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      Who’s Unhappy With Schools? People Without School-Age Kids.

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      Tucked into a New Yorker article by Jill Lepore about the spate of school board fights over just about everything was a statistic that caught my eye. Despite all the ink spilled lately about clashes over masking, critical race theory and which books to assign (or ban), American parents are happy overall with their children’s education. Lepore explains:In “Making Up Our Mind: What School Choice Is Really About,” the education scholars Sigal R. Ben-Porath and Michael C. Johanek point out that about nine in 10 children in the United States attend public school, and the overwhelming majority of parents — about eight in 10 — are happy with their kids’ schools.Though I am quite happy with my children’s public school, am surrounded by parents who are mostly happy with their kids’ public schools and, when I was a kid, attended a public school that my parents were basically happy with, I was still surprised the number was that high.I would have thought that the latest numbers about parental satisfaction might be lower because of all the pandemic-related chaos. But according to Gallup, which has tracked school satisfaction annually since 1999, in 2021, “73 percent of parents of school-aged children say they are satisfied with the quality of education their oldest child is receiving.” More parents were satisfied in 2021 than they were in 2013 and 2002, when satisfaction dipped into the 60s, and in 2019, we were at a high point in satisfaction — 82 percent — before the Covid pandemic dealt schools a major blow.Digging deeper into the Gallup numbers revealed that the people who seem to be driving the negative feelings toward American schools do not have children attending them: Overall, only 46 percent of Americans are satisfied with schools. Democrats, “women, older adults and lower-income Americans are more likely than their counterparts to say they are satisfied with K-12 education,” Gallup found. My hypothesis is that it’s a bit like the adage about Congress: People tend to like their own representatives (that’s why they keep sending them back year after year) but tend to have a dim view of Congress overall.Polling done by the Charles Butt Foundation shows a similar dynamic playing out in Texas, a state where book bans have been well publicized and an anti-critical race theory bill was signed into law in December. The third annual poll, which was of 1,154 Texas adults, found:The share of public school parents giving their local public schools an A or B grade is up 12 percentage points in two years to 68 percent in the latest statewide survey on public education by the Charles Butt Foundation. In contrast with the increase among parents, there’s a decline in school ratings among those without a child currently enrolled in K-12 schools. Forty-eight percent of nonparents now give their local public schools A’s and B’s, versus 56 percent a year ago.This isn’t to say that our education system, broadly speaking, is humming along perfectly. There are so many ways it can improve, particularly in serving students in schools with higher poverty rates and those with physical disabilities and learning differences. But it does mean that we should take stories with a grain of salt when they present the American education system as a fact-free zone, no longer focused on teaching the basics, that parents are or should be fleeing from in any significant or sustained way. As the Gallup polling also showed, home-schooling is back to its prepandemic rate of 4 percent, and data from the National Center for Education Statistics found that by far the steepest drops in public school enrollment during the 2020-21 school year were among children in pre-K or kindergarten. These kids likely will not be away from public schools permanently; their start was merely delayed. It should also make us a bit more reflective about election results that are framed as a result of displeasure with schools. TargetSmart, which bills itself as a Democratic political data and data services firm, analyzed records showing who voted in Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial election, which has been touted as a win for the Republican, Glenn Youngkin, that was based on unhappiness over the way the previously Democratic-led state handled the pandemic in schools.TargetSmart found:Turnout among voters age 75 or older increased by 59 percent, relative to 2017, while turnout among voters under age 30 only increased by just 18 percent. Notably, turnout of all other age groups combined (18-74), which would likely include parents of school-aged children, only increased by 9 percent compared to 2017 … This “silver surge” is an untold story that fundamentally undermines the conventional wisdom that Covid-19 protocols in schools and fears about critical race theory in curriculum determined the outcome of the election.All of this at least raises the question of whether some of the people driving the outrage, even animus, against schools might not have much skin in the game and might not have any recent experience with teachers or curriculum. As we head into the midterms, at the very least we should resist easy conclusions about who is angry about what’s happening in our public schools and whether it has anything to do with the reality of what’s going on day to day for millions of children and their families.Tiny VictoriesParenting can be a grind. Let’s celebrate the tiny victories.My autistic 3-year-old grabbed my hand, led me to her bubble maker and left me there while she went to get her communication cue card. She placed my hand on the bubble machine and pointed to the word “want.” I hugged the breath out of her before I went in my closet and cried tears of joy.— Danielle Jernigan, IndianaIf you want a chance to get your Tiny Victory published, find us on Instagram @NYTparenting and use the hashtag #tinyvictories; email us; or enter your Tiny Victory at the bottom of this page. Include your full name and location. Tiny Victories may be edited for clarity and style. Your name, location and comments may be published, but your contact information will not. By submitting to us, you agree that you have read, understand and accept the Reader Submission Terms in relation to all of the content and other information you send to us. More

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      Republican in Ohio Senate Primary Spoke Offensively About Asians

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      Mike Gibbons, a leading contender to succeed Senator Rob Portman, made the comments in a 2013 podcast on doing business in China.The leading Republican candidate in the Ohio Senate primary employed offensive stereotypes about Asian people in a 2013 podcast, citing a widely discredited book, “The Bell Curve,” that has drawn allegations of racism and sloppy research.The Senate candidate, Mike Gibbons, a financier who has poured millions of dollars of his own money into his campaign, made the comments during a discussion of how to do business in China. The remarks, published here for the first time, come as Republican candidates grapple with how to address a topic that has inflamed their voters, many of whom blame Beijing for a coronavirus pandemic that Donald Trump has referred to as the “Chinese virus.”And though Gibbons hasn’t used that terminology, his decade-old comments on China and Asian people could draw fresh scrutiny to a candidate who has received little national media attention despite running in one of the marquee races in this year’s midterm elections.“I’ve often thought that when I’ve run into Asians they’re all — you know, if you’ve ever read ‘The Bell Curve,’ it’s a book, a very controversial book, I can’t even remember who wrote, I think his name is Murray wrote this book,” Gibbons said in the Nov. 3, 2013, podcast, according to a transcript of his comments reviewed by The New York Times. He was referring to Charles Murray, a co-author of the 1994 book.Gibbons continued: “And it said that the smartest people in the world as far as measurable I.Q. were Ashkenazi Jews. And then right below them was basically everybody in China, India and, you know, throughout the Asian countries.”About a minute later, Gibbons, who earned a master’s degree from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, described being in a class with “mostly Asians” during graduate school.“It was astounding to me how much they studied, how they were incredibly bright, but they memorized formulas,” Gibbons said. “And when we ran into a word problem — and you know, I think this is a function of the educational track they put them on — they got lost in the weeds.”As the discussion continued, his co-host asserted that the Chinese education system did a poor job of teaching critical thinking.“They’re very good at copying,” Gibbons added.Asked about Gibbons’s comments, Samantha Cotten, a senior communications adviser to the campaign, said in an email, “Mike was discussing the difference in educational structure and attainment that he experienced in both business and graduate school in relation to China.”Asian American leaders and advocates described Gibbons’s comments as offensive.“Defining an entire continent of billions of individuals by a singular characteristic is the definition of racism,” said Representative Judy Chu, a Democrat of California and the chairwoman of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. Gibbons’s comments, she added, “betray his own lack of ‘critical thinking.’”Russell Jeung, the co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, a group that monitors incidents of discrimination against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, said Gibbons’s description of Asian intelligence was “part of the dehumanizing rhetoric around AAPIs that has contributed to the surge in racism that harms us today.”China has been an especially vexing topic for Republicans during this year’s campaigns, especially in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. Candidates have accused one another of being “soft” on Beijing, which many primary voters hold responsible for everything from the coronavirus pandemic to lost manufacturing jobs.In July 2020, the Pew Research Center reported that 83 percent of Republicans held unfavorable views of China. And in a March 2021 Pew survey, 72 percent of Republicans said they supported getting tougher on China on economic issues, and 53 percent said that they viewed China as an enemy of the United States.The pandemic has also been accompanied by an alarming surge in attacks on Asian Americans across the United States. In the most recent example, in Yonkers, N.Y., a security camera captured a man assaulting a 67-year-old woman of Asian descent inside the entry to an apartment building. The video shows him hitting her more than 125 times, stomping on her crumpled body and spitting on her in what law enforcement officials said was a racially motivated incident.The pandemic has been accompanied by an alarming surge in attacks on Asian Americans across the United States.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesA Trump-like pitchOn the campaign trail, Gibbons casts himself as a self-made man, a political outsider and a job creator — in language that often sounds a lot like Trump’s 2016 campaign.His Cleveland-based investment banking and financial advisory firm, Brown Gibbons Lang & Company, has indeed made him wealthy and successful. According to his Senate campaign’s financial disclosure, Gibbons reported assets worth between $83 million and $286 million. He has already spent nearly $12 million in advertising alone, according to AdImpact, eclipsing his closest rivals.“I can’t be bought,” he said during a recent stop in Canton. “I’ve already lived my American dream. I’m not going there to get rich or make friends. I’m going there to restore American values.”The pitch seems to be paying off: Gibbons is leading the field, according to a recent Fox News poll of Ohio Republican primary voters, along with Josh Mandel. Twenty-two percent of those surveyed said they planned to vote for Gibbons in the May 5 primary, and 20 percent favored Mandel. Other candidates polled lower: J.D. Vance at 11 percent, Jane Timken at 9 percent and Matt Dolan at 7 percent.Senator Rob Portman, who is retiring, has endorsed Timken, a former state party chairwoman, as his preferred replacement.But the race is still wide open — 24 percent of voters remain undecided, and about two-thirds of the supporters of each of the top three contenders said they would consider another candidate.The world according to Mike GibbonsLike the other candidates in the Ohio race, Gibbons has played up his ties to Trump. He was a finance co-chair of Trump’s presidential campaign in Ohio in 2016, and, his website notes, he “gave even more money to the Trump re-election campaign in 2020.”But Gibbons does not always seem to have been in sync with one of the core elements of Trump’s political appeal: the former president’s trade policies, which were defined by an America-first agenda that included imposing tariffs on Chinese goods and promising to return manufacturing to the United States.Last year, Gibbons praised Trump’s handling of China during an interview with Jewish Insider.“I’ve done large financial transactions all over the world, and I can tell you I long ago noticed what was going on in how China was abusing their role,” he said. “But they don’t play by the rules, and I think Donald Trump was the first one with enough gumption to go out and say, ‘We’re gonna force you to play by the rules, and you’re not going to keep draining us of our intellectual property.’ I think he was the first one to stand up.”Years earlier, however, during an interview with Crain’s Cleveland Business in 2005, Gibbons expressed a different perspective. Asked what the “biggest challenge” Northeast Ohio was facing, he replied by discussing free-market capitalism, arguing that the region’s political leaders were clinging to an outdated understanding of global economic forces.The biggest challenge, Gibbons said, was “getting our politicians to understand the way the world works.”“The battle is over between socialism and capitalism, and capitalism won,” he told Crain’s Cleveland Business. “If our politicians want to keep fighting that battle we will end up looking like Youngstown,” an Ohio city that has been hit hard by job losses over the last few decades.He continued: “If you can have the same product on the shelf out of China, with the same level of risk as far as getting it there and development costs, invariably, in a free market, all those jobs [making that product] are going to move to China. And we better face it. No legislation in the world can stop it.”“That’s the way a free market works, and that will ultimately create more benefits for the people of the United States,” Gibbons said.Asked about those comments, Cotten, the senior communications adviser to the Gibbons campaign, said, “Mike was stating that free market capitalism is good for the U.S., not pushing American jobs overseas.”She added: “Unfortunately, because of decades of failed Democrat policies that included higher taxes and excessive regulations, good-paying, blue-collar jobs were driven to places like China. Mike believes in the America first agenda” and a need for “new leadership in Washington that will put our economy back on track like we experienced under President Trump.”What to readPresident Biden will attend a NATO summit in Brussels next week. The New York Times continues its live coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war.The crisis in Ukraine has empowered the political center, Jonathan Weisman reports.Sarah Bloom Raskin withdrew from consideration to serve as the Federal Reserve’s top regulator after Senator Joe Manchin III said he wouldn’t vote to confirm her, Jeanna Smialek reports.Closing segmentPresident Biden spoke in Philadelphia last week. He has argued that solving climate change is a way to create more jobs, and he repeated that theme at a fund-raiser on Monday.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesA change in the political climate At his first in-person fund-raiser of his presidency Monday evening, President Biden focused his remarks on the threat of climate change, boasting that he had written the first climate bill in the 1980s and calling the issue “an existential threat to humanity.”For environmentalists who have long pushed to make climate change a salient political issue, it’s a major moment. While polling indicates that most Americans believe the United States should work to address climate change, the issue can get lost in campaigns.Biden has long argued that solving climate change is also a way to create more jobs. He repeated that theme last night in Washington, D.C. — but also added that addressing climate change was a timely national security issue.It would be a “different world,” Biden said, if the United States and Europe could rely on renewable energy rather than Russian oil.— Blake & LeahIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      How a Murdoch Hopes to Save American Democracy

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      Kathryn Murdoch is trying to change how elections are run. It’s a work in progress.Over the last decade, as America’s two dominant political parties pulled farther apart, a group of centrist-minded donors was growing increasingly frustrated.A gridlocked Congress made bipartisan policy wins close to impossible. Campaign-finance reform? The Supreme Court effectively put a stake in it in 2010. Climate legislation? Time and again, it hit a phalanx of Republican opposition.“Basically, everything that we were looking at would run up against a nonfunctioning government,” said Kathryn Murdoch, who has become a leader of a network of donors seeking to change the way Americans choose their elected officials.Fix the election system, the thinking goes, and the government will begin to run more smoothly. But when Murdoch’s family foundation, Quadrivium, examined the democracy reform movement, they found it too anemic and fractured to be effective.“Everything was very subscale, it seemed very clear to me — smart people, good ideas, a lot of data backing all of it up, but subscale for the problem, and not a lot of collaboration or, frankly, enough funds,” Murdoch said in an interview.The daughter-in-law of Rupert Murdoch, the Australian media mogul, Kathryn Murdoch has often found herself at odds with the conservative politics of her family’s TV, print and radio empire. Murdoch, a registered independent who is American, spent years funding efforts to slow climate change, only to encounter political obstacles at nearly every turn. Her new focus is building a movement to reshape American democracy itself, and she has set a goal of mobilizing $100 million to do so over the 2020 and 2022 election cycles.This focus has meant pitching her fellow philanthropists on why they should donate to democracy groups rather than to their own causes.“There’s not necessarily a special-interest group that is helping to ensure the integrity of the system,” said Marc Merrill, a software entrepreneur and donor who works with Murdoch on political overhaul projects. “Well, that’s an opportunity.”Murdoch’s problem with primariesMurdoch quickly determined that the chief villain was the partisan primary.It was aiding extremist candidates like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia. It was forcing moderate Republican senators like Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska to cater to the right wing rather than to the center of the electorate. And it was souring voters on politics. Murdoch has the statistics at her fingertips: In 2020, just 10 percent of Americans effectively elected 83 percent of the House. Only 17 percent of general elections for House seats were competitive.“What I hear all the time is that there are people who want to work on legislation, but they can’t before their primary, because they are terrified — and particularly if there’s an extreme Trumpy candidate or something like that,” Murdoch said. “They’re terrified of being seen as bipartisan. And that’s absolutely the wrong thing for the American people.”Murdoch says she now sees a “clear path” to fixing what ails American democracy, even if it takes years. A big part of the solution, in her view, is getting rid of partisan primaries altogether.On that much, advocates agree — though they may differ on the remedy required.In addition to Murdoch, several other donors have bankrolled the idea of eliminating partisan primaries. John and Laura Arnold, a billionaire couple from Texas, are big financial backers. So is Mike Novogratz, a Wall Street financier. Katherine Gehl, the former chief executive of a food company and co-author of “The Politics Industry,” a political reform manifesto, is an influential proponent.“How can we take that weapon away from people using it for those self-interested, narrow purposes?” Laura Arnold asked in a podcast discussion on partisan primaries with Gehl, who is pushing her own alternative called “final-five voting.”The biggest factor energizing those in the movement to reform American democracy is former President Donald Trump, whose attacks on the integrity of the election system alarmed many donors.Travis Dove for The New York TimesThe Trump factorThe biggest factor energizing advocates is Donald Trump, whose attacks on the integrity of the American election system and endorsements of fringe candidates have alarmed many donors.“After Trump got elected, things started to shift toward structural issues of democracy,” said Lee Drutman, who studies election reform as a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. “And the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol was a galvanizing moment.”A separate group, launched by Novogratz, has been enlisting philanthropists to each pledge 1 percent of their net worth toward “protecting democracy” and said it had already raised $87 million toward a goal of $250 million in pledges by 2024.Most proposed changes include some variation on ranked-choice voting, a system that allows voters to select their preferred candidates in order. New York City used the system in its Democratic primary for mayor last year, to great media fanfare — a breakout moment for what previously had been an obscure cause promoted by a small and scattered group of activists.Before then, ranked-choice proponents had notched a few quieter wins. In Maine, voters pushed through a ballot initiative in 2016 to become the first state to allow the system in elections for federal office. Alaska followed in 2020 with a similar ballot initiative, and 51 cities across the country have adopted ranked choice in some form or another.Proponents of ranked-choice voting argue it will make campaigns more civil, save money, lessen the polarization that is poisoning American politics and give voters more choices. And while the data is still out on many of those claims, surveys do show that voters tend to like it.One detractor has been Sherrie Swensen, the clerk of Salt Lake County, Utah, a state that has embraced ranked-choice voting in municipal elections. Swensen, whose position includes overseeing elections, said the system was “very complex to implement,” as it took weeks to figure out how to design new ballots.The democracy lobbyMurdoch is plowing resources and much of her energy into Unite America, a collection of groups that backs organizations, campaigns and candidates that support her reform goals. Unite America is meant to be a “cross-partisan” meeting ground for donors and activists, she said. “It’s a group of people,” Murdoch added with a chuckle, “with a wide variety of reasonable opinions.”Its executive director is Nick Troiano, a 32-year-old activist who ran for office as an independent in Pennsylvania at 24. Troiano has recruited a staff of hard-nosed political operatives from both parties, hoping to develop a cadre of seasoned campaigners who can steer investments and advise ballot initiatives in new states.“One thing that we’ve learned is we have to professionalize running these campaigns, and some of the best political talent that’s out there is sometimes locked up in the parties,” Troiano said.Murdoch and Merrill have also invested in Citizen Data, a nonpartisan outfit that provides voter information and analytical tools to groups that don’t have access to the two parties’ vast data resources.In the short term, Troiano expects what he calls “the primary problem” to get worse before it gets better. He noted that only a few dozen House seats are expected to be competitive this year, according to the Cook Political Report, even though redistricting has shaped up to be more balanced than many expected.“The important thing is to take on the winner-take-all mind-set in American politics,” said Rob Ritchie, the head of FairVote, a nonpartisan election reform group. Ritchie predicts that between five and 10 states will be using some version of ranked-choice voting for presidential primaries by 2024, along with dozens more cities.Unite America’s official goals are somewhat more modest: help at least four new states start nonpartisan primaries and ranked choice in federal elections by 2024, using the Alaska model. Along with Alaska, several other states have already been largely “liberated” from partisan primaries, in Troiano’s estimation: California, Louisiana, Nebraska and Washington.Over the long term, Murdoch says, she is starting to feel more optimistic about American politics.“When you’re outside of it, it’s very easy to be completely depressed and cynical and say, ‘It can never get fixed. There’s too much money involved. It’s all going to hell in a handbasket,’” Murdoch said. “But from the inside, if you join in and actually start doing it, you realize that we can get it done.”What to read The war in Ukraine has ushered in a new era of foreign policy, aligning the United States more closely with Europe and re-energizing its leadership role, Michael Crowley and Edward Wong report. Here is our live coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Biden are suggesting different midterm slogans, with some vulnerable House Democrats revolting against the name “build back better,” Jonathan Martin reports.American Bridge, the Democratic super PAC, accused Trump of violating campaign-finance law by spending political funds on a 2024 presidential bid without formally declaring himself a candidate, Shane Goldmacher reports.how they runGlenn Youngkin’s victory in the Virginia race for governor last year has been attributed to parents who were upset about the state’s coronavirus response. New data has suggested otherwise. Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesVirginia’s ‘silver surge’Did angry school parents really sway the Virginia governor’s race?A new analysis by the Democratic-aligned firm TargetSmart suggests that conventional wisdom is wrong.Drawing on newly available voting records, the firm found that turnout among voters aged 75 or older went up by 59 percent in 2021 compared with the 2017 election for governor.As for those angry parents, when TargetSmart looked at counties where schools closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, it found no comparable surge for Republicans.“In fact,” TargetSmart’s Tom Bonier writes, “the biggest swings towards Republicans occurred in southwestern Virginia, where schools were open for in-person instruction for most of the year.”None of this means Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s focus on “parents’ rights” and critical race theory in schools did not affect his defeat of former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate. But it does suggest that we should be skeptical of first impressions.Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.— Blake & LeahIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Why Republicans in Nevada Are Targeting Senator Catherine Cortez Masto’s Seat

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      Seizing on signs that suggest Democrats are losing support among Hispanic voters nationwide, Republicans are targeting Senator Catherine Cortez Masto’s seat.When Senator Catherine Cortez Masto and her allies unveiled their first paid ads of the 2022 election cycle, the Nevada Democrat’s intended audience was clear: the state’s quarter-of-a-million Latino voters, a critical swing vote.Majority Forward, the nonprofit arm of the Senate Democratic super PAC, has a Spanish-language ad called “Siga Protegiendo” — “Keep Protecting” — airing on Telemundo in Las Vegas. It hails Cortez Masto for her work as Nevada attorney general and in the Senate to “fight sex trafficking rings” and “protect our children.”Another ad, titled “Led the Fight,” shows Cortez Masto speaking with Gladis Blanco, a Las Vegas hotel worker.“When Covid first hit, there was a lot to worry about,” Blanco says as she wheels a cart of clean towels down a hallway. “My first priority was keeping my family safe, and I was very worried about making a living.”“In times like that,” she added, “you want someone looking out for you. That’s what Catherine Cortez Masto did.”It’s hardly the first time Nevada Democrats have made the Latino community a priority. In many ways, the state’s Latino voters are the backbone of the political machine built by Harry Reid, the Nevada senator and former majority leader who died in December. Nevada’s economy is powered by tourism, and the state’s powerful service-sector unions are closely intertwined with Latino politics.Allies of Cortez Masto, the first Latina to serve in the U.S. Senate, also insist that it’s not usual to communicate this early in an election cycle with Latino voters. Their experience, they say, shows the importance of making persuasive arguments to the Hispanic community throughout a campaign — and not just toward the end.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the 2022 election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.“Nevada’s a state where you need a bilingual strategy,” said Arturo Vargas, the chief executive of the NALEO Educational Fund, a national civic engagement organization. He noted that service-industry workers had suffered heavily during the Great Recession, and again during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, when Las Vegas casinos were forced to shut down their operations. He said it made sense for Democrats to speak to their economic concerns.But Republicans now sense an opportunity to peel away many of those votes, and in ways that could have national political reverberations. Some data in the latest Wall Street Journal poll suggest why. According to the poll, Republicans enjoy a 9-point advantage over Democrats in the so-called congressional generic ballot among Latino voters — meaning that, by a 9 percentage-point margin, respondents said they would prefer to elect a Republican to Congress.There are reasons to be skeptical of these specific numbers: The poll sampled only 165 Latino voters, and the margin of error was plus or minus 7.6 percentage points. And Latino voters are hardly a monolith — the anti-socialism messages that have appealed to Cuban Americans in Florida differ widely from the jobs and health care-themed proposals that are effective with Mexican Americans elsewhere.Plenty of other data suggests Democrats ought to be concerned, however. John Anzalone, a Democratic pollster who helped to conduct The Journal’s poll and a previous one in December, has called Hispanics “a swing vote that we’re going to have to fight for.”Last year, a study by the Democratically-aligned firm Equis Labs found that Democrats had lost support among key Latino communities during the 2020 election. In 2020, exit-poll data showed that Donald Trump had made gains among Latino voters in Nevada specifically, even as he lost the state in that year’s presidential election. And more recently, our colleague, Jennifer Medina, reported that the shift toward Republicans among Latino voters in South Texas has continued.“It’s not in question whether the Democrats are going to get a majority of the Hispanic vote in 2022 and 2024,” said Fernand R. Amandi, a managing partner of the Miami-based polling firm Bendixen and Amandi. “The problem for Democrats is they keep leaking oil against Republicans, and that is a trend that I think has been borne out over the last five years.”Republican challenger seeks Latino voteAdam Laxalt, a former Nevada attorney general whose campaign has the backing of both Donald Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell, launched “Latinos for Laxalt” in an effort to appeal to Hispanic voters.Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesThe bigger problem for Cortez Masto may be the low approval ratings of President Biden, which are dragging Democrats down with voters in general.Public polls of the Senate race put her ahead of her likely opponent, Adam Laxalt, a former state attorney general and the scion of a Nevada political dynasty. But even in one January survey, showing Cortez Masto up 9 points over Laxalt in a head-to-head matchup, registered voters said they disapproved of Biden’s performance, 52 percent to 41 percent.Last week, the Laxalt campaign — which has the backing of both Trump and Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader — launched “Latinos for Laxalt” in an effort to appeal to Hispanic voters. Cortez Masto’s allies have made sure to use Spanish-language criticism by Latinos against Laxalt — what they say is just smart, hard-nosed campaigning.The Democratic Party in Nevada is also suffering from an unusual schism. In effect, the party has split in two between a group aligned with former allies of Reid, the late senator, and a smaller faction led by allies of Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont progressive.The state’s top Democrats — including Cortez Masto, Senator Jacky Rosen and Gov. Steve Sisolak — are all working through a new entity called Nevada Democratic Victory, which is coordinating field operations and other statewide campaign spending with the Democratic National Committee in Washington.It’s not completely clear what role the official Nevada State Democratic Party will play in the 2022 midterms. That group, which is led by Judith Whitmer, a Sanders ally, announced it had just half a million dollars on hand at the outset of the campaign season — money that it, nonetheless, said would be used to “mount a huge field campaign.” And while Cortez Masto’s allies insist that everything is running smoothly and that any tensions between the two groups have been ironed out, several also confess to having little idea of what the state party is doing.The Cortez Masto campaign says it is taking no community in the state for granted, and is simply continuing the senator’s longstanding efforts to engage with an important constituency that was hit hard by the economic disruptions of the last few years.“While Senator Cortez Masto continues to build on her strong record of fighting for the Latino community in Nevada, Adam Laxalt continues to show he can’t be trusted,” Josh Marcus-Blank, a spokesman for the Cortez Masto campaign, said in a statement.Vargas, the head of the NALEO Educational Fund, said that mobilizing Latino voters, especially younger voters, will be a critical factor in November. His group has projected that turnout among Latinos will grow by 5.8 percent in Nevada during the 2022 midterms, but he declined to speculate as to which party might benefit.“In the past, we’ve seen Latino voters express greater support for some candidates at the national level, but then it plummeted with other candidates,” he said. “The most recent election did suggest that, but it takes more than one election to determine a trend.”What to read President Biden said the United States would strip Russia of normal trade relations, joining the European Union and other allies in doing so, Ana Swanson reports. Keep up with our live coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.A well-timed congressional endorsement by Nikki Haley in her home state of South Carolina created some distance from Donald Trump, even as she was embracing him at the same time. Jonathan Weisman reports.The Democratic National Committee is expected to work on the sequence of presidential primary states. Astead W. Herndon reports.viewfinderJudge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden’s Supreme Court nominee, met with Senator Cory Booker at his office in Washington on Tuesday.Michael A. McCoy for The New York TimesLayers of historyOn Politics regularly features work by Times photographers. Michael A. McCoy captured the photo above on Tuesday, as Senator Cory Booker met with Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Biden’s Supreme Court nominee, in his office. Here’s what McCoy told us about capturing that moment:I was amazed by his book collection (and his Star Wars collection). One book was called Picturing Frederick Douglass, who was the most photographed person in the 19th century. I moved to the right side of Booker’s office, and once I was there, I saw how Jackson and Booker were speaking next to that photograph of Frederick Douglass. There were so many layers on top of layers in that photo. If it weren’t for Frederick Douglass, there would be no Cory Booker, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Mike McCoy, or anyone else of color who works in politics. My body, my soul — that picture just caught me.Thanks for reading. We’ll see you on Monday.— Blake & LeahIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Why Rick Scott and Mitch McConnell Are Feuding Over Midterm Elections

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      Senator Rick Scott has an 11-point plan to “rescue America.” Senator Mitch McConnell would rather he not.Republican insiders have long worried that they could blow a golden opportunity to retake the Senate this year. And while most are confident that a red wave will still wash enough of their candidates ashore in November to win a majority, some doubt occasionally creeps in.The latest reason: an ongoing disagreement between two of the top Republicans in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, and Rick Scott, the leader of the party’s campaign arm. At issue is the “11-Point Plan to Rescue America” that Scott has presented as a platform for the midterms, and that McConnell has emphatically rejected.And while Scott has said that the plan is just his opinion, developed using his own campaign funds, Democrats have been all too happy to pin its provisions on the Republican Party writ large.They’ve seized on one bullet point in particular, which reads: “All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount. Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax.” That idea polls badly, according to Morning Consult, though other provisions of Scott’s plan are popular.On Thursday, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee paid for a truck-mounted billboard to troll Senate Republicans during their one-day retreat. “Senate Republicans’ Plan: Raise Your Taxes,” the billboard read.Never mind that McConnell has brushed back Scott, telling reporters at the Capitol last week, “We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people, and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years. That will not be part of a Republican Senate majority agenda. We will focus instead on what the American people are concerned about: inflation, energy, defense, the border and crime.”McConnell also made it clear who was in charge. “If we’re fortunate enough to have the majority next year, I’ll be the majority leader,” he said. “I’ll decide, in consultation with my members, what to put on the floor.”Scott defended himself last week in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, saying his plan had “hit a nerve” with Washington elites, whom he accused of misleading voters about the sustainability of federal deficits and entitlement programs.“Part of the deception is achieved by disconnecting so many Americans from taxation,” he wrote. “It’s a genius political move. And it is bankrupting us.”Scott’s plan has some powerful backers, including the Heritage Foundation, which plans to host him for an event later this month. The think tank has long advocated “broadening the base,” the preferred term on the right for increasing the number of Americans who are subject to taxation.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the 2022 election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.“Conservatives in this country are demanding an ambitious, conservative agenda,” said Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation. “Therefore, it excites us to see members talking that way.”Democrats dust off a playbookScott’s plan is a fortuitous turn of events for Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, Democrats say.“Chuck, I’m sure, is salivating,” said Jim Kessler, a former Schumer aide who is now an executive vice president at Third Way, a center-left think tank.In the first sentence of a letter to his Senate colleagues this week, Schumer wrote, “As Senate Republicans debate their plan to increase taxes on millions of working Americans, Senate Democrats have focused on ways to get rising prices under control to help working families.”Senate Democrats are considering holding hearings, and possibly a series of votes, to highlight Scott’s plan and to force Republicans to take uncomfortable positions on it.It’s a playbook that Schumer has run before. In 1995, as a member of the House representing New York, he used Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” to accuse Republicans of trying to force cuts in popular spending programs. Gingrich, who became the speaker of the House in 1995 — either because or despite that plan, depending on whom you ask — has embraced Scott’s platform.“That was probably the first thing that Chuck did that showed him as a national political leader,” recalled Kessler. With Scott’s plan, he said of Schumer, “I’m sure he sees it and says to himself, ‘I’ve taken this apart before.’”Privately, Democrats are realistic about their chances of hanging onto the Senate, and say they must seize the “gift” Scott has given them to force Republicans onto the defensive. On the day of the State of the Union, for instance, Senate Democrats ran an ad accusing McConnell of fighting “for the same wealthy insiders who get rich by keeping prices high.”During their own retreat on Wednesday, Democrats heard a presentation by Geoff Garin, a pollster, that impressed many of the senators present. Garin’s surveys have found that more voters blame the coronavirus pandemic, “China and foreign supply chains” and “large corporations raising prices to increase their profits” than they do President Biden for inflation.“The bottom line here is that Democrats have a very strong case to prosecute on rising costs,” Garin said.Republicans see the attack on Scott as a desperation play in what could be a difficult election for Senate Democrats, who must defend incumbents in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and New Hampshire while trying to pick up seats in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.“If I were them, I would try to use it, too,” said Justin Sayfie, a Republican consultant who runs an influential Florida political news website. “But they’re going to have to put a lot of money behind it. How much penetration are they going to be able to get with a message about Rick Scott?”Two visions of how to winMcConnell and Scott have a fundamental difference of opinion about how to win the Senate, people who have studied both men say.There’s McConnell, the calculating insider, who is leery of putting forward a political agenda that could open Republicans up to Democrats’ attacks. Republicans have long memories of how, in past election cycles, Democrats have had success in accusing them of wanting to cut popular programs like Medicare and Social Security.“McConnell hates variables,” said Kessler, the former Schumer aide. “He’s like a boxer who likes to cut off the sides of the ring.”In January, when a reporter asked McConnell what his agenda might be if Republicans retake the majority, he replied simply: “That is a very good question. And I’ll let you know when we take it back.”Then there’s Scott, the ambitious outsider, a former businessman whose presidential aspirations are no secret. He’s rankled some of his fellow Republican senators by taking broad swipes at Washington — despite leading the committee in charge of electing more of them.And while they share the same goal of winning back the Senate, aides and allies of both men have sniped at one another through the press, particularly over their relationship with Donald Trump.Scott has cultivated a relationship with the former president — he made sure to send copies of his plan to Mar-a-Lago — while McConnell at times has condemned Trump, who in turn refers to the Senate minority leader as “the Old Crow.” Trump has even tried to recruit Scott as a future majority leader, according to a Politico account.McConnell’s office declined to comment.“There will always be critics, but we don’t waste much time worrying about the opinions of Democrat operatives or anonymous Washington consultants,” said Chris Hartline, the communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which Scott chairs. Asked what the Heritage Foundation would say to Senate leaders like McConnell, Roberts said, “We’re grateful for their service, and we’re looking forward to them embracing Senator Scott’s plan or coming up with a plan of their own.”What to read The U.S. Census Bureau says the 2020 census seriously undercounted the number of Hispanic, Black and Native American residents, even though its overall population count of 323.2 million was largely accurate, Michael Wines and Maria Cramer report.In February, the Consumer Price Index rose at its fastest pace in 40 years. Biden blamed Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, for the increase, though inflation has been a problem for months, Jeanna Smialek reports.As oil prices rise, many governments are working to boost global production, potentially neglecting longer-term efforts to cut use of fossil fuels to fight climate change. Brad Plumer, Lisa Friedman and David Gelles report.postcardVice President Kamala Harris called for an investigation into potential war crimes by the Russian military, during a visit to Poland on Thursday.Andrzej Lange/EPA, via ShutterstockTwo V.P.s, one message for UkraineThe world got a glimpse of two potential future presidents today, in what we’re told was a sheer coincidence.Vice President Kamala Harris was visiting Poland, where she met with the country’s leaders, called for an investigation into potential war crimes by the Russian military, held a round-table event with displaced survivors from the war in Ukraine and appeared with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada in a show of Western solidarity.It so happened that her predecessor, Mike Pence, was in Ukraine on the same day as Harris’s trip. Along with his wife, Karen, he met with some of the refugees who are living in camps near the border with Poland. As Pence noted on Twitter, more than 2 million Ukrainians have fled the country over the last 12 days, according to U.N. figures.Pence’s trip comes as the former vice president tries to establish himself as a leader of the Republican Party on foreign policy ahead of a possible 2024 run. Last week, Pence blasted unnamed people in the party who, he said, were “apologists for Putin,” the Russian leader.Our colleague, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, a White House correspondent, was traveling with Harris and sending dispatches from Poland all day long. According to a background briefing by an unnamed senior administration official, he reported, teams for the former vice president and the current vice president were “not in contact.”Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.— Blake & LeahIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      President Biden Never Saw War In Ukraine Coming

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      As Joe Biden campaigned for the White House in 2020, he knew that the next president of the United States would govern under circumstances significantly more daunting than those that most faced.As he took the oath of office in 2021, he could see very clearly — in the tally of Covid-related deaths, in the economic and social devastation of the pandemic, in the country’s vicious partisanship — the immense scope and immeasurable difficulty of the work ahead.But he surely never expected this.Never expected war in Europe. Never expected a confrontation with Vladimir Putin of such urgency and unpredictable proportions. Never expected that his stack of challenges would grow this much taller, in this particularly terrifying way.He delivered his first formal State of the Union address on Tuesday night as both a leader and a lesson: Few who have taken a seat at the Resolute Desk end up reading from anything like the script they had first imagined for themselves — or that others had imagined for them. Presidents plan. History laughs.Or weeps or screams — those seem the more appropriate verbs now. Whatever the language, I look at Biden and I not only examine someone in what the journalist John Dickerson, in the title of his 2020 book, calls “The Hardest Job in the World.” I also behold someone in history’s crucible, learning or relearning what every candidate should know and what every voter should factor into his or her calculations, which is how quickly events jag and how suddenly they judder.Biden is in many ways a propitious fit for current events. It’s useful, at this fearful juncture, to have a decidedly even-tempered president with his broad perspective, which has thus far prevented a potentially catastrophic overreaction to Putin’s saber-rattling.It’s useful to have a president with his regard for institutions and NATO specifically. The Western alliance has been more united than Putin or just about anybody else wagered it would be, and Biden gets some credit for that. As John Avlon, the author of the new book “Lincoln and the Fight for Peace,” told me, “This is reflecting his experience and at least some of his intended strengths.”But Avlon agreed that Biden belongs to a long line of presidents tugged far off script. Avlon reminded me that President Woodrow Wilson had once famously said, “It would be an irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs.” Well, fate went full-throttle ironic in the form of the First World War.“It’s almost always foreign affairs,” Avlon, a senior political analyst and anchor for CNN, said, “because the process of campaigning is almost always about domestic affairs.”President George W. Bush, in his bid for the White House, questioned “nation building” in foreign lands, sounded somewhat isolationist at times and emphasized aspects of his persona that complemented a relatively prosperous, peaceful chapter of American life. Then came the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.President Jimmy Carter, whose appeal was largely as an ethical correction after President Richard Nixon, found himself dealing with stagflation at home and the Iranian hostage crisis abroad.We elect presidents — or should — not just for the moment but for any moment, because the moment changes in the blink of an autocrat’s ego. It did for Biden.“No president had delivered his State of the Union address with such a large-scale and consequential land war underway in Europe since 1945,” Peter Baker wrote in The Times, describing just how unusual Biden’s situation suddenly is.Also in The Times, David Sanger weighed in: “Eastern Europe was not the battlefield Mr. Biden had in mind when he raised the idea last year that the battle of ‘autocracy versus democracy’ would be the defining foreign policy principle of his administration.” No, the scheming of Donald Trump, not Putin, was undoubtedly front of mind.Dickerson, the “Hardest Job” author and the chief political analyst for CBS News, told me that when Biden took office, Afghanistan and “trying to orient the West’s focus — his focus — toward China” were top priorities. “Land war in Europe was not on that agenda,” he noted.“Having said that, all the planning that he’s done in his career, the building of alliances, the team he put together: Implicit in their approach to the world is that the presidency surprises you with things all the time,” he added. “This is a job of surprises.”For the Love of SentencesPeter Bocklandt / Getty ImagesSeems fitting to begin with Russia and Ukraine. So we shall.David Brooks, in The Times, cast Ukrainians’ lot as emblematic and metaphoric of “a global struggle against authoritarianism,” and he stressed “the need to defeat the mini-Putins now found across the Western democracies. These are the demagogues who lie with Putinesque brazenness, who shred democratic institutions with Putinesque bravado, who strut the world’s stage with Putin’s amoral schoolboy machismo while pretending to represent all that is traditional and holy.” (Thanks to Karen Coe, from Seattle, for nominating this.)In The Washington Post, Sally Jenkins endorsed a particular punishment of the Russian president, writing that there’s “nothing trivial about wiping Vladimir Putin’s musky perspirations from the international sports stage.” She continued: “His brand of shirtless belligerent patriotism — his macho nationalism — has been a long con, and it’s no small thing to knock him off medal podiums and expose the lifts in his shoes, or to rip off his judo belt and show the softening of his belly.” (Phil Carlsen, South Portland, Maine)And in The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan wrote this about Putin’s big going-to-war speech: “It had the wound-up particularity of the local grocer when he talks about his 30-year feud with the butcher down the street.” (Steve DeCherney, Chapel Hill, N.C.)Leaving Ukraine but sticking with foreign figures and affairs, here’s Henry Mance, in The Financial Times, on Prince Andrew’s botched spin of his onetime friendship with Jeffrey Epstein: “Still, Andrew went on TV, and said that he didn’t regret his friendship with Epstein because of ‘the opportunities that I was given to learn, either by him or because of him.’ Yes, say what you will about Hannibal Lecter, he threw very original dinner parties. Andrew is so tin-eared that he could sell mining rights to his own head.” (Chris Durban, Paris)And here’s Andrew Cohen, in The Globe and Mail of Toronto, on the much smaller Canadian city of Ottawa: “In one enterprise after another, Ottawa falls short. It is easily satisfied with mediocrity. As New York was said to be a town without foreplay, Ottawa is a city without climax.” (Bill Weaver Dresden, Ontario)Now to matters gustatory. On his website, Garrison Keillor reflected on fine music and his anticipation of an imminent breakfast, noting that “this bagel is turning into the high point of my day, the bagel of all bagels, the bagel Hegel would’ve finagled with Puccini’s cream cheese and scallions that win medallions from Italians.” (Tom Sigafoos, County Donegal, Ireland)And in The Times, Margaret Renkl pondered food and Lent: “During their midlife years of creeping weight gain, my mother and father would announce that they were losing 10 pounds for Lent, a goal I always found hilarious. As a Lenten resolution, it did bear some resemblance to the fasting and sackcloth of the early days of Christianity, if not for an entirely spiritual reason. I’m no theologian, but I feel sure that Jesus did not spend 40 days and 40 nights in the desert so he could fit into his old jeans.” (Tom Powell, Vestavia Hills, Ala., and Andrea Ondak, Newtown, Conn.)To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here, and please include your name and place of residence.What I’m Reading (and Doing)I thought I knew a thing or two about the history of food writing, but my knowledge went back only so far. In “What We Write About When We Write About Food,” in The Times’s T Magazine, Ligaya Mishan travels all the way to ancient Greece and a glutton named Archestratos. She explains that these days he’d be labeled a food writer, “kin to those specialists of our own time, the literary-minded cooks who know that every recipe comes with a story; the memoirists who recall each meal as half debauchery, half revelation; the journalists who stake out tailgates and backyard barbecues; and the critics who skulk into restaurants in disguise, brandishing words like knives.” (Thanks to Marcia Lewis of Cohasset, Mass., for recommending that I showcase this.)While news organizations and readers are rightly riveted by what’s happening in Ukraine, what’s happening in Afghanistan remains important and heartbreaking, and in The New Yorker recently, Jon Lee Anderson took fascinating measure of the Taliban’s rule.I’ll admit to reading this review in The Times of my just-published book, “The Beauty of Dusk,” more than once. OK, more than twice. When you put a book, especially such a personal one, out into the world, you take a deep, deep breath, and I thank the reviewer, Min Jin Lee, not only for letting me exhale but also for describing the scope and intent of the book so well.Over recent days, I talked about the book on CBS Mornings, chatted with Seth Meyers on his late-night show, was interviewed by Ari Shapiro for NPR’s “All Things Considered” and had a Zoom conversation with John Molner for Katie Couric Media.On a Personal (By Which I Mean Regan) NoteThere is or was or will be a squirrel in this tree. With Regan, you never know.Frank BruniThe skeptical read on those of us with dogs is that we’re gluttons for guaranteed affection. We’re after easy, unconditional love.Not so with me and Regan — and I think we’re more representative than exceptional. When I welcomed her into my life three years ago, I felt an urge to give unconditional love.That tug was inextricably tied to my suddenly compromised and imperiled eyesight. With my physical powers in question, I wanted to flex my emotional might. I also wanted to avoid the traps of self-pity in particular and self-indulgence in general, and I could be only so concerned with my own welfare when I had to lavish thought and energy on hers. Just as my heart needed more bounce in it, my head needed less Frank in it. Regan did double duty in that regard (and thus gets a significant role in “The Beauty of Dusk”). She was the catalyst for a generosity that was at odds with, and offset, any sense of enfeeblement.From the very start, I was much more focused on how well I was serving her than on how well she was serving me, and I couldn’t have predicted how satisfying it would be to figure out the riddle of which healthy foods might suit her sometimes finicky appetite; to whisk her to the vet when she was ill and make her better; to find a hiking trail that invigorated her more than other paths had; to see her sleeping peacefully for hours on end in a dog bed that I had chosen wisely and put in the right place.Before Regan, I’d puzzled over how gaga some people could be about dogs who displayed all sorts of problems and unpleasantness, but that was because I’d misjudged those relationships, which weren’t about what surefire, ready-made bundles of joy dogs were. No, dogs were acts of devotion.I don’t have any science on this, but I bet we’re flooded with more serotonin or dopamine or endorphins or all of the above when we say “I love you” than when we hear it. And we’re healthier people when we’ve made commitments beyond ourselves. We’re better still when we’ve kept them.I vowed that Regan would never lack for exercise, and she hasn’t, not even during a four-day period about two years ago when a skin infection turned the lower part of my right leg into a badly inflamed, insanely tender slab of misery. Morning and night, I took her into Central Park regardless, and I limped and winced, winced and limped, laughing inwardly at the joke and spectacle of me, a man whose left half functioned perfectly well but whose right half — bum eye, bum leg — was a disaster.I vowed that I wouldn’t travel excessively for work or pleasure and that when I did need to leave her, I’d forge arrangements that minimized the disruption. I followed through on that as well.I vowed that she’d get plenty of time with other dogs and with people in addition to me, so that her world wasn’t a small one. That, too, has come to pass.Schooled in the limits of my control over my own life, I have exercised my control over hers with all the diligence I can muster. Her tail wags and my spirits do a jig. Mercy comes in many forms, some of them four-legged. More

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      As Biden Speaks, Ukraine Crisis Escalates and Midterm Elections Start

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      As President Biden delivers his first formal State of the Union address, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine escalates and the midterms begin in earnest in Texas.An entrance to a voting site in Laredo, Texas, today.Jason Garza for The New York TimesThe first votes of 2022 Russian missiles are terrorizing Ukraine. President Biden hopes to rally the nation in his first formal State of the Union address. And the first votes of the 2022 midterm elections will be counted tonight.This is an extraordinary political moment, both at home and abroad.Those first votes of the midterms are being cast and counted today in Texas, in Republican and Democratic primaries, providing the first morsels of data on what voters are prioritizing amid multiple national and international crises.Our colleagues have been tracking the turnout, major themes and top races as part of our live Texas election coverage tonight. Keep up with the results as they come in.Here are some of the highlights:How will new voting laws affect turnout?Republican legislators throughout the country responded to former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud by passing legislation restricting voting access. In Texas, voters have already seen higher rates of rejection for absentee ballot applications. Now, the ballots themselves have been rejected at a higher rate than usual. Nick Corasaniti reports.Most voters will need to vote in person, or have already done so, since Texas’ criteria for qualifying for mail-in voting are unusually narrow. Maggie Astor writes.Do Democrats need to keep to the political center?The highest-profile progressive challenger of the night, Jessica Cisneros, isn’t focusing her early messaging on progressive causes. Instead, she’s going after the new vulnerabilities of the incumbent Democrat, Henry Cuellar, who has become ensnared in an F.B.I. investigation, though its target isn’t totally clear. Jonathan Weisman reports from Laredo.Dozens of Hispanic voters and candidates in South Texas explained why the Republican Party has been making inroads in the region. Trump-style grievance politics has been resonating with Hispanic residents in the Rio Grande Valley. Jennifer Medina reports from Brownsville.Abortion specifically seems to be moving Hispanic voters in South Texas toward Republicans. Edgar Sandoval writes from Laredo.Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat, made headlines in 2019 in the crowded presidential primary when he declared, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15.” Now, he’s running for governor in a state where Republicans have the advantage. J. David Goodman reports from Tyler.One candidate for the State Board of Education is taking a unique approach to rising above partisan politics — he’s running in both major party’s primaries. Maggie Astor writes.Will appeasing Trump’s base in the primary cost Republicans in November?Representative Dan Crenshaw, a Republican, is more likely to face a threat from a far-right challenger in his redrawn district in the Houston suburbs.Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesRedistricting has created fewer competitive districts, and therefore more races where winning the primary is the most important contest. For Democrats and Republicans, that elevates the importance of campaigning to the most ideologically focused voters. Still, Representative Dan Crenshaw, a Republican, says he refuses to “toe the line,” and has been feuding with Trump allies like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. Shane Goldmacher reports from The Woodlands, Texas.Gov. Greg Abbott has been pushing Texas even farther to the right, and it helped him pick up Trump’s endorsement for re-election. Tonight’s results will reveal how those efforts have resonated with actual Republican voters. J. David Goodman reports from Austin.For the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, his allegiance to Trump may or may not be enough to win the Republican primary outright. J. David Goodman reports from Midland.What to read tonightOur colleagues are tracking developments in Ukraine as part of our live coverage. Thousands of civilians are fleeing Kyiv as Moscow intensifies its military attack and appears “to target civilian areas with increasingly powerful weapons.”The New York Times is also providing live updates and analysis on Biden’s State of the Union address tonight. Peter Baker writes that no president has delivered a State of the Union address “with such a large-scale and consequential land war underway in Europe since 1945.”Michael D. Shear reports that Biden will use the State of the Union address to “claim credit for a robust economy and a unified global response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, even as he acknowledges the pain of inflation.”A report commissioned by the Republican speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly “endorsed a host of debunked claims of fraud and false assertions about lawmakers’ power to decertify” Biden’s victory, Reid J. Epstein reports.Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.— Blake & LeahWere you forwarded this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Texas Primary Election: What to Watch

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      The first election night of the 2022 midterms has some famous names and crowded primary races. Here’s a rundown.The midterms officially begin on Tuesday with the primary election in Texas. There are a few key themes to keep an eye on:What will Democratic turnout be like in the first midterm of Biden’s presidency?Hispanic voter turnout: Republicans exceeded expectations in garnering their support in 2020. Will that trend continue?How well will Republican candidates endorsed by Donald Trump fare against equally Trumpy competitors?In Texas, candidates only win the party nomination if they surpass 50 percent of the primary vote. If nobody reaches 50 percent on Tuesday, the top two vote getters will advance to a runoff on May 24.The more candidates in an individual race, the more splintered the vote gets — and the more likely a runoff becomes. To the chagrin of incumbents on both sides of the aisle, Texas’ primaries are crowded.In open-seat races, where the incumbent is either not running for re-election or an entirely new seat was drawn in redistricting, crowded primaries are expected and pretty uneventful. We’re watching those to see who qualifies for the higher-stakes runoff.But for incumbents and high-profile candidates, the question on Tuesday will be who avoids a runoff and by how much. For instance, in the governor’s race, how well Gov. Greg Abbott fares in his Republican primary will be a barometer of his strength before the general election. (For Beto O’Rourke, on the Democratic side, there’s little doubt he’ll sail to the nomination on Tuesday.)The most famous names might be found in the major statewide races, yet the most consequential results could come from House races. To be sure, Texas isn’t the political hot spot for House races that it was in 2020 — redistricting left the state with only one truly competitive district in the general election. But with Democrats’ majority relying on just a handful of seats, there’s no room for error.Here’s what we’ll be watching, with one warning: always be prepared for surprises. Abbott’s vindication?Gov. Greg Abbott is being challenged in the Texas Republican primary by Don Huffines, a former state senator, and Allen West, a former state party chairman.Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesRepublicans who have declared themselves Trump’s most loyal supporters have been lining up to take on Abbott — though Abbott hasn’t allowed them much room. He’s spent the last year trying to prove his pro-Trump bona fides. His efforts earned him Trump’s endorsement, though his challengers haven’t walked away quietly.A Guide to the Texas PrimaryThe 2022 midterm elections begin with the state’s primary on March 1.Governor’s Race: Gov. Greg Abbott’s rightward shift will face a test in November. His likely challenger, Beto O’Rourke, is haunted by his 2020 presidential bid.Attorney General’s Race: Whether Ken Paxton can survive the G.O.P. primary may be the biggest test yet of Donald Trump’s continued power over voters.A Changing Landscape: Issues like abortion and immigration are driving Hispanic voters in Democratic strongholds to switch parties and prompting liberal candidates to shift tactics.A Deepening Divide: Competitive districts are being systemically erased across the country. Texas is an especially extreme example.New Voting Law: Officials have rejected thousands of absentee ballots based on new requirements, an alarming jump ahead of the primary.Public polling is limited, but it seems pretty clear all the same that Abbott is the favorite, even if he isn’t guaranteed to avoid a runoff. He hit the 60 percent mark in two recent polls, with his Republican opponents — Don Huffines, a former state senator, and Allen West, a former state party chairman — floundering in the teens or single digits.Abbott’s margin of victory, or whether he avoids a runoff and gets to start the general election early, could signal the strength of his incumbency before he faces his likely Democratic opponent, O’Rourke.Beto’s second chanceThere’s little doubt that Beto O’Rourke will sail to the Democratic nomination for Texas governor on Tuesday.Brandon Bell/Getty ImagesO’Rourke, the former congressman, is likely to win the Democratic nomination outright. He won’t be the only name on the ballot, but he’s the only candidate who is a household name. The latest batch of polling shows him leading by more than 60 percentage points.As the general election begins, the question will be what O’Rourke has learned since his last campaign. He lost a statewide race in Texas in 2018, when Democrats enjoyed a favorable national environment. That environment will likely be tougher this time around, and he may have jeopardized some of his above-the-party-fray credentials by running for president in 2020. However, he’s now an experienced candidate who has the benefit of having built a campaign organization behind him, something he didn’t have in 2018.The other big namesSome of the most prominent Republican names are all clustered in a single race. As J. David Goodman explained over the weekend, Attorney General Ken Paxton is facing a challenge from Republicans including Representative Louie Gohmert; Eva Guzman, a former Texas Supreme Court justice; and George P. Bush, the grandson of George H.W. Bush.Like Abbott, Paxton has Trump’s endorsement. Unlike Abbott, Paxton isn’t polling far above and beyond his Republican challengers. This race is likely to go to a runoff.A Democratic challenger in the HouseJessica Cisneros, who is backed by progressives, is waging a rematch against Henry Cuellar, the longtime Democratic congressman.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesJessica Cisneros’ primary challenge to Representative Henry Cuellar might be the most consequential race of the night. We’re just not sure what the consequences will be.Cisneros, who is backed by progressives like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is waging a rematch against Cuellar, a Democrat who has opposed abortion rights, after she fell narrowly short in the 2020 primary runoff. But, as Edgar Sandoval reported, conservative Democrats might have more luck in some parts of South Texas.When the F.B.I. raided Cuellar’s home and campaign office earlier this year, however, the political calculus shifted. The target of the F.B.I. investigation remains unclear, and national Republican groups are watching to see whether there’s a window for whoever emerges from the G.O.P. primary.That doesn’t necessarily mean that Cisneros would be more likely to hold the seat for Democrats than Cuellar. If national abortion rights organizations get involved in the race, they could provoke Republicans to play more aggressively in the district.“It doesn’t help in trying to actually change the political dynamic in Texas, when you have national organizations come in, brand themselves as liberal, wave blue flags, and say we’re going to turn stuff blue and flip it,” said Matt Angle, the founder of the Lone Star Project, which provides opposition research and other support to Democratic candidates in Texas.There’s a third Democrat on the ballot for the race, so it’s possible that neither Cuellar nor Cisneros clears Tuesday’s primary. If the race goes to a primary runoff, it would leave another few months for the Cisneros-Cuellar primary to unfold — and more time to see what happens with the F.B.I. investigation.The lone competitive House seatThere’s only one district that’s built to be truly competitive in 2022. But we probably won’t know who’s running in it until the May runoff.The incumbent in the 15th Congressional District in South Texas would have been Representative Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat. However, he instead chose to run in a seat that was drawn to be slightly safer for Democrats after redistricting, leaving his current seat open.Trump narrowly carried the newly drawn 15th District in 2020. Republicans expect Monica De La Cruz to be their nominee, even if she doesn’t win outright on Tuesday. The Democratic race is more scattered, with multiple credible candidates, and will likely go to a runoff.There is one other House race that could be competitive come November: the 28th District, another South Texas seat. But while the 15th District was drawn to be competitive, the 28th was drawn to favor Democrats. However, if Democrats put forth a nominee who’s either plagued by scandal or ideologically out of step with the district, Republicans, boosted by a favorable national environment, might be able to seize the opportunity.What to read tonightJennifer Medina reports from Brownsville, Texas, where the politics of immigration is driving many Hispanic voters into the Republican Party.Redistricting is altering national politics in profound ways, as Shane Goldmacher describes in a look at Representative Dan Crenshaw, a Republican whose suburban Houston district grew less competitive after the Legislature drew new maps.The last two weeks have been a monumental time in Biden’s presidency. Our colleagues on the White House team reconstructed a chaotic past few days within an administration preparing for a State of the Union address while handling the crisis in Ukraine.briefing bookProtesters held the Ukrainian flag as they rallied Sunday in Washington, D.C., against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Shuran Huang for The New York TimesThe latest in UkraineFighting is still raging in Ukraine, despite diplomatic efforts to arrange a cease-fire. Here are the latest developments:The U.S. Treasury Department froze assets of the Russian central bank and imposed sanctions on a sovereign wealth fund that is run by a close ally of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin. The value of Russia’s currency fell by as much as 25 percent within hours.Belarus hosted face-to-face talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials, but they proved inconclusive, as did a phone call between Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, and Putin.Satellite photos showed a column of Russian forces bearing down on Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. In Kharkiv, a city in the northeast of the country, videos showed the results of indiscriminate shelling of Ukrainian civilians.Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.— Blake & LeahWere you forwarded this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More