Aurelia Butler

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    Italian Americans, for and Against Mamdani, Square Off in New York

    Feelings ran high at a colorful protest outside the Assembly district office of Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic mayoral nominee.For a political protest, especially in the dead of July in New York City, the colorful demonstration on Monday outside of Zohran Mamdani’s Assembly district office in Queens had it all.On one side, some members of an Italian American affinity group — which had taken offense at a recently resurfaced social media photo from 2020 showing Mr. Mamdani giving the middle finger to a Columbus statue — spoke of their umbrage, often in colorful terms.They vowed to fight Mr. Mamdani’s bid to become mayor. Some pledged their allegiance to Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate in November’s general election. One held a sign that was less committal, but just as dismissive. “Anyone but Communist Mamdani,” it said.Across the street, counterprotesters, many also Italian Americans, amassed. Some wore pins from Mr. Mamdani’s successful Democratic primary campaign (one woman wore a “Hot Italians for Zohran” shirt), and held up signs like “Fast + Free Buses for Nonna!”, “Paisans for Zohran!” and “You Eat Jar Sauce!”The two groups steadily held their ground, about a dozen cops between them, until the arrival of an infamous interloper — a performance artist known as Crackhead Barney — seemed to reignite the fury of the anti-Mamdani group.Yet for all of the event’s circuslike pageantry, it made no direct impression on Mr. Mamdani. He was more than 7,000 miles away, taking a vacation from the campaign trail in Uganda, where he was born.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

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    Miami Can’t Delay Its Election by a Year, Judge Rules

    City commissioners said the move was meant to save money and improve turnout. Critics noted that it would give some city officials an extra year in office.Miami city commissioners violated the Florida Constitution when they voted last month to postpone this fall’s election to November 2026, a state judge ruled on Monday, saying that such a change required voter approval.The judge, Valerie R. Manno Schurr of Florida’s 11th Judicial Circuit, ruled in favor of Emilio T. González, a candidate for mayor. He sued in late June after the City Commission voted 3 to 2 to delay the election, a move it said was meant to save money and improve turnout. Critics noted that it would give elected city officials an extra year in office.The postponement had led to public outcry from candidates who had already filed to run, and from some voters who said the process had been undemocratic.Mayor Francis X. Suarez and one city commissioner, Joe Carollo, are supposed to leave office at the end of this year because of term limits. Mr. Carollo voted against postponing the election; Mr. Suarez signed the approved ordinance into law.The commissioners and the mayor cannot lawfully change the date of a municipal election by ordinance, the judge wrote. Postponing the election from an odd-numbered year to an even-numbered one amounted to amending the city’s charter, which would require approval from the electorate, she ruled.The judge cited the Miami-Dade County charter, which governs cities in the county, including Miami, under the Florida Constitution.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

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    Trump Posts Fake Video Showing Obama Arrest

    President Trump shared what appeared to be an A.I.-generated video of former President Barack Obama being detained in the Oval Office.President Trump reposted a fake video showing former President Barack Obama being arrested in the Oval Office, as Trump administration officials continue to accuse Mr. Obama of trying to harm Mr. Trump’s campaign during the 2016 election, and the president seeks to redirect conversation from the Epstein files.The short video, which appears to have been generated by artificial intelligence and posted on TikTok before being reposted on Mr. Trump’s Truth Social account on Sunday, comes days after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued the latest in a series of reports from the Trump administration trying to undermine the eight-year-old assessment that Russia favored the election of Mr. Trump.The video appears to be manipulated footage of an Oval Office meeting that took place in November 2016 between Mr. Obama, then the president, and Mr. Trump, who days earlier had defeated Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, in the election.The fake video purports to show F.B.I. agents bursting into the meeting, pushing Mr. Obama into a kneeling position and putting him in handcuffs as Mr. Trump looks on smiling, while the song “Y.M.C.A.” by the Village People plays. Later, the fake video shows Mr. Obama in an orange jumpsuit pacing in a cell. The start of the video shows a compilation of actual footage of Democratic leaders, including Mr. Obama and former President Joseph R. Biden Jr, saying, “no one is above the law.”Mr. Obama’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the video.Mr. Trump regularly reposts A.I.-generated or mocked-up videos and photographs on his Truth Social account.Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said last week that the latest report released by her offices showed a “treasonous conspiracy in 2016” by top Obama administration officials to harm Mr. Trump. She said she would make a criminal referral to the F.B.I. based on recently released documents.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

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    James Carville: My Fix for the Confused and Leaderless Democrats

    Constipated. Leaderless. Confused. A cracked-out clown car. Divided. These are the words I hear my fellow Democrats using to describe our party as of late. The truth is they’re not wrong: The Democratic Party is in shambles.Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary wasn’t an isolated event. It represents an undeniable fissure in our political soul. We are divided along generational lines: Candidates like Mr. Mamdani are impatient for an economic future that folks my age are skeptical can actually be delivered. We are divided along ideological lines: A party that is historically allegiant to the state of Israel is at odds with a growing faction that will not look past the abuses in Palestine. From Medicare for All purists to Affordable Care Act reformists, the list goes on and on.The Democratic Party is steamrolling toward a civilized civil war. It’s necessary to have it. It’s even more necessary to delay it. The only thing that can save us now is an actual savior, because a new party can be delivered only by a person — see Barack Obama in 2008 and Bill Clinton in 1992. No matter how many podcasts or influencer streams our bench of candidates go on, our new leader won’t arrive until the day after the midterms in November 2026, which marks the unofficial-yet-official beginning of the 2028 presidential primary. No new party or candidate has a chance for a breakthrough until that day.Until then, we must run unified in opposition to the Republicans to gain as many House seats as possible in the midterms, because every congressional seat we gain in 2026 means we will be more likely to bring about change in 2028. And there’s good news on that front.There’s plenty of tantalizing political scandal surrounding the president right now. But issues of moral or ethical concern are almost always more powerful when they’re self-inflicted. Let President Trump Rope-A-Dope with MAGA on the Jeffrey Epstein case, and don’t get in the way.Instead, the midterms will, like all elections, be decided largely based on issues that affect Americans’ everyday lives. This time around, we don’t have to run with a shred of nuance when it comes to kitchen table issues: Mr. Trump’s “big, beautiful” domestic policy law is a big, steaming doggy nugget of epic proportion, contemptible to a vast majority of the nation. According to a new CNN poll, over 60 percent of Americans were opposed to Mr. Trump’s bill. For context: When Mr. Trump’s first-term budget dropped in 2017, the split was closer, with 41 percent opposed and 28 percent in favor.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

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    Japan’s Long-Dominant Party Suffers Election Defeat as Voters Swing Right

    The loss on Sunday left the Liberal Democrats a minority party in both houses of Parliament, while two new nationalist parties surged.Japan’s long-governing Liberal Democratic Party suffered a defeat in parliamentary elections on Sunday that saw new right-wing populist groups make gains, heralding what could be a tectonic shift in what has been one of the world’s most stable democracies.Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba vowed to stay on after his Liberal Democrats and their coalition partner lost 19 of their 66 seats that were up for re-election, depriving them of control of the less powerful Upper House. But he is facing calls to step down after the setback left the Liberal Democrats, who have led Japan for all but five of the last 70 years, a minority party in both chambers of the Diet, the country’s Parliament.Mr. Ishiba and his party failed to convince enough voters that they could resolve a host of challenges that included rising prices of staples like rice, tariff talks with the United States and the growing burden that supporting Japan’s aging population has placed on working-age people.The election results exposed a growing generational fissure that is altering the nation’s politics. While two-thirds of the 124 seats up for grabs on Sunday went to opposition parties, the biggest gains were made not by the traditional liberal opposition, but by a gaggle of new parties that drew younger voters with stridently nationalist messages. Among them was Sanseito, a populist party led by a politician inspired by President Trump.“With the L.D.P. in decline, Japan’s political landscape is diversifying,” said Romeo Marcantuoni, a Ph.D. candidate at Waseda University in Tokyo who has written about Sanseito. “For the first time, we’re seeing far-right populism similar to what we’ve seen in Europe.”Before all the votes had even been counted, powerful members of the governing party were calling on Mr. Ishiba to step down, to take responsibility for what exit polls suggested would be a poor showing. Taro Aso, a former deputy prime minister, said he “couldn’t accept” Mr. Ishiba staying on as prime minister, TV Asahi reported.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

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    Mamdani Travels to Uganda in Break From Mayoral Campaign

    Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York, said that he and his wife were going to the African country where he was born to celebrate their recent marriage.Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, said on Sunday that he was visiting Uganda, where he was born, in a break from campaigning for the general election in November.In a video posted on X and Bluesky, Mr. Mamdani said he was making the trip to Africa with his wife, Rama Duwaji, whom he married in February, to celebrate their marriage with family and friends.He left the city during the traditional summer lull in the weeks after the June primary, while, at the same time, his most formidable opponent, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, was seeking to strengthen his own run on an independent ballot line with appearances across New York in the aftermath of his surprise defeat by Mr. Mamdani.In a statement, Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who is running for re-election as an independent, criticized his opponent for taking a vacation. (Mr. Adams has taken numerous trips abroad before and after becoming mayor, including a weeklong “spiritual journey” to Ghana shortly after his election in 2021.)“At a time when public safety, housing, and education remain top concerns for working New Yorkers, the mayor is here — managing the responsibilities of running the largest city in America,” Mr. Adams said in a prepared statement. “This election is about who’s prepared to lead, not who can rack up the most passport stamps or press headlines. Eric Adams is working. Others are sightseeing.”A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Mr. Mamdani’s spokesman, Jeffrey Lerner, said in a statement that the candidate would return to New York before the end of the month “and looks forward to resuming public events and continuing his campaign to make the most expensive city in America affordable.”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

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    Mamdani Won Over N.Y.C. Democratic Voters. Can He Charm Washington?

    National Democrats are grappling with how much to embrace Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, a leftist who has become the party’s standard-bearer in America’s largest city.The head of the local Democratic Party in Queens, where Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani got his political start, has never met him. The party’s longtime state chairman had not spoken to him until the day after a stunning primary night that stamped him as a rising Democratic star.And among the party’s strategists, officials and elected leaders in Washington, he’s almost entirely unknown.Now, as the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, Mr. Mamdani, 33, is on a crash course to change that. He is unleashing a full-scale charm offensive of private meetings, phone calls and public promises aimed at wooing top party leaders, donors and activists.On Monday, he met with Jewish elected officials in New York City. The next day, he took pointed questions about his views on Israel and tax policy from a group of 150 business leaders in the city.A day later, he headed to Capitol Hill to offer campaign advice to dozens of Democratic members of Congress at a breakfast hosted by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York before returning to Manhattan for a private meeting with younger technology executives. And on Friday, he met with Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader and a fellow New Yorker who has yet to endorse his bid.Already, some establishment Democrats have been grappling with Mr. Mamdani’s sudden standing as their party’s standard-bearer in America’s most populous city. And they want to quickly get the measure of a man who has spent much of his political life far outside of their big tent.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

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    A Pro-Trump Community Reckons With Losing a Beloved Immigrant Neighbor

    Voters here in Oregon’s rural Yamhill County have backed Donald Trump for three presidential elections in a row, most recently by a six-point margin. His promises to crack down on immigration resonated in these working-class communities.Then last month ICE detained Moises Sotelo, a beloved but undocumented Mexican immigrant who has lived in the county for 31 years and owns a vineyard management company employing 10 people. Two of his children were born here and are American citizens, and Sotelo was a pillar of his church and won a wine industry award — yet he was detained for five weeks and on Friday was deported to Mexico, his family said.“Moises’s story just really shook our community,” Elise Yarnell Hollamon, the City Council president in Newberg, Sotelo’s hometown, told me. “Everyone knows him, and he has built a reputation within our community over the last few decades.”Christopher Valentine for The New York TimesThe result has been an outpouring of support for Sotelo, even in this conservative county (which is also my home). More than 2,200 people have donated to a GoFundMe for the family, raising more than $150,000 for legal and other expenses, and neighbors have been dropping off meals and offering vehicles and groceries.“Oh, my God, it’s been insane,” said Alondra Sotelo Garcia, his adult daughter, who was born in America. “I knew he was well known, but I didn’t know how big it would blow up to be.”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