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      Defeat Trump, Now More Than Ever

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      The democratic nations of the world are in a global struggle against authoritarianism. That struggle has international fronts — starting with the need to confront, repel and weaken Vladimir Putin.But that struggle also has domestic fronts — the need to defeat the mini-Putins now found across the Western democracies. These are the demagogues who lie with Putinesque brazenness, who shred democratic institutions with Putinesque bravado, who strut the world’s stage with Putin’s amoral schoolboy machismo while pretending to represent all that is traditional and holy.In the United States that, of course, is Donald Trump. This moment of heightened danger and crisis makes it even clearer that the No. 1 domestic priority for all Americans who care about democracy is to make sure Trump never sees the inside of the Oval Office ever again. As democracy is threatened from abroad it can’t also be cannibalized from within.Thinking has to be crystal clear. What are the crucial battlegrounds in the struggle against Trump? He won the White House by winning Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin with strong support from white voters without a college degree. Joe Biden ousted Trump by winning back those states and carrying the new swing states, Arizona and Georgia.So for the next three years Democrats need to wake up with one overriding political thought: What are we doing to appeal to all working-class voters in those five states? Are we doing anything today that might alienate these voters?Are the Democrats winning the contest for these voters right now? No.At the start of 2021 Democrats had a nine-point advantage when you asked voters to name their party preference. By the end of 2021 Republicans had a five-point advantage. Among swing voters, things are particularly grim. A February 2022 Economist/YouGov survey found that a pathetic 30 percent of independents approve of Biden’s job performance. Working-class voters are turning against Biden. According to a January Pew survey, 54 percent of Americans with graduate degrees approved of Biden’s performance, but only 37 percent of those without any college experience did.Are Democrats thinking clearly about how to win those voters? No.This week two veteran Democratic strategists, William A. Galston and Elaine Kamarck, issued a report for the Progressive Policy Institute arguing that Democrats need to get over at least three delusions.The first Democratic myth is, “People of color think and act alike.” In fact, there have been differences between Hispanics and Black Americans on issues like the economy, foreign policy and policing. Meanwhile working-class people have been moving toward the G.O.P. across racial lines.“Today, the Democrats’ working-class problem isn’t limited to white workers,” the veteran Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg wrote in The American Prospect. “The party is also losing support from working-class Blacks and Hispanics.”The second Democratic myth is, “Economics trumps culture.” This is the idea that if Democrats can shower working- and middle-class voters with material benefits then that will overwhelm any differences they may have with them on religious, social and cultural issues — on guns, crime and immigration, etc. This crude economic determinism has been rebutted by history time and time again.The third myth is, “A progressive ascendancy is emerging.” The fact is that only 7 percent of the electorate considers itself “very liberal.” I would have thought the Biden economic agenda, which basically consists of handing money to the people who need it most, would be astoundingly popular. It’s popular, but not that popular. I would have thought Americans would scream bloody murder when the expansion of the existing child tax credit expired. They haven’t. Distrust in government is still astoundingly high, undercutting the progressive project at every turn.What do Democrats need to do now? Well, one thing they are really good at. Over the past few years a wide range of thinkers — across the political spectrum — have congregated around a neo-Hamiltonian agenda that stands for the idea that we need to build more things — roads, houses, colleges, green technologies and ports. Democrats need to hammer home this Builders agenda, which would provide good-paying jobs and renew American dynamism.But Democrats also have to do something they’re really bad at: Craft a cultural narrative around the theme of social order. The Democrats have been blamed for fringe ideas like “defund the police” and a zeal for “critical race theory” because the party doesn’t have its own mainstream social and cultural narrative.With war in Europe, crime rising on our streets, disarray at the border, social unraveling in many of our broken communities, perceived ideological unmooring in our schools, moral decay everywhere, Democrats need to tell us which cultural and moral values they stand for that will hold this country together.The authoritarians tell a simple story about how to restore order — it comes from cultural homogeneity and the iron fist of the strongman. Democrats have a harder challenge — to show how order can be woven amid diversity, openness and the full flowering of individuals. But Democrats need to name the moral values and practices that will restore social order.It doesn’t matter how many nice programs you have; people won’t support you if they think your path is the path to chaos.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      What to Know: India’s Local Elections

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      What to Know: India’s Local ElectionsHari Kumar📍Reporting from Punjab, IndiaSaumya Khandelwal for The New York TimesIf challengers such as the Aam Aadmi Party, which runs on an anti-corruption platform and is currently in power in India’s capital, Delhi, wins in Punjab, it will embolden other regional parties to push for toppling Congress as the natural leader of the opposition. More

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      As French Elections Loom, Macron Tries to Strike a Balance

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      The news media calls the French president “Jupiter,” the king of the gods, but he is trying to show a more human face. Will it soften his image?PARIS — Rarely has a modern French leader embraced the powers of the presidency as forcefully as Emmanuel Macron. From his earliest days in office, Mr. Macron was called “Jupiter” by the news media, the king of the gods who ruled by hurling down lightning bolts.But if that image has helped Mr. Macon push through his agenda, it has also made him a special focus of anger among his opponents in a way extraordinary, even by the standards of a country where the power of the presidency has little equivalent in other Western democracies. “Death to the king” has been a frequent cry in recent years during street protests, along with makeshift guillotines.As elections approach in April, that image has also become a political liability and left Mr. Macron struggling to strike the right balance between quasi king and electoral candidate in a political culture that swings between an attachment to monarchy and a penchant for regicide.“I’m someone who’s rather emotional, but who hides it,” the president said, lowering his eyes in the gilded ballroom of the Élysée Palace, during a recent two-hour television interview. “I’m someone who’s rather very human, I believe,” he said.Mr. Macron, the Le Monde newspaper wrote, sought to “symbolically kill Jupiter.”Still, Mr. Macron has taken full advantage of presidential prerogatives to so far avoid even declaring his candidacy for a second term — though it is considered a foregone conclusion. That has allowed him to delay descending from the throne of the “republican monarch,” as the presidency is sometimes called, to engage in early battle with his opponents.Mr. Macron on a screen outside the Louvre in Paris in May 2017, the month he became president. He rejected his two predecessors’ attempts to modernize the institution of the presidency.Francois Mori/Associated PressInstead, to increasing criticism, he has run a stealth campaign for months, reaching out to voters and leaving his challengers to squabble among themselves.“His goal is to show that he’s a good-natured monarch, a human monarch, but with authority,” said Jean Garrigues, a leading historian on France’s political culture. “His challengers’ goal is to show Macron as a helpless monarch, someone who has the powers of a monarch, but who’s incapable of putting them to use.”“That’s the great French paradox,” Mr. Garrigues added. “A people permanently in search of participatory democracy who, at the same time, expects everything of their monarch.”France’s president as a “republican monarch” was the product of the father of the Fifth Republic, Charles de Gaulle. The wartime hero and peacetime leader, through a disputed national referendum in 1962, turned the presidency into a personalized, popularly elected office, an all-powerful providential figure.“You have power around one man who is the politician with the most power in his system of all Western nations,” said Vincent Martigny, a professor of political science at the University of Nice and an expert on leadership in democracies. “There is no equivalent of the power of the president of the republic, with checks that are so weak.”Under Mr. Macron, the national assembly has become even less of a counterweight. His party, La République en Marche, was a vehicle he created for his candidacy; many of its lawmakers, who hold a majority in the national assembly, are neophytes beholden to him.Campaign posters for Mr. Macron’s political party on a wall in Paris in January, carrying the slogan, “Avec vous,” or “With you.”Benoit Tessier/ReutersMr. Macron, experts say, chose two weak prime ministers in a bid to exercise direct control over the government, even replacing his first prime minister after he became too popular. At the same time, as president, Mr. Macron is not held accountable by Parliament, unlike prime ministers.“We shouldn’t mix the roles of the president and the prime minister,” said Philippe Bas, a center-right senator who served as secretary general under President Jacques Chirac in the Élysée Palace. “What Macron has done is to absorb the function of the prime minister, which is a problem because he can’t appear in Parliament to defend his draft laws.”That imbalance has allowed Mr. Macron to push economic reforms through Parliament, sometimes with little consultation — or no vote, in the case of an overhaul of the French pension system that had provoked weeks of strikes and street protests, but was ultimately put on hold because of the coronavirus pandemic.Mr. Macron oversaw a crackdown on Yellow Vest protesters that raised the issue of police violence to a national level. His pandemic measures were adopted behind the closed doors of a “defense council,” and included a state of emergency and one of the strictest lockdowns among democracies. He has not fulfilled an earlier pledge to empower Parliament by introducing proportional representation.Mr. Macron’s full embrace of presidential prerogatives and his image of aloofness combined to expose the limits of France’s democratic institutions, Mr. Martigny said. Protesters have directed their anger at Mr. Macron, he added, because the increasingly weak Parliament and other government institutions are incapable of addressing their concerns.“Doubts about the institution of the presidency have come to the fore much more during Macron’s five years in office, especially during the Yellow Vest crisis, which showed there was a real problem with the system,” Mr. Martigny said.A rally to protest Covid-19 restrictions, including a health pass, in Paris in September. Mr. Macron’s pandemic measures have been adopted behind the closed doors of a “defense council.”Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesHe added that Mr. Macron tried to work around the institutional limits with democratic experiments. He defused the Yellow Vest protests, which were set off by a rise in the gasoline tax, by single-handedly engaging in marathon town hall events for two months in a “great debate.” And he announced the creation of a citizens panel to draw up proposals on climate change.Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionCard 1 of 6The campaign begins. More

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      ‘Dark Money’ Suddenly Dominates Australia’s Election

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      Chinese financing, unreported donations, payouts from coal barons: The new political season is shining an unaccustomed light on a culture of opacity.SYDNEY, Australia — When Dr. Ken Coghill served in the Victoria state legislature in the early 1980s, he joined a movement to reform Australia’s campaign finance system, which allowed donations to slosh through politics, with donors mostly able to hide their identities and contributions.Dr. Coghill, a Labor leader at the time, said he was outraged because the so-called dark money undermined the principle of all voters being equal, giving unidentified donors and their chosen candidates or parties “a very considerable advantage.”Nearly 40 years later, Dr. Coghill is still outraged, because little has changed. But now, that culture of cashed-up secrecy is suddenly defining the start of the federal election campaign that will determine whether the current conservative prime minister remains in power.With an election due by the end of May, Australians are not being treated to policy debates but rather accusations of shadowy Chinese financing, failures to report large donations, and payouts to climate-change warriors from coal barons.“The flow of money is increasing, but also the political culture is becoming eroded,” said Han Aulby, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity. “There’s a sense that if you can get away with things, you do it.”Compared with the United States, Australia’s campaign season is shorter and less costly, as is the case for many countries with parliamentary democracies. But even among its peers, such as Canada and New Zealand, Australia is a laggard on campaign finance regulation. Research from the Center for Public Integrity shows that over the past two decades, the source of nearly $1 billion in party income has been hidden.Some scholars argue that Australia’s opacity reflects a distinct set of cultural idiosyncrasies: a belief that transparency is not an obvious social good and a sense that those in power should decide what the public needs to know.A view of the Sydney waterfront. A majority of Australians believe corruption in politics is a common occurrence.Isabella Moore for The New York Times“The prevailing view in Australia is still that the government owns the information — it is not held on behalf of the citizens — and if people want it, it should not be automatically available,” said Johan Lidberg, a media professor at Monash University. “That sits at the very core here. We haven’t shifted away from that yet.”The money fight this time follows a period of increased public concern about corruption.In a country far wealthier than it used to be, where infrastructure money has been known to flow toward political friends, and where government secrecy keeps expanding, polls show overwhelming support for an anti-corruption body at the federal level. A majority of Australians now believe corruption is a common occurrence.The center-right Liberal Party of Prime Minister Scott Morrison had promised to do something about that after winning the last election, in 2019, but never followed through. Now, with support for his government’s pandemic management in decline, he has begun using dark money as a theme on which to attack his political opponents.The effort started with accusations of money and support from China.This month, Mike Burgess, head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, the country’s main domestic intelligence agency, warned in his annual threat assessment that the authorities had foiled a foreign interference plot involving a wealthy individual who “maintained direct and deep connections with a foreign government and its intelligence agencies.”Mr. Morrison at a campaign rally in Sydney during the last election in 2019. His campaign pledge to create a federal agency to crack down on corruption has so far gone unfulfilled.Mick Tsikas/EPA, via ShutterstockThe “puppeteer,” he said, had hired someone in Australia and set the person up with hundreds of thousands of dollars procured from an offshore bank account.Speculation immediately turned to Beijing. The next day, in Parliament, Australia’s defense minister, Peter Dutton, said the Chinese Communist Party had chosen to support Anthony Albanese, the Labor party leader, “as their pick.” Mr. Morrison followed up by calling Labor Party leaders “Manchurian candidates.”Critics called the remarks scaremongering. The Labor Party has said it did nothing wrong, and Mr. Burgess has pushed back against the partisan attacks.“Attempts at political interference are not confined to one side of politics,” he said last week.Nor are accusations about hidden money.Zali Steggall, a political independent who entered Parliament in 2019 after defeating Tony Abbott, a former prime minister, with a campaign focused on fighting climate change, has run into her own problems. An Australian Electoral Commission review found that she did not correctly report a $100,000 donation in 2019 from the family trust of a former coal company executive.The commission’s review found that the gift — the largest single donation she received — was not reported because after the check had been received, the money was split into eight separate contributions that were under the $13,800 disclosure threshold.Ms. Steggall called it “a rookie mistake.” She argued that previous investments in coal should not prevent someone from donating to candidates supporting a greener future, and insisted that she did not know the donation had been misreported. Corrected last year, it has come to light now as several independent candidates are threatening to unseat Liberal incumbents in part with money from centralized issue-oriented organizations.Zali Steggall, a political independent who is a member of Parliament, failed to correctly report a $100,000 donation in 2019 from the family trust of a former coal company executive.Lukas Coch/EPA, via ShutterstockThe Steggall campaign’s financial controller is now a director of one such group, Climate 200.“What this highlights is there are a lot of people who are happy to throw stones, but they’re often in glass houses,” Mr. Morrison said.What it actually shows, according to advocates for a more transparent approach, is how the current system has been encouraging a spiral of misbehavior.Disclosures of donations for federal elections are still released just once a year, in unsearchable scans of documents riddled with errors and omissions. Supporters of reform have called for real-time reporting and lower thresholds for reporting donations.“This is an issue that has bubbled along since the early 1970s,” said Dr. Coghill, who is a professor of government at Swinburne University of Technology, as well as a veterinarian.“In a way, that’s a reflection of Australia’s relative isolation,” he added. “We don’t have frequent contact with people in other countries that do have more rigorous regimes in place.”But Ms. Aulby, who founded the Center for Public Integrity in 2016, said that many Australians were starting to question what happens in the shadows where favors and financing intertwine.She said one of the most blatant tactics to hide money involved “associated entities” — essentially shell companies that distribute donations.Both major parties rely on them. Labor, for example, received 33 percent of its income from 1998 to 2021 from associated entities, for a total of more than $120 million.Campaign posters outside a polling station in Melbourne in 2019. Both major parties rely on shell companies to hide donation money.Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for The New York TimesThe Liberals brought in even more from their associated entities — about $140 million in the same period, according to the center, amounting to 42 percent of all the party’s reported income.“They do a lot of business, but I don’t know who their directors are or if they and their money are from the resource or banking industry,” Ms. Aulby said.The consequences of that approach, however, are becoming more visible. Last month, Transparency International recorded a drop for Australia in its annual corruption index, giving the country its lowest score since the organization adopted its current measurements in 2012.Polls in Australia also show growing alarm. That has become especially true after the current government assigned public funds to sports infrastructure projects in districts that it needed to win in the last election, even when no one applied for the grant money.In those cases, the Morrison government stonewalled and refused to release its final internal report on what happened with more than $70 million in grants. The minister in charge of them was demoted only temporarily.“Scandal after scandal is happening without any consequence,” Ms. Aulby said.But once the accusations begin, the cycle can be hard to stop. Last week, Mr. Morrison was busy attacking opponents and their supposed financiers; this week his own coalition partner was being dragged through the media for failing to disclose a payment of 1 million Australian dollars ($721,000) from an influential property owner in the capital, Canberra.“There needs to be some consequences — electoral consequences, because there aren’t other consequences happening,” Ms. Aulby said. “I hope that voters have that in mind in the upcoming election.” More

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      Your Monday Briefing: Shelling in Ukraine intensifies

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      Plus the Olympics end and Queen Elizabeth II tests positive.Mortar attacks continued through the weekend in eastern Ukraine.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesRussia’s imminent invasion?U.S. intelligence learned last week that the Kremlin had ordered an invasion of Ukraine to proceed, prompting a dire warning by President Biden that President Vladimir Putin had made the decision to attack.The new intelligence reveals that 40 to 50 percent of the Russian forces surrounding Ukraine have moved out of staging and into combat formation.Russian artillery fire escalated sharply in eastern Ukraine this weekend, deepening fears of an imminent attack and potentially giving Russia a pretext to invade. Ukrainians reluctantly left their homes, some evacuating to Russia. After repeated assurances that military drills would end this weekend, Belarus said that it and Russia would continue to “test” their military capabilities and that Russian troops would stay longer than planned. NATO has long warned that the deployment could be used as cover to build an invasion force.Resources: Here are live updates, an explainer about the conflict and a timeline.Genocide: The single word has become key to Moscow’s baseless accusations against the Ukrainian government — and a wider quest for a new imperial identity rooted in Russian ethnicity.Ukraine: The conflict has weakened Ukraine’s economy, but its people are doubling down. Paramilitary groups are preparing for an invasion.Diplomacy: President Volodymyr Zelensky left Ukraine to meet with leaders in Europe. Zelensky urged sanctions against Russia and criticized the Western response after the U.S. heightened its warnings of an imminent Russian attack. Geopolitics: Russia and China appear to be in lock step, and the U.S. is trying to build up global coalitions to counter the alliance. Experts say that Putin may be trying to revise the outcome of the last Cold War and that Russia’s troop buildup could be a sign that he has become more reckless.Flags at the closing ceremony in Beijing.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesThe Beijing Olympics closeFor all of China’s efforts to carry on the Winter Games with a festive spirit, Beijing 2022 unfolded as a joyless spectacle: constricted by the pandemic, fraught with geopolitical tensions and tainted once again by accusations of doping.Television viewership dropped significantly in the U.S., Canada, Britain and other countries, underscoring concerns facing the Olympic movement. But the sports shone through.Medals: Norway repeated its extraordinary success in the Winter Olympics, with a record 16 golds and 37 medals overall.China: The Chinese team had its best medal haul in a Winter Olympics: nine golds and 15 overall. Inside the country, online propagandists promoted a vision of the Games free of rancor or controversy.Athletes: Eileen Gu, an 18-year-old skier from San Francisco who competed for China, became the event’s breakout star. Some Chinese Americans see themselves in the duality she has embraced.Pandemic: China’s “closed loop” approach worked — and birthed new infrastructure. Only a few athletes had to miss their competitions, and there were days when not a single test came back positive.Business: Olympic sponsors are struggling to straddle a widening political gulf between the U.S. and China: What is good for business in one country is increasingly a liability in the other.If Queen Elizabeth II is too ill to fulfill her duties, her heirs — Prince Charles and Prince William — would step in to lead.Steve Parsons/Agence France-Presse, via Pool/Afp Via Getty ImagesQueen Elizabeth tests positive for Covid The 95-year-old British monarch was “experiencing mild coldlike symptoms,” Buckingham Palace said.Although the circumstances of the queen’s infection remained clouded in questions, Prince Charles, her eldest son and heir, tested positive in a breakthrough infection two days after meeting with her earlier this month.After canceling public events in the fall, citing exhaustion, the queen has begun appearing in public again. Her frailty is deepening anxiety that her extremely popular reign may be coming to an end.Pandemic: Prime Minister Boris Johnson was expected to announce the lifting of the remaining restrictions in England on Monday, including the legal requirement for those who test positive to isolate.In other pandemic developments:Australia will reopen to travelers on Monday.Canadian police cleared demonstrators in Ottawa in an attempt to end the weekslong occupation over Covid restrictions.Hong Kong will postpone the election of its next leader, citing a surge in cases.South Korea, which is experiencing its largest Covid-19 wave yet, will set a 90-minute window for Covid-positive voters to cast their ballots in next month’s presidential election.THE LATEST NEWSAsiaCharanjit Singh Channi, the chief minister of the Indian state of Punjab, is both the incumbent and the underdog.Saumya Khandelwal for The New York TimesThe Indian National Congress, once the dominant force in Indian politics, faced a major test in Punjab’s election on Sunday.A young Afghan boy died on Friday after being trapped in a deep well for several days.World NewsCritics say the China Initiative chilled scientific research and contributed to a rising tide of anti-Asian sentiment.Stefani Reynolds/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe U.S. Justice Department will modify the China Initiative, a Trump-era effort to combat security threats. Critics said it unfairly targeted Asian professors.Recently leaked data from the 1940s until the 2010s showed how Credit Suisse held millions for strongmen, spies and human rights abusers.A severe storm pummeled parts of Britain and northern Europe with fierce winds, killing at least eight people. Hundreds of people were rescued on Friday from a burning ferry near Greece. At least one person has died, and 10 are still missing.Syrians are mixing wheat flour with corn to cope with shortages, after years of conflict and climate change destroyed the country’s breadbasket.What Else Is HappeningJean-Luc Brunel, an associate of Jeffrey Epstein charged with the rape of minors, was found dead in an apparent suicide in a Paris jail.The Biden administration is pausing new federal oil and gas drilling in a legal fight over how to weigh the cost of climate damage.Forensic linguists believe they have identified two men as the likely sources of the QAnon conspiracy theory movement.A Morning ReadScientists land on an ice floe to take measurements.Explorers have started combing Antarctica’s icy Weddell Sea for one of the most revered ships in the history of polar exploration: Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance. As underwater drones scan the seafloor for the wreck, scientists are also looking for signs that the climate crisis is changing the pack ice.ARTS AND IDEAS Ana MiminoshviliHow will we travel in 2022?With Omicron cases ebbing, travel agents and operators have reported a significant increase in bookings for spring and summer trips. Big bucket-list trips seem to be in high demand.Here are a few trends to watch:Air travel will probably open up. Expect fewer restrictions in 2022, more travelers and more flights. Maybe even cheaper fares, too.Entry requirements may still snarl plans: Here’s a guide of what to expect at international borders.Cities are back: Travelers are itching for museums and great restaurants, especially in European capitals.So are all-inclusive resorts, catering to pandemic-scarred travelers wary of leaving the grounds.There’s also a rise in sexual wellness retreats, education-focused jaunts for families looking to help children supplement missed learning and smaller, more niche cruises. Happy trails!PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookAndrew Purcell for The New York TimesThis gingery fried rice is a good way to use up leftover vegetables.What to Read“The Naked Don’t Fear the Water: An Underground Journey With Afghan Refugees” is an “expansive, immersive work that reads like the most gripping novel.”WellnessCan a cold water plunge really reduce anxiety and depression?Now Time to PlayHere’s today’s Mini Crossword.Here’s today’s Wordle. (If you’re worried about your stats streak, play in the browser you’ve been using.)And here is today’s Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. Tell us what you think about this newsletter in this short survey. Thank you! See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. Times reporters shared how they have covered the U.S. as it struggled to navigate Covid-19.The latest episode of “The Daily” is about the shortage of nurses in the U.S.You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      India’s Congress Party Faces a Test of Survival as Punjab Votes

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      A defeat here, one of the few states where the once-dominant party still retains power, would be a major blow.ATTARI, India — Charanjit Singh Channi, the chief minister of the Indian state of Punjab, has many of the elements to mount a successful election campaign in India’s politics.He is from the state’s dominant party. He has doled out last-minute sweeteners, by waiving utility bills and reducing prices on necessities like fuel. And he has captured the imagination of India’s raucous television scene, offering viral moments that depict the 58-year-old chief minister, a former handball player, as a man of the people: breaking into bhangra dance routines at debate events; stopping his official convoy to help an injured biker; congratulating a newly married couple on the road.Yet when this state of 30 million votes on Sunday to elect its new government, Mr. Channi is an underdog. Not only are the opposition parties trying to dislodge his Indian National Congress party from one of the last states where it remains in power, but his own ranks have also been unraveling amid messy infighting.The vote in Punjab is shaping up as a broader test of whether Congress, which governed India for the majority of its history since independence from British rule, can arrest its steep national decline in recent years following the rise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. At the national level, Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has established itself as such an undisputed force in consecutive national elections that India’s democracy increasingly feels like a one-party rule, analysts and observers say.Mr. Channi, in an interview between campaign rallies, acknowledged the pressures of his situation in a race with a significance to Congress beyond just Punjab, adding that he was focused only on what he could do. “I work hard, with dignity and effort, and the rest is up to the public.”The Congress party, run by members of the Gandhi family at the top, is a shadow of its former self, with less than 10 percent of the seats in the Parliament and leading governments in just three of India’s 28 states. The party has won some victories in local elections, but not enough to fuel a national revival. Other regional parties that have been trying to form coalitions to challenge Mr. Modi have expressed frustration with what they see as Congress’s sense of historic entitlement, despite its shrinking numbers.Police officers inspecting the venue for a Congress party event on Thursday in Attari, India.Saumya Khandelwal for The New York TimesSeveral parties, including Mr. Modi’s B.J.P., are trying to gain seats when the votes for the Punjab assembly are tallied next month, along with the results of ongoing elections in some other states. In Punjab, an agrarian state struggling with rising farmer debt and unemployment, the main challenger is the Aam Admi Party, which is trying to expand nationally after sweeping to power in the capital region on an anti-corruption protest movement.“There is a new game that has started among India’s opposition parties — to cannibalize on Congress,” said Rahul Verma, a political scientist at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.Mr. Verma said Congress’s woes were such that even a win in Punjab would not translate to broader momentum. If Congress loses, the damage could be more lethal — the party would struggle to justify clinging to the role of what he described as “the natural leader of the opposition.”“If Channi succeeds to pull through, it is positive morale boosting,” Mr. Verma said, “but it doesn’t mean Congress can improve its situation drastically nationally.”The Congress’s victory in Punjab in 2017 followed major defeats, including in the 2014 national elections when Mr. Modi first came to power. The party’s leaders wanted their victory in Punjab to be seen as the impetus for a national comeback.Supporters of Mr. Channi in Attari. He is the first Dalit, from a community at the bottom of India’s caste system, to hold the position of chief minister in Punjab.Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times“Congress will revive from here, get energy from Punjab, and spread,” Rahul Gandhi said after that 2017 victory. “Mark my words.”That did not happen. The party endured another sweeping defeat at the hand of Mr. Modi in the 2019 general elections, its position so reduced in the national Parliament that it did not have enough seats to claim the title of the leader of opposition.Its government in Punjab was marred by mismanagement, as discontent grew over pressures on farmers, rising prices, and worsening unemployment. Amrinder Singh, the chief minister, was seen as so disconnected that he started facing revolts from within his government.Months before the assembly elections, the Congress leadership replaced Mr. Singh. But the shake-up, and the jockeying over his replacement, divided the party’s ranks. Amid the friction, Mr. Gandhi, who along with his mother and sister have been running the party in recent years, made what was lauded as an inspired choice. He selected Mr. Channi as the new chief minister, making him the first Dalit, from a community that occupies the bottom of India’s caste system, to hold the position in Punjab.“I started crying,” said Mr. Channi, whose father ran a small shop renting out wedding tents, about receiving the call that declared him chief minister.Manish Sisodia from the Aam Admi Party greeting supporters in Amritsar, India, on Friday. His party has been trying to position itself as the answer to Punjab’s woes on health and education.Saumya Khandelwal for The New York TimesMr. Channi, previously a cabinet minister under Mr. Singh, had about four months to correct some of the damage before Sunday’s elections. But other party leaders continued to see him as a stopgap solution who could be elbowed out.Just two weeks before the vote, Mr. Gandhi reaffirmed that Congress would fight the Punjab election with Mr. Channi as their leader.After his ouster as chief minister, Mr. Singh quickly formed his own party and teamed up with Mr. Modi’s B.J.P. to create a coalition. The Congress party has been trying to blunt some of the anti-incumbency sentiment in Punjab by blaming Mr. Singh. For his part, Mr. Singh has been criticizing Congress in terms that amount to attacks on his own record.“Everyone in Punjab knows that the Congress has done nothing in the last five years but make money,” Mr. Singh said in a recent interview with Indian media.The Aam Aadmi Party, or Common Man Party, founded by an anti-corruption crusader, has been trying to position itself as the answer to Punjab’s woes on health and education. Their members point to their record of improving government schooling in Delhi. In a “road show” on the final day of campaigning in Amristar, a convoy of hundreds of cars, trucks, and motorcycles wove through the streets urging voters to “give one chance” to the party.Mr. Channi stopped for some soccer between rallies on Friday.Saumya Khandelwal for The New York TimesAt one of Mr. Channi’s rallies outside the city, thousands of people who had streamed in — on tractors, buses and motorcycles — waited for about four hours, entertained by a live band, before the chief minister arrived.Jagroop Singh Sandhu, a 33-year-old farmer in the crowd, acknowledged the fatigue with Congress’s mismanagement and infighting. But Mr. Channi’s ability to connect with people, he said, was making the race about him rather than the party.“There is a Channi wave,” Mr. Sandhu said. “It will be about what he has shown in his three months.”Driving between rallies on Friday, Mr. Channi stopped his convoy when he saw a group of children playing soccer and ran to the field. The children swarmed around him excitedly. He took turns taking penalty shots at the goal, and then playing goalkeeper — the skill which had won him scholarships during his high school and university days when he played handball — as the children took shots.His media team quickly posted a video on his Twitter account, edited in a way that showed Mr. Channi as both shooter and defender of the same shot — an apt metaphor for his party’s race. More

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      How Macron Stands as France's Presidential Election Looms

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      The president, not even a formal candidate yet, seems to benefit from standing above the anti-immigrant fray.PARIS — France faces an unusual presidential election in seven weeks, with no credible left-wing contender, an electorate so disenchanted that abstention could be high, and a clear favorite who has not even announced his candidacy.That favorite is President Emmanuel Macron, 44, who has opted to stay above the fray, delaying his decision to declare he is running until some time close to the March deadline, yet another way to indulge his penchant for keeping his opponents guessing.Comfortable in his lofty centrist perch, Mr. Macron has watched as the right and extreme-right tear one another to shreds. Immigration and security have largely pushed out other themes, from climate change to the ballooning debt France has accumulated in fighting the coronavirus crisis.“To call your child ‘Mohammed’ is to colonize France,” says Éric Zemmour, the far-right upstart of the election who has parlayed his notoriety as a TV pundit into a platform of anti-immigrant vitriol.Only he, in his telling, stands between French civilization and its conquest by Islam and “woke” American political correctness. Like former President Donald J. Trump, to whom he spoke this week, Mr. Zemmour uses constant provocation to stay at the top of the news.Éric Zemmour, the far-right presidential candidate, at a campaign rally last month in Cannes. He uses constant provocation to stay at the top of the news.Daniel Cole/Associated PressStill, Mr. Macron has a clear lead in polls, which give him about 25 percent of the vote in the first round of the election on April 10. Mr. Zemmour and two other right-wing candidates are in the 12 to 18 percent range. Splintered left-wing parties are trailing and, for now, seem like virtual spectators for the first time since the foundation of the Fifth Republic in 1958.France generally leans right; this time it has lurched. “The left lost the popular classes, many of whom moved to the far right because it had no answer on immigration and Islam,” said Pascal Bruckner, an author and political philosopher. “So it’s the unknowable chameleon, Macron, against the right.”The beneficiary of a perception that he has beaten the coronavirus pandemic and steered the economy through its challenges, Mr. Macron appears stronger today than for some time. The economy grew 7 percent in the last quarter. Unemployment is at 7.4 percent, low for France. The lifting of Covid-19 measures before the election, including mask requirements in many public places, seems probable, a step of potent symbolism.It is a measure of the difficulty of attacking Mr. Macron that he seems at once to embody what is left of social democracy in France — once the preserve of a Socialist Party that is now on life support — and policies embraced by the right, like his tough stand against what he has called “Islamist separatism.”Paris in December. Many in the country are struggling to pay rising energy bills and are weary from the two-year struggle against the pandemic.Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times“He is supple,” said Bruno Le Maire, the economy minister. Mr. Macron’s predecessor as president, François Hollande, a Socialist who feels betrayed by the incumbent’s shift rightward, put it less kindly in a recent book: “He hops, like a frog on water lilies, from one conviction to another.”The two leading candidates in the first round go through to a second on April 24. The crux of the election has therefore become a fierce right-on-right battle for a second-place passage to a runoff against Mr. Macron.Marine Le Pen, the perennial anti-immigrant candidate, has become Mr. Zemmour’s fiercest critic, as defections to him from her party have grown. She has said his supporters include “some Nazis” and accused him of seeking “the death” of her National Rally party, formerly called the National Front.Mr. Zemmour, whose own extremist view is that Islam is “incompatible” with France, has ridiculed her for trying to distinguish between extremist Islamism and the faith itself. He has attacked her for not embracing the idea of the “great replacement” — a racist conspiracy theory that white Christian populations are being intentionally replaced by nonwhite immigrants, leading to what Mr. Zemmour calls the “Creolization” of societies.The president would be confident of his chances against either Ms. Le Pen, whom he beat handily in the second round in 2017, or Mr. Zemmour, even if the glib intellectualism of this descendant of an Algerian Jewish family has overcome many of the taboos that kept conservative French voters from embracing the hard right.Marine Le Pen, the perennial anti-immigrant candidate, has become Mr. Zemmour’s fiercest critic.Valery Hache/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFrance is troubled, with many people struggling to pay rising energy bills and weary from the two-year struggle against the pandemic, but a blow-up-the-system choice, like the vote for Mr. Trump in the United States or Britain’s choice of Brexit, would be a surprise.Paulette Brémond, a retiree who voted for Mr. Macron in 2017, said she was hesitating between the president and Mr. Zemmour. “The immigration question is grave,” she said. “I am waiting to see what Mr. Macron says about it. He probably won’t go as far as Mr. Zemmour, but if he sounds effective, I may vote for him again.”Until Mr. Macron declares his candidacy, she added, “the campaign feels like it has not started” — a common sentiment in a country where for now the political jostling can feel like shadow boxing.That is scarcely a concern to the president, who has portrayed himself as obliged to focus on high matters of state. These include his prominent diplomatic role in trying to stop a war in Ukraine through his relationship with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and ending, along with allies, the troubled French anti-terrorist campaign in Mali.If Mali has been a conspicuous failure, albeit one that seems unlikely to sway many voters, the Ukraine crisis, as long as it does not lead to war, has allowed Mr. Macron to look like Europe’s de facto leader in the quest for constructive engagement with Russia. Mr. Zemmour and Ms. Le Pen, who between them represent some 30 percent of the vote, make no secret of their admiration for Mr. Putin.Ukrainian soldiers at a front-line position in eastern Ukraine this week. Mr. Macron has portrayed himself as obliged to focus on high-level matters of state like trying to stop a war in Ukraine.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesOne member of Mr. Macron’s putative re-election team, who insisted on anonymity per government practice, said the possibility of a runoff against the center-right Republican candidate, Valérie Pécresse, was more concerning than facing either Ms. Le Pen or Mr. Zemmour in the second round.A graduate of the same elite school as Mr. Macron, a competent two-term president of France’s most populous region and a centrist by instinct, Ms. Pécresse might appeal in the second round to center-left and left-wing voters who regard Mr. Macron as a traitor.Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionCard 1 of 6The campaign begins. More

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      South Korea Prepares for Another Covid-Era National Election

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      SEOUL — South Korea, which is experiencing its largest Covid-19 wave yet, will set aside a 90-minute window just for voters with the coronavirus to cast their ballots at polling stations next month.The recent surge in coronavirus cases had raised questions about how the country’s tight presidential election would be held. Lawmakers agreed this week to reserve 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on March 9, Election Day, for voters with Covid. The rest of the electorate will vote from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.“Protecting everyone’s right to vote is paramount,” Dr. Jung Jae-hun, a professor who is a Covid-19 policy adviser to the prime minister, said in an interview. “It’s entirely possible to do so while preventing outbreaks.”The National Election Commission reported on Thursday that interest in voting in the upcoming election was at its highest since 2012, demonstrating that the surge in coronavirus infections might not dampen turnout.Lee Jae-myung of the ruling Democratic Party and Yoon Suk-yeol of the opposition People Power Party are neck and neck.About 44 million eligible voters reside in South Korea, according to the election commission. But at the rate that infections are going, as many as one million might have Covid by Election Day, according to Dr. Jung, who is also a professor of preventive medicine at Gachon University near Seoul.The government’s health protocols require people with Covid to remain in isolation at home. The special time window on Election Day would allow them to leave for the purposes of casting their ballot.The daily caseload in South Korea was 93,135 on Thursday. By comparison, in the last nationwide election of the coronavirus era, in 2020, the government reported fewer than 40 new ​infections a day. More