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      Utah Supreme Court to Hear Arguments Over G.O.P. Map Splitting Salt Lake County

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      The Utah Supreme Court will hear arguments over whether a congressional map drawn to dilute Democratic votes is subject to judicial review, or a political issue beyond its reach.The 550,000 voters in Salt Lake County, Utah’s most populous, handed Joseph R. Biden Jr. an 11-percentage point victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 contest for president. A year later, in November 2021, the state’s Republican-controlled legislature drew a new political map that carved up the county, putting pieces of it in each of the state’s four congressional districts — and ensuring that Republican voters would outnumber Democrats in all of them.On Tuesday, the Utah Supreme Court will consider whether to wade into the increasingly pitched nationwide battle over partisan gerrymanders. The justices will decide whether the state’s courts can hear a lawsuit challenging the House map, or whether partisan maps are a political issue beyond their jurisdiction.The U.S. Supreme Court considered the same question in 2019 and decided that the maps were beyond its purview. But voting rights advocates say Utah’s Constitution offers a stronger case than the federal one for reining in political maps.“There’s a very clear provision in the State Constitution that says all power is inherent in the people, and that they have the right to alter and reform their government,” said Mark Gaber, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington-based advocacy group representing the plaintiffs. He said other relevant provisions in the State Constitution, but absent from the federal Constitution, include guarantees of free elections and the right to vote.State Senator Scott D. Sandall, Republican co-chair of the State Legislature redistricting committee that drew the House map, did not respond to requests for comment for this article.In court filings, legislators said that the State Constitution gave them exclusive authority to draw political maps, and that the plaintiffs were trying to impose “illusory standards of political equality” on the mapmaking process.Though Utah is a conservative state, no one argues that four Republican-dominated districts are inevitable. “If you just draw a very compact circle around the middle of Salt Lake County, you’re going to get a Democratic district,” Mr. Gaber said.Rather, the central issue in the case is whether Republican legislators had a constitutional right to maintain their party’s monopoly on the four seats through a map that was beyond the purview of judges to review.The Utah case could have national implications — not merely for the political balance in the closely divided U.S. House of Representatives but also for the emerging body of legal precedents that influence how courts rule in other states.With the Supreme Court removing the federal courts from deciding partisan gerrymander cases, state courts are becoming a crucial battleground for opponents of skewed maps. Joshua A. Douglas, an expert on state constitution protections for voting at the University of Kentucky, said the growing body of legal precedents in state gerrymandering cases was important because many state constitutions share similar protections for elections and voters, often derived from one another.Courts in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Alaska, New York and, last week, New Mexico have ruled that partisan gerrymanders can be unconstitutional. So have courts in Ohio and North Carolina. However, the Ohio court proved unable to force the Legislature to comply with its rulings, and the North Carolina decision was overturned in April after elections shifted the court’s partisan balance from Democratic to Republican.The Kentucky Supreme Court will hear a challenge to that state’s congressional and legislative maps in September. And a lawsuit contesting an extreme Republican gerrymander of the Wisconsin Legislature is widely expected after an April election gave progressives a majority on the state’s high court.Perhaps the closest analogy to the Utah gerrymander is in Nashville, where the Republican-run state legislature’s latest congressional map divided the city’s onetime Democratic-majority House district among three heavily Republican districts. Democrats have not challenged the map in state courts, presumably because they see little prospect of winning in a Supreme Court dominated by Republican appointees.In Utah’s case, however, the State Supreme Court’s five justices do not have reputations for bending easily to political winds. They are chosen through a merit-based selection process.The Utah plaintiffs — the state chapter of the League of Women Voters; the advocacy group Mormon Women for Ethical Government and a handful of Utah voters — accuse the State Legislature not just of illegally gerrymandering the state’s congressional map but of ignoring voters’ explicit instructions not to do so.The State Constitution allows voters to enact new laws, and to repeal ones that the Legislature enacted, through ballot initiatives. In 2018, voters narrowly approved a law outlawing maps that were unduly skewed to favor a candidate or party, and allowing voters to enforce that mandate through lawsuits. The Legislature later repealed that law and then drew the congressional map that quartered Salt Lake County. Plaintiffs in the suit argue that the repeal violated a provision in the State Constitution stating that citizens “have the right to alter or reform their government as the public welfare may require.” And they say that the gerrymandered map ignores a host of state constitutional provisions, including guarantees of free speech, free association and equal protection — provisions that they say should be read to prohibit partisan maps.For their part, Republican legislators contend that they had the right to repeal the redistricting law, just as they can any other state law. And they say the plaintiffs’ aim is no different than their own: to tilt the playing field in their favor.Katie Wright, the executive director of Better Boundaries — the grass-roots group that led the successful effort to pass the 2018 redistricting law and is backing the lawsuit — said there is a difference between the two. She noted that the Legislature’s disclosure of its new maps in 2021 sparked an unusually large public outcry that continues even today.“The reason we have these maps is to keep the people who are in power in power,” she said. “Utahns have not given up.” More

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      Amazon Union Group, Challenging Christian Smalls, Seeks Vote

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      A split over the stewardship of the union’s high-profile president, Christian Smalls, has led a rival faction to file a lawsuit seeking an election.A dissident group within the Amazon Labor Union, the only certified union in the country representing Amazon employees, filed a complaint in federal court Monday seeking to force the union to hold a leadership election.The union won an election at a Staten Island warehouse with more than 8,000 employees in April 2022, but Amazon has challenged the result and has yet to begin bargaining on a contract.The rise of the dissident group, which calls itself the A.L.U. Democratic Reform Caucus and includes a co-founder and former treasurer of the union, reflects a growing split within the union that appears to have undermined its ability to pressure Amazon. The split has also threatened to sap the broader labor movement of the momentum generated by last year’s high-profile victory.In its complaint, the reform caucus argues that the union and its president, Christian Smalls, illegally “refuse to hold officer elections which should have been scheduled no later than March 2023.”The complaint asks a federal judge to schedule an election of the union’s top officers for no later than Aug. 30 and to appoint a neutral monitor to oversee the election.Mr. Smalls said in a text message Monday that the complaint was “a ridiculous claim with zero facts or merit,” and a law firm representing the union said it would seek legal sanctions against the reform group’s lawyer if the complaint was filed.The complaint states that under an earlier version of the union’s constitution, a leadership election was required within 60 days of the National Labor Relations Board’s certification of its victory.But in December, the month before the labor board certification, the union’s leadership presented a new constitution to the membership that scheduled elections after the union ratifies a contract with Amazon — an accomplishment that could take years, if it happens at all.On Friday, the reform caucus sent the union’s leadership a letter laying out its proposal to hold prompt elections, saying it would go to court Monday if the leadership didn’t embrace the proposal.The reform group is made of up more than 40 active organizers who are also plaintiffs in the legal complaint, including Connor Spence, a union co-founder and former treasurer; Brett Daniels, the union’s former organizing director; and Brima Sylla, a prominent organizer at the Staten Island warehouse.The group said in its letter that enacting the proposal could “mean the difference between an A.L.U. which is strong, effective, and a beacon of democracy in the labor movement” and “an A.L.U. which, in the end, became exactly what Amazon warned workers it would become: a business that takes away the workers’ voices.”Mr. Smalls said in his text that the union leadership had worked closely with its law firm to ensure that its actions were legal, as well as with the U.S. Labor Department.Jeanne Mirer, a lawyer for the union, wrote to a lawyer for the reform caucus that the lawsuit was frivolous and based on falsehoods. She said that Mr. Spence had “improperly and unilaterally” replaced the union’s founding constitution with a revised version in June 2022, and that the revision, which called for elections after certification, had never been formally adopted by the union’s board.Retu Singla, another lawyer for the union, said in an interview that the constitution was never made final because there were disagreements about it within the union’s leadership.Mr. Spence said he and other members of the union’s board had revised the constitution while consulting extensively with the union’s lawyers. A second union official involved in the discussions corroborated his account.The split within the union dates from last fall, when several longtime Amazon Labor Union organizers became frustrated with Mr. Smalls after a lopsided loss in a union election at an Amazon warehouse near Albany, N.Y.In a meeting shortly after the election, organizers argued that control of the union rested in too few hands and that the leadership should be elected, giving rank-and-file workers more input.The skeptics also complained that Mr. Smalls was committing the union to elections without a plan for how to win them, and that the union needed a better process for determining which organizing efforts to support. Many organizers worried that Mr. Smalls spent too much time traveling the country to make public appearances rather than focus on the contract fight on Staten Island.Mr. Smalls later said in an interview that his travel was necessary to help raise money for the union and that the critics’ preferred approach — building up worker support for a potential strike that could bring Amazon to the bargaining table — was counterproductive because it could alarm workers who feared losing their livelihoods.He said a worker-led movement shouldn’t turn its back on workers at other warehouses if they sought to unionize. A top union official hired by Mr. Smalls also argued that holding an election before the union had a more systematic way of reaching out to workers would be undemocratic because only the most committed activists would vote.When Mr. Smalls unveiled the new union constitution in December, scheduling elections after a contract was ratified, many of the skeptics walked out. The two factions have operated independently this year, with both sides holding regular meetings with members.In April, the reform caucus began circulating a petition among workers at the Staten Island warehouse calling on the leadership to amend the constitution and hold prompt elections. The petition has been signed by hundreds of workers at the facility.The petition soon became a point of tension with Mr. Smalls. In an exchange with a member of the reform caucus on WhatsApp in early May, copies of which are included in Monday’s legal complaint, Mr. Smalls said the union would “take legal action against you” if the caucus did not abandon the petition.The tensions appeared to ease later that month after the union leadership under Mr. Smalls proposed that the two sides enter mediation. The reform caucus accepted the invitation and suspended the petition campaign.But according to a memo that the mediator, Bill Fletcher Jr., sent both sides on June 29 and that was viewed by The New York Times, the union leadership backed out of the mediation process on June 18 without explanation.“I am concerned that the apparent turmoil within the ALU E. Board means that little is being done to organize the workers and prepare for the battle with Amazon,” Mr. Fletcher wrote in the memo, referring to the union’s executive board. “This situation seriously weakens support among the workers.”Colin Moynihan More

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      Ron DeSantis Doesn’t Know Whether He’s Coming or Going

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      Gail Collins: Bret, about Ron DeSantis. Last week, I criticized him for weenie stuff like big book advances and questionable road repair materials. At the time, I definitely felt like I was carping.Then his people shared an ad on L.G.B.T.Q. issues that … wow.Bret Stephens: “Wow” just about covers it.Gail: It began with a clip of Donald Trump defending gay rights in days of yore, which was very clearly supposed to make viewers … hate Trump. Followed by praise for Florida laws DeSantis signed that “literally threaten trans existence.” Followed by a super-duper weird montage showing men flexing muscles, Brad Pitt in Trojan-warrior garb and Governor Ron with lightning flashes coming out of his eyes.Pete Buttigieg, who is President Biden’s secretary of transportation and one of the best-known gay figures in politics, rightly pointed out “the strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of you in between oiled-up, shirtless bodybuilders.”Any thoughts?Bret: I guess my main takeaway is that DeSantis isn’t going to be the next president. He makes Trump seem tolerant, Ted Cruz seem likable, Mitch McConnell seem moderate, Lauren Boebert seem mature and Rick Santorum seem cool. Not what I would have expected out of the Florida governor six months ago, but here’s where I confess: You were right about him, and I was wrong.Gail: My other takeaway is that Republicans are focusing more on L.G.B.T.Q. issues now that they’ve come to understand that attacking abortion isn’t a national winner — or even a state winner in most places.In the long run, stomping on gay rights isn’t going to do it either, because such a huge number of people — even conservative Republicans — have friends, family, colleagues who are gay. May take a while to come to grips with that, but once you realize someone you care about is gay, the idea of persecuting them presumably seems way less attractive.Just recalling how my conservative Catholic mother wound up, in old age, riding on a float in Cincinnati’s Gay Pride parade.Bret: As you mentioned last year in that wonderful column you wrote about Allen Ginsberg.Gay bashing is morally intolerable as well as politically inept. But a lot of people — including many Democrats and independents — have honest and serious concerns about some aspects of the trans issue, especially as it concerns the integrity of women’s sports, the morality of drastic medical interventions in teenagers and the anti-scientific denial of basic biology when it comes to questions of sex. I also detest terms like “bodies with vaginas” as a substitute for “women.” It isn’t a sensitive or inclusive use of language; it’s misogynistic and Orwellian.DeSantis could have addressed these issues in a sober and nuanced way. Instead, he went full Trojan, and I suspect his campaign will meet a similar fate to Troy’s.Gail: Full Trojan? Just like Brad Pitt in that ad!Bret: Switching topics, Gail, can we talk about homelessness? The problem just keeps getting worse, particularly out west, and it’s doing real damage to urban life. Your thoughts on what does and does not work?Gail: What works is pretty simple: more housing and outreach for the mentally ill. Both are difficult, of course, ranging from pretty darned to stupendously.Bret: What also works are ordinances forbidding “camping” on public lands so that homeless people are required to use shelter beds, which some liberal judges have blocked cities from doing. One of the problems of our public discussion of the issue is that we treat homelessness as a problem of the homeless only. It’s also a public safety issue and a quality-of-life issue. People ought to have a right to walk down urban sidewalks that haven’t been turned into tent cities and open-air toilets.Gail: New York is still dealing with a flood of new migrants, mainly from Latin America, who have been coming in huge numbers for more than a year. Most of them are ambitious and hopeful, and they could be a great shot to our local economy — if they had permanent places to stay.Bret: Completely agree. I also think the migrant problem is qualitatively different from the kind of homelessness issues that cities like San Francisco or Portland, Ore., are experiencing. Migrants are struggling with poverty but not, generally, mental health or drug-dependency issues. What migrants typically need is a room and a job.Gail: Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, has talked about finding some of them homes in the suburbs, where there’s obviously more room and housing prices are sometimes a lot lower. Said suburbs rose up in rage to stop an incursion of needy people. It’s so irritating, although I have to admit that my liberal Manhattan neighborhood — which has plenty of programs for the homeless — consistently rebels against talk of any big new housing projects for any income group.Your turn.Bret: I’m skeptical of the theory that we could solve the crisis just by building a lot more housing. First, because we can’t build quickly and cheaply enough to keep up with the growing number of homeless people. Second, because even when the homeless are housed, they often fall back into the kinds of behaviors that ultimately lead them to return to the streets.My own view is that people living on the street should be required to go into shelters, which can be built much more quickly and cheaply than regular housing, be required to get mental health screenings and be required to be treated if they have drug or alcohol dependencies.Gail: Well, if the mental health treatments were great, that might be an argument. But they often aren’t — just because there’s a terrific shortage of personnel.And the shelters are no picnic either. A lot of the people you see on the street have been, at one time or another, threatened by a mentally troubled co-resident, gotten into a fight as a result of shared emotional problems or in some other way come to feel that living on the street is safer.Bret: The other big story from last week, Gail, is the ruling by a federal judge that forbade the Biden administration to work with social media companies to remove content it didn’t like, mainly connected to alleged Covid misinformation. What the administration was doing seems to me like a serious infringement on people’s freedom of speech, but I’d like to know your view.Gail: Gee, I was under the impression one of the jobs of the executive branch was to make sure people were getting the right information about health issues. And it’s not as if the Biden folks marched in and removed a bunch of posts themselves. Conferring with the social media companies seems like something they ought to do.Bret: One good way of thinking about the issue is putting the shoe on the other foot. For instance, we now know that the Steele dossier was malicious partisan misinformation, secretly and illicitly paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, and that some of its most salacious allegations, like the pee-tape stuff, were false. How would you react if you had learned that the Trump administration had been putting heavy pressure on executives at MSNBC to forbid Rachel Maddow from ever mentioning it back when she had her show?Gail: Hey, it’s hot and humid outside. No fair trying to take me down the Hillary Clinton road. Look — the whole world changed with the advent of social media. If you’ve got influencers with millions of followers warning that, say, giving milk to babies is dangerous, you’ve got to do something more than issue a press release.Bret: I’m pretty sure we could get the word out that milk is generally fine for babies or vaccines are generally safe without setting a precedent that the federal government can work with Big Tech to censor individual speech.Gail: Of course I agree with you about freedom of expression. But in the process of protecting it, it’s natural to argue about specific cases with particular details. We will pursue this again soon. Well, forever probably.But let me be boring for a second and ask you about Congress. Just got through that deficit crisis, and another one will be coming around the bend this summer. What’s your long-term advice? Spend less? Tax more? Ignore the whole thing and figure it’ll work out somehow like it always does?Bret: My advice: Talk less, smile more. Seriously, what we need from Congress and the president is to get through the next 18 months without another manufactured domestic crisis. Between the war in Ukraine, Iran’s creeping nuclearization and China’s saber-rattling over Taiwan, we have more than enough to worry about abroad.Gail: Hmm. One writer’s manufactured domestic crisis is maybe another’s reasonable disagreement. And while Congress isn’t always fascinating, it’s at the top of the critical-if-possibly-boring ladder.Bret: Before we go, Gail, I have to put in a word for Penelope Green’s funny, fabulous obituary in The Times of Sue Johanson, a Canadian sex educator who died last month at 92. It has the single most memorable paragraph to appear in the paper for at least a month, if not a year. I have to quote it in full:Is it weird to put body glitter on your boyfriend’s testicles? Is it safe to have sex in a hot tub? Could a Ziploc baggie serve as a condom? If condoms are left in a car and they freeze, are they still good? Answers: No. No (chlorinated water is too harsh for genitals, particularly women’s). Definitely not. And yes, once they’ve been defrosted.I mean, after that, what else is there to say?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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      Mark Rutte, Netherlands Prime Minister, Says He Will Leave Politics

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      Mr. Rutte, the country’s leader since 2010, announced the collapse of his government on Friday. New elections are expected this fall.Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the Netherlands’s longest-serving prime minister, said on Monday that he would step aside as his party’s leader and would be leaving politics in the coming months after his governing coalition collapsed last week.Mr. Rutte came to power in 2010 and earned the name “Teflon Mark” for his ability to weather political storms, but the failure of the four parties in his coalition to come to an agreement on the country’s migration policies set the stage for elections in the fall.The leader of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, Mr. Rutte, 56, remains in charge of a caretaker government.“This isn’t entirely without emotion,” he told reporters, according to the broadcaster NOS. “But it feels good to pass the baton.”Caroline van der Plas, leader of the Farmer-Citizen Movement, a pro-farmer party that swept local elections in the Netherlands this year, said that she welcomed the chance for voters to go to the polls this fall. Attje Kuiken, leader of the Labor Party, said on Twitter this weekend that “Mark Rutte is done governing.”Mr. Rutte’s coalition collapsed after he failed to convince the more centrist members of his coalition to back more restrictive migration policies, a sign of the potency of that issue in European politics.The government had been negotiating the terms of family reunification for refugees and also whether to create two classes of asylum: a temporary one for people fleeing conflicts, and a permanent one for people fleeing persecution.The goal of both proposals was to reduce the number of refugees, a reflection of the desire to head off right-wing parties outside the coalition who have been making political inroads by tapping into voter concerns about immigration.The other coalition parties were ready to agree to the two-tier asylum system, but they would not endorse Mr. Rutte’s proposal for a two-year waiting period before refugees already living in the Netherlands could be joined by their children.That impasse ultimately led Mr. Rutte to offer the resignation of his government to King Willem-Alexander in writing on Friday night.Mr. Rutte has long been known for a no-nonsense approach to politics and a modest lifestyle. He pays for his own coffees. When attending public events, he stands in line with everyone else. In true Dutch fashion, he prefers to ride his bicycle to work. On Saturday, Mr. Rutte drove himself to see the king in a Saab he has had for years.Mr. Rutte’s tenure has not been without scandal. In 2021, his government collapsed after a report showed a systemic failure by his government to protect thousands of families from overzealous tax inspectors. More

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      Future of Prigozhin’s Vast Empire Is Clouded After Rebellion

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      Over decades, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin amassed considerable clout in Russia and built businesses in at least 15 countries. His whereabouts and the future of his extensive portfolio are now uncertain.A chocolate museum in St. Petersburg. A gold mine in the Central African Republic. Oil and gas ventures off the Syrian coast.The economic ventures of Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a former hot dog seller turned Wagner group warlord who staged a brief mutiny against Russia’s military last month, stretch far beyond the thousands of mercenaries he deployed in Ukraine, Africa and the Middle East.Through a vast network of shell companies and intermediaries, Mr. Prigozhin’s activities have included catering, producing action movies, making beer and vodka, cutting timber, mining diamonds and hiring people to sow disinformation in elections abroad, including the 2016 U.S. election.The exact size of his business is a mystery.A worker removes the logo of the Wagner Group from a building in St. Petersburg, Russia, after Mr. Prigozhin’s rebellion.Anatoly Maltsev/EPA, via ShutterstockWith Mr. Prigozhin’s whereabouts unknown, the fate of his sprawling empire is uncertain. President Vladimir V. Putin has said Russia financed Mr. Prigozhin’s enterprises, but it’s unclear how much control the Kremlin has over the business network, which reaches thousands of miles away from Moscow, experts say.“It will certainly not look exactly as it has, in terms of who is leading it, how much oversight the Kremlin will have, and how long the leash it will allow Wagner to operate with,” said Catrina Doxsee, an expert on irregular warfare at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based research organization.Here is a look at Mr. Prigozhin’s business interests.Russia and UkraineCatering, real estate and mercenaries.From his humble beginnings as an amateur cross-country skier and former convict, Mr. Prigozhin carved a path through the tumult of post-Soviet Russia, laying the foundations for his empire by opening hot dog kiosks in 1990 and later providing catering for the Kremlin — earning him the nickname “Putin’s chef.”Over the decades, he secured billions in state contracts and controlled an extensive portfolio of businesses, mostly in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city and his birthplace.Mr. Prigozhin’s ventures have included construction, catering and entertainment. He ran a media company, which has begun being dismantled since his mutiny, and pioneered troll farms that sought to shape the 2016 American presidential election. His companies run hotels, restaurants, business centers and a gourmet grocery store on St. Petersburg’s main thoroughfare.Vladimir V. Putin of Russia with Mr. Prigozhin, right, in a photograph released by Russian state media, during a 2010 tour of Mr. Prigozhin’s catering business in St. Petersburg.Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik, via Associated PressWhether his businesses made consistent profits is not clear: Some have gone under, others have stayed afloat. Over the years, Mr. Prigozhin used money from state contracts paid to some of his companies to finance his other projects, including shadowy tasks apparently ordered by the Kremlin.“They were all interconnected, these vessels, in the sense of general management and in the sense of possible flow of funds,” said Marat Gabidullin, a former assistant of Mr. Prigozhin’s who fought for the Wagner group before seeking asylum in France.The Wagner group was paid almost $10 billion by the Russian government, according to Russian state media. Mr. Prigozhin secured contracts worth another $10 billion from the Kremlin for his catering company.On Thursday, the autocratic leader of Belarus, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, who intervened in the mutiny, signaled that at least some of Wagner’s fighting force could stay intact.“Wagner” carved into the wall of a classroom in a school in Velyka Oleksandrivka, Ukraine, which Russian soldiers occupied until the town was liberated by Ukrainian troops in October.David Guttenfelder for The New York TimesIn June, Mr. Prigozhin admitted that he used profits from lucrative state contracts to finance Wagner in Africa, Syria and elsewhere — but always “to pursue the interests of the Russian state.”“It all functions as a business model — he uses state resources to pursue various projects,” Mr. Gabidullin said. “And within this, he gets his own bonus.”AfricaSoldiers for hire, and interests in gold and timber.Wagner’s primary business in Africa is mercenaries: From Libya in the north to Mozambique in the south, the group has deployed troops in five African countries, providing security to presidents, propping up authoritarian leaders and fighting armed groups, often at a high cost for civilian populations.In the Central African Republic, Wagner provides security to the president, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, and trains the army. Observers have called the group’s actions in the nation “state capture” because of how Wagner has influenced political decisions to further its interests at the expense of the public.According to the United States, a military-led government in the West African nation of Mali has paid Wagner around $200 million since late 2021, essentially for mercenaries to fight against groups affiliated with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.Wagner operatives also helped boot out a decade-long United Nations peacekeeping operation, according to White House officials, forcing Mali to rely almost exclusively on Russia.Commandos trained by the Wagner group standing guard during Labor Day celebrations in Bangui, Central African Republic, in 2019.Ashley Gilbertson for The New York TimesBeyond mercenary work, businesses affiliated with Mr. Prigozhin have been present in more than a dozen countries. They mine gold in Sudan and the Central African Republic, where they also export timber, make beer and vodka, run a radio station, and have produced action movies and organized a beauty pageant.A firm affiliated with Mr. Prigozhin also controls the Central African Republic’s largest gold mine, and recently signed new mining permits there for the next 25 years. The mine could bring $100 million in revenues to the group each year, according to Hans Merket, a researcher on minerals for the Brussels-based IPIS organization.Fidèle Gouandjika, a top adviser to the country’s president, said Wagner had protected against rebels; made quality wood available to Central Africans through their timber business; and was selling cheap beer.“So we’re telling them, ‘Take some diamonds, take some gold,’” Mr. Gouandjika said about what Central African officials were offering Wagner for its services. “The West is jealous.”SyriaBashar al-Assad’s protectors and oil and gas explorers.As Mr. Prigozhin staged his mutiny last month, Russian troops in Syria surrounded several bases where Wagner mercenaries were stationed, including around the capital, Damascus. Fearing movement from Wagner fighters, Syrian forces set up checkpoints around the bases; the country’s intelligence services were put on alert; and telecommunications were jammed. The response was another sign of Mr. Prigozhin’s long reach.Officially, Russia intervened in Syria in late 2015 to help the authoritarian regime of President Bashar al-Assad turn the tide against rebels trying to oust him.But Russian paramilitary fighters with a group known as the Slavonic Corps were detected in Syria as early as 2013, experts say. Although detailed connections between the Slavonic Corps and Wagner remain unclear, many Wagner commanders were originally part of the corps, according to Gregory Waters, a scholar at the Middle East Institute.Wagner asserted its presence in Syria in 2017. While the Russian military brought in its air force and commanders, the bulk of its frontline personnel came from Wagner, Mr. Waters said.Wagner fighters both captured territory from rebels and the Islamic State and guarded oil and gas fields and Palmyra, an important tourist site.Wagner fighters now guard Palmyra, an important tourist site in Syria.Omar Sanadiki/Associated PressU.S. intelligence officials have described Wagner’s goal in Syria as seizing oil and gas fields and protecting them for Mr. al-Assad.At least four companies linked to Wagner and registered in Russia have exploration permits for sites in Syria, according to Lou Osborn, an analyst at All Eyes on Wagner, an open-source research group. All have been placed under sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department.These activities have been central to Russia’s quest to become an energy superpower, said Candace Rondeaux, an expert on Wagner who is a senior director at New America, a Washington research group.“With Russia there’s no deconflicting or disentangling military interests from energy interest,” Ms. Rondeaux said.Mr. Gabidullin, the former Wagner fighter, said that Mr. Prigozhin’s far-reaching network abroad had grown too much for the Kremlin to fully control it.“He has so many specialists there,” he said. “It is the Ministry of Defense’s specialists who need to learn from his staff.” More

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      What You Need to Know About the Dutch Government Collapse

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      The coalition parties couldn’t come to an agreement on the country’s migration policy. What were they fighting over and what comes next?A political crisis erupted in the Netherlands on Friday night, with the prime minister offering the resignation of his government to the king, meaning there will be new elections in the fall. Here’s what you need to know.Why did the Dutch government collapse?Unable to convince the more centrist members of his four-party governing coalition to back more restrictive migration policies, the conservative prime minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, offered his resignation to King Willem-Alexander in writing on Friday night and spoke to the king in person about it on Saturday in The Hague.The collapse underscores the potency of immigration as an arbiter of Europe’s politics, and how stopping far-right parties from capitalizing on it is a growing problem for mainstream politicians.Mr. Rutte’s four-party coalition included his own party, the center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, as well as the centrist pro-European D66 and two centrist Christian parties: CDA and Christian Union.With his government feeling pressured on the migration issue by parties to the right, Mr. Rutte had been talking for months to his coalition partners about measures to further control the number of refugees coming into the country. On Friday night, the parties decided they could not come to a compromise and chose to dissolve the coalition, plunging the country into political uncertainty.“It is no secret that the coalition partners have very different views on migration policy,” Mr. Rutte said on Friday. “And today, unfortunately, we have to draw the conclusion that those differences are irreconcilable.”What were the proposed policies that led to the breakup?The government had been debating terms of family reunification for refugees and also whether to create two classes of asylum: a temporary one for people fleeing conflicts, and a permanent one for people fleeing persecution.The goal of both proposals was to reduce the number of refugees, as right-wing parties outside the coalition were seeing political gains by appealing to growing voter concerns in the Netherlands about immigration.While the other coalition parties were ready to agree with the two-tier asylum system, they would not agree to back Mr. Rutte’s proposal for a two-year waiting period before refugees already living in the Netherlands could be joined by their children.Last year, more than 21,000 people from outside the European Union sought asylum in the Netherlands, according to the Dutch government. More than 400,000 people immigrated to the Netherlands overall in 2022, the office said, an increase from the year before.The large numbers of arrivals have strained the Netherlands’ housing capacity, which was already suffering a shortage for the country’s more than 17 million people.The prime minister arriving to speak with the king on Saturday. After Mr. Rutte’s resignation, the Netherlands will hold general elections in the fall, probably in November.Patrick van Katwijk/Getty ImagesWhat happens now?Although he resigned as prime minister, Mr. Rutte will remain in charge of a caretaker government until general elections are held.Dutch voters will head to the polls in the fall, probably in November. It’s unclear whether Mr. Rutte will stay on as leader of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, but he indicated on Friday night that he would be open to it and Dutch media have speculated that he will.Many of the party’s faithful are still happy with Mr. Rutte, said Marcel Hanegraaff, an associate professor of political science at the University of Amsterdam.If Mr. Rutte’s party — which can count on the steady support of about 20 percent of Dutch voters, according to Mr. Hanegraaff — manages to win the election, he would be tasked with forming a new coalition government, his fifth. But he may face the same set of coalition problems.Who is Mark Rutte, and what does his future hold?Mr. Rutte has weathered many political storms before. He is the Netherlands’ longest serving prime minister, coming into power in 2010. For surviving at least one other government collapse and multiple other political obstacles, he has earned the nickname “Teflon Mark.”But Dutch politicians from other parties have said it is time for a new prime minister.Caroline van der Plas, the leader of the Farmer-Citizen Movement, a pro-farmer party that swept local elections in the Netherlands this year, said she wanted a new leader and welcomed a chance for voters to go to the polls this fall, two years earlier than expected.Analysts in the Netherlands expect the Farmer-Citizen Movement, which currently has one seat in the 150-member Parliament, to do well in the coming elections. Polls show they could come in as the nation’s second-biggest party.Dutch farmers are angry at Mr. Rutte’s government for announcing reductions in nitrogen pollution to preserve protected nature reserves — a policy that the farmers believe unfairly targets them.Attje Kuiken, the leader of the Dutch Labor Party, wrote on Twitter that “Mark Rutte is done governing.” She added that she wanted new elections quickly, “because the Netherlands needs a government that shows vigor and makes decisions.” More

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      Far-Right Party Gaining in Spain

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      As Spain prepares for elections, some liberal European politicians fear that the hard-right Vox party could become the first right-wing party since the Franco era to enter Spain’s national government.Last month, after Spain’s conservative and hard-right parties crushed the left in local elections, the winners in Elche, a small southeastern town known for an ancient sculpture and shoe exports, signed an agreement with consequences for the future of Spain — and the rest of Europe.The candidate from the conservative Popular Party had a chance to govern, but he needed the hard-right Vox party, which, in return for its support during council votes, received the deputy mayor position and a new administrative body to defend the traditional family. They inked their deal under the cross of the local church.“This coalition model could be a good model for the whole of Spain,” said Pablo Ruz Villanueva, Elche’s new mayor, referring to upcoming national elections on July 23, which most polls suggest will oust the liberal prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party. The new deputy mayor from Vox, Aurora Rodil Martínez, went further: “My party will do everything that’s necessary to make that happen.”If Ms. Rodil’s wish comes true, with Vox joining a coalition with more moderate conservatives, it would become the first right-wing party since the dictatorship of Francisco Franco to enter the national government.The rise of Vox is part of an increasing trend of hard-right parties surging in popularity and, in some cases, gaining power by entering governments as junior partners.People walking through the old part of Elche, Spain.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesThe parties have differences but generally fear the economic ramifications of globalization, and say that their countries will lose their national identities to migration, often from non-Christian or nonwhite-majority countries, but also to an empowered European Union that they believe looks after only the elites. Their steady advances have added urgency to a now pressing debate among liberals over how to outflank a suddenly more influential right.Some argue that the hard right needs to be marginalized, as was the case for more than a half-century after World War II. Others fear that the hard right has grown too large to be ignored and that the only choice is to bring them into governing in the hopes of normalizing them.In Sweden, the government now depends on the parliamentary votes of a party with neo-Nazi roots, and has given it some sway in policymaking. In Finland, where the right has ascended into the governing coalition, the nationalist Finns party has risked destabilizing it, with a key minister from that far-right party resigning last month after it emerged that he had made “Heil Hitler” jokes.On Friday, the Dutch government led by Mark Rutte, a conservative and the Netherlands’ longest serving prime minister, collapsed because more centrist parties in his coalition considered his efforts to curb migration too harsh. Mr. Rutte has had to guard his right flank against surging populists and a longstanding hard-right party.In Italy, the far right has taken power on its own. But so far, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, politically reared in parties born from the ashes of Fascism and a close ally of Spain’s Vox, has governed more moderately than many in Europe expected — bolstering some analysts’ argument that the reality of governing can be a moderating force.Elsewhere, hard-right parties are breaking through in countries where they had recently seemed contained.Elche’s new mayor, Pablo Ruz Villanueva, left, and deputy mayor, Aurora Rodil Martínez, in their office last month in Elche, Spain.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesIn France, the once fringe party of the far-right leader Marine Le Pen has become an established force as entrenched anger against President Emmanuel Macron has newly exploded over issues like pension changes and the integration and policing of the country’s minority communities. He is not running again and the election is years away, but liberals across Europe shuddered when she passed him in some recent polls.And in Germany, where the right has long been taboo, economic uncertainty and a new surge in arrivals by asylum seekers has helped resurrect the far-right Alternative for Germany party. It is now the leading party in the formerly Communist eastern states, according to polls, and is even gaining popularity in the wealthier and more liberal west.While the parties in different countries do not have identical proposals, they generally want to close the doors to and cut benefits off for migrants; hit the pause, or reverse, button when it comes to L.G.B.T.Q. rights; and stake out more protectionist trade policies. Some are suspicious of NATO and dubious about climate change and sending arms to Ukraine.Supporters of the hard-right Italian politician Giorgia Meloni in Rome before the general elections that she won in 2022.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesIn a seeming recognition that the continent’s political complexion is changing, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said in Spain this past week that the European Union needed to deliver tangible results in order to counter “extremist” forces.In Spain, where the conservative Popular Party has a good chance of finishing first in the coming election, Esteban González Pons, a leading party official, said that bringing hard-right parties, like Vox, into government was a way to neutralize them. But he acknowledged that strategy carried risks.“First, the bad scenario: We can legitimize Vox,” he said.“Then, there is a second chance: We can normalize Vox,” he said, adding that if they governed well, “Vox will be another party, a conservative party inside of the system.”For now, the situation is fluid and there are indications that Mr. Sánchez and his leftist allies are gaining support. Vox also appears to be losing ground as the Sánchez campaign and well-known artists and liberals throughout Spain have focused on the threat of conservatives bringing Vox into the government.A Pride flag hanging on a house in Náquera, Spain.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesSpain seemed in recent years to be a bright spot for liberals. Under Mr. Sánchez, Spain has kept inflation low, reduced tensions with separatists in Catalonia, and increased the growth rate, pensions and the minimum wage. He is also generally popular in the European Union.But the alliance between Mr. Sánchez and deeply polarizing separatists and far-left forces has fed resentment among many voters.Mr. González Pons, a leading official of the Popular Party, does not think that worries about Vox possibly joining forces with his conservatives are entirely off base. “We are pro-European and Vox is not,” he said, adding that Vox “would prefer something like a general Brexit, for all the countries to recover their own sovereignty.” He said Vox had views on gay rights and violence against women that “are red lines for us.”Those lines started to show as the new leaders of Elche sat on leather armchairs in the mayor’s office last week and sought to put up a united front. Mr. Ruz, the mayor from the conservative Popular Party, and his deputy from Vox, Ms. Rodil, took turns bashing the prime minister. But when pressed, the mayor acknowledged that his party recognized gay marriage, and that he was queasier about hard-right parties like Alternative for Germany than his “partner.” Still, he said, the Popular Party and Vox had similar voters, just different approaches to “implementation.”Far-right supporters of Spain’s Vox party during a recent rally in Barcelona.Samuel Aranda for The New York Times“Can I say something regarding that?” Ms. Rodil said with a coy smile. “We have a stance that is maybe a little firmer.” Vox, she said, believes in the “sovereignty of nations” and would like to make it more difficult for women to have abortions, positions that she said some people in the mayor’s party “do not defend.” She said the “ambiguous” stances of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the Popular Party’s leader, were “worrying.”Many, instead, are worried about Vox.“We have seen populism, supported by the center-right, grow in small towns,” said Carlos González Serna, the former socialist mayor of Elche, who lost the election. He said that instead of cordoning off the extreme right, mainstream conservatives had given it an “umbilical cord” of legitimacy.The leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, split from the Popular Party amid a slush-fund scandal in 2013. The party’s popularity grew in 2018 as more migrants arrived by sea to Spain than to any other European country. The nationalist Vox was also well positioned to exploit a backlash to the Catalonian independence movement.But Vox has also found support among Spaniards unhappy with their country’s progressive shift on climate change and social issues, including gay rights and feminism. Their campaign billboards have included candidates throwing L.G.B.T.Q., feminist and other symbols in the trash. In the town of Náquera, near Elche, the newly elected mayor from the Vox party has ordered the removal of Pride flags from municipal buildings.Migrants having breakfast on a rooftop in 2018 in Barcelona. That year, more migrants arrived by sea to Spain than to any other European country.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesOne resident, a 45-year-old truck driver named Maximo Ibañez, said he voted for Vox because the party spoke clearly, but also because he feels that Spain’s pioneering laws to explicitly protect women against gender-based violence — complete with special courts and tougher sentences — discriminate against men.“It’s women who have the right to presumption of innocence here,” he said.One of Vox’s regional leaders has joked that some women were too unattractive to be gang raped, and another said that “women are more belligerent because they don’t have penises.”Ms. Rodil, the new deputy mayor of Elche with Vox, said that her party had no quarrel with women, just with the notion that domestic violence should be seen through gender-based ideology, and that a man, “just for being a man, is bad, that he has a gene that makes him violent.”She argued that Mr. Sánchez’s government had endangered women with botched legislation that had the potential to let sex offenders out of jail. Mr. Sánchez has apologized for the inadvertent effects of the so-called yes-is-yes law, which was intended to categorize all non-consensual sex as rape, but which, through changes to sentencing requirements, has risked reducing jail time or setting free potentially hundreds of sex offenders.As many in Europe say the time has come to start taking right-wing parties more seriously, some voters in Elche regretted not having taken Vox seriously enough.“I didn’t think that they were going to form a government and the fact that they have has surprised me,” Isabel Chinchilla, 67, said in a plaza that features three statues of the Virgin Mary. “I will vote in the national elections so that this doesn’t happen again, because they are very reactionary in their vision of society.”Maximo Ibañez, right, a truck driver who said he voted for Vox, at a bar in Náquera, Spain.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesRachel Chaundler More

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      Dutch Government Collapses Over Plan to Further Limit Immigration

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      Prime Minister Mark Rutte, one of Europe’s longest-serving leaders, had struggled to reach an agreement with his coalition partners about migration, including more restrictions.The Dutch government collapsed on Friday after the parties in its ruling coalition failed to reach an agreement on migration policy, underlining how the issue of asylum seekers coming to Europe continues to divide governments across the continent.Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who was overseeing his fourth cabinet and is one of Europe’s longest-serving leaders, told reporters on Friday that he would submit his resignation to the king.“It is no secret that the coalition partners have very different views on migration policy,” Mr. Rutte told reporters in The Hague on Friday. “And today, unfortunately, we have to draw the conclusion that those differences are irreconcilable.”The disintegration of the government triggers new general elections in the fall, and a caretaker government headed by Mr. Rutte will remain in place until then.For months, the parties in the coalition government had struggled to come to an agreement about migration, debating terms of family reunification and whether to create two classes of asylum: a temporary one for people fleeing conflicts, and a permanent one for people fleeing persecution. .Dutch news organizations reported that Mr. Rutte had called for limiting the entrance for children of war refugees who were already in the Netherlands and for making families wait at least two years before they could be reunited. Mr. Rutte denied those reports, according to the Dutch broadcaster NOS.But arguments about migration policy continued to split the Dutch government, which already has tougher immigration policies than some other E.U. nations. This week, two parties in the governing coalition, the Christian Union and the centrist D66, determined that they could not come to terms with Mr. Rutte’s party, leading to a crisis in the government.“One of the values that are important with the proposals is that children grow up with their parents,” a statement by the Christian Union party said. “As a family party, that is what we stand for.” The party said it wanted to work with “heart and soul for a humane and effective migration policy.”Migration has proved an intractable issue among many European voters and political parties, fueling the popularity of nationalistic and right-wing parties around the continent, and leading to sharp criticism from rights activists over how governments have treated migrants. Last year, Dutch aid agencies struggled to help hundreds of asylum seekers who were living in a makeshift camp outside an overcrowded reception center, in what aid workers described as dismal conditions.Last year, more than 21,000 people from outside the European Union sought asylum in the Netherlands, according to the Dutch government. More than 400,000 people immigrated to the Netherlands overall in 2022, the office said, an increase from the year before.The large numbers of arrivals have strained the Netherlands’ housing capacity, which was already suffering a shortage for the country’s more than 17 million people.The ruling parties of the Dutch government had met repeatedly in recent days to try to find common ground, and Mr. Rutte’s cabinet met late Friday for its own talks.“We talked for a long time, we are coming here tonight because we did not succeed,” the defense minister, Kajsa Ollongren, told reporters as she walked into the cabinet meeting, according to The Associated Press.“Everybody wants to find a good, effective solution that also does justice to the fact that this is about human lives,” the finance minister, Sigrid Kaag, a member of the D66 party, said before the talks began.Aid workers handing out blankets and other supplies to asylum seekers in Ter Apel, the Netherlands, in August 2022.Vincent Jannink/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOver the last decade, as thousands of people have sought asylum in the European Union from Africa and the Middle East, far-right parties that oppose immigration have gained popularity across the 27-member bloc. In some countries, their success has pushed center and right-wing parties to lurch further to the right on immigration and asylum policy.In June, Spain’s far-right Vox party did better than expected in regional elections, and last fall, the Sweden Democrats, a party with roots in the neo-Nazi movement, won 20.5 percent of the vote in Sweden, becoming the second largest party in Parliament.In France, the far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who has long held an anti-immigration stance, reached the final round of the presidential election last year. In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has clung to power in part by railing against immigration.And last year Italy elected a hard-right coalition led by Giorgia Meloni, whose long record of criticizing immigration and the European Union has sown concern about the nation’s reliability in the Western alliance.Mr. Rutte had supported European Union efforts to limit migration, visiting Tunisia last month with Ms. Meloni and a top E.U. leader, Ursula Von der Leyen. In a joint statement, the leaders said the European Union would provide 100 million euros, or about $109 million, to Tunisia for “border management” and search-and-rescue and anti-smuggling efforts.The last time Mr. Rutte and his cabinet resigned was in 2021 over a report highlighting systemic failure by his government to protect thousands of families from overzealous tax inspectors. But Mr. Rutte weathered that crisis, emerging as the Netherlands’ leader yet again after nine months of negotiations that December. More