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      For Turkey, Erdogan Victory Brings More Risky Economic Policy

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      The Turkish lira has hit a new low, and analysts see few improvements ahead as re-elected President Erdogan pursues unconventional economic policies.Since winning re-election, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has publicly doubled down on his idiosyncratic economic policies.“If anyone can do this, I can do it,” he declared in a victory speech last Sunday, referring to his ability to solve the country’s calamitous economic problems.His brash confidence is not widely shared by most analysts and economists.The Turkish lira dropped to a record low against the dollar this week, and foreign investors have been disheartened by the president’s refusal to stray from what is widely considered to be an eccentric economic course.Instead of combating dizzying inflation by raising interest rates and making borrowing more expensive — as most economists recommend — Mr. Erdogan has repeatedly lowered rates. He argues that cheap credit will boost manufacturing and exports.But his strategy is also fueling inflation, now running at an annual rate of 44 percent, and eroding the value of the Turkish lira. Attempts by the government to prop up the faltering currency have drained the dwindling pool of foreign reserves.As the lira’s value drops, the price of imported goods — like medicine, energy, fertilizer and automobile parts — rises, making it more expensive for consumers to afford daily costs. And it raises the size of debt payments for businesses and households that have borrowed money from foreign lenders.The national budget is also coming under increasing strains. The destructive earthquakes in February that ripped up swaths of southern Turkey are estimated to have caused more than a billion dollars in damage, roughly 9 percent of the country’s annual economic output.At the same time, Mr. Erdogan went on a pre-election spending spree to attract voters, increasing salaries for public sector workers and payouts for retirees and offering households a month of free natural gas. The expenditures pushed up growth, but economists fear that such outlays will feed inflation.President Erdogan in Istanbul last month. Foreign investors have been disheartened by his refusal to stray from what is widely considered to be an eccentric economic course.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesAn effort to encourage Turks to keep their savings in lira by guaranteeing their balances against currency depreciations further adds to the government’s potential liabilities.Critics of the president’s economic approach were somewhat heartened by reports that Mr. Erdogan is expected this weekend to appoint Mehmet Simsek, a former finance minister and deputy prime minister, to the cabinet. Mr. Simsek is well thought of in financial circles and has previously supported a tighter monetary policy.“What Turkey really needs now is more exports and more foreign direct investment, and for that you have to send a signal,” said Henri Barkey, an international relations professor at Lehigh University. One signal could be Mr. Simsek’s appointment, he said.Mr. Barkey argues that Mr. Erdogan will have no choice but to make a U-turn on policy by winter, when energy import costs rise and some debt payments are due.Others are more skeptical that Mr. Erdogan will back down from his insistence that high interest rates fuel inflation. Kadri Tastan, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, a public policy think tank based in Brussels, said that regardless of the cabinet’s makeup, he didn’t believe a policy turnaround was imminent.“I’m quite pessimistic about an enormous change, of course,” he said.To deal with the large external deficit and depleted central bank reserves, Mr. Erdogan has been relying on allies like Russia, Qatar and Saudi Arabia to help bolster its reserves by depositing dollars with the central bank or extending payment deadlines and discounts for imported goods like natural gas.In a note to investors this week, Capital Economics wrote that any optimism about a policy shift is likely to be short-lived: “While policymakers like Simsek would probably pursue more restrained fiscal policy than we had envisaged, we doubt Erdogan would give the central bank license to hike policy rates to restore balance to the economy.”Turkey’s more than $900 billion economy makes it the eighth largest in Europe. And Mr. Erdogan’s efforts to position himself as a power broker between Russia and the European allies since the war in Ukraine began has further underscored Turkey’s geopolitical influence.Mr. Erdogan, who has been in power for two decades, built his electoral success on growth-oriented policies that lifted millions of Turks into the middle class. But the pumped-up expansion wasn’t sustainable.As the lira’s value drops, the price of imported goods rises.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesThe borrowing frenzy drove up prices, spurring a cost-of-living crisis. Still, Mr. Erdogan persisted in lowering interest rates and fired central bank chiefs who disagreed with him. The pandemic exacerbated problems by reducing demand for Turkish exports and limiting tourism, a large source of income.Mr. Erdogan is likely to keep up his expansionary policies until the next local elections take place next year. Until then, Hakan Kara, the former chief economist of the Central Bank of Turkey, said the country would probably just “muddle through.”“Turkish authorities will have to make tough decisions after the local elections, as something has to give in eventually,” Mr. Kara said. “Turkey has to either switch back to conventional policies, or further deviate from the free market economy where the central authority manages the economy through micro-control measures.”“In either case,” he added, “the adjustment is likely to be painful.” More

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      Senegal Blocks Some Social Media After Ousmane Sonko Is Sentenced

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      Demonstrators had battled with the police to protest a two-year prison sentence given to a leading opposition figure.The government of Senegal said on Friday that it had shut down some social media platforms as a result of clashes between protesters and security forces a day earlier, which it said had left at least nine people dead.Demonstrators had taken to the streets across the West African nation on Thursday shortly after a court acquitted a leading opposition figure, Ousmane Sonko, on charges of rape and making death threats, but convicted him on the lesser charge of “corrupting youth.” Mr. Sonko was sentenced to two years in prison in a case that his supporters said was politically motivated.The violence brought tensions in the largely peaceful country to a new high. Periodic clashes have sporadically broken out since the arrest of Mr. Sonko in 2021 after a massage parlor employee accused him of rape.The Senegal interior minister, Antoine Felix Abdoulaye Diome, said the deaths on Thursday had occurred in Dakar, the capital, and in Ziguinchor, a southern city where Mr. Sonko is mayor. In 2021, at least 14 people were killed in clashes that followed his arrest.Mr. Diome said that blocking of the social media outlets was justified because calls to violence and hatred were circulating through them.On Friday morning, Dakar and other cities remained calm as many Senegalese waited to see what would happen next.Security forces stationed around Mr. Sonko’s house in Dakar have prevented him from leaving for days. They have also, without warning, thrown tear gas at journalists, lawmakers and residents walking nearby.Mr. Sonko, a 48-year-old former tax inspector, is popular among younger people and has branded himself as the main opponent of President Macky Sall. Mr. Sonko has accused the president of using court cases to sideline him. In return, the government has accused Mr. Sonko of calling for an insurrection and threatening Senegal’s public order.Ousmane Sonko, a prominent opposition figure, waving to supporters at a rally in Dakar in March.John Wessels/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJustice Minister Ismaïla Madior Fall told reporters on Thursday that Mr. Sonko could be arrested at any time.For now, the sentence bars him from running in next year’s presidential election and he is not allowed to appeal the verdict because he was not present in court for the trial. But two of his lawyers and Mr. Fall, the justice minister, said that Mr. Sonko could secure a retrial if he surrendered or was imprisoned.Senegal has long taken pride in its culture of peaceful dialogue, political pluralism and the absence of coups since gaining independence from France in 1960. But human rights defenders and political observers have raised questions about the arrests of journalists and dozens of political opponents in recent years, as well as the criminal charges brought against major opposition figures, including Mr. Sonko.“There are expectations in the Senegalese democratic culture that the judiciary should be independent,” said Catherine Lena Kelly, an expert on Senegalese politics at the African Center for Strategic Studies, a research group that is part of the United States Defense Department. “But there have been grievances during the Sall presidency about what some citizens consider to be the state selectively charging opposition leaders with criminal offenses.”Babacar Ndiaye, a political analyst in Senegal, said that to his knowledge, the social media blackout was a first in the country.“It’s surprising to say the least,” Mr. Ndiaye, the research and publication director at Wathi, a Dakar-based research organization, said on Friday. “Social media have always been a space of free expression in Senegal, including yesterday when people exchanged information in real time about the clashes and the law enforcement response.”As of Friday morning, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and WhatsApp were not working, and many Senegalese had switched to virtual private networks, which get around such bans by masking a user’s location. “This is where we’re now at in Senegal,” Mr. Ndiaye said. More

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      ‘The View’ Has Narrowed

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      Illustration By The New York TimesThe ladies of “The View” were in high spirits. A piece of news they’d been hankering for had broken at last: President Biden, a revered figure around their talk show table, had kicked off his re-election campaign.The show’s hosts — known in “View” parlance as “the ladies” — had been hyping this moment for months. They’d lavished praise on President Biden for leading the country out of the pandemic and overseeing what they described as a thriving U.S. economy. They’d downplayed scandals and investigations involving Mr. Biden and his family members. They’d also taken extraordinary pains to disqualify as “ageist” questions of whether he is simply too old to run again. Mr. Biden would be 86 by the end of a second term, but when the Democratic strategist David Axelrod expressed mild concern, the comedian Joy Behar snapped that he “should keep his mouth shut.”“I’d rather have Joe Biden, drooling, than any Republican,” Ms. Behar said another day.Now the ladies agreed that Mr. Biden’s campaign announcement made them feel hopeful. They were tired of what Sunny Hostin called Republican “fearmongering,” which, in a startlingly casual aside, she noted had “led to the demise of our democracy.” If any of the ladies was perturbed by the irony of decrying scare tactics while calling U.S. democracy dead, she kept it to herself.“You get behind him,” the actress Whoopi Goldberg said of Mr. Biden, seemingly instructing the Democrats at large, “and we won’t have a problem.”This kind of unabashed cheerleading is reserved for Mr. Biden. The panel of “View” hosts has been annoyed and dismissive of other Democrats who might vie for the nomination. (“You start making inroads — maybe this person, maybe this person — we’re done for,” Ms. Goldberg said.) When compelled to discuss the Twitter-hosted presidential campaign announcement of Gov. Ron DeSantis of the Florida — a man they’d decried as “fascist,” “bigot” and “Death Santis” — the ladies used the occasion to mock the platform and its new owner, Elon Musk, for the tech failures that disrupted the event. As for Mr. Trump, forget about it: Ms. Goldberg won’t even utter his name, referring to him instead as “you know who.”The day after Mr. Biden’s announcement, the co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin, a Republican political operative who’d already been silenced by Ms. Goldberg, giggled from her end of the table. Ms. Farah Griffin has said she’d write in another candidate before voting for either Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump, but her counterpoints tend to get interrupted or dismissed by the rest of the panel.Mr. Biden “needs another four years to finish the job,” Ms. Behar said. “You can’t fight fascism in four years only. You need eight years for that.”“He has had a lot of accomplishments,” Ms. Hostin agreed.“He brought us back from the precipice,” Ms. Goldberg said. “Maybe it’s not a perfect country, but it’s better than where we were.”With that, the music came up and the audience applauded. The discussion was done.I’ve been a regular Viewer for years, starting when I was a foreign correspondent salving late-night homesickness via satellite TV. Along the way I’ve amassed an encyclopedic knowledge of the hosts’ marriages and hobbies, and a habit of analyzing the “Hot Topics” discussions as a bellwether of centrist America’s political and cultural trends. I’m hardly alone — “The View” has long inspired pieces of serious analysis that bob along like flotsam on a choppy sea of dressing room gossip, leaks and hate tweets. For me, though, it’s a solitary fixation, for none of my friends or family members have ever shared my interest in “The View.”“Ugh, I can’t watch that show,” they grimace. Or — this most of all — “Aren’t they always arguing?”Which is funny because, if you ask me, the co-hosts don’t argue nearly enough. At least, not substantively. Not anymore. The freewheeling discussions that once evoked a spectrum of American opinion on everything from reproductive rights to foreign policy — those have mostly fallen silent. “The View” has become a chorus of conformity. The title of this show I’ve loved for years used to suggest messy and fearless debate. Lately, it seems like a command.The hosts include centrist Democrats (Ms. Hostin and Ms. Behar), centrist Republicans (Ms. Farah Griffin and Ana Navarro) and one centrist independent (the TV journalist Sara Haines). But, anyway, they agree. They agree (or at least pretend to agree) that Mr. Biden is basically a good president. Even on topics notorious for splitting American opinion — the need for “common-sense gun reform,” protecting L.G.B.T.Q. rights and funding the war in Ukraine — they don’t find much to debate one another about. Even those who privately consider abortion a sin agree that access should be preserved in some cases.We, the people, are split. Our many divisions obstruct coherent governance. But “The View” continues to project a brightly lit illusion of accord.And there is no article of agreement more important — lending the show an intoxicating but oddly irreal flavor — as the ladies’ absolute disdain for Mr. Trump and, increasingly, anyone who belongs to his party.Current events haven’t always anchored “The View.” Since the program’s 1997 debut, celebrity interviews, gossip and relationship advice vied for time against news and politics. In its current iteration, though, “The View” carries itself like an earnest journalistic platform — a must-do interview for establishment politicians and a reliable midmorning destination for nuggets of news analysis. In 2019, The New York Times Magazine dubbed it “the most important political TV show in America.”Which has made its erasure of the country’s most dynamic and least understood political strains all the more frustrating.As the current season got underway last September, Ms. Hostin, a former federal prosecutor, came out with a sweeping justification for shunning Republicans — all Republicans, she specified, not just MAGA loyalists — because polls showed that the majority of Republicans regard Mr. Trump as their figurehead.“So if you are saying that he is a fascist, what are they? If you are saying that he is a white supremacist, what are they?” Ms. Hostin continued. “If you follow someone that has hate in their heart, and I believe that he does, then you are complicit in that, and you don’t have a pass.”I gathered that Ms. Hostin was enshrining the new ground rules of “The View,” updated to reflect our ever more divided age. She has become the show’s dominant voice, although I can’t tell if that’s by design or whether it’s the inevitable result of her indomitable delivery and the clear, unambiguous opinions she’s polished into repeatable bites.Either way, the idea that Republicans could be written off en masse signaled a radical departure in “View” philosophy. The panelists have traditionally taken pains to distinguish between bad politicians and the regular people who vote for them. Barbara Walters, who created the show and presided over it for years, urged the ladies to appeal to an imaginary viewer in Wyoming, according to interviews with current and former panelists for the podcast “The View: Behind the Table.” When Ms. Goldberg and Ms. Behar stormed off the set mid-interview in 2010 to protest anti-Muslim rhetoric from Bill O’Reilly (“Muslims killed us on 9/11”), Ms. Walters was outraged.“You have just seen what should not happen,” Ms. Walters told the audience that day. “We should be able to have discussions without washing our hands” of one another “and screaming and walking offstage,” she said.But that was a different age. Ms. Hostin’s wholesale dismissal of Republicans comes across as a bleak but frank acknowledgment that the show had adopted the coping mechanisms of our time: Ban thoughts we don’t like and carry on as if all the reasonable people agree. It’s been particularly chilling to watch this attitude finally take hold at a mainstream women’s program that has long postured as a nonthreatening place to air whatever opinions were working their way through the land, a make-believe living room where you could disagree about politics but then bond over bratty bridal behavior and unrealistic beauty standards.There is an argument, familiar by now, that denying Mr. Trump and his supporters a platform is the only moral approach to a movement many regard as a historic evil. But trying to smother any serious consideration of his politics has the unfortunate effect of suggesting that we are afraid of letting Americans hear these ideas because — why? They might like them too much?To be fair, the animosity between “The View” and Republicans is mutual, and finding the origin point is something of a chicken-versus-egg conundrum. For example, “The View” invited Mr. DeSantis to appear this season — a fact we only know because his spokesman tweeted out the invitation, along with the governor’s refusal, which cited various slurs and insults the ladies had used to refer to Mr. DeSantis.Even beyond “The View,” many conservatives, especially those in the thrall of Mr. Trump, now avoid mainstream journalists they decry as purveyors of “fake news.”Whatever the reason, one fact is undeniable: “The View” brazened all the way through Mr. Trump’s first campaign and presidency without deigning to hire a Trump supporter.The closest the show came was Meghan McCain, who spent so much time name-checking her father and bickering peevishly that she often drowned out her own points — which amounted to tortured efforts to reconcile her disgust for Mr. Trump with a desire to speak up for his voters.This may not be a popular take on Ms. McCain (who eventually left the show amid mockery of her entitled attitude and embarrassing lapses in decorum), but she had moments of clarity. She raised valid but then-taboo questions about America’s pandemic response and, to the acute annoyance of her co-hosts, analyzed failures and weaknesses of the Democratic Party.In 2020, when the other ladies nitpicked Bernie Sanders (saying, among other things, that he was ineffective, a fake Democrat and backed by Russians), Ms. McCain calmly laid out her repugnance for the Vermont senator’s leftist policies while acknowledging that his runaway popularity could land him the nomination. It was Ms. McCain who frankly discussed the populist sentiment fueling the rise of both Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders.Ms. McCain’s seat was filled this season by the more cordial — or perhaps more easily cowed — Ms. Farah Griffin, a former spokeswoman for the Trump administration. Ms. Farah Griffin quit her job amid Mr. Trump’s election lies and went on to testify before the House select committee investigating the insurrection of Jan. 6 — insufficient atonement, according to her new colleagues. Her early weeks on the show were full of struggle sessions in which her co-hosts (most notably Ms. Hostin and Ms. Navarro) snubbed and needled her until she coughed up, yet again, a denunciation of Mr. Trump.“I do question you … ’cause you’re a very smart woman,” Ms. Hostin said to her in a typical early exchange. “When you looked at his history … did it give you pause? As a woman who considers herself a brown woman, ‘My God, I’m working for a racist’?”Ms. Farah Griffin repeated the familiar explanation: She believed public service was a higher calling and didn’t think it was acceptable to cede the White House to “the crazies.”“I could spend the rest of my life debating if that was the right choice and, honestly, I spend a lot of time thinking about it,” she said, sounding weary. “But what I worry about is that this man could be president again.”When I first started watching “The View,” I was immersed in the violence and upheaval that followed Sept. 11, 2001. Peering westward through the window of the TV, I’d marvel at how unaffected the ladies seemed, how coifed and manicured, chatting about cheating husbands while the wars ground along. Sometimes I had the sense of watching anesthesia dripping into the veins of the American public.But then, like clouds parting, the ladies would say real things. Looking back now, I’m struck by how layered and blunt those conversations were — especially compared to those of today.In a 2007 episode, for example, the ladies clashed over torture, morality and America’s reputation abroad. Elisabeth Hasselbeck sneered that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed deserved to be tortured for his role in the Sept. 11 attacks. “Why don’t we give him milk and cookies at the same time,” Ms. Hasselbeck said. “And a lawyer, and let him watch ‘American Idol’?”Rosie O’Donnell countered by asking if labeling someone a terrorist nullified that person’s humanity. “They have been treating them like animals, Elisabeth, not like human beings,” she said.The U.S. government was “sanctioning torture,” Ms. O’Donnell went on, “from the president all the way down,” leading to anti-American protests around the world.Ms. Hasselbeck was unmoved. “I’d rather be safe than liked,” she said.Ms. Behar, a compulsive mood lightener with a habit of cracking jokes and steering the discussion back to daily practicalities, sided with Ms. O’Donnell, saying that she wanted to be greeted warmly on vacation in Italy.“I want them to say, ‘Hey, Americana, come,’” Ms. Behar said. “I don’t want them to not like me.”I still loathe what Ms. Hasselbeck said — suggesting torture as a punishment, mocking the right to a lawyer, prizing safety above all else. But it didn’t shock me. Those values had dominated the U.S. government since 2001, and I’d been watching them play out disastrously in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. If anything, it was cathartic to hear the arguments trotted onto TV, to see them falter and collapse under challenge.What strikes me now, though, was how that debate ended. “I think you’re wrong,” Ms. O’Donnell told Ms. Hasselbeck. “I still love you, but I think you’re wrong.”I love you, but you’re wrong. “The View” isn’t like that anymore. I think Americans are, or could be, or want to be — but we certainly don’t see it done on TV.The ladies often seem on the brink of having an honest and textured discussion — somebody will say something intriguing — but the most compelling comments tend to go untouched.I envision behind them the suited figures of the ABC network and the Walt Disney Company, which owns the network, and the companies that buy ads to sell things in the breaks, all of which benefit from predictable centrist leadership and regard eruptions of popular sentiment as an undesirable expense.Ms. Goldberg, seemingly keen to avoid any steep ideological edges, frequently shuts down conversation with a sweeping and vague speech on the uncertainty of politics or the unreliability of polls or some such.One recent morning, Ms. Haines fretted about the insurrection of Jan. 6 and the erosion of public trust.“The media is at its lowest. The Supreme Court is at its lowest,” she said, ticking off on her fingers. “People don’t trust anyone these days, so to completely ——”Ms. Behar interrupted: “They trust us,” she snapped.“Yes!” Ms. Hostin said emphatically, hands folded around her coffee mug, like a teacher’s pet who’s just called the right answer. As the audience exploded in applause, Ms. Haines stammered to regain her thought.Ms. Behar shrugged, and interrupted again. “Sure,” she said curtly.And that was that.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.

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      Miami Mayor Suarez Eyes Presidential Run Amid City Hall Turmoil

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      Miami’s strong economy has its mayor weighing a presidential run. But a trial against a city commissioner has exposed some of the city’s less attractive inner workings.Mayor Francis X. Suarez of Miami has visited early primary states in recent weeks, mulling a Republican presidential run built on the premise that his in-vogue city has boomed in difficult times — “the Miami miracle,” he calls it. Techies have flocked to the city from San Francisco. Bankers from New York. Taxes — and the murder rate — are low.It makes for a rosy story, not untrue.At the same time, a very different story about Miami unfolded recently in a drama-filled civil trial against a city commissioner who was accused by a pair of businessmen of violating their First Amendment rights by siccing inspectors on their bars and restaurants as political retribution. Testimony from a parade of former public employees portrayed City Hall as a toxic workplace, rife with dysfunction.On Thursday, a jury ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, holding the commissioner, Joe Carollo, liable for more than $63 million in damages.Miami has long been a city of confounding narratives, the airbrushed image it projects to outsiders often obscuring the complicated realities that lie beneath. But these days, the contrast between the Miami brand and the goings-on at City Hall seems especially stark.Under the city’s shiny postpandemic hood lie the inner workings of a local government mired in turmoil. The trial and its revelations came at a pivotal moment, as Miami teems with new residents whose arrival has put pressure on services, housing and roadways, and as Mayor Suarez, who took office in 2017, considers trying to leverage the city’s popularity to run for higher office.The mayor was not implicated in the trial, but a national campaign would bring new scrutiny to the problems at City Hall under his watch, a reminder that Miami has never been as easy to summarize as its marketing pitch.“Miami is not the glamorous place that everybody believes,” said Manolo Reyes, a city commissioner who was not the one on trial. “We have problems, and we have to solve those problems and tackle them head on.”Miami has low taxes compared with other major cities, but it also consistently has one of the highest rates of income inequality.Lynne Sladky/Associated PressThere are troubling signs beyond the trial. A federal judge ordered the city last month to draw new commission districts after finding that commissioners — there are five who make up the city’s legislative body — racially gerrymandered the boundaries last year. Last week, a former spokesman for Mr. Suarez pleaded guilty to receiving sexually explicit photographs from a 16-year-old boy after first meeting him in City Hall in 2019.In April, two Black officers filed a whistle-blower case against the Miami Police Department, saying that they faced discrimination and retaliation after reporting corruption. In January, a retiring police sergeant used her radio sign-off to blast the chief for having “destroyed” the department.Mr. Suarez — who will face Gov. Ron DeSantis, with whom he has openly disagreed at times, if he enters the Republican primary — does have some data points to brag about: Wages and salaries have risen more sharply than in most other major metropolitan areas. The unemployment rate is lower than the national average. The real estate market remains buoyant, if somewhat less so than during the pandemic frenzy, a contrast with recent downturns in other big cities.“I focus on the results, and the results are very clear,” said Mr. Suarez, a 45-year-old Cuban American and the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, said in a recent interview. “That speaks to the Miami model being a working model that’s scalable across urban America.”But Miami also ranks as one of the nation’s most unaffordable cities for housing. It consistently has one of the highest rates of income inequality.At City Hall, spending has stalled on a $400 million bond that voters approved in 2017 to address widespread flooding, the lack of affordable housing and other infrastructure problems. The Police Department is on its third chief in three years. The city attorney and her relatives are facing questions on whether firms they owned or helped runfinancially benefited from a county-run program that is now under investigation.Joe Carollo, a Miami city commissioner, speaking during a commission meeting last year.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesAfter repeatedly clashing with the city commissioners, who among other things pushed out his police chief in 2021, Mr. Suarez pivoted and worked on raising his profile. He found a niche posting online videos about his recovery from Covid and later promoting the city, famously responding to a venture capitalist who in 2020 suggested moving Silicon Valley to Miami by posting on Twitter, “How can I help?”He also heavily promoted cryptocurrency, calling Miami the “crypto capital of the world,” before it collapsed last year.Mr. Suarez has come under heightened scrutiny after a series of revelations by The Miami Herald involving his failure to disclose financial interests, including that a developer paid him at least $170,000 over the past two years to help with a $70 million project.“I don’t know why my local paper is obsessed with how many jobs I do,” he said on the CBS Sunday news program “Face the Nation.” “I think they should be focused on the job of being mayor, which I think I do a great job at.”Mr. Suarez, who is in his second and final term, has declined to disclose his consulting clients. He receives compensation of about $130,000 for his part-time job as mayor, though his power — and, critics argue, any credit he can claim — is limited: He has no commission vote but can veto legislation and hire and fire the city manager. (A separate mayor and commission run Miami-Dade County, a far larger government whose mayor does have broad executive powers.)Former Mayor Tomás Regalado, Mr. Suarez’s predecessor and a fellow Republican, who is considering running for mayor again, called Miami “ethically challenged.”“The city is going through a very difficult situation in terms of governance, because you have a city commission in which every commissioner believes that they are the mayor and manager,” he said. “And you have an absent mayor.”Ball & Chain, a popular bar and nightclub in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood, is co-owned by a plaintiff in the case against Mr. Carollo.Scott Baker for The New York TimesThe trial pitted Mr. Carollo, a city commissioner and former mayor, against two businessmen, Bill Fuller and Martin Pinilla, who said that Mr. Carollo “weaponized” the code enforcement department against them because they backed Mr. Carollo’s opponent in 2017.Mr. Carollo, a Republican who at 68 has been a bombastic figure in Miami politics for decades, countered that his actions were intended to preserve residents’ quality of life and ensure that the plaintiffs’ properties, some of which had fallen into disrepair, were safe and operating with proper permits. One night, it was noted during the trial, one of their bars was found to be running an illegal boxing ring.Mr. Fuller and Mr. Pinilla have extensive property holdings in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood; Mr. Fuller co-owns Ball & Chain, a popular bar and nightclub. The plaintiffs’ lawyer said that their businesses had been cited for code violations 84 times. One business was forced to move and another to close.The jury held Mr. Carollo liable for $15.9 million in compensatory damages and $47.6 million in punitive damages.The trial, which began in April, was full of outlandish accusations and startling anecdotes, including that Mr. Carollo patrolled the plaintiffs’ properties late at night and wanted an aide to secretly measure the distance from one of their businesses to a church, looking for grounds to revoke a liquor license.Mr. Carollo, who took the stand for several days, called the plaintiffs’ witnesses — including a former city manager, three former police chiefs and several former aides to Mr. Carollo — liars with personal “gripes.”“I’d put my record against anyone in the city,” he said.In the recent interview, Mr. Suarez was dismissive of the trial. “It’s typical for the press to focus on things that are negative,” he said.The city spent at least $1.9 million on legal fees to defend Mr. Carollo, who could appeal Thursday’s verdict. But a more serious case looms for City Hall: The corporate entity that owns the Ball & Chain nightclub has filed a separate lawsuit against the city, not the commissioner, for $28 million in business losses.That trial is pending. More

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      Senegal’s Opposition Leader Is Sentenced to 2 Years in Prison

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      A case involving a rape charge against Ousmane Sonko has monopolized the country’s political life and raised concerns over the prosecution of political opponents.A court in Senegal sentenced the country’s leading opposition figure to two years in prison on Thursday after finding him guilty of “corrupting youth.” The ruling, which for now bars him from running in future elections, throws the West African nation’s political future into uncertainty less than a year before its next presidential contest.The opposition leader, Ousmane Sonko, was accused of raping an employee of a massage parlor in Dakar, the capital, and issuing death threats against her. The court acquitted him of those charges, which he had denied and has denounced as an attempt by Senegal’s president, Macky Sall, to sideline him.But the conviction of “corrupting youth” — a charge relating to an accusation that Mr. Sonko had a sexual relationship with the massage parlor worker, who was under 21 at the time — renders him ineligible to run in next year’s election, a vote that is widely seen in Senegal and broader West Africa as a test of democratic values in the region.Mr. Sonko cannot appeal, because he did not appear in court for the hearings or the verdict, citing threats to his safety.Clashes erupted between protesters and security forces across Senegal and in Dakar shortly after the verdict was announced, including near the city’s main university, where several protesters erected barricades and threw stones at the police, who responded with tear gas. A few protesters were injured.Clashes broke out in Dakar on Thursday after the verdict was announced.Zohra Bensemra/ReutersSenegal, a country of 17 million people, has long been hailed as a model of political pluralism in West Africa, a region known for coups and aging leaders clinging to power. Elections have been mostly peaceful since the country became independent from France in 1960. The United States and European countries, as well as China, hold the country as one of their most reliable partners in West Africa.Yet the battle around the political future of Mr. Sonko, 48, whose fiery rhetoric has made him popular among young Senegalese, has become the president’s biggest challenge. In the coming months, it could lead to the most serious test faced by Senegalese democracy in more than a decade, analysts say.“Senegal finds itself in a thick fog, with lots of uncertainties,” said Alioune Tine, a rights expert and founder of the AfrikaJom Center, a Dakar-based research organization. “It has turned into a police state and, increasingly, an authoritarian one.”There is no public proof that Mr. Sonko’s case has been politically motivated, but some academics, human rights observers and most opponents of Mr. Sall have raised questions about the lack of concrete evidence and the harsh treatment of Mr. Sonko throughout the proceedings. They have also in recent years warned of a steady erosion of democratic norms as several political opponents have been jailed and journalists arrested.In recent months, police officers have been posted at multiple traffic circles in Dakar; temporary bans on motorcycles to prevent quick gatherings of protesters have become a regular fixture in the capital; and demonstrators have faced a heavy-handed response from security forces, with clashes at times turning deadly. Protesters have also targeted the police, attacked gas stations and this week burned the house of Mr. Sall’s chief of staff.Demonstrators faced off with riot police officers during a protest on Thursday at the Cheikh Anta Diop University campus.Leo Correa/Associated PressMr. Sonko’s fate remained unclear as of Thursday. One of his lawyers, Bamba Cissé, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Sonko would not surrender, “because we’re against a judiciary system perverted by political leaders.” He continued: “For two years, Senegal has been told that Mr. Sonko was involved in a rape affair. Today we have the proof that it was a plot.”Riot police officers positioned near Mr. Sonko’s house in Dakar were blocking access, and on Wednesday had thrown tear gas at lawmakers from the National Assembly who were trying to peacefully approach it. The police have also targeted foreign journalists covering the episode.Adama Ndiaye, a supporter of Mr. Sonko’s who unsuccessfully tried to approach his residence on Thursday, said it was a bleak day for Senegal. “The ‘corrupting youth’ charge comes out of nowhere, it’s pure injustice,” said Mr. Ndiaye, a 35-year-old car salesman who said he was on his way to a Dakar neighborhood where protests were taking place.Opponents of Mr. Sall have accused him of repeatedly sidelining key opposition leaders, including Mr. Sonko, who was barred by Senegal’s constitutional council from running in last year’s parliamentary elections. Dozens of members of his party have been jailed or placed under electronic surveillance. Current and former Dakar mayors were also prohibited from running in the 2019 presidential election because of convictions for embezzlement.At a hearing last month, Mr. Sonko’s accuser said he had assaulted her five times at a massage parlor between late 2020 and February 2021, and sent her death threats. The New York Times does not routinely name accusers in rape cases, but Mr. Sonko’s accuser, Adji Sarr, has been publicly identified and has given news interviews. She has been under police protection since 2021.Gender-based violence has been decreasing in Senegal in recent years, but it remains widespread, though rarely talked about. About 30 percent of women aged 15 to 49 have experienced physical or sexual violence, according to a demographic and health survey released in 2017, with the highest rate, 34 percent, among those ages 25 to 29. More than two-thirds never spoke about it or sought help.Some Senegalese said they considered the trial politically motivated.Leo Correa/Associated PressEven as Ms. Sarr detailed at length last week the assaults she said she had faced, Senegalese newspapers published headlines with lewd innuendos, comparing her testimony to pornography.Marième Cissé, an expert on gender issues, said Senegalese society still put the blame on victims of sexual violence. The Sonko trial, she added, gave many Senegalese the impression that a crime as serious as rape had been used for political purposes.“That instrumentalization has minimized the seriousness of the accusation,” said Ms. Cissé, a researcher with the Dakar-based Wathi research organization. “It could discourage women from talking about the abuse they may face.”Many Senegalese say they do not believe the accuser.Moussa Sané, a 46-year-old businessman who attended the court session on Thursday, said that he was not a Sonko supporter but that the verdict showed the political motive of the trial. “The government is trying its best to prevent Sonko from running in the next election,” he said.Until Thursday, Mr. Sonko had been widely regarded as Mr. Sall’s strongest challenger in next year’s election, although Mr. Sall has not said whether he will run.According to most legal experts, the Senegalese Constitution prevents Mr. Sall from running: It limits presidents to two five-year terms, and Mr. Sall is set to complete his second term in February. But he argues that a constitutional reform adopted in 2016 reset the clock to zero and gives him the right to seek another term.Mr. Tine, the rights expert, said a third term would amount to a clear violation of the Constitution. “With Sonko convicted, Macky Sall has made him a political martyr,” he said. “And with this third-term issue, he has created another problem for himself.”Mady Camara contributed reporting. More

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      Millennials Are Not an Exception. They’ve Moved to the Right.

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      Over the last decade, almost every cohort of voters under 50 has shifted rightward.Fifteen years ago, a new generation of young voters propelled Barack Obama to a decisive victory that augured a new era of Democratic dominance.Fifteen years later, those once young voters aren’t so young — and aren’t quite so Democratic.Republican Voting Share in Presidential Elections, by Age More

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      Solomon Peña Faces Federal Charges for Attacks on Democrats

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      Solomon Peña, who lost a bid for a seat in the New Mexico Legislature in 2022, is accused of orchestrating shootings at Democratic officials’ homes. He also faces state charges.Solomon Peña, a former Republican candidate for the New Mexico House of Representatives, has been charged with several federal offenses in connection with drive-by shootings at the homes of Democratic officials, the Justice Department said Wednesday.The authorities in New Mexico have said that Mr. Peña, 40, orchestrated the shootings at the homes of four Democratic officials in the weeks after he lost an election bid in November 2022. No one was injured in the attacks.Mr. Peña, who was arrested in January, already faces several state charges, including attempted aggravated battery and shooting at an occupied building. The federal charges against him and two other people — Demetrio Trujillo, 41, and Jose Trujillo, 22 — were unsealed in a court in New Mexico on Wednesday and include several firearms offenses and interference with federally protected activities.Mr. Peña would face a mandatory minimum prison sentence of 60 years if he were to be convicted of the federal charges, the Justice Department said in a statement.“There is no room in our democracy for politically motivated violence, especially when it is used to undermine election results,” Kenneth A. Polite Jr., the assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s criminal division, said in the statement.Roberta Yurcic, a lawyer who has represented Mr. Peña at the state level, did not immediately respond to requests for comment overnight. The state trial is expected to start early next year.Mr. Peña was convicted of burglary and larceny in 2008 and served nearly seven years in prison in New Mexico. He was released in 2016.After the November 2022 midterm elections, Mr. Peña refused to concede even after losing by a wide margin to an incumbent in a district that has long voted for Democrats. Prosecutors say that he also visited the homes of several county commissioners to urge them not to certify the results.The shootings at the four Democratic officials’ homes took place in December and early January. Two of the officials had certified the election results.Prosecutors say that Mr. Peña hired others to carry out the shootings, and that he took part in at least one of them — by trying to fire an AR-15 rifle at the home of Linda Lopez, a state senator.The shootings rattled New Mexico’s political establishment. They also stoked growing concerns nationwide about political violence after an attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and a conspiracy to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, among other incidents. More

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      Fear Sets In Among Turkey’s L.G.B.T. Community After Erdogan’s Attacks

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      When Yasemin Oz, a lesbian lawyer in Istanbul, heard President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claiming victory after a runoff election on Sunday, she said she feared for the future. In his speech, he declared “family is sacred for us” and insisted that L.G.B.T.Q. people would never “infiltrate” his governing party.They were familiar themes, heard often throughout Mr. Erdogan’s campaign for re-election: He frequently attacked L.G.B.T.Q. people, referring to them as “deviants” and saying they were “spreading like the plague.” But Ms. Oz said she had hoped it was just electioneering to rally the president’s conservative base.“I was already worried about what was to come for us,” said Ms. Oz, 49. But after the speech, she thought, “it will get harsher.”The rights and freedoms of L.G.B.T.Q. citizens became a lightning-rod issue during this year’s election campaign. Mr. Erdogan, facing the greatest political threat of his two decades as the country’s dominant leader and seeking to woo conservatives, repeatedly attacked his opponents for supposedly supporting gay rights. The anti-Erdogan opposition mostly avoided the topic for fear of alienating some of its own voters.That left many L.G.B.T.Q. people fearing that the discrimination they have long faced by the government and conservative parts of society could worsen — and feeling that no one in the country had their backs.“People are scared and having dystopian thoughts like, ‘Are we going to be slashed or violently attacked in the middle of the street?’” said Ogulcan Yediveren, a coordinator at SPoD, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group in Istanbul. “What will happen is that people will hide their identities, and that is bad enough.”Turkey, a predominantly Muslim society with a secular state, does not criminalize homosexuality and has laws against discrimination. But in recent conversations, more than a dozen L.G.B.T.Q. people said they often struggled to find jobs, secure housing and get quality health care as well as to be accepted by their friends, relatives, neighbors and co-workers.Supporters of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan celebrating his victory in Istanbul on Sunday.An aerial view of a mosque and an election poster for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Kayseri, Turkey in April. Turkey is a predominantly Muslim society with a secular state.In recent years, they said, they have encountered new restrictions on their visibility in society. Universities have shut down L.G.B.T.Q. student clubs. And since 2014, the authorities have banned Pride parades in major cities, including in Istanbul, where crowds in the tens of thousands used to participate.That tracks with Mr. Erdogan’s vision for Turkey.Since the start of his national political career in 2003, he has increased his own power while promoting a conservative Muslim view of society. He insists that marriage can only be between a man and a woman, and encourages women to have three children to build the nation.Rights advocates say that as Mr. Erdogan has gained power, his conservative outlook has filtered down, encouraging local authorities to restrict L.G.B.T.Q. activities and pushing the security forces to crack down on gay rights activism.Anti-L.G.B.T.Q. rhetoric was more prominent during this election than in past cycles, even though there are no looming legal changes that would expand or limit rights. No political party is trying to legalize same-sex marriage or adoption, for example, or expand medical care for transgender youth.Instead, Mr. Erdogan and his allies use the issue to galvanize conservatives.“What they want to impose on society in terms of other values is full of hatred and violence toward us,” said Nazlican Dogan, 26, who is facing legal charges related to participation in pro-L.G.B.T.Q. protests at Bogazici University in Istanbul. “It was really ugly and it made us feel that we can’t exist in this country, like I should just leave.”Bambi Ceren, right, and other members of a Pride week organizing committee gather in an apartment in Istanbul.Nazlican Dogan, who is facing legal charges related to pro-L.G.B.T.Q. protests at a university, in Istanbul last week.During his campaign, Mr. Erdogan characterized L.G.B.T.Q. people as a threat to society.“If the concept of family is not strong, the destruction of the nation happens quickly,” he told young people during a televised meeting in early May. “L.G.B.T. is a poison injected into the institution of the family. It is not possible for us to accept that poison as a country whose people are 99 percent Muslim.”In April, his interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, went even further, falsely claiming that gay rights would allow humans to marry animals.SPoD, the advocacy group, asked parliamentary candidates during the campaign to sign a contract to protect L.G.B.T.Q. rights. Fifty-eight candidates signed, and 11 of them won seats in the 600-member legislature, said Mr. Yediveren, the coordinator.His group has also tried to expand legal protections for L.G.B.T.Q. people.While certain laws prohibit discrimination, they do not specifically mention sexual identity or orientation, he said. At the same time, the authorities often cite vague concepts like “general morals” and “public order” to act against activities they don’t like, such as Pride week events.“This week is very important because we don’t have physical locations we can come together as a community to support each other,” said Bambi Ceren, 34, a member of a committee planning events for this year’s Pride week, which begins on June 19.A drag performer who uses the stage name Florence Konstantina Delight at a club in Istanbul.People socialize at Ziba, a gay-friendly bar in Istanbul.Last year, the police prevented Pride events and arrested people who gathered to take part, committee members said.SPoD runs a national hotline to field queries about sexual orientation, legal protections or how to access medical care or other services. The group can solve most issues related to services, Mr. Yediveren said, but most callers’ problems are social and emotional.“People are feeling very lonely and isolated,” he said.Transgender individuals struggle to find jobs, housing and proper medication and care. And gay men and lesbians are sometimes forced into heterosexual marriages and fear coming out to their families and co-workers.Worrying about, “‘Will I be caught one day?’ causes a lot of stress for them,” Mr. Yediveren said.And the threat of violence is real.Some L.G.B.T.Q. people said they had been beaten by the security forces during protests or met with indifference from the police while being harassed on the street.A survey last year by ILGA-Europe, a rights organization, ranked Turkey second-to-last out of 49 European countries on L.G.B.T.Q. rights. Another group, Transgender Europe, said that 62 transgender people had been killed in Turkey between 2008 and 2022.Many L.G.B.T.Q. people fear that the demonization during the campaign will make that threat more acute.A queer university student from Turkey’s Kurdish minority, who grew up in a smaller city with no significant L.G.B.T.Q. presence, said she feared that bad days were ahead.Members of a Pride week organizing committee spraying graffiti in Istanbul.Berat, an openly gay architecture student, works as a hairdresser in Istanbul.People who would not normally commit violence might feel empowered to do so because the government had spread hatred for people like her, she said, claiming they were sick, dangerous or a threat to the family. She spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being attacked.Despite the increased danger, many L.G.B.T.Q. people vowed to keep fighting for their rights and maintaining their visibility in society. To deal with the fear of random attacks, they plan to look out for each other more to ensure they are safe.In Istanbul, a 25-year-old drag performer who goes by the stage name Florence Konstantina Delight and uses gender-neutral pronouns called the new attention unsettling.“In the whole history of queer life in Turkey, we could never be that visible,” they said in an interview. “But because of the election, everyone was talking about us.”They described growing up in Turkey as “full of abuse, full of denial, full of teachers ignoring your existence and what happened to you, like your pals bullying you.”At age 16, Florence accepted their sexual identity, attended a Pride parade and set up a Facebook account with a fake name to contact L.G.B.T.Q. organizations and make friends, eventually stumbling upon someone at the same high school.They later moved to Istanbul, where they perform weekly at a rare L.G.B.T.Q.-friendly bar.Mr. Erdogan’s win on Sunday caused Florence despair.“I stared into space for a while,” they said.A woman dancing at a lesbian bar in Istanbul in front of an image of Kemal Kılıcdaroglu, who lost to Mr. Erdogan in the presidential election. 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