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      Your Tuesday Briefing: Political Turmoil in Pakistan

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      Plus the Philippines reopens schools and China raises interest rates.Good morning. We’re covering political turmoil in Pakistan and schools reopening in the Philippines.An expert on Pakistani politics said Imran Khan was “clearly an order of magnitude stronger” than when he was ousted as prime minister. Sohail Shahzad/EPA, via ShutterstockPolitical tensions swell in PakistanImran Khan, Pakistan’s former prime minister, was charged under the country’s antiterrorism act on Sunday. He is trying to stage a political comeback after he was ousted from power in April following a no-confidence vote.The charges followed a rally in Islamabad, the capital, where Khan condemned the recent arrest of one of his top aides and vowed to file legal cases against police officers and a judge involved in the case. Police said the comments amounted to an illegal attempt at intimidation.The charges represent a drastic escalation of the power struggle between Pakistan’s current government and its former leader and could set off a fresh round of public unrest and violent street protests.Analysis: Khan’s rallies have drawn tens of thousands, and his party has scored recent victories in the most populous province, Punjab, and the economic hub, Karachi. But experts say he and his supporters face a mounting crackdown aimed at curtailing their electoral successes.Details: Pakistan’s media regulatory authority imposed a ban on the live broadcast of Khan’s speeches on news television channels. Several journalists and talk show hosts, who are sympathetic to Khan, say they have been threatened by the state authorities.Classes opened across the Philippines yesterday.Aaron Favila/Associated PressThe Philippines reopens schoolsMillions of children in the Philippines returned to in-person classes yesterday, ending one of the world’s longest pandemic-related shutdowns.“We could no longer afford to delay the education of young Filipinos,” said Vice President Sara Duterte, who is also the education secretary.The lost time will be hard to make up: Even before the pandemic, the Philippines had among the world’s largest education gaps, with more than 90 percent of students unable to read and comprehend simple texts by age 10, according to the World Bank.Read More on the Coronavirus PandemicNew Guidelines: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention loosened its Covid-19 guidance, saying those exposed to the virus no longer need to quarantine.A Sweeping Rebuke: Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that her agency had failed to respond quickly enough to the coronavirus pandemic and needed to be overhauled.Back to School: New York City’s Education Department has rolled back most Covid restrictions ahead of the start of school on Sept. 8, reflecting a wider shift toward learning how to live with the virus.A Century-Old Vaccine: The results of clinical trials, launched in the early days of the pandemic, involving an old tuberculosis vaccine offered hope that it could provide a measure of universal protection against infectious diseases.Covid-19 may have only worsened divides. Even though the country offered online instruction during the pandemic, many students lacked access to computers or the internet.Pandemic: As other countries sent students back to classrooms, government officials and parents hesitated. They feared that schoolchildren could bring the virus to homes crowded with multiple generations of family members, potentially overtaxing a creaky health care system.Details: Schools in the Philippines have long suffered from teacher shortages, and only some schools are currently in-person five days a week. The country plans to fully reopen all of its roughly 47,000 schools by November.A dried-out riverbed of the Jialing River, a major tributary of the Yangtze River.EPA, via ShutterstockDrought roils China’s economyChina’s central bank announced that it would cut its five-year interest rate yesterday, an effort to bring a little relief to the country’s huge construction and real estate sector.The rate cut comes as record-high temperatures and a severe drought have crippled hydropower and prompted the shutdown of many factories in west-central China, an industrial base.Sichuan Province, for instance, normally generates more than three-quarters of its electricity from huge dams. The summer rainy season usually brings so much water that Sichuan sends much of its hydropower to cities and provinces as far away as Shanghai.But an almost complete failure of summer rains this year has meant that many dams now cannot generate enough electricity even for Sichuan’s own needs, forcing factories there to close for up to a week at a time and triggering rolling blackouts in some commercial and residential districts.Fallout: Sichuan’s three main rivers feed the Yangtze River, so hydropower cutbacks have also started to affect downstream areas, like the city of Chongqing and adjacent Hubei Province.Details: The central bank cut the rate by 0.15 percentage points yesterday, to 4.3 percent, and said that it was reducing a one-year interest rate by 0.05 percentage points, to 3.65 percent.THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificSouth Korean howitzers took positions near the border with North Korea yesterday.Ahn Young-Joon/Associated PressThe U.S. and South Korea began their largest joint military drills in years yesterday, The Associated Press reports.More than 5,000 farmers protested in New Delhi, Reuters reports. They are pushing for minimum price guarantees and government accountability.Today, Anthony Albanese, Australia’s prime minister, plans to release a report on Scott Morrison’s secret ministerial roles, Reuters reports.A woman in South Korea may be the relative of two children whose remains were found in suitcases in New Zealand, The Independent reports.Bangladesh is closing schools for another day during the week and taking other measures to save energy, Reuters reports. The country shut down its diesel-run power plants after the war in Ukraine drove up fuel prices.Chinese censors changed the end of the new “Minions” film before releasing it, Reuters reports. In this version, police catch a rebel, and Gru, a main character, promotes family values.The War in UkraineHere are live updates.Daria Dugina, a Russian nationalist commentator.Tsargrad.Tv, via ReutersRussia blamed Ukraine for the killing of Daria Dugina, 29, an ultranationalist commentator. The allegation could not be verified. Kyiv denied involvement.Dugina’s father, who is a prominent supporter of the invasion, called for revenge.Moscow said that Dugina, not her father, was the target of the car bomb and said a suspect had fled to Estonia. The brazen attack recalled historical assassinations.What’s next: Tomorrow is Ukraine’s Independence Day — and the six-month mark of the war.What Else is HappeningDr. Anthony Fauci has advised seven presidents and spent more than half a century at the National Institutes of Health.Doug Mills/The New York TimesDr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s top medical adviser, plans to step down in December.Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s president, has suggested that he would dispute election results if he lost in October. But the political establishment believes he lacks support to stage a coup.Eric Adams vowed to bolster nightlife around New York City. But the mayor mostly visits one pricey restaurant, run by friends with troubled pasts.A Morning ReadCarmen Abd Ali for The New York TimesAs more looted art returns to Africa, countries have wrestled with the right way to display it.Benin may have found an answer: More than 200,000 people have come to a free exhibition of pieces that were plundered by French colonial forces in the 19th century and returned last year.ARTS AND IDEASWill New Zealand change its name?New Zealand, known by some as Aotearoa.Jim Huylebroek for The New York TimesIn the 1600s, the Dutch named the land now known as New Zealand for Zeeland, a western province of the Netherlands. It was intended as a companion name for “Hollandia Nova” or “New Holland,” as Australia was then known.Nearly four centuries later, a petition before Parliament asks that the country be called “Aotearoa,” which loosely translates from Maori as the “land of the long white cloud.” The Maori have used Aotearoa to refer to the country for decades, if not centuries. It is widely believed to be the name bestowed by Kupe, a Polynesian navigator — and is, increasingly, what New Zealanders and their lawmakers call their home.For now, a wholesale change seems unlikely: Polls suggest voters prefer “New Zealand” or a hybrid “Aotearoa New Zealand.” But the debate speaks to a changing climate: Amid culture war debates, Maori names are gaining traction. In 2009, New Zealand’s politicians voted against creating a holiday for Matariki, the Maori New Year. In June, it was observed nationally for the first time.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookTanveer Badal for The New York TimesKimjang, the act of making kimchi, connects Koreans across the diaspora. Eric Kim offers a recipe.What to ReadFour new books re-examine World War II.ArtMichael Heizer’s “City,” a mysterious land art megasculpture, was revealed after 50 years.Now Time to PlayPlay today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: “Guacamole ingredient” (five letters).Here are today’s Wordle and today’s Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. Chang Che is joining The Times from SupChina to cover technology in Asia.The latest episode of “The Daily” is about a U.S. coal miner on strike.You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      Ahead of Midterms, Some Democrats Search for New Message on Virus

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      Democrats were cheered for strict lockdowns and pandemic precautions. Now many weary voters want to hear the party’s plan for living with the coronavirus.When the coronavirus pandemic first swept Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Wolf closed stores and schools and ordered millions of citizens to stay home. Even four months into the crisis in 2020, all but “life-sustaining” businesses in much of the state were locked down.Today, the virus is ravaging Pennsylvania again, like much of the country, with hospitalization numbers nearing or exceeding those during the worst months of the pandemic.Yet Mr. Wolf, a Democrat whose party desperately wants to keep control of his seat in the midterm elections, has no intention of returning to the strict measures of two years ago. There are no plans for mask mandates or more virtual schooling. Pennsylvanians, the governor said, crave a return to normalcy.“I think everybody’s angry,” said Mr. Wolf, who is ineligible to run again this year. “It’s been two years now. We’re fatigued and ready to move on. I think a lot of the political vectors are reflecting that.”Around the country, Democratic elected officials who in the pandemic’s early phase shut down cities and states more aggressively than most Republicans did — and saw their popularity soar — are using a different playbook today. Despite the deadly wave fueled by the Omicron variant, Democratic officials are largely skipping mask mandates and are fighting to keep schools open, sometimes in opposition to health care workers and their traditional allies in teachers’ unions.The shift reflects a potential change in the nature of the threat now that millions of Americans are vaccinated and Omicron appears to be causing less serious disease. But it is also a political pivot. Democrats are keenly aware that Americans — including even some of the party’s loyal liberal voters — have changed their attitudes about the virus and that it could be perilous to let Republicans brand the Democrats the party of lockdowns and mandates.“You’ll see more Democratic elected officials say that this is our forever now and we can’t live our lives sitting rocking in a corner,” said Brian Stryker, a partner at the polling firm ALG Research, whose work on Virginia’s elections last year indicated that school closures hurt Democrats. “We’ve just got to live with this virus.”The warning signs for Democrats are manifest. For the first year of the pandemic, Democratic governors in politically divided states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina responded aggressively to the pandemic and won high marks from voters of both parties. The issue was critical to President Biden’s victory in 2020.Today President Biden’s overall approval, which has fallen into dangerous territory for any party in a midterm election year, is being kept down in part because of disappointment over his performance on coronavirus. Fewer than half of Americans approved of his handling of the pandemic in a CBS News/YouGov survey last week, down from 66 percent who approved in July.Now that vaccines have been proven effective, Americans have lower tolerance for restrictions, strategists and elected officials said. While schools are largely open in the United States, many families are still dealing with the fallout of two years of classroom disruptions, including loss of learning, mental health problems and millions of parents who were driven out of the work force.A Look Ahead to the 2022 U.S. Midterm ElectionsIn the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are 10 races to watch.In the House: Republicans are already poised to capture enough seats to take control, thanks to redistricting and gerrymandering alone.Governors’ Races: Georgia’s race will be at the center of the political universe this year, but there are several important contests across the country.Key Issues: Both parties are preparing for abortion rights and voting rights to be defining topics.A survey conducted this month by USA Today and Suffolk University found that while majorities of Democratic voters supported policies like vaccination mandates and masking, only 43 percent backed shifting schools to remote learning.Voters frequently complain of changing advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as on-again, off-again mask orders in many places.Lynn Saragosa said that the changing advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the on-again, off-again mask orders in many places were confusing.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York Times“The rules are confusing,” said Lynn Saragosa, a resident of La Mirada, Calif., just along the border of Los Angeles and Orange Counties. “You go one place and see one thing, but it’s very different someplace else — it becomes very divided and we’re arguing over every single decision.”Ms. Saragosa, 58, a Democrat who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020, said she was unlikely to vote in the midterms, even though some of California’s most competitive congressional races will take place in Orange County.Ms. Saragosa represents one of Democrats’ biggest fears heading into the midterms, when control of Congress and key governors’ mansions are at stake. The Democrats already begin at a disadvantage, as the party that holds the White House often loses seats during the first midterm elections. If malaise over the pandemic further slackens turnout, it will add to Democrats’ headwinds.Some Democratic officeholders say they’re ready to defend their actions, noting that by closing businesses and schools they slowed the spread of the coronavirus and saved lives. But Republican candidates have vowed to make the shutdowns central in races from school board to governor to the Senate.“They will pay the price in the next election,” said Lou Barletta, a Republican candidate for governor in Pennsylvania who blames Democrats, rather than the virus, for damage to businesses and loss of learning. “Nobody’s going to forget businesses who couldn’t open again or people who lost their jobs. That doesn’t get erased from memory. Not to mention a year’s education was stolen away from our children.”In Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s upset victory in November as a Republican was fueled in part by parents fed up with school closures and mask mandates for their children. Around the country, long-term school closures, which disproportionately occurred in Democratic-run states and cities, has turned off even some progressive voters.Kim McGair, a lawyer and a normally staunch Democrat in Portland, Ore., said she felt “utterly betrayed” by her party, which she believes abandoned parents and students. “I will not vote for a Democrat who was silent or complicit on school closures, which is the vast majority of them here,” Ms. McGair said. But she also cannot picture herself casting a ballot for a Republican, a situation she describes as being “politically homeless.”In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, imposed some of the nation’s strictest stay-at-home orders early in the pandemic. Angry protesters who waved Tea Party flags at the State Capitol in April 2020, while former President Donald J. Trump tweeted “Liberate Michigan,” were one of the first signs of politicization of the pandemic.Ms. Whitmer, facing another deadly surge of the virus in her state and a tough re-election fight this fall, was pressed recently about why she hadn’t issued new statewide orders. Her response was defensive, but telling: “Like what?” she said to a Detroit TV interviewer. The existence of vaccines meant that the “blunt tools” used in 2020 to fight the pandemic were not needed, the governor said.Though broad shutdowns and mandates are off the table in many places — sometimes because of court decisions — Democrats have used other tools lately, including aggressively promoting vaccines, opening testing centers and deploying strike teams to beleaguered hospitals.One model of how Democrats might speak to the new mood of voters is in Colorado, where Gov. Jared Polis has been unusually blunt in saying that it is time to treat the coronavirus as a manageable disruption, more like the flu. Last month he told Coloradans that if they were unvaccinated and wound up in the hospital, it was their “own darn fault.” Regarding masks, he said that state health authorities had no business telling people “what to wear.”The coronavirus was now something “we live with,” Mr. Polis said in an interview. “We will be living with it in three years. We’ll be living with it in five years. We have to learn how to empower people to protect themselves.”He looks forward to a time soon when the virus is “endemic,” meaning that it will circulate in the population, but people will carry on without major disruptions to their lives.Scientists say it’s possible that Omicron, because of its lightning spread, is setting the stage for that return to normalcy, although they also warn that more variants — and more upheaval — could be ahead.Still, “live with it” is hardly the message Mr. Biden delivered on July 4, when cases were low. At the time, the president declared that the country was “closer than ever to declaring our independence” from the virus.Asked recently if the coronavirus was “here to stay,” Mr. Biden acknowledged that it would never be wiped out but said he believed Americans could control it.To merely battle the virus to a truce, rather than to defeat it triumphantly, might strike some voters as less of a victory than the president promised. Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who worked on Mr. Biden’s campaign, said that the president and his party were paying a political price for an unpredictable pandemic.“This up and down is really taking a toll, and it’s taking a toll on all elected officials,” she said. “Voters appreciate Biden’s style, they appreciate that he listens to the science, but people are just so frustrated that it’s always going to seem like too little too late.”“They wanted to believe if we all did the right thing we could make this better immediately,” she said. More

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      Cyber Ninjas, Derided for Arizona Vote Review, Says It Is Shutting Down

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      The organization that conducted the widely derided review of the presidential vote in Arizona’s largest county said it was insolvent and had laid off its employees.For a company that has had its share of bad weeks, Cyber Ninjas, the Florida firm behind the widely derided review of Arizona’s 2020 presidential vote, may finally have hit bottom.On Thursday, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in Phoenix delivered a detailed four-hour livestreamed rebuttal of all the firm’s claims, showing that all, except one involving 50 votes, were either mistaken, misleading or outright false.That same day, a superior court judge cited the company for contempt after it refused to surrender records of its vote review to The Arizona Republic, which is seeking them under a freedom of information request. He levied a $50,000-a-day fine on the firm until it produces the records.By week’s end, lawyers said the firm was insolvent and had laid off its employees, including Doug Logan, its chief executive and onetime proponent of a baseless theory that the state’s voting machines had been rigged.The shutdown was confirmed on Friday by a spokesman, Rod Thomson, who said it was unclear whether the company would declare bankruptcy.That did not impress the judge, John Hannah, who suggested that the shutdown might be designed “to leave the Cyber Ninjas entity as an empty piñata for all of us to swing at.” The official Maricopa County Twitter account seized on the description, declaring that “an empty piñata is a pretty accurate description of the ‘audit’ as a whole.”But whether the exercise was a complete failure is another matter. Experts say it played a role in accomplishing a more fundamental political goal: fueling anger over the accuracy and integrity of the 2020 election among former President Donald J. Trump’s most ardent backers.The six-month, $5.6 million review of the 2.1 million votes cast in Arizona’s largest county was ordered up last year by the Republican-controlled State Senate after supporters of Mr. Trump insisted that his narrow loss in the state was the result of fraud.It became something of a national punchline in September after the review concluded that President Biden actually won by a greater margin than official tallies showed.Still, the review and its supporters insisted that the election was suspect, citing 75 potential irregularities they said the Cyber Ninjas were unable to resolve.The rebuttal by the five-member Board of Supervisors, four of them Republicans, was striking both for its detail and its bluntness.The Cyber Ninjas have laid off their employees, including Doug Logan, the organization’s chief executive.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesA 93-page printed version said that a review of the Cyber Ninjas’ claims of irregularities found only 37 potentially questionable ballots among the 53,304 that had been labeled suspect. Those were referred to the state attorney general, a Republican who has been asked to review the organization’s claims.Out of the 75 claims of irregularities, the county said, the only one that could be valid involved 50 ballots that may have been double-counted. That error would not have affected the outcome of any race in the November 2020 election, the county said.The county supervisors had denounced the Senate’s review for months as partisan theatrics aimed at mollifying the substantial far-right share of the state’s Republican voters. But the board’s chairman, Bill Gates, a Republican, went further on Thursday, drawing a straight line between tolerance for “extreme misinformation” and political violence like the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.Referring to protesters who stormed the building, Mr. Gates said that “many of these people did it because they believed they were saving their country from an election that they had been told had been stolen.”“Many people in positions of power, they fed into this, for they simply turned a blind eye,” he added. “They’ve listened to the loud few and told them what they want to hear, and that’s the easy thing to do. But here, we don’t do what’s easy. We do what’s right.”The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 6Numerous inquiries. More

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      India’s Rising Omicron Wave Brings a Grim Sense of Déjà Vu

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      Just months after Delta fueled hospital failures and funeral pyres, India’s leaders again offer a mixed message: Their political rallies are packed even as they order curfews and work closures.NEW DELHI — When the Omicron coronavirus variant spread through India late in December, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged the nation to be vigilant and follow medical guidelines. Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of the capital region of Delhi, swiftly introduced night curfews, shut down movie theaters, and slashed restaurants and public transport to half capacity.Then, both men hit the campaign trail, often appearing without masks in packed rallies of thousands.“When it is our bread and butter at stake, they force restrictions and lockdowns,” said Ajay Tiwari, a 41-year-old taxi driver in New Delhi. “There are much bigger crowds at political rallies, but they don’t impose any lockdown in those areas. It really pains us deep in the heart.”As Omicron fuels a rapid spread of new infections through India’s major urban hubs, the country’s pandemic fatigue has been intensified by a sense of déjà vu and the frustration of mixed signals.A temporary coronavirus care center in New Delhi on Wednesday. Money Sharma/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt has been just a few months since the deadly Delta variant ravaged the country, when government leaders vastly underestimated its threat and publicly flouted their own advice. The memories of overwhelmed hospitals and funeral pyres working around the clock are still all too fresh here.The metropolis of Mumbai on Wednesday reported more than 15,000 new infections in 24 hours — the highest daily caseload since the pandemic began, beating the city’s previous record of about 11,000 cases during the second wave in the spring. In New Delhi, the number of daily infections increased by nearly 100 percent overnight.The sheer size of India’s population, at 1.4 billion, has always kept experts wary about the prospects of a new coronavirus variant. In few places around world was the toll of Delta as stark as in India. The country’s official figures show about half a million pandemic deaths — a number that experts say vastly undercounts the real toll.A temporary coronavirus care facility was set up at the Chennai Trade Center in Chennai. Scientists say any optimism about Omicron is premature simply because of how many people the variant could infect.Idrees Mohammed/EPA, via ShutterstockOmicron’s high transmissibility is such that cases are multiplying at a dangerously rapid pace, and it appears to be ignoring India’s main line of defense: a vaccination drive that has covered about half of the population. Initial studies show that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, a locally manufactured version of which has been used for about 90 percent of India’s vaccinations, does not protect against Omicron infections, though it appears to help reduce the severity of the illness.Sitabhra Sinha, a professor of physics and computational biology at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai, said his research into the reproduction rate of the virus — an indicator of how fast it is spreading that is called the “R value” — in major cities like Delhi and Mumbai shows “insanely high” numbers for cities that had built decent immunity. Both had a large number of infections in the spring, and a majority of their adult populations have been vaccinated.“Given this high R value, one is looking at incredibly large numbers unless something is done to stop the spread,” he said.A Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rally in Ferozepur on Wednesday. Omicron is spreading in India at a time of high public activity — busy holiday travel, and large election rallies across several states that are going to the polls in the coming months.Narinder Nanu/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut officials appear to be latching onto the optimism of the early indications from places like South Africa, where a fast spread of the variant did not cause devastating damage, rather than drawing lessons from the botched response to the Delta wave in the spring that ravaged India.Dr. Anand Krishnan, a professor of epidemiology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, said India’s messaging of the new variant as “a mild illness” has led to complacency.“The health system has stopped being complacent. But the population is complacent. People are not wearing masks or changing their behavior,” Dr. Krishnan said. “They think it is a mild illness, and whatever restrictions are being imposed are seen more as a nuisance than necessary.”Scientists say any optimism about Omicron is premature simply because of how many people the variant could infect.“Even if it is a microscopic percentage who require hospitalization,” Dr. Sinha said, “the fact is that the total population we’re talking about is huge.”A vaccination center in Bangalore. India’s vaccination drive has covered about half of the population.Manjunath Kiran/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAlthough the percentage of newly infected people turning to hospitals has been increasing in recent days, data from India’s worst-hit cities — Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata — showed that only a small number of Covid-designated beds were occupied so far. Data compiled by the Observer Research Foundation showed that about three percent of the known active cases in Delhi and about 12 percent in Mumbai have required hospitalization.Dr. J. A. Jayalal, until recently the president of The Indian Medical Association, said what worried him was not hospital beds or oxygen running out — capacity that Indian officials have been trying to expand after the deadly shortfalls during the Delta wave — but that the health system might face an acute shortfall of health workers.The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 6The global surge. More

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      Republicans Pounce on Schools as a Wedge Issue to Unite the Party

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      Rallying around what it calls “parental rights,” the party is pushing to build on its victories this week by stoking white resentment and tapping into broader anger at the education system.After an unexpectedly strong showing on Tuesday night, Republicans are heading into the 2022 midterm elections with what they believe will be a highly effective political strategy capitalizing on the frustrations of suburban parents still reeling from the devastating fallout of pandemic-era schooling.Seizing on education as a newly potent wedge issue, Republicans have moved to galvanize crucial groups of voters around what the party calls “parental rights” issues in public schools, a hodgepodge of conservative causes ranging from eradicating mask mandates to demanding changes to the way children are taught about racism.Yet it is the free-floating sense of rage from parents, many of whom felt abandoned by the government during the worst months of the pandemic, that arose from the off-year elections as one of the most powerful drivers for Republican candidates.Across the country, Democrats lost significant ground in crucial suburban and exurban areas — the kinds of communities that are sought out for their well-funded public schools — that helped give the party control of Congress and the White House. In Virginia, where Republicans made schools central to their pitch, education rocketed to the top of voter concerns in the final weeks of the race, narrowly edging out the economy.The message worked on two frequencies. Pushing a mantra of greater parental control, Glenn Youngkin, the Republican candidate for governor in Virginia, stoked the resentment and fear of some white voters, who were alarmed by efforts to teach a more critical history of racism in America. He attacked critical race theory, a graduate school framework that has become a loose shorthand for a contentious debate on how to address race. And he released an ad that was a throwback to the days of banning books, highlighting objections by a white mother and her high-school-age son to “Beloved,” the canonical novel about slavery by the Black Nobel laureate Toni Morrison.But at the same time, Mr. Youngkin and other Republicans tapped into broader dissatisfaction among moderate voters about teachers’ unions, unresponsive school boards, quarantine policies and the instruction parents saw firsthand during months of remote learning. In his stump speeches, Mr. Youngkin promised to never again close Virginia schools.While Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic nominee, and his party allies eagerly condemned the ugliest attacks by their opponents, they seemed unprepared to counter the wider outpouring of anger over schools.Glenn Youngkin, Virginia’s governor-elect, pushed a message on education that stoked the resentment of white voters while speaking to broader frustrations with schools.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesFor weeks before the Virginia election, Republicans pointed to the school strategy as a possible template for the entire party. Mr. Youngkin’s narrow but decisive victory on Tuesday confirmed for Republicans that they had an issue capable of uniting diverse groups of voters. The trend was most evident in Mr. Youngkin’s improvement over former President Donald J. Trump’s performance in the Washington suburbs, which include a mix of communities with large Asian, Hispanic and Black populations.Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House majority leader, listed education as a main plank of his party’s plan to reclaim power, with promises to introduce a “Parents’ Bill of Rights.”“If the Virginia results showed us anything, it is that parents are demanding more control and accountability in the classroom,” he wrote in an election-night letter to his caucus.Steven Law, the president of American Crossroads, one of the most active outside groups working to elect Republicans to the House and Senate, said the strategy was ripe for replicating in races across the country.“It’s always possible to overdo something,” he added, cautioning that Republicans would be unwise to pursue attacks that appear hostile to teachers themselves. “But very clearly there’s a high level of concern among parents over political and social experimentation in schools that transcends ideology.”While the conservative news media and Republican candidates stirred the stew of anxieties and racial resentments that animate the party’s base — thundering about equity initiatives, books with sexual content and transgender students on sports teams — they largely avoided offering specific plans to tackle thornier issues like budget cuts and deepening educational inequalities.But the election results suggested that Republicans had spoken about education in ways that resonated with a broader cross-section of voters.In Virginia, the Youngkin campaign appealed to Asian parents worried about progressive efforts to make admissions processes in gifted programs less restrictive; Black parents upset over the opposition of teachers’ unions to charter schools; and suburban mothers of all races who were generally on edge about having to juggle so much at home over the last year and a half.“This isn’t partisan,” said Jeff Roe, the Youngkin campaign’s chief strategist. “It’s everyone.”Democrats largely declined to engage deeply with such charged concerns, instead focusing on plans to pump billions into education funding, expand pre-K programs and raise teacher pay.In Virginia and New Jersey, the Democratic candidates for governor adopted the approach of Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, who faced a recall challenge that exploited similar lines of attack but beat it back by leaning into vaccination and mask mandates in schools. Ahead of the midterms, many of the educational issues are sure to linger.Already, the effects of remote learning on parents have been severe: School closures drove millions of parents out of the work force, led to an increase in mental health problems among children and worsened existing educational inequalities. Many of those effects were borne most heavily by key parts of the Democratic base, including women and Black and Latino families.Strategists, activists and officials urged Democrats to prepare for the Republican attacks to be echoed by G.O.P. candidates up and down the ticket.Virginia was among the East Coast states that were slowest to reopen their schools. Some parents supported the cautious approach, but others became angry.Kenny Holston/Getty ImagesGeoff Garin, a top Democratic pollster, said the party’s candidates needed to expand their message beyond their long-running policy goals like reducing class sizes and expanding pre-K education.Takeaways From the 2021 ElectionsCard 1 of 5A G.O.P. pathway in Virginia. More

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      As New York City Reopens, Its Recovery Will Hinge on the Next Mayor

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      The Democratic candidates are making radically different bets about the mood and priorities of New Yorkers as the city moves toward reopening after the pandemic.The signs of New York City’s recovery are everywhere: Vaccinations are on the rise; restaurant and bar curfews are ending; occupancy restrictions are easing in offices, ballparks and gyms. By July 1, Mayor Bill de Blasio says the city should be “fully reopened.”After more than a year of death and economic devastation, New York is lurching into a new and uncertain phase of recovery — and the candidates vying to be the city’s next mayor are making radically different bets about the mood and priorities of New Yorkers, and how best to coax the city back to life.As the mayoral candidates barrel toward the June 22 Democratic primary, sharp distinctions are emerging around how to address this immense task.Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate and current front-runner, has positioned himself as the city’s ultimate cheerleader in the race, and he has made accelerating the reopening of the city a central plank of his messaging. Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, describes a series of crises facing New York and promises to be a progressive mayor who will “manage the hell out of the city.”Maya Wiley, a civil rights lawyer who is particularly focused on matters of racial justice, often urges a “reimagining” of a more equitable city following the pandemic. And Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, suggests that public safety is a prerequisite for progress and speaks often of his experience as a Black former police captain who pushed for change within the system.“I don’t want to hear people say, ‘We want to have New York City be just happy again,’” Mr. Adams said at a recent campaign appearance in Queens, even as he promised brighter days ahead. “To too many New Yorkers, the city was never happy.”The matter of how the city recovers plainly resonates with New Yorkers: A recent Spectrum News NY1/Ipsos poll found that 34 percent of likely Democratic primary voters surveyed viewed reopening businesses and the economy as the top priority for the next mayor, second only to stopping the spread of Covid-19 and closely followed by crime and public safety.Eric Adams has emerged as the candidate most focused on public safety.Shannon Stapleton/ReutersThe challenge for all the candidates is to offer the right mix of experience and empathy, energy and vision, to engage a diverse electorate that experienced the coronavirus crisis and its fallout in very different ways.More than any other candidate, Mr. Yang expects that New Yorkers, after a desperately challenging year, want a hopeful mayor with a simple message about reopening the city quickly.Part of Mr. Yang’s lead in the sparse public polling available can be attributed to name recognition from his presidential campaign, but a number of veteran Democratic strategists say he has also settled on a tone that resonates with many voters eager to move on from the pandemic.“It’s the spring of 2021, not the spring of 2020, and New Yorkers are increasingly optimistic and hopeful about the future,” said Howard Wolfson, a longtime adviser to former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who is neutral in the race. “So far, Andrew Yang is the person who has best captured that sentiment.”He and his competitors agree that New York must be reopened as a more vibrant and equitable place than it was when it closed, and they are putting forth a wide range of policy prescriptions and arguments around leadership skills to illustrate how they would do just that.Mr. Yang, who says he wants to be the anti-poverty mayor, has unveiled a range of policy proposals around vital city issues, many of which begin with a simple prescription: accelerate the opening of the city and cheer on New York’s promise. On Tuesday, for instance, he urged the state to loosen restrictions on bars and restaurants, saying that reopening those establishments was “mission critical.” He has also proposed a basic income program for the poorest New Yorkers, a less expansive version of the universal basic income he promoted as a presidential candidate.But a big part of his strategy also involves attending reopening events — like Opening Day at Yankee Stadium — and declaring that New York must be open for business. He has promised to host “the biggest post-Covid celebration in the world.”The test for Mr. Yang will be whether voters believe he has sufficient managerial experience and knowledge of the city to execute the complicated rebuilding efforts that he likes to applaud. And his efforts to cheer on city businesses do not always land: He recently had a disastrous appearance before a prominent L.G.B.T.Q. Democratic organization, where participants felt that he was more focused on discussing gay bars than matters of policy.“We need somebody who’s going to steer the ship, but not overpromise — don’t tell me we’re going to be Disneyland next week,” said Donovan Richards, the Queens borough president. He was speaking broadly about the field, but when asked which candidates were striking the right balance in tone, he pointed to Mr. Adams and Ms. Wiley. He intends to make an endorsement in the coming days.Maya Wiley, right, is particularly focused on issues of social justice.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesSeveral of Mr. Yang’s rivals have argued that he is ill-equipped to lead the city at a moment of staggering challenges. Many are working to draw sharper contrasts with him, an effort that may culminate in the first debate, on May 13.A number of candidates believe that the electorate — while convinced of New York’s strengths and hopeful about its future — also wants an experienced government veteran who exudes knowledge of the political system in discussing how to navigate recovery.Shaun Donovan, the former Obama administration housing secretary, is seeking to brand himself “the man with the plan,” issuing a 200-page proposal with ideas ranging from launching a skills-based training program to facilitate employment opportunities, to creating “15-minute neighborhoods” in an effort to make good schools, transit and parks more accessible. He often notes his time working with President Barack Obama and President Biden to illustrate his ability to manage high-stakes moments for the country..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Kathryn Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner, is especially focused on promoting small businesses and combating climate change. She has pushed for a single city permit for small businesses in an effort to ease bureaucratic hurdles. Ms. Garcia is a veteran of city government who exudes affection for her hometown but is blunt in her assessment of the depths of New York’s challenges.She and other longtime officials, like Mr. Stringer and Mr. Adams, argue that deep familiarity with navigating city government is vital to managing the city’s reopening.Mr. Stringer often says that the city is facing interlocking crises around the economy, social justice and health disparities. His long list of ambitions, with accompanying lengthy plans, includes a promise for “universal affordable housing.” Mr. Stringer’s ability to make his case has been complicated in recent days by an allegation of sexual assault, which he denies.Other contenders with less campaign experience argue that they bring a fresh perspective to combating the city’s biggest challenges.Ms. Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, describes herself as an unconventional candidate with a background in advocacy around racial and economic justice. She has been highlighting “50 Ideas for NYC,” which includes a proposal to invest in caregiving, in part by paying more informal care workers, and she has proposed a $10 billion capital spending program aimed at creating jobs and improving infrastructure in communities across the city.Dianne Morales, a left-wing former nonprofit executive, is calling for a total overhaul of the city’s “system,” noting the inequality that the pandemic deepened. She supports ideas like “basic income relief for every household,” and sees matters of racial justice and public safety as core to how the city reopens and recovers. She urges far-reaching proposals like $3 billion in cuts to the New York Police Department’s budget, to be reinvested in community responses.Dianne Morales wants to cut the police budget by $3 billion.Jeenah Moon/ReutersAssessing how to discuss reopening is difficult, said Gale Brewer, the Manhattan borough president, because people have vastly different priorities depending on their circumstances.“How do you get New York City back working again and including everybody? That’s the problem,” she said. “The city’s pretty divided.”In January, Mr. Adams — who has cast himself as a candidate with a blue-collar background who is focused on combating inequality — rolled out more than 100 ideas for the city’s future. But in recent weeks he has also emerged as the candidate most clearly focused on combating gun violence. “Public safety,” he often says, is the “prerequisite to prosperity.”Raymond J. McGuire, a former Citigroup executive with a hardscrabble childhood, sometimes declares, “no jobs, no city,” as he pitches himself as the best steward of the city’s economic recovery, with a plan that he claims will bring back 500,000 jobs. And in one sign of his sense of the electorate’s mood, Mr. McGuire has released an ad that concludes, “Ray McGuire: the serious choice for mayor.”Even by 2022, the city’s future will be uncertain: Tourists may not fully return until 2025, a dynamic with significant implications for New York’s standing as a global cultural capital; many companies will adopt hybrid work strategies, blending work from home with traditional office time and threatening to permanently reshape Manhattan; and many small businesses that closed during the pandemic may never reopen.In a city shaped by deep racial and socioeconomic inequality, candidates seeking to build a broad coalition need a message and tone that connects with both white-collar workers who are overjoyed about leaving their apartments and with New Yorkers worried about evictions and unemployment.“For a large amount of people suffering in this pandemic,” said Mr. Richards, the Queens borough president, “their question is going to be, ‘Reopen the city for whom?’” More

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      Many Mayors Cite Covid Burnout as a Reason for Their Exit

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      Local officials nationwide are announcing plans to step back from elected office. Many offer the same explanation: Covid burnout.NEWBURYPORT, Mass. — Donna Holaday is the kind of mayor who does not say no to an invitation.She shows up for lesser ribbon cuttings, at Radiant U Esthetics and the Angry Donut. She is there for the dinky parades, three or four blocks to the waterfront and back. Funerals, fund-raisers, National Honor Society inductions, she does them all.Over four terms as mayor of Newburyport, a coastal city of around 17,000, she learned that she could always perk herself up by getting up on a podium, reflecting back the energy of a roomful of people. Not this past year.“There is nothing. Nothing on my calendar. It’s just the way it has been for a year,” said Ms. Holaday, 66. Through the shutdown, she made a point of spending the day in her empty City Hall, if only so people could see the light on in her office.But they were long days she described as “Whac-a-Mole, you take care of one thing and 15 things pop up.” And the calls she fielded were not about normal problems, like trash collection or snow removal, but matters of profound suffering: a loved one forced to die in solitude, or families running out of food.“It was so traumatic, with people calling us crying, distressed,” said Ms. Holaday, who has announced she will not run for a fifth term. “I was sitting in my corner office feeling quite alone, there is no question about it.”Though coronavirus cases are down from their winter peak and several states are well into the reopening process, many mayors are leaving their posts because of burnout.Damian Strohmeyer for The New York TimesIt has been an exhausting season for America’s mayors.Mayors are hands-on officials in the best of times, barraged with criticism and individual pleas for help. Over the last year, they found themselves weighing matters of life or death — devastating local businesses by prolonging shutdowns, canceling gatherings treasured by voters, unable to provide comfort by being there in person.And this spring, many American mayors are explaining their decision to leave office with the same reason: that the pandemic response demanded so much that they could not both campaign and perform their duties; or that the work had become so stressful that their families had recommended that they step away.“They are just spent,” said Katharine Lusk, executive director of Boston University’s Initiative on Cities, which carries out an annual survey of mayors. Mayors surveyed last summer expressed deep anxiety about the effects of lost tax revenue on their budgets, as they juggled the pandemic, economic recovery and their core responsibilities.Meanwhile, Ms. Lusk said, the positive aspects of the job were stripped away.“They will tell you it’s the most personal job in politics,” she said. “If you can’t interact with the community, all of the things that sort of fuel mayors — the inputs that build up that reservoir of energy — that aspect of the job has been taken from them.”There is little national data on local elections, so it is impossible to say whether this year’s turnover of mayors is unusual. In Massachusetts, nearly a fifth of the state’s mayors have announced they will not run again, as CommonWealth, a politics journal, reported, but that is not an unusual portion, according to the Massachusetts Municipal Association.Decisions to step down are rarely made for one reason, and the year has increased pressure on leaders on many fronts, including conflicts over policing and racial justice. Among those who have offered an explanation, however, Covid fatigue comes up a lot. Michelle De La Isla, the mayor of Topeka, Kan., told The Topeka Capital-Journal that campaigning would make her workload unmanageable, and there “there was no way I was going to be able to do this at the same time” as heading coronavirus response.Mayor Grover C. Robinson IV, of Pensacola, Fla., said he decided not to run out of frustration with the politicized reaction to health directives, after returning from a vacation and attending yet another contentious meeting. Similar explanations have come from the mayors of Highland, Ill., Pascagoula, Miss., and Seattle, among others.Thomas M. McGee, the mayor of Lynn, Mass., a large, blue-collar city north of Boston, described parts of last year as “a blur,” as the virus raced through crowded neighborhoods that were home to multiple generations of families.Lynn was classified as a high-risk zone for all but two weeks of the past year, and the sense of crisis has never abated, even now that the vaccination drive is underway.“Do you remember the terrible earthquake and tsunami in Thailand? I feel like we’re running on the beach, up to a higher ground, and the tsunami is behind us,” he said. “Are we going to get to higher ground before the pandemic comes rushing back in and surges over us?”Mayor Thomas McGee of Lynn, Mass., is also stepping down. He described parts of last year as a blur and said the sense of crisis never abated.Damian Strohmeyer for The New York TimesMr. McGee, a Democrat, ran for mayor of Lynn, his hometown, in 2016, after 22 years in the State Legislature. But nothing, he said, prepared him for the intensity of being a mayor last year.“After 27 years and this, in some ways, lost year,” he said, “my family was like: ‘You’re stressed. It’s really had a substantial impact on you. And we’ll support you 100 percent whatever you want to do. But we think you should consider making a step back.’”Mr. McGee’s account of the past year is laced with frustration at the federal government, which he said left local officials to cope with a fast-moving public health emergency, while former President Donald J. Trump contradicted basic messaging about safety.“It became apparent, and I’d say it on calls, and while we were making decisions, ‘You know, we’re on our own here,’” he said. “They left a lot of us in the lurch, and we were left to really kind of navigate this on our own.”His frustration was echoed by Joseph A. Curtatone, 54, the mayor of Somerville, Mass., a city of 81,000, who is leaving office after nearly 18 years, amid speculation that he will run for governor.“We’re the first to hear if someone has lost a loved one, we’re the first to hear if someone is being evicted and has no place to live,” he said, joking that his brief moments of relief came when he was allowed to talk about snowstorms.Mayors, Mr. Curtatone said, were forced to coordinate policies on such grave matters as shutdowns and school closings among themselves, putting collective pressure on the state government to follow their lead.“Trump pushed it onto the states, and they pushed it onto the cities and towns,” he said.Nearly two-thirds of big-city mayors are Democrats, many in Republican-controlled states whose leaders were more skeptical of shutdowns and mask mandates.That tension has exacerbated mayors’ “sense of being embattled,” even as coronavirus case numbers decline, said Ms. Lusk, of Boston University’s Initiative on Cities.Jospeh Curtatone, the mayor of Somerville, Mass., is leaving office after four terms.Damian Strohmeyer for The New York Times“I think the cyclicality of the pandemic meant they’ve never been able to let their guard down, they’ve never been out of the woods,” she said.Thomas Bernard, the mayor of North Adams, a city of about 14,000 in the northwest corner of Massachusetts, said he desperately missed ordinary interactions, like reading picture books to schoolchildren.He recalled the holiday season as a difficult time, as he was forced to make decisions that, as he put it, “really strike at the spirit of the community.”“I was the person who stole fun from North Adams for a year,” he said. “It feels that way sometimes. I was making the decisions, like other mayors, that led to the cancellation of the things we all love.”He announced in February that he would not run for re-election — the second time in nearly 40 years that an incumbent mayor will not appear on the ballot — so that he could focus on containing the virus and rebuilding the economy.“I feel behind the curve on the recovery, and adding the campaign, it didn’t feel tenable,” he said. “It didn’t feel like I could bring the best of myself to all three of those things.”Mr. Bernard, who recently turned 50, is unsure what he will do after he steps down.“There will be days, as it gets more toward election season, and I’m not doing a spaghetti dinner, you know, I’m probably going to have a twinge,” he said. “There are going to be days — the last holiday tree-lighting as mayor, the last high school graduation — those are the moments I’m going to feel most emotional about.”“I wear my heart on my sleeve as it is,” he said, “but it’s going to be a complex flood.” More

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      Could Ron DeSantis Be Trump’s G.O.P. Heir? He’s Certainly Trying.

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      Florida’s governor has elbowed his way to the front of the line of 2024 Republican hopefuls by leveraging a brand of “competent Trumpism” (as one ally put it) and hitting back at critics of his pandemic leadership.MIAMI — No one had to tell Ron DeSantis that his mock debates had bordered on disastrous. His answers rambled. He seemed uninspired.By the time he got to the greenroom of the biggest political stage of his career, a Republican primary debate for Florida governor in June 2018, he had made a risky decision.“I thought about everything we did in debate practice,” his campaign manager, Brad Herold, recalled Mr. DeSantis’s telling him. “I’m going to throw it out and do my own thing.”At the debate’s start, the audience applauded louder for his better-known opponent, Adam Putnam. By its end — after he had cast Mr. Putnam as a vestige of old Republicanism and delivered a rat-a-tat of one-liners — Mr. DeSantis had taken command of the crowd.Nearly three years and a pandemic later, Mr. DeSantis’s inclination to keep his own counsel and drive hard at reopening Florida has made him perhaps the most recognizable Republican governor in the country and a favorite of the party faithful. In turn, he has become a polarizing leader in the resistance to lengthy pandemic lockdowns, ignoring the advice of some public health experts in ways that have left his state’s residents bitterly divided over the costs and benefits of his actions.Now, with Florida defying many of the gloomy projections of early 2020 and feeling closer to normal as the pandemic continues to dictate daily life in many other big states, Mr. DeSantis, 42, has positioned himself as the head of “the free state of Florida” and as a political heir to former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. DeSantis owes a mightier debt than most in his party to Mr. Trump, who blessed his candidacy when he was a nobody congressman taking on the staid Florida Republican Party.Mr. DeSantis’s political maneuvering and extensive national donor network have allowed him to emerge as a top Republican candidate to succeed Mr. Trump on the ballot in 2024 if the former president does not run again. The governor’s brand of libertarianism — or “competent Trumpism,” as one ally called it — is on the ascent. Seizing on conservative issues du jour like opposition to social media “censorship” and vaccine passports, he has forged strong connections with his party’s base.In February, Mr. DeSantis had a prominent speaking appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, another high-profile gathering of Republicans in his home state. Erin Schaff/The New York TimesAnd his bonds with Republican leaders may be deepening: Mr. DeSantis has a plum speaking spot on Saturday night at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s resort and political base in Palm Beach, Fla., for the Republican National Committee’s spring retreat. Other possible 2024 rivals, like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Senator Marco Rubio, were relegated to appearances a night earlier.The governor has also taken steps to shore up his political standing around his handling of the pandemic, summoning reporters to the State Capitol on Wednesday to blast — complete with a slide-show presentation titled “FACTS VS. SMEARS” — a report in CBS News’s “60 Minutes” that did not have sufficient evidence to prove a pay-to-play dynamic between Mr. DeSantis’s administration and Covid-19 vaccine distribution for white and wealthy Floridians.His record on the virus is, in fact, mixed. By some measures, Florida has had an average performance in a pandemic that is not yet over. Yet his decisions helped keep hospitals from becoming overwhelmed with coronavirus patients. He highlights that he helped businesses survive and allowed children to go to school.What his critics cannot forget, however, is how he resisted some key public health guidelines. An op-ed article endorsing masks that his staff drafted under his name in mid-July was never approved by the governor for publication. The restrictions he now dismisses as ineffective, such as local mask mandates and curfews, which experts say in fact worked, were imposed in most cases by Democratic mayors with whom he hardly speaks.Given the ways people admire or despise him, however, the nuances seem beside the point.He infuriates passionate critics who believe he operates shrewdly to tend to his own interests. They fear that approach contributed to confusing public health messages, vaccine favoritism for the wealthy and the deaths of about 34,000 Floridians. “DeathSantis,” they call him. (Mr. DeSantis declined repeated interview requests for this article.)But at almost every turn, Mr. DeSantis has seized the criticism as an opportunity to become an avatar for national conservatives who relish the governor’s combativeness. He can score points that his potential Republican rivals in the minority in Washington, including Mr. Rubio and Senator Rick Scott, his predecessor as governor, cannot.“He’s taken the wrong approach on some of our most critical issues, Covid being first and foremost, yet within Republican political circles, he is considered to be the front-runner for the White House,” said former Representative David Jolly, an ex-Republican who is flirting with a possible run for governor. “He’s worked his hand perfectly.”Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Trump appeared together at a campaign rally in Tampa in 2018. The former president’s endorsement of Mr. DeSantis helped him win the Republican primary in the governor’s race that year.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. DeSantis has raised his profile despite lacking the gregarious personality that might be associated with an aspiring Trump successor. Unlike the former president, no one would describe the publicly unemotional and not especially eloquent Mr. DeSantis as a showman. (After a record day of coronavirus deaths in July, he offered, “These are tough, tough things to see.”) People close to him describe an un-Trump-like fondness for poring over articles in scientific journals.And, they say, do not underestimate the intellect and instinct that have repeatedly defied expectations and propelled Mr. DeSantis from Little Leaguer in middle-class Dunedin, Fla., to potential presidential contender.“He has a set of skills and traits that are ideal for the times,” said former Representative Carlos Curbelo, a Republican who served in the House with Mr. DeSantis. “Today, it would be very difficult to defeat him.”A long athletic, military and political résuméHe pronounces his last name “DEE-san-tis.” On the baseball field, he went simply by “D.”His team from Dunedin, on Florida’s Gulf Coast, made it to the Little League World Series in 1991. He was a 12-year-old known to be serious and competitive.Mr. DeSantis playing for Yale’s baseball team.Yale Athletics His father installed Nielsen TV-ratings boxes. His mother was a nurse. When he went to Yale, the Florida native — he was born in Jacksonville — arrived on campus in cutoff denim shorts.“One of the reasons we got along is we weren’t the traditional, Ivy-League-mold students,” said Nick Sinatra, a former Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity housemate. “He always talked politics. I’m a conservative, and at a place like that, that’s not common.”A history major, Mr. DeSantis lugged around a backpack full of books. He studied for both academics and athletics, scrutinizing ballplayers on TV. The Yale baseball team elected him captain.His résumé got only more sterling. He spent a year teaching history at a Georgia prep school before landing at Harvard Law. He received a commission in the Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps, where he served at Guantánamo Bay (“not as a detainee, as an officer,” he has quipped) and in Iraq. For two years, he worked as a federal prosecutor before winning a congressional seat near Jacksonville in 2012. His 2011 book, “Dreams From Our Founding Fathers,” which laid out a stridently conservative ideology, made him popular among Florida Tea Party Republicans.Mr. DeSantis and his wife greeted supporters after he won Florida’s election for governor in 2018, narrowly defeating Andrew Gillum, then considered a Democratic rising star.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesTwo years earlier, he had married Casey Black, a local television anchor he met on a driving range. Ms. DeSantis would become one of her husband’s closest advisers and biggest political assets, with an office at the State Capitol. They have three children under the age of 5; the youngest was born in March 2020. Mr. DeSantis said he was not in the delivery room so as to avoid using up precious personal protective equipment.The most memorable part of Mr. DeSantis’s six years in Congress might be the platform they gave him to heighten his profile on Fox News, where he frequently represented the hard-line Freedom Caucus. Later, he would staunchly defend Mr. Trump over the Russia investigation.“He was a policy wonk with an ability to really identify a few areas within his committees, responsibilities which he knew would give him the political opportunity to get on television,” said Scott Parkinson, who was Mr. DeSantis’s chief of staff in 2018. Mr. DeSantis was appearing on cable TV multiple times a day, Mr. Parkinson recalled.Mr. DeSantis often slept in his office and walked the Capitol halls wearing headphones, avoiding unwanted interactions. He made few friends and struck other lawmakers as aloof.A brief Senate run in 2016 proved critical: It exposed him to a national network of wealthy donors he would later tap in his long-shot bid for governor.Mr. DeSantis speaking at a rally in Orlando in 2018. After winning the governor’s office, he pursued a broadly conservative agenda but made moves to appeal to moderates, and his approval ratings rose.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis barely defeated Andrew Gillum, at the time considered one of the Democrats’ brightest stars, after a bruising campaign laced with accusations of racism. Determined to show his independence in his first months in office, he appointed a chief science officer and pledged billions for the Everglades. He pardoned four wrongfully accused Black men. He lifted a ban on medical marijuana in smokable form.He was hardly a moderate: Mr. DeSantis also gutted a voter-approved measure meant to restore felons’ right to vote. He allowed some teachers to carry guns in schools. He banned so-called sanctuary cities in a state where there were none.But the mix pleased voters, and his approval ratings surged. Might the man who had shown his diaper-age daughter building a wall in a campaign ad actually be a pragmatist?Then came the pandemic.Defiant leadership during a crisisIn a state where political consultants often become synonymous with their clients over time, Mr. DeSantis has cycled quickly through advisers. A close friend and transition deputy was Representative Matt Gaetz, who is now embroiled in a scandalous federal investigation.Mr. DeSantis centralized power in his office early in the pandemic, ceding little of the spotlight to public health officials. The state Department of Health’s weekly Covid-19 recaps are titled “Updates on Florida’s Vaccination Efforts Under Governor DeSantis’ Leadership.”Mr. DeSantis’s slowness in locking down the state last year hurt his approval ratings. So did a deadly summer surge of the virus. But then, far earlier than most other governors, he pledged that schools would open in the fall and life would start returning to normal.Young people crowded the beaches in Fort Lauderdale on March 11 last year, as the coronavirus spread rapidly throughout the United States. Mr. DeSantis was slow to lock down Florida, which had a deadly summer surge.Saul Martinez for The New York Times“His policies were contrarian, and he was defiant,” said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster who has tracked Mr. DeSantis’s popularity and saw it rebound beginning last summer. “The more he stands his ground, the more he speaks his mind, the more the affinity grows for him.”His critics see the governor as stubborn and unwilling to hear dissent.“The governor we have today is the governor we anticipated after the election,” said Nikki Fried, Florida’s agriculture commissioner and the only Democrat elected statewide, who looks likely to run against Mr. DeSantis.“He surprised everybody in 2019,” she added, “but obviously that is not truly who he is.”In some ways, Mr. DeSantis has filled the void left by Mr. Trump, minus the tweets. He remains a Fox News regular. He counts among his scientific advisers Dr. Scott W. Atlas, the former Trump adviser who has promoted dubious theories. Mr. DeSantis’s office said he had received a vaccine last week but not in public, reminiscent of Mr. Trump, who was given the shot behind closed doors.Mr. DeSantis spoke at a news conference in January about the opening of a coronavirus vaccination site at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens. Vaccine access in the state has been slower for Black, Latino and poorer communities.Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesAnd the governor’s favorite foes are the “corporate media,” against whom he has scored political points.His recent tangle with “60 Minutes” centered on the extent to which political connections have helped white, wealthy Floridians get vaccinated.Local news outlets have chronicled how vaccine access has been slower for Black, Latino and poorer communities. Some pop-up vaccination sites were opened in neighborhoods that had many older residents — and that also had ties to DeSantis campaign donors.But “60 Minutes” focused on how Publix supermarket pharmacies received doses and left out relevant details, including an extended response from the governor at a news conference.On Wednesday, in Mr. DeSantis’s words, he “hit them back right between the eyes,” accusing “60 Minutes” of pursuing a malicious narrative.He left without taking questions.Research was contributed by More