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      Could Democrats Get Another Shot at Redistricting in New York?

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      State courts that struck down Democrats’ gerrymandered maps a year ago are poised to decide a renewed legal contest over whether to grant them another chance.A year ago, Democrats were taken to task by New York’s highest court for attempting to gerrymander the state’s congressional districts, and saw their tilted map replaced by more neutral lines that helped Republicans flip four House seats.Now, with a 2024 rematch approaching, Democratic leaders in Washington and Albany are reviving a legal battle to reopen the mapmaking process and potentially pull the lines back in their direction.Lawyers paid by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee are expected to argue before appellate judges in Albany on Thursday in favor of scrapping the court-drawn districts, and returning the mapmaking powers to New York’s beleaguered redistricting commission — and ultimately the State Legislature that gerrymandered the lines in the first place.The case will almost certainly rise to the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, in the coming months. And while a ruling may turn on competing readings of the State Constitution, its significance is unmistakably political, with far-reaching implications for the balance of power in Washington.Under the current maps drawn by a court-appointed expert, New York is one of the nation’s most competitive House battlegrounds. But if the Legislature is once again given a say, Democratic lawmakers could conceivably flip as many as six of the 11 seats now held by Republicans, offsetting potential Republican gains from a similar case playing out in the Southeast.“With the likelihood Republicans will re-gerrymander the lines in North Carolina, the legal fight over New York’s lines could determine whether Democrats stay in contention for House control in 2024,” said Dave Wasserman, an elections analyst with the Cook Political Report.The redistricting battle in New York last year wound its way to the office of Jonathan Cervas at Carnegie Mellon University. Mr. Cervas drew the new district maps for the state.Ross Mantle for The New York TimesHe called the suit “pretty close to must-win for Hakeem Jeffries to have a shot at becoming speaker.”Legal experts are uncertain about the Democrats’ chances of success. Republicans already convinced a lower court judge to dismiss the case. But Democrats are newly optimistic that the lawsuit will ultimately be upheld, given the shifting composition of the state’s top court, where a new chief and associate judge have pushed the bench leftward this spring.Whatever happens, New York promises to be perhaps the most contested state in the nation for House races next year. Republicans outperformed expectations in New York during the 2022 midterm elections, leaving their candidates positioned to defend six districts President Biden won in 2020, two by double digits.“We think our chances are good, but it’s not something we are relying on,” said Jay Jacobs, the Democrats’ state party chairman. “If it happens, it’s a bonus.”But as an analysis by Mr. Wasserman has shown, rearranging those six districts even slightly could make the task nearly prohibitive for Republicans to win in some places. Both parties have begun taking that possibility more seriously.The court case was proceeding this week as Democrats in Albany used the final days of this year’s legislative session to try to shore up their electoral prospects in other ways. Democratic supermajorities in both legislative chambers appeared poised to adopt changes weakening New York’s new publicly financed donor-matching program in ways that would benefit incumbents.Fair Elections for New York, a coalition of government watchdog groups that had hailed the new system for trying to diminish the influence of big-money donors in politics, warned that the tweaks could “severely roll back the progress” just as the public financing system takes effect.Republicans, who have aggressively pursued their own gerrymanders in other states, leveled similar criticisms at New York Democrats about the attempt at a redistricting do- over. Savannah Viar, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the Democrats were “weaponizing the courts to rig the game.”“The Democrats, despite all of their rhetoric about fair elections and protecting democracy, are trying to subvert democracy in New York State,” said John Faso, a former congressman who helped orchestrate the successful Republican lawsuit last year that undid the Democrats’ preferred district lines. Like last year’s legal fight, the new case, Hoffmann vs. Independent Redistricting Commission, revolves around a set of 2014 constitutional amendments intended to remove partisanship from redistricting. They outlaw gerrymandering and create a new, bipartisan commission to draw legislative lines.That commission failed to reach consensus in 2022. After its members could not even agree to meet to complete their work, the Legislature commandeered the process and passed maps that heavily favored Democrats.The Republicans sued, and the Court of Appeals ruled that the Legislature had gerrymandered the lines, and violated the constitution by simply going ahead when the commission stopped working. With time running short, the high court told a trial court judge to appoint a neutral expert from out of state to draft replacement districts.In the new lawsuit, which counts several New York voters as plaintiffs, Democrats are not defending the initial maps. Instead, they argue that the court-approved mapmaking process also ran afoul of the State Constitution.“The people of New York are presently governed by congressional maps that were drawn by an unelected, out-of-town special master and rubber-stamped by a partisan, right-wing judge,” said Christie Stephenson, a spokeswoman for Mr. Jeffries, the House Democratic leader from New York. She added that letting the maps stand would be “undemocratic, unacceptable and unconscionable.”The Democrats’ lawyers have asked for the judges to step in to order the redistricting commission to reconvene, more than 12 months after it deadlocked. Doing so could prompt the commission to find new agreement. If it does not, however, the Legislature could step in and draw new lines, this time on surer legal footing.Republican members of the commission and their allies disagree, and are prepared to argue that the court-drawn maps put in place last year must stand for the remainder of the decade.A lower court judge, Peter A. Lynch, agreed with that position last September, when he dismissed the suit, ruling that there were no constitutional grounds to reopen the mapmaking process. Democrats’ appealed.A panel of judges who will hear the case on Thursday are expected to issue a ruling in the coming weeks, after which it will likely be pushed to the Court of Appeals.The composition of the court has been the subject of a tense, intraparty tussle since the retirement of the former chief judge, Janet DiFiore, last summer, not long after she wrote the majority decision striking down Democrats’ redistricting plan.The state’s new chief judge, Rowan Wilson, is expected to be more receptive to Democrats’ arguments than his predecessor.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesProgressives who run the State Senate rejected Hector LaSalle, the first chief judge nominee put forward by Gov. Kathy Hochul, before ultimately accepting the elevation of a more liberal alternative in Judge Rowan D. Wilson.The Senate objected to Judge LaSalle’s previous rulings related to abortion rights and unions. But Republicans and some neutral observers argued that liberal lawmakers were also shopping for a judge who would be more likely to take their view on redistricting matters.Democrats denied that, but may indeed have a more receptive audience in Judge Wilson, who as an associate judge, dissented from the majority opinion in the 2022 redistricting case. At the time, Judge Wilson wrote that the Republicans had failed to prove the congressional map was impermissibly gerrymandered, and concluded that the state constitution gave the Legislature final authority in redistricting.Two other members of the seven-person court shared that view in whole or in part. If they maintain those positions, that could leave the case in the hands of the court’s other new member, Caitlin Halligan, whose position is not clear to court watchers.Grace Ashford More

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      As Prosecutors Revisit Police Killings, Charges Are Still Rare

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      Pamela Price, a new district attorney in Northern California, is the latest to reopen cases that had seemingly been shut, including one from more than 15 years ago.Agustin Gonsalez was shot dead in 2018 by police officers in Hayward, Calif., when he refused to drop a sharp object during a confrontation on a dark street.Andrew Moppin-Buckskin was killed by Oakland officers in 2007 after he ran away following a car chase, hid under a vehicle and failed to comply with their demands.Two years ago, Mario Gonzalez died after he was pinned on the ground for more than five minutes by officers in Alameda, Calif.In all three cases, prosecutors determined that the police should not be criminally charged, seemingly closing the book.But shortly after she became the district attorney of Alameda County in January, Pamela Price initiated a new review of those cases and five others in one of the most extensive re-examinations of police killings launched by progressive prosecutors.Ms. Price’s review is notable because her predecessors had already cleared the officers of wrongdoing and two of the reopened cases occurred more than 15 years ago.As high-profile instances of police brutality shocked the public in recent years and raised questions about official law enforcement accounts, liberal prosecutors campaigned on the promise that they would review cases that they felt were hastily closed without charges. Their efforts to revisit old cases have won praise from the activists and liberal Democrats who voted for them.But the re-examinations so far have rarely led to criminal charges.“To reopen a police use-of-force case is, in many ways, a herculean task,” said Steve Descano, the commonwealth’s attorney in Fairfax County, Va. He lost in court after he charged two federal Park Police officers for the 2017 shooting of a man who fled a car crash, a case that the Justice Department previously reviewed and declined to pursue.The incidents almost never have evidence as stark as the bystander video showing George Floyd being pinned to the ground in 2020 for more than nine minutes by Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer who was convicted of murdering Mr. Floyd.The circumstances often are more ambiguous, the footage less telling. And once a district attorney writes a lengthy memo detailing why criminal charges are unjustified against a police officer, it can be difficult for a successor to overcome those arguments, absent new evidence.“Everybody is going to go through it again, and the outcome in all probability is going to be the same,” said Jim Pasco, the executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police. “And what’s Einstein’s definition of insanity?”The biggest hurdle for pursuing criminal charges is the wide latitude that officers have to use force. State legislatures, including California’s, have tried to narrow that ability. But officers generally can still use lethal force when they feel they or others could be killed, a level of immunity that law enforcement officials say is necessary to ensure the public’s safety.Pamela Price, the new district attorney of Alameda County, Calif., announced this year that she would review eight police killings, including one dating to 2007.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesAlameda County, Ms. Price’s jurisdiction, covers a large swath of the East Bay across from San Francisco, containing 14 cities and numerous police departments. In the county seat of Oakland, where the Black Panther Party emerged in the 1960s, a legacy of radical politics is intertwined with a troubled history of law enforcement. The Oakland Police Department has been under federal oversight for more than two decades.Ms. Price campaigned on a liberal platform that, besides reviewing old cases, included removing local residents from death row and resentencing inmates serving life sentences — an effort, she said, to restore public trust. Since taking office, she has directed her staff to seek the lowest possible prison sentence for most crimes.She said that in the past, prosecutors routinely gave officers a pass when they killed someone on the job, and she wants questionable police killings to face the same rigor that other criminal cases get.“Every case that we’re looking at now was determined under a double standard,” Ms. Price said in an interview. “Police officers received a different standard of justice than everyday people.”Ms. Price is among a growing cadre of progressive prosecutors elected over the last decade, beginning with the 2016 elections of Kim Foxx in Chicago and Kimberly Gardner in St. Louis, on promises of reducing jail populations and holding police accountable. The movement gained steam after Floyd’s murder.Some prominent district attorneys have since faced a backlash over crime concerns. Chesa Boudin was recalled last year in San Francisco, while Ms. Gardner resigned last week as she faced criticism for her handling of violent crime. Ms. Foxx is not running for re-election next year and has endured criticism from moderates and conservatives, especially for her support of eliminating cash bail statewide.In Maine, a police officer has never been prosecuted for an on-duty killing. But in July 2020, Natasha Irving, the district attorney for four counties, said she would seek charges for the 2007 police shooting death of Gregori Jackson, who was drunk and ran away after a routine traffic stop in Waldoboro, the town where Ms. Irving grew up.Three years later, however, Ms. Irving said that based on the attorney general’s review of the forensics from the case, she will not file charges.“It’s just not going to be a provable case,” she said in an interview.Karla Gonsalez stood at a memorial to her son at the site in Hayward, Calif., where he was shot and killed by police officers.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesIn the Virginia case pursued by Mr. Descano, Bijan Ghaisar, 25, was involved in a minor car crash and then fled in his Jeep, pursued by two officers who cornered Mr. Ghaisar in a residential neighborhood. When the vehicle moved toward a police car, they opened fire, killing him.Mr. Descano brought a case, but a judge dismissed the charges, ruling the officers reasonably feared they were in danger. His efforts to pursue the case further were rejected by the state’s attorney general and the Justice Department.Such reviews offer the possibility of justice for still grieving families but also may unrealistically raise their hopes. Karla Gonsalez, the mother of Mr. Gonsalez, the man who was killed in Hayward, said she was torn when she heard Ms. Price was reopening her son’s case.Television outlets began replaying the body camera footage of Mr. Gonsalez’s confrontation with police. For his family, all of the anger, grief and unresolved questions came rushing back. Why had the officers not tried to de-escalate the situation?“I was excited to know that it was going to be opened up again,” Ms. Gonsalez said. “At the same time, I was very nervous that it was going to be another roadblock, another failure.”Less than 2 percent of police killings result in charges, according to Philip M. Stinson, a professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University. That figure has not budged since 2020. The number of people killed by the police is holding steady — last year it was 1,200, compared with 1,147 in 2022, according to Mapping Police Violence.“From where I sit, nothing has changed,” Mr. Stinson said.In Los Angeles County, George Gascón, who was elected district attorney in 2020, appointed a special prosecutor to reopen four cases in which his predecessor declined to file charges.Ryan Young for The New York TimesIn Los Angeles County, George Gascón, who was elected district attorney in 2020, appointed a special prosecutor to reopen four cases in which his predecessor, Jackie Lacey, declined to file charges. He also asked an independent team of experts to review more than 300 previous use-of-force cases to see if the evidence warranted criminal charges.The special prosecutor, Lawrence Middleton, had secured convictions in a 1993 federal trial against Los Angeles Police Department officers for beating Rodney King. In the new cases, he has secured indictments against two officers in the 2018 shooting death of Christopher Deandre Mitchell, who was driving a stolen vehicle and had an air rifle between his legs when he was confronted by officers in a grocery store parking lot. (“Both officers’ use of deadly force was reasonable under the circumstances,” Ms. Lacey wrote in a 2019 memo.)The re-examinations themselves take time, and liberal prosecutors may yet file criminal charges against more officers in past cases. But they said that charges should not be the only benchmark of whether their reviews are worthwhile.“I think there is huge value to reopening a case if there is probable cause, or if there is evidence that seems compelling in any way,” Ms. Irving, the prosecutor in Maine, said. “Yes, part of it is to send a message to people who would be bad actors. Part of it is to send a message to families that have lost loved ones, or individuals who have been harmed, that they count.”Ed Obayashi, a California-based expert in use of force who trains law enforcement, said in 2021 that Mario Gonzalez did not seem to be a threat to the public in Alameda and questioned why officers restrained him before he died. The police had responded to a call that Mr. Gonzalez, 26, was acting strangely in a park and talking to himself.Mr. Obayashi said this week that he did not fault Ms. Price for reviewing the case, but he also felt that if there was consensus in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office under her predecessor, Ms. Price should not have reopened it.“It’s a big concern to law enforcement because these types of decisions, to revisit old cases that former prosecutors have decided that no charges should be brought against the officer, it’s political,” Mr. Obayashi said. “It’s politically driven.”Ms. Price’s review also includes two cases from 15 years ago that occurred seven months apart and involved the same officer killing men who ran away after traffic stops, including Mr. Moppin-Buckskin. The officer, Hector Jimenez, was cleared in each case and remains with the Oakland Police Department.“For the life of me I can’t understand what Ms. Price thinks she’s doing with those kinds of cases, some 15 years after they occurred,” said Michael Rains, a lawyer for Mr. Jimenez.In Hayward, the city agreed to pay $3.3 million to settle a federal lawsuit with Agustin Gonsalez’s family but said it was a way to support his children rather than an admission of wrongdoing. The city said in April that there appeared to be no new evidence that warranted reopening the case.Mr. Gonsalez was shot in November 2018 after police officers confronted him. He was suicidal and was holding a razor blade. He refused to drop the blade and approached the officers with his arms outstretched. That’s when the two veteran police officers shot him 12 times.Karla Gonsalez recently sat in her sister’s kitchen and described her son as a father of two who was an Oakland sports fan and often drove nearly 400 miles south to Disneyland with his season pass. In the corner of her living room was a makeshift shrine, with a flickering candle and a crucifix draped over his portrait.Cynthia Nunes, Mr. Gonsalez’s cousin, said her family was grateful his case was being reopened. But they want more.“Charges actually have to be brought forward, too,” she said. “The system needs to change.”Julie Bosman More

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      Senegal Blocks Some Social Media After Ousmane Sonko Is Sentenced

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      Demonstrators had battled with the police to protest a two-year prison sentence given to a leading opposition figure.The government of Senegal said on Friday that it had shut down some social media platforms as a result of clashes between protesters and security forces a day earlier, which it said had left at least nine people dead.Demonstrators had taken to the streets across the West African nation on Thursday shortly after a court acquitted a leading opposition figure, Ousmane Sonko, on charges of rape and making death threats, but convicted him on the lesser charge of “corrupting youth.” Mr. Sonko was sentenced to two years in prison in a case that his supporters said was politically motivated.The violence brought tensions in the largely peaceful country to a new high. Periodic clashes have sporadically broken out since the arrest of Mr. Sonko in 2021 after a massage parlor employee accused him of rape.The Senegal interior minister, Antoine Felix Abdoulaye Diome, said the deaths on Thursday had occurred in Dakar, the capital, and in Ziguinchor, a southern city where Mr. Sonko is mayor. In 2021, at least 14 people were killed in clashes that followed his arrest.Mr. Diome said that blocking of the social media outlets was justified because calls to violence and hatred were circulating through them.On Friday morning, Dakar and other cities remained calm as many Senegalese waited to see what would happen next.Security forces stationed around Mr. Sonko’s house in Dakar have prevented him from leaving for days. They have also, without warning, thrown tear gas at journalists, lawmakers and residents walking nearby.Mr. Sonko, a 48-year-old former tax inspector, is popular among younger people and has branded himself as the main opponent of President Macky Sall. Mr. Sonko has accused the president of using court cases to sideline him. In return, the government has accused Mr. Sonko of calling for an insurrection and threatening Senegal’s public order.Ousmane Sonko, a prominent opposition figure, waving to supporters at a rally in Dakar in March.John Wessels/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJustice Minister Ismaïla Madior Fall told reporters on Thursday that Mr. Sonko could be arrested at any time.For now, the sentence bars him from running in next year’s presidential election and he is not allowed to appeal the verdict because he was not present in court for the trial. But two of his lawyers and Mr. Fall, the justice minister, said that Mr. Sonko could secure a retrial if he surrendered or was imprisoned.Senegal has long taken pride in its culture of peaceful dialogue, political pluralism and the absence of coups since gaining independence from France in 1960. But human rights defenders and political observers have raised questions about the arrests of journalists and dozens of political opponents in recent years, as well as the criminal charges brought against major opposition figures, including Mr. Sonko.“There are expectations in the Senegalese democratic culture that the judiciary should be independent,” said Catherine Lena Kelly, an expert on Senegalese politics at the African Center for Strategic Studies, a research group that is part of the United States Defense Department. “But there have been grievances during the Sall presidency about what some citizens consider to be the state selectively charging opposition leaders with criminal offenses.”Babacar Ndiaye, a political analyst in Senegal, said that to his knowledge, the social media blackout was a first in the country.“It’s surprising to say the least,” Mr. Ndiaye, the research and publication director at Wathi, a Dakar-based research organization, said on Friday. “Social media have always been a space of free expression in Senegal, including yesterday when people exchanged information in real time about the clashes and the law enforcement response.”As of Friday morning, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and WhatsApp were not working, and many Senegalese had switched to virtual private networks, which get around such bans by masking a user’s location. “This is where we’re now at in Senegal,” Mr. Ndiaye said. More

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      Senegal’s Opposition Leader Is Sentenced to 2 Years in Prison

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      A case involving a rape charge against Ousmane Sonko has monopolized the country’s political life and raised concerns over the prosecution of political opponents.A court in Senegal sentenced the country’s leading opposition figure to two years in prison on Thursday after finding him guilty of “corrupting youth.” The ruling, which for now bars him from running in future elections, throws the West African nation’s political future into uncertainty less than a year before its next presidential contest.The opposition leader, Ousmane Sonko, was accused of raping an employee of a massage parlor in Dakar, the capital, and issuing death threats against her. The court acquitted him of those charges, which he had denied and has denounced as an attempt by Senegal’s president, Macky Sall, to sideline him.But the conviction of “corrupting youth” — a charge relating to an accusation that Mr. Sonko had a sexual relationship with the massage parlor worker, who was under 21 at the time — renders him ineligible to run in next year’s election, a vote that is widely seen in Senegal and broader West Africa as a test of democratic values in the region.Mr. Sonko cannot appeal, because he did not appear in court for the hearings or the verdict, citing threats to his safety.Clashes erupted between protesters and security forces across Senegal and in Dakar shortly after the verdict was announced, including near the city’s main university, where several protesters erected barricades and threw stones at the police, who responded with tear gas. A few protesters were injured.Clashes broke out in Dakar on Thursday after the verdict was announced.Zohra Bensemra/ReutersSenegal, a country of 17 million people, has long been hailed as a model of political pluralism in West Africa, a region known for coups and aging leaders clinging to power. Elections have been mostly peaceful since the country became independent from France in 1960. The United States and European countries, as well as China, hold the country as one of their most reliable partners in West Africa.Yet the battle around the political future of Mr. Sonko, 48, whose fiery rhetoric has made him popular among young Senegalese, has become the president’s biggest challenge. In the coming months, it could lead to the most serious test faced by Senegalese democracy in more than a decade, analysts say.“Senegal finds itself in a thick fog, with lots of uncertainties,” said Alioune Tine, a rights expert and founder of the AfrikaJom Center, a Dakar-based research organization. “It has turned into a police state and, increasingly, an authoritarian one.”There is no public proof that Mr. Sonko’s case has been politically motivated, but some academics, human rights observers and most opponents of Mr. Sall have raised questions about the lack of concrete evidence and the harsh treatment of Mr. Sonko throughout the proceedings. They have also in recent years warned of a steady erosion of democratic norms as several political opponents have been jailed and journalists arrested.In recent months, police officers have been posted at multiple traffic circles in Dakar; temporary bans on motorcycles to prevent quick gatherings of protesters have become a regular fixture in the capital; and demonstrators have faced a heavy-handed response from security forces, with clashes at times turning deadly. Protesters have also targeted the police, attacked gas stations and this week burned the house of Mr. Sall’s chief of staff.Demonstrators faced off with riot police officers during a protest on Thursday at the Cheikh Anta Diop University campus.Leo Correa/Associated PressMr. Sonko’s fate remained unclear as of Thursday. One of his lawyers, Bamba Cissé, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Sonko would not surrender, “because we’re against a judiciary system perverted by political leaders.” He continued: “For two years, Senegal has been told that Mr. Sonko was involved in a rape affair. Today we have the proof that it was a plot.”Riot police officers positioned near Mr. Sonko’s house in Dakar were blocking access, and on Wednesday had thrown tear gas at lawmakers from the National Assembly who were trying to peacefully approach it. The police have also targeted foreign journalists covering the episode.Adama Ndiaye, a supporter of Mr. Sonko’s who unsuccessfully tried to approach his residence on Thursday, said it was a bleak day for Senegal. “The ‘corrupting youth’ charge comes out of nowhere, it’s pure injustice,” said Mr. Ndiaye, a 35-year-old car salesman who said he was on his way to a Dakar neighborhood where protests were taking place.Opponents of Mr. Sall have accused him of repeatedly sidelining key opposition leaders, including Mr. Sonko, who was barred by Senegal’s constitutional council from running in last year’s parliamentary elections. Dozens of members of his party have been jailed or placed under electronic surveillance. Current and former Dakar mayors were also prohibited from running in the 2019 presidential election because of convictions for embezzlement.At a hearing last month, Mr. Sonko’s accuser said he had assaulted her five times at a massage parlor between late 2020 and February 2021, and sent her death threats. The New York Times does not routinely name accusers in rape cases, but Mr. Sonko’s accuser, Adji Sarr, has been publicly identified and has given news interviews. She has been under police protection since 2021.Gender-based violence has been decreasing in Senegal in recent years, but it remains widespread, though rarely talked about. About 30 percent of women aged 15 to 49 have experienced physical or sexual violence, according to a demographic and health survey released in 2017, with the highest rate, 34 percent, among those ages 25 to 29. More than two-thirds never spoke about it or sought help.Some Senegalese said they considered the trial politically motivated.Leo Correa/Associated PressEven as Ms. Sarr detailed at length last week the assaults she said she had faced, Senegalese newspapers published headlines with lewd innuendos, comparing her testimony to pornography.Marième Cissé, an expert on gender issues, said Senegalese society still put the blame on victims of sexual violence. The Sonko trial, she added, gave many Senegalese the impression that a crime as serious as rape had been used for political purposes.“That instrumentalization has minimized the seriousness of the accusation,” said Ms. Cissé, a researcher with the Dakar-based Wathi research organization. “It could discourage women from talking about the abuse they may face.”Many Senegalese say they do not believe the accuser.Moussa Sané, a 46-year-old businessman who attended the court session on Thursday, said that he was not a Sonko supporter but that the verdict showed the political motive of the trial. “The government is trying its best to prevent Sonko from running in the next election,” he said.Until Thursday, Mr. Sonko had been widely regarded as Mr. Sall’s strongest challenger in next year’s election, although Mr. Sall has not said whether he will run.According to most legal experts, the Senegalese Constitution prevents Mr. Sall from running: It limits presidents to two five-year terms, and Mr. Sall is set to complete his second term in February. But he argues that a constitutional reform adopted in 2016 reset the clock to zero and gives him the right to seek another term.Mr. Tine, the rights expert, said a third term would amount to a clear violation of the Constitution. “With Sonko convicted, Macky Sall has made him a political martyr,” he said. “And with this third-term issue, he has created another problem for himself.”Mady Camara contributed reporting. More

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      Arizona Judge Tosses Kari Lake’s 2022 Election Lawsuit

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      Lawyers for Ms. Lake, a Trump ally who lost the governor’s race, claimed Maricopa County did not properly review mail-in ballot signatures. A judge said the arguments “do not clear the bar.”An Arizona judge threw out a lawsuit filed by Kari Lake over her defeat in last year’s race for governor, ruling that she had failed to prove that the state’s most populous county, Maricopa, had neglected to review voters’ signatures on mail-in ballot envelopes.The decision, issued late Monday, is the latest legal setback for Ms. Lake, a Republican who was backed by former President Donald J. Trump in one of the nation’s most prominent governors’ races in 2022.During a three-day bench trial last week in state Superior Court in Maricopa County, Ms. Lake’s lawyers argued that election workers worked too quickly to properly review 300,000 signatures that accompanied mail-in ballots.But in a six-page decision, Judge Peter A. Thompson wrote that the process had complied with state law, which requires signatures to be compared to ones in public voter files, but does not include specific guidelines for how much time a worker must spend on each ballot.“Plaintiff’s evidence and arguments do not clear the bar,” he wrote, adding: “Not one second, not three seconds, and not six seconds: No standard appears in the plain text of the statute.”At a news conference on Tuesday in Arizona, Ms. Lake said that she would appeal the ruling and that her lawyers were exploring various pathways forward.“We can’t trust the buffoons running our elections in Maricopa County anymore,” she said, later adding, “You’ve not seen the last of our case.”The case was the latest in a string of court losses over the election for Ms. Lake, who has claimed, without evidence, that mail-in voting compromises election integrity. Other claims in her lawsuit had previously been rejected by the court.Ms. Lake has suggested she may run for office again. This year, she said she was considering a run for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who left the Democratic Party in December to become an independent.Clint L. Hickman, the chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which helps oversee elections in the county, praised the judge’s decision in a statement on Monday.“Wild claims of rigged elections may generate media attention and fund-raising pleas, but they do not win court cases,” he wrote. “When ‘bombshells’ and ‘smoking guns’ are not backed up by facts, they fail in court.” More

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      $5 Million in Damages

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      Donald Trump has been found liable for sexual abuse.Donald Trump’s legal problems are growing deeper.Yesterday, a jury found the former president liable for the sexual abuse and defamation of the magazine writer E. Jean Carroll, ordering him to pay her $5 million. The case was a civil trial, which means that Trump is not subject to prison time. But the verdict indicates that jurors believed Carroll’s claim that Trump assaulted her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.Carroll also accused Trump of raping her. The jury ruled against Carroll on that count, finding insufficient evidence to support her allegation.Today’s newsletter will walk through the details of the case, the reactions to the verdict and the potential political consequences.The caseAt the heart of the lawsuit was Carroll’s account of her encounter with Trump, which she described in detail during the trial. She said that she saw him outside the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan nearly three decades ago, and that he had asked her to help find a gift for a female friend. The two bantered while walking through the store, and he asked her to try on a gray-blue bodysuit from the lingerie section. She declined and told him to put it on instead. Trump then motioned her into a dressing room, where he threw her against the wall, used his weight to pin her down and raped her, according to Carroll.The episode “left me unable to ever have a romantic life again,” Carroll said. (She was able to sue after so much time had passed under the Adult Survivors Act, a New York law that provides victims of abuse a one-time opportunity to sue the accused.)To make her case, Carroll and her lawyers relied on Trump’s history of comments denigrating women. They pointed to the “Access Hollywood” tape, released during the 2016 election, on which he had boasted that he could grab women by their genitals without their permission. “When you’re a star, they let you do it,” Trump said. He stood by those remarks during a deposition in the Carroll case.Carroll’s lawyers argued that Trump’s comments showed he was capable of the assault that she had accused him of. The jury, composed of six men and three women, concluded that the allegations of sexual abuse, but not of rape, were more likely to be true than untrue, holding Trump liable.Trump denied the accusations. He did not testify, and his lawyers called no witnesses as a defense in the trial. He previously told reporters that the allegations could not be true because Carroll was not his “type.”Trump promised to appeal the verdict. “I have absolutely no idea who this woman is,” Trump posted yesterday on Truth Social, his social media platform. “This verdict is a disgrace — a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time!”The reactionsTrump is set to appear live on a CNN town hall tonight, where he will take questions from voters.Many of Trump’s political rivals and opponents, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, stayed quiet about the verdict. Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and author running for president, defended Trump: “I’ll say what everyone else is privately thinking: If the defendant weren’t named Donald Trump, would there even be a lawsuit?”One 2024 candidate did criticize Trump. “The jury verdict should be treated with seriousness and is another example of the indefensible behavior of Donald Trump,” Asa Hutchinson, Arkansas’s former governor and a longtime Trump critic, said.The political impactIt is not clear how the verdict will affect Trump’s presidential campaign. His poll numbers against DeSantis, his main potential rival in the Republican primary, improved even after a Manhattan grand jury indicted Trump on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records.But Trump’s advisers are not making a similar prediction after the Carroll verdict, my colleagues Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan wrote.Trump is almost certain to confront more legal problems before the 2024 election. The Manhattan trial could start as soon as next January. Trump is also under investigation for his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and for his handling of classified documents.More on the verdictMore than a dozen women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct, but Carroll’s is the only allegation that a jury has affirmed.Why was Trump liable for sexual abuse, not rape? New York law gave jurors three types of battery to consider.While the verdict may have been foreseeable, how Republicans will respond is less clear, David French writes in Times Opinion.The verdict is a reminder that the legal onslaught against Trump can’t be deflected with lies, Michelle Goldberg writes in Times Opinion.THE LATEST NEWSPoliticsSpeaker Kevin McCarthy, left, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesPresident Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy did not reach a consensus over the debt ceiling. They agreed to meet again.Representative George Santos, the New York Republican whose finances have been under investigation, faces federal criminal charges.A recent poll showed Trump leading Biden in the 2024 race. It was an outlier, Nate Cohn writes, but its message is clear: Don’t underestimate Trump.Lawmakers in Texas are pushing voting restrictions that only apply to Harris County, a Democratic stronghold that includes Houston.Senate Democrats asked the billionaire Harlan Crow for a full accounting of his gifts to Justice Clarence Thomas.Florida officials demanded revisions to school textbooks mentioning socialism and Black Lives Matter protests.InternationalA naval guardsman killed at least three people at a synagogue during a Jewish pilgrimage in Tunisia.The Israeli army launched airstrikes on the Islamic Jihad armed group in Gaza, killing three of its leaders and 10 civilians, Palestinian officials said. Here’s a guide to the group.Imran Khan, Pakistan’s former prime minister, was arrested on corruption charges. He accuses the military of conspiring against him.HealthThe U.S. will end its Covid emergency tomorrow, winding down programs that began when the virus dominated everyday life.Women should have regular mammograms starting at age 40 rather than 50, an expert panel said.Other Big StoriesTucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, said he would start a show on Twitter. That could violate his deal with the network.New York City, where about half of middle schoolers are not proficient in reading, is changing how it teaches the subject.The Metropolitan Museum of Art will hire a team to scour its collections for looted treasures.A woman wrote a children’s book to help her sons process their father’s death. Now she is accused of killing him.OpinionsIf cities want to survive the unpredictability of our climate, they should accommodate an unpredictable ecosystem, Ben Wilson argues.A new Netflix docudrama depicts Cleopatra as culturally Black, Gwen Nally and Mary Hamil Gilbert write.Here are columns by Jamelle Bouie on mass shootings and Thomas Friedman on Vladimir Putin.MORNING READSIn Japanese, these foods are fuwa fuwa, which means “fluffy fluffy.”Esther ChoiBeyond crunchy: Cuisines around the world prize texture as much as taste.Hiatus: Some women are taking the summer off from dating apps.Metropolitan Diary: Mic drop at the opera.Health: How to spot — and remove — skin tags.Canine needs: Walking your dog with a harness is safer than leading them by the collar.Advice from Wirecutter: The best Mother’s Day gifts.Lives Lived: Grace Bumbry’s vocal range and transcendent stage presence made her a towering figure in opera and one of its first, and biggest, Black stars. She died at 86.SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETICN.B.A. playoffs: The Nuggets and Sixers earned 3-2 series leads with victories last night. Women’s soccer: It’s notable enough to be the first Native American to play in the N.W.S.L., but Madison Hammond is much more.An uncertain future: The Oakland A’s agreed to their second land deal in a month for property in Las Vegas, where the franchise plans to move.ARTS AND IDEAS Buddy Holly won Best in Show at the 147th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesBest in showBuddy Holly, a petit basset griffon Vendéen, took the top prize at the Westminster Dog Show. He’s the first of his breed — better known as P.B.G.V., because that is easier to say — to do so. (Second place went to Rummie, a Pekingese whose breeder and handler, David Fitzpatrick, has produced two previous best in show winners, including Wasabi, the 2021 champion.)“I have dreamed of this since I was 9 years old,” said Buddy Holly’s owner and trainer, Janice Hayes. She said the dog was “the epitome of a show dog; nothing bothers him.” Now he gets to relax and go back to his daily life, which involves hanging out with “his girlfriends,” Hayes said. “He never has a bad day”: The Times’s Sarah Lyall visited Striker, a Samoyed who was a crowd favorite at last year’s show.Two Times photographers went behind the scenes. Do not miss their pictures.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookAndrew Purcell for The New York TimesThe secret ingredient in this spaghetti Bolognese is Worcestershire sauce.What to Watch“Dealing With Dad” is a lighthearted movie about generational trauma and chronic depression. What to Listen toHere are six new songs you should hear.Now Time to PlayThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was windfall. Here are today’s puzzle and the Bee Buddy, which helps you find remaining words.And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle and Sudoku.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — GermanP.S. Emma Goldberg, who covers the future of work, wants to hear how readers’ jobs have changed in the past few years.Here’s today’s front page. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. More

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      For Trump, a Verdict That’s Harder to Spin

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      After an indictment in Manhattan, Donald Trump’s supporters fell in line behind him. A jury’s decision in a sexual abuse and defamation case may yet carry a political price.When Alvin L. Bragg secured the indictment of former President Donald J. Trump, it galvanized Trump supporters. Allies of his Republican rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, mark that indictment as the moment that Mr. Trump sped away from his nearest opponent in the polls.Nobody around Mr. Trump is making a prediction publicly or privately that there will be a similar effect after a jury on Tuesday in the lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation.The price that Mr. Trump was ordered by the jury to pay his accuser, Ms. Carroll, was $5 million, in a verdict he has promised to appeal. But whether he pays any political price at all is unclear. Mr. Trump was said to be furious about the verdict, and questioning the various decisions that were made by his team in the defense. Far from letting up on Ms. Carroll, his team plans to aggressively attack her claims and tether her to Democrats.There is no world in which the result of that civil trial was a positive development for the project he is most focused on: the presidential campaign for which he remains the Republican front-runner.Mr. Trump has a decades-long history of crude and misogynistic comments — and he has faced repeated accusations of sexual harassment and assault, so many that they most likely would have sunk any other candidate. But a majority in the Republican Party have largely dismissed the accusations against a celebrity former president as irrelevant to how they cast votes.But comments and even allegations are different from a jury verdict.The first real test of his in-person response will come on Wednesday night on a national stage in front of a live television audience — a town hall hosted by CNN in New Hampshire, in a venue filled with about 400 voters who are Republicans or Republican-leaning independents.“Americans heard with their own ears in 2016 Trump brag on tape about sexual assault and still elected him,” said David Axelrod, a former top adviser to President Barack Obama, referring to the “Access Hollywood” tape. “Will this be different, or will his supporters simply dismiss it as one more example of the politically motivated ‘deep state’ beat-down of which he claims to be the victim?”A handful of allies of Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Trump’s closest rival in the Republican primary race, anticipated that this case could prove different from myriad other scandals Mr. Trump has faced.Senators John Kennedy of Louisiana and John Thune of South Dakota essentially averted their gazes when asked to comment by reporters. Among those who publicly defended him was Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama defended Mr. Trump on Tuesday after the jury’s verdict.Kenny Holston/The New York Times“It makes me want to vote for him twice,” Mr. Tuberville told The Huffington Post. “People are going to see through the lines,” he added, saying that with “a New York jury, he had no chance.”Few of Mr. Trump’s opponents were willing to condemn him either, at least so far. Only one Republican candidate, Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, issued a statement.“Over the course of my over 25 years of experience in the courtroom, I have seen firsthand how a cavalier and arrogant contempt for the rule of law can backfire,” the statement read. “The jury verdict should be treated with seriousness and is another example of the indefensible behavior of Donald Trump.”Former Vice President Mike Pence told NBC News that it was up to the American public to decide whether Mr. Trump is fit to be president again, but added, “I just don’t think it’s where the American people are focused.”For years, Mr. Trump’s approach to his business and his political life has been to portray himself as inevitable, to give off the impression that challengers or critics shouldn’t even bother trying to best him. He has handled the 2024 Republican primary in much the same manner, encouraged by his polling lead and Mr. DeSantis’s stumbles. Still, some of his critics and even some allies concede that the various legal challenges could risk becoming too much freight for him to carry.Mr. Trump’s advisers have recently conducted extensive polling to explore how deeply the various legal cases are resonating with primary voters, according to people briefed on the efforts.Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers were nervously anticipating the verdict before deliberations began. One was candid in private that while they were relieved Mr. Trump had been found not liable of the specific claim of rape, the rest of the jury’s verdict was “not good.”For Mr. Trump and his allies, describing him as the victim of a “deep state” plot by his government opponents and prosecutors could be much harder to accomplish in this case. A federal jury of six men and three women gave legitimacy to an accusation of sexual abuse made by Ms. Carroll, a writer who was photographed with Mr. Trump in New York yet whom he continues to maintain he does not know.One of the most damaging aspects of the trial for Mr. Trump was his videotaped deposition. People close to him acknowledge the comments were a self-inflicted wound, and are aware Democrats in particular may put them in television ads where independent and suburban voters whom Mr. Trump long ago alienated would see them.In his deposition, he burrowed into his remarks on the “Access Hollywood” tape, when asked by Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, if it was true as he said on that recording that stars can grab women by the genitals.“Well, if you look over the last million years, I guess that’s been largely true,” Mr. Trump said. “Not always, but largely true. Unfortunately, or fortunately.” More

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      Your Wednesday Briefing: Trump Liable for Sexual Abuse

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      Also, protests in Pakistan after the arrest of Imran Khan.E. Jean Carroll, center, leaving court yesterday.Brittainy Newman for The New York TimesTrump found liable for sexual abuseA Manhattan jury found Donald Trump liable yesterday for the sexual abuse and defamation of the writer E. Jean Carroll and ordered him to pay $5 million in damages.The jury determined that Carroll had proven Trump sexually abused her, but they rejected the accusation that she had been raped. The findings were civil, not criminal, meaning Trump has not been convicted of any crime and faces no prison time. Trump said he would appeal the decision.By finding Trump liable, the jury declared that the “preponderance of the evidence” supported Carroll’s accusation that he attacked her in the dressing room of a New York department store in the mid-1990s.Carroll is one of more than a dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct over the years — allegations he has always denied — but hers is the first to be successfully tested before a jury.Trump did not attend the two-week trial. The unanimous verdicts came after three hours of jury deliberation.Context: Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, faces other legal cases. Here’s where they stand.Analysis: Trump had been thriving politically before the verdict and it is not clear how — or whether — the jury’s determination will affect his momentum. Criminal investigations against him have done little to hurt him with his supporters. It remains to be seen whether the verdict will be a different story.Supporters of Imran Khan clashed with police in Karachi yesterday.Shahzaib Akber/EPA, via ShutterstockProtests in Pakistan after Khan’s arrestParamilitary troops arrested Pakistan’s former prime minister, Imran Khan, yesterday in Islamabad, in connection with one of the dozens of corruption cases against him. Soon after the arrest in the capital, Khan’s supporters took to the streets in several cities, including Lahore and Karachi.His arrest represents a major escalation in a political crisis that has engulfed the country since Khan was removed from power by a no-confidence vote in April last year. Khan has accused the military and government of conspiring against him.The drama surrounding Khan seems only to have buoyed his popularity, analysts said. He has staged a comeback since being ousted, openly challenging the military, which for decades has been the invisible hand wielding power behind the government.Christina Goldbaum, our Afghanistan and Pakistan bureau chief, told us, “For many people in Pakistan, this feels like a turning point, political tensions that have been simmering for months finally boiling over.”“The protests we saw today at the army’s headquarters in Rawalpindi and the ransacking of the official residence of an army commander in Lahore — direct confrontations with the country’s powerful military by the public — were in many ways unprecedented,” she said.Details: Khan’s arrest was in connection with a case involving the transfer of land for Al-Qadir University, near Islamabad, officials said. Khan is accused of granting favors to a powerful real-estate tycoon, with the university getting land and donations in return.What’s next: Khan will be presented before a court today, officials said. Protests are expected to continue this week, raising the possibility of violent clashes between the police and Khan’s supporters.Who is Khan? A former cricket star turned prime minister.Even as China reopens, security visits spook foreign businesses.Aly Song/ReutersChina raids another firm with foreign tiesFor weeks, little was known about why Chinese authorities were raiding prominent international consulting firms.Now a reason is coming to light after raids on American firms such as the Mintz Group and Bain & Company, and most recently Capvision Partners, a consulting company with headquarters in New York and Shanghai.State media said the raids were in the name of national security and accused Western countries of stealing key intelligence as part of a “strategy of containment and suppression against China.” Beijing has also moved to limit the availability of financial data to foreign customers and expanded a counterespionage law.The big picture: The campaign has sent a chill through the business community and threatens to undercut Beijing’s attempts to persuade foreign businesses to reinvest in China at a time when the Chinese economy is still trying to recover from tough Covid restrictions.Related: LinkedIn said it would pare down its operations in China.Tit-for-tat: China expelled a Canadian diplomat from Shanghai after Canada ejected a Chinese official who was accused of gathering information on a Canadian lawmaker.THE LATEST NEWSAround the WorldA funeral in Gaza City for people killed in the airstrikes.Mohammed Salem/ReutersIsrael launched airstrikes against Islamic Jihad in Gaza, killing three of the group’s leaders and ending an uneasy weeklong cease-fire.President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey is facing what is shaping up to be the toughest elections of his career. Polls suggest a tight race this weekend, perhaps even a defeat.Wireless carriers in dozens of U.S. states are tearing out Chinese equipment as China and the U.S. jockey for tech primacy.The War in UkraineMuch of the spectacle was missing from this year’s Victory Day parade in Red Square.Pelagiya Tikhonova/Moscow News Agency, via ReutersRussia’s annual Victory Day celebrations were muted, reflecting the uneasy moment that the country faces in the war.President Vladimir Putin kept to his usual talking points during a speech, accusing Kyiv and its Western allies of “pursuing the dissolution and the destruction of our country.”William Burns, the director of the C.I.A. and a key figure in bolstering U.S. support for Ukraine, has amassed influence far beyond most previous agency leaders.Other Big StoriesDavid B. Torch for The New York TimesNorway has embraced electric vehicles. Its air is already cleaner.The detaining of protesters during the coronation of King Charles III is fueling a national debate in Britain about a new anti-protest law.A Morning ReadBudget tour groups from China are returning to Hong Kong, bringing frustration and limited economic benefit.Anthony Kwan for The New York TimesWith China’s borders opened after the lifting of pandemic restrictions, budget tour groups from the mainland have been coming back to Hong Kong in droves. Their return has revived old tensions — and a touch of snobbery — in a city starved for business.“Can we have some good quality tour groups?” a Hong Kong lawmaker asked during a recent legislative session while holding up pictures of tourists overrunning parts of the city.ARTS AND IDEASPhotograph by Esther Choi. Set design by Jocelyn CabralThe language of food textureEnglish has many words for flavor. But when it comes to words for texture, it’s far behind Chinese, which has 144, according to a 2008 report. Japanese has more than 400. For example, English basically has “crunchy” and “crispy.” While in Chinese, there’s a word for food that “offers resistance to the teeth but finally yields, cleanly, with a pleasant snappy feeling.” There’s a phrase for crisp but tender, like young bamboo shoots. For a “dry, fragile, fall-apart crispness,” like deep-fried duck skin. For brittle then soft, like pastry that dissolves at the touch.Some English speakers tend to value a narrower range of textures, too. People in the U.S. seem to mostly crave crunchy or creamy. They shun many textures beloved elsewhere, like the chewiness of tripe or the jellified tendon in pho. Even as the national texture palate slowly expands, the foods on offer may outstrip the language’s powers of description.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookDavid Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.Add a buttery orange syrup to these delicate crepes to make Crêpes Suzette.What to WatchThe rom-com “Down With Love” is getting new life 20 years after it flopped at the box office.What to Read“African Studies,” a large-format photo book, captures the toll of industrialization on sub-Saharan Africa.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Catches on fire (five letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you tomorrow. — Justin and AmeliaP.S. Our colleague, Corina Knoll, won a top award from the Asian American Journalists Association for her profile of an older Chinese woman who was attacked in New York City.“The Daily” is about U.S. immigration.Was this newsletter useful? Send us your feedback at briefing@nytimes.com. More