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      Macron Vows Ambitious Green Policies, Wooing the Left in Runoff

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      France’s president is trying to tap into the country’s large pool of left-wing voters, but many are hesitant to back him.MARSEILLE, France — On a stage erected on lush green lawns overlooking the sun-soaked Mediterranean port of Marseille, President Emmanuel Macron declared on Saturday to a crowd of supporters, “The politics that I will carry out in the next five years will be environmental, or will not be!”It was an ambitious promise for a president whose green policies have been criticized at repeated climate protests, condemned by courts for “inaction” and marked by failure to meet goals. But above all, Mr. Macron’s vow was a direct appeal to voters to his left, who hold the key to a final victory in the second round of the presidential election — and for whom climate has become a key issue.Mr. Macron devoted about three-quarters of his hour-and-a-half speech to environmental issues. He promised to appoint ministers responsible for long-term environmental planning, to plant 140 million trees by 2030 and to rapidly cut dependence on oil and gas by developing nuclear and renewable energy.“Inaction — not for me!” he told a cheering crowd of some 4,000 people who gathered in the Parc du Pharo, on the heights of Marseille, for what was possibly Mr. Macron’s last rally before the April 24th vote.The event symbolized Mr. Macron’s strategy for the runoff between the centrist incumbent and his far-right opponent, Marine Le Pen: wooing the left with progressive policies and campaigning in working-class cities where he is trying to shed his image as an aloof president detached from everyday realities. If large numbers of left-wing voters stay home for the second round of voting, or migrate to Ms. Le Pen’s camp, it could spell serious trouble for Mr. Macron.Stewart Chau, an analyst for the polling firm Viavoice, said Mr. Macron’s main goal was to “seek voters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon,” the far-left candidate who came in third overall in the first round of voting — but first in Marseille, with 31 percent of the vote.In September, the president unveiled a multibillion-euro plan to tackle crime and poverty in Marseille.Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate, held a news conference on her foreign policy agenda this week in Paris.Yoan Valat/EPA, via ShutterstockPromising a “complete renewal” if he is re-elected, Mr. Macron also used his speech to attack Ms. Le Pen, accusing her of wanting to curtail freedom of the press, challenge gender equality and lead France out of the Europe Union. He is trying to revive the “dam” that mainstream voters have long formed by voting for anyone over a Le Pen — either his current opponent or her father, Jean-Marie, leaders of the French far right since the 1970s.Saturday’s rally capped an intense week of campaigning for Mr. Macron, touring the country since Monday to make up for a lackluster initial campaign. Visiting only places where Ms. Le Pen or Mr. Mélenchon came out on top in the first round, he is risking engaging with angry residents, in an attempt to show that he, too, can feel their pain.By contrast, Ms. Le Pen, who has long striven to soften her public image, has been more risk-averse, limiting her campaign trips this week. Instead, she has tried to cement her credibility with two news conferences on her institutional overhaul proposals and her foreign policy agenda.But those events partly backfired after her party’s refusal to accredit some media outlets caused a stir, and as she detailed contentious plans to seek rapprochement with Russia and quit NATO’s integrated military command.Ms. Le Pen has been more exposed to scrutiny since another far-right candidate, Éric Zemmour, failed to make the runoff. His incendiary comments opposing immigration and Islam drew much of the attention away from Ms. Le Pen, who has long been known for similar stances.“The form confronts the substance,” said Mr. Chau, the analyst, adding that Ms. Le Pen’s sanitized image now clashed with “the reality of her ideas, which are anything but appeased, anything but softened.”At a rally on Thursday in the southern city of Avignon, Ms. Le Pen mentioned immigration only three times, despite it being the cornerstone of her platform. She has proposed deporting foreigners after they have been unemployed for one year, giving priority to native-born French for social housing and benefits, and abolishing the right to citizenship through birth in France.Supporters of Ms. Le Pen on Thursday in Avignon.Daniel Cole/Associated PressHer supporters were blunter. “She still wants to kick out the immigrants,” said Aline Vincent, a French flag in her right hand, who attended Ms. Le Pen’s rally along with about 4,000 others. “But she doesn’t say it the same way.”In Marseille, Daniel Beddou, said he “was very worried” about the rise of the far right. Holding a European flag in his left hand, he said he was pleased by Mr. Macron’s environmental plans. He said they embodied the president’s “at the same time” approach, referring to his habit of borrowing policies from both the left and right.As he appeals to the 7.7 million voters who backed Mr. Mélenchon in the first round and appear to hold the key to a final victory, Mr. Macron has toned down some of his proposals, like a plan to raise the legal retirement age to 65 from 62, which he now says could be softened.On Saturday, he also insisted on long-term “environmental planning” — a concept that was a cornerstone of Mr. Mélenchon’s platform — promising to appoint a minister “directly responsible” for it, assisted by two ministers in charge of the energy and environmental transition.“There’s a real willingness to speak to a working-class electorate, a left-wing electorate that we lacked in the first round,” said Sacha Houlié, a lawmaker and spokesman for Mr. Macron’s campaign.What to Know About France’s Presidential ElectionCard 1 of 4Heading to a runoff. More

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      Making Sense of the 2022 French Elections

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      Even as a Ukrainian missile strike has sunk a Russian warship, events in France are arguably even more important. The first round of the Presidential elections have thrown up the same two candidates for the final round as last time. On one side is “le Président des riches” Emmanuel Macron and on the other is Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader who risen in popularity in France.

      FO° Insights is a new feature where our contributors make sense of issues in the news.

      [embedded content]

      Florence Biedermann on Marine Le Pen, Emmanuel Macron and the French Elections

      In this episode, we have the former chief editor of Agence-France Presse explain what is going on in France. You can read what she has to say below.

      This is the first time in French political history that the extreme right is so close to the winner of the first round. 

      Why is Marine Le Pen so popular? 

      She really focused on a program for social matters, on social questions, on the cost of living and this is the main worry of the French people right now.

      After the war in Ukraine, the price of energy has risen considerably. There is a stronger inflation and it is now one of the main topics for the French people. So she managed to put aside all the more extreme side of her program on immigration, of changing the institutions, and her resistance to the EU, and she really focused on the daily life of the people with small incomes, on their difficulties and has insisted that Emmanuel Macron was a kind of an elitist who was far away from those daily worries of the French people. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      Has Marine Le Pen detoxified the Le Pen name? 

      And that’s how she managed to somehow detoxify her brand, because for years she has been associated, of course, with extreme views and immigration. A few years ago, she was still against the EU, she wanted to withdraw from the EU. 

      She is still very much a euroskeptic, but she gave up this project. She also gave up the fact that she wants to get out of the euro and she styled herself as a kind of innocuous housewife, a cat lover who raised her children on her own. She has presented herself as someone running an ordinary life and being close to ordinary people. And it really worked pretty well when you see the voting results now. 

      After Trump and Brexit, could France be in for a surprise result? 

      So of course the big question now is whether she can win or not. I mean, all the polls still give Macron as the winner, but we know that polls failed before in predicting the victory of Trump, and the victory of Brexit. So everybody is pretty careful and obviously there is nervousness in the camp of Macron because he’s now campaigning really hard, which he didn’t do before the first round because he was busy with the war in Ukraine. 

      So obviously there is a chance that she can win, especially because one of the measures proposed by Macron is very unpopular as it is to postpone the retirement age from 62 to 65 and if this election ends up finally being a kind of referendum on this question, then he may lose. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      What would a victory for Le Pen mean for France and Europe as a whole? 

      So for France on the international scene, a victory for Marine Le Pen would really be a disaster. France is one of the main countries trying to make the EU more dynamic, more efficient, which does not interest her. She wants to present France as a sovereign country where French laws would be more important than European laws. Let’s say you can really compare her to Viktor Orbán. She’s the same kind of leader.

      And then of course in the EU with one of the main leaders being eurosceptic that would be a disaster. Also, she’s kind of very reluctant towards NATO. And let’s not forget she was an admirer of Vladimir Putin for years. She even needed to borrow from a Russian bank to finance her campaign. So definitely the image of France internationally would be completely downgraded. 

      This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Brazil’s climate politics are shifting. That matters for the whole planet.

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      The Amazon is emerging as a central issue in this year’s presidential campaign. Leaders have taken note.A message from your Climate Forward host: I’d like you to meet Manuela. She’s my partner on Climate Forward, and you’ll hear from her regularly when I’m out on reporting trips and unavailable to write the newsletter. Today, she takes you inside the climate politics of her home country, Brazil. — Somini SenguptaIn Brazil, beef isn’t just food. It’s political. It’s a symbol of dignity and equality, and the price of beef is a kind of barometer of well-being in the country.“Beef is not a privilege for people with money,” former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said in an interview last year.But now, with elections just months away, da Silva, who is better known as Lula, seems to be taking a more environmentally conscious position. He’s suddenly talking about vegetable barbecues and organic salads.“I broadened my perspective,” he said on Twitter in February. He was not just concerned about whether the average Brazilian could afford a barbecue, Lula said, “but also vegetarian people, who don’t eat meat, being able to eat a good organic salad, us encouraging healthier agriculture in our country.”At 76, and with more than five decades of politics under his belt, Lula is adapting. And his willingness to do so makes it clear that, for the first time, climate and the environment will be at the center of the debates before Brazilians vote for president and the national legislature on Oct. 2.Lula, who led Brazil from 2003 to 2010, is one of the best-known politicians in the developing world. Under his administration, millions rose out of poverty, helped by China’s growing hunger for Brazilian commodities like soybeans and steel.Beef was, in some ways, a thread that ran though his presidency. It became a more frequent part of daily meals and one of the country’s major exports. Lula’s administration poured millions from Brazil’s development bank into meatpacking companies, and those operations, in turn, eventually grew to become major drivers of deforestation in the Amazon.This time around, though, Lula is talking about supporting that “healthier agriculture” he mentioned on Twitter.Izabella Teixeira, who served as one of Lula’s environment ministers, told me the former president always treated climate issues seriously. But she said she saw something new in the way climate and environment issues seem to be gaining prominence in his speeches and debates.“He is looking at it with a modern mind set,” she said. “It is one thing to correct the past, to undo mistakes. It is another thing to affirm new paths.”President Biden similarly made climate a pillar of his campaign, as did Gabriel Boric, who became president of Chile in March. Just a few weeks ago, Colombia’s leftist presidential candidate Gustavo Petro chose an environmental activist as his running mate. The first round of that election is May 29.The choice Brazilians make matters for global climate targets. Brazil is, by some measures, the world’s sixth-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. More important, though, is why: It is currently slashing its part of the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, at a pace not seen in over a decade.Lula’s environmental record is mixed. Back in the day, his administration pushed for new policies that sharply curbed Amazon deforestation, even as agribusiness, including beef, grew. But he seemed to disregard the need for an energy transition, instead refusing to support legislation that would have required Brazil to phase out fossil fuels.Under the current president, Jair Bolsonaro, climate action has been all but abandoned. The recent explosion in deforestation rates, which have angered the world, will unquestionably be one of the main legacies of his presidency.Brazil’s current policies have intensified its climate challenge. And it’s not just because of beef. Soy, the country’s top commodity, is increasing pressure on the Cerrado, the country’s vast tropical savanna. There’s also Brazil’s heavy dependence on oil and steel exports.Bolsonaro’s rise to power is widely seen as a response to a multibillion dollar corruption scandal that upended Brazilian politics years ago. Prosecutors said Lula was implicated at the top of the scandal. He spent 580 days in prison in connection with a conviction that was ultimately overturned.As Lula has clawed his way back into public life, he has refused to acknowledge mistakes in the corruption scandal. When it comes to climate policy, though, he has signaled a willingness to reform his legacy.Earlier this week, speaking to thousands of Indigenous people gathered in a demonstration in Brasília, the capital, he promised to appoint an Indigenous cabinet minister. It would be a first for Brazil, a country where Indigenous people are at the forefront of the environmental movement.Past governments of his Workers’ Party, Lula said, “didn’t do all they should have done” for Indigenous people.So far, Lula has the lead over Bolsonaro, who is seeking re-election, in all the main opinion polls, though the race has been tightening. Hunger, unemployment, inflation and the Covid pandemic will also be major issues during the campaign.But the two candidates’ radically different views on the environment could be crucial. According to a poll in September, 80 percent of voters believe protecting the Amazon rainforest should be a priority for presidential candidates.A majority also said a specific plan to defend the Amazon would increase their willingness to vote for a candidate.California’s plan to eliminate gas cars, if adopted, would very likely set the bar for the broader auto industry.Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesEssential news from The TimesPhasing out gas cars: Officials in California made public plans to prohibit the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035.White House departure: People close to Gina McCarthy, President Biden’s top climate adviser, say she plans to quit because she is unhappy with the slow pace of progress.Even cactuses aren’t safe: More than half of species could face greater extinction risk by midcentury, a new study found, as rising heat and dryness test the plants’ limits.Antarctic puzzle solved: Researchers say the collapse of the two ice shelves was most likely triggered by vast plumes of warm air from the Pacific.‘Silent victim’ of war: Research on past conflicts suggests that, in addition to the human toll, the Russian invasion of Ukraine could have a profound environmental impact.From the Opinion sectionDitch the gas-powered leaf blower: Get an electric one or just use a rake, Jessica Stolzberg writes.Other stuff we’re followingThe latest issue of National Geographic is all about saving forests.A new analysis showed that many big utilities in America are actively pushing back against climate policies, according to The Washington Post.Banks around the world are abandoning coal projects, except in China, according to Bloomberg.A new podcast from the Food & Environment Reporting Network talks to farmers about what they are doing to adapt to climate change.Parts of the Sacramento Valley in California have received their earliest-ever “red flag” warning for fire danger, Capital Public Radio reported.One TikToker found the transportation of the future.Adélie penguins on an iceberg near Paulet Island at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Tomás MunitaBefore you go: For these birds, location mattersAdélie penguins are having a rough time on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula, where warming linked to climate change has occurred faster than almost anywhere else on the planet. One researcher called the situation a “train wreck” for the birds. On the eastern side of the peninsula, however, it’s a very different story. Adélie populations there seem to be doing just fine. You can find out why, and see some impressive photos from a recent survey expedition in our article.Thanks for reading. We’ll be back on Tuesday.Claire O’Neill and Douglas Alteen contributed to Climate Forward. Reach us at climateforward@nytimes.com. We read every message, and reply to many! More

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      Quiz Time on the Campaign Trail

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      Several “gotcha” questions for candidates, including one that Anthony Albanese got wrong, raise deeper questions about the quality of the nation’s political discourse.The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email. During the first week of the federal election campaign, politicians have been asked about: the price of bread, milk and petrol; the JobSeeker rate; the wage price index; the cash rate; the unemployment rate, and more.We still have five weeks to go, and I’m already exhausted.When the opposition leader, Anthony Albanese failed to correctly name the cash rate and unemployment rate on the first day of the campaign, it prompted widespread media coverage, and Prime Minister Scott Morrison seized on the opportunity to label his opponent as weak on the economy. Other politicians received pop quizzes on various other prices and statistics over the next two days, before it all screeched to a halt on Wednesday, when the Greens leader, Adam Bandt, excoriated the news media after being asked for the wage price index.“Google it,” he responded, adding: “Politics should be about reaching for the stars and offering a better society. And instead, there’s these questions that are asked about — can you tell us this particular stat or can you tell us that particular stat.”In an election campaign that so far seems lacking in big-picture vision, the episode has fueled debate about the value of so-called gotcha questions. Should any aspiring prime minister be able to recite these figures to show they have a good understanding of the country they want to lead, or do such questions just get in the way of better, higher-level political debate?Speaking about Albanese’s blunder on Monday, Andrea Carson, a political scientist at La Trobe University and the creator of the Below the Line election podcast, put it in a different category than a gotcha question devised to catch a politician out. Instead, it spoke to a lack of preparedness on the part of Labor to anticipate attacks from an opposition eager to paint it as weak on the economy, she said.“It wasn’t so much about the gotcha moment, it was the lack of pre-emption,” she said. “In one moment Albanese undid any good work they could have done in that space by feeding into the narrative that Labor can’t be trusted on the economy.”Elections have been lost in the past because of such own-goal blunders before, she added. In 1993, when Liberal opposition leader John Hewson wasn’t able to explain whether his proposed goods and services tax policy would increase or decrease the price of a birthday cake, it “made it look like he didn’t understand the policy he was campaigning on — and that was his election to lose.”More recently, the Labor opposition leader Mark Latham’s infamous handshake in 2004 turned voters off with its aggression, she added.Those were both “a seminal moment in the campaign that sort of sums up how that election campaign went,” said Carson, the political scientist. It’s yet to be seen whether Albanese’s moment will have the same impact.“Every election, there’s at least one gotcha fail,” said Paul Williams, an associate professor and political expert at Griffith University. Though they usually have quite a short life, he added, Bill Shorten’s gaffe during the 2019 election campaign, when he mistakenly ruled out introducing new taxes on superannuation, in contradiction to his party’s policy, “did tend to frame his campaign. It did injure his campaign quite significantly.”While it was understandable that swing voters would be critical of Albanese’s blunder, he said, they should also know that “this doesn’t define the party or his potential to be a prime minister, because prime ministers are chairs of cabinets and are responsible for policy. Prime ministers have become big-picture guardians.”And as much as the episode shows that Labor should have been better prepared, he said, there’s also something to be said for the idea that we should aspire to a better quality of political debate.We all contribute to it, he says: the journalists who ask the gotcha questions, because they’re short on time or know that’s what will attract clicks and views; the politicians and their spin doctors who protect “themselves so carefully with garrisons of PR that journalists have to ask those sorts of questions to break through”; and voters who respond to gotcha questions and horse-race framing and see the election as a personality contest rather than a contest between two parties’ policies.“We’re all to blame,” Williams said. “We all need to lift the political debate.”Now for this week’s stories.Australia and New ZealandHannah Gadsby in 2018.Molly Matalon for The New York TimesIn “10 Steps to Nanette,” Hannah Gadsby Moves From Stage to Page. The Australian comedian brings distinctive flair to the structure and tone of her memoir.New Zealand Welcomes Vaccinated Tourists From Australia and Relaxes More Policies. The latest steps toward reopening are being taken in a country that has maintained some of the strictest coronavirus precautions in the world.No Reusable Cup? In Australia, It’s at Your Own Risk. On a visit to Melbourne, a Times reporter got a lesson in cafe etiquette, and the challenges facing the sustainability movement.These Photographers Chase New Zealand’s Glowing Waves. Capturing bioluminescence, a phenomenon in which glowing algae give crashing waves an electric-blue glow, requires technical skill and a bit of luck.An Australia Homecoming, Mixed with Yearning and Trepidation. When “Fortress Australia” sealed its borders, thousands of citizens were stuck abroad. When allowed to return home, a reporter wondered how she would find the country — and how it would find her.Around The TimesA new simulation gives a detailed look at a shockwave that circled the planet for days.‘It’s Super Spectacular.’ See How the Tonga Volcano Unleashed a Once-in-a-Century Shockwave. A new simulation gives a detailed look at a shockwave that circled the planet for days.Elon Musk, After Toying With Twitter, Now Wants It All. The billionaire executive recently became one of the company’s largest shareholders. Now he says he wants to buy the whole thing and change how it handles speech.Even the Cactus May Not Be Safe From Climate Change. More than half of species could face greater extinction risk by midcentury, a new study found, as rising heat and dryness test the prickly plants’ limits.Tensions Over the Ukraine War Deepen the Chill Near the North Pole. The war and the comments of a Russian diplomat have strained relations on an archipelago in Norway where Russians, Ukrainians and Norwegians have lived peacefully for decades.Enjoying the Australia Letter? Sign up here or forward to a friend.For more Australia coverage and discussion, start your day with your local Morning Briefing and join us in our Facebook group. More

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      Trial Alleging Voter Suppression in 2018 Abrams-Kemp Georgia Race Begins

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      A trial is underway to determine whether Georgia’s handling of the 2018 election for governor was discriminatory, in a case brought by Stacey Abrams’s voting rights group.The 2018 race for governor in Georgia ended in a bitter dispute between Brian Kemp, a Republican who was serving as secretary of state at the time, and Stacey Abrams, the Democratic challenger who accused the state of voter suppression.The election, won by Kemp, was plagued by long lines, especially in communities of color where wait times occasionally exceeded two hours. And Kemp’s office put 53,000 voter registrations on hold under the state’s “exact match” rule, which requires that voters’ registration information exactly match what is on file with the state’s Department of Driver Services or Social Security Administration. Many of those 53,000 were Black voters, according to an investigation by The Associated Press in 2018.After the election, Fair Fight Action, the voting rights group founded by Abrams, sued the state, claiming its election practices were illegal and discriminatory.Now, more than three years after the suit was filed, the trial began on Monday in Atlanta — the first federal voting rights trial in Georgia in over a decade. Abrams is now in the middle of a second campaign for governor, a rematch with Kemp.After Judge Steve C. Jones tossed parts of the original lawsuit last year, Fair Fight opened its case challenging three specific tenets of the Georgia election system. These tenets, the group says, make it harder for people to vote, especially Black voters.“Through the three practices at issue in this case — exact match, affirmative mismanagement of the voter rolls and failure to train on absentee ballot cancellations — these defendants have erected a series of roadblocks — roadblocks that propose unjustifiable burdens on eligible voters in violation of both the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act,” Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, a lawyer for Fair Fight and the other plaintiffs, said in her opening statement.The office of Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state and the defendant in the case, has said repeatedly that the state has already beaten back most of the claims in court, and accused Fair Fight of playing politics.“They ran this litigation like a campaign,” Joshua B. Belinfante, a lawyer for the secretary of state, said in his opening remarks. He continued: “What the evidence will show is what the plaintiffs allege is part of a campaign is not what is happening on the ground in Georgia elections.”Echoes from the pastFair Fight and other groups have challenged Georgia’s election laws on both constitutional grounds and under a provision of the Voting Rights Act known as Section 2. The trial represents one of the first marquee challenges using this provision after the Supreme Court weakened its protections for voting rights last year.In her opening remarks, Lawrence-Hardy spoke of John Lewis, the Georgia Democrat and civil rights icon who died in 2020. And she drew comparisons between the current legal battle and the state’s history of suppressing voters. Georgia was one of the states that were put under special federal oversight by the Voting Rights Act when it was signed in 1965 because of the history of discrimination at the polls in those states.“The methods may be different than in the past, but the state’s creation of barriers to voting in Georgia have the same impact, particularly for people of color and immigrants who meet all eligibility requirements to vote in Georgia’s elections,” Lawrence-Hardy said. She added that when the state first proposed the exact-match identification policy in 2009, Georgia was still under federal oversight and the Justice Department rejected the initial proposal.The trial, which is expected to last roughly a month, will feature dozens of voters who claim that their right to vote was foiled by the state’s rules and regulations, with anecdotes from both the 2018 and the 2020 elections. Election workers will also testify.“You’ll hear how these election workers, who come from all political persuasions and demographic roots, operate under extraordinarily trying circumstances,” Belinfante, the lawyer for the secretary of state, said in his opening remarks. “And you’ll hear how at the end of the day they just want to get it right.”But the trial will not focus on the state’s controversial new voting law that was passed last year and that added numerous new restrictions on voting. The lawsuit was filed before that law was introduced and passed.A window of opportunityThough Raffensperger is on the defense, the trial also presents a political opportunity for the sitting secretary of state, who is seeking re-election. After he rebuffed Donald Trump’s entreaties to “find” enough votes to subvert the election in Georgia, Raffensperger became a key target of Trump, who has endorsed a well-funded challenger in Representative Jody Hice, a Republican who has publicly claimed that Trump won the election in Georgia.Raffensperger has not backed down from saying Trump legitimately lost the 2020 election in Georgia, a stance that has put him at odds with a segment of the Republican base who will be deciding his fate in the May 24 primary.But the trial has allowed Raffensperger the opportunity to attack Abrams and embrace issues that help endear him to the Republican base, such as noncitizen voting. Republicans have focused on noncitizens voting in their hunt for widespread voter fraud (there is no evidence of swaths of noncitizens voting, nor of widespread fraud) and also to justify new policies. Lawyers for Fair Fight contend that part of the “exact match” process could result in citizens being prevented from voting, including newly naturalized citizens.“I want to make sure it is citizen-only voting here in the state of Georgia,” Raffensperger said in a brief news conference before the trial began on Monday. “We are defending this basic protection of the integrity of Georgia’s elections.”Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, has accused Fair Fight of playing politics with the lawsuit. Dustin Chambers/ReutersWhat to read President Biden announced that the Environmental Protection Agency would lift summertime regulations on E15, an ethanol-gasoline blend, the latest sign that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed the White House to embrace fossil fuels.U.S.-backed news outlets and Ukrainian activists’ efforts to deliver news to Russians are starting to show signs of working, sowing doubt in the Kremlin’s accounts of the invasion.North Carolina dropped Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, from its voter rolls, as officials investigate whether he fraudulently cast a ballot in the state in 2020.in the moment Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas used the migrant drop-off as a fund-raising opportunity. Joel Martinez/The Monitor, via Associated PressTexas sends a bus to … Fox News The arrival of a busload of migrants sent to Washington by Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas made for quite the event.Not so much on the ground, but on cable news, on Twitter and in fund-raising emails.In response to the Biden administration’s plans to end a Trump-era pandemic policy that turned away most unauthorized migrants at the border, Abbott pledged to put immigrants on charter buses and send them to Washington. This morning, the first bus arrived near Union Station, with Fox News camera crews ready to record the moment.Understand the Battle Over U.S. Voting RightsCard 1 of 6Why are voting rights an issue now? More

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      Le Pen Backs NATO-Russia Reconciliation and Reduced French Role in Alliance

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      PARIS — Rejecting a “herd-like conformity” with the Biden administration, Marine Le Pen, the French far-right candidate for the presidency, said Wednesday that France would quit NATO’s integrated military command if she were elected and would seek for the alliance “a strategic rapprochement” with Russia.As Russia’s war in Ukraine rages on, Ms. Le Pen effectively signaled that her election would terminate or at least disrupt President Biden’s united alliance in confronting President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and perhaps create a breach in Western Europe for Mr. Putin to exploit.Dismissing multilateralism, blasting Germany, criticizing the European Union, relegating climate issues to a low priority, attacking “globalists” and maintaining a near silence on Russia’s brutal assault in Ukraine, Ms. Le Pen gave a taste of a worldview that was at once reminiscent of the Trump presidency and appeared to directly threaten NATO’s attempts to arm Ukraine and defeat Russia.A lurch to the far right by France, a nuclear power and permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, would realign the world, with unpredictable and disruptive consequences.In a wide-ranging 75-minute news conference devoted to international relations, and apparently conceived to bolster her credentials on the global stage, Ms. Le Pen said France would remain in NATO and respect its core Article 5, which says an attack on one alliance member is an attack on all.But, she added, “I would place our troops neither under an integrated NATO command nor under a European command.”“I would place our troops neither under an integrated NATO command nor under a European command,” Ms. Le Pen said.Yoan Valat/EPA, via ShutterstockHer position, she said, was “no submission to an American protectorate exercised on European soil under the cover of NATO” — a stance she compared to that taken by Gen. Charles de Gaulle in 1966, when he took France out of NATO’s integrated military command, where it remained until 2009.Her position, she said, did not signal “submission to Moscow.” But her promise to withdraw France from the command was consistent with the policy of “equidistance” from great powers she said she would pursue if she defeats the incumbent, President Emmanuel Macron, in a runoff vote for the French presidency on April 24.Polls show Mr. Macron with 53 to 55 percent of the vote, ahead of Ms. Le Pen with 45 to 47 percent. But the political situation is volatile as the president, scurrying around the country, scrambles to make up for a lackluster initial campaign. The French nationalist extreme right is closer to attaining power than at any time since World War II.The proposed rapprochement with Russia, “once the Russian-Ukrainian war is over and settled by a peace treaty,” would even be in the interest of the United States, Ms. Le Pen suggested, because Washington would not be served by a “close Russian-Chinese union.”Ms. Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally, formerly the National Front, a fiercely anti-immigrant party, dismissed the Biden administration as “too aggressive toward Beijing,” saying the United States “needs enemies in order to unite its allies under its domination.”It was one of very few references to the United States, none of them positive, as Ms. Le Pen embarked on a kind of world tour of her preoccupations that also omitted Russia but did include a long exegesis of why France has solemn obligations in Lebanon.“France is not France without grandeur,” she declared.A protester outside the venue where Ms. Le Pen had her news conference. Emmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNor is it France without protests. The news conference was briefly disrupted by a protester carrying a heart-shaped image of Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Putin. The protester was wrestled to the ground and dragged out by security guards.Russia-Ukraine War: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 4U.S. support. More

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      Ahead of Philippines Election, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Rises

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      Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has spent his political career trying to rehabilitate the family name. As the front-runner in the upcoming election, he may finally succeed.MANILA — They bopped along to the beat of a martial law anthem updated into a pop tune. They cheered when an A-list celebrity proclaimed that the spirit of Ferdinand E. Marcos, the former dictator, was alive. And when Mr. Marcos’s son and namesake held up the peace sign made popular by his father a generation ago, the shrieking crowds mirrored it in return.It is election season in the Philippines, and history is being rewritten, one campaign rally at a time.Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has spent decades defending his family’s name against accusations of greed and corruption and downplaying the legacy of his father’s brutal rule. During his presidential campaign, he has portrayed himself as a unifier, while false narratives online reimagine his father’s regime as a “golden era” in the nation’s history.Now, as patriarch of the Marcos dynasty, Mr. Marcos is expected to be the first person to win the presidential election in the Philippines by a majority in more than three decades.The race is being cast as a competition between those who remember the past and those who are accused of trying to distort it, the last chapter in a brazen attempt to absolve the Marcoses of wrongdoing and quash any effort to hold the family accountable. Five years of President Rodrigo Duterte — a strong Marcos ally known for his bloody war on drugs and for jailing his critics — may have presaged a Marcos family comeback.“It will determine not just our future but our past,” said Maria Ressa, a journalist and Nobel Prize winner who is an outspoken critic of both Mr. Duterte and Mr. Marcos.Supporters at a rally cheering for Mr. Marcos, who has spent decades defending his family’s name against accusations of greed and corruption.Jes Aznar for The New York TimesThe Marcoses are accused of looting as much as $10 billion from the government before fleeing to Hawaii in 1986, when the peaceful “People Power” protests toppled the Marcos regime. The family returned to the country shortly after the death of the elder Mr. Marcos in 1989.Despite the exile, the Marcos name never truly left the political establishment.Mr. Marcos, known by his boyhood nickname, “Bongbong,” served as vice governor, governor and congressman in Ilocos Norte, the family stronghold, for most of the period between the 1980s and 2010. That year, he entered the national political scene when he was elected senator. Imelda Marcos, his 92-year-old mother, ran for president twice and lost in the 1990s.Rehabilitating the family name has been a recurring theme. Over the decades, the Marcoses have sought to target young voters with no memory of martial law or the torture and killing of political prisoners. Fifty-six percent of the voting population in the Philippines is aged between 18 and 41, and most did not witness the atrocities of the Marcos regime — ideal circumstances for the spread of disinformation, opponents say.A voter holding a portrait of Ferdinand E. Marcos, the dictator, and his wife, Imelda Marcos. The Marcoses are accused of looting as much as $10 billion from the Philippine government before fleeing to Hawaii in 1986. Jes Aznar for The New York TimesIn January, Twitter said it had removed more than 300 accounts promoting Mr. Marcos’s presidential bid for violating rules on spam and manipulation. The influential Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines said in a statement that it was appalled by the “historical revisionism” in the election, and “the attempt to delete or destroy our collective memory through the seeding of lies and false narratives.”Mr. Marcos’s spokesman, Vic Rodriguez, said there was “no certainty” that the Twitter accounts belonged to his supporters. Last week, Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said it had suspended more than 400 election-related accounts, pages and groups for violating its standards. The company cited a video on Mr. Marcos’s official Facebook page that falsely accused his election rival, Leni Robredo, who is vice president, of cheating in the 2016 vice-presidential race. (The president and vice president are elected separately in the Philippines.)Several groups have sought to disqualify Mr. Marcos’s candidacy, pointing to a 1995 tax evasion conviction and the $3.9 billion in estate taxes that his family still owes the government. Mr. Marcos, 64, has brushed off the attacks as “fake news,” and refused to participate in nearly all presidential debates.Instead, Mr. Marcos has used social media to reach a captive audience online, reviewing viral TikTok dances and agreeing to makeovers.Live streaming Mr. Marcos’s motorcade south of Manila. Instead of participating in debates, Mr. Marcos has used social media to reach a captive audience online, reviewing viral TikTok dances and agreeing to makeovers.Jes Aznar for The New York TimesAt a rally in Las Piñas, Ella Mae Alipao, 15, said that she got most of her news about Mr. Marcos from TikTok and Facebook, and that she did not “believe much in books.” After Mr. Marcos’s father was ousted, Ms. Alipao said, “the Filipinos found out how good he was; that’s when they realized that they should have made him president for a longer time.”Mr. Marcos has made similar comments: “I’m not going to vindicate my father’s name because his name doesn’t need vindication,” he said in 1995. “I am so confident that history will judge him well.”In the 36 years since the father was ousted, many Filipinos have become disillusioned with the country’s democracy. Poverty is widespread, income inequality remains high and few people trust their elected leaders. When Mr. Duterte came to power, he promised radical change, ushering in a new era of strongman politics that has been embraced by many across the country.The names of those who died during the Marcos regime are etched on a wall at a memorial site in Quezon City. Opponents fear a Marcos victory would amount to rewriting history.Jes Aznar for The New York TimesMr. Duterte formed an alliance with the Marcoses early in his six-year presidential term. In 2016, he arranged for the father’s body to be moved tothe Philippines’ equivalent of Arlington National Cemetery, despite protests. And it was not until Sara Duterte, Ms. Duterte’s daughter, made the surprise announcement that she would run for vice president instead of president that Mr. Marcos gained his large lead in the polls.In recent weeks, the opposition has been working furiously to counter the false narratives online about the Marcoses. Sergio Osmena III, a former political prisoner, senator and a grandson of the fourth president of the Philippines, said he had hired 10,000 volunteers to wage a counteroffensive against the Marcos campaign by releasing videos on the economic devastation and human rights violations of the Marcos years.“It’s probably too late,” he said.The Marcoses have been remarkably adept at avoiding jail time. Mr. Marcos was sentenced to up to three years in prison in 1995 for tax-related convictions, but his sentence was overturned on appeal two years later, even though his conviction remained on the books. In 2018, his mother was sentenced to up to 11 years in prison for creating private foundations to hide her unexplained wealth. She posted bail, and the Supreme Court is still reviewing her appeal.Waiting to catch a glimpse of the Marcos motorcade south of Manila. “I’m not going to vindicate my father’s name because his name doesn’t need vindication,” Mr. Marcos said in 1995. Jes Aznar for The New York TimesThe government has recovered just $3.3 billion of the estimated $10 billion that the Marcoses are accused of stealing, but $2.4 billion in assets are still under litigation, with various groups tussling over them. Should Mr. Marcos win the presidency, many fear those proceedings, along with the $3.9 billion in estate taxes, will be swept away, cementing the false idea that the Marcoses are innocent.Among some young voters, that view has already taken hold. “If he is a thief, how come he hasn’t been jailed?” asked Rjay Garcia, a 19-year-old rug salesman, at a recent rally in the city of Santa Rosa. Mr. Garcia said that he believed the cases against Mr. Marcos’s family were meant “to destroy his reputation,” and that he had “never heard” of the People Power protests.Even those with intimate memories of the country’s struggle for democracy may feel it is time to move on.Benjamin Abalos Jr., Mr. Marcos’s campaign manager, led protests against the Marcos regime as a student council officer of the Ateneo Law School. He said he never talked about those days with his candidate. “Whatever justice was achieved in those 36 years, I think that’s already enough,” he said. “Perhaps now it’s about moving forward.”Such attitudes could signal that a full rehabilitation of the Marcos name may soon be complete. The family now includes a governor, a senator, a mayor and a possible congressman. Mr. Marcos’s eldest son, Ferdinand Alexander, 28, is running for a congressional seat in Ilocos Norte, where his cousin, Matthew Marcos Manotoc, is governor.Volunteers and supporters in front of a campaign logo for Mr. Marcos and Sara Duterte, the daughter of President Rodrigo Duterte. Mr. Marcos has seized on his alliance with the Dutertes to present himself as a unifier.Jes Aznar for The New York TimesMr. Marcos has seized on his alliance with Ms. Duterte to present himself as a unifier who is ready to lead, but his political track record is mostly thin.While in his six years in the Senate he helped pass laws on protecting older people and expanding emergency relief to children, nearly 70 percent of the 52 laws he pushed for were on designating holidays and festivals, renaming highways and reapportioning provinces and cities, a review by The New York Times found.An investigation in 2015 found that his résumé on the Senate website had been embellished to include a bachelor of arts from the University of Oxford. The university later said he did not complete his degree, but obtained instead a special diploma in social studies. Mr. Marcos has denied misrepresenting his education.Though Mr. Marcos is seen as the front-runner in the May 9 election, rallies for Ms. Robredo, the vice president, have drawn hundreds of thousands of young supporters in recent weeks. Hecklers have shouted “magnanakaw,” or “thief,” at Mr. Marcos’s motorcade, and the petitions to disqualify his candidacy are still under appeal, though experts say they are unlikely to succeed.“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting,” said Ms. Ressa, the journalist, recalling a quote from the author Milan Kundera. She described the election as a “microcosm of a global battle for facts.”“If facts don’t win,” she said, “we’ll have a whole new history.”Waving campaign posters and flashing the peace sign made popular by Mr. Marcos’s father, a dictator who oversaw the torture and killing of political prisoners in the Philippines.Jes Aznar for The New York Times More

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      Macron and Le Pen Trade Jabs and Lean Left as French Race Heats Up

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      President Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate, are in close contention as the April 24 presidential runoff election nears.PARIS — France’s presidential election entered a new, intense phase on Tuesday as President Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate trying to unseat him, traded barbs from afar and rubbed shoulders with voters in hopes of widening their appeal, especially on the left.Mr. Macron, who spent the day in eastern France, and Ms. Le Pen, who was campaigning in Normandy, are competing in the second round of voting in the elections, a rematch of their 2017 face-off that will be held on April 24.In the first round of voting on Sunday, both attracted a bigger share of voters than they did five years ago — Mr. Macron with 27.85 percent of the vote, up from 24.01 in 2017, and Ms. Le Pen, of the National Rally party, with 23.15 percent. It was the largest proportion ever gained by a far-right candidate in the first round of voting, and almost 2 percentage points more than in 2017.The latest polls predict a very close runoff, and put Mr. Macron only slightly ahead.With less than two weeks to go before the vote, Mr. Macron has picked up the pace, seeking to dispel criticism that his campaign ahead of the first round was unfocused and that he appeared distracted by his diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine.In Mulhouse, a city in the Alsace region, Mr. Macron navigated crowds to shake the hands of those who supported him and debate those who did not, many of whom sharply questioned him on issues like purchasing power, welfare benefits and hospital funding.“I’m on the field,” Mr. Macron pointedly told a scrum of television reporters, emphasizing that for the past two days he had chosen to meet voters in towns that had not voted for him.He sought to portray Ms. Le Pen as unfit to govern.Ms. Le Pen, for example, says she has no intention of leaving the European Union — but many of her promised policies would flout its rules. Mr. Macron dismissed her assurances as “carabistouilles,” an old-fashioned term that roughly translates to “claptrap” or “nonsense.”“The election is also a referendum on Europe,” Mr. Macron said later at a public meeting in Strasbourg, where supporters waved French and European Union flags in the shadow of the city’s imposing cathedral.President Emmanuel Macron in Paris during the first round of the voting.James Hill for The New York TimesRoland Lescure, a lawmaker in France’s lower house of Parliament for Mr. Macron’s party, La République en Marche, said that the campaign was now focused on getting Mr. Macron as much direct face time with voters as possible.“The method is contact,” Mr. Lescure said, warning that there is a real risk of Ms. Le Pen being elected. “We have to campaign at full speed and until the end.”Mr. Macron’s stature as a leader who was at the helm throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine is not enough to secure him a new term, and neither is admonishing voters about the threat of the far right, Mr. Lescure said.“It’s not the devil against the angel,” he said. “It’s social models that are fundamentally opposed. We need to show what Marine Le Pen’s platform would do to France.”On Tuesday, Mr. Macron was endorsed by Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s right-wing president from 2007 to 2012. Ms. Le Pen’s campaign unveiled an official poster reminiscent of Mr. Macron’s official presidential portrait. Ms. Le Pen’s has a tagline: “For all the French.”After the collapse of France’s traditional left-wing and right-wing parties on Sunday, much of the candidates’ energy is now devoted to wooing voters who either abstained in the first round or picked Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the radical leftist and veteran politician who came in a strong third place, with 21.95 percent of the vote.For Ms. Le Pen, that means highlighting economic proposals like a lower sales tax on essential goods, but also keeping Éric Zemmour, another far-right politician, at arm’s length.Mr. Zemmour, a pundit who shook up French politics with his presidential bid, came in fourth on Sunday, and polls suggest that over 80 percent of those who picked him in the first round intend to vote for Ms. Le Pen in the second. That gives her little incentive to court them openly as she tries to reinvent herself in the eyes of mainstream voters.Marine Le Pen near Paris on Sunday.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesOn Tuesday, Ms. Le Pen flatly rejected the possibility of making Mr. Zemmour one of her ministers should she win, telling France Inter radio that “he doesn’t wish to and neither do I.”For Mr. Macron, attracting Mr. Mélenchon’s voters means toning down proposals that are particularly taboo on the left, especially his plans to raise the legal age of retirement from 62 to 65, which he says is necessary to keep funding France’s state pension system.On Monday, he insisted that he would gradually push back the retirement age by four months per year starting in 2023, but he said he was open to discussing a softening of the plan in its later stages, although how and to what degree is still unclear. During his first term, Mr. Macron’s pension proposals were derailed by massive strikes and protests.Ms. Le Pen, speaking Tuesday at a news conference in Vernon, a town in Normandy where she also mingled with crowds, dismissed Mr. Macron’s concession as a feeble attempt to attract left-wing voters, and called his platform “social carnage.”She detailed several proposals that she hoped would attract voters who supported Mr. Mélenchon, like creating a mechanism for referendums proposed by popular initiative, or introducing proportional representation in Parliament.“I intend to be a president who gives the people their voice back,” she said.Mr. Mélenchon was particularly popular with urban voters, coming ahead in cities like Lille, Marseille, Montpellier and Nantes, and he scored high with France’s youth. One study by the Ipsos and Sopra Steria polling institutes found that over 30 percent of those 35 and younger had voted for him, more than for any other candidate.Campaign posters in the town of Stiring-Wendel, in the northeast, this month.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesMarie Montagne, 21, and Ellina Abdellaoui, 22, both English literature students standing in front of the Sorbonne University in Paris, said that Mr. Mélenchon had not necessarily been their first choice — online quizzes suggested to Ms. Abdellaoui that she was most compatible with Philippe Poutou, a fringe anticapitalist candidate.But Mr. Mélenchon’s leftist, ecological platform was still appealing, they said, and he seemed like the left-wing candidate best positioned to reach the runoff. Now, though, the two students said they faced a difficult choice.“I am hesitating between abstaining and Macron,” Ms. Abdellaoui said. “I can’t vote for Le Pen.”Ms. Montagne said she would vote for the incumbent “because I don’t want the smallest chance of the far-right passing.”“But I won’t vote for him because I enjoy it,” she added.Adèle Cordonnier More