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The Russian leader announced a call-up of troops and hinted at using nuclear weapons, accusing the West of trying to “destroy our country” and vowing that Russia would defend itself.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia accelerated his war effort in Ukraine on Wednesday, announcing a call-up of roughly 300,000 reservists to the military, while also directly challenging the West over its support for Ukraine with a veiled threat of using nuclear weapons.In a rare address to the nation, Mr. Putin said he was prepared to declare four Ukrainian regions to be part of Russia as early as next week, even though some of that territory is still controlled by Ukrainian forces. And he framed the war he launched seven months ago in existential terms for Russia, insisting that the nation was merely defending itself against a mortal threat to its “sovereignty” and that the West was seeking to “weaken, divide and ultimately destroy our country.”“If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people,” he said. “This is not a bluff.”Taken together, Mr. Putin’s speech laid out the Kremlin’s strategy of continuing to raise the stakes in the war, despite the humiliating setbacks Russia’s military has suffered on the battlefield and a potential public backlash in Russia. Protests against the mobilization and arrests were reported in dozens of cities.The address also suggested that even as Mr. Putin was mobilizing more troops, his broader aim was to startle the United States and its European allies into dropping their support for Ukraine or compelling President Volodymyr Zelensky to negotiate a peace deal that is acceptable to Moscow.A photograph released by Russian state media on Tuesday shows President Vladimir V. Putin speaking at a meeting on Wednesday.Gavriil Grigorov/Sputnik“You get the feeling now that he might do anything, and this is his strategic potential,” Gleb O. Pavlovsky, a Moscow political analyst and a former adviser to Mr. Putin, said in a phone interview. “He is using this strategic potential because he has no other.”Russian occupation authorities in four Ukrainian regions declared on Tuesday that they would stage referendums on annexation by Russia, laying the groundwork for Mr. Putin’s escalation. In his speech on Wednesday, he said he would support the results, likely redefining the territory as part of Russia, while justifying the mobilization as a matter of self-defense.But if Mr. Putin’s aim was to change the terms of the war so profoundly as to shake Ukraine and its allies, there was no immediate evidence that it was working.In Kyiv, Mr. Zelensky told a German newspaper in response to Mr. Putin’s speech that the Russian president wanted to “drown Ukraine in blood” and that he would only negotiate “if they leave our territories.” Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, said in an interview with The New York Times that the situation was “dangerous,” but that Russia’s status as a nuclear power would not “change what we are doing.”At the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Wednesday, President Biden insisted that “we will stand in solidarity to Russia’s aggression,” and said Mr. Putin was making “irresponsible nuclear threats.’’ He added later, “This war is about extinguishing Ukraine’s right to exist as a state.”In Russia, the announcement of a major call-up thrust the Kremlin into uncharted political terrain. Until now, the government has sought to assure regular Russians that they could go on living their lives, referring to the war as only a “special military operation” and insisting that no one would be forced to fight in Ukraine against his will.But this month’s stunning counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces, in which Kyiv retook more than one thousand square miles of territory, appeared to change that calculus. Mr. Putin suddenly appeared on the back foot, under fire from even some of his supporters on national television who claimed that he was not waging war decisively enough. And the fact that Russia lacked sufficient combat personnel in Ukraine to make gains or even to hold territory — as Western analysts and officials have asserted for months — became unmistakable.The city of Bakhmut, in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, is on the front line in the war with Russia. Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesIn response, Mr. Putin declared for the first time on Wednesday that Russian civilians could be pressed into service in Ukraine. Apparently keen to avoid a public backlash, the Russian leader insisted that the new draft was only a “partial mobilization” and that only men with military experience would receive orders to report for duty.Mr. Putin said that Russia’s goals in Ukraine had not changed and that the move was “necessary and urgent” because the West had “crossed all lines” by providing sophisticated weapons to Ukraine.In subsequent remarks, Russia’s defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, put the number of potential new call-ups at 300,000 people. He said that university students would not be subject to the draft, and that young conscripts serving the one year of military service that is required in Russia would not be sent to the front lines.But the official order declaring the call-ups was far more vague, leaving open the possibility that the government could later broaden the draft.In Russia, news of the call-up spurred protests across the country; more than 1,200 from 38 cities were detained, according to OVD-Info, a human rights watchdog that monitors police activity. In Moscow, hundreds of protesters gathered on the Old Arbat, a pedestrian street in the city center, screaming “Send Putin to the trenches!” and “Let our children live!”Some Russians rushed to purchase plane tickets out of the country, and the Telegram messaging app was filled with messages about the border situation and possible ways to get out of the country.Vasiliy Horkaviy, center, and his father Alexey Horkaviy, left, in an evacuation vehicle taking them from Kupiansk, Ukraine, on Wednesday.Nicole Tung for The New York TimesThe responses underscored the risks being taken by Mr. Putin as he pushed to escalate a war that has caused heavy Russian casualties and is increasingly violating his unspoken deal with the public: that Russians stay out of politics and the Kremlin lets them live their lives. Mr. Putin has successfully clamped down on dissent since starting the war, with new censorship laws and a spate of arrests, but analysts said that the main reason he long avoided declaring a draft was his fear of public backlash.“This is crossing a red line,” Mr. Pavlovsky, the former Putin adviser, said, referring to Wednesday’s mobilization order. “It will violate, in a sense, the contract with the Putin majority.”Military analysts said the draft would not have immediate consequences on the battlefield because it would take weeks, if not months, for Russia to mobilize, train and equip additional combat-ready troops. Still, the move could begin to address Russia’s manpower shortages, in part because it would prohibit existing contract soldiers from quitting, said Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at the CNA defense research institute in Arlington, Va.Mr. Putin this week has also sought to retake the initiative by setting the stage for claiming sovereignty over more territory in Ukraine. Russian occupation authorities in Ukraine said they would hold five-day, snap “referendums” starting Friday on joining Russia, a likely prelude to annexation.“Russia can’t give up on people living close by to be torn apart by executioners and fail to respond to their desire to determine their own fate,” Mr. Putin said, referring to Ukrainians in occupied territory, even as reports continue to emerge of torture and killings by Russian occupying forces.Pro-Kremlin analysts and officials have said that after annexation, Moscow could claim that any further Ukrainian military action on those territories was an attack on Russia itself, providing Mr. Putin with a justification for retaliation. He did not explicitly threaten a nuclear response, but warned that he was ready to use all of the weapons in Russia’s arsenal to protect what the Kremlin considered Russian territory.“An attack on the people and territories will be an attack on Russia,” a senior Russian lawmaker, Konstantin I. Kosachev, posted on social media, warning the West to “stop playing military games with a nuclear state.”Western officials have condemned the planned referendums as “sham’’ votes, and Ukrainian officials have described them as a red line after which negotiation with Russia would be impossible.But there remained some signals that Mr. Putin was open to a negotiated exit from the war.Hours after his speech, officials in Kyiv announced that Russia had released 215 Ukrainians in a prisoner of war exchange, including the top two commanders of the Azov Battalion and more than 100 other troops who were involved in the last-ditch defense of Mariupol before it fell to the Russians in May — fighters who are regarded in Ukraine as national heroes. Saudi Arabia made its own announcement about an exchange that secured the release of 10 prisoners held by Russia, including U.S. and British citizens.Andrei Kortunov, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, a research organization close to the Russian government, said in a phone interview that he did not expect Mr. Putin to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine as long as NATO did not directly attack Russia. Doing so would offer no significant battlefield advantage over conventional weapons, he said, while “the political risks associated with this are very high.”Mr. Kortunov said that Mr. Putin’s goal was now pressuring the West, rather than Ukraine, to agree to some kind of peace deal.“This means that there is no hope for political dialogue with Kyiv,” Mr. Kortunov said of Mr. Putin’s apparent plans for annexing more of Ukraine. “If there is any dialogue, it will be with the West, not with Kyiv.”Ukrainian military vehicles in Bakhmut on Wednesday.Tyler Hicks/The New York Times More

Representative Elise Stefanik, the No. 3 House Republican, also spoke about her PAC’s success in backing female candidates, 23 of whom are running in the fall.Today’s newsletter is a guest dispatch from Annie Karni, a congressional correspondent in Washington.Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, the No. 3 House Republican, predicted on Wednesday that her party would pick up as many as three dozen House seats in November, despite signs that the red wave many predicted months ago might not form after all.And, brushing aside concerns from many Republicans that the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has saddled them with an unpopular position that is energizing Democrats all over the country, Stefanik told reporters defiantly at a news conference that “we will have a pro-life Republican majority in the next Congress.”Stefanik, who was first elected in 2014 to her upstate New York seat as a relative moderate, became a star of the MAGA universe thanks to her role as President Donald J. Trump’s chief defender on the House Intelligence Committee during his first impeachment trial.She has translated her Trump-refracted fame into a fund-raising boon for female Republican candidates she is boosting in critical House races — a move that is also helping build a base in the G.O.P. House conference for a politician with big ambitions.“My own experience going through impeachment No. 1, where I played an outsized role on the House Intelligence Committee — we built up a national donor list,” Stefanik said Wednesday at a briefing at the Republican National Committee about the midterm elections. “We’ve been able to have that donor list support other women candidates across the country.”Stefanik, 38, founded her political action committee, Elevate PAC, or E-PAC, in 2018, when only 13 Republican women served in the House of Representatives. At the time, her goal was to elect more conservative women to Congress.In 2020, 11 of the 15 House seats that Republicans flipped were won by women that E-PAC had endorsed. Today, there are 34 Republican women in the House.During this campaign cycle, Stefanik’s organization has raised and donated more than $1 million directly to female Republican candidates, and 23 women endorsed by E-PAC are running in the general election. Since its creation, E-PAC has raised $4 million to date.Another part of Stefanik’s aim is to help with news coverage. “One thing that is very clear to me is Democrat women get outsized coverage in the media,” Stefanik said. “They get magazine covers.” Those she helps, she said, “deserve glossy magazines as well.”The outcome of those races will help determine Stefanik’s clout as a queenmaker in the current, Trump-controlled version of the Republican Party. Her activities are also a key part of the G.O.P.’s overall midterm strategy to expand beyond the core political base of right-wing and conservative voters with a more diverse slate.The push to elevate female candidates comes as the Republican Party struggles to overcome political gains Democrats have made on the issue of abortion since the overturning of Roe v. Wade.In an election year when political tensions are running high over gender and social issues, liberal groups are willing to give Stefanik only so much credit for helping to elect women.“There are challenges that all women face in running for office,” said Christina Reynolds, a spokeswoman for Emily’s List, a group that backs Democratic female candidates who support abortion rights. “I understand why there’s a need for this on both sides of the aisle.”But she added, “To support women’s rights, to support our freedoms, we think it’s critical that we elect Democratic, pro-choice women.”Stefanik shrugged off questions about how the issue of abortion will affect the midterms. Her party has struggled to unite behind a strategy on a fraught social issue that is reshaping campaigns across the country and, in some cases, forcing Republicans to backpedal on hard-line positions they took to win their primaries.“On the issue of abortion, Democrats are working overtime to force the American people to rethink what their top priorities are,” Stefanik said. “In every poll, inflation is the No. 1 issue. In my district, Second Amendment issues are second. Our candidates know how to communicate on this issue.”Stefanik also emphasized that many of the candidates she is backing are mothers. “I think that’s a very compelling message to voters,” she said, noting that one congressional candidate in Ohio, Madison Gesiotto Gilbert, gave birth just days ago.E-PAC’s slate of candidates includes seven who are Hispanic, four who are veterans and one who is Black. Stefanik said it was the most diverse group of candidates her PAC had supported to date.Stefanik said she had no ideological litmus test for candidates to gain her organization’s financial backing and endorsement.This cycle, she has backed candidates who falsely claim that Trump won the 2020 election, like Karoline Leavitt in New Hampshire’s First Congressional District and Yesli Vega in Virginia’s Seventh District.Vega has come under attack for questioning on tape whether a woman was less likely to become pregnant after a rape.Stefanik also supported Representative Mayra Flores, who won a special election in Texas’s 34th District after saying, falsely, that the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol was stoked by members of Antifa and used a hashtag associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory in tweets that were later deleted.At the same time, Stefanik is backing Barbara Kirkmeyer, a state senator running in Colorado’s competitive Eighth District, who said President Biden legitimately won the 2020 election.Stefanik simply interviews candidates who are able to raise $250,000 in their first quarter, she said, and decides which of them have what it takes, based on her gut feeling and experience.“I interview and talk with everyone,” she said. “I put candidates through their paces. I ask how they would answer certain questions from the media.”After meeting hundreds of candidates across the country over the years, she said, “I’m able to tell pretty quickly, No. 1, if they have the fire in the belly, and also if they’re speaking from the heart on behalf of their district. I don’t do any ideological litmus test. These are all strong, conservative Republicans.”Karoline Leavitt with Senator Ted Cruz before her primary. “When you start your campaign as an outsider, you’re looking for that early support and help,” Leavitt said of Stefanik’s political action committee.Brian Snyder/ReutersIn some cases, Stefanik’s endorsements have put her at odds with leadership. She endorsed Leavitt, a 25-year-old hard-right Republican who served as an assistant in Trump’s White House press office before winning the G.O.P. nomination for a House seat in New Hampshire. Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, was backing Leavitt’s rival, Matt Mowers, in the primary.“When you start your campaign as an outsider, you’re looking for that early support and help,” Leavitt said on Wednesday, joining Stefanik briefly as an example of an E-PAC success story. She said that Stefanik, whom she once worked for, was “someone that I leaned on, not only for financial support through E-PAC but also for advice and support.”Republicans are expected to win back control of the House next year, although in recent weeks, the political winds that once favored them have shifted toward Democrats.Still, for Democrats to retain a majority, they will have to hold virtually all their tossup districts in addition to flipping some tossup seats Republicans currently hold.Stefanik said she remains bullish about a red wave.“I remember on election night in 2020 when people said Nancy Pelosi would pick up 15 seats,” she said, referring to the House speaker. “Well, Republicans picked up 15 seats.”She added: “Eighty percent of their dollars are on defense. Do I think we have the opportunity to earn that historic majority of 35 seats? I do. I’ve always thought that this cycle.”What to readToday’s big story: Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, filed a lawsuit accusing the Trump Organization, former President Trump and three of his children of what she called “staggering fraud.” Jonah E. Bromwich, William K. Rashbaum and Ben Protess wrote the main article examining the 220-page claim, and I have a short piece on the politics at play.The House voted mostly along party lines to overhaul the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act, the law that Trump tried to exploit to overturn his defeat, Carl Hulse reports.At the United Nations, President Biden called on countries to unify in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine. Moscow’s goal, he said, is “extinguishing Ukraine’s right to exist as a state.” Follow our live coverage of the U.N. General Assembly here.The Federal Reserve tightened interest rates by a further three-quarters of a percentage point fewer than seven weeks before the November elections, an effort to stem inflation that remains stubbornly high. Chairman Jerome Powell said the U.S. economy was fundamentally healthy, however. The Times’s economic team covered all the angles here.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

WASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday took the first major step to respond to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, voting mostly along party lines to overhaul the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act, the law that former President Donald J. Trump tried to exploit that day to overturn his defeat.The bill was the most significant legislative answer yet to the riot and the monthslong campaign by Mr. Trump and his allies to invalidate the 2020 presidential election, but it also underscored the lingering partisan divide over Jan. 6 and the former president’s continuing grip on his party.It cleared a divided House, passing on a 229 to 203 vote. All but nine Republicans opposed the measure, wary of angering Mr. Trump and unwilling to back legislation co-written by Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and a leader of the House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 and what led to them.The partisan division could complicate future negotiations with the Senate, which is moving ahead with its own bipartisan version of the legislation that differs from the House bill in some significant respects. Lawmakers now say they do not expect final approval before Congress returns for a lame-duck session after the Nov. 8 midterm elections.The legislation is aimed at updating the law that governs Congress’s counting of the electoral votes cast by the states, the final step under the Constitution to confirm the results of a presidential election and historically a mostly ceremonial process. Democrats said that the aftermath of the 2020 election — in which Mr. Trump and his allies’ attempts to throw out legitimate electoral votes led to the violent disruption of the congressional count by his supporters on Jan. 6 — made clear that the statute needed to be changed.“These are common-sense reforms that will preserve the rule of law for all elections moving forward,” said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of the Rules Committee. “Time is running out before the next election.”One key provision in the bill, which is also contained in the Senate proposal, would clarify that the role of the vice president, who by law presides over the counting of the ballots in his capacity as president of the Senate, is strictly ministerial. After the 2020 election, Mr. Trump and his advisers tried but failed to persuade Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to accept electoral votes from states where Trump was falsely claiming victory.The measure also would raise the threshold substantially for Congress to consider an objection to a state’s electoral votes, requiring that at least one-third of the House and Senate sign on to such a challenge, up dramatically from the one member of each chamber that is now required. The Senate proposal has a lower threshold, requiring one-fifth of the House and Senate to agree.Members of both parties have raised objections in recent elections, though none have been sustained by a majority of the House and Senate. The House bill would also more narrowly define the grounds for an objection to those with a defined constitutional basis.“Ultimately, this bill is about protecting the will of the American voters, which is a principle that is beyond partisanship,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren, the California Democrat who leads the Administration Committee and introduced the measure with Ms. Cheney. “The bottom line is if you want to object to the vote, you’d better have your colleagues and the Constitution on your side.”Passage of the bill comes as the Jan. 6 committee is wrapping up its work after a summer of high-profile hearings and preparing an extensive report, which is expected to include recommendations for how to confront the threats to democracy raised by the riot and Mr. Trump’s drive to overturn the election. Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the panel, said the next and likely final hearing would take place on Sept. 28.“We have substantial footage of what occurred that we haven’t used; we’ve had significant witness testimony that we haven’t used,” Mr. Thompson said in an interview. “This is an opportunity to use some of that material.”The legislation was also a direct response to Mr. Trump’s efforts to orchestrate the submission of fake slates of electors in states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. It would require that states choose their electors under laws in place before the election, a provision intended to prevent states from reversing course if they do not like the result. And the bill would allow candidates to sue state officials if they failed to submit their electors or certified electors that did not match the election results..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-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs 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.It also would lay out the circumstances in which a federal judge could extend an election following a catastrophe and force election officials to count ballots or certify an election if they refused to do so.Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, sponsored the bill along with Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California.Kim Raff for The New York TimesRepublicans said the legislation represented a renewed Democratic attempt to exert more federal control over elections that are usually the responsibility of state officials and courts.Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma, called it “another attempt to federalize elections at the expense of states.” Other Republicans accused Democrats of rushing the legislation to the floor without review by the appropriate committees or engaging Republicans.They also accused Democrats of using the bill to take aim at Mr. Trump, portraying the legislation as an extension of the work of the special committee investigating Jan. 6, which most House Republicans denounce as a partisan exercise aimed at blaming Mr. Trump for the assault on the Capitol.“This is nothing more than an attack on President Trump and the 2020 election, an attack on a man who has not been in office for nearly two years,” said Representative Guy Reschenthaler, Republican of Pennsylvania.Lawmakers said the legislation’s close association with Ms. Cheney led House Republicans to abandon it in large numbers. Her aggressive criticism of Mr. Trump prompted Republicans to remove her from a party leadership position in May last year, and she lost her re-election primary last month.But Ms. Cheney noted strong support for the measure from conservative jurists and analysts and called on Republicans to embrace it.“If your aim is to prevent future efforts to steal elections, I would respectfully request that conservatives should support this bill,” she said on the House floor. “If instead your aim is to leave open the door for elections to be stolen in the future, you might decide not to support this or any other bill to address the Electoral Count Act.”Leaders of the bipartisan group behind the Senate bill, which was made public in July, were surprised by the sudden House action on the legislation just days after it was introduced and after months with few details on how the House was proceeding. Backers of the Senate bill said the House approach could lead to more election lawsuits, a prospect that could increase Republican opposition. But they remained hopeful the bills could be reconciled.“We can work together to try to bridge the considerable differences,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and one of the chief authors of the Senate bill. “But it would have been better if we had been consulted prior to the House sponsors deciding to drop their bill.”The Senate Rules Committee is scheduled to consider that chamber’s version next week. Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota and the chairwoman of the panel, is preparing a new version that incorporates changes sought by election experts and other lawmakers in hopes of enhancing its chances of approval. The legislation so far has at least 10 Republican backers, meaning it could overcome a G.O.P. filibuster if all Democrats supported it.Despite the differences, supporters of the legislation said it needed to become law.“Failure is not an option,” said Representative Pete Aguilar of California, a member of the Democratic leadership and the Jan. 6 panel. “We’ve got to put a piece of reform on the president’s desk. We’ve got to protect democracy.”Luke Broadwater More

Illustration by The New York Times; images by Olivier Douliery, Anna Moneymaker and Andrii Shyp, via Getty ImagesThis article is part of the Debatable newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it on Wednesdays.Just a couple of months ago, Democrats’ prospects heading into the November elections looked, if not quite doomed, then decidedly dour: Not only do Americans tend to swing against the president’s party in the midterms, but President Biden was also presiding over the worst spate of inflation in four decades and his approval ratings over the summer had plunged to the lowest of any elected president at that point in his term since the end of World War II, according to FiveThirtyEight.But the national political environment has changed: Since July, Biden’s approval rating has risen by five percentage points and Democrats have gained around a net three percentage points in the generic ballot, which asks whether voters would prefer Democrats or Republicans to control Congress, overtaking the Republican Party’s lead.What are some of the issues that voters care most about, and how might the parties’ recent rhetorical and legislative handling of them be driving the race? Here’s what people are saying.AbortionWhen the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, there was a great deal of speculation among poll watchers and pundits about whether the abrogation of the constitutional right to abortion would redound to the Democratic Party’s benefit, potentially boosting turnout and swinging independents who might otherwise vote for Republicans.Shortly before the decision was handed down, but weeks after a draft of it had been leaked, the Times columnist Michelle Goldberg didn’t find much evidence to support this theory: “I don’t know that I’ve seen a new influx of energy,” Samhita Mukhopadhyay, the co-editor of “Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance and Revolution in Trump’s America” and the former executive editor of Teen Vogue, told her. “It’s surprising. There were marches, but it wasn’t the level of activism that we saw a couple of years ago with Black Lives Matter or even the Women’s March.”In the months since, though, there have been signs that the curtailment of abortion rights has moved the needle: In an August poll, Gallup found that abortion had climbed on Americans’ list of “most important problems” facing the country, ranking behind only economic concerns and more general issues of government and leadership. What’s more, according to a Times analysis, Roe’s overturning was followed by a surge in voter registration among women in 10 states with available data, including Kansas, where strong turnout in an August primary helped defeat a referendum that would have effectively ended abortion rights in the state.Because most Americans favor at least some abortion rights, many Republicans have tried to avoid making abortion a central campaign issue, emphasizing instead that the matter has been returned to the states. But that rhetorical posture became much harder to maintain last week, when Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, proposed a federal ban on the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy — “to cringes from many of his Republican colleagues,” The Times’s Carl Hulse reported.In the view of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, renationalizing the question of abortion regulation could be a risky political gamble for Republicans: “By Mr. Graham’s political logic, if voters in Colorado, Pennsylvania or Arizona think 15 weeks is too restrictive, they now have a reason to vote against those G.O.P. Senate candidates. Every Republican candidate will be asked to take a stance, and a Senate majority is made by swing states.”InflationPoll after poll after poll has found that inflation remains voters’ top concern heading into November. And while July’s Consumer Price Index report suggested that inflation had peaked, the August report suggested that it was not cooling as quickly as the White House and many economists had forecast. The price of rent and some food items actually increased between July and August, and workers lost buying power over the last year as prices increased faster than wages.These would be problems for any party in power during an election year, much less one whose leader has boasted of delivering wage gains. “Citizens of countries suffering from inflation have routinely sought to assign blame — to the government, to greedy companies or to politicians,” The Times’s Jonathan Weisman wrote last week of the Republican campaign strategy to blame Democrats for inflation. “Inflationary periods often yield labor strife, as workers and unions press for wage increases to keep up with rising prices, point fingers at ‘price-gouging’ companies and, more than anything, rage at those in power.”At the same time, some Republican officials have become concerned that inflation may no longer be the electoral clincher they had hoped for: Gasoline prices have fallen 26 percent from the record above $5 a gallon set in June, and consumer sentiment has improved as a result. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported this month that consumer inflation expectations were also falling, with households now expecting gas prices to be roughly unchanged a year from now.If inflation is indeed sinking in salience, some conservatives believe that Republicans will regret not elevating other issues like school curriculums, crime and immigration, Gabby Orr reported for CNN. “Our closing pitch must be compelling enough to make Republicans want to vote,” a Senate campaign aide told her. “‘It’s the economy, stupid’ no longer fits into that category.”Student debt reliefWhen Biden made the decision in August after months of lobbying to wipe out up to $20,000 of student loan debt for tens of millions of low- and middle-income Americans, it was in part because his chief of staff, among others, had argued that the relief could endear the administration to younger voters — an age group that, while more Democratic-leaning than any other, had broadly soured on the president.“It certainly energizes young people and people with student loan debt, which also includes many Republicans,” Andre Perry, a senior fellow at Brookings, told NPR. “Overall, it’s a political win for Biden because he’s delivering on his promises, he has a chance to pick up on some moderate Republicans who have debt.”This read of Biden’s debt jubilee is shared even by some of his political enemies:But Philip Bump wrote for The Washington Post that, so far, there are no obvious signs that young people will reward Biden for the relief plan, which hasn’t yet taken effect. In approval rating polls since August, “when we look at Americans under 30 — the group with the most debt — there’s been little to no movement at all,” he noted.Nor, as Vox’s Christian Paz pointed out, does the relief plan seem to be making much of an impression with independent voters, who polls have suggested are divided on the issue. “Ultimately, the policy might have had the effect of stopping the bleeding of support that Biden and Democrats were experiencing among their base,” he wrote. But, he added, “What is apparent is that Biden’s action is not as popular with the kind of voter that tends to matter in midterm elections in swing states: older white Americans and independents.”The polling wild cardThe polling profession entered something of a legitimacy crisis after the 2016 presidential election that only deepened in 2020, as this newsletter has explored, and there’s good reason to be wary of the polling data we’ve seen so far in 2022: As Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, noted last week, Democratic Senate candidates are outrunning expectations in the same places where the polls overestimated Biden in 2020 and Hillary Clinton in 2016, raising the possibility that the party’s supposedly favorable odds of retaining Senate control are an illusion.Polling mistakes matter not just because they can give pundits and readers a false impression of how an election might turn out; as Dan Pfeiffer, a senior adviser to Barack Obama, wrote in his newsletter last weekend, they can also change the outcome of the election itself, because campaigns, national party committees and super PACs rely on polling to make decisions about where to direct their efforts and funds.But Pfeiffer (and Cohn, too) sees evidence that the polls might actually be right this time around: Polls were more accurate in the 2018 midterms than they were in the 2020 presidential race, and recent special elections — including one that resulted in the pickup of a House seat in Alaska — have been encouraging for Democrats.Their predictive function (or dysfunction) aside, polls can also be useful for revealing trends in public opinion and voter behavior. In 2016, for example, pre-election polls accurately showed that Donald Trump was making huge gains among white voters without college degrees, and in 2020 they showed that he was also making gains among Hispanic voters. Even when polls miss on the horse race, Cohn noted this week, “these trends uncovered by polls continue to have import.”Do you have a point of view we missed? Email us at [email protected]. Please note your name, age and location in your response, which may be included in the next newsletter.READ MORE“Are the Polls Wrong Again?” [The New York Times]“Will Abortion Affect the Midterm Vote for Candidates? Lessons From the Ban Gay Marriage Ballot Initiatives” [The Brookings Institution]“Two Months That Turned the 2022 Midterms on Their Head” [The Cook Political Report]“America’s Dueling Realities on a Key Question: Is the Economy Good or Bad?” [The New York Times]“Four Types of Voters We’re Watching in the Midterms” [The New York Times]What’s at stake for you on Election Day?In the final weeks before the midterm elections, Times Opinion is asking for your help to better understand what motivates each generation to vote. We’ve created a list of some of the biggest problems facing voters right now. Choose the one that matters most to you and tell us why. We plan to publish a selection of responses shortly before Election Day. More

Plus protests in Iran intensify and New York State sues Donald Trump for fraud.President Biden addressed the U.N. General Assembly yesterday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesPutin signals a coming escalationVladimir Putin accelerated his war effort in Ukraine yesterday and announced a new campaign that would call up roughly 300,000 additional Russian troops. Here are live updates of the war.In a rare address to the nation, the Russian president made a veiled threat of using nuclear weapons. “If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people,” Putin said. “This is not a bluff.”His comments appeared to be a shift in his domestic strategy to the war. Ukraine said Putin’s remarks reflected his desperation: Russia’s military has suffered humiliating setbacks this month. (Here’s a map of Ukraine’s advances.)It also seemed to be an effort to startle the U.S. and its Western allies into dropping their support. But at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Western leaders looked undeterred. President Biden said the U.S. and its allies would “stand in solidarity” against Russia and accused Moscow of violating the U.N. charter.Reaction: Protests erupted across Russia in response to the “partial mobilization,” and at least 1,252 people have been detained. Russians also rushed to buy one-way flights out of the country.Analysis: Experts say Russia currently has 200,000 troops, or fewer, in Ukraine. Putin’s campaign would more than double that, but those called up need training and weapons.Other updates:Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, is expected to address the U.N. shortly after this newsletter sends. Here are live updates of the General Assembly.Ten prisoners of war, including two U.S. military veterans, have been transferred to Saudi Arabia as part of a Russia-Ukraine exchange, Saudi Arabia said.Protesters rallied outside the U.N. to protest Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi.Stephanie Keith/Getty ImagesProtests in Iran escalateAntigovernment protests in Iran over the death of a 22-year-old woman in police custody are intensifying. The unrest has spread to dozens of cities, and at least seven people have been killed in her home province, Kurdistan.The protests appear to be one of the largest displays of defiance of the Islamic Republic’s rule in years. Women risked arrest by removing and burning their hijabs in public. Protesters have called for an end to the Islamic Republic with chants of “Mullahs get lost,” “Death to the supreme leader” and “Life, liberty and women.”The State of the WarRaising the Stakes: Kremlin-backed officials in four partially occupied regions announced referendums on joining Russia and President Vladimir V. Putin called up roughly 300,000 reservists to join the fight in Ukraine, indicating a possible escalation of the war.Ukraine’s Counteroffensive: As Ukrainian troops try to inch forward in the east and south without losing control of territory, they face Russian forces that have been bolstered by inmates-turned-fighters and Iranian drones.In Izium: Following Russia’s retreat, Ukrainian investigators have begun documenting the toll of Russian occupation on the northeastern city. They have already found several burial sites, including one that could hold the remains of more than 400 people.A Near Miss: A powerful Russian missile exploded less than 900 feet from the reactors of a Ukrainian nuclear plant far from the front lines, according to Ukrainian officials. The strike was a reminder that despite its recent retreat, Russia can still threaten Ukraine’s nuclear sites.The government responded by unleashing security forces, including riot police officers and the plainclothes Basij militia, to crack down on the protesters. Internet and cell service have been disrupted in neighborhoods where there were protests. Access to Instagram, which has been widely used by the protesters, was also restricted.Background: Mahsa Amini died last week after the morality police arrested her on an accusation of violating the law on head scarves.Context: Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s president, made his first appearance at the U.N. yesterday. He made no mention of the protests, even as demonstrators gathered outside the building to protest Amini’s death. Raisi also did not address the health concerns about Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 83, who recently canceled all meetings and public appearances because of illness.Letitia James’s lawsuit strikes at the foundation of Donald Trump’s public image and his sense of self.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesNew York sues Trumps claiming fraudDonald Trump and his family business fraudulently overvalued his assets by billions of dollars in a sprawling scheme, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday by the New York attorney general, Letitia James.James said Trump inflated his net worth by billions, doing so with the help of three of his children: Eric, Donald Jr. and Ivanka. She said that the defendants repeatedly manipulated the value of assets to receive favorable loans and assist with their tax burden.James concluded that Trump and his family business violated several state criminal laws and “plausibly” broke federal criminal laws as well. She is seeking to bar the Trumps from ever running a business In New York State again, but her case could be difficult to prove.Details: In one example cited in the lawsuit, the company listed a group of rent-stabilized apartments in its building on Park Avenue as worth $292 million, multiplying by six the figure that appraisers had assigned.Context: Trump faces six separate investigations. Here is where each stands.THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificMany of the whales are dying as they lie stranded on a beach in Tasmania.Agence France-Presse, via Department of Natural Resources /AFP via Getty ImagesAround 230 pilot whales are stranded on a Tasmanian beach where 470 whales were beached in 2020. Half have already died. European corporate investment in China has fallen steeply. It is now limited to a handful of multinationals.China’s “zero Covid” policy means that Hong Kong is no longer considered a global aviation hub, Al Jazeera reports.In an effort to counter China’s growing influence in the Pacific, the U.S., the U.K., Australia and New Zealand are conducting joint military exercises with Fiji, The Associated Press reports.World NewsThe U.S. Federal Reserve made its third straight supersize rate increase yesterday: three-quarters of a point. Here are live updates.The French leftist politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon defended a lawmaker who admitted to slapping his wife, renewing debates over the left wing’s dedication to feminism.U.S. medical experts recommended that doctors screen all patients under 65 for anxiety.The Times looked at the Republican Party’s chances in the U.S. House of Representatives. New congressional maps offer them a huge advantage.What Else Is HappeningJames Manning/Press Association, via Associated PressRoger Federer will play his last match tomorrow, a doubles appearance in which he is expected to team up with Rafael Nadal.New York City is fighting about the fate of its carriage horses again.Bar-tailed godwits fly from Alaska to New Zealand and Australia without stopping to eat, drink or rest. Researchers believe the feat is so extraordinary that it should change the study of ornithology itself.A Morning ReadLoretta Sipagan, 87, spent more than two months in prison after working as a community organizer.Jes Aznar for The New York TimesFifty years ago this week, Ferdinand Marcos placed the Philippines under military rule. Now, Marcos’s son is in power, after spending years trying to rehabilitate his father’s name. Victims who survived the crackdown fear their stories will be lost. “What happened before was true,” a community organizer told The Times. “They can try to change history, but they can’t.”Lives lived: Jack Charles, one of Australia’s leading Indigenous actors, had a charismatic personality and a troubled personal life. He died this month at 79.ARTS AND IDEAS‘We’re on That Bus, Too’A quarantine bus crashed in China on Sunday, killing at least 27 people. The accident has become a flash point for online protest at the government’s “zero Covid” policy.Some shared an old headline on social media: “Evil is prevalent because we obey unconditionally.” An editor lamented on his WeChat Timeline: “Just because an extremely small number of people may die from Covid infections, a whole nation of 1.3 billion Chinese are held hostage.”“We’re on that bus, too” has been one of the most shared comments since the crash.“The bus itself was a symbol of their collective ‘zero Covid’ destiny: the country’s 1.4 billion people heading to an unknown destination,” my colleague Li Yuan writes in an analysis of the outrage. “They felt they have lost control of their lives as the government pursues its policy relentlessly, even as the virus has become much milder and much of the world is eager to declare the end of the pandemic.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookDavid Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Greg Lofts.Warm spices flavor this Hungarian honey cake.What to Watch“See How They Run,” a witty whodunit, riffs on Agatha Christie.TravelIn Istanbul, the elegant summer palaces known as kasir offer a glimpse of Ottoman life.Now Time to PlayPlay today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: large beer mug (five letters).Here are today’s Wordle and today’s Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. “We announce the establishment of the People’s Republic of China,” Mao Zedong said 73 years ago yesterday.The latest episode of “The Daily” is on migrants in the U.S.You can reach Amelia and the team at [email protected]. More

Less than two months before the midterm elections, TikTok is blocking politicians and political parties from fund-raising on its platform.In a blog post on Wednesday, the social media platform said it would prohibit solicitations for money by political campaigns. The company said political accounts would immediately lose access to advertising features and monetization services, such as gift giving, tipping and e-commerce capabilities.Over the next few weeks, TikTok will clamp down on politicians’ posting videos asking for donations, or political parties’ directing users to online donation pages, the company said.Accounts run by government offices will be slightly less restricted. TikTok said such accounts would be allowed to advertise in limited circumstances, such as when running educational campaigns about Covid-19 booster shots. But the people operating those accounts must work with someone from the company to run that kind of campaign.The new rules will help enforce a ban on political advertising that TikTok, known for its short videos and younger-skewing audience, first put in place in 2019.The company, which has more than a billion monthly users globally, continues to describe itself as “first and foremost an entertainment platform,” but the platform is increasingly drawing political content. Researchers who track online falsehoods say TikTok is on its way to becoming a major hub of political misinformation, fueled by the same qualities that make consumer products and dance videos go viral on the platform.In a campaign season already marked by conspiracy theories and aggressive rhetoric, TikTok has announced several steps to try to civilize and secure its platform. In August, the company debuted an “Elections Center,” a hub on the app with information about voting curated from authoritative sources and presented in more than 45 languages. TikTok said it planned to label posts related to the midterms with links directing users to the elections hub.Starting on Wednesday, TikTok said it would test a requirement that political accounts in the United States be verified. TikTok also said it was trying to educate users about its sponsorship rules, which prohibit creators from being paid to produce political content. More

A campaign watchdog group has filed a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission against the campaign arm of Senate Republicans, accusing the group of breaking federal law by using money that is supposed to be earmarked for legal expenses on campaign ads instead.The complaint was filed this week by the Campaign Legal Center after the unusual use of walled-off legal funds by the National Republican Senatorial Committee was first reported by The New York Times this month. End Citizens United, a group that advocates changes to campaign finance law, joined the complaint. In July, the Senate Republican campaign arm paid for $1 million in political advertising using money that, under campaign finance law, is meant to be for legal expenses. The spending, which appears to have been used for ads in the Senate races in Colorado and Washington State, is part of more than $3 million in media-related spending through the Republican committee’s legal fund, according to federal filings in 2021 and 2022.Senator Rick Scott of Florida oversaw an enormous wave of spending on digital ads at the National Republican Senatorial Committee.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesIn addition to the formal complaint by the watchdog group, the Senate Democratic campaign arm has asked the Federal Election Commission for a separate ruling on the legality of the practice, in an effort to spur the notoriously slow-moving agency into faster action.In its request to the F.E.C., the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee asked for legal guidance on whether money raised specifically into such a legal fund can be used to pay for television advertising — something the committee’s lawyer wrote is likely to be illegal.“It is beyond the imagination of the D.S.C.C. to understand why the N.R.S.C. believes that candidate attack ads are expenses incurred in connection with a legal proceeding,” Jacquelyn K. Lopez, a lawyer representing the Democratic committee, wrote to the F.E.C. in the request, which was filed Tuesday afternoon.Federal law stipulates that money raised for such an account, to which individual donors are allowed to give three times as much as they can to the main committee fund-raising vehicle, can be used only for “the preparation for and the conduct of election recounts and contests and other legal proceedings.”Chris Hartline, a spokesman for the Republican committee, declined to comment on the request. Previously, he has said the committee will “always find the most effective, efficient and creative way to get our message out and stretch every dollar, in accordance with the law.”The Senate Democratic group is seeking an advisory opinion from the F.E.C. rather than filing a complaint about the Republican practice, in hopes of receiving a response before the midterm elections in November. The commission, divided evenly between Democratic and Republican members, is a slow-moving body that rarely scolds a political committee or candidate in the closing weeks of a campaign.The F.E.C. would typically have 60 days to respond to such an advisory opinion request, but because the general election is happening in less than seven weeks, the Democratic lawyers requested a response “within 20 days.”David Bergstein, a spokesman for the Senate Democratic committee, said it had not filed a complaint against the Republican practice because it hoped to receive an answer as soon as possible. The Federal Election Commission can take years to resolve formal grievances.But by seeking an advisory opinion instead of filing a complaint, the Democrats also leave open the possibility that in the future, they could engage in the same practice of using legal money to subsidize television advertising. More

Letitia James, attorney general of New York state, has filed a civil lawsuit against Donald Trump and members of his family for doctoring their finances in order to obtain favourable borrowing terms. 
In a statement on Wednesday, James said: ‘The lawsuit alleges that Donald Trump, with the help of his children Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump, and senior executives of the Trump Organization, falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to induce banks to lend money to the Trump Organization on more favorable terms.’
Allen Weisselberg, a former chief financial officer for the Trump Organization, and Jeffrey McConney, a former controller, were also named in the suit.

New York attorney general announces civil lawsuit against Trump and family More