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      Belarus Holds an Election, but the Outcome Is Not Hard to Predict

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      The opposition in exile has called for a boycott of the parliamentary vote, which includes only parties that support Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, who has ruled the country for 30 years.Amid a number of high-stakes elections to be held around the world this year, the East European nation of Belarus on Sunday offered an alternative to the unpredictability of democracy: a vote for Parliament without a single candidate critical of the country’s despotic leader.Opposition parties have all been banned — belonging to one is a crime — and the four approved parties taking part in the election have competed only to outdo each other in their displays of unwavering loyalty to the country’s leader, President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus with an iron fist for 30 years.For the government, the election on Sunday — the first since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which neighbors Belarus to the south — is important as an opportunity to show Moscow, its ally, that it has snuffed out all domestic opposition and survived economic and other strains imposed by the war. Russia, which has in the past had doubts about Mr. Lukashenko’s durability and reliability, launched its invasion in February 2022 in part from Belarusian territory.Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, an exiled opponent of Mr. Lukashenko, said: “These so-called elections are nothing more than a circus show. It’s not even entertaining.”The Belarusian election is similar in format and predictability to a vote next month in Russia intended to anoint Mr. Putin for a fifth term in the Kremlin.The European Union, which for years held out hope that Belarus, sandwiched between Russia and Poland, could be tugged out of the Kremlin’s orbit, has dismissed the whole process as a sham. The bloc’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, last week denounced Mr. Lukashenko’s “continued senseless violation of human rights and unprecedented level of repression ahead of the upcoming elections. Those responsible will be held to account.”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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      Nikki Haley Vows to Stay in the Race After Losing to Trump in South Carolina

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      Despite another stinging defeat, this time on her home turf in South Carolina, Nikki Haley said on Saturday that she would forge ahead in the Republican primary race regardless of the daunting road ahead.Speaking to several hundred supporters at her watch party in a ballroom in Charleston, S.C., Ms. Haley, the former governor of the state, cast herself as the voice for the “huge numbers” of Americans looking for an alternative to President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump.She argued that Mr. Trump would be a losing candidate in November and that the nation could not afford four more years of his turbulence or what she described as Mr. Biden’s failures.“I know that 40 percent is not 50 percent,” she said to some laughs, nodding to her share of the vote around the time she spoke. “But I also know 40 percent is not some tiny group.”But she struck a more serious and determined tone in her remarks — so much so that as she began, it was difficult to tell whether she would indeed continue her bid, as she had pledged to do for weeks. But she soon put any speculation to rest.“I said earlier this week that no matter what happens in South Carolina, I will continue to run for office,” she said. “I am a woman of my word.”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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      Asian Americans Are Often Invisible in Polling. That’s Changing.

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      Without much survey data, there’s little information about what issues matter to Asian Americans.This article is also a weekly newsletter. Sign up for Race/Related here.When Dr. Michelle Au ran for State Senate in Georgia in 2020, an experienced political operative told her: “Don’t waste too much time talking to Asian voters. They don’t vote.”That same year in Georgia, turnout among Asian American voters, who as a group rarely receive dedicated attention from politicians, nearly doubled, according to data from Georgia’s secretary of state. Dr. Au, a Democrat, became the first Asian American woman to be elected to the State Senate. Joe Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state since Bill Clinton, in 1992.“People really started to realize that there is a large and growing and quite powerful Asian electorate in Georgia, but one that people have, up until now, not been paying attention to at all because of this sensibility that the Asian population is too small to make a difference,” said Dr. Au, who is now serving in the state’s House of Representatives.Dr. Michelle Au at a campaign event in Johns Creek, Ga., in 2022.Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesPollsters face a population problem when gathering public opinion research on Asian Americans: They are the fastest-growing racial group in the country but still make up a relatively small share of the population, so it is rare for pollsters to reach enough respondents in a typical poll to warrant breaking the group’s responses out as a distinct category. More

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      The Race Trump Can’t Disappear Behind

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      Donald Trump is creating hurdles his allies wish he would avoid. For much of 2023, Donald Trump’s political campaign was defined by the criminal charges he faces in four jurisdictions. Republicans reacted, the former president went to arraignments and the coverage on television was often wall to wall.The cycle of events created a sense of motion for a front-running Republican candidate seeking another term in office who was, in fact, speaking fairly infrequently in public compared with his previous campaigns. That impression cushioned him from, bluntly, himself — limiting the self-inflicted wounds he made by giving relatively few interviews and holding relatively few rallies.But as Trump has moved closer to becoming the Republican nominee, such a cushion has become harder to maintain. There is barely a primary race for him to disappear behind. And as the race shifts to a new phase, he is creating hurdles his allies wish he would avoid.Take his recent comments about mail-in voting and early voting.“If you have mail-in voting, you automatically have fraud,” Trump said to the Fox News host Laura Ingraham this week. When Ingraham pointed out that mail-in voting exists in Florida, a state where Trump lives and which he won, he pressed again. “That’s right, that’s right. If you have it, you’re going to have fraud,” he said.It’s a message he delivered again in Nashville before an audience of Christian broadcasters on Thursday night. Mail-in voting is rife with fraud, he insisted.“We no longer have Election Day, we have election periods, some of them last for 45 days,” Trump said ominously. “And what they do during those 45 days is very bad. A lot of bad things happen.”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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      MAGA’s Violent Threats Are Warping Life in America

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      Amid the constant drumbeat of sensational news stories — the scandals, the legal rulings, the wild political gambits — it’s sometimes easy to overlook the deeper trends that are shaping American life. For example, are you aware how much the constant threat of violence, principally from MAGA sources, is now warping American politics? If you wonder why so few people in red America seem to stand up directly against the MAGA movement, are you aware of the price they might pay if they did?Late last month, I listened to a fascinating NPR interview with the journalists Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman regarding their new book, “Find Me the Votes,” about Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. They report that Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis had trouble finding lawyers willing to help prosecute her case against Trump. Even a former Georgia governor turned her down, saying, “Hypothetically speaking, do you want to have a bodyguard follow you around for the rest of your life?”He wasn’t exaggerating. Willis received an assassination threat so specific that one evening she had to leave her office incognito while a body double wearing a bulletproof vest courageously pretended to be her and offered a target for any possible incoming fire.Don’t think for a moment that this is unusual today. Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing Trump’s federal Jan. 6 trial, has been swatted, as has the special counsel Jack Smith. For those unfamiliar, swatting is a terrifying act of intimidation in which someone calls law enforcement and falsely claims a violent crime is in process at the target’s address. This sends heavily armed police to a person’s home with the expectation of a violent confrontation. A swatting incident claimed the life of a Kansas man in 2017.The Colorado Supreme Court likewise endured terrible threats after it ruled that Trump was disqualified from the ballot. There is deep concern for the safety of the witnesses and jurors in Trump’s various trials.Mitt Romney faces so many threats that he spends $5,000 per day on security to protect his family. After Jan. 6, the former Republican congressman Peter Meijer said that at least one colleague voted not to certify the election out of fear for the safety of their family. Threats against members of Congress are pervasive, and there has been a shocking surge since Trump took office. Last year, Capitol Police opened more than 8,000 threat assessments, an eightfold increase since 2016.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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      Pakistani Official Admits to Helping Rig Vote

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      The surprising confession appeared to lend weight to accusations by Imran Khan’s party that the military had tampered with the vote count in dozens of races.A senior Pakistani official confessed on Saturday to helping manipulate results in the country’s elections — a startling claim strengthening a sense that the vote was among the least credible in Pakistan’s history, and deepening the turmoil that has seized the country ever since people went to the polls this month.The official, Liaquat Ali Chatha, is a top administrative official in Punjab Province overseeing Rawalpindi, a garrison city where the military has its headquarters, and three adjacent districts. He said he would resign from his position and turn himself in to the police.“We converted losers into winners, reversing margins of 70,000 votes of independent candidates for 13 national Parliament seats,” he said at a news conference on Saturday, referring to moving votes from independent candidates aligned with Imran Khan, the former prime minister whose party the military had sought to sideline ahead of the vote. He suggested other high-ranking officials had been a part of the scheme, and said he was unable to sleep at night after “stabbing the country in its back.”Mr. Chatha’s admission came just over a week since Pakistanis went to the polls for the first time since Mr. Khan fell out with the military and was ousted by Parliament in 2022. Most had expected an easy victory for the party backed by the country’s powerful military, but instead, candidates aligned with Mr. Khan won more seats than any other party, though they fell short of a simple majority.Mr. Khan was not on the ballot, being imprisoned and disqualified from running for office after convictions for crimes his supporters called trumped-up, yet the victory was clearly his. It was one of the biggest upsets in electoral history in Pakistan, where the military has typically engineered election results by winnowing the field of candidates using intimidation, clearing the way for its preferred party to win.The success of candidates aligned with Mr. Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or P.T.I., upended that playbook and pushed the country’s political scene into uncharted territory.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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      Conservatives Suffer Setback in Parliamentary Election in Britain

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      The results came as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak deals with a shrinking economy and discontent over a crisis gripping the country’s health system.Britain’s governing Conservative Party has lost the first of two parliamentary elections in a new blow to its embattled leader, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, whose future has been questioned by critics within his fractious political party.The Conservatives were defeated in Kingswood, near Bristol, by 8,675 to 11,176 votes, losing a seat that the party had previously held. Votes were cast Thursday to replace two Conservative lawmakers who had quit Parliament, with the first set of results announced early Friday morning.With a general election expected later this year, the result is likely to compound Mr. Sunak’s difficulties at a time when the British economy is shrinking, interest rates are high, and Britain’s health service seems to be in a state of almost permanent crisis. Opinion polls show his party trailing the opposition Labour Party by double-digit margins.The results from the second parliamentary election, in Wellingborough, are expected later on Friday morning. Turnout in both contests was low at less than 40 percent, with many people staying home rather than casting a ballot.A woman leaving a polling station after casting her vote in the Kingswood by-election near Bristol, Britain, on Thursday.Phil Noble/ReutersThe gloomy mood within the Conservative Party had already deepened on Thursday, after the release of economic data showing that in the last months of 2023, Britain had officially entered a recession.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