Politics and Government

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Primaries Show Limits, and Depths, of Trump’s Power Over G.O.P. Base

      by

      The tumultuous start to the Republican primary season, including a down-to-the-wire Senate race that divided conservatives in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, has shown how thoroughly Donald J. Trump has remade his party in his image — and the limits of his control over his creation.In each of the most contentious primary races this month — including two closely watched contests next week in Alabama and Georgia — nearly every candidate has run a campaign modeled on the former president’s. Their websites and advertisements are filled with his images. They promote his policies, and many repeat his false claims about election fraud in 2020.But Mr. Trump’s power over Republican voters has proved to be less commanding.Candidates endorsed by Mr. Trump lost governor’s races in Idaho and Nebraska, and a House race in North Carolina. In Senate contests in Ohio (where his pick won earlier this month) and Pennsylvania (which remained too close to call Wednesday morning), roughly 70 percent of Republicans voted against his endorsement. In contests next week, his chosen candidates for Georgia governor and Alabama senator are trailing in polls.Long known for being dialed into his voters, Mr. Trump increasingly appears to be chasing his supporters as much as marshaling them. Republican voters’ distrust of authority and appetite for hard-line politics — traits Mr. Trump once capitalized on — have worked against him. Some have come to see the president they elected to lead an insurgency as an establishment figure inside his own movement.Trumpism is ascendant in the Republican Party, with or without Mr. Trump, said Ken Spain, a Republican strategist and former National Republican Congressional Committee official.“The so-called MAGA movement is a bottom-up movement,” Mr. Spain said, “not one to be dictated from the top down.”The primaries aren’t the first time conservative voters in Mr. Trump’s red-capped constituency have demonstrated their independence from the patriarch of the Make America Great Again movement.In August, at one of Mr. Trump’s largest post-presidential campaign rallies, the crowd booed after he urged them to get vaccinated against Covid-19. In January, some of the most influential voices in Mr. Trump’s orbit openly criticized his pick for a House seat in Middle Tennessee, Morgan Ortagus — who had served in the Trump administration for two years as State Department spokeswoman but was deemed insufficiently MAGA.These mini-rebellions have tended to flare up whenever Mr. Trump’s supporters view his directives or endorsements as not Trumpy enough.“There’s no obvious heir apparent when it comes to America First — it’s still him,” said Kellyanne Conway, Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign manager and White House counselor. “But people feel they can love him and intend to follow him into another presidential run — and not agree with all of his choices this year.”After the Pennsylvania and North Carolina PrimariesMay 17 was the biggest day so far in the 2022 midterm cycle. Here’s what we’ve learned.Trump’s Limits: The MAGA movement is dominating Republican primaries, but Donald J. Trump’s control over it may be slipping.‘Stop the Steal’ Endures: G.O.P. candidates who aggressively cast doubt on the 2020 election have fared best, while Democratic voters are pushing for change. Here are more takeaways.Trump Endorsements: Most of the candidates backed by the former president have prevailed. However, there are some noteworthy losses.Up Next: Closely watched races in Georgia and Alabama on May 24 will offer a clearer picture of Mr. Trump’s influence.Still, Republican candidates remain desperate to win Mr. Trump’s endorsement. In Georgia’s Senate race, Mr. Trump’s support for Herschel Walker kept serious rivals away. In some contested races, his endorsement has proved to be hugely influential, as it was in North Carolina’s Senate primary on Tuesday, where Representative Ted Budd cruised to victory against a former governor and a former congressman.But the emergence of an autonomous wing of the MAGA movement — one that is more uncompromising than Mr. Trump — has allowed even candidates without Mr. Trump’s endorsement to claim the mantle.“MAGA does not belong to President Trump,” Kathy Barnette said during a Pennsylvania Senate primary debate in April.The late surge from Ms. Barnette, who portrayed herself as a higher-octane version of Mr. Trump, eroded support for Dr. Mehmet Oz, the longtime television personality whom Mr. Trump endorsed, from conservatives who questioned his political credentials. As a result, Mr. Oz was running neck-and-neck with David McCormick, the hedge fund executive who had withstood a flurry of criticism from Mr. Trump. Still, Mr. Oz held about one-third of the vote.Republican Senate candidate Kathy Barnette at her election watch party Tuesday night in Elizabethtown, Pa. Ms. Barnette portrayed herself as a higher-octane version of Mr. Trump.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesOutside Ms. Barnette’s election night party on Tuesday, Diante Johnson, a Republican activist and the founder and president of the Black Conservative Federation, said she was proud of how the conservative author and commentator fought against the party powers that be.“The knife came to her and she didn’t back up,” Ms. Johnson said. “Every Trump establishment individual that came after her, she stood there and fought.”Ms. Barnette’s rise stunned Mr. Trump, who never considered the possibility of endorsing her candidacy, advisers said.But his base’s increasing autonomy should surprise no one.As president, Mr. Trump governed in a constant state of concern about tending to his supporters. Even though he was elected in part as a deal-making political outsider — he had spent much of his adult life toggling between political parties — he rarely made a significant decision without considering how his base would react.Those instincts prevented him from reaching a significant deal with Congress over immigration policy and fueled battles with Democratic leaders that led to repeated government shutdowns. His fear of appearing weak to his base voters drove his decision to not wear a mask in public for months into the pandemic.While Mr. Trump has indicated he is inclined to run for president for a third time in 2024, some advisers said the volatile and intensely fought primaries have risked alienating some of his supporters.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

    • 63 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      John Fetterman: ‘Unfussy and Plain-Spoken’

      by

      John Fetterman, the Democratic Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, isn’t like most politicians in his party.Only 38 percent of American adults have a bachelor’s degree. Yet college graduates have come to dominate the Democratic Party’s leadership and message in recent years.The shift has helped the party to win over many suburban professionals — and also helps explain its struggles with working-class voters, including some voters of color. On many social issues, today’s Democratic Party is more liberal than most Americans without a bachelor’s degree. The party also tends to nominate candidates who seem more comfortable at, say, Whole Foods than Wal-Mart.All of which makes John Fetterman such an intriguing politician.Last night, Fetterman — Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor — comfortably won the state’s Democratic Senate primary, with 59 percent of the vote. Conor Lamb, a more traditional Democratic moderate, finished second.In the general election this fall, Fetterman will face either Mehmet Oz, a celebrity doctor endorsed by Donald Trump, or David McCormick, a former business executive. Their primary remains too close to call.The basic theory of Fetterman’s candidacy is that personality and authenticity matter at least as much as policy positions. On many issues, his stances are quite liberal. He has supported Bernie Sanders and taken progressive positions on Medicare, marijuana, criminal justice reform and L.G.B.T. rights. “If you get your jollies or you get your voters excited by bullying gay and trans kids, you know, it’s time for a new line of work,” Fetterman said at a recent campaign stop.He is also 6-foot-8, bearded and tattooed, and he doesn’t like to wear suits. “I think he is a visual representation of Pennsylvania,” one voter recently said.Fetterman is the former mayor of Braddock, a blue-collar town in western Pennsylvania where about 70 percent of residents are Black. He declined to move into the lieutenant governor’s mansion near Harrisburg and spends many nights at his home in Braddock. He talks about having been around guns for most of his life. And he does take some positions that clash with progressive orthodoxy, like his opposition to a fracking ban.Fetterman “does not sound like any other leading politician in recent memory,” my colleague Katie Glueck wrote from the campaign trail. Holly Otterbein of Politico called him “unfussy and plain-spoken” in contrast to “a party often seen as too elite.” One suburban voter in Pennsylvania — making the same point in a more skeptical way — told The Times, “I think sometimes he might come off as not a polished person.”To be clear, Fetterman may lose the general election. This year is shaping up as a difficult one for Democrats, and the Republican campaign will no doubt use his progressive positions to claim he is a leftist out of step with Pennsylvania’s voters. Republicans may also point out that Fetterman has a graduate degree from Harvard and that he pulled a gun on a jogger in Braddock during a disputed 2013 encounter.Still, I find Fetterman to be notable because Democrats have nominated so few candidates like him in recent years. The party is more likely to choose ideologically consistent candidates whose presentation resembles that of a law professor or think-tank employee. Fetterman, like many working-class voters, has a mix of political beliefs. On the campaign trail, he wears shorts and a hoodie.Describing his appeal to voters, Sarah Longwell, a Republican political strategist, said: “It’s not that he’s progressive that they like or don’t like. They like that he’s authentic.”Although the specifics are different, he shares some traits with Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, who comes off as “simultaneously progressive, moderate and conservative,” as the political scientist Christina Greer wrote in The Times. Adams won his election despite losing Manhattan, New York’s most highly educated, affluent borough.Fetterman also has some similarities with Senator Sherrod Brown, a populist Democrat who has managed to win in Ohio and who revels in “his less than glamorous image,” as Andrew J. Tobias of Cleveland.com has written.For years, most Democrats trying to figure out how to win over swing voters have taken a more technocratic approach than either Adams or Fetterman. Centrist Democrats have often urged the party to move to the center on almost every issue — even though most voters support a progressive economic agenda, such as higher taxes on the rich.Liberal Democrats have made the opposite mistake, confusing the progressive politics of college campuses and affluent suburbs with the actual politics of the country. Some liberals make the specific mistake of imagining that most Asian, Black and Latino voters are more liberal than they are. As a shorthand, the mistake is sometimes known as the Latinx problem (named for a term that most Latinos do not use).It remains unclear whether Fetterman represents a solution to the Democrats’ working-class problem. But the problem is real: It is a central reason that Democrats struggle so much outside the country’s large metro areas. And if Democrats hope to solve it, they will probably have a better chance if more of their candidates feel familiar to working-class voters.Politics isn’t only about policy positions. People also vote based on instinct and comfort.For more: In Times Opinion, Michael Sokolove asks whether Fetterman is the future of the Democratic Party.The latest resultsIn the primaries for Pennsylvania governor, Doug Mastriano — a far-right state senator endorsed by Trump — won the Republican nomination, while Josh Shapiro, the state attorney general, won the Democratic race. Mastriano’s victory caused The Cook Political Report to say that the general election was no longer a toss-up and Shapiro was favored to win.In North Carolina, Madison Cawthorn lost the Republican primary for his House seat. Cawthorn was endorsed by Trump, but had feuded with others in his party after a series of scandals.Representative Ted Budd, also backed by Trump, won North Carolina’s Republican Senate primary. He will face the Democrat Cheri Beasley.Brad Little, Idaho’s Republican governor, beat back a primary challenge by Janice McGeachin, the Trump-endorsed lieutenant governor.THE LATEST NEWSWar in UkraineBuses with surrendered Ukrainian troops under Russian escort yesterday.Alexander Ermochenko/ReutersHundreds of Ukrainian soldiers who defended the steel mill in Mariupol are in Russian custody.Negotiators on both sides say peace talks have collapsed.On a Russian talk show, a retired colonel stunned his colleagues by saying that the invasion wasn’t going well.The VirusPublic schools in the U.S. have lost at least 1.2 million students since 2020, with some switching to home-schooling and others dropping out.The F.D.A. authorized Pfizer’s booster for children 5 to 11.Hospitalizations are rising in New York City, nearing the threshold to reinstate an indoor mask mandate.The White House will send Americans eight more at-home tests, through covidtests.gov.PoliticsA memorial outside the Tops supermarket in Buffalo.Doug Mills/The New York TimesPresident Biden visited the site in Buffalo where a gunman killed 10 people. “White supremacy is a poison,” he said.A Pentagon investigation found no wrongdoing in a 2019 airstrike in Syria that killed dozens of people, including women and children.The Justice Department requested transcripts from the Jan. 6 committee, potentially as evidence in future cases.In a hearing on U.F.O.s, Pentagon officials revealed video of an unidentified craft flying past a fighter jet.The Justice Department sued the casino mogul Steve Wynn, saying he lobbied Trump on China’s behalf.Other Big StoriesThe suspect in the Buffalo massacre invited a small group of people to review his plan on the chat app Discord. None of them alerted law enforcement.The shortage of baby formula has hospitalized two children who can’t absorb nutrients properly.Gun manufacturing has nearly tripled in the U.S. since 2000, fueled by sales of handguns.Johnny Depp’s lawyer challenged Amber Heard’s account of abuse, asking her why she had not presented medical records to back up her story.OpinionsIbrahim RayintakathWe want to call heat waves, wildfires and other deadly weather events “extreme,” but climate change has made them increasingly common, David Wallace-Wells writes.The baby formula shortage is more proof that new mothers, venerated in theory, are unsupported in practice, Elizabeth Spiers says.MORNING READSLife hacks: How to become an early bird.Hype man: A trash-talking crypto bro caused a $40 billion crash.Stanley tumbler: The sisterhood of social media’s favorite water bottle.A Times classic: How to talk to someone who’s sick.Advice from Wirecutter: Freeze your food — without freezer burn.Lives Lived: Urvashi Vaid, a lawyer and activist, was a leading figure in the fight for L.G.B.T.Q. equality for more than four decades. She died at 63.ARTS AND IDEAS The music supervisor Randall Poster.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesA boxed set for birdsRandall Poster had never appreciated the songbirds of the Bronx, where he has lived for most of his life, until the quiet the pandemic brought in 2020. After speaking with an environmentalist friend, Poster — a music supervisor for filmmakers — was inspired. What if he harnessed his industry connections into a fund-raiser for bird conservation?This week, Poster will release the first volume of “For the Birds,” a star-studded, 242-track collection of original songs and readings based on birdsong. It benefits the National Audubon Society.“For the Birds” features electronic trance, fiddle tunes and field recordings. Alice Coltrane and Yoko Ono make appearances, and a song from Elvis Costello shares space with a Jonathan Franzen reading.“Of all the things we need to work harder to protect, birds, like music, speak to everyone,” said Anthony Albrecht, an Australian cellist who has led similar conservation efforts. “They’re such a visible — and audible — indicator of what we stand to lose.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookDavid Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.Use up seasonal produce by adding tangy rhubarb to sheet-pan chicken.What to WatchManuel Garcia-Rulfo plays the lead in Netflix’s “The Lincoln Lawyer.” It’s a tricky job when your first language isn’t English.What to ReadNell Zink’s “Avalon” is about a girl who has a menacing stepfamily and a great ambition.Late NightThe hosts celebrated Sweden and Finland’s NATO applications.Now Time to PlayThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was backfill. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Blue hue (four letters).If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — DavidP.S. The Times covered the first same-sex marriages in Massachusetts on the front page 18 years ago today.Here’s today’s front page.“The Daily” is about a Ukrainian soldier. On “The Argument,” a debate about inflation.Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Is John Fetterman the Future of the Democratic Party?

      by

      John Fetterman’s resounding victory in the Democratic Pennsylvania Senate primary was not surprising, but it was uncharacteristic.Pennsylvania Democrats do not ordinarily veer too far from the center lane, and they are cautious about whom they send forward from their primary elections to take on Republicans in general elections. They’re not gamblers, and given the state’s perennially up-for-grabs status and its unforgiving electoral math, you could argue they shouldn’t be.But on Tuesday, Democrats made Mr. Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor, their nominee to compete for the seat being vacated by the retiring Republican Pat Toomey. (They did it despite Mr. Fetterman’s recent health scare; last week he suffered a stroke, but he said that he was on his way to “a full recovery.”)Conor Lamb, 37, a Pittsburgh-area congressman, would have been a more conventional choice. His House voting record tracks to the center, and he has been compared to the state’s three-term Democratic senator, Bob Casey, a moderate and the son of a former Pennsylvania governor.Mr. Fetterman, 52, offers something different, a new model for Pennsylvania. It is built on quirky personal and political appeal rather than the caution of a traditional Democrat in the Keystone State. With over 80 percent of the votes counted, Mr. Fetterman was more than doubling the total of Mr. Lamb, whose campaign, despite winning many more endorsements from party leaders, never gained momentum.For Democrats, the stakes are high: The outcome may well determine the balance of the evenly divided U.S. Senate, future votes to confirm Supreme Court nominees and much else in our bitterly divided nation.Nearly every story about Mr. Fetterman points out his 6-foot-8 frame, shaved head, tattoos and preferred attire — work clothes from Carhartt, a brand long favored by construction workers and miners and more recently by hip-hop artists. He sometimes attends public events in baggy gym shorts.It is all part of a style that has won him passionate followers among progressive Democrats. Mr. Fetterman has been a frequent presence on MSNBC and is a skilled social media practitioner, with over 400,000 Twitter followers. (His dogs, Levi and Artie, have their own Twitter account and more than 25,000 followers.) It can sometimes seem that he skirts the line between being a traditional candidate and an internet influencer.“Fetterman doesn’t have supporters so much as full-on fans,” The Philadelphia Inquirer noted during the campaign. “Fans who write songs about him, buy his merch and know his life story.”Mr. Fetterman has served as lieutenant governor since 2019 and, before that, for four terms was the mayor of Braddock, a town east of Pittsburgh with just over 1,700 residents. He vows to conduct a “67-county campaign” — the whole of Pennsylvania.Rebecca Katz, his senior political adviser, told me that she believes the campaign’s mantra of “every county, every vote” is being received with too much skepticism and said that people “haven’t seen what kind of map he can run on in Pennsylvania.”But he still must solve the math of an evenly divided state: A Democrat hoping to win in Pennsylvania has to thread an electoral needle.Mr. Fetterman will face either the celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz or the financier David McCormick.In the fall, Mr. Fetterman will need to pile up huge winning margins in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and win by healthy margins in their suburbs and the state’s few other pockets of blue in order to withstand the lopsided totals that Republicans win nearly everywhere else.In less populous counties, as recently as 2008, Barack Obama took 40 percent of the vote or more, but as polarization has increased, Democrats have struggled to get even 25 percent.State Democrats hoped that Joe Biden, a Pennsylvania native and senator from neighboring Delaware — and a white septuagenarian running in a state that is whiter and older than the national average — could reverse that trend. But he did only marginally better than Hillary Clinton four years earlier, cutting the margins by a couple of percentage points but hardly reversing the trend of Democrats being routed in the smaller counties.That Mr. Biden could not do better outside the cities and close-in suburbs has made many Democrats pessimistic about what’s possible in those areas. Mr. Fetterman’s background, his attention to the state’s rural communities and his manner — the work clothes, a straightforward speaking style — could make some difference. In the winning Fetterman model, he narrows the massive margins that have been run up by Republicans.His positions do not differ that much from more traditional Democrats’, but some of his central concerns do set him apart. A signature issue has been the legalization of marijuana — “legal weed,” as he calls it. He has flown a flag displaying cannabis leaves from the official lieutenant governor’s office, alongside a rainbow-colored L.G.B.T.Q. banner.The advocacy of legal marijuana may be the rare issue that draws support from unpredictable corners and crosses all kinds of lines — including urban and rural.The lieutenant governor in Pennsylvania has few defined duties, but as chairman of the Board of Pardons, Mr. Fetterman modernized an outdated system and granted clemency in cases where it was long overdue.Mr. Fetterman’s one glaring departure from progressive causes, and a nod to Pennsylvania realpolitik, is that he does not support a ban on fracking, the environmentally questionable hydraulic extraction of natural gas. Tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians have benefited financially from it by selling drilling rights on their land, working in the industry or both.Mr. Fetterman’s most worrisome vulnerability is his appeal to his party’s most dependable voting bloc: Black voters in Philadelphia and the state’s other urban centers, the places where any Democrat running statewide must mine the largest trove of votes. Only about 10 percent of the state’s voters are Black, but they are an essential component of the margins that the party runs up in the cities.Mr. Fetterman’s challenge stems in large part from a 2013 incident in Braddock, when he used his shotgun to stop a Black jogger and detained him until police arrived. Mr. Fetterman, who was mayor at the time, told police he had heard gunshots in the area and suspected the jogger. Police searched the man down and released him after they found no weapon.The incident has come up during the campaign, and Mr. Fetterman’s responses have been awkward, at best.“He has said he did not actually point the gun, but what difference does that make?” said Mark Kelly Tyler, the pastor of Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the nation’s oldest A.M.E. churches. “Even if he admitted that it was from his implicit bias and says that he has learned from it, that would actually be better. It would be accepted.”Mr. Tyler said that if Mr. Fetterman does not do a better job of explaining it, the incident will be “weaponized on Black talk radio and elsewhere” and used by his opponent in the fall to depress turnout.Mr. Fetterman won by huge margins all across Pennsylvania, with one notable exception: Philadelphia. There, it was a close race against a third Democratic primary candidate, Malcolm Kenyatta, a city resident and the first Black openly gay L.G.B.T.Q. member of the state legislature.With the primary complete, everything is reset. In a big state with six television markets, the candidates will likely combine to spend $200 million or more — much of it, undoubtedly, in an attempt to label each other as too extreme for middle-of-the-road Pennsylvania.Mr. Fetterman’s progressive politics and persona appeal to younger people. They lean to the left and are always potentially influential in any election. But they are also traditionally the least reliable voters, especially in nonpresidential years.In Pennsylvania and all other battleground states, it always comes down to the math. The state’s graying electorate does not always like new things or ideas.Mr. Fetterman is ultimately going to have to go where the votes are. And if he has a problem with Black voters, he will have to solve it.Michael Sokolove, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, is the author of “Drama High: The Incredible True Story of a Brilliant Teacher, a Struggling Town and the Magic of Theater,” which is set in his hometown, Levittown, Pa.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

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      For Hochul, Shooting in Buffalo Is a Hometown Tragedy

      by

      The governor grew up in the Buffalo suburbs and lives in the city now. The shooting has taken on political overtones in the 2022 race for governor of New York.Hours after an 18-year-old gunman killed 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket, Gov. Kathy Hochul convened a news conference just blocks away.She mourned for the tight-knit community and for the lives shattered by the cruelty of white supremacy. She spoke of the danger of hatred circulating online. And she talked knowingly of the neighborhood and the streets she had walked — and how it all hit so close to home.Ms. Hochul grew up in the Buffalo suburbs and lives with her husband in the city’s downtown area, less than four miles from the East Side, the mostly Black neighborhood where a white gunman orchestrated one of the deadliest racist massacres in recent memory.“This is personal” Ms. Hochul said a day later at True Bethel Baptist Church, a Black church one mile away from the site of the shooting. “You’ve hurt our family.”In recent days, Ms. Hochul has called out tech companies that she said were not doing enough to stop the spread of online hate that motivated the gunman, and denounced Washington for its failure to impose what she said should be common-sense gun control laws.On Tuesday, she appeared with President Biden as he visited Buffalo, a postindustrial city in western New York on the shores of Lake Erie. And in the coming days, Ms. Hochul has hinted that she plans to unveil a new gun safety package.With the Democratic primary for governor six weeks away, and Ms. Hochul running for her first full term, the shooting has presented the governor with both an opportunity to engage with voters in a moment of crisis and a challenge to demonstrate whether she is up to the task.From Opinion: The Buffalo ShootingCommentary from Times Opinion on the massacre at a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo.The Times Editorial Board: The mass shooting in Buffalo was an extreme expression of a political worldview that has become increasingly central to the G.O.P.’s identity.Jamelle Bouie: G.O.P. politicians and conservative media personalities did not create the idea of the “great replacement,” but they have adopted it.Paul Krugman: There is a direct line from Republicans’ embrace of crank economics, to Jan. 6, to Buffalo.Sway: In the latest episode of her podcast, Kara Swisher hosts a discussion on the role of internet platforms like 4chan, Facebook and Twitch in the attack.Indeed, the shooting, which law enforcement officials said was motivated by a white supremacist ideology fanned by some factions of the country’s right wing, has swiftly taken on political overtones in the escalating race for governor of New York, where gun violence has become a central issue.One of Ms. Hochul’s primary opponents, Representative Thomas R. Suozzi, was in Buffalo when the shooting occurred. He immediately used the event as a political cudgel, proclaiming on Twitter, “Hochul refuses to make fighting crime a priority. I will.”Mr. Suozzi, a centrist Democrat from Long Island, later issued a statement that took issue with Ms. Hochul’s record in Congress and endorsement during that time by the National Rifle Association, which has vehemently opposed gun control measures, including background checks.“That is not leadership,” said Mr. Suozzi, who has received an F rating from the N.R.A. “It is hypocritical and it does nothing to protect New Yorkers from this kind of tragedy happening again.”Ms. Hochul, at a Sunday prayer service in Buffalo, lives less than four miles from the scene of the shooting.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesRepresentative Lee Zeldin, a Suffolk County Republican who is running to be his party’s nominee for governor, issued a statement over the weekend that pushed for the reinstatement of the death penalty in New York State, which was declared unconstitutional nearly two decades ago.“Those who commit fatal hate crimes, acts of terrorism and other extreme violence should be brought to justice, and in some of these cases, the only fitting form of justice is the death penalty,” said Mr. Zeldin, who, visited the shooting scene on Monday to pay his respects to those killed, but did not take questions from reporters and avoided overtly political remarks.But for Ms. Hochul, the shooting has more obvious resonance.“I think the governor feels it on a whole different level, because she’s passed by the Tops, if not been in the Tops,” said Darius G. Pridgen, a pastor at the True Bethel Baptist church.In the days since the shooting, the governor has visited churches and gone on television and radio, giving interviews to nearly a dozen outlets, from MSNBC and CNN to Buffalo’s long-running morning radio show, “Janet & Nick in the Morning.”She has highlighted the state’s existing gun safety laws, seizing the opportunity to emphasize actions she has already taken as governor, such as an interstate task force that she assembled last year to tackle the illegal flow of guns.And she has denounced the killings as “white supremacist acts of terrorism,” calling on white Americans to take a stand against racism.“To say that she is taking this personally is to say the least,” said Jeremy Zellner, the chair of the Democratic Party in Erie County.The governor has lived with her husband in a condo in the waterfront area of the city’s downtown area since 2013, shortly after she lost her seat in Congress — though she often splits her time between Albany and New York City since becoming governor in August.Ms. Hochul got her start in politics as a member of the town board in Hamburg, a suburban town just south of Buffalo that is overwhelmingly white. While she briefly represented the East Side as clerk of Erie County, the House district she was elected to in 2011 was largely rural and suburban and did not include Buffalo.Ms. Hochul, at a news conference on Sunday, once represented the East Side of Buffalo when she was Erie County’s clerk.Malik Rainey for The New York TimesShe later helped promote economic development projects and job training programs aimed at the city as lieutenant governor to former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. As governor, she visited the East Side as recently as March to tout the construction of new affordable housing.One of Ms. Hochul’s major priorities for the region involves addressing the racial and economic inequalities that were exacerbated by a stretch of highway that was built through the East Side. Ms. Hochul is spearheading a plan to reconnect neighborhoods that were divided by the Kensington Expressway over 60 years ago, saying last month that there was $1 billion available in federal and state funds for a project to potentially cover the expressway, or part of it.“She’s from the suburbs, but in no way, shape or form a stranger to that part of the city,” said State Senator Sean Ryan, a Democrat who represents parts of the city’s West Side. “She’s a known commodity in terms of boots on the ground in neighborhood centers.”The mass shooting came as New York’s gubernatorial primary, scheduled for June 28, looms large.Ms. Hochul has amassed a gargantuan $20 million war chest and a huge polling advantage, but her campaign has faltered in recent weeks, battered by the arrest of her lieutenant governor, Brian Benjamin, on corruption charges, and criticism of a deal she secured to subsidize the construction of a new football stadium for the Buffalo Bills with taxpayer money.Mirroring many Democrats nationwide, Ms. Hochul had recently pivoted her attention to the likelihood that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade, radically redrawing the national landscape for women’s health care. Ms. Hochul has begun speaking more extensively about making New York a refuge for reproductive rights, vowing to enshrine abortion rights into state law and using her executive authority to create a $35 million fund to support abortion providers.Her campaign released a television ad this week that highlighted her commitment on the issue, even as the shooting’s aftermath overtook most of her public schedule.And on Monday, Ms. Hochul took the stage with Mr. Biden at a community center, seeking to draw parallels between Buffalo and the president’s hometown, Scranton, Pa. She said both leaders were used to their native cities failing to get the “respect” they deserved.“I’m a daughter of Buffalo, and I’m so proud to be governor,” she said ahead of the president’s remarks. “But right now I’m a daughter of Buffalo.” More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Redrawn New York Map Nullifies Democrats’ Gamble to Gain House Seats

      by

      The court-drawn lines would increase competition for seats in Congress, and pit longtime Democratic incumbents against one another.Earlier this year, Democratic leaders in New York made a brazen gamble: With the national party’s blessing, they created a congressional map that promised its candidates as many as three additional House seats.On Monday, three weeks after the state’s highest court declared the Democrats’ map unconstitutional, it became clear just how spectacularly the party’s gambit had backfired.A new slate of new congressional districts unveiled by the courts on Monday could pave the way for Republicans to make gains in this year’s critical midterm elections, a disastrous reversal for Democrats in a state where they control every lever of power.The proposed maps, drawn by Jonathan R. Cervas, the court-appointed special master, would unwind changes that Democrats had hoped to use to unseat Representative Nicole Malliotakis, a Staten Island Republican; flip other Republican-held swing districts; and secure their own tenuous seats in the Hudson Valley region.The new lines even cast the future of several long-tenured, powerful Democratic incumbents in doubt, forcing several to potentially run against one another.The most striking example came from New York City, where Mr. Cervas’s proposal pushed Representatives Jerrold Nadler, a stalwart Upper West Side liberal, and Carolyn Maloney of the Upper East Side into the same district, setting up a potentially explosive primary fight in the heart of Manhattan. Both lawmakers are in their 70s, have been in Congress for close to 30 years and lead powerful House committees.Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and a favorite to become the party’s next leader, was one of a handful of incumbent lawmakers who, under the new map, would no longer reside in the districts they represent. In one case, the new lines put Representative Brian Higgins mere steps outside his greater Buffalo district.Taken together, the proposed changes have broad national implications, effectively handing Republicans the upper hand in a national fight for control of the House, and rattling the top echelons of House Democratic leadership.“This is a huge swing against Democrats from the plan that was struck down,” said Dave Wasserman, a national elections analyst with the Cook Political Report. “Democrats could lose a lot of ground this fall and that could drive a stake through their hopes of keeping the House majority.”The final results promised to make New York an anomaly in a nation composed of increasingly gerrymandered states. Numerous states used redistricting this year to reinforce the dominance of one party or the other, yet New York — one of the largest Democratic-led states — is now expected to preserve and potentially even add competitive seats.What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Deepening Divides: As political mapmakers create lopsided new district lines, the already polarized parties are being pulled even farther apart.By Mr. Cervas’s own account, the new map would create eight competitive congressional seats, a figure closer to New York’s current decade-old map than the three that he estimated the Democrats’ map would have yielded.Mr. Wasserman put the handicapping at 15 safely Democratic seats, five safely Republican seats and a half-dozen tossups in a state where roughly 60 percent of voters supported President Biden.The map approved by the State Legislature, where Democrats control both houses, this year would have given their party a clear advantage in 22 of 26 districts. Democrats hold 19 seats on the existing map, which was also drawn by a court-appointed special master a decade ago.The final lines may yet still be revised to account for feedback from both parties. The state court judge in upstate Steuben County who is overseeing the case, Patrick F. McAllister, has set a Friday deadline for approving the congressional lines and a separate proposal for State Senate districts.Mr. Cervas, who declined to comment on the maps, removed one House seat from upstate New York altogether, shrinking the state’s delegation from 27 members to 26. New York was required to shed the seat after its population failed to keep pace with growth in other states in the 2020 census, continuing a decades-long trend.In making other changes, outside redistricting analysts said, it appeared that Mr. Cervas had sought to make the districts as competitive and compact as possible.The effect was evident on Long Island, where Mr. Cervas created one safe Republican seat, one safe Democratic seat and two swing seats. In the Hudson Valley, he drew districts that were more competitive than the ones approved by Democrats. And he returned Ms. Malliotakis’s district to its more conservative contours, after the Legislature tried to fuse Brooklyn’s ultraliberal Park Slope neighborhood onto Staten Island.Mr. Cervas showed less regard for protecting incumbents from changes, though, in many instances sharply redrawing lines that the previous special master laid out a decade ago.Two upstate Republicans, Representatives Claudia Tenney and Chris Jacobs, were left scrambling to lay a stake in rearranged rural seats in central and western New York. A third Republican congressional candidate, the Dutchess County executive, Marc Molinaro, saw the territory he had competed in for months reconfigured.The situation was more dire for Democrats, though. No fewer than five were drawn out of their districts: Mr. Jeffries; Mr. Higgins; Paul Tonko, who represents the Albany area; Grace Meng, who represents a heavily Asian American swath of Queens; and Nydia Velázquez, who represents a Latino-heavy district in Brooklyn.Representatives are not required to reside in their districts, but the changes could create yet another layer of uncertainty for incumbents and challengers alike.Each could still run to represent the core of the district they currently hold, but they would be forced to choose between moving their homes or explaining to voters why they do not live inside the lines they are seeking to represent in Washington.Representatives Mondaire Jones and Jamaal Bowman, two Black progressive Democrats in their first term, may face more difficult choices after Mr. Cervas’s map drew them into a single Westchester County district.In a blistering statement, Mr. Jeffries accused the court of ignoring the input of communities of color, diluting the power of Black voters and pitting Black incumbents against each other in “a tactic that would make Jim Crow blush.”“The draft map released by a judicial overseer in Steuben County and unelected, out-of-town special master, both of whom happen to be white men, is part of a vicious national pattern targeting districts represented by members of the Congressional Black Caucus,” Mr. Jeffries wrote.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      How the Long Recovery From Bush Fires Could Decide Australia’s Election

      by

      COBARGO, Australia — On a recent sunny day in the hills behind Cobargo, a village in southeastern Australia, local volunteers were hard at work installing a bathroom for the Jee family, which had waited more than two years for a proper one.Tammie and Brett Jee and their five sons lost their home on New Year’s Eve 2019 when a ferocious fire swept through the area. It was one of the most damaging of the record-setting “black summer” bush fires in Australia that killed 34 people, destroyed 3,500 homes and burned more than 60 million acres over two months.For the Jees and many others, the recovery from their devastating loss has been painfully slow. Barely one in 10 families in the affected region have finished rebuilding, local government data shows. Most have not even started. Planning delays, skilled labor shortages, supply chain problems brought on by the pandemic and a lack of government support are among the causes of delay.The suffering has left its mark not just on the families living in sheds or battling bureaucracy. It has also shifted the political firmament: If the opposition Labor Party wins the Australian election on Saturday, it could be in part because these once-conservative rural towns south of Sydney have shifted their allegiance out of frustration and anger.“It’s a perfect storm of factors,” said Kristy McBain, the area’s member of Parliament. Among them is a recovery effort complicated by overlapping involvement from national, state and local governments.“It seems that every time we have a disaster, we have a government that wants to try to reinvent the wheel for how recovery should work,” added Ms. McBain, who was mayor of the local council during the fires. “And we’ve never settled on a model, which is pretty crazy.”Tammie Jee and her son Mason preparing dinner in a temporary kitchen inside a shed on their property.Because Mason has muscular dystrophy, he needed a portable disabled bathroom installed, which took more than two years.Other communities were also devastated by the summer blazes. Other towns have also struggled to rebuild and recover, hampered by a pandemic; by flooding and storms; and by a glacial approval process from government agencies.But Cobargo, where Prime Minister Scott Morrison was loudly heckled while visiting the town in the fires’ immediate aftermath, has come to stand as an emblem for the devastation and the politically divisive aftermath.Just inland from Australia’s southeast coast, 240 miles from Sydney, Cobargo is in the electorate of Eden-Monaro, a bellwether seat that, until 2016, had been won by the party forming the government in Australia’s parliamentary system for four decades. It is currently held by Ms. McBain, for the opposition Labor Party, who won a by-election in July 2020 with a margin of less than 1 percentage point.The electorate to the north, Gilmore, also hard hit by the fires, is held by another Labor representative, Fiona Phillips. It was previously in conservative hands for two decades.With the ruling conservative Liberal-National coalition expected to lose urban seats in other states, the conventional wisdom is that the current government’s route to re-election goes through the country — in this case, bush-fire-ravaged country.Bushland on the outskirts of Cobargo that has been irrevocably altered by the fires that tore through the region in December 2019.Buildings in Cobargo destroyed by fire, January 2020.Mr. Morrison currently governs with a one-seat majority in Parliament. A failure to win back those seats could cost his coalition re-election.The Jee family has more immediate concerns. They initially lived in a rental property before returning to their fire-scarred rural acreage in Wandella, near Cobargo, where they built a small shed and supplemented it with a disaster accommodation “pod” — a self-contained shipping container 23 feet long and eight feet wide — provided by an Australian charity.Life in their tiny temporary accommodation has been hard, even before an unseasonably wet year that now has them fighting mold. Because the Jees’ third son, Mason, 16, has muscular dystrophy, he cannot use the cramped, camp-style shower in the pod. Before the new bathroom was installed in a newly constructed shed, every time he wanted to shower, he had to go to his grandmother’s house, a few miles away.When the Jees set about rebuilding, they hit a wall of planning paperwork. Legacy planning issues with their previous home, and changes to development law, meant that at one stage it looked as if they might never be permitted to rebuild.While those roadblocks have been largely overcome, the Jees are still awaiting final approval to start construction. They are unlikely to have a new home built by the fourth anniversary of the bush fires. “It’s been a nightmare,” Ms. Jee said.Nearby in Cobargo, Vic Grantham has been trying to get answers about the latest delays in his own planning process. When Mr. Grantham and his partner, Janice Holdsworth, moved to a 26-acre property in the area in 2005, they found community and contentment.Early in the morning on New Year’s Day in 2020, their house was destroyed by fire.Janice Holdsworth and Vic Grantham in front of the shed where they currently live. Because they moved after the fire, they no longer qualified as “bush-fire-affected” for planning prioritization.Emergency accommodation pods that have been returned or are about to be sent to families in need on the outskirts of Cobargo.They sold their property and bought a block in the Cobargo township, intending to live in an existing shed on that site while they built their new dream home.But because they had moved, they subsequently learned, they no longer qualified as bush fire survivors for planning prioritization by the local government.“We’re not prioritized,” Mr. Grantham said, “because we’re not ‘bush-fire-affected.’ It’s George Orwell-speak. Tell me again I’m not bush-fire-affected.”There are signs that such anger at the disaster response could hurt the Liberal-National government’s chances of regaining Gilmore and Eden-Monaro. A poster depicting Mr. Morrison in a Hawaiian shirt and floral headpiece was prominent recently on Cobargo’s main street, pointedly reminding voters that the prime minister vacationed in Hawaii while the fires were raging.In February, there was a regional government by-election for the seat of Bega, which takes in parts of the two federal electorates and is home to many communities hit by the fires. For the first time, a Labor candidate won the seat.“I do think there was anger about the bush fires,” said the election’s winner, Dr. Michael Holland.A poster depicting Prime Minister Scott Morrison in a Hawaiian shirt at a coffee shop in Cobargo, reminding voters that he vacationed in Hawaii while the fires were raging.The area around Wandella Creek was ravaged by the 2019-20 fires. Now it has been flooding after months of torrential rainfall in the area.In an interview at his clinic in the coastal town of Moruya, Dr. Holland, an obstetrician, recalled sheltering from the fires in his office. “I slept for five nights on the floor here,” he said.His home was spared, but many of his constituents were not so fortunate. “People still haven’t rebuilt,” he says. “There are really a lot of people out there struggling, and they’re a lot of the time struggling in silence.”With Australia acutely vulnerable to the impact of climate change, effective disaster recovery is going to become only more critical in the years ahead.“Climate change makes a difference,” said Ms. McBain, the member of Parliament. “These events are occurring more frequently; they are more intense. They are having an impact on the lives and livelihoods of so many people now. It is incumbent upon governments to get the process right.”Whatever happens during Australia’s election, the people of Cobargo will continue their slow road to recovery.“You heal with the land,” said Philippe Ravenel, a Swiss Australian blacksmith who, with his wife, Marie, lost his home in Wandella during the fires.Iain Hamilton, a blacksmith, showing his family how to prepare the steel used to forge leaves, part of a memorial sculpture project for the communities that survived the bush fires.“We use fire to create something, instead of all the destruction that the fire left behind,” said Philippe Ravenel, another blacksmith working on the project, showing some of the leaves made by local residents.“We cannot complain,” he said, noting that some lost their lives. The fire in the area was so intense that Mr. Ravenel’s cast-iron pots melted.For much of the past two years, the Ravenels have been living in a shed attached to the blacksmith workshop, which survived the fires. They will soon begin rebuilding.In the meantime, Mr. Ravenel has been part of a project to help the community heal. Together with another local blacksmith, Iain Hamilton, he has opened up his workshop to residents from the area to forge a leaf inscribed with their name. Once 3,000 or so leaves have been forged, the blacksmiths intend to use them to create a memorial.“The idea is that you have a tree that you can sit under and reflect,” he said.The memorial, on Cobargo’s main street, will be a lasting reminder of the bush fire that devastated this hamlet, the turbulent rebuilding process that followed and Cobargo’s central role in a wider national debate in Australia.“We use fire to create something,” Mr. Ravenel said of the project, “instead of all the destruction that the fire left behind.”Bushland destroyed by the fires in 2019. With Australia acutely vulnerable to the impact of climate change, effective disaster recovery is going to become only more critical in the years ahead.Matthew Abbott for The New York Times More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      German Conservatives Win State Election in Setback for Scholz

      by

      Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats scored record-low votes in the first major electoral test he has faced since taking office.BERLIN — Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats, in a regional election overshadowed by the war in Ukraine, scored record-low vote percentages on Sunday as Germany’s most populous state went to the polls.The contest involved only legislative seats in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. But with the campaign’s start coinciding with the Russian invasion, the race was unusually dominated by national issues — in particular, the risks that the European land war might spread and the worry about energy supplies.Mr. Scholz has been increasingly criticized as dithering in his approach to supporting Ukraine in the war, which has become a popular cause in Germany across several parties, and his party appears to have paid a price in the first major electoral test it has faced since taking power less than six months ago.Projections showed the incumbent Christian Conservatives easing to a win and likely the governorship as the head of a coalition government. They were expected to take close to 36 percent of the vote versus less than 27 percent for the Social Democrats and 18 percent for the Greens.“It’s a huge disappointment for the S.P.D.,” said one political scientist, Uwe Jun of Trier University.“Given these results,” he said, “the S.P.D. must realize that it is obviously not perceived as the driving force of the federal government, but that it seems to be playing more of a supporting role in the coalition at the moment.”Just days after Russia invaded on Feb. 24, Mr. Scholz addressed the German federal Parliament and promised an epochal change, and signaled more spending on the Germany military. But since then the chancellor has struck many people as dragging his heels on policies that would actually help Ukraine.Supporters of the Christian Democrats after hearing the initial exit poll results on Sunday.Sascha Schuermann/Getty ImagesThere were weeks of debates on whether the German government would allow the export of heavy weapons before the Defense Ministry finally announced the shipment of dozens of armored air-defense systems.Germany was also seen as wavering on punishing Russia over the invasion. Fellow members of the European Union said Germany was trying to block decisions to boycott Russian energy imports, on which Germans are heavily dependent.Mr. Scholz was also criticized for sending his foreign minister on a state visit to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, instead of going himself.A recent poll found that nearly two-thirds of Germans do not consider Mr. Scholz a strong leader, and from respected broadsheets to Germany’s noisy tabloid Bild, commentators took the result of Sunday’s election as a damning verdict on Mr. Scholz’s first six months in office. A headline in the Süddeutsche Zeitung called the outcome “a vote of no confidence against the chancellor,” while Bild called it “a historic slap.”Voter unease seems not to have hurt one of Mr. Scholz’s coalition partners, the Greens. On Sunday, they were the big winners in terms of numbers gained over the last election, bettering their performance in 2017 by nearly 12 percentage points. Mr. Scholz’s two most popular ministers are Green party members who appear to be pushing for much of the popular Ukraine policy within the government coalition. One of them, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, traveled to Kyiv last week.The Free Democratic Party, the third coalition partner in the federal government, did not do well at the polls, claiming less than 6 percent of the state’s votes.At 56 percent, voter participation was unusually low for a state election in Germany.“It’s a test of people’s mood, which just shows what people think about the government’s work at the moment,” said Professor Jun.Voters handed the Christian Democratic Union, which lost the federal election after Chancellor Angela Merkel retired, an important win. It keeps conservatives in power in the industrial west, the former heartland of the Social Democrats, but it could signal a changing tide as voters go to polls in several other big state elections in the coming years.“The C.D.U. is back, our forward-looking course has been vindicated,” the party leader, Friedrich Merz, said on Twitter.The Social Democratic leader in North Rhine-Westphalia, Thomas Kutschaty, on Sunday.Ina Fassbender/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe election does not directly affect federal politics in Berlin, where Mr. Scholz has been running the three-party coalition since December. But the support for the conservative government in the big western state adds to Mr. Scholz’s woes trying to keep his government stable and the Social Democratic brand strong.Russia-Ukraine War: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3Inching closer to NATO. More

    • 88 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Your Monday Briefing: North Korea’s Growing Outbreak

      by

      Plus India bans most wheat exports and South Korea amends surgery laws.Good morning. North Korea’s outbreak grows, India bans most wheat exports and South Korea amends its surgery laws.Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, chided health officials for “incompetence” at a Saturday meeting, according to state media.Korean Central News Agency, via Associated PressNorth Korea’s outbreak growsState media reported 21 new deaths and a huge jump in suspected coronavirus cases on Saturday, as North Korea struggled to contain its first reported outbreak.State media said an additional 174,400 people had symptoms, like a fever, that could be caused by Covid-19 — a tenfold jump from the 18,000 such cases reported on Friday. North Korea has reported a total of 524,400 people with Covid-like symptoms since late last month.“North Korea is reporting only ‘people with fever’ because it does not have enough test kits,” an expert said. Covid may not be causing all those fevers, he said, but the number of asymptomatic cases is likely much higher than the official count.Vaccines: North Koreans are unvaccinated, though some elites may have received shots. International health organizations and the South Korean government have said that they were ready to ship vaccines, therapeutics and other aid.In other developments:The Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is nearing one million. The nation wants to move on, but many of the loved ones left behind are grieving alone.If the U.S. had the same Covid death rate as Australia, about 900,000 lives would have been saved, our Sydney bureau chief writes in an analysis.Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand tested positive and has moderate symptoms.Thanks to its focus on subsidizing its farmers, India has about 10 percent of the world’s grain reserves.Amit Dave/ReutersIndia bans most wheat exportsAdding to concerns of global food insecurity, the world’s second-largest wheat producer has banned most exports of the grain. India’s commerce ministry said that a sudden price spike had threatened the country’s food security.The move, an apparent about-face, could compound a worldwide shortfall and exacerbate a dire forecast for global hunger. In April, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told President Biden that India was ready to supply the world with its reserves.Background: The war has interrupted wheat production in Ukraine and Russia, and blockades in the Black Sea have disrupted transport of the grain. And climate change poses a dire threat. Agricultural experts said that India’s ongoing heat wave could affect the harvest this year. Torrential rains brought on poor harvests in China, while drought in other countries further snarled supplies.Iran: Protests driven by rising food prices spread to at least six provinces on Friday. A hospital near Seoul voluntarily put cameras in its operating rooms in 2020.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesSouth Korea’s surgery surveillanceSouth Korea has become one of the first countries to require cameras in operating rooms that handle patients under general anesthesia, a measure meant to restore faith in the medical system.For years, hospitals have fielded complaints about doctors turning patients over to unsupervised assistants who perform “ghost surgeries.” About five patients have died from such surgeries in the past eight years, a patient advocate said.According to patient advocates, surgeons deputize nurses to perform operations, thereby packing in more procedures and maximizing profits. They argue that cameras will protect patients and offer medical malpractice victims evidence to use in court.But ethicists and medical officials across the world have cautioned that surveilling surgeons may hurt morale, violate patient privacy and make physicians less likely to take risks to save lives.Background: The surreptitious surgeries began occurring at plastic surgery clinics in the 2010s, after South Korea started promoting medical tourism, according to legal experts. They spread to spinal hospitals, experts said, which mostly perform relatively uncomplicated procedures in high demand among the country’s aging population. THE LATEST NEWSAsia and the PacificMost of the victims were assembly line workers, local officials said.Sajjad Hussain/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAt least 27 people were killed after a fire swept through a commercial building in New Delhi. The city’s chief fire officer said that the city was seeing more fires during India’s heat wave.Most members of the Rajapaksa political dynasty are hiding out at a military base in Sri Lanka as a protest movement grows. Only the president is still clinging to power.Gender transition surgery is a campaign flashpoint in Australia that looks like something from an overseas culture war.The WarHere are live updates.Finland’s government and Sweden’s governing party confirmed that they would seek NATO membership on Sunday, another strategic setback for Russia.Ukrainian forces drove Russian troops farther from Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, as thousands of residents return each day. Residents are also returning to Bucha, and Kyiv shortened its curfew.Russian bloggers are criticizing evidence of a military disaster on the Donets River, which is breaking through the Kremlin’s information bubble.Ukraine won the Eurovision Song Contest in a pop culture endorsement of solidarity.World NewsA memorial for the victims of the Buffalo shooting.Joshua Rashaad McFadden for The New York TimesA white gunman killed 10 people and injured three more — almost all Black — at a supermarket in upstate New York, one of the deadliest racist massacres in recent American history. Follow live updates here.Israeli police officers attacked mourners at the funeral procession of Shireen Abu Akleh, a slain Palestinian American journalist.The U.A.E. has a new leader, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. His half brother Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed died on Friday, after leading the Persian Gulf country for 18 years.Somalia elected a new president, but the government holds little sway: Al Shabab militants collect taxes, decide court cases and control the streets.Lebanese voters cast ballots for a new Parliament on Sunday, their first chance to pass judgment on lawmakers since the economy fell apart.A Morning ReadKim Do-yoon, an internationally known tattoo artist, at his studio in Seoul. Chang W. Lee/The New York Times Tattooing without a medical license is illegal in South Korea, where decorative body art has long been associated with organized crime. But the law is crashing into rising international demand for what are known as “k-tattoos,” and the country’s tattoo artists argue that it’s time to end the stigma against their business.Lives lived: Katsumoto Saotome compiled six books of survivors’ recollections of the 1945 Tokyo firebombing and founded (without government support) a memorial museum. Saotome died at 90.ARTS AND IDEASThe future of paralysis?Sixteen years ago, Dennis DeGray’s mind was nearly severed from his body. He ran to take out the trash in a rainstorm, slipped, landed hard on his chin, and snapped his neck, paralyzing him from the collarbones down.For several years, he “simply laid there, watching the History Channel,” he said. But then he met Jaimie Henderson, a neurosurgeon at Stanford, who had been developing a brain-computer interface. Henderson asked DeGray if he wanted to fly a drone. DeGray decided to participate.Now, implants in his brain allow DeGray some control, even though he cannot move his hands. Just by imagining a gesture, he can move a computer cursor, operate robotic limbs, buy from Amazon and fly a drone — albeit only in a simulator, for now.There are obvious therapeutic applications. Interest from an increasing number of high-profile start-ups also suggests the possibility of a future in which neural interfaces enhance people’s innate abilities and grant them new ones — in addition to restoring those that have been lost.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookRyan Liebe for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Hadas Smirnoff.The secret to these chocolate chip cookies? Chill the dough for a day before you bake them.FitnessGetting back into running is easier than you think.What to WatchFour children develop unusual abilities in “The Innocents,” a wonderfully eerie Norwegian horror movie.Now Time to PlayPlay today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Clothing (four letters).Here are today’s Wordle and today’s Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. Elisabeth Goodridge, The Times’s deputy travel editor, will study travel reporting in an era of climate change as a 2023 Nieman fellow at Harvard.The latest episode of “The Daily” is on America’s Covid death toll.You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. More