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      What a Reversal of Roe v. Wade Might Mean for the Midterms

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      Abortion, it almost goes without saying, is a singularly fraught issue. Pew Research describes the complexity in a May 6 report, “America’s Abortion Quandary”: “A majority of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, but many are open to restrictions; many opponents of legal abortion say it should be legal in some circumstances.”Pew continues: “Relatively few Americans on either side of the debate take an absolutist view on the legality of abortion — either supporting or opposing it at all times, regardless of circumstances.”A majority of the Supreme Court, however, appears to be prepared to take on this unwieldy, intensely personal subject by overturning the 1973 landmark decision Roe v Wade. “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Justice Alito wrote in a draft opinion supported by four other justices. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.” The decision as written would in fact transfer jurisdiction over the laws governing abortion to the states, 26 of which “are certain or likely” to adopt laws banning “abortion, and those abortion bans would apply to both procedural and medication abortion,” according to the Guttmacher Institute.In a May 3 interview with The Harvard Gazette, Laurence Tribe, a law professor at the school, argued that the public image of the Supreme Court has been badly “damaged by the obviously partisan divisions within the court” and exacerbated “by the court’s ham-handed attempts to persuade people that the political and ideological orientation of justices on the right or on the left somehow has nothing to do with the way they view legal issues.”Tribe described the Alito draft as “a savage attack” on the Roe decision, and while it may yet be moderated, Tribe said:I think it’s important for people to recognize that the thrust of the decision and the dramatic and radical approach it takes to interpreting the Constitution’s unenumerated rights, narrowly and stingily, will not depend on the tone. That is, the opinion, whether it’s delivered in a velvet glove or not, is going to be an iron fist. The court is really announcing that it’s laying down the gauntlet with respect to rights like those recognized in Lawrence v. Texas, in terms of sexual intimacy, and Obergefell v. Hodges, in terms of the right to marry.As long ago as February 2006, Ronald Dworkin, a law professor at N.Y.U. who died in 2013, anticipated in The New York Review of Books the probability that Alito would become an absolutist member of the Supreme Court’s conservative wing:His dissent in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Pennsylvania case in which the Supreme Court later reaffirmed its earlier Roe v. Wade protection of abortion rights, was of course of particular concern. Alone on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, he voted to uphold a provision of the Pennsylvania law that required married women to inform their husbands before seeking an abortion, except women who could prove that their husbands were not the father of the child or that they would be subject to physical abuse if they told their husbands.At one level, the likelihood that the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade would seem to be an ideal vehicle to invigorate the left. Such a decision, in political terms, would amount to the imposition of a major change in social policy, by a bare 5-to-4 majority of an unelected court, against the will of a majority of the electorate.In other words, at a time of growing anxiety over authoritarian trends in the Republican Party, the autocratic nature of a court decision jettisoning Roe has the potential to inflame an already divided nation.“Research generally shows that anger is an emotion that mobilizes people to act, and many will certainly be angered by this decision,” Brian Schaffner, a political scientist at Tufts and at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard, wrote by email in response to my inquiry. “We saw Republicans use the teaching of Critical Race Theory in schools as a way of mobilizing their supporters with anger in 2021, but overturning Roe seems quite likely to enrage a much larger share of the population and could lead to a much different calculus for what we might expect in November.”Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, similarly argued that upending Roe would have the “strong potential to mobilize the liberals, mobilize women voters, and mobilize low-propensity Democrats. 91 percent of Democrats and liberals support access to abortion and 71 percent of young voters support the same.”Lake added two other points. First, “Americans always think of us going forward, not reversals, not taking away rights, not losing things, not losing freedoms,” and second:There is an interesting overlap with the Jan. 6 hearings. The Trump Republicans are showing the lengths they will go to to overrule the will of the people and fundamentally change our system in ways voters never thought possible. These are fundamental attacks on our country. And voters believe this is the start not the end.Surveys show that a decisive majority opposes overturning Roe v. Wade. In a CBS News survey conducted May 4 to 6, for example, 64 percent said Roe should be “kept as it is” and 36 percent said it should be “overturned.”There are a number of countervailing factors, however, not least of which is public ambivalence.Perhaps most important, before the Alito draft opinion became public, abortion did not rank high on the list when voters were asked to identify issues of importance to them. In an April 30 to May 3 YouGov/ Economist survey, abortion ranked at the bottom of 14 issues when respondents were asked if they were “very important” to them, behind jobs and the economy, crime, national security, education and health care. The YouGov/Economist poll was conducted over four days, and only on the last day and a half did the Alito opinion become public.Since Politico revealed the contents of the draft opinion on May 2, however, there are some indications that the salience of abortion is increasing.YouGov conducted a separate survey for Yahoo News from May 3 to May 6, covering the first four days during which the Alito draft received widespread publicity. Among key Democratic constituencies, abortion shot up the list of most important issues: From November to May the share of Democrats describing abortion at their most important issue rose to 20 percent from 4 percent.There are at least three other hurdles facing Democrats seeking to mobilize voters in the 2022 midterm elections using the overturning of Roe to motivate turnout.First, the number of women undergoing abortions has been declining steadily. The Guttmacher Institute found that the abortion rate for every 1,000 women between ages 15 and 44 reached a high of 29.3 in 1980 and 1981. Since then, the rate has declined to 13.5 per 1,000 in 2017.Second, a majority of abortions now rely upon abortifacient drugs instead of surgery. The Guttmacher Institute found that in 2020, 54 percent of abortions were performed using mifepristone and misoprostol, the two-drug combination that is known as medication abortion or the abortion pill.Third, the share of women getting abortions who are either high income or white has declined rapidly. FiveThirtyEight reported last January that in 1975, 65 percent of women getting abortions were white and 31 percent were Black or members of other minorities; by 2017, 47 percent were white and 49 percent minority members.Caitlin Myers, a professor of economics at Middlebury who has written extensively on reproductive issues, was pessimistic about the likelihood of abortion functioning as a liberal mobilizing issue. She wrote by email:The brunt of the impacts of a Roe reversal will be felt by young, poor, and Black women living in the Deep South and Midwest. Will their plight mobilize the left? I don’t know. But I will observe that when I drive around liberal Vermont I see plenty of lawn signs supporting Ukraine and Black Lives Matter, but have yet to see one supporting abortion rights.Eitan Hersh, a professor of political science at Tufts, noted that a Supreme Court decision overturning Roe “would reinvigorate mass organizing on the left,” but, he added, “there’s a caveat” in the vitality of the grass-roots infrastructure the right has built over decades:Even with all the news about the leaked court opinion, I’m not sure it sinks in for most Democrats what a long-term, deeply organized mass movement was behind the change. In addition to the development of the conservative legal movement and their nomination strategies, we have seen activists organizing in state legislatures preparing for this moment for decades. It took a very long time, a lot of patience and a lot of hard work from ordinary activists.Hersh’s point is well taken, but there is a counter argument. Over those same decades, while conservatives made their case that abortion was immoral and tantamount to homicide, social scientists have quietly but steadily produced detailed research reports describing the social benefits that have been spurred by the Roe decision. Such studies have had limited visibility as far as the general public is concerned, but are surfacing or resurfacing now that Roe is facing an imminent upheaval.In “Abortion and Selection,” for example, Elizabeth Ananat, Jonathan Gruber, Phillip Levine and Douglas Staiger, economists at Barnard, M.I.T., Wellesley and Dartmouth, argue that their research provides “evidence that lower costs of abortion led to improved outcomes in the form of an increased likelihood of college graduation, lower rates of welfare use, and lower odds of being a single parent.”In conclusion, the authors write:Our findings suggest that the improved living circumstances experienced by the average child born after the legalization of abortion had a lasting impact on the lifelong prospects of these children. Children who were “born unwanted” prior to the legalization of abortion not only grew up in more disadvantaged households, but they also grew up to be more disadvantaged as adults.Gruber wrote by email that he, like many others, is “pro-choice on the grounds of women’s reproductive freedom,” but too few people recognize “that ending abortion rights imposes enormous additional costs to society.”Gruber continued:The very states that oppose abortion rights are the ones that engage in poorly designed tax cuts that leave them without the resources to support their neediest citizens. So ending abortion rights is basically imposing a large new tax on all citizens to support millions of unwanted, and disadvantaged, children — a tax that these governments are then unwilling to finance.Ananat elaborated on a related point in an email:We also know from recent research that has followed women who were unable to get an abortion under new laws — because they came to a clinic just after instead of just before a gestational cutoff in their state — that it is the case today that those who were unable to get a wanted abortion are much more likely to be poor in the years afterward, much more likely to get evicted, are in much worse mental and physical health, are much more likely to be in an abusive relationship. Their existing children — 60 percent of women seeking an abortion are already mothers — end up with poorer developmental outcomes. All of these results portend badly for their futures and their children’s.Ananat argued that the role of abortion in coming elections depends on whether “the enormity of this news” sinks into the public,particularly given the signals coming from the court and from state legislatures of an interest in complete bans on anything affecting a fertilized egg, including lifesaving surgeries such as for ectopic pregnancies and bans on some kinds of contraception and fertility treatments. Saliently for coalition-building, these medically necessary abortions, as well as contraception like IUDs and Plan B and interventions like IVF, are used by a much broader and more privileged cross-section of women than the low-income, politically marginalized women who are most impacted by laws that represent restrictions rather than abolition. And then some politicians are talking about taking on other rights guaranteed under Griswold, Obergefell, Loving, etc., which may help an even broader group of people see the linked fate of these civil rights.Many Republican elected officials are legitimizing liberal fears.Republicans in the Louisiana House have approved legislation in committee that would apply criminal homicide charges to both the woman and the abortion provider. In Idaho, Brent Crane, chairman of the House State Affairs Committee, announced on May 6 that he will hold hearings on legislation banning emergency contraception and abortion pills. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, told USA Today that if Republicans win control of Congress and the White House in 2024, a national abortion ban is “possible,” noting that “with regard to the abortion issue, I think it’s pretty clear where Senate Republicans stand.” The governor of Mississippi, Tate Reeves, was equivocal when asked if the state might make contraceptives like the Plan B pill or IUDs illegal: “That’s not what we are focused on at this time.”Perhaps most ominously for those on the left, Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, told The Times, “If a dog catches a car, it doesn’t know what to do. We do.”I asked two Republican pollsters — Ed Goeas and Whit Ayres — about the possible consequences of a court ruling overturning Roe. Their replies could best be described as restrained.Goeas emailed me back: “I increasingly have come to believe that neither Republicans nor Democrats represent the majority of the American public that is truly centrist. Not moderate but centrist.”In the case of the abortion debate, Goeas continued,the overwhelming majority do not fall into the category of abortion on demand or no abortion in any case. Most fall into a category of abortions with limits. That’s where the real discussion has been for decades, even though many of those people may call themselves pro-life or pro-choice.Many people “dread the thought of a loud, ugly fight over Roe v. Wade,” Goeas argued. “The fight may still rage on because of our increasingly electing members from the two extremes. If it does, I believe centrist America will just turn down the volume.”Ayres argued that “most Americans are torn about the issue” and have remained so over time:Opinions on abortion have been remarkably stable, unlike opinions on gay marriage, which have moved with lightning speed. I am convinced that our children and grandchildren will still be arguing about the morality of abortion.Ayres downplayed the prospect of a Supreme Court decision having a major influence on the outcome of the 2022 elections:Abortion has never been considered as important as issues that affect almost everyone like inflation, unemployment, Covid, and crime. But the people who do care about it care incredibly intensely, so this Supreme Court decision, if it follows the Alito draft, will energize those people on both sides of the issue.Ryan Enos, a political scientist at Harvard, was less equivocal:At first blush, the overturning of Roe certainly seems like it could be a mobilizing event: it involves a medical procedure that is extremely common and has been experienced by a large portion of women in the United States and could materially affect the lives of millions of people. In some states, it will be the rare instance of the state taking away a right that people have previously enjoyed. To my knowledge, this has not happened since Southern states moved to strip voting rights after the end of Reconstruction.At the same time, Enos continued:Your typical voter has only a vague notion of the ideological composition of the court, let alone how it got that way. While the Republican hijacking of the court to push an ideological agenda seems like a grave injustice to many of us, understanding why this is an injustice takes a level of engagement with politics that most voters simply don’t have.Instead, Enos argued:A more likely way for Roe to matter is that the most active Democrats, those who donate money and volunteer, will be animated for the midterm. Democrats were so animated by Donald Trump that they brought an energy to the election in 2020 that was impossible for them to sustain. While this might return in 2024 if Trump is on the ballot, it was not going to be there in 2022 without a catalyzing force — overturning Roe might be that force.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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      How Democrats Want to Put Republicans on the Defensive on Abortion

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      While conservatives control the courts and key states, the public tends to lean in favor of abortion rights. Democratic leaders are trying to translate that sentiment into victories for the party.In politics, sometimes you need to lose in order to win.Wednesday’s planned vote on the Women’s Health Protection Act, Senate Democrats’ bill to codify Roe v. Wade, will fail. Democrats are unlikely to persuade any Republicans to cross party lines, and Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, also opposes abortion, in keeping with the politics of a state Donald Trump won by 39 percentage points in 2020.So why is Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, holding a doomed vote?It’s what’s known in Washington as a “message vote” or a “show vote.” My colleague Annie Karni puts it plainly in her piece today: The move is meant to force Republicans to take a vote that could hurt them in November. Now that the Supreme Court appears poised to overturn Roe, Democrats believe there’s a political opportunity.Which, of course, there is. Democrats are hoping to anchor Republicans to an impending court decision that is well outside the American mainstream.They plan to spend the rest of the campaign season telling voters that if they want to protect the right to abortion — let alone contraception and same-sex marriage — they should expand Democrats’ Senate majority. It’s an argument they believe will appeal to suburban college-educated women, a key swing demographic, among others.Until the leak of the draft opinion on Roe, Democratic strategists I’d spoken with in private had been skeptical that abortion would move many voters in November. That’s changing rapidly.In the Virginia governor’s race last year, for instance, Glenn Youngkin, the eventual Republican winner, appeared to pay no price for his views on reproductive rights even though Terry McAuliffe’s campaign spent several million dollars on abortion-themed television ads. Back then, many voters just didn’t believe that Republicans would really ban abortion.At one point, McAuliffe even said he would encourage companies to move their operations to Virginia to escape restrictive abortion laws in states like Texas, a move that caused Youngkin’s campaign to consider running ads condemning those comments.“Youngkin’s abortion quotes would lose him that election if it were held today, I think,” said Brian Stryker, a Democratic pollster who worked on the Virginia governor’s race. “The court changed all that by making this issue way more real to people.”Of course, how Democrats try to seize the advantage will matter. They can’t just call this vote on Wednesday, pump out some press releases and expect to carry the day. Execution matters.Thousands of demonstrators gathered in Chicago last weekend in support of abortion rights.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesThe polling picturePolling shows that abortion rights are popular. But the answers depend heavily on how the questions are worded. The public often shows conflicting impulses: Americans approve of Roe by large margins, but also approve of restrictions that seem to conflict with it.From Opinion: A Challenge to Roe v. WadeCommentary by Times Opinion writers and columnists on the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.Maureen Dowd: Samuel Alito’s draft opinion, which calls for overturning Roe v. Wade, is the culmination of the last 40 years of conservative thinking, showing that the Puritans are winning.Tish Harrison Warren: For many pro-life and whole-life leaders, a Supreme Court decision overturning Roe would represent a starting point, not a finish line.Matthew Walther, Editor of a Catholic Literary Journal: Those who oppose abortion,  should not discount the possibility that its proscription will have some regrettable consequences. Even so, it will be worth it.Gretchen Whitmer, Governor of Michigan: If Roe falls, abortion will become a felony in Michigan. I have a moral obligation to stand up for the rights of the women of the state I represent.A Pew Research Center poll taken before the Roe leak is instructive. It found that 19 percent of adults said abortion should always be legal. Just 8 percent said it should always be illegal, with no exceptions. Most Americans are somewhere in between those two poles, though a healthy national majority of about 60 percent say it should be legal in most cases.Republicans would like to force Democrats into that 19 percent corner. Democrats would like to push Republicans into that 8 percent cul-de-sac. And so would each side’s activist community, even though voters tend to see the issue in shades of gray.“Voters are not looking for a change in the status quo on either side,” said Molly Murphy, a Democratic pollster who advises House and Senate candidates. But, she added, the nuances in the polls reflect the fact that voters struggle to decide when, and under what circumstances, it is appropriate to end a pregnancy.What is making the abortion issue especially potent now that Roe is likely to be overturned, Murphy said, is that “Republicans now need to defend where their line is.”Regional distinctions are also important. When you break down public opinion on abortion by state, as Nate Cohn recently did, you find large differences between culturally liberal states like Nevada and New Hampshire, where more than 60 percent of the public says abortion should be mostly legal, and culturally middle-of-the-road Georgia, where that number shrinks to 49 percent.Where Democrats are on firmer groundAnother way to gauge the politics of an issue is to ask: Who wants to talk about it, and who doesn’t?Abortion rights seem like a clear political winner for Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, a Democrat who is defending her seat against several little-known Republican challengers. Hassan did seven interviews the day after Politico published the Roe leak.The favorite candidate of the state’s G.O.P. establishment is Chuck Morse, a state senator who describes himself as “pro-life.” Morse pushed a ban on late-term abortions last year that did not include exceptions for rape or incest. It also required all women to take an ultrasound exam before terminating a pregnancy.Morse issued a statement last week highlighting his role in passing legislation that “settled the law in New Hampshire that permits abortions in the first six months.” Through a spokesman, his campaign has said it prefers to talk about the economy, inflation and immigration.Awkwardness for RepublicansIn other key Senate contests, Republican candidates are scrambling to defend or explain their past comments.In a statement last week, Adam Laxalt, the likely Republican challenger to Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, Democrat of Nevada, praised the draft ruling but noted that abortion is already legal in Nevada, “so no matter the court’s ultimate decision on Roe, it is currently settled law in our state.”“He can’t play it both ways. He’s already come out and said he would overturn it,” Cortez Masto said in a brief interview. “He’s already said it was a ‘historic victory.’”In Ohio, J.D. Vance, the G.O.P. nominee, has said that women should bring pregnancies to term “even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society,” referring to rape and incest. Vance does, however, support exceptions to spare the life of the pregnant woman.Blake Masters, a Republican candidate for Senate in Arizona, has said that Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 Supreme Court case that barred state bans on contraception and established the federal right to privacy, was “wrongly decided.”Masters clarified in a statement that he did not support “any ban on contraception, and that extends to I.U.D.s,” or intrauterine devices, which some abortion opponents view as abortifacients.For both sides, precision mattersRepublicans would much rather talk about late-term abortions, even though nearly nine in 10 abortions take place within the first 12 weeks of a pregnancy.An interview this month on Fox News with Representative Tim Ryan, Vance’s Democratic opponent in Ohio, offered a telling example of how this could play out.Pressed twice by the Fox host on whether he supported any limits to abortion, Ryan gave an answer that was faithful to standard Democratic talking points.The State of Roe v. WadeCard 1 of 4What is Roe v. Wade? More

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      If Roe Is Struck Down, Where Does the Anti-Abortion Movement Go Next?

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      The Supreme Court draft opinion signals a new era for the 50-year effort to end the constitutional right to abortion. Next goals include a national ban and, in some cases, classifying abortion as homicide.For nearly half a century, the anti-abortion movement has propelled itself toward a goal that at times seemed impossible, even to true believers: overturning Roe v. Wade.That single-minded mission meant coming to Washington every January for the March for Life to mark Roe’s anniversary. It required electing anti-abortion lawmakers and keeping the pressure on to pass state restrictions. It involved funding anti-abortion lobbying groups, praying and protesting outside clinics, and opening facilities to persuade women to keep their pregnancies. Then this week, the leaked draft of the Supreme Court opinion that would overturn the constitutional right to abortion revealed that anti-abortion activists’ dream of a post-Roe America appeared poised to come to pass.The court’s opinion is not final, but the draft immediately shifted the horizon by raising a new question: If Roe is struck down, where does the anti-abortion movement go next?Many leaders are redoubling state efforts, where they’ve already had success, with an eye toward more restrictive measures. Several prominent groups now say they would support a national abortion ban after as many as 15 weeks or as few as six, all lower than Roe’s standard of around 23 or 24. A vocal faction is talking about “abortion abolition,” proposing legislation to outlaw abortion after conception, with few if any exceptions in cases of rape or incest.The sprawling anti-abortion grass-roots campaign is rapidly approaching an entirely new era, one in which abortion would no longer be a nationally protected right to overcome, but a decision to be legislated by individual states. For many activists, overturning Roe would mark what they see as not the end, but a new beginning to limit abortion access even further. It also would present a test, as those who have long backed incremental change could clash with those who increasingly push to end legal abortion altogether.This week, many anti-abortion leaders were wary of celebrating before the court’s final ruling, expected this summer. They remembered Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, when they hoped the court would overturn Roe and it ultimately did not. But they said they have been preparing for this moment and its possibilities for decades.“If a dog catches a car, it doesn’t know what to do,” said Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee. “We do.”The Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion political group, is planning a strategy involving state legislatures where it sees room to advance their cause or protect it. The National Right to Life is trying to support its affiliates in every state as it looks to lobby lawmakers. Both groups have been hoping to build support in Congress for a national abortion ban, even if it could take years, just as it did to gain momentum to undo Roe. Many Republicans have repeatedly tried to enact a ban at about 20 weeks, without success. Next week Democrats in the Senate are bringing a bill to codify abortion rights to a vote, but it is all but certain to be blocked by Republicans.Abortion rights advocates are using the moment to re-energize their own supporters, organize protests and mobilize for midterm elections in November. Planned Parenthood Action Fund, NARAL Pro-Choice America and Emily’s List announced Monday, hours before the leaked draft appeared, that they would spend a collective $150 million on the midterm election cycle. Other groups are planning a nationwide “day of action” May 14, with marches in cities including New York, Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles.The reality of the leaked draft shocked casual supporters of abortion rights who weren’t paying particularly close attention to the issue, or who had grown numb after decades of warnings about the end of Roe.An abortion opponent at the March for Life in Washington. Many leaders are doubling down on state fights, with an eye toward pushing for more restrictive measures in other parts of the country.Kenny Holston for The New York Times“People just couldn’t fathom losing a constitutional right that has been enshrined for nearly half a century,” said Kristin Ford, vice president of communications and research for NARAL Pro-Choice America. “To see it in such stark terms has really galvanized people.”Across the anti-abortion spectrum, everything is on the table, from instituting bans when fetal cardiac activity is detected, to pressing their case in Democratic strongholds. Some activists are prioritizing limiting medication abortion, which accounts for more than half of all abortions.From Opinion: A Challenge to Roe v. WadeCommentary by Times Opinion writers and columnists on the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Alison Block: Offering compassionate care is a core aspect of reproductive health. It might mean overcoming one’s own hesitation to provide procedures like second-trimester abortions. Patrick T. Brown: If Roe is overturned, those who worked toward that outcome will rightly celebrate. But a broader pro-family agenda should be their next goal. Jamelle Bouie: The leak proves that the Supreme Court is a political body, where horse-trading and influence campaigns are as much a part of the process as legal reasoning.Bret Stephens: Roe v. Wade was an ill-judged decision when it was handed down. But overturning it would do more to replicate its damage than to reverse it.Jay Kaspian Kang: There is no clear path toward a legislative solution to protect abortion rights. That’s precisely why people need to take to the streets.This week in Georgia, former Senator David Perdue, who is challenging Gov. Brian Kemp in the Republican primary for governor, called for a special session to “eliminate all of abortion” in the state, which already has an abortion ban at about six weeks on the books that would likely take effect if Roe is overturned.While many fighting for restrictions believe abortion to be murder, only a small fringe openly call for punishing a woman for procuring one.Lawmakers in Louisiana, however, advanced a bill on Wednesday that would classify abortion as homicide and make it possible for prosecutors to bring criminal cases against women who end a pregnancy.“If the fetus is a person, then we should protect them with the same homicide laws that protect born persons,” said Bradley Pierce, who helped draft the Louisiana legislation and leads the Foundation to Abolish Abortion. “That’s what equal protection means.”A more prominent anti-abortion group, Louisiana Right to Life, however, opposes the bill for going too far.For the more mainstream campaigners, a post-Roe landscape would mean the anti-abortion fight will become even broader, clearing the path to expand further into state politics. “It will be different work,” said Mallory Carroll, spokeswoman for the Susan B. Anthony List. If Roe is overturned, anti-abortion activists will be free to pass legislation without having to work around Roe’s limits. “Instead of just fighting for the right to pass pro-life laws, we will actually be able to pass and protect pro-life laws,” she said.On Monday, before the leak, a coalition led by Students for Life Action told Republican members of Congress in a letter that abortion restrictions even at 12 weeks of pregnancy were not sufficient but that what ultimately mattered was “whether the infant is a human being.”After the leaked draft of the Supreme Court opinion, activists on both sides of the abortion debate gathered in front of a federal courthouse in Indianapolis. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesUltimately, abortion opponents’ biggest goal extends beyond legislation. It is an effort to change broader American culture and get more people to see a fetus as a human person with an inherent right to life. Many activists talk about making abortion not merely illegal but “unthinkable.”Public opinion polls show that a majority of Americans say abortion should be legal in at least some cases. But anti-abortion activists say they see plenty of room for persuasion in the details. Polling also suggests most Americans are open to some restrictions. Thirty-four percent of Americans say abortion should be legal at 14 weeks of pregnancy — roughly the end of the first trimester — compared with 27 percent who say it should be illegal, according to a survey released Friday by the Pew Research Center. Another 22 percent say “it depends.”“We are prepared to not only create a legal landscape to protect life at the federal and state levels, but also to support a culture of life,” said Kristen Waggoner, general counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which supports Mississippi’s ban at 15 weeks that led to the Supreme Court case that could overturn Roe.Advocates on the left see the leaked draft laying out a playbook for a sweeping attempt to roll back other established rights. “There are some folks on the right saying they’re just turning back to the states, when in fact it’s very clear their agenda is much broader than that,” Ms. Ford of NARAL said. “It’s not just about abortion.”The State of Roe v. WadeCard 1 of 4What is Roe v. Wade? More

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      Biden’s Unpopularity

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      Covid helps explain it.Shortly after taking office, President Biden called on the government to do better. “We have to prove democracy still works,” he told Congress. “That our government still works — and we can deliver for our people.”Most Americans seem to believe Biden has not done so: 42 percent of Americans approve of his job performance, while 53 percent disapprove, according to FiveThirtyEight’s average of polls.In today’s newsletter, I want to use Covid as a case study for how Biden failed to persuade Americans that the government delivered and instead cemented perceptions that it cannot.Polling suggests that Covid — not the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan — jump-started Biden’s political problems. His approval rating began to drop in July, weeks before the withdrawal.Source: FiveThirtyEightThat timing coincides with the rise of the Delta variant and reports that vaccine protection against infection was not holding up. Both came after Biden suggested for months that an “Independence Day” from Covid was near, setting up Americans for disappointment as it became clear that his administration would not fulfill arguably its biggest promise.The Covid exampleAt first, the Biden administration’s pandemic response helped highlight how government can solve a big problem. Millions of Americans were receiving shots a day — a campaign that Biden compared to wartime mobilization.But then things went awry, culminating in the disappointment many Americans now feel toward Biden’s handling of Covid.Biden’s administration gave mixed messages on boosters and masks that at times appeared to contradict data and experts. As we have covered before, U.S. officials often have not trusted the public with the truth about Covid and precautions.Getting a booster in Jackson, Ala., last year.Charity Rachelle for The New York TimesCongress also lagged behind, with pandemic funding caught in intraparty squabbles and partisan fights — the kind of gridlock that has often prevented lawmakers from getting things done in recent years.“American government is fairly slow and very incremental,” said Julia Azari, a political scientist at Marquette University. “That makes it very difficult to be responsive.”Perhaps Biden’s biggest mistake was, as Azari put it, “overpromising.” He spent early last summer suggesting that vaccines would soon make Covid a concern of the past — a view some experts shared at the time, too.Biden could not control what followed, as the virus persisted. But he could have set more realistic expectations for how a notoriously unpredictable pandemic would unfold.Another problem preceded Biden’s presidency: the political polarization of the pandemic. It made vaccines a red-versus-blue issue, with many Republicans refusing to get shots. Yet the vaccines remain the single best weapon against Covid.Given the high polarization, Biden’s options against Covid are now limited. His support for vaccines can even turn Republicans against the shots, one study found.“There is more that could be done, but the impact would probably only be at the margins, rather than transformative,” said Jen Kates of the Kaiser Family Foundation.Even if Biden cannot do much, the public will likely hold him responsible for future Covid surges; voters expect presidents to solve difficult issues. “People blame the administration for problems that are largely outside its control,” said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College.Lost trustBiden framed his call to deliver as a test for American democracy. He drew comparisons to the 1930s — “another era when our democracy was tested,” then by the threat of fascism. He pointed to new threats: Donald Trump challenging the legitimacy of U.S. elections and China’s president, Xi Jinping, betting that “democracy cannot keep up with him.”There is a historical factor, too. Since the Vietnam War and Watergate, Americans’ trust in their government has fallen. If Biden had succeeded, he could have helped reverse this trend.But Covid, and the government’s response to it, did the opposite. Trust in the C.D.C. fell throughout the pandemic: from 69 percent in April 2020 to 44 percent in January, according to NBC News.Distrust in government can turn into a vicious cycle. The government needs the public’s trust to get things done — like, say, a mass vaccination campaign. Without that support, government efforts will be less successful. And as the government is less successful, the public will lose more faith in it.Given the polarization surrounding Covid and the government’s mixed record, skepticism seems a more likely outcome than the renaissance of trust that Biden called for.THE LATEST NEWSWar in UkraineThe Russian ship Moskva off Havana in 2013.Adalberto Roque/AFP via Getty ImagesThe U.S. provided intelligence that helped Ukraine sink the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.Russia intensified its attacks in the eastern regions of Ukraine, hoping for a victory by Monday. But it is difficult to evaluate how the actual fighting is going.Ukrainian forces, mounting a highly mobile defense, regained ground elsewhere in the east.An operation to evacuate 200 remaining civilians from a steel factory in Mariupol was underway this morning. Russia bombed the complex overnight.Here’s what the war looks like on Russian TV, where the goal is often to leave viewers confused.The VirusA mass cremation for Covid victims in New Delhi last year.Atul Loke for The New York TimesThe pandemic’s true toll: nearly 15 million excess deaths — including 4.7 million in India, nearly 10 times its official total.The F.D.A. further limited the use of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, citing concerns over a rare clotting disorder.PoliticsKarine Jean-Pierre will take over from Jen Psaki.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesKarine Jean-Pierre will become the first Black woman and first openly gay person to serve as White House press secretary.As president, Trump proposed launching missiles into Mexico to destroy drug labs and cartels, his defense secretary writes in a memoir.The White House hosted labor organizers who have unionized workplaces at Amazon, Starbucks and elsewhere.Texas plans to challenge a Supreme Court ruling requiring public schools to educate undocumented immigrants.Other Big StoriesTwo assailants, at least one armed with an ax, killed at least three people in an Israeli town.The next front in the fight over abortion rights: pills.Amber Heard accused Johnny Depp, her ex-husband, of sexual assault, seeking to counter Depp’s testimony that she had been the aggressor.The stock market had its best day in over a year on Wednesday. Then it fell sharply yesterday.New York City’s rent panel backed the largest increase since 2013, affecting more than two million people.OpinionsThe end of Roe v. Wade will worsen America’s cultural wars, Michelle Goldberg argues.Biden should cancel student debt — but only for those in precarious situations, says David Brooks.The Supreme Court lost its legitimacy long before the draft abortion ruling leaked, Jamelle Bouie writes.NFTs and cryptocurrencies were meant to liberate the internet. Instead, they’re polluting it with scams, Farhad Manjoo writes.MORNING READSHandle with care: Peek into Bob Dylan’s archive, including notebooks and fan mail.Ancient relic: Goodwill sold a Roman bust for $34.99. Its 2,000-year journey to Texas remains a mystery.Great gowns: They’re the dry cleaners to the stars.Modern Love: For a family scattered by war, a group chat is everything.A Times classic: How gender stereotypes are changing.Advice from Wirecutter: The best anti-mosquito gear.Lives Lived: Marcus Leatherdale captured downtown Manhattan in the AIDS-darkened 1980s, photographing Andy Warhol, Madonna and others. Leatherdale died at 69.ARTS AND IDEAS Products from the show “CoComelon.”Alexander Coggin for The New York TimesParents dread it. Kids love it.With vivid colors, ear-worm songs and simple animation, the cartoon series “CoComelon” has an almost hypnotic effect on toddlers. The show is the second-largest channel on YouTube and holds a firm spot on Netflix’s top 10.This is all by design — “CoComelon” is a production of Moonbug Entertainment, a London company that produces several of the world’s most popular online kids’ shows.Moonbug treats children’s shows like a science, where every aesthetic choice or potential plot point is data-driven and rigorously tested with its target audience. Should the music be louder or more mellow? Should the bus be yellow or red? The answer is yellow — infants are apparently drawn to yellow buses, as well as minor injuries and stuff covered in dirt.“The trifecta for a kid would be a dirty yellow bus that has a boo-boo,” a Moonbug exec said during a company story session. “Broken fender, broken wheel, little grimace on its face.”Read more from inside one of the pitch sessions for a kids’ show juggernaut. — Sanam Yar, a Morning writerPLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookDane Tashima for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.This veggie burger uses cabbage and mushrooms for crunch.ProfileHe has sampled Fergie in his music, vacationed with Drake and has been co-signed by Kendrick Lamar. Meet Jack Harlow.Spring CleaningMarie Kondo is here to help you tidy up your pandemic clutter.Late NightTrevor Noah has thoughts on interest rates.Take the News QuizHow well did you follow the headlines this week?Now Time to PlayThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was offhanded. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.Here’s today’s Wordle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and a clue: Bagel variety (five letters).If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.P.S. The Times’s Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns discussed their reporting about Jan. 6 on NPR’s “Fresh Air.”Here’s today’s front page.“The Daily” is about anti-abortion activists. Still Processing” is about “Fatal Attraction.”Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      Democrats’ Mystery: How to Brighten a Presidency and a National Mood

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      LAKEWOOD, Ohio — At a Whole Foods in one moderate Cleveland suburb, shoppers recently worried about war, inflation, a “scary” political climate — and a Democratic Party some saw as slow to address the nation’s burning problems.At a house party for a left-wing congressional candidate across town, attendees fretted over the high cost of living and exorbitant student loan debt as they weighed their choices in Ohio’s primary elections on Tuesday.And at a campaign event for Representative Shontel Brown here in Lakewood, a liberal city near Cleveland, not everyone seemed impressed by President Biden.“He’s OK,” allowed Yolanda Pace-Owens, 46, who works in security. She said that she had voted for Mr. Biden and still admired him, but that she was alarmed by a pandemic-era rise in violent crime. “We just got to do better,” she said.Nearly six months before the midterm elections, Mr. Biden and the Democrats face staggering challenges and signs of dampened enthusiasm among nearly every constituency that powered their 2020 presidential and 2018 midterm victories, according to polls and more than two dozen interviews with voters, elected officials and party strategists across the country.Yet Democrats are still struggling with how to even discuss the nation’s greatest challenges — much less reach a consensus on how to right the ship.The party’s problems run deep, as Mr. Biden’s lead pollster has privately warned the White House for months. Independent voters backed Mr. Biden in 2020, but his approval rating with independents now hovers in the 30s. He has underperformed with voters of color in some surveys. Warning signs have emerged among suburban voters. And Mr. Biden’s approval rating has deteriorated with young people even though he won them overwhelmingly in 2020.Yolanda Pace-Owens said that she admired Mr. Biden but that “we just got to do better.” Dustin Franz for The New York TimesIn a midterm environment heavily shaped by the president’s approval rating, all of those numbers are gravely worrying for Democratic candidates, who are left with tough questions about how to engage unsettled voters and reinvigorate their base.How much time should they spend trying to show voters they grasp the pain of inflation, compared with efforts to remind them of low unemployment? Should they pursue ambitious policies that show Democrats are fighters, or is it enough to hope for more modest victories while emphasizing all that the party has passed already?A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The 2022 election season is underway. See the full primary calendar and a detailed state-by-state breakdown.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.And even when candidates try to tell that story, is anyone listening?“Voters hear us, but I don’t know that we have convinced voters as to how these things will affect them on a personal level,” Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the third-ranking House Democrat, said in a recent interview. “We’re not connecting with the voters on the level that they can connect with.”As Mr. Biden confronts the lingering pandemic, war in Ukraine and historical headwinds — the president’s party typically loses seats in midterm elections — he has acknowledged his party’s messaging challenges, worrying recently that amid crises, “we haven’t sold the American people what we’ve actually done.”The president, a consummate retail politician who some Democrats had hoped would be more visible, is now pursuing a more robust travel schedule to sell his party’s agenda and accomplishments, and he is highlighting some contrasts with Republicans.Consumers across the country are seeing a rise in the price of everyday items, like $8.29 for a gallon of milk at a Whole Foods grocery store in Rocky River, Ohio.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesHao Pham of Cleveland filling his S.U.V. with gas, the price of which has increased.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesAllies and some voters note that polling is partially driven by anger over extraordinary events, including the war’s impact on gas prices, that the White House could not fully control. But Mr. Biden’s advisers say that the president is working to demonstrate that Democrats understand voters’ struggles and are moving to fix them, as the party’s lawmakers make a fresh push for a range of legislative priorities, especially concerning prices. On Thursday, Mr. Biden also said that he was considering wiping out some student loan debt.A new Washington Post-ABC poll also showed some positive signs for Mr. Biden and the Democrats, though Republicans retained significant advantages on issues including inflation, the economy and crime.“While President Biden and Democrats work to lower costs and continue the historic economic recovery made possible by the American Rescue Plan, Republicans have done everything they can to try to stand in the way,” Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement.Yet months of national polls show that Americans have a vastly different perception of the party in power. Even in overwhelmingly liberal Los Angeles, private Democratic polling in April found Mr. Biden’s favorability rating at only 58 percent, according to a person with direct knowledge of the data.Democratic tensions over messaging have been on display in Ohio, where candidates in this week’s primaries reflect the full spectrum of competing views.Ms. Brown, who faces a contested primary in a safely Democratic seat and was endorsed by Mr. Biden, is running hard on the bipartisan infrastructure law.She echoed other House Democrats in promoting the message that “Democrats have been delivering.”But Biden advisers have privately indicated that pitch tests poorly as a party slogan. And at another Ohio event in late April, Nina Turner, a former state senator who is challenging Ms. Brown from the left in a rematch, suggested that Democrats had not delivered nearly enough.She urged, among other priorities, universal cancellation of student debt — or, at a minimum, canceling $10,000 in federal student debt per borrower (Ms. Brown also supports some student debt forgiveness measures). Mr. Biden, who endorsed the $10,000 goal in 2020, has postponed payments, and significant student debt has been erased during his tenure, but some have called on him to do much more. He may take further action, and there is still time to make more progress on the Democratic agenda.But for now, many on the left are disappointed that Democrats, despite controlling Washington, have run aground in the divided Senate on priorities like the climate and voting rights.“People can forgive you, even if you can’t get something done,” Ms. Turner said. “What they don’t like is when you’re not fighting. And we need to see more of a fighting spirit among the Democratic Party.”Nina Turner, a progressive House candidate in Ohio, held a gathering with supporters to talk about issues they prioritized.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesOn the other end of the party’s ideological spectrum is Representative Tim Ryan, a moderate Ohio Democrat running for Senate in a state that has veered rightward. He is casting himself as a fighter for the working class and highlighting measures like the infrastructure law, while seeking some cultural and political distance from many others in his party.In an interview, Mr. Ryan cheered a ruling to eliminate mask mandates on airlines and public transportation, which is now being challenged. “Masks suck,” he said. “I think we’re all tired of it.”Asked which national Democratic surrogates he would welcome, he cited Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Senator Jon Tester of Montana and Senator Gary Peters of Michigan — but asked specifically about Mr. Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Ryan said: “This is my race. I’m going to be the face of this.” (Biden advisers noted that the president has recently appeared with Democrats in competitive races.)And as of Friday, Mr. Ryan was one of seven Democratic candidates who have run ads this year that mentioned inflation, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact. By contrast, dozens of Republican candidates and allied groups have done the same. In polls, Americans have cited inflation as a top issue.“Burying your head in the sand,” Mr. Ryan said, “is not the way to approach it.” Asked about the biggest challenges facing his party, he replied, “A response to the inflation piece is a big hurdle.”He also cited “a national brand that is not seen as connected to the working-class people, whether they’re white or Black or brown.”Representative Tim Ryan, center right, and Michael S. Regan, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, met in April at a home in Youngstown, Ohio, where lead pipes are set to be replaced thanks to new federal funding.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesLou McMahon, a registered Democrat who said he did not vote in the last two presidential elections because he did not like his choices, sounded open to Mr. Ryan in an interview at Ms. Brown’s event. But asked to assess Democrats in Washington generally, he replied, “Promise, but not delivered,” citing both stalled legislative ambitions and Mr. Biden’s pledge to help heal partisan divisions.“The targets and the aspirations were maybe beyond the reach,” said Mr. McMahon, 58, an environmental lawyer. “The reuniting that was so much of the promise hasn’t played out in reality quite that way.”Celinda Lake, a veteran Democratic strategist and a pollster on Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign, said that “there’s nobody in America more deeply disappointed in how divided America is than Joe Biden.”“He does communicate it, but I think it helps a lot when he’s on the road,” she said.Republicans face their own midterm difficulties. Many candidates have adopted former President Donald J. Trump’s relentless focus on the false notion of a stolen 2020 election, a stance that swing voters may dismiss as extreme. In some primaries, the party runs the risk of nominating seriously flawed general-election candidates.Democratic officials hope their prospects will brighten as primary contests are settled and candidates draw sharper direct contrasts with their opponents — and they are already trying to define that choice.On one side, they say, are bomb-throwing Republicans who are caught up in cultural battles, fealty to Trumpism and a controversial tax and social safety net proposal. On the other, Democrats argue, is a party that passed major infrastructure and pandemic relief measures, and spearheaded the confirmation of the first Black woman to the Supreme Court. Mr. Biden has also moved to combat gun violence, confronting Republican efforts to portray Democrats as weak on crime.Many Democratic candidates are also raising vast sums of money, a sign of voter engagement.“Our members have a great record of results, and the other side is offering nothing except anger and fear,” said Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, the chair of the House Democratic campaign arm. “My message is: We’re getting good things done. We’re part of the solution. Give us a little more time.”Time indeed remains, and Democrats could reverse their fortunes in an unpredictable environment — but it is also possible that in the fall, the outlook will be largely unchanged.“The problem with midterm elections is, they’re not really a choice,” said David Axelrod, who served as a senior adviser to former President Barack Obama. “They tend to be a referendum on the party that controls the White House.” 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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      The Unsettling Warning in France’s Election

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      A record number of abstentions, and a strictly binary choice for voters — many of whom said they were picking the lesser of two evils — are trouble signs even within a mature democracy.You should know at least two crucial facts about the French presidential election, whose final round was held last Sunday.The first is that Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate known for her warm relationship with Vladimir Putin and her hostility toward the European Union and immigrants, lost the election — but with the best showing that her party has ever had, carrying 41.5 percent of the second-round vote.The second is that Emmanuel Macron, the incumbent president from the center-right En Marche party, won the election — but with the lowest share of registered voters of any candidate since 1969, because of historically low turnout and high numbers of votes that were cast blank or spoiled in a show of protest.Of those two facts, the first has garnered the most attention. But the second may be more important.Vote, or hostage negotiation?In the first round of the presidential election, Macron came in first, but with nowhere close to a majority. He got barely more than a quarter of the total votes, with 27.85 percent. Le Pen came next with 23.15 percent, and the leftist candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, got 21.95 percent. The rest of the votes were divided between smaller parties.That’s actually pretty common: Today, in many mature democracies, it’s uncommon for any party or ideological faction to get more than about a third of the votes. In the German federal election last year, the center-left party came first, but with only 25.7 percent of the vote — strikingly similar to the numbers for Macron in the first round. In multiparty parliamentary systems, that results in coalition governments in which two or more parties work together — take Germany, again, where a three-party coalition now governs.Ms. Le Pen had a strong showing in both rounds of the 2022 French presidential election.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesBut in direct presidential systems, the winner takes all. And for many voters, that means that elections are less a matter of who they want to support than of who they most want to oppose.So when Le Pen made the second round runoff of the French election, the contest took on the tenor of a hostage negotiation. Macron argued that Le Pen was an existential threat to France, and called for all other candidates’ supporters to unite behind him in order to prevent her from winning the presidency. Mélenchon, the leftist candidate, made a similar plea to his supporters. “We know who we will never vote for,” he said on April 10. “We must not give a single vote for Madame Le Pen.”In the end, enough voters aligned behind Macron to keep the far right out of the presidency. And it seems that many heeded the calls to hold their noses and vote for Macron, despite their aversion to him, in order to protect the country from the far right: According to one poll, about 45 percent of those who voted for him did so only to oppose Le Pen.But the same poll found that the opposite was also true: About 45 percent of Le Pen voters were more interested in opposing Macron than in supporting the far right. Other data bears that out: The overseas French territories Martinique and Guadeloupe supported Mélenchon in the first round, but then gave a majority to Le Pen in the second.Others withdrew entirely. Abstentions and blank ballots hit record highs in this election — a notable development in France, where turnout has historically been around 80 percent.A warning from historyExperts who study France’s history of revolutions and democratic collapse see signs of danger in a system that pushes a wide spectrum of voters into a binary choice between what some see as the lesser of two evils.So how do you tell the difference between normal political anger that can work itself out through a series of elections without leading to serious instability, and something dangerous enough to require structural change to the system itself?A woman voting at a polling station in Saint Denis, in the suburbs of Paris. The election saw a high level of voter abstentions.Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times“That’s the question of French history, right?” Terrence Peterson, a political historian at Florida International University, told me. “Historians have been asking that question about France for a long time, given its history of repeated revolutions.”He saw particular cause for concern in the rising levels of abstentions. “When voters express that they feel disenfranchised, if a majority of them do, then that’s a clear sign” of serious trouble, he said.Some in France have begun to call for an overhaul of the Constitution to make the system more representative. Mélenchon has called for a new Constitution to be drafted via a people’s constituent assembly. In an editorial last week in the French newspaper Le Monde, Frederic Sawicki, a political scientist at Pantheon-Sorbonne University, argued that the lack of proportional representation had brought the far right “to the gates of power” in France.Camille Robcis, a Columbia University historian who studies 20th-century French politics and institutions, said that she was not surprised to hear such calls. “You have a kind of disconnect between the representatives and the popular vote, the electorate,” she said. “The result is that these disenchanted, disenfranchised voters are moving to the extremes.”How am I doing?I’d love your feedback on this newsletter. Please email thoughts and suggestions to interpreter@nytimes.com. You can also follow me on Twitter.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      in Elections

      Convincing Victory Disguises Challenges for France’s Macron

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      France’s runoff election was marked by a record level of abstention, and many cast a ballot only to keep the far right from power — a testament to a growing disillusionment.ROYE, France — There is no doubt that President Emmanuel Macron of France won a convincing re-election over Marine Le Pen, his far-right challenger, on Sunday. Mr. Macron scored a thumping 17 point margin of victory, becoming the first French leader to be re-elected to a second term in 20 years.In the view of many, the electoral system worked as it was intended to, with nearly 60 percent of those who voted joining together to defend against a xenophobic and nationalist far right widely regarded as a threat to French democracy.That is, perhaps, unless you are a supporter of Ms. Le Pen, who was blocked in the final round for a second consecutive time.“I think we’re heading into five more years of crisis, probably worse, because people are just fed up,” Sébastien Denneulin, 46, a Le Pen supporter, said on Monday morning in Roye, a northern far-right stronghold.Even as Ms. Le Pen has edged her party into the mainstream, ensconcing it firmly in the political establishment, her supporters say they are growing frustrated with a lack of representation in the political system.In the far-right stronghold of Roye, in northern France, two out of three voters backed Marine Le Pen in the runoff.James Hill for The New York TimesThe far right enjoyed its strongest ever showing at the ballot box on Sunday, as Ms. Le Pen widened her appeal with pocketbook issues important in parts of the country like this northern region, where in the past two generations voters have shifted to the far right from the political left along with deindustrialization.The challenge now for Mr. Macron will be how to lure back into the political fold the 41.5 percent of voters who cast ballots for Ms. Le Pen — and the roughly 28 percent who opted not to vote at all. Despite the president’s clear victory, the election results disguised myriad challenges that could make his next five years in office even more tumultuous than the last.As French news media organizations drew up maps of the nationwide breakdown of the runoff vote, they showed a widening and deepening fracture along the French equivalent of American blue and red states.In the reddest areas of France, there was frustration that Ms. Le Pen had been defeated once again and a strong sentiment that her supporters were continuing to be shut out of the political system.Supporters of Ms. Le Pen in Paris on Sunday. In the reddest areas of France, there is a strong feeling among them that they are being shut out of the political system.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesIn Roye, some people gathered at the QG brasserie voiced anger when they learned of the results on their smartphones on Sunday evening. One man set fire to his voter’s card.Tony Rochon, 39, a roofer, said he had voted for a Le Pen — either Marine or her father, Jean-Marie — all of his life. But each time, he said, other political parties had united to deny a Le Pen victory in the presidential race. Then the same thing had happened in legislative elections — also a two-round system — effectively marginalizing Ms. Le Pen’s influence in Parliament.In 2017, for instance, while Ms. Le Pen garnered 34 percent of the vote in the presidential election, her party secured only eight seats in Parliament — not even enough to form a parliamentary group.That year, Mr. Macron promised to introduce proportional representation in Parliament, which experts say would better reflect the population’s political beliefs. But he failed to fulfill his pledge.“That’s why the only option for us is to take to the streets,” said Mr. Rochon, who joined the Yellow Vest anti-government protests in Paris. “Macron has no legitimacy.”Tony Rochon, center right, holding his daughter, reached in frustration for his friend’s phone as news of Mr. Macron’s victory came in. He had voted for a Le Pen his whole life.James Hill for The New York TimesHe and his wife, Adelaide Rochon, 33, a dental assistant who has also always voted for Ms. Le Pen’s party, said they believed that the vote had been rigged.“We don’t know a single person around us who voted for Macron,” Ms. Rochon said. “It’s impossible that he won.”Not impossible, actually.In Roye, a town of 6,000 people, two out of three voters backed Ms. Le Pen in the runoff. But nationwide Mr. Macron drew many votes — 47 percent, according to one poll — not necessarily because people endorsed him, but because they joined the so-called Republican front against the far right, whose politics remain anathema to a majority of French despite Ms. Le Pen’s persistent efforts to remake and soften her image.For others, like Madeleine Rosier, a member of the leftist France Unbowed, a choice between Mr. Macron and what she deemed an unacceptable far-right candidate was no choice at all. She did not cast a ballot on Sunday after voting for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the veteran leftist who came in third place in the first round.“I didn’t want to grant Emmanuel Macron legitimacy,” she said.The abstention rate — the highest in a runoff since 1969 — reflected the widespread disillusionment with the political system that sent protesters from towns like Roye to the Champs-Élysées in Paris as part of the anti-government Yellow Vest movement in 2018, the biggest political crisis of Mr. Macron’s first term.Madeleine Rosier, a member of France Unbowed, did not vote on Sunday because she “didn’t want to grant Emmanuel Macron legitimacy.”James Hill for The New York TimesThat anger persists in many pockets of the country. In another measure of political disillusionment, more than three million people cast blank or null-and-void ballots — and that does not include the 13.7 million who opted not to vote at all.Étienne Ollion, a sociologist and professor at the Polytechnique engineering school, said the importance of such voters and those who reluctantly backed Mr. Macron to keep Ms. Le Pen from power, as well as the level of abstention give Mr. Macron “a relatively limited legitimacy.”The election results underscored a growing sense of “democratic fatigue and democratic fracture” in France, Mr. Ollion said.Given Mr. Macron’s unfulfilled pledge to reform Parliament, Chloé Morin, a political scientist at the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, a Paris-based think tank, said there were doubts about Mr. Macron’s “capacity to take into account this extremely divided political landscape and opposition parties that will inevitably, in all logic, be little represented” in Parliament.Daniel Cohn-Bendit, an ally of Mr. Macron and a former Green member of the European Parliament, said in an interview that “an unfair French electoral system” had led to governing that ignores the political opposition and various actors of society.“To have a Parliament where someone who gets 42 percent of the votes only has about 20 lawmakers, that’s unacceptable,” he said, referring to Ms. Le Pen.Shortly after Mr. Macron was re-elected on Sunday, there were immediate signs that discontent surrounding French democracy would mark his second term.Demonstrators in Lyon, France, after Mr. Macron’s re-election on Sunday. The sign reads, “Down with Macron, the Robin of the bourgeoisie,” referring to Robin Hood.Laurent Cipriani/Associated PressHundreds of protesters gathered in Paris and other big cities to oppose Mr. Macron’s second term. The protests were marred by violent clashes with the police, who fired tear gas in Paris to disperse the crowd.Protesters in Paris converged from the city center to the large Place de la République, chanting a song originating from the Yellow Vest movement, “We are here, even if Macron doesn’t want it, we are here!”By midnight, the police had cleared the Place de la République of protesters. But they had scrawled, in red, a warning on the large statue of Marianne, an emblem of the French Republic, in the middle of the square: “Beware of revenge when all the poor people stand up.”Norimitsu Onishi More