Elections

GOOSE LAKE, Iowa — “We’re like a bunch of blind bats. We human beings are, we millennials are, we Americans are,” Vivek Ramaswamy riffed. “We can’t see where we are.”Bats send sonar signals, which bounce off objects and allow the mammal to navigate. “So we do that, we send out our signals, and it bounces off something that is true, something that is real, like family. The two parents who brought me into this world, my mother and father. The two children who I brought into this world,” he went on. “That is real. That is true. That means something to me.”In person, Mr. Ramaswamy’s presentation is a lot more intense; it is also about a bleaker landscape of American life than the bright version of Trumpism he’s trying to project.“We’re hungry for a cause,” he said of millennials when he spoke on a recent Friday night in Iowa, in a navy suit and white dress shirt, not pausing too often for applause and walking the stage. “We’re hungry for purpose and meaning. And identity. At a point in our national history when the things that used to fill that void — things like faith, patriotism, hard work, family — these things have disappeared.” Instead, he said, “poison” and “secular cults” had taken their place.All of this — the bats and the void and the disappearance of our families from the collective American identity — was delivered to a county committee dinner in a friendly ballroom with an open bar, a buffet, patriotic decorations and a fun local musician playing country hits from the past.This is what a pro-capitalism candidate looks like in post-Trump Republican politics, in which the emphasis is on the creation of a national identity in the face of spiritual emptiness and the idea that big business and the customer aren’t always right.The next morning, at campaign events held at one of those cool digital driving ranges and at a pizza place with a beautiful old tin ceiling, the American identity crisis talk continued. “There’s more to life than just the aimless passage of time, going through the motions,” he said standing in front of what looked like a floor-to-ceiling image of a Pebble Beach fairway. “You’re more than the genetic attributes you inherited on the day you were born,” he went on to say. “You are you.”He is technically the business candidate, but not really. This is the elite corporate executive as culture warrior. Mr. Ramaswamy’s pitch in Iowa was not about the application of free-market principles to the federal government, at least not in the way you might expect from a pre-Trump Republican business candidate. Nor was it economic populism, either, not really, because his idea isn’t so much that corporations are ripping you off; it’s that they’re in bad-faith league with one another to advance liberal pieties.Thalassa Raasch for The New York TimesThalassa Raasch for The New York TimesThalassa Raasch for The New York TimesThalassa Raasch for The New York TimesTheoretically, he could be doing a business pitch. Mr. Ramaswamy started a pharmaceutical investment and drug development company that picked up pharmaceutical projects abandoned by other companies and aimed to bring the drugs to market. In 2020, as C.E.O., he refused to support Black Lives Matter and in 2021 was an author of a Wall Street Journal opinion essay arguing that online platforms were censoring people when they blocked accounts in the chaotic aftermath of Jan. 6, 2021. He has published three books critiquing the environmental, social and governance practices of BlackRock and other fund managers and started an anti-E.S.G. asset management firm.As Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review pointed out, Mr. Ramaswamy has chosen to “download and internalize” MAGA moods — shutting down the F.B.I., replacing the A.T.F., raising the voting age to 25 unless you pass a civics test or serve in the military or as an emergency worker. These are the kind of proposals that are drafted to please and anger the right people and never happen. He’s given $10,000 to the defense fund of Daniel Penny, the man accused of second-degree manslaughter in the subway chokehold death of Jordan Neely, and his campaign is selling a coffee mug that reads “truth,” with the words “wokeism,” “climatism” and “transgenderism” crossed out above. He has repeatedly portrayed trans people as mentally ill.As a Ramaswamy campaign memo recently said, “The mistake every other campaign is making is that they see their path to the nomination through Trump, when our path is alongside Trump.” In reality, many Republican politicians have seen their path alongside Mr. Trump as they wait for someone else to break him like a big piñata.Mr. Ramaswamy wants to restore an American identity that, in speeches, involves a lot of concepts but rarely anecdotes. That identity would involve the pursuit of excellence, which he described in an interview along vague, traditional lines — people achieving their maximal potential, free of societal hindrance. He contended this ethic is absent from corporate life. “I think that part of this is psychological, that in the moment people feel compelled to apologize for excellence,” he told me. To “be accepted as cool,” the most successful “have to apologize for the system that got them there by sticking the word ‘stakeholder’ in front of it,” he said, and called “the racial equity agenda” an “example of prioritizing a different value.”Mr. Ramaswamy came up in an elite world where some people employ the idea of charity or progressive impulses to get ahead, first in admissions, then in business, and they sometimes become deluded or self-interested ethical consumers. “Whatever justice is, surely it can’t be attained so incidentally, by just picking the right shirts, the right burgers and the right bankers,” he writes in the book “Woke, Inc.” He’s bothered by that thing many also dislike, which is a hedge fund putting in place a superficial diversity effort intended to disrupt as little as possible to prevent a lawsuit or make money, or a corporation with an aspirational brand made of cotton produced in the Xinjiang region of China.This is the world summarized by Sam Bankman-Fried last year in a DM he later claimed he thought was off the record: “this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us.”In “Woke, Inc.,” Mr. Ramaswamy’s solution is to separate politics and business. He argues that both stakeholder capitalists and Milton Friedman devotees miss something in the corporate system we have: A sole focus on fiduciary duty and profit maximization keeps corporations from becoming extragovernmental bodies like Dutch colonial trading companies.But it’s also not as if the only time anyone cares about racism in America is to sell Pepsi or to get into Columbia. The practical implications of keeping business and politics separate become complicated quickly for this reason; the economy is made up of millions of individuals who live in the larger world. “This is a business,” as Dolly Parton said of her decision to remove “Dixie,” the nickname for the South often associated with the Confederacy, from the Stampede, two dinner show attractions she owns. She didn’t want to offend prospective customers. What if Chick-fil-A wants to stay closed on Sundays? What if a company wants to market fratty beer to trans people and supporters as customers in and of themselves? What counts as maximizing profit or respecting the employees, and what counts as politics? What is politics?Over the past decade, many presidential candidates — especially the long-shot, unconventional kind in both parties — have talked in secular-spiritual ways about voids in American life and the corruption among elites. There are different theories of the case (technological change, inequality, institutional decline, loneliness), including the omnipresence of corporations and the emptiness of material goods for justice. The vision that markets and capitalism would liberalize the world and accelerate the realization of a pluralistic America, full of choice and privacy and respect, has begun to dim.Mr. Ramaswamy has isolated a problem in that vision (the hollowness of so much of corporate social policy). His national-identity-based explanation for the void is winning with some post-Trump conservative politicians who see the “power, dominion, control and punishment” that Mr. Ramaswamy said he believes are behind climate activism in much of American elite life. It’s a lean time for the sunnier version of a capitalist pitch — in which climate change is a problem but also a business opportunity, just like the valued employees and customers in a pluralistic, ever-changing American society.Katherine Miller is a staff writer and editor in Opinion.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

As Republican candidates enter the 2024 presidential race, Times columnists, Opinion writers and others will assess their strengths and weaknesses with a scorecard. We rate the candidates on a scale of 1 to 10: 1 means the candidate will probably drop out before any caucus or primary voting; 10 means the candidate has a very strong chance of receiving the party’s nomination next summer. This entry assesses Tim Scott, the junior senator from South Carolina, who announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination on Monday.How seriously should we take Tim Scott’s candidacy?Jamelle Bouie The odds that Tim Scott leaves the single digits, much less overtakes Donald Trump, are extremely slim, but I still think we should take Scott’s candidacy seriously for what it might say about the Republican Party after Trump.Jane Coaston We should take it far more seriously than we ultimately will.Michelle Cottle Maybe divide Ron DeSantis’s chances by Nikki Haley’s, then multiply by the square root of Vivek Ramaswamy’s.Ross Douthat The only reason to take Scott more seriously than his fellow South Carolinian Nikki Haley is that he has less of a national identity and brand, so there’s a little more room for him to surprise us on the campaign trail. For now, though, he occupies roughly the same terrain that she does: the donor-friendly, telegenic candidate of the multiracial future who just doesn’t have the populist edge required to satisfy the typical conservative voter’s far grimmer and more combative mood.Rosie Gray Like the other non-Trump Republicans entering the race, the odds are stacked against him. However, he’s already proved to be attractive to major G.O.P. donors and is popular in the Senate (not that that helped other Republicans much in 2016).Michelle Goldberg He’s a long shot, but we should take him more seriously than any of Trump’s other declared challengers. He’s beloved by the conservative elite, has a reported $22 million in the bank and would probably be the most formidable Republican in a general election.Liz Mair He’s unlikely to be the G.O.P. presidential nominee — but very likely to be the vice-presidential nominee.Daniel McCarthy Tim Scott is the most serious candidate who isn’t Trump or Ron DeSantis. That may seem like faint praise. But Republican primary voters have been eager to consider Black candidates in recent cycles: Herman Cain in 2012, Ben Carson in 2016. That eagerness gives Scott an opening.Alex Stroman Tim Scott is a serious candidate with a biography that in any other year would make him one of the likeliest nominees for the presidency. A strong finish in Iowa — a state tailor-made for a candidate like Scott — could still propel him to the nomination.What matters most about him as a presidential candidate?Bouie In terms of his assets as a candidate, he is one of the most prodigious and impressive fund-raisers in the Republican Party, which is a testament to his serious retail political skill. But what truly matters most is the fact that he’s trying to build on the things Trump brought to Republican politics while also trying to forge a different direction for the party.Coaston He is a candidate with both a self-concept and a policy direction. He is very conservative, but his conservatism is rooted in conservative policy, not just conservative performance. His police reform bill favored oversight rather than reducing protections for police in civil cases, for example. That’s not my ideal, but it’s one that I understand, at least.Cottle As the lone Black Republican in the Senate, he is an experienced elected leader who could help soften the party’s image as a bunch of angry, racist old white guys.Douthat From his perspective, what matters most is whether Ron DeSantis collapses and there’s a scramble to find a different anti-Trump candidate — or somewhat more plausibly, whether he can sell himself as a compelling vice-presidential candidate for the eventual nominee. From the country’s perspective, he and Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy are all reminders that the G.O.P. is, in its own way, a multiethnic big tent — but not in the kind of way that’s likely to make Scott its nominee.Gray For one thing, Scott’s run is historic in that he is the first Black officeholder to seek the Republican presidential nomination, as Jamelle Bouie recently pointed out. And his candidacy, like that of Haley, will be a test of how much support truly exists for the favorites of the old G.O.P. establishment.Goldberg White people on the right love Black conservatives who mostly absolve them on racial issues while indicting progressives. Mair Scott’s entire persona and approach runs counter to what is currently dominant in the Republican Party. He’s a very positive, optimistic and upbeat guy. You don’t find that often in today’s politics — in either party. He’s also smart and a very strong communicator, even when explaining complex policy.McCarthy His candidacy makes it harder to overlook Black men who support the G.O.P. In Scott, they have an example of success within the party. Nearly one in five Black men nationwide voted for Donald Trump in 2020 — Senator Scott would broaden the national conversation as well as the Republican field.Stroman He’s inspiring and doesn’t turn off moderates or MAGA supporters. He’s a conservative, but he’s not angry about it — a refreshing outlier when both parties are dominated by loud voices playing to their bases and ignoring the middle. If his major addresses (his 2020 Republican National Convention speech and 2021 response to President Biden’s first address to Congress) are anything like his campaign, I expect he will run a compassionate-conservative-style race that focuses on uplifting and uniting the country and making Americans feel proud again.What do you find most inspiring — or unsettling — about his vision for America?Bouie I think he, along with his fellow South Carolinian Nikki Haley, represents one vision for a multiracial ideological conservatism that might have legs.Coaston He sounds like a person who exists outside of Washington, in comparison to his party, which talks a lot about the evils of the Beltway while never leaving. Today, who is a Republican and who is a Democrat is shifting. No better example of that than Tim Scott.Cottle He’s aiming for a unity and optimism vibe — more “morning in America” than “American carnage.”Douthat Scott looks like the heir to Jack Kemp’s old blueprint for how the Republican Party could thrive in a multiracial future — with an upbeat, equal-opportunity, colorblind-capitalism-lifts-all-boats vision of the American experiment. This vision was too simplistic in Kemp’s era and way too simplistic now; it is, however, a piece of what a healthy conservatism should offer to the country.Gray Scott markets himself as a positive, optimistic, let’s-work-together guy, but his politics are in line with the most intransigent conservatives of his party. Whether this is inspiring or unsettling I guess depends on one’s point of view.Goldberg He’s a sunny and optimistic figure, not an apocalyptic culture warrior, and has a record of bipartisan work on criminal justice reform. I’d be very sad if Scott became president, but I wouldn’t be terrified.Mair Scott’s personal story really exemplifies why he believes what he believes about limited government and small-c conservatism, and why it will open up opportunities for many Americans who have historically lacked them. And Scott himself is an inspiring guy.McCarthy What’s most inspiring about Senator Scott’s vision is its integration of certain sound priorities old and new: stronger border enforcement, including building the wall that Trump proposed in 2016, combined with unsexy but urgent traditional G.O.P. themes like curbing the national debt. Scott is no national conservative, but he has learned some lessons from populism without forgetting what was right about older fiscal orthodoxies.Stroman He didn’t go to Fordham or to an Ivy League school — he went to Charleston Southern, a small Southern Baptist university near his hometown, North Charleston, where he announced his presidential campaign. He was raised by a single mother in poverty, and became only the seventh Black U.S. senator in American history. Through his story, Scott has the ability to attract new voters to the party — if primary voters will give him the opportunity.Imagine you’re a G.O.P. operative or campaign manager. What’s your elevator pitch for a Scott candidacy?Bouie Americans like a happy warrior, and Scott is nothing if not a happy warrior.Coaston He speaks to an optimistic conservatism — one that believes in its own rhetoric.Cottle He has a great back story, and he’d make a heckuva V.P. candidate.Douthat If the Republican Party could just seem normal, friendly and nonapocalyptic for more than five minutes at a time, it could beat Joe Biden by five points. Why not nominate Scott and try it?Gray Scott has a compelling story and a more positive message than mudslinging rivals like Trump and DeSantis. He could be attractive to voters who are sick of the back-and-forth and want a more hopeful-seeming alternative.Goldberg At a time when the Democratic Party is losing Black men, a Tim Scott nomination would be a nightmare for Joe Biden.Mair Tim Scott offers sunny optimism for a great country whose best days really are ahead of it.McCarthy Tim Scott is the Republican answer to the 1619 Project.Stroman Trump has to win Iowa. But evangelicals win Iowa, and Tim Scott is an evangelical.Jane Coaston (@janecoaston) is a staff writer in Opinion.Michelle Cottle (@mcottle) is a member of The Times’s editorial board.Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) is a political reporter.Jamelle Bouie, Ross Douthat and Michelle Goldberg are Times columnists.Liz Mair (@LizMair) has served as a campaign strategist for Scott Walker, Roy Blunt, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina and Rick Perry. She is the founder and president of Mair Strategies.Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.Alex Stroman (@AlexStroman) is a former spokesman with the Republican National Committee and executive director of the South Carolina Republican Party.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

With his 2024 campaign imminent, Ron DeSantis pointed to how he could tilt the court further to the right. He also highlighted his ability to serve for eight years as president, unlike Donald Trump.On the eve of declaring his candidacy for president, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has begun articulating a new rationale for why Republicans should nominate him over former President Donald J. Trump, saying he could “fortify” the Supreme Court’s conservative majority during a potential eight years in office.“You would have a 7-2 conservative majority on the Supreme Court that would last a quarter-century,” Mr. DeSantis said on Monday during an address to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Orlando. “So this is big stuff, very important that that gets done right.”His comments seemed to signal a new avenue of attack against Mr. Trump, who could serve for only another four years in the White House. Conservatives have praised Mr. Trump for establishing a strong 6-to-3 majority on the court, which overturned Roe v. Wade last year, a decades-long ambition of Republicans.Mr. DeSantis, who is expected to declare his candidacy this week, suggested that he would appoint similarly conservative justices — but that he would have the opportunity to do so for longer than Mr. Trump.“I think if you look over, you know, the next two presidential terms, there is a good chance that you could be called upon to seek replacements for Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito,” Mr. DeSantis said, referring to two of the court’s most staunchly conservative members. “And the issue with that is you can’t really do better than those two. They are the gold standard for jurisprudence.”The governor also seemed to criticize Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2005 but has sometimes voted with the court’s liberal wing. Mr. DeSantis warned that replacing a justice like Justice Thomas with a jurist in the mold of Justice Roberts would “actually see the court move to the left.” He also indicated that the next president could have an opportunity to replace Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a liberal who has been on the court since 2009.In Florida, Mr. DeSantis has reshaped the State Supreme Court with conservative justices, removing a potential roadblock to enacting his agenda.While Mr. DeSantis has not talked much about his faith on a national tour ahead of his presidential run, he told the audience of Christian conservatives in Orlando about bringing home water from the Sea of Galilee in Israel to baptize his children. He also praised the nation of Israel, calling it “the cradle of our Judeo-Christian civilization.”“Those are the values that undergird our Constitution and our republic here in America,” Mr. DeSantis added. More

A surge in government spending before the election this month and pressure on the country’s currency could hit the economy in coming months, experts say.Inflation in Turkey remains stubborn at 44 percent. Consumers have watched their paychecks buy less and less food as the months tick by. And now, government largess and efforts to prop up the currency are threatening economic growth and could push the country into recession.It’s a tough challenge for whoever wins the runoff election for the presidency on Sunday. And it’s an especially complicated one if President Recep Tayyip Erdogan remains in power because his policies, including some aimed at securing his re-election, have exacerbated the problems.“The relatively strong economy of the past several quarters has been the product of unsustainable policies, so there will most likely be a contraction or recession,” said Brad W. Setser, an expert in global trade and finance at the Council on Foreign Relations.“Working Turks will feel poorer when the lira falls in value,” he said of the local currency. “People will find it harder to find a job and harder to get a salary that covers the cost of living.”In the run-up to the election, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rolled out a range of policies aimed at blunting the immediate effects of inflation on voters. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesEconomic turmoil in Turkey, one of the world’s 20 largest economies, could echo internationally because of the country’s broad network of global trade ties. It will also likely dominate the immediate agenda of whichever candidate prevails in the runoff election on May 28.During Mr. Erdogan’s first 10 years in power, he oversaw dramatic economic growth that transformed Turkish cities and lifted millions of people out of poverty. But some of those gains have been eroded in recent years. The national currency has lost 80 percent of its value against the dollar since 2018. And annual inflation, which reached more than 80 percent at its peak last year, has come down but was still 44 percent last month, leaving many feeling poorer.While economic orthodoxy usually calls for raising interest rates to combat inflation, Mr. Erdogan has insisted on doing the opposite, repeatedly reducing them, which economists say has exacerbated the problem.During his election campaign, Mr. Erdogan showed no intention of changing his policies, doubling down on his belief that low interest rates would help the economy grow by providing cheap credit to increase Turkish manufacturing and exports.“We will work relentlessly until we make Turkey one of the 10 largest economies in the world,” he said at an election rally this month. “If today there is a reality in Turkey that does not allow its pensioners, workers and civil servants to be crushed under inflation, we succeeded by standing back to back with you.”In other rallies, he vowed to continue lowering interest rates and to bring down inflation.“You will see as the interest rates go down, so will inflation” he told supporters in Istanbul in April.In the run-up to the election, with the cost-of-living crisis on many voters’ minds, Mr. Erdogan launched a range of expensive policies aimed at blunting the immediate effects of inflation on voters. He repeatedly raised the minimum wage, increased civil servant salaries and changed regulations to allow millions of Turks to receive early government pensions. All of those commitments must be honored by whomever wins the election, meaning greater government spending into the future.Exacerbating the economic stress is the vast damage caused by the powerful earthquakes that destroyed large parts of southern Turkey in February. In March, a government assessment put the damage at $103 billion, or about 9 percent of this year’s gross domestic product.Rubble of buildings destroyed in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, by the earthquakes that struck in March.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesAt the same time, the government has heavily intervened to slow the decline of the Turkish lira, mostly by selling foreign currency reserves. During one week in early May, the reserves declined by $7.6 billion to $60.8 billion, according to central bank data, the largest such decline in more than two decades.To address that, Mr. Erdogan has reached agreements with countries including Qatar, Russia and Saudi Arabia that would help shore up reserves in Turkey’s central bank. Saudi Arabia announced a $5 billion deposit in March, and Russia agreed to delay at least some of Turkey’s payment for natural gas imports until after the election.The terms of most of these agreements have not been made public, but economists said they were part of a short-term strategy by Mr. Erdogan more focused on winning the election than on ensuring the country’s long-term financial health.Should Mr. Erdogan win, as many analysts expect he will, few expect him to dramatically change course.“I don’t think the current government has a plan to fix this because they don’t admit that these problems are due to policy mistakes,” said Selva Demiralp, a professor of economics at Koc University in Istanbul. “I don’t see a way out for the current government.”A vegetable market in Kayseri, Turkey. Inflation has left many Turkish people feeling poorer.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesMr. Erdogan came out ahead in the first round of elections on May 14 with 49.2 percent of the vote but fell short of the majority needed to win outright. The main opposition candidate, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, won 45 percent, and a third candidate, Sinan Ogan, won 5.2 percent. Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Kilicdaroglu will compete in the runoff.Most analysts give Mr. Erdogan an edge because of his strong showing in the first round and the likelihood that he will inherit significant votes from Mr. Ogan, who formally endorsed Mr. Erdogan on Monday. Mr. Erdogan’s political party and its allies also maintained their majority in Parliament, allowing Mr. Erdogan to argue that voters should choose him to avoid a divided government.If Mr. Erdogan sticks to the status quo, economists expect the currency to sink further, the government to impose restrictions on foreign-currency withdrawals and the state to run short of foreign currency to pay its bills.In its campaign, the political opposition promised to follow more orthodox economic policies, including raising interest rates to bring down inflation and restoring the independence of the central bank, whose policies are widely believed to be overseen by Mr. Erdogan himself.A market in Istanbul. Whichever candidate wins Turkey’s runoff election will face a significant economic crisis.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesBut if he becomes president, Mr. Kilicdaroglu will inherit a financial situation that will require immediate attention, economic advisers to opposition parties have said.In addition to honoring the additional spending added by Mr. Erdogan in recent months, a new administration would need to respect his financial arrangements with other countries, the terms of many of which are not clear.“What are the political terms? What are the financial terms?” said Kerim Rota, who is in charge of economic policy for Gelecek Party, a member of the opposition coalition. “Unfortunately, none of those numbers are reflected in the Turkish statistics.”If it came to power, the opposition would need both short- and medium-term plans to bolster the government’s finances and restore the confidence of investors, he said. But restricting its ability to maneuver would be the majority in parliament led by Mr. Erdogan’s party and its allies.“We need a very credible medium-term program, but the question is if the majority of the parliament is on the A.K.P. side, how can you manage a five-year program?” he said, using another name for Mr. Erdogan’s party.Gulsin Harman More

As the party climbs, its rivals, the Democratic Unionists, are stalled, which means any compromise that could revive its power-sharing national government may remain elusive.The Irish nationalist party, Sinn Fein, cemented its status as the largest party in Northern Ireland in local election results counted over the weekend. But rather than break a political deadlock in the North, Sinn Fein’s striking gains may harden the sectarian divide that has long complicated its fragile government.Sinn Fein, the party that has historically called for uniting the North with the Republic of Ireland, gained 39 seats, for a total of 144 council members who oversee services like fixing roads and collecting trash. The Democratic Unionists, who support remaining part of the United Kingdom, managed to hold on to their existing total of 122 seats, a mediocre result that is nevertheless viewed by some in their ranks as vindication of the party’s refusal to enter a power-sharing government since last year.The combination of a surging Sinn Fein and a stalled, but defiant, Democratic Unionist Party, or D.U.P., gives neither side much incentive to compromise in restoring Northern Ireland’s assembly, which collapsed over a year ago after the D.U.P. pulled out in a dispute over the post-Brexit trade rules that govern the territory. And British officials in London seem resigned to continued paralysis, with some predicting there won’t be any movement toward a restored government until the fall.“The picture is one of unionism and nationalism both more hard-line than ever,” said Katy Hayward, a professor of politics at Queen’s University in Belfast. “That doesn’t bode too well for the prospect of power sharing, even if it does get restarted.”The chronic political dysfunction cast a long shadow over last month’s celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. That treaty ended decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, known as the Troubles, by creating a government that balances power between the unionists, who favor remaining part of the United Kingdom, and the nationalists, who favor a united Irish Republic.But the government has been paralyzed for 15 months over the unionists’ claims that the post-Brexit trade arrangements, known at the Northern Ireland protocol, drive a wedge between the North and the rest of the United Kingdom. They called for the British government to all but overturn the protocol.A girl walking on the Catholic side of the peace line that separates the Catholic and Protestant communities in West Belfast.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesPrime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain struck a deal with the European Union in February that modified many of the rules, and he called on the unionists to re-enter the assembly. But the Democratic Unionists have refused, arguing that the changes fall short of the root-and-branch overhaul that they had demanded.Their objection has done nothing to prevent the agreement, known as the Windsor Framework, from being implemented. But it rallied the party’s core voters, who feel increasingly isolated in Northern Ireland, where demographic trends are moving against them. The Catholic population, which tends to be nationalist, has overtaken the Protestant population, which tends to be unionist.While the Democratic Unionists treaded water in the elections, the more moderate Ulster Unionist Party lost 21 seats, a bruising setback that analysts said would discredit its less antagonistic approach to power sharing. The Democratic Unionists also fended off a challenge from the even more hard-line Traditional Unionist Voice.Similarly, the other major Irish nationalist party, the Social Democratic and Labour Party, which does not have Sinn Fein’s vestigial ties to the violent resistance of the Irish Republican Army, lost 20 seats in the election. That leaves Sinn Fein as the overwhelming force among nationalist voters.Sinn Fein first emerged as the largest party in legislative elections last year, a victory that gave it the right to name a first minister in the government, with the runner-up D.U.P. naming a deputy first minister. Sinn Fein’s inability to do that because of the Democratic Unionists’ intransigence has frustrated its voters, who analysts said flocked to the polls in large numbers in these elections to register their disapproval.“Sinn Fein did better than anyone predicted they would, even Sinn Fein,” Professor Hayward said, noting that it was the first election in which the overall nationalist vote was larger than the overall unionist vote.Jeffrey Donaldson, center, the head of the Democratic Unionist Party, in February.Charles Mcquillan/Getty ImagesUntil now, Sinn Fein has campaigned heavily on kitchen-table issues like housing and health care, eschewing a direct appeal for Irish unification. But headlines in Irish nationalist papers this week called on the British government to clarify the conditions under which a poll on Irish unification would be held.Under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, Britain’s top official for Northern Ireland must call a referendum if there is clear evidence that people favor breaking away from the United Kingdom and becoming part of a united Ireland. But there is no precise mechanism for measuring that sentiment.The issue of unification is also likely to come up more frequently in the Republic of Ireland, where Sinn Fein comfortably outpolls either of its rivals, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, which currently govern in a unity coalition.“They’re now really on the rise in both North and South,” said Diarmaid Ferriter, a professor of modern Irish history at University College Dublin. “They’re not big enough to govern on their own in the South, but they’re heading in that direction.” At the moment, Sinn Fein is pressing its advantage: The party’s leader in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill, accepted an invitation from Buckingham Palace to attend the coronation of King Charles III, declaring on Twitter that times had changed.The unionists, on the other hand, are in a familiar cul-de-sac: opposed to the status quo, but unable to propose any viable alternatives.If they continue to spurn the government, analysts say they will continue to bleed support in the broader electorate. But if they drop their opposition, the D.U.P.’s leaders fear they will be outflanked by more hard-line unionist parties.“There’s a bit of a sense of a time warp in Northern Ireland,” Professor Ferriter said. “The D.U.P. is not going to succeed in renegotiating the deal. London is not remotely interested and has already moved on. We could be in for a long, hot and boring summer.” More

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The fourth-term senator said he would do everything he could to ensure that Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester, the state’s lone congresswoman and his former intern, won the race to succeed him.Senator Thomas R. Carper, a veteran Democrat from Delaware, announced on Monday that he would not seek re-election next year, opening up a seat in a deep-blue state that he said he hoped would go to his handpicked successor.Mr. Carper, 76, is in his fourth term in the Senate and is the last surviving Vietnam veteran to serve there. He has held public office since the 1970s, first as Delaware’s treasurer, then for a decade as a congressman, then as governor and, since 2001, as a senator.“This just seems like a good time just to turn the page and move on,” Mr. Carper said at a news conference in Wilmington, Del. He added, “I’ve got miles to go, and I’m going to make every day count.”The senator said he intended to do all he could to help Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester, the Democrat who serves as the state’s only member of the House and was his former intern, win the race to succeed him.As the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Mr. Carper said he planned to spend his final months in Congress overseeing the clean energy provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act and key projects included in the bipartisan infrastructure legislation.“I’ll continue working 60-hour weeks,” he said.Mr. Carper said he also planned to help his friend President Biden succeed and win re-election, brushing aside questions about the president’s age.“Every meeting I’ve been a part of, he’s actually sharper than the rest of us,” Mr. Carper said.He said he had called Ms. Blunt Rochester on Monday morning and told her, “You’ve been patient waiting for me to get out of the way, and I’m going to get out of the way.”He added that he also told her: “I hope you run, and I hope you’ll let me support you in that mission.”And Mr. Carper said Ms. Blunt Rochester replied, “Yes, I’ll let you support me.”Ms. Blunt Rochester, who is also in her fourth term, has not yet announced a campaign but has publicly expressed interest in running. In a statement, she praised Mr. Carper as a lawmaker who was “more interested in attending a local Sunday service than doing the Sunday shows, more interested in hearing from his constituents in person than getting clicks online and more interested in the happenings of the day in Delaware than D.C.”Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, spoke by phone with Ms. Blunt Rochester shortly after hearing of Mr. Carper’s decision and told her he “believes she could be a really good senator and he looks forward to sitting down with her soon,” according to Mr. Schumer’s spokesman.In a separate statement, Mr. Schumer praised Mr. Carper as a “conscientious, hardworking, honorable and effective senator who has done so much for his beloved Delaware and America, particularly in protecting our precious environment and strengthening our transportation systems.”Mr. Schumer credited Mr. Carper for spearheading important legislation such as postal reform and reducing the effects of methane in the atmosphere.Senator Chris Coons, also a Democrat from Delaware, said Mr. Carper relied on his background as a former governor during his time in the Senate.“Tom Carper has also mentored a generation of Delaware leaders,” Mr. Coons said. “From my first race for County Council president, he has encouraged and supported my career in service, acting as a source of advice and encouragement when I needed it most, and as a role model for balancing family and service.” More

The support of Sinan Ogan gives the Turkish president a boost as he takes on the opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu.The candidate who came in third in Turkey’s presidential election last week announced on Monday that he was endorsing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the runoff vote on Sunday, granting Mr. Erdogan an additional boost against his remaining challenger.Mr. Erdogan, the dominant figure in Turkish politics for 20 years, appears to have an edge in the runoff, whose victor will shape Turkey’s domestic and foreign policies for the next five years. Throughout the campaign, Mr. Erdogan aimed to link himself in voters’ minds with the image of a strong Turkey, with expanding military might and geopolitical clout.Although most polls in the run-up to the initial vote on May 14 showed Mr. Erdogan trailing his main challenger, the opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the president overcame voter anger at high inflation and frustration with the government’s initially slow response to catastrophic earthquakes in February to win 49.5 percent of the vote.Mr. Kilicdaroglu, the joint candidate of a coalition of six opposition parties that came together to try to unseat Mr. Erdogan, won 44.9 percent.In his campaign, Mr. Kilicdaroglu vowed to undo Mr. Erdogan’s legacy, which he said had damaged the economy and pushed the country away from democracy and toward one-man rule.The third-place candidate, Sinan Ogan, is a far-right nationalist who defied expectations to win 5.2 percent of the vote, preventing either of the top contenders from winning the simple majority that would have granted instant victory.In an interview with The New York Times after the first-round results were released last week, Mr. Ogan said he was negotiating with figures on both sides of the political divide to decide whom to endorse for the runoff.Sinan Ogan, who came in third in the first round of presidential voting in Turkey, with supporters in Ankara this month.Burhan Ozbilici/Associated PressHe said he was seeking to ensure that the winning candidate adopts nationalist causes, including a scheduled plan to deport millions of refugees and a refusal to cooperate with pro-Kurdish and hard-line Islamist parties that he considers connected to terrorism.In exchange for his endorsement, Mr. Ogan said he wanted a senior post in the new administration, such as vice president.But it remains unclear whether his support will deliver many voters. Mr. Ogan has no significant party apparatus to mobilize his backers, and in the eight days since the election, his hard-right electoral alliance has broken apart.Political analysts said that many voters who chose him in the first round probably did so to protest the top two contenders and so might not vote at all in the runoff.Mr. Erdogan met with Mr. Ogan on Friday, but neither man released details of what was discussed. That same day, Mr. Erdogan said in an interview with CNN that he did not want to bargain with Mr. Ogan.“I am not a person who likes to negotiate in such a manner,” Mr. Erdogan said. “It will be the people who are the kingmakers.”In announcing his endorsement of Mr. Erdogan at a news conference on Monday, Mr. Ogan said nothing of any agreement the men had reached but characterized his impact on the election as a victory for far-right causes.“We uplifted Turkish nationalists to a key role,” he said, listing the major issues facing Turkey as refugees, earthquake preparedness, the economy and the fight against terrorism.“We recommend that those who belittle our voters watch our work more closely,” he said, apparently referring to a change in rhetoric by the opposition after far-right figures such as himself did better in the election than expected. More