Elections

Fox’s prime time ratings have consistently been the highest in cable news but have fallen off by roughly one-third since the network took Mr. Carlson off the air.Fox News shook up its prime-time lineup on Monday in the first major reorganization to its most popular programming since the beginning of the Trump administration. The moves include permanently filling the 8 p.m. slot, which has been vacant since the network canceled Tucker Carlson’s show in April.The changes will result in the promotion of two rising stars at the network — Jesse Watters, whose show will move to 8 p.m. from 7 p.m., and Greg Gutfeld, who has been hosting an 11 p.m. comedy and current events program that regularly draws higher ratings than late-night rivals like Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel. Mr. Gutfeld’s show will now start at 10 p.m.Laura Ingraham, who has hosted a 10 p.m. program since 2017, will move to 7 p.m., occupying the hour that Mr. Watters has been hosting. Sean Hannity, a mainstay at Fox News since its early days, will remain in his 9 p.m. slot.Though some of the names and times of Fox’s most important shows are changing, the overall tone of the coverage is not likely to sound much different to the audience.Mr. Watters is a reliably pro-Trump conservative voice who first became widely known to Fox’s audience for his cameos on Bill O’Reilly’s program before the network canceled that show in 2017. His commentary has come under criticism at times, including when he did a segment from Manhattan’s Chinatown in 2016 in which he asked Asian people offensive questions, including whether they knew Karate or bowed when saying hello.Fox’s prime-time ratings have consistently been the highest in cable news but have fallen off by roughly one-third since the network took Mr. Carlson off the air. His departure followed a string of public relations headaches and legal problems stemming from both his offensive commentary, on and off the air, and a lawsuit from a former producer claiming that he had enabled a toxic workplace.In April, shortly before canceling Mr. Carlson’s show, Fox News and its parent company settled a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million. Some of Mr. Carlson’s private text messages became public during the case, including some in which he attacked network colleagues, denigrated former President Donald J. Trump and said he did not believe that the results of the 2020 election were materially affected by voter fraud.One especially damaging text, which set off a crisis at the top of the Fox Corporation, expressed inflammatory views about violence and race. More

Voters seemed to embrace Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s approach to the economy and tough stance on migration, and were less concerned about revelations of spying on the opposition.Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the leader of the conservative New Democracy party who has presided over a period of economic stability and tough anti-migration policies in Greece, was sworn in on Monday for a second term as prime minister after a landslide victory that gave him a clear mandate for the next four years.The result made clear that Greeks, who endured a decade-long financial crisis, were much less concerned with scandals, including accusations of the authorities’ spying on their own people, or disasters such as the fatal shipwreck of a boat carrying hundreds of migrants, than they were with Mr. Mitsotakis’s pledges to keep the country on the road of economic and political stability.Mr. Mitsotakis, a supporter of Ukraine who has maintained good relations with the European Union, has also vowed to stand up to pressure from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who also recently won re-election. Here are some of the lessons from the results in Greece.Tough migration policies are good politicsGreece, led by Mr. Mitsotakis, has done the European Union’s unpleasant work of blocking migrants from reaching the continent with hard-line policies and reception centers that critics equate to prisons. Voters appeared to reward him for the significant reduction of arrivals in the country since the height of the migrant crisis in 2015.Revelations that the Greek Coast Guard has been illegally pushing back migrants by land and sea, and, more recently, questions about the Greek authorities’ fatal decision not to immediately come to the assistance of a ship this month that ultimately sank, killing hundreds off the coast, have infuriated migrant advocates.Survivors of the migrant ship that sank off the coast of Greece this month waited to be transported to a refugee camp in Kalamata, in the south of the country. Eirini Vourloumis for The New York TimesBut not Greek voters.On the campaign trail, Mr. Mitsotakis noted that the number of migrant arrivals was down 90 percent, from more than a million nearly a decade ago, and Greeks appeared more than willing to stomach the harsh tactics he employed.They apparently supported the patrols of the Aegean Sea and the extension of a European Union-subsidized fence along the country’s northern land border with Turkey, which Mr. Mitsotakis had linked to national defense. Mr. Erdogan, the Turkish leader, had sought to exert pressure and wrest concessions from the European Union by allowing migrants to cross the borders.One opinion poll last week showed that seven in 10 Greeks were in favor of the fence, which the previous conservative administration had pledged to extend by some 22 miles, to about 87 miles, by the end of this year.Spying isn’t a deal breakerSpying on an opposition politician does not generally go over well in Western democracies. So when it was revealed last August that Greece’s state intelligence service had been monitoring a prominent opposition leader, and subsequently journalists and others, analysts anticipated political fallout for Mr. Mitsotakis.When use of the spyware Predator was found on some of the same devices, it seemed likely to explode into a full-blown scandal. Instead, Greek voters mostly shrugged.Nikos Androulakis, the head of the socialist Pasok party, speaking last a week at an election rally in Athens. Alkis Konstantinidis/ReutersThe surveillance of Nikos Androulakis, the leader of the socialist Pasok party, and of several others, was never directly linked to Mr. Mitsotakis, who had assumed greater authority of the intelligence service but repeatedly denied any knowledge of the monitoring. Heads rolled. Close advisers to Mr. Mitsotakis, including his nephew, fell on swords. And the scandal blew over.The reaction was endlessly frustrating for the leftist Syriza party, which sought to exploit the apparent espionage in part by trying, and failing, to to form an alliance of grievance with Mr. Androulakis and his Pasok party.In the end, the spying claims ranked close to the bottom of voters’ concerns in opinion polls, while the economy, Greek-Turkish relations and concerns about the health care system topped the list.It’s the economy, stupidWhat Greeks did care about, and significantly more than anything else, was the economy and stability. After a decade-long financial crisis that erupted in 2010, Mr. Mitsotakis persuaded Greeks that the country had made enormous strides under his watch and that he deserved another four years to finish the job.He had some good data to point to. Growth in Greece is twice the eurozone average. Wages and pensions have increased. Foreign investors have returned. Greek bonds, long at junk status, are now expected to be restored to investment grade, which will lower borrowing costs.A market in Athens in June.Byron Smith for The New York TimesGreeks preferred this path of stability rather than returning to Syriza, the party that was in power when Greece nearly crashed out of the eurozone in 2015.Speaking as preliminary results came in on Sunday night, Mr. Mitsotakis said he aimed to achieve more in a second term, to “transform” Greece and build a country with “more prosperity and more justice for all.”Deep economic problems, including rising costs and questions of inequality, remain, but Mr. Mitsotakis convinced the vast majority of Greeks that the way to address them was to keep on his conservative government’s path.The right wing rises in southern EuropeThe end of the last decade was marked by intense anxiety in the European establishment about populist and nationalist parties eroding the European Union from within. Although that fear has mostly passed for now, conservatives are making significant inroads in the bloc’s southern flank.In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of the hard-right Brothers of Italy party is firmly in control, although many of the worst fears of liberals have not come to fruition. In Spain, polls suggest that elections next month could bring the conservative People’s Party to power, most likely with the hard-right party Vox as a coalition partner, an alliance that until recently seemed out of the question.Supporters of Mr. Mitsotakis celebrated outside New Democracy headquarters in Athens after his victory on Sunday.Yorgos Karahalis/Associated PressAnd now in Greece, the landslide victory of Mr. Mitsotakis gives him a freer hand to impose his economic vision. But it also allows him to continue his crackdown on migrant arrivals, a policy that is detested by rights groups but is appreciated in Brussels, a reflection of just how much the status quo has shifted to the right on the issue.Exhaustion with migration is surely an important driver of the shift, but so is an overall reassertion of national identities, if not outright nationalism, after years of campaigning against meddling by the European Union.A Mitsotakis dynasty?The return of Mr. Mitsotakis to power is not just a personal victory — it also elevates his family to something approaching dynasty status in Greek politics.His father, Konstantinos Mitsotakis, governed as a reformer as prime minister from 1990 to 1993 but left office as a divisive figure in a volatile period for Greek politics.His sister, Dora Bakoyannis, was mayor of Athens and a former foreign minister, and her son, Kostas Bakoyannis, is currently the capital’s mayor. Another nephew, Grigoris Dimitriadis, was Mr. Mitsotakis’s point man for the state intelligence service but quit in the wake of the surveillance scandal.Kostas Bakoyannis, the prime minister’s nephew and mayor of Athens, is part of what appears to be something resembling a political dynasty.Eirini Vourloumis for The New York TimesThe opposition sought to portray Mr. Mitsotakis as an arrogant, autocratic and out-of-touch elitist who was both a beneficiary and perpetrator of nepotism, but that did not seem to resonate with voters.“I will be the prime minister of all Greeks,” Mr. Mitsotakis said on Sunday night after preliminary results rolled in. “I will remain committed to my national duty without tolerating any arrogant or conceited behavior.”A new political landscapeNew Democracy took easily the biggest portion of the vote, with 40.5 percent, compared with 17.8 percent for Syriza in second. That allowed Mr. Mitsotakis to portray the victory as evidence that his party was the only dominant force in a now fragmented political landscape.“The strongest center-right party in Europe,” he said on Sunday night. But the marginalized far right had a good day, too, with a little-known nationalist party, Spartans, recording a surprisingly strong showing and comfortably crossing the 3 percent threshold for representation in Parliament, winning 4.6 percent of the vote.Spartans, backed by a jailed leader of the defunct neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, joined two other hard-right parties to claim 34 seats. More

Bret Stephens: Gail, I hope your summer is off to a great start. We’re in the season of Supreme Court decisions, waiting any day for the Harvard and U.N.C. ruling to come down. Assuming the court overturns affirmative action for private and public universities, and maybe beyond that, what do you think the effect will be?Gail Collins: Bret, I guess we’ll have to see the how and the why of the much-dreaded decision before it’s possible to tell.Bret: The fine print is what has really mattered in past affirmative action cases, going back to the Bakke decision in 1978, which ruled that explicit racial quotas were unconstitutional, but that race could be considered a plus factor in admissions.Gail: I’m hoping the court will leave some room for schools and employers to continue taking race into account — and also things like economic background, childhood home environment — factors that help produce a diverse America where people who come from impoverished communities and disadvantaged homes can get some breaks.Bret: I’d have a much easier time accepting affirmative action if the principal criterion was class, not race. If universities thought of themselves more as ladders of social mobility and less as curators of racial rebalancing, they could still give a lot of poorer minorities a lift while also opening their doors to larger numbers of low-income white students who might otherwise have been denied a shot at admission.Gail: You can’t leave race out, but yes, it’s important to mix it with other parts of a biography. We have to protect schools’ right to create a diverse freshman class every year — one that will help students learn the joys and struggles and fun and exasperation that comes from living with people who aren’t like you in color, creed or background.Bret: Or viewpoint. Diversity is also about making sure universities don’t become ideological monocultures where people look different but share nearly all the same opinions and assumptions.Gail: To me, diversity is a very, very important goal — you don’t want to be living in a world in which all the folks of one race or class never interact with folks from another.How about you?Bret: Diversity can be a virtue, but it doesn’t have to apply in every conceivable setting or override other considerations, especially academic excellence. I don’t think it’s any secret that students whose families are from East and South Asia outperform many of their peers in high school academics, just as Jewish kids from immigrant backgrounds did a couple of generations ago. If the end of affirmative action means that top-tier universities will be demographically overrepresented with students of Asian background for the simple reason that they worked that much harder to get there, should that be considered a problem?Gail: Of course we have to include, and celebrate, the many fabulous students with East and South Asian backgrounds. And part of the educational opportunities they deserve is a chance to be in school with kids from other backgrounds. So that they graduate with the ability to work with, supervise and take directions from Black, white and Hispanic colleagues.It’s a win-win.Bret: It would be win-win if universities vastly expanded their enrollments, perhaps by doing more of the coursework online, so that every academically qualified student got in. For now it’s zero-sum: At Harvard in 2013, according to the initial lawsuit, the admission rate for Asian American students was 19 percent, even though 43 percent of the admitted class would have been Asians if based on academic performance alone.Gail: Have a feeling this isn’t going to be the last time we debate this issue. But Bret, we’ve had a busy news week and I want to check in on some of the big developments. Starting with … Hunter Biden! Am I right in recalling he’s not your favorite presidential offspring?Bret: He’s running neck-and-neck with Don Jr. and Eric in that contest, though I hear that James Madison’s stepson, Payne Todd, may have been the worst of them all.Gail: Hunter’s legal issues seem to have been pretty much resolved — he’s pleading guilty to two far-from-major tax crimes, getting probation and pledging to remain drug-free for two years.Bret: For which we wish him well.Gail: Two questions: Is this resolution fair? And what political impact will it have? Some Republicans are acting as if this is gonna be a large cloud over the Biden administration. That the president won’t be able to campaign for re-election without being followed by “Huckster Hunter’s Dad” banners.Bret: Hard to judge without seeing all the evidence. The U.S. attorney in the case, David Weiss, was appointed by Donald Trump and kept in his job by Merrick Garland to complete the investigation, so this hardly seems a case of partisan favoritism. And Weiss says the investigation is “ongoing,” which I have to assume means he’s taking a close look at Hunter’s fishy foreign business deals.But the political timing is lousy and plays into Donald Trump’s narrative that the Biden administration is weaponizing the Justice Department against him while letting off Biden’s son with a slap on the wrist.Gail: I’ve always believed that as long as there was no reasonable evidence that Joe was actually involved in any of Hunter’s smarmy let’s-make-a-deal-did-you-happen-to-notice-my-last-name schemes, the whole thing has no political impact whatsoever. Nobody but desperate Republicans cares about Hunter’s misdeeds, and if anything, I think he stirs sympathy for his father.Bret: Well, desperate Republicans means tens of millions of Americans. But since we keep touching on the subject of errant children of famous politicians, your thoughts on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?Gail: I know the polls suggest he might be a problem for Biden. A good chunk of that is just boredom with the current election picture and name recognition for Junior. Once voters take a serious look at him, his anti-vaccine craziness and overall right-wing loopiness, I’m confident those polls will plummet.Bret: I would call it left-wing loopiness, but go on.Gail: Nevertheless, if he runs as a third-party candidate, he always has the potential to screw things up — just a sliver of votes in a swing state could do the trick. Which is why I’m so hostile to third-party presidential candidates.Bret: I don’t see him running, Nader-like, as a third-party candidate. But I think one reason some Democrats are rallying to him is because they are wary of the idea of a second Biden term, even if they think he’s done a decent job in his first.Gail: We were both hoping Biden wouldn’t run again because of the age issue, but here we are. And he’s still a thousand leagues better than Trump, who’s only a few years younger. So Joe’s the one.Bret: They see him as old and faltering, they don’t think Kamala Harris is up to the job if she needs to succeed him, and they worry that any Republican save Trump could defeat him. If Bobby Jr. wins in New Hampshire because Biden isn’t even on the ballot, it could shake things up, and he could wind up being the Eugene McCarthy of this political season: not the nominee, but the catalyst for change. I’ve been saying this for months, and I’m still willing to bet you a good Zinfandel that Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, is the surprise Democratic nominee next summer. Mark Leibovich seems to agree, by the way.Gail: All I will say is that I am looking forward to the Zinfandel.Bret: And speaking of catalysts, how about that Chris Christie?Gail: He’s not going to be elected president, but gosh I would so love to see him in the Republican primary debate this August. Think there’s a chance he’ll raise enough money to qualify?Bret: For sure. He’ll get it because he’s a bring-the-popcorn sort of candidate who will make the debates interesting and because a lot of the big Republican donors long ago soured on Trump and because all the other Republicans in the race look like a bunch of moral midgets auditioning for cabinet-level jobs in the next G.O.P. administration and because the choice of Ron DeSantis or Trump is starting to look about as appetizing as the choice between Vladimir Putin and Yevgeny Prigozhin — scorpions in the proverbial bottle who really deserve each other.Gail: This is the reason you’re my favorite Republican.Bret: Ex-Republican. Still conservative.Christie’s essential theory of the race is that the only way to defeat Trump is the “They pull a knife, you pull a gun” theory that Sean Connery espoused as the best way to defeat Al Capone in “The Untouchables.” Except Christie aims to bring a .44 magnum, a rocket-propelled grenade and maybe even some HIMARS artillery — rhetorically speaking, of course.Gail: Of course.Bret: Which is all another way of saying that he’ll tell the truth about Trump. It will be a joy to watch, however it turns out.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

Once considered an affordable, model city, Toronto is headed for an election while struggling with the same issues confronting other big cities that are trying to recover from the pandemic.The last mayor stepped down after having an affair with his staffer.The mayor before him was stripped of his powers after he admitted to smoking crack cocaine.It would seem that being mayor of Toronto, one of the four largest cities in North America, would come with some major baggage — not to mention its crumbling transit system, growing homelessness and sporadic violent crime.Instead, 102 candidates are on the ballot to lead the city, a record for Toronto, one that underscores the public’s discontent with the city’s direction.As voters in the city of three million — Canada’s most populous and its financial center — prepare to choose a mayor on Monday, Toronto is floundering through the litany of issues that are also confronting other urban powerhouses trying to rebound from the pandemic.For decades, Toronto was known as “a city that works,” lauded as a machine oiled by orderliness and livability, with a robust inventory of affordable housing, an efficient transit system and many other markers of urban stability.Now the city is in crisis after more than a decade of steep budget cuts for social services and the devastating withdrawals of fiscal support for housing in the 1990s from higher levels of government.Voters in Toronto, the most populous city in Canada, will choose from 102 mayoral candidates.An emergency shelter in Toronto that was built as a temporary pandemic measure. Lockdowns and social distancing rules compounded issues that had been affecting the city before the pandemic.The pandemic compounded issues with lockdowns that tightened revenue streams for the city and with social distancing rules that made running it much more expensive.In February, the city’s former mayor, John Tory, resigned after admitting to an affair with a staffer, leaving the city’s deputy mayor, Jennifer McKelvie, in charge.The next mayor will be responsible for reversing the city’s course and restoring the image of the office in one of its most difficult moments. This election is seen by many as a referendum on the fiscal austerity of Toronto’s two most recent mayors, who were both conservatives.“The good news is, this is turning into a change election,” said Jennifer Keesmaat, a former chief city planner who served under those mayors. “People are saying, enough already, you had your chance with the low taxes and the low level of investment.”No matter who is elected, the winner will face a lengthy backlog of deferred maintenance that will eat a significant share of the city’s revenues and encounter a budget shortfall of more than 1 billion Canadian dollars.The candidate leading in some polls is Olivia Chow, a left-leaning, veteran politician, who lost to Mr. Tory in 2014 and has announced a plan to address affordable housing by having the city build and acquire more units. Vowing to “build a Toronto that’s caring, affordable and safe,” she has proposed to raise property taxes, without saying by how much.Entertainers at Ms. Chow’s campaign rally in June. Her supporters barely filled half of the banquet space in a neighborhood that is a stronghold for liberal voters, a possible sign of the splintering support among the large field of candidates.An efficient transit system, a sign of urban stability, was one of the reasons Toronto was considered “a city that works.”But The Toronto Star, the city’s biggest newspaper, and the former mayor, Mr. Tory, have endorsed Ana Bailão, a longtime councilor the paper has called a “pragmatic centrist.” Ms. Bailão has said she would keep property taxes low in a city that already has among the lowest in the province of Ontario.The disinvestment in city services increased with the populist plea of former Mayor Rob Ford to stop what he called the “gravy train” at City Hall. Years of austerity budgets by his successor, Mr. Tory, followed. Both mayors appealed to voters who believed Toronto did too much for downtown residents and not enough for the city’s outlying regions.Mr. Ford, whose four-year tenure ended with him admitting to smoking crack cocaine, found ways to reduce the budget by millions of dollars, including by changing service levels for a wide variety of city services and cutting city jobs.Among the issues most exasperating Toronto residents is the dearth of affordable housing. The average rent in Toronto reached a record high of more than 3,000 Canadian dollars per month, according to a recent report by Urbanation, a real estate analytics company. And the city has a subsidized housing wait list that is now 85,000 households deep.The issue has become such a third rail that among the 102 candidates, not a single one has stepped forward to be the voice of the small faction of wealthy residents who oppose affordable housing developments that increase density.Activists say bold policies, such as rezoning some major streets to build up density and reducing fees and taxes on affordable housing developers, are needed to make up for Canada’s limited building of subsidized housing projects in the last 25 years.“We are so phenomenally behind in our housing supply,” Ms. Keesmaat said. “Tinkering at the margins is not going to be how we house the next generation.”Jennifer Keesmaat, a former chief city planner who served under two Toronto mayors. “People are saying, enough already, you had your chance with the low taxes and the low level of investment,” she said.Toronto had a surge of refugees entering homeless shelters last month.The affordable housing crisis has been exacerbated by surges in the population, which grew by a record one million people as Canada raised its immigration targets. A large share of the newcomers landed in Toronto and surrounding suburbs.The city also had an influx of refugees entering homeless shelters last month, rising from 530 less than two years ago to 2,800.Ms. Chow has proposed to address affordable housing by having the city act as its own developer to build 25,000 rent-controlled homes in the next eight years, as well as by buying up market value properties and letting nonprofits manage them.Liberal voters are split over how to address the city’s issues, and the sheer number of candidates, including a handful of big names in local politics, is likely to splinter the vote to the center and right of the political spectrum.At Ms. Chow’s first campaign rally one week before the election, her supporters barely filled half of a banquet space in a commercial plaza in a neighborhood that is a stronghold for liberal voters.“I’m not very impressed about the turnout today,” said Warren Vigneswaran, 76. He said he was on the fence about voting for Ms. Chow, concerned his property taxes would rise. “But she’s a leading candidate, and her policies are better than anybody else,” he added.Liberal voters are split over how to address some of the city’s biggest issues, which include affordable housing. More

Sarah McBride is no stranger to firsts: In 2012, she became the first openly transgender person to work at the White House, during the Obama administration.State Senator Sarah McBride announced on Monday that she would run for Delaware’s at-large U.S. House seat — a bid that, if successful, would make her the first openly transgender member of the U.S. Congress.The seat is currently held by Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester, a Democrat who said on Wednesday that she would pursue the Senate seat being vacated by Senator Thomas R. Carper, who is retiring. Both elections will take place next year.Ms. McBride, 32, is no stranger to firsts: In 2012, she became the first openly transgender person to work at the White House, as an intern in President Barack Obama’s administration. She won her Wilmington-based State Senate seat in 2020 with more than 70 percent of the general election vote, becoming the first openly transgender legislator in that position nationwide, and ran unopposed for a second term last year.Her candidacy comes during an onslaught of Republican-led policies that target L.G.B.T.Q. people.This year, 17 states have passed bills directed at gender-affirming care for transgender youth, a sharp uptick from the three states that had previously approved restrictions. And there are discussions to ban L.G.B.T.Q.-related information for K-12 students in states like Florida, where laws prevent public schools from teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity.Ms. McBride, also a former national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy organization, is likely to face a primary challenge in her solidly blue district. But she holds ample political capital in the state — helped by her relationship with President Biden, who wrote the foreword for the memoir she wrote in 2018. She also worked on the attorney general campaigns for Beau Biden, his son who died in 2015.Ms. McBride recently spoke with The New York Times about her candidacy. Excerpts from this conversation have been edited for clarity and length.What issues do you hope to prioritize in your campaign?There were so many pieces of the Build Back Better Act that were unfortunately left on the cutting room floor, and it is going to be critical for Congress to pick up those policies, like paid family and medical leave, affordable early childhood education and elder care. Those types of policies will be at the heart of my campaign, as will policies that I fought for in the Delaware General Assembly, like gun safety and reproductive rights. One of the issues where we have to continue to make progress is climate change. We can’t build a fairer, more just world if we also don’t protect our planet.A wave of bills in recent years have affected transgender people, like limiting transitioning procedures for children and restricting which bathrooms transgender people can use. What are your concerns going forward?The policies that you mentioned are wrong and unconstitutional, and they are an attempt by MAGA Republicans to distract from the fact that they have absolutely no agenda for families and for workers in our country. They are solutions in search of a problem. They are cruel, and we know that policies that target young people, that target parents, that target families, that target vulnerable people in our society, they never wear well in history. I truly believe that democracy only works when it includes all of us.What should members of your party do to respond to these laws?I’m incredibly proud that the Democratic Party has been unwavering in its support of L.G.B.T.Q. rights. We have seen Democrats from Montana, to Nebraska, to Virginia, to Delaware, who have made clear that attacks on vulnerable members of our communities, including L.G.B.T.Q. young people, will not stand, and we will do everything we can to stop them.People across this country are eager for politicians to appeal to our better angels and to focus on issues that actually matter to them. I don’t believe that targeting kids and parents for discrimination is a priority for voters in Delaware or across the country.Going into 2024, President Biden is struggling to maintain public approval. In your view, what should he and other Democrats be thinking about?Democrats have a strong record to run on, and there’s obviously unfinished work before us. This president has focused on working families, on recognizing that we all have a responsibility to one another. I think if this president continues to contrast his priorities with the invented problems and the culture wars of the right, that this president will win.There’s a sort of scrutiny that historically has come with being the first of anything. Are you concerned about backlash?There will certainly be attacks, but I’m no stranger to those. What I’ve demonstrated over the last few years is that I’m able to move past those attacks and focus on what matters to the people I represent. Congress is certainly different than the Delaware State Senate, but I am confident that when I get there, by focusing on issues that impact people of every party, of every ideology, and in every part of our state, that I’ll be able to find common ground with people whom I disagree with vehemently. More

With their party out of power, some Republicans in the state are worried that the former president could cost Michigan its status as a swing state.In front of a sold-out crowd on Sunday evening in Novi, Mich., former President Donald J. Trump lamented the decline of the automobile industry under Democratic rule and said he “stood up to China” to save thousands of manufacturing jobs.It was a speech he might have given in 2020. But then the script changed. In his first campaign visit to the state this year, Mr. Trump paired rants about free trade and manufacturing with culture-war jabs against liberals and criticism of his main Republican rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.The latter remarks received the most raucous applause at the Oakland County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner, which was giving Mr. Trump its man of the decade award.Statewide, however, the Republican Party is at a crossroads, with internal disputes among Trump-aligned factions whose candidates have faced a series of losses in recent years and an establishment wing that has all but lost any semblance of power.Mr. Trump’s full-throated embrace of election denialism and a crusade against “wokeism,” echoed by his most ardent supporters, have left some Michigan Republicans wondering about his chances in a general election — and if there is any possibility of stopping his candidacy before then.Though Mr. Trump won Michigan in his 2016 presidential bid, Republicans have struggled to garner statewide voter support since. They lost the governorship to Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, in 2018, and then faced another major loss in 2020 when Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the White House.But 2022 may have stung the most: For the first time in 40 years, Michigan Republicans lost control of both State Legislature chambers and failed to recapture the governorship, putting them out of power entirely. That year featured a wide array of candidates backed by Mr. Trump, many of whom embraced false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and subsequently lost their races.Oakland County underscores the party’s tumultuous past few years: Still G.O.P.-controlled in 2016, the region in the Detroit suburbs, home to the state’s largest population of Republicans, is now controlled by Democrats.Establishment Republicans have raised concerns that Mr. Trump himself is to blame for sustained losses, and that Michigan will slowly lose its swing-state status with his loyalists at the helm. Kristina Karamo, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully for secretary of state in 2022 and made voter fraud and election denial central to her campaign, won control of the state party apparatus in February.“Donald Trump decapitated the entire Republican establishment in Michigan,” said Jason Roe, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party who plans to support another candidate in the growing Republican primary field for president.“The reality is that other than Donald Trump’s surprise victory in 2016, all he’s done is lose,” Mr. Roe added. “So at some point, conservative voters in America have to decide if they want to be loyal to Donald Trump or if they care about the future of our country.”Party officials said more than 2,500 people were on hand for the event.Scott Olson/Getty ImagesThat perceived choice, however, was a nonstarter in Novi on Sunday, where dinner attendees paid at least $250 for a ticket. Organizers said over 2,500 people packed the Suburban Collection Showplace.In an hourlong speech, Mr. Trump frequently attacked Mr. Biden, looking past the primaries and ahead to a possible general election rematch. He criticized the president for what he called a “maniacal push” for electrical vehicles that would lead to the “decimation” of the state’s auto industry.But he also continued what is now a yearslong tirade about voting security. In attendance was Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former lawyer known for carrying out frivolous lawsuits to overturn the 2020 election, who received a standing ovation when acknowledged by Mr. Trump.And the former president received significant crowd approval when he said he would sign an executive order to cut funding from schools that support critical race theory and “transgenderism.”Rather than fault Mr. Trump for recent losses, many pointed the blame back on party officials, if they acknowledged that Republicans had lost their elections at all.“It needs a little bit more leadership. I think they seem to sway sometimes, and I don’t like that,” said Lisa Mackey of Plymouth, Mich. “We all have to work together, regardless of what side of the fence you’re on, but I think sometimes they’re not looking out for our best interests.”Mr. Trump praised Ms. Karamo, saying that she was a “hard worker who’s working very hard to keep this an honest election.” And some attendees, like Monica Job of Armada, Mich., offered their praise as well: “When she lost and then ran for the state party, that showed she’s not a quitter,” Ms. Job said.Doubts that the state party leadership can steer Republicans to victory in 2024 have become increasingly widespread — party activists are discussing how to generate funding outside the party apparatus, said Jamie Roe, a Republican strategist in the state, who is unrelated to Jason Roe.“I don’t think they’re communicating very effectively with the broad base of the party,” he said. “I just think that we have opportunity, and I’m praying that we don’t forgo those opportunities.” More

Supporters and party officials from the All Peoples’ Congress were sifting through polling data from the presidential vote when the military surrounded party headquarters.DAKAR, Senegal — Senior officials from Sierra Leone’s main opposition party on Sunday accused the country’s military of shooting live ammunition and tear gas into their headquarters, raising tensions in the small West African nation a day after presidential elections. Samura Kamara, the presidential candidate of the opposition All People’s Congress, had gathered his supporters, party staff and local officials at the headquarters in Freetown, the capital, to sift through data from Saturday’s vote when the military surrounded the building and fired at the crowds gathered outside, according to Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr of Freetown, who was inside the building.“There was a festive mood, people were playing music and dancing outside,” Ms. Aki-Sawyerr said in a telephone interview after she had been evacuated from the building on Sunday evening, coughing from the tear gas.A New York Times reporter at the scene saw a truck loaded with soldiers carrying semiautomatic weapons, and others holding tear-gas launchers. Reports of live ammunition being fired could not immediately confirmed.Drone footage showed the building engulfed in smoke, with tear gas canisters thrown around it.The Sierra Leonean police said in a statement on Sunday evening that supporters of the A.P.C. party had paraded through the streets of Freetown claiming to have won the elections, although results have yet to be officially announced.“As the situation became unbearable, the police had to fire tear gas canisters so as to disperse the crowd, which was harassing people on the road,” the statement said.Representatives from the government or the military could not be immediately reached for comment. A spokesman for the country’s national security agency denied that the military was present at the scene.Sierra Leoneans went to the polls on Saturday to elect their next president amid a crippling economic crisis and widespread doubt that either of the two favorites — the incumbent, Julius Maada Bio, and Mr. Kamara — can heal the country’s ills.Over the past year, inflation has reached its highest level in two decades. The national currency is one of Africa’s weakest. And Sierra Leone, one of the world’s poorest countries, has one of West Africa’s highest youth unemployment rate.Mr. Bio, a former military leader who participated in two coups during the country’s civil war in the 1990s, was elected president in 2018, beating Mr. Kamara in a tight race. While Mr. Bio is considered the favorite in this year’s vote, a runoff is considered likely; candidates need 55 percent of the vote to secure a victory in the first round.The unrest on Sunday came after violent protests over rising prices left more than two dozen people dead last summer, including police officers, which had raised fears of further tension ahead of the vote. On Wednesday, supporters of Mr. Kamara clashed with security forces in front of the party’s headquarters, but election observers said voting went without major disturbance on Saturday.The Carter Center, which has observers monitoring the election, urged parties not to release data before the country’s electoral commission. In a statement on Sunday, it also expressed concerns over the lack of transparency in the vote tallying.That afternoon, dozens of people were trapped inside the headquarters of the opposition party for more than an hour as they were about to celebrate provisional results in some of Freetown’s districts that appeared to favor Mr. Kamara.Uncertain of what was happening outside, and whether soldiers had penetrated the building, Ms. Aki-Sawyerr said she and about 20 people crawled toward Mr. Kamara’s office to escape the tear gas.Mr. Kamara said live rounds had been fired at his office’s door, and posted a photo of what appeared to be a bullet hole on social media.One woman was severely wounded and appeared unresponsive, according to a Reuters reporter who was there. Ms. Aki-Sawyerr said the woman had been brought to Mr. Kamara’s office.“I’m in shock,” she said. “I am sorry this is happening to my country.”Elian Peltier reported from Dakar, Senegal, and Joseph Johnson from Freetown, Sierra Leone. More

His party’s election victory comes as the country experiences strong economic growth, with voters seemingly willing to look past scandals and disasters that have tarnished his government.Greek voters on Sunday overwhelmingly re-elected the conservative New Democracy party, preliminary results showed, setting the stage for its leader, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, to strengthen his grip on power with an absolute majority and what he called a “strong mandate” for the foreseeable future.With his landslide victory, voters appeared to have overlooked his government’s ties to a series of scandals and embrace his promise of continued economic stability and prosperity.With 91 percent of the votes counted at 9:45 p.m., the party had 40.5 percent, and was poised to win 158 seats in Greece’s 300-member Parliament, far ahead of the opposition Syriza party, which was in second place with 17.8 percent, with 47 seats. The socialist Pasok party took third place, with 12.5 percent, and got 32 seats.In a statement from his party’s headquarters in Athens, the capital, Mr. Mitsotakis described the results as “a strong mandate, to move more quickly along the road of major changes.”He also said of those who had voted: “In a resounding and mature way, they put a definitive end to a traumatic cycle of toxicity that had held the country back and divided society.”Turnout, however, was just over 52 percent, compared with 61 percent in the first elections held in May, according to preliminary results. Earlier on Sunday, Greek television showed images of packed beaches following a final week of campaigning in which politicians had appealed to voters not to forsake their vote for the waves.New Democracy won the first election in May by 20 percentage points — the largest margin in decades. But it had fallen short of the votes necessary for an absolute majority in Parliament. Mr. Mitsotakis, who as prime minister had overseen a period of economic stability and tough anti-migrant measures, opted to head for a second vote conducted under a system that grants bonus seats in Parliament to the winning party.The gambit worked.Now, with an expected solid majority in Parliament, Mr. Mitsotakis will have more freedom in policymaking and will most likely spur international credit rating agencies to lift their ratings on Greece’s bonds — which have lingered in junk status — to the much-coveted investment grade, lowering the country’s borrowing costs.Mr. Mitsotakis was brought to power in the 2019 election, when his party also won 158 seats. He served as prime minister until May this year, then stepped aside following the inconclusive vote.He has vowed to continue focusing on prosperity, appealing to voters who seemed to overlook revelations about the wiretapping of an opposition leader by the state intelligence service, a fatal train crash in February that killed 57 people and a catastrophic shipwreck off Greece that killed hundreds of migrants as the government was facing fierce criticism for its hard-line migration policies.A pro-refugee demonstration this month in Kalamata, Greece. Mr. Mitsotakis’s party secured a solid parliamentary majority despite criticism of his government’s tough anti-migrant measures.Eirini Vourloumis for The New York Times“I never promise miracles,” he said on Sunday, “but I can assure you that I will remain faithful to my duty, with planning, devotion and chiefly hard work.” He added that his second term could “transform” Greece with dynamic growth rates that would increase wages and reduce inequalities, and he vowed, “I will be the prime minister of all Greeks.”Greece’s economy stabilized under Mr. Mitsotakis after a decade-long financial crisis that shattered Greek society and shook the eurozone. Growth this year has been twice the eurozone’s average, spurred by his government’s tax cuts, while wages and pensions have risen and large investors are again pumping money into the economy.These achievements have reassured many Greeks who feared a return to the uncertainty and upheaval of the crisis years, analysts say.“One should not underestimate what this economic stability and growth means in material but also in psychological terms for a country which has been on the brink of economic collapse in the previous decade,” said Lamprini Rori, a professor of political analysis at the University of Athens.Strengthening the country’s international image and position, and bolstering people’s sense of security and national pride, all meant a “positive calculus” for New Democracy, she said.The center-left Syriza is led by Alexis Tsipras, under whose watch Greece came close to leaving the eurozone in 2015. Mr. Tsipras had promised justice and change, calling Mr. Mitsotakis arrogant and his government “an unaccountable regime that is a danger to society.”On Sunday, Mr. Tsipras said the election result was chiefly negative for society and democracy. The fact that three hard-right parties were set to enter Parliament, along with New Democracy, was a “warning bell,” he said.Analysts said the opposition had trouble gaining traction amid a rejuvenated economy.“The opposition’s narrative was ‘down with the junta’ and ‘we’ve become a banana republic,’” said Harry Papasotiriou, a professor of international relations at Panteio University in Athens. “But people saw economic growth.”With New Democracy’s dominance pretty much undisputed, Mr. Tsipras is likely to face new questions about his future, as there is no clear potential successor to the charismatic former communist firebrand.A campaign ad in favor of Alexis Tsipras and the Syriza party, which he leads, in Athens this past week. Byron Smith for The New York TimesSyriza also had to contend with increased support for hard-left fringe parties, including Sailing for Freedom, which was formed by the former Syriza official Zoe Konstantopoulou and was poised to gain national representation for the first time. It picked up 3.1 percent of the vote, or eight seats.The support for fringe parties demonstrated the failure of both the Syriza and Pasok parties to convince voters that they can offer a dynamic opposition, Professor Rori said.Apart from Mr. Mitsotakis’s strong showing, the small, relatively unknown party, Spartans, did surprisingly well, and appeared poised to enter Parliament with 13 seats after winning 4.7 percent of the votes.The party, which has a nationalist, anti-migrant stance, had not registered in opinion polls until a few weeks before the elections in June, when Ilias Kasidiaris, the jailed former spokesman of the now-defunct neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, publicly backed it after his own party had been banned from running because of his criminal convictions.In a televised statement, the Spartans’ leader, Vasilis Stingas, thanked Mr. Kasidiaris for his support, which he said had been the “fuel” for the party’s success, adding, “We’re here to unite, not divide.”Other smaller parties on track to enter Parliament include the little-known ultra-Orthodox, pro-Russia, hard-right Niki party, with 10 seats. It started gaining support in the weeks before the May election.The presence of new smaller anti-systemic parties in Greece’s next Parliament will bring more voices into the chorus of criticism against Mr. Mitsotakis — but not necessarily in a productive way, according to Professor Rori.She remembered chaotic sessions involving Golden Dawn and Ms. Konstantopoulou, and fears a degeneration of Greece’s political opposition.“It was all about impressions, stalemates, toxicity,” she said. More