Elections

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      How Hated Is Macron? It Could Decide the French Election.

      by

      Given the choice between a president they suspect of despising ordinary people and a far-right candidate they detest, many French voters may stay home.LE HAVRE, France — As an ardent supporter of President Emmanuel Macron of France, Nicole Liot was all smiles after seeing him at a recent campaign stop. But she was also worried about the final round of the French election this Sunday. In her lifetime, she had never seen such intense dislike for a president among some French.“There are presidents who weren’t hated like this even though they weren’t saints,” Ms. Liot, 80, said, positing that what has become known as Mr. Macron’s “little phrases” fueled the aversion. “Like when he told someone, ‘You’re searching for a job? Just cross the street and you’ll find one.’”As anti-Macron protesters burned tires and blotted the sky with smoke over the northwestern city of Le Havre, Ms. Liot added, “Maybe people won’t forgive him for these mistakes of language and attitude.”No French president has been the object of such intense dislike among significant segments of the population as Mr. Macron — the result, experts say, of his image as an elitist out of touch with the ordinary French people whose pensions and work protections he has threatened in his efforts to make the economy more investor-friendly.Just how deep that loathing runs will be a critical factor — perhaps even the decisive one — in the election against his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen. Recent polls give Mr. Macron a lead of around 10 percentage points — wider than at some points in the campaign, but only a third of his winning margin five years ago.“Macron and the hatred he arouses is unprecedented,” said Nicolas Domenach, a veteran political journalist who has covered the past five French presidents and is the co-author of “Macron: Why So Much Hatred?,” a recently published book. “It stems from a particular alignment. He is the president of the rich and the president of disdain.”Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate, at a meeting in Avignon.Daniel Cole/Associated PressNo doubt Mr. Macron could end up winning re-election despite his unpopularity. Even if a groundswell of voters does not turn out to vote for him, what matters for him is that enough voters come out to vote against her — to build a “dam” against the far right.It is a long-established strategy to erect a so-called “Republican front” against a political force — her party, the National Rally, formerly the National Front — that is seen as a threat to France’s democratic foundations.But given the choice between a president they find disdainful and a far-right candidate they find detestable, many French voters may just stay home, or even vote for Ms. Le Pen, tipping the scales in a close election.Every chance she gets, Ms. Le Pen has done her best to remind voters of “these terrible words” — “these words of disdain” — that now stick to Mr. Macron, as she did at a big campaign rally in the southern city of Avignon last week.“They are the words of a power without empathy,” she said as the crowd booed.Both she and Mr. Macron are now vying in the campaign’s closing days for the voters who cast ballots for other candidates in the first round of the presidential election on April 10, on whom the election now hinges.Waiting for Mr. Macron, while smoke from from tires set on fire as part of a protest against the president rose in the distance.James Hill for The New York TimesThe most critical bloc voted for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the veteran leftist who came in a strong third. On the left, many feel betrayed by Mr. Macron’s rightward tilt over the course of his presidency.Ms. Le Pen is trying especially to appeal to voters who feel the same emotions of hate and disdain so often heard among Ms. Le Pen’s core backers — many in Mr. Mélenchon’s camp.Roland Lescure, a lawmaker and spokesman for Mr. Macron’s party, La République en Marche, said he was convinced that “rejection for Marine Le Pen” would prove more potent than the dislike for the president, which he recognized.The rejection was not just of the person of Ms. Le Pen, he said, “but above all of an ideology, of a political history and of a platform, which, when one reads it, is extremely harmful.”But Ms. Le Pen has grown so confident in her widening appeal after taking calculated steps to soften her image that she has even dared seize the term “dam” for herself — beseeching voters six times in her rally to build a “dam against Macron.”The calls for dams on both sides underscored how the final vote boils down to an unpopularity contest: The less-disliked candidate wins.It is especially true in this race, which features the same finalists as in 2017. But if Ms. Le Pen was seen as a bulldozer of far-right ideology back then, in the current campaign she has tried to present a softer, more personable side.Mr. Macron meeting with voters on his way to the Museum of Modern Art André Malraux in Le Havre.James Hill for The New York TimesAnd if Mr. Macron was once seen as a fresh face who inspired many with his promises to change an ossified France, this time he has been cast by his haters as a kind of malign king.A former investment banker, whose tax policies have favored the wealthy, Mr. Macron has been unable to shake off his image as the president of the rich, even after his government provided massive subsidies during the pandemic.His “little phrases” over the years to or about regular folk have cemented that unsympathetic image, creating the kind of political and cultural schism opened by Hillary Clinton’s description of Donald J. Trump’s supporters in 2016 as “deplorables.”It has also not helped Mr. Macron that he barely bothered to campaign initially, absorbed in diplomacy around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but also as part of a strategy to hold himself out of reach of his opponents.For many French, the approach only reinforced the impression of aloofness from a president who has concentrated powers in his own hands and considered campaigning beneath him.Voting in the first round of the presidential election in the Paris suburb of Trappes. Polls give Mr. Macron around a 10 percentage point lead in the second round.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesAs Mr. Macron finally engages the race, he is now being confronted with the raw emotions that have shaped much of his presidency.What to Know About France’s Presidential ElectionCard 1 of 4Heading to a runoff. More

    • 113 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      France’s Marine Le Pen Is as Dangerous as Ever

      by

      TOULOUSE, France — In 2017, we thought we’d seen the worst French politics could offer.Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader, had made it through to the second round of the country’s presidential elections. For the first time since 2002, a far-right figure was in the runoff to become president — and with considerably more support. When Ms. Le Pen lost to Emmanuel Macron, albeit with a worrying 34 percent share of the vote, we breathed a collective sigh of relief. Many hoped Ms. Le Pen, after falling at the final hurdle, would fade into obscurity.It was not to be. Ms. Le Pen never went away, instead biding her time and preparing for the next tilt at power. She now has more chance of winning it than ever: After taking 23 percent in the first round, she’s within eight points of Mr. Macron in the second, on April 24. She’s benefited from the presence of the even more hard-line Éric Zemmour, whose lurid reactionary persona made Ms. Le Pen seem, by contrast, more reasonable. Yet she’s also embarked on a comprehensive effort to soften her image, renaming her party, downplaying the harsher elements of her platform and presenting herself as a warm, even folksy woman who loves her cats.But no one should be fooled. At the head of a party that long housed Nazi collaborators, Ms. Le Pen is an authoritarian whose deeply racist and Islamophobic politics threaten to turn France into an outright illiberal state. She may pretend to be a regular politician, but she remains as dangerous as ever. For the good of minorities and France itself, she must not prevail.If Ms. Le Pen looks more mainstream now, it’s because the mainstream looks more like her. In the years running up to the last election, she ran on a hard-right platform, stoking antagonism toward immigrants and French Muslims under the guise of protecting public order. She especially targeted minorities, “to whom,” she said bitterly, “everything is due and to whom we give everything.” In response to her success in 2017, nearly every party on the political spectrum — centrist, traditional right wing and even socialist — used the talking points of her party, now named National Rally (formerly National Front).The tenor of political discussion, as a result, has shifted substantially to the right. There is now barely any space in French politics to advocate for French citizens who don’t look, behave, pray or eat the way “traditional” French people are supposed to — let alone to champion the rights of immigrants and refugees. In this environment, Ms. Le Pen can turn her attention to more everyday issues, such as rising energy bills and the cost of living, safe in the knowledge that on immigration, citizenship and “national identity,” she’s already won the argument.That success didn’t happen overnight. For more than 30 years now, French political debate has centered itself around issues of identity at the expense of more pressing topics such as health care, climate change, unemployment and poverty. The far right has led the way. Exploiting feelings of decline at the end of the 1960s — as France shed its colonial empire, lost the war in Algeria and submitted to American domination of Western Europe — the far right became a potent political force. It used its influence to defend its conception of French identity, evoking a thousand-year-old European Christian civilization threatened by North African Muslim immigration.This was the foundation upon which the National Front was created in 1972 by Ms. Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. As people from France’s former colonies migrated to the metropole, the party focused obsessively on the supposed dangers of immigration. Mr. Le Pen’s tone was often apocalyptic: “Tomorrow,” he infamously said in 1984, “immigrants will stay with you, eat your soup and sleep with your wife, your daughter or your son.” Such rancorous resentment found some sympathy in certain quarters of French society, where the homogenizing effects of globalization and the increased visibility of Islam among French-born citizens were held to be stripping France of its essential character.This antipathy took in many targets, among them French Jews. Mr. Le Pen was notorious for his antisemitic remarks — for which he was condemned by the courts multiple times — and the party created in his image trafficked in antisemitic ideas, tropes and images. Though Ms. Le Pen claimed to be moving past her father’s fixation on Jews, she continued to fan the flames — refusing in 2017 to accept France’s culpability for the Vichy regime’s role in the Holocaust and even, in a campaign poster this April, appearing to make a gesture associated with neo-Nazis. Capped by Mr. Zemmour’s open embrace of the Vichy regime, antisemitism has re-entered the political mainstream.Muslims have similarly borne the brunt of bigotry. Initially considered a threat from elsewhere — supposedly coming to France to deprive the native-born of jobs — Muslims have in recent decades been viewed as an internal threat. With the rise of Islamist terrorism, Muslims were seen to be practicing an inherently violent religion that required containment by public authorities. To be a Muslim was to be guilty until proved innocent.The past decade has taken this equation to a new level. The widespread fear now is not that a handful of people among nearly six million Muslims might pose a danger to public safety, but that all French Muslims by their very existence threaten the cultural identity of “traditional France.” It is, for some voters, an existential fear. In response, politicians have pushed measures to curb Islam’s purported infringement on French life, such as banning religious attire in public schools, full-face coverings in public spaces and burkinis on public beaches, and passing a bill that gives the state power to monitor Muslim religious observance and organizations.To justify such moves, politicians weaponized the liberal concept of laïcité — effectively state-backed secularism — to restrict freedom of religion and conscience in the interests of an anti-Muslim agenda. This process, crucially, has made it possible for Ms. Le Pen to turn from radical firebrand to reasonable truth-teller. But underneath the sheen of normalcy, the brutally racist ideology her party pioneered over the past 30 years is very much intact.Her manifesto, for example, promises to amend the Constitution to prohibit the settlement of a “a number of foreigners so large that it would change the composition and identity of the French people” — a rewording of the white-supremacist “Great Replacement” theory. She also plans to legally distinguish between “native-born French” and “others” for access to housing, employment and benefits, and allow citizenship only to people who have “earned it and assimilated.” Completing the picture, Ms. Le Pen has said she would ban the wearing of the head scarf in public spaces.In these promises as well as the company she keeps — she has associated with Vladimir Putin, Bashar al-Assad and Viktor Orban — Ms. Le Pen has made clear her intention to reshape France at home and abroad. Her administration would echo those in Brazil, India and other countries where a similar rightward slide has taken hold. For minorities, immigrants, dissidents and democracy itself, it would be a disaster. Though her momentum appears to have stalled in recent days, Ms. Le Pen is not going away, no matter what happens on Sunday. As a French Muslim citizen born and raised here, I fear for my country.And it is my country, as much as it is Ms. Le Pen’s or Mr. Macron’s. At a time when politicians and pundits are demanding Muslims “abide by republican values” if they want to be part of the country, it’s instructive that voters may elect a politician whose core ideology violates the values of liberty, equality and fraternity that France has long championed. In that irony lies the gap between what France could be and what it is.Rim-Sarah Alouane (@RimSarah) is a Ph.D. candidate and a researcher in comparative law at Toulouse 1 Capitole University in France. Her research focuses on civil liberties, constitutional law and human rights in Europe and North America.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

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Johnson Is All Apologies Before Parliament After ‘Partygate’ Fine

      by

      Though opposition politicians called him out, only one member of his own Conservative party called on him to resign.Boris Johnson, the prime minister of Britain, apologized to members of Parliament after he was fined by police for attending a lockdown party in Downing Street during the height of the pandemic.Neil Hall/EPA, via ShutterstockLONDON — Prime Minister Boris Johnson faced Parliament on Tuesday as an awkward pioneer in British politics: a confirmed lawbreaker who misled fellow lawmakers but remains ensconced in the nation’s highest elected office.Apologizing profusely for his recent police fine for breaching coronavirus restrictions, Mr. Johnson tried to move on from a scandal over illicit Downing Street parties that has threatened his hold on power. The war in Ukraine and a lack of obvious successors to him have conspired to keep him in his job, at least for now.But Mr. Johnson’s political resilience did not mask the weighty legal and constitutional issues at stake. Opposition lawmakers hammered the prime minister for flouting the rules he imposed on others and accused him of misleading Parliament when he claimed that none of the social gatherings held in his office had been improper.“He knows he’s dishonest and incapable of changing, so he drags everybody else down with him,” said Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party. He urged backbench members of Mr. Johnson’s Conservative Party not to follow “in the slipstream of an out-of-touch, out-of-control prime minister.”Only a single Conservative lawmaker, Mark Harper, called on Mr. Johnson to resign. Several echoed the arguments of his cabinet ministers that the scandal was a distraction at a time when Europe is facing its gravest security crisis since World War II. Forcing out their leader now, they said, would be a mistake.Still, the angry, emotional tenor of the debate revealed how deeply the scandal has blackened Mr. Johnson’s reputation. No prime minister in living memory has been formally designated as a lawbreaker, and he faces the prospect of additional fines for attending other illicit parties. Tory lawmakers began drifting out of the chamber as the debate wore on, suggesting limits to the party’s backing for him.The angry, emotional tenor of the debate in Parliament revealed how deeply the scandal has blackened Mr. Johnson’s reputation.Tolga Akmen/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Johnson stuck to his penitent tone, apologizing more than a dozen times, though he never explicitly admitted to breaking the law, when asked directly. He was especially contrite about his previous statements to Parliament, which pose a particular danger to him since they have been exposed as misleading, either intentionally or unwittingly.“It did not occur to me, then or subsequently, that a gathering in the Cabinet room just before a vital meeting on Covid strategy could amount to a breach of the rules,” Mr. Johnson said. “That was my mistake and I apologize for it unreservedly.”Ministers caught lying to Parliament are expected to resign under rules written in what is known as the ministerial code. As recently as 2018, a Conservative lawmaker, Amber Rudd, quit as home secretary after admitting that she had “inadvertently misled” lawmakers over government targets for removing illegal immigrants.“The ministerial code is quite clear: deliberately misleading Parliament is a resigning offense since it prevents Parliament doing its job of scrutiny,” said Vernon Bogdanor, an expert on constitutional issues and professor of government at King’s College London. “The trouble is that there is no means of enforcing this principle against a prime minister if his party continues to support him.”Indeed, the ultimate arbiter of the ministerial code is the prime minister himself. Mr. Johnson has disregarded this system of checks and balances before, in 2020, when they involved a member of his government.That was when Mr. Johnson’s independent ethics adviser, Alex Allan, concluded that the home secretary, Priti Patel, had breached the ministerial code in her treatment of members of her staff, even if she was not aware she was bullying them. Despite that finding, Mr. Johnson decided that Ms. Patel had not breached the code and should not resign, and it was ultimately Mr. Allan who quit.Now Mr. Johnson is in the odd position of being a prime minister who is accused of breaking the code, making him effectively the judge and jury in his own case. He has made it clear that he has no intention of stepping down, declaring that the best way to come back from this scandal is to deliver on behalf of the British people.“It’s something the people who drew up the ministerial code didn’t really anticipate happening,” said Hannah White, deputy director of the Institute for Government, a London-based think tank. Under what she called the “good chap” theory of government, the prime minister would typically have resigned before getting to this point.Understand Boris Johnson’s Recent TroublesCard 1 of 5Turmoil at Downing Street. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Drawn and Caricatured: French Cartoonists on the Campaign Trail

      by

      Cartoonists play a high-profile role in France’s political discourse, and they have been busy drawing the presidential candidates as the race approaches its end.PARIS — There is little time left until the French choose their next president on Sunday, and image is important. As media teams flutter around the two remaining candidates, President Emmanuel Macron and the far-right leader Marine Le Pen, the nation’s political cartoonists are out in force, ready to accentuate even the smallest slip.When they pounce, many will be waiting in a country where political cartoons have deep roots, thriving as expressions of unhappiness during the French Revolution and continuing to play an outsize role in modern-day politics.Comic books regularly top the French best-seller lists, and weekly satirical newspapers — most notably Charlie Hebdo and Le Canard Enchaîné — are considered national institutions. Last year, when Mr. Macron’s government granted teenagers 300 euros (about $325) to spend on culture, many bought comic books.“The world of politics is very artificial,” said Mathieu Sapin, a cartoonist behind several comic books featuring Mr. Macron and his predecessor, François Hollande. “It’s very codified, which makes it deeply fascinating from a drawing perspective.”For Mr. Sapin, the French president is a character of fascination. He is often depicted by cartoonists as a gaptoothed, square-shouldered, somewhat boyish figure. But he also remains aloof, granting significantly less access than did Mr. Hollande, who courted cartoonists as much as journalists.“Macron is more distant with the media, though he did once come up to me to tell me how much he loved cartoons,” recalled Mr. Sapin. “He’s a real seducer.”A page from Mr. Sapin’s “Campaign Notebooks,” in which President Emmanuel Macron argues that voters were distracted and would not be interested until the late stages of the race. The war in Ukraine overshadowed the campaign, but Mr. Macron also refused to debate his opponents ahead of the first round of voting. DargaudHow much so was illustrated in Mr. Sapin’s previous book, “Comédie Française,” in 2017. In one cartoon, the two men shake hands. A bead of sweat appears on Sapin’s forehead. “This handshake is taking a long time,” reads the thought bubble.Mr. Sapin is drawing Mr. Macron for “Campaign Notebooks,” his 240-page comic book on the 2022 presidential election. The project brings together Mr. Sapin and five other veteran cartoonists: Dorothée de Monfreid, Kokopello, Louison, Morgan Navarro, and Lara.Each cartoonist was assigned one or two candidates to follow for the course of the campaign — most of whom were eliminated in the first round on April 10. For eight months, they traveled the breadth of the country, attending rallies and meetings, and even tagging along on trips overseas.The team has worked independently, occasionally meeting in Mr. Sapin’s studio to plot on a big dry-erase board. “We are all recounting different events, but it’s all rendered in the same way,” said Louison, who goes by one name. For her, the small details are the most compelling.“Political gaffes, the sight of an aide frantically helping a politician with their tie before a speech, backstage pep talks and spats — these make the comics,” said Louison, who followed Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, during her unsuccessful campaign, joining her on bike rides around the city.Beyond being used as a tool for revolt, political cartoons have long been used as an ideological weapon — Communists and radically conservative Catholic groups in France used cartoons to influence the country’s youth after World War II — and their importance is not lost on Mr. Macron.He gave the keynote speech two years ago at the International Comics Festival in Angoulême, the first presidential visit since François Mitterrand attended the event in 1985, and he announced plans for a European House of Press and Satirical Cartoons to open in the capital by 2025.“Still,” said Mr. Sapin, “he wants to protect his image.”Morgan Navarro, a French cartoonist who contributed to “Campaign Notebooks,” followed Marine Le Pen, depicted bottom left, a far-right leader who has repackaged her campaign to draw in mainstream voters. His drawings were inspired by Hunter S. Thompson’s coverage of the 1972 Nixon campaign for Rolling Stone. DargaudHis rival, Ms. Le Pen, is often drawn as a self-congratulatory figure, her mop of yellow hair and twinkling blue gaze emphasized. Mr. Navarro has chosen to home in on what he sees as a smug air, representing Ms. Le Pen with spiky, upturned features and eyes narrowed in steely determination. Mr. Navarro has noticed some of her subtler tics, too, such as the nervous puffing on an e-cigarette, or the readjusting of a particular strand of hair. These he has worked into his drawings for humorous effect, but also a degree of pathos — something not usually associated with a far-right politician who was once depicted on the cover of Charlie Hebdo dressed in a dirndl and holding a gun to Europe’s head.While in Marseille, Mr. Navarro was startled by the sight of Ms. Le Pen, whose message is fiercely anti-immigrant, posing for a selfie with a group of Muslim men, a moment he captured for the book. “Her image has changed, somewhat — they seemed unfazed by her reputation,” Mr. Navarro said.What to Know About France’s Presidential ElectionCard 1 of 4Heading to a runoff. More

    • 75 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Can Democrats Turn Their 2022 Around?

      by

      With the midterms just over six months away, the electoral prospects for Democrats are looking bleak. President Biden’s approval rating is at 42 percent, around where Donald Trump’s was at this point in his presidency. Recent polls asking whether Americans want Republicans or Democrats in Congress found that Republicans are leading by about 2 percentage points. And with inflation spiking to its highest point in decades, Covid cases rising and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continuing to send economic and humanitarian shock waves across the globe, things don’t look as if they are going to get better anytime soon.What will it take for Democrats to turn things around? What fights should they be picking with Republicans, and how should they be making the case that they deserve another chance at leading the country?[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]Sean McElwee is a co-founder and the executive director of Data for Progress, a research organization that gathers polling data to strategize on behalf of progressive causes and policies. Anat Shenker-Osorio is a principal at ASO Communications, a political communications firm that conducts analytic and empirical research to help progressive political campaigns. McElwee and Shenker-Osorio have deeply influenced my thinking on how words work in American politics: how campaigns can meaningfully address what voters want and how they can persuade swing voters and motivate the party’s base.In this conversation, McElwee and Shenker-Osorio help me understand where Democrats stand with the electorate and what, if anything, they can do to improve their chances in 2022. We discuss why Biden’s approval rating is so low, given the popularity of his policies, why governing parties so often lose midterm elections, whether Democrats should focus more on persuading swing voters or on mobilizing their base, why it’s important for Democrats to get their base to sing from the same songbook, what Democrats can learn from Trump about winning voters’ attention, how Republicans are running politics on easy mode, whether it was wise politically for Biden to double down on the message to fund the police, what political fights Democrats should pick in the lead-up to the midterms, how the party should address spiking inflation and more.You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.Warning: This episode contains explicit language.(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Photo courtesy of Ahmad Ali“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Effort to Remove Marjorie Taylor Greene From Ballot Can Proceed, Judge Says

      by

      The case that Ms. Greene unsuccessfully sought to have dismissed mirrors efforts against other Republicans centered on the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.A federal judge cleared the way on Monday for a group of Georgia voters to move forward with legal efforts seeking to disqualify Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from running for re-election to Congress, citing her role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.The disqualification effort is based on a constitutional provision adopted after the Civil War that barred members of the Confederacy from holding office. It mirrors several other cases involving Republican members of Congress, whose roles leading up to and during the deadly riot have drawn intense criticism.The judge, Amy Totenberg, who was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia by President Barack Obama, denied Ms. Greene’s request for a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order in the high-profile legal feud.Ms. Greene, 47, who is known for her unflinching loyalty to former President Donald J. Trump and for her clashes with Democrats, has steadfastly denied that she aided and engaged in the attack on the Capitol.In the 73-page ruling, Judge Totenberg wrote that Ms. Greene had failed to meet the “burden of persuasion” in her request for injunctive relief, which she called an extraordinary and drastic remedy.“This case involves a whirlpool of colliding constitutional interests of public import,” Judge Totenberg wrote. “The novelty of the factual and historical posture of this case — especially when assessed in the context of a preliminary injunction motion reviewed on a fast track — has made resolution of the complex legal issues at stake here particularly demanding.”James Bopp Jr., a lawyer for Ms. Greene, said on Monday night that the ruling was flawed and minimized the adverse effect that the disqualification effort was having on Ms. Greene’s right to run for office.“This is fundamentally antidemocratic,” Mr. Bopp said, maintaining that Ms. Greene had “publicly and vigorously condemned the attack on the Capitol.”He called the effort to remove her from the ballot part of a well-funded nationwide effort to strip voters of their right to vote for candidates of their choice, with elections determined by “bureaucrats, judges, lawyers and clever legal arguments.”In her request for an injunction, Ms. Greene argued that it would be impossible to fully resolve the case before Georgia holds its primary elections on May 24. Absentee ballots will start to be mailed on April 25, Ms. Greene’s motion said.In the ruling, Judge Totenberg determined that Ms. Greene had failed to prove that there was a strong likelihood that she would prevail on the merits of her legal claims. A state administrative judge is scheduled to hear the case on Friday.The decision by Judge Totenberg stood in stark contrast with a recent ruling in a similar case involving Representative Madison Cawthorn in North Carolina. In blocking that disqualification effort, U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers II, an appointee of Mr. Trump, ruled that the 14th Amendment of the Constitution narrowly applied to members of the Confederacy after the Civil War.Ms. Greene’s critics have said that she frequently referred to efforts to challenge the 2020 presidential election results as “our 1776 moment” in public comments that led up to the riot at the Capitol. They contend that the phrase was a code used to incite violence, and point to the third section of the 14th Amendment in their argument to drop her from the ballot.That section says that “no person shall” be a member of Congress or hold civil office if they had engaged in insurrection or rebellion after “having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State.”Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3Debating a criminal referral. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      French Candidates’ Economic Programs Hold Key to the Election

      by

      Promising tax cuts, higher wages and changes in the retirement age, President Macron and Marine Le Pen vie for undecided voters.PARIS — As President Emmanuel Macron wove through crowds during a campaign stop in northern France last week, an elderly voter got in his face to protest one of his most unpopular economic proposals: raising the retirement age to 65 from 62 to fund France’s national pension system.“Retirement at 65, no, no!” the woman shouted, jabbing a finger at Mr. Macron’s chest as he tried to assuage her. The boisterous exchange was caught on camera. Two hours later, he retreated, saying he would consider tweaking the age to 64. “I don’t want to divide the country,” he said on French television.Mr. Macron’s reversal on a key element of his economic platform, in an industrial region backing the far-right firebrand Marine Le Pen ahead of France’s presidential election next Sunday, was a reminder of the social distress dominating the minds of voters. He and Ms. Le Pen have starkly divergent visions of how to address these concerns.As they cross the country in a whirlwind of last-minute campaigning, their runoff will hinge to a large extent on perceptions of the economy. Worries about widening economic insecurity, and the surging cost of living amid the fallout from Russia’s war on Ukraine, have become top issues in the race, ahead of security and immigration.Ms. Le Pen won by a comfortable margin in the first round of voting last Sunday in places that have lost jobs to deindustrialization, where she has found a ready audience for her pledges to bolster purchasing power, create employment through “intelligent” protectionism and shield France from European policies that expanded globalization.An open-air produce market in Paris, in December. Economic insecurity and the cost of living have become top issues for voters in the presidential runoff.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesWhile Mr. Macron is still expected to win in a tight race, workers in restless blue-collar bastions may yet prove a liability. Despite a robust recovery in France from Covid lockdowns — the economy is now growing at around 7 percent, and unemployment has fallen to a 10-year low of 7.4 percent — many feel inequality has widened, rather than narrowed, as he pledged, in the five years since Mr. Macron took office.After France’s traditional left-wing and right-wing parties collapsed in the first round of voting, both candidates are scrambling to lure the undecided and voters who gravitated to their opponents — especially the far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon — in large part by recasting major planks of their economic programs to appeal to those struggling to get by.Pensions is a case in point. Mr. Macron has worked to recalibrate his image as a president who favors France’s wealthy classes, the business establishment and white-collar voters as he set about overhauling the economy to bolster competitiveness.In 2019 he was forced to set aside plans to raise the retirement age to 65 after raucous nationwide strikes shut down much of France. He had sought to streamline France’s complex system of public and private pension schemes into one state-managed plan to close a shortfall of 18 billion euros, or about $19 billion.Following his confrontation in northern France last week, Mr. Macron insisted that he would continue to push back the retirement age incrementally — by four months per year starting next year — but that he was open to discussing an easing of the plan in its later stages.“It’s not dogma,” he said of the policy. “I have to listen to what people are saying to me.” Mr. Macron has struggled to achieve his goal of raising the retirement age to 65.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesMs. Le Pen accused Mr. Macron of engaging in a policy of “social wreckage” and of blowing with the wind to capture votes, although she has also shifted gears after the protectionist economic platform she advanced five years ago spooked businesses. She dropped plans to withdraw from the European Union and the eurozone.Today, Ms. Le Pen favors maintaining the current retirement age of 62, abandoning a previous push to reduce it to 60 — although certain workers engaged in intensive manual labor like construction could retire at the lower age.As Ms. Le Pen seeks to rebrand her far-right National Rally party as a kinder, gentler party than the one she steered in 2017, albeit with a clear anti-immigrant message, she has focused on economic issues close to blue-collar voters’ hearts.She got out front on one of the biggest issues of the campaign: a surge in the cost of living.While Mr. Macron was trying to broker a cease-fire in Ukraine, Ms. Le Pen was visiting towns and rural areas across France, promising increased subsidies for vulnerable households.She has pledged a 10 percent hike in France’s monthly minimum wage of 1,603 euros. She is also vowing to slash sales taxes to 5.5 percent from 20 percent on fuel, oil, gas and electricity, and to cut them altogether on 100 “essential” goods. Workers under 30 would be exempt from income tax, and young couples would get interest-free housing loans.Her France-first policy extends even further: To make up for increased spending on social programs, she has said she would slash billions in social spending on “foreigners.”Marine Le Pen speaking to supporters on April 10 after the first round of the French election. She has tried to recast her far-right party in a kinder, gentler form.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesShe has also vowed to create jobs and re-industrialize the country by prioritizing French companies for government contracts over foreign investors and dangling a host of expensive tax incentives to encourage French companies that have branched out overseas to return to France.While she has abandoned talk of a so-called Frexit — a French exit from the European Union — some of her proposals to protect the economy would amount to essentially that, including a pledge to ignore some European Union laws, including on internal free trade. She has said she would withhold some French payments to the bloc.Mr. Macron has branded such promises “pure fantasy” and is proposing to retain many of his pro-business policies, with modifications.Having vowed to lure jobs and investment, under his watch foreign companies have poured billions of euros into industrial projects and research and development, creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs, many in tech start-ups, in a country that has not easily embraced change.At the same time, he has faced a challenge in discarding the image of an aloof president whose policies tended to benefit the most affluent. His abolition of a wealth tax and the introduction of a 30 percent flat tax on capital gains has mainly lifted incomes for the richest 0.1 percent and increased the distribution of dividends, according to the government’s own analysis.After a growing wealth divide helped set off the Yellow Vest movement in 2019, bringing struggling working-class people into the streets, Mr. Macron increased the minimum wage and made it easier for companies to give workers “purchasing power bonuses” of up to 3,000 euros annually without being taxed, a policy he has pledged to beef up.The candidates have tried to address concerns about rising fuel prices in blue-collar areas like Stiring-Wendel, a former coal mining town in France’s northeast.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesAs inflation has surged recently, Mr. Macron has also authorized billions of euros in subsidies for energy bills and at the gas pump and has promised to peg pension payments to inflation starting this summer. He has vowed new tax cuts for both households and businesses.His economic platform also aims for “full employment,” in part by pressing ahead with a series of pro-business reforms that has continued to lure the support of France’s biggest employers’ organization, Medef.“Emmanuel Macron’s program is the most favorable to ensure the growth of the economy and employment,” the group said last week, adding that Ms. Le Pen’s platform “would lead the country to stall compared to its neighbors and to put it on the sidelines of the European Union.”For all the differences, the pledges by Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen have one thing in common: more public spending, and less savings. According to estimates by the Institut Montaigne, a French economic think tank, Mr. Macron’s economic plan would worsen the public deficit by 44 billion euros, while Ms. Le Pen’s would widen it by 102 billion euros.“These shifts are significant enough to think that some of their proposals cannot actually be applied — except if they put in place budget austerity measures that they are not talking about,” Victor Poirier, director of publications at the Institut Montaigne, said. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Marine Le Pen Proposes Ban on Muslim Women Wearing Head Scarves

      by

      Marine Le Pen, the far-right contender, has proposed a ban on Muslim women wearing head scarves in public.PARIS — A Muslim woman in a blue and white hijab confronted Marine Le Pen, the far-right presidential candidate, as she made her way through a crowd in the southern town of Pertuis last week. “What is the head scarf doing in politics?” the woman demanded.Ms. Le Pen, a nationalist with an anti-immigrant agenda, has vowed to ban the wearing of the head scarf in public if she is elected in the second round of voting next Sunday. She says that it is “an Islamist uniform,” or a sign of adherence to an extremist, anti-Western interpretation of the Muslim faith.The woman who argued with Ms. Le Pen was having none of this. Her choice to wear a head scarf was made, she said, “when I was an older woman,” as a sign of “being a grandmother.” Ms. Le Pen insisted that in many French neighborhoods women who do not wear a veil are “separated, isolated and judged.” In the country with the largest Muslim population in western Europe, what a woman wears on her head matters. France has a troubled relationship with Islam because of its colonial history in Algeria and several jihadist terror attacks in recent years. As Ms. Le Pen and President Emmanuel Macron confront each other in a tight race, religious freedom, particularly for the Muslims who make up about 8 percent of the population, has emerged as a pivotal issue.Mr. Macron, who has called Ms. Le Pen’s plan “an extremist project,” has nevertheless angered some members of the Muslim community, mainly through legislation designed to combat what he calls “Islamist separatism.” That law, passed last year, has been used to close some mosques and Islamic associations accused of fostering radicalism. It was designed in part to draw right-wing voters to his centrist camp.Mr. Macron, whose lead in polls has widened slightly over the past week to 53.5 percent against Ms. Le Pen’s 46.5 percent, had his own confrontation with a young French woman wearing a hijab during a campaign stop in Strasbourg last week.“Are you a feminist?” he asked. “Are you for the equality of women and men?”President Emmanuel Macron of France at a rally in Marseille on Saturday.Afp Contributor#Afp/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhen the woman answered yes to both questions, and said her head scarf was chosen, not imposed, Mr. Macron, clearly alluding to Ms. Le Pen, said this was “the best answer to all the stupidity I keep hearing.”It was another example of Mr. Macron, who scarcely campaigned before the first round of voting on April 10, adjusting his message to appeal to blocs of voters who have felt betrayed by him over the past five years — the Muslim community and the left.In the first round, about 70 percent of French Muslims voted for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the far-left candidate who was narrowly eliminated, according to a study by the Ifop polling institute. Where those votes now go matters.France is a secular republic and in theory a nondiscriminatory society where people are free to believe, or not, in any god they wish. But it finds itself in a fracturing debate over Islam. A growing Muslim presence is seen by the extreme-right as a mortal threat to French identity, and this view has gained a foothold in the political mainstream.Intensely attached to its model of a secular society, known as laïcité, which is supposed to subsume all men and women into the rights and responsibilities of French citizenship, France has been reluctant to acknowledge failures that have left many Muslim immigrants and their descendants in dismal housing projects on the periphery of big cities, feeling no viable French identity or future.Since 2011 it has been illegal to wear a face-covering niqab, or a burqa covering the entire body, in public. But there is no ban on the head scarf.French laws prohibit wearing ostentatious religious symbols — the head scarf is considered one — in schools. Civil servants are also barred from doing so on the job. Debate has raged over whether parents accompanying school trips should be allowed to wear head scarves, but attempts to stop them have failed.A woman in a head scarf in Marseille on Saturday ahead of a campaign appearance by Mr. Macron.Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesStrongly held French feelings about the equality of men and women, about secularism, and about its supposedly colorblind society lie behind the virulence of the discussion of these issues. So does unacknowledged or overt prejudice.Mr. Macron has accused Ms. Le Pen of undermining the principles of laïcité and the Constitution itself with the proposed head scarf ban. In an interview with Franceinfo radio last week, he said she would also have to ban the use of the “kippa, the cross and other religious symbols” in public or she would be discriminating among believers.Not so, Ms. Le Pen retorted in an interview with France Inter radio. “The head scarf is in reality an Islamist uniform, it is not a Muslim uniform, and that makes all the difference. It is the uniform of an ideology, not of a religion.”She continued: “This ban is not based on the concept of laïcité. It is based on the battle against Islamist ideologies.”However, Ms. Le Pen appeared to hedge a little on Sunday, saying that the issue is a “complex problem” and that her proposed ban would be debated in the National Assembly.Whether the ban would also apply to women choosing head scarves as fashion statements à la Audrey Hepburn is unclear.What to Know About France’s Presidential ElectionCard 1 of 4Heading to a runoff. More