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      Tina Peters, Former Colorado County Clerk, Is Sentenced in Obstruction Case

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      Ms. Peters, who is awaiting trial in a voting equipment tampering case, was given four months of home detention and community service after her conviction on an obstruction charge.Tina Peters, a Trump loyalist who was barred from overseeing elections in a Colorado county after her indictment on charges related to tampering with voting equipment, was sentenced on Monday to home detention after she was convicted in a separate obstruction case.Ms. Peters, the former clerk in Mesa County, was given four months of house arrest and 120 hours of community service in connection with her February 2022 arrest in Grand Junction, Colo., on a misdemeanor obstruction charge, according to court records.A jury convicted Ms. Peters last month of stonewalling investigators from the district attorney’s office in Mesa County when they tried to seize an iPad from her that she had used to record a court proceeding.According to an affidavit, police officers responded to a local bagel shop where they said that Ms. Peters, a Republican, resisted while she was being searched and was taken into custody.Ms. Peters was found guilty of obstructing government operations, but was acquitted of obstructing a peace officer. She was also fined $750 and ordered to wear an ankle monitor.Harvey A. Steinberg, a lawyer for Ms. Peters, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday, but told NBC News that he and his client were relieved that Ms. Peters avoided jail time, as had been requested by the district attorney.A stay was issued in the case, pending an appeal that is expected from Ms. Peters, according to the sentencing order.Daniel P. Rubinstein, the district attorney of Mesa County, who is also a Republican, said in an interview on Tuesday that Ms. Peters had been seeking to provoke a confrontation with law enforcement officers as a “badge of honor” with her followers — and that as a public office holder at the time, she should be held accountable.Ms. Peters, a leading election denier in Colorado who promoted former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election had been stolen, ran unsuccessfully last year for secretary of state. She lost the Republican primary to Pam Anderson, who was defeated in the general election by Jena Griswold, the incumbent Democrat.A Colorado judge sided with Ms. Griswold in a lawsuit against Ms. Peters last May, blocking Ms. Peters from overseeing elections in Mesa County after she was indicted in March 2022 on charges related to a scheme to copy sensitive voting data after the 2020 election. At the time, Ms. Peters accused Democrats of using the grand jury “to formalize politically motivated accusations” against her.She is awaiting trial in that case, which is separate from a contempt charge that the district attorney is also bringing against her.Kirsten Noyes More

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      Republican Mark Lamb Files to Run for Kyrsten Sinema’s Senate Seat

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      Mark Lamb, a sheriff and an ally of former President Donald J. Trump, will run for the seat held by Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat-turned-independent.Mark Lamb, a right-wing sheriff and an ally of former President Donald J. Trump known for his policing of elections and his defiance of a pandemic lockdown, announced Tuesday that he would run for Senate in Arizona next year, a contest that could determine control of the closely divided chamber.Mr. Lamb, 50, became the first high-profile Republican to compete for the seat, one currently held by Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who left the Democratic Party in December to become an independent. Ms. Sinema has not said whether she will run, but if she does, there is already one Democratic challenger: Representative Ruben Gallego, a progressive Democrat from Phoenix.In his announcement video, Mr. Lamb said he would “stand up to the woke left” and “secure our border and support our law enforcement.” He also called out his support for gun rights and his anti-abortion stance in the ad.Mr. Lamb, as the top law enforcement officer in Arizona’s third-most populous county, Pinal, made headlines when he refused to enforce the state’s stay-at-home order in 2020 and then when he expressed sympathy for the rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He has also sown doubt over the results of the 2020 election and drawn scrutiny for his embrace of private militias and hard-line positions on immigration.The field appears likely to grow, as Republicans see an opening to retake the seat in the potential matchup between Mr. Gallego and Ms. Sinema, which could split the Democratic and independent voters who have powered victories for the left in the state.Kari Lake, a Republican who refused to accept her defeat in the governor’s race last year, has also signaled that she could jump into the race.Ms. Sinema has infuriated Democrats with her departure and opposition to key planks of their agenda in the Senate. Her split with the party came shortly after it gained an outright majority in the Senate during the midterm elections last fall.Arizona was one of the key battlegrounds in those elections, and in 2020, Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory there over Mr. Trump helped him to secure the presidency. More

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      Biden Says He Plans to Run for Re-election in 2024

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      But the president said he was not ready to formally announce a campaign yet, and a delayed announcement would not be out of character for him.WASHINGTON — President Biden on Monday said he was “planning on” seeking re-election next year but was not ready to launch his campaign yet.Mr. Biden’s 2024 plans have for months been the subject of speculation, with top aides quietly making plans to build out a campaign. But the president has yet to make a final decision.At the White House Easter egg roll, Al Roker of NBC News asked Mr. Biden if he planned on being in the White House after 2024.“I’m planning on running, Al,” Mr. Biden said. “But we’re not prepared to announce it yet.”NEW: TODAY’s @alroker asks President Biden about his possible Presidential run in 2024. pic.twitter.com/3OELi0yJmK— TODAY (@TODAYshow) April 10, 2023
      The White House has long said Mr. Biden “intends to run” but has not revealed a timeline to start a campaign. A delayed announcement would not be out of character for Mr. Biden, who waited to begin his 2020 campaign until April 2019 — well after other major candidates entered the race.President Barack Obama began his 2012 re-election campaign in April 2011. By then he had selected Charlotte, N.C., to host the 2012 Democratic National Convention and had announced his campaign headquarters would again be in Chicago.Mr. Biden has made neither type of announcement. A 2024 convention site selection could come at any time, officials say. Atlanta, Chicago and New York are the three finalist cities. The campaign headquarters will be in either Philadelphia, where Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign was based, or Wilmington, Del., where Mr. Biden has a home he often visits on weekends.Mr. Biden faces limited Democratic primary opposition despite polling that suggests majorities of Democrats would prefer he not seek re-election in 2024. More

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      Politics Complicates Chinese Reaction to U.S. Visit by Taiwan’s President

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      For Beijing, showing displeasure too openly carries risks, particularly of harming the chances for its preferred party in Taiwan’s coming presidential election.China fired off a volley of condemnations on Thursday after Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, met the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, but it held off from the kind of military escalation that threatened a crisis last summer, when Mr. McCarthy’s predecessor visited Taiwan.China’s angry reaction to the meeting between Ms. Tsai and Mr. McCarthy in California followed weeks of warnings from Beijing, which treats Taiwan as an illegitimate breakaway region whose leaders should be shunned abroad. Despite the combative words, any retaliation by Beijing in coming days may be tempered by the difficult calculations facing China’s leader, Xi Jinping, including over Taiwan’s coming presidential race.Soon after the meeting at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, China’s ministry of defense, foreign ministry and other offices in Beijing issued warnings to Taiwan and the United States.“Do not go down this dark path of ‘riding on the back of the U.S. to seek independence,” said the Chinese Communist Party’s office for Taiwan policy. “Any bid for ‘independence’ will be smashed to pieces by the power of sons and daughters of China opposed to ‘independence’ and advancing unification.”So far though, Beijing’s pugnacious language has not been matched by a big military response like the one last year. After the previous speaker, Nancy Pelosi, visited Taiwan in August in a show of solidarity, China’s People’s Liberation Army held days of miliary exercises simulating a blockade of Taiwan.Early Thursday, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense detected one Chinese military plane that entered the “air defense identification zone” off Taiwan — an informal area where aircraft are supposed to declare their presence — and three Chinese navy vessels in seas off the island. Last year, China announced its blockade exercise on the same day that Ms. Pelosi arrived in Taipei.Taiwan military vessels docked at a Navy base in Suao, Taiwan, on Thursday.Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times“China is not doing the kind of saber rattling that they were doing before the Pelosi visit. They haven’t set the stage in the same way,” said Patrick M. Cronin, the Asia-Pacific security chair at the Hudson Institute, who attended a closed-door speech Ms. Tsai gave in New York last week. “They’re going to have their hands close around the throat of Taiwan, but we’ll have to see how they squeeze.”Mr. Xi, anointed last month to a third term as president, wants to deter Taiwan from high-level contacts abroad. Yet he is also trying to improve China’s relations with Western governments, restore economic growth and aid the chances of his favored party in Taiwan’s presidential election in January. An extended military crisis over Taiwan could hurt all three goals, especially the last one.“On the one hand, there’s a desire to signal to Taiwan, to the U.S. and also to Taiwan voters, that efforts to raise Taiwan’s international profile are unacceptable from China’s standpoint,” said Scott L. Kastner, a professor of politics at the University of Maryland. But, he added, “on balance the incentives are for the People’s Republic of China to act with more restraint than usual in the run-up to the election.”China’s ties with Europe, Australia and other Western governments have been damaged by disputes over Covid, Chinese political influence abroad, and Mr. Xi’s ties to Russia. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, is in China this week, and he is among the European leaders who Mr. Xi hopes can be coaxed away from Washington’s hard line on China.President Emmanuel Macron of France is welcomed by Chinese Premier Minister Li Qiang at the Great Hall of the People on Thursday in Beijing.Pool photo by Thibault CamusA menacing display by the People’s Liberation Army could also hurt the presidential hopes of Taiwan’s main opposition party, the Nationalists, which favors stronger ties with China. Ms. Tsai must step down next year, and a crisis in the Taiwan Strait could help galvanize support for her Democratic Progressive Party and undercut the Nationalists’ case for more cooperation with Beijing.“Beijing will want to visibly register its displeasure, lest its leaders be accused at home of tolerating Taiwan’s efforts to move further away from China,” said Ryan Hass, a former adviser on China policy to President Obama and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “At the same time, Beijing also will want to preserve some headroom for further escalation should future circumstances require.”In Beijing and Taipei, memories linger of 1995, when Lee Teng-hui, then president of Taiwan, gave a speech celebrating Taiwan’s democratic transformation while visiting the United States. China condemned Mr. Lee’s visit and responded with military exercises that resumed in 1996. President Lee soundly won another term that year, despite Beijing’s missiles.President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan delivering a lecture at his alma mater, Cornell University, in 1995. Bob Strong/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn 2020, Ms. Tsai rebounded from low approval ratings to win a second term after a Beijing-backed crackdown on protests in Hong Kong repulsed voters in Taiwan.“Beijing likely has learned from past experience that whenever it uses tough fire-and-fury rhetoric around Taiwan’s presidential election, usually that invites voter backlash,” said Wen-Ti Sung, a political scientist with the Taiwan Studies Program of the Australian National University in Canberra.Still, if Taiwanese voters felt that Ms. Tsai was goading Beijing, that could hurt her standing and her party’s image. Her trip to the United States reflected her careful calculus: She sought to deepen Taiwan’s ties with Washington, while avoiding giving China an excuse for a new round of threatening military exercises.In California, Ms. Tsai thanked the Republican and Democrat lawmakers who attended. “Their presence and unwavering support reassure the people of Taiwan that we are not isolated,” she said, standing next to Mr. McCarthy.Ms. Tsai and Mr. McCarthy at a news conference at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Wednesday.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesMany in Taiwan, especially supporters of Ms. Tsai’s government, believe that such meetings are important, despite Beijing’s warnings.“Taiwan is already very alone, and it’s very dangerous if we don’t show we have friends, especially the United States,” said Kao Teng-sheng, a businessman in Chiayi, a city in southern Taiwan, who previously ran a factory in southern China. “If she did not meet McCarthy, that would also be dangerous for Taiwan. It would look like we are panicking.”Taiwan’s presidential race is likely to come down to a contest between the Democratic Progressive Party’s Lai Ching-te, currently the vice president, and a Nationalist contender, possibly Hou You-yi, the popular mayor of New Taipei City. Beijing would prefer a Nationalist leader in Taipei, and over recent days has been hosting, and feting, Ma Ying-jeou, the previous Nationalist president.“In military threats, China’s attitude won’t soften, but it will also invite those like Ma Ying-jeou to China,” said I-Chung Lai, a former director of the China affairs section of the Democratic Progressive Party and now a senior adviser to the Taiwan Thinktank in Tapei.Beijing’s dismal relations with Washington may also factor into Mr. Xi’s calculations. At a summit in November, he and President Biden tried to rein in tensions over technology bans, military rivalry, human rights, and Chinese support for Russia.U.S. President Biden meeting with President Xi Jinping of China in Bali, Indonesia, in November 2022.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThose efforts stalled in February after the Biden administration revealed that a Chinese surveillance balloon was floating over the United States, and Mr. Xi affirmed his support for Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, during a summit in Moscow, despite the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A new crisis over Taiwan could push the strains between Beijing and Washington to a dangerous limit.Some Taiwanese analysts have said that China may announce some military exercises around Taiwan after Mr. Ma, the visiting former president, returns to Taipei on Friday.Even with Taiwan’s looming election, “if the Chinese Communist Party faces what it believes is a violation of its very core fundamental positions or interests, then it seems it won’t go soft on Taiwan,” said Huang Kwei-Bo, a professor of international relations at the National Chengchi University in Taipei who is a former deputy secretary-general of the Nationalist Party. More

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      This Wisconsin Court Race Is Highly Partisan. It Wasn’t Always That Way.

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      Supreme Court races were once more swayed by endorsements from legal and law enforcement officials. Now they’re indistinguishable from other elections.Today’s election in Wisconsin will be closely watched for its impact on the partisan makeup of the state’s top court, with abortion rights and election rules frequent topics of the campaign. The contest between Daniel Kelly, a conservative former state Supreme Court justice, and Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee County judge, is set to be one of the most consequential — and expensive — elections in the country this year.Judicial elections in Wisconsin are officially nonpartisan, but the races have become increasingly political. While it used to be common for voters to cast ballots for judges with whom they weren’t ideologically aligned, Democratic counties now heavily favor the liberal judicial candidates and Republican counties the conservative ones.The trend has been turbocharged in recent years as partisan polarization has grown nationally and as overt partisanship has crept into the dialogue among candidates for the court.It wasn’t always this way. In the 1980s and 1990s, races were largely seen as less partisan and more swayed by endorsements from leaders in the legal and law enforcement community, according to Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette University Law School Poll. He has studied the relationship between the ideological voting patterns in state Supreme Court races and presidential races.“Supreme Court races at the time seemed to be about who had more endorsements from sheriffs and prosecutors than anything else,” he said.While many candidates during the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s had discernible ideological leanings, there was almost no relationship between electoral support for judicial candidates and presidential candidates of the corresponding political party. A notable example is Dane County, a longtime Democratic stronghold that is home to the University of Wisconsin at Madison. In 2000, a majority of voters in Dane County voted for Diane Sykes, a conservative judicial candidate, while also voting for Al Gore, the Democratic candidate for president.Partisanship began creeping into races over the next decade. In a particularly vicious 2008 campaign, the conservative candidate, Michael J. Gableman, ran TV ads falsely accusing his opponent, the only Black justice on the state Supreme Court, of securing an early release of a rapist who was also Black. Mr. Gableman won by a narrow margin. After leaving the bench, he led a partisan inquiry into whether there was election fraud in Wisconsin during the 2020 presidential election.The Relationship Between the Judicial and Presidential VoteState Supreme Court and presidential election results have become increasingly correlated in Wisconsin. More

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      The Year’s Biggest Election

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      The battle for a state Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin.Wisconsin is a microcosm of the country. It is narrowly divided politically, though Democrats have a slight advantage in the popular vote in statewide elections. And, as in Washington, Republicans have structural advantages in the government that give them outsize power.Conservatives have controlled the state’s Supreme Court since 2008, and Republicans have held a hammerlock on the Legislature since 2011, when the party drew itself an impenetrable majority after taking control in a wave election.Tomorrow, Wisconsin will hold an election for a seat on its Supreme Court, and it is no exaggeration to call the race, for a 10-year term, the single most important American election of 2023. It is already the most expensive judicial race in the nation’s history. The candidates and the super PACs supporting them have spent nearly three times as much on this race as in any prior court election.Why is a single state race crucial? Because whichever side prevails will hold a 4-to-3 court majority, and this is the first American election in which the winner will single-handedly determine two big issues: the fate of abortion rights and whether the state has a functional representative democracy. The winner will also set the course for the 2024 presidential election in a state where fewer than 23,000 votes decided four of the last six such races.If the liberal candidate, Janet Protasiewicz, wins, Wisconsin will almost certainly become the first state to allow abortion again after outlawing it with last summer’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. And because Democrats are likely to challenge the makeup of the state’s legislative districts if the court has a liberal majority, the near supermajorities that Republicans enjoy in the State Legislature would also probably not survive until the 2024 election.A victory for the conservative candidate, Daniel Kelly, would mean abortion remains illegal, the gerrymandered maps stay in place, and Wisconsin remains a dysfunctional democracy for the foreseeable future.Janet Protasiewicz and Daniel Kelly.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesThe biggest prizeAbortion became illegal in the state last June, when the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion, throwing the question to the states. Wisconsin’s near-total ban on abortion — enacted in 1849, a year after statehood and seven decades before women could vote — suddenly became the law again.Protasiewicz (pronounced pro-tuh-SAY-witz) is a judge and former prosecutor from Milwaukee who has so emphasized her support for abortion rights that nobody could be confused about how she’d rule on the 1849 law. In interviews and television advertisements and during the lone general election debate, she has stressed her belief that abortion decisions should be left to women and their doctors, not to state legislators.Kelly, a conservative former state Supreme Court justice who lost a re-election bid in 2020, has the backing of the state’s leading anti-abortion organizations and has repeatedly stressed his opposition to the practice.Protasiewicz has bet that her support for abortion rights will energize Democratic voters and persuade enough independents and moderate Republicans to win. It is a big wager on the continuation of the politics that helped Democrats exceed expectations in last year’s midterm elections.Democracy is on the lineWhen I got my first full-time job in journalism at The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2002, Wisconsin was an evenly divided state but one where control regularly switched back and forth between the two parties.That ended after the 2010 Republican wave, when the party took both chambers of the Legislature and Scott Walker was elected governor. The G.O.P. weakened public-sector labor unions and drew itself the most aggressive gerrymander in the country — near supermajority control of both chambers in a 50-50 state. In 2020, Joe Biden won Wisconsin but carried only 37 out of 99 State Assembly districts.Republicans also changed state law to make voting more onerous, enacting a strict voter ID law, while the state’s Supreme Court banned drop boxes for absentee ballots last year. Wisconsin now ranks 47th out of 50 states on how easy it is to vote, according to the 2022 Cost of Voting Index.Protasiewicz calls the Republican-drawn maps “rigged,” has suggested the labor law is unconstitutional and says she agrees with the liberal dissent in last year’s Supreme Court drop box ruling. Kelly says redistricting is a political problem to be solved by legislators — the very people who created it.This race will have real impact on national issues, too.Wisconsin’s Supreme Court was the only one in the country that agreed to hear Donald Trump’s challenge to the 2020 election, eventually rejecting — by a single vote — his attempt to throw out 200,000 ballots in the state’s two big Democratic counties. Kelly, when I interviewed him in February, declined to say whether he agreed with the decision to uphold the 2020 results.The 2024 presidential election in the state may be close enough to be contested in the courts again. New congressional maps could also put up to three Republican-held House seats in play.Tomorrow’s other big election: Chicago’s mayoral runoff race has focused on crime. The election pits a former schools executive, Paul Vallas, who is campaigning largely on a pro-police platform, against Brandon Johnson, a county commissioner who favors solutions that go beyond policing. Here’s what matters in four of the city’s wards.More politics newsDemocrats are using messages about abortion in their campaigns, even when the office they’re running for has little say on the issue.Asa Hutchinson, a former governor of Arkansas and a Trump critic, announced his bid for the 2024 Republican nomination.The Biden administration blacklisted a spyware firm. But the government signed a secret contract with the company.THE LATEST NEWSTrump’s IndictmentDonald Trump is using his criminal indictment to raise money and promote his 2024 presidential campaign.Trump spent the weekend making plans for his arrest, while officials in New York prepared for potential turmoil.War in UkraineThe Russian authorities said they had detained a woman in the killing of a pro-war blogger in a bombing in St. Petersburg, Russia, yesterday.In a call with his Russian counterpart, Secretary of State Antony Blinken demanded the release of the imprisoned American journalist Evan Gershkovich.A Russian children’s rights advocate says she’s rescuing abandoned Ukrainian children. The International Criminal Court accuses her of abducting them.Residents in a Ukrainian city near active combat refuse to leave. The Times rode with the police trying to evacuate them.InternationalSaudi Arabia, Russia and their oil-producing allies said they would cut production, an apparent effort to increase prices.The Israeli government moved forward with a plan to establish a national guard, a political victory for a far-right minister.Sanna Marin, Finland’s prime minister who found international popularity, lost a national election.Pope Francis left the hospital after receiving treatment for bronchitis.Other Big StoriesStorms have resurrected a California lake that was drained.Mark Abramson for The New York Times“This could be the mother of all floods”: California residents are bracing for the melt of this winter’s snowfall.Anti-abortion groups argue abortion pills are dangerous. More than 100 scientific studies have concluded that they are safe.The police found the body of a 2-year-old boy in the jaws of an alligator in Florida after his mother was stabbed to death.OpinionsGail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss Trump’s indictment and the 2024 election.Women’s sports deserve to be mythologized like men’s sports are, Kate Fagan writes.“The Last of Us” is right: In a warming world, fungal infections are a public-health blind spot, Dr. Neil Vora says.MORNING READSSecret to happiness: People in Finland say it’s knowing when you have enough.Looking for love? Move abroad.Metropolitan Diary: Getting his daily steps in. (All 113,772 of them.)Quiz time: Take our latest news quiz and share your score (the average was 8.8).Advice from Wirecutter: The best creamy peanut butter.Lives Lived: Seymour Stein championed acts including the Ramones, Talking Heads and the Pretenders on his label Sire, and helped found the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. He died at 80.SPORTS NEWSThe victorious L.S.U. players.Tony Gutierrez/Associated PressN.C.A.A. champions: Louisiana State beat Iowa, 102-85, winning its first national title in women’s basketball, The Athletic writes. “I think we have a lot to be proud of,” an emotional Caitlin Clark, Iowa’s star, said after the game.Colorful and divisive coach: Kim Mulkey, L.S.U.’s coach, wore a tiger-striped pantsuit of pink and gold sequins. But don’t mistake her for any triviality, Jeré Longman writes in The Times. It was Mulkey’s fourth national title as head coach.Chaos on the track: Max Verstappen won the Australian Grand Prix yesterday, but it was not a leisurely competition for the title front-runner, The Athletic’s Madeline Coleman writes.ARTS AND IDEAS Leonard Scheicher and Girley Jazama in “Measures of Men.”Julia Terjung/Studiocanal GmbHHistory on screenModern Germany has frequently grappled with the Holocaust, but it has not paid much attention to its role in the 20th century’s first genocide, when German colonial forces killed many people in what is now Namibia. A movie, “Measures of Men,” aims to change that.The film tells the story of the killings through the eyes of a German anthropologist who becomes complicit in the slaughter. It has been screened for lawmakers in Germany’s Parliament and will be shown in schools too. “Cinema allows us to awaken emotions, and implant images that can let you see events differently,” Lars Kraume, the director, said.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookLinda Xiao for The New York TimesMaqluba is a Palestinian dish made with rice, meat and fried vegetables.TheaterThe Broadway adaptation of “Life of Pi” is rich and inventive.Now Time to PlayThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was pocketbook. Here is today’s puzzle.Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Get down (five letters).And here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.P.S. Wordplay columnist Rachel Fabi’s mom engaged in some lighthearted trolling in the comments section of a recent Times Crossword puzzle.Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about Trump’s indictment.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. More

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      The 2024 Election Is Already Here

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      Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicPremiering April 6It may seem way too early to be thinking about next year’s presidential election — and it is too soon to ask who’s going to win. But actually, it’s the perfect time to understand what the parties took away from the last election and how that’s already shaping their plans for the next one.For the past few months, Astead W. Herndon has been reporting from inside the political establishment, where party leaders, donors and activists are already trying to influence the 2024 election — and while voters are less likely to pay attention and lines of allegiance are scrambled.“The Run-Up” returns Thursday, April 6. See you there.Your HostASTEAD W. HERNDON is a national politics reporter for The New York Times. He was an integral part of The Times’s reporting on the 2020 presidential election and 2022 midterm elections. Before joining The Times, Mr. Herndon wrote for The Boston Globe, including as a national politics reporter in the Washington office, where he covered the Trump White House.Photo Illustration by The New York Times. Photo by Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesAbout ‘The Run-Up’First launched in August 2016, three months before the election of Donald Trump, “The Run-Up” is The Times’s flagship political podcast. The host, Astead W. Herndon, grapples with the big ideas already animating the 2024 presidential election. Because it’s always about more than who wins and loses. And the next election has already started.Last season, “The Run-Up” focused on grass-roots voters and shifting attitudes among the bases of both political parties. This season, we go inside the party establishment.New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      Milo Djukanovic Is Defeated in Montenegro’s Presidential Election

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      The incumbent, Milo Djukanovic, conceded to Jakov Milatovic, who had campaigned on pledges to root out corruption and organized crime.The shape-shifting president of Montenegro, Milo Djukanovic, Europe’s longest-serving elected leader, lost a re-election bid on Sunday, according to provisional official results, raising hopes across the Balkans of a long-awaited end to a political era stamped by the Yugoslav wars of the early 1990s.The vote on Sunday was a runoff between the two top finishers among seven candidates competing in a first round last month. Mr. Djukanovic, 61, conceded defeat late Sunday to Jakov Milatovic, 36, an Oxford-educated economist who campaigned on pledges to root out corruption and organized crime.Mr. Milatovic won decisively with about 60 percent of the vote, with 70 percent counted as of Sunday night.Mr. Djukanovic said he respected the outcome of the vote and wished Mr. Milatovic success, adding, “If he is successful, it means that Montenegro can be a successful country.”Mr. Milatovic, endorsed by most of the losing candidates in the first round, had been expected to win, but Mr. Djukanovic, a consummate political survivor, had dominated Montenegro for so long — he served four terms as prime minister and two as president — that his defeat still caused a sensation.“Tonight is the night we have been waiting for for more than 30 years,” Mr. Milatovic told supporters in Podgorica, the Montenegrin capital. “We said goodbye to crime and corruption. This is a historic day for everyone.”Mr. Djukanovic has been dogged throughout his career by accusations of links to organized crime, which he has strenuously denied.The defeat of a leader who began his political career in the former Yugoslavia lifted the spirits of opposition groups elsewhere in the Balkans, particularly in neighboring Serbia, whose own entrenched veteran leader, Aleksandar Vucic, also got his start in Yugoslavia and has been a fixture of Serbian politics for decades.“We hope that this victory will be a clear signal to everyone that the previous policies of division and conflict are dying because the entire region needs new people and new energy,” the Serbian opposition party Zajedno said in a statement welcoming Mr. Milatovic’s victory.Yugoslavia, a federation of republics, dissolved in 1992, but unlike, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia, which had all declared independence, Montenegro and Serbia formed a new federal state called Serbia-Montenegro. That entity, shaky from the start, fell apart after Montenegro declared independence in 2006.Mr. Milatovic, center, with his supporters in Podgorica, Montenegro, after declaring victory during the presidential runoff.Savo Prelevic/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Djukanovic first came to power in 1991 as prime minister of Montenegro, then still part of Yugoslavia. Initially a close ally of Slobodan Milosevic, Serbia’s Russia-friendly strongman leader, he later shifted his allegiances to the United States, securing Montenegro’s entry to NATO in 2017 despite widespread public hostility to a military alliance that had bombed the country in 1999.Mr. Djukanovic also sought membership in the European Union, but that effort, which began in 2008, stumbled largely because of Montenegro’s reputation for sheltering criminals.Mr. Milatovic vowed on Sunday to get the country into the bloc before the end of his five-year term as president.A political novice, Mr. Milatovic ran as a candidate for the newly formed party Europe Now and promised to shed Montenegro’s unsavory image. He accused Mr. Djukanovic of turning the country into the “Colombia of the Balkans,” a reference to Montenegro’s role as a hub for smuggling cigarettes and other contraband.Mr. Djukanovic was close to Russia in the 1990s and 2000s, when Montenegro opened its doors to a flood of investment from Russia and became a popular holiday destination for Russians. But he later threw his lot in with the West, accusing Russia of orchestrating what his officials said was a botched 2016 coup aimed at torpedoing the country’s NATO membership.He also reached out to China, sealing a deal with that country’s state companies for the construction of a “highway to nowhere” that cost nearly $1 billion and severely strained Montenegro’s finances.Mr. Djukanovic tried to paint Mr. Milatovic, his electoral rival, as a stalking horse for Serb interests, citing his endorsement by pro-Serb politicians. But that was a hard sell given Mr. Milatovic’s previous career with Deutsche Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the incumbent’s own long record of flip-flops and questionable dealings.Alisa Dogramadzieva More