Category: News

After two years of extended deadlines, tax filing in April is back — and fast approaching.

The pandemic led to delays in filing deadlines that stretched into late spring or even summer. But this year, the filing date for most taxpayers is April 18, a little more than a week away.

Even so, there may still be a few things you can do to reduce your tax bill. Here are some steps to consider.

There’s still time to contribute to a traditional individual retirement account for the 2021 tax year and take a deduction — if you qualify. I.R.A. contributions for 2021 can be made until the filing deadline — up to $6,000 for an individual and $7,000 for people who were 50 or older at the end of 2021. Your deduction may be limited, however, depending on your income and whether you have a workplace retirement plan.

People who are self-employed can put more of their earnings away by contributing to a Simplified Employee Pension plan, or SEP I.R.A. The contribution limit for a SEP I.R.A. for 2021 is 25 percent of your compensation or $58,000 — whichever is less. (You may also have more time to contribute to a SEP I.R.A. If you get an extension to Oct. 15 to file your tax return, you have until then to make a contribution.)

The deadline for contributing to a Roth I.R.A. for 2021 is also April 18 — but since you don’t get a tax deduction for depositing money into a Roth, it won’t lower your tax bill.

You may also be able to reduce your taxable income by contributing to a health savings account, or H.S.A., by the filing deadline. To be eligible, you must be covered by a health plan that meets specific criteria, like a high deductible (at least $1,400 for an individual for 2021), said John Larson, vice president of benefit solutions at Conduent, a business services company.

If you qualify, the contribution limit for 2021 is $3,600 for an individual and $7,200 for families. People 55 and older can contribute an extra $1,000.

If you had eligible health coverage for just part of 2021, the maximum contribution you can make may be less, said Rita Assaf, vice president of retirement at Fidelity Investments. For example, someone enrolled in a qualifying health plan for six months could contribute up to $1,800 — half the maximum.

But there is an option that lets you contribute more to your H.S.A., known as the “last month” rule, Ms. Assaf said. Here’s how it works: If you are eligible to contribute to an H.S.A. on the first day of the last month of the tax year — let’s say Dec. 1, 2021 — you are considered eligible for the entire year and may contribute up to the maximum. But there’s a catch: You must keep your high-deductible health coverage for the next 12 months. If you lose qualifying health coverage before the end of 2022, you will owe taxes and possibly a penalty on the extra contribution, the I.R.S. says.

Money is contributed to an H.S.A. tax free. It’s also tax free when it’s withdrawn to pay for eligible medical expenses, and can be invested and grow free of federal taxes. The accounts go with you if you change employers.

At the state level, a few states don’t offer the same tax breaks. California and New Jersey tax H.S.A. contributions, while New Hampshire and Tennessee tax H.S.A. earnings, including interest earned and investment gains, according to an H.S.A. provider, Lively.

And for those of you who haven’t started to calculate your taxes and now realize you can’t make the tax deadline, you can file for an automatic extension. This gives you until Oct. 15 to get your return prepared and submitted.

“You’ll want to extend if you do not have the information to prepare a complete and accurate return,” said Henry Grzes, lead manager for tax practice and ethics at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

But an extension to file doesn’t give you more time to pay. So you’ll need to make your best estimate of what you may owe and pay the government by April 18.

Some people may worry that they can’t pay, so they don’t submit a return. But that creates more problems, including penalties for failing to file, Mr. Grzes said. You should file and pay what you can, he said, and then contact the I.R.S. to discuss an installment plan to pay any balance after your return is processed. To estimate what you owe, he said, check last year’s return or, if you’re using do-it-yourself tax software, enter what information you have available to get a rough amount.

How can I find a reputable tax preparer?

The Justice Department warned taxpayers recently to use caution when choosing a tax professional, noting that it has taken action against numerous dishonest preparers over the past year. Red flags include preparers who ask you to sign a blank return or refuse to sign a return they have prepared (known as a “ghost” return), will not let you review your return before filing it or are depositing your refund in a way that isn’t clear to you. The I.R.S. offers tips for choosing a preparer on its website and offers a directory of credentialed preparers that can be searched by ZIP code.

Where can I get free help with tax questions?

The Internal Revenue Service is offering free walk-in help — no appointment needed — at its Taxpayer Assistance Centers in numerous cities on Saturday, April 9. The office won’t prepare returns, but taxpayers can get questions answered and receive guidance.

Free options for tax preparation include I.R.S. Free File and the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance and Tax Counseling for the Elderly programs. You can search the I.R.S. website for locations.

When is the deadline for the first estimated tax payment of 2022?

If you’re self-employed or are otherwise required to pay quarterly estimated taxes, the first payment deadline is April 18. You can use Form 1040-ES to figure how much to pay.

Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. I was moved by Ketanji Brown Jackson’s remarks last week after her Senate confirmation: “In my family, it took just one generation to go from segregation to the Supreme Court.” What a ringing affirmation of what’s possible in the United States. And how depressing that only three Republican senators could bring themselves to vote for her, if only on the principle that every president deserves to get qualified nominees confirmed. Whatever happened to acknowledging the possibility that we can respect and admire people with whom we also disagree?

Gail Collins: Bret, every time we converse, I get to experience that.

Bret: Ditto.

Gail: But you know what our politics have become. There are a lot of people to blame for the death of bipartisanship in judicial selection, but I’ll never forget Mitch McConnell refusing to bring multiple Barack Obama nominees up for a vote.

Bret: I’ll resist the urge to dwell on Harry Reid’s filibustering of George W. Bush’s nominees. The larger question is how we go forward. I don’t think we can endure as a republic if no president of either party can even appoint judges or staff the executive branch unless he has a Senate majority, too. Your thoughts?

Gail: I tend to resist the we-can’t-survive-this predictions — we’ve survived a heck of a lot, after all.

Bret: Fair point. We defeated Germany twice. What’s one Ted Cruz, more or less?

Gail: But this kind of perpetual partisanship certainly isn’t good for the country. I guess the world will be looking toward Alaska to see how the regular public is reacting — of the three Senate Republicans who voted to confirm Judge Jackson, Lisa Murkowski is the only one up for re-election this year.

Bret: Murkowski also faces a primary challenge from a Donald Trump-endorsed Republican opponent, meaning that she showed real political courage in voting for Jackson. More than can be said for a bunch of G.O.P. senators who are retiring at the end of the year and could have usefully demonstrated some principle and independence.

Gail: Murkowski aside, I suspect the Republican candidates this fall are going to be running on a generally Trumpist line, which will make things worse. Do you disagree?

Bret: Not clear yet. Our news-side colleagues Shane Goldmacher and Jonathan Martin reported last month that some of the primary candidates Trump originally preferred — like the Senate candidate Mo Brooks in Alabama and the gubernatorial candidate David Perdue in Georgia — aren’t doing well in the polls. Trump is also getting crosswise with Republican incumbents in the governor’s office like Doug Ducey in Arizona and Pete Ricketts in Nebraska by opposing their favored candidates, or at least favoring ones they don’t like. If anything, Trump may turn out to be the Democrats’ secret weapon this fall by dividing the party or backing candidates who can’t win in the general election. That’s how Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock were able to win their Georgia Senate races the last time around.

Gail: I noticed Trump went ahead and withdrew his support for Brooks, claiming he was outraged that Brooks said it was time to stop obsessing about the 2020 election and move on.

Bret: Trump is like John Cleese’s Basil Fawlty character from “Fawlty Towers,” except in reverse: You must mention the war. Or at least the “stolen election.”

Gail: Still, I bet Trump could have managed to overlook it if Brooks wasn’t also running way behind in the polls.

Bret: We’ll see. Right now, the generic polling leans Republican, but it could change if the Supreme Court votes to overturn Roe v. Wade. It could change even further if Ukraine manages to defeat Russia with American help. What else do the Democrats need?

Gail: The Democrats need to run on ways to make the country better. One is reducing health care costs, which would include cracking down on waste and government funding for expensive drugs like insulin. Another is reducing the deficit with a tax on the very rich.

Bret: The administration seems to be taking your advice on both points, though I’m not sure it will help them all that much by November. I’d like to see them get ahead of a couple of looming surges that will play into G.O.P. hands: the expected migrant surge at the border, the big cost-of-living surge and the next Covid surge. The last one is actually tied to the first: The administration can help moderate Democrats by extending something called Title 42 to expedite migrant expulsions as a health-emergency measure. As for inflation, how about a sales-tax holiday for necessities and other basic goods for the next 12 months?

Gail: Here’s a proposed deal: a sales tax holiday for basics combined with a tax increase for the rich.

Bret: I always oppose tax hikes, but that isn’t the worst bargain. How about the immigration issue? The administration doesn’t seem to know its own mind, according to a fascinating piece last weekend in The Times.

Gail: Well, another way to think about it is that the administration knows there’s no good answer. Any immigration policy is going to be unpopular with one side or the other — except Biden’s very, very much appreciated halt to building that stupid Trump wall.

Bret: A wall I have reluctantly come around to concluding should be built, even as we do more to increase legal immigration.

Gail: Oh wow, Bret, you’ve gone over to the wall! Better than going over the wall, I guess, but still …

Bret: Bet some of our readers are thinking, “Both things are possible.”

A wall won’t stop people from coming here legally and then overstaying their visas. But it will save some of the most vulnerable migrants from taking terrible risks to cross the border while denying right-wing nativists one of their most potent political issues.

Gail: And serve as a great symbol to the rest of the world that the days we celebrated our country as a nation of immigrants are long gone. Sigh.

Bret: We are and should remain a nation of immigrants. Just lawfully arrived.

Gail: It’s certainly important not to encourage illegal immigration. But it’s equally important — actually more important — to raise the number of immigrants we’re bringing into the country. Given the very low birthrate in America, we’ve got to attract all the willing workers we can.

Bret: Totally agree on this. Countries that stagnate demographically will eventually stagnate economically. Our Hispanic population is incredibly talented, energetic and diverse, we’ve got plenty of room to grow, and we’re blessed to have Mexico — the country where I grew up — as a neighbor. Anyone who doubts me on this score should consider what it’s like for Ukraine to have Russia as a neighbor.

The case I’d make to the administration is to set out three principles for immigration: that it should be lawful, that it should be safe and that it should be compassionate. They need to take care of the first point to guarantee the other two.

Gail: No problem there, but there’s a long leap from a commitment to lawful, compassionate immigration and — oh, Lord, that wall. Sorry, still flummoxed. Let’s move on.

Bret: The other big domestic story last week was the failure of the Justice Department to win its case against four men accused of conspiring to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. What do you make of it?

Gail: Basically you’ve got a bunch of dopey right-wing guys venting about Governor Whitmer’s Covid restrictions and talking about kidnapping her. And some genuine question as to whether they’d have done anything more than posture over lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings if an F.B.I. informant hadn’t become one of their leaders.

Bret: It’s a thin line between, um, entrapment and hate, to adapt an old lyric.

Gail: This kind of case always poses the question of how far our investigators can go in exposing anti-government nut jobs. Imagine what it’s like to spend months — sometimes years! — pretending to be best pals with paranoid idiots.

Bret: My wife and kids know the feeling.

Gail: Sooner or later you may be tempted to push things along — and then maybe create a crime that would never have happened otherwise.

I’m not an expert in this case, but I do appreciate how very careful the country needs to be in overseeing law enforcement.

Any final thoughts on your end?

Bret: Given how high-profile this case was, it’s a real black eye for the government and particularly the F.B.I. Bamboozling foolish people into potentially criminal behavior and then prosecuting them for it in a highly politicized way is the sort of thing that fuels precisely the kind of conspiracy thinking that these people were prey to in the first place.

Gail: Meanwhile, I’ve been sort of obsessing about what would happen if Russian psycho-hackers managed to figure out a way to take our power grid offline. Imagining what that’d be like gives me the kind of chills I got as a kid in Catholic school when the nuns would spend hours warning us that the end of the world could arrive any day. Then we were supposed to go home and practice hiding in the basement with our parents.

Bret: The good news is the Russians haven’t even been able to manage taking out the power grid in Ukraine, so they might have a harder time against us. Perhaps the end of the world isn’t nigh, after all?

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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Pakistani Parliament selected the opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif to become the country’s interim prime minister on Monday, ushering in a new government after the ouster of Imran Khan and capping a week of political turmoil that pushed the fragile democracy to the brink.

The vote came two days after Mr. Khan, the former cricket star turned politician, was removed from office in a no-confidence vote in Parliament after he lost the support of top military leaders late last year.

The political crisis escalated last week after Mr. Khan demonized the opposition as traitors, and defied the Constitution to dissolve Parliament in an effort to block the vote — stoking fears that the country’s powerful military might intervene, as it has several times before in Pakistan’s tumultuous 75-year-history.

Members of Mr. Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf or P.T.I., boycotted the vote on Monday in the National Assembly to elect the new prime minister — a move to undercut the new government’s legitimacy as the country heads into a highly charged election season, analysts say.

The motion to elect Mr. Sharif as prime minister was passed with 174 votes, two more than the requisite simple majority.

Mr. Sharif, 70, takes power at a time of deep political divisions and economic tumult in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation home to 220 million people. His government faces a stalled economy that has struggled with double-digit inflation and immense national debt, and make good on his promise to pass electoral reforms to ensure that elections expected by the end of this year are free and fair.

Many also expect Mr. Sharif will try to improve Pakistan’s broken ties with the United States. Pakistan’s military leaders, who historically have guided the country’s foreign and security policies, have recently expressed their interest in improving relations with the United States, as well.

But Mr. Sharif must walk a fine line, repairing the country’s relationship with the United States without playing into Mr. Khan’s narrative that American officials conspired with opposition parties to oust him from power. That accusation has already become a central part of Mr. Khan’s campaign ahead of the next elections.

As the new prime minister, Mr. Sharif will preside over a coalition of several political parties that had united around the goal of voting Mr. Khan out of office. But those parties historically have been at loggerheads, and it is unclear whether they will remain united as elections approach.

“In Pakistan, there’s always a lot of serious challenges and political uncertainty, but he’s coming in at a particularly challenging time compared to earlier governments,” said Ijaz Khan, the former chairman of the department of international relations at the University of Peshawar.

Mr. Sharif is the younger brother of Nawaz Sharif, who served as prime minister three times, and like other family members, he has been dogged by allegations of widespread graft and malfeasance that were the focus of several corruption investigations. The younger Sharif’s rise to prime minister offers a rebuke to Mr. Khan’s professed mission of dismantling Pakistan’s political dynasties and rooting out corruption in politics.

Mr. Sharif was made the standard-bearer of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz by his elder brother in July 2017, and he was officially elected party leader in March.

Nawaz Sharif, whose second term was cut short by a military coup in 1998, has consistently feuded with the country’s domineering military establishment. But Shehbaz Sharif is considered to have better relations with the generals.

Mr. Khan, the former prime minister, also had a falling out with the military over foreign policy and top military appointments. Mr. Sharif is expected to fare better thanks to his cautious and calibrated approach, analysts say.

Though he is seen as popular, Mr. Sharif’s political career has also been riddled with controversy. He has been criticized for doing too little to curb extremist sectarian groups in Punjab Province during his three terms as chief minister there, and he has been accused of ordering extrajudicial killings.

In 2003, a court issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Sharif after he was accused of ordering the extrajudicial killings of several people in 1998, charges of which he was acquitted in 2008. He was arrested in 2018 by the anticorruption authorities after being accused of misconduct in a low-cost housing program introduced during his tenure as chief minister of Punjab. And he was arrested again in 2020 on corruption-related charges.

Mr. Sharif has denied all of the graft allegations, characterizing them as politically motivated.

As the chief minister of Punjab, he led the country’s most populous province and its political power base, where the Sharif dynasty has dominated politics since the 1980s.

In that role, Mr. Sharif developed a reputation for his administrative skills and for presiding over a high-profile campaign of infrastructure improvement and social development programs.

He also became known for his high-energy style of governance, including surprise inspection “raids” of hospitals and schools, even in Punjab’s smaller towns, and his aides describe him as a workaholic with a taste for 7 a.m. staff meetings.

His record delivering large infrastructure projects at a fast pace has been a defining feature of his political career and helped him win significant public support.

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is vigorously debating how much the United States can or should assist an investigation into Russian atrocities in Ukraine by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, according to officials familiar with internal deliberations.

The Biden team strongly wants to see President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and others in his military chain of command held to account. And many are said to consider the court — which was created by a global treaty two decades ago as a venue for prosecuting war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide — as the body most capable of achieving that.

But laws from 1999 and 2002, enacted by lawmakers wary that the court might investigate Americans, limit the government’s ability to provide support. And the United States has long objected to any exercise of jurisdiction by the court over citizens of countries that are not part of the treaty that created it — like the United States, but also Russia.

The internal debate, described by senior administration officials and others familiar with the matter on the condition of anonymity, has been partly shaped by a previously undisclosed 2010 memo by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Obtained by The New York Times, the memo interprets the scope and limits of permissible cooperation with the court.

The discussions have also been marked by Pentagon opposition to softening the U.S. stance, even as congressional Republicans, long skeptics of the court, have signaled openness to finding a way to help it bring Russian officials to justice.

For now, officials said, the primary focus has been on compiling evidence of apparent war crimes that are still unfolding — both the details of particular killings and intelligence that President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, asserted on Sunday indicates a high-level plan to brutalize the civilian population into terrorized subjugation.

“This was something that was planned,” he said on ABC’s “This Week,” adding, “Make no mistake, the larger issue of broad-scale war crimes and atrocities in Ukraine lies at the feet of the Kremlin and lies at the feet of the Russian president.”

But the unresolved deliberations about where to channel such intelligence explain why administration officials have been hazy about where efforts to prosecute Russian war crimes should center — even as evidence of large-scale atrocities has mounted, prompting Mr. Biden to label Mr. Putin a “war criminal” and to call for a “war crimes trial.”

Mr. Sullivan, was vague, for example, at a news briefing last week when a reporter asked whether the president envisioned such a prosecution playing out at the International Criminal Court or some other tribunal.

“We have to consult with our allies and partners on what makes most sense as a mechanism moving forward,” he said. “Obviously, the I.C.C. is one venue where war crimes have been tried in the past, but there have been other examples in other conflicts of other mechanisms being set up.”

But setting up other venues would raise its own obstacles. Among them, while the United Nations Security Council in the past helped establish special international courts to handle conflicts in places like Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, Russia can veto any Council resolution seeking to establish a tribunal for Ukraine.

Still, there are reasons to doubt that Mr. Putin and other senior Kremlin officials responsible for the war may ever stand trial, so long as they remain in power and ensconced in Russia. But war-crimes indictments, human rights specialists say, serve a “naming and shaming” function even without trials — and can inhibit defendants’ ability to travel abroad.

Another possibility is a nation’s court with jurisdiction over war crimes on Ukrainian soil. Germany, for example, has war-crimes and crimes-against-humanity laws that cover the world. Prosecutors there said in March that they had started gathering evidence of deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, and two former ministers filed a complaint there last week asking prosecutors to charge Russian officials.

Ukraine’s own prosecutor general has asked for international help in gathering evidence. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in recent days that administration officials were working on a multinational effort to shore up Ukraine’s efforts, while also holding discussions with European counterparts.

Still, with Ukraine under continuing assault, the capacity of its justice system may be limited. The International Criminal Court, by contrast, is already set up — and it specializes in conducting this very kind of investigation and prosecution.

Against that backdrop, the State Department has said that the United States “welcomed the fact” that the court has opened an investigation into the war in Ukraine, and Biden administration officials are weighing what the United States can do to help it.

One set of issues is primarily legal. A group of top national security lawyers across the administration has been wrestling with how to navigate the limits imposed by a pair of laws that Congress enacted a generation ago. Those laws curtail the aid the American government may provide to the court, but are ambiguous in places.

The deliberations have centered on a 26-page opinion by the Office of Legal Counsel that interpreted those laws for the executive branch.

The memo looked at the kinds of assistance that the United States had offered to the tribunals for war crimes and genocide in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, which proved crucial to making them work — like sending dozens of experienced Justice Department prosecutors and contributing more than $500 million to cover operational costs.

But a 1999 appropriations law bars the government from spending funds to support the International Criminal Court. The memo concludes that Congress banned both donating money to the court directly and donating material items, like supplying a computer system or building a courthouse — and that the law permits no exceptions.

The memo also analyzes a 2002 law, the American Servicemembers Protection Act. It bars giving the court other kinds of support — like sharing intelligence, training its staff or lending it personnel. The memo concludes that the United States cannot offer general institutional support, but can provide such help for “particular cases.”

Unlike the funding ban, the 2002 law permits “rendering assistance to international efforts to bring to justice” a list of offenders from that era, like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, along with any other foreign citizens who are accused of genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity.

Even as administration lawyers struggle with how much wiggle room the government has as it tries to hold Russia accountable, there are signs of bipartisan interest in Congress in potentially rescinding or modifying those laws so the United States can more broadly help the court.

Last month, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, backing any investigation into war crimes committed by Russian forces and proxies. It praised the International Criminal Court and encouraged “member states to petition the I.C.C.” to investigate and prosecute Russian atrocities — as at least 41 nations have done.

Mr. Graham has since been working with Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, on what they hope will be fast-track, bipartisan legislation responding to outrage over events in Ukraine.

Their initial focus, Mr. Graham said in an interview, has been on developing legislative language to expand the domestic War Crimes Act so that American courts would have jurisdiction over such crimes by noncitizens abroad.

But Mr. Graham said that the International Criminal Court appeared “to be the only venue that works” for investigating Mr. Putin. He said Congress would also “look at the laws on the books and see if they need to be changed to make sure these investigations can be supported, either financially or to provide any intelligence or manpower.”

A related issue under discussion among administration officials is whether the United States should soften its longstanding objection to the court exercising jurisdiction over citizens from a country that is not a party to its treaty, according to officials.

On the table is whether those decisions should instead depend on whether a particular country has a functioning justice system that can handle allegations of war crimes. The rationale is that it would be legitimate for the court to investigate Russian war crimes because Mr. Putin and his commanders appear to be committing them with domestic impunity.

Pentagon officials, however, are said to be balking. They contended that moving to a case-by-case approach would be shortsighted because it would make it harder for the United States to argue against court investigations into potential war crimes by American forces, officials said.

Some opponents of changing the American position are also said to have pointed to Israel — an ally that is also not a party to the treaty. The United States has objected to an investigation by the court of potential war crimes by Israeli forces.

But calls for shifting the U.S. position are growing louder.

Mr. Graham asserted that the court was set up to deal with situations only where the rule of law has collapsed — unlike the court systems in the United States or Israel, he said. By contrast, he argued, “there is no rule of law in Russia any more than there would be in certain parts of Africa” where the court has prosecuted warlords for atrocities.

And in a Washington Post opinion column last week, John Bellinger, a national security lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, and Christopher J. Dodd, a former Democratic senator who was responsible for adding the exception to the 2002 law, argued that “U.S. support for an I.C.C. investigation of Russian war crimes would not constitute a double standard or be inconsistent with U.S. objections to the court’s claimed jurisdiction over U.S. personnel.”

While most of the world’s democracies joined the court a generation ago — including close U.S. allies like Britain — many American leaders were wary, fearing that it could be used or misused someday to prosecute American forces.

In 2000, President Bill Clinton signed the 1998 treaty creating the court, known as the Rome Statute, but he also called it flawed and never submitted it to the Senate for ratification. Two years later, Mr. Bush essentially withdrew that signature.

Still, by 2008, Mr. Bellinger — then the top State Department lawyer — declared that the United States accepted the “reality” of the court, acknowledging that it “enjoys a large body of international support.” The Obama administration bolstered its efforts to prosecute warlords in Africa, offering rewards for the capture of fugitives indicted by the court.

Relations plunged during the Trump administration, when a top prosecutor for the court tried to investigate the torture of terrorism detainees during the Bush administration. The government imposed sanctions on court personnel, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denounced it as corrupt.

But in 2021, the Biden administration revoked those sanctions and a new top prosecutor dropped the investigation.

In light of that history, the unanimous vote for the Senate resolution supporting the International Criminal Court represented a striking change. Mr. Graham attributed that shift to the “war crimes spree” by Mr. Putin.

“I would say this is one of Putin’s bigger accomplishments,” Mr. Graham said. “I didn’t think it was possible but he did it — and that’s for him to rehabilitate the I.C.C. in the eyes of the Republican Party and the American people.”

One of the most contentious items in New York’s $220 billion budget deal had little to do with fiscal issues: For the second time, legislators revised laws governing bail for criminal defendants that they had passed just three years ago.

Those measures barred judges from setting bail for defendants charged with less serious crimes; those defendants were released while they awaited trial without posting bail. Another law passed in 2019 also forced prosecutors to meet more stringent requirements for turning over evidence to defense lawyers.

Governor Kathy Hochul, a moderate Democrat, pushed for changes in those laws during an election year marked by rising gun violence.

The New York City mayor, Eric Adams, signaled on Friday that he was not satisfied by the agreement to revise the law reached in Albany last week as part of state budget negotiations, saying in a television interview that it is “only halftime” and “clearly, there’s more to be done.” But some prosecutors in New York City welcomed the changes.

Public defenders have argued that the process was driven by politics and not data. The revised law, they contend, will result in more people being held at Rikers Island — which disproportionately holds people of color and is already in crisis — while public safety will not benefit.

Here’s a guide to the changes and how they were made:

A 2019 Rewrite

Bail is a sum of money that a defendant posts in exchange for freedom before a trial. It is returned when a case has concluded. New York rewrote bail laws in 2019 so that fewer people awaiting trial landed behind bars because they could not afford to post bail.

Under the legislation, judges were no longer able to set bail for a wide-ranging list of misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies. Those included burglary, stalking, assault without serious injury, many drug offenses and some kinds of arson and robbery. People charged with those offenses were released to await trial, although some were subject to monitoring.

And in cases where bail could be set, the new rules compelled judges to consider a defendant’s ability to pay and to choose the “least restrictive” means necessary to ensure that defendants returned to court.

The new rules were implemented, in part, to prevent low-income defendants from being disproportionately jailed because they could not pay.

But those changes, which took effect in January 2020, were met with fierce backlash from many district attorneys, judges, law enforcement officials and Republicans. Critics, including Dermot F. Shea, the former New York City Police Department commissioner, blamed the legislation for a spate of serious crimes shortly after the new rules went into effect, with little evidence to support that argument.

Supporters of the law noted that crime statistics can change for many reasons, and researchers say that it is difficult to isolate the impact of reforms from the social disruptions caused by the pandemic.

Revisions in 2020

After a wave of criticism from law enforcement officials and Republicans, lawmakers agreed upon an initial set of changes.

Those measures, which passed in April 2020 and took effect that July, added two dozen crimes to the list of serious charges for which a judge could impose cash bail. They included sex trafficking, grand larceny, second-degree burglary, vehicular assault and any crime that results in a death.

The revisions also added conditions under which a judge could consider a defendant’s criminal history in setting bail. Setting bail was allowed for certain “persistent offenders,” for example, or when new felonies were committed by someone on probation or parole, even when the offenses were nonviolent.

Fresh Arguments in 2022

Bail became a matter of debate again this year after Mr. Adams unveiled an ambitious public safety plan in January.

In New York, bail is imposed solely to ensure that people return to court; judges are not supposed to set high bail for defendants who they think might be a public safety risk. New York is the only state without a so-called dangerousness standard. Mr. Adams wanted judges to be able to consider a defendant’s dangerousness.

Last month, Ms. Hochul began to push lawmakers to change the law, casting her plan as targeted tweaks rather than wholesale rollbacks. Progressive politicians have disputed that characterization.

The New Rewrite

Although the changes adopted in the budget are relatively modest compared to those initially proposed, their effect is to give judges more discretion in a few key areas in the criminal process.

While judges still must choose the least restrictive means to ensure a defendant returns to court, and cannot explicitly assess a defendant’s “dangerousness,” they will need to weigh specific factors in setting bail, including whether a defendant is accused of causing “serious harm” to someone and whether a defendant has a history of using or possessing a gun.

The law also expands the number of crimes for which defendants can be required to pay bail, by creating stricter rules for people accused of repeated offenses that harm people or property. Under the new law, bail can be set even for some minor offenses such as shoplifting, if an individual commits more than one such offense in a certain time frame.

In an effort to avoid imprisoning people who have committed crimes of poverty, lawmakers included an exception for thefts that are considered “negligible,” though it is not yet clear how that term will be defined.

The impact of both of these provisions will greatly depend on how judges interpret them, and the degree to which they are seen as an invitation to impose stricter conditions on people awaiting trial.

Gun Crimes

Judges in New York can already set bail for most gun crimes. The new law adds a few less commonly charged crimes to that list, including the sale of a firearm to a minor.

The law also lowers the threshold required to bring a charge of gun trafficking.

Changes to the Discovery Rules

The state’s discovery law — which governs how the prosecution shares evidence with the defense in a case — was rewritten in 2019. Defense attorneys had said that prosecutors were taking too long to turn over crucial facts, leaving defendants to languish for months awaiting trial. The revision required the prosecutors to turn over 21 kinds of material, including all electronically created or stored information pertaining to a case, in a tight time frame, or risk having it dismissed.

The new law preserves this requirement but clarifies the expectations for prosecutors, and it gives judges more discretion over whether a case should be thrown out when deadlines are not met. Ms. Hochul described the changes as being aimed at preventing automatic dismissals of cases when prosecutors operated “in good faith,” even though they failed to make a disclosure.

Jonah E. Bromwich contributed reporting.