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      ¿El máximo tribunal de Brasil se extralimita en su defensa de la democracia?

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      El principal contrapeso al poder del presidente Jair Bolsonaro ha sido el Supremo Tribunal Federal de Brasil. Ahora muchos temen que el organismo se convierta en una amenaza.RÍO DE JANEIRO — El chat grupal en WhatsApp era una especie de vestidor de gimnasio para decenas de los más grandes empresarios de Brasil. Estaba un magnate de centros comerciales, el fundador de una tienda de ropa para surfear y el multimillonario de la tienda departamental más conocida de Brasil. Se quejaban de la inflación, enviaban memes y, a veces, compartían opiniones incendiarias.El Times More

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      Don Bolduc Indicates He Has Not Entirely Turned His Back on Election Denial

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      All through his primary, Don Bolduc, a far-right Senate candidate in New Hampshire, said the 2020 election was stolen. A day after his victory was called, he reversed course. But eight days after that?He indicated on a podcast that he had not completely turned his back on the stolen-election movement, conveying that he found it unclear why his election-denial message had not been resonating with voters in the battleground state.“The narrative that the election was stolen, it does not fly up here in New Hampshire for whatever reason,” Mr. Bolduc said in a Sept. 23 appearance on The Mel K Show, a podcast aligned with the QAnon conspiracy movement.Then he renewed his false claim there had been fraud in the election.“What does fly” in New Hampshire, Mr. Bolduc said, “is that there was significant fraud and it needs to be fixed.”For about five minutes on the podcast, Mr. Bolduc attacked the expansion of mail-in voting during the pandemic and said voters in New Hampshire should be forced to present identification at the polls. He further stated his opposition to college students from out of state voting in New Hampshire.Shortly after winning his primary, Mr. Bolduc struck a far different tone in a Fox News interview, saying, “I want to be definitive on this — the election was not stolen.”“Elections have consequences, and, unfortunately, President Biden is the legitimate president of this country,” he said in the interview.Mr. Bolduc’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.He is challenging Senator Maggie Hassan, whose underwhelming job approval ratings have emboldened Republicans in New England. The race could help determine whether Republicans gain control of the Senate in the November elections. More

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      Jim Florio, New Jersey Governor Undone by Tax Hike, Dies at 85

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      A Democrat, he had successes on gun control, the environment and property-tax relief, but after raising income and sales taxes, he lost a bid for re-election.Jim Florio, who was elected governor of New Jersey in 1989 by persuading voters that he would not raise state taxes but who then pushed through a record increase shortly after taking office, incurring public wrath that led to his defeat in his bid for a second term, died on Sunday. He was 85.His law partner Douglas Steinhardt announced the death on Twitter on Monday but did not specify the cause or place of death.The nation was facing a worsening economy and New Jersey the prospect of a yawning budget deficit when Mr. Florio, then an eight-term Democratic congressman, insisted during his campaign that he would balance the budget only by cutting waste in state spending.But two months after taking office in January 1990 he proposed a budget that called for sharp increases in income and sales taxes totaling more than $2.5 billion, in addition to deep cuts in most state services.He had no choice, he said. On taking a close look at the state’s books after he took office, he said, it was plain that just cutting spending would not be enough to balance the budget. Mr. Florio said tax-revenue projections by the previous Republican administration of Gov. Thomas H. Kean Sr. had been grossly overstated, even “phony,” and made even the deep spending cuts he proposed insufficient by themselves.Public reaction was harsh. Many New Jerseyans felt betrayed, asserting that Mr. Florio had broken a firm pledge not to increase taxes. Many fellow Democratic politicians expressed shock at the extent of the proposed increases, and some budget experts said that Mr. Florio had ignored evidence during the campaign that tax increases would be unavoidable.Ultimately, however, the Democratic-controlled State Senate and Assembly approved his plan by slim margins.More popular were his successes in enacting auto-insurance reform aimed at lowering the steep premiums that the state’s residents had been paying; pushing for property-tax relief for many middle-income homeowners, a measure approved by the State Legislature; and appointing an environmental prosecutor to crack down on the state’s notoriously polluting industries.Mr. Florio also won legislation to ban semiautomatic assault weapons, then prevailed over intense efforts led by the National Rifle Association to have the law repealed. And he successfully pushed a bill that shifted a substantial amount of state aid from affluent public school districts to lower and moderate-income ones — a measure that proved widely divisive.But the tax increases were his undoing. Feeding off voters’ anger, Republicans for the first time in two decades gained control of both houses of the legislature in 1991, and in a close election two years later, Mr. Florio was denied a second term by Christine Todd Whitman, a former Somerset County freeholder and scion of a prominent New Jersey family who became the state’s first woman governor.To his supporters, Mr. Florio — who preferred to be called Jim, and the news media obliged — was a tough-minded liberal with an independent streak. The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation gave him its Profile in Courage Award in 1993. Mr. Florio, the foundation said, had shown “courageous political leadership in gun control, education and economic reform,” including having “risked political and public criticism when he swiftly and boldly restructured the state’s income tax system.”Detractors called Mr. Florio stiff-necked. He shrugged off that assessment in his speech accepting the Profile in Courage Award, saying: “The first thing I learned as governor is that you can’t please everybody. The second thing I learned is some days you can’t please anybody. So be it.”Mr. Florio had won the governorship after two previously unsuccessful races for the office during the 15 years he served in Congress, where he made a name nationally as an environmental protection advocate. Most prominently, he helped spearhead the 1980 Superfund legislation to clean up dangerous toxic waste dumps and chemical spills across the country.In Congress, representing the Camden area, he gained a reputation as a hard worker and a frugal one.“My philosophy has always been, I have one pair of shoes because I have one pair of feet,” he said at the time. “My father always worked, always worked very hard. It is just beyond comprehension that anyone would not.”James Joseph Florio was born in Brooklyn on Aug. 29, 1937. His father was a shipyard painter.Mr. Florio dropped out of high school to serve in the Navy, where he earned a high school equivalency diploma. He was also an amateur boxer, an avocation that left him with a permanently sunken left cheekbone. He later served in the Navy Reserve for 17 years, rising to lieutenant commander.Mr. Florio graduated from Trenton State College (today the College of New Jersey) in 1962 and from Rutgers Law School in 1967. While in college he married Maryanne Spaeth. The marriage ended in divorce, and in 1988 he married Lucinda Coleman.Information about Mr. Florio’s survivors was not immediately available.Mr. Florio began practicing law in Camden, became active in local politics and served in the State Assembly in the 1970s. He lost a race for Congress in 1972 to the Republican incumbent, John E. Hunt. But in a return match two years later he defeated Mr. Hunt and served in the House until he was elected governor in 1989.He first ran for governor in 1977 as one of nine Democrats seeking to unseat a fellow Democrat, Gov. Brendan T. Byrne. Mr. Byrne defeated them in the primary and then prevailed in the general election.Mr. Florio ran again in 1981, winning the Democratic nomination but losing the general election to Mr. Kean, a moderate Republican, by a hair — fewer than 2,000 votes out of 2.3 million cast.In 1989, Mr. Florio easily won the Democratic nomination and then handily defeated his Republican opponent, Rep. James A. Courter. As the highly conservative Mr. Courter took a hard line against big government and taxes, Mr. Florio called himself part of “the sensible center” who would pursue policies like fighting pollution and steep auto insurance rates while holding the line on taxes.In seeking re-election in 1993, Mr. Florio had no Democratic primary opponent, even as polls had long suggested that he was unlikely to win in the general election. But as the race with Ms. Whitman heated up, polls showed it had tightened in the weeks before Election Day.Mr. Florio charged that Ms. Whitman, who had not held an elected post above the county level, was too inexperienced to run the state and that, coming from one of its wealthiest families, was out of touch with the needs of most residents. “There are no blue bloods” where he grew up in Brooklyn, Mr. Florio said time and again.Ms. Whitman hammered away at the Florio tax increases, pledged to cut income taxes by 30 percent over three years and accused the incumbent of waging a campaign based on class warfare.In the end, she narrowly won, with 49 percent of the vote to his 48 percent, while more than a dozen independent candidates shared the rest.It was not Mr. Florio’s last hurrah. In 2000 he ran for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat being vacated by a fellow Democrat, Frank R. Lautenberg.Mr. Florio faced a Wall Street multimillionaire and novice politician, Jon S. Corzine, who maintained that Mr. Florio, with his sharp tax increases as the economy sank into a recession in 1990, “took a problem and made it a crisis.” Mr. Florio questioned his opponent’s qualifications for the office and accused him of sounding like a Republican.Mr. Corzine, who outspent Mr. Florio by 14 to 1 — $35 million to $2.5 million — won easily, and then won the general election. Mr. Corzine left the Senate in 2006 after being elected governor and served one term, defeated for re-election in 2009 by the Republican Chris Christie, a prosecutor at the time.After losing his bid for a second term as governor, Mr. Florio returned to private law practice. But he remained active in environmental matters. From 2002 to 2005 he served as chairman of the New Jersey Pinelands Commission, which works to preserve the state’s Pine Barrens, the 1.1 million acres of semi-wilderness spanning parts of seven counties. While in Congress, Mr. Florio had pressed for federal support of such efforts.Alex Traub More

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      Giorgia Meloni's Election Win in Italy: Here’s What To Know

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      Giorgia Meloni, leader of the hard-right Brothers of Italy, looked set to become prime minister after her party garnered more votes than any other.After a historic national election in Italy, nearly complete election results on Monday showed a clear victory for a right-wing coalition led by a party descended from the remnants of fascism. The impressive showing for that party — the highest of any single party — made it almost certain that Giorgia Meloni, its leader, would become Italy’s first female prime minister.The right-wing coalition won 44 percent of the votes across the country, while the left, which failed to cobble together a significant alliance, barely surpassed 26 percent. Those results would give the right the ability to govern without help from the opposition.Giorgia Meloni holding a sign reading “Thank you Italy” at a news conference on Monday. She is almost certain to become Italy’s first female prime minister.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesItaly will not have a new government for weeks, though, as the system requires the newly elected Parliament to be seated before negotiations on who becomes prime minister. A new government should be installed by the end of October or early November, analysts said.The country’s hard turn to the right has sent shock waves across Europe after a period of stability in Italy led by Mario Draghi, the centrist technocrat who resigned as prime minister in July. Mr. Draghi directed some 190 billion euros, about $184 billion, in Covid recovery funds to modernize the country and helped lead Europe’s strong response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.But on Monday, European analysts said that Ms. Meloni, who has a long record of bashing the European Union and international bankers, did not represent an immediate economic or political threat to the bloc. They said that the real risk was for Italy, noting that the nation would likely lose the influence it exercised under Mr. Draghi, going from a leading country to one that Europe watches anxiously.Here’s what to know about the landmark vote.Key Points From Italy’s Election ResultsSome familiar names are back: Berlusconi and Salvini.The Five Star Movement was resurgent.The center-left was split, and suffered for it.Turnout hit a record low.The majority looks strong, and maybe even stable.Some familiar names are back: Berlusconi and Salvini.One vote out of every four cast was for the hard-right Brothers of Italy, known for its anti-immigrant policies, nationalist views and focus on “traditional” families. The party managed to multiply its support more than sixfold, to 26 percent in Sunday’s election, from 4 percent in 2018. Ms. Meloni’s party is now the largest in the country and the strongest within the coalition.In an early-morning speech from an upscale Roman hotel, Ms. Meloni said that Italians’ indication was “clear” for a government “led by Brothers of Italy,” an apparent signal that she expected her coalition partners to support her for prime minister.Before the election, Matteo Salvini of the nationalist League party; and Silvio Berlusconi, the four-time former prime minister and leader of Forza Italia — her main partners in the coalition — had been ambivalent about clearly designating her the top candidate for prime minister.Ms. Meloni at a rally on Thursday in Rome with her right-wing coalition partners Matteo Salvini, left; Silvio Berlusconi, center; and Maurizio Lupi.Roberto Monaldo/LaPresse, via Associated PressBut the League party, which sought to expand from its northern, business-oriented base to a nationalist party on the strength of an anti-migrant appeal, had such a poor showing on Sunday that analysts said it was unlikely to be able to argue about who gets to lead the country. The party won less than 9 percent of the vote, about half of what it obtained in 2018, hemorrhaging support especially in its stronghold in the northern regions.Ms. Meloni’s party devoured the League’s support, leaving Mr. Salvini’s leverage, and even leadership, in doubt. Some representatives of the League have started calling for his resignation.Mr. Berlusconi, positioning himself as the most moderate partner in the coalition, should hold on to his influence even though his party also lost support. Forza Italia took 8 percent in this election, compared with 14 percent in 2018. In 2001, the party had 29 percent.The Five Star Movement was resurgent.One of the surprises in the vote was the performance of the Five Star Movement, the once anti-establishment party that was part of the coalitions that governed Italy for more than four years from 2018 until earlier this year.The party had been struggling because of internal divisions and lackluster showings in opinion polls. But after it prompted the collapse of Mr. Draghi’s government, it managed to gain 15 percent of the votes on Sunday, becoming the third-largest party, after Brothers of Italy and the center-left Democratic Party, which took 19 percent.Giuseppe Conte, the Five Star Movement’s leader and a former prime minister, campaigned largely on the citizens’ income, a subsidy for unemployed, low-income Italians that has split the electorate. Five Star introduced the program in 2019, and it has been very popular in Italy’s poorer south. But many of Ms. Meloni’s supporters are against the subsidy, and she has said in the past that she wants to abolish the program.Giuseppe Conte, leader of the Five Star Movement, speaking in Volturara Appula, Italy, this month. His party took 15 percent of the vote, a showing that surprised many.Franco Cautillo/EPA, via ShutterstockAt a news conference in the early hours of Monday, Mr. Conte spoke of his party’s “great comeback,” which he deemed “very significant.”The center-left was split, and suffered for it.The Democratic Party won 19 percent of the vote, losing support even in historical bastions of Italy’s left.After the defeat, Enrico Letta, the party’s leader, said, “Our opposition will be strong and intransigent.”Enrico Letta, leader of the Democratic Party, leaving a polling station in Rome on Sunday. He was accused of leading a campaign lacking in substance and based on fear of the right.Fabio Frustaci/EPA, via ShutterstockBut he also announced that he was not going to run for the party’s leadership next year. He has been accused of leading a campaign lacking in substance and based on fear of the right.The Democrats, for decades the largest party in the center-left, have failed to build durable alliances. In this election, as in previous ones, they were able to build a coalition only with smaller, pro-European, environmentalist and more extreme leftist parties. In recent years, some of the Democratic Party’s former leaders have broken away and founded their own parties, draining support.Governing the country with other political forces for the past 10 years, and in Mr. Draghi’s unity government, did not help the party, Mr. Letta said.Turnout hit a record low.Voters went to the polls in record-low numbers. Only 64 percent of eligible voters cast ballots on Sunday, nine percentage points lower than in 2018. In the southern region of Calabria, only 50 percent voted.“Italians are disillusioned with politics,” Giovanni Orsina, director of the school of government at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome, said on a national news channel on Monday. “The largest party in Italy are those who didn’t vote. It’s a strong message.”A polling station in Rome on Saturday. Only 64 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the election.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesThe numbers are striking in a country that is used to relatively high turnout. Voter participation had hovered around 90 percent after World War II, but in the 1980s, the figure started falling. Still, the numbers from this election were especially low; in 2018, almost 73 percent of eligible voters cast ballots.The majority looks strong, and maybe even stable.The results will hand the right-wing coalition a strong majority in seats in both the lower house and in the Senate, allowing it to govern without much consent or support from the opposition, which is likely to be quite fractured.It was not immediately clear whether the coalition would have the overwhelming number of seats — a two-thirds majority — in Parliament that would allow it to change the Constitution and veer toward making Italy a presidential republic, a long-sought goal of the right. Analysts said that it was unlikely the coalition would surpass that threshold, however.The lower house of the Italian Parliament in July, when Mario Draghi resigned as prime minister. The right-wing coalition will have a majority in both that chamber and in the Senate.Remo Casilli/ReutersThe coalition partners also have substantial differences of opinion on domestic and foreign policy. Ms. Meloni has supported Ukraine and backed Mr. Draghi’s strong stance against Russia, while her coalition partners, such as Mr. Berlusconi, have signaled admiration for President Vladimir V. Putin and criticized sanctions against Moscow, saying they are damaging to the Italian economy. More

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      Europe Looks at Italy’s Giorgia Meloni With Caution and Trepidation

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      Giorgia Meloni, poised to be the country’s first far-right leader since Mussolini, says she supports Ukraine and has moderated her harsh views on Europe, but there are doubts, given her partners.BRUSSELS — The victory in Italian elections of the far-right and Euroskeptic leader Giorgia Meloni, who once wanted to ditch the euro currency, sent a tremor on Monday through a European establishment worried about a new right-wing shift in Europe.European Union leaders are now watching her coalition’s comfortable victory in Italy, one of its founding members, with caution and some trepidation, despite reassurances from Ms. Meloni, who would be the first far-right nationalist to govern Italy since Mussolini, that she has moderated her views.But it is hard for them to escape a degree of dread. Even given the bloc’s successes in recent years to agree on a groundbreaking pandemic recovery fund and to confront Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, the appeal of nationalists and populists remains strong — and is spreading, a potential threat to European ideals and cohesion.Earlier this month, the far-right Sweden Democrats became the country’s second-largest party and the largest in what is expected to be a right-wing coalition.The economic impact of Covid and now of the war in Ukraine, with high national debt and rocketing inflation, has deeply damaged centrist parties all over Europe. Far-right parties have not only pushed centrist parties to the right, but have also become “normalized,” no longer ostracized, said Charles A. Kupchan, a European expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.“The direction of political momentum is changing — we had a wave of centrism before and during the pandemic, but now it feels like the political table is tilting back in the direction of the populists on the right,” he said. “And that’s a big deal.”Under the outgoing technocratic prime minister Mario Draghi, Italy played an important role in a Europe of weak leadership, both on vital economic issues and the response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But Italy has now turned away from the European mainstream.An Italy led by Ms. Meloni is likely to be constrained by European control over billions of euros in crucial funding. In the best case, diplomats and analysts say, it will not smash the European consensus, but could severely complicate policymaking.If Ms. Meloni and her coalition partners choose to side with other populist, Euroskeptic leaders inside the European Union, like Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland, she can certainly “gum up the works,” Mr. Kupchan said.For Italy to team up with “Orban and company is Brussels’ nightmare,” said Stefano Stefanini, an analyst and former Italian diplomat. “For over 10 years the E.U. has lived with the fear of being swamped by a tide of Euroskeptic populism,” he said. “Hungary is a pain, but Italy joining forces with Hungary and Poland would be a serious challenge to the mainstream E.U. and would mobilize the far right in other countries.”Hungary’s populist leader Viktor Orban last month. For Italy to team up with “Orban and company is Brussels’ nightmare,” a former Italian diplomat said.Emil Lippe for The New York TimesThe first European congratulations to her came Sunday night from Hungary. Mr. Orban’s political director, Balazs Orban, said in a Twitter message: “In these difficult times, we need more than ever friends who share a common vision and approach to Europe’s challenges.”Europe’s concerns are less about policy toward Ukraine. Ms. Meloni has said she supports NATO and Ukraine and has no great warmth for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, as her junior coalition partners, Matteo Salvini and Silvio Berlusconi, have evinced.Still, Mr. Berlusconi said last week that Mr. Putin “was pushed by the Russian population, by his party, by his ministers to invent this special operation.” The plan, he said, was for Russian troops to enter “in a week to replace Zelensky’s government with a government of decent people.”Italian popular opinion is traditionally sympathetic toward Moscow, with about a third of seats in the new Parliament going to parties with an ambiguous stance on Russia, sanctions, and military aid to Ukraine. As the war proceeds, with all its domestic economic costs, Ms. Meloni may take a less firm view than Mr. Draghi has.Mr. Kupchan expects “the balance of power in Europe will tilt more toward diplomacy and a bit less toward continuing the fight.” That is a view more popular with the populist right than with parties in the mainstream, but it has prominent adherents in Germany and France, too.Supporters of the far-right Sweden Democrats celebrating exit polls near Stockholm this month. Sweden Democrats are now the country’s second-biggest party.Stefan Jerrevang/EPA, via Shutterstock“These elections are another sign that all is not well with mainstream parties,” said Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and spell a complicated period for the European Union.Even the victory a year ago of Olaf Scholz in Germany, a man of the center left, was ensured by the collapse of the center-right Christian Democrats, who had their worst showing in their history, while in April, France’s long-dominant center-right Republicans fell to under 5 percent of the vote.“People in Brussels are extremely anxious about Meloni becoming an E.U. prime minister,” Mr. Leonard said. “They’ve seen how disruptive Orban can be from a small country with no systemic role in the E.U. Meloni says she won’t immediately upend the consensus on Ukraine, but she could be a force for a much more virulent form of Euroskepticism in council meetings.”One or two troublemakers can do a lot of a damage to E.U. decision-making, he said, “but if it’s five or six,” it becomes very hard to obtain coherence or consensus.When the populist Five Star Movement led Italy from 2018 to early 2021, before Mr. Draghi, it created major fights inside Brussels on immigration and asylum issues. Ms. Meloni is expected to concentrate on topics like immigration, identity issues (she despises what she calls “woke ideology”), and future E.U. rules covering debt and fiscal discipline, to replace the outdated growth and stability pact.But analysts think she will pick her fights carefully, given Italy’s debt mountain — over 150 percent of gross domestic product — and the large sums that Brussels has promised Rome as part of the Covid recovery fund. For this year, the amount is 19 billion euros, or about $18.4 billion, nearly 1 percent of Italy’s G.D.P., said Mujtaba Rahman, Europe director for the Eurasia Group, with a total over the next few years of some 10.5 percent of G.D.P.“Draghi has already implemented tough reforms to satisfy Brussels, so there is no reason for her to come in and mess it up and agitate the market,” Mr. Rahman said. But for the future, there are worries that she will push for an expansionist budget, looser fiscal rules and thereby make the more frugal countries of northern Europe less willing to compromise.For Mr. Rahman, the bigger risk for Europe is the loss of influence Italy exercised under Mr. Draghi. He and President Emmanuel Macron of France, “were beginning to create an alternative axis to compete with the vacuum of leadership now in Germany, and all that will be lost,” Mr. Rahman said. Italy will go from a country that leads to one that Europe watches anxiously, he said.Italy’s outgoing Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, left, with President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, on their way to Ukraine in June.Pool photo by Ludovic MarinThere was a sign of that anxiety just before the election, when Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, warned that Brussels had “the tools” to deal with Italy if things went in a “difficult direction.” It was seen as a hint that the European Commission could cut funds to Italy if it were deemed to be violating the bloc’s democratic standards.Mr. Salvini, seeing an opportunity, immediately responded: “What is this, a threat? This is shameful arrogance,” and asked Ms. von der Leyen to “respect the free, democratic and sovereign vote of the Italian people” and resist “institutional bullying.”Instead, Mr. Stefanini, the former diplomat, urged Brussels to be patient and to engage with Ms. Meloni. “The new government should be judged on facts, on what it does when in power,” he said. “The real risk is that by exaggerated overreactions the E.U. makes legitimate concerns self-fulfilling prophecies.“If she’s made to feel rejected, she’ll be pushed into a corner — where she’ll find Orban and other soulmates waiting for her, and she’ll team up with them,” he continued. “But if she’s greeted as a legitimate leader, democratically elected, it will be possible for the E.U. to do business with her.”Luuk van Middelaar, a historian of the bloc, also urges caution. European leaders know two things about Italian prime ministers, he said. First, “they are not very powerful at home, and two, they tend not to last very long” — since World War II, an average of about 18 months.“So they will wait and see and not be blown away,” Mr. van Middelaar said. If she lasts longer, however, she could energize other far-right Euroskeptics in other big countries like France, he said, “and that would make a real difference.” More

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      Meloni Faces Early Test of Italy’s Resolve on Russia and Ukraine

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      The hard-right leader Giorgia Meloni has been a full-throated supporter of Ukraine, but her coalition partners have sounded like apologists for Vladimir V. Putin.ROME — Throughout her time in the opposition to Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s national unity government, Giorgia Meloni, the hard-right leader who is poised to become the next Italian prime minister after a strong showing in Sunday’s elections, railed against everything from vaccine requirements to undemocratic power grabs.But on the issue of Ukraine, perhaps the most consequential for the government, she unambiguously criticized Russia’s unwarranted aggression, gave full-throated support for Ukraine’s right to defend itself and, in a recent interview, said she would “totally” continue to provide Italian arms to Kyiv.The same cannot be said for Ms. Meloni’s coalition partners, who have deeply admired Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, and have often sounded like his apologists. Just days before the vote, the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, once Mr. Putin’s best friend among leaders in Western Europe, claimed “Putin was pushed by the Russian population, by his party and by his ministers to invent this special operation,” and that a flood of arms from the West had thwarted Russian soldiers in their mission to reach “Kyiv within a week, replace Zelensky’s government with decent people and then leave.”The other coalition partner, Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League party, used to wear T-shirts with Mr. Putin’s face on them and has for years been so fawning toward Russia that he has frequently had to reject accusations that he has taken money from Moscow.Recently, with Ms. Meloni apparently uncomfortable as she sat beside him, Mr. Salvini doubted the wisdom of sanctions on Russia, which he said hurt Italy more than Mr. Putin’s government.How Ms. Meloni navigates those tensions in her coalition will now be a key factor in the European Union’s struggle to keep an unbroken front against Russia as the cost of sanctions begins to bite in winter.Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy, second from right, visited Ukraine in June with leaders from France, Germany and Romania. Under Mr. Draghi, Italy became a key player in Europe’s hard line against Russia.Viacheslav Ratynskyi/ReutersIf she wavers, especially on sanctions, European leaders who have stood up to Mr. Putin all these months fear it could begin a major unraveling of resolve, widening divisions in the European Union and between the United States and Europe.“We are ready to welcome any political force that can show itself to be more constructive in its relations with Russia,” the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, said after the Italian election results, according to the Russian news service Tass.But analysts said Russia should not expect a change from Ms. Meloni anytime soon, believing that her position on Ukraine is credible and that the weak showing of her partners in the election will allow her to keep them in their place without blowing up their alliance.“I put my hand today on fire that she is not going to bend,” said Nathalie Tocci, the director of the Institute for International Affairs in Rome. “She’s very gung-ho about Russia.”Despite a widespread suspicion that political calculation lay behind Ms. Meloni’s pivot during the campaign to less hostile positions on the European Union and away from leaders such as Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary and Marine Le Pen in France, analysts judged that on the issue of Ukraine, Ms. Meloni was not likely to budge.In the past, Ms. Meloni has admired Mr. Putin’s defense of Christian values, which is consistent with her own traditionalist rhetoric. But unlike other hard-right politicians and newbie nationalists, like Mr. Salvini, Ms. Meloni was raised in a post-Fascist universe in Italy where Russia — and especially Communist internationalists — represented an Eastern force that threatened the sanctity and peculiarities of Western European identities.For Ms. Meloni it was less difficult to step away from the Putin adoration that swept the populist-nationalist right over the last decade. During the campaign, she was happy to point out this difference with her coalition partners, as she was competing with them and it helped differentiate her and reassure the West of her credibility.Pummeling the competition in Sunday’s election will have made it easier to withstand any attempted pressure from Mr. Salvini or Mr. Berlusconi, who both failed to break into double digits in the polls and were thus left with little leverage.In any case, Mr. Berlusconi and Mr. Salvini had already supported the sanctions as part of Mr. Draghi’s national unity government and didn’t bolt over the issue then. Mr. Salvini, who has sought to distance himself from Mr. Putin, was so hobbled by his disastrous performance in the elections that Rome was rife with speculation that he could be replaced as his party’s leader by a more moderate and less ideological governor from the country’s north, where the League has its electoral base.Ms. Meloni meeting with her coalition partners, Matteo Salvini and Silvio Berlusconi, in October 2021. The two men admire Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, and have often sounded like his apologists.Guglielmo Mangiapane/ReutersThat is not to say Ms. Meloni faces no pressure at home for a more forgiving stance. Italy, a country with deep and long ties to Russia, has long had reservations about sanctions against Moscow and getting involved in foreign wars.“I think we should put the question up to the Italians in a referendum,” Stefano Ferretti, 48, a supporter of Ms. Meloni, said on Election Day. “Let’s see if they really want it.”And Italy is not alone in Europe when it comes to doubts about a continued hard line against Russia, and turning away from its cheap energy, ahead of a cold and economically painful winter.In Prague this month, a day after the Czech government survived a no-confidence vote over accusations that it had failed to act on soaring energy prices, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets to voice outrage on the issue while far-right and fringe groups led many demonstrators in calling for withdrawal from NATO and the European Union. In Sweden, a hard-right party more sympathetic to Mr. Putin was on the winning side in elections this month.Mr. Orban has created complications for the European Union in its efforts to present a united force against Mr. Putin by demanding, and receiving, carve-outs for oil imports in exchange for agreeing to an embargo on Russian crude oil imports, a sanctions measure that required unanimity among member countries. On Monday, Mr. Orban applauded Ms. Meloni’s victory, writing on Facebook: “Bravo Giorgia, A more than deserved victory. Congratulations!”But analysts did not foresee Italy, under Ms. Meloni, playing the same games Hungary has done with sanctions. In her acceptance speech, she emphasized “responsibility” and experts said she was a savvy politician who clearly understood that Italy’s leaving the fold would break the bloc’s Russia strategy.As a reminder, though, only days before the vote, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, responded to a question about “figures close to Putin” poised to win elections in Italy by saying, “We’ll see.”“If things go in a difficult direction — and I’ve spoken about Hungary and Poland — we have the tools,” she said.Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League party, used to wear T-shirts with Mr. Putin’s face on them.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesThe tools included the cutting of funds for member states that Brussels considers in violation of the rule of law. Last week, the commission — which is the European Union’s executive arm — proposed to cut €7.5 billion of funds allocated to Hungary.But Italy is a central pillar not only of the European Union, but of its united front against Russia. Aldo Ferrari, head of the Russia, Caucasus and Central Asia Program at the Institute for International Political Studies in Milan, said Ms. Meloni had made her position “amply clear” throughout the election campaign, and that it was through Ukraine that she “sought legitimacy” among international leaders, especially members of the European Union and NATO.And as Russia is an ever less attractive ally, its pull on the West diminishes. The decision by countries of the European Union to endure economic pain together made it less likely that Italy, which is so woven into the fabric of the union, would break.“Our inclusion in the European Union and NATO,” Mr. Ferrari said, overcame the will “of individual politicians and individual countries.”Under Mr. Draghi, Italy became a key player in Europe’s hard line against Russia, which he has framed as an existential issue that will define the contours and values of the continent for decades to come.While some liberals had hoped he would rally to their side during the election campaign, or at least nod that he preferred them, Mr. Draghi stayed out of it completely. Analysts say he saw the polls, and the writing on the wall, and decided the most prudent coarse of action for his platform, legacy and, some critics say, future ambitions, was a smooth transition of power to Ms. Meloni.“I have a good relationship with Draghi,” Ms. Meloni said in an interview earlier this month. She said that more than once, “He could trust in us much more than the parties he had in his majority.”“Look on Ukraine,” she said. “On Ukraine, we made the foreign policy.”Elisabetta Povoledo More

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      Iran’s Ferocious Dissent

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      Times reporters make sense of what’s happening.Few independent journalists are working inside Iran today. But videos, emails and other information coming from inside the country suggest that Iran is experiencing its most significant protests in more than a decade.The demonstrations began after a 22-year-old, Mahsa Amini, died in police custody on Sept. 16, having been arrested for violating Iran’s law requiring women to wear head scarves fully hiding their hair. This weekend, the protests spread to at least 80 cities, and demonstrators briefly seized control of a city in northwestern Iran. In response, the country’s security forces have opened fire on crowds.In today’s newsletter, I’ll try to help you make sense of what’s going on.Five main points1. Iran’s government is again run by hard-liners.In last year’s presidential election, the clerics who hold behind-the-scenes power in Iran disqualified nearly every candidate except for a hard-liner named Ebrahim Raisi. Since becoming president, Raisi has set out to reverse the legacy of his reformist predecessor, Hassan Rouhani.“On multiple fronts, Raisi has ferociously swung the pendulum back to the kind of xenophobic policies and tone-deaf rhetoric witnessed during the Revolution’s early days,” Robin Wright wrote this weekend in The New Yorker. Among Raisi’s moves: calling for the police to strictly enforce the head scarf law, in a reversal of Rouhani’s policy.Raisi has also taken a tougher line toward the U.S. In meetings connected with the United Nations gathering last week, for instance, he scoffed at the notion that Iran’s police were overly violent. “How many times in the United States, men and women are killed every day at the hands of law enforcement personnel,” he told journalists on Thursday.As Wright described, “His voice rose so loudly and so often that it was frequently hard to hear the English translation through our headsets.”2. The rise of hard-liners has contributed to growing desperation among young Iranians.“The reason the younger generation is taking this kind of risk is because they feel they have nothing to lose, they have no hope for the future,” Ali Vaez, Iran director for the International Crisis Group, told The Times. (My colleagues Vivian Yee and Farnaz Fassihi went into more detail in this recent story.) Many Iranians understand they are taking existential risks by protesting, given the regime’s history of responding to past protests with mass arrests.“I’m struck by the bravery of these young Iranians,” my colleague David Sanger, who has been covering Iran for decades, said. “And by the ferocity of their desire to get out from under the rule of this government.”Protesters in the streets of Tehran on Wednesday.Associated Press3. The economy plays a big role in the dissatisfaction.In 2018, Donald Trump decided to pursue a high-risk, high-reward policy toward Iran. He exited a nuclear deal that Barack Obama had negotiated three years earlier, which had lifted many sanctions in exchange for Iran’s taking steps away from being able to build a nuclear weapon. Trump reimposed those sanctions and added new ones, betting that doing so would force Iran to accept a tougher deal and maybe even destabilize the government.Over time, the sanctions — combined with Iran’s pre-existing economic problems — plunged the country into an economic crisis. “Many Iranians are struggling to make ends meet, thanks to an economy decimated by mismanagement, corruption and sanctions,” Vivian, who is The Times’s Cairo bureau chief, told me. “Some are even offering to sell their organs.”She added:In the past — say, when Rouhani first got elected, in 2013 — lots of Iranians felt genuinely optimistic that things would turn around, because Rouhani promised that the nuclear deal with the U.S. would help open up the economy and boost trade, along with getting the sanctions lifted. But the mood darkened when those benefits failed to materialize before President Trump scuttled the deal.With the election of Raisi, a hard-liner who has spoken against returning to the deal and whose government hasn’t shown much flexibility in negotiations with Western powers over the last year, Iranians who had hoped for a recovery felt like there was no way things would improve.Does all this mean Trump’s policy is succeeding? Many experts say it’s too soon to make that judgment. The policy has sharply raised the risk that Iran will soon have a nuclear weapon. And a week or so of protests does not mean Iran’s regime will collapse. If the regime does collapse, however, it will be fair to revisit Trump’s Iran legacy.4. Biden is taking a tougher approach toward Iran than Obama did.In 2009, during the last major wave of protests, Obama did relatively little to support them, out of a concern that Iran’s government could then portray the demonstrations as the work of foreign agitators.This time, Biden is pursuing a more confrontational policy. “Part of the reason that there was a different kind of approach in 2009 was the belief that somehow if America spoke out, it would undermine the protesters, not aid them,” Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, who also served in the Obama administration, said on “Meet the Press” yesterday. “What we learned in the aftermath of that is that you can overthink these things, that the most important thing for the United States to do is to be firm and clear and principled in response to citizens of any country demanding their rights and dignity.”One example: To combat Iran’s government’s attempts to shut down large parts of the internet and prevent protesters from communicating with each other, the Biden administration has authorized some technology companies to offer services inside Iran without risk of violating U.S. sanctions. The administration also allowed SpaceX — one of Elon Musk’s companies, which offers the Starlink communication service — to send satellite equipment into Iran.“The technology available today makes it easier for Iranians to communicate in secret than ever before,” David Sanger said. “That’s why the Iranians are trying to bring down the whole internet inside Iran. That’s real desperation.”5. In the short term, Iran’s government seems likely to prevail. Then again, revolutions are rarely predictable.David put it this way: “History would suggest that since the state holds all the guns, this isn’t likely to last. But sometimes it’s a mistake to be a slave to past events. The successful Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 led many of us — me included — to suspect that Ukraine would shatter in a few days back in February.”Related: Amini, the Iranian woman who died in police custody, was a member of Iran’s Kurdish minority. Their rage reflects a history of discrimination.THE LATEST NEWSPoliticsTikTok has been under a legal cloud in the U.S. because of its Chinese ownership.Tony Luong for The New York TimesThe Biden administration and TikTok have drafted a preliminary deal to let the Chinese-owned app continue operating in the U.S.State chief justices want the Supreme Court to reject a legal theory that would give state legislatures extraordinary power over elections.InternationalGiorgia Meloni is set to become Italy’s first female leader.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesGiorgia Meloni, a hard-right politician who leads a party descended from the remnants of fascism, appears set to be Italy’s next prime minister.China is on track to sell about six million electric vehicles this year, more than every other country combined.Global markets tumbled this morning, and the pound fell to a record low against the dollar.Russia is forcing Ukrainians in occupied territory to fight against their own country.Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, fearing a war between Russia and NATO, refuses to send Ukraine tanks.Other Big StoriesA NASA spacecraft is set to collide with an asteroid today, testing a technique to protect Earth. Here’s how to watch.Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya beat his own world record to win the Berlin Marathon.Rihanna will perform at the Super Bowl halftime show.OpinionsGail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss crime and the investigations into Trump.“My faith is in the people of this state”: Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic nominee for Texas governor, spoke to Charles Blow.On both Taiwan and Russia, Biden’s rhetoric and actions are dangerously mismatched, Kori Schake argues.MORNING READSCalm: Can “brown noise” turn off your brain?“Jihad Rehab”: Sundance liked her documentary on terrorism, until Muslim critics didn’t.Quiz time: The average score on our latest news quiz was 9.1. See if you can do better.A Times classic: Do these A.I.-generated faces look real to you?Advice from Wirecutter: How to clean a coffee grinder and baking sheets.Lives Lived: Nancy Hiller was one of America’s most renowned woodworkers, breaking a barrier in a male-dominated trade. She died at 63.SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETICBroncos win ugly affair: Safeties and fumbles highlighted Denver’s 11-10 win over San Francisco last night, improbably sending the Broncos to 2-1 this season and ending a chaotic day of football.Judge’s chase stifled: Rain intervened Sunday in the Bronx to end the Yankees’ 2-0 win over the Red Sox after just six innings, cutting short another chance for Aaron Judge to tie the A.L. home run record. He has 10 games left to hit two home runs to pass Roger Maris.U.S. takes Presidents Cup: Jordan Spieth led the way for a convincing American victory in the Presidents Cup, as expected, but the weekend brought up questions about changing the event’s format.ARTS AND IDEAS Rookie dinnersRib-eye steaks, Norwegian water and cognac named after a French king: At “rookie dinners” in the N.F.L., the bill can reach $20,000.The meals are a longstanding tradition, in which new players pay for exorbitant nights out for their teammates. Footing these five-figure bills is “like putting your pads on before practice,” Channing Crowder, a former linebacker for the Miami Dolphins, said. “It is part of the game.”Torrey Smith, a two-time Super Bowl champion, disagrees. “Dudes come into the league with no financial literacy and real problems but folks think 50k dinners are cool! NAH!” he wrote on Twitter in June. His posts have prompted discussions of whether the tradition should end.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookMichael Graydon & Nikole Herriott for The New York Times. Matzo ball soup is a combination of three simple things: chicken broth, matzo balls and garnish.What to ReadSpecial powers, avian obsession and visions of the future fuel these historical novels.FashionErgonomic laptop bags — with style.Now Time to PlayThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was tackled. Here is today’s puzzle.Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Colon, in an emoticon (four letters).And here’s today’s Wordle. After, use our bot to get better.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — DavidP.S. Phil Pan, The Times’s top weekend editor, will become our next International editor.Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about the decline in child poverty in the U.S. “Popcast” is about Blondshell, Ice Spice and other breakout stars of 2022.Matthew Cullen, Natasha Frost, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More