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      Eric Adams Is Using Endorsements to Influence Policy

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      The mayor has chosen sides in at least 10 primaries this year, as he looks to enact criminal justice changes and defeat left-leaning candidates.Most big-city mayors, especially those in the relative infancy of their tenures, typically try to avoid wading into fractious party primaries, mindful that their goal is to build consensus.Mayor Eric Adams of New York City does not subscribe to that theory.Just seven months into his first term, Mr. Adams, a Democrat, has injected himself into his party’s divide, making endorsements in roughly a dozen state legislative primaries.Mr. Adams has endorsed incumbents, upstart challengers, and even a minister with a history of making antisemitic and homophobic statements.Behind all the endorsements lies a common theme: The mayor wants to push Albany and his party away from the left, toward the center.“I just want reasonable thinking lawmakers. I want people that are responding to the constituents,” Mr. Adams said Thursday. “The people of this city, they want to support police, they want safe streets, they want to make sure people who are part of the catch-release-repeat system don’t continue to hurt innocent New Yorkers.”In Tuesday’s State Senate primary, the mayor has endorsed three candidates facing rivals backed by the Democratic Socialists of America. The mayor said the endorsements are meant to help elect people willing to tighten the state’s bail law, a move that he believes is needed to address an uptick in serious crime.Mr. Adams’s most striking endorsement might be his decision to back the Rev. Conrad Tillard, who has disavowed his remarks about gay people and Jews, over incumbent Senator Jabari Brisport, a member of the Democratic Socialists.The mayor, who proudly hires people with troubled pasts, said Mr. Tillard is a changed man. During a recent interview on WABC radio, Mr. Tillard said that Mr. Adams was elected with a “mandate” to make New York City safer.“I want to join him in Albany, and I want to join other legislators who have common sense, who realize that without safe streets, safe communities, we cannot have a thriving city,” he said.The mayor has also held a fund-raiser for Miguelina Camilo, a lawyer running against Senator Gustavo Rivera in the Bronx. Mr. Rivera was endorsed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has criticized Mr. Adams for some of his centrist views; Ms. Camilo is the candidate of the Bronx Democratic Party.In a newly created Senate district that covers parts of Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan, the mayor has endorsed a moderate Democrat, Elizabeth Crowley, over Kristen Gonzalez, a tech worker who is supported by the Democratic Socialists and the Working Families Party. Mike Corbett, a former City Council staff member, is also running. The race has been flooded with outside money supporting Ms. Crowley.In Brooklyn, Mr. Adams endorsed incumbent Senator Kevin Parker, who is facing a challenge from Kaegan Mays-Williams, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney, and David Alexis, a former Lyft driver and co-founder of the Drivers Cooperative who also has support from the Democratic Socialists.Senator Kevin Parker, endorsed by the mayor, faces a Democratic Socialist opponent.Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesThree candidates — Mr. Brisport, Ms. Gonzalez and Mr. Alexis — whose rivals were supported by Mr. Adams said they are opposed to revising the bail law to keep more people in jail before their trials.“When it comes to an issue like bail reform, what we don’t want to have is a double standard where if you have enough money you can make bail and get out, but if you are poor or working class you don’t,” Ms. Gonzalez said.Mr. Brisport said that the mayor’s motive extends beyond bail and criminal justice issues.Mr. Adams, Mr. Brisport said, is “making a concerted effort to build a team that will do his bidding in Albany.”The mayor did not disagree.In his first dealings with Albany as a mayor, Mr. Adams fell short of accomplishing his legislative agenda. He had some victories, but was displeased with the Legislature’s refusal to accommodate his wishes on the bail law or to grant him long-term control of the schools, two issues central to his agenda.While crime overall remains comparatively low and homicides and shootings are down, other crimes such as robbery, assault and burglary have increased as much as 40 percent compared with this time last year. Without evidence, the mayor has blamed the bail reform law for letting repeat offenders out of jail.Under pressure from the governor, the Legislature in April made changes to the bail law, but the mayor has repeatedly criticized lawmakers for not going far enough.Mr. Adams has raised campaign money for Miguelina Camilo, center. Janice Chung for The New York Times“We passed a lot of laws for people who commit crimes, but I just want to see what are the list of laws we pass that deal with a New Yorker who was the victim of a crime,” Mr. Adams said. The mayor’s strategy is not entirely new. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg sought influence by donating from his personal fortune to Republicans. Mayor Bill de Blasio embarked on a disastrous fund-raising plan to help Democrats take control of the Senate in 2014. But those mayors were interceding in general elections, not intraparty primaries.In the June Assembly primaries, Mr. Adams endorsed a handful of incumbents facing upstart challengers from the left. He backed Michael Benedetto, an incumbent from the Bronx who beat back a primary challenge from Jonathan Soto, who worked for, and was endorsed by, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Mr. Adams also endorsed Assemblywoman Inez E. Dickens in Central Harlem in her victorious campaign against another candidate backed by Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.“The jury is still out on how much endorsements matter, but they do matter for the person being endorsed,” said Olivia Lapeyrolerie, a Democratic political strategist and former aide to Mr. de Blasio. “It’s good to keep your friends close.”Mr. Adams’s influence is not restricted to his endorsements. Striving for a Better New York, a political action committee run by one of his associates, the Rev. Alfred L. Cockfield II, donated $7,500 to Mr. Tillard in May and more than $12,000 to Mr. Parker through August.The mayor’s efforts have come under attack. Michael Gianaris, the deputy majority leader in the Senate, said there is no need to create a new faction in the Senate that is reminiscent of the Independent Democratic Conference, a group of breakaway Democrats that allowed Senate Republicans to control the chamber until they were vanquished in 2018.“Eric Adams was never very good at Senate politics when he was in the Senate,” Mr. Gianaris said. “And apparently he hasn’t gotten much better at it.”It’s unclear how much influence Mr. Adams’s endorsements will have. Sumathy Kumar, co-chair of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, said that with the mayor’s lukewarm approval ratings, she’s betting that on-the-ground organizing will be the deciding factor in what is expected to be a low turnout primary.Mr. Parker said the mayor’s endorsement would be influential in his district and supported Mr. Adams’s push against the left wing of the party.“How many times do you have to be attacked by the D.S.A. before you realize you’re in a fight and decide to fight back?” Mr. Parker said.Emma G. Fitzsimmons contributed reporting. More

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      How Democracy Is Under Threat Across the Globe

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      The United States is far from alone in facing pressure on its democratic norms and institutions. According to data from V-Dem, a monitoring institute based in Sweden, more democracies are declining, and even sliding into autocracy, today than at any point in the last century. This trend, continuing for over a decade, appears to be accelerating, data shows, affecting established and fragile democracies alike across the globe.Here’s a look at some of the latest developments.KenyaThough considered one of Africa’s most robust democracies, Kenya has faced periodic turmoil. Politicians there have sometimes exploited polarization along ethnic and geographic lines, particularly during elections. This has led to succession crises, communal violence or attacks on institutions such as the courts.A razor-thin election this August has brought with it another test for Kenyan democracy, with a senior aide to the losing candidate suggesting that their campaign might challenge the results as fraudulent.“The state of democracy in our country, Kenya, is sitting in a very hostile territory,” William Ruto, the election’s winning candidate, said at a Washington, D.C., event earlier this year.Sri LankaThis multiethnic and religiously diverse democracy has been questioned since the brother of Mahinda Rajapaksa, a former strongman, took power in the 2019 elections. The Rajapaksa family had long faced accusations of abusing power and vilifying the country’s minorities, raising fears that Sri Lanka might return to autocracy.This summer, demonstrations over economic issues culminated in protesters storming the presidential palace. The president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, resigned, but appointed an ally as his replacement; that ally later formally became president, with the Parliament’s blessing. This has left the conflict between protesters and the influence of the Rajapaksa dynasty in limbo.Hungary“The new state that we are building is an illiberal state,” Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban declared in 2014.Since then, Mr. Orban, who casts himself as a vanguard of the global populist right, has retooled the courts, the Constitution and voting rules in ways that have cemented his rule. He has also wielded state-run and private media against opponents, promoting disinformation and nationalist narratives.Mr. Orban has cast these steps as necessary to defend Hungary from the corrupting influences of racial diversity, non-European immigration and the European Union. While opposition parties have risen built on discontentment with Mr. Orban, he retains a meaningful base of support.BrazilPresident Jair Bolsonaro, who praises Donald J. Trump as a political model, has long criticized Brazil’s democratic institutions as corrupt. He has also spoken fondly of the country’s right-wing military dictatorship, which ruled from 1964 to 1985.Mr. Bolsonaro is already questioning the legitimacy of Brazil’s presidential race coming up in October, in which he has consistently trailed in the polls. He has even enlisted the help of some military leaders in raising doubts about the integrity of the vote.Though it is unclear whether Mr. Bolsonaro would actually seek to overturn or reject a loss, his rabble rousing has elevated international concern over the stability of Latin America’s largest democracy.The PhilippinesRodrigo Duterte’s six years as president in the Philippines saw political rivals and critical journalists jailed, the widespread dissemination of pro-Duterte disinformation and a wave of vigilante police violence that left thousands dead.A fiery populist, Mr. Duterte positioned himself as defending democracy from the opponents he cast as threats to the country from within, winning support from his base despite his excesses while in office.Though he left office willingly at the end of his term in May, voters elected a new president, Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., that rights groups fear will continue his style of rule. The new President Marcos is the son of a former dictator of the Philippines. His vice president, Sara Duterte, is Mr. Duterte’s daughter.IndiaUnder Narendra Modi, India’s right-wing prime minister since 2014, a sharp rise in extreme Hindu nationalism, often backed by his government’s allies, has divided Indian society.The country’s roughly 200 million Muslims have faced political marginalization and, in many cases, deadly religious violence, with officials at times looking the other way. Critical journalists come under growing pressure from both the government and an increasingly nationalist media.Mr. Modi’s government clamped down fiercely on the disputed region of Kashmir and responded harshly to a wave of protests by Indian farmers last year, raising fears that his rule was growing increasingly strong-armed.TurkeyIn his nearly 20 years in power, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has remade Turkish democracy into a vessel for his personal rule. Once seen as a liberalizing force, Mr. Erdogan has curtailed political freedoms and centralized power so drastically that he is widely seen as a dictator.After a 2016 coup attempt against him, Mr. Erdogan’s administration detained 100,000 people and purged 150,000 government employees from their jobs, cementing his power. Still, there remains enough of a semblance of democracy that opposition groups unseated Mr. Erdogan’s ally from the powerful mayoralty of Istanbul in 2019 and hope for further gains.PolandOnce Eastern Europe’s great post-communist success story, Poland is now facing deep political polarization. The ruling right-wing party has sought to subordinate the traditionally independent judiciary and media to its will. It also railed against the European Union, which has questioned whether Polish leaders’ are upholding the rule of law.In recent months, fears for Poland’s democracy have ebbed slightly. Polish leaders have sought to repair ties with the European Union, including over democracy matters, as a way to fight against what they see as the Russian threat to Europe. Still, rights groups say that Polish democracy has hardly reversed its backward steps.El SalvadorThis small Central American country had established a fragile democracy in the wake of its wrenching civil war, which ended in 1992 but created wounds that are still healing.A young outsider, Nayib Bukele, won the presidency in 2019 promising change. In office, however, he has curbed basic rights, purged judges, jailed thousands with little due process and deployed the army, all in what he calls an emergency measure to fight crime.Still, even as rights groups and international monitors raise alarms, Mr. Bukele has grown wildly popular, a reminder that, in today’s world, would-be strongmen are often cheered while on the rise.VenezuelaOnce South America’s oldest democracy and wealthiest economy, Venezuela has collapsed into an economic disaster zone, with much of the population hungry and ruled under what is widely considered a dictatorship.The country is often held up by democracy scholars as representative of how democracies tend to decline today: slowly, pulled down from within by elected populists who treat opponents and institutions as illegitimate, and whose actions may initially be quite popular.The leader who oversaw much of this decline, the leftist firebrand Hugo Chávez, died in 2013. His successor, Nicolás Maduro, has overseen deadly crackdowns on protesters, as well as asserting forceful control over the courts and legislature.Czech Republic and SloveniaWhen the populist outsider and billionaire media tycoon Andrej Babis became the prime minister of the Czech Republic in 2017, there were fears he might follow the path created by Mr. Orban in Hungary toward arch-conservative illiberalism. As nearby Slovenia elected its own right-wing populist, concerns arose of a bloc of nations that might break the European Union from within.While Mr. Babis did inch his country in that direction, he was ultimately felled in the 2021 elections, when several opposition parties banded together against the leader they called a threat to Czech democracy. Slovenian voters cast out their populist government the next year. Both countries served as demonstrations that doubts around democracy can still sometimes recede. More

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      In Deep Red Texas, Beto O’Rourke Takes on Guns and Abortion

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      WHITESBORO, Texas — As supporters of Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate for Texas governor, emerged from a crowded campaign event in a quaint, conservative bastion north of Dallas, Treva Sanges was there to protest them.“Murderers!” she called out.Most walked by her, but Abbi Gregory and a friend, who support abortion rights, stopped and engaged Ms. Sanges in a lengthy debate in the late evening sun. The women quickly realized that while they were political opponents, they were also once neighbors.“I actually have a few of her art pieces hanging in my house,” Ms. Gregory, 22, said. “And I love her to pieces,” added Ms. Sanges, 58. The women eventually found a thin reed of agreement: abortion bans should allow exceptions for child rape, which Texas law does not provide.“If a 10-year-old gets raped, by all means, you know, go and get it taken care of,” Ms. Sanges said.Locked in a race against Gov. Greg Abbott that has grown unexpectedly close, Mr. O’Rourke has been venturing into deeply conservative corners of rural Texas, sparking confrontations and conversations between Democrats and Republicans who may rarely speak with each other about politics, even if they cross paths every day in the local grocery store or at church.“This is refreshing to see people like me — there’s probably five Democrats in the county,” said John Wade, 73, a retired Methodist elder who came to see Mr. O’Rourke in Bowie, Texas, where nearly 90 percent of voters chose Donald J. Trump in 2020.Supporters listened to Mr. O’Rourke during a campaign rally in Whitesboro.Allison V. Smith for The New York TimesMr. O’Rourke took a photo with Caroline Gomez, a supporter, in Bowie.Allison V. Smith for The New York TimesAt five recent town hall-style gatherings across the deep red rural northeast of Texas, Mr. O’Rourke invited protesters inside for a break from the oppressive heat, answered questions from supporters of Mr. Abbott and took pains to direct his attacks against the governor, not Republicans in general.Mr. O’Rourke sees such efforts as critically important to his uphill campaign to retake the governor’s mansion for Democrats for the first time since Ann Richards mounted an improbable, come-from-behind victory in 1990.“I can’t win this with Democrats alone,” Mr. O’Rourke said in an interview after an event in Texarkana, along the Arkansas border. “I hope that that gives more Republicans a greater opportunity to be part of this, without feeling like they are responsible for what Greg Abbott is doing now, because they’re not.”A former El Paso congressman who made his name with a brash challenge and narrow loss to Senator Ted Cruz in 2018, Mr. O’Rourke has sought to avoid the mistakes of that race, in which his voter turnout efforts also helped Mr. Cruz, and his campaign eschewed big-money supporters. This time, he has taken a few $1 million donations, including from the billionaire George Soros.“I’m raising the money I need to win this race,” Mr. O’Rourke said.For years, Democrats have forecast a political shift in Texas, based on the state’s growing and more liberal urban centers. Mr. O’Rourke’s run is the latest attempt to test that prediction, which has yet to come true.Mr. O’Rourke discussed guns with Rod Parker, a revivalist preacher with a .40-caliber handgun, at a church in Whitesboro last month.Allison V. Smith for The New York TimesMr. O’Rourke attracted protesters in Whitesboro. Many had handguns on their hips, and one had a flag depicting the weapon in place of a cannon over the famous slogan from the Texas revolution: “Come and Take It.”Allison V. Smith for The New York TimesWhat has changed this time, for him and the state, has been the resurgence of emotional debates over guns and abortion. Those hot-button issues are more relevant than ever in Texas, with a school shooting in Uvalde in May and a clampdown on abortion made possible by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on the issue in June. They have invigorated Mr. O’Rourke’s longtime supporters and provided an opening for him to move into conservative strongholds around Texas — like the rural counties north of Dallas — and present his positions as moderate compared with those of Mr. Abbott and other Republican leaders.While Mr. O’Rourke is hoping to find more votes, he is still likely to lose in these corners of the state by large margins.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsLiz Cheney’s Lopsided Loss: The Republican congresswoman’s defeat in Wyoming exposed the degree to which former President Donald J. Trump still controls the party’s present — and its near future.2024 Hint: Hours after her loss, Ms. Cheney acknowledged that she was “thinking” about a White House bid. But her mission to thwart Donald J. Trump presents challenges.The ‘Impeachment 10’: With Ms. Cheney’s defeat, only two of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump remain.Alaska Races: Senator Lisa Murkowski and Sarah Palin appeared to be on divergent paths following contests that offered a glimpse at the state’s independent streak.“I had my picture with him — if I was running again, I’d lose my campaign,” said L.D. Williamson, 85, the top executive in Red River County who first won office as a Democrat before switching to the Republican Party, joining most of the county’s roughly 12,000 residents. (Mr. Trump won the county 78 percent to 22 percent.)Mr. O’Rourke packed a restaurant on the main square in Clarksville. In his remarks, he outlined a moderated position on guns from some he had taken in the past — expanded background checks, raising the age to 21 from 18 to buy an AR-15-style rifle and a “red flag” law to take firearms from those deemed a risk.“You don’t need an AR-15 to defend yourself and your home,” he said. But, he added, “I’m not here to stand on principle. I’m not here to tell you only what my ideal is. I’m here to get something done.”Still, Mr. O’Rourke has exhibited some raw feelings on the issue: While speaking in Mineral Wells, Texas, he lashed out after a man in a group holding Abbott campaign signs was heard laughing as Mr. O’Rourke spoke about the killing of school children in Uvalde.“It may be funny to you,” he said, lashing out with an expletive, “but it’s not funny to me.” His supporters cheered. A video of the encounter has been viewed nearly five million times.Even before that exchange, the Abbott campaign had grown concerned that the presence of the governor’s supporters at Mr. O’Rourke’s events could backfire. An email from an Abbott campaign worker, described by The Texas Tribune, cautioned them not to go into Mr. O’Rourke’s events or talk to him, not because of fears of confrontations, but because of concerns that it could appear in photos as if they had been converted.Dave Carney, a top campaign strategist for Mr. Abbott, stressed that the campaign welcomed Mr. O’Rourke’s frequent speeches, in which the campaign says he can be seen waffling or pandering to voters of different stripes on gun control, the oil industry and police funding. “He looks at his phone, at what area code he’s in, and he tries to appeal,” Mr. Carney said. “L.B.J. could get away with that, but it doesn’t work today.”Windmills between Bowie and Whitesboro. Mr. O’Rourke has been venturing into deeply conservative corners of rural Texas.Allison V. Smith for The New York TimesHayden Head, 18, of Parker County, protested outside the campaign stop in Bowie. Mr. O’Rourke is locked in a race against Gov. Greg Abbott that has grown unexpectedly close.Allison V. Smith for The New York TimesMr. Abbott agreed this month to a debate, something Mr. Carney had said would happen only if the race were close. Several recent polls have put Mr. O’Rourke around five percentage points behind the governor.At each of the five campaign stops, Mr. O’Rourke stressed broadly popular positions: expanding Medicaid, canceling statewide school assessment tests, cutting property taxes, legalizing marijuana.He was repeatedly asked about one past position, taken during the 2020 presidential primary: a vow, after a deadly mass shooting in El Paso, to “take your AR-15.” The issue has been front of mind for his supporters — who have resurrected the issue since the shooting in Uvalde — and for those who have shown up to protest him, openly bearing arms.The politics of abortion have also appeared to energize Mr. O’Rourke’s campaign. A clear majority of his crowds were women, and the loudest cheers came whenever he discussed his support for abortion rights.“The reason I came is because he was a premature baby, and I am now considered a high-risk pregnancy,” said Azucena Salinas, 20, a pregnant substitute teacher who stood at the back of Mr. O’Rourke’s event in Pittsburg with her 8-month-old son, Malakai. “I want to have the choice and the right for the doctors to be able to give me an abortion when my life is in danger.”Apart from courting conservatives, Mr. O’Rourke’s strategy is focused on turning out new voters, recruiting an army of volunteers — his campaign already claims 80,000 — and campaigning across the state. He is currently in the middle of a 49-day drive across Texas that ends next month.Mr. Carney said Mr. Abbott had also been reaching across party lines to disaffected Democrats, particularly those Hispanic voters who have drifted toward the Republican Party.At his stop in Whitesboro, Mr. O’Rourke drew hundreds of supporters to a renovated church near a downtown gun store. He also attracted scores of protesters, many with handguns on their hips. One man carried an AR-15-style rifle, and another had a flag depicting the weapon in place of a cannon over the famous slogan from the Texas revolution: “Come and Take It.”“The race is really, really close,” said Rod Parker, a revivalist preacher with a .40-caliber handgun on his hip who helped organize the protest. If Mr. O’Rourke wins, he said, Texas would “end up being like a California or an Oregon or a Chicago, and we’re not putting up with that garbage in this town.”Inside the campaign event, Amy Maxey, 46, said she was happy to see the crowd of mostly fellow Democrats gathered there, but she also bemoaned the anger that Mr. O’Rourke’s visit had brought to the surface. She said that as she entered, a protester had told her she was not a Christian because of her support for Mr. O’Rourke.“Our kids grew up in this town together,” she said. “I’m definitely a Christian. I go to church here.”After the event, tensions grew. Mr. Parker and a large group waited outside for Mr. O’Rourke to emerge. Some taunted his supporters.“Baby killers!” they shouted. “Pedophiles!”Inside, Mr. O’Rourke posed for photos and talked to anyone who wanted to ask a question or share their story, including Trey Ramsey, a former police officer who said he backed Mr. Trump in 2016 and Mr. Abbott in 2018 but had become disillusioned with the Republican Party. His wife is volunteering for Mr. O’Rourke.Eventually, Mr. Parker grew impatient with waiting outside and, along with several armed supporters, entered the church. Some shouted at Mr. O’Rourke. As they filled the center aisle, a few dozen feet from Mr. O’Rourke, the town’s police chief urged them to “keep cool,” but people were ruffled nonetheless.“It was a real kind of a shock,” Mr. Ramsey said. “As a former law enforcement officer, my hairs immediately stood up.”Mr. O’Rourke agreed to speak with Mr. Parker. They shook hands and, for five minutes, engaged in a discussion of guns.“I bet that we can agree on something like a universal background check,” Mr. O’Rourke said. “We might be able to agree on a red-flag law.”“No, sir!” shouted a man who had entered with Mr. Parker.“The reason for the people to have the Second Amendment, OK, was for — so that we could protect ourselves from big government,” Mr. Parker said.“You think your right to have a gun is so that you can use it against your government?” Mr. O’Rourke responded.“Not necessarily,” Mr. Parker said. Before walking away, he told Mr. O’Rourke that he was “not welcome in this town.”“Hey, there were a lot of people who just welcomed us to this town,” Mr. O’Rourke responded. “And we’ll be back, again and again.” More

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      Doug Mastriano Gets Pennsylvania Republicans to Close Ranks Behind Him

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      STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Before Pennsylvania’s primary, much of the state’s Republican establishment agreed that Doug Mastriano would be a disaster as the nominee for governor.Andy Reilly, the state’s Republican national committeeman, had joined a stop-Mastriano effort by rival candidates, who feared that the far-right state senator and prolific spreader of election conspiracy theories would squander an otherwise winnable race.Yet on a warm evening last month, Mr. Reilly opened his suburban Philadelphia home for a backyard fund-raiser for Mr. Mastriano, who won his primary in May. Guests chipped in $150 for ribs and pulled pork and listened to Mr. Mastriano, fresh from an uproar over his presence on Gab, a social media site that is a haven for hate speech.Mr. Reilly later defended Mr. Mastriano as the better choice to lead Pennsylvania over his Democratic opponent, Josh Shapiro. “The question is can Doug Mastriano keep the Republican Party base and all the factions together?” Mr. Reilly said.In one of the most closely watched governor’s races of the year, Pennsylvania Republican officials who had warned that Mr. Mastriano was unelectable have largely closed ranks behind him, after he proved to be the overwhelming choice of base Republicans. On Friday, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida plans to headline a rally with Mr. Mastriano in Pittsburgh, a bearhug from one of the party’s most popular national figures.Mr. Shapiro, the state attorney general, has used a huge fund-raising advantage to batter Mr. Mastriano in TV attack ads as an extremist on abortion and on the 2020 election, opening a double-digit lead in polls. Still, Democrats remain anxious they could lose to Mr. Mastriano because of the free-floating anger of the electorate this year, with most voters worried primarily about the economy.Josh Shapiro, with supporters in Lock Haven, Pa., has battered Mr. Mastriano in TV attack ads as an extremist.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesWhether the recent run of Democratic successes nationally — including the climate and drug-pricing legislative package and the resounding defeat of an anti-abortion measure in Kansas — can shift the fundamental midterm equation remains unclear.“The environment that Joe Biden has created for Josh Shapiro makes this year probably the only year that a Mastriano-type candidate could win in a purple state like Pennsylvania,” said Matt Brouillette, the head of a conservative political group in the state that opposed Mr. Mastriano in the primary. “While the Democrats want to focus on Jan. 6 and Roe v. Wade, the electorate is focused on putting food on their table and filling up the tanks in their cars.”The Democratic anxiety was on display recently at a party picnic in liberal State College, the home of Pennsylvania State University. At Mr. Shapiro’s mention of Mr. Mastriano during a speech, a woman shouted, “You better win!”More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsLiz Cheney’s Lopsided Loss: The Republican congresswoman’s defeat in Wyoming exposed the degree to which former President Donald J. Trump still controls the party’s present — and its near future.2024 Hint: Hours after her loss, Ms. Cheney acknowledged that she was “thinking” about a White House bid. But her mission to thwart Donald J. Trump presents challenges.The ‘Impeachment 10’: With Ms. Cheney’s defeat, only two of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump remain.Alaska Races: Senator Lisa Murkowski and Sarah Palin appeared to be on divergent paths following contests that offered a glimpse at the state’s independent streak.There was nervous laughter. The worry reflects the alarm of Democrats that if Mr. Mastriano, 58, becomes governor, he would sign severe abortion restrictions and would have the power to subvert the 2024 presidential election in the swing state in favor of the G.O.P. nominee.A Shapiro campaign event in State College. Democrats in Pennsylvania are worried about Mr. Mastriano’s positions on abortion and voting.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York Times“I hear it every single day,” Mr. Shapiro told the crowd. “They’re worried about their rights being ripped away from them.”Mr. Mastriano, a retired Army officer who led Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election in Pennsylvania, marched on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, passing police barricades breached by other marchers. He has boasted that as governor, “I get to decertify any or all machines in the state.” He has called for compelling all nine million registered voters in the state to re-register, which experts say would violate federal law.“These are dangerous, extreme positions he’s taken, and these are things I know the people of Pennsylvania reject,” Mr. Shapiro, 49, said in an interview.Mr. Shapiro compared the unusually high turnout in deep-red Kansas in favor of abortion rights to how the issue is motivating his own supporters. “We have seen incredible intensity in our campaign post-Dobbs,” he said, referring to the Supreme Court decision leaving it to states to protect or deny abortion access.Many women who attended his events agreed, saying that abortion is their most important issue. “I was the generation that was young when Roe vs. Wade became the law of the land, and I’ve known women whose health was ruined because of an illegal abortion,” said Bonnie Hannis, 80, who came to hear Mr. Shapiro in rural Clinton County.“I’m excited to defend my reproductive rights,” said Gianna Renzo, 19, who grew up in the county and is now a student at Princeton. “I see women my age who are typically from Republican families, and they’re going to come over to the Democratic side” because of abortion.Mr. Mastriano, the sponsor in the State Legislature of a six-week abortion ban with no exceptions, has appeared to modulate that position lately, saying lawmakers will write whatever bill they choose and “my personal views are irrelevant.”But there are few signs that he has broadened his appeal to independent and swing voters, especially in the suburbs, who have played a pivotal role in recent Pennsylvania elections. He was supported by 82 percent of Republicans in a Fox News poll in late July, but independents preferred Mr. Shapiro by 28 points.It remains to be seen if Mr. Mastriano can broaden his appeal to independent and swing voters.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesMr. Mastriano declined to comment for this article.He has routinely snubbed the state’s TV news outlets and newspapers that might help him reach a broader audience. It is a purposeful strategy aimed at exciting conservatives who believe that Democrats have “the media in their pockets,” as he recently put it.This week, he said he would not participate in traditional debates run by independent news organizations because of what he called their “hidden partisan agenda.” He proposed debates in which each candidate names a moderator — a nonstarter for the Shapiro campaign, which called the idea an “obvious stunt.”Mr. Mastriano speaks almost exclusively to far-right podcasters like Stephen K. Bannon, conservative talk radio hosts and Fox News. On a recent swing through northwest Pennsylvania, he brushed off a Pittsburgh TV station that sought to interview him, and even the small-circulation Meadville Tribune.One result of that approach is that he seldom has to field tough questions. And his poor fund-raising — he ended the primary season with just $400,000 in his campaign account, compared with $13.4 million for Mr. Shapiro — has left him unable to run TV ads all summer to counter a barrage of attacks from his opponent.The Shapiro ads use Mr. Mastriano’s words to paint him as outside the mainstream, not just on abortion and election denial, but on gay marriage, which he has said should “absolutely not” be legal, and on global warming, which he called “fake science.”“You’ve basically got a one-person governor’s race right now in terms of voter contact,” said Christopher Nicholas, a Republican consultant in the state. “All the folks who listen to those far-right podcasts, I think he maxed out his vote potential. He has to move past his base.”At a recent appearance by Mr. Mastriano at the York County Fair, there were no signs on the sprawling fairgrounds directing potential voters his way. Outside the hall where he was to appear, a large crowd on bleachers at the appointed hour turned out to be waiting for the Hot Dog Pig Races.Mr. Mastriano showed up inside at the county Republican booth. He did not give a speech, but shook hands and posed for pictures with several dozen supporters.Donna VanDyne, an insurance agent, supported a no-exceptions abortion ban, claiming that victims of rape or incest who give birth adjust. “When they have their baby, they have each other and become support systems for one another,” she said.Dawn Smith, an aspiring teacher’s aide, repeated a debunked conspiracy theory Mr. Mastriano had spread about voting machines. “They switched President Trump’s votes to Joe Biden’s votes with the Dominion machines,” she claimed.Wayne Liek, a retired truck driver, recalling prayers he said in school in the 1960s, agreed with Mr. Mastriano that the Constitutional separation of church and state was, as Mr. Mastriano described it, “a myth.”A core of Mr. Mastriano’s popularity with Republicans is his embrace of views associated with Christian nationalism, the belief that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, and often intertwined with far-right conspiratorial thinking.Mr. Mastriano, the sponsor in the legislature of a six-week abortion ban with no exceptions, has appeared to modulate that position lately.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesFew attendees seemed aware of the furor over Mr. Mastriano’s presence on Gab. His campaign had paid $5,000 to broaden his support with users of the social media site, which is known as a haven for white nationalists. A post by Mr. Mastriano in July criticizing Democratic policies drew dozens of replies that were antisemitic insults of Mr. Shapiro.Gab’s founder, Andrew Torba, defended Mr. Mastriano in videos laced with antisemitic vitriol. Mr. Mastriano distanced himself from Mr. Torba on July 28, saying that he rejected “antisemitism in any form.’’At a later appearance where he did give a speech, in Cochranton, Mr. Mastriano said: “It’s funny, they want to call us extremists. They’re the extremists.’’He attacked Mr. Shapiro for suing, as attorney general, to keep a mask mandate in schools and to uphold Gov. Tom Wolf’s shutdown of nonessential businesses early in the pandemic. Mr. Mastriano first gained a following for leading protests against restrictions to prevent the spread of Covid. Fury at those orders lingers for many conservatives.Asked about the suits, Mr. Shapiro said that he personally opposes mandates for masks and vaccines, but as the state’s top lawyer he was required to represent the governor and executive branch in litigation. He prevailed in both cases.Before he campaigned in State College, a blue island in a sea of red in central Pennsylvania, Mr. Shapiro had visited Lock Haven in nearby Clinton County.Mike Hanna Sr., a retired Democratic state lawmaker from the area, said Mr. Mastriano “has a strong base here, just like Trump.” But Mr. Hanna said the former president had lost support since inciting the mob that attacked the Capitol.“I hunt with a bunch of veterans, and they just shake their heads,” Mr. Hanna said. “Trump has done a lot to erode his standing with his base, and Mastriano’s participation in all that, and the extreme positions he’s taken, have done the same thing.”“It’d be a lot scarier for us,” Mr. Hanna said, “if the Republicans had selected a moderate.” More

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      America Needs More Caregiving Support

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      On Tuesday President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which contains parts of his Build Back Better agenda, including major climate investments and authorization for Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices. The law will reduce the cost of health care, slash carbon emissions to roughly 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, invest in clean energy vehicles and raise taxes on corporations, among other things.Make no mistake, President Biden and the Democrats in Congress have achieved a transformative investment in our future.But investments in Medicaid home and community-based services for older adults and people with disabilities, raising wages for the work force that provides caregiving, four weeks of paid family and medical leave, and subsidies for families in need of child care did not make it into law.Infrastructure isn’t only sustainable modes of transportation. As Senator Bob Casey recently said: “The bridge to work for many is someone who can come into their home and care for aging parents. For others, it’s quality, affordable child care for their kids.” Fair pay for caregiving would free up more Americans to take part in the economy.For too long we have underinvested in and undervalued caregivers. After the coronavirus pandemic hit, a breakthrough seemed possible when policies intended to help families became the focus of a national conversation.A 2020 report by AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving found that more than one in five Americans were caregivers and almost one in four of these was caring for more than one person. A more recent study by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed that a vast majority of Americans want to age at home and want the government to act to help them do so.But we can hardly sustain the existing home care work force with workers’ current median annual income just over $18,000 per year. What will we do when the aging baby boomer generation — roughly 73 million people — needs more support and services?There are more than 12 million working parents with children younger than 6 years old. Without access to paid leave, these parents must find affordable child care in order to work and provide for their families. The American Rescue Plan Act included funding to stabilize child care programs for low-income families and expanded the child tax credit for 2021, but what will happen when that funding runs out?Lawmakers must now decide how to support the care economy — including administrative and regulatory reforms as well as legislation. We should see investments in care reflected in appropriations and at the heart of the next budget reconciliation. Many voters want representatives who refuse to devalue women and families and who want caregivers to have the freedom to choose whether they leave the work force rather than be forced out of it.The Biden administration’s economic agenda has often been compared to Roosevelt’s New Deal in scope and significance, but the New Deal explicitly excluded two groups of workers — farm workers and domestic workers. Over time, these domestic workers became the backbone of the care economy, but the government never advanced comprehensive solutions to support them.Mr. Biden’s original agenda not only included these workers, but it highlighted the importance of investing holistically in the care that families need and the jobs that support it. Today, we understand that the economy doesn’t grow or work without care, including for the work force entrusted with the people who matter most in our lives. Let’s not wait another 80 years to act on that vision.Ai-jen Poo is the executive director of Caring Across Generations and the president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance.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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      What Liz Cheney’s Loss in Wyoming Means

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      If Liz Cheney’s loss to Harriet Hageman in Wyoming’s primary election on Tuesday seems like a bad dream to many of Ms. Cheney’s Democratic admirers, that’s because it is: For a generation, progressives have imagined the moment when the white working class would finally turn against an insular and privileged Republican establishment. That day has arrived. But it isn’t what Democrats dreamed.Apparently uninterested in everyday governing, the new insurgents who elected Ms. Hageman are consumed with demonstrating that they are authentic conservative Republicans. And in that sense, they are succumbing to the same impulses they associate with their liberal opponents: a shrill hostility to different viewpoints, an obsession with virtue signaling and a willingness to purge their own ranks. The older tradition of Republican politics — the one that cradled Ms. Cheney from girlhood and shaped her in office — is still alive, though embattled, even in Wyoming. Progressives who realize that this privileged Republican establishment was a linchpin of our democracy all along may start rooting for a counterrevolution from above rather than a revolution from below.In the not very distant past, Wyoming’s G.O.P. was focused on governing the state by addressing everyday challenges, like distributing a limited number of liquor licenses and funding its public schools. Politics was “frankly boring,” recalled Tim Stubson, a partisan of the old school.The Cheneys exemplified Wyoming’s establishment: They are quiet and diligent legislators, even a little bland. They are also highly educated and wealthy, splitting their time between Washington and Wyoming’s Teton County, one of the wealthiest counties in the United States.Wyoming politics began to change beneath their feet, slowly at first, as the Tea Party rose to power, and then rapidly during the Trump years, as a new guard waged war with the establishment, making politics less about ordinary governance than about identity.We’ve spent the last year traveling Wyoming, from Cheyenne in the south to Sheridan in the north, from Evanston in the west to Wheatland in the east, talking to local political activists and leaders. This obsession with identity left a mark everywhere, but nowhere more obviously than at the recent Republican state conventions. Just a decade ago, few delegates would have attended party meetings with guns strapped to their hips. Now many do. That wasn’t enough for one delegate at the last convention: He reportedly strutted about with a gun fully cocked. In another departure from old norms, many delegates have taken to wearing their cowboy hats inside the convention center. “That’s not a Wyoming thing,” noted JoAnn True, a patron of the old party. This is mostly because there is no need to wear a cowboy hat indoors — unless your goal is to sport a costume that signals a conservative social identity.Virtue signaling is also on the rise. One convention delegate argued that Wyoming schoolchildren should not be required to say the Pledge of Allegiance, since the word “indivisible” suggests that states can’t secede from the union. Another Republican Party figure was criticized for allegedly failing to adopt an appropriately respectful posture during the pledge.Acting the part of a true Wyoming conservative is a delicate art. It’s not only about signaling that you belong to a rugged, rural working class, but also about highlighting your conservative bona fides, which often means exiling anyone who doesn’t toe the line. Now a conservative cancel culture as unforgiving as its progressive rival is sweeping over the Wyoming G.O.P.Ms. Cheney, of course, is the most prominent victim of that cancel culture: She has been censured twice by the party, and now has been voted out of office. But she is just the tip of an iceberg that mostly lies beneath the media’s radar. Other members of the old type have been censured as well. Their crimes are varied, ranging from supporting Medicaid expansion to founding a nonpartisan PAC to fund female candidates.Websites have emerged that help the new censors identify politically incorrect Republicans. WyoRINO, for example, exposes legislators “who falsely claim to be Republicans” by scrutinizing their voting records for the slightest signs of apostasy. According to the site’s index, nearly a two-thirds majority of Wyoming’s Republican legislators are faking it.Those who are formally censured, though, usually have something else in common: They are from the upper class. In recent years the party has censured a wealthy activist, a state senator with a doctorate and a physician. Joe McGinley, the physician — a prominent party leader of the old style — was censured for reasons that are still a bit mysterious. But as a Stanford-trained doctor, he was a perfect symbol of an inauthentic conservative. Joey Correnti IV, a pistol-packing delegate, mocks his supposed haughtiness, claiming that he introduces himself as “Doctor Joe McGinley.”Plenty of the new insurgents are themselves comfortable members of the professional class pretending to be “one of the people.” Some, like Ms. Hageman, simply seem opportunistic, while others sincerely share cultural affinities with Wyoming’s working class. But to its credit, the new identity politics has also done something rare in this gilded age of American politics: It has elevated genuinely working-class citizens into positions of power. For example, Tom James, elected to the State Senate in 2018, grew up in a foster home and campaigned for office as he delivered pizzas. Meanwhile, Frank Eathorne, the current chairman of the state party, previously worked as a Terminix pest exterminator. As Tim Stubson of the old establishment acknowledged, “It’s a much more blue-collar party.”These candidates are starting to reshape the G.O.P. beyond Wyoming as well. Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado earned a G.E.D., having left high school after she got pregnant. Meanwhile, in New Jersey, a truck driver won a State Senate seat on a shoestring budget. And in Arizona, Rusty Bowers — who resisted pressure from Donald Trump to overturn his state’s election results — was just badly defeated by David Farnsworth, a small businessman and former crane operator with an A.A. degree.For decades, progressives have hoped that the white working class would turn against the affluent bankers, doctors and oil magnates who control the Republican Party. Well, it did. Class warfare of a kind did finally break out. It’s just not the sort of war progressives imagined, much less hoped for.That’s true partly because progressive longings for class war rested on a falsehood. Influential books like Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter With Kansas” insisted that the Republican elite was rapaciously consumed with padding its wealth and exploiting its working-class supporters. Like other myths, that critique contained a kernel of truth. Wyoming’s establishment was too insular at times — and it practiced self-dealing on occasion.But whatever its sins, it was also public spirited. It cared about the general welfare of the state and worked hard on its behalf, laboring away for a pittance in a legislature that begins its sessions in the dead of Wyoming’s punishing winter, when driving is treacherous. The new identitarians infiltrating the State Legislature seem less interested in seeking remedies to real problems than in signaling to their base.Thus, they perform small symbolic acts, like pushing a bill that requires local law enforcement officials to ignore federal law that violates the Second Amendment, or sponsoring a bill that prohibited the teaching of critical race theory in Wyoming public schools. It failed because enough traditional conservatives don’t believe it’s a real problem. Tom Walters, a state representative of the old school, observed, “They speak of it as though it’s there, and yet they know all their teachers and they know their teachers aren’t teaching it.”Addressing these phantoms swallows up time, leaving larger issues neglected. Cathy Connolly, the Democratic minority leader in the State House, told us: “We have one of the highest suicide rates in the nation. We now have the highest workplace fatality rate. We’ve got Covid issues. We’ve got hospitals closing. We’re not looking at these issues because we have these stupid bills,” she said, adding an expletive.The right’s new identity craze wasn’t engineered by Donald Trump. It simply created an opportunity that he exploited. But Mr. Trump has rendered identity politics more dangerous than its progressive rival by wedding it to a cult of personality and a campaign to steal an election. Those changes have only widened the party’s class divide: While a substantial majority of white Republican primary voters without a college degree say they would prefer to vote for him in 2024, those with college degrees generally want someone else, according to a July New York Times/Siena College poll.Ms. Cheney’s fall highlights the cultish character of the right’s evolving politics of identity. During her first two terms, she supported Mr. Trump’s positions 93 percent of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight (almost as often as Kevin McCarthy and more often than Elise Stefanik). Yet Ms. Cheney is not only considered to be a “Republican in Name Only” by many Wyoming Republicans — she is the face of the RINOs. At the state convention, one attendee sported a T-shirt that said “No More RINOs” with Ms. Cheney’s name circled and crossed out. To cross Mr. Trump is to become a fake conservative.Sadly, the G.O.P. establishment was not strong enough to save Ms. Cheney. Happily, though, it isn’t dead, even in Wyoming. In fact, it’s far more entrenched than Ms. Cheney’s defeat might suggest. The old guard still controls the State Legislature and Wyoming’s two most populous counties, both of which pushed back forcefully on efforts to censure Ms. Cheney. And in some places the new insurgents have been outmaneuvered and beaten back. For example, in Campbell County, where support for Mr. Trump surpasses that of most Wyoming counties, the establishment wrestled the party away from the new identitarians.Similar fights are playing out in state parties and legislatures from Colorado to Arizona, Idaho, Illinois and Texas, where the new identitarians are gaining momentum, chipping away at the old guard’s power. But even if they continue to advance, their style of politics may also contain the seeds of its destruction. Any party that elevates symbolism over governing risks stirring mass revolt down the road. Some practitioners of identity politics on the left have already discovered that lesson the hard way. When some members of the San Francisco Board of Education busied themselves renaming schools instead of prioritizing reopening them after lengthy closures during the pandemic, they were recalled. Results matter even in the age of identity politics.Though the outcome of the G.O.P.’s civil war is impossible to determine, one thing is clear: Both sides see the conflict in existential terms. As the traditionalist Dr. McGinley said of Ms. Cheney’s race: “The soul of the Republican Party is at stake.” Ms. Cheney fought valiantly for the party’s soul and was celebrated by traditional Republicans in Wyoming for doing so. They don’t believe her cause is lost — and neither should we.Stephanie Muravchik (@stephaniemurav1) and Jon A. Shields are professors of government at Claremont McKenna College and the authors of “Trump’s Democrats.” They are working on a new book about Liz Cheney’s Wyoming and the future of the American right.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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      Iraq Power Struggle Intensifies as Protesters Block Parliament

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      BAGHDAD — Iraqi political leaders spent the last 10 months struggling unsuccessfully to form a government, their country sinking deeper and deeper into political paralysis in the face of growing drought, crippling corruption and crumbling infrastructure.Then in June, those talks imploded. And now, there is a scramble for power as Iraq’s main political factions vie for the upper hand.The powerful Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who leads the largest bloc in Parliament, quit the negotiations in frustration, then urged his followers to take to the streets to get what they wanted. Heeding his call, they set up a tent encampment that has blocked access to Parliament for more than two weeks to prevent any government from being voted in.It is not the first time that Mr. al-Sadr has resorted to the threat of violence to get what he wants politically. He led the armed Shiite revolt against the American occupation of Iraq from 2003-2009, and U.S. officials say they now worry that Iraq could plunge again into violence and instability.Equally alarming, despite years of American efforts to shape Iraq into an alternative Shiite power center that would be more Western-oriented than Iran, ‌Mr. Sadr and his Shiite political rivals favor a political system that would confer more power on religious clerics along the lines of an Iranian-style theocracy.“We’re looking at the beginning of the end of the American-backed political order in Iraq,” said Robert Ford, a former American diplomat in Iraq and now a fellow at Yale University and the Middle East Institute.For decades, Iraq has reeled from crisis to crisis — a cycle that shows no signs of abating. Following the 2003 U.S. invasion to oust Saddam Hussein, there was a civil war, and then the takeover of large parts of the country by the Islamic State.As a result, Iraq, despite vast oil reserves, has remain remained mired in political chaos with a stagnant economy that has left its unemployed youth vulnerable to recruiters for extremist movements and made investors leery. At the same time, Gulf States led by the United Arab Emirates normalized relations with Israel and forged ahead politically and economically to become the new center of gravity of the Middle East.Supporters of the powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr gathered for Friday prayers outside the Parliament in Baghdad on Friday. Saba Kareem/ReutersAnd the U.S. vision for Iraq’s future has seemed to slip further and further away.When President George W. Bush invaded in 2003, his government tried to encourage Iraqi political leaders to set up a representative system that would share power more equitably among the country’s three main groups — the Shiite majority, and the Sunni Muslim and Kurdish minorities.“The Americans were kind of hoping that there would be these cross-sectarian and more policy-centered alliances between the political factions, but the sectarian and ethnic divisions won out,” Mr. Ford said. “Instead, we have this squabbling between and within sectarian and ethnic communities about how to divide Iraq’s oil money.”About 85 percent of the Iraqi government is funded by oil income, according to the World Bank. And under the current political system, each major political faction in Parliament gets control over at least one government ministry, and with it, patronage jobs and the opportunity to skim money and pocket kickbacks.As politicians have focused more on their own power than national interests, Iran has found it easier to persuade a number of Sunni, Kurd, and Shiite leaders to support the policies it cares most about; the cross-border movement of Iranian arms, people, and goods.The crisis now enveloping Iraq pits Mr. Sadr, and his mostly Shiite supporters against a coalition of Shiite parties with militias linked to Iran in a bitter power struggle. The caretaker government, fearing violence, has been reluctant to disrupt Mr. Sadr’s blockade, allowing him to hold the country hostage to a sweeping list of demands:the dissolution of Parliament, new elections, and changes in election law and possibly the Constitution.“It looks like a peaceful coup d’état, a peaceful revolution,” Mahmoud Othman, a former Parliament member who was not affiliated with any political party, said of the Sadrists’ blockade of Parliament. “I say peaceful because his followers are not carrying guns. Sadr is stronger than guns. He is now the strongman on the street and he is imposing his will on others.”So far the blockade has not been violent.Several thousand Sadrists occupy the tent encampment, working in shifts. They wander about, listening to clerics denounce government corruption and eating shawarma, grapes and watermelon donated by sympathizers. They rest in tents in the heat of the day, waiting for Mr. Sadr’s next instructions via tweet — his favored means of communication.Inside Baghdad’s Green Zone, supporters of the Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr told The New York Times that they would remain there as long as he tells them to.Sunnis and Kurds have remained on the sidelines.Many Sunnis say they feel disenfranchised and see no role for themselves in the future Iraq, and many wonder whether it would be better to divide the country and have a separate Sunni enclave, said Moayed Jubeir Al-Mahmoud, a political scientist at the University of Anbar in the city of Ramadi, a Sunni stronghold.“Unfortunately I do not see a secure and prosperous future for my country,” he said, describing Iraq as a failed state controlled by Iran-linked militias. “We are concerned that the state will just go from being dominated by militias to being dominated by al-Sadr.”For now, the tent city blockading Iraq’s Parliament seems a relaxed place. Thousands of Sadrists maintain it at any given time, working in shifts.Ahmed Jalil/EPA, via ShutterstockThe United States and most neighboring countries have stayed largely silent about the chaos in Iraq. Only Iran has tried to intervene, meeting with Mr. Sadr’s Shiite opponents and encouraging negotiations even though Mr. Sadr, a nationalist, has taken a strongly anti-Iranian stance in recent years.The last thing Iran wants is for Shiites to fight one another and risk weakening their grip on power, which could end up undercutting Tehran’s influence in Iraq.A number of Mr. Sadr’s positions align with Tehran. Both want to force the remaining 2,500 U.S. troops to leave Iraq, oppose any interactions with Israel and favor criminalizing homosexuality.This is not the first time Mr. Sadr has resorted to mass demonstrations. But this time, he is using street protests to force the country to ignore last October’s election results and to hold a new vote that could return his legislators to power.The parliamentary election 10 months ago went well for Mr. Sadr. Legislators who supported him won the most seats of any faction and had almost forged a governing coalition supported by Kurdish and Sunni partners. The next step would have been to bring it to a vote for approval.Mr. Sadr’s Shiite rivals, however, refused to attend the Parliament session, denying him the quorum needed for a vote. Frustrated, Mr. Sadr asked his legislators to resign in protest.Portraits of Muqtada al-Sadr and his father, Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, outside the Parliament building.Ahmad Al-Rubaye/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe parties who had gotten fewer votes, primarily his Shiite rivals, then filled the seats that Mr. Sadr’s followers had vacated potentially giving them control over ministries and government offices and leaving Mr. Sadr out.He responded by calling for the blockade of Parliament to prevent a vote on a new government.“So this is when Muqtada al-Sadr decided that if the democratic procedures are not allowed to play themselves out, then the response is revolution,” said Rend Al-Rahim, a former Iraqi ambassador to the United States and the president of the Iraq Foundation, a nonprofit organization that promotes democracy.At the tent encampment, the atmosphere is decidedly Shiite. Last week, Mr. Sadr’s followers marked Ashura, which commemorates the death of Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. His death is often depicted as the start of the division between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.Everywhere there were signs of support for Mr. Sadr’s cause: Even some of the poorest chipped in to pay for a tent or meals. A water company donated enough every day to fill the large tanks that supply the tent dwellers. The markets in Sadr City — a poorer area of Baghdad filled with Sadr loyalists — sent crates of tomatoes, onions, dates, grapes and apples.To cope with the 115 degree heat in daytime, some protesters installed large fans or air coolers hooked up to Parliament’s 24-hour electricity supply.Protesters cooled down in a fountain outside the Iraqi Parliament in Baghdad. Ahmad Al-Rubaye/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“It’s the first time we have had electricity 24 hours a day,” said Faiz Qasim, an enthusiastic Sadr organizer who usually works as a day laborer. Much of Baghdad suffers from daily electricity cuts.Sadr supporters from the south of Iraq prepared large caldrons of stews daily. One day it was a rich curried chicken, while nearby, the next day’s meal — a black-and-white cow tethered to a cellphone tower — placidly masticated some watermelon. A little further down the same street, another cow was being slaughtered for dinner that night.Clerics periodically rallied groups of men — there are almost no women in the tents — with chants against the current political leaders:“Many people suffered from those who were here in this swamp.They climbed to power on the backs of the innocent and Iraq suffered because of them.There are many people holding out their hands, begging in the streets and going through the garbage.Al-Sadr says America and Israel have the money and the weapons. But what do we have?Allah almighty.”Falah Hassan contributed reporting. More

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      Alaska Elections: Where to Vote and What’s on the Ballot

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      Do not be misled by Alaska’ long history of voting for Republicans: Its slate of primaries and a special election on Tuesday offers plenty of intrigue, with multiple big names on the ballot such as former Gov. Sarah Palin and Senator Lisa Murkowski.The races pose another test of the power of an endorsement from former President Donald J. Trump. He is backing Ms. Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, for the state’s lone House seat, and also supports Kelly Tshibaka, Ms. Murkowski’s main Republican rival in the Senate primary.Here is a refresher on the rules for voting and what is at stake.How to voteThe registration deadlines for voting in person and requesting an absentee ballot have passed. Alaska does not have same-day registration for primaries, though it does for presidential elections.All registered voters, regardless of party affiliation, can participate in Alaska’s newly nonpartisan primaries.Where to voteAlaska’s voters can click here to look up their assigned place to vote. Absentee ballots returned by mail must be postmarked by Tuesday and received by state election offices by Aug. 26. They can also be hand-delivered to designated drop-off locations by 8 p.m. Alaska time on Tuesday, which is also when the polls close for in-person voting.Alaska offers no-excuse absentee voting — meaning voters are not required to provide a reason — with an option to receive ballots through the state’s secure online portal. Voters can choose to return their ballots by fax instead of mail but must do so by 8 p.m. on Tuesday.What is on the ballotMs. Murkowski was one of seven Republicans in the Senate who voted to convict Mr. Trump during his impeachment trial after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, drawing a backlash from the former president and his supporters in her quest for a fourth term. Mr. Trump endorsed one her opponents, Ms. Tshibaka, a former commissioner of Alaska’s Department of Administration, in the primary.Another race creating national intrigue will decide who will fill the seat of Representative Don Young, a Republican who died in March, for the remainder of his term that ends in January. Mr. Young had held the seat since he was first elected to the House in 1973.The special election is headlined by Ms. Palin, who will face Nick Begich III, a Republican and the scion of an Alaskan political dynasty, and Mary S. Peltola, a Democrat and former state legislator. Voters will rank their choices in the special election. If no candidate receives a majority, officials will eliminate the last-place finisher and reallocate supporters’ voter to the voters’ second choices until one candidate has at least 50 percent.All three candidates, along with many others, are also listed separately on the regular primary ballot for the House seat, which will determine who will compete in November to represent the state for a full two-year term starting in January.Voters will also decide various races for governor and the State Legislature. Click here for a sample ballot. More