Elections

Will Justin Trudeau remain the prime minister? A month ago, it might have looked like a sure thing.Since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada called a snap election last month — two years ahead of schedule — he has struggled to explain why he thinks it’s necessary.The last general election, in 2019, left his Liberal Party in a weakened position, able to govern only with the support of opposition lawmakers in Parliament. This time, Mr. Trudeau says, he needs a strong mandate to bring the pandemic under control and lead Canada to economic recovery.But his rivals have called the election a power grab — and an unnecessary one, since Mr. Trudeau has largely been able to enact his legislative agenda.They also said it was reckless to hold an election at a time when coronavirus cases are rising and restrictions are being reimposed.Still, Mr. Trudeau is hoping that the 36-day campaign — the shortest election period allowed by law — pays off with the majority that eluded his party last time. The Liberals were heading into Election Day in a statistical tie with their main opponent, the Conservative Party, led by Erin O’Toole. Results may not be clear until Monday evening or early Tuesday morning; the last polls close in British Columbia at 7 p.m. Pacific time, or 10 p.m. Eastern.Why an election now?During the short campaign, Mr. Trudeau has argued that only a majority Liberal government can beat the coronavirus and set a path to recovery. But the other parties have supported his pandemic response all along, including his plans for vaccine procurement and delivery, and his popular economic aid programs.The public approved, too. The Liberals’ standing rose in the polls, and Mr. Trudeau’s personal approval ratings soared. Most political analysts say he called the election to take advantage of that popularity, rather than risk an election two years from now, when memories may have faded.A Covid-19 vaccination site at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto this summer.Cole Burston/The Canadian Press, via Associated PressIf that was the idea, it seems to have backfired. Since he called the election, Mr. Trudeau’s poll numbers, and those of his party, have fallen.On the campaign trail, his rivals have attacked his character (as they have throughout his political career), pointing to a series of ethical missteps and accusing him of putting his interests above the nation’s.Nonetheless, Mr. Trudeau — a Canadian celebrity since his birth in 1971, when his father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was prime minister — has drawn large crowds to his rallies, with people eager to pose for selfies with him.How is Covid-19 affecting the election?Canada has one of the world’s highest vaccination rates, but in some areas, the Delta variant has driven case numbers up and hospitals are close to capacity. The western province of Alberta, which had lifted its restrictions, reimposed most of them during the campaign. Public health leaders are now warning of a fourth wave.Mr. Trudeau supports vaccine mandates for travel and for federal workers, as well as vaccine passports. Mr. O’Toole opposes them.What other issues have surfaced?Climate change: Since Mr. Trudeau first took office in 2015, he has made climate change a top priority, introducing, among other measures, a national carbon tax.The Conservatives, who opposed such taxes for years, came to this campaign with their first carbon tax plan. Many analysts have called it inadequate, but its existence made it impossible for Mr. Trudeau to paint the party as entirely unwilling to take action on global warming.The Petro-Canada refinery and distribution center in Edmonton, Alberta.Dan Riedlhuber/ReutersGun control: At the start of the campaign, Mr. O’Toole promised to repeal a ban on 1,500 different models of military-style assault rifles. But he seemed to abandon that plan quickly; polling in Canada consistently shows strong support for tight gun restrictions.The economy: Canada has recovered nearly all the jobs lost by the pandemic. Mr. Trudeau’s pandemic spending on vaccines and economic support, though, has left large debts and deficits. After criticizing those deficits, Mr. O’Toole unveiled similar spending plans. He also promised to balance the budget within 10 years, a time frame that most economists say is too distant to be credible.The election itself: In some ways, Mr. Trudeau’s decision to hold an election during a pandemic has crowded out other questions facing the country. During the candidates’ recent French-language debate, the subject came up 13 times.How about foreign policy?Even before this campaign, the Conservatives had consistently pounded Mr. Trudeau over China, arguing that he had been ineffective in dealing with Beijing.China’s incarceration of two Canadian businessmen — Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor — has been a source of tension for almost three years. It has been seen as retaliation for Canada’s detention, at the United States’ request, of Meng Wanzhou, a senior executive at the Chinese tech giant Huawei.After Mr. O’Toole said in a debate that Mr. Trudeau was not tough enough with China, the prime minister retorted, “If you want to get the Michaels home, you do not simply lob tomatoes across the Pacific.”Afghanistan has also been an issue. Mr. Trudeau called the snap election the same weekend that Kabul fell to the Taliban. His opponents said the timing interfered with Canada’s mission to rescue Afghan refugees and criticized the government for not acting earlier to help them.Mr. Trudeau’s relationship with former President Donald J. Trump was famously antagonistic. Mr. Trump called him “very dishonest and weak,” and imposed trade sanctions on Canada, arguing that its steel and aluminum exports were a threat to American national security. Relations between Canada and the United States have calmed since President Biden came to office, and the issue was rarely raised during the campaign.Mr. O’Toole has criticized the prime minister for Canada’s absence from a new security alliance between Canada, Britain and the United States that was part of a deal to sell nuclear submarines to Australia. Mr. Trudeau has said that Canada is not in the market for nuclear submarines, and that the arrangement does not detract from existing alliances.Have Indigenous issues been at play?Along the highway in Kamloops, British Columbia, this summer, a line of children’s clothing represented children who died at the Kamloops Indian Residential School.Amber Bracken for The New York TimesIn the months leading up to the election, Canadians were shocked by the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at former residential schools for Indigenous children. The discoveries renewed a national discussion about reconciliation with Canada’s Indigenous communities, which has been another of Mr. Trudeau’s top priorities.Jagmeet Singh of the left-of-center New Democratic Party has accused Mr. Trudeau’s government of dealing too slowly with Indigenous concerns, as with a missed target to bring clean drinking water to all reserve communities within five years.How soon could we know the results?All 338 of Canada’s electoral districts, each represented by a member of the House of Commons, will hold an election today. The party that wins the most seats gets to form the government and make its leader the prime minister.Canadians have 12 hours to vote. The last polls close in British Columbia at 7 p.m. Pacific time, or 10 p.m. Eastern. But Canadian elections are generally decided in Ontario and Quebec, the most populous provinces.Canada still votes with paper ballots, and they all must be counted by hand before the results become clear well into Monday evening or early Tuesday morning. More

If Sanae Takaichi wins, it would be a milestone for the country. But some feminists hope it doesn’t happen.TOKYO — Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, often talked about creating a society in which women could “shine.”Now, a year after he resigned because of ill health, Mr. Abe is backing a woman, Sanae Takaichi, to lead the governing Liberal Democratic Party. If party members elect her this month, she will almost certainly become Japan’s first female prime minister.Ms. Takaichi, 60, is considered a long shot. If she beats the odds, it will be a significant milestone for Japan, where women make up less than 15 percent of Parliament and only two of the current cabinet’s 21 ministers are female.But Ms. Takaichi, a hard-line conservative, is a divisive figure among Japanese who want politicians to do more to empower women. She rarely talks about gender equality, and she supports some policies, such as a law requiring married couples to share a surname, that feminists say diminish women’s rights.“For her to be up there on a pedestal as a shining example of a different, improved, changed society for Japanese women would be the worst possible thing that could happen,” said Noriko Hama, an economics professor at Doshisha University Business School in Kyoto.The Liberal Democrats will hold their leadership vote on Sept. 29. Yoshihide Suga, the unpopular current prime minister and party leader, said this month that he would step aside.Whoever party members choose is highly likely to be named the new prime minister by Parliament. He or she will then lead the party into a general election that must be held by the end of November. The Liberal Democrats, who have governed Japan for almost all of the postwar period, are heavily favored to win that election.Ms. Takaichi, who was first elected to Parliament in 1993 from Nara Prefecture in western Japan, has been a staunch ally of Mr. Abe’s since 2006, when he began his first, brief stint as prime minister, and through his return to power in 2012. She served repeatedly in his cabinet, where her portfolios included — ironically, in some feminists’ view — gender equality.Ms. Takaichi, left, with then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, center, and the rest of his first cabinet in 2006. Kazuhiro Nogi/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesUnlike Mr. Abe, Ms. Takaichi has said little about the gender gap, though she has called for tax deductions for child care and doing more to support women’s health.But on many other far-right policies, she echoes Mr. Abe. She supports amending the pacifist Constitution, a contentious position in a country wary of military aggression. In a campaign speech Friday, she vowed to “protect the national sovereignty and honor at all costs.” (She did not comment for this article.)Like Mr. Abe and other conservatives, Ms. Takaichi argues that Japanese atrocities during World War II have been overstated and objects to further official apologies for them. She regularly visits Yasukuni Shrine, a memorial in Tokyo honoring Japan’s war dead — including Class A war criminals from the World War II era — that is a flash point for historical sensitivities in China and South Korea.On social issues, Ms. Takaichi opposes same-sex marriage and legal changes that would allow women to reign as emperor. And she opposes changing the century-old law requiring married couples to share a surname for legal purposes, an issue often seen as a litmus test among conservative power brokers.She has said that revising the law could lead to divorce or extramarital affairs. Ms. Takaichi, who is divorced, used her birth surname professionally during her marriage.Political analysts say Mr. Abe, who still wields considerable influence in the party, has calculated that Ms. Takaichi’s gender will overshadow her lack of policies supporting women. “Abe is just pretending to respect and proactively promote women,” said Naoto Nonaka, a professor of politics at Gakushuin University in Tokyo.Ms. Takaichi visiting the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, which honors Japan’s war dead, in 2014. Yoshikazu Tsuno/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Abe is widely seen as having fallen short on his promises to advance women in society. In the World Economic Forum’s annual analysis of gender gaps, Japan, which has the world’s third-largest economy, ranks 120th out of 156 countries. Women still struggle to gain traction in Japanese politics, particularly at the national level. Yuriko Koike, the governor of Tokyo, founded a party in 2017 in an attempt to disrupt a national election that year, but Mr. Abe led the Liberal Democrats to victory, while Ms. Koike’s party drew only lukewarm support.Another woman in the Liberal Democrats’ leadership race, Seiko Noda, 61, has explicitly promoted gender equality, as well as rights for older people and those with disabilities. But she barely secured enough signatures from party lawmakers to qualify as a candidate.The Liberal Democrats’ far-right wing has held sway for a decade, and analysts said women in particular had to tack right to rise in the party. “In order to compensate for this disadvantage of being a woman, you have to show over-loyalty to the conservatives,” said Mari Miura, a professor of political science at Sophia University in Tokyo. “And that means you have to be hawkish and anti-feminist.”Gender aside, Ms. Takaichi is an unusual leadership candidate because she does not come from a prominent political family. The top contenders, Taro Kono, 58, and Fumio Kishida, 64, are both sons and grandsons of members of Parliament. Mr. Abe’s grandfather was also a prime minister.Ms. Takaichi’s mother was a police officer in Nara, and her father worked for a car company affiliated with Toyota. In a memoir, Ms. Takaichi wrote that she had been admitted to two prominent private universities, Waseda and Keio, but that her parents wanted to save the tuition money for her younger brother.Instead, she attended Kobe University, a state school, where she played drums in a band and drove a motorcycle. After graduation, she spent a year in the United States, interning with then-Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder of Colorado, a Democrat.From left, Taro Kono, Fumio Kishida, Ms. Takaichi and Seiko Noda, all candidates to lead the Liberal Democratic Party, at a debate in Tokyo on Saturday.Pool photo by Eugene Hoshiko“I was amazed that she was so interested in how the U.S. government worked,” Ms. Schroeder wrote in an email. “A lot of Americans aren’t interested in that! She was very dedicated and dug into any project she was given.”Ms. Takaichi, who has often cited Margaret Thatcher as a role model, decided her best path to power was to align with Mr. Abe. “Her candidacy became viable in a way that it wouldn’t have been without” him, said Tobias Harris, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington and a specialist in Japanese politics.She has never strayed far from her mentor’s agenda. Ms. Takaichi has even unveiled an economic platform that she calls “Sanaenomics,” an obvious reference to Mr. Abe’s so-called Abenomics. It includes monetary easing and strong fiscal investment, two principles that he promoted.Ms. Takaichi raised eyebrows in 2014 when she posed for photos with Kazunari Yamada, a Holocaust denier who leads the fringe National Socialist Japanese Workers party. Years earlier, she had endorsed a book by a Liberal Democrat that praised Hitler’s campaign tactics.Taku Yamamoto, Ms. Takaichi’s ex-husband and a fellow lawmaker in the party, said being photographed with someone was not a sign of an alliance. “We politicians accept anyone who wants to take a picture with us,” he said, adding, “I have had my photo taken with members of the Communist Party.”References to Nazi Germany are not as politically explosive in Japan and other Asian countries as they can be in the West. “The issue seems very distant in Japan regarding the Holocaust,” said Kiyoka Tokumasu, 20, a student studying education and international affairs at International Christian University in Tokyo.Ms. Tokumasu said she knew little about Ms. Takaichi’s positions but would welcome a female prime minister.“Having a high-profile woman represent a country where the politicians are predominantly male will create a ripple effect,” Ms. Tokumasu said. “Hopefully, while she’s in her role, we can influence her to support more laws and ideologies that create a more gender-equal world.”Hisako Ueno contributed reporting. 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Warning of Texas-style laws nationwide, the party believes it can use the issue to turn out suburban women in the Virginia governor’s race this fall and the 2022 midterms.VIRGINIA BEACH — Kenzie Smith is “not big into politics,” she said, and while she votes faithfully in presidential elections, for Democrats, she is less interested in off-year races, such as those seven weeks away in Virginia for governor and the legislature.But the recent news that the Supreme Court had allowed Texas to ban most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape or incest, grabbed her attention.The fear that such a restrictive law, which she called “insane,” could come to Virginia if Republicans take power has sharpened her desire to turn out on Election Day. “If there are laws like what’s going on in Texas coming here, I’d absolutely be motivated to go to the polls over that,” said Ms. Smith, 33, a marketing consultant.The Supreme Court’s decision on Sept. 1 to let Texas enact the country’s most restrictive abortion law came as a grievous blow to abortion rights advocates, a long-sought victory for abortion opponents and, for Democrats, a potential political opportunity.As the party mobilizes for next year’s midterms, its first big test on the issue will come in the Virginia elections this fall. Democrats are hoping to win a tight governor’s race and keep control of the legislature in a state that has moved rapidly to the left. Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat who is running for his old office, has repeatedly promised to be a “brick wall” against anti-abortion measures, and has played up his defense of abortion rights at a debate last week, on the campaign trail and in fund-raising appeals.Democrats in Virginia and beyond are focusing in particular on suburban women, who played a large role in electing President Biden, but whose broader loyalty to his party is not assured. With Republicans smelling blood in next year’s midterm elections as Mr. Biden’s approval ratings slip and the economy faces a potential stall over the lingering pandemic, Democrats are looking for issues like abortion to overcome their voters’ complacency now that Donald J. Trump is gone from office.In more than two dozen interviews in the politically divided city of Virginia Beach, the largest in the state but essentially a patchwork of suburban neighborhoods, Democratic-leaning and independent female voters expressed fear and outrage over the Supreme Court’s green light for the Texas law. Many said it intensified their desire to elect Democrats, although historically, single issues have not driven turnout waves; candidate personalities and the overall economy have.Even a number of women who said they favored Republicans noted that they also supported abortion rights — which may explain why G.O.P. candidates in Virginia have played down the issue, scrubbing anti-abortion comments from campaign websites and walking back some remarks.In a debate on Thursday between candidates for governor, Glenn Youngkin, the Republican, said, “I would not sign the Texas bill today.” But he dodged when asked if he would sign a six-week abortion ban with exceptions for rape and incest. He affirmed that he supported a “pain-threshold bill,” which generally outlaws abortion after 20 weeks.Mr. McAuliffe said he was “terrified” that “the Trump Supreme Court” could overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision granting a constitutional right to an abortion. He said he supported “a woman’s right to make her own decision to a second trimester.” He misleadingly said that Mr. Youngkin “wants to ban abortions.”Early in the campaign, a liberal activist recorded Mr. Youngkin saying that he had to play down his anti-abortion views to win over independents, but that if he were elected and Republicans took the House of Delegates, he would start “going on offense.” The McAuliffe campaign turned the recording into an attack ad.Ellen Robinson was “horrified” by the Texas law.Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesKathleen Moran said the Supreme Court’s decision on the Texas law “scared” her.Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesRepublicans portray Mr. McAuliffe as favoring abortions up to the moment of birth, trying to tie him to a failed 2019 bill in the legislature that would have loosened some restrictions on late-term abortions. Virginia law permits abortions in the third trimester if a woman’s life is in danger.Polling on abortion shows that Americans’ attitudes have remained stable for decades, with a majority of around 60 percent saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases. In Virginia, slightly fewer people, 55 percent, agree, according to the Pew Research Center.However, in a contradiction that illustrates the moral complexities of the issue, national polls also show that majorities favor abortion restrictions that are impermissible under Roe, such as outlawing second-trimester abortions in most cases.A Washington Post-Schar School poll of Virginia conducted this month, after the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Texas law, found that abortion ranked low among voters’ concerns, with only 9 percent saying that it was their most important issue in the governor’s race.The starkness of the Texas decision — and the prospect that the Supreme Court could overturn Roe next year in a case involving a 15-week abortion ban in Mississippi — has sharpened the issue.Virginia Beach presents a test case of the fraught abortion issue on the front lines of America’s shifting electoral landscape. The large population of military families has long lent a conservative cast to local politics, but last year the city voted for a Democratic presidential candidate, Mr. Biden, for the first time since Lyndon B. Johnson. Representative Elaine Luria, a Democrat and former Navy commander whose congressional district includes Virginia Beach, is among Republicans’ top targets for 2022.The city stretches from saltwater taffy shops on the touristy Atlantic beaches to quiet streets of brick homes that lace around the area’s many bays. Outdoor conversations are interrupted by earsplitting military jets, which rarely draw a glance skyward.Ellen Robinson, a retired nurse, who identifies as a political independent, was “horrified” by the Texas law and said that if the court overturned Roe, “I think it would be the beginning of fascism in this country.”Kathleen Moran, a technical editor in the engineering field, who favors Democrats, said the Supreme Court’s decision on the Texas law “scared” her.“I have boys who will be dating women,” she said. “I have nieces. This goes back to the whole ‘white men get to make all the decisions about everything.’”Ms. Moran said she was more intent on voting after the court declined to halt the Texas law, which the Biden administration is trying to block.“We are in a really dangerous situation,” she said. “Obviously for abortion, we don’t want to become Texas, but on a lot of issues we could lose what is now a blue state.”While many Republican women across Virginia would most likely support stricter abortion laws, few conservative-leaning women in suburban Virginia Beach expressed support for a six-week abortion law or a reversal of Roe v. Wade. Overall, while these women didn’t always embrace the “pro-choice” label, they agreed that women should be able to make their own reproductive decisions.Glenn Youngkin, the Republican candidate for governor in Virginia, dodged a question at a debate about whether he would sign a six-week abortion ban with exceptions for rape and incest.Carlos Bernate for The New York Times“I know Republicans have been against abortion forever, but as a woman, I think I ought to be able to choose myself,” said Janis Cohen, 73, a retired government employee. Her lawn featured a parade of signs for G.O.P. candidates. When it was pointed out that one of them, Winsome Sears, who is running for lieutenant governor, has said she would support a six-week abortion ban, Ms. Cohen fired back that the current governor, the Democrat Ralph Northam, was what she considered an abortion extremist.In 2019 the governor, a pediatric neurologist, seemed to suggest that a delivered baby could be left to die if the mother requested an abortion while in labor with a deformed fetus unlikely to survive. Republicans across the country seized on the comments as sanctioning “infanticide.” Mr. Northam’s office called the accusations a bad-faith distortion of his views.Polls of the Virginia governor’s race have generally forecast a close race, including one by Emerson College last week with the candidates within the margin of error.Nancy Guy, a Democratic state delegate who flipped a Republican-held seat in Virginia Beach by just 27 votes in 2019, said that before abortion rose as an issue in recent weeks, “most people were complacent and not paying attention.”Ms. Guy’s opponent has pledged that if elected, he will donate his salary to a so-called crisis pregnancy center that steers pregnant women away from abortions. The contrast could not be more clear to voters who follow the issues. Still, Ms. Guy said, with the news constantly churning, it is difficult to know what will drive voters nearly two months from now to cast ballots.Nancy Guy, a Democratic state delegate, said that before abortion rose as an issue in recent weeks, “most people were complacent and not paying attention.”Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesDemocrats in Virginia made huge strides during Mr. Trump’s divisive leadership, culminating in 2019, when the party took control of both the State Senate and House of Delegates. But Democrats’ majorities are slim, and Republicans believe they have an anti-incumbent wind at their backs this year. Three statewide positions are on the ballot on Nov. 2 — governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general — along with all 100 seats in the House.The field director for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia said that on average, 10 to 15 volunteers were on door-knocking shifts, compared with 25 to 40 two years ago, a worrying sign for supporters of abortion rights.Han Jones, Planned Parenthood’s political director in Virginia, added: “People are exhausted with elections and exhausted with Donald Trump’s rhetoric and feel like they can take a break. We could easily go red in this election alone if Democratic voters who are not feeling as passionate or leaned in don’t turn out to vote.”A team of Planned Parenthood canvassers who visited a neighborhood of attached town homes recently encountered general support for Democrats, but not much awareness of the election or enthusiasm for it.One voter, Carly White, said abortion was a touchy subject in her household. “I’m for Planned Parenthood but my husband is not,” she said, stepping outside a home with a small, precisely trimmed lawn. “I think the issue is, he’s a man. He’s never grown a baby. I just can’t — I don’t like somebody telling me what I can do with my own body.” More

Mr. O’Rourke has been calling Democratic leaders in Texas to tell them he is seriously considering challenging Gov. Greg Abbott in 2022. HOUSTON — Beto O’Rourke, the former El Paso congressman who became a darling of Democrats after nearly defeating Senator Ted Cruz in 2018, is inching closer to announcing a run for governor of Texas, according to three people who have spoken with him.In recent weeks, Mr. O’Rourke has been making calls to Democratic leaders across Texas to inform them that he is seriously considering taking on Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who is up for re-election next year. And he has begun talking to supporters about having them join his campaign staff. A decision could be made in the coming weeks, the three people said, possibly as soon as October. Democrats in Texas have been urging Mr. O’Rourke to get into the race for governor almost from the moment he dropped out of the 2020 race for president, a quixotic effort that stumbled early and failed to gain traction amid a crowded primary field. But despite his troubles on the national stage, Mr. O’Rourke has maintained a deep wellspring of support in Texas, where many Democrats still display the black-and-white Beto signs from the 2018 campaign on their lawns and on their cars. Mr. O’Rourke did not respond to calls or text messages seeking comment. David Wysong, a longtime adviser to Mr. O’Rourke, cautioned that “no decision has been made” on a run for governor. The three people who discussed their conversations with Mr. O’Rourke are Democratic officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about conversations that were meant to be private.No Democrat has been elected governor of Texas since Ann Richards in 1990. And no prominent Democrat has emerged to take on Mr. Abbott next year. The governor, who has built up a war chest of more than $55 million, has appeared more concerned with insulating himself from challengers on his right in a Republican primary than worrying about the general election. But Democrats see a potential opening. Over the last few months, Texas has bounced from crisis to crisis — including a surge in pandemic deaths and a winter failure of the electric grid — while Republican leaders in Austin have steered the state even farther to the right on issues from guns to elections to abortion. In a survey last month, a majority of Texans told pollsters they thought the state was heading in the wrong direction.Amid the political turmoil, Mr. O’Rourke has stayed active in the state. “He’s been not just making pronouncements, he’s been out there knocking on doors, leading marches, setting up rallies all over the state,” said Gilberto Hinojosa, the chairman of the Texas Democratic Party. Mr. Hinojosa said the Supreme Court’s decision to let a strict new abortion law passed by the Texas Legislature go into effect had galvanized many Democrats in the state. The new law effectively bans the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy and is structured in such a way as to avoid an immediate court challenge.“This whole abortion legislation has changed the dynamics incredibly,” he said. In the 2018 campaign, Mr. O’Rourke showed that he was able to energize Democrats, raise significant sums of money and campaign aggressively across Texas, a large and notoriously difficult place to run a statewide campaign. Even in defeat, his margin against the incumbent Mr. Cruz — 51 to 48 percent — helped lift Democratic candidates in local races and led to gains in the State Legislature that year. The prospect of a run by Mr. O’Rourke against Mr. Abbott — reported by Axios on Sunday — would present Democrats with the biggest and most direct test yet in their attempts to loosen the Republican grip on power in Texas. During his failed presidential run, Mr. O’Rourke took positions, including a hard line on confiscating assault weapons, that could make him vulnerable in any new campaign in Texas. “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” Mr. O’Rourke said during a Democratic debate in Houston in 2019, referring to military-style rifles that have been used in mass shootings.David Carney, a campaign adviser to Mr. Abbott and a longtime Republican political consultant, said that he would not be surprised if Mr. O’Rourke jumped into the race. “O’Rourke has been planning to run since he got crushed in his presidential flop,” Mr. Carney said. “He is a target-rich environment with positions way, way out of the mainstream.” More

With voting in the country neither free nor fair, United Russia is still expected to retain power easily even if its seats in Parliament slip.MOSCOW — Early results in Russia’s parliamentary elections showed a rise in opposition to President Vladimir V. Putin’s governing party, though it was nevertheless expected to cruise easily to victory.In partial results broadcast by state television after three days of voting ended on Sunday, the party, United Russia, carried 44 percent of the vote, 10 percentage points less than in the previous election in 2016. In second place, the Communist Party received 22 percent, compared with 13 percent in 2016.Russian elections are not free and fair, and Parliament’s role in recent years has mainly been to rubber-stamp the Kremlin’s initiatives while providing a veneer of democratic legitimacy to Mr. Putin’s rule. Over the weekend, videos of ballot stuffing and other apparent instances of fraud circulated widely on social media. But allies of the imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny had hoped to use the elections to deliver a rebuke to Mr. Putin by consolidating the opposition vote.The weekend’s elections came amid a harsh crackdown on dissent by the Kremlin and murmurings of popular discontent. Apparently fearing a rebuke at the ballot box, the authorities barred just about all well-known opposition figures from running for Parliament, while forcing many dissidents into exile and declaring popular independent media outlets to be “foreign agents.”The multiday nature of the elections — measures officially put in place to reduce the spread of the coronavirus — increased the likelihood of fraud by making the process harder to monitor, election observers and Kremlin critics said. And given the system by which the 450 seats in the lower house of Parliament, the Duma, are apportioned, United Russia could still maintain its two-thirds majority in the chamber despite getting less than half of the votes.The opposition’s uphill battle was complicated by decisions by Google and Apple to comply with Russian government demands to block access to Navalny-related content that was supposed to coordinate the protest vote. After the two tech giants on Friday removed from their stores a smartphone app connected to Mr. Navalny’s movement, Google over the weekend went further, apparently complying with a government request to block YouTube videos and Google Docs files that Mr. Navalny’s allies were using to coordinate voting across the country’s 225 electoral districts.Google did not respond on Sunday to a request for comment. Mr. Navalny’s allies, who are organizing the protest vote campaign from abroad, said they were notified by Google that their content could be blocked because of a government request.“This content is not available on this country domain due to a legal complaint from the government,” a YouTube message says when users in Russia try to open one of the blocked videos.Google’s compliance with Russia’s demands in recent days has represented a remarkable concession for a company that prides itself on enabling the open exchange of information. In Russia, Google’s products — in particular, YouTube — have helped provide avenues for free expression even as the Kremlin has rolled back democratic freedoms.Specific threats of prosecution against some of Google’s more than 100 employees inside Russia forced the company to take down the Navalny smartphone app, a person familiar with Google’s decision told The New York Times on Friday. Russian courts in recent months have outlawed Mr. Navalny’s movement as extremist and declared his “smart voting” campaign to be illegal.Nevertheless, Mr. Navalny’s allies have been pushing the tactic they call “smart voting” to pool opposition votes and elect as many challengers to United Russia as possible, no matter the challengers’ political views. Their campaign garnered support among opposition-minded voters, many of whom managed to find out which candidate the “smart voting” campaign supported in their district despite Google and Apple’s compliance with the Russian government’s demands.“This is an election without any choice, and while they can make up whatever result is necessary for them, ‘smart voting’ is a good mechanism,” said Philipp Samsonov, 32, a photographer in Moscow. “I hope that one day I can vote with my heart.”Mr. Samsonov said he planned to vote for the candidate picked by the Navalny team in his district — in his case, a Communist — as the person with the best chance of defeating the governing party’s candidate. Mr. Samsonov also said he planned to vote on Sunday evening to reduce the chances that something would happen to his ballot.It was too early to tell Sunday evening whether Mr. Navalny’s smart voting campaign had borne fruit, with the early results providing little clarity on how individual candidates were faring on a district-by-district level. But nationwide, the surge in support for the Communists and the decline for United Russia reflected an increase in Russian discontent. On a YouTube broadcast Sunday evening, a top aide to Mr. Navalny, Leonid Volkov, described the probable loss of seats by United Russia as progress in the strategy of chipping away at Mr. Putin’s hold on power.“This is, to put it lightly, a significant shift in the political landscape of the Russian Federation,” Mr. Volkov said.The “smart voting” app, used by allies of the imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, which Apple and Google removed in Russia on Friday.Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated PressA ballot box on Sunday in the village of Bolshoy Kunaley, Russia. Videos appearing to show ballot stuffing and other types of fraud during the vote have circulated online.Maxim Shemetov/ReutersGennadi A. Zyuganov, the leader of the Communist Party in Russia, said there had been a “huge amount” of violations in the elections and warned of demonstrations in the coming days — a notable statement because the Communists are typically loyal to Mr. Putin on key issues.“I can’t rule out that all this will lead to mass protests,” Mr. Zyuganov said Saturday on Twitter. “I am sure that people won’t stand for a blatant substitution of their choice.”In St. Petersburg, some independent election observers were removed from polling stations and detained by the police right before votes were counted. One observer, Ksenia Frolova, was detained after filing numerous complaints about irregularities.“We discovered that the same person cast a vote several times at different polling stations,” Ms. Frolova, 18, a biology student, said in a phone interview shortly after being released from a police station. “I feel morally exhausted. You just feel that none of your complaints mattered.”Last year, widespread fraud in the presidential election in neighboring Belarus set off huge street protests — an outcome that analysts say the Kremlin is determined to prevent from occurring in Russia. Buses of riot police officers were stationed around central Moscow throughout the weekend, but there were no significant protests.During the election, the authorities appeared to be pulling out all the stops to get the typical United Russia base to the polls: public sector workers, members of the military and security services, and pensioners. In central Moscow on Friday, groups of men in civilian clothes, all with similar, tightly cropped haircuts, lined up outside a polling station that covers the Russian Ministry of Defense.Some acknowledged that they were members of the military and that they had been “strongly advised” by their commanders to vote on Friday. Others said that they had been given time off to vote before the weekend, which they planned to spend out of town.And many Russians continue to support Mr. Putin. Outside a Moscow polling place, a teacher, Tatyana Kolosova, 46, said she had voted against United Russia to inject some “competition into the political sphere.” She said she hoped for a government shake-up after the elections that would result in more being done to reduce unemployment and support private business.But she dismissed Mr. Navalny as “an enemy of our country” and promised to vote for Mr. Putin if he ran for a fifth term as president in 2024, recalling the relative poverty and chaos of the 1990s, before he came to power.“I’m thankful that God gave us such a leader,” she said.Adam Satariano More

Evangelical Christians castigated Bill Clinton in wake of his “improper relationship” with the White House intern Monica Lewinsky. He had sinned. He would be stoned.Franklin Graham, the evangelical minister, wrote in The Wall Street Journal in 1998 that Clinton’s “extramarital sexual behavior in the Oval Office now concerns him and the rest of the world, not just his immediate family,” and that “private conduct does have public consequences.”He concluded:“Mr. Clinton’s sin can be forgiven, but he must start by admitting to it and refraining from legalistic doublespeak. According to the Scripture, the president did not have an ‘inappropriate relationship’ with Monica Lewinsky — he committed adultery. He didn’t ‘mislead’ his wife and us — he lied. Acknowledgment must be coupled with genuine remorse. A repentant spirit that says, ‘I’m sorry. I was wrong. I won’t do it again. I ask for your forgiveness,’ would go a long way toward personal and national healing.”But Mr. Graham never demanded the same of Donald Trump. To the contrary, he became one of Trump’s biggest defenders.When a tape was released during the 2016 campaign of Trump bragging years earlier about sexually assaulting women, Graham revealed his true motives: It wasn’t religious piety, but rather raw politics.He wrote on Facebook that Trump’s “crude comments” could not be defended, “but the godless progressive agenda of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton likewise cannot be defended.” He continued, “The most important issue of this election is the Supreme Court.”The Supreme Court represents a more lasting power than the presidency, a way to lock in an ideology beyond the reach of election cycles and changing demographics at least for a generation.In an interview with Axios on HBO in 2018, Graham said of his support of Trump, “I never said he was the best example of the Christian faith. He defends the faith. And I appreciate that very much.”The courts are central to that supposed defense, in Graham’s calculation.Case in point, his rigid defense of Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused by Christine Blasey Ford of cornering her in a bedroom at a 1982 house party. Graham dismissed the allegations as “not relevant” and said of the episode:Well, there wasn’t a crime that was committed. These are two teenagers, and it’s obvious that she said no and he respected it and walked away — if that’s the case, but he says he didn’t do it. He just flat out says that’s just not true. Regardless if it was true, these are two teenagers and she said no and he respected that, so I don’t know what the issue is. This is just an attempt to smear his name, that’s all.The hypocrisy of white evangelicals, taken into full context, shouldn’t have been shocking, I suppose, but as a person who grew up in the church (although I’m not a religious person anymore), it was still disappointing.I had grown up hearing from pulpits that it was the world that changed, not God’s word. The word was like a rock. A lie was a lie, yesterday, today and tomorrow, no matter who told it.I had hoped that there were more white evangelicals who embraced the same teachings, who would not abide by the message the Grahams of the world were advancing, who would stand on principle.But I was wrong. A report for the Pew Research Center published last week found that, contrary to an onslaught of press coverage about evangelicals who had left the church, disgusted by its embrace of the president, “There is solid evidence that white Americans who viewed Trump favorably and did not identify as evangelicals in 2016 were much more likely than white Trump skeptics to begin identifying as born-again or evangelical Protestants by 2020.”That’s right, the lying, philandering, thrice-married Trump, who has been accused by dozens of women of sexual misconduct or assault, may actually have grown the ranks of white evangelicals rather than shrunk them.To get some perspective on this, I reached out to an expert, Anthea Butler, a professor of religious studies and Africana studies and the chair of the religious studies department at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the author of the recently released book “White Evangelical Racism.”As Professor Butler told me, the reason that some people might be surprised by these findings is that “they believed the hype.” For years, evangelicals had claimed that they were upholding morality and fighting injustice. But what the movement has really been since the 1970s, said Butler, is “a political arm of the Republican Party.” As Butler put it, evangelicals now “use moral issues as a wedge to get political power.”Butler concluded, “We need to quit coddling evangelicals and allowing them to use these moral issues to hide behind, because it’s very clear that that’s not what the issue is. The issue is that they believe in anti-vaxxing, they believe in racism, they believe in anti-immigration, they believe that only Republicans should run the country and they believe in white supremacy.”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 and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

For some refugee families who traveled to Germany during the migrant crisis of 2015 and 2016, gratitude for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to welcome them comes via a namesake.WÜLFRATH, Germany — Hibaja Maai gave birth three days after arriving in Germany.She had fled the bombs that destroyed her home in Syria and crossed the black waters of the Mediterranean on a rickety boat with her three young children. In Greece, a doctor urged her to stay put, but she pressed on, through Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary and Austria. Only after she had crossed the border into Bavaria did she relax and almost immediately go into labor.“It’s a girl,” the doctor said when he handed her the newborn bundle.There was no question in Ms. Maai’s mind what her daughter’s name would be.“We are calling her Angela,” she told her husband, who had fled six months earlier and was reunited with his family two days before little Angela’s birth on Feb. 1, 2016.“Angela Merkel saved our lives,” Ms. Maai said in a recent interview in her new hometown, Wülfrath, in northwestern Germany. “She gave us a roof over our heads, and she gave a future to our children. We love her like a mother.”Chancellor Angela Merkel is stepping down after her replacement is chosen following Germany’s Sept. 26 election. Her decision to welcome more than a million refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in 2015 and 2016 stands as perhaps the most consequential moment of her 16 years in power.It changed Europe, changed Germany, and above all changed the lives of those seeking refuge, a debt acknowledged by families who named their newborn children after her in gratitude.The chancellor has no children of her own. But in different corners of Germany, there are now 5- and 6-year-old girls (and some boys) who carry variations of her name — Angela, Angie, Merkel and even Angela Merkel. How many is impossible to say. The New York Times has identified nine, but social workers suggest there could be far more, each of them now calling Germany home.Migrants arriving at a registration tent in Berlin in 2015. Ms. Merkel’s decision to welcome more than a million refugees in 2015 and 2016 stands as perhaps the most consequential moment of her 16 years in power.Gordon Welters for The New York Times“She will only eat German food!” said Ms. Maai of little Angela, now 5.The fall of 2015 was an extraordinary moment of compassion and redemption for the country that committed the Holocaust. Many Germans call it their “fall fairy tale.” But it also set off years of populist blowback, emboldening illiberal leaders like Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary and catapulting a far-right party into Germany’s own Parliament for the first time since World War II.Today, European border guards are using force against migrants. Refugee camps linger in squalor. And European leaders pay Turkey and Libya to stop those in need from attempting the journey at all. During the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, a chorus of Europeans was quick to assert that refugees would not be welcome on the continent.“There are two stories here: One is a success story, and one is a story of terrible failure,” said Gerald Knaus, the founding chairman of the European Stability Initiative, who informally advised Ms. Merkel on migration for over a decade. “Merkel did the right thing in Germany. But she lost the issue in Europe.”The Guardian AngelaHaving fled war, torture and chaos in Syria, Mhmad and Widad now live on Sunshine Street in the western German city of Gelsenkirchen. In their third-floor living room, a close-up of Ms. Merkel’s smiling face is the screen saver on the large flat-screen television, a constant presence.“She is our guardian angel,” said Widad, a 35-year-old mother of six, who asked that she and her family members be identified only by their first names to protect relatives in Syria. “Angela Merkel did something big, something beautiful, something Arabic leaders did not do for us.”“We have nothing to pay her back,” she added. “So we named our daughter after her.”Angela, or Angie as her parents call her, is now 5. An animated girl with large hazel eyes and cascading curls, Angie loves to tell stories, in German, with her five siblings. Her sister Haddia, 13, wants to be a dentist. Fatima, 11, loves math.“There is no difference between boys and girls in school here and that is good,” Widad said. “I hope Angie will grow up to be like Ms. Merkel: a strong woman with a big heart.”The arrival of nearly one million refugees shook Germany, even as Ms. Merkel rallied the nation with a simple pledge: “We can manage this.” Like many others, Widad and her family were granted subsidiary protection status, in 2017, which allows them to stay and work in Germany. In three years, they will apply for German citizenship.The latest government statistics show that migrants who arrived in 2015 and 2016 are steadily integrating into German society. One in two have jobs. More than 65,000 are enrolled either in university or apprenticeship programs. Three in four live in their own apartments or houses and say they feel “welcome” or “very welcome.”During the pandemic, refugees sewed masks and volunteered to go shopping for elderly Germans isolated at home. During the recent floods in western Germany, refugees drove to the devastated areas to help clean up.Angie, right, loves to tell stories, in German, with her five siblings. Lena Mucha for The New York Times“They come to me and say they want to give something back,” said Marwan Mohamed, a social worker in Gelsenkirchen for the Catholic charity Caritas.Widad, who was an English teacher in Syria, recently got her driver’s license, is taking German lessons and hopes to eventually return to teaching. Her husband, who had a plumbing business in Syria, is studying for a German exam in October so that he can then start an apprenticeship and ultimately be certified as a plumber. For now, the family receives about 1,400 euros, about $1,650, a month in state benefits.In Wülfrath, Tamer Al Abdi, the husband of Ms. Maai and father of Angela, has been laying paving stones and working for a local metal company since he passed his German exams in 2018. He recently created his own decorating business, while his wife wants to train as a hair dresser.When Ms. Maai brought baby Angela to be registered at a nursery, she could barely speak German, said Veronika Engel, the head teacher.“Angela? Like Angela Merkel?” Ms. Engel had asked.“Yes,” Ms. Maai had beamed back.Her family was the first of 30 refugee families whose children joined the nursery.Tamer Al Abdi, who has a daughter named Angela, after Chancellor Merkel, has recently created his own decorating business, after passing his German exams in 2018. Lena Mucha for The New York TimesOne boy would not allow the door to be closed, Ms. Engel recalled, while another could not bear loud noises. Angela’s older sister Aria, who was 5 when they fled Syria, became scared during a treasure hunt in the forest because it brought back memories of how her family hid from thugs and border guards during their journey through Central Europe.“These are children traumatized from war,” Ms. Engel said. “The resilience of these families is admirable. We are a richer country for it.”A vicar’s daughter, Ms. Merkel grew up behind the Iron Curtain in Communist East Germany, a background that has profoundly impacted her politics.“She was clear: We won’t build new borders in Europe. She lived half her life behind one,” recalled Thomas de Maizière, who served as Ms. Merkel’s interior minister during the migrant crisis.‘You Got Unlucky’Not everyone has agreed. The migration crisis unleashed an angry backlash, especially in Ms. Merkel’s native former East Germany. This is where Berthe Mballa settled in 2015. She had been sent to the eastern city of Eberswalde by German migration officials, who used a formula to distribute asylum seekers across the country.“The East is bad,” one immigration lawyer told her. “You got unlucky.”In 2013, Ms. Mballa fled violence in Cameroon with a map of the world and the equivalent of 20 euros. She had to leave behind two young children, one of whom has since gone missing, and the trauma is so searing that she cannot bring herself to speak of it.The first time she had ever heard Angela Merkel’s name was on the Moroccan-Spanish border.“The Europeans had built big fences so the Africans wouldn’t come in,” she recalled. “I saw the people on the African side shouting her name, hundreds of them, ‘Merkel, Merkel, Merkel.’”Since settling in Eberswalde, Ms. Mballa has been insulted on the street and spat at on a bus. Ms. Merkel is loathed by many voters in this region, yet Ms. Mballa did not hesitate to name her son, born after she arrived in Germany, “Christ Merkel” — “because Merkel is my savior.”“One day my son will ask me why he is called Merkel,” she said. “When he is bigger, I will tell him my whole story, how hard it was, how I suffered, the pregnancy, my arrival here, the hope and the love that this woman gave me.”A refugee held a picture of Ms. Merkel at a train station in Munich in 2015.Christof Stache/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesToday, Germany and the rest of Europe have stopped welcoming refugees. Politicians in Ms. Merkel’s own party have reacted to the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan by declaring that “2015 mustn’t repeat itself.” In Gelsenkirchen, Widad and her husband, Mhmad, have been treated well but realize that times have changed.“Who will lead Germany?” Mhmad asked. “What will happen to us when she is gone?”Ms. Mballa also worries. But she believes that naming her son after Ms. Merkel, if a small gesture, is one way to keep the chancellor’s legacy alive.“Our children will tell their children the story of their names,” Ms. Mballa said. “And, who knows, maybe among the grandchildren there will even be one who will run this country with that memory in mind.” More

Elections in Russia are always tricky for the Kremlin. Offer too much choice, and citizens may pick the wrong candidates. Offer too little, and the underlying authoritarianism of the regime becomes grimly apparent.This year, for the parliamentary elections that began on Friday and end on Sunday, President Vladimir Putin is not taking any chances. From the moment Aleksei Navalny, the opposition leader and the Kremlin’s best-known critic, returned to the country in January, the president has overseen a wave of repression.Scores of independent media outlets have been labeled foreign agents, hobbling their activities, and opposition figures have either been banned from political activity or intimidated into exile. Mr. Navalny is in jail, most of his closest associates have left the country and his organization has been disbanded. The opposition is in tatters.There has been no sustained outcry within the country against these moves. Mr. Putin’s approval ratings remain solid, and the election is likely to return a majority for his party, United Russia. The system grinds on.At the heart of the Kremlin’s continued social and political control sits the Russian media. A sprawling network of television stations and newspapers, often lurid in style and spurious in content, the Kremlin’s propaganda system is a central pillar of Mr. Putin’s power. Against all the dissent and discontent with his regime, inside and outside the country, it acts as an impermeable shield. Combined with repression, it is how he wins.Nearly all of Russia’s television stations and newspapers are under state control. Some, like REN TV, are owned by private companies with links to the Kremlin. Others, like Rossiya and Channel One, are state-owned and often deliver outright propaganda as the news.Behind the scenes, Mr. Putin’s accomplices — like Alexei Gromov, who as deputy chief of staff in the presidential administration oversees the media — carefully manage the message. Failures are downplayed, criticism avoided and, at every turn, praise heaped on the president, who is cast as a sensible and wise leader.This machine doesn’t need coercion. An army of reporters, editors and producers, happy to toe any political line in return for promotion and payment, churns out an endless stream of fawning accounts of Mr. Putin, the prime minister and influential regional governors. Conformists and careerists, these journalists are not blind to the realities of contemporary Russia. But they choose to work on the side of the winners.Funded to the tune of billions of dollars by those close to Mr. Putin, the media preys on the population’s worst fears. The threats of economic disaster and territorial disintegration, in a country that suffered both in the 1990s, are constantly invoked: Only loyalty to the Kremlin can keep the monsters at bay. The European Union, Britain and the United States are portrayed as sites of moral decay, rife with political instability and impoverishment.In a country where 72 percent of the population doesn’t have a passport and where the financial means to travel abroad remain generally out of reach, such messages find a receptive audience.This wall-to-wall coverage has profound effects on public opinion. In 2008, as conflict between Russia and neighboring Georgia escalated, the media went into overdrive, depicting Georgia as a haven of anti-Russian activity intent on violence. The results were stunning: A year later, after the war ended, 62 percent of Russians considered Georgia, a small republic in the south Caucasus, to be Russia’s main enemy.Now ruled by a government more friendly to Russia, Georgia has largely disappeared from state television. The view of it as the main enemy has steadily dropped and is now held by just 15 percent of Russians.Both broadcast and print are comprehensively under the Kremlin’s control. So too, nearly, is the internet. Ten years ago, social networks helped bring people to the streets in protest against rigged parliamentary elections. Since then, a set of technological and legislative measures — tapping users’ phones and computers, introducing criminal charges for content labeled “extremist” and curtailing the independence of Russia’s biggest tech company, Yandex — have turned the internet into heavily policed terrain. A social media post can cost a few years in prison.But that’s not the whole story. The great success of Mr. Navalny’s film about Mr. Putin’s alleged mansion by the Black Sea, which has been watched by at least 118 million people since it was released in January, shows that the state’s domination over the media is not enough to prevent undesired content from reaching ordinary Russians. No matter how extensively the Kremlin intervenes in internet platforms — through bots, paid trolls and law enforcement — it remains possible to spread information injurious to the regime.There are still a few independent local and nationwide media outlets in Russia. Though they can hardly compete with state-funded television channels and newspapers, they are able to reach a sizable slice of the population.Meduza, for example, one of Russia’s most respected independent news outlets, draws millions of readers to its website a year, and MediaZona, an independent outlet that focuses on corruption and the misuse of law enforcement powers, added more than two million readers earlier this year through its coverage of Mr. Navalny’s trial. TV Rain, an independent television channel, manages to command the attention of 2.3 million viewers.This success, however small and circumscribed, proved too much for Mr. Putin — and he turned to repression. Through the “foreign agent law,” introduced in 2012 and initially aimed at foreign-funded media such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, the Kremlin has been able to decimate the ranks of independent media. Six outlets were given the designation this year, along with 19 journalists. For the smaller publications, it was the end. Bigger outlets, including Meduza, are scrapping for survival.The situation, though bleak, is not lost. Independent journalists and outlets continue to find a way to operate, inventively sidestepping the constraints cast on them by the Kremlin through canny crowdfunding and humor. In this, they offer an example to other independent journalists around the world fighting to keep authoritarian politicians accountable.Even so, Mr. Putin’s media method — propaganda on one hand, repression on the other — continues to bear fruit. Faced with a stagnant economy, an aging population and simmering discontent, it surely can’t go on forever. But, for now, it’s working.Ilya Yablokov is a lecturer in journalism and digital media at Sheffield University, England, the author of “Fortress Russia: Conspiracy Theories in the Post-Soviet World,” and co-author of “Russia Today and Conspiracy Theories: People, Power, Politics on RT.”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