Elections

DETROIT — Once again, the Census Bureau reported, Detroit has gotten smaller.For most Detroiters’ entire lives, census day has brought only bad news, a painful once-a-decade accounting of an exodus that has shrunk their city’s population by more than half since 1950 and left entire blocks abandoned.Mayor Mike Duggan pledged to stop that decline when he swept into office eight years ago, telling voters they could measure his success based on whether residents returned. But when the latest numbers were released this month, they showed the population had fallen more than 10 percent since 2010, to about 639,000 residents.In the ledger of the federal government, Mr. Duggan had failed to meet his goal, people were still leaving and Detroit now had fewer residents than Oklahoma City. In the mayor’s own view, he was succeeding, the city was coming back and the Census Bureau had just counted wrong.Hours after the census count was released, the mayor fired off an indignant statement accusing the bureau of undercounting Detroit residents by at least 10 percent. Mr. Duggan said municipal utility data backed up his claims, but his office declined to provide localized evidence to prove that. Census officials mostly declined to discuss the mayor’s complaints.Mayor Mike Duggan has told Detroiters they could measure his success based on whether residents returned to the city.Nick Hagen for The New York TimesOnce the country’s fourth-largest city, Detroit had more than 1.8 million residents at its peak in 1950. In the 2020 census, fewer than 640,000 people were counted.Nick Hagen for The New York TimesThe unusual squabble between City Hall and the Census Bureau was only the latest sign that, under Mr. Duggan, Detroit has become America’s ultimate Rorschach test. Does your attention go to the many challenges that persist — the crime, the trash piles, the people struggling to pay rent, and, yes, the census tally? Or do your eyes focus on what has clearly improved during the mayor’s tenure — the livelier downtown, the clean lots where blighted houses once stood, the N.B.A.’s Pistons moving back from the suburbs, the new Jeep factory?“People in Detroit know the difference,” said Mr. Duggan, a Democrat who is seeking a third term and who finished far ahead of his challengers in this month’s primary election. “If you came in from the outside, you would not go around saying how good this looks.”On the west side, where well-kept homes are situated next to others with busted windows or fire-scorched frames, Cynthia A. Johnson, a state representative, said her district “hasn’t changed a whole hell of a lot” since Mr. Duggan took office.The mayor is a smart guy and a talented politician, she said, but his policies have benefited newcomers to the city and business interests more than the longtime Detroiters in her part of town. She found his complaints about a census undercount unconvincing as she went through a mental list of neighbors who had recently left the city.The number of white Detroiters increased over the last decade after decades of flight, experts said, but the census counted tens of thousands fewer Black Detroiters than lived in the city in 2010. The city’s population of Asian and Hispanic residents also increased since 2010.The vast majority of Detroit residents are Black. Mr. Duggan is the city’s first white mayor in 40 years.“He has opened the door for gentrification — that is my belief,” Ms. Johnson, a fellow Democrat, said. “He has given companies contracts over the people.”Looking at the same evidence, though, some reach the opposite conclusion about Detroit’s trajectory. As Ms. Johnson walked through her neighborhood, pointing out city-owned lots with overgrown weeds and sidewalks littered with liquor bottles, Willie Wesley emerged from his home with a more upbeat view.Cynthia A. Johnson, a state representative, walks through her neighborhood in Detroit. She said her district “hasn’t changed a whole hell of a lot” since Mr. Duggan took office.Nick Hagen for The New York TimesWillie Wesley, who has has been living in the same neighborhood as Ms. Johnson for 21 years, said Detroit was on the upswing.Nick Hagen for The New York TimesMr. Wesley, a retired U.P.S. worker who helps mow his neighbors’ lawns, said Detroit was on the upswing. His block felt safer. Some long-vacant homes had new buyers. New industrial sites offered the chance for neighbors to earn a good wage.“I like the mayor I have — I wouldn’t trade him for nothing right now,” Mr. Wesley said. “He’s bringing jobs back into the neighborhood.”Detroit is a city caught in transition. Its distant past as the world’s manufacturing center remains a source of pride. The struggles of recent decades, including the city’s unprecedented journey through municipal bankruptcy, are spoken of with pain. And a vision of its future, though blurry and contested, comes into clearer view with every boarded-up home that is razed, with every coffee shop that opens, with every U-Haul truck heading in or out.Once the country’s fourth-largest city, Detroit had more than 1.8 million residents at its peak in 1950. By the turn of the century, fewer than a million remained. And in the 2020 census, fewer than 640,000 people were counted and Detroit was barely among the country’s 30 most populous cities.Those declines are more than a blow to civic pride. They lead to less political power when new legislative districts are drawn and less federal funding.“I think that is the ultimate test of a city,” Mr. Duggan said. “Do more people want to move in or move out?”Detroit was far from the only city where the latest census showed a populace in atrophy. Cleveland, Milwaukee, St. Louis and Flint, Mich., were among several other industrial centers in the Midwest that saw their populations drop. In Michigan’s rural Upper Peninsula, almost every county lost residents.But unlike most local officials who received bad news, Mr. Duggan reacted by engaging in a public fight with the Census Bureau and suggesting he might sue. He said the bureau, under former President Donald J. Trump, did not give on-the-ground canvassers enough time to do their work last year. The change to an online questionnaire also disadvantaged the city, he said. The pandemic did not help.“The census is just factually inaccurate,” Mr. Duggan said in an interview, noting that he raised concerns about the process last fall, long before the numbers were published. “It was census malpractice and we’re going to get it reversed.”Census officials declined to discuss the mayor’s specific claims, but defended their work in an unsigned statement and said local officials who thought there were errors could appeal. Any corrections would not affect the data used for political redistricting, the bureau said.There is precedent in Detroit for census disputes paying off. After the 1990 count, Coleman A. Young, the mayor at the time, challenged the tally in court and got the bureau to acknowledge that it missed tens of thousands of residents.Still, the latest drop in the population provided a political opening for Anthony Adams, who finished a distant second to Mr. Duggan in the low-turnout mayoral primary and who will face his fellow Democrat again in the November general election.“We’re starting to lose our Black population in the city, and we’re losing it because the policies of this administration are harmful to the people who have been here through thick and thin,” said Mr. Adams, a lawyer who has focused his campaign on crime reduction, police reform and keeping longtime residents in the city.Even some of Mr. Duggan’s allies were unconvinced by his census rhetoric.Paul A. Garrison II, an urban planner and economic developer who leads the Osborn Business Association, credited Mr. Duggan with nurturing new businesses, addressing problems in neighborhoods and attracting educated newcomers to Detroit. He said he even had a Duggan campaign sign in his yard. But Mr. Garrison was not buying the claims of a massive population undercount.“No mayor,” Mr. Garrison said, “wants to admit that the population of their city is decreasing and people are leaving the city. That’s not good politics.”Gov. Gretchen Whitmer speaking at the Farwell Recreation Center in Detroit during a news conference on crime reduction. Nick Hagen for The New York TimesKenneth Robinson and his wife had to leave their apartment after their unit flooded.Nick Hagen for The New York TimesMr. Duggan is betting that Detroiters trust the direction he is steering the city. He says the city’s problems are on a smaller scale than when he took office in the throes of a bankruptcy and a crisis of city services.“Eight years ago, the problems Detroit was facing were just Detroit — no other city was talking about bankruptcy or streetlights,” Mr. Duggan said. “Today, the challenges that we’re dealing with, every other city has.”But the question of whether the census count ever officially goes up will be determined one resident, one circumstance at a time.Earlier this month, at a senior apartment complex that was swamped during this summer’s devastating floods, Kenneth Robinson grew emotional as his belongings were loaded into a moving truck.“It’s a horrible feeling,” he said. “I hate to even think about it. And I’ve got a sick wife with cancer.”Mr. Robinson, 72, a lifelong Detroiter, had been staying with his wife in a downtown hotel since their unit flooded. Mold and mildew made it unsafe to return home, and financial assistance to stay at the hotel was running out. There was talk about moving temporarily to an extended-stay motel in the suburbs.Mr. Robinson, who worked in the auto industry and as a janitor before retiring, wanted to eventually move back into his apartment. He wanted to stay in Detroit. But he did not know what would come next.The population in Detroit has dropped more than 10 percent in the last decade. Nick Hagen for The New York Times More

While the Conservative leader Erin O’Toole is still hitting the road, his party has also created a virtual method of reaching voters.After nearly two weeks of campaigning, it would be a stretch to say that election fever is sweeping Canada. Lawn signs are relatively scarce in Eastern Ontario, where I live, and others tell me similar stories from other parts of the country. Erin O’Toole, the Conservative leader, during a virtual town hall meeting this week.Ian Austen/The New York TimesPolitical scientists and pollsters expect, or hope, that the nation’s focus will turn to the campaign after Labor Day brings an unofficial end to summer’s all-too-short reign.Meanwhile, inside the campaigns, candidates and their teams are busy looking for new ways to get their messages across and interact with voters during the pandemic, without risking in-person gatherings.This week, I checked out a modified campaign event hosted by the Conservative Party in Ottawa, my first event of this campaign. The party has transformed part of a ballroom in a downtown Ottawa hotel into a television studio that Erin O’Toole, its leader, uses for what the party calls virtual town hall meetings, which it targets to specific parts of the country. On Tuesday, when I dropped by, the audience was in British Columbia.For about an hour, the Conservatives robot-dialed voters in the province and asked them if they would listen in and try to ask Mr. O’Toole questions.Mr. O’Toole had an answer for every question, of course. But the callers weren’t allowed to follow up, making it impossible to determine if his answers actually satisfied them. That said, it’s likely safe to assume that the man who asked if Mr. O’Toole would take the advice of a recent U.N. report to immediately start moving away from fossil fuels was not sated. After acknowledging that the Conservatives did not have a valid climate plan in 2019, Mr. O’Toole praised the party’s new proposal, a system that would aim for substantially smaller emissions reductions than the government’s current target.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau campaigning in Surrey, British Columbia, this week.Jennifer Gauthier/ReutersMr. O’Toole has conducted 10 virtual town halls from Ottawa to date. The sessions are streamed live on YouTube and through Facebook, where questions can be submitted in writing. But the questioners, and the listeners, are found mostly through automated phone calls placed by the campaign, and none of them appear on video. The party declined to describe the screening process it uses before putting anyone through to Mr. O’Toole. But there are clearly people vetting the callers.Whether by chance or by design, many of the questions at the session that I attended, and others that I watched, were on issues that polls show resonate the most with Conservative voters, such as the budget deficit and rolling back recently strengthened gun controls. But at least two people called for action on climate change far beyond what the Conservatives are proposing.The session had the feel of a video stream of a talk radio show. Its moderator was Michael Barrett, a Conservative member of Parliament from Eastern Ontario, who never challenged any of Mr. O’Toole’s claims and promises, the way an independent host might.The vast ballroom-turned-studio, dominated by a flag lined stage that vaguely evokes the interior of the Parliament buildings, was utterly devoid of campaign atmosphere during the session.The only people physically present during the town hall were professionals. In addition to me, the very socially distanced, in-person audience consisted of a television producer, a television network camera operator, a handful of Conservative Party technicians running the show, Mr. O’Toole’s bodyguards and, briefly, a photographer.Despite the absence of a crowd, let alone crowd energy, Mr. O’Toole remained enthusiastic and energetic for the entire hour.Jagmeet Singh, leader of the New Democratic Party, during a stop in Winnipeg on Thursday.Shannon Vanraes/ReutersIt’s much too early to say if virtual town halls, like other pandemic make-dos, will succeed the traditional campaign road show with its jets and buses. Mr. O’Toole is, like the other leaders, still hitting the road. I’ll also be out there soon to see how the campaigns of Mr. Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh of the New Democrats have adjusted to the pandemic.Trans CanadaCanadian and British troops helping an Afghan climb up onto a wall on Sunday.Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesCanada ended its evacuation operation in Afghanistan on Thursday, shortly before explosions at the Kabul airport killed nearly 200 and injured scores of people.“We stayed in Afghanistan as long as we could,” Gen. Wayne Eyre, the acting chief of the defense staff, told a news conference. “We wish we could have stayed longer and rescued everyone who was so desperate to leave. That we could not is truly heartbreaking.”The exact number of Canadians, permanent residents and others evacuated by the Canadian military in recent weeks is still not clear, nor is the number of people left behind. But General Eyre said that the country airlifted about 3,700 people out on a combination of Canadian military flights and aboard planes of allied nations.The Gurkhas who were hired by a contractor to guard Canada’s embassy — a task that had fatal consequences in 2016 for 13 of them — have also been returned to their homes in Nepal.Canada was effectively pushed out of Kabul by American efforts to finish its evacuation plan by Tuesday. The Times is continuing to provide constantly updated coverage which you can find at our home page.Alina Chan, a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass., is questioning the consensus view that the coronavirus naturally spilled over to humans from bats through an intermediary host animal. Now, Dr. Chan, who was born in Vancouver and who studied at the University of British Columbia, is in the middle of a maelstrom, Roni Caryn Rabin reports.R. Murray Schafer, the composer who pioneered the field of acoustic ecology, has died at his home near Peterborough, Ontario, at the age of 88.Rod Gilbert, who was born in Montreal and became the face of hockey in New York, has died at the age of 80.Chinese officials are cracking down on celebrity idol worship like that surrounding Kris Wu, the popular Canadian singer who has been detained on suspicion of rape.SUMMER GAME FUNThis week: Letter Boxed, where you try to create words using letters surrounding a square. All of The Times’s games, and tips on playing them, can be found here.A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Times for the past 16 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.How are we doing?We’re eager to have your thoughts about this newsletter and events in Canada in general. Please send them to [email protected] this email?Forward it to your friends, and let them know they can sign up here. More

Eric Adams, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, is rushing to raise $5 million for the general election in November.On Martha’s Vineyard last weekend, as most residents braced for the possible arrival of Hurricane Henri, a smaller gathering focused on a more certain visitor: Eric Adams, New York City’s likely next mayor.Mr. Adams mingled on Friday with potential donors at a fund-raiser in Oak Bluffs, a historically Black section of the island. A day later, Mr. Adams traveled to the opposite end of the island, for a fund-raiser hosted at the waterfront retreat of Zach Iscol, a businessman who ran for mayor and then comptroller during the June 22 primary election. Caroline Kennedy attended.The weekend before, Mr. Adams was in the Hamptons, donning a bright red blazer with polka dot elbow patches at a fund-raiser hosted by John Catsimatidis, the Republican billionaire, and attending a separate meeting with the venture capitalist Lisa Blau.Mr. Adams, the Democratic nominee for mayor, will be an overwhelming favorite in the November general election. His Republican opponent, Curtis Sliwa, faces a steep disadvantage in party registration — Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly seven to one in the city — and an even more pronounced gap in campaign funds.Yet Mr. Adams — who has raised more than $11 million in public and private funds for the primary, and now has about $2 million on hand — has been working overtime on the fund-raising circuit, attending as many as five fund-raisers in one day. His campaign has said he intends by November to raise a fresh $5 million, including public matching funds; Mr. Sliwa, by contrast, has raised only $599,000 since entering the mayor’s race in March, and has about $14,000 on hand.On Mr. Adams’s docket for next month are fund-raisers hosted by the billionaire former mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, reported by Politico, and another hosted by Michael Novogratz, a hedge fund titan-turned-cryptocurrency investor.The fund-raising blitz will enable Mr. Adams to “spend October in full campaign mode,” said Frank Carone, his lawyer and close confidante.Mr. Adams’s trips beyond Brooklyn, Mr. Carone added, allow him to establish a robust fund-raising infrastructure that he can tap into after the general election, to raise money for the transition.A week after being declared the winner of the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, Eric Adams was the star attraction at a Brooklyn fund-raiser in July.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesMr. Adams’s aides would not disclose how much he had raised since winning the primary nor how many fund-raisers he has attended; his campaign disclosure forms are set to be released by the end of the week, via the city’s Campaign Finance Board.“Voters deserve to hear Eric’s plans for the city, and the working people he represents deserve to have a voice in this election — and that’s why Eric’s campaign is raising the resources necessary to get his message out,” said Evan Thies, Mr. Adams’s spokesman.In his years in elected office, Mr. Adams’s fund-raising has, at times, tested the boundaries of campaign-finance and ethics laws. Mr. Adams was investigated as a state senator for his role in awarding a video lottery machine contract at Aqueduct Racetrack after, among other things, soliciting donations from people affiliated with the bidders. He has also been criticized for taking money as Brooklyn borough president from developers who were lobbying him for crucial zoning changes.Good government groups have said they will be watching closely to make sure that Mr. Adams steers clear of conflicts of interest; his summer of fund-raising may offer opportunity for dissection.“He will be under intense scrutiny, and I’m sure his campaign is aware of that,” said John Kaehny, executive director of Reinvent Albany.Mr. Adams will, arguably, never be more attractive to donors than now; he is the de facto mayor-in-waiting for a city of 8.8 million who has yet to alienate powerful interests by making difficult mayoral decisions.The Martha’s Vineyard fund-raiser in Oak Bluffs featured a largely Black “cross-section of distinguished leaders, achievers, and I won’t say elite, but certainly upper-class folks,” said one attendee, the Rev. Jacques Andre DeGraff, an associate pastor at Harlem’s Canaan Baptist Church of Christ.Hasoni Pratts, one of the hosts of the gathering at Mr. Iscol’s house and the national director of engagement for Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, said it was not difficult to find donors for Mr. Adams.“They like his message and his background as a self-made person and a public servant,” she said.In August, Mr. Adams traipsed out to the Hamptons. There was a speech at the Hamptons Synagogue, followed by a fund-raiser at the Westhampton Beach home of Jerry W. Levin, a businessman and Republican donor who has given more than $17,000 to Representative Lee Zeldin and his PAC. Mr. Levin posed for a photo with Mr. Adams at the event promoting his Waterloo Sparkling Water brand, holding a grape-flavored can.Jerry Levin, a Republican donor, hosted a fund-raiser in Westhampton Beach, N.Y., for Mr. Adams, saying he thought Mr. Adams was the “right person for the position.”Dan’s PapersMr. Levin declined to say how much he had contributed to Mr. Adams.“I’m a conservative Republican, and I remain a conservative Republican,” he said. “I think Eric is the right person for the position. Realistically, I can’t see how a Republican could win.”Another fund-raiser in Water Mill was organized by Mr. Catsimatidis, and attended by Rudy Washington, a deputy mayor in the 1990s under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. Ms. Blau — the venture capitalist married to Jeff T. Blau, chief executive of the real estate company that developed Hudson Yards — invited friends to her home to hear Mr. Adams speak, for what was billed as a conversation, not a fund-raiser. During the primary, Ms. Blau backed an effort to get more Republicans to register as Democrats.One Hamptons donor, Jean Shafiroff, said she was impressed by Mr. Adams’s focus on tackling crime, as well as by his colorful ensemble.“I thought it was cheerful looking,” she said. “He was saying it’s OK to get a little dressed up and support fashion.”Ms. Shafiroff, the wife of a banker who is known as the “first lady of philanthropy,” donated $1,000 at the event.A fund-raiser in July at the Queens home of the developer Carl F. Mattone was co-hosted by Eric Ulrich, a Republican councilman, along with the lobbyist Williams Driscoll and Gerry Caliendo, a Queens architect. Another event is planned for Sept. 8 at South Street Seaport by Bo Dietl, a former Republican and mayoral candidate who also hosted a fund-raiser for Mr. Adams at Smith & Wollensky earlier this year.Mr. Adams, a former police captain, has positioned himself as a centrist, someone willing to work with Democrats and Republicans alike. After the primary, Mr. Adams was photographed dining with Mr. Dietl and Mr. Catsimatidis at Rao’s in East Harlem.“I am pro common-sense Democrats,” Mr. Catsimatidis said in an interview. “We had a lot of common-sense Democrats that loved what Eric Adams said during the get-together, and a lot of Republicans that loved what he said.”On Sept. 30, Mr. Novogratz, a Democrat, will host a high-dollar fund-raiser for Mr. Adams at an undisclosed location in Manhattan. Greenberg Traurig, the international law firm that lobbies city government for Fordham University, AT&T and various real estate firms, is hosting one on Sept. 9 at their Manhattan office, where designated hosts must contribute $2,000. To be listed as a “friend” will cost $1,000; regular guests will pay $400. Bolton-St. Johns, a prominent firm that lobbies city government for Airbnb and DoorDash, is also planning a fund-raiser in September.The fund-raising event in Brooklyn also drew Letitia James, the state attorney general, center, with Mr. Adams.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesOther fund-raiser hosts have included the prominent real estate lobbyist Suri Kasirer, who held an event for Mr. Adams at her home on Aug. 14; and several partners from the Manhattan law firm Cozen O’Connor, which represents clients with business before the city. The law partners hosted an Aug. 10 fund-raiser on the 17th-floor sky terrace at 3 World Trade Center.Ofer Cohen, who runs a Brooklyn commercial real estate firm, is planning a fund-raiser for Mr. Adams as well. Mr. Cohen is still trying to nail down a date that works, amid the back-to-school rush and the Jewish High Holy Days. He considers his Brooklyn fund-raising crowd “the O.G.s.”“The business community and the real estate community here always liked Eric,” Mr. Cohen said. “The difference is now, it’s all over the city. It’s all business sectors.”Some Democrats pledged during the mayoral primary not to accept money from real estate developers, but Mr. Adams said he would take campaign contributions from all New Yorkers and that they would not influence his decisions as mayor. During the primary, Mr. Adams also received indirect financial support from a well-funded super PAC run by Jenny Sedlis, who was on leave from a charter school advocacy group. Mr. Sliwa, on the other hand, has struggled to raise money. He has not qualified for public matching funds yet, but his campaign believes it will soon. Republicans like Mr. Catsimatidis, who said Mr. Sliwa was “like a brother” to him, may want to hedge their bets by supporting Mr. Adams and Mr. Sliwa.Mr. Adams’s ease in drawing interest from donors — for himself and his party — began immediately after he emerged as the Democratic primary victor. One week later, he appeared as the headliner at a waterfront fund-raiser for the Brooklyn Democratic Party, where top tickets went for $50,000. The July 14 event was the first in-person gathering for many donors since the pandemic began, and it was packed with lobbyists and elected officials: Mayor Bill de Blasio; Letitia James, the state attorney general; and several members of Congress.At the restaurant Giando on the Water, where guests enjoyed sweeping views of the East River and the Williamsburg Bridge, Mr. Adams appeared onstage like a rock star. He declared, “I am the mayor,” and urged the audience to donate to his friends at the Brooklyn Democratic Party.“I’m hoping the people at the door will not allow anybody in here without writing a check,” he told the crowd. More

In an interview prompted by his new book, the 83-year-old leader of the court’s liberal wing said he is working on a decision about when to step down.WASHINGTON — Justice Stephen G. Breyer says he is struggling to decide when to retire from the Supreme Court and is taking account of a host of factors, including who will name his successor. “There are many things that go into a retirement decision,” he said.He recalled approvingly something Justice Antonin Scalia had told him.“He said, ‘I don’t want somebody appointed who will just reverse everything I’ve done for the last 25 years,’” Justice Breyer said during a wide-ranging interview on Thursday. “That will inevitably be in the psychology” of his decision, he said.“I don’t think I’m going to stay there till I die — hope not,” he said.Justice Breyer, 83, is the oldest member of the court, the senior member of its three-member liberal wing and the subject of an energetic campaign by liberals who want him to step down to ensure that President Biden can name his successor.The justice tried to sum up the factors that would go into his decision. “There are a lot of blurred things there, and there are many considerations,” he said. “They form a whole. I’ll make a decision.”He paused, then added: “I don’t like making decisions about myself.”The justice visited the Washington bureau of The New York Times to discuss his new book, “The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics,” scheduled to be published next month by Harvard University Press. It prompted questions about expanding the size of court, the so-called shadow docket and, inevitably, his retirement plans.The book explores the nature of the court’s authority, saying it is undermined by labeling justices as conservative or liberal. Drawing a distinction between law and politics, Justice Breyer wrote that not all splits on the court were predictable and that those that were could generally be explained by differences in judicial philosophy or interpretive methods.In the interview, he acknowledged that the politicians who had transformed confirmation hearings into partisan brawls held a different view, but he said the justices acted in good faith, often finding consensus and occasionally surprising the public in significant cases.“Didn’t one of the most conservative — quote — members join with the others in the gay rights case?” he asked in the interview, referring to Justice Neil M. Gorsuch’s majority opinion last year ruling that a landmark civil rights law protects gay and transgender workers from workplace discrimination.Justice Breyer made the point more broadly in his new book. “My experience from more than 30 years as a judge has shown me that anyone taking the judicial oath takes it very much to heart,” he wrote. “A judge’s loyalty is to the rule of law, not the political party that helped to secure his or her appointment.”That may suggest that judges ought not consider the political party of the president under whom they retire, but Justice Breyer seemed to reject that position.He was asked about a remark from Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who died in 2005, in response to a question about whether it was “inappropriate for a justice to take into account the party or politics of the sitting president when deciding whether to step down from the court.”“No, it’s not inappropriate,” the former chief justice responded. “Deciding when to step down from the court is not a judicial act.”That sounded correct to Justice Breyer. “That’s true,” he said.Progressive groups and many Democrats were furious over Senate Republicans’ failure to give a hearing in 2016 to Judge Merrick B. Garland, President Barack Obama’s third Supreme Court nominee. That anger was compounded by the rushed confirmation last fall of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald J. Trump’s third nominee, just weeks after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and weeks before Mr. Trump lost his bid for re-election.Liberals have pressed Mr. Biden to respond with what they say is corresponding hardball: expanding the number of seats on the court to overcome what is now a 6-to-3 conservative majority. Mr. Biden responded by creating a commission to study possible changes to the structure of the court, including enlarging it and imposing term limits on the justices.Justice Breyer said he was wary of efforts to increase the size of the court, saying it could erode public trust in it by sending the message that the court is at its core a political institution and result in a tit-for-tat race to the bottom.“Think twice, at least,” he said of the proposal. “If A can do it, B can do it. And what are you going to have when you have A and B doing it?”Such a judicial arms race, the justice said, could undercut public faith in the court and imperil the rule of law. “Nobody really knows, but there’s a risk, and how big a risk do you want to take?” he said.“Why do we care about the rule of law?” Justice Breyer added. “Because the law is one weapon — not the only weapon — but one weapon against tyranny, autocracy, irrationality.”Term limits were another matter, he said.“It would have to be a long term, because you don’t want the person there thinking of his next job,” he said.Term limits would also have a silver lining for justices deciding when to retire, he added. “It would make my life easier,” he said.Justice Breyer said the court should be deciding fewer emergency applications on its “shadow docket,” in which the justices often issue consequential rulings based on thin briefing and no oral arguments. Among recent examples were the ruling on Tuesday that the Biden administration could not immediately rescind a Trump-era immigration policy and a ruling issued a few hours after the interview striking down Mr. Biden’s eviction moratorium.In both, the three liberal justices were in dissent.Justice Breyer said the court should take its foot off the gas. “I can’t say never decide a shadow-docket thing,” he said. “Not never. But be careful. And I’ve said that in print. I’ll probably say it more.”Asked whether the court should supply reasoning when it makes such decisions, he said: “Correct. I agree with you. Correct.”He was in a characteristically expansive mood, but he was not eager to discuss retirement. Indeed, his publisher had circulated ground rules for the interview, saying he would not respond to questions about his plans. But he seemed at pains to make one thing clear: He is a realist.“I’ve said that there are a lot of considerations,” Justice Breyer said. “I don’t think any member of the court is living in Pluto or something.” More

The president of the Philippines says he’ll run for the vice presidency next year. Critics see a plot to avoid prosecution for the killings in his drug war.MANILA — Rodrigo Duterte has dominated politics in the Philippines since becoming president five years ago, with an antidrug crusade blamed for thousands of extrajudicial killings and a pressure campaign against opposition leaders and the news media.Now, with mere months left in his six-year term, his opponents fear he is laying the groundwork to stay in power for years to come.Mr. Duterte announced this week that he intended to run for the vice presidency in the elections next May. Critics say it is a blatant attempt by Mr. Duterte, 76, to save himself from his “political sins” as he confronts possible prosecution by the International Criminal Court. An I.C.C. report last year said there was sufficient evidence to show that crimes against humanity had been committed in Mr. Duterte’s bloody drug war, which has left thousands dead.But Mr. Duterte says he still has unfinished business, chiefly the drug war and his fight against the country’s Communist insurgency.“I may not have the power to give direction or guidance, but I can always express my views in public,” he said of his potential new role as vice president.He has long flirted with the idea of staying on in government, though he repeatedly said during the past year that he was tired of the presidency, which he claimed had taken a toll on his health.Then, late Wednesday, during a nationally televised cabinet meeting, Mr. Duterte said unequivocally: “All right, I will run for the vice presidency. Then I will continue the crusade.”The political and defense analyst Chester Cabalza, founder of the Manila-based International Development and Security Cooperation, a research institute, said Mr. Duterte’s decision was clearly meant to save him from prosecution.Jimboy Bolasa, 25, of Manila was found dead in 2016 with gunshot wounds and signs of torture. His killing was one of thousands that have been attributed to Mr. Duterte’s drug war. Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times“However, international laws are tested to have teeth against world leaders who have committed crimes against humanity,” Mr. Cabalza said in an interview. “And this will not spare him from his political sins.”In addition, he said, Mr. Duterte likes to be portrayed as the man in charge, and playing second fiddle is clearly not his style.“We will see clashes and divides if this happens,” Mr. Cabalza said, adding that the president’s fading health could also work against him.In the Philippines, the president and vice president are elected separately, with each serving a single six-year term. The Constitution bars a president from seeking re-election, but it allows him or her to run for a lower office afterward.Two graft-tainted former presidents, Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, were elected to other public offices after their terms as leader of the country ended.There is no legal reason why Mr. Duterte cannot be prosecuted as president, but he has made it clear that he would defy any summons by the international court. A vice president would have less power to do so, but Mr. Duterte hopes to run in tandem with Senator Christopher Lawrence Go as the presidential candidate.If both men win, political experts say, Mr. Go can either resign to allow Mr. Duterte to step in as leader or let Mr. Duterte rule the country by proxy, ensuring he escapes prosecution.Harry Roque, the president’s spokesman, confirmed on Thursday said that all Mr. Duterte was waiting for now was for Mr. Go “to make up his mind” about his candidacy.Mr. Go did not return a phone call requesting comment and has not publicly addressed the issue of running for president. In a statement to local reporters, he said of Mr. Duterte: “I promised him that I will serve him as long as he lives. And that promise includes taking care of his children when he is gone.”Mr. Duterte hopes to run in tandem with Senator Christopher Lawrence Go, left, as the presidential candidate.King Rodrigues/Presidential Photo Division, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Duterte’s decision puts him on a collision course with his daughter, Sara Duterte, the mayor of the city of Davao. She has shored up popularity as a potential successor to his father but is not a member of his political party.She appeared not to be amused by the latest development. She said that her father had informed her ahead of time about his decision and that “it was not a pleasant event.”Mr. Roque, for his part, said he did not wish to comment on an internal “family affair.”Among other figures who have indicated they planned to contest the presidency are Senator Manny Pacquiao, the boxing star who parlayed his sports popularity into a career in politics; Francisco Domagoso, the current mayor of Manila, who was once a matinee idol known as Isko Moreno; and Vice President Leni Robredo, the opposition leader, who is a lawyer and a former member of Congress.The former congressman Neri Colmenares, a human rights lawyer, said Mr. Duterte’s announcement appeared to be an attempt to perpetuate his own political dynasty. He suggested that the president was exploiting the Constitution.Mr. Duterte remains popular in the impoverished Philippines, though his luster has been dimmed somewhat by corruption allegations and the extrajudicial killings, according to various surveys. Corruption accusations have also hounded Mr. Duterte’s Covid-19 response; he has refused to fire his health secretary over discrepancies in the accounting of state funds.“He is now a lame duck and will surely lose in the 2022 elections,” Mr. Colmenares predicted.Mr. Colmenares, who is one of a group of lawyers who brought charges against Mr. Duterte before the I.C.C., added, “His craving for immunity only shows he is afraid of the International Criminal Court after all his bluster of being a fearless president.”The only way for Mr. Duterte to escape prosecution is for him to stay on as president, Mr. Colmenares added, and the only way he can do that is through the back door.“He’s hoping to escape prosecution after he is out of power,” he said. “It is not only legally insane, but also exposes his real fear of going to prison.” More

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If you live in California and haven’t yet voted or made plans to vote on the proposed recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom, please wake up. This is a situation in which apathy could have awesome consequences: California, which isn’t as liberal a state as you may imagine but is nonetheless considerably more liberal than the nation as a whole, may be about to absent-mindedly acquire a Trumpist governor who could never win a normal election.This would happen at a moment when control of statehouses is especially crucial because it shapes the response to the coronavirus. MAGA governors like Greg Abbott in Texas and Ron DeSantis in Florida aren’t just refusing to impose mask or vaccination requirements themselves; they’re trying to prevent others from taking precautions by issuing executive orders and backing legislation banning the imposition of such requirements by local governments and even private businesses. And that’s the kind of governor California will probably find itself with if the recall succeeds.How is something like this even possible? Because the recall process is crazy. Voters answer two questions: Should Newsom be recalled? And who should replace him? If a majority vote “yes” on recall, whoever is chosen by the largest number of people on the second question becomes governor, even if that person receives far fewer than the number of votes to keep Newsom in office.And the most likely outcome if Newsom is ousted is that Larry Elder, a right-wing talk-radio host who is vehemently opposed to mask and vaccine mandates, will end up in the governor’s office despite receiving only a small fraction of the total vote.What would make this outcome especially galling is that California is in many ways — with the glaring exception of housing, which I’ll get to — a progressive success story.The Golden State took a sharp left turn in 2010, with the election of Jerry Brown as governor. Two years later, Democrats gained a supermajority in the Legislature, giving them the power to enact many progressive priorities. California soon raised taxes on the rich, increased social spending and increased its minimum wage. It also enthusiastically implemented the Affordable Care Act.Conservatives predicted disaster, with some saying that the state was committing economic “suicide.” And California gets a lot of negative coverage in the business press, where one constantly finds assertions that business is moving en masse out of the state to lower-tax, less-regulated states, like Texas.The data, however, say otherwise. Given all the trash-talking of California and trumpeting of Texas’ prospects one reads, it’s a bit startling to look at trends in real G.D.P. and employment between 2010 and the eve of the pandemic and discover that California and Texas had essentially the same growth rates. It’s also startling, given all the talk about people fleeing high taxes, to learn that highly educated, high-income workers — who do indeed pay higher taxes in California than in most other parts of the U.S. — were continuing to migrate into the state.California’s experience, in other words, gives the lie to conservative claims that taxing the rich and spending more on social programs destroys prosperity. And the state didn’t just achieve rapid economic growth; its effective implementation of Obamacare helped it reduce the number of its residents without health insurance much more rapidly than the rest of the country.OK, there are some important shadows on this picture. Even as affluent workers continued to move to California, lower-income workers — who actually pay lower taxes in California than they do in Texas — were moving out. This was surely in large part because of the high price of housing, which has become a huge problem.Despite overall economic success, California has the nation’s highest poverty rate (when you measure it properly), largely because of high housing costs: The median apartment in San Francisco rents for more than twice as much as an apartment in any Texas city. California also has a lot of homelessness, for the same reason.What’s behind California’s housing nightmare? Runaway NIMBYism, which has blocked new housing construction. California’s economic performance matched that of Texas in the 2010s, but it issued far fewer building permits despite having a larger population. California gained three million jobs between 2010 and 2019 but added fewer than 700,000 housing units.NIMBYism, however, happens to be one of the few major issues that cut right across party lines. Conservatives are as likely as liberals to oppose housing construction; some progressives — among them Governor Newsom — are strong advocates of housing expansion. So California’s big policy failure shouldn’t be an issue in this recall election. What’s on the line are its policy successes.If Californians choose to turn their backs on these successes, well, that’s their right. The danger now is that the state won’t choose — that it will stumble into MAGAland via a bizarre recall process and lack of attention.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