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Russia’s foreign minister and its ambassador to the United States have both signaled that Russia’s debacle in Ukraine could lead to a nuclear strike. By claiming that Russia is readying its weapons, by warning of a “serious” risk of nuclear escalation and by declaring “there are few rules left,” they purposefully rattled the ultimate saber. Vladimir Putin himself has noted that he has weapons his opponents do not and that he will “use them, if needed.” Even the C.I.A. director, William Burns, has warned of the possibility that Mr. Putin could use a tactical nuclear weapon, even if there is no “practical evidence” right now to suggest it is imminent. Nevertheless, we should be prepared; the former secretary of state Henry Kissinger has argued that we should give the threat consideration.

We should imagine the unimaginable, specifically how we would respond militarily and economically to such a seismic shift in the global geopolitical terrain.

President Biden is right not to have elevated our nuclear DEFCON level. Nor has the administration’s rhetoric stooped to Mr. Putin’s bait. In 2012, I noted that Russia was the biggest geopolitical adversary to the United States, and it clearly remains a source of great concern to both Republicans and Democrats. Given the magnitude of consequence of a nuclear strike, our potential options merit thought, by our leaders and by American citizens alike.

By invading Ukraine, Mr. Putin has already proved that he is capable of illogical and self-defeating decisions. If he loses in Ukraine, he not only will have failed to achieve his life’s ambition to reverse what he sees as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century — the collapse of the Soviet Union — but he will also have permanently diminished Russia as a great power and reinvigorated its adversaries. It is possible that Mr. Putin could face significant internal challenges to his leadership. In such a circumstance, he may be able to convince himself that the United States and the West are the reason he invaded Ukraine and that the propaganda he has deployed to justify this immoral invasion was true from the beginning.

Some will conclude that to avoid provoking Russia — and thus avoid the prospect of a possible Russian nuclear strike — we should pre-emptively restrain Ukraine from routing the Russian military. We could limit the weapons we send, hold back on intelligence and pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky to settle. I disagree; free nations must continue to support Ukrainians’ brave and necessary defense of their country. Failing to continue to support Ukraine would be like paying the cannibal to eat us last. If Mr. Putin, or any other nuclear power, can invade and subjugate with near impunity, then Ukraine would be only the first of such conquests. Inevitably, our friends and allies would be devoured by brazen, authoritarian nuclear powers, the implications of which would drastically alter the world order.

The right answer is to continue to give Ukraine all the support it needs to defend itself and to win. Its military successes may force Mr. Putin to exit Ukraine or to agree to a cease-fire acceptable to the Ukrainian people. Perhaps his control of Russian media would enable him to spin a loss into a face-saving narrative at home. These are the outcomes he would be smart to take. But if a cornered and delusional Mr. Putin were to instead use a nuclear weapon — whether via a tactical strike or by weaponizing one of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants — we would have several options.

There are some who would argue for a nuclear response. But there is a wide range of options, and they need not be mutually exclusive. For example, NATO could engage in Ukraine, potentially obliterating Russia’s struggling military. Further, we could confront China and every other nation with a choice much like that George W. Bush gave the world after Sept. 11: You are either with us, or you are with Russia — you cannot be with both.

Russia’s use of a nuclear weapon would unarguably be a redefining, reorienting geopolitical event. Any nation that chose to retain ties with Russia after such an outrage would itself also become a global pariah. Some or all of its economy would be severed from that of the United States and our allies. Today, the West represents over half of the global G.D.P. Separating any nation from our combined economies could devastate it. The impact on Western economies could be significant, but the impact on the economies of Russia and its fellow travelers would be much worse. It could ultimately be economic Armageddon, but that is far preferable to nuclear Armageddon.

Together with our key NATO allies, we should develop and evaluate a broad range of options. I presume the president and the administration are already engaged in such a process. The potential responses to an act so heinous and geopolitically disorienting as a nuclear strike must be optimally designed and have the support of our NATO allies. Mr. Putin and his enablers should have no doubt that our answer to such depravity would be devastating.

Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) is a senator from Utah and was the Republican nominee for president in 2012.

Yong, who’s become well known as a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for The Atlantic, helping to make sense of the pandemic, here turns his attention to sensory experiences throughout the animal kingdom. All creatures, from ticks to elephants, perceive the world in different ways. Yong does the best he can to put readers inside those bubbles of perception.

Random House, June 21

Picking up where Gurnah’s 1994 novel “Paradise” left off, on the eve of the Great War in German East Africa, “Afterlives” is another multigenerational, character-driven saga of a modern-day Tanzania under European imperialism.

Riverhead, Aug. 23

Pasulka, a journalist, spent a decade following drag culture in Brooklyn, which she writes contains “both the most experimental corners of the drag world and the most professional,” and is “more messy, freewheeling and avant-garde” than how the art form appears in its increasingly mainstream appearances on TV and elsewhere.

Simon & Schuster, June 7

These 12 linked stories are set in a Native community in Maine, where Talty grew up as a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation. His debut collection, full of surprising drama, offers a fresh view of the precarious lives of marginalized people in the 21st century.

Tin House, July 5

The English novelist Pym (“Excellent Women,” “Quartet in Autumn”) went in and out of fashion during her lifetime, and since. Byrne’s biography arrives at a time of rekindled interest. Rhys is best known for “Wide Sargasso Sea,” her feminist prequel to “Jane Eyre.” Seymour captures her childhood on the Caribbean island of Dominica and the rest of her often turbulent and challenging life.

“The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym” (William Collins, June 7)
“I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys” (Norton, June 28)

This chameleon of a book was inspired by the writer’s discovery of recorded interviews between the poet Frank O’Hara and her father, the art critic Peter Schjeldahl. Calhoun’s father idolized the poet and had hoped to complete a biography; this book recounts Calhoun’s attempt to finish it herself. Even if you don’t know O’Hara’s poetry (maybe start with “Having a Coke With You”), there’s plenty to appreciate in this memoir.

Grove, June 14

Stodola’s sobering investigation into the beach resort economy leaps from Thailand to Cap d’Antibes to Senegal, looking at why these manufactured environments became the vacation ideal and how climate change threatens them all.

Ecco, June 28

Kiki has become known at her university for doling out romantic advice to her classmates, helping members of the school’s Afro-Caribbean Society avoid heartache. But her judgment is questioned after she kisses a man she called unsuitable; to save face, she and the man manufacture a fake relationship that becomes very real.

William Morrow, July 5

This debut drops readers into the Canary Islands in the early 2000s. The narrator is a 10-year-old who idolizes her best friend, Isora, who is brash and fearless. Over the summer, their relationship twists and refracts as each girl comes into her own. Read this coming-of-age story for its unsparing language and vivid sense of place.

Astra House, Aug. 2

No stranger to eccentric obsessives in his acclaimed movies, like “Fitzcarraldo” and “Grizzly Man,” Herzog was inspired to write his first novel about Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who spent nearly 30 years after the end of World War II defending a small island in the Philippines, unwilling to believe the war was over. Herzog developed a friendship with Onoda before the ex-soldier died in 2014.

Penguin Press, June 14

In September 2021, former Senator David Perdue was hemming and hawing about running for governor of Georgia. Over dinner with an old friend on Sea Island, he pulled out his iPhone and showed the list of calls he’d gotten from Donald J. Trump, lobbying him to take the plunge.

“He said Trump called him all the time,” said Martha Zoller, a former aide to Mr. Perdue who now hosts a talk radio show in Gainesville, Ga. “He showed me on his phone these multiple recent calls and said they were from the president.”

Ms. Zoller and a legion of other former Perdue aides and advisers told the former senator that running was a bad idea. He listened to Mr. Trump instead.

Now, Mr. Perdue is staring down an epic defeat at the hands of Gov. Brian Kemp, the Republican whom Mr. Trump has blamed for his 2020 loss more than any other person. The Perdue campaign is ending the race low on cash, with no ads on television and a candidate described even by his supporters as lackluster and distracted.

“Perdue thought that Trump was a magic wand,” said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and a Trump ally, who was among Mr. Perdue’s highest-profile Georgia supporters. “In retrospect, it’s hard to understand David’s campaign, and it’s certainly not the campaign those of us who were for him expected.”

Mr. Perdue’s impending downfall in Tuesday’s primary for governor looms as the biggest electoral setback for Mr. Trump since his own defeat in the 2020 election. There is perhaps no contest in which the former president has done more to try to influence the outcome. Mr. Trump recruited, promoted and cleared the field for his ally, while assailing Mr. Kemp, recording television ads and giving $2.64 million to groups helping Mr. Perdue — by far the most he has ever invested in another politician.

Yet the race has exposed the limits of Mr. Trump’s sway, especially against entrenched Republican incumbents.

Mr. Perdue’s failures were not just of his own making. He was outflanked by a savvy incumbent in Mr. Kemp who exploited the powers of his office to cut off Mr. Perdue from allies — including Mr. Perdue’s own cousin Sonny, a former governor and Trump agriculture secretary whom Mr. Kemp’s allies appointed chancellor of the University System of Georgia.

Mr. Kemp also appeared to punish those who crossed him: One congressional seat was drawn to exclude the home of a candidate whose father, a Perdue supporter, had publicly criticized the governor.

And he offered goodies to voters, including a gas-tax holiday that conveniently runs through the end of May, just past the primary.

On Thursday, as Mr. Perdue campaigned outside the Semper Fi Bar and Grille in Woodstock, Ga., he was not conjuring up a path to victory but haggling over the scope of his widely expected defeat, after a Fox News survey showed him down 32 percentage points.

“Hell no, I’m not down 30 points,” insisted Mr. Perdue, whose campaign did not respond to requests for comment for this article. “We may not win Tuesday,” he added, “but I guaran-damn-tee you we are not down 30 points.”

The key threshold on Tuesday is 50 percent: Mr. Kemp must win an outright majority in the five-candidate field to avoid a one-on-one runoff in June.

The story of Mr. Perdue’s effort is less one of political collapse and more of a failure to launch. From the moment he announced his candidacy in December, Mr. Perdue never demonstrated the same commitment to winning that he displayed in his first Senate race in 2014.

His case for ousting Mr. Kemp was always largely based on support from the former president. Mr. Perdue argued at his campaign introduction that the governor had so alienated the party’s Trump faithful that they would not rally around Mr. Kemp against Stacey Abrams, the presumptive Democratic nominee and a leading villain for Republicans.

But Mr. Perdue, 72, a wealthy former chief executive of Dollar General, never came close to matching the $3.8 million of his own money he put into his 2014 Senate race. He invested just $500,000 in his bid for governor.

That is less than he and his wife spent last year for a waterfront lot on a secluded peninsula on scenic St. Simons Island, a purchase made not long after his runoff defeat at the hands of a then-33-year-old Democrat that delivered Senate control to Democrats. A permit to build a nearly 12,000-square-foot mansion worth an estimated $5 million — on land including “over 625 feet of lake frontage,” according to the listing — was granted two weeks after he declared his candidacy, records show.

Mr. Trump has simultaneously invested heavily in Mr. Perdue, with his $2.64 million, and sought to avoid blame as the candidate has faltered, telling The New York Times in April that the news media’s focus “should be on the endorsements — not the David Perdue one” to measure his influence.

Mr. Trump’s last rally in Georgia came in late March. He did not return, as Perdue allies had hoped, instead holding a conference call for supporters in early May.

“I am with David all the way because Brian Kemp was the WORST governor in the Country on Election Integrity!” Mr. Trump insisted Friday on his Truth Social messaging platform.

Mr. Perdue, like candidates for governor in Idaho and Nebraska this month, learned that a Trump endorsement alone does not assure the support of Trump voters or Trump donors.

“The Trump endorsement is very important, but it’s only an endorsement,” said former Representative Jack Kingston, who lost the 2014 Senate primary to Mr. Perdue and is a former Trump adviser. “It’s not an army of infrastructure and door-knockers the way it would be if you have the Sierra Club or the N.R.A. or the A.F.L.-C.I.O.”

The juxtaposition between the Kemp and Perdue camps was particularly stark on Friday.

Mr. Kemp was outside Savannah, announcing that Hyundai was investing $5.5 billion in an electric battery and vehicle manufacturing plant, one of the largest economic development projects in Georgia history. There was a champagne toast.

Mr. Perdue was nearby holding an endorsement event with Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, who is making her own comeback attempt in a House race in Alaska.

“I would rather be standing on the stage announcing 7,500 jobs than standing next to Sarah Palin,” said Mr. Kemp’s lieutenant governor, Geoff Duncan, a fierce Trump critic who opted not to run for re-election this year.

Randy Evans, a Perdue supporter who served as ambassador to Luxembourg in the Trump administration, said the Kemp operation had been ruthless in using what he called the “bullying” powers of the governorship.

Mr. Evans’s son, Jake, is running for Congress in the Atlanta suburbs. When Kemp-aligned Republican legislators drew new lines in redistricting, the younger Mr. Evans was suddenly drawn out of the district in which he had been planning to run.

“They cut a sliver about the size of your little finger,” the elder Mr. Evans said. “Jake had to move, buy a new house.”

Mr. Kemp, 58, leveraged the powers of incumbency in other crucial ways. He signed a measure to provide tax refunds of up to $500 for married couples, then announced on May 11, after early voting had begun, that those checks were in the mail. He appealed to rural Georgians by raising pay for teachers, and pleased conservatives by signing sweeping legislation to restrict voting access, expand gun rights and forbid school mask mandates.

Mr. Perdue’s efforts could seem feeble in comparison. In March, he attacked Mr. Kemp for recruiting an electric truck maker to open a factory in rural Georgia — creating thousands of jobs — because George Soros, the prominent Democratic donor, had recently invested in the company.

The Kemp-Perdue contest was steeped in the drama of personal betrayal.

Mr. Kemp had spent weeks campaigning with Mr. Perdue before the senator’s defeat in the January 2021 Senate runoff election. By then, Mr. Kemp had infuriated Mr. Trump by defending the legitimacy of Georgia’s presidential results.

Last spring, Mr. Kemp’s aides said, Mr. Perdue assured Mr. Kemp that he did not intend to run for governor. That June, Mr. Perdue introduced the governor at the Georgia Republican Party’s annual convention.

But Mr. Kemp, cannily, had already begun the process of installing Sonny Perdue, a popular former governor, to run Georgia’s state universities — an appointment that effectively put him on the sidelines. (Sonny Perdue, through a spokesman, declined to comment.)

Mr. Kemp also pre-emptively secured the loyalty and fund-raising might of Alec Poitevint, a South Georgia businessman who had served as campaign chairman for David Perdue’s Senate campaigns and Sonny Perdue’s campaigns for governor — one of many ways the Kemp operation boxed out Mr. Perdue financially.

Mr. Poitevint said he was among a host of longtime David Perdue supporters who had urged him not to run.

“I didn’t think it was serious,” Mr. Poitevint said. “I expressed the fact that I didn’t agree with it, that I thought that the governor had done a great job and deserved re-election.”

Shunned by the state’s political establishment, Mr. Perdue tried framing himself as a political outsider — “I’ve been an outsider since I got into politics,” he said on Thursday — but that is a difficult case to make for a former senator boasting of his support from a former president.

Even Mr. Trump’s $2.64 million infusion was swamped by the $5.2 million in television ads paid for by the Republican Governors Association to aid Mr. Kemp.

For all of Mr. Trump’s attacks on Mr. Kemp, the governor never struck back. Mr. Kemp’s advisers believe that discipline helped provide permission for even the most devoted Trump supporters to stick with the governor.

Mr. Perdue’s campaign, meanwhile, was laser-focused on falsehoods about 2020 — repeating Mr. Trump’s lie and blaming Mr. Kemp for President Biden’s election.

Mr. Evans, the former ambassador who in early 2021 had tried to broker a peace deal between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kemp, campaigned for Mr. Perdue but said he saw little effort to define a distinctive platform.

​​ “As far as having an existence that existed independent of Trump, I really didn’t see that materialize,” Mr. Evans said.

Mr. Kemp’s lieutenant governor, Mr. Duncan, summarized the arc of the Perdue candidacy.

“David Perdue made a bad bet six months ago when he jumped in the race and thought, ‘Because Donald Trump likes me, I’m going to win,’” Mr. Duncan said. “He bet wrong.”

Maya King contributed reporting. Kirsten Noyes contributed research.

At least one person was killed and 44 people were injured when a tornado swept through Northern Michigan on Friday, damaging numerous homes and businesses, flipping cars and downing trees, the authorities said.

The patients were taken to four different hospitals, though their conditions were not immediately available.

Lt. Derrick Carroll of the Michigan State Police reported from Gaylord, a city of about 4,000 in Michigan’s lower peninsula, that the storm had torn through a mobile home park and the business area and knocked out power.

Vic Ouellette, 74, a Gaylord City Council member, was in the basement of the home where he was born when the three-bedroom structure collapsed on him and his wife, he said in a phone interview.

“I’ve got a goose egg the size of a lemon on the top of my head where the roof hit me,” Mr. Ouellette said as he waited to be seen at a nearby emergency room, wearing just shorts, a T-shirt and one slipper. “I’m lucky to be alive.”

Though his childhood home was destroyed, Mr. Ouellette said, he and his wife were going to be OK, thanks to people who helped pull them from the debris. “We couldn’t have gotten out of there without help,” he said.

Mr. Ouellette, a retired police officer, hurried himself and his wife into the basement after receiving a tornado alert on his phone. There, he peeked out a window and watched aluminum siding being torn off a neighbor’s house. That’s when the tornado hit his house, stunning him.

“It’s like being inside of a snow globe,” he said. “Dust is flying. Water is flying. You can’t see anything. It’s like you’re inside of a cloud.”

Video posted on Twitter showed a trail of destruction along a commercial strip in Gaylord, which is about 175 miles north of Lansing.

Andy Sullivan, a forecaster at the National Weather Service office in Gaylord, said there was “no doubt” that a tornado had struck and said it was a “very strong one at that.” He said the office had assessment teams in the community. He added that it was unusual to have a tornado strike Northern Michigan.

The tornado, which hit around 3:45 p.m., “heavily damaged” the commercial district, he said.

The Michigan State Police said on Twitter that trees and power lines were blocking roadways and reported that “multiple homes and businesses” were damaged.

Lieutenant Carroll said that officials were urging people to stay away and that numerous ambulance crews from around the region had responded. He said it appeared the entire community had been struck, including a mobile home park that he described as “pretty bad.”

Michael Ryan, a council member who lives across the street from his colleague, Mr. Ouellette, said the tornado ripped shingles off his roof and shattered his windows. On Friday evening, he sat in his car in his neighborhood and surveyed the destruction. He saw trees snapped in half or torn down and downed power lines scattered throughout an area he estimated to be about four blocks by four blocks.

“The house next to me is collapsed,” he said. “Vic’s house is off its foundation. The house next to it is still standing but the roof’s gone.”

Mayor Todd Sharrard said Friday evening that Gaylord had lost power and some injured residents were being rerouted to other nearby hospitals.

“The tornado stayed on the ground for a good two miles,” he said. “Right through the heart of our town.”

Mr. Sharrard said emergency crews from across Northern Michigan were helping in the rescue and cleanup effort. He said city officials were working on instituting a curfew because “we’re getting too many gawkers.”

Scott Distler, the senior pastor at E-Free Church in Gaylord, said that the west side of the city had sustained a lot of damage. “There are areas that have been leveled,” he said. “And we know of at least two families in our church who have lost their houses.”

The E-Free Church is serving as a shelter for the community, and Mr. Distler said that many people had sought refuge at the church.

In the 11 years he has lived in Gaylord, he said, he had never seen a tornado like this.

“This is Northern Michigan, we’re used to blizzards,” Mr. Distler said. “Not tornadoes.”

In a statement on Twitter, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who late Friday declared a state of emergency in Otsego County, said: “To the entire Gaylord community — Michigan is with you. We will do what it takes to rebuild.”

Isabella Grullón Paz contributed reporting.

Growing up in the 1980s, I knew there were kids like those on “Stranger Things,” which returns Friday for its fourth season, who spent their after-school hours playing Dungeons & Dragons. I was not one of them; I played with Barbies. I figured what I was doing with dolls — acting out scenes involving homework, school dances and what happened last weekend at the plastic pool — was a far cry from the secretive world of the D&D table, with its arcane mythos and complicated rules.

It wasn’t until 2000, when an episode of the show “Freaks and Geeks” featured kids playing D&D, that I got a glimpse into how role-playing games worked. In essence, it was not so different from what my friends and I were doing with Barbies: imagining and then inhabiting characters, writing stories collaboratively, escaping reality while developing real-life social skills.

While I retired my Barbies by the time puberty hit, the universe of Dungeons & Dragons is intricate and expansive enough that it has continuing appeal for adults. In fact, it has so fully emerged from nerd-dom that it has become “something of a social flex — the antithesis of the popularity contest that was the 1990s and early 2000s, an antidote to our more basic tendencies,” Amelia Diamond writes in The Times this morning. Vin Diesel plays. So does Tiffany Haddish.

I’ve written about how socializing is weird lately. D&D offers one way to alleviate some of the anxiety. Rules govern interactions, and a dungeon master who acts as both narrator and referee enforces them. In the safety of this container, players explore, improvise, cocreate worlds.

“All of us at times feel a little inadequate in dealing with the modern world,” Gary Gygax, one of the creators of D&D, once said. “It would feel much better if we knew that we were a superhero or a mighty wizard.”

D&D and other role-playing games, improv comedy, murder-mystery parties where each guest is assigned a part in a whodunit, even escape rooms: They’re all creative, rule-bound forms of fun where scenes are created in real time and success requires teamwork and trust.

They’re lo-fi ways to socialize through performance, a relief from social media venues that insist we perform as ourselves for an audience of friends and followers. These activities give us permission to play, to drop our inhibitions and try on new personas. They let us escape into another world for a little while.

Ideas for structured fun that you recommend? Drop me a line.

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WEEKENDS ARE FOR …

🍿 Movies: Five action flicks to stream.

🎧 Audiobooks: Six picks.

👟 Exhibitions: Sneakers that were among the designer Virgil Abloh’s final projects are going on display in Brooklyn.

Jordan Marsh’s Blueberry Muffins

I’ve always been a strong advocate for eating dessert for breakfast, which is part of why Jordan Marsh’s blueberry muffins have been on my radar for a while. I finally whipped up a batch this past week, using thawed frozen berries as suggested in the recipe notes. And I’m here to report that these purple-speckled beauties are truly deserving of their 11,000-ish five-star ratings. Yes, they are distinctly cupcake-like: fluffy and sugary, and completely delightful with your morning cup of coffee or tea. But if the idea of cake before noon puts you off, serve them as a midafternoon snack or even dessert — the after-dinner kind of dessert, that is.

REAL ESTATE

Carolina Hurricanes vs. New York Rangers, N.H.L. playoffs: The Rangers are hot. Down 3-1 in the last round, they beat the Penguins three games in a row to win the series. “They have the best goalie in the league this year, Igor Shesterkin,” David Waldstein, a Times reporter who has been covering the playoffs, tells us. “They are really fun to watch and are becoming a big story in New York. Lots of folks are jumping on their bandwagon.” Game 3 is 3:30 p.m. Eastern on Sunday on ESPN.

For more:

NOW TIME TO PLAY

The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was raunchy. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

A state court formally approved New York’s new congressional map late Friday, ratifying a slate of House districts drawn by a neutral expert that could pave the way for Democratic losses this fall and force some of the party’s most prominent incumbents to face off in primary matches.

The map, approved just before a midnight deadline set by Justice Patrick F. McAllister of State Supreme Court in Steuben County, effectively unwinds an attempted Democratic gerrymander, creates a raft of new swing seats across the state, and scrambles some carefully laid lines that have long determined centers of power in New York City.

Jonathan R. Cervas, the court-appointed mapmaker, made relatively minor changes to a draft proposal released earlier this week whose sweeping changes briefly united both Republicans and Democrats in exasperation and turned Democrats against each other.

In Manhattan, the final map would still merge the seats of Representatives Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler, setting the two Democratic committee leaders, who have served alongside each other for 30 years, onto an increasingly inevitable collision course.

Another awkward Democratic primary loomed up the Hudson in Westchester County, where two Black Democratic House members were drawn into a single district.

But the worst outcome for Democrats appeared to be averted early Saturday morning when one of the incumbents, Representative Mondaire Jones, said he would forego re-election in his Westchester seat. He said he would run instead in a newly reconfigured 10th Congressional District in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, a race that has already drawn the candidacy of Bill de Blasio, the former New York City mayor, but which no other sitting House member is expected to enter.

Republicans were already eying pickup opportunities in the suburbs of Long Island and in the 18th and 19th Districts in the Hudson Valley that could help them retake control of the House.

And in New York City’s only Republican-held district, Representative Nicole Malliotakis breathed a sigh of relief that Mr. Cervas had reversed one of the boldest moves by the Democratic leaders in the State Legislature, when they inserted liberal Park Slope, Brooklyn, into her Staten Island-based district.

Some of the most notable changes between the initial and final district lines came in historically Black communities in Brooklyn, where Mr. Cervas reunited Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights into single districts. He had faced uproar from Black lawmakers and civil rights groups after his first proposal divided them into separate seats.

Responding to feedback from community groups, Mr. Cervas also revised the map to reunite Manhattan’s Chinatown with Sunset Park in Brooklyn, another heavily Asian American community, in the 10th Congressional District. In each case, he said the communities had been “inadvertently split” in his first proposal.

Justice McAllister’s order approving the congressional and additional State Senate maps on Friday makes New York one of the final states in the nation to complete its decennial redistricting process.

But both parties were already girding late Friday for the potential for civil rights or political groups to file new, long-shot lawsuits challenging the maps in state or federal court.

Justice McAllister used the unusual five-page order to rebut criticisms leveled at Mr. Cervas and the court in recent days, as the maps were hastily drafted out of public view. He conceded that the rushed time frame was “less than ideal” but defended the final maps as “almost perfectly neutral” with 15 safe Democratic seats, three safe Republican seats and eight swing seats.

“Unfortunately some people have encouraged the public to believe that now the court gets to create its own gerrymandered maps that favor Republicans,” wrote Justice McAllister, a Republican. “Such could not be further from the truth. The court is not politically biased.”

The final map was a stark disappointment for Democrats, who control every lever of power in New York and had entered this year’s decennial redistricting cycle with every expectation of gaining seats that could help hold their House majority. They appeared to be successful in February, when the Legislature adopted a congressional map that would have made their candidates favorites in 22 of 26 districts, an improvement from the 19 Democrats currently hold.

But Republicans sued in state court, and Justice McAllister, a judge in the state’s rural Southern Tier, ruled that the maps violated a 2014 state constitutional amendment outlawing partisan gerrymandering and reforming the mapmaking process in New York. In late April, the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, upheld the decision and ordered a court-appointed special master to redraw the lines.

Justice McAllister appointed Mr. Cervas, a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon with few ties to New York and scant experience drawing state lines, and delayed the congressional and State Senate elections until Aug. 23.

On Friday, Mr. Cervas produced a 26-page report explaining the rationale of his map, in which he tried to balance the need to protect communities of shared interest, existing districts, and other constitutional requirements.

Mr. Cervas eliminated one district overall, carving it out of central New York to shrink the state’s congressional delegation to 26. The change was required after New York failed to keep pace with national population growth in the 2020 census.

He made a slew of other changes across the state, responding to a crush of feedback to the initial proposal. For instance, Mr. Cervas reoriented his maps for Long Island considerably, creating districts that divided the island north-south rather than east and west, but kept them highly competitive.

Still, in his final congressional map, Mr. Cervas rejected pleas by Democrats and various interest groups to revert to a traditional east-west split of Manhattan. Doing so would have allowed Mr. Nadler and Ms. Maloney to run in their own districts, avoiding a messy primary conflict, but the special master wrote that he “did not find a compelling community of interest argument for changing the configuration.”

Mr. Nadler and Ms. Maloney have both declared their intentions to run in the newly created 12th Congressional District, which comprises central Manhattan.

“The new district belongs to no individual candidate, but instead to the voters who call it home,” Mr. Nadler said early Saturday morning.

Just to the south, a growing number of candidates have declared their interest in running for a newly reconfigured 10th District, which encompasses all of Lower Manhattan and a large swath of Brooklyn, including Park Slope and Borough Park.

Mr. de Blasio declared his candidacy on Friday before the lines were finalized. Hours later, Mr. Jones surprised Democrats by announcing that he would follow suit, despite having minimal ties to the district.

“This is the birthplace of the L.G.B.T.Q.+ rights movement,” said Mr. Jones, who is gay. “Since long before the Stonewall Uprising, queer people of color have sought refuge within its borders.”

Representative Nydia Velazquez lives within the new district lines, but she has previously said she intends to run this year in the nearby Seventh District.

Mr. Jones’s decision will help avert another tense intraparty showdown in the Lower Hudson Valley.

The potential conflict emerged earlier this week, when Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, the D.C.C.C. chairman tasked with protecting the House majority, announced that he would seek to represent territory currently included in Mr. Jones’s seat. The decision would have forced Mr. Jones to compete in a primary with either Mr. Maloney or a fellow progressive congressman, Jamaal Bowman, in the neighboring 16th District.

With the maps finalized, other candidates across the state were expected over the weekend to announce campaigns and begin collecting petitions to get on the ballots.

Two upstate Republican incumbents also appeared to have avoided a potential primary conflict by Saturday morning. Representative Claudia Tenney said she would run for the new 24th District stretching from the outskirts of Buffalo to the eastern shore of Lake Ontario, and Representative Chris Jacobs said he would run for the 23rd District covering the Southern Tier.