Elections

A State Board of Elections investigation was stalled when two Republican board members were absent from a vote to request subpoena power.New York’s top elections watchdog is investigating whether the campaign of Representative Lee Zeldin, the Republican nominee for governor, violated state law by coordinating with a pair of super PACs supporting his candidacy, according to two people familiar with the inquiry.Michael L. Johnson, the chief enforcement counsel at the State Board of Elections, initiated the preliminary investigation following reporting by The Times Union of Albany and a formal complaint by the New York Democratic Party documenting individuals who may be working for both the super PACs and Mr. Zeldin’s campaign in a prohibited manner.In recent days, Mr. Johnson asked the Board of Elections to grant him broad subpoena authority to compel cooperation from the campaign and the groups, Save Our State Inc. and Safe Together New York.But before the board could vote on Mr. Johnson’s request as a part of a long-scheduled regular business meeting on Tuesday, two Republican board members — a co-chairman and a commissioner — both unexpectedly said they could not attend, denying the body a quorum to vote on the subpoena, according to the people familiar with the events, who were not authorized to speak about it publicly.Under the election board’s current rules, Mr. Johnson cannot immediately issue a subpoena on his own — meaning the matter will be likely to wait until after Election Day.The investigation comes as Mr. Zeldin, a conservative four-term congressman from Long Island, appears to be surging in polls against Gov. Kathy Hochul, the Democratic incumbent. An inquiry could complicate his path in the final campaign stretch and undercut attacks he has leveled at Ms. Hochul for her own fund-raising practices.The super PACs have played a significant role in Mr. Zeldin’s political success, raising more than $12 million dollars to spend on TV ads amplifying his campaign message and attacking Ms. Hochul this fall in terms that mirror those of his campaign. Without the groups’ efforts, the governor would be outspending Republicans five-to-one on advertising.Jennifer Wilson, a spokeswoman for the state elections board, declined to comment on the investigation. Calls to the Republican board members, Peter S. Kosinski and Anthony J. Casale, were not returned. The two men were said not to have given fellow election officials a specific reason for their absences this week.Katie Vincentz, a spokeswoman for Mr. Zeldin’s campaign, characterized the investigation as Ms. Hochul’s “latest desperate attempt to try and deflect from her abysmal record on the issues most important to New York.”“It’s absolutely zero coincidence that the person pushing this agenda at the Board of Elections is a political appointee of the Cuomo-Hochul administration,” she said, referring to Mr. Johnson. “The Democratic Party is embarrassing itself with baseless tinfoil hat conspiracy theories.”Mr. Johnson was nominated by former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, and confirmed by the Senate in 2021. He was previously a longtime Assembly aide.The position of chief enforcement counsel is supposed to be apolitical and independent from the broader elections board in many respects, though Mr. Johnson is dependent on the commissioners for certain powers, like issuing subpoenas. Under the rules, if the commissioners fail to vote on one of Mr. Johnson’s requests, he can issue the subpoena anyway after 20 days, which in this case would be after Election Day.Benjamin Cleeton for The New York TimesThe issues that appear to be at stake in the inquiry cut to the heart of New York’s campaign finance system.Unlike a traditional campaign, which can only raise up to $47,100 in the general election from a given donor, super PACs like Save Our State or Safe Together can legally raise and spend unlimited amounts of money influencing political races. In this case, much of the funding for both groups has come from Ronald S. Lauder, a billionaire cosmetics heir, and a few other wealthy donors.But New York law strictly prohibits any coordination between a candidate’s campaign committee and a so-called independent expenditure committee, or super PAC, that supports it. The Times Union first reported apparent ties between the Zeldin campaign and the super PACs earlier this month.Illegal coordination can be difficult to tease out, particularly in a state like New York where political figures often have overlapping titles and roles that can grow more and more tangled over time.One such figure is Joseph Borelli, the minority leader of the New York City Council, who serves as both the co-chairman of Mr. Zeldin’s campaign committee and the spokesman for Save Our State. Mr. Borelli has denied any wrongdoing, stressing that his role on the Zeldin campaign was merely ceremonial and that he served as an unpaid volunteer for the super PAC. He said in a brief interview that he was not aware of the inquiry but that there had been no coordination between the group and the campaign.Another is John McLaughlin, Mr. Zeldin’s longtime pollster, who was paid $100,000 by Safe Together to cut a radio advertisement attacking Ms. Hochul late last year. A spokesman for Safe Together declined to comment.A third is Allen H. Roth, whose connection to Mr. Zeldin is more opaque. Mr. Roth is a vice chairman of the New York State Conservative Party, which is directly working with Mr. Zeldin’s campaign. He is also a longtime adviser to Mr. Lauder, the cosmetics heir, who is the top donor to both super PACs.The New York State Democratic Party formally filed a complaint against the Zeldin campaign a few days after the Times Union report was published.Other potential areas for legal scrutiny have emerged since them.Mr. Zeldin himself has openly welcomed the outside support, describing his own campaign efforts and that of the groups as one shared mission. But on Monday, he went further, directly urging donors on a call hosted by the Republican Governors Association to contribute large sums to the super PACs, according to a recording of the call obtained by The Times Union.On Tuesday, Democrats filed a separate complaint to Mr. Johnson about the Republican governors group itself, arguing that the $1.2 million it had directed to Save Our State in recent weeks ran afoul of New York law. The group appears to have made the donations without registering a political entity in the state or disclosing its donors, as required under New York law.Kitty Bennett More

When politicians play pundit, it rarely reflects well on them. Which makes what happened Thursday, when Senator Chuck Schumer of New York was caught on a hot microphone assessing the Democrats’ chances of retaining power, such an anomaly.His comments, made while greeting President Biden on the tarmac at Hancock International Airport in Syracuse, were mostly positive, talking up his party’s fortunes. The remarks ricocheted around social media on an otherwise slow political news day — and not to his, or his party’s, detriment.“It looks like the debate didn’t hurt us too much in Pennsylvania as of today,” Mr. Schumer, the majority leader, can be heard telling Mr. Biden, his former Senate colleague. “So that’s good.”The comments came two days after an uneven performance by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania, in the state’s lone debate for that position. Mr. Fetterman had a serious stroke in late May, and deals with auditory processing issues. He has been making steady progress, he has said, but continues to see a speech therapist.“To be honest, doing that debate wasn’t exactly easy,” Mr. Fetterman said Wednesday, before a friendly crowd of more than 3,000 people in Pittsburgh. “I knew it wasn’t going to be easy after, you know, having a stroke after five months.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: The debate performance by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is still recovering from a stroke, has thrust questions of health to the center of the pivotal race and raised Democratic anxieties.G.O.P. Inflation Plans: Republicans are riding a wave of anger over inflation as they seek to recapture Congress, but few economists expect their proposals to bring down rising prices.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Mr. Fetterman’s campaign has seized on remarks on abortion made during the debate by his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, who said that he wanted women, doctors and local political leaders “to put the best ideas forward so states can decide for themselves.”On Wednesday, Mr. Schumer issued a statement calling Dr. Oz’s comments “a devastating mistake” that would help Mr. Fetterman win. Mr. Fetterman’s campaign said on Wednesday that it had raised more than $2 million in the immediate aftermath of the debate..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.During his conversation Thursday with Mr. Biden, Mr. Schumer also forecast other hotly contested Senate races. Democrats are defending vulnerable incumbents in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and New Hampshire, while the seat in Pennsylvania is held by Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican who is retiring. Republicans need to pick up just one Senate seat to retake the majority.“I think we’re picking up steam in Nevada,” Mr. Schumer said, continuing: “The state where we’re going downhill is Georgia. It’s hard to believe that they will go for Herschel Walker.”Mr. Schumer also observed that the early turnout in Georgia was “huge.”Strategists in both parties have long expected the races to tighten as voters began paying closer attention as Election Day approached. Each of the “core four” races — as Democrats call their incumbents’ re-election bids — is, along with Pennsylvania, essentially a tossup.But to the surprise of some Democrats, Mr. Walker, a former football star who became the Republican nominee despite the private doubts of party leaders, has weathered a barrage of stories about his personal life. Since late August, Democratic groups have spent millions highlighting Mr. Walker’s past.On Wednesday, a second woman came forward to accuse Mr. Walker — who is running as an abortion opponent — of pressuring her to have an abortion. The New York Times has not confirmed her account, and Mr. Walker has denied the accounts of both women.Democrats cautioned that Mr. Schumer’s remarks did not necessarily represent a definitive statement on the election. A spokesman for his Senate office said Mr. Schumer “believes the Democratic candidates will win.” More

Ahead of U.S. elections, the Russian leader sounded like some right-wing Westerners, saying his fight is not with those in the West who hold “traditional values.”President Vladimir V. Putin declared on Thursday that Russia’s battle was with “Western elites,” not with the West itself, in a speech seemingly aimed more at winning over political conservatives abroad than his own citizens.Mr. Putin, addressing an annual foreign policy conference outside Moscow, appeared intent on capitalizing on political divisions in the United States and its allies that have only heightened since they began showering Ukraine with military aid to fend off the Russian invasion.Many of the Russian leader’s themes were familiar, but they took on particular resonance given the coming midterm elections in the United States and growing discontent in Europe over the costs of the war.“There are at least two Wests,” Mr. Putin said.One, he said, is a West of “traditional, mainly Christian values” for which Russians feel kinship. But, he said, “there’s another West — aggressive, cosmopolitan, neocolonial, acting as the weapon of the neoliberal elite,” and trying to impose its “pretty strange” values on everyone else. He peppered his remarks with references to “dozens of genders” and “gay parades.”Mr. Putin, as he often does, portrayed Russia as threatened by the possible expansion of NATO — and the values of its liberal democracies — to countries like Ukraine that were once part of the Soviet Union.He denied that Moscow was preparing to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine. “We have no need to do this,” he said. “There’s no sense for us, neither political nor military.”It is Mr. Putin himself, however, who has raised that prospect, as have other senior Russian officials. And past Kremlin assurances about its intentions have proved unreliable. In the days before the war began, for example, Russia denied that it planned to invade Ukraine.Mr. Putin has tried to blame the West for the war in Ukraine. This residential building in Kyiv was hit by missiles on the second day of the Russian invasion.Lynsey Addario for The New York Times“This is a trick — it shouldn’t make anyone relax,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a Russian political analyst, noting that Mr. Putin has blamed the West and its support for an independent Ukraine for every escalation in the war. “His goal is to show that escalation is the product of Western policies.”In his nearly four-hour speech and question-and-answer session, the Russian leader did not mention the U.S. midterm elections taking place on Nov. 8. But his barbs against “elites” were a reminder that he still hopes to build alliances with supporters of Russia in the West.The State of the WarFears of Escalation: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia repeated the unfounded claim that Ukraine was preparing to explode a so-called dirty bomb, as concerns rose in the West that the Kremlin was seeking a pretext to escalate the war.The Looming Fight for Kherson: As Russian forces pillage the occupied southern port city and pressure residents to leave for Russia, a nearby hydroelectric dam has emerged as a linchpin in what is shaping up to be the site of the next major battle in Ukraine.A Coalition Under Strain: President Biden is facing new challenges keeping together the bipartisan, multinational coalition supporting Ukraine, which has shown recent signs of fraying with the approach of U.S. midterm elections and a cold European winter.Anti-Drone Warfare: Since Russia began terrorizing Ukrainian cities in recent weeks with Iranian-made drones, Ukraine has turned its focus to an intense counter-drone strategy. The hastily assembled effort has been surprisingly successful.In the United States, Republican leaders have said that should they regain control of the House and Senate, President Biden can no longer expect a “blank check” when it comes to sending military aid to Ukraine, despite strong popular backing for that aid. Even some Democrats, faced with restive constituents, have appeared to distance themselves from support for the war effort.And Mr. Putin’s attack on “elites” may also play well in the United States, where many Republican candidates have rallied voters by denouncing leaders they say are out of touch, and their liberal approaches to divisive social issues.“In the United States,” he said, “there’s a very strong part of the public who maintain traditional values, and they’re with us. We know about this.”Mr. Putin’s attempts to gain political ground in the West came as his military is struggling — often without success — to keep hold of the territory it seized in Ukraine after invading on Feb. 24.Ukrainian soldiers receiving a meal near the front line in the Kherson region on Thursday.Ivor Prickett for The New York TimesIn the question-and-answer session, the foreign policy analyst moderating the event, Fyodor Lukyanov, pressed Mr. Putin on those setbacks, and said there was a widespread view that Russia had “underestimated the enemy.”“Honestly, society doesn’t understand — what’s the plan?” Mr. Lukyanov asked.Mr. Putin brushed aside the implicit criticism, arguing that Ukraine’s fierce resistance showed that he was right to launch the invasion. The longer Russia had waited, he said, “the worse it would have been for us, the more difficult and more dangerous.”Mr. Putin also repeated Russia’s claims that Ukraine was preparing to detonate a “dirty bomb” to spread radioactive material on its territory and then blame Moscow. Ukraine and the West say that the claims — for which Russia has offered no evidence — are baseless disinformation that could be used as a pretext by the Kremlin to use a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb.Ms. Stanovaya, the political analyst, said Mr. Putin appeared to be trying to harness worldwide anti-establishment sentiment.“There’s now a sense that he is building an anti-Western coalition on a global scale,” she said. “He doesn’t think he’s been backed into a corner. He thinks he’s a witness to the birth of a new world.”Mr. Putin himself said he was confident that eventually, the West would be forced to engage Russia and other world powers in talks on a future world order.“I always believed, and believe, in the power of common sense,” Mr. Putin said. “I am therefore convinced that sooner or later, the new centers of the multipolar world order and the West will have to start a conversation of equals.”As Western leaders have tried to punish Moscow for the war with crushing sanctions, Russian leaders have sought to build new ties to other nations and strengthen existing ones. On Thursday, the government of one of those nations, China, an increasingly important ally, offered a full-throated endorsement of Mr. Putin’s leadership.In a telephone call with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that any attempt to block the progress between the two countries would never succeed, the Chinese ministry said in a statement.In Ukraine on Thursday, Russian forces pursued their drone and missile assaults on infrastructure, leaving hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians without power. And the Ukrainian military said it was increasing the number of soldiers near its northern border with Belarus, where it noted what it said were unusual troop movements.Tanks during Russian and Belarusian military drills in Belarus in February, days before the invasion of Ukraine.Alexander Zemlianichenko Jr./Associated PressBrig. Gen. Oleksii Hromov said Kyiv had no new evidence to suggest that Belarusian or Russian forces were preparing a strike force, but concern has mounted in recent days after the Kremlin dispatched thousands of soldiers to Belarus.Moscow used Belarus, its closest military and political ally, to help stage its invasion of Ukraine, and the movement of Russian soldiers there is closely monitored by Ukraine and its Western allies.Ukraine’s government has issued broad statements in recent weeks indicating that it was aware of the threat of an offensive from that direction, with the military releasing a video recently warning that “if the Belarusian army supports Russian aggression,” Kyiv would respond “with our entire arsenal of weapons.”But the more immediate concern for Ukrainian officials is the continuing use of Belarus as a launching pad for aerial assaults.Russia has deployed its troops to airfields in Belarus, and this week, it used Belarusian territory to carry out 10 launches of Iranian-made drones, General Hromov said.Reporting was contributed by More

Taylor Swift was quite the romantic when she burst on the scene in 2006. She sang about the ecstasies of young love and the heartbreak of it. But her mood has hardened as her star has risen. Her excellent new album, Midnights, plays upon a string of negative emotions — anxiety, restlessness, exhaustion and occasionally anger.“I don’t dress for women,” she sings at one point, “I don’t dress for men/Lately I’ve been dressing for revenge.”It turns out Swift is part of a larger trend. The researchers Charlotte Brand, Alberto Acerbi and Alex Mesoudi analyzed more than 150,000 pop songs released between 1965 and 2015. Over that time, the appearance of the word “love” in top-100 hits roughly halved. Meanwhile, the number of times such songs contained negative emotion words, like “hate” rose sharply.Pop music isn’t the only thing that has gotten a lot harsher. David Rozado, Ruth Hughes and Jamin Halberstadt analyzed 23 million headlines published between 2000 and 2019 by 47 different news outlets popular in the United States. The headlines, too, grew significantly more negative, with a greater proportion of headlines denoting anger, fear, disgust and sadness. Headlines in left-leaning media got a lot more negative, but headlines in right-leaning publications got even more negative than that.The negativity in the culture reflects the negativity in real life. The General Social Survey asks people to rate their happiness levels. Between 1990 and 2018 the share of Americans who put themselves in the lowest happiness category increased by more than 50 percent. And that was before the pandemic.The really bad news is abroad. Each year Gallup surveys roughly 150,000 people in over 140 countries about their emotional lives. Experiences of negative emotions — related to stress, sadness, anger, worry and physical pain — hit a record high last year.Gallup asks people in this survey to rate their lives on a scale from zero to 10, with zero meaning you’re living your worst possible life and 10 meaning you’re living your best. Sixteen years ago, only 1.6 percent of people worldwide rated their life as a zero. As of last year, the share of people reporting the worst possible lives has more than quadrupled. The unhappiest people are even unhappier. In 2006, the bottom fifth of the population gave themselves an average score of 2.5. Fifteen years later, that average score in the bottom quintile had dropped to 1.2.In an interview, Jon Clifton, the C.E.O. of Gallup, told me that in 2021 21 percent of the people in India gave themselves a zero rating. He said negative emotions are rising in India and China, Brazil and Mexico and many other nations. A lot of people are pretty miserable at work. In the most recent survey Gallup found that 20 percent of all people are thriving at work, 62 percent are indifferent on the job and 18 percent are miserable.Part of the problem is declining community. The polls imply that almost two billion people are so unhappy where they live they would not recommend their community to a friend. This is especially true in China and India.Part of the problem is hunger. In 2014, 22.6 percent of the world faced moderate or severe food insecurity. By 2020, 30.4 percent of the world did.Part of the problem is an increase in physical misery. In 2006, 30 percent of people who rated their lives the worst said they experienced daily pain. Last year, 45 percent of those people said they live with daily pain. Before the pandemic, the experience of living with pain increased across all age groups.A lot of those numbers surprised me. Places like China and India have gotten much richer. But development does not necessarily lead to gains in well-being, in part because development is often accompanied by widening inequality. This is one of the core points Clifton makes in his book “Blind Spot: The Global Rise of Unhappiness and How Leaders Missed It.” We conventionally use G.D.P. and other material measures to evaluate how nations are doing. But these are often deeply flawed measures of how actual people are experiencing their lives.Misery influences politics. James Carville famously said, “It’s the economy, stupid.” But that’s too narrow. Often it’s human flourishing, stupid, including community cohesion, a sense of being respected, social connection. George Ward of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has argued that subjective measures of well-being are more predictive of some election outcomes than economic measures. Measures of well-being dropped in Tunisia and Egypt before the Arab uprisings. Well-being dropped in Britain before the Brexit vote. Counties in the United States that saw the largest gain in voting Republican for president between the 2012 election and Donald Trump’s election in 2016 were also the counties where people rated their lives the worst.If misery levels keep rising, what can we expect in the future? Well, rising levels of populism for one. And second, greater civil unrest across the board. Clifton noted that according to the Global Peace Index, civic discontent — riots, strikes, anti-government demonstrations — increased by 244 percent from 2011 to 2019.We live in a world of widening emotional inequality. The top 20 percent of the world is experiencing highest level of happiness and well-being since Gallup began measuring these things. The bottom 20 percent is experiencing the worst. It’s a fundamentally unjust and unstable situation. The emotional health of the world is shattering.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

G.O.P. operatives, like a classic rock station playing “Stairway to Heaven,” believe that the hits work, and so they eagerly link vulnerable Democrats to the “radical San Francisco liberal.”It’s a phrase you’re hearing a lot in debates and Republican attack ads: that Democrat X voted “100 percent of the time” with Speaker Nancy Pelosi.Whenever you hear a claim like that, be skeptical. It’s probably false.Some of these ads go even further. An ad for J.D. Vance in Ohio, for instance, claims his Senate opponent, Representative Tim Ryan, “votes with Biden, Pelosi 100 percent.” He repeated that statistic in a news release today.Ryan actually ran against Pelosi for House speaker in 2016, winning 63 votes. In 2018, he signed a letter calling for her ouster. He’s probably been her most vocal critic among elected Democrats, at some risk to his career in the House.Republicans have tried the same tactic against other Democratic rebels — notably Representative Abigail Spanberger, a lawmaker from Northern Virginia who is another of Pelosi’s in-house critics. “Abigail Spanberger votes 100 percent with Pelosi,” one G.O.P. ad says. “It is like having our very own Pelosi mini-me.”Pelosi has been a boogeywoman in Republican campaigns for more than a decade. Remember “Fire Pelosi” in 2010? The haircut thing during the pandemic? The ice cream freezer drawer? For G.O.P. operatives, linking vulnerable Democrats to Pelosi, or the “radical San Francisco liberal” in their words, is akin to a classic rock station that always plays “Stairway to Heaven” or “Free Bird” — they do it because they think it works.And has Ryan voted with Pelosi and Biden 100 percent of the time? Has Spanberger? Not really. Republicans have leveled the same cookie-cutter accusation at Cindy Axne, Angie Craig, Elaine Luria, Chris Pappas, Dean Phillips and Susan Wild — all of them known to be among the least partisan Democrats in the House.Let’s unpack where those statistics come from, and why they’re so misleading.There are two main sources that track congressional voting records: FiveThirtyEight, which rates lawmakers on how often they align with Biden, and ProPublica, which built an online tool that allows you to compare head-to-head voting records of any two members of Congress.ProPublica’s tool lists only “votes designated as major by ProPublica.” In the current Congress, there have been 123 such votes. And when you do a comparison between Pelosi and Ryan, it does return a result of 100 percent, along with the text: “They have disagreed on 0 votes out of 123 votes in the 117th Congress.”But that’s “really misleading,” according to John Lawrence, a former chief of staff to Pelosi and the author of a new book on her first tenure as speaker, “Arc of Power.”Not only, he said, does the tool cherry-pick votes, but it doesn’t capture how often Pelosi has had to deliver what Lawrence called “bad news” to the left wing of her caucus when the Senate balks. During the negotiations over the Affordable Care Act, for instance, Senator Joe Lieberman refused to support a public insurance option — so Pelosi had to twist the arms of disappointed progressives in the House to get them to support final passage.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: The debate performance by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is still recovering from a stroke, has thrust questions of health to the center of the pivotal race and raised Democratic anxieties.G.O.P. Inflation Plans: Republicans are riding a wave of anger over inflation as they seek to recapture Congress, but few economists expect their proposals to bring down rising prices.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Here are six more reasons that the 100 percent thing is bunk:First: Because she’s speaker, by House tradition, Pelosi usually doesn’t vote. So on a purely factual basis, it’s flat wrong.“We could estimate with some confidence, but it’s not a great metric,” said Sarah Binder, a scholar at the Brookings Institution and George Washington University who studies Congress. But that’s a minor point.Second: Centrists like Ryan will sponsor or co-sign reams of legislation that never gets a vote because it doesn’t match the priorities of their more liberal Democratic colleagues. Along with Spanberger, for instance, he’s a co-sponsor of the Trust in Congress Act, a bill to bar lawmakers and their families from trading individual stocks. Pelosi initially opposed it. Ryan also broke with Pelosi by opposing the USA Freedom Act of 2014, which would have cut off the National Security Agency’s collection of bulk telephone records.Third: The “100 percent” sound bites also don’t capture all the times Ryan, for one, voted with the man who hopes to replace Pelosi as speaker: Representative Kevin McCarthy of California. ProPublica’s tool finds that, in the 116th Congress, Ryan and McCarthy voted together 256 times out of 744 total votes, including 11 “major votes.”Drew Hammill, a deputy chief of staff in Pelosi’s office, also noted that legislation on gun safety, infrastructure and semiconductor manufacturing had passed with Republican votes.Fourth: Like a duck paddling beneath the surface of the water, there’s a lot that goes on in Congress that is not easy to see and is impossible to quantify: Lawmakers shape legislation through committee meetings, private exchanges or random hallway encounters with colleagues, public statements and amendments.As Lawrence pointed out, lawmakers will often withhold their vote in exchange for concessions that make a bill more palatable for their districts. Ryan, for instance, insisted on beefing up pro-union provisions in the CHIPS Act, the bipartisan semiconductor bill, and he got his way before voting yes.If you’re a Capitol Hill reporter or a whiz at using Congress.gov, the government’s extremely clunky vote-tracking tool, or the even more arcane Congressional Record, you can trace some of that. But a lot of the give-and-take is hard to capture with data.Fifth: Lawmakers on the left are just as likely to break with leadership as centrists are, if not more so. By ProPublica’s measure, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York voted with Pelosi 94 percent of the time — but nobody would describe her as more moderate than Ryan or Spanberger. Binder noted that, on paper, Ocasio-Cortez often votes with Republicans when she opposes the Democrats’ party line. So she shows up as a “moderate” in some indexes, as do Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib.Sixth: The House and the Senate are different institutions, with different structures and traditions. The House, for instance, has a much more powerful Rules Committee, which enforces more party-line voting. As Binder pointed out, most votes are “procedural votes” that don’t tell us much about a lawmaker’s ideological predilections.In the Senate, where any senator can hold up a bill for pretty much any reason, there’s also the filibuster — which, for better or worse, promotes more collaboration across the aisle.So if you run two senators against one another in ProPublica’s app, you’ll find far more Democrats voting with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer at rates in the 80s. But that doesn’t tell you all that much about whether, say, Senator Jon Tester of Montana is to the left of Representative Jared Golden of Maine. And the Senate tends to vote on lots of nominations, which clogs up the data.Representative Tim Ryan, campaigning at Ohio State University, lands in the middle of the pack among Democratic members of Congress in terms of voting against the majority.Gaelen Morse/Getty ImagesSo which metrics are more accurate?Political scientists prefer more sophisticated measures of ideology, but they don’t tend to be easy to use. There are two main ones: VoteView, which I wrote about earlier, and Congressional Quarterly’s “Party Unity” score.Party Unity scores are proprietary, but C.Q. occasionally releases rankings to the public. The publication’s list of the Democrats who voted most often against their own party’s majority makes intuitive sense. The top 10 of these “opposition Democrats” in 2020 all represented swing districts: They include Golden, Spanberger, Luria of Virginia, Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania, Max Rose of New York, Joe Cunningham of North Carolina, Anthony Brindisi of New York and Stephanie Murphy of Florida.By VoteView’s more complex measure, Ryan scores a -0.402, which puts him around the middle of the Democratic pack. Spanberger scores a -0.176, implying that she is more conservative.For comparison’s sake, Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the leader of the Progressive Caucus, scores a -0.681, while Golden, the most conservative Democrat, is at -0.114. Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, who voted with Pelosi 99 percent of the time according to ProPublica’s online tool, is right up there with Golden at -0.15.But that’s not exactly the stuff attack ads are made of, let alone rebuttals. You probably won’t see Ryan out there promoting his VoteView rating of -0.402 on the hustings — it’s far easier for him to say, as he often does, “Well, I ran against Nancy Pelosi.”What to readMany American entrepreneurs have mixed politics and business. No one has fused the two quite like the election-denying chief executive of MyPillow, report Alexandra Berzon, Charles Homans and Ken Bensinger.As was the case in 2020, Republican votes are more likely to be counted and reported first in several battleground states, giving the party’s candidates deceptively large early leads. Nick Corasaniti reports on the “red mirage.”As Cheri Beasley and Val Demings run competitive Senate campaigns in North Carolina and Florida, some Black female Democrats say party leaders are leaving them to fend for themselves, writes Jonathan Weisman.A Tennessee man was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for dragging a police officer protecting the Capitol into an angry pro-Trump crowd that brutally assaulted the officer on Jan. 6, 2021. Alan Feuer has sentencing details.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected]. More

Attempts by candidates to discredit the integrity of the vote have “snowballed enormously” since the 2020 election, the head of the observation mission said.WASHINGTON — Election observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe warned this week of “intensely divisive” rhetoric ahead of the midterm elections in the United States, noting that Republicans who have denied the 2020 election results are running for offices that directly oversee future contests.In a 16-page interim report released on Wednesday, the organization highlighted a number of concerns for the midterms, including threats of violence against election officials, widely circulated election misinformation, and potential voter suppression and voter intimidation. The group, an international security organization whose members include the United States, routinely monitors the elections of its member states at their invitation.The report noted that “a number of Republican candidates in key races” who could be in charge of overseeing future elections have “challenged or refused to accept the legitimacy of the 2020 results.” Attempts by candidates to discredit the integrity of the vote have “snowballed enormously” since the 2020 election, Tana de Zulueta, the head of the organization’s election observation mission for the U.S. midterms, said in an interview.The report offered further evidence of international concern about the state of democracy in the United States in the wake of President Donald J. Trump’s time in office and his attempts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election.Despite the concern, the World Justice Project, an organization that tracks the rule of law internationally, said on Wednesday that the situation in the United States had actually improved slightly in 2022 after several years of decline. In newly released rankings, the group placed the United States at No. 26 out of 140 countries and jurisdictions.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: The debate performance by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is still recovering from a stroke, has thrust questions of health to the center of the pivotal race and raised Democratic anxieties.G.O.P. Inflation Plans: Republicans are riding a wave of anger over inflation as they seek to recapture Congress, but few economists expect their proposals to bring down rising prices.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.“The U.S. is not out of the woods by a long stretch,” Elizabeth Andersen, the organization’s executive director, said in a statement. “Authoritarian trends have weakened both trust and accountability, and our democracy is not as healthy as it should be.”The report from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or O.S.C.E., made note of “intensely divisive and at times inflammatory rhetoric” in campaigns by Republicans and Democrats, including what it described as “allegations by some political leaders and candidates from both sides that their opponents were seeking to subvert democracy and were a threat to the United States.” As examples, the report pointed to remarks by Mr. Trump and President Biden about each other.The report also said that election monitors had observed language at rallies and on social networks that “sought to delegitimize the other party, was potentially defamatory and in several instances invoked racist, xenophobic, transphobic and homophobic tropes.” At one rally, for example, an incumbent Republican lawmaker “made inflammatory xenophobic remarks,” according to the report, which did not identify the lawmaker.Ms. de Zulueta said that the use of divisive language was not equal between the two parties and that reports by election observers about Democratic campaigns were “more low-key.”The report said that both Republicans and Democrats “campaigned on platforms of ensuring electoral integrity” but went about it in very different ways. “Republicans emphasized the perceived need to prevent the casting and counting of illegal votes,” the report said, “while Democrats focused on preventing what they see as the potential for rejection of legitimate votes.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.The report added that those campaign messages from the two parties had “contributed to a diminishing trust in a fundamentally robust electoral process.”Ms. de Zulueta said the report was not meant to present the two parties’ election-related campaign messages as equally damaging, noting that it was Mr. Trump who transformed election denial into “a defining characteristic of his campaign” and of later Republican primaries. Instead, she added, the report sought to highlight that warnings by Democrats of potential election interference could also be damaging to the credibility of elections.“You have to be careful,” Ms. de Zulueta said. “You can actually by challenging — in some ways you can actually feed into this.”The O.S.C.E. has routinely monitored elections in the United States, but its efforts took on increased prominence when Mr. Trump refused to acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election. The election observation mission for that contest condemned Mr. Trump’s “baseless allegations” of fraud and expressed confidence that the vote was secure.For this year’s election, the organization will have far fewer election monitors than had been planned. A report from the group in June recommended a full election observation mission of about 500 observers “given the highly polarized environment” and “diminishing trust in the integrity of elections” in the United States. But the size of the mission was reduced to 57 people because of a shortage of available observers.Ms. de Zulueta said the downsizing would not significantly affect the mission’s work. A spokesman for the organization noted that its observation mission for the 2020 election had also been limited because of the coronavirus pandemic.The mission for the midterms will present its preliminary findings on Nov. 9, the day after Election Day, and a final report will be released about two months later. More

Plus the war in Ukraine may boost clean energy and investigations into Chinese outposts overseas.Quarterly changes in gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation.By The New York TimesU.S. economy grows, but slowlyThe U.S. economy grew slowly over the summer, adding to fears of a looming recession while simultaneously keeping alive the hope that one might be avoided.Gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, increased by 0.6 percent after six months of decline, slightly exceeding forecasters’ expectations. That suggests that a path to “soft landing,” in which policymakers cool off red-hot demand without snuffing out the recovery entirely, remains open, but narrow.There are still plenty of economic headwinds. Consumer spending slowed as inflation cut into households’ buying power, and mortgage rates rose to the highest level since 2002, leading to a steep contraction in the housing sector. Big tech companies like Meta and Microsoft, which are usually two drivers of U.S. growth, are also signaling that tough times might be ahead amid inflation.In Europe: The European Central Bank raised interest rates again. In just three months, the bank has raised rates at the fastest pace in its history.Ripple effects: Interest rate increases by the U.S. Federal Reserve have hurt other currencies — including those of Japan, China and India — by making it harder for foreign borrowers with debt in U.S. dollars to repay their loans.Quotable: “Ignore the headline number — growth rates are slowing,” Michael Gapen, chief U.S. economist for Bank of America, said. “It wouldn’t take much further slowing from here to tip the economy into a recession.”Europe has seen an uptick in coal use as countries scramble to replace lost Russian gas.Martin Meissner/Associated PressThe war in Ukraine may boost clean energyIn response to natural gas shortages caused by the war in Ukraine, some countries are burning more coal. In the short term, European leaders looking for alternatives to Russian gas are turning to Africa to drill for more fossil fuels.But the International Energy Agency said yesterday that the war could speed up the shift to clean energy rather than slowing it down. One major reason is that soaring fossil fuel prices have led to a wider embrace of wind turbines, solar panels, nuclear power plants, hydrogen fuels, electric vehicles and electric heat pumps.The State of the WarFears of Escalation: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia repeated the unfounded claim that Ukraine was preparing to explode a so-called dirty bomb, as concerns rose in the West that the Kremlin was seeking a pretext to escalate the war.The Looming Fight for Kherson: As Russian forces pillage the occupied southern port city and pressure residents to leave for Russia, a nearby hydroelectric dam has emerged as a linchpin in what is shaping up to be the site of the next major battle in Ukraine.A Coalition Under Strain: President Biden is facing new challenges keeping together the bipartisan, multinational coalition supporting Ukraine, which has shown recent signs of fraying with the approach of U.S. midterm elections and a cold European winter.Anti-Drone Warfare: Since Russia began terrorizing Ukrainian cities in recent weeks with Iranian-made drones, Ukraine has turned its focus to an intense counter-drone strategy. The hastily assembled effort has been surprisingly successful.The I.E.A. said global investment in clean energy is now expected to rise to more than $2 trillion annually by 2030 from $1.3 trillion in 2022.Still, the shift is not happening fast enough to avoid dangerous levels of global warming. The agency said that for things to change, governments would have to take much stronger action to reduce their emissions over the next few years.Notable: A climate protester glued his head to “Girl With a Pearl Earring,” a painting by Johannes Vermeer, at a museum in The Hague.Beyond catastrophe: In The Times Magazine, David Wallace-Wells argues that while there’s plenty of bad climate news, thanks to real progress, the world is headed toward a less apocalyptic future.From Opinion: The runoff election in Brazil on Sunday will determine the fate of the Amazon rainforest and Earth’s future.“It is such a brazen escalation and violation of territorial sovereignty,” said a member of a rights group.Bart Maat/EPA, via ShutterstockChina’s offshore police stationsThe Dutch government is investigating reports that Chinese law enforcement agencies are illegally operating offices in the Netherlands to police Chinese citizens overseas.The recent reports, which come from the news media and a human rights group, add to a growing body of evidence that suggests that Beijing surveils Chinese nationals from overseas outposts. The authorities in Canada are investigating similar operations there, and a rights group said that there are dozens of surveillance outfits around the world — including in New York, Paris, London, Madrid and Toronto.China said that the operations, which it described as “service stations” meant to help Chinese citizens with administrative tasks like passport renewals, also have the aim of “resolutely cracking down on all kinds of illegal and criminal activities related to overseas Chinese people.”Reaction: China’s Embassy in the Netherlands said it was “not aware” of and “not involved” with the offices. According to the Vienna Convention, an international pact that both China and the Netherlands signed, administrative matters are to be handled by consulates.THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificFoxconn is now making the new iPhone 14.Gilles Sabrie for The New York TimesA Covid outbreak in China forced workers at a major iPhone manufacturing plant into quarantine right before an expected holiday buying surge.An Australian judge ordered a new trial of a former parliamentary staff member accused of raping a colleague in the Parliament House, after a juror brought a research article on sexual assault cases into the jury room.Around the WorldThe deal has stirred fierce debate in Israel: Some view it as an achievement; others see it as a dangerous capitulation.Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIsrael and Lebanon, which are technically still at war, signed a maritime agreement regulating their rights to gas reserves at sea.Brazil’s presidential runoff is Sunday. Many fear that President Jair Bolsonaro, who spent months building the myth of a stolen election, may not accept defeat.The War in UkraineVladimir Putin, Russia’s president, used an annual foreign policy speech to try to appeal to conservatives in the U.S. and Europe.Fearing aggression from Belarus, Ukraine said it had increased its troop presence in the north.Russian loyalists stole the bones of Prince Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin from Ukraine. Potemkin is an inspiration to Putin: He persuaded Catherine the Great, his lover, to annex Crimea in 1783.The Week in CultureSkechers said it escorted Kanye West, now known as Ye, from its Los Angeles offices after he showed up there unannounced. Many wonder whether his music can withstand the backlash to his recent string of offensive outbursts.A memoir by Prince Harry is due in January. Some royal experts say the project is fraught with risk for him.A Morning Read“We should lead this world,” Wang Xiaodong once said.Gilles Sabrié for The New York TimesWang Xiaodong was once called the standard-bearer of Chinese nationalism.Now, he warns that the movement he helped to ignite nearly 35 years ago has gone too far. “I’ve been called nationalism’s godfather,” he told my colleague Vivian Wang. “I created them. But I never told them to be this crazy.”SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAA demonstration in Addis Ababa in support of Ethiopia’s armed forces last weekend.Amanuel Sileshi/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHigh-stakes talks on EthiopiaAfter nearly two years of civil war, representatives from the Ethiopian government and rebel forces in the country’s Tigray region began holding formal peace talks this week.The failure of the talks could exacerbate a conflict that began when fighting broke out after a contested election, and in which thousands have been killed and millions have been displaced.Little has emerged so far from the negotiations, which are being held in South Africa and mediated by former African leaders on behalf of the African Union. Tigrayans in exile have said they have little hope that the talks will end the fighting.“Ethiopia faces multiple challenges including major climatic stresses, an economy in deep distress, partly due to the war, and a number of other rebellions,” Murithi Mutiga, the Africa program director at the International Crisis Group, said.“It can’t afford a years’ long war on its borders,” he added. “A collapse in the talks will mean even more carnage in a war that’s already one of the world’s deadliest.”— Lynsey Chutel, reporter based in JohannesburgPLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookJohnny Miller for The New York TimesIf you have leftover rice, put it to good use in this crispy rice salad with halloumi and ginger-lime vinaigrette.What to ReadSome standout newly published books include “The Rebel and the Kingdom,” about a secret mission to overthrow the North Korean government.What to Watch“All That Breathes,” a subtle, poetic documentary, follows three men trying to rehabilitate New Delhi’s birds of prey.TravelHow to spend 36 hours in Sydney.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and here’s a clue: Get older (three 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. Vivian Nereim will be our new Gulf bureau chief, becoming the first Times correspondent to lead a bureau in Saudi Arabia.The latest episode of “The Daily” is on the midterm elections in New York. Lynsey Chutel wrote today’s Spotlight on Africa. You can reach Amelia and the team at [email protected]. More

The installation of a new prime minister and cabinet ends a long-running political deadlock, but perpetuates a system plagued by corruption and dysfunction.Iraq’s Parliament approved a new government on Thursday that was more than a year in the making but that perpetuates an almost two-decade-old political system that has been blamed for endemic corruption and dysfunction since being ushered in after the U.S.-led invasion.The new prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, presented his list of cabinet ministers to Parliament more than a year after elections last October that were meant to produce a new, reformist government in response to sweeping protests.The new government embodies a system put in place after the 2003 invasion, which allots key roles for specific sects and ethnic groups, and allocates government ministries to the most powerful political parties, which have routinely used those ministries to enrich themselves.The parties once again negotiated among themselves to divide up important posts, and once again Nouri al-Maliki, a former prime minister, played a prominent role in the process. Lawmakers approved Mr. Sudani and his cabinet choices in a closed session.The new cabinet retains the Kurdish politician Fuad Hussein as foreign minister but replaces 16 of the 21 cabinet members named so far. At least two positions were left unfilled, including for the environment ministry, which would have a key role in combating climate change.The influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, an Iraqi nationalist who has resisted Iranian influence, emerged from elections last year with the biggest single bloc in Parliament. But after months of negotiations failed to form a coalition government, he ordered the resignation of his 73 members and in August announced he was withdrawing entirely from politics.Mr. Sadr’s withdrawal opened the way for a rival political bloc made up mostly of Iran-backed Shiite parties to take control in a coalition with Kurdish and Sunni political parties. The bloc includes Mr. Sadr’s archrival, Mr. Maliki, who was backed by the United States in his first term as prime minister, and was blamed in his second term for sectarian policies that fueled the rise of the Islamic State.Nouri al-Maliki, a former prime minister, has remained a power broker within the Iraqi government.Hadi Mizban/Associated PressParliament earlier this month elected Abdul Latif Rashid as president, as part of a power-sharing agreement among the parties to make Mr. Sudani, a former human rights and labor minister, the new prime minister. That voting took place just after rockets targeted the green zone and central Baghdad, in a sign of Iraq’s continued security instability.On Thursday, as he presented his cabinet nominees to Parliament, Mr. Sudani pledged to fight corruption that has devastated the country, work to repair ties with the government of the semiautonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq, and build an economy that would create jobs and improve public services.“Corruption that has affected all aspects of life is more deadly than the corona pandemic and has been the cause of many economic problems, weakening the state’s authority, increasing poverty, unemployment and poor public services,” he told Parliament. He did not set out specific measures his government planned to take.Iraq has become one of the most corrupt and nontransparent countries in the world, according to independent watchdog groups. In the most recent scandal, $2.5 billion has gone missing from government funds in a scheme involving tax checks issued to companies submitting fake documents. The Interior Ministry this week said it had arrested a key suspect as he tried to flee the country.The endemic corruption and lack of basic public services and jobs sparked protests three years ago that led to the resignation of the government and the holding of early elections last year. Security forces that included Iran-backed militia fighters responded to the protests by killing hundreds of unarmed demonstrators.In Parliament on Thursday, one of the political leaders to emerge from the protest movement, Alaa al-Rikabi, was ejected from the session for disrupting proceedings by objecting to the system by which the ministers were chosen.Some analysts said Mr. Sudani stood little chance of carrying out the sweeping reforms he promised on Thursday.A photo released by the Iraqi government shows Parliament Speaker Muhammad al-Halbousi on Thursday announcing the vote approving Iraq’s new government.Iraqi Parliament“At the end of the day, even if he’s 100 percent committed to fighting corruption, his constituency is not the Iraqis calling for anti-corruption, his constituency is the parties that put him in power,” said Renad Mansour, director of the Iraq Initiative program at Chatham House, a policy research center.Sajad Jiyad, an Iraq-based fellow at the Century Foundation think tank, said the cabinet, with some technocrats among the political appointees, might find it easier than the previous government to enact programs.Mr. Sudani, a former mayor and provincial governor in southern Iraq before he entered federal politics, is an experienced politician and a former member of Mr. Maliki’s Dawa party. Every previous prime minister since the U.S. invasion had lived in exile when Saddam Hussein held power and then had returned after he was toppled, but Mr. Sudani remained in Iraq.His predecessor as prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, is a former intelligence chief who took office in 2020 with a pledge to hold early elections, which took place last year. Mr. Sudani said he would also aim to hold elections within the next year.Although Mr. Sadr is not in government, he remains a potent political force with the power to mobilize supporters in the streets and create instability for any government. He has been clear that he expects early elections.“Having elections within a year is ambitious and obviously unlikely to happen, but I think that condition is in there as a way of placating Sadr,” said Mr. Jiyad.Nermeen al-Mufti and More