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

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

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      Brian Benjamin Won’t Be on the New York Ballot After All

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      Lawmakers have passed legislation that would allow individuals who have been arrested or indicted to be removed from state ballots.ALBANY, N.Y. — Brian A. Benjamin, the former New York lieutenant governor who resigned after being indicted on federal bribery charges, will no longer appear on the state Democratic primary ballot after legislation passed on Monday made it possible to remove him.The measure is widely regarded as an accommodation to Gov. Kathy Hochul, who had publicly appealed to Democratic leaders of the Assembly and Senate to change the law, after other efforts to remove Mr. Benjamin from the ballot had stalled.The bill passed by the Senate and Assembly will allow candidates who have been arrested or charged with a misdemeanor or felony after being nominated to be removed from the ballot if they do not intend to serve. Ms. Hochul is expected to sign the bill into law shortly.Mr. Benjamin released a statement on Twitter Monday, saying that he would sign the necessary paperwork to remove his name from the ballot. “I am innocent of these unsubstantiated charges. However, I would be unable to serve under these circumstances,” he said.Under the old law, candidates who had formally accepted a party’s nomination could not be taken off the ballot unless they died, moved out of state or were nominated to another office. People who have been convicted of felonies are eligible to run for and hold public office under New York law, though a politician convicted of a felony while in office will be removed, according to the state Board of Elections.If Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, had been unsuccessful in changing the law, she would probably have faced the awkward scenario of running in November with a running mate who had been the designated No. 2 of one of her Democratic primary opponents.Democrats to Ms. Hochul’s left and Republican foes characterized the move as an abuse of power, saying that Ms. Hochul should not have been allowed to change the rules midstream because it suited her.“The rules of democracy really matter,” said Ana Maria Archila, an activist who is running to be lieutenant governor. “And how you do democracy, how you participate in it is actually the way that you demonstrate your commitment to it.”“Anyone else find it frightening that the Governor — the most powerful person in NY — is changing the rules of the election they are running in mid-game to help them look better in said election?” Robert G. Ortt, the State Senate minority leader, wrote on Twitter.Leaders in Albany had also initially expressed skepticism, with the Senate majority leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, saying she “really, really, really” did not like the idea of changing election laws while a campaign was already in progress. Some of her Democratic colleagues in the party’s progressive wing chafed at the idea of offering Ms. Hochul political favors after bruising budget negotiations.But the lawmakers softened over the weekend, with many embracing the idea that it did not serve voters’ interest to keep someone like Mr. Benjamin, who has no intention of serving, on the ballot.“There’s always that extreme example that leads us to the change. That’s all this is,” said Assemblywoman Amy Paulin of Westchester, a bill sponsor. “This is so that voters are voting for someone who intends to serve. This isn’t about politics.”Political observers noted, however, that the optics of sharing a ticket with someone who is under federal indictment were obviously less than ideal for Ms. Hochul. Mr. Benjamin has pleaded not guilty.The governor, who is seeking her first full term, enjoyed broad popularity when she ascended to the state’s highest office after her predecessor, Andrew M. Cuomo, resigned amid allegations of sexual harassment. Mr. Cuomo has denied wrongdoing.Ms. Hochul quickly set to work building a campaign that would raise more than $20 million in record time, making her the prohibitive favorite for the Democratic nomination.What to Know About Lt. Gov. Brian BenjaminCard 1 of 5Who is Brian Benjamin? More

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      What Democrats Don’t Understand About Rural America

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      NOBLEBORO, Maine — We say this with love to our fellow Democrats: Over the past decade, you willfully abandoned rural communities. As the party turned its focus to the cities and suburbs, its outreach became out of touch and impersonal. To rural voters, the message was clear: You don’t matter.Now, Republicans control dozens of state legislatures, and Democrats have only tenuous majorities in Congress at a time in history when we simply can’t afford to cede an inch. The party can’t wait to start correcting course. It may be too late to prevent a blowout in the fall, but the future of progressive politics — and indeed our democracy — demands that we revive our relationship with rural communities.As two young progressives raised in the country, we were dismayed as small towns like ours swung to the right. But we believed that Democrats could still win conservative rural districts if they took the time to drive down the long dirt roads where we grew up, have face-to-face conversations with moderate Republican and independent voters and speak a different language, one rooted in values rather than policy.It worked for us. As a 25-year-old climate activist with unabashedly progressive politics, Chloe was an unlikely choice to be competitive — let alone win — in a conservative district that falls mostly within the bounds of a rural Maine county that has the oldest population in the state. But in 2018, she won a State House seat there with almost 53 percent of the vote. Two years later, she ran for State Senate, challenging the highest-ranking Republican in state office, the Senate minority leader. And again, in one of the most rural districts in the state, voters chose the young, first-term Democrat who sponsored one of the first Green New Deal policies to pass a state legislature.To us, it was proof that the dogmas that have long governed American politics could and should be challenged. Over the past decade, many Democrats seem to have stopped trying to persuade people who disagreed with them, counting instead on demographic shifts they believed would carry them to victory — if only they could turn out their core supporters. The choice to prioritize turnout in Democratic strongholds over persuasion of moderate voters has cost the party election after election. But Democrats can run and win in communities that the party has written off — and they need not be Joe Manchin-like conservative Democrats to do so.This isn’t just a story about rural Maine. It’s about a nationwide pattern of neglect that goes back years. After the 2010 midterms, when the Democrats lost 63 House seats, Nancy Pelosi, then the House minority leader, disbanded the House Democratic Rural Working Group. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada later eliminated the Senate’s rural outreach group. By 2016, according to Politico’s Helena Bottemiller Evich, the Clinton campaign had only a single staff person doing rural outreach from its headquarters, in Brooklyn; the staffer had been assigned to the role just weeks before the election. And in 2018, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Tom Perez, told MSNBC, “You can’t door-knock in rural America.”We saw this pattern for ourselves. In 2019, the Maine Senate Democratic Campaign Committee told us that it didn’t believe in talking to Republicans. (The group’s executive director did not respond to a request seeking comment by press time.)That blinkered strategy is holding the party back. When Democrats talk only to their own supporters, they see but a small fraction of the changes roiling this country. Since 2008, residents of small towns have fallen behind cities on many major economic benchmarks, and they watched helplessly as more and more power and wealth were consolidated in cities. We saw up close the loss, hopelessness and frustration that reality has instilled.The current Democratic strategy doesn’t just lead to bad policy but also to bad politics. Our democracy rewards the party that can win support over large geographic areas. Ceding rural America leaves a narrow path to victory even in the best circumstances. When the landscape is more difficult, Democrats set themselves up for catastrophic defeat. But we don’t have to cede these parts of the country. Democrats have to change the way they think about them and relate to the voters who live there.What much of the party establishment doesn’t understand is that rural life is rooted in shared values of independence, common sense, tradition, frugality, community and hard work. Democratic campaigns often seem to revolve around white papers and wonky policy. In our experience, politicians lose rural people when they regurgitate politically triangulated lines and talk about the vagaries of policy. Rural folks vote on what rings true and personal to them: Can this person be trusted? Is he authentic?While these defeats ought to prompt real soul-searching within the party, some political scientists and many mainstream Democrats have taken them as proof not that their own strategies must change, but rather that rural Republicans are too ignorant to vote in their own best interest. It’s a counterproductive, condescending story that serves only to drive the wedge between Democrats and rural communities deeper yet.Chloe has knocked on more than 20,000 doors over the last two cycles, listening to stories of loss and isolation. One man told her she was the first person to listen to him; most campaigns, he said, didn’t even bother to knock on his door — they judged him for what his house looked like. Another voter said she had been undecided between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump until Election Day but ultimately voted for Mr. Trump because, she said, at the Republican convention, he talked about regular American working people, and Ms. Clinton didn’t at her own convention.Something has to change. The Democrats need a profoundly different strategy if they are to restore their reputation as champions of working people, committed to improving their lives, undaunted by wealth and power. In our view, the only way for Democrats to regain traction in rural places is by running strong campaigns in districts that usually back Republicans. This change starts with having face-to-face conversations to rebuild trust and faith not only in Democrats but also in the democratic process. Even though it’s hard work with no guaranteed outcome, it is necessary — even if we don’t win.In our two campaigns, we turned down the party consultants and created our own canvassing universe — the targeted list of voters whom we talk to during the election season. In 2020, this universe was four times larger than what the state party recommended. It included thousands of Republicans and independents who had (literally) never been contacted by a Democratic campaign in their entire time voting.Our campaign signs? Hand-painted or made of scavenged wood pallets by volunteers, with images of loons, canoes and other hallmarks of the Maine countryside. Into the trash went consultant-created mailers. Instead, we designed and carried out our own direct mail program for half the price of what the party consultants wanted to charge while reaching 20 percent more voters.Volunteers wrote more than 5,000 personal postcards, handwritten and addressed to neighbors in their own community. And we defied traditional advice by refusing to say a negative word about our opponents, no matter how badly we wanted to fight back as the campaigns grew more heated.When we first embarked down this road, the path was rocky. Chloe came home from canvassing distraught one day and dictated a voice memo to herself: “I talked to a lot of people I’ve known my whole life, and they wouldn’t commit to vote for me.” They knew she was a good person; the only reason they refused to support her was that she was a Democrat.Another day she met a couple who thought people should be able to snowmobile and hunt and fish and ride ATVs on protected lands. Chloe told them she agreed; while she considers herself extremely progressive, there are some things she thinks the left is too rigid on. Then the conversation turned to immigration, and the couple told her that undocumented immigrants should be separated from their kids. “I literally have no idea what to say to that besides just not getting into it,” Chloe reflected. “But is that being disingenuous? Is that not fighting the fight?”We heard some rough stuff, and we didn’t tolerate hate. But through the simple act of listening, we discovered that we could almost always catch a glimpse of common ground if we focused on values, not party or even policy. If people said they were fed up with politics, we’d say: “Us, too! That’s why we’re here.” If they despised Democrats, we’d tell them how we had deep issues with the party as well, and we were trying to make it better. It was how we differentiated ourselves from the national party and forged a sense of collective purpose.Slowly but surely, we thought we might be able to turn things around. A young mom who opened her door said that she couldn’t afford to take her child to the emergency room. She had never voted for a Democrat, but she committed to vote for us. There was a man with a Trump bumper sticker on his truck who, after talking with Chloe, put a Chloe Maxmin bumper sticker on his tailgate, too. There was a preacher who had never put up a political sign in his life until our campaign.Perhaps the most memorable experience was in 2018 at the end of a winding driveway on a cold fall day. Several men were in the garage, working on their snowmobiles. Chloe stepped out to greet them. “Hi, I’m Chloe, and I’m running for state representative.” The owner immediately responded with a question: Did she support Medicaid expansion? Chloe answered honestly that she did. The man pointed an angry finger toward the road and told her to leave.Taken aback, Chloe asked: “Hold on a second. What just happened? I’m honestly just interested to hear your perspective, even if you don’t vote for me.”This gentleman went on to tell his story, how he grew up on that very property without any electricity or running water; how he had worked hard to build a life for himself and his family, which included paying for his own health care without any help from the government. This was his way of life and what he believed in. It was an honest conversation, and by the end, he said he would vote for Chloe.Gradually, our own volunteers learned from Chloe how to find common ground. Despite the many doors shut in their faces, they largely succeeded.“Talked with a 43-year-old guy who announced that he wasn’t voting, that he was so depressed at the quality of people in office,” an old-timer who was one of our volunteers recounted in an email. By the end of their conversation, he was going to vote just for Chloe. “The fact that an older person is optimistic and working to elect young people is a great thing,” the voter told him.Another volunteer once called these conversations “a connection with each other and with something bigger that each one of us craves.”When Covid hit in March 2020, we tried a new way of fostering these connections, pausing the campaign and pivoting all our resources to supporting seniors struggling with the isolation and upheaval of the pandemic. With some 200 volunteers, we made more than 13,500 calls to seniors in the district — regardless of their political affiliation — and offered them rides, pharmacy pickups, connections to food banks, and a buddy to call them every day or week to check in.A volunteer spoke with an elderly woman who depended on the library for large-print books, but the libraries were closed. We found a bookstore that delivered some. Another volunteer talked with a gentleman who had no internet and therefore no access to the news. She bought him a subscription to The New York Times.The Democratic campaign leadership was eager to replicate our success but also fundamentally unequipped to understand what we were doing. At the height of the pandemic, we told the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee about our approach. Almost immediately the committee’s staff was instructed to tell Democratic candidates to make similar calls, but only to seniors within their “persuasion universe” — people whose votes they thought they could win. Specifically, people over 60 who were likely Democratic voters. We read this in horror and immediately wrote back, imploring the leaders to not limit the scope of the calls. They brushed us off.It was far from the only time party leaders told us they knew better than we did. In the final stretch of the 2018 campaign, they insisted that as part of their turnout effort they would send their people to conservative households that had told us Chloe was the only Democrat they would support. We were terrified that volunteers reciting a generic script, pushing folks to vote for Democrats up and down the ticket, would alienate the disaffected Republican voters whom we had worked so hard to persuade to vote for Chloe.We begged the party officials to reconsider. They refused. It wasn’t until the afternoon of Election Day that they backed down, telling us they were unable to mobilize enough volunteers to send down the back roads to the district. That experience only reinforced our belief that candidates should be able to control the resources that the party puts into districts, so that they can iterate and improve on the one-size-fits-all strategies that the Democrats tend to employ.After both successful campaigns, we asked ourselves: Is our strategy something that can be replicated? We scaled up our approach in 2020 to solidify some of our tactics, such as focusing on canvassing voters whom the party had given up on, eschewing consultants and leaning into values-driven messaging. But, at the same time, we knew that the back roads of Maine were unique; the roads of Georgia, Wisconsin, Washington or Utah might require their own strategy. A state or local campaign is an easier ship to turn than a U.S. Senate campaign and better situated to buck consultants and bring a different politics to folks’ doorsteps. We certainly don’t have all the answers; all we can hope is that our example will help persuade candidates to try, to recommit themselves to rural places, to listen, to learn and to evolve.As Democrats, we feel every day the profound urgency of our times, the existential necessity of racial justice, the impending doom of the climate crisis, the imperative to reform our criminal justice system, and so much more. At the same time, as a party we’ve made some big mistakes as we walk down the road to a better world. Abandoning rural voters could be one of the costliest.But it’s not too late to make amends, to rebuild our relationship with the quiet roads of rural America. We have to hit the ground running, today, this cycle, and recommit ourselves to the kind of politics that reaches every corner of our country.Chloe Maxmin (@chloemaxmin) is a state senator in Maine. Canyon Woodward (@CanyonWoodward) was her campaign manager in 2018 and 2020. Their book, “Dirt Road Revival,” comes out on May 10.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      How N.Y. Democrats Lost a Critical Redistricting Battle

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      When an independent redistricting commission failed to reach consensus, Democratic leaders decided to make their own maps and risk a lawsuit.It was 2020, more than a year before New York began its once-in-a-decade redistricting process, when Carl Heastie, the Assembly speaker, foresaw a problem.New York voters had empowered a bipartisan commission to guide the task of drafting new legislative maps for the House and local state districts. But Mr. Heastie worried that constitutional language behind the new process would give incentive to Republicans to undermine the commission, according to two Democrats familiar with the discussions.If the commission failed to complete its work, Republicans could try to push the mapmaking process directly to the courts, rather than the Democrat-dominated Legislature.With a handful of crucial House and State Senate seats hanging in the balance, that outcome could have been disastrous for Democrats. They drafted a constitutional amendment to head off Republicans, but voters soundly rejected it last November. Lawmakers then tried another workaround, passing a bill authorizing the Legislature to act if the commission failed to complete its work.Mr. Heastie’s fears came to pass in January, when Republican commissioners refused to approve a final recommendation to the Legislature.But rather than defer to the courts, Democratic leaders decided to make a bet: They disregarded the commission’s work, unilaterally approved maps that positioned their party to pick up key House seats, and hoped that their legal change would withstand scrutiny.Carl Heastie, the Assembly speaker, had warned colleagues that a new redistricting commission might intentionally deadlock.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesOn Wednesday, the Democrats’ maneuver imploded.In a sharply worded decision, the New York State Court of Appeals said that the Legislature’s actions violated the State Constitution, accusing Democratic leaders of placing partisan interests above the will of the voters who, in 2014, created the commission and outlawed partisan gerrymandering.A majority of the seven-judge panel — all appointed by Democrats — explicitly found fault with Mr. Heastie’s attempted procedural fix, ruled that the congressional maps had been “drawn with impermissible partisan purpose,” and empowered a court-appointed special master to redraft the congressional and State Senate lines.The ruling threw New York politics into chaos and scrambled the national fight for control of the House of Representatives this fall.What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Deepening Divides: As political mapmakers create lopsided new district lines, the already polarized parties are being pulled even farther apart.“Any Democrat in New York today who you get on the phone and tells you anything other than this was an unmitigated disaster, is just not telling you the truth,” said Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who helps lead the Republicans’ national redistricting effort.Democrats had been counting on the new maps in New York to provide as many as three new House seats, offsetting expected Republican gains through redistricting in other states.The final outcome of the 2022 battlefield may still depend on whether Florida courts strike down Republicans’ new map there as a gerrymander. But for now, Republicans appear poised to best the Democrats nationally for the second consecutive redistricting cycle, making it increasingly difficult for Democrats to hold onto their slim House majority.The situation in New York was even more tenuous. Not only will it take a court-appointed special master weeks to draw new lines — significantly scrambling contests that have already been going on for months — but election lawyers said on Thursday that they were not certain how the state could even comply with the order and other election-related requirements.For instance, while it at first appeared that primaries for statewide offices like governor and lieutenant governor had not been affected by the ruling, those contests may be called into question, after all. To qualify for the ballot, the State Board of Elections requires candidates for statewide office to collect petitions from voters in multiple congressional districts. No one could immediately say whether those petitions, filed weeks ago, were now invalid.“Boy, that could really upend the elections much more than I originally thought,” said Jerry H. Goldfeder, a Democratic elections lawyer who wrote a leading textbook on New York election law, as he puzzled through the ruling Thursday morning.Mr. Goldfeder and other Democrats strenuously disagreed with the Court of Appeals’ decision, the first time in half a century that the judges have struck down a map approved by lawmakers. They called it judicial overreach and heaped blame back on Republicans, who they say intentionally sabotaged the commission’s work in hopes of achieving the outcome they ultimately won in court.“It would have been impossible for us to actually meet the threshold laid out by the Court of Appeals because the Republicans refused to come to a meeting to vote,” said David Imamura, the Democratic appointee who chaired the redistricting commission.He called the current system “unworkable” and warned that the Court of Appeals decision, while attempting to vindicate the will of the voters, would actually ensure that one party or the other always has a political incentive to deprive the Legislature of the ability to draw lines.Jack Martins, Mr. Imamura’s Republican counterpart, did not return requests for comment.In reality, both parties entered this year’s redistricting cycle knowing that the commission was legally untested and had serious flaws that made it different from those that have worked in other states.Created out of a compromise between former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Republicans who controlled the Senate at the time, the panel consisted of even numbers of Democratic and Republican appointees. It lacked clear incentives to compromise, and its work could always be overruled by the Legislature if lawmakers rejected two consecutive proposals by the body.But voters, sick of years of political mapmaking in New York, enthusiastically enshrined it in the State Constitution alongside language outlawing partisan gerrymandering.For a time, the commission appeared to be working. That changed late last year, when the members began to draft final congressional, State Senate and Assembly maps. Rather than sending the Legislature one set of maps to consider in January, the commission sent competing partisan maps.When those maps were rejected, the commission simply collapsed without submitting a second proposal required by the State Constitution, eventually laying the groundwork for the Republicans to sue.Democratic lawmakers insist that after the commission failed, they proceeded in good faith, acting on what courts in New York have long recognized as the authority of the representative branch of government to draw maps.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      After Elevation of Trump Allies, Revolt Brews in Michigan G.O.P.

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      For Republican supporters of Donald J. Trump in Michigan, it seemed like a crowning moment: The state party chose two candidates endorsed by the former president, both outspoken preachers of 2020 election falsehoods, as its contenders for the state’s top law enforcement officer and its chief of election administration.But instead, that move at a convention last weekend — where Republicans officially endorsed Matthew DePerno for attorney general and Kristina Karamo for secretary of state — has ruptured the Michigan Republican Party. After months of strain, it appears to finally be snapping as what remains of the old guard protests the party’s direction.This week, Tony Daunt, a powerful figure in Michigan politics with close ties to the influential donor network of the DeVos family, resigned from the G.O.P.’s state committee in a blistering letter, calling Mr. Trump “a deranged narcissist.” Major donors to the state party indicated that they would direct their money elsewhere. And one of Mr. Trump’s most loyal defenders in the State Legislature was kicked out of the House Republican caucus.The repudiation of the election-denying wing of the party by other Republicans in Michigan represents rare public pushback from conservatives against Mr. Trump’s attempts to force candidates across the country to support his claims of a rigged 2020 vote. That stance has become a litmus test for G.O.P. politicians up and down the ballot as Mr. Trump adds to his slate of more than 150 endorsements this election cycle.Yet some Republicans in Michigan and beyond worry that a singular, backward-looking focus on the 2020 election is a losing message for the party in November.“Rather than distancing themselves from this undisciplined loser,” Mr. Daunt wrote in his resignation letter, “far too many Republican ‘leaders’ have decided that encouraging his delusional lies — and, even worse — cynically appeasing him despite knowing they are lies, is the easiest path to ensuring their continued hold on power, general election consequences be damned.“Whether it’s misguided true belief, cynical cowardice, or just plain old grift and avarice,” Mr. Daunt continued in the letter, which was addressed to a Republican colleague, “it’s a losing strategy and I cannot serve on the governing board of a party that’s too stupid to see that.”Mr. Daunt’s resignation shocked party insiders in Michigan, in part because of his close ties to Dick and Betsy DeVos, prominent conservative donors who have often acted as kingmakers in state Republican politics and have marshaled millions of dollars through their political arm, the Michigan Freedom Fund. Ms. DeVos served in Mr. Trump’s cabinet as education secretary.Jeff Timmer, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party and critic of Mr. Trump, said of Mr. Daunt’s letter, “Him taking a step like this is indicative of where their thinking is.” Mr. Timmer added, “It seems highly unlikely that he would do this and tell them afterward when they read it in the press.”A spokesman for the Michigan Freedom Fund did not respond to a request for comment. But some people within the DeVos network have also expressed frustrations about the direction of the state party, though they still want Republicans to do well in November, according to two people who have spoken with donors connected to the network and who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.Betsy DeVos, the former education secretary, and her husband, Dick DeVos, at a White House event in 2019.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesIn an interview on Thursday morning, Mr. Trump disputed that a lasting focus on the 2020 election might hurt Republicans in November.“I think it’s good for the general election because it’s made people very angry to get out and vote,” he said. He declined to say whether he would provide financial backing for Mr. DePerno or Ms. Karamo, though he praised Mr. DePerno as a “bulldog” and called Ms. Karamo “magnetic.”A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The 2022 election season is underway. See the full primary calendar and a detailed state-by-state breakdown.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.Mr. Trump declined to comment on the DeVos network, saying only of Ms. DeVos, who resigned from his administration after the Capitol riot, “She was fine, but the one that I really liked in that family was the father, who was essentially the founder.” (Ms. DeVos’s father, Richard M. DeVos, who died in 2018, was also a major Republican donor.)The most recent campaign-finance reports for the state party show that some big-dollar contributors have shifted their giving.“A lot of the traditional donors, they just walked away,” said John Truscott, a Republican strategist in Michigan. “I don’t know how it survives long term.”By the end of 2021, campaign finance reports show, the number of direct contributions greater than $25,000 to the Michigan Republicans had dwindled. The money the party took in included $175,000 in November from Ron Weiser, the party’s megadonor chairman.Mr. Weiser, who drew criticism last year when he joked about assassinating two Republican congressmen who voted to impeach Mr. Trump, gave the party at least $1.3 million for the cycle, according to the reports.In an email on Wednesday, Gustavo Portela, a spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party, said it was financially sound and cited the generosity of Mr. Weiser, saying he had committed to give and raise “the money we believe is necessary in order to win in November.”Ron Weiser, the chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, is also a major donor who has pumped cash into the party.David Guralnick/Detroit News, via Associated PressBut the names of other prolific donors, like Jeffrey Cappo, an auto-dealership magnate and philanthropist, no longer appeared in the reports for late 2021.Mr. Cappo said on Wednesday that he had found other avenues to give money to Republicans.“Our political state,” Mr. Cappo said, “is more dysfunctional than it’s ever been.”He said of Mr. Trump, “I think the guy really, really cared, but he cares more about himself than anybody else.”Republican divisions had been growing for weeks before the state party convention last weekend. And frustrations with Meshawn Maddock, a co-chair of the state party with close ties to Mr. Trump, boiled over as she endorsed candidates before the convention, including Mr. DePerno and Ms. Karamo.Mr. DePerno, a lawyer who challenged the election results in Antrim County, has pledged to investigate “all the fraud that occurred in this election,” including inquiries of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Attorney General Dana Nessel, all Democrats.Ms. Karamo rose to prominence after challenging the state’s 2020 results as a poll worker, arguing that she had witnessed fraud. Her claims were later debunked, but she quickly gained fame in conservative circles.When Mr. DePerno and Ms. Karamo all but clinched their nominations, it was not through a traditional party primary. Michigan instead nominates many statewide offices through a convention system, in which party activists serve as “precinct chairs” and vote on the nomination.The campaigns for Ms. Karamo and Mr. DePerno did not respond to requests for comment.Amid the fallout from the convention, Matt Maddock, a Republican state representative whom Mr. Trump had supported to become speaker next year, was pushed out of the House Republican caucus this week.Matt Maddock and Meshawn Maddock have been power players in Michigan Republican politics. Emily Elconin/ReutersA spokesman for Jason Wentworth, the current State House speaker and a Republican, confirmed in an email on Wednesday that Mr. Maddock had been “removed” from the Republican caucus. He declined to give a reason, saying he was not authorized to discuss internal business. On the website of the Michigan House Republicans, a member page for Mr. Maddock had been removed.Mr. Maddock’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Nor did Ms. Maddock, a chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party and Mr. Maddock’s wife. The Maddocks had been vocal supporters of Trump-aligned Republican candidates before the convention, including some Republican challengers to incumbents in the Legislature.“When you’re a member of a team, you can’t expect the benefit of being on that team while you’re simultaneously trying to trip your teammates,” said Jase Bolger, a Republican former speaker of the Michigan House. “So it wouldn’t be reasonable to expect him to remain on that team while he’s out actively opposing his teammates.”Removing Mr. Maddock from the House Republican caucus does not doom his re-election chances, but it will make it harder for him to raise money and maintain influence. Of course, outside money from groups allied with Mr. Trump could help offset any loss in fund-raising for Mr. Maddock, the state party or other candidates aligned with the former president.Despite the chaos, veteran Michigan Republicans are still bullish on the coming elections, provided the party’s message shifts.“We need to return to focusing on issues, on principles, on empowering people and turn away from the divisiveness and personalities,” Mr. Bolger said, “and certainly need to focus on 2022 and not 2020.” More

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      Court Tosses Out Maps That Favored Democrats

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      Primaries for Congress and the State Senate are likely to be delayed after New York’s highest court ruled that new districts were unconstitutional.Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll look at a decision that many people who follow politics in New York did not expect: The state’s top court threw out the new map for congressional and State Senate districts. We’ll also look at opposition to the city’s plans for homeless shelters in Chinatown.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesNew York’s top court said Democrats had violated the State Constitution when they took it upon themselves to draw new congressional and State Senate districts, which were widely seen as likely to favor Democratic candidates. The judges ordered a court-appointed expert to prepare new maps.The ruling is expected to delay the June 28 primaries for congressional and State Senate districts until August, to allow time for new maps to be readied and for candidates to collect petitions to qualify for the ballot in the districts on those maps.But there could still be primaries in June for governor and the State Assembly because those districts were not at issue. The high court left it to a trial court judge and the state Board of Elections to figure out the details with “all due haste.”My colleague Nicholas Fandos writes that Democratic leaders had counted on the Court of Appeals, with all seven judges appointed by Democratic governors, to overturn earlier decisions about the congressional and State Senate maps from a Republican judge in Steuben County and a bipartisan appeals court in Rochester. The high court instead issued a more damning verdict that is not subject to appeal.National Democrats had looked to New York to pick up as many as three new seats in the fall and offset redistricting gains by Republicans across the country. Now, with the ruling likely to eliminate the prospect of Democratic gains in New York, Republicans’ chances of retaking control of the House of Representatives appear to have increased.With Chief Judge Janet DiFiore writing the majority opinion, the court concluded that the Democrats — who control the Assembly and State Senate and adopted the maps at issue in February — had ignored a constitutional amendment approved by voters in 2014 that banned partisan gerrymandering. The judges said the Democrats had designed districts “with impermissible partisan purpose.”Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said she was reviewing the decision. Michael Murphy, a spokesman for Democrats in the State Senate, said they still “believe in the constitutionality” of their maps and will repeat that to the court-appointed expert assigned to draw ones.Republicans and several nonpartisan public interest groups applauded the ruling. “The will of the people prevailed over the Corrupt Albany Machine in a tremendous victory for democracy, fair elections & the Constitution!” Representative Nicole Malliotakis, an endangered Republican, wrote on Twitter. Her Staten Island-based district was among several that the Democrats’ congressional map would have made significantly bluer by adding liberal voters from Park Slope in Brooklyn.What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Deepening Divides: As political mapmakers create lopsided new district lines, the already polarized parties are being pulled even farther apart.WeatherEnjoy a sunny day in the high 50s with breezes that will continue into a mostly clear evening, when temps will drop to the 40s.alternate-side parkingIn effect until Monday (Eid al-Fitr).The latest New York newsMayor Eric Adams has appointed several well-respected government professionals with no known red flags. But he has also surrounded himself with friends and allies with histories that led to protests and even arrests.A former Police Department officer accused of assaulting a Washington police officer during the Capitol riot is on trial.A newly released, partially redacted 2017 letter confirmed the Yankees’ illicit use of electronic devices to decipher and share opposing teams’ signs.Chinatown fights the city’s shelter planAndrew Seng for The New York TimesThe Chinatown neighborhood in Manhattan is about to get two new homeless shelters, one of which is proposing to allow drug use. Residents are fighting the city’s plans. I asked my colleague Andy Newman, who covers homelessness and related issues, to explain.The fight over the new shelters has elevated the usual not-in-my-backyard objections. What’s fueling residents’ heightened urgency?Hardly any neighborhood in the city welcomes homeless shelters. But anti-Asian hate crimes increased by over 300 percent from 2020 to 2021, and a lot of those attacks were linked to homeless people — and a lot of people in Chinatown feel that their very right to live is under attack. One man whose children go to school in Chinatown said at a community board hearing: “We do so much for this country and the city, and our human rights, my son and daughter’s human rights, are being taken away.”You mentioned the community board, which has just voted to oppose one of the new shelters. Will that vote make a difference, or will it just add to the pressure on Mayor Eric Adams?The community board’s vote is not binding — the city does not need the community board’s support to open that shelter, on Grand Street. But the community board resolution against it, which was introduced in response to complaints from the community, is a measure of the degree of opposition. The optics are tricky for Adams. He has thrown his weight behind opening more shelters as part of his plan to convince people who live in the streets and subways to come indoors. He has also been a strong supporter of the “harm reduction” approach to the opioid crisis that this planned shelter embraces.But he is also under pressure to stop hate crimes against Asian New Yorkers, and many residents of Chinatown believe that this shelter would lead to more such crimes — even though the shelter’s supporters, and city homeless services officials, argue that the shelter will actually make the neighborhood safer by taking in people who are already homeless in the neighborhood and connecting them to mental health and substance abuse services.Jacky Wong, founder of Concerned Citizens of East Broadway, which opposes another Chinatown shelter, questions the city’s approach of opening shelters in areas with a lot of street homelessness. “People may come here just to buy drugs, and so they would be considered ‘from’ this neighborhood,” he told me. “Why not give them housing in a neighborhood where they have more positive connections?”How has Chinatown coped with what residents say was a surge in random violence and thefts that accompanied the pandemic?Every Chinese-speaking person we interviewed has either witnessed or been a victim of some kind of episode of violence, crime or disorder that they attributed to a homeless person. Senior citizens are taking self-defense courses. Doctors said they send their staff home early so that they don’t have to deal with the streets and subways after dark.The city says the new shelters are partly a response to the killing of a homeless Asian man in 2019. But plans to name one of the shelters for him have drawn opposition. Why?Many people in Chinatown feel that the city is exploiting the 2019 murder of Chuen Kwok, an 83-year-old man from Hong Kong who slept in the street in Chinatown, as a justification for forcing a shelter on a community that doesn’t want it. These planned shelters are intended for people who are street-homeless, and there is a widely held belief in Chinatown that street homelessness is primarily a problem of the non-Chinese population, notwithstanding Kwok.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      The Tennessee Law Making School Board Culture Wars Even Worse

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      FRANKLIN, Tenn. — “What happens when a child sounds out the word ‘lesbian’ and turns to their teacher and asks, ‘What is a lesbian?’”Trisha Lucente, the mom of a local kindergartner, has come before the Williamson County school board to voice her distress over the district’s continued use of Epic, a digital library app containing more than 40,000 children’s books and videos. Ms. Lucente and like-minded parents have complained about several titles that they consider inappropriate. Anything touching on race, gender or sexuality can set off alarms in conservative circles here. (A book on sea horses came under fire recently. The fact that male sea horses get pregnant was seen as promoting the idea of gender fluidity.)In response, the school system temporarily shut down access to the library to conduct a review — prompting an outcry from supporters of the app — then reinstated it while allowing parents to opt out their kids.Ms. Lucente finds the compromise unacceptable. What happens when a child who has been opted out overhears the lesbian question, she demands. “What position does that put our teachers in? What are they supposed to say to that?” The Epic situation, she contends, is just another example of how the board and administration are dividing the community and “failing our children and our teachers.”Ms. Lucente is not the only one with strong feelings on the matter. Multiple parents and teachers at the meeting rise to praise Epic. One teenager, a junior at Franklin High School, asserts that “censorship is stupid” and scolds adults who would “shield” students from learning about racism, antisemitism and other uncomfortable aspects of history and humanity.Welcome to Williamson County, a hot spot in the ongoing culture war engulfing America’s public schools. An affluent, highly educated, politically conservative enclave just south of Nashville, Williamson has seen its share of school-related drama over the years. In 2015, for instance, conservatives here were fired up about a seventh-grade social studies unit that some viewed as Islamic indoctrination.The trauma of the Covid pandemic has driven tensions to a new level. Last August, the district drew national attention after a mob of parents, protesting the board’s vote to impose a temporary mask mandate, turned feral. One pro-mask dad was swarmed, cursed at and threatened as he made his way from the meeting back to his car. “You can leave freely, but we will find you!” a protester raged in a video that went viral.The district has since sought to curtail the hostilities. The 25 residents who signed up to speak at this month’s meeting were allowed precisely one minute each, with a timer keeping everyone on track. Officials warned at the outset that disruptive speakers would have their remarks terminated and that those who felt unsafe could have a sheriff’s deputy escort them to their vehicles.Williamson County is obviously not the only community dealing with such frictions. School boards across the nation are being dragged onto the front lines of partisan battles. Vaccination requirements, diversity and inclusion efforts, books that make certain people feel icky — these issues and more have prompted ugly, overheated confrontations, some of them violent. Outside groups are fanning the flames, as are cynical politicians looking to juice their careers. (See: DeSantis, Ron, governor of Florida.) The day-to-day concerns of running a school district (boring stuff like budgeting and approving contracts for vendors) are increasingly being overshadowed by partisan agendas.Many people would look at the spiraling circus and think: This is bad. Low-level, nonpartisan school boards are not where these radioactive political issues should be hashed out. Someone should find a way to reduce the heat on these public servants.Instead, Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature went the other way: passing a law last fall that allows for partisan school board elections, setting up a system that not only codifies the existing toxicity but also promises to exacerbate it. So much for putting students first.The overwhelming majority of school board races around the country are nonpartisan. This was the case in Tennessee until Republican lawmakers, during an emergency session called to deal with Covid-related issues, rammed through legislation permitting county parties to hold primary elections to select school board nominees, who can then list their party affiliations on the general election ballots. It was a controversial move, and the opposition included state Democrats, droves of educators and school board officials and even some Republicans.The law’s supporters insist that partisan contests will give voters a clearer sense of school board candidates and their values and, more broadly, that they will increase involvement and public interest in what are typically low-profile races.Critics of the new system counter that the law will change the fundamental nature of the position — and not in a good way. Among their biggest fears: To win their party’s primaries, candidates will need to focus more on hot-button issues that appeal to base voters, leading to more and fiercer culture clashes. Campaigns will require more money and more partisan brawling, discouraging many people from running. Those who skip the primaries and run in general elections as independents will be at a disadvantage. (America’s two-party system is not kind to independent candidates at any political level.) And as time goes on, the pool of people who choose to run will be composed less of civic-minded parents than of partisan warriors and careerist politicians.Not all of the county parties opted to hold school board primaries this cycle, and many voters are likely not yet aware of the change. But even at this early stage, there are signs that the new law’s supporters and its detractors are both right.Pretty much everyone plugged into this drama acknowledges that the newly partisan contests have increased interest and participation in school board races.Jim Garrett is the chair of the Davidson County Republican Party, which is holding primaries for its candidates running for the Metropolitan Nashville school board. Nashville is among Tennessee’s bluer regions, where Democrats have an electoral edge. Even so, with the new system, he says, more Republicans are running, and they are raising more money. “It looks like the cost of a campaign is going to be about double what it used to be,” he estimates.The local G.O.P. is also investing more in these races. For the first time, Davidson Republicans are arranging training sessions for school board candidates. These races weren’t a focus in previous elections, says Mr. Garrett. “They are a focus now.”There hasn’t yet been special training on the Democratic side. But the county party is happy to connect candidates to campaign vendors and other resources, says its chairwoman, Tara Houston. The party has also tasked a special committee to come up with a platform outlining its basic values on public education, which Democratic school board hopefuls will be expected to support.In Williamson County, where having a D next to one’s name is a scarlet letter of sorts, most of the primary action has been on the Republican side. In multiple districts, more conventional conservatives are facing off against contenders from the party’s Trumpier wing. Outside groups have lined up behind their champions, providing financial and other support. The most prominent of these is Williamson Families, a political action committee dedicated to protecting the county’s “conservative roots” and “Judeo-Christian values.” The PAC is led by Robin Steenman, who also heads the local branch of Moms for Liberty, a nonprofit based in Florida that champions parental rights and “liberty-minded” leaders nationwide. Williamson Families has endorsed a slate of superconservatives — after weeding out the RINOs, of course.Multiple parents and teachers in Williamson complain that, as predicted, some of the campaigns and contenders seem focused less on concrete education issues than on culture-war talking points. One middle-school teacher vents to me that some candidates are bragging about their love of Donald Trump and decrying the decline of traditional families and the godlessness of today’s youth.Meagan Gillis, whose two young daughters attend county schools, says the whole situation has turned to “chaos.” She points to a social media post by a conservative candidate promoting the child furries myth: the wacky online claim that teachers are being forced to cater to students who identify as cats, to the point of putting litter boxes in classrooms and meowing at the children. “I’m like, are you kidding me?” Ms. Gillis marvels. Things are getting so absurd, she says, that her family is seriously considering moving out of the area.Similar concerns and complaints can be heard from other corners of the state. Virginia Babb has loved her time on the Knox County school board and was planning to run for re-election — until the shift to partisan races. Now she will step down at the end of her term rather than get sucked into the slime. She initially ran for the board as “a very involved parent” without strong partisan leanings, she tells me, noting: “I don’t like either party. They are too much controlled by their extremes.”So down the partisan rabbit hole Tennessee school boards are being nudged — with other states possibly to follow. Missouri, Arizona, Florida and South Carolina are among the states where lawmakers toyed less successfully with similar legislation this year. Some bills made it farther than others, and the idea is likely to keep popping up. The conservative American Enterprise Institute favors listing school board candidates’ party affiliations on ballots. A collection of conservative leaders has been exploring other ways to bring school board races more into line with other types of elections, according to Politico.All of which would indeed most likely earn school board campaigns more attention and resources and make candidates easier to ideologically sort. But at what cost to America’s children?The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Disney vs. Florida

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      A debate over taxes is rapidly unraveling Florida’s long relationship with Disney, with broader implications for corporate America.Supporters of Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill at a weekend rally outside Walt Disney World in Orlando.Octavio Jones/ReutersNot so special anymoreYesterday, the Florida Senate voted to revoke special benefits that, since the 1960s, have given Disney the ability to essentially self-govern a vast area around its Disney World theme park and issue tax-free municipal bonds. The state’s House, which like its Senate is led by Republicans, is expected to vote for the measure today.It’s a rapid unraveling of a long relationship. Last month, Disney C.E.O. Bob Chapek, facing a backlash from employees, spoke out against Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity until the third grade, and limits it for older students as well. Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is eying a 2024 presidential run, has hit back, calling the company “Woke Disney,” and saying it no longer deserves its long-held special status. “If Disney wants to pick a fight, they chose the wrong guy,” DeSantis wrote in a recent campaign fund-raising email.This is about more than taxes, with broader implications for Disney, Florida and all of corporate America:For Disney: The company’s theme parks are flying, thanks to looser pandemic restrictions and higher-priced ticket sales. The loss of Disney’s special tax district could put a dent in that growth, and it would also restrict the company’s ability to develop the land it owns and tap state resources to do it.For Florida: The biggest issue is nearly $1 billion in tax-free bonds that have been issued by Disney. Florida law says that if a special tax district is dissolved, the responsibility to pay those bonds reverts to local governments. Democratic state lawmakers say that the interest on those bonds equates to an additional tax burden of $580 per person for the 1.7 million residents of neighboring Orange and Osceola counties, which would also have to step in and provide many of the public services for the area that are currently funded by the company. Disney employs about 80,000 people in Florida.For corporate America: Disney’s clash with Florida is the latest example of how companies’ growing willingness to speak out on social and political issues puts them in conflict with some lawmakers. Last year, Georgia politicians threatened to raise taxes on Delta after the airline spoke out against the state’s restrictive voting laws. More recently, Texas lawmakers have said they would bar Citigroup from underwriting the state’s bonds unless the bank revoked its policy to pay for employees to travel out of state for abortions, which are severely restricted there.“I don’t think this is going to stop companies that have a strong reputation and value system,” Paul Argenti, a professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, told DealBook. “It’s a real test of what is the Disney value system and what they are willing to stand up for.” Lloyd Blankfein, the former Goldman Sachs C.E.O., tweeted that Disney’s special tax status may not have been a good policy when it was first adopted, but DeSantis’s recent move looks like “retaliation” for the company’s stance on unrelated legislation. “Bad look for a conservative,” he said.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENINGThe Justice Department appeals to reinstate the transportation mask mandate. It will challenge the ruling by a federal judge in Florida who struck down the mandate on Monday, with the C.D.C. declaring that the mask rule was necessary to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Meanwhile, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York urged people to take “common sense” safety measures, as New York City prepared to raise its Covid alert level amid rising cases.Workers at an Apple store in Atlanta move to form a union. If they are successful, it would be the first of the tech giant’s stores in the U.S. to unionize. The move reflects increasing momentum in service-sector unionization, with recent union wins at Starbucks, Amazon and REI locations.The Obamas are leaving Spotify. Barack and Michelle Obama will not renew their production company’s lucrative podcasting contract with the streaming service, Bloomberg reports. In a speech at Stanford today, the former president is expected to speak about the scourge of falsehoods online, as he wades deeper into the public fray about how misinformation threatens democracy.Nestlé raises prices steeply, suggesting that inflation will persist. The world’s largest food company said today that the prices it charges for products rose by more than 5 percent on average in the first quarter, the biggest jump in that quarter since at least 2012. The largest increases, of more than 7 percent, were in pet food and bottled water.Chinese energy giant Cnooc surges in Shanghai debut. The company’s listing comes months after it was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange to comply with a Trump-era executive order banning American investment in companies that the U.S. says aid China’s military. Cnooc raised $4.4 billion in the offering.Tesla’s mixed messageTesla reported its latest quarterly earnings yesterday and, no, the company’s C.E.O., Elon Musk, did not talk about his attempt to buy Twitter. (Musk could fund the purchase, in part, by selling some of his Tesla shares or using them as collateral for loans.)Musk instead kept the discussion focused on Tesla, delivering some good and bad news to the electric carmaker’s shareholders. The company’s shares rose 5 percent after the results were released.The good: Tesla made a $3.3 billion profit in the first three months of the year, up from $438 million a year earlier and the biggest quarterly profit since the company’s creation. Tesla sold 310,000 vehicles in the first quarter, up almost 70 percent from a year earlier.The bad: Tesla said it resumed “limited production” in Shanghai after a three-week shutdown, but “persistent” supply-chain problems and the rising cost of raw materials mean that it expects its factories to run below capacity for the rest of 2022. Despite concerns that supply-chain issues could hamper the company’s growth, Musk told analysts that his “best guess” was that Tesla would produce 1.5 million cars this year, meeting the company’s goal of 50 percent sales growth.The lithium interlude: Musk said that soaring prices for lithium, a key material in batteries, had forced the company to raise prices, potentially slowing the pace at which people switch to electric vehicles. Soaring demand for the metal has given producers 90 percent profit margins, Musk said. “Do you like minting money? Then the lithium business is for you,” Musk said. He hinted that Tesla could get more involved in the supply chain for raw materials but didn’t say whether it would expand into mining metals like lithium directly.What’s Happening With Elon Musk’s Bid for Twitter?Card 1 of 3The offer. More