In New York State’s Democratic primary election for governor on June 28, some of the protections and freedoms we would expect in a healthy democracy are on the ballot: the right to vote; the right of women to reproductive freedom; the right to a fair and competent system of public safety, including protection not just from street crime but also from the proliferation of assault rifles and gun violence; and, as President Franklin Roosevelt once said, the freedom from want — want for affordable housing, strong education, a sustainable climate, a stable economic future, among so much more.

With the federal government paralyzed on many of these issues, states are poised to become an even more powerful force in American life. New York is among the few that have been dedicated to defending these essential norms that are under attack elsewhere in the country.

It’s a moment, in other words, when leadership matters. Gov. Kathy Hochul is already leading on these questions, and she deserves an additional four years as chief executive of New York. She has our endorsement to be elected governor.

A former member of Congress who was elected lieutenant governor in 2014, Ms. Hochul stepped into the governor’s office last August after Andrew Cuomo resigned amid allegations of sexual harassment. It was a period of upheaval and uncertainty for New York’s roughly 20 million residents, as the state was still suffering through the Delta wave of the Covid pandemic. In her first months in office, Ms. Hochul gave the state exactly what it needed: a competent, steady hand who put the interests of the public first.

Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon has laid out plans for the country to hold a “consultative” independence referendum on October 19 2023.

Sturgeon told the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh on Tuesday that Scotland’s lord advocate had agreed to refer a bill setting up the referendum to the UK Supreme Court, to establish if it was within her government’s authority to hold such a vote. If the court disagreed, then the UK general election expected to be held in 2024 would be a de facto vote on independence, she said.

“The legislative competency can only be determined judicially,” she said. Sturgeon said she accepted that a “Yes” vote in itself would not lead to independence, and that legislation would have to be passed by both the Scottish and UK governments.

Ahead of the speech, Sturgeon’s Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat opponents accused her of being out of touch with Scotland’s voters, echoing the stance of the government in Westminster that people were concerned about the cost of living crisis, education and health.

Read more: https://www.ft.com/content/e5374e59-61f5-44f9-863a-ebbde4a5abb7

---

A grocery store worker accused of assaulting Rudolph W. Giuliani at a Staten Island supermarket on Sunday had the charges against him reduced after the emergence of video footage that appeared to show him patting Mr. Giuliani on the back with an open palm rather than striking him.

The worker, Daniel Gill, had been charged with second-degree assault in the immediate aftermath of the episode. Prosecutors later reduced the charges to third-degree assault, third-degree menacing and second-degree harassment.

After a day in custody, Mr. Gill, 39, was arraigned on the lesser charges in Staten Island Criminal Court on Monday. He was released by Judge Gerianne Abriano and ordered to return to court in August.

The culture war raged most hotly from the ’70s to the next century’s ’20s. It polarized American society, dividing men from women, rural from urban, religious from secular, Anglo-Americans from more recent immigrant groups. At length, but only after a titanic constitutional struggle, the rural and religious side of the culture imposed its will on the urban and secular side. A decisive victory had been won, or so it seemed.

The culture war I’m talking about is the culture war over alcohol prohibition. From the end of Reconstruction to the First World War, probably more state and local elections turned on that one issue than on any other. The long struggle seemingly culminated in 1919, with the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment and enactment by Congress of the National Prohibition Act, or the Volstead Act (as it became known). The amendment and the act together outlawed the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States and all its subject territories. Many urban and secular Americans experienced those events with the same feeling of doom as pro-choice Americans may feel today after the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Only, it turns out that the Volstead Act was not the end of the story. As Prohibition became a nationwide reality, Americans rapidly changed their mind about the idea. Support for Prohibition declined, then collapsed. Not only was the Volstead Act repealed, in 1933, but the Constitution was further amended so that nobody could ever try such a thing ever again.

That’s where the story usually ends. But now let’s add one more chapter, the one most relevant to our present situation. When Prohibition did finally end, so too did the culture war over alcohol. Emotions that had burned fiercely for more than half a century sputtered out after 1933. Before and during Prohibition, alcohol had seemed a moral issue of absolute right and wrong. Between heaven and hell (as the prohibitionists told it), between liberty and tyranny (as the repealers regarded it), how could there be compromise?

...snip...

The great debate on alcohol offers, a century later, a fascinating parallel with the contemporary one on abortion. In each instance, the battle commenced with big triumphs in the courts for legalization. In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court found a constitutional right to abortion; in 1856, the highest court in the state of New York struck down an early prohibition law as a violation of property rights. Defeat in the courts drove the pro-life and prohibition sides toward mass mobilization. Meanwhile, victory in the courts lulled the original winning sides into complacency. Gradually, the balance of political power shifted. The pro-life/prohibition sides came to control more and more state legislatures. State and federal courts slowly reoriented themselves to the pro-life/prohibition sides. At last came the great moment of reversal for the formerly defeated: national Prohibition in 1919, the Dobbs case in 2022.

Prohibition and Dobbs were and are projects that seek to impose the values of a cohesive and well-organized cultural minority upon a diverse and less-organized cultural majority. Those projects can work for a time, but only for a time. In a country with a representative voting system—even a system as distorted in favor of the rural and conservative as the American system was in the 1920s and is again today—the cultural majority is bound to prevail sooner or later.

A Russian strike hit a crowded shopping mall in central Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Telegram Monday. At least 20 people are injured and two dead, according to officials — figures expected to rise. Videos shared in the aftermath appear to show the shopping center in the industrial city of Kremenchuk engulfed in flames.

President Biden told Zelensky Monday that the United States intends to provide Kyiv with advanced medium- and long-range air defense capabilities, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday. Washington is “in the process of finalizing a package” that will also include other items of “urgent need, including ammunition for artillery and counter-battery radar systems,” Sullivan said, according to a pool report.