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      James Abourezk, the First Arab American Senator, Dies at 92

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      A Democrat from South Dakota, he found the freedom to act on principle in the House and Senate by choosing not to seek re-election.James Abourezk, who was elected by South Dakotans as the first Arab American senator, and who used his prominence to support the causes of Palestinians and Native Americans while also pushing for friendlier relations with Cuba and Iran, died on Friday, his 92nd birthday, at his home in Sioux Falls, S.D. His daughter Alya James Abourezk confirmed the death.Mr. Abourezk (pronounced AB-ur-esk) was a double novelty for a senator. He was a left winger from a generally conservative rural state and a politician who gave up the chance for re-election to focus on pursuing the political objectives he believed in, rather than those supported by his party, his constituents or even, in some cases, most Americans.In 1970, when Mr. Abourezk won a race for South Dakota’s second district seat in the House, the state’s newly elected governor was a fellow Democrat, Richard F. Kneip, and its other senator was the progressive standard-bearer George McGovern. Mr. Abourezk’s victory came as a surprise nevertheless: A Democrat had not occupied that House seat since the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s dominance in the 1930s.He was elected to the Senate in 1972. After he stepped down, Larry Pressler, a Republican, succeeded him and served for nearly 20 years.Mr. Abourezk attributed his success to his reputation as “more populist than liberal or leftist, a brand of politician that resonates with people from South Dakota,” he told The Capital Journal, a South Dakota newspaper, in 2013. “One comment I constantly heard from people was that, ‘I don’t agree much with Abourezk, but by God, he’s honest.’”Mr. Abourezk in his Sioux Falls, S.D., office in 2004. After leaving the Senate, he served as counsel for the Iranian Embassy and founded the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.Lloyd B. Cunningham/The Argus Leader, via Associated PressHis biggest achievements as a senator concerned support for Native Americans. He proposed the establishment of the American Indian Policy Review Commission, which studied legislative possibilities to address problems in that community. The laws that resulted included the 1975 Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, which granted tribes more autonomy in administering government programs, and the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, which established controls on the adoption of Indigenous children by white families. That measure continues to draw praise, even from tribal representatives and legal advocates who say it did not go far enough.On some issues, Mr. Abourezk was content to oppose most other senators — or even the entire rest of the chamber. In 1977, he was a lone dissenter in an 85-to-1 vote on an amendment concerning child pornography. He questioned the legality of a ban on selling or distributing material that might not be considered obscene.The same year, he organized an almost comically unusual good-will trip to Cuba for a delegation of South Dakota college basketball players to compete against the Cuban national team. “Sports is noncontroversial, and this should do a lot for normalization of relations,” Mr. Abourezk told The New York Times in Havana. “It’s fitting South Dakota should be involved because we’re famous for pioneers of all kinds.”Traveling from 25-degree Sioux Falls to 85-degree Havana and being served frozen daiquiris upon arrival, the South Dakotans reacted to the trip with wonderment. “I’ve never even seen the sea before,” Bob Ashley, a 6‐foot‐10 center from the Sioux tribe, told The Times.Mr. Abourezk brought his dissident sensibility most vocally to issues involving the Middle East, particularly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In a 1975 article for The Times, he argued, “No settlement can come about and no peace can endure unless the Palestinians have been settled in a homeland of their own.”The next year provided another occasion for him to vote against the rest of the Senate. The issue was a measure to cut off foreign aid to nations that harbored international terrorists. Mr. Abourezk said that the amendment was aimed at Arab terrorists but had no provisions for what he termed terrorist acts by the Israeli military.Some opposed his appearance at a 1977 Democratic dinner in Denver on the grounds that he was too critical of Israel. He replied, “Just as we have seen U.S. Presidents wrap themselves in the American flag in efforts to stifle criticism of their policies, so do we see a foreign country wrapping itself in its state religion, so that criticism of the state or its policies is perceived as a form of racism.”After leaving the Senate, he became “Iran’s Man in Washington,” as The Times labeled him in 1979, serving as counsel for the Iranian Embassy and seeking to recoup money that the Islamic Republic said had been stolen by the Shah. He also founded the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, which drew attention to prejudicial treatment of Arabs by the government and in everyday life.James George Abourezk was born on Feb. 24, 1931, in Wood, S.D. He grew up there and in Mission, two tiny towns that were on the Rosebud Indian Reservation of southern South Dakota. His father, Charles, had moved to the United States from Lebanon as a peddler in 1898 and managed to open general stores in Wood and Mission. His mother, Lena (Mickel) Abourezk, a Lebanese Greek Orthodox immigrant like her husband, ran the family store in Wood, while Charles managed the one in Mission.Mr. Abourezk served for four years in the Navy. He got a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, and in 1966 he earned a law degree from the University of South Dakota School of Law. Before entering politics, Mr. Abourezk worked as a farmhand, wholesale grocery salesman, car salesman, bartender and bar owner. He became passionate about politics after a family doctor lent him copies of I.F. Stone’s Weekly, The Nation and The New Republic.Mr. Abourezk’s marriages to Mary Ann Houlton and Margaret Bethea ended in divorce. He married Sanaa Dieb in 1991. She survives him, along with Alya, their daughter; two sons, Charlie and Paul, and a daughter, Nikki Pipe On Head, from his first marriage; a stepdaughter, Chesley Machado; more than 30 grandchildren; and several great-grandchildren.Mr. Abourezk’s wife runs Sanaa’s Gourmet Mediterranean, a restaurant in Sioux Falls that The Times credited in 2014 with kicking off “an epicurean trend” in the city. In 2019, when he was 89, The Aberdeen News reported that Mr. Abourezk enjoyed holding court at the restaurant, telling stories of his colorful life and sharing his views on politics.He suggested to The Capital Journal a way to ensure more independent-minded legislators such as himself: term limits. “If a member of Congress is not worried about getting re-elected, he or she will more often than not vote in the public interest rather than in his or her own electoral interest, which is now what happens,” he said. More

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      Large Crowds Across Mexico Protest Overhaul of Election Watchdog

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      Demonstrations took place in over 100 cities against the recent overhaul of the country’s electoral watchdog, which officials say could make fair and free elections difficult.More than 100,000 people took to the streets of Mexico on Sunday to protest new laws hobbling the nation’s election agency, in what demonstrators said was a repudiation of the president’s efforts to weaken a pillar of democracy.Wearing shades of pink, the official color of the electoral watchdog that helped end one-party rule two decades ago, protesters filled the central square of the capital, Mexico City, and chanted, “Don’t touch my vote.”The protesters said they were trying to send a message to the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who backed the measures and lives in the national palace on the square’s edge.They were also speaking directly to the nation’s Supreme Court, which is expected to hear a challenge to the overhaul in the coming months. Many see the moment as a critical test for the court, which has been a target of criticism by the president.Protesters also chanted on Sunday morning, “I trust in the court.”Hours before the demonstration officially began, attendants, many wearing crisp collared shirts and Panama hats, lined up outside upscale cafes and sat for breakfast on a terrace overlooking the seat of government.Protesters said the changes imperiled a key pillar of the nation’s democracy.Luis Antonio Rojas for The New York TimesBut on the streets, the mood was anxious.“I paid my own expenses and my stay, but it doesn’t bother me, I’d do that and more for my country,” said Marta Ofelia González, 75, who flew in from Mazatlán, on the coast of Sinaloa State, and wore a straw visor to block the punishing sun.She came, she said, because she fears “we will lose democracy and become a dictatorship.”The president argues the changes will save millions of dollars and improve the voting system. Electoral officials, though, say the overhaul will make it difficult to guarantee free and fair elections — including in a crucial presidential election next year.“This is our last hope,” said Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo, a former leftist congressman and one of the demonstration’s organizers. “We want to defend the court’s autonomy so it can declare these laws unconstitutional.” Otherwise, Mr. Acosta Naranjo said, “we will have to hold an election with a partial and diminished arbiter.”It was not immediately clear how many people protested across the country — demonstrations had been organized in more than 100 cities — though the numbers in Mexico City alone were above 100,000, organizers and local officials said.Looming over the protests was the recent conviction in a Brooklyn courtroom of Genaro García Luna, a former top Mexican law enforcement official, who was found guilty of taking bribes from cartels — a verdict widely viewed in Mexico as damaging to one of the opposition parties associated with the demonstration on Sunday.José Ramón Cossío Díaz, a retired minister of the Supreme Court, spoke in front of the court building on Sunday.Luis Antonio Rojas for The New York TimesMr. García Luna served in high-profile security roles for more than a decade under two conservative National Action Party presidents — Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón — both of whom publicly called for citizens to attend the protest.The streets where protesters roamed on Sunday were lined with posters bearing Mr. García Luna’s face and the word “guilty.”The president has suggested that the protesters are motivated by the desire to put the country back in the hands of the corrupt leaders of the past.“They’re going to show up because there are vested, corrupt interests that want to return to power to continue stealing,” Mr. López Obrador said at a recent news conference. “So don’t try to say ‘it’s that we care about democracy, it’s that democracy is being damaged.”It was the second time in about four months that Mexicans had demonstrated in support of the election watchdog, which the president and his supporters say has become a bloated bureaucracy captured by political interests. “It has too much power, perverted power,” said Pedro Miguel, a journalist at La Jornada, a leftist newspaper, who describes himself as a “militant” of the president’s political project. Mr. Miguel criticized the agency for paying its governing members too much, including a bonus after stepping down.“This is a march in defense of that bonus and those miserable salaries,” he said of the demonstration on Sunday.It was the second time in about four months that Mexicans had rallied in support of the election watchdog, which the president and his supporters say has become a bloated bureaucracy.Luis Antonio Rojas for The New York TimesThe measures, passed by the legislature last week, will cut the agency’s staff, undermine its autonomy and limit its capacity to punish politicians who break electoral law. Electoral officials say the overhaul will also eliminate the majority of workers who directly oversee the vote and install polling stations across the country.“It threatens the validity of elections themselves,” said Lorenzo Córdova, the departing president of the agency, in an interview.The protest comes as the country gears up for the start of the 2024 presidential campaign, amid serious questions about whether a battered and inchoate opposition has the wherewithal to win over disenchanted voters.“It’s an important test of how much they’re able to mobilize their base,” said Blanca Heredia, a professor at Mexico’s Center for Research and Teaching in Economics, referring to the parties opposing Mr. López Obrador, known by his initials, AMLO.The crowd was big enough on Sunday, analysts said, to suggest that many Mexicans are eager to support their institutions — and vent their anger at the president.Ms. González, of Mazatlán, said she had not voted for Mr. López Obrador “because my brain still works.”It remains unclear whether the opposition can use that bitterness to its electoral advantage.“All they have is that anti-AMLO sentiment,” Professor Heredia said of the parties opposing Mr. López Obrador. “If they want to gain more voters that aren’t just anti-AMLO, they’re going to need a positive project — a plan for the country.”Demonstrators marching against the measures pushed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has suggested that protesters want to place the country back in the hands of corrupt leaders.Luis Antonio Rojas for The New York TimesElda Cantú More

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      Why Fox News Lied to the Viewers It ‘Respects’

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      There are some stories that are important enough to pause the news cycle and linger on them, to explore not just what happened, but why. And so it is with Fox News’s role in the events leading up to Jan. 6, 2021. Thanks to a recent filing by Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation lawsuit against Fox, there is now compelling evidence that America’s most-watched cable news network presented information it knew to be false as part of an effort to placate an angry audience. It knowingly sacrificed its integrity to maintain its market share.Why? There are the obvious reasons: Money. Power. Fame. These are universal human temptations. But the answer goes deeper. Fox News became a juggernaut not simply by being “Republican,” or “conservative,” but by offering its audience something it craved even more deeply: representation. And journalism centered on representation ultimately isn’t journalism at all.To understand the Fox News phenomenon, one has to understand the place it occupies in Red America. It’s no mere source of news. It’s the place where Red America goes to feel seen and heard. If there’s an important good news story in Red America, the first call is to Fox. If conservative Christians face a threat to their civil liberties, the first call is to Fox. If you’re a conservative celebrity and you need to sell a book, the first call is to Fox.And Fox takes those calls. In the time before Donald Trump, I spent my share of moments in Fox green rooms and pitching stories to Fox producers. I knew they were more interested in stories about, say, religious liberty than most mainstream media outlets were. I knew they loved human-interest stories about virtuous veterans and cops. Sometimes this was good — we need more coverage of religion in America, for example — but over time Fox morphed into something well beyond a news network.Fox isn’t just the news hub of right-wing America, it’s a cultural cornerstone, and its business model is so successful that it’s more accurate to think of the rest of the right-wing media universe not as a collection of competitors to Fox, but rather as imitators. From television channels to news sites, right-wing personalities aren’t so much competing with Fox as auditioning for it.Take, for example, the online space. Fox News is so dominant that, according to data from December, you could take the total traffic of the next 19 conservative websites combined, and still not reach half of Fox’s audience.But that kind of loyalty is built around a social compact, the profound and powerful sense in Red America that Fox is for us. It’s our megaphone to the culture. Yet when Fox created this compact, it placed the audience in charge of its content.During the Trump years, Fox faithfully upheld its end of the bargain. If you were Republican and felt embattled for supporting Donald Trump, a quick visit to Fox (especially in prime time) would calm your mind and soothe your soul. There you’d be reminded that the Democrats are the real radicals. That the Democrats are the true threat to America. And if you voted for Trump even though you were uncomfortable with some of his conduct, it was only because “they” forced your hand.As the Trump years wore on, the prime-time messaging became more blatant. Supporting Trump became a marker not just of patriotism, but also of courage. And what of conservatives, like myself, who opposed Trump? We were “cowards” or “grifters” who sold our souls for 30 pieces of silver and airtime on MSNBC.Our disagreement was cast as an act of outright betrayal. People like me had allegedly turned our backs on our own community. We had failed in our obligation to be their voice.So you can start to understand the shock when, on Election Day in 2020, Fox News accurately, if arguably prematurely, called Arizona for Joe Biden. It broke the social compact. By presuming the fairness of the election and by declaring Joe Biden the winner of a previously red state, Fox sent a message to its own audience — an audience that had been primed to mistrust election results by Trump and by reports on Fox News — that it did not hear them. It did not see them.In the emails and texts highlighted in the Dominion filing, you see Fox News figures, including Sean Hannity and Suzanne Scott and Lachlan Murdoch, referring to the need to “respect” the audience. To be clear, by “respect” they didn’t mean “tell the truth” — an act of genuine respect. Instead they meant “represent.”Representation can have its place. Fox’s deep connection with its conservative audience means that it can be ahead of the rest of the media on stories that affect red states and red culture.But there is a difference between coming from a community and speaking for a community. In journalism, the former can be valuable, but the latter can be corrupt. It can result in audience capture (writing to please your audience, not challenge it) and in fear and timidity in reporting facts that contradict popular narratives. And in extreme instances — such as what we witnessed from Fox News after the 2020 presidential election — it can result in almost cartoonish villainy.There are courageous reporters at Fox. We learned some of their names in the Dominion filing. They were the people who had the courage to tell the truth. But then there are the leaders, and the prime-time stars. Tough? Courageous? Hardly. When push comes to shove, they embody the possibly apocryphal remark of the French revolutionary Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin: “There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.” And follow them they did, straight into a morass of lies and conspiracy theories that should undermine Fox’s credibility for years to come.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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      In Nigeria’s Presidential Election, A Rare Chance to Turn the Corner

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      In Nigeria’s presidential election on Saturday, voters are desperate to elect a leader who can unleash their youthful country’s potential and chart a new course after years of dashed hopes.Upon winning independence from its British colonizers in 1960, thousands of Nigerians watched as their new green and white flag was raised over the capital at the time, Lagos, at midnight. As fireworks lit up the streets, hope and promise filled the air.Nigerians’ hopes have been dashed many times since then. They have endured a bitter civil war, decades of military dictatorship and, in the past eight years, rising violence and economic failures under President Muhammadu Buhari. A record 89 percent of Nigerians think the country is going in the wrong direction.But in this weekend’s presidential election — one of the most consequential in the 23 years since the last dictatorship ended and democracy took hold — many see a chance to change course.And as Nigerians made their way on Saturday to polling stations across their huge and diverse country, the race to lead their young democracy and its legions of youthful citizens seemed wide open.People began arriving at the polls long before they opened. In Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, voters searched for their names on lists pasted on walls. Young men played soccer on streets that would usually be choked with traffic but had been cleared for the election.Some polling units were slow to open, prompting a few voters’ anger, but mostly their patience. In Abuja, the capital, three young women spread a blanket on a patch of grass and settled in to wait.The monopoly on power that the two major parties have held for two decades has been shaken up by a surprise third-party candidate, Peter Obi. Multiple polls have shown him in the lead, propelled by enthusiastic young voters, but whether they will turn out in large enough numbers to elect him is uncertain.Other polls have shown both the governing party’s candidate, Bola Tinubu, and Atiku Abubakar, a businessman and perennial opposition candidate, in the lead.In a country of 220 million, Africa’s most populous, more than 93 million people registered for permanent voting cards, the most ever, the election commission said.Waiting for money outside a bank this month in Lagos. A shortage of bank notes has made it hard to pay for food, medicine and other daily essentials.John Wessels/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA market this month in Lagos. A record 89 percent of Nigerians think the country is going in the wrong direction.John Wessels/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOn a recent afternoon outside an event hall in Lagos, one remorseful former Buhari voter, Joshua Pius, 34, a drummer on a break from performing, said he was now earning so little that his young family had been forced to cut back on food. His children are 1 and 3.Mr. Pius was determined to make his next vote count, he said, as bouncy highlife music from a funeral streamed from the hall. Funerals in Nigeria are often celebrations of life rather than somber occasions.He said, using the shorthand for the permanent voter’s card, “The only hope you have is your P.V.C.”Like many Nigerians, Mr. Pius has been blindsided by a sudden countrywide shortage of cash — a crisis precipitated when the government decided to redesign and roll out new currency just before the election. Nigeria’s central bank took billions of naira (the local currency) out of circulation, while putting only a fraction in new notes back in. Even those with money in the bank cannot find cash to pay for food, medicine and other essentials, causing widespread suffering.Peter Obi speaking this month to market workers in Lagos.Taiwo Aina for The New York TimesBola Tinubu, the presidential candidate for the governing party, the All Progressives Congress, arriving on Tuesday by bus at Teslim Balogun Stadium in Lagos.Patrick Meinhardt/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSorting out that mess is just one of the mammoth tasks the election winner will face. G.D.P. per capita has plummeted during Mr. Buhari’s tenure. Oil production fell last year to its lowest point in over three decades. The army is deployed all over the country, fighting Islamist militants, secessionists, kidnappers and communal clashes.But the potential of Africa’s biggest democracy is perhaps greater than the challenges. Nigerians speak proudly of their country’s natural riches: As well as oil, it has profuse supplies of gas and solid minerals, as well as greater agricultural potential than almost any other African country because of its vast, fertile lands and abundant water.And that is to say nothing of its human capital. The country’s unofficial motto, “Naija no dey carry last” — pidgin English for “Nigerians never come last” — speaks to their drive and creativity, on display in the booming tech sector, the Nollywood film industry and the global musical phenomenon that is Afrobeats.Recently, however, the young people who drive that innovation have been leaving in droves, or are making plans to.One of those, Henry Eze, 31, a music producer, was on the sidelines of a political rally in Lagos this month, natty in a three-piece suit despite the heat. Mr. Eze said he left Nigeria for Europe in 2017, but ended up instead in a Libyan detention center, where he witnessed horrific abuses and had to bury dozens of his friends before he was rescued and brought home.Rabiu Kwankwaso, the presidential candidate of the New Nigerian People’s Party, greeting his supporters during a final election campaign rally on Thursday in the northern city of Kano.Sani Maikatanga/Associated PressA presidential hopeful, Atiku Abubakar, joined worshipers at a mosque in northeastern Yola on Friday, the day before the presidential election.Esa Alexander/ReutersThe rally he was attending was for Mr. Obi, who six months ago was not seen as a serious contender, but who has run a remarkably successful campaign, particularly online. He is the unexpected challenger against the governing party’s candidate, Mr. Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos, and Mr. Abubakar, the perennial opposition candidate. Of the 18 total candidates, a fourth candidate, Rabiu Kwankwaso, could prove a spoiler by splitting the vote in parts of the north.Mr. Eze said that if Mr. Abubakar or Mr. Tinubu, whom he called “a vampire” for sucking the country’s riches, won the election, he would not hesitate to leave Nigeria again, even though he was traumatized by his first attempt to escape.“Anywhere is better than Nigeria,” Mr. Eze said.Searching for his polling station on Saturday morning in Ikoyi, an upscale neighborhood of Lagos, Maxwell Sadoh, 18, a student and Obi supporter, echoed his words.“It’s so painful to see what we’ve become,” Mr. Sadoh said.Many Nigerians think their leaders, also, cannot get much worse.Some, like Mr. Eze, are putting their hopes in Mr. Obi. Others think Mr. Abubakar’s business acumen will help put Nigeria back on a prosperous path. Many support Mr. Tinubu, who has a reputation for spotting the talent and experience many say the country needs.Michael Odifili, a professional fumigator who was at the Lagos polling station where Mr. Tinubu voted on Saturday morning, said that Mr. Tinubu’s experience as governor put him in good stead to lead the country.“We want Tinubu to correct everything, all the mistakes of the past eight years,” Mr. Odifili said.A man accused of being a pickpocket was attacked on Tuesday in Lagos during a rally for the All Progressives Congress, the party of the current president.Michele Spatari/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNigerian Army troops outside the Central Bank of Nigeria in the southeastern city of Awka on Friday.Patrick Meinhardt/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAll three of the front-runners — who have all faced accusations of corruption or wrongdoing — are promising several major departures from the way things have been done in the past: an end to the fuel subsidies that have helped push Nigeria into a fiscal hole and allowing the exchange rate to be set by market forces rather than officials.For the first time, not one of the top contenders has a military background, a big deal considering former military rulers turned democrats have been at Nigeria’s helm for 16 of the 23 years since democracy was reborn in 1999.For a country so youthful, with a median age of just over 18, politics is dominated by old men, in many ways playing by the old rules.A well-known though murky phenomenon in Nigerian politics is the role of godfathers, a loose term for the “big men” who play an outsize role in making or breaking politicians’ careers.Mr. Tinubu is one of the country’s best-known godfathers, boasting that he handpicked his successors as the governor of Lagos state. Mr. Tinubu even claims that without him, Mr. Buhari would never have become president.This goes some way to explain the slogan coined by Mr. Tinubu and most often associated with his own presidential bid: “It’s my turn.”Churchgoers prayed for Nigeria on Friday at the Celestial Church of Christ on Lagos Island.Ben Curtis/Associated PressCampaign posters for Mr. Tinubu and others under a highway this month in Lagos.John Wessels/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Abubakar, of the main opposition party, has run and lost five times before. He could be forgiven for thinking it is his turn, too.And at a recent visit to a Lagos market, Mr. Obi told the crowd: “If it is anybody to talk about ‘It’s my turn,’ it should be me,” a reference to the fact that there has never been a president from his region, the southeast.Recently, other West African countries have experienced a wave of coups. Afrobarometer, a survey organization, noticed that several factors came together in the lead-up to those coups: dissatisfaction with the direction the country is headed, a lack of trust in the presidency, approval of the military, and a perception that corruption is increasing.In Nigeria, the indicators are going that way too, according to the head of Afrobarometer.On that last night of British rule in 1960, after the flag raising and the fireworks display ushering in their first day of independence, Nigerians waited for the dawn.Often in the years since, analysts have predicted the disintegration of Nigeria, invoking the words of its most beloved writer, Chinua Achebe, who was quoting W.B. Yeats: “Things fall apart. The center cannot hold.”So far, it has held.At a beach this month in Lagos.Michele Spatari/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesElian Peltier More

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      Nigerian Politician Arrested With Nearly $500,000 on Eve of Election, Police Say

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      For years, Nigerian politicians have been accused of buying votes. The lawmaker, the police say, was caught with dollar bills and a list of possible recipients.A Nigerian politician was arrested on Friday with nearly $500,000 in U.S. bills in his car and a list of possible recipients for the money, the police said, announcing his detention on the eve of a closely watched presidential election in which vote buying has worried officials.Vote buying, long a problem in Nigeria, is one of several potential threats to the election, which is set to take place on Saturday. For years, politicians in the country have been accused of handing out cash for votes, knowing that many Nigerians — more than 60 percent of people live in poverty — are in need. The local police on Friday identified the arrested politician as Chinyere Igwe, a lawmaker in Nigeria’s lower parliamentary chamber and a member of the opposition People’s Democratic Party. They said he was arrested on suspicion of money laundering but did not announce formal charges. Mr. Igwe could not immediately be reached for comment, and it was not clear whether he had a lawyer.The police also asserted that Mr. Igwe, a representative in the southern city of Port Harcourt, was found not with the national currency, naira, but with large piles of American $100 bills in his car.The government decided last year to replace its currency with new notes, in part to prevent politicians from stockpiling naira to buy votes. President Muhammadu Buhari, who has reached his term limit and is not standing for re-election, said it had reduced the influence of money on politics. But since the transition period for changing old notes ended this month, the currency change has thrown the country into chaos, with most Nigerians unable to withdraw their cash.The possibility that a politician planned to buy votes with U.S. dollars, as the police indicated, suggested that the issue of vote buying may not be limited to Nigeria’s local currency. (It is not limited to money, either; in past elections, some votes were bought with food, like bags of rice.) Some nongovernmental organizations have urged the country’s central bank to track suspicious bank transfers before the vote.Vote buying is one of many issues that could tarnish the integrity of Nigeria’s election, a close race in which three candidates have a good chance of winning: Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a 70-year-old former governor of Lagos who is the candidate of the governing All Progressives Congress; Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president who has run for the presidency five times; and Peter Obi, a 61-year-old surprise front-runner who is seen as the candidate of the youth.In a separate operation, Nigeria’s antigraft agency announced on Friday that it had seized 32.4 million naira, or about $70,000, which it asserted was meant for vote buying in Lagos, the country’s largest city. It said someone had been taken into custody, but didn’t name the person or say whether they were acting on behalf of a party.Another threat is the risk of election-related violence, which could discourage voters from going to polling stations.Mutmaina Omobolame, a 20-year-old computer science student in Ibadan, Nigeria’s third-largest city, said this week that she did “not feel like voting,” even though she holds a voting card, because she was afraid violence could break out.Nigeria’s electoral body said this week that 87 million Nigerians had collected their voting cards and would be able to cast a ballot on Saturday, the largest figure ever for a democratic election in Africa.Whether that will translate into high voter turnout remains to be seen. More

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene Has a Dream

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene, now one of the most influential Republicans in the House of Representatives, says it is time for Americans to consider a national divorce.“Tragically, I think we, the left and right, have reached irreconcilable differences,” Greene wrote a few days ago on Twitter. “I’ll speak for the right and say, we are absolutely disgusted and fed up with the left cramming and forcing their ways on us and our children with no respect for our religion/faith, traditional values, and economic&government policy beliefs.”And how will this national divorce work in practice? Greene says that “red” states and “blue” states will simply go their separate ways.On education, for example, “Red states would likely ban all gender lies and confusing theories, Drag Queen story times, and L.G.B.T.Q. indoctrinating teachers, and China’s money and influence in our education while blue states could have government-controlled gender transition schools.”On gun policy, in red states, “law abiding gun owners wouldn’t go to jail for shooting an attacker” while in blue states, “the left could achieve their dreams of total and complete lawlessness.”The federal government would still exist, Greene explains, but it would be a minimal state, devoted to border security and defense — an update, of sorts, of America under the Articles of Confederation. Everything else would be up to the discretion of the states, including voting and elections.“In red states,” Greene wrote, “they would likely pursue one day elections with paper ballots and require voter ID with only the red state citizens or even red state tax payers voting. And blue states would be free to allow illegal aliens from all over the world to vote freely and frequently in their elections like the D.C. City Council wants. Dead people could still vote. Criminals in jail could vote that is if blue states even have jails or prisons anymore.”You can probably tell, from the substance of Greene’s comments, that this “national divorce” is more paranoid fantasy than serious proposal. Even so, it rests on a set of ideas and tropes that are in wide circulation in the public at large.Let’s start with the idea that individual states constitute singular political communities, meaning that there is a real distinction between Americans who live in “big states” versus “small states,” between the residents of Montana and those of Massachusetts. There’s also the idea that partisan divides between states represent fundamental differences of culture and interest. And then there’s the idea, underneath all this, that states are, or ought to be, the fundamental unit of representation in the American political system.Taken together, those ideas make a “national divorce” seem, if not likely, then at least plausible. But there’s a problem. States are not actually singular political communities. There are partisan divides between states, even large ones, but they do not represent fundamental differences of culture and interest. And although states play an important role in the American political system, they are not the autonomous, nearly independent units of either Representative Greene’s imagination or the folk civics that shapes political understanding for tens of millions of Americans.It is true that in debates over representation during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia, small-state delegates insisted on equal representation of states in at least one chamber of Congress, so that they might preserve their interests against those of the larger states. William Paterson of New Jersey worried that his state would be “swallowed up” by Virginia, Massachusetts and others if the Senate were apportioned by population, like the House. Likewise, Luther Martin of Maryland called apportion by population “a system of slavery for ten states.” For these delegates, the states were sovereign units with distinct interests that deserved representation in Congress.For James Madison, a fierce proponent of proportional representation in the House and Senate, this was nonsense. Far from unitary, each state was, in his view, a collection of diverse and divergent factions — of a “greater variety of interests, of pursuits, of passions” — that could only speak with a single voice on issues of broad agreement and consensus.On this question of representation and apportionment, the upshot of Madison’s theory of faction was that states, as states, did not have interests to represent in Congress.“States possessed interests,” the historian Jack Rakove explains in “Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution,” “but these were rooted in the attributes of individuals: in property, occupation, religion, opinion, and the uneven distribution of human faculties. Moreover, since congeries of interests could be found within any state, however small — witness Rhode Island — the principle of unitary corporate representation was further undercut.”Madison lost the battle for proportional representation in the Senate — small-state delegates threatened to torpedo the convention rather than accept an outcome that might undermine their influence in the national legislature. But he would return, years later, to this argument about the nature of the states, and the divergent interests within them, in a letter written just before his death.Addressed, in substance, to critics of majority rule like John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, Madison again challenged the idea that states represent distinct and singular political communities.In Virginia, he notes, there is “a diversity of interests, real or supposed” and “much disagreement” on questions of infrastructure and “public patronage.” If majority rule threatens abuse of power in national government — because one interest may grow in size over another — then it would have to do the same within each individual state, rendering “a majority government as unavoidable an evil in the States individually as it is represented to be in the States collectively.”But let’s say you could split each state into its constituent interests, so that majorities would not form against it. Well, then, Madison says, you would find yourself in the same situation as before: “In the smallest of the fragments, there would soon be added to previous sources of discord a manufacturing and an agricultural class, with the difficulty experienced in adjusting their relative interests, in the regulation of foreign commerce if any, or if none in equalizing the burden of internal improvement and of taxation within them.”No matter how small you go, in other words, you run into the simple fact that there’s no such thing as a truly homogeneous political community. There will always be differences of belief and interest, and the only way to deal with them in a representative, republican government is through deliberation and majority rule.What was true in the 18th and 19th centuries is true now. A “national divorce” is possible only if the states represent singular political communities. But they don’t. A conservative, deep “red” state like Oklahoma still has liberal, “blue” cities and suburbs with conflicting interests. If you tried to separate conservative rural areas from liberal urban ones, you’d quickly find that within those subdivisions lie profound political differences among both individual people and groups of people.We are not actually 50 separate communities tied together by a single document. We are a single, national community of diverse and divergent interests in every corner of the union. The states aren’t hard borders of culture and politics, and there’s no way to divide the country so that all Americans live in their own camp, with their own side. Perhaps if conservatives and Republicans win enough elections, we’ll have a much smaller and less expansive federal government than we do now. But that will not solve the problem of political conflict and majority rule; it will simply push the problem down to the next level of government.What advocates of a “national divorce” or some other separation want is a resolution of the struggle of democratic life, a point at which they must no longer contend with alternative and conflicting ways of living. But that is just another fantasy.The great virtue (or perhaps curse) of democracy is that it doesn’t settle — it keeps moving. There are no final victories, but there are no final defeats either. There is only the struggle for a more humane world or, for some among us, a more hierarchical one.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