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      Putin Raises Stakes in the War, With Direct Challenge to the West

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      The Russian leader announced a call-up of troops and hinted at using nuclear weapons, accusing the West of trying to “destroy our country” and vowing that Russia would defend itself.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia accelerated his war effort in Ukraine on Wednesday, announcing a call-up of roughly 300,000 reservists to the military, while also directly challenging the West over its support for Ukraine with a veiled threat of using nuclear weapons.In a rare address to the nation, Mr. Putin said he was prepared to declare four Ukrainian regions to be part of Russia as early as next week, even though some of that territory is still controlled by Ukrainian forces. And he framed the war he launched seven months ago in existential terms for Russia, insisting that the nation was merely defending itself against a mortal threat to its “sovereignty” and that the West was seeking to “weaken, divide and ultimately destroy our country.”“If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people,” he said. “This is not a bluff.”Taken together, Mr. Putin’s speech laid out the Kremlin’s strategy of continuing to raise the stakes in the war, despite the humiliating setbacks Russia’s military has suffered on the battlefield and a potential public backlash in Russia. Protests against the mobilization and arrests were reported in dozens of cities.The address also suggested that even as Mr. Putin was mobilizing more troops, his broader aim was to startle the United States and its European allies into dropping their support for Ukraine or compelling President Volodymyr Zelensky to negotiate a peace deal that is acceptable to Moscow.A photograph released by Russian state media on Tuesday shows President Vladimir V. Putin speaking at a meeting on Wednesday.Gavriil Grigorov/Sputnik“You get the feeling now that he might do anything, and this is his strategic potential,” Gleb O. Pavlovsky, a Moscow political analyst and a former adviser to Mr. Putin, said in a phone interview. “He is using this strategic potential because he has no other.”Russian occupation authorities in four Ukrainian regions declared on Tuesday that they would stage referendums on annexation by Russia, laying the groundwork for Mr. Putin’s escalation. In his speech on Wednesday, he said he would support the results, likely redefining the territory as part of Russia, while justifying the mobilization as a matter of self-defense.But if Mr. Putin’s aim was to change the terms of the war so profoundly as to shake Ukraine and its allies, there was no immediate evidence that it was working.In Kyiv, Mr. Zelensky told a German newspaper in response to Mr. Putin’s speech that the Russian president wanted to “drown Ukraine in blood” and that he would only negotiate “if they leave our territories.” Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, said in an interview with The New York Times that the situation was “dangerous,” but that Russia’s status as a nuclear power would not “change what we are doing.”At the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Wednesday, President Biden insisted that “we will stand in solidarity to Russia’s aggression,” and said Mr. Putin was making “irresponsible nuclear threats.’’ He added later, “This war is about extinguishing Ukraine’s right to exist as a state.”In Russia, the announcement of a major call-up thrust the Kremlin into uncharted political terrain. Until now, the government has sought to assure regular Russians that they could go on living their lives, referring to the war as only a “special military operation” and insisting that no one would be forced to fight in Ukraine against his will.But this month’s stunning counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces, in which Kyiv retook more than one thousand square miles of territory, appeared to change that calculus. Mr. Putin suddenly appeared on the back foot, under fire from even some of his supporters on national television who claimed that he was not waging war decisively enough. And the fact that Russia lacked sufficient combat personnel in Ukraine to make gains or even to hold territory — as Western analysts and officials have asserted for months — became unmistakable.The city of Bakhmut, in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, is on the front line in the war with Russia. Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesIn response, Mr. Putin declared for the first time on Wednesday that Russian civilians could be pressed into service in Ukraine. Apparently keen to avoid a public backlash, the Russian leader insisted that the new draft was only a “partial mobilization” and that only men with military experience would receive orders to report for duty.Mr. Putin said that Russia’s goals in Ukraine had not changed and that the move was “necessary and urgent” because the West had “crossed all lines” by providing sophisticated weapons to Ukraine.In subsequent remarks, Russia’s defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, put the number of potential new call-ups at 300,000 people. He said that university students would not be subject to the draft, and that young conscripts serving the one year of military service that is required in Russia would not be sent to the front lines.But the official order declaring the call-ups was far more vague, leaving open the possibility that the government could later broaden the draft.In Russia, news of the call-up spurred protests across the country; more than 1,200 from 38 cities were detained, according to OVD-Info, a human rights watchdog that monitors police activity. In Moscow, hundreds of protesters gathered on the Old Arbat, a pedestrian street in the city center, screaming “Send Putin to the trenches!” and “Let our children live!”Some Russians rushed to purchase plane tickets out of the country, and the Telegram messaging app was filled with messages about the border situation and possible ways to get out of the country.Vasiliy Horkaviy, center, and his father Alexey Horkaviy, left, in an evacuation vehicle taking them from Kupiansk, Ukraine, on Wednesday.Nicole Tung for The New York TimesThe responses underscored the risks being taken by Mr. Putin as he pushed to escalate a war that has caused heavy Russian casualties and is increasingly violating his unspoken deal with the public: that Russians stay out of politics and the Kremlin lets them live their lives. Mr. Putin has successfully clamped down on dissent since starting the war, with new censorship laws and a spate of arrests, but analysts said that the main reason he long avoided declaring a draft was his fear of public backlash.“This is crossing a red line,” Mr. Pavlovsky, the former Putin adviser, said, referring to Wednesday’s mobilization order. “It will violate, in a sense, the contract with the Putin majority.”Military analysts said the draft would not have immediate consequences on the battlefield because it would take weeks, if not months, for Russia to mobilize, train and equip additional combat-ready troops. Still, the move could begin to address Russia’s manpower shortages, in part because it would prohibit existing contract soldiers from quitting, said Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at the CNA defense research institute in Arlington, Va.Mr. Putin this week has also sought to retake the initiative by setting the stage for claiming sovereignty over more territory in Ukraine. Russian occupation authorities in Ukraine said they would hold five-day, snap “referendums” starting Friday on joining Russia, a likely prelude to annexation.“Russia can’t give up on people living close by to be torn apart by executioners and fail to respond to their desire to determine their own fate,” Mr. Putin said, referring to Ukrainians in occupied territory, even as reports continue to emerge of torture and killings by Russian occupying forces.Pro-Kremlin analysts and officials have said that after annexation, Moscow could claim that any further Ukrainian military action on those territories was an attack on Russia itself, providing Mr. Putin with a justification for retaliation. He did not explicitly threaten a nuclear response, but warned that he was ready to use all of the weapons in Russia’s arsenal to protect what the Kremlin considered Russian territory.“An attack on the people and territories will be an attack on Russia,” a senior Russian lawmaker, Konstantin I. Kosachev, posted on social media, warning the West to “stop playing military games with a nuclear state.”Western officials have condemned the planned referendums as “sham’’ votes, and Ukrainian officials have described them as a red line after which negotiation with Russia would be impossible.But there remained some signals that Mr. Putin was open to a negotiated exit from the war.Hours after his speech, officials in Kyiv announced that Russia had released 215 Ukrainians in a prisoner of war exchange, including the top two commanders of the Azov Battalion and more than 100 other troops who were involved in the last-ditch defense of Mariupol before it fell to the Russians in May — fighters who are regarded in Ukraine as national heroes. Saudi Arabia made its own announcement about an exchange that secured the release of 10 prisoners held by Russia, including U.S. and British citizens.Andrei Kortunov, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, a research organization close to the Russian government, said in a phone interview that he did not expect Mr. Putin to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine as long as NATO did not directly attack Russia. Doing so would offer no significant battlefield advantage over conventional weapons, he said, while “the political risks associated with this are very high.”Mr. Kortunov said that Mr. Putin’s goal was now pressuring the West, rather than Ukraine, to agree to some kind of peace deal.“This means that there is no hope for political dialogue with Kyiv,” Mr. Kortunov said of Mr. Putin’s apparent plans for annexing more of Ukraine. “If there is any dialogue, it will be with the West, not with Kyiv.”Ukrainian military vehicles in Bakhmut on Wednesday.Tyler Hicks/The New York Times More

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      Your Thursday Briefing: Russia’s ‘Partial Mobilization’

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      Plus protests in Iran intensify and New York State sues Donald Trump for fraud.President Biden addressed the U.N. General Assembly yesterday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesPutin signals a coming escalationVladimir Putin accelerated his war effort in Ukraine yesterday and announced a new campaign that would call up roughly 300,000 additional Russian troops. Here are live updates of the war.In a rare address to the nation, the Russian president made a veiled threat of using nuclear weapons. “If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people,” Putin said. “This is not a bluff.”His comments appeared to be a shift in his domestic strategy to the war. Ukraine said Putin’s remarks reflected his desperation: Russia’s military has suffered humiliating setbacks this month. (Here’s a map of Ukraine’s advances.)It also seemed to be an effort to startle the U.S. and its Western allies into dropping their support. But at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Western leaders looked undeterred. President Biden said the U.S. and its allies would “stand in solidarity” against Russia and accused Moscow of violating the U.N. charter.Reaction: Protests erupted across Russia in response to the “partial mobilization,” and at least 1,252 people have been detained. Russians also rushed to buy one-way flights out of the country.Analysis: Experts say Russia currently has 200,000 troops, or fewer, in Ukraine. Putin’s campaign would more than double that, but those called up need training and weapons.Other updates:Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, is expected to address the U.N. shortly after this newsletter sends. Here are live updates of the General Assembly.Ten prisoners of war, including two U.S. military veterans, have been transferred to Saudi Arabia as part of a Russia-Ukraine exchange, Saudi Arabia said.Protesters rallied outside the U.N. to protest Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi.Stephanie Keith/Getty ImagesProtests in Iran escalateAntigovernment protests in Iran over the death of a 22-year-old woman in police custody are intensifying. The unrest has spread to dozens of cities, and at least seven people have been killed in her home province, Kurdistan.The protests appear to be one of the largest displays of defiance of the Islamic Republic’s rule in years. Women risked arrest by removing and burning their hijabs in public. Protesters have called for an end to the Islamic Republic with chants of “Mullahs get lost,” “Death to the supreme leader” and “Life, liberty and women.”The State of the WarRaising the Stakes: Kremlin-backed officials in four partially occupied regions announced referendums on joining Russia and President Vladimir V. Putin called up roughly 300,000 reservists to join the fight in Ukraine, indicating a possible escalation of the war.Ukraine’s Counteroffensive: As Ukrainian troops try to inch forward in the east and south without losing control of territory, they face Russian forces that have been bolstered by inmates-turned-fighters and Iranian drones.In Izium: Following Russia’s retreat, Ukrainian investigators have begun documenting the toll of Russian occupation on the northeastern city. They have already found several burial sites, including one that could hold the remains of more than 400 people.A Near Miss: A powerful Russian missile exploded less than 900 feet from the reactors of a Ukrainian nuclear plant far from the front lines, according to Ukrainian officials. The strike was a reminder that despite its recent retreat, Russia can still threaten Ukraine’s nuclear sites.The government responded by unleashing security forces, including riot police officers and the plainclothes Basij militia, to crack down on the protesters. Internet and cell service have been disrupted in neighborhoods where there were protests. Access to Instagram, which has been widely used by the protesters, was also restricted.Background: Mahsa Amini died last week after the morality police arrested her on an accusation of violating the law on head scarves.Context: Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s president, made his first appearance at the U.N. yesterday. He made no mention of the protests, even as demonstrators gathered outside the building to protest Amini’s death. Raisi also did not address the health concerns about Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 83, who recently canceled all meetings and public appearances because of illness.Letitia James’s lawsuit strikes at the foundation of Donald Trump’s public image and his sense of self.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesNew York sues Trumps claiming fraudDonald Trump and his family business fraudulently overvalued his assets by billions of dollars in a sprawling scheme, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday by the New York attorney general, Letitia James.James said Trump inflated his net worth by billions, doing so with the help of three of his children: Eric, Donald Jr. and Ivanka. She said that the defendants repeatedly manipulated the value of assets to receive favorable loans and assist with their tax burden.James concluded that Trump and his family business violated several state criminal laws and “plausibly” broke federal criminal laws as well. She is seeking to bar the Trumps from ever running a business In New York State again, but her case could be difficult to prove.Details: In one example cited in the lawsuit, the company listed a group of rent-stabilized apartments in its building on Park Avenue as worth $292 million, multiplying by six the figure that appraisers had assigned.Context: Trump faces six separate investigations. Here is where each stands.THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificMany of the whales are dying as they lie stranded on a beach in Tasmania.Agence France-Presse, via Department of Natural Resources /AFP via Getty ImagesAround 230 pilot whales are stranded on a Tasmanian beach where 470 whales were beached in 2020. Half have already died. European corporate investment in China has fallen steeply. It is now limited to a handful of multinationals.China’s “zero Covid” policy means that Hong Kong is no longer considered a global aviation hub, Al Jazeera reports.In an effort to counter China’s growing influence in the Pacific, the U.S., the U.K., Australia and New Zealand are conducting joint military exercises with Fiji, The Associated Press reports.World NewsThe U.S. Federal Reserve made its third straight supersize rate increase yesterday: three-quarters of a point. Here are live updates.The French leftist politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon defended a lawmaker who admitted to slapping his wife, renewing debates over the left wing’s dedication to feminism.U.S. medical experts recommended that doctors screen all patients under 65 for anxiety.The Times looked at the Republican Party’s chances in the U.S. House of Representatives. New congressional maps offer them a huge advantage.What Else Is HappeningJames Manning/Press Association, via Associated PressRoger Federer will play his last match tomorrow, a doubles appearance in which he is expected to team up with Rafael Nadal.New York City is fighting about the fate of its carriage horses again.Bar-tailed godwits fly from Alaska to New Zealand and Australia without stopping to eat, drink or rest. Researchers believe the feat is so extraordinary that it should change the study of ornithology itself.A Morning ReadLoretta Sipagan, 87, spent more than two months in prison after working as a community organizer.Jes Aznar for The New York TimesFifty years ago this week, Ferdinand Marcos placed the Philippines under military rule. Now, Marcos’s son is in power, after spending years trying to rehabilitate his father’s name. Victims who survived the crackdown fear their stories will be lost. “What happened before was true,” a community organizer told The Times. “They can try to change history, but they can’t.”Lives lived: Jack Charles, one of Australia’s leading Indigenous actors, had a charismatic personality and a troubled personal life. He died this month at 79.ARTS AND IDEAS‘We’re on That Bus, Too’A quarantine bus crashed in China on Sunday, killing at least 27 people. The accident has become a flash point for online protest at the government’s “zero Covid” policy.Some shared an old headline on social media: “Evil is prevalent because we obey unconditionally.” An editor lamented on his WeChat Timeline: “Just because an extremely small number of people may die from Covid infections, a whole nation of 1.3 billion Chinese are held hostage.”“We’re on that bus, too” has been one of the most shared comments since the crash.“The bus itself was a symbol of their collective ‘zero Covid’ destiny: the country’s 1.4 billion people heading to an unknown destination,” my colleague Li Yuan writes in an analysis of the outrage. “They felt they have lost control of their lives as the government pursues its policy relentlessly, even as the virus has become much milder and much of the world is eager to declare the end of the pandemic.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookDavid Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Greg Lofts.Warm spices flavor this Hungarian honey cake.What to Watch“See How They Run,” a witty whodunit, riffs on Agatha Christie.TravelIn Istanbul, the elegant summer palaces known as kasir offer a glimpse of Ottoman life.Now Time to PlayPlay today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: large beer mug (five letters).Here are today’s Wordle and today’s Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. “We announce the establishment of the People’s Republic of China,” Mao Zedong said 73 years ago yesterday.The latest episode of “The Daily” is on migrants in the U.S.You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      A Shrinking Margin

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      Democrats lost ground with Hispanic voters in 2020. It doesn’t seem to have been a blip.In Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, he won the Hispanic vote over Mitt Romney by 40 percentage points — 70 percent to 30 percent, according to Catalist, a political research firm. Four years later, Hillary Clinton did even better, beating Donald Trump by 42 percentage points among Hispanic voters.But then something changed.The economy became even stronger at the start of Trump’s presidency than it had been during Obama’s. The Democratic Party moved further to the left than it had been under Obama. Trump turned out to have a macho appeal, especially to some Hispanic men. And some Hispanic voters became frustrated with the long Covid shutdowns.Whatever the full explanation, Hispanic voters have moved to the right over the past several years. As a group, they still prefer Democrats, but the margin has narrowed significantly. In 2020, Joe Biden won the group by only 26 percentage points. And in this year’s midterms, the Democratic lead is nearly identical to Biden’s 2020 margin, according to the latest New York Times/Siena College poll — a sign that the shift was not just a one-election blip:Which party’s candidate are you more likely to vote for in this year’s election for Congress? More

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      How ‘Lord of the Rings’ Inspires Italy’s Giorgia Meloni

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      Giorgia Meloni, the nationalist politician who is the front-runner to become prime minister, sees “The Lord of the Rings” as not just a series of novels, but also a sacred text.ROME — Giorgia Meloni, the hard-right leader who is likely to be the next prime minister of Italy, used to dress up as a hobbit.As a youth activist in the post-Fascist Italian Social Movement, she and her fellowship of militants, with nicknames like Frodo and Hobbit, revered “The Lord of the Rings” and other works by the British writer J.R.R. Tolkien. They visited schools in character. They gathered at the “sounding of the horn of Boromir” for cultural chats. She attended “Hobbit Camp” and sang along with the extremist folk band Compagnia dell’Anello, or Fellowship of the Ring.All of that might seem some youthful infatuation with a work usually associated with fantasy-fiction and big-budget epics rather than political militancy. But in Italy, “The Lord of the Rings” has for a half-century been a central pillar upon which descendants of post-Fascism reconstructed a hard-right identity, looking to a traditionalist mythic age for symbols, heroes and creation myths free of Fascist taboos.“I think that Tolkien could say better than us what conservatives believe in,” said Ms. Meloni, 45. More than just her favorite book series, “The Lord of the Rings” was also a sacred text. “I don’t consider ‘The Lord of the Rings’ fantasy,” she said.Tolkien’s agrarian universe, full of virtuous good guys defending their idyllic, wooded kingdoms from hordes of dark and violent orcs, has for decades prompted scholarly, and convention center, debate over the author’s racial and ideological biases, his view of modernity and globalization. More recently, his works have also provided a fertile shire for nationalists who see themselves in his heroic archetypes.But in Italy, the adventures of Bilbo Baggins and the maps of Mordor have informed generations of post-Fascist youths, including Ms. Meloni, who, the latest polls strongly suggest, will emerge from the election on Sunday as Italy’s first female prime minister — and the first descended from post-Fascist roots.Ms. Meloni, who leads the hard-right Brothers of Italy party, and who has called for a naval blockade against illegal migrants and warns her supporters about the dark, conspiratorial forces of internationalist bankers, first read Tolkien, a conservative who once called Hitler a “ruddy little ignoramus,” at age 11. She became a fantasy fanatic.In her early 20s, she surfaced in chat rooms under the nickname Khy-ri, calling herself the “little dragon of the Italian undernet.” More recently, she named her political conference Atreju, an Italian rendering of the name of the hero of “The NeverEnding Story,” best known as a 1980s cult film featuring a flying animatronic character that appeared to be half dragon, half Labrador retriever.As a government minister in 2008, Ms. Meloni posed for a magazine profile next to a statue of the wizard Gandalf. In 2019, she honored a manga character, Captain Harlock, the “space pirate,” as a “symbol of a generation that challenged the apathy and indifference of people.” Last month, she lamented that her busy campaign schedule had kept her from mainlining Amazon’s new “Rings of Power” series.But Ms. Meloni’s otherworldly interests have as much to do with politics as personal taste.“The genre of fantasy in Italy has always been cultivated by the right,” said Umberto Croppi, a former member of the Italian Social Movement who is now the director of a national association of public and private agencies in Italy’s culture industry. He said that the two worlds shared a “vision of spirituality against materialism, a metaphysical vision of life against the forms of the modern world.”A supporter of Ms. Meloni wearing a hobbit T-shirt at one of her rallies this month in Cagliari. Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesThe modern world did not work out so well for the die-hard Fascists who stayed loyal to Hitler and Mussolini after the official Italian government switched sides to join the Allies during World War II.After the war, many of those Fascists flocked to the Italian Social Movement, but the party’s efforts to reintegrate into Italy’s institutions eventually hit a wall. Its younger members, feeling excluded from civil society, seized on an Italian edition of “The Lord of the Rings,” prefaced by Elémire Zolla, a philosopher who was a point of reference on the hard right and who argued that Tolkien was “talking about everything we confront every day.”That resonated with a small group of the party’s Youth Front, already bristling at the cultural dominance of the left. They saw themselves, as one of their leaders, Generoso Simeone, put it, as “inhabitants of the mythical Middle-earth, also struggling with dragons, orcs, and other creatures.” Seeking a more palatable alternative to quoting Mussolini’s speeches and spray-painting Swastikas, which, Mr. Croppi pointed out, “was easy to reproduce on walls,” in 1977, they created the first Camp Hobbit festival.“The idea to call it Camp Hobbit came from a real strategy,” said Mr. Croppi, one of the founders. The thinking was to move beyond the old symbols and to capitalize on the party’s isolation, smallness and victimization by violent leftist enemies to make their hero “not the warrior Aragorn, but the little hobbit — we wanted to get out of this militarist, heroic idea.”The party’s old guard was perplexed. But, with the support of hard-liners, Camp Hobbit festivals emerged as formative touchstones for the young activists. Celtic cross flags that meshed perfectly with the Tolkien aesthetic waved. The band Fellowship of the Ring played songs about European identity, including what became the anthem of the party’s Youth Front, “Tomorrow Belongs to Us.”The song echoed a ballad “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” sung by a member of the Hitler Youth in a chilling scene in the movie “Cabaret.” Mr. Croppi acknowledged that the camps had their fair share of Fascist salutes, but argued they were “ironic.”When Ms. Meloni entered the picture as a teenage activist in the Youth Front in Rome in the 1990s, the far right — especially in the capital — was still in a trenchlike mentality, struggling to break with the previous generation.Francesco Lollobrigida, a leader in Ms. Meloni’s party, Brothers of Italy (as well as her brother-in-law), said that he and others had a desire starting in the 1980s “to break with the patterns of a party that still had inside of it people who had been in the Social Republic, who had done fascism.”Ms. Meloni, seated across from him, agreed.“There was a desire to get out of that,” she said.Ms. Meloni attended a new iteration of Camp Hobbit in 1993, which she called a “political laboratory” and where she sang along with Fellowship of the Ring and discussed culture and books.“We read everything,” Ms. Meloni said.The bookstore of choice for the hard right in Rome was Europa, just outside the Vatican walls. On a recent visit, it displayed titles like “Mussolini Boys” and “The Occult Origins of Nazism.” A picture of Hitler stood watch above the register next to a cup of pens.Europa has a section dedicated to Julius Evola, an esoteric, deeply taboo, Nazi-affiliated Italian philosopher who became a favorite of Italy’s post-Fascist terrorists and bourgeoisie-loathing nostalgists. Evola argued that progress and equality were poisonous illusions.“A bit boring,” Mr. Lollobrigida said of Evola’s work.Ms. Meloni said that instead a more influential writer at the time was the more mainstream Ernst Jünger, a German former soldier, who sought to make sense of war but also glorified combat.But for Ms. Meloni, all of those took a back shelf to “The Lord of the Rings.” She said she had learned from dwarves and elves and hobbits the “value of specificity” with “each indispensable for the fact of being particular.” She extrapolated that as a lesson about protecting Europe’s sovereign nations and unique identities.In the 1990s, after becoming the leader of the youth wing of the National Alliance, the party that succeeded the Italian Social Movement, Ms. Meloni started her own political festival, which she called “similar” to Camp Hobbit. But this time, she named it Atreju. “It was the symbol of a boy in battle against nihilism, against the Nothing that advances,” she said.She joked that Italians could hardly pronounce Atreju, but she said that the annual conventions, including the first one, in 1998, which was about the dangers of globalization, had reach.“We wanted to say that globalization, you have to govern it,” she said. “If you look around, we weren’t wrong, were we?” she added.At the Atreju convention in 2018, the guest of honor, Stephen K. Bannon, walked by patriotic posters of “Italy’s heroes” and desks selling Evola-themed T-shirts and works by Evola. Ms. Meloni’s supporters have interpreted her calls to defend Italy from mass migration — and the replacement of native Italians by invaders — as a battle cry to protect Middle-earth. This month, at a rally in Sardinia, Davide Anedda, 21, the leader of the local youth wing of the Brothers of Italy, wore a T-shirt reading “Hobbit.”“If you’re not from our world, it’s very hard to understand,” Mr. Anedda said, explaining that Hobbit was a post-Fascist far-right rock band and that Tolkien had written “a fundamental part of our history.”And for Italy, maybe a part of its future.Ms. Meloni, who seems poised to grab her own brass ring after decades in the political trenches, said that her understanding of power and its ability to corrupt and isolate a person was “closely tied to Tolkien’s reading.”“I consider power very dangerous,” she said. “I consider it an enemy and not a friend.” More

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      Sweden’s Far Right Is Rising

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      STOCKHOLM — “Helg seger.”Those two words, spoken by Rebecka Fallenkvist, a 27-year-old media figure and politician from the Sweden Democrats, the far-right party that took 20 percent in Sweden’s general election last week, sent shivers down spines throughout the country. It’s not the phrase, which is odd and means “weekend victory.” It’s the sound: one letter away from “Hell seger,” the Swedish translation of the Nazi salute “Sieg Heil,” and the war cry of Swedish Nazis for decades.Ms. Fallenkvist was quick to disavow any Nazi associations. She meant to declare the weekend a victorious one, she said, but the words came out in the wrong order. Perhaps that’s true. But the statement would be entirely in keeping with the party Ms. Fallenkvist represents which, after a steady rise, is now likely to play a major role in the next government.For Sweden, a country that trades on being a bastion of social democracy, tolerance and fairness, it’s a shock. But perhaps it shouldn’t be. Steadily rising for the past decade, the Swedish far right has profited from the country’s growing inequalities, fostering an obsession with crime and an antipathy to migrants. Its advance marks the end of Swedish exceptionalism, the idea that the country stood out both morally and materially. There’s no doubt about the party’s Nazi origins. The Sweden Democrats was created in 1988 out of a neo-Nazi group called B.S.S., or Keep Sweden Swedish, and of the party’s 30 founding fathers, 18 had Nazi affiliations, according to a historian and former party member, Tony Gustaffson. Some of the founding fathers had even served in Hitler’s Waffen SS.Step by step the party changed its image — in 1995 uniforms were forbidden — but the core ideology remained: Immigrants should be persuaded to go home, Swedish culture should be protected and neither Jews nor the Indigenous Sami people were to be considered “real Swedes.” Not even the soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimovic secured the party’s approval, although he was born in the country and is the national team’s record goal scorer. The stances of the current leadership, which has sought to sanitize the party’s reputation, are equally worrying.Take Linus Bylund, the party’s chief of staff in the Swedish Parliament. In an interview in 2020, he declared that journalists for the national public service radio and television ought to be “punished” if their reporting was biased. Such people, he stated previously, would be “enemies of the nation.” Proximity to power hasn’t softened his views. The day after the recent election, a reporter asked him what he now looked forward to. “Journalist-rugby,” he replied.Jimmie Akesson, the party’s leader, also surprised a television audience in mid-February when he refused to choose between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin. It’s of a piece with the party’s accommodating stance on Russia: The Swedish Parliament was so concerned about a journalist who used to work in the party’s office and had contact with Russian intelligence that it denied the journalist accreditation. Add in a cohort of representatives more prosecuted for crimes than any other, organized troll campaigns against opponents and even attempts to undermine faith in the electoral system, and you have the image of a deeply unsavory party.Even so, the Sweden Democrats’ rise is an impressive right-wing success story. The party entered the Parliament in 2010 with just over 5 percent of the vote — but, under the leadership of Mr. Akesson, it built an efficient, nationwide organization. It more than doubled its share of the vote in 2014 and, after Sweden admitted over 160,000 Syrian refugees, grew even more in the 2018 election. But it’s in this vote that Sweden Democrats secured a sought-after breakthrough with a stunning 20.6 percent of the votes, surpassing the conservative Moderaterna, which had been Sweden’s second-biggest party for over 40 years. Now only the Social Democratic Party, Sweden’s historic party of government, has more support.This monumental rise is thanks to the dramatic changes in Swedish life over the past three decades. Once one of the most economically equal countries in the world, Sweden has seen the privatization of hospitals, schools and care homes, leading to a notable rise in inequality and a sense of profound loss. The idea of Sweden as a land of equal opportunity, safe from the plagues of extreme left or extreme right, is gone. This obscure collective feeling was waiting for a political response — and the Sweden Democrats have been the most successful in providing it. It was better in the good old days, they say, and people believe them. Back to red cottages and apple trees, to law and order, to women being women and men being men.For opening this door, the major parties have themselves to blame. Bit by bit, the traditional parties have adopted the point of view and rhetoric on crime and immigrations of the Sweden Democrats Party — but this strategy hasn’t won back any votes. On the contrary, it seems to have helped the far right. In a little more than 12 years, Sweden Democrats has managed to compete with the Social Democrats for working-class voters, with Moderaterna for the support of entrepreneurs and with the Centre Party among the rural population.The media is culpable, too. In an attempt to protect traditional Swedish democratic values, the mainstream media has often shunned and canceled Sweden Democrats officials and supporters, especially in the party’s early years. But now it seems that this response actually might have had the opposite effect. Individuals leaning toward the Sweden Democrats for various reasons have felt stigmatized: Some haven’t been invited to family gatherings, and in a few cases have even lost their jobs. This has not only fed the party’s self-image as a martyr, but also nurtured even more loyalty among its supporters.One could argue that the traditional parties have had their part in creating the perfect storm. The Social Democratic party has named the Sweden Democrats their main enemy in the election campaign, making other alternatives almost invisible in the public debate. Us or them, was the strategy. Many, predominantly male Swedes, chose the Sweden Democrats. As for a conservative party like Moderaterna, they have seen their voters abandon them for Sweden Democrats and so Moderaterna reacted by emphasizing the similarities between the two parties until it reached a point where it became hard to distinguish any differences at all. The result is now plain to see. The Social Democrats, though the largest party, are unable to form a government. Instead, a conservative bloc, led by Ulf Kristersson from Moderaterna, will attempt to take office — as long as it has the support of the Sweden Democrats. Effectively a kingmaker, the party is now one of the most successful far-right parties in Europe since World War II.It’s a terrifying truth. But we must bear in mind that the majority of the country’s population is not among the Sweden Democrats’ ranks. These people want solutions to real problems — such as a worrying spike in gang and drug-related shootings in several cities — without recourse to ethnic blame games and the vilification of “un-Swedish” culture. As a liberal democrat I will never approve of a party that celebrates its success with references to Hitler’s Nazi ideology, no matter the claim that only by sheer coincidence was the exclamation “Helg Seger” just one letter apart from a Nazi war cry. Elisabeth Asbrink is the author of “1947: Where Now Begins,” “Made in Sweden: 25 Ideas That Created a Country” and “And in Wienerwald the Trees Remain.”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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      Your Tuesday Briefing: Britain Buries Queen Elizabeth II

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      Plus a preview of the U.N. General Assembly and growing nuclear fears in Ukraine.The queen’s coffin was moved from the gun carriage to a hearse before traveling on to Windsor.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesBritain buried Queen Elizabeth IIQueen Elizabeth II was buried in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, next to her husband, Prince Philip. It concluded the period of official mourning — a time of unifying grief and disorienting change.The state funeral began with a majestic service at Westminster Abbey. International dignitaries and about 200 people who had performed public services joined members of the royal family.The queen’s coffin then moved through London in a procession as tens of thousands of people watched. “They don’t make them like her anymore,” one woman said. “She was a one-off.”The funeral closed with a more intimate service and private internment. Before the final hymn, the crown jeweler removed the imperial state crown, the orb and the scepter from the queen’s coffin and placed them on the altar. The lord chamberlain broke his wand of office and placed it onto the coffin, a symbol of the end of his service, to be buried with the sovereign.Photos: See images from her life and a visual dictionary of the symbols of her reign.Reflection: The queen’s coronation and funeral have become the bookends of a generation, Alan Cowell, a contributor based in London, writes in an essay on her life.Yoon Suk Yeol, president of South Korea, is trying to raise his profile by pursuing a new foreign policy agenda.Woohae Cho for The New York TimesU.N. General Assembly beginsThe 77th session of the U.N. General Assembly, the largest annual gathering of world leaders, began yesterday in New York City. Here’s what to expect.The meeting will be the first in-person General Assembly in three years, after the pandemic restricted movements. But the mood is likely to be a somber one. Leaders will address the war in Ukraine, mounting food and energy crises and concerns over climate disruptions, such as the floods in Pakistan.Tensions are expected to be high between Russia, the U.S. and European countries over Ukraine — and between China and the U.S. over Taiwan and trade. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, the leaders of Russia and China, are not expected to attend.The State of the WarA Critical Moment: After success in the northeast battlefields, Ukraine is pressing President Biden for more powerful weapons. But Mr. Biden wants to avoid provoking Russia at a moment U.S. officials fear President Vladimir V. Putin could escalate the war.Ukraine’s Counteroffensive: As Ukrainian troops try to inch forward in the east and south without losing control of territory, they face Russian forces that have been bolstered by inmates-turned-fighters and Iranian drones.In Izium: Following Russia’s retreat, Ukrainian investigators have begun documenting the toll of Russian occupation on the northeastern city. They have already found several burial sites, including one that could hold the remains of more than 400 people.An Inferno in Mykolaiv: The southern Ukrainian city has been a target of near-incessant shelling since the war began. Firefighters are risking their lives to save as much of it as possible.“The General Assembly is meeting at a time of great peril,” António Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general, said last week.Analysis: “This is the first General Assembly of a fundamentally divided world,” said Richard Gowan, the U.N. director at International Crisis Group, a research group based in Brussels. “We have spent six months with everyone battering each other. The gloves are off.”South Korea: Yoon Suk Yeol, the new president of South Korea, is expected to address the General Assembly today. Last week, he told our Seoul bureau chief that it had become necessary — even inevitable — for South Korea to expand its security cooperation with Washington and Tokyo as North Korea intensified its nuclear threat.Other details: Narendra Modi, India’s leader, and Abiy Ahmed, the leader of Ethiopia, will also skip the meeting. The U.S. and Europe will most likely try to pressure Iran over the nuclear deal. And developing nations and the West will very likely spar over development aid.Recent setbacks haven’t deterred Russia from advancing on the eastern city of Bakhmut and claiming all of the Donbas Region.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesNuclear concerns rise in UkraineRussian missiles struck a second nuclear site in Ukraine yesterday, narrowly avoiding a possible calamity in the Mykolaiv region.Moscow damaged a hydroelectric station less than 900 feet (about 274 meters) from reactors at Ukraine’s second-biggest nuclear plant. (The occupied Zaporizhzhia site is the largest.) Despite the close call, there was no damage to essential safety equipment at the plant, which remained fully operational, Ukraine’s national nuclear energy company said.The explosion still caused extensive damage, forced the shutdown of one of the plant’s hydraulic units and led to partial power outages in the area. It also highlighted the threat to Ukraine’s critical infrastructure.“A few hundred meters and we would have woken up in a completely different reality,” a Ukrainian official said. Here are live updates.Details: Before the war, 15 working reactors at four nuclear power plants produced more than half of Ukraine’s electricity, the second-highest share among European nations after France.Other updates:Senior officials from China and Russia announced joint military exercises and enhanced defense cooperation. It signals a strengthening partnership, despite Xi Jinping’s apparent misgivings about the war in Ukraine.Ukraine is facing a severe glass shortage that will make it hard to fix shattered windows before winter.European manufacturing are furloughing workers and shutting down lines because of “crippling” energy bills.THE LATEST NEWSAsiaAn undated photo of the American engineer, Mark Frerichs.Charlene Cakora, via Associated PressIn a prisoner swap with the U.S., the Taliban freed an American engineer in exchange for a tribal leader convicted of drug trafficking.The deaths of 27 people on a quarantine bus in China renewed an anguished debate over “zero Covid.” Even in Tibet, where people live under repressive controls from the Chinese government, there are grumblings against lockdowns.Army helicopters in Myanmar shot at a school, Reuters reports, killing at least six children.Typhoon Nanmadol has killed at least two people in Japan, the BBC reports.World NewsMore than 1,000 residents were rescued across Puerto Rico.Ricardo Arduengo/ReutersHurricane Fiona dumped heavy rain on the Dominican Republic after knocking out Puerto Rico’s fragile power grid. It is expected to strengthen into a major hurricane. Here is a map of its path and live updates.Donald Trump is involved in six separate investigations. And the trial of one of his advisers, Thomas Barrack, who is accused of working secretly for the U.A.E., may shed light on foreign influence campaigns.The economy remains the top concern for U.S. voters, a New York Times/Siena poll found.A Morning ReadHundreds of thousands gathered in Washington, a day after Donald Trump took office.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesIn 2017, as American feminists came together to protest Donald Trump’s election, Russia’s disinformation machine worked to derail the Women’s March, a Times investigation found.Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian American activist whose hijab marked her as an observant Muslim, became a central target. ARTS AND IDEAS“The Phantom of the Opera” will close a month after celebrating its 35th anniversary.Matthew MurphyThe end of “Phantom”“The Phantom of the Opera” is the longest-running show in Broadway history. Based on Gaston Leroux’s 1911 novel, this symbol of musical theater will drop its famous chandelier for the last time in February after 35 years, becoming the latest show to fall victim to the drop-off in audiences since the pandemic hit.The show, about a mask-wearing opera lover who haunts the Paris Opera House and becomes obsessed with a young soprano, is characterized by over-the-top spectacle and melodrama. A Times review in 1988 acknowledged, “It may be possible to have a terrible time at ‘The Phantom of the Opera,’ but you’ll have to work at it.”Speaking about the decision to end the show’s run, the producer Cameron Mackintosh, said: “I’m both sad and celebrating. It’s an extraordinary achievement, one of the greatest successes of all time. What is there not to celebrate about that?”By the numbers: On Broadway, the show has been seen by 19.8 million people and has grossed $1.3 billion since opening. —Natasha Frost, a Briefings writer.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookChristopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini.Garam masala punches up this pantry pasta.What to Watch“The Lost City of Melbourne,” a new documentary with a growing cultural cachet, explores the city’s fraught architectural history.What to Read“The Rupture Tense,” already on the poetry longlist for the National Book Award, was partly inspired by a hidden photo archive of China’s Cultural Revolution.Now Time to PlayPlay today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Fan publication (four letters).Here are today’s Wordle and today’s Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. The executive editor of The Times, Joseph Kahn, wrote about why we’re focusing on the challenges facing democracy in the U.S. and around the world.The latest episode of “The Daily” is on the U.K after the Queen.Natasha Frost wrote today’s Arts and Ideas. You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      Democracy Challenged

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      Representative government faces its most serious threats in decades.This is an election year unlike any we’ve experienced in recent decades. Not only do candidates of both major parties in the United States have starkly different views on the pressing issues of the day, including climate change, war, taxes, abortion, education, gender and sexual identity, immigration, crime and the role of government in American life. They also disagree on democracy itself, especially one of its essential pillars — willingness to accept defeat at the polls.All year, our staff has sought to balance what we think of as politics, the candidates, polling, policy positions, campaign strategies, and views of voters on important issues, with coverage of acute challenges to democracy. Those include a deterioration in the integrity of constitutional democracy, manipulation of state election laws to limit or overturn the will of voters, and a global trend toward autocracy in places where democratic institutions once seemed solid. While we may continue to witness robust political competition in this midterm election cycle in ways that appear in keeping with American history, threats to that electoral system have grown relentlessly at the same time. Our coverage must examine both.So while we have a large staff dedicated to reporting on politics, a special team of some of our best journalists, nationally and internationally, has produced dozens of explanatory and investigative stories on the causes of our democratic decline. These include the rise in political violence, especially on the right, election denial and its hold on many Republicans, disinformation and the profiteers peddling falsehoods, the people and money behind the Jan. 6 insurrection, the origins and popularity of leading conspiracy theories, and the partisan political motives of some leading jurists.It is our deep and ongoing commitment to expose the cancers eating away at democracy, as well as joining the search for solutions. We have been gathering our coverage in a collection called Democracy Challenged.An overviewThe latest piece in the collection, by David Leonhardt, covers the two biggest threats to American democracy: first, a movement within the Republican Party that refuses to accept election defeat; and, second, a growing disconnect between public opinion and government power. Below, we summarize the main points:The Jan. 6 attack on Congress was only the most obvious manifestation of the movement that refuses to accept election defeat. Hundreds of elected Republican officials around the country falsely claim that the 2020 election was rigged, suggesting they may be willing to overturn a future election. “There is the possibility, for the first time in American history, that a legitimately elected president will not be able to take office,” Yascha Mounk, a political scientist, said.Even many Republicans who do not repeat the election lies have chosen to support and campaign for those who do. Representative Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House leader, has gone so far as to support colleagues who have used violent imagery in public comments, such as calling for the killing of Democrats.But there are also many senior Republicans who have signaled they would be unlikely to participate in an effort to overturn an election, including Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate. He recently said that the United States had “very little voter fraud.”This combination suggests that the risk of an overturned election remains uncertain. But the chances are much higher than would have been fathomable until the past few years. Previous leaders of both parties consistently rejected talk of reversing an election outcome.In addition to this acute threat, American democracy also faces a chronic threat: The power to set government policy is becoming increasingly disconnected from public opinion.Two of the past four presidents have taken office despite losing the popular vote. Senators representing a majority of Americans are often unable to pass bills, partly because of the increasing use of the filibuster. And the Supreme Court is dominated by an ambitious Republican-appointed bloc even though Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections — an unprecedented run of popular-vote success in U.S. history.Parties in previous eras that fared as well in the popular vote as the Democrats have fared in recent decades were able to run the government and pass policies they favored. Examples include the Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson’s time, the New Deal Democrats and the Reagan Republicans.The growing disconnect from federal power and public opinion generally springs from enduring features of American government, some written into the Constitution. But these features did not conflict with majority opinion to the same degree in past decades. One reason is that less populous and more populous states tended to have broadly similar political outlooks in the past.A sorting of the population in recent decades has meant that the less-populated areas given outsize influence by the Constitution also tend to be conservative, while major metropolitan areas have become more liberal. In the past, “the system was still antidemocratic, but it didn’t have a partisan effect,” said Steven Levitsky, another political scientist. “Now it’s undemocratic and has a partisan effect.”Over the sweep of history, the American government has tended to become more democratic, through women’s suffrage, civil rights laws, the direct election of senators and more. The current period is so striking partly because it is one of the rare exceptions: The connection between government power and popular opinion has become weaker in recent decades.Here is the full story on democracy’s twin crises.A rally in Lansing, Mich., last fall, organized by the Election Integrity Force.Mark Peterson/Redux, for The New York TimesMore from the seriesThe following are some of the other articles in The Times’s continuing series, Democracy Challenged:The election-denier movement didn’t start in 2020. It began even before the Trump presidency.The Arizona Republican Party’s experiment: First, it turned against the establishment. Now it has moved to anti-democracy sentiment — the principles, the process and even the word itself.A team of Times journalists analyzed 1,150 episodes of Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show and produced an interactive feature explaining how he pushes extremist ideas and conspiracy theories into millions of households.As American feminists came together in 2017 to protest Donald Trump, Russia’s disinformation machine set about deepening the divides among them.Viktor Orban — Hungary’s populist prime minister and a hero to many American conservatives — changed voting rules to help his re-election campaign.THE LATEST NEWSPoliticsRepublican senators at a news conference in August.Jonathan Ernst/ReutersThe economy remains the top concern for voters, a New York Times/Siena poll found, as Republicans focus their campaigns on inflation.Texas sent Lever Alejos, a Venezuelan migrant, on a bus to Washington, D.C. Two months later, he is making a new life for himself.Trump is involved in six separate investigations. Here’s where each of them stands.War in UkraineA missile struck a hotel in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, over the weekend.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesRussia has begun using Iranian-made attack drones to counteract heavy artillery provided by the U.S.Alla Pugacheva, a pop music icon once called “the most popular human being in Russia,” declared her opposition to the invasion.A video showed Russian mercenaries offering to release convicts from prison in return for a six-month combat tour in Ukraine.When Russian troops withdraw, they leave a trail of anonymous death.Other Big StoriesThe queen’s funeral this morning in Westminster Abbey.Pool photo by Phil NobleQueen Elizabeth II’s funeral is today. The Times has live coverage.“We still have a problem with Covid,” President Biden said in a CBS interview, “but the pandemic is over.”After knocking out Puerto Rico’s power grid, Hurricane Fiona has made landfall in the Dominican Republic.OpinionsGail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss Trump and his imitators.Thanks to hard work by activists and others, America is poised to lead on climate, Gina McCarthy argues.As the seasons change, take a cue from birds, butterflies and other migratory animals, Margaret Renkl says.MORNING READSXYZ: The jeans of the young and stylish are unzipped and unbuttoned.Errors: A copy editor recounts his obsession with perfection. Will Smith: Apple thought its Civil War drama could win an Oscar. Then the slap happened.Quiz time: The average score on our latest news quiz was 8.7. Can you can beat it?A Times classic: How to raise better boys.Advice from Wirecutter: Great retirement gifts.Lives Lived: Maximilian Lerner was one of the so-called Ritchie Boys, who were trained at a secret Army intelligence camp to serve in World War II. He died at 98.SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETICAces win W.N.B.A. title: Las Vegas has its first major sports championship after the Aces topped the Connecticut Sun, 78-71, to close out an entertaining finals series. It’s a crowning achievement for the team and its coach, Becky Hammon, who spurned the N.B.A. for this job. Comebacks highlight N.F.L.’s second week: Two teams overcame 20-point deficits to win, and another scored 14 points in the last 1:55. It was indicative of a wild football Sunday.Aaron Judge inches closer: The New York Yankees star hit two more home runs yesterday in Milwaukee, numbers 58 and 59 in what has become a magical season. He’s two shy of the American League record set by Roger Maris in 1961. Judge has 16 games left to break it.ARTS AND IDEAS Fasicka and Patrick Hicks run Smoke’N Ash in South Arlington, Texas.Jessica Attie for The New York TimesAmerica’s best restaurantsKitty’s Cafe makes a pork sandwich that ought to be the most famous meal in Kansas City, Mo. Neptune, in Boston’s North End, has perfected the art of the oyster bar. The married couple at Off Alley in Seattle cram a dozen customers into a tiny room with the raucous feel of a Lyonnaise bouchon.Times food writers and editors ate their way across the U.S. to find the 50 restaurants that most excite them. Here’s the list.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookDavid Malosh for The New York TimesVegetarians, add smoked paprika to this classic split pea soup.What to ReadAndrew Sean Greer’s sequel to his 2017 novel “Less” might raise eyebrows.What to Watch“Moonage Daydream,” a documentary about David Bowie, is more séance than biography.Now Time to PlayThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was validity. Here is today’s puzzle.Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Fireworks reaction (three letters).And here’s today’s Wordle. After, use our bot to get better.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.P.S. Join Al Gore, John Kerry and other experts for a Times event about climate solutions tomorrow.Here’s today’s front page.“The Daily” is about Britain after the queen.Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      Inflation Remains Voters’ Top Concern. Can Republicans Keep Their Focus?

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      Democrats and Republicans are running parallel campaigns, with one party emphasizing abortion and democracy, the other inflation and the economy — and both talking past each other.Zach Nunn, an Iowa Republican challenging one of the House’s most vulnerable Democrats, had been talking for months about rising prices when a Texas congressman two weeks ago invited him to visit the Mexican border — to see the fentanyl confiscated, hear tales of dying migrants and witness overwhelmed border agents.Mr. Nunn took it all in, he said. Then, he went back to a district that stretches from Des Moines to the Missouri line to talk about inflation some more.“You know, from knocking on 10,000 doors, what people are interested in,” Mr. Nunn said. It would not matter, he said, if he were speaking in Clarinda, Iowa — a city of 5,300 — or West Des Moines, a city of 70,000. “People are all talking about what is going on with the economy,” he said.In the six-month primary season that came to a close on Tuesday, issues like abortion, crime, immigration, the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and Donald J. Trump have risen and fallen, but nothing has dislodged inflation and the economy from the top of voters’ minds. On Wednesday, polls out of Wisconsin and Georgia again found inflation to be the issue of greatest concern.A New York Times/Siena poll released on Friday had bright spots for Democrats, but 49 percent of respondents said that “economic issues such as jobs, taxes or the cost of living” were likely to determine their votes in November, compared with 31 percent who saw “societal issues such as abortion, guns or democracy” as decisive. And 52 percent of registered voters said they agreed with Republicans on the economy, versus 38 percent who said they agreed with Democrats.“People are all talking about what is going on with the economy,” said Zach Nunn, a Republican candidate for a House seat in Iowa.Bryon Houlgrave/The Des Moines Register, via Associated PressAnd Republican candidates aren’t letting go.“Inflation is now high enough to rob every working American of a month’s pay over the course of a year,” said Tom Barrett, a Michigan state senator challenging Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat, in a Republican-leaning district around Lansing.Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, released her first advertisement of the general election on Thursday — and it focused solely on inflation.“I’m Nancy Mace, and I have had it with crazy inflation,” she says to the camera as she counts up the cost of cooking an eggs-and-bacon breakfast. (Milk, $4 a gallon, a dozen eggs, nearly $4, and bacon, $8 a pack.)For all the losers in an inflationary economy, there are also winners: people with large mortgages or student loan burdens that shrink away in real terms; workers whose wages suddenly rise, sometimes enough to keep pace with prices; frugal seniors who enjoy Social Security cost-of-living increases tied to the inflation rate and higher interest rates on their savings accounts.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Echoing Trump: Six G.O.P. nominees for governor and the Senate in critical midterm states, all backed by former President Donald J. Trump, would not commit to accepting this year’s election results.Times/Siena Poll: Our second survey of the 2022 election cycle found Democrats remain unexpectedly competitive in the battle for Congress, while G.O.P. dreams of a major realignment among Latino voters have failed to materialize.Ohio Senate Race: The contest between Representative Tim Ryan, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, J.D. Vance, appears tighter than many once expected.Pennsylvania Senate Race: In one of his most extensive interviews since having a stroke, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee, said he was fully capable of handling a campaign that could decide control of the Senate.Even so, inflation has had outsize potency as a political issue for at least a century — and since hyperinflation after World War I helped usher in authoritarianism across Europe, few issues have been quite so politically destabilizing.In the mid-1990s, Robert J. Shiller, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at Yale who was puzzled by the power of inflation as a disruptive force, surveyed people in the United States, Germany and Brazil to determine why inflation had always produced so much anger, wounded national pride and a feeling that an unwritten social contract between citizens and their government had been broken.Facing deep feelings of insecurity, anxiety and unfairness, “not a single respondent volunteered anywhere on the questionnaire that he or she benefited from inflation,” he marveled.Representative Nancy Mace released her first ad of the general election last week, focusing on the economy. “I’m Nancy Mace, and I have had it with crazy inflation,” she says in the ad.Allison Joyce/Getty ImagesFor Republicans seeking control of Congress, that history still could prove determinative, even as Democrats try to center their campaigns on abortion rights and democratic pluralism and Republican strategists test other themes, like crime, the border and Democratic “radicalism.”Representative Kim Schrier, a Democrat in the suburbs of Seattle who is locked in a tossup contest for re-election, has gone after her Republican opponent, Matt Larkin, on abortion, using her background as a physician to press a persona of earnest trustworthiness. Democratic campaign officials in Washington, D.C., have accused Mr. Larkin of questioning the election results of 2020 and refusing to acknowledge President Biden as legitimately elected.Mr. Larkin’s response? The price of eggs, “up 52 percent in Washington State,” he said Thursday, and milk, “way, way up in the Eighth District.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Voters, he said in an interview, “are very, very concerned.”And, in a country where one party controls the House, the Senate and the White House — and in a state where Democrats control pretty much everything — “there’s also a sense that the Democrats in general are doing this,” Mr. Larkin added.That, too, is consistent with economic history: Citizens of countries suffering from inflation have routinely sought to assign blame — to the government, to greedy companies or to politicians. Inflationary periods often yield labor strife, as workers and unions press for wage increases to keep up with rising prices, point fingers at “price-gouging” companies and, more than anything, rage at those in power.Labor leaders marching against inflation at a demonstration in Buenos Aires in August.Juan Mabromata/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesRichard M. Nixon’s 1968 victory over Hubert Humphrey is popularly attributed to the Vietnam War and domestic unrest, but inflation was a “top three” issue, even though price increases were a relatively mild 4.27 percent, said Jason Furman, a Harvard economist with deep connections to the national Democratic Party.Gerald R. Ford’s defeat in 1976 is often ascribed to the hangover from Watergate, but his WIN (Whip Inflation Now) buttons became an object of ridicule in a year in which inflation was still pushing 6 percent. Four years later, Jimmy Carter’s dreams of a second term were vaporized by 13.5 percent inflation.And in 1982, as the Federal Reserve was engineering a recession to finally get control of price gains and Ronald Reagan was absorbing the blame, Democrats beat Republicans by nearly 12 percentage points in the midterm elections — and padded their House majority by 27 seats.“From bitter historical experience, we know how quickly inflation destroys confidence in the reliability of political institutions and ends up endangering democracy,” Helmut Kohl, the chancellor of Germany, said in 1995, harking back to the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic.In 2022, Republicans like State Senator Jen Kiggans, who is challenging Representative Elaine Luria in southeast Virginia, are using inflation not only to go after the party in power, but also to deflect Democratic charges of “radicalism” by portraying themselves as ordinary family folks, in touch with consumer reality.For voters, however, the signals from the actual economy are mixed. The official inflation report last Tuesday showed that prices in August rose 8.3 percent from a year earlier, only slightly better than July’s 8.5 percent. But because of rapidly falling gasoline prices, overall consumer costs from the month before rose a barely noticeable 0.1 percent. Prices at the pump, the most visible inflationary signal to consumers, are expected to continue their fall in the weeks leading up to the election. That could offer at least psychological relief to consumers — and Democrats — as other cost-of-living indicators like food and rent send stock traders and the Federal Reserve running for shelter.Gasoline prices are expected to continue falling in the weeks leading up to the November elections.Carlos Bernate for The New York Times“If you’re going to have 8 percent inflation over the year before up to the election, you’d like to have the last three months at zero, so the sequencing is about as good as it could be” for Democrats, Mr. Furman said.Mr. Barrett conceded that these fresh signals could blunt the political impact. “To some degree, they boiled the frog, then turned the temperature down a notch on the stove,” he said, “but it’s still raging hot.”And his Democratic opponent, Ms, Slotkin, has taken pains to address the issue, too, ticking off legislation and administrative actions that she said she supported to address inflation. They include suspending the federal gas tax, releasing oil from the strategic petroleum reserve, pressing companies on “price gouging” and granting Medicare the authority to negotiate drug prices.“Certainly if there was a silver bullet to fix it, it would have been fired,” she said, adding, “leaders need to do all they can — not just use it as a political issue.”Republicans say that, as children go back to school, higher prices on clothes, food and school supplies will come more into focus, and cold weather will bring the sticker shock of soaring heating bills. The disorienting power of price increases is all the more potent, experts say, because Americans have not weathered them in four decades.Democrats hope to turn voters’ minds elsewhere. On the lengthy “issues” web page of Mr. Nunn’s opponent, Representative Cindy Axne, the word inflation does not appear, though she does mention inflation in one campaign ad as being among a litany of travails hitting Iowans recently. In another ad, Ms. Axne acknowledges that “rising costs are hurting Iowa families everywhere.”Representative Cindy Axne mentioned inflation in one campaign ad, among a list of problems facing Iowans.Cheriss May for The New York TimesOn Friday, Emilia Sykes, the Democratic candidate for an open House seat in northeast Ohio, released a new ad saying she has “a plan to lower costs,” though she avoided the word inflation.Elsewhere, Democrats are focusing almost exclusively on abortion, democracy and the overall theme that Republicans who have undermined the integrity of elections and democratic institutions cannot be trusted with power.In that sense, the parties are entering the final sprint to Nov. 8 largely talking past each other.But the unique ability of inflation to anger voters and undermine authorities in power should not be underestimated, economists say. Wage increases, though stronger than they have been in years, have not kept pace with inflation this year, but in 2021, when voters’ anger showed up most clearly in polling, average family incomes “far exceeded” price gains, thanks in large part to temporary tax cuts and income supplements approved in successive pandemic-relief measures, said Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist.“Average actual real incomes went up, not down,” he said, “so it’s still a puzzle.”For Republicans, there is no mystery, only the challenge of staying on the issue as Democrats try to direct voters’ attention anywhere else.“This stuff is real,” Mr. Barrett said on Thursday. “The Democrats are whistling past the graveyard.” More