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http://archive.today/2025.07.08-170104/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/08/us/politics/biden-aides-election-age.html

Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s aides did not want him to speak with me.

Yet when I reached Mr. Biden on his cellphone in late March, he answered and agreed to talk. He broke his silence on his successor to criticize the early weeks of Mr. Trump’s second term. “I don’t see anything he’s done that’s been productive,” the former president said.

When I asked if he had any regrets about dropping out of the presidential race, Mr. Biden said, in a detached tone, “No, not now. I don’t spend a lot of time on regrets.” Then he hung up because he was boarding an Amtrak train.

My brief conversation with Mr. Biden prompted a cascade of concern among his top aides. One screamed at me for calling the former president directly. Others texted furiously, trying to figure out how I had obtained Mr. Biden’s phone number.

Mr. Biden had seemed open to continuing the conversation, but my subsequent calls went straight to voice mail. His automated greeting simply said, “Joe.”

Two days later, that greeting was replaced by a message from Verizon Wireless: “The number you dialed has been changed, disconnected or is no longer in service.”

The swift reaction to my call reflects the insularity that became a defining feature of the final stages of Mr. Biden’s political career. And in no instance was the protectiveness of his staff, and his failure to connect with outside voices, more pronounced than in the period after his disastrous debate performance 13 months ago. At the most perilous moment of his presidency, with his prospects for re-election teetering amid growing concerns about his age and mental acuity, Mr. Biden was all but impossible for anyone outside his tight inner circle to reach.

Instead of confronting the president with the bad news, his aides limited access to him, making it difficult for even some of his longtime friends and allies in Congress to reach him, including Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware and a close ally.

Mr. Biden’s aides never had him meet with his campaign’s pollsters. Instead, they often presented overly optimistic outlooks of the political landscape, alarming members of the campaign staff, who looked for ways to bypass his longtime advisers Steve Ricchetti and Mike Donilon to get information to the president. For the most part, they failed to reach him.

Mr. Biden had a team of campaign pollsters who were prepared to tell him the truth about the numbers, but they never got the opportunity. They were told they should present to his closest advisers — not to the president himself.

The pollsters tried to be as polite as possible, but their conclusion was damning: Their research found that Mr. Biden was just not able to persuade voters that he was up for the job. The president had no path to victory.

Two days after the presentation, Geoff Garin, one of the pollsters, checked in with Mr. Ricchetti. Mr. Ricchetti lit into him and said the presentation was out of line. It was not their job to tell them there was no path to victory. The pollsters, Mr. Ricchetti said, were supposed to provide the path to win.

When former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, met privately with Mr. Biden in the White House for a crisis meeting that July, she grew frustrated by his insistence that the polling showed no real change since the debate. Was he not seeing the numbers she was seeing?

At one point, Mr. Biden asked an aide to put Mr. Donilon on the phone because the president did not believe Ms. Pelosi. She was adamant the polls showed Mr. Biden would lose to Mr. Trump.

Mr. Donilon got on the line and said he disagreed.

In the months since Mr. Trump took office, many Democrats have expressed regret that they did not call for Mr. Biden to drop out sooner — or push him to not run for re-election at all. The former president’s closest aides maintain a different view. He should have never given into pressure and abandoned his re-election campaign, they argue.

“It was an act of insanity by the Democratic leadership,” Mr. Donilon said in an interview for this book. “Tell me why you walked away from a guy with 81 million votes.”

He added: “The only one who has run ahead among seniors. A native of Pennsylvania. Why do that?”

http://archive.today/2025.07.08-043058/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/us/politics/trump-ukraine-weapons.html

President Trump said on Monday that the United States would send more weapons to Ukraine to help it fend off Russia’s invasion, arguing that Moscow’s recent assault on Ukrainian cities left him with little choice.

Mr. Trump’s comments appeared to signal a reversal from the president after his administration paused some arms transfers to the country just last week, raising fears that the United States was retrenching its support. Instead, Mr. Trump said on Monday that he had grown unhappy with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has frustrated Mr. Trump’s hopes to broker a cease-fire.

Those statements were a remarkable turnaround for Mr. Trump, who has often expressed skepticism of U.S. aid to Ukraine and just months ago dressed down President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in the Oval Office, claiming he had been insufficiently grateful for America’s support.

The White House acknowledged last week that the administration had paused the delivery of some air defense interceptors and precision-guided bombs and missiles to Ukraine, citing Pentagon concerns that U.S. weapons stockpiles were dwindling. The decision was described at the time by a White House spokeswoman as an assessment of munitions provided around the globe.

Two people briefed on the pause, who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said that Mr. Trump had directed the Pentagon to review available munitions stockpiles around the time the United States conducted surgical bombing attacks on three Iranian nuclear weapons sites. From there, someone at the Pentagon — classifying the munitions in different categories — halted at least some of what was scheduled to be sent to Ukraine, one of the people briefed on the matter said.

Mr. Trump spoke with Mr. Zelensky on Friday, and the Ukrainian president called it a “very important and fruitful conversation.”

After the call, Mr. Trump spoke positively about supplying additional support to Ukraine, telling reporters on Air Force One that “we’ve been helping them, and we’ll continue to help them.”

He also suggested that the United States would sell more Patriot missiles to Ukraine.

http://archive.today/2025.07.07-164127/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/world/europe/ukraine-war-russia-donetsk.html

It was the dead of night, and the Ukrainian infantryman was writhing in a tree line from serious injuries to his legs, shoulder and lung.

His unit had told him by radio that they could not send anyone to evacuate him. The road to their base in the nearby city of Kostiantynivka had become a kill zone. “There were too many drones flying around,” recalled the infantryman, Oleh Chausov, as he described the experience.

Instead, he was told, the brigade would try to get him out with a small, robot-like tracked vehicle remotely operated from miles away and less visible to Russian drones than an armored carrier.

When the vehicle arrived, Mr. Chausov dragged himself aboard, his wounded legs dangling. But within 20 minutes, the vehicle hit a mine and blew up, he said. Miraculously, Mr. Chausov survived, crawled out and took shelter in a nearby trench.

He was back to square one, still trapped on the battlefield.

After a vehicle evacuating Mr. Chausov hit a mine, his unit sent a second vehicle. It carried him under cover of darkness for several hours, finally reaching Kostiantynivka at dawn, passing a building still ablaze from a recent strike. There, a medical team pulled Mr. Chausov out and rushed him to a hospital. Now recovering in western Ukraine, Mr. Chausov is still unsure how he made it out.

“There were so many drones,” he said in a recent phone interview. “It was a nightmare.”

The operation in May — detailed in separate accounts from Mr. Chausov and an officer from his unit, the 93rd Mechanized Brigade, and captured in drone footage shared with The New York Times — underscores the dire conditions Ukrainian troops face defending Kostiantynivka.

Russian forces have carved out a 10-mile-deep pocket around the Ukrainian troops defending Kostiantynivka, partly surrounding them from the east, south and west. Practically every movement in that pocket is targeted by Russian drones around the clock, according to a half-dozen Ukrainian soldiers and officers fighting in the area. Troops are often stranded for weeks without rotation or the possibility of evacuating the wounded.

“Before, they could hit targets within two or three kilometers,” or less than two miles, said the commander of the unit operating crewless vehicles in the 93rd Brigade, who asked to be identified by only his first name, Oleksandr, according to military protocol. “Now, they’re striking every 10 to 20 minutes at a consistent range of 15 kilometers from the front line. Everything within that 15-kilometer zone is being destroyed.”

http://archive.today/2025.07.04-101354/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/04/nyregion/hamptons-grocery-prices.html

It wasn’t even 8:30 on a recent morning when a shopper emptied his basket of dinner ingredients onto the counter of the Farm & Forage Market in Southampton: two king crab legs, two bags of frozen dumplings, two packages of ramen noodles and a bag of dried sea kelp.

The cash register rang up an already eye-popping tally before the customer realized he had forgotten the caviar. He tossed a jar of it onto the counter. The grand total was $1,860.

“I’ll put that on your tab, right?” asked Jonathan Bernard, owner of the tiny, tidy store. The shopper, a private chef who works in a home nearby, nodded and noted he would be back later for truffles.

This summer, an arms race among gourmet groceries has emerged with new specialty stores opening and longtime favorites expanding or adding new items — along with new, higher prices — to their shelves. Some of the big-ticket items top even the Hamptons’ much maligned $100-a-pound lobster salad, that debuted several years ago.

A top competitor is the specialty musk melon on offer at Farm & Forage. Imported from Japan, it is sprung from tenderly cared-for vines. It sells for as much as $400. (To the undiscerning eye, it looks identical to a regular, grocery store cantaloupe.)

Bethenny Frankel, the former reality TV star and entrepreneur, dropped into Farm & Forage recently and sampled the fancy fare, posting on Instagram that “we have a situation going on in the Hamptons — savage gourmet market wars.”

“This eggplant caponata makes me want to do naughty things in my own home,” she said in another post as she held a fork-full of the $15 dish to her mouth.

The video is titled “Round Swamp Who?” — a reference to a different gourmet grocery, Round Swamp Farm, whose outlet in Bridgehampton during lunchtime last week was swarmed by shoppers digging into the grab-and-go bonanza of prepared meals stacked six-deep in large store coolers. Popular items were $17.50 containers of curry chicken salad; $30.21 Mexican street corn sprout salad and $22 chicken fingers with $15 chipotle mayonnaise dip.

At the Loaves & Fishes Foodstore in Sagaponack, home of the $100-a-pound lobster salad, the shelves are lined with chunky halibut fish salad, perfect deviled eggs, 36 different sauces, glistening plum tarts, cappuccino crunch cold brew coffee with homemade salted toffee and hot fudge ice cream, mousses, jams, marmalades and jars of specialty veal baby food.

Just down the street, the Sagaponack General Store is making a splash after its long-awaited reopening in May following a multiyear, multimillion-dollar renovation.

Mindy Gray, wife of Jonathan Gray, the billionaire president of the investment firm Blackstone, said she bought the store, which got its start selling sundries to farmers in the late 1800s, when it came up for sale during the Covid pandemic.

Shoppers lounged on the front porch, dogs perched at their feet; others perused the $16.95 cartons of pale pink oyster mushrooms and the $8 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Some sat on benches in the backyard near a parking lot lined with beige and white gravel so clean it looked like each nugget had been hand wiped.

“I’m very impressed with what she’s done, but she has a lot of resources and can put out a very fancy neighborhood-like product,” said Tony Schlesinger, a retired lawyer from Brooklyn who spends much of the summer in the Hamptons.

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/vwyJL

There are roughly two million people in Gaza. Israel, which has frequently hindered the flow of aid to the enclave since the start of the war in October 2023, cut it off completely for about 80 days from March to May to put pressure on Hamas, which it accuses of looting donated food. Palestinians in Gaza were left with little to eat and are still facing widespread hunger, according to humanitarian groups.

The State Department said on Thursday that it had approved $30 million in funding for a fledgling aid distribution system in Gaza backed by Israel and run mostly by American contractors, which has seen deadly violence erupt near its sites.

Humanitarian groups have been raising alarms since before the project’s operations began late last month. There are only a few distribution sites, most in southern Gaza, and Israeli soldiers are stationed nearby. Aid groups say that situation displaces residents, exposes them to danger and militarizes humanitarian assistance.

Deadly violence has erupted frequently near the sites as large numbers of people have approached them seeking food. The Gaza health ministry said on Wednesday that hundreds had been killed near the distribution points in the past month.

Witnesses have repeatedly reported that Israeli troops opened fire near the new aid hubs. The Israeli military has said that it fired “warning shots” when people approached soldiers threateningly.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has pushed back on reports of violence near its sites, saying that news outlets have sometimes misreported where shootings took place. It has also accused Hamas of spreading misinformation and threatening aid workers.

Thomas Pigott, a State Department spokesman, said at a news briefing that the new group running the food distribution centers, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, was “absolutely incredible and should be commended and supported.” He called on other countries to follow suit and contribute funding to the group, which has been criticized by the United Nations and many humanitarian organizations.

But the U.N. humanitarian agency said on Thursday that the needs of people in Gaza were very far from being met.

“Families in Gaza are risking their lives to access food, with nearly daily mass casualties reported as people attempt to reach supplies,” the agency said in a report. “Most families survive on just one nutritiously poor meal per day, while adults routinely skip meals to prioritize children, the elderly and the ill amid deepening hunger and desperation.”

Mr. Pigott declined to respond to questions about whether the United States would press Israel to let more aid into the enclave and whether the new foundation would expand its operations to reach more people.

Asked about the violence that has broken out near the foundation’s sites, Mr. Pigott referred reporters to the Israeli military, which has said it is investigating some of the incidents. He blamed “Hamas propaganda” for “some of these reports.”

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/035nB

For years, the conventional wisdom in New York among strategists and candidates alike has been that in any Democratic primary, the road to victory runs through Black communities.

Then came Zohran Mamdani.

In the race that culminated on Tuesday, Mr. Mamdani forged a new multiracial political coalition to become the likely Democratic nominee for mayor and topple Andrew M. Cuomo, the former governor, who had far more name recognition, financial firepower — and political baggage.

And Mr. Mamdani did so even as he lost many of New York City’s most solidly Black neighborhoods. A New York Times analysis of the results shows that Mr. Cuomo dominated in precincts where at least 70 percent of residents are Black, more than doubling Mr. Mamdani’s support, 59 percent to 26 percent.

The result is a break not just from the parochial politics of New York — Black voters helped deliver the mayoralty to both Eric Adams and his predecessor, Bill de Blasio — but from the nation as a whole. Black voters have served as the Democratic Party’s most important voting bloc this century, elevating Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the party’s last three presidential nominees, oftentimes sanding down the most exuberant instincts of the left.

Most famously, Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina rescued Mr. Biden’s flagging 2020 effort by rallying Black voters before his state’s primary in a bid to thwart Senator Bernie Sanders, though Mr. Clyburn’s backing did not appear to help Mr. Cuomo in this race’s closing stretch.

The new dynamic creates a fresh sense of uncertainty for Black leaders in New York who worry about whether their influence will wane at a moment when rising costs, which Mr. Mamdani put at the center of his campaign, are pushing out growing numbers of lifelong Black residents from the city entirely. Currently, 25 percent of voters in the city are Black.

Anthonine Pierre, executive director of the Brooklyn Movement Center, said the traditional Black electorate is in a moment of transition.

Older Black voters who might be homeowners worry a candidate like Mr. Mamdani might not share their priorities. The left, she said, needs to do a better job of looking at “Black people with capital as people worth organizing.”

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/QEU1X

In the wake of last November’s election, many Democrats blamed low turnout for Kamala Harris’s defeat.

It wasn’t entirely without reason, as turnout dropped in Democratic areas, but many months later it is clear the blame was misplaced. Newly available data, based on authoritative voter turnout records, suggests that if anything, President Trump would have done even better if everyone had voted.

The new data, including a new study from Pew Research released Thursday, instead offers a more dispiriting explanation for Democrats: Young, nonwhite and irregular voters defected by the millions to Mr. Trump, costing Ms. Harris both the Electoral College and the popular vote.

The findings suggest that Mr. Trump’s brand of conservative populism once again turned politics-as-usual upside down, as his gains among disengaged voters deprived Democrats of their traditional advantage with this group, who are disproportionately young and nonwhite.

For a generation, the assumption that Democrats benefit from high turnout has underpinned the hopes and machinations of both parties, from Republican support for restrictive voting laws to Democratic hopes of mobilizing a new progressive coalition of young and nonwhite voters. It’s not clear whether Democrats will struggle with irregular voters in the future, but the data nonetheless essentially ends the debate about whether Ms. Harris lost because she alienated swing voters or because she failed to energize her base. In the end, Democrats alienated voters whose longtime support they might have taken for granted.

The post-election studies aren’t perfect, but they all tell the same story: Nonvoters preferred Mr. Trump, even if only narrowly. None show Ms. Harris winning nonvoters by the wide margin she would have needed to overcome her deficit among those who turned out.

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/WDuxY

One of the most robust studies of the 2024 election shows that President Trump’s return to the White House was powered more heavily by his ability to turn out past supporters than by winning over Democratic voters, even as he built one of the most diverse coalitions in Republican Party history.

In the end, the math was simple and significant: A larger share of voters who supported Mr. Trump in the 2020 election — 85 percent — showed up to vote for him again in 2024. Ms. Harris earned the support of just 79 percent of former President Joseph R. Biden’s 2020 voters.

The analysis showed that 5 percent of Mr. Biden’s voters flipped to Mr. Trump, while only 3 percent of Mr. Trump’s 2020 voters flipped to Ms. Harris.

But the bigger factor was turnout: 15 percent of Mr. Biden’s voters did not vote at all in 2024, Pew found.

https://archive.is/2025.06.22-050300/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/21/world/middleeast/congress-iran-strike-republicans-democrats.html

Top Republicans in Congress swiftly rallied behind President Trump on Saturday after he ordered strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites, even as senior Democrats and some G.O.P. lawmakers condemned it as an unconstitutional move that could drag the United States into a broader war in the Middle East.

In separate statements, the leading Republicans in Congress, Speaker Mike Johnson and Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, commended the military operation, calling it a necessary check on Iran’s ambitions of developing a nuclear weapon. Both men had been briefed on the military action before the strike was carried out, according to three people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

Leading national security Democrats on Capitol Hill were not informed of the strikes until after Mr. Trump had posted about them on social media, according to three people familiar with the matter who would discuss it only on the condition of anonymity.

Mr. Johnson and Mr. Thune both argued that the airstrikes were necessary after Iran had rejected diplomatic overtures to curb its nuclear program.

“The regime in Iran, which has committed itself to bringing ‘death to America’ and wiping Israel off the map, has rejected all diplomatic pathways to peace,” Mr. Thune said.

But top Democrats harshly criticized the move.

“President Trump misled the country about his intentions, failed to seek congressional authorization for the use of military force and risks American entanglement in a potentially disastrous war in the Middle East,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said in a statement. He said the president “shoulders complete and total responsibility for any adverse consequences that flow from his unilateral military action.”

Representative Jim Himes, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, condemned the operation as unconstitutional and warned that it could drag the United States into a larger conflict.

“Donald Trump’s decision to launch direct military action against Iran without congressional approval is a clear violation of the Constitution, which grants the power to declare war explicitly to Congress,” he said in a statement. “It is impossible to know at this stage whether this operation accomplished its objectives. We also don’t know if this will lead to further escalation in the region and attacks against our forces, events that could easily pull us even deeper into a war in the Middle East.”

Mr. Trump, “did not come to Congress to explain his reasons for bombing a sovereign nation and to seek authorization for these strikes,” Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado, said in a statement. “These reckless actions are going to put the lives of American service members and American citizens at risk.”

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/2tIbi

Ukraine secured a $1.7 billion military support package from Canada at the summit, but little else. Mr. Zelensky canceled a news conference scheduled for Tuesday evening. A spokesman for Mr. Zelensky did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Carney’s statement said the Group of 7 leaders had “expressed support for President Trump’s efforts to achieve a just and lasting peace in Ukraine” and were “resolute in exploring all options to maximize pressure on Russia, including financial sanctions.”

Addressing the Middle East conflict, the leaders called Iran “the principal source of regional instability and terror,” according to the statement, which added, “We urge that the resolution of the Iranian crisis leads to a broader de-escalation of hostilities in the Middle East, including a cease-fire in Gaza.”

Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany told a news outlet during the summit that Israel was doing Western powers’ “dirty work” by attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities. President Emmanuel Macron of France, by contrast, warned on Tuesday against using the conflict to force through regime change in Tehran.

“We don’t want Iran to get a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Macron told reporters. “But the biggest error would be to use military strikes to change the regime because it would then be chaos.”

Mr. Carney held significant direct talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, in which they agreed to restore diplomatic relations. The two nations expelled each other’s top diplomats last year, part of the fallout from Canada’s accusation that India had sanctioned the assassination of a Sikh activist in Canada.

Many of the leaders who attended the Group of 7 talks will be together again in Brussels next week for a NATO summit, which is expected to focus on the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. Mr. Carney said that overall, the meeting in Kananaskis had been a useful display of cooperation at a critical time.

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/SoPvR

To save its takeover of U.S. Steel, Japan’s Nippon Steel agreed to an unusual arrangement, granting the White House a “golden share” that gives the government an extraordinary amount of influence over a U.S. company.

New details of the agreement show that the structure would give President Trump and his successors a permanent stake in U.S. Steel, significant sway over its board and veto power over a wide array of company actions, an arrangement that could change the nature of foreign investment in the United States.

Under the terms of the national security pact, which the companies said they signed Friday, the U.S. government would retain a single share of preferred stock, called class G — as in gold. And U.S. Steel’s charter will list nearly a dozen activities the company cannot undertake without the approval of the American president or someone he designates in his stead.

Activities requiring the president’s permission include the company transferring production or jobs outside the United States, closing or idling plants before agreed-upon time frames and making certain changes to how it sources its raw materials.

Under the terms of the deal with the steel companies, the president could exert significant influence over U.S. Steel’s board. The president has the authority to directly appoint one of the board’s three independent directors, and approve or reject appointments for the other two, the two people familiar with the negotiations said.

The golden share in U.S. Steel cannot be transferred or sold by a future president, they said. They also described the share as “noneconomic,” meaning that it would not affect the size of other U.S. Steel shareholders’ stakes or give the U.S. government the chance to directly profit from U.S. Steel in the form of dividends.

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/TXxp4

The latest round of talks between the United States and Iran on the future of Iran’s nuclear program has been canceled, officials said on Saturday.

The two countries had been scheduled to meet for a sixth round of negotiations on Sunday in Muscat, the capital of Oman. But that diplomacy has been scuttled by the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran, which began with Israeli airstrikes on Friday. Israel’s attacks have targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities, top military commanders and senior nuclear program officials.

The senior Iranian figures killed by Israel included Ali Shamkhani, a former secretary of the Supreme National Council, who was overseeing the talks as part of a committee named by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Earlier Saturday, Iran had appeared to adopt a slightly ambiguous stance on further negotiations, calling the talks “meaningless” while also suggesting that a final decision on whether to participate was still pending.

But Iran’s stance hardened as the day went on, with Ismail Baghaei, a spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, telling reporters at a news conference in Tehran that Iranian participation would be suspended until Israel halts its attacks.

“Iran’s leadership will be wise to negotiate at this time,” McCoy Pitt, a senior State Department official, said in a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Friday focused on the crisis.

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/8qvpv

An aid group in Gaza backed by Israel and the United States said that on Wednesday night a bus carrying some of its Palestinian workers was attacked by Hamas, leaving at least five people dead and others injured.

At the time of the attack, the bus was carrying about two dozen of the group’s workers and was en route to an aid distribution site in southern Gaza, according to a statement from the group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Some of the workers “may have been taken hostage,” it said, adding that it was still gathering information.

“We condemn this heinous and deliberate attack in the strongest possible terms,” said the foundation, which is run by American contractors. “These were aid workers. Humanitarians. Fathers, brothers, sons, and friends, who were risking their lives every day to help others.”

The New York Times could not independently verify the attack. Hamas did not comment on the accusation that it had attacked workers from the group, and the Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The foundation said it held the militant group “fully responsible” for the deaths of “dedicated workers who have been distributing humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people.” The group called on the international community to condemn Hamas for the attack.

“Tonight, the world must see this for what it is: an attack on humanity,” it said.

http://archive.today/2025.06.11-113426/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/world/middleeast/israel-knesset-vote-orthodox-draft-law.html

Israel’s opposition parties said they would bring a motion to dissolve Parliament to a vote on Wednesday, presenting the most serious challenge yet to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government and raising the specter of early elections.

If the motion passes, it is unlikely that the government will fall immediately. The parliamentary process before any final vote could take months, giving the prime minister time to shore up his increasingly fractious governing coalition or set his own agenda for a return to the ballot box. But it would deal a heavy blow to his political credibility.

The opposition parties are exploiting a crisis within the governing coalition over the contentious, decades-old policy that exempts ultra-Orthodox men who are studying religion in seminaries from compulsory military service.

http://archive.today/2025.06.11-204837/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/us/politics/iran-us-iraq-diplomats-middle-east.html

The State Department has decided to reduce its diplomatic presence in Iraq, the department said in a statement on Wednesday, as tensions across the Middle East spiked amid signs that nuclear diplomacy between the United States and Iran may be deadlocked.

Word of the U.S. decision, along with a warning from the United Kingdom about new threats to Middle East commercial shipping, came hours after President Trump said in a podcast released Wednesday that he has grown “less confident” about the prospects for a deal with Iran that would limit its ability to develop nuclear weapons. American and Iranian negotiators have been planning to meet later this week for another round of talks, although Mr. Trump told reporters on Monday that Iran had adopted an “unacceptable” negotiating position.

The British warning came from the country’s maritime trade agency, which issued a public advisory saying that it had “been made aware of increased tensions within the region which could lead to an escalation of military activity having a direct impact on mariners.” The advisory urged commercial vessels transiting the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz to use heightened caution.

The sense of alarm was heightened by comments from Iran’s defense minister, General Aziz Nasirzadeh, who warned on Wednesday that in the event of a conflict following failed nuclear talks, the United States would suffer heavy losses from Iranian attacks on U.S. bases in the Middle East. His comments were reported by Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency.

The State Department did not provide details on how many personnel would be removed from Iraq, or why. The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that nonessential U.S. personnel would be withdrawn from Baghdad, and that nonessential personnel and family members of diplomats had been authorized to depart from U.S. embassies in Bahrain and Kuwait.

http://archive.today/2025.06.10-214250/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/10/business/media/terry-moran-abc-news.html

ABC News is cutting ties with the correspondent Terry Moran after he wrote derisive comments on social media that attacked President Trump and Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff, referring to both men with the term “world-class hater.”

The network suspended him on Sunday, hours after he posted a late-night message on X in which he described Mr. Miller as “a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred.”

The post was later deleted, but screenshots circulated on social media. Allies of Mr. Trump immediately pounced on Mr. Moran’s remarks, with Vice President JD Vance calling the post an “absolutely vile smear.”

The network said on Tuesday that it had decided not to renew Mr. Moran’s contract. He had worked at ABC News for 28 years.

Mr. Moran’s contract had been set to expire on Friday, according to a person with knowledge of his deal who requested anonymity to disclose sensitive details.

“We are at the end of our agreement with Terry Moran, and based on his recent post — which was a clear violation of ABC News policies — we have made the decision to not renew,” a network spokesman said in a statement. “At ABC News, we hold all of our reporters to the highest standards of objectivity, fairness and professionalism, and we remain committed to delivering straightforward, trusted journalism.”

http://archive.today/2025.06.10-210801/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/10/magazine/romania-election-tiktok-russia-maga.html

Early last December, Adrian Thiess, a well-connected political fixer in Romania, sent an urgent text message to Brad Parscale, the digital media strategist who had been working off and on for Donald J. Trump since 2012. Thiess and Parscale bonded in 2019, Thiess told me, when Parscale was managing Trump’s re-election campaign. Thiess had paid Parscale to speak at a conference in Bucharest called “Let’s Make Political Marketing Great Again” — as it happened, the day before Robert S. Mueller III, then serving as a special counsel, submitted his report about Trump’s dealings with Russia. The pair hit it off, both feeling the Russian accusations were a hoax. In the years since, Thiess had parlayed his friendship with Parscale into an entree into Trump’s inner circle, even inviting the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., to Bucharest for his own paid talk.

But it wasn’t a speaking gig that was on Thiess’s mind that night — he wanted to sound an alarm. “Have you seen what’s happening in Romania?” Thiess asked.

Thiess was referring to the Romanian presidential election, specifically to a candidate named Calin Georgescu. Georgescu was a 62-year-old agronomist who had turned to nationalist politics, starting out as a fringe candidate who claimed on television that electronic chips were planted in soft drinks. Georgescu also professed a love for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for whose manifesto attacking Dr. Anthony J. Fauci he penned an introduction in its Romanian edition. He made several promotional TikTok videos of himself that appeared to be inspired by Vladimir V. Putin’s flamboyantly macho campaign imagery — in which Georgescu was sometimes on horseback, sometimes doing judo.

The iconography was striking because Putin was extremely unpopular in Romania, a NATO member with an expanding air base on the Black Sea whose importance has grown since the war in Ukraine began. Georgescu, however, railed against NATO, which he said was dragging the country into World War III, while hailing Putin as a “patriot and a leader.” What’s more, Georgescu said he had spent no money on his campaign, and he didn’t throw a lot of big outdoor rallies like his competitors. So it came as a big surprise when, after the first round of voting in November, Georgescu won — beating all five top candidates and sending him to a runoff that would decide the election.

The next jolt came days later from Romania’s top court: It abruptly halted the second round, essentially canceling the country’s election. All ballots from the first round were thrown out, and the judges told the country to vote again. Georgescu had cheated, Romania’s intelligence agency now said — his campaign had colluded with Russia, which had run a vast disinformation campaign on, it turned out, TikTok. An army of fake accounts, some 25,000 strong, had been mobilized on the platform by the Kremlin to promote Georgescu. And authorities said a series of illegal campaign payments had been made through cryptocurrencies to support Georgescu online, leading to speculation that the candidate would soon be under criminal investigation. The accusations stunned Romanians, but the solution — to cancel an election and order a do-over — shocked the country just as much.

What follows is the story of an alliance that formed between America’s conservatives and European nationalists who saw common cause — not just in a canceled election in Romania, but across a global map where the right is on the rise. No country in the European Union has ever taken such a measure as drastic as canceling a presidential election, and it comes at a time when the political establishment across the region, facing an antidemocratic right and an increasingly anti-establishment electorate, is taking other measures once seen as unthinkable. As Thierry Breton, a former E.U. commissioner said of the canceled election: “We did it in Romania, and we will obviously do it if necessary in Germany.”

http://archive.today/2025.06.09-221437/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/09/world/canada/carney-canada-nato-military-spending.html

Declaring that Canada is too dependent on the United States for its defense, Prime Minister Mark Carney on Monday committed to having his country meet NATO’s spending target this year, seven years ahead of schedule.

The Canadian government said it would immediately add 9.3 billion Canadian dollars, about $6.8 billion, to its defense budget. That will raise total defense-related spending this year to 62.7 billion dollars, slightly higher than the 2 percent NATO target. To get there, the government included 2.5 billion Canadian dollars in spending related to “defense and security” for other departments, including the Canadian Coast Guard, an unarmed civilian agency which is under the department of fisheries.

President Trump and leaders of other allied nations have long criticized Canada for consistently falling well short of NATO’s goal of a military budget equal to 2 percent of each member’s gross domestic product. Canada’s previous government, under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, planned to raise Canada’s spending, which is at 1.37 percent, to meet the military alliance’s target by 2032.

Mr. Carney laid out a long shopping list for the military, including “new submarines, aircraft, ships, arm vehicles and artillery.”

He also said the military would add drones and sensors to monitor the seafloor in the Arctic, a vast region of the country that is becoming a source of competition among global powers like Russia and China.

Mr. Carney also said that money would be directed toward much-needed improvements, noting that three of the Royal Canadian Navy’s four diesel submarines were not seaworthy.

Mr. Carney, speaking in Toronto, said that new geopolitical threats, advances in technology and the fraying of Canada’s alliance with the United States demanded an accelerated spending schedule.

“We stood shoulder to shoulder with the Americans throughout the Cold War and in the decades that followed, as the United States played a dominant role on the world stage,” he said. “Today, that dominance is a thing of the past.”

Mr. Carney also said the country would no longer rely as extensively on American defense contractors to supply its armed forces, underscoring Canada’s strained relations with the United States and focus on shifting away from its neighbor.

While Mr. Carney promised to increase spending by billions of Canadian dollars, he did not specify where the funds would come from. Government officials spoke mostly in broad terms about how the money would be used.

http://archive.today/2025.06.09-025229/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/world/middleeast/gaza-flotilla-greta-thunberg-israel.html

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said early on Monday morning that a Gaza-bound ship carrying a dozen pro-Palestinian activists and some aid had been diverted toward Israeli shores and that its passengers were expected to return to their home countries.

The civilian ship, called the Madleen, has been operating under the auspices of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, an international grass-roots campaign that opposes the nearly two-decade-old blockade of Gaza. The ship set sail from Sicily on June 1. The passengers included the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and Rima Hassan, a member of the European Parliament.

The Madleen was carrying only a symbolic amount of humanitarian assistance — an amount the Israeli foreign ministry dismissed as “tiny” in its statement, and “less than a single truckload of aid.”

Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said on Sunday that he had instructed the country’s military to prevent the vessel from reaching Gaza.

In a blunt statement, he said, “To Greta the antisemite and her friends, propagandists for Hamas — I say clearly: You would do well to turn back, because you won’t get to Gaza. Israel will act against any attempt to breach the blockade or aid terrorist organizations by sea, air or land.”

Israel said at the time that its soldiers, some of whom had rappelled onto the ship from helicopters, came under ambush and were attacked with clubs, metal rods and knives.

“The ‘selfie yacht’ of the ‘celebrities’ is safely making its way to the shores of Israel,” the Israeli foreign ministry wrote on social media on Monday. It accused “Greta and others” of attempting “to stage a media provocation whose sole purpose was to gain publicity.” The ministry later posted video of what it said were the passengers, who were wearing life jackets and being offered sandwiches and water.

http://archive.today/2025.06.08-042608/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/world/asia/japan-military-trump-china.html

The ship-slaying missiles of the Japanese army’s Seventh Regiment are mounted aboard dark green trucks that are easy to move and conceal, but for now, the soldiers are making no effort to hide them. Created a year ago, the fledgling regiment and its roving missile batteries occupy a hilltop base on the island of Okinawa that can be seen for miles.

The visibility is intentional. The Seventh is one of two new missile regiments that the army, called the Ground Self-Defense Force, has placed along the islands on Japan’s southwestern flank in response to an increasingly robust Chinese navy that frequently sails through waters near Japan.

“Our armaments are a show of force to deter an enemy from coming,” said Col. Yohei Ito, the regiment’s commander.

Since the regiment was created, U.S. Marines have begun visiting to observe its drills and study the Japanese-made Type-12 missiles, which can hit a ship more than 100 miles away. The Americans are eager to learn as they prepare to deploy their own land-based anti-ship missiles in Okinawa, part of a shift in strategy to challenge China’s growing forces.

“Japan has capabilities that the U.S. military didn’t have before now,” said Colonel Ito, the Japanese commander. “There are things that we can teach them.”

Given the growing military strength of nearby China and also North Korea, Japan wants to upgrade the defense alliance with the United States by becoming a fuller-fledged military partner and moving further from the pacifism enshrined in its Constitution adopted after World War II.

With the war in Ukraine stirring fears of a similar Chinese move on the democratic island of Taiwan, Japan announced in 2022 it would double spending on national security to about 2 percent of gross domestic product. The resulting defense buildup is now underway.

Japan is buying expensive weapon systems from the United States like the F-35B stealth fighter and Tomahawk cruise missiles that will give Japan the ability to strike targets on enemy soil for the first time since 1945.

The spending is also revitalizing Japan’s own defense industry. At a trade show last month near Tokyo, Japanese manufacturers displayed weapons currently under development, including a hypersonic missile, a laser system for shooting down drones, and a jet fighter to be built with Italy and Britain.

As China and North Korea tilt the power balance by building up their nuclear arsenals, Japanese policymakers are also asking the United States to show its commitment. There have been growing calls for Washington to make a visible deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in the region to discourage potential foes from using theirs.

If Washington proves unreliable, Japan has an ultimate fallback: tons of plutonium stockpiled from its civilian nuclear power industry, which it could use to build a nuclear arsenal of its own. So far, the national trauma from the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has kept such an option off the table.

http://archive.today/2025.06.08-025637/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/us/trump-national-guard-deploy-rare.html

President Trump took extraordinary action on Saturday by deploying 2,000 National Guard troops to quell immigration protesters in California, making rare use of federal powers and bypassing the authority of the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom.

Governors almost always control the deployment of National Guard troops in their states. But according to legal scholars, the president has the authority under Title 10 of the United States Code to federalize the National Guard units of states to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.”

In a presidential memo, Mr. Trump said, “To the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement on Saturday night that President Trump was deploying soldiers in response to “violent mobs” that she said had attacked federal law enforcement and immigration agents. The 2,000 troops would “address the lawlessness that has been allowed to fester,” she said.

Protests have occurred Friday and Saturday in California to oppose federal immigration raids on workplaces in California. The latest incident was at a Home Depot in Paramount, Calif., about 20 miles south of downtown Los Angeles.

Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, immediately rebuked the president’s action, indicating that Mr. Trump had usurped his own state authority.

Mr. Trump suggested deploying U.S. forces in the same manner during his first term to suppress outbreaks of violence during the nationwide protests over the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

He opted against doing so at the time, but he has repeatedly raised the idea of using troops to secure border states.

http://archive.today/2025.06.07-203705/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/us/la-immigration-raids-ice.html

Protesters and immigration officials clashed again in Los Angeles County on Saturday as agents conducted raids at a Home Depot, local officials said, just a day after dramatic standoffs at similar workplace raids elsewhere in the area.

In Paramount, Calif., about 20 miles south of downtown Los Angeles, protesters squared off with federal immigration agents after at least two immigration raids took place on Saturday, including one at the Home Depot and another at a nearby meatpacking facility.

Video of the protests showed agents using what appeared to be flash-bang grenades to disperse the protesters. Immigrant rights advocates said that the agents, who were wearing riot gear, had also used some type of tear gas to break up the crowds. José Luis Solache Jr., a state assembly member, said on social media that he was among those who were hit with tear gas.

The standoff followed a series of immigration raids that swept through Los Angeles on Friday, which resulted in chaos outside a federal building downtown where people detained in the raids were being processed.

Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, said on social media on Saturday that the protests on Friday were “an insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States.”

“What took place in Los Angeles yesterday was appalling,” said Todd M. Lyons, the acting director of ICE. He added that Los Angeles police officers took “over two hours” to respond to the unrest, “despite being called multiple times.” The Police Department has not responded publicly to Mr. Lyons’s remarks.

On Saturday, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said that it was not involved in any of the federal operations and that its response was limited to traffic and crowd control.

http://archive.today/2025.06.07-094705/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/world/europe/russia-intelligence-documents-leak-how.html

In November, a crime group known as Ares Leaks announced on Telegram that it was selling classified Russian intelligence documents. The group claimed that the records originated from inside the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B.

How Ares Leaks acquired these documents is unclear. The group did not answer when asked. Russian agencies have been hacked before. Perhaps an F.S.B. officer mishandled them or had them stolen. Maybe an insider sold or leaked them, or Ares grabbed them from another criminal group.

The New York Times does not pay its sources or buy stolen documents. But we do accept documents that are provided without cost or strings attached. And it is common practice for sellers like Ares Leaks to share free samples.

In this case, Ares Leaks provided snapshots of Russian intelligence documents and, most important, a complete F.S.B. counterintelligence document about China. More documents were available, the group said, for a negotiable price paid in the cryptocurrency Monero.

The sample document on China appeared to come from the security agency’s Department for Counterintelligence Operations, known as the D.K.R.O. And it offered tantalizing insight into Russia’s relationship with China, one of the most important — and least understood — alliances in modern geopolitics. It described deep concerns in Moscow about Chinese espionage, and it revealed that Russia operates a secretive program to organize and analyze data from the popular Chinese messaging app WeChat.

The document looked consistent with F.S.B. records that have previously been made public. Times reporters who have studied Russian espionage for years analyzed the material and saw nothing immediately suspicious.

The Times also confirmed some details from the document. For instance, we established — independent of the Western intelligence sources we consulted — that the Russian government had in fact been conducting “precautionary briefings” with Russians who travel to China for work.

We took the document to six Western intelligence agencies. All of them confirmed that it appeared authentic, based on its format and content. A few agencies told us that the content was consistent with intelligence that they had collected independently. One went so far as to say that the content was consistent with what it knew about Russia’s views on China and its penetration of Chinese communications.

http://archive.today/2025.06.07-033117/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/06/us/los-angeles-immigration-raid.html

Federal agents in tactical gear armed with military-style rifles threw flash-bang grenades to disperse an angry crowd near downtown Los Angeles on Friday as they conducted an immigration raid on a clothing wholesaler, the latest sign of tensions between protesters and law enforcement over raids carried out at stores, restaurants and court buildings.

The raid at the clothing wholesaler began about 9:15 a.m. in the Fashion District, less than two miles from Los Angeles City Hall.

It was an extraordinary show of force. Dozens of federal agents wearing helmets and green camouflage arrived in two hulking armored trucks and other unmarked vehicles, and were soon approached by a crowd of immigrant activists and supporters. Some agents carried riot shields and others held rifles, as well as shotguns that appeared to be loaded with less-than-lethal ammunition.

Agents cleared a path for two white passenger vans that exited the area. A short time later, as officers boarded their vehicles to leave, a few agents lobbed flash-bang grenades at groups of people who chased alongside the slow-moving convoy. Some protesters had thrown eggs and other objects at the vehicles. At one point, the vehicles snagged and crushed at least two electric scooters that protesters had used.

Hours after the raid, a second clash between protesters and federal agents broke out outside a federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles, where those who were detained were taken. At one of the entrances, protesters chanted and approached the building as officers fired less-than-lethal projectiles and squirted what appeared to be pepper spray. Some protesters threw a chair and other objects, and appeared to spray-paint anti-ICE graffiti on the building.

Agents at the scene were wearing patches on their uniforms identifying themselves as being with the F.B.I., Homeland Security Investigations and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Officials did not detail any injuries. One man on the street said he was injured by a flash-bang grenade.

By 7 p.m., the Los Angeles Police Department declared an unlawful assembly, ordered demonstrators to disperse and a line of police in riot gear started to clear the area.

The Los Angeles police have had a policy in place since 1979 that bars officers from initiating police action for the sole purpose of determining someone’s immigration status. California law also prohibits state and local resources from being used to help with federal immigration enforcement.

Chief Jim McDonnell of the Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement that his agency was not involved in civil immigration enforcement efforts.

“While the LAPD will continue to have a visible presence in all our communities to ensure public safety, we will not assist or participate in any sort of mass deportations,” Chief McDonnell said, adding that the department would not attempt to determine anyone’s immigration status.

http://archive.today/2025.06.05-092924/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/upshot/tax-audits-wealthy-biden-trump.html

It was a promise repeated many times by President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration: The Internal Revenue Service would conduct more audits of wealthy Americans, but audit rates would not rise for households earning less than $400,000 per year.

Mr. Biden and the Democrats made that pledge as they bolstered funding for the I.R.S., hoping that more enforcement aimed at wealthy tax evaders would generate revenue to pay for climate and health care programs.

Republican lawmakers warned that more money for the I.R.S. would lead to more audits across the board, and that middle-class taxpayers would be targeted.

But [sic] new data released by the I.R.S. last week suggests that the agency upheld Mr. Biden’s promise in 2024. With an audit rate of 0.8 percent, people making over $500,000 on their latest return were more than twice as likely to be audited compared with the same point in the audit cycle in previous years.

Meanwhile, the matching audit rate for taxpayers making under $500,000 declined slightly. The figures covered 2022 tax returns that were filed in 2023 and audited during the 2024 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30.

With more funding during the Biden administration, I.R.S. staffing grew to about 100,000 employees from 80,000. But President Trump has sought big cuts. More than 20,000 employees offered to resign earlier this year, while others have been fired. A recent inspector general’s report showed that the agency now has closer to 90,000 employees. And congressional Republicans have rescinded or frozen the extra I.R.S. enforcement funding.

While the number of audits opened on wealthy taxpayers did spike last year, an audit can take several years to close, especially for a high-income return. The I.R.S. closed fewer audits last year than in any year except 2020, when adjusted for the number of returns filed. Audit collections decreased to $29 billion, down 10 percent from 2023.