Nikki Haley Answers a Thorny Abortion Question: Should Women Be Punished?

At town halls and political events in New Hampshire, where she has made far more campaign stops than her rivals, Nikki Haley has mostly sidestepped any discussion of abortion, a fraught issue for the Republican Party.

But on Tuesday, with more than 100 people gathered in a drizzle for a town hall at a picturesque vineyard in Hollis, Christina Zlotnick, 55, an undeclared voter from Amherst, posed a hard question. Ms. Haley provided little by way of concrete policy proposals, but this time she drew an enthusiastic response.

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On the Road With Will Hurd, the Bipartisan Candidate in Search of a Base

It is the stuff of viral internet legend now. After snow disrupted their flights, Will Hurd, the former Republican congressman, and Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat from a neighboring district, climbed into a rented Chevy Impala and took a cross-country road trip from their home state of Texas to Washington.

As they live streamed what they called “a bipartisan town hall” to millions of Americans on Facebook and Twitter, featuring hourslong policy debates on health care, singalongs to Willie Nelson and doughnut runs, the two captured the national attention as Americans watched them cultivate a friendship, even as they disagreed.

More than six years later, on a sunny day this July, Mr. Hurd was on the road again, this time as a longer than long-shot presidential candidate, a moderate whose penchant for bipartisanship puts him at odds with the party’s current mood.

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Legal Fights and Charges of Discrimination Send Latino Group Into Turmoil

One of the nation’s oldest and most venerated Latino civil rights organizations is at a critical juncture that some members say could determine its direction — or have dire implications for its future.

A messy legal dispute, rooted in a decades-long debate over whether Puerto Rico should become a state, has led to infighting among the members and leadership of the group, the League of United Latin American Citizens, known as LULAC.

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For Progressive Democrats, New Momentum Clashes With Old Debates

Progressive victories in Wisconsin and Chicago have injected new momentum into the most liberal wing of the Democratic Party. But those recent electoral successes are masking deeper internal tensions over the role and influence of progressives in a party President Biden has been remaking in his moderate image.

Interviews with more than 25 progressive and moderate Democratic leaders and strategists — including current and former members of Congress and directors of national and statewide groups — revealed a behind-the-scenes tug of war over the party’s policy agenda, messaging and tactics. As the party looks toward next year’s elections, its key constituencies have undergone a transformation. Once mostly white, working-class voters, Democrats now tend to be affluent, white liberals, Black moderates and a more diverse middle class.

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More Black Women Run for Office, but Prospects Fade the Higher They Go

As Representative Barbara Lee hits the campaign trail for a Senate seat in California, significant hurdles await her. The race is expected to be one of the most competitive, and expensive, in the country. Even more daunting, she will face one of the strongest glass ceilings in American politics.

When Ms. Lee, 76, was first elected to Congress in 1998, the House had 11 Black women in office, and only one Black woman served in the Senate. With the swearing-in of Jennifer McClellan as the first Black woman to represent Virginia on Tuesday, the House now has 28 Black women in its ranks, a new high-water mark, but the Senate has none.

“It blows my mind that in 2023, I am a first,” Ms. McClellan said in an interview Tuesday. “Frankly, it is this imagination gap that people have had for a very long time — that because they haven’t seen a Black woman in these offices, they can’t imagine it.”

Over the past decade, Black women have made tremendous gains: Kamala Harris broke barriers as the nation’s first Black, Asian American and female vice president. More Black women are leading major cities, and many more have sought Senate seats and governorships.

But winning those offices still poses familiar and enduring challenges for women of color, and Black women in particular. Many confront both blatant racism and sexism, along with subtler forms of racial and gender bias that, candidates and political advocates said, make it more difficult for them to raise money to pay for the costly work of hiring staff and buying advertising in expensive markets.

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East Palestine Crisis Tests a Trump-Backed Senator

EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — As Donald J. Trump criticized the federal response to the train derailment that has shaken this Ohio town, there was one leader in Washington he praised repeatedly — the man he helped propel to Congress, Senator J.D. Vance.

“J.D. Vance has been incredible,” Mr. Trump told reporters and local officials on Wednesday at an East Palestine firehouse, as Mr. Vance stood behind him.

While a fight brews between Democrats and Republicans over the role of the federal government in the derailment’s aftermath, Mr. Vance, 38, has been at the center of it all. Some of his actions have been the conventional response of any seasoned politician. He has drafted letters calling on federal officials for more oversight and met with some of the residents most affected by the derailment and chemical spill. But he also has joined far-right Republican figures in depicting the deep-red village in northeastern Ohio as a forgotten place, taking a page from Mr. Trump’s grievance-politics playbook.

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Trump Visits East Palestine, Seeking to Draw Contrast With Biden

EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — It was evocative of the former president’s time in office: an at-times meandering address, punctated by self-promotion — his brand-name Trump Water — and an undercurrent of grievance.

But as he visited the small Ohio town of East Palestine on Wednesday, former President Donald J. Trump sought to hammer home a message just by showing up — that his successor and the man he’s seeking to replace, President Biden, had been ineffective in responding to a domestic crisis after a train derailed and spewed toxic chemicals early this month.

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Barbara Lee, a Longtime Congresswoman, Is Running for Senate in California

WASHINGTON — Representative Barbara Lee, who stood alone against authorizing military action after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and remains a leading antiwar voice in Congress, entered the 2024 Senate race in California on Tuesday, becoming the third prominent Democrat to run for the seat being vacated by Dianne Feinstein.

Ms. Lee, 76, the highest-ranking Black woman appointed to Democratic leadership in the House, unveiled her Senate bid in a video that highlighted the racism she fought against in her youth and the struggles she faced as a single mother and a survivor of domestic violence.

“No one is rolling out the welcome mat, especially for someone like me,” Ms. Lee said in the video. “I was the girl they didn’t allow in.”

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Senate Race in California Reflects Fight for Democrats’ Future

LOS ANGELES — Even before Senator Dianne Feinstein of California announced her retirement on Tuesday, the race taking shape for the seat she has held since November 1992 was poised to become one of the most competitive and expensive in the country. Now, the incumbent’s imminent departure has raised an urgent question for California Democrats: Whose turn is it?

Two members of Congress have jumped in, with a third expected to join soon, and the 2024 contest is already revealing ideological, generational, regional and racial divides within the party in America’s most populous — and arguably bluest — state.

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Democrat in Arizona Will Seek Kyrsten Sinema’s Senate Seat

The announcement on Monday that Representative Ruben Gallego, a progressive Democrat from Phoenix, would run for the Senate in 2024 sets up a potential face-off with Senator Kyrsten Sinema over a seat that carries immense stakes for Democrats’ control of the upper chamber.

Ms. Sinema left the Democratic Party in December to become an independent, though she has kept her Democratic committee assignments. She has not yet announced re-election plans, but if she runs again, national Democrats will have to decide whether or not to support her, even as the state party has strongly rebuked her and some polling has shown her to be deeply unpopular among Arizona Democrats, signs of a possibly divisive battle to come.

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How the Worst Fears for Democracy Were Averted in 2022

Not long ago, Joe Mohler would have seemed an unlikely person to help bury the political legacy of Donald J. Trump.

Mr. Mohler, a 24-year-old Republican committeeman and law student in Lancaster Township, Pa., voted for Mr. Trump in 2016. He voted for him again in 2020 — but this time with some misgivings. And when Mr. Trump began spouting lies and conspiracy theories about his 2020 loss, Mr. Mohler, who grew up in a solidly conservative area of southeastern Pennsylvania, was troubled to hear many people he knew repeat them.

Last January, after county Republican leaders aligned with a group known for spreading misinformation about the 2020 election and Covid-19 vaccines, Mr. Mohler spoke out against them — a move that he said cost him his post as chairman of the township G.O.P. committee.

“I just realized how much of a sham the whole movement was,” he said. “The moment the veil is pulled from your face, you realize how ugly the face is that you are looking at.”

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Warnock Claims Momentum in Georgia, as Walker Banks on Election Day Turnout

ATLANTA — In the final day before Georgia’s Senate runoff, Senator Raphael Warnock pleaded with supporters to tune out pundits predicting his victory and instead vote “like it’s an emergency” in a bitterly contested race that is closing out the midterm election cycle.

His Republican challenger, Herschel Walker, the former football star recruited into the race by former President Donald J. Trump, made a circuit of north Georgia counties he won easily a month ago, urging Republicans who have avoided early voting to hit the polls Tuesday. “Got to get out the vote,” he said.

The two men are vying in an election with major symbolic as well as practical ramifications. A Warnock victory would deliver Democrats a 51st vote in the Senate, where the party has for the past two years relied on Vice President Kamala Harris to break 50-50 ties. If Mr. Walker wins, Republicans would maintain joint control of Senate committees and two centrist Democratic senators, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, would maintain effective veto power over all legislation in the chamber.

But the broader political stakes are just as significant. Democrats believe a victory would deliver proof they have transformed Georgia into an indisputable battleground, heralding a new era of Sun Belt politics and reshaping their strategies for winning the White House. A Walker victory, after his deeply troubled campaign and the G.O.P.’s clean sweep in statewide races this year, would reassert Republican dominance in the state.

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Warnock and Walker, at Finish Line in Georgia, Stick to Their Strategies

ATLANTA — The closely watched rematch between Senator Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker has reached its final hours, capping an intense and turbulent campaign that has prompted debate over issues of race, class and power in a state with a pivotal role in American politics.

On Sunday morning at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Mr. Warnock is a senior pastor, he peppered his sermon with thinly veiled allusions to the election, reminding people multiple times to vote and joking that they had a choice between two candidates whose “last name starts with W.”

Mr. Walker on Sunday urged his supporters to vote, on part of what his campaign has been calling an “Evict Warnock Bus Tour.” “If you don’t have a friend, go make a friend and get them out to vote,” he told supporters.

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In Georgia, a Heated Senate Race Stirs Mixed Emotions in Black Voters

ATLANTA — The line of voters circled around the East Point Library on a recent Thursday evening, giving Dacia Davis, a 45-year-old human resources coordinator braced against the chill, plenty of time to contemplate the historic significance of the ballot waiting for her inside.

Two African American men — Herschel Walker, a Republican, and Raphael Warnock, the Democratic incumbent — are vying for a Senate seat in the Deep South, in a runoff contest, a process designed decades ago to thwart Black candidates. The winner in Tuesday’s election will serve in an institution that has been overwhelmingly white throughout its history: Nearly 2,000 people have served in the U.S. Senate, and onlyhttps://ATLANTA — The line of voters circled around the East Point Library on a recent Thursday evening, giving Dacia Davis, a 45-year-old human resources coordinator braced against the chill, plenty of time to contemplate the historic significance of the ballot waiting for her inside. Two African American men — Herschel Walker, a Republican, and Raphael Warnock, the Democratic incumbent — are vying for a Senate seat in the Deep South, in a runoff contest, a process designed decades ago to thwart Black candidates. The winner in Tuesday’s election will serve in an institution that has been overwhelmingly white throughout its history: Nearly 2,000 people have served in the U.S. Senate, and only 11 of them have been Black. But a race that may seem like a triumph for Black political power has stirred a complicated mix of emotions for Ms. Davis and many other Black Georgians. Mr. Walker’s troubled candidacy has clouded their pride with suspicions, dismay, offense and even embarrassment. of them have been Black.

But a race that may seem like a triumph for Black political power has stirred a complicated mix of emotions for Ms. Davis and many other Black Georgians. Mr. Walker’s troubled candidacy has clouded their pride with suspicions, dismay, offense and even embarrassment.

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Katie Hobbs, Who Defied Trump in Arizona, Tops Kari Lake for Governor

PHOENIX — Katie Hobbs, who as Arizona’s secretary of state stood up to efforts by allies of former President Donald J. Trump to overturn the 2020 election, has clinched a victory in the state’s race for governor, according to The Associated Press.

Ms. Hobbs, a Democrat, narrowly defeated Kari Lake, a right-wing former newscaster who was talked about as a future leader in a Trump-dominated Republican Party, in a bitter and closely watched race that became a final test of whether candidates molded in Mr. Trump’s image could win in battlegrounds. Ms. Lake, one of the most prominent purveyors of Mr. Trump’s lies about his 2020 election, followed several other election-denying candidates in defeat.

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Mark Kelly Wins Arizona Senate Race, Putting Democrats a Seat From Control

Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona won a tough campaign for re-election on Friday, The Associated Press reported, defeating his Trump-backed Republican rival, Blake Masters, to put Democrats within one seat of retaining control of the Senate.

Democrats hope to clinch the chamber when votes are fully counted in the Nevada contest between Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, and her Republican challenger, Adam Laxalt, who held a tiny lead late Friday but was expected to fall behind.

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Despite their discontent, midterm voters did not kick out incumbents this week.

High inflation. President Biden’s low approval ratings. Polls showing that a majority of Americans were dissatisfied with the direction of the country.

The overall landscape heading into the 2022 midterm elections looked bleak for incumbents across the country, and for Democratic ones in particular, as many braced to feel voters’ outrage after Republican-led attacks on crime, immigration and high food and gas prices. But early tallies show that voters have mostly opted to keep their members of Congress.

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In Arizona’s race for governor, Hobbs defies expectations and takes a narrow lead.

PEORIA, Ariz. — In a cramped campaign office tucked in a strip mall, Katie Hobbs, the Democratic nominee for governor, was hours away from Election Day and trying to rally volunteers while also tempering expectations.

“I think this state is still a red state,” Ms. Hobbs said, pointing to Republicans’ advantage over Democrats in voter registration numbers. “We are exactly where we thought we would be in terms of the closeness of this race. We knew it was going to come down to the wire.”

Ms. Hobbs always cautioned the race would be tight. What some Republicans — and even some Democrats — in Arizona did not realize was just how tight.

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