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      France Votes on Making Abortion a Constitutional Right

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      Lawmakers are expected to pass an amendment that would give women “guaranteed freedom” to end their pregnancies, something experts say would be a global first.French legislators are expected to pass a measure on Monday that would make France the first country in the world to explicitly enshrine access to abortion in its Constitution.The constitutional amendment requires three-fifths approval of gathered lawmakers from both houses of Parliament to pass. But since 90 percent of lawmakers supported the measure in earlier votes, the vote is widely seen as a formality before a celebration in the regal setting of Versailles Palace, where the joint session of Parliament is being held.The amendment would declare abortion a “guaranteed freedom” overseen by Parliament’s laws. That means future governments would not be able to “drastically modify” current laws funding abortion for women who want it, up to 14 weeks in their pregnancies, according to the French justice minister, Éric Dupond-Moretti.The impulse for the change was the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022. But it also reflects the widespread support for abortion in France, built over years, and a successful campaign by a coalition of feminist activists and lawmakers.“We are saying today, we don’t envisage a democratic society without the right to abortion — that it’s not an accessory, it’s the core of our society,” said Mélanie Vogel, a senator from the Green Party who was a major force behind the bill. “We are not France anymore without the right to abortion.”Speaking in an interview, Ms. Vogel said, “I want to send a message to feminists outside of France. Everyone told me a year ago it was impossible.” She added: “Nothing is impossible when you mobilize society.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Fix the Damn Roads’: How Democrats in Purple and Red States Win

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      When Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania got an emergency call about I-95 last June, his first thought turned to semantics. “When you say ‘collapse,’ do you really mean collapse?” he recalled wondering. Highways don’t typically do that, but then tractor-trailers don’t typically flip over and catch fire, which had happened on an elevated section of the road in Philadelphia.Shapiro’s second, third and fourth thoughts were that he and other government officials needed to do the fastest repair imaginable.“My job was: Every time someone said, ‘Give me a few days, and I’ll get back to you,’ to say, ‘OK, you’ve got 30 minutes,’” he told me recently. He knew how disruptive and costly the road’s closure would be and how frustrated Pennsylvanians would get.But he knew something else, too: that if you’re trying to impress a broad range of voters, including those who aren’t predisposed to like you, you’re best served not by joining the culture wars or indulging in political gamesmanship but by addressing tangible, measurable problems.In less than two weeks, the road reopened.Today, Shapiro enjoys approval ratings markedly higher than other Pennsylvania Democrats’ and President Biden’s. He belongs to an intriguing breed of enterprising Democratic governors who’ve had success where it’s by no means guaranteed, assembled a diverse coalition of supporters and are models of a winning approach for Democrats everywhere. Just look at the fact that when Shapiro was elected in 2022, it was with a much higher percentage of votes than Biden received from Pennsylvanians two years earlier. Shapiro won with support among rural voters that significantly exceeded other Democrats’ and with the backing of 14 percent of Donald Trump’s voters, according to a CNN exit poll that November.Biden’s fate this November, Democratic control of Congress and the party’s future beyond 2024 could turn, in part, on heeding Shapiro’s and like-minded Democratic leaders’ lessons about reclaiming the sorts of voters the party has lost.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Pakistan’s New Leader, Shehbaz Sharif, Installed

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      Parliament’s election of Shehbaz Sharif for a second term follows a month of political turmoil. The new government faces economic troubles and questions of legitimacy.Pakistan’s newly elected Parliament approved Shehbaz Sharif as prime minister on Sunday, ushering in his second term in that role and capping weeks of upheaval — as well as setting into motion a government facing economic and political challenges that are likely to leave the country in turmoil for years to come.His selection also brings to a crossroads the role of Pakistan’s powerful military, which has long been seen as an invisible hand guiding the country’s politics and has previously engineered its election results. Analysts say that public confidence in Mr. Sharif’s government is low.“The government is being seen as foredoomed,” said Talat Hussain, a political analyst based in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital.Mr. Sharif secured 201 votes in the national assembly, while his closest rival, Omar Ayub, a supporter of the imprisoned former prime minister Imran Khan, got 92.Before the voting began, Mr. Sharif arrived in the main hall accompanied by his older brother, Nawaz, who was also elected as a member of the national assembly. The two brothers sat together in the front row, a reminder that the elder Sharif, himself a three-time prime minister, remains influential and is likely to wield power behind the scenes.The proceedings started with a loud protest in support of Mr. Khan. Several Khan supporters sat in front of the speaker’s dais to chant slogans; many others waved pictures of Mr. Khan, as they, too, shouted slogans in support of the cricket star turned politician.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Makes Baseless Claims About Immigration and Voter Fraud

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      Fresh off his trip to the southern border earlier this week, former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday baselessly suggested that President Biden had “smuggled” violent anti-American forces across the border.At a pair of rallies in North Carolina and Virginia, Mr. Trump — who has been charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States as part of the 91 felony counts he currently faces in four separate criminal trials — broadly and without evidence asserted that Mr. Biden’s border policy amounted to a “conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America.”Mr. Trump has previously suggested without evidence that Democrats were encouraging migrants to cross the border illegally in order to register them to vote. On Saturday, he told crowds in Greensboro, N.C., and Richmond, Va., that he believed Mr. Biden was “giving aid and comfort” to America’s foreign enemies.He went on to frame this year’s election as a question of “whether the foreign armies Joe Biden has smuggled across our border will be allowed to stay or whether they will be told to get the hell out of here and go back home.”Mr. Trump has frequently blamed the surge of migrants at the border on Mr. Biden and Democrats, who he claims are too lenient on those who cross illegally. But there is no evidence to support the claim that Mr. Biden has trafficked migrants across the border.Nor is there evidence to suggest that Democrats have been encouraging the surge of migrants at the border in order to register them illegally to vote, one of many claims that Mr. Trump has made as he has promoted widespread and frequently debunked assertions of voter fraud in the 2020 election.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      George Galloway Wins Rochdale By-Election in Blow to Labour Party

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      Mr. Galloway is likely to be a thorn in the main opposition party’s side. Labour was forced to disown its candidate in the special election over antisemitic remarks.A parliamentary district held recently by Britain’s main opposition Labour Party has slipped from its grip after a chaotic election campaign that became emblematic of the anger that has swept through British politics over the war in Gaza.George Galloway, a left-wing firebrand, won the seat in Rochdale, north of Manchester, with 12,335 votes, according to official results announced early Friday. Voting had taken place on Thursday to replace Tony Lloyd, a Labour Party lawmaker who had represented the district but died of blood cancer in January.Mr. Galloway, founder of the far-left Workers Party of Britain, once represented Labour in Parliament but was forced out of the party in 2003 over his outspoken criticism of the Iraq war.In his campaign in Rochdale, Mr. Galloway appealed directly to the district’s Muslim voters, who make up around 30 percent of the electorate. Many of them are angry about the war in Gaza and want Britain to press harder for an immediate cease-fire.In his campaign literature, Mr. Galloway described Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, as a “top supporter of Israel” and suggested his leadership could be weakened by the outcome of the vote. “Imagine — the people of Rochdale coming together to topple the hated Labour leader,” the leaflet added.That prospect may be fanciful, as recent polling suggests Mr. Starmer is more popular with voters than any other leading politician in Britain. But Mr. Galloway’s victory followed a chaotic campaign for Labour. The party was forced to disown its own candidate, Azhar Ali, after a recording revealed that he had claimed that Israel had “allowed” Hamas to go ahead with the Oct. 7 attacks as a pretext to invade Gaza.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Chad Opposition Leader, Yaya Dillo, Reported Killed in a Shootout

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      Yaya Dillo, who was expected to run in national elections in May, was killed alongside many others in a gun battle in the capital, the national prosecutor said.The main opposition leader in the central African nation of Chad was killed on Wednesday in a shootout at his party headquarters in the capital, the country’s prosecutor has announced.Yaya Dillo, who had been expected to run for president in an election planned for May, was among dozens of people killed and injured in an exchange of gunfire with security forces in Ndjamena, the capital. Heavy gunfire was heard in Ndjamena on Wednesday, and the internet was cut off.A landlocked, desert country surrounded by neighbors battling insurgencies, plagued by coups or at war, Chad has long been seen as a linchpin for stability and is an important U.S. ally in the region, despite its political travails.After its longtime president Idriss Déby was killed on the battlefield in 2021, his son took power in what analysts agree was a coup d’état. But Western nations did not condemn the move to the same extent that they did coups in neighboring Niger and Sudan.The death of Mr. Dillo — a former rebel who was the cousin of the country’s president, as well as his most vocal critic — leaves a void in Chad’s political opposition less than three months before national elections are set to be held.Chadian officials said previously that there had been an attack on the country’s National Security Agency, and accused Mr. Dillo’s party, the Socialist Party Without Borders, of being behind it — which Mr. Dillo denied.In a news conference broadcast on national television on Thursday, Oumar Mahamat Kedelaye, the national prosecutor, accused Mr. Dillo of heading a band of armed men that had launched an attack on the intelligence agency.“This well-armed group in 11 vehicles attacked the National Security Agency, and this attack led to dozens of people wounded, and deaths, among them Yaya Dillo,” Mr. Kedelaye said. More

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      Transnistria, Breakaway Region of Moldova, Asks Russia for Protection

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      Transnistria declared independence in 1992 but is not recognized internationally. The request by the territory’s legislature could fuel regional tensions as the war in Ukraine rages.A thin sliver of land sandwiched between Ukraine and Moldova asked Russia on Wednesday to provide it with protection, repeating in miniature the highly flammable scenario played out by regions of eastern Ukraine now occupied by Moscow.The call for Russian protection by Transnistria, a self-declared but internationally unrecognized microstate on the eastern bank of the Dniester River, escalated tensions that date to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The territory, largely Russian-speaking, broke away from Moldova and, after a brief war in 1992, set up its own national government.The appeal to Moscow was made at a special session of Transnistria’s Congress of Deputies, a Soviet-style assembly that rarely meets. At its last session, in 2006, the assembly asked to be annexed by Russia, though Moscow did not act on that request.The latest appeal to Russia came a day before a state of the nation address in Moscow by President Vladimir V. Putin.The Transnistria Congress appealed to the two houses of Russia’s Parliament to take unspecified measures “to protect Transnistria in the face of increasing pressure” from Moldova given that “more than 220,000 Russian citizens permanently reside in the region.”Russian news reports quoted Vadim Krasnoselsky, the enclave’s professed president, as calling for help from Moscow because “a policy of genocide is being applied against Transnistria.” Similar incendiary and evidence-free claims were made for years by Russian proxies in eastern Ukraine and used by Moscow to help justify its 2022 invasion.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ego, Putin or Jets? Reasons for Orban’s Stance on Sweden Perplex Many.

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      The Hungarian leader has given various rationales for stalling Swedish membership in NATO. The real reason may have to do with his own standing and domestic politics.It took 19 months of broken promises and belligerent rhetoric for Hungary to finally ratify Sweden’s entry into NATO.Why all the foot-dragging, many observers wondered, when Hungary was going to approve the Nordic country’s membership of the military alliance anyway?That question has perplexed even members of Hungary’s governing party, Fidesz, according to Peter Ungar, an opposition legislator. He said he had been approached by one Fidesz lawmaker, in the run-up to Monday’s vote in Parliament to accept NATO’s expansion, and asked: “‘What the hell is going on with Sweden?’”That a member of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s governing party would seek an explanation from a rival politician is a measure of how puzzled even allies of the Hungarian leader, never mind his opponents, became over their country delaying NATO’s expansion.“The whole thing is incomprehensible,” said Mr. Ungar, a Hungarian progressive whose mother, Maria Schmidt, is a prominent conservative and longtime ally of Mr. Orban. “Nobody understands what the problem was,” Mr. Ungar added.He declined to name the member of Parliament who had sought him out, saying that Fidesz demands unquestioning loyalty to and acceptance of Mr. Orban’s decisions, no matter how bewildering they might seem. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More