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      Republicans Face Setbacks in Push to Tighten Voting Laws on College Campuses

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      Party officials across the country have sought to erect more barriers for young voters, who tilt heavily Democratic, after several cycles in which their turnout surged.Alarmed over young people increasingly proving to be a force for Democrats at the ballot box, Republican lawmakers in a number of states have been trying to enact new obstacles to voting for college students.In Idaho, Republicans used their power monopoly this month to ban student ID cards as a form of voter identification.But so far this year, the new Idaho law is one of few successes for Republicans targeting young voters.Attempts to cordon off out-of-state students from voting in their campus towns or to roll back preregistration for teenagers have failed in New Hampshire and Virginia. Even in Texas, where 2019 legislation shuttered early voting sites on many college campuses, a new proposal that would eliminate all college polling places seems to have an uncertain future.“When these ideas are first floated, people are aghast,” said Chad Dunn, the co-founder and legal director of the UCLA Voting Rights Project. But he cautioned that the lawmakers who sponsor such bills tend to bring them back over and over again.“Then, six, eight, 10 years later, these terrible ideas become law,” he said.Turnout in recent cycles has surged for young voters, who were energized by issues like abortion, climate change and the Trump presidency.They voted in rising numbers during the midterms last year in Kansas and Michigan, which both had referendums about abortion. And college students, who had long paid little attention to elections, emerged as a crucial voting bloc in the 2018 midterms.But even with such gains, Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the voting rights program for the Brennan Center for Justice, said there was still progress to be made.“Their turnout is still far outpaced by their older counterparts,” Mr. Morales-Doyle said.Now, with the 2024 presidential election underway, the battle over young voters has heightened significance.Between the 2018 and 2022 elections in Idaho, registration jumped 66 percent among 18- and 19-year-old voters, the largest increase in the nation, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. The nonpartisan research organization, based at Tufts University, focuses on youth civic engagement.Gov. Brad Little of Idaho gave his approval to a law that bans student ID cards as a form of voter identification.Kyle Green/Associated PressOut of 17 states that generally require voter ID, Idaho will join Texas and only four others — North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina and Tennessee — that do not accept any student IDs, according to the Voting Rights Lab, a group that tracks legislation.Arizona and Wisconsin have rigid rules on student IDs that colleges and universities have struggled to meet, though some Wisconsin schools have been successful.Proponents of such restrictions often say they are needed to prevent voter fraud, even though instances of fraud are rare. Two lawsuits were filed in state and federal court shortly after Idaho’s Republican governor, Brad Little, signed the student ID prohibition into law on March 15. “The facts aren’t particularly persuasive if you’re just trying to get through all of these voter suppression bills,” Betsy McBride, the president of the League of Women Voters of Idaho, one of the plaintiffs in the state lawsuit, said before the bill’s signing.A fight over out-of-state students in New HampshireIn New Hampshire, which has one of the highest percentages in the nation of college students from out of state, G.O.P. lawmakers proposed a bill this year that would have barred voting access for those students, but it died in committee after failing to muster a single vote.Nearly 59 percent of students at traditional colleges in New Hampshire came from out of state in 2020, according to the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education at Tufts.The University of New Hampshire had opposed the legislation, while students and other critics had raised questions about its constitutionality.The bill, which would have required students to show their in-state tuition statements when registering to vote, would have even hampered New Hampshire residents attending private schools like Dartmouth College, which doesn’t have an in-state rate, said McKenzie St. Germain, the campaign director for the New Hampshire Campaign for Voting Rights, a nonpartisan voting rights group.Sandra Panek, one of the sponsors of the bill that died, said she would like to bring it back if she can get bipartisan support. “We want to encourage our young people to vote,” said Ms. Panek, who regularly tweets about election conspiracy theories. But, she added, elections should be reflective of “those who reside in the New Hampshire towns and who ultimately bear the consequences of the election results.”A Texas ban on campus polling places has made little headwayIn Texas, the Republican lawmaker who introduced the bill to eliminate all polling places on college campuses this year, Carrie Isaac, cited safety concerns and worries about political violence.Voting advocates see a different motive.“This is just the latest in a long line of attacks on young people’s right to vote in Texas,” said Claudia Yoli Ferla, the executive director of MOVE Texas Action Fund, a nonpartisan group that seeks to empower younger voters.Students at the University of Texas at Austin lined up to cast their ballots on campus during the 2020 primary. A new proposal would eliminate all college polling places in the state.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesMs. Isaac has also introduced similar legislation to eliminate polling places at primary and secondary schools. In an interview, she mentioned the May 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers — an attack that was not connected to voting.“Emotions run very high,” Ms. Isaac said. “Poll workers have complained about increased threats to their lives. It’s just not conducive, I believe, to being around children of all ages.”The legislation has been referred to the House Elections Committee, but has yet to receive a hearing in the Legislature. Voting rights experts have expressed skepticism that the bill — one of dozens related to voting introduced for this session — would advance.G.O.P. voting restrictions flounder in other statesIn Virginia, one Republican failed in her effort to repeal a state law that lets teenagers register to vote starting at age 16 if they will turn 18 in time for a general election. Part of a broader package of proposed election restrictions, the bill had no traction in the G.O.P.-controlled House, where it died this year in committee after no discussion.And in Wyoming, concerns about making voting harder on older people appears to have inadvertently helped younger voters. A G.O.P. bill that would have banned most college IDs from being used as voter identification was narrowly defeated in the state House because it also would have banned Medicare and Medicaid insurance cards as proof of identity at the polls, a provision that Republican lawmakers worried could be onerous for older people.“In my mind, all we’re doing is kind of hurting students and old people,” Dan Zwonitzer, a Republican lawmaker who voted against the bill, said during a House debate in February.But some barriers are already in placeGeorgia has accepted student IDs only from public colleges and universities since 2006, so students at private institutions, including several historically Black colleges and universities, must use another form of identification.Georgia has accepted student IDs only from public colleges and universities since 2006, a rule that means students at private institutions, like several historically Black colleges and universities, must use another form of identification. Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesIn Ohio, which has for years not accepted student IDs for voting, Republicans in January approved a broader photo ID requirement that also bars students from using university account statements or utility bills for voting purposes, as they had in the past.The Idaho bill will take effect in January. Scott Herndon and Tina Lambert, the bill’s sponsors in the Senate and the House, did not respond to requests for comment, but Mr. Herndon said during a Feb. 24 session that student identification cards had lower vetting standards than those issued by the government.“It isn’t about voter fraud,” he said. “It’s just making sure that the people who show up to vote are who they say they are.”Republicans contended that nearly 99 percent of Idahoans had used their driver’s licenses to vote, but the bill’s opponents pointed out that not all students have driver’s licenses or passports — and that there is a cost associated with both.Mae Roos, a senior at Borah High School in Boise, testified against the bill at a Feb. 10 hearing.“When we’re taught from the very beginning, when we first start trying to participate, that voting is an expensive process, an arduous process, a process rife with barriers, we become disillusioned with that great dream of our democracy,” Ms. Roos said. “We start to believe that our voices are not valued.” More

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      The Woman Shaking Up Italian Politics (No, Not the New Prime Minister)

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      Daughter of Italian and Jewish American parents, Elly Schlein wants to remake the center-left opposition to Giorgia Meloni, if only her party can survive it.ROME — Growing up in Switzerland, Elly Schlein felt a little lost.“I was the black sheep. Because my brother and sister seemed to be more sure of what they would do,” the politician recalled. She watched Italian neorealist cinema and American comedies, played Philip Glass on the piano, pet her dwarf bunny named after Freddie Mercury, listened to the Cranberries and ultimately got involved in her school’s politics. “It took a lot more time for me to find my way,” she said.Last weekend, Ms. Schlein, 37, found her way into the center of the debate about the future of the European left when she stunned the liberal establishment and reordered Italy’s political landscape by winning a primary election to become the first woman to lead the country’s center-left Democratic Party. She is promising, she said in her new office headquarters on Wednesday, to “change deeply” a party in the midst of an identity crisis.It is hard to embody change in Italy more than Ms. Schlein.A woman in a relationship with a woman, she is the daughter of a Jewish American father; granddaughter of an Italian antifascist partisan; proud native of Lugano, Switzerland; former volunteer for Barack Obama; collaborator on an award-winning documentary about Albanian refugees; fan of “Naked Gun” movies; shredder of Green Day chords on her electric guitar; and fervent progressive eager to make common international cause with “A.O.C.,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York.With her election, Ms. Schlein has catapulted Italy, which long seemed a Country for Old Men, into markedly different territory. A female opposition leader now is pitted against the first female prime minister, the right-wing nationalist Giorgia Meloni.Ms. Schlein grew up in Lugano, Switzerland, and described herself as the “black sheep” of her family. Andrea Wyner for The New York Times“It’s a different scenario now,” said Ms. Schlein, who had the professorial air of her professor parents as she leafed through newspapers. “And an interesting one, because I’ve always said that we don’t need just a female leadership. We need a feminist leadership.”The two women could hardly be more different. Ms. Meloni, who called Ms. Schlein to congratulate her, was raised by a single mother in a working-class neighborhood of Rome, was a youth activist in post-Fascist parties and came to prominence on an anti-migrant, Italy-first platform. Her battle cry: “I’m Giorgia, I’m a woman, I’m a mother, I’m a Christian!”Explore The Times’s Saturday ProfilesThey are shaping the world around them. These are their stories.Going Gray: The prominent news anchor Lisa LaFlamme was unceremoniously dismissed not long after she stopped dyeing her hair — setting off debates across Canada.Reclaiming His Voice: While on a rescue mission in Ukraine, an aspiring opera singer was shot in the lungs. His recovery is a marvel of medicine, chance and his own spirit.A Marxist Mayor: A Communist politician in Graz, Austria, wants to redistribute wealth. A focus on housing, her own modest lifestyle and a hard childhood have helped her popularity.Cleaning Up Senegal: Dressed head to toe in plastic, Modou Fall is a familiar sight in Dakar. His goal? Ridding the capital of the scourge of plastic bags.Princess Rita: A Texas rancher’s daughter landed a dream role as a Roman princess. A battle over the estate of her late husband has soured the reality.Ms. Schlein — who has Italian, Swiss and American passports — said she didn’t understand how being “a woman, a mother and a Christian helps Italians to pay their bills.” She added: “I am a woman. I love another woman. I am not a mother, but I am not less of a woman for this.”She argued that Ms. Meloni represented an ideology that viewed women merely for their reproductive and child-rearing roles. Ms. Meloni has “never described herself as an antifascist,” Ms. Schlein said, arguing that she instead threw red meat to her base with “inhuman” and “illegal” policies making it harder to save migrants at sea.Such liberal red meat is likely to sate the base of progressives and young voters that Ms. Schlein brought into the Democratic Party fold in last Sunday’s primary. But it did little for the left in the election Ms. Meloni won easily in September. Ms. Schlein’s party now has about half the support of Ms. Meloni’s.Moderate critics within Ms. Schlein’s own deeply divided party fear that she will fold its big tent by forfeiting the political center, driving the party to the far left, gutting it of its reputation for sober competence, and blending it with — or feeding it to — the reinvigorated, populist Five Star Movement.Supporters of Giorgia Meloni at a rally in September, in Rome. Ms. Schlein has criticized the prime minister for hurling red meat to her base with “inhuman” and “illegal” policies on migrants.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesBut Ms. Schlein is not convinced that denizens of an Italian middle even exist. “Where are they today?” she asked in her perfect English, noting that “when somebody had tried to represent them with new political options, it never went really well.” Instead, she saw the way forward as making “clear who we want to represent” — struggling Italians.She said she would spread “environmentalist and feminist” solutions to endemic Italian problems such as female unemployment and inequality in “clearly a patriarchal country.” She would make amends for “the mistakes made in the past,” especially during the leadership of former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, which led her to quit the Democratic Party nearly a decade ago.She would reintroduce labor protections, tax the rich, reconnect with trade unions, invest in a greener economy and push for gay and immigrant rights. This week, she visited the site of a deadly shipwreck of migrants in Calabria and effectively interrogated Ms. Meloni’s interior minister for appearing to blame the victims.“Rights, civil rights and social rights, for us are strictly interconnected,” she said in the interview, adding, “The left lost in the moment it became shy on these issues.”One major change on her agenda is to put her party in a position to win elections by making alliances with partners who agreed on critical progressive issues, such as the support of a universal income.“Five Star, of course,” she said. “They have a lot of support.”But Giuseppe Conte, the leader of Five Star, which has demonstrated a strong illiberal streak over recent years, was the prime minister who signed off on the crackdown of migrant rescue ships at sea. He has emerged as Italy’s main opponent to Ms. Meloni’s vow to keep sending weapons to Ukraine.Ms. Schlein with her assistant in her temporary office at the party headquarters in Rome.Massimo Berruti for The New York TimesFive Star’s position on Ukraine, Ms. Schlein said, “I don’t agree on.” She described her party as wholly supportive of Ukraine against the “criminal invasion” by Russia and noted it had voted to send arms over the next year, because “it’s necessary now.”Supporters of Ukraine, however, worry about Ms. Schlein’s ongoing commitment because of her talk of being a “pacifist” and what some consider her naïve argument that Europe somehow needed to convince China to force Russia to end the war.But she said she feels a personal connection to Ukraine. Her grandfather was from Ukraine, she said, and after he emigrated to the United States, eventually settling in Elizabeth, N.J., his family back home was almost certainly wiped out in the Holocaust. Her Italian grandfather, who eventually became a Socialist lawmaker, refused to wear the “black shirts of the Fascists” during his graduation and “was an antifascist lawyer” who, she said, would “defend Jews in trials.”That family history has made her keenly sensitive to “what nationalism has brought to the European continent,” she said, adding, with a reference to the Russian president, “This war is a nationalist war from Putin.”Ms. Schlein was herself not raised Jewish, though she called herself “particularly proud” of her Jewish ancestry. In a friendly interview during the campaign, she told an Italian website that her last name and pronounced nose, what she considers her defining physical feature, attracted odious anti-Semitic attacks. But, she noted, the nose was not Jewish, but “typically Etruscan.”The Colosseum lit up in the colors of the Ukrainian flag, in Rome, in February. Ms. Schlein described her party as wholly supportive of Ukraine against the “criminal invasion” by Russia.Roberto Monaldo/LaPresse, via Associated PressAsked about that comment, Ms. Schlein’s verbosity stalled. “I wouldn’t go back to that,” she said. “No, thanks.” When pressed on what an Etruscan nose looked like, she threw her hands up and acknowledged, “They don’t even exist!”The point, she said, was that she learned that being a “woman,” and “an L.G.B.T.Q.I.+ person” and “very proudly the daughter of a Jewish father” made her a prime target “from the extreme right or also from my extreme left sometimes.” Ms. Schlein declined in the interview to discuss her family or her partner in further detail.Ms. Schlein said addressing such injustices drew her into politics. A star pupil in her Lugano high school, she said, she wanted to take her talents to Italy, “because I’ve always felt that this country, the country of my mother, has strong potential that only needs to be freed.”She went to art school in Bologna. Then she dropped film for law and went from campus politics to the real thing — making powerful friends, gaining fluency in social media and doing stints in the European and Italian Parliaments along the way. When she quit the Democratic Party to protest the loss of its liberal way, she supported a movement to “occupy” the party.Now she occupies the leadership headquarters near the Spanish Steps, and after a short walk toward Ms. Meloni’s palace, Ms. Schlein, the progressive no one saw coming, entertained taking that place over, too.“Well,” she said. “We’ll see.” More

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      Thai Hunger Strikers Calling for Changes to Monarchy Are at Risk of Dying

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      The two young women have not had food for 44 days, part of a campaign urging the government to repeal a law that criminalizes criticizing the royal family.A stream of protesters outside the Supreme Court in Bangkok held up the three-fingered salute — a symbol of defiance against the government. “Fight, fight, fight,” they yelled to two young women who were taken out of a makeshift tent in stretchers, both so weak that they could not open their eyes.The women, Tantawan “Tawan” Tuatulanon, 21, and Orawan “Bam” Phuphong, 23, were taken to a hospital on Friday evening after their family members and lawyer said that they were on the brink of death. They were on their 44th day of a hunger strike, protesting the detention of Thai political prisoners, calling for judiciary changes and the repeal of a law that criminalizes criticizing the Thai monarchy. Their plight has been discussed by Thailand’s House of Representatives and has drawn urgent expressions of concern from international human rights groups, which have called on the government to engage with the activists. In 2022, both women were accused of violating the law against criticizing the monarchy after they conducted a poll asking whether the royal motorcade was an inconvenience to Bangkok residents. They were released on bail in March that year under the condition that they no longer participate in protests or organize activities that defame the royal family.The doctors are now most concerned about the women’s kidneys failing, according to their lawyer, Krisadang Nutcharut. “Their parents and I were consulting each other and saw that they wouldn’t make it past tonight, according to the blood results,” Mr. Krisadang said.The women’s protest has presented the Thai government with a political dilemma two months before a general election: Meet their demands and risk appearing weak among voters or do nothing and face a potential fallout that could trigger widespread unrest.Kasit Piromya, a former Thai foreign minister, has called on Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha of Thailand to address the women’s demands. Mr. Prayuth, through a government spokesman, has said he hopes the two women are safe but urged parents to “monitor their children’s behavior” and for all Thais to “help protect the nation, religion and monarchy.”The women began their hunger strike in January. Last month, Ms. Tantawan, a university student, and Ms. Orawan, a grocery store worker, were hospitalized and put on saline drips after their conditions became critical. They have stopped drinking water but are sipping electrolytes on doctors’ orders.Orawan “Bam” Phuphong after leaving the hospital in Bangkok in February.Rungroj Yongrit/EPA, via ShutterstockOn Thursday, the pair announced that they would stop taking electrolytes, too. In an interview with The New York Times on Thursday evening, Mr. Krisadang said the women’s spirits remain unbowed.In January, Thailand’s justice minister told Ms. Tantawan and Ms. Orawan that the government would consider reforming the bail system, though he did not address their core demands, which include reforming the country’s judicial system.Thailand’s opposition parties, Pheu Thai and Move Forward, submitted an urgent motion for a debate in the House of Representatives in February to propose measures to save the women’s lives. The debates stopped short of addressing the activists’ demands to abolish lèse-majesté, the law that makes criticizing the monarchy illegal, fearful of alienating royalists before the election. (The protesters are also calling for the abolition of Thailand’s sedition laws.)Thailand has one of the world’s strictest lèse-majesté laws, which forbids defaming, insulting or threatening the king and other members of the royal family. Known as Article 112, the charge carries a minimum sentence of three years and a maximum sentence of up to 15 years. It is the only law in Thailand that imposes a minimum jail term.Previously, Thai authorities confined the use of lèse-majesté against people who explicitly criticized the leading members of the monarchy. But after Mr. Prayuth seized power in a coup in 2014, the number of topics that constituted lèse-majesté expanded to include criticism of the institution, and even deceased kings.Thailand informally suspended the use of the lèse-majesté law in 2018, according to Chanatip Tatiyakaroonwong, Amnesty International’s regional researcher on Thailand. The move coincided with calls from the international community for Thailand to respect their commitments to the United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.But after the 2020 protests, Mr. Prayuth, who has repeatedly vowed to remain loyal to the monarchy, instructed all government officials to “use every single law” to prosecute anyone who criticized the monarchy.The authorities have charged at least 225 people, including 17 minors, for violating the lèse-majesté law since 2020. Thousands more have been slapped with other criminal charges. As more activists were targeted, the mass protests slowly began to wane.Protesters attending a pro-democracy rally demanding that Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn hand back royal assets to the people and reform the monarchy, in Bangkok in 2020. Adam Dean for The New York TimesSunai Phasuk, the senior researcher for Thailand for Human Rights Watch, said the case of Ms. Tantawan and Ms. Orawan and their public survey was the clearest example of how the law is being arbitrarily enforced. “The use of the lèse-majesté law has become more and more arbitrary, in that even the slightest criticism of both the individuals and the institution can lead to legal action,” he said.On Thursday evening, dozens of supporters appeared outside the Supreme Court in support of the women. They held sunflowers and cards that read, “Abolish lèse-majesté law.” (Ms. Tantawan’s name in Thai means “sunflower.”)“These kids are so brave, my generation cannot compete with them,” said Yupa Ritnakha, a 65-year-old supporter who was holding a bunch of sunflowers outside of the Supreme Court. “They are willing to die for their cause.”This is not Ms. Tantawan’s first hunger strike. In April 2022, she went on a hunger strike for over a month after she was detained for violating her bail by posting details of the royal motorcade on Facebook. She was released on bail once again, but placed under house arrest.Friends of Ms. Tantawan and Ms. Orawan say they are disappointed that the women’s campaign has failed to sway the general public or motivate the government to introduce reforms.“It’s unfortunate for them that this is happening at a low point of the protest movement,” said Mr. Chanatip, of Amnesty. “After three years of an official crackdown on the protests, people are quite burned out.”Ryn Jirenuwat More

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      In Nigeria’s Presidential Election, A Rare Chance to Turn the Corner

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      In Nigeria’s presidential election on Saturday, voters are desperate to elect a leader who can unleash their youthful country’s potential and chart a new course after years of dashed hopes.Upon winning independence from its British colonizers in 1960, thousands of Nigerians watched as their new green and white flag was raised over the capital at the time, Lagos, at midnight. As fireworks lit up the streets, hope and promise filled the air.Nigerians’ hopes have been dashed many times since then. They have endured a bitter civil war, decades of military dictatorship and, in the past eight years, rising violence and economic failures under President Muhammadu Buhari. A record 89 percent of Nigerians think the country is going in the wrong direction.But in this weekend’s presidential election — one of the most consequential in the 23 years since the last dictatorship ended and democracy took hold — many see a chance to change course.And as Nigerians made their way on Saturday to polling stations across their huge and diverse country, the race to lead their young democracy and its legions of youthful citizens seemed wide open.People began arriving at the polls long before they opened. In Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, voters searched for their names on lists pasted on walls. Young men played soccer on streets that would usually be choked with traffic but had been cleared for the election.Some polling units were slow to open, prompting a few voters’ anger, but mostly their patience. In Abuja, the capital, three young women spread a blanket on a patch of grass and settled in to wait.The monopoly on power that the two major parties have held for two decades has been shaken up by a surprise third-party candidate, Peter Obi. Multiple polls have shown him in the lead, propelled by enthusiastic young voters, but whether they will turn out in large enough numbers to elect him is uncertain.Other polls have shown both the governing party’s candidate, Bola Tinubu, and Atiku Abubakar, a businessman and perennial opposition candidate, in the lead.In a country of 220 million, Africa’s most populous, more than 93 million people registered for permanent voting cards, the most ever, the election commission said.Waiting for money outside a bank this month in Lagos. A shortage of bank notes has made it hard to pay for food, medicine and other daily essentials.John Wessels/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA market this month in Lagos. A record 89 percent of Nigerians think the country is going in the wrong direction.John Wessels/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOn a recent afternoon outside an event hall in Lagos, one remorseful former Buhari voter, Joshua Pius, 34, a drummer on a break from performing, said he was now earning so little that his young family had been forced to cut back on food. His children are 1 and 3.Mr. Pius was determined to make his next vote count, he said, as bouncy highlife music from a funeral streamed from the hall. Funerals in Nigeria are often celebrations of life rather than somber occasions.He said, using the shorthand for the permanent voter’s card, “The only hope you have is your P.V.C.”Like many Nigerians, Mr. Pius has been blindsided by a sudden countrywide shortage of cash — a crisis precipitated when the government decided to redesign and roll out new currency just before the election. Nigeria’s central bank took billions of naira (the local currency) out of circulation, while putting only a fraction in new notes back in. Even those with money in the bank cannot find cash to pay for food, medicine and other essentials, causing widespread suffering.Peter Obi speaking this month to market workers in Lagos.Taiwo Aina for The New York TimesBola Tinubu, the presidential candidate for the governing party, the All Progressives Congress, arriving on Tuesday by bus at Teslim Balogun Stadium in Lagos.Patrick Meinhardt/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSorting out that mess is just one of the mammoth tasks the election winner will face. G.D.P. per capita has plummeted during Mr. Buhari’s tenure. Oil production fell last year to its lowest point in over three decades. The army is deployed all over the country, fighting Islamist militants, secessionists, kidnappers and communal clashes.But the potential of Africa’s biggest democracy is perhaps greater than the challenges. Nigerians speak proudly of their country’s natural riches: As well as oil, it has profuse supplies of gas and solid minerals, as well as greater agricultural potential than almost any other African country because of its vast, fertile lands and abundant water.And that is to say nothing of its human capital. The country’s unofficial motto, “Naija no dey carry last” — pidgin English for “Nigerians never come last” — speaks to their drive and creativity, on display in the booming tech sector, the Nollywood film industry and the global musical phenomenon that is Afrobeats.Recently, however, the young people who drive that innovation have been leaving in droves, or are making plans to.One of those, Henry Eze, 31, a music producer, was on the sidelines of a political rally in Lagos this month, natty in a three-piece suit despite the heat. Mr. Eze said he left Nigeria for Europe in 2017, but ended up instead in a Libyan detention center, where he witnessed horrific abuses and had to bury dozens of his friends before he was rescued and brought home.Rabiu Kwankwaso, the presidential candidate of the New Nigerian People’s Party, greeting his supporters during a final election campaign rally on Thursday in the northern city of Kano.Sani Maikatanga/Associated PressA presidential hopeful, Atiku Abubakar, joined worshipers at a mosque in northeastern Yola on Friday, the day before the presidential election.Esa Alexander/ReutersThe rally he was attending was for Mr. Obi, who six months ago was not seen as a serious contender, but who has run a remarkably successful campaign, particularly online. He is the unexpected challenger against the governing party’s candidate, Mr. Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos, and Mr. Abubakar, the perennial opposition candidate. Of the 18 total candidates, a fourth candidate, Rabiu Kwankwaso, could prove a spoiler by splitting the vote in parts of the north.Mr. Eze said that if Mr. Abubakar or Mr. Tinubu, whom he called “a vampire” for sucking the country’s riches, won the election, he would not hesitate to leave Nigeria again, even though he was traumatized by his first attempt to escape.“Anywhere is better than Nigeria,” Mr. Eze said.Searching for his polling station on Saturday morning in Ikoyi, an upscale neighborhood of Lagos, Maxwell Sadoh, 18, a student and Obi supporter, echoed his words.“It’s so painful to see what we’ve become,” Mr. Sadoh said.Many Nigerians think their leaders, also, cannot get much worse.Some, like Mr. Eze, are putting their hopes in Mr. Obi. Others think Mr. Abubakar’s business acumen will help put Nigeria back on a prosperous path. Many support Mr. Tinubu, who has a reputation for spotting the talent and experience many say the country needs.Michael Odifili, a professional fumigator who was at the Lagos polling station where Mr. Tinubu voted on Saturday morning, said that Mr. Tinubu’s experience as governor put him in good stead to lead the country.“We want Tinubu to correct everything, all the mistakes of the past eight years,” Mr. Odifili said.A man accused of being a pickpocket was attacked on Tuesday in Lagos during a rally for the All Progressives Congress, the party of the current president.Michele Spatari/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNigerian Army troops outside the Central Bank of Nigeria in the southeastern city of Awka on Friday.Patrick Meinhardt/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAll three of the front-runners — who have all faced accusations of corruption or wrongdoing — are promising several major departures from the way things have been done in the past: an end to the fuel subsidies that have helped push Nigeria into a fiscal hole and allowing the exchange rate to be set by market forces rather than officials.For the first time, not one of the top contenders has a military background, a big deal considering former military rulers turned democrats have been at Nigeria’s helm for 16 of the 23 years since democracy was reborn in 1999.For a country so youthful, with a median age of just over 18, politics is dominated by old men, in many ways playing by the old rules.A well-known though murky phenomenon in Nigerian politics is the role of godfathers, a loose term for the “big men” who play an outsize role in making or breaking politicians’ careers.Mr. Tinubu is one of the country’s best-known godfathers, boasting that he handpicked his successors as the governor of Lagos state. Mr. Tinubu even claims that without him, Mr. Buhari would never have become president.This goes some way to explain the slogan coined by Mr. Tinubu and most often associated with his own presidential bid: “It’s my turn.”Churchgoers prayed for Nigeria on Friday at the Celestial Church of Christ on Lagos Island.Ben Curtis/Associated PressCampaign posters for Mr. Tinubu and others under a highway this month in Lagos.John Wessels/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Abubakar, of the main opposition party, has run and lost five times before. He could be forgiven for thinking it is his turn, too.And at a recent visit to a Lagos market, Mr. Obi told the crowd: “If it is anybody to talk about ‘It’s my turn,’ it should be me,” a reference to the fact that there has never been a president from his region, the southeast.Recently, other West African countries have experienced a wave of coups. Afrobarometer, a survey organization, noticed that several factors came together in the lead-up to those coups: dissatisfaction with the direction the country is headed, a lack of trust in the presidency, approval of the military, and a perception that corruption is increasing.In Nigeria, the indicators are going that way too, according to the head of Afrobarometer.On that last night of British rule in 1960, after the flag raising and the fireworks display ushering in their first day of independence, Nigerians waited for the dawn.Often in the years since, analysts have predicted the disintegration of Nigeria, invoking the words of its most beloved writer, Chinua Achebe, who was quoting W.B. Yeats: “Things fall apart. The center cannot hold.”So far, it has held.At a beach this month in Lagos.Michele Spatari/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesElian Peltier More

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      Two Evangelical Leaders, Jim Wallis and Kyle Meyaard-Schaap, on ‘Radical Faith,’ Climate Change and More

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      For the Taking the Lead series, we asked leaders in various fields to share insights on what they’ve learned and what lies ahead.When Kyle Meyaard-Schaap was in high school, a quote from the Rev. Jim Wallis was emblazoned on the wall of his English classroom: “God is not a Republican or a Democrat.” Today, the two men are leaders in the movement to expand the political imaginations of American evangelicals. Though evangelicals are known for their strong support of former President Donald J. Trump — most polls showed around 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for him in 2020 — and an array of conservative causes, a vocal cohort includes many who find their faith directing them elsewhere.Mr. Wallis, now 74, was raised in what he described as a “very evangelical” family in Detroit, where his parents were lay leaders in a Plymouth Brethren church. He attended an evangelical seminary outside Chicago but was drawn to the radical student politics of his era, and quickly became one of the leading figures in an energetic politically progressive wing of American evangelicalism. That movement — anchored by Sojourners, the organization he founded and led for 50 years, before leaving in 2021 — enjoyed a heady decade until the rise of the Moral Majority and the election of President Ronald Reagan in 1980, when evangelicals became a reliably conservative voting bloc, which they remain today.That forced Mr. Wallis into the role of opposition leader, a perch from which he has tried to turn the American church’s attention to issues including racism, poverty and, more recently, voting rights. He has written 12 books, has been arrested 25 times for civil disobedience, and was one of a small group of pastors President Barack Obama turned to for prayer and counsel in the early years of his presidency.Mr. Meyaard-Schaap, 33, was ordained as a pastor in the Christian Reformed Church in North America and serves as the vice president of the Evangelical Environmental Network, a ministry that seeks to mobilize evangelicals around environmental issues. He was previously the national organizer and spokesman for Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, another group devoted to mobilizing young evangelicals on climate issues. His book, “Following Jesus in a Warming World: A Christian Call to Climate Action,” will be published by the evangelical InterVarsity Press this month.The two leaders came together for a conversation, conducted in November over a video call, about collaborating with secular leaders, talking to Christians about climate change and capitalizing on being, as Mr. Wallis put it, a “critical minority.”Mr. Wallis was speaking from his office in Washington, D.C., where he is the founding director of the Center on Faith and Justice at Georgetown University, where he is also the chair of faith and justice at the McCourt School of Public Policy. Mr. Meyaard-Schaap joined the call from Grand Rapids, Mich., where lives with his wife and two young sons.This conversation has been condensed and edited.Rachelle BakerHow did you settle on the issues you’ve devoted your careers to?JIM WALLIS For years I was a student activist but not a religious person. We organized, marched in Washington, marched to the Capitol there in Lansing and then were attacked by right-wing groups and all of that. I guess I never quite got shed of Jesus, even though I left the church and they left me. I was studying — like everybody else those days — Marxism, anarchism. My conversion text was the 25th chapter of Matthew, called the “It Was Me” text. “It was me,” Jesus says. “I was hungry, it was me. I was thirsty, I was naked, a stranger, sick, in prison. How you treat them, the least of these, is how you treat me.”That was more radical than Karl Marx and Che Guevara. And so I signed up.KYLE MEYAARD-SCHAAP I grew up in a pretty conservative Christian home. I never really remember calling ourselves evangelicals. But I do remember this overwhelming assumption of ideological and political sameness. When I was in the fifth grade, it was during the 2000 election between Bush and Gore, and we did a mock election at the school where everybody wrote down their choice for president. All day, none of us could pay attention to any of the lessons. The vote came out to like 96, 97 percent Bush, 3 percent Gore. And everybody said, Who the heck voted for Al Gore? It was just inconceivable that a Christian could vote for Al Gore.RUTH GRAHAM Was it you?MEYAARD-SCHAAP No, it certainly wasn’t!You know, we recycled. But if the truck didn’t pick it up at the curb, I don’t know if we would have done that either. I don’t remember derision, necessarily, around climate change or environmentalism. Growing up, what I mostly remember was silence.Key Insights From ‘Taking the Lead’Card 1 of 7Conversations about leadership. More

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      Peter Obi Has Energized Nigeria’s Young Voters. Will They Turn Out for Him?

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      The race is wide open in the presidential election in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and a struggling economic powerhouse. Youth looking to evict the old guard are cheering on Peter Obi, a surprise third-party candidate.As the convoy of S.U.V.s pulled up to the biggest electronics market in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic capital, word quickly spread that inside one vehicle with tinted windows was Peter Obi, one of the front-runners in the upcoming presidential election, on a surprise campaign stop. Within minutes, a large crowd of mostly young men had gathered.“If I told them I was coming, they’d have shut down the market — it would have been ten times this,” Mr. Obi said, smiling, looking out at his roaring fans from under a cap that read: “Make Nigeria Great.” Then he stepped out in front of the sea of smartphones held aloft to record the occasion.“A new Nigeria is possible,” he told the crowd in his distinctive high voice. “For the first time, government is going to care about you.”For eight years, the citizens of Africa’s most populous nation — 70 percent of them under the age of 30 — have been governed by Muhammadu Buhari, who previously ruled the country as a military dictator, in the 1980s, long before most of them were even born.In a country where vote-buying and violence often distort elections, the presidential vote scheduled for Feb. 25 presents a rare chance for millions of young Nigerians, many of them new voters, to make their elders listen.According to polls, many of these new voters support Mr. Obi, a former state governor challenging the traditional two-party hegemony by running with the lesser-known Labour Party. He is seen as the candidate of the youth, though far from young at 61; his main rivals are in their 70s. Mr. Buhari, who is 80, served the maximum of two terms.“A one-eyed man, in the land of the blind, is king,” said Mr. Obi’s running mate, Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, in an interview.Mr. Obi, seen as the candidate of Nigeria’s youth, drew an enthusiastic young crowd at Alaba market, Lagos, this month.Taiwo Aina for The New York TimesNigeria, and particularly its young people, have had an extremely tough few years. Large groups of schoolchildren have been kidnapped, by extremists or ransom seekers. Youth unemployment nearly tripled during the Buhari years. Demonstrators in peaceful protests against police brutality were themselves shot dead by security forces in 2020 as they sang and waved the flag by a tollgate in Lekki, an upmarket Lagos suburb.Many young people are channeling their anger at the government’s repressive response to that movement — as well as the failure to bring those responsible to justice, a seven month Twitter ban, and persistent police brutality — into this election.“What happened in Lekki is a clear indication that this government don’t care about the youth,” said Amanda Okafor, 28, who said she saw many fellow protesters shot dead in Lekki. Ms. Okafor was eligible to vote in the past two elections, but never did. Now she goes everywhere with her voter’s card, determined to cast her first-ever vote.“We’re tired of these same old people coming in to tell us that they’re going to change stuff for us and they’re not doing anything,” she said.For many young Nigerians, these “same old people” include the presidential candidate of the party in power, Bola Tinubu, a former Lagos governor with a strong southwestern base, and the slogan, “It’s my turn.” He sometimes slurs words and appears confused, alarming some voters.Minutes after he arrived at the Alaba electronics market, Mr. Obi’s visit began to go viral. Taiwo Aina for The New York TimesThe old guard also includes the candidate of the opposition People’s Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar — a former vice president running for president for the sixth time. He will likely garner much support in Nigeria’s northern states.In an interview, Mr. Obi said that young people invest so much hope in him because the leaders they had known never cared for them or Nigeria. He said it was an “existential election” for the country.“We’re not going to solve the problem of Nigeria overnight, because it’s huge,” he said.His rivals, Mr. Abubakar and Mr. Tinubu, did not respond to requests for interviews.Minutes after he arrived in Alaba electronics market, Mr. Obi’s unexpected visit began to go viral. As the convoy left for yet another rally, social media-savvy Obi supporters — nicknamed Obidients — mobbed the vehicles, unsure which one their hero was in. Eventually, he popped out of a sunroof, blowing kisses to the crowd.“No shishi!” yelled the supporters running alongside his car — a slogan that, roughly, means “My vote is not for sale.”“No shishi” is exactly the kind of change that Onyx Ahmed, 21, would like to see. A recent anatomy graduate and protester against police violence, she retweets Peter Obi’s posts, blocks supporters of his rivals, and hectors her friends to register to vote.But in June, when she went to collect her own voter’s card, upon seeing the long lines, she quickly gave up.“I was like, I’ll go home, and come back. I never went back,” she said, wincing, but only slightly. “I don’t really like stress.”Supporters of the incumbent All Progressives Congress party, whose candidate, Bola Tinubu, is a former Lagos governor, at a rally in Lagos this month.Taiwo Aina for The New York TimesAnalysts warn Ms. Ahmed’s attitude may be common, and say that newly registered voters are least likely to show up at the polls. Mr. Obi’s political opponents wield this idea to mock his supporters, dismissing them as just a few irrelevant armchair warriors.But the Obidients give as good as they get. When Adams Oshiomhole, a former governing party chairman, told a television channel that Mr. Obi’s online support was “just 10 young men and women in one room” churning out stories, the Obidients changed his words to the catchier “Four people tweeting in a room.” That became a catchphrase, posted alongside image after image of thronging crowds at Obi rallies.But there are other reasons young Obi supporters may not turn out. Many tried for days to obtain voters’ cards, but never made it to the front of interminable queues. Others cannot afford to travel to the states where they are registered to vote.And their numbers may be overwhelmed by the get-out-the-vote machines built over decades by the governing All Progressives Congress party, and its longtime rival, the P.D.P. Each has local branches, women’s and youth groups nationwide, and affiliations with workers’ groups like that of Lagos’s market women, to mobilize voters come election day.The reach of this party machinery was on display at Adebayo market in Bariga, a Lagos suburb, where customers sashayed down lanes crammed with jollof rice seasoning, diapers, hair weaves and zippers.The governing party has deep ties among the people who work at the Bariga market in Lagos.Taiwo Aina for The New York TimesThe market’s financial secretary took me around, making introductions to women working there, including Olabisi Onisarotu, selling baby care products. She said she was supporting Mr. Tinubu, because as Lagos governor, he had provided free education and good health care.She glanced over my shoulder at the financial secretary, who was making sure she stuck to the script.“Social amenities,” he mouthed.“And social amenities,” Ms. Onisarotu repeated.Around the corner in a general goods store, the market coordinator, 72-year-old Gbemisola Lawal, complained that the policies of the A.P.C. had run the economy into the ground, driving her customers away. But that wouldn’t change her vote, she said — or that of her small army of market women.“This market belongs to A.P.C.,” said Ms. Lawal. “We’ve always voted A.P.C. and we’ll always vote A.P.C.”Left: Onyx Ahmed, 21, who hectors her friends to vote for Mr. Obi but did not collect her own voter’s card. Right: Gbemisola Lawal, 72, coordinator of Adebayo market, whose market women, she said, would all vote for Mr. Tinubu.Taiwo Aina for The New York TimesEven so, cracks are appearing in the traditional parties’ machinery. Near the market, the driver of a yellow danfo, or minibus, said that this year he would defy his A.P.C.-supporting transport union, follow his conscience, and vote for Mr. Obi.But the driver would not give his name, saying it would cost him his job.Back in Mr. Obi’s convoy, his Labour Party colleagues — traveling in the luxury van behind his car — strategized about when he should stay hidden (in the neighborhood of his opponent, Mr. Tinubu) and when he should pop out of the sunroof and wave (in areas dominated by people from the southeast, Mr. Obi’s home region). Calls from the rally they were headed toward reported members being attacked by thugs.“They should fight back,” one of them ordered.The convoy drew up at the rally, where the crowds sang along with the musical duo P-Square, who like many Nigerian musical stars, are proud Obidients. On the sidelines, dozens of young people insisted they would turn out to vote, violence or not.The stakes were too high for them not to, they said.An Obi rally in Lagos this month. Many young Obi supporters tried to obtain voters’ cards but never made it to the front of the lines. Others cannot afford to travel back to the states in which they are registered to vote.Taiwo Aina for The New York TimesOladeinde Olawoyin contributed reporting. More

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      Republicans Can’t Decide Whether to Woo or Condemn Young Voters

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      As Democrats keep winning millennials and Gen Z, Republicans are still debating how to get them back.For months before the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats fretted that younger voters might fall into old habits and stay home. The analysis is still a little hazy, but as more data comes in, it looks as if enough young people showed up in many key states to play a decisive role.And now, some Republicans are warning that their party’s poor standing with millennial and Gen-Z voters could become an existential threat. But there’s no consensus about how much, if at all, Republicans’ message needs to change.“We’re going to lose a heck of a lot of elections if we wait until these people become Republicans,” said John Brabender, a G.O.P. consultant who has been sounding the alarm about the party’s deficit with younger voters.By 2024, those two generations combined could make up as much as 40 percent of the voting public, according to some estimates. So far, millennials — some of whom are entering their 40s — are betraying little sign of growing more conservative as they age. If those trends hold, it could make for some daunting electoral math for the right.“This is a multigenerational problem for Republicans,” said John Della Volpe, the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, who studies the youth vote.Republicans are failing to engage younger voters early enough and on the right platforms, Brabender argued — and when they do, they’re not addressing the issues on their minds. “We need to be much more effective about presenting an alternative side,” he said. “Right now we are just silent.”In private, Republicans can be scathing about the party’s looming demographic challenges; one bluntly said the G.O.P. was relying on a base of older white voters who are dying off, while failing to replace them from among the more racially and ethnically diverse generations coming up behind them. But while some counsel that the party needs to adapt its message accordingly, others argue that it’s more a matter of delivering the same message in new ways.“Republicans have to understand that the issues of that next generation of voters are different,” Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire told me last month.“There are young Republicans out there who really care about the environment,” he added. “It doesn’t mean they want the Green New Deal, but they want to know that leaders are taking good, sensible, responsible, economically smart ways to address transitioning off fossil fuels or clean water and clean air.”Karoline Leavitt, a 20-something former Trump administration aide who lost her bid for a House seat in New Hampshire last year, wrote in a recent Fox News op-ed article that “the most colossal challenge facing the G.O.P. is the inability to resonate with the most influential voting bloc in our electorate — my generation, Generation Z.”Karoline Leavitt, a former Trump administration aide who lost her bid for a House seat in New Hampshire, said that her party was not resonating effectively with her age group, Generation Z.John Tully for The New York TimesBut in a reflection of the same ambivalence that leads Republican politicians like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas to mock the use of gender pronouns, Leavitt also argued that members of Generation Z had been “indoctrinated to be faithless, anti-American, self-proclaimed socialists who care about changing their gender more than paying their bills.”Millennials and Gen-Z voters came of age during tumultuous times — the Great Recession and the rise of movements like Occupy Wall Street, then the Trump presidency and the coronavirus pandemic — and share a skepticism of capitalism and a belief in the value of government to solve problems, Della Volpe noted.And on social issues, younger voters are much more in tune with Democrats. They value racial and ethnic diversity and L.G.B.T.Q. rights at higher rates than older voters. Among those aged 18 to 29, three-quarters say that abortion should be legal in most cases. Younger voters may not love the Democratic Party, but they like the Republican Party even less.“You’re not going to be able to engage them on policy specifics unless you meet them on their values,” Della Volpe said. “Young people aren’t even going to consider voting for you if deny that climate change exists.”A ‘shortsighted’ focusThe Republican Party has sporadically tried to address this problem, Brabender said, but has made “no effort to do anything about it on an organized basis.”Which is not to say that nobody has tried. The Republican National Committee’s post-2012 autopsy concluded that the party was seen as “old and detached from pop culture” and urged Republicans to “fundamentally change the tone we use to talk about issues and the way we are communicating with voters.” Then the party nominated Donald Trump, who did the opposite.When Representative Elise Stefanik of New York entered Congress in 2015 at just 30 years old, she convened experts to brief Republicans on the views of millennial voters. In 2017, a task force she helped lead produced a report, “Millennials and the G.O.P.: Rebuilding Trust With an Untapped Electorate,” that made modest recommendations for addressing the cost of college education, but sidestepped more thorny cultural issues.In the years since, as Stefanik has climbed the ranks of Republican leadership, she has rebranded herself from a forward-thinking change agent in the party to a devoted acolyte of Trump, whose approval ratings among younger voters are abysmal.There are upstart groups on the far right like Turning Point USA, which has positioned itself as the youth wing of the Trump coalition. Representative Dan Crenshaw, a 38-year-old Republican from Texas, has begun holding annual youth summit meetings, which tend to draw a more moderate crowd. And there are venerable organizations like the Young America’s Foundation, whose roots date to the days of William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of National Review.The foundation is now led by Scott Walker, the former governor of Wisconsin, who has oriented the group toward a longer-term approach of waging a battle of ideas from college campuses all the way down to middle schools.“The immediate reaction from the consultant class is going to be, ‘We need slicker digital ads or new youth coalitions,’” Walker said.“I think that’s really shortsighted,” he added, arguing that “years and years of liberal indoctrination” in the education system had led to a monoculture that silenced conservative ideas. “These are young people who have heard nothing but the left’s point of view.”A crowd at an event in Tampa, Fla., hosted by Turning Point USA, which has positioned itself as the youth wing of the Trump coalition.Todd Anderson for The New York TimesWhat the numbers showThere’s a robust debate among analysts about the depth of Republicans’ problems, as my colleagues have reported. Pew Research has found that while Biden won voters under 30 by a 24-point margin in 2020, that was actually a retreat from 2016 and 2018.Last year, according to one set of exit polls — Edison Research’s data, as analyzed by researchers at Tufts University — voters under 30 overwhelmingly chose Democrats. In Senate races, Democrats captured 76 percent of the under-30 vote in Arizona, 70 percent in Pennsylvania and 64 percent in Nevada. Nationwide, voters under 30 preferred Democrats in House races by 28 percentage points.Republicans find comfort in Associated Press/VoteCast data, where the nationwide gap was far smaller among voters aged 18 to 29: 53 percent for Democrats versus 41 percent for Republicans. In a postelection analysis, The A.P. concluded that young people’s enthusiasm for Democrats “may be waning,” noting that younger voters tend to be much less tethered to party identities than older generations.Young people are notoriously difficult to survey. Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, a researcher at Tufts, said her team used the Edison data because it tracked census numbers more closely and dated further back in time, though she acknowledged that it was an “imperfect” barometer.What about turnout? According to an analysis of voter-file data from TargetSmart, a Democratic data firm, voters under 30 made up a larger percentage of the electorate in 2022 than they did in 2014 across seven battleground states. In Michigan, for instance, their share grew from just 6.9 percent in 2014 to 12.2 percent in 2022. In Nevada, it grew from 5.9 percent in 2014 to 13.2 percent last year. And while those numbers represent a slight retreat from 2018, that was a huge year for turnout, fueled on the Democratic side by a nationwide backlash to Trump’s presidency.Tom Bonier, the chief executive of TargetSmart, also pointed to signs that registration among young people had surged at two distinct points in 2022: after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and after President Biden passed an executive order wiping out some student debt.Before the election, the Harvard Youth Poll found that 59 percent of young Americans believed that their rights were under attack — reflecting their reaction to the abortion decision and their worries about election deniers linked to Trump.Overall, Bonier said, “The lesson we learned writ large in the election is that the stain of Trump on the party had an impact even without him even on the ballot.”What to read tonightKevin McCarthy has gained steam in his bid to become speaker and is trying to muster enough support before 10 p.m. Eastern, when the House will resume voting. Follow live updates.South Carolina’s First Congressional District is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and its boundaries must be redrawn for elections to be held, a panel of federal judges ruled. Michael Wines explains.The Biden administration proposed to tighten limits on fine particulate matter, a deadly air pollutant also known as soot that is responsible for thousands of premature deaths every year, Coral Davenport reports.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Maxwell Frost, First Gen Z Congressman, Gets His Bearings on Capitol Hill

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      In the weeks after his election, the youngest member of the incoming House has learned just how different his lifestyle and perspective is from his older colleagues’.WASHINGTON — He is a fan of early-2000s rock, which was popular when he was in kindergarten. He is still working to get his undergraduate degree. And he is couch surfing to save money as he starts his new job, which is representing Florida’s 10th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives.Representative-elect Maxwell Frost, a 25-year-old Afro-Cuban progressive activist from Orlando, is about to be the youngest member of Congress. He has swapped the megaphone he once used to lead protests for a seat in one of the nation’s most powerful institutions, where he will be the first member of Generation Z to serve.In a body where the average age was more than twice his (58.4 years old in the most recent Congress), Mr. Frost is starting with a keen sense of mission.“I think we all have this call to action, and you feel like you have to do something,” he said on a recent Wednesday, as he made his way to a hotel room to freshen up before getting his official head shot taken.The something that motivated Mr. Frost, he said, was the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, when he was in high school, which killed 26 people, most of them young children, and gave rise to a grim and nearly omnipresent ritual of active shooter drills for primary and secondary school students across the country.Mr. Frost, who is of Lebanese, Puerto Rican and Haitian descent and was adopted at birth in 1997, grew up in Orlando with a mother who was a Cuban refugee and schoolteacher and a father who was a Kansas-born musician.At an early age, he came to love music and the arts, eventually hosting a music festival with a friend. But he found another passion in political activism, volunteering in 2012 with President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign and then in 2016 with presidential campaigns for Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.After enrolling at Valencia College in Orlando in 2015, he took a break in 2019 to work for the American Civil Liberties Union, and later became a national organizer for the youth-led advocacy group March for Our Lives, which focuses on enacting stricter gun control measures. He drove for Uber to make ends meet.In January 2021, a political operative approached urging him to seek public office, but Mr. Frost said what ultimately persuaded him to do so was connecting with his biological mother several months later.Mr. Frost jogging to the front of the room to participate in the office lottery for new members in the Capitol last week.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesMr. Frost looking at a potential office after the lottery.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesDuring the conversation, Mr. Frost learned that his biological mother, who had seven other children and gave birth to him at the most vulnerable point in her life, had given him up because she did not have the resources to care for him.“Just hearing about the hardships she went through as a woman of color really solidified my beliefs,” Mr. Frost said. “I hung up the phone and said, ‘I’m running for Congress.’”A New U.S. Congress Takes ShapeFollowing the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats maintained control of the Senate while Republicans flipped the House.Divided Government: What does a split Congress mean for the next two years? Most likely a gridlock that could lead to government shutdowns and economic turmoil.Democratic Leadership: House Democrats elected Hakeem Jeffries as their next leader, ushering in a generational shift that includes women and people of color in all the top posts for the first time.G.O.P. Leadership: After a midterms letdown, Representative Kevin McCarthy and Senator Mitch McConnell faced threats to their power from an emboldened right flank.Ready for Battle: An initiative by progressive groups called Courage for America is rolling out a coordinated effort to counter the new Republican House majority and expected investigations of the Biden administration.He declared his candidacy two months later. Mr. Frost said he was moved to run “for people like my biological mother, for my family and for my district,” and wanted to be in a position “to fight to ensure that the condition doesn’t exist for anybody.”Mr. Frost’s win in the midterm elections was a bright spot for Democrats, who lost ground in Florida and narrowly lost their majority in the House. He adds to a diverse field of newly elected representatives from underrepresented communities.Not everyone has been dazzled by Mr. Frost’s youthful enthusiasm. His Republican challenger, Calvin Wimbish, suggested that he was unfit to serve in Congress. “What has he been able to do?” Mr. Wimbish asked in an interview with Spectrum News. “Has he managed people, resources, has he had time? Has he had the exposure to learning from others?”Mr. Frost is taking over the distinction of youngest member of Congress from Representative Madison Cawthorn, Republican of North Carolina, who was elected in 2020 at the age of 25. But the Florida Democrat is not the youngest member of Congress in history. That record, which is unlikely ever to be broken, belongs to William C.C. Claiborne, who may have been 22 when he was elected to the House in 1797. (There is some dispute over his age, but no question that he was under 25.)While the Constitution mandates that House members be at least 25 years old, the House chose to seat Mr. Claiborne anyway.With his youth come some unique challenges for Mr. Frost. He is spending his first few weeks in Washington crashing with friends as he searches for an affordable place to live, as he will not be paid for a few weeks, until the new Congress convenes on Jan. 3.When the moment is right, he said he would rent a studio apartment within walking or electric scooter distance of the Capitol.Mr. Frost viewing an apartment last week. He plans to couch surf during his first few weeks in Washington.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesBut his age has also given him a leg up in some areas. During the digital training portion of new member orientation over the past two weeks, he managed to set up his personal technology in half the time of his older colleagues.He surprised his fellow members-elect last week as he captured moments throughout the day with 0.5 selfies, a new fad among the Gen Z set that entails taking iPhone photos using the back camera. And he’s had the privilege of being “slimed” by Nickelodeon and getting a shout-out from the English pop band The 1975 while at one of the band’s concerts.On Capitol Hill, he has sometimes felt like a kid trying to get to know a new school. He got lost in the Capitol Visitor Center — as the soundtrack of the Broadway musical “Hamilton” blared in his headphones — and had the dizzying experience of meeting new and current members during informational sessions throughout the Capitol complex.Representative Val B. Demings, the Florida Democrat whom he will succeed, has offered him mentorship and described him in an interview as “beyond his years.”“He takes the job seriously, but I don’t think he takes himself too seriously,” Ms. Demings said. “If he can keep that kind of spirit, even on the rough days and nights here, he’ll be OK.”Her main piece of advice for the youngster: Talk to different people and look across the aisle for unlikely allies.Representative Mark Pocan, Democrat of Wisconsin, who visited Mr. Frost before the primary election to help his campaign, said he would fit right in in Congress.“You know, for someone who is 25, he’s kind of an old soul,” Mr. Pocan said, adding that he had been struck by Mr. Frost’s “thoughtfulness of how he looked at issues and his progressive values.”Mr. Frost was an activist and volunteered for several presidential campaigns before running for Congress.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesMr. Frost will be the youngest member of the 118th Congress.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesMr. Sanders was among the first to reach out to congratulate him after the election was called, Mr. Frost said, recounting how he knew his former boss was calling when the Vermont area code popped up on his phone.“He has the potential to be a great leader, speaking to the young people in this country,” Mr. Sanders said of Mr. Frost in an interview.For now, Mr. Frost is focused on some immediate tasks. He has about a year left of his undergraduate education at Valencia College, and he said he intends to resume his coursework at some point.Over the next two years, Mr. Frost aims to lean into his love for grass-roots organizing by building a strong local presence with an accessible district office. At the Capitol, he said his goal was to make incremental steps toward addressing Democratic priorities such as improving health care, enacting gun control measures and building community violence intervention programs.In the next few weeks, he will hire a staff, move into his new corner office in the Longworth Building across from the Capitol and learn how to balance his administrative budget and manage his time as a representative.“Let’s start where we can,” he said, “and not lose sight of our values.” More