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      Rishi Sunak’s Dismal Task: Leading U.K. Conservatives to Likely Defeat

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      After 14 years of Conservative government, Britain’s voters appear hungry for change. And Prime Minister Rishi Sunak seems unable to persuade them otherwise.A few days before Britain’s Conservative Party suffered a stinging setback in local elections on Thursday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recorded a short video to promote some good news from his government. In the eight-second clip, Mr. Sunak poured milk from a pint bottle into a tall glass, filled with a steaming dark beverage and bearing the scribbled figure of 900 pounds on the side.“Pay day is coming,” Mr. Sunak posted, referring to the savings that an average wage earner would supposedly reap from a cut in mandatory contributions to Britain’s national insurance system.The mockery soon started. He’d added too much milk, some said. His numbers didn’t add up, said others. And why, asked one critic, would Mr. Sunak choose a pint bottle as a prop days after the opposition Labour Party’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, had skewered him in Parliament as a “pint-size loser?”However partisan her jab, loser is a label that Mr. Sunak is finding increasingly hard to shake, even among his members of his own party. In the 18 months since he replaced his failed predecessor, Liz Truss, Mr. Sunak, 43, has lost seven special parliamentary elections and back-to-back local elections.This past week’s local elections, in which the Conservatives lost about 40 percent of the 985 seats they were defending, were merely the latest signpost on what analysts say is a road to thumping defeat in a general election. National polls show the Labour Party leading the Conservatives by more than 20 percentage points, a stubborn gap that the prime minister has been unable to close.The drumbeat of bad news is casting fresh scrutiny on Mr. Sunak’s leadership and the future of his party, which has been in power for 14 years but faces what could be a long stretch in the political wilderness.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden’s Stance on Marijuana Has a Political Upside, Allies Say

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      The president’s allies say the Justice Department’s chill take on marijuana has a political upside.On Labor Day in 2022, John Fetterman found himself in a room in Pittsburgh with President Biden.Fetterman, a Democrat who was then the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania and in the middle of his successful run for the U.S. Senate, had a simple message he wanted to share: Go big on legal weed.And how did the president respond? “He was just, like, ‘Yeah, absolutely,’” Fetterman told me yesterday.The Justice Department on Tuesday said it had recommended that federal restrictions on marijuana become a whole lot chiller. And while it is not clear that lobbying from Democrats like Fetterman has played any role, the move was the latest step by the Biden administration to liberalize the nation’s cannabis policy — something his allies believe comes with an obvious political upside when more than two-thirds of Americans support legalization of the drug.“High reward, zero risk,” said the perpetually sweatshirted Fetterman, joking that he advises Biden only on matters of fashion and weed policy.Biden, a suit-wearing president who is more statesman than stoner, has become something of the pot president. It could elevate his standing specifically with young voters, who support rescheduling, or reclassifying, marijuana as a less serious drug, as well as with supporters of changes to criminal justice laws.One of the president’s allies just wishes he would talk about it more.“He has pardoned people, he initiated this rescheduling, but he has not embraced it. It’s not too late,” said Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, the 75-year-old Democrat who has been pushing for looser cannabis policy for half a century. “The public needs to know that this is the single most significant step that has been taken by the federal government in the more-than-50-year-old war on drugs.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Election Deniers Are Still Shaping Arizona Politics

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      There have been few political consequences for many Republicans accused of helping Trump try to overturn the 2020 election.Two years ago, a group of election deniers ran for office in Arizona, with Kari Lake’s campaign for governor topping the ticket. When many of them lost, it seemed like a convincing rebuke of the conspiracy theory-steeped Republicans who wanted to control the levers of electoral power in 2024.It turned out, though, that the small matter of losing was not going to keep election deniers out of the spotlight, nor away from key roles in the Arizona Republican Party and beyond.And neither will an indictment, it seems.Last week, the Democratic attorney general of Arizona charged 17 people with counts including conspiracy, fraud and forgery, alleging they made efforts to overturn former President Donald Trump’s narrow loss in the 2020 election that amounted to a crime. Eleven of the people charged cast fake electoral votes in support of Trump.The defendants who got the most attention are the ones who were closest to Trump at the time, like former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York, the former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Boris Epshteyn, who is one of Trump’s legal advisers. (While their names were redacted in the indictment, detailed descriptions contained in the charging documents made it easy to tell who they are.)But the trajectory of some of the 11 local and lower-profile defendants is even more revealing. Their story shows how Republicans who sought to challenge the 2020 election results continue to face few political consequences, and how deeply their philosophy is woven into the politics of 2024 in Arizona and elsewhere.“The party has not only not created any distance, it has continued to forcefully embrace” election deniers, said Barrett Marson, a Republican strategist in Phoenix.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Three Questions About Politics and the Campus Protests

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      The encampments present a new wrinkle in a year already knotted by war abroad and domestic discord.The pro-Palestinian student encampments protesting the war in Gaza swept across the country this week, and with them, dramatic imagery of arrests and crackdowns from New York to Texas to Southern California.Soon, the comparison to another protest-filled election year inevitably arose. Is 2024 going to morph into something that feels like 1968?That year, protests at Columbia University exploded amid a nationwide movement against the Vietnam War, one that involved violent clashes as police moved in on protesters at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that summer. Democrats, who had been deeply divided over the war, ultimately lost the election to President Nixon.There are many differences between then and now, and it is much too soon to know whether the campus protests happening now will come to feel like what happened that seismic year. But the bubbling up of protest activity across college campuses half a year before a presidential election has made 2024 — a year already knotted by war overseas and deep domestic political division — that much more complicated. It’s another question mark in a political season already full of them.Here are three questions about the politics of this moment — questions that my colleagues and I will continue to explore in the coming weeks and months.Do the protests represent a broad disaffection that will hurt Democrats?The students demonstrating on college campuses across the nation are a physical embodiment of the way that the Democratic base has been divided by the war in Gaza. They have drawn renewed attention to the disappointment many young and progressive voters feel about the Biden administration’s support of Israel in a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. (While largely peaceful, the protests have also been criticized for some demonstrators’ use of antisemitic language.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      India to Repeat Voting at Polling Sites Hit by Violence

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      The attacks occurred in Manipur, a northeastern state that has been troubled by ethnic unrest. Witnesses reported that voting booths were captured and bogus ballots cast.India’s election authorities have directed officials to redo voting at several polling places in the troubled northeastern state of Manipur, after armed men attacked polling stations and captured voting booths despite the presence of dozens of paramilitary soldiers.The state of Manipur has endured ethnic conflict for months after a dispute erupted over who gets to claim a tribal status that grants extra privileges, for example preferential treatment in seeking government jobs.The conflict, which began last May, has essentially split the region, home to about three million people, pitting two ethnic groups against each other: the mostly Hindu Meiteis, who form a narrow majority, and members of Christian hill tribes known as Kukis. More than 200 people have been killed, members of both groups. Thousands were internally displaced and still fear returning to places they once called home, seeking refuge in squalid camps.The Election Commission of India said on Saturday that voting would be done again on Monday in 11 polling stations where voting had been held on Friday.The order came after the region’s top election commissioner wrote to his agency describing mob violence, gunfire, damage to electronic voting machines and bogus voters entering the booths.Video footage from the Inner Manipur constituency, one of the two seats in the state for the lower house of Parliament, showed mobs raiding a polling station and breaking electronic voting machines.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Could the Union Victory at VW Set Off a Wave?

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      Some experts say the outcome at a plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., may be organized labor’s most significant advance in decades. But the road could get rockier.By voting to join the United Automobile Workers, Volkswagen workers in Tennessee have given the union something it has never had: a factory-wide foothold at a major foreign automaker in the South.The result, in an election that ended on Friday, will enable the union to bargain for better wages and benefits. Now the question is what difference it will make beyond the Volkswagen plant.Labor experts said success at VW might position the union to replicate its showing at other auto manufacturers throughout the South, the least unionized region of the country. Some argued that the win could help set off a rise in union membership at other companies that exceeds the uptick of the past few years, when unions won elections at Starbucks and Amazon locations.“It’s a big vote, symbolically and substantively,” said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociologist who studies labor at Washington University in St. Louis.The next test for the U.A.W. will come in a vote in mid-May at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama.In addition, at least 30 percent of workers have signed cards authorizing the U.A.W. to represent them at a Hyundai plant in Alabama and a Toyota plant in Missouri, according to the union. That is the minimum needed to force an election, though the union has yet to petition for one in either location.“People only take action when they believe there is an alternative to the status quo that has a plausible chance of winning,” said Barry Eidlin, a sociologist at McGill University in Montreal.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Croatia’s Election Result Makes a Far-Right Party a Possible Kingmaker

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      The Homeland Movement came third in parliamentary elections, setting itself up as a possible partner for the ruling conservatives, who failed to achieve a majority.A far-right party emerged on Thursday as a potential kingmaker in Croatia after the governing conservatives finished first in a bitterly contested parliamentary election but fell short of winning enough seats to form a new government.The outcome of Wednesday’s vote signaled a new era of messy political uncertainty in the Balkan nation, which has been dominated by one party, the Croatian Democratic Union, or HDZ, since 1991 when it declared independence from Yugoslavia.The HDZ, led by the incumbent Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, won 61 seats in the 151-member legislature, according to the near-final official tally. That was more than all its rivals, including Rivers of Justice, a left-leaning coalition formed by President Zoran Milanovic, which won 42 seats to finish second. The far-right Homeland Movement finished third with 13 seats.Speaking early Thursday in Zagreb, the Croatian capital, Mr. Plenkovic said his party had “convincingly won” but acknowledged that he would need help from rival groups to form a government and secure a third term as prime minister.He later said in a post on Facebook that talks had already started with potential allies that he did not name. “Everything is going well,” he said, and predicted that a government would be formed “soon.”Tihomir Cipek, a political science professor at the University of Zagreb, said the result reflected a general trend in Europe, particularly among new members of the European Union, which Croatia joined in 2013. “The political center starts losing voters to parties on the far right and far left that are a reaction to Europeanization,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Beautiful World of Birding

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      More from our inbox:Civility on the Court, but These Are Not Civil TimesA History of Deception About Politicians’ HealthTest the CandidatesBanning Plastic Foam Nadine RedlichTo the Editor:Re “Birds Open Our Eyes and Ears,” by Ed Yong (Opinion guest essay, March 31):Mr. Yong has written a marvelous article that will resonate with many birders, especially in these troubled times. Many are the mornings when I’ve put aside reading the news in favor of watching the birds at my home in southeast Arizona.To Mr. Yong’s article I would add that seeking and identifying new birds are wonderful ways to experience the world. Spending time getting to know the birds you’ve already seen can be equally fulfilling, if not even more so.People who don’t have the luxury of traveling to find exotic species need not feel deprived; they can find fulfillment creating a songbird habitat in their backyard.Craig CorayPatagonia, Ariz.To the Editor:Thank you for the wonderful birding article. I too have become obsessive, and I am learning the names of different birds.The positive healthy aspects of birding are obvious, but people should not just get to know birds, but also think about their safety and their food. Sanctuary and breeding grounds are being depleted around the world. Shorelines are being paved and water conditions are subpar.Birds are not just for us to enjoy, enhancing our photo albums or improving our species lists. Stay a distance from their habitats, and don’t let your dog or cat tread on them. Get protected glass for buildings. Think of birds as precious, not as a game for humans.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More