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      Chris Christie Meets With Zelensky in Surprise Trip to Ukraine

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      Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, made an unannounced visit to Ukraine on Friday to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky, whom he praised for demonstrating “the resolve it takes to survive a war and ultimately win it.”Mr. Christie is the second 2024 G.O.P. hopeful to visit Mr. Zelensky in Kyiv, signaling his support for Ukraine in a war that has divided the Republican candidates and Republican voters. Former Vice President Mike Pence traveled to Ukraine in June.Escorted by a Ukrainian security detail, Mr. Christie visited sites near Kyiv that were devastated during Russia’s drive toward the Ukrainian capital in the first months of the invasion, including Bucha, a Kyiv suburb where Russian soldiers massacred more than 400 people last April.“There are hundreds of millions of people in our country who support you,” Mr. Christie told local officials in Moshchun, a village northwest of Kyiv, during a visit to a memorial overlooking a trench used by Ukrainian soldiers during a battle in March of last year.The United States has provided Ukraine with billions of dollars in military and security assistance since Russia’s invasion more than a year ago, with President Biden often framing the extraordinary level of support as part of an existential fight for democracy against authoritarian aggression as well as being vital to national security interests.A majority of Americans continue to approve of U.S. aid to Ukraine in the conflict, but that support has softened over time, owing mostly to increasing Republican opposition. The percentage of Republicans saying the United States is providing “too much” support to Ukraine has grown to 44 percent from 9 percent since the Russian invasion in February 2022, according to polling by the Pew Research Center.That shift has been led by former President Donald Trump, whose first impeachment resulted from his 2019 phone call to Mr. Zelensky pressuring him to investigate Mr. Trump’s political rivals after freezing hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Ukraine. Mr. Trump, who maintained that he did not pressure Mr. Zelensky, has said defending Ukraine is not a vital national interest for the United States.In a CNN town hall in May, he refused to say whether he would continue President Biden’s policy of supplying weapons and ammunition to Ukraine if he returned to the White House, or whether he supported Mr. Zelensky or Russian President Vladimir Putin in the conflict.“I want everybody to stop dying,” Mr. Trump said.Mr. Christie said that in his meeting with Mr. Zelensky, which was closed to reporters, the Ukrainian president “spoke about his desire for there to be bipartisan support for Ukraine.” He said the subject of Mr. Trump did not come up. “There was no conversation from him about the race that I’m in,” Mr. Christie said. He said Mr. Zelensky told him, “Whoever the next president is, I need to have that person feel a partnership with Ukraine.”Ukraine policy is an area in which Mr. Christie, a 2016 Trump rival-turned Trump adviser-turned Trump critic, has sought to draw a sharp contrast between himself and the former president, calling Mr. Trump a “puppet of Putin” and mocking his recent claim that he could negotiate “in one day” a truce between Mr. Zelensky and the Russian leader.“Move over Churchill, Trump is here to save the day,” Mr. Christie tweeted last month.“I think he really likes strongmen,” Mr. Christie said late Thursday of Mr. Trump in an interview aboard a train to Kyiv. “I think those are his role models in terms of the way he would like to control power if left to his own devices.”Mr. Christie also criticized the Biden administration for not doing more to support the Ukrainian war effort, in particular its delays in supplying Mr. Zelensky’s government with F-16 fighter jets, which Mr. Biden had resisted doing for a year before approving the move in May. “I would have been sending them months ago,” Mr. Christie said. He also favors NATO membership for Ukraine.A New York Times/Siena poll this week showed Mr. Christie trailing far behind Mr. Trump, who remains the overwhelming favorite in the race, with the support of 54 percent of likely Republican primary voters.“I wish you political luck,” Anatolii Fedoruk, the mayor of Bucha, told Mr. Christie during his visit to the city.“We all hope for that, right?” Mr. Christie replied, clapping him on the back. More

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      Anti-Abortion Republicans Don’t Want You to Notice Ohio’s Issue 1

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      There’s an extraordinarily important referendum in Ohio next week that the anti-abortion movement hopes most citizens don’t notice. It’s a vote that demonstrates why reproductive rights and the preservation of democracy, two issues that have catalyzed recent Democratic victories, are intertwined. That’s almost certainly why it’s being held in the torpid month of August, a time when a great many people would rather think about almost anything other than politics.Issue 1, which Ohio Republican legislators put on the ballot, would make future ballot measures to change the state Constitution harder to pass in two key ways. If it’s approved, citizens who hope to put amendments to the voters would first have to collect signatures in each of the state’s 88 counties, up from 44 now. And to pass, constitutional ballot initiatives would need to win 60 percent of the vote, rather than a simple majority.The measure’s import may not be immediately clear to voters, but it’s meant to thwart a November ballot initiative that will decide whether reproductive rights should be constitutionally protected in Ohio, where a sweeping abortion ban is tied up in court. Publicly, Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose, has denied that abortion is the motivation behind Issue 1. But at a private event in May, he told a group of supporters, “It’s 100 percent about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our Constitution.”The outcome of next Tuesday’s vote will resonate nationally, because the strategies of both Ohio abortion-rights supporters and opponents are being replicated elsewhere. Throughout the country, reproductive-rights advocates, faced with legislatures that have insulated themselves from the popular will, are turning to referendums to restore some of what was lost when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. And throughout the country, abortion opponents understand that to keep abortion illegal, they need to change the rules.Most voters, as we’ve seen repeatedly, want abortion to be legal. Last August, a Kansas measure declaring that abortion isn’t protected by the state’s Constitution was defeated by an overwhelming 18 percentage points. In the midterms, there were abortion-related initiatives on the ballots in five states, including Kentucky and Montana, and the pro-choice side won all of them. Encouraged by these victories, activists are planning ballot measures to restore reproductive rights in states including Arizona, Florida, Missouri and, of course, Ohio.Ohio has been trending right for years, but gerrymandering ensures that the State Legislature is far more extreme than the population. As The Statehouse News Bureau, a news organization devoted to Ohio politics, has reported, “Ohio’s voter preference over the past 10 years splits about 54 percent Republican and 46 percent Democratic.” Yet under Ohio’s highly gerrymandered maps, Republicans control 67 of 99 State House seats and 26 of 33 State Senate seats. The Ohio Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled these maps unconstitutional, but before the last election, federal judges appointed by Donald Trump ordered the state to use them.“This August election is sort of a final vote that gives the people any chance to say, at some point we still exert power here,” said David Pepper, former head of the Ohio Democratic Party and author of “Laboratories of Autocracy,” a book about undemocratic right-wing statehouses.Ohio, you might remember, is the state that forced a 10-year-old rape victim to flee to Indiana for an abortion. Its prohibition on abortion once fetal cardiac activity is detectable — usually at around six weeks of pregnancy — has no exceptions for rape or incest. The Republican governor, Mike DeWine, told The Statehouse News Bureau that even though he signed the law, he thinks it goes farther than voters want, and he urged lawmakers to amend it, though he didn’t specify how. But with Republicans in gerrymandered districts more worried about primary challenges from the right than about general election challenges from the center, they have little incentive to respond to public sentiment. Instead, some anti-abortion lawmakers want even stricter anti-abortion laws, and one, Representative Jean Schmidt, has said she’d consider a ban on birth control.The November ballot initiative to make abortion a constitutional right is a chance for Ohio voters to circumvent their unrepresentative representatives. With this August initiative, the Republicans are working to head off the voters by essentially asking them to disenfranchise themselves. Because most people are unlikely to give up their rights quite so easily, Republicans scheduled the vote at a time when few are paying attention. Just last December, Ohio Republicans voted to effectively eliminate August special elections because of their expense and low turnout. But for this election, they reversed themselves.It is not just Democrats who oppose Issue 1; the former Ohio governors John Kasich and Bob Taft, both of whom are Republicans, do as well. “This is a fundamental change in Ohio’s voting rights,” Taft said during a League of Women Voters forum in June, adding, “I just think it’s a major mistake to approve or disapprove such a change at the lowest-turnout election that we have.”The task for opponents of Issue 1 isn’t to convince voters, but to alert them. “It’s just a math question: Can you reach enough people on a short timeline?” said Yasmin Radjy, executive director of the progressive group Swing Left, which is running a get out the vote drive in Ohio. Polling has been mixed: A July USA Today/Suffolk University poll found that 57 percent of voters oppose the measure, but one from Ohio Northern University shows a tossup, with a little more than 42 percent supporting Issue 1, 41 percent opposing it, and the rest neutral or undecided. (Interestingly, the Ohio Northern poll also shows that almost 54 percent of voters support a constitutional amendment to protect reproductive rights, suggesting that some voters aren’t connecting Issue 1 to abortion.) As The Columbus Dispatch points out, there hasn’t been an August vote on a ballot initiative in Ohio in almost a century, making the outcome unpredictable.Issue 1’s backers are doing their best to confuse Ohioans with ads suggesting, bizarrely, that the initiative is about defending parents’ rights against those who, as one spot said, “put trans ideology in classrooms and encourage sex changes for kids.” This is such dishonest agitprop that it’s challenging to even parse the logic behind it, but essentially, Issue 1 proponents are pretending that language in the November referendum saying that “individuals” have the right to make their own “reproductive decisions” implies that children have the right to transition without parental consent.If the right prevails on Issue 1 — and probably even if it doesn’t — you can expect to see the blueprint repeated in other places. Already, Republicans in states including Florida, Missouri and North Dakota, recognizing the danger that direct democracy poses to their own abortion bans, are trying to make the ballot initiative process much more onerous.In May, Dean Plocher, the Republican speaker of the Missouri House, angry that a bill creating new obstacles to citizen-led ballot initiatives had stalled in the State Senate, warned that, in the law’s absence, there would be a referendum to “allow choice,” which would “absolutely” pass. If that were to happen, he said, the Senate “should be held accountable for allowing abortion to return to Missouri.” It’s not clear whom exactly he thought the Senate should be accountable to. He certainly didn’t mean the voters.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Trump’s 2024 Campaign Seeks to Make Voters the Ultimate Jury

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      Donald J. Trump has long understood the stakes in the election: The courts may decide his cases, but only voters can decide whether to return him to power.The indictment of former President Donald J. Trump on charges of conspiring to overthrow the 2020 election ensures that a federal jury will determine whether he is held accountable for his elaborate, drawn-out and unprecedented attempt to negate a vote of the American people and cling to power.But it is tens of millions of voters who may deliver the ultimate verdict.For months now, as prosecutors pursued criminal charges against him in multiple jurisdictions, Mr. Trump has intertwined his legal defenses with his electoral arguments. He has called on Republicans to rally behind him to send a message to prosecutors. He has made clear that if he recaptures the White House, he will use his powers to ensure his personal freedom by shutting down prosecutions still underway.In effect, he is both running for president and trying to outrun the law enforcement officials seeking to convict him.That dynamic has transformed the stakes of this election in ways that may not always be clear. Behind the debates over inflation, “wokeness” and the border, the 2024 election is at its core about the fundamental tenets of American democracy: the peaceful transfer of power, the independence of the nation’s justice system, the meaning of political free speech and the principle that no one is above the law.Now, the voters become the jury.Mr. Trump has always understood this. When he ran for president the first time, he channeled the economic, racial and social resentments of his voters. But as his legal peril has grown, he has focused on his own grievances and projected them onto his supporters.“If these illegal persecutions succeed, if they’re allowed to set fire to the law, then it will not stop with me. Their grip will close even tighter around YOU,” Mr. Trump wrote to supporters on Tuesday night. “It’s not just my freedom on the line, but yours as well — and I will NEVER let them take it from you.”Mr. Trump’s arguments have so far been effective in his pursuit of his party’s nomination. After two previous indictments — over hush-money payments to a porn star and purloined classified documents — Republican voters rallied behind the former president with an outpouring of support and cash.A New York Times/Siena College poll released this week found that Mr. Trump has a commanding lead over all his Republican rivals combined, leading Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida by a two-to-one margin in a theoretical head-to-head matchup. Mr. Trump, even as America’s best-known criminal defendant, is in a dead heat with Mr. Biden among general election voters, the poll found.About 17 percent of voters who said they preferred him over Mr. Biden supported Mr. Trump despite believing that he had committed serious federal crimes or that he had threatened democracy after the 2020 election.The prevailing Republican view is that the charges against Mr. Trump are a political vendetta.Republicans have spent two years rewriting the narrative of the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, reimagining the violent attempt to disrupt the Electoral College vote count as a freedom fight against a Washington “deep state.” The result is that in many quarters of the Republican Party, Mr. Trump is more trusted than the prosecutors, special counsels and judges handling the cases against him.“Even those who were fence sitting or window shopping, many of them are of the belief that the justice system under President Biden is simply out to get the former president,” said Jimmy Centers, a former aide to former Gov. Terry Branstad of Iowa, a Republican who later served as Mr. Trump’s ambassador to China. “It has only strengthened his support in Iowa, to the point at which his floor is much more solid than what it was earlier this spring.”Whether Republicans continue to stand by Mr. Trump, as they have for months, remains to be seen in the wake of Tuesday’s indictment.“At a certain point, are you really going to hitch your whole party to a guy who is just trying to stay out of jail?” asked former Representative Barbara Comstock, a Virginia Republican who lost her seat when suburban voters turned against Mr. Trump in 2018. “There may be another strategy that Republicans could come up with. And if they can’t, I think they lose.”Strategists supporting rivals of Mr. Trump say that over time, the continued charges could hurt his standing with Republican voters, distract Mr. Trump from focusing on presenting his plans for the future and raise questions about his electability in the general election.“Even though people will rally around him in the moment, it starts to erode favorablity and his market share,” said Kristin Davison, chief operating officer of Never Back Down, the super PAC backing Mr. DeSantis. “More people will start to look forward.”Or they may not.Republicans’ responses to the third indictment have been similar to their complaints about the previous two — if slightly more muted. Loyal allies in Congress have rallied around Mr. Trump, blasting the Justice Department while most of his rivals for the party’s nomination declined to directly attack him over the charges.Richard Czuba, a veteran pollster who conducts surveys for Detroit’s media outlets, said opinions about Mr. Trump on both sides of the aisle had long been cased in cement. Like the past three cycles, this election will probably be another referendum on Mr. Trump, he said, and the outcome is likely to depend on which side can best drive its voters to the polls — regardless of whether Mr. Trump faces three indictments or 300.“We have to be brutally honest: Donald Trump sucks all the oxygen out of the room,” Mr. Czuba said. “If you were with him, you’re with him. If you were against him, you’re against him.”Still, Democrats are hopeful that in a general election, the indictments might sway some small slice of independents or swing voters. There is little doubt that a steady drumbeat of news out of the various court proceedings will ensure that Mr. Trump’s legal troubles continue to dominate the news in 2024. Court appearances and legal filings will compete for attention with debates and policy rollouts.Biden campaign officials and allies believe they can focus on topics with a more direct impact on the lives of voters — economic issues, abortion access and extreme weather — without explicitly addressing Mr. Trump’s issues.About an hour after news of Mr. Trump’s indictment broke, Mr. Biden and his wife finished dinner at a seafood restaurant in Delaware, then went to the movies. The president did not address the indictment, just as he had stayed silent after reports broke of the first two.Still, Democrats believe there will be an impact. Representative Brendan Boyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat who is a member of the Biden campaign’s national advisory board, said prosecuting Mr. Trump for his actions leading up to the Jan. 6 attack has the potential to galvanize the country in a way that the other legal cases against Mr. Trump do not.Tens of millions of people tuned in last summer for the hearings of the House Select Committee’s investigation of the Capitol riot, he noted, and Mr. Trump’s approval ratings among persuadable voters dropped afterward.Although a federal trial would not be televised, a steady stream of news may be enough to remind voters of the stakes in electing a candidate who is also a defendant, he said.“When you see witness after witness, day after day,” Mr. Boyle said, “I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility that that could end up changing things.” More

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      The Far-Reaching Consequences of the Latest Trump Indictment

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      The latest charges against Donald Trump amount to “the most consequential of all the indictments filed so far,” the Opinion columnist David French argues in this audio essay. On Tuesday, the former president was indicted on four federal counts related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, efforts that were part of what French calls “one of the most malicious conspiracies in American history.” Despite this, the case, which hinges on proving Trump’s intent, may not be a slam dunk.Christopher Smith for The New York TimesThe 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.This Opinion Short was produced by Vishakha Darbha. It was edited by Kaari Pitkin and Annie-Rose Strasser. Mixing by Pat McCusker. Original music by Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. More

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      Thailand’s Royal Establishment Is Denying the Will of the People Again

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      For a brief time this summer, it seemed like Thailand might finally be on the cusp of truly representative government.In elections in May, a pro-reform party won the largest share of votes, riding a wave of public discontent over nine years of military rule and the outsize prerogatives enjoyed by the Thai royal family. Thailand’s monarchy is one of the wealthiest and longest-reigning in the world. Backed by the military and the judiciary, it is the linchpin of a conservative establishment that has fought off challenges to its dominance for decades, often with royally-endorsed military coups that overthrew democratically elected governments. This state of affairs has mired Thailand in a cycle of recurring political violence and frustrated the democratic yearnings of a new generation.So, like many of my compatriots who also grew up in this authoritarian climate, I celebrated the win by the progressive Move Forward Party, which openly seeks to curb royal power, and the second-place finish of Pheu Thai, a longtime opposition party. Voters issued a resounding call for change.Now those hopes are being crushed.More than two months after the elections, Thailand still does not have its new government, as the conservative establishment maneuvers to deny the will of the people once again by frustrating Move Forward’s efforts to form a coalition.We’ve been here before. But this time it feels even more ominous for the future of Thai democracy. A royalist establishment that has in the past relied on the blunt force of the military has added political sophistication to its arsenal. Working through the parliamentary system, this old guard has maneuvered to block Move Forward and co-opt Pheu Thai in return for allowing the party’s 74-year-old spiritual leader Thaksin Shinawatra, a popular former prime minister, to return from exile.The Thai monarchy has always been an aggressive contender for political power.In 1932, Thailand ended centuries of absolute royal rule in favor of a constitutional monarchy. But the ensuing 70-year reign of late King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who died in 2016, undid much of that. After taking the throne in 1946 the king forged ties with the military and together they engineered a neo-royalist system which, although far from an absolute monarchy, placed the palace at the political apex and exalted King Bhumibol as a godlike figure. Elected governments were subservient or tossed out. The neo-royalists were never interested in investing in electoral politics to guarantee their power, relying instead on shortcuts like military coups and strict lèse-majestélaws that forbid criticism of the monarchy and are an important tool for protecting its privileges.Supporters of Move Forward Party’s leader and its prime minister candidate, Pita Limjaroenrat, during a protest in Bangkok.Rungroj Yongrit/EPA, via ShutterstockBut over the past decade, with the towering figure of King Bhumibol gone and the palace occupied by his less-revered son, King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun, the neo-royalists have realized the need for novel strategies. After its latest coup in 2014, the military moved to preserve conservative dominance and contracept future challenges with new changes, including stuffing the Senate with appointees to offset the democratically elected House of Representatives.These tactics are hardly new in the political life of Southeast Asia. Autocratic governments in the region have become more sophisticated in manipulating electoral systems to secure power. Myanmar’s military junta has for years retained 25 percent of the seats in Parliament, which enables it to block constitutional changes that could weaken its authority. After decades of neutralizing dissent, the Cambodian strongman Hun Sen has more recently turned to using stage-managed elections to give his regime a thin veneer of legitimacy. (He intends to hand power over to his son.)The Thai neo-royalists are adopting the same strategies.Parliamentary means have been used to deny Move Forward its right to form a government. The party’s leader, Pita Limjaroenrat, failed to secure enough votes in Parliament to become prime minister and is also under investigation for failing to disclose shares held in a media company, which could disqualify him from office. Move Forward represented too much change to Thailand’s stifling political culture and simply could not be allowed to take power.Other forces that bode ill for reform are also in motion. The conservative pushback has prompted the pro-democracy Pheu Thai party to break from a proposed coalition with Move Forward and into talks with conservatives on forming a government.This is a momentous shift for Thai politics. Pheu Thai is the successor to a party founded by Mr. Thaksin, a populist business tycoon who served as prime minister from 2001 to 2006. Mr. Thaksin won over voters by advocating to improve livelihoods in poor and marginalized regions of the country. But when his popularity threatened to eclipse that of King Bhumibol, he was ousted in a coup and fled the country, saying he could not get a fair trial in Thailand on a series of corruption charges; he was later sentenced to a total of 12 years in prison. The struggle for influence — marked by two coups and a series of violent street demonstrations — between the conservative establishment and Mr. Thaksin’s supporters and relatives has dominated Thai politics for more than two decades.Now there are indications that Mr. Thaksin and Pheu Thai are falling in line with the royalists. Mr. Thaksin has long expressed a desire to come home and reunite with his family. In the run up to the elections in May, he pleaded publicly for “permission” to return home and came out against reforms proposed by Move Forward to curb royal influence.Last week, Mr. Thaksin’s daughter announced that he would return to Thailand on Aug. 10 after 15 years in exile. Royalists who had previously cursed Mr. Thaksin as public enemy No. 1 are now cheering his return, hoping to thwart what they see as the greater threat: the Move Forward Party and the generational change that it represents.Mr. Thaksin gets to come home; the royal establishment dodges a potent challenge. The only ones who won’t get what they want are the Thai voters.Pavin Chachavalpongpun @PavinKyoto is associate professor at Kyoto University’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies. He is the editor of the forthcoming “Rama X: The Thai Monarchy under King Vajiralongkorn.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      ISIS Affiliate Claims Deadly Attack at Political Rally in Pakistan

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      The death toll from Sunday’s suicide bombing, which targeted a political rally near the border with Afghanistan, rose to at least 54 people, an official said.The Islamic State affiliate in South Asia claimed responsibility on Monday for a suicide bombing in northwest Pakistan that killed dozens of people and injured about 200 more, in the latest bloody sign of the deteriorating security situation in the country.The death toll from the explosion on Sunday, which targeted a political rally in the Bajaur district near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, rose to at least 54 people, Shaukat Abbas, a senior officer at the provincial police’s counterterrorism department, said on Monday.The Islamic State affiliate, known as the Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K, claimed on Monday that a suicide bomber had carried out the attack, characterizing it as part of the group’s war against democracy as a system of government, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.The blast was among the deadliest terrorist attacks in months in Pakistan, where some militant groups operating along the border with Afghanistan have become more active over the past year. The rise in violence represents a grim shift: Since 2014, when security forces carried out a major military operation to flush militants out of Pakistan, the country has experienced relative calm.But several high-profile attacks this year — including a bombing in Peshawar that killed more than 100 people and an hourslong assault on the police headquarters in the port city of Karachi — have sent shock waves across the country, with scenes of bloodshed that seemed to announce militancy’s return to Pakistan.The attacks have raised questions about whether Pakistan’s security establishment can stamp out militancy without the American air and other military support it relied on during the 2014 security operation. The violence has also stoked tensions between Pakistani officials and the Taliban administration in Afghanistan, which the Pakistani authorities have accused of providing haven to some militant groups. Taliban officials have denied that claim.“The attack in Bajaur unquestionably presents a significant escalation of ISK’s growing capacity and aggressive stance in northwest Pakistan — a region which is already home to many other militant factions,” said Amira Jadoon, the co-author of “The Islamic State in Afghanistan and Pakistan: Strategic Alliances and Rivalries,” using another abbreviation for the Islamic State affiliate.“It also shows ISK’s continued ability to access and operate on both sides of the border, as it has done so in the past.”On Monday, funeral processions took place in several villages in the Bajaur district to bury victims of the attack.Khuram Parvez/ReutersAt least three people suspected of being involved in the attack have been arrested so far, the local police chief, Nazir Khan, told news outlets. They were being interrogated by intelligence and law enforcement agencies, he added.On Monday, funeral processions took place in most villages in the Bajaur district as dozens of families gathered to bury victims of the attack. Even those not mourning loved ones were shaken by the attack and its aftermath, residents said.Shakir Ali, a shopkeeper who volunteered to take the injured to the hospital, said the screams and cries echoing across the area after the explosion were still ringing in his head on Monday. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, almost everyone who passed him was covered in blood, he recalled.“It was difficult for us to determine who was injured and who was not,” he said.The attack — among the first by a militant group on a political rally in the country this year — stirred concerns about whether the country’s deteriorating security situation will affect the next general election, expected in the fall.The election is seen as critical to restoring political stability to a country that has been rocked by mass protests and unrest since Imran Khan was forced out as prime minister in a vote of no-confidence in April last year.Security personnel guarding the site of a bomb blast on Monday.Abdul Majeed/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPaving the way for the election this fall, the current government is expected to dissolve Parliament in August and hand over power to a caretaker government that will oversee the election process. The establishment of a caretaker government is constitutionally required to carry out a general election.While it is unlikely that ISIS-K has the capacity to significantly disrupt the elections, many security experts are concerned that the Pakistani Taliban — a militant group also known as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or the T.T.P. — may try to target campaign rallies or voting sites, analysts say.The T.T.P. — which is an ideological twin and ally of the Taliban in Afghanistan — frequently attacked political rallies during Pakistan’s 2008 and 2013 election seasons and the group has seen a resurgence since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021.“The question is how is the T.T.P. planning to sabotage the coming election season,” said Asfandyar Mir, a senior expert at the United States Institute of Peace. “So far, indicators are that it won’t — but that can change.”Salman Masood More

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      Trump Crushing DeSantis and GOP Rivals, Times/Siena Poll Finds

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      The twice-indicted former president leads across nearly every category and region, as primary voters wave off concerns about his escalating legal jeopardy.Former President Donald J. Trump is dominating his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, leading his nearest challenger, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, by a landslide 37 percentage points nationally among the likely Republican primary electorate, according to the first New York Times/Siena College poll of the 2024 campaign.Mr. Trump held decisive advantages across almost every demographic group and region and in every ideological wing of the party, the survey found, as Republican voters waved away concerns about his escalating legal jeopardy. He led by wide margins among men and women, younger and older voters, moderates and conservatives, those who went to college and those who didn’t, and in cities, suburbs and rural areas.The poll shows that some of Mr. DeSantis’s central campaign arguments — that he is more electable than Mr. Trump, and that he would govern more effectively — have so far failed to break through. Even Republicans motivated by the type of issues that have fueled Mr. DeSantis’s rise, such as fighting “radical woke ideology,” favored the former president.Overall, Mr. Trump led Mr. DeSantis 54 percent to 17 percent. No other candidate topped 3 percent support in the poll.Below those lopsided top-line figures were other ominous signs for Mr. DeSantis. He performed his weakest among some of the Republican Party’s biggest and most influential constituencies. He earned only 9 percent support among voters at least 65 years old and 13 percent of those without a college degree. Republicans who described themselves as “very conservative” favored Mr. Trump by a 50-point margin, 65 percent to 15 percent.Republican voters are apparently not concerned about Donald J. Trump’s increasing legal peril.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesStill, no other serious Trump challenger has emerged besides Mr. DeSantis. Former Vice President Mike Pence, the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina each scored 3 percent support. Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, and Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur, each received support from just 2 percent of those polled.Yet even if all those candidates disappeared and Mr. DeSantis got a hypothetical one-on-one race against Mr. Trump, he would still lose by a two-to-one margin, 62 percent to 31 percent, the poll found. That is a stark reminder that, for all the fretting among anti-Trump forces that the party would divide itself in a repeat of 2016, Mr. Trump is poised to trounce even a unified opposition.The survey comes less than six months before the first 2024 primary contest and before a single debate. In an era of American politics defined by its volatility, Mr. Trump’s legal troubles — his trials threaten to overlap with primary season — pose an especially unpredictable wild card.For now, though, Mr. Trump appears to match both the surly mood of the Republican electorate, 89 percent of whom see the nation as headed in the wrong direction, and Republicans’ desire to take the fight to the Democrats.“He might say mean things and make all the men cry because all the men are wearing your wife’s underpants and you can’t be a man anymore,” David Green, 69, a retail manager in Somersworth, N.H., said of Mr. Trump. “You got to be a little sissy and cry about everything. But at the end of the day, you want results. Donald Trump’s my guy. He’s proved it on a national level.”Both Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis maintain strong overall favorable ratings from Republicans, 76 percent and 66 percent. That Mr. DeSantis is still so well liked after a drumbeat of news coverage questioning his ability to connect with voters, and more than $20 million in attack ads from a Trump super PAC, demonstrates a certain resiliency. His political team has argued that his overall positive image with G.O.P. voters provides a solid foundation on which to build.But the intensity of the former president’s support is a key difference as 43 percent of Republicans have a “very favorable” opinion of Mr. Trump — a cohort that he carries by an overwhelming 92 percent to 7 percent margin in a one-on-one race with Mr. DeSantis.By contrast, Mr. DeSantis is stuck in an effective tie with Mr. Trump, edging him 49 percent to 48 percent, among the smaller share of primary voters (25 percent) who view the Florida governor very favorably.In interviews with poll respondents, a recurring theme emerged. They like Mr. DeSantis; they love Mr. Trump.“DeSantis, I have high hopes. But as long as Trump’s there, Trump’s the man,” said Daniel Brown, 58, a retired technician at a nuclear plant from Bumpass, Va.Stanton Strohmenger, 48, a maintenance technician, said he was supporting Mr. Trump.Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times“If he wasn’t running against Trump, DeSantis would be my very next choice,” said Stanton Strohmenger, 48, a maintenance technician in Washington Township, Ohio.A number of respondents interviewed drew a distinction between Mr. DeSantis’s accomplishments in Tallahassee and Mr. Trump’s in the White House.“Trump has proven his clout,” said Mallory Butler, 39, of Polk County, Fla. “And DeSantis has, but in a much smaller arena.”The truly anti-Trump faction of the Republican electorate appears to hover near one in four G.O.P. voters, hardly enough to dethrone him. Only 19 percent of the electorate said Mr. Trump’s behavior after his 2020 defeat threatened American democracy. And only 17 percent see the former president as having committed any serious federal crimes, despite his indictment by a federal grand jury on charges of mishandling classified documents and his receipt of a so-called target letter in the separate election interference case being brought by the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith.“I think Donald Trump is going to carry a lot of baggage to the election with him,” said Hilda Bulla, 68, of Davidson County, N.C., who supports Mr. DeSantis.Yet Mr. Trump’s grip on the Republican Party is so strong, the Times/Siena poll found, that in a head-to-head contest with Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Trump still received 22 percent among voters who believe he has committed serious federal crimes — a greater share than the 17 percent that Mr. DeSantis earned from the entire G.O.P. electorate.Mr. DeSantis has made taking on “woke” institutions a centerpiece of his political identity. But when given a choice between a hypothetical candidate who prioritized “defeating radical woke ideology” or one who was focused on “law and order in our streets and at the border,” only 24 percent said they would be more likely to support the candidate focused on fighting “woke” issues.Equally problematic for Mr. DeSantis is that those “woke”-focused voters still preferred Mr. Trump, 61 percent to 36 percent.G.O.P. Primary Voters See Trump as Stronger, More Electable Than DeSantisTell me if you think this word or phrase better describes Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis:

      Based on a New York Times/Siena College poll of the likely electorate in the Republican primary, conducted July 23-27, 2023. Figures are rounded.By Christine ZhangThe ability to defeat Mr. Biden and to enact a conservative agenda is at the core of Mr. DeSantis’s appeal to Republicans. He has warned that Mr. Trump has saddled the party with a “culture of losing” in the Trump years and has held up his resounding 2022 re-election in the once purple state of Florida as a model for the G.O.P. As governor, he has pushed through a sweeping set of conservative priorities that have sharply reoriented the state and promised he would bring the same policymaking zeal to the White House.Yet these arguments do not appear to be working. A strong majority of Republicans surveyed, 58 percent, said it was Mr. Trump, not Mr. DeSantis, who was best described by the phrase “able to beat Joe Biden.” And again, it was Mr. Trump, by a lopsided 67 percent to 22 percent margin, who was seen more as the one to “get things done.”Mr. DeSantis narrowly edged Mr. Trump on being seen as “likable” and “moral.” Interestingly, the share of Republicans who said Mr. Trump was more “fun” than Mr. DeSantis (54 percent to 16 percent) almost perfectly mirrored the overall horse race.“He does not come across with humor,” Sandra Reher, 75, a retired teacher in Farmingdale, N.J., said of Mr. DeSantis. “He comes across as a — a good Christian man, wonderful family man. But he doesn’t have that fire, if you will, that Trump has.”Sandra Reher of New Jersey plans to support Donald Trump over Ron DeSantis. Of Mr. DeSantis, she said, “he doesn’t have that fire, if you will, that Trump has.”Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesIncreasingly on the trail, Mr. DeSantis is calling attention to his “blue-collar” roots and his decision to serve in the military as reasons voters should support him as he runs against a self-professed billionaire. But the poll showed Mr. Trump lapping Mr. DeSantis among likely Republican primary voters earning less than $50,000, 65 percent to 9 percent.As of now, Mr. DeSantis’s few demographic refuges — places where he is losing by smaller margins — are more upscale pockets of the electorate. He trailed Mr. Trump by a less daunting 12 points among white voters with college degrees, 37 to 25 percent. Among those earning more than $100,000, Mr. DeSantis was behind by 23 points, half the deficit he faced among the lowest earners.The fractured field appears to be preventing Mr. DeSantis from consolidating the support of such voters: In the hypothetical one-on-one race, Mr. DeSantis was statistically tied with Mr. Trump among white college-educated voters.On a range of issues, the poll suggests it will be difficult for Mr. DeSantis to break through against Mr. Trump on policy arguments alone.In the head-to-head matchup, Mr. Trump was far ahead of Mr. DeSantis among Republicans who accept transgender people as the gender they identify with, and among those who do not; among those who want to fight corporations that “promote woke left ideology,” and among those who prefer to stay out of what businesses do; among those who want to send more military and economic aid to Ukraine, and among those who do not; among those who want to keep Social Security and Medicare benefits as they are, and among those who want to take steps to reduce the budget deficit.Mr. Trump leads Mr. DeSantis among Republicans who believe abortion should always be legal, and among those who believe it should always be illegal.Mr. DeSantis signed a strict six-week abortion ban that Mr. Trump has criticized as “too harsh.” Yet Mr. Trump enjoyed the support of 70 percent of Republicans who said they strongly supported such a measure.Marcel Paba, a 22-year-old server in Miami, said he liked what Mr. DeSantis had done for his state but didn’t think the governor could overcome the enthusiasm for Mr. Trump.“There are just more die-hard fans of Trump than there are of Ron DeSantis. Even in Florida,” Mr. Paba said. “I don’t see people wearing a Ron DeSantis hat anywhere, you know?”Camille Baker More

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      How Trump Could Wreck Things for Republicans in 2024

      by

      Things just got a whole lot more interesting in New Hampshire politics. Just below the presidential churn, the governor’s race in the politically quirky Granite State has some superjuicy drama percolating — the kind that offers a vivid reminder of just how much trouble Donald Trump stands to cause for his party in 2024.Gov. Chris Sununu, currently enjoying his fourth two-year term, recently announced that he would not run for re-election next year. This instantly gave Democrats their best shot at flipping a governorship from red to blue in 2024, and the race is now rated as a tossup. Quick as a bunny, Republican contenders began hopping into the field, and both parties started gearing up for a brawl.Of the candidates so far, the best known is the former senator Kelly Ayotte. Like Mr. Sununu, Ms. Ayotte is from the more moderate, pragmatic, bipartisan end of the Republican spectrum — as you might expect in this staunchly independent, politically purple state. Elected to the Senate in 2010, she was considered a serious up-and-comer in the party until, with a little help from Mr. Trump’s lousy coattails, she narrowly lost her 2016 re-election race against the Democrat Maggie Hassan.It’s hard to know precisely how much of a drag Mr. Trump, who also lost New Hampshire that year, exerted on Ms. Ayotte. But the senator’s wild waffling over Mr. Trump’s fitness for office surely didn’t help: Did she see as him a role model? “Absolutely.” Oops, make that no! Would she endorse his candidacy? Um, not really. Did she personally support him? Yes. Wait, no!The voters of New Hampshire were unimpressed.Seven years later, Ms. Ayotte is looking to make a comeback. Unfortunately for her, so is Mr. Trump, who may be popular in deep red states but will be a source of agita for Ms. Ayotte and other Republicans in swing states who might have to share the ticket with him. Republicans are hopeful about picking up Senate, House and governors’ seats in 2024, but they have barely started to contend with how the once-and-aspiring president could complicate things for down-ballot candidates.Nowhere is this clearer than in New Hampshire, a key presidential battleground. The state’s Trump-infected political landscape looks even more treacherous in 2024 than it did in 2016. Not just because of the former president’s latest campaign, which is shaping up to be even nastier and more divisive than his first two, but also because of Mr. Sununu’s high-profile crusade to tank that campaign.One of the nation’s most popular governors and one of his party’s most prominent Trump critics, Mr. Sununu has grown increasingly adamant that his party must move beyond the 45th president, and he has publicly pledged to work against Mr. Trump’s nomination. If Mr. Trump is the nominee in 2024, “Republicans will lose again. Just as we did in 2018, 2020 and 2022. This is indisputable, and I am not willing to let it happen without a fight,” Mr. Sununu wrote in The Washington Post last month.This move may burnish Mr. Sununu’s independent rep nationwide. (He is seen as a future presidential player.) But it only complicates life for many down-ballot Republicans in the state. Especially ones, like Ms. Ayotte, who have a somewhat … troubled history with the fealty-obsessed Mr. Trump.For the G.O.P., the New Hampshire governor’s office is one of the shrinking number of outposts where a pragmatic, old-school breed of Republican leader has been able to thrive in the midst of the party’s MAGAfication. Republicans felt confident Mr. Sununu had the juice to win, no matter who topped the ticket next year. Any other Republican is a shakier bet for winning the independent and crossover votes needed to win statewide in New Hampshire. The governor’s departure is being talked about as yet another step in the party’s ideological constriction.Although broadly popular, Mr. Sununu is not beloved in New Hampshire’s conservative circles. His anti-Trump mission will do nothing to improve this. “I think Sununu is trying to dance the same tightrope I am and a lot of us are: being very forceful about the fact that we need a new nominee and yet trying not to take too big of a dump on the former president,” said Jason Osborne, the Republican leader of the state House and one of Ms. Ayotte’s early endorsers.Fancy footwork aside, the Trumpnunu rift is going to make it harder for the governor’s aspiring successors to avoid getting sucked into the Trump vortex — the dangers of which Ms. Ayotte knows too well. She is already trying to get out ahead of the issue, asserting that she will support whoever winds up the party’s standard-bearer.“I do wonder whether she’s going to hold to that line of, ‘Hey, that’s between Sununu and Trump,’” said Dante Scala, a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire. “She may be able to do that for some time.”But as campaign season heats up, look for Ayotte et al. to be increasingly pressed to clarify their views on the whole mess. (Trust me: Intraparty feuding is catnip for political journalists.) Staying out of the muck will very likely require elaborate tap dancing on a tightrope while juggling hot potatoes.The situation will be even thornier for whomever Mr. Sununu decides to endorse — which, at this point, is expected to be Ms. Ayotte. Sure, a popular governor’s nod in the race to succeed him will serve as a vote of confidence in the eyes of many. But it could also “fire up the conservative base even more” to undermine his pick, said Mike Dennehy, a G.O.P. strategist in the state. The territory is “more complicated than in 2016,” he asserted. And some think it would be best for the governor to delay endorsing until much later in the game.All of this, mind you, is piled on top of Ms. Ayotte’s specific challenges as a candidate. (Pro-life in a pro-choice state post-Dobbs? Oof.) And the basic political disposition of New Hampshire. “In general, it has become a slightly uphill battle to beat Democrats,” observed Mr. Scala.Stay tuned. As with so much in Mr. Trump’s Republican Party, this promises to be quite the show.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