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      The Most Important Election of 2023 Is Taking Place in Wisconsin

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      In 2011, as tens of thousands of left-leaning demonstrators occupied the Wisconsin state capitol to protest a new bill gutting public employee unions, a prank caller posing as the right-wing billionaire David Koch got the Wisconsin governor, Scott Walker, on the phone. Just two years after Barack Obama won Wisconsin by 14 points, Walker had been swept into office by the Tea Party wave. He saw the anti-union law, Act 10, as his chance to follow in the footsteps of his idol, Ronald Reagan, who’d fired over 11,000 striking air traffic controllers in 1981, a devastating blow to the labor movement. Republican governors nationwide, Walker boasted, would follow his lead. “This is our moment,” he told the man he thought was Koch.In addition to eviscerating unions, Act 10 was designed to undermine the Democratic Party that depended on them. If similar bills were “enacted in a dozen more states,” wrote the right-wing activist Grover Norquist, “the modern Democratic Party will cease to be a competitive power in American politics.” Pro-union forces in Wisconsin tried hard to fight back. Democratic legislators fled the state to deny Republicans a quorum. Students walked out of schools and teachers held sickouts. People camped at the capitol for almost three weeks, with sympathizers around the world sending them pizzas. As demonstrations spread to other states, The New York Times drew comparisons to the Arab Spring, asking if Wisconsin was “the Tunisia of collective bargaining rights.” But Republicans jammed the law through, and Wisconsin’s hard right turn was underway.Walker and his party would go on to lock in G.O.P. rule, enacting shockingly lopsided electoral maps and assuring continuing Republican control of the state legislature, as well as dominance of Wisconsin’s national congressional delegation. Nothing since, not even the election of a Democratic governor, has been able to loosen Republicans’ gerrymandered grip on the state. That grip has been used to restrict voting rights, pass an anti-union right-to-work law, cut funding to education, dismantle environmental protections and make Wisconsin one of the hardest states in the country in which to cast a ballot.Democrats, on the other hand, are powerless to pass laws of their own. In 2022, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled, 4-3, that the state must adopt new, even more gerrymandered maps passed by the legislature. As Craig Gilbert wrote in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, under those maps, to win a bare majority in the Assembly, Democrats would have to win the statewide popular vote by double digits. The Wisconsin Democratic representative Mark Pocan put it this way: For Democrats to win a majority in the legislature, “The Republican Party would have to come out and say we’re now the party of the Chicago Bears and the Minnesota Vikings.”Impervious to voter sentiment, the Republican edifice of power has appeared unbreakable. But a contentious state Supreme Court election on April 4 could finally put a crack in it.A judicial election in a state you probably don’t live in — it might be hard to get excited about. But the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, pitting the mild-mannered, liberal-leaning family court judge Janet Protasiewicz against the Trumpist former state Supreme Court justice Daniel Kelly, is by far the most important political contest of the year.Janet Protasiewicz won’t say how she’d rule on specific abortion cases, but she’s made her view on the issue clear. The race, which has gotten quite vicious, is ostensibly nonpartisan; candidates are not affiliated with a party on the ballot. But its political stakes are clear. Wisconsin’s Supreme Court currently has a 4-3 conservative majority, and one of the conservatives is retiring. If elected, Protasiewicz hopes to take a fresh look at the maps. She wants to revisit Act 10, which the state Supreme Court upheld in 2014. “Since 2011,” she told me in Madison last week, “it’s just been a spiral downward to a place where our democracy is really at peril.” This election is a singular chance to reverse that spiral.It could also determine whether the next presidential election is free and fair, shaking up a swing state court that came frighteningly close to overturning the 2020 vote. And if that isn’t enough, this election will also be a referendum on abortion rights, which is turning out to be the key issue in the race. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, an 1849 Wisconsin law banning almost all abortions went into effect. The state’s Democratic attorney general has filed a lawsuit challenging the ban, and the case will almost certainly make its way to Wisconsin’s Supreme Court.“The state Supreme Court has always been the trump card for Republicans,” Charlie Sykes, once an influential right-wing radio host in Wisconsin and now the co-founder of the Never Trump conservative publication The Bulwark, told me. “You flip that and it changes the rules and dynamics of Wisconsin politics pretty fundamentally.”Like anyone auditioning for a judicial role, Protasiewicz, a former prosecutor who likes to tout her “common sense,” won’t say explicitly how she’d rule on the state’s abortion ban. But she offers strong hints. “You’ve had women and families counting on the protections of Roe for 50 years, right?” she told me. “Three generations of women, probably, counting on those protections, and now they’re gone.”Abortion is the primary reason that Protasiewicz’s race is garnering both national attention and, more importantly, national money, becoming the most expensive state Supreme Court contest in American history. After all, in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court decision scrapping Roe, state courts have emerged as crucial backstops for abortion rights, blocking abortion bans in states including South Carolina and North Dakota. “We’ve got this 1849 ban, and I think it is certainly motivating people to get out and vote,” said Protasiewicz.Democrats are hoping Wisconsin’s abortion ban will motivate the pro-choice vote. This protester is dressed as a uterus outside of the State Bar Center before last week’s debate. When a group of obstetrician-gynecologists held an event for her earlier this month, Protasiewicz said they told her they feared that doctors would no longer want to practice in Wisconsin, worried that routine medical care would run afoul of the law.These fears are well-grounded. One doctor told The New York Times about a patient who was denied standard care for a miscarriage and left bleeding for days. NBC News reported on a Wisconsin doctor who had to jump through hoops to care for a woman whose water had broken at 18 weeks, giving her baby almost no chance for survival and putting her at risk for sepsis. Protasiewicz recounted that the ob-gyns told her, “We don’t want to practice someplace where we can’t provide the necessary services that we feel we need to provide.”“I can’t tell you what I would do in a particular case,” Protasiewicz told me. But, she added, her “personal value” is that “those reproductive health choices should be able to be made by a woman who’s carrying a fetus.”Protasiewicz’s frankness about her views, and the policy implications of this election, seem to infuriate her opponent. In a contentious debate in Madison last week, in front of a standing-room-only crowd, the mutual contempt between candidates was palpable. Kelly kept pointing at Protasiewicz and calling her a liar as she looked straight ahead; the event had a bit of the same vibe as the infamous second presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Kelly inveighed against Protasiewicz for speaking in terms of policy outcomes rather than legal doctrine, calling her “a candidate who does nothing but talk about her personal politics.”“See, this is a judicial election,” Kelly said, his voice oozing with condescension. “You should be talking about things that the courts do.” On the trail, Kelly refers to his opponent as “Politician Protasiewicz” and claims that she’ll replace the rule of law with the “Rule of Janet.”Yet there’s little doubt that Kelly, who was appointed to the bench in 2016 by Walker when another justice retired, will be a reliable vote for the right. That’s why Wisconsin Right to Life has endorsed him and the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List is running ads on his behalf. It’s why a well-known MAGA influencer and a hard-core Christian nationalist have been campaigning for him. As a former Republican, Sykes was bombarded with pro-Kelly mailings before the February primary. Two-thirds of them, he said, were about Kelly’s anti-abortion bona fides. (Kelly’s campaign did not respond to a request for an interview.)A crowd gathered in Sheboygan to hear Scott Presler, a right-wing influencer who was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, campaign for Daniel Kelly.The current Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Jill Karofsky, who beat Kelly when he ran to retain his seat in 2020, was in the audience at the debate, and found his pretensions to neutrality risible. “Kelly always ruled in favor of the right-wing special interests,” Karofsky told me. “He was put on the court to carry the water of the right wing, and he did that job phenomenally.”The combination of strenuous claims of neutrality and consistently partisan rulings is, of course, a familiar one in judges who come out of the right-wing legal movement, including those who sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Again and again, conservative justices have insisted that the ideological beliefs that fueled their careers will have no bearing on their jurisprudence, then used the bench to shore up Republican power. One result is that, for Democrats, the courts have become utterly demystified. They are done pretending that judges are merely legal umpires.Ben Wikler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, pointed out that in 2019, Lisa Neubauer, the Democratic-leaning Supreme Court candidate, ran a largely nonpartisan race focused on her experience and qualifications. “In the final stretch of that campaign, the Republican apparatus came in with the singular goal of getting every Republican to vote for the conservative candidate,” said Wikler, knowing that Neubauer “hadn’t made a partisan appeal to Democrats to counterbalance that.” Though Neubauer had been ahead in internal polls, she lost by 5,981 votes. “That was probably the last election in which someone tries to run a campaign that isn’t explicit about the values of the candidate,” Wikler said.In 2018, a Democrat, Tony Evers, defeated Walker in the governor’s race. Another Democrat, Josh Kaul, won the race for attorney general. Republicans in the Legislature responded by weakening the powers of both offices. Among other things, they passed laws, signed by a lame-duck Walker, giving themselves more authority over key appointments, blocking Evers and Kaul from withdrawing from a lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act and ensuring that Evers would be unable to get rid of work requirements for some Medicaid recipients. (They also cut early voting in Democratic strongholds from six weeks to two.) The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the laws along ideological lines.An even bigger challenge to democracy came in 2020. Had Karofsky not replaced Kelly, it’s likely that the court would have overturned Wisconsin’s presidential vote, plunging the country into chaos. As it was, the state Supreme Court decided by a single vote to toss out the Trump campaign’s suit seeking to reverse his Wisconsin loss. Even though there was no evidence of fraud, the Wisconsin Supreme Court justice ​​Rebecca Frank Dallet told me, “there were still three people who were willing to throw out people’s ballots.”Daniel Kelly calls his opponent “Politician Protasiewicz.”After Kelly left the court, he was paid by the Wisconsin Republican Party and the Republican National Committee to work on “election integrity.” His name surfaced in Congress’s Jan. 6 investigation, with the former Wisconsin Republican chair Andrew Hitt saying that Kelly had been part of “pretty extensive conversations” on the scheme to create a slate of fake Republican electors who would attempt to cast votes for Trump.The one right-leaning judge who voted against the Trump campaign in 2020 was Brian Hagedorn. Kelly has blasted him for it, calling him “supremely unreliable.” Even if Kelly wins in April, Hagedorn will still be on the court, so Republicans can’t count on a majority if they contest the state’s election results in 2024. Nevertheless, several people I spoke to said they think Hagedorn might sign on to a less preposterous challenge than the one brought by the Trump team. “I don’t take him for granted at all,” said Sykes, whose ex-wife is a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice. “Because the pressures are so intense here on these kinds of things. So I’d be very worried.”As of this writing, there’s been no public polling on the Supreme Court race. Protasiewicz’s internal polling shows her ahead by the mid-to-high single digits. A poll by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, a right-wing group supporting Kelly, also had Protasiewicz ahead, but only by two points, within the margin of error.Last week, Kelly campaigned with Matthew Trewhella, a fundamentalist pastor who has defended the murder of abortion providers, and Scott Presler, a right-wing influencer who was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. “What that tells me is that Kelly has gotten so deep into swimming in that really hard-right cesspool, that I’m not sure he’s really reaching out to the swing voters,” said Sykes.Still, given that April elections historically have low turnout, getting out the base can be enough to win. “The fact that both sides are spending heavily at the end certainly suggests that both sides believe the race may still be within reach,” said Charles Franklin, a political scientist and the director of the Marquette Law School Poll.Early voting in Wisconsin has begun. With so much riding on the outcome, the contest has turned extraordinarily ugly. During the primary election that whittled the field to Kelly and Protasiewicz, the right-wing radio host Dan O’Donnell boasted of his readiness to play dirty. “I can do dirty tricks too,” O’Donnell said, suggesting he’d put out ads claiming that Protasiewicz opposed abortion. He added: “We can fool them. We can trick them.” In a Twitter group chat about plans for anti-Protasiewicz disinformation, later leaked online, one right-wing troll wrote, “I could doctor a couple videos or articles about how she said the N-word or something.”In what may or may not be a coincidence, earlier this month a conservative website, Wisconsin Right Now, published allegations that, in the 1990s, Protasiewicz used the N-word, and that she’d abused her ex-husband, Patrick Madden, who is deceased.Protasiewicz was married to Madden, a much older conservative judge, for 10 months when she was in her 30s, and their divorce was acrimonious. The sources named by Wisconsin Right Now were an old friend of her ex-husband and her ex-husband’s son, with whom Protasiewicz had a hostile relationship. According to divorce records, one reason Protasiewicz and her ex split up was that Prostasiewicz was unhappy that Michael Madden, who was on probation after serving a prison term for marijuana trafficking, was living with them. The divorce records make no mention of abuse, though O’Donnell, who has amplified the story, argued on his radio show that Patrick Madden must have been too ashamed to admit it.The Wisconsin Republican Party has repeatedly tweeted about the Wisconsin Right Now stories. In a press release, Kelly said that the allegations “are troubling to say the least,” calling for a “swift and full explanation.” At first, it seemed the issue might remain confined to the fever swamps. Last week, though, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel asked Protasiewicz about the claims during a videotaped editorial board meeting.“It’s an absolute lie, 100 percent. To me it smacks of some type of level of desperation,” she said. (The Journal Sentinel later reported, of Madden, “Some details of the stepson’s story have changed, and his siblings did not confirm either allegation.”)These accusations now seem set to become part of the right’s closing pitch. “Like everybody around politics, I get a ton of emails from both sides,” said Franklin, the political scientist from Marquette. “And those claims are being pushed very heavily in the Republican and allied group emails I get.”Still, said Franklin, this is an election that is overwhelmingly about abortion and redistricting. These are issues that affect people’s real lives, and they’re deeply intertwined. In a decade of polling, Franklin said, roughly 60 percent to 65 percent of Wisconsin voters have consistently said that abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances. Gerrymandering means that the majority cannot enact its beliefs into law.“If I had one big thing that I want to get across to you, it’s that the deadlock between the political branches, which is related to districting, is one of the reasons why the Supreme Court has become such a hot race,” said Franklin. “Because it’s become the arbiter of that deadlock.”If Democrats can flip the Supreme Court, that “changes the rules and dynamics of Wisconsin politics pretty fundamentally,” said Charlie Sykes. There’s a certain irony here. For decades, conservatives have crusaded to overturn Roe v. Wade, nurturing a bench of right-wing judges and building the political power needed to confirm them. In Wisconsin as elsewhere, opposition to abortion motivated the grass roots and united most of the right’s factions. As BuzzFeed News reported, it was probably the central issue fueling the political rise of Scott Walker, who served as president of the Students for Life chapter at Marquette University. “Support of abortion opponents is credited in Walker’s victory,” a 1993 Milwaukee Journal headline said when he won the primary for an assembly seat.But in finally triumphing, the right created a backlash that threatens their durable hold on power in a crucial swing state. “Now that Roe v. Wade is gone, we move from the court of law to the court of public opinion,” Walker tweeted after the Dobbs decision. Inasmuch as that’s true in Wisconsin, it could mean the beginning of the end of what Walker built there. And because Wisconsin has been a pioneer in minority rule, the restoration of democracy there would resonate nationally.“In my election in 2020 we worked really, really hard to try to explain to people why the court matters. How it’s relevant to their everyday life,” said Karofsky. “And I think that the U.S. Supreme Court, in the Dobbs decision, made that crystal clear for everyone.”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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      Michigan Democrats Rise, and Try to Turn a Battleground Blue

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      With a strong governor, a Legislature passing a raft of liberal measures and a looming early presidential primary, Democrats are testing the promise and pitfalls of complete control of the state.The governor of Michigan is considered one of her party’s brightest stars. Her state’s Democratic-controlled Legislature is rapidly approving a raft of ambitious priorities. The Democratic Party is planning to host one of its earliest presidential primaries in Michigan, while the state’s Republican Party is in chaos.Seven years after Michigan helped cement Donald J. Trump’s presidential victory, the state has transformed into a new — if fragile — focal point of Democratic power, testing the promise and pitfalls of complete Democratic governance in one of the nation’s pre-eminent political battlegrounds.Michigan’s Democratic leaders, however, recoil at the idea that their state — once a reliable stronghold for the party in presidential years — is turning blue once more.“No! Michigan’s not a blue state,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer insisted in an interview last week in Bay City, nestled in a windy, working-class county near Saginaw Bay that Mr. Trump won twice. Ms. Whitmer captured it too, prevailing there and across the state in Democrats’ November sweep.“It would be a mistake for anyone to look at that and think Michigan is not still a tossup, very competitive, very diverse state that’s going to decide the outcome of the next national election again,” she said.“Everybody thinks, Oh, Michigan’s done, it’s a blue state,” added Representative Debbie Dingell, a Michigan Democrat. “Tenuous is the operative word.”Against that backdrop — significant victories last fall, in a state that is still closely divided — state Democrats are pursuing a flood of liberal legislation, while measuring the durability of an unwieldy coalition that defeated Republicans in the last three elections.Democratic triumphs were fueled by both moderate suburbanites and liberal city dwellers, left-wing college students and even some onetime Trump voters who thought their party had gone too far.“The state Republican Party is not reflective of the average Republican in Michigan,” Ms. Whitmer said, nodding to the hard-right turn of the Michigan G.O.P. “I don’t think that everyone’s all of a sudden become Democrats.”In November, Michigan voters decided to enshrine abortion protections in the State Constitution. Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesMs. Whitmer has cautioned against claiming political “mandates.”But Democrats have moved assertively to act on their power, which includes full control of the Legislature and governor’s mansion for the first time in 40 years, focusing on both pocketbook priorities and cultural issues.They have shepherded through a major tax package, and, to the consternation of some in the business community, made Michigan the first state in nearly 60 years to repeal right-to-work rules, which had weakened organized labor. They have expanded L.G.B.T.Q. protections and pursued anti-gun violence measures, and have moved to repeal a now-unenforceable abortion ban from 1931.Ms. Whitmer has also signed a measure moving up Michigan’s presidential primary, a move blessed by national Democrats, though it is unclear how Republicans will proceed.If that calendar change takes hold, voters around the country who were once made intimately familiar with the Iowa State Fair may soon become acquainted with the Posen Potato Festival and a Michigan cheeseburger festival, as the state moves into a position of greater prominence in the Democratic nominating process.Ms. Whitmer’s victory margin of nearly 11 percentage points — on par or ahead of governors in several more liberal states — has only encouraged a perception among many Democrats that she is possible presidential material.But she insisted she would not run for president in 2024, regardless of President Biden’s re-election plans. He is expected to run and would have strong support from party leaders including Ms. Whitmer, but has not yet announced a bid.Ms. Whitmer holding a discussion with students and faculty members at a career center in Bay City, Mich., this month. Many Democrats see her as a potential presidential candidate one day, but she has insisted she will not run in 2024.Emily Elconin for The New York Times“I have made a commitment to the people of Michigan, I’m going to do this job till the end of this term,” Ms. Whitmer said. Pressed on whether there was anything about the presidency that appealed down the road, she first demurred — “no, not at the moment” — before allowing, “I think that this country is long overdue for a strong female chief executive.”Republicans, for their part, who as recently as 2018 controlled the state levers of power, are now adrift and divided. Ahead of what should be a marquee Senate race to succeed Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat who is retiring, the challenge of nominating someone who would both survive a primary contest and thrive in a general election is growing more apparent by the week.The state Republican Party is now helmed by an election denier, Kristina Karamo, who lost her November race for secretary of state by 14 points and has stoked doubts about her ability to run a serious operation.“People have concerns that the incumbent will have trouble raising money when she openly maligns the same donors she needs to bring in to help win the Senate race,” said Gustavo Portela, a former spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party. “She’ll have a challenge being able to balance the grass roots and donors.”Former President Donald J. Trump endorsing Kristina Karamo, left, who would go on to lose Michigan’s race for secretary of state in November. She is now the leader of the state Republican Party. Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesMs. Karamo did not respond to requests for comment.Just last week, the Michigan G.O.P. promoted an image on social media that compared efforts to curb gun violence with the Nazis’ theft of wedding rings from Holocaust victims, then defended the posts amid a backlash.“The Republican Party in Michigan is dead for the foreseeable future,” said former Representative Dave Trott, who represented a suburban Detroit district as a Republican but now considers himself an independent, supporting Mr. Biden in 2020. “Even if the right people were in charge, the MAGA movement is such that any candidate that would be more acceptable to a general electorate can’t win the primary.”“If I’m Elissa Slotkin,” he added, “I’m already trying to figure out which Senate building I want my office in.”The primary and the general elections for Senate are political lifetimes away, but Ms. Slotkin, a Democratic congresswoman from a competitive district, is currently in a commanding position in the race.Several of the state’s highest-profile Democrats have passed on a Senate run, giving her running room in the primary, though a number of other Democrats — hoping to see more representation of Black voters, Detroit voters, or both in the race — could still get in. Among Republicans, former Representative Peter Meijer, who voted to impeach Mr. Trump, is perhaps the best-known potential candidate. Kevin Rinke, who ran a largely self-funded Republican primary campaign for governor, has also been seen as a possible contender, among others. Both men lost primaries last year to far-right candidates who were then defeated in general elections.Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat, joined Michigan State students at the State Capitol who were protesting gun violence two days after a deadly shooting on the university’s campus. Nick Hagen for The New York TimesMaggie Abboud, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said the committee had seen “a number of strong potential candidates reach out.”Certainly, it is difficult to predict how the Democratic strength on display last fall will translate in 2024. The contests were defined in part by an extraordinary backlash to the overturning of Roe v. Wade and a major, successful initiative to enshrine abortion protections in the State Constitution — and it is far too early to say what issues will be galvanizing next year.Democrats benefited from a redistricting process. And party leaders freely acknowledge how quickly the political environment in the state can shift.“We were looking into the brink and decided to work our backsides off,” Ms. Slotkin said. “The minute you sleep on Michigan, it can go the other direction.”There were also warning signs in Wayne County, which is home to Detroit and the state’s largest population of Black Americans. Turnout was lower in 2022 than it was in the 2018 midterms.“We have an opportunity to do more,” said Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist II, himself a Detroiter. “I certainly spent a lot of time with Black voters and particularly our younger voters and our Black male voters who we’ve got to make sure are deeply engaged, and that we invest in that engagement.”Still, the party’s gains were significant, including signs of new inroads in white working-class territory that has become exceedingly difficult for Democrats around the country.“In my district, folks were outraged by Jan. 6, but if that’s all you talk to them about, you’re not going to win their vote,” said State Senator Kristen McDonald Rivet, a Democrat whose seat includes parts of Bay County, and who emphasized both kitchen-table economic issues and abortion rights in her race.Kristen McDonald Rivet, a Democratic state senator, said her party was mobilized “in a way that I haven’t seen in a really long time.”Emily Elconin for The New York Times“By demonstrating that we are moving on real issues that people care about and doing it very aggressively with Democratic power,” she said, she hoped Michiganders would believe that “voting for a Democrat means things are going to get better.”Democrats “were really demoralized after the Trump victory, and suddenly we are seeing people coming to party meetings again,” she added. “The Democratic trifecta in Michigan has mobilized Democrats in a way that I haven’t seen in a really long time.”But Ms. Dingell, the Democratic congresswoman, remains keenly focused on pro-Trump sentiment in the state, and she is already warning of another challenging election cycle, arguing that races up and down the ballot will be highly competitive.“We will be ground zero for every race,” she said. 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      Junta Disbands Aung San Suu Kyi’s Political Party in Myanmar

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      The regime has dissolved dozens of opposition parties ahead of the next general election, including the popular National League for Democracy.The political party of Myanmar’s imprisoned opposition leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, has been officially dissolved, in yet another blow to the Southeast Asian nation’s democracy.The party, the National League for Democracy, was disbanded by Myanmar’s military-appointed election commission, state media said late Tuesday night. The announcement set the stage for an upcoming election that will almost certainly keep the junta in power for years to come.Before Tuesday’s announcement, the N.L.D. had already made it clear that it would not participate in the election, calling it a sham. When the party failed to register with the election commission, Myanmar’s state television said that the N.L.D. — as well as 39 other opposition parties — would be dissolved.U Kyaw Htwe, a spokesman for the N.L.D., said the party would continue its activities, despite the announcement from the election commission. “As Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said before, if there are people, the N.L.D. party will exist,” said U Tun Myint, another N.L.D. spokesman. “The N.L.D. is already in the hearts of the people.”Mr. Tun Myint said that the military has burned down over 200 N.L.D. offices, killed more than 90 party members and supporters and arrested more than 1,300 party members since the generals seized power in a coup two years ago.“There is nothing darker than midnight,” he said, using a Burmese phrase that means things are as bad as they can get.The N.L.D. clinched landslide victories in three previous elections. In the last election, held in November 2020, the party won 82 percent of the available seats in Parliament. But before the new Parliament could be sworn in on Feb. 1. 2021, the military staged its coup, detaining Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and other top N.L.D. officials.Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, 77, has since been given a 33-year prison sentence. The military regime accused her of a range of charges, including corruption and violating the Official Secrets Act. The United Nations and international human rights groups have condemned the prosecutions, calling them politically motivated with the intent of keeping Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi out of power.Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s former leader, in 2020. The country’s military leaders have long seen her as a threat to their power.Aung Shine Oo/Associated PressAfter the coup, N.L.D. leaders who escaped arrest — as well as politicians from other parties — formed a new government called the National Unity Government. The organization, which operates in exile and has not been recognized by any international body, has supported armed rebel groups engaged in violent clashes against the military.Battling against the People’s Defense Force, as the armed rebel groups are known, the military now struggles to control territory throughout the country.Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has long been a thorn in the side of Myanmar’s generals, who see her overwhelming popularity as a threat to military power. She was previously kept under house arrest for nearly 15 years until 2010, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 in recognition of her struggle for democracy.Although Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is still revered by many in Myanmar, a large swath of the population is now looking beyond her for guidance. In the two years since the coup, a younger, more progressive — and confrontational — generation has emerged, reshaping politics and society.The junta initially said this year’s general election would be held by August, but in February it announced a six-month extension of the post-coup state of emergency, delaying the vote without providing a new date. Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the junta, said the military could not guarantee voters’ safety on election day because dozens of townships were not under military control.Fifty political parties have registered to contest the election, and 13 parties have applied to register, according to state media. The United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, has urged international organizations and election monitoring groups not to provide technical support in the election and to avoid lending legitimacy to the regime.“Instead, they should explicitly denounce what will be a farcical exercise designed to perpetuate military control of Myanmar’s political system,” Mr. Andrews said in a report. More

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      Israel’s Far-Right Government Backs Down, for Now

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      Mary Wilson and Sydney Harper and Patricia Willens and Diane Wong and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicFor months in Israel, the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pushing a highly contentious plan to fundamentally change the country’s Supreme Court, setting off some of the largest demonstrations in Israel’s history.On Monday, Mr. Netanyahu announced that he would delay his government’s campaign. Patrick Kingsley, the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times, explains the prime minister’s surprising concession.On today’s episodePatrick Kingsley, the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, center. The country is in the throes of a political crisis that has ballooned in recent days.Maya Alleruzzo/Associated PressBackground readingMr. Netanyahu delayed his bid to overhaul Israel’s judiciary in the face of furious protests.Israel’s prime minister is caught between his far-right coalition and public anger over the government’s plan to weaken the judiciary.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Patrick Kingsley More

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      Biden’s Defense of Global Democracies Is Tested by Political Turmoil

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      The administration’s Summit for Democracy begins this week amid crises in several countries allied with the United States, including Israel.WASHINGTON — A political crisis in Israel and setbacks to democracy in several other major countries closely allied with the United States are testing the Biden administration’s defense of democracy against a global trend toward the authoritarianism of nations like Russia and China.President Biden will deliver remarks on Wednesday at the second White House-led Summit for Democracy, which Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken kicked off on Tuesday morning.The three-day, in-person and virtual event comes as Mr. Biden has boasted, more than once, that since he became president “democracies have become stronger, not weaker. Autocracies have grown weaker, not stronger.”Casting a cloud over the long-planned gathering is a move by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government to weaken the power of Israel’s judiciary, a plan that his opponents call an existential threat to the country’s 75-year democratic tradition.But that is only the most vivid sign of how autocratic practices are making inroads around the world.Proposed changes to Israel’s judiciary have starkly divided society and ignited huge protests this week.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York TimesBiden administration officials are also warily eyeing countries like Mexico, which has moved to gut its election oversight body; India, where a top opposition political leader was disqualified last week from holding a post in Parliament; and Brazil, where the electoral defeat last year of the autocratic president, Jair Bolsonaro, was followed by a riot in January that his supporters orchestrated at government offices in Brasília, the capital.Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to postpone the proposed judicial changes under intense political pressure may slightly ease the awkwardness of Israel’s participation in the summit, where he is set to deliver prerecorded video remarks. Mexico, India and Brazil will also participate.Mr. Netanyahu’s retreat came after private admonitions from Biden officials that he was endangering Israel’s cherished reputation as a true democracy in the heart of the Middle East.In a briefing for reporters on Monday, John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, said that Mr. Biden had “strongly” urged Israel’s government to find a compromise to a judicial plan that has starkly divided society and ignited huge protests. Asked whether the White House might disinvite Israel from the summit, Mr. Kirby said only that Israel “has been invited.”But the larger troubles remain for Mr. Biden, who asserted in his State of the Union address last month that the United States had reach “an inflection point” in history and that during his presidency had begun to reverse a worldwide autocratic march.Democracy activists call that a debatable proposition, and U.S. officials acknowledge that the picture is nuanced at best.On the positive side of the ledger, U.S. officials and experts say, Mr. Biden has rallied much of the democratic world into a powerful coalition against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In a speech during his visit to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, last month marking the anniversary of the invasion, Mr. Biden repeated his assertion about the growing strength of democracies against autocracies and said that the war had forced the United States and its allies to “stand up for democracy.”Damage in Siversk, Ukraine, this month. U.S. officials and experts say Mr. Biden has rallied much of the democratic world into a powerful coalition against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesMr. Biden has also rallied democratic nations to take firmer stands against Chinese influence around the world at a time when experts say Beijing is looking to export its model of governance.And some argue that Mr. Biden has been a savior of democracy by winning the 2020 presidential election — defeating President Donald J. Trump, a U.S. leader with authoritarian tendencies — and by containing for now Mr. Trump’s efforts to reject the results of that election and myriad other democratic norms.“Without suggesting that the fight has been won, or that Biden is doing everything right, I think we need to give him credit for helping to save American democracy and standing up to the great authoritarian powers,” said Tom Malinowski, a former Democratic congressman from New Jersey.But Mr. Biden’s claim that autocracies have grown weaker faces a stark reality in some nations.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia may find himself economically isolated and militarily challenged in Ukraine. But he still has strong political support in Russia and has even consolidated power through a crackdown on dissent that has driven hundreds of thousands of Russians from the country.In Beijing, Xi Jinping was awarded a third five-year term this month not long after suppressing protests against his government’s coronavirus policies. In its latest official worldwide threat assessment, the U.S. intelligence community found that arms of the Chinese Communist Party “have become more aggressive with their influence campaigns” against the United States and other countries.President Xi Jinping of China was awarded a third five-year term this month not long after suppressing protests against his government’s coronavirus policies. Wu Hao/EPA, via ShutterstockBiden officials conceived a democracy summit during the 2020 campaign to address a belief that autocratic influence had been spreading for years, destabilizing and undermining Western governments. They also worried about a growing perception that political chaos and legislative paralysis in places like Washington and London — or in Israel, which held five elections in three years before Mr. Netanyahu narrowly managed to form his coalition — was creating a sense around the world that democracies could not deliver results for their people.Mr. Biden’s first Summit for Democracy, in December 2021, featured uplifting language from world leaders and group sessions on issues like media freedom and rule of law in which countries could trade best practices on strengthening their democracies and share advice on countering foreign efforts to manipulate politics and elections.The summit this week will include about 120 countries and will be hosted by Costa Rica, the Netherlands, South Korea and Zambia in addition to the United States.Recent democratic trends can be described as mixed at best. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual democracy index found last year that in 2021, the first year of Mr. Biden’s presidency, “global democracy continued its precipitous decline.” More recently, the same survey found that in 2022, democracy had “stagnated.”Mr. Biden hosted a Summit for Democracy from the White House in 2021.Doug Mills/The New York TimesSimilarly, a report released this month by Freedom House, a nonprofit group that monitors democracy, human rights and civil liberties around the world, found that global freedom had slipped for the 17th year in a row, by its measurement. But the group also reported that the steady decline might have plateaued and that there were just slightly more countries showing a decrease in freedoms compared with those whose records were improving.“This seems like a critical moment,” said Yana Gorokhovskaia, an author of the Freedom House report. “The spread of decline is clearly slowing. It hasn’t stopped.”That has been clear in some countries. Last month, Mexican lawmakers passed sweeping legislation hobbling the election oversight body that is widely credited with steering the country from decades of one-party rule. Critics say the country’s populist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has shown some troubling autocratic tendencies.In India, opponents of the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, have complained for years that he is weakening the democratic tradition of the world’s second-largest country by population by cracking down on critics and religious minorities. The concerns reached a new level with the expulsion from Parliament of Rahul Ghandi, a prominent opponent of Mr. Modi’s, a day after a court found him guilty of criminal defamation for a line in a campaign speech in 2019 in which he likened Mr. Modi to two thieves with the same name.And after supporters of Mr. Bolsonaro — who blamed electoral fraud for his narrow defeat in December — stormed government buildings in Brazil’s capital, Mr. Biden condemned “the assault on democracy.”Supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil stormed government buildings in Brasília, the capital, in January.ReutersDemocratic setbacks have also occurred in West Africa, where there have been coups in Mali and Burkina Faso in recent years. In Nigeria, a country of 220 million people, experts say that the presidential election in February appeared suspect.In Europe, thousands of people in the Republic of Georgia have taken to the streets to protest a measure that would curb what the government calls “foreign agents,” but which activists say is an effort to crack down on nongovernmental organizations and news media groups. The State Department called a March 7 parliamentary vote approving the measure “a dark day” for democracy in Georgia, which U.S. officials have tried to support against the influences of Russia, its neighbor.The tumult over Israel’s democracy has been particularly shocking to U.S. officials and experts who have long seen the country as a paragon of democratic values and an especially bright example in a region long plagued by dictatorship.And the summit this week will notably exclude two members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Hungary and Turkey, whose autocratic political systems have grown no less repressive during Mr. Biden’s tenure.Still, some people who track democratic trends say they are optimistic.“Perhaps the most striking indication of democracy’s forward movement over the last two years has been the election of President Biden, and the election of President Lula in Brazil,” said Sarah Margon, the director of foreign policy at Open Society-U.S.Those events “sent a critical message to people who are looking to defeat autocrats or leaders with autocratic tendencies,” added Ms. Margon, whom Mr. Biden nominated last year to the State Department’s top position for human rights and democracy. (Her nomination expired after Republican opposition and was not renewed in January.)But many world leaders profess to be unmoved by critiques from democracy advocates, especially from U.S. officials.“If they want to have a debate on this issue, let’s do it,” Mr. López Obrador said last month. “I have evidence to prove there is more liberty and democracy in our country.” More

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      Scotland’s National Party Picks Humza Yousaf to Succeed Sturgeon

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      Humza Yousaf is on course to become the first Muslim to lead a democratic western European nation, and when that happens, he will confront several daunting obstacles.The pro-independence Scottish National Party on Monday elected Humza Yousaf, the country’s health secretary, as its top official, putting the 37-year-old minister on track to become the first Muslim to lead a democratic western European nation.Mr. Yousaf emerged with a narrow victory in a bruising leadership race that followed the surprise resignation last month of Nicola Sturgeon, who had dominated Scottish politics for almost a decade as the country’s first minister and leader of the S.N.P.In choosing Mr. Yousaf, members of his party opted for the candidate thought most likely to stick with Ms. Sturgeon’s progressive agenda, rejecting a more socially conservative contender, Kate Forbes.“We will be the generation that delivers independence for Scotland,” said Mr. Yousaf after the result was announced, and before a vote on Tuesday in the Scottish Parliament to confirm him as the country’s first minister.As the new leader of the S.N.P. — the largest party in Scotland’s Parliament — that should be a formality. But, referring to some of the wider problems he faces, Mr. Yousaf appealed for unity after a divisive leadership contest that fractured a party previously renowned for its discipline.“Where there are divisions to heal we must do so and do so quickly because we have a job to do, and as a party we are at our strongest when we are united,” he said.In a sometimes emotional victory speech, Mr. Yousaf thanked his family, including his deceased grandparents, who emigrated to Scotland.“I am forever thankful that my grandparents made the trip from the Punjab to Scotland over 60 years ago,” he told the audience at Murrayfield, Scotland’s national rugby stadium, where the leadership results were announced. “As immigrants to this country, who knew barely a word of English, they could not have imagined their grandson would one day be on the cusp of being the next first minister of Scotland.”Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a research institute that focuses on identity issues, described Mr. Yousaf as “the first Muslim to be elected as a national leader in any western democracy,” writing that it was “a breakthrough moment that should resonate well beyond Scotland.”That in part reflects a growing diversity in the higher reaches of British politics. Anas Sarwar, leader of the Scottish opposition Labour Party, is also Muslim, while Britain’s prime minister Rishi Sunak, follows the Hindu faith.Though Mr. Yousaf was on top after the first ballot, he failed to win more than half of the votes cast by party members in the initial round of voting, as required to win the race. But once the third-place candidate, Ash Regan, was eliminated and her votes were redistributed, Mr. Yousaf won 52.1 percent, to 47.9 percent for Ms. Forbes.Scotland’s outgoing first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, center, at an heatlh center in Fife. She had dominated Scottish politics for almost a decadePeter Summers/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHaving served as transport minister, justice secretary and health secretary, Mr. Yousaf was seen as the preferred candidate of the party’s establishment, but his record in government was questioned by his opponents.“You were transport minister and the trains were never on time, when you were justice secretary the police were stretched to breaking point, and now as health minister we’ve got record high waiting times,” said Ms. Forbes, his main challenger, during a televised leadership debate.The social conservatism and strong religious beliefs of Ms. Forbes, who was on maternity leave from her position of finance secretary when Ms. Sturgeon quit, featured prominently in the leadership contest.A member of the evangelical Free Church of Scotland, Ms. Forbes said she would have voted against single-sex marriage had she been in the Scottish Parliament when it was approved in 2014, and that she believed that having children outside of marriage is “wrong” according to her faith.Another social question — gender recognition — became a political battleground just before Ms. Sturgeon’s resignation, when Britain’s government rejected legislation from Scotland’s Parliament making it easier for people to change their gender. Mr. Yousaf said on Monday that he would seek to challenge the British government’s decision.Had Ms. Forbes been elected, the Scottish Greens might have withdrawn their support for the S.N.P.-led government in Edinburgh, reducing it to a minority administration.The new leader faces numerous challenges both in replacing Ms. Sturgeon, who was a popular leader and skilled communicator, and in charting a course to independence.Ms. Sturgeon took over the leadership after Scots voted by 55 percent to 45 percent against independence in a referendum in 2014. Since then, sentiment on the issue has not shifted significantly.Ms. Sturgeon’s resignation came after the British Supreme Court ruled that a second referendum could not be held without the agreement of Britain’s government in London, which opposes such a move. Mr. Yousaf’s task will be to try build support for independence to such a level — perhaps around 60 percent in opinion polls — that it would be politically impossible for London to ignore calls for another vote.His leadership victory also has implications for the rest of Britain, where a general election must take place by January 2025. If the result is close, the S.N.P.’s performance could play a decisive role in determining the next prime minister.Given the divisions within the S.N.P. and the difficulties replacing Ms. Sturgeon, Britain’s main opposition Labour Party, which once dominated Scottish politics but has seen its influence dwindle as the S.N.P. gathered strength, now senses an opportunity to claw back some of its old seats in Scotland. More

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      Rahul Gandhi, Leader of India’s Opposition to Modi, Disqualified From Parliament

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      The expulsion of Rahul Gandhi is a devastating blow to the once-powerful Indian National Congress party. He and several other politicians are now in jeopardy through India’s legal system.NEW DELHI — Rahul Gandhi, one of the last national figures standing in political opposition to Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, was disqualified as a member of Parliament on Friday, sending shock waves across the country’s political scene and devastating the once-powerful Indian National Congress party Mr. Gandhi leads.Mr. Gandhi was expelled from the lower house the day after a court in Gujarat, Mr. Modi’s home state, convicted him on a charge of criminal defamation. The charge stemmed from a comment he made on the campaign trail in 2019, characterizing Mr. Modi as one of a group of “thieves” named Modi — referring to two prominent fugitives with the same last name. Mr. Gandhi received a two-year prison sentence, the maximum. He is out on 30 days’ bail.Any jail sentence of two years or more is supposed to result in automatic expulsion, but legal experts had expected Mr. Gandhi to have the chance to challenge his conviction. A notification signed by a parliamentary bureaucrat appointed by Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday stated that Mr. Gandhi had been disqualified automatically by the conviction itself, per the Constitution of India.“They are destroying the constitution, killing it,” said Srinivas B.V., president of the Indian National Congress Party’s youth wing. “The court gave Mr. Gandhi 30 days to appeal against the order, and hardly 24 hours have passed since.”Mr. Gandhi said in a Twitter post on Friday, “I am fighting for the voice of this country. I am ready to pay any price.”Lawmakers from the Congress Party and other opposition parties protesting outside of India’s parliament in New Delhi on Friday.Altaf Qadri/Associated PressMr. Srinivas said the party will fight the expulsion, politically and legally. One of the party’s most prominent members, Shashi Tharoor, who like Mr. Gandhi is a member of the lower house in the state of Kerala, said on Twitter that the action ending his tenure in Parliament was “politics with the gloves off, and it bodes ill for our democracy.”Mr. Gandhi, a scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family whose father, grandmother and great-grandfather served as prime minister, has taken pains to improve his national profile in recent months. He led an unexpectedly popular march late last year across swaths of India, rallying crowds to “unite India” against the Hindu-first nationalism espoused by Mr. Modi. And since the fortunes of Gautam Adani, a tycoon long associated with Mr. Modi, collapsed under pressure from a short-seller’s report in January, Mr. Gandhi has been using his platform in Parliament to call for an investigation of his business empire.The Congress Party is not alone in worrying about the implications for India’s democracy that Mr. Gandhi’s disqualification poses. With parliamentary elections coming next year, the government’s attempts to clamp down on dissent seem to be gaining momentum, other opposition leaders pointed out.Last month, Manish Sisodia, the second in command of the Aam Aadmi Party, was arrested on charges related to fraud. Earlier this month Kavitha K., a leader from a regional party that recently turned to national politics, was questioned by federal investigators in connection with the same case.The string of criminal cases against politicians — though none have been brought against high-profile members of Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P. — contrasts awkwardly with Mr. Modi’s presentation of India as “the Mother of Democracy” during a global publicity blitz to accompany its hosting the Group of 20 summit meeting this year.Police raids against the BBC’s office in India and some of the country’s leading think tanks have intensified doubts about the strength of India’s democracy. Eliminating the opposition from parliament through the courts might heighten those misgivings dramatically. More

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      Arizona Supreme Court Turns Down Kari Lake’s Appeal in Her Election Lawsuit

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      The justices refused to hear Ms. Lake’s claims disputing her loss in the governor’s race, but sent one part of her lawsuit back to a trial court for review.Arizona’s Supreme Court on Wednesday denied a request from Kari Lake to hear her lawsuit disputing her loss last year in the governor’s race. The lawsuit was based on what the court said was a false claim by Ms. Lake, a Republican, that more than 35,000 unaccounted ballots were accepted.In a five-page order written by Chief Justice Robert Brutinel, the court determined that a vast majority of Ms. Lake’s legal claims, which had earlier been dismissed by lower courts, lacked merit.“The Court of Appeals aptly resolved these issues,” Chief Justice Brutinel wrote, adding that the “petitioner’s challenges on these grounds are insufficient to warrant the requested relief under Arizona or federal law.”But the justices on Wednesday ordered a trial court in Arizona’s most populous county, Maricopa, to conduct an additional review of that county’s procedures for verifying signatures on mail-in ballots, keeping one part of her lawsuit alive.The decision dealt another setback to Ms. Lake, a former television news anchor whose strident election denialism helped her to gain the endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump.Ms. Lake tried to put a positive spin on the ruling, contending on Twitter that remanding the signature verification aspect of her case back to the trial court was vindication.“They have built a House of Cards in Maricopa County,” Ms. Lake wrote. “I’m not just going to knock it over. I’m going to burn it to the ground.”Ms. Lake had argued that “a material number” of ballots with unmatched signatures were accepted in Maricopa County. The Supreme Court agreed with the appeals court ruling on the matter, effectively saying that she would have to show the numbers that prove the election outcome “would plausibly have been different, not simply an untethered assertion of uncertainty.”She fell to Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who was Arizona’s secretary of state, by just over 17,000 votes out of about 2.6 million ballots cast in the battleground state — less than one percentage point.Representatives for Ms. Hobbs, a defendant in Ms. Lake’s lawsuit, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.Ms. Lake has repeatedly pointed to technical glitches on Election Day, which disrupted some ballot counting in Maricopa County, to fuel conspiracy theories and baseless claims.Stephen Richer, the Maricopa County recorder and a Republican who helps oversee elections, said in a statement, “Since the 2020 general election, Maricopa County has won over 20 lawsuits challenging the fairness, accuracy, legality and impartiality of its election administration.”He added, “This case will be no different, and will simply add another mark to Lake’s impressively long losing streak.”Ms. Lake’s chief strategist, Colton Duncan, vowed that Ms. Lake’s lawyers would expose more fraud and corruption.“Buckle up, it’s about to get fun,” he said. More