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      Your Monday Evening Briefing

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      Daniel E. Slotnik and (Want to get this newsletter in your inbox? Here’s the sign-up.)Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Monday.Firefighters at the scene of a missile strike in Lviv, Ukraine, today. Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times1. Russia has begun its offensive in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said.“Now we can state that the Russian forces have started the battle for the Donbas that they have been getting ready for a long time,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address.Russia claimed today that it had hit some 300 Ukrainian targets, mostly in the east, in one of the broadest barrages of missile attacks in weeks. There was also a missile strike on the western city of Lviv, which had been relatively unscathed until now. Seven people there died. Russian forces are closing in on a complete capture of the city of Mariupol, which would be a major strategic prize in the fight.In Russia, the central bank chief warned that ripple effects from Western sanctions were only beginning to spread, despite President Vladimir Putin’s claim that Russia’s economy remains stable. Moscow’s mayor said 200,000 jobs were at risk in the Russian capital alone.Travelers may no longer need to wear masks in U.S. airportsAlyssa Pointer for The New York Times2. A federal judge struck down the mask requirement on planes and public transit in the U.S.The ruling came days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention extended the federal transportation mask requirement through May 3. The judge in Florida said that the mandate “exceeds the C.D.C.’s statutory authority.”The judge’s decision apparently shuts down the requirement for people to wear masks on airplanes, in airports and while taking other public transportation. It was not immediately clear whether the Justice Department would appeal the judge’s order, which could keep the rule in place while the matter undergoes further litigation.In other Covid news, Philadelphia became the first major city in the U.S. to reinstate a mask rule in response to rising cases of the coronavirus. In China, several economic indicators show that Covid lockdowns could have a disastrous effect on the country’s economy.And in Shanghai, the authorities announced that some workers might have to live at their workplaces even after the city lifts its lockdown.Allies of former President Donald Trump are renewing a push to overturn the 2020 election.Veasey Conway for The New York Times3. Some Trump allies are pushing to “decertify” the 2020 vote in key states and overturn the election.More than a year after failing to cancel the 2020 election results, some of the same lawyers and associates are still insisting that former President Donald Trump won. In statehouses and courtrooms across the country, Trump allies are pressing for states to pass resolutions rescinding Electoral College votes for President Biden and to bring lawsuits that seek to prove baseless claims of large-scale voter fraud. The efforts, dismissed as preposterous by many legal experts, are nonetheless stoking Trump supporters’ grievances. Democrats and some Republicans have raised deep concerns about the effect of the decertification efforts, including the potential to incite violence of the sort that erupted on Jan. 6, 2021.Kenya’s Peres Jepchirchir won the 126th Boston Marathon’s women’s division.Winslow Townson/Associated Press4. Peres Jepchirchir and Evans Chebet won the Boston Marathon.Jepchirchir finished the 26.2-mile course in 2 hours 21 minutes 1 second, beating Ababel Yeshaneh in the women’s division by just four seconds in a sprint to the finish line.Evans Chebet won the men’s race with a time of 2 hours 6 minutes 51 seconds, his first victory at a major marathon. The Boston Marathon returned to its traditional slot on the springtime calendar after three years.In 2020, the race was canceled for the first time in its history. And last year, the race was pushed to October, when it competed for elite entrants with a cluster of other marathons. We have highlights from the race.Alex Jones addressed Trump supporters in 2020.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times5. Alex Jones’s Infowars and two affiliated companies filed for bankruptcy.The Infowars filing, which was made yesterday, came after courts in two states ruled against Jones, a far-right broadcaster, in defamation lawsuits by families of victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012.For years, Jones spread bogus theories that the shooting, which killed 20 elementary school students and six educators, was part of a government-led plot to deprive Americans of their guns and that the victims’ families were actors in the scheme. Two other companies connected to Jones, IWHealth and Prison Planet TV, also filed for bankruptcy protection. A homeless encampment along Glendale Boulevard in Los Angeles last month.Mark Abramson for The New York Times6. More than ever it has become deadly to be homeless in the U.S., especially for men in their 50s and 60s.There are many factors behind these lonely deaths: the aging of the unsheltered population; the wider availability of fentanyl, a fast-acting and dangerous opiate; the lack of treatment for chronic illnesses and the long-term health damage from years on the street. In many cities the number of homeless deaths doubled during the pandemic, and the problem is especially acute in California, where about one in four of the nation’s 500,000 homeless people live.“It’s like a wartime death toll in places where there is no war,” said Maria Raven, an emergency room doctor in San Francisco who co-wrote a study about homeless deaths.The four co-CEOs of the Lede Company at their New York City office.OK McCausland for The New York Times7. Meet the women of the Lede Company. They’re some of Hollywood’s top publicists (just don’t ask why).Their clients include Lady Gaga, Pharrell Williams, Emma Stone, Ariana Grande, Charlize Theron and the Obamas. And oh yes, an actor named Will Smith (about whom they have no comment). Discretion is their craft, making it tough for our reporter to get her subjects to open up.Marcy Engelman, Julia Roberts’s longtime publicist, did say of Amanda Silverman, one of Lede’s heads: “She knows how to play the game. She is very well liked, so she must take care of people.”Workers on the production line of the 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning.Sylvia Jarrus for The New York Times8. Ford’s new pickup truck could determine whether the automaker can survive in an industry dominated by Tesla.Driven by the dizzying success of Tesla, sales of electric vehicles appear to be on an unstoppable rise, and automakers are spending tens of billions of dollars to prepare to meet that demand.The question for Ford is whether Jim Farley, the company’s chief executive and a car guy from the Detroit area, can channel his inner Elon Musk. Farley, and Ford, are betting big on the F-150 Lightning, an electric version of the company’s signature pickup that could become one of the most important vehicles in the company’s 113-year history.The Gravity Diagnostics lab in Kentucky where an unwanted birthday party was thrown. Liz Dufour/The Enquirer via Imagn Content Services, LLC9. They wished him a “Happy Birthday!” he didn’t want. He sued and won $450,000.A Kentucky man, Kevin Berling, asked his manager at a medical lab to be sure no one threw him a birthday party. Berling has an anxiety disorder and knew the party would trigger it. But while the manager was away, Berling’s colleagues planned a celebration.After hearing of it, Berling spent the time in his car. Two supervisors confronted him about his “somber behavior.” After having a panic attack in the meeting, he was fired. A month later, he sued the company for disability discrimination.In other acts of workplace dissent, a Dollar General employee who loved her job but thought it needed improvements opened up on a TikTok series that went viral. She was fired.We say we like creative thinking and thinkers but our gut response isn’t always in sync.Illustration by Yoshi Sodeoka10. And finally, we look up to great artists, scientists and inventors. Or do we?The new science of implicit bias suggests we may talk a good game about admiring creativity but many of us are suspicious of it. Without realizing it, we may see creativity as disturbing.“People actually have strong associations between the concept of creativity and other negative associations like vomit and poison,” said Dr. Jack Goncalo, a business professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.Goncalo has looked at what spurs or hinders creators in studies. One main conclusion? Often, people’s subconscious views of creativity reflect a fear of change or uncertainty; creativity disrupts, and we like stability.Have an original eveningHannah Yoon and Eve Edelheit compiled photos for this briefing. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern.Want to catch up on past briefings? You can browse them here.What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes.com.Here are today’s Mini Crossword, Spelling Bee and Wordle. If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here. More

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      United Auto Workers reformers prevail in vote to choose president by direct election.

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      Members of the United Automobile Workers union have voted decisively to change the way they choose their president and other top leaders, opting to select them through a direct vote rather than a vote of delegates to a convention, as the union has done for decades.The votes on the election reform proposal were cast in a referendum open to the union’s roughly one million current workers and retirees and due by Monday morning. Nearly 64 percent of the roughly 140,000 members who cast valid ballots favored a direct-election approach, according to a court-appointed independent monitor of the union.“It is time to move forward on behalf of the over one million members and retirees of the U.A.W. in solidarity,” the union said in a statement.The referendum was required by a consent decree approved this year between the union and the Justice Department, which had spent years prosecuting a series of corruption scandals involving the embezzlement of union funds by top officials and illegal payoffs to union officials from the company then known as Fiat Chrysler.More than 15 people were convicted as a result of the investigations, including two recent U.A.W. presidents.Reformers within the U.A.W. have long backed the one member, one vote approach, arguing that it would lead to greater accountability, reducing corruption and forcing leaders to negotiate stronger contracts. A group called Unite All Workers for Democracy helped organize fellow members to support the change in the referendum.“The membership of our great union has made clear that they want to change the direction of the U.A.W. and return to our glory days of fighting for our members,” said Chris Budnick, a U.A.W. member at a Ford Motor plant in Louisville, Ky., who serves as recording secretary for the reform group, in a statement Wednesday evening. “I am so proud of the U.A.W. membership and their willingness to step up and vote for change.”David Witwer, an expert on union corruption at Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg, said the experience of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which shifted from voting through convention delegates to direct election in 1991, after an anti-racketeering lawsuit by federal prosecutors, supported the reformers’ claims.Dr. Witwer said the delegate system allowed seemingly corrupt union leaders to stay in power because of the leverage they had over convention delegates, who were typically local union officials whom top leaders could reward or punish.“Shifting the national union election process from convention delegates to membership direct voting was pivotal in changing the Teamsters,” he said by email.At the U.A.W., leadership positions have been dominated for decades by members of the so-called Administration Caucus, a kind of political party within the union whose power the delegate system enabled.Some longtime U.A.W. officials credit the caucus with helping to elevate women and Black people to leadership positions earlier than the union’s membership would have directly elected them.But the caucus could be deeply insular. The Justice Department contended in court filings that Gary Jones, a former U.A.W. president who was sentenced to prison this year for embezzling union funds, used some of the money to “curry favor” with his predecessor, Dennis Williams, while serving on the union’s board.Union officials have said Mr. Williams, who was recently sentenced to prison as well, later backed Mr. Jones to succeed him, helping to ensure Mr. Jones’s ascent. More

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      Horse Carriage Ban in New York? De Blasio Wants to Try Again.

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      As he enters his final weeks in office, Mayor Bill de Blasio is resurrecting an old campaign promise to ban horse-drawn carriages in New York City.When Bill de Blasio first ran for mayor of New York City, he promised to ban horse-drawn carriages “on Day 1.”Eight years later, with just six weeks left in office, Mr. de Blasio is trying one last time to fulfill that pledge.His administration is developing legislation that would phase out the use of the carriages in Central Park and replace them with “show cars,” according to a series of internal City Hall emails marked “confidential” that were sent between late October and last week and reviewed by The New York Times.The promise to ban horse-drawn carriages, along with an ultimately successful plan to implement universal prekindergarten, was among a handful of major proposals that animated Mr. de Blasio’s successful mayoral bid. Mr. de Blasio and some advocates argue that it is inhumane to use horses for transportation in a modern city filled with cars.Now, as the mayor contemplates a run for governor next year, he has returned to his core campaign issues: In an appearance on MSNBC on Thursday morning, he proposed statewide, year-round, all-day school, a vision that he said would “revolutionize education in the State of New York.”Mr. de Blasio has yet to announce his plan to ban horse-drawn carriages, which would require approval by the City Council, but it has been quietly moving forward. In the emails, city officials said they were aiming to have the legislation ready by Dec. 16, when the City Council is expected to hold its last full meeting of the year.Danielle Filson, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said he had always wanted to ban horse-drawn carriages, and that he hoped the City Council would again consider it.The mayor’s office has directed the Economic Development Corporation to contract with a consulting firm, Langan Engineering, to conduct an analysis of the proposal, with a focus on its environmental, transportation, and socioeconomic impacts, according to the emails. The firm’s managing principal did not respond to requests for comment.It remains unclear if there is any appetite in the City Council to ban horse-drawn carriages. “The Council has not received a proposal from the mayor,” Shirley Limongi, a spokeswoman for the Council, said in a statement. “We will review anything we do receive.”The City Hall emails do not define “show cars,” but proponents of banning the carriages have previously pushed to replace them with electric-powered vehicles resembling old-time carriages.In 2018, Appaloosa Management Charitable Foundation, named for a horse breed and run by the billionaire hedge fund manager David Tepper, retained lobbyists to push for such a plan, according to city records and a city official, who was not authorized to speak publicly. Little came of the effort.This April, New Yorkers for Clean, Livable, and Safe Streets, the leading advocates for the ban, retained the lobbying firm Blue Suit Strategies to push Mr. de Blasio to pursue a similar plan, city lobbying records indicate. The organization is paying the firm $7,000 per month.The group, known as NYCLASS, helped fund a campaign to topple the 2013 mayoral candidacy of Christine Quinn, then the City Council speaker and Mr. de Blasio’s rival, in part because she did not support a ban on horse carriages. The campaign was credited with helping to undermine the candidacy of Ms. Quinn, who was considered the early front-runner.In the ensuing years, NYCLASS pushed Mr. de Blasio to fulfill his promise. But efforts to pass legislation went nowhere, including in 2016, when the mayor failed to push through a bill that would have reduced the number of horses on city streets and confined them to Central Park.The group has gotten involved in more recent political efforts. This year, it supported a super PAC that ran ads targeting Andrew Yang’s mayoral campaign after Mr. Yang responded “no” to a questionnaire asking if he supported efforts “to strengthen welfare protections and increase the standards of care for New York City’s carriage horses.”And in October, after a grisly collision between a horse and a car, NYCLASS ran roughly $200,000 worth of TV and digital ads calling for the elimination of the industry.Steve Nislick, the group’s co-founder, said that New York should follow the example of Guadalajara, Mexico, which replaced horse-drawn carriages with electric vehicles.Takeaways From the 2021 ElectionsCard 1 of 5A G.O.P. pathway in Virginia. More

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      As Germany Election Nears, Merkel Leaves a Strong But Vulnerable Economy

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      Chancellor Angela Merkel steered Europe through crises, and Germany has boomed during her tenure. But she has ducked changes needed to ensure the success lasts, analysts say.During her 16 years as Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel has become an international avatar of calm, reason and democratic values for the way she handled crises that included a near financial meltdown of the eurozone, the arrival of more than a million migrants and a pandemic.Today Germany is an economic colossus, the engine of Europe, enjoying prosperity and near full employment despite the pandemic. But can it last?That is the question looming as Ms. Merkel prepares to leave the political stage after national elections on Sept. 26. There are signs that Germany is economically vulnerable, losing competitiveness and unprepared for a future shaped by technology and the rivalry between the United States and China.During her tenure, economists say, Germany neglected to build world-class digital infrastructure, bungled a hasty exit from nuclear power, and became alarmingly dependent on China as a market for its autos and other exports.The China question is especially complex. Germany’s strong growth during Ms. Merkel’s tenure was largely a result of trade with China, which she helped promote. But, increasingly, China is becoming a competitor in areas like industrial machinery and electric vehicles.Economists say that Germany has not invested enough in education and in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and electric vehicles. Germans pay some of the highest energy prices in the world because Ms. Merkel pushed to close nuclear power plants, without expanding the country’s network of renewable energy sources enough to cover the deficit.Ms. Merkel met President Xi Jinping of China, second right, in Beijing in 2019. Germany has grown strongly through trade with China, but they’re also increasingly competitors. Pool photo by Michael Kappeler“That is going to come back to haunt Germany in the next 10 years,” said Guntram Wolff, director of Bruegel, a research institute in Brussels.There was never much pressure on Ms. Merkel to focus on fundamental economic policy because the German economy has boomed during her tenure. Germany has recovered from the pandemic faster than other European countries like France or Italy.But the pandemic has also exposed Germany’s economic dependence on China.In 2005, China accounted for a fraction of German exports. Last year it surpassed the United States as Germany’s largest trading partner. China is the biggest market by far for the automakers Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and BMW. German companies have also thrived by equipping Chinese factories with machine tools and other industrial goods that made China an export powerhouse.Ms. Merkel abandoned her early emphasis on human rights in her relations with the Chinese government and instead encouraged ever deeper economic ties. She hosted Chinese leaders in Berlin and traveled 12 times to Beijing and other cities in China, often with delegations of German business managers. But Germany’s economic entanglement with China has made it increasingly vulnerable to pressure from China’s president, Xi Jinping.Late last year, while Germany took its official turn setting the agenda of the European Union, Ms. Merkel and President Emmanuel Macron of France pushed through an investment accord with China over the objections of the incoming Biden administration, largely bypassing other European allies.“German trade with China dwarfs all other member states, and Germany clearly drives policy on China in the E.U.,” said Theresa Fallon, director of the Center for Russia Europe Asia Studies in Brussels. Germany’s economic dependence on China “is driving a wedge in trans-Atlantic relations,” Ms. Fallon said.An electric Mercedes Benz at the International Motor Show in Munich this month. Germany has only recently moved to match U.S. incentives for buyers of electric cars.Felix Schmitt for The New York TimesIn recent years China has been using what it learned from German companies to compete with them. Chinese carmakers including Nio and BYD are beginning to sell electric vehicles in Europe. China has become the No. 2 exporter of industrial machinery, after Germany, according to the VDMA, which represents German engineering companies.Ms. Merkel’s supporters say that she has helped the German economy dodge some bullets. Her sharp political instincts proved valuable during a eurozone debt crisis that began in 2010 and nearly destroyed the currency that Germany shares with 18 other countries. Ms. Merkel arguably kept hard-liners in her own Christian Democratic Union in check as the European Central Bank printed money to help stricken countries like Greece, Italy and Spain.But her longtime finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, was also a leading enforcer of policies that protected German banks while imposing harsh austerity on southern Europe. At the time, Germany refused to back the idea of collective European debt — a position that Ms. Merkel abandoned last year, when faced with the fallout from a pandemic that threatened European unity.Ms. Merkel had some luck on her side, too. The former communist states of East Germany largely caught up during her tenure. And Ms. Merkel profited from reforms made by her predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, which made it easier for firms to hire and fire and put pressure on unemployed people to take low-wage jobs.Mr. Schröder’s economic overhaul led to a sharp decline in unemployment, from more than 11 percent when Ms. Merkel took office to less than 4 percent. But the changes were unpopular because they weakened regulations that shielded Germans from layoffs. They paved the way for Mr. Schröder’s defeat by Ms. Merkel in 2005.The lesson for German politicians was that it was better not to tamper with Germans’ privileges, and for the most part Ms. Merkel did not. Many of the jobs created were low wage and offered limited chances for upward mobility. The result has also been a rise in social disparity, with a rapidly aging population increasingly threatened by poverty.“Over the past 15 to 16 years we have seen a clear increase in the number of people who live below the poverty line and are threatened,” said Marcel Fratzscher, an economist at the D.I.W. research institute in Berlin. “Although the 2010 years were very economically successful, not everyone has benefited.”Ms. Merkel’s failure to invest more in infrastructure, research and education, despite her background as a doctor of physics, also reflects the German aversion to public debt. Mr. Schäuble, as finance minister, enforced fiscal discipline that prioritized budget surpluses over investment. The German Parliament, controlled by Ms. Merkel’s party, even enshrined balanced budgets in law, a so-called debt brake.A school in Berlin last year. Economists say that Germany has not invested enough in education and in emerging technologies.Lena Mucha for The New York TimesThe frugal policies were popular among Germans who associate deficit spending with runaway inflation. But they also let Germany fall behind other nations.Since 2016 Germany has slipped from 15th to 18th place in rankings of digital competitiveness by the Institute for Management and Development in Lausanne, Switzerland, which attributed the decline partly to inferior training and education as well as government regulations. Between 40 to 50 percent of all workers in Germany will need to retrain in digital skills to keep working within the next decade, according to the Labor Ministry. Most German schools lack broadband internet and teachers are reluctant to use digital learning tools — a situation that became woefully apparent during the coronavirus lockdowns.“Technology is strategic. It’s a key instrument in the systemic rivalry we have with China,” Omid Nouripour, a lawmaker who speaks for the Green Party on foreign affairs, said during an online discussion this month organized by Berenberg Bank. “We didn’t create enough awareness of that in the past.”The need for Germany to modernize has become more urgent as climate change has become more tangible, and as a shift to electric vehicles threatens the hegemony of German luxury automakers. Tesla has already taken significant market share from BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi, and is building a factory near Berlin to challenge them on their home turf. Until last year, the financial incentives that the German government offered to buyers of electric cars were substantially smaller than the tax credits available in the United States.Wind turbines, mining and coal power in Garzweiler, Germany. Ms. Merkel pushed the country away from nuclear energy, but without renewables quickly filling the gap.Ina Fassbender/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“What is very important for Germany as an industrial nation, and also for Europe as a place for innovation, is a symbiosis between an ambitious climate policy and a very strong economic policy,” Ola Källenius, the chief executive of Daimler, told reporters at the IAA Mobility trade fair in Munich.Auto executives do not criticize Ms. Merkel, who has been a strong advocate for their interests in Berlin and abroad. But they implicitly fault her government’s sluggish response to the shift to electric vehicles. While Germany has more charging stations per capita than the United States, there are not enough to support increasing demand for electric vehicles.“The framework for this transition of the auto industry is not complete yet,” said Oliver Zipse, the chief executive of BMW and president of the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. “We need an industry policy framework that begins with charging infrastructure.”Said Mr. Källenius of Daimler, “We are in an economic competition with the United States, North America with China, with other strong Asian countries. We need an economic policy that ensures that Europe remains attractive for investment.” More

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      German Election: Who Is the Green Party's Annalena Baerbock?

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      Annalena Baerbock, the 40-year-old candidate for the Green Party, is likely to have a say in Germany’s next government, no matter who wins this month’s election.BOCHUM, Germany — The woman who wants to replace Chancellor Angela Merkel strode onto the stage in sneakers and a leather jacket, behind her the steel skeleton of a disused coal mining tower, before her a sea of expectant faces. The warm-up act, a guy with an Elvis quiff draped in a rainbow flag, sang “Imagine.”Annalena Baerbock, the Green Party candidate for chancellor, is asking Germans to do just that. To imagine a country powered entirely by renewable energy. To imagine a relatively unknown and untested 40-year-old as their next chancellor. To imagine her party, which has never before run Germany, leading the government after next month’s election.“This election is not just about what happens in the next four years, it’s about our future,” Ms. Baerbock told the crowd, taking her case to a traditional coal region that closed its last mine three years ago.“We need change to preserve what we love and cherish,” she said in this not necessarily hostile, but skeptical, territory. “Change requires courage, and change is on the ballot on Sept. 26.”Just how much change Germans really want after 16 years of Ms. Merkel remains to be seen. The chancellor made herself indispensable by navigating innumerable crises — financial, migrant, populist and pandemic — and solidifying Germany’s leadership on the continent. Other candidates are competing to see who can be most like her.Ms. Baerbock, by contrast, aims to shake up the status quo. She is challenging Germans to deal with the crises that Ms. Merkel has left largely unattended: decarbonizing the powerful automobile sector; weaning the country off coal; rethinking trade relationships with strategic competitors like China and Russia.It is not always an easy sell. In an unusually close race, there is still an outside chance that the Greens will catch up with Germany’s two incumbent parties. But even if they do not, there is almost no combination of parties imaginable in the next coalition government that does not include them. That makes Ms. Baerbock, her ideas and her party of central importance to Germany’s future. But Germans are still getting to know her.“This election is not just about what happens in the next four years, it’s about our future,” Ms. Baerbock said during her election tour.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesA crowd gathered to listen to Ms. Baerbock in Duisburg, in western Germany.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesA competitive trampolinist in her youth who became a lawmaker at 32 and has two young daughters, Ms. Baerbock bolted onto Germany’s national political scene only three years ago when she was elected one of the Greens’ two leaders. “Annalena Who?” one newspaper asked at the time.After being nominated in April as the Greens’ first-ever chancellor candidate, Ms. Baerbock briefly surged past her rivals in Germany’s long-dominant parties: Armin Laschet, the leader of the Christian Democrats, and Olaf Scholz of the center-left Social Democrats, who now leads the race.But she fell behind after stumbling repeatedly. Rivals accused Ms. Baerbock of plagiarism after revelations that she had failed to attribute certain passages in a recently published book. Imprecise labeling of some of her memberships led to headlines about her padding her résumé.More recently, she and her party failed to seize on the deadly floods that killed more than 180 people in western Germany to energize her campaign, even as the catastrophe catapulted climate change — the Greens’ flagship issue — to the top of the political agenda.Hoping to reset her campaign, Ms. Baerbock, traveling in a bright green double-decker bus covered in solar panels, is taking her pitch to German voters in 45 cities and towns across the country.Ms. Baerbock in the campaign bus with her social media and logistics team.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesIt was no coincidence that her first stop was the industrial heartland of Germany, in the western state of North-Rhine Westphalia, which was badly hit by floods this summer and is run by Mr. Laschet, who has been criticized for mismanaging the disaster.“Climate change isn’t something that’s happening far away in other countries, climate change is with us here and now,” Ms. Baerbock told a crowd of a few hundred students, workers and young parents with their children in Bochum.“Rich people will always be able to buy their way out, but most people can’t,” she said. “That’s why climate change and social justice are two sides of the same coin for me.”Leaving the stage with her microphone, Ms. Baerbock then mingled with the audience and took questions on any range of topics — managing schools during the pandemic, cybersecurity — and apologized for her early missteps.“Yes, we’ve made mistakes, and I’m annoyed at myself,” she said. “But I know where I want to go.”Germany’s two traditional mainstream parties have seen their support shrink in recent years, while the Green Party has more than doubled its own.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesIf there is one thing that sets Ms. Baerbock apart from her rivals, it is this relative openness and youthful confidence combined with a bold vision. She is the next generation of a Green Party that has come a long way since its founding as a radical “anti-party party” four decades ago.In those early days, opposition, not governing, was the aim.For Ms. Baerbock, “governing is radical.”Her party’s evolution from a fringe protest movement to a serious contender to power in many ways reflects her own biography.Born in 1980, she is as old as her party. When she was a toddler, her parents took her to anti-NATO protests. By the time she joined the Greens as a student in 2005, the party had completed its first stint in government as the junior partner of the Social Democrats. By now, many voters have come to see the Greens as a party that has matured while remaining true to its principles. It is pro-environment, pro-Europe and unapologetically pro-immigration. Ms. Baerbock joined the Greens as a student in 2005.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesMs. Baerbock proposes spending 50 billion euros, about $59 billion, in green investments each year for a decade to bankroll Germany’s transformation to a carbon-neutral economy — and paying for it by scrapping the country’s strict balanced budget rule.She would raise taxes on top earners and put tariffs on imports that are not carbon neutral. She envisions solar panels on every rooftop, a world-class electric car industry, a higher minimum wage and climate subsidies for those with low incomes. She wants to team up with the United States to get tough on China and Russia.She is also committed to Germany’s growing diversity — the only candidate who has spoken of the country’s moral responsibility to take in some Afghan refugees, beyond those who helped Western troops. Ms. Baerbock’s ambitions to break taboos at home and abroad — and her rise as a serious challenger of the status quo — is catching voters’ attention as the election nears.It has also made her a target of online disinformation campaigns from the far right and others. A fake nude picture of her has circulated with the caption, “I needed the money.” Fake quotes have her saying she wants to ban all pets to minimize carbon emissions.Ms. Baerbock’s enemies in the mainstream conservative media have not held back either, exploiting every stumble she has made.Many of those who heard her speak in Bochum recently said they were impressed by her confident delivery (she spoke without notes) and willingness to engage with voters in front of rolling cameras.A supporter surprised Ms. Baerbock by offering her a heart-shaped balloon in Hildesheim, in northern Germany.Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times“She focused on issues and not emotions,” said Katharina Münch, a retired teacher. “She seems really solid.” Others were concerned about her young age and lack of experience.“What has she done to run for chancellor?” said Frank Neuer, 29, a sales clerk who had stopped by on his way to work. “I mean, it’s like me running for chancellor.”Political observers say the attacks against Ms. Baerbock have been disproportionate and revealing of a deeper phenomenon. Despite having a female chancellor for almost two decades, women still face tougher scrutiny and sometimes outright sexism in German politics.“My candidacy polarizes in a way that wasn’t imaginable for many women of my age,” Ms. Baerbock said, sitting in a bright wood-paneled cabin on the top level of her campaign bus between stops.“In some ways, what I’ve experienced is similar to what happened in the U.S. when Hillary Clinton ran,” she added. “I stand for renewal, the others stand for the status quo, and of course, those who have an interest in the status quo see my candidacy as a declaration of war.”Bochum was among the stops on Ms. Baerbock’s campaign swing.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesWhen Ms. Merkel first ran for office in 2005, at 51, she was routinely described as Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s “girl” and received not just endless commentary on her haircut, but relentless questions about her competence and readiness for office. Even allies in her own party dismissed her as an interim leader at the time.Ms. Baerbock’s answer to such challenges is not to hide her youth or motherhood, but rather to lean into them.“It’s up to me as a mother, up to us as a society, up to us adults to be prepared for the questions of our children: Did you act?” she said. “Did we do everything to secure the climate and with it the freedom of our children?”Ms. Baerbock talking with a group of young women at the end of a campaign day in Duisburg.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesChristopher F. Schuetze More

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      Automakers Drop Efforts to Derail California Climate Rules

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Climate and EnvironmentExecutive OrdersWild WeatherBlack FarmersReversing Trump’s RollbacksAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAutomakers Drop Efforts to Derail California Climate RulesMomentum is shifting toward a clean-car future as more automakers end their legal efforts to block California’s tough fuel economy standards.New cars on a dock at the Port of Los Angeles in April.Credit…Lucy Nicholson/ReutersFeb. 2, 2021, 4:52 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Toyota, Fiat Chrysler and several other major automakers said Tuesday they would no longer try to block California from setting its own strict fuel-economy standards, signaling that the auto industry is ready to work with President Biden on his largest effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.The decision by the companies was widely expected, coming after General Motors dropped its support for the Trump-era effort just weeks after the presidential election. But the shift may help the Biden administration move quickly to reinstate national fuel-efficiency standards that would control planet-warming auto pollution, this time with support from industry giants that fought such regulations for years.“After four years of putting us in reverse, it is time to restart and build a sustainable future, grow domestic manufacturing, and deliver clean cars for America,” said Gina McCarthy, the senior White House climate change adviser. “We need to move forward — and fast.”The auto giants’ announcements come on top of a 2020 commitment by five other companies — Ford, Honda, BMW, Volkswagen and Volvo — that they would abide by California’s tough standards. And last week, G.M. pledged to sell only zero-emissions vehicles by 2035, a move that would put the company in line with another recent California policy banning the sales of internal-combustion vehicles by that year.Tuesday’s move also marked a stark reversal for California’s influence on Washington policymaking. After President Donald J. Trump rolled back Obama-era auto pollution rules that had been modeled after California’s state-level rules, he then blocked the state’s authority from setting such rules. Now Mr. Biden is expected to use California as a model for swiftly reinstating national rules.“We’re going to continue to play an important role in pushing the federal government and the auto companies,” vowed Jared Blumenfeld, the California secretary of environmental protection, who added that Mr. Biden had recently spoken with Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, about using the state’s auto emissions polices as a guide to federal policies.California Gov. Gavin Newsom, left, and Jared Blumenfeld, the state’s secretary of environmental protection, in 2019.Credit…Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesIn a statement, the auto companies, represented by the industry group Coalition for Sustainable Automotive Regulation, said the lawsuit started by the Trump administration to block California’s fuel economy rules no longer had their support: “We are aligned with the Biden Administration’s goals to achieve year-over-year improvements in fuel economy standards that provide meaningful climate and national energy security benefits.”They added, “In a gesture of good faith and to find a constructive path forward, the C.S.A.R. has decided to withdraw from this lawsuit in order to unify the auto industry behind a single national program with ambitious, achievable standards.”Mr. Trump had made the rollback of Obama-era fuel economy standards the centerpiece of his deregulatory agenda. The Obama-era standards, which were modeled on California’s, would have required auto companies to make and sell vehicles that reached an average fuel economy of about 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. The standards, which would have eliminated about six billion tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide pollution over the lifetime of the vehicles, stood as the single largest federal policy ever enacted to reduce climate change.The Trump administration last year rolled back that standard to about 40 miles per gallon by 2026 — a move which would have effectively allowed most of that carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. California, however, reached a separate deal with the five automakers, in which they agreed to reach a standard of 51 miles per gallon by 2026. The Trump administration, backed by G.M. and other automakers, blocked California’s legal authority to set those standards.Now that G.M., Toyota and Fiat Chrysler have dropped out of that lawsuit, Biden administration officials have one less speed bump ahead of a new federal standard. The White House is also expected to explore ways to adopt the California policy requiring all new vehicles sold after 2035 to release no emissions.Pete Buttigieg, U.S. secretary of transportation nominee, leaving a Senate confirmation hearing last month.Credit…Pool photo by Stefani ReynoldsThe Biden administration is already moving swiftly to craft that new standard, which will be jointly released by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation. On Wednesday, the Senate confirmed the new Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg. In his confirmation hearing, Mr. Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., and a 2020 presidential contender, vowed to make tackling climate change a guiding principal of his tenure — a first for a transportation secretary.And he will be aided by a new top official who helped broker the California deal with the five automakers: Steven Cliff, formerly the deputy executive officer with the California Air Resources Board, has been appointed by Mr. Biden to lead the Transportation Department’s National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration, the agency that will oversee the rewrite of the new auto fuel economy standards.“He’s probably the most knowledgeable person anywhere on the planet about how these auto companies align on this and how we push on this,” Mr. Blumenfeld said.Ms. McCarthy is expected to meet this week with the heads of several major auto companies and representatives from the United Auto Workers and other unions as she begins to sketch out the details of the new rules.Though the California deal sets a standard of 51 miles per gallon for model year 2026, the coming Biden rule will likely take a year or more to complete. So its first targets will be later, 2028 or 2029. California and environmental groups are likely to push for standards that are even more aggressive to help meet the goal of ending sales of gasoline- and diesel-powered cars by 2035.Crafting such rules could be a lengthy and complex process, but several people close to the administration say they expect that the E.P.A. and Transportation Department to publish a “notice of proposed rule making” — essentially, a document that launches the one-to-two-year legal process of drafting and implementing such rules — by March.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      California, Vaccines, Georgia: Your Monday Evening Briefing

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