Elections

“Hell, yes.” “100%.” Those were the replies of some Republican state legislators in Georgia to a last-ditch attempt by Donald Trump’s campaign to stop Joe Biden’s election win in the state, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, citing newly released congressional records.The Trump campaign wanted the group to appoint presidential electors who would vote for Trump, not Joe Biden – even though he’d won the state’s 16 electoral votes, the first time a Democrat has done so since Bill Clinton in 1992.The publication contacted the approximately 30 lawmakers who said they would participate in the effort, which was ultimately unsuccessful. Seventeen couldn’t be reached, or didn’t respond to a request for comment. But others appeared to deny they’d ever signed on.“I do think there were some issues with the election. But that was not the way to go,” Republican state representative Kasey Carpenter told the Journal-Constitution.You can read the rest of the story here.Let’s say Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis does decide bring charges against Donald Trump based on the grand jury’s report. What would be the alleged crime? As the Guardian’s Carlisa N. Johnson reported last month, the answer could be racketeering:An Atlanta prosecutor appears ready to use the same Georgia statute to prosecute Donald Trump that she used last year to charge dozens of gang members and well-known rappers who allegedly conspired to commit violent crime.Fani Willis was elected Fulton county district attorney just days before the conclusion of the 2020 presidential election. But as she celebrated her promotion, Trump and his allies set in motion a flurry of unfounded claims of voter fraud in Georgia, the state long hailed as a Republican stronghold for local and national elections.Willis assumed office on 1 January 2021, becoming the first Black woman in the position. The next day, according to reports, Trump called rad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, urging him to “find” the nearly 12,000 votes he needed to secure a victory and overturn the election results.The following month, Willis launched an investigation into Trump’s interference in the state’s general election. Now, in a hearing on Tuesday, the special purpose grand jury and the presiding judge will decide whether to release to the public the final report and findings of the grand jury that was seated to investigate Trump and his allies.Willis, who has not shied away from high-profile cases, has made headlines for her aggressive style of prosecution. Willis was a lead prosecutor in the 2013 prosecution of educators in Atlanta accused of inflating students’ scores on standardized tests. More recently, Willis brought a case against a supposed Georgia gang known as YSL, including charges against rappers Yung Thug and Gunna.Could Trump be charged for racketeering? A Georgia prosecutor thinks soRead moreGot questions about the special grand jury’s report in Georgia? The Guardian’s Sam Levine has answers in this piece published just before a hearing in which a judge ultimately opted to allow its partial release:A court hearing on Tuesday will mark one of the most significant developments in a Georgia investigation examining whether Donald Trump and allies committed a crime in their efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Here’s all you need to know about that hearing and what to expect next.What exactly is happening on Tuesday?Since May of last year, a special purpose grand jury in Fulton county, Georgia has been investigating whether Donald Trump committed a crime under state law when he tried to overturn the 2020 election by pressuring state officials to try and overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state.The grand jury concluded its work earlier this month. On Tuesday, there will be a hearing to determine whether the grand jury’s report should be made public. The special grand jury – which consisted of 23 jurors and three alternates – has recommended its report be made public.Why is this investigation such a big deal?Trump and allies have yet to face any criminal consequences for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The Fulton county probe could be the first time that charges are filed against Trump and allies for those efforts. The US House committee that investigated the January 6 attacks also made a criminal referral to the justice department, which is also investigating Trump’s actions after the 2020 election.What is Georgia’s Trump election inquiry and will it lead to charges?Read moreShould Donald Trump face criminal charges?That’s the big question the report authored by a special grand jury in Georgia’s Fulton county might answer. We won’t be seeing all of it today, but what’s released could shed light on what the jurors came to believe after spending months hearing from former Trump officials, state lawmakers and others with knowledge of his attempt to stop Joe Biden from carrying the state’s electoral votes.The answer to that question could very well be no – at least in the eyes of the jurors. But they might recommend charges against other officials who appeared before them. Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani was, for instance, told that he was a target of the investigation, as was reportedly the state’s lieutenant governor Burt Jones and David Shafer, chair of the Georgia GOP.But even if the jurors want to bring the hammer down, it’s not their decision to make. That’s up to Fani Willis, the district attorney for the Atlanta-area county, who will have to decide whether to accept their recommendations and move forward with prosecutions.Good morning, US politics blog readers. Today, we may get a sense of which direction one of the many investigations into Donald Trump is heading, when parts of a special grand jury’s report into his attempt to undo Joe Biden’s 2020 election win in Georgia are made public. A judge earlier this week ordered the release of the document’s introduction, conclusion and a chapter on jurors’ concerns that some witnesses were lying, while withholding the rest, at least for now. Fani Willis, the district attorney in Georgia’s Atlanta-area Fulton county, is expected to use the report to determine whether to bring charges in the investigations – and against who. This blog will dig into the document as soon as it’s released.Here’s what else is going on:
Joe Biden may as soon as today give a public address about the Chinese spy balloon and three UFOs shot down by American jets over North America, the Washington Post reports, in a response to pressure from lawmakers who want more transparency on the unusual events.
Barbara Lee, a progressive House Democrat known for her anti-war bona fides, has filed the paperwork to compete in the California Senate race, according to Politico.
Special counsel Jack Smith wants to hear from Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff for his final days in the White House, CNN reports. More

The judge ordered the report’s introduction and conclusion to be made public, along with a section detailing the special grand jury’s concerns about witnesses lying under oath.A judge in Atlanta is expected to release portions of a report on Thursday detailing the findings of a special purpose grand jury that examined whether former President Donald J. Trump and some of his allies violated Georgia law in their efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s 2020 election loss in the state.Special grand juries cannot issue indictments, but they can recommend whether criminal charges should be sought. Earlier this week, Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court ruled that much of the jury’s final report should not be disclosed until after Fani T. Willis, the local district attorney, makes her own charging decisions.Still, he ordered the report’s introduction and conclusion to be made public, along with a section detailing the special grand jury’s concerns about witnesses lying under oath. Judge McBurney wrote that revealing the grand jury’s specific recommendations now would create “due process deficiencies” that would be unfair to anyone who might be “named as indictment-worthy in the final report.” But legal experts say the judge’s decision to keep much of the report secret strongly suggests that the special grand jury determined that someone deserves to be indicted.“We’re at the cusp of something consequential, I think,” said Clark D. Cunningham, a professor at Georgia State University College of Law, who has been following the case closely.Understand Georgia’s Investigation of Election InterferenceCard 1 of 5A legal threat to Trump. More

Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation removes one of the most formidable figures from British politics, one who has dedicated her life to the cause of Scottish independence.LONDON — Nicola Sturgeon, a fiery campaigner for Scotland’s independence who led its government for more than eight years, resigned on Wednesday, declaring that she was exhausted and had become too polarizing a figure to lead the country’s hurly-burly politics as it weighs another bid to break from Britain.Her resignation removes one of the most formidable figures from British politics. A skilled veteran of the United Kingdom’s system of power sharing and a sure-handed leader during the coronavirus pandemic, she outlasted four British prime ministers, while bedeviling each of them with her unyielding push for Scottish independence.But that goal has remained elusive and appears no closer than it was nearly a decade ago, when voters rejected a proposal for independence. Support for leaving the union has ebbed and flowed over the years, but the British government remains implacably opposed to another referendum. And Ms. Sturgeon said she was no longer the leader to see the battle through.“Is carrying on right for me?” Ms. Sturgeon, 52, said at a news conference in Edinburgh. “And, more important, is me carrying on right for my country, my party, and for the independence cause I have devoted my life to?”“I’ve reached the difficult conclusion that it’s not,” she said.In recent weeks, Ms. Sturgeon had also become embroiled in a dispute over the Scottish government’s transgender policy. Britain’s Parliament rejected legislation from Scotland’s Parliament making it easier for people to legally change their gender. Ms. Sturgeon said she would remain as first minister until the Scottish National Party, which controls Parliament, chooses a successor, most likely at a party conference next month. So dominant is her position that political analysts said there was no obvious successor — an acute problem for a party that faces a crossroads on independence, but a weakness that she said was another reason for her to relinquish the stage now.There was a distinct echo in Ms. Sturgeon’s resignation of the similar decision by Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand, who announced her resignation last month by saying she “no longer had enough in the tank.” Both women emphasized the relentless toll of their jobs and their yearning to focus on other parts of their lives.Journalists and members of the public gathered outside Bute House, the official residence of the first minister, where Ms. Sturgeon held a news conference.Pool photo by Jane BarlowLike Ms. Ardern, Ms. Sturgeon drew widespread attention for adopting policies on Covid that diverged from those of other countries — in her case, keeping lockdowns in place longer than in neighboring England. As with Ms. Ardern, Ms. Sturgeon’s Covid policies brought mixed results and her popularity, while still decent, dimmed as the urgency of the pandemic gave way to concerns about the economy.“While Sturgeon is effectively the equivalent of a state governor, she has an extraordinary international profile,” said Nicola McEwen, professor of territorial politics at the University of Edinburgh. “But she has become a figure who divides; there is a recognition that she may not be the person to get them to the next level.”Still, her announcement left Scotland’s political establishment slack jawed. Only last month, she told the BBC that she had “plenty in the tank” to continue leading Scotland and was “nowhere near ready” to step down.On Wednesday, however, Ms. Sturgeon said she had been wrestling for weeks over whether to resign. She spoke about only realizing now how exhausting the pandemic was for her, and said she had come to a final decision on Tuesday while attending the funeral of Allan Angus, a friend and leading figure in the Scottish National Party.Ms. Sturgeon has been married to Peter Murrell, the chief executive of the S.N.P., since 2010. She does not have children, but spoke about her twin niece and nephew during her resignation speech, noting that when she had entered government in 2007, both were very young and now they were celebrating their 17th birthday.Commuters heading home during rush hour in Edinburgh on Wednesday evening spoke of their surprise at Ms. Sturgeon’s choice. Regardless of their opinions on her politics, many said that it was an important moment for the nation.Sean MacMillan, 29, said he expected her decision to step down could have an impact on the push for a second independence referendum as she did not have a clear strong successor. “It is really unclear who is coming next, and I am sure it will change with that,” he said.Prime Minister Rishi Sunak offered restrained praise, thanking Ms. Sturgeon on Twitter “for her long-standing service. I wish her all the best for her next steps.” Mr. Sunak and Ms. Sturgeon have a cordial relationship, an improvement over the scarcely concealed hostility between her and one of Mr. Sunak’s predecessors, Boris Johnson.A photograph released by 10 Downing Street showing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon of Scotland during a meeting in Inverness, Scotland, last month.Simon Walker/No 10 Downing Street, via ReutersMs. Sturgeon denied she had resigned over the transgender legislation or any other short-term political setbacks. But she said that in the current hothouse political environment, “issues that are controversial end up almost irrationally so.”Scotland’s law would allow transgender people to have the gender with which they identify legally recognized, and to get a new birth certificate without a medical diagnosis. But the British government swiftly overruled the Scottish Parliament, saying the law conflicted with equality laws that apply across Britain.For Ms. Sturgeon, passing the legislation was part of what she said was a deeply felt commitment to protect minority rights, and she denounced the British government’s decision to block it. But the law was less popular with the Scottish public than it was in Parliament. And it quickly became a cudgel in the heated cultural clash over transgender rights, with both sides seizing on it to attack the other.The debate was inflamed by the case of Isla Bryson, who was convicted of raping two women before her gender transition. She was initially placed in a women’s prison, prompting an outcry over the safety of other female inmates. Ms. Sturgeon later announced that Ms. Bryson had been moved to a men’s prison.The handling of the case exposed Ms. Sturgeon to sharp criticism and put her in an awkward position when she was quizzed repeatedly at a news conference about whether she regarded Ms. Bryson as a woman.“She regards herself as a woman,” a visibly frustrated Ms. Sturgeon replied. “I regard the individual as a rapist.”A rally against a controversial transgender legislation in Glasgow earlier this month.Andy Buchanan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhen it came to independence, Ms. Sturgeon was rarely at a loss for words. Having joined the Scottish National Party when she was 16, she spent much of her time trying to secure for Scotland as much power over its own affairs as possible. Allies described her as one of the most important leaders of the era of devolution, when London delegated more power to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.Ms. Sturgeon’s departure is unlikely to weaken Scotland’s independence drive. It is, after all, the Scottish National Party’s founding goal. But as the party gathers at next month’s conference to plot the next phase of the campaign, her absence could greatly affect their tactics and strategy.The Scottish government had at one point planned to schedule a second referendum next October, following the unsuccessful vote in 2014. But those hopes were dashed last November when Britain’s Supreme Court ruled that Scotland’s Parliament did not have the right to act unilaterally. The court upheld the authority of the British Parliament to consent to a referendum, which it has steadfastly refused to do.That has left the Scottish nationalists with a dilemma. Ms. Sturgeon has proposed that the Scots treat the next British general election, which must be held by January 2025, as a de facto referendum on independence. A clear majority for the Scottish National Party, she said, would effectively be a vote for independence.The problem with this approach, analysts said, is that it would lack legal or constitutional legitimacy. That could hurt Scotland’s quest to join the European Union, which it has said it wants to do after separating from Britain. There are practical questions about how Scotland would break away if Britain did not recognize the move.Other people in the party would prefer to continue to build support for independence in the hopes that the pro-independence majority would become so emphatic that the Parliament in London would have no choice but to go along.Ms. Sturgeon leaving the news conference on Wednesday where she announced she would step down.Pool photo by Jane BarlowSupport for independence has waxed and waned since 2014, when Scots voted against leaving by 55 percent to 45 percent. But the Brexit vote in 2016, which was deeply unpopular in Scotland, has built a durable, if small, majority in favor of independence. Scotland’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which many viewed as more sure-footed than England’s, also fired up separatist sentiment.The prospects for independence, analysts said, will depend in part on how the Scottish National Party handles life after Ms. Sturgeon.“The downside risks are obvious,” said John Curtice, a professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde and one of Britain’s leading experts on polling. “That the party will not be able to find someone with the communications skills of Sturgeon,” leaving the nationalists divided and without a plan.Ms. Sturgeon herself emphasized the necessity of having someone fully dedicated to her party’s causes. “Giving absolutely everything of yourself to this job is the only way to do it,” she said, before acknowledging that she was no longer able to do that. “The country deserves nothing less.”Megan Specia More

From an economic perspective, the most interesting play of Super Bowl LVII was near the end of the game, when the Kansas City Chiefs running back Jerick McKinnon sprinted toward the end zone but slid to a stop inches short of scoring a touchdown, like Moses not entering the Promised Land or me rejecting a slice of chocolate cake.If you watch the replay, you can see Philadelphia Eagles cornerback James Bradberry IV chasing McKinnon but … not very hard, like a dad playing touch football with a 6-year-old. Instead of trying to shove McKinnon out of bounds, Bradberry has his arms by his sides.What makes this economically interesting is that it’s an example of incentive incompatibility, a problem that crops up in many other realms. The Chiefs wanted to run down the clock to keep the Eagles offense off the field as long as possible. The Eagles wanted the Chiefs to score quickly so they could get the ball back, score a touchdown of their own and send the game into overtime. So the ordinary incentives of the offense and defense were reversed. It became a pantomime. Imagine if you had to watch a whole game like that. The fans would be streaming out of the stadium.Incompatibility of incentives is usually caused by a flaw in the rules of the contest, whether it be an election or a bankruptcy proceeding. It’s not always easy to fix the rules to prevent strategic behavior. That Super Bowl play is a good example. What rule change could have induced the Chiefs and Eagles to try their hardest on the play? I can’t think of one.Sports are designed to be zero-sum games, in which one side’s gain is another’s loss. For example, you don’t see boxers trying to work out a win-win agreement before the opening bell. Yet there are many times in sports when the rules inadvertently make it possible for competitors to win by losing or tying. In some leagues, unsuccessful teams have an incentive to lose because the teams with the worst records get first picks in the next player draft. (Although that ignoble strategy doesn’t always work.)British soccer fans are still arguing over a 1977 match between Bristol City and Coventry City in which the two sides found out during the second half that a mutual rival, Sunderland, had lost its match, which meant they could both avoid being relegated to a lower division if they remained tied. What had been a hard-fought match became a silly passing drill. Incentives for such strategic play are surprisingly common in European playoffs, according to several recent papers. A 2022 article in The European Journal of Operational Research showed that the design of the European qualifying rounds for the 2022 FIFA World Cup made the playoffs vulnerable to “tanking” — deliberately losing — by teams in certain circumstances. The paper proposed a way to minimize the risk.This wouldn’t matter much if it were confined to sports. But what about elections? Last year, Democrats helped some far-right candidates in Republican primary contests, betting correctly that more extreme candidates would lose in the general elections. They’re doing the same thing now for a State Senate seat in Wisconsin, The Times reported Tuesday. To me, the Democrats’ gambit seems both unsporting and dangerous. A study of German elections in 2012 found that almost a third of voters abandoned their preferred candidate if that person was not in serious contention.There are voting systems that minimize strategic voting, giving people an incentive to vote for the candidate they really want. But the economist Kenneth Arrow proved in his impossibility theorem that when there are more than two choices, there is no procedure that consistently orders collective preferences and satisfies reasonable assumptions about people’s autonomy and preferences.I’ll close with an example straight from economics: auctions. In an auction in which bids ascend and everyone sees them, it’s possible to lose by winning and win by losing. As the bidding rises and other people drop out, you may start to wonder if they know more than you do about the value of what’s up for auction. If you win an item, maybe it’s because you overpaid — making you a loser. Realizing that risk, some people will drop out early, so the thing being sold might actually go for less than it’s worth, to someone who doesn’t value it as highly as others. A good solution is a second-price, sealed-bid auction. You bid what you think the thing is truly worth, but if you win, you pay only the second-highest bid. Because there’s less risk of winner’s curse, the object will tend to go to the person who values it the most, usually for close to the amount that person values it at.Elsewhere: Why Rising Rates Hurt Tech StocksThe big tech companies don’t do a lot of borrowing, by and large, but rising interest rates are crushing their stock prices nevertheless. That’s because tech stocks’ prices are pumped up by expectations that profits will grow for years to come. They usually pay only small dividends, if any. When interest rates were low, investors were willing to pay a lot for that distant payoff. But when rates rise, Treasury bonds and other safe, long-term, interest-bearing investments start to look like a more attractive alternative.Quote of the Day“The Nazi agitator whom, many years ago, I heard proclaim to a wildly cheering peasants’ meeting: ‘We don’t want lower bread prices, we don’t want higher bread prices, we don’t want unchanged bread prices — we want National-Socialist bread prices,’ came nearer explaining fascism than anybody I have heard since.”— Peter Drucker, “The End of Economic Man: The Origins of Totalitarianism” (1939)Have feedback? Send a note to [email protected]. More

Just hours after Nicola Sturgeon announced her surprise resignation on Wednesday, discussion had already begun about who might succeed her as the leader of the Scottish National Party and who would head the Scottish government.The party is expected to hold a leadership election in the coming weeks, and Ms. Sturgeon said she would continue to lead the party until that time. While it is still unclear who may stand for the leadership role, and no one has yet to officially throw his or her hat into the ring, a handful of party members have already been suggested.Kate ForbesPool phoot by Fraser BremnerKate Forbes, 32, has often been tipped as a potential successor to Ms. Sturgeon. A former finance secretary, Ms. Forbes is currently on maternity leave after giving birth to her daughter, Naomi, in August.Ms. Forbes is the daughter of missionaries and is originally from the town of Dingwall in the Scottish Highlands, but spent much of her time growing up in Glasgow and India. She is a fluent Gaelic speaker and is a member of the Free Church of Scotland, an evangelical Presbyterian church that follows a strict interpretation of the Bible.She was first elected to the Scottish Parliament in 2016, representing the constituency of Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch since that time. In 2020 she was appointed as the finance minister after her predecessor, Derek Mackay, resigned from the post when it was revealed that he had been sending inappropriate text messages to a teenager.Angus RobertsonRussell Cheyne/ReutersAngus Robertson, the former leader of the Scottish National Party’s group in Westminster, is also seen as a potential candidate to succeed Ms. Sturgeon. After serving in the House of Commons from 2001 to 2017, he became a Member of the Scottish Parliament representing the Edinburgh Central constituency in 2021.Mr. Roberston, 53, is considered one of the most senior members of his party, which he joined in 1984 as a teenager. He now serves as a cabinet secretary for the Constitution, external affairs and culture. He was a journalist before he entered politics and is married with two daughters.John SwinneyRussell Cheyne/ReutersJohn Swinney, Ms. Sturgeon’s deputy, has also been seen as a potential successor. He was appointed as the deputy first minister and cabinet secretary for Covid Recovery in May 2021.Mr. Swinney, 58, was born in Edinburgh and has a master’s degree in politics from Edinburgh University. He is married to Elizabeth Quigley, a television reporter, and has three children.He previously served as the head of the Scottish National Party from 2000 to 2004, but was not first minister because the party did not have the majority of seats in the Scottish Parliament at the time. Shortly after Ms. Sturgeon’s resignation, Mr. Swinney said he was “very sorry Nicola Sturgeon has decided to step down as first minister and as SNP leader.”“She has given outstanding leadership to our country, government and party,” he wrote in a statement on Twitter.Humza YousafRussell Cheyne/ReutersHumza Yousaf, 37, has served in the Scottish Parliament since 2011 and is currently the cabinet secretary for health and social care. When he was first elected, representing the Glasgow region, he was just 26, the youngest minister ever appointed to the Scottish government.He broke another barrier the next year, when he was appointed Scotland’s minister for external affairs and international development, becoming the first person from an ethnic minority background to hold the position. Mr. Yousaf, a practicing Muslim, has long been involved in community work and served as a media spokesman for the international aid group Islamic Relief.His family initiated a legal action against a nursery that he and his wife believed had discriminated against their daughter, allegedly because she had a Muslim-sounding name, but dropped the lawsuit earlier this month. More

A battle over her support for transgender rights is not, by Nicola Sturgeon’s account, the reason she is quitting as Scotland’s first minister. But the issue has dogged her in recent weeks, precipitating a clash with the British government and ensnaring her in a messy episode involving a convicted rapist who was held in a women’s prison.Ms. Sturgeon’s problems began in December when the Scottish Parliament passed legislation that would allow transgender people to have the gender with which they identify legally recognized and to get a new birth certificate without a medical diagnosis. Britain’s government swiftly rejected the law, saying that it conflicted with equality laws that apply across Britain, including Scotland.That prompted a crisis in Britain’s power-sharing system, known as devolution, with Ms. Sturgeon calling it a “a full-frontal attack on our democratically elected Scottish Parliament and its ability to make its own decisions.”For Ms. Sturgeon, the transgender legislation is part of her declared commitment to protect minority groups. But while the law was supported in Parliament, it has divided the broader Scottish population and become a cudgel in the culture wars.It has also become conflated with the case of Isla Bryson, a transgender woman who was convicted of raping two women before her transition. She was initially placed in a women’s prison while awaiting sentencing, a decision that prompted an outcry by critics who said it jeopardized the safety of other inmates.Ms. Sturgeon later announced that Ms. Bryson had been moved to a men’s prison. But the handling of the case exposed Ms. Sturgeon to sharp criticism and put her in an awkward position when she was quizzed repeatedly at a news conference about whether she regarded Ms. Bryson as a woman.“She regards herself as a woman,” a visibly frustrated Ms. Sturgeon replied. “I regard the individual as a rapist.” More

The news that Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland, will step down raises a variety of questions about how the United Kingdom — England, Scotland and Wales, along with Northern Ireland — is governed. Here is a quick guide.What role does the king play?The United Kingdom operates under a constitutional monarchy. While there is no single written constitutional document, laws and carefully documented traditions together form a Constitution that binds the monarch, currently King Charles III.These rules have accumulated in centuries of legislation. Together, they make the king a constitutional monarch: an embodiment of power and statehood with no personal public role in politics, and tight constraints even on private influence.Who runs the U.K. government?Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is the current leader of the government of the United Kingdom. He took over as the country’s 57th prime minister in October, after his predecessor, Liz Truss, lasted just six weeks in the post.The role of the prime minister, according to the U.K. government’s official website, is to oversee the operation of the civil service and government agencies. The leader also appoints members of the government and is the principal government figure in the House of Commons.Where does Scotland fit in?Here’s where it gets interesting. Mr. Sunak is responsible for some, but not all, of what happens across the United Kingdom. His government makes decisions for England, but some powers and responsibilities are left to elected officials in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — a result of what is known as devolution.(Northern Ireland is having its own leadership issues at the moment, after the first minister resigned last year and the government remains in limbo.)In Scotland, the government makes decisions relating to the economy, education, health, justice and other areas. The government enforced its own Covid policies during the pandemic, and it has the power to set its own income-tax rates. Decisions regarding immigration, foreign policy and defense are left to the U.K. government.How are first ministers appointed?Following a Scottish parliamentary election, a first minister is nominated by the Parliament in Edinburgh and is appointed by the monarch.The first minister is responsible for appointing Scottish ministers to create a cabinet and is responsible for setting and carrying out government policy. More