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      Junta Disbands Aung San Suu Kyi’s Political Party in Myanmar

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      The regime has dissolved dozens of opposition parties ahead of the next general election, including the popular National League for Democracy.The political party of Myanmar’s imprisoned opposition leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, has been officially dissolved, in yet another blow to the Southeast Asian nation’s democracy.The party, the National League for Democracy, was disbanded by Myanmar’s military-appointed election commission, state media said late Tuesday night. The announcement set the stage for an upcoming election that will almost certainly keep the junta in power for years to come.Before Tuesday’s announcement, the N.L.D. had already made it clear that it would not participate in the election, calling it a sham. When the party failed to register with the election commission, Myanmar’s state television said that the N.L.D. — as well as 39 other opposition parties — would be dissolved.U Kyaw Htwe, a spokesman for the N.L.D., said the party would continue its activities, despite the announcement from the election commission. “As Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said before, if there are people, the N.L.D. party will exist,” said U Tun Myint, another N.L.D. spokesman. “The N.L.D. is already in the hearts of the people.”Mr. Tun Myint said that the military has burned down over 200 N.L.D. offices, killed more than 90 party members and supporters and arrested more than 1,300 party members since the generals seized power in a coup two years ago.“There is nothing darker than midnight,” he said, using a Burmese phrase that means things are as bad as they can get.The N.L.D. clinched landslide victories in three previous elections. In the last election, held in November 2020, the party won 82 percent of the available seats in Parliament. But before the new Parliament could be sworn in on Feb. 1. 2021, the military staged its coup, detaining Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and other top N.L.D. officials.Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, 77, has since been given a 33-year prison sentence. The military regime accused her of a range of charges, including corruption and violating the Official Secrets Act. The United Nations and international human rights groups have condemned the prosecutions, calling them politically motivated with the intent of keeping Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi out of power.Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s former leader, in 2020. The country’s military leaders have long seen her as a threat to their power.Aung Shine Oo/Associated PressAfter the coup, N.L.D. leaders who escaped arrest — as well as politicians from other parties — formed a new government called the National Unity Government. The organization, which operates in exile and has not been recognized by any international body, has supported armed rebel groups engaged in violent clashes against the military.Battling against the People’s Defense Force, as the armed rebel groups are known, the military now struggles to control territory throughout the country.Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has long been a thorn in the side of Myanmar’s generals, who see her overwhelming popularity as a threat to military power. She was previously kept under house arrest for nearly 15 years until 2010, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 in recognition of her struggle for democracy.Although Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is still revered by many in Myanmar, a large swath of the population is now looking beyond her for guidance. In the two years since the coup, a younger, more progressive — and confrontational — generation has emerged, reshaping politics and society.The junta initially said this year’s general election would be held by August, but in February it announced a six-month extension of the post-coup state of emergency, delaying the vote without providing a new date. Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the junta, said the military could not guarantee voters’ safety on election day because dozens of townships were not under military control.Fifty political parties have registered to contest the election, and 13 parties have applied to register, according to state media. The United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, has urged international organizations and election monitoring groups not to provide technical support in the election and to avoid lending legitimacy to the regime.“Instead, they should explicitly denounce what will be a farcical exercise designed to perpetuate military control of Myanmar’s political system,” Mr. Andrews said in a report. More

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      Israel’s Far-Right Government Backs Down, for Now

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      Mary Wilson and Sydney Harper and Patricia Willens and Diane Wong and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicFor months in Israel, the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pushing a highly contentious plan to fundamentally change the country’s Supreme Court, setting off some of the largest demonstrations in Israel’s history.On Monday, Mr. Netanyahu announced that he would delay his government’s campaign. Patrick Kingsley, the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times, explains the prime minister’s surprising concession.On today’s episodePatrick Kingsley, the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, center. The country is in the throes of a political crisis that has ballooned in recent days.Maya Alleruzzo/Associated PressBackground readingMr. Netanyahu delayed his bid to overhaul Israel’s judiciary in the face of furious protests.Israel’s prime minister is caught between his far-right coalition and public anger over the government’s plan to weaken the judiciary.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Patrick Kingsley More

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      Biden’s Defense of Global Democracies Is Tested by Political Turmoil

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      The administration’s Summit for Democracy begins this week amid crises in several countries allied with the United States, including Israel.WASHINGTON — A political crisis in Israel and setbacks to democracy in several other major countries closely allied with the United States are testing the Biden administration’s defense of democracy against a global trend toward the authoritarianism of nations like Russia and China.President Biden will deliver remarks on Wednesday at the second White House-led Summit for Democracy, which Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken kicked off on Tuesday morning.The three-day, in-person and virtual event comes as Mr. Biden has boasted, more than once, that since he became president “democracies have become stronger, not weaker. Autocracies have grown weaker, not stronger.”Casting a cloud over the long-planned gathering is a move by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government to weaken the power of Israel’s judiciary, a plan that his opponents call an existential threat to the country’s 75-year democratic tradition.But that is only the most vivid sign of how autocratic practices are making inroads around the world.Proposed changes to Israel’s judiciary have starkly divided society and ignited huge protests this week.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York TimesBiden administration officials are also warily eyeing countries like Mexico, which has moved to gut its election oversight body; India, where a top opposition political leader was disqualified last week from holding a post in Parliament; and Brazil, where the electoral defeat last year of the autocratic president, Jair Bolsonaro, was followed by a riot in January that his supporters orchestrated at government offices in Brasília, the capital.Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to postpone the proposed judicial changes under intense political pressure may slightly ease the awkwardness of Israel’s participation in the summit, where he is set to deliver prerecorded video remarks. Mexico, India and Brazil will also participate.Mr. Netanyahu’s retreat came after private admonitions from Biden officials that he was endangering Israel’s cherished reputation as a true democracy in the heart of the Middle East.In a briefing for reporters on Monday, John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, said that Mr. Biden had “strongly” urged Israel’s government to find a compromise to a judicial plan that has starkly divided society and ignited huge protests. Asked whether the White House might disinvite Israel from the summit, Mr. Kirby said only that Israel “has been invited.”But the larger troubles remain for Mr. Biden, who asserted in his State of the Union address last month that the United States had reach “an inflection point” in history and that during his presidency had begun to reverse a worldwide autocratic march.Democracy activists call that a debatable proposition, and U.S. officials acknowledge that the picture is nuanced at best.On the positive side of the ledger, U.S. officials and experts say, Mr. Biden has rallied much of the democratic world into a powerful coalition against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In a speech during his visit to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, last month marking the anniversary of the invasion, Mr. Biden repeated his assertion about the growing strength of democracies against autocracies and said that the war had forced the United States and its allies to “stand up for democracy.”Damage in Siversk, Ukraine, this month. U.S. officials and experts say Mr. Biden has rallied much of the democratic world into a powerful coalition against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesMr. Biden has also rallied democratic nations to take firmer stands against Chinese influence around the world at a time when experts say Beijing is looking to export its model of governance.And some argue that Mr. Biden has been a savior of democracy by winning the 2020 presidential election — defeating President Donald J. Trump, a U.S. leader with authoritarian tendencies — and by containing for now Mr. Trump’s efforts to reject the results of that election and myriad other democratic norms.“Without suggesting that the fight has been won, or that Biden is doing everything right, I think we need to give him credit for helping to save American democracy and standing up to the great authoritarian powers,” said Tom Malinowski, a former Democratic congressman from New Jersey.But Mr. Biden’s claim that autocracies have grown weaker faces a stark reality in some nations.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia may find himself economically isolated and militarily challenged in Ukraine. But he still has strong political support in Russia and has even consolidated power through a crackdown on dissent that has driven hundreds of thousands of Russians from the country.In Beijing, Xi Jinping was awarded a third five-year term this month not long after suppressing protests against his government’s coronavirus policies. In its latest official worldwide threat assessment, the U.S. intelligence community found that arms of the Chinese Communist Party “have become more aggressive with their influence campaigns” against the United States and other countries.President Xi Jinping of China was awarded a third five-year term this month not long after suppressing protests against his government’s coronavirus policies. Wu Hao/EPA, via ShutterstockBiden officials conceived a democracy summit during the 2020 campaign to address a belief that autocratic influence had been spreading for years, destabilizing and undermining Western governments. They also worried about a growing perception that political chaos and legislative paralysis in places like Washington and London — or in Israel, which held five elections in three years before Mr. Netanyahu narrowly managed to form his coalition — was creating a sense around the world that democracies could not deliver results for their people.Mr. Biden’s first Summit for Democracy, in December 2021, featured uplifting language from world leaders and group sessions on issues like media freedom and rule of law in which countries could trade best practices on strengthening their democracies and share advice on countering foreign efforts to manipulate politics and elections.The summit this week will include about 120 countries and will be hosted by Costa Rica, the Netherlands, South Korea and Zambia in addition to the United States.Recent democratic trends can be described as mixed at best. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual democracy index found last year that in 2021, the first year of Mr. Biden’s presidency, “global democracy continued its precipitous decline.” More recently, the same survey found that in 2022, democracy had “stagnated.”Mr. Biden hosted a Summit for Democracy from the White House in 2021.Doug Mills/The New York TimesSimilarly, a report released this month by Freedom House, a nonprofit group that monitors democracy, human rights and civil liberties around the world, found that global freedom had slipped for the 17th year in a row, by its measurement. But the group also reported that the steady decline might have plateaued and that there were just slightly more countries showing a decrease in freedoms compared with those whose records were improving.“This seems like a critical moment,” said Yana Gorokhovskaia, an author of the Freedom House report. “The spread of decline is clearly slowing. It hasn’t stopped.”That has been clear in some countries. Last month, Mexican lawmakers passed sweeping legislation hobbling the election oversight body that is widely credited with steering the country from decades of one-party rule. Critics say the country’s populist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has shown some troubling autocratic tendencies.In India, opponents of the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, have complained for years that he is weakening the democratic tradition of the world’s second-largest country by population by cracking down on critics and religious minorities. The concerns reached a new level with the expulsion from Parliament of Rahul Ghandi, a prominent opponent of Mr. Modi’s, a day after a court found him guilty of criminal defamation for a line in a campaign speech in 2019 in which he likened Mr. Modi to two thieves with the same name.And after supporters of Mr. Bolsonaro — who blamed electoral fraud for his narrow defeat in December — stormed government buildings in Brazil’s capital, Mr. Biden condemned “the assault on democracy.”Supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil stormed government buildings in Brasília, the capital, in January.ReutersDemocratic setbacks have also occurred in West Africa, where there have been coups in Mali and Burkina Faso in recent years. In Nigeria, a country of 220 million people, experts say that the presidential election in February appeared suspect.In Europe, thousands of people in the Republic of Georgia have taken to the streets to protest a measure that would curb what the government calls “foreign agents,” but which activists say is an effort to crack down on nongovernmental organizations and news media groups. The State Department called a March 7 parliamentary vote approving the measure “a dark day” for democracy in Georgia, which U.S. officials have tried to support against the influences of Russia, its neighbor.The tumult over Israel’s democracy has been particularly shocking to U.S. officials and experts who have long seen the country as a paragon of democratic values and an especially bright example in a region long plagued by dictatorship.And the summit this week will notably exclude two members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Hungary and Turkey, whose autocratic political systems have grown no less repressive during Mr. Biden’s tenure.Still, some people who track democratic trends say they are optimistic.“Perhaps the most striking indication of democracy’s forward movement over the last two years has been the election of President Biden, and the election of President Lula in Brazil,” said Sarah Margon, the director of foreign policy at Open Society-U.S.Those events “sent a critical message to people who are looking to defeat autocrats or leaders with autocratic tendencies,” added Ms. Margon, whom Mr. Biden nominated last year to the State Department’s top position for human rights and democracy. (Her nomination expired after Republican opposition and was not renewed in January.)But many world leaders profess to be unmoved by critiques from democracy advocates, especially from U.S. officials.“If they want to have a debate on this issue, let’s do it,” Mr. López Obrador said last month. “I have evidence to prove there is more liberty and democracy in our country.” More

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      A Campaign Aide Didn’t Write That Email. A.I. Did.

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      The Democratic Party has begun testing the use of artificial intelligence to write first drafts of some fund-raising messages, appeals that often perform better than those written entirely by human beings.Fake A.I. images of Donald J. Trump getting arrested in New York spread faster than they could be fact-checked last week.And voice-cloning tools are producing vividly lifelike audio of President Biden — and many others — saying things they did not actually say.Artificial intelligence isn’t just coming soon to the 2024 campaign trail. It’s already here.The swift advance of A.I. promises to be as disruptive to the political sphere as to broader society. Now any amateur with a laptop can manufacture the kinds of convincing sounds and images that were once the domain of the most sophisticated digital players. This democratization of disinformation is blurring the boundaries between fact and fake at a moment when the acceptance of universal truths — that Mr. Biden beat Mr. Trump in 2020, for example — is already being strained.And as synthetic media gets more believable, the question becomes: What happens when people can no longer trust their own eyes and ears?Inside campaigns, artificial intelligence is expected to soon help perform mundane tasks that previously required fleets of interns. Republican and Democratic engineers alike are racing to develop tools to harness A.I. to make advertising more efficient, to engage in predictive analysis of public behavior, to write more and more personalized copy and to discover new patterns in mountains of voter data. The technology is evolving so fast that most predict a profound impact, even if specific ways in which it will upend the political system are more speculation than science.“It’s an iPhone moment — that’s the only corollary that everybody will appreciate,” said Dan Woods, the chief technology officer on Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign. “It’s going to take pressure testing to figure out whether it’s good or bad — and it’s probably both.”OpenAI, whose ChatGPT chatbot ushered in the generative-text gold rush, has already released a more advanced model. Google has announced plans to expand A.I. offerings inside popular apps like Google Docs and Gmail, and is rolling out its own chatbot. Microsoft has raced a version to market, too. A smaller firm, ElevenLabs, has developed a text-to-audio tool that can mimic anyone’s voice in minutes. Midjourney, a popular A.I. art generator, can conjure hyper-realistic images with a few lines of text that are compelling enough to win art contests.“A.I. is about to make a significant change in the 2024 election because of machine learning’s predictive ability,” said Brad Parscale, Mr. Trump’s first 2020 campaign manager, who has since founded a digital firm that advertises some A.I. capabilities.Disinformation and “deepfakes” are the dominant fear. While forgeries are nothing new to politics — a photoshopped image of John Kerry and Jane Fonda was widely shared in 2004 — the ability to produce and share them has accelerated, with viral A.I. images of Mr. Trump being restrained by the police only the latest example. A fake image of Pope Francis in a white puffy coat went viral in recent days, as well.Many are particularly worried about local races, which receive far less scrutiny. Ahead of the recent primary in the Chicago mayoral race, a fake video briefly sprung up on a Twitter account called “Chicago Lakefront News” that impersonated one candidate, Paul Vallas.“Unfortunately, I think people are going to figure out how to use this for evil faster than for improving civic life,” said Joe Rospars, who was chief strategist on Senator Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 campaign and is now the chief executive of a digital consultancy.Those who work at the intersection of politics and technology return repeatedly to the same historical hypothetical: If the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape broke today — the one in which Mr. Trump is heard bragging about assaulting women and getting away with it — would Mr. Trump acknowledge it was him, as he did in 2016?The nearly universal answer was no.“I think about that example all the time,” said Matt Hodges, who was the engineering director on Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign and is now executive director of Zinc Labs, which invests in Democratic technology. Republicans, he said, “may not use ‘fake news’ anymore. It may be ‘Woke A.I.’”For now, the frontline function of A.I. on campaigns is expected to be writing first drafts of the unending email and text cash solicitations.“Given the amount of rote, asinine verbiage that gets produced in politics, people will put it to work,” said Luke Thompson, a Republican political strategist.As an experiment, The New York Times asked ChatGPT to produce a fund-raising email for Mr. Trump. The app initially said, “I cannot take political sides or promote any political agenda.” But then it immediately provided a template of a potential Trump-like email.The chatbot denied a request to make the message “angrier” but complied when asked to “give it more edge,” to better reflect the often apocalyptic tone of Mr. Trump’s pleas. “We need your help to send a message to the radical left that we will not back down,” the revised A.I. message said. “Donate now and help us make America great again.”Among the prominent groups that have experimented with this tool is the Democratic National Committee, according to three people briefed on the efforts. In tests, the A.I.-generated content the D.N.C. has used has, as often as not, performed as well or better than copy drafted entirely by humans, in terms of generating engagement and donations.Party officials still make edits to the A.I. drafts, the people familiar with the efforts said, and no A.I. messages have yet been written under the name of Mr. Biden or any other person, two people said. The D.N.C. declined to comment.Higher Ground Labs, a small venture capital firm that invests in political technology for progressives, is currently working on a project, called Quiller, to more systematically use A.I. to write, send and test the effectiveness of fund-raising emails — all at once.“A.I. has mostly been marketing gobbledygook for the last three cycles,” said Betsy Hoover, a founding partner at Higher Ground Labs who was the director of digital organizing for President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign. “We are at a moment now where there are things people can do that are actually helpful.”Political operatives, several of whom were granted anonymity to discuss potentially unsavory uses of artificial intelligence they are concerned about or planning to deploy, raised a raft of possibilities.Some feared bad actors could leverage A.I. chatbots to distract or waste a campaign’s precious staff time by pretending to be potential voters. Others floated producing deepfakes of their own candidate to generate personalized videos — thanking supporters for their donations, for example. In India, one candidate in 2020 produced a deepfake to disseminate a video of himself speaking in different languages; the technology is far superior now.Mr. Trump himself shared an A.I. image in recent days that appeared to show him kneeling in prayer. He posted it on Truth Social, his social media site, with no explanation.One strategist predicted that the next generation of dirty tricks could be direct-to-voter misinformation that skips social media sites entirely. What if, this strategist said, an A.I. audio recording of a candidate was sent straight to the voice mail of voters on the eve of an election?Synthetic audio and video are already swirling online, much of it as parody.On TikTok, there is an entire genre of videos featuring Mr. Biden, Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump profanely bantering, with the A.I.-generated audio overlaid as commentary during imaginary online video gaming sessions.On “The Late Show,” Stephen Colbert recently used A.I. audio to have the Fox News host Tucker Carlson “read” aloud his text messages slamming Mr. Trump. Mr. Colbert labeled the audio as A.I. and the image on-screen showed a blend of Mr. Carlson’s face and a Terminator cyborg for emphasis.The right-wing provocateur Jack Posobiec pushed out a “deepfake” video last month of Mr. Biden announcing a national draft because of the conflict in Ukraine. It was quickly seen by millions.“The videos we’ve seen in the last few weeks are really the canary in the coal mine,” said Hany Farid, a professor of computer science at University of California at Berkeley, who specializes in digital forensics. “We measure advances now not in years but in months, and there are many months before the election.”Some A.I. tools were deployed in 2020. The Biden campaign created a program, code-named Couch Potato, that linked facial recognition, voice-to-text and other tools to automate the transcription of live events, including debates. It replaced the work of a host of interns and aides, and was immediately searchable through an internal portal.The technology has improved so quickly, Mr. Woods said, that off-the-shelf tools are “1,000 times better” than what had to be built from scratch four years ago.One looming question is what campaigns can and cannot do with OpenAI’s powerful tools. One list of prohibited uses last fall lumped together “political campaigns, adult content, spam, hateful content.”Kim Malfacini, who helped create the OpenAI’s rules and is on the company’s trust and safety team, said in an interview that “political campaigns can use our tools for campaigning purposes. But it’s the scaled use that we are trying to disallow here.” OpenAI revised its usage rules after being contacted by The Times, specifying now that “generating high volumes of campaign materials” is prohibited.Tommy Vietor, a former spokesman for Mr. Obama, dabbled with the A.I. tool from ElevenLabs to create a faux recording of Mr. Biden calling into the popular “Pod Save America” podcast that Mr. Vietor co-hosts. He paid a few dollars and uploaded real audio of Mr. Biden, and out came an audio likeness.“The accuracy was just uncanny,” Mr. Vietor said in an interview.The show labeled it clearly as A.I. But Mr. Vietor could not help noticing that some online commenters nonetheless seemed confused. “I started playing with the software thinking this is so much fun, this will be a great vehicle for jokes,” he said, “and finished thinking, ‘Oh God, this is going to be a big problem.’” More

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      United Auto Workers Usher In New Era of Leadership

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      Shawn Fain, who ousted the incumbent president, is presiding over a convention to chart the union’s approach in contract talks this year.The United Auto Workers union has opened a new chapter in its storied history, and it may end up looking a lot like its combative past.Over the weekend, the 88-year-old union confirmed that an outsider, Shawn Fain, had prevailed in a hotly contested election for president, ousting the incumbent. An electrician whose father and grandfathers were also U.A.W. members, Mr. Fain has promised to take a tough negotiating line for increased wages in contract talks this year with the three Detroit automakers.“It is a new day for the U.A.W.,” Mr. Fain said on Monday at the start of a three-day convention, where hundreds of delegates will hammer out priorities and strategies for the contract talks that will formally open this summer.“We are here to come together for the war against our one and only true enemy — the multibillion-dollar corporations and employers who refuse to give our members their fair share,” Mr. Fain said.He opened his address by shouting, “Let’s get ready to rumble!” — drawing out the final word in the style of the famed boxing ring announcer Michael Buffer.Mr. Fain, 54, won by a razor-thin margin after prolonged vote-counting and more than two weeks of wrangling over some 1,600 challenged ballots. With the count nearly complete, Mr. Fain had 69,459 votes — 483 more than the incumbent, Ray Curry. Mr. Fain was declared the victor, and Mr. Curry conceded, when the margin exceeded the number of ballots still under challenge.The election was the first in the U.A.W.’s history in which the president and the union’s other senior executives were chosen through direct balloting of members. In the past, the leadership was chosen by delegates, a system in which favors and favoritism played a heavy role.T-shirts on display at the convention showed support for the union faction led by Mr. Fain. Rebecca Cook/ReutersThe democratic election had been mandated by a court-appointed monitor who has been overseeing the U.A.W.’s efforts to carry out anti-corruption reforms. The monitor was appointed as part of a 2021 settlement of a federal investigation that found that top union officials had embezzled more than $1.5 million from membership dues and $3.5 million from training centers, and had spent some of the money on expensive cigars, wines, liquor, golf clubs, apparel and luxury travel. More than a dozen U.A.W. officials, including two former presidents, pleaded guilty.Mr. Curry was not a target of the corruption investigation but many members saw him as linked to the establishment that had been running the union for years.Mr. Fain takes office along with several other outsiders running on his slate who were elected to senior posts by convincing margins. They won support from members who were angered over the corruption scandals and wanted an executive team that would push harder for higher wages and other demands in contract talks with General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis, the automaker formed through the merger of Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot S.A.Decades ago, the U.A.W. had more than 1.5 million members and the power to influence presidential elections and demand steady increases in wages and benefits. When the manufacturers resisted, it called strikes that shut down a large part of the industry. Over the years, the U.A.W.’s gains helped lift wages and living standards for a broad swath of manufacturing workers across the United States.But its influence declined as the Detroit automakers struggled. When G.M. and Chrysler were reorganized in bankruptcy court in 2009, the union made concessions on wages and benefits that it has not won back, and it has had to weather the closing of dozens of plants. It now has about 400,000 members.The contract talks come after years in which G.M., Ford and Stellantis have been reporting record results and have paid significant sums to workers in profit-sharing bonuses. In 2022, for example, G.M. made a profit of $9.9 billion and paid a bonus of $12,750 to each of its U.A.W. workers.Members want Mr. Fain to fight for wage increases to offset inflation, an end to a two-tier wage system that pays newer workers significantly less than veterans and assurances that new plants will be built in the United States rather than abroad.At the convention, the rank and file appeared to back Mr. Fain, despite his narrow margin of victory.“I’m ready to strike,” said Romaine McKinney III, an electrician at a Stellantis stamping plant in Warren, Mich. “We have to show these companies that we are ready to walk out.”Jamonty Washington, a worker at a Detroit plant where Stellantis makes Jeeps, said he started his job 12 years ago making just under $16 an hour — working next to a colleague making $31 an hour. He has worked his way up to $30 an hour, he said, but thinks the union has to fight to eliminate such differences in pay.“Equal pay for equal work,” he said. “It’s time for this union to get back to being militant — not asking but demanding.” More

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      Trump ya no controla a su movimiento

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      El intercambio más revelador en el mitin de Donald Trump en Waco, Texas, el sábado, no vino del propio Trump. Ocurrió al principio, cuando Ted Nugent, una vieja estrella del rock, animaba a la multitud. “Quiero que me devuelvan mi dinero”, gritó. “No autoricé ningún dinero a Ucrania, a un tipo raro y homosexual”.Momentos después, en Real America’s Voice, un canal de televisión de extrema derecha, el excorresponsal de Fox News Ed Henry calificó de “asombrosas” las palabras de Nugent “sobre Zelenski” y sobre el financiamiento a Ucrania. Luego resumió la carrera hacia el fondo del movimiento trumpista en una frase sucinta: “Está canalizando el sentir de muchos estadounidenses”.En efecto. Y también todos los oradores del maratónico mitin de Trump. Uno tras otro, miraron a una multitud enardecida y adepta a las conspiraciones y consintieron, alimentaron y avivaron cada elemento de su furiosa visión del mundo. No vi a ningún verdadero líder en el escenario de Trump, ni siquiera al propio Trump. Vi una colección de seguidores, cada uno compitiendo por el afecto del verdadero poder en Waco, la turba populista adulada.Para entender la dinámica social y política de la derecha moderna, hay que comprender cómo es que millones de estadounidenses se inocularon contra la verdad. Durante las primarias republicanas de 2016 no faltaron líderes ni comentaristas republicanos dispuestos a poner en evidencia a Trump. John McCain y Mitt Romney, los dos candidatos presidenciales anteriores del partido, incluso dieron el extraordinario paso de condenar a su sucesor en términos inequívocos.Sin embargo, cada vez que Trump se enfrentaba a la oposición, él y sus aliados llamaban a los críticos “elitistas”, “noticias falsas”, “débiles” o “cobardes”. Era mucho más fácil decir que los detractores de Trump tenían el “síndrome de enajenación de Trump”, o que eran “simples títeres de la clase dominante”, que comprometerse con una crítica sustancial. Así comenzó la adulación a la mente populista (irónico para un movimiento que se deleitaba llamando “copos de nieve” —que no aguantan nada— a los estudiantes progresistas).El desacuerdo en la derecha se convirtió de inmediato en sinónimo de falta de respeto. Si “nosotros, el pueblo” (el término que los partidarios de Trump aplican a lo que ellos llaman el “Estados Unidos de verdad”) creemos algo, entonces el pueblo merece que sus políticos y expertos reflejen esa opinión.Lo vemos en los documentos internos de Fox News que salieron a la luz en el litigio por difamación de Dominion, en el que Dominion Voting Systems demandó a Fox News por difundir afirmaciones falsas sobre las máquinas de votación después de las elecciones de 2020. En repetidas ocasiones, los líderes y personalidades de Fox que no parecían creer que las elecciones de 2020 fueron robadas se refirieron a la necesidad de “respetar” a su audiencia al decirles lo contrario. Para estos empleados de Fox, respetar a la audiencia no significaba transmitir la verdad (un verdadero acto de respeto). Por el contrario, significaba alimentar el hambre insaciable de los espectadores por confirmar sus teorías conspirativas.Fui testigo directo de este fenómeno al principio de la era Trump. Conversaba con un pequeño grupo de pastores evangélicos sobre cómo los evangélicos blancos ya no valoraban la buena reputación de los políticos. En comparación con otros grupos cristianos y estadounidenses no afiliados, los evangélicos blancos pasaron de ser el grupo menos propenso en 2011 a creer que “un funcionario electo que comete un acto inmoral en su vida personal puede, a pesar de ello, comportarse con ética y cumplir su deber” al grupo más propenso a excusar a los políticos inmorales en 2016, según una encuesta del Public Religion Research Institute/Bookings Institution.En esa conversación hablé de la Resolución de la Convención Bautista del Sur de 1998 sobre la moralidad de los funcionarios públicos. Aprobada durante el punto álgido del escándalo en torno a la aventura de Bill Clinton con Monica Lewinsky, declaraba un compromiso cristiano con la integridad política en términos inequívocos. “La tolerancia de las faltas graves por parte de los líderes”, decía, “cauteriza la conciencia de la cultura, engendra inmoralidad desenfrenada y anarquía en la sociedad, y sin duda resulta en el juicio de Dios”.Cuando le recordé esas palabras al grupo, un pastor de Alabama planteó una objeción: “Eso les va a parecer elitista a muchos miembros de mi congregación”. Yo estaba confundido. Un pastor bautista me estaba diciendo que a su congregación le parecería “elitista” una declaración reciente de creencia bautista. Quedó claro que muchos bautistas creían en su propia resolución cuando se refería a Clinton, pero no cuando se refería a Trump.Los políticos siempre tienen la tentación de ser complacientes, pero rara vez se ve una abdicación tan completa de cualquier cosa que se acerque a un verdadero liderazgo moral o político como lo que ocurrió en el mitin de Waco. Comenzó con esa ridícula e irrelevante declaración sobre Volodímir Zelenski (¿qué tiene que ver su orientación sexual con la rectitud de la causa ucraniana?); continuó con Mike Lindell, de MyPillow, quien repitió aseveraciones electorales totalmente falsas y terminó con un airado, aunque repetitivo, discurso de Trump, también plagado de falsedades.Y si se piensa por un momento que hay algún arrepentimiento en el mundo de Trump por la insurrección del 6 de enero de 2021, el mitin ofreció una respuesta contundente. Antes de su discurso, Trump se puso de pie —con la mano sobre el corazón— mientras escuchaba una canción llamada “Justicia para todos”, que grabó con algo llamado el “Coro de la Prisión J6”, un grupo de hombres encarcelados por asaltar el Capitolio. La canción consiste en que el coro canta el himno nacional mientras Trump recita el juramento a la bandera.Es habitual criticar el movimiento trumpista como un culto a Donald Trump, pero eso ya no es del todo correcto. Sigue teniendo una influencia enorme, pero ¿acaso los verdaderos sectarios abuchean a su líder cuando se desvía del guion aprobado? Sin embargo, eso es lo que ocurrió en diciembre de 2021, pues una parte de la multitud de un mitin en Dallas abucheó a Trump cuando dijo que se había puesto un refuerzo de la vacuna contra la covid. ¿Y alguien cree que Trump es aficionado a QAnon? Sin embargo, en 2022 impulsó contenido explícito de Q en Truth Social, su plataforma de redes sociales preferida.Quizá haya habido un momento en el que Trump de verdad dirigiera su movimiento. Ese tiempo ya pasó. Ahora es su movimiento el que manda. Alimentado por teorías de la conspiración, está hambriento de confrontación, y mítines como el de Waco demuestran su dominio. Como el pirata que se planta frente al personaje de Tom Hanks en la popular película de 2013 Capitán Phillips, la derecha populista se planta frente al Partido Republicano, los medios conservadores e incluso los republicanos de base reticentes y lanza un único y sencillo mensaje: “Ahora yo soy el capitán”.David French es columnista de opinión del New York Times. Es abogado, escritor y veterano de la Operación Libertad Iraquí. Es un exlitigante constitucional y su libro más reciente es Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation. @DavidAFrench More

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      Scotland’s National Party Picks Humza Yousaf to Succeed Sturgeon

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      Humza Yousaf is on course to become the first Muslim to lead a democratic western European nation, and when that happens, he will confront several daunting obstacles.The pro-independence Scottish National Party on Monday elected Humza Yousaf, the country’s health secretary, as its top official, putting the 37-year-old minister on track to become the first Muslim to lead a democratic western European nation.Mr. Yousaf emerged with a narrow victory in a bruising leadership race that followed the surprise resignation last month of Nicola Sturgeon, who had dominated Scottish politics for almost a decade as the country’s first minister and leader of the S.N.P.In choosing Mr. Yousaf, members of his party opted for the candidate thought most likely to stick with Ms. Sturgeon’s progressive agenda, rejecting a more socially conservative contender, Kate Forbes.“We will be the generation that delivers independence for Scotland,” said Mr. Yousaf after the result was announced, and before a vote on Tuesday in the Scottish Parliament to confirm him as the country’s first minister.As the new leader of the S.N.P. — the largest party in Scotland’s Parliament — that should be a formality. But, referring to some of the wider problems he faces, Mr. Yousaf appealed for unity after a divisive leadership contest that fractured a party previously renowned for its discipline.“Where there are divisions to heal we must do so and do so quickly because we have a job to do, and as a party we are at our strongest when we are united,” he said.In a sometimes emotional victory speech, Mr. Yousaf thanked his family, including his deceased grandparents, who emigrated to Scotland.“I am forever thankful that my grandparents made the trip from the Punjab to Scotland over 60 years ago,” he told the audience at Murrayfield, Scotland’s national rugby stadium, where the leadership results were announced. “As immigrants to this country, who knew barely a word of English, they could not have imagined their grandson would one day be on the cusp of being the next first minister of Scotland.”Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a research institute that focuses on identity issues, described Mr. Yousaf as “the first Muslim to be elected as a national leader in any western democracy,” writing that it was “a breakthrough moment that should resonate well beyond Scotland.”That in part reflects a growing diversity in the higher reaches of British politics. Anas Sarwar, leader of the Scottish opposition Labour Party, is also Muslim, while Britain’s prime minister Rishi Sunak, follows the Hindu faith.Though Mr. Yousaf was on top after the first ballot, he failed to win more than half of the votes cast by party members in the initial round of voting, as required to win the race. But once the third-place candidate, Ash Regan, was eliminated and her votes were redistributed, Mr. Yousaf won 52.1 percent, to 47.9 percent for Ms. Forbes.Scotland’s outgoing first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, center, at an heatlh center in Fife. She had dominated Scottish politics for almost a decadePeter Summers/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHaving served as transport minister, justice secretary and health secretary, Mr. Yousaf was seen as the preferred candidate of the party’s establishment, but his record in government was questioned by his opponents.“You were transport minister and the trains were never on time, when you were justice secretary the police were stretched to breaking point, and now as health minister we’ve got record high waiting times,” said Ms. Forbes, his main challenger, during a televised leadership debate.The social conservatism and strong religious beliefs of Ms. Forbes, who was on maternity leave from her position of finance secretary when Ms. Sturgeon quit, featured prominently in the leadership contest.A member of the evangelical Free Church of Scotland, Ms. Forbes said she would have voted against single-sex marriage had she been in the Scottish Parliament when it was approved in 2014, and that she believed that having children outside of marriage is “wrong” according to her faith.Another social question — gender recognition — became a political battleground just before Ms. Sturgeon’s resignation, when Britain’s government rejected legislation from Scotland’s Parliament making it easier for people to change their gender. Mr. Yousaf said on Monday that he would seek to challenge the British government’s decision.Had Ms. Forbes been elected, the Scottish Greens might have withdrawn their support for the S.N.P.-led government in Edinburgh, reducing it to a minority administration.The new leader faces numerous challenges both in replacing Ms. Sturgeon, who was a popular leader and skilled communicator, and in charting a course to independence.Ms. Sturgeon took over the leadership after Scots voted by 55 percent to 45 percent against independence in a referendum in 2014. Since then, sentiment on the issue has not shifted significantly.Ms. Sturgeon’s resignation came after the British Supreme Court ruled that a second referendum could not be held without the agreement of Britain’s government in London, which opposes such a move. Mr. Yousaf’s task will be to try build support for independence to such a level — perhaps around 60 percent in opinion polls — that it would be politically impossible for London to ignore calls for another vote.His leadership victory also has implications for the rest of Britain, where a general election must take place by January 2025. If the result is close, the S.N.P.’s performance could play a decisive role in determining the next prime minister.Given the divisions within the S.N.P. and the difficulties replacing Ms. Sturgeon, Britain’s main opposition Labour Party, which once dominated Scottish politics but has seen its influence dwindle as the S.N.P. gathered strength, now senses an opportunity to claw back some of its old seats in Scotland. More

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      Taiwan’s Ex-President, Ma Ying-yeou, Heads to China in a Historic Visit

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      Though his visit is not official, it is nonetheless significant and may offer clues to political calculations on both sides of the increasingly tense Taiwan Strait.TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan’s former president, Ma Ying-jeou, landed in China on Monday in the first visit to the country by any sitting or former Taiwanese leader since China’s civil war ended with the Nationalist government retreating to the island from the mainland in 1949.Though the 12-day visit by Mr. Ma, who was president from 2008 to 2016, is unofficial, it is likely to be watched closely at home and abroad for clues on how Beijing might seek to influence Taiwan, its democratic neighbor, ahead of a presidential election in January. The timing of Mr. Ma’s trip is also noteworthy because he departed just days before Taiwan’s current leader, President Tsai Ing-wen, visits the United States, a trip that has been met with objections by China, which claims Taiwan as its territory.The contrasting destinations highlight what each politician’s party sees as its advantage. Ms. Tsai, of the Democratic Progressive Party, has strengthened U.S.-Taiwan ties during her eight years in office, while the Chinese Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, to which Mr. Ma belongs, bills itself as better able to deal with Beijing.President Tsai Ing-wen, right, and Mr. Ma, in 2016 when she was sworn in. Mr. Ma’s efforts to bring Taiwan closer to China had brought citizens out into the streets in protest.Pool photo by Taipei Photojournalists AssociationPresident Tsai will leave Taiwan on Wednesday for a trip to Central America, with what officials have described as transit stops in the United States planned in New York and Los Angeles. Beijing has said it “strongly opposed” Ms. Tsai’s planned U.S. trip and any form of contact between the United States and Taiwan’s authorities. On Saturday, in a blow to Taipei’s international standing shortly before Ms. Tsai’s overseas trip, Honduras announced it was severing diplomatic ties with Taipei in favor of Beijing.In China, news of Mr. Ma’s pending arrival drew praise from the Taiwan Affairs Office. When he landed in Shanghai on Monday, he was welcomed at the airport by officials from that office and the city government. The former president is leading a delegation of Taiwanese students to promote cross-strait educational exchanges, which took off during his presidency, but dwindled in recent years, both because of the pandemic and because of Beijing’s disapproval of Ms. Tsai. Mr. Ma, who declined to comment for this article, will also visit the graves of his ancestors in Hunan Province.“Ma underlining his familial roots in China at the precise moment when Tsai is highlighting U.S.-Taiwan ties will provide very contrasting visuals, and influence Taiwanese voters’ perception of where Taiwan’s two main political parties stand on U.S.-China relations,” said Wen-Ti Sung, a political scientist at the Australian National University’s Taiwan Studies Program. “Having served as Taiwan’s president for eight years, his every move will carry political significance, whether he likes it or not.”Beijing’s cultivation of Mr. Ma and the Kuomintang, once the mortal enemy of Mao Zedong’s Communists, is a concession that China must make to Taiwan’s democracy, Mr. Sung said.“Beijing has learned from past experience that whenever it uses fire-and-fury rhetoric against Taiwan, that usually backfires, and helps to elect the very Taiwanese nationalist politicians who are unfavorable to Beijing,” Mr. Sung said. “So, instead, recently Beijing has been seeking to extend an olive branch towards Taiwan, and where possible to lend a hand to what it sees as the relatively Beijing-friendlier voices in Taiwan.”Mr. Ma’s trip to China is the most recent high-profile interaction between China and Kuomintang officials.In February, the newly elected mayor of Taipei, Chiang Wan-an, welcomed a delegation from the Shanghai branch of the Taiwan Affairs Office. Andrew Hsia, a Kuomintang vice chairman, went to China and met with Wang Huning and Song Tao, two key figures in Beijing’s Taiwan strategy.The Kuomintang and its leader, Chiang Kai-shek, were driven off the mainland and to Taiwan in 1949 by the Communists in the war for control of China. In Taiwan, the Kuomintang imposed authoritarian rule and a Chinese identity on the island until 1987, when the government ended 38 years of martial law, opening the way for democracy and the re-emergence of Taiwanese identity.The United States ambassador to China, Patrick J. Hurley, with China’s Nationalist president, Chiang Kai-shek, and his Communist rival Mao Zedong, in 1945, in a photo provided by Taiwan’s Central News Agency.Central News Agency, via Associated PressSince then, relations between the Kuomintang in Taiwan and the Communists in China have warmed, with Mr. Ma at the forefront of the push for closer cross-strait ties.In 2014, his efforts to bring Taiwan closer to China brought citizens out into the streets in protest, and a subsequent election swept Ms. Tsai and her D.P.P. into power in the executive and legislative branches. In 2015, Mr. Ma faced criticism at home for his decision to meet with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in Singapore in the first-ever encounter between leaders of the two sides.Roughly half of Taiwan’s voters are unaffiliated with either the Kuomintang or the D.P.P., forcing both parties toward the center of the political spectrum to win votes. For Mr. Ma and the Kuomintang, this means appearing to be in favor of Taiwan’s continued sovereignty, while also having good relations with a Communist Party that claims Taiwan and has not ruled out taking it by force.“I see Ma’s visit as a form of performative politics for Kuomintang voters and potential voters,” said James Lin, a historian of Taiwan at the University of Washington. “This reflects a core Kuomintang foreign policy — they are able to deal with Beijing pragmatically and maintain friendly relations to secure peace for Taiwan.”Amy Chang Chien More