Elections

Subterms

    More stories

    • 75 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Tucker Carlson Is No Less Dangerous

      by

      Gail Collins: Bret, we have all kinds of deeply important issues to tackle. But let’s start with Tucker Carlson. We’ve learned he didn’t really believe all the stuff he said on TV about a “stolen” election. Shocking!Bret Stephens: They say that hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue, but in this case it’s the tribute that cynicism pays to cowardice.Gail: Since you’re in charge of that side of our world, I really want to hear your opinion.Bret: I sometimes think of Carlson in the same mold as Father Coughlin, but worse: At least Coughlin was an honest-to-God fascist, a sincere bigot, whereas Carlson only plays one on TV for the sake of ratings.Gail: Wow, been a while since I heard a Father Coughlin comparison.Bret: As for Fox, the way in which they are trying to “respect” their viewers is to lie to them. I can only wish Dominion Voting Systems well in its $1.6 billion lawsuit against the network for claiming that their voting machines played a role in Trump’s loss. I believe in strong protections against frivolous lawsuits, but knowingly and recklessly spreading falsehoods about the subject of one’s reporting is the very definition of — dare I say it — fake news.Gail: Glad we can come together on the importance of not making up the news.Bret: But Gail, let’s move on to weightier things. Like President Biden’s dead-on-arrival $6.8 trillion budget. Your thoughts?Gail: Yippee! Whenever I wonder if we’re ever going to have a serious fight again, government spending rears its head.So let’s have at it. Obviously, Biden knows his plans aren’t going anywhere with a Republican-sort-of-controlled House. But he’s laying his cards down, and I think the cards look great.Bret: Explain.Gail: He’s ready to raise taxes on the rich. Good for him! Right now the Republicans seem to be claiming we can keep taxes as they are, or lower, plus protect Social Security and Medicare, plus protect or increase military spending. Which would, I believe, cut the rest of the budget by 70 percent.Bret: To steal a line from “Pride and Prejudice,” “My feelings are so different. In fact, they are quite the opposite.”Gail: Love that you’re bringing up Jane. Even if it’s to disagree with me.Bret: Ten years ago, federal spending was $3.45 trillion. Biden’s budget request is double that, and he has the chutzpah to suggest he wants to reduce the deficit — achieved almost entirely by huge tax increases instead of spending discipline.Gail: I will refrain from referring at length to a super-deficit-exploder named Donald Trump. Who was very much with his party’s program in one sense — pretending to be anti-deficit without proposing anything difficult to reduce it. Of course, the gang is OK with cutting back on, say, child care. Which makes it tougher for single parents to go to work and create a better future for the whole family.Bret: I too will refrain from noting that, godawful as Trump was, his final pre-Covid 2019 budget request was around $4.75 trillion, which is still $2 trillion less than Biden’s current request. I’m also not too thrilled by Biden’s proposal for higher taxes, including a nakedly unconstitutional tax on the appreciated assets of very rich people. It won’t pass, which I guess is the point, since the budget is less of a serious proposal and more of a campaign platform.Speaking of platforms: Your thoughts on the administration’s reported decision to approve an $8 billion oil-drilling project in the Alaskan wilderness?Gail: I’m horrified, actually. We’re supposed to be worrying about global warming and Biden is approving a plan that, as our story pointed out, will have an effect equivalent to adding almost two million more cars a year on the roads.Bret: OK, so now it’s my turn to cheer Biden while you jeer. We’re going to need oil for decades to come no matter how many electric vehicles we build, and the oil has to come from somewhere. Europe has discovered the price of relying on Russia for its energy, and I’d much rather have our gas come from a remote corner of Alaska, extracted by American workers, under American regulations, than from, say, Venezuela or Iran.But I’m really curious to see how this will play out within the Democratic Party. To me it looks like a crucial test of whether the party will again reach out to its old blue-collar manufacturing base or move further into the orbit of knowledge-industry workers with, well, coastal values. What do you think?Gail: The Biden administration is obviously going along with labor, lower-cost energy and all the other stuff you think of when you’re running for re-election. Democrats who worry about the environment may be rightfully horrified, but I doubt it’ll cost Biden votes. When the elections roll around, they’ll realize the other side is worse.Bret: Smart political advice.Gail: Still, the least the oil-drilling forces could do would be to apologize in advance to the kids who are currently in kindergarten and will have to live with the results.Bret: Also known as jobs and energy security.Gail: Hey, talking about youth reminds me of … oldth. I was so sorry to hear Mitch McConnell had fallen and been hospitalized with a concussion. He’s 81 and you can’t help wondering if he’s coming to the end of his career as the Senate Republican leader. Any predictions?Bret: First of all, we’ve got to petition the O.E.D. to make “oldth” a word as the appropriate antonym of youth. Second, I wish the senator a speedy recovery.His bigger problems, though, aren’t his physical stumbles but his political ones. He let Biden score his unexpected political wins last year. He’s fallen between two stools when it came to Trump: not Trumpy enough for Trump and his crowd, but not brave enough to stand up to them and move the party past them — like when he lambasted Trump after Jan. 6 but refused to vote to convict him during his second impeachment trial. And he’s been the Republican Senate leader forever, or at least it feels that way.Gail: So who’s next?Bret: He’d probably be wise to step aside for his whip, South Dakota’s John Thune, except that the Trumpians hate Thune for his anti-denialist position when it came to the 2020 election.Gail: Well, if you want to see the kind of leader that can crawl between the regular Republicans and the Trumpians, there’s … Kevin McCarthy. Senators would be better off with a hospitalized McConnell.Bret: A very good point. Since we’re speaking of Trump, your thoughts on his potential indictment?Gail: So many to choose from! Are we talking about the secret government documents he piled up at Mar-a-Lago, or his attempt to interfere with Georgia’s 2020 ballot counting, or the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels, the ex-lover Trump wanted to keep quiet? Although possibly as much about his sexual ineptitude as his marital sins? Pick one, Bret.Bret: My general view with most of these legal efforts is that, merited though they may be, they are more likely to help Trump than to hurt him. The weakest case seems to be the one that may be closest to an actual indictment — the alleged hush money payments to the alleged paramour Stormy Daniels. Problem there is that the star witness, the former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, is an ex-felon with a big-time ax to grind against his former boss.Gail: Well, when your witnesses have to be people who spent a lot of quality time with Donald Trump, the options will almost always be depressing.Bret: The stronger case is the one in Georgia. Then again, is a jury in Georgia going to vote unanimously to convict the former president? Color me skeptical. At this point, the most realistic way for the country to be done with Trump is if Ron DeSantis or some other Republican defeats him, fair and square, in the race for the G.O.P. nomination. Which is why you’re strongly rooting for DeSantis to jump in the race, am I right?Gail: Oh, Bret, it’s so hard to admit I’d rather see Trump as the nominee than DeSantis, but it’s true. I would. Rather have a terrible Republican with no real fundamental values than one who has strong but terrible commitments and is a genuine obsessive on social issues like abortion rights.Bret: That sound you just heard was my jaw hitting the floor. But I’m giving you full points for total honesty.Gail: Plus, if we have to live through two years of presidential politics featuring Joe Biden on one side, I’d rather have the awful, wrong-thinking Republican who isn’t also incredibly boring. Is that shallow?Bret: Other than for the entertainment value, do you prefer to have Trump as the nominee because you think he has no chance of winning the election? You could very well be right. Then again, I remember how that worked out in 2016.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

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Your Monday Briefing: China’s Saudi-Iran Deal

      by

      Also, Xi Jinping loyalists stack China’s leadership and Australia revives an Aboriginal alcohol ban.An Iranian newspaper with a photo of the top diplomats from China, Iran and Saudi Arabia.Majid Asgaripour/West Asia News Agency, via ReutersChina brokers a Middle East dealSaudi Arabia and Iran announced that they had agreed to re-establish diplomatic ties on Friday after years of fighting proxy conflicts. The deal, facilitated by China, highlights Beijing’s growing importance in the Middle East — and, some say, the U.S.’s waning influence there.Saudi Arabia and Iran said that they would patch up a seven-year split by reactivating a lapsed security cooperation pact, and that each would reopen an embassy in the other country. But differences run deep, and it remained unclear how far the rapprochement would actually go.China’s involvement was a surprise and signaled Xi Jinping’s ambitions as a global statesman amid a shift in longstanding alliances and rivalries. “This is among the topsiest and turviest of developments anyone could have imagined,” wrote Peter Baker, our chief White House correspondent.Some Gulf Arab officials say that they can no longer rely on the U.S. to guarantee their security and that China is ready to offer weapons, technology and investment with no strings attached. And Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, is trying to prove that the kingdom is not just an American “client state.”But other analysts cautioned that Prince Mohammed was simply taking a pragmatic approach. While the U.S. remains the kingdom’s dominant security partner, they say, Washington could not have brokered a deal, given its deeply strained relations with Iran.Iran’s gains: The deal could be a relief for the country, which is facing domestic unrest and an economy waylaid by harsh sanctions.Saudi Arabia’s gains: The pact could help quiet the regional tensions that have inflamed costly wars, like the one in Yemen, which have deterred potential investors.Israel’s fears: Its hopes for an anti-Iranian coalition with Saudi Arabia may be dashed.Saudi nuclear fears: Officials have repeatedly expressed fear over Iran’s nuclear program, saying that they would be the foremost target for any attack. In exchange for normalizing relations with Israel, the kingdom wants security assurances from the U.S. and help developing a civilian nuclear program.Xi Jinping solidified his status as China’s most powerful leader in decades.Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesChina’s new leadershipXi Jinping swept into an unprecedented third term as China’s president on Friday. The unanimous vote cemented his dominance, as Xi steels China for an era of superpower rivalry and seeks to revive a battered economy.The meeting of the National People’s Congress, which ends today, will also elevate new leaders for the first time in five years — many of them Xi’s loyalists. His new No. 2, Li Qiang, faces the challenge of reviving economic growth after three years of Covid-19 restrictions. Li oversaw the bruising lockdown in Shanghai last year and will probably extend a hand to a wary private sector.On Friday, the National People’s Congress also approved a series of regulatory changes that reflect Xi’s efforts to centralize Communist Party control.Some changes are aimed at stabilizing the financial sector and growing the power of the central bank amid a rolling real estate crisis. Others seek to boost tech and scientific innovation to compete with the West. And China will centralize how its data — which it views as the backbone of its economy in the future — is managed.“I’m a Vietnam veteran, and I couldn’t even buy a beer,” said Geoff Shaw, left.Tamati Smith for The New York TimesAn Aboriginal alcohol banAustralian authorities have reinstated a ban that prevented people living in most Aboriginal communities from buying takeaway alcohol. The move has reignited debates about race and control.The ban was in place from 2007 until last July, when the Northern Territory let it expire, calling it racist. But little had been done in the intervening years to address the communities’ severe underlying disadvantages. Once alcohol flowed again, there was an explosion of crime.Opponents believe that the ban, imposed by a largely white leadership, replicates the effects of colonialism and distracts from practical issues. Others argue that the benefits — like reducing domestic violence and other harms — could outweigh the discriminatory effects while long-term solutions are developed.Context: The debate has flared up again as Australia begins to discuss constitutionally enshrining an Indigenous body that would advise on policies.THE LATEST NEWSThe War in UkraineWestern analysts say that Russian forces now control most of Bakhmut. Ukraine insists that it holds the city, but its grip is tenuous.Pregnant Russians are heading to Argentina, which gives citizenship to anyone born there — and grants their parents a right to permanent residency and a fast track to a passport.Ukraine’s farmers face risks in the spring planting season: The fields are studded with unexploded bombs.Around the WorldSome human rights groups compared migrant workers’ conditions in Qatar to modern slavery.Olya Morvan for The New York TimesQatar pressed a U.N. agency not to investigate labor abuses in the run-up to the World Cup.The U.S. is racing to contain fallout from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which is the largest U.S. bank to fail since the 2008 crisis.Turkey is trying to identify more than a thousand earthquake victims who remain unaccounted for.A South African corruption watchdog cleared President Cyril Ramaphosa in the theft of $580,000 stashed in his sofa.Other Big StoriesThe BBC is in turmoil after a sports host was taken off the air for criticizing a U.K. immigration proposal.Australia’s strict immigration policy, which includes a system of indefinite mandatory detention, is of questionable legality.At least eight people died when small boats capsized off California, in what authorities said was a human-smuggling operation gone awry.The Oscars are about to start. Follow our live coverage.A Morning ReadIn Luanda, Angola’s capital, dancers celebrated Carnival last month. Gulshan Khan for The New York TimesOnce a cultural highlight, the Carnival celebration in Angola’s capital seems to barely register these days. But a competition could restore its glory, as groups of young dancers compete for prize money.ARTS AND IDEASThe race to turn water into fuelTrucks transporting iron ore in Western Australia.Giacomo d’Orlando for The New York TimesHundreds of billions of dollars are being invested in a high-tech gamble to make hydrogen clean, cheap and widely available. Producers hope to find customers in Australia’s huge mining industry, which currently relies on fossil fuels.“Green hydrogen” is made by using renewable electricity to split water molecules. (Currently, most hydrogen is made by using natural gas.) Because burning hydrogen emits only water vapor, green hydrogen avoids carbon dioxide emissions from beginning to end.Green hydrogen’s biggest impact could be in steel production, which emits more carbon dioxide than all the world’s cars. Three of the world’s four biggest ore miners operate dozens of mines in Australia’s Outback, where 10 million new solar panels and as many as 1,743 wind turbines will go toward making green hydrogen. This month, a steel company there will open the world’s biggest electrolyzer factory, producing machines that split water molecules apart to isolate the hydrogen.Critics say green hydrogen projects divert investment from surer emissions-reduction technologies. But if the rosiest projections hold, green hydrogen in heavy industry could reduce global carbon emissions by at least 5 percent.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookChristopher Simpson for The New York TimesIn this vegetarian take on shawarma, the usual spiced lamb, chicken or turkey is replaced with cauliflower florets.What to WatchIn “Stonewalling,” a young Chinese woman struggles with pregnancy, informal work and the pandemic. (I saw it and highly recommend it!)What to Listen toCheck out new songs on our weekly playlist.Exercise“Gymtimidation” is real. Don’t let that stop you from working out.The News QuizHow well did you follow last week’s headlines?Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and here’s a clue: Public uprisings (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 next time. — AmeliaP.S. “Sin Eater: The Crimes of Anthony Pellicano,” a Times documentary about a Hollywood fixer, premiered. Watch the trailer.Start your week with this narrated long read about Germany’s military. And here’s Friday’s edition of “The Daily,” on protests in Israel.We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to briefing@nytimes.com. More

    • 100 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      BBC Suspends Host Gary Lineker Over Immigration Comments

      by

      Mr. Lineker, one of England’s best-known sports personalities, had accused the British home secretary of using language reminiscent of Nazi Germany to promote a plan to stop asylum seekers.One of the premier soccer programs on British television was thrown into turmoil on Friday after the BBC suspended its host, the former English soccer star Gary Lineker, over comments he made criticizing the Conservative government’s plan to stop asylum seekers who arrive on boats across the English Channel.Mr. Lineker, a former captain of England’s national soccer team and the top goal scorer at the 1986 World Cup, ignited a firestorm on the political right after he suggested on Tuesday that the British home secretary, Suella Braverman, was using language reminiscent of Nazi Germany to promote the plan.After several days of debate played out on social media, in the pages of British newspapers and in the halls of Parliament, the BBC said on Friday that Mr. Lineker’s social media activity was “a breach of our guidelines,” and that he had been suspended from hosting “Match of the Day,” a mainstay of the BBC’s schedule since 1964.“The BBC has decided that he will step back from presenting ‘Match of the Day’ until we’ve got an agreed and clear position on his use of social media,” the British Broadcasting Corporation said in a statement.“When it comes to leading our football and sports coverage, Gary is second to none,” the statement said. “We have never said that Gary should be an opinion-free zone, or that he can’t have a view on issues that matter to him, but we have said that he should keep well away from taking sides on party political issues or political controversies.”Soon after the BBC issued the statement, two others who host “Match of the Day” with Mr. Lineker, Ian Wright and Alan Shearer, said that they would not appear on the show on Saturday.“Everybody knows what Match of the Day means to me, but I’ve told the BBC I won’t be doing it tomorrow,” Mr. Wright wrote on Twitter. “Solidarity.”Mr. Shearer wrote, “I have informed the BBC that I won’t be appearing on MOTD tomorrow night.”The BBC reported that the program would still be broadcast on Saturday, without hosts. Saturday’s “Match of the Day” will “focus on match action without studio presentation or punditry,” a BBC spokesman was quoted as saying by the BBC.The program, which features highlights from Saturday’s Premier League games, usually draws millions of viewers, according to the BBC.Mr. Lineker, who first appeared on “Match of the Day” as a presenter in 1999, signed a five-year contract in 2020 to remain with the BBC until 2025.After parlaying his hugely successful soccer career into a career as one of Britain’s best-known sports personalities, Mr. Lineker has frequently engaged in debates on social media, most prominently when he supported the campaign for Britain to remain inside the European Union.His comments have sometimes led to criticism from the right and accusations that he is violating the BBC’s guidelines on impartiality.Such was the case with his comments on the government’s plan to stop asylum seekers.Mr. Lineker had responded on Twitter to a video that the Home Office had posted in which Ms. Braverman promoted legislation that would give the office a “duty” to remove nearly all asylum seekers who arrive on boats across the English Channel, even though many are fleeing war and persecution.“Enough is enough,” Ms. Braverman declares. “We must stop the boats.”Mr. Lineker responded with sharp criticism.“This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and I’m out of order?” he wrote.The comments were roundly rejected by Ms. Braverman and others on the right, and they set off a debate about the BBC’s impartiality and the comparison to Nazi Germany.“It diminishes the unspeakable tragedy that millions of people went through, and I don’t think anything that is happening in the U.K. today can come close to what happened in the Holocaust,” Ms. Braverman said in an interview this week with the BBC. “So I find it a lazy and unhelpful comparison to make.”In The Daily Telegraph, the journalist Charles Moore accused Mr. Lineker of being “the most famous exemplar of the power of the BBC’s ‘talent’ to trash its impartiality.”“He expresses not the voice of the concerned citizen, but the arrogance of a man of power,” Mr. Moore wrote. “He is the big player who thinks he can defy the ref. The reputation of the entire BBC and its director-general depends on telling him he cannot.”On the political left, others defended Mr. Lineker and expressed dismay that the BBC had pulled him from “Match of the Day.”“This feels like an over reaction brought on by a right-wing media frenzy obsessed with undermining the BBC,” Lucy Powell, a member of Parliament from the Labour and Cooperative Party, wrote on Twitter. More

    • 75 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Will This Earthquake Be Erdogan’s Undoing?

      by

      ADIYAMAN, Turkey — Beneath each fresh mound in this rapidly expanding graveyard lies a tragedy. One morning at dawn, Zeki Karababa told me about his.Karababa’s brother, Hamit; Hamit’s wife, Fatma; and two children, Ahmet, 10, and Evra, 3, had been crushed when their apartment building crumbled in the earthquake.But that was just the beginning.“For three days there were no professional rescuers,” Karababa told me. By the time they found his relatives, all four were dead.“I took the bodies with my bare hands,” he said, weeping. “Nobody came to help us.”It is a refrain I heard over and over in the week I spent traversing southeastern Turkey last month. The country is struggling to recover from an earthquake whose wrath defies superlatives: 50,000 dead in Turkey and Syria and countless families homeless. The World Bank estimates that the quake caused $34.2 billion in physical damage in Turkey, or roughly 4 percent of the country’s G.D.P.Turkey’s government, led by the increasingly autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has tried to portray the unbearable losses as the inevitable result of a biblical catastrophe that no one could have prepared for. But few people I spoke to were buying that.“There is nothing natural about this disaster,” Ali Aslan, a volunteer rescue worker in Adiyaman, told me. “The state failed these people. They didn’t have to die like this.”In all of the death and destruction, nothing has been shaken more thoroughly than the Turkish people’s faith in their government. The quake has undermined Erdogan’s strongman image and exposed the core contradiction of autocratic rule: A government that insists on its own omnipotence and competence will inevitably disappoint when it is nowhere to be seen in the face of disaster. The implicit trade — freedom for safety and security — begins to look like a very bad bargain indeed.This is not the first time the Turkish people have had to confront this reality. For generations, Turkish citizens had been told that the government — “devlet baba,” or father state — would keep them safe. Few people have gotten more out of this promise than Erdogan. He rose to power in the aftermath of Turkey’s last devastating earthquake, which hit near Istanbul in 1999 and killed more than 17,000 people. Just as they did last month, victims lay under the rubble for days awaiting rescue from a government that showed up too late or not at all.“I am not saying that the civil defense organization collapsed,” a Turkish lawmaker said at the time. “It did not exist. I saw that there was not the slightest bit of preparation.”Survivors of the earthquake stand in line to get aid at a distribution point in Adiyaman.Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York TimesThe government response was “a declaration of bankruptcy for the Turkish political and economic system,” a cabinet member declared in a speech. “All ideological arguments were flattened by the earthquake,” he said. “Lying under the ruins is the Turkish political and administrative system.”The state’s compact with the Turkish people had been broken. The disastrous response was seen by many as a result of the corrupt governance and decadent indifference of the elite, and it led to the eventual defeat of the secular, nationalist establishment that had held power in Ankara since the founding of the Turkish state. Erdogan had been Istanbul’s mayor and was a loud critic of the government at the time. His new political party, the Justice and Development Party, took power, led by pious business owners who said they wanted to improve the lot of the average citizen, not line their own pockets.But more than 20 years have passed, and now the tables have turned. If it took roughly eight decades for the old elite to wear out their welcome with corruption and overreach, Erdogan and his party have achieved the same ignominy in two.“In any modern setting, when something bad happens to you, you expect the state to show up,” said Selim Koru, a leading analyst of Turkish affairs. “Somebody is supposed to answer the call. And when that doesn’t happen, people just get very, very upset.”There are lots of very angry people in Turkey right now. “Lies, lies and more lies, it has been 20 years, resign,” Turkish football fans recently shouted.It wasn’t supposed to be this way.Erdogan and his party came to power promising good governance and public safety in the aftermath of the Istanbul quake. His government embarked on a frenzy of building, and construction supercharged the Turkish economy. Per capita G.D.P. nearly tripled between 2003 and its peak in 2013. In just about every city, towers of apartment blocks mushroomed. Cranes dotted the skylines.But many of those buildings held deadly secrets that only now have spilled out. Idris Bedirhanoglu, a professor of civil engineering at Dicle University in southern Turkey, explained to me how contractors routinely cut corners and the government let them get away with it. They might skimp on cement or substitute smooth river stones for commercially made crushed gravel, making for a weaker aggregate. A builder might put in thinner rebar.In 2018 Erdogan extended what was known as “zoning amnesty” to buildings that did not meet stringent code requirements. The action was intended as an election year sop to voters who had expanded their homes and businesses illegally, and he touted this in remarks he gave in the city of Kahramanmaras. That city would be one of the hardest hit by this year’s earthquake.What’s left of an area in Hatay, Turkey, after the quake.Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York TimesErdogan’s rise to power after the 1999 Istanbul disaster was paralleled by a surge in civic activity. Many people felt abandoned by a paternalistic government. Turkish intellectuals and activists formed and bolstered their own civil society organizations aimed at helping one another through all manner of difficulties. A lot of the organizing was done by professional associations of architects and engineers and others worried about not just building safety but also the use of public space and the environmental impacts of the building frenzy that accompanied Erdogan’s rise. These groups did not want a new, paternalistic state to take the place of the old one. They wanted greater participation in a truly democratic civic sphere.In Erdogan’s first decade in power, he was broadly hailed as a champion of openness and democracy. Turkey was seeking European Union membership and burnishing its democratic credentials. Erdogan emphasized freedom of religion, which had been repressed in the old secular regime, and freedom of expression. Most critically, he managed to contain Turkey’s military and all but eliminate its meddling in political life.But ultimately Erdogan began refashioning the old centralized state as an even more powerful instrument that he alone could wield. Over the past decade, and with increasing speed since a 2016 coup plot was put down, Erdogan has squeezed civil society groups, brought the independent press to heel and prosecuted his political opponents. He has steadily accrued power, culminating in a 2017 referendum that moved Turkey from a parliamentary system to a strong executive system, giving him greater control over the judiciary and legislature.He centralized disaster relief under a new government agency known as AFAD, and in a decision that calls to mind George W. Bush’s appointment of the head of the International Arabian Horse Association to lead FEMA two years before Hurricane Katrina, Erdogan named a theologian with little experience in disaster relief to head AFAD’s relief efforts, according to local media reports.Erdogan has joined a growing club of elected autocrats who came to power in truly democratic elections only to slowly insulate themselves from political competition. For such men there is no need to declare oneself the leader for life — it is much better to follow the frog-in-boiling-water approach. Bit by bit, destroy the independence of institutions, civil society, the media. Drain the legislature of its oversight power. Bend the judiciary to your will. Use the law to remove popular competitors from the playing field of politics. Slowly, then all at once, you are the only person who can win an election.Zeki Karababa mourns the death of his brother Hamit and Hamit’s wife and children, all killed when their apartment building collapsed in the earthquake.Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York TimesIt is happening in India and in Hungary, and many feared that Brazil was headed in this direction, until the last election. The natural end point of this process — unfettered one-man rule despite regular elections — is on display most tragically in Russia, where a madman who answers to no one controls what is reportedly the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. But Civicus, an organization that tracks the health of civil society across the globe, gives Turkey the same rating as Russia: repressed.In the concentration of this power, however, lie the seeds of destruction. If the president controls all the levers of power, who else can he blame when the response to a disaster goes awry? In a world where we expect more disasters, not fewer, this is an extraordinary vulnerability.“To build his strongman rule he weakened institutions, and those weak institutions came back to haunt him,” said Gonul Tol, director of the Turkey program at the Middle East Institute. “It really undermined his ability to govern and deliver.”It would be foolish to try to predict with any certainty how the earthquake and its aftermath will affect Erdogan’s political fortunes. The country needs rebuilding, and Erdogan is nothing if not a committed builder. Dueling polls disagree about whether his popularity has dipped since the quake.Erdogan also has lots of friends on the global stage. His handling of the cataclysm on his doorstep in Syria, which could easily have undone a less savvy leader, has raised Turkey’s stature, making him ever more indispensable in a new, multipolar world. Turkey is a NATO member that nevertheless has warming ties with Russia, making it a crucial and sometimes frustrating player in the Ukraine crisis.But as Erdogan well knows, disaster changes the trajectory of history in sudden and unexpected ways. The country is in the midst of an economic crisis, in part driven by Erdogan’s highly unorthodox policy of keeping interest rates low despite inflation soaring at one point beyond 85 percent. A poll before the earthquake found that more than 70 percent of young Turks want to leave the country, and that percentage is certain to rise. Even before the quake, Erdogan’s poll numbers were slipping.Meanwhile, the fractured Turkish opposition has become more united. New polling numbers reported this week show a double-digit lead for the opposition candidate, Kemal Kilicdaroglu. He has pledged to return the country to its parliamentary system and decentralize power.Last week, Erdogan indicated that elections would happen on schedule. Right now, Turkey simmers with grief and rage. The last time there was a massive quake, that grief and rage were channeled into the possibility of a new compact between citizen and state in Turkey and a rejection of the centralized, autocratic style of the previous regime. If Erdogan and his party, despite a promising start, have crushed that dream, the elections in May, assuming they are allowed to proceed freely and fairly, could offer another rare chance for the Turkish people to try again.“I think this is the last exit for Turkish democracy,” Gonul Tol said. “The stakes are really high.”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

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      No Rest Between Censuses for Congressional Mapmakers

      by

      What used to be a once-a-decade redistricting fight between political parties is now in perpetual motion, and up to 29 seats in 14 states are already at risk of being redrawn.WASHINGTON — For just about all of the nation’s history, politicians would fight over redistricting for a short period after each once-a-decade census, then forget about congressional maps until the next reapportionment.Now, a string of lawsuits and in-the-works state referendums are poised to redefine the battles over state legislative and congressional lines and leave the country in a state of perpetual redistricting.The dynamic is an escalation of the scattered redistricting battles over the last decade. Not since 2012 and 2014 have all 50 states’ congressional lines remained constant for consecutive elections, a streak unlikely to be broken next year. The National Democratic Redistricting Committee estimates that up to 29 seats in 14 states could be redrawn based on lawsuits that have already been filed. Scores more seats could change if the Supreme Court rules later this year that state legislators have ultimate authority to draw the lines.To prepare for those fights, the party’s redistricting committee is changing its leadership for the first time since its formation in 2017. Kelly Burton, the committee’s president, is leaving to join its six-member board and is being replaced by John Bisognano, who has been executive director. Marina Jenkins, who has served as the committee’s litigation director, will succeed Mr. Bisognano as executive director.“People used to think about staff that worked on redistricting as redistricting cicadas that come out every 10 years,” Mr. Bisognano said in an interview Thursday. “We need to keep this movement alive and growing in order to continue to fight back against the gerrymandering that we see coming.”Mr. Bisognano, a 38-year-old Massachusetts native, worked as a clubhouse manager for the minor league baseball team that used to play in Pawtucket, R.I., before beginning his political career as an organizer on Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. He later worked in the Obama White House and joined the Democratic redistricting committee shortly after it formed in 2017.Mr. Bisognano, the new president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, and Marina Jenkins, its new executive director.Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesThe Democratic redistricting committee and its Republican counterpart, the National Republican Redistricting Trust, both emerged in 2017, as the two parties prepared for the redistricting cycle that would follow the 2020 census. That cycle was itself a shift from how redistricting business had been done before, when it was chiefly a concern of the Democratic and Republican National Committees. Both redistricting organizations are remaining intact for the 2020s, as the political and legal fights persist, and lines that in past decades would have been considered fixed are now subject to change.“It was something that the party committees used to do themselves — the D.N.C. and the R.N.C. both had it in-house for a long time,” said Adam Kincaid, the president and executive director of the Republican redistricting organization. “It was time for organizations to have a full-time eye on this versus just having one or two staff working on it part time.”Republicans, led by a super PAC run by Ed Gillespie, outflanked Democrats in 2010 to flip control of 20 state legislative chambers just before new congressional and state legislative districts were to be drawn. That gave Republicans a firm grip on the House that didn’t give way until 2018, when President Donald J. Trump alienated suburban voters who had previously voted for G.O.P. candidates.Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.Yielding to Conspiracy Theories: Five Republican-led states have severed ties with a bipartisan voting integrity group, one that has faced intensifying attacks from election deniers and right-wing media.Asian Americans: In the New York governor’s election last year, voters in Asian neighborhoods across New York City sharply increased their support for Republicans. The shift is part of a national trend.The MAGA-fication of a College: North Idaho College trustees vowed to root out the school administration’s “deep state.” A full-blown crisis followed, and the school’s accreditation is now at risk.Chicago Mayor’s Race: The mayoral runoff pits two Democrats against each other who are on opposite sides of the debate over crime and policing — a divide national Republicans hope to exploit.By then, Mr. Obama, along with his attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., had created the Democratic redistricting organization in the waning days of his presidency. Mr. Holder will most likely head to Wisconsin this month to campaign for Janet Protasiewicz, the liberal state supreme court candidate there, while Mr. Obama is hosting a March fund-raiser for the committee that will have as a “special guest” Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic House speaker.“For the past six years, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee has done the hard work of redrawing and reinstating district maps to make them more fair,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. “Their work has meant the difference between victory and defeat, and our democracy is in stronger shape because of what they have accomplished.”Barack Obama helped create the Democratic redistricting organization in the waning days of his presidency.Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesThe next movement on redistricting is likely to come in Ohio and North Carolina, where Republicans who control the state governments are poised to redraw congressional maps to give their party an added advantage. Texas lawmakers are also redrawing their maps.Democrats have challenged maps in four states — Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia and Texas — for violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act that prohibits racial discrimination. Democrats have also filed a lawsuit in state courts in their effort to undo congressional maps in Florida and Utah.In New Mexico, Republicans are suing to overturn congressional district maps.And the outcome of the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in April will determine whether a Republican-drawn gerrymander of state legislative lines survives. Four other states — Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania — have state Supreme Court elections in the next five years that could shift the balance of power and change how district lines are drawn.In those five years, control of the Michigan court, on which liberals now hold a 4-3 majority, could change three times.“We started this project six years ago because American voters deserved fair maps that represent our diverse communities — and we needed a coordinated strategy to make that happen,” Mr. Holder said. “The threat to fair maps continues and so must N.D.R.C.’s work.”In addition to elections for governors, state Supreme Court justices and legislators, ballot referendums are another area that the national parties’ state legislative committees are targeting.Florida, Missouri and Oklahoma all have legislation pending that would make passing a voter-driven referendum harder. Republicans in South Dakota and several other states tried similar threshold increases last year, but voters rejected them.Mr. Bisognano said the Democratic redistricting committee would also keep a focus on maintaining the integrity of the 2030 census after Trump administration officials tried to meddle in the 2020 census in order to achieve a favorable outcome for Republicans.“It came and went very quickly, and Covid obviously had an interesting and significant impact on the census, but so did Donald Trump,” Mr. Bisognano said.The Supreme Court could also sharply increase the power that state legislators have over drawing congressional districts. However, justices hinted this week that they might duck making a ruling on the case, known as Moore v. Harper.Even without a major Supreme Court decision, just seven states have laws that forbid mid-decade congressional districting, leaving the others to draw new maps when state legislators desire. Six more states prohibit new state legislative lines to be drawn in between censuses.A Supreme Court ruling that state legislators have ultimate control over federal redistricting would remove any stability from the redistricting process, Mr. Bisognano said.“If you add on the reality that these folks could redraw their maps and have no checks and balances in any capacity, that’s a pretty grim prospect for the ability for citizens to have fair maps,” he said. More

    • 100 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Nigeria Postpones State Elections Amid Presidential Vote Controversy

      by

      The government moved elections scheduled for Saturday back by a week, saying it needed more time to reset digital voting machines at the center of fraud accusations.Nigeria has postponed state elections that had been scheduled for Saturday, heightening popular anger and cynicism over whether the country can conduct a fair vote only two weeks after a presidential election tainted with technical malfunctions and allegations of fraud.Since the declaration a little over a week ago that the governing party’s candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, had won the presidential election, Africa’s most populous nation has spiraled further into economic and political paralysis.Now the country’s electoral commission has moved the election for the country’s powerful state governors back by a week, saying it needs more time to reset digital voting machines used for the first time in the presidential election last month. The vote for governors is now scheduled for March 18.The postponement of the election for 28 of the country’s 36 state governors is just the latest challenge faced by Nigeria, a country of 220 million people that has been plagued by fuel scarcity, a cash crunch and multiple security crises.Mr. Tinubu, a divisive figure in Nigerian politics, won the election with 36 percent of the vote, but the two other main candidates, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, have called for a rerun, alleging vote rigging. A new vote appears unlikely, and Mr. Tinubu is scheduled to be sworn in on May 29.Hopes were high ahead of the largest democratic election ever organized in Africa, and Nigerian officials recorded fewer instances of violence than in previous contests. But countless malfunctions — from polling units that opened late or not at all, to the sluggishness of ballot counting — have eroded Nigerians’ trust.“The electoral process remains chaotic, with no improvement from one election to another,” said Idayat Hassan, director of the Center for Democracy and Development, a research and advocacy group based in Abuja, the capital.The confusion over the elections has been compounded by a seemingly never-ending cash crunch: New notes introduced by the government just months before the election have remained largely unavailable, while old ones are not valid anymore.There were reports of some polling locations in Nigeria’s presidential election opening late, or not at all.Akintunde Akinleye/EPA, via ShutterstockLast Friday, the Nigerian Supreme Court ruled that the use of old bank notes should be extended until Dec. 31 because of the impact of the policy on Nigerians’ livelihoods. But neither the government nor the central bank have addressed the issue, leaving most businesses, street traders and even public bus drivers wary of accepting the old notes, even as some banks begin to distribute them again.In Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, one trader, Adelaja Adetoun, was trying to gain access to a commercial bank on Thursday, her face beaded with sweat. “The old notes I received from the banks are being rejected and I need to return them,” she said.Ms. Adetoun, 67, said she was not interested in the state elections, especially since they had been postponed.That decision has left some analysts worried that the turnout on March 18 will be drastically lower than that of the presidential election, in which just over a quarter of 87 million eligible voters cast a ballot. It was the lowest voter turnout ever recorded for a Nigerian presidential election.In many ways, the state elections are as important, said Oge Onubogu, head of the Africa Program at the Wilson Center, a Washington-based research institute.“States are grooming grounds for governors who want to be Nigeria’s next president,” she said. (Both Mr. Tinubu and Mr. Obi are former state governors.) “Some governors oversee budgets that are larger than other West African countries,” Ms. Onubogu said.The digital voting machines that need to be reconfigured ahead of the state vote are at the center of a controversy around the presidential election.Using the machines, election officials were supposed to verify voters’ identities and to photograph result sheets in each polling unit, uploading them to a website publicly accessible shortly after the voting ended on Feb. 25.But the country’s Independent National Electoral Commission, known as INEC, failed to fulfill that mission, according to multiple observers. Instead, the results were uploaded days later, prompting Mr. Abubakar’s and Mr. Obi’s parties to accuse election officials and Mr. Tinubu’s party of having manipulated the results.An election observer at a news conference organized in Abuja after the election last month.Michele Spatari/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo countless Nigerians, the delays and lack of transparency left a bitter taste.“INEC’s performance has made many Nigerians feel that their vote doesn’t count,” said Joachim MacEbong, a senior governance analyst at Stears, a Nigerian data and intelligence company. “It’s difficult to see how they’re going to rebuild their credibility.”International observers voiced similar concern.“The number of administrative and logistical problems flawed the outcome,” Johnnie Carson, a former assistant secretary of state for African affairs in the Obama administration, who was in Nigeria to monitor the election, said this week.Officials from Mr. Obi’s party have said that the results uploaded by the electoral commission didn’t match those that party workers collected when the polling units closed. A representative for Mr. Obi, Diran Onifade, refused to provide the results collected, but in a phone interview said the election had been marred by “sabotage.”Mr. Obi’s team now has a few days to inspect the electronic voting machines before the electoral commission reconfigures them for the state elections.Ms. Hassan, the Center for Democracy and Development analyst, and Ms. Onubogu of the Wilson Center both said that a fair and functional Nigerian election experience mattered almost more than the outcome.“Nigerians needed to be able to see that the process worked,” said Ms. Onubogu.Instead, Ms. Hassan said, “More and more citizens are losing trust in democracy itself because of these dysfunctions.” More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      The Fed’s Struggle With Inflation Has the Markets on Edge

      by

      The central bank’s success or failure will affect your wallet and, maybe, the next election, our columnist says.Clarity about the future of inflation and the stock and bond markets would be wonderful right now, but that’s just what we don’t have.What we do have are enormous quantities of inconclusive data. There is something for everyone, and for every possible interpretation.The Federal Reserve is intent on whipping inflation now — to borrow an infamous phrase from the Ford administration, which failed spectacularly to “WIN” in the 1970s. But despite a series of steep interest rate increases by the Fed, and its stated intention to raise rates further this year, inflation remains intolerably high.“We’re stuck in the messy middle,” Josh Hirt, senior economist at Vanguard, said in a note this month.It’s a muddle right now, and the lurching stock and fixed-income markets reflect investors’ uncertainty.In testimony before Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday, Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, made it clear that the central bank not only intends to keep raising interest rates, but will increase them even more than “previously anticipated” if it deems that necessary to squelch inflation.It’s too soon to say how effective the measures taken by the Fed have been. The economy has been generating a lot of jobs and unemployment is quite low, but corporate earnings are beginning to fall. At some point, the economy is going to slow down — Vanguard thinks that may not happen until the end of the year. We may be heading into a recession. Or we may not be. The verdict isn’t in yet.Really long-term investors can ride out the turmoil, and those who prize safety above all else have reasonably good options now, too: There are plenty of attractive, high-interest places to park your cash.But what transpires in the next few months will still be critical for consumers and investors, and may even determine the outcome of the next presidential election. Considering what’s at stake, it is worth wading a little more deeply into this morass.The Fed and InflationThe Fed finds itself in a difficult spot. It has declared that it intends to bring inflation down to its longtime 2 percent target, but prices keep rising much faster than that.Our Coverage of the Investment WorldThe decline of the stock and bond markets this year has been painful, and it remains difficult to predict what is in store for the future.Value and Growth Stocks: Eight tech giants are no longer “pure growth” stocks, while Exxon and Chevron are, according to a new study. Here is what that means for investors.2023 Predictions: There are plenty of forecasts coming for where the S&P 500 will be at the end of the year. Should you be paying attention to them?May I Speak to a Human?: Younger investors who are navigating market volatility and trying to save for retirement are finding that digital investment platforms lack the personal touch.Tips for Investors: When you invest and where matters for taxes. But a few rules of thumb can stave off some nasty surprises.That 2 percent target is an arbitrary number, without much science to it. Whether 2 percent inflation is better than, say, 1.5 or 2.5 or 3 percent inflation — and how the inflation rate should be measured — are all open for debate. Let’s save those issues for another day.For now, the Fed has drawn a red line at 2 percent, and its credibility is at stake. The Consumer Price Index in January rose at more than three times that target rate.  The Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, which the Fed favors — and which, not coincidentally, generally produces lower readings than the C.P.I. — rose at a 5.4 percent annual rate in January, which was more than in the previous month. No matter how you slice it, inflation is ugly.So the Fed has few immediate options. It will keep raising the federal funds rate, the short-term interest rate it controls, in an effort to slow the economy and squelch inflation. The only questions are how high it will go and how rapidly it will get there. Traders in the bond market, who set longer-term rates through bidding and purchases, have had trouble coming up with consistent answers.  The central bank has already raised the short-term federal funds rate substantially and quickly, to a range of 4.5 to 4.75 percent, up from near zero just a year ago. But the federal funds rate is a blunt instrument, and the economic effects of these rate increases operate with a significant lag,The Fed could easily plunge the economy into a major recession. In a misguided bet that the Fed would beat inflation quickly or that a recession would arrive so definitively that the Fed could reverse course, bond traders began moving longer-term rates lower in October. That optimism also set off a stock market rally.But lately, with inflation and the economy failing to respond as traders had expected, the outlook has turned gloomier. Treasury yields reached or exceeded 5 percent for so-called risk-free securities in the range of three months to two years. That’s an attractive proposition in comparison with the stock market, and it’s no accident that stocks have fallen.Bonds and StocksEven 10-year Treasury yields have ascended to the 4 percent range. Compared with stocks, Treasuries in a murky market are, for the moment, exceptionally attractive.Falling earnings haven’t helped the stock market, either. For the last three months of 2022, the earnings of companies in the S&P 500 declined 3.2 percent from a year earlier, according to the latest I/B/E/S data from Refinitiv. And if you exclude the windfall from the energy sector, where prices were bolstered by Russia’s war in Ukraine, earnings fell 7.4 percent, the data showed.Corporate prospects for 2023 have begun to dim a bit, too, executives and Wall Street analysts are concluding. On Feb. 21, both Home Depot and Walmart warned that consumer spending had come under strain. The S&P 500 fell 2 percent that day, the worst performance for the short year to that date, in what Howard Silverblatt, a senior analyst for S&P Dow Jones Indices, called a “turnaround point” for the stock market.Whipping InflationIt’s early yet in 2023, but so far, stock investors are maintaining a relentless focus on the Fed, whose policymakers next meet March 21 and 22 and are all but certain to raise short-term interest rates further. The only questions are by how much, and how high rates will end up before the Fed concludes that it has accomplished its objective.  But with Mr. Powell aspiring to achieve the performance of his illustrious predecessor Paul A. Volcker, who vanquished inflation in the 1980s and set off two recessions to do it, it’s a fair bet that the Fed won’t back off its rate tightening policy soon.Bring down inflation and you are likely to be remembered as a hero. Bungle the job and you may well be memorialized as officials in President Gerald R. Ford’s administration have been, for their hapless effort to “whip inflation now.” In a widely derided public relations stunt in 1974, when inflation was running above 12 percent, the Ford White House distributed buttons with the WIN acronym, but that administration never beat inflation.It wasn’t until the next president, Jimmy Carter, appointed Mr. Volcker that the Fed even began to get control of inflation — and Mr. Volcker didn’t finish the job until the Reagan administration was well underway.The 2024 ElectionThe outcome of the next presidential election could well depend on whether the Fed gets the job done this time — and whether it causes a severe recession in the process.Ray Fair, a Yale economics professor who has been predicting presidential and congressional elections for decades, points out in a succinct note on his website that the political effects of the Fed’s efforts will be large. In his work, Professor Fair relies only on economic variables — and not the customary staples of political analysis — to forecast elections. His record is excellent.He outlines two paths for the economy. Because President Biden is an incumbent, and is likely to run for re-election, good economic results would be expected to help his cause.“In the positive case for the Democrats, if inflation is 3 percent in 2023 and 2 percent in 2024,” Professor Fair wrote, and if the economy grows at 4 percent rate in 2024 before the election, his economic model says the Democratic candidate is highly likely to win the presidency.On the other hand, he said, “in the negative case for the Democrats, if inflation is 5 percent in 2023 and 4 percent in 2024” and if the economy shrinks 2 percent in 2024 — in a recession — a Republican is highly likely to be the next president. He added, “Somewhere in between regarding the economy will mean a close election.”These statements assume that only the two main political parties mount credible campaigns. A well run third-party candidacy would complicate matters considerably.I’m not making any bets, either on politics or on the economy.  It’s all too complex and confused now.As always, for investments of at least a decade and, preferably, longer, low-cost index funds that mirror the entire markets are a good choice.Bonds are a safe and well-paying option right now. So is cash, held in money market funds or high-yield bank savings accounts.We may well be at a turning point, but taking us where, exactly? Unless you somehow know, it may be wise to play it safe for a while. More