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Latino voters have never seemed more electorally important than in the coming midterm elections: the first real referendum on the Biden era of government.

Latinos make up 20 percent of registered voters in two crucial Senate races — Arizona and Nevada — and as much or more in over a dozen competitive House races.

In the past 10 years, the conventional wisdom about Latino voters has been uprooted. We explore a poll, conducted by The Times, to better understand how they view the parties vying for their vote.

Guest: Jennifer Medina, a national politics reporter for The New York Times.

In September 2021, a group of female minority students at Arizona State University confronted two white male students who were studying in the library’s multicultural center.

The women were upset with what they saw as blatant antagonism: One of the men sported a “Didn’t Vote for Biden” shirt, the other had a “Police Lives Matter” laptop sticker. The women felt they had chosen the multicultural center in order to rile them. A heated row between both parties erupted, a video of which quickly went viral, threatening to upend the lives of all involved.

For The New York Times, Sarah Viren, a journalist and essayist, explored the incident in the context of “the widening gyre of the culture wars.” The row at Arizona State was, she explained, “a symbolic fight,” one that raised questions of “wokeism” and “free speech,” the perils of viral videos, and the purpose of “safe spaces.”

“It was a brief drama that was also a metaphor,” Ms. Viren wrote. “But watching and rewatching that drama unfold from my computer, I kept asking myself: a metaphor for what?”

Why we can’t understand this moment in politics without first understanding the transformation of American evangelicalism.

“The Run-Up” is a new politics podcast from The New York Times. Leading up to the 2022 midterms, we’ll be sharing the latest episode here every Saturday. If you want to hear episodes when they first drop on Thursdays, you can search for “The Run-Up” wherever you get your podcasts. Visit nytimes.com/therunup to learn more.

As the sun came up over Florida yesterday, a fuller picture began to emerge of the destruction that Hurricane Ian had inflicted on the state and its residents.

The Category 4 storm washed away roads, bridges, cars, boats and homes. The damage is so extensive that, according to the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, it may take years to rebuild.

Guests: Patricia Mazzei, the Miami bureau chief for The New York Times; Richard Fausset, a Times correspondent based in Atlanta; Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, a national news reporter for The Times; and Hilary Swift, a photojournalist.

Kirill, 24, works at a nonprofit for homeless people in the Moscow region. He does not support the policies of President Vladimir V. Putin and is vehemently against the invasion of Ukraine.

After suffering setbacks in the war, Mr. Putin announced a military draft a week ago. Kirill was among those called up. As he hides out to avoid being served his papers, Kirill spoke to Sabrina Tavernise about how his life has changed.

Guest: Kirill, a 24-year-old from Moscow who is attempting to avoid the draft and who asked that only his first name be used to avoid reprisals.

Mahsa Amini, 22, traveled from her hometown in the province of Kurdistan to the Iranian capital, Tehran, this month. Emerging from the subway, she was arrested for failing to cover her hair modestly enough. Three days later, she was dead.

The anger over Ms. Amini’s death has prompted days of rage, exhilaration and street battles across Iran, with women stripping off their head scarves — and even burning them — in the most significant outpouring of dissent against the ruling system in more than a decade.

Guest: Farnaz Fassihi, a reporter for The New York Times.