Elections

Voters picked Hakainde Hichilema, a businessman who had lost five previous bids for the job, to take over from Edgar Lungu, who has led the southern African nation since 2015.JOHANNESBURG — The leader of Zambia’s main opposition party sailed to victory in the nation’s presidential election, according to results announced on Monday, staving off strong-arm tactics from the incumbent governing party that had stoked fears of a rigged vote.The opposition leader, Hakainde Hichilema, a businessman who had lost five previous bids for the presidency, captured more than 2.8 million votes in the election, which was held Thursday, unseating Edgar Lungu, who drew 1.8 million votes. Mr. Lungu had governed the southern African nation since 2015.Analysts saw the victory by Mr. Hichilema, 59, who leads the United Party for National Development, as a resounding rebuke of Mr. Lungu’s shepherding of an economy that was in tatters. Zambia, a copper-producing nation, has been marred by huge inflation, stifling debt, rising food prices and unemployment.On top of the economic problems, activists and opposition politicians warned that increasingly repressive tactics from Mr. Lungu’s government would cause an erosion of the country’s democracy, which was seen as a model across the continent after Zambia’s founding father, Kenneth Kaunda, reluctantly stepped aside when he lost the first multiparty elections in 1991.Mr. Hichilema, in a written statement provided to The New York Times by Vanguard Africa, a pro-democracy nonprofit that is working with him, said, “In the 2021 elections, the people voted to save democracy.”“We know that a healthy and functioning democracy is one in which the voices of citizens can be heard freely,” he added. “We will listen to those voices rather than seeking to silence critics.”Ahead of the election, irregularities in voter registration led to a greater number of people on the rolls in areas that historically favored Mr. Lungu’s party, the Patriotic Front. The government cracked down on Mr. Hichilema’s ability to campaign, in some cases blocking his travel. And activists accused the government of rights abuses in violently squashing opposition demonstrations and of trying to stifle critical independent media.Even during the voting, the government deployed the military to the streets, citing attacks on Lungu supporters, and it restricted access to social media sites, a decision that a court quickly overturned.Despite all of the challenges, Mr. Hichilema won decisively.President Edgar Lungu of Zambia at the United Nations in 2018. Activists accused his government of rights abuses in violently squashing opposition rallies and of trying to stifle critical news media.Eduardo Munoz/ReutersZambians were “anxious about the possibility of another five years under such a dysfunctional regime,” said Laura Miti, director of the Alliance for Community Action, a nongovernmental organization based in Lusaka, the Zambian capital, that works on public accountability. That made people even more vigilant in the face of the Patriotic Front’s efforts to sway the election toward Mr. Lungu, she said.“I think, in a way, the attempts to subvert the election worked against them,” Ms. Miti said. “I think more people turned out.”Although voter registration was higher in Mr. Lungu’s traditional bases of support, turnout there was lower than in the regions that tended to favor Mr. Hichilema, analysts said. And Mr. Hichilema’s party generally lost by narrow margins in Mr. Lungu’s strongholds, while winning handily the constituencies most favorable to him.As the first rounds of election results were released, Mr. Lungu issued a statement declaring that the voting was “not free and fair.”He claimed that violence at polling stations on Thursday had kept his supporters away. Mr. Lungu posted a lengthy thread on Twitter condemning the killings of two of his supporters and railing about the effect that he said it was having on the elections.Mr. Lungu’s Twitter feed leading up to the voting has been laced with calls for prayer and images of infrastructure projects during his tenure as he sought to portray his re-election as necessary to continue that progress. But that messaging stood in contrast to the everyday realities of Zambians, said Nicole Beardsworth, a lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg who has been in Zambia since early last month studying the election.“I heard this from a lot of people that, ‘You can’t eat the roads,’” she said. “And what point is a school if you don’t have a teacher, and what’s the point of a clinic if you don’t have medicine? That was really the thing that turned the election against the P.F. and against Lungu.”A campaign poster for Mr. Lungu on a tree in downtown Lusaka on Sunday. As the first rounds of election results were released, he issued a statement declaring that the vote was “not free and fair.”Marco Longari/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn his statement, Mr. Hichilema said that, while it would take time to get the economy headed in the right direction, Zambians could expect to see immediate changes in transparency and governance.“We will not bring the military out on the streets,” he said. “We will not arrest civil society activists speaking out in the interests of the people. And we will act quickly to stop the plunder of state resources.”Ms. Miti said that with Mr. Hichilema’s margin of victory and support from Parliament members outside his party, he could govern with a two-thirds majority — the level of support required to make constitutional changes. In the past, presidents have tried to change the Constitution to their benefit. It will be up to Zambians now to hold him accountable, she said.“The question is: What does he do with that power?” Ms. Miti said. “If citizens go to sleep and say, ‘Well, we’ve done our part,’ then you could easily create another regime that either becomes tyrannical or rules in self-interest.” More

The landslide victory of pro-democracy politicians in local elections in 2019 was a stunning rebuke of Beijing. Now, fear of retaliation has driven them to quit.HONG KONG — When Hong Kong’s pro-democracy politicians won a resounding victory in local council elections in 2019, they inspired hopes of democratic change. Now, fears of arrest have driven most of them to quit, laying bare that dream’s dramatic collapse.The opposition had swept nearly 90 percent of the 452 seats in Hong Kong’s district councils, riding on widespread antigovernment sentiment that had turned into months of protests. Though the polls were for the lowest rung of elected office, they were regarded as an informal referendum that showed the public’s support for the pro-democracy camp. The victory dealt a stinging defeat to Beijing and raised the opposition’s expectations that even greater electoral successes were within reach.But in less than two years, Beijing has struck back, demolishing those gains as part of a broader security crackdown that has drastically raised the risk of political dissent.More than half of the council members from the pro-democracy camp, over 250 of them, have quit in recent weeks to avoid being ensnared in Beijing’s campaign. Those who remain are worried about being arrested.A line at a polling station during the district council election in Hong Kong in November 2019, during which pro-democracy candidates won a large majority of the seats.Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times“Before, we had a lot of hope and anticipation. Now, it feels like our hands and feet are tied,” said Zoe Chow, an elected district official who had represented the working-class neighborhood of Sham Shui Po since 2015 before resigning in July. “We have to think very hard about what to do next because it feels as though everything we do is considered wrong.”By targeting opposition figures in local councils, the authorities are effectively burying the last vestige of democracy in Hong Kong. Dozens of politicians are in jail and facing potential life sentences on national security charges. Apple Daily, a major pro-democracy newspaper, has been forced to close after the arrest of its founder and top editors. Hong Kong’s largest teachers union and the Civil Human Rights Front, which organized large protest marches, both said in recent days that they would disband. Beijing has rewritten the rules for future elections to bar candidates it deems disloyal.The district councilors said they were alarmed by the government’s plans to impose a new loyalty oath on them and reports that perceived violations could leave them imprisoned, barred from politics or bankrupted.District councilors are not usually in the political limelight. They handle unglamorous tasks such as dealing with pest infestations, overflowing trash and illegal parking. They help residents with everyday problems such as the payment of bills or economic aid.Roy Tam, right, a district councilor, boarding a prison van in Hong Kong in March after being charged under the national security law.Jerome Favre/EPA, via ShutterstockBut in 2019, when the city was consumed with antigovernment protests, the councils took on outsize political importance. Many first-time candidates campaigned on issues raised by the protesters, even though the councils have little say on questions of police accountability or universal suffrage.After the opposition swept up the bulk of the seats, Beijing ordered, as part of a sweeping national security law, that anyone who assumed public office must swear allegiance to the Hong Kong government and its laws. The new condition was widely seen as paving the way to disqualifying the government’s critics.“It was only when so many radicals got on to the district councils through the 2019 election did the problems arise,” according to Lau Siu-kai, a senior adviser to Beijing on Hong Kong affairs.Beijing has said only patriots are allowed to run the city. It has applied vague definitions to what it means to break an oath of loyalty to the government. Last year, it ordered the ouster of four opposition leaders in Hong Kong from the city’s legislature for expressing support for U.S. sanctions against Hong Kong’s officials. The remainder of the pro-democracy camp in the legislature then resigned in protest.Volunteers campaigning for a candidate for the district council elections in November 2019. District councilors, who usually handle daily tasks, took on outsize political importance during the antigovernment protests.Chris Mcgrath/Getty ImagesThe government has not told the district councilors what consequences they may face for breaching the oath, or even when they are supposed to take it. But the city’s pro-Beijing news outlets carried reports warning that district councilors found infringing the oath could be forced to repay two years of salary and expenses. They also cited officials as warning that district councilors who had displayed protest slogans in their offices could be targeted.Michael Mo, a district councilor in the satellite town of Tuen Mun, said he quit to avoid the oath and the risk of being accused of disloyalty. He said he believed that such an allegation could later become the grounds for a national security investigation; in July, he fled to London.“It’s scary,” he said. “It’s like they’re trying to make a trap for you.”The exodus also follows months of tensions with city officials and pro-Beijing politicians. Many democrats wanted to use their platforms as district councilors to pressure the government on political issues. When they raised complaints about police conduct, for instance, local officials would sometimes cancel meetings or walk out.A government billboard earlier this year, after Beijing announced that only patriots were allowed to run the city.Lam Yik Fei for The New York TimesSome pro-government district council members have criticized the opposition representatives’ approach as unproductive.Lam Kong-kwan, one of two establishment representatives on the Sha Tin district council, pointed to a statement opposing the national security law that was approved last year by the 17 district councils controlled by the pro-democracy camp, calling it a distraction.“They always say they are reflecting the will of the people. But what does the will of the people even mean?” Mr. Lam added. “The people aren’t telling you to oppose the government or oppose central authorities.”But many pro-democracy district council members say the government is unwilling to work with opposition politicians even on public service improvement projects.Paul Zimmerman, a pro-democracy representative who did not step down, said the Home Affairs Department has not allowed him to approve agendas for committee meetings of the Southern District Council, even though he is now the most senior officer after a wave of resignations.A pro-democracy district councilor and his team distributing face masks and cleaning products at a housing estate in Hong Kong last year during the pandemic.Isaac Lawrence/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat will hold up plans for projects like a pedestrian bridge over a bay in the district, he said. He called it part of a campaign “to disempower the district councils.”The government has acknowledged that the resignations have crippled some district councils but said it did not plan to hold elections to fill the empty seats before next July.In Sham Shui Po, a district in the northwest corner of the Kowloon peninsula known for its walk-up tenement buildings, street vendors and old temples, older residents have long relied on council members to navigate the complexities of applying for government benefits and services.Yeung Yuk, a pro-democracy politician, resigned as one of its district councilors in July but said he would continue to help residents on a voluntary basis until the end of this month. His name is still visible on a sign outside his office on the ground floor of a high-rise in the Hoi Lai public housing complex, but a sheet of paper was taped over the Chinese characters for his former title, “councilor.”In Sham Shui Po, older residents have long relied on council members to navigate the complexities of applying for government benefits and services.Lam Yik Fei for The New York TimesAs he worked from his desk on a recent weekday, a steady stream of residents dropped by the office. Some wanted to buy cockroach poison. Others wanted to watch the television. Stacked on the tables were boxes of masks, bags of rice and bottles of tea. A poster on the wall showed the 25 council members from the district, with the photos of 20 crossed out.“I don’t want to leave them, and they don’t want to me to leave,” Mr. Yeung said, adding that he would find a part-time job in social work to support his family. Mr. Yeung, 36, was covering the rent of the office space out of pocket and with donations from residents. He planned to close the office at the end of August.Ngan Siu, a 71-year-old retiree, said she often sought Mr. Yeung’s help when she received government notices she did not understand. He had helped her register for her Covid-19 vaccine appointment and to receive a $640 spending voucher.“The government keeps telling us to go online, but how?” Ms. Siu asked. “If he didn’t help me, where else would I go?” More

US Capitol attack Cybersleuths find men who allegedly attacked officer during US Capitol riotDavid Walls-Kaufman and Taylor F Taranto appeared to target Jeffrey Smith because his eyes and face were vulnerable, suit says Alexandra VillarrealSat 14 Aug 2021 14.23 EDTFirst published on Sat 14 Aug 2021 13.03 EDTA group of cybersleuths have tracked down two men who allegedly attacked police officer Jeffrey Smith at the US Capitol during the 6 January insurrection, leaving him with injuries that have been linked to his death days later.In a new complaint, attorney David P Weber – who represents Smith’s widow, Erin – wrote that David Walls-Kaufman and and Taylor F Taranto appeared to specifically target Smith because his eyes and face were vulnerable.Man charged in Capitol riot also engaged in rightwing street brawlRead moreThe lawsuit said Walls-Kaufman used a cane, crowbar or similar object to level a brain injury to Smith, who took his own life on 15 January. Jonathan Arden, DC’s former chief medical examiner, has attributed Smith’s death to post-concussion syndrome, which can lead to symptoms like depression and suicidal thoughts.About a dozen people with the open-source intelligence group Deep State Dogs pored over evidence from the capitol attack for more than a month until they found footage of Smith and his assailants.“We felt we had to do something to honor the memory and family of Officer Smith. It’s terrible that the bereaved were left in that situation,” Forrest Rogers from Deep State Dogs told HuffPost. “So we turned to the thing we do best: finding bad guys.”Walls-Kaufman, a chiropractor, has said in the past that about 40% of his clients work at or around the Capitol. In January, he was quoted in a story about the riot, which implied he was in attendance.Taranto – a US navy veteran from Washington state – handed a weapon to Kaufman, who then struck Smith in the head. The battery led to a concussion, according to the lawsuit.“But for the concussion of Officer Smith at the hands of these defendants, Officer Smith would be alive today,” Weber wrote.Smith’s widow, Erin, has been trying to convince the Police and Firefighters’ Retirement and Relief Board to consider her husband as having died in the line of duty. But the DC metropolitan police department has refused to release Smith’s body-camera video showing what actually happened, and Weber expressed frustration about how little federal law enforcement has done to avenge Smith months after the attack.“I thought the I in FBI stood for ‘investigation’,” Weber told HuffPost. “It’s pretty lame that a private lawyer for a dead police officer’s widow has to be the one conducting the investigation.“The fact that these volunteers have accomplished what the FBI has not is extraordinary.”TopicsUS Capitol attackWashington DCUS policingLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

Lindsey Graham’s moment, it seemed, came on the evening of Jan. 6. With crews still cleaning up the blood and broken glass left by the mob that just hours before had stormed the Capitol, he took the Senate floor to declare, “Count me out” and “Enough is enough.”Half a year later, a relaxed Mr. Graham, sitting in his Senate office behind a desk strewn with balled napkins and empty Coke Zero bottles, says he did not mean what almost everybody else thought he meant.“That was taken as, ‘I’m out, count me out,’ that somehow, you know, that I’m done with the president,” he said. “No! What I was trying to say to my colleagues and to the country was, ‘This process has come to a conclusion.’ The president had access to the courts. He was able to make his case to state legislators through hearings. He was disappointed he fell short. It didn’t work out. It was over for me.”What was not over for the senator from South Carolina was his unlikely — to many people, confounding — relationship with that president, Donald J. Trump.For four years, Mr. Graham, a man who had once called Mr. Trump “a race-baiting, xenophobic bigot,” exemplified the accommodations that so many Republicans made to the precedent-breaking president, only more vividly, volubly and candidly.But Mr. Graham’s reaffirmed devotion has come to represent something more remarkable: his party’s headlong march into the far reaches of Trumpism. That the senator is making regular Palm Beach pilgrimages as supplicant to an exiled former president who inspired the Capitol attack and continues to undermine democratic norms underscores how fully his party has departed from the traditional conservative ideologies of politicians like Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney and Mr. Graham’s close friend John McCain.To critics of Mr. Graham, and of Mr. Trump, that enabling comes at enormous cost. It can be seen, for example, in Republicans’ efforts to torpedo the investigations of the Capitol riot and in the way the party, with much of its base in thrall to Mr. Trump’s stolen-election lie, is enacting a wave of vote-suppressing legislation in battleground states.Mr. Graham, of course, describes his role in far less apocalyptic terms. Even as he proclaims — from under the hard gaze of a half-dozen photos of Mr. McCain — that the Republican Party is now “the Trump party,” even as he goes on Fox to declare that the party can’t “move forward” without the man who twice lost the popular vote, Mr. Graham casts himself as a singular force for moderation and sanity.Senator Lindsey Graham at a campaign rally last year with President Donald J. Trump.Doug Mills/The New York TimesHe alone can fix the former president, he believes, and make him a unifying figure for Republicans to take back both houses of Congress next year and beyond. To that end, he says, he is determined to steer Mr. Trump away from a dangerous obsession with 2020.“What I say to him is, ‘Do you want January the 6th to be your political obituary?’” he said. “‘Because if you don’t get over it, it’s going to be.’”Many of Mr. Graham’s old friends on both sides of the aisle — and he still does not lack for them — grudgingly accepted as political exigency his original turn to Mr. Trump. His deviations from conservative orthodoxy, they understood, had left him precariously mistrusted back home. Now, though, they fear he has reached a point of no return.“Trump is terrible for the country, he’s terrible for the Republican Party and, as far as I’m concerned, he’s terrible for Lindsey,” said Mark Salter, a close McCain friend who was the ghostwriter for Mr. Graham’s autobiography.“Lindsey is playing high-risk politics,” said Senator Dick Durbin, a liberal Democrat from Illinois who considers Mr. Graham a friend. “He is pinning the hopes of the Republican Party on a very unstable person.”What makes Lindsey run?Over the last four years, pundits and political analysts have endlessly teased the question. Yet what emerges from interviews with more than 60 people close to him, and with the senator himself, is a narrative less of transformation than of gyration — of an infinitely adaptable operator seeking validation in the proximity to power. It is that yearning for relevance, rooted in what he and others described as a childhood of privation and loss, that makes Mr. Graham’s story more than just a case study of political survival in the age of Trump.Raised just this side of poverty and left parentless early, Mr. Graham, 66, has from his school days chosen to ally himself with protective figures he calls “alpha dogs,” men more powerful than himself — disparate, even antagonistic, figures like Mr. Trump and Mr. McCain, the onetime prisoner of war so famously disparaged by Mr. Trump. Indeed, toward the end of his life, Mr. McCain privately remarked that his friend was drawn to the president for the affirmation.“To be part of a football team, you don’t have to be the quarterback, right?” Mr. Graham said in the interview. “I mean, there’s a value in being part of something.”It was in that role, amid unrelenting pressure from Mr. Trump and his sons, that Mr. Graham called Georgia’s top elections official in November to inquire about the vote tally in the state, which Mr. Trump lost by nearly 12,000. That call is now part of a criminal investigation of the Trump camp’s actions in Georgia.Yet nothing Mr. Graham does or says seems enough to satisfy the Trumps. That has left the self-described conciliator struggling to generate good will on both sides of the political divide.In mid-November, as he was publicly urging Mr. Trump to keep up the election fight, Mr. Graham made a previously unreported phone call to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., to revive a friendship damaged by his call for a special prosecutor to investigate the overseas business dealings of Mr. Biden’s son Hunter.It was short, and not especially sweet, according to three people with direct knowledge of the exchange. Mr. Graham told Mr. Biden that, in attacking Hunter, he had done only the bare minimum to satisfy Trump supporters back home. (A Graham spokesman disputed that account.)Mr. Biden, who viewed Mr. Graham’s statement as an unforgivable attack on his family responded by saying he would work with any Republican, but dismissed the approach as Mr. Graham trying to have it both ways, two people close to the president said.“Lindsey’s been a personal disappointment,” Mr. Biden said a few days later, “because I was a personal friend of his.”From Humble BeginningsIt is a truism of political biography that golf affords a window into both style and soul. And it has certainly played an important role in sustaining the precarious but durable Trump-Graham partnership. (That bond was on display in May, when the two men staged a Trump Graham Golf Classic fund-raiser, with an entry fee of $25,000.)Still, the senator’s frequent impromptu trips to Mar-a-Lago remain a bit of a puzzlement to the former president.“Jesus, Lindsey must really, really like to play golf,” Mr. Trump recently told an aide.The game — and the status conferred by playing with Mr. Trump — is no small thing to a man who grew up on the creaky lower rungs of the middle class, living in the back room of his family’s beer-and-shot pool hall, the Sanitary Cafe, in Central, S.C., a mill town at the midpoint of the freight line between Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C.His parents, Millie and F.J. Graham — known to everyone in town as Dude — worked 14-hour days and slept in the cramped apartment next to the bar’s two bathrooms, their kitchen separated by a curtain from the smoky tavern, with its jukebox, pinball machines and peeling laminate-wood counter. The future senator shared a single room with his parents, his sister, Darline, and the occasional patron, often coated in mill dust, who would wander in tipsily to watch TV with the family.A young Mr. Graham with his mother, Millie, in 1958.via Lindsey GrahamThe future senator being held by his father, F.J., several years earlier.via Lindsey GrahamMr. Graham was very close to both parents, and he finds it hard to discuss their loss without choking up. But his mother was the warmer presence; her husband was a wry but undemonstrative World War II veteran devoted to his family but preoccupied with keeping the business afloat and prone, in Mr. Graham’s early years, to drinking.“He had a tough side to him. He kept a gun behind the counter,” the senator’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone, recalled in a recent interview, adding, “You knew that Mr. Dude was a kind, good man, but you weren’t going to mess with him.”It fell largely to Mr. Graham, 9 years older, to be parent to his sister. From his early teens, she recalled, it was Lindsey who helped her with her homework, Lindsey who gave her medicine when she was sick. Not too many years later, it would be Lindsey who told her that their mother was dying. “Lindsey took me to the end of the hall” at the hospital, she said. “He told me he didn’t know if she was going to make it.”The Grahams did not have the money or the time for real vacations, so to bond with his father, Lindsey decided they should take up golf. They began playing at a chewed-up county course, and it became such a weekly ritual that, to save on rental fees, Dude Graham eventually bought an old electric cart that could be charged, free, at the course’s cart shed.Mr. Graham with his sister, Darline, and his parents.via Lindsey GrahamShortly after Mr. Graham began attending the University of South Carolina, his mother was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer. On weekends, he would ride a bus home to look after his sister. “It was just dark and lonely without him there,” she said.Fifteen months after their mother died, Ms. Nordone, still in middle school, woke up to discover Dude Graham dead, from a heart attack.“Don’t worry,” her brother told her, “I’ll always take care of you,” which he did as he ground his way through law school.Had this childhood led Mr. Graham to seek out father figures in his adult life? “That’s a tough question,” she replied. “I just don’t know.”Either way, his quicksilver mind and self-lacerating sense of humor made him a magnet for mentors and big brothers. Two of the earliest were his high school coach, Alpheus Lee Curtis, and Colonel Pete Sercer, the head of Air Force R.O.T.C. at the University of South Carolina, who guided him toward his first career, as a military lawyer, serving largely in Europe.Another mentor was Larry Brandt, his law partner when he returned to South Carolina. In an interview, Mr. Brandt recalled that Mr. Graham’s career in politics began when he was approached by both the local Republican and Democratic parties in 1992 to run for a state House seat held by an unpopular Democrat.“Lindsey came to me and said, ‘What do you think?’” said Mr. Brandt, a lifelong Democrat. “Lindsey and I talked a lot over time about issues, and there’s no doubt Lindsey was a Democrat on all social issues.”Ultimately, he said, Mr. Graham’s decision came down to calculation more than deep partisan feeling: The Democratic primary would be competitive; if he ran as a Republican, he would be able to devote himself to the general election.He won, and within a few years was elected to Congress, which in 1999 led to a career-making performance as a House manager in President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial. Mr. McCain was so impressed with the barbed, folksy one-liners that he invited Mr. Graham back to his Senate office, where he declared himself a fan — and, oh, would Mr. Graham endorse him for president in 2000?Mr. Graham was House manager in President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial in 1999.Douglas Graham/Congressional Quarterly, via Getty Images“I said, ‘Yeah,’” recalled Mr. Graham, who remembers thinking, in the moment, how far he had come from the Sanitary Cafe. “No one’s ever asked me to help them run for president. If Bush had asked me before him, I’d have probably said yes.”After Mr. Graham’s election to the Senate in 2002, the two became inseparable, communicating by flip-phone, often several times an hour, with Mr. Graham serving as sounding board, soother and tactical adviser. Their influence peaked as they supported the Iraq war before joining forces to question the Bush administration’s strategy and interrogation methods. They shared a vision for the Republican Party — inclusive, center-right, hawkish on foreign policy, more moderate on immigration and other domestic issues.But that ideal had long been fading when Mr. Graham joined Mr. McCain at his ranch in Sedona, Ariz., on election night 2016. Mr. Graham still believed Hillary Clinton would win in a romp, yet there he was, incredulously watching the returns come in for Mr. Trump, uttering profanities over and over and over.“I was in shock for a week,” Mr. Graham recalled. It did not take him long to make a decision. “Am I going to be fighting a rear-guard action here? Or am I going to try to work with him?”‘An Abiding Need to Be in the Room’Mr. McCain, whose own presidential aspirations ended after his loss to Barack Obama in 2008, had urged Mr. Graham to run in 2016. But he warned his friend against engaging in a one-on-one verbal brawl with Mr. Trump. Mr. Graham did not listen.“I want to talk to the Trump supporters for a minute. I don’t know who you are and why you like this guy,” Mr. Graham said on CNN in late 2015, before quitting the race. “Here’s what you’re buying: He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic bigot. He doesn’t represent my party.”Yet scarcely two months after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, a grinning Mr. Graham could be found in the office of the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, chatting with Kellyanne Conway, one of the president’s top advisers.The senator had been orchestrating his West Wing appearance, steadily softening his criticism of Mr. Trump on Fox, and working some of the network’s pro-Trump hosts, with the knowledge that the president would be watching. He had also had dinner with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.Mr. Graham’s presence bewildered some Trump aides, but not people who knew him. “He has an abiding need to be in the room, no matter what the cost,” said Hollis Felkel, a veteran South Carolina Republican political consultant.Mr. Graham said he was there to sell the president on a more hawkish foreign policy at a time when Mr. Trump was vowing quick withdrawals from Afghanistan. He was surprised, he said, how friendly the president was. Indeed, to hear Mr. Graham talk about his interactions with Mr. Trump is to be struck by how much he seems to relish them.“He came in and he was very gracious, like he’s trying to sell me a condo, showed me around,” Mr. Graham recalled.Mr. Graham said he reciprocated by praising his host’s political skills and pledging to support him when he could, especially on judicial nominations. He soon followed up with a flurry of phone conversations on politics, gossip and golf.That led to the prize Mr. Graham wanted from the start: an invitation to Mr. Trump’s club in Virginia.“Where it all changed is when we went for golf,” Mr. Graham said.Senator and president playing golf last summer at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va.Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Trump had his own motivations for making nice. He was an interloper who craved legitimacy, and found the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, unapproachable and humorless. Mr. Graham, according to Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist at the time, wasn’t a “stiff,” like so many others in Congress.“The senator closest to Trump was Lindsey Graham, and it’s not even a question,” Mr. Bannon said. “Have you met Lindsey Graham? I like him, and I think he’s the worst.”Like Mr. McCain, Mr. Trump was drawn to Mr. Graham’s ambidextrous, pragmatic politics — and his strategic amiability.“People apparently found the combination of my slight stature and gabby nature comical,” Mr. Graham wrote in his 2015 memoir, referring to a coping strategy learned in childhood. “I was expected to entertain folks. And I knew the more audacious I was the more entertaining I would be.”Mr. Trump also told his staff that he preferred the company of people he had turned — former enemies who had come to see that he was actually a good guy they could respect.Mr. McCain was decidedly not turned. While he understood the need to make peace with the party’s leader, he told Mr. Graham flatly that the president “is not one of us.”He kept his temper in check until Mr. Graham started raving about how “such a big, older guy” could put up an 18-hole score that nearly matched his age, according to a mutual friend.“My ass he shot a 70!” Mr. McCain yelled.“John was just surprised and to certain extent disappointed, but not really angry, with the closeness of the Lindsey Graham relationship with Trump,” said Joseph Lieberman, a former Democratic senator from Connecticut who was close to both lawmakers.When Mr. McCain’s aggressive brain tumor was diagnosed in the summer of 2017, Mr. Graham compartmentalized, comforting his friend and courting Mr. Trump.The president enlisted Mr. Graham and another McCain ally, Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona, to win over Mr. McCain on a key campaign promise, repealing Obamacare, and Mr. Graham eagerly agreed. Both assured White House officials they had persuaded Mr. McCain to vote “yes,” according to former West Wing aides involved in the talks.They had not. On July 28, a dying Mr. McCain returned to Washington to deliver his defiant thumbs-down, and it seemed, for a moment, that Mr. Trump’s grip on the party was not as tight as he claimed.There would be one more act. The McCain family had insisted that the president and his entourage would not be welcome at the senator’s state funeral, but Ivanka Trump, who had collaborated with Mr. McCain’s wife, Cindy, on the issue of human trafficking, insisted on attending. It was Mr. Graham who persuaded Ms. McCain to reluctantly extend an invitation to Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner.Afterward, Mr. McCain’s daughter Meghan angrily told the late-night host Stephen Colbert, “My father had been very clear about the line between the McCains and the Trumps.”Mr. Graham paid his respects after the death in 2018 of Senator John McCain, a longtime friend.Erin Schaff for The New York TimesBy this time, Trump aides were noticing a curious dynamic: It wasn’t just that the president absolved Mr. Graham for the Obamacare debacle; the senator was one of the few people who could get away with taking on Mr. Trump and his temper.The most common source of flare-ups was Afghanistan. During one golf outing, the two men got into a screaming match after Mr. Graham said he would rather deal with a bomb killing civilians in Kabul “than in Times Square.”Mr. Trump barked an expletive, shouted, “You guys have been wrong for 20 years,” and stomped off, according to a person who witnessed the exchange.A few minutes later, they were chatting amiably as if nothing had happened, the person said.Some of the president’s top advisers were growing annoyed by Mr. Graham’s pesky omnipresence — finagling flights on Air Force One, showing up at the West Wing on little notice. “Sometimes he’d just like to sit with the president in the dining room off the Oval at the end of the day,” a former senior White House official said.In early 2019, as the Trumps were sitting down to dinner, Mr. Graham phoned up the president’s assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, to say he was coming up to the White House residence with Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas, to discuss a plan to address one of the many crises plaguing the administration.Mr. Trump obliged, Melania Trump felt put upon and nothing came of it, aides familiar with the episode said.‘I’m the Senator From South Carolina’Mr. McCain’s death in August 2018 had been a profound loss for Mr. Graham, and during the interview in his office, he nearly broke down describing the hours he spent at his friend’s hospital bedside, holding his hand, during those final days in Arizona.Yet he also acknowledged that the dissolution of the partnership had freed him to look after his own political interests, which entailed cozying up to the right-wing populists who increasingly dominated his party in South Carolina.“I jokingly refer to Senator Graham as Senator Graham 1.0 and the Senator Graham 2.0 who came along during the Trump years, the 2.0 being the preferred upgrade,” said Nate Leupp, chairman of the Greenville County Republicans and one of several party leaders in South Carolina who said they had long been wary of the senator’s “maverick alliances.”Mr. Graham’s 2016 presidential primary bid — a bit of a lark, intended to vault him to the national stage as a solo act — had been a humiliating reminder of how vulnerable he was at home: When he dropped out in December 2015, he was polling in single digits in South Carolina.His McCain-esque positions on immigration and trade, he admits, were part of the problem. “I adore John McCain. Yeah, he’s done more to mentor me and help me than any single person in politics,” Mr. Graham said. “But having said that, I’m the senator from South Carolina.”Perhaps the most sensitive issue for Mr. Graham was his bipartisan record on judicial appointments.Mr. Graham had long argued that presidents deserved to have their judicial nominees confirmed, and in 2010, he voted for Mr. Obama’s first Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan. It came at a cost: Anti-abortion protesters in South Carolina hanged him in effigy, and when he ran for re-election in 2014, six primary opponents popped up, each hammering him for being too liberal on the courts.Mr. Graham has played down the episode, but it clearly scarred him.“I have triplets, and I would probably do anything, including breaking the law, to protect them. He’s got a Senate seat,” Mick Mulvaney, the former acting White House chief of staff, said of Mr. Graham on a recent podcast.So when a second Supreme Court vacancy opened up in early 2016, Mr. Graham signed on to Mr. McConnell’s refusal to allow a Senate vote on the nomination of Merrick Garland, on the grounds that it came too close to the November election.And several people described a similar determination to prove his conservative bona fides in what was probably Mr. Graham’s most memorable public performance in the service of Mr. Trump: his outraged defense of Brett M. Kavanaugh, whom he had known for a decade, against sexual misconduct allegations during the Supreme Court confirmation hearings in September 2018.“You’re legitimizing the most despicable thing I have seen in my time in politics!” Mr. Graham said.Yet if Mr. Graham’s performance won him kudos from skeptics back home, it did not translate into safety ahead of his re-election campaign. The election became a referendum, of sorts, on Mr. Graham’s shotgun conversion to Trumpism.In mid-2019, his eventual Democratic opponent, Jaime Harrison, began raising tens of millions of dollars from donors nationwide. And after a mid-September 2020 poll showed the candidates in a dead heat, Mr. Harrison raised $1 million in 24 hours, part of a $57 million quarter, the richest for any Senate candidate in history.“I’m getting overwhelmed,” Mr. Graham lamented to Sean Hannity on Fox. “LindseyGraham.com. Help me.”The senator campaigned for re-election last year. He won by 10 points.Gavin McIntyre for The New York TimesBehind the scenes, Mr. McConnell tapped his national fund-raising network, channeling $10 million to Mr. Graham’s cause, and two Ohio-based dark-money groups chipped in $4.4 million.As for Mr. Trump, he made one appearance with Mr. Graham in South Carolina and cut one campaign ad. But he did let Mr. Graham raise money off his brand, and, in the end, the senator raked in about $111 million, almost nine times what he had raised in 2014 and nearly as much as Mr. Harrison.Mr. Graham won by 10 points.After the ElectionEven with a renewed six-year lease on public life, Mr. Graham hasn’t stopped tap dancing.In the days following the election, he scrambled to stay on Mr. Trump’s good side, publicly urging him not to concede until he had exhausted all his legal challenges and listening calmly on late-night phone calls as the president raged about a stolen election. He even wrote a $500,000 check to aid Mr. Trump’s legal defense.But privately he was already reaching out to Mr. Biden and counseling Mr. Trump to ramp down his rhetoric. And he steadfastly refused to appear at news conferences with Mr. Trump’s legal team or repeat their false claims — which annoyed the president and infuriated his son Donald Jr., always a Graham skeptic, retweeting stories with a “#whereslindsey” hashtag when he felt the senator was not standing up for his father.The biggest source of residual anger inside the Trump bubble was Mr. Graham’s refusal, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to acquiesce to White House demands for hearings into Hunter Biden’s business dealings.Mr. Graham said all the right things on Fox, and hinted he would get to the bottom of the matter. But his staff advised him that it was impossible to tell reality from disinformation, so he delayed and deliberated, happily deferring to the homeland security committee.He had a better relationship with the president’s middle son, Eric, yet he, too, was growing frustrated that the senator would not even retweet claims of election fraud. At a family meeting, he fumed that Mr. Graham had always been “weak” and would pay a price because his father would be the most powerful Republican for years to come, according to a political aide who was within earshot. Mr. Trump was working the senator, too, according to people familiar with the exchanges.Mr. Graham said that what happened next had nothing to do with the pressure bearing down on him. But on Nov. 13, he called Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, the first of a series of interventions Mr. Trump and his allies were to make into the tallying of the results in Georgia.Mr. Raffensperger has said that Mr. Graham asked if there was a legal way, using the state courts, to toss out all mail-in votes from counties with high rates of questionable signatures. And a Raffensperger aide who was on the call said in an interview that Mr. Graham’s goal was getting as many ballots thrown out as possible.Even so, he made no overt request to discard ballots, according to another Raffensperger aide, Gabriel Sterling. As such, prosecutors investigating the Trump camp’s actions in Georgia would probably have difficulty establishing any wrongdoing by Mr. Graham.In the interview, Mr. Graham laughed off the idea that he had done anything wrong, saying he had called “Ratzenberger” simply to ask about auditing signatures.Around the same time, he made another call, to Governor Ducey in Arizona. His aim, Mr. Graham said, was not to overturn Mr. Biden’s narrow victory but to counter the “garbage” Mr. Trump was getting from his own legal team, according to an aide who was given a readout.In Mr. Graham’s mind, he had threaded the needle: He had professed loyalty and value to Mr. Trump while taking an unequivocal public stand, as Mr. Biden’s inauguration approached, opposing efforts to block certification of the election.Then came Jan. 6, and his presumed declaration of independence.Mr. Graham, in fact, began softening his tone almost immediately, following a tongue-lashing from the president and a confrontation, two days after the Capitol assault, with dozens of Trump supporters at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, chanting: “Traitor! Traitor!”Mr. Graham was escorted by security through a Washington airport in January while Trump supporters called him a traitor.Oreo Express/Via ReutersBy Jan. 13, when Mr. Trump was impeached on charges of inciting the riot, Mr. Graham was back on board, offering advice on how to quell a possible revolt by Republican senators. What followed, in the eyes of many Senate colleagues, was a frenzied overcorrection.Mr. Graham has become an ever-more-frequent face on Fox, denying the existence of systemic racism and decrying federal aid to Black farmers as “reparations.” He posted a video of himself firing an AR-15 bought as protection from marauding “gangs” and forcefully backed Ms. Cheney’s expulsion from House leadership. He has embraced the culture-war grandstanding that he and Mr. McCain mocked when they were a team — recently saying he would “go to war” against students at the University of Notre Dame for trying to block a Chick-fil-A on campus over the anti-L.G.B.T.-rights politics of its executives.Yet there are signs Mr. Graham may be playing an inside-outside game. He has placed himself at the center of a monthslong effort to draft bipartisan police-reform legislation and recently met with the Rev. Al Sharpton to hear him out on the bill. And when he tested positive for Covid-19 after being inoculated, he made a point of telling vaccine deniers in his own party to get their shots.During his near-weekly golfing trips to Mar-a-Lago, he said, he is still trying to persuade Mr. Trump to “take it down a notch.” He remains convinced he can get him to play by the rules, and not the other way around.Many of the people who have known him longest are not so sure.From his office in Walhalla, just up the road from Central, Mr. Graham’s old law partner, Mr. Brandt, has been thinking about something the senator told him during a visit eight or nine years ago.“Larry, you are too honest to survive in Washington,” Mr. Graham said. “Eighty-five percent of the people there would sell their mothers to keep their jobs.”Mr. Brandt ran into Mr. Graham at a local restaurant in 2017, as the senator was beginning to court Mr. Trump. Mr. Brandt took him to task, reminding him of their “85 percent” conversation. “I said, ‘Lindsey, don’t sell your mother,’” he recalled.Two years later, Mr. Graham called to say he was coming back to town, and could they have dinner? Mr. Brandt said he was eager to see him — and to give him an earful about his friendship with the president. Mr. Graham said sure, and promised to ring back.“I’m still waiting on that call,” Mr. Brandt said. More

Andrew M. Cuomo always cared about his place in history.And so, early in his governorship, he invited Robert Caro, the Pulitzer-prize winning biographer and historian of power, for a private audience in Albany. The pitch had been for Mr. Caro to share lessons from the legacy of Robert Moses, the master builder who ruthlessly rolled over his opponents to remake New York in the past century.But over cookies at the Capitol, it quickly became clear that Mr. Cuomo would be doing most of the talking. For close to two hours, he spoke admiringly about Mr. Moses, outlined his own governing philosophy and regaled Mr. Caro with his ambitions to build big — overhauling bridges, airports and more. Then, the governor politely declared the meeting over.“It was an arrogant and angering thing to do,” Mr. Caro, now 85, recalled in an interview. “To think I had given a day of my life to have him lecture me.”Imposing his will on others to accommodate his agenda and ambitions has been a hallmark of Mr. Cuomo’s career, from his role as chief enforcer for his father, the three-term governor Mario Cuomo, through his own decade-plus reign as New York’s unrelenting chief executive. He trampled lawmakers, lashed his own staff and browbeat political officials — in both parties, but often fellow Democrats — throughout a steady rise that saw him accumulate power and enemies in almost equal measure.His strong-arming often worked. Mr. Cuomo pushed through some of the very infrastructure projects he foretold in his talk with Mr. Caro, including replacing the Tappan Zee Bridge and overhauling La Guardia Airport.For more than 40 years, the Cuomo name has been almost synonymous with Democratic governance in New York, with a Cuomo running for statewide office in every election but one since 1974.Now, suddenly, it stands for something else.The first accusation of sexual harassment against Mr. Cuomo came in December, then another in late February, and then another, and then calls for investigations and resignations and ultimately, an independent investigation from the office of the state attorney general. The damning final report on Aug. 3 corroborated or lent credence to the accounts of 11 women alleging various degrees of harassment and misconduct by Mr. Cuomo, including one accusation of groping.Facing almost certain impeachment, Mr. Cuomo announced his resignation on Tuesday, even as he denied the harassment claims and any inappropriate touching.“It’s a stain that’s always going to be there,” said Robert Abrams, who served as New York attorney general while Mr. Cuomo’s father was governor. The accusations and his stepping down, Mr. Abrams said, would surely be etched into the opening lines of Mr. Cuomo’s eventual obituary.Andrew Cuomo, far right, was preparing to run for a fourth term, which would have surpassed his father, the three-term New York governor Mario Cuomo.Keith Meyers/The New York TimesIt was a fall so swift that observers could be forgiven for alternating between calling it a Greek and a Shakespearean tragedy. An upscale sweater shop that a year ago had hawked “Cuomosexual” and “Cuomo for president” wares was now offering free embroidery to remove that stitching and replace it with “Believe survivors” (or any other phrase).Mr. Cuomo will no longer equal the 12-year tenure served by his late father, whose reputation as an orator and icon of liberalism has forever shadowed his son’s career. The younger Mr. Cuomo wore a pair of his late father’s shoes for his own third inauguration, and in recent days his aspiration for a fourth term — to be the longest-serving Cuomo — evaporated.“I love New York,” Mr. Cuomo said in his resignation speech on Tuesday. “Everything I have ever done has been motivated by that love.”Mr. Cuomo and his allies have argued that his methods were in service of taming a notoriously unruly state apparatus. Most prominently, he quarterbacked same-sex marriage through the divided Legislature in his first six months as governor, corralling conservative Democrats and recalcitrant Republicans alike to make New York then the largest state to allow it.There would be more: a gun-safety package and timely balanced budgets, a phased-in $15 minimum wage and other crucial infrastructure investments, including the new Moynihan Train Hall and the Second Avenue subway.“Historians are going to have to be honest about the accomplishments that he notched,” said Harold Holzer, who worked for Mr. Cuomo’s father and drove Mr. Caro to the meeting in Albany. Now the director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, Mr. Holzer summed up the younger Mr. Cuomo’s legacy as: “Flawed human being and a great governor.”But where exactly Mr. Cuomo’s love of the state ended, and his pursuit of power and control began, has long been a blurry line. Former advisers have grappled with that question in recent therapy sessions, text chains and over drinks.“Toxic, hostile, abusive,” Joon H. Kim, one of the lawyers who led the inquiry, quoted witnesses describing the Cuomo office culture. “Fear, intimidation, bullying, vindictive.”Mr. Cuomo announced his resignation at his Manhattan office, attributing his behavior with women to generational differences. Benjamin Norman for The New York TimesAmong Mr. Cuomo’s former closest confidantes, there has been a recent reconsideration of how necessary his tactics truly were. “Did we all create a patina around the governor that gave him more latitude than he deserved?” said Christine Quinn, the former New York City Council speaker and a former Cuomo ally.Mr. Cuomo has been characteristically unrepentant about his style. In his first post-resignation interview, with New York Magazine, he said: “You can’t charm the nail into a board. It has to be hit with a hammer.”Still, that heavy-handedness had a crucial side effect: The governor was fatally isolated at his time of political need.In resigning, Mr. Cuomo said he “didn’t realize the extent to which the line has been redrawn” on sexual harassment. He left out that, as governor, he had done some of the redrawing as he signed legislation to impose new protections against sexual harassment. A day after the bill-signing, Mr. Cuomo asked a female state trooper why she did not wear a dress, according to the report.Now the 63-year-old governor is days away from unemployment and still facing criminal investigations into his conduct with women. Federal authorities also have been examining his administration’s handling of nursing home deaths during the pandemic, and the state attorney general is looking into the use of state resources for Mr. Cuomo’s memoir last year.“I am sure he feels like he has enormous unfinished business left to do,” said Charlie King, Mr. Cuomo’s running mate for lieutenant governor in 2002 and one of the few people who counseled Mr. Cuomo to the end. “And that, more than anything, will stick with him as he closes the gates at Eagle Street and says goodbye to the governor’s mansion.”Eyeing the history booksAndrew Cuomo in 1988, when he was president of Help Inc., a nonprofit agency that helped provide housing to the homeless.Suzanne DeChillo/The New York TimesFrom the start, Andrew Mark Cuomo had a knack for vivid political imagery and a flair for exuding his dominance. He conducted interviews while lighting cigarettes in his office in the 1980s and puffing cigars in a Manhattan park in the early 2000s. Behind the scenes, he was known to shape stories with off-the-record chats.His first run for office, in 2002, was a flop, when he dropped out of the primary even before getting a chance to match up against the Republican, Gov. George Pataki, who had ousted his father in 1994.But he quickly spun a comeback narrative of contrition that propelled him to become attorney general four years later. Successive implosions of Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Gov. David Paterson in scandal put him on a glide path to the governor’s mansion by 2010.Even before he had won, Mr. Cuomo was eyeing the history books — sending copies of a biography of former Gov. Hugh L. Carey to labor leaders that October. He said he had learned from the hard-charging Mr. Spitzer’s mistakes, too.“Lesson 1 from Spitzer,” Mr. Cuomo said then. “Don’t alienate the Legislature on Day 1.”“It’s a stain that’s always going to be there,” Robert Abrams, who served as attorney general during Mario Cuomo’s governorship, said of Andrew Cuomo’s legacy. Nathaniel Brooks for The New York TimesIt took Mr. Cuomo a little longer, but by this year, he had precious few friends in Albany.His winner-take-all approach to politics — with the executive always winning — grew wearisome for legislators as they saw their ideas either repeatedly stomped on or co-opted (and sometimes both).A centrist, especially on fiscal policy, Mr. Cuomo triangulated between the parties to curb the most progressive elements of his party.For years, he had tacitly backed a division among Democrats in Albany, when a breakaway faction of Senate Democrats formed a power-sharing agreement with the Republicans. Mr. Cuomo long claimed he was powerless to reunite the party — until he helped broker an accord to do just that in 2018.The Path to Governor Cuomo’s ResignationCard 1 of 6Plans to resign. More

The prime minister hopes his handling of the pandemic will help his Liberal Party win an early election. No decision has been made on the date.OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is considering dissolving Parliament, perhaps as soon as Sunday, to set Canada on a path for an election in late September. Such a move has been widely anticipated and would signal his confidence that voters will return him to power after three consecutive campaigns.If called, the election would come less than two years after the previous vote and at a time when coronavirus cases are rising in many parts of the country, leading health officials to declare that a fourth wave is underway. Mr. Trudeau could have waited until 2024 to call an election.Officials in Mr. Trudeau’s government and his Liberal Party have been told to prepare for the prime minister to request the dissolution on Sunday from Governor General Mary Simon, Queen Elizabeth’s representative as head of state. Their understanding is that the vote will be held on Sept. 20, after the minimum period for campaigning by law.The final decision on timing rests with Mr. Trudeau, and on Friday it was not clear if it had been made. Mr. Trudeau’s office declined to comment.For several weeks, Mr. Trudeau, prominent members of his cabinet and the leaders of the main opposition parties have been making campaign-style appearances throughout the country. Over the past few months, several politicians have announced their retirements, also a signal that a vote was looming.Mr. Trudeau appears to be gambling that the government’s generally well received measures, particularly on financial support to Canadians and Canadian companies and vaccine procurement, will return his government to office with a majority in the House of Commons. His Liberal Party won the most seats in the 2019 election, 157, but fell short of a majority in the 338-seat house, leaving him to rely on the support of opposition parties to pass legislation.Polls show the Liberals with enough support to return to power but not necessarily with a majority. Mr. Trudeau may be hoping that his noted campaign skills and celebrity image may still turn that around.Erin O’Toole, the leader of the Conservative Party, the largest opposition group, has struggled to attract attention and win support during his first year in that role.Lori Turnbull, a professor of political science at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, said that waiting to go to the polls could also bring risks for Mr. Trudeau.“Canada’s been great at managing the spread of Covid-19,” she said. “We didn’t see the kind of crisis situation develop that developed in other places like within the U.S.”“Trudeau wants to ride the Liberal’s record into this election,” she said. “But if you let too much time go by, voters forget about what you’ve done for them.” More

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may call an early election as soon as Sunday despite rising Covid-19 cases. If so, it won’t be campaigning as usual.The country may, or may not, be headed into an election at the same time that a fourth Covid-19 surge is now underway thanks to the Delta variant.A polling station in Ottawa on election day in 2019.Ian Austen/The New York TimesBased on indications to officials in his government and the Liberal Party, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is contemplating a visit to Governor General Mary Simon, perhaps as early as Sunday, to dissolve Parliament and set an election for Sept. 20. That call on timing is Mr. Trudeau’s to make, and on Friday afternoon it was still unclear if he had reached a decision.[Read: Trudeau Weighs Snap Election in Canada]Whatever the precise date of the election call, it is widely anticipated that the vote will come soon. And it won’t be the first campaign Canada has seen during the pandemic. Including Nova Scotia, which votes on Tuesday, elections have unrolled in five provinces plus Yukon.In Alberta, any federal vote in the near future will come on top of municipal election campaigns as well as referendums on Canada’s equalization system and daylight saving time.While none of the provincial elections were blamed for major outbreaks, a surge in cases caused Newfoundland to switch to mail-in ballots just 12 hours before voters were supposed to visit polls on Feb. 12, and to extend the election period until March 1. Things only got worse after that, with the final results not being confirmed until the end of that month.Stephane Perrault, the chief electoral officer, has warned that a pandemic vote will likely lead to an enormous increase in mail-in ballots and perhaps a delay of a few days in announcing some results. Canada does not start counting mail ballots until the day after in-person voting to make sure that no one double-voted and to allow people to submit their ballots right up to the closing of polls.That may leave some close races in limbo. In-person voters will also see changes such as voting at movie theaters because many usual voting spots like schools are currently reluctant to open up to large numbers of outsiders.For weeks it’s been apparent that an election is coming soon. Mr. Trudeau and his cabinet members have been traveling the country making spending announcements, and the opposition leaders have similarly hit the road.If Mr. Trudeau goes ahead less than two years into his last mandate, it will be the third time since it passed in 2007 that Canada’s fixed election date law has been treated with roughly the same respect as highway speed limits. (After introducing that measure Stephen Harper, the former Conservative prime minister, made the first two early calls.)Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.Blair Gable/ReutersEarly elections are rarely greeted with enthusiasm. And a poll released earlier this summer found little enthusiasm for a fall election. Both Erin O’Toole, the Conservative leader, and Jagmeet Singh, leader of the New Democrats, have condemned the idea of a pandemic vote as reckless.Mr. Singh sent the governor general a note asking her to turn down any request to dissolve Parliament from Mr. Trudeau. (When that happened in 1926 to William Lyon Mackenzie King, the Liberal prime minister at the time, it set off a constitutional crisis over the powers of the governor general. Most experts agree that Ms. Simon will not refuse to dissolve Parliament.)The question, then, is whether voters will punish Mr. Trudeau for the early vote. Shachi Kurl, the president of the Angus Reid Institute, a nonprofit opinion research firm in Vancouver, told me earlier this week that history suggests it won’t be a worry for the prime minister.“At the beginning of every advantageously called election, there are always several days of grumbling,” she told me. “Then people get on with it and judge the leaders and the issues accordingly.”The other question, of course, is will it be safe? While announcing that Canada is now in its fourth wave this week, Dr. Theresa Tam, the chief public health officer of Canada, added that “cases are plotting along a strong resurgence trajectory.”Deaths, she noted, remain comparatively low.Dr. Theresa Tam said this week that Canada is now in its fourth wave of the pandemic.Blair Gable/ReutersOf course this resurgence of the virus comes at a time when vaccination rates are high in Canada and still rising. Vaccination does not 100 percent guarantee protection against Covid infections or death from them. But a team of colleagues at The Times went through data from 40 American states on so-called breakthrough infections — when fully inoculated people contract the virus.The findings of their analysis, which likely apply broadly to Canada, are encouraging: “Fully vaccinated people have made up as few as 0.1 percent of and as many as 5 percent of those hospitalized with the virus in those states, and as few as 0.2 percent and as many as 6 percent of those who have died.”The Times report also found that “people who were not fully vaccinated were hospitalized with Covid-19 at least five times more often than fully vaccinated people, according to the analysis, and they died at least eight times more often.”[Read: See the Data on Breakthrough Covid Hospitalizations and Deaths by State]Earlier this month, Dr. Tam said that in-person voting can be done safely with public health guidelines but added that mail-in ballots are an option for anyone who feels uneasy.That will likely lead to an unusual campaign, assuming it begins before the current infection wave ends. The leaders will be spared endless handshaking, and they won’t cozy up to voters for selfies and baby kissing — something that in my experience happens with astonishing frequency. Big rallies will likely be outdoors with participants socially distanced, and virtual events will likely be common.And perhaps I’m being optimistic, but the pandemic may also have the effect of creating a campaign, whenever it comes, that’s actually focused on issues and substance rather than personality and stagecraft.Trans CanadaA Chinese court sentenced Michael Spavor to 11 years in prison.Associated PressIn a case widely characterized as an act of hostage diplomacy by China, a court in that country sentenced Michael Spavor, a Canadian businessman, to 11 years in prison for spying this week. The decision followed another Chinese court’s rejection of a death sentence appeal by Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, a Canadian convicted of drug trafficking. The decisions came as final arguments were underway in Vancouver at the extradition hearing for Meng Wanzhou, a Chinese telecommunications executive held in Canada who is facing fraud charges in the United States. The Canadian government contends that the two men as well as a Michael Kovrig, another Canadian arrested in China and accused of spying, are victims of political retaliation by China for Ms. Meng’s detention.Vjosa Isai continues to follow the disruption and devastation brought by wildfires in Western Canada and has also written an overview on how British Columbia is battling 300 wildfires all at the same time.Catherine Porter revisited Ted Freeman-Atwood, 90, a long-term care home resident who is now back in the greater world after nearly a year locked indoors because of coronavirus restrictions.I headed down to the border with the United States earlier this week when it reopened to fully vaccinated Americans for nonessential visits. While there were considerable delays crossing into Canada, largely because of new rules, the number of visitors heading north did not surge.Qianshi Lin, a botanist at the University of British Columbia, has discovered the secret of the Western false asphodel, a wildflower: It’s a carnivore.Tony Esposito, the Chicago Blackhawks’ goaltender for 15 seasons, died at the age of 78.As a director, David Cronenberg is credited with creating a subgenre of film known as body horror. Now he’s acting and starring in Season 4 of the Canadian horror anthology series “Slasher.”Joshua Barone, a music critic for The Times, writes that Robert Carsen, a Canadian, “might be the most, well, reliable director in opera. I meant it as high praise: His work is by no means repetitive, cautious or dull. But in more than 125 productions over three decades in the field, he has been peerlessly dependable.”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

Kathy Hochul, on the cusp of becoming New York’s first woman governor, has been consigned to a strange limbo for the next 12 days because of Andrew Cuomo’s time-delayed resignation — a lag she has made clear is not her preference.But Mr. Cuomo’s slow goodbye may be a blessing in disguise for Ms. Hochul, and not just because it gives her time to put together a trusted team and get her arms around the many significant challenges facing the state.It also gives New Yorkers time to figure out who the heck she is — and to learn that she is not someone to be underestimated, as some of us who have long watched her know. Ms. Hochul has made a whole career out of biding her time, seizing opportunities, and cannily remolding herself to address shifting constituencies.What’s critical to understand about Ms. Hochul — and it may sound like a small thing, but it’s not — is that she finds ways to make the most of her position.Her most recent one, the lieutenant governor’s job, is largely ceremonial in New York, with no official policy portfolio and little opportunity to establish an agenda. And until this month, she has been far from a household name: Even some seasoned TV anchors and reporters covering the governor’s downfall and resignation struggled to pronounce “Hochul” (it’s a hard “c,” like “cool,” not the soft “ch” of “church”).But Ms. Hochul is seemingly indefatigable, known to pack her day full of public events — sometimes beginning and ending at opposite ends of the state. In the process, she has established strong ties with a wide array of political stakeholders and power brokers.In doing so she has created a profile for herself well beyond her political base in Buffalo, which has always been viewed as something of a backwater by the downstate-dominated political class. The last true upstate governor was a Cortland County native, Nathan Miller, elected in 1920. George Pataki claimed the upstate mantle, but he hailed from Westchester County, which is really a New York City suburb.Her experience in western New York is also revealing. Her unlikely 2011 special election victory in a Republican-dominated congressional district briefly captured media attention outside the Empire State. She was the first Democrat to hold the seat in 40 years. But less than two years later, her district redrawn to become even more G.O.P.-dominant, Hochul lost a tight race to the Republican Chris Collins.While running for Congress as an “independent Democrat,” Ms. Hochul was endorsed by the N.R.A. She regularly accepted the Conservative Party line in local races, and while serving as Erie County clerk, she took on Gov. Eliot Spitzer — who had appointed her to the role — when she opposed his plan to let undocumented immigrants obtain driver’s licenses.That played well in western New York, which leans right, but made Ms. Hochul a lightning rod for the left. Eleven years later, in a different position with a broader constituency, Ms. Hochul vociferously supported Mr. Cuomo’s push for the same immigration policy Mr. Spitzer had failed to realize and cheered when the so-called Green Light bill became law.New York elected officials have a tradition of shifting positions as they move up the political food chain. Kirsten Gillibrand’s transformation from a Blue Dog congresswoman to an outspoken progressive senator is Exhibit A. But some on the left remain skeptical about Ms. Hochul. She has work to do to unite the notoriously fractious Democratic Party.That may prove to be an impossible task, given the growing schism between the party’s liberal wing and its more moderate members. Difficult debates are looming in Albany next year, particularly around single-payer health care — a top priority for Democratic Socialists, who are growing their number in the New York State Legislature.But Ms. Hochul will be up for the challenge. Her folksy mannerisms and kill-them-with-kindness approach belie a steely and savvy operator.That prowess was on display in 2018 when Ms. Hochul outmaneuvered Mr. Cuomo as he sought to dump her from his third-term re-election ticket while facing a primary challenge from the progressive activist and actress Cynthia Nixon. Ms. Hochul herself was fending off a primary opponent: Jumaane Williams, who is now the New York City public advocate but was then a Brooklyn councilman.Ms. Hochul rejected the governor’s public suggestion that she run for her old House seat, calling his bluff. She knew he could not afford to force out his loyal lieutenant and alienate upstate voters, or, for that matter, women — especially not as he faced a female challenger. He was stuck with her.She won the primary and cruised to a general election victory at Mr. Cuomo’s side: She had beaten Albany’s political chess master at his own game.Now that she plans to seek a full term in 2022 for the office she is about to inherit, Ms. Hochul has just over 14 months to convince New York voters, as well as Democratic leaders and allies, of her competence and progressive credibility. She is already seeking to separate herself from her predecessor and quell accusations that she stood silently by while he created a toxic work environment and harassed multiple women. (Ms. Hochul insists she had no knowledge of that, but Mr. Cuomo’s bullying and strong-arm tactics have long been well known).Ms. Hochul faces many challenges: the surging Delta variant, an uptick of urban violent crime, annual budget battles and the growing list of 2022 wannabes. But she starts with a well of good will and a reputation for being tough but not abusive. “No one will ever describe my administration as a toxic work environment,” she told reporters on Wednesday. For the time being, that should be more than enough.Liz Benjamin is a former reporter who covered New York politics and government for two decades. She’s now the managing director for Albany at Marathon Strategies, a communications and strategic consulting firm.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. 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