Monday Briefing – The New York Times

Putin won a rubber-stamp election

President Vladimir Putin yesterday extended his rule over Russia until 2030, using a heavily stage-managed election with no real opposition to claim overwhelming public support for his domestic dominance and his invasion of Ukraine.

Western governments condemned the election, and some Russians tried to turn the vote into a protest by forming long lines at polling stations at noon. Ukraine sought to cast its own vote of sorts, firing a volley of exploding drones at Moscow and other targets.

But the Kremlin brushed those challenges aside and released results claiming that Putin had won 87 percent of the vote, an even higher number than in the four previous elections in which he ran.

In a news conference after the voting, Putin commented for the first time on the death of the imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, calling it an “unfortunate incident.” (Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, waited in line for hours to vote in Berlin.)

The extent of the public’s true support for Putin was hard to judge, with opposition candidates barred from running — the three other candidates on the ballot didn’t criticize Mr. Putin — and the work of independent poll observers reduced to its lowest level since the days of the Soviet Union.

Putin is set to use his new six-year term to further cement his control of Russian politics and to press on with the war in Ukraine. If he finishes the term, he will become the longest-serving Russian leader since Catherine the Great in the 1700s.

“That’s something that Israel, the Israeli public, does on its own,” Netanyahu said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We’re not a banana republic.”

The remarks by Schumer, the Senate majority leader, were part of a scathing speech he gave last week, during which the New York Democrat also accused Netanyahu of putting his political survival before the good of his country. The speech was indicative of the growing gap between Israel and the U.S. on the war in Gaza. President Biden praised the speech but stopped short of endorsing Schumer’s call for a new election.

Netanyahu, in remarks to his government, vowed that the Israeli military would invade Rafah, where more than a million Gazans have taken shelter. Displaced people there are terrified by the prospect of a ground invasion.

Humanitarian crisis: New approaches for getting aid into Gaza have not curtailed the hunger and malnutrition there, experts said.

Trump’s allies are winning a war over disinformation

After the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, officials and social media companies worked to rein in the lies that spurred the assault. Donald Trump and his allies embarked on their own coordinated effort to block what they called dangerous censorship of conservatives, with financial support from conservative donors who have backed groups that promoted lies about voting in 2020.

That effort, little noticed by most Americans, has weakened checks on disinformation online, potentially bolstering Trump’s attempt to recapture the presidency.

U.S. elections: Trump again described immigrants as “poisoning” America. President Biden’s re-election campaign said it had raised $53 million in February, which is expected to widen Democrats’ cash advantage over Republicans.

The designer Phoebe Philo, who transformed the French fashion brands Chloé and Celine, has been called the Chanel of her generation. But Philo walked away from the industry almost seven years ago, becoming a myth practically overnight.

In her first interview in a decade, Philo spoke with Vanessa Friedman, our chief fashion critic, about reversing a fashion designer’s traditional trajectory by starting her own label after working for major brands.

Live lived: Steve Harley was a British rock star who topped British music charts with the single “Make Me Smile.” He died at 73.

Conversation Starters

SPORTS NEWS

From Bayern to Gladbach: How Saarbrucken became the haunted home of cup terrors.

Equals for now: Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner are the future of tennis.

The search for an ‘offensive’ silent film

The 1927 silent comedy “The Callahans and the Murphys” depicted stereotypes of Irish Americans so noxious that it was yanked from circulation and is now considered lost. That did not stop my colleague Dan Barry, who learned about the film while impulsively researching the actor Marie Dressler, from eventually tracking down a short clip from the movie, which one critic and historian described as “legendary.”

“There’s really only been a handful of films that, instead of simply being edited, were pulled altogether because they were considered offensive,” the historian said.

You can watch that clip, which Barry found in an enormous storehouse run by the Library of Congress, and another one discovered in the Irish Film Institute’s collection, in his article.

That’s it for today’s briefing. Thank you for spending part of your morning with us, and see you tomorrow. — Dan

P.S. Steven Erlanger, The Times’s chief diplomatic correspondent, compares the leader of HBO’s “The Regime” to autocrats he has covered.

You can reach Dan and the team at [email protected].