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      Republicans Are Forgetting One Crucial Truth About People and Their Bodies

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      In the homestretch of the epic Wisconsin Supreme Court race that ended last week with a blowout victory for liberals, voters’ cellphones pinged incessantly with text message ads.“Woke trans activists have their candidate,” one text message said, according to Wisconsin Watch, a local nonprofit news site. “Schools across Wisconsin are stripping away parental rights and trans kids behind parents backs. There’s only one candidate for the Supreme Court who will put an end to this. Vote for Judge Daniel Kelly by April 4 and protect your children from trans madness.”For a judicial race that centered on two big issues the Wisconsin Supreme Court is likely to consider soon, abortion and voting, it might seem odd that these ads in support of the conservative candidate chose to focus on an issue nowhere near the top of the agenda on the court’s upcoming docket.For reasons that are now obvious, conservative groups supporting Kelly largely avoided touting his opposition to abortion. That’s a sure loser, as the G.O.P. is rapidly learning. It probably wouldn’t have been a good idea to run on preserving the right-wing gerrymander that gives conservatives a total lock on Wisconsin’s Legislature and congressional delegation either. So some supporters reached for the wedge issue du jour: transphobia.An article of faith has emerged among hard-right conservatives — and has been worried over by some centrist pundits — that parental concerns about health care and social support for transgender children make for a potent wedge issue. After all, it has all the hallmarks of an effective culture war hot button: It involves strange new social and medical practices and unfamiliar ways of life, and children are sometimes concerned. But it’s not working the way conservatives expected.The end of Roe has reversed the tides of the culture war. The right has now lost it by winning the biggest victory of all. State legislatures across the country are enacting draconian abortion bans that are producing predictably tragic outcomes. Americans don’t have to imagine what the right will do with its power over women’s lives because we see it in every headline about women risking death because a doctor is too scared of running afoul of an anti-abortion law to provide a necessary medical procedure. It has become blindingly obvious what happens when Republicans legislate what Americans do with their sex organs. And voters, understandably, don’t like what they see.For years even before the fall of Roe, conservatives have used hard-edge anti-trans messaging in both red and swing state races, only to come up short. They tried it in North Carolina’s 2016 governor’s race, in the aftermath of a controversial bill requiring people to use the bathroom associated with their sex assigned at birth. The Democrat, Roy Cooper, won despite a hail of anti-trans ads. They tried it against Andy Beshear, the Democratic candidate for governor in deep-red Kentucky in 2019, and failed. In 2022, G.O.P. candidates tried to use L.G.B.T. issues as a wedge in races in swing states from the Midwest to the Sunbelt to New England. The data suggest that opposition to trans rights cannot overcome — or possibly even make a dent in — the advantage that comes to Democrats in swing states for supporting abortion rights. It’s not even close.“Transphobia was, and is, the dog that couldn’t hunt,” wrote the anonymous but eerily prescient polling analyst who writes a Substack newsletter under the name Ettingermentum.Wisconsin was the most recent example of this failure. The American Principles Project, a Virginia organization that is a driving force behind the harsh anti-transgender laws sweeping red states, spent almost $800,000 on ads supporting Kelly in the State Supreme Court race, according to Wisconsin Watch. A video paid for by the organization’s PAC accompanied text messages that described his liberal opponent, Judge Janet Protasiewicz, as “endorsed by all the woke activists that are stripping parents of their rights in Wisconsin schools and forcing transgenderism down our throats,” Wisconsin Watch reported.In one mendacious video advertisement the narrator claims that a 12-year-old was medically transitioned without parental consent. The video shows images of surgical scarring and implies that this child underwent surgery at the behest of school officials. This is absolutely false. The child in question merely changed their name and pronouns.But any hopes that this messaging would drive swing voters seems to have fallen flat. Indeed, the margin of victory in Wisconsin exceeded predictions. Joe Biden won the state by just 20,000 votes in 2020. Protasiewicz won by 200,000.The failure of anti-trans messaging as a wedge issue may seem surprising because the Democratic Party really does seem to have a problem when it comes to parents and schools. Resentment over Democrats’ support for school closures during the pandemic has become a liability for the party among educated suburbanites, as the 2021 governor’s race in Virginia demonstrated.But Republicans seem to be making the grave error of assuming that someone angry about school closures in the fall of 2021 is a potential conscript in their war today against drag queens and trans people. So far there appears to be little appetite among swing-state voters for laws that could — if our worst fears are realized — allow school officials to demand inspections of their child’s genitals before soccer matches and swim meets. Besides, there’s a far more urgent issue when it comes to students’ safety: In a country where child shooting deaths went up 50 percent from 2019 to 2021, who would trust their children to the political party that opposes gun regulation?There is no doubt that attitudes about gender are changing quickly, and changing especially quickly among young people. But it’s hard to draw firm conclusions about how Americans really feel about this. In a Pew poll last June, a large majority of respondents said they favor legal protections for trans people from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces. Other findings suggest unease: 43 percent said gender identity norms were changing too quickly. Majorities support requiring athletes to compete as their sex assigned at birth. Depressingly, 46 percent said they supported criminalizing gender-affirming care for minors.But one finding from that same poll stood out to me: 68 percent of respondents aren’t paying close attention to the trans bills popping up across the country, and three-quarters of self-identified moderates said they weren’t following the issue closely. But that doesn’t mean they are interested in restrictive or repressive laws, much less willing to vote on the basis of support for such policies.Of course, this lack of attention can cut both ways. Voters who aren’t paying attention to the issue are unlikely to be drawn to the polls to vote against a transgender care ban, either. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis, presumed to be a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, has been able to defy post-Roe gravity and increase his support despite prosecuting an aggressive culture war campaign against queer people. It remains to be seen how this would play out in a presidential election, which would run smack into swing states that have recently rejected in statewide elections both anti-abortion and anti-trans candidates.Democrats — and all Americans — should support the rights of all queer people, not just for electoral advantage but as a matter of principle. There is a clear line from the fight over bodily autonomy in reproductive rights to the fight for access to medical care for trans people. It’s a matter of dignity, too. Trans rights, much like abortion, present a profound challenge to the gender binary, which upholds the world’s oldest and most persistent hierarchy. People who don’t want to or cannot fit within their traditionally prescribed roles — mother, father, woman, man, boy, girl — increasingly have the freedom to live their lives beyond those circumscribed identities.The right has responded to this flowering of freedom with a barrage of repression. In states where Republicans have an ironclad grip on power, they have been incredibly successful. There are hundreds of bills passed or pending that vary in their intrusion on personal liberty but share the goal of giving right-wing politicians the power to control the bodies of citizens through law. On Thursday, this frenzy reached cruel new heights when the attorney general of Missouri issued new emergency rules that put up steep barriers to transgender care, not just for children but also for adults. These barriers could amount to a virtual ban on gender-affirming care for most transgender people in the state.In the face of this onslaught, some centrists seem determined to keep flirting with trans skepticism. It is easy to see why trans issues have become the place for certain centrists to try to perform their moderation — queer people have served this purpose for decades. While other forms of open bigotry became taboo, homophobia and the view that queer people’s rights were a marginal concern has persisted. It has happened before. Bill Clinton heavily courted the gay vote to win the presidency in 1992, only to turn around and sign into law two odious policies: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act. Clinton has since rent his garments over his regrets, but the fact remains that he enshrined discrimination against queer people into federal law.Republicans like to say they are the party of common sense. But what they seem to have forgotten is the commonest sense of all: Most people do not want the government making personal decisions for them. People want to control their own bodies. People want the freedom to decide when and how to form families. Suddenly, after years of pointing fingers at the left for so-called cultural totalitarianism, Republicans have now decisively revealed themselves to be the “jackbooted thugs” wanting details on your teenage daughter’s menstrual cycle. It’s hard to imagine a less appealing message to swing voters than that.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Protasiewicz’s Wisconsin Victory Shows Power of Abortion Rights for Democrats

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      A resounding victory by a liberal judge who ran on abortion rights showed that a largely unified political left is keeping up its momentum, and served as a new warning sign to Republicans.MILWAUKEE — The commanding victory on Tuesday by a liberal candidate in a pivotal race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court showed the enduring power of abortion rights and issues of democracy as motivators for Democratic voters, as well as a continuing struggle among conservatives to put forward candidates who can unite Republicans and win general elections.The liberal candidate, Janet Protasiewicz, swept onto the bench by 11 percentage points, a staggering margin in an evenly divided battleground state that signaled just how much last summer’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade has transformed American politics.The Wisconsin race centered squarely on abortion rights and political representation: Judge Protasiewicz all but promised voters that if they elected her, the court’s new 4-to-3 liberal majority would reverse Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban and overturn the state’s famously gerrymandered, Republican-friendly legislative maps.Wisconsinites responded to that pitch, rejecting a conservative candidate backed by anti-abortion groups who took 2020 election deniers as a client and struggled to rally Republican donors behind him.The outcome, combined with a surprise victory in Chicago’s mayoral race by Brandon Johnson, an outspoken progressive, demonstrated that the country’s largely unified political left is sustaining momentum since its unexpectedly strong showing in the midterm elections, even as conservatives fight among themselves and struggle to counter Democratic messaging on abortion rights.Republicans are now heading into a series of coming races — for Kentucky governor this year and for president and an array of Senate seats in 2024 — with ample warning signs about the pitfalls of nominating candidates who hold positions on issues like abortion and elections that are unpopular with voters in the nation’s most competitive states.Judge Protasiewicz will join the court in August. Liberal lawyers in the state are already preparing to pursue lawsuits to roll back conservative policies. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesThe triumph by Judge Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee County judge, will also allow Wisconsin Democrats to pursue their own agenda through the courts after spending a dozen years ducking and running at most levels of state politics, worrying about what the dominant Republicans would lob at them next.“For a long time, Democrats in the Assembly have understood that our role is primarily being on defense,” Greta Neubauer, who leads the chamber’s Democratic minority, said at Judge Protasiewicz’s victory party in Milwaukee. Now, Ms. Neubauer said, “we have an opportunity to go on offense.”Judge Protasiewicz will be seated on the court on Aug. 1. A legal challenge to the state’s abortion ban is scheduled to begin in circuit court in Dane County next month, and while it is unclear when the ban could come before the State Supreme Court, the justices are widely expected to hear the case within a year or two and strike down the ban. Liberal lawyers are also eyeing the best way to frame a lawsuit that could prompt the court to throw out the Republican-drawn maps.During her victory speech, the liberal candidate said she would treat the role with “integrity,” then was joined on stage by current members of the court.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesIt will be many months, at least, before there is a final State Supreme Court resolution on those and other hot-button issues likely to come before the court’s new liberal majority, which will consist of four women for the first time in the state’s history.To emphasize that point, when Judge Protasiewicz arrived to deliver her victory remarks on Tuesday night, she was trailed by the three sitting liberal justices as the sound system played Lizzo’s “About Damn Time.”“Today’s results mean two very important and special things,” Judge Protasiewicz told supporters. “First, it means that Wisconsin voters have made their voices heard. They have chosen to reject partisan extremism in this state. And second, it means our democracy will always prevail.”Judge Protasiewicz defeated Daniel Kelly, a conservative former State Supreme Court justice who also lost an April 2020 election by 11 points and went on to represent the Republican National Committee in its efforts to overturn President Donald J. Trump’s defeat that year.Justice Kelly, who has long been an opponent of abortion rights, did little to parry Judge Protasiewicz on the issue. He never mentioned abortion in his television advertising and, during his final rally on Monday night in Waukesha, a parade of Republican officials spoke for more than an hour without mentioning abortion.Instead, Justice Kelly and his allies focused almost entirely on crime, an issue that also fell flat in Chicago, where Mr. Johnson, a liberal candidate, defeated Paul Vallas, who had tethered his campaign to a tough-on-crime message.Asked about his relative silence on abortion, Justice Kelly said that “the court does not do political decisions,” adding, “The question of abortion, that belongs in the Legislature to decide.”That approach turned Justice Kelly into a denier of the current political reality.Supportive right-wing radio hosts complained that he had not defended the state’s abortion ban, and conservative donors, whom Justice Kelly was reluctant to call to ask for money, steered clear of his campaign. And not enough of Wisconsin’s legions of conservative grass-roots voters were energized by his campaign speeches, which delved into legal theory and lamented his severe financial disadvantage.“Doing a statewide campaign, as it turns out, is kind of hard,” Justice Kelly said at the Waukesha rally.On Wednesday, Mr. Trump blamed Justice Kelly, whom he endorsed in 2020, for neglecting to seek his endorsement this year, arguing on his social media site that this “guaranteed his loss.”Democrats in Wisconsin and beyond gave the Protasiewicz campaign a decided financial edge. Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois organized a March 6 videoconference that raised $5 million for the Protasiewicz campaign, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and allied groups. The party transferred $8.3 million to the Protasiewicz campaign.The Republican Party of Wisconsin gave no money directly to Justice Kelly. Instead, Republican donors poured $12 million into third-party groups, whose rates for television advertising are three times what candidates pay.Brian Schimming, the Wisconsin G.O.P. chairman, lamented the disparity and donors’ decision to keep an arm’s-length distance from Justice Kelly’s campaign.“There’s a fair bit of chatter about that right now,” he said. “We could have done a more efficient job of spending it.”Daniel Kelly, who has long been an opponent of abortion rights, did little to parry Judge Protasiewicz on the issue in their race.Marla Bergh for The New York TimesAfter abortion, the biggest issue facing the new liberal court will be the state’s legislative maps.Jeffrey A. Mandell, the board president and founder of Law Forward, a progressive law firm in Madison, said he aimed to have new maps in place in time for the 2024 election, which would most likely require the case to be decided and new maps to be drawn by next April, when candidates begin circulating petitions to qualify for the primary ballot.“There’s no time to waste,” Mr. Mandell said.The three sitting liberal justices declined to say whether they believed it was possible to have new maps ready for 2024, but Judge Protasiewicz said it was “unlikely” the court could decide a case and put new maps into effect by next year’s elections.Liberals will hold a 4-to-3 majority on the court through at least 2025, when Ann Walsh Bradley, a 72-year-old liberal justice poised to become the new chief justice under the new majority, faces re-election. Justice Bradley said Tuesday night that she would run for a fourth 10-year term.Democrats are hopeful about her chances: Since the Wisconsin Supreme Court began electing justices statewide in 1853, no justice who has won a competitive election, as Justice Bradley has done twice, subsequently lost one.Beyond abortion and redistricting, the new liberal majority will decide a host of other issues, including labor rights that were diminished by Republicans.Stephanie Bloomingdale, the president of the Wisconsin A.F.L.-C.I.O., said she had watched with jealousy this year as Michigan Democrats enacted a wide range of liberal policies after redistricting helped them take full control of their state government for the first time in 40 years.“We see them, we’re very proud of them, but we’re wishing it could be us,” Ms. Bloomingdale said. “You know, in Wisconsin, we can have nice things, too.”Even before Election Day, Wisconsin Republicans who saw that a liberal victory was likely began to disparage their State Supreme Court as an illegitimate body.“I don’t think people have any idea of what’s coming,” said Rebecca Bradley, a conservative Supreme Court justice who in a decision banning drop boxes last year compared the state’s 2020 presidential contest to elections in Syria, North Korea and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. “We will have four people in Wisconsin robbing the people of the right to govern themselves.”But the scale of Judge Protasiewicz’s victory suggests that Wisconsin voters are inclined to dismiss the Republican arguments. She carried 27 of the state’s 72 counties — 11 more than Mr. Evers did when he was re-elected in November by three points — and nearly equaled the margin by which Jill Karofsky, a fellow liberal, defeated Justice Kelly in the 2020 election, when Democrats held their presidential primary on the same ballot.“I’m not concerned about the legitimacy of the court, because so many people voted for this court,” Justice Karofsky said as she nursed a Miller Lite at the Protasiewicz victory party. “So many people wanted this majority.” More

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      Wisconsin Supreme Court Election: Protasiewicz Wins With Abortion Message

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

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

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

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      The Election That Could Reshape Wisconsin, and the Country

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      Mary Wilson and Rachel Quester and Marion Lozano, Diane Wong and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicWisconsin will hold an election for a seat on its Supreme Court today, and it is no exaggeration to say that the result could end up reshaping U.S. politics for years to come.The Times political correspondent Reid J. Epstein explains why the race to replace a single judge has become the most important American election of 2023.On today’s episodeReid J. Epstein, a political correspondent for The New York Times.Janet Protasiewicz, left, and Daniel Kelly during a debate in Madison, Wis., last month. Ms. Protasiewicz is a liberal, while Mr. Kelly is a conservative.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesBackground readingCash is pouring in to the Wisconsin race, and some of the candidates have shed any pretense of judicial neutrality.Here’s what you need to know about the battle for the seat.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Reid J. Epstein More

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      Wisconsin’s High-Stakes Supreme Court Race: What to Watch

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      The election for a swing seat on the court is likely to determine whether abortion remains illegal in Wisconsin, as well as the future of the state’s heavily gerrymandered political maps.WAUKESHA, Wis. — American political candidates routinely drum up support by warning voters that this election, really, is the most important of their lifetimes.It’s almost always an exaggeration, but the description might just fit for Wisconsin’s deeply polarized voters, who on Tuesday will choose a justice to fill a swing seat on the state’s Supreme Court.The winner — either Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee County judge, or Daniel Kelly, a conservative former State Supreme Court justice — will have the deciding vote on a host of major issues, including abortion rights, gerrymandered political maps, and voting and election cases surrounding the 2024 presidential contest.Officials on both sides have described the stakes of the officially nonpartisan race in existential terms — either they win and democracy survives, or they lose and it perishes.Wisconsin Democrats, who have been lost in the political wilderness for a dozen years, cast Judge Protasiewicz as their path to a promised land of abortion rights and fair maps. The state’s Republicans say Justice Kelly is their last hope to ward off liberal tyranny by fiat.Here are four themes animating Tuesday’s election:Wisconsin could turn sharply back to the left — or not.Wisconsin Republicans tend to talk about the election as if Judge Protasiewicz would roll onto the Supreme Court with a giant eraser to wipe out all of the legislative policies and structural advantages the G.O.P. has built for itself since Scott Walker became governor in 2011.They’re not entirely wrong.“A lot of the duly passed laws by the elected representatives of the state of Wisconsin would be deemed invalid,” Duey Stroebel, a Republican state senator from Cedarburg, said last week. “It wouldn’t be the people electing their representatives that would be making decisions, it would be her, based on her personal beliefs.”Indeed, Judge Protasiewicz has been clear about her views. She has signaled her opposition to Wisconsin’s 1849 law banning abortion in nearly all cases, which went back into effect when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, and she has called the legislative maps Republicans drew to give themselves a durable near-supermajority in the State Legislature “rigged” and “unfair.”But the state’s Democrats sound similarly apocalyptic about the prospect of Justice Kelly, who lost a 2020 bid to retain his seat on the court, returning to deliver conservatives a majority. He is aligned with the state’s anti-abortion groups and has said there is no legal problem with the maps.He also worked as a legal adviser for the Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Wisconsin when they sought to overturn the results of the state’s 2020 presidential election. That Republican effort to undo Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in Wisconsin was only narrowly rejected by the State Supreme Court, which voted 4 to 3 to uphold the results.“Dan Kelly advised fake electors in 2020,” said Greta Neubauer, the Democratic leader in the Wisconsin State Assembly, referring to a brazen plan by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies to overturn results in several states. “I absolutely fear what he would do in 2024 if a challenge to the popular vote and the election results came in front of him.”Abortion and crime are the two main issues.From the beginning of her campaign, Judge Protasiewicz (pronounced pro-tuh-SAY-witz) has sought to make the race a referendum on abortion rights in Wisconsin. Her campaign has spent $12 million on television ads in the last six weeks reminding voters that she supports them and Justice Kelly does not.“Judge Janet Protasiewicz believes in women’s freedom to make their own decisions when it comes to abortion,” her closing television ad states.It is a bet on the power of the most potent issue for Democrats since last summer, when the U.S. Supreme Court left the issue to the states.Even Republicans acknowledge privately that if the election is about abortion, Judge Protasiewicz has the advantage. Justice Kelly has not been as explicit, but he has implied that because legislators enacted the state’s abortion ban 174 years ago, they would need to rescind the law — something the current Republican majorities are unlikely to do.Hundreds of abortion rights supporters marched to the State Capitol in Madison, Wis., in January. Nearly all abortions became illegal in Wisconsin when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times“He’s running a bit of a traditional campaign talking about larger issues of judicial restraint and things of that nature,” said Mr. Walker, the former governor who appointed Justice Kelly to the State Supreme Court in 2016. “She just spelled it out, and that very well may be the case for the left and the right in the future, just people saying, ‘Here’s how I’m going to vote.’”Republicans, as usually happens in Wisconsin, have tried to make the election about crime. Outside groups backing Justice Kelly have bombarded Judge Protasiewicz with ads attacking her as soft on violent criminals.Last week, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s business lobby, removed from the television airwaves an ad claiming that Judge Protasiewicz had issued a soft sentence to a convicted rapist. The victim in that case had told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the ad had caused her new trauma and that she had no problem with the length of the sentence.In another episode, the Republican Party of Wisconsin, while southern Wisconsin was under a tornado watch last week, texted to voters a replica of an emergency weather alert warning that Judge Protasiewicz was “a soft-on-crime politician with a long history of letting dangerous criminals go free.”The cash-filled contest is all over Wisconsin TV screens.All indications are that more people will vote in this Supreme Court election than any other in Wisconsin history.More people voted in the Feb. 21 primary contest than participated in the state’s primaries in August, when there were races for governor and Senate. According to data from the Wisconsin Elections Commission, the early-vote total as of Monday amounted to about a third of the total turnout of the 2019 State Supreme Court race, the last one that did not fall on the same day as a presidential primary.The record-smashing spending in the race — $39 million on television alone, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm — has ensured that just about every Wisconsinite is at least aware of the race, a key hurdle in typically low-turnout spring elections.The ultimate cost is expected to triple the previous high-water mark for spending on an American judicial election, which was $15 million for a 2004 Illinois Supreme Court race.Weeks ago, Wisconsin Democrats switched their strategy. Instead of sending door-to-door canvassers to visit voters who typically cast ballots in spring elections, they focused on reaching out to a broader group of people who tend to vote in November general elections.“When I was out knocking on doors a month or two months ago, people were aware that this election was coming, because they were seeing YouTube ads with their kids,” Ms. Neubauer said. “They were being bombarded with information about this election.”A key State Senate race is also unfolding.Wisconsin is also holding a special election on Tuesday for a vacant State Senate seat that covers parts of four counties in the suburbs north of Milwaukee.The district has long been held by Republicans but is trending away from the party. Mr. Trump carried it by 12 percentage points in 2016 but by only 5 in 2020. The Democratic candidate, Jodi Habush Sinykin, is contesting it with a heavy emphasis on abortion rights.Jodi Habush Sinykin, a Democrat, is running for a State Senate seat in suburbs north of Milwaukee. Morry Gash/Associated PressIf the Republican candidate, State Representative Dan Knodl, wins, his party will have a two-thirds supermajority in the State Senate, which would allow the G.O.P. to impeach and remove judges, statewide elected officials and appointees of Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat.Mr. Knodl, in an interview with PBS Wisconsin, said the impeachment powers granted to State Senate Republicans with his election “certainly would be tested.”Mr. Stroebel, the Republican state senator from Cedarburg, called impeaching Judge Protasiewicz over expected rulings on abortion and gerrymandering unlikely “but certainly not impossible.”If Dan Knodl wins his race for State Senate, Republicans will have a two-thirds supermajority, which would allow them to impeach and remove judges, statewide elected officials and appointees of Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat.Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, via Associated Press“If she truly acts in terms of ignoring our laws and applying her own personal beliefs, then maybe that’s something people will talk about,” he said. “If the rulings are contrary to what our state laws and Constitution say, I think there could be an issue.”Even if Republicans do not seek to impeach Democratic officials, the mere possibility could limit Democrats’ ambitions.“Just the threat of it obviously changes the way that public officials will act,” said Kelda Roys, a Democratic state senator from Madison. “It will make agency heads and civil servants be extremely timid and feel like they can’t carry out their job responsibilities.” More

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      The Year’s Biggest Election

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

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      With Judicial Overhaul Paused, U.S. Softens Tone on Netanyahu

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      News that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be welcomed in Washington came a day after the Israeli leader delayed plans to limit the power of the courts and signaled a calmer atmosphere.In a sign of easing tensions in Israel after the suspension of a contentious judicial overhaul, the United States ambassador to Israel said on Tuesday that President Biden would host the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in Washington in the coming months, but did not specify a date.The possibility of such a meeting, long coveted by Mr. Netanyahu, came after other shifts in tone overnight from the Biden administration, as Washington signaled its support for Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to delay the divisive judicial plan.But the news did not suggest a complete reset after weeks of fraught relations: The ambassador, Thomas R. Nides, said that no date had been fixed for any meeting, leaving open the possibility that it could be delayed if Mr. Netanyahu pushed ahead with the plan after a delay.The news was nevertheless one of several signs on Tuesday that emotions were calming across Israel after concerns over the judicial overhaul had set off civil unrest on a scale rarely seen in the country and had exacerbated tensions with the Biden administration.After Mr. Netanyahu’s reversal, the country’s leading union called off a general strike, hospitals resumed full services after reducing them in protest on Monday, and the main airport began to allow outbound flights again after putting them on hold a day earlier.But suspicion and disappointment on both sides remained. Protesters feared that the government would resume the overhaul after only a superficial delay, and some demonstrations were still scheduled for Tuesday. And some government supporters complained that their views and goals had been crushed despite right-wing parties’ winning a majority in an election last November.The comments from Mr. Nides came the morning after Mr. Netanyahu made a last-minute decision to delay the overhaul. Opponents to the government plan had begun a general strike that shut down large parts of the Israeli economy, shuttering universities and schools, stopping outgoing flights, and pausing nonurgent medical services.Protesters in Jerusalem rallying against the proposed judicial overhaul on Monday. Israel had been gripped by turmoil in recent days as mass demonstrations and strikes swept across the country.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York TimesThe Biden administration had avoided extending an invitation to Mr. Netanyahu in recent weeks as officials in Washington grew increasingly concerned about the pace of the judicial overhaul, its effect on Israeli social cohesion and its consequences for Israeli democracy — as well as about the Netanyahu government’s policies in the occupied West Bank.“There’s no question that the prime minister will come and see President Biden,” Mr. Nides said in an interview on Tuesday morning on Israeli radio.“He obviously will be coming,” Mr. Nides said, adding, “I assume after Passover.” The Jewish festival of Passover ends on April 13.Reached by phone, Mr. Nides said that no fixed date had been set for the visit. The Israeli prime minister’s office did not issue a response.Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to delay the judicial overhaul, days before its enactment, led to the postponement of several further protests this week. Opponents of the overhaul still fear he could reinstate it later in the year and say they will not hesitate to organize further demonstrations if he reverses course again. Opposition lawmakers accused the government of playing a double game by delaying the legislation while also taking procedural measures that would make it swifter to vote on the package in Parliament in the future. The coalition said that was simply a technical move.More generally among the opposition, there was a sense of relief.“This morning, we are allowed to rejoice a little,” Nadav Eyal, a columnist for Yedioth Ahronoth, a major centrist broadsheet, wrote on Tuesday morning. “Israeli democracy may die one day,” he added. “But it will not happen this week, nor this month, nor this spring.”Nonetheless, many in the opposition remain worried that the overhaul has been delayed but not scrapped entirely. There were also fears about Mr. Netanyahu’s promise to Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right minister for national security, that he would consider creating a national guard under Mr. Ben-Gvir’s control.Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right Israeli minister for national security, in Jerusalem on Monday night.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York TimesCritics warned that if Mr. Netanyahu followed through on that proposal, made after Mr. Ben-Gvir agreed to remain in the government despite the delay to the overhaul, it would effectively place a paramilitary body under the control of a man convicted of racist incitement and support for a terrorist group.In a statement, Mr. Ben-Gvir said that the body — which has yet to be created — would prevent rioting and “strengthen security and governance in the country.”There was also uncertainty about the future of Yoav Gallant, the defense minister fired by Mr. Netanyahu on Sunday night after Mr. Gallant called for a halt to the overhaul.Mr. Gallant’s dismissal has not formally taken effect, and Israeli commentators speculated that Mr. Netanyahu may yet allow him to keep his job.Among government supporters, there were feelings of uncertainty, disappointment and resentment at Mr. Netanyahu’s inability to push through the legislation, even though right-wing parties had won a majority in Parliament in the general election in November.“At school they told me that Israel is a democracy,” Evyatar Cohen, a commentator for Srugim, a right-wing news outlet, wrote. “They said that as soon as I reach the age of 18 I can go to the polls and influence the future of the country, its character and goals.”Government supporters organized small protests overnight, with some attacking journalists and an Arab taxi driver, and chanting against Arabs. Some formed a roadblock in northern Israel, stopping drivers from an area associated with the centrist opposition.Gabby Sobelman More