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      News Leaders Around the World Pledge Support for Journalists in Gaza

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      Nearly 60 leaders from international and regional news outlets signed a letter on Thursday and Friday committing their support for journalists covering the war in Gaza and calling for their safety and the freedom to do their work amid intense personal risk.The letter, coordinated by the Committee to Protect Journalists with the support of the World Association of News Publishers, also called on Israeli authorities to protect journalists as noncombatants, as required by international law, adding that those responsible for violations of that protection should be held accountable.“These journalists — on whom the international news media and the international community rely for information about the situation inside Gaza — continue to report despite grave personal risk,” the letter says of the Palestinian media workers doing the on-the-ground reporting. “They continue despite the loss of family, friends and colleagues, the destruction of homes and offices, constant displacement, communications blackouts and shortages of food and fuel.”The signatories include leaders of The Associated Press, Reuters, The New York Times and regional outlets across Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Asia.Palestinian journalists have faced grave risks or personal loss while trying to report on the war: Some have been injured while reporting; others have lost family members and colleagues. Several have quit amid the challenges. Since Oct. 7, at least 94 journalists have been killed in the war, making it the deadliest period for journalists since the Committee to Protect Journalists started collecting data in 1992, according to the organization. Israeli and Egyptian authorities have prohibited international media from entering Gaza, and journalists from other major news outlets have evacuated, making the true scale of the war impossible to grasp.According to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists, most of the media workers killed in the war were Palestinian, and many of them were killed along with their families in airstrikes. Some human rights groups have said that Israel has targeted journalists, though Israel has repeatedly denied that accusation.The letter prompted backlash from some journalists who said they or their colleagues were punished by their news organizations for affirming their support for Palestinian journalists and civilians in letters highly critical of Israel’s war tactics in Gaza.When journalists have resigned or been fired for protesting the Israel-Hamas war, news organizations have said that voicing opinions that take sides violates their newsroom policies. More

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      A Majority of Americans Support Trump Indictments, Polls Show

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      Recent polls conducted before the Georgia indictment showed that most believed that the prosecutions of the former president were warranted.Former President Donald J. Trump’s blistering attacks on prosecutors and the federal government over the cascade of indictments he faces do not appear to be resonating much with voters in the latest polls, yet his grip on Republicans is further tightening.A majority of Americans, in four recent polls, said Mr. Trump’s criminal cases were warranted. Most were surveyed before a grand jury in Georgia indicted him over his attempts to subvert the 2020 election, but after the federal indictment related to Jan. 6.At the same time, Mr. Trump still holds a dominant lead over the crowded field of Republicans who are challenging him for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who continues to slide.The polls — conducted by Quinnipiac University, The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, ABC News/Ipsos and Fox News — showed that Americans remain divided along party lines over the dozens of criminal charges facing Mr. Trump.The takeaways aligned with the findings of a New York Times/Siena College poll last month, in which 22 percent of voters who believed that Mr. Trump had committed serious federal crimes said they still planned to support him in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup with Mr. DeSantis.Here are key findings from the recent polling:Most say a felony conviction should be disqualifying.In the Quinnipiac poll, 54 percent of registered voters said Mr. Trump should be prosecuted for trying to overturn the 2020 election. And seven out of 10 voters said that anyone convicted of a felony should no longer be eligible to be president.Half of Americans, but only 20 percent of Republicans, said that Mr. Trump should suspend his presidential campaign, according to the ABC News/Ipsos poll. This poll, which surveyed American adults, was the only one of the four surveys conducted entirely after Mr. Trump’s indictment in Georgia.When specifically asked by ABC about the Georgia case, 63 percent said the latest criminal charges against Mr. Trump were “serious.”Republicans, by and large, haven’t wavered.The trends were mixed for Mr. Trump, who is a voracious consumer of polls and often mentions them on social media and during campaign speeches. He has continually argued that the indictments were politically motivated and intended to short-circuit his candidacy.In a hypothetical rematch of the 2020 election, Mr. Trump trailed President Biden by a single percentage point in the latest Quinnipiac poll, 47 to 46 percent. Mr. Biden’s advantage was 5 percentage points in July.At his campaign rallies, Mr. Trump has frequently boasted how the indictments have been a boon for his polling numbers — and that rang true when Republicans were surveyed about the primary race.In those polls that tracked the G.O.P. nominating contest, Mr. Trump widened his lead over his challengers, beating them by nearly 40 points. His nearest competitor, Mr. DeSantis, had fallen below 20 percent in both the Fox and Quinnipiac polls.Mr. DeSantis, who earlier this month replaced his campaign manager as he shifts his strategy, dropped by 6 to 7 percentage points in recent months in both polls.Trump participated in criminal conduct, Americans say.About half of Americans said that Mr. Trump’s interference in the election in Georgia was illegal, according to the AP/NORC poll.A similar share of Americans felt the same way after Mr. Trump’s indictments in the classified documents and the Jan. 6 cases, but the percentage was much lower when he was charged in New York in a case related to a hush-money payment to a porn star.Fewer than one in five Republicans said that Mr. Trump had committed a crime in Georgia or that he broke any laws in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.When asked by Fox News whether Mr. Trump had engaged in illegal activity to overturn the 2020 election, 53 percent of registered voters said yes.But just 13 percent of Republicans shared that view.A plurality of those surveyed by ABC (49 percent) believed that Mr. Trump should be charged with a crime in Georgia.Support for the Justice Department’s charges.Fifty-three percent of U.S. adults said that they approved of the Justice Department’s decision to bring charges against Mr. Trump for his attempts to reverse his electoral defeat in 2020, The A.P. found.At the same time, the public’s confidence in the Justice Department registered at 17 percent in the same poll. More

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      Jury in Georgia Trump Inquiry Recommended Multiple Indictments, Forewoman Says

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      She would not discuss specific indictments in the special grand jury’s report but noted that its recommendations were “not going to be some giant plot twist.”A special grand jury that investigated election interference by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies in Georgia recommended indictments for multiple people on a range of charges in its final report, most of which remains sealed, the forewoman of the jury said on Tuesday.“It is not a short list,” the forewoman, Emily Kohrs, said in an interview.Ms. Kohrs, 30, declined to name the people recommended for indictment, since the judge handling the case decided to keep those details secret when he made public a few sections of the report last week. But seven sections that are still under wraps deal with indictment recommendations, Ms. Kohrs said.Special grand juries in Georgia do not have indictment powers. Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., has led the investigation and will decide what charges to bring before a regular grand jury.Asked whether the jurors had recommended indicting Mr. Trump, Ms. Kohrs would not answer directly but said: “You’re not going to be shocked. It’s not rocket science.” In the slim portions of the report that were released last week, the jurors said they saw possible evidence of perjury by “one or more” witnesses who testified before them.“It is not going to be some giant plot twist,” she added. “You probably have a fair idea of what may be in there. I’m trying very hard to say that delicately.”The investigation in Atlanta has been seen as one of the most significant legal threats to Mr. Trump as he begins another run for the presidency. In November, the Justice Department named a special counsel, Jack Smith, to oversee two Trump-related criminal investigations. And last month, the Manhattan district attorney’s office began presenting evidence to a grand jury on whether Mr. Trump paid hush money to a porn star during his 2016 presidential campaign, laying the groundwork for potential criminal charges against the former president in the coming months.A focal point of the Atlanta inquiry is a call that Mr. Trump made on Jan. 2, 2021, to Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, in which he pressed Mr. Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, to recalculate the results and “find” 11,780 votes, or enough to overturn his loss in the state.Understand Georgia’s Investigation of Election InterferenceCard 1 of 5A legal threat to Trump. More

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      J.R. Majewski’s Claims About His Military Record Unravel Further

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      The political tailspin of J.R. Majewski, a Republican House candidate in northern Ohio, appears to be worsening one week after the Air Force said it could not corroborate his repeated claims that he served in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that the Air Force demoted Mr. Majewski in September 2001 for driving drunk at Kadena Air Base in Japan. Mr. Majewski’s campaign had previously told the news organization that involvement in a “brawl” was the reason he could not re-enlist in the Air Force after his initial four years. The A.P. cited military records it had obtained since its initial reporting last week on Mr. Majewski’s inconsistencies about his service, including where he served.A campaign spokeswoman for Mr. Majewski, 42, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday about his demotion. In a statement to The A.P., Mr. Majewski acknowledged that he was punished for drunken driving, though he did not address why his campaign previously said his demotion was the result of a fight.“This mistake is now more than 20 years old,” Mr. Majewski said in the statement. “I’m sure we’ve all done something as young adults that we look back on and wonder, ‘What was I thinking?’ And I’m sure our parents and grandparents share these sentiments.”The drip of revelations has sent Mr. Majewski, who has been heralded by former President Donald J. Trump, into damage-control mode.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Sensing a Shift: As November approaches, there are a few signs that the political winds may have begun to blow in a different direction — one that might help Republicans over the final stretch.Focusing on Crime: Across the country, Republicans are attacking Democrats as soft on crime to rally midterm voters. Pennsylvania’s Senate contest offers an especially pointed example of this strategy.Arizona Senate Race: Blake Masters, a Republican, appears to be struggling to win over independent voters, who make up about a third of the state’s electorate.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Doug Mastriano, the Trump-backed G.O.P. nominee, is being heavily outspent and trails badly in polling. National Republicans are showing little desire to help him.On Sept. 22, not long after Mr. Majewski was accused of misrepresenting himself as a combat veteran, the National Republican Congressional Committee canceled television ads it had booked to support him in the final six weeks of the campaign, according to AdImpact, a firm that tracks campaign advertising.The following day, Mr. Majewski insisted that he was staying in his race against longtime Representative Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat. He said that records of his deployment to Afghanistan were “classified” and posted a photo on Twitter of an undated document that he claimed supported this contention, but military experts have pointed out to The A.P. that there are several other steps that Mr. Majewski could take to back up his claims, including having a supervisor or peer vouch for him.According to a record of punishment proceedings obtained by The A.P., Mr. Majewski was demoted from the rank of airman first class to basic airman after being stopped for drunken driving on Sept. 8, 2001, at the gate of the Kadena Air Base on Okinawa. It made no reference to a fight as contributing to Mr. Majewski’s demotion.Mr. Majewski’s disciplinary report was not immediately available on Thursday from the National Archives.Mr. Majewski was deployed for six months in 2002 to Qatar, the Persian Gulf nation that is now home to the largest U.S. air base in the Middle East, according to Air Force records The New York Times examined last week.The A.P. noted that he worked as a “passenger operations specialist” while he was in Qatar, helping to load and unload planes. In addition to Air Force records, the news organization used information that it had obtained through a public records request from the National Archives, which provided Mr. Majewski’s record to The Times on Wednesday. Those records made no mention of Afghanistan.The inconsistencies in Mr. Majewski’s public accounts of his military service brought renewed scrutiny to the candidate, who had already faced questions about his presence at the U.S. Capitol on the day of the Jan. 6 siege and sympathies for the QAnon conspiracy movement.The role detailed in Mr. Majewski’s military records contrasted sharply with his repeated claims on social media and right-wing podcasts that he was in Afghanistan.After the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan last year, Mr. Majewski chided President Biden over the chaotic exit of forces there, saying in a tweet, “I’d gladly suit up and go back to Afghanistan tonight and give my best to save those Americans who were abandoned.”He also mentioned Afghanistan during a February 2021 appearance on a podcast platform that has drawn scrutiny for promoting conspiracy theories and misinformation.“I lost my grandmother when I was in Afghanistan, and I didn’t get to see her funeral,” he said. 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      When Will We Know Who Won in New York and Florida Elections?

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      Florida and New York are on the clock: A series of primaries on Tuesday, some fiercely competitive, are posing the latest test of each state’s efficiency at counting votes and reporting timely results.New York is holding its first primaries since it streamlined its process for counting mail-in ballots, which election experts say should reduce delays. And Florida makes few exceptions for accepting absentee ballots after in-person voting ends, so relatively few votes will remain uncounted after polls close.But close races could upend the timely reporting of results, those experts cautioned.In Florida, most of the polls close at 7 p.m. Eastern time, but voting ends an hour later for parts of the Panhandle in the Central time zone.A half-hour after the polls close, election supervisors in the 67 counties are required to report to the state early voting and vote-by-mail results that they have received by that point, said Mark Ard, a spokesman for the Florida Department of State.The first results should appear on the state’s election website shortly after 8 p.m. Eastern time, with counties required to release updates every 45 minutes until they have completed their counts, he said.Absentee ballots must be received by the counties by 7 p.m. local time, except for those from military and overseas voters. The number of uncounted ballots after Election Day should be relatively small, according to Mr. Ard, who said the state would track those totals.About 98 percent of the vote in Florida is typically counted on Election Day, said Stephen Ohlemacher, election decision editor for The Associated Press.In the 2020 general election, 100 percent of Florida’s precincts had reported election results as of 1:02 a.m. Eastern time the morning after the election, according to The A.P.In New York, in-person voting ends statewide at 9 p.m. Eastern time. Under a new state law, counties must start processing mail-in ballots within four days of receiving them and may begin tabulating those results an hour before the polls close, Mr. Ohlemacher noted. In the past, he said, the counting of mail-in ballots did not start until a week after the election.The change already had a major effect during the June 28 primaries in New York, which hosted intraparty contests for governor and the State Assembly, the lower chamber of the Legislature. Just 1 percent of the vote remained uncounted after Election Day. In the 2020 general election, it was 23 percent, according to The A.P.But New York continues to lag behind other states in providing information about the number of mail-in ballots cast, Mr. Ohlemacher said, adding that this could delay The A.P. from determining who wins close races.Counties will start to post results in real time on the state’s election results website around 10 p.m. Eastern time, said Jennifer Wilson, a spokeswoman for the New York State Board of Elections. More

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      Jan. 6 Hearings Focus on Fox News Call That Made Trump’s Loss Clear

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      At Fox News, there was little drama over the decision to project Joseph R. Biden the winner of Arizona. But the relationship between Trump and the network was never the same.Shortly before 11:20 p.m. on Nov. 3, 2020, Bill Sammon, the managing editor for Fox News in Washington, picked up the phone in the room where he and others had been reviewing election returns. On the other end of the line was the control room.Mr. Sammon informed the producers and executives listening in that the network was calling Arizona for Joseph R. Biden Jr., effectively declaring an end to one of the most contentious presidential elections in modern times. He clicked a box on his computer screen, and Arizona turned blue on the map that viewers saw at home.Inside Fox News, the moment unfolded with little drama despite its enormous implications. To the people in the room with Mr. Sammon, the result was clear. On the outside, it immediately provoked a fury with President Trump and his supporters, who maligned Fox News, the country’s most watched cable news channel and his longtime stalwart defender, as dishonest and disloyal.The relationship between the former president and the network would never be the same.The events of that night were the focus of a congressional hearing on Monday that peeled back the curtain on the decision-making process at Fox News. The hearing, part of the House investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, featured testimony from a former senior editor at Fox News who explained how there was never any doubt that his team was making the correct call on Arizona — even though most other news outlets would not call the state for days.“We already knew Trump’s chances were very small, and getting smaller based on what we had seen,” Chris Stirewalt, who was the politics editor for Fox News until he was fired two months after the election, told the House committee. Mr. Stirewalt described the cautious, analytical approach they took to determining that Mr. Trump could not come from behind and overtake Mr. Biden in Arizona.At Mr. Sammon’s insistence, he said, they took a vote of the people who worked on Fox News’ so-called decision desk. And only after the group agreed unanimously did Mr. Sammon issue it.“We looked around the room. Everybody says, ‘yea.’ And on we go,” Mr. Stirewalt testified before the committee, adding that they had already moved on to looking at calling other states by the time they heard of the backlash their decision created.Read More on the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsMaking a Case Against Trump: The committee appears to be laying out a road map for prosecutors to indict former President Donald J. Trump. But the path to any trial is uncertain.The Meaning of the Hearings: While the public sessions aren’t going to unite the country, they could significantly affect public opinion.An Unsettling Narrative: During the first hearing, the panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Trump’s Depiction: Mr. Trump was portrayed as a would-be autocrat willing to shred the Constitution to hang onto power. Liz Cheney: The vice chairwoman of the House committee has been unrepentant in continuing to blame Mr. Trump for stoking the attack on Jan. 6, 2021.Mr. Stirewalt’s testimony was part of the second televised hearing by the committee, which is aiming to refocus the country’s attention on the horrors of that day and to make a compelling case that Mr. Trump continued to lie about voter fraud and “stolen” votes despite being told by the family and aides closest to him that he had lost.On Monday, the hearing centered on people who said they did not believe that any hard evidence or data supported the former president’s contention that he must have won because the early vote returns showed him ahead on Election Day.At issue was what political observers have called the “Red Mirage.” On Election Day, Mr. Trump was widely expected to appear far ahead as polls closed across the country, because the first votes counted are primarily those from people who voted in person that day — the method favored by Republicans. But that, warned political experts, would probably be a “mirage.” Mr. Trump’s lead would shrink, they said, or perhaps evaporate entirely, as states tallied the mail-in ballots, which were favored by Democrats and take longer to count.For several weeks before the election, a group of advisers, including Stephen K. Bannon and Rudolph W. Giuliani, had encouraged Mr. Trump to declare victory on the night of the election, arguing that he could easily dismiss mail-in ballots as riddled with fraud regardless of whether he had any evidence for the claim.Fox’s Arizona call blew a hole in that strategy. A projected loss in traditionally red Arizona — which a Democratic presidential candidate had won only once since Harry Truman — coming from a presumably loyal outlet, augured a bad night.But Fox News had good reason to feel confident about a call no other news outlet was prepared to make at that point in the evening, with roughly one-fourth of the vote still uncounted in Arizona, Mr. Stirewalt said. Its decision desk used data that other networks did not have.After the 2016 election, Rupert Murdoch, who oversees Fox News as part of his larger conservative media empire, urged Fox to pull out of the consortium of news organizations that used polls to project results. Those polls had wrongly predicted a Hillary Clinton victory.That paved the way for Fox News and The Associated Press to go their own way in 2020, according to an account of the decision desk’s process that Mr. Stirewalt gave for the book “Insurgency: How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever Wanted.” In the weeks leading up to the election, they surveyed 100,000 voters across the country who had cast ballots early, giving them a sense of how misleading the “mirage” might be. On the night of the election, the Fox News decision desk compared those surveys with another layer of data: actual precinct-level vote tallies that the A.P. was tracking.On Monday, Mr. Stirewalt testified that the joint A.P.-Fox News project worked remarkably well. “Let me tell you, our poll in Arizona was beautiful,” he said. “And it was doing just what we wanted it to do.”Some of Mr. Trump’s former aides testified that the Fox call shocked them but also undermined their confidence in his chances of victory. Jason Miller, a senior aide on the Trump campaign, said in video testimony played by the committee that he and others were “disappointed with Fox” for making the call but at the same time “concerned that maybe our data or our numbers weren’t accurate.”Mr. Miller had shared none of that concern on election night, when he tweeted that Fox was a “complete outlier” whose call should be ignored by other media. At Mr. Trump’s insistence, he and other aides immediately reached out to Fox executives, producers and on-air talent to demand an explanation. Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, went straight to the top, calling Mr. Murdoch. The scene played out in part on the air as Fox talent commented about the complaints raining down on them from the Trump campaign.“Arnon, we’re getting a lot of incoming here, and we need you to answer some questions,” the network’s chief political anchor, Bret Baier, said at one point, referring to Arnon Mishkin, the person on the decision desk who was responsible for analyzing the data and recommending when Fox issue its calls.On Monday, Mr. Stirewalt did not describe either Mr. Murdoch or Lachlan Murdoch, the Fox Corporation executive chairman, as being part of the decision desk’s process. And network executives have said the Murdochs were not involved.Though Fox News coverage is typically favorable to conservative, pro-Trump points of view, that deference has never been adopted by the decision desk, which is a separate part of the news-gathering operation overseen by Mr. Mishkin, a polling expert who is also a registered Democrat. In the days after the election, Mr. Mishkin was unwavering in his defense of the call as Fox anchors pressed him. Once, as the host Martha MacCallum peppered Mr. Mishkin with a series of “what if” scenarios that could bolster Mr. Trump’s chances of eking out a victory, Mr. Mishkin responded sarcastically, “What if frogs had wings?” (Mr. Mishkin remains a paid consultant for the network, not an employee, and will run the decision desk for the midterm elections in November.)The decision desk was created under the former Fox News chairman and founder Roger Ailes, who relished making controversy and drawing ratings more than he cared about toeing the line for the Republican Party. Its quick calls angered Republicans on more than one occasion, including in 2012, when it was the first to project that President Barack Obama would win Ohio and a second term, and in 2018 when it declared that Republicans would lose the House of Representatives even as votes were still being cast on the West Coast.Though Fox News and the Murdochs stood by the Arizona projection, they paid a price for it.As Mr. Trump’s rally goers took up a new chant, “Fox News sucks,” the former president urged his supporters on Twitter to switch to Fox’s smaller, right-wing competitors instead, Newsmax and One America News Network.With anchors who steadfastly refused to acknowledge Mr. Trump’s loss, Newsmax saw a ratings bump as Fox, the No. 1 cable news network for two decades, showed some rare — if short lived — slippage.Soon, various Fox opinion hosts were giving oxygen to false assertions that the election was stolen, several of which were methodically debunked at Monday’s hearings, including by one former Trump aide, who called them “nuts.”Mr. Stirewalt, who was among the Fox News journalists who defended the Arizona call, was notified of his firing on Jan. 19, 2021. 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      How Do Election Results Work?

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      The process behind calling elections: how The Times will report live election results during the 2022 primary season.The 2022 primary season begins on Tuesday with elections in Texas, and The New York Times will be reporting the results live on its website and apps. Here’s how it all works.The ResultsHow does The Times get live election results?Our live results are provided by The Associated Press. To produce its results, The A.P. combines data feeds from state and county websites with on-the-ground reporting by more than 4,000 correspondents who gather vote tallies from county clerks and other local officials after polls close. The Times has also occasionally published data from other results providers.How often are the results updated on election night?When The A.P. gets reports from states, it checks the vote totals for potential inconsistencies or errors. Then it sends the updated data to The Times and other customers about every one to three minutes. Calls projecting winners are sent immediately.Times journalists and engineers have written software that automatically downloads and publishes the results within seconds. Don’t worry about refreshing the page — the results will update automatically.Why do I see different vote counts on different websites?Not every news organization gets its election results from The A.P. like The Times does. There are two other election results providers used by news organizations: Edison Research and Decision Desk HQ. State or local election officials often display their own results as well.A Guide to the Texas PrimaryThe 2022 midterm elections begin with the state’s primary on March 1.Governor’s Race: Gov. Greg Abbott’s rightward shift will face a test in November. His likely challenger, Beto O’Rourke, is haunted by his 2020 presidential bid.Attorney General’s Race: Whether Ken Paxton can survive the G.O.P. primary may be the biggest test yet of Donald Trump’s continued power over voters.A Changing Landscape: Issues like abortion and immigration are driving Hispanic voters in Democratic strongholds to switch parties and prompting liberal candidates to shift tactics.A Deepening Divide: Competitive districts are being systemically erased across the country. Texas is an especially extreme example.New Voting Law: Officials have rejected thousands of absentee ballots based on new requirements, an alarming jump ahead of the primary.These sources can have different counts on election night, depending on the speed and scope of their reporting on a particular race. The results from all providers may not match until all the votes are counted.How does The Times track the share of votes reported in a given election?For years, election results providers used the percentage of precincts reporting to help give readers a sense of how many votes remain to be counted. Not anymore. The rise of mail-in voting and early voting has made the measure all but useless in many states, since absentee votes are usually not counted by precinct. This has often left readers and analysts at a loss about how many votes remain to be counted.This year, The Times will be publishing its own estimates for the number of remaining votes.Early in the night, these estimates will be based on our pre-election expectations for the eventual turnout, based on prior elections and early voting data. Once The A.P. reports that a county has largely completed its count, we will compare the reported vote with our pre-election expectations and gradually revise our expectations for the eventual turnout. We expect these estimates will be better than the old “precincts reporting” metric, but they are still only estimates. They will not usually reflect official information on the number of remaining votes.What’s a precinct?A precinct is the smallest level at which election results are reported. A precinct may be a few city blocks or an entire county.The WinnersHow does The Times call winners?In virtually every race, we rely on The A.P.’s calls. It employs a team of analysts, researchers and race callers who have a deep understanding of the states where they declare winners.In addition to overall vote totals, race callers pay attention to county-level votes, votes by type of ballot and where there are ballots left to count.The A.P. describes its decision-making process as “aimed at determining the answer to a single question: Can the trailing candidates catch the leader?” And only when the answer is an unquestionable “no” will The A.P. call the race.In a very small number of high-profile contests, The Times independently scrutinizes and evaluates A.P. race calls before making a projection.How can The Times call a race before any votes are counted?News organizations can project a winner, even with no results, if the race was not closely contested or the party or candidate has a history of consistent wins in the county or state. In some cases, The A.P. also relies on the results of a pre-election survey to help make a decision.Most major news media organizations, including The A.P., wait until polls are closed before calling a winner.The MapsWhy does my state’s election map look as if it’s dominated by a candidate even though that person is behind in the vote totals? More

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      DeSantis and the Media: (Not) a Love Story

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      The Florida governor and the mainstream press have had a rocky relationship that he has often worked to his advantage.If Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida somehow becomes the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 2024, two factors will help explain why: his mastery of his party’s hostile relationship with the mainstream media, and his relentless courtship of Fox News.An exchange in August 2021 is a typical example of how DeSantis interacts with the press — with a combination of bluster and grievance modeled on Donald Trump, his political mentor and potential rival.The Delta variant of the coronavirus had just arrived, and a question about the rising number of Covid-19 cases in the state set him off. There was plenty of room in Florida’s hospitals, he explained.Then, with a jerky, almost robotic forward-chopping motion, he gestured at the reporters gathered in front of him. “I think it’s important to point out because obviously media does hysteria,” he said. “You try to fearmonger. You try to do this stuff.”Awkward and ineloquent as the moment was, it was vintage DeSantis — a frequently underestimated politician who has made the media his focal point and foil throughout his rapid rise. The clash, not the case numbers, which averaged nearly 25,000 a day in Florida at the peak of the Delta surge, led that day’s headlines.“It’s the undercurrent of his operation,” said Peter Schorsch, the publisher of FloridaPolitics.com. “Trolling the media.”Former aides say that DeSantis views the press as just another extension of the political process — a tool to weaponize or use for his own benefit. During a recent interview on “Ruthless,” a conservative podcast, he expounded on his philosophy.“Too long, for many of these Republicans, they would always defer to the corporate media,” DeSantis said. “They would try to impress the corporate media. Don’t work with them. You’ve got to beat them. You’ve got to fight back against them.”He’s proven remarkably deft at fighting back.The day after a “60 Minutes” report suggesting that Florida’s vaccine program had been influenced by political donors, DeSantis gave a 26-minute news conference — complete with a PowerPoint presentation — to decry CBS’s reporting as “malicious smears” and “a big lie.” Media critics agreed the segment was flawed.“I think you need that approach,” said Dave Vasquez, his former press secretary. “Some outlets are out to land a big punch on him, so he goes into it thinking, ‘I’m going to fight really hard.’”How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Trump vs. DeSantis: Tensions between the ex-president and Florida governor show the challenge confronting the G.O.P. in 2022.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.The incident with “60 Minutes” earned him the sympathy of the right-wing media ecosphere, which cheered DeSantis as he pounded CBS for deceptive editing and misleading innuendo.“I view it as positive feedback,” he later boasted. “If the corporate press nationally isn’t attacking me, then I’m probably not doing my job.”The candidate from FoxDeSantis has shrewdly cultivated the right-wing media — and Fox News above all.It began in 2012, when DeSantis was an unknown candidate for a U.S. House seat in Florida. Somehow, he managed to score an appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, where the nervous-looking, 33-year-old Iraq veteran spoke about then-President Barack Obama and his supposed lack of support for Israel.DeSantis won that race, and the relationship blossomed over the ensuing years. When DeSantis ran for governor in 2018, he appeared regularly on Fox in what former aides acknowledged was a strategy aimed at securing the primary endorsement of the network’s No. 1 fan. Sure enough, Trump endorsed him, and DeSantis went on to defeat Andrew Gillum, the Democratic nominee, by fewer than 33,000 votes.Lately, it often seems like Fox News is promoting another campaign: DeSantis’s thinly disguised bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.Last year, The Tampa Bay Times revealed that various Fox shows requested the Florida governor appear on the network 113 times between November 2020 and the end of February 2021 — almost once a day. The Times quoted emails from Fox staffers gushing about DeSantis, with one producer calling him “the future of the party.”In response to the Tampa Bay paper, Fox said it “works to secure interviews daily with headliners across the political spectrum, which is a basic journalism practice at all news organizations.”Last March, DeSantis invited Brian Kilmeade of “Fox and Friends” to the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee for a fawning feature on his family.“I’m just so proud that he’s been able to be there for the people of Florida,” his wife, Casey, says in the segment. “I mean, it’s not every day you can say that you’re married to your hero.”A ‘sandpapery’ relationshipThe mainstream press, which DeSantis invariably describes with epithets like “the corporate media” or “the Acela media,” tends to get brass-knuckle treatment — when it gets access to him at all.Former advisers say DeSantis was often dismissive of the Florida press corps in particular, which he saw as biased and irrelevant. “I don’t think anybody reads them,” he told one aide.In a March 2021 profile, Michael Kruse, a senior writer for Politico Magazine, described the governor’s relationship with the media as “sandpapery at best.” Aminda Marqués Gonzalez, the publisher of The Miami Herald, in 2020 accused the governor’s office of pressuring the newspaper not to file a public-records lawsuit seeking information on how elder-care facilities were handling the pandemic. His spokesperson denied the allegation.After The Associated Press ran a story implying that DeSantis was helping a top donor by promoting Regeneron, a biotechnology company selling a coronavirus treatment, Twitter briefly suspended the combative account of his press secretary, Christina Pushaw, for what the social media company said was abusive behavior.In one tweet aimed at The A.P. that she has since deleted, Pushaw wrote: “Drag them.” In another, she wrote, “Light. Them. Up.”In a letter to DeSantis, Daisy Veerasingham, A.P.’s chief executive, asked him to stop Pushaw’s “harassing behavior.” The A.P. reporter later described receiving death threats, and took his account private.In an interview, Pushaw said she was merely asking her followers to criticize The A.P.’s coverage. “Frankly,” she said, “they deserved that criticism.”Journalists in Florida privately describe a climate of fear since the arrival of Pushaw, who often engages in late-night Twitter battles with her foes. On Sunday night, she suggested that Democratic operatives posed as Nazi sympathizers at a rally in Orlando. She deleted the tweet after an outcry, acknowledging it was “flippant.”“There’s nothing in there that could be interpreted as giving cover to neo-Nazis,” Pushaw said. “It’s despicable what they’re doing. I would never condone that in any way.”As for the criticism that she is too combative with the press, Pushaw is unapologetic. “I think the press has been combative with the governor, and I call that out,” she said.Asked about DeSantis’s relationship with the media, she said, “The governor is willing to work with any reporter who covers him fairly.”His former aides as well as his critics describe his approach to the media as methodical and ruthless, in contrast to Trump’s haphazard, seat-of-the-pants approach.“He has studied what has worked and left behind what doesn’t,” said David Jolly, a former Republican congressman who has contemplated running against him for governor. “He’s very good at maximizing the Trump benefit without bringing along the liabilities.”Conservative writers have celebrated DeSantis for regularly coming out ahead in his battles with the press. Dan McLaughlin, a columnist for National Review, compared the governor to the Road Runner for his ability to keep “escaping with his head high while his pursuers’ plans detonate in their faces.”‘Will you stay strong, or will you fold?’When Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio host, died in February of last year, DeSantis ordered flags in Florida lowered to half-staff — an honor usually bestowed on public officials or law enforcement heroes.Announcing the move, DeSantis hailed Limbaugh for connecting with “the hardworking, God-fearing and patriotic Americans who were and are the subject of ridicule by the legacy media.”The flag order provoked an uproar in Florida, but DeSantis made sure to mention it days later in his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference.The question facing conservatives, he told the audience, was this: “When the klieg lights get hot, when the left comes after you, will you stay strong, or will you fold?”What to read Trump’s grip on the Republican Party faces new strains, Shane Goldmacher reports, though the former president remains the party’s dominant figure. At a rally Saturday in Texas, Trump said he would consider pardons for the Jan. 6 defendants if he won the presidency again.Jennifer Medina, Nick Corasaniti and Reid J. Epstein dive deep into the previously obscure office of secretary of state, which has become a major point of contention between the parties ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a leading contender to replace Justice Stephen G. Breyer on the Supreme Court, was shaped by her uncle’s cocaine conviction, according to a new profile by Patricia Mazzei and Charlie Savage.Justice Breyer, who is retiring from the Supreme Court, brought his own musings to cases during oral arguments.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesOne more thing …Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who announced his retirement last week, is famous for spinning long-winded, hypothetical scenarios during Supreme Court arguments.In his column today, our colleague Adam Liptak recounts an episode from October, in a case involving a dispute over water rights between Tennessee and several other states:“San Francisco has beautiful fog,” Breyer said during oral arguments. “Suppose somebody came by in an airplane and took some of that beautiful fog and flew it to Colorado, which has its own beautiful air.”“And somebody took it and flew it to Massachusetts or some other place,” he continued. “I mean, do you understand how I’m suddenly seeing this and I’m totally at sea? It’s that the water runs around. And whose water is it? I don’t know. So you have a lot to explain to me, unfortunately, and I will forgive you if you don’t.”Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More