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      It’s Macron vs. the Left in a Fierce Battle for France’s Parliament

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      President Emmanuel Macron’s supporters and an alliance of left-wing parties came in neck and neck in the first round of voting. Now they are in a bruising face-off for control of the lower house of Parliament.PALAISEAU, France — Five years ago, Amélie de Montchalin, a politician known more for her quiet technocratic skills than her oratory, easily won election to Parliament from this southern suburb of Paris, and later became one of President Emmanuel Macron’s ministers.But at a small rally last week, at risk of losing her seat to a left-wing opponent in this year’s parliamentary elections, she launched into an uncharacteristically fiery tirade, accusing the left of promoting “a vision of disorder” that would lead France to “submission” to Russia.If the left won, Ms. de Montchalin told the crowd gathered in a sun-drenched square, “in a few weeks or a few months, there will be bankruptcies and unemployed people.”Her outburst reflected the bruising rhetorical battle that Mr. Macron’s centrist forces and a coalition of left-wing candidates are waging ahead of the second round of voting in the parliamentary elections on Sunday. The stakes are high for Mr. Macron given that a defeat could hamper his majority in the National Assembly, France’s more powerful house of Parliament, and hinder his ambitious agenda.Only months ago, Mr. Macron was wooing the left as he sought re-election as president in a bid to keep the country’s rising far right from winning power. Now, a left-wing coalition has become his No. 1 enemy.Amélie de Montchalin, France’s Ecological Transition and Territories’ Cohesion minister, spoke at a campaign rally last week in Palaiseau, near Paris.Alain Jocard/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Macron’s supporters describe a potential victory by the coalition and its leader, the hard-left politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon, as a catastrophe that would ruin France. The left says Mr. Macron and his allies are panicking because they are losing their grip on power, and they accuse the president of staging photo ops in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, as he seeks to mediate in the Ukraine war instead of caring for French voters.Both sides are desperately chasing the roughly 52.5 percent of the French electorate who did not vote last Sunday, the lowest level in the first round of a legislative election since 1958.Polls and projections suggest it could be difficult for Mr. Macron’s alliance of centrist parties, known as Ensemble, to retain the absolute majority that it enjoyed during his previous term and that allowed him to push legislation through relatively unimpeded.Instead, the president could be left with a relative majority — more seats than any other political force, but not more than half of the 577 seats in the National Assembly — forcing him to reach across the aisle for certain bills.“Even if he gets a majority, it is likely that he will have to negotiate more,” said Olivier Rozenberg, an associate professor at Sciences Po in Paris. After five years of Mr. Macron’s top-down governing style, which left many lawmakers feeling sidelined, “the logic of governing will probably be a little less vertical,” Mr. Rozenberg said.Weeks ago, Mr. Macron appeared likely to secure an absolute majority after convincingly defeating Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader, in the presidential race. Over the past 20 years, voters have usually given their newly elected president a strong parliamentary backing.Mr. Macron, third left, and other European leaders on Thursday in Irpin, Ukraine. Mr. Macron’s opponents have chastised him for staging photo ops in Ukraine instead of focusing on the concerns of French voters.Pool photo by Ludovic MarinThen, France’s fractious leftist parties unexpectedly agreed to set aside major differences on foreign and economic policies, at least temporarily, and forge an alliance for the parliamentary election called NUPES, for Nouvelle Union Populaire Écologique et Sociale, which includes Mr. Mélenchon’s France Unbowed Party, and the Socialist, Green and Communist parties. In the first round last Sunday, they finished neck and neck with Mr. Macron’s alliance, with roughly 25 percent of the vote.Pointing to the leftist alliance’s proposals, which include overhauling France’s Constitution and raising the monthly minimum wage to $1,580, Mr. Macron’s top lieutenants have compared Mr. Mélenchon with Hugo Chávez, the populist former Venezuelan leader. They have warned that a leftist victory would return France to “Soviet regulation” and bring a “fiscal guillotine at all levels.” They have also castigated Mr. Mélenchon as being too soft on Russia.Jérôme Guedj, a Socialist who is running for the leftist coalition in the Essonne department against Ms. de Montchalin, lamented what he called “demonization, caricature and amalgam” that reflected Mr. Macron’s and his party’s “panic” over possible defeat.“It really reminds me of 1981,” Mr. Guedj said, referring to the year when François Mitterrand, the Socialist leader, won the presidency with support from French Communists. “People were saying, ‘There will be Russian tanks on the Place de la Concorde.’”The left has lobbed accusations of its own. Mr. Mélenchon’s supporters say the government is secretly planning to increase the value-added tax in order to reduce the country’s deficit, an assertion that Mr. Macron’s alliance has called a falsehood.The speed with which Mr. Macron went from courting the left in the presidential election to battling it for the parliamentary vote is partly a result of France’s two-round electoral system. But it is also a testament to Mr. Macron’s shifting political nature, and to the fact that his party has gradually occupied an enlarged center with radical opponents on both sides, Mr. Rozenberg said.Mr. Mélenchon this week in Toulouse, southwestern France. Mr. Macron’s supporters describe a potential victory by the left coalition and Mr. Mélenchon as a catastrophe that would ruin France.Lionel Bonaventure/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Macronism developed by eating at its margins, by eating the center left and eating the center right rather than making alliances or negotiating coalitions,” he said.This shapeshifting has not been without confusion. The president’s alliance initially struggled to give clear voting guidance to supporters in districts where Ms. Le Pen’s party was facing off against leftist candidates in runoffs, at times describing both forces as equally threatening. Party leaders eventually stressed that “not one vote” should go to the far right.But some of Mr. Macron’s supporters appear divided on the issue.Michèle Grossi, 74, a retiree from a constituency near Paris where the far right and the left will face off on Sunday, said she would vote for Ms. Le Pen’s candidate in the absence of a Macron candidate because she was “very afraid of Mélenchon.” Another supporter of Mr. Macron, Christophe Karmann, said that presented with the same scenario, he would back the left because it was a “republican force.”Ms. Grossi also echoed concerns among some of the president’s supporters that he had been disengaged from the campaign, saying it was “unfortunate that Macron has not spoken more.”Mr. Macron tried to dispel that notion last week, issuing dire warnings about what was at stake in this election. In a solemn address on Tuesday on the tarmac of Orly airport, south of Paris, he said that “in these troubled times,” the vote was “more crucial than ever.” He urged voters to give him a “solid majority” for the “superior interest of the nation.”“Nothing would be worse than to add a French disorder to the global disorder,” said Mr. Macron, who was about to embark on a trip to Eastern Europe, partly to visit French troops dispatched in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.But Mr. Macron’s comments, made as the presidential aircraft’s engines thrummed in the background, did little to quell accusations from his opponents that he had avoided open confrontation.“His ship is sinking and Macron is taking a plane,” Mr. Mélenchon said mockingly at a rally in Toulouse. In an interview with Le Parisien, Mr. Mélenchon said the French president was disconnected from ordinary citizens’ concerns over rising food and energy costs.A market in Amiens, France, in March. Rising costs for basic items continue to be a talking point for France’s politicians.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times“He doesn’t understand French society,” he said. “He doesn’t realize how people are being suffocated by prices.”In the Essonne department, Ms. de Montchalin, who is currently the minister in charge of France’s green transition, trailed Mr. Guedj by seven percentage points after the first round. She is one of 15 ministers who are running for a seat in Parliament and who have been warned by Mr. Macron that losing would mean leaving his cabinet.To gin up support during the rally last week, Ms. de Montchalin invited a notable guest: Bruno Le Maire, France’s longtime finance minister. He told the crowd that the economy had improved — unemployment has fallen to 7.3 percent, the lowest level in a decade — and that unlike Mr. Mélenchon, Mr. Macron was not promising “a bright future on credit.”But Ms. de Montchalin’s campaign staff acknowledged it would be a tough election.Mr. Karmann said he had bet with friends that should Mr. Macron’s party fail to muster a solid working majority, the president would dissolve the National Assembly and call new elections. France in the next five years, he said, “will be hard to govern.”Constant Méheut More

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      Pro-Macron Forces Expected to Prevail but Face Left-Wing Challenge

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      The French president’s party and its centrist allies were neck and neck with a left-wing alliance in France’s first round of parliamentary elections.PARIS — After a first round of voting in French parliamentary elections marked by the lowest turnout on record, President Emmanuel Macron’s party and its allies looked likely on Sunday to retain a majority even as a newly formed coalition of left-wing parties mounted a strong challenge, according to preliminary projections.Just 47.5 percent of the electorate voted, according to the projections based on initial results, a reflection of widespread disillusionment with politics and a feeling that nothing will change whatever the country’s political alignment.The projections, which are generally accurate, showed pro-Macron parties and the left each getting around 25 to 26 percent of the vote. However, the projections also suggested that after the second round of voting Mr. Macron’s centrist alliance would win between 255 and 310 seats in the 577-member National Assembly.The left-wing alliance known by the acronym NUPES, for Nouvelle Union Populaire Écologique et Sociale, would have 150 to 210 seats.The second round of the elections — for candidates who did not win outright this time — will be held next Sunday.Unlike many of its European neighbors, France awards seats to candidates who get the most ballots in each district, rather than by proportion of the total vote across the country, meaning that percentage vote shares are an imperfect measure of what the National Assembly will ultimately look like.President Emmanuel Macron of France after casting his ballot in parliamentary elections on Sunday in the seaside town of Le Touquet, in northern France. Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIf Mr. Macron’s party and its allies muster an absolute majority of seats — 289 — he will have relatively free rein to enact his legislative agenda. That seemed plausible but by no means certain after the first round.There has been no honeymoon for Mr. Macron, who was decisively re-elected in April. In the end, he won more because enough voters were determined to keep his extreme-right opponent, Marine Le Pen, out than because there was any wave of enthusiasm for him. Energy and food bills have been rising, and the president has at times seemed curiously disengaged from France’s citizens and their concerns.The result in Sunday’s elections represented a remarkable achievement for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the fiery leftist leader who has benefited from the broad anxiety in French society over inflation. He managed to forge a movement uniting his own France Unbowed Party with the Socialists, Greens and Communists, after the left proved hopelessly divided during the presidential election and was largely sidelined.Emmanuel Macron’s Second Term as President of FranceWith the reelection of Emmanuel Macron, French voters favored his promise of stability  over the temptation of an extremist lurch.Cabinet: President Macron’s new government combines continuity with change, as newcomers at the foreign and education ministries join first-term veterans.New Prime Minister: Élisabeth Borne, the minister of labor who previously was in charge of the environment, will be the second woman to hold the post in France.Overcoming Tragedy: Ms. Borne’s father, a World War II resistance member and a Holocaust survivor, killed himself when she was 11, an experience she has rarely discussed in public.Rape Allegations: Two women have accused Damien Abad, the newly appointed minister for solidarity and for disabled people, of raping them. Mr. Abad has denied the allegations.However, Mr. Mélenchon, who had wanted to turn the vote into a plebiscite that would force Mr. Macron to make him prime minister, appeared to have failed in that aim.Among other measures, Mr. Mélenchon wants to reduce the retirement age to 60 from 62, raise the minimum wage, phase out the nuclear plants that provide most of France’s energy and bend European Union rules to allow higher debt and deficits.A poster for the NUPES coalition, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in Paris, on Sunday. Mr. Mélenchon is pictured on the left in the poster. Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Mélenchon, in a televised address on Sunday, said that the left-wing alliance had “magnificently” succeeded in its first test, “campaigning together, shoulder to shoulder, and convincing.” He insisted, against the evidence, that Mr. Macron’s party had lost its dominance.“For the first time in the Fifth Republic, a newly elected president has been unable to muster a majority in the following legislative election,” he said, an apparent reference to the equal vote shares on Sunday.The final composition of the National Assembly will become clear only after the second round of voting. Runoffs are usually held when no candidate gets more than half of the vote in the first round. They are contested between the top two vote-getters in a district, although under certain conditions they can feature three or even four candidates. Whoever wins the most votes in the runoff wins the race.If Mr. Macron’s party and its allies lose their absolute majority next Sunday, he will be forced to reach out to lawmakers from opposing parties, most probably the center-right Republicans, for support on certain bills. The projection showed the Republicans and their allies claiming 40 to 60 seats.The president, whose party and its allies currently hold 345 seats, named a government only last month, led by Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne. Her impact up to now seems to have been minimal.Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne of France voting on Sunday in Calvados, in the country’s north.Sameer Al-Doumy/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSeveral of Mr. Macron’s cabinet members are running in the elections, including Ms. Borne. On Sunday none appeared to have been knocked out of the election. Their races were being closely watched, as a loss by one or several of them next week would be a rebuke of Mr. Macron, who has warned that those who are not elected will be obliged to leave his cabinet.Ms. Borne said in a televised address on Sunday that Mr. Macron’s party and its allies were the “only political force capable of obtaining a majority.”“Faced with the situation in the world, and war on Europe’s doorstep, we cannot take the risk of instability and of approximations,” she said. “Faced with extremes, we will yield nothing, not on one side nor the other.”If the turnout — the lowest on record for the first round of legislative elections — was linked to broad dissatisfaction with politics, it might also have reflected Mr. Macron’s highly personalized top-down style during his first term, which has often made France’s Parliament seem marginal or even irrelevant. He has now promised to govern in a more consultative way — but then he promised that in 2017, only to embrace the enormous powers of the presidency with apparent relish.Mr. Macron is the first incumbent to be re-elected since Jacques Chirac in 2002. After stumbling during the presidential campaign, he recovered to defeat Ms. Le Pen by a margin of 17 percentage points.Since then, Ms. Le Pen’s anti-immigrant National Rally party has had trouble connecting with voters and, after the first round of voting, appeared likely to end up with no more than a few dozen seats.On Sunday, Ms. Le Pen, who was poised to keep her seat in Parliament, called on her supporters to abstain from voting in the event of a runoff between a candidate from the left-wing alliance and one from Mr. Macron’s coalition, to prevent Mr. Macron from gaining an absolute majority.“It’s important to not let Mr. Macron get an absolute majority,” she said. “If you let him, we risk entering a tunnel over the next five years, a lightless tunnel.”Éric Zemmour, a far-right pundit who briefly shook up the presidential election with anti-immigrant stances even more extreme than Ms. Le Pen’s, had entered the parliamentary race in the southern Var area of France, but on Sunday he was knocked out.Marine Le Pen after voting in Henin Beaumont, in northern France.Stephanie Lecocq/EPA, via ShutterstockForeign policy is largely determined by the president, but Mr. Macron needs Parliament for his domestic agenda. This includes his contentious vow to raise the legal age of retirement progressively to 65 from 62. He would like to see a bill enacted within 12 months to that effect.More pressing is a government bill to prop up French purchasing power, which has taken a hit from rising inflation. The government wants Parliament to vote over the summer on the bill, which includes subsidies for poorer households to buy essential food products.The National Assembly is the more powerful house of Parliament, with greater leeway to legislate and challenge the executive than the Senate. It usually has the final word if the two houses disagree on a bill, and it is the only house that can topple a French cabinet with a no-confidence vote.The party that Mr. Macron founded, La République en Marche, swept to victory in 2017 with a wave of political newcomers as candidates. For these elections, La République en Marche is the largest force in a coalition called Ensemble, which includes some of Mr. Macron’s longtime centrist allies and some newer ones.The left-wing alliance ran a vigorous campaign that saturated airwaves and that focused heavily on Mr. Mélenchon. With typical bravado, and equally typical hyperbole, he promised that French voters could “elect” him prime minister by sweeping in a left-wing majority in Parliament for the first time in a decade. The prime minister is in fact appointed by the president.But Mr. Macron is a formidable opponent, as several elections have now shown. He has proved masterful in occupying the entire middle ground in French politics, eclipsing both the center-left Socialists and the center-right Republicans.Whatever the temptation of the extremes for French voters angered over the economic situation and immigration, the center retains a strong appeal, and the country has resisted the kind of blow-up-the-system political lurch evident in America’s election of Donald J. Trump and Britain’s choice of Brexit.Constant Méheut More

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      Newly United, French Left Hopes to Counter President in Upcoming Vote

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      Left-wing parties have joined forces ahead of France’s two-stage parliamentary elections, hoping to revive their fortunes and put a break on President Emmanuel Macron’s agenda.ALLEX, France — With its centuries-old stone villages nestled among lavender fields, cows and goats grazing in the mountains and miles of vineyards, the Drôme region resembles a France in miniature.Steeped in tradition and seemingly averse to change, the vast southeastern district, tucked between Lyon and Marseille, has for the past two decades been the political domain of France’s center-right. But with the first round of France’s two-step parliamentary elections approaching on Sunday, the long-excluded left sees a rare opening to challenge President Emmanuel Macron, after his convincing re-election victory in April over Marine Le Pen, his far-right challenger.Largely nonexistent in the presidential campaign, France’s fractious leftist parties have forged an alliance with the aim of making themselves relevant again, blocking Mr. Macron from getting a majority in Parliament and complicating his new five-year term.At least that is the hope of politicians like Marie Pochon, the local left-wing candidate in the third constituency of the Drôme, where left-wing parties outscored Mr. Macron’s in the presidential vote by more than 10 percentage points.Marie Pochon, left, a candidate representing the leftist coalition NUPES, campaigning door to door in Allex, France, a town in the Drôme.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesDuring a recent stop in Allex, a small village of cream-colored stone houses in the eastern part of the Drôme, Ms. Pochon was met with an enthusiasm that had long eluded the left in this part of France.“Keep going, we’re all behind you!” Maud Dugrand, a resident of Allex, told Ms. Pochon as she rang doorbells on a narrow street and handed out leaflets, which one resident, reading a newspaper on his terrace, refused, saying he was already convinced by her.“Our constituency is a laboratory,” said Pascale Rochas, a local Socialist candidate in the 2017 legislative elections who has now rallied behind Ms. Pochon’s candidacy. “If we can win here, we can win elsewhere.”The Drôme, indeed, is a snapshot of small-town France, giving the local election the veneer of a national contest. Until recently, the region was typical of the disarray of the left at the national level, with each party refusing to collaborate and instead clinging to its strongholds.Emmanuel Macron’s Second Term as President of FranceWith the reelection of Emmanuel Macron, French voters favored his promise of stability  over the temptation of an extremist lurch.Cabinet: President Macron’s new government combines continuity with change, as newcomers at the foreign and education ministries join first-term veterans.New Prime Minister: Élisabeth Borne, the minister of labor who previously was in charge of the environment, will be the second woman to hold the post in France.Overcoming Tragedy: Ms. Borne’s father, a World War II resistance member and a Holocaust survivor, killed himself when she was 11, an experience she has rarely discussed in public.Rape Allegations: Two women have accused Damien Abad, the newly appointed minister for solidarity and for disabled people, of raping them. Mr. Abad has denied the allegations.The Socialists and Communists have long dominated the southern Provençal villages, while the Greens and the hard left have battled for the more economically threatened farmlands in the north.Residents discussing the upcoming legislative elections in a market in Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux, in the Drôme, on Tuesday.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesBut the new leftist alliance — forged under the leadership of the longtime leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon — is now trying to bridge those gaps, uniting Mr. Mélenchon’s own France Unbowed Party with the Socialists, Communists and Greens.Mr. Mélenchon, who came third in April’s presidential race, has portrayed the parliamentary election as a “third round” presidential vote. He has called on voters to metaphorically “elect” him prime minister (the position is appointed by the president) by giving the coalition a majority in the National Assembly, the lower and most powerful house of Parliament.The alliance has allowed the left to avoid competing candidacies and instead field a single candidate in almost all of France’s 577 constituencies, automatically raising its chances of winning seats in Parliament.Stewart Chau, a political analyst for the polling firm Viavoice, said the alliance was “the only dynamic in the current political landscape.”Since her loss in the presidential election, Ms. Le Pen’s National Rally party has failed to drive the public debate around its favorite themes of economic insecurity, immigration and crime, and the two-round voting system, which generally favors more moderate candidates, will most likely result in the far right securing only a few dozen seats in Parliament.Posters featuring Ms. Pochon, in the commune of Saoû.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesMr. Chau said Mr. Mélenchon had created a new “center of gravity” for the French left and had “succeeded in pushing through the idea that the game was not up yet,” despite Mr. Macron’s re-election.Opinion polls currently give the leftist coalition — called Nouvelle Union populaire écologique et sociale, more commonly known by its acronym NUPES — a chance of winning 160 to 230 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly.That could be enough to put a break on Mr. Macron’s political agenda in Parliament and upset his second term as president, though it is far from certain.Ms. Pochon, 32, an environmental activist, perhaps best embodies the outreach of the left-wing alliance even in areas that the center-right has long controlled.Economic and social issues vary greatly along the roads that run through the Drôme’s third constituency. Each of its 238 municipalities, populated by only a few thousand people, face specific challenges.Voters mingling after Ms. Pochon’s rally on Tuesday before the first round of voting on Sunday.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesEconomic insecurity, a shortage of doctors and a lack of public transportation are the main concerns in the district’s northern farmlands, whereas Provençal villages in the south are more worried about lavender production, a key feature of the local economy increasingly threatened by rising temperatures.To address the variety of issues, Ms. Pochon has drawn on the alliance’s extensive platform, which includes raising the monthly minimum wage to 1,500 euros, or about $1,600; kick-starting ecological transition with big investments in green energy; reintroducing small train lines; and putting an end to medical deserts.“We’re witnessing the emergence of a rural environmentalism, of a new kind of left in these territories,” Ms. Pochon said during an interview.It has also helped that local left-wing forces have teamed up in the election, putting an end to divisions that Ms. Rochas said had been a “heartbreak.”Celia de Lavergne, right, a candidate in Mr. Macron’s center-right party, canvassing for votes at a market.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesIn the Drôme, Macron supporters acknowledged the challenge they face. “NUPES worry us a bit because they’re very present on the ground,” said Maurice Mérabet, as he was handing out leaflets at an open-air market for Célia de Lavergne, the constituency’s current lawmaker and a member of Mr. Macron’s party, La République En Marche.Ms. de Lavergne, who is running for re-election and was campaigning in Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux, a small town in southern Drôme, said it would “be a close race” between her and Ms. Pochon.She attacked the leftist alliance for its economic platform, saying it was unrealistic and slammed the coalition’s plans to phase out reliance on nuclear power.Instead she highlighted how she has fought to try to get an additional reactor for the local nuclear plant, as part of Mr. Macron’s ambitious plans to construct 14 new-generation reactors.“Being antinuclear is a total aberration,” said Jean-Paul Sagnard, 72, a retiree, as he wove his way through the market’s vegetable stalls. He added that Mr. Macron’s platform was “the one that makes the most sense economically speaking.”Nuclear power and climate change are key issues for voters in the Drôme.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesCriticism about Mr. Mélenchon’s fiery personality is also frequent, even among left-wing supporters.Maurice Feschet, a lavender producer, said that even though he would vote for the leftist alliance on Sunday, Mr. Mélenchon’s calls to elect him prime minister had left him indifferent.“I don’t think that he has what it takes to lead the country,” said Mr. Feschet, standing in the middle of a lavender field.In the narrow streets of the village of Allex, Ms. Dugrand, the supporter of Ms. Pochon, also told the candidate that Mr. Mélenchon “is not my cup of tea.” But she could not hide her excitement at the prospect of the left becoming the main force of opposition to Mr. Macron, after five years during which it was virtually voiceless.“We only have one wish, that something happens,” she said.Campaign posters in Allex, a village in the Drôme, speak to the region’s importance in the upcoming election.Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times More

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      America’s Doug Mastriano Problem

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      If the Ohio Senate primary two weeks ago provided some clarity about the ideological divisions in the Republican Party, Tuesday’s primaries often seemed more like a showcase for the distinctive personalities that populate a Trumpified G.O.P.The Pennsylvania Senate race gave us an especially vivid mix: As of this writing, the Celebrity Doctor and the Hedge Fund Guy Pretending to Be a MAGA True Believer may be headed for a recount, after the Would-Be Media Personality With the Inspiring Back Story and the Unfortunate Twitter Feed faded back into the pack. In the governor’s race, Republican voters chose to nominate Doug Mastriano, a.k.a. the QAnon Dad. In North Carolina, they ended — for now — the political career of Representative Madison Cawthorn, the Obviously Suffering Grifter.On substance, as opposed to personality, though, the night’s stakes were relatively simple: Can Republicans prevent their party from becoming the party of constitutional crisis, with leaders tacitly committed to turning the next close presidential election into a legal-judicial-political train wreck?This is a distinctive version of a familiar political problem. Whenever a destabilizing populist rebellion is unleashed inside a democratic polity, there are generally two ways to bring back stability without some kind of crisis or rupture in the system.Sometimes the revolt can be quarantined within a minority coalition and defeated by a majority. This was the destiny, for instance, of William Jennings Bryan’s 1890s prairie-populist rebellion, which took over the Democratic Party but went down to multiple presidential defeats at the hands of the more establishmentarian Republicans. You can see a similar pattern, for now, in French politics, where the populism of Marine Le Pen keeps getting isolated and defeated by the widely disliked but grudgingly tolerated centrism of Emmanuel Macron.In the alternative path to stability, the party being reshaped by populism finds leaders who can absorb its energies, channel its grievances and claim its mantle — but also defeat or suppress its most extreme manifestations. This was arguably the path of New Deal liberalism in its relationship to Depression-era populism and radicalism: In the 1930s, Franklin Roosevelt was able to sustain support from voters who were also drawn to more demagogic characters, from Huey Long to Charles Coughlin. Two generations later, it was the path of Reaganite conservatism in its relationship to both George Wallace’s populism and the Goldwaterite New Right.The problem for America today is that neither stabilizing strategy is going particularly well. Part of the Never Trump movement has aspired to a Macron-style strategy, preaching establishment unity behind the Democratic Party. But the Democrats haven’t cooperated: They conspicuously failed to contain and defeat Trumpism in 2016, and there is no sign that the Biden-era variation on the party is equipped to hold on to the majority it won in 2020.Meanwhile, the Republican Party at the moment does have a provisional model for channeling but also restraining populism. Essentially it involves leaning into culture-war controversy and rhetorical pugilism to a degree that provokes constant liberal outrage and using that outrage to reassure populist voters that you’re on their side and they don’t need to throw you over for a conspiracy theorist or Jan. 6 marcher.This is the model, in different styles and contexts, of Glenn Youngkin and Ron DeSantis. In Tuesday’s primaries it worked for Idaho’s conservative incumbent governor, Brad Little, who easily defeated his own lieutenant governor’s much-further-right campaign. Next week the same approach seems likely to help Brian Kemp defeat David Perdue for the governor’s nomination in Georgia. And it offers the party’s only chance, most likely via a DeSantis candidacy, to defeat Donald Trump in 2024.Unfortunately this model works best when you have a trusted figure, a known quantity, delivering the “I’ll be your warrior, I’ll defeat the left” message. The Cawthorn race, in which the toxic congressman was unseated by a member of the North Carolina State Senate, shows that this figure doesn’t have to be an incumbent to succeed, especially if other statewide leaders provide unified support. But if you have neither unity nor a figure with statewide prominence or incumbency as your champion — no Kemp, no Little — then you can get results like Mastriano’s victory last night in Pennsylvania: a Republican nominee for governor who cannot be trusted to carry out his constitutional duties should the presidential election be close in 2024.So now the obligation returns to the Democrats. Mastriano certainly deserves to lose the general election, and probably he will. But throughout the whole Trumpian experience, the Democratic Party has consistently failed its own tests of responsibility: It has talked constantly about the threat to democracy while moving leftward to a degree that makes it difficult to impossible to hold the center, and it has repeatedly cheered on unfit Republican candidates on the theory that they will be easier to beat.This happened conspicuously with Trump himself, and more unforgivably it happened again with Mastriano: Pennsylvania Democrats sent out mailers boosting his candidacy and ran a big ad buy, more than twice Mastriano’s own TV spending, calling him “one of Donald Trump’s strongest supporters” — an “attack” line perfectly scripted to improve his primary support.Now they have him, as they had Trump in 2016. We’ll see if they can make the story end differently this time.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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      Emmanuel Macron Inaugurated for a 2nd Term as France President

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      “Rarely has our world and our country confronted such a combination of challenges,” Mr. Macron said, promising to govern France more inclusively.PARIS — Beneath the chandeliers of the Elysée Palace, Emmanuel Macron was inaugurated on Saturday for a second five-year term as president of France, vowing to lead more inclusively and to “act first to avoid any escalation following the Russian aggression in Ukraine.”In a sober speech lasting less than ten minutes, remarkably short for a leader given to prolixity in his first term, Mr. Macron seemed determined to project a new humility and a break from a sometimes abrasive style. “Rarely has our world and our country confronted such a combination of challenges,” he said.Mr. Macron, 44, held off the far-right nationalist leader Marine Le Pen to win re-election two weeks ago with 58.55 percent of the vote. It was a more decisive victory than polls had suggested but it also left no doubt of the anger and social fracture he will now confront.Where other countries had ceded to “nationalist temptation and nostalgia for the past,” and to ideologies “we thought left behind in the last century,” France had chosen “a republican and European project, a project of independence in a destabilized world,” Mr. Macron said.In a sober speech lasting less than ten minutes, Mr. Macron projected a new humility and a break from a sometimes abrasive style.Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHe has spent a lot of time in recent months attempting to address that instability, provoked above all by Russia’s war in Ukraine. His overtures have borne little fruit. Still, Mr. Macron made clear that he would fight so that “democracy and courage prevail” in the struggle for a “a new European peace and a new autonomy on our continent.”The president is an ardent proponent of greater “strategic autonomy,” sovereignty and independence for Europe, which he sees as a precondition for relevancy in the 21st century. This quest has brought some friction with the United States, largely overcome during the war in Ukraine, even if Mr. Macron seems to have more faith in negotiating with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia than President Biden has.Understand France’s Presidential ElectionThe reelection of Emmanuel Macron on April 24 marked the end of a presidential campaign that pitted his promise for stability against extremist views.Presidential Election: Mr. Macron triumphed over Marine Le Pen, his far-right challenger, after a campaign where his promise of stability prevailed. Growing Disillusionment: The election was marked by record levels of abstention, a sign of people’s frustration with the political establishment. Signs of Trouble: Despite Mr. Macron’s victory, the low turnout and Ms. Le Pen’s strong showing offered warning signs for Western democracies. Political Parties: France’s mainstream left and right-wing parties used to have it all, but fared poorly in the presidential election. What went wrong?Mr. Macron gave his trademark wink to his wife Brigitte, 69, as he arrived in the reception hall of the presidential palace, where about 500 people, including former Presidents François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, were gathered.Laurent Fabius, the president of the Constitutional Council, formally announced the results of the election. A general presented Mr. Macron with the elaborate necklace of Grandmaster of the Legion of Honor, France’s highest distinction.Guests came from all walks of life, ranging from the military to the theater. But in a sign of the distance France has to travel in its quest for greater political diversity, the attendees included a lot of white men in dark blue suits and ties, the near universal uniform of the products of the country’s elite schools.At the ceremony, Mr. Macron received the necklace of a Grandmaster of the Legion of Honor, France’s highest distinction.Pool photo by Gonzalo FuentesThe president then went out to the gardens, where he listened to a 21-gun salute fired from the Invalides on the other side of the Seine. No drive down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées followed, in line with the ceremony for the last re-elected president, Jacques Chirac, two decades ago.Mr. Macron will travel to Strasbourg on Monday to celebrate “Europe Day,” commemorating the end of World War II in Europe, which in contrast to Mr. Putin’s May 9 “Victory Day” is dedicated to the concept of peace through unity on the Continent.Addressing the European Parliament, Mr. Macron will set out plans for the 27-nation European Union to become an effective, credible and cohesive power. He will then travel to Berlin that evening to meet German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in a sign of the paramount importance of Franco-German relations.Sometimes referred to as the “president of the rich” because of the free-market reforms that initiated his presidency (and despite the state’s “whatever-it-takes” support for furloughed workers during the pandemic), Mr. Macron promised a “new method” of governing, symbolized by renaming his centrist party “Renaissance.”Dismissing the idea that his election was a prolongation of his first term, Mr. Macron said “a new people, different from five years ago, has entrusted a new president with a new mandate.”He vowed to govern in conjunction with labor unions and all representatives of the cultural, economic, social and political worlds. This would stand in contrast to the top-down presidential style he favored in his first term that often seemed to turn Parliament into a sideshow. The institutions of the Fifth Republic, as favored by Charles de Gaulle in 1958, tilt heavily toward presidential authority.Mr. Macron greeted two of his presidential predecessors, Nicolas Sarkozy, center, and François Hollande.Pool photo by Gonzalo FuentesMs. Le Pen’s strong showing revealed a country angry over falling purchasing power, rising inflation, high gasoline prices, and a sense, in blighted urban projects and ill-served rural areas, of abandonment. Mr. Macron was slow to wake up to this reality and now appears determined to make amends. He has promised several measures, including indexing pensions to inflation beginning this summer, to demonstrate his commitment.However, Mr. Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age to 65 from 62, albeit in gradual stages, appears almost certain to provoke social unrest in a country where the left is proposing that people be allowed to retire at 60.“Let us act to make our country a great ecological power through a radical transformation of our means of production, of our way of traveling, of our lives,” Mr. Macron declared. During his first term, his approach to leading France toward a post-carbon economy was often hesitant, infuriating the left.This month, left-wing forces struck a deal to unite for next month’s parliamentary election under the leadership of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a hard-left politician who came just short of beating out Ms. Le Pen for a spot in the presidential election runoff. Mr. Mélenchon has made no secret of his ambition to become prime minister, and Mr. Macron no secret of his doubts about this prospect.The bloc — including Mr. Mélenchon’s France Unbowed Party, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party and the Greens — represents an unusual feat for France’s chronically fractured left and a new challenge to Mr. Macron. He will be weakened if he cannot renew his current clear majority in Parliament.A crowd from all walks of life, ranging from the military to the theater, at the Elysée Palace.Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe creation of the new Renaissance Party and an agreement announced on Friday with small centrist parties constituted Mr. Macron’s initial answer to this changed political reality.Mr. Macron’s first major political decision will likely be the choice of a new prime minister to replace Jean Castex, the incumbent. The president is said to favor the appointment of a woman to lead the government into the legislative elections.However, he will not make the decision until after his second term formally begins on next Saturday, after the first term expires at midnight.Constant Méheut More

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      Are Traditional Political Parties Dead in France?

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      Presidents, prime ministers, Parliament — France’s mainstream left and right-wing parties used to have it all. In the first round of April’s presidential elections, they got less than 7 percent of the vote.PARIS — Since the 1950s, France’s traditional left- and right-wing parties have provided three-quarters of the country’s presidents and nearly all of its prime ministers.Parliament has also swung from one to the other in alternating waves of pink, the color associated with the Socialist Party or its predecessors, and blue, which represents the main conservative party, known today as Les Républicains.But in this month’s presidential election, candidates for both parties cratered.In the first round of voting, Anne Hidalgo, the Socialist candidate, got only 1.75 percent of the vote. Valérie Pécresse, the Républicain candidate, got 4.78 percent, far less than the 2017 candidate for her party, François Fillon, who garnered 20.01 percent — even after a scandal involving a no-show job for his wife.Both Ms. Hidalgo and Ms. Pécresse were unceremoniously knocked out of the race.President Emmanuel Macron, whose centrist party was created just six years ago, then battled Marine Le Pen, of the far-right National Rally party, and won a second term.The stark collapse of the Socialists and Les Républicains capped a yearslong downward spiral for both parties, which have struggled to persuade voters that they could handle concerns including security, inequality and climate change, experts say.Supporters of Valérie Pécresse, the presidential candidate for Les Républicains, watching the results of the first round of the presidential election in Paris, on April 10.Adnan Farzat/EPA, via ShutterstockThe old left-right division has given way to a new landscape, split into three major blocs. Mr. Macron’s broad, pro-globalization center is now flanked by radical forces: on the right, Ms. Le Pen and her anti-immigrant nationalism; on the left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a fiery politician who champions state-led policies against E.U. rules and the free market.Many now wonder what will remain of the former stalwart political parties.“Before, there was the left, the right — that was clearer,” said Jeanette Brimble, 80, speaking recently on a narrow cobblestone street in the southern French town of Aix-en-Provence. For decades, she voted for mainstream conservatives. This time, pleased by Mr. Macron’s shift rightward, she cast a ballot for him.The downfall of the traditional parties, Ms. Brimble said, was “a bit disturbing for my generation.”In 2017, Mr. Macron’s first election landed an initial blow to the system, shattering the left. With the vote this month, the right is feeling the damage.Mr. Macron is set to be in office until 2027 — French law limits presidents to two consecutive terms. After that, it is unclear whether the traditional parties will be able to rebound.Dominique Reynié, a political analyst who heads the Foundation for Political Innovation, a research institute that focuses on European and economic policy, said a departure from politics by Mr. Macron “would give the traditional governing parties a chance to get back into the game.”But some expect volatility instead.“I don’t believe that traditional parties are going to be reborn on the ashes of La République en Marche,” said Martial Foucault, director of the CEVIPOF political research institute at Sciences Po in Paris, referring to Mr. Macron’s party. In France’s increasingly personality-driven politics, disillusioned voters could shift from one charismatic leader to another, regardless of party affiliation, he said.“Citizens want efficiency,” he added. “So they are prone to these electoral movements, effectively leaving the system in total turbulence.”Mr. Macron, whose policies have straddled the left and right, is scheduled to be in office until 2027.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesIn Aix-en-Provence, a city of 145,000 that has long leaned right, the collapse was striking. Five years ago, Mr. Fillon came in first there with 27.45 percent of the vote. This month, Ms. Pécresse came in sixth with 5.5 percent.Nationwide, the Elabe polling institute found that roughly a third of those who had voted for Mr. Fillon in 2017 chose Mr. Macron this time, versus only a quarter for Ms. Pécresse, Mr. Fillon’s successor as the candidate of Les Républicains. Even Nicolas Sarkozy, the party’s last French president, from 2007 to 2012, didn’t endorse her.In a particularly humiliating turn of events, Ms. Pécresse came in fourth behind Mr. Mélenchon in Versailles, the bourgeois Parisian suburb that she once represented in Parliament. Ms. Hidalgo, who has been mayor of Paris for over eight years, got only 2.17 percent of the capital’s vote.Financial concerns compound the embarrassment.Presidential candidates can get a state reimbursement of up to 8 million euros for funds that they personally contribute to their campaigns. But the amount is much lower — 800,000 euros, or about $865,000 — if they get less than 5 percent of the vote.Mainstream candidates long considered 5 percent a low bar, allowing them to take out loans with the assurance that a large chunk of their expenses would be reimbursed once they cleared the threshold. But Ms. Pécresse, now personally in debt for €5 million, has been forced to appeal for donations.“At stake is the survival of Les Républicains, and beyond that, the survival of the republican right,” she said. (So far she has collected €2 million.)A poster of Ms. Pécresse lying on a street in Marseille, southern France, on April 6.Daniel Cole/Associated PressBoth the Socialists and the Républicains failed to capitalize on anger against Mr. Macron, who wooed voters with sweeping promises of pragmatic centrism but whose first term was divisive. Mainstream parties have struggled to address issues like immigration, security, inequality or climate change, experts say, partly because Mr. Macron has cherry-picked from their platforms, especially on the right.Alix Fabre, who voted for Mr. Fillon in 2017 before turning to Mr. Macron, said in Aix-en-Provence that the president’s pro-business policies and those of the mainstream right felt similar.“Most people around me are from the right, and they’ve joined Macron,” she said.Experts also see a deeper disconnect, saying that both parties grew complacent in the belief that their turn in office would always come again. Fixated on internal quarrels and hemorrhaging dues-paying members, they lost touch with ordinary citizens, failing to harness movements like the Yellow Vest protests, experts said. They have also been unable to offer convincing alternatives to more radical forces like Ms. Le Pen.“It’s a constant, lasting failure to represent social conflict,” said Mr. Reynié, the analyst. For Mr. Foucault, of the CEVIPOF, “these parties haven’t understood what citizens are asking of them, in terms of renewing their platforms and their ideology.”Ms. Hidalgo, center, has been the mayor of Paris for more than eight years, yet only got 2.17 percent of the vote there in the presidential election.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesMr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen’s parties have issues too. Few see La République en Marche outlasting Mr. Macron’s political ambitions. The National Rally has been a Le Pen family affair for decades, marked by eight defeats in presidential elections.France’s traditional political forces still control many cities and other local or regional offices, where voters are more likely to trust familiar faces with day-to-day concerns.In 2021, Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen’s parties failed to win a single one of France’s 13 mainland regions, although Mr. Foucault said appearances were slightly misleading, because without American-style midterm elections, the French only have local elections to voice discontent with the government.Corinne Narassiguin, a top Socialist official, said that her party’s disastrous results at the national level marked “the end of a cycle” that started in 2017, after which the party was forced to sell its headquarters in an upscale Paris neighborhood and move to the suburbs.“Voters have made it clear that we’re no longer able to tell them why they should vote for the Socialists at the national level,” she said.The Socialists and the Républicains are now scrambling to shore up support ahead of the legislative elections in June, which will fill all seats in France’s lower house of Parliament. But both face serious challenges.The Socialists, whose strength in Parliament has already shrunk, could end up with even fewer lawmakers as Mr. Mélenchon’s party gains prominence. The Républicains are torn between those favoring an alliance with Mr. Macron’s party, those wanting to stay independent, and those leaning toward Éric Zemmour, an anti-immigrant pundit who also ran for president.Marine Le Pen, who battled Mr. Macron for the presidency, earlier this month in Paris.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesMarie Ronzevalle, 29, who works in event management in Aix-en-Provence, voted for Mr. Macron in 2017 — she liked his vow to “break with traditional codes” — but was disappointed by some of his policies and picked Ms. Hidalgo in the first round this year.She said that her family struggled to pick a candidate in this election — unlike her now-deceased grandmother and great-grandmother, loyal Socialists who worked for the party.One of her grandfathers, who always voted for the mainstream right but strongly hesitated this time, even briefly considered a blank ballot.“There is less of that feeling of belonging and automatically giving your vote to a party,” Ms. Ronzevalle said. “People are sick and tired of being asked to fit into a box.”“They want to see things change,” she added. “But maybe the old parties are no longer the solution.”Aurelien Breeden More

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      The Unsettling Warning in France’s Election

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      A record number of abstentions, and a strictly binary choice for voters — many of whom said they were picking the lesser of two evils — are trouble signs even within a mature democracy.You should know at least two crucial facts about the French presidential election, whose final round was held last Sunday.The first is that Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate known for her warm relationship with Vladimir Putin and her hostility toward the European Union and immigrants, lost the election — but with the best showing that her party has ever had, carrying 41.5 percent of the second-round vote.The second is that Emmanuel Macron, the incumbent president from the center-right En Marche party, won the election — but with the lowest share of registered voters of any candidate since 1969, because of historically low turnout and high numbers of votes that were cast blank or spoiled in a show of protest.Of those two facts, the first has garnered the most attention. But the second may be more important.Vote, or hostage negotiation?In the first round of the presidential election, Macron came in first, but with nowhere close to a majority. He got barely more than a quarter of the total votes, with 27.85 percent. Le Pen came next with 23.15 percent, and the leftist candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, got 21.95 percent. The rest of the votes were divided between smaller parties.That’s actually pretty common: Today, in many mature democracies, it’s uncommon for any party or ideological faction to get more than about a third of the votes. In the German federal election last year, the center-left party came first, but with only 25.7 percent of the vote — strikingly similar to the numbers for Macron in the first round. In multiparty parliamentary systems, that results in coalition governments in which two or more parties work together — take Germany, again, where a three-party coalition now governs.Ms. Le Pen had a strong showing in both rounds of the 2022 French presidential election.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesBut in direct presidential systems, the winner takes all. And for many voters, that means that elections are less a matter of who they want to support than of who they most want to oppose.So when Le Pen made the second round runoff of the French election, the contest took on the tenor of a hostage negotiation. Macron argued that Le Pen was an existential threat to France, and called for all other candidates’ supporters to unite behind him in order to prevent her from winning the presidency. Mélenchon, the leftist candidate, made a similar plea to his supporters. “We know who we will never vote for,” he said on April 10. “We must not give a single vote for Madame Le Pen.”In the end, enough voters aligned behind Macron to keep the far right out of the presidency. And it seems that many heeded the calls to hold their noses and vote for Macron, despite their aversion to him, in order to protect the country from the far right: According to one poll, about 45 percent of those who voted for him did so only to oppose Le Pen.But the same poll found that the opposite was also true: About 45 percent of Le Pen voters were more interested in opposing Macron than in supporting the far right. Other data bears that out: The overseas French territories Martinique and Guadeloupe supported Mélenchon in the first round, but then gave a majority to Le Pen in the second.Others withdrew entirely. Abstentions and blank ballots hit record highs in this election — a notable development in France, where turnout has historically been around 80 percent.A warning from historyExperts who study France’s history of revolutions and democratic collapse see signs of danger in a system that pushes a wide spectrum of voters into a binary choice between what some see as the lesser of two evils.So how do you tell the difference between normal political anger that can work itself out through a series of elections without leading to serious instability, and something dangerous enough to require structural change to the system itself?A woman voting at a polling station in Saint Denis, in the suburbs of Paris. The election saw a high level of voter abstentions.Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times“That’s the question of French history, right?” Terrence Peterson, a political historian at Florida International University, told me. “Historians have been asking that question about France for a long time, given its history of repeated revolutions.”He saw particular cause for concern in the rising levels of abstentions. “When voters express that they feel disenfranchised, if a majority of them do, then that’s a clear sign” of serious trouble, he said.Some in France have begun to call for an overhaul of the Constitution to make the system more representative. Mélenchon has called for a new Constitution to be drafted via a people’s constituent assembly. In an editorial last week in the French newspaper Le Monde, Frederic Sawicki, a political scientist at Pantheon-Sorbonne University, argued that the lack of proportional representation had brought the far right “to the gates of power” in France.Camille Robcis, a Columbia University historian who studies 20th-century French politics and institutions, said that she was not surprised to hear such calls. “You have a kind of disconnect between the representatives and the popular vote, the electorate,” she said. “The result is that these disenchanted, disenfranchised voters are moving to the extremes.”How am I doing?I’d love your feedback on this newsletter. Please email thoughts and suggestions to interpreter@nytimes.com. You can also follow me on Twitter.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      French Lessons for the Biden Administration

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      You probably breathed a deep sigh of relief when you heard that Emmanuel Macron trounced Marine Le Pen by a 17-point margin in Sunday’s French presidential election. A Le Pen victory would have been a boon to Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban and Steve Bannon and a disaster for NATO, Europe and France.The center held, thank God — because Macron governed from the center. He was hated by the far left and the far right and never entirely pleased those closer to the center. But he also became the first president to be re-elected in France in 20 years.There’s a lesson in that for the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress, especially when it comes to immigration.It has become an article of progressive faith in recent years that efforts to control immigration are presumptively racist.A border wall is “a monument to white supremacy,” according to a piece published in Bloomberg. The “remain in Mexico” policy is “racist, cruel and inhumane,” according to the Justice Action Center. An essay published by the Brookings Institution calls U.S. immigration policy “a classic, unappreciated example of structural racism.”It wasn’t long ago that Bernie Sanders was an avowed restrictionist on the view that immigration depresses working-class wages. Did that position make him a racist? The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, where I once worked, used to make the case for open borders with Mexico. Were we left-wing progressives? People of good will should be able to take different and nuanced views on immigration — and change their minds about it — without being tagged as morally deficient.But that’s no longer how it works in progressive circles. The results are policy choices that are bad for the country and worse for Democrats and are an unbidden gift to the far right.The issue is now acute with the Biden administration simultaneously seeking to end the Trump administration’s “remain in Mexico” policy in a case before the Supreme Court while accepting a recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to let the use of Title 42, which allowed border authorities to expel illegal immigrants as a public health measure, expire on May 23.There’s not much doubt as to what will happen if the administration gets its way: An already straining southern border will burst. In fiscal year 2020 there were 646,822 “enforcement actions” at the border. In 2021 the number was a little shy of two million. Without the authority of Title 42, under which 62 percent of expulsions took place in 2021, the number of migrants being released in the United States will increase drastically. You don’t have to be opposed to immigration as a general matter to have serious doubts about the administration’s course.Is there a practical and available legal alternative to regulating immigration through Title 42 enforcement? Where is the logic of ending Title 42 even as the administration seeks to extend mask mandates because the pandemic is far from over? Given housing shortages, how much capacity is there to absorb the next wave of migrants? Even if an overwhelming majority of migrants are merely seeking a better life, what system is there to find those with less honorable intentions?More to the point: What does the administration’s utter failure at effective control of the border say about its commitment to enforcing the rule of law?To raise such questions should be an invitation to propose balanced and practical immigration legislation and try to win over moderate Republicans. Instead it tends to invite cheap accusations of racism, along with policy paralysis in the White House. As Politico reported last week, some think the administration’s secret policy is to call for an end to Title 42 to satisfy progressives while crossing fingers that the courts continue it — which a federal judge did on Monday, at least temporarily.Leading from behind Trump-appointed judges is probably not what Americans elected Joe Biden to do.Which brings us back to the example of France. When Jean-Marie Le Pen made his first presidential bid on an anti-immigration platform in 1974, he took 0.75 percent of the ballot in the first round — fewer than 200,000 votes. When his daughter Marine ran on a similar platform this year, she took 41.5 percent in the second round, or more than 13 million. The Le Pens are thoroughgoing bigots.But decades of pretending that only bigots had worries about immigration only made their brand of politics stronger.As president, Macron tacked right on immigration — not to weaken France’s historic position as an open society, friendly to newcomers, but rather to save it. He has cracked down on some asylum seekers, demanded that immigrants learn French and get jobs and taken a hard line against Islamic separatism. But he’s also tried to make France a more welcoming place for legal immigration. The left thinks of him as Le Pen lite, the right as a feckless impostor. Maybe he’s both. Then again, he also saved France for the free world.Democrats could stand to brush up on their French.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