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      Stumping on July 4, Trump’s Rivals Pitch Themselves to Early-State Voters

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      Donald J. Trump loomed large over the campaign trail, even though he was among the few G.O.P. contenders who stayed away from it.At a high school cafeteria in Merrimack, N.H., on Tuesday, where patriotic music blasted from the speakers and the lunch tables were decked in star-spangled napery, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota mingled with families who were digging into eggs, sausage and pancakes at a Fourth of July breakfast hosted by the local Rotary Club.Nelson Disco, 88, one of the prospective voters in the small crowd, had a couple of questions for him. What was he running for? And with which party?“You’ve got some competition,” Mr. Disco exclaimed, as the North Dakota governor told him he was seeking the Republican nomination for president.But Mr. Burgum was undeterred: “Feeling great” about the race, he said.It was the final Fourth of July before New Hampshire’s first-in-the nation Republican primary, set for February, and the famed kingmaking caucuses in Iowa — plenty of time to make up ground, but it was clear for the darkest of dark horses who were burning shoe leather on Tuesday that there was a lot of ground to make up.Some better-known competitors were in New Hampshire too. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is in a distant second place in the Republican primary polls to former President Donald J. Trump, walked in two parades, including one that also drew Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is still well back in the pack. The weather was less than agreeable: Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Scott and others walking in the afternoon parade in Merrimack, N.H., were soaked when a rainstorm swept through.Independence Day campaigning is a tradition in New Hampshire and Iowa, as old as the caucuses and the primary in those states. That would be more than a century of front-runners and also-rans at the parades, picnics and pancake breakfasts of the Granite State. This year, however, there was a twist: The prohibitive front-runner, Mr. Trump, skipped the hustings, staying home with his family and firing off vulgar social media posts.Yet the minions of his campaign and his own bulky shadow still hung heavily over his competition.Former Vice President Mike Pence greeted spectators at an Independence Day parade in Urbandale, Iowa.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesIn Urbandale, Iowa, where Mr. Trump’s former vice president and current competitor, Mike Pence, was marching in the parade, spectators broke into a chant — “Trump, Trump, Trump” — as he passed by.Melody Krejci, 60, of Urbandale, said: “My whole family is Trump supporters, even down to our grandbabies. They also wear Trump clothing and Trump hats.” There are posters of Trump in their rooms, too, she said.She added, “I think Pence is a coward,” alluding to the erroneous belief, still pushed by Mr. Trump, that his vice president could have rejected enough electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, to send the 2020 election back to the states, and possibly overturn Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.In the old days — before super PACs flooded the airwaves, social media brought politicians’ messages directly to voters’ smartphones and partisans were glued to their favored cable news shows — showing up on the Fourth of July really mattered.“Retail has always been mostly theater, but now it’s all a performance for the cameras, not about meeting regular people and listening to their concerns,” said Fergus Cullen, a former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee.This year, Mr. Trump’s rivals hoped it still did matter. In Merrimack, N.H., volunteers and supporters backing Mr. DeSantis waited to walk with their candidate in the Fourth of the July parade there, standing near a dance troupe in hot pink shirts, a wooden float filled with members of the Bektash Shrine Clowns and a yellow school bus decorated as the boat from the Boston Tea Party.But it was another Republican presidential hopeful, Mr. Scott, who caused a stir first, showing up on the parade route trailed by a passel of photographers and television cameras.“Hopefully some of those voters will become our voters,” Mr. Scott told reporters when asked his thoughts on the people in DeSantis and Trump gear who were coming up to shake his hand. “But at the end of the day, we thank God that we have folks that are committed to the country, committed to the concept that the conservative values always work.”Outside a pancake breakfast in Merrimack, N.H., former Representative Will Hurd of Texas and his wife, Lynlie Wallace, mixed with runners at a road race.Mr. Hurd, a moderate Republican and a fierce critic of Mr. Trump’s who is trying to get his fledgling presidential campaign out of the starting gate, said he had just finished touring the northern border near Vermont, which he said faces problems similar to those at the southern border in his home state: low resources and increased drug trafficking. Those were the sorts of issues he wanted to tackle, he said. But for now, he added, he was just happy to simply be out shaking hands.“Today is about meeting people, right?” Mr. Hurd said. “Not everybody is doom scrolling on social media or consuming cable news.”And Trump? “I’m sure people are thankful he’s not out,” he said. “He comes with a lot of baggage.”If there were glimmers of hope for the dark horses, it came from voter acknowledgment of that baggage, which now includes felony charges in New York connected to the payment of hush money to a porn star and federal felony charges in Miami accusing him of misusing highly classified documents and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them.Senator Tim Scott joked with a Trump supporter before walking in the July Fourth parade in Merrimack, N.H., on Tuesday.Reba Saldanha/Associated Press PhotoIn Iowa, Jim Miller, 73, was sitting along the Urbandale parade route with his wife and other family members. He said he had voted for Mr. Trump twice but had been disappointed in his attitude. He wants a candidate who puts being American ahead of being a Republican or a Democrat.Asked to compare Mr. Pence with Mr. Trump, Mr. Miller said: “Not even close. I’d take Pence any day.”As for Mr. Burgum, he expressed an understanding of just how steep his climb would be to even get into contention for his party’s presidential nomination. The name recognition challenge is “familiar,” he said. But he also noted that people had underestimated him when he left a lifelong career in the private sector to run for governor in 2016.He won that race by 20 percentage points, and he has not been seriously challenged in North Dakota since.Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota in Iowa last month. Mr. Burgum was among a number of Republican presidential hopefuls who spent the July Fourth holiday in New Hampshire.Charlie Neibergall/Associated PressNot everyone was in the dark on his campaign. A volunteer, Maureen Tracey, 55, rushed up from the back of the room to ask for a selfie with him. She said she liked Mr. Burgum because, like Mr. Trump, he seemed “different from a politician.” But unlike Mr. Trump, she added, Mr. Burgum seemed to be someone she could trust.Mr. Trump “has hurt too many people, and when you hurt so many people, there is no trust,” Ms. Tracey said.Mr. Burgum, contrasting himself with the highest-profile Republican in the race, Mr. Trump, without mentioning him, said that he had decided to run because the country needed a leader who would work for every American, regardless of political affiliation.“Republicans, Independents, Democrats — they all drive on the U.S. roads, they all go to U.S. schools, they all get health care in America,” he said. “Today’s the day to really reflect on that.”Ann Hinga Klein More

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      Macky Sall, Senegal’s Leader, Says He Won’t Run for Third Term

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      Macky Sall had considered seeking a third term in the West African country despite a constitutional limit of two.President Macky Sall of Senegal said on Monday that he would not seek a third term in office, putting an end to months of tensions over a hypothetical candidacy that many say would have violated the West African nation’s Constitution.“My dear fellow citizens, my decision after long consideration is to not be a candidate in the election on Feb. 25, 2024,” Mr. Sall said in a televised address. “My 2019 term was my second and last term.”Mr. Sall’s speech came a month after at least 16 people died in government protests that were fueled, in part, by his refusal to say whether he would run for a third term next year.Thousands of demonstrators, most of them young, had taken to the streets to protest against what they saw as an authoritarian drift from Mr. Sall’s government, and against the conviction of his main political opponent, Ousmane Sonko, on charges that his supporters said had been an attempt to sideline him.The violence, reminiscent of deadly protests in 2021, raised concerns among the Senegalese public and international observers that Senegal was no longer the beacon of political pluralism and stability it had long been regarded as in a region known for its frequent coups and aging leaders clinging to power.That made Mr. Sall’s announcement all the more welcome to many.“A time bomb was just deactivated,” Alioune Tine, a renowned Senegalese human rights figure, said about Mr. Sall’s renouncement. “It’s a huge relief for Senegal and the African continent.”Mr. Sall’s decision not to run was unusual for West and Central Africa, where some leaders have in recent years curbed their countries’ laws to stay in power.In 2021, President Alassane Ouattara of Ivory Coast was elected for a third term despite a constitutional rule limiting presidents to two. In the Central African Republic, President Faustin-Archange Touadéra is also seeking a third term through a constitutional referendum scheduled this month.Senegal, which has never experienced a coup since gaining independence from France in 1960, considers itself a model of democracy in Africa. Many feared that Mr. Sall might change that.Mr. Sall, 61, was first elected in 2012 for a seven-year term and again in 2019 for five years after he modified the Constitution, which limits presidents to two terms. He argued that the constitutional change had reset the clock to zero, but legal experts in Senegal and abroad dismissed the contention as fallacious.Since 2012, Mr. Sall has presided over the development of one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies, focusing on major infrastructure projects like a new international airport, a train linking the capital, Dakar, to its suburbs and a new metropolis aimed at alleviating congestion in Dakar.He has also overseen the development of a gas field off Senegal’s northern coast that is expected to start production next year. It could make the country of 17 million people a major producer of natural gas in Africa.Yet, Senegal’s health care system remains underdeveloped, while youth unemployment is widespread. And under Mr. Sall’s leadership, hundreds of political opponents have been jailed and journalists arrested.Senegal now faces an open election in less than eight months.The future for Mr. Sonko, Mr. Sall’s main opponent, remains uncertain. Last month, he was sentenced to two years in prison for “corrupting youth” after a massage parlor employee accused him of rape in 2021. Mr. Sonko was acquitted of rape and other charges, all which he denied.Mr. Sall has yet to name a political successor. On Tuesday evening, he said, “Senegal exceeds my person, and is full of leaders capable of taking the country to the next level.” More

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      Bolsonaro ha sido inhabilitado en Brasil. Trump busca la presidencia en EE. UU.

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      Aunque el comportamiento de ambos expresidentes fue muy similar, las consecuencias políticas que enfrentan han sido drásticamente diferentes.El presidente de extrema derecha, que no era el favorito en las encuestas, alertó sobre un fraude electoral a pesar de no tener ninguna prueba. Tras perder, afirmó que las elecciones estaban amañadas. Miles de sus seguidores —envueltos en banderas nacionales y engañados por teorías de la conspiración— procedieron a asaltar el Congreso, buscando anular los resultados.Ese escenario describe las elecciones presidenciales más recientes en las democracias más grandes del hemisferio occidental: Estados Unidos y Brasil.Pero si bien el comportamiento de los dos expresidentes —Donald Trump y Jair Bolsonaro— fue muy similar, las consecuencias políticas han sido drásticamente diferentes.Si bien Trump enfrenta cargos federales y estatales que lo acusan de pagarle a una actriz de cine porno por su silencio y de manejar de manera indebida documentos clasificados, sigue siendo la figura más influyente de la derecha estadounidense. Más de dos años después de dejar la Casa Blanca, Trump parece estar destinado a convertirse en el candidato republicano a la presidencia, con una amplia ventaja en las encuestas.En Brasil, Bolsonaro ha enfrentado represalias más rápidas y feroces. También enfrenta numerosas investigaciones criminales. Las autoridades allanaron su casa y confiscaron su teléfono celular. Y el viernes, menos de seis meses después de que dejara el poder, el Tribunal Superior Electoral de Brasil votó para inhabilitar a Bolsonaro de optar a un cargo político durante lo que queda de la década.Las secuelas de un asalto en el complejo de oficinas del gobierno brasileño por parte de los partidarios de Bolsonaro en enero.Victor Moriyama para The New York TimesEl tribunal dictaminó que el expresidente abusó de su poder cuando hizo afirmaciones sin fundamento sobre la integridad de los sistemas de votación de Brasil en la televisión estatal. Su próxima oportunidad a la presidencia sería en las elecciones de 2030, en las que tendría 75 años.Trump, incluso si es hallado culpable en un caso antes de las elecciones del año que viene, no sería descalificado automáticamente de postularse a la presidencia.El contraste entre las consecuencias que enfrentan ambos hombres refleja las diferencias de las estructuras políticas y gubernamentales de los dos países. El sistema estadounidense ha dejado el destino de Trump en manos de los votantes y del proceso lento y metódico del sistema judicial. En Brasil, los tribunales han sido proactivos, rápidos y agresivos para eliminar cualquier cosa que consideren una amenaza para la joven democracia de la nación.Las elecciones estadounidenses están a cargo de los estados, con un mosaico de reglas en todo el país sobre quién es elegible para postularse y cómo. En muchos casos, uno de los pocos obstáculos para aparecer en una boleta es recolectar suficientes firmas de votantes elegibles.En Brasil, las elecciones están regidas por el Tribunal Superior Electoral, el cual, como parte de sus funciones, sopesa regularmente si los candidatos tienen derecho a postularse para un cargo.“El alcalde, el gobernador o el presidente tienden a abusar de su poder para ser reelectos. Por eso creamos la ley de inelegibilidad”, dijo Ricardo Lewandowski, juez jubilado del Supremo Tribunal Federal de Brasil y expresidente del Tribunal Superior Electoral.La ley brasileña establece que los políticos que abusen de sus cargos sean temporalmente inelegibles para cargos. Como resultado, el Tribunal Superior Electoral ha bloqueado rutinariamente la postulación de políticos, incluidos, junto con Bolsonaro, tres expresidentes.“Lo que nuestro sistema trata de hacer es proteger al votante”, dijo Lewandowski. “Quienes cometieron delitos contra el pueblo deben permanecer fuera del juego durante cierto periodo de tiempo hasta que se rehabiliten”.Según algunos analistas, esta estrategia ha puesto demasiado poder en manos de los siete jueces del Tribunal Superior Electoral, en lugar de que sean los votantes quienes decidan.“Es una diferencia estructural entre los dos países”, dijo Thomas Traumann, analista político y exsecretario Especial de Comunicación Social de una presidenta brasileña de izquierda. Los políticos en Brasil conocen las reglas, dijo, y el sistema ha ayudado a mantener alejados del poder a algunos políticos corruptos. “Por otro lado, estás impidiendo que la gente decida”, dijo.El sistema electoral centralizado de Brasil también impidió que Bolsonaro librara una batalla tan prolongada por los resultados de las elecciones como lo hizo Trump.En Estados Unidos, un conteo lento de votos retrasó una semana la proclamación del ganador y luego el proceso del Colegio Electoral tomó varios meses más. Cada estado también realizó sus propias elecciones y auditorías. Eso le dio a Trump, y a los políticos y grupos que lo apoyaban, tiempo y varios frentes para implementar ataques contra el proceso.En Brasil, un país con 220 millones de habitantes, el sistema electrónico de votación contó las boletas en dos horas. La autoridad electoral central y no los medios de comunicación, procedieron a anunciar al ganador esa noche, en una ceremonia que involucró a líderes del Congreso, los tribunales y el gobierno.El sistema de votación electrónica de Brasil contó las papeletas en dos horas.Victor Moriyama para The New York TimesBolsonaro permaneció en silencio durante dos días pero, con pocas opciones, al final se hizo a un lado.Sin embargo, ese enfoque también conlleva riesgos.“Se podría alegar que ser tan centralizado también te hace propenso a más abusos que en el sistema estadounidense, que está más descentralizado y permite básicamente una supervisión local”, dijo Omar Encarnación, profesor del Bard College que ha estudiado los sistemas democráticos en ambos países.Sin embargo, añadió, en Estados Unidos, varios estados han aprobado recientemente leyes de votación restrictivas. “Resulta claro que son dos modelos muy diferentes y, dependiendo del punto de vista, se podría argumentar cuál es mejor o peor para la democracia”.En el periodo previo a las elecciones, el sistema de Brasil también le permitió combatir de manera mucho más agresiva contra cualquier desinformación o conspiración antidemocrática. El Supremo Tribunal Federal ordenó redadas y arrestos, bloqueó a miembros del Congreso de las redes sociales y tomó medidas para prohibir a las empresas de tecnología que no cumplieran con las órdenes judiciales.El resultado fue una campaña radical e implacable destinada a combatir la desinformación electoral. Sin embargo las medidas también generaron reclamos generalizados de extralimitación. Algunas redadas se enfocaron en personas solo porque estaban en un grupo de WhatsApp que había mencionado un golpe de Estado. Algunas personas fueron encarceladas temporalmente sin juicio por criticar al tribunal. Un congresista fue sentenciado a prisión por amenazar a los jueces en una transmisión en vivo.Estas acciones estrictas de los tribunales han ampliado su enorme influencia en la política brasileña en los últimos años, incluido su papel central en la llamada investigación Lava Jato que envió a prisión al presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.“La audacia, la temeridad con la que los tribunales han actuado, no solo contra Bolsonaro, sino incluso contra Lula, sugiere que los tribunales se están comportando de una manera un tanto —odio usar la palabra irresponsable— pero tal vez incluso represiva”, dijo Encarnación.Sin embargo, a pesar de los esfuerzos del tribunal, miles de partidarios de Bolsonaro procedieron a atacar y saquear los recintos del poder de la nación en enero, una semana después de la toma de posesión de Lula.Si bien la situación fue inquietantemente similar al asalto al Capitolio de Estados Unidos el 6 de enero de 2021, los roles de los dos expresidentes fueron diferentes.Cientos de simpatizantes de Bolsonaro fueron detenidos temporalmente después de los disturbios de enero.Victor Moriyama para The New York TimesAmbos avivaron los reclamos y convencieron a sus seguidores de que se cometió un supuesto fraude, pero Trump les ordenó de manera explícita que marcharan hacia el Capitolio durante un discurso en las inmediaciones del lugar.Cuando los simpatizantes de Bolsonaro formaron su propia turba, Bolsonaro se encontraba a miles de kilómetros en Florida, donde permaneció por tres meses.En ambos países, cientos de invasores fueron arrestados y condenados, e investigaciones de los congresos están investigando lo sucedido. Por lo demás, las consecuencias han sido distintas.Al igual que Trump, Bolsonaro también ha defendido a sus seguidores.El viernes, Bolsonaro dijo que la revuelta no había sido un intento de golpe de Estado sino “viejitas y viejitos con banderas brasileñas en sus espaldas y biblias bajo sus brazos”.Pero las repercusiones políticas han sido diferentes.En Estados Unidos, gran parte del Partido Republicano ha aceptado las afirmaciones infundadas de fraude electoral, los estados han aprobado leyes que dificultan el voto y los votantes han elegido candidatos para el Congreso y las legislaturas estatales que niegan los resultados de las elecciones presidenciales.En Brasil, la clase política se ha alejado en gran medida del discurso de fraude electoral, así como del propio Bolsonaro. Los líderes conservadores están impulsando en la actualidad a un gobernador más moderado como el nuevo abanderado de la derecha brasileña.Encarnación afirmó que, a pesar de sus problemas, el sistema democrático de Brasil puede proporcionar un modelo sobre cómo combatir las nuevas amenazas antidemocráticas.“Básicamente, las democracias están luchando contra la desinformación y Dios sabe qué otras cosas con instituciones muy anticuadas”, dijo. “Necesitamos actualizar el hardware. No creo que haya sido diseñado para personas como las que enfrentan estos países”.Jack Nicas es el jefe de la corresponsalía en Brasil, que abarca Brasil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay y Uruguay. Anteriormente reportó de tecnología desde San Francisco y, antes de integrarse al Times en 2018, trabajó siete años en The Wall Street Journal. @jacknicas • Facebook More

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      Chris Christie Takes On Donald Trump

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      I offered to help prep Chris Christie for the debate with Donald Trump.Christie helped prep Trump in 2016, saying he played Hillary Clinton very aggressively so that Trump would think the real thing was “a cakewalk.”And now, sitting at a table in the Times cafeteria with the former New Jersey governor, I figured I could play Trump.We have both known the blackguard for decades. And let’s be honest. We want Christie on that wall. After years of watching Republicans cower before Trump, it’s bracing to see the disgraced former president finally meet his mean match.Even my Republican sister, who does not want to vote for Trump — but may if it’s Trump versus President Biden — sent Christie money to help him secure a spot on the debate stage.Trump has boasted that he’s so far ahead of his Republican rivals that he might not bother to show up for the first debate in August, hosted by Fox News in Milwaukee.“I think that he’ll show up at the debates because his ego won’t permit him not to,” Christie said. “He can’t have a big TV show that he’s not on.” He smiled, adding: “He’s on Truth Social going bonkers, and no one’s paying attention? He won’t deal well with that.”I warned that Trump is an asymmetrical fighter, so it’s hard to know how to go at him. Clinton tried to rise above him, and Marco Rubio imitated his crude style.“You just brought up two of the most unskilled politicians I’ve ever met,” Christie said, noting about Trump: “I don’t think he’s ever gone up against somebody who knows how to do what he does. He’s never run against somebody from New Jersey who understands what the New York thing is and what he’s all about. For people like me, who’ve grown up here and lived my whole life in this atmosphere, he’s just one of a lot of people I know who have that personality. He knows I know what his game is.”He said he isn’t running to get back at Trump for giving him a horrible case of Covid. Trump came to debate prep in September 2020 without telling Christie or anyone else that he had tested positive the day before, and Christie ended up in the I.C.U. for seven days. And he said he isn’t seeking payback because Trump didn’t make him attorney general. (Jared Kushner was still nursing a grudge because Christie put Kushner’s father in prison.)But even for a guy who could be plenty nasty as governor, trying to overturn democracy was a bridge too far.“The idea that somehow everyone’s going to stand around and wait for him to collapse of his own weight and then say, ‘Oh, I didn’t say anything bad about him,’” he said. “He’s never fallen of his own weight. The only time Donald Trump’s ever backed off in his life is when he’s been beaten to back off. I saw it happen in Atlantic City. He was bankrupt three times. He had to finally give in and close down.”Christie mocked Ron DeSantis responding to Jan. 6 by saying he was not in Washington — “Was he alive?” Christie asked Kaitlan Collins on CNN. He thinks DeSantis has already lost the authenticity contest: “If you say to Tucker Carlson that Ukraine is a territorial dispute and then a few days later you go to Piers Morgan and you call Putin a war criminal, well, it’s one or the other.”What about the end of the love affair with Fox News and Trump?“I’ve known Rupert for a long time,” Christie said. “I suspect Rupert’s view is, ‘Enough is enough.’”Is Trump, as his former chief of staff John Kelly said, scared to death?“He’s scared,” Christie said. “Look, a guy like him, the last place you ever want to be in life is in jail because you give up all control, and he’s a complete control freak.” Trump is playing checkers, not chess, Christie said, just scrambling to make that next jump.Christie is the ultimate Jersey guy. (His relationship with his idol, Bruce Springsteen, which shattered over his stint as a Trump sycophant, is “a work in progress,” he said.) So I wonder how he feels about Jack Smith zeroing in on vivid scenes at the golf club at Bedminster, N.J., with Trump waving around classified documents and then telling reporters it was simply “bravado” and the documents were merely plans for a golf course.“Yes, because look, for Donald Trump, it is better to be called a liar than to go to jail,” Christie said. “If what it buys him is a get-out-of-jail-free card, he’ll take that trade every day.”Trump has been peppering Christie with insults about his weight — “slob,” “Sloppy Chris Christie” and a phony video showing Christie feasting at a fried food buffet.“I’m not going to say it never bothers me,” Christie said, noting that, whenever you’re hit for “a weakness or a failure,” it depends on your mood how hard you take it. But, he added, Trump is no Adonis, so “coming from him? Who cares? Look in the mirror. I always thought it was very funny that he has this vision of himself. He told me one time the reason he ties his ties so long is that it slenderizes him and I should do the same thing.”Trump is also the one, back in 2005, who first suggested to Christie that he get lap-band surgery, which he eventually did. So, I ask, Trump used to be concerned about your health and now he viciously insults you about your weight?“That’s, in part, the magic of him,” Christie said. “He’s got it in him to do either. It’s not like he’s unable to be charming. He can be. But only when he’s looking for something from you.”What about the Biden age debate?“I think he’s beyond his sell-by date, and I think Trump is, too, by the way,” Christie, 60, said, adding about Biden, “I think his family should let him go home.” He asked, “Are they actually motivated by love for this guy, or is it motivated by the grift?”And Hunter Biden’s appearance at the state dinner for the Indian prime minister, two days after his plea deal?“Look, that also shows you Joe Biden’s not in control, because if he were of right mind, I don’t care how much you love your kid, he doesn’t have to be at the state dinner,” Christie said. “It’s not like you’re saying, ‘You can’t come to the White House. I can’t see you. I can’t visit with you. You’re toxic.’”He believes Kamala Harris is “a problem for Biden, and it will hurt him,” saying, “I don’t think Dan Quayle hurt George Bush 41. But George Bush 41 wasn’t 82 years old.”Since we’re heading into the Fourth of July, I wonder if Christie is having any acid flashbacks to the Fourth of July weekend of 2017 when, as governor, he was photographed sunning himself on a closed public beach during a state government shutdown.“My mistake,” he said. “I blew it. But no acid flashbacks.”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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      The Royals May Be on to Something

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      LONDON — With the thrill of coronation still in the air outside Buckingham Palace, it’s tempting for a Yankee to mock the British for the shop windows full of coronation plates and King Charles III coffee mugs. And how can we not roll our eyes when a slice of cake from the 2005 wedding between the new king and queen now sells for $1,600?Yet I won’t indulge in mockery for two reasons. First, many of the tourists buying the souvenirs have undeniable American accents.Second, I would never admit this in public — but I’ve come to think that maybe there are advantages to having a royal family.Britain is, like America, so polarized that any political leader is loathed by a sizable chunk of the population, sowing conflict and risking violence. But with the monarchy, the U.K. is guaranteed a nonpolitical head of state who amounts to a unifying force.“It helps to have someone who is above politics and can bring people together,” said Chris Patten, a longtime political leader who is now formally Lord Patten of Barnes.A May poll found that 62 percent of people in Great Britain favored remaining a monarchy, compared to 28 percent who preferred a republic. Young people were somewhat less enthusiastic about royalty than older people, but that has been true for decades: As they age, Britons appear to become more pro-monarchy.A monarch is not the only option for a nonpolitical head of state. Germany, Israel and other countries have non-royal largely ceremonial heads of state who can stand for harmony above the fray. President Isaac Herzog of Israel tried to do that this year to promote compromise, preserve democratic norms and calm the mass protests in Israel; he warned that the conflict could even lead to civil war.But even the nonpolitical presidents like Herzog are often former politicians and don’t seem to have the healing power of monarchs. King Charles declined to be interviewed (when I requested time with him, I think his staff giggled). But I’ve occasionally interacted with other members of his family and with royalty in other countries — and it’s funny how even we Americans go weak-kneed over even a measly duchess or, say, a Tongan king.When Japan gave up fighting in 1945 to end World War II, many in the Tokyo government bitterly opposed the decision. It was perhaps only Emperor Hirohito as the revered leader of Japan who could convince the army to stand down, even if his speech announcing surrender was royally elliptical: “The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.”One study of 137 countries over more than a century found that monarchies perform better economically than republics over the long run. The authors concluded that this was in part because monarchs provided a national symbol of unity, reducing internal conflict and threats to property rights.Kings can be expensive, of course, and it can seem ridiculous to provide public housing in the form of palaces to one family, while countless others are homeless. But in Britain, the royal family may pay for itself with tourism income, and constitutes a useful tool of foreign policy: Every foreign leader wants tea with the sovereign, so when prime ministers ruffle foreign feathers the royals can smooth them.The royal family is “an integral part of our soft power strategy,” noted Arminka Helic, now the Baroness Helic, a foreign policy expert. Helic grew up in the former Yugoslavia and came to Britain only at the age of 24, but she says she still sees the royals as “the family to which we are all related no matter where we come from.”I’m not advocating for royalty in America, even if we may be more perilously divided than at any time in a century. George III soured us forever on kings. Which raises the question: What happens when a bad (or mad) king comes along?Britain dodged a bullet when King Edward VIII abdicated in 1936, for he was a racist who was soft on Nazism, especially because he lived a long life, dying only in 1972. The United Kingdom hit the jackpot with Queen Elizabeth II and seems to have relatively reliable heirs in the form of King Charles and Prince William.Thailand is less fortunate. When the last, much revered Thai king died in 2016, he was succeeded not by the king’s widely admired daughter but by his scandal-plagued son — who has spent a great deal of time in Germany with his paramours and once promoted his poodle, Foo Foo, to the rank of “air chief marshal.”Bad kings are difficult to recover from. They’re one reason the number of monarchies has fallen from 160 in 1900 to fewer than 30 now.But today’s constitutional monarchies like Britain, Japan, Sweden and the Netherlands may benefit by turning to an apolitical family that, in exchange for palaces, will supply a nation with gossip, tourism and a bit of harmony.So don’t tell a soul, but as I stand outside Buckingham Palace, I think: “God save the king!”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. More

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      Why Trump and Bolsonaro Cases Were Handled Differently

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      In both the United States and Brazil, former presidents made baseless claims of fraud, and their supporters stormed government buildings.Down in the polls, the far-right president warned of voter fraud, despite no evidence. After losing, he claimed the vote was rigged. Thousands of his supporters — draped in the national flag and misled by conspiracy theories — then stormed Congress in a bid to overturn the results.That scenario describes the latest elections in the Western Hemisphere’s largest democracies: the United States and Brazil.But while the behavior of the two former presidents — Donald J. Trump and Jair Bolsonaro — was remarkably similar, the political aftermath has been drastically different.While Mr. Trump faces federal and state charges that accuse him of paying off a porn star and mishandling classified documents, he remains the most influential figure on the American right. More than two years after leaving the White House, he again appears poised to become the Republican nominee for president, with a wide lead in the polls.In Brazil, Mr. Bolsonaro has faced much swifter and fiercer blowback. He, too, faces numerous criminal investigations. The authorities have raided his house and confiscated his cellphone. And on Friday, less than six months after he left power, Brazil’s electoral court voted to block Mr. Bolsonaro from political office for the rest of the decade.The aftermath of a riot at the Brazilian government office complex by supporters of Mr. Bolsonaro in January.Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesThe court ruled he had abused his power when he made baseless claims about the integrity of Brazil’s voting systems on state television. His next shot at the presidency would be in the 2030 election, when he is 75.Mr. Trump, even if he is convicted in a case before next year’s election, could still potentially run.The contrasting fallout for the two men reflect key differences in the two countries’ political and governing structures. The U.S. system has left Mr. Trump’s fate up to voters and the slow, methodical process of the justice system. In Brazil, the courts have been proactive, fast and aggressive in snuffing out anything they see as a threat to the nation’s young democracy.U.S. elections are run by the states, with a patchwork of rules across the country on who is eligible to run and how. In many cases, one of the few hurdles to appearing on a ballot is collecting enough signatures from eligible voters.In Brazil, elections are governed by a federal electoral court, which, as part of its duties, regularly weighs in on whether candidates have the right to seek office.“The mayor, governor or president tend to abuse their power to be re-elected. So we created the law of ineligibility,” said Ricardo Lewandowski, a retired Brazilian Supreme Court justice and former head of the electoral court.Brazilian law states that politicians who abuse their positions are temporarily ineligible for office. As a result, the electoral court has routinely blocked politicians from running, including, with Mr. Bolsonaro, three former presidents.“What our system has tried to do is protect the voter,” Mr. Lewandowski said. “Those who committed crimes against the public have to stay out of the game for a certain amount of time until they rehabilitate.”The approach has also put what some analysts say is too much power in the hands of the electoral court’s seven judges, instead of voters.“It’s a structural difference between the two countries,” said Thomas Traumann, a political analyst and former press secretary for a leftist Brazilian president. Politicians in Brazil know the rules, he said, and the system has helped keep some corrupt politicians from power. “On the other hand, you are preventing the people from deciding,” he said.Brazil’s centralized electoral system also thwarted Mr. Bolsonaro from waging as protracted a fight over the election’s results as Mr. Trump did.In the United States, a slow vote count delayed the declaration of a winner for a week, and the Electoral College process then took several more months. Each state also ran its own election and audits. That gave Mr. Trump and politicians and groups supporting him time and various fronts to mount attacks against the process.In Brazil, a nation of 220 million people, the electronic voting system counted the ballots in two hours. The central electoral authority, not the news media, then declared the winner that night, in a ceremony involving leaders of Congress, the courts and the government.Brazil’s electronic voting system counted the ballots in two hours. Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesMr. Bolsonaro remained silent for two days but, with few options, eventually stepped aside.But that approach also carries risks.“You can argue that being that centralized is also prone to more abuse than the American system, which is more decentralized and allows for basically local supervision,” said Omar Encarnación, a Bard College professor who has studied the democratic systems in both countries.Yet in the United States, several states have recently passed restrictive voting laws, he added. “So clearly, these are two very different models, and one can argue in either direction, which one is best or worst for democracy.”In the run-up to the election, Brazil’s system also allowed it to fight far more aggressively against any anti-democratic misinformation or plotting. The nation’s Supreme Court ordered raids and arrests, blocked members of Congress from social networks and moved to ban tech companies in Brazil that did not comply with court orders.The result was a sweeping and unrelenting campaign aimed at fighting election misinformation. But the moves also drew widespread claims of overreach. Some raids targeted people just because they were in a WhatsApp group that had mentioned a coup. Some people were temporarily jailed without a trial for criticizing the court. A congressman was sentenced to prison for threatening judges on a livestream.Such stringent actions by the courts extends their outsized influence in Brazilian politics in recent years, including their central role in the so-called Car Wash investigation that sent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to prison.“The boldness, the fearlessness in which the courts have acted, not just against Bolsonaro, but even toward Lula, would suggest that the courts are behaving in a somewhat — I hate to use the word reckless — but perhaps even in a repressive mode,” Mr. Encarnación said.Yet regardless of the court’s efforts, thousands of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters still raided and ransacked the nation’s halls of power a week after Mr. Lula’s inauguration in January.While the scenes were eerily similar to the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the roles of the two ex-presidents were different.Hundreds of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters were temporarily detained after the riot in January.Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesBoth had fanned the flames, convincing their followers there had been fraud, but Mr. Trump explicitly directed his supporters to march to the Capitol during a speech nearby.When Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters formed their own mob, Mr. Bolsonaro was thousands of miles away in Florida, where he remained for three months.In both countries, hundreds of trespassers were arrested and charged, and congressional investigations are digging into what happened. Otherwise the aftermath has been different.Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Bolsonaro has also defended his supporters.Mr. Bolsonaro said on Friday that the riot was not an attempted coup, but instead “little old women and little old men, with Brazilian flags on their back and Bibles under their arms.”But the political reverberations have differed.In the U.S., much of the Republican Party has embraced the baseless claims of election-fraud, states have passed laws that make it harder to vote, and voters have elected election-denying candidates to Congress and state legislatures.In Brazil, the political establishment has largely moved away from talk of election fraud — and from Mr. Bolsonaro himself. Conservative leaders are now pushing a more moderate governor as the new standard-bearer of the Brazilian right.Mr. Encarnación said that, despite its problems, Brazil’s democratic system can provide a model on how to fight new anti-democratic threats.“Democracies basically are fighting misinformation and God knows what else with very antiquated institutions,” he said. “We do need to upgrade the hardware. I don’t think it was designed for people of the likes these countries are facing.” More

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      Brazil’s Bolsonaro Blocked From Office for Election-Fraud Claims

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      Brazil’s electoral court banned former President Jair Bolsonaro from seeking office until 2030 for spreading false claims about the nation’s voting system.Brazilian election officials on Friday blocked former President Jair Bolsonaro from seeking public office until 2030, removing a top contender from the next presidential contest and dealing a significant blow to the country’s far-right movement.Brazil’s electoral court ruled that Mr. Bolsonaro had violated Brazil’s election laws when, less than three months ahead of last year’s vote, he called diplomats to the presidential palace and made baseless claims that the nation’s voting systems were likely to be rigged against him.Five of the court’s seven judges voted that Mr. Bolsonaro had abused his power as president when he convened the meeting with diplomats and broadcast it on state television.“This response will confirm our faith in the democracy,” said Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice who leads the electoral court, as he cast his vote against Mr. Bolsonaro.The decision is a sharp and swift rebuke of Mr. Bolsonaro and his effort to undermine Brazil’s elections. Just six months ago, Mr. Bolsonaro was president of one of the world’s largest democracies. Now his career as a politician is in jeopardy.Under the ruling, Mr. Bolsonaro, 68, will next be able to run for president in 2030, when he is 75. The next presidential election is scheduled for 2026.Mr. Bolsonaro said Friday that he was not surprised by the 5-to-2 decision because the court had always been against him. “Come on. We know that since I took office they said I was going to carry out a coup,” he told reporters (though he, too, had hinted at that possibility). “This is not democracy.”His lawyers had argued that his speech to diplomats was an “act of government” aimed at raising legitimate concerns about election security.Mr. Bolsonaro appeared to accept his fate, saying Friday that he would focus on campaigning for other right-wing candidates.Yet he is still expected to appeal the ruling to Brazil’s Supreme Court, though that body acted aggressively to rein in his power during his presidency. He has harshly attacked the high court for years, calling some justices “terrorists” and accusing them of trying to sway the vote against him.Judge Alexandre de Moraes, center, a member of Brazil’s Supreme Court, used the court to curb Mr. Bolsonaro’s power during his administration.Dado Galdieri for The New York TimesEven if an appeal is successful, Mr. Bolsonaro would face another 15 cases in the electoral court, including accusations that he improperly used public funds to influence the vote and that his campaign ran a coordinated misinformation campaign. Any of those cases could also block him from seeking the presidency.He is also linked to several criminal investigations, involving whether he provoked his supporters to storm Brazil’s halls of power on Jan. 8 and whether he was involved in a scheme to falsify his vaccine records. (Mr. Bolsonaro has declined the Covid-19 vaccine.) A conviction in any criminal case would also render him ineligible for office, in addition to carrying possible prison time.Mr. Bolsonaro was a shock to Brazil’s politics when he was elected president in 2018. A former Army captain and fringe far-right congressman, he rode a populist wave to the presidency on an anti-corruption campaign.His lone term was marked by controversy from the start, including a sharp rise in deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, a hands-off approach to the pandemic that left nearly 700,000 dead in Brazil and harsh attacks against the press, the judiciary and the left.Mr. Bolsonaro in 2017, when he was a member of congress.Lalo de Almeida for The New York TimesBut it was his repeated broadsides against Brazil’s voting systems that alarmed many Brazilians, as well as the international community, stoking worries that he might try to hold on to power if he lost last October’s election.Mr. Bolsonaro did lose by a slim margin and at first refused to concede. Under pressure from allies and rivals, he eventually agreed to a transition to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.Yet, after listening to Mr. Bolsonaro’s false claims for years, many Bolsonaro supporters remained convinced that Mr. Lula, a leftist, had stolen the election. On Jan. 8, a week after Mr. Lula took office, thousands of people stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court and presidential offices, hoping to induce the military to take over the government and restore Mr. Bolsonaro as president.Mr. Bolsonaro said on Friday that the riot was not an attempted coup, but instead “little old women and little old men, with Brazilian flags on their back and Bibles under their arms.”Since then, more evidence has emerged that at least some members of Mr. Bolsonaro’s inner circle were entertaining ideas of a coup. Brazil’s federal police found separate drafts of plans for Mr. Bolsonaro to hold on to power at the home of Mr. Bolsonaro’s justice minister and on the phone of his former assistant.Mr. Bolsonaro’s attacks on the voting system and the Jan. 8 riot in Brazil bore a striking resemblance to former president Donald J. Trump’s denials that he lost the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol.The aftermath of the riot at the Brazilian government complex in Brasília in January.Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesYet the result for the two former presidents has so far been different. While Mr. Bolsonaro has already been excluded from the next presidential race, Mr. Trump remains the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination. Mr. Trump could also still run for president even if he is convicted of any of the various criminal charges he faces.The ruling against Mr. Bolsonaro upends politics in Latin America’s largest nation. For years, he has pulled Brazil’s conservative movement further to the right with harsh rhetoric against rivals, skepticism of science, a love of guns and an embrace of the culture wars.He received 49.1 percent of the vote in the 2022 election, just 2.1 million votes behind Mr. Lula, in the nation’s closest presidential contest since it returned to democracy in 1985, following a military dictatorship.Yet conservative leaders in Brazil, with an eye toward Mr. Bolsonaro’s legal challenges, have started to move on, touting Tarcísio Gomes de Freitas, the right-wing governor of Brazil’s largest state, São Paulo, as the new standard-bearer of the right and a 2026 challenger to Mr. Lula.“He is a much more palatable candidate because he doesn’t have Bolsonaro’s liabilities and because he is making a move to the center,” said Marta Arretche, a political science professor at the University of São Paulo.The Brazilian press and pollsters have speculated that Mr. Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle, or two of his sons would run for president. Mr. Bolsonaro said recently that he told Ms. Bolsonaro she doesn’t have the necessary experience, “but she is an excellent campaigner.”Tarcísio Gomes de Freitas, the right-wing governor of São Paulo state, is emerging as a new standard-bearer of the Brazilian right.Adriano Machado/ReutersFriday’s decision is also further proof that Mr. Moraes, the head of the electoral court, has become one of Brazil’s most powerful men.During Mr. Bolsonaro’s administration, Mr. Moraes acted as the most effective check on the president’s power, leading investigations into Mr. Bolsonaro and his allies, jailing some of his supporters for what he viewed as threats against Brazil’s institutions and ordering tech companies to remove the accounts of many other right-wing voices.Those tactics raised concerns that he was abusing his power, and Mr. Bolsonaro and his supporters have called Mr. Moraes an authoritarian. On the left, he has been praised as the savior of Brazil’s democracy.Mr. Bolsonaro’s case before the electoral court stemmed from a 47-minute meeting on July 18 in which he called dozens of foreign diplomats to the presidential residence to present what he promised was evidence of fraud in past Brazilian elections.He made unfounded claims that Brazil’s voting machines changed ballots for him to other candidates in a previous election and that a 2018 hack of the electoral court’s computer network showed the vote could be rigged. But security experts have said the hackers could never gain access to the voting machines or change votes.The speech was broadcast on the Brazilian government’s television network and its social media channels. Some tech companies later took the video down because it spread election misinformation.As for Mr. Bolsonaro’s future plans? He told the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo that during the three months he spent in Florida this year after his election loss, he was offered a job as a “poster boy” for American businesses wanting to reach Brazilians.“I went to a hamburger joint and it filled with people,” he said. “But I don’t want to abandon my country.”Ana Ionova More

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      Hun Sen’s Facebook Page Goes Dark After Spat with Meta

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      Prime Minister Hun Sen, an avid user of the platform, had vowed to delete his account after Meta’s oversight board said he had used it to threaten political violence.The usually very active Facebook account for Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia appeared to have been deleted on Friday, a day after the oversight board for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, recommended that he be suspended from the platform for threatening political opponents with violence.The showdown pits the social media behemoth against one of Asia’s longest-ruling autocrats.Mr. Hun Sen, 70, has ruled Cambodia since 1985 and maintained power partly by silencing his critics. He is a staunch ally of China, a country whose support comes free of American-style admonishments on the value of human rights and democratic institutions.A note Friday on Mr. Hun Sen’s account, which had about 14 million followers, said that its content “isn’t available right now.” It was not immediately clear whether Meta had suspended the account or if Mr. Hun Sen had preemptively deleted it, as he had vowed to do in a post late Thursday on Telegram, a social media platform where he has a much smaller following.“That he stopped using Facebook is his private right,” Phay Siphan, a spokesman for the Cambodian government, told The New York Times on Friday. “Other Cambodians use it, and that’s their right.”The company-appointed oversight board for Meta had on Thursday recommended a minimum six-month suspension of Mr. Hun Sen’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram, which Meta also owns. The board also said that one of Mr. Hun Sen’s Facebook videos had violated Meta’s rules on “violence and incitement” and should be taken down.In the video, Mr. Hun Sen delivered a speech in which he responded to allegations of vote-stealing by calling on his political opponents to choose between the legal system and “a bat.”“If you say that’s freedom of expression, I will also express my freedom by sending people to your place and home,” Mr. Hun Sen said in the speech, according to Meta.Meta had previously decided to keep the video online under a policy that allows the platform to allow content that violates Facebook’s community standards on the grounds that it is newsworthy and in the public interest. But the oversight board said on Thursday that it was overturning the decision, calling it “incorrect.”A post on Facebook by Cambodian government official Duong Dara, which includes an image of the official Facebook page of Mr. Hun Sen.Tang Chhin Sothy/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe board added that its recommendation to suspend Mr. Hun Sen’s accounts for at least six months was justified given the severity of the violation and his “history of committing human rights violations and intimidating political opponents, and his strategic use of social media to amplify such threats.”Meta later said in a statement that it would remove the offending video to comply with the board’s decision. The company also said that it would respond to the suspension recommendation after analyzing it.Critics of Facebook have long said that the platform can undermine democracy, promote violence and help politicians unfairly target their critics, particularly in countries with weak institutions.Mr. Hun Sen has spent years cracking down on the news media and political opposition in an effort to consolidate his grip on power. In February, he ordered the shutdown of one of the country’s last independent news outlets, saying he did not like its coverage of his son and presumed successor, Lt. Gen. Hun Manet.Under Mr. Hun Sen, the government has also pushed for more government surveillance of the internet, a move that rights groups say makes it even easier for the authorities to monitor and punish online content.Mr. Hun Sen’s large Facebook following may overstate his actual support. In 2018, one of his most prominent political opponents, Sam Rainsy, argued in a California court that the prime minister used so-called click farms to accumulate millions of counterfeit followers.Mr. Sam Rainsy, who lives in exile, also argued that Mr. Hun Sen had used Facebook to spread false news stories and death threats directed at political opponents. The court later denied his request that Facebook be compelled to release records of advertising purchases by Mr. Hun Sen and his allies.In 2017, an opposition political party that Mr. Sam Rainsy had led, the Cambodia National Rescue Party, was dissolved by the country’s highest court. More recently, the Cambodian authorities have disqualified other opposition parties from running in a general election next month.At a public event in Cambodia on Friday, Mr. Hun Sen said that his political opponents outside the country were surely happy with his decision to quit Facebook.“You have to be aware that if I order Facebook to be shut down in Cambodia, it will strongly affect you,” he added, speaking at an event for garment workers ahead of the general election. “But this is not the path that I choose.” More