Elections

The images, which at first glance appear genuine and are interspersed with real photographs in a campaign video, purport to show Donald Trump hugging and kissing Dr. Anthony Fauci.As Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida begins to aggressively attack former President Donald J. Trump, his campaign has spread three images of the former president embracing Dr. Anthony S. Fauci that forensic experts say are almost certainly realistic-looking “deepfakes” generated by artificial intelligence.The images — which at first glance appear genuine and are interspersed with real photographs in a campaign video — show Mr. Trump hugging and kissing Dr. Fauci, who led the nation’s pandemic response and has been a target of harsh criticism from Mr. DeSantis. The governor has used the pandemic to contrast himself with his main rival for the Republican presidential nomination.A Twitter account run by Mr. DeSantis’s campaign posted the images, part of a video attacking Mr. Trump, on Monday. The news agency Agence France-Presse first reported that they appeared fake on Wednesday.The governor’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.Mr. Trump’s Republican allies criticized the DeSantis campaign on Thursday. Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio wrote on Twitter: “Smearing Donald Trump with fake AI images is completely unacceptable.” Representative Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia agreed, saying: “Those fake AI campaign ads need to be taken down immediately.”In turn, Mr. DeSantis’s camp suggested the images were obviously fake, comparing them to memes circulated by Mr. Trump and his allies. But those images — which included a video of Mr. DeSantis in a woman’s suit adapted from “The Office” and a “recording” of a conversation between Mr. DeSantis, Adolf Hitler and the Devil — were clearly intended to be humorous and easy to discern as doctored.On Twitter, Christina Pushaw, the DeSantis campaign’s rapid response director, shared a fake photograph of Mr. DeSantis riding a rhinoceros (a reference to accusations that he is a “Republican in Name Only,” or RINO), writing: “I think this might be an AI-generated image. Who knows?” The image, which appeared to be photoshopped, had earlier been posted by Mr. Trump on his Truth Social website.As the 2024 campaign heats up, the use of such deepfakes has been of urgent concern to those who study manipulated images, which thanks to new technology are easier to generate than ever before. While Americans have grown far more skeptical of reports in the print, digital and broadcast news media, experts said, they have been more likely to trust videos and images that they could examine with their own eyes. The advent of deepfakes could change that.“This is the big information security problem of the 21st century,” said Matthew Stamm, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Drexel University who reviewed the images of Mr. Trump and Dr. Fauci and strongly doubted their authenticity.After President Biden announced he would seek re-election, the Republican National Committee released a video with A.I.-generated images, including of China invading Taiwan, claiming to depict a potential future if he were to win again in 2024. Unlike Mr. DeSantis’s video, the R.N.C. ad acknowledged, in small white characters at the top left of the screen, that it had been “built entirely with A.I. imagery.”Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said the use of such tactics would only increase.“We will continue to see campaigns, state-sponsored actors, trolls and people who want to sow chaos use these fake images to drive their own agendas,” said Mr. Farid, who also concluded that the images posted by the DeSantis campaign were most likely fake.While he described the three images as “pretty clumsily done” — pointing to flaws in Mr. Trump’s hair and ear, as well as nonsensical lettering in what appeared to be a White House seal and an American flag with a bizarre pattern of stars — he said generative artificial intelligence was quickly growing more sophisticated. For instance, he said, the technology had already adapted to produce more authentic-looking hands, an early flaw in its realism.“These are well-known signs that an A.I.-based synthetic image generator was likely used to create these images,” said Mr. Farid, who added that some experts were beginning to systemically review campaign materials for signs they contain deepfakes.He said politicians would now have a ready-made excuse when genuine representations of their actions — such as Mr. Trump’s infamous “Access Hollywood” tape — appear in public.“They have plausible deniability,” Mr. Farid said. “They can say it’s fake.”Jonathan Swan More

Also, a victory for voting rights in the U.S.Fighting in the Donetsk region this week prompted U.S. authorities to say that the counteroffensive may have begun.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesUkraine mounts a major attack in the southA senior U.S. official said that the Ukrainian assault in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia appeared to be a main thrust of its long-anticipated counteroffensive to retake territory from Russia. The stakes are high for Kyiv and its Western allies.The Ukrainian forces in Zaporizhzhia included German Leopard 2 tanks and U.S. Bradley fighting vehicles, the official said. The attack involved some of the troops the U.S. and other allies of Ukraine had trained and equipped especially for the counteroffensive.Russian military officials said that their forces had withstood the assault and inflicted heavy casualties. The U.S. official confirmed that Ukraine’s Army had suffered casualties in the early fighting. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine, which has said it would remain silent on details.Stakes: If Ukraine fails to break through Russia’s lines, support could shrink — and Kyiv could come under pressure from allies to enter serious negotiations to end or freeze the conflict.Flooding: Russian forces shelled Kherson yesterday, striking near an evacuation point, hours after Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, visited the flood-stricken city. Rescue efforts are continuing after a dam was destroyed.The U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington. Kenny Holston/The New York TimesA victory for U.S. voting rightsIn a surprise move, the Supreme Court ruled that Alabama had diluted the power of Black voters by drawing a congressional voting map with a single district in which they made up a majority.The 5-to-4 decision was a surprise: The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has worked to erode the Voting Rights Act, a federal law that was enacted in 1965 to protect minority voters from racial discrimination.The case started when Alabama’s Legislature, which is controlled by Republicans, redrew the congressional map to take account of the 2020 census. The state has seven districts, and its voting-age population is about 27 percent Black.The decision means that Alabama’s State Legislature will have to draw a second district with a Black majority.Context: The Supreme Court’s recent rightward lurch — seen in decisions on abortion, guns, religion and climate change — has shaken public confidence in its moral authority.For decades, the Najiaying Mosque has been the pride of the Muslim Hui ethnic minority in Nagu.Vivian Wang/The New York TimesChina’s plan to remake mosquesThe mosques in Nagu and Shadian in Yunnan Province in China hold particular importance in the story of Beijing’s relationship with Islam, which has fluctuated between conflict and coexistence.They are among the last major mosques with Arab-style architecture still standing in China after a campaign by the ruling Communist Party to close, demolish or forcibly redesign mosques that has so far been met with limited resistance.But late last month, members of the Muslim Hui ethnic minority in Nagu clashed with the police after the authorities drove construction cranes into that mosque’s courtyard. Officials had said they planned to remove its domes and remake its minarets in a more “Chinese” style. The demolition was paused, but residents think that it’s inevitable.To Hui residents in Nagu, which our correspondent Vivian Wang visited shortly after the protest, the remodeling plan was a precursor to a more sweeping repression of their way of life.THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificChina has agreed to pay several billion dollars to Cuba to build an electronic eavesdropping center, which could be used to spy on the U.S., The Wall Street Journal reports.A poll has found that Europeans still mostly see China as “a necessary partner,” even as Beijing moves closer to Russia.Around the WorldA haze over the U.S. Capitol yesterday.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesSmoke from raging wildfires in Canada that has plagued the northeastern U.S. is spreading south and west. President Biden and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain met at the White House and pledged to work together to confront challenges posed by A.I., the economy and Ukraine.Prosecutors have told Donald Trump’s lawyers that the former president is the target of an investigation into his handling of classified documents, a sign that he is likely to face charges.Other Big StoriesA Syrian asylum seeker was arrested in France after an attack in a park in which four children and two adults were stabbed.The eurozone fell into a mild recession early this year.The U.S. suspended all food aid to Ethiopia, citing theft of the contributions.The Week in Culture“I’m good at a lot of things, but I’m best at performing.” — Alex Newell of “Shucked”Thea Traff for The New York Times Ahead of the Tony Awards on Sunday, our theater and culture reporters spoke to Jessica Chastain, Wendell Pierce, Ben Platt and other nominees about their craft. Here’s the full list of nominees.Satoshi Kuwata, the Japanese designer and founder of Setchu, won fashion’s most prestigious award for young designers.The job of a museum director is expanding beyond the art: Directors need to confront controversies ranging from looted art to issues of social justice.The fabled Cinecittà Studios in Rome are buzzing with activity again, thanks to modernized facilities and generous tax incentives.A Morning ReadDr. Sandra Hazelip, left, and Eleanor Hamby.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesIt’s never too late to travel with your best friend.Just ask Eleanor Hamby, 81, and Dr. Sandra Hazelip, 82, known by some as “the TikTok traveling grannies.” They went from Antarctica to the Grand Canyon in just 80 days, visiting 18 countries on a budget.Lives lived: Pat Robertson, a Baptist minister and broadcaster who gave Christian conservatives clout in U.S. politics, died at 93.ARTS AND IDEASA gay bar in Singapore.Ore Huiying for The New York TimesL.G.B.T.Q. life in AsiaFor Pride month, we asked our L.G.B.T.Q. readers to share their experiences. Thank you to those who told us about your joys and worries. I’ve lightly edited some responses.A reversal in ChinaJack, 38, moved to Beijing in 2008. At the time, “it felt like things were on the up for queer people.” The nightlife was thriving and activism was moving. “Everyone expected things would continue to get better,” he said. That all changed once Xi Jinping came to power, Jack said. Venues closed. Activists disappeared. Representation dwindled. “People withdrew into apps and the underground,” he wrote.Uncertainty in South KoreaA 16-year-old in Seoul, who didn’t want to share his name, said that there was little representation in the media or arts, and he knows only one other L.G.B.T.Q. person. “I’m a gay student,” he wrote. “I have come out to just a few friends whom I trust; it would be social suicide to come out publicly to everyone.”Muted relief in SingaporeSince Singapore repealed a ban on gay sex, some readers said life felt easier. Tan Jun Lin, 25, said that being gay felt less scary now, both because of the change in the law and because of growing visibility on social media. But he has still had to cut off homophobic friends and hide his sexuality from colleagues.“Pride doesn’t simply mean acceptance,” he wrote. At work, he told some colleagues about his sexuality, but they responded with a “stunned silence that clearly conveyed a concealed homophobia.”Frustration in JapanGaku Hiroshima, 33, lives in Kyoto. He is still aware of prejudice, he said, but in just a few years, he has seen attitudes change.“I feel the arrival of the zeitgeist of ‘making fun of sexuality is not cool,’” Gaku wrote. Kyoto’s City Hall is decorated for Pride, which he said “was clearly impossible a few years ago.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookDavid Malosh for The New York Times. Fold grated cheese into ground beef, instead of layering it on top, to make these moist burgers.What to WatchThese 10 movies celebrate New York City.What to Listen toDiscover the beauty of New Orleans jazz.Advice from WirecutterA guide to picking the best camping tent.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Night hallucination (five letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. I hope you have a lovely weekend! — AmeliaP.S. Gilbert Cruz, our Books editor, spoke with NBC about exciting new titles. He recommends “The Wager,” by David Grann, about an 18th-century shipwreck.“The Daily” is about the race to become the Republican Party’s presidential candidate.We’d like your feedback. You can email us at [email protected]. More

While many of them acknowledge that climate change is real, they largely downplay the issue and reject policies that would slow rising temperatures.As wildfires in Canada have sent masses of smoke over the United States this week, engulfing much of the Northeast in a yellow haze of hazardous air pollution, scientists are clear that we are seeing the effects of climate change. But the Republicans campaigning for the presidency have largely downplayed the issue and rejected policies that would slow rising temperatures.On Wednesday, even as the country experienced one of its worst days on record for air quality, with New York City especially hard-hit, former Vice President Mike Pence said in a town-hall event on CNN that “radical environmentalists” were exaggerating the threat of climate change.His response reflected what has become a pattern among Republican officials. Many of the candidates acknowledge that climate change is real, in contrast to party members’ years of outright denial. But they have not acknowledged how serious it is, and have almost universally rejected the scientific consensus that the United States, like all countries, must transition rapidly to renewable energy in order to limit the most catastrophic impacts.Here is a look at where some of the major Republican candidates stand.Donald J. TrumpAs president, Donald J. Trump mocked climate science and championed the production of the fossil fuels chiefly responsible for warming the planet.He rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations, mostly aimed at reducing planet-warming emissions and protecting clean air and water; appointed cabinet members who were openly dismissive of the threat of climate change, including Scott Pruitt as head of the Environmental Protection Agency; and withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement, under which almost every country had committed to try to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.President Biden rejoined the Paris Agreement and undid many of Mr. Trump’s policies, but the damage may not be fully reversible. A report last year from researchers at Yale and Columbia found that the United States’ environmental performance had plummeted in relation to other countries as a result of the Trump administration’s actions.Mr. Trump has given no indication that his approach would be different in a second term. He has repeatedly minimized the severity of climate change, including claiming falsely that sea levels are projected to rise only ⅛ of an inch over 200 to 300 years. But according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, sea levels are rising by that amount every year.Ron DeSantisGov. Ron DeSantis leads a state, Florida, that is on the front lines of climate change: It has been hit hard by hurricanes, which are becoming more frequent and more severe as the Atlantic Ocean gets warmer.But Mr. DeSantis has dismissed concern about climate change as a pretext for “left-wing stuff” and said on Fox News last month, “I’ve always rejected the politicization of the weather.”He has, however, taken significant steps to fortify the state against stronger storms and rising waters. Among other things, he appointed the state’s first “chief resilience officer” and backed the Resilient Florida Program, which has sent hundreds of millions of dollars to vulnerable communities to fund projects like building sea walls and improving drainage systems.Scientists support these sorts of adaptation efforts, because the climate has already changed enough that even aggressive emission reductions will not avert all the effects. But they are also clear that such measures are not enough on their own.Nikki HaleyNikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, has acknowledged that climate change is real and caused by humans, but she has generally rejected governmental efforts to reduce emissions. Her advocacy group Stand for America said that “liberal ideas would cost trillions and destroy our economy.”As ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration, Ms. Haley was closely involved in withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement. At the time, she said, “Just because we pulled out of the Paris accord doesn’t mean we don’t believe in climate protection.” Over the next three years, the Trump administration systematically reversed climate protections.But Ms. Haley has supported greater use of carbon capture technology to remove carbon from the air. She and some other Republicans — including another presidential candidate, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota — have presented this as a way to limit climate change while continuing to use fossil fuels. Many experts agree that carbon capture could be a powerful tool, but it is unlikely to be sufficient on its own, in part because of its high cost.Mike PenceMr. Pence has acknowledged that climate change is real. He said during the 2016 campaign, “There’s no question that the activities that take place in this country and in countries around the world have some impact on the environment and some impact on climate.”But that assertion falls short of the scientific consensus that human activity is the primary driver of climate change. He has also downplayed the severity, like in his comments this week that “radical environmentalists” were exaggerating climate change’s effects. And as vice president, Mr. Pence had a hand in Mr. Trump’s defiantly anti-climate agenda, including defending the decision to withdraw from the Paris accord by saying Mr. Trump had stood up for “America first.”Mr. Pence’s political organization, Advancing American Freedom, has denounced “the left’s climate radicalism” and called for a rejection of “climate mandates.” It has also called for expediting oil and gas leases and taking other steps to “unleash the full potential” of fossil fuel production in the United States.Tim ScottSenator Tim Scott of South Carolina has also acknowledged that climate change is occurring, once telling The Post and Courier, his home-state newspaper: “There is no doubt that man is having an impact on our environment. There is no doubt about that. I am not living under a rock.”At the same time, he has opposed most policies that would curb carbon dioxide emissions. During the Obama administration, Mr. Scott challenged a regulation that would have required utilities to move away from coal and adopt wind, solar and other renewable power. During the Trump administration, he argued for dumping the Paris Agreement. And last year, he voted against President Biden’s expansive climate and health legislation that will invest about $370 billion in spending and tax credits over 10 years into clean energy technologiesChris ChristieChris Christie acknowledged the reality of climate change before many of his fellow Republicans did. “When you have over 90 percent of the world’s scientists who have studied this stating that climate change is occurring and that humans play a contributing role, it’s time to defer to the experts,” he said in 2011.As governor of New Jersey, he announced a moratorium on new coal-plant permits, filed a successful petition with the E.P.A. to demand reduced pollution from a coal plant along the Pennsylvania border and signed offshore wind power legislation. But state regulators in his administration didn’t approve any wind projects — and at the same time, Mr. Christie withdrew New Jersey from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a multistate cap-and-trade partnership, and vetoed state legislators’ efforts to rejoin it.He also said in 2015 that climate change, while real, was “not a crisis.” Last year, he called for increases to domestic oil production.Asa HutchinsonAsa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, has not spoken much about climate change. But when he has, he has generally stuck to the Republican Party line, rejecting government efforts to reduce emissions.He criticized President Barack Obama’s power plant regulations and, in 2019, praised the Trump administration for its environmental deregulation. Shortly after Mr. Biden was elected president in 2020, Mr. Hutchinson joined several other Republican governors in pledging to sue if the federal government mandated emission reductions.“Our power companies have voluntarily embraced sources of alternative energy without heavy-handed regulation from government,” he said at the time.Vivek RamaswamyVivek Ramaswamy began his presidential campaign by claiming that “faith, patriotism and hard work” had been replaced by “secular religions like Covidism, climatism and gender ideology.” In an interview with The New York Times, he defined “climatism” as “prioritizing the goal of containing climate change at all costs.”He is also an outspoken opponent of environmental, social and governance investing, or E.S.G., in which financial companies consider the long-term societal effects — including climate-related effects — of their investment decisions.Mr. Ramaswamy supports using more nuclear power and has painted a conspiracy theory for why many environmentalists oppose it. “The problem with nuclear energy is it’s too good,” he claimed on Twitter this April. “And if you solve the ‘clean energy problem’ activists lose their favorite Trojan Horse for advancing ‘global equity’ by penalizing the West.”But many environmental activists cite concerns about the safe storage of nuclear materials and the potential for accidents as the reason for their opposition — though they are by no means united in their stance, and many support nuclear power as a carbon-free source of energy.Doug BurgumGov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota has pushed harder to address climate change than most Republicans by actively identifying carbon neutrality as a goal: In 2021, he announced that he wanted North Dakota to reach it by 2030.He wants to do so through carbon-capture programs alone, without transitioning away from fossil fuels. (Climate scientists are skeptical that this is possible, even as they agree the technology holds promise.)Mr. Burgum, who created a tax incentive for one form of carbon capture, argued in an interview with Future Farmer magazine in 2021 that his policies showed “North Dakota can reach the end goal faster with innovation and free markets and without the heavy hand of government mandates and regulation.” More

GOFFSTOWN, N.H. — After watching Chris Christie lambaste Donald Trump at the standing-room-only town hall where he announced his presidential campaign, Catherine Johnson, who grew up in Republican political circles, was delighted. “It was vintage Chris Christie and I loved it,” said Johnson, a 63-year-old retiree. “I believe I know where he stands on the issues. And I love where he stands on Donald Trump.”Johnson, whose father, William Johnson, was once the head of New Hampshire’s Republican Party, supported Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, when he ran for president in 2016. She’s planning to volunteer for him this time around. “Governor Christie still reminds me of what a moderate Republican is,” she said. She was happy that he hadn’t spoken about banning books or critical race theory; at the packed event, which went on for more than two hours, culture war issues barely came up. “Honestly, we don’t care about that stuff very much,” Johnson said. “I know I don’t.”But to vote for Christie in the primary, Johnson would have to change her voter registration, because during Trump’s presidency she became a Democrat. And though she’s not thrilled with Joe Biden — “It’s hard for me to watch him give a speech because he’s so prone to gaffes,” she said — she’s not even sure she’d vote for Christie in the general, because she fears a Republican president would empower the “crazy” Republicans in the House and the Senate. “If Chris Christie is the nominee,” she said, “I’m going to have to think really hard about my vote.”Christie’s problem is that he’s running for the nomination of a party that no longer exists. In a G.O.P. where people like Johnson still felt at home, his pitch, a wholesale rejection not just of Trump but also of Trumpism, would make sense. But that Republican Party is dead; by backing Trump in 2016, Christie helped kill it. So it’s hard to figure out what he thinks he’s up to, even if his kamikaze attacks on the ex-president — “a lonely, self-consumed, self-serving mirror hog” — are fun to watch.The ex-governor certainly has fans. At his launch event here, you could almost see how he’d convinced himself that he might have a chance. A standing ovation will do that for you. I’d expected at least a few wary conservatives, if not outright MAGA trolls, in the crowd. But while there were Trump supporters protesting outside, the auditorium at Saint Anselm College was full of people hungry for Christie’s message. I asked David Dickey, who’d voted for Trump twice but turned against him after Jan. 6, what he’d do if Trump was the nominee again. He’d never vote for Biden, he said. Instead, he just wouldn’t cast a ballot.Mark Peterson for The New York TimesMark Peterson for The New York TimesThere aren’t nearly enough people like this, however, for Christie to win the Republican nomination. One March poll found that while only 40 percent of registered voters view Trump favorably, 81 percent of Republicans do. Christie seems to believe he can change these numbers. He argued, in fact, that there are no such things as “Trump voters,” only people who voted for Trump. “I don’t think he owns them,” he said during the town hall. “He thinks he owns them.” After 2016, Christie said, Trump also thought he owned the general electorate. “And what did they show him in 2020? Not so fast.”But the general electorate changed only around the edges between 2016 and 2020. Whereas to have a chance, Christie would have to catalyze a moral and ideological revolution inside his party.His central insight, that the only way to beat Trump is by taking him on directly, is almost certainly correct. It was a pleasure to watch him mock his passive-aggressive competitors with their coded criticisms of the ex-president. He intoned, with mock earnestness, “We need a leader who looks forward, not backwards.” The crowd burst out laughing. Then, as if solving a puzzle, he exclaimed: “Oooh! You’re talking about the way he still thinks the 2020 election was stolen! And you won’t say it wasn’t stolen!”It was even more amusing listening to Christie tear into Trump. He called him a “bitter, angry man who wants power back for himself” and told a story about Trump urging him, when he was governor, to declare bankruptcy for the State of New Jersey. He imitated Trump like Alec Baldwin would on “Saturday Night Live.” He even went after Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner — whose father, you’ll remember, he helped put in prison when he was a prosecutor — for the $2 billion investment Kushner secured from a fund led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. “The grift from this family is breathtaking,” he said.But my enjoyment of his newfound Resistance shtick doesn’t bode well for Christie. The people he needs to win over are not liberal New York Times columnists, but voters who hate liberal New York Times columnists. The trick, for a Republican, is going to be painting Trump as a weak loser who will sabotage right-wing priorities. At times Christie tried to do this, as when he criticized Trump for his failure to build the border wall and repeal the Affordable Care Act. But many of his criticisms were decidedly centrist. He attacked Trump for “idolizing” Vladimir Putin and trying to extort President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, admitting, in an offhand line, that Biden deserves admiration for uniting Europe against Russian aggression. He praised John McCain, expounded on the necessity of compromise and agreed with one questioner that Trump had “traumatized” the country.At one point, in response to a question about drug prices, Christie spoke about the need to protect pharmaceutical innovation, lauding Pfizer’s investment in mRNA vaccines. I appreciate that he won’t pander to his party’s Covid skepticism, but I also can’t imagine this going over well with the Republican electorate. Later, in response to a question about “reproductive justice” from a young woman who appeared to be pro-choice, he said the matter should be entirely left up to the states, which should be free to enact laws as permissive or as restrictive as they wish. That might be a good stance for a general election, but it is sure to alienate influential right-wing activists.So what is Christie up to? One theory is that he wants to redeem himself after his humiliating embrace of Trump by filleting him on the debate stage, much as he did to Marco Rubio in 2016. But to qualify for the debates, Republican candidates must have at least 1 percent support across several polls, have at least 40,000 individual donors from 20 states or territories and pledge to support whoever wins the Republican nomination. Even if Christie clears the polling and donor thresholds, he’s already sworn never to back Trump again, and his entire campaign is premised on Trump’s total unfitness.Maybe Alan Steinberg, a former Bush administration official and a columnist for Insider NJ, was on to something when he speculated that Christie might eventually run as an independent. “Given the virtual impossibility of Christie winning the 2024 G.O.P. presidential nomination, would he be willing to accept the role of the presidential candidate of a 2024 center-right independent party?” Steinberg wrote in April. After all, if Trump is ultimately nominated to face Biden, a contest most Americans do not want to reprise, the clamor for third-party candidates is likely to be intense.Or maybe Christie really thinks the force of his personality is so great that he can single-handedly turn his party around. “I’ve seen some of the press coverage of me getting ready to run, and there’s this thing like, ‘Christie doesn’t really care about winning, all he cares about doing is destroying Trump,’” he said. “Now let me ask you something. How are those two things mutually exclusive?” The crowd burst into applause. A test for Christie will be whether he can sustain his bluster in front of an audience that doesn’t start out on his side.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

State courts that struck down Democrats’ gerrymandered maps a year ago are poised to decide a renewed legal contest over whether to grant them another chance.A year ago, Democrats were taken to task by New York’s highest court for attempting to gerrymander the state’s congressional districts, and saw their tilted map replaced by more neutral lines that helped Republicans flip four House seats.Now, with a 2024 rematch approaching, Democratic leaders in Washington and Albany are reviving a legal battle to reopen the mapmaking process and potentially pull the lines back in their direction.Lawyers paid by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee are expected to argue before appellate judges in Albany on Thursday in favor of scrapping the court-drawn districts, and returning the mapmaking powers to New York’s beleaguered redistricting commission — and ultimately the State Legislature that gerrymandered the lines in the first place.The case will almost certainly rise to the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, in the coming months. And while a ruling may turn on competing readings of the State Constitution, its significance is unmistakably political, with far-reaching implications for the balance of power in Washington.Under the current maps drawn by a court-appointed expert, New York is one of the nation’s most competitive House battlegrounds. But if the Legislature is once again given a say, Democratic lawmakers could conceivably flip as many as six of the 11 seats now held by Republicans, offsetting potential Republican gains from a similar case playing out in the Southeast.“With the likelihood Republicans will re-gerrymander the lines in North Carolina, the legal fight over New York’s lines could determine whether Democrats stay in contention for House control in 2024,” said Dave Wasserman, an elections analyst with the Cook Political Report.The redistricting battle in New York last year wound its way to the office of Jonathan Cervas at Carnegie Mellon University. Mr. Cervas drew the new district maps for the state.Ross Mantle for The New York TimesHe called the suit “pretty close to must-win for Hakeem Jeffries to have a shot at becoming speaker.”Legal experts are uncertain about the Democrats’ chances of success. Republicans already convinced a lower court judge to dismiss the case. But Democrats are newly optimistic that the lawsuit will ultimately be upheld, given the shifting composition of the state’s top court, where a new chief and associate judge have pushed the bench leftward this spring.Whatever happens, New York promises to be perhaps the most contested state in the nation for House races next year. Republicans outperformed expectations in New York during the 2022 midterm elections, leaving their candidates positioned to defend six districts President Biden won in 2020, two by double digits.“We think our chances are good, but it’s not something we are relying on,” said Jay Jacobs, the Democrats’ state party chairman. “If it happens, it’s a bonus.”But as an analysis by Mr. Wasserman has shown, rearranging those six districts even slightly could make the task nearly prohibitive for Republicans to win in some places. Both parties have begun taking that possibility more seriously.The court case was proceeding this week as Democrats in Albany used the final days of this year’s legislative session to try to shore up their electoral prospects in other ways. Democratic supermajorities in both legislative chambers appeared poised to adopt changes weakening New York’s new publicly financed donor-matching program in ways that would benefit incumbents.Fair Elections for New York, a coalition of government watchdog groups that had hailed the new system for trying to diminish the influence of big-money donors in politics, warned that the tweaks could “severely roll back the progress” just as the public financing system takes effect.Republicans, who have aggressively pursued their own gerrymanders in other states, leveled similar criticisms at New York Democrats about the attempt at a redistricting do- over. Savannah Viar, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the Democrats were “weaponizing the courts to rig the game.”“The Democrats, despite all of their rhetoric about fair elections and protecting democracy, are trying to subvert democracy in New York State,” said John Faso, a former congressman who helped orchestrate the successful Republican lawsuit last year that undid the Democrats’ preferred district lines. Like last year’s legal fight, the new case, Hoffmann vs. Independent Redistricting Commission, revolves around a set of 2014 constitutional amendments intended to remove partisanship from redistricting. They outlaw gerrymandering and create a new, bipartisan commission to draw legislative lines.That commission failed to reach consensus in 2022. After its members could not even agree to meet to complete their work, the Legislature commandeered the process and passed maps that heavily favored Democrats.The Republicans sued, and the Court of Appeals ruled that the Legislature had gerrymandered the lines, and violated the constitution by simply going ahead when the commission stopped working. With time running short, the high court told a trial court judge to appoint a neutral expert from out of state to draft replacement districts.In the new lawsuit, which counts several New York voters as plaintiffs, Democrats are not defending the initial maps. Instead, they argue that the court-approved mapmaking process also ran afoul of the State Constitution.“The people of New York are presently governed by congressional maps that were drawn by an unelected, out-of-town special master and rubber-stamped by a partisan, right-wing judge,” said Christie Stephenson, a spokeswoman for Mr. Jeffries, the House Democratic leader from New York. She added that letting the maps stand would be “undemocratic, unacceptable and unconscionable.”The Democrats’ lawyers have asked for the judges to step in to order the redistricting commission to reconvene, more than 12 months after it deadlocked. Doing so could prompt the commission to find new agreement. If it does not, however, the Legislature could step in and draw new lines, this time on surer legal footing.Republican members of the commission and their allies disagree, and are prepared to argue that the court-drawn maps put in place last year must stand for the remainder of the decade.A lower court judge, Peter A. Lynch, agreed with that position last September, when he dismissed the suit, ruling that there were no constitutional grounds to reopen the mapmaking process. Democrats’ appealed.A panel of judges who will hear the case on Thursday are expected to issue a ruling in the coming weeks, after which it will likely be pushed to the Court of Appeals.The composition of the court has been the subject of a tense, intraparty tussle since the retirement of the former chief judge, Janet DiFiore, last summer, not long after she wrote the majority decision striking down Democrats’ redistricting plan.The state’s new chief judge, Rowan Wilson, is expected to be more receptive to Democrats’ arguments than his predecessor.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesProgressives who run the State Senate rejected Hector LaSalle, the first chief judge nominee put forward by Gov. Kathy Hochul, before ultimately accepting the elevation of a more liberal alternative in Judge Rowan D. Wilson.The Senate objected to Judge LaSalle’s previous rulings related to abortion rights and unions. But Republicans and some neutral observers argued that liberal lawmakers were also shopping for a judge who would be more likely to take their view on redistricting matters.Democrats denied that, but may indeed have a more receptive audience in Judge Wilson, who as an associate judge, dissented from the majority opinion in the 2022 redistricting case. At the time, Judge Wilson wrote that the Republicans had failed to prove the congressional map was impermissibly gerrymandered, and concluded that the state constitution gave the Legislature final authority in redistricting.Two other members of the seven-person court shared that view in whole or in part. If they maintain those positions, that could leave the case in the hands of the court’s other new member, Caitlin Halligan, whose position is not clear to court watchers.Grace Ashford More

Gov. Doug Burgum’s quixotic presidential campaign has baffled even North Dakotans, but then again, many of the 2024 hopefuls have prompted the same wonder.With Gov. Doug Burgum’s money and his family’s vision, Fargo, N.D., has undoubtedly changed in recent decades. Broadway, its main drag, is packed with restaurants, cafes, retailers and offices lovingly converted from old factories.Parking lots have been turned into public parks. A warehouse saved from the wrecking ball now houses North Dakota State University’s architecture and arts program. With a population of nearly 127,000 — 16 percent of North Dakota’s total population — the largest city for hundreds of miles is growing, in size and diversity, with a liberal tilt.But as a base for a presidential run, Fargo is still the smallest of towns, closer to Winnipeg, in Canada, than to Minneapolis, the nearest American metropolis. The hamlet of Arthur, where Mr. Burgum grew up and where his family’s prosperous, century-old grain elevator dominates the flat landscape, is still more removed from the nation’s political currents. Even North Dakotans who express admiration for their governor’s wealth, business acumen and energy are baffled by his suddenly lofty political ambitions.“He’s a long shot, for sure,” said Brad Moen, 69, of Jamestown, N.D., who has known Mr. Burgum for 60 years and traveled 100 miles for his presidential introduction on Wednesday. “California, New York, Ohio, Florida — they’re the big dogs, not North Dakota.”Of course Mr. Burgum has a plan for winning the Republican nomination: eschewing the culture wars and getting the party back on a business-friendly economic message of low taxes, less regulation and can-do entrepreneurship.Fargo, N.D., with a population of nearly 127,000, is the largest city for hundreds of miles and is growing in size and diversity.Dan Koeck for The New York TimesBut first he’ll face the other new entrants in a G.O.P. field that as of this week seems largely set.Former Vice President Mike Pence has piety and consistent conservatism to remind evangelical Christians of what brought them to politics in the first place. Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, has his tell-it-like-it-is pugilism, as the only candidate willing to take on Donald J. Trump. Tim Scott, the senator from South Carolina, has hope and optimism. Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, has Trumpism without Trump.Yet all these options seem to have done nothing but carve up the Republican primary electorate that is not with Mr. Trump into ever more slender slivers — leaving the former president’s inviolable piece of the pie looking larger and larger with every new candidate.That has North Dakotans asking the same question that many other Americans are: What do these candidates really want — a cabinet post in a second Trump administration, a higher national profile for a future presidential bid, a vanity project after a long career? Mr. Pence is seen by many Republican voters as the ultimate traitor, the man they wrongly believe could have given Mr. Trump a victory in 2020 and declined. Mr. Christie is viewed with hostility by many Republicans because of his outspoken contempt for Mr. Trump — and with suspicion by anti-Trump Republicans because of his loyalty to him until now.As for Mr. Burgum, who knows?“I think that he is genuinely thinking this is a vehicle for promoting North Dakota,” Dustin Gawrylow, a conservative political commentator and activist in the state, said of Mr. Burgum. Or, he suggested, “he may have his eye on a cabinet position.”Tony S. Grindberg, a utility executive and former state senator, was at Mr. Burgum’s rally on Wednesday working through how the governor could pursue his quixotic presidential run and prepare to seek a third term in Bismarck.“Technically, he can,” he concluded, hopefully.Tony S. Grindberg, a former state senator, hoped that Mr. Burgum could pursue his presidential bid while preparing to seek a third term as governor if his loftier bid falters.Dan Koeck for The New York TimesMr. Burgum’s path to the White House seems particularly forbidding. His story is out of central casting: the son of a tiny town who as a teenager lost his father, and then channeled a natural entrepreneurial spirit into enterprises that included chimney sweeping, a business software empire and venture capital — all within the state lines of North Dakota.Mr. Burgum’s status as a billionaire traces back to Microsoft, which bought his company, Great Plains Software, in 2001 in a $1.1 billion stock deal that made him one of the richest men in the Dakotas. All that money will give him staying power in the race, but it cannot get him the 40,000 individual donors or the 1 percent in the polls that he needs to qualify for the Republican debate stage. It won’t make him a household name, and among some of the Republican faithful, it could conjure feverish images of Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder who features in many of the most outlandish far-right conspiracy theories.Even North Dakotans are not sure what to make of their governor. They can squint to see the politician they want to see.Jonathan Melgaard, 29, sees Mr. Burgum as the essence of nonpartisan leadership, an effective entrepreneur and bridge builder inspiring enough to lure him back from Colorado, where he worked for the Aspen Institute to help build a progressive, forward-looking Fargo. To voters like Mr. Melgaard, Mr. Burgum is the investor who promised to make oil-rich North Dakota “carbon neutral,” in part by backing an ambitious pipeline to bring carbon dioxide produced as an unwanted byproduct of ethanol from around the Midwest to the absorbent 300-foot-thick Broom Creek sandstone 7,000 feet under North Dakota’s surface.Jonathan Melgaard said that Mr. Burgum’s leadership drew him back to North Dakota.Dan Koeck for The New York Times“I am not a Republican,” Mr. Melgaard said. “I do not subscribe to conservative governance. I do subscribe to effective governance.”Mr. Moen waved off all that talk of carbon capture and electric vehicles and latched on to Mr. Burgum’s promise to bolster the state’s abundant traditional energy sources, oil and coal.Outside Mr. Burgum’s event, Shelly Reilly, 59, joined a small group of protesters determined to discount the governor’s nonpartisan business pitch and emphasize the bills he has actually signed, which banned gender transition care, abortion and the discussion of L.G.B.T.Q. issues in elementary schools.“I know people who have left because of him,” she said. “They’re leaving in droves.”Even Mr. Burgum doesn’t seem to know quite what to do with his record. He ran on innovation, vowing to diversify the state’s economy beyond agriculture and oil by expanding the technology sector and appealing to educated professionals with distance learning and thriving cities.Fargo shows that promise, but social policy will be Mr. Burgum’s legacy. In a recent interview with Joel Heitkamp, a popular radio host and the brother of former Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, Mr. Burgum acknowledged that the six-week exception for rape and incest in the new abortion ban would be so short that a woman might not know in time whether she was pregnant, but he said that if he had vetoed it, the legislature would have overridden him. He said the same thing about the anti-L.G.B.T.Q. rights bills, even as he insisted most of them codified what was happening in the state anyway.“He was the most exciting person to become governor in my lifetime,” said Earl Pomeroy, a Democrat who was North Dakota’s at-large House member for 18 years before the rising tide of Republicanism swept him out. He voted for Mr. Burgum, Mr. Pomeroy said, “but it’s been years of unspectacular leadership out of the governor’s office.” He added, “He’s been somewhat captive to the crazy legislature.”Fargo’s downtown is now packed with restaurants, cafes, retailers and offices lovingly converted from old factories.Dan Koeck for The New York TimesThe governorship was Mr. Burgum’s first elective office. He spent freely to win his race in 2016 and then spent freely to bolster his support.In 2020, Mr. Burgum clashed with the state House Appropriations Committee chairman, Jeff Delzer, especially over the governor’s prized project, a new Theodore Roosevelt presidential library near the Burgum ranch in Medora, N.D. After the conflict, Mr. Burgum funded a primary challenger running as a “Trump Republican” against Mr. Delzer.The challenger, David Andahl, died of Covid-19 before his name could be taken off the ballot — and won. Then local officials reappointed Mr. Delzer to the seat.The carbon dioxide pipeline, bankrolled by the oil and gas billionaire Harold Hamm, has angered activists on the right and the left.Yet Mr. Burgum’s rally on Wednesday was packed with past and present elected officials.“There are a lot of legislators that outright fear what Doug Burgum will do to them,” Mr. Gawrylow said. “Burgum has shown he is not afraid to put his money where his mouth is, and that is scary.”Mr. Heitkamp takes Mr. Burgum’s presidential ambitions at face value. He acknowledged the rampant speculation that the governor doesn’t actually believe he can beat Mr. Trump to the nomination and then secure the White House. But Mr. Heitkamp thinks Mr. Burgum is a believer.“He’s a nerd, and he looks in the mirror and sees something that others don’t,” Mr. Heitkamp, a former Democratic state senator, said. “When he shaves in the morning, he sees a president.” More

Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicHeading into the 2024 presidential election, a big part of the Democratic Party’s approach is to win through defense — to watch Republicans and promise voters that Democrats will be the solution to G.O.P. extremism.Some Democrats, however, argue that this is not a viable long-term strategy.This week, Representative Elissa Slotkin shares what happens when Democrats have a plan, and Megan Hunt, a Nebraska state senator, explains what happens when they don’t.Photo Illustration by The New York Times, Photos: Barrett Emke for The New York Times; Brandon Bell/Getty ImagesAbout ‘The Run-Up’First launched in August 2016, three months before the election of Donald Trump, “The Run-Up” is The New York Times’s flagship political podcast. The host, Astead W. Herndon, grapples with the big ideas already animating the 2024 presidential election. Because it’s always about more than who wins and loses. And the next election has already started.Last season, “The Run-Up” focused on grass-roots voters and shifting attitudes among the bases of both political parties. This season, we go inside the party establishment.New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

Pamela Price, a new district attorney in Northern California, is the latest to reopen cases that had seemingly been shut, including one from more than 15 years ago.Agustin Gonsalez was shot dead in 2018 by police officers in Hayward, Calif., when he refused to drop a sharp object during a confrontation on a dark street.Andrew Moppin-Buckskin was killed by Oakland officers in 2007 after he ran away following a car chase, hid under a vehicle and failed to comply with their demands.Two years ago, Mario Gonzalez died after he was pinned on the ground for more than five minutes by officers in Alameda, Calif.In all three cases, prosecutors determined that the police should not be criminally charged, seemingly closing the book.But shortly after she became the district attorney of Alameda County in January, Pamela Price initiated a new review of those cases and five others in one of the most extensive re-examinations of police killings launched by progressive prosecutors.Ms. Price’s review is notable because her predecessors had already cleared the officers of wrongdoing and two of the reopened cases occurred more than 15 years ago.As high-profile instances of police brutality shocked the public in recent years and raised questions about official law enforcement accounts, liberal prosecutors campaigned on the promise that they would review cases that they felt were hastily closed without charges. Their efforts to revisit old cases have won praise from the activists and liberal Democrats who voted for them.But the re-examinations so far have rarely led to criminal charges.“To reopen a police use-of-force case is, in many ways, a herculean task,” said Steve Descano, the commonwealth’s attorney in Fairfax County, Va. He lost in court after he charged two federal Park Police officers for the 2017 shooting of a man who fled a car crash, a case that the Justice Department previously reviewed and declined to pursue.The incidents almost never have evidence as stark as the bystander video showing George Floyd being pinned to the ground in 2020 for more than nine minutes by Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer who was convicted of murdering Mr. Floyd.The circumstances often are more ambiguous, the footage less telling. And once a district attorney writes a lengthy memo detailing why criminal charges are unjustified against a police officer, it can be difficult for a successor to overcome those arguments, absent new evidence.“Everybody is going to go through it again, and the outcome in all probability is going to be the same,” said Jim Pasco, the executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police. “And what’s Einstein’s definition of insanity?”The biggest hurdle for pursuing criminal charges is the wide latitude that officers have to use force. State legislatures, including California’s, have tried to narrow that ability. But officers generally can still use lethal force when they feel they or others could be killed, a level of immunity that law enforcement officials say is necessary to ensure the public’s safety.Pamela Price, the new district attorney of Alameda County, Calif., announced this year that she would review eight police killings, including one dating to 2007.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesAlameda County, Ms. Price’s jurisdiction, covers a large swath of the East Bay across from San Francisco, containing 14 cities and numerous police departments. In the county seat of Oakland, where the Black Panther Party emerged in the 1960s, a legacy of radical politics is intertwined with a troubled history of law enforcement. The Oakland Police Department has been under federal oversight for more than two decades.Ms. Price campaigned on a liberal platform that, besides reviewing old cases, included removing local residents from death row and resentencing inmates serving life sentences — an effort, she said, to restore public trust. Since taking office, she has directed her staff to seek the lowest possible prison sentence for most crimes.She said that in the past, prosecutors routinely gave officers a pass when they killed someone on the job, and she wants questionable police killings to face the same rigor that other criminal cases get.“Every case that we’re looking at now was determined under a double standard,” Ms. Price said in an interview. “Police officers received a different standard of justice than everyday people.”Ms. Price is among a growing cadre of progressive prosecutors elected over the last decade, beginning with the 2016 elections of Kim Foxx in Chicago and Kimberly Gardner in St. Louis, on promises of reducing jail populations and holding police accountable. The movement gained steam after Floyd’s murder.Some prominent district attorneys have since faced a backlash over crime concerns. Chesa Boudin was recalled last year in San Francisco, while Ms. Gardner resigned last week as she faced criticism for her handling of violent crime. Ms. Foxx is not running for re-election next year and has endured criticism from moderates and conservatives, especially for her support of eliminating cash bail statewide.In Maine, a police officer has never been prosecuted for an on-duty killing. But in July 2020, Natasha Irving, the district attorney for four counties, said she would seek charges for the 2007 police shooting death of Gregori Jackson, who was drunk and ran away after a routine traffic stop in Waldoboro, the town where Ms. Irving grew up.Three years later, however, Ms. Irving said that based on the attorney general’s review of the forensics from the case, she will not file charges.“It’s just not going to be a provable case,” she said in an interview.Karla Gonsalez stood at a memorial to her son at the site in Hayward, Calif., where he was shot and killed by police officers.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesIn the Virginia case pursued by Mr. Descano, Bijan Ghaisar, 25, was involved in a minor car crash and then fled in his Jeep, pursued by two officers who cornered Mr. Ghaisar in a residential neighborhood. When the vehicle moved toward a police car, they opened fire, killing him.Mr. Descano brought a case, but a judge dismissed the charges, ruling the officers reasonably feared they were in danger. His efforts to pursue the case further were rejected by the state’s attorney general and the Justice Department.Such reviews offer the possibility of justice for still grieving families but also may unrealistically raise their hopes. Karla Gonsalez, the mother of Mr. Gonsalez, the man who was killed in Hayward, said she was torn when she heard Ms. Price was reopening her son’s case.Television outlets began replaying the body camera footage of Mr. Gonsalez’s confrontation with police. For his family, all of the anger, grief and unresolved questions came rushing back. Why had the officers not tried to de-escalate the situation?“I was excited to know that it was going to be opened up again,” Ms. Gonsalez said. “At the same time, I was very nervous that it was going to be another roadblock, another failure.”Less than 2 percent of police killings result in charges, according to Philip M. Stinson, a professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University. That figure has not budged since 2020. The number of people killed by the police is holding steady — last year it was 1,200, compared with 1,147 in 2022, according to Mapping Police Violence.“From where I sit, nothing has changed,” Mr. Stinson said.In Los Angeles County, George Gascón, who was elected district attorney in 2020, appointed a special prosecutor to reopen four cases in which his predecessor declined to file charges.Ryan Young for The New York TimesIn Los Angeles County, George Gascón, who was elected district attorney in 2020, appointed a special prosecutor to reopen four cases in which his predecessor, Jackie Lacey, declined to file charges. He also asked an independent team of experts to review more than 300 previous use-of-force cases to see if the evidence warranted criminal charges.The special prosecutor, Lawrence Middleton, had secured convictions in a 1993 federal trial against Los Angeles Police Department officers for beating Rodney King. In the new cases, he has secured indictments against two officers in the 2018 shooting death of Christopher Deandre Mitchell, who was driving a stolen vehicle and had an air rifle between his legs when he was confronted by officers in a grocery store parking lot. (“Both officers’ use of deadly force was reasonable under the circumstances,” Ms. Lacey wrote in a 2019 memo.)The re-examinations themselves take time, and liberal prosecutors may yet file criminal charges against more officers in past cases. But they said that charges should not be the only benchmark of whether their reviews are worthwhile.“I think there is huge value to reopening a case if there is probable cause, or if there is evidence that seems compelling in any way,” Ms. Irving, the prosecutor in Maine, said. “Yes, part of it is to send a message to people who would be bad actors. Part of it is to send a message to families that have lost loved ones, or individuals who have been harmed, that they count.”Ed Obayashi, a California-based expert in use of force who trains law enforcement, said in 2021 that Mario Gonzalez did not seem to be a threat to the public in Alameda and questioned why officers restrained him before he died. The police had responded to a call that Mr. Gonzalez, 26, was acting strangely in a park and talking to himself.Mr. Obayashi said this week that he did not fault Ms. Price for reviewing the case, but he also felt that if there was consensus in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office under her predecessor, Ms. Price should not have reopened it.“It’s a big concern to law enforcement because these types of decisions, to revisit old cases that former prosecutors have decided that no charges should be brought against the officer, it’s political,” Mr. Obayashi said. “It’s politically driven.”Ms. Price’s review also includes two cases from 15 years ago that occurred seven months apart and involved the same officer killing men who ran away after traffic stops, including Mr. Moppin-Buckskin. The officer, Hector Jimenez, was cleared in each case and remains with the Oakland Police Department.“For the life of me I can’t understand what Ms. Price thinks she’s doing with those kinds of cases, some 15 years after they occurred,” said Michael Rains, a lawyer for Mr. Jimenez.In Hayward, the city agreed to pay $3.3 million to settle a federal lawsuit with Agustin Gonsalez’s family but said it was a way to support his children rather than an admission of wrongdoing. The city said in April that there appeared to be no new evidence that warranted reopening the case.Mr. Gonsalez was shot in November 2018 after police officers confronted him. He was suicidal and was holding a razor blade. He refused to drop the blade and approached the officers with his arms outstretched. That’s when the two veteran police officers shot him 12 times.Karla Gonsalez recently sat in her sister’s kitchen and described her son as a father of two who was an Oakland sports fan and often drove nearly 400 miles south to Disneyland with his season pass. In the corner of her living room was a makeshift shrine, with a flickering candle and a crucifix draped over his portrait.Cynthia Nunes, Mr. Gonsalez’s cousin, said her family was grateful his case was being reopened. But they want more.“Charges actually have to be brought forward, too,” she said. “The system needs to change.”Julie Bosman More