A South Korean marine colonel who faced insubordination and defamation charges after accusing President Yoon Suk Yeol of whitewashing his investigation into a marine’s death was acquitted by a court-martial on Thursday.

A public uproar over the case of the colonel, Park Jung-hun, rocked South Korea for months last year, prompting opposition lawmakers to put forward a bill to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate his allegations. The political confrontation intensified ​as Mr. Yoon vetoed the bill three times and the opposition threatened to impeach him.

Mr. Yoon eventually was impeached by the opposition-dominated National Assembly, but for another reason: his six-hour imposition of martial law last month, during which he was accused of sending troops into the Assembly, which he said had tried to paralyze his government​. He was also accused of ordering the arrests of his political enemies.

Months before that, the opposition had cited the prosecution of Colonel Park as a​n example of how Mr. Yoon’s government abused its ​authority to silence ​dissenting voices.

In its ruling on Thursday, a three-judge panel at the Central District Military Court in Seoul cleared ​Colonel Park of insubordination and defaming senior military officers. He had denied the charges, saying they were filed in retaliation for ​his efforts to hold senior officers in the South Korean Marine Corps accountable for the death of ​Lance Cpl. Chae Su-geun in July 2023.

Lance Corporal Chae and other marines had been sent to search for missing residents in central South Korea after the town was hit by floods, but they were given no life jackets ​and ordered to wear knee-high rubber boots that impeded their movement as they waded through the fast-moving, waist-deep floodwaters. Lance Corporal Chae was swept away and later found dead.

Colonel Park, who led an investigation into the incident, concluded that eight superior officers, including Maj. Gen. Im Seong-geun, the commander of the 1st Marine Division, had been responsible for Lance Corporal Chae’s death through negligence.​

He later accused the Defense Ministry of whitewashing ​his inquiry and absolving top military brass of responsibility. He blamed Mr. Yoon, who he said “flew into a rage” after being told that his report held senior commanders responsible for the death. Colonel Park cited the marines’ top commander as his source ​for his knowledge of Mr. Yoon’s outburst, but the commander denied making such a statement.

Colonel Park ​said he resisted pressure from the Defense Ministry to expunge the names of senior officers like Major General Im as criminal suspects, and that he sent his files, as required by law, to the national police for further investigation. The Defense Ministry retracted the files and later sent the police a revised version, which named only two of the original eight suspects, both of whom were lower-ranking lieutenant colonels.

Mr. Yoon has not addressed Colonel Park’s allegation against him and has not been charged in the case. But Colonel Park was indicted on charges of ​​defaming his superiors and disobeying an order to postpone sending his files to the police​.

In its ruling on Thursday, the military court panel said the insubordination charge could not stand because the Marines’ leadership had no right to delay sending Colonel Park’s findings to the police. It also said there was not enough evidence that the colonel had intended to defame his superiors.

The opposition’s efforts to launch a parliamentary investigation into Mr. Yoon’s role in Colonel Park​’s case have been sidetracked by the​ political turmoil caused by his impeachment.

“There is a long way to go to find out the truth about the death of Lance Corporal Chae,” Colonel Park said at a news conference after the ruling on Thursday.

The House on Thursday passed legislation that would impose sanctions on officials at the International Criminal Court, making a frontal assault on the tribunal in a rebuke of its move to charge top Israeli leaders with war crimes for their offensive against Hamas in Gaza.

The bill instructs the president to freeze property assets and deny visas to any foreigners who materially or financially contributed to the court’s efforts to “investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute a protected person.” Protected persons are defined as all current and former military and government officials of the United States and allies that have not consented to the court’s jurisdiction, such as Israel.

The measure is one of several that were pushed through the House by Republicans last year but died in the Democratic-led Senate, and is now all but certain to be enacted now that Republicans control both chambers of Congress and Mr. Trump is taking office on Jan. 20.

Last year, a similar measure drew some bipartisan support in the House but still faced resistance among many Democrats, who joined Republicans in criticizing the I.C.C.’s move to prosecute Israeli leaders but called the sanctions overly broad and ineffective. With Republicans now in charge, the barriers to the bill’s passage appear to have fallen away.

“The I.C.C.’s rogue actions only enable the terrorists who seek to wipe Israel off the map, and they cannot be allowed to stand unchecked,” Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, said on the floor this week. “In November, I promised that if Leader Schumer wouldn’t bring the I.C.C. sanctions bill to the floor, Republicans would. And we’ll soon fulfill that promise and have a vote to support our ally Israel.”

The 243-to-140 vote in the House, in which 45 Democrats joined all Republicans to support the bill, reflected the considerable bipartisan aggravation among lawmakers with the court’s decision to pursue Israeli officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity alongside the leaders of Hamas, whose deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, started a bloody backlash in the Gaza Strip.

“America is passing this law because a kangaroo court is seeking to arrest the prime minister of our great ally,” Representative Brian Mast, Republican of Florida and the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on the floor. He accused the court of antisemitism, trying to prevent the Israeli military from being successful and of stymying efforts to release Israeli and American hostages being held by Hamas.

“This bill sends an incredibly important message across the globe,” Mr. Mast added. “Do not get in the way of America or our allies trying to bring our people home. You will be given no quarter, and again, you will certainly not be welcome on American soil.”

The United States has sent Israel shipments of weapons worth billions of dollars since the start of the armed conflict, despite international condemnation of its assault on Gaza and accusations from human rights groups that its actions there are tantamount to genocide. Efforts to broker a cease-fire have eluded the Biden administration. Mr. Trump said this week that if Hamas did not release Israeli hostages by his inauguration, “all hell will break out in the Middle East.”

Congressional Republicans have been trying to crack down on the court since May, when its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, announced he was seeking warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and its defense minister at the time, Yoav Gallant, alongside Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza; Ismail Haniyeh, its Qatar-based chief; and Muhammad Deif, its top military commander. The House first passed a bill to impose sanctions on court officials and their associates just two weeks later.

In November, the court issued warrants for Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Gallant and Mr. Deif for war crimes and crimes against humanity. By that point, Mr. Sinwar and Mr. Haniyeh had been confirmed as killed by Israeli forces. Israel has also claimed to have killed Mr. Deif.

Proponents of the bill have argued that the sanctions are a necessary rebuke of the court’s move to equate Israel’s leaders with the top brass of a terrorist group like Hamas. They have also insisted that the measure is an important repudiation of what they see as overstepping by the court, since Israel, like the United States, has not consented to its jurisdiction.

The bill is “critically important not just for our friendship with our ally Israel but for our own national security, the protection of our men and women in uniform,” Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas and the author of the bill, said on the floor. He argued that if the United States failed to impose sanctions on the court, U.S. service members could be targeted for their conduct in foreign conflicts.

The I.C.C., Mr. Roy added, “should have no authority over our people, no authority over the prime minister of Israel.”

Most Democrats objected to the legislation, arguing that it was trying to punish too wide a swath of people for the decision.

“Republicans want to sanction the I.C.C. simply because they don’t want the rules to apply to everyone,” said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts. “There is no international. right to vengeance, and what we are seeing in Gaza is vengeance.”

The International Criminal Court claims jurisdiction over alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide that are committed by citizens of states that have recognized the court or occur in countries that have recognized the court. The Palestinian Territories did so in 2015, a few years after the United Nations admitted Palestine as an observer state.

The United States and Israel were among only seven countries that voted against the creation of the criminal court in 1998. Though both countries later became signatories to its founding document, the Rome Statute, neither country ratified it.

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s suggestion on Tuesday that the United States might reclaim the Panama Canal — potentially by force — unsettled Panamanians, who used to live with the presence of the U.S. military in the canal zone and were invaded by American forces once before.

Few appeared to be taking Mr. Trump’s threats very seriously, but Panama’s foreign minister, Javier Martínez-Acha, made his country’s position clear at a news conference hours after the American president-elect mused aloud about retaking the canal, which the United States built but turned over to Panama in the late 1990s.

“The sovereignty of our canal is nonnegotiable and is part of our history of struggle and an irreversible conquest,” Mr. Martínez-Acha said. “Let it be clear: The canal belongs to the Panamanians and it will continue to be that way.”

Experts said that Mr. Trump’s real goal might have been intimidation, perhaps aimed at securing favorable treatment from Panama’s government for American ships that use the passageway. More broadly, they said, he might be trying to send a forceful message across a region that will be critical to his goals of controlling the flow of migrants toward the U.S. border.

“If the U.S. wanted to flout international law and act like Vladimir Putin, the U.S. could invade Panama and recover the canal,” said Benjamin Gedan, director of the Wilson Center’s Latin America Program in Washington, adding, “No one would see it as a legitimate act, and it would bring not only grievous damage to its image, but instability to the canal.”

In recent weeks, as he prepares to take office, Mr. Trump has talked repeatedly not just about taking over the Panama Canal, but also about buying Greenland from Denmark (though it is not, as it happens, for sale). He returned to those expansionist themes in a rambling speech on Tuesday at Mar-a-Lago, his estate in Florida, and this time refused to rule out using military force to retake the canal.

“It might be that you’ll have to do something,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Trump’s comments have not sat well with the people of Panama.

Raúl Arias de Para, an ecotourism entrepreneur and a descendant of one of the country’s founding politicians, said talk of American military force stirred memories among his compatriots of the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989. The military action then, he noted, was aimed at deposing the country’s authoritarian leader, Manuel Noriega.

“That was not an invasion to colonize or take territory,” Mr. Arias de Para said. “It was tragic for those who lost their loved ones, but it liberated us from a formidable dictatorship.”

Of Mr. Trump’s threat to send the military to retake the canal, he said, “It’s a possibility that’s so remote, so absurd.” The United States has the right under the treaty to defend the canal if its operations are threatened, he said, “but that’s not the case.”

Some experts said Mr. Trump might be hoping to obtain assurances from Panama’s president, José Raúl Mulino, that he would do even more to stop the flow of migrants through the Darién Gap, the jungle stretch that hundreds of thousands of migrants have crossed on their way north, fueling a surge at the U.S. border.

Mr. Mulino has already pushed hard to deter migrants.

“There is no country in which the United States has found greater collaboration on migration than Panama,” said Jorge Eduardo Ritter, a former foreign affairs minister and Panama’s first canal affairs minister.

On his first day in office, Mr. Mulino approved an arrangement with the United States to curb migration through the Darién region with the help of U.S.-funded flights to repatriate migrants entering Panama illegally. Since then, the number of crossings has dropped drastically, with the lowest figures seen in nearly two years.

If Mr. Trump’s administration carries out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, it will also need countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to agree to receive flights carrying not only their own deported citizens, but also people from other nations, something Panama has not agreed to do.

Experts said it was just as likely that Mr. Trump was angling for a discount for U.S. ships, which make up the largest proportion of vessels transiting the passage between oceans. Fees have gone up as the Panama Canal Authority has been grappling with drought and the cost of creating a new reservoir to counter it.

“I imagine the president-elect would settle for a U.S. discount at the canal and declare victory,” said Mr. Gedan, of the Wilson Center.

Many experts on the region, he said, view Mr. Trump’s combative remarks as “standard operating procedure for a once-and-future president who uses threats and intimidation, even with U.S. partners and friendly countries.”

After lengthy negotiations, the United States, then under President Jimmy Carter, agreed in the late 1970s to a plan to gradually turn the canal it had built in Panama over to the country where it lay. The exchange was completed in December 1999.

Theories about why Mr. Trump appears focused on the canal were swirling this week. Some noted that ceding the canal to Panama has long been a sore point for Republicans.

Others said Mr. Trump was upset that ports at the ends of the canal are controlled by companies out of Hong Kong. Panama’s president has dismissed those concerns.

“There is absolutely no Chinese interference or participation in anything to do with the Panama Canal,” Mr. Mulino said at a news conference in December.

A small country with more than four million inhabitants and no active military, as per its Constitution, Panama would be in no position to stave off the U.S. military. Protests, however, would most likely erupt, and might paralyze the Panama Canal, with disastrous effects on global trade and particularly on the United States, experts agreed.

Panama, said Mr. Ritter, the former foreign minister, can only hope the United States abides by international law. “This is the case of the egg against the stone,” he said.

Deadly wildfires ravage Southern California as water runs low

Multiple out-of-control blazes in the Los Angeles area yesterday killed at least two people and seriously injured many others. The fires destroyed homes and businesses and blanketed highways in smoke. Officials warned of a dwindling water supply and said the worst was yet to come. Follow our live coverage here.

Tens of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes, and more areas were placed under evacuation orders by the hour. At least 18 school districts reported closures, and about 400,000 energy customers were without power. Air quality worsened as smoke poured into the sky. Here’s a map of the evacuations.

Hurricane-level winds in the area reached as high as 160 kilometers per hour, fueling the fires and hampering efforts to contain the devastation. Multiple firefighting agencies responded with strike teams, but the wind forced them to ground aircraft, making the fires particularly difficult to fight.

Context: The winter and late fall tend to produce catastrophic fires in California, and scientists have found that fires in the region have been moving faster. An analysis of 60,000 wildfires in the contiguous U.S. between 2001 and 2020 found that growth rates had increased over the decades in California and other parts of the West. As areas there become hotter and dryer, the ground becomes more flammable.

World leaders reacted to Trump’s foreign policy threats

On Tuesday, President-elect Donald Trump suggested that the U.S. might reclaim the Panama Canal by military intervention. Then he hinted that the same thing could be done to annex Greenland. He also threatened to use “economic force” to make Canada part of the U.S. and suggested that the Gulf of Mexico should be renamed the “Gulf of America.” The responses from world leaders were mixed.

“The sovereignty of our canal is nonnegotiable and is part of our history of struggle and an irreversible conquest,” Panama’s foreign minister, Javier Martínez-Acha, said. Residents of Greenland appeared to be bewildered and anxious. “This is all getting scary,” a native Greenlander said.

Canada was blunt. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded in a social media post that “there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States.” Mexico had some fun with it. During a news conference yesterday, President Claudia Sheinbaum rejected several of Trump’s assertions and joked that the U.S. should be renamed “Mexican America.”

Related: Trump vowed that “all hell will break out in the Middle East” if Israeli hostages were not freed in the next two weeks. Gazans were left to wonder: If this is not hell, then what is?

U.K. released evidence from a war crimes inquiry in Afghanistan

British special forces soldiers used extreme methods against militants in Afghanistan, according to testimony released yesterday as part of a British Ministry of Defense inquiry into allegations of war crimes. The evidence paints a disturbing portrait of an elite fighting force acting with impunity and putting body counts above all other benchmarks.

The testimony came from email exchanges, letters and witness statements by senior officers and rank-and-file soldiers. One member of a British unit said that the troops acted as if they had “a golden pass allowing them to get away with murder.”

Armia Khalil, an artist who worked as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, met a visitor in 2023 who was clearly looking for something specific. Their five-minute talk in the museum’s Egypt wing changed Khalil’s life.

The visitor turned out to be a museum curator planning an exhibition. After Khalil showed him his art, it was included in the show.

Lives lived: Perry, the miniature donkey who was the model for Donkey in the “Shrek” franchise, has died at 30.

What determines longevity?

There are countless people who live to be 100 years old, and their daily habits don’t always adhere to common medical advice — they drink, they smoke, they don’t exercise. Helen Reichert, a cigarette smoker who lived for more than a century, outlived all the doctors who told her to quit.

But decades of research have shown cases like Reichert’s to be more of an anomaly than a motivation to let loose. So, how much of a person’s longevity comes down to lifestyle, and how much is because of luck — or lucky genetics?

Both can be factors in how long you live. Read more.

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Lebanon’s fractured Parliament overcame more than two years of gridlock on Thursday to choose a new president, a critical step toward bringing stability to a country attempting to recover from economic catastrophe and a devastating war.

Lawmakers elected Gen. Joseph Aoun, the commander of the Lebanese military, by an overwhelming majority in the second round of voting, after he failed to achieve the necessary majority in the initial vote. It marked a breakthrough toward forming a government with a mandate to lead the country after stalemate under weak caretaker rule.

The vote was seen as a crucial milestone for Lebanon, which has endured a series of disasters in recent years, including an economic collapse and a war between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah that has left large parts of the country in ruins.

The election — which frequently descended into shouting matches — also came at an unnerving time for Lebanon and the wider region. In neighboring Syria, an untested new government is attempting to chart a path forward and rebuild after years of civil war. The fall of the Assad regime in Syria and the defeat of Hezbollah mean a sudden loss of power for their patron, Iran.

Lebanon’s international backers, including the United States, have implied that postwar financial support is contingent on the election of a president. According to the World Bank, the Israel-Hezbollah war, which has been suspended during a fragile 60-day cease-fire, has cost Lebanon $8.5 billion in damages.

Since October 2022, when Michel Aoun stepped down as president at the end of his six-year term, the Parliament has failed in 12 previous votes to elect a successor. But Hezbollah, long a dominant political force in Lebanon, was deeply weakened by the war with Israel and analysts noted that the group likely felt it had to make concessions because of the scale of Lebanon’s financial need.

The new president, who is not related to Michel Aoun, is considered by analysts to have U.S. backing and is widely respected in Lebanon. He has led the country’s armed forces since 2017, a role that placed him at the helm of the single national institution that enjoys cross-sectarian support.

“He is seen as an acceptable figure by all of Lebanon’s political elite,” said Lina Khatib, an associate fellow at Chatham House, a London-based research organization. “This is tied to the perception in Lebanon that the Lebanese army is an institution working in the national interest.”

Diplomats hope Mr. Aoun’s stature will allow him to exercise continued influence over the military and lead to the full implementation of the U.N. Security Council’s Resolution 1701 — a 2006 agreement that ended the previous Israel-Hezbollah war but failed to keep the peace. They hope it will be a blueprint for a longer-term peace once the current cease-fire ends.

Mr. Aoun is now expected to appoint a prime minister, in consultation with Parliament, and the prime minister will then form a government. With no faction holding a majority, that could be a long process.

Pierre Poilievre, the man who is the favorite to become Canada’s next leader, has painted his country as “broken” and ridden with “crime and chaos.” He has derided Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a “wacko” and his ministers as “crazy,’’ “disastrous,’’ “incompetent and discredited.’’

In Parliament, he called a leftist opposition leader and former Trudeau supporter “a fake, a phony and a fraud’’ and a “sellout.’’ Enraged, the leader stood up from his seat, walked into the aisle, and yelled, “I’m right here, bro.”

“Do it,’’ Mr. Poilievre shot back as the House speaker struggled to restore calm and pleaded that lawmakers respect “the rules that we have.’’

Mr. Poilievre, 45, the opposition Conservative Party leader, has been stretching the rules in Canada’s political discourse with a combative, attack-driven style and an anti-elite, populist message that has been described as authentic by supporters and Trumpian by critics.

So far, it’s worked.

For the past year, Mr. Poilievre and his party have enjoyed a double-digit lead in the polls over Mr. Trudeau and his Liberal Party. If the polls hold, Mr. Poilievre will emerge as the next prime minister in a general election that must be held by October but will most likely be held in the spring after Mr. Trudeau’s announcement on Monday that he would resign as party leader and prime minister once his party decides on a successor.

A career politician long known as a fierce attack-dog for his party, with an instinctive sense of the themes that resonate among voters, Mr. Poilievre has successfully pummeled the unpopular Mr. Trudeau in the past year and made him appear out of touch.

Mr. Poilievre drove the nation’s political agenda by handpicking issues — housing costs, inflation and immigration — that, according to many Canadians, Mr. Trudeau’s government had underestimated or mishandled.

But in a news conference announcing his resignation, Mr. Trudeau said that Mr. Poilievre’s “vision for this country is not the right one for Canadians,’’ adding that the opposition leader was not offering “an ambitious, optimistic view of the future.’’

Whether Mr. Poilievre can cling to his lead in the polls, or even build on it, as voters now get to know him better remains unclear. In the months ahead, the Liberal Party’s choice of a successor could yield a bump in the party’s popularity. And Mr. Poilievre, who became leader of the Conservatives in 2022, will have to campaign on his own agenda to win over mainstream voters.

“He’d be very different from any other prime minister we’ve had,’’ said Duane Bratt, a political scientist at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta. “He’s been very combative, and he’s been like that his whole life. That’s great as an opposition leader, and even as a junior minister. But can he do that as prime minister?’’

Like other populist leaders, Mr. Poilievre has tapped into the post-pandemic frustrations of voters over rising living costs, unaffordable housing and what to many seemed like a smug Trudeau government that made big decisions — like increasing immigration to historical levels or imposing a carbon tax — without much explanation or consultation.

Three years ago, Mr. Poilievre was one of the few politicians to openly support truckers who paralyzed the center of Ottawa, the capital, for weeks to protest vaccine mandates.

“He’s channeled an anti-elitism in Canada,’’ said Lori Turnbull, a political scientist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. “It is populist, it is anti-institutional. That is a big part of his messaging.’’

Mr. Poilievre has pushed a traditionally conservative message of personal freedom, small government, lower taxes, being tough on crime and softer on regulations on Canada’s oil industry.

But he has laced his message with railings against “globalist Davos elites,’’ threatening to fire Canada’s central banker, embracing cryptocurrency and attacking the mainstream media, especially the public broadcaster, the C.B.C., which he has vowed to defund.

“The problem we’ve had in this country and in all of the countries that have been afflicted by this horrendous utopian wokeism is that it’s been focused on the grand, the grandiosity of the leadership of the egotistical personalities on top and not the things that are grand and great about the common people,’’ Mr. Poilievre said in a recent interview with Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist and conservative social media star.

“And that is another reason why I think we’re doing very well,’’ Mr. Poilievre added. “People are saying, finally, there’s someone who’s focused on letting me take back control of my own life.’’

Elon Musk, the billionaire and one of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s most influential supporters, said “great interview” about Mr. Poilievre’s appearance on Mr. Peterson’s podcast. Mr. Musk appeared to embrace Mr. Poilievre even as he continued to belittle Mr. Trudeau.

“Girl, you’re not the governor of Canada anymore, so doesn’t matter what you say,’’ Mr. Musk posted on social media after Mr. Trudeau said there was not “a snowball’s chance in hell’’ that Canada would become part of the United States, as Mr. Trump has suggested.

In his personal life, Mr. Poilievre couldn’t be more different from Mr. Trudeau, who — as the son of Pierre Trudeau, who led Canada for nearly 16 years and helped define Canada’s modern identity — grew up in the prime minister’s official residence in Ottawa.

In an apparent effort to emphasize his modest origins, Mr. Poilievre has often told the story of how he was born in Calgary to a 16-year-old mother and given up for adoption. His adoptive parents were schoolteachers who separated when he was 12, after which his father came out as gay.

When he was elected Conservative Party leader in a landslide in 2022, he saluted his biological mother, his adoptive parents and his father’s longtime partner, all of whom were in the audience.

“We’re a complicated and mixed-up bunch, like most families, like our country,’’ said Mr. Poilievre, who supports same-sex marriage and abortion rights.

Mr. Poilievre has two young children with his wife, Anaida Galindo, a former Senate aide he met in Ottawa. Ms. Poilievre was born in Venezuela but grew up with her family in Montreal. Her husband has often referred to the benefits of immigration by citing as an example Ms. Poilievre’s family, saying they came to Canada “with almost nothing’’ and “like so many immigrant families, built our country.’’

Involved in conservative politics in Calgary since his early teens, Mr. Poilievre became the youngest member of Parliament when he was elected in 2004 at the age of 25. He rose quickly through the ranks, impressing older politicians with his hard work, acumen and combativeness, earning the nickname, “Skippy.’’

He tried to shed the image evoked by the nickname with a makeover in the summer of 2023. Abandoning navy blue suits and ties, he began appearing in public in jeans and sometimes tightfitting T-shirts. He jettisoned his squarish glasses for contacts and aviator sunglasses.

“He’s transformed his own image from this nerdy little guy with the glasses and scowl on his face all the time to this sort of Bitcoin bro who is appealing to young voters, male voters,’’ said Ms. Turnbull, the political scientist.

Mr. Poilievre said in the interview with Mr. Peterson that he had become “tougher” since becoming Conservative leader and was ready to become prime minister.

“It’s personal for me,’’ he said. “I don’t come from a privileged or wealthy background. I was adopted by schoolteachers, grew up in a normal suburban neighborhood. We didn’t always have money. But I was able to get here.”