Russian Invasion of Ukraine (2022)

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      Where Mike Johnson Stands on Key Issues: Ukraine, LGBTQ Rights and More

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      The new House speaker, an evangelical Christian, has a staunchly conservative record on gay rights, abortion, gun safety and more.Speaker Mike Johnson, the little-known congressman from Louisiana who won the gavel on Wednesday, is deeply conservative on both fiscal and social issues, reflecting the G.O.P.’s sharp lurch to the right.Mr. Johnson, a lawyer, also played a leading role in former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, helping to push a lawsuit to throw out the results in four battleground states he lost and then offering members of Congress a legal argument upon which to justify their votes to invalidate the results.He has a career rating of 92 percent from the American Conservative Union and 90 percent from Heritage Action for America.Here’s where he stands on six key issues.Government fundingMr. Johnson is a fiscal conservative who believes Congress has a “moral and constitutional duty” to balance the budget, lower spending and “pursue continued pro-growth tax reforms and permanent tax reductions,” according to his website.He voted in favor of the deal in May to suspend the debt ceiling negotiated between former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the Biden administration. But alongside 89 other Republicans, Mr. Johnson voted against the stopgap funding bill Mr. McCarthy put forth last month to stave off a government shutdown just hours before it was to commence. That bill ultimately passed with more Democratic than Republican support and cost Mr. McCarthy the gavel.In a letter this week, before he was elected speaker, Mr. Johnson proposed a short-term funding bill to avoid a shutdown and an aggressive calendar for passing yearlong spending bills in the interim. But he did not specify what spending levels he would support in the temporary bill, and many Republicans have refused to back such measures without substantial cuts that cannot pass the Democratic-controlled Senate or be signed by President Biden.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please More

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      Tim Scott Opposes Package Tying Aid to Israel and Ukraine

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      The South Carolina senator and 2024 presidential candidate said a “longer process” was needed to determine how much aid to send to Ukraine, while Israel demanded immediate attention.Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina said on Sunday that he would not support a request from President Biden to package aid for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan and funding for border security, even though he has endorsed U.S. spending for each of those purposes.“I believe that leveraging the challenges in the war with Israel to get more assistance for Ukraine at that level of $60 billion is too much, and we need to have a single focus on bringing Congress together behind the support for Israel,” Mr. Scott, a 2024 Republican candidate, said on “This Week” on ABC News.At first, he indicated that his objection was mainly to the possibility of delaying aid to Israel by combining it with funding on which Congress is more divided. He said that he believed aid to Israel alone “would pass overnight,” and that a “splintered” package would be harder to pass.But when the interviewer, Jonathan Karl, asked whether he would actually vote against the package if it came to the Senate floor, Mr. Scott said he would.“I will in the current construct,” he said, adding that a “longer process” was needed to debate how much aid to send to Ukraine. “Israel is at the beginning of a long, protracted war,” he said. “I think we are much better off, better served as a nation, focusing our resources and our attention immediately on Israel, and continuing to provide the kind of level of accountability and responsibility the American people want to see as it relates to the resources for Ukraine.”His campaign did not elaborate on his comments, and pointed to a CNN interview in which he said largely the same thing, criticizing the package for including “more money for Ukraine than it does for Israel.”The request that Mr. Biden submitted to Congress on Friday included about $61 billion for Ukraine; $14 billion for Israel; $7 billion for Taiwan and other Indo-Pacific allies; $9 billion for humanitarian aid in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza; and $14 billion for border security in the United States.Mr. Scott is not the only Republican to object to putting those pieces in one package, an effort by the Biden administration to pressure lawmakers who oppose funding Ukraine to support the proposal in the interest of funding Israel, and vice versa.Vivek Ramaswamy, another Republican presidential candidate, denounced the proposal at a campaign event in Iowa on Saturday. Mr. Ramaswamy has long opposed aid to Ukraine, and he said at the event that Israel’s military objectives in Gaza were unclear and that helping Israel would risk a broader conflict in the Middle East.But Mr. Scott’s rejection of the package is notable because he is on the record as supporting every component.He has been one of the most outspoken Republican candidates in favor of helping Ukraine repel Russia’s invasion: He accused Mr. Biden last year of “waiting too long to provide too little support,” and he has described a Ukrainian victory as a matter of American interest, arguing that it would discourage a Russian incursion into NATO territory that would pull the United States into a wider war. He has endorsed sending weapons to Taiwan. And, in the same interview on Sunday in which he rejected the package, he called for funding to secure the southern border of the United States.Almost the entire Republican presidential field has endorsed military aid to Israel, but the candidates are divided on aid to Ukraine: In addition to Mr. Ramaswamy, former President Donald J. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida have said they want to cut it. Only a few, though, have voiced their positions on Mr. Biden’s proposal.Among them is former Vice President Mike Pence, who told NBC News on Sunday that he supported aid for Israel and Ukraine “together or separately.” More

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      Poland Election: Centrists Poised to Oust Law and Justice Party

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      The election, seen as one of the most significant in decades, was cast as a choice between the defense of Polish sovereignty and liberal values.Centrist and progressive forces appeared capable of forming a new government in Poland after securing more seats in a critical general election on Sunday, despite the governing nationalist party, Law and Justice, winning the most votes for a single party.Exit polls showing a strong second place finish by the main opposition group, Civic Coalition, and better than expected results for two smaller centrist and progressive parties suggested a dramatic upset that would frustrate the governing party’s hope of an unprecedented third consecutive term.A jubilant Donald Tusk, Civic Coalition’s leader, declared the projected results a resounding “win for democracy” that would end the rule of Law and Justice, known by its Polish acronym PiS, in power since 2015.“We did it! We really did!” Mr. Tusk, a former prime minister, told supporters Sunday night. “This is the end of this bad time! This is the end of PiS rule!”The election for a new Parliament, held after a vicious campaign in the highly polarized nation, was closely watched abroad, including in Russia and Ukraine, and viewed by many Poles as the most consequential vote since they rejected communism in the country’s first partly free election in 1989. Reflecting the high-stakes, nearly 73 percent of the electorate voted, the highest turnout in a Polish election since the end of communist rule.Both the governing Law and Justice and Civic Coalition cast the election as an existential moment of decision on Poland’s future as a stable democratic state.Voting on Sunday in Gdansk, Poland. The election in Poland, held after an often vicious campaign in the highly polarized nation, has been closely watched abroad.Mateusz Slodkowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIf early forecasts turn out to be correct when final official results are announced, probably on Tuesday, Civic Coalition and its potential partners won 248 seats in the 460-member legislature, compared with 200 won by Law and Justice.Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the governing party’s chairman and Poland’s de facto leader for the last eight years, also claimed victory, declaring the vote “a great success for our formation, our project for Poland.” But he acknowledged that his party would have trouble forming a government if the exit polls are correct.Konfederacja, a radical right-wing grouping that shares many of the nationalist views of Law and Justice, won only 6.2 percent of the vote, giving it 12 seats. Exit polls are generally reliable in Poland but some experts cautioned that the unusually high turnout could make them less accurate. Because of long queues at polling stations voting continued late into the night in some places.Exit polls released by Poland’s three main television channels indicated that Law and Justice had won the most votes overall — 36.8 percent — compared with 31.6 percent for Civic Coalition. Two smaller parties, Third Way, an alliance of centrists, and The Left reached the necessary threshold to enter the more powerful lower house of Parliament, the Sejm.Seats in the Sejm are apportioned under a complicated proportional system that makes it difficult to determine with precision the future balance of power until all of the votes have been counted and those of smaller parties that failed to reach the threshold (5 percent for parties and 8 percent for coalitions) are redistributed among the top finishers.Przemyslaw Adynowski, a Warsaw lawyer, said he had voted for Civic Coalition in what he described as “probably the most important election in 30 years.” A victory for Law and Justice, he added, would complete Poland’s “phase of transition from democracy to an authoritarian system” and put it at odds with its allies in NATO and the European Union, except for Hungary, a much smaller nation with little clout.Campaign posters last week in Gorno, Poland. The governing Law and Justice party and its main rival, Civic Coalition, cast the election as an existential moment of decision on Poland’s future as a stable democratic state.Wojtek Radwanski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPiotr Buras, the head of the Warsaw office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, declared the election “a triumph of both democracy and liberalism” that “opens the way for a massive reorientation of Poland’s domestic and European policy.”The result was particularly striking given that Law and Justice enjoyed a big advantage thanks to its tight control of Poland’s public broadcasting system, a nationwide network of television and radio stations that is supposed to be neutral but mostly served as a propaganda bullhorn for the incumbent party.The playing field was further tilted in the governing party’s favor by the holding of a referendum alongside the parliamentary election. Voters were asked to answer four loaded questions about immigration and other issues that were clearly intended to cast the European Union, and by association the opposition, in a bad light.One asked: “Do you support the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa, in accordance with the forced relocation mechanism imposed by European bureaucracy?”The referendum short-circuited campaign finance restrictions, allowing Law and Justice to deploy state funds to promote supposedly neutral information about questions heavily slanted in its favor. Many voters, however, declined to answer referendum questions, viewing the exercise as a stunt by the governing party.Law and Justice hoped that the referendum would help revive an anti-migrant message that has for years been its electoral strong suit, but one that lost its edge in the final weeks of the campaign when some of its officials became embroiled in a visas-for-cash scandal. Evidence that a large number of Polish work visas, valid across the European Union, had been sold to African and Asian migrants led to the abrupt resignation of a deputy foreign minister and his removal from a list of candidates put forward by Law and Justice.Mr. Kaczysnki, the party’s chairman, warned that a vote for his opponents, led by Mr. Tusk, a former president of the European Council, the European Union’s main power center, would mean subordinating Poland’s national interests to those of Berlin and Brussels and the end of Poland as an independent democratic country.“They intend to eliminate democracy and any traces of the rule of law in Poland,” Mr. Kaczysnki said this month at a party convention.Mr. Tusk’s camp, for its part, presented Mr. Kaczynski as a mortal threat to liberal democracy and to Poland’s continued membership of the European Union, with which the departing Law and Justice government clashed repeatedly over the rule of law, the protection of minority rights and other issues.The election campaign was so vituperative and unsettling that many Poles, particularly opposition supporters, could not wait for it to be over.“It was awful, so brutal,” said Ewa Zabowska, a retired Health Ministry official, after casting her vote for the opposition at a Warsaw primary school. “It went on for too long. Nonstop lies for months.”What Ms. Zabowska viewed as lies, however, fans of Law and Justice accepted as alarming truths. “Tusk is an emissary of Germany — he will do exactly what Germany dictates,” Antoni Zdziaborski, a retired Warsaw tram driver, said after voting for the governing party.Anatol Magdziarz in Warsaw contributed reporting. More

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      Has Support for Ukraine Peaked? Some Fear So.

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      The war in the Middle East, anxiety about the commitment of the U.S., and divisions in Europe are worrying Kyiv that aid from the West may wane.Clearly anxious, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine went in person this week to see NATO defense ministers in Brussels, worried that the war between Israel and Hamas will divert attention — and needed weapons — from Ukraine’s long and bloody struggle against the Russian invasion.American and NATO officials moved to reassure Mr. Zelensky, pledging another $2 billion in immediate military aid. But even before the war in the Mideast began last week, there was a strong sense in Europe, watching Washington, that the world had reached “peak Ukraine” — that support for Kyiv’s fight against Russia’s invasion would never again be as high as it was a few months ago.The new run for the White House by former President Donald J. Trump is shaking confidence that Washington will continue large-scale support for Ukraine. But the concern, Europeans say, is larger than Mr. Trump and extends to much of his Republican Party, which has made cutting support for Ukraine a litmus test of conservative credibility.Even in Europe, Ukraine is an increasingly divisive issue. Voters in Slovakia handed a victory to Robert Fico, a former prime minister sympathetic to Russia. A vicious election campaign in Poland, one of Ukraine’s staunchest allies, has emphasized strains with Kyiv. A far right opposed to aiding Ukraine’s war effort has surged in Germany, where Chancellor Olaf Scholz is struggling to win voters over to his call for a stronger military.“I’m pessimistic,” said Yelyzaveta Yasko, a Ukrainian member of Parliament who is on the foreign affairs committee. “There are many questions now — weapons production, security infrastructure, economic aid, the future of NATO,” she said, but noted that answers to those questions had a timeline of at least five years.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, right, talking with Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on Wednesday at a NATO meeting in Brussels.Olivier Matthys/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“We have been fighting for 600 days,” she added, “and I don’t see the leadership and planning that is required to take real action — not just statements — in support of Ukraine.”Even more depressing, Ms. Yasko said at a recent security forum in Warsaw, is the way domestic politics are “instrumentalizing Ukraine.”“Opinion polls show the people still support Ukraine,” she said, “but politicians start to use Ukraine as a topic to fight each other, and Ukraine becomes a victim.”“I’m worried,” she continued. “I don’t like the way my country is used as a tool.”The previous bipartisan support for Ukraine in the United States no longer seems to hold. “There’s less pushback against the anti-Ukrainian stuff already out there,” said Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the former president of Estonia, mentioning the Republican right wing and influential voices like Elon Musk. “It’s dangerous.”Should Washington cut its aid to Ukraine, deciding that it is not worth the cost, top European officials, including the European Union’s head of foreign affairs and security policy, Josep Borrell Fontelles, openly acknowledge that Europe cannot fill the gap.He was in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, when Congress excluded support from Ukraine in its temporary budget deal. “That was certainly not expected, and certainly not good news,” Mr. Borrell told a summit meeting of E.U. leaders this month in Spain.European Union’s head of foreign affairs and security policy, Josep Borrell Fontelles, right, with Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, this month in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.Ukraine Ministry of Foreign Affairs, via EPA, via Shutterstock“Europe cannot replace the United States,” he said, even as it proposes more aid. “Certainly, we can do more, but the United States is something indispensable for the support to Ukraine.” That same day, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said that without Western aid, Ukraine could not survive more than a week.European leaders have pledged to send more air-defense systems to Ukraine to help fend off a possible new Russian air campaign targeting energy infrastructure as winter looms. Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands said on Friday that his country would send additional Patriot missiles, which have proved effective in defending the skies over Kyiv, according to Mr. Zelensky’s office.At the same time, European vows to supply one million artillery shells to Ukraine by March are falling short, with countries supplying only 250,000 shells from stocks — a little more than one month of Ukraine’s current rate of fire — and factories still gearing up for more production.Adm. Rob Bauer, who is the chairman of the NATO Military Committee, said in Warsaw that Europe’s military industry had geared up too slowly and still needed to pick up the pace.“We started to give away from half-full or lower warehouses in Europe” to aid Ukraine, he said, “and therefore the bottom of the barrel is now visible.”Even before the outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East, a senior NATO official said that the mood about Ukraine was gloomy. Still, the official said that the Europeans were spending more on the military and that he expected Congress to continue aid to Ukraine, even if not the $43 billion authorized previously.Malcolm Chalmers, the deputy director of the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based defense research institution, said a key issue now is Ukrainian will and resources in what has become a war of attrition. “It’s not really about us anymore, it’s about them,” he said. “The issue is Ukrainian resilience.”Ukrainians will quietly admit to difficulties with morale as the war grinds on, but they see no option other than to continue the fight, whatever happens in the West.Soldiers with the 128th Brigade repairing a broken down Carnation, a self-propelled artillery piece, before taking it back to the front line in September in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine.Lynsey Addario for The New York TimesBut some say that they are fearful that President Biden, facing what could be a difficult re-election campaign against Mr. Trump, will try to push Kyiv to get into negotiations for a cease-fire with Russia by next summer, to show that he is committed to peace.That worry is likely to be exaggerated, American officials suggest, given Mr. Biden’s continuing strong support for Ukraine, which is echoed in American opinion polls. But there remains confusion about any end goal that does not foresee Ukraine pushing all Russian troops out of sovereign Ukraine, or any clear path to negotiations with a Russia that shows no interest in talking.As Gabrielius Landsbergis, the foreign minister of Lithuania, said at the Warsaw security forum, the mantra “as long as it takes” fails to define “it,” let alone “long.” For him, “it” should mean driving the invading Russians out of all of Ukraine, including Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014.In private, at least, other European officials consider that highly unlikely.Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister and foreign minister, suggested that NATO’s 75th anniversary summit meeting next summer in Washington will be tense because of Ukraine, as it will come at the height of the American presidential campaign. Any invitation for Ukraine to join NATO is likely to help Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican candidate, Mr. Bildt said.But while many worry about the possibility of declining American support for Ukraine, the potential for backsliding is not limited to the United States, as the costs of the war are more deeply felt in Europe.In its campaign in Poland, for elections this weekend, the governing Law and Justice Party has complained angrily that Ukrainian grain exports are flooding the Polish market, damaging the farmers who are a key element of the party’s support and underlining the implications for Polish agriculture should Ukraine join the European Union.Mr. Zelensky responded that “it is alarming to see how some in Europe, some of our friends in Europe, play out solidarity in a political theater — making a thriller from the grain.”Grain stored in Leszczany, Poland, in April.Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York TimesThe Polish government, fighting for votes with parties farther to the right, then said it would cease military aid to Ukraine, even though it has already provided an enormous amount early in the war.Anti-Russian sentiment is a given in Poland, but the animosity toward Germany, an E.U. and NATO ally, was striking, too, said Slawomir Debski, the director the of Polish Institute of International Affairs.He described the campaign as “very dirty,” with wild accusations playing on strong anti-German, anti-Russian, anti-European Union sentiments, combined with growing tensions with Ukraine.It was all a sharp contrast to Poland’s embrace of Ukrainian refugees and important early provision of tanks, fighter jets and ammunition just last year.“I warned many people, including the Americans, that this government is being accused of doing too much for Ukraine, so be careful,” Mr. Debski said.Michal Baranowski, a Pole who is the managing director for the German Marshall Fund East, said he was “disheartened because Polish political leaders know we need to stay the course in Ukraine, but they are letting emotions and politics get the better of them.”Polish division, however political, does not stay in Poland, Mr. Baranowski warned. “The effect of this on the United States and the Republican Party is terrible,” he said.Constant Méheut More

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      Growing Wariness of Aid to Ukraine Hangs Over Polish Election

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      Last year, Poland was one of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters. But pressure from the right to focus more on domestic problems is pushing that support to the center stage of Sunday’s election.The radical right-wing candidate running for Parliament in Poland’s deep south wants to slash taxes, regulations on business and welfare benefits. Most striking, however, is his vow to remove a small Ukrainian flag that was hoisted last year on a town hall balcony as a gesture of solidarity with Poland’s eastern neighbor.He wants it taken down, not because he supports Russia, he says, but because Poland should focus on helping its own people, not cheering for Ukraine.In a country where millions of citizens rallied last year to help fleeing Ukrainians, and where the government threw itself into providing weapons for use against Russia’s invading army, complaints about the burden imposed by the war used to be confined to a tiny fringe. A general election set for Sunday, however, is pushing them toward center stage.That is due in large part to the vocal carping about Ukraine from candidates like Ryszard Wilk, the owner of a small photography business in the southern Polish town of Nowy Sacz. He is the electoral standard-bearer in the region for Konfederacja, or Confederation, an unruly alliance of economic libertarians, anti-vaxxers, anti-immigration zealots and belligerent nationalists that is now unusually united in opposition to aiding Ukraine.“We have already given them too much,” Mr. Wilk said in an interview early this week. He was traveling during a campaign swing through his mountainous and deeply conservative home region, a longtime bastion of support for Poland’s right-wing governing party, Law and Justice.Candidates from the Konfederacja list in the upcoming parliamentary elections meeting with potential voters at a volunteer fire department station in Limanowa, Poland.Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York Times“We don’t want Ukraine to lose the war, but the burden on Poland and its taxpayers is too high,” Mr. Wilk added. “Poland should be helping Poles.”The growing reservation in Poland comes at a critical time for Ukraine, which is struggling in its counteroffensive against Russia and scrambling to stem an erosion of support from Western allies. Sunday’s vote in Poland comes after an election two weeks ago in neighboring Slovakia that was won by a Russia-friendly populist party that wants to halt sending arms to Ukraine.Long dismissed by liberals as a collection of extremist cranks, Konfederacja has jumped on the question of how much Poland should help Ukraine as a potential vote-winner, channeling what opinion surveys show to be modest but growing currents of anti-Ukrainian sentiment.Konfederacja is still less a party than a jumble of niche and often contradictory causes — from small-state libertarianism to big-state nationalism — but “they are all anti-Ukrainian, though for different reasons,” said Przemyslaw Witkowski, an expert on Poland’s far-right who teaches at Collegium Civitas, a private university in Warsaw.“Anti-Ukraine feeling and sympathy for Russia is one of the few elements that glues them all together,” he added.Konfederacja has no chance of winning on Sunday and opinion polls indicate that its public support, which surged to 15 percent over the summer, slipped after Law and Justice started echoing some of its views, particularly on Ukraine. By threatening to outflank the governing party, itself a deeply conservative force, on the far right in a tight election, Konfederacja helped prod the Polish government into curbing its previously unbridled enthusiasm for backing Ukraine.The Ukrainian flag hanging from the town hall in Nowy Sacz, Poland. A radical right-wing candidate for Parliament wants the flag taken down.Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York TimesThe result has been a sharp souring in recent weeks in relations between Warsaw and Kyiv, particularly over Ukrainian grain imports. The issue triggered an ill-tempered tiff last month when Poland’s government, led by Law and Justice, banned the import of grain from Ukraine in an effort to protect Polish farmers — and avoid defections in its vital rural base.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine exacerbated tensions by insinuating in a speech at the United Nations that Poland, by blocking grain deliveries, had aligned itself with Russia. And last month, Ukraine filed a complaint against Poland with the World Trade Organization over grain.Infuriated by what it saw as Mr. Zelensky’s ingratitude, Poland denounced the Ukrainian president’s remark as “astonishing” and “unfair.” It also briefly suggested it was halting the delivery of weapons but, after an uproar, said arms would continue to flow.Fearful of losing its grip on Ukraine-skeptic voters to Law and Justice, Konfederacja leaders in Warsaw drew up a bill totaling 101 billion Polish zloty (around $24 billion) to cover all the money they said Ukraine owed Poland for military and other aid like assistance to the millions of Ukrainians who fled the war.Ryszard Wilk, center, the electoral standard-bearer for Konfederacja in southern Poland during a pre-election barbecue party for supporters in Zakopane, Poland.Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York TimesIn Nowy Sacz — the capital of an electoral district encompassing farmland and resort towns — Mr. Wilk sent a letter to the local mayor demanding, unsuccessfully, the removal of a Ukrainian flag from the town hall and an end to welfare payments to refugees from Ukraine.“We see no reason to pay benefits to foreigners, we see no reason for Ukrainians to receive Polish pensions,” Mr. Wilk wrote. “We see no reason for hanging the flag of a country that is declaring a trade war on us and complaining to the W.T.O.”Sunday’s election, which opinion polls indicate will be a tight race between Law and Justice and its strongest rival, Civic Coalition, a grouping of center-right and liberal forces, is unlikely to put Poland on the same openly anti-Ukrainian path as Hungary or Slovakia.But the fight for votes has introduced a level of discord that has already comforted the Kremlin’s hopes that Western solidarity with Ukraine is fraying, even in Poland, where hostility to Russia runs very deep.And if, as opinion polls suggest is likely, neither of the top two parties wins enough seats to form a new government on its own, Konfederacja could become a potential kingmaker, though it insists it won’t join either of the front-runners in a coalition government.A billboard promoting candidates from Konfederacja in the upcoming parliamentary election hangs on an apartment building in Nowy Sacz, Poland.Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York TimesIts Five Point election manifesto promises lower taxes, simplified regulations for entrepreneurs, cheaper housing for everyone and “zero social benefits for Ukrainians.” The program replaces an earlier agenda put forward by one of its national leaders, Slawomir Mentzen, in 2019: “We do not want: Jews, homosexuals, abortion, taxes and the European Union.”Mr. Wilk, who heads the party’s list of candidates in the south, said the earlier program was meant as a joke and did not reflect Konfederacja’s current direction. “We are definitely a right-wing party, but mostly on economics, not this other stuff,” he said.Surveys of public opinion suggest that bashing Ukraine is not something most Poles want, but that it resonates among some voters as the war drags on.Eighty-five percent of Poles, according to a study released this summer by the University of Warsaw, want to help Ukraine in its war with Russia, but the share of respondents with a strong preference in favor of Ukraine fell to 40 percent in June from 62 percent in January. And the study found that “for the first time, we are dealing with a situation when the majority of Poles (55 percent) are against additional aid.”An outdoor barbecue organized last Sunday by Konfederacja for voters in the mountain resort town of Zakopane drew only a handful of people, though it was cold and rainy. Those who did attend, all men, were fully behind the party’s stance on Ukraine.Wojciech Tylka, a Konfederacja supporter, with his son, listen to candidates in the parliamentary elections during a barbecue event organised in Zakopane, Poland.Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York Times“I will never tolerate the Ukrainian flag flying here in Poland,” said Wojciech Tylka, a professional musician who brought his three children along to hear Mr. Wilk and fellow candidates rail against taxation, social benefits and Ukraine’s drain on Polish resources. “Only the Polish flag should fly.”“If Ukrainians don’t like this, they should go home,” Mr. Tylka added.Disgusted by politicians of all stripes, Mr. Tylka said he had not voted in an election for more than 15 years, but that he would definitely vote for Konfederacja on Sunday.Desperate to hang on to conservative voters in the region, Law and Justice sent one of its best-known known national figures, Ryszard Terlecki, to lead its list of candidates in the district.Appearing Monday at a raucous pre-election debate at a university in Nowy Sacz with Mr. Wilk and four other opposition candidates, Mr. Terlecki said that Law and Justice would continue to help Ukraine “but must also take Polish interests into account.” He defended the government’s ban on the import of Ukrainian grain.Józef Klimowski, a shepherd whose flock of sheep blocked access to a recent campaign event for Mr. Wilk, said he didn’t care about politics but would vote for Law and Justice because it had found sponsors for his favorite local ice hockey team.After the debate, Artur Czernecki, a local Law and Justice politician, said he understood why Mr. Wilk has made an issue of Ukraine and its flag on Nowy Sacz’s town hall: “Every party is looking for ways to stand out,” he said. But, as deputy speaker of the City Council, Mr. Czernecki added that he would not allow the flag issue to be put to a vote, at least not until the election is over.“I just hope that after the election everything will calm down,” he said.Election posters hanging on an abandoned building in Nowy Sacz, Poland. The country’s parliamentary elections are set for Sunday.Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York TimesAnatol Magdziarz in Warsaw contributed reporting More

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      Trump’s Remarks on Hezbollah and Netanyahu Prompt Bipartisan Outcry

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      Republican rivals and the White House were among those to roundly condemn the former president for his characterization of the Lebanese militant group.Former President Donald J. Trump drew scorn from both sides of the political aisle on Thursday for remarks that he made one day earlier criticizing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and referring to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group, as “very smart.”During a speech to his supporters in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Wednesday, he weighed in on the Hamas attacks on Israel, the worst experienced by America’s closest Middle East ally in half a century.Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite group, has clashed with Israeli forces in the days after Hamas fighters from Gaza attacked border areas in southern Israel, intensifying concerns that the country could be drawn into a conflict on a second front.“You know, Hezbollah is very smart,” Mr. Trump said. “They’re all very smart.”He took swipes at Mr. Netanyahu on the “Brian Kilmeade Show,” a Fox News Radio show, broadcast on Thursday, arguing that intelligence lapses by Israel had left it vulnerable to the sweeping attack, kidnappings and slaughter of civilians leading to the war.A broad spectrum of political rivals condemned Mr. Trump on Thursday, including the White House and several of his Republican primary opponents.“Statements like this are dangerous and unhinged,” Andrew Bates, the deputy White House press secretary, said in a statement. “It’s completely lost on us why any American would ever praise an Iran-backed terrorist organization as ‘smart.’ Or have any objection to the United States warning terrorists not to attack Israel.”While filing paperwork on Thursday to appear on the Republican primary ballot in New Hampshire, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is running a distant second to Mr. Trump in national polls, also admonished his main rival.“You’re not going to find me throwing verbal grenades at Israeli leadership,” said Mr. DeSantis, whose campaign shared a clip Wednesday night of Mr. Trump’s Hezbollah remarks on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.Former Vice President Mike Pence similarly objected to Mr. Trump’s rhetoric, saying that his former boss was sending the wrong message.“Well look, this is no time for the former president or any other American leader to be sending any other message than America stands with Israel,” Mr. Pence said during a radio interview with “New Hampshire Today.”Mr. Pence disputed Mr. Trump’s characterization of Hezbollah and pointed out that Mr. Trump’s compliments to a brutal figure were not new: Mr. Trump referred to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as a “genius” and “very savvy” after Russia invaded Ukraine last year. And as president, Mr. Trump praised Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, as “very honorable.”“Look, Hezbollah are not smart,” Mr. Pence said on Thursday. “They’re evil, OK.”Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat who is a national advisory board member for President Biden’s re-election campaign, slammed Mr. Trump in a statement on Thursday.“No true friend of Israel, the Jewish people or of peace would praise Hezbollah just days after what President Biden and Jewish leaders have called the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust,” Mr. Pritzker said.In a statement on Thursday, Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, defended Mr. Trump’s comments. He accused the Biden administration of telegraphing its concerns about the potential for a Hezbollah offensive in northern Israel, and he cited a background briefing that a senior defense official gave to the media on Monday.But the Israeli Army had already been engaged in clashes with armed militants along the country’s volatile northern frontier for several days. On Sunday, the day before the briefing, The Associated Press reported that Hezbollah had fired dozens of rockets and shells at three Israeli positions in a disputed area along Lebanon’s border with the Golan Heights.“Hezbollah has operated there for decades,” Mr. Bates said. “And the United States’ words of deterrence have been welcomed across the board in Israel — unlike some other words that come to mind.”Mr. Trump, who has frequently sought to cast himself as a champion for Israel, maligned Mr. Netanyahu on multiple occasions in recent days.On Wednesday in Florida he said that Israel had in 2020 opted out of participating in the U.S. drone strike that killed Iran’s top security and intelligence commander, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, who the Pentagon said had been planning attacks on Americans across the region — despite its coordination on the plan.“But I’ll never forget,” Mr. Trump said. “I’ll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down. That was a very terrible thing.”In the “Brian Kilmeade Show” interview, the former president criticized Mr. Netanyahu and Israeli intelligence as being poorly prepared for the attacks by Hamas on Saturday.“Thousands of people knew about it, and they let this slip by,” he said. “That was not a good thing for him or for anybody.”Mr. DeSantis said that Mr. Trump had crossed the line with his attack on Mr. Netanyahu.“We all need to be on the same page,” he said. “Now is not the time to air personal grievances about an Israeli prime minister. Now is the time to support their right to defend themselves to the hilt.”Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, who are also challenging Mr. Trump for the Republican nomination, condemned his remarks as well.“Shame on you, Donald,” Mr. Hutchinson wrote on X. “Your constant compliments to dictators, terrorist groups, and evil-doers are beneath the office you seek and not reflective of the American character.”Speaking to reporters in New Hampshire, Mr. Burgum said that “smart” was not how he would describe Hezbollah or Hamas.“I’d call them barbaric,” he said. “I’d call them inhumane. I’d call it unthinkable. But what Hezbollah and Hamas have done, but I don’t think I’d characterize them in any positive fashion — not when you see this incredible ability to conduct the atrocities that most of us would find as unthinkable and unimaginable.”In an interview on CNN on Thursday, Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, told the anchor Wolf Blitzer: “Only a fool would make those kinds of comments. Only a fool would give comments that could give aid and comfort to Israel’s adversary in this situation.”While campaigning in New Hampshire on Thursday, Nikki Haley criticized Mr. Trump in response to a question from a voter during a town hall. “I don’t want him hitting Netanyahu,” she said, adding: “Who cares what he thinks about Netanyahu? This is not about that. This is about the people of Israel.”Jazmine Ulloa More

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      House Speaker, Ukraine War, Border Wall: Trump’s Influence Reaches a Post-Presidency Peak

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      A Republican leadership vacuum has allowed the former president to exert power over his party — and in the country — in a way that lacks much historical precedent.From a House leadership contest to the southwestern border and a foreign war, Donald J. Trump’s influence this week seemed to pervade the nation’s politics more than it has since the first weeks after his exit from the White House.Not since Jan. 27, 2021, when Representative Kevin McCarthy flew to Mar-a-Lago to mend the rift with Mr. Trump, has the former president’s sway been as widespread or as palpable.Mr. Trump’s successor, President Biden, resumed construction of a border wall that will always be stamped with Mr. Trump’s name and restarted deporting Venezuelan migrants, following a hiatus when the Biden administration extended protective status for those fleeing that devastated nation.The House Republican Conference launched its search for a new speaker following the historic vanquishing of the last one, Mr. McCarthy, and again, Mr. Trump was calling the shots. Some House Republicans even suggested handing the gavel to their unofficial leader, Mr. Trump, before he stepped in to try to anoint Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, with an effusive endorsement that dwelt heavily on the congressman’s high school and college wrestling records.Lurking next is mid-November, when funding for the federal government expires and Mr. Trump’s policy demands will overtake the debate in Congress: halting U.S. military assistance to Ukraine, stiffening border controls and neutering the Justice Department as it pursues felony prosecutions that threaten Mr. Trump’s grip on the reins of his party — and also his freedom.U.S. Border Patrol agents patrolling for migrants in La Grulla, Texas, in 2017. Starr County, where La Grulla is located, is where 20 miles of wall are to be built.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesThat a twice-impeached, quadruply indicted former president is exercising this much influence is baffling to historians far more used to defeated or disgraced politicians fading into obscurity. David Blight, a professor at Yale University who specializes in the dissolution of American unity before the Civil War, struggled for a precedent.“Let’s think of Nixon: What influence did he really have in Washington? He got on TV, did the Frost interviews, but real influence on the Republican Party? No. They tried to become something other than the Nixon Party,” Mr. Blight said.“I don’t know of another analogy except in authoritarian regimes elsewhere,” he concluded, pointing to on-again, off-again dictatorships in Africa and South America and to the attempted returns of Oliver Cromwell and Napoleon Bonaparte.But an extraordinary vacuum of leadership has given the former president an in, and he has taken it with zeal. The Republican speaker’s chair is vacant, swept clean by internecine conflict. The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, is diminished by age, health issues and a Senate Republican Conference increasingly willing to challenge his authority.And the Democrats, led by an aging and soft-spoken president who is temperamentally Mr. Trump’s opposite, are facing issues they cannot solve on their own but without partners across the aisle to help address, including a broken immigration system, the stalled war in Ukraine, crime, labor unrest and economic uncertainty.The White House has struggled to control the narrative on recent events — Mr. Biden insisted, for instance, that his administration’s decision to waive more than 20 federal laws and regulations and resume construction of a border wall was merely the fulfillment of a legally binding appropriation signed into law in 2019 — even as his secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, attested in writing to “an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States.”President Joe Biden resumed construction of a border wall that will always be stamped with Mr. Trump’s name and restarted deporting Venezuelan migrants, leading to a struggle to control the narrative on recent events.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBut Mr. Trump’s presence looms undeniably large. A chorus on the right embraced the border decision, claiming “Trump was right” as it still sank in among Democrats. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a leading voice on the Democratic left, dismissed the excuse that the administration was somehow “required to expand construction of the border wall.”“The president needs to take responsibility for this decision and reverse course,” she wrote Thursday evening.Immigrant rights groups are beginning to speak out, using the same accusations of cruelty and callousness toward Mr. Biden that they routinely used against Mr. Trump.Mr. Trump’s endorsement of Mr. Jordan may have given the combative Ohio Republican an edge over the House majority leader, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, in his quest for the speakership, but Mr. Jordan still found himself on Fox News praising Mr. Trump as the best president of his lifetime and the likely next president, to head off suggestions from colleagues that the former president would be a better leader for the House.All of this was extraordinary for a man who is, at this very moment, on civil trial in New York for business fraud, whose co-defendants go on trial in Fulton County, Ga., within weeks on charges that they conspired with him to overturn a presidential election, and whose lawyers are maneuvering to delay or dismiss three felony trials, any of which could put him behind bars.His own former lawyer, Ty Cobb, told a panel at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics this week that Mr. Trump has no legal defense in the federal cases he faces. And, Mr. Cobb added, given federal sentencing guidelines, “a judge is going to have to depart pretty aggressively, under difficult circumstances, if Trump’s convicted, to keep him out of jail.”Yet turmoil has always been an asset to Mr. Trump, a cauldron into which he has always been more than willing to plunge.He did nothing to save Mr. McCarthy, showing no appreciation for the man he once called “my Kevin,” and who rescued him at perhaps his darkest political moment, when even Mr. McConnell was suggesting Mr. Trump face criminal charges for a Capitol riot he was “practically and morally responsible for provoking.” The former president basked briefly in the accolades of his House Republican acolytes who floated his name for speaker before ending such talk with his endorsement of Mr. Jordan.Kevin McCarthy addressed reporters after being ousted as speaker on Tuesday.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesFor now, much of this is only theater. But when a stopgap spending bill expires in mid-November, fealty to Mr. Trump will have real consequences. The next speaker will still be facing a Democratic Senate and president, but will also face the impossible demands dictated by Mr. Trump to his loyal troops in the House.As the migrant crisis worsens in Democratic cities, Mr. Biden could well be pushed further in Mr. Trump’s direction on new border controls. New York Mayor Eric Adams traveled to Mexico this week with a message to deter migrants from coming to the United States. Chicago’s young and liberal mayor, Brandon Johnson, said Wednesday he would also travel to see the porous frontier with Mexico “firsthand,” as migrant buses reach his city by the dozen each day.Mr. Trump’s influence could also imperil Ukraine in its defensive war against Russia.The 45-day measure to keep the government open dropped additional military aid to Ukraine, and supporters of such aid will be hard-pressed to resume the flow through the next spending measures. Mr. Trump’s “America First” mantra was long dismissed by critics as an isolationism that leaned the country toward Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia.Ending American assistance to a Ukraine battling an invading army from Moscow would be the apotheosis of Trumpist foreign policy — and could be brought about even without Mr. Trump in the White House.But for all those possible Republican victories, Mr. Trump’s most pressing personal demand — defunding the prosecutions of him — almost certainly cannot be met, raising once again the prospect of a pointless government shutdown.At some point, Republicans in Washington may have to choose between Mr. Trump and governance. More

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      Scalise and Jordan Seek House Speaker Backing as Trump Hangs Over Race

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      The two lawmakers sought support from members of their fractured party as the former president threatened to get involved in a potentially fierce struggle over who will lead the House.The two leading candidates to become the next Republican speaker of the House worked the phones and the halls of the Capitol on Thursday, vying for support from within their party’s fractured ranks as the chamber remained in a state of paralysis after the ouster of Representative Kevin McCarthy of California.Representatives Steve Scalise, the majority leader, and Jim Jordan, the Judiciary Committee chairman, had each landed more than a dozen endorsements by the afternoon as they raced toward a vote of Republicans tentatively scheduled for Tuesday. An election on the House floor could follow the next day, though the process could stretch much longer if no consensus can be reached.Far from the Capitol, former President Donald J. Trump, whose far-right acolytes in Congress helped lead the rebellion that has plunged the House into chaos, weighed in on what could become an epic struggle.Representative Troy Nehls of Texas wrote Thursday evening on X, formerly Twitter, that he had spoken with Mr. Trump, and that he had said he was endorsing Mr. Jordan. “I believe Congress should listen to the leader of our party,” Mr. Nehls said. “I fully support Jim Jordan for Speaker of the House.”Mr. Jordan picked up an important G.O.P. backer and cleared a potential challenger from the field with the endorsement of Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, who had previously been exploring his own run for speaker, according to a person familiar with his calls to lawmakers. Mr. Donalds said on the social media site X that Mr. Jordan “has my full support to become the next Speaker of the House!”Both Mr. Scalise and Mr. Jordan are faced with the difficult challenge of attempting to unite a fractious Republican conference that is reeling after Mr. McCarthy’s removal from the speakership.For Mr. Jordan, an Ohioan and co-founder of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, the task will be to convince more mainstream Republicans that he can govern and not simply tear things down. He met on Thursday with members of the Main Street Caucus, a group of business-minded Republicans.For Mr. Scalise, a Louisianian who has won conference elections before as majority leader, the challenge will be to stay one step ahead of Mr. Jordan, and make better inroads with the right wing of the party.Both men are considered further to the right than Mr. McCarthy, a point Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, who led the drive to oust Mr. McCarthy, has noted with a sense of satisfaction.“If it’s Speaker Jim Jordan or Speaker Steve Scalise, there will be very few conservatives in the country who don’t see that as a monumental upgrade over Speaker McCarthy,” Mr. Gaetz said on Newsmax.Casting a long shadow over the race is Mr. Trump, the G.O.P. presidential front-runner who holds heavy sway among congressional Republicans because of his strong standing with the party base, including many of their constituents.Some right-wing Republicans had been encouraging Mr. Trump to make a run for speaker himself, though the party’s current conference rules would block him from doing so because he is under multiple felony indictments and facing the possibility of significant prison time. Speaking Wednesday outside a Manhattan courthouse where he is facing a civil fraud case, Mr. Trump seemed to enjoy dangling the possibility of a run for speaker, telling reporters: “Lot of people have been calling me about speaker. All I can say is we’ll do whatever is best for the country and for the Republican Party.”“If I can help them during the process,” he added, “I’ll do it.”Back in the halls of the Congress, a serious race was taking shape.Mr. Scalise, who has been in leadership since 2014, has built relationships across the Republican conference. He has been quietly securing commitments through one-on-one calls with members.On such calls seeking support, Mr. Scalise has emphasized that he is second only to Mr. McCarthy in fund-raising prowess, and he has locked up a string of commitments from the south and the Midwest, according to a person familiar with his private calls, who described them on the condition of anonymity.“Not only is Steve a principled conservative, he has overcome adversity far beyond the infighting in our conference right now,” said Representative Ashley Hinson of Iowa, who endorsed Mr. Scalise after speaking with him.One clear point of contrast between Mr. Scalise and Mr. Jordan is their dueling positions on continued aid to Ukraine for its war against Russian aggression, which has become increasingly politicized and is now regarded by many Republicans as toxic.Mr. Jordan was one of 117 Republicans who voted last week against continuing a program to train and equip Ukrainian troops, while Mr. Scalise sided with 101 Republicans in supporting it.“Why should we be sending American tax dollars to Ukraine when we don’t even know what the goal is?” Mr. Jordan said Thursday on Fox News. “No one can tell me what the objective is.”Several Republicans said they were waiting to hear more from the candidates before deciding whom to support.Representative Marc Molinaro of New York said he had spoken with both Mr. Scalise and Mr. Jordan by phone.“There really wasn’t any one person in Congress who worked harder to help me get to Congress or to earn my support than Kevin McCarthy,” Mr. Molinaro said.“We now have individuals who have a week,” he added. “And so I’m going to observe, I’m going to listen, and I’m going to demand that members like me and the people we represent have a seat at the table, and then make a decision.”Robert Jimison More