Todd Buchanan hangs a leaflet on the doorknob of a modest brick house, knocks lightly, and steps back. An older Black woman in a flowered blouse opens the door, a smiling toddler at her feet, and Mr. Buchanan explains that he’s come to remind her to vote in November’s election.

“I always vote,” Deborah Huntley assures him, adding that she’s been urging her sister and daughter, whose toddler she’s watching, to go to the polls as well. “They say it don’t make a difference, but I do it anyway.”

A retired caregiver, Ms. Huntley belongs to a generation that remembers being denied the vote in states like North Carolina and, since then, has overwhelmingly supported Democrats up and down the ballot. Mr. Buchanan, the canvasser, belongs to a younger generation of Black Americans that has grown less tethered to the Democratic Party and to voting overall.

With just weeks to go before Election Day, North Carolina offers a window into a murky but potentially significant shift taking place among voters of color. Former President Donald Trump, whose rhetoric and policies Democrats have long lambasted as racist, is polling higher among Black voters, particularly men, than any Republican nominee in decades. Some surveys have shown him winning as much as 15% or more of the Black vote across the United States – the highest share for a GOP presidential candidate in 60 years. Even if that proves vastly inflated, and other surveys suggest it is, Mr. Trump seems likely to improve on his 2020 performance, in which he won 8% of Black voters.

Vice President Kamala Harris, a Black and Asian woman who would be the nation’s first female president, is trying to shore up Black support in states like North Carolina and Georgia, where she will need a robust turnout to win. At the same time, polls suggest she’s notched some gains with white voters, especially women and those with college degrees, who have continued to move away from Mr. Trump. How this racial sorting plays out may determine whether the Tar Heel State – where 1 in 5 eligible voters is Black, and more than one-third of voters hold college degrees – remains in the Republican column or goes blue for the first time since Barack Obama won here in 2008.

Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

Supporters stand before former President Donald Trump as he speaks at a campaign rally at Minges Coliseum, Oct. 21, 2024, in Greenville, North Carolina.

Republicans say Mr. Trump’s economic message has found a receptive audience among Black and Latino men who are unhappy about the high cost of living. Many also seem to like the former president’s pugilistic style. The Trump campaign has leaned into hypermasculine branding, which has targeted young Black and Hispanic voters and the media they consume.

“They get it. They’re coming our way,” says Lorena Castillo-Ritz, the GOP chair in Mecklenburg County. “They’re not better off under this government.”

Ms. Harris’ strength among white women, meanwhile, has been driven in no small part by the issue of abortion. Many female voters, particularly highly educated ones, remain outraged about Mr. Trump’s role in the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which eliminated the national right to an abortion and threw the matter back to the states. In North Carolina, abortion is now illegal after 12 weeks gestation, with few exceptions.

Race and class are tightly woven into politics in North Carolina, a state with a growing and diverse population. This includes college-educated professionals in the Research Triangle between Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill, and those working in Charlotte’s financial services industries. Latinos, who made up less than 2% of the electorate in 2008, now account for 8% of eligible voters and a larger share of the state’s population, which grew by 9.5% to 10.4 million in the decade leading up to 2020. Every day, an estimated 120 people move into the Charlotte area, fueling a construction boom.

In Charlotte, the biggest city in North Carolina, Democrats are battling to raise turnout among voters of color who represent the party’s best hope of overcoming the Republican advantage in rural areas. “We know what the numbers are, and we know we have to fight really hard to get people out to vote,” says Vi Lyles, the four-term mayor of Charlotte.

North Carolina also ranks second only to Texas in the size of its rural population; 80 of its 100 counties are considered rural, including western mountainous counties that were leveled last month by Hurricane Helene. Most are heavily Republican, but some also have large Black populations, where Democrats are also hoping to turn out votes. Meanwhile, the state’s diffuse media markets make for expensive statewide campaigns decided by knife-edge margins.

“It’s a microcosm of the country. It’s split right down the middle,” says Doug Wilson, a Democratic strategist in Charlotte who is an adviser to the Harris-Walz campaign.

Chuck Burton/AP

Salvador Fonseca (right) and Elena Jimenez speak with Johanna Ortiz during a voter engagement event for the Latino community in Greensboro, North Carolina, Sept. 21, 2024.

All about turnout

In 2008, Mr. Obama carried several rural counties in North Carolina. Since then, white working-class voters have become a smaller share of the overall population but have also swung hard to the GOP, boxing out Democrats who could once count on a floor of rural votes in statewide races.

The intensification in rural support for Republicans made Democrats more reliant on turnout in 1-million-strong Mecklenburg County, which includes Charlotte. What was once an all-volunteer county party with a paltry budget now employs more than 20 full-time staff working out of a downtown office overflowing with volunteers helping to get out the vote. Behind this expansion is a pitch to national Democratic donors that North Carolina is winnable, provided blue cities deliver more blue votes.

“What happens in Mecklenburg County matters to everyone in the country,” says Andrew Richards, deputy operations director at the Mecklenburg County Democratic Party. “This is where the doors need to get knocked.”

In the 2022 midterms, 58% of white voters cast a ballot in North Carolina, while Black voter turnout was 42%. That gap hurt Democratic candidates like Cheri Beasley, a former chief justice of North Carolina’s Supreme Court, who lost an open Senate race to GOP Rep. Ted Budd by 120,000 votes.

Democrats had built a robust 2024 registration and turnout effort here – communicating with voters over social media, and at barbecues, bars, and churches – even before President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and the party nominated Ms. Harris in August.

The change of candidate jolted the presidential race in ways that were reminiscent of Mr. Obama’s run in 2008, says Aimy Steele, who runs the New North Carolina Project, the nonprofit that sent Mr. Buchanan to Ms. Huntley’s door. “Now Vice President Harris is at the top of the ticket; there’s an excitement,” she says.

Still, it’s not clear that excitement extends to all demographics. Mr. Obama himself recently sounded an alarm about a lack of enthusiasm for Ms. Harris’ candidacy among Black men. “Based on reports I’m getting,” he said at an event in Pittsburgh, “we have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running.” Speaking to Black men directly, the former president pointedly suggested sexism was at play: “It makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president.”

Kathy Kmonicek/AP

A supporter of former President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance signs the Trump bus Oct. 17, 2024, in Rutherfordton, North Carolina.

When Ms. Harris was asked by a Black journalists association last month about her lagging support among Black men, she vowed to win them over with her policies. “Black men are like any other voting group. You’ve got to earn their vote,” she said. Her campaign has been emphasizing support for small businesses.

Activists like Dr. Steele suggest it’s hard for female politicians to overcome patriarchal views that women should “play a supporting role” to men. She contrasts the recent defeats of Ms. Beasley, the Senate nominee, and Stacey Abrams, a two-time Democratic gubernatorial nominee in Georgia, with statewide victories for Black male candidates like Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock in the South.

The overall gender gap, which cuts across racial groups, has widened since Ms. Harris became the nominee, with men more likely than women to prefer Mr. Trump by a 26-point margin, compared with a 17-point margin when Mr. Biden was running. In 2016, when the Democratic nominee was Hillary Clinton, the gender gap was 11 points, according to exit polls.

A controversial candidate for governor

Complicating the picture for the GOP in North Carolina is their nominee for governor, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, a Black Republican whose candidacy imploded in September after CNN reported he had posted a number of offensive comments on a porn website. Mr. Robinson, who denied making the posts and has sued CNN for defamation, had already courted controversy with extreme statements on abortion and other social issues. Most of his staff have quit his campaign, and he’s fallen far behind in polls and fundraising to Attorney General Josh Stein, the Democratic nominee.

In attack ads, Democrats have tried to tie Mr. Robinson to Mr. Trump. The former president had endorsed and publicly praised Mr. Robinson, at one point calling him “Martin Luther King on steroids.” Still, Republicans and even some Democrats say such attacks are unlikely to dent Mr. Trump’s vote share, though they could hurt down-ballot Republicans.

Addul Ali, a Black Republican and Robinson ally who’s running a longshot bid against five-term Democratic Rep. Alma Adams in a deep-blue district in Mecklenburg County, says Mr. Robinson has been unfairly maligned. He believes the polls underestimate the gubernatorial candidate’s support, including that of Black men.

Simon Montlake/The Christian Science Monitor

Addul Ali, the GOP candidate for North Carolina's 12th Congressional District, displays a yard sign at a Republican Party office in Charlotte, North Carolina, Oct 2, 2024. Mr. Ali is running a longshot bid against Democratic Rep. Alma Adams.

Mr. Ali, who owns a small media company, calls himself an “urban conservative” – a label he believes appeals to younger Black voters, who, he says, have soured on Democrats’ failure to deliver on promises for decades. Campaigning in bars and smoke shops, he tells them Republicans are better for business and border security and that he doesn’t care if they smoke a joint after work or what their sexual orientation is; he has the endorsement of the Log Cabin Republicans and hands out “LGBTQ for Ali” yard signs.

“[Voters] have good sense. When given the right information, they will make good decisions,” he says. “But you have to show up. You have to have the conversation.”

Even if he loses, however, Mr. Ali hopes his campaign may be effective in wrangling minority votes for Mr. Trump and other Republican candidates.

“Every vote we can, for lack of a better word, poach from the Democrats, anybody we can swing our way, has a monumental impact,” he says.

Harris vs. Trump on criminal justice

One sore spot for Ms. Harris among some Black voters is her record as a public prosecutor and attorney general in California, presiding over a criminal justice system in which Blacks and Latinos were disproportionately incarcerated. Analysts say she also sought to reform the system and to divert nonviolent drug offenders from prison.

As president, Mr. Trump signed the First Step Act in 2017, a bipartisan bill aimed at reforming federal sentencing and recidivism. He also granted clemency to individuals convicted of drug-related crimes and pardoned two high-profile rappers charged with firearm offenses.

At the same time, Mr. Trump has a long history of what critics call race-baiting. He questioned whether Ms. Harris is really Black. He spread an unfounded rumor that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating people’s pets. This week, he was sued by a group of Black and Latino men known as the Central Park Five who had been exonerated in the rape and assault of a jogger in 1989, for continuing to suggest they were guilty.

Still, as a Black man who served nearly 10 years for bank robbery, Kenneth Robinson (no relation to Lieutenant Governor Robinson) says he understands why some formerly incarcerated voters might support Mr. Trump.

The former president speaks bluntly and doesn’t worry about offending anyone, he says. “One thing that we do say amongst ourselves is that Trump is strong, and he ain’t going to change his tone or his rhetoric for nobody,” says Mr. Robinson, who heads a nonprofit in Charlotte that advocates for formerly incarcerated people. His group has received state and federal funding to house individuals and their families and has acquired land to build affordable housing. They represent more than 2,000 people, he says, “who are registered and are going to vote.”

That is, if they’re allowed to. North Carolina has fought a protracted legal battle over whether felons released from prison but still under supervision can vote. Of the 56,000 people in this category, 42% were Black, according to a 2021 court filing. Their voting rights were restored for the 2022 election, but the state Supreme Court has since reinstated the ban.

Mr. Robinson himself plans to vote for Ms. Harris. The main reason? He has five daughters. “In order for any of my daughters or granddaughters to ever have an opportunity to be the president, somebody has to do it first,” he says. “So, for that reason alone, she would earn my vote.”

As the BRICS Plus economic bloc finished a three-day summit in Kazan, Russia, on Thursday, it’s hard to overstate the rapidly growing group’s potential to change the global conversation about geopolitical governance and economic development, and even to redistribute power.

BRICS has nearly doubled its membership in the past year, with dozens of countries from the Global South queued up to join. Russian President Vladimir Putin, the group’s current chair, declared Thursday that a new multipolar world order is taking shape before our eyes.

For Russia in particular, it represents an alternative vehicle for diplomatic influence and economic survival after being frozen out of relations with the West under an intense barrage of sanctions. Indeed, the meeting in Kazan made major elements of Russia’s foreign policy agenda look almost mainstream.

But it also illustrated severe limitations that Moscow may face. Most of the BRICS members quietly declined to join in any sharp condemnation of the West, or to support any comprehensive efforts to build a full-scale alternative to the existing global system.

Challenging the current world order?

BRICS currently has nine members – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, plus new additions Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. Thirty-six world leaders, including United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, attended the Kazan summit. Most held intimate sideline chats with Mr. Putin and other participants.

The bloc issued a 43-page consensus statement, called the Kazan Declaration, that stakes out demands for reform of key global institutions, including the U.N. Security Council, the International Monetary Fund, and the Group of 20 leading rich and developing nations.

Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

Officials attend a plenary session at the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, Oct. 24, 2024.

More concerning for backers of the current Western-led order, it roundly denounces the “disruptive effects” of “illegal sanctions” on the world economy. It also puts in place what might be seen as at least the beginnings of an alternative architecture for finance and trade between group members and partners that would avoid the use of the U.S. dollar. It further establishes a development bank to provide funding for economic development on a more equitable basis than is available in the current financial system.

“What is driving the growth of the BRICS Plus is, first, the dissatisfaction of many countries with the U.S.-dominated world order. People are tired of the weaponization of the U.S. dollar, and there is a general sense that the U.S. order is rigged to benefit mainly Western interests,” says Dmitry Suslov, an international relations expert with the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.

He adds that BRICS is viewed as an enabler of change toward a system that embodies “multipolarity without hegemony.” Though the two dozen or more countries that are seeking to join the group are extremely diverse – in some cases they are literally enemies – on issues of global governance, he insists, they are of the same mind.

Negotiating deals, and peace

For Mr. Putin, the immediate and most obvious benefit of the Kazan summit is that it provided a convincing demonstration that, despite concerted efforts from the West, Russia is not isolated – a message not lost on the Western media. The countries of BRICS and the Global South already provide an economic lifeline to sanctions-hit Russia, by buying its energy and providing it with a range of goods that can no longer be directly obtained from the West.

But what Russia, sanctions-battered Iran, and, to a lesser extent, China would like to see is rapid movement toward alternative payment systems and banking networks that are completely sanctions-proof. Such a plan could culminate in the development of a BRICS currency that could fully compete with the U.S. dollar and euro as a means of payment and savings accumulation. That’s a tall order, and not one that much interests big members of the group such as India and Brazil.

Still, most countries of the Global South and East seem amenable to using national currencies and other means of payment that avoid the dollar, says Irina Yarygina, a banking expert with MGIMO, a university associated with the Russian Foreign Ministry. She says that dollar transactions among BRICS-associated countries have been reduced to just 38% of the total in recent years.

“Most payments now are on the basis of various national currencies, through national payment systems and central banks of member states,” she says. “Sanctions gave a new impulse, created new challenges and incentives to use traditional payment systems,” instead of U.S. dollar transactions through Western banks.

For the time being, BRICS is little more than a “discussion club” about big goals such as creating an alternative global currency, says Alexander Ignatov, an expert on international institutions with the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in Moscow.

Maxim Platonov/RU Host Photo Agency/REUTERS

Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan takes part in a welcoming ceremony at an airport as he arrives to attend the BRICS summit in Kazan, Oct. 23, 2024.

“Global trade is measured in U.S. dollars for a lot of good reasons,” he says. “Creating a full-fledged new structure would be extremely complex and expensive. ... Countries like Russia and Iran need an alternative; for them using national currencies is a tactical solution, not a strategic one.” But other countries like Brazil trade within the group mainly with China, and have no such immediate need.

Some analysts say the constructive atmosphere of the BRICS association can be a catalyst for peace, since members and aspiring members will seek to resolve differences in order to maximize the benefits of membership.

At the Kazan summit, China and India finalized a deal to normalize relations along their disputed border, sealed in a handshake between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Similarly, a sideline meeting between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, both aspirants to join BRICS, raised hopes that a final peace treaty between the two warring states might be imminent.

Not necessarily to Russia’s benefit

But the elephant in the room is Russia’s war in Ukraine, which the Kazan Declaration stresses must be resolved by diplomatic means in accordance with the principles of the U.N. Charter and hints at possibilities for mediation. That is not language that would have been chosen by Russia, though Mr. Putin has in the past explicitly invited countries like India, Brazil, and China to propose terms of mediation.

“All the BRICS Plus countries feel that the war should be ended as soon as possible. But while they don’t want to see Russia suffer a strategic defeat, they are not necessarily in favor of Russian victory,” says Mr. Suslov. “The point they all agree on is that the fundamental reasons for the war should be addressed, including issues like NATO enlargement.”

Most experts agree that despite the triumphal mood in Kazan, BRICS is still a work in progress that needs to demonstrate its potential, even as it deals with a deluge of new membership applications.

“On political questions, such as setting new rules, the BRICS needs to project feasible alternatives to the system the West has created,” says Mr. Ignatov. “Everyone wants to see a road map for BRICS Plus to expand and develop in coming years.”

Ahn Young-joon/AP

A TV screen shows file images of North Korean troops during a news program at Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Oct. 18, 2024.

North Korea is sending troops to military training areas in Russia, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin confirmed this week, calling the development a “very, very serious” escalation in the war.

It is a charge that South Korea and Ukraine have made repeatedly in past days, which the United States had yet to corroborate.

Officials in Kyiv last week released a video showing North Korean troops collecting military fatigues at Russian bases. These troops could begin showing up in Russia’s Kursk region – which Ukraine invaded this summer – as early as this week, they say.

Some 3,000 North Korean troops arrived in Russia’s far east earlier this month courtesy of Russian naval transport ships, according to U.S. officials. South Korean intelligence agencies estimate that some 12,000 North Korean troops in total are in training.

“What exactly they’re doing is left to be seen,” Secretary Austin said Wednesday. “We’re trying to gain better fidelity on it.”

Why would North Korea do this?

During a June summit in Pyongyang, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin – in his first visit to the country in nearly a quarter century – signed a mutual defense pact, promising military support if either country is attacked. It was ratified by Russia’s lower parliament Thursday.

Ukraine’s August incursion into Russia’s Kursk region could, by Moscow’s reckoning, constitute such an attack.

Russia of course benefits by getting a boost in forces from North Korea, which, with some 1.3 million troops, has the world’s fourth-largest army.

This is helpful politically for the Kremlin. Within Russia there is growing agitation – “albeit heavily suppressed” – surrounding the massive mobilization of troops from eastern Siberia and inner Mongolia in particular, says Ra Mason, associate professor at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England.

“Those people might be somewhat pacified if North Koreans are being used in place of disproportionately used minorities,” he says. Some 600,000 Russians have been killed or wounded in the war, by U.S. estimates.

Fighters are not something that even Russia’s few allies have been willing to provide. Some Central Asian republics have warned their citizens against serving as mercenaries in Russia. Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs last year called out Moscow for operating a “human trafficking network” on the island after trying to recruit its citizens.

In exchange for forces, Moscow may have promised Pyongyang technology for its nuclear program and for intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching U.S. shores, analysts speculate. North Korea also appears determined to launch military spy satellites, known in defense parlance as space-based surveillance systems. The Kremlin could help with this, too.

What’s clear is that “Russia is paying a price” for North Korean aid, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said last week. “In return, it means that they have to deliver innovation.”

What difference could North Korean forces make on the battlefield?

Whether these troops will be sent into battle at all is a key question.

Gen. Charles Flynn, the U.S. Army’s top commander in the Pacific, said last week that having North Korean troops on the ground would help provide Pyongyang with “feedback from a real battlefield” – a development he called “very concerning.”

North Korean military engineers may already be aiding in the use and repair of the weapons their country has been sending Russia, which includes missiles and more than a million artillery rounds.

As the bulk of the new forces arrives, analysts believe that many could be sent to a place like Kursk, the site of Kyiv’s cross-border invasion, to fill in for scarce Russian forces there.

This could be easier to justify under international law – in the way that the special forces of Western nations are thought to be advising Ukrainian troops behind the front lines.

Deploying North Korean forces forward in an offensive operation into, say, Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region would be far more likely to trigger an “escalation spiral,” Dr. Mason says.

Rep. Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican who chairs the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, for instance, said this week “If North Korean troops were to invade Ukraine’s sovereign territory, the United States needs to seriously consider taking direct military action against the North Korean troops.”

“From the NATO and U.S. perspective, if they accept the idea that there are actually North Koreans in the trenches of Donbas, that would create a scenario where they might be compelled to do more to support ailing Ukrainian forces,” he adds. “Russia might want to avoid that.”

What are the implications for the U.S. and other democratic nations – and what might they do about it?

For starters, the revelations have prompted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to renew his longstanding pleas for allies to lift restrictions on using long-range missiles to strike inside Russian territory.

“This escalation on Russia’s part gives greater ammunition to Zelenskyy to say to the Americans, ‘Why are you making us fight with one arm behind our backs?’” says Taras Kuzio, professor of political science at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Ukraine.

The office of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, for its part, has said it will “not sit idly by” while North Korean forces flow into Ukraine. It is now reviewing its policy of sending only nonlethal aid to the embattled nation.

This would diminish the supply of artillery shells that South Korea has instead been sending to the U.S. to bolster American stockpiles, which have been dwindling throughout the war.

More broadly, the deepening military ties between North Korea and Russia raise the larger question of what a collaboration of antidemocratic nations can accomplish – particularly as a destabilizing force.

Though Western officials have been quick to point out that bringing in North Korean troops is an embarrassing sign of Moscow’s serious war struggles – Secretary Austin called it “tin-cupping” – showcasing eastern Russian training camps for North Korean troops allows the Kremlin to “strike fear in an already struggling Ukrainian army and poke its Western backers in the eye,” Dr. Mason notes.

Such tactical moves serve a political purpose. “These associations send a message that Russia won’t be swayed by international opinion,” he adds. “It’s creating what you might describe as an unholy alliance of rogue states.”

This includes China, Iran (a key supplier of drones for Russia), and a now less-isolated North Korea, nations that all delight in upending what they call a U.S.-led unipolar world.

“What they dream of is a return to the Cold War when they believed that there was a multipolar world with different centers of gravity,” Dr. Kuzio says.

Such alliances, like the one now bringing North Korean forces into Russia’s war, “destroy what they see as this kind of very pro-American, very pro-spreading-of-democracy model that’s been around since 1991,” he adds. “So the Western, democratic, ‘end of history’ model, shall we say, will not be the only one in town.”

Susan Walsh/AP/File

President Donald Trump (right) looks over to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) during an event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Jan. 28, 2020, to announce a Trump administration plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“The president is on the line, sir.” To which Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could have been forgiven for wondering, as the call was put through: Which president?

For within the space of a couple of days last week, he spoke not only to U.S. President Joe Biden but also to the man who preceded him in office and now hopes to return, Donald Trump.

Headlines worldwide highlighted Mr. Biden’s call. He urged Mr. Netanyahu to capitalize on the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar by negotiating a cease-fire and hostage release in Gaza.

But it was Mr. Trump’s very different message that will likely weigh more heavily on Mr. Netanyahu’s mind as he decides when, and whether, to act on Mr. Biden’s appeal.

And this “Trump factor” makes it vanishingly unlikely that he will move before America votes Nov. 5.

There is an important caveat, potentially more encouraging to those in the Middle East, in Washington, and around the world who are desperate to see negotiations and de-escalation in Gaza.

It is that no matter who wins the U.S. election, Mr. Netanyahu may well face renewed pressure from Washington to “take the win” – as Biden administration officials have been urging – and join in that process.

For now, however, the Israeli prime minister is clearly minded to pay less attention to Mr. Biden than to Mr. Trump.

The immediate reason is that the former president has been echoing the Israeli leader’s own words on the campaign trail.

After Israel killed the Hamas leader, Mr. Trump criticized President Biden’s call for Mr. Netanyahu to move toward a cease-fire. “Biden is trying to hold him back,” he said. “And he should probably be doing the opposite actually.”

On the phone call last week, Mr. Trump went further on another Mideast front where the Biden administration has been urging Israeli caution: the expected military response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack early this month.

“Just do what you have to do,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Netanyahu.

But the roots of Mr. Netanyahu’s preference for Mr. Trump over President Biden – and over the Democratic Party candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris – run deeper.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP/File

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepares to speak to a joint meeting of Congress to seek support for Israel's fight against Hamas and other adversaries, at the Capitol in Washington, July 24, 2024.

Breaking with the bipartisan approach to U.S. politics that all previous Israeli leaders adopted, Mr. Netanyahu has in recent years openly aligned himself with the Republican Party.

Twice he has done a political end run around a Democratic president by accepting a Republican invitation to address Congress to argue against administration policy.

In 2015, he attacked President Barack Obama for pursuing a nuclear deal with Iran.

Earlier this year, Mr. Netanyahu turned his back on President Biden’s efforts to promote a hostage-release deal and to persuade him to engage with a “day after” plan for Gaza that would lead to an eventual two-state peace with the Palestinians.

During Mr. Trump’s tenure as president, he and the Israeli leader were close allies, a partnership buttressed by Mr. Netanyahu’s personal ties with Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and Mideast envoy, Jared Kushner.

They jointly produced a diplomatic breakthrough, dubbed the Abraham Accords, normalizing Israel’s ties with historically hostile Gulf Arab states without requiring Mr. Netanyahu to make any commitment to a future Palestinian state.

The Trump administration also broke with longtime U.S. policy by formally endorsing Israeli gains from the 1967 Six-Day War. Washington recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights from Syria, and its declaration of the disputed city of Jerusalem as its capital.

Given Vice President Harris’ full-blown support for a two-state peace deal and her outspoken concern over the level of civilian casualties in Gaza, there is no doubt Mr. Netanyahu would far prefer to see Mr. Trump win the U.S. election.

So why, then, the caveat? Why might a second Trump administration also exert pressure to embrace a day-after deal not unlike the one Mr. Biden has been working so hard to advance?

One key reason is the very quality in Mr. Trump that benefited Mr. Netanyahu the first time around: his intensely personal, if often mercurial, approach to political relationships.

Mr. Netanyahu, himself, experienced the full effects after the 2020 U.S. election.

Mr. Trump fumed over what he saw as the Israeli leader’s betrayal when Mr. Netanyahu ignored claims the election had been “stolen” and congratulated Mr. Biden on his victory.

The chill thawed only recently, when Mr. Netanyahu made a concerted effort to repair their relationship.

But there’s another reason that the Biden day-after plan could remain on the table no matter who wins next month.

It’s that Mr. Trump has a closer, unfrayed relationship with another Mideast leader, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Saudi Arabia, the most influential of the Arab states in the region, decided not to join the Abraham Accords.

Yet the crown prince has been a central player in Mr. Biden’s postwar plan for Gaza, hoping to secure a formal U.S. defense guarantee, and an Israeli commitment to the idea of a two-state peace, in return for taking the financial and political lead in Gaza’s reconstruction and future security.

That’s a pitch the prince will likely make to Mr. Trump, too, if he wins.

AP

Presidential candidate Edmundo González and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado greet supporters at a campaign rally in Barinas, Venezuela, July 6.

The highest honor that the European Union bestows each year is an award to an individual or group from anywhere for defending “freedom of thought.” Picking a winner often entails quiet and collegial deliberation between parties on the left and right in the European Parliament. This year, the nominees ranged from Elon Musk to a jailed climate activist in Azerbaijan.

During the prize selection, a respect for each other’s thought process usually helps form a parliamentary consensus, reinforcing the fact that freedom of thought is not just an ideal. It is practical.

This year’s winners of the Sakharov Prize – named after Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov – are models for the mental freedom that includes seeing the inherent dignity in others. They are Venezuela’s María Corina Machado and exiled presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, leaders of a big-tent opposition coalition known as the Democratic Unitary Platform.

By most accounts, Mr. González won a rigged presidential election in July that should have ousted socialist Nicolás Maduro, South America’s longest-ruling authoritarian leader. Mr. González has since fled to Spain.

The European Parliament's award was specific in citing the two opposition leaders – who reflect different parts of the political spectrum – for representing all Venezuelans who are “fighting for the restoration of freedom and democracy.” Mr. González is a centrist and former diplomat, while Ms. Machado is a conservative former lawmaker from a wealthy family.

During his campaign, Mr. González set a high tone. “It’s time for the big Venezuelan family to come together once more,” he told CNN en Español. “It’s time that the adversary is respected as such, and not seen as an enemy.”

Ms. Machado described the campaign as a “spiritual fight,” or one in which people dig deep into their conscience. “Even people that are not religious or don’t believe in God were praying together,” she told The Times in September.

“I’m reaching out not only to democratic governments around the globe but also to freedom-loving people who understand that what’s going on in Venezuela is a vanguard for the fight for freedom in the western hemisphere and involves all of us.”

The unity of the Democratic Unitary Platform coalition relies on the free expression of opinions and a listening to opposing arguments. By treating each other as moral equals, they hope to find the best path for Venezuela’s return to democracy. “Today our struggle continues,” Ms. Machado said, “because truth persists until it prevails.”