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World

Ukraine Hits Hotel Hosting Russian Military

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KHERSON, Ukraine—Kyiv’s military demolished a hotel complex hosting dozens of Russian military personnel overnight with U.S.-supplied long-range artillery, while more Russian drone strikes continued to destroy Ukraine’s electricity grid. 

Ukrainian President

Volodymyr Zelensky

said 1.5 million people in Ukraine’s southern Odessa region were left without power after strikes late Saturday. Only critical infrastructure was connected to the power grid, he said, adding that restoring service could take longer than after previous attacks.

Air-raid sirens continued to sound in Ukraine on Sunday as Russia launched more strikes. 

Footage of the Ukrainian artillery strike against a hotel in the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol showed burning buildings as well as dead and wounded Russian soldiers among the wreckage. Russian and Ukrainian social-media channels said there were dozens of casualties but gave varying death tolls.

Workers repair high-voltage power lines cut by missile strikes near Odessa, southern Ukraine.



Photo:

oleksandr gimanov/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Ukrainian soldiers with a self-propelled howitzer near the front line in eastern Ukraine.



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ihor tkachov/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The exiled Ukrainian mayor of Melitopol,

Ivan Fedorov,

wrote on his Telegram channel that as many as 200 Russian troops were “roasted” in the strike. The Russian-installed governor of the region said dozens were wounded and two killed.

Ukraine has been using U.S.-supplied long-range artillery, or Himars, to try to break up Russian troop concentrations behind the front lines so that Moscow can’t maneuver its forces for an attack. The strike on the hotel complex in Melitopol, located in southeastern Ukraine about 50 miles from the Sea of Azov, appeared to be at the limit of the range of the Himars munitions supplied by the U.S.

But Ukraine has so far been able to mount only a limited defense against Moscow’s campaign of missile and drone attacks. 

Missile strikes late Saturday that hit around Ukraine’s southern port city of Odessa “were critical,” Mr. Zelensky said in his nightly address. 

“This is the true attitude of Russia toward Odessa, toward Odessa residents—deliberate bullying, deliberate attempt to bring disaster to the city,” he said.

A destroyed house in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine.



Photo:

ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO/REUTERS

Odessa regional officials didn’t say what exactly had been hit, but wrote on Facebook that repairing the damage could take two or three months. DTEK, one of the country’s largest energy companies, said almost the entire region was without power late Saturday, and that utility workers were giving priority to reconnecting hospitals and other critical infrastructure to the grid.

“The situation in the energy sector of Odessa region remains difficult,” DTEK wrote on Facebook. “According to preliminary forecasts, it will take much more time to restore energy facilities in the Odessa region than in the previous times after enemy shelling.”

Ukrainian leaders have repeatedly accused Russia of weaponizing the onset of winter to affect the civilian population and compel Kyiv to withdraw from its positions. Russian President Vladimir Putin last week acknowledged doing so and vowed to continue. “There’s a lot of noise about our strikes on the energy infrastructure of a neighboring country,” Mr. Putin said. “Yes, we do that.”

Officials encouraged Odessa residents to go to government-established centers, which have power generators, to warm up and charge devices. In addition, Germany said it would donate 470 electric generators, at a cost of about $20 million. 

The attack on Odessa over the weekend suggested that Moscow has replenished its supply of drones following several weeks in which they had disappeared from Ukrainian skies. 

People embrace after arriving at the railway station in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine.



Photo:

SHANNON STAPLETON/REUTERS

Meanwhile, Russia continued to step up its shelling of Kherson after withdrawing from the southern regional capital last month. Shelling hit critical infrastructure in the city on Saturday night, said regional governor Yaroslav Yanushevych. A day earlier, shelling killed two people and injured eight others. 

Ukrainian forces, meanwhile, fired at Russian positions across the Dnipro River from inside the city. The sound of rockets whistled through neighborhoods near the river. 

Fierce fighting also continued in the area around Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine. Russian forces are attempting to regain the city, which they occupied in the early days of the invasion and into the summer before a Ukrainian counteroffensive drove them further into eastern Ukraine.

Many of the Russian personnel who were withdrawn from Kherson in the fall were redeployed to the east to bolster the Russian push toward Bakhmut, where trenches and other fortifications now resemble those seen in World War I.

Apartment buildings without electricity during a power outage in Odessa, southern Ukraine.



Photo:

STRINGER/REUTERS

Write to Ian Lovett at ian.lovett@wsj.com and Alan Cullison at alan.cullison@wsj.com

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World

Russia Launches New Drone Attacks as Partnership With Iran Deepens

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Russia launched fresh attacks with Iranian-made drones early Saturday over Ukraine, where the country’s southern command said it shot down 10 of the unmanned aerial systems, an indication that Moscow has replenished its supply of the drones as the two countries move toward what the U.S. has called a full defense partnership.

Ukraine’s southern command said it shot down four Shahed-136 drones in the Kherson region, four more in the Mykolaiv region and two in the Odessa region.

Maksym Marchenko, the governor of Odessa, said the drones had attacked energy infrastructure and civilian housing overnight.

“There is no electricity in nearly any of our region’s districts and communities of our region. Energy workers are already working on restoring the damaged infrastructure,” he said.

Russia purchased hundreds of Iranian Shahed and Mohajer series drones over the summer, which Moscow has used to attack Ukraine’s front-line positions and civilian infrastructure. Ukrainian air defenses, however, adapted quickly, shooting the entire batch down over a series of months.

The reappearance of the UAVs on the battlefield this week shows that Russia has resupplied its stocks as the West sees greater defense cooperation between Moscow and Tehran.

Russia has targeted Ukraine’s power grid in an attempt to break civilians’ will.



Photo:

Andrew Kravchenko/Associated Press

The streets of Kyiv in darkness during one of the city’s periodic blackouts to conserve power.



Photo:

oleg petrasyuk/Shutterstock

The Biden administration warned Friday that military ties between Russia and Iran were expanding into “a full-fledged defense partnership” and said the two nations were considering establishing a joint production line to provide lethal drones in Russia.

The U.S. said it believed Iran was considering selling hundreds of ballistic missiles to Russia, and described the military relationship between the two nations as moving beyond simply Iran supplying drones to Russia for use in the war in Ukraine.

The U.K.’s Defense Ministry warned Saturday that the missiles would be used to buttress Russia’s dwindling supply following months of sustained large-scale attacks on Ukraine’s power infrastructure, meant to freeze Ukrainians ahead as winter temperatures dip. Russia has highly likely expended a large proportion of its stock of its own SS-26 Iskander short-range ballistic missiles, which carry a 500 kilogram warhead up to 300 miles, the ministry said.

“If Russia succeeds in bringing a large number of Iranian ballistic missiles into service, it will likely use them to continue and expand its campaign of strikes against Ukraine’s critical national infrastructure,” the ministry said on Twitter.

The worst of the strikes cut water supply in major cities and knocked out half of Ukraine’s power grid, forcing rolling blackouts across the country.

This week, Russian President

Vladimir Putin

admitted to targeting Ukraine’s power infrastructure, despite previously repeatedly asserting that Russia’s forces don’t hit civilian targets. He vowed to continue the campaign. 

A Ukrainian soldier takes a break from the front line near the Donbas city of Lyman.



Photo:

STRINGER/REUTERS

Fighting has increased around Donbas, which Ukrainian forces retook this fall.



Photo:

STRINGER/REUTERS

“There’s a lot of noise about our strikes on the energy infrastructure of a neighboring country,” Mr. Putin said. “Yes, we do that.”

Criticism of the strikes would “not interfere with our combat missions,” he said.

Russia’s deployment of drones in Ukraine’s south came as its forces are working to make incremental gains in the country’s eastern Donbas region, with much of the fighting concentrated around the city of Bakhmut. With much of Russia’s artillery ammunition running low, Russia has been forced to make gains on foot. 

Russian troops have also boosted fighting around the Donbas city of Lyman, which Ukrainian forces took earlier this fall, causing large portions of the Russian front line to crumble.

The “Russian enemy suffered the greatest losses of the past day near Bakhmut and Lyman,” Ukraine’s general staff said in a statement. 

Late Friday Ukrainian President

Volodymyr Zelensky

held a meeting with officials from the Vatican City, following

Pope Francis

‘ increasingly harsh condemnation of the war. The pope has compared the suffering of Ukrainians to 20th century genocides.

Write to Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com

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World

Germany Arrests Suspects in QAnon-Inspired Coup Plot

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German authorities on Wednesday said they had dismantled a QAnon-inspired terrorist cell on suspicion of planning to overthrow the government.

Twenty-five people were arrested in the early hours of the day, 22 of whom are suspected of conspiring to foment a coup, the federal prosecutor said. Their alleged plans included an armed storming of the federal parliament. The other three, including a Russian citizen living in Germany, are suspected of supporting the group, the prosecutor said.

More than 3,000 police officers including special forces conducted raids at 150 properties across Germany, Italy and Austria, in one of the largest operations of its kind in recent history, officials said.

“This organization has, according to our knowledge, set the goal of using violence and military means to overthrow the existing liberal democratic order in Germany,” federal prosecutor Peter Frank told reporters Wednesday.

The far-right group, whose suspected leaders included a former elite paratrooper commander, had been attempting to recruit police and armed-forces members, and had sought to set up terrorist cells across Germany to help it install and maintain a military government, according to the prosecutor.

“The suspects are united in a deep rejection of the Federal Republic of Germany, which has in the course of time developed in a decision to initiate a violent coup for which they had made specific preparations,” the prosecutor said.

“The members of the organization understood that their endeavor could only be realized by using military means and violence against representatives of the state. This includes committing murders.”

“The people who had been arrested subscribe to conspiracy myths composed of different narratives of the Reichsbürger and the QAnon ideologies,” Mr. Frank said.

QAnon is a far-right, loosely organized network and community of believers who embrace a range of outlandish and unsubstantiated beliefs. It has spread worldwide from the U.S. and has been linked to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

The German Reichsbürger, or Citizens of the Reich, movement doesn’t recognize the authority of the postwar government. Members have printed their own passports and other documents, and set up their own schools. Some factions seek to re-establish the German Empire that was dismantled after World War I.

Outside the U.S., QAnon online channels have their largest subscriber base in Germany, according to several assessments by extremism researchers. The conspiracy has been spreading rapidly in Germany since 2020, especially in the ranks of critics of the government’s Covid-19 pandemic restrictions, according to the German domestic intelligence agency. 

The agency said it considers the ideology a potential source of violence given its strongly anti-Semitic message, its legitimation of violence and its opposition to the state. In August 2020, protesters opposed to pandemic restrictions, some of them carrying “Q” banners, were blocked by police as they tried to storm the Reichstag building, home to the lower house of parliament.

There was no indication that members of the alleged cell were in contact with QAnon sympathizers in the U.S. 

The people detained on Wednesday included a sergeant serving with the KSK, the special military command of Germany, and a former lawmaker, as well as several former servicemen, including two colonels, officials said.

One of the alleged ringleaders was named by the prosecutor as Heinrich XIII P. R. The website of the Der Spiegel news weekly and other German news publications identified the man as Heinrich XIII Prinz Reuss, a 71-year-old prince and known far-right extremist. In a conference speech posted on YouTube in 2019, Mr. Reuss espoused anti-Semitic views and conspiracies about historic events and German politics.

More than 3,000 police officers conducted raids at 150 properties across Germany, Italy and Austria.



Photo:

TILMAN BLASSHOFER/REUTERS

Calls to a number appearing on what claims to be the prince’s website went unanswered and a lawyer for him couldn’t be identified.

Another alleged conspirator was identified by the prosecutor as Birgit M.-W. Der Spiegel and other German publications said the suspect was Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, 58, a judge in Berlin and a former member of parliament for the nationalist Alternative for Germany party. 

A lawyer who has in the past represented Ms. Malsack-Winkemann declined to comment. 

After leaving parliament, Ms. Malsack-Winkemann resumed work as a judge in March. The Berlin state government later sought to have her removed from the bench, arguing that she had promoted extremist positions online and as a lawmaker. The Berlin administrative court rejected the government’s request in October, saying that it violated the principle of an independent justice.

Ms. Malsack-Winkemann was temporarily suspended as judge on Wednesday after an intervention of the president of the Berlin Regional Court, a spokeswoman for the court wrote in an email Wednesday. The spokeswoman didn’t mention the arrest.

Mr. Frank, the prosecutor, said eight of the people arrested had been remanded into custody by a judge.

One of the suspects arrested was a former police officer who had been involved in securing Jewish sites in the German state of Lower Saxony, according to the American Jewish Committee, a nonprofit.

“It now must be established that there is no security risk [for these sites],” the organization said in a tweet.

The suspected conspirators had set up several chat channels, primarily on social network Telegram, and had congregated in a property that one of them owned, officials said.

Weapons were secured during the raid and investigators are probing an alleged plan by the suspects to storm the German parliament and arrest legislators in an action that they hoped would bring about a collapse of the German government, according to the prosecutor.

It remains unclear, however, whether the group planned an imminent attack, or whether it had the capacity to pull out a coup in the 84-million-strong country. In addition to the 25 people who were taken into custody, there are another 27 suspects who haven’t been arrested, prosecutors said.

The suspects had been meeting in a format they called the council, a mock government cabinet headed by Mr. Reuss and designated ministers, which was supported by a military arm, according to prosecutors. The body was meant to govern Germany with the support of a military arm consisting of several retired officers in their 60s and one active serviceman. 

“The terror organization that was unearthed today was driven by violent takeover fantasies and conspiracy ideologies, according to the current state of the investigation,” said German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser. The police raid was conducted in very dangerous circumstances but fortunately no one was injured, Ms. Faeser added.

Ms. Faeser said that it was “especially bitter” that a former legislator was implicated in the alleged conspiracy.

One of the alleged leaders had established contacts with representatives of Russia in Germany to facilitate the planned takeover, the prosecutor said, adding that there was no evidence that the Russian officials responded positively to his advances. The Russian citizen who was arrested as a helper of the group is suspected of having facilitated such contacts.

There has been no involvement by the Russian government, which only found out about the case from media reports, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

The Russian Embassy in Berlin said it learned of the raids from the news and was unfamiliar with any Russian citizens connected. Russian diplomatic representations in Germany don’t have contact with members of terrorist organizations, the embassy said.

There are more than 20,000 adherents of the Reichsbürger movement in Germany, including 2,100 potentially violent supporters, according to the latest annual report of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.

Several police officers and members of the armed forces have in the past been arrested in raids connected to the Reichsbürger and similar groups. While members of such groups from the ranks the armed forces and security and law-enforcement agencies constitute a small minority, the presence of rogue networks within the security establishment is an acutely sensitive matter because of Germany’s Nazi past.

The group that was foiled Wednesday had been set up around November 2021, driven by a belief that Germany is governed by a so-called “deep state” and would soon be freed by a so-called “alliance,” an alleged secret society of officials and military officers from various countries including the U.S. and Russia, the prosecutor said.

The group is suspected of having planned armed attacks on government institutions, said Germany’s justice minister, Marco Buschmann.

“Democracy is defending itself,” Mr. Buschmann tweeted Wednesday.

Write to Bojan Pancevski at bojan.pancevski@wsj.com

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World

Argentine Court Sentences Vice President Cristina Kirchner to Six Years in Prison

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BUENOS AIRES—A federal court on Tuesday convicted Vice President

Cristina Kirchner

of fraud charges and sentenced her to six years in prison for embezzling money through public-construction contracts, a blow for a leftist government grappling with soaring inflation and one of the worst economic crises in two decades.

A three-judge panel said Mrs. Kirchner, along with several other former aides, would be permanently banned from holding public office, capping a long-running graft case against Argentina’s most prominent and polarizing politician. Mrs. Kirchner served as president for two terms from 2007 to 2015 before becoming the first vice president in the country to be tried and convicted on graft charges while in office.

Mrs. Kirchner, a driving force in the populist Kirchnerismo movement for two decades, denied the accusations, saying she is the victim of political persecution. She is expected to appeal the judgment, a process that Argentine legal experts say could drag on for years and hamper prosecutors’ efforts to ban her from holding office.

She might also never serve jail time because she enjoys immunity from prosecution. In addition, Argentine law prohibits prison time for people over 70 years old. Mrs. Kirchner turns 70 in February.

“This sentencing, my compatriots, is not one based on the laws of the constitution,” Mrs. Kirchner said in a video address just after the court’s decision. “This is a parallel state, a judicial mafia.”

Though Mrs. Kirchner had in the past left open another possible run for the presidency, she said on Tuesday following the sentence: “I will not be a candidate.”

“I won’t be a candidate for anything, not president, not senator,” said Mrs. Kirchner, who has also been a senator since 2019 and is considered the most dominant leader of her left-leaning political movement. “My name will not be on any ballot.”

The court also found eight others guilty of defrauding the state, sentencing them from three to six years in prison while acquitting four others. The case centered on the granting of public contracts to a construction mogul, Lázaro Báez, who was close to the Kirchner family.

As a powerful figure in President Alberto Fernández’s political coalition, Mrs. Kirchner’s legal troubles are likely to weigh on an unpopular government facing what economists call a challenging economic environment.

Mr. Fernández and his economy minister, Sergio Massa, agreed to austerity measures and cutting energy subsidies earlier this year as part of a deal with the International Monetary Fund to refinance $44 billion in debt to avoid a default. Mrs. Kirchner has opposed efforts to reduce the budget deficit, clashing with the president, while backing the printing of pesos to fund generous social programs.

An opposer of Argentine Vice President Cristina Kirchner is seen in Buenos Aires last month.



Photo:

Luis Robayo/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Argentina’s poverty rate has risen, jumping from 28% in 2017 to 43% this year, according to a study by the Catholic University of Argentina. Annual inflation hit 88% in October, the government statistics agency said, tops in the Group of 20 and the highest pace of consumer price increases since Argentina faced hyperinflation in the early 1990s. And economists expect inflation to hit 100% by year’s end. The peso, meanwhile, has weakened sharply against the dollar this year, raising concerns about a painful devaluation amid low reserves at the Central Bank.

Mrs. Kirchner and her supporters say the investigation has generated animosity against her, leading to a purportedly failed assassination attempt in September after prosecutors formalized charges against her.

In a puzzling incident, a man thrust a gun in Mrs. Kirchner’s face as she greeted supporters outside her apartment and pulled the trigger. The weapon didn’t discharge, and the vice president was unharmed. A Brazilian man residing in Argentina was arrested immediately after the attack. Authorities haven’t disclosed a motive.

The criminal case against Mrs. Kirchner stems from her time as president, when the government granted highway building contracts to the construction magnate, Mr. Báez, in the southeastern province of Santa Cruz, a stronghold of Kirchnerismo.

Argentine antigraft prosecutors had sought 12 years in prison and a public-office ban, alleging that Mrs. Kirchner used her position to conspire with aides and Mr. Báez to receive kickbacks for fraudulent contracts for projects, some of which were never completed. The alleged conspiracy cost the government nearly $1 billion, prosecutors said.

While the court found Mrs. Kirchner guilty of defrauding the state, it didn’t find her guilty of leading a criminal conspiracy.

Mr. Báez, who is already serving a 12-year sentence on money-laundering charges, had in the past denied the allegations, showing off schools and other projects that he said demonstrated that the contracts issued to him were legitimate.

Mrs. Kirchner’s conviction is likely to further erode support for Mr. Fernández’s government, which has an approval rating of about 18%, according to Mariel Fornoni, director of Management and Fit, an Argentine political consultancy. In public-opinion surveys, corruption is topped only by inflation as citizens’ primary concern, said Ms. Fornoni.

In recent months, Mrs. Kirchner had criticized some of the Fernández administration’s efforts to reduce subsidies on gas and other utilities. Her comments, Ms. Fornoni said, had heightened speculation she would seek public office in elections next year, when Mr. Fernández’s term ends.

Mrs. Kirchner “has high levels of rejection” in polls, Ms. Fornoni said. But she said that the vice president also has had a base of strong supporters hovering at 25%, which until her announcement on Tuesday made her the leading figure in the ruling Peronist Party.

“It’s going to be hard to find anyone else to generate confidence in Argentina,” Ms. Fornoni said.

Mrs. Kirchner and her husband, Néstor Kirchner, president from 2003 to 2007, presided over the country during a tide of left-leaning governments across Latin America that used revenue from high commodity prices to ramp up public spending and forged alliances to counter the U.S. influence in the region.

With leftist governments again emerging in countries around the region, Mrs. Kirchner had a new bevy of allies, some of whom had criticized the investigation in Argentina.

In August, the presidents of México, Colombia and Bolivia joined Argentina in signing a joint statement calling the case against Mrs. Kirchner political persecution. “They’re trying to bury the ideals and values that she represents with the final objective to implant a neoliberal model,” the statement said.

In her comments after Tuesday’s verdict, Mrs. Kirchner cast the conviction as a ruling against the populist system she had furthered in Argentina. “They’re condemning me because they’re condemning a model of economic development and recognition of people’s rights,” she said.

Write to Kejal Vyas at kejal.vyas@wsj.com

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Business

November Employment Report Shows U.S. Economy Added 263,000 Jobs

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The November payrolls gain compared with an upwardly revised 284,000 jobs in October, the Labor Department said Friday. Payrolls grew in leisure and hospitality, healthcare and government. Retailers and transportation-and-warehousing companies cut jobs in a sign of weak holiday hiring.

Average hourly earnings grew 5.1% in November from a year earlier, the department said. Wage growth has remained elevated but roughly stable after a sharp increase earlier in the year.

November job growth was roughly in line with the previous three months, when payrolls grew an average of 282,000 a month. Job growth continues to exceed the 2019 monthly average of 164,000, though gains have slowed from the first half of the year.

The job market has remained resilient this year, with employers still seeking to hire despite an uncertain economic outlook and elevated recession fears. Low unemployment and wage gains have helped fuel consumer spending, the economy’s main engine.

One big question is how long that strength can last as the Federal Reserve aggressively raises interest rates to tame inflation. Some companies in technology, entertainment and real estate are laying off workers, but demand for workers continues to outpace the number of unemployed people looking for work.

Economists are concerned that higher interest rates will trigger more widespread layoffs and a recession in the next year, as has typically occurred during prior episodes of rapid rate rises. They are closely monitoring the pace of hiring for early signs of shifts in labor-market momentum.

“An employer is going to start reducing hiring long before they start letting go of their existing workforce,” said Guy Berger, principal economist at LinkedIn. “That’s the first lever.” 

Rising unemployment could follow, he said, as job seekers have fewer available opportunities. Continuing claims, which reflect the number of people seeking ongoing unemployment benefits, are drifting upward in a sign of labor-market cooling, Mr. Berger said. 

On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chair

Jerome Powell

indicated the central bank is on track to raise interest rates by a half-percentage point at its next meeting, scaling back from an unprecedented series of four 0.75-point rate rises. Fed officials are hoping higher rates will trigger less competition for workers and slower wage increases, taking some pressure off consumer prices. 

This week, CNN said it was laying off employees and DoorDash Inc. said it would trim its corporate staffing levels by about 1,250. AMC Networks Inc. said in a memo to employees that it plans to lay off about 20% of its U.S. workforce. 

Corporate layoff announcements generally have been concentrated in the technology industry and sectors of the economy sensitive to interest rates such as housing and finance. Other businesses are quickly scooping up laid-off workers as job openings remain well above prepandemic levels, even in sectors such as real estate.

LodeStar Software Solutions, a small software company that helps mortgage lenders accurately disclose fees to consumers, recently posted an opening for a customer-service role, said Jim Paolino, chief executive of the Conshohocken, Pa.-based company.

Mr. Paolino quickly received about 130 résumés for the job, which entails account management. He held screening calls with 10 applicants, eight of whom had lost their jobs at mortgage companies. 

“It’s actually a great time to hire right now,” he said. “There has been an influx of talent in our industry and to the market because a lot of larger companies have done pretty large-scale layoffs.”

Companies are still largely avoiding job cuts because demand for goods and services is solid. Personal spending increased 0.8% from the prior month, the Commerce Department said Thursday. 

Some firms also are hesitant to lay off employees because they found it so difficult to rehire as the economy recovered from the pandemic downturn.

The layoff announcements just keep coming. As interest rates continue to climb and earnings slump, WSJ’s Dion Rabouin explains why we can expect to see a bigger wave of layoffs in the near future. Illustration: Elizabeth Smelov

“Demand restarted, and they couldn’t hire fast enough,” said

Becky Frankiewicz,

president and chief commercial officer of staffing firm

ManpowerGroup.

“There’s still this aftershock of, ‘I want to hold on to the talent that I have.’”

Companies are still offering hiring bonuses to attract talent, but the rationale has shifted some from a year ago. Employers are expecting inflation to come down and bonuses give them more flexibility to dial back compensation than wage increases do, she said. 

“If you still have a talent shortage and you don’t want to lock in at higher wages across all your roles, what do you do? You do bonuses,” Ms. Frankiewicz said.

Wage growth has cooled in recent months but remains above the prepandemic pace.

Still, there are signs that spending could be reaching a limit, with some Americans dipping into savings or taking on credit-card debt to finance purchases. The personal-saving rate was 2.3% in October, its lowest level since 2.1% in July 2005.

David Blake, president of Iowa-based Blue-9 Pet Products, said sales have been roughly flat this year, a shift from previous years when the 10-person manufacturer and seller of dog-training accessories posted double-digit sales growth. 

Pet owners appear to be cutting back on some discretionary purchases as they face higher prices for staples like groceries, he said.

“Whether we’re in a recession or going to have a recession or not, the fact still remains that the inflation out there is having an impact on spending,” said Mr. Blake.

Write to Sarah Chaney Cambon at sarah.chaney@wsj.com

Due to slower sales, Mr. Blake held off on hiring new employees this year. He also doesn’t plan to add any next year.

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World

Chinese Protests Put Xi Jinping in a Bind

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President

Xi Jinping

faces a difficult choice between loosening China’s zero-tolerance Covid-19 policy or doubling down on restrictions that have locked down neighborhoods and stifled the country’s economy over the past three years.

Neither option is a good one for a regime focused on stability. Stock markets around the globe declined Monday as protests in China fueled worries among investors about the outlook for the world’s second-largest economy.

“Xi’s leadership is in a bind,” said

Yuen Yuen Ang,

a political scientist focused on China at the University of Michigan. “If they compromise and relax zero-Covid, they fear it will encourage mass protests. If they repress more, it will create wider and deeper grievances.”

Protesters across China have directly challenged the authority of the Chinese leader and the Communist Party in scenes unthinkable just a month ago, when Mr. Xi secured a third term in power.

In Shanghai over the weekend, protesters used call-and-response chanting to demand political change. In Beijing, crowds shouted “Freedom.” In other large cities, demonstrators marched holding blank sheets of paper—a swipe at government censorship.

China experts say the protests are unlikely to translate into a leadership change, in the near term at least. But Beijing’s dilemma is a tough one. It could lift restrictions and risk a large and potentially deadly wave of Covid infections that could undermine its credibility. Or it could crack down on the demonstrators and stick with a strict pandemic strategy that large parts of the population are clearly fed up with.

All three benchmark U.S. stock indexes closed more than 1% lower on Monday as investors worried that the protests would lead to more market volatility.

Widespread and public outpourings of political grievance have been extremely rare in a country where people have long consented to obey party authorities—as long as they deliver prosperity and allow citizens relative freedom in their personal lives.

People sang slogans and chanted for political change on a street in Shanghai on Sunday.



Photo:

hector retamal/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Police cars were parked on a Shanghai street on Monday, a day after rare demonstrations were held.



Photo:

hector retamal/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The protests put in stark relief the fraying of that social contract, showing that the climbing economic and social costs of China’s zero-Covid policies—coupled with an increasingly authoritarian regime’s zero-tolerance for dissent—have driven many to a kind of breaking point.

Demonstrations aren’t unusual in China, but they are largely over local grievances such as unpaid wages, land disputes or pollution. Since the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, the party has made it a priority to prevent nationwide protests of a political nature.

The current wave of unrest started last week in the remote northwestern region of Xinjiang after 10 people died in a fire. Residents contended that Covid restrictions were partly to blame for delaying rescuers and contributing to the death toll. Officials said some barriers had to be moved but attributed the delay to parked cars in the way.

In the days since, the anger has spread across China. On Monday, authorities moved broadly to prevent any new protests, including dozens of uniformed and undercover police swarming the area around a highway bridge in Beijing where a lone protester hung a banner denouncing Mr. Xi in October. On Sunday, protesters had chanted lines from the banners.

In a rare show of defiance, crowds in China gathered for the third night as protests against Covid restrictions spread to Beijing, Shanghai and other cities. People held blank sheets of paper, symbolizing censorship, and demanded the Chinese president step down. Photo: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

The unrest also underlined how anger about the Covid restrictions has united people from a range of social backgrounds—from migrant workers assembling iPhones in central China and residents of the remote region of Xinjiang to college students and middle-class urbanites in the nation’s biggest cities.

“The mass protests represent the biggest political crisis for Xi,” said

Minxin Pei,

editor of quarterly academic journal China Leadership Monitor. “It’s the first time in recent decades that protesters from a broad coalition of social groups have mounted a direct challenge to both the top leader himself and the party.”

Students staged a small protest Sunday at Tsinghua University in Beijing.



Photo:

Associated Press

Sudden reopening could lead to millions of intensive-care admissions in a country with fewer than four ICU beds per 100,000 people, and where many elderly still haven’t been fully vaccinated, according to public-health experts and official data. In addition, such a compromise would send a signal to the general public that mass protests are an effective means to win change, not something the government would want to encourage.

On the other hand, sticking to the zero-Covid policy could stir up even greater public resentment toward the leadership, with hard-to-gauge consequences.

The University of Michigan’s Ms. Ang and others say that the protests are unlikely to lead to any radical policy shift. Rather, one likely outcome is a mixture of selective relaxation of controls and harsh retaliation against select protesters.

Protesters and police stood on a street in Beijing on Monday.



Photo:

Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

“The danger is that if the leadership responds with repression, that could take China down a vicious cycle of control, leading to more grievances, to more control,” Ms. Ang said.

China’s Covid struggle underscores the limits of a political system where a lack of public debate has made it hard to adjust policies as other countries have done.

Many public-health experts say Beijing has missed the window to put in place a gradual exit plan out of zero-Covid. For the past three years, the government has spent significant resources on building ever more quarantine facilities and expanding mass-testing capabilities, while China’s progress on developing more effective vaccines has been slow.

Partly thanks to Beijing’s early successes at stemming infections, the Chinese population has developed little natural immunity. It only has access to homegrown vaccines that are less effective than some of the global alternatives.

A neighborhood in Beijing where access is restricted because of Covid regulations.



Photo:

Ng Han Guan/Associated Press

Notably, negotiations between China and the European Union over mRNA vaccine imports from the bloc fell through nearly two years ago, according to people familiar with the matter, after Beijing insisted that Europe recognize Chinese vaccines.

Beijing has also resisted approving any large-scale adoption of the mRNA vaccine co-developed by

Pfizer Inc.

and

BioNTech SE,

a decision healthcare and foreign-policy experts attribute partly to China’s strained relations with the U.S.

Mr. Xi and the party have faced public anger before, most notably during the early days of the pandemic when emotions swelled with the death from the virus of

Li Wenliang,

a young doctor in the city of Wuhan who was punished for trying to raise an early alarm. Ultimately, much of the nation’s anger then was directed at local authorities.

In the years since, Mr. Xi has identified himself closely with the zero-Covid strategy. That is now turning him into the natural target of protesters’ fury and has also made it nearly impossible to shift course without diminishing his standing. Notably, a People’s Daily article on Sunday continued to stress the importance of unwaveringly sticking to the existing Covid-control policy.

A Covid testing station in Shanghai on Monday. The government has built quarantine facilities and expanded mass-testing capabilities, while its development of more-effective Covid vaccines has been slow.



Photo:

Bloomberg News

As repeated lockdowns kept businesses closed and pushed up unemployment, some hoped there would be a shift away from the zero-Covid strategy once an October party conclave that handed Mr. Xi another five-year term was over.

As long as the top leader felt politically secure enough, those people argued, he would want to adjust the policy to help the economy—which still matters to the leadership despite its increased emphasis on ideology and party control.

Businesses and investors alike cheered when Beijing earlier this month unveiled plans to “optimize and adjust” the Covid policy, including shortened quarantine restrictions. Many market analysts viewed the step as the beginning of a gradual exit from zero-Covid.

However, as Covid cases surged again along with the colder season, local officials across the country reimposed strict restrictions for fear of putting their jobs in jeopardy. Keeping Covid under control has remained the overarching political priority for localities that are also struggling to reboot economic activity.

The contrast of China’s continued Covid lockdowns as the rest of the world has moved on became more obvious over the past week as many Chinese soccer fans have seen TV images of thousands of maskless spectators cheering in stadiums during the World Cup in Qatar.

Then came the deadly fire in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, where residents had struggled with lockdowns of more than 100 days, prompting protesters across the country to defy the risks of expressing dissent to seek change.

People lighted candles on Sunday in Beijing for victims of a deadly fire in the northwestern city of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang.



Photo:

Bloomberg News

Write to Lingling Wei at Lingling.Wei@wsj.com

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World

Chevron Gets U.S. License to Pump Oil in Venezuela Again

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WASHINGTON—The U.S. said it would allow

Chevron Corp.

CVX -0.29%

to resume pumping oil from its Venezuelan oil fields after President Nicolás Maduro’s government and an opposition coalition agreed to implement an estimated $3 billion humanitarian relief program and continue dialogue in Mexico City on efforts to hold free and fair elections.

Following the Norwegian-brokered agreement signed in Mexico City, the Biden administration granted a license to Chevron that allows the California-based oil company to return to its oil fields in joint ventures with the Venezuela national oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela SA. The new license, granted by the Treasury Department, permits Chevron to pump Venezuelan oil for the first time in years.

Biden administration officials said the license prohibits PdVSA from receiving profits from Chevron’s oil sales. The officials said the U.S. is prepared to revoke or amend the license, which will be in effect for six months, at any time if Venezuela doesn’t negotiate in good faith.

Venezuela produces some 700,000 barrels of oil a day, compared with more than 3 million in the 1990s.



Photo:

Isaac Urrutia/Reuters

“If Maduro again tries to use these negotiations to buy time to further consolidate his criminal dictatorship, the United States and our international partners must snap back the full force of our sanctions,” said Sen.

Robert Menendez

(D., N.J.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The U.S. policy shift could signal an opening for other oil companies to resume their business in Venezuela two years after the Trump administration clamped down on Chevron and other companies’ activities there as part of a maximum-pressure campaign meant to oust the government led by Mr. Maduro. The Treasury Department action didn’t say how non-U.S. oil companies might re-engage with Venezuela.

Venezuela produces some 700,000 barrels of oil a day, compared with more than 3 million barrels a day in the 1990s. Some analysts said Venezuela could hit 1 million barrels a day in the medium term, a modest increment reflecting the dilapidated state of the country’s state-led oil industry.

Some Republican lawmakers criticized the Biden administration’s decision to clear the way for Chevron to pump more oil in Venezuela. “The Biden administration should allow American energy producers to unleash DOMESTIC production instead of begging dictators for oil,” Rep. Claudia Tenney (R., N.Y.) wrote on Twitter.

Biden administration officials said the decision to issue the license wasn’t a response to oil prices, which have been a major concern for President Biden and his top advisers in recent months as they seek to tackle inflation. “This is about the regime taking the steps needed to support the restoration of democracy in Venezuela,” one of the officials said.

The Wall Street Journal reported in October that the Biden administration was preparing to scale down sanctions on Venezuela’s regime to allow Chevron to resume pumping oil there.

Jorge Rodriguez led the Venezuelan delegation to the talks in Mexico City, where an agreement was signed.



Photo:

Henry Romero/Reuters

Under the new license, profits from the sale of oil will go toward repaying hundreds of millions of dollars in debt owed to Chevron by PdVSA, administration officials said. The U.S. will require that Chevron report details of its financial operations to ensure transparency, they said.

Chevron spokesman Ray Fohr said the new license allows the company to commercialize the oil currently being produced at its joint-venture assets. He said the company will conduct its business in compliance within the current framework.

The license prohibits Chevron from paying taxes and royalties to the Venezuelan government, which surprised some experts. They had been expecting that direct revenue would encourage PdVSA to reroute oil cargoes away from obscure export channels, mostly to Chinese buyers at a steep discount, which Venezuela has relied on for years to skirt sanctions.

“If this is the case, Maduro doesn’t have significant incentives to allow that many cargoes of Chevron to go out,” said

Francisco Monaldi,

director of the Latin America Energy Program at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. Sending oil to China, even at a heavy discount, would be better for Caracas than only paying debt to Chevron, he said.

The limited scope of the Chevron license is seen as a way to ensure that Mr. Maduro stays the course on negotiations. “Rather than fully opening the door for Venezuelan oil to flow to the U.S. market immediately, what the license proposes is a normalization path that is likely contingent on concessions from the Maduro regime on the political and human-rights front,” said

Luisa Palacios,

senior research scholar at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy.

The license allows Venezuelan oil back into the U.S., historically its largest market, but only if the oil from the PdVSA-Chevron joint ventures is first sold to Chevron and doesn’t authorize exports from the ventures “to any jurisdiction other than the United States,” which appears to restrict PdVSA’s own share of the sales to the U.S. market, said Mr. Monaldi.

The license prohibits transactions involving goods and services from Iran, a U.S.-sanctioned oil producer that has helped Venezuela overcome sanctions in recent years. It blocks dealings with Venezuelan entities owned or controlled by Western-sanctioned Russia, which has played a role in Venezuela’s oil industry.

Jorge Rodriguez,

the head of Venezuela’s Congress as well as the government’s delegation to the Mexico City talks, declined to comment on the issuance of the Chevron license.

Freddy Guevara,

a member of the opposition coalition’s delegation, said the estimated $3 billion in frozen funds intended for humanitarian relief and infrastructure projects in Venezuela would be administered by the United Nations. He cautioned that it would take time to implement the program fully. “It begins now, but the time period is up to three years,” he said.

The Venezuelan state funds frozen in overseas banks by sanctions are expected to be used to alleviate the country’s health, food and electric-power crises in part by building infrastructure for electricity and water-treatment needs. “Not one dollar will go to the vaults of the regime,” Mr. Guevara said.

Chevron plans to restore lost output as it performs maintenance and other essential work, but it won’t attempt major work that would require new investments in the country’s oil fields until debts of $4.2 billion are repaid. That could take about two to three years depending on oil-market conditions, according to people familiar with the matter.

PdVSA owes Chevron and other joint-venture partners their shares of more than two years of revenue from oil sales, after the 2020 U.S. sanctions barred the Venezuelan company from paying its partners, one of the people said. The license would allow Chevron to collect its share of dividends from its joint ventures such as Petropiar, in which Chevron is a 30% partner.

Analysts said the new agreement raises expectations that will take time and work to fulfill. “Ensuring the success of talks won’t be easy, but it’s clear that offering gradual sanctions relief like this in order to incentivize agreements is the only way forward. It’s a Champagne-popping moment for the negotiators, but much more work remains to be done,” said Geoff Ramsey, Venezuela director at the Washington Office on Latin America.

—José de Córdoba and Ginette Gonzalez contributed to this article.

Write to Collin Eaton at collin.eaton@wsj.com and Andrew Restuccia at andrew.restuccia@wsj.com

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Business

OPEC+ Eyes Output Increase Ahead of Restrictions on Russian Oil

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Saudi Arabia and other OPEC oil producers are discussing an output increase, the group’s delegates said, a move that could help heal a rift with the Biden administration and keep energy flowing amid new attempts to blunt Russia’s oil industry over the Ukraine war.

A production increase of up to 500,000 barrels a day is now under discussion for OPEC+’s Dec. 4 meeting, delegates said. The move would come a day before the European Union is set to impose an embargo on Russian oil and the Group of Seven wealthy nations’ plans to launch a price cap on Russian crude sales, potentially taking Moscow’s petroleum supplies off the market. 

After The Wall Street Journal and other news organizations reported on the discussions Monday, Saudi energy minister Prince

Abdulaziz bin Salman

denied the reports and said a production cut was possible instead.

Any output increase would mark a partial reversal of a controversial decision last month to cut production by 2 million barrels a day at the most recent meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and their Russia-led allies, a group known collectively as OPEC+. 

The White House said the production cut undermined global efforts to blunt Russia’s war in Ukraine. It was also viewed as a political slap in the face to President Biden, coming before the congressional midterm elections at a time of high inflation. Saudi-U.S. relations have hit a low point over oil-production disagreements this year, though U.S. officials had said they were looking to the Dec. 4 OPEC+ meeting with some hope.

Talk of a production increase has emerged after the Biden administration told a federal court judge that Saudi Crown

Prince Mohammed

bin Salman should have sovereign immunity from a U.S. federal lawsuit related to the brutal killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The immunity decision amounted to a concession to Prince Mohammed, bolstering his standing as the kingdom’s de facto ruler after the Biden administration tried for months to isolate him. 

It is an unusual time for OPEC+ to consider a production increase, with global oil prices falling more than 10% since the first week of November. Oil prices fell 5% after reports of the increase and then pared those losses after

Prince Abdulaziz

‘s comments. Brent crude traded at $86.25 on Monday afternoon, down more than 1%. 

Ostensibly, delegates said, a production increase would be in response to expectations that oil consumption will rise in the winter, as it normally does. Oil demand is expected to increase by 1.69 million barrels a day to 101.3 million barrels a day in the first quarter next year, compared with the average level in 2022. 

Saudi energy minister Abdulaziz bin Salman has said the kingdom would supply oil to ‘all who need it.’



Photo:

AHMED YOSRI/REUTERS

OPEC and its allies say they have been carefully studying the G-7 plans to impose a price cap on Russian oil, conceding privately that they see any such move by crude consumers to control the market as a threat. Russia has said it wouldn’t sell oil to any country participating in the price cap, potentially resulting in another effective production cut from Moscow—one of the world’s top three oil producers.

Prince Abdulaziz said last month that the kingdom would “supply oil to all who need it from us,” speaking in response to a question about looming Russian oil shortages. OPEC members have signaled to Western countries that they would step up if Russian output fell. 

Talk of a production increase sets up a potential fight between OPEC+’s two heavyweight producers, Saudi Arabia and Russia. The countries have an oil-production alliance that industry officials in both nations have described as a marriage of convenience, and they have clashed before. 

Saudi officials have been adamant that their decision to cut production last month wasn’t designed to support Russia’s war in Ukraine. Instead, they say, the cut was intended to get ahead of flagging demand for oil caused by a global economy showing signs of slowing down. 

Raising oil production ahead of the price cap and EU embargo could give the Saudis another argument that they are acting in their own interests, and not Russia’s. 

Another factor driving discussion around raising output: Two big OPEC members, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates, want to pump more oil, OPEC delegates said. Both countries are pushing the oil-producing group to allow them a higher daily-production ceiling, delegates said, a change that, if granted, could account for more oil production. 

Under OPEC’s complex quota system, the U.A.E. is obligated to hold its crude production to no more than 3.018 million barrels a day. State-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., which produces most of the U.A.E.’s output, has an output capacity of 4.45 million barrels a day and plans to accelerate its goal of reaching 5 million barrels of daily capacity by 2025. Abu Dhabi has long pushed for a higher OPEC quota, only to be rebuffed by the Saudis, OPEC delegates have said.

Last year, the country was the lone holdout on a deal to boost crude output in OPEC+, saying it would agree only if allowed to boost its own production much more than other members. The public standoff inside OPEC was the first sign that the U.A.E. has adopted a new strategy: Sell as much crude as possible before demand dries up.

Earlier this month, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani said that his country, which is the second-largest crude oil producer in OPEC, would discuss a new quota with other members at its next meeting.

A discussion of OPEC production quotas has been on hold for months. The idea faces opposition from some OPEC nations because many can’t meet their current targets and watching other countries run up their quotas could cause political problems domestically, delegates said. 

—Michael Amon contributed to this article.

Write to Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com and Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com

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US

GOP Gains College-Educated and Minority Voters in Slim House Pickup

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In making modest gains in House seats this year, Republicans drew more support from minority and college-educated voters than in other recent elections, chipping away at important pillars of the Democratic coalition in ways that could better position the party for the next election.

Republicans narrowed the Democratic advantage among Latino voters, Black voters and white women with college degrees—important components of the Democratic voter pool—according to AP VoteCast, a large survey of midterm participants. GOP House candidates won a majority of white women in the nation’s suburbs, a swing group that helped power the Democratic Party to its House majority in 2018 and backed President Biden in 2020.

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“The numbers indicate that our party has been more successful than we previously knew in getting voters of color moving to the GOP,’’ said Neil Newhouse, a veteran pollster who led polling for several GOP presidential nominees. “Ever since I got involved in politics more than 40 years ago, that’s been a long-term goal of the party.”

The voter shifts helped Republicans win a majority of House votes nationally, preliminary results show, but weren’t strong enough to bring the party substantial gains in House seats. Republicans have so far lost a net of one seat in the Senate, with the final tally to be decided in Georgia’s runoff election next month. Still, the gain among these groups “tells me that Republicans are potentially well-positioned to win a national election, if we can replicate this,’’ Mr. Newhouse said.

House members-elect following a group photo on the Capitol steps a week after the midterm vote.



Photo:

Leah Millis/Reuters

Ruy Teixeira, a demographer at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, said the shift among Latino voters was particularly noteworthy and extends a move toward the GOP that was a feature of the last two presidential elections. “They lost quite a bit among Latinos, and the swing was significant,” he said.

Many caveats apply in drawing lessons from a midterm election. Far fewer voters participate than in a presidential contest. The voter shifts detected by AP VoteCast varied widely by state and by whether an election had the potential to restrict legalized abortion. Voters’ choices this year might have been driven more by their views of former President

Donald Trump

and of candidates who copied his style of politics, than by their views of the two parties. Mr. Trump is now a declared candidate for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024.

The AP VoteCast survey, which included more than 94,000 midterm voters nationwide, found a number of significant shifts in voter preferences:

—Latino voters favored Democratic House candidates by 17 percentage points—giving 56% support to Democrats and 39% to Republicans—a far slimmer lead than the 28-point edge that helped President Biden win in 2020 or the 34-point Democratic advantage in the last midterm elections, in 2018.

—Black voters gave 14% of their support to GOP House candidates, compared with 8% in the elections of two and four years ago.

—White women with college degrees, who had backed Democrats by 19 points in the last midterms and by 21 points in the 2020 presidential election, tipped toward Democrats by a far narrower 6 points this year.

—Republicans won an outright majority of white women in the suburbs, carrying the group by 6 percentage points. Suburban white women had backed Mr. Biden by 5 points, and Democratic House candidates in 2018 by 7 points. Female voters overall, who account for over half the electorate, favored Democrats by a single percentage point, down from 12 points and 15 points in the last two elections, respectively.

Some Democrats cautioned that little could be read into results from a midterm election with special conditions. The fate of legalized abortion was a pressing issue in some states, which helped Democratic candidates, and was less salient in others.

“I’m skeptical, because it wasn’t a national presidential election, and because you have such differences state by state,’’ said Elaine Kamarck, a veteran of the Clinton administration White House who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Analysts said that more data were needed to better understand what the variations among voter groups from state to state meant to the election outcomes. Some early clues suggest that the Latino voter shift boosted the GOP vote share in some House races, even if the shift didn’t produce a victory.

In some Latino-rich House districts in California, Democratic candidates won their elections with far smaller vote margins than the party produced two years earlier. Rep.

Norma Torres

of Southern California, for example, won by 12 points in preliminary results in a district that Mr. Biden carried by 28 points.

Republicans cut into Democratic margins in two heavily Latino House districts in South Texas. Democratic Rep.

Vicente Gonzalez

won re-election by 8 points in a district that Mr. Biden had carried by 15 points, while Republican Monica De La Cruz won in a newly created district by 9 points, which Mr. Trump had carried by 3 points.

In a third South Texas House district, Democratic Rep.

Henry Cuellar

won re-election by a larger margin than Mr. Biden won in 2020.

Carlos Odio, co-founder of Equis Research, a Democratic-aligned firm that focuses on Latino voters, said the Hispanic vote varied significantly by state.

Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D., Texas) celebrating a victory that had a slimmer margin than President Biden’s in 2020.



Photo:

Denise Cathey/Associated Press

“Florida was an unmitigated disaster for Democrats across the board. But it is especially true among Latino voters,’’ he said. Republicans won a majority of the Hispanic vote for the first time since 2006, Mr. Odio said. Republicans carried heavily Latino Miami-Dade County, the state’s largest, “something that was unthinkable in the Obama era,’’ he said.

Republicans boosted their share of voters who don’t have a four-year college degree. They also dominated among white voters in rural areas and small towns, winning a commanding 70% of those voters—producing an advantage of about 40 points—compared with leads of about 30 points two years and four years ago.

The AP VoteCast survey was conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for The Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press and Fox News.

Write to Aaron Zitner at aaron.zitner@wsj.com and Anthony DeBarros at Anthony.Debarros@wsj.com

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World

Donald Trump’s Fate in Justice Department Probes Headed for Special Counsel

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WASHINGTON—Attorney General

Merrick Garland

appointed a former federal and international war-crimes prosecutor as special counsel on Friday to oversee Justice Department investigations into former President

Donald Trump.

Jack Smith, who once led the Justice Department unit that investigates public corruption and since 2018 was the chief prosecutor at The Hague investigating war crimes in Kosovo, will be the third special counsel in five years to examine issues involving Mr. Trump.

He will lead both the probe into the handling of classified documents at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and oversee key aspects of the sprawling Justice Department investigation into efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election loss.

“The Special Counsel is authorized to prosecute federal crimes arising from the investigation of these matters,” Mr. Garland said in a brief memo naming Mr. Smith to the post. The memo said Mr. Smith’s remit doesn’t include cases against those who were physically present at the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

The appointment comes three days after Mr. Trump announced another bid for the presidency and would mark the naming of the third independent prosecutor in five years to examine issues involving Mr. Trump.

Jack Smith previously led the Justice Department unit that investigates public corruption.



Photo:

U.S. Department of Justice

The move reflects the sensitivity of Mr. Garland overseeing any investigation into Mr. Trump now that he is a declared presidential candidate. President Biden, who has said he intends to run for re-election in 2024, nominated Mr. Garland to head the Justice Department in part for the former judge’s promise to insulate the agency from political influence.

Some legal experts have anticipated such an appointment. Regulations governing special counsels provide for the attorney general to name an outsider if he determines that the investigation or prosecution presents a conflict of interest for the department and recusals of certain officials wouldn’t be enough to overcome the concerns.

Some former Justice Department officials and prosecutors have said such an appointment wouldn’t do much to allay criticism of the FBI and Justice Department by Mr. Trump and his supporters. There are few people with the necessary prosecutorial experience and nonpartisan reputation who would be willing to take on the post, those people say.

A special-counsel appointment won’t entirely eliminate the appearance of a conflict, as Mr. Garland and other senior Justice Department officials are still likely to be involved in some decision-making related to the probe, according to people familiar with past special counsels.

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol voted in mid-October to issue a subpoena for relevant documents and testimony under oath from former President Donald Trump. Photo: Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters

Write to Aruna Viswanatha at Aruna.Viswanatha@wsj.com and Sadie Gurman at sadie.gurman@wsj.com

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