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      When Will We Know the California Recall Election Results?

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      Californians have been voting early for weeks in the election to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom.But it is unclear how long it will take to get a definitive answer on whether he will keep his job.Depending on the number of early ballots and the amount of in-person voting on Tuesday, the math could be clear within a few hours of when the polls close at 8 p.m. Pacific time, election experts say. But if the race is tighter than expected, weeks could pass while the counting drags on.Recall attempts are a fact of political life for governors of California. But they do not usually make it onto the ballot, and Californians have gone to the polls only one other time to determine whether the state’s top officeholder should be ousted. That was in 2003, when Gov. Gray Davis was recalled and replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Since then, the state’s voting rules and electorate have changed substantially.Because of the safety concerns arising from the coronavirus pandemic, ballots were mailed early to all of the state’s 22 million or so registered and active voters in the 2020 election. Voters can return their completed ballots by mail, deposit them in secure drop boxes, vote early in person or vote at a polling place on Tuesday.Nearly 40 percent of registered voters have already cast ballots, but many Republicans have indicated that they plan to vote in person, citing — without evidence — a concern that election officials in the Democrat-dominated state will tamper with their ballots. Studies after the 2020 election found that the system had worked smoothly, with no systemic voter fraud.Early Democratic ballots have outnumbered Republican ones by two to one, with overwhelming majorities of voters in both parties telling pollsters they plan to vote along party lines. Mr. Newsom is a Democrat, as is about 46 percent of the electorate.But that margin is expected to tighten as Republican voters — who represent fewer than a quarter of registered voters — head to the polls.Vote counts are notoriously slow in California because the state is so massive. The law for this election allows county officials to open and process early ballots as they come in, but those results cannot be shared with the public until the polls close, said Jenna Dresner, a spokeswoman for the California secretary of state’s office.California has 58 counties, and each processes its ballots differently. Results often land later in larger counties, such as Los Angeles County. Officials have 30 days to complete their official canvass and must give vote-by-mail ballots postmarked on Election Day a week to arrive. The certified count is not expected until Oct. 22.Significant partial counts should be available within a couple of hours after polls close in some key areas, such as the Bay Area and Orange County. And the electoral math in California should offer some strong clues about the outcome, said Paul Mitchell, a vice president of Political Data Inc., a nonpartisan supplier of election data.Because so many voters are Democrats, he said, the higher the turnout, the better Mr. Newsom’s chances are of beating the recall. If the overall turnout hits 60 percent, he said, the proposed ouster of Mr. Newsom is almost mathematically impossible. More

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      How large is Newsom's lead in the California recall election polls?

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      After the polls overestimated Democratic candidates in 2016 and 2020, it is reasonable to wonder whether Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lead in the California recall election might prove as illusory as Hillary Clinton’s lead in Wisconsin or Joe Biden’s in Florida.It’s not impossible. But Mr. Newsom’s lead now dwarfs the typical polling error and is large enough to withstand nearly every statewide polling miss in recent memory.Opposition to recalling Mr. Newsom leads by 17 points, 58 to 41 percent, according to the FiveThirtyEight average. Polls in 2020 overestimated the Democrats by an average of about five percentage points.There was no state in either the 2016 or 2020 presidential elections where the final polls missed by 17 percentage points. Perhaps the worst recent polling miss — Senator Susan Collins’s comfortable nine-point victory after trailing in the polls by three points — is in the ballpark, but would still fall five points short of erasing Mr. Newsom’s lead.Many of the most embarrassing and high-profile misses for pollsters, such as the seven-point polling errors in Wisconsin in 2016 and 2020, might still leave Mr. Newsom with a double-digit victory.It is hard to find many precedents for such a large polling error. According to Harry Enten, a writer at CNN, there are only four cases in the last 20 years where the polling average in a race for governor was off by at least 15 percentage points.Mr. Newsom’s opponents can hope that the idiosyncrasies of a recall election might make it more challenging for pollsters than a typical general election. Special and primary elections often have larger polling errors.But the polls were fairly accurate in the last California gubernatorial recall and dead-on in the high-profile effort to recall former Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin in 2012. The high turnout in early voting in California so far tends to reduce the risk that an unusual turnout would contribute to a particularly large polling error.And California is not a state where the polls have missed badly in recent election cycles. The largest polling errors have been in Wisconsin, Maine and other states with large numbers of white working-class voters. That’s not California. Just 22 percent of California voters in 2020 were whites without a four-year college degree, the second lowest of any state, according to census data.Perhaps as a result, statewide polling in California has generally been fairly accurate.Joe Biden led the final California polls by 29.2 points, according to FiveThirtyEight.He won by 29.2 points. More

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      When Will Californians Know the Recall Election Results?

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      Californians have been voting early for weeks in the election to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom.But it is unclear how long it will take to get a definitive answer on whether he will keep his job.Depending on the number of early ballots and the amount of in-person voting on Tuesday, the math could be clear within a few hours of when the polls close at 8 p.m. Pacific time, election experts say. But if the race is tighter than expected, weeks could pass while the counting drags on.Recall attempts are a fact of political life for governors of California. But they do not usually make it onto the ballot, and Californians have gone to the polls only one other time to determine whether the state’s top officeholder should be ousted. That was in 2003, when Gov. Gray Davis was recalled and replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Since then, the state’s voting rules and electorate have changed substantially.Because of the safety concerns arising from the coronavirus pandemic, ballots were mailed early to all of the state’s 22 million or so registered and active voters in the 2020 election. Voters can return their completed ballots by mail, deposit them in secure drop boxes, vote early in person or vote at a polling place on Tuesday.Nearly 40 percent of registered voters have already cast ballots, but many Republicans have indicated that they plan to vote in person, citing — without evidence — a concern that election officials in the Democrat-dominated state will tamper with their ballots. Studies after the 2020 election found that the system had worked smoothly, with no systemic voter fraud.Early Democratic ballots have outnumbered Republican ones by two to one, with overwhelming majorities of voters in both parties telling pollsters they plan to vote along party lines. Mr. Newsom is a Democrat, as is about 46 percent of the electorate.But that margin is expected to tighten as Republican voters — who represent fewer than a quarter of registered voters — head to the polls.Vote counts are notoriously slow in California because the state is so massive. The law for this election allows county officials to open and process early ballots as they come in, but those results cannot be shared with the public until the polls close, said Jenna Dresner, a spokeswoman for the California secretary of state’s office.California has 58 counties, and each processes its ballots differently. Results often land later in larger counties, such as Los Angeles County. Officials have 30 days to complete their official canvass and must give vote-by-mail ballots postmarked on Election Day a week to arrive. The certified count is not expected until Oct. 22.Significant partial counts should be available within a couple of hours after polls close in some key areas, such as the Bay Area and Orange County. And the electoral math in California should offer some strong clues about the outcome, said Paul Mitchell, a vice president of Political Data Inc., a nonpartisan supplier of election data.Because so many voters are Democrats, he said, the higher the turnout, the better Mr. Newsom’s chances are of beating the recall. If the overall turnout hits 60 percent, he said, the proposed ouster of Mr. Newsom is almost mathematically impossible. More

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      Norway’s ‘Climate Election’ Puts Center-Left in Charge

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      Global warming and the future of the country’s oil and gas industry dominated the election campaign, yet smaller parties with ambitious approaches on climate fared less well than expected.Voters in Norway ousted their conservative prime minister on Monday, turning instead to a center-left leader following an election campaign dominated by climate change, and the growing contradictions between the country’s environmental aspirations and its dependence on its vast oil and gas reserves.The vote came at the end of a tumultuous summer in Europe, marked by scorching temperatures and flooding in many countries. Once a distant prospect for many Norwegians, global warming became a more tangible reality that all political parties in the wealthy Nordic nation of 5.3 million could no longer ignore.Though smaller Norwegian parties with the most aggressive stance toward fossil fuels fared less well than expected Monday, the vote offered evidence that the climate issue may be shifting the balance of power to the left in some European countries, among them Germany, which is holding its own election in just two weeks. The Social Democratic candidate there has been leading in the polls, and the Green candidate is ranking third.In Norway, the Labour Party, led by former Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store, won around 26 percent of the votes in the country’s parliamentary elections and was poised to form a coalition with the Center Party. But he may also have to include a smaller left-wing party that has demanded a more aggressive response to tackle climate change, and that could make any coalition deeply divided over fossil fuels and taxes.The release in August of a United Nations report on the irreversible impact of global warming put climate change at the forefront of the Norwegian vote, buoying green parties in the polls and leading observers to describe it as a “climate election.”Deadly floods in Germany and Belgium, and fires in Greece and Italy, made the climate emergency more real for many Norwegians, who have called on their leaders to confront the environmental cost of Norway’s oil and gas industry.“Norway tries hard to act as a pro-nature, pro-diversity society, but our main source of wealth comes from oil and fossil fuels,” said Thomas Hylland Eriksen, a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo. “That tension became increasingly visible with this climate election.”While several smaller parties with ambitious approaches on climate appeared to be gaining momentum in the weeks leading to the election, on Monday they enjoyed only mixed results.That raised questions about Norway’s readiness to take a hard look at its economic dependence on fossil fuels. Several parties shared a pro-climate platform but differed on other issues, scattering green votes and keeping the parties under 8 percent.With electric cars now accounting for 70 percent of new vehicle sales in the country, with an already ambitious tax on carbon dioxide emissions that could triple by 2030, and with emission goals in line with those of the European Union, Norway, which isn’t part of the bloc, has tried to champion a range of environment-friendly policies.It is electrifying its fleets of ferries, and Oslo’s city center has become mostly car-free. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Erna Solberg, the Conservative Party leader defeated on Monday, Norway has also sought to establish a global and legally binding agreement to tackle plastic pollution, and it has been a leader in rainforest conservation.But such efforts are dwarfed by the environmental cost of Norway’s fossil fuel activities, according to climate scientists, who say that only concrete measures designed to move away from oil and gas exploitation will make a difference. Norway is the leading petroleum producer in Western Europe, and the world’s third-largest exporter of natural gas behind Russia and Qatar.The country has built so much of its wealth on oil and gas fields discovered in the North Sea in the late 1960s that most politicians argue it will take decades to transition from an industry that brings 14 percent of Norway’s revenues, employs nearly 7 percent of its work force, and has fed a $1.4 trillion sovereign-wealth fund, the world’s largest.Still, Bard Lahn, a researcher on climate and oil policy at the Oslo-based Center for International Climate Research, said Norway reached a turning point in May, when the International Energy Agency called for a halt to new oil and natural gas projects.“The International Energy Agency had been an important source of expertise and credibility for both the government and oil companies in justifying the continuation of oil and gas exploration,” Mr. Lahn said.The energy agency’s conclusions and the U.N. report on climate change both shifted the debate during the campaign, Mr. Lahn said. “Climate wasn’t necessarily supposed to be such a central issue, and all of a sudden, it was,” he said.Despite the soul-searching, the four main political parties all back continued oil exploration and production for the moment, as economic inequalities also dominated the campaign. Mr. Store argued that the revenues from oil could be used to finance a transition, but that stopping exploration and production would only hurt the country’s economy.Five smaller parties, including some that could participate in a coalition led by Mr. Store, have pushed for an end to oil and gas exploration. The Greens, which made gains in the polls after the release of the U.N. report, even campaigned for an end to all such activities by 2035. But on Monday, they won less than 4 percent of the vote.A former foreign minister, Mr. Store, 61, had long been a prime contender to lead the country, but he was defeated twice by Ms. Solberg, in 2013 and 2017. During her two terms, Ms. Solberg lowered taxes and increased public spending. Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, Norway has had one of the lowest death rates in Europe.Ms. Solberg will also be remembered for having formed a coalition with the anti-immigrant Progress party that joined her government in 2017. It then left the coalition in January 2020 in protest against the repatriation of Norwegian families who had joined the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Since then, Ms. Solberg had been leading a minority government.Critics and climate scientists say Ms. Solberg did too little to address climate change during her time as leader. But her successor will also face considerable challenges in trying to take climate change policies to the next level, like how to support workers in the oil and gas sector.“Until now, Norway had been picking the low-hanging fruit in climate change mitigation policies,” said Fay Farstad, a senior researcher at the Center for International Climate Research. “Now that we may be getting into the harder part, there has been more attention to the fairness of such policies, and making sure that the costs are being shared.”In a victory speech on Monday, Mr. Store vowed to lead a “fair environment policy” and to deliver on the fight against climate change, although he may have to compromise with other parties that may make up his coalition and have diverging interests on oil and taxes.Mr. Hylland Eriksen, the social anthropologist at Oslo University, said another challenge will be to reconcile all Norwegians with the fact that their oil bonanza may have to come to an end.“Many feel that it’s too little too late,” he said, “Others who are in favor of oil argue that we’re only five million. But if we, as the richest people in the world, don’t make efforts, then who is going to?”Henrik Pryser Libell More

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      Voting in the California Recall: Ballots, Deadlines and Registration

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      More than 35 percent of California’s active, registered voters have already cast their ballots, and early voting is underway in several counties. If you missed the deadline to register to vote in the recall election, don’t worry. You can still register on Tuesday.Our Voter Guide has everything you need to know about where to vote, how to turn in your ballot and when we can expect to know the results.Where is my ballot?All registered and active California voters should have received a ballot by mail in the past few weeks. You can mail that ballot back or return it to a secure drop box by 8 p.m. You can track when your vote-by-mail ballot was mailed, received and counted at https://california.ballottrax.net/voter/.Where can I vote in person?Voters can cast ballots in person (you can find early voting locations here.) until 8 p.m. Pacific when polls close.You can check whether you’re registered to vote here. Visit the Secretary of State’s website to learn more about same-day voter registration.When will we know the results?So when will we know the results? After Election Day, county election officials have to complete their work receiving and counting ballots, although we may have some idea of the vote by then, since nearly eight million ballots have already been returned and many more are expected to come in as we get closer. Counties can process early ballots and get them ready to count, but they cannot start tallying until the polls close. More

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      Germany’s Election Is Armin Laschet's to Lose, but Will He Succeed?

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      Armin Laschet, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party’s candidate for chancellor, is flagging in the polls, and he seems to be dragging the party down with him.FRANKFURT AN DER ODER, Germany — His party is the biggest in Germany. It has won all but three elections since 1950, including the past four. Its departing chancellor is more popular than any politician in the country. And German voters crave stability and continuity.Armin Laschet, the conservative Christian Democratic Union party’s candidate for chancellor, should be riding high. The race to replace Angela Merkel was his to lose.So far, he appears to be doing just that.Weeks before Germans vote on Sept. 26 in their most important election in a generation — one that will produce a chancellor who is not Ms. Merkel for the first time in 16 years — Mr. Laschet is sinking, and he is pulling his party down with him.The race is still close enough, and Germany’s coalition politics so unpredictable, that it would be dangerous to dismiss the conservative candidate. But after recent polls showed Mr. Laschet’s party dropping to record lows — of 20 percent to 22 percent support — his position is so dire that even some Christian Democrats have wondered aloud whether they picked the wrong candidate.More broadly, Mr. Laschet’s campaign has prompted queasiness among conservatives who fear they could be seeing a weakness in the party’s appeal that has been disguised for years by Ms. Merkel’s own popularity and is now exacerbated by her inability to groom a replacement.In 2018, she announced her personally chosen successor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a moderate centrist. But even with Ms. Merkel’s support, Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer had trouble stepping out of the chancellor’s shadow and building her own base. She quit in 2020 as leader of the conservatives, leaving the door open for Mr. Laschet.Mr. Laschet had long boasted that if he could run Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, where he has been governor since 2017, he could run the country. But then extraordinary flooding this summer called even that credential into question, exposing flaws in his environmental policies and disaster management.Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mr. Laschet visited the flood-ravaged district of Iversheim in July.Pool photo by Wolfgang Rattay“The biggest problem for Laschet is that he has not been able to convince voters that he can do the job like Merkel,” said Julia Reuschenbach, a political scientist at the University of Bonn.She cited images of him laughing as the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, made a somber speech after devastating flash floods that killed 180 people, and posing before a mound of trash to make a statement of his own. “He comes across as uncertain, flippant and unprofessional,” Ms. Reuschenbach said.In recent weeks, Mr. Laschet has seen his individual popularity drop below that of his Social Democratic rival, Olaf Scholz, while support for Mr. Laschet’s party has been in a free fall since late July. The situation is so dire that Ms. Merkel, who had said she wanted to stay out of the race, is now intervening and trying to rally voters for Mr. Laschet.“Let’s be honest: It is tight. It will be very tight in the coming weeks,” Markus Söder, the head of the conservatives’ Bavarian branch, the Christian Social Union, and an erstwhile rival, said at an election rally on Aug. 20 that was meant to propel Mr. Laschet’s campaign into a final, intense stretch. “It is no longer a question of how we could govern, but possibly of whether.”Mr. Söder openly challenged Mr. Laschet this year for the chance to succeed the chancellor, and he still enjoys a higher individual popularity rating among Germans than Mr. Laschet’s.Germans elect parties, not a chancellor candidate. But over the course of Ms. Merkel’s four terms in office, her party has enjoyed the so-called chancellor bonus, meaning the willingness of voters to effectively cast a ballot for consistency.Although Ms. Merkel remains Germany’s most popular politician, her recent attempts to drum up support for Mr. Laschet have failed to turn his fortunes around, partly because they have appeared last-minute and halfhearted.Election campaign billboards featuring Mr. Laschet, left, and his Social Democratic rival, Olaf Schoz.John Macdougall/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesInstead, Mr. Scholz now appears to be reaping the incumbent benefit, playing up his closeness to Ms. Merkel to become the second most popular politician in the country.“Even conservative voters tend to approve of Mr. Scholz,” said Ursula Münch, the director of the Academy for Political Education in Tützing.Yet Mr. Laschet is known for comebacks, for surviving blunders — including making up grades for exam papers when he was lecturing — and for his ability to turn around a sagging campaign in the final stretch. In the weeks before the 2017 vote in North Rhine-Westphalia, he focused on the need to increase security against a backdrop of record break-ins, to better integrate migrants and to reposition the state’s industry to focus on the future. The strategy worked and he defeated the incumbent Social Democratic governor, whom he had trailed in the polls for most of the race.Among Mr. Laschet’s influences is his faith. At a time when more and more Germans are quitting the Roman Catholic Church, Mr. Laschet is a proud member. “I am not someone who uses Bible verses in my politics,” he said. “But of course it has influenced me.” And Ms. Merkel has praised his Christianity as a guiding moral compass.Mr. Laschet noted that his faith was something he had in common with President Biden, adding that the last time the leaders of the United States and Germany shared that faith was in the 1960s, with President John F. Kennedy and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer — also a Christian Democrat.Mr. Laschet talking with residents of Frankfurt an der Oder, in eastern Germany, last month.Jens Schlueter/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnother influence for Mr. Laschet is Aachen, Germany’s westernmost city, where he was born and raised. Growing up in a place with deep ties to Belgium and the Netherlands, Mr. Laschet has been integrated into the larger European ideal all of his life. He still maintains a home in Aachen with his wife, Susanne, whom he met through their church choir and youth group. Together they have three grown children, including, Joe Laschet, a social media influencer and fashionista for classic men’s wear.Mr. Laschet’s first political post was as a municipal official in 1979. He was elected to the German Parliament in 1994, and then, five years later, he was elected to represent his home region as a member of the European Parliament. He entered state government in North Rhine-Westphalia in 2005, as Germany’s first minister for integration — a role focused on migrants and their descendants that earned him nationwide recognition.After the Christian Democrats suffered a stinging defeat in the 2012 state elections, Mr. Laschet helped rebuild the party. He supported Ms. Merkel’s decision to welcome more than a million migrants in 2015, and two years later, he became the governor of North Rhine-Westphalia.This January, he fought to become the leader of the Christian Democrats, beating Mr. Söder, who remains a more popular politician with many Germans, but whether Mr. Laschet can save himself remains to be seen.He has had some minor successes, including a feisty appearance in the first televised debate and deftly dealing with an angry vaccination opponent who stormed the stage during a campaign stop. Mr. Laschet has also assembled a team of experts, including former rivals, like Friedrich Merz, who is well liked among the party’s conservative wing, in an effort to show his bridge-building skills. But none of these things have made a dent in the widening gap with the Social Democrats.At a campaign stop in Frankfurt an der Oder, a woman wielding a cellphone pushed her way toward the candidate as he stood on a bridge overlooking the Polish border, making a statement to reporters about Germany’s role in Europe.Asked if she intended to vote for Mr. Laschet, she demurred. “I don’t know yet who I will vote for,” said the woman, Elisabeth Pillep, 44. “But I don’t think it will be him.” More

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      What Canada's Election Could Mean For Gun Ban

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      The Conservative Party leader, Erin O’Toole, rolled back a promise to end a ban on assault weapons, giving his opponents less room to maneuver.With the debates now over, we have come to the final days of the high-speed election campaign that was called last month by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.Mr. O’Toole, the Conservative leader, with Mr. Trudeau, who leads the Liberals. Justin Tang/The Canadian Press, via Associated PressAt the official debates, moderators dominated and, in the view of many, party leaders hardly debated.[Read: 5 Takeaways From Canada’s Official Election Debates]Among the issues given cursory treatment was gun control, a topic that the Conservative Party’s platform has reversed course on.Few issues divide urban and rural Canada more than guns. In cities and suburban areas, polls have shown for years that there’s strong support for even tighter restrictions. Horrific crimes like last year’s shooting and arson spree in Nova Scotia increase that sentiment.But in many rural areas and Indigenous communities, guns are a part of everyday life. Totaling up the numbers has been difficult since the Conservative government led by Stephen Harper eliminated the registry for shotguns and standard rifles. But the Small Arms Survey, a project based in Switzerland, estimates that there are 12.7 million legal and illegal guns held by private owners in Canada. There are 2.2 million Canadians who hold a license to buy and own guns.Last year, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau banned 1,500 models of assault-style semiautomatic rifles after the shooting rampage in rural Nova Scotia that left 23 people dead. Although some designs of semiautomatics can still be owned, their use is limited.Erin O’Toole, the Conservative leader, began the election campaign by promising to roll back Mr. Trudeau’s assault weapon ban and roll back other Liberal anti-gun measures. He argued that they penalized law-abiding gun owners but did little or nothing to stop gun crime, although assault weapons have been used in mass shootings in Canada.In place of a ban, he proposed cracking down harder on smuggling, something Mr. Trudeau had already advanced, and hiring 200 additional members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who would be assigned to gun and gang crimes in Toronto and Vancouver.While there was little broad public support for loosening of gun rules, gun groups and many gun owners are strong and reliable supporters of the Conservatives.But as criticism grew over his plan to cancel Mr. Trudeau’s ban, Mr. O’Toole began to change his tune.An assault rifle of the type banned last year by Mr. Trudeau’s government.Chris Young/The Canadian Press, via Associated PressFirst, he said during an unofficial French debate on TVA, the Quebec-based broadcaster, that he would “maintain a ban on assault weapons.” While he didn’t make it immediately clear, he didn’t mean Mr. Trudeau’s ban. Instead, Mr. O’Toole was referring to a ban that dates to the 1970s on weapons like fully automatic rifles.But eventually Mr. O’Toole said that he would keep Mr. Trudeau’s assault weapon ban in place if the Conservatives take power. But that came with a significant qualifier: Mr. O’Toole also promised that a group that will include gun makers will review firearms laws and regulations.The National Firearms Association, which once hired one of Mr. O’Toole’s top aides as a lobbyist, soon issued a statement saying that it was “completely confident that the election of a Conservative government” and the review would lead to the repeal of Mr. Trudeau’s assault weapon ban. Mr. O’Toole has only said that he won’t prejudge the proposed review.The platform change that the Conservatives made appears to have worked for their campaign by muting criticism of Conservative gun policy — guns received just cursory attention at the English debate. And when Angus Reid Institute asked Canadians to list the top issues in the campaign, guns didn’t meet the minimum reporting threshold. Going Inside FacebookMy colleagues Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang will be speaking on Sept. 14 at 5 p.m. Eastern about their new book “An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination” in a virtual event organized by the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. The school has a special offer for Canada Letter readers. If you use the code NYTIMESROTMAN21 when registering here you’ll be able to join the livestream and receive a hardcover copy of their book by mail for 21.99 Canadian dollars, a 20-dollar reduction.Trans CanadaBen Solomon for The New York TimesPerhaps the biggest distraction from politics this week for many Canadians was the U.S. Open where Leylah Fernandez, 19, of Montreal will play in the women’s final against Emma Raducanu, a British player who was born in Toronto. David Waldstein writes that Fernandez is the most successful member of a group of Canadians at the Open, “where Canadian players are winning on courts across the grounds and beyond.” Fernandez is also part of a group of teenagers who are on a run at the open. But Matthew Futterman writes that, in tennis, early success can quickly “go off the rails.”As Hurricane Larry continues on a path that appears to be taking it to Newfoundland, you can track its progress here.In 2018, a team of paleontologists from the Royal Ontario Museum discovered the preserved shell of a spaceship-shaped creature during a fossil hunting expedition in the Rockies. Now Titanokorys gainesi has been declared to be one of the earliest-known large predators on Earth.Stephen Vizinczey, who formed his own publishing company in Toronto to publish his racy and successful novel “In Praise of Older Women: The Amorous Recollections of Andras Vajda,” has died at the age of 88.Jon Caramanica, a pop music critic for The Times, writes that Drake’s new album “demonstrates how sonically rigorous even the most casual, tossed-off Drake songs are.”Brandon Valdivia, a producer from London, Ontario, better known as Mas Aya, told Isabelia Herrera that he is “trying to meld a political take in addition to a very spiritual take” in his music.A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Times for the past 16 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.How are we doing?We’re eager to have your thoughts about this newsletter and events in Canada in general. Please send them to nytcanada@nytimes.com.Like this email?Forward it to your friends, and let them know they can sign up here. More