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      In Wisconsin, Middle-Class Voters Think Carefully About Trump and Harris

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      Voters in Wisconsin are weighing which candidate better understands their economic anxieties.It was a resplendent autumn morning in central Wisconsin this week, and I was doing what I do best: hanging out at a farmers’ market, admiring a $6 bunch of dahlias, and talking to strangers about the election.“We’re 50-50. We’re middle-class. We’re in a swing state,” said Toni Case, 65, as she took a break from selling gyros from a silver trailer. “We’re in the middle of an election tornado.”Case was right.The market was set up in a suburban shopping center near Wausau, a city of about 40,000 people bisected by the Wisconsin River. The whole area is the kind of place that has almost mythic status in American politics today: a haven for the middle class.According to the Pew Research Center, the Wausau metropolitan area is one of 10 in the country with the largest share of middle-income residents. It has a gleaming downtown, a new Amazon distribution center and an abundance of parks along the river. It’s the sort of place that both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are evoking all the time, though not by name, as they talk about how to improve the American economy by strengthening the middle class.It’s also a place that lays bare the challenges both candidates face as they try to appeal to middle-class voters. As I interviewed voters in Wausau and Weston, right next door, I heard pronounced anxiety over the rising cost of living, and confusion over what being middle class even means anymore. It was clear that Trump’s dire picture of a middle class under attack has resonated here, but also that voters are thinking carefully about which candidate better understands the economic complexities of their lives.“It’s hard to stay ahead,” Mercedes Anderson, 25, told me. “It feels like you just get by.”Facing ‘outrageous’ costs, and seeking a solutionTrump has depicted an American middle class on the edge of extinction, accusing Harris of making middle-class life “unaffordable and unlivable.” He pledges to create a middle class that is “once again the envy of the entire world,” mostly by suggesting that his broad promises of tax cuts or mass deportations will help these Americans.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ukraine’s Parliament Approves Biggest Tax Hike of War to Support the Army

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      The authorities are resorting to a politically unpopular move as they scramble to raise funds for the grueling military effort against Russia.The Ukrainian Parliament voted on Thursday to approve its biggest tax hike since Russia’s full-scale invasion began more than two years ago, resorting to a politically unpopular move to raise funds for its grueling war effort.The bill increases a tax on personal income that raises money for military expenditure, raising the rate to 5 percent, from 1.5 percent. It also retroactively doubles taxes on bank profits, to 50 percent for this year, and raises taxes on the profits of other financial institutions to 25 percent, from 18 percent, among other provisions.The tax rise approved on Thursday will help to fund a $12 billion military spending increase for this year. Yaroslav Zhelezniak, deputy chairman of the parliamentary committee on finance, tax and customs policy, called it a “historic tax increase.”The move is likely to hit hard in Ukraine, where people have already seen their economic well-being plummet because of the war. But the authorities argue that they have no choice if Ukraine is to sustain its fight against Russia, which has ramped up its own military expenditure. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is expected to ratify the bill in the coming days.Oleksii Movchan, a member of Mr. Zelensky’s party and the deputy chairman of the parliamentary committee on economic development, acknowledged that the bill was “unpopular.”“We will be hated, but we don’t have any other option,” he said. “It’s about our survival in this war.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Who Will Be U.K. Conservative Leader? The Contest Narrows to an Unexpected Choice.

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      After an epic election defeat in July, opposition lawmakers have presented their party’s paying members with an unexpected choice of two candidates from the right.The race to lead Britain’s vanquished Conservative Party narrowed to two finalists on Wednesday, as the party’s lawmakers in a surprise twist set up a clash between two right-wing candidates.After four knockout rounds of voting, the lawmakers left two finalists standing: Kemi Badenoch, a favorite of the right who has said the party needs to fight against “nasty identity politics,” and Robert Jenrick, a rival hard-liner who has appealed to the right by promising to slash annual immigration numbers.The choice of two right-wing candidates was completely unexpected, provoking gasps in the room when the vote totals were announced on Wednesday.James Cleverly, a centrist who was buoyed by a well-received performance at the party’s recent conference, had surged to the front of the pack in the most recent vote by the party’s lawmakers. But he was unexpectedly eliminated on Wednesday.Whoever wins will face a prolonged, painful job of rebuilding a party that suffered the worst electoral defeat of its modern history in July — losing voters not just to the victorious Labour Party but also to a hard-right anti-immigrant party, Reform U.K., and the more centrist Liberal Democrats.The new leader will be selected in the next few weeks by the party’s dues-paying members, who number fewer than 170,000 and are generally older, wealthier and less ethnically diverse than the broader British population. The result of the vote is set to be announced on Nov. 2.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Athens Democracy Forum: Young Activists on What Drives Them

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      Six young people from around the world who attended the Athens Democracy Forum spoke about what drives them and the challenges they face.Young people from around the world who actively champion democracy are an integral part of the global effort to gain, preserve and protect freedoms. The following six were among the group of young activists who attended and participated in the Athens Democracy Forum last week.Before the forum began, we interviewed them by phone, video and email about their work and experiences. Their responses were edited and condensed.Persiana AksentievaLaettersPersiana AksentievaHamburg, Germany; 28; Youth fellow, International Youth Think TankBorn in Sofia, Bulgaria, Ms. Aksentieva has spent the last five years advocating democracy in Europe. An International Youth Think Tank fellow, she recently traveled to Sofia and spoke to high school students about the importance of voting. She also works for a beauty and personal care company in Hamburg.Nicole KleebAnsichtssache Britta SchröderNicole KleebBerlin; 27; Project manager, Bertelsmann StiftungMs. Kleeb works for Bertelsmann Stiftung, a social reform foundation, in Gütersloh, Germany, as well as in youth engagement in democracy throughout Europe. She also leads the foundation’s #NowEurope initiative that encourages young people to vote and volunteers as vice president for the Young German Council on Foreign Relations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tunisia’s President Cruises to Landslide Re-Election Victory

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      President Kais Saied’s apparent landslide re-election is the latest sign that authoritarianism has returned to the birthplace of the Arab Spring.In Tunisia’s first presidential election since its authoritarian leader began dismantling the democracy Tunisians built after their 2011 Arab Spring revolution, the apparent winner came as little surprise: the incumbent himself.President Kais Saied, first elected in 2019, easily won re-election on Sunday, according to exit polls broadcast on state television.The government had disqualified most of his would-be challengers and arrested his main rival on electoral fraud charges that rights groups said were trumped up. The resulting race recalled the days of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the dictator who ruled Tunisia from 1987 until his overthrow in 2011, rather than the competitive elections of the years in between, when Tunisia was working to develop a full-fledged democracy.Mr. Saied captured more than 89 percent of the vote over Ayachi Zammel, the imprisoned candidate, and Zouhair Maghzaoui, a leftist who had previously supported Mr. Saied before running to replace him, according to exit polls.But turnout was roughly half what it was in the last presidential election, according to figures released by the government commission that oversees elections — the latest sign that the country’s multiplying crises have damaged Tunisians’ faith in a president many once idolized, even though they see no real alternative to him among the country’s weak and fractious political opposition.Mr. Saied leaving a polling station in Tunis on Sunday. Exit polls showed he had won more than 89 percent, according to state television.Ons Abid/Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.K. Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, Sue Gray, Resigns

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      Ms. Gray said intense media scrutiny of her role meant she “risked becoming a distraction” to the new Labour government. Sue Gray, the chief of staff to Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, resigned abruptly on Sunday after weeks of speculation about turf wars in Downing Street, a media storm over her pay and questions over responsibility for a series of political errors.Ms. Gray, a career civil servant with decades of experience at the heart of government, said in a statement that it had “become clear to me that intense commentary around my position risked becoming a distraction to the government’s vital work of change.”Mr. Starmer thanked Ms. Gray in a statement for “all the support she has given me, both in opposition and government, and her work to prepare us for government and get us started on our program of change.”Ms. Gray has been appointed as the prime minister’s envoy for regions and nations, while the role of chief of staff will be taken by Morgan McSweeney, who masterminded the successful election campaign this summer for the Labour Party, and had served as Mr. Starmer’s chief adviser.The changes bring to an end a turbulent period of several months in which the presence of both Ms. Gray and Mr. McSweeney in Downing Street created two centers of power, prompting rumors of a fierce rivalry between them, although both denied any hostility.Ms. Gray’s departure also heralded a wider shake-up. The political director at Downing Street, Vidhya Alakeson, and the director of government relations, Jill Cuthbertson, have been promoted to deputy chiefs of staff. James Lyons, a former journalist who worked in communications for the National Health Service, and more recently at TikTok, will head a new strategic communications team.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kamala Harris Can Beat Donald Trump at Protecting America

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      It’s a truism that female candidates for high office face obstacles that men don’t. Less acknowledged is that women face different obstacles each from the other. Individually and generationally, women confront their own particular impossible dilemmas.Hillary Clinton’s dilemma was how to be forceful without coming off as fatally unfeminine, of seeming like a male impostor by virtue of being ambitious. Kamala Harris’s quandary is different. She’s not having to bat down accusations that her ambition makes her unwomanly, in part because she chose not to make breaking the glass ceiling a theme of her campaign. Her particular Achilles’ heel — pointed out by her opponent, who, whatever his manifest unfitness for the job, does have a talent for identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities — is contained in the word “protection.”That’s the insinuation behind so many of the attacks on Ms. Harris’s presidential quest: How’s she going to protect voters who, knocked around by everything from contagion to inflation to war, feel unsafe and insecure? As much as the Harris campaign promotes “joy,” the national mood radiates fear — of exposure, threat, bodily harm. How’s a woman supposed to protect us from that? Protection is an area of American culture that is resolutely gendered. The problematic dynamics that traditionally govern protection of home and hearth also govern our politics, an arena in which, historically, women have been granted neither protector nor protected status.In the public sphere, as in the personal, he who would dominate offers to protect. Forty-seven years ago, the feminist philosopher Susan Rae Peterson identified the syndrome of the “male protection racket,” asking, “Since the state fails them in its protective function, to whom can women turn for protection?” She explained that “women make agreements with husbands or fathers (in return for fidelity or chastity, respectively) to secure protection. From whom do these men protect women? From other men, it turns out.” She continued: “There is a striking parallel between this situation and tactics used by crime syndicates who sell protection as a racket. The buyer who refuses to buy the protective services of an agency because he needs no protection finds out soon that because he refuses to buy it, he very definitely needs protection. Women are in the same position.”Or as Mae West putatively said: “Every man I meet wants to protect me. I can’t figure out what from.”Donald Trump has it figured out. “Sadly, women are poorer than they were four years ago,” he told a Pennsylvania rally in late September. Also: “less healthy,” “less safe on the streets” and “more stressed and depressed and unhappy.” In a part of his speech aimed explicitly at female voters, he added, “I will fix all of that and fast, and at long last this nation, and national nightmare, will end.” Women, he promised, “will no longer be abandoned, lonely or scared. You will no longer be in danger.” Why? “You will be protected, and I will be your protector.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      David Paterson, Former New York Governor, Is Attacked in Manhattan

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      Mr. Paterson and his stepson suffered minor injuries in a street attack on Friday. The former governor was not believed to have been targeted in the assault, the police said.The former governor of New York, David A. Paterson, and his stepson were injured in an assault on a Manhattan street on Friday evening, the Police Department said.Mr. Paterson, 70, and his stepson, Anthony Sliwa, 20, were walking in the Upper East Side at about 8:30 p.m. when they were attacked after a verbal altercation with five people, according to the police.Mr. Paterson suffered minor injuries to his face and body, while Mr. Sliwa received minor injuries to his face, the police said. Both were taken to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in stable condition.A spokesman for the Police Department said the former governor was not believed to have been targeted in the assault.The former governor and Mr. Sliwa had been on a walk near their home when they encountered the five people, Sean Darcy, a spokesman for Mr. Paterson, said in a statement on Friday night. Mr. Sliwa had had “a previous interaction” with the five people, Mr. Darcy added, though details of that interaction were not immediately clear.Mr. Sliwa is the son of Curtis Sliwa, a former Republican mayoral candidate and the founder of the Guardian Angels, an anti-crime group.Mr. Paterson and his stepson were sent home from the hospital early on Saturday, Mr. Darcy said. They had been taken to the hospital as a precaution, he said, after “both suffered some injuries but were able to fight off their attackers.”They filed a police report, he said.“The governor’s only request is that people refrain from attempting to use an unfortunate act of violence for their own personal or political gain,” Mr. Darcy said on Saturday, adding that Mr. Paterson and his wife, Mary Alexander Paterson, were thankful for “the outpouring of support they have received from people across all spectrums.”The police said they were still looking for the five people suspected in the assault.Dakota Santiago for The New York TimesThe five people, who were not identified, fled on foot along Second Avenue after the assault, and the police said they were still being sought. Several of them appeared to be teenagers, according to footage circulated online by the Police Department.Mr. Paterson, the 55th governor of New York and the first Black person to hold the office, served from 2008 to 2010.He rose to the position during a tumultuous time: His predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, resigned in 2008 after being linked to a high-end prostitution ring. Mr. Paterson, then the lieutenant governor, took over after Mr. Spitzer resigned.Mr. Paterson, a Democrat who served for two decades in the State Senate, weathered his own scandals and a state budget ravaged by recession. He did not seek re-election after completing his term as governor. More