Elections

Concerns about misinformation on Twitter have flared in the days since Elon Musk’s takeover on Oct. 27, pushing away advertisers, rattling researchers and increasing fears that conspiracy theories and false narratives could pollute the political discourse on the platform ahead of the midterm elections.Researchers at the Fletcher School at Tufts University said in a report that “early signs show the platform is heading in the wrong direction under his leadership — at a particularly inconvenient time for American democracy.”The researchers said they had tracked narratives about civil war, election fraud, citizen policing of voting, and allegations of pedophilia and grooming on Twitter from July through October. They said they had found that the discussion reflected a commitment to combating misinformation, hate speech and toxic ideas.“Post-Musk takeover, the quality of the conversation has decayed,” as more extremists and misinformation peddlers tested the platform’s boundaries, the researchers wrote.Before Mr. Musk took control of Twitter, posts pushing back against misinformation, hate and other toxic speech were usually many times greater than the original false or misleading posts, the Tufts researchers discovered.Conspiracy theories focused on unfounded allegations of pedophilia or “grooming,” which advance an anti-L.G.B.T.Q. message, have encountered less resistance from a Musk-led Twitter, the Tufts report found. Earlier spikes in the topic were accompanied by strong condemnation; after Oct. 28, researchers wrote, “the conversation deteriorated quickly” as users tested Twitter moderators by repeatedly writing “GROOMER,” in an echo of a coordinated campaign to spread antisemitic content as the platform adjusted to Mr. Musk.On Monday, with hours to go before the vote, Mr. Musk tweeted out a link to Twitter’s rules, which he said “will evolve over time.” Watchdog groups quickly noticed that the page did not explicitly address misinformation, although it did prohibit users from using the platform to manipulate or interfere in elections, employ misleading and deceptive identities or share harmful synthetic or manipulated media. A separate page about misinformation in Twitter’s “Help Center” section remained live.Fears about ads appearing in proximity to misinformation and other problematic posts have led General Mills, United Airlines and several other large companies to pause their spending on Twitter in recent days. Content moderation has sparked heated exchanges on Madison Avenue with and about Mr. Musk. More

In virtually every race, we rely on calls by The Associated Press, which employs a team of analysts, researchers and race callers who have a deep understanding of the states where they declare winners.In addition to overall vote totals, race callers pay attention to county-level votes, votes by type of ballot and areas where there are ballots left to count. In some tightly contested races, The Times independently evaluates A.P. race calls before declaring a winner.The A.P. describes its decision-making process as “aimed at determining the answer to a single question: Can the trailing candidates catch the leader?” And only when the answer is an unquestionable “no” will The A.P. call the race.Not every news organization gets its election results from The A.P. Other election results providers used by news organizations include Edison Research and Decision Desk HQ.These sources can have different counts on election night, depending on the speed and scope of their reporting on a particular race. The results from all providers may not match until all the votes are counted. Major news organizations supplement this data with their own analysis, which is why they may make their calls at different times.News organizations can sometimes project a winner, even with no results reported, if the race was not closely contested or the party or candidate has a history of consistent wins in the county or state. In some cases, The A.P. also relies on the results of pre-election surveys to help make a decision. But most major news organizations, including The A.P., wait until polls are closed before calling a winner. To be clear, the news media does not decide who will take office — that’s made official when states certify their election results. But race calls are an essential part of reporting the news about an election before votes are certified. More

Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right militia, testified that he did not order anyone to go into the Capitol on Jan. 6 and that he had nothing to do with an armed force waiting nearby.WASHINGTON — At the height of the chaos at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, two dozen members of the Oath Keepers militia met outside the building with their leader, Stewart Rhodes.When some of them reported that they had just come back from inside the Capitol, Mr. Rhodes was outraged, he testified in court on Monday. Taking the stand at his own sedition trial, he said that those who had gone inside the building that day had done so of their own accord — and that he had never had a plan or had given any orders to go in.“When I heard that they went in,” he told jury, “I said, ‘That was stupid.’”Testifying for a second day at the trial in Federal District Court in Washington, Mr. Rhodes sought to wash his hands of much of what the Oath Keepers did on Jan. 6, laying the blame on several of his colleagues.He told the jury that one of his co-defendants, Kelly Meggs, who went inside the Capitol with others in the group, had gone “off mission.”He also claimed — for the first time — that he had “nothing to do with” an armed “quick reaction force” made of up Oath Keepers that was staged in hotel rooms in Virginia, ostensibly to rush to the aid of compatriots if things at the Capitol went wrong.Mr. Rhodes has firmly denied there was a plan to break into the Capitol on Jan. 6 and disrupt the certification of the 2020 election, as the government has claimed. He has also argued that the Oath Keepers went to Washington that day on what he claims was a peaceful mission: to serve as bodyguards for pro-Trump celebrities like Ali Alexander, a Stop the Steal organizer, and Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser to Mr. Trump.It is rare for a defendant, especially one of his prominence, to take the witness stand, but Mr. Rhodes, who holds a law degree from Yale, has been visibly confident in putting forward several intersecting arguments.He spent much of the afternoon sparring with a prosecutor, Kathryn Rakoczy. Ms. Rakoczy’s questions seemed designed to both poke holes in the details of his account and to chip away at his broader credibility.Ms. Rakoczy started, for example, by suggesting that Mr. Rhodes had soft-pedaled the nature of the Oath Keepers during his first turn on the witness stand on Friday. She pointed out that while telling the jury about some of the missions the group had been involved in over the years, he had failed to mention several in which his members used weapons to confront government forces and challenge their authority.Ms. Rakoczy also noted that even when the Oath Keepers have undertaken nominally defensive operations — serving, say, as self-appointed protectors of residents and businesses during periods of unrest — local law enforcement leaders have expressed exasperation at their involvement.From well before the trial began, lawyers for Mr. Rhodes have claimed that the armed “quick reaction force” in Virginia would have been mobilized only if Mr. Trump had invoked the Insurrection Act, a move that Mr. Rhodes believed would have given the Oath Keepers standing as a militia to take up arms in support of Mr. Trump.Last week, Mr. Rhodes testified that he had established a similar force for a pro-Trump rally in Washington in November 2020, fearing that leftist activists were going to break into the White House and drag Mr. Trump into the streets. On Monday, he told the jury that as Jan. 6 approached, he no longer feared that the White House might be overrun and that an armed force was not needed.He then suggested that his compatriots could have set up the reaction force without his knowledge.But Ms. Rakoczy showed Mr. Rhodes a series of messages he exchanged with Mr. Meggs and others in the days leading up to Jan. 6 in which he seemed to be aware of the quick reaction force — or Q.R.F.“Ok We WILL have a QRF,” he wrote in one of the messages. “This situation calls for it.”Mr. Rhodes suggested that despite this apparent confirmation, his colleagues could have hashed out the details for the force without him — noting, as he often did during his day on the stand, that he did not like to micromanage as a leader.“Sir, the buck stops with you in this operation, right?” Ms. Rakoczy asked.“I’m responsible for everything that everyone did?” Mr. Rhodes responded.During more than three hours of questions, Ms. Rakoczy also sought to make another point: that Mr. Rhodes had planned to act on Jan. 6 even without the legal cover that would have been offered by Mr. Trump invoking the Insurrection Act.She showed Mr. Rhodes a message he had written saying that the Oath Keepers were going to “rise up in insurrection” against Joseph R. Biden Jr. even if Mr. Trump never summoned them. What Mr. Rhodes had really wanted, Ms. Rakoczy said, was for Mr. Trump to call up the Oath Keepers to “serve as his private bodyguards to stay in power.”Mr. Rhodes denied it.To prove the seditious conspiracy charges against Mr. Rhodes, Mr. Meggs and their co-defendants — Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins and Thomas Caldwell — prosecutors must persuade the jury that the Oath Keepers plotted to use force to oppose the lawful transfer of power from Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden. Several government witnesses have already admitted under questioning from the defense that there was no explicit plan to storm the Capitol and disrupt the election certification.That left Ms. Rakoczy with the task of using circumstantial evidence to argue that Mr. Rhodes had encouraged his compatriots to go into the building.She pointed out that as rioters were storming toward the Capitol, Mr. Rhodes compared the attack to the country’s founders destroying the house of the governor of Massachusetts during the Revolutionary era. Mr. Rhodes acknowledged he had made that comparison, but claimed at the time that he did not know the extent of the violence at the Capitol.Ms. Rakoczy also noted that, according to phone records, Mr. Rhodes had a call with one of his top lieutenants, Michael Greene, and Mr. Meggs just minutes before Mr. Meggs went into the Capitol with other Oath Keepers in what prosecutors have described as a military “stack.”Mr. Rhodes admitted he was on the 90-second call but could not hear a thing that Mr. Meggs had said.“For 90 seconds you sat on that dead air?” Ms. Rakoczy asked, sounding incredulous.Mr. Rhodes said yes.Bringing her questions to a close, Ms. Rakoczy reminded Mr. Rhodes that even after Jan. 6, he continued his attempts to reach Mr. Trump and persuade him to invoke the Insurrection Act. She suggested that the storming of the Capitol was for him “just a battle in an ongoing war.”“You and the Oath Keepers were prepared to take steps to abolish this government?” she asked.“We were prepared to walk the founders’ path, yes,” Mr. Rhodes said. “If the government steps outside of the Constitution, it puts you in a bad place.” More

The new owner of Twitter has embarked on a tweeting spree to push back, spar and justify his actions.Illustration By The New York Times; Photo By Adrees Latif/reutersUnder pressure and facing a wave of criticism, Elon Musk has increasingly turned to his favorite release valve: Twitter.Since Saturday, Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man and the new owner of Twitter, has embarked on a tweeting spree so voluminous that he is on a pace to post more than 750 times this month, or more than 25 times a day, according to an analysis from the digital investigations company Memetica. That would be up from about 13 times a day in April, when Mr. Musk first agreed to buy Twitter.His recent tweets have covered an increasingly broad range of topics. Over the last four days, Mr. Musk, 51, needled the comedian Kathy Griffin and beefed with the Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey on the platform. He made masturbation jokes aimed at a rival — and much smaller — social media platform. He posted, then deleted, a tweet engaging with a quote from a white nationalist. And he defended his ownership of Twitter, including why he had laid off 50 percent of the company’s staff and why people should not impersonate others on the service.All in all, Mr. Musk, who described himself in his Twitter profile as “Chief Twit” before later changing the description to “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator,” has tweeted more than 105 times since Friday, mainly about Twitter, according to a tally by Memetica.“Birds haven’t been real since 1986,” Mr. Musk tweeted on Sunday in a discussion thread about Twitter, including a meme from an absurdist conspiracy theory that posits that birds are actually robot spies. He did not respond to a request for comment.Mr. Musk is under tremendous scrutiny 11 days after completing his $44 billion deal for Twitter, which was the largest leveraged buyout of a technology company in history. On Friday, he cut roughly 3,700 of the company’s 7,500 employees, saying he had no choice because Twitter was losing $4 million a day. At the same time, he has found himself embroiled in the same content debates that have plagued other social media companies, including how to give people a way to speak out without spreading misinformation and toxic speech.More on Elon Musk’s Twitter TakeoverA Familiar Playbook: In his first days at Twitter, Elon Musk has been emulating some of the actions of Mark Zuckerberg, who leads Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.A Different Kind of Deal: Silicon Valley moguls used to buy yachts and islands. Now they are rich enough to acquire companies they fancy.‘Hard Fork’: In an episode of The Times’s tech podcast, two Twitter employees described the atmosphere inside the company in the aftermath of the acquisition.Effect on Midterms: Mr. Musk is in the middle of firing thousands of Twitter employees, including many who helped fight misinformation. What could that mean for the upcoming elections?Already Mr. Musk has had to delay the rollout of a subscription product that would have given people check marks on their Twitter profiles. Advertisers have paused their spending on Twitter over fears that Mr. Musk will loosen content rules on the platform. And the midterm elections are set to be a test of how a slimmed-down Twitter will perform in catching inflammatory posts and misinformation about voting and election results.In a report that was published on Monday, researchers at the Fletcher School at Tufts University said the early signs of Mr. Musk’s Twitter “show the platform is heading in the wrong direction under his leadership — at a particularly inconvenient time for American democracy.”The researchers said they had tracked narratives about civil war, election fraud, citizen policing of voting, and allegations of pedophilia and grooming on Twitter from July through October. “Post-Musk takeover, the quality of the conversation has decayed” as more extremists and misinformation peddlers have tested the platform’s boundaries, the researchers wrote.Amid the hubbub, Mr. Musk’s behavior on Twitter suggests that he intends to simply post through it. And while he has always been a prolific tweeter, he has raised the level in recent days.On Friday, Mr. Musk, who has more than 114 million followers on Twitter, proposed a “thermonuclear name & shame” campaign against brands that had stopped advertising on the platform. He said that he had done everything he could to appease advertisers but that activists had worked against him to cause brands to drop out of spending on Twitter.At the same time, the billionaire was embroiled in a fight over his plan to charge Twitter users $8 a month for a subscription service, Twitter Blue, which would give a check mark to anyone who paid. The check mark had been free for notable people whose identities had been verified by the company, including celebrities, politicians and journalists, as a way to protect against impersonation.Critics were unhappy about Mr. Musk’s plans to monetize the check mark, saying it could lead to the spread of misinformation and fraud on the platform. In protest, some Twitter accounts that had check marks changed their display names and photographs to match Mr. Musk’s account over the weekend, a move intended to illustrate why it would be confusing if anyone could buy a check mark.On Sunday, Mr. Musk announced that he would permanently suspend any account “engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying ‘parody.’” The billionaire, who had previously criticized Twitter when it permanently barred users, then barred Ms. Griffin, who had posed as him on the service.Mr. Musk, who has called himself a “free speech absolutist,” is learning the basic expectation of content moderation for popular social networks, said Daphne Keller, director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center.“His ideas have been incoherent for a while,” she said.On Sunday night, Mr. Musk responded to a tweet featuring a quote from a white nationalist, before deleting the post and moving on to squabble with Mr. Dorsey over Birdwatch, a feature that lets community members add context to tweets that they believe are misleading. Mr. Musk, who previously lauded the feature, proposed changing the feature’s name to “Community Notes.”“Community notes is the most boring Facebook name ever,” replied Mr. Dorsey, who owns a $1 billion stake in Mr. Musk’s Twitter.Then on Monday, Mr. Musk suggested he might pursue civil society groups and activists who were pushing for Twitter advertiser boycotts, when he replied to a right-wing commentator that “we do” have grounds for legal action. Legal experts said the holding of boycotts for social and political goals is protected under the First Amendment.Mr. Musk also tweeted that people should vote Republican in Tuesday’s midterm elections. “Shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties, therefore I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic,” he tweeted. He later posted that he was an independent with a “voting history of entirely Democrat until this year.”He soon moved on. Mr. Musk’s attention became fixed on Mastodon, a Twitter competitor that has gained traction over the past 10 days. Playing off Mastodon’s name, he made several crude jokes about masturbation — then deleted those posts an hour later.Tiffany Hsu More

If you aren’t feeling a sense of dread on the eve of the midterm elections, you haven’t been paying attention.We can talk about the conventional stakes of these elections — their implications for economic policy, major social programs, environmental policy, civil liberties and reproductive rights. And it’s not wrong to have these discussions: Life will go on whatever happens on the political scene, and government policies will continue to have a big impact on people’s lives.But I, at least, always feel at least a bit guilty when writing about inflation or the fate of Medicare. Yes, these are my specialties. Focusing on them, however, feels a bit like denial, or at least evasion, when the fundamental stakes right now are so existential.Ten or 20 years ago, those of us who warned that the Republican Party was becoming increasingly extremist and anti-democracy were often dismissed as alarmists. But the alarmists have been vindicated every step of the way, from the selling of the Iraq war on false pretenses to the Jan. 6 insurrection.Indeed, these days it’s almost conventional wisdom that the G.O.P. will, if it can, turn America into something like Viktor Orban’s Hungary: a democracy on paper, but an ethnonationalist, authoritarian one-party state in practice. After all, U.S. conservatives have made no secret about viewing Hungary as a role model; they have feted Orban and featured him at their conferences.At this point, however, I believe that even this conventional wisdom is wrong. If America descends into one-party rule, it will be much worse, much uglier, than what we see in today’s Hungary.Before I get there, a word about the role of conventional policy issues in these elections.If Democrats lose one or both houses of Congress, there will be a loud chorus of recriminations, much of it asserting that they should have focused on kitchen table issues and not talked at all about threats to democracy.I don’t claim any expertise here, but I would note that an incumbent president’s party almost always loses seats in the midterms. The only exception to that rule this century was in 2002, when George W. Bush was able to deflect attention from a jobless recovery by posing as America’s defender against terrorism. That record suggests, if anything, that Democrats should have talked even more about issues beyond economics.I’d also say that pretending that this was an ordinary election season, where only economic policy was at stake, would have been fundamentally dishonest.Finally, even voters who are more worried about paychecks and living costs than about democracy should nonetheless be very concerned about the G.O.P.’s rejection of democratic norms.For one thing, Republicans have been open about their plan to use the threat of economic chaos to extract concessions they couldn’t win through the normal legislative process.Also, while I understand the instinct of voters to choose a different driver if they don’t like where the economy is going, they should understand that this time, voting Republican doesn’t just mean giving someone else a chance at the wheel; it may be a big step toward handing the G.O.P. permanent control, with no chance for voters to revisit that decision if they don’t like the results.Which brings me to the question of what a one-party America would look like.As I said, it’s now almost conventional wisdom that Republicans are trying to turn us into Hungary. Indeed, Hungary provides a case study in how democracies can die in the 21st century.But what strikes me, reading about Orban’s rule, is that while his regime is deeply repressive, the repression is relatively subtle. It is, as one perceptive article put it, “soft fascism,” which makes dissidents powerless via its control of the economy and the news media without beating them up or putting them in jail.Do you think a MAGA regime, with or without Donald Trump, would be equally subtle? Listen to the speeches at any Trump rally. They’re full of vindictiveness, of promises to imprison and punish anyone — including technocrats like Anthony Fauci — the movement dislikes.And much of the American right is sympathetic to, or at least unwilling to condemn, violence against its opponents. The Republican reaction to the attack on Paul Pelosi by a MAGA-spouting intruder was telling: Many in the party didn’t even pretend to be horrified. Instead, they peddled ugly conspiracy theories. And the rest of the party didn’t ostracize or penalize the purveyors of vile falsehoods.In short, if MAGA wins, we’ll probably find ourselves wishing its rule was as tolerant, relatively benign and relatively nonviolent as Orban’s.Now, this catastrophe doesn’t have to happen. Even if Republicans win big in the midterms, it won’t be the end for democracy, although it will be a big blow. And nothing in politics, not even a full descent into authoritarianism, is permanent.On the other hand, even if we get a reprieve this week, the fact remains that democracy is in deep danger from the authoritarian right. America as we know it is not yet lost, but it’s on the edge.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

Plus a warning at COP27 and Kherson in distress.Since 1934, nearly every president has lost seats in his first midterm election.Nic Antaya for The New York TimesA U.S. midterms overviewAmericans will finish voting in midterm elections today, which could change the balance of power in state and federal legislative bodies, influence foreign policy and foreshadow the 2024 presidential race.Many races are teetering on a knife’s edge, but Democrats are bracing for losses even in traditionally blue areas. Republican control of the House, Senate or both could embolden the far-right and lawmakers in Washington who traffic in conspiracy theories and falsehoods. Here are four potential election outcomes.Democrats have depicted Republicans as extreme, while Republicans have portrayed Democrats as out of touch on inflation and immigration. Crime is a key issue: Many Americans think there’s a surge in violence, which could benefit Republicans, even though experts disagree on the data.It could also further politicize the U.S. approach to Iran and the war in Ukraine and allow Republicans to slow the torrent of aid to Kyiv. That could benefit Moscow: Russian trolls have stepped up efforts to spread misinformation before the midterms, which researchers say is an attempt to influence the outcome.2024: Donald Trump — who may announce a run soon — and Gov. Ron DeSantis, the top stars of the Republican Party, held competing rallies in Florida. And President Biden, who hoped to heal America’s divides, faces a polarized nation.Cost: These midterms have shattered all spending records for federal and state elections in a nonpresidential year, surpassing $16.7 billion.Many countries and companies have made only halting progress toward previous climate goals.Mohammed Salem/ReutersLosing “the fight of our lives”António Guterres, the U.N. secretary general, gave a stark warning in his opening remarks at yesterday’s COP27 session. “We are in the fight of our lives, and we are losing,” he said. “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.”“Loss and damage” — code words for the question of which countries will pay for the effects of climate change — is a key agenda item. Guterres issued an impassioned plea to help Pakistan and other vulnerable countries.The State of the WarKherson Braces for Battle: Civilians and Kremlin-appointed occupation officials have fled the city in southern Ukraine, but Russian troops appear to be digging in for an intense fight. Here’s why control of Kherson matters so much to both sides.Infrastructure Attacks: As they struggle to maintain an electricity grid heavily damaged by Russian missiles, officials in Kyiv say they have begun planning for a once unthinkable possibility: a complete blackout that would force the evacuation of the Ukrainian capital.On the Diplomatic Front: The Group of 7 nations announced that they would work together to rebuild critical infrastructure in Ukraine that has been destroyed by Russia’s military and to defend such sites from further attacks.Refugees: The war has sent the numbers of Ukrainians seeking shelter in Europe soaring, pushing asylum seekers from other conflicts to the end of the line.For the first time, “funding arrangements” for loss and damage were included on the formal agenda of the climate talks, overcoming longstanding objections from the U.S. and the E.U. Costs: On Sunday, the World Meteorological Organization said that the planet had most likely witnessed its warmest eight years on record. And famous glaciers are disappearing.Tactics: Activists want a “fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty.” The U.N. also called for an extension of early warning systems, which could save millions from climate disasters. And Belize is working to protect its coral reefs — and simultaneously reduce its debt. Egypt: Protesters are notably absent as Egypt cracks down on dissent. And Alaa Abd El Fattah, one of the country’s most prominent activists, is intensifying a hunger strike to press for his release from prison.A damaged residential building in the region of Kherson.Hannibal Hanschke/EPA, via ShutterstockHard times in KhersonRussian forces are stepping up efforts to make life unbearable for civilians in the occupied southern region of Kherson.Power was cut Sunday night, and Ukrainians say Russian troops have destroyed electrical infrastructure and have placed mines around water towers. An exiled Ukrainian official said that repairs are impossible without specialists and equipment. Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, said that Russia was planning more mass strikes on energy infrastructure.Kherson City is the only regional capital to be captured by Russia, and a battle for its control has loomed for months. Its loss would be a major blow to Moscow, and Ukraine says it has no evidence that Russian forces will abandon the region.Ukraine: The military has reclaimed over 100 towns and villages in the region since it began a counteroffensive in August.Russia: Kremlin-appointed authorities ordered the “evacuation” of all civilians there last month, and occupation officials have reduced their presence. Since then, Russian personnel have shuttered essential services and looted the city, according to residents and Ukrainian officials.Other updates:Russia’s Parliament is poised to pass laws that intensify an L.G.B.T.Q. crackdown.Polls across Europe show a slight dip in popular support for Ukraine, but backing remains strong.THE LATEST NEWSAround the WorldHoward Schultz, the interim chief executive of Starbucks, said that the company was “highly concerned and humbled by the environment.”Valerie Plesch for The New York TimesChief executives seem to think a recession is nigh: Of the 409 S&P 500 companies that have held analyst calls this quarter, the word has come up 165 times.Italy’s hard-right government is taking a harder stand against migrants: Authorities are refusing to let men leave a ship that arrived from Libya.Other Big StoriesMeta is said to be planning the biggest layoffs in its history this week.Jimmy Kimmel will host the Oscars in March.A man in Philadelphia ate 40 chickens in 40 days. He’s done now, though the last few days were intense: “My body is ready to repair,” he told The Times.A Morning ReadMelanie Jones, a biologist at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan, is skeptical about the idea.Jennilee Marigomen for The New York TimesThe concept of a “wood-wide web” has overturned conventional views of forests. Instead of competing for resources, the theory goes, trees collaborate and communicate underground through fungal filaments.Although those findings influence Hollywood and forest management discussions alike, the theory is up for debate. Most experts believe that organisms whose members sacrifice their own interests for the community rarely evolve, a result of the powerful force of natural selection.Lives lived: Ela Bhatt was a champion of gender equality who secured protections for millions of Indian women in the work force. She died at 89.TAIWAN DISPATCHA new life for old bomb sheltersThis bunker has been converted into a temple.Lam Yik Fei for The New York TimesPeople in Keelung, a port city in Taiwan, have prepared for war for hundreds of years: The city had its first foreign attack, by the Dutch, in 1642.Those anxieties have left a mark on Keelung, which has the highest density of air-raid shelters of any city on the highly fortified island. Kitchens connect to underground passageways that tunnel into the sandstone. Rusty gates at the ends of alleys lead to dark maws that are filled with memories of war, and sometimes trash or bats — or an altar or restaurant annex.Now, some of the city’s nearly 700 bomb shelters are being renovated and turned into cultural oases. Some are part of restaurants, while others sprout murals or altars.“It’s a space for life,” said a breakfast shop owner who uses her bunker for storage. “And a space for death.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookJoe Lingeman for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Cyd Raftus McDowell.If you’re celebrating Thanksgiving, try yuca purée. If you’re not, the Brazilian-inspired dish is still a satisfying and creamy side.What to Watch“Mood,” a genre-bending BBC America series, explores online sex work.What to ReadIn his new book, Bob Dylan riffs on 66 songs. Dwight Garner writes that the prose sounds “a lot like his own song lyrics, so much so that part of me wanted this to be a new record instead.”The CosmosAstronomers have found Earth’s closest known black hole. It’s dormant, at least for now.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Tempted with bait (five letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. My colleague Alexandra Berzon discussed election deniers and the U.S. midterm elections on NPR’s “Fresh Air.”“The Daily” is about the Democrats’ fight for white working class voters.You can always reach us at [email protected]. More

NASHVILLE — There I was, snug in my own bed in the middle of the night, turning to sleep on my side, when wham! the room slid sideways. Then it took off, spinning and spinning as though a sadistic carnival barker had flipped a switch and pushed the speed to max.Reader, I will spare you the details except to say that I have lately learned how delicate an instrument is the human ear, how many ways there are to disrupt its functions. As when, say, a lump of wax detaches itself from the ear canal through an exactly wrong combination of angles and gravity, lodges itself in the eardrum, and transforms the human vestibular system into a Tilt-A-Whirl. For days I lay in bed, trying not to move my head and reciting to myself lines from “The Second Coming,” a poem by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats:Turning and turning in the widening gyre/The falcon cannot hear the falconer.At the otolaryngologist’s office, the source of my torture finally emerged after half an hour of patient manipulations by a doctor wielding tiny power tools. In the newly stationary room, I looked at it, amazed. How fragile the human body is that it can be thrown into chaos by something so small!The same can be said for the body politic. Right-wing politicians and media outlets have turned American democracy upside down through nothing more than a lie. They put forth Supreme Court candidates who assure Congress that they respect legal precedent but who vote to overturn Roe vs. Wade the instant they have a majority on the court. They endorse political candidates who openly state that they will accept only poll results leading to their own election.Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.They denounce calamities where no calamities exist, turning public schools into battlegrounds and library books and bathrooms into weapons. But their “answer” to the real calamity of children being slaughtered in their classrooms is to arm teachers, to bring even more guns into the classroom. Political violence and threats are rising, and so is the intimidation of voters and voting officials.The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned.Here in blue Nashville, the Tennessee General Assembly carved the city into three different voting districts this year, hoping to send yet another Republican to Congress from a state where both senators are Republicans, and the entire congressional delegation, not counting the current representatives from Memphis and Nashville, is Republican.Seeing the handwriting on the wall, Representative Jim Cooper, a Blue Dog moderate, opted not to run for re-election, but Heidi Campbell, a state senator, stepped up. Ms. Campbell is a progressive who has significantly outpaced her MAGA opponent in fund-raising, but it would take a miracle turnout in Nashville for her to win in a district expressly drawn to make her lose.While Republicans are skilled at suppressing votes in districts that don’t favor Republicans, they have proven to be incompetent at administering the vote in these newly redrawn districts, which divide neighborhoods and sprawl out into the surrounding red counties. Last week, Nashville election officials — and keep in mind that the Davidson County Election Commission is regulated by the Republican state government and controlled by a Republican majority — distributed the wrong ballots to at least 200 Nashville voters. The error was caught not by voting officials but by The Associated Press.This may well be an honest mistake. Nevertheless, when you gerrymander a district out of recognizability with the express purpose of subverting the will of the political majority, and yours is the party screaming nonstop about nonexistent voter fraud, and you send people to the wrong district to vote, too, you deserve to be held accountable.On Friday, ACLU Tennessee filed a lawsuit on behalf of the League of Women Voters and two voters affected by the error. By Friday night, election officials had agreed to abide by a court order to address the error, though the solutions are complicated and will no doubt leave votes uncounted anyway.This chaos could’ve been avoided simply by allowing Nashville to continue to vote as a district and by honoring the will of the voters. “This is the result of a racist, bigoted, money-hungry Republican Legislature who is doing everything to hoard power to keep the system rigged against everyday working-class people,” said Odessa Kelly, the Democratic candidate in the redrawn Seventh Congressional District.Surely some revelation is at hand;/Surely the Second Coming is at hand.Americans belong to an electorate in which those who are most affected by voter suppression laws and extreme gerrymandering are so full of despair they may see no point in trying. Meanwhile, in the rest of America, voters aren’t especially concerned about the possibility of losing their own democracy.The best lack all conviction, while the worst/are full of passionate intensity.People often think I’m an optimist because I believe that human beings are mostly good, because I know that reasons for hope are everywhere if you look for them.The good people of Kansas voted to preserve abortion rights, for instance, and polls indicate that they would be far from alone if other red-state voters were given the chance to choose. The chaos agent formerly known as Kanye West has discovered the cost of antisemitism in the wide world, even if it mostly goes unchallenged in his squalid corner of the political sphere. The chaos agent known as Elon Musk may be on track to kill the hellsite known as Twitter. Best of all, a new report suggests that we haven’t yet lost the chance to prevent this verdant and teeming planet from becoming completely uninhabitable.Even so, I am not an optimist. I spend much of my life with my heart in my throat, and at this moment I am terrified. What has happened to my country that 20 percent of Americans believe political violence is justified? That an entire political party increasingly relies on lying and cheating to win elections? That Vladimir Putin, of all people, has become a Republican hero?And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?“I get why people are anxious,” Barack Obama said last week on the stump for Democrats in Georgia. “I get why you might be worried. I understand why it might be tempting sometimes just to tune out, to watch football or ‘Dancing With the Stars.’ But I’m here to tell you that tuning out is not an option. Despair is not an option.”Despair is not an option, but vertigo appears to be inescapable.My mother, too, was prone to both debilitating vertigo and frequent dizzy spells. At Mass one Sunday, in line for communion, she stepped up to the priest and started to tilt. Before she even had time to stumble, I put my hands on her shoulders and gently righted her. The priest looked over her head and met my eyes in understanding. Elder care is hard, he seemed to be saying, but this is what we do for one another. Somebody begins to fall. Somebody else catches the falling one.If only it were so in other realms. If only we could be counted on to catch one another before we fell. If only American voters will stand up for democracy and vote to restore the equilibrium of our fragile body politic. That would be the true answered prayer.Margaret Renkl, a contributing Opinion writer, is the author of the books “Graceland, at Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South” and “Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss.”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

Gail Collins: OK, Bret — it’s elections week! Tell me the one outcome you’re most hoping to see and the one you’re most dreading.Bret Stephens: The idea of Herschel Walker being elected a United States senator is the political equivalent of E.L. James, the author of “Fifty Shades of Grey,” being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature: the preposterous elevation of the former equals the total debasement of the latter.On the other hand, and despite my reservations about him, I’m rooting for Lee Zeldin for New York governor. Our state is overtaxed, underpoliced and chronically misgoverned, and I’d like to see it the other way around. And a Republican victory in New York might finally jolt the Democratic Party into getting serious about crime and urban decay.You?Gail: Zeldin is awful. There are New York Republicans you could imagine running the state well, and there are New York Republicans who will inevitably create a mess of political polarization and stalled services. Mr. Z is definitely in that category.Bret: I would be more inclined to agree with you about the overly Trumpy Zeldin — until I consider his opponent, the uninspired, ethically challenged and insipid Kathy Hochul.Gail: In my rooting-for category, I’m going to bring up Senator Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire — just so I can mention her dreadful opponent, Don Bolduc. He’s long been known as an opponent of legal protections for transgender people. Last week, he claimed schools were giving out litter boxes to support kids who identify as cats. Which is, um … not true.Who’s your most-to-be-avoided?Bret: I’m with you on Hassan, a conscientious and bipartisan legislator. Who — I am amazed to say — might lose on Tuesday. As for my most-to-be-avoided? I’d have to go with Arizona’s Blake Masters. He gives me the sense of being the love child of Ayn Rand and Hans Gruber, the Alan Rickman character in “Die Hard.”Gail: I adore it when you get mean about people like ol’ Blake.Bret: Actually, that’s probably unfair to Gruber, who had a twinkle-in-the-eye panache that made his villainy interesting and often funny. Masters is neither interesting nor funny, and his only talent seems to consist in sucking up to rich guys.Gail: You would be referring to Peter Thiel, billionaire co-founder of PayPal and backer of rancid Republicans.Bret: And Donald Trump — assuming he’s actually rich. Let me ask you a different question: Is there any Republican in this whole election cycle you might see yourself supporting?Gail: This goes back to the question I’ve been wrestling with since the world watched that Fetterman-Oz debate.There are plenty of decent Republicans running for Senate, and some who are smarter than their Democratic opponents. And at least one Republican who can out-debate a Democrat who’s recovering from a stroke. But they all share one thing — they’d immediately vote to put their party in power.Bret: They do tend to do that.Gail: And that’s the crucial question this season — which party will be in charge? Right now the partisan rift is so deep you really have to decide which side you want to run the show and let that be your guide.Does that make sense to you?Bret: Yes and no. I powerfully sympathize with the impulse to oppose everyone who belongs to the party of Trump. But the idea of voting for your own side, no matter how lousy the candidate, also explains how Republicans talk themselves into voting for Trump, Walker, Bolduc, Masters and the rest of the evil clown parade. Parties should not be rewarded by voters when they sink to the lowest common denominator.But … predictions! Any upsets you see coming?Gail: When I worry about election results my thoughts almost always turn to Arizona, land of the you-never-can-tell voter. You’ve got Senator Mark Kelly neck-and-neck with Blake Masters. The only positive thing I can think of to say about Masters is that he hasn’t yet expressed any deep concern about litter boxes in public schools.But the most terrifying Arizona race is for governor, where Kari Lake, a former TV anchor and current election denier, appears to be leading Katie Hobbs, the responsible but sorta boring secretary of state. Do not want to imagine the vote-counting crisis there in 2024 if Lake wins.Bret: I’m going to venture that Lake is going to win handily and that Masters will win by a hair.Gail: Aaauuughhh.Bret: Part of my overall prediction that Democrats will wake up on Wednesday morning with a powerful impulse to move to Canada or Belgium to take advantage of their permissive assisted-suicide programs.Gail: And what would your own reaction be, pray tell? I know you theoretically support the Republican Senate agenda, but I’ve noticed you find a lot of the Republican senators kinda … repulsive.Bret: Again, very mixed feelings. Seeing the Republican Party go from bad to worse is depressing and scary. But as long as Joe Biden is president they won’t be able to do much except embarrass themselves.If there’s one saving grace for me here, it’s the faint hope that a Republican majority in at least one house of Congress will pump the brakes on spending. Our gross national debt is $31 trillion and rising. And it’s going to cost more to service as interest rates rise.Gail: I’m touched to hear you express such confidence that the Republicans we’ve seen on the hustings this year are going to be able to come up with a smart plan to completely redo government spending.Bret: Fair point.Gail: My first response to the idea of sane Republican spending policy is sad giggles.But I do feel obliged to offer at least one suggestion. The best way to tackle debt issues is not to cancel Covid relief or stop fixing the nation’s infrastructure. Tax the folks who can afford it, like those pharmaceutical billionaires who’ve done so very well off the pandemic.Bret: Not sure these billionaires could pay off so many trillions in debt, even if we confiscated every penny they have.Gail: It would be a start, and I suspect that even under a very serious new tax plan they’d be left with enough coins in their pockets to allow them to soldier on.But speaking of good/bad government spending plans, what do you think about recent Republican calls to cut back on Social Security and Medicare entitlements?Bret: The devil is in the details. Regarding Social Security, it was designed in the 1930s, when the typical life expectancy was around 60. It’s now around 76. The program is predicted to be insolvent in about 13 years if we do nothing to change it. My basic view is that we should honor our promises to those now benefiting from Social Security, pare back the promises to younger workers and eliminate them completely for those who haven’t yet spent decades paying into them.How about you?Gail: I say leave Social Security alone. It was meant to help protect Americans who reach retirement age, give them a reliable cushion to make their old age comfortable or at least bearable. Can’t do much better than that.The fact that it’s seen as a plan for everybody — not just a program to aid the poor — gives it a special survivability. And on the fairness end, wealthy folk who don’t need it will give a good chunk back when it’s taxed as part of their income.Bret: True, but it’s still going broke.Gail: Of course I’m not crazy enough to say the government can never touch Social Security if its finances get truly shaky. I just want to be sure whoever’s doing the fixing is dedicated to protecting the basic concept.And Medicare — oh gosh, Bret, let’s save Medicare for next week. It can be our postelection calming mechanism.Bret: Gail, I don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves, but any thoughts on the news that Trump is very likely to declare his candidacy for president later this month?Gail: Now that was the immediate postelection conversation I was yearning to avoid. Of course we knew it was going to happen, but, gee, don’t you think he could have let us have the holidays off?Bret: I know very little about what goes on in Trump’s mind, but I think we can safely say that giving either of us a break isn’t high on his list of priorities.The silver lining here is that if Democrats take the kind of electoral drubbing I suspect they will on Tuesday, it should help concentrate their minds. Time for President Biden to give up on the idea — or fantasy, really — that he’s going to run for re-election and devote his time to saving Ukrainians, Iranians and Taiwanese from tyranny as the centerpiece of his presidential legacy.Gail: I’m with you in the Joe-Don’t-Run camp.Bret: Time also for party strategists to start thinking a whole lot harder about how they lost the working-class vote and how they can recapture it. Time, finally, for Democratic politicians to focus on middle-class fears about crime, education and inflation, not progressive obsessions with social justice and language policing.Who knows? Maybe that’s just the wake-up call we all need if we’re going to keep Trump in Mar-a-Lago.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