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      ‘A dangerous game’: Republican chaos and indecision as crises shake the world

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      The US’s closest ally in the Middle East is reeling from what many call its “9/11” and now a humanitarian disaster looms in Gaza. Winter is approaching in Ukraine, which needs urgent supplies to maintain its counteroffensive against Russia. From China’s expansive ambitions, to coups in Africa, to the climate crisis, the world is crying out for leadership.But on Capitol Hill in Washington, Republicans can’t find one. Friday marked the 10th day of paralysis as the party struggles to elect a speaker of the House of Representatives to replace the ousted Kevin McCarthy. This after majority leader Steve Scalise won a closed-door vote but abandoned his run because he lacked enough support to win on the House floor.Such petty bickering, grievances and vendettas might typically fascinate seasoned Washington watchers and readers of political insider newsletters but be met by a shrug by many Americans and indifference overseas. This time, however, is different. The ripples of Republican dysfunction could soon be felt across a troubled world.“It’s a dangerous game that we’re playing,” Michael McCaul, chairman of the House foreign affairs committee, told reporters on Thursday. “It just proves our adversaries right that democracy doesn’t work. Our adversaries are watching us and Israel is watching. They need our help.”McCaul, a Republican congressman from Texas, has put forward a bipartisan resolution with Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the committee, condemning Hamas and reaffirming support for Israel. But the House cannot vote on it until there is a speaker in the chair.McCaul added: “I’m going to remind my colleagues about how dangerous this is. If we don’t have a speaker, we can’t assist Israel in this great time of need after this terrorist attack. So I think we’re playing with fire and we need to stop playing games and politics with this and vote a speaker in.”The House speaker is the third-highest-ranking elected official in the country, second in line to the presidency. Without one, legislative business is at a standstill. The House is currently under the control of Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, who was named as the temporary speaker after McCarthy’s departure, but his ability to move legislation is unclear.Joe Biden said on Tuesday that he would seek approval from Congress for additional funding for Israel in the wake of the devastating attack by Hamas. But the fight over the speakership puts a question mark over how soon such aid could be approved and sent.Biden has also requested $24bn in additional funding for Ukraine but this too hangs in limbo. Although the White House has claimed that the vast majority of House Republicans still support such assistance, there has been growing dissent in recent weeks and the issue was a factor in McCarthy’s downfall.Then there is the threat of a government shutdown that would further dent US credibility overseas. Congress has until a self-imposed deadline of 17 November to pass 12 new bills to fund the government for the rest of the year and into 2024. The leadership vacuum is sucking up precious time and energy and making a shutdown more likely.Biden had spent the first two years of his presidency seeking to restore order and rebuild alliances after the “America first” mayhem of the Donald Trump years. But when Republicans gained control of the House in January with a narrow majority that empowered the far right, that effort was always likely to suffer erosion.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKarine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, told reporters: “What we’re seeing is certainly shambolic chaos over there on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue, and they need to get their act together … We’ve never seen a conference behave this way or be this chaotic.”Biden’s speech on Tuesday was described as one of the most powerful statements of support for Israel ever given by a US president; he has previously spoken of his deep-rooted love for the country. Huge uncertainties remain: Israel has ordered a million people to evacuate northern Gaza ahead of an expected ground invasion; Hamas could still have more surprises in store; Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia based in Lebanon, could still open a second front.But instead of addressing the crisis with one voice, Republicans are consumed with a bogus impeachment inquiry into Biden and the publicity-seeking antics of members such as Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mace. And this week New York Republicans moved to expel accused fraudster George Santos.Kyle Herrig, executive director of the Congressional Integrity Project, said: “Since day one the Maga Republicans in the House majority have failed to work on real domestic priorities and instead focused on partisan stunts in their extreme efforts to return Donald Trump to the White House.“Their ongoing dysfunction, misplaced priorities and failures now impede the efforts of President Biden to come to the aid of key allies internationally. Chaos, not governance, defines the House Republican Caucus.” More

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      A Gaza Father’s Worries About His Children

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      More from our inbox:A Temporary House Speaker?Republicans, Stand Up for UkraineWork Permits for ImmigrantsIs A.I. Art … Art?An injured woman and her child after an Israeli bombing near their house in the Gaza Strip.Samar Abu Elouf for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “What More Must the Children of Gaza Suffer?,” by Fadi Abu Shammalah (Opinion guest essay, Oct. 13):My heart goes out, and I cry over the suffering of Palestinian children in Gaza. They have done nothing to deserve war after war after war.However, to ignore Hamas’s responsibility for contributing to that suffering is to miss the whole picture. Hamas rules Gaza, and it has chosen to buy missiles and weapons with funds that were meant to build a better society for Gazan civilians.Last weekend’s attack was designed by Hamas to prompt a heavy response by Israel and stir up the pot, probably to kill a Saudi-Israeli peace deal, even if it meant sacrificing Palestinian civilians in the process. We can lay the blame for the Gazan children who have been killed in recent days at the feet of both the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas.Aaron SteinbergWhite Plains, N.Y.To the Editor:Thank you for publishing Opinion guest essays from Rachel Goldberg (“I Hope Someone Somewhere Is Being Kind to My Boy,” nytimes.com, Oct. 12) and Fadi Abu Shammalah. These essays, for the most part, demonstrate the dire disconnect between Israelis and Palestinians for decades.Ms. Goldberg and Mr. Abu Shammalah describe the horrors from their perspectives (terrorists or fighters; most vicious assaults on Jews since the Holocaust or terrifying violence raining down on Gaza).Despair is a shared theme in these articles. There is also a glimmer of hope found in the similar, heartbreaking pleas of loving parents for their children. Is now the time for mothers and fathers around the world to stand together for all children? If not now, when?Daniel J. CallaghanRoanoke, Va.To the Editor:Thank you for publishing Fadi Abu Shammalah’s essay. I’m hoping that hearing from a Palestinian in Gaza at this incredibly terrifying time might help your readers better understand the importance for all of us to call for immediate de-escalation to prevent Israel’s impending invasion.Shame on those who do not do what they can to prevent this assault on humanity. Let’s end this current horror show.Mona SalmaSan FranciscoTo the Editor:Regarding Fadi Abu Shammalah’s essay, “What More Must the Children of Gaza Suffer?”:Maybe Hamas should have considered that question before deciding to attack Israel.Jon DreyerStow, Mass.A Temporary House Speaker?Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana, announcing his withdrawal as a candidate for House speaker on Thursday night. He hopes to remain as the party’s No. 2 House leader.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Scalise Departs Speaker’s Race as G.O.P. Feuds” (front page, Oct. 13):Given the urgent state of affairs (Israel-Gaza, Ukraine, looming government shutdown), wouldn’t it be a good idea for the Republicans in the House of Representatives to pick a temporary speaker? Someone who doesn’t want the job permanently but would take the role through, say, early January.One would think that having the speaker role be temporary would make it easier to arrive at a compromise.Shaun BreidbartPelham, N.Y.Republicans, Stand Up for Ukraine David Guttenfelder for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “G.O.P. Resistance to Aid in Ukraine Expands in House” (front page, Oct. 6):Where do Republicans stand? On the side of autocracy or democracy? Dare I ask? The Ukrainians are on the front lines, fighting and dying to preserve the values of the West. Republicans, stand up and be counted!Norman SasowskyNew Paltz, N.Y.Work Permits for Immigrants Illustration by Rebecca Chew/The New York TimesTo the Editor:In your Oct. 8 editorial, “The Cost of Inaction on Immigration,” you correctly identified one potential benefit from proactive immigration policies. If Congress were not so frozen by the anti-immigration fringe, immigrants could fill the urgent gaps in the American labor market and propel our economy forward.President Biden can and should also expand work permits for long-term undocumented immigrants using an existing administrative process called parole.The organization I lead, the American Business Immigration Coalition, published a letter on behalf of more than 300 business leaders from across the country and a bipartisan group of governors and members of Congress clamoring for this solution.The farmworkers, Dreamers not covered by DACA and undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens who stand to benefit already live and belong in our communities. The advantages for businesses and everyday life in our cities and fields would be enormous, and this should not be held hostage to dysfunction in Congress.Rebecca ShiChicagoIs A.I. Art … Art?A.I. Excels at Making Bad Art. Can an Artist Teach It to Create Something Good?David Salle, one of America’s most thoughtful painters, wants to see if an algorithm can learn to mimic his style — and nourish his own creativity in the process.To the Editor:Re “Turning an Algorithm Into an Art Student” (Arts & Leisure, Oct. 1):A.I. art seems a commercially viable idea, but artistically it falls very far short of reasoned creativity and inspiration. When you remove the 95 percent perspiration from the artistic act, is it art anymore? I don’t think so.David Salle’s original work is inspired. The work produced by his A.I. assistant (no matter how much it is curated by the artist), I am afraid, will never be.I hope he makes money from it, as most artists don’t or can’t make a living with their inspired, personally or collectively produced art. They cannot because the market typically prefers a sanitized, digitized, broadly acceptable, “generically good” art product — something that has been produced and edited to satisfy the largest number of consumers/users/viewers. The market will embrace A.I. inevitably.I fear the day when A.I.-written operas, musicals, concerts and symphonies are performed by A.I. musicians in front of A.I. audiences. With A.I. critics writing A.I. reviews for A.I. readers of A.I. newspapers.Eric AukeeLos AngelesThe writer is an architect. More

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      in Elections

      Poland Isn’t About to Be Saved

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      “Of all the arts, the most important for us is the cinema,” Vladimir Lenin supposedly said. It’s not often that his words feel apt in Poland, a post-Communist country once traumatized by Soviet propaganda. But in recent weeks, as the country has been convulsed by controversy centered on a film, Lenin’s declaration has acquired a surprising resonance.“Green Border,” by the Oscar-nominated director Agnieszka Holland, tells the story of the tragedy of migrants and those helping them at the Polish-Belarusian border. Awarded the special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival, it is refined, thought-provoking and full of nuance — exactly the opposite of politics in Poland today.The ruling Law and Justice party, threatened by Ms. Holland’s humanitarian approach, has gone on the attack. Government officials called the film “anti-Polish” and the prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, labeled it “a collection of blatant lies.” The justice minister even went so far as to compare the film to Nazi propaganda.The government is jumpy for a reason: On Sunday, Poland goes to the polls. The stakes are high. After eight years of rule by the Law and Justice party, in which the right-wing government has remade the country’s institutions in its image, the election is perhaps the most important since the democratic breakthrough in 1989.Given the country’s geopolitical significance, much expanded since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the vote will be closely watched across Europe. Yet for Poland itself, mired in nationalist sentiment and populist reason, the outlook is bleak. Even if the opposition coalition triumphs, there will be no easy salvation.First and foremost, the campaign has not been fair. As in Hungary and Turkey, where autocratic governments recently won re-election, the odds have been heavily stacked in favor of the incumbents. There are, in practice, two kinds of populism: one in opposition and another in power. The former participates in the democratic game as one of many players. The latter changes the rules of the game to become the only player in town.In Poland, the process is in full swing. State media has been churning out propaganda, presenting a glowing depiction of the government while spurning the opposition. In the run-up to the election, the administration has treated core voters to increased benefits and gerrymandered the electoral map, through the creation of new districts in government-supporting rural areas. Even the police and the military have appeared in campaign materials. Another victory for the ruling party is the order of the day.The cherry on the cake comes in the form of a referendum, also to be held on Sunday. Composed of four vaguely worded questions — one asks “Do you support the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa?,” another whether voters back “the sale of state assets to foreign entities” — the referendum sets the terms of debate, feeding into government talking points. Never mind that nobody is planning to carry out the policies asked about. What matters is cultivating a sense of grievance.Crucially, it also unlocks money. For all Law and Justice’s advantages, there are limits on campaign spending — but not for referendums. By holding one, Law and Justice has vastly expanded its access to funds. By the end of September, the party had already spent about four million Polish zloty, around $940,000, on internet campaigning; the biggest political group in the opposition, the Civic Coalition, had spent only about a quarter of that amount. In this unequal environment, opposition victory will be hard to come by.But the battle is not over. The opposition has run a charged campaign, culminating in a major march in Warsaw, where hundreds of thousands protested against the government. Days before voting, the race is too close to call. Two scenarios are possible.The first would be a government led by Law and Justice. That would mean deepening the systemic dismantling of Polish democracy: strengthening the executive at the cost of the judiciary, attacking independent media, imposing on the school system, and undermining the rights of minorities, especially women and the L.G.B.T.Q. community.But Law and Justice wouldn’t have things all its own way. It would most likely have to share power with the extreme right-wing Konfederacja, which has been spreading anti-vaccination, anti-minority and anti-Ukrainian sentiment. To judge from recent weeks — during which the administration, eyes on the election, threatened to withhold assistance to Ukraine — a government of this stripe would drastically worsen relations with Ukraine and the European Union.A second scenario is still possible, too: victory by the democratic opposition. In this case, Poland would have a colorful government, led by the Civic Coalition in compact with smaller parties, that would focus on restoring the independence of the judicial system and opening Poland back up to the West. Diplomatic support for Ukraine would be at the forefront, as would engaging with allies over the country’s future and that of Europe. Not everything would change. The country’s harsh migration policies would most likely remain in place and controls at the border with Belarus retained, albeit without pushbacks.But even if the opposition wins and the government quietly cedes power — far from a given — Poland would not simply be returned to political health. A deeply entrenched populist system, a president loyal to the Law and Justice party, a puppet Constitutional Tribunal and Supreme Court — these are just a few of the problems a new government would face. That’s before we get to the opposition itself, whose members, spanning the political spectrum from right to left, are by no means in agreement. Either way, the emotive languages of nationalism and sovereignty won’t be going anywhere. They remain too pervasive and deeply felt throughout Polish society.Such dominance of emotion is curious. In the past three decades, Poland has become immeasurably richer; economic success can be seen across the country. And yet, looking at its febrile politics, the words of Isaac Bashevis Singer come to mind: “Man was a pauper when it came to reason, but a millionaire when it came to emotions.” It will surely come as no surprise to learn that Singer was writing about the youthful years he spent in Poland.Jaroslaw Kuisz is the editor in chief of the Polish weekly Kultura Liberalna and the author of “The New Politics of Poland.” Karolina Wigura (@KarolinaWigura) is a board member of the Kultura Liberalna Foundation in Warsaw and an author of “A Polish Atheist Versus a Polish Catholic.” Both are senior fellows at the Center for Liberal Modernity in Berlin.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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      House Speaker, Ukraine War, Border Wall: Trump’s Influence Reaches a Post-Presidency Peak

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

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      in Elections

      A Wartime Election in Ukraine? It’s a Political Hot Potato.

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      In normal circumstances, Ukraine’s president would face voters next spring. Analysts say a wartime election is unlikely, but the prospect is causing some anxiety in Kyiv.It might seem like a huge distraction at the height of a full-scale war, not to mention a logistical nightmare: holding a presidential election as Russian missiles fly into the Ukrainian capital and artillery assaults reduce whole towns to ruins.But President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has not ruled it out. His five-year term ends in several months, and if not for the war, he would be preparing to either step down or campaign for a second term.Analysts consider the possibility of wartime balloting a long shot, and under martial law, elections in Ukraine are suspended. Still, there is talk among Kyiv’s political class that Mr. Zelensky might seek a vote, with far-reaching implications for his government, the war and political opponents, who worry he will lock in a new term in an environment when competitive elections are all but impossible.The debate over an election comes against the backdrop of mounting pressure on Ukraine to show to Western donors Ukraine’s good governance credentials, which Mr. Zelensky has touted. Opponents say a one-sided wartime election could weaken that effort.A petition opposing such an election has drawn signatures from 114 prominent Ukrainian civil society activists.A new electoral mandate could strengthen Mr. Zelensky’s hand in any decision about whether to commit to an extended fight, or insulate him if eventual settlement talks with Russia dent his popularity and hurt his chances of re-election later.Mr. Zelensky has said he favors elections, but only if international monitors can certify them as free, fair and inclusive, and he has outlined multiple obstacles to holding a vote. Political opponents have been more categorical in rejecting elections, which before the Russian invasion were scheduled for March and April next year, saying the war was creating too much turmoil to properly conduct a vote.Serhiy Prytula, who runs a charity in support of the war effort, ranks high among the most respected leaders in the country.Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times“The first step is victory; the second step is everything else,” including a revival of domestic politics in Ukraine, said Serhiy Prytula, an opposition figure and the director of a charity assisting the military. Opinion surveys regularly rank him in the top three most respected leaders in the country, along with Mr. Zelensky and the commander of the military commander, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny.Mr. Prytula, a former comedic actor, had set up an exploratory committee to run for Parliament before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, following the path from show business to politics taken by Mr. Zelensky, who had played a president in a television series before winning the presidency in 2019. For now, Mr. Prytula has halted all political activity during the war. The Biden administration and European governments supporting Ukraine militarily have not weighed in publicly on an election. But the idea garnered wider attention when Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said the country should go ahead with a vote despite the war.“You must also do two things at the same time,” Mr. Graham said on a visit to Kyiv in August. “I want this country to have free and fair elections, even when it’s under attack.”To hold elections, Ukraine would have to lift, at least temporarily, martial law in the case of a vote for Parliament or amend the law in the case of a vote for president. In a photo provided by the Ukrainian government, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, center, attended a ceremony in July. He is seen as a prospective challenger to Mr. Zelensky in future elections.Agence France-Presse, via Ukrainian Presidential Press ServiceMr. Zelensky has cited as a major obstacle the need to ensure that Ukrainians living under Russian occupation can vote without retribution. “We are ready,” he told a conference in Kyiv last month. “It’s not a question of democracy. This is exclusively an issue of security.”The Ukrainian leader has said online voting might be a solution.Among the states of the former Soviet Union, Ukraine is the country with the largest population to have succeeded in transferring power democratically. Its criminal justice system has been riddled with corruption, and the privatization of state property has been mismanaged, but elections had been consistently deemed free and fair by international monitors. Ukrainians have elected six presidents since gaining independence in 1991.“Ukraine’s commitment to democracy is not in question, and being forced to postpone elections due to war doesn’t change this,” said Peter Erben, the Ukraine director of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, a pro-democracy group funded by Western governments. Ukrainian politics have revolved around parties formed by prominent personalities rather than policy positions. There is Fatherland, led by Yulia Tymoshenko, the most prominent woman in Ukrainian politics; the Punch, led by Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv and a former boxer; the Voice, led by Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, a rock star; and Mr. Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, named for a TV show.Senator Lindsey Graham visited Kyiv in May. He returned in August and spoke about potential elections.Sergei Supinsky/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMilitary veterans are widely expected to play an outsize role in Ukrainian politics when elections resume, as voters and as candidates who could challenge the current political class.Holding an election before the war ends could lock in seats for parties in Parliament now, including Mr. Zelensky’s, while soldiers are still serving in the military and unable to run for office.“A scheduled election isn’t necessary for our democracy,” said Olha Aivazovska, the director of OPORA, a Ukrainian civil society group that monitors elections. There is no means now for refugees, frontline soldiers and residents of occupied territory to vote, she said.An election in “the hot phase of the war” would almost certainly undermine, not reinforce, Mr. Zelensky’s legitimacy, she said.Even those who favor an election cite concerns about a potential consolidation of power. Oleg Soskin, an economist and adviser to a former Ukrainian president, has called for elections despite the war, warning that Mr. Zelensky could otherwise usurp authority under martial law. But that is an outlying view in Kyiv. The debate about a potential election represents some re-emergence of familiar political clashes in a Ukrainian government long marked by infighting and vendettas. Most of Mr. Zelensky’s political opponents have refrained from being overly critical of him during the war, but they say a vote now would be unfair.Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, center, and his brother Vladimir Klitschko, left, visiting a residential area after shelling in 2022.Roman Pilipey/EPA, via Shutterstock“I understand the government wants to maintain its position while ratings are high,” said Dmytro Razumkov, a former chairman of Parliament in the political opposition. Mr. Zelensky’s chances of victory, he said, “will almost certainly be lower after the end of the war.”An election now would only weaken Ukraine as politicians campaigned, competing with and criticizing one another, said Volodymyr Ariev, a member of Parliament from the opposition European Solidarity party. He has advocated for Mr. Zelensky to form a national unity government that would include members of the opposition.“It jeopardizes the unity of society,” he added.Public opinion surveys have consistently suggested that a prospective challenger to Mr. Zelensky in future elections could be the commander of his army, General Zaluzhny. As a serving military officer, he is barred from participating in an election during the war.Dmytro Razumkov, former chairman of Ukraine’s Parliament, in his office on Wednesday.Brendan Hoffman for The New York TimesMr. Zelensky still consistently leads in surveys of leaders whom Ukrainians trust. A recent poll by United Ukraine, a nonpartisan research group, showed 91 percent of Ukrainians trusted Mr. Zelensky, 87 percent trusted General Zaluzhny, and 81 percent trusted Mr. Prytula.Polls have also shown high support for Mr. Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv; Vitaly Kim, the head of the civil military administration in the southern region of Mykolaiv; and Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s national security council.Mr. Prytula’s charity has boosted his national stature during the war. It draws donations from millions of Ukrainians to provide drones, body armor, rifle scopes and other supplies to the army at a time when activities supporting the army are immensely popular domestically.Mr. Prytula said he was focused solely on keeping Ukrainians united behind the war effort. Holding an election now, he said, would be pointless because Mr. Zelensky would all but certainly win.“He is No. 1,” he said. “Our society supports him.”Maria Varenikova More

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      in Elections

      Biden admits he is worried Republican infighting could hurt Ukraine aid – video

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      Facing a likely roadblock from House Republicans, US president Joe Biden says he is worried their infighting in Congress could hurt Ukraine aid but said there was a ‘majority of members of the House and Senate in both parties’ that support the need for it. The president promised to deliver a speech soon to outline why the US needs to continue to support Ukraine in its war with Russia, and suggested there were ‘other means’ by which he could find funding but gave no further details More

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      in US Politics

      Kevin McCarthy’s historic ouster as US House speaker was a tragedy foretold

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      “In the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.” These words, delivered at the US Capitol by president John F Kennedy in his 1961 inaugural address, seemed particularly apt on Tuesday.Kevin McCarthy’s ousting as speaker of the House of Representatives was a personal tragedy foretold. The first seeds of destruction had been planted when, days after declaring Donald Trump responsible for the January 6 insurrection, McCarthy went grovelling at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and made his pact with the devil.Then came last year’s midterm elections when, thanks to Trump’s assault on democracy and his rightwing supreme court’s assault on abortion rights, Republicans underperformed and squeezed out only a narrow majority, handing extremists a huge influence.The power-hungry McCarthy was elected speaker after an epic 15 rounds of voting and, minutes later, publicly paid tribute to Trump for working the phones to help him secure victory. But he had cut a deal with the far right that would come back to bite him, including rules that made it easier to challenge his leadership.McCarthy then spent nine months trying to govern an ungovernable party, described by former Barack Obama strategist David Axelrod as the “Lord of the Flies caucus”. As the Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries has noted, the House Republican caucus is in a state of civil war.It is further proof that the political consultant Rick Wilson was on to something when he wrote a book titled Everything Trump Touches Dies. After sneaking a win in the electoral college in 2016 while losing the national popular vote, Trump has repeatedly been a grim reaper for his party’s fortunes in 2018, 2020 and 2022.The toadies who have shown extreme loyalty to Trump have usually regretted it. His fixer Michael Cohen went to prison. His vice-president, Mike Pence, could have been hanged on January 6 and is now condemned to the purgatory of explaining to half-empty rooms why he should be president. Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows and other January 6 co-conspirators face possible jail time.Now McCarthy, who purported to be restraining Trump’s worst impulses, has become the first speaker of the US House in history to be forced out of the job. Trump did nothing to spare him the humiliation. McCarthy destroyed any hope of being rescued by Democrats by announcing a baseless impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden and blaming them for trying to shut down the government.Maxwell Frost, a Democratic congressman from Florida, wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: “The Speaker did this to himself by lying to both Democrats AND Republicans. Speaker McCarthy will go down in history as the weakest Speaker in the history of our country.”No one who has been following US politics in the self-destructive, nihilistic, eat-one’s-own age of Trump will be surprised by Tuesday’s events. Words such as “historic” or “unprecedented” will have to be retired. There is no obvious heir apparent.The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, summed it up: “The Republican party of Trump cannot govern at any level; The Maga parasite is eating them alive. There will be a reckoning for the GOP as the next Speaker will be even more of a Maga apologist because that’s what the party demands. No one is coming to the rescue who has the courage to tell the truth, only cowards who hide behind the chaos and pretend to look busy.”It is a recipe for more days or perhaps weeks of inertia in Congress, which instead of tackling social inequality or supporting Ukraine will be consumed with factional infighting. America’s long march of democratic decay continues. More

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      As the war in Ukraine grinds on, western support is beginning to crack | Gaby Hinsliff

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      The blue and yellow flag still flies high over Britain’s town squares and public buildings, signalling our unwavering and enduring solidarity with Ukraine’s war effort.Well, in theory, anyway. For you can feel the fatigue descending now, like heavy autumn mist pooling in the bottom of a valley; a sort of strange public torpor, quietly smothering the high emotion of the early days of the war. Having leapt too quickly at the assumption that Kyiv couldn’t possibly hold out against the mighty Russian army, British public opinion then swung wildly towards what has turned out to be an equally unrealistic idea, namely that plucky Ukraine could somehow achieve a David v Goliath victory over the rusting superpower within the year. We could put up with one winter of rocketing gas bills, surely, if that was the price to be paid for peace in Europe. Only now it’s the second winter of not daring to turn on the central heating, and the stories emerging from the frontline are no longer of Ukrainian farmers cheerfully towing away stranded tanks with their tractors, but of a grinding war of attrition that could last up to a decade.This is the most dangerous of moments for Ukraine, whose soldiers are locked into a critical military offensive and whose civilians face another brutal winter of Russia trying to freeze them into submission by attacking their power infrastructure. But it’s western, not Ukrainian, resolve that shows the most worrying signs of faltering, with Republicans in Congress balking at signing off Joe Biden’s military aid package, and victory in last week’s Slovakian elections for a pro-Russian populist promising to end support for Ukraine. Here in Britain, meanwhile, a prime minister keen to give President Zelenskiy anything he wanted has been succeeded by an unsentimental economic hawk better known for watching every penny, under enormous political pressure to deliver tax cuts.It’s almost certainly not a coincidence, then, that former British defence secretary Ben Wallace chose the morning of the current chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s party conference speech – and the closing stages of behind-the-scenes negotiations over Hunt’s crucial autumn statement – to reveal that he had asked Rishi Sunak for another £2.3bn for Ukraine just before he resigned this summer. In war, Wallace wrote, “the most precious commodity of all is hope”, and it was Britain’s duty to keep those hopes of victory alive by stumping up.British politicians have been privately worrying about how to shore up support in Washington for the war since at least early spring, amid rising resistance on the Republican right and suspicions that Donald Trump will turn off the tap if he wins the next presidential election. “We’re giving away so much equipment, we don’t have ammunition for ourselves right now,” Trump told potential voters in New Hampshire in May, when asked if he would continue aid to Ukraine. But now similar views are filtering through the political undergrowth in Britain, too. Nigel Farage asked viewers of his GB News show earlier this year whether Britain had now given “too much” to the country and risked leaving itself defenceless, even though the whole point of arming Ukraine is to avoid Nato members having to defend themselves against whatever a victorious Russia might choose to do next.While the likes of Russell Brand peddle conspiracy theories about Ukraine, Nato and the IMF, in rightwing populist circles the idea that we can’t afford to keep supporting Ukraine is building up a powerful head of steam. “When it’s been five minutes and you haven’t asked for a billion dollars in aid,” Elon Musk posted on his social media site X (nee Twitter) on Monday over a Photoshopped image that appeared to ridicule the Ukrainian leader.The idea that charity ought to begin at home, long used as a battering ram against spending on overseas aid, is now being deployed as an argument against military aid even though western military support for Ukraine is anything but charity: if anything, it’s guilt money. Ukraine’s allies have an existential interest in halting Russian aggression in Europe but they don’t want to risk their own troops’ lives, so instead they have been persuaded to get out the chequebook – both for weapons and to absorb the effects on their own economies of oil and gas price rises. That was the unwritten deal, but Wallace is not alone in seemingly fearing that it may start to unravel as times grow tougher. Conservative party members love a bit of patriotic tub-thumping on defence at conference. But if they had to choose between tax cuts at home and supporting someone else’s war overseas – well, would you bet Europe’s future on the outcome?“We have a chance to help finish this,” Wallace wrote in the Daily Telegraph. “The Russian army is cracking.” But only, perhaps, if western politics doesn’t crack first.
      Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
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