Former President Donald J. Trump said again on Wednesday night that he would not agree to a second debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, as the noon Eastern time Thursday deadline for his response to CNN’s proposed debate approached.Ms. Harris had accepted CNN’s offer to debate on Oct. 23. Fox News had also extended an offer on Wednesday for a debate this month.Mr. Trump insisted on his social media site that Ms. Harris wanted a “rematch” because she lost their first meeting, despite polls that suggested otherwise, finding that most respondents thought Ms. Harris had performed better. He also repeated his suggestion that it was too late to debate again because voting had already begun, though debates in past presidential elections have often been held in mid- to late October.Mr. Trump also claimed that he was “leading in all swing states,” even though polling averages show him leading in some and Ms. Harris leading in others, with the race very close in all of them.Mr. Trump had expressed reluctance to debate Ms. Harris in the first place, and said shortly after that meeting that he wasn’t inclined to do it again. He turned down the CNN debate last month, and indicated that even the friendly terrain of Fox News was unlikely to entice him, even as Ms. Harris has sought to goad him into another face-off. More

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Friday that he was firing Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first female officer to rise to the Navy’s top job of Chief of Naval Operations, and would be looking for her replacement.The announcement came in a statement emailed to reporters Friday night, shortly after President Trump said he was firing Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.Mr. Hegseth said in his statement that he would also replace Gen. James C. Slife, the Air Force’s vice chief of staff, as well as the top uniformed lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force.Both Admiral Franchetti and General Slife “have had distinguished careers,” Mr. Hegseth said, adding “We thank them for their service and dedication to our country.”“Under President Trump, we are putting in place new leadership that will focus our military on its core mission of deterring, fighting and winning wars,” he added.According to her official biography, Admiral Franchetti received her commission in 1985 through the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps program at Northwestern University, just seven years after the Navy ended its prohibition on women serving on ships at sea.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The new battery by Energizer, with “color alert technology,” comes nearly two years after a report warned that more children were swallowing batteries.Almost two years after a report warned that children were swallowing batteries at an alarming rate, Energizer is releasing a new battery designed to alert parents if their child has swallowed one.The new coin lithium battery features more secure packaging, a nontoxic bitter coating to discourage swallowing and “color alert technology” that activates a blue dye when the battery comes into contact with moisture, like saliva, so parents and caregivers know that medical attention could be required.The new battery was announced in a video last week by Energizer and Trista Hamsmith, whose 18-month-old daughter died after swallowing a button battery from a remote control.Ms. Hamsmith founded a nonprofit organization focused on children’s safety, successfully advocated for legislation, known as Reese’s Law, that requires a secure compartment of the batteries in products that use them as well as stronger warning labels on all packaging, and is now working to make the batteries themselves safer.Ingested coin or button batteries result in thousands of emergency hospital visits each year, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which notes that “the consequences of a child swallowing a battery can be immediate, devastating and deadly.”“A button cell battery can burn through a child’s throat or esophagus in as little as two hours if swallowed,” according to the agency.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The move, prompted by fears for agency workers’ safety, could eventually affect U.S. avocado supplies if the inspections are not resumed.Security concerns for agency workers have led the United States Agriculture Department to suspend its inspections of avocados and mangos imported from Mexico “until further notice,” the U.S.D.A. said on Monday.Produce already cleared for export will not be affected by the decision, but avocado supplies in the United States, which mostly come from the Mexican state of Michoacán, could eventually be affected if the inspections are not resumed. The inspections “will remain paused until the security situation is reviewed and protocols and safeguards are in place,” a U.S.D.A. spokesman said in an email. The agency did not say what had prompted the security concerns. But Mexican news outlets recently reported that two U.S.D.A. inspectors had been illegally detained at a checkpoint run by community members. In Michoacán, which stretches from the mountains west of Mexico City to the Pacific Ocean, some Indigenous communities have set up security patrols to defend themselves against criminal groups.The United States Embassy in Mexico confirmed on Monday that the inspectors were no longer in detention.“The interruption of avocado exports from Michoacán was due to an incident unrelated to the avocado industry,” Julio Sahagún Calderón, the president of Mexico’s association of avocado producers and packers, known as APEAM, said in a statement. He added that the group was working “intensively” with Mexican and U.S. authorities to resume the inspection of avocados from Michoacán.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

WASHINGTON — The judge overseeing the case of President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn asked a full appeals court on Thursday to review an order by a panel of its judges to end the prosecution, saying their ruling marked “a dramatic break from precedent that threatens the orderly administration of justice.”The request by the trial judge, Emmet G. Sullivan, was the latest turn in an extraordinary legal battle over the case against Mr. Flynn, who twice pleaded guilty to a charge of lying to the F.B.I. about his conversations with a Russian diplomat during the presidential transition in late 2016. The Justice Department sought in May to dismiss the case in a highly unusual move that prompted accusations of politicization, and Judge Sullivan appointed an outsider to argue against the department’s request rather than granting it.Mr. Flynn’s lawyer, Sidney Powell, then asked the appeals panel to issue an emergency ruling over whether Judge Sullivan had the legal authority to scrutinize the Justice Department’s move. Last month, a divided panel ruled 2 to 1 in favor of Mr. Flynn, ordering Judge Sullivan to end the case without further review.“The panel’s decision threatens to turn ordinary judicial process upside down,” a lawyer for Judge Sullivan wrote in the petition asking the full appeals court to examine the ruling. “It is the district court’s job to consider and rule on pending motions, even ones that seem straightforward.”Mr. Flynn was the only White House official to plead guilty to a criminal charge in the Russia investigation. Judge Sullivan had been set to sentence Mr. Flynn in late 2018 but granted him more time to maximize his cooperation agreement and testify for the government against a former business associate in a foreign lobbying case.But after Mr. Flynn hired new lawyers, he changed his stance, eventually declaring this year that he was innocent and seeking to withdraw his guilty plea. He made allegations of misconduct by prosecutors and the F.B.I., which Judge Sullivan rejected.Attorney General William P. Barr stepped in, appointing the top federal prosecutor in St. Louis, Jeff Jensen, to review the case. As part of his review, Mr. Jensen handed over documents to Mr. Flynn’s lawyers, who declared them exculpatory.That helped prompt the Justice Department to move to drop the case after a long public campaign by Mr. Trump and his allies, leading to accusations of political interference. None of the prosecutors who had worked on the case over the previous two and a half years signed the motion, and the lead prosecutor, Brandon L. Van Grack, withdrew from it altogether.Instead of granting the motion, Judge Sullivan appointed a former federal judge and onetime mob prosecutor, John Gleeson, to argue against it and invited legal experts to weigh in, suggesting that he was skeptical of the government’s rationale.Experts broadly disputed the Justice Department’s assertion that Mr. Flynn’s lies were not material since the F.B.I. was on the verge of closing its investigation of him, noting that they bore on the broader counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump campaign officials had coordinated with Russia’s 2016 election interference. Judge Sullivan had previously ruled that Mr. Flynn’s lies were relevant to the inquiry.His decision to appoint Mr. Gleeson then spurred Ms. Powell’s emergency filing with the appeals panel seeking a so-called writ of mandamus, with the Justice Department arguing that if the case was not dropped it would harm the executive branch’s exclusive prosecutorial power.The dissenting judge in the panel’s 2-to-1 decision said Mr. Sullivan should be allowed to rule.“The district court must be given a reasonable opportunity to consider and hold a hearing on the government’s request to ensure that it is not clearly contrary to the public interest,” Robert L. Wilkins, a 2014 appointee of President Barack Obama, wrote.The order had handed Mr. Flynn and the Justice Department a crucial victory as it meant that a hearing Judge Sullivan had scheduled for next week would not take place. The judge most likely would have pressed the Justice Department over its decision to drop the charge and why prosecutors who had worked at length on the case had not signed the motion.In another development on Thursday, the Justice Department said it did not raise objections to Mr. Trump’s longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr. beginning a 40-month prison sentence later this month. Mr. Stone had asked recently for a delay until Sept. 1 because of the coronavirus pandemic, citing health concerns, but a judge partly rejected his request, allowing him to put off the start of his sentence only until next week.Mr. Stone was convicted of seven felonies in a bid to impede a congressional inquiry that threatened the president.Another former aide to Mr. Trump, his onetime lawyer and fixer Michael D. Cohen, was taken back into federal custody on Thursday more than a month after being granted a medical furlough from prison, where he was serving a three-year sentence for campaign finance violations and other crimes.The federal Bureau of Prisons said without elaborating that Mr. Cohen “refused the conditions of his home confinement.” A person briefed on his legal status said he had refused to sign papers agreeing to conditions related to media appearances and the writing of books. More