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      Ahead of Election, Young People in the Philippines Rally Around Leni Robredo

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      As the election in the Philippines nears, tens of thousands of young people who fear another Marcos presidency are rallying around Leni Robredo, the country’s vice president.VALENZUELA CITY, Philippines — John Benvir Serag knocked on doors in the working-class neighborhood, wearing his pink “Youth Vote for Leni” T-shirt and holding a stack of fliers. He has spent nearly every day in the past month trying to explain to strangers why Leni Robredo is the best person to lead the Philippines.“What are you looking for in a president?” Mr. Serag asked an older woman, ahead of the country’s presidential election in May.“Of course, someone who does not steal,” she responded.“Right! Leni has no trace of corruption,” Mr. Serag said. “Also, she is not a thief.”Anyone who made eye contact with the 26-year-old Mr. Serag in this neighborhood was an opening. Questions about her proposal for clean government? Needed more information about her plans for farmers and businesses?In the past six years, many young people in the Philippines have grown increasingly disenchanted with President Rodrigo Duterte’s leadership: both his brutal war on drugs and his approach to the pandemic. They have watched men and boys being gunned down in the streets and experienced the mental toll from a prolonged shutdown of schools, two years and running.John Benvir Sera, 26, a junior high school teacher, is among the many young volunteers for Ms. Robredo.Hannah Reyes Morales for The New York TimesIn this election, many have come out in full force for Ms. Robredo, the country’s vice president, who is an outspoken critic of Mr. Duterte and a frequent target of his insults. They are facing long odds, with Ms. Robredo polling a far second behind the front-runner, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the only son and namesake of the late dictator.They are also fighting a wave of disinformation that has recast the Marcos dictatorship as what supporters of the younger Marcos call a “golden age.” Some of their peers are swayed by YouTube videos that portray Mr. Marcos as a cool parent, while some among an older generation are nostalgic for strongman rule.Presidential elections in the Philippines have long been a contest for the hearts of young Filipinos. This time, at least half of the record 65 million registered voters are between the ages of 18 and 30.But they have rarely been marked by this level of passion and intensity. As of Feb. 25, two million volunteers had signed up for Ms. Robredo’s campaign, according to Barry Gutierrez, her spokesman. Many of them are first-time voters or too young to vote. Her rallies have drawn tens of thousands of people.Supporters of Ms. Robredo preparing to go house-to-house in Manila to campaign for her. Hannah Reyes Morales for The New York Times“It’s like my mom’s a rock star every time she goes around, and this is something very surprising to us,” said Tricia Robredo, one of Ms. Robredo’s daughters. “Especially because we’ve been going off our experience the past six years where my mom has been very vilified online.”Dozens of groups have sprouted up, combining their shared interests in K-pop and Taylor Swift with getting the vote out for Ms. Robredo. The “Swifties4Leni” wear T-shirts with the hashtag #OnlyTheYoung, referencing Ms. Swift’s track about youth empowerment against the “big bad man and his big bad clan.”Many of Ms. Robredo’s young supporters are united in their desire to prevent another Marcos from becoming president. Aside from the human rights abuses committed during his father’s 20-year rule, Mr. Marcos — who is known by his nickname, Bongbong — has been convicted of tax fraud, refused to pay his family’s estate taxes, and misrepresented his education at Oxford University.Many of Ms. Robredo’s young supporters are united in their desire to prevent another Marcos from becoming president. Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the only son of the late dictator, is leading in the polls.Hannah Reyes Morales for The New York TimesMs. Robredo, a lawyer and an economist, beat Mr. Marcos narrowly in 2016 to win the vice presidency, which is separately elected from the presidency. She has vowed to stop the extrajudicial killings in the drug war. During the pandemic, she sent medical equipment to patients and dispatched supplies to frontliners. She has helped marginalized communities and is usually one of the first top officials to visit disaster-stricken sites.Perhaps the biggest challenge facing Ms. Robredo’s young volunteers has been the wave of disinformation that has lionized the Marcos era and vilified Ms. Robredo as a communist. Spliced videos have also portrayed her as stuttering and unintelligent.Tsek.ph, an independent fact-checking project in the Philippines, found that Mr. Marcos has benefited the most from disinformation this year, while Ms. Robredo has been its biggest victim so far. The group said that of more than 200 election-related posts it analyzed, 94 percent targeted Ms. Robredo; only 10 percent went after Mr. Marcos.“It’s a little late for us to fight that disinformation,” said Mr. Serag, a junior high school teacher who goes by V.J. “But we’re still doing it, even if it’s a little too late. That’s what pushed me to be active.”Preparing campaign literature for Ms. Robredo. Perhaps the biggest challenge facing Ms. Robredo’s young volunteers has been a wave of disinformation targeting her.Hannah Reyes Morales for The New York TimesOn a recent Thursday, Mr. Serag led a team of 20 other volunteers in the neighborhood of Gen T. de Leon, where posters of Mr. Marcos and his running mate, Sara Duterte, the president’s daughter, were plastered outside many homes.Just a week before, several of Mr. Marcos’s supporters in the next neighborhood had dumped a bucket of water on them.“What are you looking for in a president?” Mr. Serag asked a middle-aged woman who runs a stall.“Someone who can help us find jobs,” the woman replied.“Leni has set aside a budget of 100 million for small and medium enterprises and when it comes to employment —” Mr. Serag began, before he was cut off.Dozens of groups have sprouted up, combining their shared interests in K-pop and Taylor Swift with getting the vote out for Ms. Robredo. Above, one such group, K-Pop Stans for Leni.Hannah Reyes Morales for The New York Times“Isn’t Leni a ‘yellow?’” the woman asked, referring to the “yellow” Liberal Party. The party of the Aquino family, which has produced two former presidents, has been seen by some as an elitist group that has failed to improve the lives of ordinary Filipinos.“No, she’s independent,” Mr. Serag responded. He pressed on: “Even if we do away with the political colors, yellow or whatever, let’s think about what she really has done. She really has helped a lot of communities.”The youth vote remains divided between Ms. Robredo and Mr. Marcos. Many young people remain big fans of Mr. Marcos — a survey has shown that seven out of 10 Filipinos aged 18 to 24 want him to be president. The country’s textbooks dwell little on the atrocities of the Marcos era. Mr. Marcos’s young supporters say they enjoy watching his YouTube videos, which often feature his family in game-show segments.One volunteer on Mr. Serag’s team, Jay Alquizar, 22, had a speaker blasting a rap and pop jingle touting Ms. Robredo’s achievements, which he carted through the streets. A group of teenage boys cycled past him. Some shouted Mr. Marcos’s initials: “BBM, BBM!”A campaign rally for Ms. Robredo. Presidential elections in the Philippines have long been a contest for the hearts of young Filipinos.Hannah Reyes Morales for The New York TimesMr. Alquizar spoke into his microphone. “We are not here for a fight, we just want to inspire you,” he said. “That is what we see as the young. You need to see that, too. Because the future is not only for you. It’s for the next generation.”Mr. Alquizar said he was inspired, in part, by his grandfather, a former police officer, who was tortured during the Marcos regime after speaking out against human rights violations. “The word ‘sorry’ from the Marcos family,” he said in an interview. “We just want to hear that from them.”In past elections, the youths in the Philippines were mostly concerned about bread-and-butter issues such as jobs. They were often frustrated by the political dynasties that dominated the establishment, but felt there was little they could do to change it. Youth turnout in the 2016 election was about 30 percent, compared with 82 percent for the general population.Maria Tinao, 16, a high school student in the city of Caloocan, said she was always disillusioned about politics, believing officials had joined government just to enrich themselves. A self-professed “pageant fanatic,” she had been more focused on winning beauty contests and listening to K-pop than thinking about her country’s leaders.Then in 2017, Kian Loyd delos Santos was shot twice in the head.A supporter of Mr. Marcos, in blue, debating volunteers from Youth Vote for Leni. Some supporters of the Mr. Marcos have cast his father’s dictatorship as a “golden age.”Hannah Reyes Morales for The New York TimesHis death shook Ms. Tinao. He was 17. The police officers who shot him were found guilty of his murder.In January, Ms. Tinao saw an interview with Ms. Robredo and was impressed. She started researching the vice president’s stance on the drug war. Although she was too young to vote, she wanted to work on swaying people who could.“We want a change, a real change for this country,” Ms. Tinao said.For the next few months, Ms. Tinao was relentless in talking about Ms. Robredo’s policies to her mother.“I was annoyed at first,” said Monica Tinao, 43, a volunteer church worker, who was considering voting for Isko Moreno, the mayor of Manila.But she remained curious about the appeal of Ms. Robredo. In March, she decided to attend a rally for the candidate. She saw the young volunteers distribute free food and water. Her daughter was in front of the stage.That night, the elder Ms. Tinao, who lives in a neighborhood of Marcos supporters, found her daughter’s banner promoting Ms. Robredo and strung it up on her front gate.Ms. Robredo onstage during a campaign rally in Pampanga, the Philippines, in April. Her rallies have drawn tens of thousands of people.Hannah Reyes Morales for The New York TimesJason Gutierrez More

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      Nebraska Candidate for Governor Accused of Second Groping Incident at 2019 Dinner

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      Charles W. Herbster, who has been endorsed by Donald Trump for Nebraska governor, was accused of groping a second woman at a 2019 Republican fund-raising event. He denies both allegations.A second woman has publicly accused Charles W. Herbster, the Republican candidate for governor in Nebraska endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump, of groping her at a 2019 Republican fund-raising dinner.Elizabeth Todsen said Mr. Herbster grabbed her at the dinner in Omaha and said details of the incident reported earlier this month by the Nebraska Examiner were correct.“For years I have struggled with an experience I had with Charles W. Herbster,” she said in a statement issued by her lawyer. “At a political event in 2019, Herbster sexually groped me while greeting my table.”The allegations against Mr. Herbster, a millionaire agribusiness executive who is largely self-funding his campaign, have roiled the often polite world of Nebraska politics ahead of the state’s May 10 primary. The longtime Trump ally has adopted the former president’s playbook in responding to the allegations, forcefully denying them, suing his first public accuser, a state senator, and tying her to his political rivals.A spokeswoman for Mr. Herbster’s campaign, Emily Novotny, said Mr. Herbster “absolutely and unequivocally denies all allegations.” She said he “will be taking legal action” against Ms. Todsen. Mr. Herbster is a bitter political rival of Gov. Pete Ricketts, a term-limited Republican who like Mr. Herbster has long been a major donor to Nebraska Republicans. Mr. Ricketts is supporting Jim Pillen, a member of the University of Nebraska Board of Regents. Limited public polling of the race shows Mr. Herbster and Mr. Pillen locked in a virtual three-way tie with Brett Lindstrom, a state senator who has attracted support from moderate Republicans and from some Democrats who have changed their party affiliation to vote in the primary.The account from Ms. Todsen follows an accusation earlier this month from Julie Slama, a Nebraska state senator who said Mr. Herbster also grabbed her at the same event.Ms. Todsen, 26, is a former political aide to Nebraska state legislators who now works for a fund-raising company in Washington. She did not respond to messages on Saturday and her lawyer, Tara Tesmer Paulson of Lincoln, Neb., said she would make no additional comments.Mr. Herbster denied Ms. Slama’s account and has since aired television ads tying her to his political rivals in the governor’s race while comparing himself to Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh, who both faced charges of improper behavior during their confirmation hearings. Mr. Herbster’s TV ad claims Ms. Slama kept in contact with him after the incident and “even invited Herbster to her destination wedding.”Ms. Slama said on Twitter on Saturday that she was “grateful for Elizabeth’s bravery in coming forward.”Mr. Herbster and Mr. Trump are scheduled to appear together at a rally on Sunday in Greenwood, Neb. The event was originally planned for Friday night but Mr. Trump moved it, he said, because of storms forecast for the area.Kirsten Noyes More

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      Sinn Fein Poised to Make Historic Gains in Northern Ireland Elections

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      But Sinn Fein, which is leading in polls ahead of next week’s elections, hasn’t focused its campaign on unification with Ireland.CARRICKFERGUS, Northern Ireland — The sun was setting over the tidy, red brick homes in a Protestant neighborhood outside Belfast when two candidates for Northern Ireland’s legislature came to knock on doors on a recent evening. It might as well have been setting on the pro-unionist dreams of the residents.“It’s changed times now,” said Brian Gow, 69, as he contemplated the growing odds that the Irish nationalist party, Sinn Fein, would win the most seats in parliamentary elections on Thursday.That would represent an extraordinary coming-of-age for a political party that many outside Ireland still associate with years of paramilitary violence. It would also be a momentous shift in Northern Ireland, one that could upend the power-sharing arrangements that have kept a fragile peace for two decades.Yet for all of the freighted symbolism, Mr. Gow and his wife, Alison, greeted the prospect of a Sinn Fein victory with relative equanimity.“There’s no way I would vote Sinn Fein,” said Mrs. Gow, 66, who, like her husband, is a die-hard supporter of the Democratic Unionist Party, which favors Northern Ireland’s current status as part of the United Kingdom. “But if they’re committed to serving everyone equally, people will have to live with it.”Mary Lou McDonald, the president of Sinn Fein, center left, talking to voters and stall owners at St. George’s Market during a campaign stop this week in Belfast.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesBrian Gow talking to Danny Donnelly, a candidate for the Alliance Party, a centrist alternative to Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionists, this week in Carrickfergus.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesThat would be music to the ears of Sinn Fein’s leaders. In polls this past week, they held a lead of two to six percentage points over the D.U.P., running a campaign that emphasizes kitchen-table concerns like the high cost of living and the need for better health care — and that plays down the party’s ideological commitment to Irish unification, a legacy of its ties to the Irish Republican Army.Irish unification, party leaders say, is an over-the-horizon issue, over which Sinn Fein has limited control. It is up to the British government to call a referendum on whether Northern Ireland should stay part of the United Kingdom or join the Republic of Ireland.The only immediate effect of a Sinn Fein victory would be the right to name the first minister in the next government. The unionists, who have splintered into three parties, could still end up with the largest bloc of votes, according to political analysts.“I hope that political unionism, when they meet this democratic test next week, will accept the vote from the people, no matter what that is,” said John Finucane, a Sinn Fein member of the British Parliament who is running the party’s campaign. “To paint this in an us-versus-them context, post election, is potentially dangerous.”A lawyer and rugby player, Mr. Finucane, 42, knows the horrors of Northern Ireland’s past firsthand. When he was 8, he watched from under a table while masked gunmen killed his father, Pat Finucane, a prominent Catholic lawyer. The murder, in which loyalist paramilitaries colluded with British security forces, was one of the most notorious of the 30 years of violence known as the Troubles.“I hope that political unionism, when they meet this democratic test next week, will accept the vote from the people, no matter what that is,” said John Finucane, a Sinn Fein member of the British Parliament.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesWalking near a “peace wall” that separates Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods in Belfast.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesPat Finucane’s photograph still hangs over his son’s desk — a poignant reminder of why a Sinn Fein victory would mean more than just better health care. In the United States, where many in the Irish diaspora embrace the nationalist cause, the party’s supporters frame the stakes more dramatically.Before St. Patrick’s Day, they took out ads in The New York Times and other newspapers that promised “Irish unity in our time” and called on the Irish government to “plan, prepare and advocate for Irish unity, as provided for in the Good Friday Agreement,” the 1998 peace accord that ended sectarian violence in the North.“If Sinn Fein are the largest party, the focus will immediately turn to their calls for a border poll” to determine whether a majority of people favor Irish unity, said Gordon Lyons, a Democratic Unionist who represents Carrickfergus. “What people want to avoid is the division, the arguments, and the rancor that would come from that.”But it is the Democratic Unionists who are laying the groundwork for the rancor. They have warned they will refuse to take part in a government with a Sinn Fein first minister. The party pulled its own first minister from the government in February in a dispute over the North’s trade status since Brexit, which is governed by a legal construct known as the Northern Ireland Protocol.Unionists complain that the protocol, which requires border checks on goods passing from mainland Britain to Northern Ireland, has driven a wedge between the North and the rest of the United Kingdom. They are pressuring Prime Minister Boris Johnson to overhaul the arrangement, which he negotiated with the European Union.Graffiti next to a supermarket pressing shoppers not to buy goods from the European Union or Ireland, but from Britain.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesUnion Jack bunting and flags celebrating Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee, which will be celebrated in June in Britain, adorned a shop this month on Sandy Row in Belfast.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesMr. Johnson seems poised to do so. His government is readying legislation, which could be introduced days after the election, that would throw out parts of the protocol. Critics warn it could prompt a clash with Brussels and jeopardize the hard-won peace of the Good Friday Agreement.But public opinion polls suggest the protocol is not a high priority for most voters in Northern Ireland, even many unionists. Some economists contend that the North’s hybrid trade status is an advantage, giving it dual access to markets in mainland Britain and the European Union.The issue did not come up much on a recent evening of canvassing by two candidates for the Alliance Party, which presents itself as a centrist alternative to Sinn Fein and the D.U.P. “People see it as the parties fighting over flags and the border, not the bread-and-butter issues that affect people’s everyday lives,” said one of them, Danny Donnelly.The D.U.P., opponents say, is exploiting the protocol — despite its numbingly complicated details — particularly in loyalist strongholds, where posters warn that residents will “NEVER accept a border in the Irish Sea!”“There’s no way you can tell me that a kid with a petrol bomb in his hand is aggrieved at the finer points of an international trade agreement between the E.U. and the British government,” Mr. Finucane said, referring to fiery clashes last year between young protesters and the police in Belfast.Still, even if the protocol has little tangible effect on daily lives, it does carry symbolic weight for those who have felt cast adrift from Britain since Brexit. Though Protestants remain a bare plurality of the population in the North, the Catholic population is growing faster and is poised to overtake them.“What people want to avoid is the division, the arguments, and the rancor that would come from” calls for a border poll, said Gordon Lyons, a Democratic Unionist.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesA Catholic neighborhood around Falls Road in Belfast.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesWhile the connection between religion and national identification is not automatic — some Northern Ireland Catholics view themselves as British, not Irish — it has added to the belief among unionists that the North and South will inevitably move closer together, and that their links to London will inevitably fray.“We’re still part of the U.K.,” Mr. Gow said, “but we’re not being treated that way.”For that, he blames the D.U.P. rather than Sinn Fein. The party signed off on the deal that Mr. Johnson struck with Brussels and now wants to unravel. Then it pulled out of the government, which he viewed as a political stunt that betrayed its 50-year history as a responsible voice for unionists in Belfast and London.The divisions within the party, which also faces a challenge from a right-wing party, the Traditionalist Unionist Voice, are so deep that some say the entire unionist movement may need a reset.“There is a stream of thought in unionism that maybe everything needs to crash and burn before we can get a proper new unionist movement that unites everybody,” said David Campbell, the chairman of the Loyalist Communities Council, which represents a group of pro-union paramilitary groups.“There is a stream of thought in unionism that maybe everything needs to crash and burn before we can get a proper new unionist movement that unites everybody,” said David Campbell, chairman of the Loyalist Communities Council.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesA view of Belfast from Black Mountain, which overlooks the city.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesMr. Lyons pointed out that the D.U.P. had managed to get the British government to commit to overhauling the protocol. He predicted that unionist voters — even those demoralized by Brexit — would return to the fold rather than risk letting Sinn Fein seize the mantle of the largest party.Whatever the result, history has moved on around Belfast. Kevin Mallon, 40, a shopkeeper on the bustling Falls Road, a Catholic stronghold, said nationalists were more interested in economic prosperity than in uniting with the South, even if that idea still holds atavistic appeal.Thomas Knox, 52, a house painter and decorator who is Catholic, nursed a pint in the Royal British Legion, a bar in the nearby town of Larne once frequented by British police and soldiers. A decade ago, he said, he would not have felt comfortable walking into the place.“Those days are long gone,” Mr. Knox said.Catholics and Protestants drinking together at the Station pub in the town of Larne.Andrew Testa for The New York Times More

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      A Minnesota Candidate Went Into Labor During Her Convention Speech

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      The pause, three minutes into a candidate’s speech about the toll of climate change, the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd, was not just for rhetorical effect.Erin Maye Quade had been making her case for why she should receive her party’s endorsement to represent the Minneapolis suburbs in the State Senate when she started having contractions.“Excuse me,” said Ms. Maye Quade, grimacing as she put her hand on her belly. She had opened her speech with the disclosure: “So they broke the news that I’m in labor, yeah?”Ms. Maye Quade completed her convention floor speech and a question-and-answer session that followed. She was trailing after the first round of voting and she withdrew from the proceedings to seek medical care. The convention, held by the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party on April 23 in Rosemount, Minn., carried on without Ms. Maye Quade, 36, a former state representative.The party’s treatment of Ms. Maye Quade, who gave birth to a girl about 10 days before her scheduled due date, drew intense criticism as several videos of Ms. Maye Quade’s speech ricocheted across the internet.Those seeking to empower female candidates faulted party officials and Ms. Maye Quade’s male opponent, Justin Emmerich, for not suspending the proceedings — a move that Mr. Emmerich told The Star Tribune he would have supported.He declined a request for comment on Friday, and Ms. Maye Quade wasn’t available for an interview. Reached briefly by phone, she said she had just returned home from the hospital.Emma McBride, a political director of Women Winning, a Minnesota campaign organization that endorsed Ms. Maye Quade, said in an interview on Friday that she was troubled by the scene.“While we were in awe of her strength, it was horrifying to watch a woman go through this vulnerable experience while nobody with the power to do so stepped in to put an end to it,” Ms. McBride said.Ms. Maye Quade, who had been seeking to become the first Black woman and first openly gay woman elected to the State Senate in Minnesota, hasn’t said whether she will run in a primary against Mr. Emmerich in August. The candidates who receive their party’s endorsement during the convention in the spring — marathon proceedings decided by party stalwarts — typically gain an upper hand for the primaries, when nominations are at stake. There is no requirement for candidates to be present while voting takes place on an endorsement, according to the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.The party referred questions on the matter on Friday to local convention officials, who said in a statement that they put the endorsement session for Senate earlier on the schedule at Ms. Maye Quade’s request.“For reasons of fairness, our convention chairs cannot unilaterally close or delay the endorsement process,” the statement said. “If a delegate had wanted to postpone the endorsement, they could have made a motion for postponement, which the convention would have then voted on. No such motion was made.”Created in the 1940s when the Minnesota Democrats merged with the Farmer-Labor Party, the party said it was “committed to ensuring as many people as possible can participate in our convention and endorsement process.”At the end of Ms. Maye Quade’s eight-minute speech, it took another 20 minutes to get through a question-and-answer session and an additional 30 minutes to finish the first round of voting, Ms. McBride said. When it became clear that Mr. Emmerich was leading but had not reached the 60 percent threshold required to clinch the party’s endorsement, Ms. McBride said, Ms. Maye Quade asked to suspend the proceedings and move to a primary.“Erin was expected to grin and bear it, as Black women are so often expected to do in the face of injustice,” Ms. McBride said, adding: “That sends a direct message to women and particularly women of color of where they fall on the priority list.” More

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      How DeSantis Transformed Florida’s Political Identity

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      The state has become an unlikely laboratory for right-wing policy, pushed by a governor with presidential ambitions.MIAMI — Florida feels like a state running a fever, its very identity changing at a frenetic pace.Once the biggest traditional presidential battleground, it has suddenly turned into a laboratory of possibility for the political right.Discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity prohibited in early elementary school. Math textbooks rejected en masse for what the state called “indoctrination.” Schools and employers limited in what they can teach about racism and other aspects of history. Tenured professors in public universities subjected to new reviews. Abortions banned after 15 weeks. The creation of a law enforcement office to investigate election crimes. A congressional map redrawn to give Republicans an even bigger advantage.And, perhaps most stunning of all, Disney, long an untouchable corporate giant, stripped of the ability to govern itself for the first time in more than half a century, in retaliation for the company’s opposition to the crackdown on L.G.B.T.Q. conversations with young schoolchildren.“It does have this feeling of, ‘Oh, what the hell just happened?’” said Kristen Arnett, a novelist and Orlando native who now lives in Miami. “It’s overwhelming.”Florida has transformed over the past two years as Gov. Ron DeSantis has increased and flexed his power to remarkable effect, embracing policies that once seemed unthinkable. That has made the Republican governor a favorite of the party’s Fox News-viewing base and turned him into a possible presidential contender.Mr. DeSantis displayed the signed Parental Rights in Education law, known by opponents as “Don’t Say Gay,” while flanked by elementary school students.Douglas R. Clifford/Tampa Bay Times, via Associated PressMr. DeSantis has demurred on the question of whether he will seek the White House in 2024 even if former President Donald J. Trump runs again. Mr. Trump has retired — for now — to his Palm Beach estate of Mar-a-Lago and looms as his party’s king or kingmaker. Yet it is Mr. DeSantis who has kept Florida in the national spotlight — relentlessly.Bob Buckhorn, the former Democratic mayor of Tampa, blamed a combination of factors for Florida’s sudden turn: Mr. DeSantis’s ambition, national culture wars and Mr. Trump, for having “given voice to all of the ugliness and the demons that inhabit Americans.”“It’s just an unholy alliance of circumstances that have come together that allow this type of politics to occur,” Mr. Buckhorn said.Not long ago, such a shift would have seemed out of the question in a state notorious for its tight election margins and nail-biting recounts. Mr. DeSantis won the governorship by about 32,000 votes in 2018, hardly a mandate. His aloof personality did not exactly sparkle.Read More on Florida’s Fight With DisneyWhat to Know: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Disney, the state’s largest private employer, are clashing over a new education law.‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill: In a move seen as retaliation for the company’s criticism of the legislation, Florida lawmakers revoked Disney World’s special tax status.Facing the Real World: Disney spent decades avoiding controversy. But it has increasingly been drawn into the partisan political fray.A G.O.P. Shift: The battle in Florida showed how combative Republicans have grown toward corporations that take a stand on political issues.But beginning in 2020, a politically attuned Mr. DeSantis seized on discontent with coronavirus pandemic policies, betting that economic prosperity and individual liberties would matter more to voters in the long run than protecting public health. More than 73,000 Floridians have died of Covid-19, yet public opinion polls have shown that Mr. DeSantis and many of his policies remain quite popular.Parents, especially, who cheered the governor’s opposition to Covid-19 restrictions in schools, have remained active on issues of curriculum and culture.“I think the governor is more popular than Disney — I think the governor is more popular than the former president,” said Anthony Pedicini, a Republican strategist in Tampa. “If you’re running for office as a Republican in Florida and you aren’t toeing the DeSantis mantra, you will not win.”The question now for Mr. DeSantis — and virtually everyone else in Florida — is whether the rightward lurch will stop, either by court intervention, corporate backlash or, come November, electoral rebuke. But given Florida’s trends in recent years, the more likely outcome could be a sustained campaign toward a new, more rigid conservative orthodoxy, one that voters could very well ratify this fall.The state’s swift and unexpected rightward tilt has happened as Florida has swelled with new residents. Between July 2020 and July 2021, about 260,000 more people arrived than left, a net migration higher than any other state. The trend began before the pandemic but appeared to accelerate as remote workers sought warm weather, low taxes and few public health restrictions.Culturally, Floridians have been less conservative than their leaders. They have voted by large margins to legalize medical marijuana, prohibit gerrymandering and restore felons’ voting rights. (Last year, Republican lawmakers passed limits on the use of such citizen-led ballot initiatives.) So the recent rash of legislation has been met with trepidation in the state’s big cities, which are almost all run by Democrats.“I’m not exactly sure what DeSantis is trying to prove,” Brian Hill, an energy consultant, said on a sun-swept morning this week in downtown Orlando’s Lake Eola Park, near the Walt Disney Amphitheater, which is painted in rainbow colors in celebration of the L.G.B.T.Q. community.In 2016, a gunman killed 49 people and injured 53 others at Pulse, a gay nightclub in town. The amphitheater, Mr. Hill said, is “a symbol of how far we’ve come.” He contrasted it with the law restricting sexual orientation and gender identity discussions through third grade, a measure that supporters said promoted parental rights but critics called “Don’t Say Gay.”“The bill is taking schools back to the ’80s, to be honest,” said Mr. Hill, 52, who has lived in Orlando for two years. “It’s not realistic with today’s society.”Mr. DeSantis has demurred on the question of whether he will seek the White House in 2024 even if former President Donald J. Trump runs again.Doug Mills/The New York TimesGoing after Disney seemed doubly strange to some Orlando residents, considering how Mr. DeSantis fought to keep businesses open during the pandemic, a boon to tourism and theme parks. “The magic is back!” his Twitter account proclaimed in August 2020 after a Disney vice president took part in one of his events.Even some residents who generally like the governor worry that his battle with Disney has gone too far. One DeSantis supporter interviewed outside a sports club in the Orlando suburbs declined to give his name but said revoking Disney’s special tax status was “cancel culture-esque.” (Disney told investors this week that its tax district cannot be dissolved unless the state assumes its existing bond debt, the Orlando NBC News affiliate WESH reported.)May von Scherrer, 35, came to Florida from Puerto Rico in 2017 and said she had found it “thrilling” to support the Black Lives Matter movement in marches during the summer of 2020. That time now feels very distant.“I’ve never felt more like those sci-fi dystopian futures,” she said. “That’s what’s happening now. We’re living in them.”But few political observers expect distaste with Mr. DeSantis and his policies to translate into robust opposition come Election Day. Florida Democrats lack the organization, funding and leadership required to mount a vast and expensive campaign. They have also lost their edge in voter registrations; Republicans now hold a narrow advantage.“People who love DeSantis are super jazzed,” said Nate Monroe, metro columnist for The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville and a frequent DeSantis critic. “People who don’t — and there are a considerable number of people who don’t in the state — are just kind of like, ‘Eh, it’s hopeless, why even bother at this point.’”Mr. DeSantis holds near daily public events in which he bashes President Biden while supporters lavish him with unmitigated praise. He exerts such dominance over Florida Republicans that a candidate for agriculture commissioner dropped out after the governor endorsed his opponent on Twitter. And he has raised more than $100 million, an extraordinary sum, from donors all over the country.Last Friday, Mr. DeSantis signed into law the restrictions on how racism and other aspects of history can be taught in schools and workplaces, known as the “Stop WOKE Act,” in an elaborate ceremony in which supporters described him as brave and bold.Among those present were parents who opposed school closures, quarantines and mask mandates during the pandemic — and then remained engaged on other education matters. Mr. DeSantis has repeatedly featured those voices to cast his policies as common sense.Christine Chaparro said she would be pulling her children out of the Broward County public schools after her son brought home language arts workbooks that cited the co-author of an antiracism book and mentioned Black Lives Matter and Stacey Abrams’s voter suppression claims in the 2018 Georgia governor’s race.“I disagree that what is in my kids’ benchmark assessment workbooks is accurate history or a lens that belongs in an elementary school classroom,” she said.A day earlier, Democrats had briefly shut down a special legislative session to protest the passage of the new congressional map. Mr. DeSantis had demanded the redrawing of two districts held by Black Democrats, and Republicans had acquiesced. Democrats staged a sit-in on the House floor.State Representatives Travaris McCurdy and Angie Nixon protest a redistricting proposal pushed by the governor and approved last week. Phil Sears/Associated Press“You can only hold people down for so long before they will do anything that it takes to make their voices heard,” State Representative Fentrice Driskell, Democrat of Tampa, said. “The governor has interfered in this process, and it’s wrong.”Meantime, parts of Florida remain unaffordable, especially for its many low-wage workers. Property insurance rates rose 25 percent on average in 2021, compared with 4 percent nationally, according to the Insurance Information Institute. Another special session has been called for May to address the crisis.Despite all the charged rhetoric and national headlines, Ms. Arnett, the novelist, said her daily life was not much different from before.“If you put on the TV or you look at the news at what’s going on, it seems like Florida is a conservative hellhole,” she said. “When you’re living in Florida and interacting with people and moving through your day-to-day life, it doesn’t feel that way at all.”The challenge, she added, is understanding what the changes in the state mean and what to do about them.“Every day, every other day, something is happening, so you don’t have time to address and solve a problem,” she said. “It’s like warp speed on all of this stuff.”Eric Adelson More

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      Is Australian Democracy in Decline?

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      With a federal election just a few weeks away, it’s time to put Australia’s system and political flaws into context.The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email.How healthy is democracy today?I’ve been thinking a lot about that question lately, after reporting on what’s needed to strengthen the liberal world order after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and as Australia’s campaign season has intensified.Worldwide, the diagnosis isn’t great.“Antidemocratic alliances.”“A rot within democracies.”“Dropping the pretense of competitive elections.”These are a few of the subheads in the latest Freedom House report about global governance. An even more data-driven study from more than 3,000 global scholars associated with the V-Dem Institute in Sweden recently reached similar conclusions, noting that liberal democracies like Australia are increasingly rare.Their numbers peaked in 2012 with 42 countries and are now down to the lowest levels in over 25 years, with 34 nations and just 13 percent of the world population.“Electoral autocracy” remains the most common form of government, with 44 percent of the world’s population. And it’s not hard to see why. Under electoral autocracy, there is enough systemic suppression to keep opponents disadvantaged, but elections exist. They’re just manipulated to serve those in power. I saw a version of this when I covered Cuba — the government there held elections that were far from free, and returned the Communist Party to power again and again.But more recently, democracies have slipped in that direction gradually rather than through revolution.“Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but by elected governments themselves,” wrote Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt in “How Democracies Die,” their 2018 book. “Like Chávez in Venezuela, elected leaders have subverted democratic institutions in Georgia, Hungary, Nicaragua, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Ukraine. Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box.”Their book and these global reports make the same point: Democracy is fragile and should not be taken for granted. No country — as the United States has discovered in recent years — should consider itself immune to the slippery slope of democratic decline.Where does Australia fit into this dismal portrait?Australia is stronger than most. Freedom House gave the country a score of 95 out of 100. The experts at V-Dem ranked Oz 14th in its measure of liberal democracy, below New Zealand (coming in at No. 5) but far above the United States (at 29).A big part of that has to do with the way Australia runs elections. Compulsory voting ensures high turnout; the independent Australian Electoral Commission runs the election with technocratic efficiency according to national standards that are widely supported and respected by political parties and the public. Politicians do not decide district boundaries, or where to put polling booths, or how many polling sites to set up.“All of those ways that partisan politics can distort outcomes, it’s just not there,” said Judith Brett, an emeritus professor of politics at La Trobe University, who is also the author of a book on Australia’s electoral history called “From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage.”But there are still many causes for concern. Polls have been showing for years that a growing number of Australians distrust the government and feel disconnected from politics.Australia’s leaders and major political parties have also shown a disturbing tolerance for secrecy — especially when it comes to the money that finances their campaigns. As I wrote in February, Research from the Center for Public Integrity shows that over the past two decades, the source of nearly $1 billion in party income has been hidden.The combination of big money and a disaffected electorate is reshaping Australian democracy in other ways as well. Professor Brett pointed out that the government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison has a habit of spraying government funds all over districts it needs to win to stay in power, often for projects that defy logic but come pretty close to attempted vote buying — from dams to BMX courses to footpaths.The Australian media has taken to calling these “election sweeteners.” Critics call it soft corruption, and they fear that it could become the norm, making Australian election results more transactional, while encouraging leaders avoid the broader challenges society faces.“We have an electorate where party loyalty is less strong,” Professor Brett said. “It’s up for grabs and if the way those votes are grabbed is with money for a sporting facility, and serious policy issues are neglected, I think we’re in big trouble.”So what can be done? Solutions are out there, and according to democracy scholars, interactions that bring people together across political and social divides tend to produce stronger, more responsive governments.With that in mind, I’ll be helping to host an event at the New South Wales Parliament on May 11 in Sydney with the Athens Democracy Forum asking how we can reconnect people with their elected officials. Presented by The New York Times in collaboration with New Democracy, an independent research organization, we’ll be gathering everyday citizens, politicians and experts for a wide-ranging discussion that will help create a report with recommendations about how to better engage all of us in democracy, worldwide.If you’re interested in being a delegate, please fill out this form.You’ll hear from six speakers, including former Premier Geoff Gallop and Rod Simpson, the commissioner of Greater Sydney, in a participatory workshop format. We’ll be selecting about a dozen readers in Sydney (or those willing to travel to Sydney) to take part in the gathering.Now here are our stories of the week.Australia and New ZealandPrime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand in Tokyo last week.Pool photo by Yuichi YamazakiNew Zealand Deal May Put Japan Closer to ‘Five Eyes’ Intelligence Alliance The two countries announced a goal of “seamless” sharing of classified information as China moves to expand its influence in the Asia-Pacific region.Chris Bailey, Who Gave Australia Punk Rock, Dies at 65 His band, the Saints, introduced the country (and the world) to their raw sound just as the Sex Pistols were emerging in London and the Ramones in New York.Can Art Help Save the Insect World? A renowned photographer who hopes to persuade humans to love their insect brethren has teamed with scientists on a new exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History.Around the TimesA crew of quarantine workers in Shanghai. The city is in its fourth week of a Covid lockdown.The New York TimesChina’s Covid Lockdown Outrage Tests Limits of Triumphant Propaganda Public anger and grief over the bungled lockdown in Shanghai is creating a credibility crisis for the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, and his zero Covid policies.Fears Are Mounting That Ukraine War Will Spill Across Borders American and European officials say their concern is based in part on a growing conviction that the war will not end any time soon.At Madeleine Albright’s Service, a Reminder of the Fight for Freedom The former secretary of state, who died last month, was honored at Washington National Cathedral as America faces the kind of struggle between democracy and autocracy that she warned about.More Kids? After the Last Two Years? No Thanks. The travails of pandemic parenting have been well documented. But how has this time shaped decision-making (and baby-making) going forward?Enjoying the Australia Letter? Sign up here or forward to a friend.For more Australia coverage and discussion, start your day with your local Morning Briefing and join us in our Facebook group. More

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      How N.Y. Democrats Lost a Critical Redistricting Battle

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      When an independent redistricting commission failed to reach consensus, Democratic leaders decided to make their own maps and risk a lawsuit.It was 2020, more than a year before New York began its once-in-a-decade redistricting process, when Carl Heastie, the Assembly speaker, foresaw a problem.New York voters had empowered a bipartisan commission to guide the task of drafting new legislative maps for the House and local state districts. But Mr. Heastie worried that constitutional language behind the new process would give incentive to Republicans to undermine the commission, according to two Democrats familiar with the discussions.If the commission failed to complete its work, Republicans could try to push the mapmaking process directly to the courts, rather than the Democrat-dominated Legislature.With a handful of crucial House and State Senate seats hanging in the balance, that outcome could have been disastrous for Democrats. They drafted a constitutional amendment to head off Republicans, but voters soundly rejected it last November. Lawmakers then tried another workaround, passing a bill authorizing the Legislature to act if the commission failed to complete its work.Mr. Heastie’s fears came to pass in January, when Republican commissioners refused to approve a final recommendation to the Legislature.But rather than defer to the courts, Democratic leaders decided to make a bet: They disregarded the commission’s work, unilaterally approved maps that positioned their party to pick up key House seats, and hoped that their legal change would withstand scrutiny.Carl Heastie, the Assembly speaker, had warned colleagues that a new redistricting commission might intentionally deadlock.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesOn Wednesday, the Democrats’ maneuver imploded.In a sharply worded decision, the New York State Court of Appeals said that the Legislature’s actions violated the State Constitution, accusing Democratic leaders of placing partisan interests above the will of the voters who, in 2014, created the commission and outlawed partisan gerrymandering.A majority of the seven-judge panel — all appointed by Democrats — explicitly found fault with Mr. Heastie’s attempted procedural fix, ruled that the congressional maps had been “drawn with impermissible partisan purpose,” and empowered a court-appointed special master to redraft the congressional and State Senate lines.The ruling threw New York politics into chaos and scrambled the national fight for control of the House of Representatives this fall.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.“Any Democrat in New York today who you get on the phone and tells you anything other than this was an unmitigated disaster, is just not telling you the truth,” said Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who helps lead the Republicans’ national redistricting effort.Democrats had been counting on the new maps in New York to provide as many as three new House seats, offsetting expected Republican gains through redistricting in other states.The final outcome of the 2022 battlefield may still depend on whether Florida courts strike down Republicans’ new map there as a gerrymander. But for now, Republicans appear poised to best the Democrats nationally for the second consecutive redistricting cycle, making it increasingly difficult for Democrats to hold onto their slim House majority.The situation in New York was even more tenuous. Not only will it take a court-appointed special master weeks to draw new lines — significantly scrambling contests that have already been going on for months — but election lawyers said on Thursday that they were not certain how the state could even comply with the order and other election-related requirements.For instance, while it at first appeared that primaries for statewide offices like governor and lieutenant governor had not been affected by the ruling, those contests may be called into question, after all. To qualify for the ballot, the State Board of Elections requires candidates for statewide office to collect petitions from voters in multiple congressional districts. No one could immediately say whether those petitions, filed weeks ago, were now invalid.“Boy, that could really upend the elections much more than I originally thought,” said Jerry H. Goldfeder, a Democratic elections lawyer who wrote a leading textbook on New York election law, as he puzzled through the ruling Thursday morning.Mr. Goldfeder and other Democrats strenuously disagreed with the Court of Appeals’ decision, the first time in half a century that the judges have struck down a map approved by lawmakers. They called it judicial overreach and heaped blame back on Republicans, who they say intentionally sabotaged the commission’s work in hopes of achieving the outcome they ultimately won in court.“It would have been impossible for us to actually meet the threshold laid out by the Court of Appeals because the Republicans refused to come to a meeting to vote,” said David Imamura, the Democratic appointee who chaired the redistricting commission.He called the current system “unworkable” and warned that the Court of Appeals decision, while attempting to vindicate the will of the voters, would actually ensure that one party or the other always has a political incentive to deprive the Legislature of the ability to draw lines.Jack Martins, Mr. Imamura’s Republican counterpart, did not return requests for comment.In reality, both parties entered this year’s redistricting cycle knowing that the commission was legally untested and had serious flaws that made it different from those that have worked in other states.Created out of a compromise between former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Republicans who controlled the Senate at the time, the panel consisted of even numbers of Democratic and Republican appointees. It lacked clear incentives to compromise, and its work could always be overruled by the Legislature if lawmakers rejected two consecutive proposals by the body.But voters, sick of years of political mapmaking in New York, enthusiastically enshrined it in the State Constitution alongside language outlawing partisan gerrymandering.For a time, the commission appeared to be working. That changed late last year, when the members began to draft final congressional, State Senate and Assembly maps. Rather than sending the Legislature one set of maps to consider in January, the commission sent competing partisan maps.When those maps were rejected, the commission simply collapsed without submitting a second proposal required by the State Constitution, eventually laying the groundwork for the Republicans to sue.Democratic lawmakers insist that after the commission failed, they proceeded in good faith, acting on what courts in New York have long recognized as the authority of the representative branch of government to draw maps.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      The fight over voting continues. Here’s the latest.

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      The conflict over sweeping new restrictions on voting, largely confined to statehouses and governors’ desks since 2020, is spilling over into the midterm elections.About two dozen states have tightened laws regulating matters like who is eligible to vote by mail, the placement of drop boxes for absentee ballots and identification requirements. Many of the politicians driving the clampdown can be found on the ballot themselves this year.Here are some of the latest developments.In Pennsylvania, the four leading Republican candidates for governor all said during a debate on Wednesday that they supported the repeal of no-excuse absentee voting in that state.In 2020, about 2.6 million people who were adapting to pandemic life voted by mail in Pennsylvania, more than a third of the total ballots cast. But Republicans, smarting over President Donald J. Trump’s election loss to Joseph R. Biden Jr. and promulgating baseless voter fraud claims, have since sought to curtail voting by mail. A state court in January struck down Pennsylvania’s landmark law expanding absentee voting, a ruling that is the subject of a pending appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court.Lou Barletta, one of the four on the debate stage and a former congressman, asserted that no-excuse absentee voting was conducive to fraud.“Listen, we know dead people have been voting in Pennsylvania all of our lives,” Mr. Barletta said. “Now they don’t even have to leave the cemetery to vote. They can mail in their ballots.”Several states had already conducted elections primarily through mail-in voting before the pandemic, with there being little meaningful evidence of fraud. They include Colorado and Utah, a state controlled by Republicans.Elsewhere in Pennsylvania, officials in Westmoreland County, which includes the suburbs east of Pittsburgh, voted this week to scale back the number of drop boxes used for absentee ballots to just one. The vote was 2-to-1, with Republicans on the Board of Commissioners saying that the reduction from several drop boxes would save money. The lone Democrat said that the change would make it more difficult for people to send in their ballots.In Arizona, two Trump-endorsed Republican candidates — Kari Lake in the governor’s race and Mark Finchem for secretary of state — sued election officials this month to try to stop the use of electronic voting machines in the midterm elections. Helping to underwrite the lawsuit, along with similar efforts in other states, is Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief executive.In Nevada, a push by Republicans to scale back universal mail-in voting while introducing a new voter ID requirement ran into a major setback on Monday when two different judges in Carson City invalidated those efforts.In Georgia, Brian Kemp, the Republican governor, signed a bill on Wednesday empowering the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to pursue criminal inquiries into election fraud, an authority solely held by the secretary of state in the past. More