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      In Wisconsin, Liberals Barrage Conservative Supreme Court Candidate With Attack Ads

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      Daniel Kelly, the conservative candidate for a swing seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, promised that help was on the way. But his campaign has already been outspent on TV by $9.1 million to nothing.As conservatives in Wisconsin seek to maintain control of the State Supreme Court in an all-important election for a crucial swing seat, they would appear to be fighting uphill.The conservative candidate, Daniel Kelly, is trailing in limited private polling of the race. Abortion rights, which powered Democrats in the midterm elections, are driving the party to shovel enormous sums of money into the campaign. And perhaps most significantly, Justice Kelly’s campaign has been outspent by a staggering margin on television since the Feb. 21 primary: $9.1 million to nothing.But Justice Kelly, who sat on the court before losing re-election in 2020, appears unfazed. He told supporters on Sunday in northwest Wisconsin that help was on the way from unidentified outside groups in his race against Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee County judge opposing him in the April 4 election.“Because there are nationwide organizations that care about the rule of law, about the constitutional order, and they are spending to promote our campaign, you should start seeing the effects of them this coming week,” Justice Kelly told a gathering of the Northland Freedom Alliance in Webster, Wis. “Right now, it’s kind of wall-to-wall Janet. And I object to that. There, I’m told the cavalry is on the way. And so hopefully, they’ll have some good and smart and true ads.”Wisconsin is at the midway point of a six-week general election for a seat that will determine the balance of the State Supreme Court. Victory by Justice Kelly would preserve conservatives’ sway over the court, which they have controlled since 2008, while success by Judge Protasiewicz would give Wisconsin liberals an opportunity to legalize abortion rights and invalidate the state’s Republican-drawn gerrymandered legislative maps, as well as roll back other measures put in place by the court and G.O.P. lawmakers.The New York Times obtained a recording of Justice Kelly’s remarks, in which he addressed an array of issues likely to be decided in the high-stakes race and estimated that his campaign would raise $2 million to $2.5 million. He also again sought to draw a contrast with Judge Protasiewicz, who has been remarkably open about her political views, by asserting that his comments articulating his judicial philosophy do not constitute broadcasting his personal political positions.“I don’t talk about my politics for the same reason I don’t campaign on who the Packers’ next quarterback should be,” he said. “It has no effect on the job.”While Justice Kelly promised that the cavalry was on the way, it’s unclear whether it will be enough to turn the tide of the battle.Only one national organization has spent anything on television to support the Kelly campaign: the super PAC Fair Courts America, which is backed by Richard Uihlein, the conservative billionaire. So far in the general election, Fair Courts America has spent $2.3 million on TV ads. This week, it began a further $450,000 in statewide radio advertising, but the group has not yet committed to investing more in the race, according to a person familiar with Mr. Uihlein’s decisions who was not authorized to speak publicly.The biggest pro-Kelly spender, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s business lobby, has spent $3.4 million on his behalf so far. Nick Novak, a spokesman for the group, declined to comment on the group’s future plans. A Fair Courts America spokesman did not respond to messages on Tuesday. The flood of Protasiewicz ads have attacked Justice Kelly for his opposition to abortion rights, past statements attacking Social Security and his association with Republican attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, among other issues.Mr. Kelly’s spokesman, Ben Voelkel, said Mr. Kelly was filming a television ad on Tuesday. He predicted the Kelly campaign and its allies would soon catch up with Judge Protasiewicz and Democrats in overall television spending, but at the same time suggested the millions of dollars spent of television time was wasted in a relatively low-turnout April election.“We’re reaching out to voters in a lot of different ways,” Mr. Voelkel said. “They are spending millions of dollars for an election that’s not going to have a big turnout. We’ve taken a slightly different approach.”Wisconsin’s municipal clerks began placing absentee ballots for the Supreme Court election in the mail this week, and in-person ballots can be cast starting next Tuesday. Private polling conducted by officials on both sides of the race shows Judge Protasiewicz with a lead over Justice Kelly in the mid-to-high single digits. Mr. Voelkel disputed that Justice Kelly was trailing but declined to reveal the campaign’s figures.The court election is formally a nonpartisan contest, but there is little mystery about where the candidates stand politically. The bulk of Judge Protasiewicz’s campaign money has come from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, which can transfer unlimited amounts under state law. Justice Kelly has worked as a lawyer for the Republican National Committee, which hired him to focus on “election integrity” issues for the party during and after the 2020 election.On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton endorsed Judge Protasiewicz. Justice Kelly was endorsed by President Donald J. Trump during the justice’s 2020 re-election campaign, which he lost.In the last three weeks, the Protasiewicz campaign has spent $9.1 million on television advertising, and outside groups supporting her have spent $2.03 million, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm.The imbalance on Wisconsin’s television airwaves is even greater than the spending figures suggest.Because the Protasiewicz campaign is able to buy television advertising at about one-third the rate of independent expenditure groups, she alone has broadcast more than three times as many TV advertisements in Wisconsin as the pro-Kelly groups combined, according to AdImpact’s data.“Dan Kelly has been relying on extreme right-wing groups to save his campaign with millions of dollars in ads that lie about Judge Janet Protasiewicz’s record,” said Sam Roecker, a spokesman for the Protasiewicz campaign.The election is already the most expensive judicial race in American history, with at least $27 million spent so far on television alone. A 2004 contest for the Illinois Supreme Court previously had the most spending, at $15 million, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.In an interview on the eve of the primary last month, Justice Kelly said he had not received any private spending commitments from Mr. Uihlein and had not spoken with him since last summer. More

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      ‘Russia Outside Russia’: For Elite, Dubai Becomes a Wartime Harbor

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      DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — On an artificial island on the edge of the Persian Gulf, Dima Tutkov feels safe.There are none of the anti-Russian attitudes that he hears about in Europe. He has noticed no potholes or homelessness, unlike what he saw in Los Angeles. And even as his ad agency turns big profits back in Russia, he does not have to worry about being drafted to fight in Ukraine.“Dubai is much more free — in every way,” he said, sporting an intricately torn designer T-shirt at a cafe he just opened in the city, where his children are now in a British school. “We are independent of Russia,” he said. “This is very important.”A year into a historic onslaught of economic sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s rich are still rich. And in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates’ biggest city, they have found their wartime harbor.Among the city’s waterfront walkways, palatial shopping malls and suburban cul-de-sacs, Russian is becoming a lingua franca. Oligarchs mingle in exclusive resorts. Restaurateurs from Moscow and St. Petersburg race to open there. Entrepreneurs like Mr. Tutkov are running their Russian businesses from Dubai, and opening up new ones.The Dubai Marina Mall attracts Russians who are visiting or who have relocated to the city.Dima Tutkov, a founder of the cafe Angel Cakes, at the Bluewaters Island location.Dubai’s new Russian diaspora spans a spectrum that includes multibillionaires who have been punished with sanctions and middle-class tech workers who fled President Vladimir V. Putin’s draft. But to some extent, they share the same reasons for being in the Emirates: It has maintained direct flights to Russia, staked out neutral ground on the war in Ukraine, and, they say, displays none of the hostility toward Russians that they perceive in Europe.“Why do business somewhere that they’re not friendly to you?” says Tamara Bigaeva, who recently opened a two-story outpost of a Russian beauty clinic that is already welcoming longtime clients. “In Europe, they clearly don’t want to see us.”Indeed, a major draw of Dubai is that it is apolitical, according to interviews with Russians who have settled there. Unlike in Western Europe, there are no Ukrainian flags displayed in public and no rallies of solidarity. The war itself feels far away. Anyone in Dubai harboring anti-Russian sentiments would most likely keep them to themselves, anyway; protests in the Emirates’ authoritarian monarchy are effectively illegal, and freedom of assembly is severely limited.The presence of wealthy Russians in Dubai at a time when they have been largely cut off from the West shows how Mr. Putin has been able to maintain the social contract that is key to his domestic support: In exchange for loyalty, those close to power can amass enormous riches.The State of the WarTesting Swiss Neutrality: The Alpine nation makes arms that Western allies want to send to Ukraine. Swiss law bans this, driving a national debate about whether its concept of neutrality should change.Kupiansk: Months after Russian soldiers were driven out of the town in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, Ukrainian authorities are stepping up efforts to evacuate civilians amid relentless Russian shelling.Bakhmut: Ukraine insisted that its forces were fending off relentless Russian attacks in Bakhmut, even as Western analysts said that Moscow’s forces had captured most of the embattled city’s east and established a new front line cutting through its center.In fact, one political scientist, Ekaterina Schulmann, said Mr. Putin has been signaling to businessmen that he is prepared to remove still more obstacles to enrichment. A recent law, for example, frees lawmakers from having to make public their income and property.“Yes, we’ve cut you off from the First World, but things won’t get any worse for you,” Ms. Schulmann said, describing how she sees Mr. Putin’s revised contract with the elite. “First of all, there are many other countries that are friendly to us. Second, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to get even richer, and we will no longer prosecute you for corruption.”Publicly, Mr. Putin has been calling on jet-setting Russian elites to refocus their lives and their investments inside Russia. But the rich who have relocated to Dubai have other ideas.Nail services at the Russian beauty chain Sugar in Dubai’s Marina District.Tamara Bigaeva, founder of the Evolution Aesthetics Clinic in the upscale neighborhood of Jumeirah in Dubai.“For all of us, this is an island of safety for a certain period of time,” said Anatoly Kamenskikh, a Russian real estate salesman who brags that his team sold $300 million worth of property in Dubai last year — the vast majority to Russian citizens. “Everyone is trying to park their assets somewhere.”Mr. Kamenskikh’s real estate developer, Sobha Realty, celebrated Dubai’s Russian-driven real estate boom by setting up a miniature St. Basil’s Cathedral and artificial snow outside the sales office. A section of the artificial island called the Palm Jumeirah is lined with Russian restaurants and nightclubs, one of which was packed on a recent Wednesday night as guests ordered $1,200 bottles of Dom Pérignon Champagne that dancing waiters delivered with lighted sparklers.When one drunken guest yelled out, “Glory to Ukraine!” the bouncers swiftly saw him out.Sobha Hartland, a new development project by the upscale real estate developer Sobha.Anatoly Kamenskikh at Sobha’s sales center. He calls Dubai “an island of safety.”“You get the feeling that they have their head in the sand,” Dmytro Kotelenets, a Ukrainian entertainment producer who moved to Dubai with his family, said of the Russians around him. “They either don’t want to notice what’s happening between Russia and Ukraine, or they think that nothing has changed.”In his state-of-the-nation speech last month, Mr. Putin called on Russia’s wealthy to “be with your Motherland” and to bring their financial assets home, rather than to view Russia “as simply a source of income” from abroad.In fact, many of Russia’s rich are simply shifting their lives to the United Arab Emirates, which — like the rest of the Middle East — has refused to join the West’s sanctions against Moscow.“I’m in Dubai, I’m chilling,” go the lyrics to the current No. 1 song in Russia, according to Apple Music. “Yeah, I’m rich, and I don’t hide it.”A view of the Palm Jumeirah, which has some of the most sought-after real estate in Dubai.A street scene in the Deira District of Dubai.The Emirates has a population of about 10 million, of whom only about a million are Emirati citizens. The rest are expatriates, including millions of Indians and Pakistanis, and smaller numbers of Europeans and Americans.A New York Times analysis of flight records last spring found that the United Arab Emirates became the top destination for private flights out of Russia in the weeks after the invasion, which began Feb. 24, 2022. Since then, by all accounts, the country’s allure has only grown.Russian government statistics show that Russians took 1.2 million trips to the Emirates in 2022, compared with one million in the pre-pandemic year of 2019. Many of those visitors put down roots: Russians were the leading nonresident buyers of Dubai real estate in 2022 by nationality, according to Betterhomes, a Dubai brokerage.First, there are the tycoons. Andrey Melnichenko, a Russian coal and fertilizer billionaire, moved to the United Arab Emirates last year after sanctions forced him to leave his longtime home in Switzerland. Last month, in the hushed lobby of an exclusive resort, another penalized Russian businessman said he was in town for a birthday party.Russian officials and their families also visit, though they try to avoid calling attention to their presence, and for good reason: In the northwest Russian region of Vologda, the pro-Kremlin United Russia party expelled two local lawmakers after social media posts placed them in Dubai. One of them, Russian journalists studying their posts reported, was vacationing there with Ksenia Shoigu, the daughter of the Russian defense minister.The elite cross paths at Angel Cakes, an Instagram-friendly cafe that Mr. Tutkov, the advertising entrepreneur, opened on an artificial island called Bluewaters in the shadow of the world’s tallest Ferris wheel. One frequent guest of the cafe, the former president of a major Russian company, quipped, “Dubai is becoming a part of Russia outside Russia.”Performers singing at Chalet Berezka, a Russian restaurant and nightclub in Palm Jumeirah.Staff members serving a bottle of Dom Pérignon, priced at about $1,200, to guests at Chalet Berezka.Mr. Tutkov dismissed as an “illusion” the idea that sanctions had wrecked the Russian economy. His advertising agency, he said, was profiting as companies race to fill the vacuum left by Western corporations that pulled out of Russia. His clients include Haier, a Chinese home appliance maker trying to break into a market that had been dominated by more established brands.Sanctions on the financial system also proved no hindrance. Last summer, the ruble soared to historic highs against the dollar. Mr. Tutkov said he took advantage of the exchange rate by using Russian banks that had not been placed under sanction to move some of his ad agency’s profits to Dubai.“We were exchanging into dollars and transferring them here,” he said. “In dollars, we were getting colossal excess profits, you understand? And everyone was doing this.”Mr. Tutkov and his family had planned to spend the summer in Moscow. But after Mr. Putin’s draft last fall, he is no longer sure he will go back.“These are colossal risks,” said Mr. Tutkov, 39. “What if you can’t leave or they take you into the army or something?”The diaspora also includes smaller earners, among them art-world types, technology workers and employees of Western companies that relocated their Moscow offices to the city.Dmitri Balakirev, who worked in tech in the Ural Mountains, left Russia because he opposed the war, he said, and went to Dubai because he had visited it previously thanks to direct flights from his city.Mr. Balakirev decided to stay and start a real estate agency. He judged that direct flights to Russia were likely to remain, allowing him to stay in touch with his relatives. And he saw it as a place where he could make a living.Potential buyers at Sobha’s sales center looking at a model of a planned development.Dmitri Balakirev, far back at right, an agent at Inside Realty, in Dubai’s Media City.Emirati officials say that their banks follow all American sanctions-related rules. Indeed, many Russian émigrés say that among the hardest parts about moving to Dubai is opening a bank account, attributing monthslong waits to the banks’ exacting compliance requirements.“There are many Russians who are not sanctioned and are interested in safer havens,” Anwar Gargash, a diplomatic adviser to the Emirates’ president, told reporters last year.Among those who found a haven in Dubai last year is the Russian pop star Daria Zoteyeva, the singer of Russia’s current No. 1 hit. She now lives in an unfinished luxury housing development in the desert. At night, a light show flashes across the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest skyscraper, in the distance.To make music, Ms. Zoteyeva said in an interview on a roadside bench, “you need to be in a good mood.” Dubai, she goes on, is a “sunny place” where the war “doesn’t affect you.” She refuses to take a position on the war, which she calls “this whole situation.”“It’s to avoid letting go of my audience, and to make money,” she said, explaining her silence. “Because it’s a lot of money. It’s a lot of money.”Fountains at The Pointe on the swanky Palm Jumeirah.Vivian Nereim More

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      Arizona Sues After County Puts an Election Skeptic in Charge of Voting

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      Cochise County, a hotbed of conspiracy theories, transferred election duties from a nonpartisan office to the county’s elected recorder, a Republican.An Arizona county is being sued by the state’s Democratic attorney general after it transferred voting oversight to the county’s Republican recorder, who has cast doubts about past election results in a place where former President Donald J. Trump won nearly 60 percent of the vote in 2020.It is the latest clash between Democrats in statewide office and Cochise County, a deeply Republican area in southeastern Arizona, where conspiracy theories about voter fraud and irregularities still swirl.The county’s nonpartisan elections director, Lisa Marra, announced in January that she would resign, citing threats against her after she refused to comply with rogue election directives from the Republicans who control county government, including plans to count ballots by hand after last year’s midterm elections. She recently accepted a position with the secretary of state’s office.The county’s board of supervisors then made David W. Stevens, the Republican recorder, the interim elections director, with the board’s two G.O.P. members supporting the new power structure in a Feb. 28 vote, and its lone Democrat opposing it.On Tuesday, Kris Mayes, who was narrowly elected as Arizona’s attorney general in November and took office in January, filed a lawsuit against the county and called the power shift an “unqualified handover.”Understand the 4 Criminal Inquiries Into Donald TrumpCard 1 of 5Intensifying investigations. More

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      Your Thursday Briefing: Covid Origins Hearing Opens in the U.S.

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      Also, protests in Georgia and armed villagers in Kashmir.Witnesses testified about the origins of the coronavirus before a House subcommittee.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesDid a lab leak cause Covid?U.S. lawmakers opened hearings yesterday into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. The hearing, which quickly became politically charged, underscored how difficult it may be to ascertain the origins of Covid-19.Republicans on the House panel investigating the pandemic’s origins made an aggressive case that the virus may have been the result of a laboratory leak. The lab-leak hypothesis recently gained a boost after new intelligence led the Energy Department to conclude, albeit with low confidence, that a leak was the most likely cause.The first public hearing came as the debate intensifies about one of the great unsolved mysteries of the pandemic. The committee is made up of seven Democrats and nine Republicans, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is known for her embrace of conspiracy theories.Here’s what we know, and don’t know, about the origins of the pandemic.Two theories: The lab-leak hypothesis centers largely around the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which studied coronaviruses. But some scientists say the virus most likely jumped from animals to humans at a market in Wuhan, China.Stakes: A lab-leak consensus could further roil U.S.-China relations.Related: Starting tomorrow, the U.S. will no longer require a negative test for travelers from China.Protesters with flags from Georgia, Ukraine and the E.U. outside Georgia’s parliament building.Zurab Tsertsvadze/Associated PressProtesters in Georgia chant ‘No to the Russian law’Thousands of demonstrators marched toward Georgia’s Parliament yesterday, a day after a bill on “foreign agents” passed first reading. Critics say the measure would replicate legislation in Russia that has been used to restrict civil society.Last night, a group of protesters tried to storm the government building, but were repelled by police officers who used water cannons, stun grenades and tear gas. On Tuesday, riot police officers had also used tear gas and water cannons to disperse a large rally in Tbilisi. Waving Georgian and European flags, the protesters chanted, “No to the Russian law!” as they walked down the main avenue in Tbilisi.The country’s pro-Western opposition sees the bill as following the model of Russian legislation passed in 2012, pushing the country closer to Moscow and highlighting democratic backsliding. Under the measure, nongovernmental groups and media outlets that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from a “foreign power” would be required to register as “agents of foreign influence.”What’s next: The bill, backed by the governing Georgian Dream party and the prime minister, was expected to be approved. The president said she would veto it, but the governing party has enough votes to override the veto.In just the Rajouri district, about 5,200 volunteers are being rearmed.Atul Loke For The New York TimesIndia arms Kashmir villagersThe Indian government has started reviving local militias in the Muslim-majority region after a series of deadly attacks on Hindus. The strategy casts doubt on the government’s claims that the region is enjoying peace and prosperity, nearly four years after India revoked its semiautonomous status.Over the past several months, there have been repeated attacks on civilians in the Jammu part of Kashmir, one of the world’s most militarized places. Many of the region’s Hindus, who fled violence in the 1990s, again feel under threat. Large numbers have left the valley or gathered for protests to implore the government to move them to safer places.India first created local militias in Jammu in the 1990s, at the militancy’s peak. Now, many have again been enlisted to provide their own protection, albeit with limited training and unsophisticated weapons.Religious tensions: Local Muslim leaders said that only Hindu groups had been armed. Security officials justified that decision by saying that the recent attacks had targeted only Hindus.THE LATEST NEWSAround the WorldPresident Biden will unveil his budget proposals today. They are expected to feature tax increases on corporations and high earners.More than 100,000 WhatsApp messages show British government officials scrambling to formulate policies during the coronavirus pandemic.Protests have erupted in more than a dozen cities across Iran over the suspected poisoning of thousands of schoolgirls.The War in UkraineThe Pentagon is blocking the U.S. from sharing evidence on Russian atrocities with the International Criminal Court, officials said.Russia lacks the ammunition and troops to make major gains in Ukraine this year and could shift to a hold-and-defend strategy, Avril Haines, the U.S. director of national intelligence, said.South Korea said that it had given Poland approval to send howitzers that used South Korean components to Ukraine.The founder of the Russian private military company Wagner claimed that his forces had taken the eastern part of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.Other Big StoriesGreece’s new transport minister said that last week’s fatal train crash “most likely would not have happened” if the rail system had been upgraded as planned.Adidas is still deciding what to do with nearly $1.3 billion worth of sneakers and sportswear from Kanye West’s Yeezy brand.Elon Musk apologized after mocking a disabled employee of Twitter.Science TimesAs countries plan lunar missions, the European Space Agency says that creating a moon time zone may simplify coordination.A team of scientists announced a breakthrough in superconductors for electricity, but faces some skepticism because a previous discovery was retracted.A Morning ReadTourists in Nepal have become lost and sometimes died while hiking alone.Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto, via Getty ImagesNepal will ban international tourists from hiking alone in its national parks. The tourism board noted that deadly incidents involving solo trekkers had spread the misperception that the country was unsafe.Some criticized the new rules. “I’m an advanced trekker,” said one would-be solo hiker. “I don’t need a nanny.”Lives lived: Georgina Beyer, who is widely believed to have been the world’s first openly transgender member of Parliament, fought for the rights of sex workers, L.G.B.T.Q. and Maori people in New Zealand. She died at 65.ARTS AND IDEASNajia, 28, is a former radio journalist. “Talibs do not feel comfortable talking with women reporters, they think their leaders might insult them for it.”For Afghan women, losses mountThe Taliban’s takeover ended decades of war in Afghanistan. Many women have since watched 20 years of gains made under Western occupation unravel under the new government. Afghanistan is now one of the most restrictive countries for women, according to rights monitors.The Times photographed and interviewed dozens of Afghan women about how their lives have changed.Keshwar, who is in her 50s, lost her son during the Taliban’s first regime. “There will be no peace in Afghanistan in my lifetime.”“There is no income, no job opportunities for me,” said Zulaikha, 25, who went into hiding after the Taliban seized power. “I don’t know how I’m going to survive.”“Those of us in grade 12 are standing above a ditch,” said Parissa, 19, a former university student. “You don’t know if you should jump over or throw yourself into the ditch.”Aziza, 35, lost her husband — a Taliban fighter — during the war. “Now we can go out, but there is no job for us, no school for our children.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookJim Wilson/The New York TimesFor muffins that stay moist and fresh longer, put mashed blueberries in your batter.What to Read“You Are Here: Connecting Flights” links 12 stories by Asian American authors that deal with racism, cultural expectations and adolescent insecurities.What to Watch“Therapy Dogs,” made by two high schoolers, is a bracing portrait of one class’s senior year.PhotographyTommy Kha’s portraits blend his Asian heritage with the mythology of the American South.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Dog doc (three letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. My colleague Hannah Dreier won the March Sidney Award for uncovering the growth of migrant child labor throughout the U.S.“The Daily” is on a Times investigation into attacks against the Nord Stream pipelines.We welcome your feedback. Please write to me at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      G.O.P. States Abandon Group That Helps Fight Voter Fraud

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      Five red states have severed ties since last year with the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonprofit that helps maintain accurate voter rolls.First to leave was Louisiana, followed by Alabama.Then, in one fell swoop, Florida, Missouri and West Virginia announced on Monday that they would drop out of a bipartisan network of about 30 states that helps maintain accurate voter rolls, one that has faced intensifying attacks from election deniers and right-wing media.Ohio may not be far behind, according to a letter sent to the group Monday from the state’s chief election official, Frank LaRose. Mr. LaRose and his counterparts in the five states that left the group are all Republicans.For more than a year, the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonprofit organization known as ERIC, has been hit with false claims from allies of former President Donald J. Trump who say it is a voter registration vehicle for Democrats that received money from George Soros, the liberal billionaire and philanthropist, when it was created in 2012.Mr. Trump even chimed in on Monday, urging all Republican governors to sever ties with the group, baselessly claiming in a Truth Social media post that it “pumps the rolls” for Democrats.The Republicans who announced their states were leaving the group cited complaints about governance issues, chiefly that it mails newly eligible voters who have not registered ahead of federal elections. They also accused the group of opening itself up to a partisan influence.In an interview on Tuesday, Jay Ashcroft, a Republican who is Missouri’s secretary of state, said that the group had balked at his state’s calls for reforms, some of which were expected to be weighed by the group’s board of directors at a meeting on March 17. He denied that the decision to pull out was fueled by what the organization and its defenders have described as a right-wing smear campaign.“It’s not like I was antagonistic toward cleaning our voter rolls,” Mr. Ashcroft said.Shane Hamlin, the group’s executive director, did not comment about particular complaints of the states in an email on Tuesday, but referred to an open letter that he wrote on March 2 saying that the organization had been the subject of substantial misinformation regarding the nature of its work and who has access to voter lists.Wes Allen, Alabama’s secretary of state, withdrew the state from the Electronic Registration Information Center in January, a day after he was sworn in.Butch Dill/Associated PressDefenders of the group lamented the departures, saying they would weaken the group’s information-sharing efforts and undermine it financially because of lost dues. And, they said, the defections conflict with the election integrity mantra that has motivated Republicans since Mr. Trump’s defeat in 2020.Republicans haven’t always been so sour about the work of the coalition, which Louisiana left in 2022.It was just last year that Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida mentioned the group’s benefit to his state, which he described as useful for checking voter rolls during a news conference announcing the highly contentious arrests of about 20 people on voter fraud charges. He was joined then by Cord Byrd, Florida’s secretary of state, a fellow Republican who, on Monday, was expressing a much different opinion. In an announcement that Florida was leaving the group, Mr. Byrd said that the state’s concerns about data security and “partisan tendencies” had not been addressed.“Therefore, we have lost confidence in ERIC,” Mr. Byrd said.Representatives for Mr. DeSantis, who is considering a Republican run for president, did not respond to a request for comment.Mr. LaRose, in Ohio, also had a stark shift in tone: After recently describing the group to reporters as imperfect but still “one of the best fraud-fighting tools that we have,” by Monday he was also calling for reforms and put the group on notice.“Anything short of the reforms mentioned above will result in action up to and including our withdrawal from membership,” Mr. LaRose wrote. “I implore you to do the right thing.”The complaints about partisanship seem centered on David Becker, a former Justice Department lawyer who helped develop the group and is a nonvoting board member. Mr. Ashcroft said he didn’t think that Mr. Becker, a former director of the elections program at the Pew Charitable Trusts who has vocally debunked election fraud claims, including disputing Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, should be on the board.Mr. Becker is the founder and director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, another nonpartisan group that has been attacked by election deniers.“There’s truth and there’s lies,” Mr. Becker said on a video call with reporters on Tuesday. “I will continue to stand for the truth.”Mr. Hamlin vowed that the organization would “continue our work on behalf of our remaining member states in improving the accuracy of America’s voter rolls and increasing access to voter registration for all eligible citizens.”While some Republican states are ending their relationship with the group, California, the nation’s most populous state, could potentially join its ranks under a bill proposed by a Democratic state lawmaker. But in Texas, a Republican lawmaker has introduced a bill with the opposite intention.Still, Sam Taylor, a spokesman for Texas’s Republican secretary of state, said in an email on Tuesday that “We are not currently aware of any system comparable to ERIC, but are open to learning about other potentially viable, cost-effective alternatives.”New York, another heavily populated state, is also not a member of the group.Seven states started the organization more than a decade ago. It charges new members a one-time fee of $25,000 and annual dues that are partly based on the citizen voting age population in each state. The Pew Charitable Trusts provided seed funding to the group, but that money was separate from donations that it had received from Mr. Soros, according to the website PolitiFact.Shenna Bellows, a Democrat who is Maine’s secretary of state, said in an interview on Tuesday that the group had been particularly helpful in identifying voters who have died or may no longer live in the state, which became a member in 2021.“We have a lot of Mainers who retire to Florida for example,” Ms. Bellows said.Ms. Bellows called the recent defections “tragic” and said that her office had received several inquiries from residents who had read criticism of the group online.“Unfortunately, this move by our colleagues in Florida and elsewhere to leave ERIC in part because of misinformation being spread by election deniers deprives all of us of the ability to effectively clean our voter rolls and fight voter fraud,” she said. More

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      It Would Be Foolish to Ignore What Just Happened in Chicago

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      Bret Stephens: Gail, the biggest political news from last week was the resounding defeat of the mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, in the primary. Your thoughts on her political downfall?Gail Collins: Well, running Chicago is a very tough job in the best of times, and Mayor Lightfoot was stuck doing it in the pandemic era.Bret: Hmmm …Gail: OK, that was my best shot at defending her. She was a huge disappointment — in a place like Chicago, you expect the mayor to get into a lot of fights, but she seemed to pick a new one every hour.If you’ve got a city beset by crime and economic problems, any incumbent mayor would need a great plan and a whole lot of emotional connection to the average voter to deserve another term. None of that there.What’s your opinion?Bret: Every thriving city needs to get two basic things right: It has to be safe for people and safe for commerce. Under Lightfoot, homicides, carjackings and shoplifting skyrocketed, and businesses fled the city. Nearly a third of Michigan Avenue’s retail space is vacant. Boeing decided to move its headquarters out of the city. When the McDonald’s C.E.O. complained about crime, Lightfoot scolded him. So I’m glad Chicago voters had the good sense to give her the boot. I just hope they also have the good sense to go with the centrist Paul Vallas in the runoff election instead of his opponent, Brandon Johnson, who may be even further to the left than Lightweight — er, Lightfoot.Gail: We’re gonna have more to discuss on that point.Bret: The election will also have national implications, Gail. Notice that President Biden has said he won’t veto a bill in Congress that would reverse a District of Columbia law that lightened sentences for various felonies. Higher crime rates are going to dog Democratic candidates everywhere until they start to get as tough on the issue as they were when Biden was in the Senate, promoting the federal crime bill.Gail: Doubt there’s a Democrat in America who isn’t sensitive to the crime issue now. But as we follow this story, just want to leave you now with one thought: Getting tough on lawbreakers is not enough to make a great chief executive. Nearly. Remember Rudy Giuliani.Bret: A highly successful mayor who brought down crime, made the city livable again and was endorsed in 1997 for a second term by the editorial board of … The New York Times. Granted, it’s a shame about the rest of his career.Gail: Now Bret, here’s a change of subject for you. Masks! Been so eager to converse about your anti-mask column the other day. Eager in part because people keep stopping me on the street and yelping: “Bret! Masks!”Bret: Oh, yeah. I’m aware.Just to be clear, Gail, my column was not against masks per se. It was anti-mask mandates as an effective means of curbing communitywide spread. Masks can obviously work in tightly controlled settings, like operating rooms. People who correctly wore high-quality masks probably protected themselves and others, at least if they never removed them in public.Gail: Go on …Bret: But the mandates didn’t work, and it’s not just on account of the recent Cochrane analysis that I cited in my column. Our Times colleague David Leonhardt came to basically the same conclusion last year based on U.S. data. What can work at the individual level can, and often does, totally fail at the collective level.It’s also common sense. If you’re required to wear a mask on an airplane but allowed to take it off to eat or drink, the requirement becomes useless. If you’re supposed to wear a mask while walking to a table at a restaurant but not when sitting down, it’s useless. If you’re supposed to wear a mask but nobody is very concerned about whether it’s an N95 or a cloth mask, it’s useless.Gail: “Less useful” yeah. But my understanding has always been that the masks aren’t as important for protecting the healthy as they are critical for keeping people who are already infected from spreading germs to others.Those folks are going to go out sometimes whether we like it or not, and if they’re the only ones who have to wear masks, it’s like a walking declaration of disease — ringing a bell to warn that the leper is coming.Make sense? Why do I suspect I haven’t persuaded you?Bret: Human nature. People who are infected but don’t know it will be no better about wearing masks properly than anyone else. People who are infected, know it and irresponsibly walk around with the disease are probably not going to be responsible mask-wearers, either.There’s also the fact that, in a culture like America’s, there was never a chance we’d get the kind of compliance we need to make a real difference. Maybe in China, which could be draconian in its enforcement, but I don’t think any of us would have wanted that here.Bottom line, the government would have been wiser telling people: If you are immunocompromised or you have a potential comorbidity like obesity or diabetes, please wear N95 masks at all times in public. If you aren’t, please be respectful of those who do wear them.Gail: Not necessarily. One of the things that struck me when mask wearing began was how it kinda defined community. Folks declaring solidarity with their fellow citizens in joining together to fight a common battle.Bret: To me, the lesson was the opposite. Many of the people who were most emphatic in their belief in mask wearing — particularly those with media bullhorns — worked the sorts of jobs that didn’t require them to wear masks all their working hours. Not like waiters or store clerks or Uber drivers who had to wear them 8, 10, 12 hours a day, and sometimes wound up with sores in their mouths. The mandates didn’t just polarize us politically, they also exacerbated class divides.Gail: I got into the habit of telling Uber drivers to feel free to take off the mask. Most of them didn’t, which made me presume they were voluntarily protecting themselves against the passengers.Bret: Gail, you scofflaw!Gail: But on to another topic entirely — the Murdaugh murder trial! I have to say when you spend most of your life listening to reports about political drama, a major murder trial reminds you how nondramatic that stuff can be.Did you follow the case? I did and figured he’d be convicted. But I was shocked by how fast the jury came to a decision.Bret: You and our colleague Farhad Manjoo, who looked at the case through a technological lens and offered a terrific, contrarian take on the trial. That said, from what I watched of the trial, Alex Murdaugh struck me as evil incarnate. My wife will probably kill me for saying this — er, so to speak — but while I can at least grasp how someone can murder a spouse, I simply can’t comprehend how anyone could murder his own child.Gail: Yeah, but about the jury: I remember years and years ago, being a juror on a trial where the defendant had punched an old lady on a bus. In front of a lot of other people. Tons of testimony and the defendant himself — if I recall this correctly — took the stand to offer the excuse that he found the old lady really irritating.Still, we deliberated for hours! Not because there was any doubt about what we were going to do. It just seemed to show respect for the process. And, maybe, to qualify for another excellent free courthouse lunch.Bret: Spoken like a true journalist: Anything for a free lunch.Gail, before we go, I hope all of our readers spend some time with Hannah Dreier’s moving and brilliantly rendered report on the thousands of migrant children, sometimes as young as 12, who came to this country alone and are now working grueling hours in factories, kitchens, construction sites, garment makers, slaughterhouses and sawmills trying to survive and sending what little extra money they have to help their families back home. It’s a powerful reminder that the migration crisis isn’t just happening at the southern border. In many ways, it’s just beginning there.Gail: Bret, I love the way you point to the great work our colleagues are doing. Hannah’s reporting on the migrant children was heartbreaking. Politically, both sides agree there’s a terrible problem here in regulating both migration itself and what happens to people who arrive in hopes of creating better lives.But do you see any hope — any at all — of their getting together on a solution? Even a partial one?Bret: The problem shouldn’t be difficult to solve through compromise. Discipline and order at the border combined with compassion and aid toward those who are vulnerable and suffering. America has shown in the past that we can meet that challenge. We just need to muster the will to meet it again.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      House Committee Budgets Swell as G.O.P. Plans Road Shows Across U.S.

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      Republican leaders have told their colleagues to get out of Washington for field hearings that allow the party to take their message straight to voters, a costly pursuit that can be a boon to big donors.WASHINGTON — When the House Ways and Means Committee traveled to Petersburg, W.Va., last month for its inaugural field hearing on “the state of the economy in Appalachia,” it met at the headquarters of a hardwood lumber manufacturer whose chief executive has donated the maximum campaign contribution allowed to a Republican member of the panel.The logo of his company was on prominent display during the event.When the committee descends on Yukon, Okla., this week for its second field hearing, this one on “the state of the economy in the heartland,” it will convene at Express Clydesdales, a restored barn and event space owned by a major donor to the super PAC aligned with Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the Republican National Committee, Senate Republicans’ campaign committee and former President Donald J. Trump.The owner, the business magnate Robert Funk, has also given the maximum campaign donation allowable to another member of the panel, Representative Kevin Hern, Republican of Oklahoma, for the past three cycles.Determined to take their message directly to voters at a time when they are hard-pressed to get anything concrete done on Capitol Hill, House Republicans are increasing the budgets of their congressional committees and going out on the road, planning a busy schedule of field hearings in all corners of the country aimed at promoting their agenda outside the Beltway.The Judiciary Committee, for example, which has held one field hearing at the U.S. border with Mexico to criticize the Biden administration’s immigration policies and is planning more, requested a travel budget of $262,000 for this year. That is more than 30 times what the panel spent on travel last year. (In 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic significantly curtailed travel, the Judiciary Committee spent about $85,000 on travel costs, according to a public disclosure form, one-third of what Republicans are planning this year.)It is part of a well-worn political strategy to reach voters where they live and generate local media attention for activity that would most likely draw little notice in Washington.Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said last week that he had “made it a priority” to take the committee’s work “outside the halls of Congress, away from the politically connected voices of Washington lobbyists and into the communities of the American people whose voices have for too long been ignored.”But it also has a direct payoff for Republicans, allowing them to reward major donors with publicity and exposure for their businesses.In West Virginia, the chief executive of Allegheny Wood Products, John Crites, whose company hosted the first Ways and Means field hearing, gave the maximum contribution allowed to Representative Carol Miller, Republican of West Virginia and a member of the panel, for the past two cycles.A spokesman for the committee declined to comment on the choice of venues. Staff aides noted that some of the witnesses who they can hear from in remote locations may not have the time or resources to travel to Washington to testify.Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, the Republican chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said that he had “made it a priority” to take the panel’s work “outside the halls of Congress.”Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesGetting out of Washington and into “real America” is part of a mandate that House Republican leaders have issued to their members, whose narrow, four-seat majority, coupled with deep party divisions, is making it difficult to pass any major legislation.“One of the things we committed is we would bring Congress to the people,” Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana, said at a news conference last week. “We’d actually have field hearings in communities across America to listen to real citizens.”A Divided CongressThe 118th Congress is underway, with Republicans controlling the House and Democrats holding the Senate.Resolution of Disapproval: Republicans are scoring wins and dividing Democrats by employing the arcane maneuver to take aim at policies that they oppose and see as political vulnerabilities for Democrats.‘Weaponization’ of Government: The first three witnesses to testify before the new Republican-led House committee investigating the “weaponization” of the federal government have offered little firsthand knowledge of any wrongdoing or violation of the law, according to Democrats on the panel.Merrick Garland: Republicans subjected the attorney general to a four-hour grilling in a contentious Senate hearing, a harbinger of the fights that loom ahead as the G.O.P. targets the Justice Department.The uptick in budgets comes as Republicans are pledging not to raise the federal debt ceiling, threatening a first-ever default, unless Democrats agree to deep budget cuts and an end to what they describe as profligate bureaucratic spending..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Their plans to pour substantial money into field hearings have for the most part received little pushback from Democratic committee leaders, who hope to take back the majority in two years and are eager to codify the precedent of larger travel budgets.“If we’re going to be able to do more field hearings, which I think are important, we are going to need more money,” said Representative Frank Pallone Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, who led the Energy and Commerce Committee in the last Congress and said his ability to hold such sessions was limited by a lack of funding.But the focus on getting out of Washington also appears to be deepening partisan divisions on congressional committees, where Democrats are complaining about not being given enough notice about the travel, or rejecting field trips out of principle.The Judiciary Committee’s hearing last month on the “Biden border crisis” in Yuma, Ariz., capped a two-day tour of the border where House Republicans accompanied law enforcement officials in an unsuccessful effort to see undocumented immigrants crossing the border.Democrats on the panel boycotted that hearing, dismissing it as a political stunt and noting that they had not been consulted about it.“It’s a shame that not one Democratic member of Congress would join us on this trip despite having weeks of advance notice,” said Representative Jim Jordan, Republican  of Ohio and the chairman.Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the committee, said Democrats on the panel planned to make their own trip to the border to hear from government officials and community members.“Republicans are so desperate to change the narrative from their failing agenda that they’re gearing up to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on political stunts,” he said. “These guys are roaming around the desert at night like part-time vigilantes, looking for migrants with their flashlights and with right-wing media outlets in tow. That’s not a solution; that’s a made-for-TV stunt.”Only one Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, Representative Donald S. Beyer Jr. of Virginia, attended the West Virginia hearing. “There was very little notice,” he said in an interview, explaining the absence of his Democratic colleagues. Mr. Beyer said he worried about the cost of relying primarily on field hearings, which often require the use of chartered planes to get members on location. For the upcoming Oklahoma hearing, he said, “they’re flying most of their 25 members and at least eight Democrats — they’re flying them and feeding them. There’s no reason not do to it, but we still live in a world of scarce resources.”Two different subcommittees of the Energy and Commerce Committee scheduled two different field hearings last month in Texas, roughly 18 hours and 600 miles apart. When inclement weather tanked the lawmakers’ commercial travel plans to get to the second hearing in Midland, they ended up chartering a plane to get them there in time.The House Judiciary Committee, led by Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, held a field hearing in Yuma, Ariz., last month.Randy Hoeft/The Yuma Sun, via Associated PressRepublicans said they were planning to ramp up the travel throughout the next two years despite the criticism, whether or not Democrats join them, and would need substantial budgets to accomplish that.“We’d like to do a lot more field hearings,” said Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, the chairwoman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. “The reality is they also cost a lot more money.”Representative Bruce Westerman, Republican of Arkansas and the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, testified last week to the House Administration Committee, which oversees panels’ budgets, that he anticipated his committee would hold “10 to 15” field hearings each year. That is a significant increase from previous years.Some panels appear to be taking the mandate to travel to greater extremes than others. Representative Mike Bost, Republican of Illinois and the chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, said panel members should prepare to get “out in the field” at “the drop of a hat” to respond to crises at veterans’ facilities across the nation. He requested a travel budget of $150,000, up from $100,000 last year.So many panels requested more travel spending this year that it raised some eyebrows during the House Administration Committee hearing when some said they did not plan to do so. When Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma and the chairman of the Rules Committee, testified that he was not requesting a budget increase for his panel, a G.O.P. member of the Administration Committee sounded surprised.“You’re not having field hearings in Alaska or anything?” asked the fellow Republican, Representative Greg Murphy of North Carolina. 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      How Chicago’s Mayoral Runoff Could Play Out on a National Stage

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      The two mayoral candidates, both Democrats, are on opposite sides of the debate over crime and policing. Republicans, with an eye toward 2024, are watching closely.CHICAGO — For nearly three years, since the ebbing of the George Floyd protests of 2020, almost nothing has divided the Democratic Party like the issues of crime, public safety and policing, much to the delight of Republicans eager to center urban violence in the nation’s political debate.Now, an unanticipated mayoral runoff in the country’s third largest city between Paul Vallas, the white former Chicago public schools chief running as the tough-on-crime candidate, and Brandon Johnson, a Black, progressive Cook County commissioner questioning traditional methods of policing, will elevate public safety on the national stage and test how ugly the Democratic divide might get in a city known for bare-knuckled politics and racial division.Mr. Vallas, as Chicago’s schools chief, expanded charter schools, then virtually eliminated neighborhood public schools in the New Orleans school system.Taylor Glascock for The New York Times“Oh, it’s going to be good,” Christopher Z. Mooney, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said of the runoff contest, which will culminate on April 4. “It’s going to get pretty rancorous, and underlying all of it will be the racial subtext.”The mayoral runoff pits two Democrats against each other, divided not only by ideology but also by race in a city where racial politics have been prominent since it elected its first Black mayor, Harold Washington, 40 years ago.A Republican hasn’t controlled City Hall since William H. “Big Bill” Thompson left office in 1931, with an open alliance with Al Capone and three safe deposit boxes containing almost $1.6 million.But this year’s Chicago election will be watched by Republicans intently. Crime has already emerged as a potent weapon for a G.O.P. eager to win back the suburbs and chip away at Democratic gains among urban professionals.It has also highlighted the Democrats’ divide between a liberal left that coined the phrase “defund the police” and a resurgent center insisting the party does “back the blue.”In New York City, a moderate Democrat, Eric Adams, harnessed the surge of violence that hit cities across the country, exacerbated by the pandemic, to win the mayoral race in 2021. A Republican-turned-Democrat, Rick Caruso, leaned on the issue of crime last year to force a runoff in the nation’s second largest city, Los Angeles, though he ultimately lost the mayoralty to the more liberal candidate, Karen Bass.In San Francisco, Chesa Boudin, the liberal district attorney of a city once synonymous with liberalism, was recalled last year by voters infuriated by rising disorder, and similarly progressive prosecutors from Philadelphia to Chicago have become lightning rods in conservative campaigns against supposedly “woke” law enforcement. Michelle Wu, the newly elected mayor of Boston, was forced just this week to respond to criticism of her handling of violence, after Black leaders accused her of ignoring their safety.And while the G.O.P. was disappointed with its showing in November’s congressional elections, one bright spot for Republicans came in victories in New York and California that were fueled by advertisements portraying Democratic cities as lawless. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said her Democratic Party may well have held onto control of the House in November if candidates had a better answer to Republican attacks on crime, especially in New York.Add to that the issue of education, another sharp divide between Mr. Johnson and Mr. Vallas, and the mayor’s race in the city of broad shoulders may play out exactly as Republican presidential candidates would want. Ever since Glenn Youngkin recaptured Virginia’s governorship for his party in 2021 with an education-focused campaign, Republicans have made problems in the nation’s schools a centerpiece of their attempted national comeback, especially in the suburbs.And that has included a pitch for more school choice, whether through charter schools or vouchers to help public school students attend private schools. Again, Mr. Vallas and Mr. Johnson represent polar opposite positions on the issue: Mr. Vallas, as Chicago’s schools chief, expanded charter schools, then virtually eliminated neighborhood public schools when he took over the New Orleans school system after Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Johnson, a former schoolteacher and teachers union leader, stands firmly against that movement.Mr. Johnson, a former schoolteacher and teachers union leader, has fought against charter schools.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times“This is a microcosm of a larger battle for the soul of the nation,” said Delmarie Cobb, a progressive political consultant in Chicago, “and being the third largest city, it’s going to get all the national coverage. This is going to be an intense five weeks.”For the national parties, those five weeks will be tricky. The runoff between Ms. Bass and Mr. Caruso in Los Angeles forced the Democratic establishment to get behind Ms. Bass, a known quantity with a long career in the House of Representatives. If the Democratic establishment rallies around Mr. Johnson, the outcome of the Chicago mayor’s race could mirror Los Angeles, come Election Day.But Mr. Johnson’s ardent progressivism, including his outspoken skepticism of policing as the answer to rising crime, could make him toxic to Democrats with national ambitions, including Illinois’ billionaire governor, J.B. Pritzker.Likewise, Mr. Vallas’s pledge to beef up Chicago’s police force and unshackle officers from the controls put on them after high-profile police shootings like the killing of Laquan McDonald could make him a hero of Republicans eying a run at the White House next year. But their endorsements would run counter to Mr. Vallas’s efforts in the nonpartisan mayoral race to persuade Chicagoans that he really is a Democrat.Rodney Davis, a former Republican House member from central Illinois, said that he had no doubt Mr. Vallas was a Democrat, but that the ideological divide in the mayoral contest was no less important because the contestants are from the same party.“Are voters going to think about whether Brandon Johnson calls Paul Vallas a Republican, or are they going to think, ‘Do I feel safe when I leave my kid in the car to go back inside and grab something? Do I feel like the public school system is getting better or worse?’” he said, adding, “This has set up a fight that really is less about politics and more about issues.”National Republicans, eager to make the crime debate central as they joust with each other for their party’s presidential nomination in 2024, are not likely to stay quiet.“They may want to exploit the situation,” said Marc H. Morial, a former New Orleans mayor who now heads the National Urban League.Last week, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida swung through New York City, the Philadelphia suburbs and a bedroom community outside Chicago to speak to police unions about crime, and to lambaste what he called “woke” urban officials who he contends have eased up on policing and criminal prosecutions.“They just get put right back on the streets and they commit more crimes and it’s like a carousel,” Mr. DeSantis, an as-of-yet undeclared candidate for president, said Tuesday night during a speech in The Villages, a heavily Republican retirement community in Central Florida.Next, Mr. DeSantis is taking his critique of big cities on a national tour, including stops in states with the first three Republican primary contests, and will promote his new book, “The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival.”Though Donald J. Trump erected a gleaming skyscraper on the Chicago River, he has made the city his No. 1 example of what is wrong with urban America.“It’s embarrassing to us as a nation,” Mr. Trump said on a visit in 2019. “All over the world, they’re talking about Chicago.”Criminal justice could be a centerpiece in the coming fight between Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis for the 2024 nomination. As president, Mr. Trump signed the “First Step Act,” a bipartisan criminal justice law that has freed thousands of inmates from federal prison. As a House lawmaker from Florida, Mr. DeSantis supported Mr. Trump’s bill in Congress in 2018, but as governor in 2019, when the state passed its own version of that federal legislation, he opposed a measure that would have allowed certain prisoners convicted of nonviolent felonies to be released after serving at least 65 percent of their sentences.The Trump measure was opposed by some Republicans, including Mr. Trump’s own attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, and the former president has since appeared eager to distance himself from the law.The race in Chicago will pit a candidate with the police union’s support against one who has the teachers’ union on his side.Taylor Glascock for The New York TimesDuring the past two years, Mr. Trump has spoken more about the need for tougher criminal justice laws, renewing his widely criticized proposal to execute drug dealers, and less about the benefits or outcomes of the First Step Act. Speaking to New Hampshire Republicans in late January, in the first public event of his latest presidential campaign, Mr. Trump said he would have a tougher response to civil rights protests if elected to a second term.“Next time, it’s one thing I would do different,” Mr. Trump said.A Republican intervention in the mayoral runoff here would not be helpful to Mr. Vallas. He was forced to denounce Mr. DeSantis’s appearance in Elmhurst, Ill., last week lest he be tied to the polarizing Florida governor ahead of Tuesday’s voting.But Mr. Johnson almost certainly represents too perfect a target for Republicans to sit this one out. He may have walked back earlier comments on “defunding” the police, but last month, he was the only mayoral candidate who refused to say he would fill the growing number of vacancies in the Chicago Police Department.“Spending more on policing per capita has been a failure,” Mr. Johnson said at a news conference outside City Hall last month.“Look, I get it,” he continued. “People are talking about policing as a strategy. But, keep in mind, that is the strategy that has led to the failures we are experiencing right now.”A substantive debate on the best approach to public safety could be good for Chicago and the country — if it stays substantive, Mr. Morial said. Policing is not only about the number of officers, he said, but about the accountability of the force and the trust of the citizens.Mr. Morial expressed doubt that Mr. Trump or Mr. DeSantis would keep the debate focused that way. But the nation will be watching, starting with the Chicago mayoral runoff, he said.“I’m watching this race closely,” he said. “I think it’s going to become a national conversation, which I think is going to be good.”Jonathan Weisman reported from Chicago, and Michael C. Bender from Washington. More