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      Wisconsin Supreme Court Election: Protasiewicz Wins With Abortion Message

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      Janet Protasiewicz prevailed in the state’s highly consequential contest for the Supreme Court, which will now be likely to reverse the state’s abortion ban and end the use of gerrymandered legislative maps.MILWAUKEE — Wisconsin voters on Tuesday chose to upend the political direction of their state by electing a liberal candidate to the State Supreme Court, flipping majority control from conservatives, according to The Associated Press. The result means that in the next year, the court is likely to reverse the state’s abortion ban and end the use of gerrymandered legislative maps drawn by Republicans.Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee County judge, defeated Daniel Kelly, a conservative former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who sought a return to the bench. With more than 75 percent of votes counted, Judge Protasiewicz led by more than 10 percentage points, though the margin was expected to narrow as rural counties tallied ballots.“Our state is taking a step forward to a better and brighter future where our rights and freedoms will be protected,” Judge Protasiewicz told jubilant supporters at her victory party in Milwaukee.The contest, which featured over $40 million in spending, was the most expensive judicial election in American history. Early on, Democrats recognized the importance of the race for a swing seat on the top court in one of the country’s perennial political battlegrounds. Millions of dollars from out of state poured into Wisconsin to back Judge Protasiewicz, and a host of national Democratic groups rallied behind her campaign.Judge Protasiewicz, 60, shattered long-held notions of how judicial candidates should conduct themselves by making her political priorities central to her campaign. She made explicit her support for abortion rights and called the maps, which gave Republicans near-supermajority control of the Legislature, “rigged” and “unfair.”Her election to a 10-year term for an officially nonpartisan seat gives Wisconsin’s liberals a 4-to-3 majority on the court, which has been controlled by conservatives since 2008. Liberals will hold a court majority until at least 2025, when a liberal justice’s term expires. A conservative justice’s term ends in 2026.As the race was called Tuesday night, the court’s three sitting liberal justices embraced at Judge Protasiewicz’s election night party in Milwaukee, as onlookers cried tears of joy. During her speech, the judge and the other three liberal justices clasped their hands together in the air in celebration.“Today’s results mean two very important and special things,” Judge Protasiewicz said. “First, it means that Wisconsin voters have made their voices heard. They have chosen to reject partisan extremism in this state. And second, it means our democracy will always prevail.”Justice Kelly, 59, evinced the bitterness of the campaign with a testy concession speech that acknowledged his defeat and portended doom for the state. He called his rival’s campaign “truly beneath contempt” and decried “the rancid slanders that were launched against me.”“I wish that I’d be able to concede to a worthy opponent, but I do not have a worthy opponent,” Justice Kelly told supporters in Green Lake, Wis. He had not called Judge Protasiewicz by the time she delivered her victory remarks.He concluded the final speech of his campaign by saying, “I wish Wisconsin the best of luck, because I think it’s going to need it.”Judge Protasiewicz made a calculation from the start of the race that Wisconsin voters would reward her for making clear her positions on abortion rights and the state’s maps — issues most likely to animate and energize the base of the Democratic Party.In an interview at her home on Tuesday before the results were known, Judge Protasiewicz (pronounced pro-tuh-SAY-witz) attributed her success on the campaign trail to the decision to inform voters of what she called “my values,” as opposed to Justice Kelly, who used fewer specifics about his positions.“Rather than reading between the lines and having to do your sleuthing around like I think people have to do with him, I think I would rather just let people know what my values are,” she said. “We’ll see tonight if the electorate appreciates that candor or not.”Over the last dozen years, the court has served as an important backstop for Wisconsin Republicans. It certified as constitutional Gov. Scott Walker’s early overhauls to state government, including the Act 10 law that gutted public employee unions, as well as voting restrictions like a requirement for a state-issued identification and a ban on ballot drop boxes.In 2020, Wisconsin’s Supreme Court was the only one in the country to agree to hear President Donald J. Trump’s challenge to the presidential election. Mr. Trump sought to invalidate 200,000 ballots from the state’s two largest Democratic counties. The Wisconsin court rejected his claim on a 4-to-3 vote, with one of the conservative justices siding with the court’s three liberals on procedural grounds.That key vote gave this year’s court race extra importance, because the justices will weigh in on voting and election issues surrounding the 2024 election. Wisconsin, where Mr. Trump’s triumph in 2016 interrupted a string of Democratic presidential victories going back to 1988, is set to again be ferociously contested.The court has acted in Republicans’ interest on issues that have received little attention outside the state.In 2020, a year after Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, succeeded Mr. Walker, conservative justices agreed to limit his line-item veto authority, which generations of Wisconsin governors from both parties had used. Last year, the court’s conservatives allowed a Walker appointee whose term had expired to remain in office over Mr. Evers’s objection.Once Judge Protasiewicz assumes her place on the court on Aug. 1, the first priority for Wisconsin Democrats will be to bring a case to challenge the current legislative maps, which have given Republicans all but unbreakable control of the state government in Madison.Jeffrey A. Mandell, the president of Law Forward, a progressive law firm that has represented Mr. Evers, said he would file a legal request for the Supreme Court to hear a redistricting case the day after Judge Protasiewicz is seated.“Pretty much everything problematic in Wisconsin flows from the gerrymandering,” Mr. Mandell said in an interview on Tuesday. “Trying to address the gerrymander and reverse the extreme partisan gerrymandering we have is the highest priority.”The state’s abortion ban, which was enacted in 1849, seven decades before women could vote, is already being challenged by Josh Kaul, Wisconsin’s Democratic attorney general. This week, a circuit court in Dane County scheduled the first oral arguments on Mr. Kaul’s case for May 4, but whichever way a county judge rules, the case is all but certain to advance on appeal to the State Supreme Court later this year.Dan Simmons More

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      Liberal judge wins Wisconsin supreme court election, flipping ideological balance

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      In a historic election, the liberal judge Janet Protasiewicz is projected to win her race for a seat on Wisconsin’s supreme court. Her win will flip the ideological balance of the state’s highest court, which has been controlled by a conservative majority for 15 years.Elections and democracy observers have called this election the most consequential one of the year, with abortion rights, redistricting and election rules at stake. The race pitted Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee circuit court judge and former prosecutor, against Dan Kelly, a former Wisconsin supreme court justice with ties to election deniers and the far right.Protasiewicz will replace the conservative justice Patience Roggensack on 1 August; the court will be controlled by a narrow liberal majority.The race smashed campaign finance records for state judicial elections, drawing more than $45m, according to a WisPolitics analysis. By comparison, in Wisconsin’s last supreme court race in 2020, donors brought in about $10m. Political groups and wealthy individuals across the country have opened their coffers on both sides of the race, with Protasiewicz raising nearly $9m from the Democratic party and outside groups pledging more than $6m on pro-Kelly advertisements.The massive contributions underscore the stakes of the race – from abortion rights to the state’s electoral maps, which experts have identified as one of the most gerrymandered in the country.In 2020 the Wisconsin supreme court narrowly rejected an attempt by former president Donald Trump to overturn the results of the presidential election; the court could see a similar challenge in 2024. Following the 2020 elections, Kelly was hired by the Wisconsin GOP to advise on a plan to have a group of Republicans falsely claim to be electors. The plan failed and Wisconsin’s 10 Democratic electors voted for Joe Biden, reflecting the popular vote in the state.In a March interview with The Guardian, Protasiewicz said the future of democracy in Wisconsin and at the national level motivated her to run. “I thought about our democracy, and our democracy being at stake. And that’s why I decided to do it,” she said. “All the issues that we care about are going to come in front of this court. But primarily, primarily, our democracy is on the line.”When the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in June, an 1849 law banning abortion went back into effect in Wisconsin. Abortion quickly emerged as a top issue in this race, with voters across the state mobilizing around the question of abortion access. A challenge to the ban is currently making its way through state courts and will likely end up in front of the state supreme court this year.During the race, Protasiewicz was open about her personal support for legal abortion access, and although Kelly refrained from sharing his views on the campaign trail, his campaign benefited from more than $1m from the anti-abortion group Women Speak Out Pac and earned endorsements from three anti-abortion groups in the state.With a liberal majority on the court, the 1849 ban could be overruled.Ahead of the announcement of Protasiewicz’s win Tuesday night, Mandela Barnes, Wisconsin’s former lieutenant governor who ran unsuccessfully for a US Senate seat in 2022, told the Guardian that her victory would be incredibly significant for the state.“If she pulls this off we can restore balance, we can restore fairness, we can restore actual justice,” he said. “That’s what’s exciting about it.”At Protasiewicz’s election night watch party in Milwaukee, supporters followed the election on their phones and broke out in excitement as favorable results were reported. The room erupted once the race was called for Protasiewicz.“She’s one of those people who’s Wisconsin to the bone,” Sonya Bice, 57, a lawyer in Madison, said about Protasiewicz. “She’s one of those people who’s willing to get out there and run in what everyone knew was going to be a very ugly race.”Progressive groups in the state are preparing to take advantage of the supreme court’s new liberal majority. Nicole Safar, the executive director of Law Forward, a progressive non-profit legal group, said organizers were considering how best to challenge the state’s rigged legislative maps.“Law Forward and our allies and our co-counsel are seriously looking at what a partisan gerrymander claim under the Wisconsin constitution looks like,” she said.In a special election that is still too close to call, voters will decide between Republican Dan Knodl and Democrat Jodi Habush Sinykin to represent Milwaukee’s northern suburbs. If Knodl wins, the Republican party will have a supermajority in the state senate, paving the way for the party to impeach state officials – a process that Knodl says he would consider launching to pull Protasiewicz from the supreme court. More

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      This Wisconsin Court Race Is Highly Partisan. It Wasn’t Always That Way.

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      Supreme Court races were once more swayed by endorsements from legal and law enforcement officials. Now they’re indistinguishable from other elections.Today’s election in Wisconsin will be closely watched for its impact on the partisan makeup of the state’s top court, with abortion rights and election rules frequent topics of the campaign. The contest between Daniel Kelly, a conservative former state Supreme Court justice, and Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee County judge, is set to be one of the most consequential — and expensive — elections in the country this year.Judicial elections in Wisconsin are officially nonpartisan, but the races have become increasingly political. While it used to be common for voters to cast ballots for judges with whom they weren’t ideologically aligned, Democratic counties now heavily favor the liberal judicial candidates and Republican counties the conservative ones.The trend has been turbocharged in recent years as partisan polarization has grown nationally and as overt partisanship has crept into the dialogue among candidates for the court.It wasn’t always this way. In the 1980s and 1990s, races were largely seen as less partisan and more swayed by endorsements from leaders in the legal and law enforcement community, according to Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette University Law School Poll. He has studied the relationship between the ideological voting patterns in state Supreme Court races and presidential races.“Supreme Court races at the time seemed to be about who had more endorsements from sheriffs and prosecutors than anything else,” he said.While many candidates during the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s had discernible ideological leanings, there was almost no relationship between electoral support for judicial candidates and presidential candidates of the corresponding political party. A notable example is Dane County, a longtime Democratic stronghold that is home to the University of Wisconsin at Madison. In 2000, a majority of voters in Dane County voted for Diane Sykes, a conservative judicial candidate, while also voting for Al Gore, the Democratic candidate for president.Partisanship began creeping into races over the next decade. In a particularly vicious 2008 campaign, the conservative candidate, Michael J. Gableman, ran TV ads falsely accusing his opponent, the only Black justice on the state Supreme Court, of securing an early release of a rapist who was also Black. Mr. Gableman won by a narrow margin. After leaving the bench, he led a partisan inquiry into whether there was election fraud in Wisconsin during the 2020 presidential election.The Relationship Between the Judicial and Presidential VoteState Supreme Court and presidential election results have become increasingly correlated in Wisconsin. More

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      Wisconsin voters cast ballots in crucial state supreme court election

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      Voters in Wisconsin are casting ballots on Tuesday in one of the most important elections of 2023 – a contest that will determine the ideological balance of the state’s supreme court.The court will probably determine the future of abortion in Wisconsin, as a lawsuit challenging the state’s 1849 ban is already winding its way through the courts. It is also poised to play a hugely consequential role in setting election rules for the 2024 presidential election in Wisconsin, a key battleground state. It could also get rid of the state’s legislative maps, which are so distorted in favor of Republicans that it’s nearly impossible for Democrats to ever win a majority.Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee judge, is facing off against Dan Kelly, a conservative who lost his seat on the supreme court in 2020. Conservatives currently have a 4-3 majority on the state’s highest court, but one of its conservative justices is retiring, meaning that the outcome of the election will determine the ideological balance of the court.The race is the most expensive judicial race in American history. More than $45m has been spent, shattering the $10m record that was spent in Wisconsin in 2020 as well as the national record of $15m spent on an Illinois race in 2004. Protasiewicz’s campaign has received significant financial backing from the Wisconsin Democratic party, while Kelly has has been bolstered by spending from outside groups, most notably a Super Pac backed by GOP mega-donors Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein. Kelly has also received donations from individuals who tried to overturn the 2020 election.Abortion has dominated the race, as have concerns about voting rights and crime.In Menomonee Falls, a Milwaukee suburb in conservative Waukesha county, a steady stream of voters poured into cast votes at the Good Shepherd church, a local polling station. Several voters pointed to abortion as their top issue in the race.“Abortion is top on my list. I’m definitely pro-choice, I don’t think anybody else should be telling me or any other woman what to do,” said Karen Bitzan, a 64-year-old self-described homemaker, outside the polling place, where it was cold and drizzling on Tuesday morning. “I don’t understand the Republicans who say you can’t have an abortion but then they have no plan of how to protect those children who are forced to be born to parents who don’t want them.”Lisa Ruiz, a 67-year-old retiree supporting Kelly, also pointed to abortion as the issue that drove her to the polls. “Abortion is my number one. I stand against abortion,” she said. “It’s bringing more Christians to come and vote.”Menomonee Falls is part of a state senate district where there is a closely watched election on Tuesday that could give Republicans a supermajority in the state legislature. Republicans could use that advantage to override vetoes from Tony Evers, the state’s Democratic governor, as well as to potentially impeach state officials. Dan Knodl, the Republican state senate candidate, has said he would consider impeaching Protasiewicz if he wins.But several voters said on Tuesday they were hoping that a reconstituted supreme court would reconsider the state legislative districts, upending the Republican advantage in the state legislature.“If Kelly wins, it means they basically still have a stranglehold on the state, except when they have a statewide election. And that’s not good news,” Terese Dineen, 70, said after she voted in Brookfield, another Milwaukee suburb.“I just think it’s ridiculous that a state that’s so evenly divided is just not represented,” said Bill Anderson, 57, a project manager in Brookfield.Also on the ballot on Tuesday were two GOP-backed referendum questions dealing with cash bail and welfare benefits. Democrats say those questions are a blatant effort to juice Republican turnout and some voters expressed frustration at how hard they were to understand. “I would like a referendum question to make referendum questions more understandable,” said Debra Tomkins, a voter in Madison, the state capital.In Milwaukee, as a heavy rain began falling around noon, canvassers dressed in neon vests gathered at the office of Black Leaders Organizing Communities (Bloc), a civic engagement group focused on Black communities. An organizer reminded the canvassers to tell voters that voters could still return their mail-in ballots in person and that those who voted a provisional ballot without identification would need to return with an accepted form of ID to have their vote counted.The majority of Wisconsin’s Black population is in Milwaukee. Earlier this year, Robert Spindell, a Republican on the six-member body that oversees voting in the state, celebrated low turnout in the city in 2022.“It’s really angering all of us. It makes us work harder. We know we have to knock 10 extra doors to make up for however many people are trying to misinform, spread misinformation,” said Kyle Johnson, 27, Bloc’s political director.The Covid-19 pandemic elevated the public’s understanding of the role of the court, said Angela Lang, the group’s executive director. “I think pre-Covid, nine times out of 10, the court maybe didn’t impact you personally, but now people are like ‘hey do you know there are 10 year terms? Have you ever voted absentee? Or used a drop box – they’re the ones that got rid of drop boxes. Or those statewide mask mandates.’ There are very real tangible things that affected people’s daily lives.”New maps in Wisconsin could also make a huge difference in Milwaukee, where Black voters have been packed into as few districts as possible to dilute their overall influence. “There’s so many other issues that we’re not able to move forward on unfortunately because of redistricting and specifically because of gerrymandering,” Lang said.Polls opened at 7am and close at 8pm. Voters and election officials reported high turnout at polling places on college campuses.“Young voters normally don’t vote in judicial elections, but this year is different,” said Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic party of Wisconsin, during a get-out-the-vote event on the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison. “There’s this real sense that with reproductive freedom on the line and democracy on the line, this is a can’t-miss election.”Wisconsin is expecting severe weather Tuesday afternoon, including high winds, hail and a potential tornado. The Dane county clerk, Scott McDonell, told the Guardian he was concerned about how the weather might affect turnout and was telling people to vote early.Meagan Wolfe, Wisconsin’s chief election official, told reporters in a call that she was working with Wisconsin emergency management to monitor the weather.“Severe weather is a very common contingency that Wisconsin election officials are prepared for,” she said. More

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      The Year’s Biggest Election

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      The battle for a state Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin.Wisconsin is a microcosm of the country. It is narrowly divided politically, though Democrats have a slight advantage in the popular vote in statewide elections. And, as in Washington, Republicans have structural advantages in the government that give them outsize power.Conservatives have controlled the state’s Supreme Court since 2008, and Republicans have held a hammerlock on the Legislature since 2011, when the party drew itself an impenetrable majority after taking control in a wave election.Tomorrow, Wisconsin will hold an election for a seat on its Supreme Court, and it is no exaggeration to call the race, for a 10-year term, the single most important American election of 2023. It is already the most expensive judicial race in the nation’s history. The candidates and the super PACs supporting them have spent nearly three times as much on this race as in any prior court election.Why is a single state race crucial? Because whichever side prevails will hold a 4-to-3 court majority, and this is the first American election in which the winner will single-handedly determine two big issues: the fate of abortion rights and whether the state has a functional representative democracy. The winner will also set the course for the 2024 presidential election in a state where fewer than 23,000 votes decided four of the last six such races.If the liberal candidate, Janet Protasiewicz, wins, Wisconsin will almost certainly become the first state to allow abortion again after outlawing it with last summer’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. And because Democrats are likely to challenge the makeup of the state’s legislative districts if the court has a liberal majority, the near supermajorities that Republicans enjoy in the State Legislature would also probably not survive until the 2024 election.A victory for the conservative candidate, Daniel Kelly, would mean abortion remains illegal, the gerrymandered maps stay in place, and Wisconsin remains a dysfunctional democracy for the foreseeable future.Janet Protasiewicz and Daniel Kelly.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesThe biggest prizeAbortion became illegal in the state last June, when the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion, throwing the question to the states. Wisconsin’s near-total ban on abortion — enacted in 1849, a year after statehood and seven decades before women could vote — suddenly became the law again.Protasiewicz (pronounced pro-tuh-SAY-witz) is a judge and former prosecutor from Milwaukee who has so emphasized her support for abortion rights that nobody could be confused about how she’d rule on the 1849 law. In interviews and television advertisements and during the lone general election debate, she has stressed her belief that abortion decisions should be left to women and their doctors, not to state legislators.Kelly, a conservative former state Supreme Court justice who lost a re-election bid in 2020, has the backing of the state’s leading anti-abortion organizations and has repeatedly stressed his opposition to the practice.Protasiewicz has bet that her support for abortion rights will energize Democratic voters and persuade enough independents and moderate Republicans to win. It is a big wager on the continuation of the politics that helped Democrats exceed expectations in last year’s midterm elections.Democracy is on the lineWhen I got my first full-time job in journalism at The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2002, Wisconsin was an evenly divided state but one where control regularly switched back and forth between the two parties.That ended after the 2010 Republican wave, when the party took both chambers of the Legislature and Scott Walker was elected governor. The G.O.P. weakened public-sector labor unions and drew itself the most aggressive gerrymander in the country — near supermajority control of both chambers in a 50-50 state. In 2020, Joe Biden won Wisconsin but carried only 37 out of 99 State Assembly districts.Republicans also changed state law to make voting more onerous, enacting a strict voter ID law, while the state’s Supreme Court banned drop boxes for absentee ballots last year. Wisconsin now ranks 47th out of 50 states on how easy it is to vote, according to the 2022 Cost of Voting Index.Protasiewicz calls the Republican-drawn maps “rigged,” has suggested the labor law is unconstitutional and says she agrees with the liberal dissent in last year’s Supreme Court drop box ruling. Kelly says redistricting is a political problem to be solved by legislators — the very people who created it.This race will have real impact on national issues, too.Wisconsin’s Supreme Court was the only one in the country that agreed to hear Donald Trump’s challenge to the 2020 election, eventually rejecting — by a single vote — his attempt to throw out 200,000 ballots in the state’s two big Democratic counties. Kelly, when I interviewed him in February, declined to say whether he agreed with the decision to uphold the 2020 results.The 2024 presidential election in the state may be close enough to be contested in the courts again. New congressional maps could also put up to three Republican-held House seats in play.Tomorrow’s other big election: Chicago’s mayoral runoff race has focused on crime. The election pits a former schools executive, Paul Vallas, who is campaigning largely on a pro-police platform, against Brandon Johnson, a county commissioner who favors solutions that go beyond policing. Here’s what matters in four of the city’s wards.More politics newsDemocrats are using messages about abortion in their campaigns, even when the office they’re running for has little say on the issue.Asa Hutchinson, a former governor of Arkansas and a Trump critic, announced his bid for the 2024 Republican nomination.The Biden administration blacklisted a spyware firm. But the government signed a secret contract with the company.THE LATEST NEWSTrump’s IndictmentDonald Trump is using his criminal indictment to raise money and promote his 2024 presidential campaign.Trump spent the weekend making plans for his arrest, while officials in New York prepared for potential turmoil.War in UkraineThe Russian authorities said they had detained a woman in the killing of a pro-war blogger in a bombing in St. Petersburg, Russia, yesterday.In a call with his Russian counterpart, Secretary of State Antony Blinken demanded the release of the imprisoned American journalist Evan Gershkovich.A Russian children’s rights advocate says she’s rescuing abandoned Ukrainian children. The International Criminal Court accuses her of abducting them.Residents in a Ukrainian city near active combat refuse to leave. The Times rode with the police trying to evacuate them.InternationalSaudi Arabia, Russia and their oil-producing allies said they would cut production, an apparent effort to increase prices.The Israeli government moved forward with a plan to establish a national guard, a political victory for a far-right minister.Sanna Marin, Finland’s prime minister who found international popularity, lost a national election.Pope Francis left the hospital after receiving treatment for bronchitis.Other Big StoriesStorms have resurrected a California lake that was drained.Mark Abramson for The New York Times“This could be the mother of all floods”: California residents are bracing for the melt of this winter’s snowfall.Anti-abortion groups argue abortion pills are dangerous. More than 100 scientific studies have concluded that they are safe.The police found the body of a 2-year-old boy in the jaws of an alligator in Florida after his mother was stabbed to death.OpinionsGail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss Trump’s indictment and the 2024 election.Women’s sports deserve to be mythologized like men’s sports are, Kate Fagan writes.“The Last of Us” is right: In a warming world, fungal infections are a public-health blind spot, Dr. Neil Vora says.MORNING READSSecret to happiness: People in Finland say it’s knowing when you have enough.Looking for love? Move abroad.Metropolitan Diary: Getting his daily steps in. (All 113,772 of them.)Quiz time: Take our latest news quiz and share your score (the average was 8.8).Advice from Wirecutter: The best creamy peanut butter.Lives Lived: Seymour Stein championed acts including the Ramones, Talking Heads and the Pretenders on his label Sire, and helped found the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. He died at 80.SPORTS NEWSThe victorious L.S.U. players.Tony Gutierrez/Associated PressN.C.A.A. champions: Louisiana State beat Iowa, 102-85, winning its first national title in women’s basketball, The Athletic writes. “I think we have a lot to be proud of,” an emotional Caitlin Clark, Iowa’s star, said after the game.Colorful and divisive coach: Kim Mulkey, L.S.U.’s coach, wore a tiger-striped pantsuit of pink and gold sequins. But don’t mistake her for any triviality, Jeré Longman writes in The Times. It was Mulkey’s fourth national title as head coach.Chaos on the track: Max Verstappen won the Australian Grand Prix yesterday, but it was not a leisurely competition for the title front-runner, The Athletic’s Madeline Coleman writes.ARTS AND IDEAS Leonard Scheicher and Girley Jazama in “Measures of Men.”Julia Terjung/Studiocanal GmbHHistory on screenModern Germany has frequently grappled with the Holocaust, but it has not paid much attention to its role in the 20th century’s first genocide, when German colonial forces killed many people in what is now Namibia. A movie, “Measures of Men,” aims to change that.The film tells the story of the killings through the eyes of a German anthropologist who becomes complicit in the slaughter. It has been screened for lawmakers in Germany’s Parliament and will be shown in schools too. “Cinema allows us to awaken emotions, and implant images that can let you see events differently,” Lars Kraume, the director, said.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookLinda Xiao for The New York TimesMaqluba is a Palestinian dish made with rice, meat and fried vegetables.TheaterThe Broadway adaptation of “Life of Pi” is rich and inventive.Now Time to PlayThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was pocketbook. Here is today’s puzzle.Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Get down (five letters).And here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.P.S. Wordplay columnist Rachel Fabi’s mom engaged in some lighthearted trolling in the comments section of a recent Times Crossword puzzle.Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about Trump’s indictment.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. More

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      ‘The dominating issue’: judicial election will decide fate of abortion in Wisconsin

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      One weekend in late March, McKenzie Schroeder offered to drive her friend across the Wisconsin border into Illinois to get an abortion. Abortion has been illegal in Wisconsin since June, when the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, reviving the state’s 1849 near-total abortion ban.“If you’ve never been in that situation, you can never understand how a woman feels if they’re pregnant and don’t know what to do,” said Schroeder, 30, who lives in Sun Prairie and works for a property management company and as a waitress. “I don’t think that any human being on the face of the earth should control what I do with my body.”Wisconsin’s abortion law has divided voters in the state, who next week could pave the way for getting rid of the ban entirely in the most consequential election of 2023.At stake on 4 April is control of the Wisconsin supreme court, which will ultimately decide the fate of the 1849 ban (a challenge is already working its way through state courts). The seven-member supreme court will probably hear consequential cases over voting disputes ahead of the 2024 election in Wisconsin, a key presidential battleground. The outcome of the election could determine whether Wisconsin’s state legislative districts last for another decade or are replaced. Republicans drew the lines and the districts are so heavily distorted in their favor that it is essentially impossible for Democrats to ever take control of the legislature.That perfect storm of issues has caused a record amount of money – about $30m – to flood the race. Daniel Kelly, a conservative, and Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal, are vying to replace the retiring conservative justice Patience Roggensack. Conservatives currently have a 4-3 majority on the state court, so whoever wins the race will determine control of the bench.During the first days of early voting, which began on 21 March, people at the polls across the state cited abortion and voting rights as well as fair elections as key concerns going into election day. Voters also described crime, a subject that has dominated political ads, as a top concern. The homicide rate in Milwaukee’s, Wisconsin’s largest city, rose by 11% in 2022 from the year before, but overall violent crime and other serious offenses dropped by 7%.“My number one is abortion,” said Pauline Tanem, a retired foundry worker in Oak Creek. Concerns about democracy and voting rights also informed her support for Protasiewicz. She said she was motivated by “anything that has to do with voting, and not limiting voting”, noting that early voting at her polling place closed before 5pm. “People usually work until five.”Barry Burden, a political science professor who closely follows races in Wisconsin and directs the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that voters seem to be most interested in a small number of issues.“Abortion is the dominating issue,” he said. “And redistricting and other voting matters are not far behind. Everything else is far down the list.”In an interview with the Guardian, Protasiewicz pointed to abortion as a defining issue of the election, but refrained from calling it the most important one. She has campaigned heavily on her support for a woman’s right to choose, though she has said she would decide abortion issues based on existing law.“I think that people are very interested in whether or not they have a right to make their own reproductive healthcare choices,” she said. “I’d be hard pressed to say that it’s a referendum on abortion, but it’s certainly an issue that concerns people.”During the race, Kelly has refrained from voicing his opinions on abortion rights, although in a since-deleted blogpost he referred to pro-choice organizations and politicians as promoting “sexual libertinism”. He has been endorsed by three anti-abortion groups in Wisconsin. (Kelly’s campaign did not respond to requests for an interview.)Political advertising has saturated the airwaves. Protasiewicz has raised a staggering $10m, while both sides have been supported by significant outside spending. The anti-abortion group Susan B Anthony has reported spending $2m on the race in support of Kelly, while the advocacy arm of Planned Parenthood has contributed at least $1m in support of Protasiewicz.“Political ads are, in my opinion, an unnecessary evil,” said Steve Scheuer, an insurance adjuster from Oconomowoc, a heavily Republican city in Waukesha county. “I think there’s a lot of money spent on that that’s wasted.” Scheuer and his wife, Heather, who works as a secretary at a local Lutheran church, said they were unpersuaded by television advertisements and pointed to abortion as the issue driving their support for Kelly.“We are against abortion,” said Heather Scheuer, who said the issue was a long-term concern and closely tied to her religious beliefs. “They are human beings at conception. That’s what we believe in 100%.”Omar Ward, a 26-year-old canvasser with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), said voting rights were particularly important to him. Ward, who is from Milwaukee, had his voting rights restored after four years when the state expunged a felony from his record in 2022. His first time casting a ballot since then was in the supreme court primary in February.While canvassing in Milwaukee and Racine, Ward said he heard more about abortion rights and crime than other issues. “Nobody feels like they should have to go all the way to Chicago to make a decision on their body and wellbeing,” he said. “And on both sides, whether they’re Democrat or Republican, everybody wants the crime to come down.”During the candidates’ only debate, which was televised on 22 March, Kelly and Protasiewicz clashed repeatedly over abortion and safety – with Kelly casting his opponent as soft on crime.Protasiewicz told the Guardian she wanted to push back on that characterization, given “that’s what I’ve spent my entire career doing, you know, holding people accountable”. More

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      in Elections

      Democrats Run on Abortion, Even for Offices With Little Say on the Issue

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      GREEN BAY, Wis. — Eric Genrich is running a full-throated campaign in support of abortion rights, reminding voters of his position at every turn and hammering his anti-abortion opponent in television ads. At a recent event, he featured an obstetrician who now commutes to a state where abortion is legal to treat patients and a local woman who traveled to Colorado to terminate a nonviable pregnancy.There’s just one inconvenient reality: Mr. Genrich is running for re-election as mayor of Green Bay, Wis., an office that has nothing to do with abortion policy.Even before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, putting back into effect a Wisconsin law from 1849 that bans nearly all abortions, the city did not have a clinic that performed the procedure, nor a health department that regulated it.Mr. Genrich is one of several candidates for municipal offices on the ballot this spring in races in Wisconsin, Chicago, St. Louis, Lincoln, Neb., and elsewhere who are making their support for abortion rights — and often their opponent’s past opposition — a centerpiece of their campaigns, even though abortion policy in all of these places is decided at the state level.Mayor Eric Genrich of Green Bay, Wis., left, has made abortion rights central to his re-election campaign. At a recent news conference, one speaker was Dr. Anna Igler, second from right, a Wisconsin obstetrician-gynecologist who traveled to Colorado for an abortion because her fetus had a severe abnormality.Kayla Wolf for The New York TimesDemocrats used a muscular defense of abortion rights to great success in the midterm elections last fall, and, if that strategy works again, they are likely to copy it next year in races at all levels of government, including in President Biden’s campaign if he seeks re-election.The focus on abortion rights in down-ballot races, however, reflects Democrats’ increased nationalization of local politics. For decades, local Republican candidates ran on issues like abortion, immigration and national security, putting them in simple terms: “A noun, a verb and 9/11,” Mr. Biden once said in describing the phenomenon.Now Democrats are doing the same on abortion in left-leaning cities, hoping to win over independent voters and some moderate Republicans.Doing so allows Democrats to avoid discussing crime rates or other less appealing campaign topics. But beyond that, they recognize and emphasize that in today’s tribal politics, the precise responsibilities of an office matter less than sending a strong signal to voters about one’s broader political loyalties.“It’s definitely not a municipal issue per se,” Mr. Genrich said in an interview. “Voters don’t care about some of these parochial distinctions between municipal boundaries. This is a city issue, a state issue, a federal issue. Some of their most important questions are, what do you stand for fundamentally?”Mr. Genrich declined repeated opportunities to explain what, precisely, the mayor of Green Bay could do about abortion in his city.Still, Republicans running for mayor find themselves doing a political tap dance, trying to de-emphasize but not disavow their opposition to abortion rights, which is not an electoral winner in Democratic cities. In Green Bay, Mr. Biden won 53 percent of the vote in 2020; last year, Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, took 55 percent of the city’s vote.Mr. Genrich’s opponent in Tuesday’s officially nonpartisan election, Chad Weininger, is a former state legislator who cast a series of votes to restrict abortion rights before last year’s Supreme Court ruling. Now, as television ads and campaign mail blast his stance and label him “MAGA Chad” to emphasize his Republican politics, he is trying to change the subject.Chad Weininger, who is running for mayor against Mr. Genrich in Green Bay, is a former state legislator who has opposed abortion rights in the past. Kayla Wolf for The New York Times“I’m running for mayor, I’m not debating abortion,” Mr. Weininger said. “We could have discussions about nuclear arms, but guess what? Can’t do anything about it. We can have discussions about securing our borders, but there’s nothing we can do about it.”National Democratic organizations that do not typically involve themselves in local elections are using abortion policy to promote and raise money for candidates who back abortion rights.Emily’s List, a group that backs women who support abortion rights, has endorsed mayoral candidates in Jacksonville, Fla., Madison, Wis., and Lincoln, Neb.In Lincoln, where Mr. Biden won 54 percent of the vote in 2020, Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird, a Democrat, said her constituents had demanded to know what she could do about proposed legislation in the Nebraska Legislature that would restrict abortion rights. Her answer: speak out against the bills.Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird of Lincoln, Neb., has urged constituents to speak out in favor of abortion rights. Madeline Cass for The New York TimesVoters, Ms. Gaylor Baird said, are “much more interested in knowing where people stand. So I expect that people will want to know where I stand on this issue, even if it isn’t a local issue typically.”Her main opponent, Suzanne Geist, a Republican state senator who has sponsored bills to restrict or ban abortion in Nebraska, said her actions in the State Capitol should have little bearing on how she would run the state’s capital city. She said she would prefer to focus on issues like public safety and the health of the city’s business community.Talking about abortion, Ms. Geist said, is “a way of avoiding what the present issues are and trying to get the public wrapped around something that really has nothing to do with the mayor’s office or the mayor’s race.”Suzanne Geist, a Republican state senator running for mayor of Lincoln, Neb., said that talking about abortion was “a way of avoiding what the present issues are and trying to get the public wrapped around something that really has nothing to do with the mayor’s office or the mayor’s race.”Madeline Cass for The New York TimesPast opposition to some abortion rights has become a political liability even for candidates who support them now. In Chicago, Paul Vallas, the former Chicago Public Schools chief executive who is running for mayor, is being attacked by his more liberal opponent, Brandon Johnson, for a 2009 television interview in which Mr. Vallas said, “Fundamentally, I oppose abortion.”Mr. Vallas’s statement, which he made when he being asked about possibly running for state office as a Republican, came after he had declared himself “personally pro-choice” but said he would favor banning some late-term abortions.Mr. Johnson is now broadcasting ads with a clip of Mr. Vallas’s statement that he opposed abortion; Mr. Vallas has responded with advertising declaring that he supports abortion rights.In an interview on Sunday at a Greek restaurant, Mr. Vallas said Mr. Johnson had taken his past abortion comments out of context.“It’s had some impact,” he acknowledged.In other races, municipal candidates are trying to find ways to make their cities have some influence over abortion access.Daniela Velázquez, a public relations executive running for the St. Louis Board of Aldermen, has proposed providing money for women seeking abortions to travel across the Mississippi River to Illinois, where the procedure remains legal. While abortion became illegal in Missouri after the Supreme Court’s decision, Ms. Velázquez said many in St. Louis supported abortion rights.“I have been knocking on doors and people have looked at our lit and been like, ‘Oh, you know, pro-choice,’” she said. “Then they say, ‘Yeah, I’m going to vote for you.’”Democrats are open in their belief at the current moment, the best way to win votes is to focus on the abortion fight.“Abortion and reproductive rights is the No. 1 issue in 2023,” said Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, which has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to back Mr. Genrich in Green Bay and Mayor Cory Mason in Racine, who is making similar arguments there. “It’s the No. 1 issue that moves voters that normally vote Republican to vote for someone else and it’s the No. 1 issue to get Democrats off the couch and casting ballots.”Beyond the Green Bay mayoral election, abortion is a major issue in Wisconsin’s race for the State Supreme Court, which will finish on Tuesday and is likely to decide whether the procedure remains illegal in the state. Kayla Wolf for The New York TimesIn November, Racine asked voters on the midterm-election ballot if Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban should be repealed — and 71 percent said yes. Mr. Mason is now running television ads highlighting his stance in favor of abortion rights and attacking his opponent.Abortion, Mr. Mason said, comes up in his discussions with voters as much as snow plowing, public safety and housing.“These two big issues around freedom, the freedom to vote and the freedom to make your own health care decisions, they are every bit as front and center in this race as anything else that we deal with at the municipal level,” Mr. Mason said.Mr. Mason’s opponent, Henry Perez, a Republican city alderman opposed to abortion rights, said voters in Racine did not care much about the issue. He said that he did not remember how he had voted in the November abortion referendum, and that too much fuss was being made over abortion being banned in Racine when it was available across the state line in Illinois, roughly 25 miles south of the city.“A lot of people I’ve talked to say, ‘Henry, abortion, really?’” Mr. Perez said. “What do we care about it here? I mean, it’s not a thing that we do. And there’s always options like going out of town, you know, or going over to the next state to take care of an abortion if they need to.”Mitch Smith More

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      in US Politics

      Will Wisconsin decide who wins in 2024? Politics Weekly America podcast

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      Voters in the swing state Wisconsin will head to the polls on 4 April to determine who will replace Justice Patience Roggensack on the state supreme court.
      It is down to the final two – a liberal and a conservative – and the outcome will determine majority control of the court for at least the next two years, including during the presidential election in 2024.
      It is expected to be the most expensive election of its kind in history. Joan E Greve speaks to Alice Herman and Sam Levine about what is at stake

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More