coercing innocent suspects into confessing, said Rebecca Brown, who for the past eight years was director of policy at the Innocence Project in Manhattan.And police still can lie and make false promises to suspects, including children, to elicit false confessions, she said.“Many of the contributing causes are still alive and well in New York City,” she said. “There’s nothing resembling robust accountability.”Still, changes have been made to interrogations and suspect lineups, and there is more oversight of prosecutors and access to officers’ discipline records.Standards have been improved for obtaining more reliable confessions and identifications, Mr. Rudin said, adding that judges and prosecutors are now generally more skeptical of cases built around jailhouse informants. Defense lawyers, previously stymied by limited access to prosecutors’ case information, are now entitled to more of it, and can prepare a proper defense, he said.And the politics have changed. In Mr. Salaam’s City Council campaign, he spoke often about his conviction and exoneration. In his interview, he urged measures like drug treatment instead of prison for drug offenders and allowing lower-level offenders to avoid Rikers Island.“We don’t want to put innocent people in jail,” he said.As for Mr. Hamilton, he has worked since his release as an activist and paralegal to identify and overturn other wrongful convictions, including numerous ones linked to Mr. Scarcella. He is part of a brotherhood of exonerees who cooperate to prepare legal briefs and continue to visit inmates, donate money and raise awareness about cases.“My loyalty,” he said, “is to those guys still wrongfully in prison.” More

The former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador is intensely focused on the state. But her brand of politics may not resonate in the 2024 political climate.Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, five months into her first run for president, acknowledges the position she is in.Though she was the first Republican to announce a challenge to former President Donald J. Trump, she hasn’t spent a dime on television ads, is polling well behind Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and has struggled at times to make a case for her campaign.But in an interview on Friday, at a picnic table outside a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in the small town of Lancaster, N.H., Ms. Haley downplayed concerns about her standing in the primary. It’s early in the race, she said, and many voters have yet to tune in to the campaigns.“I look at it like one goal after another; I don’t look at the end,” she said. “I know that by mid-fall, this is going to be totally different. Once you pass Labor Day, the numbers start to shift. And you can look at history for that. That’s not me just hoping, that’s me knowing.”As she traversed small towns in the mountainous North Country region of New Hampshire last week, she tacitly acknowledged the uphill race, while also telling her story of overcoming long political odds to win South Carolina’s governorship in 2010, making her the first woman to serve as governor of the state and the second governor of Indian descent.During her appearances, Ms. Haley also mixed in subtle digs at her primary rivals.“I did not go to an Ivy League school like the fellas that are in this race,” she told voters in a North Conway community center on Thursday. “I went to a public university.” Touting her degree in accounting from Clemson University, she said: “I’m not a lawyer. Accountants are problem solvers.”Ms. Haley’s most recent swing through New Hampshire, which holds the party’s first primary, was billed by her campaign as a grass-roots-focused trip, and one intended to introduce her to voters in this part of the state as a former state executive with roots in the rural South, rather than an establishment figure with Washington ties.Frank Murphy, 54, who moved to northern New Hampshire from South Carolina in 2016, knows Ms. Haley as his former governor. When she introduced herself to the voters crowded into the Lancaster V.F.W. post, he raised his hand within the first few minutes of her speech to tell her he was from Charleston.“I got to see firsthand what she did to help the economy down there,” he said, adding that he was elated to see her running for president. “To come into a small town meeting like this and to speak to people and to get them to engage and to talk and ask questions? That’s what you want from a politician,” he said.The challenge for Ms. Haley is that her credentials might be more of a liability than an asset in a Republican primary that seems to be geared more toward personality than policy, with much attention concentrated on Mr. Trump’s legal troubles and Mr. DeSantis’s focus on social and cultural issues.In small events and meet-and-greets, Ms. Haley spoke as much about her family and personal background as she did about the economy and foreign policy.She complimented the scenery of the North Country, adding that its close-knit communities reminded her of her hometown, Bamberg, S.C. Her upbringing as a member of the only Indian American family in town — “We weren’t white enough to be white, we weren’t Black enough to be Black,” she said — taught her to look hard for the similarities she shared with others.Ms. Haley sought to connect with New Hampshire voters by noting her small-town roots.John Tully for The New York TimesSpeaking to voters at the V.F.W. outpost in Lancaster on Friday, she poked fun at the southern accents she is used to hearing in South Carolina and tested out a New England twang, asking those present if her saying “Lan-cah-stah” made her sound local.“Somebody said I sounded like I was from Boston,” she acknowledged, to sympathetic laughs.Ms. Haley has focused intensely on New Hampshire. By the end of this week she will have made 39 stops in the Granite State, far outpacing most of the Republican field. She is one of the few 2024 Republican contenders — along with Vivek Ramaswamy — to visit the counties in the state’s North Country region, which sits less than 200 miles from the Canadian border and has woodsy, winding roads stretching through the White Mountain range.Her campaign says it is hanging its hopes on a growing network of supporters and volunteers in the far corners of the state, rather than spending money on radio or television ads — a longstanding tradition of glad-handing and retail politicking.The strategy has yet to generate much momentum. Most polls of the primary in New Hampshire show her in fourth place, behind Mr. Trump, Mr. DeSantis and former Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, who has also spent a significant amount of time in the state.Ms. Haley’s supporters have expressed frustration and confusion that their preferred candidate — whose past roles as U.N. ambassador and governor prompted an event moderator to ask a crowd on Thursday to decide by applause which title he should use to introduce her — has barely polled above 4 percent in most national public polls.“We don’t understand that because she’s doing so well,” said Beverly Schofield, an 84-year-old Republican voter, clad in red, white and blue, who drove from Vermont with her daughter to see Ms. Haley in New Hampshire on Friday. “It’s very impressive that she’s doing as well as she is. But I’d like to see her move up that ladder quickly.”Ms. Haley’s standing reflects the challenges of campaigning in this particular primary more than it does her political capabilities, her supporters say. The Republican field has ballooned to a dozen candidates, splintering the anti-Trump vote, while his recent and prospective indictments seem to have only put the former president closer to capturing the nomination. Ms. Haley’s supporters are wondering how the campaign intends to turn things around“That’s the question I wanted to ask her,” said Ted Kramer, 81, a retired marketing executive who attended Ms. Haley’s town hall in North Conway. “She’s got to get the profile up.”Ms. Haley said she was comfortable with her current position in the primary race, which she described as “a marathon, not a sprint.”John Tully for The New York TimesMs. Haley pointed to previous Republican front-runners who later fizzled out, such as Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and former Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin. The race so far has been painted largely as a two-man race between Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis, Ms. Haley said, but voters are likely to sour on one.“I know the reality of how quickly somebody can go up and how quickly they can fall,” she said. “The shiny object today is not the shiny object tomorrow. So it’s about not peaking too soon.”She added, “I’m very realistic about what the benchmarks are and what we need to overcome.”Those markers include securing the required number of donors and funds to make the debate stage in August — which she has done. She also said she would continue to focus on Iowa and New Hampshire while building on the base she has in South Carolina, another early state, where she and Senator Tim Scott, who represents the state, are aiming to leverage similar voter bases and donor networks. The two have not spoken since he launched his campaign, she said.Ms. Haley also admitted to feeling underestimated in the race. She is often included in conversations about vice-presidential contenders, though she has emphatically said she is not eyeing the position. She also said that many, particularly in the news media, failed to recognize “the street cred that I have,” listing political wins and averted crises seen during her tenure as South Carolina governor and as United Nations ambassador. “I mean, these were no small jobs,” she said.Republicans longing for an alternative to Mr. Trump made up a large portion of the crowds at Ms. Haley’s events, along with moderate Republicans and independent voters. Few who attended Ms. Haley’s events this week said they were fully committed to supporting her, and many said they wanted to test the political waters, a signature of campaigning in New Hampshire, where most primary voters can expect to hear from every candidate in person, usually more than once.Ms. Haley, eager to sway some of those who were on the fence, made policy points on the stump and condemned Democrats on race, education and inclusion of transgender athletes. She criticized both Democrats and Republicans for the handling of Covid-19 and chastised Congress, asking voters if they could point to anything their representatives in Washington had done for them.She also drew on her foreign policy background, saying that the biggest threat to the United States is China and repeatedly criticizing the Biden administration on its approach, folding in terse words for Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who is visiting the country this week.Joanne Archambault, an independent voter who lives near North Conway, said she liked Ms. Haley’s message and saw her as an authoritative speaker on policy issues. Still, she said that Ms. Haley’s talk of foreign policy distracted from domestic priorities.“I think there’s too much focus about overseas stuff, too much talk about the border and about China,” she said. “Let’s talk about the problems we are facing — you know, gun violence, abortion, let’s talk about those things. Let’s focus on this country and not what other countries are doing.”Her closing message to voters has been an entreaty to them to tell others to support her. That was good news to Mr. Murphy the South Carolina Transplant who said he was committed to voting for Ms. Haley in the primary in January.“She said tell 10 people. I’ll probably tell 20,” he said. More

Bristol Smith, a manager at a McDonald’s in Maryville, Tenn., came across Vivek Ramaswamy’s name this spring, shortly after Mr. Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur, announced he was running for president. Mr. Smith was intrigued. He liked the way Mr. Ramaswamy “stands up against the wokeness” and his plan to send the military to the southern border to combat drug cartels. He respected Mr. Ramaswamy’s acumen as a businessman worth hundreds of millions of dollars.Then Mr. Smith, 25, searched for Mr. Ramaswamy’s faith. Mr. Smith is an evangelical Christian who recently started a small church that meets at his parents’ house.“I looked up his religion and saw he’s Hindu,” he recalled. “I was going to vote for him until that came up.” What the country needs is to be “put back under God,” as Mr. Smith sees it, and he doesn’t want to take a chance on someone who is not a Christian.At that point, he said, “I got back on President Trump’s train.”Mr. Ramaswamy, 37, was raised by Indian immigrants and is a practicing Hindu. That poses a dilemma for some of the conservative Christian voters who make up a significant share of the Republican primary electorate and are accustomed to evaluating candidates not just on their policy proposals but also on their biographies and personal beliefs, including religious faith. For many conservative voters, a candidate’s faith is a signifier of his or her values, lifestyle, loyalties and priorities as a leader. It’s the Sunday-morning version of the classic question of which candidate you would most enjoy having a beer with: Who would fit in at your church? “It’s another hurdle people need to cross to go to him,” Bob Vander Plaats, an influential evangelical leader in Iowa, said of Mr. Ramaswamy.Mr. Ramaswamy stood for a prayer at the Veterans Freedom Center during a morning pancake breakfast in Dubuque, Iowa.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesMr. Vander Plaats recently had Mr. Ramaswamy’s family over for Sunday supper at his house, where the meal opened with a prayer and the reading of a passage from the Bible. He came away impressed with Mr. Ramaswamy and said that his message aligned with the priorities of many evangelical voters. He mentioned Mr. Ramaswamy’s list of 10 core “truths,” the first of which is: “God is real.” (The second: “There are two genders.”)“I think he’s really connecting with the audiences in Iowa,” said Mr. Vander Plaats, who has not endorsed a candidate. “He welcomes the deeper questions.” Mr. Ramaswamy is polling under 5 percent in most recent national polls.Mr. Ramaswamy’s approach has been to confront the issue directly and argue that he has more in common with observant Christians than they might think.“I’m not Christian. I was not raised in a Christian household,” he told Mr. Vander Plaats in June in front of a small audience at the headquarters of his organization, the Family Leader. “But we do share the same Christian values that this nation was founded on.”In an interview in late June, after leaving a meeting with a few dozen pastors in New Hampshire, Mr. Ramaswamy said his faith taught him that Jesus was “a son of God, absolutely.” (That “a” is a sharp distinction from the central Christian belief that Jesus is the son of God. Hinduism is a fluid and expansive tradition, and many believers embrace scores of deities, with some seeing Jesus as one teacher or god.)Although he is not a Christian, Mr. Ramaswamy pointed out, he speaks openly about why belief in God matters and why rising secularism in America is bad for the country, and about values like marital fidelity, duty, religious liberty and self-sacrifice.“I don’t have a quick pitch to say, ‘No, no, that doesn’t matter,’” he said of the theological differences between Hinduism and Christianity. “It’s that I understand exactly why that would matter to you.”At campaign stops, Mr. Ramaswamy refers to Bible stories, including the crucifixion of Jesus, and quotes Thomas Aquinas. He frequently mentions his experience attending a “Christian school” in Cincinnati (St. Xavier High School, a Catholic school). And he contrasts “religions like ours,” which have stood the test of time, with the competing worldviews of “wokeism, climatism, transgenderism, gender ideology, Covidism,” as he put it to an audience in New Hampshire.Iowa voters asked questions to Mr. Ramaswamy in Dubuque.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesMr. Ramaswamy’s campaign has disseminated clips of an Iowa pastor comparing him to the biblical figure of King David, and of his lengthy answer to a New Hampshire man who asked about his “spiritual beliefs” at a town hall. In Iowa, a woman pressed her hand to Mr. Ramaswamy’s chest and blessed him in the name of Jesus Christ.“Amen,” Mr. Ramaswamy said as she concluded her prayer.If Mr. Ramaswamy comes to have a chance with evangelical primary voters in the crowded Republican field, it will be thanks in part to forces beyond his campaign. Many conservative voters for whom a shared faith might have once been a litmus test now say they are looking not for a “pastor-in-chief” but for someone who shares their political and cultural goals, and who will fight on their behalf.“Theology matters, but the culture has changed. America has changed,” said David Brody, the chief political analyst for the Christian Broadcasting Network, who has interviewed Mr. Ramaswamy. The biggest objective now, Mr. Brody said, is combating “cultural Marxism” and correcting the course of “a country gone haywire.”He contrasted evangelical priorities in next year’s Iowa caucuses with those in 2008 and 2012, when Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum won on the strength of their conservative Christian bona fides.“The lazy narrative that he’s Hindu so he can’t appeal to evangelicals, I don’t buy it at all,” Mr. Brody said.In recent years, theological lines have blurred as political divides have hardened. Few churches split these days over old debates like the exact timing of the end times or the role of free will in salvation. About half of American Protestants now say they prefer to attend a church with people who share their political views, according to polling from Lifeway Research.Mr. Ramaswamy taking a question at a campaign event in Windham, N.H.John Tully for The New York TimesMr. Ramaswamy’s emphasis on his belief in one God has a long history for Hindus in the United States, especially those speaking to white Christian audiences, said Michael Altman, a professor of religious studies at the University of Alabama.Swami Vivekananda, who represented Hinduism at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago in 1893, took pains to depict his faith as monotheistic, in contrast to the stereotypes of its followers as “heathen” polytheists. Although the faith has many deities, they are generally subordinate to one ultimate “reality.” Many Hindus and scholars say its theology is too complex to be described as either wholly monotheistic or wholly polytheistic.“The polytheism hurdle is the first thing that has to be addressed” for many American Christian audiences, Mr. Altman said. He sees Mr. Ramaswamy’s pitch against “wokeism” as a way to counter stereotypes associating Hinduism with hippies, yoga and vegetarianism.Some evangelical observers say it was former President Donald J. Trump who opened up a new lane for Republican candidates who were not necessarily people that voters would expect to sit next to in church on Sunday morning. Many evangelical voters embraced the crude, thrice-married casino magnate not because he was one of them but because they believed he would fight in the public square on their behalf.Most Indian Americans, including Hindus, are Democrats. But some conservatives see an opening with a population that prioritizes family life, marriage and education. As president, Mr. Trump hosted Diwali celebrations at the White House, and in April the Republican National Committee announced a new Republican Hindu and Indian American Coalition. Prime minister Narendra Modi of India is a popular figure among a rising cohort of right-wing Indian Americans, attracting a crowd of 50,000 when he appeared with Mr. Trump in Houston in 2019. Mr. Ramaswamy spoke last year at a gala organized by the right-wing U.S. group HinduPACT, which is aligned with Mr. Modi’s style of nationalism.President Donald J. Trump lit the ceremonial diya lamp during Diwali celebrations in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in 2018.Doug Mills/The New York TimesNikki Haley, another Indian American contender in the 2024 primary, has similarly emphasized her background as the daughter of immigrants. But although Ms. Haley was raised Sikh, she converted to Christianity and now attends a large Methodist church in South Carolina. Bobby Jindal, a Louisiana Republican who ran for president in 2016, was raised Hindu but has described himself as an “evangelical Catholic.”Mr. Ramaswamy attends the same temple in Dayton, Ohio, that he did as a child and that his parents still do.One of the temple’s priests officiated his wedding in New York City in 2015. He and his wife and their two young sons attend temple on holidays and to mark special occasions, including the younger son’s first birthday in early July, his wife, Dr. Apoorva Ramaswamy, said. Dr. Ramaswamy, who has publicly discussed the family’s faith on the campaign trail, said there were more similarities among committed believers across traditions than between serious and nominal adherents within the same faith.“The fact that we are believers, that we have that sense of humility, that we raise our children with true respect and fear and love of God — that’s so much more unifying than the name of the God people pray to,” Dr. Ramaswamy said.The question for her husband’s campaign is whether enough Christian voters will agree.Ken Bosse, the pastor of New Life Church in Raymond, N.H., described himself as “an extreme follower of Jesus Christ” who would prefer to have a Christian in the White House, all things considered. But he would be open to the right candidate who is not a Christian, noting that “we have had some professing Christians in that position who didn’t follow biblical principles.”Mr. Bosse invited Mr. Ramaswamy to deliver a brief speech at his church on a Sunday morning in April. He liked the candidate’s emphasis on reclaiming a positive American identity, he said, and on his story as a self-made millionaire who is the child of immigrants.At the moment, however, Mr. Bosse is leaning toward supporting Mr. Trump. More

The state party will hold a nominating contest in January, the earliest it has been held in recent campaign cycles.The NewsIowa Republicans voted on Saturday to hold their caucuses on Jan. 15, 2024, pushing the state’s first-in-the-nation nominating contest weeks earlier than in recent years.The state party voted unanimously to hold the elections on the third Monday of the month, which coincides with the federal holiday recognizing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.Jeff Kaufmann, chairman of the state party, said in a statement after the vote that the Republicans “remain committed to maintaining Iowa’s cherished first-in-the-nation caucuses and look forward to holding a historic caucus in the coming months and defeating Joe Biden come November 2024.”Iowa Democrats were “aware of the decision” but “did not have a chance to have any input” on the date selection, according to a statement from Rita Hart, the chair of the state party.“No matter what, Iowa Democrats are committed to moving forward with the most inclusive caucus process in Iowa’s history,” Ms. Hart said.Republican voters at a caucus location in Pella, Iowa, in February 2016.Eric Thayer for The New York TimesWhy It Matters: Republicans Reaffirm While Democrats ReorderRepublican presidential hopefuls have been campaigning aggressively in the state, which is seen as crucial to many candidates, including former President Donald J. Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, former Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, all of whom are courting the state’s more rural and evangelical voters in an effort to gain early momentum in the race.The selected day is also the date that a judge has set for a defamation trial against Mr. Trump filed by E. Jean Carroll. Ms. Carroll (who also has filed a separate defamation suit) won a civil case against Mr. Trump in May.Iowa’s status as the first presidential contest was seemingly upended last year, when Democrats reordered their nominating calendar to prioritize states with more racial diversity and move away from the caucus system.With Mr. Biden’s approval, the D.N.C. in February voted in favor of a new calendar that propelled South Carolina — the state that saved his candidacy in 2020 — to the first primary spot on Feb. 3, 2024, from the fourth position it held in 2020. Democrats in New Hampshire and Nevada would then hold their contests three days later.Republicans did not follow suit, keeping Iowa in first position, meaning the Midwestern state remains a key battleground for Republicans as the large field of contenders try to dislodge Mr. Trump from his position as the front-runner for the party’s nomination.Background: Iowa Isn’t Always Right, but It’s Still ImportantThe date chosen by the state party is weeks earlier than it was for the past several caucuses: In 2020 the contest was held on Feb. 3, and in 2016 it fell on Feb. 1. The last time the state held its caucuses in January was in 2012, when they occurred just three days into the new year.Iowa has not selected the party’s eventual nominee, excluding incumbent presidents, since 2000, when George W. Bush won the caucuses and then the general election.Still, many Republican candidates, and voters nationwide, see the now-firmly-red state as crucial to gaining early momentum and national attention. In a year when Mr. Trump maintains a considerable lead in the primary polls, performing well with a constituency well-accustomed to being courted by politicians is seen by many candidates in the 2024 race as vital to any chance at success.What’s Next: The Date Has Changed, but Not Much ElseRepublican presidential hopefuls will continue to court Iowans in the six remaining months before the caucuses, as front-runners and long-shot candidates alike have ramped up their appearances in the state.Mr. Trump held a rally in Iowa on Friday, where he made farming issues central to his pitch for why voters should select him, a clear nod to the state’s agriculture-based economy. And Mr. DeSantis’s wife, Casey, visited Iowa on Thursday for an event held alongside the state’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds.Several candidates will appear in the state next week for the Family Leadership Summit in Des Moines, advertised as “the Midwest’s biggest gathering of Christians seeking cultural transformation.” The event will feature appearances from candidates including Mr. Scott and Mr. Pence, as well as an interview with Mr. DeSantis and the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. More

The coalition parties couldn’t come to an agreement on the country’s migration policy. What were they fighting over and what comes next?A political crisis erupted in the Netherlands on Friday night, with the prime minister offering the resignation of his government to the king, meaning there will be new elections in the fall. Here’s what you need to know.Why did the Dutch government collapse?Unable to convince the more centrist members of his four-party governing coalition to back more restrictive migration policies, the conservative prime minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, offered his resignation to King Willem-Alexander in writing on Friday night and spoke to the king in person about it on Saturday in The Hague.The collapse underscores the potency of immigration as an arbiter of Europe’s politics, and how stopping far-right parties from capitalizing on it is a growing problem for mainstream politicians.Mr. Rutte’s four-party coalition included his own party, the center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, as well as the centrist pro-European D66 and two centrist Christian parties: CDA and Christian Union.With his government feeling pressured on the migration issue by parties to the right, Mr. Rutte had been talking for months to his coalition partners about measures to further control the number of refugees coming into the country. On Friday night, the parties decided they could not come to a compromise and chose to dissolve the coalition, plunging the country into political uncertainty.“It is no secret that the coalition partners have very different views on migration policy,” Mr. Rutte said on Friday. “And today, unfortunately, we have to draw the conclusion that those differences are irreconcilable.”What were the proposed policies that led to the breakup?The government had been debating terms of family reunification for refugees and also whether to create two classes of asylum: a temporary one for people fleeing conflicts, and a permanent one for people fleeing persecution.The goal of both proposals was to reduce the number of refugees, as right-wing parties outside the coalition were seeing political gains by appealing to growing voter concerns in the Netherlands about immigration.While the other coalition parties were ready to agree with the two-tier asylum system, they would not agree to back Mr. Rutte’s proposal for a two-year waiting period before refugees already living in the Netherlands could be joined by their children.Last year, more than 21,000 people from outside the European Union sought asylum in the Netherlands, according to the Dutch government. More than 400,000 people immigrated to the Netherlands overall in 2022, the office said, an increase from the year before.The large numbers of arrivals have strained the Netherlands’ housing capacity, which was already suffering a shortage for the country’s more than 17 million people.The prime minister arriving to speak with the king on Saturday. After Mr. Rutte’s resignation, the Netherlands will hold general elections in the fall, probably in November.Patrick van Katwijk/Getty ImagesWhat happens now?Although he resigned as prime minister, Mr. Rutte will remain in charge of a caretaker government until general elections are held.Dutch voters will head to the polls in the fall, probably in November. It’s unclear whether Mr. Rutte will stay on as leader of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, but he indicated on Friday night that he would be open to it and Dutch media have speculated that he will.Many of the party’s faithful are still happy with Mr. Rutte, said Marcel Hanegraaff, an associate professor of political science at the University of Amsterdam.If Mr. Rutte’s party — which can count on the steady support of about 20 percent of Dutch voters, according to Mr. Hanegraaff — manages to win the election, he would be tasked with forming a new coalition government, his fifth. But he may face the same set of coalition problems.Who is Mark Rutte, and what does his future hold?Mr. Rutte has weathered many political storms before. He is the Netherlands’ longest serving prime minister, coming into power in 2010. For surviving at least one other government collapse and multiple other political obstacles, he has earned the nickname “Teflon Mark.”But Dutch politicians from other parties have said it is time for a new prime minister.Caroline van der Plas, the leader of the Farmer-Citizen Movement, a pro-farmer party that swept local elections in the Netherlands this year, said she wanted a new leader and welcomed a chance for voters to go to the polls this fall, two years earlier than expected.Analysts in the Netherlands expect the Farmer-Citizen Movement, which currently has one seat in the 150-member Parliament, to do well in the coming elections. Polls show they could come in as the nation’s second-biggest party.Dutch farmers are angry at Mr. Rutte’s government for announcing reductions in nitrogen pollution to preserve protected nature reserves — a policy that the farmers believe unfairly targets them.Attje Kuiken, the leader of the Dutch Labor Party, wrote on Twitter that “Mark Rutte is done governing.” She added that she wanted new elections quickly, “because the Netherlands needs a government that shows vigor and makes decisions.” More